Here’s a bit of good news:

This morning, a three judge panel for the D.C. Court of Appeals, the highest court in the District, reversed the dismissal of suits the Center for Inquiry brought against Walmart and CVS over claims that they deceived customers by marketing fake medicine as if it were real.

Walmart and CVS shelve homeopathic products alongside real medicine. This placement is deceptive to consumers who can easily confuse it for scientifically-tested products that provably work – which they are not. CFI’s suits had been dismissed by two lower D.C. courts.

This is not a joke. The local big drug chain, Bartell Drugs, does the same thing. It’s infuriating. Of course consumers are confused by it. … Read the rest

Katy Montgomerie is throwing his weight around again.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1575264200485642240

Montgomerie is a white man and a full-time bully. He’s not part of a “vulnerable minority.”

It's like when Joseph Smith found the golden plates and nobody else was allowed to look at them. pic.twitter.com/kLMkmIIgsZ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 29, 2022

I've just gone to look it up. Eleven people claimed to have seen the plates, some of them related to Smith, but there's debate as to whether this was a metaphysical experience or they genuinely saw them. And one man was allowed to hold the box but not look inside it.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 29, 2022

Eleven is a LOT.… Read the rest

At last:

Mermaids is being investigated by the Charity Commission after The Telegraph revealed “red flags” in its dealings with children.

The regulator said it had opened a “regulatory compliance case” after concerns were raised about the trans charity’s “approach to safeguarding young people”. The charity has been sending potentially dangerous breast binding devices to children behind their parents’ backs and discussing with them how puberty blocking drugs are “totally reversible”.

Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training sessions for schools, the NHS and police forces, has been contacted by the regulator.

“Training sessions” forsooth. For schools and the National Health Service and the police – all institutions where you really want to get the … Read the rest

It’s all very well to order people to evacuate, but a lot of people have no way to evacuate. In order to evacuate you need at least two things: a destination, and a way to get there. The Post tells us:

As Hurricane Ian barreled toward the nation’s third-most-populous state, millions were urged to evacuate. Many did, clogging up highways as they fanned out across Florida and beyond. But countless people defied the orders — even in some of the most vulnerable parts of the state, which could get up to 18 feet of storm surge.

…

[Rafael] Baca, who is riding out the storm with his in-laws, wife and her brothers, said they talked about leaving but decided

… Read the rest

A storm surge in action.

The full progression of the MASSIVE storm surge at Ft Myers Beach from SurgeCam 9 during Hurricane Ian. This cam was placed 8+ feet above the street surface.@weatherchannel @johnhumphress @JordanHallWX pic.twitter.com/T72Btg1PLo

— SevereStudios (@SevereStudios) September 29, 2022

… Read the rest

Hey kids it’s survey time –

Researchers from King’s College London wish to explore transgender women’s beliefs, attitudes and expectations/experiences of menopause and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). It is hoped that the study will help to build knowledge to better support transgender healthcare, wellbeing and the transgender community as a whole.

Ok but there’s just one small problem: transgender women are men, and men don’t have any experiences of menopause. If they have expectations about it they’re delusional.

The study consists of a short online questionnaire on your personal views and experiences of HRT and menopause. It will also collect some background information, such as your age, ethnicity and employment status.

Men don’t have experience of menopause.… Read the rest

Protect the children…except when it’s priests harming them.

In 33 states, clergy are exempt from any laws requiring professionals such as teachers, physicians and psychotherapists to report information about alleged child sexual abuse to police or child welfare officials if the church deems the information privileged.

That’s so interesting in the light of the fact that the Catholic church has a long long long and very full history of looking fixedly in the other direction while priests rape children.

This loophole has resulted in an unknown number of predators being allowed to continue abusing children for years despite having confessed the behavior to religious officials. In many of these cases, the privilege has been invoked to shield religious

… Read the rest

Commentary on CBS’s “study shows gender-affirming mastectomy is awesome” tweet is harsh.

https://twitter.com/coccinellanovem/status/1575049309703540737 https://twitter.com/RhinestoneCow11/status/1575186208468086784

What would we believe about tantrums if we surveyed kids right after they got the lollipop…and learning that throwing tantrums gets you what you want?

— James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD) September 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/KarolWalczak9/status/1575063782115909632

Not to mention the massive loss of follow up and 3 month follow up.

— Chloe Cole (@ChoooCole) September 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/raychilled/status/1574993827789934592 … Read the rest

Florida is about to get hammered.

Hurricane Ian is bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Florida as one of the strongest storms on record for the area. Its storm surge could be unlike anything seen there as the eye comes ashore, and forecasters are warning that Ian’s intense rainfall – which is expected to continue across the peninsula through Thursday, could lead to life-threatening floods.

Global warming=get out of Florida. It’s doomed.

Florida sees a lot of hurricanes, but not the biggest ones. This is a biggest one.

If Hurricane Ian makes landfall with maximum winds of 155 mph or stronger, it will be the most intense storm to ever make landfall on the west coast of the

… Read the rest

This is not something news organizations should be doing. It’s not news and it’s not truth, and it’s extremely harmful.

Top surgery drastically improves quality of life for young transgender people, study finds

The quality of life of young transmasculine people dramatically improves after receiving top surgery — a mastectomy procedure that removes breast tissue — according to a study by Northwestern Medicine.

What are “transmasculine people”? What is CBS doing talking silly political drivel like that?

The study, published in peer-reviewed journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, is the first to show that top surgery is “associated with significant improvement in chest dysphoria, gender congruence, and body image in transmasculine and nonbinary teens and young adults,” Northwestern Medicine said

… Read the rest

Women? Actually women? Not “people”?

Violent men credibly accused of sexual assault have no place ruling on the rights of women.

— Women's March (@womensmarch) September 27, 2022

The rights of women? Women??? Surely they mean people.

Until people who can get pregnant have control over our own bodies, we *cannot* be equal.

Abortion is a human right.

— Women's March (@womensmarch) September 14, 2022

Remember that? It was only two weeks ago.

Have they changed their minds?… Read the rest

There are developments.

Please see our statement below in relation to the recent sentencing of a historic sex offender. pic.twitter.com/7ZcwkT7yEt

— Sussex Police (@sussex_police) September 27, 2022

I don’t think the court did “sentence Sally Anne Dixon as a woman.” I don’t think that’s a thing. They sentenced Dixon under that name, but I doubt they attached “azza woman” or “ut femina” to the sentence. They sentenced this Dixon who currently calls himself a woman.

Anyway. It may be that Sussex Police were inspired to withdraw some of the Twitter insults by a Tory MP [and Home Secretary].

.@Sussex_police have done well to put a dangerous criminal behind bars. But they’ve got it wrong by playing identity politics and

… Read the rest

From a thread on W-PATH and research failings –

https://twitter.com/matildagosling/status/1574727958446604288

11-12 are CRUCIAL:

But what about the right to go through puberty with peers, to avoid surgery on healthy bodies, to preserve fertility and the ability in future to enjoy sex? Or the right to give informed consent to medical procedures recommended on basis of objective, balanced research? 12/16

— Matilda Gosling (@matildagosling) September 27, 2022

That. Trans ideologues never stop yammering about “rights” but they also never bother to define what “rights” they’re talking about. In reality they’re generally talking about rights that aren’t rights, like a “right” to be “affirmed in one’s chosen identity” or to be “validated as who you really are.” This is more of the … Read the rest

The Telegraph reports on the Twitter quarrel between Sussex Police and uppity women:

Sussex Police has been criticised for saying it did not tolerate “hateful comments” to a member of the public who expressed gender critical views over a trans paedophile.

The force tweeted that Sally Ann Dixon, 58, had been jailed for 20 years for sexually abusing children in a seaside caravan.

Her trial heard that she was living as a man when she carried out a campaign of offending against two boys and five girls.

His. He. His trial, he was “living as” a man, when he carried out a campaign. This is a man’s crime. News outlets should not be obscuring this fact by referring to … Read the rest

Another aspect of the Sussex Police dispute is that Sussex Police are blissfully unaware that sexism and misogyny exist.

Go look up hate crime on our website, they told us.

https://twitter.com/sussex_police/status/1574708767287115780

So I looked, and found what I expected to find. There’s a long list, but women aren’t on it. We never are. It’s said to be because of the wording of the most recent Equality 2020 Sentencing Act, which apparently forgot women exist.

Hate crimes and hate incidents

In most crimes it is something the victim has in their possession or control that motivates the offender to commit the crime. With hate crime it is ‘who’ the victim is, or ‘what’ the victim appears to be that motivates the

… Read the rest

“Cognitive issues.”

The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.

To be fair, lots of us think everyone in the “Freedom Caucus” has serious cognitive issues.

Denver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.

…

Describing his own spell in Congress, between 2019 and 2021, Riggleman says he joined the hardline Freedom Caucus as a way to allay concerns among conservatives that he was insufficiently loyal to Trump.

It’s strange that loyalty to Trump would be … Read the rest

Sally Hines being Sally Hines.

When I agreed to take part in this event I was unaware that it was a ‘debate’ with, as @binarythis says, extreme anti-trans activists, or that it had such a specific focus on trans inclusion in LGBT EDI policy in HE. I am no longer taking part. https://t.co/ZbGImNUi1c

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) September 27, 2022

By “extreme anti-trans activists” she means feminist women. Extreme feminist extreme women; must avoid at all costs. Abort mission.

She’s proud of her abort message.

This is my correspondence with organisers, which I would like to stand as my contribution… https://t.co/wGZszSFVXC pic.twitter.com/TqLBYIe9Rg

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) September 27, 2022

It’s all in the wording. “Anti-trans activists” she says – but … Read the rest

Sussex Police are really knocking themselves out today.

https://twitter.com/sussex_police/status/1574707058355699712

Of course the “hateful” comments were not about the gender identity of Sussex Police – but leaving that clumsy mistake aside, the important thing to note is that the sex of a sexual criminal is of course highly relevant, and it’s just utterly stupid as well as evil for Sussex Police to claim it isn’t. Just imagine the scenario: man rapes a woman while she struggles and yells, he tells her he’s not a man, she says oh well that’s fine then, carry on.… Read the rest

A press release from Sussex Police:

Woman convicted of historic offences against children in Sussex

Seven children who were sexually abused in Sussex between 26 and 33 years ago have seen justice done after their abuser was jailed for 20 years on Thursday, September 8.

Sally Ann Dixon, 58, of Swanmore Avenue, Havant, Hants, was sentenced at Lewes Crown Court after being convicted of 30 indecent assaults against her victims.

Except, of course, that the perp is actually a man. Naturally Sussex Police doesn’t admit that until the 8th paragraph.

At the time of the offences, Dixon was John Stephen Dixon, who transitioned to female in 2004 – after the period during which the offences took place.

Not our … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Fringe.

Many political parties seem to have over-reacted to online trans activism, imbuing social media genderist opinion with more importance and perceived support than it would actually have in the population at large. It’s as if there’s a social media equivalent to the funny-looking, strangely proportioned figures of the “motor humunculus” and “sensory humunculus” when the cerebral territories for these systems are mapped onto the surface of the brain. If the “digital humunculus” of the body politic were to be mapped out in the brains of political party officials, the acreage devoted to Twitter sensitivity would be grotesquely swollen and distorted, overshadowing the vestigial acceptance of “woke” thought amongst the … Read the rest