All entries by this author

Emmeline Pankhurst was not a TRA

May 15th, 2022 2:09 pm | By

There was a gathering of women today in Manchester, and the women were joined by some men in black hoodies and masks who wanted them to stop gathering.

https://twitter.com/WRNWales/status/1525806119045812224

The vibe is not “protest” but “threat.”

Well, women gathering. I mean to say.

https://twitter.com/Aja02537920/status/1525855987063742465 https://twitter.com/AyrshireBog/status/1525844344741236739

Substitute a statue of Rosa Parks or John Lewis or Thurgood Marshall. Imagine a gang of white supremacists taking over said statue. Think about that. Mmhm.

https://twitter.com/judgejules75/status/1525818978597318665

Like adding a hoe for chopping cotton to a statue of Marshall, or a box … Read the rest



Softly softly

May 15th, 2022 11:00 am | By

Aaron Blake at the Washington Post last September:

As we wrote a while back, the Republican Party’s increasing embrace of replacement theory — the idea popular in white supremacist circles that immigrants are being brought in to replace native-born (read: White) Americans — has been a slow build. For years, it was an idea relegated to infrequent mentions by fringe Republicans who operated outside the political mainstream and weren’t generally welcomed in politer circles of the GOP. When it was mentioned, it was dressed up as something besides replacement theory, per se.

Well, sure. There are a lot of ways you can dress up such things. In fact “replacement theory” itself is a dressing up – it sounds … Read the rest



The theory behind the practice

May 15th, 2022 9:45 am | By

Martin Pengelly in The Guardian last September:

After the Anti-Defamation League renewed its call for Tucker Carlson to be fired from Fox News for voicing the racist “great replacement” theory about immigration, the primetime host had a pithy response: “Fuck them.”

Claiming the Biden administration was trying “to change the racial mix of the country”, Carlson said: “In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement’, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.”

That’s the one Nicholas Confessore cited on Fresh Air the other day. It’s definitely an attention-grabber. Goebbels-like.

The “great replacement theory” originated on the far right. Perpetrators of recent mass shootings have cited iterations of the theory in “manifestos”

Read the rest


They remain steadfast

May 15th, 2022 8:00 am | By

Canadian Women and Sport think men belong in women’s sport.

I would link to the statement on their website instead of Twitter, but it’s not there. They posted it on Facebook and Twitter but not their website.

They bother to have a thing called Canadian Women and Sport but then they undercut it by making a public statement that they think men belong in it.

I wondered if there’s a comparable group for First Nations in sport and found Aboriginal Sport Circle. It’s unfortunately all male on the main page until the very bottom … Read the rest



Edicts

May 15th, 2022 7:09 am | By

When in doubt, bully women some more.

Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, they have issued various edicts restricting the freedom of women – banning them from government jobs, secondary education and from traveling more than 45 miles (72km) without a mahram, or male guardian.

Some women in Afghanistan say the edict about the use of face veils is just the latest attack on their human rights.

Well what else would it be? A defense of their human rights?

Herat University graduate Najma thinks it’s time the international community did more to put pressure on the Taliban when it comes to women’s rights.

Whatever “the international community” may be. Russia? Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan? North Korea? China?… Read the rest



Next stop: Jefferson Avenue Tops Market

May 14th, 2022 3:24 pm | By

Here he is saying it. Just one of many.

Read the rest



What Tucker Carlson is doing

May 14th, 2022 3:15 pm | By

What was that about “replacement theory”? Just yesterday? Now jump ahead to today:

A man has opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York while live-streaming on Twitch, killing at least 10 people and injuring several others, local officials and witnesses say. He also posted an online manifesto in which he described himself as a white supremacist.

Tucker Carlson whips white supremacists into a rage for ratings, which translate to money. To make himself rich, Tucker Carlson talks a lot of racist garbage on tv to an audience of millions, and here is this result. This isn’t correlation taken for causation, not when the guy live-streams himself and says he’s a violent racist.

The exact number of victims

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Guest post: They love women’s bodies but they hate women’s souls

May 14th, 2022 12:12 pm | By

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Realizing there are no sheep left.

How can it be that men who are claiming to actually be women despise the sex they aspire to be or become so much? If they loathe women as much as they do (and far too many of them do), why on earth would they ever want to be one?

It’s like a jumbled kind of mind-body dualism deployed in service of misogyny: they love women’s bodies but they hate women’s souls.

I think many trans-identified men are like many other men in that they’re preoccupied with women’s bodies, but not keen on the female people who “inhabit” them. Damn that pesky business of women as autonomous … Read the rest



A fact too obvious to mention

May 14th, 2022 11:42 am | By

Helen Lewis in The Atlantic:

Say what you like about the ACLU; it knows how to get people talking. But not necessarily in terms favorable to the ACLU. Late last month, the civil-liberties organization was revealed to have ghostwritten Amber Heard’s contentious Washington Post op-ed about suffering from domestic violence; the article was timed to coincide with the release of her film Aquaman. And on May 11, the ACLU once again caught the moment, posting a tweet that perfectly encapsulates a new taboo on the American left: a terrible aversion to using the word women.

And not just the left but the…what to call it…the mainstream, the middle, the Major Media, the organizations. They all heed … Read the rest



National Christianism

May 14th, 2022 9:36 am | By

Arwa Mahdawi says it’s not a time to Calm Down Dear.

On the same day that prominent columnists were telling people to calm down – and less than 48 hours after the leaked supreme court opinion – Republicans in Louisiana advanced a bill that would redefine personhood to begin at the moment of fertilization and make abortion a crime of murder. Yes, you read that right: the moment of fertilization. I’m sure the people involved in drafting this law have no idea about how reproduction actually works (they like controlling female bodies, not learning about them), but between one-third and one-half of all fertilized eggs never fully implant. Which means someone in Louisiana needs to arrest God

Read the rest


Uncertainties

May 14th, 2022 9:14 am | By

It doesn’t say the girls are trans.

A teacher has been arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting four girls.

The 28-year-old suspect, who works at a school in Birmingham, is also accused of sending indecent images of himself.

I take it he’s not trans and the girls are also not trans?

I wonder if he’s transitioning right this minute, and will be informing the police of his new reality with the swiftness of thought.

In a statement, the police said: “We’re investigating sexual assault accusations against a teacher at a Birmingham school.

“It’s alleged the 28-year-old man assaulted four different girls and sent indecent images of himself.

“He was initially arrested on 9 May on suspicion of sexual assault and

Read the rest


Making it about him

May 14th, 2022 8:56 am | By

Man brags about inserting himself into an abortion rights protest.

https://twitter.com/pickle_bee/status/1525498442847596544

He shouldn’t be “really proud” of that. He should be really ashamed of it. He doesn’t need abortion rights, he’s not a woman, the war on abortion rights isn’t a war on him, he should sit down and be quiet.… Read the rest



This dehumanization kills people

May 14th, 2022 8:45 am | By

He’s right you know.

https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1525463695417085953

It is, literally (all too literally), the kind of language that aspiring or existing fascist strongmen use to incite violence against The Chosen Enemy. It’s not just rude or over the top or “extreme,” it’s intended to provoke hatred then rage then violence.

“Pedo grifters.” That’s getting into blood libel territory.… Read the rest



Guest post: Realizing there are no real sheep left

May 14th, 2022 8:16 am | By

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

What follows is likely old hat to many here, but it’s something I’ve come to realize, partly in the course of writing this very comment. It might be completely off-base, but still, I’ll run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

Tatchell is being surprisingly candid, and perhaps unconciously so. First, he’s distinguishing between biological women (in reality, the only kind there is) and socially constructed “women” who do not share the biological characteristics of actual women. The claim of “both” being “equally valid” depends on the admitted existence of actual, biological women. The putative “equal validity” of “socially constucted women” (i.e. TiMs) has nothing to … Read the rest



The kids are not ok

May 13th, 2022 3:49 pm | By

Julie Bindel had a very horrible time at York University last week.

It was a sign of the times that the group that invited me to give a talk on feminism at York was the university’s Free Speech Society. It was scheduled for February but trouble immediately materialised and both the feminist and the LGBTQ societies got it cancelled. But my hosts did not back down and, pledging to guarantee the safety of both students and speaker, rescheduled the talk. It happened last week, in an atmosphere I found both deeply disturbing and profoundly distressing. 

I heard the noise before I saw the crowd. ‘Bindel, out!’ ‘Not welcome on our campus,’ ‘Decrim(inalise) sex work now’ and the like. I

Read the rest


The war between darkness and light

May 13th, 2022 3:33 pm | By

All very normal, very healthy, nothing to worry about.

Why did we elect those pedo grifters, anyway? I forget.

Read the rest


Who’s the they?

May 13th, 2022 11:50 am | By

Fresh Air on Tucker Carlson part 2.

DAVIES: One of the things you hear a lot on his show is him looking into the camera, as he does in his opening monologues, and speaks to his audience and says, they don’t like you. They don’t care about you. They want to control your lives. Who’s the they?

CONFESSORE: In Carlson’s telling, in his narrative, they is the ruling class. And the ruling class is pretty much anybody he wants it to be. It’s people who actually are in charge and have power and are elected to office – presidents, vice presidents, people in Congress. It’s pro athletes. It’s Chelsea Clinton. It’s comedians who make jokes about America. It’s pretty

Read the rest


The great replacement

May 13th, 2022 11:02 am | By

Fresh Air did a conversation about Tucker Carlson of Fox “News” yesterday.

If you follow cable TV at all, you probably know that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is one of the most influential commentators in conservative media and one of the most provocative. He’s known for praising authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and warning his viewers about the dangers of foreign immigrants and elites who want to control their lives. Our guest, New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore, recently wrote a series of articles about Carlson drawing on an analysis of more than 1,100 episodes of his show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” conducted by Confessore and a team of Times reporters as well

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You can’t protect what you can’t define

May 13th, 2022 10:40 am | By

The GB News piece behind Tatchell’s “there are two kinds of women” tweet:

Speaking on GB News, Mr Tatchell said: “What I do say is that I think the fuss about the definition protects us from the dignity, rights, welfare and safeguarding of all women, including trans women.”

I think he meant “prevents us from protecting” rather than “protects us from” – that’s just the fumble of commenting live, which is natural. But the claim is idiotic even if we correct the wording. How can we protect the rights of people we can’t define correctly? Suppose we want to campaign to protect the human rights of Uighurs – they certainly need it. Suppose we want to do that and … Read the rest



Equally valid

May 13th, 2022 8:18 am | By

Tatchell preaches the gospel.

No there aren’t. Not in that sense.

It depends on what you mean by “kinds,” for a start. There are millions of “kinds” of women in the sense of human variety, but in the ridiculous sense Tatchell is using, there aren’t. He might as well say there are two different kinds of house, one a building made of wood or bricks or stone for humans to live … Read the rest