What’s wrong with this headline? (Aside from the fact that it’s too long for a headline.)

‘I’d be BANNED from swimming if I had as much testosterone as Emily Bridges’: Olympian Sharron Davies slams trans cyclist as ‘NOT female’

It’s not a slam. It’s just a simple, humble, obvious fact. Men are not women. Women are not men. Adults are not children, children are not adults. Stones are not flowers. Squirrels are not hammers.

Anyway. The Mail goes on:

Between 1975 and 1985, Davies missed out on a string of medals while competing against East German drug cheats. She now believes there are parallels between the state-sponsored doping campaigns of the Cold War and transgender athletes taking hormone-suppression medication in

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Owen Jones gets a little ahead of himself.

It’s not a fact that X people will read this and not care about that. You can’t call a prediction a fact. You especially can’t call a prediction a fact when it’s as tendentious as OJ’s. He doesn’t know what gender critical people will or won’t read, and he doesn’t know how we will or won’t react to what we read. In short it’s a really stupid argument to claim that This Evil is underlined by my prediction that X people will do Y and react Zly. You can’t underline current evils with your claims about what will happen tomorrow.… Read the rest

Bros before hos, I guess.

Whatever your view on trans inclusion, you have to admire Emily Bridges' courage in speaking out and setting the record straight https://t.co/G9jIRrWVeC

— David Bradford (@DeeBeeCW) June 7, 2022

Of course I don’t. Nobody does. That’s not “courage,” it’s triumphant cheating. It’s a man cheating women, and courage is not the quality it requires. Narcissism and entitlement, yes, courage, no. Utter contempt for women, yes, courage, no.

David Bradford is the fitness editor for Cycling Weekly. Men helping other men cheat women in sports: what a picture.

Updating: Forgot his follow-up.

The reaction to this tweet has made me realise I underestimated Emily's courage – which I now admire even more https://t.co/DD935y1dfx

— David Bradford

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Emily Bridges seems to feel terribly sorry for himself:

The transgender cyclist Emily Bridges feels comments made by Boris Johnson over whether she should race women were the catalyst for a wave of violent threats and has also revealed she wanted to compete at the Commonwealth Games this summer.

Maybe it was Bridges’s decision to race women that were the catalyst for a wave of threats. That’s not to say that threats are ok, but it is to say that his decision to race against women wasn’t Boris Johnson’s doing, and that maybe he’s not the innocent victim in this scenario. Maybe he should stop pitying himself for a minute and think about the women.

Some of those

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ITV is really knocking itself out on the Emily Bridges front.

"I don't want special treatment from anyone, I just want the same opportunities as my fellow female athletes"

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges answers criticism from those who say she shouldn't be competing in women's events https://t.co/EbiYvSZ6Hg pic.twitter.com/NONkE0fOgx

— ITV News (@itvnews) June 7, 2022

I forgot to comment on ITV’s provocation in the previous post about this one. Of course he wants special treatment: he wants to be allowed to compete against women even though he’s a man. That’s very special, and very unfair to women.

And of course they’re not his “fellow female athletes,” because he’s not female. He’s cheating them out of wins, and then he has … Read the rest

Notice the weird gentleness in the voice of the interviewer – as if Bridges were not just a woman but a particularly fragile, traumatized woman who needs special sensitivity and care. I don’t think that’s how tv news interviewers normally talk to their subjects.

And Bridges claims his “performance has decreased massively.” He claims he’s lost more aerobic performance “than the gap is between male and female athletes.” I don’t believe him.

"I don't want special treatment from anyone, I just want the same opportunities as my fellow female athletes"

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges answers criticism from those who say she shouldn't be competing in women's events https://t.co/EbiYvSZ6Hg pic.twitter.com/NONkE0fOgx

— ITV News (@itvnews) June 7, 2022

… Read the rest

Kathleen Stock has a brilliant piece about Pride Month and the way “Pride” has changed over time to appeal to straight people to the point where straight people now get to attack lesbians for not being Inklooosivv enough. She includes, with some regret, her coming-out story, because it matters for the story of straight people – men in fact – attacking lesbians with the noisy approval of men like Justin Weinberg.

I learnt early on about the special feeling of being in a room that contains only other lesbians – a space unlike any other I’d ever known, and so thrillingly transgressive and exciting when you’ve never been in such a female place, with that unique kind of ambient energy

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This took my breath away for a moment.

https://twitter.com/Lorna9100M/status/1534096506168524800

And the merch she hands out says “YEET THE TEET” with a jolly T Rex cartoon. Wheeeeeeeeeee, hahaha, yeet the teet, by which she means amputate healthy breasts of a woman or teenage girl because she wants to pretend to be a man. Yeet the teet! What a funny fun-loving way to put it!

She calls these “procedures.”… Read the rest

What I’m saying. You can see this in newspapers and tv news reports every day – on the one hand uh oh climate change, on the other hand yay more oil.

More than £8bn of North Sea energy projects could now be given the green light rapidly as fossil fuel firms take advantage of a tax break in Rishi Sunak’s windfall tax, analysts have forecast.

…

However, campaigners warned ramping up North Sea production risked hindering efforts to tackle climate change. Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “The financial stimulus offered by the chancellor to encourage more oil and gas exploration means projects teetering on the edge of approval or rejection are now

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Just plain evil. (Folksy evil, down home evil, evil that disguises itself as perky & outspoken.)

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1533569805424463872

This is a member of Congress taunting a survivor of the Parkland mass murders. It’s vomit-inducing.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/1533593588281507842… Read the rest

First, spoiler: the GMC has declined to investigate Az Hakeem.

Now the story of the former patient who tried to get him investigated:

A high-profile Harley Street psychiatrist who calls transgender rights campaigners “trans terrorists” has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) after a patient claims he was “attempting to practice transgender conversion therapy”, i can reveal.

Dr Az Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calls himself “gender critical” and “the only psychiatrist” to specialise in “exploratory psychotherapy to persons suffering from gender dysphoria”. He has denied being anti-trans, said his service is “neutral”, and denied offering conversion therapy.

But an 18-year-old former patient, a trans man, has accused Dr Hakeem of deploying

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Same old same old. It’s a dire emergency, and we won’t do anything to stop it.

The US envoy on climate change John Kerry has warned that the war in Ukraine must not be used as an excuse to prolong global reliance on coal.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kerry criticised a number of large countries for not living up to the promises they made at the COP26 climate summit.

I can explain. Promises are easy. Living up to them is hard.

The fragile unity shown in Glasgow last November is likely to be tested in Bonn as countries deal with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis.

Mr Kerry told the BBC

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I thought publishers were responsible for publishing books, but apparently I was all wrong, apparently they’re responsible for how the writers of books talk and behave. Kind of parental, kind of tutorial, kind of policey? How did I not know this was the job of publishers??!

https://twitter.com/samuel_mcqueen/status/1533445556865060867

That bit about “whose only crime is to try and carve out a small safe space for trans people” means, when translated, “whose only crime is to try to create a blacklist of published writers who commit gender thoughtcrime.” He means “the Young Refuseniks,” who have now closed their Twitter account which called on people to help create that blacklist.

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/1533443445326487553… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A strange union.

If we were to replace trans exclusionary with racist, misogynistic or antisemitic would we be expected to define every word that would be included?

Expected to define each word that would be considered racist? No. Expected to define the list itself of words to be proscribed, as opposed to the words on that list? Yes, absolutely. Expected to be able to provide a coherent definition of racism consistent with common usage? You’d better goddamn believe it. If you’re going to curtail fundamental liberties like speech, then you are obliged to provide a full account of who, what, when, where, and why. I can define racism, sexism, misogyny, antisemitism, … Read the rest

Robyn Blumner, the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, has a much discussed editorial in the current Free Inquiry about a split that she describes as between identitarians and humanists. It starts with a couple of definitions, or a definition and an affirmation.

Identitarian: A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

“The Affirmations of Humanism”: We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together

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Janice Turner mentioned a union in her Times piece on gender indoctrination in the civil service:

The head of the union says nuh-uh:

The FDA defends all of its members, but it would be a strange union or organisation that thought language that was exclusionary or discriminatory should be tolerated. 2/3

— Dave Penman (@FDAGenSec) June 4, 2022

But what counts as “exclusionary” or “discriminatory”? That’s the issue, isn’t it. Trans dogma defines “exclusion” as “not including men in the category ‘women’.” We don’t agree that that’s a reasonable definition. It’s not “exclusionary” to exclude salmon from a recipe for chocolate cake, and it’s not exclusionary to exclude men from definitions of women. That ought to be obvious, but in … Read the rest

Heyyyyy I’ve found one that hasn’t made the big switcheroo. Meet National Advocates for Pregnant Women:

NAPW defends women who are pregnant and have abortions, experience pregnancy loss, use drugs or alcohol, and who continue their pregnancies and give birth. Our work, however, is not limited to criminal or parent defense work, nor is it limited to any single issue, strategy, or niche.

NAPW works to ensure that women do not lose their constitutional and human rights as a result of pregnancy; that addiction and other health and welfare problems women face during pregnancy are addressed through public health and social welfare systems, not the criminal law system; that families are not needlessly separated based on medical misinformation about

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Matt Walsh last September:

Matt Walsh claimed on Tuesday that female sports reporters were seeking to “feminize” football, which he said is a “mostly male space,” and said at least one woman journalist was failing to “assimilate.”

Walsh made the remarks on The Matt Walsh Show, while discussing Lindsey Gough, sports director with southeast Georgia’s WOTC 11 TV station. Gough had tweeted on September 5 about the behavior of fans after Georgia defeated Clemson.

Gough posted a video of football fans apparently engaging in harassing behavior and even some men touching her without her consent as they passed her broadcast.

But that’s male behavior, and it’s awesome, and it must not be challenged, much less altered or done … Read the rest

O excellent judge.

A trans-identified male pedophile has avoided jail after after a judge deemed that prison would make it too difficult for him to “cope” with his transition and anxiety.

Huh. It’s my understanding that prison makes it difficult for people to cope with pretty much everything, and that that’s the point – it’s a punishment. There are compelling arguments against the whole idea of punishment as such, but it seems quite original to say it’s bad for a trans person in particular because of the difficulty of coping.

Peter Selby, 68, was found with over 125,000 pieces of child sexual abuse media after a police raid in 2019, some of which depicted children as young as three

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The Mail on that insulting “hey laydeez come race against some men and lose” arrangement:

An ‘inclusive’ cycling race that saw male-born trans athletes trounce women competitors has been condemned by critics.

“Inclusive” means “women guaranteed to lose.”

Gold in the ThunderCrit race at Herne Hill velodrome in South-East London went to Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist who was barred from a woman’s race in March and who had competed in men’s events only the month before.

Because he’s a man.

In second place was Lilly Chant who, despite identifying as a woman, is still designated as male on official records.

Yes but his name is Lilly. End of.

In an attempt to devise an ‘inclusive’ event, the ThunderCrit

… Read the rest