All entries by this author

Never mind Ukraine what about trans people?

Mar 26th, 2022 11:30 am | By
Never mind Ukraine what about trans people?

A Russian-Canadian academic (he emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union) writes a public Facebook post about Putin’s absurd invocation of JK Rowling:

Earlier today, Putin railed against the alleged “Russophobia” in the West and, moronically enough, attempted to compare Russia to J.K. Rowling in that context.

He shared JKR’s prompt response. The rop comment on his post? Rebecca Solnit libeling JKR.

What a stunningly ugly and untrue thing to say – especially to a Russian-born critic of Putin at this particular time.

She goes on in the same vein, on and on. Kill the witch blah blah blah kill her some more.

She recommends a piece by Laurie Penny of all people.

More from Solnit:

Leaving aside that this

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The When we want to doctrine

Mar 26th, 2022 10:28 am | By

There are some very strange ideas about rights and entitlements out there.

Russia has approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads – the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In an interview on Saturday, Medvedev said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not require an enemy state to use such weapons first.

It’s a nuclear doctrine, you see. Bullies have a fist doctrine, murderers have a gun doctrine, Russia has a nuclear doctrine.

He said: “We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you: number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a

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Ok then we’ll leave

Mar 26th, 2022 10:12 am | By

Here’s a surprise. Protesters in Ukraine did such top quality protesting that they got Russian soldiers to go away.

A mayor in a Ukrainian town occupied by Russian forces has been released from captivity and the soldiers have agreed to leave after a mass protest by residents.

Slavutych, a northern town close to the Chernobyl nuclear site, was taken by Russian forces but stun grenades and overhead fire failed to disperse unarmed protesters on its main square on Saturday.

The crowd demanded the release of mayor Yuri Fomichev, who had been taken prisoner by the Russian troops.

Attempts by Russian troops to intimidate the growing protest failed and on Saturday afternoon Fomichev was let go by his captors.

I find … Read the rest



Guest post: Bulldozers and siege engines

Mar 26th, 2022 8:55 am | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The obvious rejoinder.

Maybe the trans people aren’t getting enough recognition after all, so let’s create trans athlete divisions…. Give them what they want; proper divisions with little sexless statuettes for the winners.

But that’s not what they want. Having a separate trans division would deny them their validation as “women” in exactly the same way that “third space” toilet facilities would. Trans activists don’t want a solution that’s “fair” that does not give them the hit of affirmation they crave. They don’t want to put a spotlight on their “transness”, they want to be centered, celebrated, and rewarded for their “womanliness.” The idea behind TWAW and “NO DEBATE” … Read the rest



Good and inspiring

Mar 26th, 2022 6:22 am | By

Sometimes it just takes the breath away. This isn’t some pink-hair young adult, this is a middle-aged man with a book to advertise, and this is how he presents himself to the world.

https://twitter.com/pdkmitchell/status/1507091047301758986

He brags of standing outside a feminist meeting with a bunch of people shouting in order to drown them out and disrupt their meeting. He brags of it.

https://twitter.com/pdkmitchell/status/1507136157389316102

“Good and inspiring” to try to shout down women meeting to discuss women’s needs and rights.

https://twitter.com/pdkmitchell/status/1507450551927197704 https://twitter.com/coccinellanovem/status/1507377345195249668 Read the rest


But the obvious rejoinder

Mar 25th, 2022 5:48 pm | By

Megan McCardle writes about Lia Thomas:

I’ve now written two columns about Thomas, and it is striking how many people — almost all of them liberal — have spontaneously erupted when I told them what I was writing about. All made the same complaint: It’s not fair.

What’s striking about that? Of course it’s not fair. The unfairness is laughably (enragingly) obvious. He’s mocking us.

There’s little question that Thomas has retained some of the many biological advantages conferred by male puberty, such as height, heart and lung capacity, and strength. But the obvious rejoinder is that of course biology isn’t fair; it never was, and never can be.

That rejoinder is not obvious at all. It’s flippant … Read the rest



To silence, intimidate, and disrupt

Mar 25th, 2022 12:08 pm | By

How is it their “turf”?

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They were told at the time

Mar 25th, 2022 11:23 am | By

Some background from way back on February 21:

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

Thousands of nuclear arms had been left on Ukrainian soil by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to completely denuclearize.

In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine’s security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.

Oh really. That’s not going all that well.

It is clear that Ukrainians knew they weren’t getting the exactly legally binding, really robust security guarantees they sought.

But they were told at the time that the United States

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Murderous monster says what now?

Mar 25th, 2022 11:02 am | By

Department of really bad analogies department:

JK Rowling has hit back at Vladimir Putin, after the Russian president cited her in a wide-ranging speech that saw him criticise “cancel culture”.

Pause for correction: she hasn’t “hit back”; she has rejected the comparison.

At a televised meeting on Friday, Mr Putin compared recent criticism of the Harry Potter author to that faced by pro-war Russian composers and writers.

“Pro-war” is sloppy too, since the issue isn’t war in general but this specific “war” which is an unprovoked attack by a massive nuclear-armed country on a much smaller one with no nukes.

In the lengthy speech, which was given to the winners of various cultural prizes, President Putin claimed Russian composers

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Dim bulb urges coup

Mar 25th, 2022 4:43 am | By

So the thing is, the wife of a Supreme Court justice tried very hard to overturn the presidential election last year, which is…kind of criminal? Probably impossible to prosecute but not therefore legit? Criminalish?

The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful [Mark] Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face”

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Amateur sociology

Mar 25th, 2022 4:02 am | By

Cultural differences.

https://twitter.com/Adele_Thames/status/1507144310378086404 https://twitter.com/Adele_Thames/status/1507144883018076173

She says, not taking herself at all seriously, not bragging at all, not boasting about how self-deprecating she is, not accusing other people of what she’s doing herself.

I see this claim a lot, in fact: the claim that people in the UK are massively self-deprecating. It’s a self-defeating claim, because it’s self-flattering. You can’t convince us how self-deprecating you are by bragging about how self-deprecating you are.… Read the rest



Ginni Thomas’s activism

Mar 24th, 2022 5:44 pm | By

It seems Clarence Thomas’s wife plotted with Mark Meadows to help Trump steal the election. That’s interesting.

Jane Mayer in the New Yorker in January:

Many Americans first became aware of Ginni Thomas’s activism on January 6, 2021. That morning, before the Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., turned into an assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of at least five people, she cheered on the supporters of President Donald Trump who had gathered to overturn Biden’s election. In a Facebook post that went viral, she linked to a news item about the protest, writing, “love maga people!!!!” Shortly afterward, she posted about Ronald Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing” speech. Her next status

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Drown out the women’s voices

Mar 24th, 2022 4:54 pm | By

There was a Woman’s Place UK meeting in Manchester tonight. Apparently the usual happened.

https://twitter.com/boodleoops/status/1507110750590017537

Of course there were men with megaphones outside. Can’t let women talk unopposed.

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Semantic theft ≠ semantic shift

Mar 24th, 2022 11:41 am | By

Yglesias is really making me cross, I must say.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1507029260657168389

Come on. This is not primarily (or secondarily and you could go through quite a lot more numbers) an issue of linguistic change. The word is not some relatively unimportant vocabulary item, it’s the word that names the female half of the set of human beings, the half that is the source of all human beings. That’s what matters about it. The fact that “language changes over time” is not central to this controversy and he must know that perfectly well.

Mar nails it.

https://twitter.com/mar2vickers/status/1507054062122020873… Read the rest


The meaning of words changes over time

Mar 24th, 2022 11:13 am | By

Yet another man telling us yet again that we have to accept the “new” meaning of the word that names us. Language changes, you fools! Live with it!

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1507005563644829696 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1507007063154515972

Funny how he’s not talking about people with XY chromosomes. Funny how people like him always know which people to lecture and bully.… Read the rest



A once pleasant suburban neighbourhood

Mar 24th, 2022 9:35 am | By

The BBC has a long piece about life on the front lines in Kharkiv:

Russia invaded at 05:00 on 24 February. The night before, 22-year-old Vlad and his brother-in-arms Mark, also 22, were at a fellow private’s wedding. Columns of Russian tanks, howitzers, armoured vehicles and troop transports rolled across the border, just 40km (25 miles) away. Despite the long build up of Russian forces, the move was a shock – Ukrainian troops scrambled to defend the city.

When they learned of the attack, Vlad and Mark joined their battalion – the 22nd Motorised Infantry – and headed straight to the front lines. They have been there ever since. I have visited them there twice on the city’s northern

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Misogynists agree

Mar 23rd, 2022 5:31 pm | By

Beardy bro wonders why there are so many more bitches in the UK than in the US and Canada. Fellow beardy bro helps him out.

Turns out it’s because…uh…we have such excellent social support for women in the US compared to the UK. Yes, sure, that’ll work.

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Originally created by and for women

Mar 23rd, 2022 3:35 pm | By

The Women’s Aid statement:

Our roots are in the international women’s rights movement, and our federation developed in the 1970s and 1980s in response to patriarchy, sexism, and male violence against women. Domestic abuse organisations and refuges were originally created by and for women – many of whom were survivors themselves – as spaces free from men for safety, healing, mutual support, and solidarity.

We have been at the forefront of shaping and coordinating responses to domestic abuse for nearly 50 years. We have done so by placing the needs of survivors at the heart of our work and by responding to their needs and many of our staff, board members and supporters are survivors of domestic abuse. Together

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Let men in or we walk

Mar 23rd, 2022 3:24 pm | By

Women’s Aid said a thing yesterday:

They have both – single sex and those that meet the needs of trans and non-binary people. But oh no, that can’t be allowed – women can’t have anything that’s just for women.

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Guest post: Pronouns place people in a double bind

Mar 23rd, 2022 11:47 am | By

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Now that the word’s been taken away. [Title by Sastra]

That’s exactly it! As I keep saying we know for a fact that many of the people now riding the gender ideology bandwagon used to say things that would now get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time. E.g. I have personally been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “trans allies” who, in the absence of telepathic powers, couldn’t possibly know anything about my “inner sense of self”. I have also heard some of these same people say things like “douches are really bad for women”, talk about abortion rights as a “women’s issue”, refer to vaginas as “lady … Read the rest