We applaud.

We applaud the athletes who have spoken up for fairness today! @EllieBaker1998 @BethDobbin @KyleLangford_96 @LongJumpChris @andyturner110h @Daley_thompson @PersKarlstrom @EmilyDiamond11@mara_yamauchi @sharrond62 (and any more we missed!). Keep it going. #SexMatters https://t.co/Q29pmKg8ag

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) March 30, 2022

You already know this, because I’ve spelled it out to some of you:

Your policy is inadequate to provide fairness for female athletes.

Happy to spell it out in person. You’ve got my number. https://t.co/yTpPmZgSAL

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) March 30, 2022

Fairness to women is not less important than “inclusion” of men who identify as women. It’s a great deal more important.

Emily Bridges’ female competitors were distressed yet afraid to go public:
“Former Olympic medal-winning swimmer @sharrond62 says

… Read the rest

I was out doing things for a few hours and this happened –

BREAKING NEWS: Statement from British Cycling. Bridges will not be competing this weekend.

"We have now been informed by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that under their current guidelines Emily is not eligible to participate in this event" /1https://t.co/L0PIhA9ipT pic.twitter.com/uiltpKEbeG

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) March 30, 2022

It’s time for British Cycling to create a trans policy that doesn’t harm female cyclists.

Today, British female cyclists said #NoThankYou https://t.co/9FTfqbBE9X

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) March 30, 2022

Be inclusive, let them find a home, yadda yadda, but not at the expense of women.

https://twitter.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1509287607141904394

Now they don’t have to boycott the race.

https://twitter.com/coachblade/status/1509246666959818756… Read the rest

Another crack in the edifice.

How this has been allowed to happen is just ridiculous. I would refuse to race and hope that the other women would stand with me on this too. This is totally unfair. The advantages a trans women has had from going through puberty as a boy to a man can never been undone. https://t.co/2ALBTXozx8

— Ellie Baker (@EllieBaker1998) March 30, 2022

Create Trans gender competitions. Unfortunately in sport you can’t have blurred lines. You have to be male or female. I get you still want to compete as you feel comfortable but there has to be a separate category then or we may as well just say goodbye to Womens sport now. https://t.co/NpxXd4xWnm

— Ellie

… Read the rest

pic.twitter.com/7S4vTwAABt

— Ma_at (@WB4justice) March 30, 2022

I happen to have seen the origin of the punchline before seeing the above.… Read the rest

The Times also appears to take the Tory MP’s claim at face value.

A Conservative MP has announced that he is transgender and has been the victim of rape and blackmail.

Jamie Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, said he was transgender, “or to be more accurate, I want to be”, and had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Maybe he just has shlub dysphoria. Has anyone looked into that? He appears to be a shlub, and dysphoria seems likely in such cases, so maybe it’s nothing to do with gender at all.

Wallis rapidly received public support from fellow MPs. Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “This is a very brave statement.” Andrew

… Read the rest

Ah good it’s helpful to have this cleared up by an expert.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1509127933750882305

So he gets to use all the toilets, right?

More from the expert:

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1509185039178899458

Men who claim to be women must be allowed into all spaces set aside for women on pain of being called unambiguously transphobic by this Montgomerie dude.… Read the rest

So there is a motion before my union Congress to "oppose gender critics".
Do they mean they want to oppose my legally held belief?
Would they say the same if I was Catholic or Muslim?
(It's long and tedious but EQ7-9)https://t.co/OFicMsp4Oc

— Dr Katie Alcock (@wontsomeonethi2) March 29, 2022

Behold EQ7-9:

EQ7  Defend trans and non-binary people’s rights   North West regional committee

Congress notes:

1.  Government hostility towards Stonewall for its support for trans rights, including disaffiliations by the BBC and government bodies;

2.  Government’s refusal to implement Self-ID in the Gender Recognition Act;

3.  Government’s failure to recognise non-binary as a legitimate identity;

4.  The EHRC’s attempts to delay anti-conversion therapy legislation for trans people and undermine the 

… Read the rest

Solidarity forever! Except with you, of course.

Yes it is really true! @UCU are ready to vote on whether to harass members for their legally protected beliefs (that there are two sexes and sexism is a problem) #WORIAD Any UCU member thinking of legal action for belief discrimination has just been provided with strong evidence. https://t.co/MMS4RxWT3k

— Holly Smith (@hollysmithhere) March 30, 2022

And the icing on the cake is the motions cheer-leading for the strike-breaking FGEN. Feels like UCU has abandoned basic principles of solidarity between workers by going for an extreme position on a very divisive political issue. Employers must be delighted #DivideAndRule

— Holly Smith (@hollysmithhere) March 30, 2022

And wait, there’s even more.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1509158382892105741… Read the rest

Julie Bindel on male violence dressed up as “protection” of women:

Sexism is a funny thing, because it presents as its own opposite. Describing women as vulnerable and in need of male protection is actually about male dominance and attempts at ownership.

…

Has [Will] Smith ever spoken out publicly and passionately against sexism? Would he have kicked off if [Chris] Rock had made similar remarks about another woman? Of course not: only his property gets protected. I make no distinction here between Smith and any other posturing, macho male.

Unlike, she adds, commentators who call that racist.

TeenVogue magazine, for example, continued its valiant tradition of promoting anything harmful to young women by publishing a piece that describes

… Read the rest

It seems this is not a parody.

It's time. https://t.co/cbt0tKQZuN pic.twitter.com/IUaCjm9PtE

— Jamie Wallis MP (@JamieWallisMP) March 30, 2022

It sure as hell looks like a parody, wouldn’t you say? But it seems it’s not. The BBC is treating it as not-parody.

Mr Wallis was arrested last year on suspicion of driving while unfit, following an incident where a car hit a lamppost at Church Road in Llanblethian, Vale of Glamorgan.

What car? Driven by whom? What does the incident have to do with Mr Wallis?

“When I crashed my car on the 28th November I fled the scene. I did so because I was terrified,” he wrote.

Oh, so it was his car, and he was driving? Then why … Read the rest

The NY Times also obscures the issue in the same old way.

Utah Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto of Transgender Athlete Bill

No, not transgender athlete, male transgender athlete. Generic “transgender” makes it sound like random cruelty, but preventing the sabotage of girls’ athletics is not random cruelty…unless of course you think girls just don’t matter, or don’t matter as much as the feelings of boys.

The Utah State Legislature voted on Friday to override the governor’s veto and enacted a bill that would bar young transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports, making the state the 12th in the country to enact such legislation.

That would bar young male transgender athletes.

Most Republicans in the Legislature who voted for the

… Read the rest

Look! Over there! Or there! Or how about over there?!

Trump’s 47 millionth frivolous lawsuit:

Former president Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Thursday against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and others, alleging that they “maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative” that his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential race.

He’s a funny guy. He can’t open his yap or move his thick fingers without uttering a false narrative.

Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, responded to the lawsuit with a one-word statement: “Nonsense.”

Let me add a second one-word statement. “Horseshit.”… Read the rest

Hmm. Sometimes sniffing out concealed hatred or “bigotry” can accidentally reveal one’s own.

“We do not condone violence.” “Assault is never the answer.” These words have echoed through all of my social media accounts since Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a poor-taste joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Most people agree the slap shouldn’t have happened. But there’s something that feels precious at best, and downright racist at worst, about white people’s reaction to the now-infamous smack.

I don’t think I understand the continuum here – from precious to racist? Maybe “petty” was the idea? At any rate, “something that feels” itself “feels” like a reach. That whole sentence “feels” like someone struggling to beef up … Read the rest

Oh interesting. Another gap. There was that 18 minute gap on the Nixon phone tapes, and now there’s a seven hour gap on the Trump ones. You’ll never guess which seven hours.

Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 – from 11:17 a.m. to

… Read the rest

Excellent analogy!

A legislature could try to end climate change by declaring that some CO2 could identify as nitrogen, but EVEN if that CO2 became 'legally nitrogen',the quantity of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere would not change, and the earth would keep warming. 4/n

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) March 29, 2022

… Read the rest

It’s not just the BBC and the Guardian doing the evasive dishonest framing of “trans athletes” and the like; the Times does it too.

Headline: Trans cyclist Emily Bridges faces Olympic winner Laura Kenny

Bridges isn’t a “trans cyclist”; Bridges is a trans woman, aka a man.

Lede:

A transgender athlete who has recently become eligible to compete in women’s events is set to compete against some of Great Britain’s leading female cyclists this week.

A trans woman athlete, i.e. a man, will be competing against women this week.

Journalism really needs to stop obscuring the realities this way.

Emily Bridges, 21, has been included on the entry list for the National Omnium Championships, to be held at the

… Read the rest

Rhys McKinnon should just move to the UK; the policy of British Cycling would suit him perfectly. (No one else, but who else matters?)

British Cycling members have been warned that they will be censored and reprimanded if they have any criticism of their [British Cycling’s] newly updated 2020 “Transgender and Non-Binary Participation Policy.”

…

In reply to their Tweeted publication announcement the organization stated:

“We take a zero-tolerance approach to instances of hate being targeted at individuals because of their views or gender identity. This thread will be moderated, and if you’re aware of inappropriate or offensive behavior by our members please email compliance@britishcycling.org.uk.”

“Inappropriate” and “offensive” probably means saying men are men.

There’s a list of Roles and … Read the rest

More Ronny:

https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1508518482538741760

No, I don’t. He’s right about that. I don’t care about Rhys McKinnon and people like Rhys McKinnon one iota. (That is, I don’t “care” in the sense he’s using it – anxiously wanting them to have novel extra “rights” so that they can get what they want at the expense of other people. I do care about him in the sense of considering him both a menace and a grotesque example of “trans activism” who is well worth discussing.) Why should I? Why should I care about him and people like him especially? There’s nothing about him to motivate such extra caring – he’s not interesting or thoughtful or eloquent or amusing, and he is belligerent … Read the rest

I guess Rhys has finished sulking over quitting his job because everybody hated him.

https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1508517853594460163 https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1508543191116496896

Except no he’s not so no he doesn’t. Again, lies don’t become true through repetition.… Read the rest

Live Science on the collapse of the Conger Ice Shelf:

A massive Antarctic ice shelf that covered an area about the size of New York City or Rome just collapsed into the ocean. Scientists warn that while they do not expect significant impacts as a result of this event, melting ice in this historically stable region may be a foreboding sign of things to come.

Satellite photos reveal the sudden disappearance of the Conger Ice Shelf on East Antarctica between March 14 and March 16. “The Glenzer Conger Ice Shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” University of Minnesota glaciologist Peter Neff told NPR. While the Ice

… Read the rest