How is it their “turf”?

“Terfs get off our fucking turf”. #WPUKManchester. pic.twitter.com/43GH5WJIIh

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

#WPUKManchester #Manchester #Misogyny ⁦@AndyBurnhamGM⁩ trans extremists try to silence, intimidate and disrupt women speakers inside the Mechanic’s Institute this evening, by converging on it for the ⁦@Womans_Place_UK⁩ event. Around 200 protesters. One arrest made. pic.twitter.com/ewI7SxwUQe

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

#WPUKManchester Around 200 trans rights activists, gathered in St Peter’s Sq, Manchester at 7pm, to attempt to silence, intimidate and disrupt a WPUK meeting, at the nearby Mechanic’s Institute. pic.twitter.com/s1sBW4atUm

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

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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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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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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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Cultural differences.

We are also much more sceptical of religion – neo or traditional.

— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) March 24, 2022

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

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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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.

Imagine this was a trans meeting in Manchester tonight.

Do you think for a moment the reaction would be symmetrical or barely recognisable to what we've seen tonight?

The indulgence offered to angry sexless bourgeoise mantra chanting misfits is quite something.

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) March 24, 2022

Women gathering to discuss our rights are being subject to a large, aggressive protest. In 2022. Please follow #WPUKManchester and share so that people can see what women have to put up with when trying to meet.

— Woman’s Place UK (@Womans_Place_UK) March

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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

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

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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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.

The answer is Mumsnet, I believe.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) March 23, 2022

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.

Yeah, no. We have secure reproductive rights, statutory maternity pay, maternity care on the NHS, maternity rights at work (far from perfect, but they exist), and at least some support with early years education.

US women? None of that.

— Homunculus  (@tryingattimes) March 23, 2022

Really glad you men are sorting this out. While you’re here, maybe you could

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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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Women’s Aid said a thing yesterday:

We will continue to campaign for funding and informed commissioning so that every DA service can meet the needs of its service users. Services should be funded properly by commissioners to provide much needed high-quality specialist domestic abuse services for all survivors (2/2)

— Women's Aid (@womensaid) March 22, 2022

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.

At SignHealth, we are concerned about this statement. We have written to Women’s Aid today to question it and notify that we will not continue our membership of Women's Aid unless

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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

The Guardian frowns on Ron DeSantis for saying that men shouldn’t compete in women’s races.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has issued a proclamation that a resident of his state is the “rightful” holder of the NCAA 500m freestyle title won by trans swimmer Lia Thomas last week.

Trans swimmer? So Thomas isn’t a real swimmer but just identifies as one?

Also, we can do the scare quotes thing too. DeSantis said a resident of his state is the rightful holder of the NCAA 500m freestyle title “won” by trans swimmer “Lia” Thomas last week. Thomas didn’t actually legitimately win that title, because it was a women’s race and he has a male body.

The Guardian does the careful wording thing … Read the rest

Bozo is saying how much better he would handle it.

“I listened to him constantly using the N-word, that’s the N-word, and he’s constantly using it: the nuclear word,” Trump told Fox Business on Monday.

…

“We say, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power,’” Trump said. “But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, the most powerful machines ever built …”

Idiot. It doesn’t matter whether we’re “greater” or not because a nuclear exchange with Russia would mean millions of people dead, whole cities destroyed, survivors if any poisoned and helpless.

“You should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over and we’ll be coasting back

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I would share the originating tweet but he’s locked his account and I don’t follow him so I can’t.

“I mean, I ONLY tweeted this…” poor me…. pic.twitter.com/gg7RkC2scj

— James Dreyfus (@DreyfusJames) March 23, 2022

He’s not some petulant and barely literate Young Person, he’s an adult academic at Oxford ffs. Yet he too considers it appropriate and useful to say publicly that Rowling is “spreading hatred” and far to the right of Marine Le Pen.

Updating to add:

The real story here is that a professor specialising in European politics and radical right extremism said JK Rowling was worse than Marine Le Pen and still expects to be taken seriously. I'd laugh him out of every conference he attends

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Oh gee golly guess what the Taliban have gone back on their promise to re-open high schools for girls. I thought they were sincere!

The Taliban on Wednesday abruptly reversed their decision to allow girls’ high schools to reopen this week, saying that they would remain closed until officials draw up a plan for them to reopen in accordance with Islamic law.

Well what’s the holdup? They’ve had months, in fact they’ve had centuries.

Tsss. We know what the holdup is. They have no intention of doing any such thing, and never did.

The keeping women in the dirt part is not some frill on the edge of their theocracy, it’s the whole point. It’s crucial. It’s central. It’s … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Culture wars in a blender.

There’s something about all this ostentatious word-swapping that gives up the game, that exposes the distinction between the reality which transactivists can see just as clearly as we can, and the performance that they put on. The words are so jumbled at this point: if the words “transgender female” are just as likely to refer to someone like Eliot Page (a female who identifies as a man) as they are to Eddie Izzard (a male who, at least some of the time, identifies as a woman), the activists end up having to fall back on their senses to make out which is which: they look at an image … Read the rest

Human Rights Watch on the situation in Mariupol:

Thirty-two civilians who managed to escape southeastern Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol last week told Human Rights Watch how they struggled to survive in below-freezing temperatures as Russian forces relentlessly attacked the city. They described men, women, and children sheltering in basements with little to no access to running water, power, heating, medical care, or mobile phone service since the siege began on March 2, 2022.

Russian forces laying siege to Mariupol should immediately ensure that civilians in Mariupol are not being denied access to items essential for their survival such as water, food, and medicine, and should facilitate safe passage to areas under control of Ukrainian forces for civilians who

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