His view.

But then Luke Easley is denying Maya’s reality, and not only Maya’s but many other people’s too, many many many other people’s. Furthermore he’s denying an objective, material, factual reality, and furthermore again he’s denying an objective reality that is at the root of the fundamental human inequality, that between women and men. That’s a lot of reality-denial for a guy who wants to banish women for denying an eccentric new fantasy-based “reality” about being Born In The Wrong Body.… Read the rest

Life under Russian occupation:

Russian soldiers patrol the streets of Berdyansk in cars and armoured vehicles marked with the “Z” symbol that denotes the Russian occupying force.

Local government officials in this city in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian troops for the past two weeks, have been kicked out of their offices, and the local radio station plays Soviet ballads and Russian pop songs, interspersed with excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speeches and news items about Ukraine being “liberated from Nazis”.

Many towns in southern Ukraine are already under Russian occupation.

In Berdyansk, a port city to the west of Mariupol with a population of a little over 100,000, the majority of city councillors have remained loyal

From the Maya Forstater tribunal today [LE is Luke Easley, a Vice President at the Center for Global Development]:

BC: We have a tweet saying ,so if a load of people stopped identifying as women they could get paid more, stop being harassed. Do you understand point claimant is making?

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

BC: Is your point that claimant must not express belief in importance, relevance, immutability of sex at all – because you think that's denying some people's reality?

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

LE: identify is reality – without identity there's jsut a corpse

BC: I suggest that you are struggling with this because you can't step outside your own views

—

The first two sentences of this Spectator piece by Stephen Daisley need a post of their own before I read the rest.

Sir Keir Starmer’s interpretation of the Equality Act has caused something of a stir. The Labour leader cited the Brown-era legislation to support his assertion that ‘trans women are women’ and that this ‘happens to be the law in the United Kingdom’.

What does equality have to do with the assertion that “trans women are women”?

Even if the Act does say that (which apparently it doesn’t), what does equality have to do with it? Nothing. “Equality” doesn’t mean “you get to force everyone to agree with whatever you say about yourself.” Even if the fatuous repetition of … Read the rest

An item from yesterday:

She’s wrong Nimco. Surprised at you.

— Lynne Featherstone (@lfeatherstone) March 13, 2022

This is of interest because Featherstone is a former LibDem MP.

I’m clear thinking and liberal and based in principles of equality. I thought you were too.

— Lynne Featherstone (@lfeatherstone) March 13, 2022

That’s a lot of bad packed into one brief retort. The final sentence is a passive-aggressive insult, but it’s the first that’s so striking – flatter yourself in public much?

I stand up for women Nimco – it’s just a kinder and more generous version than yourself. Perhaps more understanding and compassion might help you. Always willing to discuss. The objective is equality – which used to matter to

We live in confused times.

Headline: She Killed Two Women. At 83, She Is Charged With Dismembering a Third.

Subhead: Harvey Marcelin was charged with murder after a head was found in her Brooklyn apartment. Officials said it belonged to a dismembered body discovered in a shopping cart.

The reporters:

The story:

An 83-year-old Brooklyn woman convicted twice of killing women she lived with was charged with murder on Thursday, after investigators found a head in her apartment that, officials said, belonged to a body discovered in a shopping cart last week.

Harvey Marcelin, who had served decades in prison for murder and manslaughter before her release in 2019, was arrested March 4 and was initially charged with concealment

Terry Gross talked to Masha Gessen about Putin’s war on Ukraine last Thursday.

My guest, Masha Gessen, is a Russian-American journalist who reported in late January and February from Ukraine, then went to Moscow after the invasion. On the night Putin shut down the last remaining independent source of TV news, Gessen was at that studio. Gessen’s dispatches are being published in The New Yorker, where Gessen is a staff writer. Gessen left Moscow on Thursday and is speaking to us from Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia.

For 20 years, Gessen was a journalist in Moscow and had been the chief correspondent for Russia’s leading news magazine until it became impossible to report the real news. After that, Gessen

Another they does an interview.

Kae Tempest is perched at a table outside a station-side cafe, playing with a cigarette. Murphy, Tempest’s alaskan malamute, stirs as I approach, and on clocking me, Tempest returns the cigarette – still unlit – to their chest pocket. For years, Tempest’s long curly barnet was a trademark look. Today, though, wearing white trainers, upturned jeans and a turquoise jacket, their hair is short, a neat fade that, Tempest says, they still occasionally catch themselves admiring.

Got it? Tempest is special. Tempest is a they, Tempest perches and plays and has a malamute, Tempest has short hair.

In August 2020, in an Instagram post, Tempest came out as non-binary. They announced their

Arbeit macht frei, prostitution is empowering.

A clinic which receives NHS funding has been promoting prostitution as a way for transgender people to pay for their transition treatment, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Being a sex worker ‘can be useful and sometimes empowering’, according to a guide produced by CliniQ, a sexual counselling service for transgender people at King’s College Hospital in London. It adds: ‘It can help us pay for parts of our transition.’

Well of course it can; money is money. It can help pay for, or just pay for, anything; that’s how money works. Robbing banks can help pay for stuff too, unless you get caught.

Entitled Cruising: A Trans Guy’s Guide To The Gay

Not helping what?

First, to repeat myself, I hate this use of “hit” and “hit out at” and “attack” for argument and disagreement. It frames dissent as physical violence, and that’s not a useful or intelligent way to frame it. Nobody hit anybody, Rowling was not hit, she was not hit out at, she didn’t attack the Scottish government. There’s way too much talk of violence in this discussion already, and newspapers shouldn’t be adding to it via stupid metaphors.

Second, nonsense. Women have rights too and we are allowed to remind everyone of that, and insist on keeping them, and resist efforts to take them away.

Third, yes she is “helping.” Who put Slater and Harvie in charge of … Read the rest

Yeeeaaahhhhh not his call.

Anyone who has spent more than an hour in the company of gay men knows "babe" is our most overused word, not least to describe each other.

It's used as much as other people use "mate".

Anyone who thinks that's misogyny needs to find themselves some more gay friends! https://t.co/13ppVtqnWn

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) March 12, 2022

What gay men do amongst each other is wholly irrelevant to whether or not they get to call women they’re trying to bully on Twitter “babe”. If the woman you’re trying to bully says no, you don’t get to push back because gay men call each other it. Sexism is sexism even when gay men do it.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Incomplete picture.

There are many awareness days related to trans issues, but today’s is very important. Detransition Awareness Day is vital because there are so many people in positions of power being led to believe that something so life-changing as gender identity is a fixed awareness that one is “born in a body that doesn’t match their identity.”

I was at the Seattle Public Library Event sponsored by WoLF in February 2020. After exiting, thanks to police guard we were safe from the frothing crowd who were chanting “No hate, no fear, all genders welcome here” with what I perceived as hatred for the women who spoke and attended.

I met up … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Actually the law.

“The process that people have to go through does need to be looked at,” he told The Times. “If you talk to anybody who’s been through the process there’s a real issue about respect and dignity.”

So I wonder if he’s read the Cass report? How long before the continuing scandal and disaster will force him (and others) to moderate and walk back their unqualified support for genderist demands?

He called for a “more considered, respectful, tolerant debate about these issues”. Starmer added: “I don’t think it furthers the interests of anybody to continue the debate in the way that it’s been going on now for some

Another MP saying no. (Usual apologies for linking to Mail but if Guardian won’t report…)

For a woman who, only this week, was reprimanded for wading into the increasingly febrile transgender debate, you’ve got to applaud Tory police and crime commissioner Lisa Townsend for her sheer chutzpah.

…

‘It is not a “niche” issue, it is not “hysterical” for women to be taking to the street about it,’ Lisa wrote. ‘We will not accept this gaslighting from men who keep telling us they are women or from those who enable them,’ she added to her retweet and posted it without a second thought.

Three men, including local Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, complained. The Surrey police and crime panel’s complaints

No, Waterstones. That’s not correct.

Please add to the twitter storm that is spontaneously occurring and think about what this form of activism is teaching us. pic.twitter.com/0nA2wLhgmv

— M (@sisterpegj) March 12, 2022

Not period. Not end of story. Not true. Being a woman isn’t subjective – note that “identifying as” something is entirely subjective and self-reported and thus not something that anyone else can confirm or deny. Being a woman isn’t like that. Vladimir Putin could identify as a woman; it wouldn’t make him one.

And that arrogant bullying claim not only has nothing to do with feminism, it’s an insult to feminism – so what’s it doing on a table with a “Feminism” sign at Waterstones Norwich? Besides … Read the rest

A judge has put a hold on Texas’s “investigate the parents” bill.

A Texas judge on Friday issued an injunction against enforcement of the governor’s order to investigate gender-affirming care as child abuse, handing opponents of the policy a temporary victory.

I don’t know what I think about the Texas bill, but I do know that that first paragraph is already on one side as opposed to neutral. It’s a new and questionable idea that there even is such a thing as “gender-affirming care.” If children started saying they were snakes would it be species-confirming care to cut off all four limbs?

The state Legislature last year failed to pass a bill that would have made it a

New sexist pig exactly like old sexist pig.

Yeah you might be getting a bit of a skewed sample there babe

— Caspar Salmon (@CasparSalmon) March 12, 2022

Don’t you “babe” us you patronizing git.… Read the rest

Does the law actually say trans women are women?

No.

This is a relief to me, because really, who gave the law authority to determine ontology? That would just be weird. The law can define categories for the purpose of a law, but it can’t just bang a gavel and say strawberries are luxury automobiles.

Naomi Cunningham at Legal Feminist spelled it out a couple of years ago:

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 does change some people’s legal sex. Obviously the law can’t change anyone’s biological sex. The fact that the law can’t mess with material reality is the point Canute was making when he forbade the tide to come in. But section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 

Keir Starmer throws women overboard.

Asked to define a woman, Starmer replied: “A woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view — that is actually the law. It has been the law through the combined effects of the 2004 [Gender Recognition] Act and the 2010 [Equality] Act. So that’s my view. It also happens to be the law in the United Kingdom.”

It doesn’t “happen to be” the law, it’s a law because people have lost their fucking minds.

You can’t turn men into women by passing laws. You can change definitions under law, but you can’t change the underlying reality. If you want to pass … Read the rest