They just can’t ever word it honestly. BBC headline:

Fina stops transgender swimmers from competing in women’s elite events

Male swimmers.

Fina, swimming’s world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women’s elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

They could have worded it so that the male puberty part comes first, but no, it has to be the “transgender” part first.

The decision was made during an extraordinary general congress at the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.

…

The issue in swimming has been catapulted into the spotlight by the experiences of American Lia Thomas.

Not so much the experiences as the photos and video clips. … Read the rest

A win at last!

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1538532982226669569

I had to look up FINA: it’s a [or the] competitive swimming organization type thing.

The vote was massive.

Superb! Here are the slides:https://t.co/AGM6PUEK3R

— Cathy Devine (@cathydevine56) June 19, 2022

Good news at last.… Read the rest

Man tries to get group of women barred from popular London pub:

https://twitter.com/matteottismith/status/1538261727124537344

He likes to go there himself. He doesn’t want those icky women in a place where he likes to go.

https://twitter.com/matteottismith/status/1538262122492313601

Everyone should have the right to tell bars and pubs and restaurants and bowling alleys to bar groups of women from going there. It’s only fair.… Read the rest

Why we can’t do anything about climate change chapter eleventy billion:

Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

It shouldn’t be optional. It shouldn’t be up for grabs. We shouldn’t have the power to decide future generations have to face the full horror show.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental

… Read the rest

Who does this guy think he is??

https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1537872659916152835 https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1538104621142622208

Who does he think he is interrupting women on Twitter to demand when they are going to start doing what he tells them?

https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1538128140383428609

Who DOES he think he is? When is he going to get back to not telling women what to do?… Read the rest

Wo, here’s a crack in the ice: academics refused to sign a new Trans Declaration of What You Have To Do. Just up and said no, as if they had a right to.

A programme to encourage universities to follow guidance on trans discrimination is to be changed after Cambridge academics refused to sign it.

“Here’s our guidance on how you have to coddle us, sign right here.”

“No.”

Advance HE, a charity that advises higher education institutions, has bowed to pressure and pledged to alter its guidelines requiring universities to foster a “collective understanding” on the belief that gender can be chosen.

Should universities foster a collective understanding that the sun circles the earth every day? How about … Read the rest

Climate disaster hasn’t thrown anything at us here in the PNW so far this summer – it’s been unusually cool and cloudy, which is fine with me. Elsewhere though it’s not so mellow.

Summer in the American west is off to an explosive start, with extreme weather events ravaging multiple states in recent weeks. In Montana, historic flooding devastated communities and infrastructure in and around Yellowstone national park and forced a rare closure. Further south, reservoirs sank to new lows, triple-digit heatwaves left millions sweltering, and wildfires ripped through Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and California.

Natural disasters, from floods to droughts to wildfires, have always occurred in areas across the west, and it will take time for scientists to

… Read the rest

The Post of course thinks this is a good thing, or at least wants to appear to. Gender idennniny taught in schools:

Some lessons are direct: “Who can describe what transgender means?” In other classes, the discussion is more subtle: “Remember, families can come in all shapes and sizes!”

Yes all! In some families the parents are shaped like pyramids and the children are shaped like orcas!

In Florida and several others states, educators are restricted in teaching about gender identity, but elsewhere, teachers are embracing the topic as the number of transgender and gender nonbinary children rises.

If it’s true that’s unfortunate, because transgender is a fiction and “gender nonbinary” is simply meaningless. If the number of transgender … Read the rest

Even at his dumbest and most dogmatic and fingers-in-ears how can he think he knows this?

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1537901875017633797

He can’t know that; no one can; it’s not possible. It’s not knowable that zero men who identify as women will ever rape anyone or that zero men who identify as women ever have raped anyone. There are in fact reports of trans women raping women. I would love to know how he, a philosopher, thinks he can know that it has never happened and will never happen.… Read the rest

Financial Times reporter Edward Luce talks to Hillary Clinton over lunch:

With an eye on the likely coming reversal of Roe vs Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that enshrined women’s right to abortion, I ask Clinton how far such unfinished business is likely to go. “If you go down the rabbit hole of far right intellectuals, you see that birth control, gay marriage — all of it is at risk,” she replies.

What is the Christian right’s endgame, I ask. Presumably they would not be able to create the theological dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale? My question triggers a passionate response. Clinton speaks about how some states will make it illegal to abort

… Read the rest

Many are telling Jesse it’s not becoming religious, it’s been religious all along.

Anyway. Planned Parenthood is firmly in the cult.

This is becoming religious and religion makes me uncomfortable pic.twitter.com/8RF7rUO7Xh

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 17, 2022

… Read the rest

Being a woman is an inner experience (a lived experience, of course, as opposed to the other kind), a feeling, a sense, a gnosis, a revelation. It’s nothing to do with genitalia or any other physical attribute.

Unless…

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1538151379973427206 https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1538149927871729664

It’s “she,” he says, I’m “she,” he says, but to emphasize or illustrate or verify his claim he includes a photo of himself, as if to say “LOOK, you can see for yourself I’m she, in a tight dress, with long hair, and a sexy sexy pose, and a receding hairline a girly smirk.”

(He also, I’ve only just noticed, has those weird fake eyebrows drawn on his forehead well above where the real ones were. Do people who do … Read the rest

This PrideMonth, the Audobon Society partnered with a man who pretends to be a woman to bring us a message of hope future planet climate change yadda yadda. God knows why a real woman talking sense wouldn’t have done just as well or in fact much better.

https://twitter.com/audubonsociety/status/1536443288240148482

Your Name’s not Bruce? tells us they’ve blocked a lot of people as a precaution against hearing any impertinent questions on this brave mumblemumble.

https://twitter.com/NoBettyInHere/status/1537605509670309889… Read the rest

My opinion of people has just shot up. I thought I’d be the only one to say “Ew he thinks he’s doing Fine Writing,” but on the contrary, most people out of a large number said so, and more wittily. I hate hate hate wannabe Fine Writing except from geniuses.

Along with the bogus Fine Writing of course there’s the Don’t you wish you could have a nice vaycay in Cyprus? along with the Get me I’m writing, I’m a writer, you thought I was just a QC but I’m also a writer.

https://twitter.com/SCynic1/status/1537798901834579969… Read the rest

Transgender Trend summarizes some of what is known about puberty blockers and brain development:

When a child’s natural puberty is blocked we can expect to see effects not only on the body but on the developing brain. It is the surge of sex hormones at puberty which triggers the important changes in the adolescent brain which only reach completion in the mid-twenties. Hormonal changes at puberty  are thought to influence the development of both brain structure and function.

Recent research indicates that there is a window of development for some cognitive functions, and if this window is missed, cognitive development does not resume later even if blockers are discontinued. A reduction in long-term spatial memory was found to persist after

… Read the rest

We need more oil to get those prices down but don’t go producing more oil because climate.

Next up: fly us to the moon on gossamer wings.

The Post:

Battered politically by high gasoline prices and pressed to increase oil and gas production, Biden nonetheless attempted to convince countries to keep pursuing policies aimed at combating climate change.

“We cannot, we cannot afford to let the critical goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to slip out of our reach,” the president said to leaders at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate. “The science tells us the window for action is rapidly narrowing.”

And the news media and vox pop tell us we have to … Read the rest

It’s not just a few wannabe-Hitlers, it’s the Republican party.

[T]he immediate danger to American democracy stems from the fact that the Republican party is justifying all this, remains united behind the man responsible, and, worst of all, actually wants to put him back in power. This is about Trump, but not just about Trump. This is what the Republican party is: the very few voices siding against Trumpism are being shunned and ostracized, and most Republicans are united in their quest to install authoritarian rule by a reactionary minority.

And even if conservatives aren’t necessarily on board with all the specifics of Trump’s conspiracy claims, the right in general is united behind the idea that progressives are out

… Read the rest

If they could at least manage to talk about it honestly that would be a start.

First sentence of Libby Brooks’s article on a survey of attitudes toward trans people:

The British public are not bitterly polarised over trans equality, according to new research, which found a majority agreed schools should talk to pupils about transgender issues and that one in four knows a trans person personally.

But “equality” has nothing to do with it. Nobody wants trans people to be “unequal” in some never-specified way. The well is poisoned in the title and the very first sentence, and of course goes on being poisoned throughout.

Thought to be the most in-depth UK study to date of public attitudes

… Read the rest

Sometimes NOW remembers who women are and what the National Organization for Women is.

This is another supply chain problem where women are bearing the brunt of the cost. Because of these shortages, we are seeing a major hike in prices for tampons, a product that is already unaffordable for many. https://t.co/nhWIMkuIag

— National NOW (@NationalNOW) June 15, 2022

Just women. Not men, not trans women, just women. It’s women who need to soak up menstrual blood without getting it all over the furniture, not men.

Other times they struggle a bit.

Climate change-induced socioeconomic instability, structural power inequalities, health-care inaccessibility, resource scarcity, as well as breakdown in safety all leads to an increased rate of gender-based violence. https://t.co/9hAam7On4k

—

… Read the rest

I remember when the National Organization for Women was an organization for women. Seems like only yesterday.

https://twitter.com/NationalNOW/status/1536065569098694659

When will this childish shit stop. Yes of course women are the only people who need access to abortion care. Men don’t need it because men don’t get pregnant. (There’s plenty to say about how abortion rights benefit men too, but that’s a different subject, and not what NOW means.) Women need access to abortion and women need a lot of other things too. The fight has not been won. It is not time to move on from feminism and give the men who want to pretend to be women a chance.… Read the rest