Mumsnet is doing a live conversation with MPs Stella Creasey and Caroline Nokes today. So what do we get?

IdealisticCynic

To both: I think it will impossible to understand the context and proper content of any answers you may provide on women and mothers in politics without an answer to a question posed by others already:

How do you, personally, define a woman?

How odd that we’re in a place where anyone has a “personal” definition of women. Such definitions have to be universal to be any use.

Hi – Caroline here – and happy to be able to take part today.

I think it is really important to focus on this being a chat about how we get more

It’s maybe not ideal if the police have contempt for broad swathes of society, like for instance women and Other races. That’s because they’re the police. They have police power over us, so if they hate many of us going in, they might abuse that power they have.

Metropolitan Police officers joked about raping women, beating up their partners and killing black children, a damning report by the police watchdog has found.

…

Nine linked investigations were launched by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in 2018 following reports that a police officer had sex with a drunk person at a police station.

The Telegraph gives examples of the “jokes,” including one about grinding up African children … Read the rest

“Protesters” attack people feeding the homeless in Ottawa.

Ottawa’s Shepherds of Good Hope has received an outpouring of support and donations after its staff were harassed and a client was assaulted by “Freedom Convoy” protesters on the weekend.

Freedom freedom freedom: freedom to harass and assault people.

On Saturday, a group of protesters associated with the convoy of truckers and supporters railing against COVID-19 health measures in downtown Ottawa harassed staff and demanded food from its soup kitchen in an altercation that lasted for hours. Shelter officials described their behaviour as “mob-like”.

It’s almost as if libertarianism and assholism go together.

Earlier, a man who lives in the shelter was assaulted outdoors by protesters who then hurled racial slurs

The Mayor of Bangor is distraught.

My partner and Friend who are both trans were aggressively and physically removed from @CubeNightclub in Bangor last night for no justifable reason after security forced access to the cubicle they were using in the bathroom that they are entitled to…

— Owen Exie J Hurcum 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍⚧️🍉 (@OwenJHurcum) January 30, 2022

Ah um er – by “bathroom they are entitled to” he must mean the women’s – so his partner and partner’s squeeze were squeezed into a single cubicle to…

So anyway they got thrown out, to the relief of a lot of women with bursting bladders, I should think.

They weren’t starving to death hon. They were doing whatever they were doing in

Again with the idiot idea that not getting vaccinated=FREEDOM and vaccine mandates=unfreedom. Being on a ventilator plays hell with anyone’s freedom.

Thousands held a loud but peaceful protest in Canada’s capital Ottawa against prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates, on the streets and snow-covered lawn in front of parliament.

The so-called “Freedom Convoy” started out as a rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers, but turned into a demonstration against government overreach during the pandemic with a strong anti-vaccination streak.

A rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers – ok let’s discuss this. Where do the truck drivers think trucks come from? Or the roads they drive on? Or the stuff they haul? … Read the rest

When you think you’re quoting Voltaire (or Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King or Confucius) but you’re actually quoting an obscure white nationalist from 1993:

On Sunday, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted out criticism targeting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, containing a political cartoon superimposed with a quote that has been often misattributed to the French philosopher Voltaire.

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” the quote said.

Which is kind of a stupid thing to quote anyway, because of the inelegant syntax. The “who” should be “whom” but that would make a very awkward clunky sentence so the … Read the rest

The criminal who wants to be the criminal president again is promising his goons he will pardon them if he gets to be the criminal president again.

Former president Donald Trump suggested Saturday night that he will pardon the rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol if he is elected president in 2024.

Trump, who has teased but not confirmed another run for president, has repeatedly criticized the prosecution of people who violently stormed the Capitol to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. But his comments at a Texas rally on Saturday marked the first time he dangled the prospect of pardons, an escalation of his broader effort to downplay the deadly

Horrible man.

Rosie Duffield has harmed trans people by choosing to spread provocative and damaging misinformation about treatment options for young people with gender dysphoria. There should be no place in progressive politics for her. https://t.co/19D8A0sgDp

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) January 30, 2022

He posted that hours after she talked about being the target of constant abuse.

I am aware of yet more personal, libellous, nasty and fictional crap being published about me again today. All published/written by ex and current @UKLabour members who are clearly absolutely obsessed by my private life for some reason. I have been subjected to this rubbish…

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) January 30, 2022

Kent Police, Parliamentary Security team and the Speaker's Office have

I’m not the only one who thinks it’s grotesque.

Scratching my head as to how a QC can genuinely believe there are no situations where the rights of people with two different protected characteristics might conflict. Plenty of case law to show it’s not uncommon at all 🤷‍♀️

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) January 30, 2022

https://twitter.com/Leyanelle/status/1487882761499287555

I tried to debate him. He wouldn’t do it.

🤷‍♀️ https://t.co/pslO0jVfLV

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) January 30, 2022

What a lazy patronizing git. We’re supposed to do what he orders us to do, we’re supposed to take his word for it that human rights are not negotiable, we’re supposed to go away if he doesn’t like us, but he’s too grand and important to … Read the rest

Surely he’s trolling now.

And this is the very reason she shouldn't be Chair of a Human Rights organisation. Human rights aren't negotiated. They shouldn't be rolled back because others think them contestable. They are immutable. That's their very point. pic.twitter.com/Sqw2rhRmUY

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) January 30, 2022

Of course human rights are negotiated. What else does he think they are? Handed down by god? How does he think the UDHR came into being? Magic? Does he think Eleanor Roosevelt just wrote a list of them and that was that? How does he think the US Bill of Rights happened? How about Magna Carta?

Of course the aim is to declare them universal, binding, permanent, all that, but they’re still … Read the rest

Amnesty UK smuggles in its assumptions too. It’s a core part of trans activism and ideology and allyship – it’s crucial to refrain from spelling out what is meant by “trans rights,” because that would make it too obvious how destructive they are to other people’s rights, especially women’s.

On the recent statements published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the governments’ consultation on conversion therapy, Amnesty International UK disagree unreservedly in the EHRC’s assessment of separating protections for LGBTI people and specifically excluding trans people from initial legislation.

It’s a very useful aid to smuggling, this lumping together of “LGBTI” people as if they were all the same kind of thing, or all needed the same … Read the rest

Notice how the assumptions are smuggled in.

Many thanks to @cdutilhnovaes for sitting down with me to discuss our different opinions on whether some of what is being asked for in the name of trans rights conflicts with what we see as women’s rights, and to @JulianBaggini for hosting the discussion. https://t.co/DX8JAnBHyk

— Mary Leng (@mary_leng) January 21, 2022

It’s the “(But note the oddity of having 3 cis people talking abt trans rights!)” interjection that I’m talking about. What oddity? What’s odd about it? What, even, is it? What does it mean? The first assumption that’s smuggled in via that interjection is that there is a meaningful category called “cis” people. There isn’t. “Everybody who is not trans” is … Read the rest

I wish we didn’t have to turn to National Review for reporting on the injustice to women.

The University of Pennsylvania is weighing whether to pursue legal action if transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is prohibited from competing in the upcoming NCAA women’s swimming championship, according to a report.

…

Thomas is eligible to compete on the women’s team under current USA Swimming rules that require a year of testosterone suppression. Under new NCAA rules, transgender athletes will be required to document testosterone levels to remain eligible, leaving Thomas’ eligibility for the NCAA women’s championships up in the air.

Which is almost worthless, of course, because even if he does suppress his testosterone now, he still keeps most of his … Read the rest

It’s great having random guys who admire themselves a lot telling us all what’s what and collecting millions of fans for doing it, but, that said, I can’t help thinking there’s occasionally a slight downside. Like when they tell us what’s what about Covid or climate change.

As podcaster Joe Rogan faces condemnation from medical scientists for spreading misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, another interview by the controversial host this week has become the subject of mockery — this time among climate scientists.

Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Monday, making false and generalized claims that the modeling scientists use to project climate change and its impacts are flawed.

See this … Read the rest

Ok throw out the words for women but…do it nicely?

Replacing words like “women” and “mothers” with terms like “birth-givers” and “pregnant people” in research risks dehumanising women and would harm decades of work to improve the visibility of women in medical literature.

That is the conclusion of 10 prominent women’s health researchers from Australia, the US, Europe and Asia who will argue in a paper published next week that replacing words like “breastfeeding” with terms such as “lactating parents” risks “reducing protection of the mother-infant [bond]” and “disembodying and undermining breastfeeding”.

It’s also the conclusion of a hell of a lot of women, but we’re shouted at and threatened if we say so.

The authors acknowledge words are

Gail Dines in Ms on Hugh Hefner and Playboy:

“I am a feminist,” boasted Hugh Hefner, the iconic founder of Playboy.  But the first two episodes of a new the documentary series that premiered January 24 on A&E, Secrets of Playboy, showed what feminists always knew: Hefner was a vile misogynist. 

A feminist misogynist.

Feminism was never about presenting women as sex objects or, as Hefner and his magazine called them, “Playmates.” Nor would feminism ask “Bunnies,” dressed in hypersexualized costumes, to serve drinks to men in Playboy Clubs. And now, as many saw the other night on television, we have irrefutable proof that Hefner’s empire was built on the horrific abuse of women. 

Playmates, forsooth. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Prone to psychological and medical contagions.

The error we’ve made, I believe, is thinking that the emergence of more mainstream secularism was the same thing as a reduction in religious thinking. Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case. There has been no wholesale rewiring of the Mark 1 human brain. We simply have replaced the repetitive indoctrination that religions provided with that provided by asshats on social media. The programming is the same.

For a time, public education provided enough immersion in enlightenment thinking that our cognitive biases were directed at productive social issues, which is one of the reasons reactionaries targeted that system for destruction. The Inquisition … Read the rest

Valerie Tarico tells us how the Progressive Champions have trashed a local Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood in Seattle recently fired a CEO who has been a hero of the reproductive health and rights sector for the last forty years. It’s not hard to find public examples of the Left eating our own to the detriment of real change (here, here, here, here). But when it comes to reproductive health and rights, this is one of the most stark examples of form over substance that I have witnessed. And given the expected evisceration of Roe v Wade, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Chris Charbonneau was terminated abruptly under a cloud of implied racism

What is and what is not disgusting, Twitter Activist version.

This is disgusting. You're disgusting. I hope your son grows up to be a better man than you.

I'll enjoy reporting your tweets, and hopefully there are enough to get your account suspended. Fingers crossed!

— Hugh McIntyre (@PopBangHugh) January 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/PopBangHugh/status/1486793177541615621

Update: Oh wait there’s more – on the very same day. I guess January 27 was call people disgusting day in his world – “disgusting” for knowing that men aren’t women, and saying so.

Hi Linda! I'm spending a few minutes reporting your tweets as hate speech, as they're absolutely vile. With any luck, Twitter will see them all at once and remove you entirely.

Nobody needs

When the police drop by to check up on your thinking:

Nicola Murray was left “shocked and panicky” when detectives arrived at her door after an online announcement by Brodie’s Trust [which she founded] that it would no longer refer women to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

Talking to the officers, Murray, from Stanley, near Perth, was taken aback when she said they told her: “We need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.”

Murray, 43, founded Brodie’s Trust in 2018 to support women from all over the world “who’ve suffered pregnancy loss through domestic violence or forced termination” by directing victims to local services for help.

It’s the inverse of support … Read the rest