Arty on the New Yorker’s embarrassing collapse:

The New Yorker has finally chimed in on the Lia Thomas debacle, and it’s a disgrace. The cult-like language used throughout is a stain on its reputation. Remember, The New Yorker is renowned for having the most prestigious and respected fact-checking department in the world.

Exactly. They’re famously, even notoriously picky. FACTS.

They make a blunder on the fact front.

The N.C.A.A. allowed a path for people like her to join the women’s team, but it was not quick or easy. In general, élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes.

Whoops, you’ve just acknowledged that “people like her [sic]” are, in fact, “élite male athletes” who “have

… Read the rest

ESPN reports on Lia Thomas’s “win”:

Thomas, who is a transgender woman, touched the wall in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday night to become the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national championship in any sport.

Yes but the issue isn’t “transgender” but man playing in women’s sport. We weren’t waiting eagerly for the first male athlete to win a woman’s national championship. We don’t see that as a breakthrough, or as a good thing in any way. We see it as cheating. We see it as brazen theft of a woman’s win and a woman’s spot in the race. We’re not impressed, we’re disgusted.

Thomas finished 1.75 seconds ahead of

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There were some observers on the scene.

At the NCAA swim championships at Georgia Tech pic.twitter.com/np0r5dCemH

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

They got support.

Lots of thumbs up from passers by including athletes and parents. #SaveWomensSports #ncaaswimimg #NCAASwimDive pic.twitter.com/2T2Jjc35wN

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

The 500 meter final race just ended. Lia Thomas came in first. Saw some tears in the audience that weren’t tears of joy. Immediately afterward Lia was interviewed and displayed on the big screen. pic.twitter.com/hIbtuHxIf7

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/coachblade/status/1504511468422770689

The @NCAA is exclusive.
It has excluded @tylormathieu.
Just like the IOC excluded Roviel Detenamo.
This is an exclusionary policy, it excludes people who have a right to compete.
The people who it excludes are talented sports women.
Their exclusion is unfair.#LiaThomas https://t.co/on770dyuvl

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 17, 2022

Why is it fine to exclude Tylor Mathieu in order to include Lia Thomas? Why does Lia Thomas matter more than Tylor Mathieu – so much more that he’s allowed to race against a team of women in order to steal a place from one of them?… Read the rest

Lia Thomas stole a woman’s place today. Brave stunning Lia living the dream.

Thomas took the place her friend worked hard to get. #SaveWomensSports #PennCheats pic.twitter.com/yAqG2UkqjZ

— Let Women Speak Official (@StandingforXX) March 17, 2022

He really took control of the race.

Female swimmers. Truly the second sex. Of two. Patriarchy at it's finest. https://t.co/c9eLCQC96o

— Cathy Devine (@cathydevine56) March 17, 2022

NCAA Title For Lia Thomas Is Joke With Biological Women As Punchline, And Hardly a Laughing Matter – https://t.co/Nh0EKRPtH8 @Hogshead3Au @Martina @Caitlyn_Jenner @runthinkwrite @sharrond62 @ChrissieEvert @jk_rowling @coachblade @Scienceofsport pic.twitter.com/TyCoIgz6Zc

— Swimming World (@SwimmingWorld) March 17, 2022

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Even the New Yorker…which is famous for having a rigorous fact-checking department. Even the New Yorker tells us these stupid lies.

Lia Thomas has been swimming since she was five years old. As a high schooler, she was one of the top swimmers in Texas, an All-American. She followed her older brother onto the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, and established herself as a strong competitor in distance races; in her sophomore season, at the Ivy League championships, she finished second in three events.

Six factual errors (actually lies) in that one paragraph, because William “Lia” Thomas is not a she but a he.

We get the unconvincing story of how he felt unaligned with his body … Read the rest

Ok I made it back to yesterday morning at the tribunal without interrupting myself again. They started with a discussion of company policy on social media – it was quite common for employees to be Outspoken on Twitter.

AG: your response you said you were concerned and it'd get you into policing people. So you recognise you senior researchers who heavily use SM in a way that is robust and humorous, yes
AG: yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 16, 2022

Senior researchers get to be robust and humorous on social media so policing Maya would be…odd. They talk about that at some length.

BC=Ben Cooper QC, Maya’s lawyer. AG=Angela Glassman a GDC executive.

BC: sorry to interupt but I'm

… Read the rest

I didn’t get to the tribunal yesterday so I need to catch up. Here’s one segment from today which explains how and why the whole issue of what “trans woman” means is relevant to the think tank Maya was working for:

BC: Your view at this point was that claimant *could* discuss the beliefs she holds freely and openly
MP: that's what I'm saying there yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 17, 2022

BC: Global education programme by CGD: says focussed on girls schooling and women's empowerment
MP: yes
BC: repeated later in programme text
MP: yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 17, 2022

BC: Nobody is saying CGD had to publish the blog but you couldn't ever this debate

… Read the rest

Listen don’t even think about it, ok? Everybody is trans. Move on!

Hate to tell you, but in a way, everyone is trans. As writer T Cooper observed, all of us in life’s competitive arena are on the way to becoming someone profoundly different than we were, and keeping score is just a way to track the arc of a person from youth to prime to past it. If you subtract the aim of becomingness from competition just because you’re afraid of a Lia Thomas and make it strictly about the chance to win a prize, then you might as well go to an amusement park and shoot a squirt gun at a clown face because it will have

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More on that Herstory Festival thingy.

https://twitter.com/PoetintheCityUK/status/1502335838524432390 https://twitter.com/PoetintheCityUK/status/1503784417998917634

“Celebrating the unique experiences of womanhood”…by celebrating a man. Women women women, celebrate celebrate celebrate, begin with a man and end with a man, hooray hooray hooray.

Updating to add [h/t Mike]

https://twitter.com/UwuUwuUwu2000/status/1504156881979252737

His Twitter is locked.… Read the rest

The news media just lie to us about this.

A 79-year-old woman has reasonable grounds to claim that a Maine assisted-living facility discriminated against her for being transgender when it rejected her as a potential resident, the Maine Human Rights Commission found. 

In other words a 79-year-old man wants to force himself on a women-only assisted living facility.

The commission’s 3-2 vote on Monday sets in motion a process that could result in a lawsuit being filed against Sunrise Assisted Living in the town of Jonesport on a claim of violating state nondiscrimination law by denying Marie King’s application for residency.

King’s attorneys say the case has already made legal history as the nation’s first known discrimination complaint filed by

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I’m listening to BBC Radio 4 live and they just interrupted themselves to say the plane has touched down.

Just thought you’d like to know.… Read the rest

No you are.

US President Joe Biden has labelled Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a move likely to escalate diplomatic tensions even further.

Ya think? Putin won’t agree? Sharp analysis there.

The Kremlin, however, said it was “unforgiveable rhetoric”.

“We believe such rhetoric to be unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency Tass.

It’s true about the bombs, it’s true that we haven’t always done it in self-defense or the defense of others, it’s true that we’ve done a lot of bad shit since WW2, but it’s also true that Putin … Read the rest

What’s wrong with this headline.

Too easy, I know. BZZZZZZZZZZT. Lia Thomas is not a female athlete. Lia Thomas is a male athlete systematically, and laughing all the way, cheating female athletes out of the prizes and rewards they’ve earned.

After that we get a row of three photos: woman, Thomas, woman. Thomas’s photo is bigger and, all too obviously, so is Thomas. Those shoulders.

We’re told about Olympic runner Helen Stephens, who was framed as not girly enough in the 1930s. Definitely interesting, but nothing to do with Lia Thomas – the opposite of Lia Thomas.

While much has changed for female athletes since Stephens’ day, suspicion surrounding their gender and sexuality — from offensive remarks to sex verification

… Read the rest

She’s on the plane and the plane is in the air.

Nazanin’s plane took off from Oman just over half an hour ago and she’s due to arrive in the UK this evening.

Here she is on the plane – the final step in what has been a six year long ordeal.#NazaninIsFree pic.twitter.com/YN2AHA6jVR

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) March 16, 2022

… Read the rest

War crimes continue.

In the last few hours, [Mariupol] city officials have told the BBC that a theatre in the city where more than 1,000 people had been sheltering – taking refuge against the incessant Russian shelling – came under bombardment.

And the continuing bombardment was making it impossible for rescue workers to reach the theatre.

We’ve just heard from the Russian defence ministry, they have denied that they struck this theatre. So again we’re left with who caused what, who is to blame. And in a city which is suffering.

If they did bombard the theatre that’s a war crime. Biden has just told reporters that Putin is a war criminal.

Civilian buildings where people are sheltering from … Read the rest

Hey kids, it’s deplatforming Wednesday!

1/3 I was due to talk about feminism and lesbian identity at @UniOfYork today but have been deplatformed as a result of the LGBTQ+ lot. They claim to have simply delayed it for security reasons, but that's bullshit. One bluefringe stated in an open letter to the student union,

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) March 16, 2022

here?” and “are those students directly endangered by her rhetoric to understand they are not safe on campus?”. Watch this space. I will not be taking this without protest.

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) March 16, 2022

To correct – the comment about me existing only to murder women in prostitution, that was a comment made on one of the

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On their way, the BBC reports.

British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are on a plane leaving Iran after being freed, the government has said.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be reunited with her husband and seven-year-old daughter, who plans to show her mother new toys when she returns to the UK.

“It’s going to be the beginning of a new life,” Richard Ratcliffe said.

Mr Ashoori’s family said they could now rebuild the foundations of their family with their “cornerstone back in place”.

…

Cuddling his daughter, Gabriella, Mr Ratcliffe told journalists they would really believe the news when they saw “mummy”.

So not quite yet, but close.

Updating to add:

I’ve just heard from Richard Ratcliffe that Nazanin

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Breaking news –

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran nearly six years ago, has been released and is on her way back to the UK.

The 43-year-old was arrested in 2016 and accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she denied.

Her MP, Tulip Siddiq, tweeted that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was at the airport in Tehran.

She had been under house arrest and was given her UK passport back this week.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe, who lives with their daughter Gabriella in Hampstead, London, had campaigned for her release, including by going on hunger strike in October last year.

Mazel tov.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on How to personalise care.

There is a meme (in the classical sense of the word) circulating among some young people, especially young men, that “hard times create hard men, hard men create soft times, soft times create soft men, soft men create hard times”. And this sentiment, while chauvinist and not true in the strictest sense — exigencies of political economy, the natural environment, and ever-present arseholes gaming social systems at those systems’ expense to the arseholes’ personal advantage are almost always at fault for “hard times” — it does reflect a true-ish instinct one gets from the cyclical nature of stability and collapse.

Only a decadent society can collapse, because only … Read the rest