My god this subject brings out the stupid in people.

There’s a lot of noise over this interview. In my opinion @chrisrankin explains it better when he says ‘when a trans person says they are male or female, that is what they are and that is how we should treat them. It is damaging to them to say otherwise.’ https://t.co/VUHd3Zpvt4

— James Max (@thejamesmax) December 29, 2021

Explains? Explains?? Explains what? That’s not an explanation, it’s a stupid and dogmatic assertion.

I’m pretty sure we all used to know that we don’t have to believe whatever people tell us about themselves, because some people lie sometimes.

That becomes all the more the case when what the people are telling us … Read the rest

What a display.

Campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen and James Max clash over the issue of 'sex-based rights' and JK Rowling's 'trans-row'.

James: "I am slightly staggered by your views."

Campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen: "What? That biological sex exists."@thejamesmax pic.twitter.com/z9pTo9n48G

— Talk (@TalkTV) December 29, 2021

The vastly condescending James Max tells Kellie-Jay that “somebody can be born in somebody else’s body” and two minutes later that “you can never be in the brain and body of somebody else.” Well which is it?

He reminds me of Jolyon. The smugness twins.… Read the rest

This is where the stapling on of the T to the LGB has been such a destructive mistake:

Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs

Hm, I thought when I saw the headline. Are we talking about LGB, or T?

This fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

So far so good. GSAs are a good … Read the rest

Trans journalist group tells us what we can say about trans people:

A trans journalist group which advises media on how to cover trans-related topics has published a style guide encouraging media outlets to “kill” stories on trans criminals, censor detransitioners, and erase all references to biological sex.

Next up: rapist journalist group publishes a style guide encouraging media outlets to call rapists “heroes” or “rapscallions.”

*clears throat, taps mic*

just a reminder: we have a style guide that's been publicly available for well over a year, with guidance not only on what language to use but on how to accurately and ethically report on trans people https://t.co/SqtHcOPqOC

— Trans Journalists Association (@TransJA) October 25, 2021

And by “accurately” … Read the rest

Worried about losing all your brain cells?

Worried about misgendering someone in an email? Do a quick “CTRL+F” and search for any use of an incorrect pronoun before hitting send.

Fine more tips about pronouns ⤵️! https://t.co/4IYaYYMoDK

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) December 27, 2021

… Read the rest

They’re just complying with local law…

Amazon quietly removed criticism of President Xi’s books by scrubbing bad reviews, ratings and comments from its Chinese site, it has emerged.

The US retail giant agreed to Beijing’s demand to have anything below a five-star review of Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of China removed from Amazon.cn about two years ago, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified sources.

The US retail giant is just being polite.

An Amazon spokesman said that the company “complies with all applicable laws and regulations, wherever we operate, and China is no exception.”

If there’s a law that all Jews must be reported to the government for deportation and elimination, who is Amazon to argue?

Last year,

… Read the rest

Ground-breaking! Giant leap!

Rachel Levine has shattered not one but two major glass ceilings this year. In March, she became the first openly transgender person to win confirmation in the US Senate after Joe Biden nominated her as assistant secretary of health.

Then in October she was sworn in as the first openly transgender four-star officer as an admiral and head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. At that exalted rank she gets to wear the blue uniform of the corps, which though non-military is one of eight uniformed services.

First! Glass ceiling smashed! Twice!

Until you remember – this is a man. It’s not smashing any glass ceiling to appoint a man to an important government position. … Read the rest

No independent thought allowed.

Russia’s supreme court has ordered the closure of Memorial International, the country’s oldest human rights group, in a watershed moment in Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on independent thought.

The court ruled Memorial must be closed under Russia’s controversial “foreign agent” legislation, which has targeted dozens of NGOs and media outlets seen as critical of the government.

Just define “critical” as “foreign” and your work is done.

Memorial International’s closure marks an inflection point in Russia’s modern history, as efforts to publicise crimes under Soviet leaders such as Joseph Stalin have become taboo 30 years after the secret government archives were opened after the end of the Soviet Union. While not quite seeking a return to the

… Read the rest

Speaking of Christine Burns (who participated in that cozy chat about terfs on Al Jazeera)…here’s a think-piece from 1996:

On a Saturday afternoon in a pleasant English University suburb I went along to find out the hard way. To argue, as both advocate and plaintiff, that transsexual women have more in common with the experience of their sisters than they blandly imagine.

Sorry for being bland, but I still get to think that we don’t have the experience of being a woman in common with men.

Under debate was the question of whether the group I was visiting should argue the case with their peers for other women like me to be admitted to their women-only space.

The air

… Read the rest

An elegant beginning:

Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting. He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably good job of keeping from public view any redeeming qualities he might have.

You know who else is like that? Donald Trump senior. Empty suits beget more empty suits.

Trump spoke at a Turning Point USA gathering on December 19. He displayed seething, nearly pathological resentments; playground insults (he led the crowd in “Let’s Go, Brandon” chants); tough guy/average Joe shtick; and a pulsating sense of aggrieved victimhood and persecution, all of it coming from the elitist, extravagantly

… Read the rest

The Taliban pinch women ever harder.

The Taliban have said Afghan women seeking to travel long distances by road should be offered transport only if accompanied by a male relative.

Right. If she’s going only a mile or two she won’t flop down and open her legs, but if she’s going far, down she’ll go, the whore.

The majority of secondary schools remain shut for girls, while most women have been banned from working.

Of course. Women are for fucking, and for dealing with the sons that result. It’s a big mistake to let them do anything else, the whores.

The latest directive, issued by the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said women travelling

… Read the rest

Female people are not valued in India.

Laali’s unborn daughter is among India’s estimated 46 million “missing females” over a period of 50 years, ten times the female population of London. A deepening gender bias, breeding rampant sex-selective abortions and female infanticides, means that India accounts for nearly half of global missing female births.

“The traditional pattern of marriage and customs dictate an inferior position to women in Indian societies,” says Prem Chowdhry, a gender activist and retired professor at the University of Delhi. Since girls leave their birth family after marriage, she says, the dowry and cost of raising a girl is considered an unwelcome obligation, and sex-selective abortions are common.

Not a problem. Just … Read the rest

If truth doesn’t matter in the courtroom then…?

Judges have been told that they should refer to criminal defendants by the gender they have chosen for themselves.

Just “gender”? What if criminal defendants have chosen to be called Duke? Doctor? Father? Sister? Lord? Admiral? Your honor? Why is “gender” the one category defendants get to force everyone to lie about?

New guidance instructs judges to consider whether alleged victims of sexual offences should be required to describe transgender defendants by the pronouns they self-identify with.

It will give rise to concerns that witnesses and alleged victims of rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse could be forced to refer to defendants as women, even if they view them as male.

The … Read the rest

Nancy Kelley’s “Ah the joys of throwing women and gay men under the bus chatting on Al Jazeera” tweet really isn’t winning her many friends except maybe in Qatar.

Replies of course are turned off.

https://twitter.com/LabWomenDec/status/1475371360541102085 https://twitter.com/Matt_Zeleo/status/1475320701900845056 https://twitter.com/LabWomenDec/status/1475388801216299008 https://twitter.com/scotlass42/status/1475322494227779590 https://twitter.com/markjenkinsonmp/status/1475242326947684363

Really not many friends at all, in fact I haven’t seen one single friend.… Read the rest

Well…

Better than retweeting his words, if you want to honour Desmond Tutu, is following his advice. Act against those who abuse power, ally with the oppressed. Don't bystand.

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 26, 2021

Unless the oppressed are women, of course. They don’t matter. Men who say they are women are the oppressed, but women, never.

Also, “those who abuse power” does not include Jolyon Maugham. Never mind the baseball bat, never mind the bullying of lesbians and gender critical feminists, those are not abuses of power. It’s women who say men are not women who abuse power.

Well…

2022. pic.twitter.com/ImMVlygvZW

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 25, 2021

Unless it’s women. Or foxes. Or the LGB Alliance. … Read the rest

The Guardian invited us to nominate a Person of the Year.

Time magazine has announced that Elon Musk will be their “2021 person of the year”, citing the billionaire Tesla boss’s influence “for good or ill” as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman”. The choice has been criticised for Musk’s attitude to tax, opposition to unions and playing down the dangers of Covid.

With this in mind, we would like to hear about your own choices. Who would be your 2021 person of the year, and why?

A number of people said JK Rowling.

Maybe they just had enough, or…… Read the rest

Ah yes good old Al Jazeera. Qatar is notoriously queer-friendly right?

https://twitter.com/christineburns/status/1474421241243226117

Yes it’s a “trans panic” to think women shouldn’t be erased from the language and shoved aside by men pretending to be women.

https://twitter.com/Nancy_M_K/status/1474429308269695011

Oh damn, so sorry about all the bad faith arguments!

https://twitter.com/LGBT_INTL/status/1475147181841690635… Read the rest

What’s wrong with this lede?

Nearly 250 people incarcerated in California prisons — the vast majority of whom are transgender women — are waiting for their chance to transfer out of a men’s institution. The longer it takes, the greater the odds that they could be raped, beaten or killed.

One major thing wrong with it is that it frames the likelihood of being raped, beaten or killed as something to “transfer out of” as opposed to something to stop altogether. I daresay men who aren’t transgender women also don’t want to be raped, beaten, or killed.

But of course the more obvious thing wrong with it is the hidden assumption that men who “identify as” women get to transfer … Read the rest

When in doubt, pretend women don’t exist.

A BBC television doctor repeatedly referred to mothers-to-be as ‘pregnant people’ on the popular daytime show Morning Live.

Dr Xand van Tulleken was discussing the various groups who have so far declined to have the Covid jab when he said: ‘Pregnant people, for instance, early in the pandemic there were very mixed messages [on whether expectant mothers should be given a shot] so people didn’t get vaccinated when they were pregnant and they haven’t got it subsequently.

‘Pregnant people are not unreasonably nervous about putting things into their bodies.’ 

Whatever you do, don’t let on that it’s women who get pregnant, especially if you’re a doctor, even more especially if you’re a … Read the rest

“I can’t do this, I can’t support this,” she said. 1/8

USA Swimming Official Quits In Protest Of Lia Thomas: ‘Everything Fair About Swimming Is Being Destroyed’ https://t.co/njbrqU33a5

— LGB Alliance USA (@LGBAlliance_USA) December 25, 2021

“This is not right because by doing this, we’re supporting this,” Millen told the Times. “There are no swim meets if there are no officials.” 3/8

— LGB Alliance USA (@LGBAlliance_USA) December 25, 2021

“Their idea of ‘acceptance’ is to not give you a platform — by shaming or forcing you out if you have views that are too far from their own,” one student said. 5/8

— LGB Alliance USA (@LGBAlliance_USA) December 25, 2021

Why do they get to shame? Why isn’t it … Read the rest