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

Planned Parenthood with a new and exciting story about what doulas do for “people”:

Doulas support many different types of people going through a range of life experiences — including death, gender transition, birth, and abortion. Some doulas have a specific focus, while others provide a range of care. But all doulas advocate for and support their clients in situations where they may feel alone, ignored, or dismissed.

Oh yeah? The rest of the world seems to think they’re assistants to women giving birth. They’re not medically trained, so they’re not midwives, they just do the supporty helpy hand-holdy stuff – for women giving birth. Not “people” transitioning, not people dying, just women giving birth. PP is talking … Read the rest

It’s become a kind of religion.

In the year since the first shots began going into arms, opposition to vaccines has hardened from skepticism and wariness into something approaching an article of faith for the approximately 39 million American adults who have yet to get a single dose.

To be fair, there’s also a kind of faith involved in thinking people should get the shots. I don’t have any medical expertise, and most people who get vaxxed also have little or none. Why do I trust the people who say get vaxxed more than I trust people who say don’t? I guess largely because of the record – there’s a pretty long record now of vaccinations working. The choice … Read the rest

Sue the bastards.

Two election workers who counted votes for the 2020 presidential election filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the parent company of One America News, senior staff at the far-right TV network, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former president Donald Trump.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who worked in Fulton County, Ga., allege that One America News and Giuliani, who frequently appears on the network, knowingly spread misinformation about them, including falsehoods that they logged illegal ballots for Joe Biden in the election.

The two women “have become objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment … because of a campaign of malicious lies,” their attorneys wrote in the

… Read the rest

Eight minutes to launch:

Watch live: The James Webb Telescope is launching into space and could unlock mysteries of the universe and our place in it.

Live updates: https://t.co/RtXxjW8fbX https://t.co/XVBIlWgXZa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 25, 2021

… Read the rest

Janice Turner prefers brave goats to placid sheep.

How must it feel to have your name airbrushed from the $8 billion film franchise born of your scribbling in a coffee shop, penniless, while your baby napped? Or to watch the trio of child actors you chose and nurtured 20 years ago recall the stories which made them many times richer and more celebrated than their ho-hum talents deserve, yet not once uttering your name? Or have fools who run around with broomsticks up their backsides in college leagues change the name of quidditch, the sport you invented for wizards?

That’s putting aside the threats. Just search for JK Rowling on Twitter and see the stream of invective, the gun

… Read the rest

Charming.

After speaking to Crouch End we understand someone called for copies, was told that what stock they had was reserved, with apology. No mention of values. It is unfair and inaccurate to characterise otherwise, although we appreciate it may promote your book.

— WaterstonesHelp (@WstonesHelp) December 24, 2021

The rudeness of it takes my breath away. Do all institutions and chain stores hand their social media over to rude angry teenagers?

“We understand” – that perhaps an employee wasn’t entirely truthful about what happened because it wouldn’t look very responsible or adult of the employee?

And that taunt at the end – what the hell?

LOL, so you’re calling me a liar? I really hope there were no witnesses…

… Read the rest

There’s this

And then there’s this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGmRh7HOwM

Now…has Cleese become a Muggeridge or Stockwood? Or is he still Cleese while the interviewer is a credulous point-missing inquisitor?… Read the rest

When Michael met Malcolm.

There’s bit where Cleese says he knew Palin was steaming. I like that because I’ve heard Palin talking about how furious he was – he did a book talk and signing here a couple of decades ago, and someone must have asked about the Muggeridge encounter: he became quite energetic about how foul Muggeridge was and how angry it made him.… Read the rest