The pink blue and white flag is sacred.

The University of Melbourne said they have counselled one of their academics over a ‘transphobic’ post on social media on Transgender Day of Visibility.

And the next thing we see is a trigger warning – not a warning about misogyny or anti-feminism but a warning about, of course, “transphobia.” I wonder if stories about violence against women include trigger warnings after the first paragraph.

Trigger Warning: This story has details of a transphobic post, which might be distressing to some readers. For 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.

Any numbers for … Read the rest

Last week Grace Lavery, this week Veronica Ivy.

@EmmaSPearce you have invited Veronica Ivy onto @BBCWomansHour next week. Are you aware that Ivy is on record saying women should “die in a grease fire”, and also spoke outright lies on @BBCr4today today? You might want to get details from @ithompsonfdn @coachblade @AlisonSydor

— Mara Yamauchi (@mara_yamauchi) April 9, 2022

Now, maybe the idea is to give these creepy misogynist men the rope to hang themselves with, but is it worth it? And maybe that isn’t the idea, maybe the idea is just provocative, name recognition, noise. Rhys McKinnon is a loathsome, sadistic individual who relishes cheating women out of opportunities to race and medals. It’s not really cute to reward … Read the rest

Fake Gay History:

A recent video of a young teacher…shows her awkwardly speaking into a camera: “There is a way to be sneaky about supporting, say, queer students in your classroom, and I want to show you it.”

The camera pans to a homemade-looking pink triangle on her dry-erase board. The teacher continues, “The pink triangle was used in concentration camps to identify gay women and also people who were asexual and now has been co-opted by the queer community to be a symbol of a safe space. Dropping a pink triangle somewhere in your room makes a huge difference, because kids look for that.”

No it wasn’t. The pink triangle was the equivalent of the yellow star, and … Read the rest

Interesting ranking system the Guardian has.

https://twitter.com/sarahditum/status/1512354845252063235

Depp was asked to leave because of plausible claims of violence against his former wife, and Ezra Miller was videoed grabbing a woman by the throat, but that’s “small beer” compared to JKR having unapproved opinions.

It’s classic. We’re accused of “inciting violence” against “the trans community” by saying things, and men who perpetrate actual physical violence on women are too trivial to discuss compared to JKR saying things.

https://twitter.com/sarahditum/status/1512358279468711939

“Taking ownership” ffs. Jumped up little mimes.

The Guardian edited out “small beer” later.… Read the rest

Too Online Academia is a very good word for it. It always does make me cringelaugh to see actual academics engaging in this playground name-calling no YOU’RE the evil karen seven-headed beast nonsense out in the open where anyone can see them. Imagine the fun of taking a class taught by one of those people.

A glance at Too Online Academia

1. Academics express public disgust and horror at a book that isn't out yet and seek to cause professional harm to the author

2. Someone else points out this is nuts

3. This — *the pointing out* — is treated as beyond the pale 'targeting'! pic.twitter.com/HCff4vHdoU

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) April 8, 2022

Woof woof don’t you dare woof … Read the rest

Huh. I saw this one by accident, following a trail via Jesse Singal.

https://twitter.com/kwazana/status/1512489885508141060

But we don’t “seek to cancel THE VERY EXISTENCE” of anyone. That would be murder. We’re not murderers and we don’t advocate murder.

https://twitter.com/kwazana/status/1512493195115986944

Ah the community of right-minded people. Ok, I’ll shelve the plans to do whatever that was meant to be, then.… Read the rest

The NY Times on the scabbing of PhDs:

The job would be on a “without salary basis,” as the posting phrased it. Just to be clear, it hammered home the point: “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

The posting last month caused an immediate uproar among academics across the country, who accused the university of exploiting already undervalued adjunct professors, and suggested this would never happen in other occupations. Under pressure, U.C.L.A. apologized and withdrew the posting.

But the unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.

They have to keep the bulk of their funds for the football program.

Very often, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are

… Read the rest

UCLA advertised an academic job with no pay.

The job listing for an assistant adjunct professor was very clear: “The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an assistant adjunct professor on a without salary basis.  Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

Sure, that seems normal. Skip minimum wage: we’re talking no pay at all.

The listing went on to describe what the person hired could expect: “Responsibilities will include: teaching according to the instructional needs of the department. Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or equivalent discipline and have significant experience and strong record in teaching chemistry or biochemistry at the college level. The University of

… Read the rest

I listened to the Trans Women in Sport segment of Today, which starts at about 1 hour 40 minutes and ends at 1:48. It’s not a conversation between “Veronica Ivy” and Sharron Davies; Ivy gets a segment and then Davies gets one.

Ivy says around 1:41: “Here’s the thing about Emily in particular: because she was a member of the British Cycling academy, they have years of her power data, they know how much her power numbers went down, so they know for a fact that she does not have an unfair competitive advantage.”

Wait. What? Emily’s numbers went down, therefore it’s a fact that he does not have an unfair competitive advantage. But we don’t know how … Read the rest

It seems BBC Radio 4’s Today program had Sharron Davies on along with…Rhys McKinnon aka Rachel McKinnon aka Veronica Ivy. How insulting.

If you listened to the @BBCr4today program can you ask them why they are still using a person who threatened on twitter (recorded by the way) that I and every person they perceive as a terf (someone who believes in biology) should die in a fat fire? The bbc must be responsible

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 9, 2022

This Veronica Ivy:

This Veronica Ivy you mean? Out of shape male smashing it in women’s cycling? pic.twitter.com/ZqTKB6rlJW

— Mara Yamauchi (@mara_yamauchi) April 9, 2022

That was a race at Burnaby Velodrome in March, which he won, as … Read the rest

This is horrifying.

https://twitter.com/lotuseatersnews/status/1512353737662251009

Alabama lawmakers, she says, have been put on notice “that laws and policies preventing care that healthcare professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the constitution and federal law. To be clear, every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming healthcare for transgender kids is a best practice and potentially lifesaving.”

Just like that. So every kid who says “I’m trans” or maybe even “I think I’m trans” should be put on the path to trying to change sex? There’s no potential for harm, no risk at all?

Horrifying.… Read the rest

A very subtle thinker here.

For fuck sake. It's got "gender-critical" in the fucking title.

— Isaac Rabinovitch (@isaac32767) April 8, 2022

Meaning "read the book before you decide what it's about" is foolish and dishonest.

— Isaac Rabinovitch (@isaac32767) April 8, 2022

Jesus wept.

— Isaac Rabinovitch (@isaac32767) April 8, 2022

He’s convinced you, right?… Read the rest

I hope this gets Junior a prison sentence for sedition.

“It’s very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. We have operational control. Total leverage. Moral high ground. POTUS must start second term now.” – Junior’s text to Mark Meadows leading up to J6. https://t.co/Dra03pzx4r

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 8, 2022

“Moral high ground” ffs. How do you reckon?

CNN reports:

Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned.

Translating “we … Read the rest

“organized transphobic violence”

https://twitter.com/zugenia/status/1512415953140826114

She doesn’t “have to say” that of course; she chose to.

Arguing that gender is not something to celebrate but a system of oppression which should be rejected is not “organized transphobic violence.”

But this guy knows better.

This is horrifying. @OxUniPress should be rightly taken to task for publishing a book that will encourage anti-trans violence. https://t.co/R41Brz1bqG

— Matt Kopans (he/him) (@mattkopans) April 8, 2022

Reading that gender is a system of oppression will encourage violence!

What must it be like being an academic now? Can you imagine having to teach students who believe all this crap? To say nothing of having colleagues who do.… Read the rest

Oh yeah? And they’re the only ones, are they?

The Guardian reports:

The mental health of the UK’s transgender community is at crisis point, with many people “hanging by a string”, professional bodies and support groups have told the Guardian.

The stark warnings follow a week of intensified public discussion of transgender rights as the government moved to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion practices.

What are “transgender rights”? They’re so often mentioned and so rarely spelled out.

And, for the umpteenth time, “conversion” is the wrong word – the loaded word, the inaccurate word, the thumb on the scale word. It’s not a form of “conversion” to provide therapy and discussion before making permanent physical changes … Read the rest

Another meeting at the corner of Inclusion and Fairness.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1511975372610539520

“And what this UK sport document says is,” says Ed Milliband at 1:00, “look, inclusion is important in sport but so too is fairness.”

But inclusion isn’t “important in sport” in any blanket sense, for the very simple and obvious reason that much of sport is competitive, which rules out being generally “inclusive.” Competition is necessarily, inherently, non-inclusive. Competition excludes.

You can of course have “friendlies”; you can play games for the fun of it, you can decide not to keep score, you can bring everyone in and just run around and have a blast. But sport qua sport has winners and losers, so a generalized “inclusion” just is not … Read the rest

A dishonest headline:

https://twitter.com/BBCSport/status/1512375270887628803

The usual lie told in the usual way – by concealing “men who identify as women” under the blanket “transgender.” Men can’t compete against women at British Cycling elite events.

They’ve now changed the headline, no doubt in response to a torrent of furious replies to that tweet. It now says:

Transgender women no longer able to compete at elite female events run by British Cycling

Men no longer able to force themselves into women’s races. Finally.

From the story:

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week he did not believe transgender women should compete in female sporting events – a view he conceded might be “controversial”.

In response, LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall

… Read the rest

One day in North Dakota –

Scientists believe they have been given an extraordinary view of the last day of the dinosaurs after they discovered the fossil of an animal they believe died that day.

Awkward sentence, but you get the idea. They think they’ve found a fossil dinosaur that was killed by the asteroid that smacked what’s now the Gulf of Mexico and wiped out nearly all animal life on the planet.

The perfectly preserved leg, which even includes remnants of the animal’s skin, can be accurately dated to the time the asteroid that brought about the dinosaurs’ extinction struck Earth 66m years ago, experts say, because of the presence of debris from the impact, which rained down only

… Read the rest

Hadley Freeman on the breaking of the spell:

The great advantage sport has over, say, prisons and refuges is that it happens in public: people can see it and they are interested in it. That’s why when historians write about that relatively brief but extremely toxic time when gender extremism gripped western countries, and they describe the moment when that grip loosened, they will start with the photos of Lia Thomas, the Ivy League trans swimmer, towering over her teammates. These caught the mainstream interest in a way feminist arguments about trans women in prisons never have: here is an issue where even Homer Simpson can see the obvious problem.

There aren’t the same kind of visuals coming out … Read the rest

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg says he hasn’t given up on the Trump investigation.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, publicly discussed his office’s investigation into Donald J. Trump for the first time on Thursday, insisting that the inquiry has continued despite the recent resignations of two senior prosecutors who had been leading it.

Did they just misunderstand?

Mr. Bragg said in an interview that his office had recently questioned new witnesses about Mr. Trump and reviewed additional documents, both previously unreported steps in the inquiry.

But citing grand jury secrecy rules, Mr. Bragg declined to provide details on the new steps in the investigation, which has focused on whether Mr. Trump committed a crime in inflating the value of

… Read the rest