All entries by this author

Intensely personal

Nov 13th, 2021 8:58 am | By

A federal appeals court rescues our precious freedom to spread lethal diseases.

A federal appeals court has kept its block in place against a federal mandate that all large employers require their workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to weekly testing starting in January, declaring that the rule “grossly exceeds” the authority of the occupational safety agency that issued it.

Because it’s not occupational safety to be able to go to work without risking death by Covid? Sounds like occupational safety to me. Working with assholes can be very unsafe indeed.

“From economic uncertainty to workplace strife, the mere specter of the mandate has contributed to untold economic upheaval in recent months,” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt

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So that’s what they mean by “inclusive”

Nov 13th, 2021 7:26 am | By

This response to Tatchell prompted me to read Dr Em on forced teaming.

Why are ideologies antithetical to each other being presented as natural allies? Feminism argues that gender is a mechanism of a system of oppression, that gender consists of socially constructed sexist stereotypes which are then used to exploit women. [For instance] [t]he notion that because one is female one naturally wants to care and clean, one by nature of one’s female sex is submissive, polite. LGB rights rest on the idea that same-sex attraction is real and normal and should be afforded the same rights and respect as heterosexuality.

Transgenderism/transsexualism, in contrast, claims

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How do you echo a stance?

Nov 13th, 2021 6:57 am | By

That’s a lot of wrong and dishonest in one tweet.

Kathleen Stock’s views are not “trans critical.” They can be called gender critical, though I don’t know if she calls them that or not, but “trans critical” is wrong, and wrong in a harmful and probably malicious way. (I doubt that Tatchell is unaware of the label “gender critical”.) In this context the word “trans” names people, while … Read the rest



Take those off

Nov 12th, 2021 4:31 pm | By

WHAT THE FUCK??????????

https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1459224417645457408

Not like the yellow star! The end point of the yellow star was the Auschwitz gas chambers! Not being refused entry to Safeway but Zyklon B dropped into a sealed room full of people. Not comparable!… Read the rest



The shadow government

Nov 12th, 2021 3:32 pm | By

Bannon indicted.

Stephen K. Bannon, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides early in his presidency, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress, the Justice Department said.

Mr. Bannon, 67, had refused last month to comply with subpoenas for information issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The House voted last month to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress after he refused to testify or provide documents sought by the committee, a position taken by a number of former aides to Mr. Trump.

They refuse because they consider themselves a rival government in temporary exile.

Mr. Trump had directed his former

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Rivers rising

Nov 12th, 2021 2:43 pm | By

It’s been pouring rain here so the flood warnings are out. They’re a kind of poetry, thanks to the beautiful names in this bit of the world.

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Guest post: A little too willing to believe

Nov 12th, 2021 10:33 am | By

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on The rough sex defence.

So, I haven’t delved into this very far, but my impression from the article and twiliter’s comments is that there are two separate legal issues here: the victim’s consent, and the killer’s intent.

Consent is an affirmative defense to some crimes. To give a trivial example: you can’t convict a boxer for assault and battery because he punched his opponent during a match. There have always been some acts to which the law deems that consent is not applicable. It would appear that the Domestic Abuse Act clarifies that “a person cannot consent to the infliction of serious harm or, by extension, to their own death, for the … Read the rest



Times changed

Nov 12th, 2021 10:06 am | By

Billy Bragg admits it’s all about being trendy.

Billy Bragg has changed the lyrics of his hit song “Sexuality” in support of transgender rights.

In the original version of the song, Bragg sings: “And just because you’re gay I won’t turn you away/If you stick around I’m sure that we can find some common-ground” in support of gay rights. But, in recent live performances of the song, he has changed “gay” to “they” in support of transgender people.

Ooh, bold step. “Just because you’re they” – that’s a fine use of language right there.

Explaining why he chose to change the lyrics, Bragg wrote on Twitter: “Times changed. Anyone born since the song was released would wonder why it’s

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Forcible intervention

Nov 12th, 2021 8:55 am | By

Women’s bodies are public property chapter eleventy billion:

When a 21-year-old Native American woman from Oklahoma was convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage, people were outraged. But she was not alone.

You remember this story from a few weeks ago.

Brittney Poolaw was just about four months pregnant when she lost her baby in the hospital in January 2020.

This October, she was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for the first-degree manslaughter of her unborn son.

As if the four month old fetus inside her were an independent person she killed.

Yet Poolaw’s story is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of the National Advocates of Pregnant Women (NAPW),

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But you should feel optimistic

Nov 12th, 2021 8:28 am | By

JoMo says fear not, brands will save you.

Consumer brands know what the future holds. That’s some top-class epistemology right there.… Read the rest



Worries

Nov 12th, 2021 7:34 am | By

Ben Hunte is angry at the BBC. (He used to be “BBC LGBT Correspondent” according to his profile, and now works at Vice.)

But what does he mean LGBTQ employees? Does he mean several have quit as in a coupla lesbians a coupla gay men a couple bi people a coupla trans a coupla queer? Or does he mean several trans people? It would be useful to know, but the LGBTQ formula prevents us from … Read the rest



The rough sex defence

Nov 12th, 2021 6:26 am | By

It was consensual manslaughter.

A man jailed for choking a woman to death during sex will not have his prison sentence increased, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Sam Pybus, 32, was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting the manslaughter of Sophie Moss, 33, at her home in Darlington on 7 February. Attorney General Suella Braverman said the sentence was unduly lenient and referred it to the Court of Appeal.

But three judges said nah, it’s all good. He was drunk, you see.

Pybus, who was married, had told police he and Ms Moss had been in a casual relationship for three years and that she encouraged him to strangle her during consensual sex.

Ah those … Read the rest



Making some of everyone feel included

Nov 11th, 2021 5:41 pm | By

It’s all about impartiality.

The BBC retreated from Stonewall’s divisive Diversity Champions scheme because it needs to be “squeaky clean” on impartiality, an executive said.

He and Emma Barnett had a long conversation about it: he kept pressing a distinction between Stonewall’s advice on employer policy and making everyone feel included, and editorial decisions about content.

Fair enough, but as he said it over and over I kept wondering how much the BBC worried about making women feel included. I wondered, and still wonder, what it did about the imbalance between hand-wringing concern over about 400 trans employees and, I’m guessing, a rather larger number of women employees. I wondered and still wonder why he got such an anxious … Read the rest



The Good Law Project are not their lawyers

Nov 11th, 2021 4:05 pm | By

Also this happened today – a ruling that Mermaids can’t share documents with the Good Law Project (aka Jolyon Maugham), because of the obvious risk that he’ll blab everything on Twitter. Mermaids and Maugham are trying to get the LGB Alliance’s charitable status taken away.

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Saying the word “woman”

Nov 11th, 2021 11:32 am | By

Let’s look at the Pregnant People bit.

Emma Barnett: There are guests who come on this show who talk about “pregnant people.” What should I do, live in the moment – should I get them to clarify themselves because only biological women can be pregnant?

Long, telling pause

Rhodri Talfan Davies: Well, “pregnant people” isn’t inaccurate, it’s clearly one way of framing the statement

Me, interrupting: Now wait just a damn minute. Accuracy isn’t the only relevant quality here, and anyway it could be called inaccurate in some senses. It’s not the usual, familiar, standard, unsurprising way of saying it. Don’t go pretending not to know that. And because it’s not the standard way of saying it, and because … Read the rest



Wot no lesbian aunt day?

Nov 11th, 2021 10:52 am | By

The stations of the cross.

I wonder how Asexual Visibility Day is celebrated.… Read the rest



Cutting through the waffle

Nov 11th, 2021 10:45 am | By

Whoaaaa the ground is shifting.

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Infiltration

Nov 11th, 2021 5:31 am | By

Doc Stock on the “But but but you wrote a piece for The Spectator!!” expostulation:

I am on the left — or at least, a version of the left that doesn’t involve trying to get employees sacked by bosses, which may or may not be the left as we now know it. One frequent preoccupation of fellow left-wingers is the potential for guilt by association with those on the right. When feminists like Julie Bindel and I share a platform with a Tory, or write something for The Spectator, isn’t that just grist to the mill of our enemies? And, over time, won’t this heinous practice increase the likelihood of our own politics becoming less feminist? My usual

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Staying home snorting ivermectin

Nov 10th, 2021 4:34 pm | By

Sorry, can’t do the anti-vax rally, have Covid.

A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota will miss his Monday rally opposing vaccine mandates because he has COVID-19. Instead, Rep. Jeff Hoverson said he will stay home and take a cocktail of medications including the unproven anti-parasite drug ivermectine and the malaria remedy Hydroxychloroquine.

He must be a very intelligent man.

Hoverson has battled mask mandates. He was barred from boarding a flight with his wife at Minot International Airport late last month after taking issue with a TSA patdown. Hoverson said he and his wife were traveling for their anniversary.

Covid doesn’t care what you’re traveling for.

H/t Holms… Read the rest



Clown indeed

Nov 10th, 2021 11:18 am | By

GCs don’t know better than teenagers? That’s just a blanket absolute rule is it? No gender critical adults know better than teenagers?

Come on. Teenagers don’t know everything. They’re young, and their brains haven’t finished developing yet. Of course they don’t know best on all occasions no matter what.

Lavery is an academic in the English department. Academics in the English department have a bad habit … Read the rest