Ah yes, if the science says fossil fuels are cooking the planet the thing to do is…lobby to change what the science says.

A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.

The leak reveals [that] Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.

Similarly, if your house is on fire, the thing to do is take the phone away from the damn fool who is calling the fire department and call for pizza instead.

The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by

… Read the rest

I started re-reading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye last night and there’s a very resonant passage about girls and puberty in chapter 17. The adult narrator starts with her childhood friend [it’s complicated] Cordelia:

Breasts fascinate Cordelia, and fill her with scorn. Both of her older sisters have them by now. Perdie and Mirrie sit in their room with its twin beds and sprigged-muslin flounces, filing their nails, laughing softly; or they heat brown wax in little pots in the kitchen and take it upstairs to spread on their legs. They look into their mirrors, making sad faces – “I look like Haggis McBaggis! It’s the curse!” Their wastebaskets smell of decaying flowers.

They tell Cordelia there are some things she’s

… Read the rest

The quislings emerge.

https://twitter.com/loyaladvisor/status/1450872050101465096 https://twitter.com/loyaladvisor/status/1450872052890673155

Her “overarching concern for vulnerable people,” she says, as if women were invulnerable. Men who pretend to be women are not more vulnerable than women. They’re not as vulnerable as women either. If our overarching concern is for vulnerable people then it’s extremely bizarre to choose people brandishing flares and shouting threats from behind masks over one woman being abused and harassed by the masked shouters.

And what is “the harm caused”?

And how are the group in question more “vulnerable and marginalized” than women? Since when do women hold all the cards? Since when are women made of stone while men are made of gauze and smoke?

Miserable sneaking coward.… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum points out what a disaster it is when a lobby group is also providing training to public bodies on the very issue it lobbies for.

And behind the scenes, let’s say this lobby group is influencing the policies of the BBC, so that before the debate can ever take place, one side has already written the terms in which it will happen. If you wanted to complain about that to the ombudsman, don’t bother: the lobby group also has the ear of Ofcom.

Quite an advantage, isn’t it.

It’s already happening. The issue is the introduction of gender identity in law; the lobby group is Stonewall, the LGBT rights group; and the consequence has been one of the

… Read the rest

Harry Lambert at the New Statesman on Sussex and Stock:

On Saturday 16 October nearly one hundred people took over an open day at the University of Sussex to protest the employment of Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy. “Stock out!” “Get Kathleen off our campus!” “No Terfs here!” rang the chants. “Don’t come to Sussex!” they warned visitors.

They handed out an illiterate leaflet to explain their “reasons.”

When I visited Stock recently, she spoke haltingly of the slow burn of her social isolation at Sussex, punctured as it has been by the discovery of new online attacks and internal emails undermining her in the wake of any publicity she attracts.

Oh that must be nice – knowing … Read the rest

This is of course what they all think.

If you look at the entire history of social justice in liberal societies, the passage of time has always shown the "social justice warriors" to be in the right. I don't know why anti-trans people think it will be any different this time around.

— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) October 19, 2021

It’s what they all think, but it’s stupid. Which “social justice warriors” are we talking about? Lots of people see themselves as on the side of justice, including social justice in some sense. They don’t all call themselves social justice warriors (but then neither do all “social justice warriors”), but they of course see themselves as on the side of the … Read the rest

Nope.

Dr. Rachel Levine was sworn in as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service of more than 6,000 health, science and engineering professionals.https://t.co/vR69Ae18qB pic.twitter.com/94phwg83KO

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 19, 2021

Not the first female four-star admiral. The first trans four-star admiral, not the first female. There has been no first female four-star admiral yet.

The Times itself got the headline right but somehow got the tweet wrong? Another case of the social media intern erasing women?… Read the rest

Ellen Pasternack at The Critic tells us of a terf-spotting guide for the imperiled students at Cambridge.

… just last week, Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) published a guide to identifying something called “TERF ideology”, featuring section headings such as Spotting TERFS in the Field and Signs Of A TERF. We learn from this guide that “the language of TERFS is ever changing” and that “the unique danger of TERF rhetoric is that it is styled to sound like feminism”.

Nah it’s not styled to sound like feminism, it is feminism. That’s what the F is for. It’s also not rhetoric, it’s critical thinking.

This eight page guide, intended for incoming students at the Freshers’ Fair, is an

… Read the rest

Worcester News:

A GROUP of men who dress in women’s clothing to raise money claim they have been told their fundraising is potentially offensive by charity bosses.

I bet I know which set of people they were told it’s potentially offensive to, and I bet it’s not women. It’s been seen as perfectly fine for centuries, whether women saw it as offensive or not, but now…well there are more important people who might find it offensive. Women, you see, aren’t important. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Members and supporters of Upton Rugby Club have dressed in drag for the Leo Sayer All Dayer, and also held other fundraisers for 18 years, to raise more than £40,000 for

… Read the rest

Hmm, interesting argument.

“They” have been warning us about global warming since the late 70s, and sure enough it’s been getting worse and worse, therefore it’s time to stop believing in it.

Uh…what?… Read the rest

Breathtaking.

Bystanders who stood by and failed to help a woman raped on a Philadelphia commuter train last week may face criminal charges, authorities have said. Authorities say that CCTV cameras show that bystanders on the train “did nothing” as the assault took place.

Police added that some of the bystanders may have been filming the incident instead of calling police.

Wtf???????

A man has been arrested for the rape.

The alleged rape took place last Wednesday on a train belonging to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa). In a statement, Septa said that “there were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may [might] have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911″.

… Read the rest

What’s wrong with this picture?

When are the media gonna stop doing this? @GMB pic.twitter.com/BDnstnEpSI

— the locum ST3 (@admit_medics) October 19, 2021

Clue: Devi Sridhar is a professor.

Another one for my collection of cases where male professors appearing on TV get their academic title in the caption & female professors don't. It's a systematic bias, & while it may be hard to avoid in unscripted speech, captions can & should be checked for it #GenderRespectGap https://t.co/zaBTrL0Of5

— Debbie Cameron (@wordspinster) October 19, 2021

… Read the rest

JL at the Glinner Update reported on an attack on feminists in Portsmouth way back last March.

On Saturday afternoon Reclaim These Streets organised an event in Portsmouth to protest male violence against women and campaign for female safety.

Two young feminists taking part in this protest were threatened, taunted and even physically attacked by some of those in attendance.

“You’re protesting violence against women?? We’ll give you some violence against women to protest about!!!”

The two extremely brave young women stood on the Guildhall steps, holding a flag on which was written the dictionary definition of the word ‘woman’. Adult human female.

For this they were vilified and assaulted and the crowd jeered at them.

When the women were

… Read the rest

The Telegraph on Stephen Nolan and Stonewall and the BBC.

Stonewall said it works for LGBTQ+ equality and that it is “deeply disappointing” that this can still be thought of as controversial.

“Equality” is just a manipulative buzzword there, in exactly the way “trans rights” are a manipulative slogan. What is “trans equality” exactly? What Stonewall campaigns for, and tells people to do if they want to be “Stonewall champions,” is a mess of pandering and flattering, that has nothing to do with equality. It’s not “equality” to order people to use Special pronouns, or agree that men are women, or nod enthusiastically at the claim that children know who they are. Gender critical feminist are not arguing against… Read the rest

It’s because we trigger such strong feelings.

Female reality TV contestants are far more likely to be targeted for abuse by online trolls than men, research reveals.

Women of colour are particularly vulnerable to extreme and violent threats online, according to a report from the Demos thinktank, which looked at contestants on reality shows Love Island and Married at First Sight.

…

The researchers noted a particular recurrence of gendered tropes in the social media posts, including those which characterised women as devious, mentally unstable, emotionally volatile, evil, annoying or attention-seeking. Women were also much more likely to be “the subject of extreme misogynistic sexualisation and objectification” than men, they said.

And much more likely to be called cunts … Read the rest

What was that about death threats again?

More of the charmers protesting against women gathering over the weekend at #FILIA2021 to talk about male violence and women’s liberation https://t.co/dvIyzzy2Li

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) October 18, 2021

… Read the rest

On the one hand down with hate speech, on the other hand “suck my dick you transphobic cunts” is just strong feelings. Libby Purves in the Times:

Several evangelists have been convicted for lumbering around with placards against homosexuality, a chap got six months suspended for leaving a stupid cartoon in an airport prayer room and a peerlessly silly YouTube comedian got arrested for teaching a pug to do a Nazi salute. Quivering with sensibility, we proudly cherish our disapproval of “distressing” anyone, even if that distress is theoretical and caused by some harmless stranger’s moral opinion. There is little backing now for the tough old saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt

… Read the rest

They just never get the point.

The first tweet should begin “One of the protesters,” not “Thanks be” – autocorrect struck again.

That it had been made by a ‘young person’ and ‘emotions had run high’. If this sign was made by a child, why didn’t an adults among the protesters intervene?This was seen by children attending with their mothers and by bypassers. The failure to take responsibility is contemptible

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) October 17, 2021

“Emotions had run high”=it’s understandable and forgivable to call women “cunts.”

This is not an argument you ever see applied to the word “nigger” in internecine disputes among the left. No one on the left thinks that’s understandable and forgivable because of high … Read the rest

Julie Bindel on the conference and its misogynist enemies:

On arrival at the venue I saw the usual array of blue fringed students and other hangers on, some draped in trans flags, others with slogan T-shirts declaring themselves non-binary, genderqueer, he/him, they/them, zi/zir, idi/ot. They were protesting, yes, protesting, a conference with a key aim to campaign to end male violence towards women and girls, and to offer support and solidarity to the victims and survivors of that violence. Of course, the reason put forward by the blue fringes, including those that had waged a war against the conference venue from the moment it was announced, was that the organisers and attendees were anti-trans, as though everything is about

… Read the rest

Oh gosh the calendar has gotten away from me again. It’s just three days to International Pronoun Day!!

International Pronouns Day seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace.

Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender nonconforming people. Together, we can transform society to celebrate people’s multiple, intersecting identities.

One, no, referring to people by “the pronouns they determine for themselves” is not basic to human dignity. It really really isn’t. The whole idea is trivial as well as stupid. Things that are trivial and stupid can’t be basic to human dignity. Some things are basic to … Read the rest