latsot alerts us to a useful Twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/ox_fem/status/1469152679138107394

There are no images or other toys so I’ll just quote the rest of it.

Firstly, I’d need to know that there was actually research being done on the effects of the policy, particularly wrt those most likely to be affected by the loss of sex as a clearly defined category (women, gay people, anyone affected by safeguarding procedures).

I’d need to know it was somehow possible to gather and analyse these data reliably, despite the confusion between sex and gender. I’d want to see the data tracking patterns over a long time period to monitor societal changes.

I’d want to see that there hadn’t been an increase in crime against

… Read the rest

India Willoughby is appropriating the Nazi persecution of lesbian and gay people to himself.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1469113416057069570

The Nazis made gay men wear pink triangles.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1469114215873064961

There was no such thing as an “LGBTQ” library in Nazi Germany. The category did not exist. India doesn’t call himself a gay man, he calls himself a woman.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1469001525594894354

Didn’t happen.… Read the rest

Ah yes people who object to men stealing sporting wins from women are “nasty” and to be shrugged off. Shrug shrug shruggity shrug, bitches. The Daily Beast:

A trans university swimmer attacked by right-wing media for smashing records in her first meet as a woman says she expected some “pushback” but has chosen not to “engage” in the nasty online debate.

The scare-quotes should be on “as a woman” not “engage.” There’s no such thing as “as a woman.” If you’re not a woman then you’re not a woman; you don’t get to take women’s stuff by saying you’re doing it “as a woman.”

Over the weekend, Lia Thomas—now a member of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team

… Read the rest

Oh yes, completely fair, nothing to dispute here.

https://twitter.com/coachblade/status/1469279036073467907

Being male is a proven unfair advantage in competing against women.

I daresay “Lia” Thomas would see the point if one or two or six other men decided they were most comfortable competing against him and the dwindling number of women who got that far.… Read the rest

Another target.

https://twitter.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1469015820063973382

She’s not wrong though.

https://twitter.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1468897487201185794

This is the recipe. No debate or engagement. Just labels & threats. This is how pressure is exerted and it’s why it’s so difficult for women to stand up for their rights & voice their (legitimate) concerns & opinions. It makes @mara_yamauchi’s public stance even more commendable

— Ross Tucker (@Scienceofsport) December 9, 2021

… Read the rest

Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon tell us up front that they plan to take over the country.

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon and GOP Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida want some “4,000 shock troops” to get ready to take control of the federal government if Donald Trump decides to run for president again and wins in 2024.

…

During a segment of Bannon’s War Room podcast on Thursday, he and Gaetz discussed a pro-Trump strategy to take full control of the government should the former president win in 2024.

Gaetz said that “sometimes you’ve got to raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Rob on The motives.

When you’re part of a dominant culture, as I am, and I suspect most of us here, it’s always more comfortable to keep things much as they are. Sure let in some ‘ethnics’. It gives us great choice in restaurants after all, but at the same time we don’t want to deal with different language, religions, restrictions on marriage or schooling. Sometimes for good reason perhaps, sometimes not.

But western centrist governments have all wanted to promote some flavour of globalism, particularly with respect to free or low barrier trade. Ask most economists and they’ll tell you there is no truly free trade without free migration. Labour is a resource, and … Read the rest

Migrants or refugees?

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has said she will ask the BBC and other media to reflect on their language after the term “migrant” was used to describe people who drowned in the Channel.

It’s considered dehumanizing.

The home secretary has most recently adopted the term “economic migrants”, a label favoured by the likes of the hard-right campaigner Nigel Farage but seen by charities as an attempt to undermine the motives of those who risk their lives to cross from France.

In other words as saying they’re not fleeing persecution but seeking better conditions.

But that raises the question of why the second is frowned on. Better conditions are better, so yes people are going to … Read the rest

I get so tired of the mockery.

A transgender swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team continued to smash records in the pool over the weekend.

Yes haha very funny. Of course a man continued to smash records set by women. Quit rubbing our noses in it.

Lia Thomas won the 200-yard freestyle in 1:41.93 at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday to break the school’s all-time mark and establish the best time in the nation this season, according to the university. On Sunday, she won the 1,650 freestyle by more than 38 seconds in 15:59.71 to set another university record.

Yes, because he’s a man, doing what’s known as “cheating.”

In a previous meet against

… Read the rest

Like…what?

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1468911296104091651

Like Hitler? How?

Ah he explains.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1468915371885350915

It’s weird to put your own lie in scare quotes. It’s a grotesque and dangerous lie to say that Kathleen Stock backs the elimination of trans people – and it doesn’t become less of a lie when you put it in scare quotes. She backs no such thing. The word “elimination” of people means extermination, while Stock is talking about concepts and definitions and self-descriptions.

The tweet immediately before that lying one is all about the womany.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1468918205297086471

You can tell instantly that he’s a woman! Because bent knee! Men’s knees don’t bend! Only women can do that insinuating coaxing little me bend of the knee, therefore Willoughby must be one.… Read the rest

Another heretic for the pyre:

Choreographer Rosie Kay has never shied away from controversial subjects. Her ballet MK Ultra addressed conspiracy theorists; her award-winning 5 Soldiers, inspired by the weeks she spent embedded with an infantry regiment, tackled war. And on Tuesday Kay resigned from the dance company that bears her name, forced out by her belief that biological sex is immutable.

Such a cranky “belief,” isn’t it. It’s like the “belief” that animals are born and die.

What led to Kay, 45, abandoning her life’s work was an argument at a party she held for young dancers at her home. Telling them that her next ballet was based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a male aristocrat who

… Read the rest

So Catholics think they have a monopoly on organ music? They think they get to dictate who can and can’t compose and play organ music? Why would that be the case? Who has the authority to make it the case? What’s next, we have to seek permission from religious fanatics to play any instrument at all, and to sing, and to hum under our breath?

After Catholic fundamentalists prevented Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff from performing in a church in Nantes on Tuesday, the Paris church Saint-Eustache has cancelled her planned 9 December concert, citing concerns over security.

On Tuesday, a group described by Nantes’ deputy mayor, Bassem Asseh, as “intolerant radicals” blocked the entrance to the church Notre-Dame

… Read the rest

Oops now she’s had to resign.

Allegra Stratton has stepped down as the government’s spokesperson for the Cop26 climate summit after footage emerged of her joking about a party at Downing Street during the peak of lockdown rules in December last year.

Where’s everybody’s sense of humor? Pandemics are funny, dammit! People who impose rules on underlings that they flout themselves are funny. Do what I say not what I do is funny. Hypocrisy is funny. Privilege and contempt are funny. … Read the rest

Boris Johnson partied right after telling everyone not to party.

On Tuesday last week, the British tabloid newspaper, the Mirror, published a story that claimed parties had been held at Johnson’s Downing Street residence in the run-up to Christmas last year.

One of the events was said to have taken place on 18 December, with dozens of people drinking wine and playing party games.

There was one major problem with this: London had just been placed under new restrictions to stop the spread of coronavirus. Last December, Covid was spreading rapidly, hundreds of people were dying every day, and Johnson’s government had told people that parties were no longer allowed.

Yes but he told people – as in he … Read the rest

UN Women seems to have forgotten its own name.

Trans women are 4 times more likely to experience violence than cisgendered people.

This #16Days of Activism, learn with our friend @NikkieTutorials about how we can all support and protect trans women. #OrangeTheWorld pic.twitter.com/UPMb5pmBLN

— UN Women (@UN_Women) December 7, 2021

UN Women is UN Women, not UN Men Who Say They Are Women.

Also that stupid little factoid isn’t even true, and it’s also absurd on its face – why are they comparing trans women to cis people? It should be either trans women compared to women or trans people compared to people in general.

But it shouldn’t be trans women at all. UN Women should be about … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Smile when you call us that.

Lumping Hispanics together into a single group would be an improvement over what “Latinx” does. Creating a unified Latin American group is what Univision has done so successfully, and as the article says, they never say “Latinx.” When I saw what Univision was doing in creating a broad yet unified Hispanic audience I was amazed.

What “Latinx” says is that Hispanics are using their own language wrong, and they need Anglos to fix it for them. It’s colossally demeaning, and utterly unnecessary. The word is used in English, and English doesn’t have genders (either to fix, or be left alone). If they just used a different word, … Read the rest

Trump wants to be the next Zuckerberg as well as the first Emperor of Amurrika.

Donald Trump’s plan to launch “Truth Social”, a special purpose acquisitions backed social media company, early next year may have hit a roadblock after US regulators issued a request for information on the deal on Monday.

The request from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for information from Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), a blank-check SPAC that is set to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, comes as a powerful Republican congressman, Devin Nunes, announced he was stepping out of politics to join the Trump media venture as CEO.

The twin developments set the stage for a major political battle over Truth

… Read the rest

“Are you a woman or gender variant?”

I beg your pardon? Why are those my options? Do you ask everyone that?

It’s the Green Party.

The British Green Party says in an email sent to its members that anyone who “identifies” as woman or “other gender variant” is eligible to vote in the next Women Committee Election, party members have said.

So men are the normal and women are the weirdo variant along with other weirdo variants?

On December 6, members of the Green Party received an email about registering to vote in the 2021/22 Green Party Women Committee Election.

I just received an email from The Green Party about registering to vote in the Women Committee Election.

IT

… Read the rest

Students outraged, onlookers concerned, words exchanged.

AN urgent investigation is underway at Durham University after students walked out of an event at which controversial journalist Rod Liddle was a guest speaker – and were later branded “pathetic” by a college principal.

Well, Rod Liddle – he lives to irritate people. Making a fuss just amplifies him.

This is the bit that interests me:

Durham’s Intersectional Feminist Society launched an open letter condemning Liddle’s remarks and the decision to invite him.

Durham’s what?

Does Durham have other “intersectional” societies or is it just women who are expected to be inclooosive and to enforce that inclooosivity on each other?

The society doesn’t seem to have its own website or space on … Read the rest

Dud analogy time.

https://twitter.com/sjzara/status/1468213146288640008

If a lecturer publicly expressed the view that people with red hair should never eat sauerkraut would you call that humane?… Read the rest