Oh is that what they call it.

The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said on Saturday he had “reached out” to Democrats over Islamophobic comments made by one of his party, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, about the Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar.

Boebert apologised for the remarks, in which she likened one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress to a suicide bomber, on Friday, saying she wanted to meet Omar in person. 

No she didn’t. We saw this yesterday. She didn’t apologize. She did the “sorry you got so offended” thing. You don’t apologize for an insult by saying “Apologies to anyone who was offended by the insult.” That’s not an apology. It treats the insult as only … Read the rest

A tweet prompted me to look for sources.

The Koch organization (only one of the two brothers is still present-tense) is notorious for funding all kinds of reactionary causes, though it also funds items like the PBS series Nova, but I don’t know specifics about an attack on US universities. So, here’s a Trotskyist site with details!

Joking aside, I think I have seen the details before, without properly filing them in the memory system.

Last month, the George Mason University protest group “UnKoch My Campus” released documents to the public through a Freedom of Information Act request detailing how the Charles Koch Foundation and the Federalist Society, groups dedicated to the promotion of ultra-conservative “free market” public policy

It’s all “shut up and take it, bitch” at the rape therapy support group.

A rape victim who thought she had found a safe all-female space to help her come to terms with the sexual violence she endured has told how she was left deeply troubled by the arrival of a biologically male trans woman ‘with no obvious female attributes’.

…

Charity bosses insisted the trans woman had every right to be there as they allow people to define their gender for themselves, saying: ‘We do not police gender.’

Well they should. They’re an absolutely worthless, indeed harm-doing charity if they refuse to keep men out of women’s support groups.

Sarah, who was abused between the ages of eight

LGBTQ Nation is furious at feminists who think women in prison shouldn’t have to be locked up with men. LGBTQ Nation doesn’t call them feminists, of course.

A group of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have filed a lawsuit against the state of California for placing transgender women in female prisons.

Well, yes. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to place men in women’s prisons.

The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a group that opposes the extension of legal and civil rights to transgender people, recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Bakersfield.com reported. The lawsuit  claims to represent a group of incarcerated women as well as Woman II Woman, another TERF group.

Ah … Read the rest

Guest post by Bruce Everett

Been feeling oddly Kantian lately, on account of some considerations about the Drake equation, red dwarfs, and the evolution of the universe. The imminent launch of the James Webb telescope is bringing this on as well.

Several terrible documentaries and an awful lot of bad science fiction makes a bit of a fetish out of the idea of “Ancient Aliens”, largely because the narrative of some kind of idealized past that can return to save us addresses a weird but pervasive need…

I can’t relate to it. I find it a bit puerile to be honest; quit an over-reliance on Sky Daddy; start looking for Space Daddy. Couldn’t stand Stargate, sorry.

And the kookiness of … Read the rest

We’re steeped in violence.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood on the House floor and implored her colleagues to hold Paul Gosar accountable for sharing an altered anime video showing him killing her and attacking Joe Biden.

“Our work here matters. Our example matters. There is meaning in our service,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech last week. “And as leaders in this country, when we incite violence with depictions against our colleagues, that trickles down into violence in this country.”

House Republicans heard Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned plea and responded with a collective shrug. All but three Republican members voted against censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, while every House Democrat supported the resolution.

The Gosar incident served as the latest

I would have left this self-humiliation alone but then she had to throw in a jab at “terfs” so…I couldn’t.

Trying to find some good faith writing and analysis on the allegations about Michel Foucault that apparently came to light early this year. Of course nothing is entirely unbiased, but I’d love to know how Foucault scholars/writers who use his work are thinking about it all.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 19, 2021

Early this year? Uh………..

But she goes on.

The question is how much one ugly facet of a theorist’s work (or life) taints the rest of it. I’m not sure there’s a single, universal answer to that question. >

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 19, 2021

Bad … Read the rest

Boebert is on the naughty step.

“I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers,” Boebert told the laughing crowd. “You know, we’re leaving the Capitol and we’re going back to my office and we get an elevator and I see a Capitol police officer running to the elevator. I see fret all over his face, and he’s reaching, and the door’s shutting, like I can’t open it, like what’s happening. I look to my left, and there she is. Ilhan Omar. And I said, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.’ ”

On Twitter on Friday, Omar called for Boebert to be disciplined by House leaders.

“Saying I am a suicide bomber is

I guess self-mutilation is a civil right? And doctors encouraging and performing mutilations is also a civil right? Doctors giving 12-year-olds puberty blockers also a civil right?

Gender-affirming health care saves lives.https://t.co/NG5mYbIsDo

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 26, 2021

How many lives does “gender-affirming health care” (i.e. breast/penis removal, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers) end?

I wonder if the ACLU really is that confident about the long-term joy and relief of these drastic physical interventions.… Read the rest

But it isn’t “a row over transgender rights” – nobody wants to take any rights away from trans people. It’s always framed that way, and the framing is wrong.

A ROW over transgender rights has broken out on the opening day of the SNP conference, with activists demanding the party whip be withdrawn from a prominent MP.

The party’s official LBGTQ+ wing, Out for Independence, signed an open letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Westminster leader Ian Blackford urging action against Joanna Cherry QC.

The signatories, who included SNP, Scottish Green and unaligned campaigners, also called on the SNP to launch an investigation into transphobia in the SNP’s ranks.

It isn’t transphobia, either.

They’re talking about the “conversion therapy” bullshit – … Read the rest

The BBC November 13:

Durham University has defended its decision to offer training sessions to help students involved in sex work.

Further Education Minister Michelle Donelan had accused it of “legitimising a dangerous industry which thrives on the exploitation of women”.

But the university said it was acting responsibly by offering students advice on how to stay safe.

Last week its students’ union offered staff and students guidance for people involved in the sex industry.

The best way to stay safe is not to sell access to your body to anyone willing to pay. The danger is inherent.

November 18:

Last week Durham University defended its students’ union’s decision to offer training sessions to those working in the

Ilhan Omar says cool story but she made it all up.

The Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar called the Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert a buffoon, a bigot and a liar, for claiming to have joked about terrorism when sharing an elevator in Congress.

“Fact,” Omar wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “This buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny and shouldn’t be normalised. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”

…

Boebert is a first-term far-right Trump ally who consistently seeks controversy. Her connections to the deadly attack on the Capitol on 6 January remain under investigation

It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Twelve year old girl killed in Liverpool.

A murder investigation has been launched following the death of Ava White. She was killed when out with friends on Thursday night during the annual switch-on of the Christmas tree lights on Church Street.

Four males – one aged 13, two aged 14 and one aged 15, all from the Toxteth area of Liverpool – have been arrested on suspicion of murder, Merseyside police said.

…

Ava was one of two females to die in suspicious circumstances in Liverpool on Thursday, the very day the city launched a three-year strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. The mayor, Joanne Anderson,

Wait who is jealous?

It’s lesbians who are jealous? Of trans people? It’s not trans people who are jealous of people of their coveted sex, so jealous that they literally pretend to be that coveted sex no matter how batty and misogynist and intrusive that makes them look?

You coulda fooled me.… Read the rest

So that’s ugly.

Won’t somebody please think of the role models?

A Tory MP has linked young men turning to crime to women playing traditionally male roles in TV and film.

Nick Fletcher said “female replacements” in shows like Doctor Who were robbing boys of good role models.

…

“Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?,” he asked MPs taking part in a debate on International Men’s Day.

I don’t get it. The male Doctors Who are still there; the female one is in addition, not instead of. Also there are still lots and lots of male role models besides Doctor Who and other tv shows. So many. Why would new versions in which a woman plays … Read the rest

Guy tries to bully Rosie Duffield, does pratfall.

Which questions do you have on my 'transphobia' Ben? And are you putting yourself forward as the latest male offering to re-educate me?! Women my age have had a lifetime of that so please, let's hear your plan…. pic.twitter.com/GUli36viz7

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) November 21, 2021

so if your mum puts oestrogen into your cocoa at night before tucking you into bed, you're a woman by morning? is that how you think it works, Ben?

— human (@amoozeboosh) November 21, 2021

Nobody thinks “trans women aren’t biological.” Nobody.… Read the rest

Reading a piece about Kant by Robert Gressis at The Electric Agora. It starts with rude parking behavior, and goes on to discuss Utilitarianism versus Kantian deontology.

Because I know Kant better than I know Utilitarianism, and because I think Utilitarianism is significantly easier to apply than Kantian deontology, I’ll explain why Kant thinks such bad parking is not just irritating but out-and-out immoral, and why Kant thinks that bad parkers are not just rude but out-and-out evil.

To oversimplify: on Kant’s view, morality is about universalizability. At least from the moral point of view, everyone is not only of great value, but also of equal value. Consequently, morality is not only about treating other people well, but

Girl Scouts/Guides: not just for girls anymore.

Girlguiding bosses have launched an investigation into one of their Commissioners who is a trans woman after she allegedly posed for a saucy picture in a dominatrix-style outfit.

Why is there a male Commissioner of Girl Guides?

Bus driver Monica Sulley, 58, reportedly became a guiding Commissioner in July this year, overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.

Her appointment has upset some feminist campaigners who argue that biological males identifying as women should not be given leadership roles in the movement.

That is, some feminist campaigners object to giving men leadership roles in the movement. It’s not about being “upset,” or having the vapors, either.

Girlguiding has described itself

Reading the verdict.

Jury finds Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan guilty of felony murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery. https://t.co/Ps6VAJnDHo pic.twitter.com/IloqyCKOc1

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 24, 2021

Reminder: It wasn't until video of the Ahmaud Arbery's killing became public, drawing sharp questions about how local authorities handled the investigation, that the three white men were charged with murder. https://t.co/Wa4C7IcBMK

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 24, 2021

Back in September –

A former Georgia prosecutor was indicted Thursday on misconduct charges alleging she used her position to shield the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery from being charged with crimes immediately after the shootings.

A grand jury in coastal Glynn County indicted former Brunswick Judicial Circuit