Wannabe riot fizzled.

As the Republican party and Donald Trump’s more ardent supporters work to rewrite the narrative of the attempted coup, supporters of those arrested over it sought to turn it from a political to a human rights issue with the “Justice for J6” rally near the Capitol on Saturday.

As a protest, it was a flop.

Turnout was at best half of the 700 predicted by organisers, which in itself fell well short of the many thousands who stormed Congress in January. The event organiser, Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign operative, blamed the poor attendance on government intimidation and press scaremongering.

It’s shocking when the government intimidates people just because they want to seize the Capitol, … Read the rest

Instagram might have something to do with it.

According to internal research leaked to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the app has made body image issues worse for one in three girls, and in one Facebook study of teenagers in the UK and the US, more than 40% of Instagram users who said they felt “unattractive” said the feeling began while using the app.

Instagram has more than 1 billion users worldwide and an estimated 30 million in the UK, with Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande among the accounts with hundreds of millions of followers between them….

Two in five girls (40%) aged 11 to 16 in the UK say they have seen images online that have

This is an important point.

Also: a male person seeking to be defined as a mother, or a female wanting to be defined as a father, is a gross violation of the child’s right to have a say and to have their parentage clearly defined. Parenthood is a relationship.

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) September 18, 2021

It’s also a gross violation of the child’s right to be told the truth.

I think that matters a lot, because children don’t know what’s true, they have to rely on adults to tell them, so it’s grossly unfair for adults to tell them lies (with rare exceptions for compelling reasons). It’s part of adults’ job to educate children, so they shouldn’t tell … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The entitlement of children.

Mostly Cloudy #3

What on earth has happened?

As I keep saying, I think people tend to get involved in various kinds of activism or movements out of a sincere desire to do good (as they see it). But once you have identified your ingroup, other, far less admirable, motives (deference to authority, group conformity, avoiding conflict, keeping the group together, reducing cognitive dissonance, consistency with former acts or statements etc.) gradually come to supplant the original cause, even to the point of actively embracing the polar opposite of everything that got you into activism in the first place.

We see this in the case of feminists who … Read the rest

Trump sent yet another moronic (and criminal!) letter to the Georgia Secretary of State yesterday, shouting at him to cancel the Georgia vote because reasons.

Much voter fraud! 43,000! Chain of Custody rules! Many other claims! Please check it out and then decertify the Erection excuse me the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, I don’t give a fuck, just put a stamp on it or a big Sharpie signature or some lipstick or whatever, just do it. I’ve told you this like a MILLION TIMES you asshole so why haven’t you done it yet? People do not understand why you don’t do it! PEOPLE I tell you. Me, and my kids, except maybe what’s her name, Tiffany’s, … Read the rest

Never mind Karens, it’s the Lavernes we need to worry about.

I just believe as a non-essentialist intersectional feminist that womanhood is constituted beyond bodies, chromosomes and reproduction. Insisting trans women are always and only "males" as you say is getting us killed and denied equal protection under the law here in the States https://t.co/iIO74IE0Ue

— Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox) September 17, 2021

“I just believe as a non-essentialist intersectional feminist that womanhood is constituted beyond bodies, chromosomes and reproduction. Insisting trans women are always and only “males” as you say is getting us killed and denied equal protection under the law here in the States”

That “just” – it’s not a “just.” There is no “just” there. There would be … Read the rest

Women must not have any private space away from men, says top man.

Trans women should be allowed to enter all public places, the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says, as he accuses Boris Johnson of stirring up “a culture war” on the issue.

Never mind Boris Johnson, never mind men fighting over who gets to boss everyone, what about women?

Nothing. Nothing about women. Ed Davey doesn’t give a flying fuck about women. He may not even realize we exist.

There’s a transcript.

Transcript for those who, like me, couldn't quite believe what they were hearing.

Q: Do you believe that there should be spaces, places in our society where biological males can't go?
A: No https://t.co/LqAsxjZOq0 pic.twitter.com/GhHNyYBnHG

Janice Turner in the Times:

The resignation of [former shadow women and equalities secretary] Marsha De Cordova leaves a vacancy for a job one MP calls “the most poisoned chalice in politics”. Labour, like all progressive parties, is being torn apart by the quasi-religious schism of gender. Two warring tribes have emerged: “gender critical” feminists who believe single-sex spaces, in prisons or refuges, are needed to protect women; and LGBT Labour which argues if a biological male identifies as a woman they must, immediately and in every circumstance, be treated as female.

… De Cordova was vilified for meeting feminists who’ve formed the Labour Women’s Declaration on sex-based rights, and for declining to address Stonewall’s conference fringe meeting.

Covid quack becomes random Covid bullshitter:

A doctor in Oregon has had his license revoked for continually refusing to follow COVID-19 guidelines when dealing with patients and spreading misinformation about face masks.

Turns out doctors aren’t supposed to tell whoppers about a lethal virus in the midst of a pandemic.

The Oregon Medical Board issued a final order on September 2 against Steven Arthur LaTulippe for “dishonorable or unprofessional conduct; repeated negligence in the practice of medicine; and gross negligence in the practice of medicine.” He was also fined $10,000.

…

He also spread misinformation to his patients about masks being ineffective against COVID-19 and falsely claimed they could cause carbon dioxide poisoning.

…

The physician was also recorded

Girls don’t need education, any more than stoves or cribs or sex dolls need education. Female people are tools for the use of men; you don’t send your tools to high school.

The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.

…

In a further sign that the recently announced Taliban government is tightening restrictions on women, the former ministry of women’s affairs building in Kabul has been handed over to the newly re-established ministry for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue.

This was the group’s feared enforcer in the 1990s, charged with beating women who violated bars on everything from going out in public without

Originally a comment by Michael Haubrich on The entitlement of children.

I think that this is a great opportunity for purveyors of alcohol and tobacconists in the UK to join in the case so that children’s entitlement to their products is recognized as valid and wise. Who are the government to deny?

Listed below are examples of products whose sale is controlled by age restriction.

Alcohol

Cigarettes, tobacco, shisha and other smoking based products

E Cigarettes and Vaping Products

Fireworks – sparklers, party poppers, caps, cracker snaps

Dangerous chemicals – cigarette lighter fuel, glue, aerosols

Acids

DVDs, Blu Rays and computer games

Dangerous Weapons – air weapons, crossbows, knives

Lottery tickets and scratch cards

Petrol

Bookmakers

Sunbeds

Advice to … Read the rest

The Tavistock ruling has been overturned, as many people predicted.

The court of appeal has overturned a controversial judgment that children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs.

So we’re back to first do lots of harm because 15-year-olds never get it wrong about what they will want at age 30, 50, 70.

Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, which runs NHS England’s only gender identity development service (GIDS) for children, challenged a high court ruling last year in a case brought against the service by Keira Bell, a 24-year-old woman who began taking puberty blockers when she was 16 before detransitioning. The

So Covid is real?

Laura Loomer, an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist running for Congress against incumbent GOP U.S. Rep. Dan Webster of Lake County, [Florida,] says she has tested positive for COVID-19.

…

Loomer, a social media provocateur, has been banned from most platforms in part for her Islamophobic statements and support of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and far-right activist Faith Goldy, who was banned for posting racist videos. She also has spread conspiracy theories about mass shootings and has been arrested multiple times for trespassing.

On the conservative platform Parler, she wrote in December, “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life-threatening

Here’s a novel idea: the police should be policing violence against women. Who knew?!

Tackling violence against women and girls should be as much of a priority as countering terrorism, a police watchdog has said.

Really? You mean women and girls matter? I think that’s pushing the envelope a little too far, don’t you?

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) called for “fundamental cross-system change” after identifying continuing failings.

Three-quarters of domestic abuse cases are closed early without the suspect being charged, its report said.

Because it’s personal. A man’s right to get violent with the nearest woman is sacred.

According to official statistics, in the year ending March 2020 there were:

• An

Peak Trans on Billingham:

These two tweets were directed at me during a Twitter spat I had with James Billingham a couple of months ago. Yes, he really is one of those men who presume to adjudicate on what feminism is. I can’t in all seriousness believe he thinks I care what he would “love” to see me do. Rather, I think these tweets were intentionally condescending to me in order to virtue-signal to his followers, who will probably applaud the insufferable arrogance of a man telling a woman old enough to be his mother how she should be doing feminism.

In order to virtue-signal and in order to tell a woman how she should be doing feminism. He … Read the rest

Glinner takes a cold hard look at the ineffable James Billingham:

This is James Billingham, a man who has numerous sock accounts online, such as Kilgore Sprout, Sprout of Wrath, the only Sprout and Oolon, who appears to have a burning hatred of women who are invested in safeguarding women’s or children’s rights.

Billingham spends an inordinate amount of time doing the dirty work of some of the creepiest and most dangerous gender identity extremists. He minimised the vicious assault by a large man on Maria McLachlan as a slap ‘on the shoulder’ and suggested that McLachlan, a pensioner, was ‘by far the most violent person there’, an assertion completely contradicted by footage of the attack, for which 

Wadhwa continues his attack on women’s rights:

Women who oppose plans to make it easier to change gender have given a platform to “fascists who want to eliminate trans people”, according to the head of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.

Bad lede. We don’t care about changing gender, what we oppose is the absurd dogma that people can change sex, and we oppose that because it results in outrages like domineering male Mridul Wadhwa becoming the head of a rape crisis centre, where he can bully women into obeying him or simply kick them out altogether.

Mridul Wadhwa, 43, a trans woman who was appointed chief executive in May, accused those protesting against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill of

Step one.

The Justice Department [has] asked a federal judge in Texas to temporarily block enforcement of the state’s new law that bans abortions after about six weeks.

This step, a major move by the Biden administration against the highly controversial law, follows a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department last week. The Biden administration asked the court late Tuesday to implement the preliminary injunction while the lawsuit plays out in federal court.

Texas’ abortion ban essentially stops the procedure in the country’s second-largest state. Most people WOMEN don’t know they are pregnant before six weeks.

In court documents, attorneys for the Justice Department said Texas’ law, also called SB 8, is unconstitutional and cannot stand.

A preliminary injunction

No.

To see feminism – a movement based on liberating all of us from oppression based on sex *and* gender characteristics – reduced to ganging up on transgender people is beyond depressing.

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) September 10, 2021

No. Feminism is not a movement “based on” (or aiming to or meant to or about or for) liberating “all of us.” It’s about liberating women. Women are allowed to have our own movement, and it’s called feminism.

It’s not anyone’s movement to give away to “all of us,” because it’s specifically and explicitly about women, not people in general.

And gender critical feminism is not “ganging up on transgender people,” it’s critical of the ideology that says men magically … Read the rest

Pandemic, you say? Well then we’ll just make sure health officials can’t take necessary steps to deal with it.

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.

Because what mad impetuous fool wants to be protected against infectious diseases?

A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public