Let’s talk about toys.

Lego has announced it will work to remove gender stereotypes from its toys after a global survey the company commissioned found attitudes to play and future careers remain unequal and restrictive.

Researchers found that while girls were becoming more confident and keen to engage in a wide range of activities, the same was not true of boys.

Yes we know how that works. Girls don’t get called “wimps” for playing with boys’ toys. To put it another way, girls playing with toys coded “boy” are leveling up, while boys going the other direction are of course leveling down.

Seventy-one per cent of boys surveyed feared they would be made fun of if they played with

Wait who needs to get a smear test again?

SNP ministers have been accused of sowing confusion after urging “anyone with a cervix” to get a smear test rather than saying “women”.

People all over Scotland are rummaging through their attics and pantries trying to find that pesky cervix.

A Scottish Government information campaign launched today also says “people” are being urged to attend a test, and that “two people” die from cervical cancer every day.

It adds: “Cervical screening is offered to anyone with a cervix aged between 25 and 64.” 

This isn’t flaky attention-seekers on TikTok, it’s a government.

The row over the choice of language comes after some politicians have been accused of transphobia for saying

Dang, this is startling even for Ash Sarkar.

The choice is whether you love your kid for who they are more than the rigid ideology that tells you there's something wrong about trans and non-binary people. Listen to your child, accept their choices, and let empathy take the wheel. https://t.co/8jsd0W6x0l

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 11, 2021

The rigid ideology? That’s the people who don’t believe the neon-pink new ideology of Gender’s Veto Power Over Sex?

It’s no more “rigid” to say that girls are not boys than it is to say humans are not crocodiles. “If you’re a girl then you’re not a boy, but what you do with being a girl is up to you, so knock yourself … Read the rest

One of the ways it’s going to kill us – flooding of critical infrastructure.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. critical infrastructure—utilities, airports, police stations and more—is at risk of being inundated by flooding, according to a new report by First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit dedicated to making climate risk more visible to the public.

…

“Even if your home is far from the risk of flooding or forest fires, you may not so easily escape the systemic impacts from vulnerable critical infrastructure that sometimes extends hundreds of miles,” said Jesse Keenan, a climate-change and real-estate expert at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Remember Texas last winter? When Ted Cruz went bopping off to Cancun?

Recent storms highlighted the

Journalists really need to learn to report on this more precisely.

As do headline writers: the Times headline is both wrong and bad.

Truss hits out at abuse of Kathleen Stock, professor in trans dispute

No she doesn’t. The story doesn’t even say that. The lede:

Liz Truss has spoken out against the abuse a university professor has faced for her views on transgender rights and the police have told her to install CCTV cameras at home and have a bodyguard on campus.

Speaking out isn’t hitting out. The distinction is quite important, so what are newspapers doing blurring it? It’s an important distinction and it’s at the heart of this very story, which is all about violent threats against … Read the rest

That’s disgusting. No other word for it.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A tool that enforces sexism.

Proffering pronouns conceptually depends on the view that “one’s pronouns” are (1) of critical importance and (2) self-determined and inaccessible to others if not publicly stated. (2) gets most of the attention, as it’s the more obviously wrongheaded notion. We know what pronouns are and how they work, because we’ve been using them since we started emulating our parents’ speech as babies. Seeing that these demands for announcing pronouns, which are not always even words, are incompatible with what pronouns are and how they work is easy and intuitive for most people with functioning brain cells not warped by propaganda and in-group loyalty. Unfortunately, the ease … Read the rest

JL at the Glinner Update is not impressed by “Jaclyn” Moore and his performative fury at Dave Chapelle.

John “Jaclyn” Moore is a TV executive, a career forged prior to his newly discovered ‘gender identity’. He was a writer and co-showrunner on Netflix series, Dear White People. On Wednesday he announced on social media that he isn’t going to work for the streaming service again, accusing it of “Promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content”.

…

Variety interviewed Moore about his decision and allowed him to bellyache, at length, about Chappelle’s ‘dangerous rhetoric’. The article was, of course, accompanied by photos of Moore performing the coy head tilt and winsome expression we’ve come to expect when entitled white

Even the Sunday Times treats Kathleen Stock as a provocateur who insists on thinking wack thoughts like “men can’t become women.”

A university professor has told how she may need to be accompanied by bodyguards on campus and has been advised to install CCTV outside her home, following a row with students about her views on transgender rights.

Like that. It’s not a “row with students”; it’s students threatening her with violence.

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, does not believe people can change their biological sex, an opinion she has been vocal about in her academic work and on social media. Critics have accused her of being transphobic.

And like that. Of course she … Read the rest

You remember that Dave Chapelle made some jokes about the Gospel of Trans, right? Well there are consequences for these things.

Jaclyn Moore, writer and showrunner on the series “Dear White People” and the upcoming reboot of “Queer as Folk,” is boycotting Netflix after the streaming service released Dave Chappelle’s latest stand-up special, which contained a slew of jokes aimed at transgender people.

Well, Chappelle is black and Moore is white, so it’s time to start yelling about Karens and white women’s tears, right?

But wait.

Moore transitioned during production of the show’s last season, she told the Wrap, and was met with respect and support from her colleagues. But watching Chappelle’s most recent special drove her to

Lawyers are laughing at Jolyon’s lawyering.

You will not be surprised to learn that it gets worse. pic.twitter.com/uCkyVQsifN

— Levins Solicitors (@LevinsLaw) October 9, 2021

See, if you’re defending free speech, that’s what you’re doing. You’re not supposed to say “I think it’s a crock of shit but” first. You can say that in the pub, but not if you’re a university actually defending free speech. Jolyon wants them to scream “WE HATE TERFS” and then mutter “but yes yes free speech” and depart in haste.

Also…Jolyon has been saying he wishes a transphobe would agree to debate him, but it turns out he doesn’t want to.

My initial email for reference: pic.twitter.com/ex9ht99dXD

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) October 9, 2021

This is not good.

Quoting the rest.

One of the women already had pronouns displayed in her username. The effect of this was to create a really odd sense that the women had made a submissive gesture and the men had not.

In discussions at work about pronouns, the solution proposed to this has often been to ‘normalize declaring pronouns’ so that everyone feels they should comply with the request. So the women are attempting to ‘model’ this compliance. So far, so gendered.

When I have been in meetings where a man does declare he/him-ness, it simply exacerbates this sense of domination vs compliance. You have a woman underlining that she is a woman & a man announcing that

Selina Todd wrote to the Times:

Sir, The role of a university should be to pursue truth, via careful research and active debate. The recent treatment of Professor Kathleen Stock suggests this is now secondary to attracting and pacifying student consumers (“Students demand firing of ‘transphobe’ professor”, News, Oct 8). Sussex University did not take “immediate action” to stop the bullying she faced this week. Offensive posters and stickers were visible by Tuesday, October 5. Only after public pressure was applied did the university remove these and (on Thursday, October 7) make a public statement, which paid lip service to academic freedom while assuring students of the university’s “inclusivity”.

Any scholar engaged in researching women or gender-identity ideology

The trade union UCU Edinburgh says: “A reminder of UCU’s strong position in support of trans inclusion…Liberation cannot be built on exclusion.”

A union says liberation cannot be built on exclusion. Really? So unions have to include bosses and owners? Black liberation movements have to include white people? Free speech organizations have to include censors? Atheist groups have to include believers? Consumer groups have to include advertisers and PR firms? Democrats have to include Republicans and vice versa?

Horse shit. We get to organize, and campaign, and agitate, via particular parties and groups and institutions, which necessarily exclude people who don’t match the “particular” bit. Socialists don’t have to be inclusive of capitalists, and vice versa.

What does “trans … Read the rest

Says Jolyon Maugham, who never stops giving away women’s rights.

Such an important point – and so easy to miss. It's not for you to concede that which is not yours to give. https://t.co/AsimKxOFkb

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) October 9, 2021

… Read the rest

Laurie Penny had a brief moment of partial spine and said in a tweet that the bullying of Kathleen Stock was a little over the top. Then she deleted the tweet.

She left a reply up though.

Even if it’s ‘just’ a smoke flare and a giant sign, it’s unnecessarily intimidating.
FYI, I think trans women are women, I can’t stand the moral panic over ‘cancel culture’, and I do think there are some cases where no-platforming is appropriate.
This is still extremely yikes.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) October 9, 2021

Do tell feminist women they’re wrong wrong wrong but don’t use smoke flairs and giant signs.

>and I found the final chapter surprisingly measured in its call for compromise

The Telegraph reports:

Women prisoners who call transgender inmates by the wrong pronoun could face extra time in jail under equality rules, says a justice minister.

Female inmates who deliberately call a transgender woman “he” or “him” could be punished under rules barring “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”.

So…in that scenario why is it the woman who is being “threatening” or “abusive”? Why isn’t it the man? Why are women being treated as a threat to men when the reality is the other way around?

That’s before we even get to “are you fucking kidding me, women will be punished for not repeating a lie?”

This summer, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to prevent transgender

Finally.

President Joe Biden will restore the boundaries of three American nature reserves, known as national monuments, that were reduced in size by former President Donald Trump to allow commercial activity, the White House said on Thursday.

The restoration will protect more than 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Southern Utah known as the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, as well as the nearly 5,000 square mile (8,000 sq km) Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England.

This is good.… Read the rest

Ix-nay on the executive privilege ploy. Dude you don’t even go to this school.

Joe Biden has blocked an attempt by former US president Donald Trump to withhold documents from Congress related to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

There’s no “executive privilege” that lets you try to overthrow the government and then hide your homework.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden authorized the National Archives, a government agency that holds records from Trump’s time in office, to turn over an initial batch of documents requested by a House of Representatives select committee investigating the riot.

“The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration

Is it possible?

Can pigs fly? Is it possible?

Yes, it's possible for pigs to fly. In fact, it's probably a lot more common than you might think. In order to explain, we'll need to breakdown some common misconceptions about how we understand the term "pigs." pic.twitter.com/uGmNxap4bj

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) October 8, 2021

The healthline item is from 2018. I think I’ve seen it before, and probably written about it here, but I haven’t been able to find anything here. Apologies if I repeat myself.

The trick turns out to be easy.

Yes, it’s possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own. In fact, it’s probably a lot more common than you