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

Trivia, but too funny to pass up.

Daily Wire host says Barack Obama destroyed rock 'n roll because "rock 'n roll was about white male angst…Barack Obama came along and said young white men aren't allowed to have angst" pic.twitter.com/hhmXcwEEKo

— Jason S. Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) September 15, 2021

There’s plenty of ahem ahem Chuck Berry HELLO – and I would add Motown I mean come on – but also when did Obama ever say young white men (or any other people) aren’t allowed to have angst? When did he ever say anything that even vaguely resembled it?

I will say this: a lot of rock & roll is about what whores women are. That aspect can get pretty annoying.… Read the rest

Funny how states and provinces that are particularly heavy on the anti-vax trend are also heavy on the getting Covid trend. Alberta for instance:

A surge in coronavirus cases has pushed the healthcare system in the Canadian province of Alberta to the verge of collapse, as healthcare workers struggle against mounting exhaustion and a growing anti-vaccine movement in the region.

More and more cases, so let’s get more and more people campaigning against vaccinations. Brilliant. As the fire consumes more and more of the house, throw more and more stones at the firefighters.

The province warned this week that its ICU capacity was strained, with more people requiring intensive care than any other point during the pandemic – nearly

No shit. In a world that still watches placidly as cruise ships burn 80 thousand gallons of fuel a day each, it turns out that nobody, nobody, is living up to the Paris climate agreement.

Every one of the world’s leading economies, including all the countries that make up the G20, is failing to meet commitments made in the landmark Paris agreement in order to stave off climate catastrophe, a damning new analysis has found.

Less than two months before crucial United Nations climate talks take place in Scotland, none of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries have made sufficient plans to lower pollution to meet what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

This

She’s still at it.

A thread on Brit. The literary narrative in the UK is controlled by white men and women. When the @thetimes assigns Against White Feminism to an avowed anti trans white woman committed to the status quo-It is NOT a fair review it IS “putting brownie in her place” 1/

— Rafia Zakaria (@rafiazakaria) September 14, 2021

That’s a stupid way to describe Joan Smith. I don’t know if Rafia Zakaria is really stupid or not but by god she says a lot of stupid things. That’s one of them. Joan Smith is the author of the classic Misogynies. She’s a feminist thinker and columnist and activist. She’s a star. She’s not “anti-trans,” she’s skeptical of … Read the rest

The voting rights struggle continues:

Senate Democrats united on Tuesday around a pared-down voting rights bill, escalating their efforts to build a case for aggressive action by Congress to push past Republican opposition and counter a rash of new G.O.P.-written ballot restrictions in states around the country.

Why do Republicans write all these voting restrictions? Because they can’t win if everyone can vote without interference.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, quickly dismissed the measure, reiterating his view that the legislation represented unnecessary federal meddling in elections that have historically been the province of the states.

Yes and historically some of the states allowed slavery, too. Fuck “historically.”

“There is no reason for the federal government

I was listening to a useful and interesting conversation on Fresh Air about the Supreme Court’s intention to kill Roe v Wade and then I hit a bump.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my interview with Ian Millhiser, who has been writing about the recent Supreme Court order allowing a restrictive Texas abortion law to go into effect. He’s also been writing about the court’s voting rights decisions, the increasing use of the shadow docket and the court’s larger move to the right. In his new book “The Agenda: How A Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America,” he writes that while Congress has become increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has become