The move to delete women continues.

Federal health chiefs [in Australia] have rewritten a Covid-19 vaccination pregnancy guide that bizarrely erases all mention of ‘women’ and replaces it with ‘pregnant people’.

The guide was originally published in February as ‘COVID-19 vaccination – Shared decision making guide for women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning pregnancy’.

But it was republished last week under its new subtly-tweaked title: ‘COVID-19 vaccination decision guide for people who are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning pregnancy’.

Which is not only insulting to women, but also significantly less useful as an actual COVID-19 vaccination decision guide. You want such things to be as clear and easy to follow as possible, and deleting the word “women” doesn’t do … Read the rest

Kathleen Stock and Peter Tatchell were going to discuss, but now they’re not.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1430772351080280067

Tatchell tweeted a statement that simply reiterates the fanatical dogmatism and hostility to women of the trans movement.

pic.twitter.com/Y8iegxDQfK

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) August 26, 2021

But what are “trans rights”? What does Tatchell take them to be? Putting it that way makes it sound as if skeptics of the dogma want to take human rights away from trans people, which is complete nonsense. The whole problem is that “trans rights” are such non-existent rights as erasing the word “women” from the language, as men forcing themselves into women’s spaces, as men taking jobs and prizes that were meant for women, as men competing against women … Read the rest

And another one.

https://twitter.com/amy_adhd/status/1408162377531637766

We can say what men are in 5 words but women are a whole different story, so different that they can be women while also being men, i.e. the sex that produces spermatozoa.

Updating to add: it’s still there.

The other one.… Read the rest

Spot the difference.

According to healthline, men with HPV are men but women with HPV are vulva owners, same source same date. pic.twitter.com/KRhlgys460

— Michelle Alise (@Michellebudd) June 22, 2021

H/t maddog… Read the rest

Bam.

A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday night ordered sanctions to be levied against nine pro-Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood, ruling that a lawsuit laden with conspiracy theories that they filed last year challenging the validity of the presidential election was “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”

In her decision, Judge Linda V. Parker of the Federal District Court in Detroit ordered the lawyers to be referred to the local legal authorities in their home states for possible suspension or disbarment.

Declaring that the lawsuit should never have been filed, Judge Parker wrote in her 110-page order that it was “one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights

… Read the rest

And then there are those times when they just blurt it right out.

https://twitter.com/mcashmanCBE/status/1430588380480421894

Shrill sirens – you couldn’t make it up. It’s cool because it labels us as both demonic witch-women who lure men in boats to their deaths and noisy horns that scream in your ear when something bad happens.

https://twitter.com/FrancisWheen/status/1430633504568659977 https://twitter.com/FrancisWheen/status/1430634623550242816

See also: Karens.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on The same woo-woo bin.

If a particular grandiose claim is supported by science, the likelihood is that it would meet at least some of these criteria:

1.) It would have come out of science.

2.) It would answer more than one question.

3.) It would be testable and falsifiable.

4.) It would have been hotly debated for years.

5.) It would be consistent across disciplines.

6.) It would generate new hypotheses and research.

7.) It would use terms and explanations which are clear.

If the “scientific claim” can be brought to its knees by “define ‘woman,’” it’s not really a scientific claim.

The scientific consensus they talk about here involves DSDs: there are … Read the rest

Which party holds the wack belief and which party holds the other kind?

Ahh, I see.

So it's your word against the 99% scientific consensus on the existence and validity of trans people.

Your denial of trans existence is akin to the existence of a flat earth, or Earth being the center of the universe.

— MrTARDIS (@TrilbeeReviews) August 25, 2021

Other way around, I think you’ll find.… Read the rest

Our what?

Maryam Monsef just referred to the Taliban as “our brothers” pic.twitter.com/KEL5UYa3HO

— Bryan Passifiume (@BryanPassifiume) August 25, 2021

Who is she? Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality.

She's the Minister for Women and Gender Equality https://t.co/tmI4jWgluQ

— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) August 25, 2021

So, yeah…our brothers?

I think not.

Updating to add: see Sastra’s comment and Seanna’s for a better understanding.… Read the rest

Why now and not last year?

So why is Florida is experiencing its worst surge now, 18 months into the pandemic, when the vaccines are widely available?

In some ways, what’s happening in Florida is a microcosm of the current surge across America: a middling vaccination rate has collided with a more contagious version of the virus. And it’s doing so in a state where political leaders continue to insist people should act as though the pandemic is over — even as more people are dying every day than at any point in the past year.

It’s the “when in doubt, take the reckless approach” problem.

DeSantis, who has clear presidential aspirations in 2024, has positioned himself and his state’s

… Read the rest

Guardian columnist Zoe Williams also dislikes John Cleese, it seems.

[I]t’s hard to find out when John Cleese was last funny. Some people think he had some moderately amusing lines in A Fish Called Wanda (1988). There was a period in the 2010s when he had an idiosyncratic vendetta and went around town saying “Michael Palin’s travel show” and then yawning, which a small niche found rather tickling.

Does that actually matter? He did some brilliant Being Funny before the 2010s, which thanks to technology we can still benefit from. Isn’t that good enough?

It would be fair to say it’s not a recent body of comic work that has recommended Cleese for a Channel 4 show about “cancel

… Read the rest

Does “with force” mean “with force”?

Noted, but this group threatened the SPCC @_Lisa_Townsend with violence. Can you confirm that you will be investigating Pride in Surrey? pic.twitter.com/kpXKenCeOx

— SaintCirce (@SaintCirce) August 25, 2021

What views? The usual.

Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner has been accused of being transphobic but defended by refuge organisers for women after she criticised LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall.

The campaign group’s vision is that people born male who identify as women should be able to attend women’s prisons and crisis centres, whether or not they have begun to transition.

Attend? One doesn’t “attend” prisons, as if they were meetings of the book group, one is locked up in them, aka imprisoned. That’s part of the … Read the rest

Simon Callow is fed up with the tyranny.

Simon Callow, the actor and veteran gay rights campaigner, has condemned the “strange turn to the tyrannical” taken by Stonewall on self-identification for transgender people.

Callow, who was involved in the anti-government protests that led to the foundation of Stonewall in 1989, said an “extraordinarily unproductive militancy” now surrounded its position. This uncompromising mood risked infringing women’s rights and could put pressure on young gay people to transition, he said, and it was a sign of the times that he felt nervous about the reaction he would stir up, simply for expressing his views.

The uncompromising mood [or rather stance, approach, method] emphatically already does infringe on women’s rights, including … Read the rest

FEMINIST DISSENT STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH AFGHAN WOMEN AND WITH ALL THOSE FIGHTING FUNDAMENTALISM

Feminist Dissent sees fundamentalist movements as modern political movements of the far right which use religion to exercise authoritarian control, especially over women. The Taliban was never seen by us as simply a form of medievalist Pashtun tribalism, and certainly not as a liberation movement. The dominant views from the ‘anti-imperialist left’, Western ‘peace’ movements, Western governments and counter-terror establishments converge in ways that both stereotype and sanitise the Taliban.

…

The British Chief of Defence Staff Nick Carter’s claim that the Taliban want an ‘inclusive’ Afghanistan builds on the convenient myth that the Taliban are merely ‘tribal’, romantic men of honour who will keep order

… Read the rest

Ah yes certainly, I can’t see any problem with that. Bomber wants recognition of his new idenniny and oh yes a shorter sentence please.

The militia leader convicted of master­minding the bombing of a Minnesota mosque is asking a judge to legally acknowledge her transgender identity.

Emily Claire Hari was previously known as Michael Hari, who was found guilty last year of civil rights and hate crime charges related to the bombing of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington in August 2017.

During the trial, prosecutors said Hari was fueled by a hatred of Muslims when he devised a plan to pipe bomb the building during morning prayers. While no one was hurt in the bombing, it spread

… Read the rest

According to her profile this person does standup comedy.

https://twitter.com/kathbarbadoro/status/1430018992014598144

Entire thing? No verbal humor? No ideas, just physical shtick?

Funny how he has no interest in addressing the censorious ways of the people who put millions of dollars into trying to "cancel" Life of Brian, and instead sides uncritically with them in favor of anti-trans bigotry.

— Michael 'The CIA's Milli Vanilli' Marquis Albright (@ChicagoMSTie) August 24, 2021

No interest?

Watch and listen to this whole debate if you are actually interested in learning something about John Cleese (and Monthy Python), freedom of expression, religion, social history and comedy.https://t.co/2CadoUTlZ8

— Lizzie (@lizzbag) August 24, 2021

That time I went to a bookstore event with Michael Palin someone asked … Read the rest

Our Jolyon walks into these things.

Definitely what this debate needs: another privately educated elderly cis white person with a series on a national broadcaster to complain about cancel culture. https://t.co/ozvgCNMnZp

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) August 24, 2021

Erm…Jolyon Maugham is white and “cis” and not all that young and – the one he carefully didn’t mention – he’s a man. (He didn’t mention it because mentioning it would remind people that women don’t have male privilege.) He’s not as poshly educated as Cleese, I’ll give him that – but then he’s not as clever, either.

To sum up, Jolyon Maugham is sneering at John Cleese for having kinds of privilege that Maugham himself mostly shares. It’s almost as if … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on What genocide is and is not.

Hitler didn’t wipe out 6 million Jews by calling them something else, he wiped them out by murdering them.

Exactly, it’s roughly analogous to arguing that:

Denying the existence of God

≈ denying that there’s such a thing as “God’s chosen people”

≈ denying the existence of that which the Jews are

≈ denying the existence of Jews

≈ envisioning a world in which Jews don’t exist

≈ advocating genocide.

Therefore atheism is just the Holocaust

I have never heard a single Jew make such an argument. If your kind has been murdered by the millions, you don’t have to resort to this kind of language-games … Read the rest

Well this is horrible news.

James Underdown of CFI (the Center for Inquiry):

Tom Flynn, Giant of American Freethought, Has Died at Age 66

The world has lost a towering figure of American freethought, a man who was both on the cutting edge of secular humanist thought, as well as the foremost caretaker of its rich history. The entire Center for Inquiry family is anguished by the sudden and unexpected death of our colleague, teacher, and friend Tom Flynn at age 66.

Tom held numerous leadership roles during his more than thirty years with the Center for Inquiry, most recently as editor of Free Inquiry magazine, director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail, and former

… Read the rest

Woman who calls herself “transmasculine” gets all shaky-like when menstrual products say “for women” on the label. (If they do – I have my doubts that anyone who needs menstrual products also needs to be told at the point of sale that they’re for women.) Narcissism forevaaaaaaaaa!

My period has never triggered feelings of gender dysphoria as a trans masculine person, but the way people talk about menstruation and frame it as a “women’s issue” makes me experience feelings of dread and discomfort.

Really? It makes her do that? Or she does it because she’s conditioned herself to think she’s supposed to, by being exposed to 50 million stupid articles and tweets and videos like this. They’re all conditioning each … Read the rest