Success! This is exactly the goal.

Yesssssssss – because if you endeavour to commit someone’s Special Pronouns to memory, that means you’re devoting extra time and attention and effort to that someone. Achievement unlocked! Getting people to pay extra attention to Self is the goal here and it’s working!… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum on Cleese and comedy and censorship:

What has John Cleese ever done for free speech? Absolutely nothing, according to the reaction to this week’s announcement that the 81-year-old comedian and actor would be fronting a documentary for Channel 4 about cancel culture. The show, which will “explore why a new ‘woke’ generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can’t be said”, was met with derision before it had even been broadcast.

…

The sneering also came from fellow comics, the stand-up Robin Ince among them. Ince, 52, also seemed to think that Cleese’s age disqualified him from having an opinion: “Somewhere in middle age, the ‘young people nowadays’ gene is turned on,” he

Really?

I don’t believe it. “Women with penises” were not a topic, much less an entity, in the 80s. That insulting oxymoron is only a few years old. She can wink wink all she wants to but it’s still bullshit.… Read the rest

Trump the treasonous insurrectionist is claiming he’s immune from everything because “executive privilege” – which I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work, at all. I think its basic justification is so that a current president – a president actually in the job at this moment in time – can do the job without distractions or interference. There are problems with that too, as we saw for four years, but I think it is at least limited to that specific situation. It’s pragmatic, as opposed to the bestowal of a dukedom. I don’t think it makes Trump forever a Sacred Body.

Trump on Wednesday threatened to invoke executive privilege in an effort to block the House select committee investigating

Yes, sure, the Nazis, the actual Nazis, with the concentration camps, the persecution and slaughter of leftists, labor unions, the disabled, the old, the sick, the mentally ill, the Romani (“gypsies”), lesbians and gays, and of course nearly all the Jews in Europe.

At least reaction to ofcom leaving one of the stonewall schemes but remaining in all the others is provoking a sensible and reasonable reaction from SW supporters eh. pic.twitter.com/l6osMRpmsW

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) August 27, 2021

India Willoughby is not going to be sent to a concentration camp, much less an extermination camp. Nothing is going to happen to India Willoughby at all, except that fewer people will accept his claim to be a woman. That’s … Read the rest

As Anatole France remarked, the rich and the poor alike are free forbidden to sleep under bridges.

With two girls in elementary school and a mother who is a teacher, the Dringenburg household in a Milwaukee suburb had been joyous and excited about back-to-school season — until this year, when the Waukesha School District board decided to opt out of a federally funded program that would give free meals to all students regardless of family income.

Ah yes, let’s not have free meals in schools, because then poor children would have the energy to do well in school just as rich children do, and we can’t have that.

The board voted June 9 to go back to the pre-pandemic

Julie Bindel agrees that the UK and US are not Afghanistan, but disagrees that that means feminism has finished its work and can go away now.

For example, of the tiny minority of rapes that are actually reported to police, only 1.4 per cent are charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). In 2018/2019, charges, prosecutions and convictions for rape in cases brought by the CPS fell to their lowest levels in more than a decade.

That’s a really astounding statistic. I keep seeing it and keep clutching my head and wondering how the fuck. Rape is in effect legal.

The past decade has seen a shift towards what I call “feminism for men” or “fun feminism”. Currently,

So easy for them to say.

No danger to women, across the board – well, he should know.

No doubt he’s “been on a journey” since then. A journey that ends up with him still thinking women are silly.

— Jack (@j4ppleby) August 26, 2021

… Read the rest

Victoria Smith starts by thanking the men who tell women what we’re allowed to be afraid of for wading in to correct our perceptions of reality when they must be so busy.

To be fair, it is not our fault. We are not authoritative; we are not you. We are taught from an early age to doubt ourselves, to see our own versions of reality as suspect, requiring external confirmation from the experts, the men. When you are not considered a reliable witness to your own experiences, things become very confusing. This, I guess, is where you step in.

And, of course, this very stepping in is part of the process of teaching female people from an early age that … Read the rest

Yet another man telling feminist women how to feminism.

I have a protected characteristic. That PC affords me justifiable legal protections. Stonewall have systematically misrepresented my PC, and have been clear they would like justifiable legal protections removed.

What did you think would happen?

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) August 26, 2021

It's misogyny more broadly that is the threat to women. Gender ideologies (incel, trans, taliban) are manifestations of that. A woman is murdered due to her sex every 3 days in the UK. Misogyny doesn't harm *you* Robin, but it harms us.

— Billy Bragg in a Billion (@CroneInAMillion) August 26, 2021

This is unworthy of you, Robin. Vulnerable women need single-sex spaces in refuges, hospitals & prisons. Feminists

Jawad Iqbal asks an important question.

Why is the BBC, which takes pride in lecturing everyone else on its commitment to impartiality, determined to keep working with Stonewall, the LGBT charity that’s pushing an agenda on trans issues that is anything but impartial? Other public sector bodies, including the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Cabinet Office, have withdrawn from Stonewall’s diversity programme. But not the BBC, which thinks it knows better.

I have another question to go along with that one. Is there any feminist charity that has that kind of hold on the BBC and the police and other public bodies? In other words is there any feminist equivalent of Stonewall? Is there any anti-racist equivalent? … Read the rest

I find I haven’t said enough about that response from Police Scotland.

Who and what Murray Blackburn Mackenzie are in case you’ve forgotten (which I had, embarrassingly):

Established in late 2018, MurrayBlackburnMackenzie is an independent policy analysis collective, made up of Dr Kath Murray, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie. Between us, we have extensive experience in policy-making, research and communications.

How the police responded to their question about why they ask people about their gender identity but not their sex:

So they know that the gender [identity] of a person is a key factor which shapes people’s experiences of local policing…but they apparently don’t know that the sex of a person is a key factor which shapes people’s experiences … Read the rest

Our new blog looks at the Police Scotland 'Your Police' survey, and makes the case for recording demographic data on sex, in addition to self-defined gender identity. https://t.co/7Yn9R0x62O

— MurrayBlackburnMackenzie (@mbmpolicy) August 25, 2021

Or, better, instead of “gender identity.” Who cares what people’s fanciful “gender identity” is? Besides marketers of Gender Accessories, who are many and greedy.

In response to a query about the lack of a sex question, Police Scotland stated that “we do not need to know someone’s biological sex characteristics. What is important, is how they identify their gender”. pic.twitter.com/vd7b2RaWBd

— MurrayBlackburnMackenzie (@mbmpolicy) August 26, 2021

Oh my god the police in Scotland think they don’t need to know that a suspect is a man or … Read the rest

Just for thoroughness, the Wall Street Journal take on Judge Parker’s ruling:

“This case was never about fraud—it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so,” U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in Detroit said in a 110-page ruling on Wednesday.

…

“Despite the haze of confusion, commotion, and chaos counsel intentionally attempted to create by filing this lawsuit, one thing is perfectly clear: Plaintiffs’ attorneys have scorned their oath, flouted the rules, and attempted to undermine the integrity of the judiciary along the way,” Judge Parker wrote.

…

Judge Parker said that the attorneys must pay the costs incurred by state officials and the city of Detroit related to the lawsuit.

Saying it before doesn’t make it true.

No it doesn’t work the same way with trans issues. At all. Especially if by “date” he means “fuck,” which I think it’s safe to assume. People are allowed to have a preference for one sex or the other. If they’re not allowed to have that, then sex becomes indistinguishable from rape. Straight people are allowed to prefer the opposite sex and gay people are allowed to prefer the same sex. That means no one is required to have Affirmation Sex with a trans person whose sex is not the preferred one. No one. Not even women!… Read the rest

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.

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.

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