A couple of weeks ago:

Allowing transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard to compete in the women’s competition at the Tokyo Olympics would be like letting athletes dope and may set a dangerous precedent for future Games, Samoa’s weightlifting boss told Reuters.

Like letting athletes dope only worse, because it’s 37 years of more testosterone.

Tuaopepe Jerry Wallwork coaches Samoa’s Commonwealth Games champion Feagaiga Stowers and is concerned Hubbard’s presence in the super-heavyweight division at Tokyo could deny the small island nation its second Olympic medal.

Sorry, small island nations go to the wall.

The IOC has said it is committed to inclusion regardless of gender identity and sexual characteristics but is also updating its guidelines.

This stupid word “inclusion” needs … Read the rest

John McWhorter argues that it’s fine to call the Ibram Kendi-type anti-racism “Critical Race Theory” even though it’s not the actual law school Critical Race Theory, in part because people who say it isn’t fine are just playing rhetorical games. I’m still not convinced, but he says some interesting things (as he always does).

Since a year ago, CRT-infused members of The Elect, traditionally overrepresented in the world of schools of education, have sought to take the opportunity furnished by our “racial reckoning” to turn American schools into academies of “antiracist” indoctrination.

Schools of education – that’s one of the interesting things. From what I’ve read they can be quite faddy and at the same time anti-intellectual. If they’re full … Read the rest

The Samoan Prime Minister, Susuga Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi: ‘No matter how we look at it, he’s a man and it’s shocking this was allowed in the first place.’ https://t.co/VMRHzOZP2x

— Caroline ffiske (@carolinefff) June 21, 2021

Again with the shuffling and hemming and ending up in the same place:

New Zealand’s government and the country’s top sporting body have backed her inclusion for the upcoming Olympics.

“As well as being among the world’s best for her event, Laurel has met the IWF eligibility criteria, including those based on IOC Consensus Statement guidelines for transgender athletes,” New Zealand Olympic Committee chief executive Kereyn Smith said.

But Hubbard is among the world’s best for the event only if he is counted as … Read the rest

And while everyone is squawking about the critical race theorist under the bed, kindergarten children are being instructed on Special Pronouns.

There is nothing ‘diverse’ about @JustLikeUsUK’s resources for #SchoolDiversityWeek. All the materials are riddled with an obsession with pronouns. This is KS1 (age 5-7) PSHE. This is not #inclusion. This is indoctrination into a contentious political viewpoint. It is illegal. pic.twitter.com/yK3VANPtrj

— Safe Schools Alliance (@SafeSchools_UK) June 21, 2021

… Read the rest

About that Andrew Sullivan piece on what he calls “Critical Race Theory” –

How on earth could merely teaching students about the history of racism and its pervasiveness in the United States provoke such a fuss? No wonder Charles Blow is mystified. But don’t worry. The MSM have a ready explanation: the GOP needs an inflammatory issue to rile their racist base, and so this entire foofaraw is really just an astro-turfed, ginned-up partisan gambit about nothing. The MSM get particular pleasure in ridiculing parents who use the term “critical race theory” as shorthand for things that just, well, make them uncomfortable — when the parents obviously have no idea what CRT really is.

Isn’t that silly of the … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Overdose of individualism.

I have just sent the following e-mail to Andrew Sullivan after his latest piece on the subject of race on his blog ‘The Dish’. He rightly takes issue with some horrid examples of what has happened in some schools, but…

Dear Mr Sullivan,

Well, this on Critical Race Theory was rather better than your ready inclusion of ‘systemic racism’ as one of the horrible, ambiguous un-Orwellian terms in your last piece, although I think that as usual you exaggerate things. I agree with much of what you say, particularly with respect to those examples from schools, but was — I am sorry — amused by your comparing these examples … Read the rest

Laurel Hubbard is on the team.

The New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard is set to make history and headlines, plus an enormous amount of controversy, after being confirmed as the first transgender athlete to ever compete at the Olympic Games.

He’s “set to make history and headlines” by stealing a place from a woman. How about thinking of her for one fucking second, Guardian? How about imagining what that feels like?

“I am grateful and humbled by the kindness and support that has been given to me by so many New Zealanders,” Hubbard said in a statement. 

Of course he’s not humbled. If he were humble he wouldn’t be doing it! It’s a shit thing to do … Read the rest

Let’s think about autonomy.

https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1406562731763945476 https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1406562787321692162

In some cultures and contexts children have always experienced some forms of autonomy – like ones where their labor was necessary for example. Farm children – which was most children in most places for most recent history – were expected to do as much of the work as they physically could. The modern change is more in shielding them from work than in newly seeing value in autonomy for them.

But, that aside…children are children. The amount of autonomy it’s safe to give them is limited. Autonomy to decide to trash their own bodies…that’s one that should wait. The “thesis” that children know their own best interests is absurd, and thus reckless.… Read the rest

Victoria Smith points out how dull, banal, simple, obvious the whole issue of female subordination is. Where’s the fun in that? No room for clever layers of irony or jargon-riddled homilies.

“Men keep threatening to kill — and in fact killing — women and girls” is just not very interesting or complex. On the contrary, it all sounds terribly basic. Aren’t there more fascinating debates to be had about language and symbols and whether in fact — hear me out on this, it’s counter-intuitive hence super-clever — female people are in fact complicit or even to blame for their own deaths, what with them weaponising their pain by performing being murdered within the cisheteronormative capitalist economy? Makes you think, doesn’t

… Read the rest

No, please, do go on; I love being patronized.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1406507358432501760

Hazarika belittles feminist women and pats herself on the back for being so brave and determined. Two for one: you get both sides of the Both Sides award.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1406539436150726657 https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1406540732022800391… Read the rest

The Fawcett Society is continuing the “who can possibly know what to think in such a complicated disagreement??” approach. If they’re going to go that route in spite of everything, why are they even the Fawcett Society? Why aren’t they the Everybody Society? Being a feminist society is taking a position, it’s not throwing up one’s hands and saying “You’re both wrong and you should both apologize and start over.” Feminism isn’t about splitting the difference.

Another @fawcettsociety Trustee (Liz Moseley)making a virtue of cowardice – (HT @SVPhillimore )

"Both sides" didn't just pop up randomly this week. It was a response to yr fellow Trustee calling those w bravery to speak up "idiots" pic.twitter.com/AGXAOUMpPj

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) June

… Read the rest

The Law Society? Really?

Under HR and people management:

Using pronouns in the workplace

I think you’re supposed to learn that in the very early grades, or even earlier, as you learn to speak the local language. I don’t think it’s something adults need a refresher on.

Judging by name or appearance is not always an accurate method for determining a person’s pronouns.

Yes it is. Being able to tell who is which is another very early skill.

We frequently, and likely subconsciously, interpret or ‘read’ a person’s gender based on their outward appearance and expression, and ‘assign’ a pronoun.

However, our inference as to that person’s gender identity may not be correct.

Getting it wrong is extremely rare. This … Read the rest

Sarah Phillimore is scathing about the cowardice and malice of Ayesha Hazarika.

[T]here was only strange and timorous silence from the Fawcett Society following [Maya] Forstater’s victory, until it was finally broken by an article in the Evening Standard on Wednesday.

Hazarika calls for “more moderate voices” to overcome the toxicity of the current debate, and an end to “cruelty and polarisation”:

As with so much right now, extremist, unforgiving, rigid voices on both sides dominate the online war in a fight to the death of who can scream and shame the loudest. And all it does is alienate people in the middle who want to find a solution which is humane, modern and common sense. But more moderate

… Read the rest

More It Must Not Be Allowed, this time from LSE staff in solidarity with Open University staff and students.

We, the LSE Department of Gender Studies, write this letter in solidarity with the scholars, researchers, members of staff, and students at the Open University who are facing an unwelcoming and antagonistic environment because of the newly created Gender Critical Research Network. We support and wholly endorse the Open Letter from OU Staff and Postgraduate Research Students, written in response to the launch of the Network. Reiterating the demands of our colleagues at the Open University, we ask that the Open University urgently rescind its support for this network, and that it actively re-commit to supporting trans rights and the

… Read the rest

Empowerment! Yet another institution for female people has found a new way to erase female people. Progress!

The alma mater of a long list of distinguished women, from Rosalind Franklin and Dame Kate Bingham to Emily Mortimer and Rachel Weisz, is to rename the role of head girl because it is too “binary”.

In other words a girls’ school finds the word “girl” too “binary.” So will it become a persons’ school now? If so it will wait a long long long time for Eton and Harrow to do the same.

The head girl of St Paul’s Girls’ School, one of the country’s leading private schools, will be known as head of school after calls from pupils to make

… Read the rest

They always frame it deceptively.

The fight over the rights of transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s athletics has spilled over to more than a dozen states as lawmakers in Idaho, Montana, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and most recently Florida have passed legislation since the beginning of 2020 to ban them from the field.

There are no such “rights.” Imagine saying “the fight over the rights of adult athletes to compete in children’s athletics has spilled over” blah blah – nobody would say that because the absurdity would be too obvious, but for some reason it’s not obvious when it comes to men trampling women.

Chase Strangio, a transgender man who serves as the ACLU’s

… Read the rest

“Perceived” by whom, you damn fools?

https://twitter.com/alliap2/status/1406189995258482696… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1406152048857518081 https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1406152790167244807… Read the rest

Janice Turner on the Royal Academy’s venomous censorship of a woman artist starts with the fact that Jess DeWahls sent her an embroidery of her mother’s hands six months ago.

A photo I’d posted on Twitter of my first care home visit in many months had moved her to sew. She didn’t want payment, just for me to have it. Now this touching work sits by my desk.

De Wahls is no cosy cross-stitcher: she deploys her needle for political, especially feminist purpose. She embroiders fallopian tubes giving the finger, had a show called Big Swinging Ovaries, ran a vagina sewing workshop at Tate Modern. She’s funny, outspoken, has bright red hair and lavish tattoos. As all artists should be,

… Read the rest

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops trying to rule us all again:

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft a statement on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a political push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights.

They’re bishops. They’re not senators or representatives or part of the executive branch, they’re bishops – clergy of one particular religious sect. They’re not the boss of us. They’re not the boss of Biden either.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, an assembly of the country’s 433 active and retired bishops, can issue guideline statements, but it does not have the

… Read the rest