It’s interesting how often fundamentalism and exploitation get married and have kids. The NY Times last month:

Federal law enforcement agents descended on a massive temple in New Jersey on Tuesday after workers accused a prominent Hindu sect of luring them from India, confining them to the temple grounds and paying them the equivalent of about $1 an hour to perform grueling labor in near servitude.

Lawyers for the workers said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu sect known as BAPS that has close ties to India’s ruling party and has built temples around the world, had exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the yearslong construction project.

The workers, who lived

… Read the rest

Oh good, another “how about injecting bleach to kill the virus?” moment.

ORBITS: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) asks whether the Forest Service or the BLM can alter the orbit of the moon or the Earth in order to fight climate change during a House Natural Resources hearing pic.twitter.com/yYiOyi2cMZ

— Forbes (@Forbes) June 8, 2021

… Read the rest

Welp, Keir Starmer just threw women under the bus.

https://twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1402586773499244549

At 2:22 he says Labour is committed to updating the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people.… Read the rest

Spared punishment for…saying women have vaginas:

A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.

She had argued the difference in strength between the sexes meant it was not fair that women should have to compete against trans women in sport.

Which you’d think would be something everyone knew, and the reason women have their own teams and games and competitions in the first place, but you know…”offensive”…

Ms Keogh, who was supported by the SNP MP Joanna Cherry

… Read the rest

Women who are academics can’t really rely on their union, because its secretary is Jo Grady, who…

Its quite simple. Attacking trans women does not protect cis women. Attacking the institutions that campaign for equality for trans women does not protect cis women. Treating the lives of trans people as a philosophical debate dehumanises trans people. They exist and always have.

— Jo Grady (@DrJoGrady) June 7, 2021

Anyway, not only do I want to express solidarity to all trans and non binary people, this has also got me thinking about what UCU can and should do to ensure we are even more involved in helping fight this fight and stand shoulder to shoulder with our trans and nb siblings

… Read the rest

He feels it in his very BONES.

“You don’t even have bones.”

https://twitter.com/HistoryMuppet/status/1402003688835649538… Read the rest

Well that could change things.

Police forces have been threatened with legal action over their links to Stonewall, amid concerns the controversial charity’s transgender training is impacting their impartiality.

Campaigners have written to chief constables warning they will begin legal proceedings against any force that remains part of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme beyond a “period of consideration”.

I wonder if Police Scotland is having second thoughts.

Some 250 public authorities, including about half of police forces in England and Wales, pay at least £2,500 a year for advice on gender-neutral facilities and pronouns, which leading barristers have said “misrepresents” the 2010 Equality Act.

It’s an odd thing when you think about it. Who are Stonewall to be … Read the rest

Karen Ingala Smith has a more detailed transcript of Benjamin Cohen’s disinformation about what Stonewall is advocating.

Justin Webb: Just on the point about abolishing legal provisions for single sex spaces, do you not accept that it is perfectly acceptable for women to campaign for those single sex spaces and to say that those who have changes sex should not be in them?

Benjamin Cohen…..[Evades question and talks about something else for a few moments]   and goes on to say, over again, it’s a debate about trans issues without a single trans voice being heard

Justin Webb: Hang on, number one, you don’t know anything about me; number two, I asked you a question, would you answer it?

… Read the rest

On Radio 4 this morning –

Three men talk about the way Stonewall’s conception of trans rights affects women’s rights.

At 6:35 Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, says emphatically that Stonewall is not campaigning for women’s safe spaces “not to be women-only.”

“They aren’t campaigning for that,” he says, “that’s just misinformation being spread by a homophobic and transphobic media.”

The hell it is.

Of course in the through the looking-glass world of trans dogma, what he said is true because transwomenarewomen. But in the real world where real women have to live and survive, trans women are men, and women have no way of knowing which ones are a threat, which is why women-only spaces are needed in … Read the rest

His own law firm:

During the presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the Democratic candidate, slammed his opponent, Donald J. Trump, for a highly unusual legal move: bringing in the Justice Department to represent him in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a decades-old rape allegation.

At one of their debates, Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump of treating the Justice Department like his “own law firm” in the suit, filed against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll. “What’s that all about?” he sarcastically asked.

But now…his DoJ is defending Trump against Carroll.

But on Monday night, nearly eight months after Mr. Biden’s attack, his own Justice Department essentially adopted Mr. Trump’s position, arguing that he could not be sued

… Read the rest

California is doomed.

Just two years after California celebrated the end of its last devastating drought, the state is facing another one. Snowpack has dwindled to nearly nothing, the state’s 1,500 reservoirs are at only 50% of their average levels, and federal and local agencies have begun to issue water restrictions.

Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a drought emergency in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. Meanwhile, temperatures are surging as the region braces for what is expected to be another record-breaking fire season, and scientists are sounding the alarm about the state’s readiness.

From the selfish point of view I’m dreading that fire season, because it makes the air poisonous up here in the north.

https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/1398030977931235328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1398030977931235328%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2021%2Fjun%2F07%2Fcalifornia-drought-oregon-west-climate-change… Read the rest

Oh good, now we’re going the “treat miscarriage as child murder” route.

In March, a woman miscarried in a Spokane hotel. Police investigated. They searched her room, told her they’d meet her at the hospital and found it suspicious when she did not show up. They filed a search warrant in hopes of finding her.

Considering the fetus her dependent, officers suspected that the woman could be guilty of criminal mistreatment of a child if she did not call 911 soon enough to potentially save her pregnancy, according to a warrant filed at the time.

A fetus is not a child. Abortion is still legal.

Sara Ainsworth, a Seattle attorney with national nonprofit IfWhenHow, which focuses on reproductive law,

… Read the rest

Ah yes, this is very intelligent.

But survive they did to emerge unreconstructed into a new millennium ready to return fiercely to battle in the sex wars, to remodel Clause 28, to rally for *the* family, to save the child, to reclaim victimhood, to shame the perverted.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) June 7, 2021

Yes indeed, feminism is just so old-fashioned, so yesterday, so uncool. The passage of time negates everything we knew and we have to start entirely over every…ten years? Thirty? You’ll notice her arithmetic isn’t great, since she thinks 2021 is “over 2 decades” past 1988. But anyway point is, if it’s one or two or three decades old it’s wrong. It’s wrong, it’s lame, it’s … Read the rest

Canada’s answer to Dylan Roof:

A 20-year-old man was charged Monday with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in a hit and run Sunday involving a pickup truck, in what London, Ont., police believe was a targeted attack on a Muslim family of five.

Evidence indicates it was premeditated.

The family members who died are: 

• a 74-year-old woman.
• a 46-year-old man.
• a 44-year-old woman.
• a 15-year-old girl.

The youngest, a 9-year-old boy, is in the hospital with serious injuries.

Police say that at 8:40 p.m. ET, the family was walking along Hyde Park Road and were waiting to cross the intersection, in northwest London, when the truck mounted the curb and struck them. 

Horrible.

Via … Read the rest

Sonia Sodha’s piece on Stonewall has been much discussed. I had one problem with it, in the conclusion.

Two of Stonewall’s founders have accused the charity of losing its way. An independent review by a barrister into the unlawful no-platforming of two female academics found that Essex University’s policy on supporting trans staff, reviewed by Stonewall, misrepresented the law “as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than as it is”, to the detriment of women. And following the Equality and Human Rights Commission leaving Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme, the equalities minister, Liz Truss, has reportedly pushed for government departments to follow suit.

Stonewall pretends it’s all right-wingers who object, which is just another example of how shamelessly they … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Catching them early.

Kids are more likely to understand a wide spectrum of gender…

Kids are more likely to “understand” that if you put a dress on a Ken doll he becomes a girl. Children are notoriously sexist in that they learn what they think are rules about what the sexes can and can’t do and apply them strictly.

I read one of those “gender guides” aimed at the elementary grades — with the teacher’s notes — and the first few lessons were exemplary basic feminism. Boys can play with dolls and they’re still boys; girls can roughhouse and they’re still girls. Reject gender roles and assumptions! Teachers were warned how children are … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Catching them early.

I didn’t realize I needed before I started using “them,”

Rare moment of honesty. I didn’t realize I needed…until…the need was created. Until I insisted. Why didn’t she know she needed these pronouns? Because she didn’t need them. It is a need created by media hype, trans activists, and societal contagion.

What is this need? Not the need to be non-binary; we are all pretty much that, if you talk about gender stereotypes (and in spite of all their denial, that is exactly what they are talking about). The need is to be special, to be noticed, to have everyone else paying attention to her, catering to her fragility, taking … Read the rest

This is so infuriating.

States that have passed six-week bans also have other restrictions in place, which can make the deadline even harder to meet.

– In Missouri, people must wait 72hrs between initial visit and the actual abortion.

– Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, South Carolina and Louisiana: 24hrs.

— 19thnews (@19thnews) June 6, 2021

…almost two thirds of people haven’t yet terminated their pregnancy.

…people must wait 72hrs between initial visit and the actual abortion.

On the other hand –

About three-fourths of the health care workforce is women.

An exodus of women from health care could have ramifications not just for the industry, but for the nation at large. https://t.co/qi0ZTwV8Y0

— 19thnews (@19thnews) June 6, 2021

But then … Read the rest

Maybe Jameela Jamil will see the point now?

I won’t hold my breath though.

Just we are clear. They will never mandate vasectomy for males as that would mean interfering with the bodies of males. It would NEVER happen. Only female bodies can be controlled, harmed and interfered with, by LAW. Even though the vasectomy is far lower risk than forced birth.

— ❤️ Jameela Jamil ❤️ She/Her ❤️ (@jameelajamil) June 7, 2021

Exactly. EXACTLY. This is what we’ve been telling you for months.

Notice that in this instance she’s done better than 19th News, which talks of “people” realizing they’re pregnant and a person’s last period and many people having irregular periods.… Read the rest

Even TIME is issuing Gender Instructions.

It’s only been a week since Katherine Locke’s newest book was published, and they’ve already received messages from parents of trans and nonbinary children saying how much it spoke to them.

The very first sentence, and already we see what a dog’s breakfast bespoke pronouns can create. Who is the first they? Who is the second? You’ll just have to guess!

The book, What Are Your Words?, tells the story of a kid named Ari, who is gender fluid and nonbinary and tries out different pronouns depending on how they feel on different days.

Why is this kid both gender fluid and nonbinary? And why is TIME repeating this nonsense with a … Read the rest