What’s NARAL doing sharing this?

Of course women (and girls) are the only people who get abortions. What is a man going to do with an abortion? Men don’t get abortions, women do. The reasons are too obvious to spell out.

You can’t “remind” people of nonsense. “Reminder that owls aren’t the only rabbits who get shovels!” Can’t remind me of that because I never knew it because it’s a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers. … Read the rest

Meghan Murphy is underwhelmed by Andrew Sullivan’s urging us to “compromise.”

The problem begins with the premise: that the category of “trans” is either a definable or rational category, distinguishable from those who do not identify as “trans.” Often, explaining that there is no such thing as a “trans person” is (disingenuously, in my opinion) interpreted to mean I wish to “deny the existence” of people who identify as trans. I do not. I am well aware there are people in this world who identify as transgender or who have attempted to “transition” to the opposite sex or gender. It is the category itself that makes no sense. Anyone could be trans, should they choose to claim it. It means

… Read the rest

Scientific American tries to tell us that “youth” who identify as trans need to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, yes need I tell you. It’s science.

This week Arkansas became the first state to ban physicians from giving hormones or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender people under age 18. Doctors who do so could be stripped of their licenses and sued. The law is called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act…

…

The state senate sponsor of the Arkansas bill, Alan Clark, has said that puberty blockers and hormone treatments are “at best experimental and at worst a serious threat to a child’s welfare.” But medical and scientific organizations say his claim is wrong.

We are given the … Read the rest

But hey at least it’s nothing to do with social contagion, so that’s good.

There is no such thing as rapid onset gender dysphoria. There is no social contagion.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) April 12, 2021

I guess Strangio has access to the minds of all people who identify as trans, and thus knows all their thoughts and where the thoughts came from. Must be a lot to keep track of.… Read the rest

Huh. I thought Dawkins wouldn’t backtrack, but…wrong again.

Funny. It was always easy for him to brush off feminist women who disagreed with him, but trans women? Not so much, I guess.

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 12, 2021

… Read the rest

So there can be such a thing as too much deference? Who knew?!

The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history, as viewers expressed their annoyance that shows such as EastEnders and MasterChef were replaced with royal tributes.

At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.

BBC One and BBC Two dedicated Friday evening’s programming to Philip, and their ratings fell as viewers switched off altogether, turned to streaming services or watched shows such as Gogglebox on Channel 4.

But but but but … Read the rest

Republican slapstick:

In an email on Monday morning, the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced that its chairman, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), presented Trump with its first-ever “Champion for Freedom Award.” The NRSC said that the award is given to conservative leaders who work “tirelessly” to “stop the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”

…

Trump was handed the award on the same weekend that he rambled on about his usual grievances at the RNC’s spring donor retreat while delivering remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The former president, however, reportedly saved his most incendiary insults for McConnell, who he derided as a “dumb son of a bitch” for not opposing the November election results.

Well it doesn’t get much more freedom than that.… Read the rest

Well, no.

https://twitter.com/TessTanenbaum/status/1381025486059360258

Where to begin. “Gender affirming care” isn’t a medical thing, it’s a political thing disguised as medical. There’s no such thing as “gender affirming care.” Saying he means it “in the most literal and serious sense” is ludicrous: not prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers can’t possibly be seen as literal (and serious) genocide. It’s not even literal withholding of life-saving medical care, which itself couldn’t be called genocide without a lot of other factors added. It’s not even that, and on the contrary, it’s intended to avoid risky interventions in natural puberty. There’s a heated debate about whether cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are harmless or not, about whether they’re harmful or not, about whether they … Read the rest

Peter Tatchell orders women to let men into spaces reserved for us.

Excluding trans women from women’s spaces because of physical or sexual violence by a tiny unrepresentative minority is like banning all Muslims because of terrorist acts by a handful of extremists. SO WRONG!

So then not allowing men into women’s spaces because of violence by a minority is also like “banning all Muslims because of terrorist acts by a handful of extremists”? So then women don’t have a right to women-only spaces at all, ever, no matter what? Do women have to give birth in public then? Do we all have to do everything in public and leave all our doors and windows open?

In other words Peter … Read the rest

Be more inclusive by never mentioning mothers or fathers.

Schools and sporting groups in Victoria will be told to  avoid terms like “mum”, “dad”, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” as part of a push to curb the dropout and suicide rates of LGBTQI+ young people.

Here’s a surprising fact: lesbians and gay men can have mothers and fathers. I don’t think lesbians and gay men object to the words “mother” and “father.” (I don’t know why schools are talking about “mum” and “dad” instead of “mother” and “father”; mum and dad are personal names, which schools shouldn’t be using for anyone, because it’s intrusive and weird. “Mum” and “dad” are not nouns, they’re family nicknames.)

The North Western Melbourne Primary Health

… Read the rest

Genevive Gluck at Glinner’s site on the core reversal:

In 2018, Me Too campaigner Rose McGowan was at a Barnes and Noble bookshop in New York promoting her memoir Brave, which details the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. During a question and answer session, as Rose was discussing her grief and recovery, a trans-identified male heckled her from the crowd, saying, “We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. Trans women are in men’s prisons, and what have you done for them?”

The viral video depicts a trans-identifying male with hair dyed pink, wearing a pale pink hoodie, standing among a crowd of seated patrons

… Read the rest

The magic is gone.

Several Republican leaders on Sunday expressed concern at incendiary comments made by former President Donald Trump during a speech Saturday night at a Republican National Committee donor retreat.

Incendiary comments were fine as long as he was squatting in the White House, but now that he’s the official loser, they’re discovering an uncomfortable level of heat.

The former president went off-script in a roughly 50-minute keynote speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, ripping into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, even calling him a “dumb son of a bitch.” Trump also took aim at former Vice President Mike Pence — saying he was “disappointed” in him for not fighting the certification of the

… Read the rest

Ruth Smeeth, CEO of Index on Censorship, complains of polarization…a complaint I always find rather dull and beside the point. “X is for torture and Y is against it; oh no the polarization!” It seems especially beside the point for an organization whose title and purpose is to oppose censorship. It’s not literal censorship to say stop being so polar, but it is a form of pressure to say different things in a different way.

Of course, the reality is this has always been part of our political discourse. There is a healthy tradition of challenge in our public space. But…my concern is it is no longer on the fringes of our national conversations, it now dominates and the

… Read the rest

Young Americans for Freedom made the mistake of sneering at the observation that racism is built into many US highways, thus giving a lot of people the opportunity to educate onlookers about the well-documented fact that racism is built into many US highways. Own goal.

This is not parody. pic.twitter.com/bzbplAnfqO

— YAF (@yaf) April 10, 2021

No, they’re right, it’s not parody, and it’s true.

Not just in NYC. In Denver, I-70 cut off a community called Swansea from the rest of the city

— Amy H (@TheRufusFiles) April 11, 2021

That thing about roads designed not to allow buses? That’s closely tied to voter suppression, too. The suppressionist bills that limit voting places are helped along by extra difficulty … Read the rest

He’s still alive, but it was a near thing.

A second lieutenant in the US army is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop last December in which the officers drew their guns, pointed them at him and used a slang term to suggest he was facing execution before pepper-spraying him and knocking him to the ground.

Body camera footage shows Caron Nazario, who is Black and Latino, dressed in uniform and with his hands held in the air outside the driver’s window as he tells the armed officers he is “honestly afraid to get out” of his SUV.

But they must have had a good reason for the traffic stop, right?

No.

Daniel Crocker, a Windsor

… Read the rest

At A Blog of One’s Own:

On 11 March, Legal Feminist (a collective of feminist lawyers, of which I am a member: tweeting from @legalfeminist and blogging at legalfeminst.org.uk) tweeted this:

Torrey Peters, who identifies as a woman, has been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Peters wrote this: pic.twitter.com/cguNCJX9a2

— Legal Feminist (@legalfeminist) March 11, 2021

That’s from a pre-prize novella Peters wrote called The Masker.

The Masker isn’t a one-off: there’s a genre. It’s called “sissy porn,” and “forced feminisation” is a popular trope among aficionados^[2]. It is a manifestation of a phenomenon known as autogynephilia: a tendency in some heterosexual males to be aroused by the thought or image of themselves as

… Read the rest

They just will not report on this subject honestly.

A protest against trans health-care scheduled this weekend in downtown Vancouver has reignited a debate pitting the protection of vulnerable youth against the right to free speech.

It’s not a “protest against trans health-care.” Nobody is campaigning to prevent trans people from getting health care. The issue is not health care at all, it’s health-compromising body modifications to match the sex one is not. It’s also not a matter of trying to block the protection of vulnerable youth. Nobody is demanding the free speech right to keep vulnerable youth from being protected.

Vancouver social justice lawyer Adrienne Smith fears the April 10 event will include transphobic rhetoric that contributes

… Read the rest

Andy Lewis on confusion between ontology and epistemology of sex

Much confusion appears to exist in popular discussion about the nature of sex. This has political importance at the moment, most visibly in recognition of people with trans identities in law and society. Confusions abound around conflations of the terms sex and gender, but, most fundamentally, about what a sex is, and what it means for an organism, animal or human, to have a sex. What is a sexed body? How can we tell what sex an organism is? Clear responses to these questions are so often lacking. And without that, policy, law and social arrangements are likely to be incoherent and unjust.

Much of that lack of clarity is … Read the rest

McKinnon did his CNN bit. He’s highly excited.

https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1380896144801341441

CNN calls him Associate Professor of Philosophy at College of Charleston, which is misleading since he’s “quit” [or been told to quit or be fired, or just plain been fired] and will be gone as of May 15 and has been on sabbatical and then medical leave all this year.

His fans are gloating at his…erm…whatever this is.

https://twitter.com/DaniD2021/status/1380897441025814534

Anyway. Point is, things have to be arranged to suit McKinnon. That’s all you need to understand about trans women in sport.

https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1380903237277077505

There you go. If transgender people had their own sports then McKinnon would literally have no one to race against, and we can’t have that, so all of … Read the rest

Oh look, a provocation from Dawkins that doesn’t make me roll my eyes.

In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as.

Discuss.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 10, 2021

Been discussing for several years now. Progress slow.

"the argument that we cannot say what an adult is because of the difference between a biological and legal definition sounds like a last ditch plea in a paedophile trial."
Spot on!

— Bea Jaspert (@hogotheforsaken) April 10, 2021

https://twitter.com/JudyWeb92176381/status/1380863145883930626

It’s outrageous that children are … Read the rest