One of the comments allowed to remain on the American Booksellers Association’s Facebook post yesterday captures the eccentric nature of the ideology:

The book is a ploy for people to see gender dysphoria as a trend rather than a legitimate feeling. It’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”. Someone’s gender identity is not a debate. It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based or crap science or psychology. The simple answer to the author’s “mysterious” question as to why gender dysphoria is more widely acknowledged is because society is finally opening up to discuss and talk about it. Not because it didn’t ever exist before. Society has purposefully been heteronormative and forced people with gender

… Read the rest

It’s a fierce competition for who can shout the loudest.

The American Booksellers Association is facing withering criticism from booksellers after walking back its promotion of an anti-trans title to member bookstores. Among the promotional items included in the ABA July “white box” mailing sent to 750 bookstores, the organization included a copy of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, as well as a sell sheet.

So Publishers Weekly poisons the well in the first sentence (and the title) by calling the book “anti-trans.” What does “anti-trans” mean? It implies, and I think is generally taken to mean, hostile to trans people, but usually the subject is the truth claims about what “trans” means … Read the rest

David Aaronovitch reviews Helen Joyce’s Trans:

I didn’t look too closely when in 2015 a Conservative administration proposed changing the law on gender recognition. A few trans people want more easily to get official confirmation for the new gender they have become? Well, I thought, that’s probably OK. No skin off any part of me.

Then the issue appeared to morph into a different kind of conflict. It had clearly somewhere along the line become impermissible for those who thought that there was something ineluctable about biological sex to say so. It wasn’t whether they were correct or mistaken on the subject that was in question, but their right even to express their view.

That had definitely happened by … Read the rest

Trump and “like a dog” – Philip Rucker in the Post in 2018:

In President Trump’s singular lexicon, there is no more vicious put-down than likening an adversary to a dog.

“Choked like a dog.”

“Fired like a dog.”

“Sweat like a dog.”

Then there is what Trump said Tuesday of Omarosa Manigault Newman, his former reality television protege and White House staffer who is now scorned and telling all in her new book, “Unhinged,” and accompanying media tour.

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out,” Trump tweeted. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

… Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal:

The American Booksellers Association apologized Wednesday for a “terrible” and “serious, violent incident.” What dastardly offense did it commit? The profound trauma occurred this month when the trade group dedicated to selling books sent out a paperback copy of a book some of its members don’t like.

So its members have all liked every single book the ABA has ever sent out? This shocking violence of sending one that some didn’t like is a brand new event in the world?

No, it’s not that, it’s that Abigail Shrier’s book is different. It’s violent enough to say that some girls who say they are trans are just caught up in a fad.

Ms. Shrier’s book

… Read the rest

And they’ve also deleted dissenting comments from the Facebook post, and blocked some people from commenting – like me, for instance.

What a shower of class traitors and scabs and informers. What a complete shit-show.… Read the rest

Pathetic and shameful.… Read the rest

Well it’s another Streisand effect – the ABA’s idiotic groveling apology has resulted in Shrier’s book trending on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1415711631267532802

It would be a real shame if people bought the book the American Booksellers Association is calling "anti-trans" and "violent." Do not click this link and buy this book unless you are a bigot.https://t.co/0HTmYpGkzK https://t.co/SUOMwWuv5V

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 15, 2021

.@AbigailShrier wrote a great book. Why don't you buy a copy? https://t.co/r8gfASLlNo

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) July 15, 2021

Here's the book the American Booksellers' Association thinks is a form of violence. Buy it. https://t.co/UwDQkLzVPS

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 15, 2021

… Read the rest

First, CNN reported:

The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts [from] an upcoming book obtained by CNN.

The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one by one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.

…

Milley viewed Trump as “the classic authoritarian leader

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I hate to cite the Daily Wire but they took the trouble to ask the Toronto police about that “woman” whose photograph makes it so obvious that he’s a man.

In a follow-up email, The Daily Wire asked the department to confirm Ruby’s biological sex and to “please indicate if the suspect was booked in a male or female facility.”

Toronto Police Service’s Meaghan Gray replied (emphasis added):

Your question, and the answer, are irrelevant to our investigation. Our focus is on the sexual assault of a child and identifying any additional victims. The best way to do that is to share information with the public that would assist them with recognizing the person involved, such as a name and

… Read the rest

The American Booksellers Association also has that stupid crawling lying apology on its Facebook page, but this one is signed.

Again, from the section of the ABA website that celebrates and promotes Banned Books Week:

Banned Books Week was founded in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, students, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.

Unless they’re Abigail Shrier’s ideas. That’s entirely different. Then the ideas become “violent.”… Read the rest

The American Booksellers Association has a website.

On that website it has a section for…Banned Books Week.

I’m not making it up.

The most recent item is April 13:

Lovely.

But, so…why are they now screaming that sending Abigail Shrier’s book out to booksellers is “violent” and in need of prompt and searching atonement?

On April 13, the Banned Books Week Coalition announced that Jason Reynolds has been named the inaugural Honorary Chair for Banned Books Week 2021. The New York Times bestselling author will headline the annual celebration of the right to read, which takes place September 26–October 2, 2021, and features the theme: Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us.

A couple of months away. … Read the rest

What has happened to the grownups? This is the second time in as many days I’ve asked that.

https://twitter.com/ABAbook/status/1415399389615595520

A “violent” incident – that’s teenager talk, it’s the worst kind of idiot-Twitter talk, it’s frenzied catastrophizing tantrum talk.

https://twitter.com/ABAbook/status/1415399393897984001

Executions? Torture? Banishment?

If there were a Hall of Fame for capitulations to Woke bullies, the American Booksellers Association is hereby inducted.

The "serious, violent incident" they perpetrated? Including my book in a large box of new book samples sent out to independent booksellers. https://t.co/SgnKvPy4AU

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) July 15, 2021

https://twitter.com/FeralQuokka/status/1415707500490465280 … Read the rest

Women not wheeshting.

The more of us there, the harder it is for them. Hence the desperation.

They tried threats, attacks on employment, outright lies about funding & beliefs but more & more women are standing up.

They are trying legislation, but we're standing up to that too.#WomenWontWheesht

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) July 15, 2021

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1415635116420894724

You are both a credit to your sex xxxxxx

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) July 15, 2021

There are lots of these.… Read the rest

Sometimes it turns out to be a mistake to tell women to shut up about women and their rights.

Judging by the tsunami of supportive emails and letters I've received, if women learned anything from the response to my post it wasn't that they should sit down and shut up. Solidarity to the brave and fabulous @millihill (and I love your books, by the way!) pic.twitter.com/dLdsYR73Qd

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 15, 2021

There is something common with men who get angry at women's words and ideas, who threaten that women should have learnt a lesson and remain silent… they sit on the domestic violence spectrum & share the same view of women as abusers. https://t.co/ePUJ2OhUIn

— Dr EM (@PankhurstEM)

… Read the rest

It’s about the conflict over “trans rights”:

Siân Berry is to quit as leader of the Greens, citing conflict within the party over transgender rights and claiming it had been a “failure of leadership” on her part that the party was sending “mixed messages”.

What are transgender rights though? That’s the problem, isn’t it – they turn out to be a very peculiar form of “rights,” that are not really rights at all.

“There is now an inconsistency between the sincere promise to fight for trans rights and inclusion in my work and the message sent by the party’s choice of frontbench representatives,” she said.

Again, that’s a trick claim. Normally “inclusion” means just not invidious exclusion for bad, … Read the rest

This is what I keep wondering – how is it ok for a tv personality to keep killing people by using his tv celebrity to tell people not to get vaccinated?

https://twitter.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/1415444618712272898… Read the rest

The Green Party is more anti-women than most.

https://twitter.com/paul_smortions/status/1415366563801313288

It’s a bit confusing because The Spectator article, by Julie Bindel, is from March – maybe there was a second vote this week? That went the same way? From the article:

At the Green party spring conference this weekend, a motion which sought to introduce a party policy on women’s sex-based rights was defeated. A whopping 289 delegates (out of 521) voted to not include biological females in the party’s list of oppressed groups.

Thus making official the weirdness I keep pointing out: that women are being treated as the privileged sex these days, the dominant sex, the exploiter sex, the sex that already has it made and needs to … Read the rest

Add to heat domes and entire towns burning to the ground and the Colorado River drying up and the death of the Great Barrier Reef: the moon’s wobble.

The world faces an onslaught of coastal flooding starting in the mid-2030s due to a “wobble” in the moon’s orbit, Nasa has warned.

Numbers of floods could quadruple as the gravitational effects of the lunar cycle combine with climate change to produce “a decade of dramatic increases” in water disasters.

The space agency said coastal cities would experience “rapidly increasing high-tide floods” and they would occur in “clusters” lasting a month or longer.

The wobble is regular and has been known about since 1728, but now it’s in addition to rising … Read the rest

Depressing to watch.

I see the TERFs have arrived in my TL. Thank you for identifying yourself so I can block you.#ConsequencesOfFreeSpeech

— John Amaechi OBE (@JohnAmaechi) July 14, 2021

this is what I'm talking about. What has being trans to do with the abuse? You're terrible.

— John Amaechi OBE (@JohnAmaechi) July 14, 2021

What being trans has to do with the reporting on the abuse is that the news outlet called a violent man who raped a child a woman. We are not “terrible” for objecting to that!

oh and TERF… no thanks.

— John Amaechi OBE (@JohnAmaechi) July 14, 2021

No, I know who you are… you aren't fooling anyone.

— John Amaechi OBE (@JohnAmaechi) July

… Read the rest