Here’s the audio.… Read the rest

Trump the hit man tries again.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

That’s the restrained journalistic version. The reality is that Trump bullied and leaned on Raffensperger and his lawyer in an overtly “an offer you can’t refuse” kind of way. I listened to a four minute sample from the recording on Twitter just before it (apparently) got removed from everywhere, including the Post itself. I felt sick as I listened.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged

… Read the rest

Ugly.

As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example of the divide.

Israel transports batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine deep inside the West Bank. But they are only distributed to Jewish settlers, and not the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living around them who may have to wait for weeks or months.

What does that sound like?

Israeli officials have suggested they might provide surplus vaccines to Palestinians and claim they are not responsible for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, pointing to 1990s-era interim agreements that

… Read the rest

Maya Forstater on gender fluid people in the workplace:

The case of Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover has been trumpeted as a “landmark”  employment tribunal decision recognising that people who identify as non-binary or gender-fluid can be covered by the Equality Act protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.  

The case concerns Mr/Ms Taylor, a man who began to wear women’s clothing to work in 2017 as part of a process of exploring his gender.

It makes me feel tired already. Work is work, it’s not therapy, it’s not your living room, it’s not a place to “explore” your anything. Do your exploring and navel-gazing and self-actualizing and diary-keeping and mirror gazing on your own time, away from the job and … Read the rest

Republicans continue the effort to break what’s left of democracy in the US.

Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where results are contested by Donald Trump’s campaign, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit is completed”.

Which is anti-democracy, because they’re “contested” because Trump wants to steal the election. It’s like going into someone else’s house and screaming “This house is mine!!!” and then announcing that the ownership of the house is contested.

Cruz and Johnson were joined in issuing a statement on Saturday by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike

… Read the rest

It started earlier. It started Thursday.

Too many of you fail to rage daily about transphobia when as everyone knows it’s BY FAR the most urgent brand of phobia in the entire world. Fear and hatred of women, of infidels, of other races, of immigrants, of workers, of lesbians and gays, of foreigners, of Jews, of socialists, of witches – all those are trivial compared to transphobia.

And of course by transphobes he means not people who harass others in public places, but people who disagree with the truth claims about men who say they are women and women who say they are men.

I doubt that he has the power to make gender skeptics unwelcome anywhere he works (how … Read the rest

BLOCK EVERYONE. Just to be on the safe side.

Dominic Berry is (according to his profile) a historian and philosopher of science.

Yeesh. He cares so much that he goes to the trouble of figuring out how many of his followers also follow Nigel, and he then tries to use that knowledge as a cudgel to convince them to stop following Nigel. I in that situation would of course stop following the dictatorial intrusive cudgel-waver instead. I would first tell him off for being so intrusive and dictatorial.

And this goon is a philosopher.

https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1345333853112721409

Ah good, they’re doing that very thing.

“You must choose! You must choose between following Warburton or following me!”

“Ok bud, that’s an easy … Read the rest

First,

Next,

I’m proud to have several colleagues @OU_Philosophy with skin in different gender debates. As we support all of them & to ensure fair debate, we don’t take sides from our departmental account. I removed yesterday’s tweet in support & out of respect of all my esteemed colleagues.

— Manuel Dries (@manueldries) January 1, 2021

A couple of weeks ago,

.@SophieGraceCha1 has spent 3 years writing a book on epiphanies ('wow' or 'euraka' moments) for @OUPAcademic as part of a @LeverhulmeTrust Major Research Fellowship.

Watch her give a talk on it here to Barnes Philosophy Club: https://t.co/uJZjWRPtyS pic.twitter.com/Q9kZFT6Yr5

— Open Uni Philosophy (@OU_Philosophy) December 15, 2020

https://twitter.com/OU_Philosophy/status/1338878340254625793

So it’s “taking sides” to congratulate Kathleen Stock on an honour, but … Read the rest

Allison Bailey is deeply unimpressed by Judith Butler.

1/ Judith Butler once again demonstrating that a minority of women are capable of being woman-hating, penis pandering, vicious zealots. All the while imagining that they’re being deliciously transgressive.

Woman-hatred is not new. It’s not radical. It’s just disgraceful. https://t.co/NQ8ksIFJpL

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) January 1, 2021

3/ Butler accuses JKR & therefore all survivors of having “fostered hatred & misunderstanding & perhaps capitalised on a history of sexual trauma”.

It‘s a special kind of woman that would say such a thing, of another named woman, who has been bombarded with threats & abuse.

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) January 1, 2021

4/ Pay attention. Butler & her ilk are driving this attack

… Read the rest

Feminist “icon” Judith Butler is shitting on women from a great height. Very iconic.

https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345057369949167624 https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345108677720760321 https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345125890544570369 https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1345096279446212613

Sexual trauma as something scheming, duplicitous women "capitalise on". Honestly, that is the most disgusting, rape-apologist trope and to hear it from a 'feminist' professor is so demoralising.

— Ellen Pasternack (@pastasnack_e) January 1, 2021

It is. It’s stunningly disgusting.… Read the rest

Party? What party?

Guests who paid four-figures for tickets to President Donald Trump’s annual New Year’s Eve party were left to party with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, his two adult sons and various figures from the conservative media — none of whom wore masks — after the President made a last-minute decision to ditch the event and return to Washington.

No refunds, folks. In fact, kindly donate another four figures, or why not make it five, to my campaign to remain president for all eternity and to buy more ice cream for me.

No official explanation for the President’s early departure from Mar-a-Lago was given, though he remains consumed with efforts to overturn the election results and tensions are

… Read the rest

Also –

Piecing the news together this morning and anyone bragging about getting an OBE looks like a right mug to a lot of people who think the empire was bad actually

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

“Everybody loves a bit of eugenics/moral panic” but to the tune of “maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner”

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

But on the other hand –

trying to work out if I can set this and the whole class of Dolezaling white women up as an intro example or it’ll just have to be some paper in it’s own right?!

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

So a white woman saying she’s black is still … Read the rest

Also –

I can’t decide whether this is an old or new equation:

Services to higher education
=
Promotion of transphobia

— Feminist Killjoy (@SaraNAhmed) December 31, 2020

The effort to mainstream transphobia in universities in the UK needs to be met with every resistance we can think of and enact. I am speaking as a cis lesbian feminist of colour who chooses her trans siblings every second of every day over others.

— Feminist Killjoy (@SaraNAhmed) December 31, 2020

That last sentence in particular – I wonder about it. It’s typical enough, and I wonder about it. She “chooses her trans siblings every second of every day over others.” Why? It’s typical in the prioritization, and I wonder why … Read the rest

The bit where they said it and the bit where they took it back.

https://twitter.com/TriciaFrasman/status/1344966322673905664

The answer seems to be:

I’m proud to have several colleagues @OU_Philosophy with skin in different gender debates. As we support all of them & to ensure fair debate, we don’t take sides from our departmental account. I removed yesterday’s tweet in support & out of respect of all my esteemed colleagues.

— Manuel Dries (@manueldries) January 1, 2021

Except that’s not how that works, is it.

This is really sad. Congratulating someone on getting an honour is not taking sides in any particular debate on which they write.

Out of respect? I think you mean out of fear. pic.twitter.com/Iebs67bwvy

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) January

… Read the rest

This William Clare Roberts fella wrote a long blog post in May 2019 responding to that Medium piece by a bunch of pesky feminist women.

This is a response to the essay published on Medium yesterday by Sophie Allen, Jane Clare Jones, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, and Kathleen Stock.

He doesn’t link to the essay itself, which is bad form.

I am not a woman. I am not trans. I am a feminist – my earliest conversion experience was reading Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. I love very dearly a little trans girl who I hope grows up in a world where she is safe and free, or at least has a

… Read the rest

Some academics are not happy about Kathleen Stock’s OBE.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1344580259862224899

I can usually work out why someone has received an award, even if I don’t like them or don’t think they should get it. This? I’ve got nothing, except for the obvious. It’s honestly sickening.

— Dr. Bodie A. Ashton (@manwithoutatan) December 31, 2020

You cannot “serve higher education” if you actively make HE a hostile environment for colleagues and students, especially those in a disproportionately vulnerable segment of society.

— Dr. Bodie A. Ashton (@manwithoutatan) December 31, 2020

Says, as usual, a man complaining about a woman getting recognition for defending the rights of women. It seems like only yesterday that men who wanted to be seen as progressive … Read the rest

Janice Turner reviews Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage:

In both the US and Britain, Shrier shows, adolescent girls have record levels of anxiety and clinical depression, expressed in spiralling rates of self-harm, anorexia and suicidal thoughts. Overprotective modern parenting has rendered girls less resilient while the iPhone in their pocket tells them their bodies fail Instagram’s feminine ideals and shows them graphic pornography in which women are debased. No wonder the geeky or less “girlie” girls we once called tomboys, especially those who are becoming aware they are attracted to other girls, “flee womanhood”, as Shrier puts it, “like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination”.

The girls she describes — like those

… Read the rest

It’s so shaming.

2 House Republicans tell me they expect as of now that at least 140 Republican Members of the House will on Jan 6 object to and vote against the Electoral College results showing President-elect Biden won

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 31, 2020

Meaning, if they had their druthers, the election would be thrown out and they would make Trump the winner. They would like to cancel a presidential election entirely, and impose a criminal corrupt sadistic evil incompetent man on us for another four years…during a lethal pandemic which he has made vastly more lethal than it had to be.

Shaming.

Jake Tapper at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s Republican allies have virtually zero chance of

… Read the rest

What is this “toxic masculinity”? Summoning Google to assist I get:

Toxic masculinity involves cultural pressures for men to behave in a certain way. And it’s likely this affects all boys and men in some fashion.

Toxic masculinity refers to the notion that some people’s idea of “manliness” perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression.

Domination of what, though? Primarily women, surely. Men jostle for domination among themselves, but domination of women is deeply ingrained. It’s odd to mention homophobia but not sexism.

This idea that men need to act tough and avoid showing all emotions can be harmful to their mental health and can have serious consequences for society, which is how it became known as “toxic masculinity.”

“Their mental … Read the rest

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has news on Zara Kay:

Zara Kay, an Australian citizen and founder of Faithless Hijabi, was summoned to the Dar es-Salaam Oysterbay Police Station on 28 December 2020 and was held in police custody for 32 hours without an initial clear indication of charges.

Zara is a well-known ex-Muslim and women’s rights activist. Faithless Hijabi, which she founded in 2018, supports women who have been ostracised or abused for leaving Islam. Whilst in police custody, Zara was asked about the work of her organisation and why she left Islam.

Farking hell can you imagine? Being summoned to a police station, detained for 32 hours, and interrogated about your views on religion? As if … Read the rest