Oh dear, we’re unacceptable.

In the past weeks there has been an unacceptable upsurge in Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) and transphobic talking points as well as false narratives being expressed within Irish media.

Unacceptable. I guess that means we should be locked up and deprived of all means of communication?

This is happening while the trans community is currently facing massive disruption in the implementation of healthcare reforms, including the potential collapse of healthcare for trans children and teenagers.

It’s not healthcare though. It’s destructive quackery. Women saying that one’s sex can’t be taken off the way one takes off a jacket does not cause the collapse of actual healthcare – the medical kind – for anyone, including children … Read the rest

Oh gee, it would be a little bit unpleasant if Trump staged a coup.

I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while. I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell / Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top. https://t.co/NxjC0sUrzI

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) December 19, 2020

NEW: Senior Trump administration officials are increasingly alarmed that President Trump might unleash — and abuse — the power of government in an effort to overturn the clear result of the election. https://t.co/rYJhRw7MKx

— Axios (@axios) December 19, 2020

Got it; so do we really have to stand around looking helpless while he continues to do this? Wouldn’t it maybe … Read the rest

Time for a quick demo at Target!

Anti-maskers in Arizona invade a Target pic.twitter.com/qMDsG6jjlA

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 18, 2020

A group of about 30 people spray their aerosol all over the entrance to a Target store and then depart.

Is that departing line “Bye retards!” or “Buy retards!”? It is a store, after all, and it does sell a large array of objects.… Read the rest

The editor who wrote the headline made a weird choice – Trump Discussed Naming Campaign Lawyer as zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I think it would have been more eye-catching to focus on the Trump attempting a coup part, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway. The campaign lawyer bit is also batshit, to be fair.

President Trump on Friday discussed making Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed a series of conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, a special counsel investigating voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

Well duh. Only someone who traffics in batshit conspiracy theories is going to believe in the “voter fraud” myth.

Most

… Read the rest

Remember, kids, everything is worse for trans people – earthquakes, racism, fleas, pandemics, misogyny, Starbucks, everything. Miscarriages? Worse for trans people, obviously.

A 32-year-old man with obesity, Sam, arrived at the emergency room to be treated for intermittent abdominal pain that had been going on for 8 hours, according to a case described in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019.

We can see where this is going already.

A triage nurse chalked this up to his “untreated chronic hypertension” and designated his symptoms as “nonurgent.”

Sam told the nurse that he was transgender, had taken a pregnancy test that was positive, had not menstruated in years, and had “peed himself” earlier that day. Yet

… Read the rest

Joe Biden wants to punch him out but Jill Biden says nope.

“That was such a surprise,” she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, seated next to her husband, Joe Biden. “It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it.”

Why did he call her “kiddo”? It seems so over the top – like caricaturing his own caricature. The whole thing was facetious, but it’s that kind of facetious that is just a phony pretense of not really being insulting because aw come on aincha got no sense of humor? Jokey-insulting. So why … Read the rest

Why not shepherds? Priests? Angels?

America’s newest branch of the military is about to celebrate the end of its first year, and now members of the Space Force will have something to call each other.

Vice President Mike Pence announced on Friday that members will be called “guardians.”

On the one hand it sounds a bit fascist, and on the other hand it sounds soppy. We’re not orphans, we don’t need “guardians.”

“It is my honor on behalf of the president of the United States to announce that henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as guardians,” Pence told an audience at the White House. “Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and guardians will be

… Read the rest

Trump is soothing his poor bruised ego with the thick poultice of cash he’s fooled a lot of people into giving him.

Deflated by a loss he has yet to acknowledge, Mr. Trump has cushioned the blow by coaxing huge sums of money from his loyal supporters — often under dubious pretenses — raising roughly $250 million since Election Day along with the national party.

Not bad as a consolation prize.

His astonishing talent for raising money by being a flaming asshole means he is still the boss of the Republicans.

Mr. Trump has long acted with few inhibitions when it comes to spending other people’s money, and he has spent millions of campaign dollars on his own family businesses

… Read the rest

I’m not the only one who finds it absurd that Jolyon Maugham says judges must not meddle with what parents decide is best for their children.

https://twitter.com/oliverburkeman/status/1340007739389558785

How can he be? If he thinks for even a second? Some parents are abusive. Some are mentally ill. Some are alcoholics. Some are addicted to drugs that render them incapable. Some are religious fanatics. Some are sadists. The law sometimes has to protect children from their own parents. Maugham is a barrister; he can’t possibly be unaware of that fact.

While I was in rehab recovering from heroin addiction, my daughter was made a ward of court and put in the care of my parents.
At that time, the judge knew better

… Read the rest

The Guardian reports:

One of the Scottish Greens’ most prominent MSPs has resigned abruptly from the party, citing its “intolerance” to open discussion of potential conflicts between women’s and transgender rights.

Andy Wightman, the Scottish Greens’ list member for Lothian region and a highly respected campaigner for tenants’ rights and land reform, stated in his resignation letter published on Friday afternoon: “Some of the language, approaches and postures of the party and its spokespeople have been provocative, alienating and confrontational for many women and men”.

It’s the part about treating women’s rights as entirely secondary to trans rights that gets on our nerves. That and all the rest of it, but it’s rooted in this bizarre assumption that we … Read the rest

Lesson time!

Your pronouns reflect…you!… Read the rest

It’s the old “feminism is just victimhood” trope.

https://twitter.com/hatpinwoman/status/1339628416170115072

Uh huh. It’s that simple. Just be full and capable and awesome and there will be no arbitrary unjust obstacles! Or maybe there will, but that means you get to overcome them and be better than everyone else. Yay we’re better than everyone else! Unjust obstacles are a good thing because we get to look so much more capable by overcoming them.

https://twitter.com/Julio_Vichon/status/1339541425084575747

So…there are unjust obstacles, but they are thrown in front of trans people only. Women just sail through one open door after another, the bitches.… Read the rest

Let them eat…grouse? Truffles? Caviar? Foie gras? Saffron-infused fish and chips?

Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Unicef of “playing politics” after the charity launched a campaign to help feed children in the UK.

The Tory MP said the charity was meant to look after people in the poorest countries and should be “ashamed”.

It comes after Unicef said it would pledge £25,000 to a south London charity to help supply breakfast boxes over the Christmas holidays.

Unicef said every child deserves to “thrive” no matter where they are born.

Surely even Jacob Rees-Mogg can grasp that living in a rich country is compatible with being personally very poor. If you live in a rich country with crap social services … Read the rest

I keep thinking “imagine trying this bullshit with race – imagine white guys saying they ‘identify as’ black and trying to bully black people into agreeing.” Now we can see an actual example in the wild.

.@Critic_Speak asked me to contribute to a podcast discussion around the subject of race in the Welsh Arts scene.

They wanted me to talk about how I might have suffered, as a Black artist, from the gatekeeping White hierarchy that has dominated Welsh culture forever.

Instead/ https://t.co/QIuO58NaNb

— Sonya Douglas (@SonyaDouglas) December 17, 2020

That is, simply, How Do I Live?

How do I live when women and girls are subjected to such violence on their bodies, their psychology, their education and choices?

… Read the rest

Trump longs and craves and pines and yearns to see a special counsel investigate something something something Hunter Biden, but it’s a little tricky in the last weeks of a lame duck presidency.

President Donald Trump is pushing extensively for the appointment of special counsels to separately investigate his baseless allegations of voter fraud and allegations surrounding Hunter Biden, the son of the President-elect, according to people familiar with the matter.

I wonder if it ever occurs to him that an investigation of his baseless allegations would simply underline the fact that they’re baseless. “Please please please investigate my fake claims! You’re sure to find something even though my claims are fake!!”

Justice Department rules say a special counsel must

… Read the rest

Beware “wellness.” It’s always bullshit and sometimes it’s worse than that.

Another day, another ‘clean eating’ instagramer posting images of toxic flowers on food.

It may not contain dairy or gluten *gasp* but it does contain the toxic plant alkaloid, lycorine.

Symptoms: Itching, swelling, (and in quantity) nausea, vomiting & convulsions. pic.twitter.com/CH4zLMnS1i

— James A Wong (@Botanygeek) January 28, 2018

From 2018 but “wellness” promoters who tell us to poison ourselves haven’t gone away yet.

Yes, whilst this “pudding” is free from gluten and the milk we’ve drunk for centuries, any health benefits would be heavily offset by the terrible diarrhea you would likely get from lycorine, found in the deadly Narcissus flowers sat prettily atop the glass. You

… Read the rest

I missed this news item from DC a couple of years ago:

The Cuba Libre restaurant in Penn Quarter has agreed to institute civil rights training for employees and pay a $7,000 fine following an incident in June in which two staff members attempted to prevent a transgender woman from using the ladies bathroom.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced today that his office had reached a settlement with the Washington location of the chain following an investigation that found Cuba Libre DC violated the city’s Human Rights Act by discriminating against Charlotte Clymer’s gender identity and failing to educate its employees on customers’ rights.

Customers’ rights? Or customers who are trans women’s rights. Clearly women’s rights are not … Read the rest

The Great Man quotes himself.

"I've moved a long way in my conceptualisation of what privilege really means, and quite how extraordinarily stupid and thoughtless and arrogant my tribe can be" https://t.co/TjJbNspeav

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 15, 2020

He hasn’t though. Or maybe he has, in the sense that he was even worse before. I don’t know, I didn’t know of him before. But in the sense of actually becoming thoughtful and not arrogant? No. No, there he has failed utterly.

In fact, amusingly, the very act of tweeting this vain “Look how awesome I am” self-quotation demonstrates that failure. His habit of blocking anyone who disagrees with him no matter how politely just underlines it.

Updating to add … Read the rest

Grace Lavery in action just a few hours ago.

I mean, the tactic of SAYING NUMBERS VERY LOUDLY in support of a minor criticism about citation? Smacks of self-knowledge. This may be the first time Jesse has had to confront how petty, pedantic, obscure, and obscene he seems to those who aren’t part of his little cult.

— Prof. Grace Lavery (@graceelavery) December 16, 2020

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1339282593901142025

Grace Lavery’s graceful response?

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1339308878476013573… Read the rest

“Grace” Lavery gets a pile of crap published at Foreign Policy. Why FP is that gullible is beyond me. It’s about the Tavistock ruling (so that makes it suitable for FP because it’s in Another Country?).

In effect, the courts intervened in the transition-related care of children experiencing gender dysphoria, putting those children and their families in the position of having to seek care abroad.

But calling it “care” assumes the very thing that is at issue – that puberty blockers are a legitimate treatment for a genuine medical condition that needs treatment. That’s a very shaky assumption, and for Keira Bell, for instance, it turned out to be entirely wrong. Lavery is cheating by treating it as obvious … Read the rest