Ursula Doyle speaks up:

My name is Ursula Doyle, and I have worked in book publishing for more than thirty years. Since 2008 I have worked at Hachette UK, one of the UK’s leading publishing groups, first at its Virago imprint (a sub-brand of the publisher) before setting up my own imprint, Fleet, in 2016. Fleet publishes a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, and Fleet authors have between them won numerous awards, including four Pulitzers.

In 2020 I published Kathleen Stock’s influential book on sex and gender, Material Girls. Since then, I have been a target for abuse by colleagues in the book industry, who have used social media to accuse me of – among other things … Read the rest

Gender critical women are the new…what…bosses? Priests? Scabs? Enslavers? Colonialists? The new all-powerful sneering unjust overlords who need to be overthrown and punished.

1. If all cis women at Hachette were polled today to ask if they were happy for trans women to share the same facilities then the overwhelming majority would say yes. To say ‘all women’ in H’s employ are being discriminated against because of a policy we WELCOME is ludicrous pic.twitter.com/8uoVJjsoPE

— Ella Gordon (@EllaSGordon) July 14, 2024

Sighing as I write because I know how horny the terfs get when anyone gives them attention, but also can’t let statements like this go unchallenged within our industry, so here we are. Looking forward to the usual, not-at-all

I’m taking a look at the publisher Hachette’s incloosion policy. I’ve spotted something quite funny (in its own warped way).

It lists a bunch of networks – AgeWise Network, AllTogether Network, Accessibility Network, Gender Balance Network – ah yes that’ll be the one, let’s look at the caption under that one.

The Gender Balance Network aims to eliminate the gender pay gap by focusing on equal recruitment and progression for all genders, at every level of the business.

What?

What is this “the gender pay gap” of which they speak?

If you google it you find it’s the pay gap between men and women. This doesn’t surprise you, because that’s what it’s always meant. What else would it mean?… Read the rest

So now the church is ordering people to forget all that pesky sciencey crap about human bodies and just focus on the soul believe Gender Dogma.

Church of England set to issue advice telling teachers to challenge ‘outdated terms’ around biological sex as critics argue new guidance is pushing gender ideology that a person’s sex is ‘assigned’ at birth

Church of England advice for teachers has been criticised for pushing the gender ideology that a person’s sex is ‘assigned’ at birth rather than a biological fact.

Guidance set to be issued to thousands of schools states that a transgender man is someone ‘who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man’, and a transgender woman ‘was

Sarah Kendzior on the real danger:

1) Yes, Trump knows what Project 20205 is. No, he likely doesn’t care, because policy is a thing other people do while he steals money and ensures impunity for himself and his backers.

2) Trump is not an ideologue. He is a bulldozer used by two GOP-linked networks that often collaborate.

3) The first network is made of hard right-wing ideologues that have been gradually implementing a neo-fascist US since the Reagan era, chipping away at courts, regulations, rights, etc. This is the Project 2025 network.

4) The second network is transnational organized crime, the network in which Trump is most at home. Their goal is to collapse the US and strip it

Better to get a foreign take, so the BBC reports:

Secret Service agents have rushed former President Donald Trump off stage after what sounded like gunshots erupted at a rally in Pennsylvania. Footage showed him grimace and raise a hand to his right ear, before ducking as sharp cracks – apparently shots – broke out.

He was quickly swarmed by secret service agents and rushed off stage to a waiting vehicle. He raised a fist as he was bundled into the car. In a statement Trump’s campaign said he was “fine” and was being “checked out” at a local medical facility.

And now he’ll be able to make hay off it.

Trump’s Vice-President Mike Pence said he and his

When Ted Cruz gets it and the Dems don’t…

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday rejected the nomination of a progressive judge who approved the transfer of a 6’2″ transgender-identifying male child rapist to a women’s prison.

Just for the record – there is nothing “progressive” about trying to put a male rapist in a woman’s prison. If he needs protection from other men then deal with that, but not by transferring the danger to women.

Nominated by the Biden administration to join the federal bench for the Southern District of New York, Sarah Netburn allowed male sex offender July Justine Shelby to be sent to FMC Carswell, a female federal correctional facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Her order

NPR takes care to insult women again, via a story about metals found in tampons.

Researchers have found toxic metals — including arsenic and lead — in over a dozen popular brands of tampons, raising questions about a menstrual hygiene product used by millions of Americans.

American whats? Dogs? Cars? Barbecue grills?

Researchers say the study marks an important first step in confirming the presence of toxic metals in tampons, which are used by an estimated 52% to 86% of menstruating people in the U.S.

Ah there we go. They start slowly and build. Americans instead of American women is a jab, and menstruating people is a smash in the head with a hammer.

They say more studies are

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Please, insult us some more.

According to the cult, ‘transwomen’, who are actually men who want to pretend (and who also want the rest of us to believe) that they are women, actually are women; but the words ‘woman’ and ‘women’ aren’t ever to be mentioned in regards to adult human females; just people who can be pregnant.

In trying to decouple “sex” from the concept of “woman,” genderists are attempting to break the female monopoly on womanhood, as if menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation were as inconsequential to the definition of “woman” as hair colour and shoe size. They want an “expansive” definition of “woman” that has nothing to … Read the rest

On the one hand anybody can be a woman, men can be women, men are absolutely definitely without question women if they say they are – and on the other hand women exist for the purpose of pumping out children and can be rented for the purpose of child-production.

Or to put it another way, when greedy callous rich people decide they want to have a baby but the mommy doesn’t want to do that whole horrible carrying it and pushing it out thing, the people they pay to do the gestating for them are always, without exception, women. Never men, not even men who say they are women; always women.

The global trade in babies is big business. Research

Man who gets celebrated and flattered and high office for pretending to be a woman makes a point of pretending men can be pregnant.

A new @samhsagov funding opportunity is available to help improve access to timely, culturally relevant maternal #BehavioralHealth intervention & treatment through community referral pathways & transitions in care for pregnant people. Apply by Aug. 26. https://t.co/i1k5klATXc pic.twitter.com/6QKyojZUrR

— ADM Rachel Levine (@HHS_ASH) July 8, 2024

Is that a male body right there?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Hollowed out?

This hits close to home, for reasons I mentioned in the other thread. I hope that people don’t take this as a reason to dismiss the branch of (non-Chomskyan) linguistics that Vyv espouses, which goes under the (unfortunate) name of “cognitive linguistics”.

But anyway, yes, “gender” is a sociolinguistic construct. And I think he would agree with me when I say that the concepts expressed by language are not a direct reflection of an objective reality, but rather a result of our embodied interaction with the world, as filtered through our senses and our brain and also influenced by the culture we’re raised in.

But that doesn’t mean that those … Read the rest

And just one more thing about this Evans fella, because I hadn’t seen it, and because he’s being a ridiculous dogmatic twerp in that he’s blocking anyone who disputes his claims even though they are actual scholars in the field and he is not.

His polite, informed, in no way misogynist or anti-feminist sharing of his exciting article:

How Biology and Culture Shape Gender Identity

My latest article in @PsychToday explains how feminism led to TERFism and Gender Critical ideology, which has hollowed out the feminist movementhttps://t.co/QI7bNrFsEg#gender #identity #language #transrights #feminist

— Vyvyan Evans PhD (@VyvEvans) July 10, 2024

Ouch:

This is nonsense. You haven’t made the slightest effort to understand your opponent’s arguments.

We agree that gender

Ah I hadn’t realized when I shared Carole Hooven’s response to Vyvyan Evans’s Explanation of Woman that he (Evans) had responded to it by blocking her. Not by offering a reasoned response, or even by offering an unreasoned response, but just by officially ignoring her. How adult.

The PT article should be linked to in the original tweet that should be at the bottom of mine. But he just blocked me so I think I'll just retweet mine with a new link to his article. pic.twitter.com/JtvJJtTjtn

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) July 12, 2024

And he didn’t stop there.

Guy has PhD right there on his profile, yet he instantly blocks fellow academics who dispute his claims. That’s a good … Read the rest

Carole Hooven disputes Vyv Evans straight on the “biological essentialism” question:

Picking one point to explore in this article in @PsychToday that claims, among other things, that "TERF has been 'rebranded' as gender critical (GC) feminism, a 'linguistic pivot' from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-woman’".

Take the idea of "biological essentialism" and Evan's claims… https://t.co/VJSwnlc4YC

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) July 11, 2024

Picking one point to explore in this article in @PsychToday that claims, among other things, that “TERF has been ‘rebranded’ as gender critical (GC) feminism, a ‘linguistic pivot’ from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-woman’”. Take the idea of “biological essentialism” and Evan’s claims about “GC ideology.”

@VyvEvans: “GC ideology invokes biological essentialism: the idea that sex is binary and immutable, determined

Dude laboriously does us an explain in Psychology Today that gender norms are cultural. Gosh, who knew?

Never mind that we don’t need some guy telling us that, because it’s there only as a runway for a flight into the usual Women Must Do What They’re Told.

More recently, the advent of so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) came to be a significant feminist ideology. In recent years, TERF has been “rebranded” as gender critical (GC) feminism, a “linguistic pivot from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-woman’ … an attempted claim to legitimacy with an aim of accruing mainstream support,” according to a peer-reviewed research article by Claire Thurlow.

No, chump, “terf” hasn’t been rebranded. Terf has always been a snide pejorative for … Read the rest

Oh great.

Joe Biden introduces Zelenskyy to the stage as “President Putin”… pic.twitter.com/aEFdDEZjBP

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) July 11, 2024

Furthermore he pronounces it pootin. Poot is slang for fart.… Read the rest

Ok listen up, what’s with all this endless whining and fussing about some writer, the people who really need our support and sympathy and worship and support are the ones who chat about books on social meeja.

Tilly Fitzgerald, a former Waterstones employee and a prominent figure on social media for book enthusiasts, has publicly expressed her gratitude following substantial backing from the literary community in an open letter. Fitzgerald’s dismissal from the bookstore chain has sparked significant controversy and debate around freedom of expression and the responsibilities of employees on social media.

Prominent; substantial; significant. We know we’re in the presence of Important Stuff when we get that many Inflative Adjectives in one short paragraph.

Kidding. Actually we … Read the rest

Sometimes the bitterness is overwhelming.

The Guardian puts the boot in:

More than 500 authors and book industry professionals have signed an open letter calling on Waterstones to reverse a decision to dismiss an employee who said she would tear up and throw away books written by a gender-critical author.

Yes that’s right, side with the bratty entitled snot who tried to sabotage a novelist, don’t even consider siding with the novelist who did nothing to deserve the sabotage.

Figures including Chocolat author Joanne Harris, writer and podcaster Dorian Lynskey, and author and culture journalist Jason Okundaye have backed Tilly Fitzgerald, who posts book-related content and reviews under the username TillyLovesBooks on social media. Fitzgerald was sacked after responding