All entries by this author
Oct 30th, 2020 12:06 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Kayleigh McEnany explained about the ballots in a river way back at the beginning of the month.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Meagan Wolfe, director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said during a news conference this week that “no Wisconsin absentee ballots were found” in a mail bag that was discovered last week in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin, although she said she didn’t know if any out-of-state ballots were caught up in the mail bag.
McEnany sparred with Fox News Radio reporter Jon Decker on Thursday when he asked her about Trump claiming that his voters’ ballots were being thrown into an unspecified river, and she responded by saying that the president actually meant the ditch in Greenville.
Coulda … Read the rest
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2 comments
Oct 30th, 2020 10:59 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The cavalry has arrived! Just in time to be swept into the ditch.
How poignant to see Kent garagiste Nigel Farage interfering in the US election, much in the way a drop interferes in the ocean. Farage is appearing at the odd rally for his emotional support president, Donald Trump, which tells its own story about where the US leader is at, psychologically speaking, for the final days of his campaign. On Wednesday, Trump gibbered to a crowd: “I’m glad I called him up.” So is Nigel’s agent.
Nigel was brought on stage in Arizona by Donald, where the latter introduced him as “the king of Europe”.
Certainly, and Trump is the emperor of Antarctica.
Farage rubed his way
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8 comments
Oct 30th, 2020 10:00 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Thought for the Day: Marketing Harry Potter-themed underwear=advocating violence against “trans folx.”
https://twitter.com/MeUndies/status/1321127734601379842
An alert observer asked “So these are officially licensed, correct? Meaning that JK Rowling does profit from me purchasing them? Love the prints, but out of principle I have to pass, unless a portion of proceeds were donated to supporting trans charities.”
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11 comments
Oct 29th, 2020 5:31 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It turns out men are stronger than women. Who knew?
Earlier this year, World Rugby caused somewhat of a stir when its draft proposals to ban biological men from playing at the top level of women’s rugby were reported by The Guardian. The proposals were of particular interest because they were in sharp contrast to the rules of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has loosened its requirements to focus on athletes’ testosterone levels. World Rugby was also the first international sporting federation to indicate such a move, which led to immediate criticism from some quarters that the proposals were “harmful” despite the fact the they were aimed at safeguarding players’ health.
Which never made any sense, seeing … Read the rest
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37 comments
Oct 29th, 2020 4:54 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Andrew Copson at Humanists UK:
This morning, three civilians were murdered in France – stabbed to death and beheaded – by an Islamic extremist. It was a shocking and despicable act, but not an isolated one.
It comes just a fortnight after state school teacher Samuel Paty was murdered for teaching his class about freedom of expression and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. France responded then in the only way a human rights-loving republic should. It defended the right to free expression, including to publish materials which may cause offence.
Sickeningly, today’s murders have been portrayed as a retaliation for that defence of free speech and secular education and it feels like this is a situation spiralling out of
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1 Comment »
Oct 29th, 2020 11:50 am |
By Ophelia Benson
iknklast’s comment on the fabrication post
You know, there seems to be a rather common thread running through all of this: wealth. It seems most of the “self-ID” people lead comfortable to wealthy lives. Maybe it’s that old thing where rich people used to crave living the “more authentic” lives of poor people; this is the new version of that, only you don’t actually have to give anything up or sleep in a less comfortable bed to do it. You just say “I am woman”, “I am black”, “I am Chicana”. Voila! Instant tourism into an oppressed status.
reminded me of this classic Monty Python reversal.… Read the rest
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1 Comment »
Oct 29th, 2020 10:26 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Labour has suspended Corbyn.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the party over his reaction to a highly critical report on anti-Semitism.
The human rights watchdog found Labour responsible for “unlawful” harassment and discrimination during Mr Corbyn’s years in charge of the party.
But Mr Corbyn later said the scale of anti-Semitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated” by opponents.
Labour said he was being suspended “for a failure to retract” his words.
I think Corbyn should think very seriously about coming out as trans now. I can’t think of anything else that would save his hide.
Sir Keir, who became Labour leader in April, said the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s
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12 comments
Oct 29th, 2020 9:55 am |
By Ophelia Benson
An anonymous Medium post yesterday:
I have watched the unmasking of CV Vitolo and Jessica Krug from afar. But when an old friend pointed me to the twitter bio of Dr. Kelly Kean Sharp, currently an Assistant Professor at Furman University, I now had a similar example on the edges of my own circles. I had distantly known Kelly while she was a PhD student at University of California, Davis, and was more than surprised to find out that she was now describing herself as Chicana.
This discovery led to multiple conversations and a flurry of research on the part of people who had known Kelly at UC Davis. They approached me to help publicize her fabrication and strategic
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10 comments
Oct 29th, 2020 8:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
If god is so great why does it need you to murder people while shouting “god is great!”?
Three people have been killed in a knife attack at a church in the French city of Nice, police say.
President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “Islamist terrorist attack” at the Notre-Dame basilica after visiting the scene in the southern city.
One elderly victim who was praying was “virtually beheaded”. Another woman and a man also died. A suspect was shot and detained shortly afterwards.
Not a very kind god, is it. If it wants humans stabbing other humans to death because they worship the god under a different alphabet, it can’t be a benevolent god.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi spoke of
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14 comments
Oct 28th, 2020 5:07 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
That UN Women post is getting a lot of heated “the hell it is” from women, I’m glad to say.
One example:
It is your role as feminists to support and safeguard and empower women. Instead you seek to force them into submission to new and alien definitions, and you fail to protect us from a movement that polices and even denies our language, our right to describe our bodies, to name and identify the source of our oppression and to name and describe the violence enacted to maintain a world order that will forever deny us this most fundamental liberty and tool: to name our oppressors and their actions.
Instead you open the door to individuals and organisations whose
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Oct 28th, 2020 4:27 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
UN Women giving away women’s rights and self-definition and reality again:
One, no, people don’t have a blanket right to identify themselves the way they want to. That’s just not true. All of us barring one person lack the right to identify ourselves as the president of the US. We can’t identify ourselves inaccurately if we’re stopped for reckless driving and have to show our driver’s license. We can’t identify ourselves as little Kathy’s mommy and take her home from school if we’re not little Kathy’s mommy. It’s just not true, yet people keep saying it. We can fantasize however we like, but once we involve other people, it’s not that simple. It’s not even close to that simple.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Oct 28th, 2020 11:40 am |
By Ophelia Benson
I’m wondering about the logistics.
Conversations over the dinner table that incite hatred must be prosecuted under Scotland’s hate crime law, the justice secretary has said.
Journalists and theatre directors should also face the courts if their work is deemed to deliberately stoke up prejudice, Humza Yousaf said.
When he says “the dinner table”…does he mean strictly dinner with the family? Or does he mean any dinner table? If you have friends over for pizza, does that count? If you go out for a hamburger with one or more other person(s) does that count? How about the lunch table? Breakfast? How about if no one ever sits down – how about if all the people eating the dinner or … Read the rest
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7 comments
Oct 28th, 2020 10:01 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Bonjour Charlie!
https://twitter.com/Charlie_Hebdo_/status/1321134572105572352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1321134572105572352%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_2%2Ccontainerclick_1&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fcharlie-hebdo-cartoon-turkey-erdogan-macron-feud-2020-10…
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Oct 28th, 2020 9:45 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump is blithely putting people in danger to serve his purposes again. He did a rally at an airport in Omaha yesterday, and by the time he hopped back into Air Force One, the temperature had dropped below freezing.
But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.
The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.
At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio
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6 comments
Oct 27th, 2020 5:07 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It’s so impressive when men who say they are lifelong feminists announce that men are women if they say they are, and that they will block any stupid obstinate women who disagree.
https://twitter.com/Paul_Ilett/status/1321166271090667525
It’s not his call though. He can swear he’s been a feminist since his first breath, but if he feels it necessary to say that men who “identify as” women are women and that he won’t listen to dissent…then I’m not going to believe him about the being a feminist part.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
36 comments