Argh. Genevieve Gluck has a thread on the ACLU and its hatred of women, and it’s hard going. Highly informative but painful to read.

The first tweet is cut off, so I’ll just quote it.

The @ACLU hates women and is led by a gay man: a thread. One of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States pushing “gender identity” policies is the ACLU. Currently, the organization is leading the legal fight to place violent men, including sadistic killers and rapists, into women’s prisons. The executive director since 2001 is Anthony Romero. In the past the organization defended NAMBLA, asserted that child pornography is free speech, defended child marriage, took money from pornographers, and argued that sex

Oh yay, a new law in Belgium will provide a labor contract to workers in the sex mines. Solidarity forevaaaa!

The Belgian Parliament voted for the law on May 3, with 93 in favor, zero opposed, and 33 abstentions.  

The legislation is being touted as a win by UTSOPI, the Belgium Union of Sex Workers, which had lobbied extensively for the legislation. The law outlines that prostitutes will receive health insurance, a pension, maternity and holiday leave, and unemployment benefits. Their pimps will be forced to provide them with a “safety button” to use for emergencies.

Their website claims that the law “is a historic step in the battle for sex workers’ rights” and will create a “respectful,

National Organization for Women (aka NOW) on Facebook three days ago:

All women should have access to the gender-affirming care they want and need, including those who are incarcerated.

They linked to an article at The 19th with the headline

Incarcerated trans women won sweeping prison reforms in Colorado

Er. Meaning what? That men who claim to be women get to be in the women’s prisons?

Yes, of course that’s what they mean. This is NOW, remember. The W stands for women.

The state signed a legal agreement meant to make prisons safer for transgender women, who are often the targets of violence and harassment.

By “safer for transgender women” they of course mean much more dangerous for women. … Read the rest

Stupid AND bossy.

Just call people what they want to be called. It’s basic decency.

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 12, 2024

Just shut up. You’re not the boss of JKR, you’re not the boss of us.

That’s the bad manners part. Now the bad epistemology part.

Is that right? Is it basic decency to call people what they want to be called? What if they want to be called Hitler? How about Hannibal Lecter? Timothy McVeigh? Stalin?

Booby McBoobtits? Pussy Galore? Slutty Slutface? Katy Cunty?

Marc Lépine? OJ Simpson? Killer O. Women?

Just shut up. It’s basic decency.… Read the rest

The Telegraph taunts the French for being just as stupid as the British about the whole knowing the difference between women and men thing. The French ffs! Cue lascivious Maurice Chevalier-type laughter.

France is failing to learn from Britain’s transgender mistakes, two French feminists who received support from JK Rowling after receiving death threats have told The Telegraph.

Dora Moutot, 36, and Marguerite Stern, 33, have been thrust into the spotlight after releasing Transmania, their bestselling gender-critical book.

Or, to put it another way, Moutot and Stern have written a bestselling gender-critical book. Naturally some spotlight goes along with that, thrust or no thrust. Meanwhile: will you look at that now?! Gender-critical book is best seller! So ha!

Making simple

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Oh no she compared a man to a man.

Transition is literally about the self. It’s definitionally a self-centered phenomenon, based on an assumption of entitlement to not just spaces and benefits and language, but to the perceptions and thoughts of others.

Excellent points. But there’s still the issue of how to explain the acceptance of their pretense of womanhood by so many. How does the thinnest application of stereotypical “womanface” make up for the complete lack of the basic, and again stereotypical, markers of female socialization?

In World War Two, in the run-up to D-Day, the Allies used crude decoy trucks, tanks, and aircraft to fool the Germans … Read the rest

California to women: sucks to be you.

A California surf competition has been told it must allow a transgender woman to compete in the women’s division or it will be in violation of state law. The California Coastal Commission said surf competitions could “not discriminate based on gender”.

So surf competitions can have women’s divisions, but they have to let men compete in them. That means women will never be able to win their own competitions, because there will always be men eager to take advantage of the California Coastal Commission’s idiotic rule.

Why is it ok to discriminate on the basis of sex but not on the basis of gender?

Stupid question: so as to enable men to … Read the rest

Shock horror as woman compares a straight white bloke to a straight white bloke.

Author JK Rowling has been accused of cruelty for mocking the world’s first openly transgender football manager, comparing her to a ‘straight, white, middle-aged bloke’. The transgender referee is the first trans manager in the top five divisions of English Women’s football.

But he’s not a trans manager, he’s a trans man. He’s a real manager. The owners wouldn’t let him be a manager if he were a trans one, they need the real thing.

In the [tweet], JK Rowling said: When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.’ 

Take some deep breaths before reading this from M. K. Fain at 4W:

Natalie* had been housed with Tremaine Carroll in a prison cell in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) for just a few days when she says he attacked her in the shower and raped her. According to charges filed by the Madera County District Attorney’s office – which includes enhancements because Tremaine has prior sex offenses – there was at least one other victim at the prison besides Natalie.

Before California passed SB 132, “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act”, the law already allowed males who had surgery, and were deemed to not pose a “management and security risk”, to request housing in women’s facilities. However,

Let’s think about this.

At Sheffield university today. Lovely “inclusive” forced teaming. Not. pic.twitter.com/ra8tH3GTHx

— Duncan (@DuncanHenry78) May 11, 2024

There’s more than one stumbling block here.

One: why “free”? Is that the issue? Are lesbians and gay men and bisexual people all locked up or enslaved or otherwise restrained or confined?

Two, why the T? What does the T have to do with the LGB?

Three, is it true that none are free until all are free?

The first one. “Free” is used as a kind of catchall for social justice movements, but I think it shouldn’t be, because it just muddles things. Freedom isn’t really the issue here, although it was in the past, when people could be … Read the rest

Oh god this is a genre of writing I absolutely cannot stand, it brings me out in a mental rash before I’ve finished reading the first sentence. The genre is the person – a guy, in my experience – who thinks he has a delightful subtle and erudite wit but doesn’t. You know what I mean, right? In love with his own writing voice, and completely blind to how tedious and unamusing and pompous it is?

It’s a nameless fool on Twitter trying to condescend to JK Rowling as if he were her beloved great uncle and knows far better than she ever will. He’s fingernails on a blackboard, I tells ya.

You see what I mean, right? … Read the rest

Update: This story is from 2010, as diligent readers pointed out.

Ya think?

Nadia Murad, a Yezidi girl, was 19 years old when lSlS kidnapped and held as a slave for 3 months, tortured and raped.
lSlS kiIIed her mother and 6 brothers.

Nadia's book event was cancelled in Canada because organizers felt 'her story could promote Islamophobia' pic.twitter.com/5GW6ZEaFXK

— Azat Alsalem (@AzzatAlsaalem) May 10, 2024

Right. By the same token, don’t report murders, because that might promote murderophobia. Don’t report torture because that might promote torturerophobia. Don’t report genocide because that might promote genociderophobia.

I’m well familiar with the line of thought because of Does Got Hate Women? There were worries about it, and discussions, and cautions. I did … Read the rest

Either way, there are always men intimidating women. The guy in the blue T shirt is an actual academic, who teaches students.

Horrid intimidatory harassment of a Muslim woman from former IDF soldier Sammy Ben & ASU Professor Jonathan Yudelman. They chase her down & tell her “no one wants you here. Leave. Go back to Jeehaad.”

Does @ASU support this bigotry?

(Tweet corrected)pic.twitter.com/qeNr7EMEvz

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) May 6, 2024

He gets in her face, he raises his arms inches from her face, he follows her as she tries to get away, he addresses her with the underlined “bitch” – he’s just the flip side of the coin.

NBC News reports on the aftermath:

An Arizona

Speaking of tawdry…

Laurence Fox has been slammed online after he posted an unearthed upskirt photo of a TV host.

The actor-turned-politician, 45, took to X to mock Jeremy Vine and GB News star Narinder Kaur as he posted a compromising paparazzi photograph of the 51-year-old television star in the back of a vehicle. The photo in question shows Kaur without any underwear on. Fox has been slammed by countless X users, who have claimed that his decision to post the picture was “low, even for him”.

Wtf? We need harsher language for this kind of bullying crap. “Paparazzi” and “compromising” are way too mild.

Upskirting is a criminal offence in the UK, and the photo was removed from

Further installments of squalor and piggishness:

With the third week of testimony drawing to a close, the case that ultimately hinges on record-keeping returned to deeply technical testimony — a sharp contrast from Daniels’ dramatic, if not downright seamy, account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump that riveted jurors earlier this week. Trump denies they ever had sex.

Daniels’ story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump was a crucial building block for prosecutors, who are seeking to show that the Republican and his allies buried unflattering stories in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to illegally influence the race.

Trump walked out of the court in a rage Thursday, angrily telling reporters,

Ohhhh the hell with it, let’s put the Confederate names back.

After a meeting that lasted for hours, the Shenandoah County school board voted early Friday morning to restore the names of three Confederate officers to schools in the district.

With the vote, the district appears to be the first in the country to return Confederate names to schools that had removed them after the summer of 2020, according to researchers at the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative.

The vote rolled back a decision made four years ago, when the killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide demands for a racial reckoning. At a virtual meeting in July 2020, the summer of pandemic and protests, the board voted 5-1 to

The Times in July 2020 on why Black instead of black:

“We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover,” said Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, and Phil Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, in a memo to staff.

Conversations about the change began in earnest at The Times and elsewhere after the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, said Mike Abrams, senior editor for editing standards. Several major news media organizations have made the same call including The Associated Press, whose stylebook has long been an influential guide for news organizations.

“It seems like such a minor change,

Joyce Vance on the state of play:

Lots going on, most notably news that neither the Fulton County case nor the classified documents prosecutions [is] going to see the light of day before the election. Although that already seemed preordained, it’s now formal.

• In Fulton County, the Georgia Court of Appeals will review Judge McAfee’s decision that Fani Willis can stay on the case. Whichever side loses the appeal will likely apply to the Georgia Supreme Court for another bite at the apple. The process will take months.
• In Florida, Judge Cannon has removed her May 20 trial date from the calendar. She refused to set a new one, but scheduled almost all of the pending motions in the

From Slate a few months ago:

Homicide Is a Leading Cause of Death for Pregnant People. Abortion Bans Are Making Things Worse.

You know what else is making things worse? Pretending violence against women is violence against people. Pretending violence against women is not specific to women and thus not in any way linked to hatred and contempt and disgust for women.

When Julianne McShane wanted to report on how some of the most vulnerable women in the United States were dealing with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she knew exactly where she needed to go: Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oklahoma is where two realities collide. It is one of 16 states that have banned abortion almost

If you don’t have the goods, just make something up.

A barrister who championed LGBT+ charity Stonewall has been disbarred after making false homophobia claims. Barry John Harwood was found to have knowingly misled the Bar Standards Board (BSB) after fabricating parts of “serious” allegations against fellow barristers. Mr Harwood, who was the deputy director of advocacy at City law firm DWF, complained about a colleague’s behaviour towards him in March 2019.

What behavior? Referring to Harwood’s partner as his “husband” despite knowing they were in a civil partnership aka not married.

Take your time digesting the horror of it.

But anyway, however trivial, it’s not even a fair cop.

However, the BSB found Mr Harwood had in