Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

After seeing the beauty of these Games defaced by the spectacle of Valentina Petrillo, a 51-year-old father-of-two, taking semi-final places in female sprinting from two women barely half the Italian’s age, you might have expected Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, to commit – at the very least – to a review of the ridiculous policy that let this happen. Instead he seemed, at his closing press conference, almost to celebrate it as a watershed.

…

Parsons began these 11 days by spelling out his ambition for an “inclusion revolution”. Include everybody: that is the mantra. Even if it now means excluding women from their own category. This is not some

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Women are such a damn nuisance, you know?

Surrogate mother wins access to her biological son in landmark case

She’s not actually a surrogate mother, she’s a mother.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, won the case after the gay couple for whom she carried the baby for nine months tried to stop her seeing her own biological child and erase her from his life. The two men claimed that the little boy would be confused if he saw his mother because he lived with them in a ‘motherless family’ and was being raised within the LGBT community.

The couple told her there was ‘no vacancy’ for her ‘just because [he] has same-sex parents’ – even

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Continuing the theme, Jacky Davis in the Observer on Saturday:

he British Medical Association is both a trade union and a professional organisation. Professional activities such as its successful campaigns around seatbelt legislation and smoking have added weight to its standing as a union. It is not noted for drama and histrionics.

So there was significant surprise when its governing body, the BMA council, recently voted to reject the recommendations of the Cass review…

BMA members were genuinely outraged. Letters to the BMJ accused the council of bringing “the BMA and the medical profession into disrepute”. One correspondent said they were “more shocked than anything I can think of in 40 years of practising medicine”. Some members, aghast

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When doctors clash:

The British Medical Association has threatened the reputation of all UK doctors by rejecting the findings of the landmark Cass review of transgender healthcare, a leading member of the BMA has told the Observer.

Dr Jacky Davis claims that the doctors’ union’s stance on the Cass review is “irrational”, has created a “fracture” between its leadership and the grassroots doctors it represents, and left the medical profession “in an uproar”.

What is that stance? Fingers in the ears shouting NONONONONO

The BMA refused to endorse the findings of Dr Hilary Cass, whose review was published in April and was widely welcomed. It claimed the review contained “unsubstantiated recommendations” and its council called on

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Labour brushes off women yet again:

The Government will not carry forward plans to rewrite the Equality Act 2010 that were aimed at protecting single-sex spaces, the Minister for Women and Equalities has confirmed.

Anneliese Dodds said there were no plans to update the existing legislation, which the Conservatives had promised to reform ahead of the general election.

Because women don’t matter. Men matter, and men who pretend to be women really matter, but women are so much lint on the sweater of life.

The Tories planned to rewrite the Act in order to make it clear that “sex” in the legislation means “biological sex” instead of the gender with which a person identifies.

This would have allowed

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Originally a comment by Alan Peakall on Vice n virtue.

Certainty of paternity may be the ultimate material basis of the imperative for sexual control, but it does not account for religious taboos on non-procreative sexual acts. Possibly they are Gouldian spandrels emerging from cross firing of the supposed exchange instinct asserted to be disclosed by evolutionary psychologists’ study of Wason test experiments. Once humans have acquired the intellectual sophistication to recognise sexual pleasure as an inducement to reproduction, non-reproductive sex becomes a potential trgger for guilt/shame at cheating nature or Nature personified as a god. Religion as an institution then seizes on that guilt as a means of social control and incorporates it into a meme matrix. This … Read the rest

Saeedullah Safi in the Irish Times on the demolition of women’s rights in Afghanistan:

“My voice is now a crime,” says Mariam, a teacher from Kabul province. Speaking over a shaky WhatsApp connection, Mariam (whose name has been changed for her safety) describes her life as a woman under new Taliban rules. “I am terrified to leave my house,” she says. “Not because I fear the violence in the streets, but because I fear my own voice might betray me.”

Last week, the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, approved new “vice and virtue” laws, which include a total ban on women’s voices in public and further restrictions on their presence outside the home.

Because, you see, if a man … Read the rest

Speaking up for the women of Afghanistan.

And still NZ have no issue playing male cricket against them. Sports boycotts only ever get enacted when it affects men! https://t.co/pL1bot73YX

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) September 8, 2024

‘Ghosts in our own country’. A reminder, in a week when other atrocities have taken the spotlight off this one, that we need to keep pressing for this situation not to be normalized or forgotten about https://t.co/f4QDqeLP7D

— Debbie Cameron (@wordspinster) September 8, 2024

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Wow, what a funny joke.

https://twitter.com/ACBofficials/status/1832765832612520344 Bet you thought that was some stupid slag of a woman under there, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU??… Read the rest

Trump issues threats:

Former President Donald Trump, who makes frequent false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through rampant fraud, warned Saturday that he would attempt to imprison anyone who engages in “unscrupulous behavior” during the 2024 race results.

No he didn’t threaten to attempt to imprison, he said he would imprison. Trump never tempers what he says with an awareness of limitations on his power, he just issues the threatyest threats he can come up with.

The threat was issued in a post on Truth Social, his social media website, and repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, accusing Democrats of “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery.”

“The 2024 Election, where Votes have just started

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How sweet.

Notice anyone missing?

https://twitter.com/ACBofficials/status/1832666909562593733… Read the rest

Urrgghh I did not know this – Trump has been campaigning in sundown towns.

Howell, Michigan. LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Mosinee, Wisconsin.

These relatively small cities — spread across midwestern swing states and far from dense metropolitan areas — all have one thing in common: They are former “sundown” towns, where threats of Jim Crow-era violence enforced racial segregation.

After a series of rallies in major cities to kick off his general election campaign, the Republican presidential candidate zeroed in on a handful of cities with familiar pasts.

That’s really really really disgusting.

Viral criticism across social media has argued that Trump’s latest campaign stretch isn’t a coincidence but a “dogwhistle” to racist supporters. Vice President Kamala Harris’s

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Oliver Brown being sly in the Telegraph:

Valentina Petrillo, the Italian father-of-two who qualified on Friday for a second semi-final of these Paris Paralympics in women’s sprinting, has hit back at being called an “out-and-proud cheat” by author JK Rowling, saying: “I’ve never even read Harry Potter.”

Nicely done. The father-of-two in women’s sprinting, who retorts to criticism with a fatuous irrelevance.

Despite the backlash, Petrillo claimed: “There is so much transphobia in all this. The most important word in Olympic and Paralympic sports is inclusion.”

No it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. How could it be? Sports are about competition, which means there are losers along with winners, and in fact there are far more losers than … Read the rest

Trump zeroes in on the real cheating in elections.

It’s true that if height is a top issue this election, Trump has an edge pic.twitter.com/DFmpsh6I6L

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 7, 2024

He’s tall. That definitely means he should win.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on The most important word.

Two incidents from last week at the Paralympics.

Partially-sighted Australian runner, Jaryd Clifford, accidentally let go of the tether linking him to his guide 4998 metres into the 5000 metres final. He was the only runner in that race to use guides, i.e. the ‘most’ blind runner in the field, finished in third place but was disqualified from recieving the bronze. Essentially, letting go of the tether at any point in the race, whether intentionally or not, suggests that the guide isn’t really needed and therefore the runner is gaining an unfair advantage. Clifford was disqualified because he broke the rules, and cheats don’t deserve medals, right?… Read the rest

The march of stupidity continues.

A Victorian breastfeeding expert is facing legal action over a series of social media posts denying that transgender women can breastfeed.

Jasmine Sussex is being taken to Queensland’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal by a trans mother after labelling attempts by transwomen to breastfeed their children “experimental’’ and calling it a “dangerous fetish”.

Ms Sussex raised concerns about Queensland trans mother Jennifer Buckley – who was born male but later transitioned into a woman – taking hormones to grow breasts and induce lactation to breastfeed her newborn baby.

No he didn’t “transition into a woman” – there is no such thing. He later started to pretend to be a woman.

The Victorian woman is preparing

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The Irish Times:

A transgender woman, who was referred for gender-affirmation surgery in Germany, says she was unable to receive “basic healthcare” on her return to a Dublin hospital.

It wasn’t “basic” healthcare though. It was very specialized.

Paige Behan (26) from Ballyfermot, Dublin, felt “humiliated” and “devastated” when neither the urology, gynaecology nor plastics teams would treat her at St James’s Hospital – the largest acute academic teaching hospital in the State – last month, despite her being referred by her GP for a worsening wound infection at the site of her surgery.

What was his surgery? A “neo-vagina” – which is not basic healthcare, and is arguably not healthcare at all.

Instead she was advised to travel

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Janice Turner on the Taliban’s gender apartheid:

The Afghan men’s cricket team is one of 12 Test match sides. The limited-overs team competed in last year’s World Cup — with prestigious victories over Pakistan and England — and on Monday in India the Test side will play New Zealand. Why? The only possible answer is that the international community cares not a damn for Afghan women.

Why isn’t there a global boycott?

The Taliban is certainly thorough. First it stopped girls attending school and university, removed women from most jobs and demanded they cover themselves in chadors head to toe. Then it pondered other female pleasures, barring women from gyms, beauty salons, hairdressers and public parks, and making shopping

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Liz Cheney endorsed Harris for president the other day. She also had some thoughts on the other candidate.

The former Republican Wyoming representative spoke with Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich in Texas on Friday, following her endorsement of Harris for president this week. In her conversation, she shared words of wisdom for Harris—and a brutally honest condemnation of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Well there’s no point in being gently dishonest about those two, is there. They want to destroy everything. They’re bad men. They have to be stopped.

When asked how Harris should approach Tuesday’s presidential debate against Trump, Cheney responded by saying that Harris should relish the fact that this is an “opportunity [where] Donald Trump gets to

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Trump is throwing hissy fits.

Former President Donald Trump, frustrated by the state of the race and his continued legal troubles, on Friday sought to claim the spotlight for himself.

Wedging a hastily called press conference into an otherwise packed day of campaign events and court-related issues, he angrily complained to reporters inside the lobby of Trump Tower about his appeal in a sex abuse and defamation case. He criticized his legal team’s performance. Trump accused the moderators of the upcoming ABC debate of being unfair — and slammed Harris for not addressing reporters as often as he has.

In other words, wah wah wah wah wah wah wah.

Very edifying.

“This is a disgraceful case and disgraceful, in

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