All entries by this author

Guest post: Suddenly they all found that they could prevent it

Apr 6th, 2024 2:22 pm | By

Originally a comment by Athel Cornish-Bowden on Local misogyny.

Kaspar Zeta-Skeet said there was an “assumption” among some teenagers he taught “that women are things just to be observed”

I fear that that is indeed a common assumption of boys, made much worse by social media.

In France, we are experiencing a particularly nasty series of violent attacks on teenagers by other teenagers — three in three days, not all girls. The first concerned a young girl of 13 in Montpellier. She had been bullied for around 18 months, especially by a somewhat older girl who considered that she wasn’t a proper Muslim because she wore normal clothes and joined in regular school activities. This older girl, or one … Read the rest



Homophobia and rape culture

Apr 6th, 2024 10:16 am | By

So is Mr Menno.

His rage is heartwarming.… Read the rest



Utter scum

Apr 6th, 2024 10:13 am | By

Dennis is pissed off.

I won’t be cow’ed by them. This is anti-homosexual campaigning and surprise, surprise, the target is, yet again, lesbians. The fact they are selected over gay men tells you everything one needs to about how this movement regards sexually non compliant women. This is rape culture. It is a pathetic attempt at shaming. It is anti gay and it is two scruffy ugly kids who hate

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A big shift in position

Apr 6th, 2024 10:00 am | By

Sex Matters goes on to note how Stonewall has also moved the goalposts.

Stonewall also responded, publishing a statement that presents “misgendering” as akin to criticising religion. 

“The PM, and high-profile commentators, are incorrect when they suggest that misgendering or ‘stating facts on biology’ would be criminalised. This is no more true than stating that the existing law has criminalised the criticism of religion. This kind of misrepresentation about the Act and its purpose only serves to trivialise the violence committed against us in the name of hate.”

This is a big shift in position. 

To put it mildly. What does “terf” even mean now?

In Stonewall’s hate-crime resource, it defines being “insulted, pestered, intimidated or harassed” as a

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Show us on the doll which content is abusive

Apr 6th, 2024 9:07 am | By

Sex Matters wrote a post yesterday about the same glaring unknown that I wrote about: how the hell do we know what is “abusive” as opposed to “offensive” or “insulting” or “upsetting”? Hamza Yousaf says his shiny new law applies only to “abusive” content, not merely “offensive” or “insulting” or “upsetting” content, but he doesn’t spell out which is which and how we all know.

Sex Matters says:

One of the most controversial aspects is the extension of so-called “stirring up” provisions to characteristics other than race, including transgender identities (which expressly covers non-binary identities and cross-dressers). The threshold for what counts as hateful is set low – at a single act of speech that is merely “abusive” and

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Shelf life

Apr 6th, 2024 5:04 am | By

Huh. It turns out the people really harmed by climate change are trans sex workers. I did not know that. The Independent informs us:

Joya Patiha, a 43-year-old Indonesian transgender woman, first started to notice that changing weather patterns in the mountain-ringed city of Bandung were affecting her income as a sex worker a decade ago.

Her income as a sex worker? He had a fixed income “as a sex worker”? I think what the reporter probably meant is that Patiha can’t get as many paying customers as he could a decade ago. So no one told him that men think women are old hags at age 25? He thinks it’s the weather that’s the problem? And the reporter … Read the rest



She didn’t blink

Apr 5th, 2024 6:17 pm | By

Suzanne Moore on JKR v Humza Yousaf:

Humza Yousaf had been warned that this legislation was unworkable by numerous women’s groups. Men who identified as women were protected but women weren’t. How on earth were the police going to deal with this?

Who would blink first? Rowling or the police? When what she said was not deemed a hate crime, everything began to fall apart. “Oh, it’s OK for her with her wealth” some said and there she was again, asserting that if any other woman was arrested, she would repeat those words and be arrested alongside them.

Here was a lesson in solidarity, in sisterhood and the simple but incendiary power of saying no.

Much of this

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Show us on the doll how high the threshold is

Apr 5th, 2024 11:41 am | By

Yousaf pretends his thrilling new law is not aimed at defiant women:

Humza Yousaf said he was “not surprised” police had assessed JK Rowling’s online posts challenging the new hate crime law to be non-criminal.

Well no, I’m sure he wasn’t surprised, because I’m sure he knew that the police know better than to tangle with JKR as opposed to women who are not rich and famous.

Mr Yousaf told BBC Scotland News: “Those new offences that have been created by the act have a very high threshold for criminality. The behaviour has to be threatening or abusive and intends to stir up hatred. So it doesn’t deal with people just being offended or upset or insulted.”

That’s nice; … Read the rest



Local misogyny

Apr 5th, 2024 9:48 am | By

The BBC reports that phones teach boys to be aggressive misogynist little piggies.

Sexism is on the rise in schools because of harmful content on children’s phones, according to the National Education Union’s (NEU) general secretary. Daniel Kebede said boys watched “aggressive and violent pornography” and influencer content that “completely distorts their view of women”.

Mr Kebede’s comments come as teachers at the NEU conference, in Bournemouth, prepare to debate a motion about the rise of online misogyny and its impact in the classroom.

Kaspar Zeta-Skeet said there was an “assumption” among some teenagers he taught “that women are things just to be observed” and he had heard words such as “slut” and “whore” being used about female

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Public defender?

Apr 5th, 2024 7:16 am | By

Um. I don’t much want to promote Jonathan Choe, who is a Discovery Institute honcho of some kind, but I can’t just ignore this…eccentric public defender.

I don’t understand why it’s allowed. Courts wouldn’t allow a guy in a fuzzy bear costume to do the public defender thing would they? Or, more parallel to this guy’s prank, courts wouldn’t allow someone dressed up like Al Jolson in The Jazz … Read the rest



Actual women in actual Afghanistan

Apr 5th, 2024 6:39 am | By

The Taliban promises to torture women to death:

The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue.

“You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials. “But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public,” he declared in his harshest comments since taking over Kabul in August 2021.

“Harshest”? Careful, Telegraph, you don’t want to be too…er…harsh.

Also “comments”? I don’t call a promise to … Read the rest



Guest post: Upstanders just don’t get enough likes

Apr 4th, 2024 3:43 pm | By

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Well knock me down with a feather.

How have so many of them managed to convince themselves that children who “have doubts about their gender identity” are in touch with a great truth as opposed to just being uncomfortable in an ordinary way that dissipates over time? How have so many managed to convince themselves that it’s better to tamper with children’s sexes rather than watch and wait?

Nobody likes Nazi Germany analogies, but the phenomenon where everybody remains complicit even in the face of the worst atrocities under certain circumstances when the social system is arranged just-so… I suspect this has to be some kind of vestigial behavioural trait from our bygone … Read the rest



Guest post: The role of child-centered parenting

Apr 4th, 2024 3:33 pm | By

Originally a comment by Sastra on Well knock me down with a feather.

I think adults have accepted Great Truth Gender Pediatrics in part because of the popularity of child-centered parenting (which may also involve child-centered schooling, child-centered therapy, and, ultimately, child-centered spirituality.) Though we need an antidote to the authoritarian “obey me without question” boogeyman-man method of parental control, the belief that children are fragile, unique flowers needing mostly love and acceptance to bloom can deteriorate rapidly into nonsense. In our rush to validate their feelings, we treat kids like miniature adults— which, as you point out, they aren’t.

Our own recollections of what it was like to be a child might actually be part of the problem … Read the rest



Dominating women’s football in the region

Apr 4th, 2024 9:42 am | By

Five men on a women’s team. Not one not two not three not four but five.

Reduxx can confirm that a trans activist YouTuber is among five trans-identified males currently participating on a women’s football team in North West Sydney, Australia. Riley Dennis, who was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating on another women’s team, is now playing for The Flying Bats, which has been dominating women’s football in the region.

Gee, I wonder why.

The Flying Bats Football Club secured a 4-0 victory against the Macquarie Dragons on March 24, and of their five trans-identified players, the highest goal-scorer is a male trans activist who injured two female players during a match last year.

The

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Investigate her conduct

Apr 4th, 2024 9:15 am | By

The Times on the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre hearing:

A rape crisis centre run by a trans woman has been “illegitimately” hiding the biological sex of its counsellors from victims of sexual assault, an employment tribunal has heard.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, whose chief executive is Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and activist, was said to have used “disciplinary processes to enforce its extreme and uncompromising version of gender identity theory”.

Isn’t that what rape crisis centres are for, though?

No, it damn well is not.

The dispute began when [support worker Roz Adams] consulted colleagues about a rape victim who had asked if her counsellor would be a “man or a woman” because she would feel “uncomfortable

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Well knock me down with a feather

Apr 4th, 2024 8:19 am | By

A study finds what we pretty much knew already:

Most gender-confused children grow out of it.

The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults, according to a long-term study. Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.

Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed ‘gender non-contentedness‘ to varying degrees. But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.

The researchers concluded: ‘The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it

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Do you have a receipt for that?

Apr 4th, 2024 3:06 am | By

The Guardian taking care to insult women right in the headline:

‘I’m as baffled as the next ovary-owner’: navigating the science of treating menopause

The subhead:

Conversations about menopause have matured but the question of when and how to treat perimenopausal symptoms remains confusing – even to a science journalist

Conversations about menopause have matured but we’re calling women “ovary-owners”? How do you square those two items?

I wonder how often The Guardian calls men “testicle-owners.”… Read the rest



The man with the van plan

Apr 3rd, 2024 3:58 pm | By

They ran out of time.

You see it’s like this. When a guy like India Willoughby publicly fantasizes about kidnapping Joanna Cherry, Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling, it’s social justice. When we talk about guys like India Willoughby fantasizing about kidnapping women who make him angry, it’s transphobia, and deserving of harsh punishment, like kidnapping for example. Head Willoughby wins, tails women lose.… Read the rest



Guest post: A major life-changer that can’t easily be ignored

Apr 3rd, 2024 2:17 pm | By
Guest post: A major life-changer that can’t easily be ignored

Originally a comment by Artymorty on And finally move on.

The corollary of the argument that only trans people should be allowed to play trans characters is that trans isn’t a neutral attribute that can be ignored.

Speaking to GQ magazine, Schafer said being known simply as a “trans actress” was “ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do”. She continued: “I’ve been offered tons of trans roles, and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

In a sense I get what he means, or what he thinks he means: something like how, say, Black actors were tired of playing “Black” characters, instead of just regular characters who happened to … Read the rest



Hide the tits

Apr 3rd, 2024 11:57 am | By

Wait what century is this?

Woman removed from flight for not wearing a bra

Lisa Archbold was due to fly from Salt Lake City to San Francisco when airline staff, she said, took issue with her clothing — a loose white T-shirt.

The incident was in January and received some media attention, but Archbold now has legal representation. Her attorney is Gloria Allred, who has been involved in several high-profile women’s rights cases — including representing women who accused Donald Trump and R. Kelly of sexual misconduct.

In a recent letter to the airline’s president, Allred said Archbold wasn’t questioned when she boarded the plane but was later escorted off the flight by a Delta gate agent.

For wearing … Read the rest