All entries by this author

Lotta bugs

Aug 26th, 2019 3:41 pm | By

The Daily Beast last month on Trump and vermin (the literal kind):

Over the past few days, President Donald Trump has been on an extended Twitter tirade, going off on what he deems to be the rat infestation plaguing the city of Baltimore. But if anyone should know about the plague of vermin, it’s Trump.

The president’s restaurants, resorts, and golf clubs have all been cited for extensive health-code violations, including the presence of rodents.

Health inspectors have for years turned in stomach-churning reports of rats, mice, cockroaches, and other pests in the kitchens and food-preparation areas at Trump properties in New York, Florida, and Las Vegas. One infestation in the main kitchen of Trump’s Doral golf club in 2015

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So uppity

Aug 26th, 2019 3:17 pm | By

McKinnon is continuing to show what a reasonable, thoughtful, decent, other-regarding human he is.

Nathan Oseroff thought the issue was David Koch:

I saw one of those show up in my feed and I’m wondering if they really think David Koch was a young woman?

McKinnon had to explain he’d been talking the same shit about Magdalen:

Oh, I also said it in relation to a really truly horrible TERF who’s dying of brain cancer.

It’s the latter that they’re so uppity about.

Magdalen is not horrible. “TERF” is just trans-english for “cunt.” We’re “uppity” because gloating about her terminal brain cancer is disgusting.… Read the rest



McKinnon on the Science of Fairness

Aug 26th, 2019 1:12 pm | By

Speaking of McKinnon – there’s an event in London in October:

Fri, 11 October 2019

6:45 pm – 8:00 pm

Transgender Athletes and the Science of Fairness
Dr Rachel McKinnon

VENUE

The Tabernacle (Off Portobello)

34-35 Powis Square, Notting Hill, London,

W11 2AY

The science of fairness, eh? I’m not sure Rachel McKinnon is the person I would consult on the subject of fairness.

Should trans athletes participate in women’s sport? Philosophy professor, activist and world champion cyclist Rachel McKinnon sifts science and ethics from politics and prejudice.

Well now wait a second. McKinnon is a “world champion cyclist” only because he has a large muscular male body and he races against women. He does that and he boasts … Read the rest



Sir, it just ended, Sir

Aug 26th, 2019 12:35 pm | By

Trump was too busy adding up how much money he was going to lose by making the G7 pay him for putting the next one in his hotel to make it to the climate session today. (It’s actually sort of relevant that the Doral is in Miami, because Miami is one of those scandalously reckless places that keep building giant hotels and condo towers on a sinking shore. Miami is committing suicide while the world watches, dumbfounded.)

Donald Trump did not attend Monday’s crucial discussion on climate and biodiversity at the G7 meeting of international leaders in Biarritz, missing talks on how to deal with the Amazon rainforest fires as well as new ways to cut carbon emissions.

Reporters

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Next year let’s do it at his place

Aug 26th, 2019 12:22 pm | By

Trump says the best possible place to hold the next G7 is…you’ll never guess…one of his golf resorts. What a happy coincidence, because he’s in a position to get them a good deal.

Speaking as this year’s meeting of world leaders wrapped up, he told reporters that “my people” had toured venues across the US before concluding his Doral hotel would be ideal.

“It’s not about me, it’s about getting the right location,” he said at a news conference on Monday.

Of course. It’s never about him, it’s always about doing the right thing, and there is nowhere in the entire United States that would do as well for a meeting of world leaders than his personal golf resort in … Read the rest



Hot or not

Aug 26th, 2019 12:02 pm | By

There are bigger things to talk about in relation to the G7, but all the same…

Bolsonaro jeers at Macron because Bolsonaro’s wife is hot and Macron’s isn’t.

That’s how we’re doing the G7? Playing Whose Wife Is Most Fuckable? Really?

French President Emmanuel Macron has lashed out at Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro for endorsing “rude” remarks about his wife.

A supporter of the Brazilian president mocked Mr Macron’s wife, Brigitte, 66, in a Facebook post.

The post contained a photo contrasting the French first lady’s appearance with that of Mr Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, 37.

“Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” it reads.

In response to the comment, Mr Bolsonaro wrote (in Portuguese): “Do not humiliate (him)…

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Trans activist rejoices at woman’s impending death

Aug 26th, 2019 11:30 am | By

Less than four years ago, in October 2015, I wrote about Magdalen Berns’s candidacy for Women’s Liberation Group Convenor at Edinburgh University and the obnoxious way they labeled her “whorephobic” because she’s not pro-pimp. She wrote a guest post here in January.

She promptly went on to become a genius feminist star on YouTube – so the misogynist bit of the universe took her out with glioblastoma, pretty much the worst brain cancer there is. Last week she moved to hospice care. My opinion of these latter developments is that they suck.

“Rachel” McKinnon on the other hand is a fan.

Eh, if they’re a trash human actively trying to harm marginalized people because of who they are?

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Sautez, m’sieu

Aug 25th, 2019 3:35 pm | By

Trump’s stupidest tweet of the moment:

The question I was asked most today by fellow World Leaders, who think the USA is doing so well and is stronger than ever before, happens to be, “Mr. President, why does the American media hate your Country so much? Why are they rooting for it to fail?”

Lordy. Every word.

Note “fellow World Leaders” for instance. “Get it? I’m World Leader and I get to hang with other (lesser) World Leaders. I am important!”

Note also “Mr. President” – from the guy who keeps, embarrassingly, calling his “fellow World Leaders” Angela and Emmanuel and so on in his tweets. He loves being called “Sir” and he loves being called Mister President” – … Read the rest



Each individual has the freedom to decide…but…

Aug 25th, 2019 1:16 pm | By

Karen L. Blair asks the age-old question, Who will date a trans person?

Who is Blair?

Karen Blair is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia; and Chair of the Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Issues (SOGII) Section of the Canadian Psychological Association.

So, not just a random activist on Twitter but an expert.

Regardless of your current relationship status, imagine for a moment that at some point in the future you were to find yourself single and looking. Under such hypothetical circumstances, which of the following people would you consider as a potential dating partner:

  • a cisgender[1] woman
  • a
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Niche issues

Aug 25th, 2019 12:46 pm | By

The Guardian on Trump in Biarritz:

Senior aides in Donald Trump’s entourage have accused the G7 host and French president, Emmanuel Macron, of seeking to embarrass his US counterpart by making the summit focus on “niche issues” such as climate change, according to multiple US media reports.

Good scare quotes but there should be more of them, or else GIFs of scorn and derision.

Can we focus for just a second? CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A NICHE ISSUE.

Not in any sense. Climate change is making the planet less inhabitable for most mammals, fish, birds, insects, and plants right now and it’s getting worse all the time, at a much faster clip than was predicted even a few years … Read the rest



Holiday snaps

Aug 25th, 2019 11:51 am | By
Holiday snaps

Trump is hard at work at the G7.

Moments later:

Dude has his priorities straight.

Wait there’s more.

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Colleagues, please, we can’t talk about climate at an ECONOMIC meeting

Aug 25th, 2019 11:40 am | By

Trump at the G7 is whining because Macron is doing things his way instead of Trump’s way. Isn’t the entire world supposed to do things Trump’s way? If not, why not?

Macron had ripped up the script before anyone even landed in the seaside resort of Biarritz: picking a fight with Brazil over Amazon forest fires, surprising the Europeans with a threat to block a trade deal with Latin America, and keeping allies guessing about what trick he would pull next.

Did Macron “pick a fight” with Brazil over Amazon forest fires, or is Bolsonaro picking a fight with all of us by clear-cutting the Amazon? Who is really the baddy here?

With mounting threats to the global economy, divisions

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Such a yawn

Aug 25th, 2019 11:15 am | By

Trans activism does wonders for your feminism, I must say. Stamps it right out.

Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology and Gender Identities:

Re GC feminist protest pranks @ManchesterPride, please, just…[GIF of woman making the “sit down and be quiet” gesture]

Thing is, most of them are (at least!) my age and they really have only *just* discovered protest! Such a yawn. I don’t want to people watch them. They have nothing to teach me. I say, with #pride, Please. Just. Go. Away. You are not fun. You are not pretty (though yep, vacant)

Old, boring, and ugly, the professor of gender identities calls feminist women.

We get more progressive every day!

(It’s a Sex Pistols joke, the people … Read the rest



It’s just wrong

Aug 25th, 2019 10:26 am | By

Jolyon Maugham continues to be petulant and self-admiring instead of actually listening to women who point out [what ought to be] the obvious.

Hi Janice, It’s just wrong for you to suggest I am indifferent to women’s safety. There is no reasonable basis for that suggestion. It’s also wrong of you to smear me because I hold a view (shared by most sporting regulators) regarding the participation of trans women in sport.

That was in response to Times reporter Janice Turner:

It’s clearly unfair for those who’ve gone through male puberty to compete against women. But this is actually dangerous. What will it take, Jolyon, the legion of silent men & woke sports bodies, to persuade you women’s lives

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Can we put them in a box for 5 weeks?

Aug 24th, 2019 6:12 pm | By

And he wasn’t even elected.

Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.

An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such

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Wait, we can ask questions of that kind?

Aug 24th, 2019 6:00 pm | By

Rebecca Kukla – Philosophy, Georgetown, and cop of all things trans – has a public Facebook post from last week about how her piece for the Institute of Art and Ideas was drastically cut without her knowledge and how the Institute of Art and Ideas didn’t tell her it was a multi-person piece and that she would be posting in the company of TERFs. She includes the uncut piece, and what she says in one of the cut parts is interesting.

There is no such thing as ‘the’ transgender experience and identity of course; the experiences of transgender folks are as varied as the experiences of anyone else, and transgender people also do not share a single identity. Some trans

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Beware the limousine-liberal meltdown

Aug 24th, 2019 4:40 pm | By

Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker introduces us to an academic who thinks white people are Superior:

Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is the academic who perhaps best represents the ideology of the Trump Administration’s immigration restrictionists. Wax, who began her professional life as a neurologist, and who served in the Solicitor General’s office in the late eighties and early nineties, has become known in recent years for her belief in the superiority of “Anglo-Protestant culture.”…

Last month, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, in Washington, D.C., Wax promoted the idea of “cultural-distance nationalism,” or the belief that “we are better off if our country is dominated numerically, demographically, politically, at

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Bullshit Prince Andrew didn’t know

Aug 24th, 2019 12:57 pm | By

Marina Hyde on Andrew Windsor’s claim to be shocked, shocked by the news about Jeffrey Epstein:

Or as Buckingham Palace finally put it in a statement denying any impropriety on behalf of the prince: “The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes.”

I’m slightly sorry for the royal flunkies who had to issue this line, given that most of us are suffering eyeball strain from all the rolling we’re doing. Even so, I do feel we need further clarification on what precisely the Duke is appalled by. Is it just the “recent reports”? Because if we’re meant to believe that Prince Andrew is appalled by ALL of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein

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Can if I want to

Aug 24th, 2019 12:31 pm | By

Trump says he can too so order people to do what he orders them to do. Can can CAN.

President Donald Trump claimed he has the “absolute right” to “order” US companies to stop doing business with China that would involve using his broad executive authority in a new and unprecedented way under a 1977 law.

Normal presidents don’t do that, even the assholes. They don’t prance around saying they have “the absolute right” to whatever it is. They don’t do it one because it sounds babyish, and two because it sounds Stalinist, and three because it’s not true.

On Friday, China unveiled a new round of retaliatory tariffs on about $75 billion worth of US goods, the latest escalation

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Oh alas, he is simply too nuanced for this hard world

Aug 24th, 2019 11:42 am | By

Jolyon Maugham has returned to the fray.

A friend asks why I speak on the rare conflicts between trans and natal women’s rights: twitter is not a space for nuance, she says, and you persuade no-one.

But when we abandon a space to absolutists we allow stances to harden, and progress and resolution become tougher still.

Oh, he’s the one doing nuance, is he.

This was the nuance:

How the simple joy of sport can transcend fear and hate. Wonderful reporting.

That was the “nuanced” tweet linking to the BBC’s ridiculous and insulting article on the huge man who is playing rugby on a women’s team, the article that laughed at the danger that he would injure some … Read the rest