Money and power and status and malehood combined: one of the male royals may be unable to keep denying his part in Jeffrey Epstein’s hobby.

Prince Andrew faces further embarrassment from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal after a judge ordered thousands of secret documents relating to an alleged “sex slave” of the tycoon to be released.

About 2,000 files from a defamation case involving Virginia Roberts, an alleged trafficking victim, are due to be unsealed following a ruling by the US court of appeal this month. Roberts claims she was forced by Epstein to have sex with the Duke of York in London, New York and the Caribbean. Prince Andrew has strongly denied the claims.

Well he would, wouldn’t he.

In

More on Pence’s brief visit to Theresienstadt a border detention center yesterday:

Agents wore face masks, and video showed detainees packed into their holding areas surrounded by chain-link fence, the concrete floors littered with silver thermal blankets. Reporters accompanying Pence described the facility as smelling “horrendous.”

A group of men detained behind chain link fencing shouted to news cameras, “No shower, no shower!”

I wonder if this “no showers” thing is even more sinister than it looks at first blush. It’s bad enough if it’s just a matter of imprisoning non-criminals without sufficient planning and organization to provide humane conditions, but it’s worse if Trump and the gang are doing it on purpose. If the detainees smell horrendous then doesn’t … Read the rest

Here’s the young woman who lost the gold medal to a man who changed his name to Laurel and competed against women:

Samoa’s new golden girl, Feagaiga Stowers, is not just a Commonwealth Games Champion. She is an overcomer and a conqueror of unimaginable odds.

But that wasn’t always the case.

Several years ago, Stowers’ young life hit a snag. The victim of abuse, she was among the survivors of sexual violence who sought refuge and [was] given a second chance at life at the Samoa Victim Support Group (S.V.S.G.).

She entered the Campus of Hope “shy and hopeless.”

Well that girl was not the one the world saw at Carrara Sports and Leisure Centre at the Gold Coast on

More “this is all perfectly fine” reporting on “Laurel” Hubbard’s cheating.

New Zealand transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard clinched two gold medals as weightlifting competition concluded here today…

Hubbard was favourite to win the gold medal at last year’s Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast but had to withdraw mid-competition due to an elbow injury, which later required surgery.

Her appearance in the Australian city divided opinion as Hubbard – born as Gavin before transitioning in her 30s – entered a female event.

Opinion should be unanimous: this should not be allowed.

Hubbard was eligible to compete at Gold Coast 2018 because she passed the International Olympic Committee criteria for transgender athletes after proving her testosterone levels stayed below certain

Brace yourselves; this is horrendous.

New video shows severe overcrowding of men in cages at Texas detainment facility during VP Pence's visit Friday.

A group of men detained behind chain link fencing shouted to news cameras, "No shower, no shower!" https://t.co/iysmT8IUE1 pic.twitter.com/35KKyxb6w8

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 13, 2019

At the end Pence just turns and walks away.… Read the rest

Man has deep thoughts on ethics – deep Catholic thoughts on ethics.

https://twitter.com/BrandonAmbro/status/1149727620038369281

A carrier. A carrier. As if that’s all it is, like carrying a bag of groceries.

https://twitter.com/BrandonAmbro/status/1149728207685345281

And yet all this constant thinking somehow doesn’t deliver up the thought that he shouldn’t refer to the prospective baby’s mother as a “carrier.”

https://twitter.com/BrandonAmbro/status/1149729525401628673

But it’s not just carrying that gestating women do. It’s far from just that. First of all she contributes the egg. The baby is hers as well as the father’s. I know it must be painful for same-sex couples that they can’t conceive together, but that’s just how it is, and calling the mother “the carrier” doesn’t change that.

And it doesn’t end with … Read the rest

Fascist president in action. (Yes literal fascist. This kind of open demonization of the press is right out of The Big Book of How to Fascist.)

TRUMP on the New York Times: "They have phony sources. They don't even have sources. They write whatever they want … what they do is a tremendous disservice to this country. They are truly the enemy of the people, I'll tell you that. They are the enemy of the people." pic.twitter.com/1QXu8ljpiJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2019

… Read the rest

A lot of people are passing around this bit of genius:

https://twitter.com/laurenarankin/status/1149499575348035584

Would you like to try our Lobster Special today?

All-caps all you like, but that doesn’t magically make your claims true.

“Cis” just means you identify with the sex you were assigned at birth, she tells us. Yes, we know, and that’s why we reject the word. I don’t “identify with the sex I was assigned at birth.” I just am it, that’s all. It’s simply a fact. I don’t “identify with” it or embrace it or glory in it or anything else along those lines, I just have the humdrum normal awareness of the fact of it. It is what it is, as we so often hear … Read the rest

Another successful theft of athletic glory:

Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard has won gold at the Pacific Games in Samoa…

Hubbard, a transgender athlete who is trying to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, won gold medals at Apia’s Faleata Sports Complex to become the Oceania senior champion, the Commonwealth senior champion, and the Pacific Games senior champion.

The 41-year-old won with a total lift of 268kg in the women’s 87kg category on Saturday. Samoans Feagaiga Stowers and Iuniana Sipaia took home silver and bronze with respective lifts of 261kg and 255kg.

In other words a 41-year-old man competed against women in weight-lifting and thus stole a gold medal from Feagaiga Stowers and a silver medal from Iuniana Sipaia. And … Read the rest

That doesn’t sound like a good plan.

It’s hard to overstate how insane, and how obviously illegal, this is.

Many men, women, and children will suffer horribly if it goes into effect.

We’re all overwhelmed with legal news but this is a *BFD* that deserves widespread attention, condemnation, and resistance. https://t.co/frrg55dcJe

— Joshua Matz (@JoshuaMatz8) July 12, 2019

Guatemala is a country people are fleeing from.

From @NewYorker: “More people are leaving Guatemala now than any other country in the northern triangle of Central America. Rampant poverty, entrenched political corruption, urban crime, and the effects of climate change have made large swath.”

— Joshua Matz (@JoshuaMatz8) July 13, 2019

Reading the UN Dispatch piece:

This is a guest

Oh those zany wacky folks at Border Patrol. They’re at it again.

An unofficial commemorative coin has been circulating among Border Patrol agents at the U.S./Mexico border, mocking the task of caring for migrant children and other duties that have fallen to agents as families cross into the U.S.

On the front, the coin declares “KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING” under an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag — a caricature of the “caravan” from last fall, which started in Honduras and attracted thousands of people as it moved north. (While the caravan included many women and children, the only visible figures on the coin appear to be adult men.)

The coin’s reverse side

It turns out there’s a cost to internalized misogyny. Who could have predicted that?

The author is anonymous, fortunately.

I am 24, and have always been self-conscious of how I looked “down there”. Not enough to put me off having sex and I never had complaints, but it was always in the back of my mind that my labia were on the larger side. I’d previously had cosmetic surgery on my ears, which went well, and figured that labiaplasty could also boost my confidence.

“On the larger side” compared to what? The women in porn? Who makes these rules? Who decided that chopping off bits of the genitalia should be medicalized into the official-sounding “labiaplasty”? What is wrong with … Read the rest

Susan Matthews at the Times Higher on Sally Hines’s Is Gender Fluid?: A Primer for the 21st Century:

Hines is interested in two different questions. Can an individual change their gender identity? And is the categorisation of biological sex really fluid?

Her key idea (drawn from Thomas Laqueur) is that binary sex difference is a cultural construction, cemented in the Enlightenment to underpin gender differences. From Anne Fausto-Sterling, Hines takes the claim that the existence of intersex people undermines the concept of binary sex differences. Cordelia Fine’s work allows her to argue that most claims for binary sex differences in the brain derive from cultural bias. What’s new is not the idea of gender fluidity but the claim that biological

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Yes but if you switch the labels that changes everything.

The scene, an upscale RESTAURANT. ALAINA HYPE LEVITATE is shown to her seat. A WAITER fills her water glass and offers AHL a menu.

AHL: That’s okay, I know what I’m ordering. I’ll have the lobster special and a glass of the house white, please.

W: An excellent choice! Coming right up.

A few moments later, the WAITER returns with a glass of milk, and what looks very much like a plate of mashed potatoes.

W. Here you go, the special with house white.

AHL. Where’s the lobster?

W. It’s right there on the plate.

AHL. That looks very much … Read the rest

Once in awhile Twitter will show me completely random tweets, from people I don’t follow and don’t want to follow, so occasionally I see a wack tweet I didn’t even go looking for. Like:

https://twitter.com/alanalevinson/status/1149329288564314112

Oh yeah, it’s only conservatives who dispute the claim that men can get pregnant. Definitely.

So I followed the link.

The subhead:

Pregnancy is still believed to be something only a woman will experience, but trans men and non-binary people can and do get pregnant too

Language games. Stupid language games. Pregnancy isn’t believed to be a woman-only thing, it simply is a woman-only thing. The gotcha has no got. Yes of course trans men i.e. women who call themselves men can get pregnant … Read the rest

Washington’s army seized the airports, and the kidney is in the heart.

Donald Trump surprised the medical community on Wednesday afternoon, when he claimed “the kidney has a very special place in the heart”.

Speaking as he announced a government plan to tackle kidney disease, Trump went on an extended riff about the efforts of specialists.

“You’ve worked so hard on the kidney. Very special. The kidney has a very special place in the heart. It’s an incredible thing,” Trump gushed.

See this is what happens when you get someone whose brain is disintegrating rapidly and who loves to hear himself talk. He generates words, just words, whatever words he can clutch as they float past, and since most … Read the rest