Humanists UK stands up for blasphemy.

A poster advertising comedian Fern Brady’s tour is ‘sacrilegious’, according to a complaint received by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Given ASA rules, this complaint could lead to the comedy poster being banned.

Humanists UK is concerned that the ASA will ban the poster on grounds of causing religious offence, as it has with similar adverts in the past. It says that doing so amounts to a de facto anti-blasphemy law, which is an unreasonable restriction on free expression.

To put it mildly. If blasphemy is forbidden then we can’t point out that old stories about gods and devils and angels are just that: old stories. We need to be able to distinguish … Read the rest

BBC trolling us:

The BBC pundit Sharron Davies has joined forces with a leading human rights charity in accusing the national broadcaster of potentially casting a shadow over next month’s Sports Personality of the Year (Spoty) event by naming Barbra Banda as their women’s footballer of the year.

The BBC was the subject of widespread criticism on Tuesday after announcing that a player banned from the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations for elevated testosterone levels had received its coveted award.

See that will be why the Beeb did it. Feminist women must be trolled and punished and generally shoved around.

Now Davies, the former Olympic swimmer who worked as the poolside reporter for the BBC at this year’s

Sally Hines thinks people in developing countries don’t know how to make babies.

I cannot stress how much JK R needs to do some reading on the historical and cultural context of sex. There’s a massive literature from across disciplines on how the binary model of biological sex is a ‘“first world” notion’. And of course Amnesty knows https://t.co/ckamYl4mAL

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 27, 2024

There’s no stupidity like sophisticated academic stupidity. … Read the rest

Fiona McAnena last week on fairness in women’s sport:

The Football Association does not allow mixed football for adults. That is what it will tell you. But this month a 17-year-old girl was suspended for questioning the presence of a bearded man in the opposing team. That was an offence under the FA’s code of conduct because that man says he is a woman.

So which is it? You might think the FA should pick one and only one, but wait, there’s an escape clause. The bearded man is not a man, because he says he’s not. Bam, problem solved.

Since 2013, the FA has allowed male players who identify as transgender into women’s teams if they can show

Hmmmmm. It says “NHS inform” at the top. It shows other available languages. Surely the goal here is to inform patients. And yet…

The goal is surely to inform, and yet the NHS tells people, including people who don’t read English, that there are people who are not women or girls yet who “bleed from their vagina.” Well, what people? What people are those exactly? What people who are not women or girls have the ability to “bleed from their vagina”? Why don’t we all know about them? Why haven’t we all always known about them?

The NHS, let’s remember, is not the Guardian or the BBC, nor is it an activist on social media. The NHS is a health … Read the rest

Here NI is “a place for lesbian and bisexual women” in Belfast. Its most recent Facebook post, six hours ago:

One, it carefully omits “sex” from the “regardless of” bit. Two, the image is of a woman brandishing her fist at a cringing shaking man while shouting at him.

To repeat: it calls itself “a place for lesbian and bisexual women.” … Read the rest

Pretend-woman Robin Moira White in the Independent:

Today continues the Supreme Court hearing of the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers appeal. Ostensibly, this case concerns guidance issued by the Scottish government about who can be considered for places on boards of public bodies in Scotland. In fact, it comes down to a dispute about the meaning of the word “sex” in the UK Equality Act 2010, the definition of “woman” and “man” under that act – and the place of trans people in our society.

As if you can change the realities of who is a woman and who is a man by passing an act. As if we don’t already know who is a woman and … Read the rest

From the New Republic:

Sargent: Indeed. I want to ask you about this idea of self-censorship under that pressure. You have some experience and insight with what happens inside The New York Times. You were public editor. How do you think editors and newsroom leaders experience criticism like this from Trump? Do they see it as something to worry about? Do they get anxious about being perceived as being biased against Trump? How does this sort of stuff register internally there?

Sullivan: There’s a real push and pull about it. Reporters want to do good stories. They’re not going after Trump, or it’s not really about their personal politics or whether the Times leans left or right. They want

Oliver Brown points out that women are entitled to think we’re being trolled.

The failure of Barbra Banda to meet sex eligibility rules is not in question: indeed, Andrew Kamanga, president of the Zambian football association, confirmed in 2022 the striker had not met the “gender verification criteria” and so could not compete in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. He gave this statement to the BBC. And so it is doubly extraordinary to discover that in 2024, Banda has just been anointed BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year.

The Confederation of African Football is one of the few major sporting bodies in recent years to have mandated sex testing. Fifa and the International Olympic Committee, by contrast,

Originally a comment by maddog on You’ve never been.

… because you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for granted. You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone.

What a liar.

Women “have never been denied any area of expression”? In what world? Women have for centuries been, and continue to be, denied almost every form of expression until relatively recently, and then only partially permitted, and only in modern Western democratic countries. Women in … Read the rest

So people voted for Trump thinking he would make housing cheaper?

Do they know what he’s been doing for the past half-century? His day job, if you like? His one skill?

Is Trump serious about massive tariff hikes that could increase prices for US consumers as soon as he begins a second presidency, which was won partly because voters were so frustrated with inflation and costs of housing and groceries?

And they thought Trump would lower the costs of housing? Really?

Just curious.… Read the rest

In honor of Yay Blasphemy hour here’s this week’s Jesus and Mo.

baking

… Read the rest

How about no.

Labour MP Tahir Ali has today advocated for blasphemy laws during Prime Minister’s Questions.

The MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley asked Keir Starmer if he would “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. Speaking in the Commons, Ali added that “November marks Islamophobia awareness month,” and that “last year the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the desecration of religious texts, including the Quran, despite opposition from the previous government.”

Then the UN Human Rights Council needs to have a word with itself. Goddy rights are the enemy of human rights. “Prophets” are the fictional goon squad that enforces … Read the rest

Trans-identifying man Brianna Wu tells women we’ve never been denied anything so we just don’t get it.

I think for a lot of women, particularly after childbirth, their sense of being female is biology. And I fully admit that you have those experiences and we don’t.

But respectfully, I think because you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for… https://t.co/K8Wb74nwLC

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) November 25, 2024

Yes he actually wrote that. Women have never been denied any area of expression, he says, blithely ignoring all the many many areas of expression we have been denied, and in some cases punished for trying to enter. Man lectures women on how we have never been … Read the rest

Jack Smith left the door open just a fraction.

In fact, this move could be an effort to keep the cases alive in the long term. An interesting tell in each motion is Smith’s request to dismiss the cases “without prejudice.” That means that the cases can be filed again. By dismissing the cases now on his own terms, Smith blocks Trump’s attorney general from dismissing the cases for all time.

Which of course Trump’s attorney general would be required to do.

In addition, by filing his motions pre-emptively, Smith was able to explain his reasons for dismissing the case, rather than allowing Trump’s future AG to mischaracterize them. According to Smith, he was dismissing the case not because

Does Amnesty Hate Women?

Well duh. Of course it does. Obviously.

It’s not a human rights issue to pretend to be something you’re not and force everyone else to play along with your pretense.

It’s glaringly obviously not a human right to force women to agree that men are women if they say so, welcome men into all our spaces, give them all our prizes, put them in charge of all our organizations, make them CEO of all our rape crisis services.

Amnesty is garbage.… Read the rest

I was thinking Jack Smith shut down the Trump case because he had to, but Adam Schiff implies he didn’t.

“I think this is a serious mistake by the department,” Schiff told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, saying that while Smith sought to dismiss the cases without prejudice — meaning they can be brought against Trump once his term is over — it now means that the “status quo” is to not bring any charges against the president.

If it’s a mistake, that implies it wasn’t mandatory.

“But it is nevertheless a very serious distinction, because the status quo now is no charges against the president,” Schiff, who served on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on

Why Bad Kennedy should not be the boss of Health and Human Services, by former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey S. Flier.

RFK Jr. was nominated precisely because of his stated positions on a wide range of health and scientific matters: vaccines, AIDS, the reputed harms of electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi and cell phones, and many other topics. So these views are central to assessing his suitability for the role. 

The scientific process requires skepticism about prevailing consensus. Some Kennedy supporters see his skepticism on a wide variety of scientific and medical issues, including policies during the Covid epidemic, as a positive that will enable him to disrupt the medical and research establishment.

But there’s informed skepticism and … Read the rest

Dang. The BBC wins another prize for maximum hatred of women.

Find out more about Barbra Banda's story and why she was shortlisted for #BBCWFOTY

Read: https://t.co/xrfne3pr7h pic.twitter.com/r98X1TOrma

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) November 26, 2024

… Read the rest

It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

UN Women (which doesn’t always know which people are women) tells us:

Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. Globally, almost one in three women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once in their life.

For at least 51,100 women in 2023, the cycle of gender-based violence ended with one final and brutal act—their murder by partners and family members. That means a woman was killed every 10 minutes.

So are we talking about women here? Or about women plus men who pretend to be women? … Read the rest