The Scottish Feminist Network speaks up:

We did not hold homophobic signs or make offensive demands, or use abusive terms. 2/ pic.twitter.com/Od0E5NMOBc

— Scottish Feminist Network (@Scot_Feminists) April 7, 2024

Women met, they wore t-shirts and merkins and hats, they used their customary humour – not threats – to express their rights, their concerns about children and vulnerable adults. 4/ pic.twitter.com/MVzkrsuGuj

— Scottish Feminist Network (@Scot_Feminists) April 7, 2024

… Read the rest

From The Scottish Daily Express:

Police chiefs are facing an angry backlash over their handling of a women’s free speech rally on Saturday, which saw feminists and trans protesters clash, it can be revealed. Up to 1000 gender critical women and trans activists faced off in Edinburgh during outspoken women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak rally, the first major test of Scotland’s controversial new hate crime laws.

To put it more bluntly, feminist women held a free speech rally and trans “activists” did their best to drown it out.

While Ms Keen publicly thanked Police Scotland “for keeping women safe at the event”, many among her supporters were left angry and frustrated. Several complained about being “corralled”

Agent-free passive voice and periphrasis dialed up to 1000:

H/t Sackbut… Read the rest

We’re not going to get any eclipse fun here in Seattle, because it’s all clouds up there. Nothing will change. It won’t even get darker.

But while we’re on the subject – this is a puzzle that doesn’t get discussed enough – how utterly bizarre is it that from here on this planet, the moon, which is practically next door, and the sun, which is way the fuck out there, ARE THE SAME SIZE???

I mean what are the odds? Eh? You wouldn’t place a bet on them. And yet there it is: from here, the moon can neatly block the sun such that only the corona is visible.

It’s downright creepy, is what it is.… Read the rest

Someone called Wren Sanders wrote a deferential piece on Judith Butler. Before we read it let’s find out who Wren Sanders is.

Wren Sanders (she/they) is an award-winning journalist and the editor of Them’s Community Section. Since joining the site in 2019, she has explored subjects such as Arca’s divine mutations, the case against LGBTQ+ military inclusion, and the power of trans monstrosity. As an editor, she is drawn to stories of resilience and insurgent joy, critiques of contemporary culture and politics, and visions of more livable worlds.

Is insurgent joy like trans joy, or is it a different kind of joy altogether? How do they both relate to intersectional joy? I’ll put research on … Read the rest

Kara Dansky a few weeks ago:

I have been thinking about the potential conflict between laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” in places of public accommodation and criminal laws that prohibit voyeurism and indecent exposure at least since 2021, when a man named Darren Merager decided to parade his naked body (complete with erection) around the women’s section of Wi Spa, a Korean-style nude spa in Los Angeles.

You remember that incident, I’m sure.

A video of a woman named Cubana Angel complaining about the incident went viral. In the video, she is seen asking staff: 

I just want to be clear with you: It’s okay … for a man to go into the women’s

The argument from they exist:

‘Shock horror, I do not agree with your narrow view of the big bang. Do you know why? Well because God exists and God created the universe. Astrophysics does not end with a generalised study of neutrinos. Why, because God exists, that’s why.’ pic.twitter.com/SuvHEM0Pfb

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 7, 2024

Compelling.

Likewise, frimblz exist and frimblz are frimblz. Why, because frimblz exist, that’s why.

You can’t argue with that.… Read the rest

Willz is now reporting people to the police for laughing.

The cells are going to fill to the brim before you can say “knife.”… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Shelf life.

Trans women like Patiha are among the most affected by extreme weather linked to climate change, as well as suffering disproportionately when disasters strike.

“Women, the elderly, and people with disabilities are mentioned, but there is no provision for sexual and gender minorities,” Darmawan said.

Perhaps TiMs are more absorbent, or prone to melting than mere mortals in the face of climate change. They are, by their own admission, “the most vulnerable and marginalized” ever, of everyone. Their misery and poverty is ever so much worse than anyone else’s. They are uniquely disadvantaged and targeted amongst all humans, and most endangered species. Why shouldn’t they also be preferrentially … Read the rest

What was the US justice system thinking?

Every night since August 2022, a small crowd has gathered outside the Washington DC Central Jail, through frigid winter nights and under spring rain, to protest against the US justice system.

The protesters outside the red-brick buildings of the facility pray, discuss the news, and broadcast telephone calls with prisoners inside the jail, where hundreds of accused or convicted rioters have been held in the three years since the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol.

What are the protesters protesting? Is the thinking here that violent assaults on the federal government should be legal?

In recent months, as Donald Trump has gripped the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, the protesters have taken heart

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

So is Mr Menno.

His rage is heartwarming.… Read the rest

Dennis is pissed off.

Straight pride. Forced heterosexuality version. Top down nonsense fed goons so lost to the corrupted rainbow they actively campaign on the streets against homosexuality. A disgusting hateful rabble the Scottish Hate Crime apparatus is designed to protect from criticism. I won't… pic.twitter.com/vQPWkx0pT4

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) April 6, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Due to popular demand, I'm posting the extended cut of my interview with public defender Stephanie Mueller. The transgender attorney is representing one of the far-left activists charged with disrupting a council meeting in February.
Otherwise, this is Seattle. What's the big… https://t.co/rYo4nrj9Wu pic.twitter.com/fuTP4qObvu

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) April 5, 2024

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