Originally a comment by Artymorty on The Three Anti-imperialists.

I’ve never understood people who worship Marx like a god and treat his writings like holy text. The philosophers and thinkers of the past had good ideas and bad ones. As I see it, the general rule is, the further back you go in time, the more surprising it is to find good ideas that hold up today — and the more credit is due to those who came up with them — and the more apt you are to find bad ones that didn’t hold up so well. Because that’s how knowledge is built: over time. So it seems weird to me that anyone would revere thinkers from centuries … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on Looking fixedly in the other direction.

In the James Rieger edition (1974/1982) of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), Rieger’s introduction says this about Shelley’s father William Godwin:

Of all the tracts published by the Johnson circle, none had so great or enduring an impact as Godwin’s Enquiry considering Political Justice (1793).

Godwin argued that once the mind has been cleansed of superstition, emotionalism, and respect for custom, the free and rational man will necessarily perform virtuous actions, which will be socially useful and, at the same time, personally pleasurable.

Legislatures, courts of law, monarchy, marriage, and all other forms of “positive institution” with wither away, and the wise world will enter upon

Hamza Yousef says men will be protected under new misogyny laws.

Scotland’s first minister has said transgender women will be protected under any new misogyny laws. Humza Yousaf insisted that “anyone affected” by misogyny would be covered, whatever their biological sex.

That is moronic. Anyone can be “affected” by anything; it’s meaningless. Hatred of women is bad for women. There’s no “anyone” here; the word is quite specific.

Women were not included in the recent Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 that was introduced on 1 April – a decision that Mr Yousaf said had followed discussions with a number of women’s groups.

What kind of discussions? The kind where Mr Yousaf says “You bitches don’t … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sonderval on And a crime in Germany?

Actually, the situation is more complicated than described in the article by Tagesspiegel.

A biology PhD student (who is the focus of a lot of TRA criticism and hate since she dared trying to give a talk about the biology of sex) said that the Nazis did not pursue trans people. TRA activists then accused her on Twitter of being a holocaust denier.

The court clearly said that she is not a holocaust denier in the normal sense or anything like that, but that if you are a trans activist focused on this topic only (and only then), your opinion that the Nazis did pursue trans people is an … Read the rest

Attempt to force secular school to stop being secular fails:

A Muslim student at a London school has lost a High Court challenge against its ban on prayer rituals. Michaela School in Wembley was taken to court by the girl over the policy, which she argued was discriminatory. The non-faith state secondary school previously told the High Court that allowing prayer rituals risked “undermining inclusion” among pupils.

Theocrats will of course retort that secularism undermines inclusion of theocrats, which is true enough, but secularism has the advantage of neutrality. If the school allowed prayers for one religion then it would risk “undermining inclusion” for all the other religions and for secular neutrality. That, of course, is the goal.

In

The glorious future.

The Multipolar world is taking form.

No longer is the global majority going to turn the other cheek.

American imperialism, just like all of its imperial forefathers, will fall.

Only through the destruction of the empire and the tyranny of capital can we #FREEAMERICA and the… pic.twitter.com/917wFImO4v

— Midwestern Marx (@MidwesternMarx) April 13, 2024

… Read the rest

I’m pretty sure Willoughby is lying about this.

Smithsonian Magazine did an article on the Nazis and “trans people” last September, except that it admits up front that it’s not exactly about “trans people” for the simple reason that they weren’t a thing at the time.

In the fall of 2022, a German court heard an unusual case. It was a civil lawsuit that grew out of a feud on Twitter about whether transgender people were victims of the Holocaust. Though there is no longer much debate about whether gay men and lesbians were persecuted by the Nazis, there’s been very little scholarship on trans people during this period.

The court took expert statements from historians before

It’s in The Sun, so I don’t feel like reading it, but I gotta say, that banner would make me feel the very opposite of welcome.

Sun: Shock as @NHS bosses unfurl banner featuring 21 'genders or sexualities' in hospital reception@UHNM_NHS — one of the country’s worst performing — insisted the flags help patients “be themselves” & supports "LGBTQ+ ahead of June’s Pride month"https://t.co/MjtdfkH7Dx

— Emily Wilding Davison (@Wommando) April 15, 2024

If all that gender chopped salad is welcome then gender skeptics are not welcome. Just for one thing, we don’t have a colorful stripey flag. We are aflagual. … Read the rest

Guy goes to a shopping mall to kill people.

I say “people” but of course that’s wrong. Sheer habit; sorry.

He went there to kill women. A man tried to stop him so he killed that one man too, but the rest were all women. Women are shit; women need killing.

The man who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre appears to have targeted women, police say.

Appears?

What would it take for the BBC to omit that “appears to have” part?

The New South Wales police commissioner told Australia’s ABC News that it was “obvious” Mr Cauchi focused on women.

The only man killed in the attack was security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, who

Am I wrong to say that no one wants to make trans people less equal?

I get that there are plenty of malevolent people who dislike trans people along with gay people, feminists, lefties, atheists, you name it, but are there people who want to make trans people less equal? What would that even look like?

That question is related to one I ask a lot, which is “what do we mean by ‘trans rights’?” What exactly are trans rights? Trans people should have human rights, obviously, but what are specifically trans rights, and how do we know that anyone should have them?

There’s a lot of sloppy rhetoric about equality and rights all through the trans ControVersy, and … Read the rest

President of Humanists UK refuses to step up.

It's not something I know much about.

— Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) April 14, 2024

I must say as an ex member of the Humanists UK I find this startling to say the least. I couldn't find any response from the Humanist Twitter feed on the Cass Review (I may have missed it). I would have hoped that at the very least there would be some acknowledgement of it?

I…

— Heather (@Heatherthefair) April 14, 2024

They don’t want the tsuris.… Read the rest

Neale Hanvey MP on Ruth Hunt:

Ruth Hunt’s claim that she was “absolutely someone who has always been working in the middle ground, trying to build consensus” is most egregious insult imaginable.

@stonewalluk attacked anyone occupying a position beyond their pious queer theory doctrine. Any LGB person who raised so much as a ‘heretical’ whisper was targeted and demonised. The agenda they have been pushing has seen emboldened extremist positions find their way on to the floor of the House of Commons where straight women tell gay men to get back in the closet. That’s what you achieved Ruth Hunt, but it’s never going to happen. Now we stand with @AllianceLGB.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Often contending with other difficulties.

You’d think they’d make sure there actually was such a thing as a “gender identity” before offering to “develop” it, “treat” it, or follow its dictates with regard to the bodies it allegedly inhabits. Why do some people claim to have such an identity, while others do not? Why are most people’s identities “aligned” with their sex, while others are not? What causes this supposed “misalignment”? How is the identity’s presence and nature determined, apart from patient self-diagnosis? How do you screen out people who don’t require your services, and/or those who will not benefit from them? Surely clinicians dealing with this phenomenon would want … Read the rest

Dreaming the impossible dream again:

Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer has said she no longer wants to play transgender roles. The 25-year-old transgender star shot to fame playing a trans character, Jules Vaughn, in HBO’s hit teen drama.

So he’s an actor and a he, and the BBC is lying to its readers in the usual way by calling him “she.”

Anyway. Trans actor Hunter doesn’t want to play trans characters any more. Ok; there are other jobs. Have a nice life, Hunter.

But Schafer said she felt she could go further as an actress by “not making it the centrepiece to what I’m doing”. She said: “I worked so hard to get to where I am, past these really

In other news…

This is exactly the escalation in the simmering conflict between Iran, its proxies and Israel that everyone feared: a direct attack by one nation against another.

For nearly two weeks Iran’s security establishment has been mulling its response to the 1 April airstrike on its consulate in Damascus, widely assumed to be the work of Israel, that killed several top Iranian commanders. Clearly, a decision was reached that such a major escalation – an attack that flattened a diplomatic building and therefore sovereign Iranian territory – called for an escalatory response.

Israel has several layers of air defences and it has vowed to respond to any attack on its soil and it will. The risk now

Ruth Hunt’s “Who, me?? Never!!” is not going down very well.

I found this interview with Ruth Hunt, former head of Stonewall, very hard to read—because I personally know so many people who have sacrificed so much to contradict the stances she once held, and now disowns.https://t.co/53HOh7XxLY

— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) April 13, 2024

1/ When gay children abandoned to gender needed Stonewall to stand up for them, Ruth Hunt wasn't even absent from her post, it was worse than that. She conspired against them, joined and led enemy forces and today she sets out her defence. But this prosecution is overwhelming. pic.twitter.com/YCI7p36r8K

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) April 13, 2024

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1779159322666181054

LGB people who tried so hard to

Hannah Barnes in The New Statesman:

[Hannah Barnes is associate editor of the New Statesman and author of “Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children” (Swift)]

The report confirms that the majority of children referred to Gids had complex needs, and alongside their gender-related distress were often contending with other difficulties: anxiety, depression, eating disorder and autism were all over-represented when compared with what you would see in the general children’s population.

It also vindicates what so many former Gids staff have been saying for years: that there was no consistency in its clinical approach; that some assessments – prior to referral for puberty blockers – could be just one

Again with the re-wording.

Doc Stock asked for examples of Stonewall doing its thing, which has made for a highly useful thread full of sources. One item gives us yet another lie about what the trans ideology is about:

https://t.co/8PTxeTcX68 I went looking for 2018, because that's the year Maria McLachlan was battered. And to my memory, weren't Stonewall going to participate in a debate, bailed due to TRA pressure, then women tried to have a conversation without them…. pic.twitter.com/3xMc0cX0xV

— womenopausal ✊♀️ (@womenopausal1) April 12, 2024

Second paragraph under “We stand up for people”:

“We do draw a line with regard to questioning whether trans people deserve the same level of equality as any other group.”

NOBODY SAYS trans … Read the rest

Welp.

Stonewall tried to suppress early warnings to schools about the shaky evidence base for medical transitions for children, The Times can reveal.

Not just ignore; not just dispute; not just dismiss; suppress.

Speaking for the first time since the publication of the Cass review, Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green insisted that Stonewall had always supported calls for evidence-based medicine during her leadership from 2014 to 2019.

That buzzing you hear? That’s gender-critical types exclaiming “Like hell it did!!”

However, when campaigners sent out resource packs to schools in 2018 warning teachers that there was little medical evidence to support puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, Stonewall sought to have them removed from schools.

The evidence-led approach advocated by

Talk about mission creep…

Amnesty International put out a press release announcing Cass review on gender identity is being ‘weaponised’ by anti-trans groups.

What does the Cass review have to do with Amnesty International? And what does Amnesty have to do with the Cass review? Does AI now see itself as simply The Correct Ones, there to rebuke the wicked and sanctify the good, “wicked” and “good” according to Amnesty itself of course?

In response to the sensationalised coverage surrounding the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people by the paediatrician Hilary Cass, Amnesty International UK and Liberty, said:

“All children have the right to access specialist effective care on time and must