All entries by this author

Psst I think it’s sarcasm

Jan 12th, 2024 5:20 pm | By

Aw come on, that has to be parody, doesn’t it?

Daughter wants to pretend-transition to boy so that she can transition to girl in a few years? That can’t be real. Can it? (And “we’ll lose the deal with TLC” sounds parodic too.)

AnnLesby – that’s a known parody-maker, right?… Read the rest



No YOU have the personal vendetta

Jan 12th, 2024 3:08 pm | By

Trump owes the NY Times:

Former President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay the New York Times nearly $400,000 (£313,900) in legal fees for a failed lawsuit.

Mr Trump’s $100m lawsuit accused the newspaper and Mr Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, of “an insidious plot” to obtain his tax records. A judge dismissed it last year, saying its claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”.

Free press? Ring a bell, Don?

The lawsuit, over a 2018 investigation that alleged the former president was involved in “dubious tax schemes”, accused three journalists who reported on the story of working with Mr Trump’s niece as part of a “personal vendetta” against him. It claimed they relentlessly pursued her and

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We matter more than you mkay?

Jan 12th, 2024 2:06 pm | By

This is a point that should be made more often. A LOT more often.

Indeed. “We men don’t want to be around men in private spaces, so you have to let us be around you in private spaces, even though you don’t want to be around men in private spaces either.”… Read the rest



Trump tells us how it goes

Jan 12th, 2024 1:44 pm | By

Trump threatens:

There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.

Why will there be bedlam? Because Donald Dictator will foment it.

“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.

Hey, you know what’s not the way it goes? A guy who loses an election sending an armed mob to attack the government, that’s … Read the rest



Speaking of medical quackery and dubious medical claims

Jan 12th, 2024 1:27 pm | By

Jerry Coyne on the decline of Science Based Medicine:

Lordy, how many of us used to love the Science-Based Medicine (SBM) site? I did! It was the go-to place for enjoying the debunking of medical quackery and the scrutiny of dubious medical claims. Started in 2008 by Steve Novella and David Gorski (“Orac”), SBM is affiliated with the Society for Science-Based Medicine.

Sadly, it’s now going down the tubes, having bought heavily, like the ACLU and FFRF, into gender activism. It started with an incident I reported here, involving Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage and a positive review by SBM editor, skeptic, and physician Harriet Hall. 

Let’s let Wikipedia sum it up:

On June 15, 2021, Science-Based Medicine

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Globally official

Jan 12th, 2024 10:30 am | By

From Reduxx:

The World Health Organization is under fire for choosing a group of trans activists to develop its first global guide to “gender-affirming care,” with particular concern surrounding an appointee who advocates for halting children’s puberty. 

Why is the WHO doing that at all? Why is the WHO promoting a stupid fad that urges people to ruin their own bodies? Why do people in Nigeria and Laos and Afghanistan need to adopt this brainless destructive fad?

On December 18 of 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally announced the individuals who had been selected to make up its guideline development group (GDG). According to the global health body’s website, the GDG will create “implementation guidance on health sector

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SPS thinks there is an “acceptable” level of risk

Jan 12th, 2024 8:03 am | By

Kath Murray, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie write:

This week the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee will consider the Scottish Prison Service revised policy for transgender prisoners, finally published after a five-year hiatus…

As before, the revised policy is based on self-declaration principles. Prisoners seeking to be accommodated and/or searched based on their gender identity are required to “demonstrate” their identity, but this is not essential. As the SPS explain, the “policy is also explicit that decisions should not be made based on an individual’s ability to provide a wealth of evidence and there may be many reasons why an individual cannot provide this evidence and should not be penalised for this”.

Because the people of gender … Read the rest



People and pregnancy

Jan 11th, 2024 5:35 pm | By

Pathetic NPR:

“I think just a few years ago, before Roe was overturned, it was unimaginable for people to tell their stories about traumatic pregnancy loss and about abortions without the fear of public stigma,” Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights told NPR.

For people to tell their stories? Avoiding something?

Now, it’s different. “Women and pregnant people in this country are so angry and so shocked at the treatment that they are receiving at the hands of the state that they have been compelled to tell their stories,” she says.

Go to hell, NPR. There are no pregnant men in this or any other country; we don’t need you erasing us in the very act of … Read the rest



Respect

Jan 11th, 2024 4:11 pm | By

Awww look at that adorable cutesie-wootsie kittycat and look how stabby it is and how threat-makey it is. I always love that combination of violent threat and cuddly diddums.

https://twitter.com/filthyfeminist/status/1743440884090175635… Read the rest


Hvaldimir

Jan 11th, 2024 3:20 pm | By
Hvaldimir

I didn’t know about this guy:

A beluga whale that turned up in Norway wearing a harness in 2019, prompting speculation it was a spy trained by the Russian navy, has reappeared off Sweden’s coast.

First discovered in Norway’s far northern region of Finnmark, the whale spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline, before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and move on to Sweden.

On Sunday [May 22, 2023], he was observed in Hunnebostrand, off Sweden’s south-western coast.

Norwegians nicknamed him Hvaldimir – a pun on whale in Norwegian, hval, and a nod to its alleged association with Russia.

When

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Empathy for women off the charts

Jan 11th, 2024 11:30 am | By

Man tells world he can’t understand why women don’t want men strip-searching them.

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Guest post: Always already

Jan 11th, 2024 11:09 am | By

Originally a comment by Papito on Relating to coercive behavior.

Since “changing gender” doesn’t really mean anything, how can one prevent it? If you are “assigned sex at birth,” but you are born with an inherent, inalienable gender, then it never changes, so you can’t prevent it changing. For example, once upon a time, in a deleted universe, there was an actress named Ellen Page, but in our more valid universe you can see that a fellow named Elliot Page has credits for Juno, where he played a pregnant girl, and Hard Candy, where he played a 14-year old female vigilante. Because he was always Elliot, he never changed gender. He played those roles as a remarkably talented young … Read the rest



Relating to coercive behavior

Jan 11th, 2024 8:46 am | By

Yes, yes they would. Next question?

Parents are allowed to talk about gender identity, but they are of course not allowed to say it’s not a real thing. It’s like the church. Parents are allowed to talk about the religion, but they’re not allowed to say it’s bullshit.

Furthermore parents will be jailed for seven years only in the case of coercive behavior, like telling their sons they’re boys and can’t change themselves into girls.

How very liberal.… Read the rest



Newcomers who consider themselves morally enlightened

Jan 11th, 2024 8:31 am | By

Dave Hewitt is brilliant.

There is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in political discourse many times in recent years, which goes like this:

  • An existing term is colonised and its meaning subverted to new political ends
  • Previous users of the term are forced to try to come up with a new term to replace the old one
  • The new occupants demonise the old, and deny political legitimacy to any new terminology

The best description I can think of for this process is semantic gentrification, in which users of a word’s original meaning are forced out by newcomers who consider themselves morally enlightened in comparison to the older population, who completely change the character of the term in service of

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Guest post: Punk, Goth, Trans

Jan 11th, 2024 7:32 am | By

Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on Too many organisations have let them get away with it.

Our generation had Punk. They practised what we’d probably now call “trolling” and got the desired response. That was their passport to seeing themselves as lonely misunderstood romantic heroes. Then came Goths and most people were a just little wiser and pretty much let them get on with mooching about in cemeteries at midnight and writing bad poetry. We’d been there. Then came what? We’d reached a point when nothing anyone could do in terms of presentation or “lifestyle” could shock or even slightly perturb the older generations. We, who had become those older generations, were all too busy desperately denying the … Read the rest



Is that really what DEI schemes do?

Jan 10th, 2024 4:09 pm | By

Is that really true though?

Is Thomas Willett’s ability to be himself at work really vital? Is it true that he shouldn’t have to hide who he is?

I don’t mean specifically the azza gay man part, I mean the generalization. Is it vital for people to “be themselves” at work?

I’ve always taken the truth of this claim for granted, but today I paused … Read the rest



Now accepting patients!

Jan 10th, 2024 11:35 am | By

Here we are, ready and eager to mutilate you!

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“Contemporary notions of queerness”

Jan 10th, 2024 11:30 am | By

Rebecca Mead wrote a rather interesting piece for The New Yorker about the Bloomsbury people and their clothes and what it all meant, but sadly it does end up at the too familiar trendy place.

At the exhibition, Morrell’s garments have been lined up like runway models at the end of a contemporary designer’s show. “Morrell spoke in her journal of how her preferred look was long and plain—she thinks her look is very simple,” Porter said. “But it seems to me that she is responding to her own features and exaggerating things because of the way she looked herself, rather than trying to hide anything.” Given Morrell’s height, hair, and hauteur, she was well aware that she looked striking

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Another star on the chart

Jan 10th, 2024 10:50 am | By

Hmm.

Hmm.

Google confirms: she does say that.

I want to tread carefully here, but wouldn’t you think a personality disorder would be a hindrance to being a good representative of the people? It’s not called a personality variation but a disorder. I’ve gathered that the borderline type is…difficult. I know “ableism” is a no-no but all the same, people in government really do need some basic abilities.

I suppose the reality is that some people now think of such things as matters of “identity” and thus sacred. Thus … Read the rest



Too many organisations have let them get away with it

Jan 10th, 2024 9:49 am | By

Joan Smith at UnHerd yesterday:

A social worker has won her claim for harassment after she was suspended for expressing gender-critical beliefs — and the judgment has far-reaching implications for freedom of speech. For years now, activists have claimed an exclusive right to decide what constitutes “transphobia” and too many organisations — employers, regulators and political parties — have let them get away with it.

Not any more. An employment tribunal has found that Rachel Meade suffered harassment by her employer, Westminster Council, and her regulator, Social Work England (SWE). It’s a stunning vindication for Meade and a warning to other organisations that take accusations of transphobia at face value. 

Meade’s ordeal began when the regulator received a single

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