All entries by this author

Your self-appointed spiritual doctor

Dec 23rd, 2023 10:56 am | By

Furthermore, why is David Brooks a thing? I’ve been wondering that every time I’m reminded of him for twenty or thirty or a hundred years now. The latest reminder was accidentally seeing a few seconds of some pompous PBS chat show last night with him pompously saying words on it. Why? Who cares what he thinks? Why do the Approved Media keep asking for his input?

The Nation wondered the same thing last August.

Take heed, American reprobates! Your self-appointed spiritual doctor, David Brooks, is diagnosing your faults, sins, and self-serving moral evasions, and his findings are grim. In successive turns at the bully pulpits of The New York Times and The Atlantic, Brooks has detected a collective

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Or did she

Dec 23rd, 2023 10:32 am | By

I should add, however, that I haven’t been able to confirm that Judith Butler did say that.

Here’s one talk that fits the description:

But searching the transcript turns up no hits for “imposition” or “sexual dimorphism” and the hit for “colonialist” doesn’t match the quotation. Maybe there are other talks where she does say that, but I have my doubts. … Read the rest



Excuse the observational imposition

Dec 23rd, 2023 10:13 am | By

Ok then let’s see you pee standing up without soaking your shoes.

If sexual dimorphism is an observational imposition of Christian colonialism then how have people managed to reproduce all this time? How have animals known how to reproduce all this time? How have genitalia been different all this time? What are ovaries and what are they for? Why don’t babies emerge from men? Why can’t gay … Read the rest



If the actuaries are worried

Dec 22nd, 2023 5:02 pm | By

Oh you mean it’s malpractice? Huh.

fter Iowa lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in March, managers of an LGBTQ+ health clinic located just across the state line in Moline, Illinois, decided to start offering that care.

The added services would provide care to patients who live in largely rural eastern Iowa, including some of the hundreds previously treated at a University of Iowa clinic, saving them half-day drives to clinics in larger cities like Chicago and Minneapolis.

By June, The Project of the Quad Cities, as the Illinois clinic is called, had hired a provider who specializes in transgender health care. So, Andy Rowe, The Project’s health care operations director, called the clinic’s insurance broker to

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Take careful notes

Dec 22nd, 2023 11:54 am | By

The Bridge to Total Freedom…

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Report them! Off with their heads!

Dec 22nd, 2023 11:49 am | By

Dawn Butler v Mumsnet:

The founder of parenting message board Mumsnet has hit back at a Labour MP who has threatened to report the website to the Metropolitan Police after users on the site slammed her reaction to the Brianna Ghey murder trial verdict.

Dawn Butler told critics to ‘get a life’ after they hit out at her suggestion that the trans teenager’s death at the hands of two teenagers in Cheshire earlier this year had been driven by ‘hate towards the trans community’ from within the government.

They sure do love that “hit back slammed hit out at hit hit hit” trick at the Daily Mail, which I suppose is not surprising. Dawn Butler talked nonsense and people … Read the rest



Barrister not questioned but questioned

Dec 22nd, 2023 10:45 am | By

Ah Joly. Never change. You’re comedy gold.

This headline, in The Times, is flatly untrue. I have not been questioned by the police. At the judges’ [sic] request, they contacted me with her question. There has never been, as this headline suggest [sic], any police investigation.

Got it. He has not been questioned by the police, the police have merely asked him a question. Glad we got that straightened out.… Read the rest



Guest post: Gender as the inviolable Me-ness of Me

Dec 22nd, 2023 10:31 am | By

Originally a comment by Sastra on An innate sense of bulllshit.

It comes from the deepest knowledge and understanding of someone’s own identity, their heart, their soul, their brain, their being. Themself

And yet both gender — and sex — are supposed to be social constructs.

It’s quite a contradiction, this denial of objective categories consisting of the objectively true coupled with an intense belief in the innate and immutable truth of one’s own Identity. According to Yascha Mounk ( in his book The Identity Trap) this circle was squared by what’s called “strategic essentialism.”

While it is important to bear in mind the theoretical fact that identity groups are socially constructed, for practical purposes the strategic imperative

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An innate sense of bullshit

Dec 22nd, 2023 7:37 am | By

Gender GP explains the science of gender.

We at GenderGP understand the true nature of gender incongruence where someone’s true gender identity is different to the one that society expects them to have based on their genitals.

Being transgender is not a lifestyle choice, a preference or a cool thing to do. It is an innate sense of self.

Wait. How are those different things? How is “an innate sense of self” not a lifestyle choice or a cool thing to do or a preference? What exactly is “an innate sense of self”? How does Gender GP know? How does Gender GP distinguish between “an innate sense of self” and what people grow up being told about the self … Read the rest



Meritorious service

Dec 22nd, 2023 7:21 am | By

Chip chip chip slowly but steadily every gain women have made over the past 50 years or so is being taken back.

Canada rewards this disgusting pig of a man for defunding a rape shelter. A woman stands next to him while he gloats. He appears to be manipulating the levers on her back, probably trying to make her smile more energetically.… Read the rest



Identifying as Good

Dec 22nd, 2023 5:22 am | By

Good law guy apologizes to the court for potentially prejudicing a trial. What a genius.

Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project, has apologised after a judge castigated him for tweeting ­during the Brianna Ghey trial about the defendants’ supposed transphobia.

The barrister and staunch supporter of trans rights posted a series of tweets on November 27, the first day of the trial, in which he wrote that “the killers exchanged transphobic slurs”.

He’s not some random gossip on Twitter, he’s a barrister. He’s even a barrister who calls himself Good Law.

Following a complaint about the tweet from the prosecution, Mrs Justice Yip said that the comment was potentially in contempt of court, a crime that

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No Munroe

Dec 21st, 2023 4:34 pm | By

Yet another deliberate insult.

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/1737966925441888315

There are simply no women who could do that. Not one. It just has to be a man in girly makeup.

He says he’s incredibly proud. I bet he is – women are incredulous too.… Read the rest



Following public outcry

Dec 21st, 2023 3:00 pm | By

Even a Catholic college.

Saint Mary’s College, a Catholic women’s college in Notre Dame, Indiana, has reversed a new policy that would consider transgender women for admission following public outcry.

In November, a local student newspaper, The Observer, reported that Saint Mary’s had notified students of an update to its non-discrimination policy, which was approved in June. Saint Mary’s would have considered cis women as well as individuals who “consistently live and identify as women,” for admission beginning in fall 2024, according to the college.

Classic, isn’t it? The Catholic church keeps women down in every way it can think of, but when it’s a matter of men pretending to be women (and taking what belongs to women) … Read the rest



Guest post: These extremely basic and obvious principles

Dec 21st, 2023 2:18 pm | By
Guest post: These extremely basic and obvious principles

Originally a comment by Piglet on Could be.

There’s a theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes? How could that be?

No, I’ve seen this being seriously argued. The idea is that men are faster, stronger etc than women because they have stronger encouragement to do sport, better coaches, more resources etc. Which is why it’s so important to let male people barge in and hog the meagre resources that female athletes DO have. /s

I read the paper and it’s actually quite funny in a way—it reads like an assignment given to undergraduates so that they can demonstrate statistical methods. What I think they’ve done in this … Read the rest



A general distraction

Dec 21st, 2023 10:56 am | By

Just fancy, being tethered to a phone all day every day isn’t good for the intellect.

PISA finds that students who spend less than one hour of “leisure” time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their screens more than five hours a day. This gap held even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. For comparison, a 50-point decline in math scores is about four times larger than America’s pandemic-era learning loss in that subject.

Never mind. AI will do the math for us.

Screens seem to create a general distraction throughout school, even for students who aren’t always looking at them. Andreas Schleicher, the director

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Spare a thought for the communinny communinny

Dec 21st, 2023 10:46 am | By

Dawn Butler working the crowd.

https://twitter.com/DawnButlerBrent/status/1737545997914394714

But the trial revealed that the murder wasn’t about trans or “the Trans community.”

Never mind. She’s too busy reporting Mumsnet to the police to bother with pesky facts.… Read the rest



Osez le féminisme

Dec 21st, 2023 9:37 am | By

Macron is all bros before hos.

President Emmanuel Macron of France this week condemned what he called a “manhunt” targeting Gérard Depardieu, the embattled French actor whose worldwide fame has been tarnished in recent years by allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Really. Why should mere harassment and assault of women tarnish the fame of a movie star dude? Obviously movie stardom is far more important and valuable than the feelings of 10 or 100 or however many stupid whiny women.

Macron’s comments, which prompted swift criticism, came after a documentary that aired in France this month showed the actor making crude sexual and sexist comments during a 2018 trip to North Korea.

Who cares? It’s only women. … Read the rest



Flooded with threats

Dec 21st, 2023 9:14 am | By

Totally normal.

In the 24 hours since the Colorado Supreme Court kicked former President Donald Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot, social media outlets have been flooded with threats against the justices who ruled in the case, according to a report obtained by NBC News.

The Colorado Supreme Court didn’t “kick” Trump off anything. That’s like the BBC and the Guardian constantly saying people “hit out at” and “hit back at” when they mean “disputed.” It’s a metaphor but news media should avoid that kind of metaphor because it’s far too emotive and manipulative.

Anyway.

Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts public interest research, identified “significant violent rhetoric” against the justices and Democrats, often in direct

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She was so close

Dec 21st, 2023 8:47 am | By

Rebecca Solnit kneecaps her own argument immediately after making it.

Republicans have sought to disenfranchise voters who are likely to vote against them and to undermine the systems set up to protect elections from corruption. They’ve sought to give corporations, including the fossil fuel industry and the gun industry, immunity from accountability as both climate change and gun deaths devastate the nation, as well as to liberate dark money to dominate politics.

The legislation and legal cases they have pursued makes women unequal to men by overturning the bodily autonomy necessary to make women free and equal participants in society. Having overturned abortion rights in their pliant supreme court, and launched a new era of persecution of both pregnant

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Could be

Dec 21st, 2023 6:25 am | By

A new discovery lights up the headlines.

Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity

Ya think???

Sex may be a more useful explanatory variable than gender identity for predicting the performance of athletes in mass-participation races, a new paper has found.

A new paper has found what everyone has always known. Humans are sexually dimorphic.

Outside of purely biological outcomes and criminology, little empirical work has been done to test the theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes.

Surely they mean sex disparities in outcomes.

More to the point, what theory? There’s a theory that gender identity is more important than biological … Read the rest