Hmmm tough question.

Social norms don’t quite oblige us to address each other in certain ways, I would say. Social norms give us a menu of ways to address each other, but they’re not really mandatory, apart from the military and on the job and so on.

But, even if we agree for the sake of argument that the norms are mandatory or might as well be, it doesn’t follow (and it isn’t true) that all such purported mandates are equally legitimate.

And that’s all the more the case when the purported mandate is not in fact about how we address people but about how we talk about them in the third person. In other words no, social norms don’t “oblige” us to refer to men as “she” and “her” even if the men in question have issued aggressive orders to do so.

It might be considered bullying or harassment to refer to a man as “he” when he’s ordered you not to, but guess what, it’s bullying or harassment for men to tell women to call them “she” and “her.”

But you can’t.

Gymnastics Australia has unveiled a new set of guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people.

The changes will allow individuals to choose uniforms, changing and bathroom facilities and compete in competitions which they believe best align with their gender identity.

GA boss Alexandra Ash said it was an important step to ensure all participants and stakeholders feel safe and included in the sport.

But it isn’t. It can’t be. It’s the opposite. By ensuring that men can intrude on women’s sports, they’ve ensured that women will never feel safe in their own sport. By including men in sports for women, they’re excluding women.

“Our commitment to transgender and gender diverse people involved in our sport is that gymnastics is and will continue to be a safe and inclusive environment for everyone, regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, ability, cultural background, or ethnicity,” Ms Ash said.

Again: not possible. By letting men in, you make the environment unsafe and thus not inclusive for girls and women. It’s not possible to be unaware of this. You might as well include gorillas in wrestling and dolphins in swimming.

“Diversity ensures our sport is better for all involved, and we want everyone to feel comfortable and supported as part of the gymnastics community.”

For the third time: you can’t. You can’t both let men invade women’s sports and make women feel comfortable and supported. No one can; it can’t be done.

The guidelines said participation in sport was a human right…

But the issue is men participating in women’s sport. Men can participate in sport by participating in men’s sport.

Within GA and Australian Gymnastics Organisation managed facilities individuals have the right to use the changing and bathroom facilities that best reflect their gender identity.

Which means female individuals don’t have the right to use the changing and bathroom facilities that are exclusive to female individuals.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Listy McListerson.

…which provides detailed bios of all those they consider to be disrupting the trans narrative.

If they’re looking for culprits guilty of “disrupting” the trans “narrative,” then they need look no further than trans activism itself, which is a disjointed hodgepodge of contradictory, unevidenced claims. For each and every claim of gender ideology, there is an equal and opposite claim that contradicts it. Find an appropriate pair of trans statements and most of the work is already done for you. It’s an extension of the principle that the best weapon you can use against trans activism is to quote trans activists.

Of course this list isn’t simply a resource to be used against opponents of genderism, but also a warning to potential doubters, backsliders and apostates. “DON’T PISS US OFF OR WE’LL PUT YOU ON THIS LIST!” The criteria for orthodoxy are not clear (given the lack of consistency and coherence, how could they be?), and are subject to change. Yesterday’s hero can become today’s pariah at the posting of a tweet (c.f. Peter Tatchell). Reeducation, recantation, and remorse however heartfelt, will never remove the taint of Error.

A movement that had confidence in the truthfulness of its arguments and the justice of its cause wouldn’t need to hold such a threat over its allies and supporters; it would not have to bully, mob, and silence its critics from speaking out. It would relish each and every opportunity to argue and debate the merits of its case against all comers, attempting to win those critics and opponents to their side through reasoned discussion and exchange of ideas. It wouldn’t need to use threats and intimidation to shut down their opponents; it could use the truth. But that would take work. In such a tangled, contradictory mass of impossible bullshit, truth is going to be awfully hard to come by. So much easier to shout down dissent and vilify opponents. It takes no thought to scream.

What’s complex about it? Men are not women. Simple.

It’s a particularly creepy brand of self-flattery, that – declaring that it’s a “really complex conundrum” when women defend their rights, and that it takes kindness and civility – like his, of course – to find “a solution.” Behold, I, a man of kindness and civility, declare women’s rights too complex to figure out unless I, a man of kindness and civility, step in to say how complex it all is, kindly and civilly.

Amy Sousa on a new blacklist:

Evan Urquhart, founder of Assigned Media, has recently published the “Trans Data Library,” a list of people and organizations she considers to be dissidents to trans orthodoxy. This database, which went live on Wednesday morning, has now been featured in the popular LGBTQ+ news source, The Advocate.

Ah yes, Evan Urquhart. She did a hit piece on me in Slate back in 2015, based on a dishonest manipulative “interview.”

Evan is a woman who claims the identity of a “transman,” and together with two men who claim to be “transwomen,” she started a fundraiser in order to create a propaganda campaign to silence reasonable dissent. They raised over $12,500 with a goal of $20,000 to support their project which provides detailed bios of all those they consider to be disrupting the trans narrative.

…

Urquhart has curated Assigned Media and the Trans Data Library using carefully crafted manipulative language. 

Now there’s a surprise! See above. I called her manipulative before I got to that sentence.

It is deeply concerning when lists start being collated and disseminated that are used to target and discredit. The biggest tactic of the entire trans agenda is to silence dissent. Authors on this list such as Abigail Shrier have had their books pulled off of Target’s shelves, organizations such as Partners for Ethical Care have had their private speaking venues shut down, activists such as myself and others have been drowned out with noise and attacked in public for attempting to hold public press conferences about this issue. This list is just one more silencing tactic.

Where’s that megaphone?

I hate it that the left has gone all-in on fantasy so we have to turn to The Telegraph for reality.

The Science Secretary will on Tuesday unveil a review into the “utter nonsense” of public bodies being urged to collect data on self-identified gender rather than biological sex. 

Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference, Michelle Donelan will sound the alarm at what she calls the “denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

It’s not even political correctness though. It’s not correct and it’s not political. It’s some other brand of bullshit – a noxious mix of idenniny and fannasy and narcissism. What in hell is “left” about any of that?

Ms Donelan has been moved to act by examples such as the NHS sometimes using a person’s stated gender rather than their biological sex in data records. 

The NHS might as well carefully record patients’ favorite tv shows and music instead of their medical histories. That would make just as much sense.

The intervention comes as the Conservative Party hardens its position on the importance of biological sex being recognised amid the debate about transgender rights.

The issue has played an increasingly prominent role in British political discourse, with all parties facing pressure to make clear how they would strike the right balance.

Balance? What balance? Men aren’t a little bit women; men aren’t women at all.

In 2005 the Athena Swan charter was established to encourage commitment to advancing the careers of women in higher education in areas such as science, engineering and maths.

At first, it monitored the gaps between men and women in recruitment and career progression. But in 2016, Athena Swan recommended that data collections should be based on gender identity rather than sex.

Miss the whole entire point why don’t you.

The Times informs us:

Former President Donald J. Trump said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” in a recent interview, language with echoes of white supremacy and the racial hatreds of Adolf Hitler.

That’s quite breathtaking.

In the interview, Mr. Trump was asked about immigration and the Southern border.

He replied: “Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”

It’s Trump who’s poisoning this country. Not with his blood but with his filthy evil mouth.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, called the former president’s comment “a normal phrase that is used in everyday life.” He added, “For anyone to think that is racist or xenophobic is living in an alternate reality consumed with nonsensical outrage.”

A normal phrase? Used in everyday life?

I suppose that could be true for people in Trump’s orbit. It probably is something they say often and routinely, because they’re people in Trump’s orbit. But people not wholly immersed in a mental swamp? Not so much.

In “Mein Kampf,” as noted by the website MeidasTouch.com and amplified by others, there are several passages in which Hitler used the words “poison” and “blood” in attacking people he deemed a threat to the purity of the Aryan race.

In a chapter titled “Race and People,” Hitler wrote, “All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.”

There’s nothing surprising about that. Hitler had a small filthy mind, and so does Trump.

More more more men.

That is some baaaaaaaaaaaad gymnastics in that photo.

The full tweet:

Gymnastics Australia changes guidelines to allow Transgender athletes to compete in the women’s category and for biological males to undress in girls locker rooms and showers. 93% of 800,000 Australians involved in gymnastics are under the age of 12. Under the new rules, biological males will be allowed to compete in whichever category matches their gender identity and will be allowed to wear women’s uniforms. They will also be allowed to undress in women’s locker rooms and showers, regardless of their genitalia. The director for Gymnastics Australia defended the decision saying “Diversity ensures our sport is better for all involved, and we want everyone to feel comfortable and supported as part of the gymnastics community.” Source: Sky News Australia

“Diversity” may make their sport better, but letting men invade women’s sport obviously will make it much much worse.

Trudeau says he never said parents who dissent from trans dogma are hateful, he just…

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he never suggested that individuals concerned about their rights as parents were hateful when he issued a statement in response to the thousands who attended recent protests about “gender ideology” in schools.

Speaking to reporters at a housing announcement in Vaughan, Ont., Trudeau said the post he issued Sept. 20 on [Twitter] was about taking a stand for the LGBTQ+ community.

There is no such community. Trans people are not part of a big jolly group that includes lesbians and gay men; they’re a separate group that focuses on fantasies about being the sex one is not.

Trudeau said in the post that “transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country,” adding that the country condemns “this hate and its manifestations.”

Again. The homo- part is not the same as the trans- part.

“I never suggested that someone who’s concerned about parental rights is somehow filled with hate or intolerance,” said Trudeau.

“But what we need to make sure is that when we do see expressions of hatred or intolerance against Muslims, against the (LGBTQ+) community, against any Canadians, that we are firm in standing against intolerance – that we reach out to bring people together.”

Again: trans people are not part of the LGB community; they are different, and have different goals and different ideas. They have, above all, a different epistemology. They view sex as decided by feelings rather than bodies. They view sex as a kind of allegiance, rather than an immutable fact that’s just there, like the fact that people are humans not lobsters. Trans believers think you can decide to be a woman the way you decide to be a doctor or farmer or politician. That’s wrong.

Aha! Appearances are never deceiving! Actors who play characters are the characters they play! You are what you say you are!

Yes indeed and Helen Mirren is Elizabeth Windsor, Gillian Anderson is Margaret Thatcher, Tom Hanks is Ben Bradlee, Robert Redford is Bob Woodward, Helena Bonham Carter was on the Titanic when it broke apart and sank.

Also, by the way, we can see the color difference between Willoughby’s heavily made-up face and his chest. Oops.

Why do we have to have Steve Bannon running things?

On Wednesday morning, two Republicans who hours earlier had toppled Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House made a well-worn trek to a 19th-century brick townhouse a few blocks away from the Capitol and entered the cluttered sanctuary of Stephen K. Bannon’s recording studio.

Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, the instigator of the rebellion, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of seven other Republican defectors, huddled with Mr. Bannon for a morning meeting ahead of a joint appearance on his “War Room” podcast.

Steve Bannon ffs. Why don’t the Republicans just go scour all the psych wards for their gurus, it would be cheaper.

From this cavelike studio not far from where Congress meets, Mr. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, has been stoking the chaos now gripping the Republican Party, capitalizing on the spectacle to build his own following and using his popular podcast to prop up and egg on the G.O.P. rebels.

Why do they let him? Why do they seek him out?

Mr. Bannon represents a clear through line from the grievance-driven MAGA base to Congress. And his role in the meltdown that played out this week in the House helps explain why the Republican Party appears to be eating its own. He is a vital part of a feedback loop of red-meat media hits and social media posts, online fund-raising and unfettered preaching to an often angry and fervently right-wing base that rewards disruptions and detests institutions.

Anarchists, in short.

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she was grateful to him for recently offering her a slot on his show to talk about the southern border, rather than to rehash her embarrassing evening at “Beetlejuice.”

“Steve is an actual trusted source, he understands that my one personal night out does not impact the work that I’ve been doing for four years,” she said. “Steve understands the base and what the base wants. I don’t go on there for the donor aspect, but I’m grateful when folks do chip in.”

Ah yes, that’s the important thing – ignore what a piece of trash Boebert is, and pretend she’s a real legislator and adult.

Mr. Bannon, an unrepentant agent of chaos, admits he was spoiling for a government shutdown.

“You create a firestorm now that totally changes things,” he said. “People right now think government is a benefit. I’m going to show government spending as cootie-infested.”

Good good good. Let’s just revert to a war of all against all.

Good grief. The journalist asks the minister if refusing to use luxury pronouns is unlawful discrimination, and the minister refuses to answer that question, saying it’s an individual case and it’s for the court to decide. The journalist keeps repeating that that’s not what he’s asking, he’s not asking about the individual case, he’s asking what the law is. Minister persists in changing the subject. Dude. What is the law? Does the law make it a crime to use ordinary pronouns?

Also maddening: the minister keeps calling it “basic courtesy” to remember everyone’s specialty pronouns. Nonsense. It’s not basic at all. Basic courtesy would be not expecting anyone to remember any information about oneself, because people have other things to do.

Wo, dude, that’s a mirror you’re looking at.

Donald Trump called his former chief of staff John Kelly a “lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth” after the former marine general confirmed reports about the ex-president’s derogatory attitude to members of the US armed forces.

Trump is a lowlife.

Trump is extremely stupid.

Trump never shuts up and never says anything that’s not stupid.

In posts to his Truth Social platform, days after Kelly spoke to CNN, Trump said his former aide was “by far the dumbest of my military people … incapable of doing a good job” as chief of staff or, before that, homeland security secretary.

There’s that stupid. He hired Kelly for those jobs.

Exciting.

Data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that September was the most anomalously warm month in recorded history.

Last month shattered the record for the hottest September on record by such a wide margin that climate scientists say it was almost beyond belief.

The September milestone, reported in new data released late Wednesday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, added to an alarming stretch of record-breaking global temperatures. During June, July and August, the planet had its hottest summer on record “by a large margin.”

September’s temperatures have climate scientists even more stunned.

“This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist — absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” Zeke Hausfather, the climate research lead for the financial services company Stripe, wrote Tuesday on X.

Frog. Pot. You know the rest.

An October heat wave is baking Western Europe, with temperatures soaring well above 90 F in parts of France and Spain. And in the Southern Hemisphere, unseasonably warm temperatures have been recorded across South America and Australia, all coming on the heels of multiple bouts of extreme heat in previous months, during what should have been the winter season in that part of the world.

We meant well.

Lots of people know lots of things “in their heart of hearts.” That’s the problem.

How does that work?

But there’s no such thing as “our pronouns”. Pronouns don’t belong to the person referred to; they’re not property. Talking about “our pronouns” is the opposite of “inclusion” (the I in DEI), because it excludes the vast majority of people. It insults them, it alienates them, it pisses them off. Is that a good thing to do in a healthcare setting? Make people more stressed than they already are?

The ostentatious “inclusion” of narcissistic people who claim to be trans is the exclusion of everyone else.

Trump won himself a gag order the other day.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial issued a gag order Tuesday barring Trump from making comments about court staff after the former president posted a social media attack on the judge’s principal law clerk that included her photo.

“This morning one of the defendants posted to his social media account a disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post about a member of my staff,” said Justice Arthur Engoron, addressing Trump as he sat in the courtroom, about 15 feet from the clerk, Allison Greenfield.

“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances,” Engoron continued.

The judge said he had warned Trump Monday “off the record” about making such comments, but that Trump had ignored him. After Trump posted the material online Tuesday, Engoron ordered him to delete the post — and it quickly disappeared from Trump’s social media site, Truth Social.

Trump is such scum.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump posted a message alleging Greenfield “is running this case against me.” The message was pulled from an account on X with fewer than 200 followers. Trump then linked to an Instagram account for Greenfield’s campaign for a judgeship in Manhattan civil court.

“How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!” Trump added. He also posted a photo of her alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and referred to her as “Schumer’s girlfriend.”

Several minutes later, Trump’s campaign sent out his social media post in an email blast.

Scum. Garbage. Trash. A talentless conceited greedy noisy bully.

Engoron’s decision lands at the precise moment a federal judge in Washington, D.C. is weighing prosecutors’ request for a more severe gag order on Trump, whom they’ve accused of repeatedly harassing and intimidating witnesses, tainting the D.C. jury pool and fueling threats against prosecutors and the court in one of the four criminal cases he is facing.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled an Oct. 16 hearing to consider the matter. Trump, despite being put on notice that prosecutors were seeking a gag order, posted a string of social media attacks on key witnesses in the Washington, D.C.-based federal case against him brought by special counsel Jack Smith. His most pointed attacks came against former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who is expected to be a witness against him in both of his federal criminal cases.

Trump’s verbal assaults on judges, prosecutors and court personnel have already resulted in consequences in another one of his criminal cases, the New York state indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The judge overseeing that case, Justice Juan Merchan, issued a protective order preventing Trump from receiving the names or other identifying information of personnel in Bragg’s office, other than prosecutors and law enforcement members, until the start of jury selection.

In requesting the protective order, prosecutors argued in a court filing that Trump “has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him, putting those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk.”

That’s who he is, and half the country loves him. It’s sick-making.

You mean…this isn’t satire? Really?

Oh no oh no, says Philip Ball: government is messing with science!

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, told the Conservative party conference this week that the Tories are “depoliticising science”. Or as a Conservative party announcement later put it, in case you didn’t get the culture-war reference, they are “kicking woke ideology out of science”, thereby “safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

I wish we could skip the stale “political correctness” bit along with the stale “woke” bit, but denial of biology is not something to laugh off as if it were imaginary.

What exactly does Donelan think science needs protecting from? What is this woke threat? At the conference, she expanded on that. “Scientists are told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex,” she claimed, adding that Keir Starmer thinks the “legitimate concerns of the scientific community” on these issues of sex and gender “don’t matter”. She said she will launch a review of the use of gender and sex questions in scientific research, apparently to be led by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, which will be used to formulate guidance.

Such a review should not be necessary, but we don’t live in that world.

You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to appreciate that questions of sex and gender have become controversial, bordering on incendiary, in some areas of academia. As a recent exchange by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and professor of humanities Jacqueline Rose in the New Statesman revealed, academics are often talking at cross-purposes: Dawkins defended the binary nature of human sexes from an evolutionary angle, Rose the socially constructed aspects of gender identity.

That’s just a bit of obfuscation. The issue is scientists – and we know there are some – who insist that trans women are literally women in every sense. Adherents of trans ideology consider it blasphemy to distinguish between “the socially constructed aspects of gender identity” and the physical ones. “Trans women are women” is the slogan. No exceptions allowed, not even for biologists.

But one doesn’t need to take a strong stand about rights or wrongs in these debates to recognise that they are difficult and subtle – and to acknowledge it is proper that they be rigorously discussed. 

They’re not all that difficult and subtle. Dressing up as Darth Vader isn’t all that difficult and subtle, and neither is dressing up as a woman.

More to the point, why is the government getting involved in the first place? What chills Baum is the idea of “politicians telling scientists about the nature of biology”. Some scientists can’t help thinking of previous instances where governments imposed their views on the subject: the spurious “race science” of the Nazis and the anti-Darwinian denialism of Stalin’s regime.

Yes but this time the role of Stalin and the Nazis is being played not by governments but by narcissists on social media. This time it would be the government stepping in to shove the ideologues out of the science. (That is, if the government does it right. That is a big if.)

Willoughby bullying women as usual.

Note: He hasn’t given birth himself, because he couldn’t, because he’s a man. Barren yerself boyo.