Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Does the left hate women?

Considering we’re talking radical left, I think a lot of it has to do with Antifa, or the philosophy behind Antifa.

Antifa is fundamentally, as an idea, a validation of violence as a form of political expression, as a tactic in political debate.

Now this strain of thought predates Antifa as a formalized idea on the radical left, but it was with Antifa that it formed enough coherency to be properly identified.

So when Islamists launch terror attacks in Western nations – think the Charlie Hebdo massacre for example – that is seen as not just a political statement, but a valid one. The conversation is always shifted to historic “context” with an emphasis on demonizing the victims. There is always the excuse of justified grievances.

In less radical spheres, in civil discussion we tend to consider violence an invalidating factor. If you punch somebody because they disagree with you, you’ve ceded the argument, because my ability to thump you doesn’t translate into me being right.

But with this ideology where violence is considered a legitimate means of making a point, those who are more willing to use violence are afforded greater credibility than those who are not. If we allow violence as a response to non-violence, we descend into rule by thuggery.

LGB and women are generally less willing to use violence than the trans community. I think the problem with saying LGBTQ will always lose, is T are prized over the rest of the alphabet soup, because lets face it a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire isn’t a lesbian symbol.

Atheists and women tend to land at the bottom of the list, women because physiology means that women are at a disadvantage in a fight. The same reasons for the sex divide in sports, means that women trying to defend that divide are at a physical disadvantage. Atheists because of the meme about how religious militants kill, atheist militants write books.

I think a part of this is the psychology that comes from phrasing radical leftwing identity politics as “allyship”. I think the concept of “allies” is fundamentally toxic – men who identify as “feminist allies” aren’t feminists. By definition they are men who see feminism as something that can be exploited to further their own political goals, that is the nature of an alliance.

You don’t have to agree with an ally, you just need to see them as a useful tool.

So who is more useful as an ally if you accept the idea that violence is an appropriate means of arguing political points? A 60-year-old woman, or a 30-year-old male pervert in a dress? Women who are simply stating biological fact, or men who will spend the better part of a decade smearing and sending death threats to a much beloved female author because she said something they didn’t like?

Of course, one needs to bear in mind that the only really successful movement in the left since the rise of Antifa, has been atheists. We’re so wildly successful that when a religious conservative doesn’t like an idea, they proclaim that idea to be a “religion”. Even the people who are pro-religion, phrase being a religion as a problem.

An increased willingness to use violence might help you with the radical left, but I’m not sure it would help you with literally anyone else.

In other words a very small number.

We’re supposed to think “all the”=a very large number.

It doesn’t.

Popehat on Musk and free speech and how confused people are about what free speech even is:

Elon Musk genuinely feels that advertisers are a threat to free speech. Why? Because many advertisers fled X after Musk eagerly endorsed a bigot’s articulation of anti-Semitic theories, including that Jews promote hatred of whites and that Jews are importing “hordes of minorities.” Unsurprisingly, many companies aren’t cool with that. That’s a mix of corporate leadership thinking that such bigotry is bad business and thinking that it’s immoral.

Private companies have a First Amendment right to make such a decision. They have the right to express their values — and choose their marketing strategy — by deciding what kind of media content to promote. They have freedom of association to refrain from advertising on platforms that repulse their customers. Those rights are held both by the corporate advertisers and by the individuals making decisions for them. Elon Musk’s sullen yawp amounts to a claim that he has a right for companies to sponsor his speech, no matter what he says. That’s nonsense, both legally and philosophically.

It doesn’t stop there. Musk is also a fan of the theory that when he speaks, your criticism of him violates his rights. His latest articulation of this theory came after Media Matters published an article claiming that X is running ads for prominent companies next to bigoted content on X. Musk responded with an extravagant, mostly incoherent threat to file a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters and its board and donors “to protect free speech,” whose criticism “seeks to undermine freedom of expression on our platform.”

Irregular verb again. When we do it it’s freedom of speech, when they do it it’s an attack on our freedom of speech. Heads we win tails they lose.

Popehat shows us a little chat among Musk, Stephen Miller, and a Federalist Society lawyer agreeing on how to shut other people up.

Just as the tree of liberty must occasionally be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants, freedom of speech must occasionally be protected by an unemployed ghoul and a personality disordered Boer persuading a bland FedSoc apparatchik to pester journalists for questioning billionaires.

I didn’t know Musk is a Boer!* How very interesting. (Personality disordered, yes, that I knew. Everyone knows.)

It would be easy to blame this contemptible nonsense on Elon Musk being socially inept, proudly ignorant, and grotesquely petulant. But when it comes to thinking that the right to free speech includes the right to silence others, Elon learned it by watching us, okay? He learned it by watching us.

Popehat goes on to say pretty much everybody thinks and says that criticism of X violates X’s free speech, with many examples.

H/t Rob

*See Bruce Gorton @ 19

Pliny on the persecuted:

Holy shit.

And so we learn that men who claim to be trans are…uh…no threat at all to women in any way.

H/t Steven

Jerry Coyne notes that blind spot on the putative left:

The decision of LGBTQ people and feminists to support Muslim societies—societies where they’d never want to live, for many of them would be killed because of their sexual orientation—is an example of MacPherson’s Law, confected by one of our readers. According to Diana, if progressives must choose between conflicting causes to support, and one of them is women’s rights, the women’s rights lose. (By “causes”, I mean “supporting a group deemed to be oppressed.”) I’ll add a corollary: if progressives have to choose between two conflicting causes, and one of them is LGBTQ rights, those rights also lose.

Diana is not wrong. Another label for it could be The Karen Principle. Whenever there’s a conflict, shazam, women become Karens.

For this reason I don’t agree with Jerry’s corollary. Purported “LGBTQ” rights are constantly canceling women’s rights, especially, of course, the T (and whatever the Q may be). Women’s rights never cancel any T rights but T rights always cancel women’s rights.

The Karen Principle features prominently in Does God Hate Women? Many on the left see Islam and [male] Muslims as in every way and every sense the downtrodden persecuted minority, and foam at the mouth if anyone points out that Islam treats women like shit.

How progressive.

Man preens about ruining another sport for women.

Harriet Haynes has broken her silence after winning a national pool tournament by default after her opponent walked out in protest against having to face transgender players, with the champion claiming ‘bigotry is alive and well’.

Lynne Pinches conceded the final of the Ladies Champion of Champions national pool tournament at the weekend without playing a single frame, refusing to face her transgender opponent Haynes.

Her male opponent.

Pinches revealed after the match – her fourth final in her pool career – that her decision to walk out was made in the aid of ‘fairness’ in the sport, protesting against the fact that natal females can be drawn against transgender players. 

Skip the “natal females” crap. Women. The word is women.

Of course there was a “statement” saying how evil it is for women to say no to this systematic abuse.

‘This past weekend, player Lynn Pinches (sister of established snooker star Barry Pinches) made a protest in front of a packed playing hall by refusing to play the final of the National Champion of Champions Ladies’ Singles Competition,’ the statement drafted by Haynes’ lawyer with her endorsement begins.

‘The reason? Her co-finalist, Harriet Haynes, was a transgender woman. The “protest” has led to significant online discussion and a lot of regretful bigotry.’

Wtf is “regretful bigotry”? The lawyer meant “regrettable.” Maybe they is a trans lawyer.

Haynes argues that given pool’s status as a ‘precision sport’ there is no grounds for a discrimination to be made, asserting that there is no proof of transgender players holding an advantage. 

‘For all the comments that people hold that being trans is an advantage in cue sports, there is no scientific evidence to prove that,’ the statement continues. 

Always this sneaky deceit – always this lie that the issue is “being trans” when it’s being male.

‘The WEPF, UPG and EBPF have been asked to provide the scientific evidence that it was assumed that they must have had before they decided to issue such a controversial and unlawful policy. No such evidence has ever been provided to show how there is an apparent advantage to transwomen as compared to naturally born women.’

But it was a women’s tournament. For women. Not for men. Haynes is a man.

Time to ditch the TQ (way past time in fact).

As rising numbers of old-fashioned LGBs see it, the “T” — for transgender — and “Q” for queer, don’t necessarily have much in common with gays and lesbians. 

Not so much “old-fashioned” as still able to tell the differences between things that are not the same.

For these ideological reformists, the LGBTQ mash-up and community-wide obsession with trans issues is sowing confusion and chaos within politics and popular culture — eroding much of the progress sexual minorities have fought to achieve.

Well, that, but also it’s a pack of lies enforced by relentless bullying.

“We feel shackled into this ‘umbrella term’ by organizations that are supposed to serve us but have actually turned against us,” explained Kate Barker, CEO of the London-based LGB Alliance, which was established in late 2019 to ​​“advance the interests of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.” “It has come to a point where many of us find ourselves forced into a relationship we never consented to and feel we cannot leave.” 

Like forced marriage, but with stripes.

…a survey conducted last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that Americans are widely in favor of general nondiscrimination laws protecting LGBTs — eight in 10 back policies securing jobs, public accommodation, and housing — but that support erodes when special privileges for trans people, framed as “rights” by the researchers, enter the picture.

All the more so because those special privileges framed as “rights” are so glaringly incompatible with women’s and girls’ rights. The “right” to use women’s toilets and locker rooms=a threat to women. The “right” to win prizes for women=women not winning their own prizes. And so on. It’s not minor or subtle stuff.

The purification continues.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The spectre.

Affirmation is a powerful psychological tool, but like all tools (nuclear power or nuclear bombs) it needs to be applied with rigour and care for the outcome.

Interesting insight. Thank you for sharing this.

We seem to be dealing with the “nuclear bomb” version of this psychological tool. These desperate people are being told that affirmation needs to be paired with drastic body modification. The self-defeating, self destructive internal voice is being catered to and appeased, not talked off the ledge. The social contagion aspect turns the phenomenon into a patient driven one, with sufferers demanding the “true path” to what they’ve been told will make them better. At the same time, the watchfull waiting approach which would leave them intact and, if successful, happier in their own, uncut skin, is condemned by activists as “conversion therapy.” The activist path is encouraging sufferers to listen to the inner voice telling them to jump into the lifelong, medicalized “journey” to a place they can never reach.

A major twist on this weaponized “affirmation” approach is that the entire rest of the world is supposed to join in with the “affirmation.” It is no longer an internal dialogue, but a play in which we’re all expected to read our scripted lines and follow the blocking that the reified, empowered and enthroned “gender identity” demands. Everyone else is supposed to go along with the fiction that yes, these people have actually changed sex. We are unwittingly and unwillingly pressed into being a part of their “therapy.” Failure to comply results in our punishment as cruel monters out to cause “harm” and “suffering” to these people who have become, at the same time, our wards and our masters. We are to dance to the tune chosen by these marginalized, vulnerable dictators, whose zealous supporters can have us cancelled and fired for using the “wrong” words.

And whatever is happening with, or done to genuinely dysphoric individuals, the “affirmation approach” has in turn been appropriated by fetishistic AGP males in order to demand access to female only spaces. And this appropriation goes farther still. The therapeutic language, along with Self-ID, become tools to be used by predators and cheats who might not even be dysphoric or AGP at all, but who see and seize an opportunity they can exploit. Trans activists, having failed to acknowledge the threat that Self-ID represents to women’s spaces perforce defend predators when they defend the “right” of TiMs to access those spaces. Because there is no way for women to distinguish between “harmless” TiMs and run-of-the-mill male predators, trans activists have effectively taken the predators under their wing so as not to weaken their own supposed claim to women’s spaces. If a few women suffer as collateral damage from predators who take advantage of the opening that TiMs have made, oh well. It’s all a part of “validation” and “affirmation.” We all have our parts to play, though we don’t all have a choice in the matter. Some of us are stars, some of us are only extras.

That all of these different, conflicting groups get lumped together under the “trans umbrella” within the even broader, forced-teamed LGBTQetc. “community” makes responding difficult, as opposing the boundary-breaking behaviour of males who claim to be trans is trumpeted as an “attack” on the “entire LGBTQ community,” even when it’s really just an attempt to protect women from creepy males. In the ultimate reductio ad absurdum, we have the bizarre, unexpected spectacle of lesbians defending their same-sex attraction and association against genderist “lady dick lesbians” being turned outcast for “attacking” the very community of which they are ostensibly charter members. To paraphrase the promulgators and aplogists of “TWAW,” The L is right there in the name! But like some sort of activist auto-immune disorder, the “community” turns on part of its own body, giving the lie to the loudly asserted claim that there is “No Conflict” between women’s rights and trans “rights.” A little “affirmation” goes a long way.

Take your diversity assessment and shove it up whatever gender-questionng orifice you have handy.

A maternity hospital received a low grade on a diversity assessment because staff only use the term “mother” when discussing maternity leave, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Cambridge University Hospital Trust, which manages a maternity hospital called the Rosie, lost points because staff use the term “mother” when referring to the policies it had in place regarding paid leave, instead of broadening it to include gender-neutral alternatives.

Are they still calling it a maternity hospital? Shouldn’t that be parental hospital? Or perhaps uterus-haver hospital? Eggy-patient hospital?

The report was carried out by the NHS’ “Rainbow Badge” scheme, which assesses hospitals based on how they treat LGBT patients.

Let’s rename it the Richter Scale 8 Badge scheme.

The trust also lost points for not providing staff with guidance on what trans and non-binary employees should wear, pointing out how the trust’s “trans inclusion policy” did not provide “guidance on the dress code for trans employees, including non-binary employees.”

Wut? Why do they need guidance? Is the hospital supposed to invent some “non-binary” scrubs?

The report also flagged a “cause for concern” about a deluge of comments from staff criticising the trust’s inclusivity efforts for “virtue signaling” instead of providing care, including one comment which said: “We cannot waste taxpayers’ money on tokenism.”

Well done staff! Pay attention NHS rainbow schemers! This nonsense absolutely is virtue-signaling instead of doing anything useful.

The report said: “0 points were awarded for the Maternity Leave Policy. The policy does not have an inclusion statement to make clear that it applies to all irrespective of gender/gender of partner etc. 

But it doesn’t apply to “all” surely. Men don’t lactate. Men don’t give birth so they have no need to regain their strength after giving birth. New mothers need maternity leave in ways that new fathers simply don’t. It’s great if men share as much of the work as they can, and ideally they should get leave, but even so their need is not the same.

One member of staff who said he was gay is cited calling the Rainbow Badge “insulting.”

They wrote: “I feel it is excessive – I just want to live my life; I don’t want to be asked; I don’t want my identity reduced to a label. I am tired of it – I just want to live my life like everyone else.”

Another said: “Rainbow badges are just performative; I would prefer all staff be properly trained and supportive to all needs, not singling out one or two.”

Good. More of that please. Everyone push back.

In 2021, the “Rainbow Badge” went from a physical symbol to a nationwide scheme that assesses hospitals based on how they treated LGBT staff by placing them on a scale between gold, silver, and bronze.

…

The scheme is commissioned by NHS England but run by trans rights groups, including Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, who carry out the grading.

Oh no no no no no. Don’t do that. Get Stonewall right out of there.

Seems bizarre.

 A Colorado judge on Friday allowed Donald Trump to remain on the ballot in the state’s election next year, but found that he “engaged in insurrection” by sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

He did the thing that should disqualify him but he gets to stay anyway.

The ruling from Judge Sarah Wallace, which is almost certain to be appealed, rejects a bid by a group of Colorado voters to disqualify Trump under a rarely used amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection” from holding federal office.

I’m betting the reason the amendment is rarely used is that insurrection doesn’t happen all that often. I don’t think it’s rarely used because hey really when you think about it who cares about insurrection anyway.

Still, the judge concluded Trump’s “conduct and words were the factual cause of, and a substantial contributing factor” to the attack on the Capitol. She found that Trump “engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 through incitement.”

Which is why he should never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power ever again.

At the Critic an anonymous psychiatrist writes:

When a child identifies as trans, the spectre of suicide is frequently raised by campaigners — sometimes in a highly manipulative and unethical form. A talk by philosopher Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union in May was interrupted by an activist glueing her hands to the floor. She wore a T-shirt stating, “No more dead trans kids”. Parents are told that unless they immediately “socially transition” their child — i.e., refer to them as members of the opposite sex, and present them as such to everyone else — their child is highly likely to self-harm.

Perhaps the most egregious form this claim takes is that unless a child is swiftly medicalised, first with puberty-blockers and then cross-sex hormones to cause their body to develop towards the “right” sex, the risk of suicide is hugely elevated. This emotional blackmail is expressed in the activist catchphrase, “Better a live daughter than a dead son”. Susie Green, former chief executive of the trans lobby group Mermaids, has described medicalisation of gender-distressed young people as “literally lifesaving”.

Thus many parents hasten to say yes to hormones and surgery.

This hurried, medicalised approach is entirely at odds with what mental-health practitioners know about assessing and managing suicide risk. The majority of patients who are suicidal are depressed, anxious, psychotic or experiencing ongoing trauma such as bullying, domestic violence or abuse. They feel hopeless and ashamed. Patients try to “carry on as normal” and hide their despair from those around them. Frequently they avoid acknowledging, even to themselves, that they are having serious mental health problems.

It’s complicated difficult stuff, so the best people to deal with it are not ideology-addled nitwits on social media.

There is, thankfully, no evidence to support the idea that having a trans identification in itself leads to a higher risk of suicide. Being gender non-conforming can cause so-called “minority stress”, and people who identify as trans often suffer from mental-health conditions that are related to self-harm and suicidality. The website of the main NHS child gender clinic, GIDS, says that “suicidality in young people attending the GIDS is similar to that of young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services”.

However, a young person who hears repeatedly that they are at risk, if they are denied social transition, puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, may come to believe this claim. 

But if the result is that they get to ruin their bodies in order to pretend to be the other sex then that’s a win, right?

Every child who experiences gender distress deserves high-quality, evidence-based care. They do not deserve to be treated as rhetorical devices by campaigners and politicians who wish to forward a political agenda. They seem to have lost sight of the harm they are doing to this very vulnerable group.

It’s for the greater good, which is creating more and more and more trans people.

Let’s read that article that Media Matters has pinned on Twitter:

Elon Musk praises antisemitic replacement theory that motivated a mass shooting as “the actual truth”

Ever in search of a new low, Elon Musk managed to find one on November 15 when he declared on X (formerly known as Twitter) that a paid X Premium (previously Twitter Blue) user’s antisemitic conspiracy theory attacking Jewish people was the “actual truth.”

We’ve already seen the tweet in question, and had a heated conversation over it. Jews pushing hatred against whites blah blah, Musk high-fiving.

The conspiracy theory, that Jewish populations are pushing “hatred against whites” and supporting “hordes of minorities” coming into the country, is the same one that motivated the 2018 Tree of Life shooter in Pittsburgh, as noted by The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and other figures linked to white nationalism are cheering on Musk.

The Tree of Life shooter, who was found guilty this year, wrote on far-right platform Gab that he blamed Jewish people in the U.S. “for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants.” (Gab owner Andrew Torba is also one of the people cheering on Musk; Gab’s X account even bragged about red-pilling Musk on “JQ” – that is, the “Jewish question.”)

How did we get from a mass shooter writing something on a platform that most people have never visited to Musk endorsing it? First, Musk himself has rebuilt X around extremists like this, making a concentrated effort to lift up extremism, even providing financial incentives.

It will be interesting to watch his thermonuclear lawsuit.

Dropping in on Media Matters this morning…

November 16:

November 16 or 17:

November 17:

MM retweeted yesterday:

Musk promises to go thermonuclear.

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The result was a lot of big advertisers leaving Musk’s social media site.

“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Colluded? I can’t wait to see what evidence he has for that and how he distinguishes it from just doing what people do on social media.

Musk on Wednesday agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user, who referenced the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, was speaking “the actual truth”.

Yes but what he meant by that was [insert long opaque explanation here].

The White House joined the outcry against Musk’s tweet on Friday, with a statement calling it an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate” that runs against our core values as Americans”.

Referring to the 7 October attacks by Hamas against Israel, the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said: “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie … one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

How many months should he wait?

Originally a comment by Arcadia on But they’re not.

we can’t have that debate, because there’s a genuine conversation to be had about the rights of transgender people and the protection of safe spaces and hard-fought rights for women.

Yeah. We could have that debate, if trans organisations would ever allow it (and to date they won’t, escalating to barricading, deplatforming, threatening and actual violence when it’s been tried).

But they won’t. And they won’t because once it’s suggested by them that the right of a woman to get changed without seeing a stranger’s dick ought to be *balanced* with the “right” of an adult to show his dick to an unwilling woman and children, most people wonder what the hell you’re smoking and want nothing to do with you.

The “rights” they want are fundamentally unpopular when explained in plain, ordinary language: such as falsified documents, to cheat at sports, to steal jobs, awards and places for other vulnerable groups, take their penises where no one wants them, and to lie about all of it with such obfuscating language that it’s quite impenetrable to the ordinary citizen. As well as to harass, charge, fine, arrest, fire etc anyone who complains that such a situation is untenable and unacceptable.

Debbie Cameron always nails it.

Funny, it seems I’m not the only credulous fool who thinks Musk’s horrible tweets are horrible.

Joe Biden has excoriated Elon Musk’s “abhorrent” tweets two days after the X owner posted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post.

…

Musk sparked backlash with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jewish people of “hating white people” and showing indifference to antisemitism. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in reply. X users, including many in the tech industry, lambasted the posts, though other users agreed with Musk and said they were gleefully watching him sink into their hateful worldview.

Well I doubt they said that exactly. I doubt they said “I am/we are gleefully watching him sink into my/our hateful worldview.”

The platform’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, attempted to do damage control after Musk’s Thursday post, though she did not say his name or reference his tweet. The accounts that Media Matters found posting antisemitic material will no longer be monetizable and the specific posts will be labeled “sensitive media”, according to a statement from X on Friday.

“X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

Yaccarino was hired by Musk to rebuild ties with advertisers who fled after he took over, concerned that his easing of content restrictions was allowing hateful and toxic speech to flourish and that would harm their brands.

If shame won’t stop him, maybe the bottom line will. Very trumpy.

Musk also said on Wednesday that the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights non-profit, was fomenting hatred. The ADL has previously accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on the platform, and of amplifying the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the group. In response, Musk has cultivated a months-long feud with the organization and threatened to sue.

Brilliant way to demonstrate how not hostile to the Jews the Jewish community he is.