The serfs must continue to be serfs.
The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down President Biden’s plan for federal student loan forgiveness. Millions of federal borrowers will not see their debts decreased or erased.
…
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the “disappointing and cruel” ruling “shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court.”
“The hypocrisy is clear: as justices accept lavish, six-figure gifts, they don’t dare to help Americans saddled with student loan debt, instead siding with the powerful, big-monied interests,” he said, referencing the court’s recent string of ethics scandals.
The rich get richer and the poor get…ever-increasing debt.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez similarly homed in on the controversies surrounding the justices, specifically Justice Samuel Alito.
He was accused last week of failing to disclose a 2008 luxury fishing trip with hedge fund Paul Singer and not recusing himself from cases Singer later had in front of the Supreme Court. When ProPublica asked Alito questions, he instead responded with a defensive, pre-emptive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Ocasio-Cortez said the court’s “corruption undercuts its own legitimacy by putting its rulings up for sale.”
Trump wins again.
Uh oh – Just Stop Oil v Pride. Is it wrong of me to hope to see them claw each other into tiny pieces?
Just Stop Oil has threatened to disrupt this weekend’s London Pride event over its headline sponsor United Airlines.
Ahead of the event on Saturday, Just Stop Oil issued a list of demands for the organisers to consider in order to stop any protest disrupting the event.
Blah blah blah but who has signed the oath swearing that men are women if they say they are, and who hasn’t? Focus, people.
We saw the pretend mother in the ITV News item several hours ago. Some hours before that Rosie Duffield commented on the pretend mother.
The TUC claimed that the man pretending to be a woman was being subject to abuse “because he is a mother.” But he’s not a mother, because he’s not a woman. Also, saying a man is not a woman is not “abuse.” I suppose it can be if you accost the man in public and scream in his face and so on, but just saying that a man who called himself “a mum” in a news item is not in fact a mum is not abuse.
Owen Jones went ballistic.
The People’s History Museum grovels in apology and self-chastisement for allowing disobedient women to hold a meeting on its premises.
People’s History Museum (PHM) is committed to creating a fairer world for everyone and we represent all those working to achieve this. The PHM team works tirelessly to create an inclusive and welcoming space. We stand in solidarity with trans and non-binary people.
But not women. Women are the Bad People.
We never want these values, or the trust that exists between us, to be undermined.
The past few days have been deeply troubling as our trans and non-binary allies, team members and collections have been at the centre of a hostile environment on social media. We are deeply upset by the situation, which arose from an external board meeting being held in a room hired at PHM by an organisation that we feel does not share our values. We did not do sufficient due diligence and we will learn from this. We are truly sorry for the impact this has had on the people and communities that we work with and our own staff team.
The organisation in question is Sex Matters.
It is a great museum. I happened on it while walking around in Manchester that time I was there for the QED conference. I’d never heard of it, so it was just luck that I spotted it after touring the Rylands Library. It is or was a great museum; now it seems to have decided women are the brutal ruling class and men are their battered starved tormented slaves.
And in conclusion:
We want to be clear that we are and always will be an inclusive space for trans and non-binary people, the wider LGBTQI+ community and all people who face marginalisation. We do not take relationships with our partners and communities for granted, we know it will take time to rebuild this trust and we are deeply committed to doing this.
But not an inclusive space for feminist women eh?
You sniveling cowards.
Keir Starmer claims to be down with the lesbians and gays but…
Labour did what?
Lesbian Labour were in Liverpool this week handing out leaflets and speaking to delegates at the annual Labour Party Conference. Our concerns include the loss of single sex spaces and provision in public life, which particularly affects us same-sex attracted women.
Unfortunately we were literally and metaphorically left out in the cold given the Labour Party’s refusal to tolerate diversity of opinion over same-sex attraction and single sex services, after refusing stall applications from same-sex champions The LGB Alliance, the feminst charity Filia, as well as the Labour Women’s Declaration. This of course only made us more determined to get our message out there, and with our pop up stall we did!
Lesbian Labour’s Carol had this to say:
Delegates and visitors to Conference took our leaflets and some stopped for a chat but how much better would it have been to be out of the wind and rain inside Conference for those exchanges. Lesbians fear the loss of our protected rights from Labour’s willingness to accept gender identity instead of sex based rights, we need that dialogue urgently.
So not those lesbians, eh? Only the ones willing to pretend men can be lesbians need apply?
Trump’s Supreme Court gets another win:
Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority on a contentious issue of American life.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.
And yet the Constitution was fine with race-based slavery for all those years. Funny how that works. You’d think “people from Africa are destined to be enslaved by people from Britain” would be at least as much “employing race in a negative manner” and “involving racial stereotyping” as giving the grandchildren of those enslaved people a leg up in education.
In Canada, professors can face discipline for openly claiming to believe in biological sex.
Not really the right wording. Not “claiming” and not “believe.” For openly saying that biological sex is real, would be more accurate.
That’s ultimately what anthropology professor Kathleen Lowrey discovered years into her battle with the University of Alberta, over her 2020 dismissal from an administrative position that she undertook on top of her teaching and research. Lowrey’s great sin: the display of print-outs outside her office door that asserted males could not be female, and her open expression of gender critical views.
There, that’s better wording.
Her punishment: removal from her position as associate chair of the anthropology department (and the loss of future stipends and potential career advancement that would have come with the position). Lowrey and her union fought her removal by taking the university to a labour arbitrator — but in May, they lost.
So…not worthy of respect in a democratic society if that democratic society is Canada?
Lowrey’s union doesn’t appear to be appealing the decision, either (the union didn’t give a clear “yes” or “no” to my inquiry, but a “we are not able to respond at this time as we are following internal processes”). Her ordeal sends a dark message to professors: academic freedom can be trampled on by university administration, dismissed in arbitration, and even shrugged off by the very unions that should be fighting to the bitter end to protect it. Even with the protection of tenure, Lowrey isn’t safe to believe that men are male and women are female.
She probably is safe to “believe” it (and know it), but not to say it. At universities in 2023 academics can’t say that men cannot be women.
It’s important to note here that Lowrey is respectful in what she says and does. She’s not harassing trans-identified students; she’s merely public with her beliefs on gender, which she came to in the mid-2010s.
But they’re not beliefs. They’re knowledge, or awareness, or understanding. Belief and disbelief are irrelevant. I can disbelieve in gravity, but gravity continues to do its thing whether I believe in it or not.
Writing for Quillette in 2020, Lowrey explained her position in a nuanced, rational manner.
“Contemporary gender ideology requires active affirmation of the proposition that men can become women and that women can become men,” Lowrey wrote. “It further asserts that to refuse to assent to this proposition is to do active ‘harm’ to trans-identified individuals. The doctrine requires uncritical reverence for retrograde gender constructs, such as the idea that a little boy who likes tea parties and pretty dresses can be deemed to have been ‘born in the wrong body’ (and so is actually, in fact, a little girl).”
It’s fair to say there are some beliefs in that passage, but the mere knowledge that men are not women should never be labeled a “belief.”
The labour arbitrator in May decided that Lowrey’s dismissal was not an act of discipline and did not violate her academic freedom because, in his view, it was simply a matter of making the department run smoothly. To his credit, he ruled that union protection should apply to professors carrying out administrative roles like that of associate chair (arbitrators of the past haven’t been so generous, so the decision on this front was a win for labour). Lowrey’s expression of gender critical views wasn’t worthy of punishment, he wrote, but it did render her “unable to carry out the job in a way that served … the department’s needs.”
“The associate chair’s role requires a person who can act and be seen to act as a supportive student advisor, a committee chair able to move the business of the faculty forward and so on,” explained the arbitrator in his decision.
Ok, accepting that claim for the sake of argument, what about the need for a supportive student advisor to students who know that men can’t be women? Why does the arbitrator assume that it’s only trans students who need a supportive advisor?
“The disputes over the treatment of transgender students within the university were live and controversial. It would be difficult for anyone to act as a chair or assistant chair that, of necessity, had to deal with such issues, not just as they arise, but in this case once they had clearly arisen.”
But what about all the students who don’t subscribe to the trans ideology? What about their side of that live controversy?
There’s a thing called Jo’s cervical cancer trust, which tells us it’s the UK’s leading cervical cancer charity. Glinner mentioned it yesterday.
It has a page headed Language to use when supporting trans men and/or non-binary people. It explains why this matters.
Using the correct language when referring to someone’s gender identity is a simple and effective way to demonstrate support and recognition. If incorrect language is used without being corrected, it can cause someone to feel hurt or distressed. This may lead them to leave and to eventually seek support elsewhere.
That’s rather anxiety-producing, if you ask me, because what is correct or incorrect language is constantly shifting and is also different depending on which expert is telling you what the correct language is.
Remember, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. It’s important that you acknowledge them, correct yourself, learn from them, and move on. Dwelling on mistakes could make the person you are talking to feel more uncomfortable.
Oh dear, more anxiety. I’ll probably get it wrong, and then when I do get it wrong I’ll probably deal with it the wrong way.
This glossary explains some of the words we use in our information or that you might hear used by a patient. This is not a definitive list and we recognise that some people may prefer different words. It is still necessary to check the words or phrases your patient would prefer.
Oh god oh god oh god. I’m too anxious to get out the door now, let alone using language to support trans men.
Anyway…first item in the glossary…
Bonus hole – An alternative word for the vagina. It is important to check which words someone would prefer to use.
Go jump off a very high bridge.
Scholarship? What scholarship? Who cares about that? The important thing is the creed praying five times a day genuflecting facing Mecca hating women DEI. All hail the DEI!
The letter is really rather astounding. It’s not about his scholarship at all, it’s about his politics.
One Alex Kirshner at Slate is very confident that it’s “fair” to let men intrude on women’s sports.
Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports. They’ve spent considerable time investigating the subject, and in general, they have decided against all-out bans of trans competitors. The competitions tend to follow the guidance of scientists and geneticists, who are much less certain of trans athletes’ advantages than are various podcast hosts, conservative media icons, and disappointed parents of high school girls who finished a spot lower than they’d have preferred in a track meet.
The way he puts it is confusing, and that’s probably intentional. “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports.” That reads as if he’s saying the governing bodies wonder especially if women have any advantages, and he then happily concludes nah. It would have been clearer and more honest to say “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially trans women, have any advantage”…but he didn’t say that. I suspect he muddled it on purpose. I’m so tired of this manipulative sleazy crap in aid of making it easier for men to cheat women in sports.
And then of course he concludes the paragraph by sneering at high school girls who don’t enjoy losing races to boys who don’t belong in those races.
Armstrong is asking the wrong question, though. He’d like to know if a world exists—and it does—where someone could ask a question about fairness in competition and not be labeled transphobic. He has less apparent curiosity about why anyone who takes issue with trans participation might, in fact, get a label of bigotry. If he’d asked that question, the answer would be just as simple: Because a lot of the loudest questioners and protesters of trans women in sports are also preoccupied with shoving trans people out of every other conceivable corner of polite society, and they’re concocting arguments on the fly in order to relocate trans people to those margins. It’s a spectacular coincidence, or none of this is on the level.
Even if that’s true, it remains unfair and wrong to let males invade women’s sports.
The conservative political and media campaigns supporting these efforts have paid dividends. The vast majority of Americans, and even a slim majority of Democrats, now see trans participation in sports as Republican politicians do. Gallup said in May that 69 percent of the public thought trans athletes should play on teams that match their birth gender.
And you know what else? They’re right.
Originally a comment by Cluecat on An unwelcome queering of disability.
This has been a serious problem in many of the “Autistic Communities” for some time.
Previously, the primary division was between the “Autism Warrior Parents” wanting everything set up to serve them, and the “Actually Autistic” groupings pointing out that autistic children will grow up to be autistic adults, who need a certain amount of representation and support that is focused on adult support needs rather than only young children – not “one or the other”, but both.
These groups did not get on. It was disturbingly common for a certain type of parent to behave as though everyone else was a naughty five-year-old and should just do what the parents told them to do, and stop kicking off about adults making decisions, because we’re too defective, the Normies know best. This included the various quack cures, and attempts to discredit the experience of the adults, since the Warrior Parents always knew best. As a result, a number of groupings split off to focus on various things.
Then there was the whole “Shiny Aspie” thing, where the association was with the brilliant “genius” type (always male) who was just so brilliant he didn’t have time for all that boring, trivial “social stuff”. He was just so special, and didn’t have any major support needs, so all that could be ignored. This is the variant that lots of people wanted to “identify” with – the Outcast Genius, with the few “cool points” that geeks could ever get.
This always ignored those who needed more support, who were never going to be Shiny Genius-types, who still have value but it’s never recognised. The ones who are always left behind by trendy Identitays, because “eww! Who wants to be like that?”
So many of us resent being held up as the Shiny Aspie type, because even when we can just-about function in the Normie world (at a considerable cost), it’s still a disability. Yes, it’s part of why I’m good at what I do, for example, but it still affects everything. There’s a price, and it can be quite high. Some of us don’t really see a big difference between ourselves, and our siblings elsewhere on the Spectrum. We know that it could have been us needing that additional support – it’s more about luck than anything we’ve done, and we try to fight for the recognition of those support needs, because it’s not acceptable to leave our siblings behind. They matter.
The take-over by the Gendurr Brigade is perhaps unsurprising. If there’s any group totally ill-equipped to fight off a coup by a bunch of Cluster-B nightmares and their supporting nitwits, it’s Autistics. We just can’t deal with them. Combine that with the literal, black-and-white thinking that many are prone to, and the idea of someone promising that we no longer have to be stuck on the outside looking in. That we, too, could be heroes, even if just for one day. That we could be the in-group this time, the special ones, the Chosen Ones. Not everyone will be seduced by this – some of us understand that we’re really different and can’t be magically “fixed”, so we accept reality – but many will. Some will do anything to no longer feel broken and defective. To be cool, just once.
The sheer cruelty of promising that everything will be fixed if we just do what these people are saying is beyond belief. All these interlopers wanted the “cool points” of the Shiny Aspie Genius, or the social lassitude to make “mistakes” in conversations, to have people leaping to their defence if they’re rude or cruel to others – “He can’t help it, he’s Autistic!” in those horribly righteous tones, and to re-establish “No Debate” as apparent attacks on Autistic people.
(Note that nobody will ever say “She can’t help it, she’s Autistic” about actual females. That leeway is only ever reserved for males. The one time it might be said is when the dude is wearing a dress.)
The takeover is complete. Those of us who understand reality are systematically hounded out of what were once “our” communities, those who are looking for help and support for their loved ones (such as the example above) are ignored at best, attacked at worst. There is no community left for us.
The Gendurr Monster has swallowed everything.
More from the Trump Would Totally Do His Daughter file:
Donald Trump’s “naked sexism,” including toward his own daughter, is described in a new book by Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who famously wrote a scathing op-ed about the former president under the pen name “Anonymous.”
Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, describes several incidents that made women in the Trump administration uncomfortable in his upcoming book Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, an extract of which was obtained exclusively by Newsweek.
Like for instance drooling about his daughter’s tits and ass and talking about what it would be like to do her.
“There still are quite a few female leaders from the Trump administration who have held their tongues about the unequal treatment they faced in the administration at best, and the absolute naked sexism they experienced with the hands of Donald Trump at worst,” Taylor told Newsweek.
Then they should take their hands off their tongues and tell the truth.
In his book, Taylor describes Trump’s “undisguised sexism” toward the women in his administration, from relatively low-level aides to cabinet secretaries.
He recalls witnessing such behavior first-hand in meetings with Trump and Kirstjen Nielsen, who was secretary of homeland security from 2017 to 2019.
Well yeah secretary of blah blah blah but also a total babe.
“When we were with him, Kirstjen did her best to ignore the president’s inappropriate behavior,” Taylor writes in his book. “He called her ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey,’ and critiqued her makeup and outfits.”
After a crass comment from Trump, he recalls Nielsen whispering to him: “Trust me, this is not a healthy workplace for women.”
And yet, there she was.
Arts Council England graciously apologizes says nyah nyah we’re not sorry and we didn’t do anything anyway.
And to conclude: we’d do it all again. Nyah.
Awesome! You can’t have women being CEOs of organizations for women, that would never do.
But they’re influencers! They identify as enthralling!
Sadly, though, nobody wants to listen to their podcast.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that one podcast idea seriously mooted by Harry [Windsor] was to make an entire series about childhood trauma. Not just his own trauma, because he has obviously got enough mileage out of that elsewhere, but the trauma of a group best described as “world baddies”. As Bloomberg wrote, the concept of the show was as follows: “Harry would interview a procession of controversial guests, such as Vladimir Putin, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump, about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today.”
And Harry is just the fella to do that because…erm…
Netflix is apparently getting ready to give Harry and Meghan the chop, refusing to pay them tens of millions of dollars unless they came up with a hit as successful as their recent six-part documentary. Which they won’t, presumably, because that documentary was literally the sum total of their entire lives.
Well can’t they just do another multi-part documentary about their lives, but in…pink? Yellow? Mauve?
Their current woes, it seems, come from giving up the good stuff too early. As an entity, Harry and Meghan are only interesting for as long as they can destabilise the monarchy. Their Oprah interview did that. Their documentary did that. Harry’s book Spare did that. Archetypes did not do that, and as such was roughly as interesting as listening to changing-room chatter in the world’s most insufferable yoga studio.
That’s it, that’s their next project – Meghan and Harry’s Yoga Studio Changing Room.
Is that right?
No, of course it’s not. There’s no need for a “prefix to describe people who identify with the same gender as their birth” any more than there’s a need for a prefix to describe people who identify with the same species as their birth. It’s a prefix too many.
The point of it of course is to nudge people into thinking there is such a need, and that being “cis” is a form of privilege, and that “cis” people – or to be honest “cis” women – have to admit they are “cis” and feel guilty for it and do everything they can to make it up to people who are not “cis.”
The issue isn’t that it’s “insulting” but that it’s dishonest and manipulative.
Originally a comment by James Garnett on Stay out of the oven.
I want to take just a quick moment to plug your local outdoors club, because they almost certainly offer inexpensive classes on hiking, backpacking, and more. If this father had taken such a course, he would not have made this mistake and his child would most likely be alive today. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the premier club is The Mountaineers. In Colorado it is the Colorado Mountain Club. I’m uncertain what is out east in the USA, but I’m aware that the Appalachian Mountain Club is active and has many offerings. There are multiple clubs doing the same in the UK, and across Europe, and I’m sure they exist in Australia and New Zealand, too. Often these classes consist of one or two evening lectures, followed by a fun weekend outing where you get to practice. Make friends, have fun, learn to survive! They will teach you a lot of things that are counter-intuitive, but which may save your life.
Also, take a First Aid course if you can. I am the membership coordinator for a unit of my local Search and Rescue group, so I’m constantly seeking out first aid offerings to alert our members who need to update their certifications. These courses take about a day, but you’ll not only learn to recognize things like heat stroke, but also how to effectively mitigate them. Here in the USA, the best First Aid courses are often offered through your local Fire Department, and they’re often free. Or you can pay big bucks to the Red Cross, but you’ll at least be able to take the class at your leisure, in that case.
