Now there’s a surprise.

Warnings over the safety of OceanGate’s Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body.

Mr Rush responded that he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

Right on. Who cares about safety? Full speed ahead.

(I don’t know why the BBC quotes this Rob McCallum fella without saying who he is.)

The tense exchange ended after OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said.

“I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic,” he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. “In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable'”.

In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a “catastrophic implosion” on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan’s safety measures. “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” he wrote. “I take this as a serious personal insult.”

How trumpish. “Dangerous things are dangerous” is not a personal insult. Taking true statements about risk personally is so trumpish.

Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed.

What?!

Throughout the exchange, Mr Rush defended his credentials and questioned the existing framework around deep sea expeditions.

He said “industry players” were trying to stop “new entrants from entering their small existing market”.

Yeah see items like this shouldn’t be a “market” at all.

“The industry has been trying for several years to get Stockton Rush to halt his programme for two reasons,” Mr McCallum, a specialist who runs his own ocean expedition company, told the BBC on Friday.

Whew, we finally learn who he is.

“One is that carbon fibre is not an acceptable material,” he said. “The other is that this was the only submersible in the world doing commercial work that was unclassed. It was not certified by an independent agency.”

Free ennerprise, baby.

“Stockton fancied himself as somewhat of a maverick entrepreneur,” Mr McCallum said. “He liked to think outside the box, didn’t like to be penned in by rules. But there are rules – and then there are sound engineering principles and the laws of physics.”

He maintains that nobody should have travelled in the Titan sub. “If you steer away from sound engineering principles, which are all based on hard won experience, there is a price to pay, and it’s a terrible price,” he said. “So it should never be allowed to happen again. It shouldn’t have been allowed to happen this time.”

It will be allowed to happen again.

The Famous Artis Birdy Rose spots a contradiction that is all too pervasive in these Inclusive No Not You times.

Yesterday I read online a statement on the Leigh Folk Festival Facebook page, which read:

“Leigh Folk Festival is, and always has been, an inclusive environment where everyone should feel welcome and comfortable, from artistes, to attendees, volunteers and crew”

The statement went on to say that a member of an act due to perform at this year’s festival has “made remarks online that are not in keeping with Leigh Folk Art’s values. As soon as we were made aware, the act’s performance was pulled from the line up”

Genius, isn’t it? “Incloosiv environment. Everyone should feel welcome and comfy. An act has said things we don’t like, so we kicked them out.”

You can’t have everything you know. You can’t boast of being incloosiv and in the very next breath brag about kicking people out because you don’t like their thinking. You have to pick one.

That’s why I for one never boast of being incloosiv, because it depends. A promise to inclood everyone and everything is a promise impossible to fulfill, so just don’t bother.

As Birdy puts it:

I also think it is owed to the public that we know what these “values” are, as it now appears very clear this festival is NOT an “inclusive environment where everyone should feel welcome and comfortable” because there is an elusive, unspoken set of “values” that we apparently must all “align” ourselves with. 

So it should be “we’re inclusive provided you adhere to this list of values, see Appendix pp 1 through 785.”

And another thing. What kind of message does this send to people who want to attend or perform at the Leigh Folk Festival?

Additionally, no consideration has been made of the possibility that other artists, staff, volunteers or attendees and members of the public might feel worry, anxiety or distress now that they are aware that they’re going to be potentially judged and/or publicly shamed and/or punished for their thoughts and opinions, even in their own personal lives. 

I want to know if there’s anything in the contract or “festival values” at Leigh Folk Arts/Festival which specifically states that despite Leigh Folk Festival only occurring once per year, all artists, musicians, staff, volunteers and attendees *must* “align” their “values” with the “Festival values” all year round, outside of the festival, in their own lives, including on their personal social media accounts

Seems just a tiny bit exigent, doesn’t it.

H/t tigger_the_wing

Two successive tweets to sum up. First tweet:

Awwwwww look at that sweet little thang, wouldn’t so much as swat a mosquito.

Next tweet:

For people not familiar with the UK education system, “two O Level” is roughly equivalent to “flunked out of high school at 16″…only more so because of the UK’s baroque and sadistic obsession with class. It’s gasp-level insulting.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on They would magically transform.

I’m not entirely sure they really want to be women, so much as they want to be what they think women are.

That distinction I think matters. I don’t think I could ever see myself as trans, because I am me, I can only ever be me, and thus I have no frame of reference for how to really truly be anyone else.

This doesn’t mean I can’t imagine how others feel, or that I can’t empathize, but that my frame of reference is based on data that is available to myself, and thus can never fully encompass someone else’s life.

If I were to try and be a woman, the best I could manage would be to be my concept of a woman based on paying attention to what women have to say about the subject, and that is going to only cover the things women care to inform me about that manages to penetrate my somewhat muddled brain.

Which is a very incomplete picture indeed.

I think part of the problem with the trans cult, is that what they seem to see a woman as being, is straight out of “As Good as it Gets” – a man minus reason and accountability. The worse activists behave in ways, that aren’t really acceptable in either gender, because what they have is that incomplete picture.

And it is not a picture you can ever really complete, because we can only ever really live our own lives. Of course the trans may respond that I’m not trans so my limitations apply to them as much as they do to women, but I’m not pretending those limitations aren’t there.

This is why the question about how to define a woman isn’t a gotcha – we really don’t have any clue what they mean when they say “Trans women are women”.

We need to understand what their understanding of what a woman is, and they can’t seem to tell us what that really is, because I don’t think it is the same thing that a real woman sees it as being.

It’s a funny thing, when you think about it, that trans women are women, but women are cis women. I think it should be the other way around. Women are women, and trans women are not.

Helen Joyce:

It’s obviously extremely hurtful for men whose dearest wish is to pass as women to be told they really don’t. I wish they hadn’t been lied to and misled by gender doctors, who promised them the impossible.

These men were promised that if they took cross-sex hormones and underwent genital amputation, they would magically transform to such a degree that everyone, but specifically women, would see them as women.

Those men want that so badly, and they are so self-centred, that in response to such promises they take it upon themselves to enter women’s spaces as if by right. And they interpret women’s silence as proof that women see them as women.

Is it possible to be trans without being self-centered? I lean toward no. I think if you take other people into account, you’re unlikely to develop ideas about a magical hidden inner self, and even less likely to try to impose your magical hidden self on those other people.

That silence is motivated by kindness, embarrassment and fear. Women are told they will lose their jobs – or get a punch in the face – if they say that they can see these men are men. It takes astonishing narcissism to interpret our forced acquiescence as genuine acceptance.

And it takes astonishing recklessness to interpret astonishing narcissism as evidence of magical special beautiful awesomeness. Trans women are lionized while women are ignored at best and bullied at worst. Weird kind of social justice.

I feel sorry for them. But women’s rights are on the line, and we’re half the population. We can’t indulge them any more. And so we’re saying politely: You’re men. Stop trying to control our language. Stop coming into our spaces.

No, you don’t pass. No, you’re not welcome. No, we’re not “cis”, we’re just women, and you’re not. I understand it hurts to hear this, but you have left us no choice but to say it. And if you don’t listen when we say it politely, you can expect to be told less politely.

I gave up saying it politely years ago.

Peter Brookes in The Times:

H/t Margaret Nelson

Where it started.

It’s worth belaboring this because it’s dangerous as well as wrong. It’s a not very subtle way of inflaming and intensifying hatred of people who don’t subscribe to gender ideology.

No, wrong; she doesn’t deny that trans people exist, she denies that people can be the opposite sex. She disputes a fact claim about people who call themselves trans, which is very different from denying that people who call themselves trans exist. We know they exist. We see their smirking selfies and/or their enraged threats.

People can say “You’re not a socialist” to someone who identifies as a socialist, and that is not denying that the person who identifies as a socialist exists. You can substitute almost any self-descriptive noun or adjective for “socialist” and the result is the same. The one exception is “alive.” “You’re not alive” is indeed a denial of someone’s existence, but it’s also a bit weird. If the subject is not alive what’s the point of saying so? If the subject is alive, still what’s the point of saying so? But anyway, disputing descriptors is not repeat is not denial of existence.

It’s a symptom of the stupidity of the ideology, frankly, that people under its spell keep repeating this dopy claim.

Existence precedes essence.

What’s not super hard is grasping that people don’t cease to exist when others don’t believe their self-descriptions. The two things are separate. Tom Coates could claim to be very clever, and I would not believe that claim, yet my non-belief would not cause Tom Coates to stop existing.

Originally a comment by Freemage on Mandatory affirmation.

Puberty blockers have been weighing on my mind, in particular, lately.

The whole claim is that the blockers prevent the development of sexual characteristics until the child has become old enough to be able to decide for themselves as an adult whether or not to transition. On first glance, this seems reasonable–I’m fine with adults transitioning, though I still agree to the GC in terms of what transition actually entails, and more importantly, permits. (Ie, an adult TIM still has no business in a women-only space, or participating in women’s sports, etc.) At that point, it becomes cosmetic surgery, which is generally up to the person getting it.

But this claim overlooks the fact that the whole reason adulthood exists as a legal category is cognitive development–you don’t suddenly become more able to make decisions about alcohol because you’ve taken 21 trips around the sun; you become more cognitively able to perceive the impacts of drinking after your body (most specifically, your brain) has developed to a point where you can make at least some amount of rational choice about such things.

But that development is both experiential and hormonal–if you stop the hormonal development with blockers, then you impede the very state of being that is supposed to enable you to decide better if you want life-altering surgery.

I know a family who adopted a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. She just hit her 18th birthday, but cognitively, she’s about 12 (and likely will still be at that stage for most purposes for the rest of her life). She’s a genuinely caring, friendly and happy kid–but the notion that she’s now at the point where she could be given the benefit of the doubt upon declaring that she wants to be considered a man is flat-out absurd. While hormone blockers probably aren’t as drastic in their inhibition of development as that, it seems pretty damned likely that the 18 year old who’s been on blockers since they were 12 is not going to be in the same position cognitively as one who actually has had all the brain development that comes with adolescence.

Abigail Shrier tells us:

Gender ideologues in California let the mask slip, or perhaps just tossed it away: A new bill, AB 957, directs family court judges to award custody based in part on “a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity,” which the bill defines as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”

And what “a child’s gender identity” means in this context “a child’s assertion that she or he is the other sex.” So custody decisions will be based partly on a parent’s “affirmation” of a silly lie, one which could end up prompting the child to make drastic changers to her or his body – irreversible damage in short.

How far must a parent go in pursuit of “affirmation”? The bill doesn’t say. “Affirmation” can include anything from allowing your daughter to adopt a male name and pronouns to commencing a schedule of hormones and surgeries that are variously risky, irreversible, and without proven mental health benefit. Puberty blockers, a staple of so-called “gender-affirming medicine,” can produce permanent sexual dysfunction and infertility, diminish cognitive development, undermine bone density and tooth enamel. How much is custody or visitation of your daughter worth to you, the Gender Thugs want to know. Sterilization and splitting teeth?

Not to mention diminished cognitive development.

Today, the notion that “affirmation” is necessarily in the best interest of every child can no longer seriously be believed. In the last two years, England, Sweden, Finland, France, and Norway have all conducted rigorous scientific reviews of pediatric gender medicine and concluded the opposite. The efficacy, far too doubtful. The harms, too grave. These countries—every one of them liberal—responded to their independent reviews by shuttering pediatric gender clinics, curtailing the availability of these medicines, restricting them to experimental settings, or banning them entirely.

It’s a fad, people, and one with far more dire consequences than most.

Birdy has the information.

But wait, there’s more! (I didn’t wait. Wasn’t possible. I couldn’t leave that bit of Emptyspeak unmocked for one second.)

It’s genius, isn’t it?

WHAT KIND OF BEHAVIOR??

Did they forget, between the second tweet and the third, that they hadn’t said what “kind of behaviour” they were talking about? The word “remarks” doesn’t quite cover it. We can’t believe they would never knowingly book an artist known for making remarks. There must be something specific about the remarks that they disapprobate, but they haven’t said what that something is.

Trans ideology makes people stupid.

This is the sort of thing up with which one must not put.

Could it be any more stupidly meaningless? “Somebody told us somebody said something not in keeping with some values. As soon as somebody told us, somebody pulled somebody’s performance.”

It’s bound to be about trans something, because people don’t talk this stupidly and meaninglessly about anything else, but even beyond the trans-bullying aspect, the vapidity of the statement is enough to make you despair of the human species.

Whooo-eeeee, we’ve got a live one here.

What?????

Andrew Tate is our fault????

How, exactly? Show your work.

But wait, there’s more.

Imagine what we could have achieved by now if men who pretend to be women hadn’t smashed women’s rights into a billion pieces.

What a horrible man.

Expertise is a powerful thing.

I do wonder how he knows that though. I wonder how he could know it. Is it possible to know all there is to know about every human society through all of history? Even if some of them left no records of any kind? Do we know, for a fact, that every human society through all of history has left records that tell us some members of all those human societies were trans? I don’t think we do, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because some human societies left very minimal traces. That’s it, that’s the how. There aren’t written or pictographic or similar records for every human society through all of history. Think of Ötzi for instance, aka the Ice Man. Scholars were beside themselves with joy over the informative baggage Ötzi had with him, because informative baggage going that far back is extremely rare. I’m pretty sure there was nothing with Ötzi that established the existence of trans people in his circles. Ötzi is just one guy. There were other human societies contemporary with him that scholars know nothing about, because the evidence is either gone or inaccessible.

If Fogg is willing to make this silly claim why should we be persuaded by his fervent belief in the reality of male women?

The Telegraph:

A patient who was referred to the controversial Tavistock transgender clinic at age 15 has spoken out saying she feels like a “mutilated experiment gone wrong” after undergoing a mastectomy.

Jasmine, who was born a girl, decided to identify as a boy but has since detransitioned – meaning she has returned to identifying as female.

Or to put it another way, she decided to pretend to be a boy but then changed her mind. What is the difference between pretending and identifying as? Is there any? Is the second just more polite? If that’s the reason maybe we should stop saying it, because too much politeness is how we got here.

“Identifying as” sounds kind of more grown-up and thoughtful, but as we all know, the reality is startlingly childish and credulous. It would probably be better for everyone over the long haul if we stopped being tactful about it. Men can pretend to be women, but that’s all it is – pretending. It’s no more real or serious or adult than children pretending to be horses.

Jasmine was referred to the GIDS clinic for children and young people at London’s Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust by a trans charity when she was 15. She was seen by professionals there three times.

From the age of 17, GIDS patients were transferred to adult services where they could then undergo gender reassignment surgery.

At her second 45-minute appointment at the adult clinic, she said she was referred to be prescribed cross-sex hormones and put on the waiting list for “top surgery”, or a mastectomy, which she said did not “help” or “fix” her but “made things a lot worse”.

Her second appointment. Cool that they didn’t rush her into it on her first appointment.

She’s just one person, of course. Some people are happy with their “transition,” as the Telegraph makes clear. But…on her second appointment???

Here’s the BBC slobbering over Paris Lees in 2013:

The annual Pink List named Paris Lees as the most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender figure in the UK. But her rise from being a “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” has been far from simple.

Huh. The “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” makes it sound so cute, but the reason he was in a prison cell was because he had been in a teenage gang that beat up an elderly man who died soon after the beating (it’s disputed whether the beating was the cause of death). There’s nothing cute or “silly” about that. It’s weird of the BBC to put it like that, to fail to explain why the silly boy was in a prison cell, to fail to mention the victim at all. Instead the BBC proceeds to burble about Lees at an awards ceremony/party.

The party – hosted by leading gay magazine Attitude – may have been glamorous but Paris was invited because of her work as a journalist, broadcaster and activist.

Plus the pretend-woman thing.

With the organisation All About Trans she is determinedly changing media representation of transgender people like herself. And as the first transgender presenter for Radio 1 and Channel 4, she is making a mainstream audience aware of trans issues.

It’s hard to believe she had difficulty leaving the house a few years ago and could not get a job answering phones because of her criminal record. “I genuinely thought I wouldn’t be able to function or have a normal life or do anything so it’s gobsmacking that I’ve got any semblance of normality, let alone do all these fabulous things,” she says.

Yeah it is kind of gobsmacking. Women are pretty gobsmacked that this guy is considered newsworthy and exactly the right person to explain girlhood to all of us.

“I had a lot of time for thinking when I was in prison.”

Paris felt like she was at “the bottom of society” but had a vision of who she wanted to be.

The vision included giving up smoking, going back to college to do her A-levels, and becoming female.

A David Copperfield or Jude Fawley, except for the becoming female part.

Paris worked hard and was released early on a curfew, but she carried on living as a boy when she went back to college.

“I knew I wanted a transition and I was so jealous of all the girls at college that looked pretty and had boys talking to them and all those things,” she says.

Ooooooh yeah all those things – that’s the best summary of girlhood ever. They’re like paper dolls, but in 3-D.

Paris stopped wearing boyish clothes and moved to Brighton to study English at university.

“In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy with my grandma still alive, to living in Brighton as a girl,” she says.

Yep. That’s all there is to it. Just stop wearing boyish clothes and bam, you’re a girl.

Thanks, BBC. It’s about time we had more men explaining us what it feels like for a girl.