Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell, president and executive director respectively of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, write at Reality’s Last Stand:

In recent years, a striking paradigm shift in medical ethics has emerged, driven by progressive political ideologies purporting to champion “Social Justice.” This shift has precipitated a surge in initiatives centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The resulting effects have varied considerably; they include the introduction of explicit racial bias in treatment protocols in a quest for “health equity,” and an unsettling disregard for biological sex as an important variable in both medical research and patient care. Instead, the new radical movement favors categorizing individuals based on their self-identified and medically irrelevant “gender identity.”

A bit like issuing all women with jock straps and all men with bras, only much much much more likely to be fatal.

This trend of overlooking biological sex as a critical medical variable stems from an ideological drive to “queer” the natural world. The proponents of this view resist categorization, arguing that such practices are instruments of oppression wielded by the powerful against the less powerful. According to this perspective, medicine must eschew not only biological categorization of patients, but also traditional notions of what is deemed desirable or adverse patient outcomes.

So we’re queering death now? Queering chronic pain, fatigue, weakness, fever? Health is bad and illness is good?

A provocative new paper in the journal Qualitative Research in Health titled “Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the ‘normal’: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender pregnancy” by Pfeffer and colleagues propels us further down the road of medical malpractice.

The authors, a group of transgender sociologists and enthusiasts, and healthcare activists, with not one medical degree among them, argue to dramatically move the goal posts of medical ethics, choosing to completely disregard the health, safety, and well-being of the developing fetus, all in the name of “trans” inclusion. 

Ok brace yourselves.

The authors argue that “gendered” pregnancy care is too focused on helping women have healthy babies, and that it might be okay for transmen to continue taking testosterone during pregnancy despite the known health risks to the fetus and effects on its normal development. The desire for “normal fetal outcomes,” according to the authors, is rooted in a problematic desire “to protect their offspring from becoming anything other than ‘normal’” and “reflect historical and ongoing social practices for creating ‘ideal’ and normative bodies.”

Ok so why was this published? What reckless cynical sniggering fool decided it would be a good idea to put this disgusting death-cultish garbage out there?

Updating to add: Here is the paper. (There’s a link in the article, but have another for convenience.)

One of the authors is Sally Hines. Of course she is.

To be “cis” is to be nothing.

YOU get a pretty colorful flag and YOU get one and YOU get one…but you dreary boring neutral straight people and “cis” people are just blanks.

Also, why the fuck do “asexual” people need a flag? Or for that matter a label? And why are they grouped with trans people and lesbians and the rest?

There’s no such thing as “LGBT+ History.”

Originally a comment by Papito on Iss biggitree an prejjudiss.

This is the way the racket works: Willie can get the nurses and doctors fired if they don’t lie to him, so they lie to him.

Establishing “misgendering” as some sort of unforgivable prejudice means that he can force them to lie by threatening their livelihoods. So of course they lie; they need their jobs.

Martina Navratilova doesn’t have to lie to him, he can’t force her to lie to him with threats to her livelihood, so she doesn’t.

If gender critical belief were protected to the extent that it should be, then no doctor or nurse could be forced to lie to creeps like Willie. Consequently, many of them would stop. Others would still continue to lie because they were concerned about anonymous violence towards them, or social shunning, banks closing their accounts, etc., and those few who truly believe that sex doesn’t exist and people aren’t living organisms at all, but constructs like potato-head toys that you can plug and unplug organs and features from at will, might continue to call Willie a woman.

It’s circular reasoning: TRAs have bullied people into lying to them, and now say having the lies repeated back to them proves the lies are the truth. No, all it proves is the coercive power of TRAs over other people and their beliefs.

It’s like a foreman at a sweat shop saying he’s proven that twelve-hour shifts are fair because all the workers he’s asked say so.

Trump has big plans to make himself (and future presidents, but what are the chances he’s taking that into account?) dictator.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

In other words he wants to make himself a dictator and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what happens after his head explodes.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

The Heritage Foundation is overseeing the operation.

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Who needs clean air and water or safe food and drugs? What a piffling administrative pansy-ass Murka-hating idea.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

You know what really violates the very foundation of our democratic republic? Trump anywhere near any kind of government power.

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Yeah that’s a more simplistic manner all right. It sounds like a toddler.

The Willoughby Diaries:

You ok with this Philip Bernie??? You condoning this Philip Bernie???

Philip Bernie is the Head of BBC Sport Content, so I guess Willoughby wants him to banish Martina from BBC sport content, or Twitter, or the planet, or something.

Originally a comment by Athel Cornish-Bowden on Robin might be described as….

Last week I was invited to referee a paper by an editor of a journal that I was associated with (as author, editor of three special issues, member of the Editorial Board) for more than 40 years. The paper was relevant to my expertise, so I said yes. However, when I tried to download the PDF file I was faced with a demand (not optional) to answer a “diversity questionnaire”.

I should have said right away that it was none of Elsevier’s business what I “identify as”, or what sort of person I spend my nights with. Foolishly, however, I answered their silly questionnaire, in which the first question asked if I was a man, a woman, or “other”. The other questions seemed mainly interested in my skin colour.

When I was on the Editorial Board we selected potential reviewers on our perception (sometimes wrong, of course) of their knowledge of the subject, etc., never any nonsense about “diversity”. In retrospect I could have answered “other (giraffe)” for the first question, and “green” for my skin colour, but I didn’t think of that until afterwards. Anyway, I am planning to write to the handling editor revoking my agreement to review the paper, and emphasizing that in the future I won’t agree to review papers if doing so requires me to answer questionnaires that have nothing to do with my competence.

Cartoon biology for cartoon people.

We’re cooking ourselves.

Americans have been treated for second-degree contact burns in Arizona as extreme heat caused pavement temperatures to surpass 71C (160F).

Over 110 million people were under extreme heat advisories in the south west as brutal conditions caused by a heat dome threatened to break records.

…

Hospitals and firefighters in the city have been treating residents who have been burned by scorching pavements.

Sidewalks are indeed nasty things in extreme heat.

Patients have been admitted with temperatures far exceeding the normal range. They have been treated with cold intravenous fluids and been placed in what look like small inflatable kayaks filled with ice.

One burn centre in Phoenix told the Washington Post it had treated 10 patients with contact burns serious enough to require hospitalisation.

H/t Mike Haubrich

Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on Men are not women=the earth is flat.

I learnt a useful term on Twitter(!) today – epistemological caste system. Roughly, the idea is that people like McKinnon see their job as purely the promotion of ideas. Testing or analysis of those ideas is strictly someone else’s job. Whatever passes for truth in their world view is taken on authority and that authority is taken as being fundamentally ethical. How that squares with identifying as a philosopher is anyone’s guess. (I suppose I could read the thesis in question but thankfully that’s not my job and I don’t identify as a masochist.)

@ktron

I certainly don’t know anyone who believes the Earth is flat but I follow several flat-Earth debunkers on Youtube and the first question I ask when I see someone new is “is this person a dupe or a scammer”. Eric Dubay who started the modern flat-Earth movement is undeniably a scammer. He’s a bullshitter in the Frankfurtian sense. He probably has less concern for truth than McKinnon, and like many new age gurus made a lucrative career out of shamelessly telling people exactly what they want to hear. Down one level, most of those who have positions in flat-Earth organisations, I suspect likewise know they are talking nonsense but they like the gig, even if it’s not financially rewarding. It’s really just a fun hobby for them. But here’s the thing. At the bottom there’s an endless parade of obvious dupes. These people simply lack the intellectual capacity to understand reality in any systematic way so they compensate by reflexive personnel incredulity which they glorify as scepticism. They don’t so much believe the Earth is flat as disbelieve anything they haven’t personally experienced or dreamt up. And to them that’s a brave and noble stance. And when you’ve found a virtually effort-free way of being special and virtuous you don’t want to go and ruin it by asking too many questions. While you don’t have to be very smart to believe the gender nonsense, you just have to be a bit less smart to believe the flat-Earth nonsense.

I don’t know if this is real or not, but if it is, it’s…interesting.

The first thing I notice isn’t even about the stupid destructive ideology being shoved at children who are too young to judge it critically. The first thing I notice is the fact that there are multiple clunky mistakes in the very first question. 1. “Robin feels like he etc is” – yuck. Robin feels that he is or Robin feels as if he is. This is school, not the pub. 2. …”like he/she/they is” – yo! If you’re gonna be teaching kids the New Progressive Whatsit, how about not taking it for granted that the “he” comes first? How about mixing it up a little? How about putting the “she” first? It’s so typical – here’s this cutting-edge new ideology, that retains all the old stupid sexist habits feminists have been pointing out for generations. 3. “he/she/they is” – insert eye-roll here.

More broadly – what a pack of stupid questions. That third one – is the answer supposed to be “a woman”? “Cis”? “Straight”? “Cis and straight”?

More broadly still why the hell is anyone being taught this bullshit in school?

Unless of course it’s not real and none of this is being taught in school.

Rowan Moore in The Observer takes the both-sides view of men who urge violence against women:

“If you see a Terf,” said Sarah Jane Baker, a speaker at last weekend’s Trans Pride in London, “punch them in the fucking face.”…As a number of pro-trans organisations and individuals have since said, this is an incitement to violence against women, both unacceptable and no help to trans people. It enables the rightwing press, as they duly did, to portray what was a celebratory and positive event as an act of hate.

Ah yes, that’s the important thing: calling for violence against women is bad for trans people, especially the male ones. Do lets be sure to rush at high speed past the violence against women part, because that’s old news and kind of boring, just as women are kind of boring.

The police, in a dangerous over-reaction, under pressure from the home secretary, Suella Braverman, have now arrested Baker.

Why is it an over-reaction? Why is it dangerous? Why is that more important and interesting and worth mentioning in The Observer than the danger to women from Baker?

Seditionists identify as not-seditionists. Who are you to deny their identity?

A growing number of Capitol rioters have gone back on their guilty pleas and apologies – including one of the most recognisable faces from 6 January.

The pretend-shaman guy.

A judge called his apology “the most remarkable I’ve heard in 34 years” and sentenced him to 41 months in prison – considerably less than the maximum allowed. Now more than a year-and-a-half later, Angeli is out of jail early, and his remorse is gone. “Regrets only weigh down the mind,” he told the BBC. “They’re like sandbags on a hot air balloon.”

Some minds need weighing down. People who do bad destructive dangerous things need to be weighed down so that they can learn to stop doing bad destructive dangerous things. The classic example of course is Trump himself, who never regrets anything. He’s a terrible human being, in large part because he never lets his mind be weighed down with thinking about the terrible things he says and does.

In addition to walking back regrets, a number of rioters have tried to capitalise on their involvement in the riots in a number of ways.

Derrick Evans, a former member of the West Virginia state legislature, resigned his post after being arrested. He pleaded guilty, apologised in court, and served three months in prison. Now he is running for a seat in the US House of Representatives, and he refers to himself and other defendants as “political prisoners”.

The term is commonly used across a broad section of the right and far-right of American politics to cast rioters as heroic and patriotic.

And their glorious cause is…Donald Trump.

Rhys McKinnon aka “Veronica Ivy” is back. He…hasn’t changed. For some reason MSNBC sees fit to publish his opinion that he has every right to compete against women in cycling races.

The International Olympic Committee and international sport federations have been grappling with inclusion policies for at least 20 years. 

What does he mean by “inclusion policies”? Allowing men like him to steal prizes and medals from women.

Are trans women really women? If you think they are, then there’s no real debate here.

If you think they aren’t, then there’s likely nothing I can say that will change your mind. It’s a little like arguing with a flat-Earther: If someone is convinced that the Earth is flat, then they will likely find any reason, no matter how irrational, to hold on to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. 

Who is the flat-Earther here? The people who don’t buy the new ideology that says men can turn themselves into women? Or the ones who say they can they can they CAN?

Trans women are women. Trans women are female. Our sport’s governing body (cycling’s Union Cycliste Internationale, the one that banned Armstrong for life) says I’m female. My U.S. and Canadian identification documents say I’m female, including my birth certificate. My medical records all list me as female. So officials in sports, government and medicine all consider me, a trans woman, to be female. The people who disagree are just wrong.

Officials in sports, government and medicine have been coaxed and/or bullied into embracing a lie. Their embrace doesn’t make the lie true. The people who say the lie is a lie are not wrong.

Martina Navratilova effectively called me a cheater for being a trans woman and following all the UCI rules — and passing all my drugs tests — en route to my Masters Track Cycling World Championships.

Diddums. Now think about how all the women you cheated felt. (Mind you, he already has, of course. He likes it. He loves doing that to women.)

Bizarrely, MSNBC captions McKinnon’s op-ed with

Dr. Veronica Ivy (previously Rachel McKinnon) is an associate professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in Charleston, S.C. She is currently writing a book on trans and intersex women athletes’ rights.

But the College of Charleston got rid of him – denied him tenure, upon which he quit – two years ago.

Thank god The Independent is on the important news.

Lorraine Kelly repeatedly misgendered Sam Smith while discussing the singer’s look for the Barbie premiere.

*gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasp*

Hosting her ITV daytime show Lorraine on Thursday (13 July), Kelly talked to guest Vogue Williams about the pink carpet hits and misses from Wednesday night’s (12 July) European premiere for Greta Gerwig’s movie.

While the majority of the guests opted for Barbie-inspired all-pink outfits, Smith – who has written a song titled “Man I Am” from the perspective of Ken for the Barbie soundtrack – went for a far more casual look.

What does “more casual than Barbie-inspired all-pink outfits” mean?

Discussing the outfit on Lorraine, Williams joked that Smith looked like they were dressed for an airport rather than a red carpet event.

They who? Smith and Barbie? Smith and the the guests in the Barbie-inspired all-pink outfits?

However, while Williams referred to Smith using they/them pronouns, Kelly referred to the singer repeatedly as “he” and “him”.

“It’s a bit big for him,” Smith said. “If he was my son, I’d be saying, ‘Son, that’s too big for you’… He’s going to stand out. He knows what he’s doing, does that fella.”

On Twitter, viewers branded the moment “awkward” and pointed out that Williams had looked uncomfortable during the segment.

How very important and significant and urgent and consequential.

In response to one critic on Twitter, Kelly insisted that her wording had been unintentional, writing: “Fair comment. Not in the least intentional but will take on board – thanks for bringing to my attention.”

That’s not insisting, it’s just saying.

The Independent has contacted Smith’s representatives, as well as ITV, for comment.

Oh thank god. I was afraid the whole thing might fizzle out because it’s so trivial and ridiculous.

Another taunt from another man pretending to be a woman:

Valentina Petrillo, a 49-year-old biological male, has won a women’s 400 metres bronze at the World Para Athletics Championships in Paris. The Italian, who was 18 years older than any other competitor in the race, denied Morocco’s Fatima Ezzahra El-Idrissi a place on the podium in the T12 final for visually impaired athletes.

The medal for Petrillo, the first achieved by a transgender athlete on the global stage in track and field, drew swift condemnation, with Peter Eriksen, Canada’s former Olympic head coach, calling the result “shocking” and Mara Yamauchi, the third fastest female British marathon runner in history, asking: “How many 49-year-olds would win medals at world level?”

Yes but he calls himself Valentina, so sit down and be quiet.

Petrillo’s involvement in international competition has long been the subject of consternation. Having only begun hormone therapy to begin transitioning in 2019, aged 45, Petrillo entered the 100, 200 and 400 metres for women at Italy’s Paralympic championships the following year and immediately won all three races. “Better to be a slow happy woman than a fast unhappy man,” the athlete told the BBC. “I don’t feel like I’m stealing anything from anyone.”

And yet, of course, he was stealing anything from anyone, and still is.

When Petrillo won a 200m women’s indoor masters title in Ancona in March, in a time that would only have been good enough for 14th in the men’s race, Cristina Sanulli, who finished second, said: “We do not feel equal because Petrillo’s physical structure is male. So we are not running at par. Although the personal path that Valentina has taken is respectable, athletically speaking it is not, and because of this we feel very discriminated against.”

Well, she’s just cross because he stole first place from her.

When Petrillo, who is understood not to have undergone gender reassignment surgery, was refused access to the female changing rooms in Ancona, the athlete lashed out at detractors as “being on the same level as Hitler”.

“I’ve not undergone hormone therapy to win, I’ve done it for myself,” said Petrillo, who is married to a woman and has two children.

Oliver Brown, chief sports writer for the Telegraph, who wrote this piece, is even more blunt on Twitter.

The National Review tells us:

A video published by the New York Post on Saturday morning shows Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explaining to a group of supporters that Covid-19 may have been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasian and black people, sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese from severe outcomes.

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” the Kennedy scion said during a dinner on the Upper East Side. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” the Democratic hopeful added.

Ah yes, there are papers out there – what more do we need to know?

In April, Kennedy launched his bid to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2024 election.

In 2021, he published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, which accused America’s leading public-health officials of collaborating in “a historic coup d’état against Western democracy.”

There are papers out there that say so.

The most predictable crisis ever:

Households in Florida, the third most populous state in the US, have been grappling for some time with a property insurance crisis that is making home ownership unaffordable for many.

Now why might that be? Because Florida is doomed. It’s like trying to get fire insurance on your house when it bursts into flames. It’s like trying to buy car insurance after you rear-end another car. It’s like trying to buy life insurance when you’re dead.

After at least six insurers went insolvent in Florida last year, Farmers on Tuesday became the latest to pull out of the Florida market, saying in a statement that the decision was based on risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state.

Because Florida is doomed.

“Hurricane insurance is critical to being able to continue to live in Vero Beach,” Brown, in his 60s, says. “In 2004 and 2005 we were hit twice, at a time when we were fortunately covered by Citizens.”

Since then, however, Citizens’ eligibility rules for property insurance have changed: homeowners are now only eligible for their policies if available premiums from private insurance companies are more than 20% higher than the premiums for comparable coverage from Citizens.

Citizens did not return requests for comment.

“Citizens fired us, and we had to take insurance with a private company – for 20% more,” Brown says.” That company then increased prices by 40% and then last September, in the middle of the hurricane season, went bankrupt and we lost all coverage. I panicked and called every insurance broker I knew. They all said getting cover was impossible now.”

Because Florida is doomed.

The insurance industry relies on low risk. Millions of people get fire insurance, and most of them never need it. If the risk of fire or floods or crashes is too high then it ceases to make sense to sell insurance.

Although demand for properties in Vero Beach has been rising dramatically since the pandemic, people who have been unable to secure insurance for their properties, Brown says, are now fearing this will reduce the value of their homes.

“The houses on either side of me have been on sale for six months. I guess not many people can afford to pay $10,000 a year or more on insurance, and hurricanes are becoming stronger and more frequent here.”

Because Florida is doomed.

Won’t somebody please think of the cheaters?

“Nobody wins in this” — the cycling community reacts to new UCI transgender policy

Subhead: Athletes and advocates on both sides of the trans-athlete inclusion debate share their opinions

It’s not “the trans-athlete inclusion” debate, it’s the fairness to women debate. It’s not fair to women to let men compete in women’s sports. It’s that simple.

Starting July 17, 2023, transgender women who have transitioned after puberty are banned from competing in the women’s category at all UCI-sanctioned events, cycling’s governing body announced today. 

Good, but incomplete. Trans women should compete in the men’s category, because they’re men. It’s that simple.

In a press release, the UCI said it was “necessary to take this measure to protect the female class and ensure equal opportunities.” 

So Cycling Weekly chooses to frame it as cruelty to men who claim to be women.

The heartbreak was certainly felt throughout the internet as trans and cis women athletes alike expressed their despondence. 

“I don’t agree with the UCI’s decision to ban trans women from competing in the women’s category. I know this is a complicated topic for many (yes, professional racing complicates this for sure), but I keep returning to what I believe to be the purpose of sport: to offer opportunities for enjoyment, self-betterment, personal challenge, camaraderie (etc.) for all,” writes Haley Smith, a Canadian Olympian and Life Time Grand Prix contestant. 

“Maybe you believe that trans women racing against those assigned female at birth is unfair or wrong. But I truly believe that a ban is much MORE wrong…I don’t have an answer, but I know in my gut that this isn’t the right decision.

I don’t think that’s her “gut.” I think it’s years of whining and screaming and throwing tantrums by the trans communinny.

Already banned from competing in the women’s category in her homeland, British cyclist and transwoman Emily Bridges released an emotional statement on her social media. 

“It’s the hope that gets you. The thought that there’s some small possibility that they’re not going to wield the axe and cut you from the thing you (used to) love keeps some semblance of hope for the future of this environment. But that hope is gone now,” she states.

Hey, Bridges, have you ever stopped to think about women’s hopes in all this?

American athlete and longtime trans-advocate Molly Cameron expressed more frustration than heartbreak, vowing to boycott any event that adopts the UCI’s new policy. A longtime cyclocross racer, Cameron raced internationally until the UCI’s first eligibility policies banned her from competing in the women’s category in the early aughts. 

So he’s a man? Aka a trans woman? Cycling Weekly should have said that up front.

So now you want to know all about Katje Van Loon, right? Obviously. You’re in luck, because the BBC explained about her exactly one year ago, on that previous International Non-Binary Day.

Ten years ago, Katje van Loon wrote a blog post calling for the creation of International Non-Binary Day on 14 July – exactly half way between International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day. Katje tells BBC gender and identity correspondent, Megha Mohan, why it is important that the day has become a reality.

Well thank fuck the BBC has a gender and identity correspondent, or we might never know about these things.

Katje explains all:

My grandmother had just died and I was at her apartment organising her things. Trying to distract myself after a while, I fell into an online rabbit hole and stumbled to the Wikipedia page for gender identities. It was here that I first read the definition of “non-binary”. In those paragraphs, I learned about people who do not follow binary gender norms, people who feel they exist in an intermediate space outside the definitions of male and female.

It was 2012. Until that day she was unaware of people who don’t follow gender norms?

In some ways I was like my mother. People called my mother a “handsome” woman, which I realised much later was designed to be an insult referring to her perceived lack of femininity.

She was a single woman, a lawyer and educator. She wasn’t like the other mothers from school. She would be as comfortable fixing things around the house as she was while teaching her students, or caring for me.

I was like her in my embrace of non-traditional gender roles. But unlike her I existed somewhere else. It wasn’t just that I didn’t feel “girly”, or was taller, and larger and less feminine. It was more than that: the label “woman” just didn’t fit me.

Because of course she’s more special and interesting than her mother. Obviously. We all are.

As an older millennial, I grew up online. In chat rooms, I found communities of people who talked about sexuality, and came out as bisexual at the age of 14.

Ah yes. Artymorty was just talking about the growing up online aspect this morning:

It’s easy to see how this is fueled in part by the increasing amount of time we spend online. Young people growing up are so focused on their digital lives, they’re beginning to find their actual bodies frightening and alien. Or if not quite frightening and alien, at least inconvenient and wrong.

Behold Katje Van Loon.

Amusingly she’s grown up since then.

Now, things have changed in my life. I’m more comfortable in myself. It matters less to me when people call me a woman or use the “she/her” pronouns. I used to be really in favour of having a third gender marker on IDs like passports or driver’s licences like they have in Argentina, Australia and India – and are proposing in South Africa. But now I’m not so sure. Do I want gender-minority data collected somewhere that is easily accessible for governments? Definitely not. I don’t have faith in bureaucracies. I can see why it may be important for some people in certain countries, but not for me.

Please notify the BBC and the Human Rights Campaign.

I’m trying to figure out who decided there’s such a thing as International Non-binary Day, and on what authority, and why anyone else is expected to nod agreement. It seems to be the work of one woman (or am I wrong to call her [xir?] a woman?) named Katje van Loon (a good deal too on the nose there) in 2012. Ok so why is anyone else expected to agree with her? Why am I expected to? What gave her the authority to invent a new International Day that we now have to hear about even though we don’t want to?

The Human Rights Campaign is very on board but it doesn’t explain any of these mysteries.

July 14 is recognized around the world as an occasion to shine a light on those who identify as non-binary and celebrates the rich diversity of the community.

Is it? I have my doubts. In Ulan Bator? Kabul? Peshawar? Kinshasa?

July 14 is recognized around the world as International Non-Binary People’s Day. This occasion shines a light on those who identify as non-binary and celebrates the rich diversity of the community.

Why do the HRC people repeat themselves, repeat themselves? I don’t know, don’t know. Anyway – what kind of “light” does it “shine” on people who claim to have interesting idenninies? All I’m seeing is pointless tedious circular flattery.

After that we get some testimonials, so that’s enough out of them.