Another eraser of women:

It’s not people in general who need abortion healthcare, it’s exclusively women.

For women living in the 24 states…

For every woman, everywhere.

Texas women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Take your “inclusion” and.

Also how revolting to see two women in government putting women’s safety at risk for the sake of this stupid ideology.

What’s in it for them? Not that politics should be about self-gain (thanks Mr. Trump!), but how do these two women see their efforts to ruin women’s sport? Certainly not as “efforts to ruin women’s sport” but that’s what’s going to happen if they get their way. Politics should at least be about being aware of the results of your actions, otherwise, why bother? If they’re not willing to talk to people who will be predictably and adversely affected by this proposal than they’re not doing their jobs. They’re not setting free a deprived, downtrodden minority, but inserting MEN into women’s rugby, with great potential for physical harm to those already in the league because they’re actually women. It’s not “liberation,” it’s a home invasion.

Still, one wonders, what are they thinking? What parts of the trans bullshit won them over? Do they really believe that TiMs are not male? Do they really believe that TiMs are disadvantaged more than women? Have these two cabinet ministers(!) consulted with women to see what they think? Have they talked to any uncaptured sports scientists who know the science behind male and female bodies? Unless of course they don’t care what this does to women, and are using this little exercise as a way to earn Stonewall points, and they’re not interested in anything other than looking virtuous and progressive to others who’ve swallowed this stupid ideology. News flash: outside of your little self-satisfied, self righteous bubble, there’s a bigger world of reality and policy that you’re blindly fucking around with, that results in lost opportunities and broken bones for women. If you’re not going to bother with little details like that while in government, then you shouldn’t be in charge of anything with more real-world impact than counting paperclips, or be allowed to operate any machinery more complicated than velcro.

Something our trans “sisters” will never have to worry about:

The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal — acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists.

An abundance of caution from the point of view of the pharmacy chain – not from the point of view of the women who need the pills.

Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company began distributing the drugs, which have become the nation’s most popular method for ending a pregnancy.

It’s that important to keep forcing women to gestate and give birth to babies against their will. Rebellious slaves must be taught who’s in charge.

The list includes several states where abortion in general, and the medications specifically, remain legal — including Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana. For example, Kansas’ law that patients only obtain the pills directly from a physician is blocked in court.

Legal shmegal – women must be made to submit.

“They’re denying people [women] agency over their lives,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy expert with the abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute. “When we’re thinking about states that have a lot of their population in rural areas, it’s much more likely that a pharmacy is nearby than a provider’s office, so these pharmacies play an outsized role in patient health and access to health care.”

They’re denying women agency, not people. It’s women who are not allowed to be full independent humans.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Take your inclusion and.

Hannah Blythyn, wrote that their “preferred position was to follow a case-by-case approach, rather than a blanket exclusion of transgender people”.

I’m gobsmacked by people who actually think it’s possible to decide whether to include or exclude trans-identified males from women’s spaces using a “case-by-case approach.” The nature of the claim, that transwomen are a TYPE OF WOMAN, completely precludes it. They’re built like an ox and just as strong? Some girls are big. They completely pass as female and nobody in the woman’s restroom would even know they’re trans? What about those poor transwomen who don’t? Where are we going to draw the line?

I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine who had never even heard of a liberal, feminist critique of including transwomen into all women’s spaces. Her responses were predictable. “There are so few.” “They pass.” “We should accept and love.” “That’s not happening.” And of course “we need to do things on a case-by-case basis, which would eliminate the problems you mention.” But … how?

The BBC reports:

Welsh ministers wrote to the Welsh Rugby Union expressing “concern” about its ban on transgender women competing in female-only games.

Concern about not allowing men to compete in women-only games. How did we get to such a stupid place and why can’t we get the hell out of it?

Their letter stated “inclusion” should be the “starting point” for decisions on transgender people’s participation in any part of society.

No it should not, because the issue is not “transgender people’s participation in any part of society,” it’s men’s intrusion on women. As always, calling it a “transgender” issue conceals the actual issue. Men aren’t shut out of women’s spaces and games and the rest because they’re “transgender” but because they’re men. Women sometimes need to get away from men, for our own safety or for fair competition or to have any hope of winning a prize. Women would almost never win Oscars for acting if there weren’t a separate category for women, because there are vastly more roles for men, and most of the roles for women get little dialogue and little to do. That’s just one example of many.

Introducing the ban in September 2022, the WRU said it was based on “current medical and scientific evidence”.

Evidence, that is, that competing against men in rugby is dangerous to women. Apparently the Welsh government doesn’t give a shit.

The Welsh government’s deputy sports minister, Dawn Bowden, and deputy minister for social partnership, Hannah Blythyn, wrote that their “preferred position was to follow a case-by-case approach, rather than a blanket exclusion of transgender people”.

Again. It’s not “transgender people”; it’s men.

Also how revolting to see two women in government putting women’s safety at risk for the sake of this stupid ideology.

The deputy sports minister also raised the issue at a meeting with WRU officials in January 2023, when according to the minutes she said the Welsh government was “disappointed in the difference in treatment between trans men and trans women”.

Excuse me, I have to go bang my head against the wall for a few hours.

But what are we meaning by “hate crimes” here?

Will saying a man is not a woman be included in the list of hate crimes?

The Philadelphia Inquirer screams

Hershey Canada Women’s Day campaign sparks transphobic vitriol on Twitter

Or to put it another way: Hershey hijacking of Canada Women’s Day sparks protests from women on Twitter.

The subhead is almost as stupid and dishonest as the headline:

For International Women’s Day, Hershey Canada launched a campaign spotlighting young women trailblazers on its chocolate bars. Their inclusion of transgender woman Fae Johnstone sparked Twitter hate.

It’s not “hate” to say that events for women should not feature men, just as events for workers should not include bosses.

The lede is also stupid and dishonest; three for three.

An ad campaign from Hershey Canada intended to highlight women trailblazers is being met online with transphobic hate.

Three venomous lying accusations in a row.

The writer, Emily Bloch, finally gets around to the particulars.

To mark International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8,Hershey Canada launched a campaign spotlighting five young Canadian women, whose faces appear on the brand’s chocolate bar wrappers. Each chocolate bar is meant to spotlight women using their voices and advocacy to contribute to systemic progress for women.

Right. Women. Because it’s Women’s Day. Women, as in women, not men larping as women.

Women featured on chocolate bars were Autumn Peltier, an Indigenous rights and water activist; Naila Moloo, a climate technology researcher; Rita Audi, a gender and education equality activist; Kélicia Massala, the founder of Girl up Québec; and Fae Johnstone, a human rights activist and the executive director of consulting firmWisdom2Action. Johnstone is transgender, which some hateful online voices are taking issue with.

“Hateful.” Women who don’t want men who call themselves women taking the place of women in women’s events are called “hateful” by the woman who wrote this poisonous article.

The campaign was meant to celebrate women’s progress and acknowledge the ongoing fight for equity, Hershey’s Canada said. The company is donating up to $10,000 to each of the five women’s organizations and an additional $30,000 to Girl Up, a group that focuses on women’s equity.

But online trolls are pushing a countercampaign, calling to boycott the Hershey Co.

Trolls. We’re trolls now. Transphobic, hateful, trolls – the activist vocabulary is complete.

According to Sarah McBride, the Human Rights Campaign’s national press secretary, TERF views — which exclude trans women from conversations about the gender — “deny the validity of transgender people and transgender identities.” TERF views are widely rejected by most feminists, LGBTQ supporters, and the mainstream medical community.

Geddit? “Everybody hates you. We’re the cool kids, you’re the losers. All the good people reject you. We’re awesome, you’re a bunch of toads.”

The tits guy is on paid leave. So that’s how to get an extra vacation!

A Canadian high school teacher has been put on leave after reportedly wearing prosthetic breasts in class.

Not just “reportedly”; there are photos.

Parents of students at Oakville Trafalgar High School southwest of Toronto, where Kayla Lemieux taught shop class, grew frustrated after months of debate regarding her appearance.

No, that’s not exactly right either. One, it’s his appearance, and two, it’s not so much his appearance as the obvious, in your face, insulting fakery of it. It looks not so much like identifying as a woman but rather insulting women in general. Plus it looks childish, or else kinky, or a weird mashup of both. At any rate, imagine if he wore vaudeville-style blackface to teach his class.

I doubt he would have been allowed to do that for weeks and weeks before getting paid leave.

The decision to place the teacher on leave came after The Post reported that journalists followed her and discovered she only wears prosthetics in class and appears to dress as a man while not at work.

The pronouns are on paid leave too.

Women-hating men who just can’t believe their luck that they get to throw bricks at women and collect virtue stamps for doing so.

Do we get a free pass to say whatever we want when discussing our rights…gee, that’s a tough one. I don’t know. Probably to be on the safe side we should get Billy Bragg’s permission before we say anything.

Billy Bragg is just having fun though. Wot larks Pip!

Newsweek pretends to be surprised that women don’t particularly like seeing something called International Women’s Day being incloooosive of men. Being incloooosive can be good some of the time, but when it’s a matter of celebrating the half of humanity that gets shoved aside and ignored when it’s not being mocked and belittled and raped, you kind of miss the whole point by inclooooding people who are not part of that shoved aside disparaged half.

Things that are supposed to be for everyone should be inclusive. Definitely. That’s what “for everyone” means. But things that are supposed to be for a specific set of people? Being inclusive of people not in that set? No. That just misses the whole point. Yes be inclusive of all kinds of women, obviously, but no, don’t be inclusive of men who claim to be women, also obviously. If you throw a birthday party for your friend, you don’t have to be inclusive of the whole neighborhood or city or country. If you throw a party to celebrate women, you don’t have to be inclusive of men, even the ones lost in a fantasy that they are women. In fact them especially.

Some social media users have called for a boycott of Hershey’s products over its decision to include a transgender woman in its International Women’s Day advertising campaign in Canada.

Yes, because a transgender woman is by definition a man.

The chocolate manufacturer brought back its SHE bar for a third time on March 1, to “shine a light on the women and girls who inspire us every day.”

…

One of those chosen for the promotion is Fae Johnstone, a transgender rights activist, who said they were honored to be featured.

But it’s not his turn to be honored. Honor him on one of the many days that celebrate trans people. Don’t do it on the one day that’s about women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Insult # eleventy billion seventeen.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by this sort of thing, but I find it odd that a company would do this. It’s one thing letting the proverbial intern with insufficient adult supervision fire off an overzealous tweet or two, but unleashing this campaign took time, effort, and money. I’m trying to decide if the people at Hershey’s who did this are True Believers, or if they’ve simply mistaken Twitter for the real world. Who did they consult before they put this together? Was this an internal project, or did someone from outside suggest this?

It’s one thing to stir debate and controversy when you’re selling a newspaper or a movie. Buzz can sell copies and tickets. But when your business is chocolate (and you’ve already been evasive and dilatory on ending the use of child labour in the production of your product, so consistency or real “social justice” isn’t quite your thing), courting controversy that has nothing to do with your brand and its image might not be the smartest move you could make. Did you run any numbers on this? Was the number of customers you might win to your brand by doing this bigger than the number who would drop your product because you’ve centred a man in your attempt to celebrate International Women’s Day?

Who did they consult with when they started to put this together? Were there any women in the room? Did they not know this might piss people off, women particularly? Are you really going to turn adherence to and support of gender ideology a litmus test for those buying your chocolate bars?

Why needlessly introduce an element of inflammatory divisiveness in the marketing of your product? Would you promote a particular political party or religious sect on your candy wrappers and advertisements? Well, like it or not that’s pretty much exactly what you’ve done with this very offensive campaign. Congratulations! You’ve committed an unforced error. You’ve just handed a whole bunch of people an incentive to stop buying your product by saying “Fuck you!” to them. That’s real genius level marketing.

What of the ad agency? You’d think that they would have some idea of the possibility for backlash; public opinion is in their wheelhouse. If they didn’t know that some people would react strongly and negatively to such a campaign, then they were incompetent. This is exactly the reason for which God created focus groups.

Maybe Hershey hired a woke ad company fully committed to Gender Justice, which has divorced itself from reality so much that it has lost sight of the needs of its clients who are trying to sell products in the world as it actually is, not in the world as they wish it was. Maybe their focus groups were just a little too narrow in their candidate recruitment profile. If they were using the same criteria you would use for taking on “sensitivity readers” they’re likely going to miss people who think the whole concept of “gender identity” is bullshit, thereby blinding themselves to the possibility of blowback, backlash, and boycott.

In a market where other people are making a similar product, where switching to another brand is not hard (really, your competitors’ wares are inches away on the same shelf), alienating customers who are in the know and who disagree with the stance you’re pushing is not a smart move. It smacks of ignorance or overconfidence.

If I wanted to get really conspiratorial, I could suggest that someone at Hershey’s, or their ad company, knew exactly what they were doing, and launched this as a false flag operation to discredit the idea of gender identity. Given the reaction, I’d say it certainly hasn’t helped the idea; so if it wasn’t a false flag op., it has failed in that regard. And although it has garnered much more interest and attention to the campaign (more so, sadly, than if they’d highlighted the work and achievements of actual women only; I feel sorry for those women who were roped into this, only to become props in Johnstone’s little validation drama), on the whole, I believe it has not been in the company’s interests. There is such a thing as bad publicity.

Fox “News” and Trump and Dominion and a puppy.

Former President Donald Trump has been hit with a “soft ban” at Fox News, the Republican propaganda outlet that helped put him in the White House, several members of his orbit told Semafor in a piece published Wednesday. Indeed, while the network has lavished other 2024 GOP presidential candidates with interviews and airtime, Trump has not appeared since launching his campaign in November — even as the network’s own polling has him leading the primary. 

It always depresses me to think about this. One evil guy – Rupert Murdoch – is why we’re in this hideous ever-worsening mess. It’s Murdoch’s world and we’re just the fleas.

Airtime on Fox — the most trusted major outlet on the right — is extremely valuable to Republican political candidates. They use it to build their brands with the network’s audience, curry favor with its powerful hosts, and raise money. Fox appearances can help politicians who are seeking the party’s nomination win their primaries. Trump, who used a regular weekly segment on Fox & Friends to boost his political profile and spent nearly twice as much time on the network during the 2016 primary as the next-most-frequent presidential candidate, is a classic case study of this phenomenon. 

Classic and, you know, the one with the most consequence. The end of abortion rights to name just one item.

The Dominion filings provide some support for this theory. They show Rupert Murdoch casually and repeatedly ordering subordinates to use Fox’s airtime to help or hinder particular political candidates. At a real news network, the parent company’s owner issuing an edict to ice out a political candidate would be understood as so unethical as to be absurd — but that’s not what Fox is.

It’s a real rants network.

The sixth annual Women’s Writes marathon via Robin Buckallew.

Links to previous years at

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

Yay another win for men invading women’s sports.

For Minnesota powerlifter JayCee Cooper, a trans woman who has been one of the prominent faces in an ongoing debate over inclusion and participation in sports, a four-year fight yielded a victory in court Monday.

Inclusion and participation in sports should not be interpreted as meaning inclusion and participation of men in women’s sports.

A Ramsey County, Minn., District Court judge ruled that USA Powerlifting violated portions of the Minnesota Human Rights Act through continued efforts to keep Cooper and other transgender competitors out of their events.

It isn’t about “transgender competitors,” it’s about male competitors invading women’s sports.

“Trans athletes across the country deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else, and we deserve equitable opportunities to compete in the sports we love,” Cooper said.

Certainly – the same rights and protections as everyone else, not a new and unworkable “right” for men to invade women’s sports.

The ruling by District Court Judge Patrick Diamond stated that USAPL failed to uphold certain responsibilities codified in law when Cooper was granted membership status in 2018.

“By denying Cooper the right to participate in the female category, the category consistent with her self-identification, USAPL denied her the full and equal enjoyment of the services, support, and facilities USAPL offered its members,” Diamond wrote in his ruling. “It separated Cooper and segregated her and, in doing so, failed to fully perform the contractual obligations it agreed to when it accepted Cooper’s money and issued Cooper a membership card.”

What the hell is “the category consistent with her self-identification” supposed to mean? We can’t just “self-identify” ourselves into any category we feel like invading. I can’t “self-identify” as Judge Patrick Diamond, or any other judge. Self-identification makes sense for some categories, but not for others. “Women” is one of the others.

Attorneys for Cooper welcomed the ruling and noted the potential future impact. “After today’s ruling, we are one step closer to making sure trans athletes like JayCee, and trans people everywhere in Minnesota, can pursue their dreams and goals without experiencing discrimination simply for being who they are,” attorney David Schlesinger said.

It’s not “being who they are.” It’s claiming to be who they are not. Major difference. How I wish adults would stop talking this babyish “affirmative” bullshit.

For Cooper, the ruling is a welcome sight after four years of struggle, uncertainty and being sidelined in a sport she loved being a part of [he loved destroying for women].

“I fought as hard as I could to ensure that every trans [male] athlete has the opportunity to compete, and be recognized with full dignity and humanity,” she [he] stated. “I am thrilled that this ruling recognizes our rights and our humanity [our campaign to kill women’s sports] and hopefully opens doors for transgender [male] athletes everywhere to participate fully in sports [ruin women’s sports].”

We will we will rock you [boom boom].

Mary Wakefield on the gender birthrate:

It was announced last week that another gender has been added to the list: nominalgender. Most news sites reported this in the sort of proud way a zoo might announce the birth of an exciting animal, a baby Komodo dragon maybe – as if the gender had somehow hatched and was waiting to be adopted. You are nominalgender ‘if your gender is so much just you that no one else can even experience it’, I read.

In fact no news sites reported this at all, so Wakefield is apparently doing satire. (There are a few mentions of “nominal gender” – two words, not one – but they’re not new and the meaning is pretty self-evident.)

Every day the list of possible gender options grows – metastasizes is a better word: non-binary, genderfluid, bigender, demigender, catgender. On Monday it was reported that a drag queen on the Isle of Man had informed Year 7 pupils that there are exactly 73 genders. When one brave child insisted that there were only two, the drag queen allegedly responded ‘You’ve upset me’ and sent the child out.

That on the other hand was reported in the news. I saw it at the time, rolled my eyes, and moved on. Look at all the good I do.

What the drag queen might have said, if the rude child hadn’t interrupted, is that though it’s an article of trans faith that there are 73 genders, it’s also often said that the fastest-growing gender subset is xenogender. You’re xenogender if you feel more akin to animals or plants or foods than humans. It’s funny, but it’s also frightening. There’s a girl on TikTok who explains very seriously that her gender is bird – a cardinal specifically, ey/em pronouns.

It turns out this is what the internet is for – telling the world about your boutique idenniny and pronouns. The lion labored and brought forth a mouse.

What does it mean to ‘come out’ as a bird? What does it mean, for that matter, to ‘come out’ as non-binary, or even trans? Isn’t it an insult to gay men and women for the language of gay rights to be hijacked by children who think they’re cake? It’s dangerous too. The phrase implies that you’ve searched your soul and discovered something true about yourself, and that coming out will set you free. But the reality is the opposite. The phrase ‘coming out’ acts like a trap, a lobster pot. In crawl the children, cheered on by their rainbow friends, but the way out is much harder to find.

That’s a good metaphor. It goes on working, too – being trans is like being the proverbial lobster in the pot that gets hotter and hotter.

I’ve looked into the eyes of that cardinal bird, and she wouldn’t thank you for suggesting that her identity is a joke. It’s not that she believes she has feathers or can fly, but she does think she’s discovered her true inner being. ‘I didn’t decide this. My brain decided for me.’

So the brain is external to the self. Interesting.

Amanda Marcotte wonders why Murdoch is not trying to settle the Dominion case when settling is what he usually does.

I suspect the reason Murdoch and Fox News seem determined to stick this out is that they are just that worried about what impact an admission of wrongdoing would have on their reputation with their audience. The possibility of a jury ruling in their favor, which they could spin as a total exoneration of their tactics, is so important to them that they’re willing to take a big risk that the opposite could happen. A settlement, however, would remove all doubt about who was in the wrong. 

…

[A]s the Dominion filings showed, internal machinations at Fox News were precisely about how to prevent journalists from conducting basic reporting. Tucker Carlson demanded the firing of a Fox reporter for reporting the simple fact of the election outcome. The latest filing quotes Murdoch himself suggesting firing a data analyst for correctly reporting that Biden had won the Arizona election. It’s telling that Fox News puts so much pressure on journalists, even when it’s just opinion writing. It suggests they’re incredibly worried that this lawsuit really could damage them in the eyes of the only people they clearly care about: MAGA. 

…

What this all suggests is that Fox News leadership is genuinely worried that their viewers will perceive them as a propaganda outlet, instead of a news organization. Why that bothers them is hard to suss out. As the court filings show, the leadership of Fox News felt pressure from their audience to downplay actual facts and play up conspiracy theories. It feels like theirs is not an audience who cares about facts, or even the illusion of facts. But watching Fox’s machinations around this case, it seems that they believe keeping up the pretense that they are “news” matters to their viewers, even if no one actually believes it. 

Murdoch and Trump are why we can’t have nice things.

Woohoo International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate –

By promoting a man.

He shouldn’t be honored to be featured in this campaign, he should be horrified at the invitation, and telling them to feature a WOMAN for International Woman’s Day.

Pink News is SHOCKED AND APPALLED by the misgendering crime spree in Newham Monday. The very reasonable and informative headline conveys PN’s shock and appallment.

Non-binary councillor storms out of chamber after being shamefully misgendered

Oh how shamefully shameful. Also how adult of a councillor to storm out because a colleague forgot to pretend he has a luxury gender identity with luxury pronouns to match.

The incident happened when Newham councillor Danny Keeling, who uses they/them pronouns, was speaking against Labour’s budget plans at a full council meeting on Monday (February 27) at Stratford Olympic Park.

There’s no such thing as “using” X pronouns—>everyone has to use them. Your using eccentric pronouns about yourself does not repeat DOES NOT mean that anyone else has to.

Keeling, who is Newham’s first openly non-binary councillor, was repeatedly misgendered by Labour council chairperson Winston Vaughan, who referred to Keeling as “he”. 

“First openly non-binary” doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is non-binary. It’s not closed. No purpose is served by this Keeling fella’s making such a fuss about his boring non-binary hood.

Speaking with PinkNews, Keeling said incidents of misgendering have been taking place for “weeks and weeks, meeting after meeting” where several councillors “never use the correct pronouns whatsoever”. 

Child, find some better way to draw attention to yourself. Almost anything would do.

A whole entire line of Trump corruption I for one didn’t know about:

Donald Trump made more than a billion dollars while serving as president, including $14 million in income from his business interests in Indonesia from 2015 to 2019, according to a CREW analysis of his tax returns. During that same period, he earned $234 million in total from businesses in foreign countries with interests in U.S. foreign policy. 

That’s so interesting because the normal thing to do on achieving political office is to divest oneself of business interests, by at minimum handing them over to other people to manage and maintaining complete separation between self and those other people. The idea is to get rid of all ability and temptation to use the political office for corrupt purposes. Donald Trump on the other hand goes “Oh boy!!!” and does every corrupt thing he can find to do.

CREW spent years ringing the alarm bell on the unprecedented number of conflicts of interest that marred Trump’s presidency, arising from his decision not to separate from the Trump Organization when he entered office. Trump’s conflicts of interest in Indonesia ranked among the most egregious. 

What I’m saying. The Trump Organization should have been dead to him. That’s not how it played out.

During his presidency, Trump’s son met with Indonesian government officials, the daughter of his Indonesian business partner obtained a high-ranking government position with authority over Trump’s businesses, and once he left office one of the developments he profited from received special tax breaks from the Indonesian government. Trump was making millions from the country as those events took place. 

While he was the head of state.

While Trump was in office his son and Trump Organization executive Eric Trump told Fox News, “When my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business.” Trump pledged that his company would pursue “no new foreign deals” during his presidency and spent four years denying claims that he was profiting from the presidency.

Read the whole CREW piece for details of how untrue that was.

Trump’s decision not to divest from the Trump Organization cast a dark shadow of corruption over his presidency. It is no secret that Trump was struggling financially and in deep debt before he became president. The release of his tax returns show that for Trump, the presidency was a chance to get back in the black. Even if he did donate his presidential salary — a promise that he may have broken in 2020 while also forcing government agencies to spend taxpayer money at his properties — that income is nothing compared to the money he earned from his properties at home and abroad. For his failing hotels, resorts, and golf courses, Trump’s election was a money-making opportunity that created a huge influx of business from foreign governments looking to ingratiate themselves with the commander in chief. 

Not how any of this is supposed to work.

When they force you to say the words:

A professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio will be paid $400,000 after he was disciplined four years ago for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns. 

Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State, was reprimanded in 2018 after he would not refer to a transgender student by her preferred pronouns. He had a warning placed in his file and was told to change the way he addresses transgender students “to avoid further corrective actions.” 

So a university – a place with, one would hope, some concept of respect for truth – ordered a professor to pretend a male student was a female student by calling him “her.” Not urged, not requested, but told. It’s degrading. It’s like telling the faculty to spend the first half hour of every class reading Winnie the Pooh to the students. It’s degrading to all parties, including the university.

The warning stemmed from an incident in 2018, during one of his Meriwether’s lectures when he called a transgender student “sir” when she raised her hand. The student asked Meriwether to call her by her preferred pronouns, which he refused to do saying his “sincerely held religious beliefs prevented him from communicating messages about gender identity that he believes are false.” 

It’s not a religious belief though. It’s a universal “belief,” or rather a fact. Males aren’t females; females aren’t males; we all know that; religion has nothing to do with it. Houses aren’t ice cream, eagles aren’t forks, potatoes aren’t oceans, steel isn’t paper, earthquakes aren’t tiramisu. No university should be ordering its professors (or any other staff) to lie at the behest of a warped stupid reality-denying pseudo-politics.

In a statement, Shawnee State said the settlement was an “economic decision” and that it continues to stand behind a student’s right to a discrimination-free learning environment while also allowing its faculty and staff to freely express their beliefs. 

It’s not “discrimination” (in the pejorative sense Shawnee State means) to refuse to call male students “she.” It’s not comparable to the old Whites Only lunch counters and water fountains in the South.