Spot the difference.

Pakistan makes its “blasphemy” laws even worse:

Pakistan has further tightened its strict blasphemy laws by extending the punishment to those who are convicted for insulting religious figures connected to prophet Muhammad.

Of course such figures can’t be “insulted” since they died many centuries ago.

The Pakistan National Assembly unanimously passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill which will not only widen the ambit of the law, but increase punishment and fines for those convicted under it.

Because more religious fanaticism and sadism is always better, yeah?

In Pakistan, an insult to the prophet Muhammad or Islam carries a potential death sentence. The laws have also been used to persecute and target minority faiths and sections in the Muslim-majority country.

Under the law, those convicted of insulting the prophet’s wives, companions or close relatives will face 10 years in prison or life imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 1m Pakistani rupees ($4,500 or £3,489). It also makes blasphemy charges a non-bailable offence.

You can’t insult them, they’re long dead!

Lloyd R-M explains that he didn’t move to sit in front of Miriam Cates to intimidate her, no no it’s all a big misunderstanding. Almost no one believes him.

He’s so firm in his conviction that he turned off replies. The quote tweets are…skeptical.

– What a load of absolute codswallop this is.

– Another disciple of the Boris Johnson School of Political Jackanory.

– Absolute BS, this man is a disgrace

– BULLSHIT

– If you want to read some bollocks, here’s some bollocks.

– What a liar!!!

Etc.

Nicola Sturgeon gave a press conference.

Despite the minuscule audience, the First Minister’s decision to answer her many, many, MANY critics on the SNP’s Gender Reform Recognition Bill by giving a Covid-style briefing to journalists only raised more questions.

Why did she do this? Could it be the avalanche of bad press that followed her MPs and MSPs posing in front of a violently misogynistic sign in Glasgow at the weekend? Very possibly.

Is the penny finally dropping? Are people at last noticing that violent misogyny is pervasive in “trans activism”?

The police are investigating.

POLICE Scotland has launched a probe after complaints about a sign at a pro-trans rally reading “Decapitate Terfs.”

The placard – which also included a drawing of a guillotine – came to prominence on social media yesterday after it featured in images and video of SNP politicians attending the rally, including MSP Kaukab Stewart, and MPs Stewart McDonald, Alison Thewliss and Kirsten Oswald. 

Especially after JK Rowling shared the image.

Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said he had reported the sign to the police, saying carrying it was “clearly a hate crime and a public order offence”. 

He added: “Good grief [Nicola Sturgeon], should your MP and MSP [Kirsten Oswald] and [Kaukab Stewart] really be standing under a banner with a guillotine and this the slogan ‘Decapitate Terfs’? And this is meant to be ‘progressive’?”

Sturgeon could retort that of course it’s not meant to be progressive, but the trouble with that is that violent threatening images and verbal abuse didn’t just crop up this minute with this one banner, it’s been a conspicuous part of trans “activism” for years.

Ms Oswald tweeted: “That’s a horrific sign, and it wasn’t there when I joined the demo. It most certainly doesn’t represent my views, and isn’t language I would ever use. Violent hateful language, of any kind, is unacceptable and has no place in the peaceful movement for LGBT equality and democracy.”

There you go, that’s what I’m saying. It’s absurd for her to say that, because the violent hateful language is pervasive, and it’s not possible that she doesn’t know it.

Ms Thewliss said she had not seen the sign and that if she had she would “have told the person involved how inappropriate and offensive it was, and to get rid of it.”

Yyyyyeah it’s not just “inappropriate and offensive.” It’s threatening. Granted the sign-haver didn’t have a guillotine with her, but the point is that the meaning of the sign is “we want to see you brutally executed.” Calling it inappropriate and offensive minimizes what’s so vile about it.

She really does say that – “to support our trans siblings” – like a deluded child.

Why are trans people called “our siblings” when workers, migrants, people with disabilities are not? What is it about transness that makes trans people our “siblings”?

Anyway, the cuddly warm fuzzies the word is no doubt meant to invoke is pretty thoroughly canceled by the “behead” part.

Just the usual – sadistic violent death threats aimed at women who defend women’s rights.

On January 19, disturbing tweets from a now-deactivated Twitter account began to circulate amongst women’s rights activists. The posts fantasized about the brutal murder of Posie Parker and her colleagues at an upcoming women’s rights demonstration in Glasgow.

The beans one.

But there’s more.

Shortly after, the user, calling himself Gaymon De Vaslayra, posted two audio clips to Twitter in which he targets Labour Member of Parliament Rosie Duffield and Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

Speaking in Gaelic, the user threatens to murder Duffield with a gun at a bar, and Rowling with a hammer. While both audio clips have now been deleted along with the account, some users managed to preserve the audio clips and provide rough translations.

All because these women refuse to agree that men can be women, and refuse to be quiet about it.

Will the police do anything about it?

The Times has a long piece on parents of “trans children” and the schools that encourage the children to think they’re trans while hiding the encouragement from the children’s parents. It’s grim reading.

Although the number of young people who identify as transgender in the United States remains small, it has nearly doubled in recent years, and schools have come under pressure to address the needs of those young people amid a polarized political environment where both sides warn that one wrong step could result in irreparable harm.

The fact that it’s nearly doubled in recent years should be a giant red flag.

The public school that Mrs. Bradshaw’s son attends is one of many throughout the country that allow students to socially transition — change their name, pronouns, or gender expression — without parental consent. Districts have said they want parents to be involved but must follow federal and, in some cases, state guidance meant to protect students from discrimination and violations of their privacy.

But what about protecting students from their teachers and administrators? What if they’re all caught up in a dubious but fashionable trend as opposed to a genuine epidemic of children discovering that they’re trans? What if all this is horribly dangerous and reckless and they should be being cautious instead of reckless? What if the schools are the danger instead of the parents? What then?

Schools have pointed to research that shows that inclusive policies benefit all students, which is why some education experts advise schools to use students’s preferred names and pronouns. Educators have also said they feel bound by their own morality to affirm students’ gender identities, especially in cases where students don’t feel safe coming out at home.

Why though? What if it’s morally better to reassure students that lots of people feel they don’t fit the stereotypes for their gender [or sex] and that it’s completely fine (and way cheaper and safer) to simply defy the stereotypes without going on medication or getting things cut off? What makes them so confident that “affirming” gender idennniny is the right thing to do?

Many advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. youth counter that parents should stop scapegoating schools and instead ask themselves why they don’t believe their children.

Stop right there. Shut up. This isn’t about LGB youth. It’s about T youth, which is a different thing, and a worse thing, a more destructive thing, a more crackpot and harmful and stupid thing. The T should stop leaning on the LGB to prop up its deranged ideology.

They said ensuring that schools provide enough support for transgender students is more crucial than ever, given the rise of legislation that blocks their access to bathrooms, sports and gender-affirming care.

The legislation doesn’t “block their access to bathrooms and sports.” It denies their access to the bathrooms and sports of the other sex, especially those of girls.

More tomorrow.

A quotable:

Some say “sex is socially constructed,” because societies attach expectations, stereotypes, and roles to the sexes.

But this is like saying that astrologers built the stars, by attaching strange ideas to them.

Tomas Bogardus

The Independent reports Sam Smith’s ridiculous pretense that he cares about the absence of women.

Sam Smith has shared their “frustration” about the treatment of women at the Brit Awards.

Whose frustration? Women’s? Of course he doesn’t share it, because he’s not the one being treated that way.

Or is it supposed to mean his frustration? Which is part of the problem with the non-binary they/them: it creates pointless confusion.

The Telegraph also chimes in. It too dutifully uses the specialty pronouns.

Smith has been nominated in the song of the year category for their collaboration with German singer-songwriter Kim Petras on the viral hit Unholy.

They will face tough competition for the award from a host of talent including Burns for her song Go, Style for megahit As It Was and Dave for his track Starlight. Smith and Petras will also be performing during the awards ceremony, which is being held in February at London’s The O2 arena.

There’s another ambiguity. Is the “they” who will face tough competition Smith and Petras? Or is it just Smith? You can’t tell. But the rest of the sentence is also a mess so whatever. Clarity is for terfs, or something.

Sam Smith agitates to make an award “gender-neutral” and when he succeeds he pretends to have a sad about the women.

Smith’s popularity is remarkable — 30 million more monthly listeners on Spotify than Adele — and the recent, riotous single Unholy feels like a statement. As does the new album, Gloria, which blends house, gospel and a blast of choral to create music of release, with lyrics steeped in “queer history”. Unholy earned Smith a Grammy nomination for the first time since that debut and is also up for best song at the Brit awards.

Ah, the Brits. The one step forwards, two steps back awards show. Smith will have to wait until next year’s ceremony to score a nod for best artist with Gloria — the first time the singer will be eligible for the gender-neutral prizes introduced last year, merging the best female and best male into an overall best artist category.

Yet the 2023 awards ceremony being held next month is already a nightmare. No women are up for best artist. Indeed, just 42 per cent of the nominations are for female artists. What’s this got to do with Smith? In 2021 the star called for the awards to be “reflective” and so became the figurehead for a landmark change, the Brits becoming the first big UK awards to become gender neutral.

And because he’s a man, it didn’t occur to him that gender-neutral will mean overlooking women, because it always does.

Women warned at the time that the change risked marginalising female artists. And so it has come to pass. Before the award went gender neutral, five women used to enjoy the spotlight in the annual race to become best female artist. This year the spotlight is basically on Harry Styles, Stormzy and George Ezra, without a woman in view.

Neutral isn’t always neutral.

“It is a shame,” Smith agrees. The singer looks genuinely bewildered that women have been forgotten, despite the bear trap the Brit jurors have walked into being so obvious. 

Thus demonstrating that he’s not gender-neutral at all, he’s a man, and typically oblivious to the ways women are ignored and overlooked and filtered out.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Smith says with a sigh. “It feels like it should be easy to do. [The Brits] just have to celebrate everyone because this is not just about artists getting awards. Awards are for kids watching on TV, thinking, ‘I can make music like this.’ When I was young, if I’d seen more queer people at these awards it would have lit my heart. Awards are there to inspire.”

Right. See also: women. Awards are for girl kids watching on TV, thinking “I can make music like this” as well as boy kids. If there are few or no awards for women, girls watching won’t be thinking that.

It really is quite astonishing – not in a good way – how accepted this stuff is.

Openly wanting us dead.

Ahh it’s the lovey kind of decapitation, how sweet.

“Decapitate Terfs” is trending.

I’m sure they’ll frown with concern for at least 5 seconds.

Cutesie murder threats – they’re the best.

The National [Scotland] on Those SNP women in front of the threat-posters:

SNP politicians have been pictured at a pro-trans rally standing in front of a sign reading “Decapitate Terfs[,]” sparking fierce criticism.

…

Glasgow Kelvin MSP Kaukab Stewart and East Renfrewshire MP Kirsten Oswald were pictured in front of the threatening sign at a rally outside the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday morning.

…

Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and an outspoken critic of her party’s transgender law reforms in Holyrood, said: “I’m sure my colleagues didn’t realise they were standing in front of a hateful sign threatening violence against women and will distance themselves from it.

“I’m due in court again soon to give evidence against a trans rights activist who threatened to kill me.”

The sign, in red and blue bubble writing, also featured an illustration of a guillotine.

The SNP is very concerned. Very very concerned. It’s wringing its hands very sincerely.

An SNP spokesperson said: “SNP MSPs and MPs attended today’s protest in defence of Scottish democracy and the rights of trans people. Violent or hateful language – of any kind – is unacceptable and has no place in the peaceful movement for LGBT equality and democracy.”

There are a couple of things wrong with that. One, it’s not a peaceful movement. Call it peaceful all you like, but we see the reality every day. It’s a testosterone-addled misogynist threatening movement that resorts to violent imagery not just occasionally but regularly. Two, nobody is opposing the rights of trans people. The issue is not the rights of trans people, which are the same as everyone’s, but new fictional unworkable preposterous pseudo-rights, like the “right” to be “validated” as a fiction. There is no “right” to impose one’s reality-denying beliefs on other people.

Hadley Freeman on the “passion” (actually the misogyny) of men like Lloyd Russell-Moyle:

It was inevitable the fantasies sold by gender activists would crash on the hard rocks of reality, and not just because of the endless internal contradictions (if gender is different from biological sex, and given that sport is segregated by sex, why are trans women now on women’s sports teams?). The movement is increasingly underpinned by a frothing misogyny that is becoming all too visible to even the most casual observers. Some insist it is impossible to engage rationally with this “debate” because, they say, “both sides are equally toxic”. Parliament last week gave the lie to that. When Rosie Duffield spoke on Tuesday, calmly — and rightly — saying that Scotland’s bill “clearly conflicts with the Equality Act and would have repercussions for women across the UK”, she was jeered by men in her own party, most obviously Ben Bradshaw and Lloyd Russell-Moyle. After the Conservative MP Miriam Cates spoke about the threats the bill poses to women’s “dignity and safety”, Russell-Moyle, pink with rage, called Cates’s speech “disgusting” and added, wagging his finger: “You should be ashamed!”

He shouted it, from a contorted rage-face, and his finger was stabbing the air rather than wagging. It was the full-on “I am this close to breaking your jaw” that far too many men allow themselves to use on women who dare to have their own views.

Yesterday Duffield wrote in The Times that Russell-Moyle then crossed over “to the Tory side of the chamber to sit on the side benches, very close to [Cates], staring as if to intimidate” the Conservative MP. He was so proud of his performance, he put a clip of it on his Twitter page, although he later issued a non-apology, saying he stood by his words but had “failed to control that passion”. Men — so emotional. Amirite, ladies?

Straight out of the bullies’ playbook. They’re not using their greater strength and bulk and vocal power to intimidate women, they’re passionate and concerned and exploding with solidarity.

Gender activism has become the permissible face of misogyny for a certain kind of allegedly progressive man. It gives him latitude to call women derogatory names and make spittle-flecked videos, insisting that anyone who has a problem with male-born people in women-only spaces is on the wrong side of history.

We’ve been watching this (and objecting to it and resisting it) for literally years, and it’s only getting worse.

Russell-Moyle has previously had to apologise to JK Rowling after accusing her of “using her own sexual assault as a justification for discriminating against a group of people who were not responsible for it”, ie trans women, ie male-born people. Perhaps he learnt something from that experience because he didn’t accuse Duffield — another victim of male violence — of exploiting her own lived experience. But it’s a shame he is so unwilling, or maybe just unable, to understand no matter how passionately he shouts at women, he cannot make them believe something as undefined as “gender” renders all differences between the two sexes — males are stronger, males are more violent — irrelevant.

His red-faced finger-stabbing shouting just underlines the fact that men are stronger and more violent and that’s why we refuse to agree that they are women if they say they are. Lloyd Russell-Moyle could wear a tutu and dance en pointe and we still wouldn’t believe he’s a woman.

Originally a comment by Steven on Nicotine frees your mind!!

There is this thing that happens as stars age.

A star can sit there for millions or billions of years slowly fusing hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, the star contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing helium into carbon. When it runs out of helium, it again contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing carbon into neon.

The star continues in this way, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. Each stage in the process produces less energy than the last, and goes by faster. The last stage fuses elements to produce iron, and takes about a day.

Iron is the endpoint. After iron, there is no more energy to be gotten from nuclear fusion. After that the star collapses and goes super-nova (i.e. it explodes).

The right-wing media machine reminds me of this. They are caught in a cycle where they have to tell more and more extreme–outlandish–stories in order to hold onto their audience. As the stories get more extreme, they get less actual return for them, so they have to spin the cycle faster and faster.

I don’t know what happens when they hit iron. Maybe Tucker Carlson’s head explodes.

This is the place where all the gears grind, isn’t it.

Ok she didn’t see that particular sign. But it’s not just that one sign, now is it. It’s the threatening woman-hating rhetoric of the whole movement, and she can’t claim she’s never seen that. She can’t claim that goes on behind her without her awareness. Why not? Because it doesn’t! It’s out in the open in full view of everyone, and given her job and her trans fandom it’s not possible that no one has ever told her about it.

Why doesn’t it bother her more? If she really does think the sign is inappropriate and offensive, why doesn’t she think the whole trans movement is also inappropriate and offensive?

I’d really like to know. The short answer is cognitive dissonance, but I’d still like the long answer. I’d like to know how she manages it.

Oh by the way, about that other frivolous lawsuit – never mind.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday morning voluntarily dropped a longshot federal lawsuit in Florida against New York’s attorney general — a day after the same judge in the case sanctioned him and his lawyer nearly $1 million for filing another, “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and many other defendants.

The judge, John Middlebrooks, had pointedly noted in a scathing sanction order Thursday evening in the Clinton case that he was also handling Trump’s complaint against Attorney General Letitia James in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Trump’s suit against James — which Middlebrooks last month warned appeared “vexatious and frivolous” — was filed in reaction to her office’s civil lawsuit against Trump in New York state court alleging fraud at his company.

…

Middlebrooks in his order in the Clinton case Thursday noted that last month he had ruled that Trump’s “attempt to sidestep rulings by the New York court by suing AG James individually rather than in her official capacity was plainly frivolous.”

The judge also had found that Trump had “no likelihood of success on the merits” of the case, and that he had urged Trump to consider dropping his opposition to James’ bid to get the case.

So Trump said “Ok!” and dropped his opposition.

No I’m not smirking, you’re smirking.

Meanwhile in Glasgow…