“I believe they’re just saying that”

How DARE you???!!!

“That’s rilly rilly offending, especially being a transgender woman myself”

Also you can tell from the mug shots – that’s a man.

Oookaaay.

Kids and bondage:

Luxury fashion house Balenciaga has apologized for featuring children cuddling teddy bears dressed in bondage gear in its latest advertising campaign.

…

In its original press release, the company said that the line featured “dozens of new products ranging from homeware, petwear and scent, from everyday items to limited-edition collectibles and bespoke furniture.”

But there was an angry response on social media to the shots which featured young children with plush teddy bear bags dressed in what looked like BDSM-inspired outfits. One child is pictured with an assortment of empty wine glasses.

They’re luxury bespoke kids, all right? They’re fine with it. They’re sex workers, it’s kink, get over yourselves.

“We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused,” the statement said.

Always the way. Any offense; may have caused. They have no idea what everyone is so pissed off about, but they’re nice people so they’re willing to say soooooooreeeeeeee you’re offennnnnnnndeddddddd and move on to the next shoot.

Hours after issuing the apology, Balenciaga posted a further statement on Instagram apologizing for displaying “unsettling documents” in a separate campaign, referring to documents from a Supreme Court case relating to child pornography laws.

They what now? This eloquent guy has the details:

Originally a comment by maddog on Clinicians and parents are trying to make sense of it.

how parents and professionals should respond to children who express distress about their gender

Girls aren’t distressed about their gender. They are distressed about their sex. And why wouldn’t they be? Society teaches girls, from birth, that they are less-than, second class, subservient, and essentially worthless non-entities. Their only value is in their fuckability.

Being a sex object — not a person — for boys and men becomes more critical for girls at puberty, when the consequences of being female — the body’s ability to become pregnant — become acute. No wonder girls don’t want to be girls. Boys have freedom; girls are imprisoned. No wonder girls hate their breasts: palpable objects of sexualization and subjugation.

At puberty, the members of both sexes develop into adults capable of sexual reproduction. Girls suffer life-changing consequences of sex in a way that boys do not. No wonder girls would like to opt out.

Gender ideology purports to offer girls a chance to opt out of their subservient status. Unfortunately, the promise is hollow. There is no such thing as changing sex. It’s simply not on offer. Instead, what girls get is mutilation and permanent medicalization, and a lost opportunity to become a fully developed adult. It’s a fraud, false advertising.

But it’s utterly unsurprising that large numbers of girls fall for the false promises. They want to escape the chains of non-personhood. They want the freedom that is denied to girls and women. No shocker there.

Announce you’re appalled first! Find out what you’re appalled about later!!

What treatment? How do they know it represents the opposite to of the College values when they don’t know what it was?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on He’s a Mx.

In the initial digging through the killer’s online tracks, was there the faintest whiff of ‘nonbinary-ism? Were ANY pronouns specified? Might this be a bit of theatre to mock the victims? [John the Drunkard]

But according to the logic of self-ID, the sudden “discovery” of one’s EnBeeness, or Transness is perfectly legitimate and must be respected, centered, and validated. That won’t stop them from playing the “No True NB” card, though. They want it both ways, and they want it now. Trans activism has long since stopped seeing (if it ever saw to start with) the many contradictions in its position. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, coheres or is consistent. Trans activists don’t need to convince anyone if they can browbeat and bully everyone into compliance. Better still if they can get others to do their bullying for them. Who needs vote and consultation and consent when you can bludgeon your way to your policy goals?

It is mildly shocking that a government is so willing to discredit itself by passing something as fundamentally opposed to reality as this bill. It’s like voting to annul gravity. Gravitation is never going to be brought to book, or appear in the dock. The world won’t give a shit, and people will keep falling down, even if you do lock up everyone who points this out unfortunate fact. Punishing the people who know how reality works, and arresting those who “calls it as they sees it” is all they’ll be able manage. They’ll run out of gaol cells and prisons long before Reality changes its mind. The world will go on its merry way, producing only two sexes of humans, without regard to Scottish Law, which can only prosecute recalcitrant humans rather than a blithely unconcerned biology.

Yesterday –

And of course there’s the issue of “what is gender inclusive healthcare?”

It’s this, for example:

Single-sex spaces – trans women need to be housed in all-female wards, this decreases violence towards trans women.

But of course it increases the risk of violence towards women, but that doesn’t matter at all to our fingernails-in-flesh “expert.”

It’s so typical, this blithe and complete indifference to the existence and needs and rights of women in favor of people like himself with a customized luxury gender idennniny. And then he she they whines about getting questions.

More from the Guardian “why the surge in girls saying they are trans?” piece:

“Left-handedness increased over time after we stopped punishing left-handed children in schools, because some children are naturally left-handed and were now able to express it,” said Cleo Madeleine, a spokesperson for the trans support group Gendered Intelligence.

“In the same way, increased visibility and acceptance of trans people has led to a gradual increase in young people who feel comfortable expressing their trans identity. The most important thing is to recognise that this is not a problem to be solved or a bad outcome to be avoided.”

It is though, at least when it involves surgeries and/or blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. And that’s just the outcome for the girl who says she is trans; there are also bad outcomes for other people, from the ideology in general and potentially from the “transition” itself. It’s not like being right- or left-handed that way; it’s a much more drastic change.

Meanwhile parents have to figure out which advice to follow.

Anyone looking for clarity from NHS England’s most recent draft guidelines on how to support under-18s experiencing what it calls “gender incongruence” may not find it helpful.

Published in October, the draft seems to put greater emphasis on the possibility that, for some, particularly pre-pubescent, children, this may be a “transient phase”.

It also suggests it is not a “neutral act” to help children transition socially (by using preferred names and pronouns) while they explore their gender identity, and stresses that more research is needed to “gather further evidence on the safety, potential benefits and harms” of puberty blockers.

This is what I’m saying. Cleo Madeleine doesn’t get to pronounce that it’s not a bad outcome, because sometimes it is.

So the Guardian is starting to allow its journalists to talk about it, occasionally, with much caution and hesitation.

Earlier this year, a team of NHS researchers was asked to investigate why there has been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.

I have to interrupt for just a second to point out that that’s a bit like asking why there was such a huge rise in the number of people talking about Harry Potter in 1997. One reason there’s been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent girls joining the trans bandwagon is the fact that it’s a bandwagon. It hasn’t always been a bandwagon; now it is; that’s one reason for the rise. Capeesh?

According to a study commissioned by NHS England, 10 years ago there were just under 250 referrals, most of them boys, to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London. Last year, there were more than 5,000, which was twice the number in the previous year. And the largest group, about two-thirds, now consisted of “birth-registered females first presenting in adolescence with gender-related distress”, the report said.

So I’ll interrupt to tell myself that the “why more girls” question isn’t a bandwagon question, although the “why the huge rise in referrals” is.

Meanwhile, clinicians and parents are trying to make sense of it themselves.

…

Their testimony reflects the lack of consensus within the medical profession about how best to proceed if a child experiences gender dysphoria – and, in turn, how this confusion contributes to the central dilemma faced by concerned parents: how should they support their child during what may be the most challenging period of their lives?

Do they accept them changing their name, gender and pronouns at home and at school and investigating medical options, or should they try to help their child to accept their natal sex?

This is radical stuff. The Guardian is openly saying it’s not just obvious and beyond question that the only guide is how their child identifies. The Guardian is admitting that helping girls accept their sex is an option.

Several parents said they had been relaxed when their daughters initially began identifying as non-binary, but became uneasy when they said they wanted to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones and began binding their breasts.

Gee I wonder why. Could it be because the first set is entirely reversable, and not much different from what many daughters have been doing for generations? And the second set is a drastic attack on the body for a very flimsy reason?

The uncertainty parents felt was compounded by the highly polarised debate – within the NHS, politics and the media – about how parents and professionals should respond to children who express distress about their gender.

“We were terrified of being accused of being bigoted,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her child’s privacy.

All the more so given that one consequence of that could easily be a permanently estranged child. This stuff isn’t just social media, it isn’t just chitchat, it’s relationships between parents and children, which if you think about it is pretty significant. Understatement intended.

To be continued.

Nottingham Council admits wrongdoing.

A council spent more than £10,000 on legal fees and handed out £570 in compensation after “unlawfully” banning an event hosted by an author.

A talk by feminist campaigner Julie Bindel was stopped by Nottingham City Council due to what it said were her views on transgender rights.

…

The talk, organised by Nottingham Women for Change, had been due to take place on 25 June. However, the day before the event, the group was told by the council it could not go ahead. The authority said Ms Bindel’s views “fly in the face” of its position on transgender rights.

The council’s position “flies in the face” of my position on women’s rights. Women are half of humanity; trans people are a tiny fraction of humanity, one with delusions about what sex and gender and identity and rights mean. It’s not obvious that trans ideology should trump women’s rights.

Following three months of pre-action correspondence, the parties reached agreement on mutually acceptable terms, including an apology, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In October, the council apologised to Ms Bindel and admitted it had acted “unlawfully” in cancelling her talk. Now it has emerged the authority spent £10,680 on legal fees and provided a £569.99 “settlement”, which the council said was paid to the author, organisers and ticketholders “in respect to their reasonable losses”.

Ms Bindel says she had not asked for compensation and the payout was for “out-of-pocket expenses” incurred.

“I’m a socialist so I would never take money from a cash-strapped council,” she said.

She has principles. Nottingham City Council, not so much.

We do this every day now, sometimes more than one a day.

At least six killed in Virginia Walmart shooting

At least six people were killed Tuesday night inside a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, according to local officials. The shooter is also dead.

• At least six people were killed Tuesday night inside a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, according to local officials. The shooter is also dead.
• Four victims are in area hospitals with unknown conditions, according to Chesapeake Police. The gunman was identified as a 31-year-old Walmart employee.
• The shooter was a manager at the store, four sources tell CNN. Investigators believe he opened fire on other employees in a break room, a law enforcement source tells CNN.

This is a bad place.

The SNP will simply ignore the rapporteur.

A leading UN official has condemned the SNP’s gender recognition reforms as posing a danger to women and urged Scottish ministers to postpone the legislation.

…

In a 4,500-word letter to the UK government Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, appealed to Sturgeon to allow “sufficient time to complete a thorough assessment of all foreseeable consequences”.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill is set to be enacted by Christmas, though it was introduced at Holyrood only last month. It aims to make it easier for trans people to switch gender through “self-ID” and by lowering the age limit from 18 to 16.

I’ll never understand the obstinate, determined recklessness of this.

Alsalem amplified many of the concerns raised by campaigners. She said: “Such proposals would potentially open the door for violent males who identify as men to abuse the process of acquiring a GRC and the rights associated with it. This presents potential risks to the safety of women in all their diversity.”

I would say “will inevitably” rather than “would potentially.” Why wouldn’t violent men take advantage of such a wide-open door?

Alsalem said the consultation on the bill had been insufficiently fair and inclusive. She added that although a Holyrood committee had listened to the voices of trans women, she was concerned that the same MSPs had told five survivors of male violence they “did not have time to see them and to put their objections in writing”.

Men who say they are women matter, women don’t matter. How did this happen?

This is not in any news stories yet, as far as I can see.

But of course by “transphobic” they mean knowing that men are not women.

How dare women know that men are not women.

Arwa Mahdawi is a little behind the curve on the Colorado shooter.

On the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a gunman opened fire in an LGBTQ+ nightclub, killing five people and injuring at least 25 in what is widely thought to have been a hate crime.

One, it’s not an LGBTQ+ nightclub, it’s a gay bar. Its owners call it a gay bar. Two, the gunman’s lawyers are saying he’s “nonbinary” so that makes him part of the mythical “LGBTQ+” so how you gonna deal with that?

Over the past year there has been an escalation in dangerously dehumanising anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. The idea that LGBTQ+ people are “groomers” and paedophiles has become a mainstream conservative talking point pushed by everyone from Fox News to Republican politicians.

Now that’s just a falsehood. Grooming and paedophilia are issues to do with trans ideology & proselytizing, not lesbian and gay rights, and it’s not only conservatives who think it’s a bad idea.

The dehumanising rhetoric has been accompanied by growing violence. The Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been disrupting Drag Queen Story Hour events (in which performers read books to children) across the US, often turning up with guns. In September Boston children’s hospital received bomb threats after sustained far-right harassment sparked by the hospital’s work with transgender youths. The tragedy at Club Q didn’t happen in a vacuum.

The Proud Boys should definitely sit down and shut up, but as for Boston Children’s, it’s not just innocuously “working with transgender children,” it’s boasting about its drastic surgeries for children it considers transgender. Elective genital mutilation and/or mastectomy isn’t comparable to talk therapy or the like. I wonder how conscious of hiding the ugly reality Mahdawi was when she did it, or if it’s pretty much automatic by now.

The Denver Post:

The person suspected of killing five and wounding 18 after opening fire in a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs is nonbinary, their defense attorney wrote in court filings Tuesday.

Uproar in court!

Notice the punctilious “their defense attorney” – on the one hand homophobic mass murderer but on the other hand nonbinareeeeeeee, must get them there pronouns right.

Joseph Archambault and Michael Bowman, the state public defenders for suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich, filed a slew of motions Tuesday and included a footnote about Aldrich’s identity.

“Anderson Aldrich is nonbinary,” the footnote states. “They use they/them pronouns, and for the purposes of all formal filings, will be addressed as Mx. Aldrich.”

Now what? How will they all deal? Whose idenninee outweighs whose?

Aldrich is being held on suspicion of murder and bias-motivated crimes in connection to the shooting at Club Q late Saturday night.

But what kind of bias? What kind of bias can he have? We’re told and told and told and TOLD that “LGBTQ+” is all one communineeee so how can he have a bias against his own communineeee?

Aldrich, who was injured after being attacked by the patrons who stopped the shooting, was released from a Colorado Springs hospital on Tuesday and booked into the El Paso County Jail.

They are scheduled to make their first court appearance virtually from the jail on Wednesday.

The idennineee police will be there to make sure no pronouns are insulted.

Listen, if makers of menstrual products can’t insult women who can? What kind of country is this, anyway? Can’t you bitches take a joke? It was funny. You’re funny. You’re a joke, so are we supposed to pretend you’re not?

Tampax has been accused of “sexualising women” after posting a controversial tweet that has gone viral and led to calls to boycott the company.

The US arm of the sanitary hygiene brand posted on Monday: “You’re in their DMs. We’re in them. We are not the same.”

The tweet spoofs the classic internet meme that reads, “You are in their direct messages”, meaning to approach someone romantically, with the follow-up remark of “I am…”.

Romantically? You mean sexually.

Tampax US, which is owned by the multinational firm Procter & Gamble and has featured Amy Schumer in adverts promoting the brand, states on its website that it’s mission is to “make period conversations as normal as periods so women and all who bleed can feel educated, empowered and limitless every day of the month.”

There is no “and” after “women.” The all who bleed in the way Tampax means are women and girls. There is no other category of people who bleed that way.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Both sides.

In hockey (and other sports too, of course), there’s a well-established and documented tendency for referees to try to “even up” the penalties called during a game. So if the home team has taken three penalties in a row, barring an absolute murder on the ice the next one is going to be called on the visitors.

I was explaining this to a neophyte fan one time, and he asked “but what if one team is just dirtier than the other?”

And yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? There’s no reason to assume that two teams are equally likely to commit fouls, but the referees act as if that were the case. They don’t want to be seen as determining the outcome, even though of course you’re also influencing the outcome if you let one team get away with infractions that the other team can’t.

Republicans have spent decades “working the refs” by complaining about liberal media bias, precisely to create this kind of false equivalence. Trump just took advantage of that by moving the Overton Window: if you start telling more and more outrageous lies, the media’s desperate striving for “balance” will lead it to ignore your ordinary lies, while blowing up the opposition’s minor evasions into huge scandals.

You only have to compare how Clinton’s email server dominated media coverage in 2016, but the many many instances of terrible information security by the Trump administration got mentioned on the electronic equivalent of page 10. Neither voters nor the press really gave a damn about IT protocols, they just needed to nail Clinton with something to offset Trump’s fraudulent businesses, blatant lies, racism, and confessed sexual assaults.

About that dog’s breakfast at the Scottish Parliament…

Gender reform bill moves on to final stage of Holyrood scrutiny

THE reform of gender recognition policy in Scotland has moved on to the final stage of parliamentary scrutiny before becoming law.

By “reform” they mean removing all obstacles that could slow down men who want to call themselves women and take everything that belongs to women. Here you go, brothers, full speed ahead!

Today, MSPs debated amendments made at Stage 2 of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in a marathon committee meeting at the Scottish Parliament.

The bill aims to make it easier for transgender people to legally change the sex on their birth certificate and removes the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a doctor before they can legally do so.

No need for that, just step up and say your name is Petunia.

The committee meeting was briefly disrupted by a protester wearing the historic colours of the Suffragette movement before being completed this afternoon.

Stupid bitch, how dare she, thank god the committee ignored her and all the other stupid bitches.

Maggie Chapman MSP, Scottish Greens equalities and human rights spokesperson, said she was pleased that the bill was a vital step closer to delivering the reforms that trans people had been waiting so long for.

She said: “This is for those who have waited so long – too long – to be given the chance to live their lives as they choose to be recognised, but it is also for all those parliamentary colleagues who have faced down mistruths and disinformation.

“The consultations and committee scrutiny of the bill have been subjected to reckless scaremongering, ill informed innuendo and the most dangerous mistruths designed to distract people from the real issue at stake – the right of individuals to be recognised in law as who they really are.”

But that’s not the issue. That’s the opposite of the issue. The real issue at stake is the purported right of individuals to be recognised in law as who they really are not. It’s the purported right of men to be recognized as women despite all objections from women that such a “right” will dig a massive hole in our rights.

Apart from anything else it’s just breathtaking to see a parliament solemnly making law to validate people’s fantasies about themselves.

“It is to this parliament’s credit that such crude and frankly dog whistle attempts to undermine trans rights and democracy have failed because of the robust systems and structures that we have in place to represent all of our citizens, including some of the most marginalised.”

But not including our female citizens. Fuck them, right?

This is just news media gossip, but then news media gossip does matter, because we get our news from the news media, so we want to know which ones have good sense and which ones don’t.

There are approximately 7 million replies all saying are you seriously comparing Trump’s record of lies with your not being invited to Biden’s granddaughter’s wedding???

Parker is a Senior National Political Correspondent for the Washington Post.

Suzanne Moore wonders where the armbands for women in Qatar might be.

Women’s rights are not much of a fashionable cause these days and are mentioned often as an afterthought.

If they’re mentioned at all. Mostly people are too busy calling us Karens and terfs to mention our rights.

This is particularly evident in Qatar, where footballers and commentators are struggling to make righteous statements about the tiny but hugely rich country they are in. The agonising around wearing a rainbow flag armband seems to me a substitution for real thought. Obviously, it is terrible to stage the tournament in a place where homosexuality is illegal and even punishable by death, but identity politics flails against the reality of choosing to play in a country that adheres to the strict sect of Salafism, often referred to as Wahhabism, which is prevalent in both Qatar and Saudi. 

This interpretation of Islam also has severe consequences for women, who live under a repressive regime of guardianship.

They have to get the permission of their male “guardian” to do anything beyond staying home out of sight.

Neither rape nor domestic violence is illegal. Men can marry up to four wives but can divorce any wife without even informing them about it. Divorce for women is limited, even if the marriage is abusive. Women are not guardians of their own children. They do not have the authority to make decisions about their own children’s schools, finances or medical treatment. A woman who reports rape may be sent to prison. 

Women are not really people at all in this form of theocracy; women are a kind of livestock and only men are full human beings who can act and think and talk. The big difference between women and livestock is that women can conceive via other men and thus steal their husbands’ owners’ Right To Impregnate. Husbands can be tricked into raising some other dude’s kid! Or kids!! And women are such demonic whores that they’re bound to do it, so it’s essential to strip them of all rights starting at birth.

And, although the government and an increasing number of Qatari women talk about gender equality, women’s rights and female empowerment, the reality is that there is nowhere to go to complain and no monitoring of how women are treated. What the government really does is hand down a mandate to families to keep control of their girls in every way possible. If a father wants to pull his daughter out of education and beat her, then that is fine. The extreme patriarchal nature of Wahhabism means that everything a woman does is controlled; the honour and reputation of her family is paramount.

That and the paternity of her children.

When Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who is said to be well integrated into Qatari society and must surely know some of this, gave his deranged monologue about feeling gay, disabled, African etc, it was pointed out that he had missed out half the world’s population so he added: “I feel like a woman, too.”

And not one person on the planet believed him.