Guardian headline:

Will Ferrell’s Netflix doc Will & Harper is flawed but vital viewing for cis people

Vital? I really doubt that. It’s not as if we don’t get lectured on the subject enough already.

Let’s admit it: cisgender people are really curious about us trans women.

Ok stop right there. First sentence and already you’re off the rails. No, we really really aren’t. We’ve heard way more than we want to about trans women. I can’t begin to express how much more we’ve heard than we ever wanted to. The only thing we can be described as “curious” about is where the hell do you get the nerve?

They want to know things such as: what’s it like to have a surgeon rearrange your genitals? How did you know you were really a girl all along? Does it suck having to be on the downside of sexism now?

Nope. I don’t. I really really don’t. I promise you. I’m not interested. You talk and talk and talk and talk about yourselves day in and day out and we are not curious about you. I for one think you desperately need to shut up about yourselves and think about other people for a change. Being trans has turned out to be a wildly effective excuse to be publicly self-obsessed all day every single day.

For our own part, trans women are curious about cisgender folk, too. We want to know things like: do you actually think I’m female, or am I just a deluded guy in a dress to you?

That’s hilarious. He’s actually reproduced, without noticing he’s doing it, the jokey catchphrase: “Enough about me, let’s talk about what you think about me.”

Skipping several boring paragraphs –

It’s extremely hard to survive a transition with your dignity intact, in large part because very few people stop to consider that a man trying to transform into a woman is in such an infinitely more disempowered position than they are.

It’s a good thing very few people stop to consider that, because it’s horseshit. No you’re not. You’re a man. The fact that you’re hell-bent on making a fool of yourself is your choice, so if that “disempowers” you because people now know you’re a fool, that’s your own work. You’re still a man; you still have that power.

It’s uniquely vulnerable, to feminize your appearance and your personality, and to put yourself out there for the world’s approval.

Try being a woman surrounded by a group of drunk men.

You are doing the one thing that – for your whole life – you have been absolutely screamed at to never, ever do. You are going against every last survival instinct you have, because it’s the only way.

Try being a woman surrounded by a group of drunk men.

He just has no clue, does he.

The Times (the London one) slobbers all over a man who wants to order up a customized baby for himself. What a shame there are no baby factories.

In recent years starry couples have raised the profile of surrogacy, including Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Robbie Williams and Ayda Field, and Elton John and David Furnish.

Oh well then, if famous people can order up luxury babies so can any man.

To go solo, Northwood must first find a woman willing to go through the invasive procedure of donating an egg, which will be inseminated in a lab. Then he needs to find another to undergo IVF with the resulting embryo, followed by pregnancy and giving birth.

Why should any woman do that for him? No reason on earth.

Often it’s easier to navigate these hurdles abroad, in countries where surrogacy is a regulated industry. By contrast, UK law prohibits payments of more than £750 to egg donors per cycle, while surrogates can only be reimbursed for expenses. It’s understandable, then, that Northwood considered doing it in the US — “but that can cost more than $200,000 [£153,000], which I can’t afford” — or Mexico, which is cheaper. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Some people are highly critical of egg donation and surrogacy, saying women should not be “wombs for rent” and that no one has the “right” to a baby. Northwood shrugs. “This is modern families now. I’ve grown up with people’s opinions about me being wrong to date men. Keep your opinions to yourself.”

No. You keep your desire for a customized motherless baby to yourself.

Going it alone feels positive, “in that I don’t have to take anyone else’s feelings into consideration”. 

Including the feelings of the customized baby. What a nice man.

This god certainly hates women and young girls.

Revisiting this for a second…

The hands.

You get the big accordion gesture.

You get the tiny wedge gesture.

You get the medium accordion gesture.

You get the big accordion gesture then some active playing the accordion gestures.

You get the jumping wedge gesture, then the diving bird gesture once, twice, part of a third time that transitions back to the accordion.

The gestures are…weird.

Musk not invited to party.

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has hit back [retorted] after not being invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit. He was not invited due to his social media posts during last month’s riots, the BBC understands.

“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Mr Musk claimed on X. Earlier this month, the government released some prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding, but no-one serving sentences for sex offences were [was] included.

…

David Yelland, a public relations specialist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, told the BBC that if Mr Musk were to attend the summit, it would be “reputationally disastrous for the whole event”.

“He’s a fan of free speech but he behaves like a child and he posts things that are deeply inaccurate and extremely damaging,” he said. “This is not just a guy that is saying stuff in the pub. This is a guy that is encouraging untruths around the world.”

And that’s from a former editor of the Sun.

When reporting becomes incoherent:

A trans woman has been jailed for six and a half years after being found guilty of rape following a night out. Lexi Secker raped a woman in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, on 23 April 2023. The attack took place before Secker began identifying as a woman.

Might as well say the attack took place before Secker began identifying as a potato. His penis doesn’t retroactively disappear once he starts “identifying as” a woman.

Secker, 35, of Lowbourne, near Melksham, has been ordered to carry out her sentence in a male prison and will remain on the sex offenders register indefinitely.

Don’t “respect the pronouns” of men who rape women.

Throughout the sentencing hearing, barristers and the judge referred to the defendant as “Ms Secker” and “she”. However, in a victim personal statement, the woman raped by Secker used the name “Alex” to describe her attacker. She said: “He took away my trust in people and myself. The assault consumed me with shame and fear.”

It’s interesting to see the Beeb pointing out the “Ms Secker” and “she” bit. Pointing it out=it’s odd (at least) and needs explanation. Usually the Beeb doesn’t like admitting that.

The court heard how Secker has depression and gender dysphoria and requires psychological and medical treatment. Secker has also been subjected to numerous assaults while being held at a male prison, it was alleged.

As the defendant is biologically male, they will serve their sentence in a male prison.

Stone the crows – the BBC admits he’s biologically male.

Also – they will serve their sentence? But up at the top of the page it was “her” sentence, not “their” sentence. Covering all the bases are we? Or confused? Or scared? What’s up, Beeb? You can tell us.

The judge told Secker: “At the time of this offence, you were a man.”

Yo, judge. Once a man always a man.

Wiltshire Police previously said Secker was living as a man when the attack took place, on April 23 2023, but was tried as a woman at Swindon Crown Court. The force confirmed that the rape was recorded as being committed by a man. The sex of a defendant recorded by police at the time of their arrest will mirror what is on court records and other criminal justice system data.

How about just recording the actual sex, every time? Saves trouble in the end.

He thinks he’s a standup comedy genius.

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Gluttons for punishment.

The Green Party, in any given country in the West, has more closely resembled a cult of feelings far more than it has a political organisation. In Germany, where our Greens have been part of the actual government for the last few years, the party is not only completely through the looking-glass on social issues which have absolutely nothing to do with preserving the environment (and some of which threaten the very fabric of German social cohesion), it has done far more to harm the environment than any party since the founding of the Federal Republic.

This is not hyperbolic extrapolation from the Greens’ irraitional anti-nuclearism, either, though that is bad enough. It saw them follow through on Angela Merkel’s closure of *every single nuclear plant* in the country, for example. The end of this plan coincided with Russia’s reactivation of its adventure in the Ukraine, to which Germany stopped importing Russian gas in response…gas which Germany had spent the last thirty years, thanks in large part to Merkel and to her predecessor Gerhard Schröder (himself a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin), making Germany’s industry and domestic heating apparatus almost entirely dependent upon.

No, the Greens’ commitment to the environment not only saw them dogmatically follow-through on the death of the German nuclear industry, it saw them recommit to closing German coal mines and to filling them with concrete (along with other more “environmentally friendly” materials for the mines’ “restoration”), which on the face of it sounds reasonable, or at least good-hearted (if one can ignore the folly of rendering such mines permanently inoperable even in theory).

But the realities of German energy production in 2022 up to today meant that we had a choice between activating (and building) more coal-fired power plants or facing regular blackouts and brown-outs in the depth of winter. So the German State, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (which means for the first time in history), has had to start importing coal to keep the lights on. This coal comes mostly from Columbia, which is…not exactly known for its environmental protections or worker safety laws, nor even for banning child labour.

And now we have German electricity produced on the back of coal dug out of the Andes, some of it by children, and shipped across the ocean so that the Greens can say they delivered on their twin promises of closing nuclear power plants and coal mines. Thanks, in no small part, to the Greens’ ideological intransigence when it meets geopolitical necessity.

But wait, there’s more. Even where Green environmental policy “works”, it has untold costs which will take us generations to sort out.

We have landfills filling up with fibreglass from wind turbines made and shipped out of China, which tend to last only a few years and which themselves cannot reliably produce enough energy to offset the carbon released during their manufacture, transport, installation, and disposal; a great many of these wind turbines are set up in forests, which necessitates removing one or more trees per turbine.

we have solar panels everywhere in a country where the *sunniest* region receives less sunlight in a year than the *least sunny* regions of the continental United States and thus cannot even theoretically produce enough energy to offset the carbon it takes to make, ship, and dispose of them.

In concrete terms, the city famed for the most sunny days in Germany is called Freiburg, a quaint little university town in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg. It receives, according to its own city’s website, “almost 1,800 sunshine-hours per year”, which in addition to giving it a “Mediterrannean flair”, makes it the most ideal place in the country for solar energy.

Seattle, Washington (where I believe our humble host has deigned to erect her domicile) receives, by way of comparison, 2170 sunshine hours per year.

The wisdom of basing a significant proportion of Seattle’s electrical grid on solar energy, much less a country whose *most-sunny location* receives only 80% as much sunshine, is an exercise left to the reader.

In any case, I could never countenance voting for the Greens in this country. I care about the environment far too much to ever do such a foolish thing as that.

Without hyperbole they have nothing. Their fundamental claims are a denial of reality, and their sweaty efforts to make that denial of reality mandatory for everyone are a rejection of sanity and of basic justice.

So what we get is a nonstop torrent of hyperbole.

It’s not “dehumanising” people to say they can’t change sex. Humans can’t change species; is it dehumanizing to say that? Humans can’t become planets; does that dehumanize them?

It’s the other way around. Claiming people can change sex dehumanizes them in the sense that it portrays them as something other than human.

Whittome doesn’t mean it literally, of course, it’s just a way of expressing demented rage at Rosie Duffield for refusing to join the new religion.

Also, trans people are not one of the most marginalized groups in society. More like one of the most pampered groups in society.

I’m so tired of these brainless loonies shouting their brainless abuse day in and day out.

From Pliny:

The BBC tells us the Green Party fucked around and found out.

A bitter legal battle could blow a hole in the Green Party of England Wales’s general election campaign funds. The BBC understands courts could force the party to pay between £200,000 and £400,000 if it loses a case against former deputy leader Dr Shahrar Ali.

The party’s financial auditors note the case has left “uncertainty” about its ability to keep running normally. The Greens are proposing a 50% increase in membership fees to build funds.

So maybe it was a mistake to punish and shun Ali for understanding that men are not women.

A Green Party spokesperson said: “Like many organisations, the Green Party is facing some challenging financial times, however it is wrong to suggest that the party has anything other than a very bright future and strong public support. We are confident that we will be in a better position than ever before as we go into the next general election.”

As they go into the next general election telling us that men can be women, and punishing Greens who don’t agree that men can be women. Better position?

Commenting on the legal case brought by Dr Ali, the party said it “remains proud of its focus on equality and human rights for all and our support for the trans community”.

Equality has nothing to do with forcing people to agree that men can be women. Nothing at all.

The Green Party is taking it well.

A senior activist who won an unlawful discrimination claim against the Green Party of England and Wales has been expelled and told he cannot return for at least two years.

In February, a judge found that the Greens had unlawfully discriminated against Dr Shahrar Ali during a row over his gender-critical beliefs. Ali, who is a former deputy leader, was awarded damages of £9,100. The Greens were also ordered to pay him a further £90,000 in costs in September.

He has now been excluded from the party for a fixed term of two years as a result of complaints made about him in 2022.

What were the complaints? What terrible thing did he do or say?

It is understood that some of the complaints against Ali related to a social media post he shared in July 2022, in which he suggested that teaching the concept of transgender identity to two year olds was a “danger to children”.

In a message on X, he quoted a post by the campaign group Stonewall which said that research suggested that “children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity”. Ali added a comment which said: “Off scale of safeguarding risk. Would we teach 2 year olds concept of schizophrenia?”

That…that’s it? But teaching the concept of transgender identity to two year olds is a danger to children. Small children believe what they’re told.

The party has told him that any future readmission would be conditional on him publicly retracting tweets that had been complained about, apologising and undertaking safeguarding training.

What a pack of brain-dead Stalinists. Honestly.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Read the room.

Would Ferrell have been as enthusiastic if his friend had come out as a bear, or a lawn mower? Would he have been as keen to travel across America if Harper had decided he was a toddler rather than a woman? Would he have changed his friend’s diapers? Would he have been willing to pay that price, to carry that burden, to put up with the imposition? (Quite apart from the hit to his reputation that passing a grown man off as an infant would have inflicted. That would have been fetish too far.) I doubt it. Well, by accepting him as a women, and encouraging (insisting?) that others do so, he’s expecting women to accept him in places he doesn’t belong. He’s pushing the price, the burden, and imposition of his friend’s delusion onto women who might not be as willing to put up with them. Yet they’re the ones with a problem. Supposedly. Ferrell is essentially getting them to “change the diaper” he’ll never have to.

Loyalty and friendship are good things, but when they cloud your judgement about what is best for your friend, and what your friend is asking/expecting/demanding of others, it papers over things that may not be healthy. You can’t assume that your personal experience with your nice, loving, harmless friend mirrors others’ experience of him, because it may not be the same. You’re never going to be the women in the restroom he enters, but you’re going to use your celebrity, friendship, and loyalty to bully women to accept this man’s presence in women’s spaces. You’re not paying the price in fear and uncertainty that the women upon whom he’s intruding will. Your friend is not harmless. Even if he never assaults a women, his presence in women’s spaces is an unwanted intrusion of someone who refuses to accept women’s boundaries. Nor can you apply your experience of him to everyone else who shares his delusion, yet your advocacy for trans “rights” will help other men who are not as seemingly benign and harmless as your friend to violate those same boundaries that your friend does.

The sheer blind stupidity and absence of thought in this stagger the mind.

“I don’t know why trans people are meant to be threatening to me as a cis male. I don’t know why Harper is threatening to me…why would you care if somebody’s happy? Why is that threatening to you? If the trans community is a threat to you, I think it stems from not being confident or safe with yourself.”

He says it himself and doesn’t even fucking notice he’s said it. Yes, bozo, you are a male, and therefore men pretending to be women are not a threat to you. That does not, however, mean they are not a threat to anyone at all. Can you figure out why? With that rather forceful nudge? Do I have to spell it out that it’s because NOT ALL OF US ARE MALE?

God almighty.

Updating to add:

An unhappy distinction for New Zealand.

Doctors are prescribing up to seven times more puberty blockers for gender dysmorphia to young transgender patients in New Zealand than other similar countries, a new medical reseach paper has found.

The paper published by academics Charlotte Paul, Simon Tegg and Sarah Donovan, was published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

In their paper, “Use of puberty-blocking hormones for gender dysphoria in New Zealand: descriptive analysis and international comparisons”, the authors found that use here was approximately 1.7 times higher than in the Netherlands, and between 3.5 and 6.9 times higher than in England and Wales, and 3.9 times higher than in Denmark. 

Not a race you want to win.

H/t Rob

There are things the law can’t do. Lots of things, actually. A big thing the law can’t do is change physical reality. You can pass a law saying the sun orbits the earth, but the sun will continue to not orbit the earth. The sun is not subject to human laws. There are lots of things you can replace “the sun” with in that sentence.

“Caster Semenya is legally female, was assigned female at birth, raised as female, and identifies as female. It seems clear on the face of it, therefore, that Semenya is female.”

Interesting choice of word, “seems.” “Seems, madam? Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems.'”

In fact, of course, no it doesn’t seem clear on the face of it that Semenya is female. Not on the face of it or the foot of it or the buttocks of it. All four items in that fatuous list are social, aka a matter of choice, aka artificial as opposed to natural, aka fantasy as opposed to reality. And speaking of on the face of it, the faces of the women Khelif punched know damn well he’s not female.

It’s cringey seeing adults continue to say these ridiculous things.

Weirdo Kennedy can’t get a date for the prom.

On August 23, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his presidential campaign. Citing the war in Ukraine and the “war on our children,” as well as “relentless, systematic censorship and media control,” the scion of the famous Democratic political family announced his support for the Republican candidate.

“These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump,” he added.

In reality, Kennedy had tried just a week earlier to sell his support to the Harris campaign in exchange for a position in her cabinet, preferably as Secretary of Health and Human Services. After getting laughed out of the room, Kennedy decamped to Team Trump, where the candidate wouldn’t commit to a cabinet post, but was at least willing to appear publicly with him.

Attaboy Junior! He won’t dance with you but at least he’ll let you hold his…er…flowers.

“In about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me,” Kennedy said that day in Phoenix.

In fact, Kennedy is working hard to be a spoiler for Harris, fighting to keep his name on the ballot where it could harm the vice president’s campaign and to remove it where his appearance might hurt Trump. It’s a remarkably shameless ploy for a man who spent his career as an environmental attorney and is now willing to get in bed with a politician who thinks windmills cause cancer and fossil fuels are the future.

They match up well though. Spoiled, entitled, empty. A pair of greedy conceited hacks with no morals.

JD Vance wants to make medical insurance Great Again.

“You also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them. A young American doesn’t have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. We want to make sure everybody is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.”

Jesus christ. How stupid do you have to be? That’s how insurance works: everyone pays in; not everyone needs to use it; it’s there for the people who do need it. Universal health care/insurance=everyone pays in and not everyone needs it. The one-size approach is the one that works; any other approach is just back to pay as you go, which does not work.

By invoking a “deregulatory agenda,” Vance is pitching a return to the bad old days when people with preexisting conditions couldn’t get coverage. Harris put this in personal terms during her debate with Trump: “I don’t have to tell the people watching tonight, you remember what that was like? Remember when an insurance company could deny [coverage] if a child had asthma, if someone was a breast cancer survivor, if a grandparent had diabetes?”

But Vance and his horrible friend want to go back to that.

“Any slave girls you may own,” he says.