Amnesty finally fixed it…in the dead of night, in a closet three stories underground.

“Just for being women and girls” replaces “for the ‘crime’ of identifying as a girl.”

Is it censorship to delete lies? Are lies free speech? Should lies be protected as free speech?

Mark Zuckerberg apparently thinks so.

[META] CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Biden administration had pressured the company to “censor” COVID-19 content during the pandemic, apparently referring to White House requests to take down misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.

Medical misinformation isn’t mere “content” – it’s misinformation.

In a letter dated Aug. 26, Zuckerberg told the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that he regretted not speaking up about this pressure earlier, as well as other decisions he had made as the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp around removing certain content.

I have to wonder why he wishes that. Does he wish more people had received bad information about Covid?

In the letter to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Monday, Zuckerberg said his company was “pressured” into “censoring” content and that the company would push back if it faced such demands again.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was posted by the Judiciary Committee on its Facebook page.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Zuckerberg regrets not allowing more lies about Covid on Facebook.

Zuckerberg has recently tried to appeal to conservative users, by complimenting Republican nominee Donald Trump’s response to an assassination attempt as “badass” and going on right-wing podcasts. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Representative Jim Jordan, is a longtime Trump ally.

In its Facebook post, the Judiciary Committee called the letter a “big win for free speech” and said that Zuckerberg had admitted that “Facebook censored Americans”.

So we shouldn’t distinguish between bad medical advice and the other kind – social media should just be a free-for-all, and if thousands die as a result that’s Free Speech.

It turns out medical organizations lose members if they make decisions based on politics rather than medical science.

Doctors are leaving the British Medical Association in revolt at its opposition to the Cass review, amid claims that the union has been taken over by an ideologically driven “vocal minority”.

See, “ideologically driven” is pretty much the last thing you want a medical association to be. Ideology is not going to cure your illness or mend your broken leg.

Hundreds of members, including NHS clinical leaders and former presidents of medical royal colleges, have gone public with their “dismay” at BMA leaders for voting to reject the Cass review into the care of transgender children and reverse a ban on puberty blockers.

Is the BMA run by teenagers?

Some have resigned from the union after up to 50 years as members, and others said that the BMA’s “abysmal” leadership was “increasingly bonkers” and “ideologically captured”.

We’re sort of used to that with universities and arts organizations, but not so much with the more technical professions. Or is that just me?

Turns out it’s a bit of a coup.

The union’s council, an elected policy-forming body of 69 members, was asked to vote on a motion rejecting the Cass review at a meeting described by critics as “secretive and opaque”. The motion passed, making it formal BMA policy, although the breakdown of votes has not been made available and the BMA’s membership base of 195,000 doctors was not consulted.

The motion was tabled at the BMA council by Tom Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist in London, and Vassili Crispi, a junior doctor in Birmingham who has said that “rejecting the Cass review is one of many steps we need to take”.

It was backed by Emma Runswick, deputy chair of the BMA council, who is the ringleader of a left-wing and pro-strike coalition of junior doctors elected to the leadership body in 2022. Runswick has described the ban on puberty blockers as a “terrible decision” and repeated a debunked claim that it is linked to more suicides.

Splitters!

Some other senior members of the BMA council were perplexed that they were being asked to vote on the issue at all and said that it did not reflect the views of the wider membership.

Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist and member of the BMA council who opposed the motion, said: “The BMA council contains a vocal minority who have an anti-Cass agenda. They are driving policy in a direction that the membership have not been consulted on and do not agree with.

A direction that is anti-reality and pro-fantasy. Not ideal for a medical organization.

“This minority has voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review which took four years to put together. They have no evidence for their opposition. The Cass review is not a matter for a trade union. It is not our business as a union to be doing a critique of the Cass review. It is a waste of time and resources.”

Evidence shmevidence. They don’t like it! They know they’re not supposed to like it because all their friends say so! Trans rights are human rights!! Doctors are terfs!!!!

More than 1,400 doctors, 900 of whom are BMA members, have signed an open letter calling for the BMA to drop its opposition to Cass. The letter criticises the union’s leaders for “going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice”. The letter has been signed by high-profile figures, including nearly 70 professors and 23 former or current presidents of medical royal colleges.

Comments left by signatories include dozens saying that they are resigning or considering resigning their membership. Many doctors criticised members of the council, with one calling for a “vote of no confidence in BMA leadership”, another saying that it was “an abysmal failure of leadership” and another commenting that “activists appear to have been allowed to take over”.

And not just any activists but activists in service of a warped new ideology that says men are women if their passports say so.

Back to Rotherham:

The journalist who uncovered the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal has said that even he massively underestimated the scale of the abuse.

…

Mr Norfolk had been putting pressure on Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police to answer questions about child sexual exploitation by predominantly Asian men since he started receiving tip-offs in 2011.

There it is again, that meaningless “Asian” euphemism. What Asian? Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malayan, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Indian, Sri Lankan, what?

But this time the BBC does in fact admit the truth, albeit briefly.

He admitted that he had had to balance his instinct to reveal the abuse with concerns that the story’s publication would both stoke the reaction of the far-right and lead to accusations of racism.

“If you’d asked me the day before that press conference how many young teenage girls had been groomed and exploited in Rotherham over the time period the report covered, I would have guessed 150,” he said. He was “staggered” to hear Prof Jay reveal how 1,400 girls had been abused, trafficked to other cities, or had petrol poured on them. “They were treated like sub-human species for the pleasure of these men,” he added.

Mr Norfolk had first identified a “pattern” of Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs exploiting white girls in the north of England and the Midlands in 2010, but came up against a “conspiracy of silence” when he tried to elicit responses from police forces and councils.

He said that hearing Prof Jay explicitly refer to the perpetrators’ ethnic backgrounds was an “extraordinary” moment. “It was so hard-hitting, she didn’t mince her words. The response was seismic across the world.”

The BBC is still carefully avoiding the issue, of course. What does “Pakistani-heritage” imply? Islam. What about Islam? It’s obvious enough when the Beeb and others report on Afghanistan but not when they report on people of “Pakistani heritage.” They don’t want to stir up the Tommy Robinson fans, and they’re right not to want to do that, but drawing a tactful veil or rather burqa over the fact that Islam is intensely hostile to women has its drawbacks.

The Times had been called racist and Islamophobic for pursuing the investigation.

“It was a very difficult story to cover because it was a story about white British girls, aged typically between 12 to 15, being groomed and abused by men who, as the pattern seemed to become more clear, were overwhelmingly of Pakistani and Muslim heritage,” he said. “It’s not fun being regarded as somebody with abhorrent views, when in your heart, you know the opposite is the case.”

There were also fears about how far-right groups would react to the story, which did eventually lead to protests and marches descending on Rotherham. “It was a dream story for the far-right,” he said.

And a nightmare for the girls.

Mother Jones reports:

I had traveled to the Silicon Valley headquarters of a startup called Qvin, pronounced “kwin,” derived from the Danish word meaning “woman.” Since receiving clearance from the FDA in January, Qvin has begun selling a new menstrual pad that it says will help people tap into the “power in your period.” Rather than undergo a blood draw, a woman (and anyone who menstruates, but for this story, I will sometimes refer to women because they dominate the group that does)…

No, women don’t dominate the group that menstruates; women are the group that menstruates. Men don’t menstruate; the end. For this story a sane journalist should always refer to women as opposed to “sometimes.”

The uterus is an incredible organ for many reasons, chief among them is that it repairs itself—without scarring—after shedding its tissue every month or so during a person’s reproductive years.

Ding ding! A woman’s reproductive years. Men don’t have the incredible organ called the uterus.

Even so, scientists studying menstrual blood say they have been met with a reluctance rooted in cultural taboos about menstruation. The queasiness continues to hamper research, obscuring discoveries that—considering every single day, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are menstruating—may be hiding in plain sight.

Women. Not people in general; women. It’s not a dirty word. You’re not (or at least you shouldn’t be) the Taliban.

She goes on to talk about the disgust and taboos around menstruation, which is ironic, given her own taboos.

H/t Mike B

Apart from anything else, it’s so futile.

The Graun:

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

In other words to avoid leading men into thinking about sex. But guess what: they’ll think about it anyway. You might as well lock up all the food so that people won’t think about eating. Sex isn’t just in the head, it isn’t just what you see in the street. It’s the testosterone, stupid.

But of course that won’t do, because then there’s no one to hate.

“The Taliban government does not have any sort of legitimacy and these new edicts designed to further erase and suppress woman are an indication of their hatred towards women,” says Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan human rights activist who was the first woman vice-president of the Afghan parliament.

Yeah. That’s the grim reality. They like the hatred, they nurture it, they want it to grow and grow. They’re like Hitler and Jews, they’re like Justice Taney and black people, they’re like Trump and almost everyone. The hatred is the point. It’s a motivator.

Godalmighty. If only people would learn how to think. Just a little would do.

“There are a number of people who genuinely believe that they are trapped in the wrong body and they want to be recognized as the gender that their mind and soul has always told them that they are.”

One, she doesn’t know how many people “genuinely” believe that. Two, so what? People can “genuinely believe” all kinds of stupid shit; it doesn’t follow that we have to act as if their beliefs were true. Who even has the time? There are so many wack beliefs out there, we can’t possibly keep up. But more to the point, we shouldn’t keep up. We shouldn’t humor people, much less encourage them, in absurd beliefs. In the long run it’s not good for them, and in all runs it’s not good for us. How about they humor us for a change instead? “That is bullshit: you are your body, it’s not some separate thing you sit in, like a car.”

And we especially shouldn’t humor stupid beliefs when they are harmful, and that goes times a billion when they cancel the rights of the despised half of humanity.

And people in Gillard’s line of work have no business telling us to lie for the sake of people with silly beliefs about themselves. It’s not fair to us. We don’t have any duty to pretend it’s not childish nonsense to insist you’re in the wrong body. Everybody out of the pool, it’s time to grow up now.

Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on What reward can genderists offer?

Spot on Sastra. I would just add that it works because that’s what moralists have always done – take the natural human desire to protect the weakest members of the tribe (without which we probably wouldn’t be here, being the weak defenceless apes we are) and by a series of metaphysical shenanigans identify protecting the interests of a power elite as the only “proper” realisation of that desire. It’s like an erotic target location error (i.e. a fetish) but culturally imposed on the entire community (except of course the most elite of those power elites – the pope can have as many “nephews” as he wants, not to mention prostitutes).

The difference here is that the power elite here has explicitly constituted itself to exploit that mechanism. There have, no doubt, been many attempts to do this in the past (Christian persecution syndrome comes to mind) but the combination of an ideology that holds all categories are infinitely malleable with its pop-cultural counterpart of “you can be anything you want” has finally made it an attainable goal. (You also need a large under-employed/leisure class with the time and financial resources to devote to the process of transformation – cue Sofie Molly moaning that it’s so unfair he doesn’t have those resources – since if only the pope were trans it wouldn’t work because we all know he’s supposed to be an exception.)

Yes, men, imagining themselves warriors, go for the social justice angle while women are seduced by the nurturing role, but it’s the same sleight of hand underneath – all made possible by the conceit of imagining ourselves as become gods freed from the constraints of mundane reality.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz will cross southern Georgia by bus next week to build on the momentum of the convention, working with the 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers, and 24 campaign offices across the state.

Trump and the MAGA Republicans have not taken the Democrats’ momentum quietly. Trump has been frantically posting.

On Thursday morning he assured readers on his social media channel that “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” although he has boasted about ending the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected women’s access to abortion and suggested that women who obtain abortions should be punished. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that his posts “were too ridiculous even for Trump,” and she wondered if his account had been hacked by Iranians.

Or Martians? Or the Loch Ness Monster?

Harris’s acceptance speech had Trump apparently beside himself. During her 38-minute speech he posted 59 times on his social media platform, saying, among other things, “WHERE’S HUNTER?” referring to President Joe Biden’s son. After the speech ended, he called in to the Fox News Channel to rant, in what Dowd called a “scream-of-consciousness,” in which he insisted he is “doing very well in the polls,” until host Bret Baier cut him off. So he turned to right-wing media outlet Newsmax, where he continued his diatribe.

That night, apparently increasingly concerned about his chances of election, Trump—or his team, because it didn’t really sound like him—reached out on social media to Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom he has lambasted since 2021 for refusing to help him steal the 2020 election. As recently as August 3, Trump went after Kemp, but on Thursday he thanked the governor “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Nothing tells you Trump is in full panic more than seeing him crawl back to nemesis Brian Kemp begging for help in Georgia.” “Kemp wanted a public groveling,” Ron Filipkowski wrote, “and that’s what Trump did tonight.”

It wasn’t just Trump who was concerned about the Democratic National Convention. A number of prominent Republicans who will be voting for Harris spoke there, providing a permission structure for other Republicans to shift their support to Harris and Walz. But that message did not make it through to viewers of the Fox News Channel. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing media, reported that the Fox News Channel did not air any of the Republicans’ DNC speeches.

It’s the Trump-Fox Party.

Friday brought more bad news for the Trump campaign when twelve Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush wrote an open letter endorsing Harris because they believe Trump is a threat to American democracy and the rule of law. They continued: “[W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris.”

They join conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday and wrote: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

That, but also, even more basic, the person. The character or morality or approach to life or whatever you want to call it. Trump is all insults and cruelty and self-promotion. He has not one decent quality – not one. He’s conspicuously bad all the way through. I find that intolerable in a president.

I don’t understand why this is allowed.

An Australian “trans inclusive” Premier League women’s football team with five male players has secured victory in the grand final match after dominating games throughout the summer. During the 2024 season of the North West Sydney Football Women’s Premier Competition, The Flying Bats won all 17 games and scored 76 goals while only a total of 8 points were scored against them.

Why aren’t they just banned?

The Flying Bats, a football club for “self-identified women and non-binary people,” has attracted significant criticism that has escalated over the past year. 

Why was a club for women and some men allowed?

Earlier this year team was awarded a $1,000 prize after winning the North West Sydney League pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, following a season of winning every game they played in the Women’s Premier League matches, 10-0. The news generated significant outcry and resulted in The Flying Bats making international headlines.

They won $1,000 by cheating. Why was it allowed?

According to regulations put forward by the North West Sydney Football Association (NWSFA), “players may register and participate on the basis of their gender identification.” There are a total of at least nine trans-identified males playing football within the women’s leagues, though their identities have been thoroughly protected and withheld by Australian media.

Well then why have women’s teams at all? Why not just say outright that women don’t get to play football any more?

Guidelines issued by the Australian Human Rights Commission state that under the federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984, sporting organizations are forbidden [to enforce] “discrimination” on the basis of a self-declared gender identity. “An example of direct discrimination would be a sporting organization refusing a trans woman’s application for membership because she is transgender,” the guidelines state.

So women can’t have women’s sports any more.

As previously revealed by Reduxx, one of the five men on the women’s football team is trans activist Riley Dennis, who was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating on another women’s team. Dennis could be seen towering over the female players during Sunday’s game, while wearing the Flying Bats uniform decorated with colors from the Pride progress flag.

Woohoo, progress!!

But wait, it gets worse.

Dennis, born Justin, 32, currently plays for The Flying Bats, but last year was a member of the Inter Lions team in New South Wales. On May 21, 2023, during a game between the Inter Lions and the St. George football clubs at the Majors Bay Reserve, Dennis launched his smaller female opponent towards a metal fence using an aggressive tackle as the two chased down the ball.

Reduxx was provided footage of the match, which showed the female player lying on her side, unmoving, as the transgender player casually walked away.

If the women object, the police turn up to threaten them.

The month prior, Dennis was said to have injured another female player, who reportedly had to seek hospital attention as a result of her injury. A letter-writing campaign was launched by Kirralie Smith, a spokeswoman with Binary Australia, encouraging concerned individuals to contact Football New South Wales, which reportedly then received over 12,000 submissions.

For her role in bringing awareness to the injuries sustained by female athletes, Smith was visited by New South Wales Police and handed an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) on March 30 that year requiring that she neither discuss nor approach Dennis. The AVO was withdrawn by authorities in September.

It’s like some dystopian horror movie except that it’s actually happening.

I was going to quote the Daily Mail story on this but it’s pointless: they refer to the male players as “transgender” instead of “male” so why bother to cite them? A women’s team with five male players won every game; you don’t say. Cathy reports honestly.

The team went through the season undefeated on account of how they had five male players. On the women’s team.

Originally a comment by Sastra on What reward can genderists offer?

I’m coming to the conclusion that what’s primarily fueling this mental social contagion isn’t misogyny, but the feminine attribute of nurturing run amok — and the responsible parties for the most part aren’t men, but women.

Sure, there are men identifying as women while thrusting themselves wherever they want just like men, but there have always been transvestites testing boundaries. The modern, ubiquitous warm, welcoming embrace of trans inclusion and acceptance, the generous impulse to say and mean “but OF COURSE you are a woman!” looks like it comes right out of the Woman’s Playbook on Being Agreeable and Helping Others. When our increasing sensitivity to minorities met Therapeutic Culture’s increasing sensitivity to everything, it was often mothers and primary school teachers who decided that a healthier, happier, better world started with the children becoming more sensitive to the feelings of those who are weak and unhappy. A noble impulse, certainly — but like a lot of noble impulses there’s an escalating series of increasing opportunities for being noble. Those kids grew up and kept looking further and further up.

Men certainly jumped on board with the idea that this issue is about civil liberties and freedom from constraint, but it’s the tender mercies of the women refusing to notice what’s happening to their rights while smiling and nodding and cooing and putting arms round their fellow “girls” that requires explanation. It’s tempting to think come on, they must know these men aren’t women just as it’s tempting to believe that religious believers don’t really believe there’s an invisible Man on High tenderly watching over them — but I think they’re likely all sincere. The Universe must be Nurturing and Kind and so must we. You see truth better through those lenses.

Remember Morgane Oger? He posted on Facebook yesterday:

Prove me wrong: No sports injury data in Canada supports the theory that trans women in sports put other women at risk.

So why is the concept even on the table?

There is no credible evidence to suggest that trans women pose a greater risk of causing injuries in women’s sports. The argument that trans women are inherently more dangerous in sports is not supported by data or research.

Sports injuries are influenced by a wide range of factors, such as the specific sport, the level of contact, the training and skill levels of the participants, and the safety measures in place.

Research on sports participation often focuses on these aspects rather than on the gender identity of the athletes. Additionally, most sports organizations that allow trans women to compete in women’s categories have policies in place regarding hormone levels and physical transition requirements to ensure fair and safe competition.

Overall, the claim that trans women put other women at increased risk in sports is not substantiated by evidence and is often rooted in misconceptions or biased views rather than in empirical research or injury data.

Sure and that’s why football, hockey, boxing, cycling, running, tennis and the like are all mixed-sex and never ever ever divided into female and male. Simply put, there are no physical differences between the two sexes that would justify that division.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A historic victory.

I’m still amazed by how many are willing to sign up in support of the new Lysenkoism, oh-so-confident that its current favour and influence will continue for at least as long as the rest of their lives. How can so many people (women particularly) be so easily conned by vapid word games that have no basis in truth? Are they so easily bought, so easily convinced of the power of their language to carve and bend physiological reality? Karl Rove set his sights too low; he settled for playing in the squalid little sandbox of global geopolitics; this lot is (like Lysenko) out to rewrite biology.

I still have to wonder: what’s in it for them? What reward can genderists offer them in exchange for their credibility and reputation, apart from the privilege of not being attacked (which is always provisional and revocable without warning)? Was Paula Gerber forced to write this, or was it completely voluntary? Is vocal support, however poorly reasoned, always more highly rewarded than silence? Is fleeting social cred really that valuable? Are they that blind to the absolute reality-denial upon which this judgement rests? Are their hubris meters all broken?

Men can’t become women, but if enough people talk enough slop fast enough for long enough, it seems everyone gives in.

Browbeating now backed by the power of the state. Pernicious nonsense that is nonetheless doomed to failure because of the stubborn resistance of material reality, but dangerous while it still has the upper hand. But belief in the security and permanence of that power is as sure as an investment in real estate on in icecube in a tropical sea. It can’t last.

Paula Gerber, a professor of law at Monash University in Melbourne, rejoices that “Roxanne Tickle” won his case.

Roxanne Tickle’s win in the Federal Court is a historic victory for transgender women

The fact that it’s historic disaster for women doesn’t seem to trouble her at all.

It’s been a case closely watched by the transgender community and legal minds alike. Today in the Federal Court of Australia, a judge ruled in favour of trans woman Roxanne Tickle in her anti-discrimination case against a social media app.

I just have to say, minds that have a taste for precision in language know better than to say a community and legal minds are watching something. Minds can’t watch things; that’s the job of the eyes. A community can’t watch things; that’s the job of people. The garbled metaphor isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s a mess. It’s kind of a portentous mess, because sloppiness with concepts and categories is the entire underpinning of trans ideology. Men can’t become women, but if enough people talk enough slop fast enough for long enough, it seems everyone gives in.

Much of proceedings have on around what constitutes a woman under Australian law, and whether someone’s sex can be changed.

Erm. Words missing. The law professor seems…agitated? Distracted? Confused?

But the decision’s ramifications extend far beyond the key players in the case. It’s a landmark decision in favour of protecting the human rights of transgender people nationwide.

Please explain how it’s a human right for a man to force women to accept him in a group for women. I don’t mean just say it over and over, I mean explain it. If women can’t ever get away from men, how can women even have basic safety?

The decision provides much-needed clarity regarding the meaning of “sex”, a word not defined in the Sex Discrimination Act. Importantly, Justice Bromwich stated that “in its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable”.

Importantly, maybe, but truthfully, no.

He also noted the concept of sex has broadened over the past 30 years, especially as people can change the sex listed on their birth certificates. 

Let’s do that with everything, shall we? Let’s broaden the concept of “person” to include reptiles. Let’s broaden the concept of “law” to include astrophysics. Let’s broaden the concept of “judge” to include teenagers roleplaying.

The court unequivocally rejected the argument that sex is immutable – that the sex that was presumed and assigned to a person at birth is the sex someone will always be. Justice Bromwich stated:

“The sex of a person may take into account a range of factors, including biological and physical characteristics, legal recognition, and how they present themselves and are recognised socially.”

In other words “a man is a woman if he says so, bitch.” Thanks, Justice Bromwich. Your respect for women is astonishing.

The judgment in this case provides much-needed clarity regarding the legal recognition of trans women as women.

In other words it demolishes women’s rights.

Rivkah Brown is truly horrible. Not just wrong, thick, delusional, sloppy in her thinking, but horrible.

I didn’t see all of her claims about Tickle yesterday so I failed to grasp quite how horrible she is.

There. That is horrible, disgusting stuff. She insists that the huge rancid man who set out to bully Sall Grover out of having a women-only network is the victim here, and that the woman he victimized is the baddy, and that she is driving him to suicide.

It’s warped and sadistic and foul.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Like eating Pringles.

And why should we expect otherwise? Rationalizing consequences away is normal. After all, in the absence of real consequences, you’re free to play the status game, and you really want to play that game. There is status and prestige to be gained (within your tribe) by supporting your team. The more zealous your support, the more status you earn, which necessarily means that you earn less by having any reservations or criticisms. People have to be scared out of playing the status game, because only when repressing a concern obviously costs more status than voicing it do you allow yourself to even become conscious that you have any concerns in the first place. [Nullius in Verba]

That’s so true.

I’m obsessed with finding a way to deprogram the gender zombies. I have a whole imaginary Ted Talk lined up in my head, and it’s aimed squarely at those whose endorsement of gender woo is motivated by social status over moral principles.

It involves getting them — the gender zealots, my imagined audience — to imagine not just their current social status but their future social status, too. To consider whether or not backing gender woo will give them net-positive social credit over the course of their lives, rather than simply right now. To consider their investment in gender woo as a kind of bet on the long term trends of the social landscape, rather than just the immediate conditions. That if they’re wrong, they will face terrible social consequences for having picked the wrong side. And so they better consider the evidence, for the sake of their future social credibility. It’s a bit like Pascal’s Wager, I guess.

The film and play Inherit The Wind serves as the framing device. Inherit the Wind was of course a parable about McCarthyism, despite being superficially about creationism and the Scopes Monkey Trial which had happened a few decades before.

The great trick of it was that, for all the courtroom drama on the screen (or the stage), the real people on trial were you, the viewer: it said to you that, with the luxury of time, you can look back at the rubes who stubbornly refused to accept evolution and cringe, and judge them harshly for having gotten it all so wrong. Then it asks you to look at yourself and imagine the people in the future judging you about your cowardice in the face of the Second Red Scare.

That can be extrapolated to our present era, Gender McCarthyism, or the Great Transphobia Panic, or whatever we want to call it. That if you think you’re getting off scot-free when you ignore the facts and the principles and the truth for easy social cred, you’re wrong. The bill will come due for you, as it does for everyone eventually, when they dare to deny reality.

A favourite line of mine, which I’ve quoted here at B&W before, is, “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themself into.” It’s in the spirit of that (bastardized) Jonathan Swift quote that I’m trying to reason the gender zealots out of their position by the same door through which they walked in. It’s the appeal of gaining social standing that motivates them into genderism, so it is most likely to be the threat of losing social standing that will usher them out.

Now, won’t someone give me a big auditorium full of genderists to try my bit out on?

This is silly.

For the most part, Ms Harris has shied away from describing in detail what her presidency would look like.

There’s talk of unity and a way beyond America’s divisive partisanship; a focus on strengthening the economy and reducing consumer prices; and a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion – an area of particular strength for Democrats.

But it is vague. And this vagueness may suit the Harris campaign just fine.

“Vague,” the BBC says. Have they heard of the other guy? Do they think he’s not-vague?

In other words, the vice-president’s policy vagueness has allowed her to cast as broad an appeal as possible in what is shaping up to be an election where every undecided voter counts.

It has been labelled by some as a “vibe” campaign – based at least in part on feeling and general impressions.

It’s based on not being Trump.

Why not just fold women up into smaller and smaller bundles until you can’t see them anymore? Wouldn’t that be the simplest way?

Speaking forbidden

Women in Afghanistan have been banned from speaking in public under draconian laws announced by the Taliban.

The rules, which also stop women from showing their uncovered faces in public, were approved by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the country’s supreme leader, and represent some of the strictest measures imposed on women since the Taliban regained power in 2021.

Clearly women are a kind of poison that must be rigorously controlled – like plutonium for instance. The tiniest bit of exposure can lead to a miserable death.

A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting or reading aloud in public. The law says that a woman’s voice is considered private and should not be heard by others.

Yeah. A woman’s voice is basically the same thing as her vadge.

Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the UN mission in Afghanistan, said: “Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls.”

Actual women and girls, not the pretend kind.

Adult people with adult jobs such as “journalist” now believe (or at least say) that law creates reality.

The sheer stupidity is breathtaking. (I have a feeling I’ve typed that sentence about 80 million times by now.)

There’s no such thing as being something “by law” except when the something is a matter of law.

Laws can change legal realities but they can’t by themselves change physical ones. Pass laws saying bears can fly all you like, but bears will remain obstinately earthbound.

Same with women and men. Men can shout “I am legally a woman!!” all they like but they remain men.

For a working journalist not to understand this childishly obvious fact is pathetic.