Europe’s rivers are drying up.

In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube.

Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite.

Ok but it’s only industry, freight, energy and food production. Everything else is ok.

With no significant rainfall recorded for almost two months across western, central and southern Europe and none forecast in the near future, meteorologists say the drought could become the continent’s worst in more than 500 years.

…

France’s rivers might not be such key freight arteries, but they do serve to cool the nuclear plants that produce 70% of the country’s electricity. As prices hit all-time highs, power giant EDF has been forced to reduce output because of the drought.

Strict rules regulate how far nuclear plants can raise river temperatures when they discharge cooling water – and if record low water levels and high air temperatures mean the river is already overheated, they have no option but to cut output. With Europe’s looming energy crisis mounting and the Garonne, Rhône and Loire rivers already too warm to allow cooling water to be discharged, the French nuclear regulator last week allowed five plants to temporarily break the rules.

I.e. it allowed already overheated rivers to become even more overheated. We’re trapped in this loop.

Rice production that depends on the Po has crashed.

In the protected wetlands of the river’s delta, near Venice, its high temperature and sluggish flow have reduced the water’s oxygen content to the extent that an estimated 30% of clams growing in the lagoon have already been killed off.

Loop. Trapped.

Yet another Doctor Nightmare.

Play the clip, it’s impordant.

Just keep repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

The mayor of Boston does.

Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday reacted to the harassment and threats being leveled at Boston Children’s Hospital, attacks which the institution says began flooding in after misinformation about its transgender health program went viral. 

It’s not all misinformation though. It’s not true that toddlers are getting hysterectomies, but it is true that girls 18 and over are getting medically unnecessary hysterectomies in order to “affirm” their “genders.”

“This is medical care,” Wu said during an appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.” “This is one of the preeminent, most renowned medical institutions in the country, doing what they do best — which is providing important, necessary care for the health and wellbeing of our community members.” 

It isn’t though. It’s an attempt at psychological care, but the attempt is based on lunatic notions about “gender affirmation.” It’s a fashion, a fad, a cult, a Jonestown. It is not “medical care” as commonly understood.

The onslaught against the hospital started last week when a conservative Twitter account posted a range of false information about the services provided by the hospital. 

But the only item of false information the article goes on to spell out is the aforementioned hysterectomies for toddlers one. If there’s more than that, making up “a range,” then what is the more, and why aren’t they specifying it?

Dr. Theodore Calianos, president of the medical society, said he supports all efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the harassment directed at Boston Children’s. 

“The Medical Society decries all acts of bigotry, including aggression and threats aimed at patients and families seeking evidence-based, medically appropriate and necessary care and the health care workers who strive to deliver care in a safe and inclusive setting,” he said in a statement. “Actions that disrupt access to health care are dangerous, unacceptable, and reprehensible. These unjust and hateful threats not only contradict the Medical Society’s assertion that health care is a basic human right, but also reflect the harmful effects of the creation and dissemination of misinformation.”

But is the care evidence-based, medically appropriate, necessary? If so why are there detransitioners?

In response to the attacks on the hospital, U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement on Wednesday that she will “ensure equal protection of transgender people under the law.”

“Children deserve an opportunity to thrive and grow as their own authentic selves,” Rollins said in a statement obtained by the Boston Globe. “Parents/guardians and health care providers who support them in that journey should be allowed to do so free of threats and harassment.”

How do all these parents and guardians and health care providers know what children’s “authentic selves” are? How does anyone? What does it mean? What if Hume was right and there is no self to find? What if there is some continuity to people’s thoughts and feelings over time but also a huge amount of discontinuity, such that it really doesn’t make all that much sense to rhapsodize about “authentic selves”? What if people would be better off and better people if they stopped focusing on their “authentic selves” and did something useful to others instead?

The mayor noted that when she recently attended a meeting of mayors from across the country, “just about every woman mayor” shared they’d experienced people demonstrating outside their homes or received threats on a regular basis. 

Every woman mayor? How does she know? How does she know they all identify as women? How does she know their authentic selves are all women? If they’re being harassed because they’re women why don’t they just transition?

But it’s definitely not a social contagion at all, definitely not.

Ollie Davies was 26 years old and at the lowest ebb of his life when he made a decision to come out as a trans woman.

Estranged from his family, he was suffering depression, anxiety and behavioural problems as well as a crisis of self-identity. He existed in what felt like a dissociative state. “I felt as if I had no free will,” Mr Davies says. “I was completely nihilistic and lonely and self-­hating and had no self-esteem. I was experiencing a total loss of identity and lack of sense of self.”

Mr Davies, who was openly ­bisexual, had never questioned his gender identity as a child or young adult. But when people within his group of queer activist friends repeatedly suggested to him that he was trans, he began to believe it was true.

“Ultimately it came from suggestions from others, people just started suggesting that I question my gender,” Mr Davies said.

That’s not possible. It never happens. People never suggest. It all comes from Within. It’s a condition of The Soul.

When Mr Davies announced his decision to transition, the ­affirmation was immediate and intoxicating.

“Everyone I knew put trans people on a pedestal,” Mr Davies says. “It was fashionable. I knew it would be celebrated and ­promoted. At first it was euphoric. I felt like coming out as trans was my coming home and the key to everything that was wrong in my life.”

On a pedestal? Fashionable? Celebrated and promoted? But how can that be when we’re told it’s the most vulnerable, the most despised, the most persecuted?

Trans health doctors under AusPath insist a mental health assessment is not required in order to facilitate a person to transition because “being trans is not a ­pathology”.

That seems like a remarkably irrelevant “because.” The issue is whether doctors should be messing around with people’s bodies in very drastic ways simply on the strength of assertions of being the opposite sex.

Mr Davies believes that if doctors probe the motivations of many young people who present with gender confusion, they would discover external factors were sometimes heavily at play.

“I think there is a massive population of people who actually don’t have gender dysphoria who are now either being pushed toward or themselves being drawn toward this gender affirmative care pathway,” he says.

“It has infiltrated the culture, it comes from doctors, it comes from the school curriculum, it comes from the media, it comes from ­social media, it comes from the peak LGBTQIA+ organisations and the marketing that they put out, it’s everywhere, telling you if you don’t feel like you fit the stereotype, you might be trans. For me, it felt like I’d pretty much been involved in a cult.”

Telling you if you don’t feel like you fit the stereotype, you might be trans and if you are you will be praised and flattered and all but deified. Why would you not take the bait?

The Guardian wonders why on earth anyone cares.

Vic Goddard, principal of Passmores secondary academy school in Essex, has no desire to get caught up in a culture war…

“Why do politicians have an opinion on my school toilets? On our uniform policy?” he said. “Sort out the rocketing electricity bills and the cost of living. Don’t get involved in small decisions you don’t add value to.”

Because “his” school toilets and uniform policy may be discriminatory against girls. That’s why.

Goddard is referring to what many schools up and down the country describe as the apparent politicisation of an increasingly incendiary issue that they are being forced to deal with on a regular basis: gender. Everything from toilets (single sex or unisex) and uniforms (skirts or trousers) to reading material and pupils’ pronouns is the subject of hostile debate in a way not witnessed previously, headteachers say.

No kidding; that’s because people are finally learning what’s going on.

In Goddard’s case, as well as changes in pronouns the school has had to navigate issues such as gender-questioning pupils not feeling comfortable using the same single-sex changing room any more. The school is relatively new so it has more flexibility than schools in 50-year-old buildings. “We can just offer a compromise and say: ‘Change in here instead,’” Goddard explained. “Problem solved.” His point is that without interference from outsiders who do not have a stake in the school, these issues have traditionally been quietly resolved between the head, parents and pupils.

But what if the issues are “quietly resolved” in ways that are grossly unfair to girls, and the girls and their parents are too afraid of the shouty activists to defend the girls’ rights? There’s been a hell of a lot of “quiet resolving” over the last few years that hasn’t been fair to the girls. Having “a stake in the school” is not necessarily a guarantee of fairness.

Suella Braverman, the government’s attorney general, this summer entered the debate on how schools deal with gender issues. In a speech to the thinktank Policy Exchange earlier this month the Tory MP sparked controversy by stating that schools had no legal obligation to comply with the gender preference of their pupils, that they could refuse to allow transgender children to wear the uniform or use the toilet of their stated gender, and that schools which no longer provided single-sex toilets were breaking the law.

Whether she “sparked controversy” or not, she was right. Girls need single-sex toilets. That’s true even if it’s a Tory saying so.

It’s not a new narrative under the current government, according to a former employee for the Department for Education (DfE), but it is one that some claim is in danger of taking over more pressing issues for schools.

It’s not a “narrative” at all. That’s a sneery manipulative way of saying The Enemy is telling stories instead of making arguments.

Yet another group that just can’t use the word in its promotions.

Those. Those what?

Those.

Yes but those what?

Those in your community!

Those what in my community??!

The old sexism in grammar issue is acute in languages that have gendered “a” and “the.” French for example.

A French actress is facing a torrent of online abuse for challenging a four-century-old grammatical rule that the masculine form should take precedence over the feminine.

Typhaine D, 35, has received insults and death and rape threats over her attempt to feminise a language that she says discriminates against women. “Every sentence we speak integrates the notion that women are inferior, and that creates a terrain . . . that is favourable to violence,” she said in an interview.

Even without the violence bit, it’s true and it matters.

The pre-eminence of the masculine form dates from the 17th century when L’Académie Française, the academy that governs the language, laid down what Typhaine D calls the “absurd and illegitimate” grammatical rules that still hold sway. The Immortals, as the academy’s members are known, decreed that if a sentence contained a masculine noun and a feminine one, any pronouns and adjectives would have to agree with the former.

English doesn’t have that issue so much because we don’t gender all the nouns, but it does have issues like everybody somebody etc.

The academy argues that the masculine form has taken on the role of the Latin neuter, which explains its dominance.

That just pushes it back a step. Why has the masculine form “taken on the role of the neuter”? Because…you know…it’s the one that counts, the one that’s real, the one that’s general. The female is particular and weird and disconcerting.

Good luck to her.

So…are men in women’s toilets and changing rooms a threat or not? Do we even know?

This isn’t a particularly rare or obscure hobby. I’ve known men who bragged about following women up stairs in order to look up their skirts.

Ok enough is enough.

I mean, fine, you’re in a hurry, you need to eat, you grab a can of something and make do. But don’t pretend it’s The Pride of the Nation or a Delicious Treat. Canned beans in sweet sauce are emergency food, there is no time food, when all else fails food. They are not not not “good” in the normal sense of good food. Many dishes that include beans or lentils are very good, but they don’t come in cans.

Also who told the UK that hash browns are molded rectangular wads? This is hash browns:

Also what is with that gruesome picture on the can? What’s with the ejaculating beans?

Originally a comment by Papito on Medicine is not a tool to exalt gender identity.

I guess the word “queer” never lost its original pejorative sense, because being anti-gay and being pro-queer lead to the same result, and it’s not good for gays.

Artymorty, you’re not the only gay man I have encountered who finds “queer” to be the antagonist of “gay.” My friend S. says if a fellow says he’s “queer,” he doesn’t even want to be in the same room anymore.

I really like how Inconvenient Woman unpacked even more how Queer Theory became misogynist and homophobic theory:

I think patriarchy is extremely adaptable (which is why it’s existed for thousands of years) and every time women make a little bit of progress, it’s repackaged and sold in a way that makes it more attractive to a wider market and makes it almost impossible to identify and oppose.

It’s like the marvelous facility of recuperation of contemporary capitalism. Any attempt at an anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist movement will quickly be printed on t-shirts sold on Amazon and expensively reimagined in music videos flogging targeted ads on YouTube.

So fighting against the patriarchy becomes Fighting Against the Patriarchy (TM), sold for the profit of … patriarchs. This is how you get rich white men in skirts insisting that they’re the most oppressed people in the world and nobody is allowed to disagree with them or even call them men. Actual gay people, or lesbians, or poor people? They’ve been told just what they can suck, again and again. The Lady Dick of the Patriarch.

The longer I have to encounter this ridiculous cult of gender and its founding dogma, the more I see it as an offshoot of Men’s Rights Activism, rather than an offshoot of its antithesis (the gay rights movement). It’s Men’s Rights going where they have never gone before, to the point of the eradication of all women’s rights. Beyond that, they expand towards the colonization of any other rights that might exist, until no other rights go unmediated.

Adam Rappaport at CREW on Ginni Thomas:

Ginni Thomas finds herself in the news a lot these days. Controversies surrounding the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas range from her husband’s conflicts of interest to texts she sent pushing former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 presidential election to her roles in organizations involved in litigation before the Court.

What many people do not know is that Thomas currently is a federal government official herself. And that’s not a position she should have.

In May 2020, then-President Trump appointed Thomas to a five-year term on the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board. Created by statute in 1925, the Trust Fund Board oversees gifts to the Library and determines the investment policy of the Library’s gift and trust funds. As of the Library’s most recent financial report, the combined value of the gift and trust funds overseen by the Trust Fund Board totalled more than $200 million.

It’s not a paid job, but it’s for sure a prestige one.

Unsurprisingly, Trust Fund Board membership is rarely if ever controversial. But Thomas’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election make her unfit for any role in government, let alone one overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money.

She’s not what you could call impartial, or reasonable, or temperate.

Thomas also recently admitted she attended the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse, though she said she left before Trump spoke. Early on that day, Thomas proclaimed on Facebook “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” and posted “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING.” Thomas also signed a letter last December calling on the House Republican Conference to expel Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for working on the House January 6th Committee, which the letter called “an overtly partisan political persecution” engaging in “political harassment” and “demagoguery.” One month later, Thomas’s husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, was the Supreme Court’s lone dissent in its order rejecting Donald Trump’s bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel.

Both of them are pro-coup pro-sedition pro-Trump let’s destroy what’s left of democracy partisans. Not ideal.

It isn’t clear why then-President Trump put Thomas on the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board. But after her efforts to undermine democracy by overturning the election that Trump lost, she shouldn’t still be on it. Her egregious actions to push the White House Chief of Staff and others to overturn a free and fair election make her a threat to democracy and should disqualify her for any role of public trust at the Library of Congress or anywhere else in government.

Seems fair to me.

Skip the beach for now.

Swimmers have been warned to stay away after sewage was discharged on beaches across England and Wales, predominantly in the south.

Pollution alerts have been issued to beachgoers by the Environment Agency, and on some beaches signs have been put up to warn people.

The environmental campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has collected data that suggests storm sewage discharges have taken place in the waters of beaches in Cornwall, Cumbria, Devon, Essex, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Sussex.

Oh is that all.

Hugo Tagholm, head of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Every year we track thousands of sewage spills at some of England and Wales’s best loved beaches. Water companies are routinely using our rivers and beaches as a sewage dumping ground, compromising the health of the environment and people alike.”

Oh well it’s only…er…shit.

Interesting. A bunch of “church leaders” in Cornwall think they have a veto over public artworks.

Since its dramatic appearance in a Cornish town centre, Earth Goddess, the tallest ceramic sculpture in the UK (and possibly the world), has provoked its fair share of controversy, with unkind critics condemning it as a gaudy piece of junk more suited to the land of the Teletubbies.

But the row has taken a religious twist after a group of church leaders wrote to St Austell town council claiming it was “offensive to God” and calling for the brightly coloured 11.5-metre-tall piece to be rebranded or removed.

That seems remarkably medieval, doesn’t it? Or papal? Or Saudiish? What business is it of theirs what a piece of public art is “branded”?

[T]he letter, signed by seven Christian leaders in the area, expressed concern that a statue of an “earth goddess” risked dividing the town and was “offensive to God”.

Tell God to get over it then. The idea that a town would be “divided” because a sculptor called her sculpture an earth goddess is ludicrous.

It said: “The choice to erect a statue of an ‘earth goddess’ means that as the leaders of the town you are actively, though likely unknowingly, choosing to reject God and instead to bring the town under the spiritual influence of an ‘earth goddess’.”

No, it doesn’t. You can’t actively but unknowingly choose to reject something. That’s just churchy gibberish.

“We understand this may sound strange and may not be language that you are comfortable with. However, as Christians we believe there is a spiritual reality to our world and so this is not an insignificant choice and has the potential to impact on the town in negative ways.”

They can believe what they like but they don’t get to impose what they believe on everyone else. It’s a bit like fake gender. Think of yourself as a woman all you like, but you don’t get to force your male self on women.

It continues: “We would ask that you consider either making significant changes to the statue … or at the very least the name is changed so that it is an abstract piece of art with no spiritual element. Or that you consider removing or relocating the statue.”

Would ask. Would if what? They don’t mean “would,” they just mean ask, but they want to veil how presumptuous that is, so they throw in a bit of periphrasis.

One of the signatories, Rev Pete Godfrey of the Light and Life Church, said the concern was not the look of the piece but the spiritual significance apparently attached to it. He added: “We see very clearly laid out by God that we are to have no gods but him and we are not to make idols, which is essentially a statue that represents another god.”

No you don’t. You see a translation of words in a very old book. That’s all. It’s not binding on anyone. We all get to ignore it.

Step one: learn what “inherent” means.

Being “assigned” something is the opposite of “inherent.” Way to ruin your own punchline.

As to the substance of the first tweet – of course they’re not. Trans women are men, by definition. “Natural women” is more a song title than a meaningful claim. “Normal women” means – ??? But biological women and born women are clear enough, and obviously men are not either of those, no matter what they call themselves.

Dumb counter-factual assertions are just dumb counter-factual assertions. They’re even born dumb counter-factual assertions if you like.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on All aboard the gender train.

What is it with everyone suddenly deciding that the naturally diverse ways humans express “gendered” interests are suddenly not just interesting, but specifically, medically interesting? It’s weird enough that we’re all suddenly obsessed with everyone’s gender “nonconformity” when at most we should just casually acknowledge that gender expression is a thing that matters to some people more than others, that different people have different gendery tastes and that’s perfectly normal, then move on. But in this crazy time we’re in, people seem to think the only way to give “gender” the weighty aura of seriousness it supposedly deserves is to put it under a medical spotlight. How is it they’ve completely forgotten that medicine is a tool to cure illness, not to exalt identity?

Just a few hours ago I was swatting away someone who’s been pestering me with his pet theory that homosexuality is actually a symptom of total femininity in males/masculinity in females, which itself is a symptom of an intersex brain condition, which means all homosexuals are actually trans people who are “really” of the opposite sex, which means they should have all had their bodies medically modified to fix them. I noticed he put a Christian cross in his Twitter bio, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s got some relevance here: his kind of “you’re actually broken and should be fixed” wordage is exactly what anti-gay Evangelicals like “trans kid” Kai Shappley’s parents and televangelist Pat Robertson have been spouting lately.

But “you’re actually broken and should be fixed” is also a core belief of people like the looney tunes at Yale Medicine, who see themselves as crusaders for the so-called “queer community.”

One group says: “I’m so anti-gay I have to help you find your proper place in society by obsessing over your gender expression and helping you change your body to ‘match’ it.”

The other group says: “I’m so pro-queer I have to help you find your proper place in society by obsessing over your gender expression and helping you change your body to ‘match’ it.”

The end result is the same. Exalting one’s “queerness” with medicine sometimes just means curing one’s homosexuality. I guess the word “queer” never lost its original pejorative sense, because being anti-gay and being pro-queer lead to the same result, and it’s not good for gays.

The Stranger also sneers at feminist women.

On Monday night, the Port Townsend City Council and Mayor David Faber delivered a message loud and clear: transphobia is not welcome in Port Townsend.

It isn’t a phobia for women to want to take their clothes off without male strangers present.

After a nasty instance of transphobic bullying at the Port Townsend YMCA made national headlines across conservative media, the quiet town refused to cede an inch to transphobic outrage culture. In a much-appreciated symbolic gesture, the Mayor proclaimed the town a welcoming place for transgender people and an unwelcoming place for discrimination of any kind. 

But it wasn’t transphobic bullying, and it wasn’t nasty. Women need spaces away from men, and they’re not the bullies in this scenario. It’s not “discrimination” in the pejorative sense for a woman to object to a man in the women’s locker room.

Earlier this month, then-YMCA member Julie Jaman took a keen interest in the genitalia of an 18-year-old employee who was helping girls use the bathroom in accordance with the YMCA’s summer camp policy.

No she didn’t. What a stupid, and obscene, and malicious lie. What a trashy thing to say.

At the council meeting, Faber read aloud: “I, David J. Faber, Mayor of the City of Port Townsend, do hereby proclaim that the City of Port Townsend values our transgender residents and visitors and urges all residents and visitors to be respectful, welcoming, and kind to everyone regardless of gender identity.”

Everyone except women, that is.

He continued, “I further proclaim that discrimination and prejudice, in any form, particularly against transgender people, are unwelcome and have no place in the City of Port Townsend.”

Why particularly against transgender people? Really: why? Why are they at the top of the list?

The widespread myth that paints trans people, particularly transgender women, as secret predators liberates vigilante bathroom cops to interrogate strangers about their genitals and to make demands that they leave the toilet. As Port Townsend resident George Marie said during the council meeting, people often use cis women’s trauma as a thinly veiled attempt to justify transphobia. 

I’m bowled over by the empathy for women’s trauma.

You know…it occurs to me that even I have some of that trauma. I suppose all women do. Even I have fought off a few sexual assaults. (Why “even”? Just because I’m not all that gregarious.) If I have I suppose all women have. I don’t consider them trauma in the sense that they haunt me, but when I pause to think about it I realize they don’t have to. They still count.

“I can sympathize with anyone who lives with the daily fears that unresolved trauma can cause… but my sympathy ends when those fears are used to target other vulnerable people,” said Marie.

Meaning men who identify as women. But men are less vulnerable than women – much less. It’s absurd to claim that the notional “vulnerability” of a man who identifies as a woman should cancel the trauma of a woman. Marie is a Quisling.

Port Townsend’s mayor is a tad flippant about women and their rights.

Women who don’t want men in their locker rooms? Bah, evil TERFs from out of town. Mute them all.

A local outlet reports on the Port Townsend protest:

As the City Council read a proclamation affirming the city as a welcoming place for all people, including transgender people on Monday night, the streets outside City Hall were full of people, the majority carrying pride flags or signs declaring support for transgender people.

Blah blah. The issue isn’t “welcoming,” especially not at the city level. No one is saying trans people are not welcome in Port Townsend. The issue is men in women’s locker rooms. Men should not be welcome in women’s locker rooms, because women don’t want to take their clothes off around random men they don’t know. It’s pretty simple.

Small scuffles broke out between protest groups and police arrested at least one person as some pro-trans activists confronted a counter-protest held at John Pope Marine Park across the street.

The woman at the center of the controversy, Julie Jaman, was joined by local activist Amy Sousa, who organized a protest against the council’s proclamation, saying the city was ignoring the concerns of women in the community.

Jaman was banned from the local pool for violating the facility’s code of conduct after a confrontation with a transgender employee in the women’s locker room.

Jaman previously told Peninsula Daily News she was showering when she heard what she described as a man’s voice and looked to see a transgender woman in a bathing suit with two young girls.

She confronted the person — an employee who was escorting summer camp attendees to the bathroom according to policy — and was quickly banned from swimming at the pool she said she’s used for more than 30 years.

What do they mean “according to policy”? There’s a policy that says men who identify as women have to escort young girls to the women’s locker room? If so, why is there such a policy?

The reporter gives the last word to Team Men In Women’s Locker Rooms, of course.

Another resident, Candace Young, had a different take on the protests.

“That group of people who are supporting (Jaman) are just bigots trying to push through their religious philosophy on other people and I’m frankly glad they were shouted down because it all comes down to bigotry,” Young said.

Yes, it’s a religious philosophy that women prefer not to take their clothes off in front of men they don’t know.

H/t J.A.

This may be the creepiest one yet.

“working with gender-expansive individuals 3 to 25 and their families” – ah yes those gender-expansive 3-year-olds, aren’t they adorable.

This is Yale. Not BCH, Yale. Is it something about New England? Just Massachusetts and Connecticut? Just Boston and New Haven? Do they grow special creepy warm-voiced doctors in tubs of earth in a lab there?

Wait a second.

Florida court rules teenager ‘not mature enough’ to have abortion

Quick question – which requires the most maturity: having an abortion or having a baby?

I’d say it’s having a baby. Even if the teenager doesn’t raise the baby, just having it requires a lot of maturity. There are things you should do or avoid doing while gestating a baby; it takes maturity to find out what they are and do or avoid doing them. It takes physical maturity just to deal with the whole thing. It takes a hell of a lot of maturity to push a baby out.

The 16-year-old initially petitioned to terminate her pregnancy, citing being a student and unemployed as reasons she is unprepared to have a baby.

A court ruled she was not mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion, blocking her from getting one.

She’s not mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion, but she is mature enough to be forced to have the baby she doesn’t want to have. How does that work exactly? I can’t make the numbers come out right.

In order for a minor to get an abortion in Florida, they must provide a physician with written consent from a parent or legal guardian, or request a waiver.

But actually having an actual baby requires no such hurdles to overcome.

This makes no kind of sense. It’s not as if the state is going to make sure that baby has a good and happy upbringing with a minimum of two loving adults raising it. That baby could be doomed to a miserable infancy and childhood with an underage mother who didn’t want it and was unable to finish school because of the baby.

It’s not about the baby, is it. It’s about punishing the girl.