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.

Wording tweaks.

It’s a long article and it talks about women and girls throughout.

The original wording was “for the ‘crime’ of being born as a girl” and I think they must have gotten complaints about “born as” and so tweaked it. Their original point was the old familiar one that being born as the “wrong” race or class or nationality or sex is not actually a crime, but we can’t make that point any more in the case of sex.

They should have refused and said “fuck off” but still, I don’t think this one “identifies as” negates the whole article.

H/t Arty

R U serious?

A man can shop in the women’s section of the store, take hormones to grow [bigger] breasts, go by a female name, have vaginoplasty and labiaplasty, and you STILL do not think that man is a woman?

Duh, no, of course I don’t, any more than I would if he put on a long curly blonde wig or flapped his hands flirtatiously or talked in a high squeaky voice.

By the same token I wouldn’t think he was a dog if he started crawling around the floor, barked, chased a ball, ate a can of dog food, and chewed the newspaper.

Women are The Enemy chapter 40 billion.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on There’s no undoing any of this.

So much of Genderism succeeds because its supporters have no skin in the game, which lets them play a different game entirely. They face none of the consequences (as far as they can see, at least) of the policies they support, but their support earns them social credit. It’s in their interest to be blind to consequences that don’t affect them and to those that affect them less than the status they might gain. Setting men aside, handmaidens to the trans movement do not perceive significant consequences to themselves, so they will not see significant consequences to other women, because that sight would lose them status. Just look how casually they dismiss as trivial the trampling of other women’s sporting dreams. The vast majority of people, never mind women, have no hope of participating in high level competition, so there’s no skin in the game. Male incursion into sport will never affect them, so it can be ignored. Pro-life women exhibit the same myopia, perceiving pro-choice descriptions of real consequences to be no more than rationalizations to avoid the consequences of promiscuity.

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.

But by the time that should happen, you very likely have been complicit in the construction of social dynamics that elevate the cost of dissent beyond the immediate cost of compliance. The young zealots who have rewarded you for nodding along will turn and feast on you in a heartbeat, and you know it. So you stay silent, both internally and externally, and your bright red line gets pushed back. And it happens again and again and again as you voluntarily cooperate in building the walls of your own prison.

Compromising moral principle for social benefit is like eating Pringles: once you pop, you can’t stop.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on There she is now.

There’s not going to be any recovery from this, for groups like Amnesty to have gotten basic women’s rights this wrong. If the people in charge of these groups were ever reasonable, if they were perhaps too afraid at first to challenge the young zealots in their staff, and somehow unable fully grasp the magnitude of what they were conceding, it’s too late to turn back now — the lunatics have well and truly taken over. They’re so deep in it, there’s no undoing any of this. Amnesty International is a massive NGO, and I genuinely don’t think their reputation can recover. How are they ever going to walk this back? “Oops, we accidentally declared that women have no human rights, but we’d like you to still trust us as advocates for human rights”? That’s simply not going to happen.

So that’s it: Amnesty is gone, forever. Same for UN Women. Same for countless others.

So much of the institutional infrastructure of the global human rights movement is being completely destroyed by gender madness. Completely destroyed.

This is not a good sign for the continuation of free society.

Amnesty International proudly displays its contempt for women.

Note the meaningless random photo, clearly meant to trick the uninformed into thinking that is “Roxanne” Tickle.

Actual Mr Tickle:

Daisy Dumas, a reporter for Guardian Australia based in Sydney, trots out all the familiar lies and some new ones:

On Friday morning, the federal court justice Robert Bromwich said the respondents had considered “sex” to mean an unchangeable sex of a person at birth.

“These arguments failed because the view propounded by the respondents conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years. Those … cases established that on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable,” he said.

This shit is so maddening. Of course we consider “sex” to mean an unchangeable sex of a person at birth. The sex of a person=the unchangeable sex of a person at birth. There is no other kind. It’s grotesque that actual judges are framing us as the baddies for knowing what “sex” has always meant and still does mean. If it didn’t still mean that, women could protect themselves from rape just by saying “Oh you’ve made a mistake, I’m not a woman.” If it didn’t still mean that, women could hand the hard work of gestating a baby over to men.

It’s funny how “sex” still does mean that when we’re talking about the other animals. Their sex is the unchangeable sex at birth. Why would human sex, alone among the animals, be changeable?

Tickle said Friday’s decision showed transgender people could stand up for themselves.

“I’m pleased by the outcome of my case and I hope it is healing for trans and gender diverse people. The ruling shows that all women are protected from discrimination,” she said outside court.

Like hell it does. It shows that no women are protected from discrimination or from being forced to pretend men are women even in hospital wards, in women-only groups, in rape crisis centers.

Changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 made it unlawful under federal law to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.

It is the first time that alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by Australia’s federal court and goes to the heart of how gender identity – and being a woman – is interpreted. The outcome is likely to have wide-reaching implications for male and female spaces and activities and is being watched around the world.

Yeah no shit. The outcome is a horror for female spaces and activities and is going to lead to all-out war.

Over the course of a three-day hearing in April, the court heard that Tickle had lived as a woman since 2017, had a female birth certificate and gender affirmation surgery and “feels in her mind that psychologically she is a woman”.

But that’s not what being a woman or a man is. He has a male body=he is a man. Feeling in our minds that we are _____ is baby talk. It’s called imagination, and it’s fine as long as we don’t lose sight of the reality outside our minds. The reality is that men are not women.

Tickle’s barrister Georgina Costello KC said that “Ms Tickle is a woman” but that “the respondents flatly deny that fact”.

Because it’s not a fact. It’s the opposite of a fact; it’s a fiction.

Grover told the court that she would not address Tickle as “Ms” and that, even if a transgender woman presented as female, had gender affirmation surgery, lived as a female and held female identity documents, Grover would still see her as a “biological male”.

Because he is.

Diddums.

‘Stolen years of my life’: Roxanne Tickle speaks after landmark ‘what is a woman’ case win

Landmark demolition of women’s rights you mean. It’s a win for piggy men who want to take what women have, and a loss for women who want to keep what women have.

Roxanne Tickle is relieved her legal case sparked by a ban from a female-only app is over, saying it has “stolen the last three years” of her life.

Liar liar liar liar. He’s the one who stole years. He didn’t have to try to force himself on a bunch of women.

Speaking outside the Federal Court in Sydney following the decision on Friday, Tickle said she was generally able to be herself and live a normal life.

“But a small group of people have taken it upon themselves to declare that I am not who I know I am, and they have set about making my life miserable,” she said.

Again: that’s a stupid ugly lie. He intruded on Giggle, not the other way around.

Tickle became emotional as she recounted how she had felt after learning on Tuesday that a decision in the case would be made this week.

“I’ve been bursting into tears at different moments because I knew soon this would all be over,” she said, her voice breaking.

Oh fuck off, SBS (there is no byline on this pile of dung). He’s not the victim here. He’s loving every minute of it.

She said the ruling shows that “all women are protected from discrimination”.

No, it shows that men like Tickle can stomp all over women.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody said the judgment sent the message that Australia wanted “an inclusive society in which all can participate”, including trans people. She dismissed a reporter’s suggestion the decision redefined what a woman was and would allow men into women-only spaces.

“The judge found there are 30 years of legal precedent … that ‘women’ includes trans women,” Cody said. “This isn’t a new or landmark decision in that way — it is recognising … that is a part of our law.”

Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said Justice Bromwich had “sensibly interpreted the law”.

That’s the Sex Discrimination Commissioner and the Equality Australia CEO.

I despair.

From Jo Bartosch’s piece in Spiked! on the Tickle v Giggle ruling:

The judge went on to explain that although the science of sex difference was not in dispute, ‘the issues in this case involve wider issues than biology’. He considered and then dismissed expert opinion from evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, author and philosopher Kathleen Stock, and campaigner Helen Joyce. Remarkably, he declared Joyce, author of a best-selling book on transgenderism, as having ‘no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion’.

Well, if all the maniacs decide as one that they’re not going to listen to a single thing a woman says because they take it for granted that women are all worthless idiots, then sure, we worthless idiot women have no recognized expertise on being a woman, in their particular worldview.

But they could always decide not to go that route.

Joan Smith on the ruling:

Women no longer exist as a separate category in Australia. Sex is “changeable”, according to the judge who has just ruled in a case that effectively destroys single-sex spaces and services for Australian women. It’s a devastating blow for female rights in the country, which is experiencing an “epidemic” of violence against women according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

If sex is changeable, tell us who the men are who have changed into women and gone on to get pregnant and give birth. Name one.

The implications of the judgment, while not directly about sexual and domestic violence, are far-reaching. There has never been a more urgent case for single-sex services in Australia, yet the outcome confirms that “gender identity” now takes precedence over sex. One of the most shocking features of the case is that the result has been welcomed by Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who issued a press release stuffed with familiar jargon.

How can the Sex Discrimination Commissioner do the job of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner if she (or he? but surely one doesn’t make a man the Sex Discrimination Commissioner?) thinks sex is changeable? It’s as if there were a Red Hat Wearing Discrimination Commissioner – just tell people to stop wearing red hats and boom, the job is over. Just tell women to change into men and problem solved.

But while an array of courts, politicians and human rights organisations have decided that sex is no longer obvious and immutable, the same cannot be said about the assumptions of men who murder women.

Last year, 64 women were killed by someone known to them in Australia, a higher rate even than in the UK. In April, six people — five of them women — were murdered in a rampage in a shopping mall in Sydney. It belongs in a horrific series of attacks based on sex that stretches all the way back to the Montreal massacre in 1989, when 14 female engineering students were murdered. The latest addition to this grim list happened in the UK last month, when three little girls were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.

Well, no doubt there are plenty of trans “women” burning with resentment and fury that the killers didn’t murder them.

Pig of a man who demolished women’s right to women’s spaces complains about how bad this has been for him him him him him him him.

“Has stolen the last three years of my life” You know what would’ve helped with that? Not launching the case in the first place.

“There is so much hate cast on trans people” Acknowledging biological reality is not hateful.

“When I walked into the courtroom, I felt safe because I was treated with respect” Bro, the TRA’s out the front didn’t even recognize you. I know that because I was there. You were also “misgendered” multiple times by your own team. Pfft. THIS is the face that is setting women’s rights back in Australia. Jason Tickle is a man. Pass it on.

It’s the “It’s in her passport” claim all over again. “What do you mean, it says she’s a woman right here in this little booklet thing!”

It was nice having some rights. Quaint, but nice.

Fuming. Also raging.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Women can’t get together without men in Australia.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, life is not quite so light-hearted.

But at least they’re provided with water bottles.

Yes but what is “his work”?

I’m not gonna try and write a children’s book tomorrow. I rather wish she’d stick out of what I do, and not comment on stuff that she doesn’t know much about either.

Like mutilating people’s genitals?

This guy started out as a urologist and switched to “gender surgery” when it became the next big thing. He’s not a scholar of gender, he’s a surgeon. He knows how to perform surgery but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about whether it’s a brilliant idea to alter people’s genitalia to make them look more like the other sex. Since he has a financial incentive not to look deeply into that question, it’s rather the opposite.

He has a website snappily titled GenderXchange. Good pun, yeah?

James Bellringer qualified in 1982 from Cambridge and St. Thomas’ Hospital, London. After training in Urology, he started as a General Urologist in West London in 1996, but when Mr. Michael Royle retired, he was invited to come and take over the Gender Surgery service, at Charing Cross Hospital, London. After initial training with Mr. Royle in 2000, he has been working in gender surgery ever since, and with the increase in the gender workload, this has become his primary interest. An irretrievable breakdown with Trust management in 2014 led him to resign from Charing Cross, and he now works privately at Parkside Hospital.

Gee I wonder what caused the irretrievable breakdown with Trust management.

On other pages he provides details about his work. I don’t feel like quoting those.