Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To pronoun or not to pronoun.

If “non-binary” has any meaning at all, that meaning should utterly undercut the current notion of “trans”…

This has always been a marriage of convenience to bolster numbers. It’s like the genderist version of the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact. The “trans umbrella” has so many identities that, if you look for very long at all, are completely contradictory. NB and gender fluid identities both go against the concept of gender as a fixed, internal sense of whatever it’s supposed to be a sense of, but in different ways. Nonbinary identities supposedly stand outside the male/female dichotomy. But how does that work with the trans/cis dichotomy? Meanwhile, gender fluidity involves moving back and forth between the male/female within the binary. How do you reconcile those with each other? How does that work? The same goes for agender or gender neutral. The whole “trans” and “cis” thing depends on everyone having a fixed gender identity which aligns, or doesn’t, with their “assigned” sex. To admit of a group of people who are outside, or beyond, or who slip back and forth kinda buggers up the whole idea. Getting clear definitions of these concepts is like nailing jello to the wall; that’s intentional. That nobody on the genderist side seems to care is interesting. As I noted elsewhere, if genderists were really interested in how this all works, they’d be conducting research on it before going all in on cutting kids up and pumping them full of drugs and hormones. But research and study might just end up showing there’s no there there, only wishful thinking and religious obscurantism.

Not that it’s ever likely to happen (as the unrelenting weight of Reality is likely to make the whole enterprise implode beforehand), but I could see further schisms, purity spirals, and purges if trans activists ever had enough power to be able to eject and discard those supposedly allied “identities” once they were no longer needed. We’ve seen this happen with the L,G, and B, who have been supplanted by the T in many groups and associations, their mission statements bent or rewritten in favour of the arrivistes. Given a chance, the rest of the alphabet soup would be dropped or dumped by the T too. The “validity” of NB “identities” is already a perfunctory, tail-end afterthought in the “TWAW, TMAM” mantra. Do so-called “intersex” or “two-spirit” people get anything at all in return for the instrumentalizing forced-teaming of trans activists? From the former, trans ideologues appropriate the “assigned at birth” terminology; from the latter, the ability to add “white, racist colonialism” to the arsenal of epithets available for use. How long would these other tag along “identities” be tolerated in the circles of trans power once they had outlasted their usefulness?

Trump shares his hearfelt sorrow at the death of one of his wives, the, the, you know, the blondy one, the foreign blondy one.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission seems confused (or worse).

Official bodies saying that knowing people can’t change sex is a “controversial belief” when it’s just a humdrum obvious known by everyone fact. Official bodies saying that in some circumstances it may be lawful to limit how “men are not women” is expressed. I await the heavy hand of the law falling on my shoulder because I’m aware that men are not women, and just typed the words. Julie Bindel should expect “consequences” for uttering the “controversial” “belief” that men are not women.

These people make me want to puke.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Gay men seeking abortions.

I detect a strong tone of bullying subjugation in HRC’s statement. I could be wrong, but I doubt other groups’ advocacy orgs are putting out tweets with such wording that could be interpreted as claiming ownership over abortion rights. But that’s par for the course for the gender movement: its objective is to annex and then dismantle anything that has to do with biological sex. First, they took over gay rights orgs, which, save for LGB Alliance, have been completely assimilated by the Gender Borg and are now overtly hostile to actual homosexuals like me. Now it’s abortion’s turn.

Any marginalized group that counts women within its population has an overlap with abortion rights, so of course it’s reasonable that advocates for those groups would state an allegiance with abortion rights. In that sense, abortion rights are African American women’s rights, disabled women’s rights, women labourers’ rights. But because abortion is centrally about biological sex, gender lobbies see this issue as a threat and a territory that must be conquered. It’s not an allegiance; it’s a hostile takeover, and that shows in the wording these groups are using. Abortion can’t be seen as about women’s rights because sex must never be acknowledged, so abortion must be seen as inseparable from and central to the gender movement instead. And look how far they’ve already gotten: by now almost no one will dare use the words “woman” or “women” when talking in public about abortion rights, thereby putting the concept of people’s made-up gender identities firmly in the centre and pushing biological sex off to the side in terms of which people are most affected by abortion restrictions. Abortion rights are LGBTQ+ rights, NOT women’s rights. By omitting the word women altogether, the emphasis is shifted.

A few years ago, before Graham Linehan got mired in the gender mess, he and his wife Helen were deeply involved in Ireland’s Repeal The Eighth abortion referendum campaign, and he’s talked about how puzzled he was when the people with the megaphones at pro-choice rallies started including “…and trans women are women!” in their otherwise strictly abortion-related slogans and speeches. That was only the beginning.

Resistance is futile.

An epic opening paragraph by Olivia Nuzzi at New York Magazine:

Donald Trump was impeached twice, lost the 2020 election by 7,052,770 votes, is entangled in investigations by federal prosecutors (over the Capitol insurrection and over the mishandling of classified White House documents and over election interference) and the District of Columbia attorney general (over financial fraud at the Presidential Inaugural Committee) and the Manhattan district attorney (over financial fraud at the Trump Organization) and the New York State attorney general (over financial fraud at the Trump Organization) and the Westchester County district attorney (over financial fraud at the Trump Organization) and the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney (over criminal election interference in Georgia) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (over rules violations in plans to take his social-media company public through a SPAC) and the House Select Committee on January 6 (whose hearings are the runaway TV-ratings hit of the summer), yet on Monday, July 11, he was in a fantastic mood.

Ten investigations by eight institutions, but it’s water off a duck’s back to him because he’s a hardened criminal who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone who isn’t Donald Trump. He’d make a great president!

There’s a long, funny section on how he explains to himself Princess Ivanka’s disavowal of him after January 6.

When I raised the subject of the testimony, Trump paused. “Well, I think she wanted to be nice and respectful,” he said, “She’s a very high-quality person, and I don’t think she wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings. I thought that Barr was weak and pathetic, and I think that she doesn’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings.” It came across like he was trying to convince himself of what he said. “I’m not even sure she knew what my feelings were. He didn’t want to be impeached, so he didn’t do his job in order to not get impeached,” he added, channeling his daughter channeling himself. “I don’t think she knew that.”

Has he talked to her about it since? “I’d rather not say. I’d rather not say,” he said. “But she’s a good person, and she doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings. She has respect for everybody, and there’s something very nice about that, actually.”

Why yes, there is; he should try it some time.

Did he think that she took after him in that respect? “No,” he said, with a laugh. “I don’t think so. We’re a little different in that regard.”

Heh heh heh. Yes, because he’s a sadist and a ruthless self-dealer who doesn’t respect anyone but himself.

Abruptly, Trump changed the subject in the most Trumpian of ways. “Did you see Alaska, and did you see Las Vegas? I’ll tell ya, the enthusiasm and the crowds are bigger than they’ve ever been,” he said. “The enthusiasm is greater than it’s ever been.” It does not seem a wholly conscious choice when he does this but like a feature that activates when he is nervous or uncomfortable and zaps him, like magic, into command as The Donald again, which is maybe why he is unable to resist doing it even when doing it could only make things worse.

He’s an attention junkie. Not new information.

When I asked if the insurrection had embarrassed him, he disputed the premise that it was committed on his behalf. “They did it on their own behalf,” he said. He disputed, too, that the insurrectionists were armed. “I don’t think one person in the Capitol had a weapon, not one weapon,” he said. And he disputed my characterization of a swarm of MAGA hats charging the Capitol. “And other hats. And other hats. Not just MAGA hats. Other hats,” he said. “There were a lot of people there that a lot of other people don’t want to talk about, but they’re also one of the largest crowds I’ve ever spoken to, when I made the speech — peacefully, it should be known as peacefully and patriotically — but when I made the speech, it was one of the largest crowds I’ve ever spoken to.” He threw in a distinction between his crowd, which he said did not go to the Capitol, and the insurrectionists. “Nobody ever talks about that,” he said, but he didn’t want to talk about it much, either. He returned to the point of all of this: “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken in front of a larger crowd.”

Wait a minute while I make a note of it.

Trump swears that shielding himself from prosecution is not among his reasons for running for president because he is not at any risk of being prosecuted. “Well, I did nothing wrong, so I don’t see that,” he said, “I did absolutely nothing wrong. I had a perfect phone call in Georgia, so I’m not concerned with it.” He was also not concerned with inquiries by Tish James, he said, referring to her as “a racist attorney general in New York.”

Definitely, and if you’re outside and there’s a bear charging at you, just close your eyes and you’ll be fine, the bear won’t know where you are.

The Daily Mail [sorry]:

A town carnival has been forced to issue an apology after a float that jokingly featured burly men dressed ‘as the Olympic 2024 female athletic team’ was deemed ‘transphobic’.

Forced? Really? How?

Trans stand-up comedian Donna Landy attended the Great Torrington Mayfair and Carnival in Devon back in May and blasted a float for being ‘offensive’ and highlighting a backwards’ viewpoint on transgender issues.

I assume a trans stand-up comedian is one who isn’t funny.

The float featured a sign declaring: ‘Of course we’re women, we sit down to pee’ and ‘Olympics 2024 woman’s 100m final’ – referencing the recent decision from FINA, world swimming’s governing body, who recently adopted a new policy to prohibit transgender women from competing in women’s races.

Three men ran behind the float, which was not officially entered into the carnival and secretly joined the procession on the day of the event, dressed in sports-bras and Speedos while wearing comedy wigs.

…

On the day of the festival, Ms Landy took to Twitter and said the float was ‘transphobic’, adding: ‘First float I see at Torrington Carnival is a bunch of blokes in drag and a sign saying ‘of course we are female we sit down to pee’. 

‘Bare naked transphobia. OK, not *completely* naked, they had shorts and singlets on.’

Is that what “forced” the carnival to apologize?

The annual festival, dating back to the 13th century, issued an apology last month to the trangender community and said they have identified one individual who will be ‘receiving a visit’ from Councillor Doug Smith to ‘discuss the inappropriate entry’.

Ah yes a visit. What a treat.

No, I won’t say it with you.

No they’re not. Abortion rights are women’s rights. Men don’t need them. Men’s lack of need for them is what frees them up to play football and boss women around.

Abortion rights are of course lesbian rights and bi women’s rights, and they’re rights for women who call themselves men, but they’re not gay men’s rights, because, again, men don’t need them.

Men don’t need them in more than one way – that is, there’s more than one way men don’t need them. Men don’t need abortion rights because men can’t get pregnant, and also because men aren’t the subordinate sex. The two are entangled. The ability to get pregnant is primary, but the social status, the power differential, the hierarchy is definitely the engine.

Kate Manne:

Abortion bans target and primarily victimize women, who are seen as no longer fulfilling their rightful reproductive and social role as mothers in particular and caregivers in general, to everyone around them.

Primarily?

We are perceived as owing our bodies, our minds, our labor, to men and “their” children within a white supremacist, cis-normative hetero-patriarchy.

What does it have to do with white supremacy? What is “cis-normative” about it?

Hence the deliberate cruelty and, in my view, paradigmatic misogyny involved in enforcing pregnancy. 

I agree with that bit at any rate. It can’t help being misogynist, given who the victims are. That’s complicated by the fact that there are many many many women who want to enforce pregnancy, but it’s still misogyny.

Never mind, here it comes.

And yet abortion bans affect others too—anyone who can get pregnant, in the first instance.

Anyone who can get pregnant of course=women. Women only. No men.

This includes cis girls, trans boys and men, and some non-binary and intersex people.

No. It includes girls of course, but it includes zero boys and men. Some women call themselves the meaningless “non-binary” but that has nothing to do with pregnancy or abortion.

When I talk about who is potentially affected by abortion bans, I thus talk about people who can get pregnant. Not only is this appropriately inclusive, but it’s not exclusive either of the many, many women—trans women, post-menopausal women, and women with infertility issues—who are not currently impregnable. 

On the contrary, it’s inappropriately “inclusive.” It’s an inclusion too many. The bit about women who can’t get pregnant is pure shameless smokescreen – she’s a philosophy teacher, she knows damn well that “only women can get pregnant” is not the same as “all women can get pregnant.” Infertile women are not insulted when we point out that abortion bans are attacks on women’s rights.

The Beeb reports:

DJ Tim Westwood accused of sex with a 14-year-old

Julie Bindel points out that the word is “rape.”

DJ Tim Westwood is facing allegations from a woman who says they had sex several times starting when she was 14. She says Mr Westwood was in his 30s at the time and describes him as a “predator”.

The woman is one of several to come forward after an investigation by BBC News and the Guardian, with claims of misconduct and abuse dating from 1990 to 2020. Mr Westwood did not respond to a request for comment.

It is illegal in the UK to have sex with a 14-year-old.

In other words it’s statutory rape. It’s not “having sex with.”

The making of a non-binary person:

There’s a meme that pops up every now and then about a bird that is called a penguin its whole life. One day the bird meets a doctor who says, “You are not a penguin, you are what is called a swan.” The swan is filled with relief. Suddenly, its whole life makes sense.

I had my swan moment in 2011 when I was in my mid-20s.

…I fell into an online rabbit hole and stumbled to the Wikipedia page for gender identities. It was here that I first read the definition of “non-binary”. In those paragraphs, I learned about people who do not follow binary gender norms, people who feel they exist in an intermediate space outside the definitions of male and female.

Which is most people. Few women refuse to pick up a screwdriver, simpering that that’s a man’s item. More men refuse to pick up a bottle of dish soap, to be sure, because for men it’s a step down, into the weak inferior stupid sex, but even so few men are 100 on the Stallone scale.

“This is me,” I thought. “I am non-binary. This has been me my whole life. And I’ve just never had the words to describe it.”

She did have the words. If she’d asked a feminist or two she could have learned that. The words are about ignoring or breaking the stupid rules about what Women Do and what Men Do. It’s not such a weird spooky subject that it needs a new vocabulary.

I was like [my mother] in my embrace of non-traditional gender roles. But unlike her I existed somewhere else. It wasn’t just that I didn’t feel “girly”, or was taller, and larger and less feminine. It was more than that: the label “woman” just didn’t fit me.

In other words she had the subjective belief that she had stronger more intense feelings about not feeling “girly” than her mother did, disregarding the fact that she had no way of knowing that. It’s not as if there’s a measuring device we can use to discover whose gender feels are more intense than Mommy’s.

She’s decided she doesn’t like customized pronouns though.

For a while I was in favour of singular “they/them” pronouns. But as I saw their use blossom and take off, I began to dislike them, and now I can’t stand them. As a writer I take language seriously, and I’ve read several texts where people use the “they/them” pronouns which have left me genuinely confused as to whether they were speaking about an individual or group. Some writers argue that Shakespeare regularly used “they/them”, to which I reply, “Very few people write as well as Shakespeare.”

Plus he didn’t use them instead of the usual ones. Viola and Cordelia and Rosalind are hers, Lear and Hamlet and Orlando are hims. He wasn’t that kind of trendy.

H/t Sackbut

The deepities of India Willoughby are deep indeed.

“Children as young as 3 know they’re the opposite sex.” Hmmm, what could be a little off about that argument? Could it be the fact that children as young as 3 know a lot of things that aren’t true? Could it be that children as young as 3 know they are dinosaurs and tigers and flying warriors in capes? Could it be that children as young as 3 believe what adults tell them?

Children as young as 3 know lots of things that aren’t true because skepticism is a fairly sophisticated skill which toddlers are too young to develop.

Exactly! It’s reminiscent of that because that’s the kind of thing it is. Role playing begets more role playing.

There was this one wild night in Trump’s lame duck tenure:

Late on a Friday night about six weeks after Donald Trump lost his reelection, a fistfight nearly broke out in the White House between the president’s fired national security adviser and a top White House aide.

A bunch of “unofficial Trump advisers” had managed to get into the Oval Office, where a bunch of official people tried to get them out, and everyone shouted at everyone else for hours.

There was shouting, insults and profanity, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Herschmann said he nearly came to blows with Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser who was part of the Trump’s group of impromptu visitors.

“Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything. … At a certain point I had it with him,” Herschmann recalled in taped testimony that played at a Tuesday hearing. “So, I yelled back: Either come over, or sit your effing ass back down.”

…

The rolling, hours-long shouting match was absurd, said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a committee member. But nevertheless, the night was “critical,” he argued, since it provided a forum for Trump to watch as his own advisers shot down, one by one, the false theories to which he had been clinging in hopes of staying in office.

But that of course didn’t prevent him from enthusiastically embracing all of them.

It took place four days after the electoral college met and, confirming the popular vote in key states, formally elected Joe Biden the next president. The committee showed clips of testimony demonstrating that Trump was told by everyone from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Attorney General William P. Barr to Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia — a lawyer and son of a deceased conservative Supreme Court justice — that there was no longer a legal path for him to remain in office, and it was time to concede.

Yet somehow, the delegation that included Flynn and Powell prevailed on a junior staffer to escort them into one of the country’s most secure facilities, where the group met for a time with Trump alone before any White House staffer even realized they were in the building.

When they did realize they sprinted to the scene.

Cipollone testified that he got a call that he needed to be in the Oval Office and rushed into the room. There, he spotted Flynn and Powell and another man he did not recognize.

“I walked in, I looked at him and I said, ‘Who are you?’” said Cipollone, in one of a number of clips played by the committee of testimony given by Cipollone last week, after months of negotiations.The man was Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the discount furniture outlet Overstock.com, who was helping to organize and fund Powell and Flynn’s efforts.

Ahhhh well in that case, naturally it was entirely appropriate for him to sneak into Trump’s playroom to talk about stealing the election.

The crazies talked a bunch of crazy, and the marginally less crazy Official White House people kept asking them what evidence they had for the crazy. Answer came there none.

Powell and the others reacted with anger, suggesting that even asking the question was a sign that Trump’s White House team was insufficiently loyal to him. The committee emphasized the point by then showing a clip of Powell.

Loyalty means making up a bunch of crazy and then stealing an election on the basis of the crazy. Semper fidelis!

At 12:11 a.m., with apparent relief, Hutchinson texted Anthony Ornato, then deputy chief of staff, that Powell, Flynn and Giuliani had left the building. She expressed amazement that Byrne — the former Overstock CEO — had been with the group. “Dream team!!!!” she wrote.

She then sent someone a photograph she had just taken of her boss, Trump’s chief of staff, escorting Giuliani from the building “to make sure he didn’t wander back to the Mansion.”

The White House aides might have been relieved to bring the meeting to a close. But at 1:42 a.m., Trump made clear which side in the debate had won his heart.

“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” he tweeted. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”

It was wild.

What it’s like in Trumpy Murka:

I think about guns because guns are what I talked about most for the last several months as I ran in our local Republican primary for county magistrate. Not gas prices. Not the “stolen” election. Not caravans at the southern border. Not abortion. Not the mundane, budget-related duties of the seat I was running for. I talked about guns. I am a Democrat who ran for local office as a Republican because in Anderson County, Kentucky, right down the road from the state capitol, Democrats no longer have a prayer of winning a partisan election, even if it is to serve in a nonpartisan job. This is die-hard Trump country now. Donald Trump won the county in both 2016 and 2020 with more than 70 percent of the vote. I figured that running on the Republican ticket, talking neighbor to neighbor with Republicans in a sensible manner about issues like guns would give me a fair shot.

It didn’t. She lost “spectacularly.”

The term “gun culture” gets tossed around. But what does it mean to live in a place rooted in Trumpian (angry, unabashed, aggrieved, armed-to-the-teeth) 2022 gun culture?

I think about guns because, two days before our May 17 primary, a friend removed my campaign signs from his yard. Around 9:30 that morning, while I was driving to Sunday school and church, he had heard the pop-pop of gunshots as men in trucks drove by, randomly yelling my name and Hillary Clinton’s and cursing about liberals.

I think about guns because, in mid-April, it was rumored that a local machine parts shop had a doormat in the store with the face of a longtime female magistrate on it. It read “Wipe Your Feet Here.” I wanted to see this doormat for myself and ask some questions: Did they have a supply? Was it for sale? Who created it? The first two friends I told begged me not to go. Did I know the owner carries a gun? If I went, they each cautioned independently, would I take a law enforcement officer with me. I thought this sounded ridiculous. “Just have the officer wait for you in the parking lot!” one insisted. When I arrived at the shop, without the police, I pulled in behind a grayish gold truck with a “Let’s Go Brandon” sticker on the back window, and sat there thinking, “I don’t belong here. What am I doing?” I left.

I think about guns because, later the same day, I made myself go back to the shop. The owner was not there, so I asked the woman behind the counter my questions. She was angry. She went in the back to get a man. What man? Would he be armed and angry? I left as fast as I could.

It sounds nightmarish. Granted some of this is her perception and questions about what might happen, but the guys in trucks shooting guns sound all too real.

People here openly carry their guns. Whether I am stopping by Kroger to pick up ice cream, grabbing a coffee on Main Street or stocking up on household supplies at Walmart, I am constantly aware that there are people around me carrying guns.

And that is much too real.

How stupid is this?

Why not also tear your hair over all the couples who split up before having children? All the couplings that didn’t result in pregnancies? All the billions of potential pregnancies that were just sexual assaults that didn’t quite get the job done? We don’t need more people. Better people, more generous people, more decent people, more unlike Ted Cruz people, yes, but more numbers, no. We’re racing toward the cliff of climate disaster, so maximizing the possible number of new people would be a cruelty.

The fantasy about “unborn children” sitting in there looking forward to the ice cream and kittens and dancing is as ridiculous as the fantasy about changing sex by saying you have changed sex.

The Washington Post duly takes the party line.

Sen. Hawley accused of transphobic questioning at abortion hearing

Not “Hawley called transphobic” but “accused of transphobic questioning” – which subtly implies that there is such a thing as transphobic questioning.

The subhead isn’t even a little bit subtle:

The Missouri Republican refused to acknowledge that some transgender men can get pregnant

No he didn’t. He refused to swallow the lie that some men can get pregnant.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on the legal impact of the end of Roe v. Wade, was accused by a congressional witness of employing a transphobic line of questioning.

Or to put it another way, a congressional witness marched proudly into the trap Josh Hawley had set.

Bridges, who had during the hearing defended access to abortion care for all people who are at risk of pregnancy, explained that cisgender women, trans men and nonbinary people can get pregnant.

She didn’t explain anything, she talked the usual line of childish fantasy, making Democrats look like idiots.

Bridges explained to Hawley that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe impacts cisgender women as well as other groups. Those things, she said, are not mutually exclusive.

Again, she didn’t “explain” anything, she just talked fantasy-riddled jargon, in a very smug manner.

Some experts on gender and reproductive rights use gender-neutral terms including “people with a capacity for pregnancy” and “pregnant people” when talking about these issues, which help illustrate that not only cisgender women have the ability for pregnancy — and cisgender women aren’t the only ones impacted by decisions to restrict reproductive health care.

And all women who know which end is up tell them to stop.

Trump tried to squeeze a witness.

Donald Trump attempted to contact one of the witnesses who has been speaking to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, the panel said Tuesday.

Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the panel, delivered the revelation at the conclusion of the committee’s seventh public hearing on the Capitol attack.

According to Cheney, Trump tried to call the unnamed witness after the committee’s sixth hearing last month. The witness, who has not yet been publicly revealed as a participant in the committee’s investigation, declined the call.

Not surprisingly, this could be a crime.

If the justice department gathers evidence indicating that Trump was attempting to influence witness testimony in the January 6 investigation, prosecutors could pursue criminal charges against the former president.

This is not the first time that the issue of witness intimidation has been raised in connection to the select committee’s work. At the committee’s sixth hearing, Cheney revealed that at least two witnesses said they had been contacted by Trump allies urging them to stay loyal to the former president when speaking to investigators.

One witness told the committee: “What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the right team. I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect. … They have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee.”

It’s very Godfather.

Yet another one.

The organization has “women” in its name, but still, it obeys the orders Not To Say The Word.

Paid sick days give people seeking abortion care the time they need to travel to a clinic, receive care, and recover.

Learn how you can use paid sick days for medication abortion.

Newsweek reports on Professor People Capable of Pregnancy and her smug exchanges with Josh Hawley:

A University of California, Berkeley, law professor slammed GOP Senator Josh Hawley as “transphobic” during a Senate hearing Tuesday on abortion policy.

During the hearing, professor Khiara Bridges used the phrase “people with a capacity for pregnancy,” which is considered a gender-neutral term that encompasses everyone who is able to get pregnant, including transgender men and nonbinary individuals.

No it isn’t. People like Khiara Bridges may consider it that, or may pretend to, but it isn’t just generally or widely or universally “considered” that, not least because it’s bullshit. Women are the only people who are able to get pregnant; that includes women who call themselves men or nonbinary…or for that matter giraffes or apples or 1947 Cadillac sedans.

The debate over gender-inclusive terminology has become heated in recent weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As supporters of LGBTQ rights push for more inclusive language surrounding pregnancy, others have argued that terms such as “people with a capacity for pregnancy” slight women. In any case, there have been many instances of transgender men or nonbinary individuals—none of whom are women—becoming pregnant.

This is Newsweek talking. “None of whom are women.” Yes they are. If they get pregnant, they’re women. Semi-respectable news magazines saying otherwise doesn’t change that. It’s grotesque to see news outlets telling stupid teenagery lies like this.

She added, “I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic, and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing that.”

It opens women up to violence to call us transphobic and terfs and the rest of the approved vocabulary, too. Professor Smug should pay some attention to that.

When Josh Hawley is talking sense and the academic he’s questioning is talking unmitigated bullshit:

Holy moly. I wouldn’t have guessed this was even possible.

In about a week, a Massachusetts woman is expected to reach the eastern end of Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, becoming the first female hiker to finish all 11 national scenic trails in the United States. 

Arlette Laan, whose trail name is “Apple Pie,” had about 200 miles left of the 1,200-mile-long trail as of last week. Once she reaches the trail’s eastern terminus in Sturgeon Bay, she’ll make history. 

Laan’s said “a lot of stubbornness” has helped her complete this journey, which began in 2003 when she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. 

She’s now done it.

Appalachian Trail: 2,190 miles

State(s): ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD, WV, VA, TN, NC, GA

Arizona Trail 800 miles

State(s): AZ

Continental Divide Trail: 3,100 miles

State(s): MT, ID, WY, CO, NM

Florida Trail: 1,300 miles

State(s): FL

Ice Age Trail: 1,000 miles

State(s): WI

Natchez: 65 miles

State(s): MS

New England Trail: 215 miles

State(s): CT, MA

North Country Trail: 4,600 miles

State(s): MI, MN, ND, NY, OH, PA, VT, WI

Pacific Crest Trail: 2,650 miles

State(s): CA, OR, WA

Pacific Northwest Trail: 1,200 milesState(s): ID, MT, WA

Potomac Heritage Trail: 710 miles

State(s): DC, MD, PA, VA

That is 17,866 miles of trail this woman has walked!

Blimey.