Hoo-boy. Talk about having it both ways. Guy claims to be a trans woman BUT don’t go thinking he doesn’t get to inherit that title. No no. There’s a “loophole” you see.

The House of Lords could shortly welcome its first trans peer and only female hereditary member.

Why only female? You know why. That stuff is reserved for men. “Hereditary”=in the male line.

Matilda Simon was this week given permission to contest the next by-election for one of the upper chamber’s remaining 92 hereditary seats.

If she wins, she will doubtless become the envy of peers’ daughters across the country, because the vast majority of titles may only be passed to a male heir.

However, because of a legal loophole, the candidate, born Matthew Simon in 1955, has inherited and retains the Barony of Wythenshawe, despite being in all other legal respects a woman.

A “legal loophole” aka having it both ways. When property or a title or other valuable privilege is involved, suddenly the actual sex becomes real again – just for a second, while official check his papers – and then reverts when no one is looking.

The Gender Recognition Act 2014 includes a provision stating that a person changing gender “does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour”.

When it really counts, suddenly the pretend gender is swept aside. When it’s just trivia, like women’s rights and opportunities and safety, it’s Holy Writ.

“Matilda” Simon has an older sister. It’s still “Matilda” who gets to inherit the title.

The House of Lords told The Telegraph that Lady Simon may have to petition the Queen to change the form of address to avoid being referred to formally as “Lord Simon”.

However, an independent expert said this may be unnecessary, pointing out that members would naturally refer to the potential member as “Lady” as a matter of courtesy.

Head he wins, tails women lose.

Don’t call it a loophole though. It’s not! It’s a considered exception! Nothing loopholish about it.

Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer:

One is a neuroscientist-turned-sculptor, the other an activist and organizer. Taking different paths to the same goal, Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer outran Boston Marathon tradition and trampled the notion that women were too frail for a 26.2-mile race.

…

“I was hacking through the jungle. There was no path at all,” said Gibb, who actually hid in the bushes before becoming the first woman to run Boston, a year before Switzer strutted up to the starting line as the first official female entrant. “But I think we need all kinds of people. She’s an extrovert, I’m an introvert. Everybody has a gift to give.”

…

Told she was too pretty for medical school — “the boys in the lab,” and all that — Gibb trained for the race in solitude while on a cross-country road trip in her Volkswagen Microbus , then persuaded her mother to drive her to the starting line by saying: “This is going to help set women free.” Jumping out of the forsythia bushes after the gun, she joined a field of 415 men and began what has only recently been recognized as the “unofficial era of women’s participation.”

A year later, Switzer told her coach at Syracuse, Arnie Briggs, about Gibb and said she also wanted to run Boston.

His response: “No dame ever ran no marathon.”

But Briggs struck a deal with her: If Switzer could complete the distance on a training run, he would bring her himself. They ran 26.2 miles together three weeks before the race, and Switzer suggested they go five more — just to be sure.

He passed out.

“And when he came to, he was so impressed,” she said. “He was like an evangelist and helped me sign up.”

…

Although Gibb was also in the race for the second year in a row, it was Switzer in official Bib No. 261 that so offended race director Jock Semple that he ran after her, in his blazer and slacks, and tried to pull her off the course.

But he didn’t succeed, and she ran.

Switzer went to work in PR and helped create the Avon International Running Circuit of 400 women’s races that showed the IOC there were enough women to fill out an Olympic field. When the women’s marathon was added to the Summer Games in 1984, the qualifiers at the U.S. Olympic trials were given trophies of a girl running.

It was sculpted by Gibb.

So there you go.

Gee I don’t know, that’s a real puzzler.

Kidding. He “assumes” that because Strangio is not a man, gay or straight. A woman, no matter how butch, is not a man.

The real question is why do adults do this crap? And why do other adults encourage them?

This story is all over Facebook and I can’t find an original author so I’ll just credit it to Facebook.

When she applied to run in the Boston Marathon in 1966 they rejected her, saying: “Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon, and we can’t take the liability.”

Then exactly 50 years ago today, on the day of the marathon, Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past she jumped in.

She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie. “I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.”

It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road, or call out to the police. Instead, the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt.

As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted—not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried.

By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third.

Content notes aren’t automatically a bad thing [see previous post] but they do have to be…you know, accurate. Truthy. Andrew Doyle continues:

But it’s not simply a matter of race; books aimed at toddlers which advance the idea that they each have a gendered soul are also being promoted by activist teachers and authors. For instance, Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide To Gender Identity by Brook Pessin-Whedbee is marketed for children as young as three, and introduces them to identity categories well beyond the comprehension of most adults, including “genderqueer, non-binary, bigender and two-spirit”.

If there’s anything the world doesn’t need it’s a children’s guide to gender bullshit. It’s all made up, by excited delusional adults, and should never be forced on children.

And yet it would be wrongheaded to call for such books to be censored or banned. The vast majority of educators understand how ridiculous it is to teach infants that they have a gendered soul, or that they are guilty of white privilege.

Bzzzzzz! Two different things there.

Call me crazy but I do think there’s such a thing as white privilege (in the US and UK). I don’t think people are “guilty” of it, I just think we have it. Hierarchies exist, and privilege is woven into them – how could it not be? There are also, at least sometimes, responsibilities along with the privilege. “Nobility” came about, as I understand it, as the price of protection from violence in lawless societies – we’ll keep the baddies off your little patch of land and you’ll treat us as superior and pay us a hefty percentage in exchange. In a lawless society it may be the only alternative to being flattened, but once there are laws and enforcement of them…the nobles don’t go away and they don’t lose all their privileges. White people continue to have privilege in societies that haven’t magically become non-hierarchical over the past generation or two.

That said, teaching about it, and writing textbooks about it, can be done well or badly.

Gendered souls on the other hand are bullshit all the way down.

How much attention to what children read is too much? Andrew Doyle writes:

Yet perhaps it is unsurprising that activists who are convinced that language causes real-world “harm” should be troubled by the reading habits of children. After all, it’s hardly a fringe view: the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cambridge this month suggested that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series ought to come with “content notes” (a substitute phrase for “trigger warnings” given that the word “trigger” connotes violence and might therefore induce trauma).

Ok hang on. It’s clear that Doyle disapproves, but lots of books include content notes, including novels written 50 or 100 or 200 years ago. It can be good to know what a barouche landau is, or how entailment worked, or the background of the Reform Act. I feel this somewhat sharply in the case of Wilder, because I loved her novels as a child, and read them over and over, and as an adult I’m aware that there are things that need explaining. The one that sticks out is the fact that Pa tried to steal a piece of land in an area set aside for Native Americans who had already been brutally expelled from the eastern part of the country. Needless to say that’s not how Wilder puts it, and children don’t just naturally know the facts. That kind of thing forms how and what people think, so yes, it should be annotated. Why not? (Don’t get me started on Gone With the Wind, which should be thrown out rather than annotated.)

Doyle doesn’t agree but I think he skates over the “children don’t just naturally know the facts” problem.

This fear that children might be morally corrupted by “problematic” literature might explain the sudden deluge of progressive children’s books on the market: just as children are deemed so malleable that they might transform into bigots if they read outdated work, it is assumed that they can be indoctrinated in the “correct” way if their reading materials are layered with messaging that reinforces the creed of social justice.

It’s not necessarily a fear that children might be morally corrupted by “problematic” literature though: it can be an awareness that children might learn factually false or incomplete history.

The NHS is getting busy with the erasers.

Official NHS advice about ovarian, [uterine] and cervix cancers have quietly removed the word ‘women’ from their webpages, MailOnline can reveal. 

…

The original version of the ovarian NHS cancer page featured the line: ‘Ovarian cancer, or cancer of the ovaries, is one of the most common types of cancer in women.’

It also highlights the women who may be particularly at risk, saying: ‘Ovarian cancer mainly affects women who have been through the menopause (usually over the age of 50), but it can sometimes affect younger women.’

However, in an update sneaked out in January — which campaigners only uncovered this week — both lines were removed. Instead, another line was added: ‘Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer, but it mostly affects those over 50.’

“With ovaries” is the new “woman.” Will it be contracted to wovaries?

…the NHS has defended the update, stating it seeks to make the pages ‘as helpful as possible to everyone who needs them’. 

No, that’s not true. The way to do that is to be as explicit as possible. Omitting the fact that it’s women (and only women) who get ovarian or uterine or cervical cancer is not explicit, it’s the opposite of explicit.

Similar changes have also been made to the NHS’s womb cancer page, which used to open with: ‘Cancer of the womb (uterine or endometrial cancer) is a common cancer that affects the female reproductive system. It’s more common in women who have been through the menopause.’ But the page was changed in October last year to omit these lines, with no other mention of women on the main page. 

…

Professor Jenny Gamble, a midwifery expert from Coventry University, told MailOnline the change in language risked women missing out on health information.

‘The trend to avoid using the terms woman and women is unhelpful,’ she said. ‘It is a well-established principle of communication that the sex of individuals should be made visible when relevant and should not be made visible when not. This ensures that sex-related needs and issues are not overlooked.’

Yes but what about validation? What about validating everyone’s magic gender? Focus.

The gender playfuls get extra paid time off so haha suckers!

Coles supermarket has announced that team members undergoing gender affirmation will now be entitled to up to 10 days paid gender affirmation leave.

Gender affirmation? Is that what we’re calling it now? It’s not transition any more? No, of course not, it wouldn’t be, would it, because that would imply change, when the gender is eternal. But why does one need time off for affirmation of what one already is? Can everyone get affirmation? So everyone gets 10 days off with pay, i.e. an extra two week vacation?

The retail giant said the policy change was an important step in its commitment to champion inclusion in the workplace.

Inclusion of what?

Why does “inclusion” always mean gender-special people and not, say, women?

“We know that we have at least 900 team members who identify as transgender or gender diverse,” Coles Chief Legal and Safety Officer and chair of the Coles Pride Steering Committee David Brewster said.

And they’re all desperately in need of two weeks off? More in need than all the other “team members” aka workers?

“We need to have proper policy and education in this area so there is clear guidance around taking leave for this important transition in their life.”

Transition? What happened to affirmation?

You’re Not Helping.

Aimee Arrambide works for an abortion advocacy group. She’s not helping.

H/t The Dude Diogenes.

Another man gets historic win in women’s sport!!! Rejoice!!

West Australian longboarder Sasha Jane Lowerson, the first transgender woman to compete in surfing, has claimed a historic victory in the West Coast Suspensions Longboard and Logger State Championships on the weekend.

It’s so historic. Because he’s a man, see, and he did better than the women, on account of how he’s bigger and has broader shoulders and all that useful stuff.

The 43-year-old, who was crowned the men’s champion three years earlier, won both the Open Women’s and Open Logger divisions on her home beach at Avalon, putting together a dominant performance in the left hand waves.

Dominant is right.

“To be the first transgender woman competing in surfing hasn’t been an easy ride emotionally, but the amount of support I’ve been showed has been phenomenal and I’m so grateful to be involved, welcomed and embraced within the longboard community in Australia,” Lowerson said, as reported by The Australian.

So sad that it hasn’t been an easy ride emotionally. Really really sad. I bet it hasn’t been an easy ride for the women either, though. Not easy at all. Quite difficult and stressful, the way rank injustice and insult always is.

Aw, sexy.

Ireland’s largest escort website offered men the opportunity to live out their “war-inspired fantasies” with Ukrainian women, a webinar has heard on Thursday.

By “escort website” they must mean “female human to fuck website.” I don’t think it has a whole lot to do with anyone “escorting” anyone. Anyway, how adorable, that men fantasize about fucking Ukrainian women along with…what, committing war crimes against them? Blowing up their children and then fucking them? Torturing them while fucking them? Hawt.

Escorts Ireland reported a 250 per cent increase in interest for Ukrainian women, Valiant Richey from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said.

That’s the ticket. When people are losing everything they love that’s the time to move in for the sexy fun times.

Mr Richey, a former US prosecutor, told the webinar organised by the Beyond Exploitation that war could be exploited by human traffickers, and Europe had already seen a rise in online searches relating to buying sex from Ukrainian women.

He said it’s up 600 percent in some places. Aren’t humans amazing.

A recent operation in Sweden proved this trend is translating into real life, Mr Richey said. Out of 38 buyers who were arrested, 30 of them were attempting to access Ukrainian women specifically.

Because they’ve lost everything, been terrorized, made homeless, seen their children killed – what better time to fuck them for a little cash?

Statistics Canada tells us:

Below you will find the proposed statistical standards for three variables: gender of person, sexual orientation of person and LGBTQ2+ status of person. These include classifications for the main components of sexual orientation – sexual identity, sexual attraction, and sexual behaviour, which can be measured separately.

Yay, clarity at last.

Gender refers to a person’s social or personal identity as a man, woman or non-binary person (a person who is not exclusively male or female). Conceptions of gender are influenced by several factors, including biological characteristics, cultural and behavioural norms, and self-identity.

Um. There are persons who are not exclusively male or female? According to Statistics Canada?

I guess not Yay clarity after all.

Gender includes the concepts of:

gender identity (felt gender), which is the gender that a person feels internally

gender expression (lived gender), which is the gender a person expresses publicly in their daily life, including at work, at home or in the broader community.

A person’s current gender may differ from the sex they were assigned at birth (male or female), and may differ from what is indicated on their current legal documents. A person’s gender may change over time. Some people may not identify with a specific gender or with the concept of gender as a whole.

So it means everything and nothing, which for most purposes translates to nothing. If it describes everything it describes nothing, it’s just a bunch of slop thrown at a wall. It’s hard to see what a bureau of statistics can do with it. I suppose you can collect stats on what people say about themselves, but really, who cares?

Usage

Sex and gender refer to two different concepts, but are interrelated. While sex is understood in terms of biological features, gender is a multidimensional concept that is influenced by several additional factors, including biological characteristics, cultural and behavioural norms, and self-identity. Caution should be exercised when comparing counts for sex with those for gender. For example, female sex is not exactly the same as female gender.

I love that “for example,” as if they’d chosen “female” at random. Pff. Female is the sex that everybody gets to redefine, whether the “females” like it or not. “Male” has to be left alone, because males have important shit to do, but women are just an extra, a frill, a bit of trivia, so redefine what they are for statistical purposes.

The variable ‘Gender of person’ and the ‘Classification of gender’ are expected to be used by default in most social statistics programs at Statistics Canada. The variable ‘Sex of person’ and the ‘Classification of sex’ are to be used in conjunction with the variable ‘Gender of person’ and the ‘Classification of gender’, where information on sex at birth is needed, for example, for some demographic and health programs and to estimate the transgender or LGBTQ2+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit or another non-binary gender or minority sexual identity) population. In statistical programs, gender may be reported in terms of a person’s felt or lived gender, as well as how one is perceived by others, depending on whether information on gender is based on self-reported data or done by proxy.

Very statistic. Much precise.

“Katy” Montgomerie is a sadistic bully of women and girls.

Filia in January 2021:

After a frustratingly painful year of violence against women, it seems only fitting that we draw attention to an activist whose relentless dedication to feminist action has made waves across the internet, resonating with women all over the globe.

…

Agence France Presse reported 116 femicides in France during 2019; however, this number is disputed by Femicides by Companions or Ex, an advocacy group who argue that the figure is closer to 138: an average of one woman murdered every three days. Marguerite responded by catalysing a movement of guerilla-style street art entitled Collages Féminicides, for which she installed white collages featuring condensed but powerful messages written in black lettering on the streets of Marseilles and Paris,  the first of which was installed to honour Julie Douib, a woman murdered in March 2019 by her ex-spouse. Since then, collages have been appearing everywhere, including London.

Marguerite is a controversial figure even in feminist movements, having been excluded from posting via the Paris chapter of Collages Féminicides on Instagram following a series of tweets she made discussing her opinion that transactivism is taking up too much space within feminism, admitting that she has experienced threats for expressing such sentiments. 

Fast-forward to today:

Naturellement.

Meta meta – the Times reporting on JKR’s response to the Times report on the bullied student who had to leave her school.

JK Rowling has condemned the “utterly shameful” treatment of a teenage girl who felt forced to leave her school after pupils hounded her for challenging the views of a visiting speaker.

…

Writing on Twitter to her 14 million followers, Rowling shared the Times article and described her treatment as “utterly shameful”. “Add this to the tottering pile of evidence that people in education and academia who’ve supposed to have a duty of care towards the young have succumbed to an outbreak of quasi-religious fanaticism,” she added. “The girl’s crime? Saying ‘sex exists’.”

Rowling has repeatedly come under fire for defending public figures against accusations of transphobia. On Sunday she criticised balaclava-wearing activists involved in a stand-off around the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in St Peter’s Square, Manchester.

She said: “I never expected the right side of history to include so many people in masks intimidating and assaulting women, did you?”

Now the girl is under even more stress.

Owen Jones is a horror.

The Mayo Clinic answers this question:

I’m adopting a newborn, and I’d like to breastfeed the baby when I bring him home. Can I produce breast milk if I haven’t been pregnant?

Neither the question nor the answer mentions “woman” but perhaps we can assume it’s assumed.

With considerable dedication and preparation, breastfeeding without pregnancy (induced lactation) might be possible.

Normally, the natural production of breast milk (lactation) is triggered by a complex interaction between three hormones — estrogen, progesterone and human placental lactogen — during the final months of pregnancy. At delivery, levels of estrogen and progesterone fall, allowing the hormone prolactin to increase and initiate milk production.

Induced lactation depends on the successful replication of this process. If you have months to prepare, your health care provider might prescribe hormone therapy — such as supplemental estrogen or progesterone — to mimic the effects of pregnancy. Hormone therapy may last for months.

About two months before you expect to start breastfeeding, you’ll likely stop hormone therapy and begin pumping your breasts with a hospital-grade electric breast pump. This encourages the production and release of prolactin. At first, pump for five minutes three times a day. Work up to pumping for 10 minutes every four hours, including at least once during the night. Then increase pumping time to 15 to 20 minutes every 2 to 3 hours. Continue the routine until the baby arrives.

In the absence of pregnancy it’s iffy, and a lot of trouble. I think it’s safe to conclude that in the absence of female breasts it’s a lot more iffy. A lot more.

From NPR a few weeks ago:

For the first time during the long legal reckoning over the opioid crisis, members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma heard directly from people who say their company’s main product, Oxycontin, wrecked their lives.

David Sackler, Richard Sackler and Theresa Sackler listened and watched during the roughly two-hour long hearing as people described surviving addiction and spoke of losing loved ones to the epidemic.

…

Roughly 500,000 people in the U.S. have died from opioid overdoses since the opioid crisis began in 1999, including prescription painkillers and street drugs such as heroin and illicit fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virtual hearing was held in federal bankruptcy court at the request of the mediator who hashed out a deal with members of the Sackler family, who are expected to pay roughly $6 billion in exchange for immunity from future opioid lawsuits.

Half a million people. That’s a hell of a body count.

Family members who served on the company’s board and who played a significant role in management decisions have long maintained they did nothing wrong, according to internal Purdue Pharma documents.

Half a million people.

Can men lactate enough to nurse an infant?

Or, it’s a man putting his kink ahead of the health of an infant.

The NY Times looked into it in 2019:

Is it possible for a man to breastfeed a baby? For millennia, this question has tickled people’s imagination. It has intrigued; it has disgusted; it has also remained largely hypothetical.

That is, until last year, when a peer-reviewed case report confirmed that a transgender woman, assigned male at birth, was able to breastfeed her child after she was put on a regimen of hormonal drugs. Weeks before the baby’s birth, she was able to produce eight ounces of milk per day, and for the first six weeks, the baby could be sustained solely on that milk alone.

But, onlookers wonder, is that regimen of hormonal drugs good for the baby? Do the drugs get into the milk?

Before the treatment, the patient had been receiving feminizing hormones for six years. We don’t know how long it would take for a cis man to induce functional lactation. But “we have a pretty good idea of the types of hormone cocktails that would be needed,” said Tamar Reisman, an endocrinologist with the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery and one of the two authors of the case report.

And are hormone cocktails good for babies? Is anyone even bothering to find out?

Hooray hooray it’s not just sports, men also get to steal work and fame and money from women in tv shows.

Yasmin Finney is joining the cast of “Doctor Who” as a character named Rose, BBC announced Monday. Her role will debut in 2023, coinciding with the show’s 60th anniversary.

…

“If anyone would have told 8-year-old Yasmin that one day she’d be part of this iconic show, I would have never in a million years believed them,” Finney said. “This show has a place in so many people’s hearts, so to be seen as a trans actress by the legend himself Russell, has not only made my year, it’s made my life. I cannot wait to begin this journey and for you all to see how Rose blossoms. Get ready.”

…

The casting of Finney, who is transgender, follows the history-making turn by Bethany Black, who was the first openly transgender actor to be cast on “Doctor Who” when she debuted her role as 474 in 2015. Rebecca Root became the first transgender actor to play a Doctor Who companion when she took on the role of Tania Bell in the audio series “Stranded.”

History-making blah blah blah first openly blah blah first transgender blah blah – all tactfully disguising the fact that these are men taking jobs from women, in an industry where most of the jobs go to men already.

Another one:

A female skateboarding champion has said she is “done being silent,” and is speaking out about her experience coming in second to a biological male allowed to complete in a women’s competition.

On May 17, Taylor May Silverman, a professional skateboarder, posted a statement to her Instagram in which she called out the last Redbull Cornerstone skate event she took part in for allowing a biological male athlete to compete against women, and take the top spot.

In her statement, Silverman writes that she placed second in two previous competitions in which biological males were allowed to compete against female skateboarders, and notes that at the last Redbull-sponsored skate event, the female athletes lost out on financial awards because a transgender competitor took first place.

It’s not the validation, honey, it’s the cash.

Silverman’s instagram post has since been inundated with over 3,000 primarily hateful and abusive comments from trans activists, with many claiming she is being “transphobic” for having concerns about the fairness of the events she took part in.

How dare a female athlete expect only female athletes to compete in events for female athletes.