Wo, here’s a crack in the ice: academics refused to sign a new Trans Declaration of What You Have To Do. Just up and said no, as if they had a right to.

A programme to encourage universities to follow guidance on trans discrimination is to be changed after Cambridge academics refused to sign it.

“Here’s our guidance on how you have to coddle us, sign right here.”

“No.”

Advance HE, a charity that advises higher education institutions, has bowed to pressure and pledged to alter its guidelines requiring universities to foster a “collective understanding” on the belief that gender can be chosen.

Should universities foster a collective understanding that the sun circles the earth every day? How about a collective understanding that elephants are smaller than grasshoppers?

Cambridge University academics had refused to commit to the Athena Swan programme, arguing that the issue should be a matter for debate.

Shouldn’t even be that really. You can’t change species. You can’t time travel. You can’t change sex.

Arif Ahmed, a reader in philosophy at Cambridge University who objected to the scheme, said: “It’s welcome that Athena Swan is reconsidering what could have been a charter for thought-control, as many of us had been warning. A university should absolutely not be ‘fostering collective understanding’ on controversial issues but encouraging open debate.

…

Johns said Advance HE was responding to the concerns raised.

“We have been working with the sector-led Athena Swan governance committee to amend and remove the wording on ‘fostering a collective understanding’.

“While this amendment will protect academic freedom, the charter principles will still recognise that individuals can determine their own gender identity and that the specific issues faced by trans and non-binary people needs tackling.”

But they can’t, not the way you mean it. If “gender identity” is defined as just how you present, then sure, but it never is confined to that, is it. It’s all “trans women are women,” and that’s where women who can find their noses in the dark say no.

Climate disaster hasn’t thrown anything at us here in the PNW so far this summer – it’s been unusually cool and cloudy, which is fine with me. Elsewhere though it’s not so mellow.

Summer in the American west is off to an explosive start, with extreme weather events ravaging multiple states in recent weeks. In Montana, historic flooding devastated communities and infrastructure in and around Yellowstone national park and forced a rare closure. Further south, reservoirs sank to new lows, triple-digit heatwaves left millions sweltering, and wildfires ripped through Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and California.

Natural disasters, from floods to droughts to wildfires, have always occurred in areas across the west, and it will take time for scientists to study the precise connections between events like the destruction in Yellowstone and the climate crisis. But it is clear that, in a warming world, combinations of factors are increasingly likely to align and turn routine events into a catastrophe. But it is clear that, in a warming world, combinations of factors are increasingly likely to align and turn routine events into a catastrophe. So-called “compound extremes”, where a combination of contributing factors come together, are on the rise, [NOAA Meteorologist Andrew] Hoell said.

You don’t want a drought and a wildfire and a windstorm all at the same time. No you don’t.

Or melting snow and heavy rain in a dried-out area.

Warming weather flushed melting snow into the waterways as a deluge pelted the [Yellowstone] region, dropping up to three months-worth of summer rain over the span of just a few days, according to an accounting done by CNN. Researchers with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and two universities had already sounded the alarm that an event like this was increasingly likely, publishing a report last year on how the climate crisis could threaten the park. Noting that average temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees in the coming decades, they concluded that the region should expect intense dry conditions peppered with dangerous downpours.

The Dust Bowl will turn into the Scour Bowl. No soil left.

The unprecedented and sudden flooding earlier this week toppled telephone poles, knocked over fences, wiped out roads and bridges, and threatened to cut off fresh drinking water supplies to the state’s largest city, after officials in Billings, Montana, were forced to shut down its water treatment plant.

States in the southwest meanwhile have been having horrific fires.

States in the south-west have been hammered by dozens of conflagrations this spring, including a ferocious fire in New Mexico that became the worst in the state’s history.

The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and wildfires have already set records and destroyed hundreds of homes.

And it’s only going to get worse.

The Post of course thinks this is a good thing, or at least wants to appear to. Gender idennniny taught in schools:

Some lessons are direct: “Who can describe what transgender means?” In other classes, the discussion is more subtle: “Remember, families can come in all shapes and sizes!”

Yes all! In some families the parents are shaped like pyramids and the children are shaped like orcas!

In Florida and several others states, educators are restricted in teaching about gender identity, but elsewhere, teachers are embracing the topic as the number of transgender and gender nonbinary children rises.

If it’s true that’s unfortunate, because transgender is a fiction and “gender nonbinary” is simply meaningless. If the number of transgender and gender nonbinary children is rising it’s probably partly because they’re being taught about it in school.

Resources and lesson plans for those who want to teach about gender identity are becoming much more common. Seven states now require that curriculums include LGBTQ topics.

Wait, stop. LGB is one thing and T is another. (Q is nothing.) There is no soup that is LGBTQ, there are 5 separate things, and they don’t all combine well.

The National Sex Education Standards, developed by experts and advocacy groups, name gender identity as one of seven essential topics, alongside puberty, consent, sexual orientation and other subjects.And the federal government recommends that schools include gender identity in their sex education programs.

What kind of experts? Why include advocacy groups? What if “gender identity” is just a made-up label for a contested mental state? Why teach it to children?

Opponents argue that teaching about gender identity is driven by liberal ideology and is inappropriate for children, especially young children.

The ideology isn’t really liberal though. It thinks it is, but it isn’t. Instead of being relaxed and liberal about who can wear skirts or like Lego, it shoves children into gender boxes for wearing skirts or liking Lego.

The restrictions often go beyond the classroom.Many districts have resisted efforts to allow transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, and 18 states limit transgender women from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, though some measures are on hold pending a court challenge.

The usual lie. The issue isn’t transgender, the issue is males in female toilets and sports.

Classes that address gender identity are still the exception in American schools. But an increase in the number of young people identifying as trans or gender nonconforming has prompted many schools to change course and adopt lessons that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

In other words they see a trend and decide the thing to do is speed it up. But what if being trans is actually not a particularly happy fate? What if all these young people would actually be vastly better off if they were urged to perform a nonconforming gender all they liked but stay away from meds and surgeries until their brains have finished developing? What if they shouldn’t be encouraged to think they’re trans as opposed to mildly eccentric?

The approaches vary, particularly for elementary schoolchildren. In some classrooms, lessons about gender identity focus on gender stereotypes. Students in first grade, for instance, may be prompted to consider that there are no “boy colors” or “girl colors.”

Do that. Go with that. Hold that thought. Say we’re all a big soup of “gender” and nobody has to change any organs or appendages to fit anything.

Even at his dumbest and most dogmatic and fingers-in-ears how can he think he knows this?

He can’t know that; no one can; it’s not possible. It’s not knowable that zero men who identify as women will ever rape anyone or that zero men who identify as women ever have raped anyone. There are in fact reports of trans women raping women. I would love to know how he, a philosopher, thinks he can know that it has never happened and will never happen.

Financial Times reporter Edward Luce talks to Hillary Clinton over lunch:

With an eye on the likely coming reversal of Roe vs Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that enshrined women’s right to abortion, I ask Clinton how far such unfinished business is likely to go. “If you go down the rabbit hole of far right intellectuals, you see that birth control, gay marriage — all of it is at risk,” she replies.

What is the Christian right’s endgame, I ask. Presumably they would not be able to create the theological dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale? My question triggers a passionate response. Clinton speaks about how some states will make it illegal to abort after rape and incest if Roe vs Wade is overturned. One state — “and this is hard even to speak about”, she says — would require the woman to get the permission of her rapist before aborting. Others plan to criminalise women who have the procedure in states where it is legal.

…

I ask whether things would have turned out differently had Clinton, not Trump, won in 2016. Her answer makes it clear she thinks the January 6 2021 storming of Capitol Hill to stop Joe Biden’s certification would simply have happened four years earlier. “Literally within hours of the polls closing in 2016, we had so much evidence pouring in about voters being turned away in Milwaukee and not being able to vote in Detroit,” she replies.

Milwaukee and Detroit, what do they have in common? Both destination cities for the Great Migration: heavily Black and heavily Democratic-voting.

It seems like a good moment to ask Clinton about Russia’s leader, whom she once quipped had “no soul”. Though Clinton talks about today’s situation in Ukraine, she keeps referring back to Putin’s role in America’s 2016 election, which she believes was in revenge for an “anodyne” statement she had made as secretary of state in 2012 in support of the pro-democracy protests against his return to Russia’s presidency.

She relates an anecdote about a restaurant dinner in London several years ago, where the guests debated the wisdom of Nato’s post-cold war expansion. After a while, the waiter interrupted: “‘Before I take your order, I am from Poland and I have one thing to say: never trust the Russians,’” Clinton recalls approvingly. She adds: “I always believed in expanding Nato and I find the arguments against that to be naive at best, because what we have seen is proof positive of why it was necessary.”

Putin once said of Clinton: “It’s better not to argue with women.” Was Putin as scathing towards Clinton in private as he was in public, I ask. Clinton draws a breath. “Yes, he was very sexist towards me. We had some interesting, even helpful, interactions in private and then the press would be invited in and he would say something insulting about America. He would then manspread for effect.”

The FT shows the manspreading in a photo above that paragraph, so I had the opportunity to see and notice and roll my eyes at the manspreading before Luce quotes the words.

I cannot allow the lunch to end without questioning the direction of her party. I say that Democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by elevating activist causes, notably the transgender debate, which are relevant only to a small minority. What sense does it make to depict JK Rowling as a fascist? To my surprise, Clinton shares the premise of my question.

It doesn’t surprise me much.

Many are telling Jesse it’s not becoming religious, it’s been religious all along.

Anyway. Planned Parenthood is firmly in the cult.

Being a woman is an inner experience (a lived experience, of course, as opposed to the other kind), a feeling, a sense, a gnosis, a revelation. It’s nothing to do with genitalia or any other physical attribute.

Unless…

It’s “she,” he says, I’m “she,” he says, but to emphasize or illustrate or verify his claim he includes a photo of himself, as if to say “LOOK, you can see for yourself I’m she, in a tight dress, with long hair, and a sexy sexy pose, and a receding hairline a girly smirk.”

(He also, I’ve only just noticed, has those weird fake eyebrows drawn on his forehead well above where the real ones were. Do people who do that think we can’t see the place where the real eyebrows were? When it’s so obvious?)

This PrideMonth, the Audobon Society partnered with a man who pretends to be a woman to bring us a message of hope future planet climate change yadda yadda. God knows why a real woman talking sense wouldn’t have done just as well or in fact much better.

Your Name’s not Bruce? tells us they’ve blocked a lot of people as a precaution against hearing any impertinent questions on this brave mumblemumble.

My opinion of people has just shot up. I thought I’d be the only one to say “Ew he thinks he’s doing Fine Writing,” but on the contrary, most people out of a large number said so, and more wittily. I hate hate hate wannabe Fine Writing except from geniuses.

Along with the bogus Fine Writing of course there’s the Don’t you wish you could have a nice vaycay in Cyprus? along with the Get me I’m writing, I’m a writer, you thought I was just a QC but I’m also a writer.

Transgender Trend summarizes some of what is known about puberty blockers and brain development:

When a child’s natural puberty is blocked we can expect to see effects not only on the body but on the developing brain. It is the surge of sex hormones at puberty which triggers the important changes in the adolescent brain which only reach completion in the mid-twenties. Hormonal changes at puberty  are thought to influence the development of both brain structure and function.

Recent research indicates that there is a window of development for some cognitive functions, and if this window is missed, cognitive development does not resume later even if blockers are discontinued. A reduction in long-term spatial memory was found to persist after discontinuation of blockers in a recent study on sheep, which concluded:

This result suggests that the time at which puberty normally occurs may represent a critical period of hippocampal plasticity. Perturbing normal hippocampal formation in this peripubertal period may also have long lasting effects on other brain areas and aspects of cognitive function. 

You’ll notice the wording is far from absolutist. The result suggests, the time may represent, perturbing normal formation may have lasting effects. This isn’t the usual Guardian-style manipulation, this is normal caution with new and sparse research.

Two previous studies which analysed IQ performance in girls taking puberty blockers for central precocious puberty also suggest the possibility that GnRHa treatment may have an adverse impact on cognitive functioning in children. The first study of 25 children in 2001 found a drop of 7 IQ points after two years on blockers. The second study in 2016 found a drop of 8 IQ points in 15 girls compared to a matched control group. An analysis of these studies is here.

Oy. On the other hand is there a control group? Maybe everybody sheds IQ points during puberty?

A study in 2017 of men with late stage prostate cancer found that treatment with GnRH analogs affects cognitive functions such as language ability, short-term memory capacity, mental flexibility, and inhibitory control.

Oy. Not functions you want to reduce. Also – could help explain the childish unreasonable bad-tempered nature of the “activism.”

At any rate, the issue needs more attention, if you ask me.

We need more oil to get those prices down but don’t go producing more oil because climate.

Next up: fly us to the moon on gossamer wings.

The Post:

Battered politically by high gasoline prices and pressed to increase oil and gas production, Biden nonetheless attempted to convince countries to keep pursuing policies aimed at combating climate change.

“We cannot, we cannot afford to let the critical goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to slip out of our reach,” the president said to leaders at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate. “The science tells us the window for action is rapidly narrowing.”

And the news media and vox pop tell us we have to get those gas prices down.

It’s not just a few wannabe-Hitlers, it’s the Republican party.

[T]he immediate danger to American democracy stems from the fact that the Republican party is justifying all this, remains united behind the man responsible, and, worst of all, actually wants to put him back in power. This is about Trump, but not just about Trump. This is what the Republican party is: the very few voices siding against Trumpism are being shunned and ostracized, and most Republicans are united in their quest to install authoritarian rule by a reactionary minority.

And even if conservatives aren’t necessarily on board with all the specifics of Trump’s conspiracy claims, the right in general is united behind the idea that progressives are out to destroy “real” America and must be stopped by whatever means. White conservatives consider themselves the sole proponents of “real America” and therefore entitled to rule, as is the party that focuses almost solely on their interests and sensibilities.

See for instance this tweet from the repellent Jim Jordan today:

What’s a fascist takeover compared to expensive gas?!

This is the basis on which 147 congressional Republicans voted to overturn the election results even after the assault on the Capitol. This is why the Republican party officially defended the violent attack of January 6 as “legitimate political discourse” and lashed out against the few Republicans who publicly dared to object. This is why Republicans are either explicitly running on the big lie or, at the very least, are lending legitimacy to the idea that there was something wrong with the 2020 election.

…

And how are the people the hearings present as Team Normal, as standing up to Trump’s coup attempt, dealing with all this? Take Bill Barr: he’s on record saying he would vote for Trump in 2024. In his testimony for the committee as well as in his book, Barr has left no doubt that he believes Trump is either willfully pushing treasonous conspiracy theories or is completely detached from reality – yet Barr is still willing to help put him back in the White House.

Barr’s ability to rationalize this astonishing balancing act is the main reason I am skeptical that the hearings, by focusing narrowly on Trump, could succeed at turning Republicans away from him. When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.

I suppose that’s because Barr is a religious fanatic and a theocrat, and the Dems with all their faults (gender ideology very much among them) are not Team Theocracy.

If they could at least manage to talk about it honestly that would be a start.

First sentence of Libby Brooks’s article on a survey of attitudes toward trans people:

The British public are not bitterly polarised over trans equality, according to new research, which found a majority agreed schools should talk to pupils about transgender issues and that one in four knows a trans person personally.

But “equality” has nothing to do with it. Nobody wants trans people to be “unequal” in some never-specified way. The well is poisoned in the title and the very first sentence, and of course goes on being poisoned throughout.

Thought to be the most in-depth UK study to date of public attitudes to what has become a notoriously toxic discourse in politics and on social media, the report from More in Common identifies a radically different attitude among ordinary people, who approach issues of gender identity from a position of compassion and fairness, often informed by their own relationships with trans people.

Radically different from what? Notoriously toxic in what way? She doesn’t say, but she does then imply that we – feminist women critical of trans ideology – oppose compassion and fairness. Poison poison poison that well.

More than 5,000 people surveyed for the thinktank did not see trans issues as a big divide in Britain today, with rows about JK Rowling or the Keira Bell case barely mentioned in focus group discussions held across Scotland, England and Wales. However, people did feel strongly that trans women should not compete against cis women in professional sporting events.

In other words they think what we think, but we stand accused of opposing equality, being toxic, and opposing compassion and fairness. Talk about manipulative…

Writing in the Guardian, More in Common’s UK director, Luke Tryl, said the research had uncovered little interest in “the latest ‘gotcha’ trend of posing questions to senior politicians about whether or not women can have penises”.

Aw yeah hahaha why would anyone ask a stupid gotcha question like that, apart from women who don’t want to be forced to pretend men are women in all circumstances and locations.

Polling showed wide support for openness in education. In contrast to the advice last month of the attorney general, Suella Braverman, that schools do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender, there is also broad agreement that schools should support young people exploring their identity.

There it is again. Libby Brooks apparently cannot help doing this manipulative translation everywhere. Changing gender is not the same thing as exploring identity. Disguising the first as the second is reckless and destructive. Of course young people should be free to “explore their identity”; trying to change your sex is a much more drastic endeavor. She said “change gender” but that’s another manipulation.

But the interviews also revealed some concerns about medical treatments for young people who were questioning their gender identity, with the majority believing physical interventions towards transition should not start before the age of 18. While almost half of the public are comfortable with the idea that someone should be able to take hormone blockers under the age of 18, they are much less likely to say the same about cross-sex hormones, and a significant minority believe that gender reassignment surgery should only be available to those aged 21 and over.

That of course is because “the public” has been told for years that hormone blockers are harmless and fully reversible, which is not true. Manipulation everywhere.

Sometimes NOW remembers who women are and what the National Organization for Women is.

Just women. Not men, not trans women, just women. It’s women who need to soak up menstrual blood without getting it all over the furniture, not men.

Other times they struggle a bit.

They mean male violence against women, but are apparently squeamish about saying so. “Gender-based violence” is more tactful.

Women’s lives. No men die in childbirth or risky illegal abortions.

I remember when the National Organization for Women was an organization for women. Seems like only yesterday.

When will this childish shit stop. Yes of course women are the only people who need access to abortion care. Men don’t need it because men don’t get pregnant. (There’s plenty to say about how abortion rights benefit men too, but that’s a different subject, and not what NOW means.) Women need access to abortion and women need a lot of other things too. The fight has not been won. It is not time to move on from feminism and give the men who want to pretend to be women a chance.

A Holyrood equalities committee is discussing reform of the Gender Recognition Act while refusing to talk to women. It’s talking about giving away women’s rights while barring women from their talk. How do they justify this to themselves?

A former Olympic athlete turned politician has slammed Holyrood’s equalities committee, describing its scrutiny of a bill to reform the Gender Recognition Act as a “sham” after it refused to hear from female atheletes concened about the impact of legislation on women’s sport.

Brian Whittle, a gold medallist in the 4x400m relay at the 1986 and 1994 European championships, and a competitor at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, said the committee was only inviting people “who give the answers they want to hear”.

He was speaking after a press conference held by Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies and marathon runner Mara Yamauchi. The pair hosted the conference along with Fair Play for Women and For Women Scotland, in an Edinburgh hotel after their requests to address the equalities committee directly were turned down.

So much for equalities. “Equalities, but not for you.”

Despite the contested nature of the bill, committee members have said they are satisfied with the evidence of two men, Malcolm Dingwall-Smith, Strategic Partnerships Manager at sportscotland, and Hugh Torrence, executive director of LEAP Sports Scotland, both of whom told the committee reforming the GRA does not impact significantly on sport.

Easy for them to say.

At last, the man says, finally, FINALLY, after all these years dragging ourselves through the sand, longing for water – finally a man steps in to bestow clarity on all this womany screeching.

Responses are somewhat acerbic.

Billy Bragg is happy about it though. Well he would be.

Imagine working in local government (as I have, working for the Zoo and the Aquarium and the Parks Department) and having your union make declarations of belief in obvious lies. The union’s position is clear: men are women. Brilliant.

Grim. Unison, the UK union for public service workers, has declared war on gender critical feminism.

UNISON local government conference unanimously passed a motion in support of trans rights this afternoon, recognising the importance of the union being loud and visible in support of its trans members.

Speaking in support of the motion, UNISON LGBT+ delegate Anu Prashar commented on the hostile media treatment of trans women in particular saying “this is the same tactic used against gay men in the section 28 era, when they were portrayed as sexual predators and a danger to children. We have seen it all before.”

No, it isn’t. It isn’t the same at all. Why is it “trans women in particular”? Because they push women aside and try to usurp everything that belongs to women – our rights, our sports, our refuges, our resistance, everything. Because trans women are men, and thus are the dominant half of the woman-man dyad. Because trans women are men and thus are used to being able to demand respect and obedience and anything else they want. Because trans women are men and thus a potential danger to women in some circumstances.

“This is why our union needs to be at the forefront of this debate, making sure our trans members are able to go to work free of fear, harassment and bullying.”

But what about their women members?

The motion also encouraged the negotiation of inclusive language in local government agreements and policies, urging branches to promote the fact sheet ‘why pronouns are important’ and ask employers to adopt a policy that allows all staff to have their pronouns on name badges, ID cards and email signatures.

Next year it will be requiring all staff to have “their” pronouns on everything.

The motion also included a commitment to provide members with materials to counter the ‘gender critical’ narrative and provide information on the links between the gender critical movement in the UK and the far right.

It’s not a narrative, it’s analysis and activism. Calling it a narrative is a sneaky way of calling it a lie.

Conference agreed that targeting a minority, and spreading false information to provoke hatred and distrust by preying on people’s fears, are ‘classic far right recruitment tactics’.

Conference agreed all that while targeting a minority and spreading false information to provoke hatred and distrust.

One more grovel added to the mountain.

What did he say?

You can call that “mean” all you want, but the reality is it’s true. Organizations for women obey this new rule that we must not mention women in connection with pregnancy or childbirth or nursing or mothers. The more people object the better. The more celebrities object the better. The fewer people and celebrities who apologize the next day THE MUCH MUCH BETTER.