Melted brains.

In the months before she started nursery, my four-year-old daughter would often say she was a boy. 

Little kids say they’re lots of things.

It came unprompted, bubbling up from somewhere pure and certain inside her.

Little kids can be certain of all kinds of things that aren’t true. Certainly is almost always a bad thing, and in a child of four it means nothing.

But the obstacles to her sense of self have started looming, ever since she started nursery in September 2021. 

After she’d been attending for a few weeks, she said to me again she was a boy. But then she looked troubled and added that her teacher told her she’s a girl, that she’s always a girl. 

Teachers are not there to lie to the children they teach.

I suspect her teachers don’t think she’s ‘old enough’ for gender nonconformity, despite published research confirming that children as young as two to three recognise their gender, and can identify their own transness.

Published where? TikTok?

Sometimes she still broaches the topic of wanting to be a boy. She’s pointed to male characters in books and said she looks like them. We say teachers can’t tell her who she is, but she comes back with the same contradiction – if my teacher said this, it must be true.

Well, ya know, in this case, given that the kid’s parents have mush for brains, she’s right – the teacher is more likely to be right than the parents are.

No matter how much you’ve taught them yourself, in the end their teachers become their educational authority. My child’s already learning from her teacher to doubt her thoughts and fear her mind, her very self.

Or maybe she’s learning from her teacher not to believe her daydreams are all true.

Plot twist:

Anti-bullying policies aren’t cutting it. Not for my daughter, or for anyone in the trans community – as a trans man, I know this firsthand.

Ohhhhhhh – you should have said.

No wonder the kid started saying she was a boy.

This poor kid is going to have one confusing childhood.

Another direct insult, as direct and insulting as nominating William “Lia” Thomas Woman of the Year:

The National Women’s History Museum’s current Biography page:

All three are men.

The pope “apologized” about the residential schools, but not really. (“About” rather than “for” is deliberate.)

Pope Francis made a public statement today to the delegations of Indigenous people who met with him this week to discuss personal experiences in residential schools or their harmful legacies.

His statement included the words “I am very sorry,” and is being reported as an apology for residential schools.

Journalism is so deferential to the popes. Why is that? The Vatican is a religious version of the Mafia; it’s not something to defer to.

There are several kinds of wrongs associated with residential schools. There were abusive and often criminal actions by individuals who worked in these institutions. Those in authority covered up abuses and failed to protect children. And the residential school system advanced an assimilationist policy.

Individual criminal responsibility and general institutional responsibility may also overlap. The many unmarked graves and unheeded calls to address deathly conditions in the schools speak to the wrongs and traumatic legacies of these institutions.

Pope Francis most clearly addressed the abusive actions by individuals — the “deplorable conduct” of “a number of Catholics” — about which he expressed sorrow and shame. He also acknowledged the painful experiences of those who shared their stories with him.

The Pope did not acknowledge that the church as an institution embraced assimilationist policy in its decision to run the schools.

And that’s the most important bit. The nuns who ran Goldenbridge were horrible to the children locked up there, but it matters far more that the church supported and administered the entire system of imprisonment and punishment of children.

As is unfortunately common in many church apology statements, when those who utter the apology use the passive voice, it’s unclear who was the agent of the actions in question.

Pope Francis spoke about “a colonization that lacked respect for you,” and acknowledged that “great harm was done to your identity and your culture.” But who was responsible? He spoke about “attempts to impose a uniformity” to which “great numbers of children fell victim” that were based on “programs devised in offices.” But which offices?

The Pope positions the church as being on the side of outrage and sorrow for this colonization — “sadly, this colonial mentality remains widespread” — and as a partner in overcoming it, rather than as an active agent of its perpetration.

Very active indeed.

Yay let’s trans toddlers! What could go wrong?!

Originally a comment by Catwhisperer on Does Dwight Schrute write tweets for Tampax?

Radio 4 has a 28-part series about the menstrual cycle (28ish Days Later, if anyone wants to check it out) which I thought was an impressive amount of time to dedicate to the subject. I’m most of the way through but struggling a bit now – it started off with the interesting detailed biology stuff and then went off into New Age Moon Goddess hippy dippy territory. Anyway. The presenter explains right at the start that they will be mostly saying “women” but of course not everyone who has a menstrual cycle identifies as a woman blah blah blah but they stay reasonably on track after that I think.

There is a whole episode with the first transman to front a period product campaign (how did I miss that happening!?). It was…. interesting. Things that stood out for me:

If I worked this out right, this kid was 15 in 2010, at an all girls school, convinced she was a boy, and presumably with everyone around her playing along, in the UK. I didn’t realise that’s where we were 12 years ago. It’s always worse than you think!

First period was traumatic because “the narrative” was that only girls get periods and she was a boy. Her mother didn’t tell her this would happen because she thought it would be too upsetting. Seriously? More upsetting than getting your period when you believe that you are somehow exempt because of how you feel? Poor kid.

The dissociation from her body to the point of total absurdity such as “there’s not enough research into trans bodies” – what does that even mean? Aren’t trans bodies the same as other bodies? Isn’t it their mind that we are told is different?

The obligatory reference to “harm”. Messages from trans people who didn’t agree with her doing the ad campaign were upsetting because she didn’t like the idea that she had “harmed” people in her “community”. When your own movement bullies you, something’s not right.

Message of support from someone she went to school with: “I’m so glad you exist!” What? Who says that to anyone, on any occasion? Unless the poor girl has been so confused by the nonsense about how evil transphobes don’t want trans people to exist that she thinks this is the right way to be supportive?

It’s worth a listen just to hear from a gender-confused female person for a change.

The Guardian on that stealth deletion of women’s rights from an already signed statement I mentioned the other day:

The UK government is coming under growing pressure from European countries and human rights groups to explain why commitments to abortion and sexual health rights have been removed from an official statement on gender equality.

The question shouldn’t be why so much as when are you going to put them back.

Norway and Denmark have approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “to protest against the substantive changes” that were made to a paper that resulted from a UK-hosted conference on freedom of religion and belief, opened by Liz Truss earlier this month, the Guardian has learned.

More than 20 countries, including those now complaining, had signed the original text, which included a commitment to the repeal of any laws that “allow harmful practices, or restrict women’s and girls’ … sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy.”

See they’d already signed it. It’s pretty outrageous to change a statement after people or countries have signed it, because then the statement is not what they signed.

Plus why put women’s rights in if you’re only going to take them out later?

Plus why tf take them out? Plus why do you think women shouldn’t have rights?

In an open letter to Truss, the foreign secretary and Tory leadership candidate, published on Friday, more than 20 human rights, pro-choice, and international aid groups demanded the government reverse the deletions immediately and explain why they were made.

They get to demand that, because the statement had already been signed. Changing the wording after that is fraudulent.

The international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) was held in early July in London. The prime minister’s special envoy on FoRB, the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, was heavily involved in the event. Bruce is co-chair of the all-party parliamentary “pro-life” group of MPs.

The resulting, amended, statement on gender equality makes a commitment to challenging “discriminatory laws that justify, condone, or reinforce violence, discrimination, or inequalities on the grounds of religion, belief or gender and that restrict women and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of human rights”. It makes no mention of sexual or reproductive rights or bodily autonomy.

Absolute shower.

Marie Juul Petersen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights who was close to the process of drafting the first statement, said the second version of the text came as “a big surprise” and a great disappointment.

“I saw the original statement as such a big step forward because this has been a very conflict-ridden area – the relationship between freedom of religion and belief and gender equality.”

Seriously. See: Does Got Hate Women?

Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, also said the government was duty bound to withdraw the amendments.

“The government must surely be aware that, given the recent events in the United States, abortion rights are under threat. To amend an agreed statement in such a manner, omitting these rights, is therefore particularly poorly timed,” he said.

“Unfortunately, this supplanting of individual freedom under the guise of “religious freedom” is an example of the right to freedom of religion or belief being abused in order to infringe the rights of others.”

Almost as if that’s what it’s for.

H/t Freemage.

You don’t get to blow off a subpoena just because you once worked for Trump.

A federal jury has found former Trump adviser Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The verdict: After nearly two days of hearing evidence and witness testimony, the jury reached a unanimous verdict on the two contempt charges in less than three hours.

Bannon smiled as the verdict was read, looking back and forth between the courtroom deputy and the foreperson. Bannon’s team did not mount a defense during the trial, and he did not take the stand. Speaking to reporters after the conviction, his attorney David Schoen said they planned to appeal the verdict, calling it a “bullet proof appeal.”

In a Justice Department news release touting the conviction, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves said that the “subpoena to Stephen Bannon was not an invitation that could be rejected or ignored.”

Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Jon Pike tweeted a link to an interesting study.

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.

Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

…

Results We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

Read the whole thing.

I missed this one from September last year.

Not a fact. All people with periods are women. (Some are girls, but by some definitions once they have periods they’re women, and anyway this stupid tweet didn’t mean “Because some are girls!!”) No men have periods. We don’t need to “celebrate” the sexual “diversity” of “people who bleed.”

Also everyone bleeds – see Shylock: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

But men don’t menstruate. Men don’t gestate babies so they don’t need a place to gestate babies so they don’t need a uterus, and they also don’t need to feed gestating babies so they don’t need an endometrium so they don’t need to shed part of it once a month to make room for the next installment. Hope that helps.

Liz Cheney was talking to her fellow Republicans:

“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the committee’s vice chair. “It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.”

Some of those people quit their Trump administration jobs on January 6.

The hearing on Thursday detailed Trump’s repeated refusal to quell the deadly mob, even when he knew that some of them were armed and that Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger. Cheney suggested the former President’s supporters should view his behavior related to that day as disqualifying for future office as many of Trump’s former allies do.

Why? Because he’s dangerous. He’d do anything. He’d invite Vladimir Putin to annex Boston and Seattle, and give him the weapons to do it.

The committee also showed video outtakes from Jan. 7, when Trump recorded a video message that aides had scripted to tell the public he knew the election had ended. He refused to go that far. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump says to aides in the room, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump. “I just want to say that Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, OK?”

I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to!! Waaaaaaaah!

Greens Leader, MP for Melbourne, calls himself a “dad” in his Twitter profile.

Of course “birthing parent” excludes anyone. It excludes mothers, which is a word that applies only to women, so it excludes women. It excludes half of humanity, which is not a small or trivial exclusion.

It never stops taking my breath away to see how comfortable men are excluding and erasing women.

Here’s the clip that shows Trump discussing the Speech to the Seditionists before giving it. It doesn’t reveal any hitherto concealed intelligence or eloquence or rational thought or awareness of moral obligation.

The January 6 hearing was lively yesterday.

The committee used Thursday’s hearing to show how Trump not only failed to act, but chose not to as he watched the violent assault on the US Capitol unfold.

Several witnesses with first-hand knowledge of what was happening inside the White House on January 6 told the committee that Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the Capitol attack was unfolding, according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday’s hearing.

The panel said it “confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, and DC government officials: None of them — not one — heard from President Trump that day,” Luria said.

The committee used that testimony to make the case that Trump’s refusal to intervene amounted to a dereliction of duty.

…

That testimony fit with other evidence presented on Thursday, like the outtakes of Trump’s videotaped speech on January 7, where he tried to water down some of the prepared language and told his aides, “I don’t want to say the election’s over, OK?”

No, sir, not ok. There are rules here.

See this is why it’s not a great idea to pick a flamboyant tv personality gang boss real estate hustler criminal as head of state. Laws don’t even make it into his consciousness: he sees everything through the one and only filter of What He Wants.

Updating to add what Representative Luria thinks of his speech:

The Women’s March…Their Twitter profile proclaims

Five years of resistance, five years of training, five years of building power. Together we will take the power back.

Take the power back. Somehow I don’t think so…

Originally a comment by Papito on Blowback for booking.

I horrified some tween girls (among whom, my daughter) the other day by saying just that: “There is no LGBTQIA+ community.”

They were stunned. They had never heard anybody say that before. They kept asking me if I’m an ally. I kept asking them what that means. And I told them that none of my gay friends want me to call myself an “ally,” because they think the word is stupid. They’re gay. I’m not. They’re my friends. That doesn’t make me special in any way. I don’t need a word for that.

The other parents with me backed me up. They’re old enough to remember history too. They pointed out that there is a gay community. And there is a lesbian community. And the two don’t really mix much. They pointed out that the two communities cooperate much more these days, after the AIDS crisis, when some of the only people who would take care of many dying gay men were lesbians. But it’s still not one community, it’s two communities that cooperate sometimes. The LGBTQIA+ (let’s just call it QUILTBAG) community is an absolute fabrication, and what’s more it was created for the benefit of people who aren’t even gay or lesbian. On the backs of people who are gay and lesbian. Look at the hatred about lesbian hiking groups. Look at all the apps that won’t let a person say they’re “same-sex attracted” anymore. That’s not a community, that’s subjugation.

All the other letters in the QUILTBAG are forced on those two communities. Sometimes people in those communities accept folks claiming other letters, sometimes not (I have friends who say they wouldn’t even talk to a guy who described himself as “queer,” let alone date him).

All this is what I told those tween girls. Because they have all already been force-fed the dominant dogma and didn’t have a choice in that. Sooner rather than later they should be able to hear different viewpoints. And the trans fad is coming for them.

In High School, they’ll either be part of the quiltbag or people will call them names. Every girl who is a tween now will have a classmate in High School who suddenly claims to be a boy. And they will bully other girls into agreeing they are, and are better for it, and if they don’t there’s names for that. At one school I know you can’t even attend the quiltbag group unless you claim an alternate sexuality or gender identity. And if you don’t… ya basic. Take your basic flag of black and white stripes and, no, wait, you can’t even have that, because it’s hateful. You get no flag, you just get insults and exonyms.

It was Humanists UK who originally reported on the falsified statement:

A UK Government-organised multinational statement committing to the fundamental rights of women and girls has been amended to remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’. The statement was issued by the UK as part of an intergovernmental conference it hosted in London on 5-6 July. A total of 22 countries signed the joint statement before it was amended. One – anti-abortion Malta – has first signed since. Humanists UK has expressed serious alarm at the changes. It is asking the UK Government for a full explanation, and if possible, a reversal.

That’s extremely shifty behavior. They got the signatures and then they secretively amended it so now the signatures are gone or invalid, or else the originally signers are simply being defrauded. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) has also expressed his dismay at the changes, saying that ‘Claims that FoRB can be invoked to deny women the enjoyment of their sexual and reproductive health rights… must be rejected as representing intolerant and patriarchal attitudes’. He says FoRB in fact guarantees such rights.

Your freedom of religion ends where it impinges on my rights. Get out of here.

The original statement was issued as part of the 2022 International Ministerial Conference on FoRB. It gave a commitment to abolishing discriminatory laws that ‘restrict women’s and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy’. It also said it would ‘support and build capacities of local religious and belief leaders to… ensure access to sexual and reproductive health and rights’.

However, it has now been revised, removing all references to ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’.

Funny kind of “commitment.”

Alongside this change, the 22 signatory countries has reduced to six. 17 have departed (and are presumably being asked to sign up to the new wording). The only country added since the change is Malta. In Malta there is an absolute ban on abortion in all circumstances, including rape, incest, and fatal foetal abnormalities.

This should be a major scandal.

H/t Gnu Atheism

Now there’s a headline:

Government quietly removes commitments to women’s rights after summit on freedom of beliefs

References to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ have been removed from the FCDO statement

References to repealing discriminatory laws that threaten women’s “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “bodily autonomy” have been removed from a statement published on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) website.

…

Lisa Hallgarten​, head of policy and public affairs at Brook, which specialises in sexual health for younger people, told i: “The whole point of the original statement is to recognise the need to support the right to religious belief and practice, but ensure it is not at the expense of the fundamental rights of women and girls.

“By changing the language, the purpose and effect of this statement are fatally undermined, and religion appears to trump human rights.”

Keep the religious freedom part, ditch the rights of women and girls part. What could possibly go wrong?

Make no mistake: many religious rules and strictures are all about controlling and limiting women and girls. It’s an obsession. Gotta control them baby-havers, because they’re all sluts so the real people might end up feeding some other guy’s brat. Amen.

Stella Creasy, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, said of the amendments: “I think it reflects a worrying trend behind the scenes in Government to trade women’s human rights. Because there is no ambiguity, either you make a commitment to them or you don’t.

“The original [statement] makes a very clear commitment to sexual and reproductive rights and health, bodily autonomy and other laws, and recognises them as a source of discrimination. The amended version doesn’t.”

That’s why they amended it. The hell with women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

Brave woman:

A female journalist says she was forced to publicly retract some of her reports about Afghanistan after being threatened with prison by the Taliban.

Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, alleges that she was detained, abused and forced to post a series of tweets stating her articles were false.

She has since left Afghanistan.

The Taliban confirmed they had detained Ms O’Donnell and claimed she had falsified reports.

The Taliban confirmed, so the BBC could have skipped that “alleges.” The Taliban confirmed, so she didn’t allege, she said.

Afghanistan has become an increasingly hostile place for journalists, with the current regime cracking down on press freedoms, Human Rights Watch says.

Plus the Taliban hates women. It hates all women and it really hates uppity foreign critical professional intelligent heathen women.

She said she was accused of “breaking their laws” and “offending Afghan culture,” with the Taliban claiming articles she had written – including one about LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan and another on the forced marriage practices of Taliban militants – were lies.

Ms O’Donnell – former bureau chief for news agencies AFP and AP in Afghanistan – stands by her reporting.

She said the Taliban had asked her to reveal her sources for these articles. But she had refused.

The Taliban foreign ministry said Ms O’Donnell was not asked to reveal her sources, but said she had failed to produce any proof which showed she had not fabricated the reports.

Catch 22 innit.

Once she was safely out of Afghanistan she retracted her retraction. She’s not planning to return.

The Community is Offended.

Comedian Dave Chappelle’s show at a Minneapolis venue on Wednesday was canceled hours before he was set to take the stage because of backlash from staff and the community over his recent jokes about transgender people.

Because jokes about trans people aren’t jokes, they’re blasphemy.

The venue had faced blowback for booking the legendary comedian for a surprise, sold-out performance in the months that followed his 2021 Netflix special, “The Closer,” in which Chappelle doubled down on jokes about the LGBTQ community after past accusations of homophobia and transphobia.

There’s no such thing as “the LGBTQ community.” The T doesn’t belong. The T is a wrong turn, which should fade away.

The storied venue, which is best known for its appearances in Prince’s 1984 film “Purple Rain,” added that while it believes in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression, “we lost sight of the impact” booking Chappelle would have on the community.

What impact? The storied venue doesn’t say.

See? No explanation, no detail, no information – just “we hear you, we’re sorry about the thing, we regret the thing, we feel guilty about the thing, we believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression but there’s the thing.”

The Post is a little more informative.

Chappelle has faced criticism for comments that LGBTQ advocacy groups say could incite harm against transgender people. As part of “The Closer,” Chappelle joked about transgender genitalia, said “gender is a fact” and told his audience he was on “team TERF,” an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The comedian also defended J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” books, who has been criticized for making statements seen as transphobic. Chappelle has joked about the transgender community in the past, including in his 2019 special, “Sticks & Stones.”

The horror.