Godalmighty. If only people would learn how to think. Just a little would do.

“There are a number of people who genuinely believe that they are trapped in the wrong body and they want to be recognized as the gender that their mind and soul has always told them that they are.”

One, she doesn’t know how many people “genuinely” believe that. Two, so what? People can “genuinely believe” all kinds of stupid shit; it doesn’t follow that we have to act as if their beliefs were true. Who even has the time? There are so many wack beliefs out there, we can’t possibly keep up. But more to the point, we shouldn’t keep up. We shouldn’t humor people, much less encourage them, in absurd beliefs. In the long run it’s not good for them, and in all runs it’s not good for us. How about they humor us for a change instead? “That is bullshit: you are your body, it’s not some separate thing you sit in, like a car.”

And we especially shouldn’t humor stupid beliefs when they are harmful, and that goes times a billion when they cancel the rights of the despised half of humanity.

And people in Gillard’s line of work have no business telling us to lie for the sake of people with silly beliefs about themselves. It’s not fair to us. We don’t have any duty to pretend it’s not childish nonsense to insist you’re in the wrong body. Everybody out of the pool, it’s time to grow up now.

Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on What reward can genderists offer?

Spot on Sastra. I would just add that it works because that’s what moralists have always done – take the natural human desire to protect the weakest members of the tribe (without which we probably wouldn’t be here, being the weak defenceless apes we are) and by a series of metaphysical shenanigans identify protecting the interests of a power elite as the only “proper” realisation of that desire. It’s like an erotic target location error (i.e. a fetish) but culturally imposed on the entire community (except of course the most elite of those power elites – the pope can have as many “nephews” as he wants, not to mention prostitutes).

The difference here is that the power elite here has explicitly constituted itself to exploit that mechanism. There have, no doubt, been many attempts to do this in the past (Christian persecution syndrome comes to mind) but the combination of an ideology that holds all categories are infinitely malleable with its pop-cultural counterpart of “you can be anything you want” has finally made it an attainable goal. (You also need a large under-employed/leisure class with the time and financial resources to devote to the process of transformation – cue Sofie Molly moaning that it’s so unfair he doesn’t have those resources – since if only the pope were trans it wouldn’t work because we all know he’s supposed to be an exception.)

Yes, men, imagining themselves warriors, go for the social justice angle while women are seduced by the nurturing role, but it’s the same sleight of hand underneath – all made possible by the conceit of imagining ourselves as become gods freed from the constraints of mundane reality.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz will cross southern Georgia by bus next week to build on the momentum of the convention, working with the 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers, and 24 campaign offices across the state.

Trump and the MAGA Republicans have not taken the Democrats’ momentum quietly. Trump has been frantically posting.

On Thursday morning he assured readers on his social media channel that “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” although he has boasted about ending the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected women’s access to abortion and suggested that women who obtain abortions should be punished. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that his posts “were too ridiculous even for Trump,” and she wondered if his account had been hacked by Iranians.

Or Martians? Or the Loch Ness Monster?

Harris’s acceptance speech had Trump apparently beside himself. During her 38-minute speech he posted 59 times on his social media platform, saying, among other things, “WHERE’S HUNTER?” referring to President Joe Biden’s son. After the speech ended, he called in to the Fox News Channel to rant, in what Dowd called a “scream-of-consciousness,” in which he insisted he is “doing very well in the polls,” until host Bret Baier cut him off. So he turned to right-wing media outlet Newsmax, where he continued his diatribe.

That night, apparently increasingly concerned about his chances of election, Trump—or his team, because it didn’t really sound like him—reached out on social media to Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom he has lambasted since 2021 for refusing to help him steal the 2020 election. As recently as August 3, Trump went after Kemp, but on Thursday he thanked the governor “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Nothing tells you Trump is in full panic more than seeing him crawl back to nemesis Brian Kemp begging for help in Georgia.” “Kemp wanted a public groveling,” Ron Filipkowski wrote, “and that’s what Trump did tonight.”

It wasn’t just Trump who was concerned about the Democratic National Convention. A number of prominent Republicans who will be voting for Harris spoke there, providing a permission structure for other Republicans to shift their support to Harris and Walz. But that message did not make it through to viewers of the Fox News Channel. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing media, reported that the Fox News Channel did not air any of the Republicans’ DNC speeches.

It’s the Trump-Fox Party.

Friday brought more bad news for the Trump campaign when twelve Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush wrote an open letter endorsing Harris because they believe Trump is a threat to American democracy and the rule of law. They continued: “[W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris.”

They join conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday and wrote: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

That, but also, even more basic, the person. The character or morality or approach to life or whatever you want to call it. Trump is all insults and cruelty and self-promotion. He has not one decent quality – not one. He’s conspicuously bad all the way through. I find that intolerable in a president.

I don’t understand why this is allowed.

An Australian “trans inclusive” Premier League women’s football team with five male players has secured victory in the grand final match after dominating games throughout the summer. During the 2024 season of the North West Sydney Football Women’s Premier Competition, The Flying Bats won all 17 games and scored 76 goals while only a total of 8 points were scored against them.

Why aren’t they just banned?

The Flying Bats, a football club for “self-identified women and non-binary people,” has attracted significant criticism that has escalated over the past year. 

Why was a club for women and some men allowed?

Earlier this year team was awarded a $1,000 prize after winning the North West Sydney League pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, following a season of winning every game they played in the Women’s Premier League matches, 10-0. The news generated significant outcry and resulted in The Flying Bats making international headlines.

They won $1,000 by cheating. Why was it allowed?

According to regulations put forward by the North West Sydney Football Association (NWSFA), “players may register and participate on the basis of their gender identification.” There are a total of at least nine trans-identified males playing football within the women’s leagues, though their identities have been thoroughly protected and withheld by Australian media.

Well then why have women’s teams at all? Why not just say outright that women don’t get to play football any more?

Guidelines issued by the Australian Human Rights Commission state that under the federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984, sporting organizations are forbidden [to enforce] “discrimination” on the basis of a self-declared gender identity. “An example of direct discrimination would be a sporting organization refusing a trans woman’s application for membership because she is transgender,” the guidelines state.

So women can’t have women’s sports any more.

As previously revealed by Reduxx, one of the five men on the women’s football team is trans activist Riley Dennis, who was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating on another women’s team. Dennis could be seen towering over the female players during Sunday’s game, while wearing the Flying Bats uniform decorated with colors from the Pride progress flag.

Woohoo, progress!!

But wait, it gets worse.

Dennis, born Justin, 32, currently plays for The Flying Bats, but last year was a member of the Inter Lions team in New South Wales. On May 21, 2023, during a game between the Inter Lions and the St. George football clubs at the Majors Bay Reserve, Dennis launched his smaller female opponent towards a metal fence using an aggressive tackle as the two chased down the ball.

Reduxx was provided footage of the match, which showed the female player lying on her side, unmoving, as the transgender player casually walked away.

If the women object, the police turn up to threaten them.

The month prior, Dennis was said to have injured another female player, who reportedly had to seek hospital attention as a result of her injury. A letter-writing campaign was launched by Kirralie Smith, a spokeswoman with Binary Australia, encouraging concerned individuals to contact Football New South Wales, which reportedly then received over 12,000 submissions.

For her role in bringing awareness to the injuries sustained by female athletes, Smith was visited by New South Wales Police and handed an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) on March 30 that year requiring that she neither discuss nor approach Dennis. The AVO was withdrawn by authorities in September.

It’s like some dystopian horror movie except that it’s actually happening.

I was going to quote the Daily Mail story on this but it’s pointless: they refer to the male players as “transgender” instead of “male” so why bother to cite them? A women’s team with five male players won every game; you don’t say. Cathy reports honestly.

The team went through the season undefeated on account of how they had five male players. On the women’s team.

Originally a comment by Sastra on What reward can genderists offer?

I’m coming to the conclusion that what’s primarily fueling this mental social contagion isn’t misogyny, but the feminine attribute of nurturing run amok — and the responsible parties for the most part aren’t men, but women.

Sure, there are men identifying as women while thrusting themselves wherever they want just like men, but there have always been transvestites testing boundaries. The modern, ubiquitous warm, welcoming embrace of trans inclusion and acceptance, the generous impulse to say and mean “but OF COURSE you are a woman!” looks like it comes right out of the Woman’s Playbook on Being Agreeable and Helping Others. When our increasing sensitivity to minorities met Therapeutic Culture’s increasing sensitivity to everything, it was often mothers and primary school teachers who decided that a healthier, happier, better world started with the children becoming more sensitive to the feelings of those who are weak and unhappy. A noble impulse, certainly — but like a lot of noble impulses there’s an escalating series of increasing opportunities for being noble. Those kids grew up and kept looking further and further up.

Men certainly jumped on board with the idea that this issue is about civil liberties and freedom from constraint, but it’s the tender mercies of the women refusing to notice what’s happening to their rights while smiling and nodding and cooing and putting arms round their fellow “girls” that requires explanation. It’s tempting to think come on, they must know these men aren’t women just as it’s tempting to believe that religious believers don’t really believe there’s an invisible Man on High tenderly watching over them — but I think they’re likely all sincere. The Universe must be Nurturing and Kind and so must we. You see truth better through those lenses.

Remember Morgane Oger? He posted on Facebook yesterday:

Prove me wrong: No sports injury data in Canada supports the theory that trans women in sports put other women at risk.

So why is the concept even on the table?

There is no credible evidence to suggest that trans women pose a greater risk of causing injuries in women’s sports. The argument that trans women are inherently more dangerous in sports is not supported by data or research.

Sports injuries are influenced by a wide range of factors, such as the specific sport, the level of contact, the training and skill levels of the participants, and the safety measures in place.

Research on sports participation often focuses on these aspects rather than on the gender identity of the athletes. Additionally, most sports organizations that allow trans women to compete in women’s categories have policies in place regarding hormone levels and physical transition requirements to ensure fair and safe competition.

Overall, the claim that trans women put other women at increased risk in sports is not substantiated by evidence and is often rooted in misconceptions or biased views rather than in empirical research or injury data.

Sure and that’s why football, hockey, boxing, cycling, running, tennis and the like are all mixed-sex and never ever ever divided into female and male. Simply put, there are no physical differences between the two sexes that would justify that division.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A historic victory.

I’m still amazed by how many are willing to sign up in support of the new Lysenkoism, oh-so-confident that its current favour and influence will continue for at least as long as the rest of their lives. How can so many people (women particularly) be so easily conned by vapid word games that have no basis in truth? Are they so easily bought, so easily convinced of the power of their language to carve and bend physiological reality? Karl Rove set his sights too low; he settled for playing in the squalid little sandbox of global geopolitics; this lot is (like Lysenko) out to rewrite biology.

I still have to wonder: what’s in it for them? What reward can genderists offer them in exchange for their credibility and reputation, apart from the privilege of not being attacked (which is always provisional and revocable without warning)? Was Paula Gerber forced to write this, or was it completely voluntary? Is vocal support, however poorly reasoned, always more highly rewarded than silence? Is fleeting social cred really that valuable? Are they that blind to the absolute reality-denial upon which this judgement rests? Are their hubris meters all broken?

Men can’t become women, but if enough people talk enough slop fast enough for long enough, it seems everyone gives in.

Browbeating now backed by the power of the state. Pernicious nonsense that is nonetheless doomed to failure because of the stubborn resistance of material reality, but dangerous while it still has the upper hand. But belief in the security and permanence of that power is as sure as an investment in real estate on in icecube in a tropical sea. It can’t last.

Paula Gerber, a professor of law at Monash University in Melbourne, rejoices that “Roxanne Tickle” won his case.

Roxanne Tickle’s win in the Federal Court is a historic victory for transgender women

The fact that it’s historic disaster for women doesn’t seem to trouble her at all.

It’s been a case closely watched by the transgender community and legal minds alike. Today in the Federal Court of Australia, a judge ruled in favour of trans woman Roxanne Tickle in her anti-discrimination case against a social media app.

I just have to say, minds that have a taste for precision in language know better than to say a community and legal minds are watching something. Minds can’t watch things; that’s the job of the eyes. A community can’t watch things; that’s the job of people. The garbled metaphor isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s a mess. It’s kind of a portentous mess, because sloppiness with concepts and categories is the entire underpinning of trans ideology. Men can’t become women, but if enough people talk enough slop fast enough for long enough, it seems everyone gives in.

Much of proceedings have on around what constitutes a woman under Australian law, and whether someone’s sex can be changed.

Erm. Words missing. The law professor seems…agitated? Distracted? Confused?

But the decision’s ramifications extend far beyond the key players in the case. It’s a landmark decision in favour of protecting the human rights of transgender people nationwide.

Please explain how it’s a human right for a man to force women to accept him in a group for women. I don’t mean just say it over and over, I mean explain it. If women can’t ever get away from men, how can women even have basic safety?

The decision provides much-needed clarity regarding the meaning of “sex”, a word not defined in the Sex Discrimination Act. Importantly, Justice Bromwich stated that “in its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable”.

Importantly, maybe, but truthfully, no.

He also noted the concept of sex has broadened over the past 30 years, especially as people can change the sex listed on their birth certificates. 

Let’s do that with everything, shall we? Let’s broaden the concept of “person” to include reptiles. Let’s broaden the concept of “law” to include astrophysics. Let’s broaden the concept of “judge” to include teenagers roleplaying.

The court unequivocally rejected the argument that sex is immutable – that the sex that was presumed and assigned to a person at birth is the sex someone will always be. Justice Bromwich stated:

“The sex of a person may take into account a range of factors, including biological and physical characteristics, legal recognition, and how they present themselves and are recognised socially.”

In other words “a man is a woman if he says so, bitch.” Thanks, Justice Bromwich. Your respect for women is astonishing.

The judgment in this case provides much-needed clarity regarding the legal recognition of trans women as women.

In other words it demolishes women’s rights.

Rivkah Brown is truly horrible. Not just wrong, thick, delusional, sloppy in her thinking, but horrible.

I didn’t see all of her claims about Tickle yesterday so I failed to grasp quite how horrible she is.

There. That is horrible, disgusting stuff. She insists that the huge rancid man who set out to bully Sall Grover out of having a women-only network is the victim here, and that the woman he victimized is the baddy, and that she is driving him to suicide.

It’s warped and sadistic and foul.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Like eating Pringles.

And why should we expect otherwise? Rationalizing consequences away is normal. After all, in the absence of real consequences, you’re free to play the status game, and you really want to play that game. There is status and prestige to be gained (within your tribe) by supporting your team. The more zealous your support, the more status you earn, which necessarily means that you earn less by having any reservations or criticisms. People have to be scared out of playing the status game, because only when repressing a concern obviously costs more status than voicing it do you allow yourself to even become conscious that you have any concerns in the first place. [Nullius in Verba]

That’s so true.

I’m obsessed with finding a way to deprogram the gender zombies. I have a whole imaginary Ted Talk lined up in my head, and it’s aimed squarely at those whose endorsement of gender woo is motivated by social status over moral principles.

It involves getting them — the gender zealots, my imagined audience — to imagine not just their current social status but their future social status, too. To consider whether or not backing gender woo will give them net-positive social credit over the course of their lives, rather than simply right now. To consider their investment in gender woo as a kind of bet on the long term trends of the social landscape, rather than just the immediate conditions. That if they’re wrong, they will face terrible social consequences for having picked the wrong side. And so they better consider the evidence, for the sake of their future social credibility. It’s a bit like Pascal’s Wager, I guess.

The film and play Inherit The Wind serves as the framing device. Inherit the Wind was of course a parable about McCarthyism, despite being superficially about creationism and the Scopes Monkey Trial which had happened a few decades before.

The great trick of it was that, for all the courtroom drama on the screen (or the stage), the real people on trial were you, the viewer: it said to you that, with the luxury of time, you can look back at the rubes who stubbornly refused to accept evolution and cringe, and judge them harshly for having gotten it all so wrong. Then it asks you to look at yourself and imagine the people in the future judging you about your cowardice in the face of the Second Red Scare.

That can be extrapolated to our present era, Gender McCarthyism, or the Great Transphobia Panic, or whatever we want to call it. That if you think you’re getting off scot-free when you ignore the facts and the principles and the truth for easy social cred, you’re wrong. The bill will come due for you, as it does for everyone eventually, when they dare to deny reality.

A favourite line of mine, which I’ve quoted here at B&W before, is, “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themself into.” It’s in the spirit of that (bastardized) Jonathan Swift quote that I’m trying to reason the gender zealots out of their position by the same door through which they walked in. It’s the appeal of gaining social standing that motivates them into genderism, so it is most likely to be the threat of losing social standing that will usher them out.

Now, won’t someone give me a big auditorium full of genderists to try my bit out on?

This is silly.

For the most part, Ms Harris has shied away from describing in detail what her presidency would look like.

There’s talk of unity and a way beyond America’s divisive partisanship; a focus on strengthening the economy and reducing consumer prices; and a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion – an area of particular strength for Democrats.

But it is vague. And this vagueness may suit the Harris campaign just fine.

“Vague,” the BBC says. Have they heard of the other guy? Do they think he’s not-vague?

In other words, the vice-president’s policy vagueness has allowed her to cast as broad an appeal as possible in what is shaping up to be an election where every undecided voter counts.

It has been labelled by some as a “vibe” campaign – based at least in part on feeling and general impressions.

It’s based on not being Trump.

Why not just fold women up into smaller and smaller bundles until you can’t see them anymore? Wouldn’t that be the simplest way?

Speaking forbidden

Women in Afghanistan have been banned from speaking in public under draconian laws announced by the Taliban.

The rules, which also stop women from showing their uncovered faces in public, were approved by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the country’s supreme leader, and represent some of the strictest measures imposed on women since the Taliban regained power in 2021.

Clearly women are a kind of poison that must be rigorously controlled – like plutonium for instance. The tiniest bit of exposure can lead to a miserable death.

A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting or reading aloud in public. The law says that a woman’s voice is considered private and should not be heard by others.

Yeah. A woman’s voice is basically the same thing as her vadge.

Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the UN mission in Afghanistan, said: “Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls.”

Actual women and girls, not the pretend kind.

Adult people with adult jobs such as “journalist” now believe (or at least say) that law creates reality.

The sheer stupidity is breathtaking. (I have a feeling I’ve typed that sentence about 80 million times by now.)

There’s no such thing as being something “by law” except when the something is a matter of law.

Laws can change legal realities but they can’t by themselves change physical ones. Pass laws saying bears can fly all you like, but bears will remain obstinately earthbound.

Same with women and men. Men can shout “I am legally a woman!!” all they like but they remain men.

For a working journalist not to understand this childishly obvious fact is pathetic.

Wording tweaks.

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

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

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

H/t Arty

R U serious?

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

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

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

Women are The Enemy chapter 40 billion.

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

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

And why should we expect otherwise? Rationalizing consequences away is normal. After all, in the absence of real consequences, you’re free to play the status game, and you really want to play that game. There is status and prestige to be gained (within your tribe) by supporting your team. The more zealous your support, the more status you earn, which necessarily means that you earn less by having any reservations or criticisms. People have to be scared out of playing the status game, because only when repressing a concern obviously costs more status than voicing it do you allow yourself to even become conscious that you have any concerns in the first place.

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

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

Originally a comment by Artymorty on There she is now.

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

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

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

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

Amnesty International proudly displays its contempt for women.

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

Actual Mr Tickle: