So now it’s your sexual preferences.
Yers it’s “rigid” to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Truly decent people are omnisexual, not that we’re judging you or anything, we’re just judging you.
Nobody should ever be pressured, but everybody should definitely be judged. Nancy Kelley is judging you.
I took my dog friend/client to Union Bay Natural Area this afternoon. It’s on top of what used to be a garbage dump but is now teeming with wildlife.
The trees were bare, unlike in this photo, but you can see what it’s like. On our way in I thought I saw an eagle perched up ahead then decided nah then decided oh, yes it is, and it was. Looking around, and then grooming under a wing. Cooper and I kept going after I watched the eagle for a while, and we were somewhere along this trail in the photo when I saw a couple of swans fly by, and then saw a whole group of them on the water. I counted at least 13, so there are at least 15 hanging out there. I didn’t know they stopped off in Seattle at all. Not too shabby.
I googled later and found a bird watcher’s log: they’re Trumpeter Swans. He saw 16.
Is it still 2015?
How original. ALL women, including men. Yes dear, we know, we’ve heard it before. We’ve replied before. It seems a bit dim to be saying that at this late date as if it were a brand new and interesting thought.
Also, big, small, short, tall, aren’t the same kind of modifier as “not.” Big and small women are of course women. Men who call themselves women are not comparable to big or small women for purposes of argument. Men are not women by definition, so no, you can’t just say “Wull small women are women so why can’t men be women?” It’s dumb.
And then “transphobic bile” and “my mentions” – you sound like a teenager. Do you want to sound like a teenager?
Apparently he does.
Inherent dignity has nothing to do with claiming to be something you’re not and then bullying anyone who doesn’t passionately agree with you and talk solemn nonsense about your inherent dignity. Nothing.
“Transphobic rant,” “my mentions” [again!] – it’s all so childish. Maek you look silly. And “summarily” blocked? What, because we were expecting trial by jury? Get over yourself.
The crux of the swimmers’ complaints is the biological advantage that Lia has over female teammates. The swimmers were promised competition between females, not men who want to be female. Yet, there’s also the matter of an apparently inflated ego.
“She compares herself to Jackie Robinson,” the female swimmer told me. “She said she is like the Jackie Robinson of trans sports.”
But Lia Thomas isn’t in trans sports. If he were there would be no problem. Lia Thomas has forced his way into women’s sports, thus ruining it for the women. He’s not the Jackie Robinson of trans sports, he’s the comet striking women’s sports.
“I try not to be around her because the whole situation makes me so mad,” the swimmer added. “I don’t think Lia is a bad person. She’s very quiet and kind of introverted … It’s just really hard for me to respect her at all because of what she’s doing to my team and what she’s doing to women in general and not caring.”
Well that is a bad person though. That describes a bad person.
Mind you, he’s also young, and could become a better person over time. But what he’s doing, and his indifference to the consequences for people who are less strong than he is, is bad, and that makes him at least situationally a bad person.
“She laughs about it and mocks the situation,” the female swimmer told me. “Instead of caring or showing that she cares about what she’s doing or what she’s doing to her teammates, she’s not sympathetic or empathetic at all. Lia never addressed our team. She never asked if it was OK. She never asked how we felt. She never tried to explain how she feels. She never has said anything to us as a group. She never addressed anything.”
“All she does is make comments to people like, ‘At least I’m still No. 1 in the country,’ and those kinds of cocky things,” she said. “She doesn’t care how all this is affecting us and how this is affecting our relationship to swimming. She doesn’t care, and it makes it really hard to like her.”
Indeed, and that difficulty in liking is a pretty good sign of a Bad Person.
“On our last training trip, we were told not to wear Penn gear on our trip to Florida, on the off chance that we would get harassed or anything,” she said. “So, everyone went out of their way — now, about 75% of our athletic wardrobe is Penn — we went out of our way to not pack any Penn stuff. Except Lia. Every single day at the airport and at the gym, Lia made sure to wear a big Penn shirt with ‘Penn Swim and Dive’ on it. And she was the only one. We weren’t allowed to wear it because of her, and she did it every day.”
“She was doing it just to make a point,” the swimmer said. “We all went out of our way for her.”
In other words he was rubbing the women’s noses in it. I say not a good person.
The school has warned the swimmers to be careful in what they say in response to inquiries about the situation because they did not want to see anyone “jeopardize their future.”
Is that a threat? That sounds like a threat to me. “It would be a shame if anything happened to this nice little future of yours.”
“We were told, ‘You guys can say whatever you want, but we don’t want you to ruin your future. So, we will help you, whatever you want to say,’” the swimmer said.
Whatever you want to say that won’t ruin your future according to us, the people who are forcing you into this grotesque unjust farce.
Yesterday evening Professor James Treadwell, a criminologist at Staffordshire University, announced his dismay on Twitter at being accused of “transphobia”. The details are vague, even to him. He has not been presented with evidence and he doesn’t and may never know who has accused him.
The issue is Professor Treadwell’s tweeting in favour of the right of female inmates to a single-sex prison estate. In a series of tweets on 27 December 2021, Professor Treadwell outlined his experience of the manipulative behaviour of violent sex offenders who will use loopholes to “game” the criminal justice system. He was clear that his tweets were not directed at the transgender community. He wrote:
“The idea that sex offenders are manipulative individuals who would exploit systems and laws could only be unreal to those who do not know how manipulative sexual offenders can be. All groom, seek to exploit and control.”
We’re talking about men convicted of sex crimes here. Why wouldn’t they be manipulative and prone to exploiting systems and laws where possible? Why wouldn’t they pretend to be trans women? It’s not “they’re trans, therefore evil,” it’s “they’re convicted sex criminals, therefore they have every motive to pretend to be trans women.”
“It isn’t about trans people, it’s about bad people who will exploit the law from self interest and work within a legal framework (that could protect women’s spaces) to do as they want and get what they want. You think that won’t happen, you don’t know how many sex offenders act.”
And you’re not even considering the obvious likelihoods.
Today, Professor Treadwell is in the awful position of fearing for his job; for a few tweets about a subject that he is specifically qualified to speak on. Meanwhile an effective message is simultaneously sent to his academic colleagues nationwide, that they could be targeted next. He is not the first and he won’t be the last. Many criminologists are choosing to look the other way. Professor Treadwell felt that he could no longer do so. His professional integrity appears to be exactly what he is being persecuted for.
Much the same thing happened to Jean Hatchet, who wrote the above.
This is the problem. Once the word “transphobia” is uttered, little else matters. Once it is written down the battle begins. It is like being blindfolded before being flung into a gladiatorial arena. You have no idea who or what you are fighting, and you have no weapons. You experience paralysing terror at what these unfounded accusations might do to your life. The loss of your job, home and everything you hold dear. A cold descends upon you and fear replaces the initial confidence that you have done nothing wrong. You can shout all you want about the unfairness, about your good character, your right to a personal belief, the boundary to your private life; but when the word “transphobia” is flung in your face, that incorporeal mud sticks immediately and it is up to you to prise it off over agonising months.
And of course “transphobia” can mean simply not believing that people can change sex. We have two choices: say we believe the magic, or risk losing everything.
We must keep speaking. Women in prison don’t have a voice and we must be the voices that protect and safeguard them. The criminal justice system has failed these women by placing sexually violent men amongst them. Society has failed many of them before they even get to prison. 82 per cent are incarcerated for non-violent or petty crimes like shoplifting. Much of this “crime” is the result of poverty and debt and committed by women who have been brutalised by men over and over again.
And they don’t have the out that men have. Saying they’re trans men and want to transfer to the men’s prison is obviously not a solution, and neither is staying where they are once men who call themselves trans are added.
Remember that story about the landslide last week? And that I added in a comment that one dog was killed and another was missing so probably also toast?
Well…
A breach in the defenses perhaps:
An upsurge in teenagers requesting hormones or surgeries to better align their bodies with their gender identities has ignited a debate among doctors over when to provide these treatments.
An international group of experts focused on transgender health last month released a draft of new guidelines, the gold standard of the field that informs what insurers will reimburse for care.
How about informing the well-being of the patient first?
A new chapter dedicated to adolescents says that they must undergo mental health assessments and must have questioned their gender identity for “several years” before receiving drugs or surgeries.
How about questioning the very idea of “gender identity”? How about not treating it as a real and detectable thing, as opposed to an idea in search of people to believe it?
Some of the drug regimens bring long-term risks, such as irreversible fertility loss. And in some cases, thought to be quite rare, transgender people later “detransition” to the gender they were assigned at birth. Given these risks, as well as the increasing number of adolescents seeking these treatments, some clinicians say that teens need more psychological assessment than adults do.
Ya think? It’s almost as if teenagers are easily influenced by their fellow teenagers, with whom they spend most of their time.
Oath Keepers guy charged with sedition.
Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged with seditious conspiracy for organizing a wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol last Jan. 6 and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, federal law enforcement officials said.
I think that might be a fairly serious crime.
The arrest of Mr. Rhodes was a major step forward in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and the case marked the first time that prosecutors had filed charges of sedition.
…
The Oath Keepers, along with the Proud Boys, have emerged as the most prominent far-right extremists to have taken part in the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors have collected reams of evidence against them, including encrypted cellphone chats and recordings of online meetings. They have charged its members not only with forcing their way into the building in a military-style “stack,” but also with stationing an armed “quick reaction force” at a hotel in Virginia to be ready to rush into Washington if needed.
In other words they can’t plausibly claim to have been just protesting, just telling Congress how they felt, just demonstrating their loyalty to the coward Trump. My guess is that a lot of people who were there can plausibly claim that, and that it’s true of some of them, but it’s always appeared that some were organized and not messing around.
Their cover story is that they were there to provide security for people like Roger Stone.
But at least four Oath Keepers who were at the Capitol that day and are cooperating with the government have sworn in court papers that the group intended to breach the building with the goal of obstructing the final certification of the Electoral College vote.
…
Mr. Rhodes has been a fixture on the far right almost from the day in 2009 that he announced the creation of the Oath Keepers at a rally in Lexington, Mass., the site of a famous Revolutionary War battle.
At the event, Mr. Rhodes laid out an antigovernment platform for the current and former law enforcement and military personnel who joined his group, saying that his plan was for members to disobey certain illegal orders from officials and instead to uphold their oath to the Constitution.
During the years that President Barack Obama was in office, the Oath Keepers repeatedly inserted themselves into prominent public conflicts, often playing the role of heavily armed vigilantes. In 2014, for instance, they turned up at a cattle ranch in Nevada after its owner, Cliven Bundy, engaged in an armed standoff with federal land management officials.
Of course they did. What cause could be more glorious than helping individuals steal public lands?
But after Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers pivoted away from their antigovernment views and appeared to embrace the new spirit of nationalism and suspicions of a deep-state conspiracy that had taken root in Washington. Like other far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers also opposed — often physically — the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis.
See this is where mention of BLM and George Floyd is relevant. When calling JK Rowling names, not so much.
I find I have to go back to the dreadful Quisling LSE blog post by Ilaria Michelis, because there are just too many irritations and outrages to ignore.
The impact of their rhetoric and political action has been and will continue to be devastating for trans people, from the halting of reforms to the Gender Recognition Act despite public support, to ever more intense levels of transphobic violence taking place online and offline.
What is online violence? Besides an oxymoron? And note the very selective catastrophizing. Oh oh oh trans people; women, meh.
I explore the function of so-called ‘gender critical’ feminism as a reactionary response to anti-racist and decolonial campaigns…
And by “explore” she means “make up.”
In July 2020, JK Rowling infamously decided to take a very public stance on the issue of trans rights and women’s safety through a series of tweets and an essay.
“Infamously.” JK Rowling dared to say something, in public of all things, and another [white!!] woman calls that infamous and hints that it’s brazen or rude or privileged to be so public about it.
As Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests spread around the world in response to George Floyd’s murder, and as Edward Colston’s statue was toppled to highlight Britain’s lack of accountability towards its colonial past, the novelist’s choice to use her substantial platform to reignite the debate on trans rights appeared highly insensitive and a product of her current class and race privilege
What utter bullshit. Censorious, creepy, witch-hunty bullshit. It is not the case that people stopped talking about other things as BLM protests spread, nor was it expected or demanded that they should.
Alyosxa Tudor asks “How bored and annoyed must JK Rowling be that she thinks the perfect moment in which she can reheat her […] comments is the height of Black Lives Matter?” (emphasis mine).
Emphasis hers; emphasis stupid. People are always talking about more than one thing. Feminists are allowed to talk about feminist issues even at “the height of” BLM. Michelis is of course carefully ignoring the fact that many gender critical feminists are Black.
One of the core arguments of so-called ‘gender critical’ ideology is that trans women cannot be fully ‘accepted’ as women because their experience of womanhood is not identical to that of cis women…
Ah ah stop right there. It’s not that it’s “not identical,” it’s that it’s the opposite. It’s that male people can’t have “their experience of womanhood” because their experience is necessarily, by definition, experience of manhood.
… and trans women can therefore not fully comprehend or empathise with the supposedly universal subordination of women. This argument rests on the fiction of a single female experience, a fiction which has routinely silenced and side-lined women who experience racism, colonial domination and other forms of oppression that cannot be singularly attributed to their gender.
No no no no. Not the same thing at all. A dishonest manipulative piece of rhetoric.
Depictions of trans women as deceitful monsters seeking to violate the purity of innocent young women and their ‘safe spaces’ recall all too clearly the starkly racist representations of Black men during the Jim Crow era.
All too clearly? More like a window plastered in mud.
Media and public attention towards BLM and global struggles against racism and coloniality have increasingly challenged white women, including white feminists, to consider their own participation and complicity in systems of white supremacy and imperialism. Concepts like “white fragility” and “white women’s tears”[5] have become mainstream…
Indeed they have, and guess why. Guess whose interests that diversion promotes.
Perhaps JK Rowling was indeed quite annoyed because BLM and other anti-racist movements had decisively shoved the conversation away from the narrative of white women as the ultimate victim towards the long overdue recognition that Black, Brown and other racialised and minoritised groups, and amongst them Black trans women, suffer incredible levels of daily violence which many white women can barely imagine.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps Ilaria Michelis is aligned with the Eating People’s Faces Party…or perhaps not, but let’s just throw it out there for credulous people to embrace. That’s the approach of the whole piece.
But he identifies as royal; surely that’s all that’s required?
The Queen has removed a range of military affiliations and royal patronages held by Prince Andrew, Buckingham Palace has said. The move comes after a US judge gave the green light for her second son to face a sexual assault civil lawsuit.
Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Thursday: “With the Queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and royal patronages have been returned to the Queen. The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”
The dramatic move comes hours after more than 150 military veterans wrote to the Queen to ask her to strip Andrew of his honorary military roles amid what they described as their “upset and anger”. The palace had said earlier on Thursday that it had no comment on their open letter.
It’s almost as if the whole system is archaic and impossible to justify. Why does he have a whole string of honorary military roles in the first place?
The veterans add in their letter, which was partly coordinated by the campaign group Republic: “Officers of the British armed forces must adhere to the very highest standards of probity, honesty and honourable conduct.
“These are standards which Prince Andrew has fallen well short of. It is hard not to see, when senior officers are reportedly describing him as ‘toxic’, that he has brought the services he is associated with into disrepute.
“We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged.”
Now that would be interesting.
She thought of it, therefore it’s true. Boy does that make fact-checking easy!
She couldn’t unsee “the connection” she made up in her own febrile brain. Well hey, I can play that game too. She posted this article at the height of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, so I can’t un-see the connection. It’s right there, staring me in the face!
Shall we take a look? It’s every bit as stupid and insinuating and jargon-ridden as you’d expect.
Re-centring white victimhood in the age of Black Lives Matter: a ‘gender critical’ project?
Self-proclaimed ‘gender critical’ feminists have grown increasingly loud within the UK political space over recent years.
Sneering in the very first words. How dare we proclaim ourselves gender-critical feminists? What a nerve! We’re supposed to call ourselves evil transphobic cunts, obviously. And we’re “increasingly loud”…says a woman who probably also considers herself a feminist.
The impact of their rhetoric and political action has been and will continue to be devastating for trans people, from the halting of reforms to the Gender Recognition Act despite public support, to ever more intense levels of transphobic violence taking place online and offline.
In short we’re killing trans people with our rude self-proclaimed insistence on talking.
I explore the function of so-called ‘gender critical’ feminism as a reactionary response to anti-racist and decolonial campaigns which aims to both reclaim the centrality of white women as the ultimate victim in public debates, and to divert attention from calls to recognise and address the role of feminist movements in upholding systems of white supremacy and imperialism worldwide.
Blah blah blah. It’s all in the playbook.
“White” feminism on trial again.
Open Democracy adds its lashes to the dead horse.
“When the trans community is discussed in the British media, there is a particular word that crops up again and again,” said Niamh Simpson, a trans illustrator and community organiser from Oxford. “That word is ‘debate’.”
A trans illustrator? So he identifies as an illustrator but actually can’t draw a recognizable stick figure?
“Trans people cannot simply exist. We must justify our existence in the public arena – in a format that is inherently dehumanising because it assumes that a fundamental aspect of our personhood is up for discussion.”
Ha no. “Trans people can’t simply exist” because they have to be always telling us about themselves. Trans people are the last people who want to “simply exist” and get on with their lives in peace – they want the rest of us to devote all our attention to them.
Simpson was one of more than a dozen speakers who addressed a crowd of trans people and allies outside the BBC’s London headquarters on Saturday (8 January), protesting against the broadcaster’s “agenda of hate and discrimination”.
What about the trans agenda of hate and discrimination? The activist wing of trans people is not exactly cuddly or eager to persuade.
2021 was the deadliest year on record for trans people: at least 375 trans, non-binary or gender nonconforming people were murdered worldwide, most of them trans women or transfeminine people of colour. At least 125 of these murders took place in Brazil…
…among trans women who worked in the sex trade. 375 worldwide is not a huge number.
There are several more paragraphs of the same stale flat reheated sludge. It’s almost as if they have nothing to say beyond “oh poor us, pay more attention to us, ignore those bleeding women over there, oh poor us.”
People may eventually get bored with it.
Loathsome man.
He’s a Republican representative from Ohio.
Linda Blade on the Lia Thomas question:
The recent editorial in Swimming World Magazine defending the right of Lia Thomas (LT) to swim as a woman deserves a response.
Allow me to begin this critique with applause for author Lucas Draper (LD). As a female athlete who self-identifies as a man, LD has chosen the ethical pathway in competing in a much more difficult field with male swimmers rather than to be competing unfairly against fellow females while doping.
Unfortunately, in the manner typical of proponents of gender ideology, LD’s editorial comments deploy escalating levels of emotional gaslighting.
Facts and arguments don’t make their case, so emotional bludgeoning is all they have. Unfortunately it works.
Fourthly, there is an appeal to victimhood while victimizing others: “Lia Thomas experiences far more scrutiny over her physical form than I will ever have to deal with” and putting the focus on LT is “mean.” Also, Lia “does not deserve to be at the center of this issue.” Yes, of course LT is scrutinized! Because being biologically male in a female competition is not fair. Scrutiny by officials and the public is part of sports. It is not being “mean.” LT chooses to be in the spotlight.
He also chooses to compete against women half his size.
Contrary to what was presented to the NCAA back in 2011, all research to date indicates that medical intervention is completely inadequate in transforming a male body into the female design – anatomically or physiologically – as discussed in this review of the literature by Hilton and Lundberg.
Given the overwhelming scientific evidence now available showing that males will always maintain a physical advantage over females in sports involving strength, speed, power and reaction time, the NCAA must undertake a re-assessment of its policy ASAP!
No matter how much emotional blackmail is sent their way.
Things are not going all that well for Boris Johnson. Now that everyone has been discussing that “work party” for days he has admitted it was a booboo and “apologized” – if it can really be called apologizing when it doesn’t happen until it has been discussed into the ground and out the other side.
The prime minister says he went into the garden of Downing Street on 20 May 2020 to thank staff before going back into his office 25 minutes later.
He says in hindsight he should have sent everyone back inside.
“In hindsight” meaning “now that everybody is screaming at him and won’t shut up.”
He says he should have recognised that even if it could be seen as technically inside the guidance there would be millions who would not see it that way.
The PM ends his statement by offering his “heartfelt apologies” to the House and to those who were not able to see loved ones at the time.
Yes very heartfelt which is why it took him days and days to admit.
It doesn’t get much more absurd than this.
Who is Brian Piddick? Profile: Lib Dem Spokesperson on Home Affairs in House of Lords. Ran for Mayor of London 2008 & 2012.
He’s a politician. That’s what he does. Politicians engage with lots of people; that’s what they do. It’s the nature of the work: engaging with lots of people. Yet here he is complaining because lots of people are talking to him.
Maybe he identifies as a recluse?
Originally a comment by Artymorty on THIS is the culture war.
Latsot, you’ve really nailed it here. It’s all about narratives now. People want a tidy story to explain things, not the complicated, underivative truth. A tidy and familiar and comforting story. This is dangerous because sometimes the truth doesn’t have a precedent to model itself on; we can’t just rely on pattern recognition and narrative familiarity to figure out what’s real and true versus what’s illusory and untrue.
It’s pattern recognition and narrative familiarity that has led everyone to treat gender identity ideology like it’s just as simple as Gay Rights 2.0. It’s also what’s behind the cringeworthy line “my truth” that I hear all the time among certain people. What they’re saying is, I’ve made sense of something complex by making it comfortable and familiar and digestible to me, and that’s what truth means to me: comfort and safety.
It’s probably also behind the fact that the entertainment industry only wants to reboot and repackage old familiar “media properties” these days: they treat entertainment consumers (a creepy way to describe what are otherwise known as people) like they don’t have the energy to invest in entirely new stories — new ideas — anymore.
If we take it a step back and speculate about why this is happening now, I guess the primary culprit has to be information overload due to social media and the internet? We have access to everything and everyone all the time now, and social media algorithms have eroded our attention spans to the point that it feels too exhausting to sort the truth out, so we just seek comfort instead. It’s quite depressing.
More and more I feel like civilization can’t survive the Internet age unless we start formally teaching everyone how to manage our lives in the digital age. Maybe the Three Rs of elementary school should become four: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Reason(able thinking in the digital age).
Last year was New Zealand’s hottest year on record, according to the country’s National Institute of Water and Aeronautic Research (NIWA), and seven of the past nine years are among New Zealand’s warmest ever. The country’s steadily rising temperature brings increased risk of major floods, bushfires and storms.
And – surprise! – that’s not going to change.
The increases won’t end anytime soon without significant action on climate change, said Victoria University of Wellington’s Dr Nathanael Melia. “Every year we spin the roulette wheel of weather variability; however, like a casino, we have rigged the game, and the hothouse always wins in the end.”
…
In July 2021 heavy rain engorged the West Coast’s Buller River, accelerating its flow to 10 times its normal rate – the highest recorded in a New Zealand river since 1926. The resulting flood devastated the town of Westport. Many residents had to be evacuated after hundreds of houses were inundated, causing an estimated NZ$132m in damage. Development West Coast’s chief executive, Heath Milne, expects the rebuild to take up to two years.
Meanwhile in the Pacific Northwest a fire destroyed a British Columbia town. Tomorrow is today. Next year is tomorrow.
Washington state now appears to allow minors to undergo life-changing gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.
Under a new law, health insurers must cover “gender-affirming” care, including surgical treatments that were previously denied coverage. Democrats rejected a proposal to apply the new law to patients over 18 years old.
So young Billy age 13 can get his penis lopped off and present his parents with a fait accompli? Seems a bit rash.
Up until this law, gender reassignment surgery and other procedures like facial reconstruction or laser hair removal were considered cosmetic by health insurance companies. Due to its classification as cosmetic, health insurers did not usually cover the procedures, even when doctors medically recommended them.
If only it were just “cosmetic.”
The source self-identifies as “conservative talk radio” but…sometimes the other team has its head up its ass.
