Ah yes good old Al Jazeera. Qatar is notoriously queer-friendly right?

Yes it’s a “trans panic” to think women shouldn’t be erased from the language and shoved aside by men pretending to be women.

Oh damn, so sorry about all the bad faith arguments!

What’s wrong with this lede?

Nearly 250 people incarcerated in California prisons — the vast majority of whom are transgender women — are waiting for their chance to transfer out of a men’s institution. The longer it takes, the greater the odds that they could be raped, beaten or killed.

One major thing wrong with it is that it frames the likelihood of being raped, beaten or killed as something to “transfer out of” as opposed to something to stop altogether. I daresay men who aren’t transgender women also don’t want to be raped, beaten, or killed.

But of course the more obvious thing wrong with it is the hidden assumption that men who “identify as” women get to transfer out of men’s prison and into women’s prison, where they can be the ones posing the threat. The even more hidden assumption is that women get no say in any of this because they just don’t matter.

When in doubt, pretend women don’t exist.

A BBC television doctor repeatedly referred to mothers-to-be as ‘pregnant people’ on the popular daytime show Morning Live.

Dr Xand van Tulleken was discussing the various groups who have so far declined to have the Covid jab when he said: ‘Pregnant people, for instance, early in the pandemic there were very mixed messages [on whether expectant mothers should be given a shot] so people didn’t get vaccinated when they were pregnant and they haven’t got it subsequently.

‘Pregnant people are not unreasonably nervous about putting things into their bodies.’ 

Whatever you do, don’t let on that it’s women who get pregnant, especially if you’re a doctor, even more especially if you’re a doctor saying things on the BBC. The word “women” is a foul obscenity, so don’t ever say it.

In 2016, the British Medical Association recommended that its staff use ‘pregnant people’ instead of pregnant women.

And in February last year, midwives at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust were told to start using terms such as ‘chest milk’ instead of breast milk.

If you mention “women” they get all uppity and confident, as if they’re real people instead of brainless dress-dummies.

Why do they get to shame? Why isn’t it the other side who gets to shame? It’s not shameful to recognize a male when you see one. It’s definitely shameful for a man to steal a woman’s place and win the top prize by claiming to be a woman.

Planned Parenthood with a new and exciting story about what doulas do for “people”:

Doulas support many different types of people going through a range of life experiences — including death, gender transition, birth, and abortion. Some doulas have a specific focus, while others provide a range of care. But all doulas advocate for and support their clients in situations where they may feel alone, ignored, or dismissed.

Oh yeah? The rest of the world seems to think they’re assistants to women giving birth. They’re not medically trained, so they’re not midwives, they just do the supporty helpy hand-holdy stuff – for women giving birth. Not “people” transitioning, not people dying, just women giving birth. PP is talking as if they’re just giving us the facts, but actually they’re redefining the word without saying that’s what they’re doing.

They quote a “death doula” telling us what that is, then a “transition doula” telling us what that is, then indigenous doulas ditto, then finally actual doulas, which they call “birth doulas.”

What is a birth doula? 

Makina Table, MPH, CD (DTI) – she/her – Labor and Birth Doula

Birth doulas provide different types of support to pregnant people during the various stages of pregnancy such as the prenatal period, labor, and delivery.

Not doula not doula not doula, then actual doula but those are for “pregnant people.” It’s such elaborate erasure of women. First expand the job so that it “helps” everyone, then belatedly mention the actual job but pretend it’s not specific to women.

Doulas can also help reduce the impacts of racial bias, gender bias, and other types of inequity in health care settings. In many cases, particularly in Black, Latino, Indigenous, low-income, and/or LGBTQIA+ communities, we advocate for the pregnant person navigating a health care system that often discriminates against them or doesn’t meet their needs. We help ensure their voices are heard and that any medical information they get is clear and thorough. 

Really? While pretending that “people” give birth – that pregnancy and childbirth are not specific to women? I don’t see how people as confused as this can even know what medical information is, let alone helping ensure pregnant “people” get a clear and thorough version.

It’s become a kind of religion.

In the year since the first shots began going into arms, opposition to vaccines has hardened from skepticism and wariness into something approaching an article of faith for the approximately 39 million American adults who have yet to get a single dose.

To be fair, there’s also a kind of faith involved in thinking people should get the shots. I don’t have any medical expertise, and most people who get vaxxed also have little or none. Why do I trust the people who say get vaxxed more than I trust people who say don’t? I guess largely because of the record – there’s a pretty long record now of vaccinations working. The choice is binary, and getting vaccinated seems quite a lot safer than refusing to get vaccinated, in the way Anthony Fauci seems more trustworthy than Lauren Boebert.

But unvaccinated people like Eric Dilts, 45, a DoorDash delivery worker in St. Joseph, Mo., said he felt like the imperfect nature of the vaccines and shifting messages from public officials about boosters and breakthrough infections had validated his skepticism.

“Now you need a first shot and second shot, and now they’re talking about all these boosters,” he said. “How many shots do you need? It seems like a joke to me.”

Well, you need as many as it takes, that’s how many. Why is that such a stumbling block? To drive a car you need a steering wheel and tires and an accelerator. There’s no law of nature that one vaccination is all anyone ever needs no matter what the virus is. They’re “talking about all these boosters” because that’s the nature of this particular virus.

Meanwhile Fox News personalities continue to tell people to defy the grownups and continue to refuse to get vaccinated. It’s quite sickening when you pause to think about it: they are telling credulous people not to do a thing that will protect them and others, and they’re doing it for the sake of ratings, their personal careers, a warped version of “politics” – in short for selfish frivolous reasons. It’s a kind of slow-motion onscreen mass murder, alternating with commercials.

Sue the bastards.

Two election workers who counted votes for the 2020 presidential election filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the parent company of One America News, senior staff at the far-right TV network, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former president Donald Trump.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who worked in Fulton County, Ga., allege that One America News and Giuliani, who frequently appears on the network, knowingly spread misinformation about them, including falsehoods that they logged illegal ballots for Joe Biden in the election.

The two women “have become objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment … because of a campaign of malicious lies,” their attorneys wrote in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

I hope they win, and I hope they’re awarded an enormous sum in damages.

The lawsuit is the second filed by the women this month against defendants they say spread false and defamatory information about their role in the election. On Dec. 2, Freeman and Moss sued Gateway Pundit, a far-right conspiracy website, alleging that the site published false stories about them that they say instigated a relentless campaign of harassment and threats.

That legal action said that the abuse against the two women was so severe that they had to “change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.” At one point, Freeman left her home for two months at the advice of the FBI.

I hope OAN and its bosses and Giuliani are all stripped of everything they own except their toothbrushes.

Eight minutes to launch:

Janice Turner prefers brave goats to placid sheep.

How must it feel to have your name airbrushed from the $8 billion film franchise born of your scribbling in a coffee shop, penniless, while your baby napped? Or to watch the trio of child actors you chose and nurtured 20 years ago recall the stories which made them many times richer and more celebrated than their ho-hum talents deserve, yet not once uttering your name? Or have fools who run around with broomsticks up their backsides in college leagues change the name of quidditch, the sport you invented for wizards?

That’s putting aside the threats. Just search for JK Rowling on Twitter and see the stream of invective, the gun memes, the intent to rape and kill, the address of her family home handily displayed for passing stalkers online. For what? I’d bet few of those denouncing her even know and have certainly never read her long, thoughtful, compassionate essay.

But it turns out an author told to publish under gender-neutral initials, since boys won’t read books by girls, was a woman all along. One of the bothersome, old-fashioned types, who won’t jettison all they’ve learnt from motherhood or sexual trauma to assuage bullies or cultural fads.

Or men who claim to be women but still feel utterly entitled to stomp all over actual women.

Just as Galileo refused to bow to the Inquisition and affirm the Earth is the centre of the universe, many women just don’t, won’t, can’t believe gender is real but sex is not.

Or that men are women just as we are, that men know just as much about being women as we do, that men are subject to bullying and abuse just as we are, that men get to take everything we have while we are obliged to shut up and take it.

Only the goats stand their ground. And this has been the year of the goat. A succession of women have upended their lives, been cast out and despised just to uphold a fundamental belief. Keira Bell, who took a judicial review against the Tavistock gender service which irreversibly medicated her teenage body rather than healed her troubled mind; Sonia Appleby, who exposed safeguarding failures at that clinic; Jess de Wahls, an embroidery artist, whose work was summarily removed from the Royal Academy shop; Professor Kathleen Stock, hounded out of academia by masked protesters while her colleagues and union stood by; choreographer Rosie Kay who lost her eponymous company because she refused to disavow the intricacies of the female body she inhabits in dance.

I’ve interviewed most of these women and prior to speaking out, all experienced long nights of the soul. Fear (of losing political allies, friends and peers) battled against a burning urge for truth. But in the end, they couldn’t not speak out. It didn’t matter what happened next. They were not prepared to deny material reality, even if they never worked again. They were happy to ascend that rock face, cold and alone. But instead they found themselves alive and free, up among the goats.

Goats forever!

Charming.

The rudeness of it takes my breath away. Do all institutions and chain stores hand their social media over to rude angry teenagers?

“We understand” – that perhaps an employee wasn’t entirely truthful about what happened because it wouldn’t look very responsible or adult of the employee?

And that taunt at the end – what the hell?

I hope there were ten of them and they all come forward.

There’s this

And then there’s this

Now…has Cleese become a Muggeridge or Stockwood? Or is he still Cleese while the interviewer is a credulous point-missing inquisitor?

When Michael met Malcolm.

There’s bit where Cleese says he knew Palin was steaming. I like that because I’ve heard Palin talking about how furious he was – he did a book talk and signing here a couple of decades ago, and someone must have asked about the Muggeridge encounter: he became quite energetic about how foul Muggeridge was and how angry it made him.

John Dickson is a historian, an actual practicing working credentialed historian, with a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and a visiting scholar gig at Oxford, yet he wrote this absurdity.

A survey found that only 49% of Australians say “Jesus was a real person who actually lived.” You mean 51% don’t?! The horror!

But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.

Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary. Every classicist has it on their bookshelf. It summarises scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just over 1,700 pages. There is a multiple page entry on the origins of Christianity that begins with an assessment of what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts at all are raised about the basic facts of Jesus’s life and death.

But Professor Dickson doesn’t tell us what he considers the basic facts.

Or take the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in 14 volumes. Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period”, right about the time that Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and — yes — Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’ life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternising with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements.

Cool; what’s hiding behind that “and so on”?

There was a time when I was quite interested in the historical Jesus question, and read a fair bit about it. If I remember correctly, secular historians consider it reasonable to think the biblical account starts from a real person, although some argue it’s all or almost all (as opposed to just mostly or half or whatever) myth. It’s textual stuff – what is this account based on, what are the sources, which came first, that kind of thing. Did Tacitus really talk about Jesus? Did Jesus walk to Sepphoris when the mood took him and thus get exposed to city life and Hellenistic culture? It’s interesting, and it’s not as cut and dried as Dickson makes it sound.

Just for one thing stories about god-men were a genre at the time, so the fact that there’s a collection of stories about this one god-man isn’t particularly remarkable. It’s a bit like stories about men who metamorphose into women…

Not wanting to labour the point, but we could also turn to the compendium of Jewish history, the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period”. Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as an interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter — 60 pages in length — focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament when they think the evidence is against it. The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think about the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, and his death on a cross are all treated as beyond reasonable doubt. The authors do not tackle the resurrection (unsurprisingly), but they do acknowledge, as a matter of historical fact, that the first disciples of Jesus “were absolutely convinced that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised and was Lord and that numerous of them were certain that he had appeared to them.”

Yes, and? Lots of people are absolutely convinced of lots of things that they’re wrong about. The fact that some guys 2000 years ago were absolutely convinced that another guy “was Lord” really doesn’t tell us anything much.

H/t Gnu Atheism

Festivities.

Idn that sweet.

No terfs allowed in the coop.

Rex Murphy on The Uninvited:

Who was not invited to participate in the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special? Why, the very woman, who in the most difficult of circumstances, and by the power of her own will and invention, brought the entire phenomenon into existence. She was effectively blacklisted from the celebration of what she created while three pretentious and above all blasphemously ungrateful actors held the spotlight, and further — I’m looking for an elegant verb — dumped on the woman who made them. Made them, almost as completely as she made Harry Potter.

…

Last year when certain authorities began promoting the phrase “people who menstruate” as a replacement for a term familiar since the birth of language and the emergence of conscious life (that would be “woman”), Rowling mocked it. Which is the only both correct and necessary response to these faddish idiocies. Very recently — you will find this hard to believe — when the Scottish police issued a guidance that rapes could be recorded as being carried out by a woman if the perpetrator “identifies as female,” Rowling gave that lunacy an apt Orwell-inspired response: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.”

What if the perpetrator identifies as a five-year-old girl with a pacifier in her mouth?

Now there’s a headline.

Tesla, bowing to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

Great god almighty. As if people don’t already drive insanely enough.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion.

Meaning that currently drivers can play video games while tailgating people going the speed limit in a downpour on a dark winter afternoon. Fabulous.

“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said.

But haha manufacturers pay no attention because it’s all just so much fun.

No [clap] No [clap] No [clap]

Meanwhile the National Organization for Women, like other national and global organizations for women, should be doing its job and focusing on women, not men who call themselves women and not trans people and not “non-binary” people. You don’t see labor unions dropping all their labor issues to say Respect [clap] the [clap] bosses [clap]. Why is it that women’s organizations are so eager to throw women overboard and “center” the concerns of male people instead?

Tory MP Caroline Nokes just wants to make the Gender Recognition Act kinder.

In order for an individual to have their acquired gender recognised, a person has to prove to a panel of strangers that they will never meet – the gender recognition panel – that they are either feminine or masculine. It has caused a great deal of concern in the transgender community that the panel, in effect, sits in judgment upon them and their transition. Who is anyone to decide whether someone is feminine or masculine enough?

Well, since you ask, why should whether someone is “feminine” or “masculine” be a matter for government at all? Why should it be officially “recognised”? Why should it even be mentioned?

It’s as if there were government panels to rule on how charismatic or repellent people are, and how extroverted or introverted they are, and how cheery or gloomy they are, and so on ad infinitum. Variations in personality should not be a government issue.

The problem of course is that the GRA isn’t about just “feminine” and “masculine” because it’s also about women and men. The process doesn’t just stamp men “feminine,” it stamps them women. That’s the issue. I think Nokes probably knows that perfectly well, but she’s hiding it.

Gender identity is no longer as rigid as it once was, thank goodness. Women wear trousers. Some of us choose to eschew makeup altogether, others only on some days. Hair can be long, or short, or shaved off. But there is no way of knowing whether the panel is making judgments based on outdated stereotypes because it is devoid of transparency.

Notice what she doesn’t say. Women wear trousers, yes, but do men wear skirts? The rules for women have loosened up in some ways (and tightened in others – like the law against having pubic hair) but the rules for men haven’t. Women get to step up to clothes coded for men but men don’t get to step down to clothes coded for women…unless they claim to be women, which seems a tad drastic.

We spent months speaking to trans rights and women’s rights groups and sought to strike a path that safeguarded the rights of both. They are not zero sum – both can be supported. 

No they can’t. They are zero sum in some instances – because of the way men who identify as women push them. Putting men in charge of rape crisis services? Including men on shortlists for women’s prizes? Calling men who rape women “she” in the newspapers and in court?

All I have ever sought is to make the GRA kinder, quicker and much more understanding of the needs of transgender people and the concerns of women’s rights groups.

And yet what she writes in this very piece shows that she puts the concerns of women’s rights group last by a long distance.

Meanwhile in Crouch End –

Because men who say they are women are infinitely more deserving and important and worthy of deference and “be kind” than mere women.

This is a novel way for shops to go about things.

Bookstores deciding which books are well written and thus to be sold and which are not and thus to be unavailable to customers. What a fantastic customer service! Apparently they read all the books themselves to save the buying public time.