Says Jolyon Maugham, who never stops giving away women’s rights.

Laurie Penny had a brief moment of partial spine and said in a tweet that the bullying of Kathleen Stock was a little over the top. Then she deleted the tweet.

She left a reply up though.

Do tell feminist women they’re wrong wrong wrong but don’t use smoke flairs and giant signs.

No mention of women being harmed of course.

She doesn’t bother to remove Kathleen from these conversations, which would have been a touch more thoughtful than sending her yet more abuse via the furious replies.

The bit where she takes it back:

So she reflects, and reverts to joining the team in bullying Kathleen some more. At the behest of one of the bullies.

Then tweet after tweet after tweet, most of them also going to Kathleen, in which Laurie Penny apologizes and withdraws it all and apologizes some more. It’s contemptible.

The Telegraph reports:

Women prisoners who call transgender inmates by the wrong pronoun could face extra time in jail under equality rules, says a justice minister.

Female inmates who deliberately call a transgender woman “he” or “him” could be punished under rules barring “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”.

So…in that scenario why is it the woman who is being “threatening” or “abusive”? Why isn’t it the man? Why are women being treated as a threat to men when the reality is the other way around?

That’s before we even get to “are you fucking kidding me, women will be punished for not repeating a lie?”

This summer, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to prevent transgender inmates with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women being imprisoned alongside other women.

So, women in prison have to put up with men convicted of violent or sexual crimes being locked up with them, and they have to pretend those men are women, on pain of further punishment.

How do the people in charge manage to stay blind to how grotesque this is?

Lord Wolfson added: “The Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service are committed to advancing equality, eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation.”

No they’re not. They’re not advancing women’s equality, nor are they eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation of women.

Finally.

President Joe Biden will restore the boundaries of three American nature reserves, known as national monuments, that were reduced in size by former President Donald Trump to allow commercial activity, the White House said on Thursday.

The restoration will protect more than 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Southern Utah known as the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, as well as the nearly 5,000 square mile (8,000 sq km) Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England.

This is good.

Ix-nay on the executive privilege ploy. Dude you don’t even go to this school.

Joe Biden has blocked an attempt by former US president Donald Trump to withhold documents from Congress related to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

There’s no “executive privilege” that lets you try to overthrow the government and then hide your homework.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden authorized the National Archives, a government agency that holds records from Trump’s time in office, to turn over an initial batch of documents requested by a House of Representatives select committee investigating the riot.

“The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations,” Psaki told reporters. “The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the Trump White House that have been provided to us by the National Archives.”

…

The decision, which affects only the initial batch of documents reviewed by the White House, sets up a potential showdown with Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the events of 6 January and sought to recast the rioters as “patriots”. The Guardian reported that he plans to sue to prevent release of the documents if necessary.

“Showdown.” Come on. He’s out of office, he’s in debt, he’s looking stupid. This isn’t the OK Corral.

Is it possible?

The healthline item is from 2018. I think I’ve seen it before, and probably written about it here, but I haven’t been able to find anything here. Apologies if I repeat myself.

The trick turns out to be easy.

Yes, it’s possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own. In fact, it’s probably a lot more common than you might think. In order to explain, we’ll need to break down some common misconceptions about how we understand the term “man.”

Oh, that. They mean women who call themselves men can get pregnant. Yes no kidding, we know that already.

Many AFAB folks who identify as men or who don’t identify as women have the reproductive organs necessary to carry a child.

Duh. All of them do unless they have a serious abnormality. This isn’t some crapshoot that nobody can really predict, it’s what everybody already knows.

Yes, pigs can fly, if you define eagles as pigs. Yes, frogs can teach physics, if you define frogs as humans who have learned physics. Yes, jumbo jets can be submarines if you define submarines as jumbo jets.

Another disaster:

There’s never a good time for an oil spill. But the most recent ones — in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida last month, and then this past weekend, in the ocean off Huntington Beach, Calif. — have come right in the heart of the fall migration of hundreds of millions of birds.

…

These journeys are perilous, even in the best of times. Flying thousands of miles requires vast amounts of food and protected habitats. But more and more of the wetlands, marshes, forests and fields needed to support migrating birds have been filled in, cut down and paved over. As a result, the remaining refuges are few and far between, overcrowded and vulnerable to even slight disruptions.

The Southern California spill is the worst sort of disruption. It tarred beaches and fouled a rare, fragile coastal wetland. And it happened at the peak of fall migration, in a spot especially important to the Pacific Flyway.

Southern California’s beaches and remnant marshes offer sanctuary for thousands of migrating birds, including threatened and endangered species. Oil from the spill penetrated these marshes before adequate protective barriers could be put in place, raising the prospect of long-term damage. Birds are already dying.

Oh look, a cruise ship.

Trump identifies as not broke, but…

Former President Donald Trump provided “misleading information about the financial situation” of his hotel in Washington while he was in office, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

The committee, which recently obtained documents from the General Services Administration, found that Trump reported his hotel in downtown D.C. brought in $150 million in income while he served in the White House, but the hotel actually incurred more than $70 million in losses.

It depends on who’s asking. If it’s the IRS, losses losses losses. If it’s potential dupes, profits profits profits.

“By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel,” the committee said Friday in a news release.

When Trump first applied to lease the Old Post Office Building in 2011 for his hotel, he also provided the federal government with information that the committee said “appeared to conceal certain debts.” Records show Trump specifically didn’t show outstanding balances for properties he owned in other major cities like New York, Chicago and Las Vegas, the panel said.

And why is that? Because the outstanding balances would make him a bad bet. Kind of like if anyone else is seeking a mortgage and doesn’t tell the lending bank about some large debts.

The committee also said the newly obtained documents show that from 2017 through 2020, the Trump International Hotel in D.C. received about $3.7 million in payments from foreign governments, which it said raises “concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.”

While he served in the White House, Trump also received “a significant financial benefit” from Deutsche Bank that allowed him to postpone making payments on the $170 million loan for the hotel, the committee said.

“Mr. Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was president,” the committee said.

But he made up for it by throwing candy at Angela Merkel.

Now there’s an easy challenge.

Yes, of course I believe that trans women are not really women, because that’s what “trans women” means. I’ve been coming out and saying it for years. This is not “like” lesbians and women of other marginalized groups, because those women are all women, but trans women are (by definition) men.

There’s no need to beg, no need to say please, I’m perfectly happy to say trans women are not really women. Just ask.

I was going to say that to Serano instead of here but he’s locked his account. I guess other women have been saying it to him.

As another citizen of Twitter said, well done those women.

Also in Trans Activists Hell Bent On Expelling Everyone Who Fails To Endorse The Dogma:

Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special is facing a wave of intense backlash after the comedian once again made jokes directed toward the LGBTQ+ community and defended the author JK Rowling, who has been previously accused of transphobia.

“Who has been previously accused,” says Maya Yang sanctimoniously.

Journalism needs to do a better job on this. Lots of people have been “previously accused of transphobia,” because journalists and others don’t hold these accusers to account. They don’t insist on a clear and exact definition of “transphobia,” so what they get is just 17 trillion venomous accusations which don’t mean anything. We’re all accused of “transphobia” as long as we don’t echo every stupid syllable of the Tranz Gospel while putting money in the plate. The reality is that none of it is “transphobia”; what it is is a rejection of the idiotic new dogma and the commands to forget all about sex because now it’s only “gender” that counts, and what gender is is whatever you want it to be, darling, provided you’re not one of those horrible transphobes we need to exclude for the sake of inclusion.

In The Closer, which premiered on Tuesday on Netflix, Chappelle declared himself a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (Terf) alongside Rowling. “They canceled JK Rowling – my God. Effectually she said gender was fact, the trans community got mad as shit, they started calling her a Terf … I’m team Terf,” the comedian said in the special, which is one of the most watched pieces of content on the streaming site.

“Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact,” Chappelle added, before saying that “trans women’s” genitalia are “not quite what it is”.

He means sex is a fact, but anyway, yes. Gender shmender blender, but women do the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping the supply of humans going.

Netflix subscribers have urged the streaming platform to take down the special, with the National Black Justice Coalition saying, “With 2021 on track to be the deadliest year on record for transgender people in the United States … Netflix should know better. Perpetuating transphobia perpetuates violence.”

See? It’s the magic expanding suitcase of “transphobia.” Saying that men don’t gestate human beings isn’t transphobia, it’s reality.

Now arguably saying it with irritation (as I just did) is a kind of transphobia, but it’s a narrow kind that also needs to be spelled out as opposed to assumed. A lot of us do say it with irritation, it’s true, but that’s because it’s 1. bullshit and 2. harmful, and because we’re not allowed to say so. It’s bullshit the way religion is bullshit, the way reincarnation is bullshit, the way the claim that there’s a magical race of beings hiding behind a planet is bullshit, the way recovered memory is bullshit. Claiming that physical sex is trivial and meaningless and that what determines who is a woman and who is a man is what’s inside each person’s head is peak bullshit, and if we can’t tell irritable jokes about it…well then we’ll just tell more irritable jokes about it.

Yang goes on to report more complaints and protests and argle bargle, while not saying anything about objections to the complaints etc etc, merely quoting Chapelle complaining about them and then giving another complainer the last word. Not exactly a balanced piece of reporting.

Oh yes, of course there’s another aspect to this business of Trump’s determination to stop people testifying and producing evidence now that he’s out of office. What is that aspect? Four little words.

Ohhh right! Obstruction of justice! That’s what he’s doing, and it’s a no-no. Witness tampering: no no, not allowed, put the phone down.

Of course that means nothing if the Justice Department looks the other way out of politeness or some such shit.

Dennis Kavanagh says the tide has turned.

Note the “empathy, compassion.” Not for the likes of Kathleen Stock of course.

But it didn’t work out the way he expected.

Some “women’s officer.”

Trump’s goons plan to ignore the subpoenas, because he told them to. Telling them to equals telling them to invite prosecution and conviction and a sentence, but whatevs, that’s their problem.

All four Trump aides targeted by the select committee – [Mark] Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel – are expected to resist the orders because Trump is preparing to direct them to do so, the source said.

It’s not clear how Trump can “direct” them to do anything. He’s not their boss and he’s not god of the universe. They don’t have to do what he tells them to do.

But increasingly concerned with the far-reaching nature of the 6 January investigation, Trump and his legal team, led by the ex-Trump campaign lawyer Justin Clark the former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, are moving to instruct the attorneys for the subpoenaed aides to defy the orders.

So the ex-boss’s attorneys are “moving to instruct” the underlings’ attorneys to protect the boss at their own expense. But the underlings’ attorneys are the underlings’ attorneys, not the boss’s. I don’t see how the boss’s lawyers get to “instruct” the underlings’ lawyers to throw their own case. I hope they send a message back instructing Trump to go fuck himself.

Trump’s strategy mirrors the playbook he used to prevent House Democrats from deposing his top advisers during his presidency. The former White House counsel Don McGahn, for instance, only testified to Congress about the Mueller inquiry once Trump left office.

Yes but the key difference there is during his presidency. This isn’t that.

House select committee investigators had demanded that the four Trump aides turn over emails, call records and other documents related to the Capitol attack by Thursday and then appear before the panel for closed-door depositions next week.

But with the former president expected to insist to Philbin that Meadows, Scavino, Bannon and Patel mount blanket refusals against the subpoenas, the source said, the select committee at present appears likely to see none of the requests fulfilled.

Again – what force does Trump’s “insisting” have? Who cares what he insists? He’s just some guy who cheats at golf.

Brighton and Hove News reports:

A targeted campaign against a philosophy professor accused of transphobia has been condemned as harassment by the University of Sussex.

Posters demanding the university fire Kathleen Stock appeared on campus this morning, and smoke bombs were set off as a masked protester held a banner saying Stock Out at the entrance to campus.

The protesters say Professor Stock seeks to exclude and endanger trans people by, for example, supporting female-only spaces and sport and questioning the safety of puberty blocking drugs prescribed to minors.

In other words she seeks to support the safety of women and of minors who want to harm themselves by halting puberty. She doesn’t seek to endanger anyone, and she seeks to “exclude” men from women’s spaces, because women need some spaces away from men. Some kinds of exclusion are permissible and necessary.

This latest campaign today posted a “mission statement” on its Instagram page which said: “Stock is one of this wretched island’s most prominent transphobes, espousing a bastardized variation of ‘radical feminism’ that excludes and endangers trans people.

Yo, radical feminism is about women. It’s not about trans people, nor should it be.

It concludes: “Our demand is simple: fire Kathleen Stock. Until then, you’ll see us around.”

A University of Sussex spokesperson said: “We were extremely concerned to see the harassment towards our staff member and took immediate action in response to this, which we continue to do.”

yatakalam has been reading the ruling so that we don’t have to. It’s quite remarkable.

Nelson says she gets “misgendered” when she gets coffee or goes to the grocery store. Nonsense. Commercial transactions don’t work that way. The only pronoun likely to come up is “you.” Nelson seems to be a bit of a liar on top of everything else.

These clips are sickening to read.

More pronoun gibberish from the BC human rights tribunal:

A former server at a Gibsons, B.C. restaurant has been awarded $30,000 after a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal decision found they were unfairly terminated for asking managers and co-workers to call them by their proper pronouns.

That’s the lede and already we’re in the woods. Who were unfairly terminated? The tribunal? The restaurant? One of the advantages of non-customized pronouns is that they convey information – that’s what they’re for. They don’t always convey all the necessary information, for instance when there is more than one she or he involved, but they’re better than a vague “they” that could refer to anything, including a group of objects.

The whole article is like that – you keep having to stop to correct what you thought you’d just read. No you don’t get used to it, because it’s inherently confusing and clumsy.

The decision says bar manager Brian Gobelle was particularly hostile, repeatedly and persistently referring to Nelson with she/her pronouns and with gendered nicknames like “sweetheart,” “honey,” and “pinky” — a reference to their pink hair.

The situation eventually escalated into a verbal altercation between Nelson and Gobelle, during which Nelson touched Gobelle’s shoulder and called him “sweetheart” in return — though Cousineau determined this did not amount to a physical assault.

Touched? Or slapped? From another account I read it appears Nelson slapped his shoulder.

Nelson was fired.

“Eventually [Kingsberry] told Jessie Nelson that they had just come off ‘too strong too fast’ and were too ‘militant’ — a word that reminded Jessie Nelson of what Mr. Gobelle had said about them,” Cousineau wrote.

“They challenged Mr. Kingsberry that they were being fired because of their pronouns. Ms. Coplin recalls Mr. Kingsberry telling Jessie Nelson that ‘part of the problem is making sure you vibe with the team,’ and that they had made people uncomfortable.”

They who had made people uncomfortable? It’s unclear, it’s confusing, it’s ambiguous – just what you don’t want in a legal ruling.

Following their termination, Nelson alleged that Gobelle’s conduct towards them, and the employer’s response, amounted to discrimination in employment based on their gender identity and expression.

But when “gender expression” becomes a matter of ordering everyone to use scrambled pronouns to refer to you then you’re making the job more difficult than it has to be. That’s not a plus.

In her decision, Cousineau wrote that “like a name, pronouns are a fundamental part of a person’s identity. They are a primary way that people identify each other.”

That’s nonsense. Pronouns are not like a name, that’s the whole point of them. And we don’t get to make ordinary parts of speech personal and special to us and our precious IdenTitty, because language has to be shared to work. All these stupid narcissistic tedious road blocks are not The New Utopia, they’re a giant pain in the ass.

“Using correct pronouns communicates that we see and respect a person for who they are. Especially for trans, non‐binary, or other non‐cisgender people, using the correct pronouns validates and affirms they are a person equally deserving of respect and dignity.”

Fuck that. Life isn’t nursery school. It’s not anyone’s job to pamper and cuddle and soothe all these wounded Victims of Gender. We’re not required to use the incorrect pronouns in order to “validate” every whiny narcissist we encounter.

How is it not obvious how stupid and childish all this is? On the one hand you have the real injustice of the residential schools, for example, and on the other hand you have this ludicrous privileged spoiled-brat tantrum. How can anyone think they’re on an equal footing?

No, “preferred pronouns” are not a human right. A Canadian human rights tribunal thinks they are though.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favor of Jessie Nelson, a British Columbia restaurant server who is biologically female but identifies as nonbinary. Nelson, who asked colleagues to use “they” and “them” pronouns, was repeatedly called “she” and “her” by former colleague Brian Gobelle, who also called Nelson nicknames such as “sweetheart,” “honey,” and “pinky,” the tribunal’s ruling said. After Nelson unsuccessfully asked Gobelle to stop, the employee went to management, who declined to intervene right away, the court said. Nelson and Gobelle then got into a heated discussion about the issue, and Nelson was fired four days later for coming on “too strong and too fast” and being too “militant.”

Ok there’s more than one issue here. The male colleague should definitely not have been calling Nelson unwanted sexist nicknames, and management should have immediately told him to stop. If she then tried to tell him to stop and then got fired for it, that’s highly unfair.

But the “pronouns” are another story. She shouldn’t be ordering fellow employees to remember not to use the pronouns that come naturally, but instead ones that don’t, because that’s a lot of mental effort for a fundamentally stupid enterprise. People shouldn’t take their priceless bespoke identities to work.

“Using correct pronouns communicates that we see and respect a person for who they are,” Devyn Cousineau, a member of the tribunal, wrote in the 42-page ruling. 

One, no it doesn’t, but two, since when is that something we have to do on the job? Jobs aren’t about “seeing people for who they are,” they’re about doing the job. It all sounds so very The Office. Imagine if Michael had had pronouns to mess around with; he could have spent all day every day creating drama about them.

“Especially for trans, non-binary, or other non-cisgender people, using the correct pronouns validates and affirms they are a person equally deserving of respect and dignity.”

Again, not what people go to work for, but also – no actually it doesn’t. Using the “correct” i.e. incorrect pronouns for Certain Special People in fact betrays that they have no dignity. People who carry on about “their” pronouns are childish and laughable. Who doesn’t know that? It’s all just an elaborate pretense, this “validation” nonsense. Less “Joe forgot their invoice” and more “Oh grow up” would be the way to go.

Nelson felt it was important to bring the fight for equality for all transgender and nonbinary people facing discrimination, according to a statement provided during the testimony portion of the tribunal.

It’s not [bad or unlawful] discrimination to call a woman “her.”

“I am here today in bringing this forward because it is important for me, as a trans person, to have my existence respected. I’m a human being with a beating heart and a desire to be seen and valued and heard in the world,” Nelson testified.

Then do something worth seeing and valuing and hearing. Having Special Pronouns is not it.

The tribunal also ordered the restaurant to implement a pronoun policy.

They’ll need an eyeroll policy with that.

Other government entities have taken steps toward promoting gender-neutral policies, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently urging “pregnant people” to get vaccinated against COVID-19…

Yes and that’s a bad thing. These Special Flowers in search of Recognition and Validation are shooting the legs out from under feminism, but they’re too stupid and too self-obsessed to realize it. They’re poisonous.

First, a news item from the Toronto Star August 21 [warning: graphic violence]:

Rhoderie Estrada went to sleep likely around 10 p.m. after folding laundry, watching Korean dramas and putting her three young daughters to bed in their two-storey East York home.

In the early hours of May 26, 2018, her husband came home to a nightmare — Estrada lying bloodied on their bed with head injuries too severe for him to perform CPR.

Now, after five days of deliberations, a jury has found Yostin Murillo and David Beak guilty of the first-degree murder and sexual assault of Estrada, a 41-year-old long-time dialysis nurse at St. Joseph’s hospital who adored — and was fiercely protective — of her children.

Fast forward to September 28:

One of a duo convicted of bludgeoning a woman to death after breaking and entering her home, robbing and raping her is now seeking transfer to a women’s prison. Fearing the inmate’s pattern of repeat violent criminality may be a barrier, transgender activists are protesting as discriminatory a clause in the prison policy that allows male convicts to be denied transfer to women’s prison if deemed a health or security risk.

Yes because obviously the tender feelings of a man who raped and beat a woman to death are far more important than the fears of women who will be forced to share prison space with him.

Also obviously he’s definitely sincere about Feeling Like A Woman Inside and not at all using the policy of putting men in women’s prisons if they say they are trans as a way to get away from other men and at vulnerable women.