Empathetic?!!!

A man who accepts an invitation to give the keynote at a lesbian conference does not have a lick of empathy. A man who stands in front of room full of lesbians and pretends to be one of them does not have a lick of honesty or integrity or decency. A man who stands in front of room full of lesbians and pretends to be one of them reeks of male entitlement and ego and sense of superiority.

Of course the quislings at “Equality Network” turned off replies on this tweet, so they know they’re insulting and provoking lesbians and women in general.

Oh whew, there’s no problem then, what a relief.

Oh but wait though. Wait a second. Back up. How do we know which is which? How do we know which “trans women” are really just predatory and abusive men disguising themselves as “trans women” to get access to vulnerable women in private spaces? How do we know???

The Met Police – the ones with the horrific record of abuse of women – just can’t do enough for their trans n enby ossifers.

The Met Police are reviewing their uniform policy amid concerns some officers feel obliged to wear uniforms that do not match their gender identity. Currently, the uniforms officers wear are at a manager’s discretion, meaning that some trans or non-binary officers may feel obliged to ‘come out’ to management when picking their kit.

But “coming out” as gender-special is the whole point. It’s an announcement that One is more special than everyone else. Doing it to a manager, and watching the manager anxiously grovel, must be their treat of the year.

In his interview with MyLondon, [Chief Inspector Declan] Halton-Woodward revealed that the Met Police are also reviewing how body searches in custody can “better reflect the officer’s gender identity” – which could involve making it the default that trans women are able to search female arrestees.

At the Met. At the Met, with its history of “What’s that smell? Must be her knickers!” and retaining Wayne Couzens long enough so that he took the opportunity to rape and murder Sarah Everard. The Met is going to allow men to do body-searches of women. Of course it is.

Ron DeSantis chastised some high school students for…clowning around? Littering? Smoking? Laughing at him? Saying “like” too many times?

No.

The Florida Republican governor approached a group of students wearing masks who were standing behind a podium at the University of South Florida, where he was scheduled for a news conference Wednesday.

“You do not have to wear those masks. I mean please take them off,” DeSantis said to, at first, polite laughter. But he wasn’t kidding around.

“Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve gotta stop with this Covid theater. So if you want to wear it, fine. But this is ridiculous,” he continued.

Why do we gotta stop?

DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw defended the governor’s statements on Twitter: “I mean, someone had to say it, after 2 years of propaganda that terrified and manipulated young people. Breathe free, feel safe and be happy.”

Or, get Covid, or pass it to someone else, or both. Whatever.

Originally a comment by Omar on Puff puff puff.

Part of her wanted people to know her journey to this moment, to know what it felt like to be in a body but not be of that body.

This could be the biggest philosophical breakthrough of all time! Imagine the response from dear old Plato if he was still around. The consciousness of Lia Thomas or whatever his real name is, floats about inside his body like goldfish at constant equilibrium with the water inside its bowl; IN THE BOWL BUT NOT OF IT! Drop the bowl on the floor and smash it, and there will be the goldfish flapping about, free.

Another term for ‘consciousness’ is ‘soul’, proving that the soul is not only independent of the body, but will not die if and when the body dies. The soul is therefore immortal.!

One important question remains. Does this apply to all souls, or just to the souls of trans types.? If just to the latter, I should imagine that there will soon enough be a trans-rush, to make the 19thC gold rush to the Klondike look like a Sunday school picnic.

ALL ABOARD.!!

(Sorry about all the block caps. But there are not too many days AS EXCITING AS THIS.!!!)

It’s Women’s History Month and Robin Buckallew is again observing it by writing a story a day. Today’s is about privilege and who really has it.

NEVER POOR

The Sports Illustrated interview with Lia Thomas slobbers all over him.

Fresh off her final practice of the week, the most controversial athlete in America sat in the corner of a nearly empty Philadelphia coffeehouse with her back to the wall. Lia Thomas had done some of her best work this season while feeling cornered.

Aw diddums. Imagine how the women feel – then laugh a callous laugh and go back to fawning over Lia.

The shy senior economics major from Austin became one of the most dominant college athletes in the country and, as a result, the center of a national debate—a living, breathing, real-time Rorschach test for how society views those who challenge conventions.

He’s not “challenging conventions.” Quite the opposite – he’s exploiting a new convention in order to cheat his way to medals and records. Also, obviously, if he were genuinely shy he wouldn’t be doing any of this.

In her first year swimming for the Penn women’s team after three seasons competing against men, Thomas throttled her competition.

Interesting choice of word.

When she swims at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships, which begin March 16 in Atlanta, Thomas is a favorite to win individual titles in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events, and also has a shot in the 100-yard freestyle. She has an outside chance to break longstanding collegiate records held by Katie Ledecky and Missy Franklin, two of the most beloved American Olympians of this century. 

Outside chance? From what I’ve seen it’s considered inevitable. He’s a man.

Thomas’s story has also become a right-wing obsession, a regular topic of discussion on Fox News. Conservative opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed her, purposely using the name she went by before transitioning. Her moves have been minutely tracked by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail about her habits in the women’s locker room provided by an anonymous teammate.

Cruel? What about what he’s doing to those teammates?

“I’m a woman, just like anybody else on the team,” Thomas says. “I’ve always viewed myself as just a swimmer. It’s what I’ve done for so long; it’s what I love.” She’s not thinking about wins or records, she insists. “I get into the water every day and do my best.”

And what possible reason could we have for not believing a word of that?

Every day this season felt like a challenge to her humanity. Part of her wanted people to know her journey to this moment, to know what it felt like to be in a body but not be of that body. She wanted people to know what it was like to finally live an authentic life and what it meant for her to finish a race, to look up at a timing board and see the name lia thomas next to the names of other women. What it meant to her to stand on a podium with other women and be counted as an equal.

Now let’s talk about those other women, the only actual women on the podium – let’s talk about what it meant to them to have him standing there towering over them.

Lia Thomas has spoken up.

Thomas was recently interviewed by Sports Illustrated and is on their daily cover.

“I just want to show trans kids and younger trans athletes that they’re not alone,” Lia Thomas told SI. “They don’t have to choose between who they are and the sport they love. I’m a woman, just like anybody else on the team. I’ve always viewed myself as just a swimmer. It’s what I’ve done for so long; it’s what I love. I get into the water every day and do my best.”

I don’t believe him. I don’t believe that is what he just wants. I think what he wants is to win a lot of races and break a lot of records. Also he’s not a woman “just like anybody else on the team.” The “just like” claim is completely wrong and false. He’s much, much bigger than they are. Swimmer’s Mother said his back is twice as wide as any of the women’s – which may not be literally true, I don’t know, but we can see from the photos that he is indeed massively bigger than they are. The shoulders alone tell the story. He’s bigger than it’s physically possible for women to be.

Her success in the water has been a controversial topic in swimming this season, but Thomas said she wants to continue to swim.

“I don’t know exactly what the future of my swimming will look like after this year, but I would love to continue doing it,” Lia Thomas told SI. “I want to swim and compete as who I am.”

Of course he would. More easy wins, more prizes, more records broken.

Always finding a new low.

Priorities.

The Russian Football Union said it will go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) to appeal against its ban from international competitions after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday, Russian football clubs and national teams were suspended from all competition “until further notice” by Fifa and Uefa.

The union said it would file one lawsuit against football’s world and European governing bodies, demanding Russia’s men’s and women’s national teams be allowed to compete.

Or, you know, they could just look at the bigger picture and take the hit. Putin is not their fault, but he’s not Ukraine’s fault either, and look what’s happening to them.

ACLU pushing girls in front of the train again.

Nobody’s trying to “push trans youth out of public life.” We’re trying to prevent males from invading and destroying everything women have. The ACLU couldn’t care less about women and our rights.

Be careful.

A personal trainer died after taking caffeine powder the equivalent of up to 200 cups of coffee, an inquest heard.

At one time, that is – not drinking 200 cups, which would take a lot of time, but taking 200 cups’ worth of caffeine all at once.

Caffeine is used by some gym-goers, with some fitness websites recommending it for improving sports performance in certain doses. However, experts have warned that when taking powders there is a risk of consuming over the recommended amount.

On Tuesday an inquest heard Mr Mansfield began clutching his chest and complaining his heart was beating fast after consuming the product. Minutes later, after going to lie down, he began foaming at the mouth.

And then he died.

The hearing was told the scales Mr Mansfield had used to measure the powder had a weighing range from two to 5,000 grams, whereas he was attempting to weigh a recommended dose of 60-300mg.

Caffeine is powerful stuff. Be careful.

More on Prymachenko and the Russian war crime:

The Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, located northwest of the capital city Kyiv was burnt to the ground, along with 25 works by Prymachenko, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Vlada Litovchenko, director of the Vyshhorod Historical and Cultural Reserve, confirmed the “irreparable loss.”

“Numerous historical and architectural monuments and archaeological sites are under threat of artillery shelling and uncontrolled movement of heavy military trucks,” Litovchenko wrote in a statement on Facebook that was translated into English.

From that statement:

Click on the tweet to see all five paintings.

How sweet.

LB+ women? What’s that supposed to mean? Men, I guess. Lesbian, bi, and male women.

That’s not what it’s called though. It’s called Lesbian Lives.

Reminds me of the time a man renamed the last Women in Secularism conference “Women and Femmes in Secularism.” It wasn’t his conference to rename.

The shoutout to the man Susan Stryker of course underlines the point. “Hahaha women you don’t get to have anything of your own. Hahaha lesbians we get to make you pretend this hulking man is a lesbian, and give him top billing. Sucks to be you.”

Smash their culture, smash their art, smash their history, smash their beauty.

Wrong sort of lesbians, wrong sort of women, wrong sort altogether – must not be allowed to say no to men.

An academic and gay rights campaigner has claimed critics of Nicola Sturgeon’s transgender reforms are being “excluded from the political process” in Scotland after she was blocked from joining a Holyrood LGBT group.

Dr Shereen Benjamin said that she was viewed as “the wrong sort of lesbian” after MSPs and pro-trans rights lobbyists unanimously decided to refuse her membership of a Scottish Parliament forum, which she said she had wanted to join to find common ground with opponents.

The right sort of lesbian is a male one, and the only slightly less right sort is the fan of the male one. Male lesbians and allies of male lesbians are welcome; real lesbians with a concern for women’s rights are very unwelcome indeed.

It’s bizarre, really, how taken for granted it is the the T belongs with the LGB when in fact it’s the opposite of the LGB. The T expects the L and the G to look right past sex and pay attention only to the detachable accessories of sex – and all this half an hour or so after the L and the G finally succeeded in getting some rights and protections.

Last December, she applied to join the Scottish Parliament’s cross-party LGBTI+ group as a representative of For Women Scotland, one of the most prominent grassroots campaign groups, which opposes SNP plans to overhaul the Gender Recognition Act.

But nooooooooo – we can’t have a lesbian feminist on the “LGBTI+” group; that would never do.

At the previous meeting of the group, set up in 2016 to “promote and discuss issues of importance to the LGBTI+ community in Scotland”, members had backed the idea of hearing from more “women’s sector” groups.

…

“It seems the only lesbians the Scottish Parliament wants to work with are those who deny the materiality of sex. As same-sex attracted women, it appears that we’re the ‘wrong sort of lesbians’ and can be excluded from the political process, with no reason given.”

It’s the same-sex part. That used to be because of homophobia, but now it’s…um…Perfect Enlightenment.

The meeting, which saw Ms Benjamin’s application turned down, was attended by seven MSPs and 26 others, including representatives of Stonewall, the Equality Network and Scottish Trans, which are outspoken supporters of the SNP plans.

Stonewall is there to keep the lesbians out. Bitches.

At least three of the non-MSPs in attendance have shared a cartoon image online which links For Women Scotland, which formed in 2018, with the Ku Klux Klan.

What cartoon?

This one:

Updating to add:

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on The single most stunning response.

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA64), in Title VII protecting employment for example, it is unlawful to discriminate against an individual “because of” this list of protected characteristics:

race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

Promoters of the Equality Act (EA) say it “completes” the CRA64 by “adding” protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The public might assume this means the EA would “add” those characteristics to the list like this:

race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity

If so, then the word “sex” would still mean the sex binary (as the Supreme Court interpreted “sex” in the CRA64 as recently the 2020 Bostock decision), and we could discuss how some rights may need to be balanced (e.g. between “sex” versus “gender identity”).

But no, in the text of the EA, in Section 7 for employment for example, it says to strike the word “sex” and replace it with the phrase “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity)”. That would make the list:

race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), or national origin

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that in the EA: 1) The word “sex” no longer means the binary (undoing 50+ years of case law), 2) The word “sex” is undefined (and I see no preamble to define it), and 3) It is not clear how to talk about balancing rights of “sex” (e.g. female sex) versus “gender identity” with the EA word “sex” undefined.

The ACLU is operating in this framework, where the word “sex” is undefined, so they can simply remove it as superfluous, and protect “gender identity” instead.

President Biden signed an Executive Order on his first day in office to apply the EA wording to all federal organizations. So while the EA is not yet the law for everyone, there is broad support for the EA, including the Biden administration.

Kara Dansky’s book The Abolition of Sex has much more to say along these lines. I have a copy, but I have not read it yet.

Yesterday we saw that University College Cork is putting on the 25th annual Lesbian Lives Conference, and that the first Keynote Presenter is Susan Stryker, a man. It’s interesting to see how he presented himself as a visiting professor at Yale.

He looks a little bit…burly.

Normally, of course, it’s obnoxious or worse to judge people on their appearances, but there is a genuine issue of male v female bodies here, along with issues of presentation and what one can get away with and so on. Stryker looks a bit like Steve Bannon. Very few women can get away with looking like Steve Bannon, and even fewer would feel 100% safe challenging him.

In other words why doesn’t it bother Susan Stryker that he looks intimidating? Why does he feel so okay with looking intimidating that he has a photo of himself with tatoos in a muscle shirt on his Yale faculty page?

I don’t know the answer to that.

Even Switzerland.

Switzerland will adopt all the sanctions that the European Union has imposed on Russian people and companies and freeze their assets to punish the invasion of Ukraine, the government said in a sharp deviation from the country’s traditional neutrality.

“We are in an extraordinary situation where extraordinary measures could be decided,” President and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told a news conference in Bern on Monday, flanked by the finance, defence and justice ministers.

What a beautifully Swiss name. Italian and French, plus it means black currant aperitif.

Switzerland also adopted financial sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, effective immediately, and closed its airspace to most Russian aircraft.

Switzerland has steered clear of imposing sanctions in a string of crises, including when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

But now Russia is invading and pummeling the whole damn country.

The EU’s head diplomat, Josep Borrell, welcomed the move and said it was “good news” that transferring money to Switzerland would no longer help Russian oligarchs.

…

[T]he government faced growing pressure from the EU, the United States and thousands of protesters who marched in Bern on Saturday calling for it to side clearly with the West against Moscow.

Well done protesters.

Glinner has a transcript as well as a backup of the video.

A couple more excerpts:

The Ivy League released their statement literally dripping with sexism. I quote “the Ivy League releases the following statement of support regarding Penn’s Lia Thomas’s participation on the women’s swimming and diving team. Over the past several years, Lia and the University of Pennsylvania have worked with the NCAA to follow all the appropriate protocols in order to comply with the NCAA policy on transgender athlete participation and compete on the Penn women’s swimming and diving team. The Ivy League has adopted and applies the same NCAA policy. The Ivy League reaffirms its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment for all student athletes while condemning transphobia and discrimination in any form. The League welcomes her participation in the sport of women’s swimming and diving and looks forward to celebrating the success of all of our student athletes throughout the season.”

It sounds so right-on, so solidarity fist in the air, doesn’t it – “The Ivy League reaffirms its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment” – but of course it isn’t. The Ivy League is providing a non-inclusive environment: it’s excluding women. The man Lia Thomas is occupying a woman’s place on the team, and he’s stealing wins that would have been women’s. That’s not “inclusive.” Nor is it celebrating the success of all its student athletes, since it’s allowing a man to take that success away from a woman. The Ivy League is just blatantly lying by saying it’s committed to inclusivity for all.

Mandatory meetings were called with scripts read off by coaches from the athletic department or in some cases handed out. The girls, already caught off guard and intimidated but upset, were now silenced. They were manipulated, coerced and emotionally blackmailed. They were told their leagues and their schools had spoken and made their positions clear. They as athletes had made the decisions to be a part of these schools and this league and they needed to support it. They were told if they had opinions, or were asked to speak, they had to clear it through their coaches and their athletic department leaders. This was also of course for their own protection as no one wants their team slung through the mud. Finally, they were told their first priority needed to be the safety and protection of their trans classmates who are being thrust into the media. Any harm or damage that befell their classmates due to expressing opinions that might not support them would be their responsibility.

Breathtaking. Move over; resign yourself to being bumped down a notch by a man who claims to be a woman; shut your damn mouth about it; if anything bad happens to the man it’s your fault.

How do these people live with themselves? I’ll never understand it.