Speaking of Dillahunty and dogmatism and the infallibility of personal beliefs…from last year:

Jonathon Van Maren writes:

French clinicians are also now taking a stand. In an open letter published four days ago on the L’Express website (and covered almost nowhere in the international press), over fifty medical professionals and prominent academics, including doctors, legal experts, educational experts, philosophers, sociologists, psychiatrists, judges, and psychoanalysts, excoriated transgender ideology and condemned “sex reassignment” in children. Published in association with the Observatory of Ideological Discourses on Children and Adolescents, the letter is worth reading in full:

The link doesn’t work, but we can read the translation JVM shares.

We can no longer remain silent about what appears to us to be a serious drift committed in the name of the emancipation of the “transgender child” (the one who declares that he was not born in the “right body”). Radical discourses legitimise requests for sex change on the basis of feelings alone, which are set up as the truth.

That right there is an important point that doesn’t get enough attention. Feelings are…not necessarily reliable as to the truth of a matter, even the truth of one’s own physical or mental state. Feelings can mislead. I think we all know this if we think about it, which often takes some nudging. Mere lack of sleep can cause very bleak moods, and if we don’t know this we can draw wild conclusions, then wake up the next morning wondering what the hell got into us. Feelings are not necessarily the truth, not even our own feelings about our own inner state, however paradoxical that may sound.

Perhaps thinking it might provide an answer, the Scottish Government has issued new LGBT inclusion guidelines since 12 August, under which children from primary school age will be able to change their names and gender at school without their parents’ consent. Without their consent and even without their parents being informed if the child requests it.

Sure, because children of six or seven know so much more about “gender” than their pesky stupid benighted parents do.

What is happening in our neighbouring countries could very quickly happen in France: the protean diffusion of these beliefs has resulted in a considerable inflation of requests for sex changes among children and more particularly among teenage girls in recent years...

Trivialised speeches claim that we could do without the biological reality, the sexual difference between men and women, in favour of chosen singularities based solely on “feelings”. These misleading ideological discourses are transmitted on social networks where many teenagers with identity problems come to seek solutions to their malaise. In the name of “self-determination” – a slogan that appeals to all progressives — children and teenagers are convinced that they can change their sex with the help of hormone treatments or even mutilating surgery. This rhetoric, spread by activists in many Western countries, uses fallacies designed to deceive.

How did we get here? And do we (still) have the right to react without being insulted or threatened? How can these rights to self-determination be a fulfilling progress? This phenomenon, the “transgender child”, is in reality a contemporary mystification that must be vigorously denounced because it is a matter of ideological embrigadement [recruitment]. They would have us believe that, in the name of the well-being and freedom of each individual, a child, freed from the agreement of its “reactionary” parents, would be able to “choose” its so-called gendered identity.

But the child is a being under construction, his or her future is in constant evolution before reaching a stage of maturity. Neuroscientists, developmentalists, psychoanalysts, child psychiatrists, paediatricians and all specialists in early childhood are unanimous on this subject.

So the child doesn’t necessarily have a stable “gender identity,” and anyway we don’t really know what “gender identity” is. Where does gender identity stop and marketing begin? Is gender identity really anything more than the accumulated ideas of what women wear and look like and say and do, ditto men? If it’s not, can we really be confident that it’s a thing as opposed to a string of impressions?

We denounce this abduction of childhood. It is now urgent to inform as many citizens as possible, of all professions, of all sides, of all ages, about what could well appear tomorrow as one of the greatest health and ethical scandals, which we would have watched happen without saying a word: the commodification of children’s bodies. For by persuading these children that they have been “assigned” a sex at birth, and that they can freely change it, they are made lifelong patients: lifelong consumers of hormonal chemicals marketed by pharmaceutical companies, recurrent consumers of ever more surgical operations in the pursuit of the chimerical dream of a fantasy body. 

Don’t we think pharmaceutical companies have already made a pretty decent haul, what with the opioids and everything?

Confusion reigns, largely maintained for the purpose of manipulating humanity in its deepest substratum: its evolution, its temporality, its wanderings and its doubts. In the name of rejecting a supposed gender assignment, we are in the process of witnessing, embarrassed, without understanding anything, an identity assignment. Thus Claude from the Club des cinq, once described as a tomboy, is now presented as transgender. We could laugh about it if it weren’t symptomatic of our era, which is struck by political radicalisms that pre-empt all debate.

We could laugh about it if it weren’t trashing so much of the world we need to live in.

Where vaccine-resistance gets us:

The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public.

An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the country has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines.

Why? Because we also have one of the highest rates of stupid.

The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.

That’s absolute numbers though, so it’s debatable whether the rona is the deadliest. Deadliest in absolute numbers but not per capita.

Not that that’s anything to brag about.

“This Delta wave just rips through the unvaccinated,” said Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan. The deaths that have followed the wide availability of vaccines, he added, are “absolutely needless.”

This is why I stare in disbelief at Twitter warriors raging at vaccination.

The recent virus deaths are distinct from those in previous chapters of the pandemic, an analysis by The New York Times shows. People who died in the last three and a half months were concentrated in the South, a region that has lagged in vaccinations; many of the deaths were reported in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. And those who died were younger: In August, every age group under 55 had its highest death toll of the pandemic.

…

Vaccines have been proven highly effective in preventing severe illness and death, and a study from the C.D.C. that was published in September found that after Delta became the dominant variant, unvaccinated people were more than 10 times as likely to die of the virus as the vaccinated were. The study, which spanned from April to mid-July, used data from 10 states, New York City, Los Angeles County and King County, Wash., which includes Seattle.

But the Twitter warriors shout that it’s the government wanting to control us.

But the recent deaths have left families and friends, some of whom said they had thought the pandemic was largely over, stunned and devastated. Weary doctors and nurses voiced frustration that many of the patients whose lives they were now struggling to save had shunned vaccines.

I’d be voicing more than frustration.

Vaccine mandates have begun to take effect in some states and within some companies, and on Friday, California became the first state to announce plans to add the coronavirus vaccine to other vaccinations required to attend school, starting as early as next fall. But only 65 percent of the eligible U.S. population is fully vaccinated. The nation’s vaccination campaign has been slowed by people who say they are hesitant or unwilling to get shots, amid a polarized landscape that has included misinformation from conservative and anti-vaccine commentators casting doubt on the safety of vaccines.

But why? That’s what I’ll never get. It’s like saying doctors are the enemy, or fire departments are stealing our souls, or clean water is the devil’s work.

More calls to fire and shun people who don’t believe men are women:

AN SNP politician has retweeted a message calling for Joanna Cherry to be expelled from the party.

Kirsty Blackman, the MP for Aberdeen North, appeared to endorse the post amid an ongoing row over trans rights.

Or trans “rights.” The issue gets wildly confused because of the chronic failure to specify which “rights” we’re talking about. Just saying “trans rights” makes it sound as if the issue is basic human rights, when in fact what is contentious is the claim that men who identify as trans have a “right” to invade women’s spaces and take women’s prizes and jobs with no questions asked. It’s not a basic human right to be “validated” as whatever you say you are. If it were we could all identify as the Queen and sleep in her bed.

Ms Blackman retweeted a message from another user which read: “If my party truly stands for trans rights and equality, if our stance is truly ‘zero tolerance’, then it has to start from within. Joanna C must be expelled from the SNP.

“Show the people of Scotland and the rest of the UK that ‘zero tolerance’ means exactly that.”

Yeah, show the world that the SNP has zero tolerance, that sounds like a great idea!

Zero tolerance of what, dumbfuck?

Zero tolerance of ignoring the rage of dumbfucks on Twitter?

The Edinburgh South West MP [Joanna Cherry] was sacked from the SNP’s Westminster front bench in February amid deepening divisions in the party.  

This morning, she tweeted: “As a lesbian & a feminist I’ve spent a lifetime campaigning for equality & to be clear I support trans rights.”

What I don’t support is the right of any man to self-ID as a woman & access the single sex spaces which the #EqualityAct protects for women & girls.”

What I’m saying. I too support trans rights, meaning the same human rights everyone has. I don’t consider it even slightly a “right” to self-ID as a woman and proceed to grab everything that belongs to women – it’s the opposite of a right, an anti-right, a force that steals other people’s rights.

Meghan Cook at Insider informs us that contestants on Survivor have just one set of clothes, so they can’t change into dry clothes after swimming. That’s not healthy.

Insider has previously reported on the potentially life-threatening consequences of wearing the same clothes and underwear for an extended period of time.

(Mind you, they could wear underwear and dry their clothes, then wear clothes and dry their underwear. But never mind, that’s a tangent.)

Gynecologist Dr. Mary Jane Minkin also previously told Insider that sitting around in damp clothes can create “a wet, moist, warm environment” that can lead to unwanted bacteria and yeast.

Specifically, competing in wet clothes for extended periods of time puts players with vaginas in an especially risky position since urinary tract infections disproportionately affect people with shorter urethras, according to Minkin.

Ahhhh yes, players with vaginas and people with shorter urethras.

I wonder if Dr. Minkin really did say that, or if Meghan Cook changed her words for her, the way so many helpful reporters do these days.

Shall we follow that link to players with vaginas? Yes let’s.

It’s straightforward until the last few paragraphs. Before that it’s about women who have to deal with menstruating while doing the survivor thing. They’re called women, the normal pronouns appear. Until…

According to multiple “Survivor” players, getting an extra pair of underwear is rare, even if you’re on your period. But it’s not unheard of.

Stott said she was able to change her underwear on “about day 30” after she lost a visible amount of weight.

She also said she heard that Beck received a second pair of underwear, adding that if “you have certain issues, they don’t just leave you hanging.”

Certain issues like chunks of endometrium in your knickers.

But Patel said this was an exception to the rule. She said that if competitors with vaginas readily received extra underwear, others might complain and “consider that an advantage.”

Did she? Did she really say that?

She told Insider that it was just another reason why players who menstruate had to “be tougher” to succeed on the show. 

Did she tell Insider that? Or did Insider change “women” to “players who menstruate”? Thus blithely obscuring the point that it’s women who have to be tougher.

Via a comment by WomenAreWomen.

Oh dear. That would be all the feminist women he’s blocked.

What a question from a guy who is so determined to ostracize and silence women who defend our own boundaries and our very definition. He wants to amplify our voices now after all these years of obsessive de-amplification? And he finds it obvious that he’s talking exclusively about women?

Catherine Bennett notes that judges and cops and politicians are still saying that some women deserve to be murdered:

[Sarah] Everard was, Lord Justice Fulford said, “a wholly blameless victim”. Ah. The other sort – the woman who contributes to her own death at the hands of a pitiless stranger – evidently lives on in the mind of the senior judiciary. Forty years after the police and prosecution virtue-rated victims of the mass murderer Peter Sutcliffe, the criminal justice system applauds a female victim who lives up to the highest patriarchal standards. Sir Michael Havers said at Sutcliffe’s trial that “perhaps the saddest part of the case” was that “the last six attacks were on totally respectable women”.

As opposed to whores, he means. Of course, if Sutcliffe had murdered any johns Sir Michael Havers wouldn’t have ruminated on their failure to be respectable – it’s only women who become suitable murder victims via transactional sex.

Turning to the mitigating arguments, Fulford acknowledged of Couzens that “some of his colleagues have spoken supportively of him”…But only thanks to the judge did we discover that even after he was known to have kidnapped and killed, the depraved Couzens – with his prostitutes and violent pornography – enjoyed support from colleagues. Are they among the officers now being investigated?

Is the Mayor of London reinstating Joan Smith as co-chair of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) board? No. I expect the same No applies to Bennett’s question. Are any male-dominated institutions doing anything about misogyny and violence against women besides uttering brief platitudes about it? No.

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, was among the prominent men tweeting their abhorrence: “Enough is enough. We need to treat violence against women and girls as seriously as terrorism.”

Sometimes, you gather, it’s acceptable to discuss endemic male violence against women and girls and sometimes it’s not. Just before the Everard verdict, Lammy had angrily dismissed women exercised by this very subject as “dinosaurs”. Women who value women-only spaces – where they feel safe from male violence – he characterised as “hoarding rights”.

Hoarding rights at the expense of men who want to invade those spaces. We need to take violence against women and girls seriously, and we need to welcome men into women’s spaces and punish any women who object.

Lammy, along with some Labour colleagues, simultaneously denounces male violence, then, taking victim-blaming to as yet unprecedented levels, is furious with any women concerned about losing the few places that individuals he depicts as terrorists can’t access.

So which bit of it can we conclude they really mean?

Not the first bit.

Speaking of “people who need abortion rights,” I’m horrified to see that even Margaret Talbot is doing it. She does at least say “women” too, but there’s way too much peopleing.

Starting with a “women” passage:

Mississippi’s brief to uphold its law offers, among other rationales, the assertion that women’s lives are so much freer, more equal, and more replete with birth-control options now than they were in 1973, when Roe legalized the right to abortion nationwide, that we can let that right go by the wayside.

You know what that’s like? It’s like the Supreme Court saying, in the Shelby ruling, that voting rights are not an issue any more, so we can stop protecting them. It was RBG who said that’s like throwing away your umbrella because it’s not raining right now. Why are women’s lives freer and more equal? Partly because of abortion rights, duuuuuuuuuh.

Furthermore, even in an egalitarian society with reliable access to contraception and to child care for all, people will still want, and should be able to exercise, agency over the intimate, life-transforming decisions of when, or whether, to have children. Many people will still feel a need to end pregnancies for reasons—health risks and crises, destructive or failed relationships, personal economic hardship, the needs of other children—that have little to do with prevailing social conditions.

There it is (and not for the last time.) People. Why say people? It’s women. This burden falls on women.

The procedure that anti-­abortion lawyers want to portray as an unnecessary and outmoded privilege (and a shameful one) is a form of medical care that hundreds of thousands of people turn to each year, low-income people in particular. (Half of all abortions are obtained by people living below the federal poverty line.)

By women. Men never need abortions.

Not everybody can afford or obtain reliable birth control. And, ­despite Abbott’s absurd claim, there will always be people who become pregnant through coerced unprotected sex.

Women. It’s women that happens to. It doesn’t happen to men.

I’m wondering if an editor made her write it that way. She’s not your average trend-following dim bulb.

All those people shouting “freedom freedom freedom” in response to mask mandates? They’re stooges for the Koch brothers.

There’s a letter to school administrators going around, invoking the sacred institution of Parental Choice.

“I do not believe little kids should be forced to wear masks, and I urge you to adopt a policy that allows parental choice on this matter for the upcoming school year.”

But the heartfelt appeal is not the product of a grass roots groundswell. Rather, it is a template drafted and circulated this week within a conservative network built on the scaffolding of the Koch fortune and the largesse of other GOP megadonors.

That makes the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, the latest salvo in an inflamed debate over mask requirements in schools…

Ok ok ok but Parental Choice is sacred, you know. If parents choose not to take their kids to a doctor even when they’re desperately ill, that’s their Choice. So is masking during a pandemic. All Choice is sacred, and Parental Choice is Sacred Squared, only more so.

A pair of CDC studies published last month found that schools with mask requirements saw fewer outbreaks than those without them, and that pediatric cases rose faster in counties where schools had made masking a matter of personal choice.

Yes but do we want fewer outbreaks? Don’t we want more? Isn’t the idea that we want fewer outbreaks a fiendish liberal plot to destroy the family and make Critical Race Theory the national religion?

This is the kind of thing that makes this conflict so maddening.

First, “I’ve also discovered today, which I did not know, that @MForstater has publicly said women should be denied access to women’s spaces if other women think they look like men.”

Wrong. There’s no “think they look like men” about it. We all publicly say that men should be denied access to [at least some] women’s spaces. That’s it, that’s the say. Men should stay out of women’s spaces. It’s not so much “denied access” as “don’t ask in the first place.” It’s just no. Way too many men are deeply weird about women (see: Wayne Couzens), and we don’t want them in places where we pee or change tampons or nurse babies or recover from rape or heal from major surgery. We want privacy from men when we need it. It’s simple, and it has nothing to do with “if other women think they look like men.”

And that “has publicly said women should be denied access to women’s spaces” bit is the maddening ploy – pretending trans women really are women and that that’s obvious and that everyone accepts it and that there’s just nothing to discuss. It allows her to accuse us of being meanies to women, which is stupid but also tragically effective.

Two, “I can’t support the creation of an underclass of women who have no safe space away from men because they aren’t what people like @MForstater think a “woman” should look like.” The same all over again but 100 times more so. They aren’t women. Men are not an underclass of women. Women are the underclass here, not men.

It’s so gullible, and smug, and taunting, and bullying, and obnoxious.

Also Coppola had blocked Maya and then she did tweet after tweet tagging her after blocking her. What’s the point of that? To get her fans to bully Maya, presumably.

Class traitors. They suck.

Trump thinks Twitter should be forced, forced, to let him use Twitter to incite insurrection and civil war.

“Plaintiff Donald J. Trump respectfully moves for a preliminary injunction directing, inter alia, Defendant Twitter, Inc. and all persons acting in concert with Defendant, to reinstate Plaintiff’s access to Defendant’s social media platform(s),” the filing said.

It argued that Twitter was “censoring” Trump by indefinitely banning him from the platform, adding that the company “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate.”

Violent insurrection and civil war are not open democratic debate. Trump has zero interest in open democratic debate.

Twitter banned Trump from its platform on Jan. 8, stating that two of his tweets had violated the company’s policies and citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” The unprecedented move came after the riot on Jan. 6 in which hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack that resulted in five deaths and left about 140 police officers injured.

Not open democratic debate.

Alex Jones is liable.

Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, is responsible for all damages in two lawsuits stemming from his false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “giant hoax,” a judge ruled this week.

District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., issued default judgments Monday against Jones and Infowars after he did not comply with court orders to give information in a pair of 2018 lawsuits brought against him by families of two children killed in the 2012 massacre. Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims that the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which killed 26 people, 20 of whom were young children, was a “false flag” operation carried out by “crisis actors.”

And “damaging” is putting it mildly. Imagine being a parent of one of those young children and knowing that Alex Jones is playing this kind of sadistic game with your child’s murder.

Gamble’s ruling, which was unsealed Thursday, lambasted Jones and his website’s parent company, Free Speech Systems, for having “intentionally disobeyed” the court’s requests and showing “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard” in not turning over documents related to this and other lawsuits filed against him. Jones has already lost several defamation lawsuits related to his Sandy Hook falsehoods and was previously ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to families who have sued him. Nine families have sued him over the years.

I hope he has to get a job at a Dollar Store.

I’m not the only one who thinks so, either.

There are many many more furious retorts, but they’re all replies so the Guardian tweet would reappear with each one so I’ll leave it at that.

The Guardian is trolling us.

Pregnant and breastfeeding people are facing abysmal vaccination rates and increasing health risks from the Delta variant, and they urgently need to be vaccinated, experts warn.

…

Only one-third of pregnant adults in the US have received the Covid vaccines – less than half the vaccination rate of all American adults. And stark disparities exist among different communities, with only 15.6% of Black pregnant people vaccinated so far.

At the same time, pregnancy is a risk factor for serious illness from the coronavirus. Being pregnant and unvaccinated doubles the risk of needing intensive care for those who have Covid, and leads to a 70% increased risk of death. In August alone, 22 pregnant people died from the virus.

…

It’s also important to vaccinate breastfeeding parents, both to form a cocoon of immunity around newborns and to pass antibodies through the milk, experts say.

New research reveals the Delta variant is hitting pregnant people harder than ever before. A study published this month found the hospitalization rate for pregnant patients more than doubled since last year, because of the Delta variant.

The byline on this contemptible Newspeak garbage is Melody Schreiber. Why the Guardian editors allow it (or do they mandate it?) is more than I can figure out.

“We’re very concerned that this is hitting a relatively under-vaccinated group because pregnant patients have lagged behind the rest of the population in getting the vaccine. And because they’re more vulnerable to severe illness – it’s bad now,” Adhikari told the Guardian.

Anna Euser was 32 weeks pregnant when the shot was offered to her late last year, and she took it immediately.

At that time, there were no data from the clinical trials about how well the vaccines worked in pregnant people. But Euser is an obstetrician/gynecologist and an associate professor of maternal fetal medicine for the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She had seen first-hand the way Covid wreaks havoc on pregnant people and their families.

She may have known they were women, too, but we can’t be sure.

Now, thanks to volunteers like Euster, we do have data on how safe and effective the vaccines are among pregnant and nursing people. She was one of 827 participants in a study finding the vaccines were very safe.

But because of the rise of cases and lagging vaccination rates, Euser is now having difficult conversations with some of her unvaccinated patients: what happens if they need to deliver the baby early to help the parent fight off Covid? Who will make decisions for the baby if the parent is intubated and can’t talk?

“We really are trying to do the best for our patients and recommend vaccination, but there’s a lot of baseline hesitancy in many people,” Euser said.

Part of the reason is because pregnant and breastfeeding people are frequently bombarded by misinformation and disinformation campaigns.

“We’re dealing with coordinated misinformation campaigns, and they definitely target pregnant people,” Dr Cecília Tomori, director of global public health and community health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, told the Guardian. “Fertility, reproduction and children are main anti-vax targets from way back.”

I wonder if Euser and Tomori really did say “people” when they meant “women,” or if Schreiber altered what they said.

Now, amid the wave of cases and deaths, experts are pleading with pregnant and breastfeeding people to speak with trusted sources of information, like their doctors, about getting vaccinated.

I hope the experts are not doing that while erasing the words “women” and “mothers” from their vocabulary.

Note: the word “women” doesn’t appear once in the article or headline or subhead. Zero.

Updating to add a pathetic detail from Melody Schreiber’s About Me page:

Melody reported on health and gender in Rwanda in 2019 on a reporting fellowship with the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). 

So she’ll accept a fellowship from a women’s foundation, but she won’t use the word “women” in an article on pregnancy and COVID.

Trans-identifying man Laurel Hubbard has been named New Zealand Sports Woman of the Year. Who has not been named that?

None of these women made the cut, but Laurel Hubbard did. Hubbard didn’t win anything at the Olympics, but he made the cut.

Why?

It has to be because he’s a “trans woman” i.e. a man who identifies as a woman, and because he’s the first such man to take a woman’s place at the Olympics.

Why is that something to reward? Why is it something to make Sports Woman of the Year?

I would really like to know what the thinking is.

Man named sportswoman of the year.

New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard has been named sportswoman of the year by the University of Otago. 

So insulting. They’re rubbing our noses in it.

She is the first transgender winner of the award in its 113 year history celebrating sporting greatness. 

He is the first man to win the award for women.

Ms Hubbard competed at the Tokyo Olympics earlier this year in the 87+ kg womens’ weightlifting. 

Mr Hubbard.

Ms Hubbard, who transitioned in 2012, qualified for the Olympic Games after the International Olympic Committee changed their rules to allow women to compete if their testosterone levels are below a certain threshold. 

Mr Hubbard qualified for the Olympic Games after the International Olympic Committee changed their rules to allow men to compete if their testosterone levels are below a certain threshold. Which is ridiculous, and profoundly unfair to woman, because men retain a slew of physical advantages even if they lower their testosterone levels.

She released a statement after qualifying for the Games through the IOC thanking them for their inclusivity.    

‘I see the Olympic Games as a global celebration of our hopes, ideals and values and I would like to thank the IOC for its commitment to making sport inclusive and accessible,’ she said.

The IOC didn’t make sport inclusive and accessible, it made sport less inclusive and accessible to women, at the behest of one selfish entitled pig of a man.

But…

Everything in his power?

Really?

Then why did he sack Joan Smith without a word of explanation?

Why has he ignored her since? Why has he refused to explain or meet with her or anything else?

It was entirely within his power not to sack Joan. She wrote the damn book on the subject. He should apologize and ask her to come back. That’s entirely within his power. Empty boasting helps no one.

Originally a comment by tigger the wing on Women’s fault.

This is how I remember things were for those of us born in the fifties. When I left secondary school in 1976, all general education was still being run, and paid for, by the government. So they had a vested interest in making sure that, insofar as possible, only those teens who would stick at studying and actually gain a good degree were funnelled into university. So kids were tested at eleven to assess what kind of further learning they were suited to, and the more academically-minded kids were sent to grammar (arts and sciences track) and technical (engineering track) schools, and those of a more practical bent were sent to secondary moderns (vocational training track). Of course, regardless of the intent of the inventors of the ‘eleven-plus’ pseudo-psychological/IQ test, everybody regarded it as a simple ‘pass or fail’.

Above all this, and quite separate from it, was the for-profit educational system, of fee-paying schools. Public schools being those which would accept any child whose parents could afford the fees, and private schools being those which had stricter criteria (in addition to being able to afford the fees/qualify for a bursary or scholarship).

Regardless of intent, with few exceptions the working class kids largely went to secondary moderns and, after getting their CSEs, went into basic jobs such as shop assistants and labourers, or community college; after earning City and Guilds certificates, they went on to become nurses, secretaries and mechanics. The middle class kids largely went to grammar and technical schools, and armed with GCEs went into nice, middle-class jobs; or, with ‘A’ levels, university; and became doctors, vets, engineers, architects and the like. The upper class kids went to Oxbridge and became lawyers, CEOs and politicians.

The socialists didn’t like this at all. Dividing kids into classes at the age of eleven on the basis of an elitist IQ test is manifestly unfair, so Labour tried their best to destroy the old three-tier system and make all children go to the same secondary schools regardless of their class, and receive the same education and study for the same exams (GCSEs). It worked; unprecedented numbers of working class children started to qualify for a university education, and join the middle class. The reactionaries didn’t like this at all; they like to have people stay in nice categories for them to boss about. At the first opportunity the Conservatives introduced fees for attending university again, putting social climbing once again out of reach for most. However, once your university is making a profit from its students, you’ll want to have as many students as you can get in through the door. Community colleges became universities, and could issue degrees instead of certificates. The reactionaries have responded by regarding a basic bachelor’s degree as the equivalent of a nice set of ‘A’ levels or a certificate, thus making it harder for anyone to get into a good job to earn the money needed to pay for a university education.

Add in the rise in house prices fueled by wealthy speculators, and thus cripplingly expensive mortgages, ‘Boomer’ parents like me have found it very difficult to have enough money in savings to pay the costs of educating our children, never mind helping them with housing. The only winners have been, as usual, the upper class. Don’t blame ‘The Boomers’ for the current situation; blame the wealthy, and the left wing parties for being too absorbed with ambition and in-fighting to fight for the rights of their natural constituency.

WHAT???????????

Yes definitely because the police are always so understanding when people resist arrest, as everyone knows. So stupid of Sarah Everard not to shout “NO!” and flag down a bus (because there is always a bus coming down the street at any given moment, and the drivers always stop for people waving at them nowhere near a bus stop).

The BBC has the aftermath:

A police boss who said women “need to be streetwise” about powers of arrest in the wake of the Sarah Everard case has apologised for his remarks.

North Yorkshire commissioner Philip Allott sparked fury when he said Ms Everard “never should have submitted” to the arrest by her killer

But her killer was a cop. When a cop arrests you…

During Couzens’ sentencing at the Old Bailey, it emerged he had tricked Ms Everard, originally from York, by falsely arresting her for a breach of coronavirus guidelines.

Speaking on BBC Radio York earlier, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence – one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.

And so you just walk away from the cop, and the cop lets you walk away, and everything is just fine.

Nicola Sturgeon tweeted it was not “up to women to fix this”.

“The problem is male violence, not women’s ‘failure’ to find ever more inventive ways to protect ourselves against it. For change to happen, this needs to be accepted by everyone,” she said.

Legal commentator David Allen Green added: “There is not a competent lawyer in the country that would have advised Sarah Everard to resist arrest by a police officer with a warrant card.”

Allott has apologized and withdrawn the comments. I suppose what he was doing was running the scenario in his head and trying to intervene. I think we all do that. If only – if only – if only – if only she had gone another way, if only she had left an hour earlier, if only he had had a flat tire – if only she had realized he couldn’t arrest her for that, and run like hell screaming her head off.

But we can’t intervene in the scenario. We can’t do anything at all.

The Stonewall thread:

Sinister liars. If they succeed in making sport a “safe haven” for trans women then it won’t be safe for women. Why should women have to give up sport or risk injury in order to make it safe for men who identify as women? How is that fair?