Preserving the dogma:

Oh come ON Beeb – “reluctant” is the LAST thing he is. If he were reluctant he wouldn’t be doing this sadistic unfair thing.

And it’s not “history” he’s making, either.

The ridiculous story, by Joshua Surtees:

“I’m not here to change the world,” said Laurel Hubbard in 2017, the year she first competed as a female weightlifter.

The year he first competed “as a female” as if that were something people can just do, the same way they can just comb their hair or eat a sandwich.

“I just want to be me and do what I do,” she told a reporter in her native New Zealand, after returning home with two silver medals from the World Championships.

Of course he said that, what else would he say? “I just want to compete against women so that I can be sure of winning”?

Two years later, her victory in the +87kg category at the Pacific Games in Samoa provoked accusations of unfairness – due to the fact she had lived as a man for the first three decades of her life before transitioning in 2012, coming out as a transgender woman aged 33, then resuming her sports career.

Rubbing the incorrect insulting pronouns in our faces. And yes of course that’s why his theft of two medals provoked accusations of unfairness: it was unfair. We’ve all seen the famous podium photo.

On Monday she will become the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category to that which they were born at an Olympic Games.

On Monday he will openly compete as a woman in the hope of winning medals he would otherwise have zero chance at.

Now 43, she will become the third oldest lifter in Olympic history. The New Zealand Olympic Committee’s Ashley Abbott called her a “really important role model” who “opens a conversation about inclusivity”.

“If you see someone like you achieving on the world stage, it’s a really wonderful opportunity to see that there is a pathway,” said Abbott.

What if you’re Samoan or Tongan and you see someone like you lose the chance to achieve on the world stage because an entitled rich white guy has stolen your place? That’s an opportunity to see that there was a pathway but entitled rich white guy has stolen it, yeah?

Though changing the world may not be top of her agenda, Hubbard’s selection as the first trans athlete in an individual sport goes a long way towards changing centuries of sporting tradition.

For the worse.

On Friday, the IOC released another statement on her behalf which read: “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.”

Bullshit. He’s thanking the IOC for making sport exclusive and inaccessible for women. How fucking dare the BBC ignore this obvious fact.

Abbott said Hubbard was “keeping a low profile” and told reporters on Friday she would be shielded from “anything negative in the social media space”.

“We all need to remember that there’s a person behind all these technical questions,” said Abbott.

A male person, who is cheating women out of their medals and chances to compete. Not all that technical really.

At the same briefing, Richard Budgett – the medical and scientific director of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – said: “Laurel Hubbard is a woman and is competing under the rules of her federation.

“We have to pay tribute to her courage and tenacity in qualifying for the Games.”

We have to no such thing. It takes zero courage to steal opportunities and rewards from women.

It’s Satanic Panic all over again.

Last paragraph of the statement:

CAAPS supports eliminating the use of ROGD and similar concepts for clinical and diagnostic application given the lack of empirical support for its existence and its likelihood of contributing to harm and mental health burden. CAAPS also encourages further research that leads to evidence-based clinical guidelines for gender-affirming care that support child and adolescent gender identity development.

CAAPS does not encourage further research that leads to evidence-based clinical guidelines for watch and wait care that support child and adolescent body-acceptance.

At this rate, 5 or 10 years down the road, will psychology organizations be supporting “species-affirming” care that helps children and adolescents look like horses, cheetahs, giraffes, swans? I don’t suppose many children and adolescents will be identifying as hippos or rats or wart hogs.

It’s always so funny when a man “jokes” about hitting a woman with a hammer. It’s even funnier when both parties are members of Congress.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joked about casual violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a glitzy fundraising dinner in Tennessee on Saturday night, according to several reporters who were at the event.

During a speech to around 1,400 GOP donors, McCarthy reportedly spoke optimistically about the Republicans’ chances for retaking the majority in the House following the 2022 midterm elections.

McCarthy went on to say that, should the GOP manage to flip the House in 2022 and if he were to become the speaker, he would find it difficult to resist hitting Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel, The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer said on Twitter.

“It will be hard not to hit her with it but I will bang it down,” McCarthy joked, according to Scherer.

They don’t want us to forget that he was “joking,” do they.

But of course it isn’t a joke. It especially isn’t a joke when it’s a man talking about hitting a woman. It especially isn’t a joke when the man’s political party tried to overthrow the government a few months ago. It especially isn’t a joke when several colleagues of the man appear to have helped the attempted overthrow of the government, and when all but two of his colleagues are resisting all attempts to do anything about the attempted overthrow.

None of it is a joke.

WHERE ARE THE GROWNUPS???

The American Medical Association says core information should be left off birth certificates because…[ ]

Sex should be removed as a legal designation on the public part of birth certificates, the American Medical Association (AMA) said Monday.

Requiring it can lead to discrimination and unnecessary burden on individuals whose current gender identity does not align with their designation at birth, namely when they register for school or sports, adopt, get married, or request personal records.

Enough already. “Gender identity” isn’t a thing. We are what we are. We don’t have species identity or time identity or geographic identity or any other kind of identity that contradicts the dull facts. Think of yourself as magical all you like, but quit trying to make the real world agree with your fantasies. We’re not interested. There are too many of us, we can’t keep track of everyone’s many Imported Luxury Identities. Birth certificates aren’t there for purposes of self-actualization or pretend-validation.

“Assigning sex using binary variables in the public portion of the birth certificate fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity,” Underwood said, and can be used to discriminate.

There is no such “medical spectrum.” Fantasy isn’t medical.

Really, where are the grownups?

How these things go. Remember yesterday the Head of Diversity and Incloooosion at Harvard something Twitter-denounced an academic for “transphobic and harmful remarks”? Like so?

All very public, with names and specifics, yeah?

But it turns out Laura Simone Lewis is the injured party here. She’s a grad student, you see, and the woman she pointed out for punishment on Twitter is not.

Wait wait wait wait wait. Lewis named and shamed Hooven on Twitter, not the other way around. It’s Lewis – the shy and fragile grad student – who announced on Twitter that she’s “appalled and frustrated” by Hooven’s “transphobic and harmful” remarks. Then Hooven responded.

Then she said let’s meet offline and Lewis enthusiastically agreed. But now Heather Dingwall wants to “make it crystal clear” that somehow Hooven is bullying Lewis.

Trans bullshit seems to inspire people to argue dishonestly.

The Attorney-General of Missouri. That’s right, not some random goon on Twitter, not that twitchy guy on the bus, not even a Fox News Personality, but the top law person in Missouri.

I see that claim from the other wackaloons – it’s not about the virus, it’s about control!!

Really. Why? To what end? How do you know? Why now? Why not two years ago? What would convince you you’re wrong? Why do you think the CDC and state/national officials should let the virus cut a swathe through the population and then turn around and cut another until we’re all gone?

What kind of control is it to get people to put masks on? Where’s the profit? What’s the next step to get the cunning plan to pay off? Ok you have 300 million people or so in masks; now what?

Is the idea that it’s training us all to obey mindlessly?

But that’s stupid. Putting masks on doesn’t mean our next step will be to obey a command to arrest all the Republicans or set fire to all the banks or kill all the Jews. It doesn’t mean anything except that we want to avoid spreading a lethal disease.

I know; it doesn’t matter; the already crazy will believe the crazy no matter how stupid it is. I still need to point out the crazy.

More on the sentencing of Grant Karte:

Grant Karte threatened the 55-year-old [Joanna Cherry] with sexual violence in a series of messages on Twitter after she was sacked from the party’s front bench in February.

In one, the 30-year-old promised to ‘f**k you like you f****d Scotland,’ also leaving contact details behind.

In other words he promised to rape her. Promising to fuck a woman you’re bullying=promising to rape her.

He admitted sending the threats back in March, but sentencing waited while he got a psych evaluation.

Karte sent the five messages on the day Ms Cherry, 55, was “sacked” from the SNP’s front bench by the party leadership on February 1.

The first read: “You don’t know me or what I’m capable of. Tell me something.” An email address and phone number was also left.

A second message added: “Or I will be your worst enemy.”

Another read: “I read between the lines.”

The fifth said: “You have 24 hours or I will f*** you like you f****d Scotland.”

We’re left to wonder what was in the fourth message.

The SNP (or Sturgeon) is hammering the message home by appointing a “complaints officer” (have some scare quotes) who has a history of…you know the rest.

The Herald has the details:

THE SNP has come under fire after posts emerged from their newly-appointed complaints officer accusing their own party MP of “transphobia” and “bullying”.

Ricky Taylor posted online on Friday evening to say he was “delighted” to be joining the SNP’s headquarters at the end of August as the party’s new complaints officer.

He added: “It’s not going to be the easiest job but I’m definitely up for the challenge of making sure the party is a welcoming and safe place for all”.

By which of course he doesn’t mean people he considers “transphobic.” (It’s scare quotes day.)

Brilliant, the new complaints officer is a punk kid who told an adult woman to grow up and adopt his ridiculous beliefs about Magic Gender.

In other words it’s a big “fuck you” to Joanna Cherry and women in general.

Rape threats? From a fellow party member? Sorry, not our department.

Joanna Cherry has condemned the “SNP hierarchy” for deserting her after she was bombarded with rape threats by a party member for her stance on gender reforms and trans rights.

There are too many scare quotes in this article. The SNP exists and it has a hierarchy so I don’t see any real reason for the “” other than leaning on one side of the scale.

At Edinburgh sheriff court Grant Karte, 30, was ordered not to contact Cherry for five years and sentenced to a community payback order under which he will be supervised for 15 months.

Cherry, 55, a QC and the MP for Edinburgh South West, said that she was “very disappointed” not to receive “the same support as other women who have suffered abuse”, describing how Karte had sent “a number of menacing and obscene private messages, including threats of sexual violence”.

We know what it’s about of course. Those other women weren’t Evil Terfs. It seems Evil Terfs deserve rape threats.

Karte sent his abusive messages on the evening of February 1 this year, the day [Cherry] was removed from the SNP front bench team at Westminster.

…

Karte, who is said to have been an SNP member at the time of the threats, admitted offences under the Communications Act 2003. He has previously admitted sending Twitter messages that were “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”, repeatedly threatening Cherry.

So many lefty men cannot believe their luck at having a “progressive” excuse to bully and threaten women.

Return of the Tax Returns:

The Treasury Department must turn over six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns to House investigators, the Justice Department said in a legal opinion issued on Friday that most likely paves the way for their eventual release to Congress and potentially to the public.

Treasury says okie doke.

Yet even as the decision lowered a key barrier for Congress, it was unlikely to be the final word in the dispute. A highly litigious and determined protector of his financial records, Mr. Trump could seek an injunction in the coming days to try to stop the transfer, setting off a new round of legal wrangling that could take weeks or longer to resolve.

Jobs program for lawyers.

Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump and his allies in Congress recoiled at the prospect of his political adversaries gaining access to six years of his personal and business tax data, as well as related I.R.S. files. They accused Mr. Neal and House Democrats of lying about their real intentions, which they claimed were to embarrass and cudgel Mr. Trump.

Oh dear, really? How shocking, when he’s such a nice man.

Now in case you’re wondering why men would want to identify as women in order to cheat at sport, Fair Play for Women provides a hint:

The IOC decided in 2015 that, for their purpose, a female is anyone who says they are, as long as their testosterone, the primary male hormone, has been below 10 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for the past 12 months. The typical testosterone level in females is less than 1 nmol/L. 

These Games are the first since these new rules applied. We know of at least three competitors, Stephanie Barrett of Canada, Chelsea Wolfe of the USA and Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, whose performance would not be good enough for qualification in the male category, but who have taken a place in a category reserved for female athletes.

That’s why.

They’re not good enough for the Olympics. They’re way closer than I am, for one, but that’s beside the point. The point is that they’re not good enough, and they know it, so they decided to cheat.

I don’t believe for a second that Hubbard genuinely “feels like” a woman or thinks he is one or thinks he has a brain that doesn’t match his body or anything like that. I think he’s just cheating, with no illusions about it. I’m less absolute about the other two, but in Hubbard’s case it’s painfully infuriatingly obvious.

Don’t let anyone tell you that it costs nothing to allow male athletes who identify as women into a female sports category. That if they don’t win a medal they haven’t taken anything away from anyone else. There are at least three women who should be Olympians this year but got bumped off the list to make room for athletes born male.

Heads they win tails we lose.

Janice Turner on The Laurel Hubbard Question:

Samoa enjoys few sporting glories but it excels at weightlifting. Feagaiga Stowers, just 20, a child sexual abuse survivor who started lifting while living in a domestic violence shelter, won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She looked a cert for the 2019 Pacific Games too, but instead the podium was topped by 41-year-old trans woman Laurel Hubbard. Bumped to second place, Stowers and team mate Iuniarra Sipaia, who took bronze, hung their heads in dismay.

While inferior athlete Laurel Hubbard loomed over them in cheating triumph.

Back in Samoa, the response was more baffled than furious. The prime minister asked how it could be fair that this New Zealand fa’afafine was competing against women. The question will echo across the world on Monday when Hubbard competes in the Olympic women’s 87kg-plus weightlifting. Stowers and team mates aren’t even there. Covid risk is the official reason. But given that all other qualifying Samoans are in Tokyo, there’s speculation the female lifters are protesting at the injustice of their event.

Reviewing Helen Joyce’s recent book Trans, my colleague David Aaronovitch remarked that her tone was too angry. But when I think about Stowers battling such odds, or Roviel Detenamo, only 18, a lifter from even poorer Nauru, denied her first Olympics because Hubbard took her qualifying slot, I’m filled with white-hot rage.

Same here, and it happens all over again every time I see Hubbard smugly proceeding along this path of stealing medals from women, and women of color at that.

Men like the International Olympic Committee’s medical and science director Dr Richard Budgett have no skin in this game. “Everyone agrees that trans women are women,” he said this week, “a lot of aspects of physiology and anatomy and the mental side contribute to elite performance.”

Everyone agrees that men are women? I think you’ll find that it’s not quite everyone.

Now the IOC rules state that any male who wants to punch female boxers or run the women’s 100 metres must simply get their testosterone below 10 nanomoles per litre for a year. The normal testosterone range for women, including elite athletes? It’s 0.12-1.78 nmol/L. So even when applying this one paltry measure of fairness — the level of rocket-fuel male hormone — they didn’t try for parity. Five to ten times the female norm was just fine. And what if a woman athlete used drugs to raise her testosterone to 10nmol/L? She’d be disqualified for doping.

How is that fair exactly? It isn’t, but they’re doing it anyway, because hey it’s only women who lose out.

Nope nope nope.

It’s not too hard for anyone to understand, but it’s not true. It’s just trendy jargon.

“not just cis women” – classic. It’s not just women who have ovaries, you bigot! Except it is.

As for creating “a safe space,” guess what: it’s not dangerous to be called a woman even if you identify as nonbinary or a man or Paul Bunyan’s blue ox Babe.

The NY Times tells us:

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.

In other words he “pressed” them (meaning bullied, screamed at, threatened them) to lie about the election to enable him to steal it.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda.

Not to mention of a president trying to bully an agency to steal an election and install a dictator. I think the Times’s language is a good deal too cool and restrained here.

They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.

And steal the election.

The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.

“Just get him to come to the restaurant and leave the rest to me.”

The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue’s notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.

To steal the election and install a dictator.

“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.

That’s more like it.

Tom Nichols used to admire J. D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy, and now does not.

Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

Instead of a truth-teller in his own community, Vance as a candidate has become a contemptible and cringe-inducing clown. His attempts at authenticity are so grating because they are so blatantly artificial. His recent tweets, for example, attempting to ingratiate himself with rural Ohioans by slagging New York City were embarrassingly amateurish; we can only wonder which social-media consultant thought them up. “Serious question,” Vance tweeted. “I have to go to New York soon and I’m trying to figure out where to stay. I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there. But is it like Walking Dead Season 1 or Season 4?”

New York, geddit? Fulla Democrats n brown people.

Worse, Vance has not only repudiated his earlier views on Trump, but has done so with ruthless cynicism, embracing the former president and his madness while winking at the media with a What can you do? shrug about the stupidity of Ohio’s voters. “If I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about,” he told Time, “I need to just suck it up and support him.”

I think he means if he wants to win he has to do that.

I suspect that Vance is also reading his own press, which would explain why a young man who attained early fame is convinced that he can jump right to national office. Take, for example, the Trump-friendly columnist Henry Olsen of The Washington Post, who wrote that Vance scares America’s elites because “he hasn’t surrendered his mind to polls or to the donor class in an effort to fit in.”

But following the polls and capering to a jig played by rich donors is exactly what Vance is doing. His gooberish tweets, his recent declaration that the most important issue for Ohio is securing the southern border, his multimillion-dollar support from “ordinary folks” like Thiel—these all show that Vance is as mossy a creature as the swamp ever produced.

This hypocrisy makes him indistinguishable from other figures in American politics, such as Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, who are products of privilege and elite education and who now pretend to be tribunes of the Forgotten People. (Vance, predictably enough, has recently expressed his admiration for both.)

It’s that weird upside-down class warfare that’s been so entrenched ever since…what? The 1965 Voting Rights Act? Probably.

Mind you neither party has ever really done much for the working class.

Originally a Miscellany Room post by Sastra.

Well, it appears I’ve finally been banned on Friendly Atheist, presumably for arguments I was making on a post about transgenderism. And what I’m guessing is 5 years of comments have all been marked as “spam” and completely erased. There’s no trace of me left. It is as if my very existence is being denied. Heh.

I’m not sure who banned me; it could have been a new moderator, or one of the other people who post articles on the site. I’ve written to ask, and questioned the spam designation elsewhere. I’m not terribly surprised, but do wonder why the absolute blackout, and not even a suspension or, best compromise, making any trans-related comment of mine only viewable when clicking (to avoid triggering the sensitive.)

I’ve been very, very careful with what I’ve said re Trans on FA. No personal attacks on others; no “misgendering” or discussions on hot button topics like bathrooms; no signs of my being angry, hurt, frustrated. And my arguments were all focused on the highest level — on basic concepts from which all else derives. Gender Identity Theory. I did that partly because that’s where the heart of the issue lies, and partly because I figured it would bore those who wanted to attack on the more personal level. My overall purpose was to persuade, of course, but my practical purpose was to help others understand the opposition, and hopefully recognize that disagreement isn’t hate.

I went out with a bang. Here’s the last thing I was allowed to post:

Glad to hear he’s better.

I, too, got the Moderna shots. I’ll be masking up again, and waiting for them to come out with an effective booster.

These “personal choices” the covidiots are making manage to escape the personal area, and it’s equally frustrating and frightening.

And here’s the last thing I wrote on the trans topic:

No, an idea can be theoretically testable and still suffer from conceptual problems. For example, the existence of God. Atheists can come up with miracles which would be hard to explain without God — the stars rearranging themselves into the words “I am God” and observed by all, say — but there’s still contradictions in a definition with the Omnis, and still a lot of vague hand waving and incoherence. These conceptual problems might take precedence, for a definitive miracle still leaves us with a confusing understanding of its source.

For those who endorse GIT, the very “central point of transgenderism” is Gender Identity. If this central point falls apart under any sort of genuine skeptical or critical examination, that’s not good.

(Edited to add: And there would still be a serious problem regarding what I put as the third point: “Gender Identity, not sex, is what makes someone a man, woman, both, or neither.” Replacing sex with gender requires its own support, and brings in a lot of conflicts involving rights.)

So abusive. Tch.

So we’re just removing the word “women” from the language entirely now?

One front in the vaccine wars:

On July 22, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said: “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” when asked why Alabama leads the nation in unvaccinated persons. “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. We’ve got to get folks to take the shot. The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID. There’s no question about that.”

So, of course, Team Antivax rushed to say what a monster she is.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler said: “What Gov. Ivey has forgotten – or never knew – is that those who are not vaccinated include a huge number who do not trust the government.  A governor pushing so hard for vaccinations makes those distrustful of government even less likely to take the vaccine.  Common sense is lacking here.”

I bet they trust the government when it’s Trump who stands for “the government” though. It’s not so much distrust of government as it is distrust of anyone who isn’t as stupid and pig-headed and irrational as Trump.

Dean Odle has announced he is challenging Ivey in the GOP primary. Odle is a Lee County pastor and school headmaster. Dean is not vaccinated and has been a vocal opponent of vaccination efforts.

“I believe the people of Alabama need to ask Governor Kay Ivey why she is pushing an experimental vaccine so hard and yet she stayed silent about the lifesaving, inexpensive treatments that were made known in March of 2020,” Odle charged.

There were no such treatments. That’s why 628,121 of us have died of the virus to date.

Former Morgan County Commissioner Stacy George is also running in the Republican primary for governor. George previously ran in the Republican primary for governor in 2014 against then-incumbent Gov. Robert Bentley.

“I thought it was really sad,” George said in response to Ivey’s comments. “I saw an angry governor this morning. She belittled a group of people today, and I say shame on the governor.”

“I am one of those non-vaccinated people that Governor Ivey was talking about,” George said, “I chose not to get the vaccine for various reasons. A governor should never belittle the people of Alabama, even the ones that disagree with her.”

What various reasons? What is this pleasing variety of reasons for not getting a vaccination to avoid a horrible disease with a high fatality rate? Better things to do, not feeling like it, cussedness, making a point? None of those are reasons for such a stupid destructive reckless refusal. If the school is on fire do you decide not to call 911 “for various reasons”? I’m guessing not, so why shrug off this best path out of the pandemic?

H/t Sackbut

Goooooood grief.

Bonds brings in ‘Cheer Bleeders’ to show off period underwear range

Excuse me?

No, it’s not a joke. Cheerleaders=Cheer Bleeders, rah rah rah.

Bonds has launched its latest Bloody Comfy Period Undies campaign, Cheer Bleeders, featuring a specially created cheer team dedicated to making all Australians who menstruate feel more empowered before, after and during their period.

All Australians who menstruate…you mean women and girls? Oh no no no no no no no good god no. That would never do.

The integrated campaign, created in partnership with Special Group Australia, showcases the Bonds’ Cheer Bleeders wearing Bloody Comfy Period Undies as they cheer about different aspects of periods using the tagline ‘Cheer through the Bleed’.

What aspects would those be? Cramps? Having to change the tampon or the pad? Leaking? Those are things to cheer about are they?

‘Cheer Bleeders’ aims to change the uncomfortable experience many Australians still feel when getting their period, with many taking time out from school, sport and other activities due to discomfort, teasing and fears of embarrassment.

Instead, Bonds strives to show people that you don’t have to follow the conventional rules around periods. It’s your period on your terms.

How very very careful this blurb is not to mention the words “girls” and “women.” How very careful it is to pretend menstruation happens to everyone, to Australians in general, to people. How very careful it is to pretend that “teasing” isn’t boys shaming girls for menstruating but just a universal experience, can happen to anyone.

How can girls grow up as feminists in a world where the existence of girls and women is treated as a shameful secret? In a world where they’re forced to pretend that boys can menstruate too?

“Bonds’ mission is centred around making the world a more comfortable place for everyone and there has never been more opportunity to do this than when it comes to young Aussies and the cultural norms around periods,” Special Group creative director Luke Thompson says.

Well thank fuck Luke Thompson is there to explain periods to girls.