Updating to add: Never mind. I was assuming it was a real competition of the athletic kind, and it’s not. This one he can have.
/update
You can’t.
You can’t. You can’t make “a moment of understanding and education” by competing against women when you are a man, especially when you are a retired professional wrestler man. That’s not “competing.” It’s cheating, which rhymes with competing but that’s where the connection ends.
It appears Waterstones is actively censoring Helen Joyce’s bestselling book.
Which is, you know, the whole point of bookstores.
On 2 August, the chief executive of [Edinburgh Rape Crisis], Mridul Wadhwa, appeared on the popular podcast The Guilty Feminist to discuss working in the women’s sector. While writing this, I am mindful that referring to Wadhwa as a man could be deemed a hate crime in Scotland — potentially carrying a hefty custodial sentence. But this legal gag cannot undo the fact that, despite identifying as a transwoman, Wadhwa is male. Furthermore, Wadhwa has boasted about not having a Gender Recognition Certificate and has taken multiple posts which are usually reserved for females, claiming that at least one of his previous employers didn’t know he was male.
When asked about “building bridges” between those who believe that women’s spaces should be segregated by sex, and others who believe they should be open to men if they identify as transwomen, Wadhwa opined:
“Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not a discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices.”
So if it’s a man who identifies as a woman who raped you, or a man who claims to be a woman when he’s accused of rape, then you can come in and they will “begin to work with you” but they will also challenge you for saying that the man who raped you was a man.
That should make the whole experience highly rewarding.
ERCC is advertising a post for a chief operating officer. In the blurb ERCC refer to the single-sex exemption in the Equality Act 2010 explaining “only women need apply”, before adding that as a “diverse organisation”, applications from “trans women” (i.e. males) are “especially welcome”. It is entirely possible that the upper echelons of the “women’s sector” in Scotland could soon be filled by men.
Only women need apply but if you tell us you’re a woman we’ll believe you.
While preparing to write this piece, I turned to social media to ask for survivors of sexual violence in Scotland to get in touch. Within minutes I had deleted my tweet because I was overwhelmed; women in direct messages and emails wanted to tell me their stories, to share with me why it mattered to have women-only spaces. Their experiences differed in the detail, but the fear they expressed was the same. These women, survivors of male sexual violence, told me they felt betrayed by RCS; they were angry at being made to feel powerless once again, this time by the very organisation charged with their protection. The most bitter blow for some was how the paid professional feminist class had tried to recast themselves as the victims.
The people who run RCS are putting their political obedience ahead of the needs of the women they are supposed to be helping – they are paid to be helping.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is doubling down on its recommendation that people who are pregnant get the COVID-19 vaccine following new data underscoring its safety and effectiveness throughout pregnancy.
Hiding the word “women” as if it were radioactive.
This recommendation is coming at a time when doctors across the country are reporting an uptick in the number of unvaccinated pregnant people getting hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19.
It would be so simple, and easy, and normal, to say “pregnant women” there, but no, we have to think of the self-absorbed brats who “identify as” men in their jeans and binders.
The low vaccination rate in this group is striking, doctors note. As of July 31, only 23% of those who are pregnant had received at least one dose of vaccine against the coronavirus, according to CDC statistics.
“Those who are pregnant”? That just plain sounds awkward, not to mention confusing. Everything was so much easier when we were allowed to say “women.”
“CDC recommends that pregnant people should be vaccinated against COVID-19, based on new evidence about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines,” the agency said in updated guidance that echoes the urgent recommendation of leading medical societies. “COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all people 12 years and older, including people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or trying to get pregnant now or might become pregnant in the future.”
So NPR and the CDC are erasing women. Awesome.
… Officials say miscarriage rates after the vaccine were similar to the expected rate of miscarriage in any group of pregnant people…She works mostly with pregnant individuals who are sick with COVID-19 and sees the damage the coronavirus can do…Vaccinating those who are pregnant has become especially urgent in states such as Texas, where the highly contagious delta variant currently makes up more than 75% of new cases…It’s an especially dangerous situation when someone who’s pregnant gets a symptomatic case of COVID-19, Turrentine notes, as he breaks down the statistics…
Medical professionals and scientists don’t know exactly why those who are pregnant are at such high risk when they become infected with the virus, but they are concerned this population is especially vulnerable because so many remain unvaccinated.
Since April, the CDC has recommended vaccines for those who are pregnant as the best way to protect them and their babies from the coronavirus. Although people who are pregnant were excluded from the initial clinical trials of the three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., significant data gathered since then has shown the shots to be safe and effective in this group.
Erase all the women.
Originally a comment by Rob on The judgment of history is too late.
A couple of years ago I attended a conference for the oil and gas industry. We’re not directly involved in that industry, but they make use of our companies services for specialist environmental monitoring.
The conference was heavily picketed and was protected by a significant police presence for the three days it was on. Protestors had even gone to the trouble of placing remote triggered sleep disruption devices on and around the hotel prior to the cordon going up. Kudos for commitment I guess.
Apart from the fact that some of the protesters had taken a four hour return flight to attend the protest, what I found fascinating was that probably 60% of the papers were focused on climate change, the industry’s role in that, and what if anything the industry could do to help reduce emissions. It was pretty obvious that a small number of the audience were outright climate deniers. It was also pretty obvious that most industry participants were very well aware of the true state of climate change (they were well aware that things were on an appalling track) and wanted very much to find some way out.
One senior executive explained over lunch that his young kids were starting to ask why he was destroying the earth. His view was that it was completely on the rich and developed nations to address the problem. As he put it, about 1 billion people use most of the worlds resources. About 2 billion people are just starting to get a taste of the life the rich nations have. The rest (5 billion) rely on twigs and dung for fuel and walk pretty much wherever they want to go. He said it is unrealistic and would be unconscionable to expect those already leading a subsistence life to give anything up – they needed more, not less. For the rich nations to try and keep what they have and use, while demanding that those recent aspirants give up and return to subsistence living, would lead to conflict and war. We – the rich nations – can afford to give up energy and resources. We can afford to develop and adopt new technology and change our lifestyle. We collectively don’t want to, and our politicians are too gutless to force us to.
It was frank and pretty brutal. Also hard to argue with. While we can see attitudes beginning to change, I reckon we’ve left it 50 years too late to allow the social conversation. I can’t see our Governments taking emergency action until the crash has already happened.
What were we just saying? When the climate report came out?
That. Climate, oh gosh, that’s terrible, we really have to do something at last, and by the way please up your production of oil.
Sackbut alerted us to Roy Speckhardt’s piece on signs you’re having unapproved thoughts. The piece is…flawed.
Even humanists, despite our commitment to critical thinking, are susceptible to disinformation campaigns, especially when we aren’t fully up-to-speed on the latest scholarship and are unaware of the campaigns calculated to use us to advance in-humanist agendas.
First sentence, and already…
This is style rather than substance, but style matters, dammit. It’s not “up-to-speed.” It’s just “up to speed.” There’s no rule that says all familiar phrases require hyphens. Decent writers avoid bonehead mistakes like that because they’re annoying. One of ten signs you’re an annoying writer: you insert meaningless hyphens where they don’t belong.
8) You think the word feminist excludes/antagonizes men.
Feminism is the advocacy for political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.
No. That would make feminism just as much for and about men as it is for and about women. No, feminism is a movement to end the subordination of women. The clue is in the “fem” part.
The rest of item 8 makes clear why he started with that stupid wrong manipulative definition.
Modern feminists recognize the need to elevate marginalized gender identities and the intersectional impact of race and gender. If you think feminism implies anything else, that suggests you’ve accepted sources for your information that are not credible.
Fuck off. Feminism has nothing to do with “marginalized gender identities,” whatever those even are. Feminism is for and about women, period. Men don’t get to bounce up to us and tell us it’s for everyone. And as for sources that aren’t credible – where did he get his idea that feminism isn’t for and about women? Who told him that “modern” feminists think it’s about “marginalized gender identities”? Look to your own sources, chum.
4) You fail to see the harm in questioning the validity of transgender identity.
Again – two can play at that game. You fail to see the harm in telling feminist women to focus on “transgender identity” instead of our own concerns. You also fail to see the harm in repeating stupid jargon about “validity” and “gender identity.” Men are not women, and feminists should not be bullied into thinking we have to “validate” men’s claims to be women. You’re not the boss of us.
What’s the difference between a member of the Flat Earth Society and those who seek to continuously question transgender identity? Both question facts people have long accepted for years, but the latter are contributing to a deadly environment where transgender people are facing bullying, harassment, rape, and murder over their identities.
That’s just embarrassing. People – all people? – have “long accepted for years” that men are women if they say they are? No they haven’t. Some people have signed up to the ridiculous belief system, and some pretend they have because they’re afraid not to, but most people still understand that men are not women. And declining to believe or repeat that men are women if they say they are is not comparable to believing the world is flat. Just for one thing nobody can take a plane from New York to London (or wherever to wherever) and look out the window and see that men are women if they say they are.
Let’s accept people’s self-identification when it isn’t harming us or others.
Dude, it is harming women. Try paying attention to us for five minutes. In any case no, let’s not – not without a lot of further particulars. Let’s not just blindly “accept” other people’s fantasies, because hello, remind you of anything?
Julie Bindel on the bit where they say it and the bit where they take it back:
The University of Essex is fast becoming an example of what happens when institutions capitulate to extreme transgender ideology.
In May the university apologised to two female academics for preventing them from taking part in seminars following baseless accusations of transphobia. The university admitted that they had made “serious mistakes” to Professors Freedman and Phoenix, who are not employed by Essex, and in a damning report, barrister Akua Reindorf criticised the university’s actions. The Vice Chancellor assured both academics that recommendations in the report would be actioned.
But that was May, you see. This is August. You do the math.
Students and staff kicked up a fuss about the Reindorf report, citing a “significant negative impact on student and staff wellbeing” – which is pseudo-acadamese for “it will make us feel bad.”
Within six weeks, the VC apologised to staff and students for releasing the report — before exams and during pride month no less — and for “anyone having been made to feel unsafe as a result of the Review”.
In other words he shoved Freedman and Phoenix back under the bus.
In the latest episode of this shameful debacle, last week the university informed Freedman and Phoenix that it plans to publish their personal data that had previously been redacted. The two academics told me that, according to the university, they made transgender and nonbinary staff and students feel physically unsafe. Why? For simply holding the views that sex is immutable and that spaces like prisons should remain segregated according to biological sex.
Prisons and perhaps rape crisis centers, hmmm? Anyway, under the bus with them. Karens.
Despite the initial apology, the University has done nothing to remedy the appalling treatment of Freedman and Phoenix. Essex told Phoenix that it was ruling out any possibility of investigating the violent, potentially illegal, threats made against her by a student.
Well you see she makes the violent threat-making student feel unsafe.
Speaking of climate…Lake Oroville, 130 miles northeast of San Francisco.
The first photo is from 3 years ago. The 2nd photo was taken April 27 2021. The 3rd was taken last week.
California has descended deep into one of the worst droughts in its recorded history. And perhaps no single location shows more starkly how deep that really is than Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir and a crucial source of water supply for the state’s farm and city water users alike.
San Francisco-based Getty Images photographer Justin Sullivan has been visiting the lake off and on since the driest days of our last severe drought, in 2014.
“Lake Oroville provided the most stunning and visible evidence of loss of water” during that five-year drought, Sullivan said in an interview with KQED Friday.
It’s the same now, with much of the reservoir’s shockingly barren floor exposed. Adding to the effect around parts of the lake: the charred skeletons of trees burned during last summer’s North Complex fires.
Situation normal: all fucked up.
We can always just #AskRapeCrisisScotland.
So they’re actually telling untruths now?
It just gets worse and worse.
Seriously, why?
“When someone tells you their pronouns, the only option is to use it.”
Wrong! There are other options. One option is to step away and talk to different people. Another is to say no. Another is to leave the scene altogether. Another is to say “I have no plans ever to refer to you for any reason so I have zero need to know what ‘your’ pronouns are, child.” Another is to say “I didn’t ask and I don’t care.” That’s only the beginning – there are many woundingly indifferent things one can say in reply to such a stupid thing as “telling” someone what “your” pronouns are.
David Gorski is still going “nyah nyah” instead of correcting errors.
Jesse Singal is really not “a hard core GC advocate.” Not even close.
As the man said – very unprofessional.
Sister Outrider on the Rape Crisis Scotland issue:
Very troubling indeed.
And we know why RCS is doing it, of course – we know it is Forbidden to acknowledge that trans women are men, and Mandatory to say that being “inclusive” of trans women is identical to providing women-only services. We know that, but we think RCS has to do better than that, because they’re there for rape victims, not for men who identify as women. Some rape victims are male, for sure, but rape victims who are female need genuine women-only services and RCS should put that need first and men’s need to be “validated” as women not second but nowhere at all. That purported need is irrelevant to female rape victims.
Indeed.
Originally a comment by latsot on Another late anti-vaxxer.
Former Silentbob – can I call you “Former”, I feel like we’re friends? – Former:
As Bjarte said, we’re not the ones who changed. We’re still applying skeptical analysis to unlikely truth claims. You’re the one who stopped doing that. We’re still skeptical of radio hosts who say we shouldn’t get vaccinated and anti-mask podcasters in their rocking chairs. We remain dubious when we’re told that a centuries-dead cult leader can be so upset by a cartoon that slaughter is the only moral recourse. We continue to raise a quizzical eyebrow at homoeopathic cures, ancient prophecies and magical underpants. We still think Bigfoot is probably just made up.
And we impose exactly the same scrutiny on the truthclaims of the trans. We find some of those claims lacking. Skeptical enquiry tells us that humans can’t change sex; that there are no man-brains and lady-brains; that the most effective cure for gender dysphoria is puberty. Along the way we learn of the long-term harms of irreversible puberty blockers; the railway rushing confused children toward life-changing surgery and the political manoeuvring to prevent other therapeutic options being presented. We see the conflict between women’s rights and the demands of gender identity extremists; the compromise of women’s safety and dignity in the removal of their spaces and the very language they use to organise and defend their rights; the opportunities opened by decades of their campaigning being swallowed by the inclusion of men. We see similar rights to safety, dignity and autonomy of homosexual men and women being gleefully eroded and rampant homophobia surfacing again in the name of an ideology that folds like a house of cards the moment you so much as glance at it.
And we question all that. We apply our skeptical enquiry. And we can only conclude the obvious. Now you may question our conclusions, but you cannot argue that we’ve changed. We’re doing the same things we’ve always done: examine extraordinary claims and see where the evidence takes us.
But you have changed. You’re the one like Josh, because you’ve abandoned all skeptical principles entirely in this one area alone. You accept truth claims you’d never have accepted from evangelical Christians or muslims or from the mouth of the Loch Ness Monster itself. But you’ve changed even more than that, because all of this special pleading is in the name of ideology. For you, ideology trumps thought, reason, evidence and compassion.
You’d never have stood for that in the old days, Former, and we won’t stand for it now. We don’t have an ideology. We won’t have one. An ideology would blind us, as it has blinded you.
So why the drive-by, if you’re really reaching out? Hang out. Engage. If you think we’ve fallen to an ideology, show us where it’s compromised our reasoning. If you think there’s a problem with ideas of AGP or social contagion, show us how we’re wrong. You know many of us, we’re mostly friendly. Unlike the commentariat of certain blogs we’ll argue but we won’t dogpile. We’ll pick apart your points, if we can, but we won’t try to stop you making them.
My guess is that you won’t, because you know I’m right. You believe things now that you’d never believe in any other sphere of human foolhardiness. But we’re not the ones scared of a fight, or of being proved wrong. So if you want to discuss these things, I’m sure you’d be welcome. If not, then I hope you remain, forever, Former.
Rape Crisis Scotland continues to get comments on its tweets that it no doubt views as yet more “abuse” when in fact the comments are simply reminding RCS that their policy of “including” trans women in their women only spaces makes their women only spaces NOT WOMEN ONLY. Ok I shouted, and they can call that abuse if they like, but they don’t listen.
This tweet in particular:
It calls the discussions “harmful” but what about its “harmful” policy of saying it provides women only spaces when in fact it includes males who say they identify as female? What about that? I think the policy is a good deal more harmful than the discussions.
They say the discussion is frightening people away from RCS, but what about the fact that RCS policy puts women in danger by falsely telling them it provides women only spaces?
Rape Crisis Scotland has joined the fray.
Rape Crisis Scotland is Scotland’s leading organisation working to transform attitudes, improve responses and ultimately to end rape and sexual violence in all its forms. Our helpline is open to anyone – including women, trans and non-binary people, men and boys – affected by sexual violence…
Accessing support is – for many survivors – a daunting and difficult thing to do. We think that all survivors should be supported to access specialist services when they are ready and that these should be available at the point of need.
Sexual violence is a gendered and has a disproportionate impact on women and girls; our services reflect that. Women only spaces are a core principle of the Rape Crisis movement and upheld through our National Service Standards (read these here). These spaces include women with a diverse range of lived experience and views, including trans women and girls.
So, in other words, their women only spaces are not women only spaces. Being a man or a boy is not part of a diverse range of lived experience of being a woman or a girl. Women only spaces are not a core principle of the Rape Crisis movement if men are included in the category “women.”
It’s just such contemptuous defiant out in the open gaslighting to tell women “we provide women only spaces that include men.”
What they’re doing, basically, is putting their own membership in the Approved Thinking Club ahead of the gut-level needs of raped women. They care more about demonstrating their personal orthodoxy than they do about helping actual raped women…which is supposed to be their whole purpose.
Over the weekend we became aware of coordinated and harmful claims circulating about Rape Crisis services in Scotland, stemming from a twitter thread that questioned the provision of women-only spaces in Rape Crisis Centres.
Maybe because you include men in your “women-only” spaces?
We engage, and will continue to do so, in good faith conversations about what support Rape Crisis offers, and what that support looks like in practice, because it helps survivors to know what to expect when they reach out. While we normally refrain from commenting on the abuse we receive on social media, to focus on our vital work, we are responding here to reiterate the principles that guide our work in supporting survivors.
…
We are feminist. Our work is underpinned by a feminist understanding of violence and inequality and our services are committed to being women-led and the provision of women only spaces and services. We are proudly diverse, intergenerational and inclusive and strive to ensure that all survivors in Scotland receive the response and support that they need and deserve.
But by “women only” you mean including men, so that’s an issue.
For Women Scotland has thoughts on the man who runs Rape Crisis Edinburgh and tells women to expect to “reframe” their trauma if they have to use his rape crisis centre.
They transcribed what he said in that interview:
But I think the other thing is that sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices, because how can you heal from trauma and build a new relationship with your trauma, because you can’t forget, and you can’t go back to life before traumatic incident or traumatic incidents. And some of us never, ever had a life before traumatic incidents.
So, women who think that men are not women must expect to be told they are bigoted if they are raped and seek help from the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre. They will also be told, apparently, that men like Mridul Wadwha have never had a life before traumatic incidents, unlike them, Karen-bitches that they are.
But if you have to reframe your trauma, I think it is important as part of that reframing, having a more positive relationship with it, where it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life, you also have to rethink your relationship with prejudice. Otherwise, you can’t really, in my view, recover from trauma and I think that’s a very important message that I am often discussing with my colleagues that in various places. Because you know, to me, therapy is political, and it isn’t always seen as that.
What does he mean by “prejudice”? He means not believing that he is a woman. He’s declaring his intention of bullying rape victims who come to the rape crisis centre he runs into pretending to believe that he is a woman. He’s claiming that he’s the oppressed person in this scenario and raped women are his oppressors.
FWS continues:
The passage above is from a podcast featuring Mridul Wadhwa, the Chief Executive Officer of Edinburgh Rape Crisis. The podcast as a whole is a masterclass of gaslighting and features an extraordinary performance by the host Deborah Frances-White, who downplays the harassment women “might” get on a night bus at 1am when compared to the “very structurally violent constant flicks of eyes, and I don’t know, oh, God, and aggressive glares” that she says transwomen are exposed to.
They must be holding her hostage. It makes no sense any other way.
Frances-White’s naive, factually incorrect analysis of violence against women and how women feel in accessing services and support is never challenged by the supposed expert Wadhwa who is happy to allow Frances-White and co-host Kemah Bob to talk about abused women being obliged to “check your privilege”. A podcast interviewing the CEO of a rape centre becomes an exercise in proving that the person in charge of the centre is a more vulnerable person than the women accessing the service.
Which is all the more peculiar when you remember that the person in charge of the rape crisis centre IS A MAN.
Wadhwa’s statement quoted in the opening paragraph has distressed many women who are survivors of violence. The “bigots” Wadhwa identifies are women who want female only spaces in rape or domestic violence shelter and female only counselling.
…
It also concerned those with a background in counselling and mental health who wondered about the professional qualifications of one who apparently failed to understand that therapy must be non-judgemental. They also worried Wadhwa had reinvented or misunderstood the concept of “reframing trauma” which is supposed to enable a survivor to understand their natural response to attack and “reframe” any residual guilt they might feel in not having fought off the attacker or for having frozen. It is not supposed to be a vehicle for re-education or for making victims think they carry “prejudice” as suggested in the opening extract.
But Wadwha is here to change all that.
Ron DeSantis is making every effort to kill as many Floridians as he can.
The Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Board of Education could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who defy the governor’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates.
Now…why would school officials impose mask mandates?
To try to reduce the body count among students, teachers and staff. That’s it, that’s the reason. It’s not a personal insult to DeSantis, it’s an attempt to keep casualties down.
It’s extremely odd and unpleasant to see an elected official planning to punish other officials for doing that. Some people are choosing to see it as a political shouting match, but the reality is that it’s an epidemiological precaution. That’s all it is.
“With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for noncompliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed. For example, the State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law.“
Parents don’t have a “right” to make health care decisions for their children that endanger other people’s children. They don’t have a right to withhold necessary precautions from their children, either. Children have rights too, and if parents violate them, sometimes the state has to step in.
Apologies for reposting this from Facebook (thus boring anyone who’s already seen it) but I discovered it’s not unique so I wanted to share.
I took the bus to a park on another bit of Puget Sound, because today is the nicest the weather is going to be until the other side of the approaching heat wave. It was indeed a perfect day for it – bright, warm but not hot, a cool breeze, interesting clouds.
Across the aisle of the bus from me was a teenage girl or young woman wearing a binder as if it were an item of clothing, like a tube top – but it was a binder. It’s quite a disconcerting sight, especially if you’ve read a lot about how painful they are and the damage they do. At the top edge the tops of the breasts were visible – but then there was this vicious edge, and below it all was flat. Breasts? What breasts? No breasts here…except for those odd swellings up above.
That’s GOT to hurt, and do damage.
End of Facebook post. Comments on the post spurred me to see if wearing binders like tops is a thing and of course it is.
Endlessly versatile, the binder-as-shirt look can be deployed in many ways. … “Most people don’t notice a difference between a binder and a crop top,” explains Fallon. “But I’ll get nods or winks of approval from passing queer people from time to time.” Like any good flag, those who are meant to get it, get it.
Aug 29, 2019
Aw yeah. Wink wink nod nod – good on you, babe, crushing your breasts for the flag. So awesomely queer!
There’s an article. Of course there is.
TRANS PEOPLE ARE PROUDLY WEARING THEIR CHEST BINDERS AS STYLISH OUTERWEAR
Why proudly? What’s to be proud of? Smashing your own twits? Showing the world how stupid you are? Hating your own body so much that you torture it? Doesn’t that sound more like shame than pride?
Of course it does, but the ideology suppresses all awareness of that.
And while I’m choosing to frame my 24/7 white T-shirt policy as “A Style Choice” instead of “Being Lazy,” I’m also hyper-aware that there’s an undershirt-forward summer style much more powerful than my bum-ass James Dean impression: Binders as a shirt.
Powerful? Wearing a binder is powerful?
It isn’t you know.
I invite you to run a quick Twitter search for the phrase “binder as a shirt,” or its equally powerful relative, “binder as a crop top.” Both searches result in dozens and dozens of pictures of trans, non-binary or otherwise gender-expansive people sporting chest binders as the central part of their ensemble. And while this isn’t an exclusively warm-weather phenomenon, the summertime definitely increases the frequency with which folks who regularly bind opt to shed their topmost layers in favor of displaying the minimum-effective amount of clothing required to appear in public.
Like a bathing suit top or a bra but painful. Progress!
That binders are typically used to minimize unwanted contours, or feelings about said contours, makes people wearing them as a statement all the more wonderful. “Why yes, I am wearing this chest-concealing tank top” is a terrific, counterintuitive gesture, one that can transform something often done covertly into a symbol of pride — or at least an obvious marker of membership in the tribe of People Who Bind. In any case, it’s much cooler than my white T-shirt thing.
Dear god these people are pathetic.
The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, you may recall, is a man. From the Glinner Update May 5:
Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has just appointed its new CEO. He’s a man.
But “she” is a man.
Mridul Wadhwa is a trans-identified male. He has no gender recognition certificate so, not only is he biologically male, he’s also legally male.
He was formerly the manager of Forth Valley Rape Crisis Centre, a job he appears to have secured by lying about his sex.
Now he’s telling women how they get to react to their own rapes.
The 56 there is 56 minutes, not seconds, so if you want to hear Wadhwa complaining about mostly cis women seeking rape services that starts at almost an hour in. Yes he really does say that.
The part where he talks about women who show up at the Rape Crisis centre with “prejudices” i.e. who see men as men starts at 1:12:30. At 1:13:56 he says “sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well.” He goes on to tell such women to expect to be challenged.
Great situation here. Women who’ve been raped go to the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre where the male CEO has made it policy to “challenge” them if they stray from male-centered trans orthodoxy.
