Well why stop there? Why not force them to wear no pants at all?

Women’s team fined for not wearing tiniest possible pants.

Norway’s women’s beach handball team have been fined 1,500 euros (£1,295) for choosing to wear shorts rather than bikini bottoms in a match at the European Beach Handball Championships in Bulgaria.

The fine was ‘150 euros per player, for a total of 1,500 euros’ handed out by the European Handball Federation (EHF) because shorts are ‘not according to the athlete uniform regulations defined in the IHF [International Handball Federation] beach handball rules of the game.’

But why are those the athlete uniform regulations? Why are women forced to wear sexually provocative underpants for what is supposed to be an athletic competition? Who made the rule, and how, and why?

Why are the rules different for men?

Shirts without sleeves and shorts are obligatory for men and tops and bikini bottoms are obligatory for women (see IHF Beach Handball rules of the Game – Athlete Uniform Regulation).

Stop right there. Why? Why are the requirements for women sexual? Why are men ordered to wear shorts while women are ordered to wear bikini bottoms?

I’ve been wondering this ever since beach volleyball turned up at the Olympics.

A request was made by the Norwegian Handball Federation (NHF) before the tournament started for their players to wear shorts rather than the ’embarrassing’ bikini bottoms that are regulated, report Inside The Games.

But oh no, that would never do, they have to be embarrassed, so that men in the crowd can get their jollies.

However, they were told that they would be fined for ignoring rules which state bikini bottoms must be ‘not more than 10 centimetres on the sides’.

Norway captain Katinka Haltvik told NRK: ‘So then we are forced to play with panties. It is so embarrassing.’

That’s a bonus.

H/t Sackbut

And then Philip Pullman.

How dare we accuse him of sending mixed messages when he interrupts himself talking about abuse of a woman to say he opposes “transphobia” – which as we know all too well can mean anything and everything and is often just a pretext for bullying women. So that’s how we “dare.”

The new wave of JKR-bullying continues to break over our heads.

They really said that? They really did.

They don’t know how to spell “despicable.”

And speaking of bona fide qualifications – an item I just saw on Facebook.

Yes it does.

Originally a comment by maddog on Lesbians with penises.

it’s denying the reality of the existence of trans-women, in fact all trans-people

Wait, what? Recognizing that women don’t have penises, and that woman/woman sexual orientation is penis-exclusive is “denying reality” now? WHAT f”ing “reality of the existence of trans women” makes them at all relevant to a group that is exclusively women/women related, and has no connection to, interest in, or reason to consider penis-people at all?

Trans-women are women. Full stop.

That’s just flatly not true. By definition, only men can be “trans women.” Trans women are men. The penis is sort of a giveaway about that.

It’s baffling that (LGB Alliance) don’t accept that …

It’s not a bit “baffling.” What’s truly baffling is how these buffoons can say with a straight face — and not be immediately laughed out of the room — that men, mostly fully intact bepenised men, can be any kind of woman at all. It’s a charade, an unbelievable one at that, to pretend that a man is a woman if he says so.

Trans and gender-diverse people … have long been an integral part of the broader community.

I don’t believe that’s true, but even if it is, so what? See that little phrase at the end? “…part of the broader community”? That part right there? The “lesbian” group is a smaller portion of the whole. It is a narrower part of the community. You may be part of the “broader community,” but that doesn’t mean that you are in every narrower subgroup. If there were an event intended for gay men, lesbians would necessarily be excluded, for example. Ever heard of BFOQs, in the labor context? That stands for “bona fide occupational qualifications,” and is a recognized exception to the general rule of equal opportunity in employment without regard to color, creed, sex, race, national origin, religion, and so on. There are some jobs in which, for instance, only a person of the same religion can perform the proper duties of the job. Some jobs may be sex-specific, if there is a genuine reason for that exclusion. The social and political events at issue here are not jobs, but the situation is analogous. There is a bona fide reason the event is sex-specific to women. Being part of a “broader community” is not an entry ticket to every subgroup that makes up the broader community.

Via Charles Pierce in Esquire, a doctor in Arkansas says what it’s like there:

The last day I worked wasn’t too bad. Had several people come in with symptoms or just to be tested. Mostly younger than 40. Of course zero vaccinations, and when I asked why, I don’t get the “cause the internet, cause screw the libs, I think it’s dangerous” excuses. I don’t get any excuses at all. They just shrug their shoulders and say they didn’t need it. It’s just part of their psyche now. Sun rises in the east, Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead, you just don’t get vaccinated.

They didn’t need it, but now they have symptoms. shrug.

The ones that were negative, when I ask them if they are going to get vaccinated they look at me like I have three heads.

The positive ones sometimes have some regrets, one in particular started crying after we talked about intubation, CPR, and ECMO. The ones I send home often get mad when I tell them there’s not anything I can do for them.

I’ve resisted the temptation to put on their discharge instructions: “You didn’t listen to me about how not to get this, why would you listen now. Ask the internet when to return to the ED.”

When I was in college I did telemarketing for a while. In those jobs they give you a sheet of things to say to overcome objections when people don’t want to buy from you. But how do you overcome an objection when they don’t give you one? They just look at you [and] shrug [their] shoulders. I tried giving them the science. I tried mild anger and looking at everybody over my glasses like their disappointed father. They are just not gonna do it and nothing I say is going to change that so it makes me wonder whether I even need to keep trying.

I’ve gotten updates from lots of people in Missouri and Arkansas. Things are absolutely at their capacity. They’re talking about field hospitals again in Springfield and we are very close to running out of capacity for ECMO in Arkansas and Missouri. Last week a paramedic posted a whiteboard showing that every ICU in Arkansas was on divert. That means they are not accepting any transfers and critically ill patients will stay in the emergency department for the foreseeable future. None of which is safe for anybody.

None of this was inevitable. People who mock the very idea of vaccinations made it happen.

Updating to add Charles Pierce’s conclusion after the doctor’s account:

Goddammit, none of this had to happen. And it certainly doesn’t have to continue to happen. If you’re making a buck out there off telling people tales about the perils of the vaccines, or if you’re an idiot meat puppet from Fox News bothering the White House with stupid questions, just shut up and sit all your asses down. Get used to the fact that you’re going to hell, every damn one of you.

It’s not? It’s not the government’s job to protect people?

I kind of think it is.

The sly way they distort the reporting on this…

Headline: J.K. Rowling Responds to Pipebomb Death Threat, Hits Out at Trans Activists

No she doesn’t “hit out” – she tweets words. See also: the American Booksellers Association claiming to have committed “violence” by including a gender critical book in a promotion.

Ryan Smith writes:

J. K. Rowling has hit out at a Twitter user on Monday, after she was sent a “pipebomb” threat amid a series of attacks over her previous statements about trans women.

She didn’t “hit out” at anyone.

The Harry Potter author shared a screenshot of the offending tweet, which was directed at her on Sunday, as she slammed the efforts of some trans activists to get her “cancelled.”

Always choose the violent metaphor.

On Sunday, Rowling hit back at another Twitter user, who accused the star of ignoring “porn tweeted at children” in her posts.

She didn’t hit back. She hasn’t hit anyone, she hasn’t physically slammed anyone. She also, by the way, hasn’t tweeted any physical threats at anyone, which is more than the pro-magic-gender side can claim.

Graham Linehan calls out the coward celebrities who are ignoring the abuse aimed at JK Rowling:

David O’Doherty? The ‘trans ally’ who gave my wife shit over the phone because he didn’t have the guts to confront me? Let’s see what he’s talking about.

Jokes about Birkenstocks, it turns out.

Aisling Bea what do you think of the pipe bomb threat? You were full of talk of nuance when you wrote this disgraceful, patronising tweet to a survivor of domestic violence.

Jon Ronson, author of ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’, anything to say about this public shaming, certainly more ambitious in scope and significance than what Justine Sacco went through? Not even a trace of journalistic interest in it?

Ronson of all people should be on this, but he isn’t. It’s pathetic.

Glinner concludes with a pair of retweets of an endless catalogue of JKR-abuse.

Now there’s a headline.

Bid to exclude ‘people with penises’ from lesbian events ‘unlawful’

But lesbian events are for lesbians, and “people with penises” are men and men can’t be lesbians because lesbians are same-sex attracted women.

Lesbians will be breaking the law if they exclude biological males who are transgender from social events, after a controversial discrimination ruling set to become a national test case. Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination commissioner Sarah Bolt has ruled lesbian events that exclude trans-women carry a “significant risk” of breaching legislation.

And lesbian events that are forced to include men are guaranteed to be no longer lesbian events.

Men can be trans all they like, knock yourselves out guys, but they’re still men and they’re still not lesbians.

In a decision earlier this month not yet publicised, Ms Bolt refused to grant an exemption to allow the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Alliance to exclude “biological men” from lesbian events.

What a wicked thing to do.

Launceston lesbian Jessica Hoyle, who made the application on the alliance’s behalf, said it aimed to exempt organisers from discrimination complaints if they excluded trans-women.

On account of how they wanted it to be a lesbian event.

“I want to exclude people with penises, because being a lesbian is about same-sex attraction. It’s not about same-gendered attraction … There are many events that cater for the trans community in Tasmania that are all-inclusive.

“This event was going to be just for lesbians who are same-sex attracted.”

That is, just for lesbians.

Transforming Tasmania said the exclusion of trans-women from lesbian events was discriminatory. “Ultimately, it’s denying the reality of the existence of trans-women, in fact all trans-people,” said Transforming Tasmania spokesperson Charlie Burton. “Trans-women are women. Full stop. It’s baffling that (LGB Alliance) don’t accept that … Trans and gender-diverse people … have long been an integral part of the broader community.”

No, trans women are not women full stop. Trans women are men who “feel” they are women, or who “identify as” women, or who call themselves women. They’re not actually literally women. The full stop does not belong in that sentence.

Yes so this is clearly a very healthy and progressive movement for social change.

The battle continues.

In reality Cardona doesn’t meddle with curriculum decisions.

Peppered with questions Thursday about whether he supports “critical race theory,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that his department will leave curriculum decisions to state and local officials.

“It’s important that I reiterate at every opportunity I have that the federal government doesn’t get involved in curriculum,” he said during a hearing before the House education committee Thursday.

But he didn’t completely sidestep the issue of how racism should figure into classroom discussions, a question that has engulfed state legislatures and local school boards across the country over the last few months.

Credit: Fox News and Trump.

Just months ago, critical race theory was known only as a line of academic thought that argued that racism is deeply embedded in American society.

And therefore shaped many if not all institutions in American society.

The phrase was catapulted from obscurity by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, who claimed that critical race theory had infiltrated the federal government and public schools. At Rufo’s urging, President Trump issued an executive order barring the concept in federal agencies. (Biden quickly rescinded it.) In the telling of critics like Rufo, critical race theory and ideas associated with it overstate the degree of racism in American society and encourage judging individuals based on their race.

As opposed to what? Our long history of not judging individuals based on their race? Come on. Ignoring it or pretending it’s long over is not reasonable or justifiable.

Rufo and others in conservative media — as well as the experience of some parents in their local schools — have helped galvanize a far-reaching backlash to a host of efforts to address racism in schools and acknowledge racism in American history. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, recently released a toolkit for parents to combat “woke schooling.”

Ok but then can we also combat comatose schooling? Can we meet in the middle somewhere?

It’s Put People Off the Vax day again.

I can’t find a link to the statement itself, including on Trump’s website, only to people citing it, so that’s irritating. Mediaite reports on it but doesn’t link to it. Maybe someone has taken it down.

Donald Trump stirred up vaccine opposition on Sunday, even linking it to his false claims about the 2020 election.

There has been significant focus on Trump supporters either being hesitant to get vaccines or outright refusing to, even though the vaccines were developed under Operation Warp Speed during his administration.

So Trump decided to amp up the distrust. Such a helpful, caring man.

Work it out for yourselves.

So the prime minister says that with the removal of Covid restrictions we will now be able to make our own “informed decisions” about what we will and will not do. Generally, we might feel it’s a sign of a good government and a good society that it allows and enables its members to make their own informed decisions about how they want to live their lives.

Generally, yes. All things being equal, yes. In normal circumstances, yes. Obviously. Of course. We can figure out for ourselves when to go out and when to stay home, what to wear and where to live, how much to sleep and what toothpaste to use. But when circumstances stop being normal, then that’s the new world we live in. You can’t always do what you want.

But it’s hard to rejoice at the removal of most Covid restrictions with the current dramatic rise in new infections. When more than 100 experts have signed an open letter in the Lancet calling the full easing of restrictions “dangerous and premature”, it can feel less like relief and freedom, and more like we’re being released into a wild unknown – and one that comes with ever-increasing ethical burdens on us as individuals.

It can probably still feel like relief and freedom if you ignore all the realities, but what it feels like and what it actually is are two different things. Humans seem to be very bad at keeping that distinction in mind – we’re always hearing people say chirpily “I feel perfectly safe!” while doing something reckless.

Sisters!

Why we can’t have nice things.

Imagine being an ICU nurse in an area of Covid deniers.

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses.

[Emily] Boucher and her colleagues were pained by those attacks — and infuriated by them. Unlike their exhaustion, that anger rarely showed on their faces, but it was often there: as they scrolled Facebook to see local ministers saying God was greater than any virus, or stood in line with unmasked grocery shoppers who joked loudly about the covid hoax.

On that December morning when she became the first person to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the 21 counties served by her hospital’s parent company, Ballad Health, Boucher breathed deeply as she described what she and her co-workers were up against. They were fighting not just for their patients’ lives, she said, but “against misinformation and reckless practices that have led to this virus getting so out of control.”

Because she was the first person in her area to get the vax, she was photographed for media stories.

Commenters speculated that the syringe might not have actually contained any vaccine. Others said she must be getting kickbacks from Pfizer. Boucher returned to her crowded ICU knowing that to some in her community, her vaccination was not a turning point and she was not a hero. She was just another part of the hoax.

She’s risking her own life and her neighbors are talking smack about her.

Jamie Swift, a registered nurse who oversees infection prevention for Johnston and Ballad’s other hospitals, recalled her realization that “people would trust Facebook more than they would trust us” — and her horror at the consequences as the winter surge began.

“You work all day, and you see people who are struggling to breathe, and you see the horrible side of what covid can do. And then you go home and you see restaurants that are packed and grocery stores where person after person is going in without a mask,” said Swift, who in December was briefly hospitalized herself with the coronavirus. “There have been times when I broke down and cried. It was just devastating, because you leave the hospital and you come out into a community that doesn’t believe that it’s real and in what it can do.”

One disbeliever went right on disbelieving even when her mother was in the ICU.

After Goff’s mother developed a high fever, she was taken by ambulance to Johnston Memorial, and a week later she was intubated. Goff was furious, claiming that doctors had not adequately informed her family about the severity of her mother’s condition. As a result, she said, she had advised her mother to refuse the proven covid-19 treatment remdesivir.

Brilliant.

She was comforted when she learned that one of her old high school friends was a nurse manager in the ICU, and thrilled when her mom recovered after several days on the ventilator. But she gives the credit to God, not to Johnston Memorial.

“It was definitely a miracle,” she said. “I had rallied the prayer warriors.” And while she no longer doubts the reality of covid-19, she said she still believes it has been exaggerated and that hospitals are falsifying cases to make money.

“It’s just like, what’s real? What’s not? Obviously the corona is real, but I don’t think the numbers that they’re reporting are actually accurate,” said Goff, a 38-year-old information systems analyst.

Nice punchline.

Is it news that Trump is a reckless imbecile? Hardly.

This week, the Guardian reported that what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents describe Donald Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual”. Vladimir Putin, the documents say, therefore decided to assist Trump’s rise to power in 2016 as a way to weaken America. Five years on, as America digests a string of bombshell revelations about the last days of Trump’s presidency pulled from a string of new books, Russia’s judgment seems born out.

Well of course it does, but it wasn’t in doubt anyway. We’ve always known that Trump is impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced, along with greedy, cruel, stupid, lazy, corrupt, empty, and trashy.

In Landslide, Michael Wolff’s second sequel to Fire and Fury, the book that birthed the genre, Trump is shown isolated and unhinged in the White House, pushed to extremes by Rudy Giuliani before, during and after his supporters’ deadly attack on the Capitol…

In Frankly, We Did Win This Election, Michael Bender reports the 2020 campaign in exhaustive detail. He also tells us Trump believed Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things”, wanted to “execute” whichever aide leaked news of his retreat to a White House bunker as anti-racism protests raged last summer, and told his top general to “just shoot” those demonstrating in Lafayette Square outside.

We need to know all this, but let’s not pretend any of it is surprising. There is no bottom to the badness of Trump.

Many Trump books report important news. Many trade in salacious gossip. But all in some way document a moment in US history that is unprecedented – and which has not ended.

Trump retains control of a party committed to advancing his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud and to attacking the voting rights of opponents. It is therefore important, Setmayer said, for the media to continue to cover both Trump and the avalanche of books about him.

Indeed. Just don’t pretend he’s ever been any better than what he is now.

Ivermectin study withdrawn:

The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”.

As in, ethical concerns over possible fakery.

[T]he drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns”. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were.

…

“The main error is that at least 79 of the patient records are obvious clones of other records,” Brown told the Guardian. “It’s certainly the hardest to explain away as innocent error, especially since the clones aren’t even pure copies. There are signs that they have tried to change one or two fields to make them look more natural.”

That’s quite an error.

The Elgazzar study was one of the the largest and most promising showing the drug may help Covid patients, and has often been cited by proponents of the drug as evidence of its effectiveness. This is despite a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases in June finding ivermectin is “not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients”.

Meyerowitz-Katz told the Guardian that “this is one of the biggest ivermectin studies out there”, and it appeared to him the data was “just totally faked”. This was concerning because two meta-analyses of ivermectin for treating Covid-19 had included the Elgazzar study in the results. A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies to determine what the overall scientific literature has found about a treatment or intervention.

“Because the Elgazzar study is so large, and so massively positive – showing a 90% reduction in mortality – it hugely skews the evidence in favour of ivermectin,” Meyerowitz-Katz said.

“If you remove this one study from the scientific literature, suddenly there are very few positive randomised control trials of ivermectin for Covid-19. Indeed, if you get rid of just this research, most meta-analyses that have found positive results would have their conclusions entirely reversed.”

Well he’s just a shill for Big Pharma, right?

The conservative Australian MP Craig Kelly, who has also promoted the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 – despite there being no evidence that it works – has been among those promoting ivermectin. Several Indian media outlets ran stories on Kelly in the past week after he asked Uttar Pradesh to loan the state’s chief minister, Adityanath, to Australia to release ivermectin. After this story was initially published, Kelly contacted the Guardian to say he disagreed with the statement that there was no evidence that hydroxychloroquine worked, and that he stood by his views.

Remember when Trump used to disagree too?

Time for another round of bleach-injection I guess.

The ABA has a Diversity and Inclusion section. There it has a Diversity Statement.

ABA exists to help member bookstores grow and succeed, and we work to do that in a way that is committed to anti white supremacy, antiracism, representation, and equity. We believe that listening to many different perspectives and empowering underrepresented voices deepens our understanding and enriches everyone’s experience. We are committed to equity, dignity, and diversity for all Peoples. 

It promises to

– Implement best practices to ensure more diverse hiring and more opportunities for promotion into senior and decision-making positions at all levels of the organization for diverse employees

– Make sure ABA policies and procedures are antiracist, create opportunities for everyone, and demonstrate support for marginalized Peoples

What are diverse employees though? What does “diverse” mean? Something to do with antiracist, but beyond that it’s left unstated.

– Work closely with ABA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council of member booksellers to be aware of concerns of a diverse group of booksellers and bookstore owners and to use the council’s insights and feedback to improve ABA’s programs and services and better serve marginalized communities

Diverse and marginalized – but which are they?

– Require representation of BIPOC, queer, disabled, and other marginalized authors and books at all ABA events (at least 40% of speakers/panelists overall)

There we go – finally we know who they are. BIPOC, queer, and disabled.

– Meet as staff throughout the year to discuss topics and educate ourselves on issues related to antiracism, antidiscrimination, microaggressions, and supporting underrepresented Peoples. 

Notice anything missing?

Women. On the whole page, there’s not one word about women.