Scary Doctor Jack Turban again.

Chase Strangio and Jack Turban are the ones causing harm.

Yes how dare they talk to radical feminists who don’t believe the new ideology of Magic Gender? How dare they not talk to Jack Turban instead of any feminists or women at all?

Also why does Jack Turban think 60 Minutes has to answer his questions? Why does he think he’s the boss of them?

By “gender-affirming healthcare” he means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and amputation of breasts or genitals. It’s at least debatable whether those items are healthcare at all.

MTG is doing outrage theater again.

House Republican leaders have condemned incendiary remarks from GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene five days after she first publicly compared Capitol Hill mask rules to the Holocaust, amid a wave of criticism from Republican and conservative critics as well as Jewish groups aimed at the Georgia congresswoman and the party leaders’ silence.

I missed it; what did she say?

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during an interview on a conservative podcast this week, compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to continue to require members of the House to wear masks on the chamber floor to steps the Nazis took to control the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

Let’s think about that. Is the mask requirement a step leading to the systematic murder of all members of the House? No. Is it a step leading to the systematic murder of anyone? Anyone at all? No. Is it a step leading to society-wide ostracism and persecution of all members of the House? No. Of anyone? No.

She has her chain of reasoning though. She’s thought about it.

Greene, in a conversation with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody Real America’s Voice TV show “The Water Cooler,” attacked Pelosi and accused her of being a hypocrite for asking GOP members to prove they have all been vaccinated before allowing members to be in the House chamber without a mask.

“You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

Actually the extermination camps were in Poland, but never mind that – the point is – no, it really isn’t. That word “exactly”? It should be “not in any way.”

Back to today’s story.

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement five days after Greene’s original comments and after she made similar comparisons Tuesday. “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”

Nuh uh, says MTG.

On Tuesday, Greene continued to ramp up her rhetoric, tweeting once again her thoughts about vaccine requirements and the Holocaust.

“I never compared it to the Holocaust, only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years. Stop feeding into the left wing media attacks on me,” Greene tweeted. “Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people. Why aren’t they?”

…

Earlier Tuesday, Republican and conservative critics drew special attention to House Republican leaders for their silence following Greene’s latest tweets.

Trump wing v Never Trump wing.

“A new comment by @mtgreenee sticking with the Nazi comparison. I’m sure Republican leadership hasn’t seen it yet, so wanted to alert @GOPLeader, @SteveScaliseGOP, and @EliseStefanik so they can hop into action,” tweeted Bill Kristol, director of Defending Democracy Together, a conservative advocacy group.

Maybe she’s there to make the rest of them look respectable.

Interesting – the Biden admin met with some secular groups.

Representatives of atheist and secular groups held their first meeting with White House officials last week, marking a willingness by the Biden administration to work with the growing networks of religiously unaffiliated Americans.

…

Leaders of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Secular Coalition for America, American Atheists, Center for Inquiry and Ex-Muslims of North America also attended the virtual gathering that included Josh Dickson, deputy director of the office, and program specialist Ben O’Dell.

…

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the FFRF, welcomed the first meeting with the new administration.

“With more than a quarter of the population identifying as a ‘None’ (no religion), it’s vital that our community, our voices be heard in favor of reason in social policy and upholding our secular government,” she said in a statement.

I’m especially glad to see Muhammad Syed there. (“There” being the meeting, not a physical place, since rows of little windows aren’t a place.)

The Scottish Sun also reports on The Great Controversial Stickers Controversy.

POLICE Scotland faced anger and ridicule after a clampdown on stickers from a feminist group opposed to the relaxation of gender self-ID laws.

The national force was accused of a “chilling” attack on free speech after announcing it was probing the matter as a “hate” crime.

Officers in Kirkcaldy also urged members of the public to contact them or Fife Council if locals saw any more “controversial stickers”.

Without specifying the nature of the controversy.

The move came after cops were alerted to “Women won’t wheesht” stickers that had been placed on lampposts in Kirkcaldy, promoting activists For Women Scotland.

…

Following the backlash, Police Scotland deleted the tweet with a senior sources saying it was “poorly worded”.

Well it was, because of the failure to describe the stickers beyond the one word “controversial” while asking the public to report them all the same. It would have tied up all the phones and computers for years.

Police also denied its move was connected to the SNP’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act – which became law last month.

The force said it had not yet been given new powers under the legislation, which sparked concerns about freedom of speech during its passage through Holyrood.

Great, so they’re going to be even worse.

SNP MP and feminist campaigner Joanna Cherry QC suggested the apparent clampdown on a women’s group could mean police risk unlawfully victimising women or people who believe that the gender self-ID push is wrong.

She said: “The onus is on Kirkcaldy police to explain why they were concerning themselves with stickers which they deemed controversial as opposed to criminal.

“The deletion of their tweet would indicate that they now accept this was not an appropriate use of police time.

“The police should be mindful that as a public authority they are bound by the Public Sector Equality Duty to foster good relations between all the protected characteristics under the Equality Act and not to discriminate, harass or victimise any person or group because of their protected characteristic.

“The protected characteristics include sex, sexual orientation and belief as well as gender reassignment.”

Got that???

The Times reports on the zealous policing in Scotland:

Marion Calder, spokeswoman for [For Women Scotland], said Millar had been overwhelmed by the support she had received.

“Marion still has no idea of what she is being accused of and won’t know until she attends the police station on Thursday,” she said. “This is exactly why we raised concerns about the new hate crime legislation.

“It was obvious that if complaints were made they would be followed through — no matter how vexatious or politically motivated. Serious questions have to be raised about how Police Scotland has handled this.

“The public are finally waking up and getting worried about what is happening to freedom of speech. Police Scotland appear determined to follow through complaints about women expressing views or posting stickers, yet we can see thousands of football supporters being able to congregate and vandalise a city centre with apparent impunity. It’s nonsensical.”

Nonsensical and repressive, sexist, bullying, and grotesquely unjust.

A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said: “We received two complaints regarding comments made on social media, enquiries into this are ongoing.”

How is it only two? If people are aware that Police Scotland react this way to two complaints, how is it that there aren’t 70 billion complaints?

And can Police Scotland not simply look at the “comments made on social media” and decide they’re not a police matter? Given that people post blood-dripping physical threats on Twitter all the damn time, I’m very skeptical that Marion’s tweets are in fact a police matter.

Police Scotland has been accused of a “chilling” attack on free speech after officers in Kirkcaldy urged people to contact them if they saw “controversial stickers” promoting For Women Scotland.

That’s not what they said though. They didn’t mention For Women Scotland. They didn’t mention anything, they just said “controversial stickers.” They said to let them know if we saw the stickers, without saying what they were.

It opposes plans which would allow individuals to self identify as women without medical checks, claiming this infringes on women’s rights. The stickers featured the hashtag #womensrightsarenotahatecrime.

But the police left all of that out of the tweet. All of it.

Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative shadow community safety minister, said: “It seems absurd but also chilling to issue a public warning about stickers.” Joanna Cherry QC, the SNP MP, said: “The deletion of their tweet would indicate this was not an appropriate use of police time.”

Or that they needed to include the relevant information, or both.

We should just elect cows and chickens and wombats to Congress, it would make more sense and be cheaper.

About those “femmes”…

If you have been on the internet recently, then you’ve likely seen the phrase “women and femmes” floating around. Maybe you read it in this article from Everyday Feminism concerning emotional labor or maybe in this takedown of white feminism from Wear Your Voice. You’ve almost certainly seen it pop up on your Twitter or Facebook feeds, at least if you’re someone who has links to queer and/or feminist communities. While it might seem innocuous, the phrase has been irritating me for the last two years or so. Why? Because it is, to put it lightly, incoherent nonsense.

…Femme is a term that comes from working-class lesbian culture. It was originally used to describe lesbians who were feminine in their appearance and clothing, and sat in opposition to butch lesbians, who were masculine in their appearance and clothing. (If you’re interested in reading more about the height of butch/femme culture then I suggest reading Leslie Feinberg’s seminal novel Stone Butch Blues.) Femme was about femininity released from the chains of obligation to men and their gazes. It was a defiant and knowing femininity, performed for oneself and for other women, rather than in service of the heteronormative status quo, which maintained that women were naturally feminine, men naturally masculine, and that the only acceptable desire was between these two kinds of people.

However, modern day usage of femme is far more expansive: Now it’s used throughout the queer community by people of any gender and sexuality as a label to name their intentional, feminine gender expression. (You can read a little more about how some queer people define their femme-ness in these pieces from Autostraddle and Vice.) It is important to recognize that people who are both straight and cisgender (i.e. not transgender) wouldn’t really claim a femme identity, since being feminine is not the same as being femme. For example, when cisgender straight women have a feminine gender expression it’s simply “the norm,” not an intentional reclamation of femininity from the clutches of heteronormativity. Femme is an identity that queer people choose—it is not simply a description of a person’s femininity.

In other words it’s for lesbians and…men who claim to be “queer.” In other other words it’s yet another word that’s been appropriated from women.

Someone should ask Stonewall “U ok hun?”

Chelsea Mitchell on what fun it was having to compete against two boys in her sport:

It’s February 2020. I’m crouched at the starting line of the high school girls’ 55-meter indoor race. This should be one of the best days of my life. I’m running in the state championship, and I’m ranked the fastest high school female in the 55-meter dash in the state. I should be feeling confident. I should know that I have a strong shot at winning.

Instead, all I can think about is how all my training, everything I’ve done to maximize my performance, might not be enough, simply because there’s a runner on the line with an enormous physical advantage: a male body.

I won that race, and I’m grateful. But time after time, I have lost. I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to male runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two male runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again.

That’s a devastating experience. It tells me that I’m not good enough; that my body isn’t good enough; and that no matter how hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed, because I’m a woman.

That’s why she filed a lawsuit along with three other women against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC).

The CIAC allows biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. As a result, two males began racing in girls’ track in 2017. In the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone, these males took 15 women’s state track championship titles (titles held in 2016 by nine different girls) and more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions that belonged to female track athletes.

Everybody used to know this was unfair.

But Connecticut officials are determined to ignore the obvious. And unfortunately, a federal district court recently dismissed our case. The court’s decision to do so tells women and girls that their feelings and opportunities don’t matter, and that they can’t expect anyone to stand up for their dignity and their rights.

…

It’s discouraging that the federal district court has decided that these experiences — these lost opportunities — simply don’t matter.But I’m not beaten yet. And neither are my fellow female athletes.

Through our ADF attorneys, my fellow athletes and I are appealing the federal district court’s ruling. We’re taking our case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where we are going to ask once again for the court to recognize our right to fair competition — a right that Title IX has promised to girls and women for 50 years. And we’re fighting not just for ourselves, but for all female athletes.

Fingers crossed.

Women are being ordered to wheesht about that man taking a woman’s place at the Olympics.

Former Olympic weightlifter Tracey Lambrechs says females are being told to “be quiet” when they complain about the [un]fairness of transgender New Zealand athlete Laurel Hubbard competing in women’s competitions.

…

“I’m quite disappointed, quite disappointed for the female athlete who will lose out on that spot,” Lambrechs, who won a bronze medal for New Zealand at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, told TVNZ.

And not just disappointed, but also angry at the injustice of it. But wheesht.

“We’re all about equality for women in sport but right now that equality is being taken away from us.

“I’ve had female weightlifters come up to me and say, ‘what do we do? This isn’t fair, what do we do?’. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do because every time we voice it we get told to be quiet.”

So, piling injustice on injustice. Doing it to them and then telling them to shut up when they try to talk about it.

In a statement on Thursday, the IOC said that while committed to inclusion, it was currently reviewing its guidelines to take into account the “perceived tension between fairness/safety and inclusion/non-discrimination”.

“Inclusion” isn’t a value at events like the Olympics – not “inclusion” meaning all shall win, all shall have prizes. The Olympics is a contest, and it’s about as exclusive as it gets. Laurel Hubbard shouldn’t be “included” in the women’s weightlifting competition, because he’s not a woman.

Australia’s weightlifting federation sought to block Hubbard from competing at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast but organisers rejected the move.

Because it’s only women who will lose out, so that doesn’t matter.

Some new light, perhaps, on the dreaded Controversial Stickers in Kirkcaldy:

Kirkcaldy Police said – in a now deleted tweet – there was a report of a hate crime involving “controversial” stickers on lampposts in Viewforth Avenue on Monday May 17, and asked people to contact Fife Council so they could be removed.

Which, by the way, makes no sense. The police had already been told about the stickers, so why “ask people to contact Fife Council so that they could be removed”? Why not just go right on ahead and remove them themselves, without any further tattling from “people”?

However, officers have since said that no criminality was established following inquiries.

Why wasn’t that blindingly obvious to them from the outset?

The stickers promote the group For Women Scotland (FWS) and displayed hashtags including #waronwomen, #sexnotgender and #nopubertyblockers.

Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland said the organisation, which was founded in 2018, did not produce or distribute the stickers.

It was probably Alger Hiss then.

Ms Smith said on Sunday: “For Women Scotland do not produce stickers, however, we know that many people express support for us and other women’s groups and we are very grateful.

“The images we have seen are of stickers which express the sentiment that women will not remain silent in conversations about our bodies or our rights.

“The idea that this is ‘controversial’ or requires investigation by the police is chilling.”

It comes after MSPs approved a new hate crime bill earlier this year.

It was created to simplify and clarify the law by bringing together various existing hate crime laws into a single piece of legislation.

Under the bill, offences are considered “aggravated” if they involve prejudice on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

But not, I point out for the millionth time, sex. Offences are considered “aggravated” if they involve prejudice on the basis of transgender identity, but not if they involve prejudice on the basis of sex. Transgender identity matters, being female doesn’t.

Trans woman Dawn Ennis bullies a young female athlete on Twitter, because that’s what trans activism is all about, right?

How would Dawn Ennis know that? Even if we buy into the claim that men can become women by saying so, how can we or Dawn Ennis or anyone know that any particular men really mean it as opposed to doing it to gain an advantage? At any rate all his fact claims are stupid. Who says “those are the proper, non-bigoted terms”? People who have bought into the bullshit, that’s who. Women are women and men are not women. It’s not “bigoted” to say that.

Interesting reversal. It’s the woman who’s being unfair, the woman who is trying to win at the expense of others – not the two men who claim to be girls and then race against girls. You coulda fooled me.

All women, including those like me, who are men.

Horrible man. Horrible horrible bullying bully of a man.

Fortunately, some higher ups are now watching what Police Scotland are doing to Marion Millar.

Hand the keys over to Bev and Kate.

Stonewall, meanwhile, is taking the bratty route.

Siva Vaidhyanathan on UNC and Nikole Hannah-Jones and special insults:

When the prestigious Hussman School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – the oldest public university in North America – went searching for a Knight chair – funded by the Knight Foundation to promote journalism education by putting some of America’s finest practicing journalists in the classroom – a distinguished alumna of that school was the obvious choice.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is just such an alumna and just such a journalist.

It did not turn out as planned. On Tuesday we learned that conservative activists on the University of North Carolina board of trustees took the unprecedented step of withholding tenure from Hannah-Jones’ appointment as the next Knight chair. All the previous Knight chairs at the university had been hired with tenure. All the previous Knight chairs at North Carolina were white.

But that’s pure coincidence, right?

Unlike her white predecessors, Hannah-Jones will be offered a five-year term without tenure. This was a clear slap at her race, gender, prominence, and mostly her unwillingness to bow to critics. It denied her something she earned through hard work and years of practice. And it was a decision made without serious consideration of her contributions to the field.

But maybe she’s just average?

Over a career spanning 20 years, Hannah-Jones has won a National Magazine award, a Polk award, a Pulitzer prize, and a MacArthur grant. Hannah-Jones was elected in 2021 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences – one of top honors a writer may achieve in America. Among other subjects Hannah-Jones has covered public education, demographics, Cuba, and civil rights.

As someone who spends each summer devouring piles of articles, books, and teaching records of scholars being considered for tenure at America’s finest universities – often candidates for tenure in journalism schools – I can attest that Hannah-Jones more than meets the criteria for tenure based on all of her journalistic work.

I’ll stop making sarcastic jokes and say it: conservatives are furious about the 1619 Project.

In 2019 Hannah-Jones oversaw a provocative and stirring account for the New York Times Magazine of the sweep of American history, placing its founding in 1619 with the introduction of slavery to North America. The collection of essays by historians, sociologists, activists, and journalists sparked debate among historians and re-assessment of curricula within high schools and colleges across the United States. By putting slavery and its legacy at the center of American history, the 1619 project echoes a strong and growing strain of scholarly work over the past 30 years. But it challenges the “consensus” story of US history that dominated most of the past 60 years of historiography.

But when you think about it why wouldn’t you put slavery at the center? It’s not a minor, peripheral aspect of our history.

[T]he 1619 project also sparked a furious blowback from conservatives who don’t like to be reminded that Black people are allowed to tell the story of America as well, and that history is always under revision as new knowledge emerges and new questions rise.

…

What the powers that be in North Carolina have not figured out is that their university needs Hannah-Jones more than she needs it. There are dozens of other universities that would gladly grant tenure to her and enlighten their students with her wisdom. She will be just fine. North Carolina, we can’t be so sure about.

They’ll still have tobacco.

Looks like piracy.

A Belarusian journalist and opposition activist is being held at an airport in Minsk after his Lithuania-bound flight was forced to land, opposition politicians and outlets said on Sunday.

Opposition figures swiftly criticized the move, which they said was a bid by the government of longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko to clamp down on critical voices.

The regime says it was a bomb scare, but one suspects it was a bomb scare in the sense that the regime yelled “bomb scare!!!” as it forced the plane to divert.

Press Release from Sex Matters:

Equality and Human Rights Commission cuts ties with Stonewall

Now there is a headline.

In a letter to the campaigning group “Sex Matters”, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Kishwer Falkner has disclosed that the equalities watchdog has quit the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme. 

Yes yes YES.

Falkner was writing in response to an open letter sent by Sex Matters calling on the EHRC to quit the scheme. 

Sex Matters campaigns for clarity about sex in law and policy. It argues that membership of the Stonewall Scheme conflicts with public service independence and in particular with the EHRC’s mandate to protect everybody’s rights.  

Organisations that join the scheme pay Stonewall an annual fee and allow it to vet their internal policies, such as about who can use toilets and changing facilities, and what language to use when talking about men and women. Scheme members are encouraged to promote “gender self – identification”, to train all staff  to be “allies”, and to take steps such as encouraging people to announce their pronouns in meetings, and to wear rainbow lanyards. 

Encourage to promote “gender self-identification” – not just accept it or warn against persecuting it but promote it.

The news of EHRC leaving the Stonewall scheme comes in the same week as Essex University released the “Reindorf Review” investigation into the no-platforming of two feminist academics. 

Barrister Akua Reindorf found the university had adopted policies which reflect “the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is”, and created a “culture of fear”. A spokeswoman from Stonewall defended their policies as being “based on guidance provided by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.”

Well let’s just go around that circle forever, shall we? Stonewall says the EHRC says it’s ok and the EHRC says Stonewall says it’s ok repeat repeat repeat forever. Be sure never to do any actual thinking.

But the EHRC has ditched them and that is the best news.

This has been around for at least a year, but I’ve been seeing some pretty stupid anti-mask rants from a once intelligent guy lately so we still need it.

I’m curious about Police Scotland now, because of their high-handed persecution of Marion Millar.

In case you haven’t seen the post earlier today:

So I looked at their Twitter and I didn’t have to look far.

They say “A hate crime is any crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by malice & ill-will towards a social group” but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think they act on reports of hate crimes against women. The new hate crimes law (which is separate from this incident, which cites the Malicious Communications Act) doesn’t include women as targets of hate crime. I guess women are the new men? We’re the ones with so much social power and physical strength and general dominance that we can’t be the targets of hate crimes?

It’s never International Day Against Misogyny. Why is that exactly?

Joanna Moorhead at The Guardian interviews Kathleen Stock:

Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, says the key question she addresses – itself offensive to many – is this: do trans women count as women?

Whatever else about her views is controversial, she is surely on firm ground when she writes that this question has become surrounded by toxicity. But the problem for her is, at least partly, that many people do anything they can to avoid answering it. “Very few people who are sceptical talk about it directly, because they’re frightened,” she says. “It’s so hard psychologically to say, in reply: ‘I’m afraid not.’”

Maybe it’s easier if you just say no, of course not.

Stock is at pains to say she is not a transphobe, and also that she is sympathetic to the idea that many people feel they are not in the “right” body. What she says she opposes, though, is the institutionalisation of the idea that gender identity is all that matters – that how you identify automatically confers all the entitlements of that sex. And she believes that increasingly in universities and the wider world, that is a view that cannot be challenged.

She doesn’t so much “believe” that as know it all too well, including from personal experience.

How, then, in her view, have we got to where we are? Stock takes issue with Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, which campaigns for trans inclusion and opposes the views of gender-critical feminists. The charity’s Diversity Champions programme is very popular on campuses, and Stock believes this has in part “turned universities into trans activist organisations” through their equality, diversity and inclusion departments.

Stonewall, as we read earlier today, started out as a campaigning group for LG; the TQ got grafted on later. Now the LG come in a distant second.