When in doubt, shaft the workers.

South Carolina will leave the federal unemployment programs providing extra money to jobless residents in light of “unprecedented” workforce shortages across the state, Gov. Henry McMaster announced on Thursday.

The state will opt out of the coronavirus pandemic assistance programs beginning June 30. The federal benefits include an extra weekly $300 to unemployed workers that was scheduled to run through early September.

States’ rights! States’ rights to starve their workers into accepting crap jobs with crap pay and crap conditions.

The labor shortage has affected all areas of the state’s economy, state government officials said, with the hotel and food service industries especially hard-hit. McMaster claimed the shortage was created in large part due to the supplemental federal payments.

Ah yes hotel and food service, where the pay and conditions are notoriously bad. They could always pay more and mandate better conditions, but nah, better to starve the workers and pocket the money yourself.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Non-binary in Huddersfield.

The media outlet reporting this story has included a helpful glossary of genderist bullshit to indoctrinate (or at least confuse) its readers. Let’s play along!

Terms you need to understand

I seriously doubt it.

There are a lot of words used within the LGBT community that you may need help to understand. Here are some of the key definitions you may not know, as explained by Stonewall.

I might not know them because they’re wrong or made up. The likelyhood of anything from Stonewall leading to an improvement in my “understanding” is close to zero..

• Non-binary – the term used to describe people who don’t feel they comfortably identify as a man or a woman

Perhaps this should have started with definitions of “man” and “woman.” It would clarify whether the discomfort has anything to do with sexist stereotypes. As it is, I’m with Jesus & Mo’s barmaid: we’re all “non-binary.”

• Bisexual – a person who is attracted to people of more than one gender

WRONG. LOOK AT THE WORD: BI= two. SEXUAL = sex. That means “people attracted to both sexes.” “More than one” only insofar as you mean TWO, like it says in the “bi” part of the word. And sex, NOT “gender.” How can you be trusted with words if you can’t even get the fucking syllables right.

• LGBT – this is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bi and trans

As far as Stonewall’s activism is concerned, “T” is the only one that counts, but if they were to be honest and dropped the other letters, they would no longer be able to benefit from its parasitism of the gay rights movement, nobody would know what they were talking about anymore, and they would lose even more support.

• Gender Dysphoria – this is when a person feels discomfort or distress because they feel there is a conflict between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity

Damn those doctors, nurses and midwives for failing to see the Magical Gender Essence in the delivery room. It’s all their fault! Good thing that there are places like Tavistock to medicate and carve the bodies of these distressed people so that they conform to their preferred, bullshit sexist stereotypes! Wait. What is “gender?”

• Gender Identity – how a person feels innately about their own gender – whether it be male, female or non-binary

Wait. What is “gender?” You’ve used it twice now, without defining it. How does differ from bullshit, sexist stereotypes?

• Pan – a person whose attraction towards others isn’t limited by sex or gender

A “gender” is not a “sexuality.” People are gay, straight, or bi. That’s it, that’s all, that’s everything. Stonewall used to know this.

• Trans – an umbrella term used to describe those whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth

An almost useless catch-all term that includes people who don’t even want to be labeled trans. And don’t even ask about all the rest of you fuckers that we’re going to label “cis.”

Note that “genderqueer,” that extraordinarily meaningful, insightful, and powerful term, the accidental discovery of which helped launch the downward spiral of Pan Hollingworth’s pursuit of surgical solutions to mental problems, is nowhere to be found on this list. Perhaps because it is meaningless, incoherent, and contradictory genderbabble?

How’s Trump’s forced retirement going? Oh you know – full of revenge and plots and shouting.

Trump is moving to handpick members of the House GOP leadership team — relentlessly attacking Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, and endorsing Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York to replace her.

He is plotting to take down Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, while continuing to stoke the false claims of a stolen election that has become a dangerous rallying cry for the party.

And he is playing host to a burbling stream of Republican well-wishers — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif). and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) — who travel to his private Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida to pay their respects, seek his support and post a photo of their ring-kissing on social media.

All this for a guy with no talent, no charm, no decency, no mercy, no brains, no heart, no kindness, no generosity, no wit, no talent – it’s an endless list of nones.

He rails that President Biden is “a disaster” and argues that “Joe isn’t in charge, everybody knows it’s Kamala” — a preview of his likely message portraying Biden as an unwitting stooge of Vice President Harris, this person said.

I know this one – Biden is “pussy-whipped,” am I right? Trump is exactly the kind of guy who thinks in those terms.

Trump’s reappearance is fueled by an ego-driven desire to remain at the center of national attention, said former advisers and allies who are in touch with Trump.

But of course he’s not the center of national attention now. I hope it’s eating him up. I hope he curls up on the floor every night and screams.

The defeated ex-president is propelled primarily by a thirst for retribution, an insatiable quest for the spotlight and a desire to establish and maintain total dominance and control over the Republican base, said several former senior White House advisers.

So why were they senior advisers? Why did they work for a horrific human being like that?

Advisers and critics alike note his statements do not receive the attention they once did — and he is severely limited after being banned by Twitter and Facebook. Some previous donors are no longer interested in giving, while allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argue that polling shows Trump is less relevant by the week.

What I’m saying. He’s a talentless heap of lard, and without the office to shine him up, that’s all he looks like.

Despite being banned from major social media platforms after his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack, he now regularly puts out statements from the “45th President of the United States of America” through his political action committee. Earlier this week, he also launched a bare-bones website, “From the desk of Donald J. Trump,” that was widely mocked by critics as underwhelming and unimpressive. He dictates the statements to aides, who then print them out for him to edit with a Sharpie before they are officially released.

Edit with a Sharpie bwahahahahahaha

Privately, however, many Republican officials — including some Trump allies — are growing frustrated, worried that the former president is wasting his time on petty rivalries and grievances. They say they wish he was working to protect policies from his term and affirmatively helping Republicans in 2022. “All the 2022 stuff is, ‘Well, what’s in it for me?’” said one former senior White House official, summarizing Trump’s thinking.

And this surprises them? Really?

A brief conversation.

I haven’t had any reply. But. But! You see that one (1) like? It’s on the Garbs tweet, not mine. Guess whose like it is – go on, guess.

It’s Gegi’s! Gegi herhimtheirself!

No like for me though. Gegi isn’t very incloosive.

Misogynist Jolyon Maugham continues his misogynist “activism.”

It’s actually a lesbian gay and bisexual rights group, so his venomous lie is also homophobic. What a charmer he is.

NARAL on Facebook:

We’re calling on President Biden to propose a budget that ensures every body can access abortion care—free from discriminatory restrictions and denial of care policies. That means dropping the Weldon Amendment, and the Hyde Amendment, once and for all. Budgets reflect our priorities, and we need a budget that prioritizes reproductive freedom.

What on earth does “GENDER AFFIRMING CARE” have to do with NARAL? What does NARAL have to do with it? And why, why, WHY is “GENDER AFFIRMING CARE” on a large banner spang in the middle where it catches the eye while “ABORTION CARE” is on a small sign off to the side where the eye misses it?

They haven’t retrofitted everything though, at least not yet. If you go to the abortion access page whoopsie women make a return appearance. I wonder how long that will last.

The right to choose abortion is essential to ensuring a woman can decide for herself if, when and with whom to start or grow a family. We’ll never stop fighting to protect and expand this fundamental human right.

The Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that affirmed abortion as a constitutional right for all was supposed to be the beginning of the fight for women’s equality and autonomy, not the end. Since then, we’ve been forced to defend it over and over again as anti-choice politicians and organizations focus on undermining and chipping away at our rights until they can do away with legal abortion access completely. They’ve passed hundreds of laws to restrict a woman’s ability to access abortion care. These laws take many forms, including trying to outlaw abortion altogether, shutting down clinics, restricting access based on income level and dictating which medical procedures are available.

Anti-choice extremists will stop at nothing. They have opened thousands of fake health-care “clinics” that lie to and mislead women to prevent them from considering abortion as an option. And some anti-abortion zealots—emboldened by extreme rhetoric from anti-choice groups and politicians—have even murdered doctors and bombed clinics.

When the right to abortion is endangered, the fundamental equality of women is threatened. A woman can never be equal if she is denied the basic right to make decisions for herself and her family.

Bolding added.

They used to know. They used to know that of course it was about and for and to and at women. They used to know that pregnancy is why women are dominated and controlled and pushed around, and that it’s women who are dominated and controlled and pushed around, because of that whole pregnancy thing. Because duh. Of course they knew that; how would it be possible not to know that? It’s all the same knot: the reproductive role, the dimorphism, the domination/subordination. They used to know that if men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament.

They even still do know, once you leave the front page. But on the front page, and on Twitter, somehow they don’t know any more. They don’t know and they even push away women who do still know.

On NARAL’s front page:

“Reproductive rights are essential for achieving gender equality.” What do they mean by that? What does that sentence mean? What is gender equality?

Gender equality means an end to the social and cultural and mental arrangements by which women are seen as inferior to men in every way, and as subordinate to men as a law of nature (and nature’s “God” for the many people who believe in such a thing).

That’s what gender equality means, so that has to be what NARAL meant by it.

So then why are they trying to tell us that abortion rights are for everyone? Why are they talking about people needing abortions instead of women? Why are they Twitter-blocking feminist women who object to this erasure?

Why do they on the one hand cite the need for gender equality and on the other hand try to bully women into agreeing that men too get pregnant and need abortion rights? Why do they go from gender equality at the beginning of the paragraph to people who choose to work while pregnant?

What the hell is wrong with them?

Golly, it was less than a month ago that NARAL was telling us (“reminding” us) that it’s not only women who get abortions. I must have given them some lip, because I now see they’ve blocked me. The big national abortion rights organization is blocking feminists who tell them to stop erasing women – that’s useful.

Anyway, they’re really pushing the “exclude women from abortion rights” line.

No it’s absolutely not that simple. It’s also not true. It’s not “inclusive” to pretend that men need abortion rights. What it is, instead, is a move to erase women, the way various civilizations have done as far back as we can see. Women are the people who get pregnant, women are the people who need to be able to get an abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant, women are the people who are imprisoned and tortured by their own bodies if they can’t get an abortion. Women. Just women. Women only. Not men. Men get to be free of this particular trap.

It’s because women are the people who get pregnant that women are also the people who are treated as suspect, and needing constant supervision and control, and subject to harsh punishment for doing things like going outside or not wearing a tent over their heads. The fact that women are the source of human beings is the reason women are treated as second class, aka inferior.

I’m pretty sure NARAL used to know this, but it seems that now all it knows is that “men can get pregnant too.”

Jesse Singal on Chase Strangio’s casual defamation of him and subsequent evasive maneuvers to avoid blame for the defamation:

Yesterday, GQ ran an interview between Saeed Jones and Chase Strangio, one of the highest-profile attorneys at the ACLU, about trans kids that contains the following passage: I think what we’re seeing now is this moment where there are these loud voices who feel so empowered and emboldened to speak out with just utter hatred for trans people. And a lot of it emerging from the UK anti-trans discourse in JK Rowling and then that sort of being an impetus for this Substack brigade, asI [sic] like to call them—that idea of the self-victimized, well-paid writer who wants nothing more than to be able to hate others without consequence. That sort of famed victimhood of censorship, which is really just self-censorship and complaining, whether it was JK Rowling, or Abigail Shrier, and Bari Weiss. And then it became sort of the cause of Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald and Jesse Singal and all these other people who are just somehow finding their moment to be like, “Oh yes, trans people are so disgusting. And I feel that way. And now I get to frame this around my right to speak without criticism.” I did not necessarily anticipate the magnitude of the public discursive escalation and the sense of empowerment that people feel attacking trans people, and doing so while fueling a very dangerous set of legal and policy objectives that I think even these people would claim to not be aligned with. [emphasis mine]

Well you see it all hinges on how you interpret “to be like.” If you take it to be a ubiquitous substitute for “say” then it seems defamatory, but if it’s an actual comparison then…it’s entirely unclear what Strangio meant.

I’m kidding. It’s the ubiquitous substitute for say thing.

The bolded passage is straightforwardly defamatory. I don’t know if it rises to the level of legal defamation, which is a high threshold in the United States, and I have no plans on suing anyone. But in the straightforward sense of “lying about people in public to attempt to harm their reputations,” it obviously qualifies.

So Chase Strangio, arguably the face of the ACLU at this point, decided to fabricate allegations about a number of journalists in the pages of GQ. Not the behavior you’d expect from someone in that sort of position. Strange times, I guess.

There’s a lot about Chase Strangio that you wouldn’t expect from someone in that sort of position.

That was yesterday. Today, Strangio backtracked a bit, seeming to blame this both on an absent period but also on us rubes who “are choosing to read [the passage] in a particular way.” (The “particular way” in question being “the exact plain meaning of the text, as per basic linguistic conventions regarding the use of conjunctions,” I guess. God, we’re idiots!)

Strangio four hours ago:

Yes people “chose to read it” the way it was written. How foolish and uninclusive.

Then a staff attorney popped up to do some more parsing of the meaning so that Strangio would look like an innocent bystander.

Singal sums up:

I just find this sequence bizarre:

1. High-profile ACLU staffer defames a bunch of people.

2. Said staffer blames the defamation on a missing period and/or people reading the sentence the way a human would rather than the way a lawyer would.

3. ACLU staff attorney chimes in publicly to say, in effect, “Well, it isn’t technically libel because of this nerdy legal rule.”

I don’t understand how anyone at the ACLU could possibly find this acceptable. I’m not wrong in thinking the organization used to be better-functioning and more professional than this, right?

He’s not wrong but that was before Twitter.

Hahahaha Loser Trump is trying to get around the Twitter ban, and failing.

Twitter has suspended an account replicating posts from former President Donald Trump’s new blog, saying it violated the company’s rules against ban evasion.

…

The account profile for @DJTDesk — an abbreviation for the former president’s new “From The Desk of Donald J. Trump” web page — was taken down after tweeting posts identical to his messages on the blog, according to screenshots tweeted by NBC News and other users. The account featured branding identical to Trump’s website, including the same profile picture and banner, according to the images.

Pure coincidence. Nothing to do with Trump.

It was not immediately clear if the account was officially linked to the former president’s team or his Save America coalition, which funds the blog. Twitter declined comment on the matter.

…

Not their first go-around: After Trump’s prolific personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump was permanently suspended by Twitter on Jan. 8, his aides sought to circumvent the ban by posting messages identical to his tweets on his campaign account and the official White House account. Twitter responded by permanently suspending the Trump campaign account and removing the White House tweets.

Well that’s what happens when you try to insurrect.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany 6.

I recently finished reading A Lot of People Are Saying – The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum. In it the authors make a distinction between “classical conspiracy theories” and what they call the “new conspiracism” which they describe as “conspiracy without the theory”. Where the former were at the very least attempts to explain real events and appealed to supposedly “scientific” data and “rational” arguments (e.g. the obsession of 9-11 truthers with the temperature of burning jet fuel and the melting point of steel), the new conspiracisms don’t attempt to explain anything (more often than not, there isn’t even anything to explain), are based on nothing but assertion (“the election was rigged!”), insinuation, or innuendo (“there’s something there”, “a lot of people are saying”), and substitutes endless repetition, as well as “liking”, sharing, retweeting, forwarding etc. for evidence and argument. I do think the authors tend to give the classical conspiracy theorists more credit than they deserve, but that’s an argument for another day.

The new conspiracism doesn’t even require belief in the literal truth of the conspiratorial claims as stated, only the notion that they are “true enough” (“it’s entirely plausible”, “it wouldn’t surprise me”), which seems to jibe well with the logic of the post-truth era: “It might not be literally true that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring from the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington DC, but I’m going to go with it anyway. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would be capable of after all. Just look at the thing with the emails! I hate her, so anything I can use against her is fine by me. Who cares if its technically ‘true’ or not?! Everybody is always lying anyway, so I might as well go with the lies that favor my own tribe.”. There is also what I have called the “Superman Fallacy” because it’s almost the perfect flip-side of a straw man: As we all know, a straw man is a dishonest portrayal of the views of your opponents specifically designed to be easily refuted or even self-evidently absurd. A Superman by contrast is a dishonest portrayal of your own views specifically designed to be easily defended, e.g. claiming for a fact that Obama tapped Donnie’s phone, and then, when challenged, moving the goalpost to “it’s possible”, “it could be true” etc. Or if you want to have it both ways: use insinuation and innuendo to get the the idea of a conspiracy out there, and then abdicate any responsibility by claiming to be “just asking questions”, requesting more information (“somebody should look into that”, “what I already know is disturbing enough”) etc.

As people like Timothy Snyder and Peter Pomerantsev have pointed out, the new authoritarians are different from the tyrannies of the past in that they don’t actually require you to believe anything, only to distrust everyone enough to dismiss any criticism of authoritarianism as well as any appeal to “democracy”, “rights”, the “rule of law” etc. as part of somebody else’s nefarious plot or hidden agenda: In other words conspiracism! Even people who know perfectly well that there’s no truth to the claims often end up either actively endorsing them or passively failing to correct them, whether out of cynical opportunism, tribalism, or cowardice.

The result is delegitimation, beginning with the political opposition. Delegitimation goes deeper than any normal disagreement or conflict over policy. I.e. the opposition is not just portrayed as wrong, or misguided, or even dishonest, but outright criminal, treasonous, or even totally evil. There is no room for argument, negotiation or compromise with pedophiles, murderers, and traitors determined to destroy everything you hold dear in this world. You just do whatever it takes to stop them, and if that means playing dirty, cheating, throwing out democratic rules of the game, then so be it. Besides the political opposition the other main target of deligitimation are knowledge-producing institutions and expertise in general, from climate scientists to the FBI, and from Anthony Fauci to the free press. Again the explicit or implicit claim is that these institutions are not just flawed, or wrong, or even biased, but actively engaged in a criminal plot against the nation and its leader. The delegitimation of independent institutions obviously has the potential to become a self-fulfillimg prophecy: The initial accusations become a pretext for defunding the institution, filling it with loyalists, or ignoring it altogether. As a result the institution does indeed begin to look increasingly corrupt, dysfunctional, and illegitimate, thus providing further justification for getting rid of it entirely.

This goes beyond mere political polarization into what the authors call “epistemic polarization”, i.e. people are not just divided over what is in fact true, but what it even means to “know” something and ultimately who “owns reality”. The new conspiracism, based as it is on mere assertion, is very much like divine revelation in that it claims special insight into layers of reality that are hidden to everyone else, cannot be independently tested or verified, and must therefore be taken on faith. Ultimately this whole situation is incompatible with democracy. Without a shared set of facts, or even a common understanding of what it would take to get to an agreement, it becomes impossible to make informed decisions, have reasoned, intelligent arguments or even disagree in any meaningful sense. When that happens, there is nothing left to appeal to but brute force.

Queen’s University promotes Gegi the leering unicorn, which is perhaps less surprising when you see that one of the “researchers” behind Gegi is at Queen’s University, and that the author of the promo is Julie Brown, Queen’s University Media Relations Officer. In other words it’s a literal promo.

Queen’s researcher Lee Airton has created Gegi.ca, an online resource that helps students advocate for their gender expression and gender identity human rights.

But why do students need to “advocate for their gender expression and gender identity human rights”? God only knows what that even means, but in any case why do they need to advocate for whatever it is?

I don’t think there’s any such thing as “gender expression human rights” and “gender identity human rights.” I think those are pseudo-rights, invented by these two fools.

Queen’s researcher Lee Airton, Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies in Education, and Kyle Kirkup, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) at the University of Ottawa, have launched an online resource that targets elementary and high school students and educators seeking more information about gender identity and gender expression human rights protections.

Where does the leering unicorn come in?

With “Gegi” – a beautiful/handsome nonbinary unicorn – as their guide, K-12 students across Ontario can acquire information and tools to self-advocate within their school and school board.

You have got to be joking.

Just for a start do they seriously think kids past 2d grade or so are going to sit still for that patronizing cartoon horse-clown? But more to the point what is this “advocacy” the weirdo grownups are trying to nudge them to do? Notify the media when little Joey comes to school wearing a ribbon in his hair?

Gegi.ca was created following a study by Dr. Airton and Dr. Kirkup of how Ontario school boards were responding to their new legal responsibilities to offer an environment free from two separate forms of discrimination: for who you are gender-wise (your gender identity), and how you let others know through things like your clothing, grooming, and behaviour (your gender expression). 

Shorter, blunter version: boys shouldn’t be bullied for being girly and girls shouldn’t be bullied for not being girly enough. Can’t that just be folded into whatever the schools are doing to prevent bullying? Which is usually not enough, so why not focus on that instead of chopping ever finer the talking points of The Sacred Trans Idenniny?

Each Ontario school board (public and Catholic) will have two dedicated student and staff web pages on gegi.ca. These pages connect students and their loved ones or staff directly to relevant board policies and suggest what a Gegi visitor can do or whom to contact if their board has not yet updated its policies. Students are also invited to download and share information about their gender identity or gender expression human rights in relation to athletics, field trips, and washroom or changing room access directly with school staff or administration.

There are the teachers and administrators trying to educate a few hundred children and there’s this constant parade of students shoving “information” about their “gender expression” in their faces. It sounds like hell on earth.

It’s almost funny how in circles it goes, saying the same thing over and over because there’s so little to say.

“Gegi.ca is a powerful resource for Ontario students and their families to ensure their gender identity and gender expression is protected and that students can thrive and grow in our schools,” says Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Dean, Faculty of Education.

Yeah thanks we got that but we still don’t know what you’re babbling about.

Never mind. Just pat the Gegi.

Hmm.

That looks…kind of creepy. Also K-12? The content looks too old for the younger ones and the style looks too young for the older ones.

But also…

What?! That’s a new one to me, but if true…well, one wonders what the thinking is. (It doesn’t come up on the top results on Google.)

Scrolling through its tweets it seems to be about pushing “gender expression” in schools, because it’s so urgent to teach children to “express” their bespoke “gender.”

Never mind all that frivolous academic stuff about history and science and math, just focus on the important business of Gender Expression with the help of a creepy lewd horse cartoon.

“Gender expression rights protection” – say what? I guess that’s if a boy decides to come to school in a bra and a thong that’s his protected gender expression right.

What does that mean? How do you teach math or history “as if there is always gender diversity in the room”?

It seems to be the work of these two guys:

The goal seems to be to raise a generation of the most self-obsessed people in the history of the world.

Won’t someone spare a thought for the exiled and silenced Josh Hawley?

Since Jan. 6, when the Missouri Republican was photographed fist-pumping his support for some of the very fine people who would later storm the United States Capitol, Hawley has been all but banished from the media. Other than his frequent appearances on some of the most popular cable news shows in the country, his biting Twitter account, the Instagram account where he posts family snapshots and clips from cable hits, and his YouTube page collecting his nearly every utterance on the Senate floor, Hawley has suffered the worst fate known to a modern American politician: cancellation.

But as Nelson Mandela wrote while imprisoned on Robben Island, “Difficulties break some men but make others.” Hawley, in that spirit, has only been stiffened by his battle with what he calls “the titans of woke capital.”

Simon & Schuster dropped plans to publish a book of Hawley’s and it took a whole two weeks for Regnery to step into the breach. (Now, granted, Regnery is a great many steps down the respectability ladder from Simon & Schuster, but Hawley isn’t all that into respectability anyway.)

He’s so canceled that he’s reduced to flogging his book on…uh…Twitter.

Sex Matters live-tweeted another judicial hearing on whether or not men can force themselves on women. R is respondent, J is judge.

R: it may be justified to exclude trans people, but that question would have to be asked 

The proportionality test will always depend on the particular facts. How could you possibly decide that every women’s refuge and every women’s changing room must always exclude transwomen? 

Well that’s easy. You could decide it the way you decide that every women’s refuge and every women’s changing room must always exclude men, because that’s what calling them women’s refuges and changing rooms means. If you don’t exclude men then they’re not women’s any more. We already know that women need their own changing rooms (and toilets) for their own safety as well as privacy, and that they need their own refuges for the same reason.

It cannot be the case that you must exclude transwomen from women’s changing rooms. 

The Commission states that there must be strong reasons not to treat someone according to their acquired gender.

J: this means fully physically indistinguishable?

R: yes. Post-operative transexuals are indistinguishable from women, hence there should be strong reasons to treat them differently. 

No, they’re not.

Anyway “indistinguishable from” isn’t the issue. Men don’t rape or spy on women because they “appear” male, they do it because they want to rape or spy on women, for reasons to do with sex and aggression and their unfortunate entanglement with each other. Disguising men as women doesn’t change that in the slightest. Fiddling with hormones maybe does change it some, but women have no way to know the hormone histories of men in their shelters and changing rooms.

J: would that also entail that refusing admission to a woman’s hostel would also need to be exceptional? Or does it mean that the situation itself is exceptional?

R: that the situation itself is exceptional. You have to balance detriment to one group against the other. 

No you don’t. You don’t have to slice and dice all rights so that all groups get to have some of them. Women’s rights are women’s rights, and no we don’t have to share some of them with men until we achieve “balance.” The “group” in question is an invented group that’s based on a lot of absurd counter-factual claims, and no they don’t get to help themselves to half of our rights.

More fawning coverage of “Laurel” Hubbard’s successful cheating:

Weightlifting has been at the centre of the debate over the fairness of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, and Hubbard’s presence in Tokyo is set to attract huge media attention as well as criticism from fellow lifters and coaches.

Her gold medal wins at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa, where she topped the podium ahead of Samoa’s Commonwealth Games champion Feagaiga Stowers, triggered outrage in the island nation.

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

In other words organisers said a big “fuck you” to women in weightlifting.

Stark raving mad.

A 25-year-old from Huddersfield has implored people to help them become comfortable in their own skin by donating money for life-changing gender reassignment surgery.

Pan Hollingworth, who was born in Leeds and moved to the West Yorkshire town in 2010, came out as non-binary 10 years ago after previously identifying as genderqueer.

They realised during childhood there was a “disconnection” with either gender as they did not conform to being male or female. After researching online, they then found a term which they could relate to.

“I was online quite a lot as a 16-year-old and I just came across this phrase,” Pan said. “I came out as genderqueer first as I knew I wasn’t a girl but also that I wasn’t a boy.

So then what surgery is required? If you’re neither then what surgery can you possibly “need” in order to match your chosen Gender Idenniny?

Maybe the idea is just to chop off everything that protrudes, and seal up everything that opens? So a non-binary assigned male gets his bits chopped off and a non-binary assigned female gets her bits sewn up (much as in FGM) and her tits chopped off? The aim is the doll under the clothes look? That smooth immaculate band of plastic between the legs?

Assessments with clinicians cost up to £300 each time, with surgery costs set to be as much as £9,000. To help with the costs, Pan is asking people for help in their fight to raise enough money for “top surgery” which will entail a double mastectomy or chest reconstruction surgery.

So Pan can’t get the annoying tits chopped off on the NHS?

“It would be unbelievable if people could help and it would mean the absolute world,” Pan said.

“It is so important and there are tons of people that are creating GoFundMe pages and I’m just one of them.

“It’s massively important for people to get the health care they need, especially with the NHS underfunded and understaffed.”

Well yes, it is important for people to get the health care they need, but cutting off healthy breasts because the breasts-haver claims to be “non-binary” is not actually health care.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre – the one that just made a trans woman its CEO – offers no women-only services.

We respect the courage and strength it takes to speak out about your experience whether it has been a recent assault or it happened a long time ago. When you contact us we will offer you a face-to-face support session. You can use this time in any way you choose, and we can talk through what support we offer. 

Our specialist trauma-informed support services are open to women, all members of the trans community, non-binary people and young people aged 12 – 18 who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any time in their lives, by abusers of any gender. This includes rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.

So, open to women and some men – which is unfortunate for women raped by men, which will be nearly all raped women.

We will listen, believe and support young people (aged 12 -18) and women and all members of the trans community of any age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity (and non-binary people), religious and cultural background.

But they won’t listen to, believe, and support women who need women-only services.

Women only spaces

We offer women only spaces (which are inclusive of trans women) in our centre on Tuesdays 4pm – 7pm, Wednesdays 12.30pm – 4pm and Fridays 9am – 12.30pm. The rest of the week we offer appointments to people of all genders.

No women only spaces at all then. Zero.

I wonder if Edinburgh has an actual rape crisis center or two.

The new Jesus and Mo –

“You’re either non-binary or you’re not”