Right? Right?? Why would such a being even care? Do we want ants to “believe in” us? Much less go to a building every week to say things about us?

Pliny:

Look at this loathsome shouting bully.

The moderate position has been found!

I don’t think that’s especially moderate though.

I really don’t think it’s “moderate” to say that people have a right to be treated as something they’re not. I think it’s pretty much the opposite – I think we all have a right to trust our senses and background knowledge about people, and act accordingly. It may be the case sometimes that a particular woman won’t mind playing along with a man’s claim to be a woman, but that should be up to her. Otherwise – it’s our choice. It’s not the pretender’s choice, it’s ours. It’s our right not to pretend, not their right to make us pretend.

And then the fact claim is highly dubious too. I get it that “trans-women are socially women” is “moderate” compared to “trans women are women,” but it’s still stupid. No, men are not “socially women,” even if they think of themselves that way. Men are playing a game of pretend, and that’s quite far away from “being” something socially.

It may sound easy at first, this treating as such, but if you think about it it isn’t. Social life isn’t like that, interaction isn’t like that, our awareness of other people isn’t like that. We will still know he’s a man. We’ll still know that he didn’t grow up experiencing life as a girl, even if he thinks he did. I just can’t see any way he has a genuine “right” to be treated “as such,” i.e. as socially a woman. He isn’t a woman even socially, because it’s just not that simple.

And Sebastian H. may think it’s rarely important who is physically female and who isn’t, but that’s a luxury men have, isn’t it. I say it damn well is important, and he can take a hike.

Uh oh, someone’s on the naughty step. (Ku Bar is a well-known London gay bar.)

The reason this grovel was necessary was Grand Inquisitor David Paisley.

I kind of hope they all get fleas.

What the world needs right now is a damn good explainer on bespoke pronouns, and by god the Good Men Project has provided one. How good they must be. The author is named Jane Sofia Struthers.

I just added a signature to my email. It says: “Jane Struthers (pronouns: she/her/hers)”.

But, you’ll probably ask, since that’s exactly what most people would expect, WHY include them? I was going to call you “she” anyway!

There’s a simple answer. Including your pronouns in your email and social media, even if you ARE gender-binary, is a recognition that the gender binary doesn’t apply to everyone. Even if it DOES apply to me (and it does!) there’s no way, simply by looking at me, that you’d know this. (Yes, despite me wearing a lot of pink and “femme” clothes, I could still be non-binary. Contrary to popular opinion, non-binary people don’t HAVE to dress androgynously!)

Oh that silly popular opinion! Imagine thinking that non-binary people have to dress androgynously – you might as well think frogs have to speak rollerskate.

Ok so there’s no way you would know by looking at Struthers that the gender binary DOES apply to her. She says. I bet there is though. I bet there’s the usual stuff, that’s so automatic we don’t think about it. Almost always we just know, because we always have, from infancy. And if you met Struthers and you didn’t know, what good would including your pronouns in your email and social media do? What, you’re going to say to this mysterious person holding out her his their hand on meeting “Excuse me a minute I have to look you up on social media to find out whether the gender binary applies to you or not”?

So that’s not really what it’s for at all. It can’t very well be, because it makes no sense. So what is it for? Silly question. The usual display of rectitude, of course. “Get me I am genderically enlightened and perfected.”

Including your pronouns is one way for gender-binary people to overcome the hurdles that our gender-binary ancestors have nailed into society. Sure, my pronouns are what a layperson expects. But having them there — simply the act of having them — causes the reader to do a double-take. And ask themself, Why did she include this information? Hopefully, they’ll realize that my pronouns might have been anything.

Naw, chum, they’ll realize you’re a posturing condescending fool, and they’ll find someone better to interact with in email and on social media.

Complaint upheld.

A programme on Today FM in which a contributor referred to author JK Rowling as a “transphobic bigot” breached rules regarding fairness, objectivity and impartiality, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has ruled.

A complaint was submitted in relation to a segment of the Last Word with Matt Cooper on September 18th.

It stated that during the weekly panel discussion, one of the contributors stated that Ms Rowling was transphobic, without providing any evidence to back this up.

So you mean there’s not a blanket rule that if you don’t agree that people can literally become the other sex, everybody is allowed to call you a transphobic bigot?

The broadcaster cited UNESCO as defining transphobia as “the irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be transgender”.

Do we have words for all examples of irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be [insert list of all possible items here]? Are anxiety and discomfort really something UNESCO needs to be calling an evil kind of phobia?

Also, what is the relevance of the UNESCO definition?

It said the panellist in question was of the opinion that JK Rowling exhibits some of the characteristics of transphobia, such as anxiety and discomfort.

Ah I see what they’re doing. They’re pretending that disputing the truth claims of trans ideology is the same thing as anxiety and discomfort about a set of people. Cheap shot. They’re not the same. If your best friend tells you she’s a horse, you’re allowed to think she’s wrong.

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on And then communicate it clearly and accurately.

The progress of science has helped us better understand who we are as trans people.

Maybe it has, but science isn’t any closer to showing that trans are the sex they claim than it was a century ago. Explaining why trans people might have their beliefs about their sex is not the same as confirming those beliefs as facts. Further, taking scientific findings about conditions such as intersex or atypical chromosone combinations out of context to back up transgender claims is not science, it’s exploitation of people with conditions only tangentially related to transgender.

I was thinking about that latter part earlier after reading PZ’s hit-piece on Jerry Coyne for his lack of belief in sex as a spectrum, a piece in which PZ once again pulls out the intersex and chromosome argument to ‘prove’ that science supports the core belief of transgender religion, and the conclusion I reached was this:

By use of visual examinations, blood tests, testing chromosone combinations, and without requiring any input from the person being examined, doctors can diagnose whether a person is intersex, standard xx-female or xy-male, chromosonally atypical, and so-on. There is no scientific test that can detect whether a person is transgender: there is no way of diagnosing transgender independently of having that information supplied by the transgender person, ie. self-reporting/self-diagnosis. So, science clearly does not support claims that transgender people are the sex they claim for themselves. True, neuroscience and psychology can confirm that people can and do believe themselves to be the wrong gender for their bodies, but confirming that they believe something is not confirming any physical reality behind the beliefs.

Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.

The part I’ve bolded there is transgender heresy. I have seen so many TRAs insist that being transgender is something one is from birth, not something that can or is caused by anything that may have been experienced since birth. Of course they have to make that argument because to admit that being transgender can be influenced by life experiences would negate that core belief that they are born with a discrepancy between their bodies and their ‘actual’ sex.

But if we can’t call a woman rude names how will we spend our time?

I’ll tell you what’s not fair! It’s not fair to tell people who like calling women rude names that it’s not fair to call women rude names! That’s what’s not fair!

But Poland was in Hawaii the whole time.

Historians fear that mounting pressure against scholars who implicate Poles in the Holocaust is having a chilling effect on research across Europe, with one France-based researcher saying she will tone down her upcoming book and shy away from naming names.

Audrey Kichelewski, an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Strasbourg who is writing a book about postwar trials of Poles, said she would be “very cautious with the vocabulary” she used and would not cite defendants’ names for fear of being sued by living relatives.

It is the latest episode in what critics say is a concerted effort by Poland’s right-wing government and supportive groups to aggressively enforce a narrative of exclusive victimhood, stressing the heroic stories of Poles who risked their lives to save Jewish compatriots but downplaying accounts of complicity in the Holocaust unearthed by some historians.

It’s a familiar pattern. White people in the US would rather say pious things about Doctor King (as they love to call him) than talk about the post-Reconstruction laws and regulations and real estate maps that entrenched racism for generations.

A 2018 legal amendment would have threatened jail for those who implied the Polish “state” or “nation” was complicit in Nazi crimes, although the law was repeatedly watered down after an international outcry and stripped of its criminal component.

In February, a Warsaw court ordered two scholars — Barbara Engelking, director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, and Jan Grabowski, professor of history at the University of Ottawa — to apologize after they detailed the case of a mayor of a Polish village who allegedly betrayed a group of Jews to Nazi occupiers.

Because that sort of thing never happened. Right? Because there never was any anti-Semitism in Poland, right? Because majority-Catholic countries are never the slightest bit anti-Semitic, right?

And last month, an ultraconservative Polish Roman Catholic group threatened to sue a French radio station for “infringing the reputation of the republic of Poland” by supposedly implicating Poland in Nazi war crimes during a program.

Poland as a nation was certainly an early victim of Hitler’s plan for world domination, but that doesn’t rule out ideological overlap.

The Polish League Against Defamation, which backed the case against Engelking and Grabowski, has launched lawsuits against newspapers and broadcasters in Germany, Italy and Spain, invoking concepts such as a right to “national pride” for Poles.

It sounds a bit trans activismy now, doesn’t it. “We have a right to see ourselves as fabulous! You are putting painful dents in our ability to see ourselves as fabulous! You are a criminal!”

American Atheists issues a statement rebuking…heresy.

In response to Richard Dawkins’ recent tweet regarding trans people, Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists, a trans woman, released the following statement:

So American Atheists don’t believe in a god but they do believe in a magical changeable “gender” that means men become women by saying so, and that no one is allowed to believe that’s nonsensical.

The progress of science has helped us better understand who we are as trans people. As the American Psychological Association notes, “Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.”

What are “identities”? Are they a solid and crisp enough concept to be scientifically investigated? Or are they just a fuzzy category about how people think of themselves?

I think neuroscience and psychology can investigate delusions…but “identities”?

We need science communicators like Richard Dawkins to put in the time to learn this information and then communicate it clearly and accurately to the public, not reinforce dangerous and harmful narratives put forward by the opponents of equality.

Who’s “we”?

And what are these “dangerous and harmful narratives put forward by the opponents of equality”? Notice that claiming to be the opposite sex is Science while saying that isn’t possible is “narratives.” The more important point is that dissenters from trans ideology are not opponents of equality. These shits really need to stop lying about what we think and what we say. It’s even in their own interest to stop, because insisting on telling the lies over and over just makes it look as if lies are all they have. You know? If they can’t make their case without lying that we hate them and hate equality, then what kind of case can it be? Besides empty?

Trans people are under constant attack across our country.

No they’re not.

Implying that our identities are somehow fraudulent and questioning whether we even exist dehumanizes us and helps justify this violence.

No it doesn’t.

Saying that humans can’t change sex is just making a dull factual statement. Brandishing the word “identities” to shore up the claims of being the other sex is just childish word magic. Nobody questions whether or not people who claim to be the other sex exist; we all know you exist, not least because you keep shouting about it.

It’s just hackery, this kind of thing. Stale phrases trotted out to justify fantasy-based ideas of “identity” – it’s silly, it’s childish, it’s beyond tedious.

Are they though?

Are trans people really “one of the most marginalized minorities”? We’re certainly constantly told they are, but what are the criteria? Who is keeping track? Where are their findings?

Are they as marginalized as homeless people with mental health and/or drug and/or alcohol issues? Are they as marginalized as very poor people who are too poor to do the things it takes to get out of poverty? Are they as marginalized as refugees and immigrants who don’t speak the local language and have no local friends or relations? Are they as marginalized as abused women? Are they as marginalized as children of fanatically religious parents?

I could go on. There are a lot of very marginalized people in the world, and they’re marginalized for much more material and obvious and intractable reasons than a feeling that one is the sex that one’s body is not.

I wonder if it’s not so much that they’re marginalized as it is that they are setting themselves up for a drastically limited pool of sexual and romantic partners, to say nothing of the complications if they want to have children. I can easily nod in agreement if the Owen Joneses say trans people have trouble finding a love interest, but I don’t nod in agreement that that’s being “marginalized.” Becoming a niche item, sexually speaking, just goes with the territory if you’re trans. That’s one reason it’s not an unmistakably brilliant idea to tell all kids who even pick up a toy meant for “the other gender” that they’re trans.

Meanwhile spare a thought for farm workers. Now they’re marginalized six ways from Sunday, I tell you what.

No freedom of information for you, terf.

A woman was interested to know how many inmates in Washington state identify as transgender, and how many of those transgender identified inmates have been given transfers to go from men’s prison to women’s prison, and the reverse. To get this information, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead of getting the information she requested, she got sued by the ACLU.

I’ll wait while you stare in disbelief. It took me quite some time.

To be clear, at no point had this woman contacted the ACLU to tell them she was filing a FOIA. She had used ACLU resources to figure out how to file a FOIA, but that was freely available on their website. The state of Washington is under no obligation to let the ACLU know about every FOIA request they receive, so it remains entirely unclear as to how the ACLU became aware of this woman’s FOIA in the first place.

And as for what business it is of theirs…

Nonetheless, instead of receiving the information she requested, she received an injunction. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a private citizen for requesting public records from the Washington State Department of Corrections on the number of inmates in state custody who identify as transgender and the number of male inmates who are housed in women’s facilities.

So private citizens don’t get to have civil liberties? Or freedom of information?

The citizen sent her request on March 18.

The Washington Public Records Act guarantees that citizens have the right to access public records, and requires the government to respond to requests within five days. Only personal student or patient information, employee files, and some investigative records are exempt.

Yet by April 8, instead of the information she requested, she received an email that the ACLU of Washington Foundation and Disability Rights Washington, along with their clients “who are current and former transgender, non-binary, and intersex inmates and in the custody of Washington Department of Corrections,” had personally named her in a lawsuit to prevent the information she requested from being released.

So not only are women in prison forced to have men locked up with them, women in general are not allowed to ask questions about it.

Washington state radio host Dori Monson has detailed several accounts of women who are housed in women’s prisons in the state and have been raped by gender non-conforming males who identify as transgender and have successfully been transferred into women’s prisons. Monson writes that there were “two inmates moved from male to female prison. One is a serial killer who admitted to killing prostitutes and hating women, another is a sex offender charged with having sex with a 12 year old.”

But we can’t ask questions about it. If we try we’ll be sued.

What is the point of any of it if you can’t or won’t think clearly and say things clearly? Very first paragraph of Hemant Mehta’s oooh Dawkins is twanzphobic post:

On Saturday, for some reason, Richard Dawkins randomly decided to question the humanity of transgender people — under the guise of I’m-just-asking-questions — while comparing their situation to that of Rachel Dolezal.

No he didn’t. Even if you disagree with what he said, even if you despise what he said, he still did not question the humanity of any people. Not even close. Saying men are not women is not questioning anyone’s humanity.

It’s a pretty glaring sign of a weak case when people keep stumbling into those lies while trying to defend it. If the harm done by not agreeing that men are women if they say they are has to be inflated as denying their humanity, then it’s probably not much harm. If it were real harm, there would be no need to talk childish nonsense about denying their humanity.

Trans people, on the other hand, aren’t changing genders just for the hell of it. They sure aren’t doing it because it gives them some kind of advantage in society. More to the point: They don’t “choose to identify” as the other gender as if it’s some kind of light switch; they are the other gender. If they undergo surgery or take hormones or request a change on their driver’s license, it’s to correct a mistake, not because they wanted to be another gender on a whim.

How does Mehta know that? How can he know it? How does he and how can he know that it’s true of all trans people, i.e. all people who say they are trans? I don’t think he can, so I don’t think he does. It’s in the nature of the whole “trans” belief system that we can’t possibly tell who is faking it and who isn’t, or that absolutely no one is faking it. The criterion is: they are if they say they are. The problem should be obvious: people can lie, and they can be wrong. People can also be confused, ambivalent, changeable – a lot of things that make simple self-descriptions not so absolutely reliable that outlandish claims have to be believed without question. Usually the default is to believe what people say about themselves, unless there’s a lot of cash at stake, but when people say something magical about themselves, politeness does not require us to believe it.

It can be true, and it seems to me very likely that it is true, that some trans people really believe the whole magical explanation and that some are consciously faking it and that some are somewhere between the two. Where Mehta gets his certainty that all trans people just are the other “gender” is beyond me.

So back to Dawkins. He’s comparing a liar, whose lie he passes off as genuine, to trans people, whose truths he dismisses. He’s comparing race to gender, as if they’re the same thing, in a way that allows bigots (including right-wing Christians) to use his words as a weapon against trans people. He also defines trans women as “men [who] choose to identify as women” (and vice versa) when that’s not the case at all.

Not ever? Not ever? But we hear from people who choose it all the time. As the trend has intensified and spread, we’ve been hearing from plenty of people who choose it, and plenty who argue loudly and often that self-declaration is all that’s required.

Why is questioning someone’s humanity just a fun little hypothetical for him?

Does he realize he’s parroting arguments made by conservative Christian pastors who have long fought against LGBTQ rights?

There it is again. Saying that men are not women is not questioning anyone’s humanity. Women and men are human. As for the conservative pastors, there’s always some overlap even with people we intensely disagree with – in fact there’s more overlap than disagreement. If we could compile a list of everyone’s beliefs, most of them would be uncontroversial and universal.

Here’s a more pressing question: What is the Center for Inquiry going to do about this?

When Donald Trump banned trans people from the military, CFI’s president denounced it by saying “We stand proudly with the transgender community as an ally in the fight for equal treatment.”

Well, the foundation that Dawkins began is now a division of CFI. Dawkins is on CFI’s Board of Directors. In the past, when one of CFI’s affiliates posted a transphobic comment online, the organization acted quickly to take it down and reiterate its support for the trans community.

So what will they do now? Do they stand with Dawkins, who mischaracterizes trans people and suggests that those who reject trans identities are unfairly maligned, or do they stand with trans people?

Maybe they don’t see what Dawkins said in such stark terms as Mehta tries to put them in – i.e. as “denying the humanity” of anyone.

So, I replied to Iona Italia’s “both sides” tweets, argumentatively but not rudely, and today I find that she’s blocked me. It’s her right to block me or anyone else, of course, but I can still point out some flaws in both her claims and her approach to disagreement.

What’s surprising about it, to me (perhaps I’m naive), is that she’s part of the anti-woke anti-feminist anti-cancel culture crowd, the Peter Boghossian-James Lindsay-Helen Pluckrose crowd, the let debate flow no matter what crowd. In short these are people you don’t expect to block you just for disputing them.

I think those are reasonable questions, and not abusive – and furthermore I really did (and do) want to know what her response is. She hasn’t given any, to me or anyone, all she’s done is complain about the volume of replies. Fair enough, a torrent of replies can be overwhelming, but does that make it reasonable to treat everyone who did reply as a wrongdoer? That’s the only real point of blocking now, because you can always just mute instead. It seems silly to say things on Twitter and then get indignant when people reply. That’s how Twitter works: you say things and sometimes people reply. Conversation may ensue.

Again: real question, to which I would have liked a real answer. I don’t understand her thinking, and given her allegiances and allies, I’m curious about it.

I’ll have to stay curious though.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Why won’t you bitches compromise?

Frankly, I think most people sounding the “why won’t you compromise” and “both sides are so extreme, ick!” and “I’m frankly sort of in the middle” are virtue signalling; they are better. They are also committing the fallacy of the golden mean. The right answer does not always lie between the two “extremes”. And sometimes one extreme is not extreme.

[iknklast]

While we are on the subject, in the “2+2” controversy, the 6 vs. 4 debate is so intensely toxic on both sides that expressing any view that is not extreme (e.g. 2+2=5), will instantly attract attacks.

Meanwhile the “Holocaust” debate seems to be totally dominated by those extremists who want to exterminate all the jews, and those crazy radicals who don’t see any need to kill any jews, while more moderate voices who acknowledge the need to kill half the jews are shut down from both sides.

This just in: In the 2+2 debate the 6 camp has changed it’s position to 2+2=8 while the 4 camp is still sticking to its guns. Hence we now embrace the original claim of the former (2+2=6) as the moderate, responsible, non-extreme position.

And now a soccer result: Real Madrid vs. Andorra: 10-0. In other words a draw.

And it looks like we have another update on the 2+2 front. The 8 camp (formerly known as the 6 camp) has once again changed its position to 2+2=12 while the extremists in the 4 camp are still stubbornly clinging to their increasingly extreme views. As good moderates we therefore update our position to 2+2=8.

But this NEVER happens. Never never never never. It’s fine to force women to share showers and toilets with men because this never happens.

A police officer “arrogantly” tried to film a female colleague as she showered at their force headquarters unisex changing rooms, a jury has heard.

PC Jonathan Eaton, 32, of Gloucestershire Police, denies a voyeurism charge relating to an incident on 27 February 2019.

Newport Crown Court heard the woman spotted the phone being held underneath the partition as she was drying off.

PC Eaton was suspended from duty when he was arrested.

That never happens though. Never.

Another “oh both sides are just so extreme.”

So…it’s extreme to say that men can be women and it’s also extreme to say that men can’t be women? It’s all just a matter of sides and not in the least a matter of what’s true and what isn’t?

Ah compromise and trade-offs again, just like Andrew Sullivan. So if people are loud and threatening and abusive enough for long enough then the people they are threatening and abusing have to compromise with them and trade some rights in order to keep others? Does that seem fair?

Typical Pink News way of framing “he said a thing we don’t like”:

Richard Dawkins drew criticism Saturday (10 April) for a provocative tweet that compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal.

No he didn’t draw criticism; people decided to criticise him.

On Saturday morning, an entire minute after tweeting about the late Prince Phillip’s top hat, the evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist abruptly gave his take on trans lives that absolutely nobody asked for.

Remind me – how does Twitter work, again? You’re supposed to wait for someone to ask you a question before you tweet? You mustn’t tweet about subject X unless someone asks you to? Have I got that right?

Dawkins compared trans folk to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who appropriated a Black identity while pursuing Black activism and academia.

Note the “folk.” Why folk? Why is it so often folk? What is that?

Also what is it to “pursue academia”?

But to the point, yes, he compared people who say they are a sex they are not to Dolezal’s saying she’s Black when she’s not. There are core similarities, you see.

Dolezal once likened herself to trans people. At the time, her words were rebutted by the psychologist and author Guilaine Kinouani, who told BBC Newsnight: “Comparing [being trans] with trans-racialism is a fallacy. It’s a false equivalency, which in my mind doesn’t advance our understanding of race, of transgender issues, neither of Black womanhood. [She’s a] white woman who’s quite oblivious to the fact that Black women’s experiences and bodies have been appropriated.”

Wo, well that’s us told!

Kidding. What a bizarre item to choose to support the case you’re trying to make. “This one person said that’s false.” Not really a conversation-stopper!

Similarly, Dawkins’ comment quickly became a lightning rod for criticism, with trans folk and allies responding with frustration and exhaustion.

Folk again, and passive-aggressive imputation of guilt again. Dawkins’s tweet didn’t “become a lightning rod”; some people chose to respond to it. I’ve done some responding to Dawkins myself in the distant past, but I don’t think I called him a lightning rod.

His argument has long been debunked by, you know, science and the very advocacy group for “reason and science” Dawkins founded.

That part is true.

Christians and Proud Boys unite to fight the common enemy…

A data breach from Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has revealed that millions of dollars have been raised on the site for far-right causes and groups, many of whom are banned from raising funds on other platforms.

…

Some of the biggest beneficiaries have been members of groups such as the Proud Boys, designated as a terrorist group in Canada, many of whose fundraising efforts were directly related to the 6 January attack on the United States Capitol.

Church militant.

Candyce Kelshall, the president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies-Vancouver, who at at Simon Fraser University researches violent transnational social movements, said that far-right crowdfunding on GiveSendGo was just “the tip of the iceberg”, and similar efforts were happening across up to 54 other crowdfunding sites that her research had revealed.

She said, however, that GiveSendGo was “particularly insidious” due to its presentation of such crowdfunding in the guise of religion-based charity.

Also due to the many ways churches are exempt from laws and regulations that apply to the rest of us.

What’s NARAL doing sharing this?

Of course women (and girls) are the only people who get abortions. What is a man going to do with an abortion? Men don’t get abortions, women do. The reasons are too obvious to spell out.

You can’t “remind” people of nonsense. “Reminder that owls aren’t the only rabbits who get shovels!” Can’t remind me of that because I never knew it because it’s a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers.