The real right to life:

The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and human rights expert.

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the Guardian that states failing to take meaningful climate action and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.

…

The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment was finally recognised as a fundamental human right by the United Nations in 2021-22. Some countries, notably the US, the world’s worst historic polluter, argue that UN resolutions are legally influential but not binding. The right to a healthy environment is also enshrined into law by 161 countries with the UK, US and Russia among notable exceptions.

Surprise surprise. The US is way too busy building more gigantic cruise ships to fret about any human right to an environment humans can survive in.

Boyd, a Canadian environmental law professor, said: “Human rights come with legally enforceable obligations on the side of states, so I believe that this absolutely should be a game-changer – and that’s why states have resisted it for so long.

“By bringing human rights into the equation, we now have institutions, processes and courts that can say to governments this isn’t an option for you to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and phase out fossil fuels. These are obligations which include regulating businesses, to make sure that businesses respect the climate, the environment and human rights.”

But that would be Marxist Communist Marxism.

Get your party clothes on! It’s Trans History Week – not to be confused with Trans Pride Week, Trans Celebration Week, Trans Rage Week, Trans Grumpy Week, Trans Electric Magenta Hair Week, to name a few.

Powerful ‘Always Been Here’ billboards appear across the UK to mark inaugural Trans+ History Week

I do love a powerful billboard.

A series of powerful billboards in major cities across the UK will make trans history visible to the public and mark the inaugural Trans+ History Week.

Ya ok that’s the same thing. Move on now?

The first-ever Trans+ History Week, which is a QueerAF launchpad project, will take place from Monday 6 May to Sunday 12 May and will be a period of time dedicating to learning about and celebrating history of trans, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex people.

Through a series of articles, podcasts and a lesson workbook created using academic research principles, Trans+ History Week aims to provide the British public and wider global community with a millennia-old history of trans+ people and gender-diverse communities.

Ah yes. We know what that will look like – examples of gender non-conformity seized and turned into unquestionable examples of “trans people” for the edification of the credulous.

Throughout the week, twenty emerging trans+ creatives – who have been supported, given audio equipment to keep, and mentored by QueerAF across multiple commissioning schemes – will also share their stories.

Oooh audio equipment to keep, well I never. The “mentoring” will of course bear no resemblance at all to manipulating, recruiting, hectoring, re-educating.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Man who can’t read claims favorite book.

I think there’s a lot of Christians who know that Trump is an absolute phony Christian, and are fine with that, because all they really want is for non-Christians to “bend the knee” and profess belief publicly whether it’s sincere or not. Saving souls is secondary at best, if it’s relevant at all.

It’s why there’s such a keen interest in forcing prayer in public schools. The point isn’t to make their own kids pray — they are presumably already doing that at home and in church. It’s to make everyone else’s kids pray, as a gesture of submission to Christianity’s dominance. You want to be a filthy atheist in the privacy of your own mind, who cares, I’m fine with you going to hell, but in public you pay lip service to our faith!

The fact that Trump, who prides himself on supposedly being a tough guy who says and does whatever he likes, is willing to abase himself like this is almost endearing to them. I think they regard it as a show of respect. Which in one sense it is, I suppose. He’s recognizing their political power. In the other sense, of course, he thinks they’re suckers.

Trump keeps putting his foot over the line and watching the grownups react.

Former US President Donald Trump has been held in contempt of court for violating a gag order for the 10th time in his hush-money trial in New York. Justice Juan Merchan issued his most serious warning yet to Mr Trump, saying further violations could mean jail. “At the end of the day, I have a job to do and that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system,” the judge said.

But at the end of the same day he has Trump to deal with, and there’s no winning in that scenario. Trump defies the judge and wins; Trump is thrown in jail and wins. He should go to jail of course, because he’s deliberately defying the court, but if he does his fans will blah blah blah and everything will be even worse.

Justice Merchan acknowledged that incarcerating Mr Trump would be very disruptive to the proceedings. But he called the gag order violations “a direct attack on the rule of law” that he cannot abide.

Sitting with a stern expression at the defence table, Mr Trump showed little reaction to the threat of jail.

Mmmmmno. Not stern but sullen. He can’t do stern. He can do sullen, sulky, rabid, but he can’t do stern. Henry Fonda he’s not.

After court adjourned for the day, Mr. Trump called the gag order “disgraceful” and seemed defiant in the face of the warning. “Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day,” he said later outside the courtroom.

Yeahbro the Constitution doesn’t say you can shoot your mouth off in court whenever you feel like it. Maybe you should learn something about it before you try to be the boss of us again.

What did he mean by it?

The Green Party is investigating a councillor who shouted “Allahu Akbar” after being elected and said on the day of the Oct 7 terror attacks that Palestinians had the right to “fight back”.

Mothin Ali won the Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds with more than 3,000 votes at Thursday’s local elections and said it was a “win for the people of Gaza”.

But the job is to be a councillor for the people of Leeds. Not Gaza, Leeds. Not Jerusalem, not Canterbury, not Mecca, not Rome, not Ayodhya, but Leeds.

The 42-year-old, a father of three who works as an accountant and runs a gardening blog, has previously described a Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds who was forced into hiding by threats from protesters as a “creep” and a “kind of animal”.

During his victory speech on Friday, Mr Ali told activists: “We will not be silenced. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu Akbar!”

Those two words have a sinister overtone to many people, but taken literally they’re just your basic monotheistic message. There is this one god, see, and it’s the one we call god, and he’s great. He’s male, obvs, and he’s great. Really really great; peak great; greater than anyone else’s god. There’s no need to fight about it, as long as you agree with us that he’s the one and he’s great.

That’s if you take it literally. In practice it doesn’t always mean that. All too often it means “our god is great and he’s going to smash you, all of you.” If you watch Mr Ali shout it he certainly seems to be shouting the threatening version.

After Mr Ali’s historic comments emerged, a Green Party spokesman said: “The Green Party is investigating issues drawn to our attention in relation to Councillor Mothin Ali, so cannot comment further. However, we are clear that we never support anything that extols violence.”

But why would we think saying “God is great” extols violence?

Probably because of all the supremely violent incidents in which somebody or many people were shouting it.

Piety interlude:

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump declared in March, in a video posted on Truth Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”

In the video, Trump, who has a long history of endorsing and selling things, is clutching the God Bless the USA Bible – a “patriotic” take on the holy text that Trump is now hawking for $59.99.

“I want to have a lot of people have it,” Trump continued. “You have to have it for your heart and for your soul.”

Well of course he wants to “have a lot of people have it” – because he’s selling it for 60 bucks. You can get them free, of course, but what good is that to Donald Trump?

Anyway the obliging writer, Adam Gabbatt, duly bought the book.

Happily the Bible, which cost $83.37 after tax and shipping, eventually arrived. I eagerly tore open the packaging, held the bag upside down, and out plopped what is essentially a Christian nationalist’s fantasy: a Bible that is all American flags and bald eagles, with founding documents and lyrics to a patriotic anthem slotted in alongside the holy text.

We’re in a hurry, ok? We have to mash all these things together to save time. Oh say can you see our father who art in heaven etc etc – it gets the job done.

The front of the Bible has an embossed USA flag. In the back are glossy pages bearing some of America’s most sacred documents: the Declaration of Independence; the Pledge of Allegiance; and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, a song which is played on repeat at Trump’s political rallies.

These pages are illustrated with the American flag and some of the country’s best-regarded things: the bald eagle, yes, but also the Statue of Liberty, what appears to be a musket, and the Capitol building, which somewhat ironically was attacked by supporters of Trump three years ago.

Well that’s why! “Look at the size of the dome on that thing! But it didn’t scare me!!”

So, kicking and screaming, the UK manages to return to the arrangement that allowed women to engage in public life instead of being tethered to home by the size of their bladders.

New restaurants, offices and hospitals in England will be required to have separate male and female toilets, in a move ministers say will combat growing concerns about “privacy and dignity” in gender-neutral facilities.

The law will mean newly built non-residential buildings require separate facilities, and cannot solely have “universal” lavatories.

The need for women’s toilets had been understood since the late 19th century, until the bright sparks of the 21st decided that women are trash.

However, the policy has been criticised as being transphobic since it was first proposed in 2021 because it offered no alternative plan for transgender and non-binary people.

It’s not “phobic” to decline to indulge people’s silly narcissistic fantasies about themselves. We don’t build special toilets in all public buildings to indulge people who think they’re horses or Napoleon or the Eifel Tower, either.

Last week, Badenoch said girls at a school who did not have access to single-sex toilets developed urinary tract infections (UTIs) because they did not want to use gender-neutral toilets. She asked people to report public bodies that fail to provide single-sex spaces or have policies not in accordance with the Equality Act. She did not name the school or further substantiate the claim.

Oh fark off, Guardian. When do you ever demand that trans ideologues substantiate their claims? Why in hell are you implying that girls should just hold their urine all day long to indulge the selfish demands of the trans lobby?

Mermaids, an LGBTQ+ charity, has responded to government proposals about gender-specific toilets.

A statement on its website said: “We hear that trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people are too often not made to feel welcome, or even safe when using toilet facilities. It is unacceptable that any child should be made to feel this way.”

But it is acceptable for all female children to feel afraid to use toilet facilities.

H/t Acolyte of Sagan

Today Elon Musk gave JK Rowling advice on what to write.

The sex/gender issue aside, it’s such an odd thing to say and do. No, of course you may not “suggest” what kind of thing we should “post content” about i.e. discuss. Of course you may not tell us what to talk about. You can ban us from Twitter, but you don’t get to manage us as if we were ballet dancers and you were Balanchine. Get out of here with that crap.

So now of course the “trans allies” are gloating.

Amanda Yen, intern at The Daily Beast:

J.K. Rowling has been on the anti-trans train for years, but her ramblings have gotten so exhausting that even anti-LGBT loudmouth Elon Musk wants her to move on.

Replying to a verbose (700+ words!) post by the Harry Potter author from nearly a month ago, Musk voiced his agreement with the general thrust of her points—which amounted to several blocks of reheated ideas on why she thinks transgender women aren’t women—but gently guided her to other endeavors.

Verbose! What a scandal that she’s verbose! 700 words is way too many to lavish on why trans ideology is a crock of shit. Trans ideology itself of course can perpetrate as many words as it likes.

Indy100 also rushes up to join the excitement.

Harry Potter author J K Rowling’s incessant tweeting about trans people has now reached the point where even “free speech absolutist” and controversial Twitter/X owner Elon Musk is telling the writer to post about something else.

In a lengthy post to the platform last month, totalling more than 700 words, Rowling set out what she believes a woman to be…

Now why on earth would she do that do you suppose? Could it be because so many credulous gomers think a woman is “anyone who says she’s a woman”?

Meanwhile, men still are not women. Dull perhaps, but true.

I feel as if it’s 1996 and we’re living the Sokal Hoax all over again.

The NY Times reports, apparently without shrieks of laughter, on a conference on – wait for it – queer food.

When Sasha DuBose uses the word “queer” to talk about food, it’s a verb, not an adjective. To Ms. DuBose, queering food is “taking how we define food and how we engage with it and twisting it, making it more fun.”

But food people already do that. It’s called coming up with new recipes.

Besides which, there is no one way that people “engage with” food. There are a vast, unmanageable number of ways people engage with food. Oddly enough, humans are very interested in food – I think it might possibly be because we need it to survive. People have been “queering” food as long as they’ve been eating it. In a famine people will eat absolutely anything, out of desperation.

To her, queer food is also okra.

“They way you slice into okra and it’s crunchy and ooshy-gushy — a lot of people think it’s weird,” said Ms. DuBose, a nonbinary transgender lesbian who will soon graduate from the food studies program at New York University. “But okra is queer.”

Ok first of all, what the fuck is a nonbinary transgender lesbian? Pick one, child. It’s just greedy to pick all of them and you’ll end up puking on your queer shoes.

But then, oh shut up. Unfamiliar foods are unfamiliar; what else is new?

Queer food can be so many things, depending who’s cooking, eating or serving. During the conference, queer food was defined as meals made by queer chefs and home cooks. But it was also far broader, almost without boundaries. It was the pie thrown in the face of the anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant, the gastro-narratives of queer people in El Paso, Texas, and the food served at “topless lesbian gatherings,” as one panelist described it.

Oooh almost without boundaries – are you excited yet? Does it remind you of that time you and all your friends got drunk at summer camp? Wasn’t that hilarious?

“Queer food defies categorization, and that’s its beauty,” said Megan J. Elias, who organized the conference with Alex D. Ketchum, an assistant professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal.

Ms. DuBose and Ms. Elias were among the some 160 food scholars, writers, students and industry professionals who last weekend paid $45 apiece to gather online and in classrooms and a cookbook library at Boston University for the inaugural Queer Food Conference. The mostly Millennial and Gen Z attendees considered food (pie, seaweed), food culture (potlucks, cookbooks) and food spaces (a co-op, clambakes) through queer, Marxist, feminist and anti-colonialist perspectives.

Meaning what? That they talked about food for a weekend. How very novel.

The goal of the event was to reclaim histories and imagine futures, not of a cuisine — queer food has no set taste profiles or geographic origins — but of food that “challenges binaries and any kind of normativity,” said Ms. Elias…

Yes! Down with normativity! Any kind of normativity! It’s perfectly fine to put ground glass in the tajine you’re preparing for your guests!

Despite the academic language, it wasn’t all brainy abstractions. 

It wasn’t brainy anything. Pretentious, yes, but brainy, no. Trend-sucking of the worst kind.

Mx. Barbosa, who’s getting a master’s degree in gastronomy from Boston University, also brought along a “sleazy wine cake,” made with Marsala and coconut, and a pecan buttercrunch — recipes from the zine that they tested and ate with a friend who was recovering from top surgery.

And that’s what makes it queer food! The fact that someone who got a double mastectomy for no medical reason ate some it makes it queer food!

This may be the stupidest thing the NY Times has ever published.

The BBC reported four days ago on the jailing of Manahel al-Otaibi.

Two human rights groups have condemned an 11-year prison sentence handed to a Saudi fitness instructor and women’s rights activist by a terrorism court.

Manahel al-Otaibi, 29, was convicted of charges related to her clothing choices and expression of her views online, Amnesty International and ALQST said. These included calls for an end to the guardianship system and videos of her shopping without an abaya, they added.

And that’s “terrorism.”

ALQST said she was initially accused of violating the Anti-Cyber Crime Law, including “opposing the laws relating to women, such as the male guardianship system and the hijab law”; “participating in several hashtags opposing these laws”; “having several photos and video clips in indecent clothes on [social media] accounts”, and “going to the shops without wearing an abaya, photographing this, and publishing it on Snapchat”.

I can’t begin to imagine why she would oppose Saudi laws relating to women.

Catherine Bennett at the Guardian asks some inconvenient questions about Saudi Arabia and its role as host of the Women’s Tennis Association finals.

She cites Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old fitness instructor and women’s rights activist.

[T]here could hardly have been a more convenient time for human rights organisations to report, as they did last week, that al-Otaibi whose circumstances were for months unknown, is serving 11 years in prison for the “terrorist” offences of wearing “indecent clothes” (ie, not an abaya) and supporting women’s rights. Her sister, Fouz al-Otaibi, fled the country in 2022 to avoid similar persecution. Fouz tweeted last week: “Why have my rights become terrorism, and why is the world silent?”

11 years in prison. For not wearing a black tent.

Had the scale of this injustice emerged earlier it could have cast a shadow over the unopposed election in March of a Saudi, Dr Abdulaziz Alwasil, as chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, a title reflecting his country’s attractive new image as a champion of women’s rights…“Is the international community’s commitment so shallow that no better champion could be found,” the academic Maryam Aldossari wrote at the time, “or was Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban’s leader, simply unavailable for the role?”

…

In a joint article (“We did not help build women’s tennis for it to be exploited by Saudi Arabia”) for the Washington Post, the tennis champions Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova had indeed argued that the Saudi deal negotiated by WTA’s leader, Steve Simon, would represent a “significant regression”. The WTA’s values, they explained, “sit in stark contrast to those of the proposed host”.

Defending her country, Princess Reema took the opportunity to reproach Evert and Navratilova for deficient feminism.

On the one hand it’s our refusal to agree that some men are women, on the other hand it’s our refusal to agree that Saudi Arabia has a fine record on women’s rights. The two meet in the middle and hey presto feminist women are wrong about everything.

As with Saudi football and golfing acquisitions, the latest sportswashing confirms that you can’t overestimate the willingness of humane people who love sport not to hold evidence of savage repression against a truly generous despot. All the more so in female sport given extensive male readiness – as witnessed with David Cameron’s business overtures in Saudi Arabia, Tobias Elwood’s enthusiasm for the Taliban – to exclude the theocratic oppression of entire female populations from the category of serious human rights abuse.

Women’s rights are a luxury. Luxuries must be dispensed with in an emergency. There is always an emergency.

As with Saudi football and golfing acquisitions, the latest sportswashing confirms that you can’t overestimate the willingness of humane people who love sport not to hold evidence of savage repression against a truly generous despot. All the more so in female sport given extensive male readiness – as witnessed with David Cameron’s business overtures in Saudi Arabia, Tobias Elwood’s enthusiasm for the Taliban – to exclude the theocratic oppression of entire female populations from the category of serious human rights abuse.

Yeah, sorry, luxury – excuse me, I have a plane to catch.

How much “evolution of understanding” does it take?

Gillian Keegan has said she will no longer use the phrase “trans women are women”, explaining that her understanding of the issue has “evolved”.

Why did it need to “evolve”? Does she not know what a woman is? Despite being one herself?

In 2020, in response to a question from an LGBT+ forum in her Chichester constituency, the Education Secretary made the statement that “trans women are women”, adding that trans people should have equal access to “safe spaces”.

Safe spaces in the sense of women’s safe spaces? Trans people including the male ones? Male people should not have access to women’s safe spaces.

But. Good that she’s become better informed, and good that she’s said so.

Her comments were welcomed by Sex Matters, a women’s rights group. Maya Forstater, its chief executive, said: “This change in position by Gillian Keegan is a welcome development and sets an example for other politicians to start using clear, serious language rather than trans activist slogans. For several years, trans activist lobby groups pushed the use of phrases such as ‘trans women are women’ as a tactic to silence debate and fair questions about how gender self-identification clashes with women’s rights. Many didn’t recognise the dangers of these slogans early on, including politicians who doubtless thought they were simply supporting a good cause. It takes guts to publicly change your mind. Women’s rights and the safeguarding of children are serious issues that need to be addressed with clear and accurate language.”

I still wonder at the people who didn’t recognize the dangers of the slogans, especially the female people. It’s not as if they weren’t discussed.

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Hormones do not negate.

If hormone levels are going to be used as a way of dividing people into sporting classes, then current levels aren’t accurate enough; lifetime levels must be taken into account.

Oh, look! We already do that! Men, and women who have ever been doped with steroids like testosterone, have already been barred from women’s sport! See? We don’t need to ask intrusive questions about someone’s self-described ‘gender’! We can simply continue to exclude men and take blood and urine samples to ensure fairness!

I find it astonishing that people are tying themselves in knots to avoid admitting that humans come in two sexes, which need to be separate in sports if there’s to be any form of fairness; and yet still keep coming back to that fact via increasingly convoluted routes.

And, as you rightly point out, ‘fairness’ isn’t what the cheating men would ever accept anyway. Never mind winning, that’s just the cherry on the cake. Their dominance of women, and the women’s capitulation, is the point of their invasion. Hence the punishment of women and girls who refuse to compete against them. Getting a win without humiliating women and girls is like being told that they can have a cherry, but no cake.

Putz says what now?

On Tuesday the Garrick Club will hold a historic vote to decide whether to start accepting women as members. Some prominent figures, however, have already made their feelings clear. Stephen Fry, Sting and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler have co-signed a letter, announcing that they “won’t feel able to continue as Garrick members” if women aren’t admitted. And the BBC’s John Simpson has publicly declared that he too would “find it impossible to stay”.

This is of course supremely noble of them. I have only one question.

After their many years as members, have they really only just discovered that the Garrick excludes women?

I suppose they must have. After all, if they’re so horrified by the exclusion of women that they feel compelled to resign, they must have hitherto been unaware of the men-only rule. Which means that, until now, they must have assumed that many of the Garrick’s existing members were women.

Yawn.

Yes, they’re very late; yes, they should have spoken up long ago; yes others should have spoken up before Fry and Co were even born; yes, women should have had equal rights all along. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. They should have spoken up sooner but they’ve spoken up now which is better than looking down from a great height.

If so, I hope they didn’t entertain any unworthy thoughts about them. Such as: “Why do the female members always insist on wearing trouser suits, rather than a nice frock? And why do so many of them have moustaches? Honestly. One doesn’t wish to seem ungallant. But the women in the Groucho are so much prettier.”

Hur hur hur. Heard the one about “women have no sense of humor”?

Putz is one Michael Deacon. I looked him up.

Michael Deacon is a British author and political satirical journalist, who was previously the parliamentary sketch writer for The Daily Telegraph. After graduating from Sheffield University, Deacon worked for the lads’ magazine Zoo Weekly before joining the Daily Telegraph as a culture writer.

Of course. A lads mag bro. “Satirical.”

A post on the Cambridge University Press blog is so bad it appears to have been written by two children, but in fact the named authors are academics. It honestly strains belief.

First paragraph:

Kathleen Stock identifies as a philosopher of (expert on) sex and gender identity partly on the grounds that she has spent years (let us take her word for it) thinking, researching, and building careful and comprehensive arguments about these issues.

“expert on” is not a synonym for “philosopher of.” The two are not the same thing.

“let us take her word for it” is sheer childish sneering.

She also says, ‘it’s not hate speech to say males can’t be women’. But this claim is not obviously correct. Nor is it immediately obvious that she is qualified to make it.

That’s just ludicrous. Do they interrupt everyone who says something to shout “that’s not obviously correct!!”? It doesn’t need to be “obviously correct” all by itself, on account of how it’s not the sum total of what she has to say. What an absolutely dumb thick dim stupid interruption. And it’s not immediately obvious that these two are qualified to go outside without adult supervision.

I believe Stock fails to take seriously the possibility that misgendering and gender denialism are forms of hate speech partly because she is not an expert on hate speech but also partly because (and this is more understandable) she wants to assert her right to free speech and her vital interest in not being ‘cancelled’. In her case, being cancelled at her former University and at several public speaking events has been (she has said) not merely confronting but professionally damaging and extremely traumatic and scary at times.

One, why “I” when the piece is signed by two authors, Alexander Brown and Adriana Sinclair? It’s “I” throughout but there are two authors. I suppose they identify as “I”?

Two, she wasn’t “cancelled at her former University”: she left, because the students upped the bullying to the point that she didn’t want to be around them anymore.

I have extensively researched the idea of hate speech, in both its ordinary and legal senses, and have concluded that misgendering and gender denialism are importantly similar to hate speech, and on the balance of probabilities are, in certain instances and contexts, forms of hate speech, at least under the ordinary concept.

…

But in what ways are misgendering and gender denialism similar to paradigmatic examples of hate speech? Take three illustrations. First, miscategorising a trans woman as just a man is similar in style to miscategorising a bisexual man as just a closet homosexual.

Sneaky. “Style” is not the issue. You could say that about anything. “X is not Y” is similar in style to “A is not B” – what’s your point? The issue is whether it’s true or not. Also, what’s that “just” doing in there? It’s manipulating, that’s what it’s doing. A trans woman isn’t “just” a man, as if being a man is like being a piece of carpet fluff. In the real world it’s more likely for women to be dismissed as “just a” than for men.

 Second, saying that trans men are simply confused and troubled women is similar as an act of degradation and belittlement to saying that lesbian women are simply confused and troubled straight women. 

No it isn’t. Why? Because the two are different. Same-sex attraction is not an impossibility; being in “the wrong body” is.

Third, denying that trans people are the gender with which they identify can have similarly profound consequences as denying that Igbo Jews are Jews.

??????????

Another illustration of “this ideology makes people stupid.”

That’s what they’re calling it now? “Extreme body modification”? The Beeb:

The ringleader of an extreme body modification website wanted to be “the architect of his own body” after his marriage broke down, a court has heard.

Marius Gustavson and others carried out multiple mutilations on his “eunuch-maker” site.

Excuse me? How do you go about mutilating people on a website?

Through his “eunuch maker” site, Marius Gustavson and other “like-minded individuals” carried out multiple mutilations, “the scale of which is without precedent”, prosecutor Caroline Carberry KC previously told the Old Bailey.

The 46-year-old Norwegian required hospital treatment after having his penis and leg removed during body modification procedures.

Well he would, wouldn’t he.

He appeared for sentence alongside six other men who had all admitted their part in the scheme…The wide-ranging conspiracy also involved the removal and trade of body parts, the court was told.

Trade? Trade? There’s a trade in human body parts?

There’s such a thing as being too creative.

Thought for the day: self-obsession is not progressive.

Someone should tell Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson. Urgently. By the way her pronouns are she/her, she says so herself.

But she says so much more than that, and all of it is About Her.

I’m a bisexual scientist. It’s only fairly recently that I’ve said that out loud, and I thought I’d say a bit about why that is and why I’m writing this blog.

So first, when I was starting out, there just weren’t opportunities like this.  Pride yes, but Pride IN STEM?  Definitely not.  I think I completely disregarded the idea that any aspect of my personal identity might be relevant to my science or my academic career.

You were right! You were right then, you’re wrong now. Go back to the way you thought then.

But there’s another factor too. I’m a cis woman, married to a cis man. I got engaged a month before I submitted my masters dissertation – I know, so young, but I did my undergraduate at St Andrews, notorious for fostering early weddings, so by those standards we were lagging behind. I was married by the middle of my PhD and was pregnant during my first postdoc. Hitting all these heteronormative milestones.

So during that time, my bi identity was completely erased. I am sure I would have gone along with assumption I was straight especially in strongly heterosexual environments like mum and baby groups. I remember that it was really only referenced when I was with people who had known me in my teens and early twenties. And in fact, I even recall the odd old friend saying things like ”remember when you were bi?” as if I had grown out of my sexual orientation.

Why is she telling the world all this? Why does she expect anyone to care?

It is easy for someone like me to glide through life looking straight – but it doesn’t feel like gliding. I’ve felt guilty for having it easy and sad for the disconnect between my identity and how I’m perceived. And I guess that’s exactly why its important to write this, even if I worry I haven’t earned a place on this blog.  Because ultimately, bi and pansexual folk belong in STEM, as they do anywhere else. It’s important that we show our faces once in a while.

No, it isn’t. It really isn’t.

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Give it all away.

Hormones do not negate the advantage conferred by longer levers, the reason that men can throw things further than women can.

Hormones do not negate the larger lungs and hearts that confer an advantage in any competition that requires stamina, eg distance running, field sports such as the various footballs and hockey.

Hormones do not negate the effect of muscle twitch, which along with longer levers, is why men punch so much harder than women.

And finally, hormones do not negate the sense of entitlement that appears in so many mid level males who will do anything to win, even if it means wearing lippie and a bra.

Oh honestly. Why.

Why do we have to balance???

Why, especially, do we have to “balance” when the balancing harms women and doesn’t harm men? Why does anyone even call it “balancing” when the losers are women and the gainers are men? Especially when the person calling it that is a woman? Especially when the woman is Alice Dreger?

Why why why why why the FUCK do we have to keep giving away women’s rights and calling it “balance”?

Stop. Stop stop stop.

Passive-aggressive bullshit alert:

“Nervous to share this” – what are we meant to conclude from that? That women who know men are not women are mean angry bullies and will say HARSH WORDS to her – so unlike men who never ever say anything harsh to women at all no matter what.

As for her question – the same as in “a female-only ward”? Of course not. Why would they? Does she think male-only wards don’t get lifesaving care? Does she think female-only wards rescue women from death while male-only wards just watch patients die while laughing a cruel laugh?

But of course she’s now doing more passive-aggression by way of thanking people for shielding her from the lethal words of the witchy monster feminist Clytemnestras.

Ah yes, those who have “checked in” to make sure she’s not dedd from all the witchy abuse and disagreement.