A thing I saw.

H/t Josh

Julie Bindel on the Blame Women trick:

Men blaming women for ‘getting themselves raped/murdered/beaten’ is certainly nothing new. But women being blamed for male violence towards other vulnerable groups, such as trans-women of colour, is the latest pernicious tactic by misogynists. Feminists are blamed for the murder of trans-women, including those killed by intimate male partners.

Apparently, we whip up hatred and fury that leads men to decide to kill trans women. Doubtless these violent male murderers will have been sitting reading me, Janice Turner, Janice Raymond, and watching Magdalen Berns videos before deciding to take a gun, knife, fists or whatever and brutally kill a trans-woman. Not being satisfied with having total permission, indeed praise, for screaming TERF, bigot, fascist, homophobic, evil witch at us feminists, the woke blokes who get regular pats on the dick for putting bitches in our place, the dudes now put the blame on others for fatal male violence. Despite the fact that we are the ones at risk from violence by trans-extremists.

It is the most ingenious tactic of misogynistic men’s rights activists I have ever seen in 40 years of feminism. But we see you, boys, and I swear to god we will have you.

The health of The Great Barrier Reef isn’t just bad, it’s very bad. That’s official.

The Great Barrier Reef’s outlook has been officially downgraded from poor to very poor due to climate change.

Rising sea temperatures thanks to human-driven global warming remain the biggest threat to the reef, a five-year Australian government report says.

They mean from bad to very bad. For some reason officials think we can’t deal with the word “bad” but we’ll be ok if they change it to “poor,” but “bad” is what they mean. In short the GBR is doomed, which is very bad (not poor) news.

Rising sea temperatures caused “mass bleaching events” in 2016 and 2017 that wiped out coral and destroyed habitats for other sea life. While some habitats remain in a good state, the condition of the site as a whole is worsening.

“Threats to the reef are multiple, cumulative and increasing,” the report says. “The window of opportunity to improve the Reef’s long-term future is now.”

Scientists say the number of new corals plummeted by 89% on the reef thanks to recent bleaching events, which affected a 1,500km stretch.

Why does it matter if we kill off the coral reefs? Because they support so much marine life:

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth’s surface and less than two percent of the ocean bottom. Because they are so diverse, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea.

It’s the biodiversity:

Biodiversity is the variety of living species that can be found in a particular place—region, ecosystem, planet, etc. Coral reefs are believed by many to have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem on the planet—even more than a tropical rainforest. Occupying less than one percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than twenty-five percent of marine life.

Why is that important? A highly biodiverse ecosystem, one with many different species, is often more resilient to changing conditions and can better withstand significant disturbances.

In addition, ecosystem services—benefits that humans receive from natural environments—are often greater in highly diverse places. Coral reefs, thanks to their diversity, provide millions of people with food, medicine, protection from storms, and revenue from fishing and tourism. An estimated six million fishermen in 99 reef countries and territories worldwide—over a quarter of the world’s small-scale fishermen—harvest from coral reefs.

And those estimated six million fishers feed six million x whatever people. Thirty million? Sixty? Six hundred?

Peter Tatchell’s decision to blame feminists for the fact that a man murdered a trans woman continues to annoy everyone who sees it.

What he said:

Tracy Single is 15th trans woman of colour murdered in US this year. The tiny minority of feminists who demonise trans women as a threat to non-trans women contribute to the toxicl atmosphere that fuels prejudice, discrimination & violence

Janice Turner:

A man killed Tracy. It is overwhelmingly men who commit murder and violence against trans people. As they kill far, far greater numbers of women. Yet somehow feminists are the cause of male violence. Why not challenge men, Peter Tatchell? Your misogyny is disgraceful.

Sarah Ditum:

Tracy Single was killed by a man. Not a feminist who accepts sex is real, a man. I’m not sure why Peter is so attached to blaming women for male violence, but it gives the strong impression that he cares more about attacking women than protecting victims.

Holly Lawford-Smith:

was she murdered by a feminist, @PeterTatchell? you absolute muppet.

Julie Bindel

our misogyny is off the scale. MEN kill, rape & abuse trans women, NOT feminists. Neither do we ‘provoke’ such violence. We campaign AGAINST it. One woman is killed every 3 days by ex or current MALE partners for example. To blame us for the actions of violent men is outrageous.

Hadley Freeman:

Are you seriously blaming feminists for male violence, Peter?

It’s not helping him that a man was arrested on suspicion of murdering Tracy Single.

Meghan Murphy has more on the activism vandalism against VRR:

On Tuesday, Vancouver Rape Relief & Woman’s Shelter (VRRWS) tweeted images of vandalism left on their storefront — a space used for meetings, events, and support groups. ‘Kill TERFs,’ ‘Fuck TERFs,’ ‘TERFs go home, you are not welcome,’ ‘Transwomen are women,’ and ‘Trans Power’ had been scrawled across the windows and door in black marker. ‘TERF,’ for the blissfully ignorant, is an acronym that stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist.’ This is, of course, a misnomer. Radical feminists are not interested in ‘excluding’ trans-identified people from anything. What they are interested in is protecting certain spaces designated for women and girls.

Not because trans people are trans, but because male people are not female.

VRRWS has been targeted not only with vandalism, but with dead animals nailed to their door and stuffed through their mail slot, on account of their women-only policy. They operate a transition house for women and their children, which aims to protect abused women and help them to heal from horrific violence and sexual assault. To most, it makes sense that a space for extremely vulnerable women escaping male violence would exclude men. For trans activists, it makes sense to disembowel a skunk and string it up by its neck — noose-like — to hang it on the door where victims of rape and domestic abuse will find it and read it as (yet another) violent threat.

I didn’t know about that one.

It’s hard to take sides on this one, but local would-be politician, Morgane Oger, managed to, tweeting:

‘Regrettably but predictably, VRR choosing to ignore Canada’s civil rights laws causes blow-back. I empathize VRR feel threatened by the predictable response to their conduct. As I have previously offered, I am ready to help VRR get out of their mess if they wish to.’

In other words, those bitches deserved it.

Many progressives like Oger have accused the women involved in Vancouver Rape Relief and their supporters of being ‘hateful’. Oger also led a (successful) campaign to end a $30,000 City grant the organization had been receiving for education purposes, claiming their practice of serving women alone and hiring only female counselors discriminated against men. Well, to be specific, men who announce they are women. During a City hearing to determine the continuation of this grant, Oger accused VRRWS of ‘having a history of discrimination against transgender women on the basis of their gender identity or gender expression.’ This is untrue, as services and spaces that are women-only don’t care about a person’s gender identity or gender expression.

Many women don’t do a particularly orthodox gender expression ourselves, after all.

Any person who would go so far as to intimidate and threaten women who stand up for other women in this particularly disturbing way is on the wrong side of politics, never mind history. It is beyond unacceptable that the left is not only remaining silent on these kinds of attacks, but is continuing to fuel them, by claiming it is feminists who are guilty of ‘hate’ and ‘violence,’ not their comrades-in-arms.

Looking at you Peter Tatchell.

Stella Nyanzi is in prison for criticizing a guy.

A prominent Ugandan academic has bared her breasts and screamed obscenities in protest as a magistrate sentenced her to 18 months’ prison on controversial charges of “harassing” President Yoweri Museveni.

The verdict against Stella Nyanzi on Friday drew the ire of rights activists who accused the government of using laws about electronic communications to stifle political dissent.

Nyanzi, a university lecturer and researcher who once called Museveni “a pair of buttocks”, is expected to serve nine months in prison after having already spent nine months behind bars.

…

A second charge of “offensive communication” was dropped against Nyanzi, who has vowed not to relent in her barbed criticism of Uganda’s long-serving ruler.

“I planned to offend Yoweri Museveni Kaguta, because he has offended us for 30 plus years,” she told the courtroom on Thursday before being found guilty.

“We are tired of a dictatorship.”

…

In a statement on Friday, Joan Nyanyuki, director for East Africa at human rights group Amnesty International, said: “This verdict is outrageous and flies in the face of Uganda’s obligations to uphold the right to freedom of expression … and demonstrates the depths of the government’s intolerance of criticism.”

The verdict should be quashed and Nyanzi, who has been in jail since November last year, freed immediately, she said.

English Pen:

Earlier this month, writer and academic Dr Stella Nyanzi was convicted of cyber harassment in relation to a poem she shared on Facebook. She is now serving 18 months in prison. Join us in sending her letters and books and calling on Uganda to #FreeStellaNyanzi.

Erm…

Replying to @JeanHatchet @MorganeOgerBC and @FeministaCanada
I have always believed that a woman is a woman is a woman. Does not matter if she was born a man. Trans women get raped and need help too.

A woman is a woman is a woman, dammit, including if she was born a man. How many times do we have to say it? A woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman. Get it now?

Trump is determined to burn it all down.

President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest—the planet’s largest intact temperate rainforest—to logging and other corporate development projects, a move that comes as thousands of firesare ripping through the Amazon rainforest and putting the “lungs of the world” in grave danger.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous officials briefed on the president’s instructions, reported late Tuesday that Trump’s policy change would lift 20-year-old logging restrictions that “barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.”

The move, according to the Post, would affect more than half of the Tongass National Forest, “opening it up to potential logging, energy, and mining projects.”

Because hey, short term profits for a few always outweigh long term health of the planet.

The logging restrictions have been under near-constant assault by Republicans since they were implemented, but federal courts have allowed them to stand. As the Post reported:

Trump’s decision to weigh in, at a time when Forest Service officials had planned much more modest changes to managing the agency’s single largest holding, revives a battle that the previous administration had aimed to settle.

In 2016, the agency finalized a plan to phase out old-growth logging in the Tongass within a decade. Congress has designated more than 5.7 million acres of the forest as wilderness, which must remain undeveloped under any circumstances. If Trump’s plan succeeds, it could affect 9.5 million acres…

Meh, it’s just a bunch of trees. You’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all.

This guy…

Ah – reducing ‘females’ to their anatomy. What stellar feminist thinking. 😍 Really top notch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a cluster account of ‘femaleness’ can include cis and trans people, but also exclude both. It doesn’t make sense. Much like the GC agenda.

Who is it that he’s setting straight with such authority?

Boodleoops – you know, an actual philosopher.

The only “gender identity” I have is knowledge that my body is female, and an awareness of what that body means for how I am treated by others. If you don’t have a female body, then you and I don’t share any gender identity, and therefore we can’t both be women. Sorry.

Family Planning @FPNewZealand· Aug 26
Everyone has a gender identity—a feeling or sense of being male, female or somewhere in between. Sometimes people’s gender identity matches their bodies, and sometimes it doesn’t. https://youtu.be/i83VQIaDlQw

I honest to god think one huge reason trans ideology is so popular with guys like Liam is because it gives them (what they think is) an excuse to sneer at and correct and lecture women this way, very much including women who are more intelligent and more educated than they are. I certainly think that applies to the ineffable Morgane Oger, telling us over and over and over that women have no right to say that men are not women.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Magic with words.

When I was a general surgeon (eons ago it seems), I had been highly trained in surgery for diseases of the breast as part of my residency. I was an early advocate of less invasive surgery for breast cancer and was the first I know of who worked with a team of physicians to council women about their options. When I saw a woman with breast cancer in my office I coordinated the visit with oncology, radiation therapy and plastic surgery in one visit so the individuals I saw could make the best choice for their needs. When surgery was part of the therapy, I worked with a highly skilled plastic surgeon on all my cases who would help design the incision sites (without compromising the cancer surgery) and we would perform immediate reconstruction surgery at the same time in most cases (so the women never woke up without a breast). Lastly, all my patients were referred to a female surgeon I respected and worked with for a second opinion. The purpose of this was twofold- one to make sure all questions and doubts were addressed and 2 – allow for the possibility that my patient might prefer a woman surgeon (we informed them that this option was completely understandable and that no one would be offended). Sometimes they did – sometimes not.

Here’s the thing – I was completely qualified to handle the clinical needs of any of these patients. But as I tried to instill in our residents – it’s not about us – it’s about what they (the patient) need. Sometimes what they needed was something I could never be – a women who could exactly empathize with them and who provided them with a bit more comfort in a horrible time in their lives. And guess what, that’s what they got. Care, comfort, and security – the things we tried to provide to all our patients.

I bring this up because this should be the only perspective on the issue of advocacy services – what do these women need. They’re not looking to part of any would-be counselor’s agenda or be part of any social movement. They have trauma and pain and helping them find care, comfort and security is all that matters. Anyone who can’t adjust to that shouldn’t be a counselor because empathy is pretty much a must have in that role.

David Karpf on the translucently thin skin of Bret Stephens:

Bret Stephens is above me in the status hierarchy. He knows this. I know this. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and has a regular op-ed column in the New York Times. I am just some professor. I’ve written two books, but unless you are professionally involved with digital politics, you probably have never heard of me.

We have now though.

Karpf was surprised to get an email from Stephens, and surprised to see the provost of his university was cc’ed on the message.

He shares the email. I neglected to quote the whole thing yesterday so why don’t I do that now.

Dear Dr. Karpf,

Someone just pointed out a tweet you wrote about me, calling me a “bedbug.” I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people — people they’ve never met — on Twitter. I think you’ve set a new standard.

I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for for a few minutes, and then call me a “bedbug” to my face. That would take some genuine courage and intellectual integrity on your part. I promise to be courteous no matter what you have to say.

Maybe it will make you feel better about yourself.

Please consider this a standing invitation. You are more than welcome to bring your significant other.

Cordially,
Bret Stephens

Apart from anything else – it’s hilarious that he thinks that one mild joke “set a new standard” for what people are prepared to say on Twitter. Oh, dude. Not within shouting distance.

Karpf was surprised he even knew about the tweet, let alone bothered to pitch a fit about it.

But what was most striking to me was that he had gone to the effort to CC the provost. Including the Provost clarifies the intent of the message. It means he was not reaching out in an earnest attempt to promote online civil discourse.

That insultingly insincere “Cordially” at the end notwithstanding.

It means he was trying to send a message that he stands above me in the status hierarchy, and that people like me are not supposed to write mean jokes about people like him online. It was an exercise in wielding power—using the imprimatur of The New York Times to ward off speech that he finds distasteful.

I was even more surprised this morning, when he was invited to speak on MSNBC about the incident and remarked that, “There’s a bad history of being analogized to insects that goes back to a lot of totalitarian regimes in the past.” You can draw your own conclusion as to whether my joke was worth a chuckle. But equating a random Twitter account with a totalitarian regime is a remarkably long walk. I have to assume that Stephens recognizes that these words would have a different meaning and impact if they came from the ministry of propaganda than when uttered as a cheeky response to a headline about actual bedbugs in a newsroom.

The ministry of propaganda or the president of the US.

The funny thing is the joke was more at the expense of the Times than Stephens himself. Or maybe not more, but equally. I read it as aimed in the general direction of the David Brookses and Bari Weisses – the conspicuously mediocre opinionators they choose to represent The Range of Views.

But here’s what still bothers me as this strange episode recedes from the news cycle: Bret Stephens seems to think that his social status should render him immune from criticism from people like me. I think that the rewards of his social status come with an understanding that lesser-known people will say mean things about him online.

Stephens reached out to me in the mistaken belief that I would feel ashamed. He reached out believing my university would chastise me for provoking the ire of a writer at The New York Times. That’s an abuse of his social station.

But what’s the point of having that kind of social station if you don’t get to abuse it?

And I thought we’d gone crazy. Boris is getting away with his coup.

Parliament will be suspended just days after MPs return to work in September – and only a few weeks before the Brexit deadline.

Boris Johnson said a Queen’s Speech would take place after the suspension, on 14 October, to outline his “very exciting agenda”.

But it means the time MPs have to pass laws to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October would be cut.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said it was a “constitutional outrage”.

The Speaker, who does not traditionally comment on political announcements, continued: “However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of [suspending Parliament] now would be to stop [MPs] debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country.”

Shit’s getting real.

How long will it take Childe Donald to try to do the same?

Three Conservative members of the Queen’s Privy Council took the request to suspend Parliament to the monarch’s Scottish residence in Balmoral on Wednesday morning on behalf of the prime minister.

It has now been approved, allowing the government to suspend Parliament no earlier than Monday 9 September and no later than Thursday 12 September, until Monday 14 October.

Nice job, Brenda.

Could she have done anything else? I have no idea. I don’t understand the arrangement. The Crown plays a merely formal or ceremonial role…but then why did three Tories zip up to Balmoral to get her ok and why does it matter that she handed it over? I don’t know. Anyway she did, so Johnson’s coup is going ahead unless MPs can stop it.

Donnie of course is all for it.

Would be very hard for Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, to seek a no-confidence vote against New Prime Minister Boris Johnson, especially in light of the fact that Boris is exactly what the U.K. has been looking for, & will prove to be “a great one!” Love U.K.

Or England, or Queenville, or whatever they’re calling it today.

Another one:

When June Eastwood steps onto the start line for the Clash of the Inland Northwest cross country meet on Saturday morning in Cheney, Wash., she will make history. Eastwood, a senior at the University of Montana, will become the fastest distance runner to ever compete in an NCAA Division I women’s race.

In fact, it won’t even be close.

Eastwood’s personal best in the 800 meters is 1:55.23. That’s almost four seconds faster than the collegiate record of 1:59.10 set by Raevyn Rogers in 2017.

Her personal best in the 1500 is 3:50.19. Jenny Simpson’s collegiate record, unchallenged for a decade, is almost 10 seconds slower (3:59.90).

Eastwood has run 14:38.80 in the 5,000, far ahead of Simpson’s collegiate record of 15:01.70.

Despite those PBs, it is far from certain Eastwood will win on Saturday. Eastwood has won just two races out of 56 in three years of competition for Montana. She’s never won a national title or earned All-American honors. In fact, she’s never even qualified for the national meet.

The reason? For the first three years of her career, June Eastwood competed on the men’s team.

Competed on the men’s team and didn’t do all that well so hey, let’s try the other team.

Unless Eastwood is utterly awful this fall, it seems likely that she will face questions about whether she has an unfair advantage because of her chromosomal sex — and how big that advantage is. If she’s 20th at NCAAs, will someone complain that she bumped someone out of All-American honors? If she’s 5th at her conference meet, will someone complain she bumped someone out of all-conference honors? If she’s 5th on her team, will someone complain she bumped someone off the travel squad?

All of this makes Eastwood one of the most compelling athletes in the NCAA this fall. How she runs — and how the NCAA reacts — could set a precedent for how the NCAA handles MTF transgender cases and reshape the future of women’s sports.

And “reshape the future of women’s sports” in the sense of killing it stone dead. There won’t be any women’s sports any more, because men who claim to be women will take all of it over.