Insult to women number eleventy billion:

Seventeen women’s rights groups have signed a letter to the charity UN Women UK expressing concern about its choice of a transgender woman as its “UK champion”.

Organisations including Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend and the Women’s Rights Network wrote of their “dismay and disappointment” that Munroe Bergdorf had been picked.

One, a man; two, a man who dresses up as a parody of a Hot Babe. Insult piled upon insult.

Bergdorf, 36, a model and broadcaster, was given the post of the first UN Women UK Champion in November. UN Women UK supports the work of the UN Women entity to improve the lives of women and girls, as well as the “empowerment of women equality globally within civil society, government and the corporate sector”.

Except it clearly doesn’t do that, because it’s too busy promoting men like Munroe Bergdorf and their porny ideas of what women are.

“I’m incredibly proud to step into my new role as a UN Women UK Champion,” Bergdorf said. “Working with the UN has been a personal ambition and dream of mine ever since I started working in the activism space over a decade ago. It’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly.

“I will use this role to further advocate for the progress, safety, inclusion and empowerment of all women and girls, of all communities and identities. I will continue to draw attention to the systemic and social impact of misogyny, transphobia and gender-based inequality within the UK — in order to help provide data and insight that contributes to forming tangible methods of tracking and countering it.”

In other words he’ll use his role as a UN Women UK Champion to change the subject from women to men who dress up as women. Thanks, that’s a big help.

A fatal shooting in Maryland:

A Bel Air woman was shot dead during an argument on Wednesday, according to court documents.

According to charging documents, the incident happened on Churchill Road Wednesday in Bel Air, where Brian Delen, 47, was delivering food. The documents said Delen asked Meghan Lewis, 52: “Are you waiting for a food delivery, sir”

As per Delen’s account described in the documents, Lewis was offended and believed Delen had misgendered her, and yelled at him.

In other words this is yet more dishonest reporting. A man was shot dead, not a woman.

The filing says Delen drove away, and Lewis followed on foot; Delen stopped driving and the two ‘engaged in a physical altercation.”

Presumably the case will turn on that. Why did Delen stop driving? Why didn’t he just leave? He shot Lewis in the abdomen and Lewis died.

Members of the local LGBTQ community are describing Lewis as ‘uplifting,’ and a committed supporter of transgender people in Maryland.

“That’s just who she was as a person – she was always interested in uplifting our fellow community members,” said Lee Blinder, the executive director of Trans Maryland, a group which supports the trans community across the state. Blinder told WMAR Lewis went out of her way to help those within her community.

The community of men who usurp women.

Delen faces serious charges, including second-degree murder and first-degree assault.

Delen was released on recognizance, according to Maryland court records. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for January 25.

Why didn’t he just keep going?

That one little word…

What this driveling fool is trying to make us believe is that “ALL women” includes men who call themselves women, and that if the word “cis” isn’t used then the word “women” means men as well as women.

It’s such a spectacle, watching apparently fully-adult women with serious jobs eagerly giving away women’s rights while patting themselves on the back for doing so.

This is not about faith and belief, also, some women have penises.

Driveling fool.

Just imagine if women had that kind of clout…

A London council has demanded that companies in its supply chain prove their commitment to approved LGBT inclusion values. Labour-run Camden Council has introduced a range of measures to ensure that its internal policies and processes are inclusive.

But of course by “inclusive” in “LGBT” terms they mean mostly non-inclusive of women. The tiny tiny barely visible minority made up of people who claim to be the opposite sex is being “empowered” to demolish women’s rights. Why is that tiny minority, made up of people suffering from a trendy delusion, so important that they get to take away the rights of half of all humans?

According to information from the local authority, it is aiming to “positively influence” through the policy. It states that “building our commitment to LGBTQ+ equality into our procurement processes” has been one of the ways in which it has sought to be more inclusive.

Spreading the trans tyranny from the council to all the firms that the council gets stuff from.

The council states: “We are beginning to ask businesses to demonstrate their commitment to LGBTQ+ equality before we procure them.”

But they don’t really mean LGB equality, they mean T equality. It’s all about the T.

Other measures brought in to increase inclusion at the local authority include introducing trans awareness sessions, partnering with Stonewall and Proud Employers, and celebrating dates on an inclusion calendar, including a Bi Visibility Day and Transgender Day of Remembrance.

No Women’s Day of Remembrance though. Women don’t matter. Women are, frankly, Karens. In fact, if you must know, we hate them. The only good women are men.

Camden had previously launched a project to examine the potentially offensive views of historical figures represented in the borough, including Virginia Woolf.

Well duh. She was a woman. She sullied Tavistock Square by living in it; this must be exposed and examined and posthumously reviled.

Nicaragua v the Church:

Pope Francis used his New Year’s Day address to highlight concern over the worsening situation of the Roman Catholic Church in Nicaragua as a result of a protracted crackdown by the government of President Daniel Ortega, which has detained clerics, expelled missionaries, closed Catholic radio stations and limited religious celebrations.

Of course the church itself has a long long history of doing all that to others. It has detained people, expelled people, closed libraries and burned books, and limited non-religious celebrations. It’s a very coercive organization.

Speaking to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the traditional New Year’s Angelus prayer and blessing, Francis said he was “following with concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom.”

And how many people have been deprived of their freedom by the church over the past two thousand years or so? How many have been executed by it? How many tortured?

It’s not the benign institution the Times is framing it as being.

Vatican News reported on Monday that at least 14 priests, two seminarians and a bishop had been arrested in recent days in Nicaragua, and that the country’s top church leader, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, had expressed his closeness “to the families and communities who are without their priests at this time.”

Are priests supposed to be immune from arrest? What if they’ve been raping children? A hell of a lot of priests got away with doing exactly that for generations. It’s odd that the Times doesn’t even pause to ask the question. Maybe the priests did something criminal? Like kiddy-fiddling? Or worse? Why should we just assume they’re innocent?

In the long campaign to dismantle the church’s reach in the country, dozens of clerics and missionaries have been detained or expelled, and Catholic institutions shut down.

Is it just self-evident that the church should have maximal reach in the country? Not to me.

In March, the Vatican closed its embassy in Nicaragua, after the Nicaraguan government proposed suspending relations with the Holy See, and its representative to Managua, Msgr. Marcel Diouf, left the country for Costa Rica, The Associated Press reported. The Vatican’s ambassador had been forced to leave a year earlier.

Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The Vatican isn’t a country. It’s a small area within the city of Rome. Why should the Vatican have ambassadors at all? Why should any country be obliged to recognize them?

There are a lot of links worth following up in that piece by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. One is University of Alberta fires Sexual Assault Centre director for signing letter questioning Hamas rape reports:

The University of Alberta fired its Sexual Assault Centre director for signing an open letter questioning sexual assault and rape claims against Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

Samantha Pearson’s use of the centre’s name was “improper and unauthorized” and “raised understandable concerns from members of our community and the public,” U of A president Bill Flanagan said in a statement Saturday.

Pretty much the last category of person who should endorse such an open letter, you’d think. “Bitches be lyin’,” said the director of the Sexual Assault Center.

The open letter posted online urges politicians in “so-called Canada” to “end their complicity in the ongoing massacres and genocide in Gaza, Occupied Palestine.”

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was also singled out in the letter for repeating the “unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.”

“Furthermore, by failing to recognize Israeli occupation as ‘terrorist’ and only directing this term at Palestinian resistance, you perpetuate an Islamophobic trope,” the letter reads. 

We’re allowed to hate Islam just as we’re allowed to hate Catholicism and any other religion. Hatred of Muslims is one thing and hatred of Islam is quite another.

And we are allowed to condemn terrorism by rape no matter who perpetrates it.

No solidarity for women:

So why, then, in a moment when statements of solidarity fly fast and furious, have feminists and their progressive allies not been more outspoken about the grotesque sexual violence visited upon Israeli women on Oct. 7?

Many feminist organizations rushed to express support for the Palestinian cause while eliding the plight of Israeli victims. The organization UN Women issued a four-page report last month exclusively addressing the impact of the war on women and girls in Gaza but made only a brief condemnation of the Oct. 7 attack that made no mention of the sexual violence that had been reported. A group of prominent scholars circulated a letter under the title “Feminists for a Free Palestine,” without explicitly condemning the sexual violence against Israeli women.

I guess the thinking is that some women deserve rape?

College campus groups have furnished other examples, such as the women’s students’ groups at Harvard that signed on to a letter holding Israel entirely responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks or the (now-former) director of the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Center’s signing on to a letter doubting the veracity of accounts of Israeli rape survivors. Even the office on my own campus that is devoted to helping students “lead social-justice centered lives” issued thousands of words in solidarity with the Palestinians and did not once acknowledge the sexual violence (or murder or abduction) perpetrated by Hamas. And then there are the familiar conversations like those that Miriam Schler, the executive director of a Tel Aviv crisis center, reports having with friends who style themselves “champions of human rights, feminism, and social justice” but who “have been bending over backwards to justify atrocities and rationalize rape.”

So, yes, the thinking is that some women deserve rape. It seems Israeli women are all Karens.

This tragic minimization — or justification, in some cases — of violence against Israeli women appears to be the result of an ideological turn among some feminists and progressives that elevates an “antiracist” agenda above the core feminist commitment to defend the universal right to bodily autonomy for all women. This argument contends that because Israel is a colonial power oppressing the Palestinians, any resistance is a justified dimension of decolonization.

Meanwhile, be sure not to ask any questions about how Hamas treats Palestinian women.

Grrrrr. Now we’re “non-trans women” – a subset of ourselves.

Sneak sneak sneak. Sneak in the “non-trans” bit as if it needs to be spelled out that women are not men who call themselves women. No thank you, that is surplus to requirements; we are women; men who pretend to be women are men.

Peter Tatchell tries to school women on who can be a woman and Rosie Duffield reminds him that we don’t need him to tell us who can be a woman. Go school yourself Peter.

Tim Harris’s mention of Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland has prompted me to summon the book from the library and to read the Guardian review by Fara Dabhoiwala.

In the endless catalogue of British imperial atrocities, the unprovoked invasion of Tibet in 1903 was a minor but fairly typical episode. Tibetans, explained the expedition’s cultural expert, were savages, “more like hideous gnomes than human beings”. Thousands of them were massacred defending their homeland, “knocked over like skittles” by the invaders’ state-of-the-art machine guns. “I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire,” wrote a British lieutenant, “though the General’s order was to make as big a bag as possible.” As big a bag as possible – killing inferior people was a kind of blood sport.

And blood sport is a Thing to [a certain class of] the British. I did a post once, not very long ago, about a fact I hadn’t known: the toffs like to shoot birds out of the sky and then just walk away. They don’t shoot them for food, they just shoot them. Same with “trophy” hunting – elephants, lions, whatever they think will look nice on the wall.

And now we learn that they saw a set of people the same way. A “bag,” a “trophy,” a blood sport.

And then the looting started. More than 400 mule-loads of precious manuscripts, jewels, religious treasures and artworks were plundered from Tibetan monasteries to enrich the British Museum and the Bodleian Library.

Ok stop right there.

Notice an incongruity?

On the one hand the people are so much garbage, as cheerfully slaughtered as mosquitoes. On the other hand, creators of precious manuscripts and artworks well worth looting and taking home to show off.

Well which is it?

Sitting at home watching the BBC antiques show Flog It one quiet afternoon in the early 21st century, Sathnam Sanghera saw the delighted descendant of one of those soldiers make another killing – £140,000 for selling off the artefacts his grandfather had “come across” in the Himalayas.

As one does.

It’s a characteristically instructive vignette in Empireland, Sanghera’s impassioned and deeply personal journey through Britain’s imperial past and present. The empire, he argues, still shapes British society – its delusions of exceptionalism, its immense private and public wealth, the fabric of its cities, the dominance of the City of London, even the entitled and drunken behaviour of British expats and holidaymakers abroad. Yet the British choose not to see this: wilful amnesia about the darker sides of imperialism may be its most pernicious legacy.

I look forward to reading it. Thanks, Tim.

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Signals.

To return to the question of ‘indigenous’ religious artefacts in museums, it should surely be pointed out that a great bone of contention is that a great many, if not most, of such artefacts were looted in the course of colonial wars, etc., and it is hardly surprising that the descendants of those peoples should not be happy about it, and the lack of respect shown to them then and now, a lack of respect that – forgive me for saying this – appears in at least one of the comments here.

There was the Younghusband invasion of Tibet in 1903, in which monasteries were sacked and plundered, and the man, Lawrence Waddell, mostly responsible for (as he said) ‘procuring from that closed land those manuscripts and books so greatly required by Western scholars’, even as he described Tibetan Buddhism as ‘a parasitic disease’ and Tibetans as ‘sunk in the lowest depths of savagery’, and as being ‘more like hideous gnomes than human beings’. There was the looting and burning of the Summer Palace in Peking in 1868. More than 10,000 Indigenous Australian & Torres Island artefacts have been identified in institutions around the world, a third of them in the British Museum. The ‘British Expedition to Abyssinia’ of 1868, in which… But I shan’t go on, except to say that you may find all this information, and more, in Sathnam Sanghera’s excellent and fair-minded book, Empireland.

I have confined the above to Britain, but I rather doubt that the objects in question in science museums in the USA were all happily handed over by happy ‘natives’ (‘Oh, great, you are going to put them in museums along with those skulls you need for your physiognomical research into IQ, etc.! Thank you so much’!). And I am not surprised at all that indigenous peoples are still unhappy about the situation.

I don’t think one should be worried about accusations of ‘virtue-signalling’, which come for the most part from people whose attitudes, even though they may proclaim themselves as atheists, seem uncomfortably close to those of nineteenth-century imperialists, colonisers, colonists, and Christian missionaries.

“Labour losing women” is trending.

Notice anything missing?

Women. She doesn’t include women. Apparently there’s no need to stand up for our rights.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Signals.

I think the term “virtue signalling” can be susceptible to overuse in something like the way “critical race theory” is. Signalling virtue in itself isn’t a bad thing, because virtue isn’t a bad thing; “virtue signalling” as a pejorative is meant to refer to a cynical or vacuous performance of a kind of artificial morality. Likewise, critical academic analysis of race in itself isn’t a bad thing, but “critical race theory” is a specific strand of academic theory which is a hot mess. The terms’ lack of clarity make them susceptible to being co-opted or misunderstood.

Nevertheless, I like the term “virtue signalling.” I like the juxtaposition of the two words. Virtue is supposed to evoke deep, rich and meaningful morality, but signalling suggests tinny pings of morse code. The idea of virtue as something to be merely signalled is, to me at least, always a little jarring, a little perverse. I like the sting it gives.

But yeah, not unlike the way Republicans have co-opted “critical race theory” to stop any academic discussion of race happening at all, rather than trying to ensure that it’s done well, “virtue signalling” has the potential to turn people against any displays of moral goodness, rather than simply trying to ensure there’s thought and meaning behind them. Which is going the wrong way.

The sting of “virtue signalling” is supposed to punish people for cheapening morality. But it could create disincentive for people to outwardly display any morality at all. Maybe it’s too cynical.

But we definitely need some kind of term for the phenomenon we’re seeing everywhere, which is that the relationship between incentive and moral behaviour has been warped. Everywhere I look, I see examples of people choosing to signal their allegiance to various groups or causes in ways that actually harm them. A thousand Trolley Problems, and everyone’s pulling the lever to drive the trolley over the victims because it gives the lever-pullers a short-term dose of social credibility.

People make a big show of embracing gender extremism because they want to appear aligned with gays and lesbians, even after we show them that it’s harmful to gays and lesbians. People make a big show of saying “trans women are women” because they want to appear as though they’re on the cutting edge of women’s rights and breaking gender stereotypes, even when it’s crystal clear that trans-identifying males are gutting women’s rights. People make a big show out of supporting ayurveda and other pseudoscience because they want to make a big show of how racially and culturally open-hearted they are, even though “alternative medicine” hurts many of the very people they’re signalling their allegiance with.

On and on. They pull the lever anyway.

We need a pithy, venomous term for that kind of incentive-reversal moral-cowardice-disguised-as-virtue that’s going on everywhere, something more precise than just “virtue signalling.”

Hmm. I’ll try to think of some ideas.

Apparently there is no number of daughters sufficient to convince men of the need to take women seriously.

Donald Trump has daughters. Ditto Vladimir Putin. David Cameron, with two, maintained a primitive preference for male colleagues/banter. George Osborne’s daughter couldn’t inoculate him against airing psychopathic fantasies about Theresa May. That Boris Johnson was the parent as prime minister of two, then three girls, similarly confirms that hiring only men who have daughters cannot, sadly, be the solution to misogyny in Westminster, the City or the Metropolitan police.

Admittedly, since spawning another girl, Johnson has apologised to the female colleague known to his old WhatsApp pals as “that cunt”.

Baby steps. Plus lots of daughters. This is going to take some time, isn’t it.

I’m reading a piece by Elizabeth Weiss about science museums and how they should respond to controversies. I’ve paused to follow up a sidetrack.

In the past two decades, science institutions have faced challenges from another source: indigenous religions. Unlike Christian fundamentalist beliefs, these indigenous beliefs often receive enthusiastic support from academics, scholars, and mainstream media journalists. This support might stem from a desire to oppose Western civilization and align with the “victims” of modernity as part of an effort to “decolonize” museums. Alternatively, it may also be linked to a trend of virtue signaling, which has allowed the misconception that “indigenous knowledge is science” to take root in academic circles.

It’s the virtue signaling bit that caused me to stop and think. It’s a label I find amusing, and probably deserved at least some of the time, but I also feel slightly uncomfortable or guilty about liking it. I second-guess myself when I smirk at it. Know what I mean? “Yes there is a lot of that around, but at the same time, what are people supposed to do, say nothing lest they be accused of virtue signaling?”

I think it’s not always that simple. I think it’s hard to tell the difference between virtue signaling and signaling solidarity or concern or sympathy and the like. I think it’s very possible, indeed likely, that sometimes what looks like virtue signaling to opponents of virtue signaling is actually solidarity and the like. No doubt it can also be a mixture of both.

I think what caused me to stop and question the label this time is the fact that it’s about things indigenous. My reading slowed when I got to that part, even before the virtue bit. Why? Because I’m ambivalent, I think. I’m not a fan of deference to religions, but on the other hand, indigenous people by definition were here first (that is, their ancestors were), and it seems a bit rude to blow off their concerns entirely. I think science museums should be science museums, but I also think indigenous people should get a little respect. I don’t think it’s necessarily virtue-signaling to say that.

Am I wrong? Do any of yiz have this kind of ambivalence?

Daily Mail:

USA Boxing to allow transgender women to compete against female boxers under certain conditions from 2024 after introducing new policy

That is, USA Boxing to allow men to punch women.

USA Boxing has adopted a ‘Transgender Policy’, which will allow male boxers who transition to fight in the female category from 2024.

One, it’s unfair, and two, it’s dangerous.

But it’s only unfair to women and dangerous to women, so it doesn’t matter.

USA Boxing announced the policy on Friday, saying in a statement: ‘The purpose of this policy is to provide fairness and safety for all boxers.’

Bullshit. That policy can’t possibly provide either fairness or safety for women boxers.

Stop cheating or lose your funding.

Parkrun must protect women runners from transgender rivals – or risk losing their funding, says a report backed by Olympians.

The research paper by Policy Exchange, a think tank, found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by biological men as a result of its policy of allowing entrants to self-identify their gender.

The report – backed by Olympic medallists Sharron Davies and Daley Thompson and tennis player Martina Navratilova – warned that female athletes risk being alienated unless grassroots sports from cricket and rowing to football and tennis could provide fair and safe play.

That is, the report warned that there’s a risk that female athletes will be alienated. The female athletes themselves aren’t doing anything risky; it’s the allowing male athletes to cheat that’s the risk.

Parkrun is among sports highlighted by Policy Exchange where grassroots policies allow for participants to self-identify their gender. This contrasted with elite or competitive levels in the same sports where there were protected female categories or there were restrictions placed on their participation.

You mean there were restrictions placed on the participation of male athletes, right? Not the participation of protected female categories.

Its analysis suggested it placed women at a competitive disadvantage, citing how the winning woman from the London Marathon in 2023 would be beaten by the 231st ranking male, or that every British long-course swimming record set by an elite female swimmer has been beaten by a teenage boy.

The report highlighted Porthcawl’s Parkrun record time of 18 minutes 53 seconds in the female 45-49 category which was set by transgender runner Siân Longthorpe. It beat the previous record by one minute 13 seconds, prompting an Olympic long distance runner to say the record was “probably now out of female hands forever”.

The unfairness seems so blindingly obvious, doesn’t it?

Blah blah blah Peter.

Rabbits aren’t same as other women but equally valid.

Shovels aren’t same as other women but equally valid.

Sailboats aren’t same as other women but equally valid.

In short, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s hurbleburble meant to cover up the absurdity of claiming that men are women. Men aren’t the same as women how? In the sense of being the opposite of women – of being the other sex in a two-sex species. Men aren’t the same as women in the same way that up isn’t the same as down or night isn’t the same as day. “Valid” is beside the point.

Women are women based on their sex. Men are men based on their sex. The end. “Gender identity” is just a thing in the head, which can be meaningful to the owner of the head but isn’t meaningful to anyone else. We can all have fantasies about our identities, but what we can’t do is order everyone else to endorse the fantasies, let alone live by them.

Still racing toward the cliff.

The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s ability to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior scientists have said.

As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment when failures became apparent.

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed,” he said. “Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.”

…

His comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows that the world is already heating to dangerous levels.

Limp and vague and wholly empty. They can’t do more even if they want to. If they try they won’t be world leaders any more.

Veteran climate watchers have been horrified at the pace of change. “The climate year 2023 is nothing but shocking, in terms of the strength of climate occurrences, from heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires, to rate of ice melt and temperature anomalies particularly in the ocean,” Prof Johan Rockström, the joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said.

He said these new developments indicated the Earth was in uncharted territory ​​and under siege. “What we mean by this is that we may be seeing a shift in Earth’s response to 250 years of escalated human pressures … to a situation of ‘payback’ where Earth starts sending invoices back to the thin layer on Earth where humans live, in the form of off the charts extremes.”

Rockstrom was among the authors of the 2018 “Hothouse Earth” paper, which warned of a domino-like cascade of melting ice, warming seas and dying forests could tilt the planet into a state beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be increasingly futile.

Check, check, check.

This is as good as it’s going to be.