The news outlets just can’t figure it out, can they.

On Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters in Kingston, Ontario, that female sports “should be for females — not for biological males.” Poilievre was responding in part to a new policy in Alberta that bans transgender females from competing in women’s sports. 

…

Polls consistently show that Canadians favour full legal equality for transgender individuals – as well as special protections from discrimination. But opinions change rapidly when it comes to edge issues such as sports.

No they don’t. Equality is not the same thing as impersonation.

Guess what: I too “favour full legal equality” for trans people. It does not follow that I think that includes allowing men to force their way into women’s sports and prizes and rape crisis centers. That’s not an “edge issue”; it’s all too fucking central.

They’re still doing it.

MAN. A MAN who filmed himself killing a cat has been jailed for murdering a man. He’s a MAN.

Ah so that’s why he stole them – he was hoping to sell them to the owners.

Hilarious. “India” Willoughby, who spends all his time shouting at people for not agreeing that he’s a hot sexy hot woman and sharing photos of himself pretending to be a hot sexy young woman sunbathing. How much time does Willz spend smiling at uplifting films about love? Any?

I mean even apart from his warped beliefs about which people are women, he’s not a joy-finding kind of guy. He’s a rage-finding kind of guy.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s a holy confusion.

Their dream is to achieve “immortality” by storing their consciousnesses in digital form, existing eternally as ghosts in the machine.

And if someone was an asshole in life, then they’ll be an asshole forever. Or at least until the machine in which they’re a ghost gets unplugged by some janitor.

Whether this sort of extreme transhumanism motivates any significant portion of Genderism’s supporters notwithstanding, a fundamental mind-body disconnect is shared between them.

.

Godalmighty. What do they think would be the point without a body? I can’t imagine anything more horrendous.

Yeah, what’s the point? The elevation and privileging of mental and intellectual pleasures, whenever and wherever it is indulged, is almost always done in conjunction with the denegration and disparagement of “mere” bodily pleasures. There’s no evidence that any kind of pleasure is possible without a body; bodily pleasures are a part of the package, so why not enjoy them? You need a body to do that, or anything; why is that a bad thing? Metaphysical sour grapes if we have no choice, but if we do, what makes us think that having the choice is necessarily good? A longer life is no guarantee of a better one. It’s not necessarily any one person’s choice either, as we shall see.

The belief that one’s personality and conciousness has an existence independent of the body, and that it can be removed and transferred to some material substrate other than the body in which it arose, is a technological version of the belief in a soul that lives on after death. Transhumanists might fool themselves into thinking they’ve changed things by describing this entity as a “pattern of information,” or somesuch, but it’s still much more a religious conviction than anything one might call “scientific.” They don’t want to know that consciousness might simply be an emergent property of a particular arrangement of matter, and that that property cannot be abstracted from that arrangement and “installed” in another one, that consciousness, personality, whatever, is something that is a product of biology, and that it must be evolved and grown, rather than designed and built. I know it smacks of vitalism, but what if consciousness is actually dependent upon biology, and that the messiness of bodies, and blood & guts existence, is the only way you can get it?

The whole idea that you can download or upload your consciousness into a machine (or anything else) feels like a category error, like believing the journal into which you write your thoughts and feelings not only thinks your thoughts and feels your feelings, but that it will continue to think thoughts and have feelings just like you, in perpetuity. Sure, it’s a pattern of information, but it’s an inert one, a dead end; it can’t write out its (or should I say your) thoughts and feelings in turn. But if someone else picks it up and reads it, then some of those thoughts and feelings, in a way, are repeated, preserved and perpetuated. But the journal can’t read itself, it can’t pick up and continue the story beyond the point where you set down your pen and closed the book.

I’m a materialist; I don’t think there is any other existence than a material one, nor that there is an “afterlife” or “immortal soul” that continues after we die. The only afterlife in which we can partake is the recycling of our briefly borrowed atoms back into the grand dance of biophysical processes from which they and we sprang in the first place. I’ve come to think of “religion” or “spirituality” as the “narrativization” we devise that sets out the way in which (we believe) we are connected to the rest of the universe. That connection does not require any supernatural agents whatsoever; it doesn’t need any overarching “plan” or “direction,” no overarching principle, personification or embodiment of Good or Evil. Maybe I’m being naive or hypocritical in my “belief” that biology is necessary for consciousness. But there’s just something desperately sad and pathological about the desire to dispose of biological embodiment altogether. Now there might come some time, with the inevitable decline of health (assuming I avoid all other, earlier manners of death) that I might feel more interested in finding some way to escape my own personal “best before” date. But I hope not. I enjoy life, but once I’ve had my turn, it’s time to go, and if that’s what my physical, biological, animality decrees, then so be it. Death will be just another non-negotiable force to which I will have to yield, like gravitation and the need to metabolize. It’s just the way things are. There’s no fault or blame for its occurrence; there’s no shame in the inevitable. It just is. And then, we just aren’t. And that’s fine. I’m under no illusion that the world needs any more of me than it’s going to get: a little goes a long way. And just as I’ve come to think that the last people you should be handing power to are the ones actively seeking it, I’m not inclined to believe that the world would benefit from the immortality of those seeking immortality. Sure, everyone is unique, but nobody is indispensable. Anyone chasing immortality is labouring under the narcissistic delusion that they’re both needed and wanted, that their desire to continue should prevail over, and that they rest of the world should be obliged to accommodate that continuation, as if they are owed it.

A pin in the map of global climate disaster:

Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change.

Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs.

“Several neighborhoods have suffered from a lack of water for weeks, and there are still four months left for the rains to start,” said Christian Domínguez Sarmiento, an atmospheric scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Politicians are downplaying any sense of crisis, but some experts say the situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could be barreling towards “day zero” in a matter of months — where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.

The Aztecs who built Tenochtitlan in a lake bed worked with the water, but the Spanish who invaded it stamped the water out. Bad move.

Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.

Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research. And the aquifer is not being replenished anywhere near fast enough. The rainwater rolls off the city’s hard, impermeable surfaces, rather than sinking into the ground.

The rest of the city’s water is pumped vast distances uphill from sources outside the city, in an incredibly inefficient process, during which around 40% of the water is lost through leaks.

Tick tick tick.

American Taliban.

Yes it definitely shouldn’t be controversial to say that half of humanity = mere objects to be exchanged and used by the other half.

Fred spots an own goal.

Lesbians MAY NOT exclude men who claim to be trans.

People who claim to be trans or non-binary MAY exclude all non-trans and non-non-binary people.

Thass eeequaliteee.

Oh look, he found a new low.

Former President Donald J. Trump, in a speech to a Black conservative group on Friday night, said he believed that the four criminal cases he is facing have earned him support from Black voters because they saw the historic unfairness of the justice system reflected in his legal woes.

Which historic unfairness of the justice system? The one that replaced slavery with bogus laws that enabled cops and prison officials to consign Black people to forced labor picking cotton or working in turpentine camps? How exactly is that similar to anything Donald Trump has come within a thousand miles of experiencing?

“I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now,” Mr. Trump said at a gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation in Columbia, S.C. “Because they see what’s happening to me happens to them. Does that make sense?”

No, of course it doesn’t make sense, you bloated rancid brainless self-serving pile of dung.

Aw yeah, textbook adding insult to injury.

Hahahahawhawhawheeheehee geddit? To celebrate This Girl Can we’re gonna share a man demonstrating that these girls can’t because he is pushing them aside and taking their place. Solidarity bitchezzzzz hahahahahahahahahaha

Is it racist?

Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson has been suspended from the party after “refusing to apologise” for comments aimed at Sadiq Khan. The Conservative Ashfield MP told GB News on Friday “Islamists” had “got control” of the mayor of London. Responding on Saturday, Mr Khan described the remarks as “pouring fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred”.

What should be said then?

Islamism and Islamists are real, and the words are not simply pejoratives or epithets. In a way they’re otiose, because Islam itself teaches that Islam should be in charge of everything including government, but in reality there are liberal Muslims who don’t think Islam should be in charge of everything including government. Some do, some don’t. It’s not wrong to distinguish between them. We talk about religious fundamentalists here in the US, and it’s not racist or racist-adjacent to say so, it’s just naming a reality. The Catholic church in the US is absolutely determined to force women to give birth against their wills, and we get to talk about that without being called racist. It ought to work the same way with Islamism.

The BBC is bizarrely parsimonious in its account of what Anderson said and what he meant by it.

Speaking on GB News Mr Anderson said: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London… He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

That’s it, that’s all the information. What did he mean, what was the context, please explain.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr Khan responded to Mr Anderson’s comments which he described as “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim and racist”.

“These comments pour fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred,” Mr Khan said.

But is there any truth in his comments? I for one can’t tell, because there isn’t enough information in the BBC’s report.

It’s just reality though that religions can cause people to do horrific things they wouldn’t otherwise do. It’s a bad idea to make it taboo to say that.

Trump is still struggling to avoid paying those overdue library book fines.

Donald Trump’s penalties in the New York civil fraud case for manipulating the value of his properties to obtain advantageous loan and insurance rates were formally set at more than $454m on Friday.

The judgment, which includes $354m in penalties plus $100m in pre-judgement interest following the three-month, non-jury trial that concluded on 16 February, will continue to accrue interest if the former president fails to pay.

…

In his ruling a week ago, Engoron has said the defendants had shown a “complete lack of contrition and remorse [which] borders on pathological” when he imposed the fine and banned Trump for three years, and his adult sons for two, from serving in as top executive roles at any New York company or seeking loans from any New York-registered bank. On Thursday, he rejected a request by Trump’s lawyer Clifford Robert to delay enforcing the judgments for 30 days in order to allow “an orderly post-judgment process, particularly given the magnitude of judgment”.

Engoron told the attorney that he had “failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay. I am confident that the appellate division will protect your appellate rights.”

Oh come on, the basis is that Donald Trump is Donald Trump and he’s not supposed to have to pay anything he doesn’t want to pay.

Erm…what?

A hospital is encouraging open conversations about sexuality with its staff members in the Paediatrics department? A hospital is encouraging staff members to start cozy chats about sex with child patients?

Is this hospital staffed entirely by priests by any chance?

Compare.

The BBC today:

US man guilty of killing transgender woman in gender identity hate crime first

A man has been found guilty of killing a transgender woman in the US’s first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity.

BBC yesterday:

Cat killer Scarlet Blake found guilty of murdering Jorge Martin Carreno

A woman obsessed with death who once livestreamed the killing of a cat has been found guilty of murdering a man.

When a trans woman is the victim his transitude is in the headline and the lede. When a trans woman is the perp his transitude is not in the headline or the lede.

This manipulative lying is shockingly bad journalism.

This.

Indeed there is.

The Beeb, unlike the Guardian, does eventually admit that the guy is trans, but only very late in the piece (and everyone knows that most of us don’t read all the way to the end). Admitting the murderer is a man after many paragraphs of “she offered him a bottle of vodka before she led him towards the river” and the like is as minimal as possible. They really want to pin these violent sadistic crimes on us.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Behold: an umbrella term.

“Breaking gender stereotypes” is the ultimate thought terminator for many.

Far too many people have been encouraged to just turn off their brains and feel the heavenly transcendence of the contradiction at the heart of gender identity ideology. It’s a holy confusion. Like the Trinity: how can three gods be one god at the very same time? That’s just it! They can’t! You can’t think your way through this; you just have to feeeeeeeel it.

Likewise with the conflation of sex and gender. How is reifying gender stereotypes breaking them down? How is obsessively promoting gender stereotypes erasing them? That’s just it! You can’t think you way though this.

The appeal is in the enigma. It’s an act of loyalty to the tribe to obstinately not sit down and think it through.

And I swear, this is precisely the psychology that I detect among so many gay people and their purported allies. Any critical inquiry conjures crippling anxiety and feral defensiveness. They’re very aware that gay people can feel both trapped by gender stereotypes and drawn to them at the same time. They’re sensitive that there’s a lot of hurt and pain among gay people to do with this confusion around gender and sex. And they’ve been lulled by gender ideology to believe that the solution to this contradiction is to make it sacred and to equate anything but turn-your-brain-off-and-give-in-to-gender-chaos as an existential threat. Anything to do with parsing the difference between sex and gender, anything to do with defining the boundaries between the sexes, any critical thought about these topics is as blasphemous to many gay people as pointing out the inherent contradiction in the Trinity is to devout Catholics.

They’ve built up a whole identity around not knowing the answers to some fundamental questions. Rather like Christians and their three-but-one-but-three-at-the-same-time god.

I see this even among some gay people who have become critical of gender identity ideology. They’ve figured out that there’s a problem with gender extremists’ views, but they still get hostile if you apply too much scientific inquiry into the connection between gender nonconformity and homosexuality. Questions like, why do so many extremely gender nonconforming children grow up to be gay in adulthood, and why are gay men so drawn to gender stereotypes in other men while we’re so averse to applying them to ourselves? These kinds of questions are held as taboo, even though from where I’m standing they look like exactly what we need to be asking in order to understand why gay people and their allies are so susceptible to gender identity ideology.

They — the science-hostile gays — are also of the mind that the topic should remain a sacred mystery; they’ve just drawn the lines around it a little differently.

I think we need to fling the doors wide open and let the sunlight in. This means that no topic is off limits to inquiry. No wonder the activists call “gender expansive” an “umbrella” term — they’re all about blocking the sunlight.

Look at the horrors hiding in the shade of that umbrella: young gay people are suffering from a mental health crisis and they’re being medically experimented on! It’s time to shut the umbrellas.

Another ratchet. It’s usual for the news media to admit they’re talking about a trans person at least once, isn’t it? As opposed to just straight-up leaving that little detail out when reporting on a gruesome murder by a revolting sadistic man?

Cat-killing woman guilty of murdering man as he walked home in Oxford

But he’s not a woman, he’s a trans woman. Yet the Guardian never once mentions that fact. Not once. Lie after lie after lie after lie.

A woman who livestreamed herself killing, dissecting and blending the body of a cat before months later brutally attacking a man and leaving him to drown to death in a river has been convicted of murder.

Scarlet Blake, 26, targeted Jorge Martin Carreno, 30, as he walked home from a night out in Oxford in July 2021. She led him to a secluded riverbank where he was hit on the back of the head with a vodka bottle, strangled and then pushed into the River Cherwell where he drowned, Oxford crown court heard.

[Also odd, though not so directly woman-hating, to switch to the agentless passive at the moment of the murder. “he was hit on the back of the head with a vodka bottle, strangled and then pushed into the River Cherwell” by whom? On second thought maybe it is still part of the woman hating, because it would strain credulity a little to say “she” did all that.]

During the trial, the court heard Carreno had been out with co-workers in Oxford city centre and was trying to get home when Blake found him sitting in the street.

She was captured on CCTV walking the streets of Oxford wearing a heavy military-style hooded jacket, face mask and carrying a rucksack, looking for a victim.

Prosecutors suggested she was carrying a “murder kit” in her rucksack, including a garotte and leopard-print dressing gown cord, which she rejected. 

…

Prosecutors said Blake had an “extreme interest in death and in harm” and got sexual gratification from violence and killings. At one point, jurors were shown a disturbing video of Blake consensually tying a ligature around her then partner’s neck from behind and pulling it tight until she appeared to fall unconscious.

Never once in the entire article does the Graun admit Blake is not a woman.

Oh good lord. Do play the clip to see reeking oozing entitlement in action. Large pallid man whose accent rivals that of Choss Windsor in poshitude bleats about being “misgendered” in court because listen here he’s not a “he” he’s nonbinareeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Bonus: the “microaggression” ploy.

Oh good, even more nonsense to keep track of.

But what does gender expansive mean? According to national LGBTQ+ advocacy group PFLAG, it’s an umbrella term for individuals who don’t align with traditional gender categories, or who expand ideas of gender expression or identity.

“It might be used because someone has identities outside of what’s socially accepted,” said Mackenzie Harte, PFLAG’s manager of learning and inclusion, adding that the term is one they’ve increasingly heard used by parents and educators regarding to youth. “It’s where someone is not conforming to social ideas of what gender should be.”

Geddit? It means they’re special and rebelly and fascinating and original and above all better than you.

Gender expansive is not synonymous with nonbinary, PFLAG notes; even cisgender individuals can embrace the term. Instead, it’s another way of saying gender non-conforming — the more preferred term, according to the group.

Yeah but any old prole can be gender non-conforming. Gender expansive is for the special people, the ones who soar above the rest of us like gender angels.

Britain’s only trans judge quits over fears of ‘politicising’ judiciary

A trans judge is someone who knows nothing about the law but identifies as a judge?

No, they mean a man who claims to be a woman.

Master Victoria McCloud, who transitioned from a man to a woman in the 1990s, warned the situation meant she is “now political every time I choose where to pee”.

Whereas before “the situation” he was free to violate women’s rights with impunity.

McCloud’s gender identity was kept private but became public knowledge after being published by a national newspaper.

Why was it kept private? How is that fair?

Referring to the rise of gender-critical campaigners, McCloud added “it has been open season on me and others” and argued this meant “the dignity of the court as well as personal dignity is at stake”.

It’s not “open season.” Nobody is stalking him in hopes of serving him for dinner.

McCloud, who worked on high-profile cases stretching from a KGB double-agent to Donald Trump, played a role in writing the judiciary’s Equal Treatment Benchbook. The 54-year-old contributed to the guidelines which includes a section on “acceptable terminology” concerning gender-identity, including titles and pronouns. Such guidelines proved controversial in the case of male-born transgender rapist Isla Bryson.

This is why his trans idenniny should not have been kept secret.

McCloud previously welcomed the prospect of more transgender judges to encourage diversity.

Another male judge is not “diversity”; another male judge is just more of the same.