… Read the rest[W]ith an entirely preventable outbreak of measles spreading across Florida, medical experts are questioning if quackery really has become official health policy in the nation’s third most-populous state.
As the highly contagious disease raged in a Broward county elementary school, [Florida Surgeon General Joseph] Ladapo, a politically appointed acolyte of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, wrote to parents telling them it was perfectly fine for parents to continue to send in their unvaccinated children.
…
Ladapo’s advice deferring to parents or guardians [on] a decision about school attendance directly contradicts the official recommendation of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which calls for a 21-day period of quarantine for anybody without
All entries by this author
Maverick proclamations
Mar 3rd, 2024 4:17 pm | By Ophelia BensonDonald where’s your trousers
Mar 3rd, 2024 12:37 pm | By Ophelia BensonHappy to oblige.
Great minds think alike … pic.twitter.com/3oh2SOgdOy
— Jocular Recalcitrant (@JoculRec) March 3, 2024
Way too “impactful” thanks
Mar 3rd, 2024 11:32 am | By Ophelia BensonStoryhouse part 2. To recap: Storyhouse Chester did a purported Weekend of Events Celebrating Women & Girls which included women on the stage berating women in the audience for not being on board with talking about men who playact women at an event celebrating women.
The chief berater on the stage, I’ve now learned, was Patsy Stevenson, the woman who bounced to fame by making the Sarah Everard vigil All About Her. Here she is again:
… Read the restPatsy tells off women who campaign for women's rights. She says defending women's rights is dangerous, yep we get that, at the end she asks the questioner to be removed from the theatre.
It's free speech but not as you know it.
It's women's
Yours but not yours
Mar 3rd, 2024 10:45 am | By Ophelia BensonThis house is your house…unless, of course, you are a feminist woman.
❤️ This house is your house. pic.twitter.com/lG0XL4s8WX
— Storyhouse (@StoryhouseLive) March 2, 2024
“Proudly trans inclusive” means “proudly feminist excluding.”
Behold, how inclusive:
Patsy tells off women who campaign for women's rights. She says defending women's rights is dangerous, yep we get that, at the end she asks the questioner to be removed from the theatre.
It's free speech but not as you know it.
It's women's rights as long as that includes some… pic.twitter.com/jEXQ5Va8BM— Artemis the ULTRA! (@ArtemisRising81) March 2, 2024
It was a Weekend of Events Celebrating Women & Girls and yet…… Read the rest
Tiny side effects like cognitive development
Mar 3rd, 2024 10:29 am | By Ophelia BensonThe convicted murderer Scarlet Blake, previously known as Fangze Wang, is male. That is why he is going to a men’s prison, after being found guilty last week of strangling Jorge Martin Carreno in what was described in court as a sexually motivated killing. And yet, Thames Valley police have recorded Blake’s crime as having been committed by a woman: “Blake identified as a female in custody. As such, Blake is recorded as female in our recording system,” a spokesman for the force said.
That’s stupid. What if Blake identified as Rishi Sunak? Or Charles Windsor? Or Maggie Smith? Or a detective chief inspector with Thames Valley Police?
… Read the restYet because gender ideologues have energetically promoted the
The jam & porridge war
Mar 3rd, 2024 9:28 am | By Ophelia BensonOh dear, no one seems to have noticed.
BREAKING: CUNT ON QUEEN VIC- THIS IS RIGGED POUR JAM N PORRIDGE ON QUEEN VIC'S HEID, SPRAYPAINT CUNT ON PLINTH pic.twitter.com/OiGilPNXmx
— This Is Rigged (@Thisis_Rigged) March 3, 2024
Learn to spell “head.”
Depressing for them that no one paid any attention.
Is this the V&A? Looks like the V&A.
Why this object in this place? What’s it got to do with the price of food?
Ok, I know, no need to shout – no reason and nothing. A moment of attention on Twitter. Achievement unlocked.… Read the rest
Guest post: When you’re inside a “community” that brooks no dissent
Mar 3rd, 2024 8:56 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Artymorty on Of the communinny.
Of course the outsize benefit of identifying as trans is why we’re seeing more and more charlatans seize on trans identities as a get-rich-quick scheme, like Dylan Mulvaney, Abigail Thorn, and thousands and thousands more cropping up everywhere.
Plus there’s the fact that when you’re inside a “community” that brooks no dissent, you’re not going to say anything if you’re unhappy. If you do a comprehensive survey of Scientologists, they’ll report being the happiest, most satisfied people in the country — a 100% perfect satisfaction rate. After all, Scientology is the greatest discovery on the planet, and on all the other planets, too! They’ll also report that Scientologists face more … Read the rest
Mired
Mar 3rd, 2024 6:59 am | By Ophelia BensonInteresting. One football club drops a player who was charged with domestic abuse, and another football club grabs him up. Thanks, lads.
On Thursday, with his team mired in the Championship’s relegation zone, [Sheffield Wednesday head coach Danny] Rohl announced his intention to sign free-agent left-back Nico Schulz. Schulz had been training at the club.
Why is he a free agent? He was released by Borussia Dortmund last year after being charged with domestic abuse. Schulz denied the allegations.
Legal proceedings came to an end this week when the case against him was dropped. Schulz agreed to pay €150,000 (£128,000) to domestic violence charities — but was not convicted, with the case officially dropped.
SO let’s err on … Read the rest
Another cheat
Mar 2nd, 2024 4:40 pm | By Ophelia BensonHow nice for him. Not so nice for the women he cheated.
Male runner, Sadie (Camden) Schreiner, is your new regional collegiate meet record holder in the women's 200 meter dash
So brave of him to continue breaking records by stomping on women done with a smile on his face🥹✨👏🏼 @RITtigers @RITathletics pic.twitter.com/8Vb1Cu1lm7
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) March 2, 2024
Nice smirk, too.… Read the rest
Of the communinny
Mar 2nd, 2024 3:58 pm | By Ophelia BensonA survey of more than 90,000 transgender people in the U.S. — the largest nationwide survey of the community ever — found that trans people continue to experience workplace and medical discrimination. However, the overwhelming majority of them still report more life satisfaction after having transitioned.
That’s all very well but it’s far from the only question. You could let a bunch of people do whatever they want and then survey them and find they liked doing whatever they want. It’s not surprising that people like to do something they want to do. The question remains, what about everyone else?
To be blunt, at this point I don’t even care whether trans people experience more life satisfaction … Read the rest
With horrid inevitability
Mar 2nd, 2024 11:12 am | By Ophelia BensonNaomi Wolf apparently doesn’t realize that weather can change from day to day, or hour to hour.
Who remembers when the sun was golden not silvery, the sky was deep rich blue, not pale milky blue, and robust gorgeous cirrus clouds were everywhere, crisply delineated in the sky; when the sky was not plagued with weird streaks that spread with horrid inevitability, blocking…
— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) March 2, 2024
She also appears to have cirrus clouds confused with cumulus clouds. Cirrus are the ones that don’t have crisp edges while cumulus are the ones that do.… Read the rest
Particular configurations of privileged knowledge
Mar 2nd, 2024 10:42 am | By Ophelia BensonDoc Stock on brilliant form at Unherd:
Is it possible to write a satirical campus novel anymore? Satire requires exaggeration and the pointed introduction of absurdity, but it is hard to see how modern university life could be further embellished in these respects. As usual, there were some classic stories served up this week for civilians to laugh at.
In the Daily Mail we read that policies at Glasgow University and Imperial College London now direct staff and students to avoid the phrase “the most qualified person should get the job” because this counts as a microaggression.
So the least qualified person should get the job? Innnnteresting.
… Read the restOver in the US, yet another professor resplendent in beadwork and buckskin
Not a regional aberration
Mar 2nd, 2024 7:10 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restAs of Friday, the Smokehouse Creek Fire had affected more than a million acres, making it the largest wildfire in Texas history, and one of the biggest in the history of the country. Still only 15 percent contained, it has crossed into Oklahoma, leaving in its wake herds of dead cattle and dozens of burned homes. At least two people have died. The forecast is for what people in the firefighting business call “fire weather” — hot, dry and windy. Under these conditions, the dozen fires in the region could, theoretically, keep burning indefinitely.
Texans know that fires aren’t uncommon in the Panhandle this time of year, and neither is snow. But huge,
Objection
Mar 2nd, 2024 4:30 am | By Ophelia BensonWaterstones spits in our eye again.
Hi @Waterstones, your promotional page for International Women's Day seems to include a category error. pic.twitter.com/jltqNxhoWE
— Scottish Lesbians (@ScotLesbians) March 2, 2024
Juno Dawson ain’t no female author.
Don’t brag at us about how you’re celebrating female authors and then start with a man who pretends to be a woman. That’s insulting.… Read the rest
Guest post: The BAD PEOPLE BILL
Mar 2nd, 2024 4:14 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Artymorty on A new power.
It’s insane. This bill is so childish. It’s basically the BAD PEOPLE BILL. They’ve decided there are BAD, HATEFUL PEOPLE and they must legislate to punish them. But they’re leaving it ENTIRELY UP TO LATER to define who these bad people are.
The people supporting this bill aren’t even asking WHO will be doing this crucial defining. It’s a nightmare.
It’s literally impossible to ethically support a bill that proposes a bunch of penalties — right up to the nation’s maximum penalty of life imprisonment — before anyone has bothered to set the fucking definitional terms of what they’re criminalizing. It’s purely an irrational appeal to emotion. That always works … Read the rest
Iss juss worrrrds maaan
Mar 2nd, 2024 3:39 am | By Ophelia BensonOh dear. That’s such a rookie error. The scorn and hilarity must be scalding for the “Prof”.
Male & female are human constructs so didn’t exist at all before humans
— Prof. Stephen Whittle OBE, PhD, DLaws, FAcSS, (@stephenwhittle) March 1, 2024
O what an ignoble mind is here o’erthrown.… Read the rest
Guest post: Government by da feelz
Mar 2nd, 2024 3:15 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Francis Boyle on A new power.
Canada: government by da feelz. Canadians (and everyone really) could do with a crash course in the relationship between sentimentalism and fascism. Unfortunately our standard cultural template for totalitarianism is 1984 and while Orwell had a keen understanding of bureaucracy and the ways it can be perverted I don’t think he had any real understanding of the way propaganda works. (Of course he understood how it was used – he practised it after all – but he didn’t consider it important. In the novel it’s just AI generated mush for keeping the proles in their place. Neither it nor the proles themselves are considered particularly interesting, something I found … Read the rest
A new power
Mar 1st, 2024 5:18 pm | By Ophelia BensonJustice Minister Arif Virani has defended a new power in the online harms bill to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future – even if they have not yet done so already.
This is Canada we’re talking about. We know it won’t be people announcing on Twitter that they’re going to shoot up a classroom full of women. We know it will be people saying trans women are not women.
… Read the restSince it was published on Monday, some lawyers and constitutional experts have raised fears that Bill C-63 could chill free speech.
The bill would allow people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission
We just want
Mar 1st, 2024 9:49 am | By Ophelia BensonRemember “Katie” Neeves who is so thrilled that he’s been “accepted as a UN Women UK delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women”? Well here he is in action.
"Katie" doesn't like his 9yr old daughter calling him dad, when she's in the ladies toilets with him…🤔 pic.twitter.com/jXFlo50hnb
— Jonny Bell (@Jonnywsbell) March 1, 2024
“We just want to wee in safety, the same as you do.” Yes, dude, you just want to wee in safety by making it impossible for us to wee in safety. In “Katie” world the only women who matter are the ones like him.… Read the rest
It’s not a personal view
Mar 1st, 2024 9:30 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Telegraph on the BBC’s enforcement of lying to the public:
A listener complained that the comment amounted to Mr Webb giving his personal view on a controversial matter in breach of the BBC’s requirements on impartiality.
But it’s not a “view”; it’s reality. It’s “controversial” only because way too many damn fools have made it controversial. News organizations can’t be letting damn fools make basic facts about reality “controversial.” Next it will be controversial to say evolution is true.
… Read the restThe BBC’s complaints unit, in a ruling published on Thursday, said it was not in a position to determine Mr Webb’s personal opinion on the issue but that it was not necessary to do so in order to judge