The stars of Activism are really on fire today. Not entirely in a good sense.

Fucking hell. He's openly calling to take away basically all trans rights we have today. Spaces, healthcare, legal protections, even calling to ban some scientific research. Mainstream GCism is so extreme, this is so grim https://t.co/JveDG5jeEl

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) November 29, 2021

Spaces set aside for other people aren’t a “right.” Puberty blockers and elective amputations aren’t “health care.” “Legal protections” that endanger other people aren’t “protections.”

He summoned the troops.

@rebeccawatson I'm sure you're sick of Dawkins but I think you'd do a really good video on this! ❤️

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) November 29, 2021

Well, really snarky, at least.… Read the rest

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

On a visit to Paris earlier this month, Harris reportedly spent more than $500 on cookware at E Dehillerin, a shop near the Louvre museum. 

Well, yes, that Le Creuset stuff is expensive.

Republicans and rightwing media outlets seized on the purchase, attempting to use it to show that the vice-president, a former California attorney general and US senator, was out of touch with ordinary Americans.

Ahhhh yes because 500 whole dollars, in sharp contrast to Donald Trump.

That’s his very own tasteful understated man of the people living room. … Read the rest

Points of view.

Is there any other controversial area where you can go on radio to civilly debate someone, have friendly chat beforehand, end interview by agreeing to do it all again, and then go on twitter to see they're saying that you want to "eliminate" them & that they're traumatised?😄

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) November 29, 2021

Oh what was that? thought I, and it didn’t take much hunting to find out.

So frustrated. Horrible experience today. Someone wants to eliminate you – and you’re not allowed to mention it? Don’t know what to do. Feels like I’m in shock. Need to think about this for a little while #BBC

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) November 29, 2021

If someone

I don’t understand what their point is, the people who write this kind of thing, whether in the Telegraph or on Fox News or on Twitter.

The PM says these measures are designed to prevent a lockdown, but I am utterly convinced they’re the beginnings of one. If they are necessary because the omicron variant’s mutations mean it travels fast, and it has already been spotted nesting in the UK, logic suggests that cases will jump – which means more pressure on the NHS and on ministers to act. How many times have we been told “thus far and hopefully no further”, only for the PM to appear on television days later and admit, with regret, that we have

Other news:

At the hearing of Dr Harrop. A private session was held to hand down a decision. The decision found that Dr Harrop is presently impaired. Hearing adjourned until 1.30 for the next stage.

— SafeguardWomen&Girls💚🤍💜 (@selfcommit2othe) November 29, 2021

After final submissions given by the GMC & AH Counsel on what they recommend; hearing now suspended until 2pm tomorrow whilst the tribunal makes their decision.

— SafeguardWomen&Girls💚🤍💜 (@selfcommit2othe) November 29, 2021

The tribunal is deciding whether or not to suspend him.… Read the rest

Trans activist says what?

Selfish are those who demand society changes its way of life to accommodate their need to feel *safe. Demand what you want, it will not be happening. Many people are waking up to this nonsense.

— Stephanie Hayden (@flyinglawyer73) November 29, 2021

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha… Read the rest

Oh is that what they call it.

The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said on Saturday he had “reached out” to Democrats over Islamophobic comments made by one of his party, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, about the Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar.

Boebert apologised for the remarks, in which she likened one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress to a suicide bomber, on Friday, saying she wanted to meet Omar in person. 

No she didn’t. We saw this yesterday. She didn’t apologize. She did the “sorry you got so offended” thing. You don’t apologize for an insult by saying “Apologies to anyone who was offended by the insult.” That’s not an apology. It treats the insult as only … Read the rest

A tweet prompted me to look for sources.

You’re simply ignorant if you laugh at the possibility that the Koch brothers have been funding an attack on US universities. Shrug.

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) November 28, 2021

The Koch organization (only one of the two brothers is still present-tense) is notorious for funding all kinds of reactionary causes, though it also funds items like the PBS series Nova, but I don’t know specifics about an attack on US universities. So, here’s a Trotskyist site with details!

Joking aside, I think I have seen the details before, without properly filing them in the memory system.

Last month, the George Mason University protest group “UnKoch My Campus” released documents to the public

It’s all “shut up and take it, bitch” at the rape therapy support group.

A rape victim who thought she had found a safe all-female space to help her come to terms with the sexual violence she endured has told how she was left deeply troubled by the arrival of a biologically male trans woman ‘with no obvious female attributes’.

…

Charity bosses insisted the trans woman had every right to be there as they allow people to define their gender for themselves, saying: ‘We do not police gender.’

Well they should. They’re an absolutely worthless, indeed harm-doing charity if they refuse to keep men out of women’s support groups.

Sarah, who was abused between the ages of eight

LGBTQ Nation is furious at feminists who think women in prison shouldn’t have to be locked up with men. LGBTQ Nation doesn’t call them feminists, of course.

A group of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have filed a lawsuit against the state of California for placing transgender women in female prisons.

Well, yes. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to place men in women’s prisons.

The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a group that opposes the extension of legal and civil rights to transgender people, recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Bakersfield.com reported. The lawsuit  claims to represent a group of incarcerated women as well as Woman II Woman, another TERF group.

Ah … Read the rest

Guest post by Bruce Everett

Been feeling oddly Kantian lately, on account of some considerations about the Drake equation, red dwarfs, and the evolution of the universe. The imminent launch of the James Webb telescope is bringing this on as well.

Several terrible documentaries and an awful lot of bad science fiction makes a bit of a fetish out of the idea of “Ancient Aliens”, largely because the narrative of some kind of idealized past that can return to save us addresses a weird but pervasive need…

I can’t relate to it. I find it a bit puerile to be honest; quit an over-reliance on Sky Daddy; start looking for Space Daddy. Couldn’t stand Stargate, sorry.

And the kookiness of … Read the rest

We’re steeped in violence.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood on the House floor and implored her colleagues to hold Paul Gosar accountable for sharing an altered anime video showing him killing her and attacking Joe Biden.

“Our work here matters. Our example matters. There is meaning in our service,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech last week. “And as leaders in this country, when we incite violence with depictions against our colleagues, that trickles down into violence in this country.”

House Republicans heard Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned plea and responded with a collective shrug. All but three Republican members voted against censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, while every House Democrat supported the resolution.

The Gosar incident served as the latest

I would have left this self-humiliation alone but then she had to throw in a jab at “terfs” so…I couldn’t.

Trying to find some good faith writing and analysis on the allegations about Michel Foucault that apparently came to light early this year. Of course nothing is entirely unbiased, but I’d love to know how Foucault scholars/writers who use his work are thinking about it all.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 19, 2021

Early this year? Uh………..

But she goes on.

The question is how much one ugly facet of a theorist’s work (or life) taints the rest of it. I’m not sure there’s a single, universal answer to that question. >

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 19, 2021

Bad … Read the rest

Boebert is on the naughty step.

“I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers,” Boebert told the laughing crowd. “You know, we’re leaving the Capitol and we’re going back to my office and we get an elevator and I see a Capitol police officer running to the elevator. I see fret all over his face, and he’s reaching, and the door’s shutting, like I can’t open it, like what’s happening. I look to my left, and there she is. Ilhan Omar. And I said, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.’ ”

On Twitter on Friday, Omar called for Boebert to be disciplined by House leaders.

“Saying I am a suicide bomber is

I guess self-mutilation is a civil right? And doctors encouraging and performing mutilations is also a civil right? Doctors giving 12-year-olds puberty blockers also a civil right?

Gender-affirming health care saves lives.https://t.co/NG5mYbIsDo

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 26, 2021

How many lives does “gender-affirming health care” (i.e. breast/penis removal, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers) end?

I wonder if the ACLU really is that confident about the long-term joy and relief of these drastic physical interventions.… Read the rest

But it isn’t “a row over transgender rights” – nobody wants to take any rights away from trans people. It’s always framed that way, and the framing is wrong.

A ROW over transgender rights has broken out on the opening day of the SNP conference, with activists demanding the party whip be withdrawn from a prominent MP.

The party’s official LBGTQ+ wing, Out for Independence, signed an open letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Westminster leader Ian Blackford urging action against Joanna Cherry QC.

The signatories, who included SNP, Scottish Green and unaligned campaigners, also called on the SNP to launch an investigation into transphobia in the SNP’s ranks.

It isn’t transphobia, either.

They’re talking about the “conversion therapy” bullshit – … Read the rest

The BBC November 13:

Durham University has defended its decision to offer training sessions to help students involved in sex work.

Further Education Minister Michelle Donelan had accused it of “legitimising a dangerous industry which thrives on the exploitation of women”.

But the university said it was acting responsibly by offering students advice on how to stay safe.

Last week its students’ union offered staff and students guidance for people involved in the sex industry.

The best way to stay safe is not to sell access to your body to anyone willing to pay. The danger is inherent.

November 18:

Last week Durham University defended its students’ union’s decision to offer training sessions to those working in the

Ilhan Omar says cool story but she made it all up.

The Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar called the Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert a buffoon, a bigot and a liar, for claiming to have joked about terrorism when sharing an elevator in Congress.

“Fact,” Omar wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “This buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny and shouldn’t be normalised. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”

…

Boebert is a first-term far-right Trump ally who consistently seeks controversy. Her connections to the deadly attack on the Capitol on 6 January remain under investigation

It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Twelve year old girl killed in Liverpool.

A murder investigation has been launched following the death of Ava White. She was killed when out with friends on Thursday night during the annual switch-on of the Christmas tree lights on Church Street.

Four males – one aged 13, two aged 14 and one aged 15, all from the Toxteth area of Liverpool – have been arrested on suspicion of murder, Merseyside police said.

…

Ava was one of two females to die in suspicious circumstances in Liverpool on Thursday, the very day the city launched a three-year strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. The mayor, Joanne Anderson,

Wait who is jealous?

That’s interesting. I do believe that SOME of the most aggressive butch anti-trans lesbians are actually people who have a form of jealousy. They dress and behave like blokes. In effect, they’ve transitioned. But they lack conviction – so take it out on trans.

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) November 25, 2021

It’s lesbians who are jealous? Of trans people? It’s not trans people who are jealous of people of their coveted sex, so jealous that they literally pretend to be that coveted sex no matter how batty and misogynist and intrusive that makes them look?

You coulda fooled me.… Read the rest