Steve Scott’s interview with “Emily” Bridges wasn’t his first rodeo. He was pouring on the sympathy and flattery all the way back in June 2022.

Online abuse has become a way of life for Emily Bridges: “It is very difficult to read everything people are saying about you, and it hurts, it hurts.”

Maybe – and this is just a suggestion – if you weren’t cheating women in their own sport people wouldn’t be saying things about you that you find “difficult.” Maybe the people wouldn’t be hurty if you weren’t so cheaty.

Bridges has become one of the most talked about athletes in Britain and the discussions about her are seldom nuanced. She sits at the centre of a polarising issue that sport in general is struggling to reconcile.

Why do the discussions about him – HIM, not her – have to be nuanced? His cheating isn’t nuanced.

He makes an odd admission toward the end of the piece.

For Bridges, though, how much of it is about medals and winning, compared to inclusion?

“The whole appeal of cycling as a sport for me, and sport in general, is about the struggle.

“I want to fight to get the best out of myself, to get the best performance that I can do. It’s not about the winning for me. Obviously, I like winning, I want to win, but it’s secondary to being allowed to compete – being given the opportunity to get the most out of myself, on an equal playing field, against people who have an equal performance to me.”

If that’s true, he should still be competing against men.

Man disagrees with woman by saying he doesn’t consider her sexually appetizing. How very original.

There’s also video.

Bridges at 0.30 says “if it was safe for me to compete” but doesn’t go on to explain how it’s not safe for him to compete. Of course it’s safe for him to compete against other men, apart from the risks all competitive cyclists take on. The claim that it’s unsafe for him in particular is just more of the maddening reversal all male trans “activists” go in for – pretending they’re vulnerable, they’re at risk, they’re unsafe, they might face physical violence.

Then he says “I can’t compete” and Scott says, rather unsympathetically, “But you can compete in an open category.” This flummoxes the lad a bit. He pauses, then asks with a girlish tilt of the head, “Can I?” Flirtatious pause, then “Would it be safe for me to compete in an open category”? Then there’s a jump cut, so we don’t know how Scott replied. Why would it be unsafe for the oily manipulative sly Bridges to compete in an open category? Is he suggesting an angry woman would violently attack him? And win the fight?

Then he says it’s not fair to make a trans woman compete in the open category, “and it’s not safe, either.” He doesn’t explain why. He of course never explains why he thinks it is fair to let men compete in the women’s category.

Scott asks him if in elite sport fairness is non-negotiable. Bridges, slightly flustered, claims he understands why fairness is important. Scott asks him if he thinks his human rights have been violated and Bridges says “Yeah, I think they have.” No follow-up. Violated how? What human right is there for a man to pretend to be a woman and compete in women’s sports? What is the wording?

Bridges says it’s part of a bigger picture of “banning trans people from public life.” By that of course he means not letting men invade women’s toilets and the like.

To finish up we get a clip of brave “Emily” riding down an empty road among t’moors and an assurance that he will continue his heroic struggle. Of course he will.

Not only does Steve Scott at ITV News write a fawning piece about “Emily” Bridges and his tragic failure to continue cheating women in cycling races, but also ITV News turns off comments on the Twitter link to said piece.

ITV News doesn’t turn off comments lightly…in fact it apparently never does except when the subject is an entitled man trying to cheat women in sports.

Yes why is that? Why is that??

Oh good, more whining from a man about not being able to compete in women’s sports.

Emily Bridges once dreamt of racing for Olympic glory in Paris this summer. But after British Cycling barred transgender women [aka MEN] from competing in the female category last year, she has all but given up on elite sport.

Diddums. After British Cycling barred men who pretend to be women from competing in the female category, Bridges gave up. That’s good news.

Bridges said the policy amounts to a ban from elite cycling.  

“A ban is a ban. You can say you can compete in the open category, but we’re women – we should be able to race in the women’s category,” she said.

They’re not women. They’re men who try to look like women, which doesn’t make them women. I could try to look like a dolphin, but it wouldn’t make me a dolphin.

British Cycling had given her the option to compete in the ‘open’ category alongside other transgender women, transgender men, and athletes born biologically male. But Bridges said she would not feel safe competing alongside men and does not like transgender women having to ‘out’ themselves to compete in the category.

Diddums. Again. Journalists should stop taking this entitled whining seriously. They should also stop calling men “she” and “her” – it just further entrenches the tedious destructive lie.

Beyond sport, Bridges is unequivocal about the impact about the wider impact excluding transgender athletes is having. She believes calls to restrict the participation of transgender athletes reinforces the idea that trans women are not women and that they are a threat.

It’s not “an idea”; it’s the reality.

Don’t mention the War.

For quite a while now, it has felt a bit like mainstream feminism has been dialled back 10 years. It’s not just the over-the-top obsession with the Barbie movie – there seems to have been a more generalized dumbing-down in the media when it comes to women’s issues. In 2021 and 2022, it felt like intersectional feminism was everywhere and nuanced discussions about how gender intersects with other forms of oppression, such as classism and racism, had moved from academic circles into the mainstream. It felt like there was a huge push – to paraphrase Rafia Zakaria, the author of Against White Feminism – to “put the fangs back in feminism”. Now, however, mainstream feminism seems to have lost its fangs and put on some sparkly lipstick instead.

Really? In 2021 and 2022? There was a huge push to put the fangs back in feminism? Along with the huge push to put the men back in feminism, which kind of nullified the fangs.

While liberal feminism (which is also often termed white feminism or corporate feminism or lean-in feminism) did fall out of favour for a bit, it feels like it’s trying very hard to make a comeback.

…

Beyond the trending headlines, substantive work is happening. Things are moving forward. “There are so many different types of feminism and gender-conscious activism that operate well outside mainstream media narratives … and social media trends,” Koa Beck, the author of White Feminism, told me over email. “I don’t advise looking to white feminism to articulate, support, or celebrate these stories in a substantive way.”

Do you advise looking to male feminism to do so?

Perhaps the ultimate takeaway from this is that, in the end, everything is cyclical. There is progress, then there is pushback. “White feminism is a concept, a story, a brand, and an ideology that many powerful entities have invested in, both literally and figuratively,” Beck says. “So there are going to be efforts by influential people, powerful companies, and profitable institutions to ‘get back’ to white feminist ideals of individualization, self-empowerment (in the trademark sense of the word), and lots and lots of spending. Like with all big change, there is cultural and political resistance. You can set your watch by it.”

The end. It’s quite a long piece yet it says not one word about the way trans ideology and bullying have undermined feminism and replaced feminist women with misogynist men.

Just imagine: a lesbian is planning a lesbian club and she’s not including men. So eccentric.

A feminist campaigner is to open Britain’s first lesbian members bar that will only allow biological women to join.

Well duh. It’s a lesbian members bar, so obviously it’s not for men.

(The men can always try the Garrick.)

The bar, named the L Community, is due to open in London later this year and will operate as a private members club so that it can bar trans women from signing up.

The bar has been set up by Jenny Watson, who in September last year was at the centre of a transphobia row after she insisted only “adult human females” could attend the lesbian speed-dating events she had organised, and urged men to stay away.

Women must never ever ever say no to men.

The bar will continue to provide speed-dating sessions, as well as open mic shows, live music performances and a book club. Ms Watson rejected the suggestion that her bar policy was transphobic and said she was instead trying to create a women-only space.

But women are subversive, so if there are no men present, they might bring all of society down. It’s a risk.

The Daily Mail is surprisingly restrained on the subject of male breast milk.

[A]n NHS Trust says drug-induced milk from transgender women who were born male is as good for babies as a mother’s breast milk. A leaked letter from the medical director of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, published this week, describes both as ‘human milk’ and says that they are the ‘ideal food for infants’. The letter was sent on behalf of the Trust’s chief executive in response to a campaign group’s complaint about gender policies.

So what’s the truth? Can a biological male really breastfeed a baby by producing milk from their nipples? The complex answer is yes and no. By using a regimen known as the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, originally developed in 2000 for adoptive mothers, the body can be tricked into lactating even if it’s male.

It works by mimicking the hormonal changes that take place naturally in the body of a woman who has just given birth, and involves several weeks of regularly using a pump to stimulate the breast, taking a combination of contraceptive hormones and the anti-nausea drug domperidone, which increases levels of the milk-producing hormone prolactin.

But if that sounds simple, it really isn’t. For a start, domperidone is banned in the US over concerns it causes heart problems. The NHS sometimes offers it to breastfeeding women who are struggling with low milk supply, as long as neither mother nor baby has any heart issues, and with clear instructions to report any changes in the baby’s behaviour. It should be used, says guidance, only ‘for a short time’.

That’s a lot of stipulations. Sometimes; struggling; as long as; clear instructions; only for a short time. That would at the very least indicate that doing it for the sake of a man’s vanity project or worse is beneath contempt.

What’s more, it’s not at all clear what else is in a trans woman’s ‘milk’. Since trans women are likely to be taking other prescription drugs as part of their transition, such as anti-androgens to lower their production of testosterone, and oestrogen and progesterone to help them create a less ‘masculine’ appearance, critics say the milk is potentially unsafe for a newborn, or at the very least should be rigorously tested.

Feminists mutter darkly about yet more double standards from the medical establishment — women, after all, are told to avoid aspirin while breastfeeding and to abstain even from the odd glass of wine because no one knows how much gets through to the milk.

But when a man wants to experiment it’s all hey live your best life bro.

Some scientists seem positive. A paper in The Journal of Human Lactation earlier this year stated that: ‘For transgender women . . . on oestrogen-based, gender-affirming hormone therapy, the ability to nourish their infants through production of their own milk may be a profoundly gender-affirming experience.’

What many experts say in private, however, seems utterly uncontroversial to most of us — that female breast milk is a miraculous biological substance with properties the male equivalent can’t replicate.

Breast milk, after all, is a ‘live’ substance, which adapts to a baby’s needs with remarkable precision. Many of us will know about colostrum, the ‘liquid gold’ that is produced in the earliest days of breastfeeding. It’s packed with antibodies, antioxidants, vitamins and nutrients in much higher quantities than in breast milk. Colostrum production has never been observed in males.

Blah blah blah. You’d think it was all about the babies.

It’s not always easy for new mothers to breastfeed, of course. Yet help from the NHS and independent organisations is already stretched thin, and many professionals tell me they are baffled and infuriated by resources being spent on promoting the idea of males trying to lactate when so many women are struggling to find adequate support. The pro-breastfeeding group La Leche League, for example, devotes lengthy space on its website to the issue.

‘About 85 per cent of mothers start breastfeeding in the UK, but that drops by about 50 per cent in the first six weeks, with as many as nine out of ten saying they didn’t want to stop but couldn’t find the help,’ one woman, who did not want to be named but who is involved in breastfeeding education, told me.

Kvetch kvetch kvetch. How are the men doing?

The BBC hits a new low.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on We’re the violent actors?

We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Pffft. That’s just a) passionate rhetoric; b) completely justified self defence; c) “just joking” or “ironic”; in other words, good, clean, healthy fun; d) taken out of context. Choose whichever one is most expedient to the particular threatener.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community

I daresay that those of us posting here on B&W would all be branded as “extremists” in light of the inflated threat vocabulary of transactivists. If misgendering is “violence,” questioning gender identity is “denying their right to exist,” and opposition and resistance to their demands is plotting “trans genocide,” then we are all guilty. Use our words against us; it’s all here. Low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. Just a few pseudonyms to fugure out and you’re done. Take us away.

We’re as “guilty” of these things as feminist philosophical critiques of gender ideology are implicated in the murder (by men) of Brazillian trans-identified sex workers. There’s an undeniable, inevitable, straight-line connection between essays defending women’s rights and spaces and the brutal slaughter of thousands upon thousands of trans identified males happening around us every day, year in, year out. Just look around; trans folk are being banned from sports; they’re denied any and all medical care; they’re thrown out of their jobs and homes. They’re being rounded up as we speak, carted off to camps, never to be heard from again. It’s JUST LIKE THE JEWS IN NAZI GERMANY (oops, Jews are the bad guys now, right?) Why isn’t CSIS investigating all of that?

A former University of Waterloo student accused of attacking a gender-studies class with a knife last summer — sending an associate professor and two students to hospital — now faces 11 terrorism charges.

I wonder; in the current climate of captured government agencies, would an attack on a feminist gathering by a knife-wielding trans activist result in terrororism charges? Or would it be passed off as a “lone wolf” attack that could be blamed on the feminists themselves?

There is no “ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement.”

But Ophelia, denial that such a thing exists is tantamount to admiting that it does.

There must such an ecosystem, or CSIS wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy, the resources being squandered by earmarked for will bear fruit of some kind, however vapourous and insubstantial. If a society believes in witchcraft, witches will be found. If not found, they will be created.

CSIS might declare victory by claiming to have “prevented” any number of attacks. They will be tied to the “transphobic dogwhistles” of the mildest sorts of criticism or questioning, because even the mildest criticism, the simplest presentation of the truth of the immutible human sex binary is an unorgiveable “incitement” that cannot be allowed to stand. Such shocking ideas are branded as right-wing bigotry by transactivists in an attempt to shut down debate and intimidate any who would speak such heresy. CSIS is now part of the Inquisition; if they are blind to the rhetorical asymmetry between transactivists and those women who dare say “No” to their demands, then they have joined the side of the genderists and will act on their suggestions. In fact , through this announcement, they already are.

Never mind the steady pushes against women’s rights from transactivists (Ogre even got a fucking medal for pretty much just that), never mind the men put into women’s prisons, the smearing of “watchful waiting” as “conversion therapy.” If “our side” was doing all of this to the “other side,” then CSIS might have something to investigate. But that’s not happening, and those examples of trans incursion on women’s rights are all state sanctioned actions. Perhaps CSIS is being put on the case precisely because of this resistance to what is essentially government policy. Would they have gone casting around on their own to find this as a subject of investigation, or were they pointed in that direction by their political masters? Are there no more important dangers and threats to the country that their time and effort could be more usefully deployed? Would they have made this sort of pre-emptive well-poisoning public announcement without permission? I have my doubts.

And if there is anti-trans violence, it won’t be because of the feminist critique of trans “rights.” Violent right wing extremists have their own agendas, and just because they agree with us that the sky is blue and water is wet, that doesn’t make us complicit with or the inspiration of whatever actions they take. We’re not telling anyone to “Punch transwomen in the fucking mouth.” You can’t even read it between the lines. They’re the ones demonizing fair, principled opposition to their demands, refusing open and honest debate. They’re the ones who hound people out of their jobs for refusing to aquiesce to trans orthodoxy. And now they’re the ones wielding the power of the state intelligence security aparatus. Welcome to Lysenkoism 2.0, the Trans Edition.

Maybe I’m awfulizing for no good reason, exhibiting an unreasonable combination of political hypochondria and histrionics. Indeed, putting all this out there makes me sound like I’ve become some kind of raving, right-wing conspiracy nut, even to myself. But I’ve stood still while much of the Left (of which I have counted myself among) has jumped of a fucking cliff, leaving me politically homeless. I would only ever vote Conservative if all the other alternatives were even farther to the right than they are, but all of the parties I normally support have surrendered to trans dogma. The lunatics haven’t taken over the asylum yet, but they’re being asked to advise on policy; delusional fantasies are accepted as Gospel truth, and sanity is being viewed with increasing suspicion and distrust.

I fear, at some point, I will be left muttering beneath my breath, “Eppur si muove.”

Wait what? Tranz kidz aren’t at greater risk of suicide if they don’t wreck their bodies? But we were assured they are!

A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.

Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%. And — importantly — this difference disappeared when the two groups were controlled for mental health issues severe enough to require specialist psychiatric help.

In other words, if I understand correctly, some adolescents who are gender dysphoric may have other mental health issues that nudge them into suicide.

In other words: while transgender identity does seem to be associated with elevated suicide risk, the link is not very strong. What’s more, the causality may not work the way activists claim.

As in, not “lack of gender fiddling–>elevated suicide risk” but “mental health issues–>gender dysphoria and elevated suicide risk.”

The association between gender dysphoria and mental illness is well-documented by both providers of “gender-affirming care” and trans advocacy groups and clinical psychology research. But one less well-evidenced claim, based on this association, is that these difficulties are caused not by being transgender, but by the political and social stigma associated with it. Gender dysphoria, we are to understand, is not in itself a mental health issue. What causes mental health issues in transgender youth — up to and including suicide — is the wider world’s rejection of their identity, and of the metaphysical frame of “gender identity” as such.

Which looks like not so much a medical or mental health explanation as a tactic. “Give me what I want or I’ll kill myself,” to put it concisely.

But if the Finnish study is correct, this whole rhetorical, legislative, and medical edifice may be built on sand. If the elevated risk of suicidality in trans youth disappears when you control for other psychiatric difficulties, this suggests strongly that trans youth are not more at risk due to transphobia or invalidation, but due to the well-documented fact that gender dysphoria tends to occur in people who are disturbed and unhappy more generally.

Horse and cart as opposed to cart and horse.

Every bit as good for babies, they say.

An NHS trust has said that breast milk produced by trans women who were assigned male at birth [i.e. men] is as good for babies as that produced by a mother who has given birth.

In a letter to campaigners, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust (USHT), said that the milk produced by trans women after taking a combination of drugs is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.

“Comparable” is a weasel-word there. Sure, you can compare the two, but they’re not the same, or alike.

In an August 2023 response, the hospital defended its claims, referring to five scientific papers dating back to 1977 and pointing to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance and “overwhelming evidence” that “human milk” is better for a baby than formula milk.

Well yes, “human milk” meaning the milk mothers produce. Not meaning the liquid men can produce after they take a cocktail of hormones and progestin.

For a person born male to breastfeed, they must develop milk-producing glands by taking the hormone progestin.

A drug is required to lactate, such as domperidone, which is often prescribed to women struggling to breastfeed, and helps to stimulate the production of prolactin – a separate hormone that tells the body to produce milk.

Domperidone, also known by the brand name Motilum, was not intended for this, but is prescribed off-label by doctors, despite the manufacturer, Janssen, itself recommending against it because of possible side effects to a baby’s heart.

Oh, well, just the heart, so that’s no big deal.

The patient leaflet for Motilium says: “Small amounts have been detected in breastmilk. Motilium may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby. [It] should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.”

Is it “clearly necessary” for men to be able to produce nipple goo to feed to babies?

Lottie Moore, of the Policy Exchange, which uncovered the letter, said the trust “is unbalanced and naïve in its assertion that the secretions produced by a male on hormones can nourish an infant in the way a mother’s breast milk can”.

USHT has removed the webpage where the guidance was published, but now links to an external website, La Leche League, which states it “supports everyone who wants to breastfeed or chestfeed in reaching their goals”.

Even if they’re men, and even if the men “reaching their goals” is bad for the baby’s nutrition and health. Rock on, daddies!

Oh yay, yet another piece on how self-obsessed it’s possible to be.

I’m non-binary. I came to terms with this recently, after living socially as a woman for many years — but I think I knew from a very young age. I just didn’t have the right words for it.

Are you really???? How fascinating and exciting! Please tell us everything about it in the utmost detail.

Then puberty hit and assigned me with the very special task of looking after two giant sacks of flesh, fat and membrane.

In every play I performed in after that point, I was only ever cast as matronly old women or busty temptresses. It sucked.

Well now that’s a different story. The article is accompanied by a photo, and she does indeed have very big breasts. I would have hated that too, but it wouldn’t have been because I was “non-binary.”

Nowadays, I use they/them pronouns, and I try to let people know that upfront — but a funny thing tends to happen when people look at me. You see, their eyes always trend downwards, scoping out what you might call the ‘traditionally feminine’ body I live in. You might also call it my ‘massive boobs’. When this elevator-eye assessment is complete, I like to think that a little switch flips over in the cis person’s brain to a ‘SHE/HER’ setting. When this switch is flipped, it takes a gargantuan effort to reset it to neutral.

No, see, it’s the other way around. Your breasts don’t determine your personality, your interests, your character. You can’t be “neutral” because that’s not a thing, but you can be a woman with massive boobs who flouts the silly rules about how women are supposed to look and act. You can do that without expecting other people to pretend you’re neither woman nor man. It’s actually a lot less trouble in the end.

Well that’s me convinced!

Top quality advocacy for sure.

The CBC has got to be kidding.

CSIS warns that the ‘anti-gender movement’ poses a threat of ‘extreme violence’

Seriously? We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community — a threat the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says almost certainly will continue over the coming year.

…

“CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community or against other targets they view as representing the gender ideology ‘agenda,'” said CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam in an email to CBC News.

It’s so DARVO it leaves me breathless.

What was the U of Waterloo attack?

A former University of Waterloo student accused of attacking a gender-studies class with a knife last summer — sending an associate professor and two students to hospital — now faces 11 terrorism charges.

And that means lots more will do the same? Regardless of the fact that the people of Gender Critical really don’t resort to threats and bullying in the way people like India Willoughby do?

Balsam said that while violent rhetoric does not always lead to violence, “the ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement, compounded with other extreme worldviews, can lead to serious violence.”

Stinking liar. There is no “ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement.” There is such an ecosystem within the pro-gender movement. See for example Fred[a] Wallace of “punch a terf in the fucking face” fame.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on By folks across the gender spectrum.

This invitation to submit is really rather helpful, in an a completely unexpected and unintentional way. Putting the whole list of gender variations (or least a good chunk of them) in one spot lets you see just what a mad, disparate, incoherent, contradictory mess it all is. The only way that some of these subunits can exist in the same room together is by keeping their definitions vague and non-commital to the point of meaninglessness, as normally several of the groups would be mutually exclusive, or distinct without actually being different. (Some of them may accidently include actual lesbians, like the occasional, unintended peanut that can show up in candy bars made in factories that are not nut-fee.)

Trans We know that transgenderism is supposed to encompass, amongst other demographics, autistic girls trying to escape womanhood, and AGP males attempting to break into it. To be somewhat more generous, it is an attempt or desire to “live as” the biological sex one is not, in order to match an internal “gendered” concept of the self, which would otherwise be in conflict with the physical body. Yet if gender is distinct from sex, why try to modify the body in an attempt to match the gender it allegedly houses? Why not leave each alone? How can there be a conflict if they’re different, unrelated, and independent? How does dysphoria arise? Why assume the “gender” is right and the body is wrong? Why force a “match” between them?

Nonbinary A supposed gender identity which apparently rejects either sex as a “target” identity. How does this fit with “transness,” which posits a mismatch between the gendered “identity” and the physical body? What is the “mismatch” here? This seems more like a refusal to engage in the stereotypical gendered sex-roles expected of each sex. Why would this require body modification at all? There are no “sexless” people to act as a “target” sex. Here we seem to have a conflation between sex and sex roles.

Genderqueer Let’s join two terms, one ill-defined, the other shorn of almost all meaning entirely, and pretend it’s something edgy and special. It would seem that a vital ingredient is hair dye. Be as cishetero as you like, but do it with purple or green hair and BAM you’re genderqueer. No, I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean; I think that’s the point.

Genderfluid Puts the lie to the whole “gender is innate and fixed” claim. Looks to me more like a lack of commitment than an actual “identity.” Think Philip/Pippa Bunce (when he wants to win a women’s race yet still be paid at the men’s rate, or Eddie Izzard when he used to move between boy and girl “modes.” Please. Make up your fucking minds.

Two-Spirit (Mis)appropriation of a First Nations cultural concept so that transactivists can use “White Western Colonialism” as an epithet while they themselves are White, Western Colonialists. Queerness (see “dyed hair” above) means their “whiteness” is now accidental, incidental Whiteness, but not political Whiteness. “Two-Spiritedness” is taken out of context, subsumed under and absobed into current Western concepts and understandings of “transness” and then, anachronistically, projected backwards in time, and continent-wide in space. It is simply assumed to be, monolithically, a part of all First Nations cultures, like tipis, totem poles, and feathered war-bonnets. Can’t get much more White, Western, Colonial than that, can you.

Gender Non Conforming Let’s trans everyone who chafed at the restrictions placed on them by sexist, gendered sex-roles, even though transness itself relies heavily on those very sex-roles to determine the supposed disconnect between the sexed body and gendered soul. Without this, a boy who likes dresses and dolls is just a boy who likes dresses and dolls, not a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

Intersex More appropriation. My understanding is that the preferred term is DSD, or Disorder (or Difference) of Sexual Devlopment. Transactivists prefer this term because it suggests that sex is a spectrum, that male and female are not as cut and dried, that there is some sort of biological no-man’s land, as it were. Even if this were true (which, of course it isn’t) such biological “space’ would not offer any support at all that humans can move between the sexes, however many “shades” there were between them. Using DSD is inimical because it says right on the tin that it’s a Difference or Disorder of Sexual Development. Nothing to do with “gender” at all. It’s a failure of the body to reach one of the two endpoints at which its normal growth and maturation would aim. Also, there are a whole bunch of DSD conditions, but each is particular to only one sex. It’s not a grab bag mixture, or a halfway house between being male or female that offers any kind of hope that one could be both, neither or switch between them. Thus the continued use of “Intersex” by transactivists is appropriative, hegemonic, and instrumentalist. It is a deliberate, bad-faith move that uses a suite of medical conditions as a means of forcing their agenda, dragging DSD people with them, without their consent.

To put it simply–if you trouble, research, or think about gender, we want your work.

Somehow I suspect that they wouldn’t be interested in the writing of anybody posting here at B&W, despite the fact that we certainly “think about gender” and definitely “trouble” it. I don’t think they like our kind of thinking and troubling, however we identified, or whatever body parts we sport.

What did Scottish Labour vote against?

And Scottish Labour voted NO on that.

It’s very embittering, this kind of thing. I thought the Left had finally caught on, half a century ago, that women are people too, that women matter too, that it’s not cute or funny or inevitable that men treat women as brainless inferiors. I thought that lesson had been learned. Yet here we are again, as if all that had been so much hot air.

More “Fuck off, women, we don’t care.”

I’m so tired of the refusal to care.

Not for the first time, I ask what the hell is “transfeminism”? Fake feminism? Pretend feminism? Not-real feminism?

Sinister Wisdom, that styles itself a Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal, interrupts itself to talk about “trans feminisms” instead of actual feminism. So much for the Lesbian part.

Trans/Feminisms

Sinister Wisdom is seeking submissions of writing and artwork by folks across the gender spectrum for our issue Trans/Feminisms. Sinister Wisdom invites all trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, two-spirit, gender non conforming, intersex writers and artists to submit. To put it simply–if you trouble, research, or think about gender, we want your work.

So…does that include lesbians? Or no? Does it include lesbians who are gender nonconforming but not the other kind? Butch ok but femme stay away?

More to the point, why is a lesbian journal doing this? Is it because they think lesbians are now the domineering capitalist lords of the manor, oppressing and exploiting the poor starved trans people whose ribs are poking through their skin?

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal that publishes four issues each year. Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian and queer space.

Perhaps that’s our answer. Lesbian and queer. Lesbian isn’t good enough any more, is that it? Lesbian equals Karen, is that it? You have to bring in some “queer” people to ward off the Karenization, is that it?

What perspectives do trans lives bring to the field of feminist thought and practice? What does it mean to hold a conversation about being trans? What does it mean to be a part of that conversation? How do the crossroads of difference affect the conversation? Trans/Feminisms is dedicated to exploring and celebrating transness. We seek work that appeals to and from transness in a range of mediums: interdisciplinary, genre-bending poetry, fiction, transcribed interviews, manifestos, essays, historical and theoretical deep dives, comic strips, visual art, photography, and beyond. Interviews, oral histories, intergenerational conversations, and collaborations are especially encouraged.

I long to read the historical and theoretical deep dives. I’m sure they’ll be more brilliant than we can possibly imagine.

The NY Times takes a close look at Trump’s immediate future:

On Friday, the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s civil fraud case issued a final ruling that inflicted a staggering financial penalty. With interest, the former president has been ordered to pay about $450 million, a sum that threatens to wipe out a stockpile of cash, stocks and bonds that he amassed since leaving the White House. He will have only 30 days or so to either come up with the money or persuade an outside company to post a bond.

The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, also imposed several new restrictions on Mr. Trump and his family business. For three years, Mr. Trump cannot run any New York company, including portions of his own, nor can he obtain a loan from a New York bank. The same restrictions apply to his adult sons for a two-year period. And the family business will be under the thumb of a watchful outsider, a court-appointed monitor who can hamstring the company if she does not like what she sees.

This won’t, unfortunately, make him an instant pauper, but it will hinder and annoy him. Baby steps.

His lawyers are already contacting companies that might post the bond, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, though it is unclear if and when they will reach a deal.

You have to wonder what company is going to want to post a bond for Trump, given his history of not paying his debts. I suppose they could demand a huge enough deposit to make it worthwhile, but then would he be able to pay it?

The penalty in Friday’s decision, when combined with an $83.3 million judgment Mr. Trump is facing from a defamation trial involving the writer E. Jean Carroll, adds up to more than half a billion dollars, eclipsing his current collection of cash. Even for someone who measures his net worth in the billions, that sum could leave Mr. Trump more financially vulnerable than he has been in decades.

The former president derives much of his net worth from his properties, and if he runs out of cash, he might have to sell or mortgage one. Although he will not go bankrupt, because the value of those buildings far exceeds the penalty imposed by Justice Engoron, selling any real estate would be a personal affront to the former president, who glories in his properties. It also might not be easy: It often takes time to find a buyer willing to pay a good price.

Especially when the seller is Trump.

Justice Engoron’s other punishments took more direct aim at the Trump Organization’s way of doing business — most notably, extending the appointment of the independent monitor, Barbara Jones.

A former federal judge, Ms. Jones will be the equivalent of a corporate babysitter for the next three years. Justice Engoron granted her additional authority — he called it “enhanced monitorship” — and asked her to recommend an independent compliance director who will oversee the company’s financial reporting from within its ranks.

Already, Ms. Jones has been an irritant for the Trump Organization, reviewing its transactions and keeping an eye out for fraud. The company has paid her millions of dollars for her work and will have to pay millions more.

Ms. Jones’s presence could also scare away potential business partners and second-guess any new deals, further constraining a company that has been stuck in neutral since Mr. Trump ascended to the White House in 2017.

Fingers crossed.

Mr. Trump’s plan to secure a bond so that he need not immediately pay either the state or Ms. Carroll could prove challenging — and expensive. Mr. Trump must find a company willing to write one in spite of his polarizing presidential run and mounting legal woes. His lawyers would negotiate a deal with the company, which would charge a premium and could demand that Mr. Trump pledge cash and other liquid assets as collateral, legal experts said. Under New York law, he will also owe 9 percent interest until the appeal is resolved, meaning the size of the bond could reach $500 million or more.

And then his head will explode? Here’s hoping.