John Pavlovitz talked about the cult of the gun back in 2017.

Enter the seductive cowboy fantasy of “the good guy with a gun.”

It’s the deadly lie that men have been led to believe; that the world is in grave danger, and that we’re all poised to be the steel-jawed hero—riding in, packing heat, and saving the day by gunning down the bad guys and getting the girl.

It is the perpetuation of a dangerously antiquated gender trope, where men all want to save and women all just want to be saved; that misogynistic myth sold by Hollywood, Republicans, and Bible Belt Evangelicals. This fantasy is incredibly persuasive and undeniably effective—but it is not reality. 

I think it’s not all that persuasive, at least not to adults. It’s a branch of entertainment, but outside that context, I don’t think most people long to see a man with a gun all over the place. But it’s persuasive to all these loonies who buy the damn things, which is what counts.

The National Rifle Association nurtures and exploits this same sick celluloid dream the in the minds of men; thereby manufacturing the very horror that these “good guys” imagine themselves rescuing people from. The NRA creates the deadly demand and simultaneously generates the violent supply. They flood the world with guns to then necessitate the need for gunslingers. They generate an endless, self-replicating revenue stream—and more and more people die long before they should.

And the actual guys with guns won’t even go in, because hey the guy with a gun might shoot them.

H/t Carrie Chapman

Peter is telling feminists what we’re allowed to do and think again. I’m increasingly tired of it.

Nobody’s talking about “blanket bans on trans women.” That’s a dopey, prejudicial way to put it. It’s not “banning” men to have women-only spaces. Women want and need women-only spaces and we have a right to them, end of story. Trans women continue to exist even if women have women-only spaces. No one is banned.

“Trans women are not a threat” is a ludicrous claim. He doesn’t know that – he can’t know it. It’s entirely possible that some trans women are a threat, in fact it would be odd if none of them were. In any case trans women are men, and we all know that some men are a threat to women, and we know women need to take precautions to avoid such men. Peter Tatchell’s fantasy that men are women if they say they are is not a reason to do away with precautions that women need to take.

Trans women are not “like all women” because they are not women, they’re men. They’re not victims of misogyny, because they’re men.

Peter Tatchell does not “defend all women” – he bullies and lectures us for not agreeing with him that men are women if they say they are. He’s not an ally, not a friend, not a feminist. He can take a hike.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Celebrating.

Warning: graphic. Brutally, necessarily, truthfully graphic.

It’s the smell. That’s what forces its way into my thoughts every time there’s another mass shooting. I guess it’s part of the PTSD associated with 25 plus years of trauma surgery trying to undo extremes of violence. It’s left its mark. Iron. Metallic. If you are winning the fight, that’s what you smell. If you’re losing it shifts to an indescribable stench of corruption as cells begin to die and normal organ barriers begin to fail. In the OR you smell death well before the monitors slow and the EKG begins to widen. Still you try. Last night I couldn’t sleep because to this day I can still see the face of my youngest GSW patient, hit in the abdomen by a high velocity slug like those used in Texas. From her diaphragm to her pelvis every organ was shredded. Her liver burst from the supersonic shock wave that followed the bullet. So much blood that you have to throw your socks away. Three trauma surgeons worked on her for hours. It wasn’t enough. I remember the smell.

What about crime and punishment? What do we do? What about Restorative Justice? Julie Bindel looks at the details:

Restorative justice (RJ) is described as an alternative to prison; it is a non-punitive response to criminal behaviour. The idea is to bring together the person who inflicted the harm (the “responsible person”, in RJ terminology) and the victim, often in the presence of community representatives. The perpetrator is supposed to accept responsibility for the harm inflicted and reach an agreement with the victim about how to make amends.

I think one problem leaps off the page at this juncture: what if the victim doesn’t want to be brought together with the responsible person? Like, suppose the crime was violent and traumatic, and the victim never wants to lay eyes on the perp ever again? This is one reason rape is hard to prosecute, I think: prosecution generally requires laying eyes on the perp again.

De Blasio’s reforms were welcomed by prison reform campaigners, as well as pretty much every liberal in the State. Alissa Ackerman, a sex crimes policy researcher at California State University and one of the few facilitators of restorative justice sessions for rape victims, has said that RJ, “allows survivors to have their pain heard and stories acknowledged, and is an opportunity for the person who caused the harm to be accountable for their actions”.

There’s that word again – “stories.” It’s not a story; it’s not a narrative. It’s not a talk thing. Rape is the opposite of a story.

I spoke to one proponent of RJ, who asked not to be named “in case I am seen as colluding with carceral white women”.

You know, those bitches who have the bad taste to get raped by non-white men.

It’s an issue. It’s always been an issue. It was an issue during slavery and by god it was a massive issue once Reconstruction was killed. Gone With the Wind contains one of those racist post-Reconstruction rape—>KKK stories, which poisoned the minds of generations. Think the Scottsboro Boys, think Emmett Till. But. It doesn’t follow that rape victims, even white ones, are obliged to meet with their rapists for a chat and then let it go.

I spoke to one proponent of RJ, who asked not to be named “in case I am seen as colluding with carceral white women”. White himself, he is a newly trained lawyer in Washington DC, specialising in “replacing the racist system with a true healing process for both parties”. “Anti-rape feminists are probably responsible for more black men being incarcerated than anyone else in modern-day America”, he says. “Locking up African Americans is a product of slavery.” Ben went on to suggest “community resolution” and “non-violent strategies” to address sexual assault.

Pesky anti-rape feminists – why can’t they be like those cool pro-rape feminists? Easy for Ben to suggest “community resolution” when he’s highly unlikely to be a rape victim.

Sarah, whose name I’ve changed, runs a support service for victims of male violence in NYC and is “appalled” that RJ is becoming a substitute for criminal justice sanctions. “What we are seeing is what we have seen forever”, she tells me, “which is the under-policing and under-protection for women, including women of colour. But some BLM activists are claiming that feminists calling for CJS sanctions for rape and domestic abuse is flat-out racist, because black men are overrepresented in the prison population.” As a result, she told me that “black and brown women, indigenous women … are the ones who are bearing the consequences of us not holding men accountable for their violence. They are the ones who are being murdered and raped and their abusers are walking free.”

The problem is that punishment isn’t really a productive or satisfactory response. It’s basically vengeance, which is an obvious dead end. But doing nothing (and just having a chat is doing nothing) is even worse than non-productive. I don’t know of any solution to this stalemate, but I sure as hell think telling women to just move on is not it.

According to the ideals of RJ, after a crime is committed the offender and the victim should meet face-to-face. The victim is not to blame or judge the perpetrator, but rather describe the impact of the offence, in order to “heal” and become “empowered”. RJ sees victim and perpetrator as equal, both in need of support and understanding.

If they were equal he wouldn’t have been able to rape her.

RJ is considered a suitable remedy for domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse and sex trafficking, among other violent crimes predominantly committed by men. Most of these crimes are committed against women by men known to them: male family members, partners and colleagues. “The perpetrators have worked very hard, often for years, to condition the person they are abusing to not disclose, to minimise, to protect his emotions: to protect his character publicly”, says Sarah. “They’ve been using manipulative tactics to inspire self-doubt, blame and fear, in the person they are abusing.”

And victims of this kind of abuse may feel coerced by RJ practices, which are conducted, as Sarah said, “without any understanding of the dynamics of power and control, the impact of a trauma-coerced bond, and also the amount of time and commitment that it actually takes to elicit genuine behaviour change in abusers”.

It doesn’t sound at all restorative, does it.

Read the whole thing.

Gun company drops out of NRA convention:

The gun manufacturer that produced the AR-15-style assault rifle the Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooter used to kill 19 children and two teachers has shut down its social media accounts after being linked to the massacre. It has also reportedly dropped out of the National Rifle Association’s annual convention set to be held starting Friday in Houston. 

…The firearm Ramos used is reportedly made by Georgia-based gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, authorities and the company each confirmed. 

If the company confirmed then you can drop the “reportedly.”

The arms manufacturer states on its site, “At Daniel Defense, we celebrate the liberty of our country, the enthusiasm of our customers and employees, and the quality and accuracy of our products.”

That’s interesting, because the quality and accuracy of their products reduce the liberty of our country, as does the enthusiasm of their customers. A country that has way too many heavily armed lunatics running around can’t boast about its liberty. A country that refuses to do anything about that grotesque situation can’t boast about its liberty. Our liberty is at the sufferance of a lot of heavily armed fanatics.

On Wednesday, one of the company’s social media posts resurfaced from a week ago on May 16, the day Ramos turned 18. That week, he legally purchased two AR-15-style assault rifles, including the Daniel Defense DDM V7 rifle, according to the Washington Post. 

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” the post said, in reference to a Biblical proverb, followed by a prayer emoji. The post included a photo of a toddler sitting with an AR-15-style assault rifle on its lap. Daniel Defense also reportedly posted the same image and text on Instagram that day, which included the hashtag #childrenarethefuture.

Dayum. Good find. Train up a child in the way he should go, and that way is carrying a military assault rifle. The way she should go is presumably in terror of him. Virtue is a gun; goodness=murderous violence. It’s a very odd combination.

That’s marketing, of course. The goal is not to say anything true or morally useful, it’s to sell the product. The goal is to sell SUVs and cruises as the planet cooks, and mass-murder guns that can take out whole Targets or primary schools. Go team.

Interesting. Three people who were scheduled to perform at the Gun Jamboree have sent regrets.

Several musical performers who planned to appear at this week’s National Rifle Association convention in Houston have withdrawn out of respect for the victims of the massacre in Uvalde, 279 miles west of the typically boisterous annual gun-rights gathering.

Out of respect for the victims? But why does respect for the victims entail not performing at the National Rifle Association convention? Presumably all musical performances all over the country aren’t being canceled, are they? Why these in particular?

Could it be, could it possibly be, that it suddenly doesn’t feel altogether right and good to celebrate The Holy Gun when The Holy Gun has just murdered a lot of children and two teachers? If that’s it, could it be that it is in fact not altogether right and good to celebrate The Holy Gun? Could there be some downsides to the cult of the gun?

The convention was planned months ago, before a recent spate of mass shootings, including the killings in Uvalde, and a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo earlier this month that left 10 people dead. Both gunmen used AR-15-type semiautomatics that have been legal since the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004, a big N.R.A. victory.

A big NRA victory to make it easier for racists and grandmother-haters to kill a lot of people in a short time.

The event’s political keynoters — Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, Senator Ted Cruz and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota — all plan to attend. Former President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to appear on Friday, although those in attendance will be prohibited from carrying firearms to his speech by the Secret Service.

Trump must be kept safe. No one else, just him.

Should be a fabulous party.

It seems the reaction to the school massacre wasn’t as swift as it might have been.

Javier Cazares, a father whose 9-year-old daughter was killed in the massacre, said that officials have been misrepresenting the response of law enforcement during the shooting at Robb Elementary.

“They said they rushed in and all that, we didn’t see that,” said Mr. Cazares, who was outside the school during the attack and heard gunshots.

He saw police officers evacuating children, but grew angry, he said, when he did not see officers enter the school immediately. Mr. Cazares wanted to rush in himself to help his daughter, Jacklyn, saying he would carry his little girl out himself, but they told him to let them do their work.

Or not do it.

They no doubt had their reasons, but still.

Mr. Cazares said he spoke with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas at a news conference Wednesday and told him that the police responded more slowly than officials had told the news media. During the news conference, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat running for governor, was quickly escorted out after interrupting the proceedings.

“That swiftness at the school would have been awesome,” he said.

Well you see O’Rourke wasn’t carrying a huge gun and a backpack full of ammunition.

And another one.

Transgender cyclists are still competing in women’s races despite British Cycling suspending the policy last month that had allowed them to race in the female category.

Suspensions are for cis people.

However, trans female cyclists are continuing to compete in the women’s category. On May 8, Maxine Yates, a transgender downhill mountain bike racer, won the women’s 19+ category in the second round of BC’s DH National Series event at Fort William, Scotland, a competition in which ranking points were available. Yates is ranked first in the senior female category on the BC website.

Despite being a man.

The rider who finished second in the race at Fort William, Jane Page, has complained to BC that it is not applying its own rules and has called for Yates to be disqualified. Page said that it had proved difficult even to make contact with the appropriate officials at BC but she has now been informed that the matter has been passed to the governing body’s compliance team. A BC spokesman said that the compliance team was investigating the matter.

And it should take them no more than oh let’s say 20 years or so to come to a conclusion.

Yates claims that she contacted BC after the suspension of the transgender rules to see if she could still race and that a member of the events team at BC told her that the “policy was only going to affect new licence applicants”.

“As I already had a licence and was not competing at an elite level, I was allowed to compete, that is what BC informed me,” Yates said. “I’ve taken their advice at every turn and am disappointed BC have let this go on as far as it has. I have followed their rules.”

Aw diddums. Of course he could have simply not asked if he could still race, because it’s obviously unfair and a cheat, but nooooooo.

“BC are not enforcing their own rules,” Page said. “Like a lot of women I feel let down. There were only a dozen or so women competing at Fort William, among more than 300 riders, but situations like this are hardly going to encourage more women to participate.”

Encourage them to walk away in disgust, more likely.

Medical sociologist writes idiotic think-piece about abortion rights for the NY Times in which she’s so busy tapping all the required Stations that she obscures whatever it is she’s trying to say. Editors should just say no to this brand of crap.

Matt Lavallee was in college when he learned his girlfriend was pregnant. “The news scared me,” he said, acknowledging that an unintended pregnancy was an even more daunting prospect for his girlfriend. “But there was no question that abortion was the best option for us.”

…

We don’t often hear abortion stories from cisgender men like Mr. Lavallee, even though they are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the world’s unplanned pregnancies, and so often benefit when an abortion occurs. The much more familiar pattern when efforts are made to curtail abortion is for a slew of mostly women to share their abortion stories.

If by “responsible for” Andréa Becker means “impregnated” then it’s not the overwhelming majority, it’s all. And Mr. Lavallee isn’t a “cisgender man,” he’s a man. The word “cisgender” is an absurd redundancy.

As for her pretend surprise that discussion of abortion focuses on women, I would point out that that’s because it’s women who are at the sharp end of it. Men may or may not take responsibility, they may or may not help with logistics and financing, they may or may not share parental duties in the absence of an abortion, but the whole thing happens outside their bodies and inside the bodies of women. Abortion is about women not because women are hogging the limelight but because it’s women’s bodies that are involved.

Reproductive health science has likewise disproportionately focused on the people who have abortions. 

She means women, but she’s rude enough to pretend she doesn’t. Contemptible.

Researchers like myself have devoted our careers to examining not only who gets abortions, but what the experience is like, what barriers must be overcome and how having an abortion or being denied one alters a person’s life trajectory. This research has found that access to abortion is associated with improved physical and mental health and is correlated to higher educational and financial attainment in the long run for both women and their children.

Yet now for some reason she’s pretending that “people” other than women need access to abortion.

Yet amid all this abortion research, some critical questions remain: What’s the effect on men who co-conceive and then the pregnancy ends in abortion? And who even are these men?

Ya mean people?

By contrast, there’s scant data on how cis men benefit from abortions, let alone demographic data that characterizes this population. This is partly because of methodology concerns: A man might not necessarily know he helped cause an abortion. Moreover, amid continuous attacks on abortion rights, the urgency among researchers has logically been to demonstrate the benefits of abortion access for those who can become pregnant.

One minute she is talking about women, the next minute she isn’t. One minute it’s people, the next minute it’s cis men. Confusion soup.

Her intention seems to be to point out that men benefit from abortion too, and she does eventually get around to spelling that out, but there’s so much cis-ing and person-ing that she clogs up and obscures her own argument. Dumb as paint.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Totally utterly completely solved. Boom.

Except. Well, just a few details.

One, you can’t have just one door for every school.

Two, you can’t have two armed cops on duty at all times at every school.

Three, what are they supposed to do, “take out” everyone who approaches the door?

Other than that, PROBLEM TOTALLY SOLVED.

Updating to add a fourth tiny problem with Cruz’s otherwise brilliant plan:

NPR tells us:

Approximately 40 minutes to an hour passed from when the gunman first arrived at Robb Elementary and fired a shot at a security guard to when he was killed by a Border Patrol agent, according to The Associated Press.

Witnesses shouted at police to go into the school after the gunman, but the officers did not do so initially.

Still a BRILLIANT PLAN though.

Ok it’s no fun to be a child blown to smithereens by a teenage boy with an assault rifle, but what about men who call themselves women? They’re the ones who really have a tough time.

Norway is so “progressive” it’s reactionary.

A Norwegian feminist could be facing up to three years in prison for allegedly “hateful” tweets directed at a male who claims to be a lesbian woman.

Christina Ellingsen, a representative of feminist organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI) is being investigated under hate crime charges for tweets she made between February 2021 and January 2022.

The tweets in question were replies directed at Christine Marie Jentoft, a representative of trans activist group Foreningen FRI. Jentoft is a male who identifies as a lesbian woman.

Ellingsen’s charges are centered around her questioning why FRI promoted the belief that men could be lesbians. While police are still investigating, if she is found guilty, Ellingsen could face a prison sentence of up to three years.

Police are investigating a lesbian for saying a man is a man and not a lesbian.

A second tweet that has been cited as evidence of hate speech reads, “Jentoft, who is male and an advisor in FRI, presents himself as a lesbian – that’s how bonkers the organization which supposedly works to protect young lesbians’ interests is. How does it help young lesbians when males claim to be lesbian, too?”

Is there a compromise possible? If men can be lesbians, can lesbians who aren’t men have a name for themselves? Realesbians perhaps?

We know the answer. No. Men would just invade that too.

Ellingsen was recently accused by Amnesty International Norway of harassing Jentoft after telling him on national television that he was male.

How is it Amnesty International’s job to tell women to pretend men can be female?

After speaking with her lawyer earlier this week, Ellingsen told Reduxx she had learned that the police report made against her was filed by Jentoft himself.

Jentoft previously sparked controversy after inviting children to contact him for hugs in a tweet made in 2018.

But he can get the police to harass a woman for saying he’s a man.

“I am under police investigation for campaigning for women’s rights, because to certain groups, the fact that women and girls are female and that men cannot be women, girls, mothers or lesbians, is considered hateful,” Ellingsen told Reduxx.

“Women are not protected against hate speech in Norway, but men who claim to be both lesbian and a woman, are protected both on the grounds of gender identity and on the grounds of sexual orientation,” Ellingsen said.

Who made that rule?

India Willoughby angrily asks what does Martina Navratilova know about sports. That’s a good look.

We don’t need to know anything about trans to say that men don’t get to invade women’s sports. The issue isn’t being trans, it’s being male. If you’re male, get out of women’s sports. Simple.

I’d be out of there at the speed of light.

It’s so touching when a guy gets to combine his fetish with his job. Like for instance

Dr Jonathan Harrow MD, a man with two PhDs, who’s lectured on health at universities and had senior medical jobs all over the world and who mostly, it seems, presents and identifies as a man.

…

However, despite being so qualified in medicine, a few weeks ago he started a community job as a nurse practitioner. The role involves wearing a nurse’s uniform. He attended the interview dressed in women’s clothing…Since starting the job there’s been a common theme in his online posts – he wants people to validate his choice of wearing a nurse’s uniform, and alludes to the fact that the women’s tunic accommodates breasts and a bra.

Notice me notice me notice me notice me.

That’s what people go there for of course – not for medical care, but to pay close attention to men who present as women.

He wore scrubs for years but that won’t do now because oh no they don’t have big signs on the front saying TITS TITS TITS.

One brazen woman asked for a female nurse, but she soon backed down from that outrageous insult.

All perfectly healthy.

God? Why God of all people? He’s the biggest mass murderer of all time.

As for good moral values, MTG wouldn’t know them if they bit her on the ass. They start with respect for others, and that’s not her style at all.

Day after tomorrow.

Former president Donald Trump will headline a forum at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston this Friday — about a four-hour drive from where a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., killed at least 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday.

Trump said Wednesday he would keep the appearance, in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Yeah he’s a tough guy, he’s not gonna let other people’s agony stop him dancing on the graves of a bunch of kids.

The Memorial Day weekend event is the year’s largest for the gun lobby meeting after cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s set to take place over three days and “showcase over 14 acres of the latest guns and gear,” according to its official website.

What are guns as consumer items for? They’re not primarily for shooting game, so what are they for? What do people need assault rifles for?

Overthrowing the government, I guess – that would be one item. “Self-defense” – like blowing away that guy jogging through the neighborhood because hey it’s a white neighborhood and he’s not white so he must be there to steal your stuff.

The forum is also slated to include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson — all Republicans. The next night, “American Pie” singer Don McLean is due to perform.

…

Cruz tweeted Tuesday that he was “fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.”

Yeah see that does no good. That’s worthless. Fuck that. Nobody wants your fervent lifting up in prayer bullshit. What we need is for you and the rest of those ruthless bloodthirsty fucks to stop blocking gun control laws. That’s it. Just your job.

Originally a comment by NightCrow on Cotton ceiling tweet.

CM: I don’t see that the workshop is necessarily coercive. We have no information about the contents of that workshop. AB’s opinion that it must be coercive is not substantiated.

Here’s the advertisement for the ‘Cotton Ceiling’ workshop preserved in its original context. Full transcript below; all emphases added by me.

Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women, with Morgan M Page

Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling will explore the sexual barriers queer trans women face within the broader queer women’s communities through group discussions and the hands-on creation of visual representations of these barriers. Participants will work together to identify barriers, strategize ways to overcome them, and build community. Open to all trans women and MAAB genderqueer folks.

According to Tribunal Tweets CM said ‘We have no information about the contents of that workshop’, or something very like it. In a strictly literal sense this is true. We don’t know what went on during the actual event. But anyone with even a modest capacity for close contextual reading should be able to recognise that the language in this abstract is violent and oppressive: ‘overcoming’, ‘breaking down … barriers’, ‘strategize ways to overcome’ and utterly dehumanizing: ‘cotton ceiling’ – lesbian women reduced to what is in their knickers, their right to agency denied.

The whole premise is saturated in misogyny and sexism: lesbians (those bitches) have been rejecting our demands! We must force them to understand that the point of their existence is to service the fantasies of heterosexual males with a cross-dressing fetish, and alleviate (whisper it quietly) our painful awareness that we are imposters.

Ed: Have a screenshot to see for yourselves.

Laurence Tribe explains what’s wrong with the claim that overturning Roe v Wade would be like the ruling that overturned “a long line of decisions that had blocked minimum wage and maximum hours and other worker-protection laws in the name of employers’ rights of “private property” and the “liberty of contract”.”

Professor [Akhil] Amar treats as laughably naïve the observation by ACLU national legal director and Georgetown law professor David Cole that, although “Parrish took away some rights of business owners … its real effect was to expand rights protections for millions of Americans subject to exploitation by powerful corporations.” Amar’s rebuttal? He says, and I’m serious here, that it’d be equally legitimate to say that “Dobbs’ real effect would be to expand rights protection for millions of innocent, unborn Americans … unborn humans, subject to extermination by society.”

It’s hard to know where to begin in unraveling that alleged parallel. Suffice it to note that the status as rights-bearing persons of embryos and fetuses remains a matter of profound sectarian controversy in America and throughout the world while no such controversy attends the status as rights-bearing persons of the array of workers whose rights, at least under laws designed to limit economic exploitation if not directly under the constitution itself, were indisputably expanded by virtue of the Parrish decision and the overturning of the Lochner line of cases.

Now why might that be? Why is it controversial?

For one thing, it’s because an embryo is an embryo. It’s unfinished. Its rights are in the future. If a woman and a man decide one convivial evening that they want to have a baby, that notional baby doesn’t instantly acquire rights. An embryo is more solid than a decision, but it’s still lacking the full humanity that needs rights.

And for a second thing, unlike all other kinds of persons, an embryo and a fetus are inside a full human being. She is making them, with her body. They can’t have any rights without her. They’re parasitic on her. She gets to reject that arrangement.

That’s what the anti-abortion faction means by “innocent” of course – they’re innocent because they’re not formed yet, they’re not independent yet, they can’t do things in the world yet – they’re hidden away inside someone else’s body. But what we’re supposed to take from that word is that they’re tiny saints, when the reality is that they’re raw material. Of course they’re “innocent” in the sense of not having shot up a school yet, but that doesn’t give them a 9 months lease on a woman’s body if she doesn’t agree.

You have got to be kidding.

This is an MP! Not your neighbor’s 12-year-old, but an actual LibDem Member of Parliament.

Does she think most people love others because of their gender, or even their sex? Because if so she has to think most people love roughly half the people they encounter daily, half the people they’ve ever met, half the people shopping at Waitrose when she shops there, half the people on the bus, half the people walking down the street, half the people in the census.

Sex is generally (though far from always) a basic starting point for sexual and romantic love, kind of the way species is, but that’s all it is. Personality and “vibe” (and other intangibles) matter more for everyone. It’s like…”Do you want to go see a play?” “If it’s in a theater, yes.” That’s not how that works. What’s the play, who’s in it, who directed it, what do the reviews say?

Pansexual visibility day ffs. Get over yourself.