“Protesters” attack people feeding the homeless in Ottawa.

Ottawa’s Shepherds of Good Hope has received an outpouring of support and donations after its staff were harassed and a client was assaulted by “Freedom Convoy” protesters on the weekend.

Freedom freedom freedom: freedom to harass and assault people.

On Saturday, a group of protesters associated with the convoy of truckers and supporters railing against COVID-19 health measures in downtown Ottawa harassed staff and demanded food from its soup kitchen in an altercation that lasted for hours. Shelter officials described their behaviour as “mob-like”.

It’s almost as if libertarianism and assholism go together.

Earlier, a man who lives in the shelter was assaulted outdoors by protesters who then hurled racial slurs at a security guard who went to assist him, the shelter’s president and CEO said Sunday.

Deirdre Freiheit said the situation was upsetting for everyone. Staff members, who were being harassed, initially served meals to some of the protesters in order to de-escalate the situation, she said.

“Freiheit” is German for “freedom.” Ironic, ain’t it.

“It was a very difficult day for them. The disruptions were many. They are working hard, they are tired and we are short-staffed. When people are taking away their ability to provide services to many of the most vulnerable people in the city, it is very discouraging.”

No no no it’s an exercise of Freedom.

For much of the day Saturday, access to Shepherds, at the corner of Murray Street and King Edward Avenue, was blocked by unattended protest trucks that were left running. Freiheit said that meant ambulances were unable to get in and staff had a more difficult time reaching people in the community who might be overdosing or in need of help.

And why were the trucks left running? Just to make everything that much more shitty? To show off their freedom to make global warming that little bit worse for the sheer hell of it?

He’s the mayor.

H/t Roj Blake

The Mayor of Bangor is distraught.

Ah um er – by “bathroom they are entitled to” he must mean the women’s – so his partner and partner’s squeeze were squeezed into a single cubicle to…

So anyway they got thrown out, to the relief of a lot of women with bursting bladders, I should think.

Again with the idiot idea that not getting vaccinated=FREEDOM and vaccine mandates=unfreedom. Being on a ventilator plays hell with anyone’s freedom.

Thousands held a loud but peaceful protest in Canada’s capital Ottawa against prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates, on the streets and snow-covered lawn in front of parliament.

The so-called “Freedom Convoy” started out as a rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers, but turned into a demonstration against government overreach during the pandemic with a strong anti-vaccination streak.

A rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers – ok let’s discuss this. Where do the truck drivers think trucks come from? Or the roads they drive on? Or the stuff they haul? Or the money to pay for the stuff and the trucks and the drivers? Or the fuel to make the trucks move? Or the laws and enforcement that protect the drivers from people who would steal their trucks and what’s in them? Or the mapping that tells them how to get where they’re going?

It’s all social. It’s a network of arrangements and institutions and people, without which we don’t have much of anything. It’s probably still possible to find places that don’t have any of that, where I suppose a trucker could put up a tent (product of all these arrangements) and attempt to live off the land, but I think the life expectancy would be short (and the life meanwhile would be boring and unpleasant).

“It’s not just about the vaccines. It’s about stopping the public health mandates altogether,” said Daniel Bazinet, owner of Valley Flatbed & Transportation in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast. Bazinet is unvaccinated, but operates domestically and so is not affected by the cross-border mandate.

So that we can have more disease and early death. Brilliant choice.

When you think you’re quoting Voltaire (or Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King or Confucius) but you’re actually quoting an obscure white nationalist from 1993:

On Sunday, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted out criticism targeting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, containing a political cartoon superimposed with a quote that has been often misattributed to the French philosopher Voltaire.

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” the quote said.

Which is kind of a stupid thing to quote anyway, because of the inelegant syntax. The “who” should be “whom” but that would make a very awkward clunky sentence so the whole thing needs to be reworked, so whoever said it isn’t all that clever.

No (to take the Rep literally) Fauci isn’t science, but then he doesn’t say he is, either. But he knows more about the relevant science than most people, because that’s his job, and because he’s good at it. It does make more sense to listen to him than to angry screamers on Twitter.

USA Today fact-checked the quote’s attribution in May of last year as it gained traction on Facebook. It found no trace of the phrase in Voltaire’s correspondence from 1742 to 1777, which is logged in the University of Southern California’s digital library.

The etymologist Barry Popik traced the quote — with slightly different wording — back to a 1993 radio broadcast with the white nationalist Kevin Alfred Strom, USA Today reported.

Big expert on novel viruses is he?

The criminal who wants to be the criminal president again is promising his goons he will pardon them if he gets to be the criminal president again.

Former president Donald Trump suggested Saturday night that he will pardon the rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol if he is elected president in 2024.

Trump, who has teased but not confirmed another run for president, has repeatedly criticized the prosecution of people who violently stormed the Capitol to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. But his comments at a Texas rally on Saturday marked the first time he dangled the prospect of pardons, an escalation of his broader effort to downplay the deadly events of Jan. 6.

It’s more than that. It’s an underlining of his contempt for the laws, a promise to flout the laws and norms, an announcement of his intention to be a lawless dictator, a boast about his affinity for violence and terrorism.

“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” he said Saturday near the end of a lengthy campaign rally in Conroe, a city about 40 miles north of Houston. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Yes, it’s so unfair not to let people bash their way into the Capitol and search for legislators to kill with impunity.

At his Texas rally, Trump also bashed the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, as he continued to spread baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him.

“This hasn’t happened to all of the other atrocities that took place recently,” he said. “Nothing like this has happened. What that ‘unselect’ committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons, it’s a disgrace.”

Eloquent as ever.

Since leaving office, Trump and other Republicans have aggressively defended those who broke into the Capitol as patriots. On the first anniversary of the riots, Trump released a scathing statement attacking President Biden and the events marking the anniversary as “political theater.”

“The Democrats want to own this day of January 6th so they can stoke fears and divide America,” he said in a statement, “I say, let them have it because America sees through theirs lies and polarizations.”

Yes, for sure, that whole thing was the fault of the Democrats.

Horrible man.

He posted that hours after she talked about being the target of constant abuse.

Horrible man.

I’m not the only one who thinks it’s grotesque.

What a lazy patronizing git. We’re supposed to do what he orders us to do, we’re supposed to take his word for it that human rights are not negotiable, we’re supposed to go away if he doesn’t like us, but he’s too grand and important to defend his own stupid assertions.

Updating to add another commentator:

Surely he’s trolling now.

Of course human rights are negotiated. What else does he think they are? Handed down by god? How does he think the UDHR came into being? Magic? Does he think Eleanor Roosevelt just wrote a list of them and that was that? How does he think the US Bill of Rights happened? How about Magna Carta?

Of course the aim is to declare them universal, binding, permanent, all that, but they’re still enumerated and negotiated (yes, Joly, negotiated) and defended (or violated) by human beings. And yes we do get to say that this new brand of “rights” that you keep talking about are different from existing rights and are in conflict with existing rights. We get to say it, and furthermore, it’s true.

What a buffoon.

Amnesty UK smuggles in its assumptions too. It’s a core part of trans activism and ideology and allyship – it’s crucial to refrain from spelling out what is meant by “trans rights,” because that would make it too obvious how destructive they are to other people’s rights, especially women’s.

On the recent statements published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the governments’ consultation on conversion therapy, Amnesty International UK disagree unreservedly in the EHRC’s assessment of separating protections for LGBTI people and specifically excluding trans people from initial legislation.

It’s a very useful aid to smuggling, this lumping together of “LGBTI” people as if they were all the same kind of thing, or all needed the same kind of rights. The T is not at all the same kind of thing as the L and the G.

These statements are actively damaging to the rights of trans and non-binary people in the UK, and we find them to be disappointing and deeply troubling. [Emphasis theirs]

What are those rights? What, exactly, are those rights? Of course they don’t say.

We encourage the UK and Scottish Governments’ to continue to show commitment and leadership on human rights by delivering on their commitments to reforming the Gender Recognition Act and introducing a comprehensive legislative ban on conversion therapy that protects the whole of the LGBTI community, including those who are trans and non-binary.

Another act of smuggling: pretending “conversion therapy” means the same thing for both LG people and trans people, when in fact that’s not the case.

Notice how the assumptions are smuggled in.

It’s the “(But note the oddity of having 3 cis people talking abt trans rights!)” interjection that I’m talking about. What oddity? What’s odd about it? What, even, is it? What does it mean? The first assumption that’s smuggled in via that interjection is that there is a meaningful category called “cis” people. There isn’t. “Everybody who is not trans” is too large and sloppy a category to be meaningful.

The second, and worse, assumption that’s smuggled in is that it’s wrong or unjust or dubious for “cis” people to talk about “trans rights” in the same way it would be for white people to talk about black people’s rights, or men to talk about women’s rights. Mind you, that can’t always be wrong or unjust, because there are situations where the white people or men are trying to correct precisely the exclusion that’s the issue – they can’t include the excluded people in the talk because of the exclusion. If it were a rule that they could never have that talk then the exclusion would just continue. But setting that aside, and assuming for the sake of argument that dominant people shouldn’t be making the rules for subordinated people without including the subordinated people in the discussion – do “cis” people and “trans” people fit that pattern? I say no, not least because that positions men who “identify as” women as subordinate to women, which means we can’t have feminism any more.

But I also say no much more broadly, because I think this whole business of pretending there’s a pattern of

oppressor and oppressed

and that as

men and women

white and black

rich and poor

bosses and workers

lesbians/gays and straights

etcetera

so is

cis and trans.

No. We haven’t agreed to that, and it’s neither accurate nor helpful, and it shouldn’t be smuggled in.

Of course “cis” people get to discuss the implications of what are called “trans rights” without much clear definition. The whole idea is about 5 minutes old and hasn’t even been properly discussed yet, so no, we don’t need to start pretending that “cis” people have to include trans people whenever they discuss what “trans rights” may be and whether they make any sense and above all to what extent they demolish women’s rights.

I wish we didn’t have to turn to National Review for reporting on the injustice to women.

The University of Pennsylvania is weighing whether to pursue legal action if transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is prohibited from competing in the upcoming NCAA women’s swimming championship, according to a report.

…

Thomas is eligible to compete on the women’s team under current USA Swimming rules that require a year of testosterone suppression. Under new NCAA rules, transgender athletes will be required to document testosterone levels to remain eligible, leaving Thomas’ eligibility for the NCAA women’s championships up in the air.

Which is almost worthless, of course, because even if he does suppress his testosterone now, he still keeps most of his physical advantages. It shouldn’t be a matter of testosterone levels, it should be a matter of No. Just no.

The [female] swimmer went on to slam how the University of Pennsylvania has handled the situation.

“They’re just proving, once again, that they don’t actually care about their women athletes,” the swimmer said. “They say that they care and that they’re here for our emotions, but why do we have to be gracious losers? . . .  Who are you to tell me that I shouldn’t want to win because I do want to win. I’m swimming. I’m dedicating more than 20 hours a week to the sport. 

She continued: “Obviously, I want to win. You can’t just tell me I should be happy with second place. I’m not. And these people in Penn’s administrative department who just think that women should just roll over — it’s disturbing, and it’s reminiscent of the 1970s when they were fighting for Title IX and stuff like that. They don’t actually care about women at all.”

Men who play at being women are the new women.

It’s great having random guys who admire themselves a lot telling us all what’s what and collecting millions of fans for doing it, but, that said, I can’t help thinking there’s occasionally a slight downside. Like when they tell us what’s what about Covid or climate change.

As podcaster Joe Rogan faces condemnation from medical scientists for spreading misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, another interview by the controversial host this week has become the subject of mockery — this time among climate scientists.

Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Monday, making false and generalized claims that the modeling scientists use to project climate change and its impacts are flawed.

See this is where the “random” comes in. Joe Rogan isn’t a medical researcher, and Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson both are not climate scientists. They’re not the right people to be “challenging the conventional wisdom” or whatever the fuck it is they think they’re doing. I like to challenge conventional wisdom myself, but I don’t go around telling neurosurgeons they’re doing neurosurgery all wrong.

“Such seemingly-comic nihilism would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous,” Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told CNN.

“Similar anti-science spread by these two individuals about COVID-19 likely has and will continue to lead to fatalities. Even more will perish from extremely dangerous and deadly weather extremes if we fail to act on the climate crisis. So the promotion of misinformation about climate change is in some ways even more dangerous.”

This is what I’m saying. They’re famous and popular and all, but that doesn’t make them medical or climatological experts. They shouldn’t be leveraging their fame and popularity to play Anti-science Geniuses to their adoring fans, especially when getting it wrong is literally fatal. There’s a lot at stake in both climate science and medical science, so amateurs should stay out of it, all the more so when they have huge audiences.

Mann said that Peterson’s claims were “nonsensical and false,” and seem to boil down to the idea that climate science is so complicated that scientists could never model it or understand it.

“Such an absurd argument leads to a dismissal of physics, chemistry, biology, and every other field of science where one formulates (and tests—that’s the critical part Peterson seems to fail to understand) conceptual models that attempt to simplify the system and distill the key components and their interactions,” Mann said.

“Every great discovery in science has arisen this way. Including the physics of electromagnetism that allowed Peterson and Rogan to record and broadcast this silly and absurd conversation.”

There’s our solution. Peterson and Rogan should tell us the physics of electromagnetism are beyond human ken therefore recording and broadcasting are impossible therefore they’re giving it up to go live in isolated cabins in Maine.

Ok throw out the words for women but…do it nicely?

Replacing words like “women” and “mothers” with terms like “birth-givers” and “pregnant people” in research risks dehumanising women and would harm decades of work to improve the visibility of women in medical literature.

That is the conclusion of 10 prominent women’s health researchers from Australia, the US, Europe and Asia who will argue in a paper published next week that replacing words like “breastfeeding” with terms such as “lactating parents” risks “reducing protection of the mother-infant [bond]” and “disembodying and undermining breastfeeding”.

It’s also the conclusion of a hell of a lot of women, but we’re shouted at and threatened if we say so.

The authors acknowledge words are changing to ensure inclusion of those who give birth but do not identify as women, but they argue against removing references to the sex of mothers in research and medical information.

No, the words aren’t changing; “activists” are trying to force us to use different words.

Governments and institutions are grappling with how to approach gender terminology. The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald can reveal that a Federal Health Department guide for pregnant and breastfeeding women regarding COVID-19 vaccination and its impact on pregnant women was edited last year to remove the term “women”, introducing errors into the scientific accuracy of the material in the process.

Stop grappling. Stop erasing women. We matter, so stop obeying the orders from a very small faction of “activists” to delete us from the language.

A co-author of the new paper and former president of the Australian College of Midwives, Jenny Gamble, a midwifery professor at the UK-based Centre for Care Excellence for Coventry University and the university hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire, said sex-based language “is important due to sex-based oppression”.

…

Professor Gamble said the trend of erasing or redefining the term “women” had started to sweep the world and that “coming from Australia it seems that the way the UK has moved to erase the use of sexed language has been rapid and extreme”.

…

In late 2021, when the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists published an article titled Those birthing people – they’re women, by the Melbourne University political philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith in an O&G magazine edition on language in women’s health, the article was taken down within a day.

If only feminists could get results that easily.

Chief executive of Gender Equity Victoria, Tanja Kovac, said she was “regularly asked by our own members to comment on [the removal of sexed language]; it’s a significant feminist issue.”

“While we don’t have any time whatsoever for TERF feminism, that does not mean we don’t see a need to provide very tailored policy differences and responses for men, women, trans people who identify as women and other non-binary and gender-diverse people, who need specially, tailored policy for them,” said Ms Kovac.

No they don’t. They claim they do, but they don’t.

Gail Dines in Ms on Hugh Hefner and Playboy:

“I am a feminist,” boasted Hugh Hefner, the iconic founder of Playboy.  But the first two episodes of a new the documentary series that premiered January 24 on A&E, Secrets of Playboy, showed what feminists always knew: Hefner was a vile misogynist. 

A feminist misogynist.

Feminism was never about presenting women as sex objects or, as Hefner and his magazine called them, “Playmates.” Nor would feminism ask “Bunnies,” dressed in hypersexualized costumes, to serve drinks to men in Playboy Clubs. And now, as many saw the other night on television, we have irrefutable proof that Hefner’s empire was built on the horrific abuse of women. 

Playmates, forsooth. Imagine women referring to men as “playmates.” What does that imply about women? Apart from the fuckability? That women are an afterthought, an accessory, a toy – a child, a bit of fluff, an outsider, an irrelevance to the important business of life. They’re vital, because fucking, but they’re still empty and trivial and inferior.

“These chicks are our natural enemy,” Hefner once wrote about feminists in an internal memo. “We must destroy them before they destroy the Playboy way of life.”  He was right. And feminism must do exactly that—destroy the misogyny that Hefner lived. Behind the carefully polished veneer of Playboy, life for the women under Hefner’s rule looked like a typical scene on Pornhub: sexual slavery. This is his enduring legacy.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Prone to psychological and medical contagions.

The error we’ve made, I believe, is thinking that the emergence of more mainstream secularism was the same thing as a reduction in religious thinking. Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case. There has been no wholesale rewiring of the Mark 1 human brain. We simply have replaced the repetitive indoctrination that religions provided with that provided by asshats on social media. The programming is the same.

For a time, public education provided enough immersion in enlightenment thinking that our cognitive biases were directed at productive social issues, which is one of the reasons reactionaries targeted that system for destruction. The Inquisition has given way to the Internetition. People are still reviled and any deviation from the equally revealed truth of the new orthodoxy makes one an apostate who deserves to burned on the web.

Of course the libertarian free speech adherents will argue that there is nothing to be done about any of this because of, you know, freedom, but since our notions of freedom are predicated on an outdated model of how actual brains function, we are pretty much screwed.

Valerie Tarico tells us how the Progressive Champions have trashed a local Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood in Seattle recently fired a CEO who has been a hero of the reproductive health and rights sector for the last forty years. It’s not hard to find public examples of the Left eating our own to the detriment of real change (here, here, here, here). But when it comes to reproductive health and rights, this is one of the most stark examples of form over substance that I have witnessed. And given the expected evisceration of Roe v Wade, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Chris Charbonneau was terminated abruptly under a cloud of implied racism after she accurately described, behind closed doors, a donor’s use of the “n-word” to characterize how women in Texas are being stripped of dignity and bodily autonomy with six-week abortion bans. I’ll come back to that story. But first, I want to underscore that Planned Parenthood has just sidelined one of the most strategic thinkers, unflinching fighters, and accomplished leaders in reproductive health and rights—one who has been formally recognized by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Bill Clinton and others for her tireless work in underserved communities. If I were a conservative Catholic bishop, I would think that God had just answered my prayers.

Now go read Valerie’s piece for the detailed account of Charbonneau’s success stories.

It’s only the “progressives” who do this – who kick the legs out from under our own work via warped purity campaigns.

None of this was enough to keep Charbonneau from being fired after she uttered the words “quote-unquote n*****” out loud, loud in a private space when asked to recount “exactly” the frustrated donor’s comment to her VP of Development, Erika Croxton. According to various insiders, Croxton reported the transgression to a board member, complaining further that Charbonneau had failed to reprimand (humiliate?) the donor at the time. A subset of board members then hired an external DEI consultant, who concluded that no harm had been intended and advised sensitivity training. That took place, and Charbonneau believed the affair was settled.

There was no need for consultation. Three words should be enough: use-attribution distinction. These two things are not the same: calling someone a [nigger or cunt or faggot] and mentioning someone else’s use of derogatory epithets of that kind.

When Croxton found that Charbonneau was not to be fired, she quit along with Chief Learning Officer Anna Kashner who called Charbonneau’s failure to reprimand the donor and her use of the n-word “inexcusable and unforgivable.” Croxton said, “I cannot in good conscience continue to be part of an organization that fails to seriously respond to this degree of racism.” (Note 1: Both Croxton and Kashner are white.)

Of course they are. It’s that hideous dinner party all over again – the one where two prosperous women of color are lavishly paid to lecture women of pallor about their privilege over a luxury dinner provided by one of the pallid women. It’s a form of literal puritanism: looking for hidden forgotten “sins” so that self-chastisement can begin.

Fearing a broader staff exodus and public accusations, the board anointed an ad hoc committee of three, led by Jeff Sprung and Colleen Foster, who opened a second inquiry, this time soliciting opinions from staff broadly via a remote town-hall event. (Note 2: All of this coincided with COVID-strained relationships and fiscal challenges within Planned Parenthood, pay cuts, rising Millennial resentment of older white leaders in the nonprofit sector, and the Great Resignation.) Not surprisingly, the process elicited a variety of dissatisfactions and disagreements with leadership style or decisions. As one nonprofit leader put it, “None of us would survive that kind of a process right now.”

I wonder if the resentful Millennials think the older white leaders in the nonprofit sector should all just retire right this minute, taking their experience and knowledge with them.

Some Black critics call this sort of public outrage performative anti-racism—an attempt on the part of (often white) progressives to loudly signal “I see racism” by being first to call out smaller and smaller transgressions of verbal or behavioral taboos. 

How many gold stars can you earn?

In some progressive advocacy communities, historical hierarchies based on race and gender have been inverted, and privileged white people can compete for status only as allies. But we humans are hierarchical social animals, instinctively vying for inclusion and rank, and progressive activists are no exception. Nuns compete by trying to out-humble each other; chickens peck, squirrels bite, some progressive activists strive to be the most activist-y allies in the room. Melodramatic displays of vicarious outrage have become all too familiar, followed by firings and groveling on the part of self-protective nonprofit boards or corporate managers.

Emphasis mine, because I love that sentence.

This type of behavior is called performative by Left-leaning critics (ranging from Black linguist John McWhorter in the center to Black Sanders-Socialist Briahna Joy Gray to queer Marxist Freddie DeBoer) because it typically does little to nothing for the people who are struggling with consequences of bigotry, or cascading intergenerational effects of historic racism, or residual racism in our cultural institutions. In this case, the actions of Croxton did tangible harm to the populations Charbonneau served.

But…they’re fun? Valerie doesn’t exactly say that, but I’m pretty sure it’s the case. Displays of righteous anger are fun, and when they’re directed at a “Karen”…well, you know the rest.

Read on.

What is and what is not disgusting, Twitter Activist version.

Update: Oh wait there’s more – on the very same day. I guess January 27 was call people disgusting day in his world – “disgusting” for knowing that men aren’t women, and saying so.

When the police drop by to check up on your thinking:

Nicola Murray was left “shocked and panicky” when detectives arrived at her door after an online announcement by Brodie’s Trust [which she founded] that it would no longer refer women to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

Talking to the officers, Murray, from Stanley, near Perth, was taken aback when she said they told her: “We need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.”

Murray, 43, founded Brodie’s Trust in 2018 to support women from all over the world “who’ve suffered pregnancy loss through domestic violence or forced termination” by directing victims to local services for help.

It’s the inverse of support for abortion, in a way, but just as necessary. Many women in India are forced to abort female fetuses, as we’ve seen.

She and a colleague determined its revised policy towards ERCC following statements by Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman appointed its CEO last year, who claimed “bigoted” victims of sexual violence should expect to be “challenged on their prejudices”.

In case it’s not enough that a pretend-woman was appointed CEO of a rape crisis centre in the first place.

In September Murray posted a message on social media on behalf of Brodie’s Trust saying: “Due to deeply concerning comments made by the current CEO of ERCC we have taken the decision to no longer signpost to this service. We cannot in all conscience send vulnerable women to the service in its current state.” The message continued: “We have no interest in our clients’ religion, sexuality nor political views . . . We are a women-only service run by women for women and will not be intimidated into changing our stance on this matter.”

Naturally the police accepted the challenge.

Detectives from Edinburgh arrived at her door on November 4. Murray said: “I ushered them through to the living room. The first thing they said was, ‘Some of your tweets have been brought to our attention.’”

If her tweets were threats of violence and murder I could see it, but of course they weren’t anything like that.

“They said, ‘Yeah, we just have to speak to you. You’ve not said anything hateful, there isn’t a crime here.’

“I said: ‘So why are you here?’ They said, ‘Because we need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.’”

Why? Why do they need to do that? In the absence of violent threats, why do they need to do that?

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie said: “Hate crime and discrimination of any kind is deplorable and entirely unacceptable. Police Scotland will investigate every report of a hate crime or hate incident.”

Well, not if the people reporting are women they won’t.

At Inside Higher Ed Angie Kirk, an English professor and former college athlete, explains what fair competitive sports policy would look like:

In the past year, legislators in several states have introduced or passed bills that would ban persons who are biologically male from competing on women’s sports teams…These bills are in contradiction to President Biden’s executive order regarding athletics, which overturned Trump-era policies prohibiting genetically male individuals from competing on women’s teams, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s recent policy change allowing each sport to make its own rules.

It’s pathetic that Trump is right about this and Biden is wrong, but that’s where we are. (No, no, exclaim the Folx Brigade, it’s YOU that’s wrong. No YOU, I reply. ∞)

To put a face to the damage caused by biological males infiltrating women’s competitive sports, consider the experience of Connecticut high school runner Selina Soule, along with her female peers. Soule lost the opportunity in 2019 to compete for a spot in the New England Regional Championships in the 55-meter dash because two biological males with gender dysphoria (a biological male feeling or desiring to be female) competed in her event and came in ahead of her.

We don’t actually know the two males had or have gender dysphoria. It’s kind of an odd coincidence, two boys in the same school in the same sport…which is to say I don’t believe it, myself.

Kirk goes on to set out the issues the way people who are not bewitched by trans ideology understand them, and to argue for clarity and accuracy of language in discussing them.

For example, the title of the most recent legislation in Florida, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, puts in the forefront the reality it hopes to highlight and uses terms factually. We need to use concrete, factual language whenever possible and note when others are and are not. Factually, we are discussing individuals who are biologically male but who believe or wish themselves to be female, with or without the use of drugs. Labeling them as such, as biological males who believe or wish themselves to be sexed female, or as biological males with gender dysphoria, is vastly different than calling these individuals transgender women.

It is indeed. Men who wish they were women are still men, and there are many compelling reasons not to lose sight of that fact.

A Daily Kos staffer called Marissa Higgins throws the usual mudpies.

As Daily Kos has continued to highlight, state-level lawmakers have really come out against trans folks over the last few years.

Getting the “folks” in early, just in case the title isn’t clear enough. (
English professor fired off a vehemently anti-trans op-ed in a big news outlet.)

Republicans across the nation have pushed a variation of the same anti-trans bills to see what they can get away with—

Just the kind of obfuscation Angie Kirk points out. The bills aren’t “anti-trans.” They’re pro rights for girls and women. It’s not persecution of trans people to preserve women’s sports for women. It gets extremely boring having to repeat this endlessly, but clearly that’s where we are.

Unfortunately, whether or not these bills are actually signed into law, giving these anti-trans, discriminatory, exclusionary perspectives prime time space does make some people feel validated in their transphobia. We shouldn’t be debating whether trans kindergarteners should be playing sports with their friends—it’s a pandemic, and that’s foolish and inhumane, anyway. And yet—perhaps emboldened by Republican rhetoric, perhaps not—people are spewing their views and recycling anti-trans language day in and day out. And as is the case in a recent op-ed appearing in Inside Higher Education, they’re getting major platforms for offensive, inaccurate speech. 

So, that’s the level of fairness, accuracy, argument, civility we get from the trans activist side.

There’s a lot more but it doesn’t get any better, so that’s enough.

H/t Sackbut

The Times of India reports:

New Delhi: A woman was allegedly sexually assaulted and paraded in the Shahdara area of the national capital on Wednesday.

The woman was attacked by a group of people who chopped off her hair, tore her clothes, blackened her face and then paraded her in the streets with a garland of slippers.

The accused are said to be illicit liquor sellers in the area. It has been alleged that the woman was also gang-raped.

…

A source privy to the investigation told IANS that the victim woman has been living in Shahdara area for the past few years. The woman is married and has a child. A man who used to live in her neighbourhood was in a one-sided affair with her. She had spurned his advances many times. A few days ago, the man had allegedly committed suicide.

There’s no such thing as a “one-sided affair” with someone. There’s a crush or obsession or stalking, but there’s no affair.

Meanwhile, Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal issued a notice to the Delhi Police in connection with the matter.

H/t What a Maroon