For people who are as all-powerful and privileged as women are, we sure do have a hard time being allowed to speak.

Despite professing commitment to free speech principles, today Massey University announced they would be revoking their agreement with Speak Up For Women to host their event ‘Feminism 2020’ at their Wellington Campus.

So in other words they’re going with Don’t Speak Up For Women.

Citing “external advice on its health, safety and wellbeing obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and its duty of care to the University community,” Massey have once more proven that they are willing to cave to activist intimidation tactics.

“The staff and students of Massey were never at any risk from our event nor from the speech of the four women speaking at it. We are a group of women wanting to talk about our rights. This should not be controversial in 2019,” says Speak Up For Women spokeswoman Ani O’Brien.

Wasn’t there an interval of a year or two when women were allowed to talk about our rights? Surely that’s enough for any sex other than the male one.

Massey University states a commitment “to the values of academic freedom, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of expression, as values that lie at the very heart of the tradition of a university and academic inquiry.” However, in the light of de-platforming more speakers due to pressure from activists, it appears that these statements are just lip service.

“A clear picture has emerged that shows that certain public organisations and educational institutions are completely ruled by thugs’ veto. New Zealanders should be aware that we are living in a country where a small group of activists are dictating who can and cannot speak in public spaces using threats and intimidation,” says Ms O’Brien.

“We’ve seen an extremist activist group simply threaten to protest events and in response Auckland Council cancel or move the event. Now at Massey, health and safety is being used to threaten legal action and they have cancelled. If a group of Kiwi women – mums, teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, unionists, professionals, students – have been deemed too ‘dangerous’ to be allowed to hold an event, who on earth will be permitted to by these wannabe-fascists?”

Oh we all know the answer to that. People who aren’t women.

Speak Up For Women are determined that they will go ahead with their event nonetheless and are currently in the process of finding a new venue; “this has shown us once again how important it is that we continue to fight to speak openly about women’s rights.”

But also how absolutely pathetic it is that we have to.

First, this is the Daily Mail, so caution is advised – but, that said, if the facts are as stated…there’s an issue. The claim is that judges have been ordered to give harsh sentences to people convicted of “transgender and homophobic hate crimes” – that is, hate crimes against LGB and trans people. New sentencing guidelines say six months in prison should be the minimum.

But what are they defining as hate crimes? That’s the crucial question, and from what we’ve seen lately it includes dissenting from various wild truth-claims about Magic Gender Changing.

The instructions, which will come into effect on January 1, follow a series of cases in which police have been accused of launching heavy-handed investigations into transgender hate crime allegations.

This year Surrey Police quizzed a Catholic mother-of-five after she was accused of ‘misgendering’ the trans daughter of an activist on social media by using the pronoun ‘him’.

Last week Thames Valley Police launched an inquiry into possible public order hate crimes by demonstrators who put up stickers in Oxford with messages such as: ‘Woman: noun. Adult human female.’

So it appears to be at least theoretically possible that feminist women could be sentenced to six months in prison for putting up stickers that say women are adult human females.

Apparently the UK is edging toward making it a criminal act to say that women are women.

It seems there is no corresponding move toward harshly sentencing men who threaten to kill women they label “TERFs”?

Notice that feminist women don’t threaten to kill men who claim to be women, we simply say that men are not women, not even if they “identify as” women.

So women could be thrown in jail for saying women are women, while men remain at liberty to threaten to kill women for saying women are women.

The guidelines, which judges and magistrates must follow unless they can show doing so would run against justice, are the first to apply to public order offences – which include the offence of ‘stirring up hatred based on race, religion or sexual orientation’.

But not sex. Yes really: not sex. Gender identity yes, but sex no. Apparently there is no such thing as hatred or contempt or oppression or exploitation based on sex, i.e. of women by men.

The number of hate crimes reported to police has reached 100,000 a year for the first time.

Home Office figures showed a 10 per cent increase this year, with a surge in allegations of homophobic and transphobic abuse.

Police must record an incident as a hate crime if a victim believes they were targeted over their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

But not sex. Not sex. Not sex. The Rachel McKinnons and Jessica Yanivs are the truly oppressed, while women are the privileged powerful domineering cruel oppressors.

White House people are upset because…they can’t keep doing whatever they want without any oversight? I guess?

Inside the West Wing, sources say, there is escalating concern about administration witnesses who are giving depositions on Capitol Hill.

Pence’s lawyer Matthew Morgan says but history and precedent.

“Instead of being accountable to the American people and casting a vote to authorize what all agree is a substantial constitutional step, you have instead attempted to avoid this fundamental requirement by invoking the Speaker’s announcement of an ‘official impeachment inquiry’ at a press conference?” Morgan wrote in a letter to House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.

Morgan added, “Never before in history has the Speaker of the House attempted to launch an ‘impeachment inquiry’ against a President without a majority of the House of Representatives voting to authorize a constitutionally acceptable process.”

Hmm, never before in history. Shall we draw up a list of things Trump has done that never before in history has a president done? It would be very long, and most of the things would be bad things.

Also on Tuesday, George Kent, the State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, was the latest witness to be questioned. Fiona Hill, Trump’s former Russia adviser, sat down for more than 10 hours on Monday.

Watching this, officials are growing frustrated because they are mainly being forced to learn about what these officials divulged from news reporters. There is no White House counsel present in the room and officials are not given transcripts or readouts after they leave, one person told CNN.

Now they know how we feel.

Let’s all congratulate Dawn, Naomi and Kirsten:

Congratulations Dawn, Naomi, and Kirsten for coming First, Second, and Third – your efforts are to be commended and I’m looking forward to watching you in future races.

And there he is in all his glory:

Sport is a human right! Cheating at sport is a human right!

Trump betrayed the Kurds; Trump betrays everyone. Peter Wehner writes:

For once, Republicans have forcefully spoken out against Mr. Trump. Graham said our Kurdish allies had been “shamelessly abandoned by the Trump administration.” Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said Trump’s decision is having “sickening and predictable” consequences. Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran, said on Face the Nation that “leaving an ally behind … is disheartening, depressing.” He added, “The Kurds found out on Twitter, for goodness’ sake. We have left them to the wolves. And the message this is sending to our allies around the world, I think, is really going to be bad.” Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican lawmaker who has been the most willing to speak the truth about Trump, declared on Twitter, “The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal.”

Indeed it is. But betrayal is hardly new to Trump, who routinely abandons people who trust in him or the nation he leads. By now, this behavior should come as a surprise to exactly no one.

Indeed not; we’ve been watching him do it for three years and more.

Betrayal is a leitmotif for this president’s entire life. Think of how he cheated on his wives. Think of the infant child of a nephew who had crucial medical benefits withdrawn by Trump because of Trump’s retaliation against his nephew over an inheritance dispute. Think of those who enrolled at Trump University and were defrauded. Think about the contractors whom Trump has stiffed. Think of Jeff Sessions, the first prominent Republican to endorse Trump, whom Trump viciously turned against because Sessions had properly recused himself from overseeing the investigation into whether Russia had intervened in the 2016 election. Think about those who served in Trump’s administration—Rex Tillerson, John Bolton, Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, James Mattis, and many more—who were unceremoniously dumped and, in some cases, mocked on their way out the door.

He’s a man for whom self is everything and others are nothing, really nothing.

Individuals like Donald Trump, who chronically betray others, are incapable of authentic relationships or genuine human connections. They view other people solely in transactional terms. For malignant narcissists, they themselves are the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Other human beings don’t have inherent dignity; their worth is determined solely in terms of what they can do for the person who is the betrayer. If the answer is nothing, then others are dismissed, discarded, and abandoned. There is no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt or shame.

I find it’s hard to imagine what that’s like, because if the self is everything…well it’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? How can one single self matter enough to live a whole long life, even if it is one’s own?

President Trump doesn’t interpret his abandonment of America’s faithful and intrepid Kurdish ally as betrayal because he can’t even understand why betrayal is a vice. It’s like trying to explain color to a person born with no eyesight.

And so we elected him president. We should be a pariah state at this point. We are that fucked up.

Jolyon Maugham again. Sigh.

James Kirkup tweeted his Spectator piece yesterday:

A ‘transphobic’ crime wave has hit Oxford: stickers so offensive the police refuse to describe them. (The stickers say “Women don’t have penises” and “Woman = adult human female”)

Maugham replied:

Surely you can see what an ugly and destructive provocation that is?

Ah yes; women saying women are women is so ugly and destructive. How dare we.

Jane Clare Jones:

Surely you can see that female people have the right to their own ontological, legal and political category and have a right to defend that category from colonization. Oh no of course you can’t. You just expect us to be good compliant little girls and hand our existence away.

Ask yourself what on earth is going on that the dictionary definition of woman can even be considered a ‘provocation.’ Because asserting that a word means what it means could only be provocative if someone else was trying to change that meaning for their own ends couldn’t it?

Maugham of course paid no attention, and simply blocked people who disputed him. Same old same old.

Dominionism at the State Department:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on Friday to the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) at its 2019 world conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Outlining “what it means to be a Christian leader,” while relaying family anecdotes and stories from his West Point education, Pompeo described how he applies his religious faith to government administration.

Titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department, religious and civil liberties organizations have decried it as a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s intended separation of church and state.

That second paragraph is a syntactical trainwreck. The speech was titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department; religious and civil liberties organizations have decried the speech and the promotion of the speech as a violation of the separation of church and state.

A complete transcript of Pompeo’s speech has been posted to the front page of State.gov, including notation indicating the audience reaction to specific lines. While politicians often speak at events sponsored by religious groups, explicit promotion of “Being a Christian Leader” is widely seen as crossing a line.

According to both religious and atheist organizations, Pompeo is welcome to his Christian faith, but in potential violation of the separation of church and state by promoting “Being a Christian Leader” in official capacities, such as the State Department home page.

Not “potential” violation of the separation of church and state, just plain in violation.

Ironically enough, I was in the middle of this when a couple of women came to the door. ?? “We just wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts from the bible.” “No.” They went away. Honestly, what makes people think that’s ok? I don’t go around knocking on strangers’ doors and telling them I want to share some thoughts from Keats or Montaigne or Orwell, what makes people think it’s acceptable when it’s the bible? It’s so rude.

It’s been a day of Dueling Statements. Exciting stuff! Mitch McConnell issued one, so of course Donald Trump had to issue one right back.

First:

New McConnell statement on Trump’s Syria decision: “Abandoning this fight now and withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy and invite the resurgence of ISIS.”

Next:

Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding Turkey’s Actions in Northeast Syria

Genius. Tell Erdoğan to go ahead and invade Syria, and then when he does, impose sanctions. But wait, they’re powerful sanctions, so that will definitely fix everything. Or as Matt Miller puts it:

The guy who opened the barn door is now running around yelling at the horses.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To celebrate the launch of Trump Towers Istanbul.

…somehow an advocate of both burning everything down and building everything up; an optimist, pessimist, realist and cynic; certainly naive: shat on but fierce, fierce but trying to help; not helping.

I get that. Hell, I have single days when I can whip through those states of mind. I currently think we’re totally fucked, and I would wish that when we go extinct, we take as few other species with us as possible (with perhaps the exception of our industrial agricultural domesticates, though they aren’t to blame for their own existence). At the same time, I would like humans to smarten up and succeed, because there’s so much more cool stuff to learn about how the universe works.

…the changing in the face of new evidence or new experience is a solid way of doing anything – business, government, science, theatre, photography, activism – everything I find of interest has required me to adjust in new and often unexpected ways.

We’re in the midst of a federal election in Canada. One of the parties (I won’t call it “major” because it’s new and has no hope of winning), the People’s Party of Canada, has a position on climate change (which it denies is a problem) that says that since 70’s talk of a “new ice age” didn’t pan out, we can ignore what climate scientists are saying now:

Climate change alarmism is based on flawed models that have consistently failed at correctly predicting the future. None of the cataclysmic predictions that have been made about the climate since the 1970s have come true. No new ice age. No steady warming in direct relation with increases in CO2 levels. No disappearance of polar ice caps. No exceptional rise in ocean levels. No abnormal increase in catastrophic weather events. No widespread crop failure and famine.In fact, CO2 is beneficial for agriculture and there has recently been a measurable “greening” of the world in part thanks to higher levels. Despite what global warming propaganda claims, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is an essential ingredient for life on Earth and needed for plant growth.

So not just not taking in new information, but denying there is new information to take in.

The PPC party leader, failed Conservative Party leadership aspirant Maxime Bernier, has had a number of well publicized twitter lash-outs at Greta Thunberg over the last months.

But it would be unwise to discount or ignore Bernier and the PPC, seeing what happened with Trump. Electorats can be fickle and unthinking. Today’s crank could be tomorrow’s head of government.

Cis privilege:

A newborn baby girl has been discovered buried alive in northern India, a local police chief has revealed.

Abhinandan Singh told reporters the baby was found by a villager who was burying his own daughter, who had died minutes after birth.

The baby girl, who had been placed inside an earthen pot about 3ft (90cm) below the ground, was rushed to hospital, where she is recovering.

Anoop Kumar Mishra

India’s gender ratio is one of the worst in the world. Women are often discriminated against socially and girls are seen as a financial burden, particularly among poor communities.

Campaigners say a traditional preference for sons has meant millions of female children lost to foeticide and infanticide over the years.

Imagine what it must be like to be a female person in India.

James Kirkup at The Spectator:

Oxford is suffering a crime wave. Police are investigating numerous serious offences over more than six months. Thames Valley Police has issued this sweeping statement about unacceptable acts in the city:

“Thames Valley Police is appealing for witnesses following a number of public offences in Oxford.

Officers are investigating a large number of offensive stickers that have been placed across Oxford city centre containing transphobic comments. It is believed they started appearing in March 2019 within the High Street, Catte Street and Parks Road area.

Investigating officer PC Rebecca Nightingale based at St Aldates police station said: “Behaviour like this is not acceptable and we take incidents of this nature very seriously.

“I am appealing for anyone who may of witnesses these stickers being placed around the city or anyone who has information that may assist our investigation to call the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 43190163238 or report online.

“Alternatively, you can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers 100% anonymously on 0800 555 111.” 

As Kirkup says, it sounds very serious. Like, what? “Kill trans people on sight”?

Makes you wonder what sort of hateful, poisonous messages were on those stickers. It must be something pretty horrible, to prompt a police force to make an appeal like this, right? Maybe those stickers were inciting violence? Or perhaps they were encouraging people to otherwise break the law? 

Oddly, Thames Valley Police didn’t explain in that dramatic statement exactly what sort of vile and hateful messages are on those “offensive” stickers. Even more oddly, when I asked the force what those stickers say, a press officer told me “the content and appearance of the stickers is not suitable for sharing.” 

What? Then how can anyone possibly claim to “of witnesses these stickers being placed around the city”? How can people possibly know they’ve seen these stickers being placed when no one knows what they say? How stupid is that? They’ll get people phoning up to report “flat to let” stickers and lost cat stickers and jumble sale this Saturday stickers and god knows what else.

Fortunately, the Oxford Mail did a bit of reporting and appear to have established the horrifying truth.

The “offensive” and “transphobic” messages on those stickers, those terrible, hateful stickers now under active police investigation apparently include these:

“Woman: noun. Adult human female”

And:

“Women don’t have penises”

So…the police are calling on the citizenry to report stickers that say women are adult human females and don’t have penises.

What is wrong with everyone??

The mother of Alanna Smith, one of the Connecticut high school runners pushed out by two boys who “identify as” girls, points out how grotesquely unfair it all is:

Men are stronger than women. Boys are faster than girls. An influx of hormones doesn’t undo these realities.

Study after study has reaffirmed this basic fact about what it means to be human. Most recently, Swedish scientists followed 11 biological men whose testosterone was dramatically decreased due to cross-sex hormone treatments over a year.

Even when the men’s testosterone levels matched that of ­biological women, the men’s competitive advantages remained almost fully intact, with muscle size and bone density remaining virtually unchanged in some and decreasing only 5 percent in others.

Anyone can Google to learn that and more, she says, but they can’t Google what it is to be her daughter’s mother.

But you can’t Google my front-row seat as a mother of a high-school athlete who has been beaten out by a biological male athlete who identifies as a female — one who hasn’t undergone hormone therapy or gender-reassignment surgery and who competed a year earlier as a male.

My daughter, Alanna, now a sophomore, is a rising star in our home state of Connecticut. As a freshman, she led her high-school team to its third straight team championship in the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference by winning the 100-meter, 200-meter and 400-meter in one of the most dominant individual performances in meet history. She was an integral component in the team’s first-place finish in the State Open and in smashing a pair of records at the New England championships in Maine.

Alanna has devoted countless days, nights and weekends to training. She pushes herself to shave mere fractions of a second from her race times…

But she also knows it’s futile, because those two boys will always beat her.

Since 2017, our state’s high-school athletic conference has allowed biological boys to compete against girls. It’s enough that they subjectively identify as female. Since then, two biological boys have won 15 women’s track championships, titles held by nine different girls in 2016.

Not only that, the same two biological boys have taken away more than 50 chances for girls to compete at the next level of competition, running these girls right off the track and forcing them to be spectators in their own sport.

…

Our daughters deserve better than to have their athletic opportunities stolen from them. My daughter deserves to compete, to achieve, to earn the opportunity to advance to the next level of competition, to earn a college scholarship and to enter into adulthood with all the confidence of a fierce, proven champion — a champion who knows she won fairly.

No biological male should take those opportunities from my daughter, regardless of how he self-identifies. Redefining “sex” to mean “gender identity” — as our state’s athletic conference has done, as what the ACLU is trying to do at the Supreme Court and as the so-called “Equality Act” in Congress would do — destroys female athletics.

Why are so many “progressive” people happy with that outcome?

Another rage-attack because Meghan Murphy is going to say things in a room rented from the Toronto Public Library:

Hey @torontolibrary, given that you’re a place deeply invested in education and learning, why are you hosting an event by a known TERF? Twitter banned Meghan Murphy for being transphobic. Why give her a platform?

Yes how dare a feminist woman ask questions about what “gender identity” means for women. It’s not as if women have any stake in the subject after all.

But never mind all that, just tell lies.

I would also like to know why my hometown library system is allowing someone who thinks someone like me doesn’t deserve to participate in society to use their facility. Megan Murphy is hateful and the furthest thing from a feminist you’ll ever find.

Meghan Murphy thinks no such thing. She thinks men are men; that does not remotely equal thinking men who claim to be women “don’t deserve to participate in society.”

The fact that “activists” like “Tracey” here have to resort to grotesque lies to back up their demands that everyone shun Meghan Murphy and make it impossible for her to speak in public is a massive hint that they don’t have anything else. Meghan Murphy thinks men are men; wow, what a shocker.