Latest Blog Post:

Referral

Now there is a catch 22.

Today, they’ve told me they can’t come to a decision. Even van driving jobs need DBS clearance.

What is DBS? You can see it under the “caseworker”‘s signature: “Disclosure and Barring Service.”

So there’s a “service” that runs around “disclosing” i.e. gossiping tattling ratting accusing whining pointing to prospective employers, and is … Read the rest

More Blog Posts

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Referral
By Ophelia Benson, December 7, 2023

Now there is a catch 22.

Today, they’ve told me they can’t come to a decision. Even van driving jobs need DBS clearance.

What is DBS? You can see it under the “caseworker”‘s signature: “Disclosure and Barring Service.”

So there’s a “service” that runs around “disclosing” i.e. gossiping tattling ratting accusing whining pointing to prospective employers, and is … Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Referral 

Now there is a catch 22.

Today, they’ve told me they can’t come to a decision. Even van driving jobs need DBS clearance.

What is DBS? You can see it under the “caseworker”‘s signature: “Disclosure and Barring Service.”

So there’s a “service” that runs around “disclosing” i.e. gossiping tattling ratting accusing whining pointing to prospective employers, and is … Read the rest

Guest post: The necessity of broadening our experiences 

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Insult & injury=.

I think that what needs to be taught regarding First Nations and their history is that the “Noble Savage” concept is insulting and patronizing. What I have experienced as recently as 4 years ago in my 300 level course in diversity is not indoctrination about the poor natives or brown people but the necessity of broadening our experiences to better understand other cultures and how they have integrated into our own. Those students who have this fantasy about an idyllic pre-Columbian world are likely to have gotten it from anywhere but a UofT anthropology course, like perhaps social media. I think the same thing whenever I see someone claim … Read the rest

One of just 10 

Liz Cheney has a book out.

Republican Liz Cheney has made no secret of her criticism of former President Donald Trump. It’s what made her an outcast in her own party and cost her her job in Congress last year.

The former Wyoming representative was one of just 10 Republicans to back his second impeachment in 2021. She became one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, for which she explicitly blamed Trump.

Cheney’s vocal and sustained criticism of the former president led to her losing her leadership role as the No. 3 House Republican and, eventually, her primary campaign for reelection.

You know…the surprising thing is not … Read the rest

NPR spits on women 

Oh look, how sweet, NPR chose yesterday as the day to run a flattering story about trans “woman” Kai Cheng Thom. Who’s he? He’s the one who gave the keynote at the University of Toronto event nominally to commemorate the 14 women murdered for being women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. How adorable of NPR to puff him up on the very same day he had the unmitigated gall to center himself instead of the 14 murdered women and women in general.

The byline is Jess Kung, Lori Lizarraga, Leah Donnella, Dalia Mortada. All women? All trans women? Half and half? Three and one? Who knows. They’re all helping NPR insult and displace women. … Read the rest

Behold the man 

Here is the disgusting narcissist in person, whining about how “afraid” he is to be there, shoving dead women aside so that he can talk about his pretense of being a woman. He actually does have the gall to call it “pure spite” for us to object to his role as keynote speaker at an event remembering 14 women who were murdered for being women.

… Read the rest
Inclusive blowing up 

A very carefully defined version of “inclusion.”

Academic specialist in inclusion calls for ‘evil’ Jewish conference to be ‘blown up’

A senior academic at the University of Bristol who specialises in inclusion, inequality and discrimination has called for someone to “blow up” a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement.

Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol Harriet Bradley made the comment while reposting another remark about the gathering which read: “If you wanted to know where you can find every racist, n**ce and sh**house in Britain, now you know.”

Above that post, which included the poster advertising the JLM event, Bradley wrote: “Somebody blow up the venue!”

I’ve had a look at her Twitter and to be honest it’s hard to … Read the rest

Insult & injury= 

Reduxx on another male usurpation of an event to commemorate women:

The University of Toronto invited a trans-identified male to speak at a memorial ceremony dedicated to the women who lost their lives during the École Polytechnique massacre. Despite it being the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada, the speech instead focused on “addressing transmisogyny.”

Hosted by the University’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Center, the event was held today at the St. George Campus in downtown Toronto. While the official announcement claimed the event was intended to memorialize the 14 women slaughtered during the École Polytechnique massacre, the keynote speech was almost completely unrelated to the horrific shooting.

The event was first

… Read the rest
But no child is born in the wrong body 

Kemi Badenoch in action.

… Read the rest

They were all out of their depth 

Encouraging.

… Read the rest

Trendy but 

I think Kendi needs to get around more. He’s very parochial. “Whiteness” just isn’t the root of all injustice in the world. Racism is not just white USians v everyone; there is racism among and between people of all hues. There is also rivalry, hostility, aggression, competition, war, oppression, exploitation among groups of every kind you can think of. Humans are very good at seeking out differences, no matter how slight, in order to create ingroups and outgroups. Believe it or not, at some times, in some places in the world, the people on top had darker skin than the people on the bottom. It happens.

In short “whiteness” isn’t as interesting as he thinks it is.

… Read the rest
National Women’s MEN’S Law Center 

National WOMEN’S Law Center throws women under that bus yet again.

…and success in school sports depends on a whole range of factors including how hard you work, and coaching, and access to really good resources and facilities, and trans students participate in sports for the same reason as their kids: because it is fun, because it creates belonging and community, because it teaches

… Read the rest

Smilingly 

It certainly is.

I pushed the button to watch it. I could hardly believe what I saw. The two presidents balked at saying that calling for genocide of Jews is harassment. Not is a crime, not is against the law, not is murderous, not is violent, just is harassment. I don’t normally find myself on Team Stefanik, but I don’t normally expect presidents of high-status universities to smile blandly at calls for genociding the Jews, either.

Politico reports:

Top university presidents defended their responses to antisemitism on their campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war before Congress on Tuesday as they faced a grilling from lawmakers.

Claudine

… Read the rest
Except exceptional 

Yes by all means err on the side of letting violent men be housed in women’s prisons instead of on the side of never doing that ever.

Transgender inmates with a history of violence against women will not be housed in female prisons in Scotland, except in “exceptional circumstances”.

Fuck “exceptional circumstances.” Just don’t do it. There are no circumstances that mean women should take the risk instead of just not housing violent men with women.

The new guidelines confirm an “individualised approach” that any transgender woman with a history of violence against women and girls, and who is assessed as presenting a risk to women and girls, will not be placed in the women’s estate.

The history … Read the rest

Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny 

Katherine Rosman and Lisa Lerer in the Times:

The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”

Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.

One can imagine why.

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in

… Read the rest
A lack of sharpness and clarity 

Decline from a not very great height.

“It’s kind of remarkable, I’ve been watching the clips from Trump’s visit to Iowa and I’m stunned having spent a lot of time with him in 2020 and years before—he is slowing down,” Griffin said. “There’s a lack of sharpness in what he’s saying and a lack [ ] of clarity,” she continued. Griffin was once in Donald’s inner

… Read the rest

Guest post: They write books that indicate that they know better 

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Confused stan.

So, that’s not the actual governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. It’s someone who “stans” him. That being said, Walz does go along with the gender woo stuff, as does the Lt Governor. He signed the bills making “affirmatiion only” treatment the law, allowing those who live in states that don’t provide transmogrifying medicine to children to travel here with a shield against prosecution to get transmogrifying medicine, and would likely sign a trans hate crime bill if it passed his desk.

But this business of “scientific consensus” is a statement that frustrates me on a forum such as X. (I don’t think we need to say “formerly known as” anymore.) … Read the rest

Women and Jews 

Hadley Freeman on Owen Jones:

Women and Jews have long shared a common experience: people telling them that what happened to them did not, in fact, happen. Denialism, in other words. People work extremely hard to see women and Jews as the privileged and never the oppressed, so they can justify their desires and prejudices to themselves.

Karenism in short. I don’t know of a karen-equivalent for Jews, although there used to be plenty of them. Karenism=working very hard to see women as privileged bitches.

It comes out in Holocaust denial, which is gaining in popularity around the world, and it came out during the Jeremy Corbyn era, when Jews who voiced their fears about antisemitism on the left

… Read the rest
Guest post: This is not testable science 

Originally a comment by Sastra on Confused stan.

“If you identify as a woman, you ARE a woman” is a “scientific consensus?” I don’t think so.

The late great Skepdoc Harriet Hall noted a common practice in pseudoscience and came up with an apt analogy and descriptive term: Tooth Fairy Science.

It’s perfectly possible for scientists to do studies on how much money the ToothFairy leaves in different countries, and whether she values front teeth more than molars or pillows more than bedside tables. Elaborate surveys measuring the satisfaction level of the children who receive a visit vs those who don’t could be sent out and results put in tables and diagrams. A substantial body of Tooth Fairy Science … Read the rest

Confused stan 

This guy said these two things almost in the same breath.

Facts don’t care about your feelings. Ok, got it.

Very next tweet:

If you identify as a woman you are a woman. So, facts don’t care about your feelings, and if you feel you are a woman, it’s a fact that you are a woman.

What?… Read the rest

Like with like 

You’d think the Times would know how to report on this subject accurately.

Tory rebels seek ban on conversion therapy

Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh Commons row after a group of Tory MPs threw their weight behind a bill to ban conversion therapy.

Former senior ministers and the first openly transgender MP are among those who have co-sponsored a private member’s bill to clamp down on the practice.

Sunak backed away from the long-promised ban on attempts to change someone’s sexuality and gender identity by not including it in his King’s Speech last month.

Sexual orientation is one thing and “gender identity” is very much another. That means reporting shouldn’t talk about “conversion therapy” as if it applied to … Read the rest