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Guest post: Social engineering when they do it

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Reassigned and replaced by a man.

“While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.”

And replacing women from these positions is not social engineering? All and only men is a neutral, apolitical, unprejudiced position? And each of these women has more experience, talent, and skill than a hundred thousand Hegseths and Trumps.

As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women “is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform….”

I wonder how … Read the rest

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Guest post: Social engineering when they do it
By Ophelia Benson, February 9, 2026

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Reassigned and replaced by a man.

“While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.”

And replacing women from these positions is not social engineering? All and only men is a neutral, apolitical, unprejudiced position? And each of these women has more experience, talent, and skill than a hundred thousand Hegseths and Trumps.

As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women “is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform….”

I wonder how … Read the rest

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

Guest post: Social engineering when they do it 

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Reassigned and replaced by a man.

“While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.”

And replacing women from these positions is not social engineering? All and only men is a neutral, apolitical, unprejudiced position? And each of these women has more experience, talent, and skill than a hundred thousand Hegseths and Trumps.

As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women “is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform….”

I wonder how … Read the rest

Guest post: There is a pattern 

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Take notes.

As much as I dislike the wokeism that got our hostess bullied off FTB, I take issue with the frequently repeated trope about how it killed the atheist and skeptics movements. The Men’s Rights Activists who flooded Watson, McCreight, Ophelia, and so many others with personal attacks, cyberbullying, harassment, and threats had dealt these movements their mortal blow long before that. If anything, wokeism just put them out of their misery.

Since the #MeToo movement (remember that?) was briefly mentioned, I was positively surprised to see the #MeToo hashtag gain the traction it did after seeing so many comparable campaigns fizzle out. I was not surprised to see the backlash … Read the rest

They have clarified 

Is the shift starting to happen?

… Read the rest

He understands the concern 

Vote for the bomb guy.

A man who was convicted of a terrorist offence has defended standing in local elections this year, saying he understands “people’s speculation and concern”.

Shahid Butt was found guilty of a plot to blow up the British consulate in Yemen in 1999, but said the charges were fabricated and that he was tortured into making a confession. Both Labour and Conservative politicians raised concerns about his suitability when he announced his plan to stand as an independent candidate, in the Sparkhill ward on the Birmingham City Council.

…

Speaking to BBC Politics Midlands this week, Butt said: “I’ve always maintained from day one, that these were false, fabricated charges that were put against

… Read the rest
He dinnit see it 

Trump explains all.

Trump admitted on Friday night that he did direct aides to post a racist video on his social media account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, but claimed that he did not see that part of the video, which was near the end of a 62-second clip that otherwise repeated conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.

Although the White House initially defended the video in a statement from the press secretary, the clip was later deleted and reporters were told that it had been posted, without the president’s knowledge, by an aide.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump undercut those efforts by his aides to explain away his own behavior, telling

… Read the rest
As they network, joke and trade information 

More from Jeffrey and co:

The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information. Women exist at the periphery, tolerated because they organise the diaries of the busy men, they arrange food, they grace a table, they provide sex.

A typical email from Epstein to a man in his network will say: “Head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee Thorbjorn Jagland will be staying in ny with me. You might find him interesting.” Epstein is writing to Richard Branson in characteristic style, combining some casual showing

… Read the rest
Reassigned and replaced by a man 

Pete Hegseth has kicked all the women out of top jobs in the military. Yes all of them.

The Naval Academy was founded in 1845, but didn’t admit its first class of women until 1976. The head of the school is known as the superintendent, and Annapolis would not get its first female admiral in that position until 2024. Now the first woman to serve as the “supe” has been reassigned and replaced by a man, and for the first time in the academy’s history, the role went to a Marine. Last week, the Navy removed Vice Admiral Yvette Davids from her post and replaced her with Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte.

…

Trump and Hegseth have been on a

… Read the rest
Take notes 

I’m seeing a lot of discussion of Rebecca Watson’s video about Epstein and Lawrence Krauss and Dawkins and the string of women Dawkins has burned through and CFI and That Conference and and and.

It’s worth a watch.… Read the rest

Quirky 

Wait.

First six seconds of this:

“But as he said, it wasn’t him, he’s got a big group that’s posting”

Stop right there.

WHY?

Why has he got a big group that’s posting on his social media?

Why has he got a big group that’s posting on his social media?

He doesn’t have to post anything on social media. It’s not part of the job. It’s not a requirement. And if he’s going to do social media he sure as hell should not be farming out the job to random … Read the rest

Cash cow going dry 

Hadley Freeman writes

Last week Fox Varian, a 22-year-old woman, was awarded $2 million by a New York court in a medical malpractice lawsuit against doctors who gave her a double mastectomy when she was 16 — not because it was medically necessary but because Varian was then identifying as a boy.

Varian’s mother, Claire Deacon, did not want her then teenage daughter to lose her breasts. She had seen her autistic daughter through a host of other problems, including anxiety and anorexia. Varian had cycled through name changes — Isabella to Gabriel to Rowan and finally to Fox — as if she were trying to find herself. Then she announced she was transgender. Instead of seeing this as yet

… Read the rest
10 times a day 

Oh hell no.

Growing up in India, I learned that thank yous are only for distant strangers, and that close friends and family get offended if you thank them. I would say thank you to a speaker delivering a formal talk but never to a friend helping during a crisis or a family member making me dinner. But living in the UK for two decades has forced me to adopt our incessant “thank you” culture. I now find myself saying thank you at least 10 times a day and sometimes many more. Nevertheless, there are some British “thank yous” that I would ban completely, if I could.

…

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that we

… Read the rest
But but but her eyeliner 

Imane Khelif’s latest propaganda campaign should fool nobody

That’s Oliver Brown in The Telegraph.

Protests against the athlete’s gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics were never about the transgender issue in the first place, but about a disqualification from the previous year’s world championships over sex test results indicating the presence of male chromosomes. Khelif has still not furnished any evidence to the contrary.

Instead, there has been only a cynical PR campaign, soft-soaping the Paris travesty by portraying Khelif – rather than the women smashed in the face by an opponent they could not even be sure was biologically female – as the victim. Worse, credulous news giants are still falling for it. Take this Mills &

… Read the rest
To defy cultural expectations 

CNN continues the campaign of cheating and insulting women.

The 26-year-old champion’s path from her humble roots in Algeria has been defined by determination and the courage to defy cultural expectations, including that a girl should not fight.

Now, Khelif has emerged as an unwitting lightning rod in the culture wars shaping elite sports and likely to influence new International Olympic Committee (IOC) policies on women’s eligibility. Those rules could establish whether to reintroduce mandatory genetic testing – determining not only whether Khelif is eligible to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Games, but also how athletes whose bodies fall outside narrow expectations of what it means to be a woman are pushed out altogether.

Ah yes “narrow expectations” … Read the rest

Credulity stretching time 

Alex Massie on the determination to put women in danger for the sake of male games.

Voters should know that if they vote for the SNP (or the Green Party), they really are voting for men convicted of some of the most heinous crimes to be housed in the female prison estate simply because these men have decided they are in fact women themselves.

Or, in fact, because these men have decided to pretend they think they are in fact women themselves, in order to be housed in the female prison estate.

Note that there’s no way to tell the difference. Note that the SNP and the Green Party don’t even care that there’s no way to tell. Note the … Read the rest

Back in the spotlight 

Why is the SNP still fighting for a trans killer to be in a female jail?

In November 2013, the Scottish courts dealt with an “utterly depraved” murder. Eight months earlier, Robert Shankland, a “caring and vulnerable” 46-year-old in poor health, had been lured to a property in the town of Glenrothes, Fife.

There he was subjected to grotesque torture over several hours, including a sexual assault. After a ligature was tied around Shankland’s neck and a plastic bag pulled over his head, his three killers ate ham sandwiches alongside the body.

Among them was Paris Green, 22 at the time, who was born Peter Laing.

Another Paris, eh. Funny how they don’t name themselves Pittsburgh or Detroit or Grimethorpe.… Read the rest

He did it all 

If you look at it the right way it’s true.

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Donald Trump spoke from prepared remarks as he discussed the persecution of Mariam Ibrahim. Ibrahim was unjustly imprisoned and sentenced to death in Sudan in 2014, in a case centered on her Christian faith, until she was released that same year following a global outcry.

Trump correctly said: “Believers all over the planet rallied to Mariam’s cause, prayed for her protection, and successfully pressured for her release.”

But then the president appeared to ad-lib – and claimed that he was the one who got Ibrahim freed.

“I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call,

… Read the rest
Definition 

Trump doesn’t know what a mistake is.

The president said Friday that he had watched and passed along the video — which focused on claims of voter fraud until the final seconds of the clip — to unidentified “people” to post to his Truth Social account, but that he “didn’t see the whole thing,” including the brief portion that showed the heads of the Obamas edited onto the bodies of apes.

In response to a question from The Washington Post about whether he would heed the calls of some Republicans to apologize for posting the video, which was widely condemned as racist and offensive, Trump said he would not.

“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on his

… Read the rest
no idea what they even are 

JCO keeps right on demonstrating that nobody’s home.

So JCO has never had the faintest idea why toilets are designated for women or men? She’s never been assaulted or spied on in a women’s toilet? That would be odd, because it’s a very common experience for women. She thinks there’s no need for prevention, it’s enough to do something unspecified after it happens?

And she calls us “airy, vacuous”…… Read the rest

Pastor Patsy Patsy 

We’re supposed to believe this?

Oh come on. He’s notoriously a shameless liar. His assuring anyone of anything means nothing. Adding “clearly” and “unequivocally” to the verb does nothing to make it true. Trump lies as easily and readily as he sneers and mocks and insults and libels. And as for “He understands the painful and racist history in America of depicting African Americans as apes, a tactic … Read the rest

Naughty tauty 

Hey kids it’s time for Ontology Gymnastics!

Biological sex is an “artificial parameter” for deciding where prisoners should be held, Scottish National Party (SNP) ministers have told a court.

Gerry Moynihan KC, acting for the Scottish Government, argued that there should be flexibility to allow transgender women, who are biological men, to serve their sentences in female jails.

He told the Court of Session in Edinburgh that defining “a man as a man and a woman as a woman, without exceptions” was “artificial”.

I know I’ve already made fun of this, but it’s just so rewarding. Defining an X as an X is not so much artificial as it is a tautology. It’s the very opposite of a definition, because … Read the rest