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According to its critics

Steven Pinker on Trump v Harvard:

In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two

… Read the rest

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According to its critics
By Ophelia Benson, May 23, 2025

Steven Pinker on Trump v Harvard:

In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two

… Read the rest

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

According to its critics 

Steven Pinker on Trump v Harvard:

In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two

… Read the rest
No forrinners!! 

Half a century ago Harvard failed to invite the young Donald Trump to partake of its services, therefore Harvard has to go.

Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Friday, less than 24 hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university and one of its most prestigious.

Later Friday morning, at the university’s request, a federal judge in Boston moved swiftly to block implementation of the federal government’s order.

The judge, Allison D. Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order against the federal edict, agreeing that Harvard had shown that its implementation would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to the university.

Well duh. That’s why Trump is doing it.… Read the rest

Guest post: What do you mean by ”exclusionary”? 

Originally a comment by maddog on What makes them experts?

“The judgment does not remove the legal protections trans people currently enjoy under the Equality Act,” the experts said. “But it may be used to justify exclusionary policies that further stigmatise and marginalise an already vulnerable population, as well as human rights defenders working to protect and promote transgender rights.

So much to unpack here!

The judgment “may be used to justify exclusionary policies . . . .”

What do you mean by ”exclusionary”? Who gets to say what policies are ”exclusionary”? You imply a universal pejorative to the word ”exclusionary,” as if ”exclusion” is always bad. Is that really true? I mean, if you classify or categorize anything, you … Read the rest

Go for both! Go for both! 

Sure. It’s just like mixing chocolates with nuts and chocolates without nuts. It’s like wearing a red shirt and black jeans. It’s like reading Pride and Prejudice one day and Middlemarch the next.

#HormonesAreAmazing#TransRightsAreHumanRights#transformation

… Read the rest

Not even neighbors 

Trump is a stinking liar chapter eleventy billion.

JOHANNESBURG, May 22 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.

“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In fact, the video, published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters

… Read the rest
What makes them experts? 

UN press release on the who gets to be a woman question:

A group of independent human rights experts* today expressed concern about the implications of the recent UK Supreme Court judgment interpreting the definition of “woman” under the Equality Act 2010.

While the ruling was limited to a question of statutory interpretation, the experts warned that it risks entrenching legal uncertainty and undermining the rights of transgender persons in all aspects of life, including education.

But what about the way the bogus “definition of woman” to include men risks undermining the rights of female persons in all aspects of life, including education?

Why does sweaty concern for the purported rights of trans people (“rights” such as being endorsed as … Read the rest

Katie Katie Katie 

BBC headline:

Sex offender jailed for contacting young girls

Tell us more, Beeb.

A registered sex offender who breached a prevention order by sending sexually explicit messages to schoolgirls has been jailed for four years and eight months. Katie Birtles was arrested on 16 January after trying to meet a 14-year-old girl at the railway station in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Birtles, of Wroxall Drive, Grantham, breached a 10-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO), preventing any contact with children, which was put in place in 2017 for previous offences. Lincolnshire Police said messages on Birtles’ phone over a two-week period in January found the offender was planning to meet victims for sex and had offered to buy gifts such as wine and

… Read the rest
Silencing the CDC 

Trump to CDC: shut up.

To accomplish its mission of increasing the health security of the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that it “conducts critical science and provides health information” to protect the nation. But since President Trump’s administration assumed power in January, many of the platforms the CDC used to communicate with the public have gone silent, an NPR analysis found.

Many of the CDC’s newsletters have stopped being distributed, workers at the CDC say. Health alerts about disease outbreaks, previously sent to health professionals subscribed to the CDC’s Health Alert Network, haven’t been dispatched since March. The agency’s main social media channels have come under new ownership of the Department of Health

… Read the rest
This soup of legal misinformation 

Sonia Sodha on the obstinate refusal to accept that men are not women:

A few weeks on, it’s becoming clear that despite the exceptional clarity of a judgment handed down by the highest court in the land, implementing it is a different matter. The rule of law, it seems, depends on most people choosing to follow it.

Some organisations, like Britain’s biggest union, are brazenly flouting it. Unison is allowing a male member who identifies as female to stand for election for its national council positions reserved for women. Last year its president accused a group of nurses from Darlington of “anti-trans bigotry” for standing up for their right to female-only changing rooms at work.

So what kind … Read the rest

No Women’s Conference for you 

So Labour is canceling women. That will make everything better.

The Labour Party has postponed its annual Women’s Conference in the wake of advice following last month’s ruling on the legal definition of a woman.

You bitches don’t want men taking everything that belongs to you? Fine!! We’ll just cancel your damn conference then, so ha!

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Up until the ruling, Labour had allowed people [men] to self-identify as a woman, so trans women could attend the event and also take part in “positive action” measures such as all-women shortlists.

That is, Labour had allowed men to ruin everything for women and

… Read the rest
Lies travel halfway around the world 

Earlier today…

… Read the rest

Even the Quakers hate women 

The Quakers are just as brain-dead as everyone else on this subject.

As a faith group, Quakers in Britain have a clear position statement, recorded in Minute 31 of Britain Yearly Meeting 2021. We wish to welcome and affirm trans and non-binary people in our communities. We have underlined this position in recent years through acts of witness, advocacy and solidarity. The Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers [2025] has affected the interpretation of some parts of the Equality Act 2010. No provision in respect of protection from discrimination for trans people has been affected, nor has the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Following the ruling, the Equality & Human Rights Commission has issued interim non-statutory

… Read the rest
Guest post: They don’t get to use women as human shields 

Originally a comment by maddog on Some memberz of the communniny.

While the full implications of the ruling are not yet clear, some members of the trans community feel threatened by it.

BBC, how can you even say that? Of course the implications are clear! Did you even read the opinion? Where the Act says “sex” or “women” or “men,” it means biological sex. What could they have said to make it any more clear?

The Supreme Court also held that discrimination against someone because of their gender identity is also prohibited, but the acts proscribed have to be actually attributable to the person’s transgender status. The two might overlap when a transgender person is actually perceived as the … Read the rest

Get out 

Will Darlington Memorial Hospital ever just do what it’s told? It seems not.

Further pressure has been placed on Darlington Memorial Hospital to “comply” with same sex policies as nurses remain locked in a legal battle over a transgender woman using their changing room.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation trust, alongside others across the country will be made to comply with a Supreme Court ruling moved forward last month that defines gender as “biological”.

When? And why won’t they just do it, without waiting to be “made” to do it?

I suppose it’s the usual answer: because women don’t matter, while a handful of men who pretend to be women do matter, matter infinitely, matter more than 5 or 10 or 100 times … Read the rest

Guest post: The armadillos were showing a lot of promise 

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Catastrophic inland migration.

Meanwhile in South-Eastern Norway, where the bulk of the population lives, 2021 still stands as the last somewhat “normal” year so far. In what we used to think of as a “normal” year the water flow in our rivers would increase something like five-fold, and the levels in our reservoirs (i.e. lakes) would rise several meters above the “highest regulated water level” around the second half of May due to snowmelt in the mountains. This “spring flood” was considered so reliable that hydropower companies would lower their reservoirs towards the “lowest regulated water level” during the winter season (when the demand for power was high and prices were good), … Read the rest

This doc thinks she’s clever 

Helen Webberley is out of her depth.

Women live as women – simple – it is not about dresses, heels, pinks, or body parts. Gender identity and expression is not a costume and exclusion is not clever, it is a civil wrong.

Being a woman is not about body parts?

I think you’ll find it is, actually.

If … Read the rest

Catastrophic inland migration 

Same old same old – it’s vastly worse than we thought and we’re doing nothing at all to slow it down.

Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future.

The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.

The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new

… Read the rest
Inclusive exclusion 

Houses of Parliament refuses to ban trans women from female lavatories

Bros before hos eh?

Stupid women. They should just stay home if they want lavatories without men in them. Women are so fucking demanding.

The Houses of Parliament have refused to ban trans women from female lavatories despite the Supreme Court’s gender ruling.

A spokesman told The Telegraph that the House of Commons would be waiting for guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission before changing its rules.

You mean reverting its rules. The House of Commons hasn’t always let men use the female lavatories. If it had, they wouldn’t be called “female lavatories.” There was a rule (however implicit) against men in the women’s toilets until … Read the rest

The Welsh Women’s football team 

It’s a funny thing…much of the time, or most of the time, or nearly all of the time, BBC Woman’s Hour seems to know perfectly well what a woman is. It is, after all, in the title of their program. Their daily program that they put on every weekday.

https://twitter.com/BBCWomansHour/status/1924389161068356050

The man. Her beloved sister. Ordinary words used in an ordinary way.

… Read the rest
BBC hates women 

Same.

Just listened to this and found it quite uncomfortable listening.

Because it felt like @BBCNuala was challenging @KateBMwriting to justify the existence of lesbians. By pushing her to say men couldn’t be lesbians – then saying some people might find that view offensive.

So I re-listened to the recent Robin Moira White interview (trans identifying man + barrister) to compare. But there were no questions that

… Read the rest