The sheer cluelessness can be jaw-dropping.

The Guardian has a piece by a trans woman about another trans woman’s voice training:

But a different voice is not just a luxury, it’s also a means of protection. For trans women, voice is often times the most significant indicator of their transness to the outside world. In 2018, LGBTQ advocates documented at least 26 homicides of trans people in the United States. Two murders of trans women have already been reported in 2019. For trans women, achieving a feminine voice can serve as a cloak of protection from bias and bigotry.

And how many murders of women were there in 2018?

I didn’t find stats for 2018 but 2016 will do… Read the rest

A couple of comments from fans of that Facebook post about families giving birth:

• I will never understand people who are offended by inclusivity. Saying “birthing individuals” takes nothing away from cis women and adds a lot for trans men. Thank you for being inclusive with your language!
• Why can’t people understand that including everyone isn’t erasing anyone?

So “All Lives Matter” takes nothing away from black people and adds a lot for white people? No. The “All” replacing “Black” is there for the explicit purpose of erasing the “Black” part and the injustice BLM is campaigning against.  Woke people understand that without the slightest struggle, don’t they, yet they deny it angrily when the word that’s erased is “women.” … Read the rest

A retired general talks about why Trump’s possible plan to pardon a list of people convicted or accused of war crimes is such a horrendous idea.

[E]ach soldier, sailor, airman or Marine undergoes extensive training regarding rules of engagement, the ethics of the military profession, and the law of land warfare. That training is usually repeated within units every year of the service-members’ enlistment, and that training is refreshed prior to deploying to combat and is reinforced by unit leaders during combat operations.

That’s because commanders — the ones ultimately responsible for good order, discipline and adherence to professional military standards — know, as difficult as it may sound, they must ensure and apply a moral boundary and a

A Facebook post by Childbirth International:

Birth trauma is becoming more widely discussed and parents are opening up about their experiences in pregnancy, labour, birth, and beyond. Doulas can be incredibly valuable as an addition to a family’s birth team to guide the family in making informed decisions and sharing valuable skills to help each individual advocate for their goals and needs.

With Childbirth International you can train as a birth doula and trauma-informed professional concurrently with our completely flexible, online courses.

Notice anything…peculiar?

Of course you do. The words “woman” and “mother” are carefully, awkwardly, painfully absent. We get parents opening up about their experiences in pregnancy and labour, as if both parents had such experiences. We get … Read the rest

The war on women escalates.

A European organization that provides doctor-prescribed abortion pills by mail is under order by the US Food and Drug Administration to stop deliveries.

The federal agency sent a warning letter to Aid Access this month requesting that it “immediately cease causing the introduction of these violative drugs into U.S. Commerce.”

“Violative” is not a word.

“The sale of misbranded and unapproved new drugs poses an inherent risk to consumers who purchase those products,” the letter says. “Drugs that have circumvented regulatory safeguards may be contaminated; counterfeit, contain varying amounts of active ingredients, or contain different ingredients altogether.”

Translation: the drugs may do what they’re supposed to do and we have orders to put a … Read the rest

We need this.

https://twitter.com/cctv_idiots/status/1130165583616577536… Read the rest

This time we have to start with the title, whether a sub chose it or not.

Trans women are victims of misogyny, too – and all feminists must recognize this

No. There is no such “must.” Trans women are male people, and there is no “must” that commands feminists to extend their feminism to men. No. All trans activists must stop trying to bully feminist women into changing the subject to men. No.

The subtitle is also bad.

Some feminists claim misogyny targets only those who have female sex features (ovaries, vaginas and uteruses). We should be alarmed by this view.

No. We should be alarmed by the spectacle of people telling us men can be women, and the Guardian … Read the rest

Ray Blanchard talks to the National Review:

Kearns: What do we mean by “gender identity”?

Blanchard: What do I mean by it?

Kearns: Yes. Let’s start with that.

Blanchard: Well, back in the days when I was writing a lot on that topic, which is quite a while ago now, I tended to avoid the phrase “gender identity” because I think that it’s a trivial concept when it’s applied to normal people. I mean normal men and normal woman know what sex they are, and they respond to that automatically, like when looking for a washroom. But I think it’s only at very unusual moments that a normal man or woman has a conscious awareness of “I’m a woman” or

From a Fresh Air interview with the novelist Stephen McCauley:

GROSS: The first time we talked in 1996, we talked about how one of your characters – your main character – always felt like he was either too young and then he felt like he was too old. And he never felt like he was the right age. And you talked about how when you started teaching, you felt like you were too young to be an authority figure. And then at some point, you felt like you were too old in the sense that you had kind of bypassed the common reference points that you used to have with your students. Where are you now?

MCCAULEY: I’m at the

Catherine Bennett notes an interesting juxtaposition.

In terms of knowing the enemy, much of it, in the US, will certainly resemble the Alabama misogynists – the 25 white, male, no longer young Republicans who have just stripped half their state’s population of reproductive rights. Photographs have been generously distributed. But, as the men would probably be the first to admit, they couldn’t have ushered in a generation or more of unwanted children without assistance from at least two women combatants, Terri Collins and the state governor, Kay Ivey.

…

Signing the ban into law, Ivey celebrated “a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious & that every life is a sacred gift from God”.

“Drink bleach” is a version of “drop dead” or “fuck off”: it’s not a “miracle cure,” or a humdrum ordinary medical cure either. Bleach is not good to ingest. It’s toxic.

But that doesn’t stop monsters from peddling it as a miracle cure:

An American pastor from New Jersey backed by a British former clairvoyant is running a network that gives up to 50,000 Ugandans a “miracle cure” made from industrial bleach, claiming drinking the toxic fluid eradicates cancer, HIV/Aids, malaria and most other diseases.

(A former clairvoyant? He used to be able to see magical stuff that no one else can see but then lost the knack?)

The network, led by pastor Robert Baldwin and part-funded by Sam

Where do we draw the line?

When Mary Gregory filled out the registration form to compete in a local weightlifting event, she checked the box that read “female” without hesitation.

“I mean, that’s my gender,” she said “I didn’t even think about it. That’s who I am.”

If any eyebrows were raised, Gregory didn’t notice, and on April 27, after months of training, she strode onto the platform at the Best Western hotel just east of Charlottesville and wowed the spectators and fellow powerlifters in attendance. That night she posted a picture on Instagram of herself holding a trophy, telling her 120 followers about the records she set for her age and weight class in the 100% Raw Powerlifting

Jeffrey Toobin reminds us to be outraged:

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called President Trump’s cries of “TREASON” on Friday morning “reckless and irresponsible,” adding that it’s yet another norm the President has broken.

“And treason is a crime for which death is a potential penalty,” Toobin said on CNN’s “New Day.” “It is so reckless and irresponsible to talk that way. One of the things that this president has done has violated so many norms.”

“It’s not illegal to say what he said, but the idea of a president accusing people of any crime — remember, he accused  Michael Cohen’s in-laws of crimes. A president, who is the head of the Justice Department, the head of

Wait.

Discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women, including trans women, and move beyond outdated, exclusionary understandings of feminism. #NoTERFsonourTurf” [4/4]

— Liberation at EdUni (@EUSALiberation) May 7, 2019

Discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women and “TERFs” must be kept out. So discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women but not the women who disagree that men can be women. So discussions on women’s rights must include men who say they are women and the women who love them but not women who refuse to agree that men who don’t “identify as” men are therefore women. So ALL women but not ALL women. Mkay.

H/t Holly

https://twitter.com/aytchellesse/status/1129408007564140544… Read the rest