The Times defends Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work again.

"Legislation that attempts to censor school curricula violates principles of free thought and free expression and is at its core un-American."
— American Society of Magazine Editors statement about The 1619 Project and @nhannahjones https://t.co/jRaX7aIZOg pic.twitter.com/rXOA4J2yLF

— Cliff Levy (@cliffordlevy) June 15, 2021

I don’t actually agree with the principle as they state it. I don’t think schools should be free to teach, say, that Emmett Till deserved what he got. Is the 1619 Project the obverse of that? I don’t think so.… Read the rest

More on that:

A legal red light district is set to be scrapped after a “significant” reduction of sex workers in the area.

Why is it called a “red light district”? That’s a euphemism. Who is shielded by that euphemism? The men who pay to rape women. “Red light district” conveys zero information. It’s a district where men pay women to be sexual toilets for them.

The Managed Approach (MA) area in Holbeck, Leeds, allowed sex workers to operate without fear of prosecution, but was paused in March 2020.

Ah yes it was all about compassion for the “sex workers,” wasn’t it, nothing to do with compassion for the johns. There’s another way to spare “sex workers” the fear … Read the rest

One piece of good news, which is actually just a piece of bad news undone.

related pause and the stranglehold of certain health-funded projects, that have pushed for 'sex work is work' policy and sticking plaster solutions for the women being abused on the zone will end. I hope the disgraced Leeds City Council that have long defended this approach,

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) June 15, 2021

for this dereliction of duty and catastrophic failure in tacking grotesque abuse of women in the sex trade. LCC enabled and encouraged men to pay for sex with the most vulnerable women as though it was a 'right'. Shame on them all: https://t.co/3RRQuPhAtk

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) June 15, 2021

Once more for … Read the rest

That guy who calls himself Wisey the Pretty isn’t happy that Maya won her appeal.

You might have heard about Maya Forstater, who made being “gender critical” a protected belief in the UK last weekend. I made this comic to summarize the situation in case you weren’t following. We can’t let that embolden and radicalize TERFs all around the world.

Not your call, bro. You don’t get to decide what we’re allowed to think and say.

Sure, because before the ruling, we weren’t allowed to think these thoughts in private. Our thoughts were public property.… Read the rest

Peggy Orenstein has an op-ed in the NY Times on why porn literacy is needed.

Parents often say that if they try to have the sex talk with their teens, the kids plug their ears and hum or run screaming from the room. But late last month, those roles were reversed: After a workshop for high school juniors at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School promoting critical thinking about online pornography, it was parents who flipped out. Some took to the media — The New York Post, Fox News, The Federalist and other like-minded outlets jumped on the story — accusing the school of indoctrinating children.

That may be because it was unclear, at least in the source I … Read the rest

Critical Race Theory may be a mixed bag that includes some very silly or sinister ideas, but on the other hand there’s this kind of thing.

This is how it introduces Reconstruction: through the gosh-darn sticktoitiveness of Francis Tillou Nicholls, the ex-Confederate "redeemer" who crushed black political rights. pic.twitter.com/mOpWVJUZob

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) June 14, 2021

In other words “history” as presented by Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind.… Read the rest

The acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs:

Medical experts have determined the Pfizer & Moderna vaccine are safe and effective for pregnant people. Scientific evidence suggests that #COVID-19 poses a greater threat while pregnant, increasing the severity of illness, likelihood of hospitalization, and risk of preterm birth

— Acting ASD for Health Affairs (@DoDHealth) June 14, 2021

Pregnant women. The word for those people is women. Stop erasing us.… Read the rest

“All you Karens” and “panties in a bunch” right out of the gate. Top class doctoring.

I'm terrified of the medical professionals getting pumped out of these indoctrination campspic.twitter.com/Kdf7XRJVNl

— TheM0dAlice (@TheM0dalice) June 13, 2021

… Read the rest

Areas with more people vaccinated are found to have lower rates of infection. I’m tempted to add “You don’t say!” but the Post reports that in fact that wasn’t true until now.

As recently as 10 days ago, vaccination rates did not predict a difference in coronavirus cases, but immunization rates have diverged, and case counts in the highly vaccinated states are dropping quickly.

…

But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.

…

Local public health officials fear the public is tuning out the danger as they see news reports

… Read the rest

Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:

The idea that will and money could create success was at the heart of the Reagan Revolution. Its adherents championed the idea that any individual could prosper in America, so long as the government stayed out of his (it was almost always his) business.

Critical Race Theory challenges this individualist ideology. CRT emerged in the late 1970s in legal scholarship written by people who recognized that legal protections for individuals did not, in fact, level the playing field in America. They noted that racial biases are embedded in our legal system. From that, other scholars noted that racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other biases are embedded in the other systems that make up our

… Read the rest

Course description for Law 266 – Critical Race Theory at UCLA Law.

General Course Description:

Throughout American history, race has profoundly affected the lives of individuals, the growth of social institutions, the substance of culture, and the workings of our political economy. Not surprisingly, this impact has been substantially mediated through the law and legal institutions. To understand the deep interconnections between race and law, and particularly the ways in which race and law are mutually constitutive, is an extraordinary intellectual challenge. That is precisely the project of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This course will pursue this project by exploring emerging themes within CRT. Contrary to the traditional notion that racial subordination represents a deviation from the liberal legal ideal,

… Read the rest

From today, the NHS Scotland Pride Badge will be worn by health care staff who have taken the pledge to show their support for LGBT+ communities. #NHSScotlandPride pic.twitter.com/AfJWwC24xZ

— Scot Gov Health (@scotgovhealth) June 14, 2021

Has there ever been an NHS badge signifying a pledge to show support for women?

Some NHS staff won’t want to take that pledge because of the way the T bullies and coerces and threatens women. What will happen to them if they refuse? Will they be reported and punished? Will they be fired?

Staff and patients alike should be free to be their true selves, safe in the knowledge that they will be listened to and not judged.#NHSScotlandPridehttps://t.co/aKeqRk2bNu

— Scot Gov

… Read the rest

Continuing the effort to pin down what Critical Race Theory actually is, I find an explainer from the American Bar Association (which I figure is establishment enough that it won’t be accused of Marxist postmodernism or modern postMarxism).

CRT is not a diversity and inclusion “training” but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship. [ Kimberlé ] Crenshaw—who coined the term “CRT”—notes that CRT is not a noun, but a verb. It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice.

Yeah that’s not a good start. It is a noun; … Read the rest

Fair questions.

https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1403471520291332096 https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1403471523357265927

Or, she concludes, “is it about adding more empty praise to the teaching of history and completing the sanitization of history that already is the case? If so, why?”

Because it’s more cheerful, I suppose.… Read the rest

Open Democracy erases women from a discussion of abortion rights. Much democracy, very open.

“Mum!” “Murderer!” “Give your baby a present – a birthday!” For close to 25 years, pregnant people were harassed by anti-choice protesters as they made their way into the MSI Reproductive Choices clinic in Ealing, west London.

No, not pregnant people, pregnant women. However butch any of them may have been, they were still women. If you can’t say the word “women” you can’t defend women’s rights.

Thanks to successful campaigning by Sister Supporter – a group of grassroots activists that I am part of – this is no longer the case. Our activism has also spread nationally, protecting women from anti-choice harassment outside

… Read the rest

Another pebble added to the pile, or piece of scaffolding removed [standard note that the source is the Daily Mail]:

Kate Grimes, a former chief executive of Kingston Hospital in South-West London, has joined a growing chorus calling on organisations to withdraw from the Stonewall scheme.

…

Ms Grimes accused Stonewall of ‘undermining’ the NHS’s ability to keep patients safe, ‘stifling’ free speech and creating a ‘culture of fear’ among some NHS staff.

And she warned [that] some advice risked ‘opening up NHS organisations to litigation and reputational damage’.

Ms Grimes recalled how she received offensive messages when she came out as a lesbian in the late 1980s, her pride at running one of the country’s leading HIV/AIDS services,

… Read the rest

Utopia at last: free binders and packers for the people.

Trans students in Edinburgh are being offered free prosthetic breasts and “packers” that help give the appearance of having a penis.

Edinburgh University’s students’ association (EUSA) is paying for “gender-empowering” items that also include breast-binders and compression underwear to hide male genitalia.

“Gender-empowering”? What does that even mean?

For Women Scotland, the women’s rights group, said it was “horrified” to learn about the programme.

It said: “Breast-binding is a dangerous and regressive practice that destroys healthy tissue and causes breathing problems and damage to the ribcage. It restricts young women’s capacity to participate in normal activities and if done for long periods will cause permanent damage.”

But in exchange … Read the rest

How interesting – Katy Montgomerie doesn’t want men in his spaces.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1404048311800287237

He doesn’t want men in his spaces, but he does want to be in women’s spaces.… Read the rest

It wears the badge or it gets the hose.

A campaign encouraging Scottish NHS staff to sign a pledge and wear a badge supporting gay, lesbian and transgender people has been criticised after it emerged participation in the scheme will be monitored.

Have Scottish NHS staff ever been encouraged to wear a badge supporting women?

The NHS Pride pledge, devised by Scotland’s health service and the SNP government, with input from the charity Stonewall, launches tomorrow as part of Pride month.

There’s your problem right there. Reject “input” from Stonewall.

The campaign has rankled some doctors and nurses, however, amid leaked guidance from civil servants that health boards should record uptake among staff. A Scottish government briefing passed to

… Read the rest

Politifact has an explainer on Critical Race Theory.

The grandfather of the movement was Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell, who in the mid-1970s voiced frustration at the limited impact of landmark civil rights laws and U.S. Supreme Court rulings of the previous decade. While those changes aimed to broaden access to high-quality education, jobs and housing, they fell short, he said. Laws remained embedded in a set of values and practices that discriminated against people of color, Bell said.

You know, it was the same way with feminism – revived feminism, aka second wave. It was about vastly more than laws – it was about a set of values and practices that discriminated against women. Better laws are … Read the rest