As the Taliban swallows Afghanistan…

In many districts captured by the Taliban, new rules have already been imposed, including restrictions on women’s movement. Women are not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male guardian and fully covered in the traditional burqa.

Why? You know why. Because men are people, and women are nothing but gaping holes. Men make the rules, women wear bales of cloth to hide their obscene gaping holes. Men can’t avoid raping women, so women have to be walking shrouds on the rare occasions they’re allowed to go outside. Men matter, and women are garbage. Men need children, and women are the only way to get children, so women must … Read the rest

Katie Benner at the Times reported a couple of days ago:

Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that his abrupt resignation in January had been prompted by Justice Department officials’ warning that President Donald J. Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

To put it another way, Trump tried to coerce a US attorney [i.e. a DoJ employee] in Atlanta to lie about voter fraud in Georgia, and was going to fire him for refusing to comply. Trump was going to fire a DoJ attorney for refusing to lie for Trump.

While he

There’s a story going around that Trump was supposed to be “reinstated” today. Cool word choice: it suggests that he was uninstated illegitimately when in fact this time he lost the electoral vote along with the popular (aka actual) vote.

“The morning of August 13 it’ll be the talk of the world,” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow impresario and purveyor of discredited conspiracy theories about a stolen presidential election, warned during a recent appearance on a conservative podcast. Lindell, who is being sued for billions in damages by Dominion, a maker of voting machines that the right-wing bedding entrepreneur has called fraudulent, promised a day of reckoning, when the “Communists” would be kicked out of power and Donald Trump

One of the more annoying thought-terminating clichés of the moment is the “please, let’s not talk about the roots of misogynist violence now when the news is fresh, lets give the families time to mourn” one.

I say this because I’m grinding my teeth over one I just saw.

On Monday, I argued on @BBCWomansHour that extreme misogyny should be regarded as a form of radicalisation. Now I’m reading that the perpetrator of a mass shooting in Plymouth was a misogynist, obsessed with guns & described himself as an incel. Not terror-related? Really?

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 13, 2021

Joan was on Womans Hour because she has a new book on the subject, and because the Home Office has … Read the rest

The Times yesterday on the male CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis:

The head of one of Scotland’s largest rape crisis centres has claimed that “bigoted” people seeking help from her organisation could be “challenged on their prejudices” in an apparent comment on trans rights and women-only spaces.

Not a great lede – the waters are muddied already. The head of that rape crisis centre is a man, but nobody who didn’t already know that would realize the waters have been muddied. It’s not “her” organisation. I know we’re under strict orders to use the pronouns that match the lie, but if we do that we mislead the people we’re supposed to be informing.

Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and former

Wadhwa has issued a statement.

https://t.co/8GoIVG0hNJ Some further thoughts from our Chief Executive, Mridul Wadhwa on survivor centred support and tackling all forms of inequality that harm women’s lives.

— Edinburgh RapeCrisis (@EdinRapeCrisis) August 12, 2021

It says that as if we were longing to hear more from him, rather than much much less. He probably wrote the tweet himself.

I am writing this because I want to make clear what I said on the Guilty Feminist Podcast, whilst I wish my language had been clearer, a few sentences in particular have been taken out of context. My input on the podcast is based on almost two decades of experience I have in working to tackle violence against women and

I was re-reading Richard Noll’s The Jung Cult this morning and there was this passage from a 1974 essay by Mircea Eliade that reminded me of some things.

What is more general is a rejection of Christian tradition in the name of achieving an individual and, by the same stroke, a collective renovatio. Even when these ideas are naïvely or even ludicrously expressed, there is always the tacit conviction that a way out of the chaos and meaninglessness of modern life exists and that this way out implies an initiation into, and consequently the revelation of, old and venerable secrets. It is primarily the attraction of a personal initiation that explains the craze for the occult. As is well

Updating to add: Never mind. I was assuming it was a real competition of the athletic kind, and it’s not. This one he can have.

/update

You can’t.

This is me, post 5-mile run, contemplating how I can word this post & turn a controversial national topic into a moment of understanding and education…As of three days ago, I made the decision & commitment to compete in an NPC fitness competition – in the women’s division. pic.twitter.com/7NKwdUVD0G

— Gabbi Alon Tuft (@GabbiAlon) July 30, 2021

You can’t. You can’t make “a moment of understanding and education” by competing against women when you are a man, especially when you are a retired professional wrestler man. That’s not “competing.” It’s cheating, which … Read the rest

It appears Waterstones is actively censoring Helen Joyce’s bestselling book.

Two Fair Coppers tried to buy a copy of @HJoyceGender’s ‘Trans’ in their local Waterstones. It had only one copy, which it hid in the stock room.

Interesting to see that some are so afraid, they will even sacrifice profit. pic.twitter.com/eRcvSCd6YN

— WeAreFairCop (@WeAreFairCop) August 12, 2021

This seemed to be a decision made higher up the chain than the floor staff. The book has a designated number on the store room shelf that can be immediately accessed if it's asked for. No browsing & coming upon it like others books.

— CarrieD (@Carriedenne1) August 12, 2021

Which is, you know, the whole point of bookstores.… Read the rest

Jo Bartosch at The Critic:

On 2 August, the chief executive of [Edinburgh Rape Crisis], Mridul Wadhwa, appeared on the popular podcast The Guilty Feminist to discuss working in the women’s sector. While writing this, I am mindful that referring to Wadhwa as a man could be deemed a hate crime in Scotland — potentially carrying a hefty custodial sentence. But this legal gag cannot undo the fact that, despite identifying as a transwoman, Wadhwa is male. Furthermore, Wadhwa has boasted about not having a Gender Recognition Certificate and has taken multiple posts which are usually reserved for females, claiming that at least one of his previous employers didn’t know he was male.

When asked about “building bridges” between

NPR is doing it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is doubling down on its recommendation that people who are pregnant get the COVID-19 vaccine following new data underscoring its safety and effectiveness throughout pregnancy.

Hiding the word “women” as if it were radioactive.

This recommendation is coming at a time when doctors across the country are reporting an uptick in the number of unvaccinated pregnant people getting hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19.

It would be so simple, and easy, and normal, to say “pregnant women” there, but no, we have to think of the self-absorbed brats who “identify as” men in their jeans and binders.

The low vaccination rate in this group is striking, doctors note.

Originally a comment by Rob on The judgment of history is too late.

A couple of years ago I attended a conference for the oil and gas industry. We’re not directly involved in that industry, but they make use of our companies services for specialist environmental monitoring.

The conference was heavily picketed and was protected by a significant police presence for the three days it was on. Protestors had even gone to the trouble of placing remote triggered sleep disruption devices on and around the hotel prior to the cordon going up. Kudos for commitment I guess.

Apart from the fact that some of the protesters had taken a four hour return flight to attend the protest, what I … Read the rest

What were we just saying? When the climate report came out?

The White House is calling on OPEC to boost oil production to combat spiking gas prices. @ylanmui reports. https://t.co/EsDNcXeW0l pic.twitter.com/FtVuNzFLOt

— CNBC (@CNBC) August 11, 2021

That. Climate, oh gosh, that’s terrible, we really have to do something at last, and by the way please up your production of oil.… Read the rest

Sackbut alerted us to Roy Speckhardt’s piece on signs you’re having unapproved thoughts. The piece is…flawed.

Even humanists, despite our commitment to critical thinking, are susceptible to disinformation campaigns, especially when we aren’t fully up-to-speed on the latest scholarship and are unaware of the campaigns calculated to use us to advance in-humanist agendas.

First sentence, and already…

This is style rather than substance, but style matters, dammit. It’s not “up-to-speed.” It’s just “up to speed.” There’s no rule that says all familiar phrases require hyphens. Decent writers avoid bonehead mistakes like that because they’re annoying. One of ten signs you’re an annoying writer: you insert meaningless hyphens where they don’t belong.

8) You think the word feminist

Julie Bindel on the bit where they say it and the bit where they take it back:

The University of Essex is fast becoming an example of what happens when institutions capitulate to extreme transgender ideology.

In May the university apologised to two female academics for preventing them from taking part in seminars following baseless accusations of transphobia. The university admitted that they had made “serious mistakes” to Professors Freedman and Phoenix, who are not employed by Essex, and in a damning report, barrister Akua Reindorf criticised the university’s actions. The Vice Chancellor assured both academics that recommendations in the report would be actioned.

But that was May, you see. This is August. You do the math.… Read the rest

Speaking of climate…Lake Oroville, 130 miles northeast of San Francisco.

The first photo is from 3 years ago. The 2nd photo was taken April 27 2021. The 3rd was taken last week.

KQED July 23:

California has descended deep into one of the worst droughts in its recorded history. And perhaps no single location shows more starkly how deep that really is than Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir and a crucial source of water supply for the state’s farm and city water users alike.

San Francisco-based Getty Images photographer Justin Sullivan has been visiting the lake off and on since the driest days of our last severe drought, in 2014.

“Lake Oroville provided the most stunning and visible

We can always just #AskRapeCrisisScotland.

Maggie, as former COO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, do you think shouting Orwellian mantras that tell women to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears is helping promote your cause? #AskRapeCrisisScotland

And does this dispels fears the SGP is captured by unscientific queer theory? https://t.co/WdvD3k9MaL

— For Women Scotland (@ForwomenScot) August 10, 2021

And we still would like to #AskRapeCrisisScotland what their understanding of schedule 9 is and what legal advice they received that told them they could offer a job they claimed was only open to females to a legal, biological male? https://t.co/F7MmB9kfVp

— For Women Scotland (@ForwomenScot) August 10, 2021

So they’re actually telling untruths now?

It just gets worse and worse.… Read the rest

“When someone tells you their pronouns, the only option is to use it.”

Wrong! There are other options. One option is to step away and talk to different people. Another is to say no. Another is to leave the scene altogether. Another is to say “I have no plans ever to refer to you for any reason so I have zero need to know what ‘your’ pronouns are, child.” Another is to say “I didn’t ask and I don’t care.” That’s only the beginning – there are many woundingly indifferent things one can say in reply to such a stupid thing as “telling” someone what “your” pronouns are.

David Gorski is still going “nyah nyah” instead of correcting errors.

There are, by my count, 15 uncorrected errors on David Gorski's website pertaining to the Abigail Shrier controversy. David should focus more on correcting them than on attacking me, which he has done repeatedly. This is really unprofessional. pic.twitter.com/p28plVLeH5

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 9, 2021

Jesse Singal is really not “a hard core GC advocate.” Not even close.

3/ "We corrected the errors that were clear-cut."
This is an astonishing sentence for him to have written. There are multiple isntances of one of his authors writing (not direct quote) "This study says X," with the linked-to study saying the *opposite* of X. Clear-cut errors. pic.twitter.com/7aruz093vO

— Jesse Singal

Sister Outrider on the Rape Crisis Scotland issue:

I have great respect for @rapecrisisscot, and no wish to contribute to the abuse they received. So I’m going to try and unpack why I find this statement frustrating whilst holding compassion for both RCS and the women who (like me) are alarmed by some of what they said. Here goes https://t.co/KAOxKL9VS3

— Sister Outrider (@ClaireShrugged) August 10, 2021

Here is @WG_Scotland’s original thread. They are quite clearly advocating for women being able to access services “on a female-only basis.” And the implication that they said otherwise was a bit of a red herring. https://t.co/MvXxhbfa0M

— Sister Outrider (@ClaireShrugged) August 10, 2021

If women are accessing Rape Crisis etc., it