Ash Sarkar is also furious.

Nobody should be pressured into sex with anybody, for any reason.

I wouldn't want someone to feel they had to have sex with me out of social pressure, but it'd be fair to ask whether racism plays a part in announcing every 5mins that they'd never sleep with a woman of colour!

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 26, 2021

Not comparable. Race is not basic to sex. Sex, on the other hand, is basic to sex. What sex you are and what sex the other is are basic to whether both of you want to have sex or not. What sex you are is basic to sexual attraction. Race is beside the point.

In ordinary … Read the rest

Pink News is furious.

Dunno, but the PN fume makes me want to read it, so I went looking. This seems like the likely culprit:

Trans women bullying lesbians into sex

Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners – then shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too.

Let’s start with the question. Izza lesbian transphobic if. Here’s the thing: sex has to be voluntary. That’s it, that’s the tweet. Nobody has to have sex with anybody. Men who … Read the rest

UK gender-critical people form our views without any need to refer to the polarized landscape in the US. This suggestion from @juliacarriew is oddly US-centric. Still, Andy Lewis has explained the difference very well. See below. pic.twitter.com/gjMG0m3tAU

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) October 25, 2021

Why would gender critical feminists in the UK be associated with the Republicans in any way? They’re two different countries. The Republican party is of little interest to most people in the UK, just as the Tory party is of little interest to most people here. We don’t decide what we think based on how “associated” our thinking may be with a political party in another country; that would be stupid and futile and time-consuming. Maybe … Read the rest

Cornel West and Jeremy Tate in the Post last April:

Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

Yet today, one of America’s greatest

Owen Jones is so important that even Oxfam explains itself to him.

An Oxfam employee got in touch anonymously about the bingo game various media outlets are kicking off about.

This is the truth. Media outlets should stop fuelling bigotry against a marginalised minority with these misleading 'culture war' headlines. https://t.co/21ZaGph1Bb pic.twitter.com/MJ0F7Y8UAH

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 25, 2021

“Senior management agreed that it would be unethical to sell the product, and it was therefore pulled.”

I’m not sure I believe the story, but even if it is true, why would it be “unethical” to sell (or give away) the product?

It wouldn’t. It’s only because there’s this exaggerated wild-eyed panic about the Specialness of being trans that lets people … Read the rest

The Times reports that Oxfam refuses to clarify that threadbare Twitter “explanation” of its decision to erase women.

Oxfam has removed a children’s game celebrating “inspirational women” such as Marie Curie, Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst from its shops because transgender and non-binary staff complained that it did not “respect people of all genders”.

No Rosa Parks for you, bitches!

Wonder Women, a bingo game, features 48 women “who have made a mark on the world, from scientists and artists to writers, activists and beyond”.

Then it quotes Rob’s explanation on Twitter, which I think does not come across as official enough to be Oxfam’s only explanation, but it seems Oxfam doesn’t agree. We don’t even know who “Rob” is… Read the rest

Oxfam confirms yes it really is committed to erasing women whenever a trans lobby tells it to.

Hi there, thank you for getting in touch. We took the decision to remove the game from sale following concerns raised by trans and non-binary colleagues who told us that it didn’t live up to our commitment to respect people of all genders. I hope that helps. – Rob

— Oxfam (@oxfamgb) October 24, 2021

A man explains that yes indeed Oxfam removed a bingo game celebrating female achievement because of its commitment to respect people of all genders.

So. That’s clear. In Oxfam view, prodded by its “trans and non-binary colleagues,” it is no longer permissible to celebrate female achievement. It’s … Read the rest

So some members of Congress were in on it, and actively helped plan it.

As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent. 

I think we can guess who some of them were.

The two sources, both of

This is police business because…………….what?

It's #AceWeek. This is a week for raising awareness about asexual identities, while also helping the #ace people within our workplaces feel more included & able to be themselves at work. We'll be sharing resources/information throughout the week to help. pic.twitter.com/HZc5upKoU6

— Police Service NI LGBT+ Network (@PSNILGBT) October 25, 2021

Raise your hands everybody who wants the police explaining you about AsxUal Idenninies.

You’re a tough crowd.… Read the rest

I have to wonder why the SMH saw fit to publish this childish drivel.

Before the movie begins, I duck off to the bathrooms. Down a dim corridor I find the signs: F and M. The same old binary. There’s no other choice. For the umpteenth time, I sigh. Which of two bad options to choose today? I’m neither man nor woman, but I must pretend to be one or the other if I’m to empty my bursting bladder. Outside the entrance, I hesitate, weighing up the dilemma.

But of course he is either man or woman. His name is Yves Reese so apparently a man but who knows, maybe he gave himself a go on, guess name. But … Read the rest

Why?

Priti Patel says don’t record crimes by men who claim to be trans as crimes by women in the statistics (for blindingly obvious reasons), and a woman cop who is co chair of the LGBT+ network for cops says well in that case don’t record women as victims? Wtf???

Where does she get the “so” and the “then”? So and then imply logic, or a chain of causation, or something along those lines. But what could such a chain be? Men who claim to be trans are not women, so they should not be recorded as women in the statistics when they commit crimes. That’s obvious. The point of the statistics is to record the truth of who … Read the rest

So Atwood posted a video.

Also this one: https://t.co/P9FMFFs4MQ

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) October 24, 2021

Not a good choice of video. A big chunk of it is about Maya Forstater and of course gets a lot wrong. (Of course because they always do.) Maya sets her straight.

I am an ordinary woman who lost her job and her livelihood because someone shouted "transphobia".

The video that you are spreading accuses me of being "transphobic" based on lies and smears. pic.twitter.com/6hmBsGdOth

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) October 24, 2021

If you want to say I am a "transphobe" based on things I have written then go aheadhttps://t.co/jpZB1L5WaU

Sharing this video that seeks destroy my reputation based on internet rumours

Ok get over it already.

As a violent mob pushed past barricades protecting the U.S. Capitol, then dragged, beat and bludgeoned police officers before roaming the halls with abandon on Jan. 6, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice watched and wept. The emotions, she said, were similar to those she felt on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I thought: ‘I study countries that do this. I didn’t think it would happen in my own country,’ ” Rice, a Republican who teaches political science at Stanford University, said Wednesday on ABC’s “The View.”

In her own country and with the tacit consent of her own political party. It wasn’t a national insurrection, it was a specific, partisan, one-sided, right-wing insurrection. Most of … Read the rest

Oh did they indeed.

No inspirational women allowed.

Oxfam has bowed to the transgender lobby by withdrawing a children’s bingo game celebrating ‘inspirational women’ from sale in its stores and online.

Inspirational men are no problem, of course, but women…ick.

The game, which sold for £14.99, uses pictures of 48 famous women rather than numbers on cards that are matched with tokens showing the same female figures, including Jane Austen, US civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, climate-change activist Greta Thunberg and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

And JK Rowling. Enough said.

But in an email last week, the charity told staff: ‘We have taken the decision to withdraw the product Wonder Women Bingo as it has been

The Times on Stonewall:

Today The Times reports on the newest foray into corporate boardrooms under the misleading guise of breaking the gender glass ceiling. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates the financial industry, has drawn up diversity guidelines. These would require every company listed on FTSE indices to declare the percentage of women serving as board members. The new rules, however, do not require that companies declare their board members’ legal or biological sex but their gender identity, regardless of when in their career they adopted it. Using this new definition, the FCA is now recommending that 40 per cent of boards should be women.

But they could all be men. Companies could comply with such recommendations … Read the rest

Women not impressed by ActiVists trying to school Margaret Atwood:

Why any self-respecting woman would want a second chance to grovel more convincingly is quite beyond me. pic.twitter.com/NfbZpCnJl1

— Eliza Mondegreen (@elizamondegreen) October 23, 2021

However will Margaret Atwood recover from having disappointed men on the internet https://t.co/xUrou7g2lG

— boodleoops (@boodleoops) October 23, 2021

https://twitter.com/AndreaC61264162/status/1452013603893268482

Margaret Atwood has become one of her own handmaidens, rising up against the tyranny of extreme activist trolls https://t.co/2fj8PKMR4j via @mailplus

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) October 22, 2021

… Read the rest

By latsot, originally a comment on Today in London but it got held because of links while I was out for a walk to Lake Union and back so now it’s a post instead of a comment.

YNNB:

Yes. And the dinosaur costumes were another genius PR idea from Posie Parker. It’s impossible to see one waddling down the street (or getting on a bus)

  without paying attention. And when people do, the explanation is a perfect lead into a discussion of Stonewall.

The event was brilliant, I’m glad I went. Everyone was incredibly nice and kind and looked after each other all day. People helped me get in and out of the pub and fretted about me crossing busy … Read the rest

Theocrats pick another fight:

Thousands of supporters of a banned radical Islamist party have departed from the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore, clashing with police for a second day, a party spokesman and witnesses said on Saturday.

The group formed on Friday with the goal of reaching the capital, Islamabad, to pressure the government to release Saad Rizvi, the head of the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party.

“Radical” coupled with Islamist means deep hatred of women and “blasphemers.” (They consider most people blasphemers.)

Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 elections, campaigning on a single issue: defending the country’s blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. It has a history of staging violent protests to

Judith Butler has a crappy predictable abusive piece in the Guardian complaining of a “backlash” over sacred Gender.

The attacks on so-called “gender ideology” have grown in recent years throughout the world, dominating public debate stoked by electronic networks and backed by extensive rightwing Catholic and evangelical organizations. Although not always in accord, these groups concur that the traditional family is under attack, that children in the classroom are being indoctrinated to become homosexuals, and that “gender” is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilization, and even “man” himself.

Meanwhile, in the real world, feminist women object to being shoved aside and told to shut up by men who claim to be women.

It

Remember Charles Clymer the “male feminist” who was always talking over women? Then declared he was “Charlotte” and it all made sense? As Charlotte he gets to talk over everyone.

You're a cis gay man. You are not a trans or non-binary person. This is not your experience, and you are not qualified to talk about what is and isn't offensive to the trans and non-binary community. Stay in your lane.

— charlotteclymer@mastodon.nz (@cmclymer) October 23, 2021

And Charles is a man. He is not a woman. Being a woman is not his experience (7 years in the army azza man) and he is not qualified to talk about what is and isn’t offensive and intrusive and misogynist to … Read the rest