The Guardian says the climate disaster is here. Not on the way, but here.

“We have built a civilization based on a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” as Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, puts it.

The world has already heated up by around 1.2C, on average, since the preindustrial era, pushing humanity beyond almost all historical boundaries. Cranking up the temperature of the entire globe this much within little more than a century is, in fact, extraordinary, with the oceans alone absorbing the heat equivalent of five Hiroshima atomic bombs dropping into the water every second.

Until now, human civilization has operated within a narrow, stable band of temperature. Through the burning of fossil fuels,

Nolan Investigates Stonewall is now available In Your Area so I’m listening. It starts with how can the BBC possibly claim to be impartial when it’s part of the Stonewall Says We’re Awesome scheme? Will it move down the league table because of this podcast?

And then a very important question: is the language they use when reporting on trans issues BBC language or Stonewall language?

Aha, thought I. Stonewall language. That’s why we keep seeing these stupid platitudes with their stupid wording. Of course it is. That’s why people keep babbling about “trans rights” without ever explaining what rights trans people have that the rest of us don’t. That’s why there’s all this Most Oppressed Most Marginalized Most Excluded … Read the rest

Cristina Beltrán in the Washington Post:

To understand Trump’s support, we must think in terms of multiracial Whiteness

Or we could just recognize that conservatism is not exclusively white. We know this already. “The Hispanic community” in Florida is highly conservative, because of the flight from Castro’s Cuba. That’s not “whiteness,” it’s politics. I don’t see what’s gained by calling it Whiteness.

Rooted in America’s ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness, multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others. Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as

What he said.

2/ How is "publicly said during a meeting that a rape didn't occur that did allegedly occur" not grounds for *instant* resignation?

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) October 14, 2021

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1448654850196066318

Never mind that privileged cis girl who got raped, worry about the trans girls instead!

6/ This happened in what is maybe the wealthiest county in America, an hour from DC. Irresistible media catnip, usually. The details are sickening and shocking. And it was *The Daily Wire* that got to the story first. When will mainstream journalists develop a sense of shame?

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) October 14, 2021

8/ Then, local and regional mainstream outlets having failed to pick up a story that was the equivalent

Finally, a non-Fox-adjacent source: Newsweek:

Several parents have demanded that Loudoun County school board’s superintendent resign over allegations that the school district covered up two sexual assaults alleged to have occurred on school grounds.

…

In an interview with The Daily Wire, Scott Smith—a father who was arrested at a previous Loudoun County School Board meeting on June 22 after a debate over a draft policy on transgender and nonbinary students’ rights escalated— alleged that his daughter was sexually assaulted at Stone Bridge High School by a student allegedly dressed with a skirt on May 28.

During the June 22 meeting in which Smith was arrested after being dragged out, superintendent Scott Ziegler dismissed any concerns about

At the Glinner update, ripx4nutmeg tells us of a story that the left-of-Fox news media so far refuse to touch.

First, a little history. In August, the Loudoun County School Board, a group of nine people who manage 94 public schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, passed a gender identity policy to allow boys to use facilities for girls, such as restrooms, if they identify as girls, and for sex-based protections for girls in sports to be removed. Seven of the nine members of the board voted for the policy.

Team Fox reported on it, Team Left of Fox ignored it. Lefty feminists have nowhere to go these days. The last 50 years might as well not have happened.

Now … Read the rest

Susanna Rustin at the Guardian was thinking the feminism-transism standoff was starting to ease a little, but now she isn’t. The mainstream types are too close to the loonies for that to be the case.

Starmer’s recent comments on the Andrew Marr Show, along with remarks by the new Green party co-leader Carla Denyer, make it clear that they too believe that gender-critical feminists’ ideas are beyond the pale. Asked by Marr whether it is transphobic to say that only women have a cervix, a reference to a comment made by Labour MP Rosie Duffield last year, Starmer replied: “It is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.” Not only does Starmer disagree with Duffield’s use of

Continuing with Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s review of David Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe:

Pius XI – formerly Achille Ratti, librarian, mountain-climber and admirer of Mark Twain – was elected Pope in February 1922, eight months before Mussolini bullied his way to the Italian premiership. For 17 years the two men held sway over their separate spheres in Rome.

They met only once, but there was a huge amount of back-channel communication.

Mussolini saw that he could use the church to legitimise his power, so he set about wooing the clergy. He had his wife and children baptised. He gave money for the restoration of churches. After two

Lucy Hughes-Hallett at the Guardian in 2014 reviews a book on the pope’s sinister pact with Mussolini.

In 1938, Pope Pius XI addressed a group of visitors to the Vatican. There were some people, he said, who argued that the state should be all-powerful – “totalitarian”. Such an idea, he went on, was absurd, not because individual liberty was too precious to be surrendered, but because “if there is a totalitarian regime – in fact and by right – it is the regime of the church, because man belongs totally to the church”.

Attaboy, that’s putting it out there.

The Pope told Mussolini that the church had long seen the need to “rein in the children of Israel”

Much proud of TheySelf.

new "How to spot TERF ideology" guide just dropped https://t.co/UewdGgcpgB pic.twitter.com/qgGyJyMhDu

— Milo Cambridge SU (@SU_Womens) October 11, 2021

Oh good, wot’s it say?

Introduction

Trans liberation is part of feminism.

Ooh bad start. No it isn’t. Feminism is about fem – i.e. women. Trans liberation is a completely different issue, and in practice vehemently hostile to women, especially feminist women.

Fighting for autonomy and freedom must be a fight for everyone, and there should be no room for transphobia or TERFs in feminist organising.

Bad second sentence, in fact lousy rotten second sentence. Fighting for women’s autonomy and freedom is women’s fight, and we’re not required to staple other fights onto ours. Also, autonomy and … Read the rest

I remember when I liked Feminist Philosophers.

I guess there are a lot of fabulous U.K. philosophers I need to tell you about, because I know a bunch of them who did not sign this.

— Jenny Saul (@JennySaul1) October 13, 2021

How fabulous of them.… Read the rest

Abigail Shrier’s article on the two doctors of transgender medicine who aren’t so sure any more has been getting attention, and in light of the WPATH and USPATH announcement that only doctors should be talking about the subject, the article is helpful. (H/t Sackbut)

For nearly a decade, the vanguard of the transgender-rights movement — doctors, activists, celebrities and transgender influencers  — has defined the boundaries of the new orthodoxy surrounding transgender medical care: What’s true, what’s false, which questions can and cannot be asked. 

They said it was perfectly safe to give children as young as nine puberty blockers and insisted that the effects of those blockers were “fully reversible.” They said that it was the job of

How very convenient.

The Vatican has sovereign immunity that protects it from being sued in local courts over sexual abuse cases, the European Court of Human Rights said in a chamber ruling on Tuesday.

Why? Why does the Vatican have sovereign immunity?

It dismissed a case brought by 24 French, Belgian and Dutch nationals, who said they were sexually abused by Catholic priests when they were children.

The class-action suit sought €10,000 compensation for each victim but the Ghent Court of First Instance said in 2013 that it did not have jurisdiction over the Holy See. The applicants had argued that they had been deprived of access to a court.

The European court agreed with the Belgian court that

This is a medical issue, a scientific issue, all these outsider non-medical people shouldn’t be talking about it because they don’t have the expertise. WPATH says so.

The United States Professional Association for Transgender Health (USPATH) and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) stand behind the appropriate care of transgender and gender diverse youth, which includes, when indicated, the use of “puberty blockers” such as gonadotropin releasing hormone analogs and other medications to delay puberty, and, when indicated, the use of gender- affirming hormones such as estrogen or testosterone. Guidelines for the assessment of transgender and gender diverse youth, as well as for the use of pubertal delay and gender affirming hormone medications have been published by

What’s awesome about that?

Foundation Beyond Belief on Facebook:

Volunteer network team Atheists United just shared these awesome pics with us of their members participating in the October Women’s March for Reproductive Rights!

Awesome? Men demanding “inclusion” in women’s marches for reproductive rights, yet again?

Really not seeing the awesome.

H/t Sackbut… Read the rest

Kathleen has closed her Twitter, I hope temporarily, and the Sussex UCU has deleted its statement, but Kiri Tunks hasn’t.

Trade unions also defend members who are unfairly targeted or persecuted because of their beliefs or political views – unless you are in the UCU, in which case they will accuse you of ‘instrumentalising your employment rights’ and throw you to the wolves. 2/3 pic.twitter.com/zBxWNbgHkv

— Kiri Tunks (@kiritunks) October 12, 2021

Let’s look at that first sentence in the third paragraph again.

Public discourses regularly devalue the lives of trans and nonbinary people and appeals to both employment rights and academic freedom are often instrumentalised in this context

That’s a very remarkable thing for a union to say. It … Read the rest

The Guardian has a weaselly piece on the Sussex snafu.

Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor targeted by activists for her views on gender identification, has said she fears her career at Sussex University has been “effectively ended” by a union’s call for an investigation into transphobia.

No, she hasn’t, that’s not what she said. If you can’t even get the lede right, take a sick day so that someone else can do it. The “she fears” part is sheer invention.

Sussex’s chapter of the University and College Union (UCU) has urged the university’s management to “take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex”, and undertake an investigation into “institutional transphobia”.

Yes but it said a lot more … Read the rest

The University and College Union has issued a statement endorsing the Sussex UCU statement, which UCU General Secretary Jo Grady has (of course) retweeted. (I think it’s safe to assume she approved it or wrote it in the first place.) It too is a disgusting, backstabbing, crawling, scab-embracing statement.

A statement from UCU: pic.twitter.com/Y7fqLzFvHM

— UCU (@ucu) October 12, 2021

The statement (the Sussex one) is of course emphatically NOT “clear that UCU is not calling for any staff to be dismissed from their post.” On the contrary it’s clear that they are, in a passive-aggressive semi-deniable way. The word “summarily” is doing all the heavy lifting here – Sussex UCU frowns on staff being summarily fired. Slowly fired is … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Djolaman on All on the rainbow.

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? If you’re under 16 then there are hardly any consequential decisions which you can make you yourself in the uk. You can’t sign a contract of any kind, get a loan, own property, leave school, consent to sexual activity, work more than 12 hours a week, get a tattoo, get a piercing, drink alcohol, get married, be tried as an adult in a criminal case, be sent to an adult prison, live alone, drive any kind of vehicle except a pushbike, receive any inheritance that isn’t managed by a trustee, view or appear in sexually explicit material, open a bank account, act as legal guardian … Read the rest

Breaking news. Bad breaking news. Disgusting breaking news.

My former union branch @sussexucu has just effectively ended my career at Sussex University. This just sent to all members. pic.twitter.com/eFdNXkSd68

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) October 12, 2021

… Read the rest