Planned Parenthood with a new and exciting story about what doulas do for “people”:

Doulas support many different types of people going through a range of life experiences — including death, gender transition, birth, and abortion. Some doulas have a specific focus, while others provide a range of care. But all doulas advocate for and support their clients in situations where they may feel alone, ignored, or dismissed.

Oh yeah? The rest of the world seems to think they’re assistants to women giving birth. They’re not medically trained, so they’re not midwives, they just do the supporty helpy hand-holdy stuff – for women giving birth. Not “people” transitioning, not people dying, just women giving birth. PP is talking … Read the rest

It’s become a kind of religion.

In the year since the first shots began going into arms, opposition to vaccines has hardened from skepticism and wariness into something approaching an article of faith for the approximately 39 million American adults who have yet to get a single dose.

To be fair, there’s also a kind of faith involved in thinking people should get the shots. I don’t have any medical expertise, and most people who get vaxxed also have little or none. Why do I trust the people who say get vaxxed more than I trust people who say don’t? I guess largely because of the record – there’s a pretty long record now of vaccinations working. The choice … Read the rest

Sue the bastards.

Two election workers who counted votes for the 2020 presidential election filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the parent company of One America News, senior staff at the far-right TV network, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former president Donald Trump.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who worked in Fulton County, Ga., allege that One America News and Giuliani, who frequently appears on the network, knowingly spread misinformation about them, including falsehoods that they logged illegal ballots for Joe Biden in the election.

The two women “have become objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment … because of a campaign of malicious lies,” their attorneys wrote in the

Eight minutes to launch:

Watch live: The James Webb Telescope is launching into space and could unlock mysteries of the universe and our place in it.

Live updates: https://t.co/RtXxjW8fbX https://t.co/XVBIlWgXZa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 25, 2021

… Read the rest

Janice Turner prefers brave goats to placid sheep.

How must it feel to have your name airbrushed from the $8 billion film franchise born of your scribbling in a coffee shop, penniless, while your baby napped? Or to watch the trio of child actors you chose and nurtured 20 years ago recall the stories which made them many times richer and more celebrated than their ho-hum talents deserve, yet not once uttering your name? Or have fools who run around with broomsticks up their backsides in college leagues change the name of quidditch, the sport you invented for wizards?

That’s putting aside the threats. Just search for JK Rowling on Twitter and see the stream of invective, the gun

Charming.

After speaking to Crouch End we understand someone called for copies, was told that what stock they had was reserved, with apology. No mention of values. It is unfair and inaccurate to characterise otherwise, although we appreciate it may promote your book.

— WaterstonesHelp (@WstonesHelp) December 24, 2021

The rudeness of it takes my breath away. Do all institutions and chain stores hand their social media over to rude angry teenagers?

“We understand” – that perhaps an employee wasn’t entirely truthful about what happened because it wouldn’t look very responsible or adult of the employee?

And that taunt at the end – what the hell?

LOL, so you’re calling me a liar? I really hope there were no witnesses…

There’s this

And then there’s this

Now…has Cleese become a Muggeridge or Stockwood? Or is he still Cleese while the interviewer is a credulous point-missing inquisitor?… Read the rest

When Michael met Malcolm.

There’s bit where Cleese says he knew Palin was steaming. I like that because I’ve heard Palin talking about how furious he was – he did a book talk and signing here a couple of decades ago, and someone must have asked about the Muggeridge encounter: he became quite energetic about how foul Muggeridge was and how angry it made him.… Read the rest

John Dickson is a historian, an actual practicing working credentialed historian, with a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and a visiting scholar gig at Oxford, yet he wrote this absurdity.

A survey found that only 49% of Australians say “Jesus was a real person who actually lived.” You mean 51% don’t?! The horror!

But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.

Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical

Festivities.

#NoTerfs pic.twitter.com/4h5jgsw0mN

— HeterodorxPodcast (@heterodorx) December 23, 2021

Idn that sweet.

More pix of us @heterodorx skulking around a business where we’re explicitly excluded. pic.twitter.com/ap3T11G1mr

— Nina Paley (@ninapaley) December 23, 2021

No terfs allowed in the coop.… Read the rest

Rex Murphy on The Uninvited:

Who was not invited to participate in the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special? Why, the very woman, who in the most difficult of circumstances, and by the power of her own will and invention, brought the entire phenomenon into existence. She was effectively blacklisted from the celebration of what she created while three pretentious and above all blasphemously ungrateful actors held the spotlight, and further — I’m looking for an elegant verb — dumped on the woman who made them. Made them, almost as completely as she made Harry Potter.

…

Last year when certain authorities began promoting the phrase “people who menstruate” as a replacement for a term familiar since the birth of

Now there’s a headline.

Tesla, bowing to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

Great god almighty. As if people don’t already drive insanely enough.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion.

Meaning that currently drivers can play video games while tailgating people going the speed limit in a downpour on a dark winter afternoon. Fabulous.

“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said.

But haha manufacturers pay no attention … Read the rest

No [clap] No [clap] No [clap]

Meanwhile the National Organization for Women, like other national and global organizations for women, should be doing its job and focusing on women, not men who call themselves women and not trans people and not “non-binary” people. You don’t see labor unions dropping all their labor issues to say Respect [clap] the [clap] bosses [clap]. Why is it that women’s organizations are so eager to throw women overboard and “center” the concerns of male people instead?… Read the rest

Tory MP Caroline Nokes just wants to make the Gender Recognition Act kinder.

In order for an individual to have their acquired gender recognised, a person has to prove to a panel of strangers that they will never meet – the gender recognition panel – that they are either feminine or masculine. It has caused a great deal of concern in the transgender community that the panel, in effect, sits in judgment upon them and their transition. Who is anyone to decide whether someone is feminine or masculine enough?

Well, since you ask, why should whether someone is “feminine” or “masculine” be a matter for government at all? Why should it be officially “recognised”? Why should it even be … Read the rest

Meanwhile in Crouch End –

There you have it. Sensible, moderate arguments for women's interests are not in keeping with Waterstone's values, and nor is freedom of thought. (Nor selling a book that has sold 20K+ elsewhere, for that matter). So why not choose a bookshop according to *your* values in future? https://t.co/XJyJese74r

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) December 23, 2021

Because men who say they are women are infinitely more deserving and important and worthy of deference and “be kind” than mere women.… Read the rest

This is a novel way for shops to go about things.

If you're going to give vouchers for Christmas, obviously don't give them for a shop whose staff may try and lecture your friend on their reading choices. Still no reply from Waterstones to this tweet yesterday. They must have noticed it by now https://t.co/exJMRCTwWD pic.twitter.com/SdTXgljWfD

— Anya Palmer (@anyabike) December 23, 2021

Bookstores deciding which books are well written and thus to be sold and which are not and thus to be unavailable to customers. What a fantastic customer service! Apparently they read all the books themselves to save the buying public time.… Read the rest

Pedophile who Identifies as a 5-Year-Old Girl

A 60-year-old pedophile who claims to identify as a 5-year-old girl was found to have been in breach of his child sexual harm prevention order after he approached two little girls and kissed them.

Janiel Verainer, of Chatham, UK, was found by the court to have breached a sexual harm order imposed in 2016 after he was found kissing a small girl outside of a cafe in Thanet, UK. At the time, child sexual exploitation images were also found on Verainer’s devices. Verainer was sentenced to 15 months in prison, and the sexual harm prevention order – one requiring he stay away from all children – was implemented.

But he did it again: … Read the rest

We always have to be kinder. Kinder and kinder and kinder and kinder. There’s never enough. No one bother about being kinder to us though. We’re just old boots.

Trans rights are a major part of the remit of [Tory MP Caroline] Nokes and her committee, which is currently undertaking the inquiry into the government’s response to Gender Recognition Act reform. (May’s government held a long consultation on updating the GRA and committed to introducing those reforms, which were later shelved by Johnson’s administration.) The committee hearings are extraordinarily sensitive, empathetic and detailed sessions with some of the leading figures on both sides of this debate, one of the most bitter in the current political landscape. 

Nokes, in

No, that’s not true.

Woman jailed for having cocaine-fuelled sex with an Alsatianhttps://t.co/fRWqa9eBbg pic.twitter.com/nMlr468VXJ

— The Scottish Sun (@ScottishSun) December 22, 2021

That’s a man.

And humans can’t “have sex” with dogs. The man didn’t “have sex with an Alsation”; he abused a dog.

This is not our crime.… Read the rest

I don’t think so.

Depressing that a handful of people responded to this with WHY WOULD YOU USE THE PRONOUN 'HE.' I can't imagine a better way to derail conversations that are already fraught than to insist, as a matter of principle, on *not* using the pronouns people request. Dumb hill for dying https://t.co/RWXzAzvx3d

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) December 22, 2021

I don’t think it’s daft or purist or obstinate or stupid to dislike customized pronouns. It’s maybe somewhat stupid or wrong to tell off other people for using them, but I think we have good reasons for objecting to them in general.

For one thing they condition us, as is the plan. If we say it we start to … Read the rest