The ACLU is really leaning into this Erase Women campaign. It has a page for Abortion is Essential: Stories of Liberation, which continues the Delete Women program.

The ability to decide whether and when to have children is essential to allowing people to control their own lives and futures. For many, having access to affordable abortion care opens the door to fulfilling educational and career goals, better parenting, staying true to gender identities, and other critical parts of life that everyone should have the ability to choose for themselves.

Freedom to decide whether and when to have children is important to men too of course, but not in the up close inside your body way it is to women. … Read the rest

The ACLU has a fundraising ad on Facebook that links to a quiz about abortion rights. You know what happens next.

4. In what ways are states trying to force people to remain pregnant?

What they conceal and deny by doing this is the power aspect, the dominance-submission aspect, the inequality aspect, the systemic arrangements by which men get to tell women what to do but women don’t get to tell men what to do, the centrality of reproduction and pregnancy in the domination of women by men. What they conceal and deny by lying about who gets pregnant is the political aspect of abortion restrictions. The ACLU makes it all look random by telling the lie that people … Read the rest

I never got around to this yesterday and that just won’t do.

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG

Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police pic.twitter.com/T9q76r706G

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) February 9, 2022

… Read the rest

What we need is more gun battles:

A Republican Senate primary candidate in Arizona has been condemned for a “disgusting” campaign ad in which he shoots at lookalike actors portraying Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and incumbent Arizona senator Mark Kelly.

Jim Lamon, an energy executive, shared the ad on Twitter, saying it would be aired at this year’s Super Bowl.

Lamon would face Kelly in a general election in the autumn should he secure the Republican nomination.

Kelly is the husband of former Democratic congressman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot in the head in 2011 while greeting constituents outside of a local grocery store.

It’s Lamon’s pinned tweet.

Arizona has had enough of the DC

Stonewall and The Good Law Project are really determined to make sure women have no rights that would trump the invented “rights” of men to invade all our spaces, take all our prizes and jobs, destroy our sports, and bully us into silence.

Britain’s human rights watchdog faces a legal challenge to its status over a row about transgender rights.

A row over “rights” that aren’t “rights” at all.

In documents shared exclusively with the BBC, campaigners say they want the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s status as an independent group revoked. It comes after the EHRC was criticised for asking Scotland to pause its plans to make it easier for people to change their sex on their birth certificate.

Yup yup yup that’s all fine, this mediocre male swimmer can pretend to be a woman and compete against women so that he won’t be mediocre any more, no problem whatsoever. Nobody will be harmed except women so full speed ahead guys.

Penn swimmer Lia Thomas will be allowed to compete at the 2022 women’s swimming and diving championships as long as she meets the NCAA’s current testosterone thresholds.

This despite the fact that everyone knows testosterone is not like a lamp or a food processor – it doesn’t just stop when you switch it off. Most of the benefits of male puberty are permanent, and women don’t have them. The NCAA knows this, so it’s just saying “Fuck women, … Read the rest

Ah what a brilliant invention, how odd that no one’s ever thought of it before. A private army which will “apprehend” all the politicians and media people who “have been found to have committed crimes.” This will go very well, there will be no problems at all.

Sovereign citizen Paul Boys announcing he’ll be setting up a “Peace Force”, made up of boxers, ex-police, ex-military & MMA.

Says common law will give him power to arrest politicians & media. pic.twitter.com/y2me2Ivw3m

— Covid Radicalisation (@CovidRadicals) February 10, 2022

… Read the rest

Yet more “blah blah because trans rights” without spelling out what “trans rights” are:

Female hospital patients’ dignity, privacy and safety is being “diminished significantly” by the imposition of transgender rights in the health service, it has been warned at Westminster.

Speaking in Parliament Tory peer Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne argued the provision of single-sex wards, exempted from equality legislation, was being undermined by updated NHS guidance.

That’s even more of a misleading disaster than usual, because Baroness Nicholson is reported saying one thing but the lede cites a quite different thing. The reporter, Nick Lester, seems to have translated exemption from equality legislation to “trans rights,” but is that accurate or fair? Is such exemption a right?

Reporters should … Read the rest

No kicking or slapping involved.… Read the rest

It’s Lia Thomas / Laurel Hubbard / Rachel McKinnon all over again.

Eddie Izzard will lead the cast of Joe Stephenson’s UK feature Doctor Jekyll, a modern interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde which places a woman in the lead role.

That is, Joe Stephenson is rethinking Doctor Jekyll as a woman, but then casting a man in the part, so not rethinking it as a woman at all.

Talk about having it both ways. “I’m making Jekyll a woman! And I’m casting a man as that woman! Am I original and quirky or what?!”

A new and more convoluted way to take away one of the few opportunities … Read the rest

Actual Vice headline:

Leaked EHRC Guidance Reveals Plans To Exclude Most Trans People From Bathrooms

First of all they don’t mean “bathrooms,” because in the UK that means literal bath rooms; they mean public toilets. But second and more to the point, of course they don’t. There are no plans to exclude people from public toilets.

Subhead:

Under unpublished guidance leaked to VICE World News, Britain’s equalities watchdog wanted to restrict the lives of trans people unless they held a Gender Recognition Certificate – despite only 1% of trans people in the UK having one.

No it didn’t. People don’t live in public toilets. It’s not in any meaningful sense “restricting the lives” of men to tell them they … Read the rest

Helen Dale explains why so many people need self-help books: because they weren’t taught or didn’t learn enough growing up. The piece as a whole isn’t among her best work, because there’s way too much self-conscious meta, too many clauses commenting on previous clauses, too much performance, but the final full paragraph is unclotted and So True.

If you are emotionally devastated by the leftward lean of science fiction to the point of launching a campaign to “take back” the genre; if the moral struggle that gets you out of bed each morning is purging racism from young adult fantasy novels; if you feel besieged by the political predilections of self-declared gamers (or betrayed by the politics of game reviewers);

The QC does it again.

Unspeakably awful. Imagine being headteacher of a school in which a trans boy commits suicide because of transphobic bullying. And then signalling in your statement that the bullying was fine. https://t.co/eRBwmFMpVS

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) February 9, 2022

It’s considered not just bad form but very dangerous to make claims about suicide like that – dogmatic assertions of a single cause.

I send my love to that boy's family. I have spoken to so many like his. All in despair, desperate to protect their children from what the country is becoming, cheered on by our media and facilitated by the @EHRC.

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) February 9, 2022

One could ask if people like … Read the rest

Fox News is selling the anti-vax truckers in Ottawa as freedom fighters. Of course it is.

Fox News’ effort to discourage its viewers from vaccinating themselves against COVID-19 has gone international. The network’s stars have in recent weeks fixated on our neighbor to the north, regaling their audiences with fawning coverage of Canadian truckers protesting their country’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements – and encouraging the development of similar activism in the U.S.

It still seems like a very weird flag to fly. Join us, we’re the ones in favor of deadly pandemics! If we’d had our way there would be no polio vax, no measles vax, no smallpox vax, and your kids or your friends or you could get a … Read the rest

Those cats are safe from Zouma.

Animal charity the RSPCA has taken West Ham defender Kurt Zouma’s pet cats away after videos emerged on social media of him kicking and slapping one of them.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is liaising with Essex Police about the incident.

“The two cats are now in RSPCA care,” said a charity spokesperson.

The Premier League club say they have fined Zouma “the maximum amount possible” and the fee will be donated to animal welfare charities.

In addition, German sportswear firm Adidas has ended its deal with the 27-year-old.

I hope the cats get a vastly kinder human for their next home.… Read the rest

Gotta keep the women out somehow.

The disqualification of five ski jumpers at the Winter Olympics because of the suits they wore didn’t just result in an unexpected podium for the inaugural mixed team event. The abrupt ouster of those participants — all women — also resulted in howls of protest and outrage directed at the International Ski Federation (FIS).

Oh I don’t know, howls of protest and outrage sound awfully manly. I expect it was more whining.

“They destroyed women’s ski jumping,” said Germany’s Katharina Althaus.

Althaus, who helped Germany win the mixed team event three times at the ski jumping world championships, was among the women disqualified on Monday when FIS ruled that their suits were “too

A letter from Amnesty UK:

Yes, I emailed amnesty UK a while back re the Amnesty Ireland letter. This is their reply pic.twitter.com/kA5SMhZL5q

— Ellie Scott (@KodaScott1) February 9, 2022

It’s funny, in a way, that Nscribble first says that AmnestyUK stands against “those spreading hate” and then immediately mentions misleading and confusing people as a common tactic against their human rights campaigns. Poor befuddled Nscribble doesn’t seem to grasp that accusing gender critical feminists of “spreading hate” is itself misleading and confusing, or to put it more crisply, a lie.

Then Nscribble accuses the gender critical feminist side of “spreading vitriol or misinformation,” which is also misleading and confusing, not to mention vituperative and unfair. Then Nscribble brushes aside … Read the rest

The ACLU yesterday, UN Women today.

Harriet Tubman
Tarana Burke
Oprah Winfrey
Rosa Parks
Wangari Maathai
Maya Angelou
Janelle Monáe
Angela Davis
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Laverne Cox
Beyoncé
Serena Williams
Wilma Rudolph
Marsha P. Johnson
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Who are women that inspire you this #BlackHistoryMonth?

— UN Women (@UN_Women) February 9, 2022

Laverne Cox is a man who calls himself a woman. Marsha Johnson was a drag queen who did not call himself a woman. Here’s a list of 15 women that includes 2 men; enjoy!… Read the rest

An ACLU promo on Facebook did what it’s supposed to do and got me to click the ACLU link and read and then to look for more. The second item is Ban Forced Pregnancy.

As the Supreme Court appears prepared to gut or overturn Roe v. Wade, the threat to our abortion rights has never been closer to becoming reality. Already, roughly half of all states are poised to ban abortion, and politicians could even push to ban abortion nationwide if they have the opportunity. As a result, people across the country could be forced to remain pregnant against their will, losing control over their own bodies and futures.

People! Actual people! I used to think it was … Read the rest

How much bigger than a cat is a large football player?

Kurt Zouma is 6’3″ and 209 lbs/94.8 kg. An average cat is 8 to 10 lb, and only a few inches high. Not exactly a fair fight.

Police have opened inquiries into a video that shows West Ham’s Kurt Zouma kicking and slapping a cat. They are planning a joint investigation with the RSPCA, which has described the footage as “very upsetting”.

Zouma has now apologized. Because what, he thought it was ok to kick and smack an animal a small fraction of his size until people got mad at him?… Read the rest