Another Lia Thomas looms into view.

Top women cyclists who have helped Great Britain to historic triumphs face losing their team places after a trans woman announced she would now compete in female events.

Emily Bridges has continued to race against men for the past year while undergoing hormone therapy, and her successes include a gold medal at the recent University Championships in Nottingham.

However, her testosterone levels are now low enough to meet the criteria set out by British Cycling, the sport’s governing body, for her to compete against women.

So he’ll be guaranteed to win everything in sight! Progress!

The 21-year-old recently spoke candidly about her transition and revealed it was ‘always the plan’ to compete in

More war crimes:

There have been more than 70 separate attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors in Ukraine with the number increasing on a “daily basis”, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

…

Since 24 February, the WHO has reviewed and verified 72 separate attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine causing at least 71 deaths and 37 injuries.

Most have damaged hospitals, medical transports and supply stores, but the WHO has also recorded the “probable” abduction or detention of healthcare staff and patients.

“We are concerned that this number is increasing daily,” the WHO’s Ukraine country representative Jarno Habicht told the BBC.

“Health facilities should be safe places for both doctors and nurses, but also patients to turn to

The BBC has lost its damn mind.

Heavy periods, debilitating pain and infertility – those are some of the causes of endometriosis, a condition that affects one in 10 people of any age in the UK, who are assigned female at birth.

They mean women. Endometriosis affects one in ten women in the UK. Simple, clear, easy to understand. The way they put it not so much.

But what is it really like living with the gynaecological condition?

Two women shared their story for Endometriosis Awareness month.

There you go! Gynaecological; women; you can say it.… Read the rest

A Russian-Canadian academic (he emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union) writes a public Facebook post about Putin’s absurd invocation of JK Rowling:

Earlier today, Putin railed against the alleged “Russophobia” in the West and, moronically enough, attempted to compare Russia to J.K. Rowling in that context.

He shared JKR’s prompt response. The rop comment on his post? Rebecca Solnit libeling JKR.

What a stunningly ugly and untrue thing to say – especially to a Russian-born critic of Putin at this particular time.

She goes on in the same vein, on and on. Kill the witch blah blah blah kill her some more.

She recommends a piece by Laurie Penny of all people.

More from Solnit:

Leaving aside that this

There are some very strange ideas about rights and entitlements out there.

Russia has approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads – the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In an interview on Saturday, Medvedev said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not require an enemy state to use such weapons first.

It’s a nuclear doctrine, you see. Bullies have a fist doctrine, murderers have a gun doctrine, Russia has a nuclear doctrine.

He said: “We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you: number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a

Here’s a surprise. Protesters in Ukraine did such top quality protesting that they got Russian soldiers to go away.

A mayor in a Ukrainian town occupied by Russian forces has been released from captivity and the soldiers have agreed to leave after a mass protest by residents.

Slavutych, a northern town close to the Chernobyl nuclear site, was taken by Russian forces but stun grenades and overhead fire failed to disperse unarmed protesters on its main square on Saturday.

The crowd demanded the release of mayor Yuri Fomichev, who had been taken prisoner by the Russian troops.

Attempts by Russian troops to intimidate the growing protest failed and on Saturday afternoon Fomichev was let go by his captors.

I find … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The obvious rejoinder.

Maybe the trans people aren’t getting enough recognition after all, so let’s create trans athlete divisions…. Give them what they want; proper divisions with little sexless statuettes for the winners.

But that’s not what they want. Having a separate trans division would deny them their validation as “women” in exactly the same way that “third space” toilet facilities would. Trans activists don’t want a solution that’s “fair” that does not give them the hit of affirmation they crave. They don’t want to put a spotlight on their “transness”, they want to be centered, celebrated, and rewarded for their “womanliness.” The idea behind TWAW and “NO DEBATE” … Read the rest

Sometimes it just takes the breath away. This isn’t some pink-hair young adult, this is a middle-aged man with a book to advertise, and this is how he presents himself to the world.

coming to love Manchester, a place I have always assumed is terrible, through the experience of standing outside a Women’s Place UK conference in a big crowd of legends all chanting “you’re a bunch of wankers”

— Peter Mitchell (@pdkmitchell) March 24, 2022

He brags of standing outside a feminist meeting with a bunch of people shouting in order to drown them out and disrupt their meeting. He brags of it.

Anyway this was good and inspiring and I'm glad I went https://t.co/L7266GsKO3

— Peter Mitchell (@pdkmitchell)

Megan McCardle writes about Lia Thomas:

I’ve now written two columns about Thomas, and it is striking how many people — almost all of them liberal — have spontaneously erupted when I told them what I was writing about. All made the same complaint: It’s not fair.

What’s striking about that? Of course it’s not fair. The unfairness is laughably (enragingly) obvious. He’s mocking us.

There’s little question that Thomas has retained some of the many biological advantages conferred by male puberty, such as height, heart and lung capacity, and strength. But the obvious rejoinder is that of course biology isn’t fair; it never was, and never can be.

That rejoinder is not obvious at all. It’s flippant … Read the rest

How is it their “turf”?

“Terfs get off our fucking turf”. #WPUKManchester. pic.twitter.com/43GH5WJIIh

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

#WPUKManchester #Manchester #Misogyny ⁦@AndyBurnhamGM⁩ trans extremists try to silence, intimidate and disrupt women speakers inside the Mechanic’s Institute this evening, by converging on it for the ⁦@Womans_Place_UK⁩ event. Around 200 protesters. One arrest made. pic.twitter.com/ewI7SxwUQe

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

#WPUKManchester Around 200 trans rights activists, gathered in St Peter’s Sq, Manchester at 7pm, to attempt to silence, intimidate and disrupt a WPUK meeting, at the nearby Mechanic’s Institute. pic.twitter.com/s1sBW4atUm

— Belstaffie (@Belstaffie) March 25, 2022

… Read the rest

Some background from way back on February 21:

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

Thousands of nuclear arms had been left on Ukrainian soil by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to completely denuclearize.

In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine’s security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.

Oh really. That’s not going all that well.

It is clear that Ukrainians knew they weren’t getting the exactly legally binding, really robust security guarantees they sought.

But they were told at the time that the United States

Department of really bad analogies department:

JK Rowling has hit back at Vladimir Putin, after the Russian president cited her in a wide-ranging speech that saw him criticise “cancel culture”.

Pause for correction: she hasn’t “hit back”; she has rejected the comparison.

At a televised meeting on Friday, Mr Putin compared recent criticism of the Harry Potter author to that faced by pro-war Russian composers and writers.

“Pro-war” is sloppy too, since the issue isn’t war in general but this specific “war” which is an unprovoked attack by a massive nuclear-armed country on a much smaller one with no nukes.

In the lengthy speech, which was given to the winners of various cultural prizes, President Putin claimed Russian composers

So the thing is, the wife of a Supreme Court justice tried very hard to overturn the presidential election last year, which is…kind of criminal? Probably impossible to prosecute but not therefore legit? Criminalish?

The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful [Mark] Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face”

Cultural differences.

We are also much more sceptical of religion – neo or traditional.

— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) March 24, 2022

I was at school in the US for a time, and have worked there. I found the class system much more rigid than in the UK and that there was more baked-in deference – I have found it bizarre ever since when Americans use postcard images of the UK to claim they are more egalitarian.

— Adele Barnett-Ward (@Adele_Thames) March 24, 2022

The US takes its self very seriously and most people believe the hype that they are in the greatest country on earth. Brits are one the whole much more cynical and self-deprecating. We don’t take ourselves seriously

It seems Clarence Thomas’s wife plotted with Mark Meadows to help Trump steal the election. That’s interesting.

Jane Mayer in the New Yorker in January:

Many Americans first became aware of Ginni Thomas’s activism on January 6, 2021. That morning, before the Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., turned into an assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of at least five people, she cheered on the supporters of President Donald Trump who had gathered to overturn Biden’s election. In a Facebook post that went viral, she linked to a news item about the protest, writing, “love maga people!!!!” Shortly afterward, she posted about Ronald Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing” speech. Her next status

There was a Woman’s Place UK meeting in Manchester tonight. Apparently the usual happened.

Highlight of the night was when it went quiet for a moment inside and we heard a male voice shout through a megaphone “the gender binary is a colonial construct!” And everyone inside hooted with laughter #WPUKManchester

— becca (@boodleoops) March 24, 2022

Of course there were men with megaphones outside. Can’t let women talk unopposed.

Imagine this was a trans meeting in Manchester tonight.

Do you think for a moment the reaction would be symmetrical or barely recognisable to what we've seen tonight?

The indulgence offered to angry sexless bourgeoise mantra chanting misfits is quite something.

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) March 24, 2022

Women

Yglesias is really making me cross, I must say.

There are many people and most of them express opinions on multiple topics; I think some people are in fact expressing anger about linguistic change and I am offering some thoughts on that topic.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 24, 2022

Come on. This is not primarily (or secondarily and you could go through quite a lot more numbers) an issue of linguistic change. The word is not some relatively unimportant vocabulary item, it’s the word that names the female half of the set of human beings, the half that is the source of all human beings. That’s what matters about it. The fact that “language changes over time” is not … Read the rest

Yet another man telling us yet again that we have to accept the “new” meaning of the word that names us. Language changes, you fools! Live with it!

Being mad that the meaning of words changes over time is not really a great basis for a political ideology.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 24, 2022

In the vast majority of cases, the people with XX chromosomes are the people with uteruses and vice versa.

But that's not uniformly the case. But the people most insistent on these definitions also want to insist on a hard binary.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 24, 2022

Funny how he’s not talking about people with XY chromosomes. Funny how people like him always know … Read the rest

The BBC has a long piece about life on the front lines in Kharkiv:

Russia invaded at 05:00 on 24 February. The night before, 22-year-old Vlad and his brother-in-arms Mark, also 22, were at a fellow private’s wedding. Columns of Russian tanks, howitzers, armoured vehicles and troop transports rolled across the border, just 40km (25 miles) away. Despite the long build up of Russian forces, the move was a shock – Ukrainian troops scrambled to defend the city.

When they learned of the attack, Vlad and Mark joined their battalion – the 22nd Motorised Infantry – and headed straight to the front lines. They have been there ever since. I have visited them there twice on the city’s northern

Beardy bro wonders why there are so many more bitches in the UK than in the US and Canada. Fellow beardy bro helps him out.

The answer is Mumsnet, I believe.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) March 23, 2022

Turns out it’s because…uh…we have such excellent social support for women in the US compared to the UK. Yes, sure, that’ll work.

Really glad you men are sorting this out. While you’re here, maybe you could do something about the crushing of US women’s access to abortion and the lack of maternity leave in the US? That’s the kind of stuff UK women discuss on Mumsnet

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) March 23, 2022

Oh no, that’s all too kitcheny, too Mumsnetty, … Read the rest