Julie Bindel on That Lunch:

I have been in contact with Jo Rowling for two or three years. She got in touch with me on Twitter having seen the abuse that I had been receiving at the hands of misogynists since 2004. I don’t know when she picked up on what was happening to me, but she was clearly concerned about women’s rights and safety.

…

We have talked regularly ever since and I soon learnt what an amazing person she is. She has a wonderful sense of humour, in fact, she is one of the funniest women I have known, and has an enormous amount of integrity and generosity.

…

This lunch has now become infamous, but contrary

The singing fanatics story originates in a Facebook post by an evangelist named Jack Jensz Jr. “Worshipping our King Jesus 30,000 feet in the air!” he exclaims, not mentioning “Intruding on unwilling passengers 30,000 feet in the air!”

There are some “Yay Jesus!” comments and some very hostile ones.… Read the rest

Alex Jones is trying to get out of paying.

Companies owned by US radio host Alex Jones, including his right-wing website InfoWars, have filed for bankruptcy.

The move comes as he fights defamation suits brought by families of those killed in a 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.

Mr Jones, who falsely claimed the shooting was a hoax, has been ordered to pay damages in the lawsuits.

So he’s declaring bankruptcy instead.

In the US, declaring bankruptcy provides a route for companies to remain in operation and negotiate their debts, with settlements overseen by the court. It puts a hold on other litigation.

Troubles for the radio host and conspiracy theorist stem from his false claims about

What I’m saying. We can’t stop. We refuse to stop. We keep driving straight at the edge, accelerator to the floor.

Three members of the Just Stop Oil campaign held on remand by Warwickshire police were taken to Coventry magistrates court on Monday morning.

Katheryn Dowds, 28, Jake Handling, 27, and Josh Smith, 29, pleaded guilty to aggravated trespass at the Kingsbury oil terminal after their solicitor did not appear to advise them, according to a campaign source.

Dowds was fined £327, and Handling and Smith were fined £150 each. All were then released, only to be immediately rearrested and held again by police for breaching a high court injunction banning protests at the Kingsbury site, Just Stop Oil

Good thing it’s a very level-headed, reasonable, thoughtful, careful, fair movement for social justice. Good thing it stays strictly away from hyperbolic claims about ideological rivals being genociders. Good thing it doesn’t pretend knowing what a woman is=systematic murder of millions of people.

At this point a visible Harry Potter tattoo should be met with the same degree of revulsion as a Swastika

— Matthew Goldin (@matthewgoldin) April 17, 2022

… Read the rest

This is unbelievably obnoxious and intrusive and aggressive.

Imagine you get on a plane and you have to listen to this pic.twitter.com/RpY8d7RK4Y

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) April 16, 2022

It’s a captive “audience,” extremely tightly confined, with no escape possible. Standing up and making a lot of noise of any kind is grossly rude, and making a lot of religious noise is an outright insult.

Now Ilhan Omar is on the naughty stool because she asked what people would think if Muslims did it. Of course, in Islamist countries, Muslims do do it, but she’s not wrong to hint that no one should do it.… Read the rest

More treason in Congress.

Mike Lee wasn't mentioned a single time on CNN's State of the Union, Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, or CBS's Face the Nation. Not one mention of new revelations about a senator scheming w/the Trump admin to end democracy on any of the major Sunday shows.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 17, 2022

The Times reports:

For weeks in late 2020, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, cheered on President Donald J. Trump’s effort to fight his election defeat, privately offering up “a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him.”

In text messages to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff,

“Me me me me me make it about me talk about me make the thing you’re talking about be about me.”

And that they are broken and terrible for existing. They're not, they're women who deserve the same respect the rest of us do, simply with the inability to have children due to medical reasons. GC's parroting such talking points, only serve to hurt women further.

— FlashFrame85 AKA Thwei Kantra (@thweikantra) April 15, 2022

I suspect as someone who is physically/phenotypically androgynous, and who never intends to be pregnant, I may not count either.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) April 15, 2022

She doesn’t suspect any such thing.

The idea that GC feminists believe that wombs, having kids or femininity

Well, punk, are ya?

I’ll start. No, and I don’t want to be, and I’ve never wanted to be. (So I must be trans, right? No.)

No, I forget “daintiness” at all times. What a revolting word.

There is nothing I can wear and still be girlish, nor do I want to. I don’t wear slacks or shorts, I wear jeans or (inside) sweat pants. I don’t wear them girlishly, I just wear them.

What does “dressing for an evening date” mean? What are “mannish suits”?

I don’t think about white gloves or white collars at all.

No. I hate perfume and have no jewelry.

No. I sprawl whenever I feel like it.

No. I stride like a fucking kangaroo.… Read the rest

If you’ve been thinking “At least cactus will flourish,” think again.

[E]ven these prickly survivors may be reaching their limits as the planet grows hotter and drier over the coming decades, according to research published on Thursday. The study estimates that, by midcentury, global warming could put 60 percent of cactus species at greater risk of extinction.

There’s nothing surprising in that really. Being adapted to the climate of Arizona doesn’t mean you’re adapted to the climate of a furnace.

Most cactus species “are in some way adapted to the climates and the environments that they live in,” said Michiel Pillet, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who led the new study,

Trump issues insults and taunts in observation of Giant Rabbit Day.

NEW!

President Donald J. Trump:

“Happy Easter to all including the Radical Left Maniacs who are doing everything possible to destroy our Country. May they not succeed, but let them, nevertheless, be happy, healthy, wealthy, and well!” pic.twitter.com/Q6tJf0nThl

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) April 17, 2022

And carrots to the Rabbit, too.… Read the rest

“Cis” man singles out feminist woman for opprobrium again.

Given how you can barely open a newspaper without reading that what cis men do is trans people's fault, I really don't think there is much danger of Janice being silenced. pic.twitter.com/wwahUlj6EP

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) April 16, 2022

Of course the headline doesn’t say “I am being silenced” – it says “women won’t be silenced.” She’s not talking about herself, she’s talking about women. Maugham wouldn’t understand.

Anyone who works in the media – and many who don't – have heard the first hand accounts of how young women are treated in those newspapers. And how their editors are either directly responsible or look the other way, because the wrongdoer

Stonewall “training” at Bristol University:

Women may not truly know they are women unless they have their chromosomes tested, Stonewall has told university staff in its latest diversity training.

Lucky lucky staff, getting trained by the best.

In a handout after the session, staff were given a series of tips for creating an inclusive environment. One stated: “Remove gendered language from key policies and support LGBT people to navigate policies which might exclude them including parental leave policies.”

Oh sure, just remove “gendered language” from everything, that’s a good idea. That way women won’t be able to talk back. Sit down, Karen!

The Stonewall handout, seen by The Telegraph, added that staff should “avoid gendered language such as girlfriend,

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Casual observers.

Women’s sports only exist to exclude males. If women’s sports included males, there would no longer be women’s sports.

It’s a matter of fairness. As soon as anyone wants to be more “inclusive” you know fairness is about to get screwed over, and somebody is going to be cheated out of a spot on the team, or a place on the podium. When it comes to fairness in sports, segregation by sex is as basic as segregation by age, but does anyone push to include high school students “included” in primary school sports, or adults in children’s divisions? No. Why not?

We’re often told that “You’re as young … Read the rest

The NY Times offers a tale of discrimination:

A same-sex married couple said in a complaint filed Tuesday that the City of New York discriminated against them in denying them in vitro fertilization coverage under the city’s insurance plan for employees.

But wait! There’s a catch. The same sex they are is the male one. In vitro fertilization don’t do you no good if you ain’t got no egg. They ain’t got no egg, on account of how they’re men.

The couple, Nicholas Maggipinto, 36, and Corey Briskin, 33, claim the policy discriminates against them based on their sex and sexual orientation and that if they were female or in a heterosexual relationship they would have access to the

Oh look, another venomous liar.

My anger at seeing the GCs express sympathy at the horrific Sligo murders is off the charts. Their never ending transphobia has played no small part in feeding into an increase in anti LBGT+ expression (here & IRL) & attacks – you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us #LGBWithTheT

— Dr Mary McAuliffe (@MaryMcAuliffe4) April 13, 2022

She’s off the charts angry at feminists who express sympathy (and horror and so on) at the murder of two gay men. What a thing to be angry about! What a disgusting sentiment! And no, being gender critical doesn’t “feed into” hatred of lesbians and gays. That’s just a made-up chain of causation, made up … Read the rest

Bill McKibben in the NYRB a couple of years ago:

Because humans have fundamentally altered the physical workings of planet Earth, this is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now. The main question is whether we’ll be able to hold the rise in temperature to a point where we can, at great expense and suffering, deal with those crises coherently, or whether they will overwhelm the coping abilities of our civilization. The latter is a distinct possibility, as Mark Lynas’s new book, Our Final Warning, makes painfully clear.

…

A survey of the damage done at one degree is impressive and unsettling, especially since in almost every case

Expel the witch.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sided with Tony Abbott and refused to join a “pile on” calling for embattled Liberal candidate Katherine Deves to be axed as the party’s candidate in the formerly blue-ribbon seat of Warringah.

Furious lobbying is under way with the Liberal Party to have Deves axed from the ticket in Warringah and a replacement candidate named before April 21, which is the cut-off date.

The Liberal Party is the right-wing party.

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean launched a blistering attack on Deves on Friday night, declaring she had to be dumped as the Liberal candidate for Warringah because of her comments about gender identity and LGBTQ issues.

“There should be no place for

Meanwhile in Guam –

The High School Rugby League season got underway Saturday, but not without incident.

Word quickly spread around the island’s sports community about a transgender athlete playing for the Guam High girls rugby team. The Panthers had three matches against the Tiyan Titans, Academy Cougars and ND Royals.

There again, it needs to be spelled out. It’s implied, but it needs to be spelled out. There was a boy playing for the Guam High School girls rugby team.

“I was shocked to discover that a male player from Guam High School was on the field charging through my female players with nearly no resistance, imposing injuries along the way,” said Tiyan head coach and long-time rugby

Now let’s read the insulting sexist dude’s piece about how women need to shut up and go away while the men say how much women’s sport they can have.

Given the urgent call-to-arms from select activists and politicians, casual observers could be forgiven for thinking Australian sport is about to be swamped by transgender athletes seeking to exploit any advantage they can on the playing fields of women’s sport.

No they couldn’t. Never mind about “swamped”; there’s no good reason women should be expected to put up with any men in women’s sports.

Liberal senator Claire Chandler has been at the vanguard of a movement she insists is designed to protect the fairness and integrity of female competition. 

Gee, I … Read the rest