Julie Bindel on lesbians and Pride:

The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality. Get the L Out represent those old-fashioned lesbians that reject the penis and all that is attached to it.

“All that is attached to it” is witty.

The women at Pride Cymru were carrying banners adorned with the words, ‘trans activism

Andrew Weissmann, who was a senior prosecutor in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, clarifies some things.

The release of the redacted affidavit provides further clarity on why Attorney General Merrick Garland took the extraordinary step of approving the search of certain locations at Mar-a-Lago. The short version is that nothing else had worked and top-secret information was at stake.

Trump tried to leverage the search of Mar-a-Lago into a shocking violation of Trump’s rights and privileges and holy status as god-emperor, but it’s the other way around – the necessity of searching Mar-a-Lago underlines Trump’s repeated criminal refusals to return the documents he stole. It was a crime to take them and it … Read the rest

The head of Vale of Glamorgan Council calls lesbians at a Pride march “hate-filled protesters.”

Love? She calls it love? She calls a malicious lie about lesbians at Pride “love”?

On Twitter right now: the leader of a trade union condemning peaceful protests; the former leader of the Green Party denouncing a protest at the abolition of a same-sex institution in her own ward; the leader of a Welsh council reviling lesbians for asserting their homosexuality.

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) August 28, 2022

But the time for that is over. When the leader of Vale of Glamorgan council blocks gay people for pointing out that lesbians have the right to be lesbians, she has taken the side of the

Joan Smith reviews the new JK Rowling novel:

Like its predecessor, The Ink Black Heart is a doorstopper, giving Rowling space to explore the psychology of individuals who abuse women online, but it is evidence of her ingenuity as a writer that this intention only gradually becomes clear.

…

“He’s convinced people I worked as a prostitute when I was broke,” Edie tells Robin. “He sent me pictures of my dead mother, claiming I told lies about her death. And the fandom believes all of it, and they attack me for stuff I’ve never done, never said, things I don’t believe.” The final sentence is not just heartfelt, it could be Rowling speaking about herself after a couple of

Academic debate 2022:

This promises to be a lively exchange of idea pic.twitter.com/gJ8gnPlHWW

— Tomas Bogardus (@TomasBogardus) August 26, 2022

There is but one Idea, and many academics to exchange it.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Army Ant on People became slotted.

This isn’t surprising at all. Anthropologists are very in love with all types of quackery (cultural relativism, post-structuralism, etc). It isn’t even a new phenomenon, BTW – they’ve been like this for several decades now. They also often seriously say things like (paraphrased, of course) “there’s no objective reality”, and basically that a cultural group’s emotional truth about its past/history is objective truth or at least should be treated as such.

This bullshit claim that sequential hermaphrodites (like clownfish and some arachnids) somehow “prove” biological sex isn’t real or that there aren’t just two of them is so utterly asinine. It’s akin to one of those “age sliders” claiming … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on People became slotted.

“It’s not just complex in the context of intersex … Our bodies are far more variable than our categories.”

This makes it sound like people with DSD (or “intersex” *as they would rather not be called), are more numerous than they really are, and their existence somehow blurs sex into a spectrum, ruining our ability to figure out who is male and who is female. It’s like saying that the existence of conjoined twins throws into doubt the classification of humans as bipedal tetrapods, and that to question that human limb number is anything but a spectrum is hateful bigotry.

Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and

There was a protest at the Hampstead Ladies Pond today. No doubt that’s why India Willoughby went there and took his gloating taunting misogynist selfie.

Here we are at the Stone of Free Speech on Hampstead Heath #LetWomenSwim @roseveniceallan pic.twitter.com/1Kc7OTM4e7

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) August 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/StandingforXX/status/1563520493608583168

Thanks to all who came today.

This is us#AdultHumanFemales#LetWomenSwim pic.twitter.com/9LQiDyMVHz

— SFW Kellie-Jay Keen #AdultHumanFemale (@StandingforXX) August 27, 2022

Really joyful mood at Hampstead Ladies Pond #LetWomenSwim pic.twitter.com/8GwHZ4Wkpi

— The Dinosaur In Black (@DinosaurInBlack) August 27, 2022

We're here!#LetWomenSwim pic.twitter.com/plw9pN9ENx

— SFW Kellie-Jay Keen #AdultHumanFemale (@StandingforXX) August 27, 2022

… Read the rest

But at least the documents are totally secure at Mar-a-Lago, because it’s not as if anyone can just waltz in off the street.

According to an article from the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a Ukrainian woman posing as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty is under [FBI] investigation after infiltrating the private members club under a false pretense.

Inna Yashchyshyn, 33, allegedly lied to members that she was a Rothschild heiress and mingled with Trump, US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others at Mar-a-Lago functions.

OCCRP, in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Gazette, reported that Yashchyshyn had demonstrated “the ease with which someone with a fake identity and shadowy background” could bypass security at

Typical Willoughby: taunting women with his ability to invade their spaces.

For the blocked (E.g 99% of Twitter) pic.twitter.com/svGDH5gJit

— Debbie 'Avocado Advocate' Taylor (@TriptychTwinsUK) August 27, 2022

Hur hur heehee smirk smirk.

Update: Now he’s blocking everyone so I’ll add a grab.

Another battle between/among a children’s hospital and Libs of TikTok/Chaya Raichik:

Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording that falsely suggested the hospital is performing hysterectomies on transgender children, a hospital spokeswoman said…

The recording, made by Libs of TikTok founderChaya Raichik, features twotelephone operatorsat the renowned D.C. medical facility stating — in response to Raichik’squestions — that a 16-year-old trans boy would be eligible for a hysterectomy at the hospital’s gender development clinic. Children’s has not disputed the authenticity of the recording but said the employees provided inaccurate information.

“None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care

It seems the police removed lesbians from a Pride Cymru march today.

Lesbians are being removed by police from Pride Cymru. This is utterly unacceptable and even more so on account of being perpetrated by the police, who should be PROTECTING them, and their right to march. Stand with lesbians! https://t.co/WoEohkPIbA

— Vanessa McCulloch (@NeedaGin) August 27, 2022

Just the lesbians. Not the men threatening the lesbians, just the lesbians.

Police have removed lesbians from Pride Cymru (Wales) because their presence was 'causing confrontation' with men at the march who identify as women https://t.co/outF8zryYU

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 27, 2022

Pride Cymru is proud of expelling lesbians.

Pride Cymru: lesbians not welcome https://t.co/PBVnRMInqK

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) August 27, 2022

Oh really? What historians?

Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body. (6/7) pic.twitter.com/x8KZ5rEaeW

— Scientific American (@sciam) August 24, 2022

That’s an ambiguous, not to say sneaky, thing to say. Even if there are some historians who talk about a “two-sex model,” it’s absurd to claim that all historians do as a matter of course – it’s absurd to treat it as universally accepted professional jargon.

It’s actually one Thomas Laqueur, who made the claim in a book titled Making Sex: Body and Gender … Read the rest

The Washington Post has an interesting detail:

Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart read the affidavit and approved the search on Aug. 5. Three days later, FBI agents dressed in polos and khakis executed the search warrant at the Palm Beach estate, carting away an additional 20 boxes of items from a bedroom, office and a first-floor storage room, according to an inventory of what was retrieved from the property that was made public earlier this month.

A bedroom and an office. I guess we should rejoice they didn’t find any in the lobby or the hotel dining room?

The affidavit says federal agents sought permission to conduct the search after reviewing the contents of 15 boxes Trump returned

Former Trump people tell us he never did bother to learn how to handle documents.

A former Trump official told CNN that they were not surprised to hear that the National Archives found boxes with classified records that “were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly (sic) identified.”

According to this source, the former President was known to walk around both the White House and Mar-a-Lago and pull documents out of boxes and look at them, then put them in other boxes or to the side, often with no method or reasoning to it. One source said that Trump was constantly putting things into stacks and leaving them around his office to go through later. These stacks often

Ah isn’t that adorable.

(He didn’t really get it from Marks & Sparks.)

Can you imagine if a female MBE behaved like this and publicly boasted about it?

But doing this under the protective label "trans" means you can get away with anything. pic.twitter.com/hqWImyW7Vh

— gender is harmful (@genderisharmful) August 26, 2022

Hur hur.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on 9 a.m. Pacific time.

After reviewing the affidavit (it’s here, the link @6 is to something else), I would say it’s not a completely uninformative nothingburger, but not terribly illuminating or new.

My notes:

— A criminal investigation was opened after the return of the 15 boxes. In other words, it’s not just the discovery that Trump continued to withhold documents that triggered a criminal inquiry.

— Of the 15 boxes that Trump voluntarily turned over, there were 67 documents marked confidential, 92 marked secret, and 25 top secret. Many also carried other designations, including those relating to human intelligence (i.e. sources)

— According to the FBI agent, many of the … Read the rest

The BBC offers some summaries:

The Department of Justice – which obtained the search warrant – described its work as a criminal investigation over the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorised spaces.

A criminal investigation of Trump, that is.

The 38-page affidavit said there was “probable cause” to believe that “evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” breaking federal laws would be found at Trump’s home.

Not a coincidence.

Trump is truth socialing his views.

Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on “Nuclear,” a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover – WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the

What Judicial Watch had to do with it:

Not long after the National Archives acknowledged in February that it had retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump began fielding calls from Tom Fitton, a prominent conservative activist.

Fitton, the longtime head of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, had a simple message for Trump — it was a mistake to give the records to the Archives, and his team should never have let the Archives “strong-arm” him into returning them, according to three sources familiar with the matter.Those records belonged to Trump, Fitton argued, citing a 2012 court case involving his organization that he said gave the former President authority

Hmmmm.

Hungary’s state audit office has issued a report about the risks of the country’s education system being “too feminine”, saying it could hurt the development of boys and create demographic problems.

…

“The phenomenon called ‘pink education’ has numerous economic and social consequences,” states the report by the state body, which is seen as close to the nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Why is it called that though? What color is “masculine” education? Does “masculine” education also have numerous economic and social consequences?

“If education favours feminine traits” such as “emotional and social maturity” and “provokes the overrepresentation of women in universities, equality (of the sexes) will be considerably weakened”, the report concludes.

Seriously? They’re going with … Read the rest