An excerpt from William Shatner’s new book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder is doing the rounds, for good reason. It’s written “with” Joshua Brandon, so the quality of the writing may be due to him.

We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there.

I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Its vital helpline???

And, as always, I wonder if the ‘abuse’ suffered is just more people stating truth about reality. They have a very low threshold for abuse.

We are supposed to accept that stating Reality is hateful, and that we should just shut up and stop mentioning it. Fuck that shit. I propose that we should turn things around, and point out things that are actually hateful, and in some instances, actually violent. I’ll start.

Telling children that they are “born in the wrong body” is hateful.

Saying that so-called “puberty blockers” are harmless and reversible is hateful.

Mutilating children and calling it “gender affirming” or “lifesaving” care … Read the rest

Trump tried to use the documents he’d stolen to get the documents he’d failed to steal.

Late last year, as the National Archives ratcheted up the pressure on former President Donald J. Trump to return boxes of records he had taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago club, he came up with an idea to resolve the looming showdown: cut a deal.

Mr. Trump, still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. Trump told advisers, he

Florida. Floods. Insurance.

Homeowners insurance policies typically don’t cover flood damage, and most people living in Ian’s path across Florida didn’t have a separate flood insurance policy. Inland areas that experienced historic rainfall and catastrophic floodwaters were especially unprepared, according to a CNN analysis of FEMA flood insurance data.

Because usually the catastrophic flooding happens on the coasts, not inland.

In Seminole County, northeast of Orlando, more than 5,200 residential buildings have been damaged by the storm, primarily due to flooding, according to a county spokesperson. “We’ve never had anything to this nature,” said Jay Zembower, a Seminole County commissioner, calling the flooding “a 500-plus-year event of quick rainfall in a short window of time.”

But “a 500-plus-year event” doesn’t … Read the rest

The Daily Mail picked up the University of Southern Maine story.

A group of students at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine are calling for their professor to be fired after she said in class only two sexes exist. 

Christy Hammer, a professor of education, allegedly made the statement during a heated debate about gender identity in her  ‘Creating a Positive Learning Environment’ class, causing an uproar among the graduate students.

Only one student agreed with the educator. The rest maintained both biological sexes and social genders are on a spectrum.

…

The class is a requirement to complete the graduate-level Extended Teacher Education Program and become a certified teacher in Maine. 

So, as we know, the … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba replying to the question “Why did a guy who seemingly wanted to diddle kids join an organization that wanted to mutilate them?” on Wearing the mask.

I’d say it’s because sexuality is inextricable from the transgender package. A transgender person is a sexual being, and so a transgender child is a sexual child. Narcissistic AGPs use the concept of the trans kid to validate their own fantasies by making their fetish an intrinsic, unalterable character trait. Pedophiles, on the other hand, use the sexuality of rainbow subculture to sexualize children.

Pedophiles get their jollies from this even if they never once meet a trans kid. They get vicarious thrills by setting … Read the rest

Nicola Sturgeon says JK Rowling isn’t a feminist, she (Sturgeon) is.

Like hell.

Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that JK Rowling is not a “real feminist” as she lashed out at the Harry Potter author’s accusation that she is a “destroyer of women’s rights” over her plan to allow people to self-identify their legal gender.

Lash out all you want but if you take women’s rights away you’re not a feminist.

In a rebuke to Ms Rowling, Ms Sturgeon said that “real feminists as I consider myself to be” focus on the “real” threats to women posed by abusive men and “lawmakers who want to take away our rights”.

Trans women are abusive men. What they’re currently doing to women … Read the rest

Oh good, YET ANOTHER man explaining what a woman is and how wrong we’ve all been to think we knew.

What is a woman? It’s a question that’s suddenly everywhere, and it turns out the answer is complicated. Jon breaks down the gender binary and gender spectrum in this week’s episode. Stream the free episode now on Apple TV+. pic.twitter.com/n9RfjAhu7p

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) October 8, 2022

… Read the rest

Sally Hines as FGEN issued a “statement” (aka a blog post) last March:

FGEN is an international network of feminist academics and others whose aims are wholly political in that we seek to oppose transphobia wherever it becomes apparent – whether in a university in Central London or on the prairies of the midwestern United States. 

So, the F shouldn’t be there at all. It’s not a feminist network, it’s an anti-“transphobia” network, i.e. a network dedicated to insisting that men are women if they say they are and no one is allowed to disagree. No feminism in sight.

We aim to promote the human rights of trans and gender diverse people worldwide to end the exclusion of trans

Sally Hines founded a thing called the Feminist Gender Equality Network, aka FGEN.

Tell us more:

The Feminist Gender Equality Network (FGEN) is a cross-sector, interdisciplinary international organisation that adopts an intersectional feminist framework in order to:

1. advance the understanding of gender and sex as fluid categories

What’s feminist about that though? If gender and sex are fluid categories, how can feminism exist? What does it mean? What is it for?

2. protect the rights and needs of people of all (or no) gender

Then why call it feminism? Why not call it peopleism? If it’s for people of all or no gender (what that means is a question for another paragraph, or another day) then why … Read the rest

Reduxx has further detail on the Jacob Breslow question – Jacob Breslow Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, that is.

The academic who recently resigned from a charity that promotes the medical transitioning of children had for years been writing blog entries related to pro-pedophilia activism and “minor attraction.”

Activism around sex with children, that is.

“Activism” forsooth – as if the common understanding that it’s extremely wrong to force sex on children were just another outdated unexamined prejudice like the one that says women are stupid and inferior or the one that says non-white people are stupid and inferior.

It’s not. Sex is not good for children. Adults forcing or coaxing or tricking them into sex … Read the rest

Oops there goes the Kerch bridge:

Ukraine is exploding with excitement this morning.

Videos of the damaged Crimean bridge have spread like wildfire on social media; this is already being compared to the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva in April.

“The guided missile cruiser Moskva and the Kerch bridge – two notorious symbols of Russian power in Ukrainian Crimea – have gone down,” tweeted Ukraine’s ministry of defence.

“What’s next in line, Russkies?” it went on.

Ukraine has a brilliant sense of humor.

Ukraine’s inventive social media activists are gleefully pumping out memes to celebrate the occasion.

And Ukraine’s second largest bank, Monobank, says it has already issued a new debit card design featuring the collapsed

There’s a petition we can sign in support of the University of Southern Maine professor under attack for saying there are only two sexes. I just signed it.

There’s a conversation about the effort to get her fired at Why Evolution is True.… Read the rest

It hasn’t sunk in yet, has it.

Trans youth charity #Mermaids forced to close its vital helpline because of “intolerable abuse”. Even if you disagree with ⁦@Mermaids_Gender⁩ (which I don’t), this harassment is so wrong & prevents trans youth & parents accessing life-saving help https://t.co/AZjUL60P33

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) October 7, 2022

WHAT “vital helpline”???

Mermaids isn’t helping, it’s harming. Puberty blockers are harmful. Cutting off breasts or penises is harmful. Telling children they’re in the wrong body and can change that with drugs and surgeries is harmful. Mermaids doesn’t help; instead of helping Mermaids gives children terrible, dangerous advice.

The brutal recklessness of these ideologues is a sight to behold.… Read the rest

Meet “Critical Childhood Studies”:

Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) is an emerging academic field that has developed over the past two decades. The field belongs in the same ballpark as Critical Race Theory or former Women’s Studies (now Gender or Queer Studies). Established to examine the histories and provide cultural context for people oppressed on the basis of race and sex, these fields have morphed.

Rather than helping oppressed communities, critical scholars often promote ideological views on race and “gender” that ultimately do the exact opposite: further fuel racism and sexism. Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) has fallen into the same trap — deconstructing childhood to a degree that, if applied outside of an academic setting, would put children in danger.

Too bad girls in Iran can’t identify their way out of being killed by the security police.

Reports are emerging of the death of another teenage girl at the hands of security forces in Iran, as protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini looked set to enter their third week.

Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old who posted popular vlogs on YouTube, was killed when the security forces beat her with batons at a protest in Gohardasht in Alborz province on 23 September, according to Amnesty International.

This isn’t random or chance. A harsh punitive control of women is the core of Islamist theocracy. Islam sees women as nothing but walking temptations to men, who have to be bagged up and … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Feminism is for everyone except women.

I fully understand why many feminists say that men can’t be feminists, and I understand why they are suspicious of men who claim to be. It’s because we have a tendency to take over when we get involved, and when it comes to transactivists, they are living up to those expectations. What I don’t understand is how people can make declarations such as “MY feminism will be intersectional” as if people could buy a feminism and paint it any color that works best for them.

I think that moving Women’s studies over to Gender Studies has had an obvious and negative effect on people’s understanding of … Read the rest

Last year Michael Biggs wrote a piece for The Critic about…it’s simpler to quote.

Threats of violence against “trans exclusionary” or “gender critical” feminists — who do not believe that people can change sex merely by announcing preferred pronouns or wearing different clothes — have become ubiquitous on social media. It is nevertheless surprising to discover that such threats can now be submitted as academic work for a master’s degree.

The London School of Economics held a conference in April 2021 for students taking the MSc in Gender (Sexuality). One session was entitled “No Time, No TERFs, No Norms”; the disparaging acronym stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. A paper in the session concluded:

“If TERFs think trans* is

From an interview with Maggie Haberman about Trump and her book about Trump and reporting on Trump:

He fixated on the paper and attacked me because of it. There were times when he attacked me over coverage — it was always over a story or something he saw me say on TV. One thing he got very upset about seeing me say on TV was that he watches a lot of TV, and then that became a fixation. He’s incredibly hostile to anyone suggesting he watches a lot of TV because he thinks it’s some knock on his intelligence.

Of course it’s a knock on his intelligence. It’s also a knock on his intellectual energy, his discipline, his abilities, his … Read the rest

An online course at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is titled Who is Feminism For? The instructor is Sophie Lewis.

The seemingly uncontroversial idea that feminism is synonymous with “the women’s movement”—i.e., that feminism is “for women”—has in fact never been widely accepted, least of all among feminists. From the beginning, comradely holes have been poked in feminism’s myriad attempts to define itself, not to mention the word “woman.” For centuries, feminists have debated: what does feminism encompass? Who is feminism for?

No they haven’t. Not for centuries – the word hasn’t been current for that long, let alone the movement.

In this course, we’ll enter that debate, unpacking questions of feminism’s purpose, scope, and possible limits. Along the