The BBC solemnly tells us what to think about Sam Smith and his new video – well no they tell us what to think about “their” new video, but you know how it is, it’s hard to remember to use the “correct” i.e. incorrect hence hard to remember ProNouns.

And with their latest video, Sam Smith has certainly caused a bit of stir.

If you haven’t watched it, the singer spends most of it wearing a corset and nipple tassels while performing some spicy moves with backing dancers.

Is this the BBC or Pink News?

One scene in particular has upset some people – it shows Sam in that corset and nipple tassel look, posing suggestively while being showered with

Also running out…

The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time in the water supply for 40 million Americans.

If you kids can’t stop fighting over the cookies/toys/puppy/front seat/ice cream Mommy and Daddy will just have to take it all away.

The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in American history, was prompted by precipitous

Maggie Haberman reports that Trump is running out of tricks in his battles with the legal system.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida wrote this month in fining the former president and one of his lawyers nearly $1 million for filing a frivolous civil suit against Hillary Clinton and F.B.I. officials.

Trump promptly dropped his similar suit against New York AG Letitia James. Tick tick tick…

The Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence on Monday to a grand jury about his role in paying hush money to a porn star

The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is protected again.

Trump rescinded a measure blocking logging and road-building on nine million acres of land in the Tongass in 2020.

…

The decision follows a years-long conflict between Alaskan Republican officials – who have argued the rule has slowed economic development and that renewing it will hamper efforts to connect remote communities by road, among other concerns – and conservationists, indigenous groups and others who say the measure is key to protecting the environment.

Spanning nearly 17 million acres – an area slightly larger than the state of West Virginia – the Tongass stores 44% of all the carbon dioxide contained in national forests across the country, according to the Alaska

Journalist Jean Calder dared to see a film.

The other day I attended a screening in Brighton of the critically acclaimed film Adult Human Female. It explores the challenges posed to women’s rights by sexist trans activism, including the way that gender “self-identification” can be used by abusive males to target women and children.

…

Women in this city, as elsewhere in the UK, have for several years been unable to freely discuss this issue without fear of sanction, harassment and threats. Elsewhere in the country, screenings of this film have regularly been sabotaged.

I did attend but not without hindrance because of the security measures in place. Every person who booked tickets had to be checked and the

Sturgeon really does give the whole game away here.

Falling apart isn’t it…

Simple questions. Deeply confused answers.

(via @PeterAdamSmith) pic.twitter.com/y8MUjYVpEr

— Tom Swarbrick (@TomSwarbrick1) January 30, 2023

Journalist: Are all trans women women?

Sturgeon: That’s not the point we’re dealing with here, trans women are women but in the present context, there is no automatic right for a trans woman –

[Journalist cuts her off, which he shouldn’t have; we needed the rest of that sentence.] There are contexts where a trans woman is not –

Sturgeon: No there is [frustrated half-laugh] circumstances where a trans woman will be held in the male prison estate.

There. She gave the whole thing away. That’s what all the sane people … Read the rest

Oh my – Sturgeon admits it. At 34 seconds she says an emphatic “Well yes” – and of course rightly so, but it’s what she’s been denying and ignoring and acting as if No all this time.

Does Scotland’s First Minister believe all trans women are women?

Scottish Gov has just implemented an effective ban on trans prisoners who’ve committed sexual & violent crimes against women being moved to a women-only prison. @itvnews pic.twitter.com/DRbvItHZ3i

— Peter A Smith (@PeterAdamSmith) January 30, 2023

… Read the rest

Another woman loses a place* to…

Finland has introduced the world's first transgender national figure skater.pic.twitter.com/qJgusb2ZCY

— IceDave (@IceDave92) January 29, 2023

*See first comment… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Calling all bullies.

To use my go-to example I see “god(s)” exactly the same way I (and practically everyone else) see the Midgard Serpent.

I don’t call myself an “amidgardserpentist”, so why should I call myself an “atheist”? If anyone honestly wants to know what I think, they’re going to have to stick around for the actual content. And if they don’t have time for that, then no real understanding is going to be conveyed by me giving them a label. This is also part of the reason* I no longer call myself a “feminist”. Julie Bindel and Laurie Penny are not different kinds of “feminists” any more than Kate … Read the rest

Pompeo has written a book.

It’s a master class in the performative anger poisoning American politics.

Mike Pompeo is a smart man — first in his class at West Point, Harvard Law Review — with a sharp tongue. In March 2016, as a four-term tea party congressman from Kansas, he warned that Donald Trump, if elected, would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.” 

And he was absolutely right, and he was part of the authoritarian’s administration. Why is that? It has to be because he’s an immoral man doing what’s useful for him as opposed to what’s good for everyone else. A smart man and a very bad one.

Pompeo disdained America’s career diplomats. He describes them,

The NY Times has an opinion piece on demographics and shrinking populations.

China, the most populous country on the planet for centuries, this month reported its first population decline in six decades, a trend that is almost certainly irreversible. By the end of the century China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.

The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s inexorable decline and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic “time bomb” that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations.

There is no doubt that a shrinking

Men brag in public of taking a baby away from her mother as if she were a jacket or an umbrella.

Men using women to gestate babies for them has nothing whatever to do with either democracy or equality.… Read the rest

MPs are afraid to talk about it at all.

In the privacy of a committee room on the parliamentary estate, Labour MPs gather for “top-secret” meetings to discuss the erosion of sex-based rights — and their numbers are growing.

They are part of a cross-party group of “gender-critical” MPs and peers often too frightened to express their views on trans matters publicly for fear of a backlash.

So that’s healthy. Trans ideology is making life steadily worse for women, and the people in charge are afraid even to talk about it.

One MP who attends regularly said the meetings “have to be top-secret or no one would come”. They added: “It’s a way of bringing women and men across

Bro journalist at the Herald talks to celebrity bro-woman India Willoughby. First sentence:

INDIA Willoughby is sitting at her kitchen table in Newcastle wearing the Versace top she bought as a treat after appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.

The scene is set! This is a woman he’s talking to. Womany womany womany woman. No self-respecting man wears a “top.” That’s laydee territory. No man buys himself a “top” as a “treat” – that’s a totally effeminate girly womany female feminine womany womany thing to do. ARE WE CLEAR???

Willoughby says he gets threats.

“Somebody will get killed. That’s where the rhetoric is going. Words kill, we know that. People are using their words and platforms to make people angry.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Calling all bullies.

Oftentimes, and more often than not, this antisocial, vile rhetoric and drive stems from “deeply-held’ religious convictions.

How does that work?

“Is homosexuality a sin?” This is a question about religious morality. “Are people who claim to be homosexual not really attracted or aroused by others of the same sex?” This is a fact question which never really came up. Religious people took it for granted because the truth of it was established in the common ground of human experience.

“Is being transgender a sin?” Religious. “Are people born with an inner conviction of what sex they are and is this a more reliable indicator of their actual sex than … Read the rest

Reduxx has the story on the man in the women’s locker room in Santee:

The trans-identified male at the center of controversy after using the women’s locker rooms at a California YMCA has a disturbing social media history, Reduxx has found.

On January 11, video clips from a Santee City Council meeting went viral on social media after a teen girl took to the podium to report her concerns about a trans-identified male who had been allowed to use the women’s facilities at the local YMCA.

Rebecca Phillips, 17, became emotional as she recounted that she had seen “a naked male in the women’s locker room” one night after finishing her workout and using the showers. Phillips said that when

So this revolting Jason Frye dude has a public post on Facebook from three days ago, drumming up fans for his campaign to bully a teenage girl who doesn’t want leering men in the women’s locker room where she has to change her clothes.

Hello Humanists,

Tonight is an important night. Thoughts of our community have been proliferating and we have a hunger to get out into the general community and show support for deserving people and causes.

Last week a woman, Christynne Wood, was changing after her regular aqua aerobics routine and a teenager who saw Ms. Wood in the locker room went to the desk to complain about seeing a “man.”

Notice that the man gets the honor … Read the rest

Well, this is breathtaking. I won’t need any more coffee for hours.

He didn’t even stop with “creepy little voyeur,” he called her a bunch more names too – including “puerile” which is funny because “puer” is Latin for “boy.”

Also he has a creepy (speaking of creepy) psychotic smile on his face the whole time he’s speaking, and whenever he says “trans women” he says it “trans women” as if to batter it into our brains and limbic systems.

After 17 year-old Rebecca Phillips spoke up about the presence of a male in the women's locker rooms at the YMCA, Jason Frye of the @americnhumanist association called her a "creepy little voyeur".

Yet the transgender person in question

Oh no, a crack in the edifice?

Robin White debated Sarah Phillimore tonight on gb news and said Adam the rapist should have "they/them" pronouns as his transition wasn't genuine.

That is an argument against self-id.

Also probably an insult to "non binary" people (lol)

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) January 28, 2023

This Moira White – the one who’s a man.

Have been booked to speak on GBNews on Sunday evening (7-8) about trans rights, the GRR Bill and s35. Not sure who other guests will be. pic.twitter.com/TTGieQGTrQ

— Robin Moira White (she/her) (@moira_robin) January 20, 2023

Hang on, I think I've heard this one before… https://t.co/R2lGDTTPox

— Anya Palmer (@anyabike) January 28, 2023

Watch the clip. Watch “Natalee” … Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on Dim bulbs.

I’m afraid you’re the one who is misled. I’ve been a part of the LGBTQA+ community for the last thirty two years since I came out in 1990. I have trans friends. This entire thing is just like it was then for gay people – demonization, misrepresentation, lies and hatred.

But it’s not “just like it was for gay people.” The things that gay people wanted didn’t affect anyone else. The accusations that gay men “recruited” young men to be gay were false. The LG purposely and scrupulously separated themselves from the pedophilia activists like NAMBLA. The “demonization, misrepresentation, lies, and hatred” against gay men and lesbians were false accusations and … Read the rest