Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on What would you spend that 9k on?

I have no idea about the health risks, but I think people are underestimating the privacy risks.

Anyone who donates eggs or sperm is incurring the risk that some years down the line, they or their family members will be contacted by the child. I don’t care what privacy protections you were promised when you made the donation, or even what laws exist in your jurisdiction to provide privacy — you don’t know what the law is going to be 20 years from now, and the general direction has been towards “I have a right to know my genetic heritage!”

More importantly, the law may be … Read the rest

Meanwhile, advertising aimed at convincing women that selling their eggs is a fab fun way to pay for a trip.

The fertility industry uses sanitised, colourful and youthful advertising to groom very young women into selling their eggs.

Notice how this ad talks only about the money, and not about any of the risks of egg retrieval, which include ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (fatal in… pic.twitter.com/6p98YBuQBt

— Radicailín (@radicailin) October 16, 2023

… Read the rest

Ah how sweet.

🧵Female fencer, Marja-Liisa Someroja from Finland has been denied her 2nd consecutive World Title in a rematch against the 6'1" male fencer.

According to another female fencer, most competitors have been completely unaware they are dueling a manhttps://t.co/OfbTr95gkC pic.twitter.com/fh41LSWAsM

— ICONS (@icons_women) October 16, 2023

… Read the rest

Anita Singh at The Telegraph on Orwell’s misogyny:

George Orwell was a “sadistic, misogynistic, homophobic, sometimes violent” man who wrote women out of his story, according to a biographer of his wife.

Anna Funder said that Orwell was a brilliant writer but a complicated man whose personal life was at odds with the “decency” of his writing.

…

“Decency is such a core Orwellian value. He writes about it. It’s the quality of the ‘proles’ in 1984 that is going to save us. He wanted to be decent, to be seen as decent, by which he meant a man of integrity, the same inside and out,” said Funder.

If that’s what he meant by decency then I … Read the rest

I’m so tired of seeing men cry crocodile tears over men who pretend to be women in order to invade women’s spaces in order to watch them take showers. SO TIRED of it.

Right-wing pundits portrayed her as a predator — a perverted man who faked his way into a sorority to leer at women. Death threats flooded her phone. Strangers began stalking her. pic.twitter.com/r2VZ5H3uw8

— William Wan (@thewanreport) October 14, 2023

Wtf else would he be?

Even if you think he is in genuine psychic anguish about having a male body, it still doesn’t follow that he gets to move in with women and ogle them when they’re naked. His anguish does not trump their right to get naked … Read the rest

The Herald [Scotland] helps Willoughby push his narrative:

Britain’s first transgender newsreader has spoken of her surprise at being nominated as Woman of the Year amid an increasingly hostile debate about trans people. 

India Willoughby, known for presenting Loose Women, said she hoped it would be a “small green shoot” for the trans community and a sign that “most mums, grandmas, sisters are on our side”. 

Writing exclusively for The Herald, the outspoken broadcaster spoke candidly about her experiences of abuse on social media, where she says she is frequently called a “groomer”, “paedophile”, and a “man”. 

The reporter who wrote this tripe is a woman. News flash: Willoughby himself is highly abusive on Twitter. The Herald … Read the rest

Anna Slatz at Reduxx tells us:

The Washington Post is under fire after sympathetically profiling a trans-identified male who enrolled in a sorority at the University of Wyoming and reportedly exposed his erection to the female members. Artemis Langford, who began identifying as a “lesbian” in 2017, was accepted into Kappa Kappa Gamma despite not even meeting basic eligibility requirements.

Plain old boring everyday women can’t do that, but special special special men who say they are women are welcomed with fireworks and a parade. Why’s that? What’s so special about a man saying he “identifies as” a lesbian? Why isn’t it just a childish taunt or insult?

On October 14, the Washington Post released an extensive profile on

Originally a comment by Sastra on Sobwhinesobwhinesobwhine.

@YNNB:

“Prepare the child for the road — not the road for the child.”

In The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure Lukianoff and Haidt talk about a sea change in child rearing and education which threw out this idea of instilling resilience and toughness for a more sensitive, concerned, child-centered approach — and as a consequence kids and adolescents became anxious and depressed. The book came out in 2018 and doesn’t really mention transgender issues, but the fragility and sense of entitlement they describe possibly hits its apotheosis there.

Great god almighty.

Not using preferred pronouns is a deep pain equal to a knife twisted into your back by a close friend. Maybe worse. pic.twitter.com/zPiJLF0t7B

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) October 14, 2023

… Read the rest

The Beeb has more on Trump’s interventions:

During remarks to a crowd of supporters, Mr Trump said Israel had to “straighten it out because they’re fighting, potentially a very big force”.

He called Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant a “jerk” and repeatedly called Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group in Lebanon, “very smart”.

Mr Trump also said that Israel had initially agreed to work with the US on a 2020 drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, but that they backed out at the last minute.

“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” he said. “That was a very terrible thing.”

That “Bibi” crap is so grating. He wants to remind us that he knows Netanyahu … Read the rest

The Washington Post editorial board on Trump’s contribution to the response:

In a reckless category of their own, however, were the comments of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. To be sure, he labeled the Hamas attack a “disgrace” shortly after it occurred — then pivoted to blaming it on Mr. Biden’s policies. That was about par for the partisan course, alas. Yet the former president went in a bizarre new direction Wednesday by heaping scorn on Israel itself for failing to anticipate the attack and lecturing the Jewish state to “step up their game.”

He labeled the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group “very smart,” comparing it to an authoritarian he rates highly for ruling “1.4 billion people

An “activist” (and stripper) called Tom Harlow is making quite a name for himself.

I went to ask him if he thought it was a great idea to be yelling at women who work for Women’s Aid, lesbians, and women involved in struggle around the world. He told me ‘I’m not going to listen to you.’ And there we have it. I hope his mum has a word. pic.twitter.com/JVp6LDLuHg

— Outspoken Women (@women_outspoken) October 13, 2023

He’s so oppressed by those women.

He might want to be a little cautious though.

Wonder whether @Harlowboylesque could let us know the identity of the fascists he spotted among the women at whom he was bellowing 'fuck you'? Asking for a friend. Well,

It’s SCIENCE.

Don't make me get the spectrum chart. In fact I WILL get the spectrum chart. pic.twitter.com/kmsdjLDXgp

— Isla Topham (@IslaTopham) October 15, 2023

… Read the rest

So a surprise guest turned up at the Filia conference.

Message of support played from @Martina to the #FiLiA2023 Women and to @jk_rowling … the room goes wild with joy.

Sisterhood and Solidarity! pic.twitter.com/1ldGRIBTzs

— FiLiA (@FiLiA_charity) October 15, 2023

https://twitter.com/MaraMatria/status/1713501610956005865 https://twitter.com/Wild_Womyn/status/1713497740980728246

All the cool kids.… Read the rest

And speaking of hatred and incitement to violence – heavily filtered man in a dress brandishes his fists in our general direction.

"I've been nominated for Woman of the Year – and I'm thrilled"

✍️ @IndiaWilloughby writes exclusively for the Herald about the "small green shoot" of hope for trans people

Read the piece in full here: https://t.co/mo3FcXx5xr pic.twitter.com/Boya4DMFTE

— The Herald (@heraldscotland) October 15, 2023

Watcha gonna do, Indy, punch the nearest woman? What’s your point?

He takes us through his morning, which starts with checking Twitter for what people are saying about him.

I dry my hair, do my make-up. Head off to the cafe where I’m writing my book.

And, after ordering my usual pot of Darjeeling,

The BBC four days ago:

Antisemitic incidents in the UK have more than quadrupled since Hamas’s attack on Israel, says a charity which helps Jewish people in the UK. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 89 “anti-Jewish hate” incidents from 7 to 10 October. That marked a more than four-fold rise on the 21 antisemitic incidents recorded in the same period last year.

Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said he was “very concerned” at reports of an increase in antisemitism.

…

Mr Tugendhat said he took the rise in antisemitism in the UK “extremely seriously” and urged a crackdown on the spread of hate. He compared the ideology of Hamas to that of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.

Goodness gracious me, a woman refused to have a conversation with a random guy who walked up to her in the street and requested a chat.

Trans entitlement. A creepy dude who almost certainly gets turned on by dressing up as a woman, walks up to a female and expects her to explain her T shirt. Imagine women walked up to AGP fetishists and demanded they justified what they’re wearing. Never hear the end of it. pic.twitter.com/Mv3g0aNJp2

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) October 15, 2023

Nobody has to consent to invitations to talk from total strangers encountered randomly out in the world. Nobody. An appeal for help is one thing, but a request to chat is very much another. A man … Read the rest

Originally a comment by YNnB (yes again) on A blanket fort for big babies.

Happily, this is a task at which anthropology should excel: spotting where the preoccupations of one cultural order—in this case, that of a late-modern, mostly Anglophone, very-online ecumene—are fervently insisted upon by members of that order as constitutive of reality itself.

Wait. Is she saying that the freshly-minted concept of “transness” is a narrow, Western, hegemonic, colonial imposition on the rest of the world’s varied cultures?! Say it’s not so!

This is just so outrageously meta, with anthropologists failing to recognize the global projection and reification of their own particular, parochial concerns and ideas. They can see the arbitrary, constructed, local nature of everyone … Read the rest

Two men win top spots in women’s race:

Transgender athletes – biological men – have been infiltrating women’s cycling for quite some time and now the absurdity has hit a new level with a pair of trans cyclists winning gold and silver in the women’s division of Chicago’s CycloCross Cup.

Tessa Johnson took the top place on the podium during the women’s SingleSpeed with Evelyn Williamson finishing second. Allison Zmuda, a biological female earned bronze in the competition, and somehow stood on the podium with a smile on her face after losing to two biological men who competed against her with a biological advantage.

Two men cheated and the woman who came in third pretended to be happy.

Today

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on True inclusion requires more and more and more.

Getting to true inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees requires much more than an inclusive and respectful workplace policy…

Oh? “Much more?” For most people, you’d think that would be sufficient.

True inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees means creating a psychologically safe workplace environment…

Please define “a psychologically safe workplace environment. ” Isn’t this a good thing for everyone to have? Why do I get the feeling that “psychological safety” isn’t going to be as “inclusive” as it should be, and that some employees’ “needs” are going to be prioritized over others. We saw this with Maya Forstater and Alison Bailey. All this “true inclusion” … Read the rest