Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Not a good look

    Erm…sir…

    Leni Riefenstahl would be all over that.

  • To raise safeguarding concerns

    When Pride becomes megalomania:

    When Marion Harding contacted the chief executive of Surrey County Council in 2021 to raise safeguarding concerns about her local Pride organisation, she expected a speedy response.

    After all, the council itself had given Pride in Surrey tens of thousands of pounds in funding, and her concerns were about the protection of potentially vulnerable young people who came into contact with the LGBTQ organisation, which was set up in 2018 by local activist, Stephen Ireland.

    Harding, 62, and her wife, Cathy, 59, had volunteered for Pride in Surrey, but both had a number of worries about Ireland’s conduct, not least that he had appointed himself head of safeguarding – a role that, according to guidance for voluntary bodies, should “not be the most senior person in the organisation”.

    Why not? Oh I bet we can guess – because if the most senior person is, say, a pedophile, then the most senior person is not going to do a brilliant job of safeguarding and will not let anyone else do a brilliant job either.

    The council appears to have done little or nothing in response to Harding’s concerns.

    In March this year, Stephen Ireland, 41, was convicted at Guildford Crown Court of raping a 12-year-old boy, along with additional counts of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, sexual assault and making indecent images.

    His partner David Sutton, 27, a volunteer at Pride in Surrey, was convicted of offences including making indecent photographs and possessing extreme pornographic images.

    Both were also found guilty of voyeurism and perverting the course of justice by deleting phone data after becoming aware of the investigation. Ireland pleaded guilty to possessing 274 prohibited images of children and possessing an extreme pornographic image, while Sutton pleaded guilty to distributing a category A indecent photograph of a child, distributing three category B indecent photographs of a child, and possessing 64 prohibited images of children. On Monday, Ireland was sentenced to 30 years in prison and Sutton received a minimum 54-month sentence.

    …

    The Pride in Surrey case has sparked questions about what safeguarding concerns the local councils were aware of before the pair were arrested in April 2024. It wasn’t just local councils that had formal ties to Surrey Pride. Until earlier this year, Surrey Police listed the organisation on its website as a “partner agency” that “can also offer information, advice, and support” on LGBTQ issues, in addition to the force’s LGBTQ liaison officers.

    Of course they did. The cops are way too busy sniffing out gender-critical feminists to do anything about pedophiles running Pride groups.

    The Telegraph has spoken to several Surrey residents who reported safeguarding concerns as long as six years ago with Surrey council, Guildford Borough Council and Woking Borough Council, which also had ties with Surrey Pride.

    But no action appears to have been taken. Surrey County Council has, according to a Freedom of Information request, funded Pride in Surrey to the tune of more than £140,000 for various events and projects since 2020, including £24,275 for the year 2024-2025. Earlier this month, weeks after Ireland’s conviction, Guildford Borough Council announced that “Surrey Pride will be returning to Guildford” for a parade in September – the sixth annual Pride event in Surrey, and the second time it has taken place in Guildford. It included a hyperlink to the website of Pride in Surrey.

    The decision astonished those who had been trying to raise the alarm.

    Raising the alarm is tranzfobick.

    H/t Mostly Cloudy

  • Collective says what?

    Oh goody, an open letter.

    Open Letter: “Biological Sex” and Its Variants are Transphobic Slurs

    Says Trans Advocacy & Complaints Collective, which I suppose is a person and a phone.

    To our Public bodies, MPs, and Media outlets,

    When considering the language we use to address a group, particularly a minority group, the most precise and respectful term is the language they choose for themselves. This is a widely accepted principle of respect, yet in recent years, it has been inexplicably overlooked when it comes to addressing transgender people and the trans community as a whole.

    Is it? Is it? Is it really?

    I don’t think so. The words “a group” can mean almost anything. Say you have a group of arsonists, or kidnappers, or Trump fans. Is it a widely accepted principle that we should let them decide what we call them? Nope, I don’t think it is.

    Instead, we have witnessed a barrage of offensive terms being invented in recent years whose intention is to cause as much offence and harm to trans people and the trans community, whilst trying to appear authoritative or scientific. To educate those who otherwise might be using these words in good faith, we have decided to make our stance clear:

    As much offence and harm as what? When writing an open letter or similar public-facing item it’s a good idea to keep track of your words until you get alllll the way to the end of the sentence.

    Now, for the substantive point, no, that’s not what you’ve witnessed. What you’re seeing is reaction to the wild claims of a deluded flattered arrogant communniny hell bent on silencing women and taking all our stuff.

    To educate those who otherwise might be using these words in good faith, we have decided to make our stance clear:

    “Biological male” and “Biological Female” when referring to trans people, is an offensive slur.

    Too bad. You have a biological sex, and when you start trying to take away everything women have fought for, we’re going to point it out.

    A fundamental principle of dignity, respect and fostering good relations between those who have a protected characteristic and those who do not, is to refer to communities by non-offensive self-determined language. 

    Oh yeah? Then stop calling us cis women.

    If our community is hurt by a phrase or term that has been externally assigned to us by those seeking to promote bigotry or erase our human rights, we have the right to call this behaviour out. It is up to no one but the members of our community to decide when something is offensive to us or when we choose to reclaim it. Currently, the trans community overwhelmingly consider the term/phrase “Biological Women” and “Biological Male” to be offensive and a slur. 

    Yuh huh and because I identify as a luxury yacht I consider the term/phrase “human being” to be offensive and a slur. What can I do about it? Not a damn thing, and the same goes for you.

    As such, we call on Public bodies, MPs and Journalists to stop using and perpetuating this offensive term with immediate effect. 

    As such what? What as such?

    And as for “with immediate effect” – well I call on you to go knit a bicycle with immediate effect.

  • Step one: specify the rights

    The reporting on trans issues is such a hodgepodge of incoherent language and bizarre assumptions. Reuters for instance:

    Transgender minors. Transgender soldiers. Transgender characters in books.

    The U.S. Supreme Court‘s latest term was bursting with fodder for America’s culture wars, few more so than three cases touching on transgender rights. The court, powered by its 6-3 conservative majority, in each case ruled against transgender plaintiffs or their interests more broadly.

    But what if the putative rights are not rights in the first place? It’s not just obvious that men have a right to force themselves on women in women’s spaces provided they claim to be trans women. I, for one, don’t think they do have such a right, because if they do, then women have no right to spaces without men in them. Reuters simply pretends that choke point does not exist.

    The court, which issued the final rulings of its nine-month term last Friday, agreed on Thursday to hear another major dispute involving transgender rights during its next term, which begins in October. The justices will decide the legality of Republican-backed state laws banning transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools, taking up appeals from West Virginia and Idaho defending the measures.

    Banning male athletes from female sports teams. Female athletes who are trans don’t want to play on female teams, and can’t if they do want to because taking testosterone is not permitted. It’s male (trans) athletes who want to be on female sports teams, and that is obviously unfair because of the built-in physical differences. It’s pathetic that journalists pretend not to grasp that point.

    The Tennessee law upheld by the court bans gender-affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria. The court’s conservatives rejected an argument that the measure unlawfully discriminated against these adolescents based on their sex or transgender status.

    Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth.

    That ruling “will undoubtedly encourage opponents of LGBTQ equality to continue enacting laws that deny transgender individuals equal opportunities,” Rutgers Law School Professor Carlos Ball said.

    There’s not really such a thing as “LGBTQ” equality. The Q is meaningless, so leave that aside, but the T demands rights that are not rights. It’s not a “right” for a man to say he’s a trans woman and therefore be included in women’s sports. That’s not a right and it has nothing to do with equality.

    “For LGBTQ rights supporters,” Ball added, “the ruling is a reminder that most of the hard work on behalf of protecting the rights of transgender people is social and political rather than legal.”

    That’s for sure. It’s social and by god it certainly is political. It takes a lot of political to undermine women’s rights while claiming to be on Team Progressive.

  • Cheating athlete wins

    Bad deceptive anti-informative journalism yet again.

    Trans athlete wins USA Cycling women’s event as female opponents protest and speak out

    MALE athlete you dishonest panderers. The problem is that he’s male.

    A trans-identifying athlete won a women’s cycling event that was officially sanctioned by USA Cycling on Tuesday, prompting female opponents to protest and speak out. 

    A MALE trans-identifying athlete. Decent journalism does not hide the most important aspect of a story.

    The trans athlete, Kate Phillips, won first place at the Lyons Masters National Championships in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Phillips beat out veteran women’s cyclist Julie Peterson for the gold, and Peterson then refused to take the podium at the medal ceremony in protest. 

    Think he’s huge enough?

    Fellow veteran women’s cyclist Kristina Gray, who did not compete against Phillips on Tuesday, wanted to speak out in support of her female peers because she said she’s also had to compete against trans athletes in cycling as an Oregon native. 

    MALE athletes. You call the women female athletes, call the male athletes MALE; don’t veil the MALE part by substituting “trans” for male.

  • Guest post: Source material

    Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on The rights of female athletes.

    I looked up this source material:

    PRESS RELEASE

    U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Finds the University of Pennsylvania Has Violated Title IX

    APRIL 28, 2025

    PRESS RELEASE

    U.S. Department of Education Announces the University of Pennsylvania Has Entered into a Resolution Agreement to Resolve its Title IX Violations

    JULY 1, 2025

    I see 3 things: (1) The words “male” and “female” appear extensively in both press releases, to explain the government case against UPenn in terms of sex discrimination; (2) The phrase “trans” does not appear in either press release; (3) The phrase “gender” appears only once, in the July 1 press release, to cite the Trump Executive Order 14168 (that he signed on his first day back in office, on Jan 20, 2025) about “Gender Ideology Extremism” (in my bolding below):

    UPenn has signed OCR’s Resolution Agreement to resolve its Title IX violations, which requires UPenn to undertake the following action items:

    • UPenn will restore to female athletes all individual UPenn Division I swimming records, titles, or similar recognitions which were misappropriated by male athletes allowed to compete in female categories;

    • UPenn will issue a public statement to the University community stating that it will comply with Title IX, specifying that UPenn will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs or occupy Penn Athletics female intimate facilities;

    • The statement will specify that UPenn will adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ pursuant to Title IX and consistent with President Trump’s Executive Orders “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism” and “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”;

    • UPenn will post the statement in a prominent location on its main website and on each of its websites for women’s athletics;

    • UPenn will rescind any guidance which violated Title IX, remove or revise any internal and public-facing statements or documents that are inconsistent with Title IX, and notify all staff and women’s athletics of all such rescissions; and

    • UPenn will send a personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer.

    My 3 findings above — from the source material — contrast against every news article that I have read about the UPenn case. They all frame the UPenn case in terms of “trans” and “gender” and “transgender” athletes, as if those phrases refer to real things and people. In contrast, the Trump administration sees that “gender ideology” exists — the way I see that Catholicism exists (for example), but I do not use Catholic beliefs in my thinking, or as legal arguments. Trump the man aside, this legal strategy is strong, it is working, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

  • Tepid

    Just one little thing here.

    Penn to ban trans women from women’s sports

    By Tuesday afternoon, the Penn website showed other athletes holding the school’s top times in Thomas’ events. The site was annotated with a note that read, “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.”

    “While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson said. “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

    Grudging. Minimal. Reluctant. Insufficient.

    Of course “some students” were “disadvantaged” – or to put it another way, several female students were grossly cheated. It was wildly, offensively, insultingly unfair, as we loudly said at the time, but the Penn administration and all the other right-thinkers brushed off our objections for the sake of rewarding that great big dude with his giant shoulders and hands. The admission should be a whole lot less grudging than “some were disadvantaged.”

    “Our commitment to ensuring a respectful and welcoming environment for all of our students is unwavering,” Jameson said. “At the same time, we must comply with federal requirements, including executive orders, and NCAA eligibility rules, so our teams and student-athletes may engage in competitive intercollegiate sports.”

    You completely failed to ensure a respectful and welcoming environment for all of your students when you let William Thomas cheat.

  • Attacked, vilified and ostracised

    Alice Sullivan in The Times:

    In the past decade, British academics have been attacked, vilified and ostracised simply for asserting that sex is real, binary and important. 

    Very important indeed, I should think. Without it we wouldn’t exist!

    In a climate where people are frightened to express their views or even to ask questions, universities have a responsibility to act as bastions of critical analysis, where reasoned debate and the pursuit of knowledge thrive. This is not only about protecting individuals but also the integrity of scientific research and scholarship.

    Instead, universities have, perhaps unwittingly, institutionalised behaviours which undermine free speech and inquiry. Equality, diversity and inclusion policies and networks have been turned against groups they are supposed to protect, including women and particularly lesbians.

    Well it’s like this. The goal was to prop up free speech and inquiry for Team Magic Gender and undermine them only for Team Sex is Real. As for women and lesbians – well, if they are tranz excloosionary they deserve all the shunning and punishment they get.

    My government-commissioned review into barriers to research on sex and gender tells the stories of academics who have suffered severe personal consequences. It also tells the less visible stories of those who have been hamstrung by bureaucratic procedures or who have bitten their tongues to avoid becoming victims of the next witch hunt.

    We know that the real-world impact of this censorship includes harm to vulnerable people. In her 2024 review of gender services for children and young people, Baroness Cass lamented the lack of quality research into the effects of puberty blockers and other interventions.

    Oh well. Children and young people are resilient. They’ll bounce back. Their bodies may not bounce back, but they will.

  • Accept no fake institutes

    There are many “Lemkin Institute” debunkers out there, fortunately, because there are also lots of credulous fools citing it as if it were a genuine human rights “institute” as opposed to one fanatic with no scruples.

    Beware of people setting up bogus “institutes” that are really just a person and a laptop.

    Remember the “Secular Policy Institute”? Yeah, like that.

  • No they don’t

    UN Women:

    Also UN Women:

    You do the math.

  • He had his fun

    Of course CNN does the usual.

    Some critics claim transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in sports, but that’s not what the research shows.

    While research is limited and ongoing, a 2017 review in the peer-reviewed journal Sports Medicine found “no direct or consistent research” showing trans people have an athletic advantage.

    No, dummy, of course “trans people” as such don’t, but men do, and trans women are men. It’s men who have the advantage, because men do have an array of physical advantages over women, which is why women have a separate category. Trans is used as a screen for that, to enable men like William Thomas to cheat.

    Thomas has not commented publicly on the latest lawsuit. Despite her expressed intention to keep swimming competitively after college, Thomas has been barred from international events by the rules of World Aquatics, which only qualify transgender athletes who have not experienced biological puberty.

    The Court of Arbitration for Sport denied Thomas’ challenge to the rule, making her ineligible for most elite competitions, including the 2024 Olympics.

    Any bets on how fast Thomas will revert to being male now that the cheat doesn’t work?

  • The rights of female athletes

    Holy shit “Lia” Thomas has to give it all back. FINALEEEEEE!!!

    The University of Pennsylvania says it will update records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and apologize to female athletes “disadvantaged” by Thomas’ participation on the women’s swimming team, part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case.

    The U.S. Education Department and Penn announced the voluntary agreement Tuesday. The case focused on Thomas, the transgender swimmer who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022, when she HE became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.

    The department investigated Penn as part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports, finding the college violated the rights of female athletes.

    Under the agreement, Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas and send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers, the Education Department said.

    YESSSSSS.

  • Who you calling “girl”???

    It’s not just trans ideology that hates women.

    Remember when I tried warn everyone about this for years way out ahead of the curve and your response was to do everything you could to damage my public reputation? This catastrophe lays [sic] at the feet of people who think exactly as you do

    Maybe a convent for a decade or two would suffice for confession, repentance and atonement. Seriously, girl: you and your ilk have serious blood on your hands. You and your poisoned apples.

    Jesus christ.

  • The advice of “legal experts”

    Churches are not institutions set up to sort truth from fiction. Result: they’re not good at it.

    The Church of Scotland flouted the law on single-sex spaces by wrongly insisting that biological men could still share female lavatories with girls, it has emerged.

    A mother raised concerns that at least one man from an LGBT club was using female facilities at a church-run community centre in Cupar, Fife, where her 11-year-old daughter attended a drama class. She was told by the church that it was “lawful and often appropriate” for “women-only spaces to include trans women”, despite the Supreme Court ruling in April.

    There you go. The truth is it’s neither lawful nor appropriate, but how is the church to know, when its whole worldview is based on fictions?

    The church has claimed that its trans-inclusive stance was based on the advice of “legal experts” such as the activist group Stonewall and the Good Law Project run by the barrister Jolyon Maugham, which is seeking to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.

    Ah well there’s your problem right there. Don’t ever take legal advice from Jolyon Maugham. The man is a women-hating zealot.

    The confusion led to new calls for the Scottish government to take a lead over the issue instead of insisting its policies cannot be changed until the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) issues formal advice later this year.

    The Scottish government rivals Jolyon Maugham in its hatred of women.

  • Did something switch?

    Huh. The BBC admits it left out important details in a story about the usual subject. I haven’t seen it do that before.

    A Guernsey teenager has been sentenced to almost three years in youth detention for child sexual offences, according to Guernsey Police.

    The force said 18-year-old transgender woman Jessica Garnham-Burton was arrested in May 2024 for using social media platform Snapchat to speak to children.

    That second sentence is a tweak. At the foot of the article we get:

    This story was updated on 1 July 2025 to make it clear that Jessica Garnham-Burton is a trans woman and will be held in the male wing of the detention facility.

    NOW DO THAT WITH ALL SUCH STORIES.

  • Equal protection

    It all depends on how you look at it.

    US Supreme Court tosses rulings that favored transgender people

    Did they favor trans people though? Depends on how you look at it.

    The U.S. Supreme Court threw out on Monday judicial decisions that favored transgender people in cases from North Carolina, West Virginia, Idaho and Oklahoma, including in legal challenges to state health insurance programs that deny coverage for patients seeking gender-affirming medical treatment.

    That’s a car-crash of a sentence. The issue isn’t “favoring” trans people, it’s whether there is such a thing as “gender-affirming medical treatment.” Affirming gender isn’t really a medical category – gender itself isn’t really a medical category. Sex is, and sex is not switchable.

    What the reporter was trying to say is that the Court threw out decisions that challenged health insurance that refuses to pay for efforts to change sex. It’s not obvious to gender atheists that insurance should pay for efforts to change sex. It can’t be done, so why waste money trying, and that’s before we even get to the whole “first do no harm” thing.

    It’s just not obvious that doctors and hospitals should be trying to change people’s sex, so it’s not obvious that insurance plans should pay them to do so.

    The Supreme Court decided that Tennessee’s ban on youth transgender care did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of equal protection, as challengers to the law had argued. The court’s conservative justices were in the majority and liberal justices in dissent in the 6-3 decision.

    What if the real equal protection here is protecting credulous adolescents from people who claim sex can be returned to the store for an upgrade?

    Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.

    Now define “significant distress.” Explain how it differs from, for instance, significant distress over being too short or tall, too fat or thin, too yourself instead of someone else. Explain how it’s a medical issue, and how it’s known for certain that surgical or pharmaceutical interventions will make everything better. Explain how anyone knows for sure that significant distress about the self won’t resolve itself as the person in distress gets older.

  • Is it our turn yet?

    When worlds collide.

    The BBC has said it regrets livestreaming a Glastonbury performance by the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan on Saturday, with the prime minister and Ofcom among those to weigh in on the incident.

    …

    In the run-up to Glastonbury, the BBC was under pressure over how it would treat the performance by the Irish-language rap group Kneecap, since one of the band had been charged with a terrorism offence.

    But it was an act that appeared on the same West Holts stage before that has left the BBC expressing regret over its editorial decisions. Pascal Robinson-Foster – of the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan – led chants of “Death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”. He also told a story about working for a “fucking Zionist” and delivered the controversial “from the river to the sea” slogan.

    Dear oh dear – which twin is the most controversial/oppressed/genocided? Can we tell?

    After the broadcast, the BBC initially stated “some of the comments made during Bob Vylan’s set were deeply offensive”. It pointed to the warning it had issued to viewers of “very strong and discriminatory language”. The organisers of Glastonbury also issued a statement stating they were “appalled by the statements” made on stage that “very much crossed a line”.

    With Keir Starmer and other political figures taking aim at the BBC over the decision not to pull the broadcast, the corporation published a new statement on Monday. It said it regretted not ending the live stream during the performance. It said its team had been dealing with a “live situation” and accused Bob Vylan of expressing “antisemitic sentiments”. The Guardian has contacted a representative for the band about that claim.

    Is it a “sentiment” to call for death, death? Are the sentiments antisemitic or genocidal?

    It comes with the BBC already facing claims of both anti-Israeli and anti-Palestinian bias. It is soon to publish an investigation into a Gaza documentary after it emerged its child narrator was the son of a Hamas official. Meanwhile, it has faced criticism for opting not to air a second documentary about medics in Gaza, citing partiality concerns, that will now be broadcast by Channel 4.

    Ok so now can we talk about how much the BBC hates women?

  • Kicking and screaming every inch of the way

    Broadcasters must air view that trans women are women, says Ofcom

    Broadcasters must give airtime to claims that biological men are women when covering trans issues, Ofcom has said.

    The media regulator warned GB News in a letter seen by The Telegraph that it could not treat the controversy as settled, despite the Supreme Court victory for women’s rights campaigners in April 2025.

    But it’s not a controversy.

    Granted, there are people who try to make it one. There are people who claim that biological men are women. But they’re wrong; wrong in a very crude obvious unmistakable sense. It’s not a genuine controversy, it’s a performance of controversy based on an absurd blatant falsehood.

    The media regulator warned GB News in a letter seen by The Telegraph that it could not treat the controversy as settled, despite the Supreme Court victory for women’s rights campaigners in April 2025. The court decided that under the Equality Act, the word “woman” means a biological woman rather than a person’s self-identified gender.

    As a result, women-only spaces have a legal right to be protected. Sir Keir Starmer has told hospitals and universities to obey the law and ban trans women from female lavatories “as soon as possible”. However, Ofcom has said that the judges’ ruling does not mean the matter is “settled”.

    So it’s not “settled” that men are not women? I say it is settled (and has been all along). It’s farcial to pretend that’s a real controversy and really up in the air.

    GB News wrote to Ofcom asking it to confirm that the ruling had settled the matter of the definition of a woman by saying it was defined by biological sex and not gender identity. The station also asked the regulator to confirm that television companies would be able to refer to people such as sports stars solely by their biological pronoun.

    But Ofcom said the Supreme Court only ruled on the definition of a woman in terms of the Equality Act and not on its meaning in other contexts.

    Oh ffs. Will everyone please just grow up? There is no non-fake controversy over which people are women. Everybody knows that it’s women who are women, and not men in lipstick or high heels or suspendies and a bra.

  • They must be cruel, only to be kind

    No. That’s not how that works.

    No, he doesn’t choose “being kind.” He says he does, but he doesn’t. Being kind is not what he’s choosing. He’s choosing a performance of “being kind” which is actually being astonishingly rude and aggressive and hostile to women.

    When was it ruled that letting men who pretend to be women do whatever they want is what “being kind” means, while defending women’s rights is the very opposite of “being kind”? It’s clear that that’s what Benjamin Ryan thinks “being kind” means, so I wonder why he thinks that. Why does he see women as not in need of any form of “kindness” or fairness or equal treatment? Why does he see men who pretend to be women as fragile cowering victims and women as their huge muscular tormenters? Why does Matt Yglesias see things that way? Why does anyone? Is it something in the water?

  • Guest post: Because they are careful

    Originally a comment by Karen the Chemist on Near the crater.

    Re risk taking: Ego is a factor.

    Common objections to instituting safety measures or changing how they handle a chemical:

    We’ve been handling it this way for years and haven’t had problems. Things have been going fine, no problems, without [safety procedure].

    Another common attitude is that people think that they won’t have a mishap* with a chemical because they are careful. They assume they are very careful, certainly more careful, and a better chemist, than those who did have mishaps.

    And those who claim they don’t need eye protection because they’ll use their arm or hand to shield their eyes. As if they could raise them quick enough to block the splatter or the broken glass from the reaction vessel flying out of the fume hood at them. Nevermind that broken glass is very sharp and can easily cut human flesh. Even through some types of glove, like the disposable nitrile gloves that are widely used.

    *spill, exposure, fire, etc.

    I’ve seen multiple incidences of people coming very very close to losing weeks worth of work because they didn’t take some time to follow some safety procedures. Even simple ones that would have taken 10-15 minutes. Them: But it takes time. This would be with a reaction that will take two days, or more, to get from reaction setup to pure compound.

    I’ve also noticed that some people just don’t care if their actions increase or create risks for others.