Petra Laszlo says she’s not as bad as all that, despite that thing about kicking the young girl and the other thing about tripping a man who was carrying a child, whom he fell on when Laszlo tripped him.

Petra Laszlo said in a letter to the Magyar Nemzet newspaper (in Hungarian) that “something snapped” in her as migrants broke through a police cordon.

She said that she reacted out of panic and felt she had to “defend herself”.

Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

Ms Laszlo said: “I do not deserve the political witch-hunts against me, nor the smears or the death threats.”

Nobody deserves smears or death threats. But people don’t deserve to be … Read the rest

Another bit of history I didn’t know about (or, if I did, forgot). I should make a section for those in In Focus. Yesterday on Fresh Air, America’s Forgotten History Of Mexican-American ‘Repatriation.’

Donald Trump has proposed immigration reform that would include building a wall on the Mexican border, paid for by Mexico, and calls for the mass deportation of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. The deportation plan has echoes of a largely forgotten chapter of American history when, in the 1930s, during the Depression, about a million people were forced out of the U.S. across the border into Mexico. It wasn’t called deportation. It was euphemistically referred to as repatriation, returning people to their native

Well that’s not at all alarming.

The Oath Keepers, an armed, camouflage-wearing volunteer militia famous for hunkering down at Bundy Ranch, now say they have “boots on the ground” to protect Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who they believe was denied her right to a jury trial.

Even if they’re right, it’s not their job to “protect” her. Volunteer militias aren’t a thing, and civilian  “boots on the ground” are certainly not a thing. Nobody wants their boots on any ground; they need to stay home and watch tv.

“People should consider her under our protection,” Rhodes says in the teleconference. “We’ll make sure that our people are keeping a close eye on the situation and we’re going have boots

Last year glosswitch wrote 9 reasons why “cis” isn’t working.

1 Cis is not a necessary alternative to trans

Many people find it hard to see what is wrong with this statement:

“anyone not trans is cis”

But what if someone said this:

“anyone not Muslim is Christian”

It doesn’t make any sense, does it? The fact that being a Muslim is predicated on having a religious belief does not mean that anyone who is not a Muslim must have a different religious belief, let alone one specified by you.

She’s framing “cis” as a belief about gender, part of a belief system about gender. The point is, not everyone buys into that belief system. We don’t … Read the rest

Bring plenty of paper towels to mop the tears of laughter.

A courageous story from April 2014 of a person who is vaguely genderfuck and took on the eternal issue of how to wear a sock down your jeans while boarding a plane. Told by: Batshua bat Yehonatan.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking more about presenting as genderfuck in my non-work time; namely, I’ve been thinking about packing.

For anyone who doesn’t know me, let me make this clear. I am terrible at true genderfuck. Nobody is going to mistake me for a 14-year-old boy or an androgyne. I am, shall we say, rather well-endowed and I do not bind.

I’d been thinking for a while

Via Planned Parenthood on Facebook:

 … Read the rest

Bad news – National Geographic is being devoured by Fox.

The 127-year-old nonprofit National Geographic Society has struck a $725 million deal that gives 21st Century Fox a majority stake in National Geographic magazine and other media properties, expanding an existing TV partnership.

The agreement announced Wednesday will give the company controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s family a 73 percent stake in the new National Geographic Partners venture. The society retains 27 percent ownership. The move shifts the longtime nonprofit flagship magazine into a for-profit venture.

What could possibly go wrong?

Besides everything?

However, some observers are worried about the future of National Geographic’s educational mission in media if control is turned over to commercial interests.

Christopher Palmer, an environmental

I watched a little of Stephen Colbert’s first Tonight show last night, and didn’t like it. I wanted to like it, I expected to like it, but I didn’t.

But Megan Garber at the Atlantic did.

…part of why politics has become so polarized, while we’re at it, is likely that we’ve come to see the workings of government as things that exist separately from the rest of our lives. The sociologist Pablo Boczkowski talks about the reluctance many people have to talk about politics in a work environment, where such discussions can create unnecessary acrimony; instead, we silo ourselves, discussing the issues of the day, for the most part, with people we know will pretty much agree

A couple of minutes from The Life of Brian.

(I really need to see that again; it’s been way too long since I did.)

… Read the rest

Have a fun quiz in the New York Times. It offers to say where you’re from based on your answers to 25 dialect questions.

It’s a little tricky if like me you have a habit of picking up bits of dialect from all over – but it’s not too tricky if you’re aware that you do that and can correct for it. I carefully gave the answers that were what I grew up with, not necessarily what I say now – and at the end there I was on the map. Good fun.… Read the rest

An interesting post from July that I didn’t see at the time – by Joel Nowak –

So I am watching this thing play out on “Free Thought” Blogs where a blogger is being harassed and bullied to the point where she may well leave the site because a pro-trans activist who was “monitoring her” saw her post this thread to a facebook gender critical group about how questions such as “Do you believe trans women are women, yes or no?” may be overly simplistic and “anti-thought”. I do not know this blogger but I feel for her predicament. For simply starting this discussion, not even on Free Thought Blogs, members there are accusing her of a “thought crime” and

Wow. The Guardian:

A camera operator for a Hungarian nationalist television channel closely linked to the country’s far-right Jobbik party has been filmed kicking two refugee children and tripping up a man at the border hotspot of Rőszke on Tuesday.

Petra László of N1TV was filming a group of refugees running away from police officers, when a man carrying a child in his arms ran in front of her. László stuck her leg out in front of the man, causing him to fall on the child he was carrying. He turned back and remonstrated with László, who continued filming.

Sure enough:

https://youtu.be/e2kdd-B_RQg

Watch closely – at 4 seconds you can see her kick a girl, but it’s over … Read the rest

Careful thinking.

Sabine ‏@ThatSabineGirl 21 hours ago
The sheer privilege of an oppressor class whining that they don’t like the word those they oppress use to describe them. It’s incredible.

And no, cis/trans is not a binary, no more than skin colour, sexuality, or gender is.

So…it’s not a binary, but we have no right to say it doesn’t describe us. Ok…

There’s more of that careful thinking.

Cis people are SO FUCKING WHINY.

Cis. Cis cis cis cis cis CIS CIS CIS. YOU ARE CIS. And more importantly, you treat trans people like dirt and you need to stop.

Really? We all treat trans people like dirt? I don’t think that has been shown.

You’re cis. Deal with

Kim Davis is (or soon will be) out of jail, and her deputies are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis freed on Tuesday, five days after he held Davis in contempt and sent her to a Kentucky jail amid an escalating standoff over marriage licenses.

Davis was jailed at the Carter County Detention Center on Thursday after she refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples. The following day, her deputies began issuing licenses in her absence.

Five of the six clerks who work under Davis swore under oath that they could comply with the court’s order to issue marriage licenses. In a status report filed to Bunning’s court

Originally a comment by Rob on Currently being pulled from libraries, schools and bookshops.

Part of the problem here is that giving a book designed to be read by teens an R18 classification is a de facto ban. Having spent far too much time on the comments section of one of our main newspaper publishers yesterday I can conform that the overwhelming reaction to the ban has been that it is a bad thing, driven by conservative Christians out of step with modern NZ society. The commonality from the few commentators supporting the ban seemed to be “think of the 10 year olds” and “the author is old, writing about teen sex and therefore a pervert” and “these comments … Read the rest