Today I learned that it’s “insidious” to be not attracted to someone.

When the Mail gets it and “progressives” don’t:

The BBC has been heavily criticised for describing playwright Noel Coward as ‘queer’ amid concerns that the term, ‘reclaimed’ by some in the gay community, is still offensive to many.

A social media post by the BBC Arts account promoting the BBC2 Boxing Day documentary about the actor, singer and composer’s life described him as being ‘queer’ in a ‘very straight world’. The same wording is used on the show’s description on the BBC’s iPlayer.

Critics accused the corporation of using ‘homophobic slurs’ saying Coward was a ‘gay man’, while another said the term ‘queer’ was an ‘insult for most gay men and women’. 

And it’s not for the BBC to err … Read the rest

What is The Birth of a Nation?

D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and freed Black people.

Similar to Gone With the Wind but without spoken dialogue.

History is usually written by the winners. But that wasn’t the case when The Birth of a Nation was released on February 8, 1915. In just over three hours, D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and immoral freed Black people. The film was an instant blockbuster. And with innovative

Two more down.

A Confederate monument was taken down in Jacksonville, Fla., on Wednesday, after an order by the city’s mayor ended years of debate, as officials around the United States reckon with memorials on public property that commemorate the Confederacy.

Donna Deegan, the Democratic mayor of Jacksonville, ordered the removal of two statues that were part of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument in Springfield Park.

Does Jacksonville need large heavy three-dimensional tributes to the women of the slave-owning Confedracy?

Ms. Deegan said in a statement on Wednesday that the monument had been erected as part of a campaign to promote discriminatory Jim Crow laws and intimidate Black people.

A campaign that lasted a … Read the rest

Don’t mention the slavery.

Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina who for years has wrestled with how to approach issues of race, slavery and the Confederacy, found herself again confronted with those subjects at a town hall event on Wednesday in New Hampshire, hundreds of miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Her answer to a simple yet loaded question by an audience member in the city of Berlin — “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” — showed just how much she continues to struggle with such topics.

“I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” she

I watched this scene again yesterday evening (not the whole movie; I came in late) and it struck me how like Trump Colonel Jessup is. Not as flabby and laughable, of course, but every bit as enraged and murderous.… Read the rest

Cheater wins.

The Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) has been forced to drop their new regulations on men who want to participate in women’s competitions after being sued by a trans-identified male player. The lawsuit was launched earlier this year by Natalie Ryan, who had been dominating women’s competitions prior to the PDGA attempting to rein in male competitors.

Natalie Ryan is of course a man.

Ryan first filed a suit against the PDGA in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California this past February. In his complaint, he argued that a recently-adopted PDGA policy prohibiting trans-identified males from competing with women if they had undergone a “male puberty” violated his civil rights and California laws against

Geeta Pandey of BBC New Delhi reports:

It was sometime after 1am on 11 December when more than a dozen people barged into Sasikala’s [not her real name] house. The 42-year-old was dragged out, stripped and paraded naked around the village, tied to an electricity pole and beaten for hours.

A resident of Hosa Vantamuri village in Belagavi district in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, she was being punished because her 24-year-old son had eloped with his 18-year-old girlfriend.

The young woman had been betrothed by her family to another man and was to get married the next day. Her furious family wanted to know where the couple were.

So this isn’t about injustice to one woman, it’s … Read the rest

Tommy Dorfman, the lovely fella who tried to make an airline worker’s life worse, isn’t a narcissistic self-obsessed dweeb at all, no indeed. Here he is “coming out” in 2021. I had to hit stop at 54 seconds because enough already, so if you manage more and it turns out he’s really not a narcissistic self-obsessed dweeb, let us know.

Actor Tommy Dorfman is here to reintroduce herself https://t.co/tOpsLgdz6g pic.twitter.com/PvVo3kz9p3

— TIME (@TIME) July 22, 2021

… Read the rest

Morgane Oger declares himself “thrilled” to ruin yet another women’s organization. Shutting down Vancouver Rape Relief wasn’t enough for him.

Man who hates women takes a woman’s place on a wonen’s non profit for board. “Gendered violence”, indeed… pic.twitter.com/ePMtlVjuHJ

— goinglikeelsie KPSS! (@goinglikeelsie) December 26, 2023

… Read the rest

Oh joy an opportunity for self-promotion!

Trans activists are calling for a boycott of Delta Airlines after a transgender actor complained about being "misgendered" by two Delta employees at LaGuardia Airport.

Tommy Dorfman, who starred in 13 Reasons Why, uploaded a video of the interaction to his TikTok. pic.twitter.com/G4nVXIsowF

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) December 26, 2023

Fame at last – Newsweek!!

A video by transgender actress Tommy Dorfman, in which she accuses Delta Air Lines Employees of “intentionally” misgendering her, quickly went viral and sparked a fiery debate on social media.

He’s an obvious guy. People who work for airlines have to deal with a lot of people, most of them stressed, all day every day. They … Read the rest

I didn’t realize it was Adam Kinzinger who set off the “Trump smells” alarm. I take that to mean it’s actually true.

I’ll do better than wearing a mask; I’ll never go near him ever.… Read the rest

A point of no return passed?

The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.

And no doubt other scientists worry that events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is slowly but not all that slowly approaching a point of no return. In short, droughts in the Amazon rainforest are a very bad sign as well as a very bad thing.

Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been

The BBC taking care to annoy gay men by using a familiar slur for “gay men.”

Noël Coward grew up in poverty and left school at 9. He was queer in a very straight world. At 30 he was the highest-paid writer in the world and a star. This is his inspirational story.

Watch Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story, Boxing Day on BBC Two & @BBCiPlayer. pic.twitter.com/DCFCIRDi4Y

— BBC Arts (@bbcarts) December 26, 2023

Replies are fierce.

You will repeat the lie or you will be punished.

Queen’s University orders every single person on campus to comply with transgender names and pronouns or face punishment

Queen’s University Belfast has toughened up its code of conduct so that refusing to recognise someone’s self-declared gender is now a “zero tolerance” disciplinary matter. Specifically, the university’s new code demands that both staff and students use whatever name and pronouns an individual demands. Failure to do so is now treated as bullying and / or harassment.

It also applies to anyone who makes “derogatory” jokes about transgenderism.

All jokes are derogatory. There shall be no joking.

This new code covers not just staff and students but anybody who sets foot on

What is a “life coach”?

I’ve suddenly noticed that there are people who go around calling themselves “life coaches,” which seems like quite a presumptuous thing to call oneself. So I consulted Google to confirm what I suspected: it’s a way to charge people for advice without having to get any professional qualifications. Anybody can put up a shingle saying “Life Coach” and charge whatever fees they like.

Some sources consider this an exciting advantage – for the life coaches, that is.

Modern lifestyles are fast paced, highly competitive and come with the added pressure of meeting (often unrealistic) expectations. Many people find it difficult to juggle personal & professional responsibilities and do justice to both. Against this backdrop, a

Trump’s Xmas message:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The course is taught from an Ethnic Studies perspective.

And why is “Identity” the first item in the list? Why is it on the list at all?

Once you rule out the trivial meanings of “identity” (i.e. x=x, people are whatever they happen to be etc.), what’s left is practically synonymous with “ingroup vs. outgroup” or “us vs. them” thinking, the very things the old “Left” was trying to get away from. I’m under no illusion that “who I am” has not to a significant degree been shaped by growing up Norwegian, white, male (in the biological sex sense, not the “gender identity” sense) etc. But that’s a stupid and evil bug … Read the rest

We hear a lot about Gaza, not so much about Khartoum.

The conflict between the [Rapid Support Forces] and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has now raged for eight months with no end in sight, killing thousands of people and creating what the United Nations says is the world’s largest human displacement crisis.

Beyond trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure in a country that already struggles with high rates of poverty, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes.

That is, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes along with trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure.

Evidence is also emerging that the RSF and their allies have massacred members of an African ethnic group in

Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on Brave New World had the “feelies.”

@Bjarte Foshaug

Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).

The character of Switch was originally intended to be one sex in the matrix and a different sex out of the matrix, the result of a coding error by the machines. That’s as good an explanation … Read the rest