Popehat on Musk and free speech and how confused people are about what free speech even is:

Elon Musk genuinely feels that advertisers are a threat to free speech. Why? Because many advertisers fled X after Musk eagerly endorsed a bigot’s articulation of anti-Semitic theories, including that Jews promote hatred of whites and that Jews are importing “hordes of minorities.” Unsurprisingly, many companies aren’t cool with that. That’s a mix of corporate leadership thinking that such bigotry is bad business and thinking that it’s immoral.

Private companies have a First Amendment right to make such a decision. They have the right to express their values — and choose their marketing strategy — by deciding what kind of media content to

Pliny on the persecuted:

Holy shit.

@WDI_USA have chosen to move their meeting from the library in Portland where they were due to speak on to the street because they feared library staff were at risk from the activists who have been stalking WDI today. https://t.co/R1Z6AUUCZc

— Maureen O'Hara (@OHaraMaureen9) November 19, 2023

pic.twitter.com/QkV9i4EUb3

— WDI.USA (@WDI_USA) November 19, 2023

Security told the women they could not keep them or the library staff safe; too many men showed up threatening violence. pic.twitter.com/hNOErLC5Kg

— WDI.USA (@WDI_USA) November 19, 2023

The women decided to give their speeches on the street outside. pic.twitter.com/fYFnKTFajW

— WDI.USA (@WDI_USA) November 19, 2023

Melinda's phone was seized and smashed before she was hit in the face with a full can of

Jerry Coyne notes that blind spot on the putative left:

The decision of LGBTQ people and feminists to support Muslim societies—societies where they’d never want to live, for many of them would be killed because of their sexual orientation—is an example of MacPherson’s Law, confected by one of our readers. According to Diana, if progressives must choose between conflicting causes to support, and one of them is women’s rights, the women’s rights lose. (By “causes”, I mean “supporting a group deemed to be oppressed.”) I’ll add a corollary: if progressives have to choose between two conflicting causes, and one of them is LGBTQ rights, those rights also lose.

Diana is not wrong. Another label for it could be The … Read the rest

How progressive.

UPDATE from WDI USA's event in Portland: #trantifa not only vandalized the women's cars; they also vandalized the library where the women will speak at noon.

The event will PROCEED; the #WomenWillSpeak. pic.twitter.com/V0FT2hYIgJ

— WDI.USA (@WDI_USA) November 19, 2023

… Read the rest

Man preens about ruining another sport for women.

Harriet Haynes has broken her silence after winning a national pool tournament by default after her opponent walked out in protest against having to face transgender players, with the champion claiming ‘bigotry is alive and well’.

Lynne Pinches conceded the final of the Ladies Champion of Champions national pool tournament at the weekend without playing a single frame, refusing to face her transgender opponent Haynes.

Her male opponent.

Pinches revealed after the match – her fourth final in her pool career – that her decision to walk out was made in the aid of ‘fairness’ in the sport, protesting against the fact that natal females can be drawn against transgender players. 

Time to ditch the TQ (way past time in fact).

As rising numbers of old-fashioned LGBs see it, the “T” — for transgender — and “Q” for queer, don’t necessarily have much in common with gays and lesbians. 

Not so much “old-fashioned” as still able to tell the differences between things that are not the same.

For these ideological reformists, the LGBTQ mash-up and community-wide obsession with trans issues is sowing confusion and chaos within politics and popular culture — eroding much of the progress sexual minorities have fought to achieve.

Well, that, but also it’s a pack of lies enforced by relentless bullying.

“We feel shackled into this ‘umbrella term’ by organizations that are supposed to serve us but

The purification continues.

A member of GPRC (Green Party Regional Council) made an anonymous complaint about me and then GPRC held a trial in secret where they acted as accuser, judge and jury. No defence – I didn't even know it was happening. Is there any regime in the world that would do this? 2/3

— Nathan Williams (@nathankw) November 19, 2023

PS – One good thing to come out of it, the party has now officially confirmed that the document I recevied is genuine – it is legal advice the party received. This is from the evidence against me. Perhaps now they accept it's real, they'll make some efforts to listen to it? pic.twitter.com/J7B0oZJXRh

— Nathan Williams (@nathankw) November

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The spectre.

Affirmation is a powerful psychological tool, but like all tools (nuclear power or nuclear bombs) it needs to be applied with rigour and care for the outcome.

Interesting insight. Thank you for sharing this.

We seem to be dealing with the “nuclear bomb” version of this psychological tool. These desperate people are being told that affirmation needs to be paired with drastic body modification. The self-defeating, self destructive internal voice is being catered to and appeased, not talked off the ledge. The social contagion aspect turns the phenomenon into a patient driven one, with sufferers demanding the “true path” to what they’ve been told will make them better. … Read the rest

Take your diversity assessment and shove it up whatever gender-questionng orifice you have handy.

A maternity hospital received a low grade on a diversity assessment because staff only use the term “mother” when discussing maternity leave, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Cambridge University Hospital Trust, which manages a maternity hospital called the Rosie, lost points because staff use the term “mother” when referring to the policies it had in place regarding paid leave, instead of broadening it to include gender-neutral alternatives.

Are they still calling it a maternity hospital? Shouldn’t that be parental hospital? Or perhaps uterus-haver hospital? Eggy-patient hospital?

The report was carried out by the NHS’ “Rainbow Badge” scheme, which assesses hospitals based on how they treat LGBT

Seems bizarre.

 A Colorado judge on Friday allowed Donald Trump to remain on the ballot in the state’s election next year, but found that he “engaged in insurrection” by sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

He did the thing that should disqualify him but he gets to stay anyway.

The ruling from Judge Sarah Wallace, which is almost certain to be appealed, rejects a bid by a group of Colorado voters to disqualify Trump under a rarely used amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection” from holding federal office.

I’m betting the reason the amendment is rarely used is that insurrection doesn’t happen all that … Read the rest

At the Critic an anonymous psychiatrist writes:

When a child identifies as trans, the spectre of suicide is frequently raised by campaigners — sometimes in a highly manipulative and unethical form. A talk by philosopher Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union in May was interrupted by an activist glueing her hands to the floor. She wore a T-shirt stating, “No more dead trans kids”. Parents are told that unless they immediately “socially transition” their child — i.e., refer to them as members of the opposite sex, and present them as such to everyone else — their child is highly likely to self-harm.

Perhaps the most egregious form this claim takes is that unless a child is swiftly medicalised, first

Let’s read that article that Media Matters has pinned on Twitter:

Elon Musk praises antisemitic replacement theory that motivated a mass shooting as “the actual truth”

Ever in search of a new low, Elon Musk managed to find one on November 15 when he declared on X (formerly known as Twitter) that a paid X Premium (previously Twitter Blue) user’s antisemitic conspiracy theory attacking Jewish people was the “actual truth.”

We’ve already seen the tweet in question, and had a heated conversation over it. Jews pushing hatred against whites blah blah, Musk high-fiving.

The conspiracy theory, that Jewish populations are pushing “hatred against whites” and supporting “hordes of minorities” coming into the country, is the same one that motivated the

Dropping in on Media Matters this morning…

November 16:

Far-right figures and white nationalists have praised Elon Musk for pushing the antisemitic conspiracy theory: “What we were saying in Charlottesville”; “Normalising our ideas.” https://t.co/JfFV0oRw7w

— Media Matters (@mmfa) November 16, 2023

November 16 or 17:

Elon Musk is reportedly no longer speaking at the APEC CEO Summit after his antisemitic comments.

He's currently slated to appear as a speaker at the NY Times' upcoming DealBook Summit on November 29.

Are they going to pull the ripcord?https://t.co/QnGeiGVitu pic.twitter.com/JzNZHbIT7K

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 16, 2023

November 17:

The obvious and central issue for X (formerly known as Twitter): Its owner, Elon Musk, is a right-wing extremist who has made the

Musk promises to go thermonuclear.

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The result was a lot of big advertisers leaving Musk’s social media site.

“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said in a

Originally a comment by Arcadia on But they’re not.

we can’t have that debate, because there’s a genuine conversation to be had about the rights of transgender people and the protection of safe spaces and hard-fought rights for women.

Yeah. We could have that debate, if trans organisations would ever allow it (and to date they won’t, escalating to barricading, deplatforming, threatening and actual violence when it’s been tried).

But they won’t. And they won’t because once it’s suggested by them that the right of a woman to get changed without seeing a stranger’s dick ought to be *balanced* with the “right” of an adult to show his dick to an unwilling woman and children, most people wonder what … Read the rest

Debbie Cameron always nails it.

It's even worse than this online pussy-themed campaign from a few years back. It's not cool, it's just 1970s sexism in 21st century dress. For the love of God just stop it /2https://t.co/l5EQacFmx7

— Debbie Cameron (@wordspinster) November 17, 2023

… Read the rest

Funny, it seems I’m not the only credulous fool who thinks Musk’s horrible tweets are horrible.

Joe Biden has excoriated Elon Musk’s “abhorrent” tweets two days after the X owner posted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post.

…

Musk sparked backlash with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jewish people of “hating white people” and showing indifference to antisemitism. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in reply. X users, including many in the tech industry, lambasted the posts, though other users agreed with Musk and said they were gleefully watching him sink into their hateful worldview.

Well I doubt they said that exactly. I doubt they said “I am/we are gleefully watching him … Read the rest

Can women have something? Just a small something? If we’re very good? No?

No, of course not.

British Cycling is allowing biological males to participate in its female-only Breeze community rides and has ejected one concerned woman from its Facebook group for ride leaders for using the term “male”, on the grounds that this constitutes discriminatory language.

That’s so interesting. Women are not allowed to say “male” now. So we can’t report rape now, we can’t say we were passed over for jobs that went to men now, we can’t take precautions to avoid male violence now unless we do it in complete silence.

The Breeze programme was set up explicitly and exclusively “by women for women”, but those

The BBC reports:

White House criticises Elon Musk over ‘hideous’ antisemitic lie

On Wednesday, Mr Musk replied [to] a post sharing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, calling it “actual truth”. Mr Musk has denied that the post was antisemitic. But a White House spokesman said his endorsement of the post, which drew anger online, was “unacceptable”.

“We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. He noted that the post Mr Musk was responding to referred to a conspiracy theory that motivated the man who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

…

On Wednesday, Mr Musk responded with his “truth” comment to a post that accused