The latest on the corruption of Clarence Thomas:

Leonard Leo is a longtime Federalist Society leader and a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. He also steers a network of nonprofits that promote conservative causes in the courts and beyond.

Leo arranged for Ginni Thomas’s for-profit firm, Liberty Consulting, to receive an unknown sum for a contract that was to have “no mention of Ginni.” In 2012, he told pollster Kellyanne Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25k,” documents show. He directed Conway to get the money by billing a nonprofit he advises. In a statement to The Post, Leo praised the work by Conway and Ginni Thomas as an “invaluable resource.”

Since

P. G. Wodehouse is now writing the scripts for gender havers.

Bingo Allison the non binary priest (who is of course a straight bloke). We really do live in a bloody South Park episode pic.twitter.com/uNQvrAArBl

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) November 10, 2023

Bingo the Non-binary Priest – it should be a whole series, shelved next to the Molesworth oeuvre.

My favorite part is the fact that our man Bingo thinks the Bible was written in contemporary English.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on How long a chain of logic do you have to use?

…but one thing I think matters is: how long a chain of logic do you have to use to reach the conclusion that this affects someone’s ability to do the job?

Of course, if the reasoning is sound, and the premises are solid, even a long chain of logic can lead to a justified conclusion. Too often, however, the conclusion is simply claimed to follow while the actual premises and inferences are best left unspecified.

It’s very similar to the way “worker’s rights”, “egalitarianism”, “solidarity”, “anti-imperialism”, “anti-colonialism”, “anti-fascism” etc. in the Soviet Union or Mao’s China were basically just synonyms for “whatever … Read the rest

Horrible bossy fool gloats at the prospect of getting people in trouble with the law for not lying about what sex ThEy is.

2. … appropriate to a person’s (in my case legal) identity would constitute detrimental treatment, or it would amount harassment ie. unwanted behaviour that: violates the person's dignity. created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment …

— Prof. Stephen Whittle OBE, PhD, DLaws, FAcSS, (@stephenwhittle) November 9, 2023

4. … in that way, & by the 3rd or 4th occasion you would discover a formal complaint made & have a police visit. @threadreaderapp unroll

— Prof. Stephen Whittle OBE, PhD, DLaws, FAcSS, (@stephenwhittle) November 9, 2023

What about the intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Without forgetting her nursing training.

I’ve been trying to sort out my views on when someone’s statements or behavior outside of their work capacity should justify disciplinary action. (I mean morally justify, not what the legal lines are.)

It’s hard to come up with a formulation that doesn’t involve a lot of case-by-case judgment. The extreme bright-line rules don’t seem workable to me. It just can’t be the case that an employer should shrug and ignore a manager who is posting statements about how members of group X are intellectualy inferior, etc. — that obviously raises concerns that such a person can’t fairly make hiring/firing/employee evaluation decisions. Ditto for someone who is … Read the rest

Also from Reduxx:

A male athlete who has dominated the women’s category of cycling competitions across the United States took home two first-place medals over the weekend, bringing his tally of women’s gold medals up to 10 since December of 2022.

So that’s ten gold medals stolen from a woman.

Tessa Johnson, a male who self-identifies as a woman, took the top spots in both the Women’s SingleSpeed and Category 1/2 races, with the latter also coming with $150 in prize money.

During the races, which fell on the weekend before Halloween, Johnson was dressed as Barbie as part of the optional costume competition.

Attaboy: cheat the women and mock them at the same time.

According to the Chicago

Reduxx a couple of months ago:

An LGBTI rights organization in France is calling on the Minister of Equality to intervene in the case of a gynecologist who they are accusing of “transphobia.”

On September 8, SOS Homophobie, which describes itself as a “national association against LGBTIphobia” took to X (formerly Twitter) to condemn a gynecologist for stating he only provided services to females. The comment from Dr. Victor Acharian, who operates in the Pau region, was made in reply to a Google review he received in which a trans-identified male’s partner complained that Acharian refused to provide services to him.

« Je m’occupe des vraies femmes ».
Nous dénonçons les propos #transphobes et discriminatoires du gynécologue Victor

The BBC offers training for female self-shooters.

Female Self Shooters is a practical self-shooting skills training programme for factual TV and documentary, supported [by] the BBC.

Good good good. Thanks, BBC.

Aimed at female (and those identifying as female) TV producers or those at producer level, who will be in a position to use the acquired skills after the training, e.g. as 2nd camera operators, shooting taster tapes or directing your own self-shot film. 

Oh. Never mind.

Dirty trick, BBC.… Read the rest

Oh dear I detect a mentation deficit.

A crucial point in this piece on Amy Hamm:

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms warned that “professional misconduct must not be permitted to be redefined to include speaking unpopular truths” — in this case, unpopular truths that bear directly on Hamm’s medical training and responsibilities as a nurse and nurse educator. Hamm knows that sex is observed, not “assigned”, at birth. Her case highlights the contradictory expectations professionals in her position face: to pretend to go along with a strange new set of beliefs about sex and gender without forgetting her nursing training, in which sex is not a postmodern riddle but rather a constantly relevant factor in medical evaluation and treatment. 

It’s all very well* for people … Read the rest

No.

HAPPENING NOW

Outside @KingsCollegeLon

"WE WILL HONOUR ALL OUR MARTYRS" pic.twitter.com/npgQo77ehz

— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) November 9, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Portents.

I think that for a long time, pro-choice advocates were regarded as the boy who cried wolf. “You keep saying that Roe will be overturned, but it never is, and all these abortion laws mostly get struck down by the courts and the abortion clinics survive the ones that aren’t anyways. I’m not pro-life, but I’m gonna vote GOP because [taxes etc.]”

And indeed for a long time, there was a school of Savvy Punditry that insisted that Republicans didn’t want Roe overturned anyway, and that’s why it would never happen. (My take is that the first part of that was largely true — there were definitely a lot of GOP … Read the rest

Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia.

Abortion rights advocates won major victories Tuesday as voters in conservative-leaning Ohio decisively passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion, while those in ruby-red Kentucky reelected a Democratic governor who aggressively attacked his opponent for supporting the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

In Virginia, a battleground state where Republicans pushed a proposal to outlaw most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Democrats were projected to take control of the state legislature after campaigning heavily on preserving access.

Women push back.… Read the rest

Boots said what??

Feedback works (sometimes!). Boots called us 'people with vaginas', women objected, and they changed it to 'women'. #thewordiswoman. Thank you @BootsUK.https://t.co/8Df70k8Oqc? pic.twitter.com/99mPvBFgyS

— Milli Hill (@millihill) November 8, 2023

Good that they’ve corrected it now but what the hell.… Read the rest

Now there’s a fine impartial headline from the CBC:

Nurse tells B.C. hearing she’s not transphobic, but calls gender identity ‘metaphysical nonsense’

There’s no “but” needed in that headline. There’s no contradiction. “Transphobic” means “mean and horrible to people who claim to be trans.” It’s neither phobic nor mean & horrible to know that “gender identity” is metaphysical nonsense. It would be metaphysical nonsense to say that people can be rabbits by thinking they are rabbits, and the same applies to all the other nouns that name something one can’t turn into via the power of thought. People can become teachers, pilots, parents, friends, colleagues, reporters, nurses, and the like. People can’t become trees or planets or watermelons. It’s not … Read the rest

When legislatures decide they get to define women.

A Bill has just been introduced to the Scottish Parliament to remove the unlawful definition of "woman" from the GRPB Act. https://t.co/MNnypbwNl9 pic.twitter.com/wnd4pEFrk0

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) November 8, 2023

A reminder of the definition of "woman" that was ruled to be unlawful by the Court of Session Inner House. pic.twitter.com/wMyg77484t

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) November 8, 2023

A man who is pretending to be a woman is not a woman, no matter how long he has been doing the pretending.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Anne Frank wasn’t diverse enough.

This is the second time this specific article has crossed my radar in the last twenty-four hours, whereas none of my normal German sources have even mentioned it, which I think is somewhat telling. Let me trawl for an actual German article…ahh, yes, a bunch of highly-motivated right-of-centre rags…some respectable publications…no highly-motivated left-of-centre rags…

Ahh, there we are, something actually readable and vaguely objective that isn’t publicly-financed (which is nearly unnecessary to qualify, as publicly-financed media in Germany are often barely readable and quite rarely objective).

Firstly, let’s clarify a few points of confusion or misconceptions. “Kindergarten”, though it is a German word, means something different in … Read the rest

Siiiiiiiiiiigh

… If we can work towards a more inclusive and welcoming physics environment, the real winner is physics itself.” (2/2)

— Institute of Physics (@PhysicsNews) November 7, 2023

Aw yeah, nothing better for increasing yer inclusion & diversity than putting a white guy with bangs in charge of it.

Oddly enough the Institute of Physics turned off replies.

Updating to add:

There are a lot of furious and/or contemptuous replies and then one outlier.

Congratulations, Clara!

— LGBTQ+ STEM @UCL (@LGBTQ_STEMatUCL) November 7, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on ‘Microaggressions started out as a legitimate issue’.

Like, I can see putting a hand on someone’s knee as being actually innocent, even though invasion of personal space is always suspect. I had a coworker who always put his hands on people’s backs when talking to them at their desks, for instance. It made me uncomfortable, for obvious reasons, but I didn’t attribute ill intent to it, because the dude was probably autistic. On the other hand, it can absolutely be anything but innocent, and there’s no way for a woman (or much less often a man) to know the intent motivating the incoming hand. For some reason, we have yet to … Read the rest

This is a fun heads I win tails you lose Trump has going here. If he pitches fits in court and calls the judge names why that’s because he’s The Victim Of A Conspiracy. If he doesn’t, same deal.

Mr Trump was combative on the stand. He took direct aim at the judge, leading to some heated exchanges, and drew his rebukes for airing broad grievances when they were not directly relevant to the question.

Is this because he’s a goon who acts like that at all times? Or is it a cunning plan?

“I think he is trying to goad the judge into doing something he can argue on appeal shows prejudice on his part,” Prof McMunigal said.