Aw yeah, solidarity forever. Islamists and sex workers, unite and fight!

The Guardian reports there is conflict over the revamped NHS gender idenniny development service.

The opening of the hubs has been delayed by more than a year amid difficulties in recruiting staff, and tensions over how to train employees in caring for young people with gender dysphoria. Meanwhile, the waiting list of young people seeking help has grown to 5,766.

As delays to the openings continue, NHS England (NHSE) has started to divert thousands of 17-year-olds, and 16-year-olds who turn 17 before next March, towards the adult waiting list, where they are likely to receive a different, less exploratory form of treatment.

This development so concerned the mothers of two 17-year-olds that they launched a judicial review challenging the stark disparities between the child and adult services.

You can see why they’d worry. “Less exploratory” probably means more eager to offer drastic interventions because hey, once you’re 17 you’re totally immune to being deluded about being the sex your body isn’t.

To complicate matters further, an NHS consultation designed to gather views on how best to support children with gender dysphoria has identified two irreconcilable outlooks on the best approach: one group is cautious about the prescription of puberty blockers, while the second is suspicious of exploratory therapy, arguing that it could enter the realm of conversion practices.

And clearly it’s far more risky to avoid blockers and surgery than it is to embrace them, right?

Tensions have also emerged in the small team charged with developing teaching materials for staff at the new clinics. There are polarised views on how quickly patients with gender dysphoria should be assisted towards social and medical transition, and how much focus should be given to other issues present in their lives, such as trauma and homophobic bullying.

In other words same old same old same old. Some people think being trans is the best thing since pumpkin lattes and other people think it’s a warped fad that is going to ruin a lot of lives.

Meetings are said to be polite, but privately clinicians have dismissed those holding opposing views variously as “activists”, for promoting trans rights, or “conversion therapists” or “transphobes”, for questioning a child’s self-diagnosis.

So it’s like Twitter but with physical consequences.

One current member of Tavistock staff said: “What they are proposing to do is gender exploratory therapy. My view, as a clinician working in gender services, is that this is tantamount to conversion therapy for trans youth. It’s very problematic and very unethical.”

But it’s not problematic and unethical to charge ahead with diverting teenagers’ puberties. How can they be so confident of that?

Originally a comment by Holms on We know that something is being waved in our faces.

The claim that using someone’s pronouns of demand is a mere ‘kindness’ is belied by the fact that they are also claimed to be non-optional. Kindness is not mandatory, and mandates are by their nature not kind as there is the implication of enforcement, punishment, for failure to comply. It is further undermined by the revisionism we see at play with trans identities. When someone declares they have a gender identity, name, and/or pronouns at odds with their sex, it is immediately forbidden to mention even obliquely that the person ever had anything other than those even in the past. This is especially visible with famous people, as their pages on wikipedia, imdb, and others are immediately edited to match the new demand even for past events under their previous name.

Perhaps the best demonstration of this inflexibility can be seen in the very public tragedy of Elliot Page, formerly Ellen. The wiki page for Hard Candy states the protagonist’s actor as Elliot Page, despite being Ellen at the time, and despite her character being a 14 year old girl. The plot of that movie begins with that character tempting another man into meeting her via online flirting, as she suspects he is a paedophile who killed an earlier victim of his predation. In particular, she suspects he is a heterosexual paedophile – the entire interaction thus depends on her being female. Yet that of course does not stop all references to Elliot referring to her as grammatically masculine.

A footnote on that page gives us another absurdity: “Elliot Page, in his memoir Pageboy, revealed that a member of the production gave him a ride home after the wrap party, and then sexually assaulted him.” Him him him, despite the glaring incongruity: Ellen page was sexually assaulted 16 years prior to ‘coming out’ as a man. The assault was due to lust for her as a woman. Elliot’s own page contains a stream of further absurd lies.

The ‘kindness’ claim is a flimsy defence, part of a coercive effort to promote mass lying.

The CBC is shocked, shocked to have discovered that Buffy Sainte-Marie invented an indigenous identity for herself.

When Buffy Sainte-Marie strolled onto Sesame Street in 1975, she was making history.

The Dec. 9 episode was the launch of the program’s efforts to present Indigenous culture to millions of viewers.

…

From the early days of her career, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, born in Canada. She has also allowed herself to be celebrated as an Indigenous icon and success story.

In 2022, CBC broadcast a concert that was held in her honour at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Anishinabe musician ShoShona Kish told the audience: “Buffy Sainte-Marie has led the way for Indigenous music on this beautiful land since her first album.”

However, almost 50 years after stepping onto Sesame Street, the iconic singer-songwriter’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being contradicted by members of her own family and an extensive CBC investigation.

Late last year, CBC received a tip that Sainte-Marie is not of Cree ancestry but, in fact, has European roots. She is the latest high-profile public figure whose ancestry story has been contradicted by genealogical documentation, including her own birth certificate, historical research and personal accounts — the latest chapter in the complex and growing debate around Indigenous identity in Canada.

Interesting. Genealogical documentation, historical research, and personal accounts are enough to justify the CBC questioning Sainte-Marie’s indigenous idenniny but nothing is enough to justify anyone questioning someone’s gender idenniny. That’s super interesting because what sex people are – aka their “gender identity” – is a lot more self-evident and concrete and unmistakable than their indigenous ancestry is, yet it’s treated as downright evil to question (let alone disbelieve or deny) that a guy who calls himself Josephine Sexgoddess is a man.

If it’s evil to question anyone’s gender identity why isn’t it evil to question anyone’s ethnic identity? Why is one taboo while the other is The Right Thing To Do? Why is it wrong to try to usurp indigenous identity but brave and stunning to usurp female identity? Please explain.

Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear, a professor of Native studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a member of Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, say it’s unacceptable for non-Indigenous people to speak for Indigenous people and take honours set aside for them.

“It’s theft of opportunities, resources. It’s theft of our stories,” she said.

Hey! I know what she means! Women feel exactly the same way! But we’re not allowed to say so.

H/t Your Name’s not Bruce

Brilliant and enraging: Helen Joyce dissects the intense deliberate sustained suppression of women’s views on Magic Gender.

There’s the double bind, for one thing – you get mostly silenced but if you manage to utter a peep that means you haven’t been silenced.

This is the logic of witch-ducking. If a woman drowns, she isn’t a witch; if she floats, she is, and must be dispatched some other way. Either way, she ends up dead.

Most of the stifling is secret and carefully hidden, but occasionally a bit of the curtain gets caught in someone’s zipper. Helen gives enraging examples – Intelligence Squared, the Irish Times, the BBC, ABC [the Australian one], Sky News.

All that Sky told me when I asked was this: “After reviewing [the show], we felt that we weren’t really happy with it — basically our production standards were not good enough … This is absolutely no reflection on you (or for that matter Joanna [Harper, trans woman]): you were engaging and interesting, and we’d love to invite you back on Sky News.” 

Reader, they haven’t.

I’ve no such striking story for BBC Woman’s Hour, because it’s never got as far as recording anything with me that it could then drop. The nearest I have to proof that this is deliberate rather than an oversight is something that happened in early 2022. 

Grace Lavery, a trans-identified man whose book Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis was about to come out, had claimed that none of the feminist critics of trans ideology were willing to debate him. I sighed heavily and decided to take one for the team. UnHerd agreed to host a debate between him and me, booked a venue and started selling tickets — at which point Lavery pulled out, insinuating that I, UnHerd and anyone on my side were fascists.

And who did Woman’s Hour invite on after this performance: the best-selling campaigner for women’s rights or the bloke who had written a book about his penis, and who insults and demeans women’s-rights campaigners? It’s not like the show’s producers and presenters can possibly think this is what its audience wants. Every August they tweet requests for topics and interviewees for “listeners’ week”; let’s just say I’m mentioned a lot in the replies and Lavery isn’t.

How grotesque and disgusting is that? They chat warmly with the hideous woman-hating Lavery and they freeze out the brilliant Helen Joyce. Woman’s Hour does. Every day, every hour, we get reminded of how expendable women are, of how ready and eager the people in charge are to silence women while listening to every word from men who wear short skirts and fishnets.

Why all this matters isn’t because it’s unfair to me, although it is. It’s because what I’m trying to shout from the rooftops is that women’s rights are being destroyed in the name of a parody of social justice; that politics and policymaking are turning towards ideology and away from evidence; and above all that a socio-medical scandal is being played out on the bodies of children. 

All that and because we get jumped on and beaten up and silenced for saying so.

Joan Smith is. not. having. it.

Referring to Izzard or any other trans-identified man as “she” is profoundly insulting to women. In this instance, it happens to be the Guardian talking to Izzard “ahead of the release of her new film”. The word “her” has no place in that sentence, creating an immediate sense of cognitive dissonance. We know that something is being waved in our faces, challenging us to object to our own erasure. 

What’s being waved in our faces is the [implicit] dick along with the explicit dick move of ordering us to ignore the dick as we are forced to submit to it.

For years we were told that using someone’s preferred pronouns was a matter of “being kind”, when it’s nothing of the sort. “Look at this obvious man and dare to challenge a suffocating orthodoxy that insists he’s a woman,” is what it says. Suffocating and silencing, because once you accept that, everything else flows from it — men demanding to be in women’s refuges, changing rooms and prisons.

All those people adding “he/him” or “she/her” to their email signatures are telling us they accept the argument that someone’s sex is a matter of personal choice.

And they’re telling us we’re evil shits for not doing likewise. It’s very much an attempt at social control, at forcing us to submit to the new boss.

It’s a form of gaslighting, promoting an ideology that’s hugely controversial, not to say scientifically illiterate. When a newspaper or website does it, it’s making a conscious decision, lining up behind the idea that men can become women at will. It could only happen in a culture where women’s legitimate concerns are laughed at and disregarded.

And stamped “KAREN”.

Princess doesn’t want to testify. Princess loses appeal.

Ivanka Trump will have to testify in a business fraud case against her father and brothers, a New York judge ruled. She had previously sought not to take the stand, arguing that she had moved out of the city and had stepped away from the Trump Organization. But Judge Arthur Engoron said she still maintains ties to Trump businesses and real estate in New York.

Wull can’t she just pocket the money without any of the consequences? She’s a princess!

Prosecutors have argued that Ms Trump has important information to share about the case. In his ruling on Friday, Judge Engoron sided with the prosecutors, writing: “Ms Trump has clearly availed herself of the privilege of doing business in New York.” He cited documents showing that she still had ownership or management ties to some businesses in New York, and that she still owns Manhattan apartments.

Wull, yeah, because she’s a property princess, duh, but that doesn’t mean she should be held accountable for anything, much less have to testify. Ew.

So women don’t get to have unions any more.

What an absolutely disgusting way to treat workers who have the bad taste to be women.

First there’s the stupid lie that the LGB Alliance “attempts to marginalise trans and gender-diverse people.” No it doesn’t! Saying men are not women is not an attempt to marginalize men. It’s simply the truth that men are not women. If anyone is marginalizing anyone it’s men who claim to be women – they are in many ways pushing women even more to the margins.

Then there’s the stupid lie that it’s a “phobia” to know the difference between women and men.

Then there’s the grotesque anti-solidarity of saying most women are not welcome in a union movement.

Then there’s the brain-dead repetition of the big lie. Trans men are not men; trans women are not women. Unions should not be in the business of ordering workers to lie about such a basic fact, let alone barring them from membership if they refuse.

Blood Knight alerted us to Kessler syndrome so I found When Elephants Fight in Space:

When spacecraft collide with other objects conducting routine space activity or are intentionally destroyed via anti-satellite tests, this creates orbital debris and risks creating a cascading chain reaction of collisions and debris propagation. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains that “collisions with orbital debris can pit or damage spacecraft in the best case scenario and cause catastrophic failures in the worst.” Collisional cascading, also known as the Kessler Syndrome, is a dangerous phenomenon because it renders orbits less accessible for all states to reap the scientific, technological, and economic benefits. For these reasons, NASA maintains that the top threat to spacecraft, satellites, and astronauts is orbital debris.

…

According to the U.S. nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, orbital debris in LEO—orbits with an altitude of 2,000 kilometers or less—can travel “30 times faster than a commercial jet aircraft. At these speeds, pieces of debris larger than 1 cm (half an inch) can severely damage or destroy a satellite, and it is not possible to shield effectively against debris of this size.”

…

Space history is a human story of customs and contradictions with its genesis in the influential 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It’s important to keep space history in mind when evaluating the environmental risks facing the international community and strategizing how to develop multilateral frameworks for cooperation. This is especially pivotal as more commercial actors are launching mega-constellation commercial satellites.

Ping! Like for instance…

Helping lead the call to action is Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, who is apprehensive of orbital slots becoming congested and disproportionately dominated by entrepreneurs.

In an interview at NewSpace Europe, Aschbacher took particular aim at SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, which is preparing to grow its Starlink satellite internet service up to $30 billion. “You have people like Elon Musk, just launching constellations and satellites and throwing Teslas up into orbit. We need to set common rules. Colonisation, or just doing things in a completely deregulated space, is a concern,” Aschbacher said.

This is a branch of Musk’s domineering reckless not giving a shit that I wasn’t aware of.

Peter Tatchell says oh yes there is too so such a thing as a “gender identity.” What’s more, we all have one. What’s more, we can all tell what everyone’s “gender identity” is by looking at what everyone IS WEARING. So neat, so easy, so simple. Why didn’t anyone tell us this before???

For once I’m not indulging in hyperbole. He really does say that, and after the whole room squawks and shouts and says no, he says it all over again.

Allow me to join all the women in the audience saying “No I don’t!!” The only sense in which I can be said to wear “women’s clothes” is that I wear colors – red, purple, orange, yellow, pretty much all the colors. It’s sad for men that that’s coded female, but if Peter Tatchell’s shirt and necktie were pink and red instead of peculiarly dismal shades of brown, he still would be a man.

Also from that event – Fred Wallace drunk and disorderly, Tatchell telling him “No no no no more drink.”

What actual girls get:

A woman has been found guilty of taking a three-year-old British child to Kenya for female genital mutilation (FGM). Amina Noor, 39, is the first person to be convicted of assisting a non-UK person to perform FGM. Noor, from Harrow in north-west London, took the child to a private house for the procedure in 2006.

…

It was only in 2015 that the girl – who is now aged 21 and who cannot be identified – confided to a schoolteacher that she had suffered FGM and police were informed.

Following an examination at University College Hospital in 2019 it was found that the girl’s clitoris had been completely removed.

That’s right: make sex a tiresome duty (or worse) because otherwise women will fuck every man within a ten-mile radius.

Many are sharing this little gem.

Again – he’s a 57-year-old man doing an impersonation of a particularly silly 13-year-old girl. A 57-year-old man playing dressup for the edification of Twitter. A 57-year-old man saying “Haha you’re ugly.” A 57-year-old man smirking and pouting at the same time while taking selfies in the world’s stupidest hat. A 57-year-old man doing this. Not 15, not 20, not 22, but FIFTY SEVEN. Aren’t most people embarrassed to do silly teenage look-at-me shit in public once they’re, I don’t know, 35 or so?

But hey, being incloosive of trans laydeez is the most pressing issue on the Left since the General Strike.

The points are tipping.

Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned, including the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food supplies.

These “risk tipping points” also include the loss of the mountain glaciers that are essential for water supplies in many parts of the world and accumulating space debris knocking out satellites that provide early warnings of extreme weather.

I didn’t know that about the space debris.

The risk tipping points are different from the climate tipping points the world is on the brink of, including the collapse of Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of a key Atlantic Ocean current. The climate tipping points are large-scale changes driven by human-caused global heating, while the risk tipping points are more directly connected to people’s lives via complex social and ecological systems.

“As we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on,” said Dr Zita Sebesvari, at UNU’s Institute for Environment and Human Security. “We are changing the entire risk landscape and losing our tools to manage risk.”

That seems like a bad idea, but we have no clue how to stop it.

One risk tipping point is the inability to get insurance. I’ve posted about that quite a few times. Why would anyone insure housing in Miami or on the Jersey shore? Or the wildfire-prone areas of California and Nevada?

The groundwater risk tipping point has already been passed in some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and is close in India, the report said. Saudi Arabia was a major wheat exporter in the 1990s but now imports the cereal after the groundwater wells were exhausted.

…

The other risk tipping points covered by the report were the point when water supplies from melting mountain glaciers start to decline; when Earth’s orbit becomes so full of debris that one collision with a satellite sets off a chain reaction; when heatwaves pass the point when natural sweating can cool the human body; and when losses of interdependent wildlife species snowball into the collapse of an ecosystem.

All of those seem to be in progress.

First, the statement from NYU:

“We’re aware of the photos from the demonstration in Washington Square Park.  These signs are antisemitic, repugnant, and a disgrace. We don’t know the identity of the people pictured, or if they are members of the NYU community, but we take this seriously and will be looking into it. To be clear, antisemitism violates the University’s rules and violators are subject to university conduct proceedings.” 

—NYU Spokesperson John Beckman

Now the photos:

This trope that a certain set of people=dirt seems to be a human universal, and a step far down the road that leads to genocide. Dirt, rats, vermin, fleas, maggots – we’ve seen it all before. Turn at a right angle and get off that road.

Is he right?

Before I get to that question – note Fred Wallace thinking anyone wants to get a good look at his thigh, let alone beyond it.

So. Should we use the language?

New question: how can we use the language when we don’t believe in the ideology that mandates the language? It’s like saying we should refer to people as rabbits if they say they are rabbits. It’s like saying we should refer to The Holy Father when we’re not Catholics.

That’s all the more true with this particular ideology because the language basically is the ideology. “Identifying as” is the ideology. The belief that “identifying as” is more real than being is the ideology. The belief that declaration creates reality is the ideology.

We can’t refer to men as “she” without endorsing the ideology. The two aren’t independent of each other. If we call men “she” we are surrendering and submitting to the ideology, when we think the ideology is poison as well as riddled with stupidity.

He’s drawing on the convention that, other things being equal, we call people what they say they are called. That’s the default, that’s normal. But it’s cheating to use the default to justify absurdities. I can’t go around saying my name is Nelson Mandela and you have to call me that. I can do that in a literal sense but it will get me nothing but contempt.

In ordinary circumstances, sure, we call people what they say they are called. In the other kind of circumstances, it depends. Here ends today’s lesson in etiquette.

The European Commission has a Justice and Consumers Department.

Justice and Consumers

This Commission department is responsible for EU policy on justice, consumer rights and gender equality.

Seems like a weird mashup but ok. The point is it’s a real department of the real European Commission. It’s not a hoax. And yet, it tells us…

One, intersex people are either male or female. Two, there’s no such thing as a “right” for people to “be exactly who they are.” There’s the tautology that people are exactly who they are, and there’s the fantasy that people can be whatever they say they are. The tautology is tautological, and the fantasy is childish and absurd.

Also are there any days that aren’t about something to do with Magic Gender?

I’m not keen on Rebel News as a source but you know how that goes – news outlets that aren’t right-wing don’t touch the subject. (Therefore I must be wrong about it, yeah? No. The left has disappeared up its own backside.)

So I won’t bother with the Rebel News story but here’s the gist:

Why did the swim competition allow this? The wrong sex and the wrong age? It won’t say.

Giant baby throws giant baby fit. World looks on in deep admiration.

Donald Trump stormed out of a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday after a heated day in court that saw the former president called to the witness stand in his $250 million fraud case and fined $10,000 for violating a gag order.

The Secret Service had to go scrambling after him. His lawyers were surprised but stayed seated.

Judge Arthur Engoron handed down the financial penalty after calling Trump to testify under oath in the afternoon about who he was talking about when he told reporters earlier in the day that the person sitting next to the judge was “very partisan.”

Trump said he was referring to Cohen, who he’s previously called a rat, a liar and a felon.

The judge asked Trump if he’d previously referred to his law clerk as “partisan” and Trump said, “maybe” he had referred to her as not fair because she’s “very biased.”

But, Trump insisted, he was referring to Cohen when he told reporters earlier that Engoron is “a very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Engoron’s law clerk sits next to him and has been the subject of complaints from Trump’s team, including earlier Wednesday, when Trump lawyer Alina Habba asked that there be no eye-rolling or whispers from the bench during her questioning of Cohen.

Eye-rolling is it? She’s upset by eye-rolling? What does she think of that thing Trump does with his lips? Or what he does with his hands? Or what he does with his whole face?

Engoron said he found Trump’s testimony “not credible.” He fined Trump for violating the gag order he issued earlier this month after the former president had smeared his law clerk on social media.

A red-faced and angry-looking Trump stormed out of the courtroom about 45 minutes later after the judge denied a motion from his lawyers on a separate legal issue.

Do more of that, Don. Do it until you blow a gasket.

I have to wonder how much time, if any, Leeds City Council Hate Crime Team spends on hate crimes against women. I have to wonder if it even realizes they exist.

[Scrolls]

Ok here’s one:

A bit perfunctory, I think, considering that women and girls are half of all humans. No photo of a council member posing with a woman.

But, hey, at least they had a nice party in a posh room.

Ah. Why? Why focus on LGBT+ hate crimes?

They did retweet something way back in August.

Women seem to be pretty much at the bottom of the list of hate crimes, which is odd if you know anything about the figures.

You’d think badmouthing The Enemy after you make a plea deal would be a bad idea.

Sidney Powell may have pleaded guilty to interfering in the 2020 US presidential election, but she still seems to think President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

On her social-media accounts, Powell has continued to push claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that prosecutors in Georgia who brought the criminal case against her were politically motivated. The newsletter published by her dark-money group has shared articles arguing the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, “extorted” her guilty plea.

That looks like taunting a bear, to me – a bear that’s right in front of you with no iron bars in between.

In her hearing Thursday, Powell pleaded guilty to six charges related to her scheme to tamper with election equipment and steal voter data in Coffee County.

None of those developments — nor the ongoing defamation lawsuits from the election-technology companies Dominion and Smartmatic — appear to have changed her tune.

Nyah nyah bear, your breath stinks and your mama eats tourists.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, she has shared posts purporting that the 2020 election was rigged and that law enforcement was politically biased against conservatives.

Over the weekend, Powell shared a post complaining that Trump “can’t even have attorney client privilege.” She also shared a post that said a new survey found many Democrats believed “cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election.”

On Monday, she asked her followers to watch “Police State,” a new movie from the conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, which argues that law enforcement is biased against Trump, who faces four pending criminal cases.

…

Powell also reposted a video from Tom Fitton, who runs the right-wing watchdog organization Judicial Watch and is said to have advised Trump on his legal issues. In the video, Fitton said Trump was under attack “for daring to dispute the Biden election,” which he lost.

…

The Substack newsletter for Defending the Republic, Powell’s dark-money group that she used to fund her lawsuits, has made even more inflammatory claims.

…

Saturday’s newsletter quoted a Federalist article claiming “Willis basically extorted a guilty plea from Powell.” The newsletter bolded a passage arguing she couldn’t get a fair trial with “a jury culled from deep-blue Fulton County” and said the misdemeanors she pleaded guilty to “would be discharged from Powell’s record following probation.”

Powell’s followers were directed to the same Federalist article again in her Monday newsletter. It also cited an Epoch Times article quoting Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow, who said Powell pleaded guilty only because of “pressure” from Willis.

The arguments contra[di]ct Powell’s claims in her Thursday plea hearing, where she agreed her plea was “voluntary” and the charges had “a sufficient factual basis.”

See that’s why I would think people who make a plea deal would refrain from publicly taking it all back hours later. I would think that was quite risky. Saying in court that your plea is voluntary and then immediately telling the world it was coerced looks like admitting you lied in your plea deal.