Drop whatever you’re doing and listen up: there’s a Statement:

ETFO strongly condemns anti-2SLGBTQ+ protests

Today, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) issued the following statement responding to 1 Million March 4 Children protests that are scheduled to take place across Canada this week:

“Any actions or events that seek to undermine the rights and dignity of the 2SLGBTQ+ community must be denounced. As such, ETFO strongly condemns this week’s planned protests, and calls on the government and school boards to do the same.”

What about actions and events that do in fact undermine the rights and dignity of women, of lesbians and gay men, of children and adolescents and adults, of people who can recognize bullshit when they … Read the rest

A petition!

The trans community calls for Peter Tatchell to shut up and let us speak for ourselves

Says Vivian Wulf.

Peter Tatchell is everywhere speaking for us.

On several occasions he has offered opinions contrary to what the majority of trans people believe.

He scolds trans activists for things he considers “bad optics”.

He has a history of questionable statements that could lead one to believe he supports pedophilia making his “optics” less than ideal.

He has used the threats and harassment trans people receive as an excuse for why he is always the person called onto TV shows rather than an actual trans person saying that trans people won’t do it so he has to. This is a

Well…

I don't ask for much.

I just want transgender people to be accepted in every single way that other people are.

To be able to live their lives equally to anyone else.

To grow old, have families, make mistakes, laugh, cry, and love.

To have the same opportunities as everyone…

— Dr Helen Webberley she/her (@HelenWebberley) September 19, 2023

Ok let’s try to figure this out.

“I just want transgender people to be accepted in every single way that other people are.”

What does that mean though? What does “be accepted” mean? Nobody is “accepted” in every possible sense, so what are we even talking about?

Where and when we have to “accept” trans people actually is an issue, … Read the rest

Apparently one thing Trump has been doing with all those stolen classified documents is cutting them into “note cards” on which he tells his employees their tasks for the day.

One of former President Donald Trump’s long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.

As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that — more than once — she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while

Debbie Schipp of the Daily Telegraph (Australia) on Russell Brand’s blatant contempt for women and how long it went unrebuked:

I don’t know if Russell Brand is guilty of the specific rape and sexual assault and harassment claims being levelled against him. I do know I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for him to be called out as an allegedly predatory and controlling creep.

I do know that when I walked out of a one-on-one interview (actually, there was one of me, and then him and the tittering entourage he played to in the room) with Brand more than a decade ago, I’d just met a very unprofessional and decidedly ordinary human being.

I’d been witness to — and

Who you callin’ mentally fogged?

Donald Trump has long attacked Joe Biden, his likely opponent at the polls next year, as “Sleepy Joe”, portraying the 80-year-old president as too old and too mentally fogged to occupy the Oval Office.

Trump, on the other hand, is just plain stupid.

Trump is 77 but polls show significantly fewer voters think he is too old to return to power. 

But is he too stupid? Too vicious, too reckless, too self-dealing, too corrupt, too law-breaking, too sexist, too racist, too xenophobic, too rude, too trashy, too sadistic, too ignorant? Hell yes.

Biden says he is fit to serve. So does Trump, telling NBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday “there should be a competency”

Gaby Hinsliff on why it matters when a sleb dude is revealed as not entirely a feminist:

The most haunting moment for me of last weekend’s joint investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, the Sunday Times and the Times wasn’t the admittedly horrific allegations of rape and sexual assault (which Brand denies, insisting that even at his wildest all the sex was consensual). It was the way Dispatches spliced footage of Brand onstage – joking about his enthusiasm for rough sex, for blowjobs that left women choking and gasping and with mascara running down their faces – together with footage of a woman named only as Alice, describing how she allegedly experienced just that with Brand when she was only

It’s never at all about narcissism though, never never never.

Found a disabled toilet … not the most fun I've had. pic.twitter.com/UQFzxPvNVt

— Heather Herbert (@HeatherHerbert_) September 17, 2023

… Read the rest

So it turns out all these indictments of Trump are Trump’s political strategy.

Donald Trump is intent on leaning into his criminal cases to boost his 2024 campaign through the election next year, according to multiple people close to the former president, after he tested that strategy through multiple indictments and decided it gave him major political advantages.

That’s great. The more of a criminal he is the more votes he gets. What a shining city on a hill we are.

The summer also gave Trump the confirmation that blurring the lines between the legal effort and political effort was perhaps his best overall strategy, in the gamble that he could use the criminal cases to benefit his

Nope, still not getting it.

Boebert takes another stab at “apologizing” and fails again for the same reason – the classic mistake of framing the behavior one is “apologizing” for as lovably passionate or eccentric or too intense or whatever the self-flattery organ comes up with.

See, this is the thing: if you do something wrong, you can’t apologize by telling us you did it because you’re so awesome. That doesn’t work. We can all see that you’re trying to convince us that you’re a fabulous person instead of apologizing.

In an interview on Sunday with the conservative One America News Network, the far-right Colorado congresswoman attributed the behavior – recorded on security camera footage – to what she described

The adults are getting involved. Sure took them a long time.

The equalities regulator has said the Government must urgently publish its delayed trans guidance for schools to provide teachers with “much needed clarity”.

Marcial Boo, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s chief executive, revealed that the watchdog had been privately urging the Department for Education (DfE) to “expedite” their new guidance, amid wrangling in Government over how to respond to children seeking to change their gender identity in schools.

Wrangling in government over it – as if they were “activists” on Twitter.

Writing to campaigners, Mr Boo also admitted that the EHRC’s own official guidance, in place for almost a decade, had been wrong to tell teachers that

Hmmm. If I were a passer-by I’m not sure I would find that a very persuasive slogan.

TRA#1: "What slogan can we use to convince the world that we are real women, who just want to live peaceful lives and have no violent intentions towards females?"
TRA#2: pic.twitter.com/8Dkau3eNLy

— Sam Morgan (@CrunchAlias) September 17, 2023

I get the thinking, maybe…It’s about being defiant, unafraid, in our face, unashamed, bold, brassy, blunt, real. It’s a sort of imitation of feminism, in a way – feminism that said all along we’re not ladies and we’re not girls, we’re women, with all that that implies. It’s not a dainty business, being a woman – you try pushing an infant human being … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on A policy vacuum filled with loonies.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that, due to a confluence of factors, modern society has become entangled in a cultural version of the Savior Complex. The psychologically exaggerated need to save other people has lead to the inadvertent creation of those who need saving: in this case, the Trans Child. Here the combined influence of Therapy Culture and nostalgia for civil rights battles seduces people into loving the pure and innocent Authentic Self suppressed by the Orthodox and bullied by Oppressors. These kids are vulnerable, weak, needy, hurt. They’re just like gay kids used to be in the bad old days. But they can save them! … Read the rest

The San Francisco Chronicle is venomous enough. The headline:

Anti-trans group, advertising as feminists, descends on S.F. for annual convention

Geddit? They’re lying about being feminists. Also they’re not gender critical, they’re haterz of tranz people.

San Francisco will host trans-denying activists for a convention. The twist is that they advertise themselves as a feminist organization.

News flash, Erin Allday [the “reporter”]: trans ideology is not feminist. Feminists are critical of trans ideology. The “twist” is not a twist.

San Francisco is hosting a “radical feminist” group aligned with anti-transgender efforts in the U.S. and abroad for a convention this weekend that is drawing fury from local trans and other LGBTQ individuals and allies.

Or to put it another … Read the rest

Sonia Sodha writes:

The argument about the relative importance of sex and gender identity – whether someone feeling they are male or female should replace the reality of sex in law and society – has become one of the most polarising identity issues of our time. But out of this toxic mess a sensible consensus has emerged: both parties have largely ditched commitments to enshrine in law the view that people should be able to self-declare their sex for legal purposes. It has at last been acknowledged that this would effectively dismantle women’s hard-won legal protections for single-sex spaces, services and sports, and these are not inconsistent with robust anti-discrimination protections for trans people.

Both parties have? I didn’t … Read the rest

Boebert tries to do the same thing – admit she’s rotten to the core while claiming to be a fine person apart from the rot at the core.

Lauren Boebert, the US congresswoman, has issued an apology after being kicked out of a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver for inappropriate behavior, an experience she has called “difficult and humbling”.

Boebert, a Republican representative for Colorado, and a male guest accompanying her were ejected from the musical on 10 September for vaping, recording video and disturbing other patrons during the Sunday performance. Video also showed them eagerly groping each other while in their seats.

Other than that they behaved impeccably.

Boebert and her campaign manager initially denied that she

She hadn’t noticed until now?

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.

Why yes, of course he is, but he always has been, and that has always been glaringly obvious. It’s more glaringly obvious with him than perhaps anyone else on the planet. How could it possibly take until now to notice?

“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply

A somewhat less blatantly partisan news article on the LWS rally in the Irish Examiner, but only somewhat, and not for long.

Hundreds of campaigners took part in rallies on opposing sides of the transgender debate in Dublin on Saturday.

Well, yes, but to be clear, the Let Women Speak rally was scheduled and then the “opposing” rally was added to the day’s festivities. It seems that a lot of people just can’t stand to see women getting together to say let us speak.

A large garda presence was visible in and around Merrion Square for the two events and metal barriers were erected to create a space between the rival demonstrations.

Again, making it sound like a football … Read the rest

This is stupid reporting. The Irish Independent:

A demonstration was held in Dublin city today in protest against a rally held by an ‘anti-trans’ campaigner.

Why does the protest against the rally come before the rally itself? Why isn’t the reporting about the rally first and only then the protest against it? And why say “by an ‘anti-trans’ campaigner” instead of something less pejorative? Why isn’t the lede more like “Gender-critical feminists held a rally in Dublin city today, and were met with protests”?

And that’s only the first sentence.

British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, better known as Posie Parker, held one of her Let Women Speak events in Merrion Square this afternoon.

A counter-protest was planned “in support of

Originally a comment by maddog 1129 on Reasons.

The capture of the Trevor Project was a special stab in the heart/stab in the back to me. I remember Tim Gunn and other out gay celebrities telling gay kids, “It gets better.” These spokespeople were undoubtedly bullied as adolescent gay and lesbian youth, but they found that, as time went on, and they grew older, the circumstances of life did change. They became happy and successful gay and lesbian adults. The bullying of young LG people had led tragically to many suicides and suicide attempts. The purpose of the Trevor Project was to assure young LG people that, despite social ostracization from (usually religious) anti-gay bigots, they need not go … Read the rest