Advertising on that Guardian article:

Hur hur guys hur hur.… Read the rest

There is audio.

A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former US president Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election.

But even as they acknowledged defeat, they decided to “fan the flames” of allegations of widespread fraud costing Trump victory there, which were ultimately debunked – repeatedly – by elections officials and the courts.

In other words they decided to amplify a lie, knowing it was a lie. Not surprising on one level, but there are other levels.

The audio from 5 November 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to

The ACLU is getting more captured by the day.

So much wrong in that one simple sentence.

The health care they have in mind has nothing to do with LGB people.

There’s no such thing as “gender-affirming” health care. Amputating parts of your body to match a fantasy that you’re the opposite sex is malpractice, not health care.

Promoting these reckless claims about needing amputations to match a personal fantasy is a million miles from what the ACLU should be doing.

Dragging lesbians and gay men into this foul campaign to encourage self-mutilation is absolutely not what the ACLU should be doing.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Lord Falconer.

Whenever I’m accused of fear mongering and creating a problem out of nothing because transwomen are no more violent than other women I always try to point out that they’re tacitly admitting that if transwomen WERE more violent than natal women, then they must believe that there’d be cause for alarm. So — what’s the figure and remedy?

If their level of violence were — oh, let’s say it’s hypothetically the same as men — would that be enough to put safeguards in place? What would those safeguards consist of? What if transwomen were more likely to be violent than males in general? In their view of things, is there a … Read the rest

Willoughby says he felt as if he were being lynched. Great sense of proportion that guy has.

"Lynch mob. Felt like I was at a hanging!"

Willoughby comparing an appearance on BBC Question Time to the lynchings of Jim Crow's American south is beyond offensive.#BBCQT#Racist pic.twitter.com/L1FimmmuDW

— gender is harmful (@genderisharmful) February 3, 2023

What’s “amazing” about pretending to change sex? Would it be amazing to pretend to be an airplane or a sardine or a block of cheese? What is so particularly amazing about trans people? Apart from their success at hijacking everything, that is.… Read the rest

“To be sat at home and see people who aren’t actually trans discuss your life and paint you as a whole as dangerous to society…is just horrible”

Broadcaster India Willoughby says there is a lot of misinformation in the trans prisoners row#bbcqt https://t.co/8cus8PaNMw https://t.co/SUQoiyFL4n

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 2, 2023

“It’s only trans women that people are gettin’ upset about,” he says. And why might that be Willz? It’s because trans women are men, abusing this deranged new ideology to steal women’s rights, ruin women’s sport, and generally undo all the work women have done over the past six decades to be seen and hired and promoted and talked to as equal human beings. That’s why. You’re … Read the rest

India Willoughby was on BBC Question Time this evening. There are some clips…

“The individual is a rapist.”

Excruciating #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/h5wrNFbxS8

— teresa smith (@treesey) February 2, 2023

“It’s remarkable to me that politicians in this country…seem to have given up on the belief in reality, that sex is real and that it’s irrefutable”

Journalist Ella Whelan says women are an afterthought in the debate around single-sex spaces#bbcqt https://t.co/8cus8PaNMw pic.twitter.com/LWuddk0AkI

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 2, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on There are buttons they can push.

During the second year of the pandemic, I was listening to a frightening story on the BBC as the UK government declared a new period of lockdowns. There was no consideration for women who lived with violent men. A woman reported that she was listening to the news with her abuser as Johnson made the announcement. I don’t recall if it was her husband or not, but he looked over at her and said “Let the games begin.” He knew that he had her isolated. It was chilling, and I had that same feeling that I get when I am watching a horror movie, that I … Read the rest

From last week:

Imagine the outrage if, after the discovery that yet another rapist had been found amid the ranks of the Metropolitan Police, the Commissioner had told women to calm down. “The vast majority of officers,” he might have told protesters, “are likely to be safe.”

The thought is preposterous. Yet it is the very argument made by those defending Scottish legislation that would allow people to change their gender in law without existing safeguards. Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, dismissed the complaints of those concerned about the privacy and safety of women, saying, “The vast majority of [applicants] are likely to be genuine.”

No skin off his noble ass, is it. It’s only women … Read the rest

More tipping points than we thought:

Trees set ablaze in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest could contribute to melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Antarctica because distant ecosystems essential to regulating the Earth’s climate are more closely connected than previously thought, new research has found. 

Scientists have discovered a new atmospheric pathway that originates in the Amazon, runs along the South Atlantic, then across East Africa and the Middle East until it reaches central Asia, according to a paper published this month in Nature Climate Change. That connection, which stretches 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) across the globe, means that when the Amazon warms, so does the Tibetan Plateau, whereas the more it rains in the Amazon, the less it rains

The things people say, and write, and publish. It’s astounding.

The fact that the Loughborough study won't deliver any worthwhile data throws us back on the 'onus' question. The IOC claims, irrationally, that there should be 'no assumption of advantage' for TW.

And one purported argument for *that* is this gem from VI: pic.twitter.com/ZBNbbiI6H4

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) February 2, 2023

Many ways, such as complete androgen insensitivity syndrome…and what else? Name one – just one of those “many ways.”

The “presence of a penis” of course isn’t the issue.

As for biological male being a socially constructed category – then how did all these billions and billions of critters get conceived and gestated and born? If female and … Read the rest

Staggering. MSP asks Sturgeon if a rapist who “changed their gender after being charged by the police” should be considered a woman, and her oh so cute answer is that a rapist should be considered a rapist.

But that’s not the question. We already consider a rapist a rapist; the question is whether we consider a man who is a rapist a woman.

H/t latsot… Read the rest

Rolling Stone on one of Trump’s more hideous triumphs:

By 9:27 p.m. Bernard was dead. In that moment, he became the ninth of 13 people executed in the final six months of the Trump administration — more federal executions than in the previous 10 administrations combined. Of the 13, six were put to death after Trump lost the election, his Justice Department accelerating the schedule to ensure they would die before the incoming administration could intercede. Before Trump, there had been only three federal executions since 1963; in January 2021, Trump oversaw three executions during a single four-day stretch.

In short Trump is a serial killer. The killings were legal, but they were far from legally required. Trump and … Read the rest

Now there’s someone who really knows how to woman.

Slopping at the hair dressers, drinking tea, reading mags. pic.twitter.com/RYBq7qa4YU

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) February 1, 2023

… Read the rest

So it’s done.

Seven US Western states that rely on the drought-stricken Colorado River have failed to reach an agreement on cutting water consumption.

California, the largest user, did not join a water cut proposal put forward by six others by a federally requested 31 January deadline.

…

The government had asked for a plan to reduce water use from the Colorado River basin by two to four million acre-feet, or one-third of the river’s yearly average flow.

Six of the states agreed on a plan that would bring it down by two million acre-feet of water. Under that plan, California – the state with the largest water consumption rate – would need to cut more than one million

Victoria Smith has a brilliant piece about male anger and how women experience it.

Years ago, I lived with a man who hit me, though not most of the time. Sometimes he would only shout at me, but again, not most of the time. I couldn’t predict when things would go wrong, though I tried to work out a pattern. One day, you’d say something and it would be fine; the next, you could say the same thing and you’d know, instantly, that you’d ruined everything. 

…

Sometimes it would end in physical violence; sometimes it would not. This made little difference to the initial terror because, of course, you didn’t know. Afterwards, if no blows had actually been

Can’t anybody get it right? Not even firefighters? The people who rescue us from burning buildings and smashed cars?

A fire chief has promised a full independent inquiry into claims firefighters took photos of car crash victims and shared them on WhatsApp.

Male firefighters at Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service (DWFS) are alleged to have made degrading comments about the women in a group chat.

A female firefighter told ITV news she had heard comments about the type of underwear women had been wearing.

Had been wearing before they were killed in a crash.

Why would anyone do that? Whence comes the impulse to mock dead women for their underwear? There’s no tangible payoff the way there is with rape … Read the rest

Oh really?

A school district in Virginia said it received a peculiar report last week from one of its junior varsity girls’ basketball games: An assistant coach for the Churchland High School Truckers had stepped on the court on Jan. 21, and played against teenagers.

The assistant coach and the head coach are no longer working at the school, the Times tactfully adds.

Details of how exactly an adult coaching staff member had managed to put on a jersey and play alongside the teenage athletes in their game against Nansemond River High School were still unclear on Tuesday as the district continued its investigation.

Yes you’d think it would be kind of obvious, wouldn’t you, and yet…

Churchland High School

Alex Massie in the Times on Sturgeon and TWAW:

The first minister’s shock at discovering that her own government’s prison policy allowed male rapists to be incarcerated in a woman’s prison is transparently convenient, self-serving and bogus. Once you swallow the mantra “trans women are women” no different to any others, there is nowhere to go. Self-ID is an all or nothing proposition but if not everyone claiming to be a woman should be treated as one, the policy collapses in a heap of its own contradictions. This is the point we have now reached even if the first minister does not appear to realise it.

Exactly. He’s talking about that exasperated “Well yes.” Those two little words … Read the rest

Cultural appropriation stunning and brave.

(Continued)
Antikainen previously competed in the 2020 Juna Cup in a performance titled "Geisha," during which he painted his face white, dressed in kimono, and skated to traditional Japanese music. pic.twitter.com/N51YQIKJAF

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) January 29, 2023

… Read the rest