So that’s good news anyway.

We are so proud to have selected our next Parliamentary candidate, @Abtisam_Mohamed! pic.twitter.com/SnFzt0Azg9

— Sheffield Central Labour Party (@CenSheffLab) December 4, 2022

Not Eddie Izzard.… Read the rest

No that’s not it.

It’s not “reducing” people to anything to know what definitions are. Nobody says female body parts are the sum total of women, are what women are about, are all there is to know about women. They’re just the basic equipment, that’s all.

Feminism has challenged the assumption among advertisers and sexist men that tits and ass are all there is to women, but that doesn’t entail saying women don’t have tits.… Read the rest

There’s that misogyny.

Uh huh, a flutter of the eyelashes, that’s us – we’re all Scarlett O’Hara. Just look at all those women fluttering their eyelashes and pleading for protection. The nerve of them.… Read the rest

Jo Bartosch on the elite feminism that can’t define women:

Even seasoned Westminster watchers could be forgiven for not having heard of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP). Co-founded by luvvie-extraordinaire Sandi Toksvig, the group works towards the laudable, if somewhat woolly, aim of making “equality a reality”. But their brand of insipid dinner party feminism is sinking into irrelevance; washed away by a wave of grassroots women’s rights activists who are tired of playing nice.

I love the combination of luvvie-extraordinaire and insipid dinner party feminism. I mean the verbal combination; the actual combination I don’t love at all.

To date, the most notable achievement of WEP’s leader Mandu Reid has been to stand next to a woman who

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Seven lousy days.

My dad thought unions were just greedy arms of the mobs until he watched Reagan fire and basically destroy Patelco, the air traffic controllers union. Dad was a Republican government employee of the Customs and all of a sudden he understood at a visceral level what it means to not have the ability to use a strike as bargaining power. It’s amazing that this was all it took to turn a Republican into a Democrat who in his later years took any opportunity he could to lampoon whichever Bush happened to be in the White House.

But, the problem is that there were not enough union members who saw … Read the rest

It’s Joe Manchin’s fault. Again. Charles Pierce explains:

Seven paid sick days. That’s what the U.S. Senate couldn’t cough up for the people who work for the country’s railroads, at considerably more risk and for considerably less money than anyone in the U.S. Senate takes or earns. The Senate—especially Joe “Friend Of The Working Man” Manchin, who couldn’t cough up seven lousy sick days—hung the president out to dry on this one, not to mention all the actual rail workers. Marco Rubio voted for the seven sick days. So did Ted Cruz, for pity’s sake. But Joe Manchin couldn’t be bothered. He was too busy planning another TV interview about how the Democrats have lost touch with their

Now there’s a headline.

Trump’s call for ‘end’ of constitution condemned by Democrats

Only Democrats? Democrats only? So Republicans are fine with it? Let’s tear up the constitution because Trump says so?

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Mr Trump’s comments were “anathema to the soul of our nation”.

“You cannot only love America when you win,” Mr Bates said in a statement. He added that Mr Trump’s comments should be “universally condemned” – seemingly a pointed jab at senior Republicans who have so far avoided criticising the former president’s outburst.

What I’m saying. Trump is publicly saying he should be forcibly installed as dictator and Republicans are just nodding along.… Read the rest

Hadley Freeman in the Times:

What is now known as LGBT rights have firmly taken precedence over women’s rights. In 2021, Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood, an organisation originally established to provide women with contraception, wrote an apology in the New York Times, saying Planned Parenthood had focused “too narrowly on ‘women’s health’, we have excluded trans and non-binary people”. 

It makes me want to smash things. “Too narrowly.” Imagine BLM saying “We’ve focused too narrowly on Black people” – saying it and apologizing for it. Imagine trans people saying they’ve focused too narrowly on trans people…and apologizing for it. It’s only women who are expected to go hungry while the real people … Read the rest

Planned Parenthood still at it.

Planned Parenthood will do whatever it takes except of course mentioning women.… Read the rest

Trump urges throwing out the Constitution.

Trump on Saturday morning raged on his anti-Twitter app Truth Social about non-existent “fraud and deception” in the November 8th midterm elections – and he proposed scrapping the United States Constitution as a means to reinstall himself into the presidency.

Did he ask nicely?

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the

Investigation ratchets up:

The Charity Commission has escalated its investigations into Mermaids, the regulatory body announced on Friday, responding to “newly identified issues” about the governance and management of the transgender children’s charity.

Which being interpreted means: “This is worse than we thought.”

The commission will investigate whether there is “serious systemic failing” in Mermaids’ governance and management. The trustees have cooperated fully, but the regulator said their response had “not provided the necessary reassurance or satisfied the commission at this stage”.

But their response identifies as the necessary reassurance.

Investigators will assess whether the charity’s governance is appropriate in relation to the activities it carries out, which involve vulnerable children and young people.

Which involve vulnerable children and … Read the rest

It’s all so maddeningly circular.

Devastating to see the hate that activists working to end male #VAWG are receiving from other feminists because we are trans allies. I know for a fact that many women's organisations want to publicly support the trans community but fear they could be sued & vilified by feminists.

— Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) December 3, 2022

How can you be an activist to end violence against women and girls and at the same time insist that men who call themselves women are not men? How can you be an activist to end violence against women and girls if you don’t know which people are women and girls? How can you be an activist to end … Read the rest

Sigh. The rot is everywhere.

Citizens Advice is facing a backlash from staff for an “ideological instruction” to wear gender pronoun badges.

…

Dame Clare Moriarty, its £170,000-a-year chief executive, told all staff last month that pronouns are “an important way of affirming their gender identity” and “we shouldn’t assume someone’s gender based on their appearance”.

No they’re not and of course we should.

Her internal memo on Citizens Advice’s intranet, seen by The Telegraph, added: “You can help to normalise sharing pronouns by sharing yours. We’ve created some button badges with different pronouns that can be fastened to a lanyard or your clothing.”

But we don’t want to “normalise sharing pronouns.” Sharing pronouns is utterly moronic and … Read the rest

Teamster honcho Sean O’Brien:

The fact that there are not 60 senators willing to stand up to Big Business and fight for basic rights for U.S. rail workers is horrific.

— Sean M. O'Brien (@TeamsterSOB) December 1, 2022

Let me be clear. This struggle is not over. I will do everything I can to make sure that rail workers in America are treated with dignity and respect. pic.twitter.com/WVGLodsr7B

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 1, 2022

https://twitter.com/TeamsterSOB/status/1598479379318857728

#43Cowardshttps://t.co/Pfkp8IhSGL

— Sean M. O'Brien (@TeamsterSOB) December 2, 2022

Ya know, Joe, a commonsense idea would have been to give rail workers paid sick days. But you blew that one. Don’t pretend like you care about people’s concerns. You care about money and

When in doubt, do it to the workers.

President Joe Biden signed legislation Friday to block a national U.S. railroad strike that could have devastated the American economy.

That is, Biden broke a strike for paid sick leave. Railroad workers have to go on working despite not having paid sick leave, while Musk and Bezos count their billions.

The U.S. Senate voted 80 to 15 on Thursday to impose a tentative contract deal reached in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers, who could have gone on strike on Dec. 9. But the Senate failed to approve a measure that would have provided paid sick days to railroad workers.

Listen, if you want paid sick leave, you … Read the rest

I saw this tweet and tracked down the particulars.

First, the news release:

Please send us your recommendations on how to deal with the mistreatment of women and girls in sport in Canada.

Second, the reply to Coach Blade:

Now, I haven’t read Coach Blade’s brief but I’ve been following her with great interest for a long time so I think I have a pretty educated guess about what she said. And the Standing Committee on the Status of Women said thanks but we threw it out, bye.… Read the rest

So even Elon Musk has a limit.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s chief executive, said late Thursday that Kanye West would be suspended from Twitter after the rapper and fashion designer tweeted an image of a swastika inside the Star of David. Mr. Musk said the post violated the social media outlet’s rule against the incitement of violence.

…

The indefinite Twitter suspension happened on the same day that [West] had appeared on a podcast hosted by the Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones, during which he told Mr. Jones, “I like Hitler.”

Speaking of Alex Jones, he’s just declared bankruptcy. I’m wondering if he’ll be able to go right on “hosting” Infowars while not paying the victims of his sadism … Read the rest

Pink News on the investigation into Mermaids:

The Charity Commission has confirmed it has opened a statutory inquiry into trans children’s charity Mermaids after safeguarding allegations were raised.

A regulatory compliance case was opened in September of this year, which has now been formalised.

This began after several articles were published in right-wing publications, which portrayed Mermaids as posing danger to children.

Geddit????? There are no safeguarding concerns really, it’s all just right-wing publicationing.

The inquiry will focus on three areas of Mermaids, its work and how the charity is run. This includes investigating potential misconduct or mismanagement, whether the trustees have fulfilled their duties under charity law and into the administration, governance and management of the charity.

Trump is running out of road.

In another big victory for the Justice Department Thursday, days after it won convictions of far-right Oath Keepers insurrectionists, an appeals court halted a third-party review of material taken by the FBI from Trump’s Florida resort…

In another blow to the ex-president on Thursday, a federal judge ordered former Trump White House lawyers to give additional grand jury testimony after dismissing Trump’s claims rooted in attorney client or executive privilege…

On another legal front threatening Trump, his former short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn became the latest acolyte of his to be ordered to testify before an Atlanta grand jury. This investigation is specifically looking into Trump’s 2020 effort to reverse his

Mermaids inquiry ratchets up.

The Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into the transgender charity Mermaids after identifying concerns about its management. The regulator said the inquiry — its most serious form of investigation — was triggered by “newly identified issues” around the youth charity’s “governance and management”.

It had already announced a compliance case into Mermaids following safeguarding concerns, but a statutory inquiry marks a significant ramping up of its examination of the charity. It will try to establish if there was any mismanagement or misconduct by trustees.

The commission said today that Mermaids’ response to the initial compliance case “has not provided the necessary reassurance or satisfied the commission at this stage”.

Tick tick tick.… Read the rest