I’ve just spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the Equality and Human Rights Commission is, with not much success. I can’t tell what its relationship to the government is. They don’t explain it very clearly.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is Great Britain’s national equality body and has been awarded an ‘A’ status as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) by the United Nations.

What’s a national body? What’s a body in this context?

As a statutory non-departmental public body established by the Equality Act 2006, the Commission operates independently. We aim to be an expert and authoritative organisation that is a centre of excellence for evidence, analysis and equality and human rights law. We

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph talks to a woman who had to race against “Lia” Thomas:

The day after she watched Thomas – who until starting hormone therapy was ranked a mere 554th as a man – vanquish every female rival in the country, she found that they would be direct competitors in the 200-yard freestyle final. They finished, ultimately, in a dead heat for fifth. 

Except, only Thomas was allowed to hold the fifth-place trophy, with Gaines told by an official that it was “for photo purposes”. She would need, she was told, to make do with the award for sixth.

They both won the fifth place but she was ordered to take sixth. Insult to injury.

Thomas

Arrgghh.

Current numbers:

Frisch: 155,579

Boebert: 155,506

Arrgghh.

Update: it seems the remaining ballots are from Frisch-leaning counties. Hoping! I long to see her return to obscurity.

UPDATE: Democrat Adam Frisch is poised to upset Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in CO-3, based on a 9NEWS analysis of remaining ballots, which are largely in counties where Frisch holds strong leads. #copolitics

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 10, 2022

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Donors are disgusted.

but the new bit is thinking feminism and anti-racism didn’t work that way, why is that? Well why is that? Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

I think part of it that campaigns against sexism and racism were eager to argue their position, to have the opportunity to present the facts of the matter to the court of public opinion, to win hearts and … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Donors are disgusted.

VanitysFiend wrote:

The idea that the religious, be they liberal or conservative, deserved to be treated with kid gloves, and people like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris etc were being highly disrespectful when they called religious beliefs silly, wrong, or worst of all, bad. The idea that the mainstream progressive liberal left would move on from defending conservative Islam to something like Transgenderism isn’t that far fetched to me, what’s bizarre is that the sceptics and atheists followed them on this.

I used to call that the “Little People Argument “ — that being skeptical and honest was a position of power and that the religious were little people, not big … Read the rest

Robert Reich points out that it’s a bad idea to let raging narcissists have a lot of power.

Like Donald Trump and Elon Musk for example.

First is Elon Musk, who last Friday fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation – and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off.

This was after he fired Twitter’s executives to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they’re owed. And after posting an article suggesting without evidence that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was in a drunken fight with a male prostitute.

Attention: the fox is inside the chicken coop.

But this has

This is what I mean. They meet, they say words, they wring their hands, but they’re not going to do anything. They’re locked into it. They take private jets to conferences to talk about climate change.

Data from FlightRadar24 shows 36 private jets landed at Sharm el-Sheikh between 4 and 6 November, the start of the summit.

A further 64 flew into Cairo, 24 of which had come from Sharm el-Sheikh.

The COP27 website says delegates should use either airport.

…

Flights produce greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) – from burning fuel. These contribute to global warming.

Emissions per kilometre travelled are significantly worse than any other form of transport.

Locked in.… Read the rest

Trump “warns” DeSantis not to compete with him.

Donald Trump has warned Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis against running for president in 2024, saying doing so would harm the Republican Party.

Which of course is code for would harm Donald Trump. Dump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican party, it’s himself he cares about.

He also threatened to release unflattering information about the 44-year-old, without providing details.

Speaking of unflattering information, Don…we have some on you. How much time do you have?

He told US network Fox News that the Florida governor should stay out of the race.

“I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really

The elections haven’t been the bloodbath that was predicted.

It’s not that there were no disappointments. There were some painful losses for Democrats: the odious Peter Thiel acolyte JD Vance has won a Senate seat in Ohio; candidates that perennially capture the imagination and hope of national democrats, like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams, lost.

Beto O’Rourke doesn’t capture my imagination, but losing Stacey Abrams is a bitter pill.

The much-watched state of Georgia provided perhaps the most embarrassing result for Trump: Brian Kemp, the candidate he campaigned hardest against, was comfortably re-elected governor, while Herschel Walker, his hand-picked Senate candidate, polled almost 5% behind Kemp and is probably facing a highly uncertain runoff against Raphael Warnock.

I hope Trump … Read the rest

The Guardian reports on the LGB Alliance hearing:

The creation of LGB Alliance has promoted constructive debate on “difficult and problematic issues” of sex and gender, the Charity Commission told a court on Monday, during final arguments over whether the gay rights group should have been given charitable status.

…

Mermaids, which supports transgender, non-binary and gender diverse children and their families, launched an appeal last year against the Charity Commission’s grant of charitable status to LGB Alliance. Mermaids has argued that the group was set up to lobby the government to restrict legal rights afforded to transgender people.

And to non-binary people and gender diverse children. Let’s make sure to get all the adjectives in every time, even … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Donors are disgusted.

Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

They need the argumentum ad misericordiam. Their movement relies on it to garner support. Why are we subjected to a “Trans Day of Remembrance,” when it’s easy to demonstrate that trans people aren’t any more likely to be murdered than anybody else? Why are gender critics constantly told we’re responsible for trans suicide and violence against “the trans community”?

It’s … Read the rest

Pippa Rogerson still dealing with blowback from her venomous attack on Helen Joyce:

Prof Rogerson joined Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, in vowing to boycott the talk. They emailed all of the students  stating Ms Joyce’s views were “offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here”.

…

The intervention by the college chiefs – before Ms Joyce spoke – led to donors telling The Telegraph they were “embarrassed, appalled and absolutely disgusted” and would not give any more without a retraction and apology.

Pardon me while I interrupt myself for a moment, because an idea about this has occurred to me. It’s about fragility, in particular fragility used as a cudgel. As … Read the rest

Dear Billy Bragg, still telling women what to do.

New report suggests incels are wrong to blame all their problems on feminism – the fault lies in their patriarchal view of masculinity and gender. https://t.co/DlCBQaBzXc

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) November 8, 2022

It's because I believe that if anti-trans feminists spent their time attacking the incel movement rather than the trans community, they would be making a much more significant contriubtion to the safety of women and girls.

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) November 8, 2022

… Read the rest

Blimey.

Academics have demanded an apology from the London School of Economics (LSE) over what it claims is a “hostile environment” for students and staff with gender-critical views.

A group of leading scholars have written an open letter condemning an “ideological cabal” at the Russell Group university’s gender studies department – the largest in the UK.

The letter was sent from academics from the Open University Gender Critical Research Network (OUGCRN). The group brings together a range of academics and scholars who share a common interest “in exploring how sexed bodies come to matter in their respective research fields”.  The network also shares a “commitment to ensuring that a space within academia is kept open for rigorous exploration

Biologist Luana Maroja on An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science:

The restriction of academic freedom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research.

Let’s start with teaching. I need to emphasize that this is not hypothetical. The censorious, fearful climate is already affecting the content of what we teach.

One of the most fundamental rules of biology from plants to humans is that the sexes are defined by the size of their gametes—that is, their reproductive cells. Large gametes occur in females; small gametes in males. In humans, an egg is 10 million times bigger than a sperm. There is zero overlap. It is a full binary. 

But in some biology 101 classes, teachers are

Society of Authors boffin continuing to win friends and admiration.

That’s your choice, Simon. But the @Soc_of_Authors is run by its members, not some rando on Twitter.

— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) November 8, 2022

… Read the rest

Times Higher Ed reports:

Mathematics degrees in the UK are being “unnecessarily politicised” because of expectations that lecturers decolonise the curriculum, leading academics claim.

Decolonize math? I can see decolonizing a lot of things, but math?

A letter shared with Times Higher Education accuses the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of trying to mandate a “narrowly skewed perspective on the history of mathematics” via its new subject benchmark instead of giving academics the freedom to design courses as they see fit.

Are we talking the history of math, or math itself? I can see decolonizing the first, but not the second.

The benchmark statement for mathematics, statistics and operational research (MSOR) – a document intended to establish a common understanding

This is revolting.

This picture of world leaders discussing *our* future was taken yesterday at #COP27.

There's a reason why we Women go on fighting for our voices, needs & realities to be heard.

It's 2022.

We're STILL here.

We go on until these scales of power change. #SHEchangesclimate pic.twitter.com/JQixXpaGZ3

— onjali rauf (@OnjaliRauf) November 8, 2022

I can find only three women, stuck way off in a back corner. One is the Italian PM according to a reply.… Read the rest

The net tightens.

Writers in Scotland have warned that a code of conduct imposed by a national book charity threatens to infringe on the free speech of authors and poets who disagree with “gender identity theory”.

The Scottish Book Trust sent the code to 600 writers on its Live Literature register, advising that they must sign up in order to keep their listing. Inclusion on the register is essential for writers, poets and spoken-word artists who want to earn a living from public events in schools and libraries.

It’s a new version of the code, and it includes the threat that the trust “will not tolerate bigotry and transphobia.” Since the censorious word “transphobia” can mean simply saying men … Read the rest

Another entry for the Encyclopedia of Pointless Groveling: The Jam Jar Bristol posts an apology to The Trans Communinny on Facebook and then issues a second apology a week later saying the first one wasn’t groveling enough.

The Jam Jar is “an independent arts venue.” What they’re apologizing for is that time a bunch of trans activists bullied and threatened a group of non-submissive feminist women, blocking them on a staircase and screaming in their faces.

The first apology starts with this:

We apologise for how long it has taken us to publicly address the concerns of the Trans community regarding an event in April 2018 organised by a group with controversial views. The panel discussed issues affecting trans people,