The great mysterious question again – what exactly is a woman and how can we possibly know? Arianne Shahvisi in the LRB is stumped.

The truth is that sex and gender aren’t so easily divided. One appears to be grounded in hard biological facts, while the other rests on the seemingly slippery notion of identity. Yet most of us have a much firmer grip on gender than we do on sex. Gender is an observable part of our everyday world, while the decisiveness of sex is mostly taken on trust.

Is it? Is it really? Mostly? Are we really mostly guessing who is which?

I think not. I think we mostly know who is which, and ambiguities are rare.… Read the rest

He actually does. He actually does say, with stentorian emphasis, “LAST WEEK weirdo – he’s a weirdo – Mark Zuckerberg came to the White House, kissed my ass.”

Trump says Mark Zuckerberg came to the White House last week and kissed his ass pic.twitter.com/QT7zBHjedy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 4, 2022

After that he does his annoying dialogue routine, where he plays first the sycophant kissing his ass calling him sir over and over then himself then the sycophant some more.

LAST WEEK weirdo Zuckerberg came to the White House and kissed Trump’s ass.… Read the rest

Well now what’s the problem with this? Just a harmless bit of fun isn’t it? Exaggeration for comic effect?

A sign from this weekend’s Dresden Pride…

This kind of sexually aggressive nonsense is precisely why so many gay men and lesbians now reject Pride. It no longer stands for them.

If you think gender ideologues are on “the right side of history”, you haven’t read much history. pic.twitter.com/ce70TOi5tc

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) September 4, 2022

No. Why? Because the threat is of a type that is not exaggerated or fictional. Whether the people who display the banner mean it or not, the words are all too familiar to women. Sexual violence is a tool to punish, dominate, control women. Forcing … Read the rest

Grown man makes fool of himself abusing his betters on social media.

https://twitter.com/AndrewAtter/status/1566414901328986112 https://twitter.com/AndrewAtter/status/1566416337169223685 https://twitter.com/AndrewAtter/status/1566417113983721472

Who is this rude bozo? According to himself on Linked in he’s “an internationally recognised psychodynamic coach, innovation consultant and university enterprise educator.”

What is any of that? It sounds like a grift. If you’re a genius at innovation and enterprise wouldn’t you just be putting them to use to make tons of money rather than setting up as a coach and consultant and educator in them?… Read the rest

Apparently these two things happened around the same time yesterday, which is amusing.

Trump: Obama.. so popular. They say he’s so handsome. He’s such a great speaker. What does he say? He says nothing pic.twitter.com/sNfmYZbpeG

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 4, 2022

Barack Obama wins outstanding narrator for 'Our Great National Parks' at the #CreativeArts #Emmys

See the full list of winners: https://t.co/ropHIyOHsg pic.twitter.com/zp2QyGNP8V

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) September 4, 2022

Trump reveals his envy, Obama wins an Emmy.

Catchy.… Read the rest

Ah yes the old “female brain” joke. Don’t tell me, I already know – shoes, gossip, shopping, gossip, romance novels, gossip, bad driving, talking too much. Hahaha that’s such a funny joke. The millionth time every bit as funny as the first.

A leading doctor who is under investigation at one of Scotland’s oldest universities has come under fire for a ‘sexist’ image that was shown to medical students.

Professor John Paul Leach, a consultant neurologist who is head of undergraduate medicine at the University of Glasgow, displayed an graphic of the female brain as part of a teaching session with a large area designated the ‘headache generator’.

A tiny part is labelled  ‘sex initiation’ gland while driving skills

… Read the rest

The former guy, the one who stole boxes full of classified documents, is out there libeling people as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Former President Donald Trump baselessly accused Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman of using drugs and disparaged his clothing while speaking at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night.

In his speech, Trump claimed without evidence that Fetterman supports “taxpayer-funded drug dens and the complete decriminalization of illegal drugs including heroin, cocaine and crystal meth and ultra-lethal fentanyl.”

“And by the way, he takes them himself,” Trump added.

There is no evidence to suggest Fetterman has ever used illicit drugs. Fetterman has never expressed support for decriminalizing the drugs mentioned by Trump, although he

… Read the rest

Yet another Diddums. He’s distraught.

The Rugby Football Union have been rocked by a legal challenge against their ban on transgender women from female contact rugby.

…

Telegraph Sport can reveal transgender player Julie Curtiss has issued the RFU with a pre-action protocol letter – a legal document written to resolve a dispute before court proceedings are commenced – following the controversial decision.

It’s “controversial” to keep men out of women’s sports – that’s how stupid this whole thing has become.

Curtiss, one of two trans players who featured in a special Telegraph Sport report about the impact of the RFU’s ban last month, claims the governing body’s new gender participation policy discriminates against her on

… Read the rest

Women can’t have anything just for women.

Our Women in STEM group became Womxn in STEM, meant for "those who identify as women or non-binary". Suddenly, I who AM a woman and do not "identify as" anything, found myself excluded while males "identifying as" women were included. (And yes the males came!) #YoungGCWomenUnite

— Céline (@ItsCelineV) September 3, 2022

She doesn’t say where this is, so I tried Google: the only two institutions named are UCL and the University of Washington Bothell – Bothell being a suburb a few miles northeast of Seattle. UW Bothell doesn’t have the status or fame or infrastructure of the UW itself, which is in Seattle. I’m guessing UCL is the more likely culprit, being … Read the rest

Trump mad at Barr:

Bill Barr had “no guts,” and got “no glory.” He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats – “Please, please, please don’t impeach me,” he supposedly said. Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!

He “supposedly” said? Supposed by whom? Nobody. Trump made it up and put it in quotation marks. “Supposedly” is not a synonym for “according to me.”… Read the rest

Ed Pilkington at the Guardian notes that Trump has an issue with documents:

Trump has been archivally challenged, to coin a phrase, for many years. The roots of his refusal to abide by normal rules relating to documents stretch back at least to his refusal to disclose his own tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign – a resistance to accepting public access to his personal papers that is the mirror image of his current claim that presidential records from his time in the White House belong to him.

Good point. Trump gets to keep his secrets, and he also gets to violate all other forms of secrecy. Heads he wins tails we lose. Trump’s will is all that … Read the rest

Sisterhood eh what?

Has the one at the front come straight from a wedding? Not a swimming costume in sight. How many of them actually swim? Looks like a load of middle aged women who have probably not worked a day in their life having an outing!

— Lucy Clark. (@lucyclarkref) August 31, 2022

Ahhhhh isn’t that nice – most women never work a day in their lives as any fule kno. Lazy sluts living off men.

Who is this Lucy Clark? He’s a football referee who boasts of being the first “openly Transgender” one in the world. He doesn’t hesitate to insult women with condescending “sweeties” and “poppets.”

Martina you are talking nonsense sweetie…These are bigots that want to

… Read the rest

Be careful what you wish for.

Twenty-seven documents with classified and top secret markings were recovered from former President Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to a detailed inventory of what the FBI removed during its court-approved search of the home last month.

The eight-page inventory detailing over 10,000 government documents removed in the search includes the location where each item was found and if it was classified, but not the subject matter. In many cases, highly classified materials are listed as having been stored in the same boxes as hundreds of unclassified items, including newspaper and magazine clippings and clothing.

In other words highly classified stuff was dumped in with random worthless stuff as if … Read the rest

Also in the “stop treating this childish crap like adult crap” file:

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1565363045001486338

It’s like doing whirly hands to pretend you’re doing something technical when you have no clue.

It’s also normalization. Don’t do it.

https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1565364843179229184

Exactly. Like NPR babbling about “transphobia” in its headlines and allowing its reporters to call JK Rowling “transphobic” in its reporting. Journalism: stop normalizing crimes and bullshit.… Read the rest

At least I’m not the only one who thinks so.

No where in this piece do I get the sense that the author has actually read the book. What she does do is continually repeat the completely subjective claim that Rowling is “transphobic.” https://t.co/roPzN1ZJ5m

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 1, 2022

I would put it more strongly, or at least affirmatively – everywhere in this piece I get the impression that the author has not read the book.

If she had read the book she wouldn’t bother telling us how Rolling Stone describes it, she would just describe it herself.

The book centers the story of Edie Ledwell, a popular cartoonist who, according to the official description, is “persecuted

… Read the rest

I guess NPR has been completely taken over by the teenagers. Actual headline:

J.K. Rowling’s new book, about a transphobe who faces wrath online, raises eyebrows

As if “transphobe” were just a normal adult word like “woman” or “feminist” or “liberal”as opposed to part of the jargon of a new and destructive pseudo-political fad.

Observers noted that the plot appears to mirror Rowling’s own experience of taking heat and losing fans for expressing transphobic views in recent years. 

There it is again – “transphobic views,” as if we all agreed that there’s such a thing as “transphobia” and that “transphobic views” are clearly evil and to be shunned. Does NPR think no adults at all read or listen to … Read the rest

The future is here: the Guardian reminds us that a third of Pakistan is under water. Much of Pakistan is high mountains where people don’t live, but that won’t be the third that’s under water – so I’m guessing it’s substantially more than a third of the livable part of Pakistan. The photos are horrifying – rooftops and treetops and everything else water. Meanwhile cruise ships continue to burn their 80 thousand gallons a day.

As the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) launched an appeal to raise funds for the 33 million people affected, the European Space Agency released stark images based on data captured by its Copernicus satellite.

Those pictures appear to confirm the Pakistani government’s assessment that

… Read the rest

Evil fascist wants to pardon the evil fascists who tried to impose a fascist takeover on what remains of the US:

Donald Trump said on Thursday he would pardon and apologize to those who participated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6 if he were elected to the White House again.

That’s nice. That’s charming. They killed several people, they tried to kill a bunch of legislators, they injured many, they wanted to overturn an election and install a corrupt idiot as dictator – the very same corrupt idiot who now threatens to apologize to them if we in the US are fascist enough to elect him a second time.

“I mean full pardons with an

… Read the rest

Some of Trump’s lawyers may live to regret being his lawyers.

Two lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump are likely to become witnesses or targets in the investigation into how he hoarded documents marked as classified at his Florida estate — and secretly held onto some even after they claimed all sensitive materials had been returned, legal specialists said.

The lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, handled Mr. Trump’s interactions with the government over a subpoena in May seeking additional material marked as classified. In a court filing late Tuesday, the Justice Department strongly suggested that people in Mr. Trump’s circle concealed documents in defiance of that subpoena, putting a spotlight on the role of his

… Read the rest

Sarah Palin LOST.

The Democrat Mary Peltola has won the special election for Alaska’s only US House seat, becoming the first Alaska Native to serve in the House after beating candidates including the Republican Sarah Palin.

Peltola, 49, who is Yup’ik, is also the first woman to hold the seat and the first from her party to gain the seat in more than half a century. During the campaign, she emphasized her support for such issues as abortion rights. She will serve the remaining months of the late Republican US Representative Don Young’s term until a general election in November.

Palin, the state’s former governor, had the backing of Donald Trump and was hoping to make a political

… Read the rest