Originally a Facebook post by an anonymous thoughts-haver.

Something about the way Matthew 6:5-6 (the bit about going into your closet to pray) is being shared around in the wake of the school prayer ruling has been bothering me, and I finally kind of figured out what it is. First, though, a disclaimer: I am an atheist who has read the whole bible more than once. I took some comparative religion classes in college, but I have never been a Christian and anything I say is coming from a theoretical understanding, not practical.

So, here’s a thing. The term “prayer” does not mean one simple thing. It doesn’t mean the same thing in all contexts, and it doesn’t mean … Read the rest

Make your language more inclusive, or you’re a bad person.

If you don’t like inclusive language, think of it as being respectful. You’re using the terms the other person prefers, as you would w/ a nickname. If you still don’t like THAT—well, what you’re admitting is that you don’t respect the other person. Maybe think on that.

— Celeste Ng (@pronounced_ing) July 5, 2022

The trouble with that is, language can’t be “inclusive.” If it’s inclusive it will stop meaning anything, and then it will be useless. We need language. It does so much work for us. Imagine being suddenly transported to a tiny distant country where you don’t know the language and the people there don’t know yours – … Read the rest

The outrage engine is overheating.

Bette Midler's tweet was all about women's rights.
It's not her fault that anti women activists deem the word women to be transphobic.
The intolerance of women is the activists' problem, not hers.
Women exist, get over it.#WomensRightsAreHumanRights #IStandWithBetteMidler https://t.co/g6Uro1mNqc pic.twitter.com/YLM41lhmlU

— Biology Rules Ok (@OkBiology) July 5, 2022

It’s possible that people are getting tired of hearing quite so much from “transgender people and their allies.”

https://twitter.com/iseult/status/1544283807225888769

“A few small healthcare cases”??? Give me a break.

https://twitter.com/BraddockBessie/status/1544099960475590656 https://twitter.com/Lachlan_Edi/status/1544055995667734530

“They had no skeletons pre-Enlightenment” hahahahahahahahaha

By the way what was that tweet?

WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They

… Read the rest

The Willoughby dude is as usual doing his best to punish and exclude women.

pic.twitter.com/00b5PxcP85

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) July 5, 2022

… Read the rest

Owen Jones talks of a “reversal on LGBTQ rights,” but of course what he means is mostly the T bit, which doesn’t belong with the LGB bit in the first place. As usual this ploy enables a lot of dishonest framing.

Even more terrifying is Texas’s banning of gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people, with their parents now legally defined as child abusers if they seek it.

But of course it’s not “healthcare.” Switch the frame and it’s mutilation and/or dangerous and damaging use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It’s not healthcare as commonly understood at all. “Gender-affirming” is not a medical term – it’s a political one. No one can change sex, and “affirming” gender is just … Read the rest

I know, it’s just Twitter, but really the argument is so powerful I have to share it.

this is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read, what the hell are you talking about

— jesse spector (@jessespector) July 4, 2022

See what I mean?

I’m not trying to contribute. I’m trying to tell you that you’re an asshole who needs to shut the fuck up because the opinions that you think are smart, result in people dying. Take a fucking seat.

— jesse spector (@jessespector) July 4, 2022

Not interested in changing minds, because you’re already too far gone. Interested in you shutting the fuck up and letting people live, because YOUR IDEAS RESULT IN DEATH.

— jesse spector (@jessespector) July

… Read the rest

Now THERE is a message!

WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They don’t call us “women” anymore; they call us “birthing people” or “menstruators”, and even “people with vaginas”! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!

— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) July 4, 2022

… Read the rest

It wasn’t just about her testimony, it was about the possibility that her testimony would draw more. That’s happening.

Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger has said that bombshell testimony given by Cassidy Hutchinson to the January 6 hearings last week has inspired more witnesses to come forward and the committee is getting more new evidence by the day.

…

“There will be way more information and stay tuned,” Kinzinger told CNN’s State of the Union co-anchor Dana Bash. “Every day, we get new people that come forward and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t think maybe this piece of a story that I knew was important, but now I do see how this plays in here.’”

…

In a separate interview,

… Read the rest

What if the pregnant rape victim is ten years old? Any concern for her?

The case of a 10-year-old child rape victim in Ohio who was six weeks pregnant, ineligible for an abortion in her own state, and forced to travel to Indiana for the procedure has spotlighted the shocking impact of the US supreme court ruling on abortion.

…

Dr Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, said she had received a call from a colleague doctor in Ohio who treats child abuse victims and asked for help. Indiana’s lawmakers have not yet banned or restricted abortion, but they are likely to do so when a special session of the state assembly convenes later this month.

Abortion providers like Bernard say

… Read the rest

Philip Pullman yet again.

You believe spiked-online?

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 2, 2022

Hi Philip, that’s my article. Would you care to point out any errors or inaccuracies? I take my job very seriously, unlike you I don’t write fantasy.

— Jo Bartosch (@jo_bartosch) July 2, 2022

As far as I can tell (replies are numerous and they go off into nested threads and subthreads and disappear into infinity) he never did: never specified and never apologized. Instead he pretended he wasn’t talking about Jo Bartosch’s article at all.

I wish my critics could actually bother to read what I say. I didn't mention Bartosch's work. I said not a word about it. I'm not interested in it. I'm

… Read the rest

An interesting Facebook post (public) from last October (anonymously written) on pregnancy as a kind of battle:

I think it’s culturally time for us to re-frame how we think about the uterus.

It’s not a nurturing organ—it doesn’t need to be. A fetus is frighteningly good at getting the resources it needs to nurture itself. If they are implanted anywhere other than the womb (most often the fallopian tube, but also sometimes the bladder, intestine, pelvic muscles and connective tissue, and the liver) placental cells will rip through a body, slaughtering everything in their path as they seek out arteries to slake their hunger for nutrients.

Fetal cells will happily grow in any of these places, digesting and puncturing tissue,

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Enzyme on The old style of fascist often hid behind tears.

[I]t just so happens that protecting this minority requires us to reform society by jettisoning the hard-won freedoms of assembly and expression, along with the presumption of innocence and the ability for a professional to disagree with whatever governing body claims the consensus to be.

I want to suggest that it’s worse – deeper, more radical, more sinister – than that. What’s being jettisoned is the stability of the language in which any claim to rights must be articulated.

Yes, rights of assembly and expression and so on might be under threat, but they’re still thinkable as rights. Suppose you live in a society … Read the rest

Fox News is finding out that you can’t tell damaging lies about people and organizations with impunity. Who knew?!

In the months after the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.

There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.

But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave new world was not free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.

Dominion Voting Systems … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Entry points.

On one level, Julia Carrie Wong is correct — instrumentalising the concept of “transphobia”, as a particularly-potent example of the more general “phobia”-based political discourse which has come to dominate rhetoric over the last couple of decades, *is* a tributary that leads to a sort of popularist authoritarianism that is becoming the modern conception of fascism.

But of course Wong doesn’t see that it is she who, by attempting to direct the rivers of fear and hatred and contempt into controlling how other people express themselves and even what they are allowed to think, is the mouthpiece for modern fascism. Of course she is simply defending what she sees as … Read the rest

A reporter for the Guardian US – she calls herself “senior reporter” but the Guardian itself just calls her a reporter, as far as I can see. At any rate it would be good if she had some kind of grip on reality.

I think that we’re entering a period when the most meaningful political distinction will be fascist and anti-fascist. It’s really important to understand that transphobia is one of the most potent entry points to fascism today – and act accordingly.

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) July 3, 2022

That’s just a fucking stupid, uninformed thing to say. We know she’s talking about the radical feminists, not actual far-right street brawlers. She’s talking about Bindel and Stock and … Read the rest

The NY Times allows Pamela Paul to say the forbidden: the left hates women just as much as the right does.

There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. Women’s rights were human rights and something to fight for. Though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, legal scholars and advocacy groups spent years working to otherwise establish women as a protected class.

But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women”

… Read the rest

The “Feminist” Library.

LGB Alliance supporters will always show how deeply hate fuelled they are. Where there is transphobia, there is inevitably misogyny, homophobia, and racism. LGB Alliance have had funding withdrawn in the past and we hope it will be withdrawn again.

— The Feminist Library (@feministlibrary) July 2, 2022

… Read the rest

Via Facebook, credited to Elizabeth Haney:

Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby.

Me: So who will adopt the baby?

PL: I don’t know there’s lots of couples who want to adopt.

Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?

PL: Um well not personally but like I know there’s lots of people waiting to adopt.

Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?

PL: I don’t know. $15,000 maybe?

Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.

PL: Oh I didn’t realize it was that much.

Me: Yep it’s really … Read the rest

Jo Bartosch on Mermaids in 2020:

Mermaids advertises itself simply as a support service for children, young people and families. But there is a political dimension to it. Its recommendations to government include: the right of children to take legal action, without parental consent, against schools which do not refer to them by their chosen names and pronouns; the provision of hormone-replacement therapy for children under 16; and the fast-tracking of appointments and physical interventions for pubescent young people.

I assume “appointments” in that last clause means medical consultations.

It is understandable that a child who knows him or herself to be different might latch on to the idea that he or she really is the opposite sex. At

… Read the rest

Still at it.

If it were “people” it would have been legal all along.… Read the rest