Let’s look at some cruise industry stats (presented by someone who seems to think the cruise industry is an excellent thing):

In 2019, the global cruise industry welcomed 29.7 million passengers, created jobs for 1.8 million people around the world and contributed over $154 billion to the global economy. 

And added huge amounts of carbon to the atmosphere. Yay.

Cruising was suspended worldwide in mid-March 2020. July 2020 saw a resumption of sailing in parts of Europe, Asia and the South Pacific with around 200 cruises departing in the second half of the year.

In 2021, the cruise industry bounced back further, welcoming almost 13.9 million passengers worldwide. However, this is still only 46% of the passengers that cruised in

It’s always surprising and alarming to see academics this pugnaciously dogmatic in enforcing belief in absurd fictions. The belief itself is ridiculous, like believing in flying elephants or talking snakes, and the rudeness and contempt with which the belief is asserted is unbecoming to anyone and appalling in an academic.

I see the trans exclusive radical fascists are at it again, and there’s always a lawyer waiting in the wings to enable them. https://t.co/RjjfKJkzur

— Yvette Russell (@yvetterusse11) May 2, 2022

“Fascists.” Because we understand that men are not women.

And she can’t defend her claim.

I’ve muted the replies so you’re all pissing into the wind! Trans solidarity forever! And solidarity with rape crisis centres having to direct precious

Charming.

NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. — Former president Donald Trump is making a closing pitch for a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, stepping deeper into a primary that has divided Republicans in this staunchly conservative state.

When in doubt, always go for the rapey guy. Rapey guys gotta stick together.

Trump appeared at a Sunday afternoon rally in Greenwood with Charles Herbster, a businessman who has advised the former president on agricultural policy and has donated to his campaigns. The visit comes after a recent Nebraska Examiner report in which eight women, including a state senator speaking on the record, accused Herbster of touching them inappropriately. Last week, another one of the eight

I hate the ACLU more than ever.

Women in prison forced to live with men at the behest of the ACLU.

On April 13, NJ News reported that at least two women became impregnated by men incarcerated in Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, the only female-only prison in the state of New Jersey. The men were placed there because they claimed to have a female gender identity.

I have a billionaire identity; can I be housed in a mansion?

The story was quickly picked up by several mainstream media outlets around the world. The Daily Mail reported that American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), once a respected human rights advocacy group, “managed” to house at least 27 people at the women’s

Wales Online tries to monster a woman for not believing trans ideology:

A Cardiff Labour council candidate has come under fire after voicing her views on gender identity. Sue Lent, a Labour council candidate for Plasnewydd, posted to her public Facebook page suggesting that trans people are “brainwashed.”

And? Does Wales Online think all this transing just happened spontaneously? Nothing to do with social influence at all?

When questioned about her comments and views, Ms Lent told WalesOnline she found the topic of trans children “difficult” and said that people experiencing gender dysphoria “need counselling”, despite NHS Wales stating that they support the banning of therapy to change somebody’s gender and sexuality.

And? Are people not allowed to disagree with … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Stay away from the Tavistock.

How many children escape the vortex of unquestioning, unanimous, compulsory ‘affirmation’ at Tavistock?

Letting desistance run its course would cut down on the number of those children going on to “transition.” Desistance and detransition together present a huge challenge to the concept of “transness” as a thing. Referring to children being treated as “dysphoric” rather than “trans” decouples the child from the putative diagnosis. It also removes the instrumentalized power of the concept of “trans kids” which is thrown about so much by activists. Refusing or failing to see discomfort with “identity” as a phase or surmountable difficulty rather than a final, inevitable destination, immediately … Read the rest

I should have posted this first thing.

Thank you for your messages of love & support. I've recovered & am home.

A special thank you to everyone within the NHS for taking such good care of me, from the ambulance crew that got me to hospital quickly, to the nurses, doctors, care staff & cleaners. You guys are amazing.

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) May 1, 2022

… Read the rest

Mermaids is telling men to call the police if they’re not allowed into women’s spaces.

Transgender women should call 999 if they feel unsafe through a request to leave a women-only lavatory, Britain’s largest child transgender charity has said.

Men don’t feel “unsafe” in women’s toilets. That’s not a thing. Women feel unsafe with men there, but men don’t. See: human anatomy, passim.

The EHRC ruled last month that trans women, who are born as males, can be excluded from female-only spaces if there is a legitimate reason such as protecting privacy and dignity.

Well we can’t have that, can we. We are mermaids, with tails instead of genitals, so we get to defy the rules and … Read the rest

First world problems…

Lately, I’ve been embroiled in what feels like constant conversations about pronouns. The wrong ones. The right ones. The preferred ones. Hint: That third category is defunct.

Of course, by “wrong” he doesn’t mean the kind of wrong where you’re learning the language and make mistakes sometimes, he means the kind of wrong where you forget or refuse to memorize anyone’s specialty pronouns.

As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns as my terms of address, I suppose I should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, I’m exhausted.

That is, as a presumptuous narcissist he’s exhausted from trying to force people to use specialty pronouns for special … Read the rest

Natalya Lusty (a cultural studies academic) reviews Laurie Penny’s new book in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Disappointingly, we never get a clear sense of why “fascism” is the best term to describe the enemy of feminism’s protracted and diffuse battles. In spite of this incoherency, the stark choice presented at the beginning of the book is between feminism and fascism. There are no shades of grey.

Many of the topics Penny covers (heterosexual love, consent, unpaid domestic labour, reproductive rights, extreme misogyny, male abuse of power and privilege) are critical if not new issues but their intractability warrants renewed attention if not outrage. But fused with anecdotes (many about Penny’s or their friend’s own experiences of bad sex and relationships)

Freddie deBoer on the valorization of mental illness:

Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a dizzying variety of psychiatric conditions…By her own telling, Eloise has suffered a great deal from these ailments; I believe her, and wish better for her. But she would prefer we not think of them as ailments at all. And that combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is emblematic of our contemporary understanding of mental health.

Actually it’s emblematic of our understanding of way too many things. I don’t think I’ve thought … Read the rest

Hahahaha yes not unusual at all, very commonplace, you see it all the time.

Am gonna suggest that even "these days" this is still quite unusual. pic.twitter.com/UdeNGa4myS

— FeministRoar (@FeministRoar) April 30, 2022

… Read the rest

The Tavistock don’t want no stinkin’ terf parents.

The head of England’s only NHS gender clinic cut ties with some parents of transgender children after claiming they promoted “transphobic” gender-critical views, The Telegraph can reveal.

Is it normal for medical clinics to “cut ties” with the parents of child patients because of the parents’ views? It doesn’t seem normal at all.

Now it has emerged that both the chief executive and chairman of the Trust told a group of parents they were “disappointed” at their gender-critical views – the idea that biological sex is binary and immutable – and cut ties upon learning of this.

What does anyone’s “disappointment” have to do with anything?

Bayswater Support Group, a

Apologies for the intrusion of some tedious Hollywood gossip here but it has to do with the ACLU so I wanna talk about it.

Actor Amber Heard hasn’t fulfilled her pledge to donate $3.5 million to the American Civil Liberties Union, according to testimony in the defamation case filed by Heard’s ex-husband, actor Johnny Depp.

…

The pledge agreement calls for Heard to donate the money over the course of 10 years, starting in August 2016. But she hasn’t made a payment since December 2018, ACLU Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Terence Dougherty said in recorded video testimony.

Why did she make the pledge? It’s not clear, but it’s hinted.

Dougherty supervises the ACLU finance, legal and other

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on He has never used the toilets.

I made it just about as far into this, before realizing I hadn’t clipped my fingernails for a while. I just find it odd that the BBC, which has produced some fine skeptical programmng in the past, doesn’t have someone investigate this social phenomenon to explore what it means to experience a mismatch between their gender and their sex at birth. This is an extraordinary claim that is to be taken at face value, and they’ve no mind to say “wait, what does this really mean and how can we know that this is what is really happening?” We can’t even get a grip on … Read the rest

The extent to which Fox News PersonAlity Sean Hannity was working for Trump while posing as an employee of a purported news organization keeps being revealed to be even more than we thought. Rival but less deranged news organization CNN reports:

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Fox’s Sean Hannity exchanged more than 80 text messages between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration, communications that show Hannity’s evolution from staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump’s election lies to being “fed up” with the “lunatics” hurting Trump’s cause in the days before January 6.

I couldn’t care less about Hannity’s “evolution.” What I care about is that he was trying to help Trump … Read the rest

Updating to warn: I got the kid’s sex wrong throughout, as the BBC intended us all to do.

The BBC twists itself into pretzels again to placate the Gender Minotaur.

In the nine months that Felix has attended high school in Fife, he has never used the toilets.

Too much information. Why is a global news organization telling us about the toilet practices of a teenage boy in Scotland?

The 13-year-old is trans and his teachers say he is welcome to use male, female or disabled toilets and changing rooms.

Well that’s no fun. How about a paneled room with armchairs and a fridge full of snacks, just for him?

But like some other trans pupils, Felix would prefer to

This is amusing/horrifying a lot of people right now.

(I told her that’s a contradiction, but…)

On second thought, I’ll update to include the preceding exchange.

We told you what it was about it. You called yourself a woman. You've claimed in the past that you're not a woman. We are by definition interested in getting clarity on this issue – we wonder why you think you're not a woman, and then we wonder why you've changed your mind.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) April 29, 2022

… Read the rest

An interesting bit of the Allison Bailey tribunal:

DrG: We feel that the ET [Forstater] definition – sex binary, immutable, matters – is a necessary but not a complete part of our campaign.
JR: long answer to short question!

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) April 29, 2022

DrG: gender critical feminism is necessary but not sufficient for our campaign – sex matters to both men and women but we are a women's rights campaign it matters more to women

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) April 29, 2022

JR: there is a very longstanding history of feminism that has nothing to do with gender critical belief. Mary Wollstonecraft, suffragettes

Dr G: suffragettes didn't have the vote because of their sex. Sex mattered to

Criminalizing poverty is the hot new thing, which is especially fun at a time when wages at least in the US have been deliberately held down while housing costs skyrocket. A town near Kansas City has just voted to make it illegal to share housing.

On Monday, a Johnson County city unanimously voted to ban a living arrangement aimed at helping tenants decrease the amount of rent they pay.

The Shawnee City Council voted 8-0 to ban co-living, becoming among the first Kansas City area municipalities to prevent the practice, which has gained popularity in recent years as rent and home prices have soared.

The new ordinance defines a co-living group as a group of at least four unrelated