The Times on those two men missing, probably murdered, in the Amazon:

The Javari Valley in the Amazon rainforest is one of the most isolated places on the planet. It is a densely forested Indigenous reserve the size of Maine where there are virtually no roads, trips can take a week by boat and at least 19 Indigenous groups are believed to still live without outside contact.

The reserve is also plagued by illegal fishing, hunting and mining, a problem exacerbated by government budget cuts under President Jair Bolsonaro. Now local Indigenous people have started formally patrolling the forest and rivers themselves, and the men who exploit the land for a living have responded with increasingly dire threats.

Dom … Read the rest

Also the lannnguage is merrrging.

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1534613350184886273

Yes and we also use the same word for “wine” and “afternoon” and “stick” and “jump.” It’s uncanny what a lot of words we share. IT MUST MEAN WE ARE NAZIS.

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1534594982585188361

One might think Jason Stanley would be able to tell the difference between lefty feminist women and hate groups/enemies of democracy, but he isn’t. New sexist pig just like the old sexist pig.… Read the rest

One, Putin probably also thinks dogs are not cats. Two, the feminist women you’re smearing aren’t “anti-trans”: we’re against the empty, brain-dead ideology that says men are women if they say they are and women must agree no matter what, and be punished and ostracized if we refuse.

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1534621077598621696… Read the rest

Yale philosophy bro Jason Stanley tweeted a faux-naïve question about why it’s always women who dispute claims about trans women, and never men. I’m giving the gist because he’s now deleted it (and of course insulted the feminist women who replied) and I don’t have a screenshot handy.

The question was so faux-naïve (he must know perfectly well why), and the deletion so quick, that it seems highly likely he did it on purpose – a tiny little one act drama in which Yale stud asks thoughtful question, transphobic witches respond with their phobic witchery, and he deletes the innocent tweet with regret about all the witchy phobicry. Misogynist prick. I daren’t say that on Twitter but I can say … Read the rest

Oookaaaaay…

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said this week that he opposes gun control in response to mass shootings because the country did not ban airplanes after they were used in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The country didn’t ban them but it sure as hell did put a lot of new restrictions and checks in place, which, funnily enough, is what gun control means. It means control, not elimination.

Also: guns have one purpose, which is to shove metal slugs into living flesh at high speed. That’s not the purpose of commercial airplanes. The purpose of commercial airplanes is to move people and goods around. The people who flew them into buildings were not using … Read the rest

Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater at the Times a couple of weeks ago:

Shortly after hundreds of rioters at the Capitol started chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6, 2021, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, left the dining room off the Oval Office, walked into his own office and told colleagues that President Donald J. Trump was complaining that the vice president was being whisked to safety.

Mr. Meadows, according to an account provided to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, then told the colleagues that Mr. Trump had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hanged.

Because he was dragging his feet on the whole steal the election thing.

It is

… Read the rest

What’s wrong with this headline? (Aside from the fact that it’s too long for a headline.)

‘I’d be BANNED from swimming if I had as much testosterone as Emily Bridges’: Olympian Sharron Davies slams trans cyclist as ‘NOT female’

It’s not a slam. It’s just a simple, humble, obvious fact. Men are not women. Women are not men. Adults are not children, children are not adults. Stones are not flowers. Squirrels are not hammers.

Anyway. The Mail goes on:

Between 1975 and 1985, Davies missed out on a string of medals while competing against East German drug cheats. She now believes there are parallels between the state-sponsored doping campaigns of the Cold War and transgender athletes taking hormone-suppression medication in

… Read the rest

Owen Jones gets a little ahead of himself.

It’s not a fact that X people will read this and not care about that. You can’t call a prediction a fact. You especially can’t call a prediction a fact when it’s as tendentious as OJ’s. He doesn’t know what gender critical people will or won’t read, and he doesn’t know how we will or won’t react to what we read. In short it’s a really stupid argument to claim that This Evil is underlined by my prediction that X people will do Y and react Zly. You can’t underline current evils with your claims about what will happen tomorrow.… Read the rest

Bros before hos, I guess.

Whatever your view on trans inclusion, you have to admire Emily Bridges' courage in speaking out and setting the record straight https://t.co/G9jIRrWVeC

— David Bradford (@DeeBeeCW) June 7, 2022

Of course I don’t. Nobody does. That’s not “courage,” it’s triumphant cheating. It’s a man cheating women, and courage is not the quality it requires. Narcissism and entitlement, yes, courage, no. Utter contempt for women, yes, courage, no.

David Bradford is the fitness editor for Cycling Weekly. Men helping other men cheat women in sports: what a picture.

Updating: Forgot his follow-up.

The reaction to this tweet has made me realise I underestimated Emily's courage – which I now admire even more https://t.co/DD935y1dfx

— David Bradford

… Read the rest

Emily Bridges seems to feel terribly sorry for himself:

The transgender cyclist Emily Bridges feels comments made by Boris Johnson over whether she should race women were the catalyst for a wave of violent threats and has also revealed she wanted to compete at the Commonwealth Games this summer.

Maybe it was Bridges’s decision to race women that were the catalyst for a wave of threats. That’s not to say that threats are ok, but it is to say that his decision to race against women wasn’t Boris Johnson’s doing, and that maybe he’s not the innocent victim in this scenario. Maybe he should stop pitying himself for a minute and think about the women.

Some of those

… Read the rest

ITV is really knocking itself out on the Emily Bridges front.

"I don't want special treatment from anyone, I just want the same opportunities as my fellow female athletes"

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges answers criticism from those who say she shouldn't be competing in women's events https://t.co/EbiYvSZ6Hg pic.twitter.com/NONkE0fOgx

— ITV News (@itvnews) June 7, 2022

I forgot to comment on ITV’s provocation in the previous post about this one. Of course he wants special treatment: he wants to be allowed to compete against women even though he’s a man. That’s very special, and very unfair to women.

And of course they’re not his “fellow female athletes,” because he’s not female. He’s cheating them out of wins, and then he has … Read the rest

Notice the weird gentleness in the voice of the interviewer – as if Bridges were not just a woman but a particularly fragile, traumatized woman who needs special sensitivity and care. I don’t think that’s how tv news interviewers normally talk to their subjects.

And Bridges claims his “performance has decreased massively.” He claims he’s lost more aerobic performance “than the gap is between male and female athletes.” I don’t believe him.

"I don't want special treatment from anyone, I just want the same opportunities as my fellow female athletes"

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges answers criticism from those who say she shouldn't be competing in women's events https://t.co/EbiYvSZ6Hg pic.twitter.com/NONkE0fOgx

— ITV News (@itvnews) June 7, 2022

… Read the rest

Kathleen Stock has a brilliant piece about Pride Month and the way “Pride” has changed over time to appeal to straight people to the point where straight people now get to attack lesbians for not being Inklooosivv enough. She includes, with some regret, her coming-out story, because it matters for the story of straight people – men in fact – attacking lesbians with the noisy approval of men like Justin Weinberg.

I learnt early on about the special feeling of being in a room that contains only other lesbians – a space unlike any other I’d ever known, and so thrillingly transgressive and exciting when you’ve never been in such a female place, with that unique kind of ambient energy

… Read the rest

This took my breath away for a moment.

https://twitter.com/Lorna9100M/status/1534096506168524800

And the merch she hands out says “YEET THE TEET” with a jolly T Rex cartoon. Wheeeeeeeeeee, hahaha, yeet the teet, by which she means amputate healthy breasts of a woman or teenage girl because she wants to pretend to be a man. Yeet the teet! What a funny fun-loving way to put it!

She calls these “procedures.”… Read the rest

What I’m saying. You can see this in newspapers and tv news reports every day – on the one hand uh oh climate change, on the other hand yay more oil.

More than £8bn of North Sea energy projects could now be given the green light rapidly as fossil fuel firms take advantage of a tax break in Rishi Sunak’s windfall tax, analysts have forecast.

…

However, campaigners warned ramping up North Sea production risked hindering efforts to tackle climate change. Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “The financial stimulus offered by the chancellor to encourage more oil and gas exploration means projects teetering on the edge of approval or rejection are now

… Read the rest

Just plain evil. (Folksy evil, down home evil, evil that disguises itself as perky & outspoken.)

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1533569805424463872

This is a member of Congress taunting a survivor of the Parkland mass murders. It’s vomit-inducing.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/1533593588281507842… Read the rest

First, spoiler: the GMC has declined to investigate Az Hakeem.

Now the story of the former patient who tried to get him investigated:

A high-profile Harley Street psychiatrist who calls transgender rights campaigners “trans terrorists” has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) after a patient claims he was “attempting to practice transgender conversion therapy”, i can reveal.

Dr Az Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calls himself “gender critical” and “the only psychiatrist” to specialise in “exploratory psychotherapy to persons suffering from gender dysphoria”. He has denied being anti-trans, said his service is “neutral”, and denied offering conversion therapy.

But an 18-year-old former patient, a trans man, has accused Dr Hakeem of deploying

… Read the rest

Same old same old. It’s a dire emergency, and we won’t do anything to stop it.

The US envoy on climate change John Kerry has warned that the war in Ukraine must not be used as an excuse to prolong global reliance on coal.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kerry criticised a number of large countries for not living up to the promises they made at the COP26 climate summit.

I can explain. Promises are easy. Living up to them is hard.

The fragile unity shown in Glasgow last November is likely to be tested in Bonn as countries deal with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis.

Mr Kerry told the BBC

… Read the rest

I thought publishers were responsible for publishing books, but apparently I was all wrong, apparently they’re responsible for how the writers of books talk and behave. Kind of parental, kind of tutorial, kind of policey? How did I not know this was the job of publishers??!

https://twitter.com/samuel_mcqueen/status/1533445556865060867

That bit about “whose only crime is to try and carve out a small safe space for trans people” means, when translated, “whose only crime is to try to create a blacklist of published writers who commit gender thoughtcrime.” He means “the Young Refuseniks,” who have now closed their Twitter account which called on people to help create that blacklist.

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/1533443445326487553… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A strange union.

If we were to replace trans exclusionary with racist, misogynistic or antisemitic would we be expected to define every word that would be included?

Expected to define each word that would be considered racist? No. Expected to define the list itself of words to be proscribed, as opposed to the words on that list? Yes, absolutely. Expected to be able to provide a coherent definition of racism consistent with common usage? You’d better goddamn believe it. If you’re going to curtail fundamental liberties like speech, then you are obliged to provide a full account of who, what, when, where, and why. I can define racism, sexism, misogyny, antisemitism, … Read the rest