Sure enough, he backed out.

Graham Linehan on Jon Ronson on Michfest:

His documentary about Michfest is, of course, a disgrace: the denigration of second-wave feminists is so facile that it actually includes a reference to them “not shaving their legs”; his barely-disguised cheerleading of third-wave feminism—what a coincidence, the porn-positive feminism that most benefits Jon—is grimly revealing. Jon’s compassion is infinite… if you’re male. If you’re female, your rights are subject to the whims of fashion.

Not shaving their legs? Really? Does Jon Ronson shave his?

And of course, there is the unmistakable attempt, one with which feminists are wearily familiar, to place trans-identified males inside the same moral framework as black people experiencing racism. This relentless propaganda, combined with the ambient soundtrack

Not a good sign.

Russian state TV's chief war correspondent is now in Donetsk

His live reports are full of claims of an 'imminent Ukrainian invasion', attacks on civilian infrastructure & artillery fire from the Ukr side

Says 70,000 women & children evacuated-> RF

The info war is in full swing pic.twitter.com/Fx8ZlH9zUB

— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) February 21, 2022

BBC Live says all signs are that Russia is invading Ukraine.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says “All the indicators point to increasing numbers and readiness of Russian forces.”

He says the pledge to withdraw Russian troops from Belarus at the end of their joint military drills “was not carried out”.

“The exercise has now been extended until further notice,” he says.

And the rest of it.… Read the rest

This is excellent. GB News was looking for volunteers on Twitter earlier because someone else had to back out, and Dennis raised his hand and so did Jon Pike.

Full clip here of me on GB news tonight guys https://t.co/p278CSaxJG

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) February 20, 2022

… Read the rest

Help friends harm enemies: Republican ethics in a nutshell.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is backing a controversial proposal to strip $200m in education funding from Democratic counties that defied his executive order last year banning mask mandates in schools.

The Democratic counties did what they thought would help protect students and teachers from a dangerous virus, while the Republican ones took the “don’t tell us what to do” route, which is not always clever in matters of public health. In other words the Dem counties didn’t do anything actually wrong or malicious. It seems very piggy to punish the schools in those counties for that kind of best judgement decision.… Read the rest

Promoting women is sex discrimination, giving scholarships to minorities is majority discrimination, free school lunches are wealth discrimination, yaddayaddayadda.

The Republican senator Ted Cruz complained on Sunday that Joe Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the supreme court was an instance of racial discrimination…

No it’s a correction of generations of racial and sex discrimination. I’m sure he understands that point, it’s not very complicated, but one must throw red meat to The Base.

“Democrats today believe in racial discrimination,” Cruz told Fox News Sunday. “They’re they’re committed to it as a political proposition. I think it is wrong to stand up and say, ‘We’re going to discriminate.’”

But it’s perfectly all right to discriminate in favor … Read the rest

Brendan O’Neill, in one of his getting something right moments, points out the flaw in Laurie Penny’s “feminism”:

Penny writes an awful lot about women for someone who doesn’t know what a woman is. Ostensibly this is a feminist tract, about how humanity faces a terrifying choice – it either carries on down the road to fascism or it embraces the corrective of Laurie Penny’s feminism. (Talk about a rock and a hard place!) And yet it’s a strange feminist tome that thinks men can be women, too. Penny gets it out of the way early. ‘In this book, when I talk about “men” and “women”… I am including everyone who locates themselves in those categories’, she says on

Andy Lewis pointed out this article (to Aaron Rabinowitz specifically) by a detransitioned young woman, and it’s got some strikingly explanatory observations. For her it all started with Tumblr.

A major aspect of Tumblr culture has always been social justice ideology. Things that are now being played out and witnessed by the general public on platforms like Twitter and TikTok, like dissociative identity disorder LARPers, demisexuals, neopronouns, otherkin, and everything you see on @LibsOfTikTok, have long existed in an uncannily identical form on tumblr.com. The oppression hierarchy of racial and gender identities now being written into law in many of our once serious nations was the state religion of the People’s Republic of Tumblr long before your political junkie

Back in November “Grace” Lavery was pining for a debate.

I don’t like doing this, and I won’t mention it again unless I get a bite, but I’ve been trying to invite a GC activist to do an event with me, where they could decide on format. Nobody wants to. I’m only mentioning it to expose the shallowness of the “we want to debate” posture. pic.twitter.com/XMe7qjYZZr

— Prof. Grace Lavery (@graceelavery) November 7, 2021

Helen Joyce took him up on it.

That’s correct, I have Twitter set to show me notifications and mentions only from mutuals. I’m happy to do an event with @graceelavery – as I already said. @andrewdoyle_com has already offered to moderate this. I’ll drop him a

Another thing about this – or maybe it’s the same thing but just louder –

The other thing. There is no Harry Potter without its creator. Why? Because she’s the one who created it. That thing they love so much? (I don’t love it, myself, so I can take a detached view of the fandom and the ardor.) That thing they love so much is the work of the woman they think they hate so much. You can’t have a Harry Potter without its creator, because that would be something completely different. The creator isn’t incidental to the creation; she’s prior and essential.

Their adoration of Harry Potter means they adore her, whether they know it or … Read the rest

Shahrar Ali is suing the Green Party.

A Green Party spokesman is bringing legal action against his former colleagues after he was sacked because of his views on the transgender debate.

Shahrar Ali, 53, was removed as the spokesman for policing and domestic safety on February 5 after activists complained that his tweets about women’s sex-based rights were transphobic.

It’s a neat trick to label non-belief in your magical mystery woo “phobic.” I don’t believe extraterrestrials drop in on us now and then for a chat; that’s not “phobic.” I just don’t believe it.

Party officials ruled that “his decision to champion a highly controversial position in the trans rights debate is not compatible” with his role.

But it’s … Read the rest

No, really????

Trans inmates revert to males when they leave Scottish prisons

I’m stunned. It never ever occurred to me for a second that they would do that. I thought they were totally sincere.

A study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, also revealed that some of these prisoners may only have identified as women in order to have sex with female inmates.

Staggered again!

No I’m not. This is what women have been saying all along.

The SPS said it has no plans to make use of the new research.

Sure. It’s only women who are affected, so who cares.… Read the rest

This dreck is so maddening and frustrating. “We enlightened ones know how much better it is to just identify out of being women than to insist that women are not inferior.”

Vernon Lee published her first writing at 14 & went on to write over 40 books in fields including travel, philosophy, psychology, art history, feminism, politics, gardening, and music theory. ⁠Not only that, she has also been credited with popularising the word ‘empathy’.

— Ashmolean Museum (@AshmoleanMuseum) February 16, 2022

Here, and in the podcast episode, we use the pronouns she and her because that is what Vernon used to describe herself, but if she were alive today, she might well choose gender neutral pronouns.

— Ashmolean Museum (@AshmoleanMuseum)

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on To scour the text.

And, of course, it often doesn’t even work. Sensitivity readers are self-selected (if not to say self-identified), claiming to speak for a particular group or so-called lived experience. Yet nobody (but nobody!) can realistically claim to account for every perspective within a group or class of people who share similar life experiences, and so anyone claiming to offer this is selling a bill of goods.

All too often, despite having engaged one or more of these charlatans, a work is still held up for a roasting by professional rivals or overenthusiastic “fans” who’ve attempted to fill the void of meaning in their lives with obsessive policing of other … Read the rest

You don’t have to like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or even be to the left of Lindsey Graham to find it disturbing that Fox personalities single her out for sustained personalized bullying.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night, claiming the US congresswoman was not a woman of colour.

“She’s a rich entitled white lady,” he said.

A “Karen.” It’s interesting how right-wing men and left-wing men join hands to abuse women.

Ocasio-Cortez’s mother is from Puerto Rico, her father from the Bronx. She has described herself as a woman of colour.

From the Bronx? That doesn’t tell us much. Puerto Rico at least hints at Hispanic, though of course it’s possible to be from … Read the rest

News from Ottawa:

Canadian police on Saturday deployed pepper spray and stun grenades in a continuing effort to break up the blockade of trucks and demonstrators that has occupied downtown Ottawa for more than three weeks in a protest against pandemic protocols.

More than three weeks seems like ample time to get a point across. It seems like way too much time when the point in question is such a selfish and dimwitted point as refusing to get vaccinated during a pandemic.

In a tweet addressed to the truckers, police said: “We told you to leave. We gave you time to leave. We were slow and methodical, yet you were assaultive and aggressive with officers and the horses.”

The … Read the rest

Peter Tatchell should look in the damn mirror before he yells “SHAME!” at women.

Most women in Scotland back some gender recognition reforms, poll confirms. Trans critics do not speak for all women. They demonise the oppressed #trans minority, with the false claim that trans women are predators & a threat to other women. SHAME! https://t.co/OQjwANGcqJ

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) February 18, 2022

… Read the rest

So tell us more about sensitivity readers.

The Times explores the question:

Joanne Harris*, the author of Chocolat, took umbrage: “I think you’re confusing sensitivity with weakness . . . It takes courage for an author to admit they may not have all the answers.” Dickens had revised his depiction of the Jewish character Fagin in Oliver Twist, she argued, removing many references to the character’s religion after corresponding with a Jewish critic, Eliza Davis. “He showed the capacity to grow. Perhaps that’s what makes a great writer.”

*The Joanne Harris who declined to remove a “fuck” from her latest novel for a US publisher.

But a Jewish critic who enlightened Dickens isn’t a “sensitivity reader,” … Read the rest