Kathleen has closed her Twitter, I hope temporarily, and the Sussex UCU has deleted its statement, but Kiri Tunks hasn’t.

Trade unions also defend members who are unfairly targeted or persecuted because of their beliefs or political views – unless you are in the UCU, in which case they will accuse you of ‘instrumentalising your employment rights’ and throw you to the wolves. 2/3 pic.twitter.com/zBxWNbgHkv

— Kiri Tunks (@kiritunks) October 12, 2021

Let’s look at that first sentence in the third paragraph again.

Public discourses regularly devalue the lives of trans and nonbinary people and appeals to both employment rights and academic freedom are often instrumentalised in this context

That’s a very remarkable thing for a union to say. It … Read the rest

The Guardian has a weaselly piece on the Sussex snafu.

Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor targeted by activists for her views on gender identification, has said she fears her career at Sussex University has been “effectively ended” by a union’s call for an investigation into transphobia.

No, she hasn’t, that’s not what she said. If you can’t even get the lede right, take a sick day so that someone else can do it. The “she fears” part is sheer invention.

Sussex’s chapter of the University and College Union (UCU) has urged the university’s management to “take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex”, and undertake an investigation into “institutional transphobia”.

Yes but it said a lot more … Read the rest

The University and College Union has issued a statement endorsing the Sussex UCU statement, which UCU General Secretary Jo Grady has (of course) retweeted. (I think it’s safe to assume she approved it or wrote it in the first place.) It too is a disgusting, backstabbing, crawling, scab-embracing statement.

A statement from UCU: pic.twitter.com/Y7fqLzFvHM

— UCU (@ucu) October 12, 2021

The statement (the Sussex one) is of course emphatically NOT “clear that UCU is not calling for any staff to be dismissed from their post.” On the contrary it’s clear that they are, in a passive-aggressive semi-deniable way. The word “summarily” is doing all the heavy lifting here – Sussex UCU frowns on staff being summarily fired. Slowly fired is … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Djolaman on All on the rainbow.

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? If you’re under 16 then there are hardly any consequential decisions which you can make you yourself in the uk. You can’t sign a contract of any kind, get a loan, own property, leave school, consent to sexual activity, work more than 12 hours a week, get a tattoo, get a piercing, drink alcohol, get married, be tried as an adult in a criminal case, be sent to an adult prison, live alone, drive any kind of vehicle except a pushbike, receive any inheritance that isn’t managed by a trustee, view or appear in sexually explicit material, open a bank account, act as legal guardian … Read the rest

Breaking news. Bad breaking news. Disgusting breaking news.

Sex advice for lesbians! From an expert!

Defining “lesbian sex” is no easy feat. Most commonly, the phrase is used as a porn search term to help people find content featuring two (or more) cisgender women.

But this is not an accurate conceptualization of lesbian sex. Why? Well, for starters, it suggests that only cis-gendered women get to participate in lesbian sex, which is untrue. Lesbian is not defined as cisgender women interested in cisgender women, but as non-man who loves, dates, and fuck other non-man.

Really??? I did not know that. I love learning new things. All this time I thought lesbian was defined as women attracted to women. I feel so stupid for not realizing it means … Read the rest

Owen Jones quote-tweeted a woman who is worried about her 16 year old daughter, whose friends are encouraging her to think she’s trans.

I’m not sharing his tweet but here’s what he said:

Some of those anti-trans activists you see online inevitably end up having trans children.

And when they fail to affirm their children for who they are, they risk causing them massive lifelong damage in the form of mental distress and all of its often terrible consequences.

Not a decent thing to do to a woman worried about her kid. The comments underline why.

Piling onto a worried mum and creating a situation where your followers call her the “c” word is revolting behaviour.

This claim to being

Let’s talk about toys.

Lego has announced it will work to remove gender stereotypes from its toys after a global survey the company commissioned found attitudes to play and future careers remain unequal and restrictive.

Researchers found that while girls were becoming more confident and keen to engage in a wide range of activities, the same was not true of boys.

Yes we know how that works. Girls don’t get called “wimps” for playing with boys’ toys. To put it another way, girls playing with toys coded “boy” are leveling up, while boys going the other direction are of course leveling down.

Seventy-one per cent of boys surveyed feared they would be made fun of if they played with

Wait who needs to get a smear test again?

SNP ministers have been accused of sowing confusion after urging “anyone with a cervix” to get a smear test rather than saying “women”.

People all over Scotland are rummaging through their attics and pantries trying to find that pesky cervix.

A Scottish Government information campaign launched today also says “people” are being urged to attend a test, and that “two people” die from cervical cancer every day.

It adds: “Cervical screening is offered to anyone with a cervix aged between 25 and 64.” 

This isn’t flaky attention-seekers on TikTok, it’s a government.

The row over the choice of language comes after some politicians have been accused of transphobia for saying

Dang, this is startling even for Ash Sarkar.

The choice is whether you love your kid for who they are more than the rigid ideology that tells you there's something wrong about trans and non-binary people. Listen to your child, accept their choices, and let empathy take the wheel. https://t.co/8jsd0W6x0l

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 11, 2021

The rigid ideology? That’s the people who don’t believe the neon-pink new ideology of Gender’s Veto Power Over Sex?

It’s no more “rigid” to say that girls are not boys than it is to say humans are not crocodiles. “If you’re a girl then you’re not a boy, but what you do with being a girl is up to you, so knock yourself … Read the rest

One of the ways it’s going to kill us – flooding of critical infrastructure.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. critical infrastructure—utilities, airports, police stations and more—is at risk of being inundated by flooding, according to a new report by First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit dedicated to making climate risk more visible to the public.

…

“Even if your home is far from the risk of flooding or forest fires, you may not so easily escape the systemic impacts from vulnerable critical infrastructure that sometimes extends hundreds of miles,” said Jesse Keenan, a climate-change and real-estate expert at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Remember Texas last winter? When Ted Cruz went bopping off to Cancun?

Recent storms highlighted the

Journalists really need to learn to report on this more precisely.

As do headline writers: the Times headline is both wrong and bad.

Truss hits out at abuse of Kathleen Stock, professor in trans dispute

No she doesn’t. The story doesn’t even say that. The lede:

Liz Truss has spoken out against the abuse a university professor has faced for her views on transgender rights and the police have told her to install CCTV cameras at home and have a bodyguard on campus.

Speaking out isn’t hitting out. The distinction is quite important, so what are newspapers doing blurring it? It’s an important distinction and it’s at the heart of this very story, which is all about violent threats against … Read the rest

That’s disgusting. No other word for it.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A tool that enforces sexism.

Proffering pronouns conceptually depends on the view that “one’s pronouns” are (1) of critical importance and (2) self-determined and inaccessible to others if not publicly stated. (2) gets most of the attention, as it’s the more obviously wrongheaded notion. We know what pronouns are and how they work, because we’ve been using them since we started emulating our parents’ speech as babies. Seeing that these demands for announcing pronouns, which are not always even words, are incompatible with what pronouns are and how they work is easy and intuitive for most people with functioning brain cells not warped by propaganda and in-group loyalty. Unfortunately, the ease … Read the rest

JL at the Glinner Update is not impressed by “Jaclyn” Moore and his performative fury at Dave Chapelle.

John “Jaclyn” Moore is a TV executive, a career forged prior to his newly discovered ‘gender identity’. He was a writer and co-showrunner on Netflix series, Dear White People. On Wednesday he announced on social media that he isn’t going to work for the streaming service again, accusing it of “Promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content”.

…

Variety interviewed Moore about his decision and allowed him to bellyache, at length, about Chappelle’s ‘dangerous rhetoric’. The article was, of course, accompanied by photos of Moore performing the coy head tilt and winsome expression we’ve come to expect when entitled white

Even the Sunday Times treats Kathleen Stock as a provocateur who insists on thinking wack thoughts like “men can’t become women.”

A university professor has told how she may need to be accompanied by bodyguards on campus and has been advised to install CCTV outside her home, following a row with students about her views on transgender rights.

Like that. It’s not a “row with students”; it’s students threatening her with violence.

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, does not believe people can change their biological sex, an opinion she has been vocal about in her academic work and on social media. Critics have accused her of being transphobic.

And like that. Of course she … Read the rest

You remember that Dave Chapelle made some jokes about the Gospel of Trans, right? Well there are consequences for these things.

Jaclyn Moore, writer and showrunner on the series “Dear White People” and the upcoming reboot of “Queer as Folk,” is boycotting Netflix after the streaming service released Dave Chappelle’s latest stand-up special, which contained a slew of jokes aimed at transgender people.

Well, Chappelle is black and Moore is white, so it’s time to start yelling about Karens and white women’s tears, right?

But wait.

Moore transitioned during production of the show’s last season, she told the Wrap, and was met with respect and support from her colleagues. But watching Chappelle’s most recent special drove her to

Lawyers are laughing at Jolyon’s lawyering.

You will not be surprised to learn that it gets worse. pic.twitter.com/uCkyVQsifN

— Levins Solicitors (@LevinsLaw) October 9, 2021

See, if you’re defending free speech, that’s what you’re doing. You’re not supposed to say “I think it’s a crock of shit but” first. You can say that in the pub, but not if you’re a university actually defending free speech. Jolyon wants them to scream “WE HATE TERFS” and then mutter “but yes yes free speech” and depart in haste.

Also…Jolyon has been saying he wishes a transphobe would agree to debate him, but it turns out he doesn’t want to.

My initial email for reference: pic.twitter.com/ex9ht99dXD

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) October 9, 2021

This is not good.

Quoting the rest.

One of the women already had pronouns displayed in her username. The effect of this was to create a really odd sense that the women had made a submissive gesture and the men had not.

In discussions at work about pronouns, the solution proposed to this has often been to ‘normalize declaring pronouns’ so that everyone feels they should comply with the request. So the women are attempting to ‘model’ this compliance. So far, so gendered.

When I have been in meetings where a man does declare he/him-ness, it simply exacerbates this sense of domination vs compliance. You have a woman underlining that she is a woman & a man announcing that

Selina Todd wrote to the Times:

Sir, The role of a university should be to pursue truth, via careful research and active debate. The recent treatment of Professor Kathleen Stock suggests this is now secondary to attracting and pacifying student consumers (“Students demand firing of ‘transphobe’ professor”, News, Oct 8). Sussex University did not take “immediate action” to stop the bullying she faced this week. Offensive posters and stickers were visible by Tuesday, October 5. Only after public pressure was applied did the university remove these and (on Thursday, October 7) make a public statement, which paid lip service to academic freedom while assuring students of the university’s “inclusivity”.

Any scholar engaged in researching women or gender-identity ideology