Originally a comment by Laurent on 8 years.

When I advertised a project at work to plant fruit trees and thus asked people to bring us back seeds or plantlets from their garden, out of 250 people, 1 gave 3 seeds and another one gave 6 young trees. That’s how people commit to a very easy task that would have sucked up tonnes of carbon over 20 years.

Eventually I did and do contribute to planting trees at work, currently possibly worth a commercial value exceeding several thousand bucks (and I don’t count my time).

I’m really amazed, because everywhere there is room for tree planting, even if we avoid places where trees falling are a potential risk. (Though … Read the rest

Saying it and saying you didn’t say it.

Word of advice: don’t make shit up about what someone said when their tweet is still online for all to see. https://t.co/kmo0RP3AnT pic.twitter.com/Y4Gl5cvQTM

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 27, 2021

Bad Ash. Dishonest Ash. Ash is pretending to think Berrelli’s tweet contained quotation marks, as in: Ash, you said “lesbians were” etc. But there are no quotation marks. Berrelli summarized what Ash said, and she summarized it accurately. Saying “it’d be fair to ask if racism plays a part” is more than close enough to “equivalent to racists.” Accurate summarizing is not “making shit up.”

Bad bad bad Ash.… Read the rest

Another version of the X on passports news:

The US has issued its first passport with an “X” gender designation – a milestone in the recognition of the rights of people who don’t identify as male or female – and expects to be able to offer the option more broadly next year, the state department said on Wednesday.

What rights? What are the “rights” of people who don’t identify as male or female that are different from the rights of anyone else? Spell them out and explain why only people who don’t identify as male or female have them. Is there a “right” to be called neither male nor female? What kind of right would that be? What would … Read the rest

So stupid it burns.

The State Department announced Wednesday that the U.S. has issued its first “X” gender marker on passports, marking a step toward making passports available for non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people throughout the country.

Then what is the point of having sex markers on passports at all? If they’re going to have some that are meaningless why have any?

Passports don’t exist to give people tingly validation feelings. Passports have not until now been unavailable to non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people. Passports are official documents and they’re supposed to tell the truth about the people who have them; that’s pretty much their whole point.

“The Department of State is committed to promoting the freedom,

When laydeez are a little dangerous…

A convicted murderer and sex offender from British Columbia, Canada has been denied parole after seeking release from prison shortly after identifying as transgender.

Roger Dale Badour, 73, is currently serving a life sentence for the fatal shooting of a woman in 2011. Badour had been living on the property of Gisele Duckham, 56, at the time of the murder. Following an argument, he fatally shot her, hid her body, and then fled.

At the time, Badour was out on parole and supposed to be living in a halfway house in Victoria, British Columbia on conditions of ceasing contact with women. This condition came after Badour was released into the community from a

There’s an open letter. Of course there is.

It’s a barely literate open letter, I must say.

An open letter to the BBC regarding an article published by Catherine Lowbridge

Dear BBC Upper Management and Editorial Staff,

The day this open letter is being written (26th October 2022), you published an article on the BBC News website by Caroline Lowbridge titled ‘We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women’¹.

Wait. Is it Catherine or Caroline?

You’d think they would at least get that straight before starting to type.

The article headline may use the word “some”, but the clear implication of the article and its headline is that transgender women as a minority group pose a threat

Stonewall is losing friends.

We went from #MeToo to "women who have a sexual orientation are bigots".

This is no accident.

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) October 26, 2021

8/ To be compared to a racist by the head of Stonewall for having sexual boundaries protected in law is a deep and vile insult to gay people.

Stonewall now makes clear it despise us and it is a homophobic hate group that poses an existential threat to us.

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) October 26, 2021

In case your memory of it has faded that’s from the BBC report on the coercion of lesbians to have sex with men who call themselves lesbians.

Stonewall is the largest LGBT organisation

Oh yes?

The BBC publishing about the coercion and rape of lesbians by trans identifying men is such a big deal

This is something Stonewall really doesn't want anyone to talk about

Allison Bailey @BluskyeAllison tweeted about the "cotton ceiling" in 2019 pic.twitter.com/8ooCIBhnC7

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) October 26, 2021

Let’s look up Morgan Page cotton ceiling then.

Let’s read My Trans Youth Group Experience with Morgan Page.

Morgan Page was the creator of the Planned Parenthood Toronto workshop “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women” in 2012. And although I had never heard about this until after leaving the trans community, years later, those of us in Morgan’s youth group definitely identified as

What I’m saying. They’re not going to do it. They probably literally can’t – in the sense that if they tried they would instantly lose the power to continue.

National plans to cut carbon fall far short of what’s needed to avert dangerous climate change, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Their Emissions Gap report says country pledges will fail to keep the global temperature under 1.5C this century.

The Unep analysis suggests the world is on course to warm around 2.7C with hugely destructive impacts.

But that’s in the future. We don’t do future.

The report finds that when added together, the plans cut greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 by around 7.5% compared to the previous pledges made

Ash Sarkar is also furious.

Nobody should be pressured into sex with anybody, for any reason.

I wouldn't want someone to feel they had to have sex with me out of social pressure, but it'd be fair to ask whether racism plays a part in announcing every 5mins that they'd never sleep with a woman of colour!

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 26, 2021

Not comparable. Race is not basic to sex. Sex, on the other hand, is basic to sex. What sex you are and what sex the other is are basic to whether both of you want to have sex or not. What sex you are is basic to sexual attraction. Race is beside the point.

In ordinary … Read the rest

Pink News is furious.

Dunno, but the PN fume makes me want to read it, so I went looking. This seems like the likely culprit:

Trans women bullying lesbians into sex

Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners – then shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too.

Let’s start with the question. Izza lesbian transphobic if. Here’s the thing: sex has to be voluntary. That’s it, that’s the tweet. Nobody has to have sex with anybody. Men who … Read the rest

UK gender-critical people form our views without any need to refer to the polarized landscape in the US. This suggestion from @juliacarriew is oddly US-centric. Still, Andy Lewis has explained the difference very well. See below. pic.twitter.com/gjMG0m3tAU

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) October 25, 2021

Why would gender critical feminists in the UK be associated with the Republicans in any way? They’re two different countries. The Republican party is of little interest to most people in the UK, just as the Tory party is of little interest to most people here. We don’t decide what we think based on how “associated” our thinking may be with a political party in another country; that would be stupid and futile and time-consuming. Maybe … Read the rest

Cornel West and Jeremy Tate in the Post last April:

Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

Yet today, one of America’s greatest

Owen Jones is so important that even Oxfam explains itself to him.

An Oxfam employee got in touch anonymously about the bingo game various media outlets are kicking off about.

This is the truth. Media outlets should stop fuelling bigotry against a marginalised minority with these misleading 'culture war' headlines. https://t.co/21ZaGph1Bb pic.twitter.com/MJ0F7Y8UAH

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 25, 2021

“Senior management agreed that it would be unethical to sell the product, and it was therefore pulled.”

I’m not sure I believe the story, but even if it is true, why would it be “unethical” to sell (or give away) the product?

It wouldn’t. It’s only because there’s this exaggerated wild-eyed panic about the Specialness of being trans that lets people … Read the rest

The Times reports that Oxfam refuses to clarify that threadbare Twitter “explanation” of its decision to erase women.

Oxfam has removed a children’s game celebrating “inspirational women” such as Marie Curie, Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst from its shops because transgender and non-binary staff complained that it did not “respect people of all genders”.

No Rosa Parks for you, bitches!

Wonder Women, a bingo game, features 48 women “who have made a mark on the world, from scientists and artists to writers, activists and beyond”.

Then it quotes Rob’s explanation on Twitter, which I think does not come across as official enough to be Oxfam’s only explanation, but it seems Oxfam doesn’t agree. We don’t even know who “Rob” is… Read the rest

Oxfam confirms yes it really is committed to erasing women whenever a trans lobby tells it to.

Hi there, thank you for getting in touch. We took the decision to remove the game from sale following concerns raised by trans and non-binary colleagues who told us that it didn’t live up to our commitment to respect people of all genders. I hope that helps. – Rob

— Oxfam (@oxfamgb) October 24, 2021

A man explains that yes indeed Oxfam removed a bingo game celebrating female achievement because of its commitment to respect people of all genders.

So. That’s clear. In Oxfam view, prodded by its “trans and non-binary colleagues,” it is no longer permissible to celebrate female achievement. It’s … Read the rest

So some members of Congress were in on it, and actively helped plan it.

As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent. 

I think we can guess who some of them were.

The two sources, both of

This is police business because…………….what?

It's #AceWeek. This is a week for raising awareness about asexual identities, while also helping the #ace people within our workplaces feel more included & able to be themselves at work. We'll be sharing resources/information throughout the week to help. pic.twitter.com/HZc5upKoU6

— Police Service NI LGBT+ Network (@PSNILGBT) October 25, 2021

Raise your hands everybody who wants the police explaining you about AsxUal Idenninies.

You’re a tough crowd.… Read the rest

I have to wonder why the SMH saw fit to publish this childish drivel.

Before the movie begins, I duck off to the bathrooms. Down a dim corridor I find the signs: F and M. The same old binary. There’s no other choice. For the umpteenth time, I sigh. Which of two bad options to choose today? I’m neither man nor woman, but I must pretend to be one or the other if I’m to empty my bursting bladder. Outside the entrance, I hesitate, weighing up the dilemma.

But of course he is either man or woman. His name is Yves Reese so apparently a man but who knows, maybe he gave himself a go on, guess name. But … Read the rest

Why?

Priti Patel says don’t record crimes by men who claim to be trans as crimes by women in the statistics (for blindingly obvious reasons), and a woman cop who is co chair of the LGBT+ network for cops says well in that case don’t record women as victims? Wtf???

Where does she get the “so” and the “then”? So and then imply logic, or a chain of causation, or something along those lines. But what could such a chain be? Men who claim to be trans are not women, so they should not be recorded as women in the statistics when they commit crimes. That’s obvious. The point of the statistics is to record the truth of who … Read the rest