Joan Smith on Sussex’s failure to hang on to Kathleen Stock:

The Vice-chancellor, Adam Tickell, has written to all staff at Sussex, insisting that the university ‘has vigorously and unequivocally defended [Stock’s] right to exercise her academic freedom and lawful freedom of speech, free from bullying and harassment of any kind’.

Stock has responded by saying that the university leadership’s approach ‘more recently has been admirable and decent’, leaving open the question of what it did when she was first targeted. Because Stock and other gender critical academics, such as Professor Jo Phoenix of the Open University, have faced slurs and bullying for at least two years — so much so that Phoenix is raising funds to take the OU

Aw yeah, direct action, comrades – bully those pesky women out of their jobs.

Scum of the earth.… Read the rest

Behold: an asexual-themed “lingerie” campaign. (Side note: what even is that stupid word? I’ve never had any “lingerie” in my life, I have underwear. Just one more way women are treated as the Designated Sex Toys.)

That’s asexual-themed??? Boy you coulda fooled me. It looks entirely sexual. The posing is sexual and the “lingerie” is sexual, as are the gloves. (Gloves???) The open mouth is not sexual? Come on. The cocked leg, the boots, the weird straps, the hair, the shooting from below, the thrown back head? There’s not one thing about it that’s not sexual.

But hey, #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike! Who am I to argue?… Read the rest

They don’t usually say it quite so bluntly.

Books deemed ‘harmful to staff and students’ are being removed from region’s public school libraries

And…”harmful” how? Oh you know…just not the kind of thing the reader would have written. Which reader? Any reader, obviously. If someone says “I don’t like this,” out it goes.

The Waterloo Region District School Board is undertaking a multi-year review of its library collections to identify and remove any texts deemed “harmful to staff and students.”

Graham Shantz, coordinating superintendent in human resources and equity services outlined the ongoing work during Tuesday’s board meeting as part of an overview of the board’s 2021-2022 strategic and operational plan.

“We recognize as our consciousness around equity, oppression work

GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE!

Amazing News!https://t.co/7IzqmhE7gj

— Helen Staniland (@helenstaniland) October 28, 2021

All charges against Marion Miller, the woman who was arrested for posting a picture of a Suffragette's ribbon on social media – as a trans activist found this 'offensive', have been dropped https://t.co/kBmH5j30RU

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) October 28, 2021

The following press release has been sent by Marion Millar's lawyers.

We are pleased that sense has prevailed and we hope that future cases are considered more carefully.#WomenWontWheesht pic.twitter.com/hfH6G220f6

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) October 28, 2021

Obviously delighted with this outcome. Prosecution against Marion Millar discontinued. See full statement below. pic.twitter.com/AeEnLohsVv

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) October 28, 2021

… Read the rest

More Ash. (She’s like a splinter that you can’t…quite…dig…out.)

My tweet can be read as what it says: consenting adults are free to sleep with, or not sleep with, whoever they like. But if all you do is talk about who you find disgusting, who you’d never sleep with because of their minority status, then maybe *that’s* a bit bigoted! https://t.co/YinPnlfbvX

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 27, 2021

One, but it’s not all we do. Obviously. It’s not all anyone does. It’s something we talk about when it comes up, and the rest of the time we do other things.

Second, we don’t generally say it’s disgusting…unless she means we say the coercion is morally disgusting. That is something I … Read the rest

Trump has written a letter to the Wall Street Journal. It’s about a brand new and exciting subject.

In your editorial “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court” (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. “This didn’t matter,” you add, “because Mr. Biden won the state by 80,555, but the country is lucky the election wasn’t closer. If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the next President might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out.

He’s still got it! The old elegance, the wit, the learning, the flare. I … Read the rest

Hilarious, in its own way.

My wife walked up to the server at our local cafe. The person was possibly transgender. She wanted to engage the individual but was frozen in fear that she might use a pronoun that might offend. Therein lies the problem with this language policing. It takes perfectly natural

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) October 27, 2021

Well, you can surely order a sandwich without any pronouns other than first person, but Gad Saad later explained that his wife had wanted to say “he’ll get the hang of it” to another server (server # 1 is new to the job) but felt nervous about the “he.” But what’s funny, in a frustrating way, is all the explaining … Read the rest

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