The Times, annoyingly, says in the headline that Romero “apologized” for re-writing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. No he didn’t.

That’s not what happened.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Yes he regretted it, but he didn’t apologize. Regretting something isn’t the same as apologizing for it. You can regret forgetting to get coffee at the store without apologizing for it.

The tweet by the A.C.L.U. occasioned mockery and some anger on social media from feminists and others.

Some anger? Lots of anger. White-hot anger.

“We won’t

… Read the rest

Michelle Goldberg in the Times yesterday on the ACLU’s insult to RBG and women:

This was a mistake for two reasons, one that’s easy to talk about, and one that’s hard.

The easy one is the “it’s bad to re-write the past this way” reason.

What’s more difficult to discuss is how making Ginsburg’s words gender-neutral alters their meaning. That requires coming to terms with a contentious shift in how progressives think and talk about sex and reproduction. Changing Ginsburg’s words treats what was once a core feminist insight — that women are oppressed on the basis of their reproductive capacity — as an embarrassing anachronism. The question then becomes: Is it?

Of course, I don’t find that one … Read the rest

Naturally this isn’t going down well.

Dear readers, in response to the Sept 25, 2021 cover of The Lancet, here is a statement from Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief: https://t.co/d47J6v4kSC pic.twitter.com/J73HlJ7w1O

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 27, 2021

Especially when men are still called men by The Lancet. This was tweeted just days earlier, Sept 20, 2021. Why are they not “Bodies with Penises”?

Nothing in this apology means anything until they address that discrepancy. Did the editor actually think we wouldn’t notice? pic.twitter.com/UXe4fgQsmV

— LMOnTheSun (@ThereIsNoYouOn3) September 27, 2021

I know where I'd like it delivered…

— Josephine Liptrott (@Jo_Liptrott) September 27, 2021

https://twitter.com/EgaliteUK/status/1442587295345876999

I think bodies with penises would've been better.
Or perhaps penises with bodies.

— Bea Jaspert (@hogotheforsaken)

… Read the rest

Labour List:

Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy has told a Labour Party conference fringe event when discussing trans rights this morning that “there are some dinosaurs on the right” and also that “those dinosaurs exist in our own party” who want to “hoard rights”.

“Hoard rights”? Is that like hoarding sugar and butter during the war?

Asked at a fringe meeting today about the ongoing conflict in the party over the rights of transgender people, he said there is “always a debate when you’re extending rights to people who have been denied them for so long”.

What “rights” have trans people been denied for so long? The right to ignore gender conventions? Probably, somewhat, but then non-trans people have … Read the rest

Oh please.

Dear readers, in response to the Sept 25, 2021 cover of The Lancet, here is a statement from Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief: https://t.co/d47J6v4kSC pic.twitter.com/J73HlJ7w1O

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 27, 2021

Blah blah blah blah fucking blah but when have they EVER talked about bodies with penises? Show me the cover that has “bodies with penises” on it. I’ll wait.… Read the rest

Again. They’re appallingly consistent about this.

Already, politicians in other states are proposing copycat bills that insult the Constitution, turn neighbor against neighbor, and force people to carry a pregnancy against their will.

It is past time for the Supreme Court to step in and right this grave injustice.

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 23, 2021

The ACLU has allowed the trans lobby – or maybe just Chase Strangio all by herself – to bully it into erasing women from its reporting and publicity.… Read the rest

Oh no, the ACLU had to name the bill and the bill has the word “women” in the title.

BREAKING: The US House of Representatives just passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, a historic move to protect abortion access nationwide.

Now, the Senate must pass this critical legislation without delay.

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 24, 2021

Ewwww women’s ewwwww they must have been feeling very sick having to say that.

But they fixed it in the subsequent tweets.

We all deserve access to the essential health care we need, including abortion — regardless of where we live or how much money we make.

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 24, 2021

Whew, that’s better! No more mention of women. Patients, people, we, … Read the rest

The ACLU is still at it (aka “doubling down”).

We may have a right to access abortion, but that doesn’t mean all of us can.

Under Texas’ anti-abortion law, SB 8, this is more true than ever.https://t.co/anbKKppZu0

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 26, 2021

We? Who’s we? Who are “all of us”?

They mean women, of course, but they’re hell bent on not saying so. It’s Chase Strangio’s world now, and the only women who matter are men.

The linked article uses the word once. One single time. I suppose the word appears that one time so that women like me won’t be able to say never. But the grotesquely sanitized language remains. It’s written by Paige Alexandria … Read the rest

Another one of these. She barks like a seal at the sheer horror of being asked if women are allowed to talk about our own bodies now.

'Is it transphobic to say only women have a cervix?'

Nick Ferrari puts Labour's Rachel Reeves on the spot after Keir Starmer said it was wrong to say 'only women have a cervix'.@NickFerrariLBC pic.twitter.com/g06jPP8TxH

— LBC (@LBC) September 27, 2021

… Read the rest

Child Psychiatry Fellow at Stanford Medical School Jack Turban to Jessica Taylor in response to her objection to a man, Mridul Wadhwa, as director of a women’s rape crisis centre:

Women “demanding” female staff at rape crisis centers is not repeat not comparable to white people demanding white staff at anything. Women are not dominant over men, women don’t rape men, women are not the oppressor class in relation to men, women are not comparable to white people and men are not comparable to black people in discussions of power imbalance or dominance/subordination or perpetrator/victim or violence/injury.… Read the rest

Something nice for a change!

In January 23, a group of five women climbers summitted Aconcagua, in Argentina, at 22,808 feet, the highest point in the Western and Southern Hemispheres. It took them seven days from when they started ascending the mountain’s flanks to when they safely returned to the bottom. This wouldn’t necessarily be noteworthy if not for the makeup of the crew.

They’re all Bolivian Aymara indigenous women who until recent years worked as cooks and caretakers for well-heeled, and mostly male, mountaineers from around the world. These women had been working at high camps for years, catering to the crews headed to the high peaks of the Andes. Finally, they decided to strap on crampons and hike

… Read the rest

Sonia Sodha on “white feminism”:

Blaming women for the ills of the world might appear an odd feminist call to action. But an idea gaining traction is that the “white feminism” dominant in the United States and the UK is not only a driving force of societal racism, but responsible for a host of other bad things, from the war on terror to the hypersexualisation of women in popular culture, to the dreadful abuses of power we see in international aid. It’s part of a growing tendency on the left to look for scapegoats at the cost of building the solidarity needed for social change.

It’s that and it’s also part of a longstanding tendency on the left to … Read the rest

You have got to be kidding.

Starmer's moment of shame. https://t.co/V2oMeZ4x0f

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) September 26, 2021

It shouldn’t be said. It’s not right.

So I guess it shouldn’t be said and it’s not right that women are the ones who gestate and give birth to all human beings without exception. I guess it shouldn’t be said and it’s not right that men can’t do either of those things. I guess it shouldn’t be said and it’s not right that men have always sought to harness and control that ability women have. I guess it shouldn’t be said and it’s not right that men are also bigger and stronger than women, and that those two facts combined are why … Read the rest

So…

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1441859955196321798

So that letter is here, and published with permission. Atwood sent it to several people.

Hi Steve,

Harriet has told me that you stated that her article “dragged SBM into a raging controversy.” She feels, and I agree, that it was your retracting that article and replacing it by very bad articles written by advocates of “gender affirmation” that dragged SBM into a raging controversy. I’ve attempted to explain why previously, but here I’ll mention a couple of the most obvious reasons. 

You claimed that Harriet’s article was below SBM’s minimal standard for “high quality scientific evidence and reasoning to inform medical issues.” Yet you replaced it with articles stating things such as the following: 

“Biology is

… Read the rest

This very young MP is a piece of work.

We need to take a much tougher line on transphobia and for it to be unacceptable at all levels of the party.

We also need a programme of proper political education on this for all members.

These are things I am pushing for and will continue to push for. 4/6

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) September 22, 2021

That might sound reasonable if you didn’t know what zealots like this novice mean by “transphobia.” She doesn’t mean cruelty or persecution of trans people, she doesn’t mean inciting hatred of trans people (although she probably thinks she does), she means not agreeing that men are women if they say they are, and … Read the rest

Yiiiiiiiiikes.

https://twitter.com/altweetsstuff/status/1441761654220328965… Read the rest

The Lancet’s “bodies with vaginas” tweet is getting scorching replies.

Still reeling from the @ACLU’s erasure of the word “woman” from a quotation by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Now we see the medical journal @TheLancet using the vile phrase “bodies with vaginas” on its front cover.

Dehumanization is the prelude to violence.#WarOnWomen

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) September 25, 2021

On the same day National Public Radio erased women from a story on abortion rights.

https://twitter.com/coccinellanovem/status/1441508423472877573 https://twitter.com/ShirTruth/status/1441814646990819328

To many, yes. With another hole at the other end where anything we have to say about ourselves and discrimination is treated as the utterance of a person with mental health issues.

— Cathy Dalton (@DuBarry_Mme) September 25, 2021

https://twitter.com/yshmypk/status/1441741623382233088

Bodies without spines

… Read the rest

The Lancet has tangled with the wrong crowd.

Our new issue is here! On the cover—'Periods on display' and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and #PeriodPoverty.

Plus, @WHO air quality guidelines, low #BackPain management, community-acquired bacterial #meningitis, and more. Read: https://t.co/eP1Lx7D116 pic.twitter.com/DchfiHnYEs

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 24, 2021

The Lancet is the Last Straw.The magazine’s supercilious,demeaning,deliberately inaccurate naming of women in examining in print one of our most delicate and defining natural processes has destroyed my innate respect for today’s medical leaders.I cannot believe them now. https://t.co/9e0prNJnDD

— Emma Harriet Nicholson (@Baroness_Nichol) September 25, 2021

… Read the rest

God damn NPR.

The U.S. House on Friday approved a bill that Democrats say will protect a person’s access to abortion.

A WOMAN’S.

A woman’s, god damn it; if it were a man’s no bill would be needed. Say the damn word. Say our name.

Passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act to floor is a response to a Texas law that essentially bans abortion after six weeks, before most people realize they are pregnant.

WOMEN. Before most WOMEN realize they’re pregnant.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would protect a person’s ability to decide to continue or end a pregnancy and would enshrine into law health care providers’ ability to offer abortion services “prior to fetal viability” without

… Read the rest

On the one hand, global warming is rapidly getting worse, on the other hand…

Southern California is dealing with a traffic jam unlike any other, as a record number of container ships have been stuck waiting in the waters outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to unload cargo.

The bottleneck this week at America’s busiest port complex is the result of a shortage of trucks and drivers to pick up goods, coupled with an overwhelming demand for imported consumer products.

Let’s import all the things! Let’s ship stuff back and forth so that we can dump ever more carbon into the environment!

As of Wednesday, 62 container ships were waiting offshore to unload cargo, according to

… Read the rest