At Lesbian and Gay News:

“Why are you wearing a boy’s uniform?” That question has stayed with me since it was first asked by my chemistry teacher in front of a packed class when I was just 13 years old. The year was 1989, Thatcher was in power and had passed Section 28 the year before and it was the year that Stonewall was founded…

I often look back on that moment, in that class in front of my classmates, and wonder why it has stayed with me more than everything else about that dreadful time at that dreadful school. Over the years I’ve battled with my mental health, most of it due to trauma of living through the

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Science-based. SCIENCE-BASED I tell you! Is is is is IS.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1418090247120986114 https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1418162070407811074

It’s a SCIENCE-BASED block.… Read the rest

On the one hand women are terfs, on the other hand women are those bitches who won’t have sex with every man who asks. (Women who do have sex with every man who asks are of course sluts.)

An Ohio man who was part of an online community of “incels,” or misogynists who blame women for denying them what they believe is their right to sexual intercourse, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with plotting to shoot students in sororities, federal prosecutors said.

Not trans women, please note, just women. We’re constantly told about how vulnerable trans women are, but they’re not the targets of incels. I go on thinking trans women are not as vulnerable as women.

From

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Again we are reminded that the US is trembling on the brink.

The House speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, announced on Wednesday that she would veto the two top Republicans appointed by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to the new select committee investigating the Capitol attack, saying the Trump-allied congressmen could threaten the integrity of the investigation.

That’s one of the reasons we’re trembling on the brink – the fact that some Republicans approved of the attack aka insurrection, and some helped it.

But the move triggered McCarthy to pull all five of the Republicans he had chosen off the committee if Pelosi wouldn’t seat the whole cohort – and threaten to set up their own investigation into

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What it does to people.

Having unwillingly undergone a five week intensive exposure to "gender critical" arguments, I've concluded that a disturbing number of them boil down to taking "Ew, trans people ick me out" and cranking that feeling up to, "Trans people are an abomination against nature/God/etc."

— David Gorski, MD, PhD (@gorskon) July 21, 2021

No they don’t. He must have been looking at the biblical arguments instead. Gender critical arguments don’t involve ew ick or god.

The ease with which he makes sweeping generalisations about women who disagree with him suggests he has issues with women too. As does the fact that he's liked this blatantly sexist and ageist reply from one of his followers. @gorskon pic.twitter.com/nYq3E31yyx

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There’s no such thing as “trans misogyny” any more than there’s such a thing as “trans racism.”

https://twitter.com/jvn/status/1417536266950881292

It’s not “the truth” that “trans and non-binary people have been here forever.” It may be, and probably is, the truth that people who have felt discomfort with their own sex and/or curiosity about being the other sex have been here forever, but “trans” has been expanded and expanded and expanded to mean far more than that, and the far more is mostly batshit crazy. There’s no reason to assume that that particular brand of crazy – so shaped by Twitter and other modern forms of media – has always existed.

When folks do threaten her it allows for her transphobic rhetoric

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Life expectancy in the US has fallen.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showed the average US lifespan dropped from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. Researchers said the pandemic was mostly to blame for the decline, with record-high drug deaths also noted as a contributing factor.

The data comes amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases across the country. Hospital rates are also on the rise with daily deaths now almost 50% higher than last week, according to officials.

More than 600,000 Americans have died so far during the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s not what they mean – they mean from or because of the pandemic. I know this because that’s the number. I think … Read the rest

He really is quite something.

Unlike most of the people who criticise me over this, I HAVE got my head round both sides, which is why I don't think that coming to conclusions is easy. Maybe there are no conclusions. Maybe some problems are just not resolvable.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 20, 2021

I’ll have to try that more often. “Unlike most people who disagree with me, I DO understand everything.”… Read the rest

That Georgia Rep has been telling lies about Covid on Twitter.

Twitter temporarily suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for violating its covid-19 misinformation policy after she falsely claimed the coronavirus was “not dangerous” for some people.

…

Greene tweeted Monday that the novel coronavirus was “not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.” More than 600,000 people in the United States have died of covid-19.

And not all of them were over 65 or obese or both.

Why would MGT endanger people by lying that way? I know the obvious reasons (politics, attention, stupidity, ignorance), but they never really seem like enough. It’s like seeing a fire engulfing an apartment block full of people, and running … Read the rest

Philip Pullman really is very entitled.

Thank you to all those people who are patronising me (I like your books but you've got it all wrong and you don't understand anything and you ought to, etc etc). May I respectfully invite you to change your tone. You're not getting anywhere like this.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 20, 2021

I guess “change our tone” in the sense of saying he’s got it all right instead of wrong? But he has got it all wrong. Despite being perfect and a sage and a magus and so on, he has got it all wrong. I know that’s hard to believe, when it’s women saying so, but there it is.… Read the rest

Anti-vaxxer dies of COVID:

On Tuesday, the Cape Cod Times reported that Linda Zuern, a former member of the Bourne, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen and a Trump-supporting figure in the local Republican Party, had died of COVID-19.

Zuern died at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston of severe complications caused by COVID-19, according to the report. She was 70 years old and had not been vaccinated.

“She was a strong woman who believed in speaking the truth and defending our freedoms in America,” Republican State Committeewoman Deborah Dugan told the Cape Cod Times. Dugan was at Zuern’s bedside when she died. “I would describe her to people as a little woman but a mighty warrior.”

What freedoms? Freedom from … Read the rest

nutmeg sums up the point neatly.

Wearing 'too short shorts': A speaking to
Wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms: A fine
Smoking cannabis: A ban
Competing against female weightlifters after a 15 year career as a men's weightlifter: Brave and stunning pic.twitter.com/jAaKH2hH2C

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) July 20, 2021

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Well why stop there? Why not force them to wear no pants at all?

Women’s team fined for not wearing tiniest possible pants.

Norway’s women’s beach handball team have been fined 1,500 euros (£1,295) for choosing to wear shorts rather than bikini bottoms in a match at the European Beach Handball Championships in Bulgaria.

The fine was ‘150 euros per player, for a total of 1,500 euros’ handed out by the European Handball Federation (EHF) because shorts are ‘not according to the athlete uniform regulations defined in the IHF [International Handball Federation] beach handball rules of the game.’

But why are those the athlete uniform regulations? Why are women forced to wear sexually provocative underpants for what is supposed … Read the rest

And then Philip Pullman.

This kind of abuse is pitiful, vile, beneath contempt.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 20, 2021

My views on this issue are not mixed. I am anti-bullying, anti-abuse of any kind, and also anti-transphobia. How dare you accuse me of sending mixed messages and sitting on the fence? How dare you assume that if I'm pro-trans I have to be anti-women?

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 20, 2021

How dare we accuse him of sending mixed messages when he interrupts himself talking about abuse of a woman to say he opposes “transphobia” – which as we know all too well can mean anything and everything and is often just a pretext for bullying women. So that’s … Read the rest

The new wave of JKR-bullying continues to break over our heads.

Children's gender identity charity Mermaids has accused JK Rowling of being 'despicable' for revealing she has received rape and death threats for defending women's rights. They've condemned not those threats she received, but threats that trans people "will" receive as a result pic.twitter.com/qzSh4oaCIn

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) July 20, 2021

They really said that? They really did.

This is a good day for allies to tweet in support of their trans siblings. #TransLove

— Mermaids (@Mermaids_Gender) July 20, 2021

They don’t know how to spell “despicable.” … Read the rest

And speaking of bona fide qualifications – an item I just saw on Facebook.

Yes it does.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog on Lesbians with penises.

it’s denying the reality of the existence of trans-women, in fact all trans-people

Wait, what? Recognizing that women don’t have penises, and that woman/woman sexual orientation is penis-exclusive is “denying reality” now? WHAT f”ing “reality of the existence of trans women” makes them at all relevant to a group that is exclusively women/women related, and has no connection to, interest in, or reason to consider penis-people at all?

Trans-women are women. Full stop.

That’s just flatly not true. By definition, only men can be “trans women.” Trans women are men. The penis is sort of a giveaway about that.

It’s baffling that (LGB Alliance) don’t accept that …

It’s not … Read the rest

Via Charles Pierce in Esquire, a doctor in Arkansas says what it’s like there:

The last day I worked wasn’t too bad. Had several people come in with symptoms or just to be tested. Mostly younger than 40. Of course zero vaccinations, and when I asked why, I don’t get the “cause the internet, cause screw the libs, I think it’s dangerous” excuses. I don’t get any excuses at all. They just shrug their shoulders and say they didn’t need it. It’s just part of their psyche now. Sun rises in the east, Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead, you just don’t get vaccinated.

They didn’t need it, but now they have symptoms. shrug.

The

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Doocy: 99% of people who are dying are unvaccinated

Kilmeade: That's their choice!

Doocy: They don't want to die. The admin and gov't says mask mandates are to protect the unvaccinated

Kilmeade: That's not their job, it's not their job to protect anybody! pic.twitter.com/NsP2IcMnCX

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) July 19, 2021

It’s not? It’s not the government’s job to protect people?

I kind of think it is.… Read the rest

The sly way they distort the reporting on this…

Headline: J.K. Rowling Responds to Pipebomb Death Threat, Hits Out at Trans Activists

No she doesn’t “hit out” – she tweets words. See also: the American Booksellers Association claiming to have committed “violence” by including a gender critical book in a promotion.

Ryan Smith writes:

J. K. Rowling has hit out at a Twitter user on Monday, after she was sent a “pipebomb” threat amid a series of attacks over her previous statements about trans women.

She didn’t “hit out” at anyone.

The Harry Potter author shared a screenshot of the offending tweet, which was directed at her on Sunday, as she slammed the efforts of some trans activists to get

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