Graham Linehan calls out the coward celebrities who are ignoring the abuse aimed at JK Rowling:

David O’Doherty? The ‘trans ally’ who gave my wife shit over the phone because he didn’t have the guts to confront me? Let’s see what he’s talking about.

Jokes about Birkenstocks, it turns out.

Aisling Bea what do you think of the pipe bomb threat? You were full of talk of nuance when you wrote this disgraceful, patronising tweet to a survivor of domestic violence.

Jon Ronson, author of ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’, anything to say about this public shaming, certainly more ambitious in scope and significance than what Justine Sacco went through? Not even a trace of journalistic interest in it?

Now there’s a headline.

Bid to exclude ‘people with penises’ from lesbian events ‘unlawful’

But lesbian events are for lesbians, and “people with penises” are men and men can’t be lesbians because lesbians are same-sex attracted women.

Lesbians will be breaking the law if they exclude biological males who are transgender from social events, after a controversial discrimination ruling set to become a national test case. Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination commissioner Sarah Bolt has ruled lesbian events that exclude trans-women carry a “significant risk” of breaching legislation.

And lesbian events that are forced to include men are guaranteed to be no longer lesbian events.

Men can be trans all they like, knock yourselves out guys, but they’re still men and they’re … Read the rest

Yes so this is clearly a very healthy and progressive movement for social change.

Yes, but now hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me I’ve realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/qb1RrCFqy0

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 19, 2021

https://twitter.com/DoorEmby/status/1417112429666783234 … Read the rest

The battle continues.

I guess it’s good you no longer pretend to be a journalist anymore. Be well.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 17, 2021

In reality Cardona doesn’t meddle with curriculum decisions.

Peppered with questions Thursday about whether he supports “critical race theory,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that his department will leave curriculum decisions to state and local officials.

“It’s important that I reiterate at every opportunity I have that the federal government doesn’t get involved in curriculum,” he said during a hearing before the House education committee Thursday.

But he didn’t completely sidestep the issue of how racism should figure into classroom discussions, a question that has engulfed state legislatures and local school boards across

It’s Put People Off the Vax day again.

Trump giving the base the exact message they want of being against the COVID vaccine because if the election was stolen, clearly you can't trust the Biden administration to administer the COVID vaccine that Trump himself is taking credit for creating.

Yeah, my head hurts too. pic.twitter.com/clNAnEqxZp

— The Darkest Timeline Numbersmuncher (@NumbersMuncher) July 18, 2021

I can’t find a link to the statement itself, including on Trump’s website, only to people citing it, so that’s irritating. Mediaite reports on it but doesn’t link to it. Maybe someone has taken it down.

Donald Trump stirred up vaccine opposition on Sunday, even linking it to his false claims about the 2020 election.

There

Work it out for yourselves.

So the prime minister says that with the removal of Covid restrictions we will now be able to make our own “informed decisions” about what we will and will not do. Generally, we might feel it’s a sign of a good government and a good society that it allows and enables its members to make their own informed decisions about how they want to live their lives.

Generally, yes. All things being equal, yes. In normal circumstances, yes. Obviously. Of course. We can figure out for ourselves when to go out and when to stay home, what to wear and where to live, how much to sleep and what toothpaste to use. But when … Read the rest

Sisters!

Why we can’t have nice things.

Imagine being an ICU nurse in an area of Covid deniers.

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses.

[Emily] Boucher and her colleagues were pained by those attacks — and infuriated by them. Unlike their exhaustion, that anger rarely showed on their faces, but it was

Is it news that Trump is a reckless imbecile? Hardly.

This week, the Guardian reported that what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents describe Donald Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual”. Vladimir Putin, the documents say, therefore decided to assist Trump’s rise to power in 2016 as a way to weaken America. Five years on, as America digests a string of bombshell revelations about the last days of Trump’s presidency pulled from a string of new books, Russia’s judgment seems born out.

Well of course it does, but it wasn’t in doubt anyway. We’ve always known that Trump is impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced, along with greedy, cruel, stupid, lazy, corrupt, empty, and trashy.

In Landslide

Ivermectin study withdrawn:

The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”.

As in, ethical concerns over possible fakery.

[T]he drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns”. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were.

…

“The main error is that at least 79 of the patient records are obvious clones of other records,” Brown told the Guardian. “It’s certainly the hardest to explain away as innocent error, especially

The ABA has a Diversity and Inclusion section. There it has a Diversity Statement.

ABA exists to help member bookstores grow and succeed, and we work to do that in a way that is committed to anti white supremacy, antiracism, representation, and equity. We believe that listening to many different perspectives and empowering underrepresented voices deepens our understanding and enriches everyone’s experience. We are committed to equity, dignity, and diversity for all Peoples. 

It promises to

– Implement best practices to ensure more diverse hiring and more opportunities for promotion into senior and decision-making positions at all levels of the organization for diverse employees

– Make sure ABA policies and procedures are antiracist, create opportunities for everyone, and demonstrate

There was a follow-up tweet from the ABA that I missed because they locked their account; it contains yet more frantic self-flagellating histrionics.

The American Booksellers Association has issued a second apology for showcasing research into the growth of children who ID as transgender. The first said it had been a 'violent incident' but this wasn't enough so its CEO has said she'd 'endangered members of the trans community' pic.twitter.com/bsClGQY7dc

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) July 17, 2021

A serious, violent incident; inexcusable; terrible incident; pain we caused; apologies are not enough; harm we caused.

It’s as if they have a literal gun to their literal heads.

Meanwhile, in the Advocacy section of the ABA website, we can see:

The American

Some of the people Fox News is killing:

The hospital is now busier than at any previous point during the pandemic. In just five weeks, it took in as many COVID-19 patients as it did over five months last year. Ten minutes away, another big hospital, Cox Medical Center South, has been inundated just as quickly. “We only get beds available when someone dies, which happens several times a day,” Terrence Coulter, the critical-care medical director at CoxHealth, told me.

Last week, Katie Towns, the acting director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, was concerned that the county’s daily cases were topping 250. On Wednesday, the daily count hit 405. This dramatic surge is the work of the super-contagious

Now it’s the Vagina Museum doing it. Yes really – the Vagina Museum.

I think there are three important things to consider when trying to be more inclusive:

1) Make sure you're not encouraging shame
2) Remember it's not just cisgender women who menstruate
3) Being inclusive means considering other people's circumstanceshttps://t.co/8QmBdWhmWB

— Vagina Museum (@vagina_museum) July 15, 2021

But women talking about things that concern women (and women only) don’t need to be “more inclusive.” It is just women who menstruate – men don’t menstruate.

Throughout this entire thread I have used inclusive and shame-free language.

I also wrote an entire book free of gendered language. It's really that easy! https://t.co/fwvr7c6uEi

— Vagina Museum (@vagina_museum) July 15,

One of the comments allowed to remain on the American Booksellers Association’s Facebook post yesterday captures the eccentric nature of the ideology:

The book is a ploy for people to see gender dysphoria as a trend rather than a legitimate feeling. It’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”. Someone’s gender identity is not a debate. It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based or crap science or psychology. The simple answer to the author’s “mysterious” question as to why gender dysphoria is more widely acknowledged is because society is finally opening up to discuss and talk about it. Not because it didn’t ever exist before. Society has purposefully been heteronormative and forced people with gender

It’s a fierce competition for who can shout the loudest.

The American Booksellers Association is facing withering criticism from booksellers after walking back its promotion of an anti-trans title to member bookstores. Among the promotional items included in the ABA July “white box” mailing sent to 750 bookstores, the organization included a copy of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, as well as a sell sheet.

So Publishers Weekly poisons the well in the first sentence (and the title) by calling the book “anti-trans.” What does “anti-trans” mean? It implies, and I think is generally taken to mean, hostile to trans people, but usually the subject is the truth claims about what “trans” means … Read the rest

David Aaronovitch reviews Helen Joyce’s Trans:

I didn’t look too closely when in 2015 a Conservative administration proposed changing the law on gender recognition. A few trans people want more easily to get official confirmation for the new gender they have become? Well, I thought, that’s probably OK. No skin off any part of me.

Then the issue appeared to morph into a different kind of conflict. It had clearly somewhere along the line become impermissible for those who thought that there was something ineluctable about biological sex to say so. It wasn’t whether they were correct or mistaken on the subject that was in question, but their right even to express their view.

That had definitely happened by … Read the rest

Trump and “like a dog” – Philip Rucker in the Post in 2018:

In President Trump’s singular lexicon, there is no more vicious put-down than likening an adversary to a dog.

“Choked like a dog.”

“Fired like a dog.”

“Sweat like a dog.”

Then there is what Trump said Tuesday of Omarosa Manigault Newman, his former reality television protege and White House staffer who is now scorned and telling all in her new book, “Unhinged,” and accompanying media tour.

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out,” Trump tweeted. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

The Wall Street Journal:

The American Booksellers Association apologized Wednesday for a “terrible” and “serious, violent incident.” What dastardly offense did it commit? The profound trauma occurred this month when the trade group dedicated to selling books sent out a paperback copy of a book some of its members don’t like.

So its members have all liked every single book the ABA has ever sent out? This shocking violence of sending one that some didn’t like is a brand new event in the world?

No, it’s not that, it’s that Abigail Shrier’s book is different. It’s violent enough to say that some girls who say they are trans are just caught up in a fad.

Ms. Shrier’s book