But, no, we really don’t know that. How could we?

I’m not ‘defending males exposing themselves to children’, though, and you know that. I’m making the point that a trans person using a changing room is categorically not the same as a person deliberately and obscenely flashing a child.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) June 29, 2021

But even if we assume that’s true (and crystal clear, and easy to understand, and universally acknowledged), how does anyone know who is which?

This is surely a very basic question, and it seems to be one that no trans “ally” will answer. It sure as hell seems that Laurie Penny will never answer it.

So you think that any trans woman using a

Putative feminist puts her putative feminism to work standing up for men again.

Feminism isn’t just about what you believe. It’s also about how you behave. If your claim to feminism boils down to spending 90% of your free time harassing trans women and their allies on Twitter dot com, your feminism is bad and you should feel bad.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) June 29, 2021

If your claim to feminism includes telling feminist women not to focus on women but instead to focus on men who claim to be women, your feminism is moronic and you should feel like a damn fool.

But instead, putative feminist feels confident and clever enough to keep right on telling feminist women to … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on 408 times on Fox News.

I confess to finding, Nullius, little to grow exercised about in the link you provide to ‘Critical Theory’. It speaks of The Frankfurt School, Kant, and of a liberal thinker like Habermas. It also refers to Karl Marx’s polemical assertion in ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ that ‘The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.’ I would say two things: first, thought about political and social structures has, pace Marx, never been a view taken studiously from the outside, as though thinkers about these matters were dispassionately studying, say, an ant colony. Read Plato, read Aristotle, Confucius, Lao-tse, Kautilya, Sir … Read the rest

Yes, Virginia, this could be the new normal, and yes it is scary.

The dangerous heat wave enveloping the Pacific Northwest is shattering weather records by such large margins that it is making even climate scientists uneasy.

You mean especially. Not even, but especially.

Infrastructure, including heating and cooling, is built according to expectations of a “normal” climate. Human-caused climate change is quickly redefining that normal, while dramatically raising the likelihood of events that simply have no precedent.

All the air conditioners are running practically nonstop. Does that put a strain on the electricity grid? Gee, I wonder.

“Because of the fact that climate change has made heatwaves like this much more likely and intense, we might very well

Judd Legum on that critical theory that everyone’s talking about.

Between now and November 2022, you will be hearing a lot about Critical Race Theory (CRT). On Saturday night, former President Trump bashed CRT during his first rally since leaving the White House. Last week, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the “END CRT Act.” In the first two weeks of June, CRT was mentioned 408 times on Fox News. 

Andrew Sullivan is obsessed with it.

It’s all because Republicans see it (see their distortions of it) as election magic.

Trump, Cruz, Bannon, and many other Republicans say that CRT is an insidious force that is being imposed in schools, corporations, and the government. This is how Cruz 

God the confident Do What I Say of them!

Hi Lizzie, it is really disappointing and quite shocking to see you re-tweeting Maya Forstater, who has expressed transphobic views and is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

— Laura Hughes-Onslow (née Solomons) (@LauraMS70) February 25, 2021

And it’s Laura’s business what Lizzie retweets why? I don’t care if they’re sisters, I don’t care if they’re married, I don’t care if they’ve been best friends since infancy – nobody gets to micromanage what other people say in public that way.

Ok there are some exceptions, employers can if it’s work-related, I think, and similar items, but just “You may not do that because I disapprove,” no. No and fuck off, no in thunder.… Read the rest

So it looks as if Princess Ivanka may have perjured herself.

The Trump family has trouble with depositions. In 2007 testimony, Donald Trump was repeatedly shown to be a liar. In February, Donald Trump Jr. was deposed in the Trump inauguration scandal lawsuit, and on several key points, under oath, he provided false testimony. A review of documents filed in that case and other material obtained by Mother Jones shows that Ivanka Trump also testified inaccurately during her deposition in this lawsuit. 

“Testified inaccurately” meaning “perjured herself.”

The inauguration probe was launched last year by Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, DC. He has alleged that Trump’s inauguration committee misused charitable funds to enrich the Trump family.

What we’re talking about when we talk about freedom of expression:

I wonder if the Observer can point to a definition of freedom of expression that says it is the right to speech *without sanction*? Yes, you can express transphobic views. But I can, vigorously, dissociate from you if you do. Vapid, shamelessly self-serving, nonsense. pic.twitter.com/FV4k48aQ7z

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) June 27, 2021

What is it to “dissociate” from people “vigorously”? Does he mean he punches people before shouting “It’s all over between us!”?

I wonder because if not, what he’s talking about isn’t what I would consider a sanction. Jolyon Maugham turning his back on us isn’t the horror he seems to think it is.

Meanwhile, of course, he’s … Read the rest

I wrote an unoptimistic column for The Freethinker. I think about the paradox a lot.

Humans are so clever in some ways. We came up with poetry, music, airplanes, the Mars Rover – but at the same time we’re too stupid to stop sawing off the branch we’re sitting on.

Stupid as a species, that is. It’s not really because individuals are stupid that we can’t stop the march to the cliff, it’s because individuals are individuals. It feels futile to try to do anything about the approaching doom when everyone else is still merrily building apartment towers and driving cars and burning down the Amazon rain forest. What’s the point?

So we’ll keep on drilling for oil and

Priorities…

Guest post by tigger_the_wing.

A lot of people do not know that the T in LGBT no longer stands for ‘transsexual’. In fact, people are these days called ‘transphobic’ for using the word ‘transsexual’ – even those who refer to themselves as ‘transsexual’. The ‘trans’ people in the recent posts I have made are those who consider themselves to be ‘under the transgender umbrella’. Here is a graphic from an information leaflet [pdf] which explains who counts as ‘transgender’:

Note: People with disorders of sexual development KEEP asking trans activists to leave them out of it and to stop using the outdated term ‘intersex’. Just as the trans activists ignore women’s boundaries, they ignore them, too.

Note 2: Male … Read the rest

The Observer points out that free speech is a fundamental human right and basic to democracy.

So it should concern anyone who claims to be a democrat that there is growing evidence that women who have expressed a set of feminist beliefs that have come to be known as “gender-critical” have, in some cases, faced significant professional penalties as a result.

Growing evidence, yes, as in there’s always more of it, but it’s been quite hefty for several years now.

The belief that the patriarchal oppression of women is grounded partly in their biological sex, not just the social expression of gender, and that women therefore have the right to certain single-sex spaces and to organise on the basis of

It’s fine, it’s ok, don’t worry, nothing’s wrong.

Sometimes people are too damn quick to say that when they don’t actually have a clue whether it’s fine or not.

Days before the collapse, Stratton, 40, the model and yoga instructor who went silent after calling her husband in Denver, had told family members that “something was wrong” with the building, according to Dean, her older sister. Stratton, who remains among the missing, had seen water damage and worried about the heavy equipment she saw being lifted to the roof for repair work, Dean said.

Heavy equipment on the roof of an occupied apartment tower; what could possibly go wrong?

Other residents had expressed concerns, too. Elaine Sabino, a transplant

Résistance Lesbienne on Facebook, a public post so anyone can see it.

La vidéo des hommes transidentifiés qui noues ont agressées pendant notre action de visibilité lesbienne à la Marche des Fiertés Paris 2021 #resistancelesbienne #lesbiennepasqueer #lesbiannotqueer #gettheloutfrance #Interlgbt #Marchedesfierte

Translation: The video of the trans-identified men who attacked us during our lesbian visiblity action at the Pride March Paris 2021.

H/t Sackbut… Read the rest

The BBC needs better editing.

A Tongan weightlifter – and rival to transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard – who missed out on an Olympic qualifying berth has been awarded a wildcard entry to the Tokyo Games.

Nini Manumua, 21, has been handed a tripartite place by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). She finished in 14th in the women’s +87kg division, one place short of an automatic qualification berth. New Zealand lifter Hubbard finished seventh.

Well, he finished seventh competing against women. Manumua is an actual woman.

She [Hubbard] competed in men’s events before coming out as transgender in 2013.

That is, Hubbard competed in men’s events (being a man and all) before he decided to pretend to be a woman … Read the rest

Trump is doing a Revenge Rally. How adult.

Several hundred supporters of former President Donald Trump lined up for a rally on Saturday in Ohio, his first since the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, as he aims to bolster allies, berate his enemies and cement his influence over the Republican Party.

Several hundred, eh. There’s glory for you.

It also marks the start of his public events lashing out at elected Republicans who he views as having crossed him. He will campaign for former White House aide Max Miller, who has launched a primary challenge against Representative Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6

Peter Tatchell trying to bully women into agreeing that men can be women. Men can’t be women. That sex is already taken.

At #LondonTransPride now. Fight misogyny & transphobia. Defend our trans siblings. Demand rights for all women, including trans women. ⁦FOLLOW: @JakeGraf1⁩ ⁦@Charlie_Craggs⁩ ⁦@parislees⁩ ⁦@GIRESUK⁩ ⁦@christineburns⁩ ⁦@AllAboutTrans⁩ pic.twitter.com/uPghuAZwUq

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) June 26, 2021

… Read the rest

Walk grabbed; back to Lucy Bannerman’s article.

More than 500 organisations, including councils, police forces, fire and ambulance services, NHS Trust and universities across the UK, applied to the 2020 Index last year. The 31-page application form vets organisations across a wide range of topics, from their HR policies and procurement processes to their social media activity.

How did more than 500 serious important grown-up organizations become convinced that they needed Stonewall’s approval so desperately that they would fill out a 31 page application???

And let’s not forget that Stonewall makes money from all this. Quite a racket, in the literal sense.

Here’s some of the explanation:

“Employers want to be one of the good guys,” an equality officer

An exchange:

Are you challenging the accuracy of the facts?
Every single person quoted in my story is gay or trans – they disagree with the dogma being imposed in their name.
The point is that Stonewall’s current zero tolerance of other views is the OPPOSITE of diversity.

— Lucy Bannerman (@TimesLucy) June 26, 2021

So let’s talk about Lucy Bannerman’s article:

Stonewall has been accused of using a workplace equality scheme to “coerce” publicly-funded organisations and companies to lobby for changes to the law.

The missing agent again. Accused by whom? I guess that’s a newspaper convention, because the lede is supposed to be very stripped-down and grabby, so if the “by whom” is complicated it gets put … Read the rest

So…they don’t look at the engineering reports until after the building has collapsed?

A structural engineering report provided to the Champlain Towers condominium association in 2018 found widespread issues that required extensive repairs “in the near future.”

That’s the one that just pancaked.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told NPR’s Weekend Edition that the engineer report was likely not read until years later. “I’m under the impression that it is something that nobody had seen until yesterday when we started looking back into the records to try to understand if there was anything in the record that would indicate why this building fell down,” he said.

What??

I could be wrong but I thought the whole point of such reports … Read the rest