Janice Turner on The Laurel Hubbard Question:

Samoa enjoys few sporting glories but it excels at weightlifting. Feagaiga Stowers, just 20, a child sexual abuse survivor who started lifting while living in a domestic violence shelter, won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She looked a cert for the 2019 Pacific Games too, but instead the podium was topped by 41-year-old trans woman Laurel Hubbard. Bumped to second place, Stowers and team mate Iuniarra Sipaia, who took bronze, hung their heads in dismay.

While inferior athlete Laurel Hubbard loomed over them in cheating triumph.

Back in Samoa, the response was more baffled than furious. The prime minister asked how it could be fair that this New Zealand fa’afafine was

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Nope nope nope.

Let’s be clear: if you respect diverse gender identities & aim to use correct pronouns, then you would know that people with diverse genders/sexes can be pregnant incl Trans men, intersex people & gender nonconforming people. That isn't too hard for medical students to understand

— Laura Simone Lewis, PhD (@LauraSimoneLew) July 30, 2021

It’s not too hard for anyone to understand, but it’s not true. It’s just trendy jargon.

I respect Carole as a colleague & scientist. But this dangerous language perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people within the med system. It directly opposes our Task Force work that aims to create a safe space for scholars of ALL gender identities and sexes.

… Read the rest

The NY Times tells us:

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.

In other words he “pressed” them (meaning bullied, screamed at, threatened them) to lie about the election to enable him to steal it.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda.

Not to mention … Read the rest

Tom Nichols used to admire J. D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy, and now does not.

Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

Instead of a truth-teller in his own community, Vance

… Read the rest

Originally a Miscellany Room post by Sastra.

Well, it appears I’ve finally been banned on Friendly Atheist, presumably for arguments I was making on a post about transgenderism. And what I’m guessing is 5 years of comments have all been marked as “spam” and completely erased. There’s no trace of me left. It is as if my very existence is being denied. Heh.

I’m not sure who banned me; it could have been a new moderator, or one of the other people who post articles on the site. I’ve written to ask, and questioned the spam designation elsewhere. I’m not terribly surprised, but do wonder why the absolute blackout, and not even a suspension or, best compromise, making any … Read the rest

So we’re just removing the word “women” from the language entirely now?

https://twitter.com/EveningStandard/status/1421010114048413696… Read the rest

One front in the vaccine wars:

On July 22, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said: “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” when asked why Alabama leads the nation in unvaccinated persons. “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. We’ve got to get folks to take the shot. The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID. There’s no question about that.”

So, of course, Team Antivax rushed to say what a monster she is.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler said: “What Gov. Ivey has forgotten – or never knew – is that those who are not vaccinated include a huge number who do not trust the government.  A governor pushing so hard for

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Goooooood grief.

Bonds brings in ‘Cheer Bleeders’ to show off period underwear range

Excuse me?

No, it’s not a joke. Cheerleaders=Cheer Bleeders, rah rah rah.

Bonds has launched its latest Bloody Comfy Period Undies campaign, Cheer Bleeders, featuring a specially created cheer team dedicated to making all Australians who menstruate feel more empowered before, after and during their period.

All Australians who menstruate…you mean women and girls? Oh no no no no no no no good god no. That would never do.

The integrated campaign, created in partnership with Special Group Australia, showcases the Bonds’ Cheer Bleeders wearing Bloody Comfy Period Undies as they cheer about different aspects of periods using the tagline ‘Cheer through the Bleed’.

What aspects would … Read the rest

Chrissy Stroop on evangelicals and vaccine-refusal:

As many exvangelicals have been trying to get the American mainstream to understand for years now, evangelical subculture is essentially ground zero for America’s other pandemic—disinformation. Conservative, mostly white evangelicalism, which represents a fear-based, authoritarian outlook on a social scale, has constructed a parallel society, mediated through churches, Christian publishing, homeschooling, Christian schools, Christian colleges and universities, and numerous parachurch ministries, in which certain sacrosanct “truths” are never questioned. When reality contradicts the truths that define group membership, the evangelical community circles the wagons and puts the power and influence of its tight institutional network behind the assertion that, in fact, the emperor is wearing clothes, and anyone who says otherwise

… Read the rest

The tragic fate of the…anti-masker.

https://twitter.com/DisaffectedPod/status/1420810016802721794

Where is he watching children turn on parents? Is he, like, looking into people’s windows? Or what? Because normally that’s not something you can just “watch,” like a football game. I also doubt that friends quarrel with friends over it right in front of him. It sounds dramatic though, to say you’re “watching” it. Drama drama drama, there can never be enough.

https://twitter.com/DisaffectedPod/status/1420811795602759682

“Dangerous vermin”; “unclean.” We’re meant to think it’s like Nazi Germany, and he’s The Jews.

No, we don’t think that, we think people are stupidly and/or selfishly refusing to wear masks, for stupid or selfish or just no real reasons, and thus helping the pandemic kill and harm more people. Do … Read the rest

More on the Gaetz Gohmert Greene rebellion:

QAnon apostle Marjorie Taylor Greene, unsanctioned high school chaperone Matt Gaetz and the self-proclaimed “dumbest man in Congress” were forced to evacuate a press conference when their regularly scheduled bullshit parade turned into an all-out shitshow.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) scheduled a Tuesday press conference outside the Department of Justice in support of the detained Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Contrary to their usual stance on law and order, the elected officials wanted the world to know how unfair it was to punish violent thugs who did absolutely nothing wrong except attempt a violent overthrow of the government at Greene and Gaetz’s behest.

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The ongoing coup.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1420819461137960966 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1420820347985829896 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1420821568381493249 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1420822595864338441… Read the rest

I watched some longer clips from the January 6 hearing yesterday. Emotionally grueling, and necessary.… Read the rest

Mo is angrynotangry about those smutty little bikini pants at the Olympics.

Support Jesus and Mo on Patreon… Read the rest

Tucker Carlson is now saying Fauci created the virus. That explains why I was seeing tweets saying Fauci should sue him for libel.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged vaccinated people to resume wearing masks under certain circumstances amid low vaccination rates and rising cases from the delta variant, Fox News host Tucker Carlson placed blame on Anthony S. Fauci for the changing mask guidelines.

Yes let’s blame someone for the fact that viruses change and knowledge changes. Let’s pretend that all knowledge is instantly available to all people and that no virus ever changes; that will make everything better overnight.

“Here’s the man who helped to create covid in the first place,” Carlson said.

The

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Another woman punished.

A teacher has been sacked after attempting to scupper the election hopes of a transgender candidate who wanted to be head girl. 

Susan Field told her tutor group she felt the pupil was not “representative” of the student body and that it was not an “appropriate” role for her, the teaching watchdog found.

Ms Field, a French teacher who was said to have previously enjoyed an “unblemished 35-year career”, was dismissed from Ash Manor School, in Surrey, for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing into her remarks and subsequently lost her appeal.

I don’t know what being representative of the student body is supposed to mean, but as for a boy who calls himself a girl … Read the rest

They actually say it. Right out in the open! As if it makes perfect sense!

One great reason NOT to get the vaccine is because you are being told you must by people who have no right to tell you any such things. This is America. We are still free. Let's make sure we act that way.

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) July 28, 2021

Yes, this is America, where dedicated researchers came up with effective vaccines for polio, to name one.

Here’s someone who would have been glad to have that vaccine available in 1921.

If the vaccine had been available, and mandated, then the people who died or were more or less paralyzed in the decades before it was … Read the rest

On the one hand boo vaccines, on the other hand yay ivermectin. Whaaat?

A contingent of Americans has embraced the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID-19 despite warnings from the American scientific community that little to no evidence exists of its efficacy.

At the same time, many Americans have rejected the COVID-19 vaccines in spite of enormous evidence supporting their efficacy.

No good reason to think ivermectin any use so let’s embrace it, but tons of reason to think the vaccines work so let’s refuse to get them.

I’m not seeing the reasoning here – not even the party or partisan or political reasoning. Your politics are kind of beside the point once you’re dead.

The

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Even Simone Biles can be a pretext for sadistic bullying from the Fox party.

On Fox, a growing cadre of white, male rightwing sports talking heads sharpened their claws, ignoring the racial and gendered nuance of Biles’ experience. On his Fox Sports radio show Doug Gottlieb claimed Biles hasn’t faced criticism in her career. “For years, women have said, all we want to be judged as is equal,” he opined. “Generally, we don’t have any sort of critique for our female sports teams. On one hand you want to be viewed, treated, and compensated the same as the men, but on the other hand whatever you do, just don’t be critical of us.”

On the one hand you want … Read the rest

It’s an interesting idea, that a member of Congress should be able to encourage a violent attack on that same Congress because his team lost an election, and then get the government to act as his lawyer. The DoJ isn’t persuaded.

The Justice Department rejected a request by Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks for legal protection in court against a lawsuit linking him to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Brooks, former President Donald Trump and others were sued by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., earlier this year. Swalwell alleges that Brooks and others named in the lawsuit helped incite a mob of Trump supporters on Jan. 6 during a pro-Trump rally.

Swalwell alleges it and the … Read the rest