Human ingenuity.

Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss is worried about Seattle’s ears. 

Earlier this spring, he drafted a “hearing protection ordinance” that would require music venues to provide hearing protection for free or less than $1, or risk fines. 

“This bill is about making sure that people have the opportunity to both enjoy Seattle’s vibrant music scene and protect their hearing health no matter where they go,” Strauss said when presenting the idea to his colleagues in March. 

Well…that’s like going swimming with the sharks while taking a box of bandaids with you. It’s like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a bottle of diet pills in your pocket. It’s like setting your house on fire and then putting on … Read the rest

One of the many things I hate most about Trump

(It’s supposed to be only one of those – many things OR hate most – but with Trump it’s always both, because he always has all the toppings. There are many many things about him that I hate the most. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t.)

is the way he does the bad thing times 10 or 100 or 1000. He has no artistry, no restraint, no sense of Less is More. Every damn time he just jumps in with both feet and dials the abuse to a million. It should handicap him, but of course it doesn’t, because there’s no justice. The stupider his reaction to X … Read the rest

I didn’t realize Pride had gone homophobic. I’m so old I remember when Pride was all about lesbians and gay men.

Stroud Pride says no LGB views.

“Come and perform at Pride!

PS NO WOOFTERS” pic.twitter.com/rGOz7OVUFj

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 16, 2025

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Woman’s hour for men.

It’s funny how the BBC feels compelled to trot out all these spokespeople who are wringing their hands at having been caught out essentially breaking the law, and how following the law is going to be such a burden and hardship. How many voices of women who are happy with the judgement are they going to feature? What’s the ratio of whiners who claim the decision is “wrong,” to women who are relieved that someone has finally listened to their concerns? Four to one? Ten to one? The BBC is certainly doing its best to browbeat people into where it believes their sympathies and concerns should… Read the rest

Onward.

…we should remember that sadly trans people are very affected by domestic violence as of course are are other women – and those people have said “we know how to run our services, we know how to protect people in those services, um, we know how to safeguard, we do that for all individuals from other individuals, those are protected before this judgement they still are now, nothing changes, we’re open for trans people” – uh – that is really important and it is very welcome that we’re hearing that – we’re also hearing people uh hearing trans people saying things like “I don’t know if I can go to the gym any more – I’m I’m afraid even

Woman’s Hour had a bro from Amnesty International on today to explain why it’s still fine to take women’s rights away and give them to men. That segment starts at 18:19.

We’re currently hearing different perspectives this week on the Supreme Court ruling last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The judgement has implications for many organizations.

Well yes, the fact that “woman” means “woman” does have implications. It always did. The claim that “woman” could also mean “man” provided he cleared the massive hurdle of saying so – that claim also had implications. Rather intrusive and annoying ones, actually.

We’re looking at the practical dilemmas

It’s like walking through three feet of mud carrying a piano. Progress is infinitesimal.

Guidance issued by an NHS hospital would allow men identifying as women to use female changing rooms, despite warnings that the policy breaks the law.

Officials from the Royal College of Nursing wrote to senior administrators at the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust to warn that Darlington Memorial Hospital was breaching 33-year-old workplace legislation that requires the provision of single-sex changing facilities for men and women.

And by the way they’re also acting like sadistic women-hating shits.

It has now emerged that in the last week of March officials at the royal college — the professional body for nurses in the UK —

What Trump is destroying:

Scientists behind some of the most important breakthroughs in Northwest scientific research over the past two decades have left their jobs in the wake of budget cutting by the Trump administration.

The federal government has terminated science experiments, canceled research contracts, set spending limits for travel and purchases to $1 and created uncertainty at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, a flagship of scientific research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I pass that flagship quite often on the bus. It’s near the Arboretum and the University, and right next to a Yacht Club. NOAA itself is a few miles northeast, on Lake Washington.

The science center has lost about 30 people, according

Ya it’s always encouraging to see public safety unions shouting that men are women and that women should shut up.

We know that the law is not always on the right side of history. The Supreme Court ruling last month does not make public spaces safer for anyone.

The interim guidance is unworkable, unhelpful and will only lead to an increase in discrimination for workers, including in fire… pic.twitter.com/JhOvqFSH5y

— Fire Brigades Union (@fbunational) May 14, 2025

The interim guidance is unworkable, unhelpful and will only lead to an increase in discrimination for workers, including in fire stations and in control rooms. Trans people are not a threat. Gender-based violence and misogyny are.

Trans ideology is misogyny, and it triggers … Read the rest

Gary Lineker was talking to Oliver Brown at the Telegraph when he said that stupid thing. He said a lot of stupid things in that talk.

And for Lineker, the subject of right and wrong is simpler than it may be for others.

“You either have empathy or you don’t,” he says. “It’s more important now than ever before that people raise their voices, because we live in dangerous times. I’ll definitely continue pushing humanitarian issues. Sometimes they cross over with politics, although I’ve never been overly loud with my politics. Nobody knows who I vote for – I’ve voted for lots of different parties over many years. You feel sometimes like you’re fairly helpless, like you can’t really do

It’s so fascinating to see men say they just can’t see why women matter.

Gary Lineker surprisingly admitted that he doesn’t see the transgender sport bans as “a real issue” and that the controversy will resolve itself by the relevant authorities. The polarising BBC host described transgender people as “some of the most persecuted on the planet” and admitted that he feels sorry for them amid recent sporting banishments.

More persecuted than women? More persecuted than the women they themselves persecute? Are they? Really?

I wonder if men think this because it’s a sort of worst nightmare thing to them – waking up to find yourself metamorphosed into a [shudder] woman. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it. Is … Read the rest

But the nonsense train rumbles on regardless.

An NHS board has failed in its attempt to prevent the public from watching a tribunal about a trans doctor allowed to use a female hospital changing room.

NHS Fife asked the judge overseeing the case brought by the nurse Sandie Peggie to remove public access to an online live stream of the employment tribunal’s proceedings.

Gee I wonder if that’s because NHS Fife is aware that it looks like a pack of women-hating bullies.

But it is understood that Sandy Kemp, the tribunal judge, has ruled that the public should be allowed to watch the case, in line with the principles of open justice. He is also said to have

Silly me, I thought I had already posted about this hours ago, promptly after listening to it. I thought wrong.

“Women’s spaces are for women. That’s non-negotiable.”

Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) speaks to @BBCNuala on Woman’s Hour @BBCWomansHour about the Supreme Court ruling on the clarification of sex. pic.twitter.com/Z6z4P07Qk8

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) May 14, 2025

Helen is brilliant, while Nuala McGovern keeps pushing the mandatory doctrine in a much more confrontational way than she used when talking to the man Robin Moira White yesterday. She’s the host of Woman’s Hour, remember, not People’s Hour or Trans Hour or Man’s Hour. She’s the host of Woman’s Hour but she coddles a huge domineering man who claims to be a … Read the rest

Foreign man allowed to go out in public again.

A federal district court judge in Virginia ordered the release of Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri on Wednesday, marking at least the third time a detained student or academic targeted by the Trump administration because of their protest activity or affiliation was released from immigration detention.

Khan Suri was detained by masked federal officers outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia, in March. Khan Suri was moved across multiple state lines shortly after his arrest and has been held in custody in a Texas detention center.

Well obviously we don’t want students and scholars in this country, so no crossing of state lines is too much to punish them. Also … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Dragging more people into the maelstrom.

The trans ideology is at its worst when it draws the line of battle with women and the same-sex attracted right across the bodies of children.

The idea of “trans children” came about because adult men who modify themselves surgically to look more like women never pass as women, so they think if only they had started the modification before puberty they’d pass. So they project their inner turmoil, self-hatred, and sexual kinks onto other people’s children. Children are easy to manipulate, and the nerdy ones are always looking for an explanation as to why they don’t fit in. Throwing them a glitter party and calling them … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on How to make a right.

There is no such thing as specifically “trans” rights. There can’t be, because “trans” is a fiction, and because making that particular fiction a basis for rights would obliterate women’s rights as well as lesbian and gay rights.

A big part of the problem stems from people’s mistaken conception of “trans people” as a fixed subset of the population — directly analogous to gay people: a small group of individuals who were born with an innate and harmless condition that caused them to be discriminated against and persecuted by the rest of society — when in fact “trans people” are an open identity group whose membership can grow … Read the rest

Classic Trump.

“It’s a great gesture from Qatar,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

Point completely missed SIR. Point not even within striking distance SIR.

To put it another way, you’ve just gone on the record as happy to accept any and all bribes from any and all parties.

The issue is not whether or not you would like a free lavish gift. We know you would love a free lavish gift. We know you’re greedy. We know you’re corrupt. We know you’re reckless. We know your brain … Read the rest

The Society for Women in Philosophy UK is not for women in philosophy. It’s for that other thing – the opposite.

It offers a “statement of solidarity and support in response to the recent UK Supreme Court ruling and EHRC guidance” which is not a statement of solidarity with women but rather a statement of solidarity with men who call themselves women.

(There’s no link to the statement because apparently they don’t do links; just scroll down – there’s not much on the page.)

What’s their philosophical take?

The Society for Women In Philosophy UK (SWIP UK) condemns the recent Supreme Court ruling on 16 April 2025 determining that the term ‘woman’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to a

If you’re a woman and a teacher in the UK you don’t have a union that looks out for your interests.

Britain’s largest teaching union has voted to campaign against the Supreme Court ruling on gender, insisting trans women in schools must be allowed to use ladies’ toilets.

The Left-wing National Education Union (NEU) resolved on Saturday to advocate for trans teachers to continue to choose toilets according to ‘gender identity’.

Which is a massive “fuck you” to women.

The judgement, which states a woman is defined by biological sex, effectively means a male-born trans person can be excluded from female-only spaces.

However, the NEU’s resolution means it may now intervene to provide legal assistance for trans teachers if

Wrong.

That little nugget of wisdom is floating around on social meeja. It’s idiotic.

There is no erosion of the human rights of trans people, i.e. the human rights that everyone has. There is no such thing as specifically “trans” rights. There can’t be, because “trans” is a fiction, and because making that particular fiction a basis for rights would obliterate women’s rights as well as lesbian and gay rights. It’s unworkable to make it a “right” for men who pretend to be women to force everyone else to agree. It’s unworkable because it’s not true and it drives a tank through women’s rights.

Imagine if trans ideology faded out, to be replaced by an ideology that claims people are … Read the rest