This happened.

Okay so going into the police station because someone reported me in for blasphemy.
Good luck

— Zara Kay (@zarakayk) December 28, 2020

She hasn’t been heard from since.

URGENT ACTION: Tanzanian government must drop all the politically-motivated charges against @zarakayk immediately and unconditionally#JusticeForZara #ReleaseZara #FreeZaraKay
@MagufuliJPhttps://t.co/kgKmyY2yFG pic.twitter.com/jMJdWXHriW

— Maryam Namazie مریم نمازی (@MaryamNamazie) December 30, 2020

@DeBalie @YoeriAlbrecht @sophierutnfrns @Ianth
Our activist friend @zarakayk who spoke at #CelebratingDissent event last year is in trouble.

Please join international coalition of #ExMuslims in calling for her release. #JusticeForZara #ReleaseZara #FreeZaraKay https://t.co/cRPKiBxRtL

— Halima Salat (@halimasalat) December 30, 2020

Drop all charges against @zarayk, they are politically motivated. #JusticeForZaraKay ,#JusticeForZara, #Tanzania, don't persecute @zarakayk https://t.co/kfItT7EbUq

… Read the rest

What if the pardon power conflicts with international law?

Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said. …

“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, the chair of the UN working group on the use of mercenaries.

The group said the Geneva conventions obliged states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they are acting as private security contractors. “These pardons violate US obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at

… Read the rest

Kathleen Stock juxtaposes academic freedom and UK universities’ policies on The Trans Question:

The Education Reform Act 1988 describes the need “to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions”. Most UK university statutes contain a similar clause.

Keeping that in mind, consider those policies.

Leeds for instance:

“Think of people as being the gender that they self-identify as.”

Er – no. A university might as well tell its staff to think of people as being the nationality or species or profession or celestial body … Read the rest

He has got to be kidding.

Or rather they have got to be kidding, since they wrote it and simply put his label on it. But still – he and they have got to be kidding.

Trump issued a ProclaMation flattering Thomas Becket and Religious Freedom and the right of religious bosses to tell the monarch to fuck off. Yes because Trump is so keen on being told to fuck off.

Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.

By “religious liberty” Trump means the liberty to agree with him and do what … Read the rest

Oh no, people questioning someone’s identity again. People are what they say they are! Unless they’re TERFs who object to being called TERFs of course; that’s completely different.

Last week, a Twitter sleuth sketched out how Hilaria Baldwin, the influencer wife of actor (and sometime SNL star) Alec Baldwin, has perpetrated “a decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”

Or rather, pretends to be a Spanish person. Impersonating one means a specific one, as opposed to a generic one. She was going for the generic.

The user, who goes by the handle @lenibriscoe, shared a number of damning videos of “Hilaria,” from a Good Morning America appearance where she employed a Spanish accent

… Read the rest

Graham Linehan asks the age-old question: Is Eddie Izzard a lesbian?

Alright, everyone, let’s get out there and start asking our favourite celebrities the following question: “Is Eddie Izzard a lesbian?”.

Ask everyone you can think of, from intellectuals like Jameela Jamil and Frankie Boyle all the way across to such LGBT giants as Michael Cashman and Linda Riley. Let’s get people on the record as saying that Eddie Izzard is a lesbian.

Because, by now I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that, yes, this is literally what is being proposed. It is why lesbians have been lying down in front of Pride Marches and such. It’s why Maya Forstater lost her job. It’s

… Read the rest

More than 13 years later and it’s still pissing us off.

As it should.

In 2007 I was a college sophomore returning to campus from winter break and I picked up a Vanity Fair in Penn Station and read Christopher Hitchens' article "Why Women Aren't Funny." Here's how it began. This is a real article printed in a real magazine by a (formerly) real man. pic.twitter.com/f4sA240krt

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) December 29, 2020

So she got a job writing comedy.… Read the rest

A tedious conversation:

But everyone isn't free to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit. We can't define ourselves as heads of state, doctors, pilots, many more items, unless we really are those things.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020

I'm not, I'm responding to the words of the tweet.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020

No I'm not, I'm replying to "Eddie Izzard, who is free, as is everyone else, to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit." You're not free to define what I said and meant.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020

I know what I said, and that I said it in response to a wild claim that we can define

… Read the rest

The really scary thing is the abject apology Jessica Cluess felt compelled to give.

https://twitter.com/JessCluess/status/1333906316247457794

Well, I tell you what, if she does learn more about “Ms. Germán’s important work with #DisruptTexts” she won’t be impressed. She probably knew that when she said it. She was either appeasing the bullies or mocking them, or perhaps both at once.

Having just read a bit of Ms. Germán’s important work I can report that it has no value. She’s not literate enough to do that kind of work; she’s not sufficiently interested in literature to do it. She’s the wrong person for the job.

The reality is there are already teachers reading against the grain, encouraging students to think critically about what … Read the rest

The Lorena Germán – Jess Cluess contretemps has nudged my curiosity, so I looked for more.

Way back last July:

https://twitter.com/JessCluess/status/1280214961709555719

Oy. You mean, like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton? For example?

Fast forward to today and she’s being bullied in the usual fashion.

https://twitter.com/MagpieLibrarian/status/1343978007778750465

So how about this DisruptTexts crew of educators?

Here’s Lorena Germán on how (and why) to disrupt Shakespeare.

We knew that suggesting educators disrupt Shakespeare would be a challenge for many. We were pleased to see the openness to the idea and the willingness to engage. But then again, it could be because we’re “preaching to the choir” and we acknowledge that educators hesitant to

… Read the rest

From the Wall Street Journal:

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.

Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic

… Read the rest

Small backwater towns are not all Frank Capra and social capital. They can be all MAGA and fuck wearing masks, instead.

Ten years ago, Dr. Kristina Darnauer and her husband, Jeff, moved to tiny Sterling, Kan., to raise their kids steeped in small-town values.

“The values of hard work, the value of community, taking care of your neighbor, that’s what small towns shout from the rooftops, this is what we’re good at. We are salt of the earth people who care about each other,” Darnauer says. “And here I am saying, then wear a mask because that protects your precious neighbor.”

But Darnauer’s medical advice and moral admonition were met with contempt from some of her friends, neighbors and patients.

… Read the rest

The Gender Studies professor strikes again.

If it’s snowing in your area today please put some food out for the endangered lesbians.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) December 29, 2020

It’s particularly dangerous for lesbians when snow turns to sludge as despite their sturdy appearance ten year old Doc Martins may crack and let water in. Please knit rainbow socks to protect a lesbian today.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) December 29, 2020

Hur hur. So funny. Lesbians are not endangered! Yes, there are a lot fewer of them in the rising generation but that’s because they’re glorious inspiring trans men instead! Which is obviously so much better! So let’s laugh ourselves sick at the very idea that fewer lesbians means fewer … Read the rest

This is a Labour MP.

If you're offended by other people's choice of pronouns, given everything else that's going on might I suggest getting some perspective? Solidarity with Eddie Izzard, who is free, as is everyone else, to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit. pic.twitter.com/OJYyY0Zjxo

— Charlotte Nichols (@charlotte2153) December 28, 2020

But that’s not true. Everyone isn’t free to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit. I’m not free to define myself as Charlotte Nichols MP, for instance. Many many kinds of defining oneself as something or someone one is not are criminal fraud, while others are reckless endangerment, and others are rape, and we could go on this way. We’re not free to tell lies … Read the rest

The conversation seemed to start well.

Mine does. I have written and spoken more than any other mainstream journalist in the UK on lesbian identity/sexuality/oppression/joy/culture. But I get told by some trans activists and allies that because I don't involve men as 'lesbians' I'm a bigot & a transphobe. Any advice?

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) December 28, 2020

But it didn’t go on well.

I think as a lesbian I have an obligation to inform/remind others that the bottom line is ONLY WOMEN can be lesbians

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) December 28, 2020

…”you drawing the lines of who gets to be one” – well if there are no such lines then what are we even talking about? What even … Read the rest

The Glinner Update leads with one of those Women of the Year items.

Monday 21st December – Even A List Of Women Isn’t Just For Women

THE TIMES: The paper’s 50 Women of the Year list was published.

It included three males.

Imagine a 50 BAME or Black People of the Year that included three white people.

The first was Valentina Sampaio, a transgender model from Brazil who has posed for Victoria Secret and featured in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

The second was High Court judge, Victoria McCloud, who transitioned in the late 1990s. In 2010 McCloud was hailed as only the second ever woman to become Queen’s Bench Master. Though, of course, he wasn’t.

Smile when you steal … Read the rest

South Oxfordshire is catching up.

A local authority will ensure all its buildings have a gender neutral toilet in a bid to help transgender people.

Will it also ensure that all its buildings have women’s toilets? Or is it going to create its “gender neutral” toilets by converting the women’s. Probably.

The council’s constitution, policies, forms and internal and external communications will also be gender-neutral.

Eh? What does that mean? What if a policy is about women? How can they make all forms “gender-neutral”? If they do that how, for instance, can they tell whether or not they’re failing to hire or promote women?

The motion also stated the council, which covers Henley, Didcot, Wallingford and Thame, respects that

… Read the rest

Big news!

I'm proud to be the first openly transgender woman to be elected co-chair of @GreenPartyWomen

It's great to be elected alongside a majority of women who support all women and non binary people

I'll make a full statement on my vision for an intersectional @TheGreenParty shortly

— Kat Bristow (@KathrynBristow) December 28, 2020

He’s proud to be the first man to be elected co-chair of Green Party Women.

Never mind, he has that winsome head-tilt, so what does it matter that he’s taking a woman’s position away from a woman.

https://twitter.com/KathrynBristow/status/1343550687704215552

Actual women can just go jump off a bridge, right?

https://twitter.com/AdiDee_Gee/status/1343546170656882690

Yeah, all women, dammit, including the ones who are men! About flipping time!… Read the rest

Don’t do that.

Globally, ethnic minority pregnant and birthing people suffer worse outcomes and experiences during and after pregnancy and childbirth. These inequities have been further highlighted by #COVID19. Watch this panel discussion on #MaternalJustice. https://t.co/RcflQQapQo pic.twitter.com/N5m2s2SRdi

— Harvard Med Postgraduate and Continuing Education (@HMSPostgradCE) November 8, 2020

It’s not “people,” it’s not randomly assorted “people” who somehow found themselves pregnant, it’s not a wide-open set of people that we have no word for. It’s women. It’s the sex that has always been viewed as and treated as both inferior to and subordinate to men. If you can’t call them “women” then you lose sight of that systematic subordination, and the contempt and loathing that goes with … Read the rest

From The Telegraph:

Lesbians are facing “extinction” because of the “disproportionate” focus on transgenderism in schools, a controversial campaign group for gay rights has claimed.

The LGB Alliance, which has been branded a “trans hate group” by Pink News and other vocal critics, was set up in October 2019 amid concerns that Stonewall, the UK’s leading gay rights charity, had become too fixated on gender identity.

Its founders, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson, claim to have been “cancelled” for questioning gender identity theory and airing their concerns about the erosion of women’s rights in the face of the transgender movement.

Their detractors claim their refusal to include the ‘T’ in their LGB Alliance is transphobic…

But why should that … Read the rest