Also in Peak Philosophy, Veronica Ivy explains that laws cannot be questioned or criticized, much less flouted (goodbye civil rights movements and protests all over the world). If it’s the law it’s pointless for you to say it’s mistaken or sinister or just plain evil. Nazi law? Slave state law? Saudi law? Never you mind whether they’re just or not, they’re the law. Sit down.
https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1210963252039032832… Read the restAll entries by this author
The appropriate authorities have been contacted
Dec 28th, 2019 9:44 am | By Ophelia BensonDOCTOR Veronica Ivy Rachel McKinnon is being peak philosopher again.
https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1210609187744624640Peak philosopher Ivy McKinnon is framing a disagreement about the ontology of the category “woman” as hate speech which must be reported to “the appropriate authorities” and flagged up to Michael Robinson’s sponsors, clearly in the hope that they will all drop Robinson instantly and with public opprobrium.… Read the rest
To persuade a straight, male audience to identify with a woman character
Dec 27th, 2019 5:24 pm | By Ophelia BensonMeryl Streep made an important point in this 2012 interview on Fresh Air:
… Read the restGROSS: You gave a terrific commencement address at Barnard in 2010. And one of things you talked about was that the hardest thing in the world is to persuade a straight, male audience to identify with a woman character. It’s easier for women because we were brought up identifying with male characters in literature. It’s hard for straight boys to identify with Juliet or Wendy in “Peter Pan,” whereas girls identify with Romeo and with Peter Pan. What led you to that conclusion?
STREEP: What let me to that was I have never – I mean, I watch movies. And I don’t care who is the
Finally time to include men in women’s sports
Dec 27th, 2019 3:39 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe smug piece on CeCé Telfer was written by Dawn Ennis, who is
- the editor-in-chief of Outsports
- a trans woman
But of course.
So it’s an Outsports award, and Dawn (formerly Don) Ennis is the editor in chief of Outsports, and Dawn Ennis is trans, so a trans woman gives a woman’s award to a trans woman. Bros before hos am I right?
For those who have trouble understanding the backlash extreme trans activism has caused: Former ABC executive Dawn Ennis is the managing editor of @Outsports. Ennis jeers at the "cis tears" of women who are fighting to save women's sport. Background on Ennis: See next tweet. https://t.co/fsXYGkGLdX
— 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) November 12, 2019
Sprinting to the top of the list
Dec 27th, 2019 3:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Outsports Female Athlete of the Year is
you know this one already
The LGBTQ sports world was blessed in 2019 with an abundance of choices for Female Athlete of the Year. Readers nominated several women, among them:
– USWNT icon Megan Rapinoe, who made an indelible mark during the Women’s World Cup.
But who cares about her, she’s just a boring commonplace woman. They’re a dime a dozen, yawn. Outsports can do better than that.
… Read the restBut in terms of making an indelible mark on sports history, CeCé Telfer of Franklin Pierce University sprinted to the top of the list with her groundbreaking victory at the May 2019 NCAA Division II National Championships
Guest post: Read the methods first
Dec 27th, 2019 3:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Claire on Researchers found.
I can’t access the paper because it’s behind a paywall and I’m not at work. The appendix has the methods and detailed description of how they collected the data and that’s all I really care about. I always read the methods first. If I think the methods are garbage then the paper is garbage and I can devote my valuable time to something else.
PNAS is a good journal and I’m a little shocked that the paper was published. Statistically, this paper is flawed in many ways. Firstly, none of the methods adjusted for confounders. Confounders are elements that you have not accounted for in a study that may be coincidentally … Read the rest
The government having a conversation with itself
Dec 27th, 2019 10:51 am | By Ophelia BensonThis explains a lot – trans activism gets massive government funding while feminist resistance to the parts of trans activism that harm women gets…can you guess?…zero funding.
It’s called “policy laundering” according to Mary Harrington. Useful term.
… Read the restIn its most blatant form, policy laundering looks like government departments using taxpayer money to pay lobbyists to influence government…
…
Let us consider an example: the Scottish Trans Alliance. This is a project funded by the Scottish Government Equality Unit and delivered by the Equality Network, which is largely funded by the Scottish government as well as by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (funded by UK government).
The project delivers research, advisory, and training, including to government-funded bodies, who
Researchers found
Dec 27th, 2019 9:47 am | By Ophelia BensonThere’s a study, you see. A study. Be impressed.
Transgender children may start to identify with toys and clothes typical of their gender identity from a very young age, a recent study suggests.
Children identify with their clothes? I think not.
They mean, of course, something like “identify with the role that is purported to belong to this sex as opposed to that,” but hey, that would make everyone stop reading.
And their confidence in their gender identity is generally as strong as that of cisgender children, whose identity matches their sex assigned at birth, researchers found.
Except that doesn’t mean anything. What shirt you wear is not organically connected to what sex you are in the way that … Read the rest
Not entirely social
Dec 26th, 2019 5:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonOne of these is not like the other, one of these doesn’t belong.
https://twitter.com/LtHarker/status/1210289444000915456Can YOU see it?… Read the rest
Boxing Day fame
Dec 26th, 2019 2:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe RSPCA is looking into claims made by a prominent lawyer that he killed a fox with a baseball bat.
Jolyon Maugham posted on Twitter on Thursday morning: “Already this morning I have killed a fox with a baseball bat. How’s your Boxing Day going?”
The animal welfare charity tweeted that the claim was “distressing”.
Which is so sad because he meant it to be funny. Jokes are such a personal thing.
Government guidelines state you can use cage traps and snares to catch foxes and you must “humanely kill any fox you catch while it’s in the trap or snare”.
Humanely doesn’t mean “with a baseball bat.”… Read the rest
SORRY you were UPSET
Dec 26th, 2019 12:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonJolyon Maugham QC’s fox-smashing exploit has garnered him considerable attention, and not the good kind. Maybe being a preening sadist isn’t such a great marketing ploy after all?
Had a difficult Christmas? Feeling a bit low today? At least you didn’t jump out of bed and bludgeon a fox to death with a baseball bat.
— Jack (@j4ppleby) December 26, 2019
https://twitter.com/Fisher_Download/status/1210253653828886528 https://twitter.com/Law_Rhetoric/status/1210140158231642112
Sorry to those upset by my tweet. My chickens were very distressed by the fox – both before and after I'd despatched it – and I wanted it out of the way quickly.
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 26, 2019
So I smashed it with a club.… Read the rest
Do you believe in magic
Dec 26th, 2019 11:39 am | By Ophelia Benson“Charlotte” Clymer, who gained fame as a patronizing male “feminist” under the name Charles Clymer, has a piece in the Washington Post telling JK Rowling what to do.
Woven throughout the narrative is an insistence on love and community and integrity and inclusion, which is why it has broken my heart in recent years to see Rowling’s inexplicable replacement of justice-minded imagination with a bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.
So Team Trans gets to claim both imagination and science & reality, while taking them away from Rowling?
… Read the restIn her tweet, Rowling effectively dismissed [the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s suit], suggesting that Forstater was being fired for “stating that sex is real,” a common transphobic assertion that has
But they don’t play baseball over there
Dec 26th, 2019 7:11 am | By Ophelia BensonOdd thing to brag about.
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1210110735189233665It's almost as if you knew the fox was going to harm the chickens, because of biology, and that's why you tried to segregate them? How did you know the fox didn't identify as a chicken and just wanted to be its authentic self?
— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) December 26, 2019
I didn't especially enjoy killing it but I imagine that's what the RSPCA would have done, if they had anyone on call in Central London on Boxing Day.
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 26, 2019
A great many people have pointed out that the RSPCA has a 24-hour hotline for exactly this purpose. The RSPCA have pointed out that what Maugham claims to have … Read the rest
10% grocery discount
Dec 25th, 2019 1:27 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn further news of holiday cheer, Walmart doesn’t pay overtime for those very same holidays.
… Read the restWalmart is one of several big-box retailers who are open on Thanksgiving Day and will start its Black Friday sale at 6pm.
Walmart is also one of the few big companies that does not offer employees increased hourly wages for working shifts on a holiday. At Target and Amazon, workers are paid time and a half for each hour worked.
“Walmart doesn’t offer holiday pay. They have a discount you have to work certain days to receive and one discount only lasts two days,” said a Walmart worker in Idaho who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. They are re scheduled
The shark bites
Dec 25th, 2019 1:05 pm | By Ophelia BensonGod almighty. These people.
Republican of Arizona.
https://twitter.com/RepGosar/status/1209504003307868160… Read the restObsessively focused on the self and nothing else
Dec 25th, 2019 12:38 pm | By Ophelia BensonI thought a nice stocking present would be a sampling of the thoughts of several prominent “mental health experts” on Trump’s Letter to Pelosi, via Salon.
Dr. Bandy Lee:
… Read the restThis letter is a very obvious demonstration of Donald Trump’s severe mental compromise. His assertions should alarm not only those who believe that a president of the United States and a commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military should be mentally sound, but also those who are concerned about the potential implications of such a compromised individual bringing out pathological elements in his supporters and in society in general. I have been following and interpreting Donald Trump’s tweets as a public service, since merely reading them “gaslights” you and reforms
How out of touch can you be?
Dec 25th, 2019 11:41 am | By Ophelia BensonIt matters.
https://twitter.com/h1x_sam/status/1209247306467250176 https://twitter.com/h1x_sam/status/1209247316948840448 https://twitter.com/h1x_sam/status/1209388337993306112… Read the restHe insisted he wasn’t crazy
Dec 24th, 2019 3:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonRudy Giuliani talked to a reporter for New York magazine the other day.
As we sped uptown, he spoke in monologue about the scandal he co-created, weaving one made-up talking point into another and another. He said former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom he calls Santa Maria Yovanovitch, is “controlled” by George Soros. “He put all four ambassadors there. And he’s employing the FBI agents.” I told him he sounded crazy, but he insisted he wasn’t.
The sarcasm is interesting. She did her job, and she answered questions before Congress, therefore Giuliani mocks her. She’s not a criminal or a traitor, so let’s sneer at her as a saint.
… Read the rest“Don’t tell me I’m anti-Semitic if I oppose him,” he said. “Soros
Welcome to the US, kid
Dec 24th, 2019 10:52 am | By Ophelia BensonStephen Miller pushed to embed agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a refugee agency in a bid to target the parents of unaccompanied migrant children for deportation, a new report has revealed.
Pro tip: that’s not what refugee agencies are for.
The Washington Post reported that according to six current and former Trump administration officials, the White House sought to plant ICE agents at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for migrant children who cross the border without a parent as part of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program.
Stephen Miller is another Mengele, minus the medical skills.
… Read the restAccording to the Post, Miller has long claimed that the
