Now why would we ever think even for a second that there’s any misogyny involved…

https://twitter.com/LankyKingNaebdy/status/1208477440584146944 https://twitter.com/lexi_dot_gaypeg/status/1207684219100643328

On a twitter timeout for calling JK Rowling a misinformed stupid person.

No regrets. Apart from I should have called her a massive syphalitic cunt.

Trans rights are people’s rights.

— RainbowAuntieOG (@horwitzpolitics) December 21, 2019

https://twitter.com/karasuhana211/status/1207783289903341569 https://twitter.com/_FoolOnAHill/status/1207673049857871873 https://twitter.com/http_mic/status/1207689824372690945 https://twitter.com/heyitsashr/status/1207726282949021698

That’s just a small sample; it seems to go on forever.… Read the rest

Andrew Sullivan wonders what the point was.

I read with some interest Peggy Orenstein’s long essay on what’s wrong with boys. An in-depth study of a hundred boys, analyzing their problems and issues, seeing what makes them tick, seeing how the culture has changed them: It’s a fascinating topic. I kept reading and reading in the hope of discovering the point. I’ve now reread it and still can’t figure it out.

Orenstein reports the following facts drawn from her meticulous research: Boys brag to each other about whom they’ve had sex with and compete for girls, they boast about how they screw around on girls, they tend to admire jocks and athletes and mock those less active in sports, they

… Read the rest

Going to girly-school:

Trans woman Nicole Thornbur goes to specialist studios to learn how to become more feminine.

But if trans women are women, why does any trans woman need to learn how to become “more feminine”?

Or, more precisely…if trans women are women because they have an internal feeling that they are women, an internal feeling that is absolutely reliable and truth-determining and ungainsayable, an internal feeling that it is evil and criminal to question or doubt, then what possible need can there be to “learn how to be more feminine”? Trans women are women, so whatever they are is feminine enough, because they are women being it.

From that point of view it all seems superfluous. From … Read the rest

Uh oh. Is Nike a TERF?

A transgender former Nike contractor is seeking $1.1 million in damages from the sporting goods giant for allegedly allowing gender identity-based harassment. 

According to a civil lawsuit filed this week, Nike and Mainz Brady Group, a staffing firm that hired workers for Nike, discriminated against computer engineer Jazz Lyles, who identifies as transmasculine and prefers the pronouns they/them/their. The complaint was filed with Multnomah Circuit Court in Oregon. 

What does “transmasculine” mean? How is it different from trans male? Is a trans man “transmasculine”? Is that just another way of saying Jazz Lyles identifies as male? Or is it different? Does they merely prefer the pronouns they/them/their, or does they require them? It sounds … Read the rest

So they admit it. Only in private, but there they admit it.

One of Donald Trump’s top re-election advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states, according to an audio recording of a private event. The adviser said later that his remarks referred to frequent and false accusations that Republicans employ such tactics.

But the report emerged just days after news that a conservative group is forcing Wisconsin to purge upwards of 230,000 people from state voter rolls more than a year earlier than planned, a move that would disproportionately affect Democrats before the 2020 election

…

Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on That turning of the tide has been slow.

To me the most memorable and useful concept from 1984 was Doublethink (I believe the closest You get to a synonym in Oldspeak is “compartmetalization”):

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or

… Read the rest

For some reason this stupid banality from Laurie Penny, similar or identical to millions of others, has gotten on my nerves.

If someone tells you they would prefer to be addressed by different pronouns, or that they’ve changed their name, it’s basic good manners to respect that. You’re entitled to your personal philosophy of sex and gender, but you don’t get to tell anyone else how to identify.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) December 20, 2019

It’s banal, we’ve seen it a billion times, but all the same, it’s infuriating – because it’s so stupid. It’s not “basic good manners” at all, it’s a new and clunky and sometimes totalitarian bit of etiquette, which if pushed to the extreme becomes … Read the rest

Jane Clare Jones’s analysis of Judge Tayler’s ruling is mammoth (in a good way!) so I’ll take small bites.

Judge Tayler’s operating ontology surfaces in his refusal to recognise that for women to adequately express their political critique of trans activist demands it is necessary to point to sex and sometimes, even, to the sex of specific individuals – a refusal which effectively corresponds to an easy dismissal of the political stakes for women, and a blunt lack of respect for our specific political interests. The half-explicit denial of sex is also central to Tayler’s refusal of Maya’s claim that the GRA creates a legal fiction, a refusal that makes sense only on the basis of denying that there is 

… Read the rest

From the other direction…

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1207967805401968640

It is though. Being female, aka having a female body, is what makes her a woman. It’s what follows from that that is a choice, and that should be a free choice.

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1207967821566754816

But that’s there anyway. We deal with it via rights, justice, arguments, regulations, organization. We don’t deal with it by saying “Look, some women have male bodies, therefore you can’t say women aren’t as strong as men!”

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1207967824771272706

No. It’s not “policing women’s bodies” to say that men are not women, because the bodies in question are not women’s bodies. It’s not “policing women’s bodies” to say that people with penises don’t get to take over feminism by announcing that they are … Read the rest

Soraya is pretty obviously right about this.

She is speaking the absolute truth, explaining what most people know, even if they don’t admit it. I’d like to think this would be seen as honest and strong, but I’m doubtful. The biases she’s talking about yield strong negative responses when women defend their own interests. https://t.co/QSm3IhtsMr

— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) December 20, 2019

Do we think a woman whose job experience for being president consisted of being a small town mayor would get any traction?

Don’t make me laugh.… Read the rest

Hmmm.

Ardent ally just cannot understand it.

She took a great ruling for trans people, a good news day, and she shit all over it, and made it about her, and I simply don't understand the abject cruelty of that. I never will.

— Aidan Comerford (@AidanCTweets) December 19, 2019

She made it about her? Really? I missed that – I didn’t think it was about her at all, but rather about reality.

Let’s see it again.

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

— J.K. Rowling

… Read the rest

It’s nice that the discussion is so reasonable, so nuanced, so careful and thoughtful and temperate.

https://twitter.com/sea_of_shoes/status/1207712587129016320

That person has 90 thousand followers.… Read the rest

There’s much buzz about the fact that Billy Graham’s mag Christianity Today says Trump must go.

Much of what it says about why is wrong, of course, but not all of it.

We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray

… Read the rest