Jennifer Block explained the other day why she wrote that hit piece about Jen Gunter at the Scientific American blog:

I’ve been mulling this one for a while, about a troubling authoritarian streak in one prominent OB/GYN in particular. Then she went after Our Bodies Ourselves, as well as the fantastic Cosmopolitan Magazine piece on LEEPs, and Jennifer Lang wrote an open letter. So here’s my contribution.

There is no “troubling authoritarian streak.” It’s not “authoritarian” to say bullshit is bullshit; the reality is it helps people resist being conned and fleeced by people who sell quack “remedies” for big bucks. Gwyneth Paltrow is not being a friend to the downtrodden by peddling jade eggs and herbal miracle drinks. And … Read the rest

Hmm.

“Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman.”

It won’t you know. It can’t. It doesn’t. It won’t. A man can’t “become” a woman. You can call it the male-to-female transition all you want, but it still won’t result in becoming a woman. Not even eventually. Not ever. This isn’t because we’re too mean to open the door of the club house, it’s because that’s not how it works.

But hey, I’m sure if he “learns to stand and walk like a woman” no one will ever suspect that he’s a man, because having a special dainty but seductive way of standing and walking is … Read the rest

Way back last May:

An Ohio state representative introduced a new bill last month, which aims to prohibit insurance coverage of abortions that occur where the mother’s life is not “endangered if the fetus were carried to term.” The bill includes exceptions, including one for a procedure that does not exist.

GOP Rep. John Becker introduced House Bill 182, which allows for two situations where insurers could offer coverage for abortion services. One is a “procedure, in an emergency situation, that is medically necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life.”

The other, the bill says, is a procedure for an ectopic pregnancy, “that is intended to reimplant the fertilized ovum into the pregnant woman’s uterus.”

Which can’t be … Read the rest

The BBC reports:

Two members of the public have died after a stabbing attack at London Bridge, in which police also shot dead the suspect.

The Met Police has declared the attack a terrorist incident.

The suspect, who died at the scene, was believed to have been wearing a hoax explosive device, police said.

Videos on social media appear to show passers-by holding down a man. An officer arrives, seems to indicate to the group to move, and fires a shot.

Because of the apparent explosive device, I guess.

The challenge for police and security services is that low-tech attacks – involving knives or vehicles – and often carried out by lone actors can be hard to spot in

The Scientific American blog has a shockingly bad – and anti-science – post by Jennifer Block attacking Jen Gunter for disrespecting The Anecdote.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand is annoying, unattainable and overpriced, for sure. But Goop does more than just annoy. It incites an interesting rage among medical professionals in particular, most prominently Jen Gunter. An ob-gyn and the author of The Vagina Bible (also a New York Times contributor, prolific Twitterer, TV show host and soon-to-be podcaster), Gunter wrote an open letter to Paltrow in 2017 and hasn’t stopped harping on her since. Gunter points to Paltrow as emblematic of the “wellness industrial complex” that is not only exploiting gullible women with snake oil but threatening their health.

A man tweets:

The replies in this posts just proves why LGBT people don’t feel welcome in sport. Such a horrid place our country is becoming. Why can’t people accept others for who they are. Trans women are women and trans men are men

Why indeed? Why can’t people accept men who dislike the gender rules that apply to men for who they are, which is men who dislike the gender rules that apply to men?

In other words, this “for who they are” crap is not necessarily a weapon only against Team Gender Critical. Which is more unreasonable: to think that men who like to simper and pout are still men? Or to think that men who like … Read the rest

The Guardian reports:

Richard Spencer, who was fired as Navy secretary for his handling of a Navy Seal war crimes case championed by Donald Trump, has said the president “has very little understanding” of how the US military works.

Coincidence! Trump has very little understanding of anything else, too.

The extraordinary accusation came in an opinion piece published by the Washington Post on Wednesday evening, three days after Spencer was fired. Spencer called Trump’s intervention in the case of Navy chief petty officer Edward Gallagher “shocking” and unprecedented.

…

Spencer said Trump had involved himself in the Gallagher case “almost from the start”, telephoning Spencer even before the Seal’s court martial started to ask that Gallagher be moved

Sally Hines, Gender Studies Academic (as she says in her own Twitter profile), has gender studies academic thoughts on the Guardian’s social experiment the other day. “Wozzat?” you wonder? The Guardian is running a blind date series, apparently – it sets up blind dates and hilarity ensues, or something. A few days ago it set one up between a lesbian and a trans woman without telling the lesbian that her date was a trans woman. Some gender critical feminists consider this a not very nice thing to do, for several blindingly obvious reasons. Sally Hines offered some gender studies academic analysis of their view.

So, the Guardian blind date thing… You’re proper mad. You lot. Simply bonkers. Just lost

Oh interesting. Can you say “two sets of books”? Pro Publica tells the tale:

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

I’m sure it’s just coincidence that … Read the rest

And the thing about the BC NDP formerly Women’s Committee’s deletion of all those dissenting comments is not just that it silences those comments but also that what’s left looks like ecstatic and universal approval.

They were thrown out to improve the averages.… Read the rest

He actually tweeted this. No words, just the photoshop.

Reality:

 … Read the rest

Wizzzdom.

Women are women regardless of sex, just as chairs are umbrellas regardless of structure.

You can be both or a mix of the two…all you have to do is dye your hair on one side. Presto! You are now both woman and man. Or you can get a Mohawk and become neither woman nor man. Isn’t life fascinating?!… Read the rest

Oh ACLU…

Some of our personal favorite Thanksgiving conversation starters:

💬 “My pronouns are…”

💬 “Firing people for being LGBTQ is illegal and Trump asked SCOTUS to change that”

💬 “Who loved Pose season 2?”

💬 “Please pass the pie, and the Equality Act”

I think Chase Strangio meant conversation enders.… Read the rest

News from Samoa:

The death toll from the measles epidemic in Samoa has reached 33 as of Wednesday and infection rates continue to rise.

Of those who have died, 29 are children under the age of 4 years old.

Despite mass immunisation efforts, the Government of Samoa confirmed 249 more cases had been recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2686 on Wednesday.

Government of Samoa tweets:

Latest update: 2,686 measles cases have been reported since the outbreak with 249 recorded in the last 24 hours. To date, 33 measles related deaths have been recorded. Since the Mass Vaccination Campaign on 20 Nov 2019, the Ministry has successfully vaccinated 33,085 individuals.

More of Today in How Dense is Donald Trump?: he doesn’t understand chronology.

Yesterday, it happened again, when Trump signed the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, which directs the Treasury to issue a commemorative coin to honor the 100th anniversary of American women getting the right to vote. After signing the measure – which passed both the House and Senate unanimously – the president decided to take a moment to reflect on what he considered important: his own awesomeness.

“I am curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago and also, well, I guess the answer to that is because now I am president and we get things done.

“We get a lot of things done that

Kevin Drum says the world has given up on climate change. He starts with a table from the Financial Times:

Europe is pulling back from clean energy research. India and Brazil barely have any to begin with. The United state is flat at about $50 billion—maybe a tenth of what we should spending. And China, after a decade of research, has decided to double down on coal and slash its clean energy R&D. Only Southeast Asia is still increasing its green energy research, perhaps because they have a more visceral fear of climate change then the rest of us. When you announce that you’re moving your capital from Jakarta to an entirely new island because Jakarta is sinking…

…it … Read the rest