Originally a comment by Seanna Watson on Then whydja do it?

I find the amount of deference granted to Franky (often even by avowed atheists) to be somewhere between inexplicable and infuriating. Despite all the pomp and ceremony of the apologetic visit (costing Canadian taxpayers ~$35 million), there has been precious little actual action taken by the church – in fact there is continuing resistance by the church to pay any sort of compensation.

Case in point: Parishioners in a Catholic church in Ottawa that is being sold had requested to have the proceeds directed toward reconciliation and residential school survivors. This seemed like a just and reasonable request, especially in view of the fact that the construction of the … Read the rest

The Tavistock is shutting down!

The Times reports:

The NHS is shutting down its gender identity clinic for children after a review found that it failed vulnerable under-18s.

The gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been ordered to close by next spring.

It will be replaced by regional centres at existing children’s hospitals offering more “holistic care” with “strong links to mental health services”.

Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic has been accused of rushing children into life-altering treatment on puberty blockers.

In other words into making changes to their bodies they will be stuck with for life.

The paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, who is leading a review of the service, issued

Marjorie Taylor Greene is proud to be a Christian nationalist.

Greene was accused on Monday of being a “Nazi” by Twitter users commenting on her defense of Christian nationalism while speaking on Saturday at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida. The Georgia Republican later shared a clip of her speech alongside the comment, “Nationalist isn’t a bad word” because it “means you care about your country.”

No, sport, that would be “patriot.”

“I am being attacked by the godless left because I said I’m a proud Christian Nationalist,” Greene said in a statement sent to Newsweek, which was also shared on Twitter. “These evil people are even calling me a Nazi because I proudly love

Originally a comment by learie on Damages, including aggravated damages.

It was so brave of Ms.Bailey to do this, and I’m so glad she’s won.

The Employment Tribunal usually awards a max of 5000 pounds, and they awarded her 22 000, including aggravated damages.

I have already seen TRAs saying it’s not much money, but if Ms.Bailey had wanted money she wouldn’t have done this. The point was to set a precedent and to expose what’s going on with Stonewall- and that’s been done very effectively.

Companies and legal bodies now know Stonewall gives advice that will see you losing at the Employment Tribunal. That is very bad news for an advisory group.… Read the rest

Found it at last – the yes or no one. Glasgow Pride says no drag comment 42:

News outlets so far seem to be ignoring the Allison Bailey win. Personnel Today is understandably interested:

The barrister Allison Bailey has today won her case for discrimination at tribunal after she claimed her employer victimised her for upholding a gender critical belief. 

She had launched claims against Garden Court Chambers and Stonewall after the charity complained to her employer about her involvement in the LGB Alliance Group, of which she is a co-founder. LGB Alliance opposes the view held by Stonewall that transgender women are women in the eyes of the law.

…

The tribunal, which began in April, found that by upholding the complaint against her, GCC had victimised her for a protected act – the fact

Two more rescued:

The Nigerian army says it has found two more of the female students abducted by Boko Haram militants from a secondary school more than eight years ago.

There was global outrage when Islamists seized nearly 300 girls in Nigeria’s north-eastern town of Chibok in 2014. Most of the victims have either been freed or escaped since then, but dozens remain unaccounted for.

It appears the two hostages gave birth while in captivity, as the army said they were both found with children.

Naturally. That’s what they’re for.

In total, 276 girls seized were from their school dormitory in the middle of the night on 14 April 2014. Within hours of their kidnapping, 57 managed to escape

Allison won!!!

1/The Employment Tribunal found that Garden Court Chambers discriminated against me because of my gender critical belief when it published a statement that I was under investigation & in upholding Stonewall’s complaint against me. #AllisonBaileyWins

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) July 27, 2022

3/In doing so the tribunal held that my protected gender critical belief also included the belief that "gender identity theory as proselytised by Stonewall is severely detrimental" to women, and to lesbians. #AllisonBaileyWins

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) July 27, 2022

5/I have lost my case against Stonewall, but I have succeeded in exposing Stonewall’s conduct & the enormous & to my mind malign influence it wields in the workplace & in society more generally. #StonewallOut

—

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The moment when we stop.

Daniel Dennett once made a useful distinction between two very different types of “belief”:

1. You can believe in the actual descriptive content of a proposition, e.g. I believe that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning (as seen from my frame of reference).

2. You can believe in whatever a proposition happens to mean, e.g. I believe that E = mc².

The first kind of belief requires you to actually understand the proposition in question (you cannot believe in the content without knowing what the content is), whereas the latter does not*. I have a vague, general notion what “E = mc²” … Read the rest

More absurd than ever.

I have been contacted by numerous members of the public, both online and via @OPCCWiltSwindon, about use of police resources after a visit by @wiltshirepolice officers to provide a resident with words of advice.
My statement is below 👇 pic.twitter.com/NkF0sayvgh

— Philip Wilkinson: PCC Wiltshire and Swindon (@pwilkinson_pcc) July 26, 2022

He was “made aware of an incident on Sunday where officers visited an address to provide words of advice to a resident after they had published a video blog online which may have caused offence or distress.”

Where to begin. The officers didn’t “visit an address,” they went to Kellie-Jay Keen’s address to scold her. They didn’t go there “to provide words of advice,” … Read the rest

The pope has said sorry about those residential schools.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology Monday for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations in ways still being felt today.

“I am sorry,” Francis said, to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta, the first event of Francis’ weeklong “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada.

The morning after he arrived in the country, Francis traveled to the lands of four Cree nations to pray at a cemetery. Four chiefs then escorted the pontiff in his wheelchair to powwow

An exchange on Twitter has got me thinking about belief in the trans ideology, and whether I ever had any. I don’t think I did. From what I can remember, I didn’t believe in it, but I tried to prevent myself from really grasping how thoroughly I didn’t believe it. But maybe that’s not quite right – maybe I did grasp it but just pretended I didn’t. Basically, I lied about it, but what I’m not sure of is how aware of the lying I was.

The exchange:

I left the “skeptic” online community years ago. But, since then it seems most have gone full in with the t trans ideology. What happened to those people??

— Another Gender Critical

Oh how interesting.

How The CEO Of A Leading LGBTQ Rights Group Played A Role During The Opioid Crisis

By “played a role” they mean “helped make it worse.”

Amit Paley, CEO of The Trevor Project, was part of a team advising Purdue Pharma on how to boost sales of opioids during his time at McKinsey & Co., according to a trove of documents reviewed by HuffPost.

How to boost sales of opioids aka how to get more people addicted to opioids.

It’s all about the getting people to buy more and more and more drugs. $$$

In the summer of 2016, America’s opioid epidemic was raging, and Purdue Pharma, one of the drug manufacturers at the center of the

Stonewall thinks two-year-olds can be trans.

Your tweet said 2-year-olds can recognise their trans identity. Are you now withdrawing that claim? Your statement today doesn’t refer to it at all, but you haven’t deleted your original tweet. The only lack of clarity is in your present clarification https://t.co/oEdvPb42Vp pic.twitter.com/6iQPxjCK1R

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) July 25, 2022

Ok let’s read their statement.

On Friday we put out a tweet that was unclear, relating to gender stereotypes and nursery age children, leading some supporters to ask us what we meant.

And others to say they’re dangerous loonies.

We were commenting on an article written by a parent reflecting on how their child was being cared for at nursery. The parent was

The left is split over sophie graces, the right is split over trump: hero or tyrant?

The Jan. 6 House select committee’s revelations have grown so overwhelmingly powerful that even some right-wing media figures have begun acknowledging their seriousness. This is fracturing conservative media: A few high-profile personalities and institutions are admitting the obvious, while many other outlets continue running outright propaganda on Trump’s behalf.

That’s been true all along, what with The Lincoln Project and George Conway and similar. But now some of the more rabid trumpies are wobbling.

This split became more visible over the weekend when Fox News anchor Bret Baier — unlike most Fox personalities — sharply denounced Trump over new revelations that Trump

Julian expands on his brief interview with “Sophie Grace” Chappell:

The published profile is short and allows Chappell to speak for herself with no criticism and minimal eyebrow-raising from me. The source interview, however, left me worried that mutual comprehension between the main actors this fight (for that is what is has become) is now almost impossible. (Supporters can listen to the entire interview here.) 

Mutual comprehension is indeed very difficult. I for one find it impossible to understand how so many otherwise reasonable people can believe (or at least constantly repeat) the core claim.

Listening to Chappell, you would think that the gender critical feminists – derogatorily called TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminist) – are almost always malign,

Julian Baggini talks to fellow philosopher Sophie Grace Chappell at Prospect:

Eight years ago, Sophie Grace Chappell came out as the UK’s first trans philosopher.

Well, not trans philosopher. Real philosopher in the sense of having the right academic credentials; no “identifying as” required. Trans woman, i.e. man who identifies as a woman. His self-renaming is interesting. He started out as Timothy David John Chappell, which is a lot of male names to have to deal with. For his transformation he chose two female names that are also flattery names – I wonder if he and Sophie LaBelle are friends or rivals. (If you’re wondering why “Sophie” is flattering, it’s because “sophia” in Greek means wisdom. Philosophers of … Read the rest

Judith Butler blows up her own argument in the middle of a sentence – and doesn’t correct it, even though it’s not a live conversation but an email exchange with a New Statesman writer.

When Justice Ginsburg established “sex” discrimination as a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to be treated equally, she underscored that equality was the basis for feminist legal victories. What if access to certain kinds of healthcare, including abortion, is a matter of equality? If men have adequate healthcare, and women do not, then women, or those who are pregnant, suffer discrimination. 

No, you can’t flip your own argument mid-sentence like that. You end up with gibberish. “If men have adequate healthcare, and women do … Read the rest

Texas lawmakers test just how much they can punish women for being women.

Republican lawmakers have sent legal threats to Texas organizations that offer to fund out-of-state travel for abortions, potentially setting up a showdown between abortion law and long-held constitutional rights such as freedom of association and freedom of travel.

The Texas Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of Republicans in the state legislature, sent a letter on 7 July to a law firm that offered to cover employees’ expenses if they travelled for abortion. It threatened Sidley LLP with felony charges, claiming Texas can criminalize anyone who “furnishes the means” for an abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurs. The letter cites a 1925 law which was not formally

Ominous:

To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”

Levitsky is co-author of the influential book How Democracies Die which traces the collapse of once-proud democratic nations – in some cases through wrenching upheavals, but more often in modern times through a tip-toeing into authoritarianism. Levitsky is also an authority on Latin America, a region from