Where do we draw the line?

When Mary Gregory filled out the registration form to compete in a local weightlifting event, she checked the box that read “female” without hesitation.

“I mean, that’s my gender,” she said “I didn’t even think about it. That’s who I am.”

If any eyebrows were raised, Gregory didn’t notice, and on April 27, after months of training, she strode onto the platform at the Best Western hotel just east of Charlottesville and wowed the spectators and fellow powerlifters in attendance. That night she posted a picture on Instagram of herself holding a trophy, telling her 120 followers about the records she set for her age and weight class in the 100% Raw Powerlifting

Jeffrey Toobin reminds us to be outraged:

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called President Trump’s cries of “TREASON” on Friday morning “reckless and irresponsible,” adding that it’s yet another norm the President has broken.

“And treason is a crime for which death is a potential penalty,” Toobin said on CNN’s “New Day.” “It is so reckless and irresponsible to talk that way. One of the things that this president has done has violated so many norms.”

“It’s not illegal to say what he said, but the idea of a president accusing people of any crime — remember, he accused  Michael Cohen’s in-laws of crimes. A president, who is the head of the Justice Department, the head of

Wait.

Discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women, including trans women, and move beyond outdated, exclusionary understandings of feminism. #NoTERFsonourTurf” [4/4]

— Liberation at EdUni (@EdUniLiberation) May 7, 2019

Discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women and “TERFs” must be kept out. So discussions on women’s rights must include ALL women but not the women who disagree that men can be women. So discussions on women’s rights must include men who say they are women and the women who love them but not women who refuse to agree that men who don’t “identify as” men are therefore women. So ALL women but not ALL women. Mkay.

H/t Holly

https://twitter.com/aytchellesse/status/1129408007564140544… Read the rest

The Liverpool Echo reported a few days ago:

Two women have been charged after a woman was threatened with a hammer during a shocking road rage incident in a car park.

Footage from the incident shows two small groups coming to blows at Stonedale Retail Park in Croxteth on Wednesday night (May 8).

Initially the groups can be seen shoving and pushing each other before a woman retrieves a hammer from the boot of a car.

At one point the video shows a woman swinging the hammer towards another, younger woman, who tries to defend herself with a shoe.

A 19-year-old woman suffered head injuries, which are believed to be from a punch and was taken to hospital for assessment,

Oops. Wokey McWokerson made a little mistake.

https://twitter.com/MJB_SF/status/1129045483157110785

Yaaaaaaay inclusivity, no mention of women, just “uterus holding individual”! Utopia is nigh!

Oh but wait though, what’s that ugly thing in the line above? “Men”? That can’t be right. On the one hand men, on the other hand uterus holding individuals? Do these rules apply only to women?

Woking every day is not easy.… Read the rest

Playing the pretend-knowledge trick: I am an expert in this made-up Thing (field? discipline? ideology? campaign?) so I get to say anyone who disputes said made-up Thing has no right to do so because No Expertise.

Like trans-activist Ugla Stefanía Jónsdóttir for instance:

Experts on trans rights and people who have been working in the field for decades are being pitted against almost anyone with a negative opinion about trans people – regardless of who they are. This seems to be a trend among anti-trans campaigners; they’re given a platform despite their lack of knowledge or experience of the discussion they’re taking part in. As an example, in a controversial move, Scottish MP Joan McAlpine has just invited Canadian writer

I hadn’t heard of Miriam Toews until I read this New Yorker profile of her.

Toews, who is fifty-four, is one of the best-known and best-loved Canadian writers of her generation. She grew up in Steinbach, a town founded by Mennonites in the province of Manitoba, for which the colony in Bolivia was named. (“Toews,” which rhymes with “saves,” is as recognizably Mennonite as “Cohen” is Jewish.) Her fiction has often dealt with the religious hypocrisy and patriarchal dominion that she feels to be part of her heritage, and with a painful emotional legacy, harder to name but as present as a watermark. Her father and her sister both died too young, and she sees a certain Mennonite tendency

Biden is so full of shit.

“History will treat this administration’s time as an aberration,” Biden told an Iowa ballroom-full of supporters last week. “This is not the Republican Party,” he continued, noting his longstanding ties to “my Republican friends in the House and Senate.”

If this is not the Republican Party, why is it occupying all those Republican seats and passing all those Republican votes and protecting Donald Trump no matter what he does? If it’s not the Republican Party why don’t they all quit, or vote with the Democrats to hobble and then impeach Trump?

Indeed, as The New York Times has reported, “in the Obama White House, he was known as the ‘McConnell whisperer’ for

The barmaid hits a nerve.

… Read the rest

Lindsey Graham told Don Junior to break the law. Seems a bit flaky for a US senator.

[W]e ought to reserve some surprise for occasions like Monday, when the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, himself a lawyer, told a private citizen to defy a Republican senator and to break the law. And that’s what Graham did when he advised Donald Trump Jr. to ignore a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, run by his Republican colleague Richard Burr. We should pause to be horrified. For the record, in the past Graham claimed that both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton could be impeached for defying subpoenas. But that was in the b.t. era: before trump.

…

Burr has questions,

Newsweek reports:

Alabama’s bill banning virtually all abortions in the state is a “violation of human rights,” Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

Which is true as far as it goes, but it’s more specifically a violation of women’s rights. If Amnesty talked about police shootings of black people it wouldn’t call that “violation of human rights,” it would call it a violation of black people’s rights, because it’s that specific issue. Somehow though the rules are different when it comes to women.

“Alabama’s vote is the latest in a string of abortion bans specifically designed to strip away people’s reproductive rights. These bans will be deadly, endanger pregnant people’s lives and criminalize doctors and health care providers for simply

Amnesty’s brilliant decision to use Alabama’s murderous ban on abortion as an opportunity to ignore women by saying

Abortion bans like the one passed in Alabama are a violation of human rights. These bans will be deadly. They will endanger pregnant people’s lives.

is not going over well. Replies are uniformly furious.

Amnesty – you are part of the problem.

You are erasing women. It’s is women’s rights that are being attacked.

Name the problem. Or be part of the problem.

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) May 15, 2019

"pregnant people" FFS.

Women. Say it: "women".

— Alan Henness (@zeno001) May 15, 2019

They will endanger WOMEN's lives. WOMEN. It is not a dirty word.

— AquatintDeliberatelyDefiantandDistasteful (@Aquatint) May 15, 2019

https://twitter.com/ThatMidwife/status/1128744618462470146… Read the rest

Guest post by Josh Slocum

The contemporary worship of the concept of being “inclusive” is in direct opposition to drawing boundaries. Personal boundaries, conceptual boundaries, physical boundaries.

It’s not merely a soft-hearted plea to be more helpful to others. It’s a disguised attack on the right of people to have any personal, emotional, or intellectual space. It’s an attack on the idea of judgment and discernment.

It’s an attack on the most basic foundations of being a healthy, confident person.

It’s also female socialization weaponized. Women are trained to deny themselves and their own needs. They’re encouraged to see virtue in the act of relaxing boundaries to give to others. This leads to many women believing that it’s immoral … Read the rest

I posted about Councillor Gregor Murray a couple of times last year, in reference to his habit of calling women “utter cunts” and “roasters” and similar. Now it’s gotten him suspended for two months.

Gregor Murray, who represents [Dundee’s] North East ward, was called before the Standards Commission for Scotland on Wednesday but did not appear in person.

The hearing panel found the councillor – who quit the SNP this week amid claims of “institutional transphobia” in the party – also broke ethical standards by using abusive and vile language to and directed at members of the public.

The councillor was alleged to have used “terms that were insulting and offensive during twitter exchanges with a member of the