Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Guest post: The false hope

    Originally a comment by Artymorty on It’s complex blah blah blah.

    For the purposes of trans, the definitions of man and woman are incredibly straightforward:

    A woman is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually aroused by. A man is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually averse to.

    A transwoman insists he is a woman because he wants his body to arouse heterosexual males (either himself in the case of AGPs, or other men in the case of gays who “go trans”).

    A transman insists she is a man because she does not want her body to be in the category that heterosexual males are aroused by. Either directly, because male sexual attention makes her uncomfortable, or indirectly, because she wants to socialize in the company of men and women without the burden of sexual objectification interfering with her social standing — she wants to be a “bro”, plain and simple.

    The entire trans phenomenon rests on the innate human ability to tell the sexes apart. It does the exact opposite of demonstrating that the boundaries between the sexes are complex. It just gives people the false hope that lots of expensive, experimental drugs and surgeries can fool other people’s innate sex detectors. They can’t, of course. Not for very long. Even the best-masked transwomen and transmen let slip their true sex after a little bit of in-person company. And certainly in intimate company, you can tell. In fact, in many jurisdictions it’s the law that you *have* to tell: in places like the UK and California, despite their rah-rah trans nonsense, you can still be charged as a sex offender if you misrepresent your sex to someone before having sex with them.

  • He just can’t catch a break

    Mary Trump is annoying the uncle from hell.

    Trump settled a $100 million lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, over accusations that she leaked information to The New York Times for an investigation into his finances.

    Mary Trump has garnered attention for her vocal critiques of her estranged uncle’s politics and administration and is a rare member of the Trump family to speak out against the president. The settlement ends one of the most personal legal battles in the president’s orbit, stemming from Mary Trump’s role in providing family tax documents to The New York Times.

    …

    “The parties are pleased to report they have reached a settlement and anticipate being able to stipulate to the dismissal of this action with prejudice in the ensuing weeks, following completion of certain conditions precedent,” the letter reads.

    I hope she humiliated him.

  • It’s complex blah blah blah

    Piffle.

    It’s easy to see what they’re doing here. They’re deploying the fact that all women are complex, because humans are complex, to pretend that the word itself is complex in the same way. It’s not.

    By the same token the definition of “oak tree” is not particularly complex, but oak trees themselves are complex. This simple comparison could be used for many many many specific examples.

    The British Museum is complex, but locating it on a map is not.

    The Great Wall of China is complex, but defining it is not.

    Oceans are complex, but a basic definition of the word is not.

    It should be a labeled fallacy of some kind to pretend that defining a word is like writing a biography or history or scientific paper about the word being defined.

  • Guest post: No not those, the other ones

    Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Much expert.

    “All the rights that a woman has.”

    Let’s see – the right to be paid 20% less than men.

    The right to be overlooked for promotions.

    The right to be ignored.

    The right to have men claim their good ideas.

    The right to be raped.

    The right to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will, even at the risk of permanent injury or death.

    The right in some countries to be forced to wear a burqa.

    The right in some countries to be denied an education.

    The right in some countries to be allowed outside the house only in the presence of a male relative.

    So many rights they’re being denied.

  • Speaking of pressure groups…

    Liar liar liar liar.

    The effort is to ban men from the women’s pond. There are three ponds: one for men, one mixed, one for women. If the one for women stops being for women then men get all three ponds and women get zero.

  • In an expletive-laden rant

    Trump making us all proud.

    Trump insisted on Wednesday that the United States was not in effect paying Iran to agree to the recently negotiated peace agreement, and he angrily proclaimed that his deal was better than the one former President Barack Obama signed with Tehran in 2015.

    …

    In an expletive-laden rant on Wednesday, Mr. Trump repeated his claim that Mr. Obama had given Iran “$1.7 billion in cash,” and then he derided his predecessor.

    It’s always nice to see him swearing a blue streak when talking to journalists at the Group of 7 summit.

    “And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama, and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch,’” Mr. Trump said in comments that indicated how determined he is to be seen as a superior negotiator to Mr. Obama.

    But not as a reasonable sensible thoughtful adult human being.

    Few issues animate Mr. Trump and other critics of the Obama-era deal as much as the U.S. shipment to Tehran of $1.7 billion in cash a few months after that nuclear deal was agreed upon. That payment was a debt owed to Iran, which bought military equipment from the United States that it never received.

    Debt, gift, whatever – Obama did it and Obama is more intelligent than he is therefore he is an epithet.

  • Much expert

    Yes sir, whatever you say sir, I’m sure you’re correct sir.

    Trans women are not men in dresses, he says very earnestly, somberly nodding his head along with his own assertions.

    “They’re certainly not predatory men,” he adds firmly.

    How the fuck would you know that, sir? How would you, for instance, know that no predatory men at all call themselves trans women? How could you know that? How could it be knowable?

    It couldn’t. You can’t know that. You can’t see into the minds of every single man on the planet who claims to be trans.

    “A trans woman is a woman, with all of the rights that a woman has,” he explains. Aha now we get to it. The point is, men who claim to be women get to claim all of the rights that a woman has, thus removing them from actual women.

    He then expresses weird naive shock-horror that some people don’t believe his dogma. Be patient with us, sir. Keep in mind that we have thought we knew that men are not women for a very long time now.

    UN experts just aren’t what they used to be.

  • Always put the T first

    Always reverse victim and offender on this subject.

    A judge ruled Tuesday that transgender people won’t face criminal charges for using Idaho public restrooms that match their gender identities.

    Aka public restrooms reserved for the sex they are not. Idaho men won’t face criminal charges for using women’s public restrooms, so women in Idaho will just have to fend for themselves, sorry laydeeez.

    “This ruling will allow transgender people throughout Idaho to find and use a public restroom,” Lambda Legal lawyer Kell Olson said in a statement Tuesday, “without the fear of arrest looming over them, while we continue the longer fight to permanently defeat this discriminatory law in court.”

    And it may prevent women throughout Idaho finding and using a public restroom that doesn’t have a man or two in it.

    People think they’re being KiNd, but they’re blithely ignoring the unkindness to women.

  • “Medical” treatments

    So now hospitals are being ordered to tamper with minors’ puberties.

    The Colorado Supreme Court has ordered Colorado’s largest provider of gender-affirming care for young people to resume medical treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy despite threats that providing the care could lead to losing federal funding.

    Puberty blockers are not medical treatments! Neither is “hormone therapy” if that means giving “young people” aka minors opposite-sex hormones in order to make them look more like the opposite sex.

    Such interventions may be psychological treatments in some sense – they may make the recipients feel more content or “validated” or similar. They may also or instead make them feel worse. But either way they’re not medical. Thinking you’re the other sex isn’t a medical issue.

    Children’s Hospital Colorado suspended medical treatments for transgender patients under 18 in January after it said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services opened an investigation into its treatments following a series of clashes between President Donald Trump’s administration and advocates over transgender health care for children.

    But you see this is the problem – there’s no such thing as “transgender health care.” Trying to change people’s sex is not health care. It’s tampering.

    It may make some people happier. It may be justifiable for that reason. But it’s still not health care, let alone medical care. You kind of have to bite that bullet.

    Four transgender girls, ranging from age 10 to 17, sued the hospital, through their parents, alleging that the hospital was violating the state’s antidiscrimination law by refusing to provide them treatment both because of their gender identity and their disability, gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the distress caused when someone’s gender expression doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth.

    They say that so solemnly, as if it’s true and well established as true.

    People can have all kinds of distress about various things about themselves; that doesn’t mean distress about the self is a medical issue.

    The girls said they feared not being able to get medication and monitoring to prevent them from undergoing puberty and developing male traits. And they cited mental health fallout, including depression and suicidal ideation.

    They’re not girls though. You said so yourself: they’re “transgender girls”. Also, think about the mental health fallout of tampering with people’s puberties when the people later regret the whole thing.

    It’s infuriating to see how entrenched this bullshit has become.

  • Still looking

    Euan Weddell blithely telling the world he’s not a woman, without even realizing he’s doing it.

    Also…I can’t help noticing the “still looking” part. Gee I wonder why that might be.

  • Talk about pride

    Well you have to admit, it doesn’t get much classier.

    A transgender woman who masturbated in front of shocked staff at a hospital has been locked up.

    See you’re not supposed to do it in hospitals or in front of adults. You’re supposed to do it on public transportation when there’s a little girl sitting opposite you.

    Former soldier Paula Stanton, aged 62, of Severn Avenue, Barry committed the sex act at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

    The Falklands War veteran had been taken there by ambulance for a mental health assessment over concerns over a threat to self-harm.

    Aha. Foolproof way to get yourself into a hospital and in the presence of staff.

    Lewis Ball, prosecuting, said: “The defendant put her hands down her leggings to the groin area. Staff could see that she had her penis in her hand and that her hand was moving up and down. This was happening on and off. He made eye contact with one nurse while he was doing it.”

    Winky winky.

  • Questioned by agents

    Trump is sending the Feds to pester people he doesn’t like.

    Federal agents have questioned friends and associates of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and his wife, Mr. Newsom said on Monday in a video in which he accused President Trump of using the Justice Department to punish a political enemy.

    The full scope of any investigation remains unclear. But Mr. Newsom’s aides say part of the federal investigation appears to focus on his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Former employees of the governor and people affiliated with his wife’s nonprofit groups are among those who have been questioned by agents, according to the governor’s office.

    A person familiar with the matter confirmed that multiple federal investigations were underway related to the governor, including one looking at his wife’s finances. But the person disputed Mr. Newsom’s assertion that the investigations were politically motivated, and said they had been initiated by federal law enforcement officials in California, not launched by officials in Washington.

    Pure coincidence, eh?

    I’m skeptical.

    Ms. Siebel Newsom, who calls herself California’s first partner, is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the social impacts of sexism. She founded a nonprofit organization called the Representation Project that advocates for gender equity, in part by developing educational materials based on Ms. Siebel Newsom’s documentaries.

    Oh well no wonder MAGA is trying to stich her up. Gender equity!! It’s an outrage!!!

    Mr. Newsom, in his video address, mentioned that Mr. Trump had called for his arrest last year and he said he was proud to join the “hit list” of people standing up to the president. Among the wide range of Democrats who[m] Mr. Trump has aggressively targeted is Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat from Arizona, for saying that members of the military should not follow illegal orders from the president. Mr. Kelly is also a potential 2028 presidential candidate in a Democratic primary.

    So people are supposed to keep quiet about illegal orders from the president?

    I think not.

  • Not just a piece of cloth

    Maryam Namazie:

    The hijab is not simply a piece of cloth. It is one visible expression of a wider system through which women’s bodies become sites of authority, discipline and control.

    In this episode of Bread and Roses TV, Maryam Namazie and Fariborz Pooya ask why women’s bodies have become such a public issue. Why are women made responsible for honour, morality, religion, culture and national identity? Why are women expected to carry society on their shoulders?

    From compulsory hijab and child veiling to purity culture, abortion bans and sex apartheid, the programme examines how control is presented as protection, obedience as virtue and submission as choice. Looking at examples from Iran and Afghanistan, including the resistance of women confronting both the Islamic regime of Iran and the Taliban, it explores what interests are served when women are denied authority over their own lives. It also examines how attempts to regulate and control women are not confined to religious power, but can also be found within sections of the opposition, from the Mujahedin and monarchists to parts of the Left.

    Drawing on the work of Jo Spence and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the programme argues that the struggle over hijab is not fundamentally about a piece of cloth. It is about power. It is about who owns women’s bodies.

  • Feminist conference

    I would go to this if I were on that side of the planet.

  • Transforming the White House grounds

    Call me an elitist now and get it over with, because I am very extremely totally elitist about this thing of holding a trashy fight punch hit contest in the front yard of the White House. It’s intentionally trashy, it’s rub our noses in it trashy, it’s suck it up libtards trashy. The trashier the better in Trumpthink. Everything he touches turns to trash.

    Trump, who turned 80 today, will spend this evening hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the South Lawn of the White House. A mass media spectacle months in the making, it has transformed the White House grounds in ways that presidential historians say are unprecedented.

    Late last month, construction began on the towering superstructure known as the “Claw” that now sits complete on the South Lawn, taller than the White House itself. White House staff members were told to work from home on Friday while the U.F.C. put finishing touches on the production, which it and its affiliates have spent more than $60 million to put on. Fighters are expected to be filmed walking through the Oval Office, out onto the lawn and into the claw, where some 4,000 people will be waiting to watch a total of seven fights.

    It’s vulgar vulgar vulgar, and that’s why they’re doing it.

    Much of the White House real estate has been given over to the U.F.C. for this. A crew of motocross stunt riders performed backflips on the South Lawn on Saturday. Another place to watch the fight was set up on the Ellipse, just beyond the White House gates. That space can hold more than 75,000 people.

    This fight night is a marketeering extravaganza: The octagonal cage for the fights is plastered with the names of sponsors who paid for their brands to appear with the ultimate backdrop. It’s heavy on crypto and light beer.

    Ah yes light beer. On diets are they?

    Maybe there will be a miracle.

    The U.F.C. event on the White House’s South Lawn faces the threat of severe weather on Sunday evening. Bob Oravec, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Weather Service, said storms were expected across much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including Washington, D.C., especially between 6 and 9 p.m., with damaging winds, lightning and heavy rain possible. Organizers have said lightning would be the main concern for the event, which is set to begin at 8 p.m.

    Send that lighting bolt right to the “Claw”.

  • Unrepentant assault

    I for one prefer the people who don’t defend “protest” that includes smashing someone’s spine with a sledgehammer.

    Premeditated destruction of property on a grand scale. Unrepentant assault against an officer of the law, taking a literal sledgehammer to the back of a police officer resulting in spinal injury & ongoing occupational health & psychological trauma, these are not acts that politicians should be condoning but condemning. Instead you are championing their violent conduct.

    Please don’t kid yourself, even as Leader of the Green Party, that you can act as a law unto yourself. Whether council tax liability or convictions for perpetrators of gratuitous harm, the law does apply to all citizens equally.

    Your continued betrayal & transgression of Green Party core values is concerning – as is your advocacy of violent tactics.

    His dim-wittedness is not much of a plus either.

  • Funny way to celebrate freedom

    Peak top pinnacle vulgarity.

    Construction crews have now built a large-scale cage on the South Lawn of the White House, dwarfed in turn by a massive arched lighting grid called “The Claw.” But before you worry that this set-up is a new development in the White House’s deportation agenda, know that it’s all for the “UFC Freedom 250” extravaganza scheduled for June 14—Flag Day and, not coincidentally, Trump’s 80th birthday.

    UFC is universal fight club. Trump is a guy who likes to watch violence. He doesn’t like to be punched himself, but he loves to watch other people getting punched.

    “UFC Freedom 250” is being promoted as part of our nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. More than 4,000 guests will attend, thanks to efforts by Pentagon brass—read Pete Hegseth—to fill seats with strapping military types. By this, I mean that his offer of free tickets comes with a strict “no fatties” policy. There could be an additional 125,000 watching on massive screens at the adjacent Ellipse, and presumably there’s no BMI checks there. But anything is possible, given that Trump fudges crowd sizes the same way he touts Iran peace deals.

    Nothing says presidential decorum, or even “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” quite like two men in silk shorts smashing each other’s faces until the canvas underneath them runs arterial crimson. But, somehow, only 16% of Americans think the White House UFC match is a good idea. For the vast majority, the prospect of the event is blood-boiling.

    Blood-boiling and nauseating at the same time.

  • Special agents searched

    Oh here we go. Bogus “voter fraud” accusations coming up.

    FBI special agents searched an office of a progressive organization in Ohio on Thursday as part of a Justice Department investigation into its voter registration efforts, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

    The search at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s office comes as President Donald Trump continues to suggest without evidence that voter fraud is rampant, and repeats false claims about the 2020 presidential election. The FBI in February also raided a Georgia elections hub related to the 2020 presidential election, and California prosecutors have said they are looking into claims of voter fraud in the Los Angeles mayor’s race after Trump made unfounded suggestions of fraud.

    Just after Trump made bogus suggestions or because he did? Also, he doesn’t “suggest”; he emphatically asserts, over and over again. Suggesting would be a big improvement.

    Voter fraud in the United States is uncommon, according to government officials and election experts. And there would have to be a massive coordinated effort in order to affect the outcome of any election.

    Trump’s FBI will overcome all these obstacles I’m sure.

  • Study the act or else

    Will sanity ever return?

    A Green councillor who compared gender-critical authors to Holocaust deniers has been forced to study the Equality Act.

    For fuck’s sake. Holocaust deniers are people who want to change the historical record to hide the fact that the Nazis murdered some eight million people. Gender critical people “deny” that people can change sex. Can we spot the difference? Yes we can: the part about murdering at least eight million people is missing.

    The commonality is a factual claim, aka a truth claim. The nature of the truth claim, however, is radically different. You’d think that would be obvious to even the most mentally challenged “activist”.

    Helen Elliott-Boult, a Green councillor for Stroud district council (SDC), justified the cancellation of an event featuring two authors critical of transgender ideology, set to take place at Stroud Brewery in the Cotswolds.

    The event was cancelled because of fears for “the safety of members of our trans community”.

    No it wasn’t. The cancelers didn’t really think the audience for the event was going to run out and physically attack their trans communinny. They just deploy this burble about fears to justify their thought-terminating censorship.

    Council officers have mandated that Ms Elliott-Boult attend training, reinforcing that gender-critical views are protected by law in the UK.

    Maybe they should start a little further back, and have her attend training in how to think clearly.

    Ms Elliott-Boult justified the cancellation of the speaking event in the interest of “inclusion”, and compared de-platforming the gender-ideology sceptics to cancelling a Holocaust denier.

    On the one hand, denying a horribly well-evidenced genocide; on the other hand, denying that humans can change sex. Quite the discrepancy.

    Stroud has become an unexpected battleground for debates over gender ideology in recent years. In 2025, local police treated graffiti that stated “men can’t be women” as a hate crime.

    Gloucestershire Constabulary launched an investigation into slogans daubed around Stroud ahead of the town’s annual Pride march, including the phrases “you can’t change sex”, “being female is not a costume”, and “trans women are men”.

    Police said the graffiti was “targeted towards transgender people” and the incident was being treated as a “hate crime”.

    Reality is not a hate crime. Reality can be horrible, and it often is, but it’s futile to try to arrest it or chastise it. The same goes for the purported interchangeability of sex. We can’t change our species, we can’t change our date of birth, and we can’t change our sex. To use a hackneyed phrase: it is what it is.

    Ms Elliott-Boult responded in a statement, saying: “The complaint was resolved under the informal resolution provisions. I will be completing the same SDC councillor training as all SDC councillors. At no point did I make negative comments about gender-critical views.”

    Well that’s a lie. If comparing said view to Holocaust denial is not “negative” (meaning harsh or hostile or similar) then what is?

  • The movable negative light

    More on the national parks ruling:

    A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the National Park Service from removing or revising signs, films and other materials at national parks across the country to comply with a directive from President Trump.

    The ruling pauses enforcement of an executive order that called for removing or covering up materials at national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans” or cast the United States “in a negative light.”

    See the problem with that is that the United States has a long and plentiful history of doing things that “cast it” in a negative light. Here’s a simile: look at Trump. He too has a long history of doing things that “cast him” in a negative light. That is, he has a long history of doing bad, often criminal things. Same with the US. Slavery was bad; genocide of the indigenous populations was bad; internment of citizens of Japanese origin was bad; segregation was bad; CIA operations in Iran, Chile, a host of other countries were bad, to name just a few.

    For some purposes Trump is very willing, indeed eager, to say how crappy the US was and how much better he has made it. For others, well, it’s wrap yourself in the flag and ignore all the patches.