Naomi Cunningham on “the dolls”:

So in plainer words, “dolls” refers to men who say they are women. And “protect the dolls” means “protect men who say they are women from being faced with the reality that they are men, and the consequences of that reality”.

Ok, that’s clarifying. I’m not going to protect those men. They don’t protect us so why should we protect them?

“Trans women” are a subcategory of men. They are men who for whatever reason (and we are not privy to their individual reasons) either wish actually to be mistaken for women, or would like other people at least to pretend to mistake them for women. They go to a variety of different lengths to be seen as women. Some do everything in their power to “pass” as women, including radical remodelling of their genitals, voice surgery, facial feminisation surgery, laser hair removal, and modifying their gait and social behaviour. I’ve heard tell that the anguished desperation of some of these men to be seen as women has even led some of them to go so far as trying to modify their habit of interrupting and talking over women.

HAhahahaha. Very few of them though. Without interrupting and talking over women life just becomes so drab and pointless.

All of these varieties of men are men. And as I have already noted, we are not privy to their reasons for claiming to be women or performing their conception of womanhood. No doubt some proportion of these men feel a genuine distress that they were not born female, and are managing that distress by pretending as hard as they can that the reality they find unpalatable is not real. I couldn’t think that a healthy or a grown-up way of coping with the disappointments of reality even if it didn’t entail entitled demands to have everyone else join in with the pretence. But the demand is both delusional and oppressive.

YES. That’s what I wish more people would say more often and more loudly. That demand is a god damn outrage, yet so many people pretend it isn’t. Adults don’t play pretend games in public, let alone forcing other adults to play along.

At least, they don’t unless they’re as arrested in their development as the male characters in The Big Bang Theory. Adults who go to comic book conventions probably are fatuous enough to pretend to be the other sex, but that’s not an argument for pretending, it’s a reason for not being an adult obsessed with comic books.

But there are other kinds of men who say they are women. There are men for whom dressing as women is a sexual fetish. There are men who are sexually aroused by invading supposedly women-only spaces. There are cross-dressing men who talk to each other on Reddit chats and other places about their “euphoria boners”. There are men who go into women’s toilets and changing rooms in order to masturbate, film themselves while they do so, and then post that footage online. It’s a porn category.

There are even men who take drugs to induce lactation, and either express the resulting milk or get infants to suck on their nipples. That’s a porn category too.

But it’s bundled into the oppressed minority category, so we’re evil if we say those infants should be rescued before another sun sets.

…there’s exactly one acceptable way for men to behave in relation to women-only spaces, and that is to stay out of them. That’s what decent men do. If a man doesn’t stay out, he’s not a decent man. Even if he’s genuinely distressed by his male body and invading women’s spaces with no more nefarious intent than to comfort himself for that distress by playing pretend, he’s showing a callous indifference to women’s privacy and boundaries by doing so. He’s behaving like a man who doesn’t think women have the right to privacy away from the male gaze. He’s behaving like a man who’s not good with the word “no”.

There are so many of those around. The struggle continues.

They’re trying to tell us he didn’t say it. Child we heard him.

“His written remarks” she said, as if we were born yesterday. His written remarks were written by people who are not quite as bad at writing (and talking) as he is. His blurted remarks said Iceland. What you wrote down for him to say is not the same thing as what he did say.

Lying for Trump isn’t going to look good on your resume forever.

Scottish Daily Express:

Ross Greer questioned the “reliability” of Sandie Peggie as he complained that the employment tribunal involving her had “ruined” the life of Dr Beth Upton. The Scottish Greens co-leader also doubled down on his refusal to call trans double rapist Isla Bryson a man, hitting out at [rebuking] this line of questioning by the BBC.

So the Scottish Greens co-leader thinks Sandie Peggie is the one who messed up someone’s life, and that it wasn’t at all “Beth” Upton who messed up Sandie Peggie’s life. Women must always comply when men tell them to, even (or especially) when the men in question are pretending to be women and forcing themselves on women in the rooms where they change their clothes. Men who say they are women are both heroic and fragile, while women who say men are not women are wicked and terrifyingly strong and violent.

Sometimes it seems as if men don’t even try to understand.

Greer went on:

“And I don’t think it has been good for anybody involved in that situation. But I do keep coming back to the fact that Beth Upton, the doctor here, was dragged through this whole process. Horrible accusations were made of her. Her private life was invaded constantly. Her face was plastered all over the place. And in the end, the conclusion was, she had absolutely no case to answer.

“She had done nothing wrong. She was a doctor who was just trying to care for her patients. And for no other reason than being trans, her life has basically been ruined by this situation. So, let’s imagine that for no other reason than being Jewish someone had been dragged through that same situation. I think we would all acknowledge how outrageously utterly unacceptable that was.”

Lying or stupid or both?

Yes he had done something wrong, no he was not just trying to care for his patients. He was also using a women’s changing room despite being a man, and he did everything he could to wreck Sandie Peggie’s career as a nurse after she objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. That is in fact something wrong.

The comparison to being Jewish is wildly offensive.

I think men like this should have to wear a label, so that women know to stay well away from them.

Take a deep breath first.

Oh darn, Trump fucked around and found out.

The European Union’s legislative body on Wednesday halted work on the formal approval and implementation of the trade deal it reached last summer with President Donald Trump.

“Given the continued and escalating threats, including tariff threats, against Greenland and Denmark, and their European allies, we have been left with no alternative but to suspend work” on the deal, said Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament’s international trade committee.

Wait that’s not supposed to happen. Everybody is supposed to say “we bow before your superior wisdom Sir” – not “ok then no trade deal for you, Donny from Queens.”

On Thursday, leaders of the 27 E.U. countries will meet to discuss their coordinated response to Trump’s Greenland threats.

This may include a package of retaliatory tariffs worth nearly $110 billion, which would impact a wide range of U.S. exports, from Boeing airplanes to soybeans to Kentucky bourbon.

Another potential retaliatory measure would be to deploy the bloc’s “Anti-Coercion Instrument,” a policy option sometimes referred to as the E.U.’s trade “bazooka.”

The ACI would allow the European Commission to target nearly any U.S. goods or services in Europe with a wide range of restrictions and barriers.

Go for it. Turn the heat up. Burn him.

Trump is on a calling-other-people-stupid roll.

Trump on Tuesday accused Britain of “an act of great stupidity” for agreeing to end British sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, in a blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s attempts to cultivate the president.

…

In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump abruptly reversed that position and argued that the decision strengthened the case for the United States to acquire Greenland.

“Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” he wrote.

He added: “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”

It’s odd/funny/bizarre that he does that, when stupidity is such a conspicuous and large aspect of what he is and does and is known for. Maybe that’s why he does it – if he calls other people stupid then that makes him not stupid himself. Stupid of him to think that.

It’s a taboo word, of course. I’m violating the taboo whenever I call him stupid, which I do often, despite knowing it’s taboo. It’s taboo for good reasons, but at the same time, it’s a very important part of what’s so wrong about Trump that he is so weak in the intellect yet feels entirely qualified for the job he has. To put it crudely (and tabooly) he’s stupid enough to think he’s not stupid.

Trump calls other people stupid.

“If they don’t get this done, they are stupid,” Trump says of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reaching a peace deal. Trump, who is now speaking with Borge Brende, the World Economic Forum president, then caveats, “I don’t want to insult anyone,” prompting one person in the crowd to cackle.

Only one?

Many of President Trump’s comments about energy in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were not grounded in reality…And China and the United States get a similar share of their electricity from wind turbines — about 10 percent as of 2024, according to data from the research firm Ember Energy and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In his speech, Trump claimed China sells turbines “to the stupid people that buy them, but they don’t use them themselves.”

Glass houses; stones.

We are sooooooo tired of having to point out the glaringly obvious problem.

Banning biological males who identify as transgender from being placed in female prisons would violate their human rights, the Scottish Government will argue in court.

Not banning men from being placed in female prisons would violate women’s human rights you obtuse clueless head in the sand lunatics.

The campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) has launched a legal challenge seeking to overturn existing prison guidance in Scotland, with a hearing due to begin at the Court of Session on February 3.

Current rules allow trans people to be placed in a prison matching their gender identity if it is considered safe to do so. This does not include those with a history of violence against women and girls, or who are judged to present a risk.

If it is considered safe to do so by whom???

Clearly, by people who are not going to be in those prisons, and so don’t need to worry about the men who don’t wear “RAPIST” badges but are in reality not risk-free if housed in a women’s prison.

FWS argues this is unlawful as ministers are statutorily obliged to provide women-only prison accommodation. It previously won a landmark Supreme Court fight against the Scottish Government over the legal definition of a woman under equality law, which judges ruled is based on biological sex.

…

In advance of the latest case, the Government has published its note of argument, which argues the position on prisons put forward by FWS contains “fundamental errors” and the Equality Act 2010 “does not mandate sex segregation”.

So the Government is perfectly happy to force women to take their chances.

Susan Smith, a co-director of FWS, said it was “depressing, but not unsurprising, that in page after page referencing human rights, the Scottish Government has, apparently, not considered that women are also human and also have rights”

She added: “Article 3 [of the ECHR] protects everyone from torture, inhuman treatment, or degrading punishment, yet women in, or recently released from, prison tell us the same stories of violation of boundaries and physical or mental abuse from the men they are locked up with.”

It’s almost as if a lot of men really don’t like or respect women. It’s almost as if all of us have grown up in a culture that sees women as contemptible, weak, sly, rebellious, and rapeable.

MSP Tess White said it “beggars belief that SNP ministers are still arguing that male-bodied criminals can be housed in women’s prisons”.

See above.

The Magic Ten Orders yet again.

The ten orders suck. They’re not just theocratic, they’re bad. Don’t steal; don’t kill; don’t lie. Well no shit; can you not come up with a little more than that? Be compassionate? Don’t hurt others? Be generous? Try to make your part of the world a little better? Can’t you come up with some affirmative suggestions instead of just the most basic don’ts plus a ton of godbothering nonsense?

No, you can’t, so get that crap out of the schools.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, who was in the courtroom for the debate, said, “I like our chances.” Asked what he would say to parents who don’t want their children taught the Ten Commandments, he said he would “advise parents like that they find some moral code.”

“You either read the Ten Commandments or your child is going to learn the criminal code,” he said.

Absolutely wrong. The ten are not even close to being a moral code. They are as minimal as they could possibly be on the moral front, and the rest is just monotheistic bullying. There’s not a word about generosity or compassion or helping others. Landry is the one who needs to learn something about morality.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, Texas state Rep. Candy Noble, a Republican and one of the authors of her state’s Ten Commandments law, urged the 5th Circuit judges to back it.

“Returning the Ten Commandments to our Texas classrooms gives our school children an understanding that the Ten Commandments were foundational to America’s educational and judicial systems,” Noble said in a statement.

Nonsense. They’re too minimal and empty to be foundational to anything, as well as being too theocratic to be tolerable to 99 percent of people.

Originally a comment by maddog on mostly white.

“We didn’t introduce this fight about sports. This was picked by the other side,” said AJ Hikes, executive director of strategy and culture at the ACLU . . . .

The hell you say! Women and girls were not the ones who introduced the bizarre and dangerous notion that men and boys should be able to shove their way into sports for women and girls, so long as the guys say the magic incantation, “I identify as a woman/girl.” This was a fight picked by men and boys to bully and Lord it over women/girls, to steal their places, steal their victories, literally beat up on them, as well as to satisfy the men’s/boys’ sex perversions by invading the women’s/girls’ private spaces. It’s all very angry, very hateful, very rapey toward women and girls.

You poisoned the well by parasitizing the gay rights movement, and bending the LGB victories and good will to your own purposes, to preempt and prevent any discussion or examination of your dangerous dogmas. You mercilessly bullied and harassed any dissenters from the lie that men/boys could be women/girls. You usurped the power, the machinery, and the money-raising capabilities of successful and established LGB organizations to implant your ideology at the highest institutional levels — you captured the corporate and governmental leadership — to impose your doctrines from above, with no examination or vettng of your claims. The hell you didn’t “introduce” or “pick” this fight; you absolutely did, after having done your best to cut the legs out from under any opposition beforehand. You picked the fight, and it was never a fair fight. It was the old-fashioned boys picking on the girls from the very beginning, only with most people cheering you on this time. Misogyny-coated misogynists, with misogyny filling.

Powerful ratiocination.

The lies persist:

As the US supreme court heard arguments on Tuesday for a case that could determine whether transgender children can participate in school sports – and potentially impact LGBTQ+ civil rights protections more broadly – competing groups of activists rallied in Washington DC.

First lie. The issue is not whether “trans” children can participate, it’s whether boys can and should play in girls-only sports. If they can’t, they can still participate in boys-only sports. That is participating. It’s not fair to let them ruin sports for girls on the pretext that anything else is preventing them from playing at all. Journalism really needs to stop lying about this.

On one side was a multiracial mix of hundreds of people rallying for trans rights and in support of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a track and field athlete from West Virginia and the plaintiff in the West Virginia v BPJ case before the supreme court.

On the other side was an equally large crowd, mostly white, that was calling on the supreme court to “protect women’s sports” by upholding laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit trans youth from participating in sports programs aligned with their gender identity.

Geddit? Clear enough? Pointed enough? The people who think boys should not ruin girls’ sports are racisssssst.

In many ways, the scene looked like other DC rallies over trans and queer rights over the past decade. Trans advocates and their allies danced to remixes of songs by the pop star Chappell Roan, while those opposing trans rights at one point held a prayer for the legal team representing West Virginia.

Geddit? Trans people are cool and fun. People who think girls should still be allowed to have their own sports are god-botherers and boring. The hip side to take is the one that doesn’t give a shit about girls.

“We didn’t introduce this fight about sports. This was picked by the other side,” said AJ Hikes, executive director of strategy and culture at the ACLU, one of the groups representing Pepper-Jackson, the plaintiff in one of the supreme court cases and the only known trans teen in West Virginia subject to the state ban. “This hyper-focus on sports is yet another example that we have of the ways that they are trying to erase trans and non-binary people from public life.”

This lie is yet another lie. I for one don’t much care about sports as such, but I’m aware that lots of people do and that it’s an area of life where which sex people are does make a huge and important difference. I do care much about fairness to girls and women. I’m not trying to “erase” trans and non-binary people but I am pointing out that those labels are new, and peculiar, and based on the lie that people can change sex.

“This is about power, and it’s about control,” said Chris Mosier, an internationally ranked triathlete who came out as trans in 2010. He said he worries about a broad supreme court ruling that could open the door to more restrictions on trans rights in schools and erode existing LGBTQ+ protections. 

But, again, what are “trans rights” and how do we know and what do we do when they erase women’s rights and girls’ rights? Is there really a “right” for men to play in women’s sports? Not in my book.

The Times on Trump’s Davos Show:

Andrew here. I am in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. President Trump is expected to speak here on Wednesday.

The mood: trepidation, for those who are being honest. I attended several events last night, where some C.E.O.s openly questioned the president, using words like “wild” and “bizarre.” Yet many of them are planning to attend a reception in his honor, with some even joking about the best way to praise him in person. “Tread lightly,” one C.E.O. said. Contrast that with a number of international politicians wringing their hands over the growing tensions about Greenland.

Contrast what? It sounds to me like the same thing. They all recognize that Trump is a dangerous moron, and they react with both dismay and jokes.

Already, the U.S. delegation has made clear that it’s not particularly interested in the event’s longtime goal of improving the world through international cooperation and commerce.

President Trump said he would hold a meeting to discuss what many see as his increasingly bellicose efforts to take Greenland from Denmark — but has reiterated that he still wants the semiautonomous territory. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed aside potential European responses to Trump’s possible trade war over the island.

It’s easy to “brush them aside” when they haven’t happened yet.

Trump’s latest entertainment is creating a “board of peace” that is inclooosive of all the neighborhood warmongers. Countries that don’t join get punished.

Trump has confirmed he invited Vladimir Putin to join a US-proposed Gaza “Board of Peace”.

The board is part of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Israel-Hamas war and expected to temporarily oversee the running of Gaza and manage its reconstruction.

On Monday, the Kremlin said the Russian president had received the offer. Neither Moscow nor Trump has said whether Putin had accepted.

Washington has asked various world leaders to sit on the board. On Monday, Trump threatened 200% tariffs on French wine after President Emmanuel Macron declined to join.

Well don’t stop there. Put also 200% tariffs on croissants and escargots and pain chocolat and ratatouille and daube de boeuf à la provençale.

The White House’s offer to Putin comes as Russia [has] yet to accept a US-backed peace deal aimed at ending its four-year assault on Ukraine.

Oh that’s ok, it’s just high spirits.

Trump responded to Macron’s decision to decline membership by threatening a 200% tariff on French wine and champagne imports. “He’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join,” Trump added.

He doesn’t have to join but we will punish him if he doesn’t.

In response, a source close to President Macron told the BBC: “Threats to use tariffs to influence our foreign policies are unacceptable and ineffective.”

But they’re fun for Trump.

Other leaders have cautiously responded to the invitations to join the Board of Peace. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Trump ally, have accepted roles on the board.

Well that will be a huge help.

Another thing, that I didn’t pay enough attention to. (It’s like reading Hamlet. There’s always something you missed – some theme or repeated metaphor or word with multiple meanings and overtones – so that it expands like one of those paper flower things, except that it never stops. In Hamlet, that is. In Trump it’s just a bit of stupidity or venality you didn’t notice fully enough the first few times around.)

Why did he send his idiotic letter to multiple ambassadors?

What was the plan? They were going to text each other and hastily put together a rebellion of the ambassadors and keep at it until Norway gave in and handed over the prize in a big silver-paper box with a red bow on top?

Or maybe he was hoping to form a clique. It would be like high school only better. His clique would sit at the best table and nobody else would be allowed to sit there, ever. He would be the boss of the clique. He would humiliate all the kids with glasses or acne or a brain.

Pretty much. I’m guessing he thought the ambassadors would all totally see his point, and they would call each other up and discuss it and decide to tell Norway it has to give Trump the Nobel or they won’t do any ambassing any more. It will be like a strike but with luxury restaurant dinners.

And another thing. I just can’t let go of this one, can I.

What could possibly be more uncool, more gross, more not in the spirit of the thing, more tacky, than telling the world that you think you should have won a big major famous global prize? You’re not even supposed to say you’d like to win, let alone screaming like a giant baby with a wasp up his ass because you didn’t, and let alone times a billion saying that you should have won it because you deserve it more than 8.3 billion people.

This is of course even more true when you are a murderous megalomaniac who has caused many deaths.

I wonder what he means by this bit:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace

What’s the logic? How is that not a non sequitur? Not to mention based on a false premise?

It wasn’t Norway that “decided” not to give him a prize, it was the Nobel committee. Except it didn’t have to “decide” anything because it never considered him for the prize. Ok I don’t actually know that for a fact, but why would it? Why of all people in the world to elevate as a force for peace would anyone pick out Donald Trump? He’s been trying to get people killed ever since the Central Park Five got his condign attention. He loves violence. He’s had a lot of people murdered over the past year, and been the origin of more deaths, such as that of Renee Good. His whole attitude to life and people is the antitheses of peaceable or peace-promoting. He’s angry, he’s a bully, he’s rude, he’s mean, he’s competitive, he cheats, he’s ruthless. He’s not a peacemaker.

That’s just one of the speed bumps in that particular road.

To cheer us up:

Ht notBruce

Great god almighty.

This is one time when a post on TwitX is the actual source: the news outlets quote it as the source so I might as well start there.

NEW:

@potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:

Dear Ambassador:  

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

There aren’t enough swears in the whole world.

Note the starting assumption that Norway (not the government of Norway but Norway itself) decided not to give Trump the peace prize – which rests on the prior assumption that it ever crossed “Norway’s” mind to award him any prize at all, let alone a peace prize. Note the mind-numbingly weird assumption that Trump was ever an obvious candidate for a peace prize or any other kind of Nobel prize.

Note that Trump frankly says he was “thinking purely of Peace” in hopes of a tangible reward. Note that he frankly says now in the absence of the award he’ll stop – in short, note that he’s brazenly saying he decides what to do based on what’s in it for him. Note that he admits that until now he was not thinking about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

Note that he asks why Denmark gets to own Greenland. Note that he does not ask why the US gets to own North and South Dakota, or Alaska, or Florida, or Hawaii, or, really, any part of the united states.

Never elect a toddler as head of state. It doesn’t go well.

Hand it over or I’ll shoot the kid.

In a Truth Social post this weekend, President Trump gave an ultimatum to Europe: If they didn’t allow “the Complete and Total purchase” of Greenland, he would slap tariffs on a group of European countries, 10 percent in February, and then 25 percent in June.

European leaders responded that they would not be bullied.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain called the ultimatum “completely wrong.” President Emmanuel Macron of France went so far as to say Europe should retaliate with the strongest trade tool at its disposable: activating a regulation that could restrict the access of American companies to the E.U. market.

Within hours of the post, members of the European Parliament announced that they would freeze the ratification of Europe’s trade deal with Trump. European leaders are set to hold an extraordinary meeting in the coming days to try to agree on a response to Trump’s threats.

Maybe someone could have a meeting with him, try to appease him? It just might work.

Trump argues that the U.S. needs to control Greenland as a bulwark against Chinese and Russian ambitions in the Arctic. But the U.S. already has the right to expand its military presence in Greenland under a 1951 agreement with Denmark.

Whatever. Trump wants to control Greenland because he’s a wants to control kind of guy. To put it in the vernacular, he’s a bully, and he’s thrilled that he gets to take his bullying hobby to the world stage. He’s having a blast. This is like breaking the glasses of a million nerds at a time.