Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Who they are today

    There’s a thing called The Feminist Library in Peckham, London. It tells us it has a long history and has [cough] changed over the years.

    The Feminist Library was founded since 1975, and we have existed in many different forms since then. This is who we are today:

    That’s not a good sign. People running a library should be more literate than that. The point appears to be that the library was founded way the hell back in 1975 when the barbarians were unaware of the spiritual glory of trans ideology, and now the library is Uplifted and Perfected.

    So you know already what their “principles” are going to be.

    So there you go. It’s not a feminist library at all; it’s a transist library, which is not compatible with being a feminist library. Transism shits all over women every chance it gets, just as this “feminist” library is doing in this “who we are today” denunciation.

    And this is what we do:

    • We stand in solidarity with Palestine, and all colonised people.
    • We work collectively on a flat hierarchy.
    • We strive to make Feminist knowledge and history free and accessible to all.
    • We seek to be a free and welcoming space for the community in Peckham, South London, and the world.
    • We promote equity and justice for women and gendered minorities.
    • We provide a safe space for people of all genders.

    So, if you are an actual feminist woman, you had better get the hell out of their library, because they hate you. They hate you way more than they hate men who abuse or bully or assault women. They hate you more than anyone, really.

    Next up: that “statement” on their “history” with “transphobia.” It’s as bad as it sounds.

  • Such is the experience

    It’s not that publishers are boycotting Jews, it’s just that they aren’t publishing books by Jews.

    Such is the experience of so many Jewish people in British publishing today. In interviews with The Telegraph, authors, agents, scouts and publishers spoke of the growing sense of discomfort and [ostracism] they have experienced in their industry since the October 7 attacks. Many say a quiet but pervasive anti-Semitism – a sense of “Jews don’t count”, as one author put it – has begun to creep in.

    Mind you, that’s generally the case with all kinds of rejections, failures, not happenings. Is it because the book or article or movie or play is not good enough or is it because the author is not in an Approved category? It’s not always obvious.

    It all adds up to what many describe as a culture of “soft boycotting” which has taken hold, whereby Jewish stories are left untold, Jewish agents are quietly dropped, and Jewish authors find themselves persona non grata amongst their peers. Underpinning it all is a growing sense of isolation. Or, as one literary agent put it, “a feeling [that you are] not part of a community that you’ve been part of for many years”.

    “The general feeling of this year is of feeling outnumbered, isolated … this culture of soft boycotting is really hard to prove and makes you sound paranoid,” says another agent. “I’ve sent out two proposals by Jewish authors and I’m just not able to sell them. Neither have written books about the conflict.”

    Well that doesn’t tell us anything. Surely agents aren’t just automatically able to sell every book they offer. We don’t know that the two books were any good.

    Occasionally, she has been able to sell books by Jewish authors “where their Jewishness is not present or out there”. But if the book has an overtly Jewish theme? “It definitely feels like it’s much harder.”

    Oh well then, that settles it.

    This piece is frustrating, because it could be true that Jewish authors are being informally boycotted, but “feels like” isn’t good enough.

  • Rushed

    Lawsuit.

    Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the nation’s leading practitioner of transgender youth medicine, faces a medical-negligence lawsuit for the irreversible treatments she administered to a former patient, who has since detransitioned.

    It’s interesting that even the National Review endorses trans ideology by using trans ideology language. What exactly is “transgender youth medicine”? In what sense is it “medicine”? Why is TNR calling it medicine in the same breath as “medical-negligence lawsuit” and “irreversible treatments”? Also whaddya mean “treatments”?

    It’s nuts. How can we even talk about this if the language is so corrupted that even critics get it wrong? Shocker: maybe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones aren’t always “treatment” at all.

    Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, alleges Olson-Kennedy, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), and numerous other defendants rushed her into transitioning to a male in spite of her struggles with mental health and history of suffering sexual abuse. The plaintiff’s transgender treatments involved puberty blockers at age 12, cross-sex hormones at 13, and finally a double mastectomy at 14. The complaint was filed Thursday in Los Angeles, where the pediatric hospital is located.

    Olson-Kennedy, who serves as medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at CHLA, allegedly performed no psychological assessment, failed to ask Breen about her past trauma and mental state, and diagnosed gender dysphoria without consulting any other physicians. Furthermore, Olson-Kennedy allegedly did not adequately take into account the detrimental effects that puberty blockers would have on Breen’s bone density.

    There’s a reason we don’t let children drive cars. There’s a reason we don’t let toddlers play with loaded guns. There’s a reason we shouldn’t chop off children’s breasts or genitals on request.

    The lawsuit accuses the primary defendant of outright lying in several instances. Olson-Kennedy lied to Breen and her parents that puberty blockers were “completely reversible,” according to the suit. The pediatric doctor also allegedly lied about Breen’s purported suicidal thoughts to her parents when trying to convince them about hormonal therapy.

    The young girl had no suicidal thoughts, the lawsuit says, nor did she express that she had any during her medical appointments.

    So then why was Olson-Kennedy so eager to cut off her breasts and block her puberty?

    Olson-Kennedy then allegedly lied that Breen would commit suicide if she did not receive cross-sex hormones. Confronted with their daughter’s hypothetical death, the parents relented and agreed to the testosterone treatment. Breen also hesitantly agreed.

    It’s kind of like talking people into buying a house they don’t really want, only worse. Much much worse.

    Olson-Kennedy has come under intense scrutiny for refusing to publish the findings of a nearly $10 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health that found no evidence that puberty blockers improved the mental health of children.

    In a revealing interview with the New York Times in October, she admitted that the long-awaited study would be “weaponized” by critics of transgender youth treatments and that the findings would be used in court to argue against puberty blockers. The study began in 2015.

    Note how completely backward she has everything. “Oh no, we mustn’t publish the study, it will inform people that ‘transgender youth treatments’ are harmful quackery, and we don’t want that, we want transgender youth to keep getting the harmful quackery.” She wanted reasons for not handing out puberty blockers concealed so that she could keep handing out these destructive meds.

  • Lookada pitty twain

    It would be quicker to list what’s not “transphobia.”

    The Telegraph:

    LNER spent £58,000 repainting one of its trains with a rainbow-themed Pride livery, it has emerged.

    The cost of the Pride rebranding was revealed after a passenger sent a freedom of information (FoI) request asking the government-owned train company for more information about it.

    58 THOUSAND quid. Just think of all the useful things one could do with that kind of money.

    But instead of answering Carol Fossick’s other detailed questions, a senior LNER manager wrote back and labelled her “transphobic” after trawling through her social media posts.

    I’m not a Mormon. I think the content of Mormonism is silly. Is that phobic?

    I don’t take part in pyramid schemes. I think pyramid schemes are a surefire way to lose money. Is that phobic?

    I was never a girl scout. I don’t regret it. Is that phobic?

    Maya Forstater, the chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, said: “LNER’s refusal to respond to an FoI request on the basis that the requester had expressed views that challenge gender ideology was disgraceful and discriminatory.

    “It’s appalling to see one of the UK’s largest transport companies losing touch with reality to the extent that it sees a focus on ‘binary sex divisions’ and criticism of its expensively clad Pride train as ‘vexatious’ and appropriate grounds for refusal. This attempt at thought-policing passengers for blaspheming against the rainbow suggests a corporate culture that is more akin to a medieval church than a modern business.”

    Exactly so; that’s why I brought Mormonism into it. We don’t have to join your church; you don’t get to force it on us.

    Ms Fossick’s questions to LNER included requests for things such as “information about LNER’s diversity initiatives, including the demographics of their staff and the selection process for future train designs” as well as the composition of the panel which decided how to rebrand the train.

    When LNER refused to reveal anything other than the cost of the whole exercise, she asked it to reconsider.

    A senior manager wrote back to brand her “vexatious” and said: “Since you submitted your internal review, your subsequent social media posts have demonstrated views that indicate a bias against transgender individuals.”

    Yo, spending 58 THOUSAND pounds on painting a train trans-color demonstrates an inability to spend the public’s money reasonably.

    An LNER spokesman said: “The Together train celebrates support of Pride activities on the route as part of our long-term commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives for colleagues, customers and communities.”

    No, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. It does the opposite of that, and does it with hostile energy. It’s not “diversity” or “equality” or “inclusion” to obsess over people who pretend to be the opposite sex while ignoring every other disregarded set of people on the planet. Paint a god damn train in women’s colors or workers’ colors for a change, then tell us how keen on equality and diversity you are.

  • Guest post: In the light of rational inquiry, queer theory withers and dies

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s A or B or both or neither.

    These people really don’t know what a definition is, do they?

    I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between not knowing what a definition is, and not having one, or not daring to offer one for fear of getting it wrong. It’s a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of ecumenicalism, wherein everybody under the infinitely elastic “trans umbrella” refuses to examine anyone else’s credentials for being a member. As soon as any kind of binding, coherent definition is offered up, somebody will be “excluded” or excommunicated, because so many of the posited attributes of the myriad gender possibilities are completely contradictory. By this measure, the lack of any such definition of “gender” is a feature, not a bug.

    If “gender identity” were an actual phenomenon, Rowling’s questions would be the basis of potentially fruitful lines of research. Correction: her questions would have been the pathway to such research, because these issues would have been investigated long ago; Hines would have already had answers to them. They would have been debated and thrashed out within the field itself. But no. The field is empty and fruitless. Nobody has been working in it because it is barren; “There is no there there.” Like astrology and palmistry, there has been no real attempt to delineate the exact nature, limits, and mechanism behind the phenomenon they claim to know so well. It’s all just claimed and assumed. They’re making it up as they go along with no thought or concern for coherence and consistency. Queer theory is above this petty need for evidence and explanation. In the light of rational inquiry (or simple questions), queer theory withers and dies, and genderism with it. Rowling’s comments are just making this plain.

    That an “unschooled amateur” like Rowling can come up with such devastatingly simple, basic, fundamental criticisms of this alleged field of alleged study is (or should be) a source of shamed embarrassment, rather than smug condescension. You don’t need titles or degrees to see that the Emperor is naked, though in the case of genderism, it’s more like there is no Emperor at all. Hines’ response is, ironically, just an iteration of PZ’s “Courtier’s Reply”. You’re supposed to steep yourself thoroughly in the minutia and nuance of their refined, cerebral bullshit before you dare comment on it.

  • Oops he forgot to pretend

    Hoooooooooo-boy.

    Sarah Pascoe really does really “correct him” to say that. She does it at high speed, aka a gabble, so you have to listen closely to catch it.

    Ince: …how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?

    Pascoe: [cozy chuckle] Um well first [??] really boring [??] trans men can have children n give birth so just [??] make sure I know we’re talking about something that is such a gendered thing we end up saying men and women but um

    Sorry about the three places where she gabbles so fast I can’t make out her words, but we get the idea.

    She gets Ince’s point about “if men gave birth” – the old old old point about how easy it is to dismiss the pain and effort and danger of other people if you’re completely safe from it yourself. We know she gets his point because she gives that little point-getting complicit chuckle – but then she instantly stomps on his point by pretending he Did a Naughty by saying it’s not men who give birth. Oooooooooooh you did not just say that.

    I wonder how furious Ince was. He goes to all this trouble, for years, to pretend that men are women if they say they are, and here this bitch is on his BBC show and she corrects him for saying “how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?”

    I bet he was livid.

  • A handful of dust

    I’d say this one should have stayed in the “too pretty to demolish” category.

    Then again, Oxford Street itself is a horrible place, best avoided, so I suppose I should keep my opinion to myself. Won’t, but should.

  • It’s A or B or both or neither

    More fun with JKR versus a bowl of oatmeal Sally Hines.

    ‘Gender identity refers to each person’s internal sense of being male, female, a combination of the two, or neither; it is a core part of who people know themselves to be.’

    However, this core of what we know ourselves to be may change, possibly several times in a single afternoon:

    ‘Genderfluid people experience their gender identity as changing over time or between different situations.’

    And some people have a partially missing core, or a core part so feeble we can’t know whether it’s male or female:

    ‘Agender people identify as having no gender, or feel that their gender is absent or neutral.’

    Imagine writing those words and not once defining how it feels to have an internal sense of being male/female, not having a gender at all, or having a neutral gender.

    Other groundbreaking things I learned from your book:

    ‘Not all bodies are biologically male or female – they are both, or neither.’

    ‘French adjectives are grammatically gendered.’

    ‘Post-colonial is sometimes used to describe the period of time after colonial rule.’

    ‘Aristotle was a philosopher and scientist living in ancient Greece.’

    ‘Historically, women have often been associated with nurturing behaviour.’

    ‘Traditional male labour is typical in heavy industries, such as Skinningrove blast furnace plant, which closed in 1971.’

    Ouch.

    You list bits of jargon like ‘genderflux’ (experiences their gender more or less intensely at different times) without ever explaining what is the thing the person is experiencing. Why isn’t there an entry-level explanation of how we can tell whether our gender is male, female, both, neither, absent, flux or fluid? How does this important ‘core thing’ manifest internally? Do we compare the picture of Skinningrove blast furnace and the one of the Miss America pageant and choose where we’d rather be? I imagine not, as we’re told endlessly that gender doesn’t rest on sex stereotypes. Your book, written for a lay audience, explains terms like ‘post-colonial’ but not the concept featured in its actual title.

    Incidentally, it’s the nouns that are gendered in French. The adjectives merely agree with them. I’m qualified to tell you that; I have a French degree.

    Sally Hines is not equipped for these exchanges.

  • Cut all the things

    Musk is busy urging slashing funds for worker safety, consumer safety, and silly Marxist nonsense like that.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy head to Capitol Hill on Thursday to present their ideas for President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.

    The new group is expected to recommend drastic cuts to the federal workforce and to slash regulation. To achieve those goals, though, the group will have to work through Congress.

    Regulation is bad, you see. Mustn’t regulate capitalism. Profit is the only goal.

    In social media posts, podcasts, op-eds, books and speeches, Musk and Ramaswamy have sketched out what they have in mind: a 75% reduction in the federal workforce, a $2 trillion cut to federal spending and the elimination of entire agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    Consumer financial protection; have you ever heard of anything so absurd? The job of consumers is to hand over their money to the profit-makers. Profit is the only value.

    William Howell, founder and director of the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, notes that these workers simply implement laws enacted by Congress.

    “These are the folks who keep our air clean, allow planes to land safely, that keep the meat we buy at the grocery store devoid of disease,” Howell said.

    He said that indeed there are federal agencies working at cross-purposes and that leads to inefficiencies like those that DOGE is determined to root out. He pointed to the country’s “unbelievably complex tax code” and what he called an immigration system that “nobody would suggest is acceptable.” However for Howell, the rhetoric from Musk and Ramaswamy to “shut down” entire agencies and lay off workers raises red flags.

    “You may need to rebuild it and you may need to adapt it to contemporary purposes,” Howell said. “But the way to do it is not by taking a sledgehammer to it.”

    Yebbut taking a sledgehammer to it is so much fun.

  • Step aside little lady

    Reclaim the night for women…

    …oh and also of course for men who pretend to be women.

    He’s a man.

    Alexa Moore is a director of Transgender NI, a newly formed not-for-profit organisation focusing on supporting and campaigning for the human and civil rights of trans people in Northern Ireland.

    Which is not what Take Back the Night is about, but never mind that, forget women, we have to talk about men with curly blonde hair instead.

  • Throwing the masts overboard

    They want to get rid of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Good plan; who the hell needs weather forecasts?

    Partisan jostling aside, what does Project 2025 say about NOAA and the National Weather Service?

    A [Rep Jared] Moskowitz spokesperson, Keith Nagy, said “while Project 2025 does not call for the complete dismantling of the NOAA, it intends to undermine the agency’s independence from the executive branch and eliminate many of its internal departments. Any threats toward the NOAA or NWS jeopardizes life-saving information about hurricanes, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.”

    …

    Project 2025 includes about four pages on NOAA and the National Weather Service. That part was written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department.

    The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”

    The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.

    Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

    Because accurate information about the weather is not a life or death necessity, it’s a consumer good, like strawberry sun cream and luxury SUVs.

  • Osteoporosis is not harm?

    Sigh.

    Siiiiiiiiiigh

  • Identifying as medicine

    The Nation should be embarrassed that it published this.

    Trans Medicine’s “Merchants of Doubt”

    Before we read any further, what is “trans medicine”? Fake medicine? Real medicine that trans people take? Reckless experimental attempts to change people’s sex?

    Someone called Joanna Wuest wrote the article. He/she looks male to my jaundiced eye, but not so unmistakably male that I can claim to be sure she/he is male. Google turned up a lot of content but not a single bit of information on what sex he/she is.

    So, what does she/he tell us?

    Gender-affirming care is based on dangerously uncertain science. So say lawmakers in the 26 states that have banned medical interventions for minors ranging from puberty-suppressing and hormonal replacement medications to surgical procedures.

    First paragraph and we’re in the weeds. What if “gender-affirming care” is in fact not a “medical intervention” but a horrifying destructive interference with normal maturation? What if it is, however well meant, a hideous mistake? What if it’s actually not all that good an idea to tamper with puberty?

    Today, the Supreme Court will hear a case, United States v. Skrmetti, deciding whether to uphold these regulations of what trans medicine’s critics have unduly called “experimental” healthcare.

    What’s “unduly” about calling puberty-disrupting “experimental”? Of course it’s experimental. It’s a shockingly reckless experiment on children and teenagers, encouraged by a virulent social contagion which Wuest her/himself is helping to spread.

    For the past several years, conservative political leaders and fringe medical voices have waged an often covert campaign against gender-affirming care. Borrowing from fossil fuel, tobacco, and Covid-19 science denial strategies, these agents of scientific uncertainty have cast doubt on trans medicine’s safety and efficacy. Just like those “merchants of doubt” who spread untruths about humanity’s impact on the climate and the dangers of secondhand smoke, extraordinarily well-funded groups have spread the idea that gender-affirming care’s evidence base is perilously uncertain.

    No, not just like them, because there is enormous room for doubt that “gender dysphoria” is a medical illness that should be treated by trying to change the patient’s sex. Also not like them because there is little or no financial incentive to say trans ideology is bullshit. Saying men are not women is not profitable the way marketing oil is. It’s much more the other way around. The “yeet the teats” doctor makes a lot of money doing what she does; feminists who refuse to shut up, not so much.

    Yep: the Nation should be embarrassed.

    H/t Mostly Cloudy

  • Guest post: With a clear conscience and an empty head

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Affirming 4 kidz.

    How do otherwise reasonable adults convince themselves that maiming teenagers is a good idea?

    With many individuals, I’d be tempted to ascribe it to a tendency to outsource moral judgement, in this case deferring to some authority who has deemed trans “rights” to be a “progressive” cause. Once somebody higher up the food chain has blessed it, they don’t have think about it any more themselves; they can climb aboard the bandwagon with a clear conscience and an empty head. Once the bandwagon starts rolling faster and farther, passing ethical and prudential boundaries one might have baulked at, it becomes harder to get off without seriously lacerating your ego, and/or social relations. Before too long, you find yourself defending the absurd and horrific.

    That’s for the passengers. As far as those driving the bandwagon, the ones setting the course and privy to the secrets they know they need to hide from everyone else, I have no explanation to offer, apart from wilfull ignorance. It can’t be lack of information: they have internalized the rules of self-censorship and rewording too well to be able to feign not knowing. Nobody writes a story about abortion that doesn’t use the the word “woman” by accident.

    It’s a political fad encouraged by political enthusiasts and enforced by political bullies…and promoted by political idiots like NPR.

    Calling them “kids” is 1. part of the toe-curling folksiness and forced intimacy that NPR is so devoted to, and 2. careful avoidance of admitting that the “trans kids” are children.

    That faux folksiness also helps hide the politicization and the horror of what they are defending and promoting. They’ve chosen a side and they’re trying to put the best polish on it that they can. They have to know exactly what they’re doing in order to do that as well as they do. In the meantime they’re running interference for fetishists touting the mutilation and sterilization of children, and helping them camouflage themselves by agreeing to portray it as calling it “social justice.”

  • Reachy

    Oh that’s outreach, is it? Not a stone-cold insult but outreach? Doesn’t reach me, I must say.

    Do they have Race Outreach Workers?

  • Affirming 4 kidz

    The wording. You always have to look closely at the wording. Like this NPR headline:

    Supreme Court hears challenge to law banning gender-affirming care for trans kids

    Calling it “gender-affirming care” is glaringly tendentious. Is it really care to remove healthy breasts or invert healthy penises in order to “affirm” a minor’s belief that she/he is the other sex? Is affirming children’s fantasies with drastic medical interventions really care? Is NPR really so confident that “yes” is the right answer to both questions that it doesn’t worry at all about encouraging teenagers to wreck their bodies?

    If so, why? How? How do otherwise reasonable adults convince themselves that maiming teenagers is a good idea?

    Front and center at the Supreme Court on Wednesday is the battle over the rights of transgender children. At issue is a state law in Tennessee that blocks minors from accessing gender-affirming care in the state.

    But minors are minors. They generally do need parental permission for medical procedures, because they’re minors. It’s not obvious that “transgender children” should be an exception. It’s more obvious that they shouldn’t be.

    In the last three years, more than two dozen states have enacted laws that ban puberty blockers, hormones and other treatments for minors seeking gender-affirming care. The issue has become highly politicized, as anyone who watched election ads this fall can attest.

    But it’s already politicized. The whole idea is politicized. It’s a political fad encouraged by political enthusiasts and enforced by political bullies…and promoted by political idiots like NPR. The claim that there is such a thing as “gender-affirming care” is a gruesomely political and harmful claim. “First do no harm”: remember? Disrupting children’s puberties=harm.

    Challenging Tennessee’s law in the Supreme Court are three trans kids and their parents.

    “Kids” again: first in the headline and now in the story. What happened to the word “children”? Calling them “kids” is 1. part of the toe-curling folksiness and forced intimacy that NPR is so devoted to, and 2. careful avoidance of admitting that the “trans kids” are children.

    The word “kids” appears nine times in the article. “Children” appears twice.

  • Well done Griz

    Well well well, look what won a Political Cartoon of the Year award.

  • Pliticklee loaded

    What oh what is a woman? It’s such a deep question. Philosophers (the male ones) have been puzzling over it for years, possibly as many as ten. Is it someone who talks in a high squeaky voice? Is it someone you [presumed guy] want to fuck? Is it someone who smells like fish?

    It’s almost as difficult as who is a baseball.

  • Guest post: You don’t need to resort to palm trees to justify it

    Originally a comment by Mosnae on Trans list.

    The “appeal to nature” fallacy is well-known: the idea is, if something’s natural it must be good. Of course, this is ridiculous. What I think needs more attention is the converse fallacy eg. the idea that if something is good, it must be natural. You’d expect the silliness of this to be obvious, yet accross the political spectrum, there are constantly people who are trying to prove stuff is “natural” or “unnatural” just because they think it matches their political views.

    Consider how homophobic rhetoric is ripe with claims that homosexuality is unnatural: that doesn’t automatically make it immoral, does it? Likewise, ancient civilisations usually being male-dominated isn’t convincing evidence for men being innately superior to women. Nor is it necessary to dig through History to find instances of powerful women in order to establish that sexism is bad. (Although it’s certainly enriching and informative.)

    Really, reverse appeals to nature are an attempt to sidestep a real examination of the issue at hand. They’re nonsensical, but facile and unduly impressive. Now, evidently, their use doesn’t mean that the cause at hand must be wrong or unreasonnable; broken clocks can be right. A perfectly decent cause can have inept promoters, and indeed any movement that is large enough will be plagued by some amount of poor reasonings. But when practically all the discourse you encounter is focused on dubious claims about nature and History, none of which make much of a case for the movement’s actual goals, I’d say that’s a cue the movement is probably nuts.

    If the concept of “gender identity” is good and legitimate and beneficial to humanity and whatever, you don’t need to resort to palm trees to justify it. If “gender identity” is good, you’re not demonstrating it by claiming that nature is [homophobic slur that starts with the letter Q]. You don’t need to legitimize it by exploring “the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity,” whatever those are.

    If “gender identity” is good, you can show it by explaining why it is good. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to show that it’s good. It’s really not too complicated, either. It’s even fairly straightforward.

  • Bigger than his head

    I wonder why “Brigitte” Baptiste decided he wanted to pretend to be a woman.

    Just can’t quite figure it out.