The good news is it’s temporary. The bad news is…

Trans and non-binary faces unveiled on Fourth Plinth

Hundreds of plaster casts of transgender and non-binary people have been unveiled as the latest installation on the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth in central London. Called Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) the sculpture was created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles and features the faces of 726 trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people.

The plinth was built in 1841 to display a permanent statue of William IV, but money ran out.

Which is just as well, because who the hell even remembers who William IV was? Or cares?

It was empty until 1999 when it became the location for an ongoing series of temporary artworks, including pieces by David Shrigley, Rachel Whiteread and Antony Gormley.

Temporary. Yay. Can we take this one down now?

Mil Veces un Instante was made by applying plaster directly onto the faces of the models, many of whom were sex workers, so the material became infused with the sitters’ hair and skin cells.

Oh good. Good good good. Let’s make “sex work” something we canonize in public spaces. Next up: statues of men who like to beat up and/or rape women.

Reduxx reports:

Indiana Department Of Corrections Ordered To Arrange Transgender Baby Killer’s “Gender Surgeries” After ACLU-Backed Lawsuit

Who knew baby killing was a civil liberty?

That’s a cheap shot, because the “civil liberty” is the gender surgery bit not the baby killing bit, but the horror of the contemporary ACLU brings out the cheap shot-monger in me.

The ACLU has successfully fought to have a transgender baby killer be given taxpayer-funded “gender affirming” surgeries. Yesterday, the United States District Court of Indiana ruled that Autumn Cordellioné, born Jonathan C. Richardson, had been subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” by being denied the various plastic surgeries he had demanded.

When did non-medical plastic surgeries to change appearance become so essential that not getting them is cruel and unusual punishment?

Richardson is currently serving a 55-year sentence for the murder of his 11-month-old stepdaughter. As previously reported by Reduxx, Richardson had been left to care for the child while her mother was at work…

…

The baby would later die at the hospital, with the cause of death determined to be asphyxiation by manual strangulation. Richardson was booked awaiting a court hearing, and would later tell a prison official “all I know is I killed the little fucking bitch.”

Well no wonder the ACLU is standing up for his sacred right to be a woman.

If you’re going to make your profits by sending massive container ships darting around the world, you need to make sure you do it safely.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking more than $100 million from the two corporations that owned and operated the container ship that destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

The two companies, Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Private Limited, “sent an ill-prepared crew on an abjectly unseaworthy vessel to navigate the United States’ waterways,” the suit reads. “They did so to reap the benefit of conducting business in American ports. Yet they cut corners in ways that risked lives and infrastructure.”

…

In the civil lawsuit, the Justice Department goes into detail about how failures on the ship led to the disastrous collision and slams the two companies for not reporting issues with the ship.

“This tragedy was entirely avoidable,” the department wrote, adding that “none of the four tools that might have averted disaster—the rudder, the propeller, the anchor, or the bow thruster—was working or operating as it should have been.”

Jeezus. That’s like driving on the freeway when your steering wheel and brakes don’t work.

Wadhwa admits. (Look at the size of those hands.)

Uh huh.

If only all these stupid women would realize that our oppression in being seen as men is exactly the same as their oppression in being subordinated as women. Why can’t they grasp this very simple point??? Stupid cows.

This Victoria Bucholz/Karla Marx person is interesting, in an irritating way.

He’s in the history department at Mount Royal University, and a drag queen. (So if he’s a drag queen why is he trying to force people to call him a woman? Drag queens are, obviously, not women – that’s what the “drag” part means.)

Last February:

The newly formed QriTical Research Hub at Mount Royal University is hosting History with a Drag Queen next Thursday, February 8th at MRU’s West Gate Social. Doors open at 6:30 PM.

This event will be a teach-in hosted by the fabulous Karla Marx! 

Karla is a drag queen, burlesque artist, and comedian, using the art of drag to shed new light on the histories of fascism and the contemporary rise of global fascist politics. 

He’s a drag queen. Drag queens are not women.

Developed and embodied by Dr. Victoria Bucholtz (History Dep. MRU), Karla Marx is known for her comedic brilliance, riveting historical analysis, and cheeky approach to educating through entertainment.

Oh I see. Bucholtz is not the drag queen, Marx is. Bucholtz merely “embodies” the drag queen. They’re the same person, but that’s a minor technicality.

Karla Marx is inviting you, the audience, to learn more about the ideologies and impacts of fascism, and to think critically and carefully about the role that “sexual anxiety” is playing in our current social and political landscape.

Which means what? You know. Wicked people saying men are not women: that there is “sexual anxiety” and it’s the road to fascism and it’s all women’s fault. Bitches.

 Taking inspiration from Jason Stanley’s book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), fascist leaders often position themselves as the protectors of women and children against “dangerous homosexuals.” In the context of growing and loudening anti-2SLGBTQIA+ movements in Canada – often under the guise of “protecting the children” – this teach-in will offer individuals a chance to better understand the functioning of “sexual anxiety” in right-wing movements.

I wonder if Bucholtz ever pauses to wonder if he’s the fascist leader.

Lauren Smith at Spiked:

Elizabeth Pitt was employed as a social worker by Cambridgeshire County Council. In January 2023, Pitt, who is a lesbian, attended a meeting of the council’s LGBT employee group. A colleague piped up to say that his dog is ‘genderfluid’.

What would that even mean? Dogs aren’t gendersolid so how can they be genderfluid? Dogs don’t know from gender. Dogs don’t know from ideology; dogs know what they smell.

Pitt decided to call this out as nonsense. This then sparked a heated debate about gender identity more broadly, during which Pitt and another co-worker shared their gender-critical views, criticising things like transwomen being allowed to compete in women’s sports or to enter female bathrooms.

For those of us with an ounce of common sense left, these views will sound perfectly reasonable. But Pitt’s trans-Dachshund-owning co-worker lodged a formal complaint with the council. He described her remarks as ‘offensive’ and ‘nasty opinions’. Another colleague who had been present at the meeting said she had a ‘really aggressive tone’.

Ever been to a workplace meeting? An aggressive tone is not unusual there.

As a result, Pitt was formally disciplined by her employer. Apparently, her opinions were ‘non-inclusive and transphobic’. She was also told that her comments caused ‘significant offence’ and had a ‘detrimental impact on the mental health and wellbeing’ of her colleagues. She was subsequently banned from attending any more events held by the LGBT group and from contacting its members.

In response, Pitt took Cambridgeshire County Council to a tribunal. This week, a judge concluded that her treatment ‘amounted to harassment / direct discrimination’ on the grounds of her gender-critical views – a ‘philosophical belief’ that is protected by the Equality Act 2010. As a result, Cambridgeshire council will not only have to pay out £55,910 in compensation and to cover Pitt’s legal costs, but it will also have to implement staff training on ‘freedom of belief and speech in the workplace’.

Learn the lesson, Cambridgeshire council!

Hmm. What’s the chain of reasoning here?

[Trump] accused President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of inviting assassins to target him when they warn that he is a threat to democracy.

He told Fox News Digital on Monday without evidence that the alleged would-be shooter “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.” Trump went on: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

…

Trump’s running mate advanced an even blunter argument.

“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that … no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance said. “I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.”

Is it though? Two examples out of millions of Dem voters isn’t really strong evidence that anything. If two people out of millions get a headache after eating a banana, medical researchers aren’t going to get all excited about a new avenue of investigation. Two out of millions of anything is just…not not random.

Would I be making similar inferences if two people had tried to shoot Biden or Harris? Probably. I’d be wrong.

But if Democrats are to blame for sometimes going over the top, Trump has made a political brand out of the most outlandish rhetoric uttered by a president or ex-president in the modern history of the United States. The scale and intensity of his invective dwarf anything that the Democrats have flung at him. He calls Harris a “fascist” in almost every public appearance — for instance, he said on August 26 in Virginia that “we have a fascist person running who’s incompetent.” He used similar rhetoric on August 23, August 17, and August 3 in campaign appearances.

Oh he’s just joking.

More on the delicate flower “Karla Marx” –

No no, child, she declined to say that trans women aka men are women. This is because men are not women. She’s not a phobe for knowing that men are not women. You’re a buffoon and a bully for demanding that she say they are, and volubly scolding her when she declines.

Classic.

The essence of trans “activism” in under three minutes – actually in the first minute. Man asks woman if she will say men are women, woman says she wants to think about it, man proceeds to berate her non-stop for the next two minutes.

Man is big, man is tall, man has loud deep confident domineering voice, man does not hesitate to take advantage of all his male tools while upbraiding a woman for not instantly agreeing that men like him are women.

Now there’s a fun way to co-opt “progressive” language about affirmation and being ourselves and solidarity and acceptance and pride.

What went wrong?

“We fully supported from day one,” parent says. “That was never in question. My job is to love and support my child no matter what.”

No it isn’t. To love, yes. To support no matter what, no. It does depend on what the “what” is. If the child tortures animals to death, no, the parent’s job is not to support that. Support the child qua child, get help for the child, do your best to make the child understand, but support the child’s actions, no.

If the child wants to go rock-climbing with no training and no gear, you don’t support that. You veto it.

If the child refuses to eat, you don’t support that. You get help, but you don’t support it.

And that’s how it is with the fad for pretending sex is switchable. Don’t support it. Apply the brakes. Gross the kid out with information about oozing surgery scars and freak the kid out with stories of regret. Do not support the lunatic idea that the kid can switch sex.

The last sentence of that paragraph – “And I will continue to do that while there is a breath in my body” – gives away the fact that she’s exercising her vanity here. “I am a fabulous committed dedicated Parent, and you have to admire me.” No, we really don’t.

Notice how the parent goes on to use the word “support” and its cognates about 90 times, sort of like a godbotherer calling on Jesus or Mo. People are weirdly obsessed with being “supportive” at all times no matter what. Screw that. Some things should not be supported.

Musk is very very dangerous.

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

There are 49 days until Election Day in the United States. Although the presidential race remains extremely close, Donald Trump and his allies have escalated their efforts to undermine the results. 

In a post to Truth Social on Sunday morning, Trump falsely claimed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) “has admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail loss and delays at a level never seen before.” Trump asked, “how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the U.S. Postal Service to run the 2024 Presidential Election?” 

How can we possibly expect Trump to stop lying?

In addition to attacking mail-in voting, Trump has advanced broader claims that Democrats “want to cheat” in the 2024 election. In a September 7 Truth Social post, Trump pledged to prosecute and jail Democrats who repeat “the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election.” (In nearly 4 years since the 2020 election, Trump has produced no evidence of cheating.) Trump claimed that prosecuting “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” was the only way to ensure “this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

“Depravity” is not the right word there – he means “betrayal” or similar – but never mind.

Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2024 election are nothing new. He did the same thing in advance of the 2020 election. The difference is that, this time, he has the public support of wealthy tech billionaires. 

Appearing on the All In podcast, billionaire investor Peter Theil asserted that if the presidential election “is going to be close,” then “I’m pretty sure [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] will win because they will cheat.” Theil claimed, without any evidence, that Democrats will “steal the ballots” to assure a Harris victory. 

Of course Trump is the one who tried to steal the last election by force, but never mind.

H/t Tim Harris

Great god almighty.

Rape survivors met with Sandy Brindley to talk about their fears around self-identified trans “women” at the [Edinburgh] Rape Crisis Centre. After the meeting got going it became clear that Brindley had brought along an activist academic (who, we know from what we read yesterday, was Brindley’s girlfriend), without asking or warning the rape survivors, or even saying who she was or explaining why she was there. The way I understand it is that the rape survivors had asked to meet with Brindley. Not random other people, and sure as fuck not her squeeze who is a trans-ideologue. Brindley simply imposed that situation on them, without asking, without mentioning, without explaining. It would be bad behavior even if the uninvited guest had been a warm ally of the rape survivors. Since she was very much not that, it’s completely outrageous.

And what this terrible person told them is, of course, even worse.

Survivors of rape have no rights in law to expect a female-only service. Picture it to yourself: a woman, uninvited, tells a group of rape survivors they have no right in law to expect men to be excluded from the service they sought at the RAPE CRISIS CENTRE. A woman they never asked to meet with, dumped on them by the woman they did ask to meet with, who is the boss of the rape crisis centre in question. It’s Trump-level insult and sadism.

And there’s all the rest of what this pair of fiends told the women.

It’s like putting a rabbi in charge of Nazi pogroms.

There was a lesbian march in Leeds Saturday.

Well we can’t have that, can we.

No, we can’t have that. We must change the subject to men who call themselves women, and berate the lesbians who marched for not being inclooosive of men. Women must never be allowed to exclude men from anything. Women are dangerous subtle enemies, and can never be trusted.

What a fool.

What a fool, and a tool, and a liar.

Sandy Brindley needs to gtfo.

The head of Scotland’s leading sexual assault support service is facing growing demands to stand down amid the fallout of a damning report into the running of a centre in Edinburgh.

Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, resigned as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre after an independent review commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) concluded that she had failed to behave professionally while in charge of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

A number of women’s groups have joined the Harry Potter author JK Rowling in now calling for the head of RCS, Sandy Brindley, to resign as well.

Why? Because she carries on as if men who pretend to be women 1. are women and 2. matter more than women.

Clare Blom, of the grassroots campaign group Women Won’t Wheesht, said: “It is unforgivable that, even now, she is unwilling to be accountable for her own conduct, or the conduct of others she enabled by her lack of judgment.

“The women of Scotland need and deserve better and she should do the right thing and resign to allow someone to take over who is willing and able to prioritise vulnerable women over the desires of entitled men.”

Instead of the other way around, which is, unbelievably, what she’s been doing.

On Sunday Brindley was attacked by Rowling after being accused of canvassing sexual assault survivors for testimonials in a bid to save her job.

“Attacked” is the wrong word in this context – a context in which women are constantly called foul names for defending women’s rights. Rowling didn’t punch Brindley in the face.

Brindley had told the Sunday Mail she had no knowledge of calls for her to quit and has been backed by some survivors.

But Rowling wrote on X: “Asking rape survivors to get you out of massive self-inflicted PR problem is unfortunately right on brand for the head of Rape Crisis Scotland.

“What are these women there for if not to protect the careers of those running the service?”

Won’t somebody please think of the brindleys?

Dialing the misogyny up to 11.

The issue about Mridul Wadhwa as CEO of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre is not that it’s a “crime” but that it’s wrong. They’re not identical. There’s a hell of a lot of wrong in the world that is entirely legal.

It’s wrong for Wadwha to put himself forward as head of a rape crisis centre because he’s a man. The very fact that he’s insensitive and brutal enough to do so…or, more likely, that he’s malevolent and sadistic enough to do so. Anyway the point is that it’s bad, not that it’s against the law. We can talk about things that are bad even if they’re not criminal.

It’s not that Wadwha “caught the eye” of gender critical feminism, it’s that gc feminism is determined not to hand women’s rights and institutions over to men just because men like Wadwha want them. It’s not the fault of feminists that Wadhwa did what he did, and we have every right to object to his doing it.

We don’t “scream” women’s rights; we try to defend women’s rights. Sneering jeering fleering men like Willoughby are always on hand to accuse us of whining or flirting or screaming or giggling, but that’s because men like Willoughby, and Willoughby himself, have contempt for women and enjoy airing it in public.

Wadwha, who is A MAN, went for and got the job that should obviously be a woman’s job. He got it because he “identified” as a woman (as opposed to being one) and too many people are way too gullible about “trans rights” and “trans activism” and “trans women.” Willoughby is another man who claims to be a woman, and he’s keen to talk angry smack about women who resist the male takeover.

I’m tired of it.

Holeeeee shit.

Take a deep breath before reading.

Complete horror show.

Vance cheerily admits he’s just making shit up.

In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.

Yunh-uh like the way Hitler created stories to draw attention to Europe’s relatively large Jewish population. No problem, nothing to see here.

Vance ultimately defended his endorsement of the lies about Springfield as calling attention to the immigration policies at the White House while Harris has served as vice-president to Joe Biden.

That’s what lies about despised groups of people do, they call attention. Then once the attention is called, the next steps can be anything from insults to genocide.

Be careful what you call attention to.