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.

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…

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 3, 2024

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

Sigh.

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

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.”

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?

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

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.

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.

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

Just can’t quite figure it out.

Stupid confusing meaningless headline: check.

Trans scientist makes BBC’s 100 Women list

Meaning the “scientist” identifies as a scientist but has no actual qualifications to be a scientist and knows nothing about science?

No. Of course, as always, they mean a man who pretends to be a woman makes BBC’s 100 Women list. As always, they should say that in the headline, instead of burbling about trans scientists.

Broadcaster says Brigitte Baptiste uses a queer lens to analyse landscapes and species in a bid to expand the notion of ‘nature’

What’s a queer lens?

Nothing. Pretentious guff.

The BBC has included a transgender Colombian scientist in its annual list of 100 inspiring women, just days after sparking controversy over its choice for women’s footballer of the year.

Every year, the broadcaster compiles a list of women who have achieved great things in public life.

Its nominees include transgender biologist Brigitte Baptiste, described in the citation as a “trans woman” who “explores the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity”.

Finally, in the third paragraph, the Telegraph admits he’s a “trans woman.” Why take so long? Why not be clear in the headline and the lede? It’s what the story is about, after all.

In a 2018 TED talk, Ms Baptiste claimed scientists had discovered “transsexual” palm trees and stated that the “change of sex and gender has been reported regularly in science”.

On this basis, she argued that it was wise to do away with ideas of “naturalness” in nature, stating: “There is nothing more queer than nature.”

So he’s saying “queer” isn’t natural?

Really?

Last year Nepalese transgender activist Rukshana Kapali was chosen for the list following a legal fight to change gender officially from male to female.

In 2022, the BBC included Erika Hilton, the first black trans woman to be elected to Brazil’s National Congress, and Efrat Tilma, the first trans woman to volunteer for the Israeli police.

Well why not just make the whole list trans “women”? If you’re going to insult women, might as well go the distance.

Next it will be cartoon characters, pirates, caddies, celebrity chefs.

Trump makes his vapid daughter’s only slightly criminal daddy-in-law Ambassador to France.

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would name Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate executive and father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France, handing one of his earliest and most high-profile ambassador appointments to a close family associate.

A close family associate with no known qualifications for being an ambassador to Staten Island, let alone France.

The announcement was the latest step in a long-running exchange of political support between the two men. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then emerged as a major donor to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Hahaha tactful. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then paid up.

Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister.

So, obviously he should be ambassador to France.

Another day another list.

The BBC has included a transgender Colombian scientist in its annual list of 100 inspiring women, just days after sparking controversy over its choice for women’s footballer of the year.

Let’s ask ourselves: why does the BBC have a list (annual, even) of 100 inspiring women? It doesn’t have an annual list of 100 inspiring men, so why does it have one of women? It has to be because women get overlooked, so let’s try to correct that overlooking with lists. It’s an attempt at affirmation of the overlooked half of humanity, aka affirmative action. That being so…what the hell do they think they’re doing, adding a man who insults women by pretending to be one on their own damn list of Let’s Not Overlook Women?

Every year, the broadcaster compiles a list of women who have achieved great things in public life. Its nominees include transgender biologist Brigitte Baptiste, described in the citation as a “trans woman” who “explores the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity”.

But a “trans woman” is a man, so he doesn’t belong on the list, and shouldn’t be there, and the BBC is yet again spitting in women’s faces.

In 2023, Nepalese transgender activist Rukshana Kapali was chosen for the list following a legal fight to change gender officially from male to female.

In 2022, the BBC included Erika Hilton, the first black trans woman to be elected to Brazil’s National Congress; and Efrat Tilma, the first trans woman to volunteer for the Israeli police.

Deliberate, calculated insult.

Meet “Rainbow Laces” –

Football has the power to bring us together. 

Clubs and communities are stronger when everyone feels welcome, and it’s down to all of us to make that happen.

That’s why we, the Premier League, proudly stand alongside Stonewall in promoting equality and diversity.

A key focus of the partnership with Stonewall encourages LGBT+ acceptance among children and young people involved in community and education initiatives such as Premier League Primary Stars and Premier League Kicks, and within Academies.

Coaches, teachers and leaders are equipped with bespoke resources and programmes developed by the League and Stonewall which promote positive attitudes towards the LGBT+ community.

Blah blah blah, on and on, short paragraph after short paragraph, until you can’t see the horizon any more.

Funny how it’s never occurred to them to encourage acceptance of women, who are 1. half the population and 2. the source of all the population. Women are old news, not cute and interesting like the elljeebeeteecyoo communniny. So GET WITH THE PROGRAM. Salute the communninny. Bow to the communninny. Flatter the communninny. And hurry up about it!

But uh oh – someone has balked. The horror.

OPTED NOT TO WEAR?????

Can he do that? Is it even legal? Can they execute him?

We’re caught between this crap and Trump’s crap. Our space to stand on is shrinking rapidly.

Tom Nichols on why Biden’s pardoning his worthless son is such a bad move.

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter is a done deal. The president has not only obviated the existing cases against Hunter; the sweep of the pardon effectively immunizes his son against prosecution for all federal crimes he may have committed over the course of more than a decade. This pardon is a terrible idea—“both dishonorable and unwise,” in the words of the Bulwark editor Jonathan Last—and, as my colleague Jonathan Chait wrote yesterday, it reflected Biden’s choice “to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.”

Obviously. Hunter Biden isn’t some random guy caught up in a mess, much less some good and useful guy victimized by others. He’s the pardoner’s son, and the pardoner is the head of state, and of course Joe Biden is putting his daddy feelz ahead of everyone else’s safety and ability to live in a country that’s not a putrefying swamp of corruption.

But it was also a tremendous strategic blunder, one that will haunt Democrats as they head into the first years of another Trump administration.

Why? Because it’s a “go right ahead” for all those wannabe overthrowers of the government to do it again.

But the Republican Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump World, and had Biden not pardoned his son, elected Republicans at every level would have had to answer for Trump’s actions without reference to the Bidens. They would have had to say, on the record, whether they agreed with Trump letting people who stormed the Capitol and assaulted law-enforcement officers out of jail. Although Trump would have remained beyond the reach of the voters, the vulnerable Republicans running for reelection might have pleaded with him to avoid some of the more potentially disgusting pardons.

Forget all that. Joe Biden has now provided every Republican—and especially those running for Congress in 2026—with a ready-made heat shield against any criticism about Trump’s pardons, past or present. Biden has effectively neutralized pardons as a political issue, and even worse, he has inadvertently given power to Trump’s narrative about the unreliability of American institutions.

Nice work, Joe. Thanks a lot.

Biden has now hobbled an effective case that his own party could have made going into 2026, even against Trump. Most people understand corruption, and though they may not care about it very much, they don’t like it shoved in their faces. Some of Trump’s pardons could have been politically damaging to Republicans: Just over a week ago, a poll found that 64 percent of Americans would object to pardoning those convicted for January 6–related offenses.

But how do Democrats make that case now that Biden sounds so much like Trump when it comes to the justice system? Biden’s statement on the pardon had a kind of Trumpian, unspecific paranoia to it: “In trying to break Hunter,” the president stated, “they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Me me me – as if Joe Biden’s personal life were more important than the US falling off a cliff into wholly corrupt despotism.

CNN slobbers over Chase Strangio:

Strangio, an attorney for the ACLU, is set to make history Wednesday as the first known transgender person to argue before the US Supreme Court. And he’ll do it as part of the most high-profile dispute on the docket this session.

The case, US v. Skrmetti, challenges a Tennessee law that bans treatments, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers, for transgender minors and imposes civil penalties on doctors who violate the prohibitions. Some two dozen similar laws have been enacted in recent years in Republican-led states.

Wait a second though. The putative treatments aren’t actually treatments. They’re more like medical malpractice.

The justices will decide whether Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for children and adolescents violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, a question that could allow a majority of the court to hold that laws targeting transgender people are unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Or a majority of the court could hold that the laws protect people who think they’re the opposite sex from drastic interventions.

A ruling along those lines would give civil rights lawyers a powerful tool for fighting anti-trans laws on bathroom access, school sports and pronouns. A ruling that allows Tennessee’s ban to stand, by contrast, could be seen as a tacit endorsement of those policies, clearing the way for states to pass still more laws aimed at trans Americans.

But, again, the laws aren’t “anti-trans” unless you assume that the whole edifice of trans ideology is healthy and useful and entirely fair to everyone. What if it’s not?