Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Guest post: Scientific fact AND philosophical belief

    Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on These rococo claims.

    Maya Forstater won her landmark employment case in the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on Thursday, June 10, 2021. The UK EAT is a high court, so she won a binding precedent for lower court cases (e.g. in the more recent case of Elizabeth Pitt that the FSU reported above).

    Later that day, Freddie Sayers interviewed Maya about her case, and Ophelia posted the interview video here. In my comment #6 there, I transcribed part of the video, where Maya explained that her legal position had two parts to be taken together:

    (1) The scientific FACT that â€œsex is real” â€” as her shorthand for “binary, immutable”, and “a scientific fact”.

    (2) Her philosophical BELIEF that â€œsex matters” â€” as her shorthand for “it’s a social and political, and economic, salient, important thing.”

    In my comments on my transcript, I noted my relief that her legal position did not claim the fact of sex to be a belief. My transcript is a good reference to read her explain this more.

  • Fun with engineering

    On a brighter note, meet the Falkirk Wheel. It joins two canals that are at different heights. They used to be joined by 12 locks that took almost an entire day to go through. Now the joining takes minutes.

    Adding another, filmed by a drone.

  • If, during any of your events, a speaker shares an opinion

    Cheltenham Literary Festival is in a panic because – oh my god – people might have unpopular thoughts which they might utter aloud.

    Cheltenham Literature Festival has come under fire after issuing a warning notice to speakers comparing gender-critical views with racism and homophobia.

    The festival, which begins today, sent an email to people who are hosting talks at the event, asking them to follow new guidance “in order to protect both yourselves and the [festival] from complaints”. It said: “If, during any of your events, a speaker shares an opinion that could be deemed controversial, please reinforce that everyone is entitled to express an opinion, however Cheltenham Festivals [the organiser] does not endorse the views shared on stage. By controversial we mean those views that may be harmful to an individual or group of people, particularly those who have been historically marginalised or oppressed.”

    So what did they lead with? I’ll give you one guess.

    It gave a list of examples headed by “gender-critical views”. 

    First item on the list, knowing that men are not women. That’s their peak historical marginalized and oppressed. Not women. Not women being treated the way the Taliban treats women. Not indigenous people, not enslaved people, not workers, not immigrants, not Jews, not Uighurs, not lesbians and gay men, but people who pretend to be the “gender” opposite their own. They lead the list; they are the most oppressed.

    The list went on to include “misogyny; extreme political views including on migration, sexuality, gender, and military action; potentially problematic views on race, religion, or ethnicity; homophobia, including opinions linked to religion; extreme views on abortion and female reproductive health; widely disputed conspiracy theories”.

    So, what does the festival want people to talk about then? Chocolate? The weather? Plums? Sealing wax? Tree houses?

    Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at the human rights charity Sex Matters, said: “Heaven forbid that a book festival should allow mention of biological reality without immediately distancing itself.

    “It is of course outrageous to compare gender-critical views to racism or conspiracy theories. But Cheltenham Literature Festival is only revealing publicly the degree of hostility routinely suffered in private by gender-critical women in literary circles.

    And political circles, and artistic circles, and sporting circles, and all the other circles, except the ones that form around men who claim to be women.

  • No more fluffy bunnies

    Yebbut that’s not what competitive sports does. That’s not how it works. The whole point is that somebody wins, which entails that somebody loses. It’s not about “being kind”; it’s about being the best.

    San Jose State volleyball played its first game on Thursday night since three Mountain West schools announced they would forfeit rather than play the Spartans and transgender starter Blaire Fleming. 

    After the match, Spartans head coach Todd Kress said he was “disappointed” that his team was “losing opportunities to play” but did not reference why, exactly, schools don’t want to face San Jose State. 

    Well, Coach Kress, people are “choosing not to play” your team because your team chooses to roster a biological male. You’ve made a choice, so they’ve made their own choice. 

    That’s kind of how this works. 

    Colorado State head coach Emily Kohan also bemoaned that politics were involved with collegiate women’s volleyball…”I don’t have a strong desire to be a politician in the future. But I do have a strong desire to raise critical thinkers in my program.  And for them to understand their own selves and what’s important to them, and be able to make really conscious and mature decisions out of that. And to always make those decisions out of kindness, right?” 

    No. Not right. Not in the sense you mean. Kindness is not relevant here. Fairness is relevant here. Women being “kind” by letting men cheat them in their own sports is not even “kindness”; it’s masochism, it’s surrender, it’s letting bullies win.

    Kindness is not always appropriate or useful or right. It’s not good to be kind to people like Trump, for instance. It only encourages him to be even worse. People like Trump need to be told No, with no warmth or charm or apology or kindness to soften the blow. It’s the same with men who want to ruin women’s sports. No.

  • Such a puzzle

    Gee, why don’t female athletes want to go up against teams that include male players? I just can’t figure it out.

    San Jose State volleyball played its first game on Thursday night since three Mountain West schools announced they would forfeit rather than play the Spartans and transgender starter Blaire Fleming. 

    That is, rather than play the Spartans, who have a male player.

    After the match, Spartans head coach Todd Kress said he was “disappointed” that his team was “losing opportunities to play” but did not reference why, exactly, schools don’t want to face San Jose State. 

    …

    “It’s not just us that are losing opportunities to play,” Kress continued. “It’s the people choosing not to play us, and that’s very unfortunate when it comes to these young women who have earned the right to step on the court and play.” 

    Well, Coach Kress, people are “choosing not to play” your team because your team chooses to roster a biological male. You’ve made a choice, so they’ve made their own choice. 

    That’s kind of how this works. 

    “And so I just think that we’re in a position where it appears that government and politics have kind of intertwined itself with college sports,” Kress added. 

    Including the politics of letting a man play on the women’s team.

  • Shit in your own soup why don’t you

    I guess Cheltenham Literary Festival identifies as disdainful of literature. Seems odd, given the name.

    The lit fest isn’t just words on a page – ew, how gross would that be? Words on a page are for snobs and toffs and probably terfs. Ew.

  • These rococo claims

    A win…but how grotesque that there was ever a contest. Frederick Attenborough at the Free Speech Union underlines how grotesque it all is:

    A gender critical social worker was harassed by her colleagues after making “non-inclusive and transphobic” comments about a co-worker’s “gender-neutral” dog, a tribunal ruled. Elizabeth Pitt, who worked for Cambridgeshire county council, was awarded £63,000 after bosses reprimanded her for expressing gender critical views at an online meeting.

    The background to Ms Pitt’s claim is that she made various comments during a Zoom meeting of the county council’s LGBTQIA+ Group in January 2023. The meeting began with a male colleague claiming that his dachshund was “gender-fluid” and that he put a dress on the dog “to prompt debate about gender”. No doubt feeling that there’s only so much of this sort of thing anyone can reasonably be expected to put up with, Ms Pitt and a lesbian colleague of hers, who was also in attendance, went on the offensive, expressing their belief that sex is binary and immutable, and pointing out that there are two sexes and people cannot change sex.

    It was, after all, a meeting for lesbians and gay men. Lesbians ought to be free to say that men are not women in meeting for lesbians and gay men. Wouldn’t you think? But no, apparently that’s too boring now, the only interesting people in LGBT alphabet soup are the ones who claim to be the sex they are not. All make-believe all the time.

    The reaction of Ms Pitt’s colleagues to hearing perfectly lawful views that they disagreed with, but were apparently intellectually incapable of rebutting, was to accuse her of “symbolic violence”. One attendee described Ms Pitt as having “a really aggressive tone,” and said he found it “quite inappropriate” that she and her colleague had commented on “transwomen participating in women’s sports and sharing women’s spaces”.

    Wawawa. The women are talking. Make them stop. Wawawa.

    Following receipt of these rococo claims, the council’s management wrote to Ms Pitt to tell her a “formal concern” had been received in relation to “some views” she had expressed during the Zoom call, which were “perceived to be of an inappropriate and offensive nature”.

    It’s “inappropriate” to say that men are not women, so lesbians just have to shut up and take dick it.

    Management then prepared a report claiming Ms Pitt’s “comments… were perceived to be non-inclusive and transphobic”, had “caused significant offence”, and had been “particularly inappropriate and ill-judged”. It said they had “a detrimental impact on the mental health and well-being” of the complainants”.

    It is not reasonable, or fair, or just, to try to force women to be “inclusive” of men in the category of women.

    Four months later, in October 2023, Ms Pitt took the local authority to an employment tribunal, pleading harassment related to sexual orientation and her philosophical belief that gender is immutable.

    Her tribunal had been due to commence on Monday 29th July 2024, but after making their former employee wait around for 10 months, Cambridgeshire county council decided to back down at precisely 8:38am on the morning of the hearing. Having accepted liability for direct discrimination on the grounds of Ms Pitt’s gender critical beliefs amounting to a philosophical belief within the meaning of section 10 of the Equality Act 2010, it agreed to pay her compensation.

    Hostile work environment much?

  • You what now?

    Sometimes you just have to track down the source.

    I saw this on Facebook, posted by Jay Novella.

    So I wanted to know more, because was it really that incoherent and nothing to do with the question asked and random and babbling about an award? And the answer is yes but more so. There’s some punctuation in the version Novella shared that is not there in the reality.

  • Ooh that’s controversho

    Chelt Lit Fest puts a target on women who know men are not women.

    Watch out for opinions that could be deemed controversial, folks.

    Of course, that’s all opinions, so maybe you should just stay home, with all the doors locked and all the windows covered.

    Also, notice that Chelt Lit Fest puts awareness that men are not women right at the top of the list. It seems that the most potentially controversial opinion one can have is that men are not women. I wonder if it occurs to CLF that they’re saying basically all people hold an opinion that is The Most Potentially Controversial aka evil evil evil. All people know that men are not women, even the trans ideologues. The game is to pretend not to know that, so that men who pretend to be women can have double the fun: pretending to be women and bullying actual women.

    Chelt Lit Fest should rename itself. Department of You Can’t Say That perhaps?

  • Unleash the scare quotes

    Hmm. Pink News:

    The founder of a social media app designed for “females” is appealing against a finding that it discriminated against a transgender woman.

    For “”females””? Really? Scare quotes on the word “female” because there’s no such thing? A man is a transgender woman, but women are “””females”””? The male category exists but the female one is just a sad pathetic joke?

    Duly noted, Pink News. By the way you can’t have pink. If we can’t have female, you can’t have pink.

  • Sabbath blabbath

    Project 2025 even wants to reimpose the sabbath on us. Annie Laurie Gaylor has the details:

    Today, we take for granted that you can do many of the things on Sunday that you can do on other days, perhaps reduced hours notwithstanding. Will this still be the case if Project 2025 becomes a reality? Not if the Heritage Foundation gets its way. Let’s turn to page 589 of Project 2025, to a subsection titled “Sabbath Rest.”

    “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day,” states the document. “Moreover, a shared day off makes it possible for families and communities to enjoy time off together, rather than as atomized individuals, and provides a healthier cadence of life for everyone. Unfortunately, the communal day of rest has eroded under the pressures of consumerism and secularism, especially for low-income workers.”

    Project 2025 assures us that churches, naturally, would, in most instances, be exempt from this rule! It pretends to care about workers, but clearly the real goal is to get more bodies back into churches because of less competition.

    The document continues: “That day would default to Sunday, except for employers with a sincere religious observance of a Sabbath at a different time (e.g., Friday sundown to Saturday sundown); the obligation would transfer to that period instead.”

    The project calls for Congress to encourage “communal rest” (sounds kinky!), by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require time-and-a half pay for working on “the Sabbath” regardless of whether someone is truly working overtime. It concedes this would “lead to higher costs and limited access to goods and services and reduce work available on the Sabbath,” but after all, “the proper role of government in helping to enable individuals to practice their religion is to reduce barriers to work options and to fruitful employer and employee relations.”

    Like hell it is.

  • Augmentation

    Even the Mayo Clinic does this. I’m not sure I knew.

    Feminizing surgery, also called gender-affirming surgery, involves procedures that help better align the body with a person’s gender identity. Research has found that gender-affirming surgery can have a positive impact on well-being and sexual function.

    Feminizing surgery includes several options, such as top surgery to increase the size of the breasts. That procedure also is called breast augmentation.

    That is, surgery on men to increase the size of men’s “breasts.” Do men even have breasts? Nipples, yes, but breasts?

    Breast surgery. Surgery to increase breast size is called top surgery or breast augmentation. It can be done through implants, the placement of tissue expanders under breast tissue, or the transplantation of fat from other parts of the body into the breast.

    Does that seem like a sensible thing to do?

  • Training module

    It’s not clear what county council this is (possibly Hampshire), but whatever council it is, it’s interesting in more than one way. Or maybe it’s just variations on one way. It’s interesting but highly irritating that any council or anyone else is trying to train anyone via childish cartoons.

    If you play it you will see how insultingly crude and infantile it is, and you will wonder what the hell is the point. Who in charge thinks it’s effective to treat the public like a concert hall full of toddlers? Full of potentially racist/anti-immigrant toddlers? What’s the deal with the slow drawing of a line through a day on the calendar over and over?

    More substantively though there is the ubiquitous mashing together of “anti-immigrant” with resistance to a particular monotheistic religion. Islam is the worst of the monotheisms (they’re all bad), and it has to be resisted. Islam teaches that all non-marital sex is the fault of women and that therefore women have to be ferociously hidden and controlled and deprived. Dopy patronizing cartoons don’t change that.

  • Bum bum bum bum bum

    Appropriate advertising to have on public transportation? Or no?

  • Keir Starmer is thin-skinned

    Tom Harris at the Telegraph on Duffield v Starmer:

    Starmer only became an MP in 2015, but was already talked about as a future leader, despite his lack of campaigning or political experience. It is the complaint most often heard from Labour politicians and ex-politicians: he’s just not that political.

    This lack of political skills nearly condemned him to political oblivion just one year after being elected leader of his party, with the loss of the Hartlepool by-election. Sitting governments winning a seat from the official opposition half-way through a parliament is a strange and rare event. Fortunately for Starmer, the Conservative Party came to his aid with a series of fratricidal misjudgments, dispensing of two prime ministers and gifting the next election to the Labour Party without its needing to make much effort to win.

    But Duffield has exposed Labour’s victory for what it really was: a vote of no confidence in all the political parties, but one from which Labour happened to be in a position to benefit.

    It would be a huge mistake for the party to now ignore Duffield, but it is also likely. Keir Starmer is thin-skinned – another weakness – and has refused on a number of occasions even to acknowledge Duffield’s existence. The woman who in 2017 won Labour’s only seat in Kent was condemned to the political wilderness by a man peeved to be called out on his previous naĂŻve and ill-informed acceptance of trans ideology. 

    Some men – grown-ass adult men at that – are astonishingly thin-skinned about women who disagree with them.

    Yet when Starmer himself slowly and painfully reneged on the catechism that “trans women are women”, he could not bring himself to acknowledge that Duffield had been right all along. During the general election campaign, he attributed his conversion to the realities of biological science (“Men have penises and women have vaginas”, apparently) to Tony Blair. 

    First rule of Boys’ Club: find a man to credit.

  • Believed to be acidic

    Probably not random:

    A 14-year-old schoolgirl has been seriously injured after a substance, believed to be acidic, was thrown at her and another teenager outside her school in west London, with a staff member also becoming hurt while trying to help them. The girl remains in hospital with potentially life-changing injuries following the incident at Westminster Academy, Westbourne Park, which took place after school hours on Monday afternoon.

    The Metropolitan Police says it believes the two teens were approached on Alfred Road by a male “who threw a substance at them before fleeing down Harrow Road”.

    I think “potentially life-changing” probably means the acid melted her face.

  • Never except when he did

    Wellllll he didn’t support a national ban on abortion, he said he wanted a national ban on abortion. Totally different thing. To be fair.

    J.D. Vance attempted to distort his own position on abortion in the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, suggesting that he “never supported a national ban.” In the past, he has said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was needed to stop women from going to another state to get an abortion.

    It’s silly to say “suggesting” when it’s simply what he said. Sometimes you just have to use the same word over and over, for the sake of meaning.

    Anyway, it’s what he said.

  • Three children without a mother

    Pro Publica reports on one pregnancy made fatal by Georgia’s woman-hating law.

    Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her. “They said it was going to be more painful and her body might not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.

    But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.

    At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.

    Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.

    It’s Savita Halappanavar all over again.

  • Liberty in Georgia

    Georgia women get to make decisions about their own bodies and lives again.

    A judge in Georgia has struck down the state’s abortion law that has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy since it took effect in 2022. Georgia’s Life Act was fully nullified by Judge Robert McBurney’s decision, meaning that the state must now allow abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

    The judge wrote in his order that “liberty in Georgia” includes “the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices”.

    It’s quite an important liberty, when you think about it.

    Gov Kemp’s office criticised the judge’s ruling on Monday. “Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” Garrison Douglas, Kemp’s spokesperson, said in a statement. “Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”

    The category “the most vulnerable among us” does not include processes in other people’s abdomens. Pregnancy is a process; it’s not yet a person.

  • No barrier to others she says

    Maggie Chapman MSP throws women under a whole fleet of buses.

    Yes it is. Of course it is. Men displace women, and they’re a physical danger to women.
    But it’s not “no matter” our body type or the details of our “biological makeup.” Both of those do matter in sports; in professional and high level competitive sports, they are why the participants are divided by sex. It’s women who need our solidarity.