When people with important human rights roles have nothing but contempt for the rights of women.
Easy for him to say.
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
-
Leave only a tiny sample
Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company, has joined a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s decision to significantly reduce the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, removing protections from nearly 3m acres.
In July, the president approved the reduction of the sites by 90%, clearing the way to open the land to oil and gas companies. He argued in his proclamations that doing so would allow lands to be “put to a higher-priority use” and that they contained critical minerals important to “resource independence …[and] national security”.
Trump previously targeted the monuments, which are sacred to tribes, in his first term. Joe Biden ultimately overturned it.
When in doubt, destroy and use up irreplaceable things. Always choose destruction.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the federal lawsuit on Wednesday along with several other conservation groups, described Trump’s proclamations as “one of the largest rollbacks of public land protections in US history”.
“These monuments protect places that took millions of years to form. President Trump is trying to destroy them with a stroke of a pen. That cannot stand,” said Christy Goldfuss, the NRDC executive director.
“Once you open these lands to mining and drilling, what gets lost is not coming back – ancient cliff dwellings, dinosaur fossils found nowhere else on Earth and sacred sites tied to the tribal nations.”
Do not destroy the dinosaur fossils! I’m serious.
The other groups that challenged Trump’s rollback in court include the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Earthjustice, which represents Grand Canyon Trust, WildEarth Guardians, the Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, Great Old Broads for Wilderness and the National Parks Conservation Association.
Great Old Broads?! Sign me up!
-
Always
Samantha Niblett has always been a trans ally? So, for 46 years? That’s fascinating because how many people even knew trans people existed 46 years ago? Especially in infancy?
Wellll by “always” she meant…um…a long time. Quite a long time. The exact length of the time is a question for the experts.
It’s a weird thing to believe, you know. Goes against our most basic knowledge. I think awareness of the difference starts in infancy. It’s quite possible that it starts in utero. Haven’t there been experiments to test that? Whether infants can tell the difference, and it turns out that they certainly can? I think there have.
Funny, just a week ago she said
Why yes, we do, and some of those bodies are female, while others are male.
-
He’s tired of being called racist
I’ve run out of time for the moment so I’ll just leave you with this little gem.
-
If a woman
But wait.
“…if a woman needing help was wearing a burqa came into your surgery asking for help…”
But women don’t wear burqas because women, women wear burqas because men. Ultimately it’s because babies and paternity and all that. Men police women between the legs because men don’t want to waste their resources on some other man’s sprog. The burqa is to hide the slut from men.
-
What do words even mean?
Trump may have committed “serious” ethical violations by giving three officials including his close personal aide Natalie Harp cash gifts of $45,000 each, according to a former White House “ethics czar”, as a watchdog group called for an investigation.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics over the US president’s handouts to a handful of staff, arguing that an investigation is “clearly warranted”.
Norm Eisen, who was a special counsel to Barack Obama for ethics and government reform, said the payments were a possible breach of regulation 18 USC 209, a federal conflict of interest statute that prohibits the US government’s executive branch employees from receiving payment beyond their salary for performing their official duties.
Possible breach? Looks like an obvious breach.
The White House has denied that they represent a breach of ethical codes.
But Eisen said the denials strained credibility. “It appears to raise the most serious issues under 18 USC 209, which prohibits supplementation of income,” he said. “The White House denies that these payments represent income supplementation but that is hard to believe under the circumstances.”
How is 45k added to your salary not income supplementation? It ain’t income diminution, now is it.
-
Bribery and fraud
Both disgusting and dishonest.
He can’t, and he wouldn’t if he could.
Plus you’re not allowed to buy votes. No, really, you’re not.
-
Australian law is now set in stone
Ok well that’s insane.
The High Court has refused Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover special leave to appeal the case brought against her by transwoman Roxanne Tickle, meaning that without new legislation, Australian law is now set in stone: men can become women, and sex is not purely biological.
Except, the law can’t do that. It can force people to say it, but it can’t make it true.
It’s an odd kind of law then. You have to say things that are not true if you discuss this subject, but they remain untrue even though we require you to say them. Sorry, but that’s the law!
Ms Grover had been seeking to overturn a finding by the Federal Court that she directly discriminated against Ms Tickle on the basis of her “gender identity” when she barred the transwoman from the female-only networking Giggle app. However the High Court announced on Thursday that it was refusing special leave to appeal, with costs awarded against Ms Grover.
The court had been expected to accept the case, which raised fundamental questions about the legal rights of women and transgender people. In a two-sentence explanation of its decision, the High Court said: “There is no reason to doubt the Full Court’s construction of s. 7D (1) and (2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth). Any appeal dependent on the demonstration of error in the Full Court’s construction of those provisions has insufficient prospects of success to warrant a grant of special leave to appeal.”
So lies win and truth loses.
Ms Grover told The Australian she was “absolutely devastated” by the decision.
“We now have confirmation that the High Court is captured by an ideology, as is the Federal Court, and so we need politicians to fix this. We have a government that won’t, but we have rising opposition to this kind of ideology being imposed upon people.
“Everybody is now at the mercy of Australian Human Rights Commission Complaints if you don’t go along with this – no one is safe because if you are deemed to have discriminated against a man who claims to be a woman, you have no legal recourse.”
It doesn’t make one want to up sticks and move to Australia, does it.
-
Always been always will be
Why?
Why has she always been a trans ally? For that matter how has she always been a trans ally? Trans people haven’t always been around, so how could she have always been their ally?
But more urgent is the question why will she always be an ally. She can’t be a trans ally without being an enemy to women. Why be an enemy to women?
Men who pretend to be women are absolutely hell-bent on taking everything from women and keeping it for themselves. Being an ally to men of that kind is like taking a baseball bat to women’s skulls.
Men don’t need allies as much as women do. Men are not as vulnerable as women are. I don’t say that because I like it – I hate it – I say it because it’s the infuriating truth.
So why is Samantha Niblett rushing to cuddle and console men while helping to demolish women’s rights?
-
Wreathed in smiles
It’s turned into fume at Stella Creasy day but if she will be such a fool it can’t be helped.
The camera pans the room. Notice anything?
It’s all men. Most of them look bored or hostile or both.
She’s all bubbly and cheery and they look as if they’d like to throw her off a tall building.
The thing is, religions are not just another innocent physical attribute. Religions have content, and some of that content is bad for many people. Snuggling it is not always a wise move.
-
On them, yes, but in them, no
More on the “filming in toilets” issue.
Now wait just a damn minute.
Filming people actually using the actual toilets (not the room but the appliance) is a sick and twisted thing to do. Filming people in the room where the toilets can be found is not necessarily a sick and twisted thing to do.
For example: filming a man in the room that contains toilets for women is a useful thing to do. He shouldn’t be there, and it useful to have records of men doing this.
-
Their own march
More on the Stella Creasy conundrum, aka the tension between wanting to appear to have some respect for the rights of women and girls and wanting to pretend that Islam is a benign friendly egalitarian religion and we all ought to embrace it as a friend.
“Why is this fine?” Jenni Russell asked.
Women have their own march and event. Yes: it’s called the back of the bus.
When X kind of people have “their own” public celebration that arrangement tends not to be a privilege but an exclusion. Muslim women have “their own” everything because they are ferociously excluded from public spaces and institutions thanks to the misogynistic suspicion and hatred that is so central to Mohammed’s religion.
-
The absence of women
Joan Smith disputes Stella Creasy:
Stella Creasy is giving Muslim misogyny a free pass
Some ideas are just incompatible. For example, it makes no sense to support the separation of men and women in public spaces and in the same breath describe yourself as a “proud feminist”. Trying to do so, as the Labour MP Stella Creasy has been doing on X, hollows out the word’s meaning.
On Sunday evening, Creasy posted footage of Muslims celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad in her east London constituency. Watching the video, one is immediately struck by the fact that the procession through the streets of Walthamstow appears to consist entirely of men. “Food, sweets and roses all shared by those marching with the local residents,” Creasy trilled, without acknowledging the absence of women from the video.
The women are in the kitchens preparing the food and sweets.
Challenged by Times columnist Jenni Russell, Creasy shared a video of herself with a group of Muslim women, wearing black robes and the hijab, whom she described as “the future optometrists, lawyers, accountants, surgeons and leaders of our community and country”. She insisted that they also celebrate the prophet’s birthday, only acknowledging yesterday that “the women have their own march and event.” She went on to say that “many religions do have separate events and structures.”
Yes, they do, and that’s the problem. Hint: “separate but equal”. When that’s white kids in this school and black kids in this other school, it turns out that’s not equal at all, it’s separation, aka apartheid. The same applies to men parading and women nowhere to be seen.
That is exactly the problem. Multiple religions insist on separation of the sexes, including at public events, which is a practice opposed by feminism pretty much since its inception. Women have always had to fight for unconditional access to public space, without having to be accompanied by a male relative or observe a discriminatory dress code. There are countries where such prohibitions are taken to an extreme, such as Afghanistan, but the underlying assumption — that women don’t have the same rights as men — is the same.
The male god has suspicion of and contempt for women.
It’s not the first time that women have been excluded from a public event on religious grounds. In October last year, women and teenage girls were excluded from a charity run in Victoria Park organized by the East London Mosque Trust. A statement on the trust’s website said that “our inclusive atmosphere ensures that every individual, from the youngest to the oldest, can take part and make a difference.” Without missing a beat, it went on to say that men and boys “of all ages” were welcome, but only “girls under 12” could participate. After fierce criticism, this year’s run will be divided into male and female events — on different days and at different venues.
Because otherwise those pubescent girls will be spreading their legs for the poor innocent boys, because those girls are sluts and whores and need stoning to death. Understood?
-
Leaders with no faces
MP Stella Creasy posted this:
[The “more” in “show more” is one word: fantastic.]
That’s an extremely infuriating post. Future lawyers and surgeons? Wearing niqabs? Really? Will the men allow them to do what it takes to become lawyers and surgeons? Come on. The niqab is not some neutral article of clothing, it’s a stifling inhibiting conspicuous shroud that is forced on women by a religion that despises women. The girls in that photo are not free to decide to be lawyers and surgeons, and Creasy must know that. And the issue is not what they think, it’s what they’re free to do. If Creasy doesn’t know that she sure as hell ought to.
-
Fancy meeting you here
Update: Sorry, sources went private after I posted this so that’s why there are dead ends. Summary: Robin “Moira” White was spotted in a women’s toilet and he was filmed.
Women don’t like it but hey who cares about that.
At least one person objected to filming him, but I don’t buy it – he should not be there, he’s committing a crime by being there, and he has zero respect for women’s privacy or safety. He has the opposite of that: he likes making women uncomfortable and afraid. We know that because if he didn’t like it he wouldn’t do it. He’s not being compelled in any way, so he must like it.
-
Because you’re a man
Aw, diddums.
Whether it’s a crime or not, it is a very shit thing to do, to run for a reserved female space when you’re a man. Zero sympathy here.
-
Efforts to reshape
Trump drives out another public servant.
Lonnie Bunch III said he will retire as the head of the Smithsonian Institution, a role that placed him at the center of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the world’s largest museum organization.
“It is with very mixed emotions and heartfelt gratitude that I announce my retirement from the Smithsonian,” Bunch said in a statement on Tuesday, adding, “I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy, and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward.”
Bunch, 73, said in multiple interviews that his retirement was not related to pressure from the Trump administration to make changes to the institution.
Instead it was about Trump’s being an asshole.
It still comes as the Trump administration has increased pressure on the institution, including saying in an August 28 letter that federal agencies may stop working with the Smithsonian if its leadership does not change. The letter cited an earlier report that accused the Smithsonian of moving “toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
Wouldn’t that make a person want to get away? I think it would.
Trump has taken issue with the Smithsonian’s telling of the past, describing it as “woke” and tasking aides with rooting out what he considers a rewriting of American history at the museums. For example, in a July executive order, the president directed the National Park Service to install temporary signage near the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, warning of “inaccurate information.”
And by “inaccurate information” Trump means information he doesn’t like. Never mind slavery, never mind the century of blatant racism that followed emancipation, never mind the Japanese internments, never mind all those CIA-backed coups, just shut up and salute the flag.
