Now we’re onto the “poisoning the blood” phase.

Donald Trump is facing a backlash for repeating a remark at a political rally on Saturday where he said undocumented immigrants to the United States are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Of course he said that. It’s how he thinks. He says it because His People love it, but also because he loves it himself. He loves talking filth of that kind. If Hitler were still around Trump would be his best friend.

In November he was widely condemned for calling his opponents “vermin”, language that echoed that used historically by dictators and authoritarians.

Well duh. He is an authoritarian, and he would be a dictator if he could. It’s all too possible that he’ll make himself one if he wins the election.

“He’s disgusting,” former New Jersey governor and Republican presidential contender Chris Christie told CNN Sunday. “He’s dog-whistling to Americans who feel under stress and strain from the economy and conflicts around the world,” Christie said. “He’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”

Here’s that dog-whistling issue again. I wouldn’t call it dog-whistling, because I think he’s just plain saying it. I mean granted he leaves off the “so kill them all” part, but I think “poisoning the blood of our country” is pretty clear.

What it is to be a Maga person:

The purpose of [Ruby] Freeman’s courtroom testimony was simple: to describe in detail how Giuliani’s lies had profoundly damaged her life. And make no mistake, Giuliani lied. He admitted that his statements were false back in July, and in August the court entered a default judgment against him, holding him liable for those falsehoods.

The only question left for the jury was the amount of the damages. And Friday, the jury gave its answer: Giuliani now owes Freeman and Moss $148 million to compensate them for his cruel and obvious lies.

The verdict is against Giuliani alone. But make no mistake, MAGA was on trial in the courtroom — its methods, its morality and the means it uses to escape the consequences of its dreadful acts. That’s because Rudy Giuliani isn’t truly Rudy Giuliani any longer. In his long descent from a post-9/11 American hero to a mocked, derided and embattled criminal defendant (he has also been indicted in Fani Willis’s sprawling Georgia case), he became something else entirely. He became a MAGA Man.

Or to put it less metaphorically, he let greed and power-hunger crowd out everything else, so he became a clone of the filthy crook Donald Trump.

The first thing you need to know about a MAGA Man like Giuliani is that he’s dishonest. Truthfulness is incompatible with Trumpism. Trump is a liar, and he demands fealty to his lies. So Giuliani’s task, as Trump’s lawyer, was to lie on his behalf, and lie he did. He even repeated his lies about Freeman and Moss — the same lies to which he’d already confessed — outside the courthouse during his trial.

A MAGA Man such as Giuliani supplements his lies with rage. To watch him pushing Trump’s election lies was to watch a man become unglued with anger. The rage merged with the lie. The rage helped make the lie stick.

That too is very filthy-trumpy. Rage is always right there, ready to show up at the smallest hint to help Master win another skirmish. Lie, rage, win.

His trial and verdict write another page in the volume of truth that tells the real story of MAGA America. Every voter should know exactly who Trump is and what his movement is like. They should know what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. We should remember their names. But if a MAGA Man remembers, he does not care. Whoever he once was is gone. He serves a new master now.

Dr Faustus without the intellect.

Science-Based Medicine has a venomous book-length post by AJ Eckert attacking Helen Joyce.

Who is AJ Eckert besides a contributor at SBM?

AJ Eckert, DO, is Connecticut’s first out nonbinary trans doctor and serves as the Medical Director of our Gender & Life-Affirming Medicine (GLAM) Program. Dr. Eckert has over 17 years’ experience in LGBTQ health care, with 9 years as a provider of primary care and gender-affirming services.

After Dr. Eckert completed their education at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine and residency at NEOMEN/Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine Program, they specialized in LGBTQ health. Dr. Eckert is board certified in family medicine.

Outside of their clinical work with patients, Dr. Eckert is active in education and advocacy. He is an assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University and has piloted a 4th-year medical student rotation at Anchor Health. Since 2021, Dr. Eckert has published nine articles in Science-Based Medicine, was a reviewer for the Journal of Medical Ethics, and had a quote in the 2nd edition of “The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.” They were on the 2021 Abstract Review Committee for the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, or USPATH.

Dr. Eckert is active in advocacy all right.

Joyce doesn’t understand why she’s seen as transphobic; in one interview, she claims,

“So according to them, I’m transphobic for just saying human beings come in two types, male and female…that’s transphobic.”

No, Helen. That’s not why you’re transphobic. Asserting two sexes is just incorrect. You’re transphobic because you claim that individuals cannot ever change biological sex, and anyone who disagrees with that statement is just frightened of activists.

Cool; that’s fine then.

Finally we get the accusation of seeking genocide:

Helen Joyce’s goal is to reduce the number of trans people and keep down the number of those who transition. She opines,

           “That’s for two reasons – one of them is that every one of those people is a person who’s been damaged. But the second one is every one of those people is basically, you know, a huge problem to a sane world.”

Joyce is following the pattern of pundits in 2023 who have taken the anti-trans campaign from “just asking questions” to “protecting children” to “trans eradication.” People are scared, and with good reason.

Subtle enough? The good doctor is saying Helen wants trans people “eradicated” i.e. killed.

It’s almost funny, because the doc goes on to quote Helen saying she hopes to see kids who think they’re trans getting over it and being happy lesbians and gay men as if that were evidence of her hoping to see them “eradicated.” Like so:

Joyce is following the pattern of pundits in 2023 who have taken the anti-trans campaign from “just asking questions” to “protecting children” to “trans eradication.” People are scared, and with good reason. And for those who still don’t believe this is Joyce’s goal, here she says in an interview:

“There are two versions of the future, and one of them is just clearly better than the other, which is to let these kids just be themselves and grow up to be gay.”

That’s not eradication. Changing your mind is not eradication. Just being yourself is not eradication. (If it is, what about people who were gay but later decide they’re trans? Wouldn’t that be eradication too?)

Joyce does not want us to exist…is it clear now?

No. No, it isn’t. She wants you not to be deluded and confused, which is not the same thing as not existing.

She compares trans rights to bindweed. We are a weed that needs to be eradicated.

“I often analogize it with bindweed or Japanese knotweed, depending on which analogy, how pessimistic I’m feeling on that day, because bindweed is hard, but Japanese knotweed is really hard. So this has spread while nobody was doing the weeding, but you could conceivably pull it all back out. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Note the lurch from “trans rights” to “we” – but note also that Helen is talking about the bizarro beliefs of trans ideology, not trans people as people. Comparing an ideology to a weed is not all that unusual, let alone shocking, let alone genocidal.

There’s a whole lot more. It’s a staggeringly long article. The bindweed goes on for miles.

H/t Harald Hanche-Olsen

Yesssssss

Eddie Izzard fails to be chosen as Brighton Labour candidate

The comedian and activist had hoped to represent the constituency as Labour’s parliamentary candidate but was defeated by music industry activist Tom Gray. The result is Eddie Izzard’s second defeated attempt to stand as an MP, after not being selected to become Labour’s candidate in Sheffield Central last year.

Tom Gray aims to become the first Labour MP for Brighton Pavilion in more than a decade after Green MP Caroline Lucas was elected in 2010.

…

Mr Gray attracted the majority of support from party members and also received the backing of several trade unions, including Unite, Unison and USDAW.

And Eddie Izzard lost.

He what?

He LOST.

Another man eager to cheat a woman out of a scholarship:

Reduxx has learned that a volleyball player from California is reportedly set to become the first known male recipient of a women’s Division 1 (D1) athletic scholarship. Tate Drageset, 17, has verbally committed to the University of Washington, and, if the offer is signed next fall, he would be seizing one of only twelve D1 volleyball scholarships available for females at the University.

The announcement of Drageset’s verbal commitment to the University of Washington was made in June to much fanfare within the volleyball community, with multiple sporting magazines and social media accounts covering the verbal commitment.

Drageset has long been considered a rising star within women’s volleyball, and he was the dominant force on two USA Volleyball teams in two separate age groups that both claimed national titles last summer. He was also named an MVP at the Girls Junior National Championships earlier this year. In addition to his club volleyball accolades, he was awarded the title of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division 5 Player of the 2022-23 Year.

I suppose being male helped him?

But this time it was a secret.

But Drageset’s transgender status has reportedly been concealed from public knowledge, with coaches, parents, and opposing players being left uninformed of his biological sex ahead of games.

Now, for the first time, a source close to the situation has anonymously come forward to reveal concerns about the steady escalation of Drageset’s participation in women’s volleyball, something which has now resulted in him preparing to take a rare, all-expenses-paid athletic scholarship opportunity.

Oh well, it’s only girls.

From the pen of Pliny:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on So many? Like five?

Back in my Movement Skeptic days, before the “deep rifts”, for a while my thinking was heavily influenced by Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. While I still think Pinker made some valid points*, in the light of everything that’s happened since, I have grown much more sympathetic towards (or at least understanding of) the reluctance among certain feminists to talk about innate cognitive or psychological differences between men and women. As I remember there was a certain “gotcha” that was very popular among “anti-blank-slatists” at the time:

So what you’re saying is that if there were differences in the distribution of interests and talents between men and women that were not entirely attributable to culture, discrimination wouldn’t be wrong after all?

Indeed, I was almost certainly guilty of occasionally using this “gotcha” myself. I now think this is a strawman. It’s not that the supposed innate differences justify discrimination, it’s that they’re too often used to explain away discrimination (Michael Shermer’s infamous “more of a guy thing” comment being a prime example).

There is a tendency among movement skeptics to talk as if claims are either “supported by evidence and sound logic” or not, when, in fact, things are almost never that clear cut. As they say, there is no algorithm for truth. The data is usually at least somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation, no method is ever infallible, and no study is ever without flaws, so if we’re motivated to reach certain conclusions and avoid others, we can always find reasons why studies that lead to an inconvenient conclusion are “fatally flawed”. For studies that lead to a desirable conclusion we don’t look so hard for flaws and don’t ascribe such fatal consequences to the ones we do notice. We can be biased and guilty of intellectual double standards even without contradicting any established facts and without making any obvious logical fallacies or methodological errors.

So while I don’t deny that there are real differences in the distribution of interests and talents between men and women, my general impression is that right-leaning people tend to be very quick to embrace biological explanations for things like the under-representation of women in positions of power and status without exposing them to the same level of hypercritical scrutiny as the alternatives. They also seem very quick to conclude that if different innate preferences enters into the explanation at all, there is no need to look any further: That’s all there is to it, and sexism has nothing to do with it. And to be fair, at the risk of engaging in false equivalence and bothsiderism, leftleaning people are almost certainly guilty of the opposite double standard.

While I have some issues with Jonathan Haidt, I think he is right to say that the merit of science is not that it makes individual scientists immune to bias, motivated reasoning, intellectual double standards etc. It’s that, at its best, it allows the competing biases of different scientists to “cancel out”, at least to some degree, which is why viewpoint diversity is so vitally important in science. I also think this is a major part of the reason it’s so important to determine in advance (i.e. before the data are in) what is going to count as a positive result. You should always be prepared to bet your pet hypothesis on predictions that haven’t yet been confirmed or disconfirmed. Because once the facts are in, it is always possible to retrofit the data to a desired conclusion.

* Indeed several critics of gender ideology, including Helen Joyce, have made the point that the tendency among many feminists to downplay and minimize the importance of biology has put them in an awkward position when it comes to defending the need for female only spaces.

Eva Kurilova reports that Canadian schools are asking students impertinent questions about personal matters.

It was recently brought to my attention that a school district in Ontario was asking students to fill out a survey that asked them to indicate what their “gender” is. The options included male and female but did not end there. This was followed by “transgender,” “non-binary,” “questioning,” and “two-spirit,” among other ridiculous prompts. If your “gender” was not listed, you could specify further.

Are school districts 14 years old all of a sudden? Are they sharing selfies on Twitter? Have they lost their minds?

These are the questions of a cult, and schools are just taking them for granted. The idea that it’s possible to be something other than male or female or that “gender” takes precedence over “sex” (they never specify which view they are taking, because confusion is the whole point) is a cult idea. It is more than just a metaphysical belief—it is a marker of complete and total indoctrination, and activist educators have the country’s children believing it.

It’s as if school districts have been taken over by Moonies or UFO finders or Freudians. Schools are supposed to educate, not induct into lunacy.

It’s been going on for some time, Eva says.

A great example is the 2021-22 York Region District School Board Student Survey. This survey asked a similar set of questions, prompting students to accept the idea that they must have a “deeply felt” sense of their “identity” on the “gender spectrum” and then asking them what it was.

What people have is the experience of being told they are girls or boys from long before their brains could form memories. That’s what these fools claim is a “deeply felt sense.” The only reason the felt sense seems “deeply felt” is because they don’t remember the beginning because they were too young to remember anything. Confusing the forgotten with the deep is a rooky error.

Why not just start asking kids if they’re elves, refugees from Remulac, giant tortoises, sharks in people suits?

Islamizing Turkish schools:

 Turkey’s steps to promote traditional moral values in students, increase Islamic lessons and open prayer rooms in schools are fuelling secularist concerns in the Muslim country and laying bare divisions over the role religion should have in education.

The measures, introduced recently, have fired up tensions over what is already a highly charged subject as Turkey marks 100 years since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the staunchly secular republic.

Reuters stumbles over its own feet there – if Turkey is a staunchly secular republic then why does Reuters call it “the Muslim country”?

The number of Imam Hatip schools, founded to educate Islamic preachers, has risen to around 1,700 from 450 in 2002 when the AKP first came to power. Their student body has risen six-fold to more than half a million.

But secularist criticism is now directed at the regular school system, where students take two compulsory religion lessons a week and now must take additional religion and morality classes.

Separately, under a regulation that came into force in October, all schools must make spaces available for what is known as a mescit, a small place for Islamic worship.

“State schools are being transformed into (religious) madrasas by making other schools’ curriculums similar to Imam Hatips,” Kadem Ozbay, head of the education sector union Egitim-Is, told Reuters.

The same thing happens in the US of course. Daddy God is always being smuggled in one way or another.

A Lively Exchange of Views.

At 9 minutes in Tatchell tells us “it’s not compatible with a kind compassionate generous society”…to say that men are not women.

Yesterday trans ideologue Finn MacKay tweeted this photo:

as evidence for this assertion:

If nobody has a gender (apart from trans people) & there is only biological sex & the rest is personality – it’s a bit weird so many men’s personalities are expressed so similarly, same for women. Is this just biological sex?

Women’s personalities are expressed so similarly, MacKay says, pointing to a grotesque photo of seven women dressed up as expensive prostitutes [aka “sex workers”]. We’re supposed to nod in agreement that that’s how women dress, and isn’t it weird that we have such similar personality expressions.

Many people pointed out the utter stupidity of that claim, and were ignored, but Colin Montgomerie gave it a thumbs up and was chucked under the chin.

What planet does MacKay live on? Where feminist women say there are ergonomic reasons for catch me-fuck me shoes? lol! ha, ha, ha?

Oops.

A word of advice: don’t do this.

Publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peers

You mean, like overwhelm peers with rave reviews? No.

Cait Corrain, whose book Crown of Starlight was due to be published in May next year, posted on X to apologise for her behaviour. “I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive,” she tweeted.

Corrain’s US publisher Del Rey, an imprint of Penguin Random House, stated on Monday that it was “aware of the ongoing discussion” about the author. Crown of Starlight “is no longer on our 2024 publishing schedule”, it said. Though it was initially unclear whether this meant that the book’s publication was being postponed or cancelled, both Del Rey and Corrain’s UK publisher Daphne Press later said that neither Crown of Starlight nor the second book in Corrain’s contract will be published by them.

Corrain’s former agent, Rebecca Podos, announced on Monday that she will no longer be working with Corrain. “Cait and I will not be continuing our partnership moving forward. I deeply appreciate the patience of those directly impacted by last week’s events as I worked through a difficult situation,” she wrote in a post on X.

So it all worked out pretty badly for this Corrain person.

“I can’t believe Del Rey spent half a million dollars on this when they could have spent half a million dollars on anything else. Sorry not sorry,” read one of the review screenshots of Chang’s book, posted by a user called Brett Spinner. The review was liked by Chantal B.

Sounds very “I agree with Polly-O!” if anyone remembers that extended prank.

A review of Corrain’s book, posted under the username Oh Se-Young, called Corrain a “f*cking genius”.

“I love this book so much that I regret reading it because now nothing on my TBR sounds interesting by comparison,” it stated.

Corrain claimed a friend was responsible for fake reviews, and shared several screenshots of a conversation in which the author berates “Lilly” for posting the ratings. Corrain later admitted that the screenshots were fabricated, and that the “friend” was “nonexistent”.

Hahahahahahaha it was all I agree with Polly-O all the way down. It’s hilarious.

In an X post, Corrain said that they had been “fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism and substance abuse” and changed medication in late November. They explained that on 2 December they “suffered a complete psychological breakdown” and created “roughly six profiles on Goodreads”. Along with two profiles created “during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022”, they used the accounts to post the negative reviews of other books and to boost their own.

Uh huh uh huh uh huh. I especially like the part where she has a complete pyschological breakdown but still remains calculating enough to use those profiles created “during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022”…in fact I think that’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in some time.

Also hilarious? Brave scourge of terfs Joanne Harris was in there supporting the psychologically broken down mad review bomber. I can’t share the tweets because of too many locked accounts, but I can tell you she was defending the poor misunderstood trickster. Good stuff.

The Times:

A jury on Friday ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who said he had destroyed their reputations with lies that they tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.

Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington had already ruled that Mr. Giuliani had defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury had been asked to decide only on the amount of the damages.

The jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.

Good. I have no idea how much of that they’ll actually get, but I like the underlying principle. Powerful rich people should not bully and defame and lie about powerless non-rich people, especially for such corrupt reasons as stealing an election to install an evil toad as dictator.

Mr. Giuliani, who helped lead Mr. Trump’s effort to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election but has endured a string of legal and financial setbacks since then, was defiant after the proceeding.

“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women.

What a disgusting rotten human being.

Mr. Giuliani’s net worth is unknown because he refused to comply with the court’s requirement to provide that information. A lawyer familiar with his legal situation said after the verdict that Mr. Giuliani was likely to file for bankruptcy protection. But because the damages he owes Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are considered an “intentional tort,” bankruptcy would not erase his liability, lawyers said.

Now do Trump.

It’s not just religious liberty though, in fact it’s not even primarily religious liberty. It’s also, of course, not just conservatives.

In a ruling hailed as a major victory by conservatives, Virginia’s Supreme Court on Thursday revived a lawsuit by a teacher who claims his religious liberties and free-speech rights were violated when school officials fired him for refusing to use the pronouns of a transgender student.

It should never be a job requirement to have to remember anyone’s specialty pronouns.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative Christian group that is representing Vlaming, called the ruling a “sweeping victory” for free speech and religious rights, and Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) said “it dramatically expands the protection of religious liberty.”

But legal counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), which has followed the case, called it “dangerous and misguided” and said it gives teachers a right to discriminate. 

Well teachers do have a right to discriminate. They have to do quite a lot of discriminating as part of their job – discriminating between good work and bad work, brilliant work and terrible work. They have to discriminate between wrong answers and right ones.

Shannon Minter, legal director for NCLR, said in a statement that the ruling ignores teachers’ obligations under the law.

“Requiring teachers to treat transgender students equally when they address them in class is about prohibiting discriminatory conduct, not speech,” Minter said. “Such a rule no more restricts protected speech than requiring teachers to treat any other group of students equally.”

But it’s not “equally.” What does remembering to use the wrong pronouns have to do with equality? Nothing.

Vlaming, who taught French, claims in his lawsuit he couldn’t refer to a transitioning student assigned female at birth by masculine pronouns because it violated the tenets of his Christian faith.

Well it doesn’t really. Jesus never said anything about pronouns. It’s not a faith issue at all, it’s a language issue, a reality issue, a truth issue, a nuisance issue. It’s a nuisance to have to remember to use opposite pronouns; it’s not something that comes naturally.

Vlaming, a six-year teacher, told the student he would use the student’s male name in class and try not to use pronouns in an effort to balance the student’s wishes and his own religious beliefs, according to the lawsuit.

But school administrators told him it would violate a nondiscrimination policy to not use the student’s masculine pronouns and issued Vlaming warnings, according to the suit. When Vlaming still refused to use the masculine pronouns, the lawsuit says, the school board fired him in December 2018.

That’s so ridiculous. What does a nondiscrimination policy have to do with using the wrong pronouns for some but not all students?

The ACLU of Virginia said in a statement that “public school officials are still bound by federal law to not discriminate against their students.”

But it’s not “discriminating against students” to fail to memorize specialty pronouns. Ordering teachers to use specialty pronouns is more like discrimination than failure to use them is.

Updating this to add – the image Finn MacKay tweeted doesn’t show so here it is:

MacKay is using that ridiculous photo as evidence that “women’s personalities are expressed so similarly.”

Wait, what??

So many?

So many women’s personalities are expressed via tiny skirts and towering heels? I don’t know any women who fit that description. Not one. Women like that are a confection of the advertising-entertainment industry; they have nothing to do with real life.

No, we don’t mean “the rights of trans people”; we mean the stupid nonsensical contorted garbage that makes up the belief system behind the idea that there is such a thing as “trans people.”

Mackay isn’t really that dumb, surely? Just identifies as that dumb?

Fiona McAnana on how cheerfully people urged men to ruin women’s sports:

In truth, a male athlete’s testosterone levels are largely irrelevant to this debate. Testosterone suppression cannot reverse the changes wrought by male puberty, which is where most of the physiological advantages that men enjoy come from.

Nevertheless, the IOC duly updated its guidance and the UK’s sports councils followed suit. As it turns out, these changes had their biggest impact on non-elite sports. In practice, no one has any idea of their testosterone levels at any given moment and most amateur athletes do not regularly measure their levels. This meant that the male population eligible to compete against women was broadened from just a handful of athletes – that is, those who had undergone surgery and had legally changed their sex – to anyone who merely claimed to be the other sex.

Some sports, like cricket and tennis, dispensed with testosterone-suppression requirements altogether, arguing that anyone should be accepted as whatever they say they are. The UK’s Lawn Tennis Association acknowledged in 2019 that ‘there may be some concerns about fairness in the women’s and mixed game’. But not to worry, explained the association:

‘Our policy assumes that transwomen (male-to-female trans persons) wishing to compete in mixed or female-sanctioned tennis competitions do so with the best of intentions and with no intent to deceive about their status to gain any competitive advantage. Accordingly, you should accept people in the gender they present and verification of their identity should be no more than that expected of any other player.’

My eyes all but popped out of my head on reading that. Why would such a policy assume such a ridiculous thing???

“Our policy assumes that no one ever does anything selfish and dishonest. Accordingly, you should always believe men who say they are women with no backtalk, bitches.”

The main problem is that the whole issue was framed wrongly from the start. It was positioned as being about trans people rather than about who should be eligible for female competitions. Trans-advocacy groups were consulted on these changes, but women’s groups and female athletes were not.

That’s a very polite way of putting it. I’m not as polite as that. I think the issue was framed as being about trans people because women were framed as not mattering. I think the brazen, shocking indifference to women came first, leading to the framing as being about trans people.

People who work in sport are all too aware of the differences between male and female athletic performance, so what were they thinking? I have to conclude that many of them were not thinking at all.

At least, they weren’t thinking about women at all.

Campaign group Fair Play for Women, where I am director of sport, has been pointing out for years that so-called trans-inclusion measures are leading to the exclusion of women and girls. Across most sports and at all levels, we hear personal accounts of how having to compete against a male, or share changing rooms with a male, is turning women and girls away from sport. For a long time, we had found very little media interest in reporting these stories. Sports bodies weren’t hearing them either, because the inclusion of trans-identifying males on their own terms had become an article of faith.

And because it’s so god damn easy to shrug off the concerns of women because women just don’t matter that much.

What a massively creepy intrusive You Will Think What We Tell You To Think letter.

“I am disappointed” – oh shut up with that passive aggressive crap. You’re not her mother.

“after last week’s workshop on inclusion and gender diversity” – as if having a “workshop” means people have to believe everything they’re told there. Guess what: not all women are delighted to be told we have to be “inclusive” of men who claim to be women. Guess what else: you can say something, but other people can think what you say is horseshit. The fact that you said it doesn’t make it true. The fact that a workshop said it doesn’t make it true.

You (the acting Lord Mayor) rebuke Councilor Elliott for saying the workshop was imposed on her, and then remind her that it was a Council decision. It was a Council decision that there would be a workshop that she would have to attend, no? So it was imposed on her, no? So what’s your point?

You ask a fatuous question about being “disrespectful” to the bullying deluded bureaucrats who are trying to force everyone to deny the reality of mammalian sexes. Did you mean to be disrespectful to the Councillor? You certainly are bullying and intrusive to her.

Refusing to pretend that men can be women is not “speaking out against” any people, it’s just awareness of reality.

Thanks for the misuse of “refuted” though. Nice inadvertent admission of reality.

I hope the jury decides Giuliani should pay $44m.

Jurors have begun deliberating in the multi-million dollar defamation case against Rudy Giuliani.

Ex-poll worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss are suing Mr Giuliani after he falsely claimed they played a role in election fraud.

They are seeking damages of up to $43m (£34m).

How about $45m?

A judge has already found that Mr Giuliani defamed the two and it is now up to eight jurors to decide exactly how much he will have to pay. In closing arguments on Thursday, Joseph Sibley, Mr Giuliani’s lawyer, urged the jury to be measured as they consider the penalty.

Lawyers for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss are “asking you to reward a catastrophic amount of damages”, he argued. He said that, although the former mayor of New York did spread lies after the 2020 presidential election, he was not as responsible – or as malicious – as lawyers for the two have argued.

Oh come on. Look at the power imbalance – the everything imbalance. On the one hand two poll workers, and on the other hand the former Mayor of New York and current buddy of the ex-president. Please explain to all of us how he was not all that malicious when he told lies about these two obscure women to help out his filthy rich filthy corrupt filthy criminal buddy who is hell-bent on driving this country into a sewer.

Golly, look what RTÉ has just broadcast and published:

Leading doctors report HSE to HIQA over transgender care

The two most experienced clinicians involved in transgender healthcare in Ireland have made a formal complaint to the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) about the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) treatment of children with gender identity issues, Prime Time has learned.

Professor Donal O’Shea and psychiatrist Dr Paul Moran of the National Gender Service (NGS) allege that the HSE has been directing children to services overseas that adhere to a so-called ‘gender-affirming’ Model of Care.

Prof O’Shea and Dr Moran say that the gender-affirming model can damage children and is associated with a greater readiness to start on inappropriate medical treatment for patients presenting with gender identity issues.

How very interesting.

What we’re supposed to think, you know, is that being trans is a wonderful thing, and that no one should be discouraged or slowed down from embracing it. We’re supposed to think it’s only social disapprobation that makes being trans less than fun, and if only everyone everywhere embraced it like a long lost puppy, all would be peaches and cream.

Ireland, along with other countries, has seen a surge in cases of gender-questioning adults and especially children in recent years.

A Children’s Ombudsman survey last year of children aged 12-17 suggests that one in 25 identifies either as non-binary or as being a gender different to their biological sex.

Good god. That’s a lot.

How these children should be treated is at the core of the dispute which is often heated.

The gender-affirming Model of Care, favoured by transgender activists and some clinicians internationally means accepting a patient’s own view of their gender identity.

This approach is supported by World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organisation made up of both activists and clinicians specialising in trans healthcare. The WPATH model is supported by the Irish Government.

I wonder how separate the clinicians who specialize in trans healthcare are from the activists and their activism – in other words I wonder how activist those clinicians are. My guess is more than zero%.

Dr Moran and Prof O’Shea argue that an exploratory Model of Care based on “probing assessment” should be used. They argue that this approach has a stronger role for psychiatry and is more comprehensive and safer.

Niamh Ní Féineadh from Trans Healthcare Action says that instead of causing harm, the gender-affirming model relieves distress for those needing healthcare.

Circular, mate. How do we know those needing healthcare do need healthcare? How do we know they “need healthcare” in the form of gender affirmation? We don’t. That’s the point.

Ms Ní Féineadh supports a gender-affirming model of care over an exploratory model.

“The patient-centred gender-affirming model means that doctors, patients and their parents should work together as a team. They should have a trust relationship. They should understand the patient’s needs at any one given moment,” she said.

The doctors should then present the treatment options and information to the patient, she said.

“The patient should be supported in whatever decision that they make. It’s kind of like supporting a child who wants to learn a language or an instrument,” she said.

Yeah no it’s not. It’s not like that at all. It’s not remotely like that. Learning a language or an instrument pretty much never does anyone any harm. It certainly never alters their bodies in drastic ways that can never be fully undone. It may bore them or tire them but that’s pretty much the worst that can happen. Trying to change sex via surgery and/or hormones? Not so much.

For adults to be referred for gender confirmation surgery in Ireland through the NGS, up to three further interviews can take place, she said.

“Those are very in-depth, and they talk in very specific and graphic detail about your sex life, what sex acts you enjoy, and how the surgery is going to impact those…That depth of conversation is unnecessary.”

“What other medical procedure do you have multiple in-depth interviews before you proceed with it? Do you have an in-depth interview with a clinical psychologist before you get an appendectomy?” she asked, describing as a “pathologising of transgender healthcare.”

But trying to change someone’s sex isn’t a “medical procedure.” It’s quackery intended as a kind of psychic or mental procedure, but it entails ruining the body. Trying to change someone’s sex is in no way like an appendectomy unless the patient has no need of an appendectomy – in which case it’s stark malpractice. Refusing to ruin a patient’s body, not so much.

Prime Time understands that the complaint made by Dr Moran and Prof O’Shea highlights concern over a clinic in Belgium and England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, where clinicians generally follow a gender-affirming Model of Care.

Ah good – the Tavistock is internationally famous for its destructive haste in these matters. What an accolade.

The Tavistock was shut down for new referrals last year, leaving children in need of specialist gender assessments in the lurch. Children already being treated by the Tavistock continue to receive treatment there.

The closure of the Tavistock to new patients came after reviews by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass revealed unsatisfactory levels of care and a service overstretched by a 26-fold increase in referrals from 136 in the year to March 2011 to 3,585 in the year to March 2022.

The Cass review found that some Tavistock staff felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

In other words just the approach Ms Ní Féineadh assures us is the only right one. Quick, slice out those genitals before she/he changes her/his mind.

An article from the CDC: 2,500-year Evolution of the Term Epidemic:

The term epidemic (from the Greek epi [on] plus demos [people]), first used by Homer, took its medical meaning when Hippocrates used it as the title of one of his famous treatises. At that time, epidemic was the name given to a collection of clinical syndromes, such as coughs or diarrheas, occurring and propagating in a given period at a given location. Over centuries, the form and meaning of the term have changed. Successive epidemics of plague in the Middle Ages contributed to the definition of an epidemic as the propagation of a single, well-defined disease. The meaning of the term continued to evolve in the 19th-century era of microbiology. Its most recent semantic evolution dates from the last quarter of the 20th century, and this evolution is likely to continue in the future.

At the start of the 21st century, epidemics of infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, avian influenza, and HIV/AIDS have, in recent years, supported the reality of this threat. Civil wars and natural catastrophes are sometimes followed by epidemics. Climate change, tourism, the concentration of populations in refugee camps, the emergence of new human pathogens, and ecologic changes, which often accompany economic development, contribute to the emergence of infectious diseases and epidemics (1). Epidemics, however, have occurred throughout human history and have influenced that history. The term epidemic is ≈2,500 years old, but where does it come from?

H/t Gordon Campbell