ITV is really knocking itself out on the Emily Bridges front.

I forgot to comment on ITV’s provocation in the previous post about this one. Of course he wants special treatment: he wants to be allowed to compete against women even though he’s a man. That’s very special, and very unfair to women.

And of course they’re not his “fellow female athletes,” because he’s not female. He’s cheating them out of wins, and then he has the gall to demand “the same opportunities” they have. The opportunities to lose to opportunistic (see what I did there?) men who cheat by pretending to be women? No, he doesn’t mean those opportunities, he means the opportunities to compete against women. He wants to compete against women but he certainly doesn’t want other men to do the same, not in any competitions he wants to win.

Of course he can’t emphathise with women. If he could he wouldn’t be cheating by competing against women. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about women.

And no he’s not fighting against any patriarchal structures or attitudes. He’s fighting against feminist structures and attitudes.

Notice the weird gentleness in the voice of the interviewer – as if Bridges were not just a woman but a particularly fragile, traumatized woman who needs special sensitivity and care. I don’t think that’s how tv news interviewers normally talk to their subjects.

And Bridges claims his “performance has decreased massively.” He claims he’s lost more aerobic performance “than the gap is between male and female athletes.” I don’t believe him.

Kathleen Stock has a brilliant piece about Pride Month and the way “Pride” has changed over time to appeal to straight people to the point where straight people now get to attack lesbians for not being Inklooosivv enough. She includes, with some regret, her coming-out story, because it matters for the story of straight people – men in fact – attacking lesbians with the noisy approval of men like Justin Weinberg.

I learnt early on about the special feeling of being in a room that contains only other lesbians – a space unlike any other I’d ever known, and so thrillingly transgressive and exciting when you’ve never been in such a female place, with that unique kind of ambient energy in it before. Within a couple of years I was even marching at London Pride, holding one side of a banner for a lesbian volleyball team (and I don’t even play volleyball). Look look, I’m a real lesbian now! I may or may not have thought as I filed down Oxford Street. Yes, there was a lot of comedy in my early lesbian period, and a bit of tragedy too, but there was also a steady drumbeat of relief and joy accompanying it. For the first few years, I couldn’t get over the fact I was now in that wonderful secret garden – and I marvelled constantly that nobody could ever come along to take back the key.

And then along came a whole mob of people trying to take back the key.

In 2018 – when I first felt moved to throw a couple of rather repressed blog posts out into the void, on the problems with gender identity ideologies as I then saw them – I had been out as a lesbian for 6 years. The language of these rather amateurish posts was carefully chosen – rendered garbled and inelegant, even, in a desperate attempt not to offend if possible (so for instance, I even used “women-who-are-not-transwomen” to refer to women, though I wouldn’t do that now). I was keen not to take on the issue of whether transwomen were women directly, but only to try to argue more conservatively that there were clearly different groups of people here, who might have conflicting interests in some areas.  And one of those groups was obviously lesbians.

But don’t you dare say so.

The first wave of aggression I received for these posts was in many ways the one that hurt me most, though it happened with the least general publicity, relatively speaking. It was from the philosophers, my tribe up until then – or the closest thing I had to one. The leaders of the online feminist pack quickly circled. These are people who spend half their working lives trying to develop complicated technical theories to justify whatever ethical mantras are presently socially expedient, and the other half hanging out online performing a simulacrum of goodness, or at least some degraded approximation of it.

Bolding mine, because I absolutely love that sentence. They’re also nearly all straight, she adds.

After my second or third blogpost – and recall that I was self-publishing these on Medium at the time, not yet promoted to Professor, and with no particular prior following or web presence – I received an email from Justin Weinberg, a US philosopher who ran a philosophy news website. This site was, and is, very popular with progressives in the profession internationally. Weinberg and I had never interacted before. Coldly but politely, he told me he had just commissioned a well-known transwoman philosopher to write a published response to my blog-posts, and would be putting it on his site later that day. He just wanted to let me know that this was being published – and to say that if I wanted to write a response to what was going to be written about me, he would be “open to considering it” (or something equally etiolated).

Later that day, the piece “When Tables Speak” by the famed Professor Talia Mae Bettcher of California State University appeared on his website. You can read it for yourself. If you are empathic, you can perhaps imagine how it felt for someone relatively lowdown the philosophy pecking order, in a humdrum position in a humdrum university, to be snidely dissected in public in this way by someone perceived as prestigious, in front of what felt like the eyes of the whole profession. (If you are not empathic – or if you have always wanted me to be wrong – you will no doubt conclude, as indeed many of the philosophers did, that I brought this all on myself).

I remember. I remember the rage, too. I wrote about one of Kathleen’s posts and a pseudonymous stranger turned up to try to enforce the party line; sparks flew.

This took my breath away for a moment.

And the merch she hands out says “YEET THE TEET” with a jolly T Rex cartoon. Wheeeeeeeeeee, hahaha, yeet the teet, by which she means amputate healthy breasts of a woman or teenage girl because she wants to pretend to be a man. Yeet the teet! What a funny fun-loving way to put it!

She calls these “procedures.”

What I’m saying. You can see this in newspapers and tv news reports every day – on the one hand uh oh climate change, on the other hand yay more oil.

More than £8bn of North Sea energy projects could now be given the green light rapidly as fossil fuel firms take advantage of a tax break in Rishi Sunak’s windfall tax, analysts have forecast.

…

However, campaigners warned ramping up North Sea production risked hindering efforts to tackle climate change. Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “The financial stimulus offered by the chancellor to encourage more oil and gas exploration means projects teetering on the edge of approval or rejection are now looking more likely.

“If there was ever confusion about whether the UK is a climate leader or laggard this has certainly removed all doubt. The science couldn’t be clearer that new oil and gas is incompatible with a safe and livable planet.”

But more oil and gas is now. Climate disaster is tomorrow. We have to pick now, every time.

Just plain evil. (Folksy evil, down home evil, evil that disguises itself as perky & outspoken.)

This is a member of Congress taunting a survivor of the Parkland mass murders. It’s vomit-inducing.

First, spoiler: the GMC has declined to investigate Az Hakeem.

Now the story of the former patient who tried to get him investigated:

A high-profile Harley Street psychiatrist who calls transgender rights campaigners “trans terrorists” has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) after a patient claims he was “attempting to practice transgender conversion therapy”, i can reveal.

Dr Az Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calls himself “gender critical” and “the only psychiatrist” to specialise in “exploratory psychotherapy to persons suffering from gender dysphoria”. He has denied being anti-trans, said his service is “neutral”, and denied offering conversion therapy.

But an 18-year-old former patient, a trans man, has accused Dr Hakeem of deploying “coercive strategies” in an attempt to “make me cis[gender]”.

Or in an attempt to persuade her not to wreck her body in pursuit of an impossibility. It all depends on the framing.

Lyle’s complaint to the GMC relates to an assessment he had with Dr Hakeem last year when he was 17. It alleges the psychiatrist used a range of tactics denying the validity of his gender identity – and that of trans people generally.

He felt that the psychiatrist “invalidated my opinions, then imposed his view of gender,” the complaint reads. “He made it clear from the very start that he was sceptical of my gender and expressed doubt that it could differ to [my] sex.”

Lyle accuses Dr Hakeem of disbelieving that his gender identity is male and of trying to encourage Lyle to unpick it in order that he could live as a woman.

Suppose Lyle had told Dr Hakeem her identity is giraffe, or eggplant, or stop sign, or Mongolia, or Donald Trump? Would it have been his medical duty to accept all those claims, one at a time or in a bunch?

There surely has to be some limit to this kind of bullshit in a medical setting. Medical professionals surely can’t – and shouldn’t and mustn’t – be expected to treat all reality-denying claims of patients as true and unquestionable? Especially not psychiatrists? Delusion is a real thing, and not automatically healthy or a guide to happier living.

“He suggested that there was little difference between my gender, and his teen Goth identity, implying that it might fade equally fast. He also likened gender-affirming surgeries to race-imitation surgeries,” wrote Lyle in the complaint. “He asked me ‘why’ I believed I had gender dysphoria, and would not accept that it’s because I’m trans.”

As he should. More of his colleagues should do the same.

Same old same old. It’s a dire emergency, and we won’t do anything to stop it.

The US envoy on climate change John Kerry has warned that the war in Ukraine must not be used as an excuse to prolong global reliance on coal.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kerry criticised a number of large countries for not living up to the promises they made at the COP26 climate summit.

I can explain. Promises are easy. Living up to them is hard.

The fragile unity shown in Glasgow last November is likely to be tested in Bonn as countries deal with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis.

Mr Kerry told the BBC that despite these drawbacks, “as a world we are still not moving fast enough,” to rein in the emissions of warming gases that are driving up temperatures.

“We can still win this battle,” the former senator said, but it will require a “wholesale elevation of effort by countries all around the world”.

Which is not going to happen. Why? See above: “the cost of living crisis.” The immediate problems always take precedence. We’re just animals. We don’t have it in us to make radical painful changes for the sake of people who don’t exist, i.e. future generations. Our immediate needs always shove long term needs onto the back burner, and by “back” I mean somewhere in the middle of Antarctica, watching the ice melt.

So how much progress on climate has been made since COP26?

Bluntly, not a lot.

A BBC analysis shows that across a range of issues, very little has been achieved.

The world emerged from Glasgow into an energy crisis sparked by a rapid rise in the price of gas. This has been massively compounded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ongoing problems in global supply lines.

Shortages! Price rises!

Both put the climate crisis into deep deep shade, because that’s how we’re wired.

I thought publishers were responsible for publishing books, but apparently I was all wrong, apparently they’re responsible for how the writers of books talk and behave. Kind of parental, kind of tutorial, kind of policey? How did I not know this was the job of publishers??!

That bit about “whose only crime is to try and carve out a small safe space for trans people” means, when translated, “whose only crime is to try to create a blacklist of published writers who commit gender thoughtcrime.” He means “the Young Refuseniks,” who have now closed their Twitter account which called on people to help create that blacklist.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A strange union.

If we were to replace trans exclusionary with racist, misogynistic or antisemitic would we be expected to define every word that would be included?

Expected to define each word that would be considered racist? No. Expected to define the list itself of words to be proscribed, as opposed to the words on that list? Yes, absolutely. Expected to be able to provide a coherent definition of racism consistent with common usage? You’d better goddamn believe it. If you’re going to curtail fundamental liberties like speech, then you are obliged to provide a full account of who, what, when, where, and why. I can define racism, sexism, misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobia in clear terms. I can define the extent and bounds of behavioral restriction I believe appropriate for any given context. It should be easy, and you should welcome the opportunity to clearly establish what constitutes transphobic behavior.

But y’all mah’f-kz won’t do that, because you can’t do that. You can’t, because your ideology is nonsensical, apophatic, self-justifying, self-negating, utterly incoherent bullshit. You can’t, because you know that definitions are inherently limiting, and having a fixed definition would mean being unable to deploy conflicting ones in rhetoric. You can’t, because clear definitions are easily communicated, and you can’t let normal people get a clear picture of your ideology’s tenets.

You can’t, because you’re lying liars who lie. God damn, this “I shouldn’t have to define my terms” routine is seriously craven.

Robyn Blumner, the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, has a much discussed editorial in the current Free Inquiry about a split that she describes as between identitarians and humanists. It starts with a couple of definitions, or a definition and an affirmation.

Identitarian: A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

“The Affirmations of Humanism”: We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for the common good of humanity. (Paul Kurtz, Free Inquiry, Spring 1987)

I think the Urban Dictionary is a less than ideal source of definitions if you’re trying to be fair to the side you oppose. For a start I think “identitarian” is a pejorative more than it is a standard noun, and for a continue I think the Urban Dictionary’s definition is not all that careful. Also, of course, the UD is not and doesn’t claim to be any kind of scholarly source.

I think I’d define “identitarian” as someone preoccupied with identity politics, but I would not go on to claim that identity politics=”group identity is the most important thing about a person.” I think that’s quite wrong (and I suppose that’s why I think Blumner should have looked for a better source). People who practice or perform or promote identity politics are aware that various identities are more or less favored, and they think life would be fairer if the most basic, comes-with-birth type identities didn’t have to overcome a Less Favored status. One doesn’t at all have to make that politics the most central thing in her life, let alone thinking a disfavored identity is the most important thing about a person. I’m a feminist, for example, and that’s an important thing about me, especially now when it’s all being thrown on the bonfire, but it’s not the most important. I think that’s true of most people.

So, in short, the editorial about identity politics v humanism starts with a non-scholarly definition of idpol from a famously non-scholarly source, and proceeds from there. The well is a tad murky from the outset. The dice are loaded.

And Kurtz’s affirmation sounds nice but it too has that ignoring the realities problem. It’s all very well to talk about transcending “divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,” but the trouble is that some people – most people in fact – can’t transcend them, because everyone else remains fully aware of them. Jews in Nazi Germany couldn’t “transcend” their pesky Jewishness; you do the math.

It’s true that people can get very bogged down in the identity stuff, and it can be tedious or clogging or beside the point or all those, but still, we’re not free to “transcend” our identities in the eyes of everyone else.

Blumner says we need to work together particularly now, so this split is a bad thing.

The division has to do with a fundamental precept of humanism, that enriching human individuality and celebrating the individual is the basis upon which humanism is built. Humanism valorizes the individual—and with good reason; we are each the hero of our own story. Not only is one’s individual sovereignty more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation, but fighting for individual freedom—which includes freedom of conscience, speech, and inquiry—is part of the writ-large agenda of humanism. It unleashes creativity and grants us the breathing space to be agents in our own lives.

It’s too Ayn Randian for my taste. In particular, “one’s individual sovereignty [is] more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation” comes across as ruthlessly Me First. Yes, it’s good for people to have lots of freedom and independence, but it’s also good for people to take heed of others, and give up some freedoms in order to live and work with others. The freedom to have a rave on your front lawn at 3 a.m. isn’t a freedom worth protecting. The freedom to destroy the planet isn’t a freedom worth having.

Janice Turner mentioned a union in her Times piece on gender indoctrination in the civil service:

The head of the union says nuh-uh:

But what counts as “exclusionary” or “discriminatory”? That’s the issue, isn’t it. Trans dogma defines “exclusion” as “not including men in the category ‘women’.” We don’t agree that that’s a reasonable definition. It’s not “exclusionary” to exclude salmon from a recipe for chocolate cake, and it’s not exclusionary to exclude men from definitions of women. That ought to be obvious, but in the real world we are accused of being evil exclusionizers for not including men in our definition of women. That’s what unions shouldn’t be supporting.

But he seems to think it’s exclusionary to ask him to define “exclusionary.”

Good point except for the fact that “transphobic” is not comparable to racist or misogynist. This is the whole point. Trans proselytizing and ideology are parasites on older social justice movements, stealing their categories and vocabulary for a very different and non-progressive brand of politics.

That’s it. We’re called transphobic for saying that men are not women. This doesn’t work for us.

Heyyyyy I’ve found one that hasn’t made the big switcheroo. Meet National Advocates for Pregnant Women:

NAPW defends women who are pregnant and have abortions, experience pregnancy loss, use drugs or alcohol, and who continue their pregnancies and give birth. Our work, however, is not limited to criminal or parent defense work, nor is it limited to any single issue, strategy, or niche.

NAPW works to ensure that women do not lose their constitutional and human rights as a result of pregnancy; that addiction and other health and welfare problems women face during pregnancy are addressed through public health and social welfare systems, not the criminal law system; that families are not needlessly separated based on medical misinformation about pregnancy and drug use; and that all people, including those who can get pregnant, have access to all of the health care services they need, including abortion and maternity care.

A little wobble in that last sentence perhaps, but the word “women” appears 21 times on that About Us page, so I won’t quibble about it.

Matt Walsh last September:

Matt Walsh claimed on Tuesday that female sports reporters were seeking to “feminize” football, which he said is a “mostly male space,” and said at least one woman journalist was failing to “assimilate.”

Walsh made the remarks on The Matt Walsh Show, while discussing Lindsey Gough, sports director with southeast Georgia’s WOTC 11 TV station. Gough had tweeted on September 5 about the behavior of fans after Georgia defeated Clemson.

Gough posted a video of football fans apparently engaging in harassing behavior and even some men touching her without her consent as they passed her broadcast.

But that’s male behavior, and it’s awesome, and it must not be challenged, much less altered or done away with. Harassing and groping women is a sacred right of masculinityfull masculine manly people.

“I must say, this situation only demonstrates why I, personally, prefer for sports broadcasts, especially football broadcasts, to be handled mostly by men,” Walsh said.

“Lindsey, though worse than the average—even as far as female sports reporters go—is definitely not the only female to enter into this mostly male space and seek to feminize it.”

“She wants the football stadium to be quiet and gentle, considerate, respectful of personal space. She wants it to be a more feminine environment. She’s not trying to assimilate herself into the culture of football fans, she is rather hoping that they assimilate themselves to her,” he said.

So objecting to men harassing and groping her equals wanting the football stadium to be quiet and gentle? I’m not seeing it. I think people can be loud and rowdy and enthusiastic without bullying and assaulting women. In fact I think this is a distinction kids are taught to make in…what, first grade? Second grade? “Use your words” – isn’t that the lesson? Don’t shove or punch or bite or kick; use your words. Does Matt Walsh really consider sexual abuse of women inherent to men, men in general, all men? I think I have a better opinion of men than he does.

O excellent judge.

A trans-identified male pedophile has avoided jail after after a judge deemed that prison would make it too difficult for him to “cope” with his transition and anxiety.

Huh. It’s my understanding that prison makes it difficult for people to cope with pretty much everything, and that that’s the point – it’s a punishment. There are compelling arguments against the whole idea of punishment as such, but it seems quite original to say it’s bad for a trans person in particular because of the difficulty of coping.

Peter Selby, 68, was found with over 125,000 pieces of child sexual abuse media after a police raid in 2019, some of which depicted children as young as three years old. Selby is male but identifies as a transgender ‘woman.’

Of the images, over 2,400 were classified as Category A, the most serious type of child sexual abuse media. Images and video in this category can depict penetrative sexual activity, bestiality, and/or sexual sadism.

But, he’s a trans laydee, so he would find it difficult to cope.

According to the Shields Gazette, during sentencing on June 1, the presiding Judge stated that no one would seek out child sexual abuse media “unless they have a sexual interest in children to start with,” yet declined to sentence Selby to an immediate prison sentence.

“You identify as transgender and that has caused issues for you and anxiety for you in how you would cope with that if you were sent immediately to prison,” the Judge said, adding: “You are someone who identifies as transgender and the impact of custody would be significant for you in the circumstances.”

Compared to……………………………….?

The Mail on that insulting “hey laydeez come race against some men and lose” arrangement:

An ‘inclusive’ cycling race that saw male-born trans athletes trounce women competitors has been condemned by critics.

“Inclusive” means “women guaranteed to lose.”

Gold in the ThunderCrit race at Herne Hill velodrome in South-East London went to Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist who was barred from a woman’s race in March and who had competed in men’s events only the month before.

Because he’s a man.

In second place was Lilly Chant who, despite identifying as a woman, is still designated as male on official records.

Yes but his name is Lilly. End of.

In an attempt to devise an ‘inclusive’ event, the ThunderCrit organisers created two new non-binary races called ‘thunder’ and ‘lightning’.

Its website said: ‘Thunder category is for cis men, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns most with cis-men, trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-men.

‘Lightning category is for cis-women, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns with cis-women and trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-women.’

So Bridges and Chant should have raced in the Thunder category, because their performance “aligns most closely” with men, because they’re men.

About that race that “Emily” Bridges “won” –

In what sense does “Emily” Bridges’s physical performance “align most closely” with women? Why do both trans men and trans women compete in the women’s category?

Also interesting that “cis people cannot choose their racing category.” It should have a “nyah nyah nyah” after it for the full effect.

The stupid is up past our upper lips now. Drowning is imminent.

The census could ask “do you menstruate?” instead of “are you female?” to be inclusive of transgender people, a taxpayer-funded study has suggested.

One, how fucking insulting.

Two – are they serious? Spot the flaw? Women over 50 or so don’t menstruate, so if they answer truthfully, the census won’t be a census. (There are also women who’ve had hysterectomies etc.)

The Future of Legal Gender Project, led by King’s College London, has assessed how legal sex would be abolished in England and Wales and replaced with a single “gender” category, with an aim of contributing to policy discussions.

Contributing what to policy discussions? An inability to talk about women and policy? What kind of “contribution” would that be?

The study, which received £579,717 of taxpayer funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, acknowledged the concerns from campaigners who argue biological sex provides vital binary data, and that trans women are not women.

But the research said that in surveys such as the census, respondents understand the question on their sex in different ways – some “assume the question is about their genitals, about their legal status or about the sex they were registered as having at birth”.

Oh shut up. No they don’t – not unless they’re nitwits or fanatics bent on making their stupid “point.” People know perfectly well what the census means by female/male.

As a result, the researchers said: “In some contexts, more precise questions may help to avoid distortions or inaccuracies, for example, ‘do you menstruate?’ or ‘are you perceived or treated as a man at work?’ rather than, or in addition to, ‘are you male or female?’.”

That’s not more precise. Would you like to know what it is? I’ll tell you. It’s much much much much much much less precise.

In their final report last month, the seven academics who carried out the study from KCL, Kent and Loughborough universities added: “For medical purposes, good practice means asking questions at a higher level of specificity. ‘Are you menstruating?’ rather than: ‘what is your sex?’”

Woman age 60 replies No. Higher level of specificity achieved!!

And where law mentions gendered physical processes, the researchers suggested it could say “gestational or birth parent rather than mother or woman – this recognises that people other than women also become pregnant”.

So it recognizes a stupid childish lie. There are no “people other than women” who become pregnant.

What is wrong with everyone.

Cheats “win” cycle race:

This one is some of each.

These female health-care workers won a huge WHO honor. They’d like a raise, too

India’s task force of over a million female health-care workers has won a prestigious award from one of the highest institutions in global health.

But their pay remains insultingly low.

Ghugare works as an ASHA, short for Accredited Social Health Activists. It’s a program run by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that provides health care to rural and low-income communities in the country. They are not medical professionals but are entrusted with a long list of crucial health-care responsibilities, from advising new mothers about breastfeeding to raising awareness about COVID vaccines.

…

They earn around $60 a month on average and have few benefits. In recent years, the government has raised monthly pay by a few tens of dollars, but workers say this is still too low. Many ASHAs, as the workers are known, and those in the global health community hope this moment can put pressure on the government to bump up their salaries, among other job improvements.

…

When the ASHA program began in 2005, the health workers were envisaged as volunteers working about 2 to 3 hours a day and a bit extra on some days, according to the National Health Mission, a program that’s part of India’s Ministry of Health. But over the years, ASHAs say their responsibilities have increased multifold.

At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Archana Ghugare says she was working 14 hours a day. And even today, she’s got a full workload. She’s been going door-to-door to identify people in the community who have a variety of medical needs, from pregnant people to kids under the age of 14 eligible for COVID vaccinations.

Pregnant people. Even in a story about exploited women, the Pregnant People have to raise their buzzcut heads.