Aw. Nobody wants her to knock on the door.
“American representatives have been walking around, practically knocking on one door after another in the past few days to ask if people might be interested in a visit from the Vice President’s wife. Everywhere, the answer was the same: ‘No, thanks.’” Source; TV2.
My answer would have been “Hell no” at best.
Still struggling mightily to square the circle:
The University of Edinburgh’s new trans policy could be illegal, leaving the cash-strapped institution open to legal challenge.
The document — a copy of which has been obtained by The Herald — tells staff they can use “the toilet facilities that align with their gender identity” rather than their biological sex, even if they do not have a gender recognition certificate.
As I keep boringly repeating: they’re telling staff the impossible. If you make all the toilet facilities “whatever” then people can’t use the ones that align with their genner idenniny because there are no single genner toilets left. It’s a very simple point: wouldn’t you think people running universities would be able to grasp it? If you make all the toidies for everyone then they’re not for people who don’t want toidies for everyone – which is in fact most people.
Point 2: I consider the “gender recognition certificate” wholly irrelevant. A certificate doesn’t change anyone’s sex, end of story.
The institution accepts this means all facilities will effectively become mixed-sex.
But, it seems, still ignores the basic contradiction. When all facilities are mixed-sex nobody gets to choose a single-sex facility, which is what most people prefer. Where’s your “we all get what we want!!” now, you damn fools?
An equality impact assessment carried out ahead of the new policy taking effect late last month states that, “as a matter of law, access to facilities on the basis of gender identity makes those facilities mixed-sex rather than single-sex facilities”.
Why yes! Thank you for noticing! Now if only the university could grasp the point.
It’s so touching to see men encouraging men to play hockey – one of the more dangerous sports available – against women. Their skulls and arms and legs will be fine, so who cares if the women’s will be smashed?
Aw, really, not even one person?? That’s just sad.
Democrat Jonah Wheeler stood alone before a capacity crowd in the Peterborough Town Hall as critics, leaders in his own party, and even some childhood friends railed against the 22-year-old state representative’s vote for legislation deemed “transphobic” by progressive activists.
Wheeler (D-Peterborough) was unapologetic during Tuesday night’s question and answer session sponsored by the Peterborough League of Women Voters as he explained why he broke with his party and voted for HB 148. The bill protects the right of local institutions to keep biological males out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because of who they are,” Wheeler said. “We can respect trans women, and we can respect the rights of women who object to having trans women in their spaces.”
“You can do whatever you feel like, but your rights end when the rights of another begin. Government is about the balance of rights,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler explained that some biological women had approached him asking that he protect their spaces. “What was I supposed to do — ignore these women?” Several people in the crowd said, “Yes! Yes!”
Well thanks a lot, massively progressive people of Peterborough New Hampshire. Men who say they are women matter and women don’t. Men get whatever they demand and women just have to lump it. What a Utopia you are creating.
New Hampshire Democrats have repeatedly and publicly accused Wheeler, who is Black, of supporting “Jim Crow” policies by supporting women’s-only spaces.
Wow, that’s nice.
HB 148 does not impose a blanket ban on transgender people, but allows local institutions and local sports authorities to set their own policies they deem appropriate. Wheeler refuses to consider the women who spoke to him in favor of the bill as somehow bigoted or transphobic.
…
Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, the lone Democrat on the council, stood up to condemn Wheeler’s vote, saying the bill is part of the “racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic” Project 2025 movement pushed by Republican President Donald Trump.
But voting to let men use women’s spaces is itself misogynistic, to put it mildly.
“I’m very sad to think New Hampshire is rolling back civil rights protections for Granite Staters,” Liot Hill said.
But what about civil rights protections for Granite State women?
Dan Grosz with the Peterborough Democratic Executive Committee read a statement on behalf of the party condemning Wheeler and Leishman’s vote.
“We must express our deep concern and disapproval over your recent voting records,” Grosz read. “While we respect your right to vote your conscience, our conscience compels us to publicly voice our opposition to your actions.”
What a filthy pack of bullies. Honestly. All this fervor on behalf of a tiny number of men who like to pretend to be women.
Bad BBC. Bad. Sit. SIT. You’re a very bad BBC.
That’s on the main page. If you click on the link you get “University of Sussex fined £585k in transgender free speech row”
Spot the difference? Transphobia v transgender free speech.
Bad bad BBC.
Breaking news in Sussex rebuke drama – our good friend latsot has turned up one of those sinister Connections that can explain so much.
The Financial Times on Sussex and Stock and all that:
An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said a policy intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.
Well that’s the thing, isn’t it – that “certain groups” bit. The policy was there to prevent what the university considered abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus and not others. It was there to protect people who claimed to be the sex they weren’t, and not people who realize it’s impossible to be the sex you aren’t. Very definitely not those people: those people were framed as the aggressors, never the aggressed.
The OfS report marks the end of an inquiry that began more than three years ago. It was spawned by the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who said she was forced out of the university in 2021 by a three-year campaign of bullying and character assassination.
For why? For because she’s aware that sex is not like a coat you can put on and take off. For because she realizes that sex is determined in utero and can’t be swapped because we decide we don’t like ours and want that other one instead.
Sussex, ranked joint 26th out of 104 UK institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, has reacted furiously to the OfS fine.
Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, said the regulator had decreed “free speech absolutism as the fundamental principle” for universities.
Roseneil claimed the regulator had “refused to speak to us” and that the fine imposed was “wholly disproportionate”. She said the university had defended Stock’s right to pursue her academic work and express her “lawful beliefs”.
No it didn’t. It may have uttered pious banalities, but it didn’t stop the students bullying her.
She added that the ruling made it now “virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying, to protect groups subject to harmful propaganda, or to determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum”.
Wtf is that supposed to mean? That universities ought to be free to tell academics they can’t say men are not women because that’s a “stereotyped assumption”? That is what it’s supposed to mean, right? From a university vice-chancellor?
Not quick learners, are they.
Big news!
An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said policies intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.
It didn’t help that “abuse” and “harassment” were defined so broadly in one sense and so narrowly in another. Anything short of passionate agreement that Joe is now Josephina is abuse & harassment, while promising to beat up or rape or silence women who know men are not women is just obvious simple justice. Naturally people self-censor.
The OfS report marks the end of an inquiry that began more than three years ago. It was spawned by the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who said she was forced out of the university in 2021 by a three-year campaign of bullying and character assassination.
Like lots of us, I’m familiar with the bullying and character assassination approach, albeit on a much smaller and less important scale.
The ruling by the OfS, which was established in 2017, will send a strong message to higher education institutions trying to balance the prevention of “hate speech” on campus and the defence of free speech.
The university, ranked joint 26th out of 104 UK institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, has reacted furiously. Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, said the regulator had decreed “free speech absolutism as the fundamental principle” for universities.
Roseneil claimed the regulator had “refused to speak to us” and that the fine imposed was “wholly disproportionate”. She said the university had defended Stock’s right to pursue her academic work and express her “lawful beliefs”.
She added that the ruling made it now “virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying, to protect groups subject to harmful propaganda, or to determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum”.
And yet what did Sussex University do to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying of Kathleen Stock? And by “stereotyped assumptions” does she mean the “assumption” that men are not women and women are not men? Because if she does, she’s arguing for nonsensical assumptions to be relied on in the university curriculum.
Originally a comment by KB Player on In the wake.
I absolutely don’t get this. In our imperial days (British variety) we were known as perfidious Albion for betraying our allies (actually we were no more perfidious than France, the Habsburgs, Russia, or any of our rivals) but we were polite to them before stabbing them in the back. It’s sheer prudence to be so, just in case perfidiousness is no longer in your interest. This blatant rudeness serves no purpose at all.
If you have vassals – and we in Britain have been a servile vassal to our imperial overlord – there’s no point in humiliating them unnecessarily. Humiliate them in deed if it serves your purposes, but why humiliate them in word and gesture? (If you have ever watched that appalling film in Love Actually, there is a scene where the British PM tells off the nasty American president – that’s what the British would love to do, but of course are not in a position to do so.)
In our jobs we know where we are in the hierarchy. I know I have to do what my bosses tell me to do – but they ask me to carry out my tasks in a civil and friendly way – which doesn’t cost them anything and means I am a more cheerful underling.
And it’s so unAmerican. Americans (except for the immigration officials) are usually polite and friendly. Do they get this snarling from Marvel movies?
Personal emotions – resentments, cockiness – seem to be replacing the normal courtesies of dealing with foreign powers. There is no advantage in it at all except to infuriate people who might be useful to you at some point, to put it at its lowest.
I listened to a podcast from three American security experts (Christopher Preble, Zack Cooper, and Melanie Marlowe), which was recommended as being from the informed right . They were trying to find some kind of rationale behind Trump’s attitude towards Ukraine – perhaps trying to prise Russia from China, though that was probably mistaken and there was a lack of long-term thinking. Now these people are far better informed than me but except for mentioning Trump’s desire for a Nobel peace prize, they missed out the personal grudges, petty vindictiveness and spite which animate Vance, Trump and Musk, the admiration for the strong man Putin; the affront that the annoying little David (Zelenskyy) is not bowing to the grand Goliath (Russia). Trump is always going on about how he “likes” this dictator or other – it’s all personal to him – there is no strategy, no acting in American interests – it’s all real estate and vanity.
From the NY Times Ethicist column, currently provided by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah:
44 year old woman has been unable to conceive.
After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.
Ah right – they want to go the cheaper route.
I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are beyond our budget. I did ask a distant cousin, but she understandably declined.
That’s quite the thing to ask a distant cousin. It’s quite the thing to ask anyone. “I want to have a baby so would you please have surgery to extract an egg to give to me?” It’s so compassionate and generous of her to admit that the distant cousin understandably said no. She understands saying no but she felt ok asking.
Spoiler: she shouldn’t feel ok asking.
My husband and I are professors, and I have a former student with whom I’m fairly close. We think she’d make a great donor, but I worry it would be inappropriate to ask her.
Well worry no more, it would be horrendously inappropriate to ask her.
Where do people get this idea that it’s ok to make such requests?
Europe just isn’t one of the cool kids any more.
The European Union is, in many ways, the antithesis of the principles that Mr. Trump and his colleagues are championing. The bloc is built around an embrace of international trade based on rules. It has been at the forefront of climate-related regulation and social media user protections.
Well rules are for peons. The best people do whatever they want all the time, because they’re the best people. Regulation and protections are horrible things, because they hinder the best people for the sake of peons.
If the relationship between the United States and Europe were merely transactional, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to just spend more on the military and give Mr. Trump some sort of victory, said François Heisbourg, a French analyst and former defense official.
But in Mr. Vance’s speech attacking European democracy in Munich, let alone in the newly public exchange, the distaste for Europe is about more than transactions. “Vance was quite clear: We don’t share the same values,” Mr. Heisbourg said.
But (dropping the sarcasm for the moment) that’s not US v Europe so much as it is Trumpians v less horrible people. Lots of us do have values that align with European democracy.
Just not quite enough of us to keep those monstrosities out of government.
Let’s zoom in on that 37 second chat with former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, now the Secretary of Defense in the Trump regime. The reporter asks him about the grotesque security breach (or rather annihilation) and he reacts with a smirk and a chuckle and
You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called “journalist” who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of Russia Russia Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax, or the suckers and losers hoax – this is a guy that peddles in garbage [sic], it’s what he does.
What. a. scumbag.
He’s asked about a massive security breach in his department and instead of answering he spits out a pack of lies about the guy who reported the security breach.
What a specimen.
The plaudits are rolling in.
And speaking of “so-called journalists” – what qualifies Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense?
Oopsie.
Nope, not kidding.
Nooo, it’s snappy dresser hire, a looks the part hire, a sir yes sir hire. Trump picks people based on how they look on tv.
I can’t disagree. They don’t come across as seasoned or wise or careful or responsible. They come across as…I dunno…kind of frat boyish?
Well I’ll say one thing about Trump: there is no insult too petty for him to make.
For more than 100 years, people in Stanstead, Quebec have been able to walk into Derby Line, Vermont to enter the border-straddling Haskell Free Library and Opera House – no passport required.
But municipal and library officials said on Friday that U.S. authorities have unilaterally decided to end the century-old unwritten agreement. Coming at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, the decision is prompting an outpouring of emotion in communities on both sides of the border, which in places has been marked simply by flower pots.
Throw out those sissy flower pots and install some guys with machine guns instead. Libraries are socialism!!
Once inside the library, Canadian and American citizens have been able to mingle freely across the border line drawn on the floor – as long as they return to the proper country afterward. In 2016, then-president Barack Obama hailed the symbolic importance of the library, built in 1901. “A resident of one of these border towns once said, ‘We’re two different countries, but we’re like one big town,’” Obama said.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, confirmed that the divide is about to become more pronounced. Starting in the coming days, only library card holders and employees will be able to cross over from Canada to enter the building through the main door on the U.S. side.
Libraries are hotbeds of smuggling and subversion as any fule kno.
Updating to add: I took a look at the library via Google maps. It’s a very nice building – two stories with a cupola third story. There are border signs and warnings around it so I don’t know, maybe it is just an ordinary border issue more than it is Trump being a bully.
The charm offensive isn’t working.
Over the past 24 hours, the Greenlandic government has dropped its previous posture of being shy and vague in the face of Mr. Trump’s pushiness. Instead, it has blasted him as “aggressive” and asked Europe for backup. And the planned visit may only strengthen the bonds between Greenland — an ice-covered land three times the size of Texas — and Denmark.
Better the colonial power you know than…Donald Trump.
Even the dogsled race has reacted coolly. The organizers of the race — the Avannaata Qimussersua, Greenland’s Super Bowl of dogsled races — said on Sunday of Ms. Vance and her son, “We did not invite them,” but added that the event was open to the public and “they may attend as spectators.”
Now that’s a snub.
Greenland says we didn’t invite them, we don’t want them, we’re not going to party with them, we think they’re rude to show up uninvited, we wish they would take a hint.
Greenland’s politicians have condemned plans for high-profile US visits, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.
Second Lady Usha Vance will make a cultural visit this week, and a separate trip is expected from Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Outgoing Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede described the plan as aggressive, and said the duo had not been invited for meetings. Meanwhile, the island’s likely next leader accused the US of showing a lack of respect.
What’s a “cultural visit”? Especially one from a spouse of a government bigwig? A spouse who was not invited?
Waltz’s trip was confirmed by a source who spoke to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News. He is expected to visit before Mrs Vance and to travel with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to the New York Times.
Outgoing PM Egede described Waltz’s visit in particular as a provocation. “What is the security advisor doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to show a demonstration of power to us,” he told Sermitsiaq newspaper.
Speaking to the same paper, Greenland’s probable next PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen accused the American officials of showing the local population a lack of respect.
If it’s any comfort, they show everyone a lack of respect.
Ugh.
Today:
I thought it was true for a few minutes, until I looked for more sources.
Nobody died. It’s the old “he’s dead to me.” His kid fell for the gender idiocy, and that’s a terrible thing, but it’s also a terrible thing – it’s a worse thing – to tell the world your kid is dead when what you mean is he went in a direction you can’t stand.
I don’t blame Musk for hating the direction, and I don’t blame him for being furious about the gender idiocy. I do blame him for turning that on the kid.
Mind you, it probably does feel like that. The kid he knew is gone, and that has to be brutal. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But still the kid is not literally dead. Estranged is not dead. Estranged is terrible, but it’s still not dead.
Vivian Wilson, a 20-year-old college student who was born Xavier Musk, swung back after her estranged father expressed his anguish over her gender transition and blamed the “woke mind virus” for fueling the surge in young people identifying as the opposite sex.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything, and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Ms. Wilson told NBC News in a Thursday phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”
Ms. Wilson, who legally changed her name and gender identification in 2022, said her father was largely absent during her childhood, calling him “cold,” “quick to anger,” “uncaring” and “narcissistic.”
Other than that he’s a real mensch.
Men who pretend to be women are not examples of “female leaders.” Ever. They’re the negation of female leaders. They’re men who shove their way into women’s everything and thus shove women out. Flattering and rewarding them for doing so is just another notch on the Comprehensive Attack on Women belt.
