On the other hand, Justin Weinberg of Daily Nous also reports on Kathleen’s resignation, and to my surprise the comments are mostly not “she had it coming.” Quite the reverse. And the approval rate for the comments is high too.

The warmest comment:

Kathleen will no doubt thrive outside of academia. Any serious philosopher, however, should feel deep embarrassment and shame at how Kathleen has been treated by the profession, if I may speak with such generality. Her decision comes after many years of personal abuse, ostracisation, attempted blacklisting, wilful misrepresentation, and defamation, and that is just from philosophers, never mind the ‘protesters’.

Three factors stand out. First, a good deal of male philosophers appear to have outsourced their morals and good sense to what the local feminist philosopher thinks. She, so the male thinks, claims that being a woman is something to do with self-identity; she won’t tell you what that means, but if you question it, you are a bigot who is literally killing people. Little wonder most stay quiet.

Secondly, there have been many public denouncements from philosophers and others for all the foul things Kathleen has said. I can’t discover what these things are, although I am sure she has regrets. She is, at any rate, free to call people idiots and trample over sensitivities. Don’t invite her to your next party, but you don’t need to organise against her.

Thirdly, the whole background to this sorry saga is the thought that philosophy needs to be more inclusive. Unfortunately, that does not extend to class. Kathleen has consistently put underprivileged women and girls at the forefront of her thinking, to which the relevant sections of the Equality Act, pertaining to sex-based exemptions, relate (for US readers, the UK has complex legislature concerning sex and gender; Kathleen has always defended the legal status quo, which protects ‘gender reassignment’). It is no surprise that the painfully middle-class academics who have hounded Kathleen have been so puddled. They can’t see beyond their class privilege even when a woman is being stamped on in front of them. If I may be excused a joke: a liberal feminist philosopher once saved Kathleen’s life. She came across her in a ca[r] park being set upon. She shouted out: ‘I think she has had enough boys’.

Daily Nous did better than the Guardian at least.

The Guardian reports on Kathleen Stock’s resignation from Sussex, and gives the copious last word to…Pink News. Yes really.

The philosophy professor was awarded an OBE in the 2021 new year honours list for services to higher education.

But hundreds of academics criticised the decision, signing an open letter that criticised Stock’s comments on transgender and gender non-conforming people.

The link is to Pink News.

The letter claimed her “harmful rhetoric” about transgender and gender non-conforming people reinforced “the patriarchal status quo”.

“Academic freedom comes with responsibility; we should not use that freedom to harm people, particularly the more vulnerable members of our community,” the letter added.

“Conflating concern about the harms of Stock’s work with threats to academic freedom obfuscates important issues.”

And that’s the last sentence in the piece. Jury dismissed.

Julie Bindel underlines that the bullying of Kathleen Stock is intended as a warning to all of us.

Claims that Stock is a ‘transphobe’ are not only unfounded but wilfully misguided. Stock is being punished not for her views on transgender issues, but for standing her ground in the face of persistent and sadistic bullying over sex-based rights, and a belief in the immutability of biology.

In other words she was supposed to take it all back, and she refused, so she had to be made an example.

Women are supposed to cave in. Patriarchy works not by all men holding a gun to the heads of all women, but by public displays of male power, such as the treatment of Stock over the past three years. What has happened to her and others in the public eye is so terrible it serves as a lesson to others. For every Kathleen Stock there are hundreds, or even thousands of women, that will be terrified to raise their heads above the parapet on trans issues.

And then there are the students.

I hear from countless young women who tell me they want to be taught about feminism in university, and all they get is an endless sop of ‘sex work is work’ and ‘trans women are women’.

The Greta Christina version of feminism – not feminism at all but neo-liberal individualistic choosy-choice horseshit.

Owen Jones is providing the mirth for today.

The world totters on its axis – the top dog in the Labour party has unfollowed the great Owen Jones!

Updating to add:

What a loathsome prick.

He wrote the Pink News story. The title is as stupid as his tweet.

Anti-trans professor Kathleen Stock quits Sussex university in ‘massive win for LGBT+ students’

She’s not “anti-trans.” How is it a win for L students to bully an L professor out? How is it a win for LGB students to bully an L professor out? How is the win “massive”? More likely James Barry is right that Sussex University has sustained a damaging injury.

Sadistic Vic Parsons gloats.

LGBT+ students at the University of Sussex have welcomed news that professor Kathleen Stock is to leave the institution.

Yeah sure lesbian students are thrilled to see a lesbian professor bullied until she can’t stand to be there any more.

She has also argued that self-ID “threatens a secure understanding of the concept ‘lesbian’”, rooting her rhetoric in a belief of immutable biological sex.

Stupid little toad. It’s not “rhetoric,” it’s argument; she’s a philosopher. Vic Parsons, by the way, is not. And guess what, sex is immutable, it’s gender that’s not.

Vic Parsons should change his gender to stupid misogynist flea.

More book-sniffing:

A Republican state lawmaker has launched an investigation into Texas school districts over the type of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or “make students feel discomfort.”

State Rep. Matt Krause, in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, notified the Texas Education Agency that he is “initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content,” according to an Oct. 25 letter obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Krause’s letter provides a 16-page list of about 850 book titles and asks the districts if they have these books, how many copies they have and how much money they spent on the books.

I don’t think state legislators are supposed to micromanage schools’ book choices that way.

His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year’s book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

But race is not the only thing on the committee chair’s list. Other listed books Krause wants school districts to account for are about teen pregnancy, abortion and homosexuality, including “LGBT Families” by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee, “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” edited by Sarah Moon, and Michael J. Basso’s “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”

It seems he’s doing all this under the umbrella of the No Critical Race Theory law.

Krause informs districts they must provide the committee with the number of copies they have of each book, on what part of campus those books are located and how much money schools spent on the books, as well as information on any other book that violates House Bill 3979, the so-called “critical race theory law”designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools. Critical race theory, the idea that racism is embedded in legal systems and not limited to individuals, is an academic discipline taught at the university level. But it has become a common phrase used by conservatives to include anything about race taught or discussed in public secondary schools.

Unless what’s taught is that there were a few hiccups but now everything is fabulous and anyone who says otherwise is a far-left wild-eyed anarchist demon.

State Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, who is vice chair of the committee, said she had no idea Krause was launching the investigation but believes it’s a campaign tactic. She found out about the letter after a school in her district notified her.

“His letter is reflective of the Republican Party’s attempt to dilute the voice of people of color,” she said.

Neave said she doesn’t know what Krause is trying to do but will investigate the motive and next steps.

Meanwhile schools are trying to figure out how the hell to comply when they’re already busy dealing with the effects of the pandemic. Is our children learning?

Meanwhile Peter Tatchell steps up.

Notice that “a significant number of” isn’t the same as “all” yet he leaps from the first to the second for his stupid analogy. Also notice how glibly he simply shrugs off the part about men pressuring lesbians for sex. Not a problem for Peter so he’s not going to take it seriously or even discuss it honestly, in fact he’s going to try to shut down discussion of it. Male privilege much?

Updating to add:

That clip is revolting.

Joan Smith on Sussex’s failure to hang on to Kathleen Stock:

The Vice-chancellor, Adam Tickell, has written to all staff at Sussex, insisting that the university ‘has vigorously and unequivocally defended [Stock’s] right to exercise her academic freedom and lawful freedom of speech, free from bullying and harassment of any kind’.

Stock has responded by saying that the university leadership’s approach ‘more recently has been admirable and decent’, leaving open the question of what it did when she was first targeted. Because Stock and other gender critical academics, such as Professor Jo Phoenix of the Open University, have faced slurs and bullying for at least two years — so much so that Phoenix is raising funds to take the OU to an employment tribunal.

Selina Todd is another who springs to mind.

For too long, other academics have looked the other way, afraid of being targeted themselves, or in some cases even joined in the harassment. Who could forget the posters around Sussex demanding that Stock should be fired? Yet those of us who denounced the gender extremists behind the bullying of feminists, after our meetings to defend women’s rights were picketed by screaming trans activists, have been primly told that the issue is ‘toxic on both sides’.

It is hard to sustain this nonsense when you have seen the venom with your own eyes. Earlier this month, when women from all over the country gathered in Portsmouth to discuss violence against women, we had to walk past trans activists bearing posters that threatened us with sexual violence in the most obscene language imaginable.

On the ‘other side’ are lesbians like Stock and Phoenix, who simply ask to do their jobs — to ask awkward questions in a polite manner — without threats. On the ‘other side’ are women who highlight the conflict between the rights of vulnerable women in prisons and men who demand the right to be housed with them.

And who do so without obscene bullying and threats.

Aw yeah, direct action, comrades – bully those pesky women out of their jobs.

Scum of the earth.

Behold: an asexual-themed “lingerie” campaign. (Side note: what even is that stupid word? I’ve never had any “lingerie” in my life, I have underwear. Just one more way women are treated as the Designated Sex Toys.)

That’s asexual-themed??? Boy you coulda fooled me. It looks entirely sexual. The posing is sexual and the “lingerie” is sexual, as are the gloves. (Gloves???) The open mouth is not sexual? Come on. The cocked leg, the boots, the weird straps, the hair, the shooting from below, the thrown back head? There’s not one thing about it that’s not sexual.

But hey, #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike! Who am I to argue?

They don’t usually say it quite so bluntly.

Books deemed ‘harmful to staff and students’ are being removed from region’s public school libraries

And…”harmful” how? Oh you know…just not the kind of thing the reader would have written. Which reader? Any reader, obviously. If someone says “I don’t like this,” out it goes.

The Waterloo Region District School Board is undertaking a multi-year review of its library collections to identify and remove any texts deemed “harmful to staff and students.”

Graham Shantz, coordinating superintendent in human resources and equity services outlined the ongoing work during Tuesday’s board meeting as part of an overview of the board’s 2021-2022 strategic and operational plan.

“We recognize as our consciousness around equity, oppression work and anti-racist work has grown, we recognize some of the texts in some of the collections that we have are not appropriate at this point,” Shantz said. He explained how the board developed a framework last year for reviewing its collections in elementary and secondary school libraries.

“We’ve done a great job over the years of adding collections that promote the diversity both of our workforce and our students and our community as a broader point, but we haven’t spent the concentrated effort that we need to spend on ensuring that we’re removing inappropriate or texts that are questionable and don’t have the pedagogical frameworks that we need,” Shantz said.

School libraries can’t have all the books there are, of course, so they have to be selective, but I’m not sure screening out every book someone considers “inappropriate” is the right filter to use.

Shantz said the process to edit school libraries will involve educating teachers about the board’s framework so they can consider removing texts from their classroom collections.

In the new and better tomorrow they will have removed all of them, and peace will settle over the land.

Earlier this year, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board removed William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies from its curriculum after its advisory committee on equity agreed with a student who said the book’s themes were outdated and too focused on white, male power structures.

Well now almost all books are outdated, aren’t they, because that’s time for you. It just keeps passing, and so books keep getting older. Maybe we should class them with apples and eggs and other things that go bad over time? Give them a shelf-life stamp?

Other books recently removed from Canadian school libraries and/or curriculums in response to complaints about racist, homophobic, or misogynistic language and themes, include Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Er…I think somebody somewhere missed the point.

GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE!

More Ash. (She’s like a splinter that you can’t…quite…dig…out.)

One, but it’s not all we do. Obviously. It’s not all anyone does. It’s something we talk about when it comes up, and the rest of the time we do other things.

Second, we don’t generally say it’s disgusting…unless she means we say the coercion is morally disgusting. That is something I say, and it’s quite possible I’ve said it about this subject. I do think it’s morally disgusting – worse than bad, worse than wrong, actively repellent and horrifying. Could Ash be confused about that? No, because what she says is “about who you find disgusting,” meaning “too disgusting to have sex with.” She’s translating the absence of sexual attraction into “disgusting,” which is a cheap trick, and in fact kind of homophobic, if you ask me.

Third, and most glaring, it’s not “lesbians don’t want to have sex with trans women because of their minority status” now is it. Of course it’s not. Lesbians don’t want to have sex with trans women because they have male bodies. Having a male body is very far from being a minority status, especially a downtrodden or exploited minority.

Any accusation she can think of in order to justify calling women bigoted, it seems.

Trump has written a letter to the Wall Street Journal. It’s about a brand new and exciting subject.

In your editorial “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court” (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. “This didn’t matter,” you add, “because Mr. Biden won the state by 80,555, but the country is lucky the election wasn’t closer. If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the next President might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out.

He’s still got it! The old elegance, the wit, the learning, the flare. I think it’s the “which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out” that impresses me the most. Person, man, woman, camera, tv.

He then does bullet points. Many many many bullet points.

• Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate election irregularities.

Whoosh there’s Bill Barr overboard!

• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook poured over $17 million to interfere in the Pennsylvania election, including $5.5 million on “ballot processing equipment” in Philadelphia and $552,000 for drop boxes where the voting pattern was not possible.

Mark Zuckerberg too? Jeez it will be Lindsey Graham next. They’ll be out there pouring money to interfere until your eyes bleed.

Hilarious, in its own way.

Well, you can surely order a sandwich without any pronouns other than first person, but Gad Saad later explained that his wife had wanted to say “he’ll get the hang of it” to another server (server # 1 is new to the job) but felt nervous about the “he.” But what’s funny, in a frustrating way, is all the explaining that you don’t have to use third person pronouns at all.

WE KNOW!!

We know, we know, we know. We’ve been saying that for years. It doesn’t matter – we still get the pronoun dramatizing.

Originally a comment by Laurent on 8 years.

When I advertised a project at work to plant fruit trees and thus asked people to bring us back seeds or plantlets from their garden, out of 250 people, 1 gave 3 seeds and another one gave 6 young trees. That’s how people commit to a very easy task that would have sucked up tonnes of carbon over 20 years.

Eventually I did and do contribute to planting trees at work, currently possibly worth a commercial value exceeding several thousand bucks (and I don’t count my time).

I’m really amazed, because everywhere there is room for tree planting, even if we avoid places where trees falling are a potential risk. (Though when people argue about the cost of lumberjacks I ask them about the cost of climate change).

There is room for mitigation, quite room, and actually quite mitigation. We won’t avoid the disaster, but we certainly can attenuate its strength. Now.

There isn’t even the need for trees to grow up huge, even if we cut them down after a few years and maintain dense cover and use the wood even for composting it will still displace carbon from the atmosphere.

Saying it and saying you didn’t say it.

Bad Ash. Dishonest Ash. Ash is pretending to think Berrelli’s tweet contained quotation marks, as in: Ash, you said “lesbians were” etc. But there are no quotation marks. Berrelli summarized what Ash said, and she summarized it accurately. Saying “it’d be fair to ask if racism plays a part” is more than close enough to “equivalent to racists.” Accurate summarizing is not “making shit up.”

Bad bad bad Ash.

Another version of the X on passports news:

The US has issued its first passport with an “X” gender designation – a milestone in the recognition of the rights of people who don’t identify as male or female – and expects to be able to offer the option more broadly next year, the state department said on Wednesday.

What rights? What are the “rights” of people who don’t identify as male or female that are different from the rights of anyone else? Spell them out and explain why only people who don’t identify as male or female have them. Is there a “right” to be called neither male nor female? What kind of right would that be? What would it be based on?

And even if it is a right (which I obviously don’t think it is, at least not without further explanation), how is the right squared with the need for passports to do what passports exist to do? How is the right squared with the need for accuracy on official documents?

It’s funny how seldom any of this is even mentioned, let alone discussed. It seems quite obvious that passports with meaningless fake details about ID are less useful than passports that are accurate (because why else do we have to go to all that trouble to get them?), yet we mostly politely don’t mention it in the news accounts.

The US special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, Jessica Stern, called the moves historic and celebratory, saying they brought the government documents in line with the “lived reality” that there is a wider spectrum of human sex characteristics than is reflected in the previous two designations.

No there isn’t. She means gender characteristics, and passports don’t record those. Passports aren’t about personality or clothes, they’re about a very short list of documented facts. Which of two sexes one is is one of those facts.

“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” Stern said.

Except that in the real world it’s their false identity, however much they feel it reflects the True Ineffable They. Again, for those in the back, passports don’t exist to reflect people’s “true” (i.e. fictional) identities, they exist to record their plain factual ones, for the inspection of officials at airports and border crossings. This is the real world, it’s not fucking high school.

So stupid it burns.

The State Department announced Wednesday that the U.S. has issued its first “X” gender marker on passports, marking a step toward making passports available for non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people throughout the country.

Then what is the point of having sex markers on passports at all? If they’re going to have some that are meaningless why have any?

Passports don’t exist to give people tingly validation feelings. Passports have not until now been unavailable to non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people. Passports are official documents and they’re supposed to tell the truth about the people who have them; that’s pretty much their whole point.

“The Department of State is committed to promoting the freedom, dignity, and equality of all people – including LGBTQI+ persons,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement announcing the move earlier this year.

So it’s issuing fake passports? How does that promote the freedom, dignity, and equality of anyone?

But also…how childish that sounds. How can a branch of government allow itself to sound like a fatuous teenager that way? It’s embarrassing.

The milestone is part of President Joe Biden’s plan to “advance LGBTQ+ equality in America and around the world.” 

How does this nonsense advance equality?

When laydeez are a little dangerous…

A convicted murderer and sex offender from British Columbia, Canada has been denied parole after seeking release from prison shortly after identifying as transgender.

Roger Dale Badour, 73, is currently serving a life sentence for the fatal shooting of a woman in 2011. Badour had been living on the property of Gisele Duckham, 56, at the time of the murder. Following an argument, he fatally shot her, hid her body, and then fled.

At the time, Badour was out on parole and supposed to be living in a halfway house in Victoria, British Columbia on conditions of ceasing contact with women. This condition came after Badour was released into the community from a 7-year prison term for the brutal sexual assault of a pregnant woman.

I guess they weren’t enforcing the “no contact with women” part very well. Or the “live in this halfway house” thing either.

Since identifying as a woman, Badour has already claimed his newfound gender identity has led to him being mistreated on his living unit in a male penetentiary. The question many are asking is whether Badour could potentially be transferred to a women’s prison due to Canadian self-identification laws.

I wonder if Badour self-identifies as not a murderer of women now.