Here we go again.

British Rowing today announces updates made to the 2016 Transgender and Transsexual Policy. A Trans and Non-Binary Inclusion Competition Policy and Procedures (2022) has been released along with new guidance to help the rowing community at the grassroots. These documents can be found on the British Rowing Policies and Guidance page in the Diversity and Inclusion section.

The Trans and Non-Binary Inclusion Competition Policy and Procedures (2022) is a revision of the British Rowing Transgender and Transsexual Policy (2016), which was found by British Rowing to be outdated and not fit for purpose. Following extensive consultation with stakeholder organisations, and taking into account more recent guidance provided by the UK Sports Councils’ Equality Group’s Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport (September 2021), the revised policy and procedures provides clarity on the process for determining eligibility to compete in a category that does not match a trans or non-binary competitor’s birth sex.

…

In recognition that this is a fast-developing area in sport, in which new information is being provided all the time, British Rowing is committed to the regular review of this policy and its procedures to ensure that our approach is consistent with latest guidance, information, or studies. The Trans and Non-Binary Inclusion Competition Policy and Procedures (2022) and associated guidance will be reviewed within 12 months.

Is it new information that’s being provided all the time? Or is it new manipulation, new yelling and whining, new stamping and holding of breath?

We encourage and welcome any feedback to support the ongoing improvement of the policy and its procedures and feedback can be shared via this dedicated Feedback Form.

British Rowing promotes a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of discrimination including transphobia.

We welcome comments, but not comments that deal with the issue.

From the FAQs:

What is the balance between fairness and inclusion?

There is no perfect solution to balancing fairness and inclusion. The UK Sports Councils’ Equality Group’s Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport (September 2021) determined testosterone levels alone do not guarantee fairness, but it also accepts that in many instances it is the best measure available. There are a number of variables that lend themselves to a competitor’s success in rowing: technical ability, athleticism, fitness, knowledge and the experience and confidence to apply these areas. 

Hm. Notice anything missing? Like, having a male body? Having a male body lends itself to a competitor’s success in rowing, I’m pretty sure.

This could suggest that exposure to greater levels of testosterone prior to testosterone suppression through hormone treatment may not necessarily be the decisive factor as to whether a trans person will be more successful in rowing competition.

And so it could also suggest that having a male body may not necessarily be the decisive factor as to whether a man will be more successful in rowing competition against women? Because if that’s the claim it’s bullshit.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Cue the stirring music.

The thing that I seriously don’t understand is that if capitalism is supposed to bring us the best of all possible worlds due to profit, why don’t these giant energy companies see themselves as energy companies as opposed to oil companies. Chevron knew that the carbon emission from their products was going to lead us to where we are now with climate change 50 years ago, but decided to hide their data and analysis, and find ways to drill deeper and farther offshore and keep us using gasoling and diesel fuel. They knew that it’s a finite resource, they knew that eventually they will have to rely on despotic governments to make contracts for drilling on their land. They knew that there are other sources of energy, and extraction is an engineering problem that could eventually be less expensive than drilling under 500 feet of water, or in the Arctic. Shell, BP, and these other giants make the commercials that this is spoofing, and promote all the wonderful things that their engineers are doing to find ways to protect the environment while giving up nothing from our mobile lifestyle.

But they continue to fight to keep it the way that it is through fracking, mountaintop removal, using ice roads to get drilling rigs over the Arctic, build drilling platforms in the North Sea and off of the Carolina coast (subject to hurricanes,) just to maintain an oil and coal based energy economy.

I’m not a commie, don’t worry. But, I’m also not a capitalist cheerleader. It’s short-term thinking when long-term was needed.

It’s the pettiness that’s so revolting.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2019 that the military had worked to obscure the USS John S. McCain ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to a neighboring ship in Japan. It was a decision that apparently stemmed from Trump’s feuds with the decorated war hero and late senator, who was added as a namesake for the ship initially named for his father and grandfather. But the senator had died just nine months prior, rendering the effort particularly bizarre.

And petty, spiteful, childish, ridiculous, contemptible.

It was not fake news, as a batch of newly released emails reinforces and details.

The emails, obtained by Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold and by the Wall Street Journal through Freedom of Information Act requests, fill out the story of military officials responding to a request from the White House Military Office. Among the discoveries:

They show military officials saying repeatedly that this was a White House request, but also that officials didn’t want to put it in writing.

At one point, a military official was apparently so taken aback by the request that the person asked that it be confirmed. “I could see that becoming a Tweet,” the official added.

Another military official responded the next morning by saying, “This just makes me sad.”

Nothing is too petty or whiny or infantile for him.

Political bodies think they have the power to change reality by passing motions.

A council can “state clearly” whatever it likes, but stating it doesn’t make it true.

A council can state clearly that carrots are alligators; that doesn’t make it true.

Also, it’s not “phobic” to spot an untrue statement.

Eyes on the prize!

Mind you, he cheats at golf.

Tune in for another episode of “Surely you are making this up”:

Randolph High Schools girl’s volleyball team has been banned from its own locker room while school officials investigate a conflict involving a transgender student on the team.

Girls, you see. Always making trouble, always picking on the boys, always starting fights.

Vermont education policy says students can play sports and use the locker room corresponding to their gender. But some members of the Randolph girl’s volleyball team objected to having a transgender teammate in the room while they were changing.

No, it’s not the “transgender” they object to, it’s the boy.

Isn’t it funny how this doesn’t come up with boys and their locker rooms? No, it isn’t, because it’s so obvious why. Boys are predators and girls are their prey. Of course boys aren’t going to object to a girl stupid enough to take her clothes off in their locker room.

[Blake] Allen [one of the girls] says that the dispute started when the trans student made an inappropriate comment while members of the volleyball team were getting changed. She says her issue is not with having the trans student on the team or at school, but specifically in the locker room. “There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom but never a locker room,” Allen said.

The issue is also with having the boy on the girls’ team, but whatever.

In an email to families, school officials wrote that the school has “plenty of space where students who feel uncomfortable with the laws may change in privacy.”

You mean a spare locker room they can use? No.

“They want all the girls who feel uncomfortable — so pretty much 10 girls — to get changed in a single stall bathroom, which would take over 30 minutes. Where if one person got changed separately, it would take a minute, like no extra time,” Allen said.

Yawn; this is about the boy’s opportunity to get attention, not the girls’ ability to keep playing their sport.

In the email to parents, school officials say they are conducting an investigation into allegations the girls harassed the transgender boy student.

There it is. School officials are framing this as girls harassing this boy in their locker room.

Vermont Agency of Education officials were not available for comment Wednesday. AOE policy states, in part, that “The use of restrooms and locker rooms by transgender students requires schools to consider numerous factors…” But it goes on to state that “A transgender student should not be required to use a locker room or restroom that conflicts with the student’s gender identity.”

Always always always the neutral neuter anodyne “transgender” student when the issue is the boy student. We’re not even allowed to name the problem, and the media obligingly perpetuate the coverup.

Stupidity on the rampage:

Nearly two dozen graduate students at the University of Southern Maine are demanding their education professor be replaced after the professor allegedly said only two biological sexes exist.

“Allegedly.” The professor allegedly said humans don’t have wings.

The students said professor Christy Hammer’s remarks were inaccurate and transphobic.

The students were wrong.

All but one of them walked out, they demanded a “restorative justice” meeting (as if she’d committed an injustice), they got their wish but she refused to lie for them.

Biologists believe there is a larger spectrum to sex than just the male-female binary.

No they don’t. The link is to that SciAm article that SciAm should never have published.

University officials have yet to make a decision on the request, but students say they don’t want to return to class until they get a new instructor.

Waaa. Waaaaaaa. Don’t WANNA go back to class. Wanna new instructor!! One that will lie to us!!!!

“I want her to do some diversity training at least — or just retire,” said student Elizabeth Leibiger, who plans to become a high school English teacher.

And teach high school students that it’s inaccurate and transphobic to say there are two sexes.

One student wasn’t in class that day, a “non-binary” student who “uses the pronoun they.” “They” learned about the crime from other students.

When Leibiger arrived for the next class, on Sept. 14, they immediately brought up the discussion again.

“I asked [Hammer] how many sexes there were,” Leibiger said. “She said, ‘Two.’ I felt under personal attack.”

There’s the narcissism right there. Reality is a personal attack. Naming reality is a personal attack. Not participating in the fantasy is a personal attack. Meanwhile, what the stalinist students are doing to the professor is of course not a personal attack at all, it’s restorative justice.

Leibiger then gathered their things and walked out of class because they no longer felt respected.

Leibiger then gathered their things and walked out of class because they spotted an opportunity for extra attention.

“I let her know I didn’t think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments,” Leibiger said. “It’s the ultimate irony.”

Back atcha, punk.

So they all got together in the hall and decided to demand “a facilitated restorative justice meeting with their professor and the single student who agreed with her.” How dare that student agree with her! There are at least 87 sexes, it’s been proven!

“We thought she was just speaking from a place of ignorance, not hate,” Leibiger said.

While also of course thinking they the students were speaking from a place of complete and perfect knowledge, not social contagion and tragic gullibility.

The meeting took place Wednesday, and the sole student who had disagreed reportedly apologized to classmates. But Hammer maintained her position on the binary nature of sex.

“I went in very optimistic, but at the end of the three hour session it felt like we weren’t listened to,” said Lombardi, who plans to teach high school science.

Three fucking hours of being harangued by a pack of delusional fad-embracing Young Adults. Imagine the tedium of it.

Lombardi said he wasn’t sure if he and his classmates would show up to the next scheduled class on Oct. 5 if university administrators didn’t agree to replace Hammer. But he’s hoping it will happen.

“Knowing in my heart, as a teacher, that I always want to have my ears open to what my students are saying, and then not have that reciprocated — it was very frustrating,” Lombardi said.

Yes so frustrating to be unable to bully their professor into teaching a stupid lie. I hope the university tells them to go swim across the Atlantic.

It’s not what you think.

Jesus christ, I go outside to do other things for a few hours and look what I come back to.

Cannon rules Trump lawyers don’t have to clarify claims on Mar-a-Lago documents

Judge Aileen M. Cannon told Donald Trump’s lawyers Thursday that they did not need to comply with an order from special master Raymond J. Dearie and state in a court filing whether they believe FBI agents lied about documents seized from the former president’s Florida residence.

Thursday’s ruling was the first clash between Cannon, a Trump appointee who has generally shown the former president deference in litigation over the Mar-a-Lago investigation [YA THINK???], and Dearie, a federal judge she appointed as an outside expert in the case, who appears to be far more skeptical of Trump.

…

Dearie last week told the former president’s legal team that they couldn’t suggest in court filings that the government’s description of the seized documents — including whether they were classified — was inaccurate without providing any evidence. He ordered them to submit to the court by Oct. 7 any specific inaccuracies they saw in the government’s inventory list of seized items.

It would have been a key test of Trump’s legal strategy, as his lawyers decided whether to back up Trump’s controversial public claims that the FBI planted items at his residence and that he had declassified all the classified documents before leaving office — or whether they would take a more conciliatory approach.

But according to Cannon, who has the authority to overrule Dearie’s orders, such a decision is not required right now.

Judge Fixy McFixface has done Trump’s bidding.

She also said Trump could have weeks more time than Dearie had allowed.

H/t Screechy Monkey

Updating to add the quick and dirty version:

Cannon: Shut up. He doesn’t have to answer your stupid questions. You don’t even go to this school.

Here’s a bit of good news:

This morning, a three judge panel for the D.C. Court of Appeals, the highest court in the District, reversed the dismissal of suits the Center for Inquiry brought against Walmart and CVS over claims that they deceived customers by marketing fake medicine as if it were real.

Walmart and CVS shelve homeopathic products alongside real medicine. This placement is deceptive to consumers who can easily confuse it for scientifically-tested products that provably work – which they are not. CFI’s suits had been dismissed by two lower D.C. courts.

This is not a joke. The local big drug chain, Bartell Drugs, does the same thing. It’s infuriating. Of course consumers are confused by it. Homeopathic cold remedy=water.

But today, in a unanimous opinion written by Senior Judge Phyllis D. Thompson, the appeals court ruled that the placement of products on a store shelf does, in fact, communicate information to consumers that they can rely upon and be deceived by.

In addition, the court reversed the lower courts’ rulings that held CFI cannot bring claims on behalf of consumers under the D.C. law because it is not a consumer protection organization. The appellate court correctly determined that CFI’s longstanding work against the fraud of homeopathy and all pseudoscience qualifies it as a consumer protection organization.

Yes!!

Katy Montgomerie is throwing his weight around again.

Montgomerie is a white man and a full-time bully. He’s not part of a “vulnerable minority.”

Eleven is a LOT.

At last:

Mermaids is being investigated by the Charity Commission after The Telegraph revealed “red flags” in its dealings with children.

The regulator said it had opened a “regulatory compliance case” after concerns were raised about the trans charity’s “approach to safeguarding young people”. The charity has been sending potentially dangerous breast binding devices to children behind their parents’ backs and discussing with them how puberty blocking drugs are “totally reversible”.

Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training sessions for schools, the NHS and police forces, has been contacted by the regulator.

“Training sessions” forsooth. For schools and the National Health Service and the police – all institutions where you really want to get the training right.

It’s all very well to order people to evacuate, but a lot of people have no way to evacuate. In order to evacuate you need at least two things: a destination, and a way to get there. The Post tells us:

As Hurricane Ian barreled toward the nation’s third-most-populous state, millions were urged to evacuate. Many did, clogging up highways as they fanned out across Florida and beyond. But countless people defied the orders — even in some of the most vulnerable parts of the state, which could get up to 18 feet of storm surge.

…

[Rafael] Baca, who is riding out the storm with his in-laws, wife and her brothers, said they talked about leaving but decided they couldn’t afford it.

“We don’t have the money for it now, to just leave,” he said. Hotel stays, gas and meals can easily top $1,000 and could be much steeper if evacuees can’t return home for several days.

That applies to a lot of people.

A storm surge in action.

Hey kids it’s survey time –

Researchers from King’s College London wish to explore transgender women’s beliefs, attitudes and expectations/experiences of menopause and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). It is hoped that the study will help to build knowledge to better support transgender healthcare, wellbeing and the transgender community as a whole.

Ok but there’s just one small problem: transgender women are men, and men don’t have any experiences of menopause. If they have expectations about it they’re delusional.

The study consists of a short online questionnaire on your personal views and experiences of HRT and menopause. It will also collect some background information, such as your age, ethnicity and employment status.

Men don’t have experience of menopause.

Protect the children…except when it’s priests harming them.

In 33 states, clergy are exempt from any laws requiring professionals such as teachers, physicians and psychotherapists to report information about alleged child sexual abuse to police or child welfare officials if the church deems the information privileged.

That’s so interesting in the light of the fact that the Catholic church has a long long long and very full history of looking fixedly in the other direction while priests rape children.

This loophole has resulted in an unknown number of predators being allowed to continue abusing children for years despite having confessed the behavior to religious officials. In many of these cases, the privilege has been invoked to shield religious groups from civil and criminal liability after the abuse became known to civil authorities.

The very people most likely to take advantage of people’s trust to molest their children are the ones who get to tell the cops to take a hike.

Over the past two decades state lawmakers like Romero have proposed more than 130 bills seeking to create or amend child sex abuse reporting laws, an Associated Press review found. All either targeted the loophole and failed to close it, or amended the mandatory reporting statute without touching the clergy privilege amid intense opposition from religious groups. The AP found that the Roman Catholic Church has used its well-funded lobbying infrastructure and deep influence among lawmakers in some states to protect the privilege, and that influential members of the Mormon church and Jehovah’s Witnesses have also worked in statehouses and courts to preserve it in areas where their membership is high.

In Maryland a successful campaign to defeat a proposal that would have closed the clergy-penitent loophole was led by a Catholic cardinal who would later be defrocked for sexually abusing children and adult seminarians.

Hail Mary, eh?

“They believe they’re on a divine mission that justifies keeping the name and the reputation of their institution pristine,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, speaking of several religious groups. “So the leadership has a strong disincentive to involve the authorities, police or child protection people.”

Or to put it another way, they want to get away with it, and they use religious privilege to bully lawmakers into letting them. I don’t believe they believe it’s anything to do with any divine mission. They just want to protect themselves and their racket.

Commentary on CBS’s “study shows gender-affirming mastectomy is awesome” tweet is harsh.

Florida is about to get hammered.

Hurricane Ian is bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Florida as one of the strongest storms on record for the area. Its storm surge could be unlike anything seen there as the eye comes ashore, and forecasters are warning that Ian’s intense rainfall – which is expected to continue across the peninsula through Thursday, could lead to life-threatening floods.

Global warming=get out of Florida. It’s doomed.

Florida sees a lot of hurricanes, but not the biggest ones. This is a biggest one.

If Hurricane Ian makes landfall with maximum winds of 155 mph or stronger, it will be the most intense storm to ever make landfall on the west coast of the Florida peninsula.

The National Hurricane Center on Wednesday increased Ian’s storm surge forecast to 12 to 18 feet from Englewood to Bonita Beach, which would be something never seen in the region.

Storm surge is generated mainly by the hurricane’s strong winds, which blow from the ocean toward land and push huge amounts of water beyond the coast. Storm surge will likely be Ian’s most deadly aspect – 90% of hurricane-related deaths are water-related, according to the National Hurricane Center, and around 50% are caused by storm surge.

It was storm surge that drowned New Orleans.

Hurricane Ian rapidly intensified Wednesday morning. Its maximum winds increased from 120 mph to 155 mph in less than three hours, jumping from a Category 3 to a strong Category 4 in the process.

Rapid intensification is defined as a wind speed increase of 35 mph or more in 24 hours, and it has historically been a rare phenomenon. But scientists say it is becoming more likely for hurricanes as the climate crisis advances, pushing ocean temperatures higher and laying the groundwork for them to explode at a breakneck pace into deadly major hurricanes.

So that’s bad.

Also it’s going to settle down over Florida and dump rain for several days. Lots and lots and lots of rain.

“Widespread, life-threatening, catastrophic flooding is expected across portions of central Florida with considerable flooding in southern Florida, northern Florida, southeastern Georgia and coastal South Carolina,” the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday. “Widespread, prolonged major and record river flooding expected across central Florida.”

How much rain?

Rainfall rates will likely exceed 3 inches per hour on Wednesday, which could result in at least a foot of rain across central Florida, the center said. Rainfall will shift north on Thursday, putting Gainesville and Jacksonville at risk.

Yikes.

Also, it’s already been raining heavily for the past couple of weeks so rivers are already swollen.

This is going to be bad.

This is not something news organizations should be doing. It’s not news and it’s not truth, and it’s extremely harmful.

Top surgery drastically improves quality of life for young transgender people, study finds

The quality of life of young transmasculine people dramatically improves after receiving top surgery — a mastectomy procedure that removes breast tissue — according to a study by Northwestern Medicine.

What are “transmasculine people”? What is CBS doing talking silly political drivel like that?

The study, published in peer-reviewed journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, is the first to show that top surgery is “associated with significant improvement in chest dysphoria, gender congruence, and body image in transmasculine and nonbinary teens and young adults,” Northwestern Medicine said in a press release. 

The study compared two groups of patients ranging in ages from 14 to 24: one group of 36 patients received top surgery, and a control group of 34 patients received gender-affirming care, but did not get top surgery. Three months after surgery, the patients who had the procedure experienced significantly less chest dysphoria than they had prior to surgery, while patients in the control group experienced around the same levels of chest dysphoria as they had at the start of their care.

“Top surgery” “chest dysphoria” – you’d think it was a student newspaper, or else Private Eye.

The girls in the study were happy with their mastectomies, and the girls in the study who didn’t get mastectomies remained unhappy with their breasts. Here’s a funny thing though: a lot of girls don’t enjoy getting breasts, and find them annoying in various ways for varying lengths of time. Mostly, though, they get used to them. Some of them end up using them to feed a baby or several babies. Cutting them off young girls is a drastic step that the girls may come to regret in five or ten years. I’m not a bit sure CBS and JAMA Pediatrics are being helpful by encouraging girls to get their tits sliced off.

Women? Actually women? Not “people”?

The rights of women? Women??? Surely they mean people.

Remember that? It was only two weeks ago.

Have they changed their minds?