Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Originally a comment by Laurent on Scoop: more men running for office!

We’re all non-binary.

I keep struggling with gender stereotypes themselves, and the whole issue clearly doesn’t clarify at all.

I really wonder what are the keystone gender norms that apply to the binary as a general inalienable truth, that almost everyone would acknowledge is actually what historically defines gender at core and still applies mostwhere, if possible independently of secondary cultural norms.

What I get is that it is not about lifestyle at all.

Men -. I was about to write down “none”, but admittedly there is one norm that became quite exceptional but may make an unexpected come-back in the future: obligation to go to war and serve the country.

Women:

– shut up, smile, be nice

– much less safety outside of home

– have kids (and take charge) (husband is a special kid with special needs)

– housekeeping & home management

– paygap, way fewer career opportunities, way fewer opportunities at large

Claiming non-binarity is not doing anything to change that.

Disclaimer: I am not claiming exhaustivity, I was aiming for defining core. Does not imply feeling fine about it neither.

In Alex Jones news: $45.2 million in punitive damages.

Jones spent years telling his audience that one of the worst school shootings in American history was a hoax. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, who brought the charges against Jones, told the court how he made their lives a “living hell” after Jesse, their 6-year-old son, was gunned down in the attack.

“I can’t even describe the last nine-and-a-half years,” Heslin said. “The living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones.”

Not to mention the brutality and cruelty and total lack of empathy.

Hoo-boy…“unethical” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

FPFW:

There are a couple of studies being done in British universities in an attempt to prove that “transition” from male to female reduces the male performance advantage enough to make it fair for those post-pubertal adult males to play and compete in women’s sport. It’s known that testosterone suppression reduces oxygen-carrying capacity, which reduces athletic performance a bit, though it’s obvious that most of the effects of male puberty are irreversible. Nonetheless, Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

I’ll just say that again. Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

That’s not a study, that’s not academic work, that’s not research – that’s men using a veneer of pretend-research to enable their theft of women’s places in women’s sport.

At Loughborough, Joanna Harper is trying to back up the anecdotal evidence provided to the IOC in 2015, on which their testosterone suppression policy, since dropped, was based. We wrote about the problems of study design and the conflicts of interest for the study leader and for the participants. It is hopelessly compromised.

Now the leader of the Brighton study, Blair Hamilton, has confirmed this. In calling for trans athletes who feel their potential exclusion from female categories is unfair to participate in their study, Hamilton is actively recruiting participants who want to demonstrate their loss of performance. As we’ve written before, we can be certain they’ll succeed.

Not exactly the right way to recruit participants for a research study.

Fun at the swimming pool:

A senior woman who expressed discomfort regarding a trans-identified male in the women’s changing room at her local pool has been banned from using the facilities she frequented for over three decades. Julie Jaman, 80, had been a guest at the YMCA-run Mountain View community pool in her small town of Port Townsend, Washington for over 35 years.

Interrupting for a moment to say I know that small town. It’s on the Olympic Peninsula, the remainder of the state west of Seattle and Puget Sound; it’s on a bluff overlooking the water and features a lot of gorgeous Queen Anne-style Victorian houses. It’s a lovely place.

Speaking to Reduxx, Jaman revealed that on July 26, she witnessed a trans-identified male using the female locker rooms at the pool, and became concerned due to the fact he appeared to be watching the little girls as they changed out of their bathing suits.

“I was showering [after a swim] and I heard a man’s voice … it was quite deep,” Jaman told Reduxx, “So I looked through the shower curtain. There was a man in a women’s bathing suit, and he was near four or five little girls who were taking off their bathing suits. He was standing there watching them.”

Jaman observed the male through the opening in the shower curtain for a moment. Shocked by his presence and becoming increasingly distressed about his proximity to the children, she quietly asked: “Do you have a penis?” The male refused to answer, prompting Jaman to demand he leave the locker room.

Rowen DeLuna, the pool’s aquatics manager, was in the area at the time, and when Jaman appealed to her to remove the male from the restroom, DeLuna told her she was being “discriminatory” and threatened to call the police.

“She said, ‘you are being discriminatory, you are banned from the pool, and I am calling the police.’”

Calling the police, because a woman told a man to get out of the women’s changing room. You couldn’t make it up.

Read the rest.

U wot?

Young people who bleed across Wales? What do they do, open a vein in Fishguard and march bleeding all the way to Abergavenny?

Haha, silly me, no, they mean “people” all over Wales who shed their uterine linings once a month.

Our aim is to break the taboo around periods by encouraging conversation on one of the most normal, natural topics that half the world’s population experience.

Which half? Which half which half which half which half which half which half?

Of course they don’t say. Funny that they want to break one taboo by instituting another.

We’re immensely proud that Bloody Brilliant was created for the young people of Wales by the young people of Wales. 

Following research with young people across the country, we got to the heart of their challenges when talking about and experiencing periods. From this, we uncovered key insights and Bloody Brilliant was born. Working with an incredible bunch of young people, we used co-creation workshops to shape the brand and information you’ll see on this website. And we can’t forget to give a massive shout out to the top team of experts and influencers across the period health field who helped us out throughout our journey.

What a pity the experts and influencers forgot to tell the young people which half.

Social Change UK created Bloody Brilliant on behalf of NHS Wales and the Welsh Government. Their combined aim is to open up the conversation and provide information on period health, so generations of young people don’t suffer in silence through fear of speaking out or lack of understanding around what’s normal when it comes to periods.

That’s great but which half?

Let’s see…off the top of my head rather than looking in a dictionary…

-fer

-late

-ition

-parent (that pun is the title of a Netflix show of course)

-cendent

-itory

Quite a few words to render meaningless.

H/t soogeeoh

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Never going back.

The situation is much the same in south-eastern Norway. For the first time ever this year the trusted spring flood due to snowmelt in the second half of May has been completely absent due to record-low levels of snow in the mountains. Combine that with the driest summer on record, and it’s becoming a major challenge for hydropower companies such as the one I’m working in to keep our power plants running. To the end consumers this has the effect of driving the already economy-breaking energy prices even further up. Factor in the European over-reliance on Russian gas that is no longer available, and we’re facing the real prospect of rationing this upcoming winter.

Many have suggested that Putin is now counting on the crisis to turn Europeans against their own governments and make them elect pro-Russian rightwing populists who will ease the sanctions against Russia and withdraw their support for Ukraine. He is obviously also counting on the Republicans to regain control over the U.S. Senate, in which case his old friend and ally Donald Trump (or someone equally bad) may very well be “legally” declared winner of the next presidential election, even if he doesn’t win the election – not even on a technicality as in 2016.

It’s like everything about this problem is self-reinforcing. Not only does the initial increase in global temperatures trigger positive feedback loops that lead to further increases in global temperatures (the greenhouse effect being amplified due to more water vapor in the atmosphere, less sunlight reflected back into space due to less snow and ice etc.), and not only does the problem significantly impair the best available alternatives to fossil fuel, such as hydropower, but the misery and suffering caused by the problem make it – if at all possible – even less politically feasible to do anything about it.

Oh well… The rest of the universe should be fine…

Amnesty International is even dumber than I thought – or its social media intern is, but that’s the same thing, because what is Amnesty doing letting a stupid clueless woman-hating child handle its social media?

It’s millions of men who can become pregnant.

Who knew?

The snowpack is shrinking.

The Western US is an empire built on snow. And that snow is vanishing.

Since most of the region gets little rain in the summer, even in good years, its bustling cities and bountiful farms all hinge on fall and winter snow settling in the mountains before slowly melting into rivers and reservoirs. That snowmelt, often traveling hundreds of miles from mountain top to tap, sustains the booming desert communities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake City — even coastal Los Angeles and San Francisco. A civilization of more than 76 million people, home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood alike, relies on snow.

Without the snow, it’s mostly desert.

Dangerously high temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and California’s deadly McKinney Fire flung the Western states’ changing climate back into the national spotlight this past week, and it only gets tougher from here. With the Southwest gripped by its worst drought in 1,200 years, there’s less precipitation of any kind these days across the region, especially the crucial frozen variety with its multi-month staying power. Rain, as desperately as it’s needed, isn’t quite the same: Unless it goes into a lake or reservoir, it won’t be available for weeks or months in the future, the way snowmelt can be. What little winter precipitation does arrive now often lands as rain and runs off, long gone by summer. The West’s mountain snowpacks have shrunk, on average, 23% between 1955 and 2022. By the end of the 21st century, California could lose as much as 79% of its peak snowpack by water volume.

But by then someone will have invented artificial water, surely.

Columbia University climate scientist Richard Seager’s lab has been modeling the next two decades of rainfall in the US Southwest, and all of the projections show the area will be drier than in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Southwest has to get it in its head that it’s never going to get back to the levels of water availability that we had in the late 20th century,” he said.

It can’t, it’s too busy building new houses in the desert.

Farmers are cutting back on production already, which…you know.

Bloomberg ends with some wan discussion of what can we do, but it’s obvious that the answer is nothing.

It seems I missed new jokes from Jason Stanley during my exile from internet privilege.

Please, sir, tell us more about yourself.

Oh look, he does!

But for the chef’s kiss –

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

Right-wing talk show host Alex Jones will have to pay the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages, a jury decided Thursday, capping a stunning and dramatic case that showcased for the public the real-world harm inflicted by viral conspiracy theories.

…

A separate, shorter trial during which punitive damages will be discussed is now expected. Punitive damages are awarded when the court finds the defendant’s behavior to be especially offensive.

…

“Neil and Scarlett are thrilled with the result and look forward to putting Mr. Jones’ money to good use,” Bankston added. “Mr Jones on the other hand will not sleep easy tonight. With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple additional defamation lawsuits pending, it is clear that Mr Jones’ time on the American stage is finally coming to an end.”

And he’s a warning.

The jury’s decision, while far lower than what the plaintiffs’ attorneys had asked for, sends a message to those who propel lies into the public conversation, whether for political power or financial gain, that there can be consequences for such behavior.

Bring it on.

Sorry! Internet torture hell. I think it’s been fixed now…

Interesting ploy in this one – mention racism but scrupulously refrain from mentioning sexism…when talking about an issue that is precisely about women and not men.

We can talk about racism and “discrimination”…but not sexism or discrimination against specifically women. We can’t ever ever ever talk about women and injustice against women. That would be transphobic.

But what it won’t do is say the word “women.”

Who? Who is “we”? Who is “us”? Whose bodies are we talking about? Everyone’s? What kind of sexual and reproductive health care are we talking about?

It’s a mystery.

See also:

No.

Not forcing “someone”: forcing a woman.

Not “their” will: her will.

Not “Americans”: American women.

NOT PREGNANT PERSON. JUST STOP.

Well obviously. Nobody is “just their genitals.” That would be weird. Imagine it, just millions and millions of genitals and nothing else. They couldn’t even walk around, because no legs (this goes for the male variety too). No walking, no talking, no ballet, no eating a cheeseburger – nothing. Just genitals. You may be thinking well at least it would be sexy, but would it? Would it? When there’s absolutely nothing else? No brain, no eyes, no ears, no feet? I say no.

Mkay this is scary. Everything is scary these days. This is very scary.

As former Republican senator Rick Santorum addressed Republican lawmakers gathered in San Diego at the American Legislative Exchange Council policy summit, he detailed a plan to fundamentally remake the United States. 

By making a new constitution! A new far-right constitution! Oh boy, kids, won’t that be fun?!

The December 2021 ALEC meeting represents a flashpoint in a movement spearheaded by powerful conservative interests, some of whom are tied to Trumpworld and share many of Trump’s goals, to alter the nation’s bedrock legal text since 1788. It’s an effort that has largely taken place out of public view. 

…

During an extraordinary few weeks in June, the Supreme Court’s three new Trump appointees powered the reversal of Roe v. Wade. They fortified gun rights and bolstered religious freedoms. Future presidents now have less power to confront the climate crisis. Each win is the product of a steady, and in some cases, decades-long quest by conservatives to bend the arc of history rightward. 

Well I guess we can take comfort from the climate change part. Soon we’ll all just be dead or struggling to stay alive and no one will give a rat’s ass about any constitution.

Communalism strikes again.

A private school in Vadodara, which had planned a field trip for kindergarten children to a mosque in the city, called off the visit after protests from Bajrang Dal on Tuesday. Volunteers of the Bajrang Dal, who claimed to have “received complaints” from parents, arrived at the school and threatened the school management with dire consequences if children were taken to the mosque.

I don’t really think schools should be taking students to mosques or temples or churches, but I much more definitely think other people shouldn’t make threats over it.

The Delhi Public School in Kalali in Vadodara, which had earlier also taken children to visit a temple in the city, had planned to take the kindergarten children to a mosque as part of a field visit for value education this week. However, on Tuesday volunteers of the Bajrang Dal arrived on campus and staged a protest, chanting the Ram Dhun. Later, they met with the principal of the school and “warned” of agitation if the field trip to the mosque was not called off.

“Warned” as in “we will get violent if you do this.”

Ahhh what a lovely man – he buried the ex on his golf course because tax break. The sentimental old fool.

When Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s first wife, was buried last month near the first hole of Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, few immediately guessed that her grave’s location might also serve her ex-husband’s long-held tax planning purposes.

Well at least near the first hole is special. Could have been the fifth, or behind the pro shop.

Tax code in New Jersey exempts cemetery land from all taxes, rates, and assessments – and her grave, as such, potentially has advantageous tax implications for a Trump family trust that owns the golf business, in a state where property and land taxes are notoriously high.

“Look! We buried Mom here! The whole thing is now a cemetery! Now look over there for a minute while I move my ball out of the sand trap.”

Brooke Harrington, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth college in New Hampshire, tweeted on Saturday that she had looked into claims that Ivana Trump’s resting place might benefit her ex-husband’s tax planning from beyond the grave.

“As a tax researcher, I was skeptical of rumors Trump buried his ex-wife in that sad little plot of dirt on his Bedminster, NJ golf course just for tax breaks. So I checked the NJ tax code & folks…it’s a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated,” Harrington wrote, after opinions accusing Trump of being primarily motivated by the possibility of a tax break began popping up on social media.

Well, he’s sentimental that way.

Ivana Trump was buried in a plot close to the first tee of the golf course, following her funeral in Manhattan on 20 July. Her resting place is marked with a rudimentary wreath of white flowers and an engraved granite stone.

And it’s near the first tee, so, super classy.

[E]very break counts, and the former president has previously designated the plot as a farm because some trees on the site are turned into mulch used for flower beds, according to the Washington Post.

And that doesn’t make it a farm??

Obviously I had to follow that link.

So let’s read the abstract:

Throughout 2019, retired athletes Martina Navratilova (tennis), Sharron Davies (swimming), Kelly Holmes (athletics) and Paula Radcliffe (marathon) all spoke publically about what they perceive to be the unfairness of trans women competing in women’s elite sport.

What they “perceive to be” the unfairness of men competing in women’s sport (elite or otherwise) – ah yes it’s wholly subjective, and downright whimsical. Why would anyone think it’s unfair for men to compete in women’s sport? Why would anyone think it’s unfair for adults to compete in children’s sport? Why would anyone think it’s unfair for non-disabled people to compete against disabled people? It’s all so silly, isn’t it.

These successful athletes, all with a history of growing and promoting women’s sport, were simultaneously celebrated for sharing their thoughts on a complex issue, and labelled transphobic for expressing anti-inclusive and transphobic views.

Growing women’s sport? It’s not a tomato. And the issue isn’t complex – it’s quite simple to see why men should not compete in women’s sport. And they may have been celebrated and called terfs at the same time, but it was by different people, so the “simultaneously” is kind of silly. “Both” would have been clearer. The views of course were neither “anti-inclusive” nor “transphobic.”

Navratilova, particularly, despite her long history of fighting for inclusion and to end homophobia in sport, faced a severe backlash for expressing anti-trans rhetoric.

But what kind of “inclusion”? Inclusion of whom? She doesn’t have a long history of fighting for the inclusion of men in women’s sport; why would she, why should she? And she didn’t express “anti-trans” anything and what she said was not mere “rhetoric.” This Sarah Teetzel person is a terrible writer and not much of a thinker.