Soooooooo let’s just start over from the beginning as if nobody had ever said anything over the past 5 or 10 years, that should be fun and productive.

In comes a flood of replies and quote tweets saying “You know where: everywhere except women-only spaces.”

This I think is partly the fault of all those Guardian and BBC and Independent pieces talking about trans people and transgender activists when what they mean is trans women. The media carefully obfuscate the issue, so it’s not entirely surprising that LP loses track. The media have trained her, and others, to lose track.

It’s still annoying though.

Ev. Ree. Where.

Yes but where though?

The riddle is “how are feminists like racists and anti-Semites?” and the answer is they’re not.

Feminists who fear [that] a radical overhaul of transgender laws in Scotland will threaten their rights and safety have been compared to racists and anti-Semites by a minister in Nicola Sturgeon’s government.

A woman, at that.

Lorna Slater, who was handed a ministerial post last year under the SNP’s coalition pact with the Greens, was accused of making “grossly offensive” remarks as she appeared to demand that media organisations censor critics of the Scottish Government plans.

In remarks about the trans rights debate published on Sunday, she said the BBC had “only recently stopped putting on climate deniers because they required balance”. She added: “We wouldn’t put balance on the question of racism or anti-Semitism, but we allow this fictional notion of balance when it comes to anti-trans [views]. The whole thing is disgusting.”

The views are not “anti-trans.” Gender critical feminists don’t want to harm trans people. We dispute the ideology about sex and gender that tells people how to think about people who say they are the opposite sex.

The SNP/Green Government at Holyrood recently published legislation that would allow anyone aged 16 or over born or resident in Scotland to change their legal sex by self-identification, removing the need for a medical diagnosis or doctor’s approval.

It seems to me if you think about it really hard for 30 seconds or so you can see how that arrangement could damage some rights of women.

Ms Slater’s comments, to The Herald on Sunday, came after Shona Robison, the SNP minister steering the legislation through Holyrood, called for a “respectful” debate without “offensive or abusive” comments on either side.

However, Ms Slater, who is entitled to a salary of £98,000 in her role as biodiversity minister, said a perceived backlash against the trans community was “hideous” and that she feared for the safety of trans women standing as Green candidates in the council elections.

“These gentle, hardworking women are being portrayed as if they’re inherently dangerous,” she said. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Interesting choice of words. “Gentle.” I guess that’s supposed to cancel our awareness that they’re men? But that’s the problem, see – we don’t want that awareness canceled. Our safety depends on it, and so do some of our rights. I understand that that’s painful to some men who identify as trans, but I still think we get to defend our safety and rights all the same.

Meanwhile of course this is fine.

Do what we tell you or we will kill you.

The pink blue and white flag is sacred.

The University of Melbourne said they have counselled one of their academics over a ‘transphobic’ post on social media on Transgender Day of Visibility.

And the next thing we see is a trigger warning – not a warning about misogyny or anti-feminism but a warning about, of course, “transphobia.” I wonder if stories about violence against women include trigger warnings after the first paragraph.

Trigger Warning: This story has details of a transphobic post, which might be distressing to some readers. For 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.

Any numbers for women to call? No? Sorry, stupid and selfish of me to ask.

Faculty of Arts Associate professor Holly Lawford-Smith on March 31, had posted a photo of a trans pride flag painted on the premises of the University in a Facebook group. The post said, “every entrance to unimelb today” and was accompanied by vomit emojis.

I wonder if there are feminist flags at every entrance to unimelb on any day of the year.

Australian drag performer Pauline Pantsdown was the first to call out the post. “Amazed that The University of Melbourne is fine with an Assoc. Prof posting vomit emojis about the existence of some students. Her research focused on climate ethics when hired; in 2018 became radicalised into anti-transgender activism & took over a feminism course. Zero priority for student safety.” 

Man who calls himself Pantsdown seeks to silence feminist woman. Naturally.

Unless they’re feminist women, of course.

Last week Grace Lavery, this week Veronica Ivy.

Now, maybe the idea is to give these creepy misogynist men the rope to hang themselves with, but is it worth it? And maybe that isn’t the idea, maybe the idea is just provocative, name recognition, noise. Rhys McKinnon is a loathsome, sadistic individual who relishes cheating women out of opportunities to race and medals. It’s not really cute to reward him with a chance to preen himself on Woman’s Hour.

Fake Gay History:

A recent video of a young teacher…shows her awkwardly speaking into a camera: “There is a way to be sneaky about supporting, say, queer students in your classroom, and I want to show you it.”

The camera pans to a homemade-looking pink triangle on her dry-erase board. The teacher continues, “The pink triangle was used in concentration camps to identify gay women and also people who were asexual and now has been co-opted by the queer community to be a symbol of a safe space. Dropping a pink triangle somewhere in your room makes a huge difference, because kids look for that.”

No it wasn’t. The pink triangle was the equivalent of the yellow star, and it was for gay men.

The Nazis didn’t, in fact, systematically persecute lesbians. Nor did they target “asexuals,” who didn’t claim their status as a distinct sexual identity until well after World War II. Homosexual men were persecuted, and the pink triangle was used to designate them as such within the camps. Before the symbol was apparently co-opted by the generalized “queer community,” it was used by AIDS activists at the height of the crisis to symbolize the US government’s perceived silence and indifference, which they believed was tantamount to a state-imposed “death sentence” against patients.

The video’s one true statement—that some ambiguous “queer community” has co-opted the pink triangle—reinforces the general trend of writing gay people, usually men, out of their own history and expanding it to include all “queer people.” The modern use of the term queer itself represents this flattening phenomenon well. It is a “reclaimed slur,” used increasingly by people who would have never had it hurled at them as an insult, and who never claimed it back when it would have resulted in social condemnation, rather than celebration. The term’s vagueness allows it to be used by virtually anyone—including, apparently, the journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr, who recently “came out,” stating he was “attracted to a wide range of women, but not men at all.”

In other words like most men, so what’s “queer” about him? Not one thing.

The problem precedes the march of apparent heterosexuals into the “queer community.” Overstating or outright fabricating the place of minorities within the community happens often. And these “histories” are often written like mad libs: Insert the name of a group, add an adjective, a verb, and a place, until somebody’s son comes home from school asking about the asexuals at Treblinka.

In short, the Nazis were not queerphobic. Next?

Interesting ranking system the Guardian has.

Depp was asked to leave because of plausible claims of violence against his former wife, and Ezra Miller was videoed grabbing a woman by the throat, but that’s “small beer” compared to JKR having unapproved opinions.

It’s classic. We’re accused of “inciting violence” against “the trans community” by saying things, and men who perpetrate actual physical violence on women are too trivial to discuss compared to JKR saying things.

“Taking ownership” ffs. Jumped up little mimes.

The Guardian edited out “small beer” later.

Too Online Academia is a very good word for it. It always does make me cringelaugh to see actual academics engaging in this playground name-calling no YOU’RE the evil karen seven-headed beast nonsense out in the open where anyone can see them. Imagine the fun of taking a class taught by one of those people.

Woof woof don’t you dare woof woof this is MY bone.

Huh. I saw this one by accident, following a trail via Jesse Singal.

But we don’t “seek to cancel THE VERY EXISTENCE” of anyone. That would be murder. We’re not murderers and we don’t advocate murder.

Ah the community of right-minded people. Ok, I’ll shelve the plans to do whatever that was meant to be, then.

The NY Times on the scabbing of PhDs:

The job would be on a “without salary basis,” as the posting phrased it. Just to be clear, it hammered home the point: “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

The posting last month caused an immediate uproar among academics across the country, who accused the university of exploiting already undervalued adjunct professors, and suggested this would never happen in other occupations. Under pressure, U.C.L.A. apologized and withdrew the posting.

But the unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.

They have to keep the bulk of their funds for the football program.

Very often, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are asked to do unpaid work that is presented not as free labor but as a way to hone their own credentials, according to union activists and some instructors who have received such requests.

Well of course the universities don’t present it as free labor. It’s a privilege to teach at UCLA for bupkis! You get bragging rights!

UCLA advertised an academic job with no pay.

The job listing for an assistant adjunct professor was very clear: “The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an assistant adjunct professor on a without salary basis.  Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

Sure, that seems normal. Skip minimum wage: we’re talking no pay at all.

The listing went on to describe what the person hired could expect: “Responsibilities will include: teaching according to the instructional needs of the department. Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or equivalent discipline and have significant experience and strong record in teaching chemistry or biochemistry at the college level. The University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry are interested in candidates who are committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities, and to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.”

All that, for $00,000 dollars a year. (This works out to $00.00 an hour.)

Candidates were asked to submit a CV, cover letter, a statement of teaching (and an optional statement of research) and three to five letters of reference.

UCLA wants the best, in exchange for nothing at all.

They got some angry emails. They’d tell us how many but that requires expensive math skills.

And of course several people compared the unpaid position for an academic with a Ph.D. to the $4 million salary the university pays its head men’s basketball coach, Mick Cronin.

Basketball is important. Simple.

I listened to the Trans Women in Sport segment of Today, which starts at about 1 hour 40 minutes and ends at 1:48. It’s not a conversation between “Veronica Ivy” and Sharron Davies; Ivy gets a segment and then Davies gets one.

Ivy says around 1:41: “Here’s the thing about Emily in particular: because she was a member of the British Cycling academy, they have years of her power data, they know how much her power numbers went down, so they know for a fact that she does not have an unfair competitive advantage.”

Wait. What? Emily’s numbers went down, therefore it’s a fact that he does not have an unfair competitive advantage. But we don’t know how much the numbers went down, or how they compare to women’s numbers. A mere “Emily’s numbers went down” tells us nothing.

That’s especially true because we already know that such numbers go down a little, but we also already know that the gap is large, which is why women’s sports exist. We also already know, and the presenter points out to Ivy, that much of male physical advantage is baked in: males are bigger, heavier, with bigger bones, wider shoulders, straighter thighs, bigger rib cages, yadda yadda.

In short, Doctor Ivy bullshits his share of the discussion.

It seems BBC Radio 4’s Today program had Sharron Davies on along with…Rhys McKinnon aka Rachel McKinnon aka Veronica Ivy. How insulting.

This Veronica Ivy:

That was a race at Burnaby Velodrome in March, which he won, as always by cheating.

This is horrifying.

Alabama lawmakers, she says, have been put on notice “that laws and policies preventing care that healthcare professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the constitution and federal law. To be clear, every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming healthcare for transgender kids is a best practice and potentially lifesaving.”

Just like that. So every kid who says “I’m trans” or maybe even “I think I’m trans” should be put on the path to trying to change sex? There’s no potential for harm, no risk at all?

Horrifying.

A very subtle thinker here.

He’s convinced you, right?

I hope this gets Junior a prison sentence for sedition.

“Moral high ground” ffs. How do you reckon?

CNN reports:

Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned.

Translating “we have operational control”: we’re in a position to steal the election.

In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all.”

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

The November 5 text message outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake “Trump electors.”

If all that failed, according to the Trump Jr. text, GOP lawmakers in Congress could simply vote to reinstall Trump as President on January 6.

Just boys being boys, yeah?

“organized transphobic violence”

She doesn’t “have to say” that of course; she chose to.

Arguing that gender is not something to celebrate but a system of oppression which should be rejected is not “organized transphobic violence.”

But this guy knows better.

Reading that gender is a system of oppression will encourage violence!

What must it be like being an academic now? Can you imagine having to teach students who believe all this crap? To say nothing of having colleagues who do.

Oh yeah? And they’re the only ones, are they?

The Guardian reports:

The mental health of the UK’s transgender community is at crisis point, with many people “hanging by a string”, professional bodies and support groups have told the Guardian.

The stark warnings follow a week of intensified public discussion of transgender rights as the government moved to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion practices.

What are “transgender rights”? They’re so often mentioned and so rarely spelled out.

And, for the umpteenth time, “conversion” is the wrong word – the loaded word, the inaccurate word, the thumb on the scale word. It’s not a form of “conversion” to provide therapy and discussion before making permanent physical changes that could be regretted. The phrase “conversion therapy” was coined to name the practice of trying to talk people out of being lesbian or gay. Being lesbian or gay involves zero permanent physical changes – no surgeries, no binders, no hormones, no puberty blockers, nothing.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission also published guidance saying transgender people could legitimately be excluded from single-sex services if the reasons were “justifiable and proportionate”.

That is, men could legitimately be excluded from women’s spaces. For the millionth time it’s not a generic “transgender people” issue, it’s a women’s right to women-only services issue.

The focus on such issues has raised concerns among experts, who see a direct line between statements made by politicians and individual wellbeing. “There is strong evidence that minorities experience greater levels of stress when their rights are being debated,” said Dr Adam Jowett, the chair of the British Psychological Society’s Sexualities Section.

And so do women. We’re not literally a “minority” but we are a set of people treated as inferior to the other set of people. We get stressed when our rights are being debated, and dismissed and ignored, too. But, you know, yawn yawn – all those millions of boring women, telling you to hang your coat up – we can’t be bothered to care about their rights and their stress. Trans people are so much more exciting.

Helen Belcher, the chair of the education and advocacy group TransActual and a Lib Dem councillor, said: “I am furious that our equalities body is telling me that I am a second-class citizen and can only do things if everyone else is OK with it. Now every trans woman in the country is gearing up to fight to have a wee. It’s vile.”

But women who want to have a wee without men in the adjoining cubicles? Meh.

Another meeting at the corner of Inclusion and Fairness.

“And what this UK sport document says is,” says Ed Milliband at 1:00, “look, inclusion is important in sport but so too is fairness.”

But inclusion isn’t “important in sport” in any blanket sense, for the very simple and obvious reason that much of sport is competitive, which rules out being generally “inclusive.” Competition is necessarily, inherently, non-inclusive. Competition excludes.

You can of course have “friendlies”; you can play games for the fun of it, you can decide not to keep score, you can bring everyone in and just run around and have a blast. But sport qua sport has winners and losers, so a generalized “inclusion” just is not part of the picture. Fairness, on the other hand, is not in tension with winning and losing.

And in conclusion, at 1:19, “I think there are tricky issues here, but I think, I come back to this point, which is: how would you be feeling as a trans person after the debate, the kind of debates that we’ve had in the last few weeks – I think you’d be feeling awful.”

But Mr. Milliband, what do you think women are feeling? Why don’t you come back to that point? Why do you think only about how a trans person is feeling? Why don’t you think also about how a woman is feeling? Why? Seriously, why? Why have trans persons shoved women off this bit of space where politicians and rights organizations and news media think about people who are feeling awful? Why are women no longer on the radar? Why do you single out trans people and ignore women?

A dishonest headline:

The usual lie told in the usual way – by concealing “men who identify as women” under the blanket “transgender.” Men can’t compete against women at British Cycling elite events.

They’ve now changed the headline, no doubt in response to a torrent of furious replies to that tweet. It now says:

Transgender women no longer able to compete at elite female events run by British Cycling

Men no longer able to force themselves into women’s races. Finally.

From the story:

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week he did not believe transgender women should compete in female sporting events – a view he conceded might be “controversial”.

In response, LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall said: “Trans people deserve the same opportunities as everyone else to enjoy the benefits of sport, and blanket exclusions on trans people participating are fundamentally unfair.”

Same old lie. It’s not a “blanket exclusion on trans people participating,” it’s exclusion of men from women’s competitions.

The Stonewall lie is the last sentence in the piece. Of course it is.