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Feminism

Isn’t this a pretty pass

The bleep test does not account for “innate biological differences” between men and women, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Koren Brown, who was a Ministry of Defence Police officer, has successfully argued she was the victim of unlawful discrimination after she was sacked for failing to meet the required standards in the fitness exam.

Her solicitor, Jillian Merchant, said the ruling should serve as a warning to employers who test the fitness of staff and that “biological and physiological differences between men and women” must be considered.

Which side will the woke and progressive take here?

One side would be don’t be ridiculous. It’s an objective standard and any woman that can meet it – like any man, trans or don’t know – gets the job. Or, more accurately, those who can’t don’t. In this particular instance that’s also my side.

But, OK, the courts have said that that#s not OK. Objective tests are sex discriminatory, beccause the sexes are objectively different. OK.

So our progressives can celebrate another vitory in which all are equal and sespecially women. Shrug.

But this insistence on these sex basd biological differences. They do rather inform our views and even legal position on trans in womens sports, don’t they? These differences are so great that they extend to hiring policemen? So, err, bicycle races? Middle distance running? Scrums?

So, this is proved then

As long as I can remember, I’ve wondered what it would be like. To be one of those people. The winners. The people who hit the jackpot, who go from normal life to that other kind, where your name is in headlines and your face is on TV, where you get recognized on the street, have your own fan club and Wikipedia page. How would that feel? No, but really, how would it actually feel?

And so I want to warn you right away: I still don’t have an answer to that question. I’ve gotten a lot closer, but this is all still so new. It has only been a year since I found myself living my fantasy, a year that passed like a whirlwind, a whirlwind that picked me up and carried me along with it, twisting and tumbling.

And I’ve fucking loved it! I’d always wanted it, on some level. After all, that’s the whole reason I wanted to know what it felt like! But I hadn’t admitted that to myself. Officially, my position was that fame wasn’t for me, that I’d be overwhelmed by it. When I married Kelly, who by majoring in theater had publicly declared her intent to pursue some form of stardom, I thought I’d found the perfect solution. Kelly would be the star, and I would bask in the warmth of her stardom, without having to risk exposing myself to the glare of public scrutiny. My public image would consist of blushing modestly while Kelly thanked me in acceptance speeches for various awards, and that would be enough for me.

This is Amy Schneider, the trans bird who won Jeopardy. A certain attention seeking here, no? Could that be part of other behaviour?

And something that really does get my goat about a certain middle aged type when they trans. There’s a certain smile and head tilt which they think is most female. When it’s clearly and obviously a pastiche which has been practised. One of those things like porno, know it when seen even if can’t quite define it.

Monogamy, eh?

Dr Way said that a first pregnancy allows babies to encounter a “hospitable niche” which triggers greater “hospitality” in their mother for future siblings.

In 2012, the Cincinnati team discovered that a first pregnancy makes a woman’s body much less likely to reject a second pregnancy with the same father.

Isn’t nature patriarchal, eh?

Well, yes, OK

When Russell and I began texting, he asked me to send some photos of myself in the bath. It was 2006 and my Motorola Razr phone had only ever been used to take pixelated photos of my classmates. I didn’t oblige. When I told him my age, before our first date, he asked me never to send him any nude photographs. That would have been a crime. At that age I wasn’t legally allowed to watch pornography for two more years. I couldn’t vote; I couldn’t drink; but I was free to date a man in his seventies if I wanted.

There was nothing my parents could do to stop the relationship with Russell; no legal recourse. My mother tried everything — grounding me, taking away my phone, even going to see Russell to remind him that I had parents who loved me — but like many 16-year-olds I was headstrong and thought I was so mature. He told me I was grown up and I believed it. My mum couldn’t go to the police, much as she wanted to, because what would she have said? My daughter is 16 but in a relationship with an adult man? It wasn’t illegal.

OK. Either you’re of age or you’re not. So, which is it?

Define conversion therapy, Matey

And make no mistake, conversion therapy is torture: the UN described it as such in 2020, calling for a global end to the cruel and hideous practice. Amnesty International agrees. Conversion therapy is a breach of people’s basic human rights – specifically, article 5 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The only psychologists and psychiatrists that support it are quacks: the practice has been condemned by both the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as well as medical bodies worldwide.

There’s no debate here; you’re either in favour of torturing children or you aren’t. Seeing politicians cave to the pro-torture camp is as despicable as it is predictable.

There’s conversion therapy as per Riotous Assembly, strapping folk down an electrocuting them as per images shown. There’s conversion therapy as “You sure you want your gonads chopped off?”

Certain activists are insisting that the second is the first. And that banning conversion therapy would mean the second is torture and not to be allowed.

One of my less fashionable – and given my opinions that’s very unfashionable – is that those who have had their gonads chopped or are about to have to, for their own psychological health, insist that there is a generation that wishes to follow them. Because if there isn’t then of course their own decision could be called into question.

There must be trans kids otherwise us trans adults were wrong.

This is all entirely true

One of Britain’s top private girls’ schools has said that gender is a “spectrum” and pupils can have “lots of different” identities.

Benenden School in Kent, the boarding school formerly attended by the Princess Royal, includes the contested theory of gender in its equality, diversity and inclusion policy for pupils.

The policy states that while “some people may identify as a boy or a girl”, others “may find neither of these terms feel right for them and identify as neither or somewhere in the middle”.

Gender is a spectrum.

It’s sex that isn’t.

Define “sexual assault”

Nearly one in three female surgeons in the NHS have been sexually assaulted in the last five years, with some taking place in operating theatres, according to a new survey.

Eleven instances of rape were reported by surgeons who took part in the study, published in the British Journal of Surgery.

The survey found 29 per cent of women who responded had experienced unwanted physical advances at work, more than 40 per cent receiving uninvited comments about their body and 38 per cent receiving sexual banter at work.

There’s a strong suspicion that what the average grandmother would call being a naughty boy is being described there as sexual assault. No, this is not to say that being a naughty boy is a good thing – it’s naughty. But a differentiation between that and sexual assault might be useful, no?

A theory

Salma Hayek didn’t get the roles she thought she should have got.

François-Henri Pinault, the French billionaire behind luxury brands including Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, has struck a surprise deal to buy a majority stake in CAA, one of the most powerful talent agencies in the world.

The Pinault family has done the deal through its holding company Artémis, which also owns the controlling stake in the luxury group Kering.

So hubby’s money is being spent on the revenge.

Erm, no, not what he said

Last week, Meloni’s partner showed a crude, casual and unreconstructed misogyny in full flow. Following a number of gang-rape cases in Palermo and Naples, Andrea Giambruno declared on TV, of young women drinking while out dancing: “if you avoid getting drunk and losing consciousness, perhaps you’d also avoid getting into trouble, because then you’ll find the wolf”. While he also said: “If you go dancing you are fully entitled to get drunk,” the statement was widely interpreted by many as victim-blaming: women, you bring rape on yourself by being wanton.

Drinking until you black out does raise the risk of rape.

Which is what he said. Nothing about being wanton in the slightest.

How cool

Here’s what’s missing from the history of rural Britain: the hidden stories of women who shaped it
Rebecca Smith

So, sit down, have a chat, take notes and write the damn stories.

How much does paper and pencil cost these days?

Lordy be

Calling a trans woman a ‘w—-r’ is discriminatory because the insult is commonly used in reference to men, an employment tribunal has suggested.

The swear word is not a gender-neutral term and so using it against someone who has transitioned would constitute a breach of equality laws, a panel concluded.

Poe’s Law comes to mind.

Amusing

A Belgian minister has been criticised for saying “freeloading” housewives should start working instead of staying at home.

Federal Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne, 50, added that “most stay-at-home mothers are of immigrant origin” in a controversial interview with a magazine.

Unemployed Belgians get more in benefits if they have a partner who also stays at home, said the centre-Right Open VLD politician, who is pushing for labour market reforms.

Housewives were “welcome to stay at home and take care of their children, but not at society’s expense,” Mr Van Quickenborne, who is also a deputy prime minister, said.

There’s a serious point behind thing. What should be subsidised? Or considered the human economic unit? The individual or the household?

It’s possible to argue this either way. Tax, subsidise, the household – which is the natural human economic unit. Or the indiviudual, can do it either way.

But note that if it’s the household then this is a definite blow to the economic liberation of women. Their income should be added to male when considiering progressive tax rates for example.

Shrug, just the implication of doing it that way…..

If you get the reason wrong

….then your conclusion will be:

The reason elite international chess has some gendered categories is for positive discrimination; there’s a huge drop-off of girl chess players around the age of 13, and there’s a lot of evidence that where boys are steered towards the game, girls are steered away from it. It’s not a biological issue but a social one. The gendered categories are designed to boost inclusion of people who are not cisgender men, which of course is a category that should include trans women.

By observation we note that top chess players are real weirdoes. More men are weirdoes in this systemising thing that makes you good at chess. The reason for having the female category is so that some women, sometimes, can win something.

Having tackle cut off does not change that mental weirdness. Thus the continued distinction.

Amusingly, those who really are mentally women shouldn’t have the extreme systemising weirdness to be good at chess so therefore we should allow trans into women’s. It’s just that no one actually believes that “really are”.

Err, yes, yes, this is true

It’s hard to think of a more important job than caring for preschool children, or elderly care home residents, to take two examples. Yet as a society we’ve quietly accepted the fact that these female-dominated roles rarely command more than the national minimum wage.

Both supply and demand matter in pricing someting. When we’ve a job that half the country can do – if we’re to be sexist and limit ourselves only to women – then the price paid for getting that job done is unlikely to be high. Because supply – or at least potential supply – is really quite high.

This is also why cooking the fries at Maccy D’s doesn’t pay much….

Wimmins, eh?

A veterinary nurse has been suspended for three months after she gave strong, unprescribed drugs meant for animals to a friend, describing them as a “cocktail of dreams”.

Melanie Herdman was reported by the friend five months after the incident, after Ms Herdman started a relationship with the friend’s husband, a professional tribunal heard.

The woman – named only as Mrs LC in the hearing – had asked Ms Herdman for drugs to ease “severe pain” experienced by her husband.

So bird 1 asked bird 2 for help, which was given. Then bird dobs in bird 2.

Mrs LC said she was aware she was not without fault as she had asked for the drugs, and was also aware that reporting the incident might be regarded as “sour grapes” as her husband was now in a relationship with Ms Herdman.

Well, yes. Could be……

Women, eh?

I also think there’s little point in showering at the gym, taking the tube and sitting on dirty seats, and then going home. I’m not too fussy about germs, but I do think that when you get in from outside, you should change your clothes before going into the bedroom or sitting on the couch.