I think the spell is finally broken...

[Daysnconfuddled]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

Disabled loos are single-occupant, so they don't need to be single-sex. And they actually can't be single-sex because carers aren't always the same sex as the disabled person.

I know. Doesn’t mean disabled women aren’t disadvantaged by the fact we have the same problems as everyone else with the spaces not being single sex.

And they wonder why people prefer Trump. All those promises from the Democrats, broken. Trump's already shown he keeps his promises to some extent. And he's not shy on telling you if he's not going to do what you want. I prefer honesty, even if I don't like the message, to constant lying, gaslighting and not delivering.

And it's heartening to see how many state laws to protect abortion have already been enacted, with many States very close to doing so (e.g. Florida).

I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States. If the Dems were ever going to do it, Obama would have done it. Now it needs to be done at State level with every indication this will be more successful in the end. This is what Ruth Bader Ginsberg believed was the case.

Great post, thanks @selffellatingouroborosofhate

Anyone who is anti this Executive Order is anti-women.

Nothing in it prevents anyone believing in GI, or claiming a trans identity. It just says that GI is not sex and does not override it.
If there are lesbians who want nightclubs where MCW are welcome they can have that.
But now, lesbians who don't want that can associate freely without males.
Women in general are not forced to bend the knee to GII to their own detriment.
The EO restores women's sex-based rights without destroying the legitimate rights of others.
No reasonable person could object to this EO.

🎯

I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States.

You are right. The Dems saw women as public property, an exploitable resource, a voting block to be blackmailed with promises about protecting abortion rights. That resource can't be exploited any more if those promises are actually kept, so it forever had to be "jam tomorrow" for federal abortion protection. And now that's backfired spectacularly.

"The difference between left-wing and right-wing when it comes to women is only about where exactly on our necks their boots should be placed. To right-wing men, we are private property. To left-wing men, we are public property."

Andrea Dworkin was right.

(I could also talk about how using women to validate men's speshul gender feelz is also treating us as public property, but that's a whole 'nother post.)

Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

I'm referring here to sports-related scholarships here.

So your argument is that the new laws are pointless because trans people will just lie and overide boundaries to get what they want?

And this is supposed to be an argument for the genderist side?

Wow. I'm gender critical but I think more highly of trans identifying people than you do. Yes I think they are wrong in their beliefs about manhood or womanhood, but bar the small subset of people, mostly biologically male, whose particular flavour of wrong idea about womanhood is malign and predatory, I don't think they are bad people!

Good spot.

Am I alone in thinking that @izimbra's post is a collective slandering of trans people as lawbreakers, and hence transphobic?

Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense.

And again. My point is it is not either or. I'm not suggesting taking single sex spaces away. I am saying if there is a demand for mixed sex provisions we can have that and single sex spaces as well. And women can choose where they prefer to be. And the only reason that situation could ever end up in losing single sex spaces is if women themselves stop using them. And if you believe that would never happen, which you clearly do, and FWIW I also cannot see happening in the foreseeable future either, then single sex spaces remain.

I really am not sure what you are arguing against, but please stop replying as if I'm advocating taking anything away based on some academic theory because that is absolutely not what I am saying.

'Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.' I 'came into contact with' a man with long hair in the Centre Parcs women's changing room two years ago and I do not consent.

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

Well, we did notice. We always noticed men who pretended to be women. And we avoided them, but then they used gay rights to get into law and the concept of 'woman' ceased to mean 'adult human female'. Hence the backlash and lots of very angry people. It's why Trump got in.

Pretending that nobody can see the men in this picture is not just insulting but completely ridiculous.

Explain.

I am arguing against more general neutral toilets.

You are arguing for people using the limited space and costs they have to build them instead of using resources for extra single sex provision, then seeing what happens if there’s a demand for them, then dismantling them if people research their impact and see that they don’t work. Refitting won’t happen because of costs. We’ll be left with the legacy of toilets that aren’t good for women. Women can’t choose in real life and they have to deal with what they are presented with.

1. I'm talking about something that would play out over decades
2. I'm not just talking about toilets, I'm talking about all single sex provisions. "Spaces" in the most general sense including social spaces, learning spaces etc
3. I'm not mandating anyone adds gender neutral anything, I'm saying they can if they want to, if they perceive there's a need or a preference.

This has been done to death now. I understand your points but I think you are reading something I'm not saying.

Also, if you want to campaign for more toilets overall I'll sign up.

Obsessed? How so?

Musk is a loud voice, but I doubt he has a much influence as he'd like.

Things I never thought I'd say, but so far I'm favourably impressed by Trump.

Janice Turner in The Times

Democrats yielded the gender war’s key weapon

Last week the US House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. One by one, Republicans rose to make the simple point that as parents or grandparents of female track stars or soccer players they thought it unfair, and in some cases dangerous, for girls to compete against male-bodied athletes.

To any Floridian football fan or Montanan marathon runner, this was an unarguable truth. Yet all Democrats (except two from Texas) opposed the bill, rebranding it the “child predator empowerment act” and arguing it would lead to the appointment of genital inspectors — “Taliban-like enforcers” and paedophiles — to look inside the underwear of girls as young as four.
If that sounds deranged, it’s because it was. But what else did the Democrats have? They couldn’t dispute biological advantage or fairness, so they ended up sounding like QAnon loons.

None of this matters now President Trump has signed Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, the executive order that got the loudest cheer from the inauguration crowd. This ticks the entire gender critical wish-list, from fair school sports to removing rapists from women’s prisons and categorically defining woman as an “adult human female”.

Liberals will cry culture war — although they didn’t on President Biden’s first day when his executive order replaced “sex” with “gender identity” in Title IX policy, in effect abolishing women’s rights. Or in 2022 when the White House “lesbian visibility day” was led by Charlotte Clymer and Rachel Levine, both straight biological males. Or when Nancy Pelosi supported the abolition of the word “mother” from House rules.

It takes two to fight a culture war. And on the gender front the Democrats lost. Why? Because they moved beyond fighting for legitimate trans rights — freedom from violence or discrimination at work — into fantastical thinking.
When I’m asked why this issue has such salience amid war and economic crisis, I say: imagine if a politician told you he was a devout Creationist or Flat-Earther. You might agree with him on other matters, but would you trust him? That’s how women feel about lawmakers who deny sex is real.

Trump’s executive order states: “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.” The damn-fool Democrats handed truth to their worst enemy. Can they ever win it back?

It's translogical.

You are right. The Dems saw women as public property, an exploitable resource, a voting block to be blackmailed with promises about protecting abortion rights. That resource can't be exploited any more if those promises are actually kept, so it forever had to be "jam tomorrow" for federal abortion protection. And now that's backfired spectacularly.

Interestingly, this is very similar to what I am hearing from a lot of black Americans who have switched to voting Republican. They see the Democrats as purposefully trying to keep the black community dependent and full of fractured families - so that they can bribe them for their votes.

Spot on.

Rules One, Three, and Five, innit?

"Basing federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself."

There's a philosophical technique called "thought experiment", a well-known example of which is the Trolley Problem, in which the subject is asked to choose between two undesirable outcomes. Children also similarly conduct thought experiments, usually of a more fantastical nature like "which is worse: being eaten by a shark or burned by a dragon?".

Someone I knew a long time ago once polled his LiveJournal friends with a childish-seeming question "which is worse: paedophiles or Hitler?" One of the respondents commented that it depends on the circumstances, because a mother seeking someone to babysit her blonde-haired blue-eyed children whilst she goes to the shops will be better choosing Hitler, whilst Jewish people looking for someone to run 1930s-40s Germany would be better choosing the paedophile. Following these threads, that LiveJournal post from over twenty years ago returns to my mind.

The US presidential election effectively asked the electorate "which is worse: a rapist who has a track record of keeping (or at least trying damn hard to keep) manifesto promises, or a woman who, based on her party's track record, will break manifesto promises?" The people weren't voting to choose someone to be their sister's plus-one at a wedding or chaperone their daughter at a gynaecological examination, they were voting to choose someone to run their country. In that context, being a rapist matters less than being someone who can be trusted to keep manifesto promises.

Orwell said via Winston Smith in 1984 that "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is four. From that, all follows." If one presidential candidate believes something akin to "two plus two is five" and calls you a bigot for dissenting, whilst the other is a rapist who defends your right to say that "two plus two is four" and signs an EO on day one to stop the government agencies from saying that "two plus two is five", the rapist is honestly the better option.

AND... he's just declassified the JFK files!!!

OMG!

RFK and MLK too.

This will be interesting.