To the small group of women, many of whom have platforms to protect, who are intent on throwing other women under the bus.

1. That a small number of transitioned trans women have been using women's spaces for a long time is not the same as the impact of a new rights movement

@PennyRed @OpheliaBenson @jk_rowling @bindelj No Laurie, you have repeatedly used the kind of monstering rhetoric towards us that many of the people who have repeatedly threatened, harassed and intimidated Julie and thousands of other women do.

When this is repeatedly brought to your attention you disavow the fact that

@OpheliaBenson @jk_rowling @bindelj calling women terfs, fascists, nazis, in league with the far right, etc etc, is rhetoric associated a broad campaign of harassment and intimidation, disavow the violence, and then carry right on with the rhetoric.

We've watched you do this for years. We've also watched you

@OpheliaBenson @jk_rowling @bindelj repeatedly claim you don't understand our position, and don't understand why we think your complicity with the erasure of female people as a sex class makes your feminism incoherent. We have explained all this to you at length, and you somehow, cannot grasp it, and then carry on

@OpheliaBenson @jk_rowling @bindelj calling us fascists.

Perhaps when women who have been on the receiving end of extreme abuse by trans rights activists for years, review your book, and find your feminism wanting, and then you turn around and claim victimhood, perhaps that's a little bit galling. Perhaps when

@OpheliaBenson @jk_rowling @bindelj you are siding with people who have been repeatedly accusing women of 'weaponising their trauma' because they want space free from males, we find it EXTREMELY GALLING for you to appeal to your trauma when you got some shitty book reviews.

Joanne Rowling is a survivor of sexual

So, on the subject of bonkers hyperbolic pretzeling over the Bell judgement, Grace 'destroy books I don't like & make inappropriate jokes about sterilising teenage girls' Lavery has some thoughts.

Tell me why my feminism is wrong Grace.

Oh

Well, if anyone thought the Bell judgment was going to make TRAs reconsider making massively overblown claims with no evidence backed up with nothing but a thick wadge of emotional blackmail.... HAHAHA, no one thought that.

A high court in the UK made a delimited judgment about teenager's ability to consent to puberty blockers. This puts all trans people everywhere in the world at risk.

Because if any human anywhere has any thoughts that deviate in any way from the rote line dictated by

the trans rights movement, this puts all trans people everywhere in mortal danger.

Let's be honest Grace. It doesn't put trans people at risk. It puts trans ideology at risk. Because trans ideology depends on the idea of innate gender identity, and the trans child is the

necessary material evidence of the ontology of gender identity.

That is, children are being medicalised to provide evidence to underwrite adults identities.

Nothing to see here.

1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.

I have just received information about a family that has locked up their child at home in isolation because she complained of some aches in her body. They suspected the child as having C19. She was tested and after a couple of days, the test came out negative. 1/n

The girl has already been in isolation for 4 days. Now they are waiting to do another PCR test today to check again because they fear that the first test was done too early and it didn't detect covid. So this little girl will remain in isolation for at least another 24 hrs. 2/n

This is idiocy. Insanity. Ignorance. Cruelty. Simply a crime against children.
The stupid fear and the stupid policies are driving parents to abuse their children. 3/n

Children are not the main source of C19 transmission.

"transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from children under 14 years of age was minimal in primary schools"

There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.

The Sentinelese are often described as “uncontacted,” but this not strictly true. They had a very significant contact in 1880 with Commander Portman.

Portman, the black sheep third son of some minor noble, was assigned by the English Royal Navy to administer and pacify the Andaman Islands, a job he pursued from 1880-1900 with the full measure of his own perversity.

Portman was erotically obsessed with the Andamanese, and he indulged his passion for photography by kidnapping members of various tribes and posing them in mock-Greek homoerotic compositions.

During his 20 years in a sexualized heart of darkness, Portman measured and cataloged every inch of his prisoner’s bodies, with an obsessive focus on genitals.