Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Trigger warnings

    nd contact wellbeing” if they are distressed. Wellbeing? What fresh hell?

    The truth is that trigger warnings – a lazy idea, largely imported from American campuses – are an embarrassing offshoot of the therapising of everyday life.

    Joanne Harris, as it happens, is a big fan of gender ideology, and when head of the Society of Authors repeatedly failed to defend writers like Rowling, Rachel Rooney, Onjali Rauf, Julie Bindel and others who lost work and received death threats because of their gender critical views. Now she's not happy about Helen Joyce and Julie Bindel being asked to speak at a literary festival. With or without a trigger warning.

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  • The Freedom From Religion Foundation saga

    uff in other words, with the inevitable bit about how the boring old gender binary is not enough to encompass the vast wondrousness of the author's own awesome life. With the final flourish:

    All of this is to say that there is an answer to the question “what is a woman,” that luckily does not involve plucking a chicken from its feathers. A woman is whoever she says she is.

    Which makes no sense. Presumably that should be: "Whoever says they're a woman, is a woman". 

    Anyway, an appalled Jerry Coyne, as an Honorary Board Member, wrote a rebuttal, which FFRF co-editor Annie Laurie agreed to publsh – “Biology is not bigotry“. This was then swiftly removed from the FFRF website, with no apology or even notification to Coyne – as he reveals here. 

    Subsequently the FFRF has been notified by Coyne himself, by Steven Pinker, and by Richard Dawkins, of their resignation from the Honorary Board of the FFRF. That's three of the biggest heavyweights in the atheist world.

    Will the FFRF reconsider? Will they apologise? We'll see, but I personally doubt it. Like so many US institutions which have succumbed to the gender cult, from Scientific American to the ACLU, once they're taken over there's no easy way back. Goodbye to the old world of scientific rationalists like Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker, welcome to the brave new world of the progressive young gender activists.

  • Purifying the Al-Aqsa Mosque

    From MEMRI TV:

    In his December 13, 2024 Friday sermon, Kent State University professor of Mathematics and Imam of the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent in Ohio, Nader Taha, stated that Gaza had planted the "seed of freedom" for the entire world. He said that in the October 7, 2023 Al-Aqsa Flood, “we have seen miracle, after miracle, after miracle.” In a previous sermon on November 10, 2023, Taha said that before October 7, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was insulted and disgraced, and it was calling out to the Muslims to liberate it and purify it from the filth it was in, a call that the brothers and sisters in Gaza answered. He continued to say that Allah had promised that the Children of Israel would be humiliated and defeated, and this is what happened to them on October 7.

    Not only professor of Mathematics at Kent State University: Nader Taha is also on the Summit County advisory council of diversity and inclusion. 

    Executive Ilene Shapiro: "The individuals on this Advisory Council represent the diversity of Summit County's residents, and they share my commitment that the county be inclusive of all people, regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, handicap, age, veteran status, sexual orientation or gender identity".

     

  • A culture of censorship

    l views, you are not just wrong, you are morally wrong and evil, and that justifies almost bullying tactics.”

    Ostracising those who are perceived to be out of line has become the punishment of choice across campuses.

    The tale of Connie Shaw, ostracised at Leeds University for her gender critical views, is a case in point:

    “It’s strange,” I told a friend. “As feminists, we’re trying to move away from gender stereotypes. So why are we now reaffirming them, rather than teaching children that whatever body they have, they can do what they want?”

    It occurred to me then that the concept of switching genders relied on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. It was this that planted a seed of doubt in my mind….

    Some students get it. Some students are fighting back.

  • Chicago & North-Western Railway locomotive

    Ca. 1900. "Chicago & North-Western Railway locomotive CNW 605 on turntable."

    SHORPY-97607a
    [Photo: Shorpy/Louis A. Marre Rail Transportation Photograph Collection]

  • Boycott the ICC

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    "The Afghan team should be denied participation in any competition until such time as women are free. We did it for South Africa, we can do it for the women and girls of Afghanistan."

  • Affirming “gender identity”

    Joan Smith at UnHerd on the case being brought against the British Transport Police over their policy of allowing men with a GRC to strip search women (previously):

    The question that arises is who this policy is meant to benefit, since it’s clearly not women. Many who end up in police stations will have experienced domestic or sexual violence, and the prospect of being strip-searched by a biological man will be traumatic — it may well feel like sexual assault.

    The awful truth is that it’s yet another exercise in affirming “gender identity”, in which the welfare of women comes a poor second to the demands of entitled men. Adult males rarely “pass” as female and require constant affirmations from people who know perfectly well that they’re men, including work colleagues. Employers give them what they want because they’re afraid of being called out as “transphobic” or sued by an employee with a GRC.

    From the police to the NHS, publicly-funded organisations have forgotten the people they are supposed to serve. “We are bringing this case to ensure that no woman in the UK has to suffer this degrading treatment,” says Forstater. In the meantime, no woman can feel safe in the hands of the very force that’s supposed to protect us on the country’s transport system. 

  • Hostage abuse

    tions as a result of their imprisonment, with many enduring starvation, sexual abuse, beatings, and more, a Saturday Health Ministry report revealed….

    According to the report, women, men, and children who returned from captivity were subjected to a variety of abuses, including beatings, isolation, deprivation of food and water, branding, hair-pulling, and sexual assault.

    Many hostages were subjected to torture by withholding medical attention, and at least one hostage is believed to have died from untreated medical complications….

    Two children reported that they were bound together and beaten throughout their captivity, and two additional children were found with burn marks consistent with branding on their lower limbs.

    Two teenage hostages described how they were made to perform sexual acts on each other.

    Many hostages of all ages and genders described undergoing sexual abuse at the hands of their captors, including a woman who was assaulted at gunpoint by a Hamas terrorist.

    “The shocking testimonies from released hostages paint a grim reality: physical abuse, psychological torment, and dehumanizing conditions were inflicted on innocent people, some as young as children and as old as grandparents, for more than 50 excruciating days,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters said in a statement following the release of the report.

    “To the world, its leaders, and humanitarian organizations: How can you watch this torture continue? How can you remain silent? The truth cannot be denied – every hostage faces mortal danger each day they remain in captivity," it added.

    "This critical report underscores the urgent need to release all hostages as swiftly as possible,” Moshe Bar-Siman-Tov, Director General of the Health Ministry, said.

    The report will be submitted to the United Nations this week. Where, I imagine, it will be ignored.

  • The gender soul

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  • Invisible women

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