Posts by PG@spinster.xyz
(DIR) Post #B0oFKQnRUT1DbbPT3g by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-01T15:55:55.980544Z
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One of the world’s most famous birds has returned to her nesting site. Wisdom, the 75-year-old albatross is known as the world’s oldest breeding bird. Earlier this month, she returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the central Pacific Ocean for the 2025-2026 nesting season.Laysal albatrosses like Wisdom (or mōlī in Hawaiian) return to the same nesting site every year. Once they reach the wildlife refuge on the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago, the birds will reunite with their mates. If all goes well, they will lay a single egg and stay on the atoll to nest. According to the United States Department of Fish and Wildlife, her arrival this year is slightly earlier than in previous years. Her mate from last year has also not been spotted yet. In 1956, wildlife biologist Chandler Robbins first identified and banded Wisdom after she laid one egg. Since then, Wisdom has produced an estimated 50 to 60 eggs and as many as 30 chicks have fledged in her lifetime. Last year, Wisdom became the world’s oldest known wild bird to successfully lay an egg at the estimated age of 74. https://www.popsci.com/environment/oldest-mother-bird-wisdom/
(DIR) Post #B0pb1UVxpocVmhZI1Y by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-02T03:16:35.698343Z
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Ottoman women from the 16th to 18th centuries lived in a patriarchal society where they had clear-cut gender roles in the household. Although they had limited opportunities for formal education and employment, many women played important roles in politics, arts, medicine, economic production, and governance.Women were not expected to have careers or professions in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. They were often barred from joining craftsmen’s guilds and rarely received formal professional training. Yet, many women were exceptions to this rule. Rural and nomadic women were expected by their communities to participate in fieldwork, such as farming, animal herding, and cotton or hazelnut picking.Townswomen often performed work as servitors, that is, as maids, washerwomen, servants, and personal attendants. They worked mainly in baths, hospitals, and for elite households. Some areas, such as midwifery, nursing, weaving, and embroidering, were even female-dominated. Pierre Belon, a 16th-century French traveller and diplomat in the Ottoman Empire, noted that women would frequently sell their handmade goods at markets.Women also performed roles where their voices and opinions could be heard. Belon noted that women were employed as teachers in primary schools for girls. Women like Mihri Hatun (d. 1506) and Ayse Hubbi Hatun (d. 1590) were celebrated court poets who were patronized by sultans. Ayse Hubbi was born into an elite family with close ties to Sultan Süleyman. As a result, she received a fine education in court and eventually became a lady-in-waiting and close friend of future sultan, Prince Selim II. Ayse Hubbi’s poetry challenged the misogynistic beliefs of her time...Many women also broke the barriers of gender segregation through their work in the medical field. Saliha Hatun was a physician who practiced in Istanbul in the 1620s-30s. Her consent forms, dated between these years, reveal that she performed successful hernia and tumour operations, mostly on men.https://www.thecollector.com/ottoman-women/
(DIR) Post #B0pbJxAG3Ob1qxDcem by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-02T01:07:35.905968Z
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These testimonies of surrogate mothers are truly cautionary tales!In Paris, France, and Brighton, UK, women committed to fighting violence against women listened attentively and empathetically to the testimonies of former surrogate mothers.Both conferences concluded with a standing ovation, reflecting a firm and collective commitment to protecting all women from surrogacy.Yes, surrogacy must be abolished everywhere in the world.https://abolition-ms.org/en/ressources-en/events/surrogacy-hear-the-voices-of-those-on-the-frontline/
(DIR) Post #B0uoNRUk0rRnz5aqWW by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-04T18:09:56.898267Z
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For years, young girls have been forced to advocate for female-only sports and spaces—both of which should be a basic right—because of radical gender ideology. Where too many adults have failed them, middle and high schoolers have had to make their voices heard. But in Maine, fathers are stepping up to defend their daughters. “Paternal not political” is the motto of Maine Girl Dads, and the group’s mission is to protect young women in the state by ensuring they have the right to fair play, equal protection under the law, and safe single-sex places.“We’re making the kids themselves that are victims of this issue stand up and be the ones to speak, and that’s really terrible,” Leyland Streiff, who leads the Maine Girl Dads petition, told IW Features. “As parents, we shouldn’t be doing that.”Maine Girl Dads hopes to put the issue directly before voters. Their ballot initiative would recognize sex-based definitions for athletic categories and private spaces such as locker rooms or bathrooms. To put the measure on the November 2026 ballot, Maine Girl Dads needs to collect 70,000 signatures.“A boy walked in on my [15-year-old] daughter’s restroom [in Michigan],” Tabor told IW Features. His daughter was so uncomfortable that she had to leave the bathroom, Tabor said. Now, Tabor said his daughter avoids using the bathroom at school because she does not want to share a private space with a male...Streiff and Tabor also heard stories from women and girls personally impacted by Maine’s current laws. One girl said her lacrosse team lost two games last year to schools with males on their teams, according to Streiff, and one college student told Streiff that she is forced to share a locker room with six-foot-tall, fully intact males.“This is an 80/20 issue across the country, and it continues to be an 80/20 issue in Maine,” Streiff said. “Over 60% of Democrats that have been polled in Maine agree that males and females should be separated in sports and sports facilities, and it’s about 90% of Republicans, from what I understand.”“All we want is the ability to be fathers for our kids and to be able to have common sense reign when it comes to how we protect them,” Streiff said. https://www.iwfeatures.com/profile/these-dads-are-standing-up-for-girls-sports/
(DIR) Post #B0wXDQsS90RYGiFGd6 by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-05T15:56:55.046178Z
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Today’s Ahnaleigh Wilson, a 15-year-old track and field athlete in Washington state who is taking a strong stand (and all the risks that come with doing so!). She is not alone, though. Several girls have been joining her recently.Ahnaleigh recently spoke at a school event and...This is what she said: "We were called 'hateful, transphobic, and bigots.' Adults have called me stupid, and adults have told my parents that they should be ashamed of me for being so hateful. I’m often told that I’m just a sore loser, and that if I wanted to win, I should train harder and just not suck. My family has been threatened with losses. We’ve lost friendships, and someone even said that we better hope that I have a body guard because I’m so hateful."Can you imagine saying this to a 15-year-old girl?? This is utterly shameful.Ahnaleigh, I am so sorry you have been put through this. It is terrible that the adults in your state have been allowing male athletes to compete in track and field, or any sport, meant for girls. It is horrific that they have allowed males (some of them adult men) into your locker rooms. They are all lying to you by making you think that if a boy says he is a girl, then he is one. This is one of the biggest scandals I have ever known. It should not take young women such as yourself to have to stand up for yourself and your teammates. They should have protected you. However, I am very glad you are taking a stand and speaking out. Today’s FFS Friday is for you.https://open.substack.com/pub/karadansky/p/ffs-friday-ahnaleigh-wilson-and-all?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #B0wlE67sBIfHYcfYOG by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-05T17:45:21.267191Z
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Today, I want to focus on a newer smear, which is that radical feminists are conservative, right-wing, exclusionary, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist and their favourite… fascist!To me, this kind of characterisation is not that surprising. It’s just the latest instalment in a very old tradition of libel against women who dare to engage in politics, philosophy, and activism. Feminists have always been smeared as man-hating, violent, wicked, cruel, cult-like, hysterical, perpetual victims, or simply “unnecessary” because “women already have all the rights.” This new rhetoric mimics witch-hunt behaviour: people (usually men) across the political spectrum, left, right, centre, hunting down and harassing women whose ideas they find threatening, and giving themselves moral permission to do it.Radical feminists are simply the latest witches.All social and political movements should be open to scrutiny. That includes feminist movements. Radical feminism is not above critique. Movements can absolutely slide into cultish behaviour. They can drift into left-wing or right-wing authoritarianism. They can become abusive, exclusionary, and cruel. Why? Because people are imperfect. People bring their biases, weaknesses, traumas, and unresolved personal issues into political spaces. People are also scared, angry, and hurt. They are often politically illiterate and yet intensely politically emotional.Feminist spaces can become vessels for bad-faith actors, for women airing out personal vendettas instead of offering political analysis, for unresolved trauma masquerading as academia. That doesn’t mean feminism itself is invalid; it means us feminists must be self-aware and open to constructive feedback. Radical feminism, at its best, demands this kind of self-reflection. It asks women to examine not only their own biases and material conditions but also those of their sisters who are less privileged by race, sexuality, class, disability, or national origin.That’s why I find the accusation that radical feminism is inherently non-intersectional or white-dominated so bizarre. Some of the most important radical feminist thinkers and activists have not been white, and many have been crystal clear about race, class, imperialism, and colonialism. Yet “radical feminist” has become an insult. It’s thrown around at random, even applied to liberal white feminists, because the right calls anything it dislikes “radical” and “extreme,” and now parts of the feminist left have happily adopted the same lazy habit. They might be ignorant and foolish, but they know exactly what they’re doing. Words like “racist,” “homophobic,” “transphobic,” or any other “-ism” or “-phobia” are powerful. They’re meant to scare people away from the movement and mark feminists as legitimate targets for harassment and abuse. And here’s the real irony they never seem to grasp: a feminist movement that calls itself “feminist” yet makes its entire political project about equality, rather than women’s liberation, and uses “intersectionality” to centre men, include men, and even argue that men must also be “liberated,” is a movement already working from a profoundly confused and disorganised ideological base. That confusion breeds paranoia. Because when you believe that feminism must serve men, must soothe men, must uplift men, anyone who centres women becomes, in your eyes, exclusionary, narrow-minded, right-wing, even dangerous. Why does the idea of women-centred liberation frighten you? Why does dismantling patriarchy, truly dismantling it, terrify you so much? You insist we are “abusive” toward men for refusing to organise our politics around them. You accuse us of being cruel, fanatical, or oppressive for critiquing male violence and male-defined gender roles. https://open.substack.com/pub/writesobereditsober/p/the-tall-tale-of-the-radical-feminist?r=dfyz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #B0z4EjFZ0QMCLNCVfc by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-06T20:39:37.621081Z
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Nowhere is the decline of analytic clarity more visible than in the university’s treatment of sex. As a category, it has collapsed entirely into “gender,” sliding from the empirical and material into pure subjectivity. At the conference, this was reflected in the pronoun badges we were encouraged to wear. (After several attempts, I managed to delete mine online and print a badge with only my name and university.) It also appeared in presentations featuring the all-too-familiar patois of gender ideology: “female-identified bodies,” “womxn,” and pregnancy as something that happens to “people.” One paper described “pleasurable violence” within a Central American trans-feminist community as “healing” when consensual, collapsing harm and care into the same category. Another uncritically mapped contemporary Western “nonbinary” gender categories onto non-Western cultures, regardless of the local realities, in the name of decolonization. It was jarring to confront scholars unable to distinguish vastly different cultures and civilisations, and committed to romanticising pre-colonial systems.The slide from empirical clarity into therapeutic reassurance wasn’t confined to the panels. Some of the same conceptual moves on display here have already appeared in high-ranking journals: a reminder that these tendencies are not fringe aberrations, but are increasingly institutionalised as “scholarship.” In the book hall, Princeton University Press was prominently displaying Sex Is a Spectrum, the establishment’s polished argument that biological sex can be dissolved into gradations and feelings — a theme reinforced by the book’s author, who was ubiquitous at the conference. Here was another face of the Therapeutic Scholar-Hero: more philosophical than performative, but still committed to dissolving material categories in favor of subjectivity.I have had a front-row seat at this unraveling, across many disciplines and arenas. The American Anthropological Association conference was hardly unique; but what I saw there was the distillation of the trend into its clearest form. The tragedy is not that universities have become ideological; it is that they have become unserious. A culture that once prized discipline, depth, and rigor now rewards emotional display, political conformity, and autobiographical performance.The university has forgotten what it was for: to preserve and extend knowledge across generations. That requires hierarchy, apprenticeship, discipline, shared categories, and a recognition of material reality. When these collapse — when reality becomes optional, subject to feeling and “lived experience” — there can be no transmission of knowledge, only performance and self-display.https://unherd.com/2025/12/tears-tales-and-tatters-social-science-in/
(DIR) Post #B0zUMJ82bca6SFxMu0 by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-07T01:16:20.637626Z
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Some TERFOPLY cards:
(DIR) Post #B0zUis8n71RVPi4Dnk by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-07T01:10:03.411835Z
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Who's ready to play TERFOPOLY?https://open.substack.com/pub/sofasrus/p/terfopoly?r=dfyz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #B0zUuWFUKdnczYklTk by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-07T00:26:05.376704Z
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Now this is my kind of iconography! Tokuhiro Kawai - "Love for Cats"
(DIR) Post #B19KYyjYgkv70MVXFo by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-11T19:57:46.631787Z
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It’s a sad bit of irony that the U.S. legislature has not managed to pass the ERA for decades, but this sorry bit of legislation has the support of almost every Democrat. It pretends to “help women” while eliminating them as a sex class, by defining “woman” as an “identity”, in law. Several states have passed laws like this one. It leaves women no legal basis to maintain single-sex anything. “The proposed federal legislation called the ‘Equality Act’ would redefine sex to include “gender identity” throughout U.S. civil rights law, including in all places of public accommodation. This would undermine the existing civil rights of women by conflating sex with the completely subjective notion of ‘gender identity.’“WDI USA has written a much better bill, which we call the Equality for All Act (EFAA). If enacted, it would protect women on the basis of sex; protect lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals on the basis of sexual orientation; and protect everyone on the basis of nonconformity to sex stereotypes.”https://womensdeclarationusa.com/efaa/
(DIR) Post #B19Uc63Wv8wq7lyUUK by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-11T21:54:39.864386Z
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A bronze cat’s head, its amber eyes still glowing with an unmistakable presence, once formed part of a cat-shaped sarcophagus dedicated to the goddess Bastet. A small golden scarab rests on its forehead, a protective symbol linked to rebirth and divine power. Crafted in the Late Period of Egypt’s 26th Dynasty, around 600 BC, the piece was designed to accompany a mummified cat offered in ritual devotion to Bastet.Objects like this were more than artistic creations. They were part of a widespread religious practice in which cats were raised, mummified, and dedicated to the goddess in temples across Egypt.
(DIR) Post #B1B2nlDBpss8YHBbnM by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-12T15:41:21.138573Z
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Today’s FFS Friday celebrates Isabella Cêpa, who has been charged with “criminal transphobia” by Brazilian authorities, threatened with 25 years in prison, and granted political asylum in Europe.In 2020, a man who calls himself a woman named Erika ran for office in Sān Paolo, and won. Cêpa said she was “disappointed to hear that the most voted-for woman in São Paulo … was a man.” He reported her, and she was charged with five counts of “social racism” due to her “transphobia,” and threatened with 25 years in prison. She fled to Europe, where she was granted asylum. Notably, “transphobia” is not an actual crime in Brazil, in that it’s not in the criminal code; the only way for the authorities to charge her was by relying on a 2019 Brazilian court decision making “transphobia” a form of racism (which is a crime).“Erika” has now been named “woman of the year” by Marie Claire Brazil.Isabella, I am so sorry. I’m happy that you’re safe in Europe, but as you said in your interview, this entire situation is utter madness. None of this should be happening. Male physical and sexual violence against women and girls is a real thing, and we should be able to discuss it plainly and openly. You shouldn’t be having to speak out about this, but I’m glad you are. Today’s FFS Friday is for you.https://open.substack.com/pub/karadansky/p/ffs-friday-isabella-cepa?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
(DIR) Post #B1FZyOTqlTJOMCUr6e by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-14T18:34:23.414162Z
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(DIR) Post #B1NyErmnWje62pQUzY by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-18T21:28:25.454739Z
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Petition to "Ban Gender Mutilation and Chemical Castration of Minors" on CitizenGO. (U.S. residents).https://citizengo.org/en-us/lf/15781-ban-gender-mutilation-and-chemical-castration-of-minors
(DIR) Post #B1ikMwutHhtlhd5Ky0 by PG@spinster.xyz
2025-12-28T20:42:07.041665Z
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Someone posted this excellent article earlier today - thank you - but I want to post some of my favorite sections for those who may not check it out in full.If you’ve been unlucky, you know the process. You see the advice on a bus stop. You decide to take it seriously. You get a GP appointment. You’re placed on a waiting list. Then you wait. And wait. When you finally sit down, there’s no room for context or curiosity. Just medication, because medication is faster than understanding. You ask for counselling and often receive a higher dose instead. The prescription sits in the pharmacy, uncollected, while you’re sent back to waiting.That is how adult mental distress is handled. Many come out the other side double-dosed and humiliated. And when a system gets away with dismissing adult distress for long enough, it shouldn’t surprise us when children are eventually pulled into the same logic.So when a child experiences discomfort with their body, long before they have the maturity to fully understand it, the system responds in the way it already knows. Speed. Medication. Next. That’s what care looks like when understanding becomes unaffordable. The only real difference is that this pathway is now labelled autonomy.Gender distress hasn’t entered a system designed for care. It has entered a system already accustomed to shallow solutions. One that manages symptoms rather than understanding causes. A system more comfortable prescribing than asking difficult questions.All we have is a one way system where forward movement is fast. Reversal is slow, unsupported, or denied altogether. When things go wrong, the system that rushed people through has no capacity to catch them on the way back.Middle and upper-class families can often escape this with access to private care, second opinions, or overseas specialists. The working class cannot. They remain on public waiting lists, trapped in systems that don’t know how to help them and are often too afraid to try. Where is the autonomy in that?The people who are most committed to ideological purity are often the most protected from consequence. When decisions backfire, there is support, flexibility, and a way out. For everyone else, autonomy evaporates the minute something goes wrong.That lack of choice and autonomy lands hardest on the working class. Working class women rely heavily on public spaces, from bathrooms to changing rooms — places most of the celebrities waving flags will never have to use. The same applies at work. Many women are expected to comply when HR departments instruct them on language or require them to share intimate spaces under new policies. Refusal is framed as a moral failing, not a question of rent, childcare, or keeping the lights on. And when you rely on that job, “just leave” isn’t an option.When understanding is replaced with affirmation, systems fail downward, and never toward the people who wrote the slogans.https://thecritic.co.uk/why-the-gender-war-is-also-a-class-war/
(DIR) Post #B2BcBdxYwIGsj9aRLk by PG@spinster.xyz
2026-01-11T20:22:01.184379Z
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Someone posted this on Substack with the text: "Meanwhile...in Greenland...".
(DIR) Post #B2TvOxlBkcNtc1h0Jk by PG@spinster.xyz
2026-01-20T13:18:05.254279Z
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Veronika is a 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow that is not farmed for meat or milk. She belongs to organic farmer and baker Witgar Wiegele as a companion. Over 10 years ago, Witgar noticed that Veronika would occasionally grab sticks and use them to scratch. Study co-author and animal cognition researcher Antonio Osuna-Mascaró tells Popular Science that Witgar said Veronika was very clumsy at first, but has improved her technique considerably over the years.Researchers observed that Veronika typically prefers to use the bristled end of a deck brush when scratching the broad, firm areas of her body such as her back. However, when targeting the softer and more sensitive regions of her lower body, she switches over to the smooth stick end. She also adjusts how she handles the tool. When scratching her upper body, Veronika uses more wide and forceful movements, while her lower-body scratching is slower, more careful, and highly controlled.Importantly, the authors note that Veronika’s life circumstances may have played a major role in the emergence of this behavior. Most cows do not live to 13 or spend their days in open and complex environments. They are also rarely given the opportunity to interact with a variety of manipulable objects. Her long lifespan, daily contact with humans, and access to an engaging physical landscape likely created favorable conditions for her to explore and innovate. https://www.popsci.com/environment/cow-tool-use-veronika/
(DIR) Post #B2TvQxPW1Oj76iVRke by PG@spinster.xyz
2026-01-20T13:13:37.010482Z
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Really?DEAR MISS MANNERS: I regret to tell you that, in the modern parlance, “You’re welcome” isn’t polite.It is currently more polite to say “No problem” or “No worries,” which imply that whatever was done, the doer was happy to do it.“You’re welcome” is passive-aggressive and means to communicate that the recipient better be thankful, because the situation was an imposition.I’m not saying that others intend anything impolite, especially if they are older as well, but they should be made aware of how the term is currently being used.GENTLE READER: Oh, please. Unless you find that word offensive, too.Miss Manners has defended “No problem” and “No worries” from those who find them offensive, claiming that they suggest that a request might have been a problem or a worry. It strikes her as a reasonable response, equivalent to the conventional replies in several Romance languages.But would all of you just please stop looking for trouble? It does not contribute to the general level of civility to brand well-intentioned, common expressions as insults.https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/01/19/miss-manners-youre-welcome/
(DIR) Post #B3Gx38xQsKU1wOj23c by PG@spinster.xyz
2026-02-12T22:22:50.680512Z
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