Yes, it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are shiny buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.

Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or for Amazon US via this link, or via the buttons in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk. Office supplies, toilet paper, a new washing machine. It’s all good.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last sixteen years, in over 3,000 posts and close to 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that. Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.

Oh yes. The buttons.

You may grip your chair arms now. || Competitive urination. || I believe it’s called spite. || A brief, salty guide to the French Revolution. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Five historical figures who were assassinated in the lavatory. || Somewhat related.  || The thrill of rubber. || The thrill of rubber 2. || Ruminations on the TARDIS doors. || Don’t fuck with grandpa. || “Best pizza of life.” || Opera patrons who find Mozart “traumatic” are advised to squeeze their toes. || Mansplaining periods. || “It made so much sense.” || When you’ve been severely educated. || A discovery is made. || Man wants truck not on lawn off his lawn. || And it was going so well. || Today’s word is girth. (NSFW) || They live on your face. || Stand back, a baby is happening. || And finally, I’m guessing it’s not her first rodeo.

You can, should you wish, follow me on Twitter.

For newcomers and the nostalgic, some items from the archives:

Wherever Possible, Avoid Mad People.

Students “negatively impacted” by insufficiently sensitive buffet.

Such Details Are Beneath Her.

On the arithmetical shortcomings of the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee.

Chewing The Scenery For Social Justice.

Performative meltdowns and pithy symbolism.

He likes to intimidate women and to pilfer things of no possible use to him.

Now tell him how pretty he is. Repeatedly.

Update, via the comments:

Note the obfuscatory use of the term TERF, which in context simply means women. Or non-compliant women. Or women caught off guard.

Oh, and a riposte of note:

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Or, Display Purposes Only.

Via Twitter:

Presumably, the statue above, which resembles its sculptor Aske Kreilgaard and is described by the museum as a “nourishing man,” and which was originally created to celebrate International Men’s Day, is meant to have some symbolic value. A message of sorts.

The decision to adorn what was once the Women’s Museum with a, shall we say, transitioning figure, this “nourishing man,” is likely an attempt to comply with prevailing fashions regarding those individuals who are somewhat at odds with their physical selves. A trans-friendly gesture. Or, as the museum puts it, somewhat coyly, a sign of “gender inclusivity.”

It occurs to me, however, that a man being given large doses of cross-sex hormones and subsequently developing facsimile breasts isn’t going to lactate anything remotely nourishing for a child. Given sufficiently high doses of female hormones, and given sufficiently zealous pumping, some men can be made to secrete a substance from their nipples, albeit unreliably and in very limited quantities – but the resulting discharge is of no nutritional value to an infant.

As Dr Maja Bowen notes here,

Given that the statue is apparently intended as both fashionable and symbolic, and a nod to the sexually dysmorphic, then an obvious reading of that gesture, rendered in stone, is that the actual feeding of the infant is of no great consequence. At best, a secondary concern. Sort of, Screw the hungry baby. Let’s focus on affirming the dysmorphic man. And which, it has to be said, is an odd message to send.

The ladies at Reduxx also have some thoughts.

Update, via the comments, from transgender Reddit:

Note the word successfully. To which, one might ask, for whom?