Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Oh, and in travel news, I bring you this:

maybe maybe maybe
byu/Zorrodelaarena inmaybemaybemaybe

And in can-anyone-else-smell-paedophilia? news:

Pictures of mentally ill, self-mutilating men. In kindergarten settings. To facilitate discussions. With pre-school children.

Strange is a good start. Other descriptors are available.

Should any readers be trying to think of reasons not to raise an eyebrow, it should be pointed out that roughly half of sexually dysmorphic male prisoners – so-called trans women – are there for sexual offences, including, quite often, offences against children – a rate that is much higher than that for the male prison population in general, whether for adult sexual offences or paedophilia.

Likewise, dysmorphic men and women report severe childhood abuse, often childhood sexual abuse, at rates far higher than is found in the wider population. Adults who have been violated as children are in turn much more likely to have, shall we say, issues regarding normal boundaries, and to act inappropriately with minors.

The consequences of which aren’t exactly hard to find. To say nothing of child abusers who invoke some sudden-onset transgenderism once their activities have been discovered and interrupted.

In light of which, encouraging small children to “accept others as they are” – a euphemism for not being wary of sexually dysmorphic men, a demographic among which paedophilia is much more common – seems rather unwise. For reasons we’ve seen many times. Yet this pre-emptive dulling of any wariness is the stated goal of the poster’s creator, illustrator and activist Tyler Feder.

As one might.

However, this is the bedlamite timeline, and so,

And,

At which point, the words foxes and henhouse spring to mind.

And it has to be said, “Your Four-Year-Old Children Will Look At Our Pictures Of Weird, Naked Men” is an odd flex. A peculiar hill to die on. 

If you read the full Reduxx article, linked above, it doesn’t get any more reassuring. The smell does seem to persist.

Update, via the comments: 

As someone who isn’t by temperament easily scandalised or particularly prudish, I nonetheless find myself in the position of having to say, “Er, are you sure about this? This seems all kinds of weird and inappropriate.”

And it seems to be happening more often than I’d expected.

Sharp-eyed readers may also note the assumption that exposure to, and familiarity with, the subject of transgenderism – and by extension, autogynephilia, and drag queens, and cross-dressing more generally – will invariably make one feel great warmth towards these phenomena – and the things that often go with them.

When in fact, the opposite may be true. And not infrequently.

Update 2:

In the comments, Aelfheld adds, 

Well, even if we assume implausibly benign motives, which may be a bit of an ask, premature exposure to sexuality, even in its more humdrum forms, isn’t generally regarded as beneficial. And it seems to me that transgender people would have an easier ride, and a less contentious group reputation, if they observed the obvious courtesy and stayed the hell away from children.

And yet, as we’ve seen repeatedly, many schools seem to be actively recruiting the psychologically marginal – say, attention-craving men in painted nails and make-up who think “looking cute” is the highest function of those employed as a primary-school educator.

And then there’s the peddling of dysmorphic cartoon pornography to middle-school children, without parents’ knowledge or consent, via which eleven-year-olds are introduced to “vagina slime,” fellatio, and “strap-on hotness,” and the joys of masturbating while driving.

Or middle-school librarians who seem convinced that eleven-year-olds need to know how to whore themselves – and to know that whoring is both valid and empowering. Because they may be transgender and may have to pay for hormones and surgical mutilations.

If this all sounds rather lurid and improbable, do follow the links.

Oh, and frottage-seeking drag queens.

And this hiring of the inapt, the incongruous and inadequate, is done as if it were a way for schools to display their own sophistication and fashionable status. As if this “queering” of children’s minds, this erosion of reality, of probity, of normal boundaries, could have no downsides, no dubious effects.

And of course we’ve encountered things of this kind:

Again, at risk of sounding stuffy, these feats of posturing and perversity do not strike me as wholesome, or a path to a brighter, more fragrant tomorrow.

Or, The Thigh Straps Were To Ensure Comfort. 

One for ladies of child-bearing age:

And so, obviously,

This patented invention from 1963 was designed to help women give birth easily

📹Hashem Al-Ghaili pic.twitter.com/VBrlB6N1L7

— Game of X (@froggyups) January 11, 2025

I can tell you’re impressed. The net and bell combo is a lovely touch. “In case medical personnel are momentarily distracted.” 

The patent, from 1963, can be found here.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Wind instrument of note. || Let’s just say mistakes were made. || Just one or two drinks during lunch. || The demands of glamorous dining. || On thin wings and flying faster than the speed of sound. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Stroppy and incoming. || Not as easy as it looks. || Adventures in large rock relocation. || Ripples. || Nodules. || More joys of public transport. || Zipper trouble. || Pigeon peepers. || The attempt to steal propane did not go entirely as planned. || The progressive retail experience, parts 607 and 608. || Helping hand. || Are you not inspired? || Well, I suppose he treated her as an equal. || Why spiders don’t (yet) rule the Earth. || Flatbread proportions. || Fishing will be fun, they said. || And finally, is your womb “an energetic vessel that holds ancestral imprints”?

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Speaking of “diversity” and its wonders, Heather Mac Donald ponders Germany’s ongoing experiment in self-annihilation:  

There follows a horror-show catalogue of incompetence, dishonesty, and inassimilable monsters, with criminal records of prodigious length, pious newcomers calling for the murder of “every critic of Islam,” and in which the word machete crops up quite a lot.

A dark surrealism ensues, not least with regard to the convoluted ordeal of deporting uninvited visitors bent on one’s destruction. All set against gushing media coverage of a “Techno Parade für Toleranz,” and cheery posters reminding viewers of the approved attitude: 

In terms of ideology, “diversity” seems to be the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be. An unobvious proposition, to say the least. Yet the word is mouthed as if it were a self-evident good, a “strength,” a moral imperative, a thing of which one could never have enough.

Update, via the comments:

Dicentra adds,

It seems to me we’ve strayed very far from the idea that an attractively developed society should – and must – be discerning about which kinds of newcomers it welcomes, lest it be flooded with incompatible tribes and the trash of the world.

The idea that the locals, the voting citizens, might want a good deal and ask, “What’s in it for us?” seems anathema to Our Betters. Likewise, the notion of a civilised society implying, quite strongly, “You’re lucky to be here. Behave accordingly.”

And so, instead, we get the routine airbrushing of crime news, and instructional videos in which ludicrous progressive women film themselves performing please-don’t-rape-me dances.

It’s a mental world in which everyone is expected to pretend that everything is fine and no grave mistakes were made, despite all available evidence. And in which the only real problem is not the ongoing, quite rapid degradation of German society, and other European societies, but those who dare to notice this unhappy transformation.

Ccscientist notes the please-don’t-rape-me dance, above, and adds,

The unrealism of such people and their peers, Our Betters, created a problem on a vast scale and which is dire in its implications – a problem that they are unwilling to fix or even clearly identify. And so, they retreat further into unrealism and absurdity, while expecting others – those on whom they’ve inflicted the problem – to become unrealistic and absurd too.

It’s the progressive way. In this and so much else.

Update 2:

Regarding the pretence above, Dicentra replies,

There’s also a weird air of displacement, of vehemently resenting those who notice the problem. And so, we get claims like this one here, in which BBC broadcaster Dan Snow denounces as “stunningly racist” even the suggestion that incompatible tribes exist. Because Mr Snow feels they shouldn’t exist, that they somehow ought not to.

And so, magically, they don’t. And only Very Bad People would say they do.

From the linked piece:

And the above, this farce, is pretty much a standard pattern.

Regarding Mr Snow, his practised obliviousness, and his rush to deploy accusations of racism, Dicentra adds,

Well, this is a pretty good summary of the phenomenon. It does rather capture the recurring dynamic:

Of course, reality is not always congenial, and what one might wish to be the case may be preferable to what actually is. I can see the appeal of a world in which everyone just rubbed along nicely with endless reciprocation and common ground. But pretending that’s the case, when it clearly, vividly, isn’t, isn’t a wise or moral way to behave.

Especially when the consequences of that pretence are imposed on others, who then, in addition, get badmouthed and vilified for daring to object. Say, people not entirely happy about the sudden ubiquity of Congolese and Somali borra gangs, whose modes of expression involve machetes, or people who discover their doorsteps literally being shat on.

Update 3:

In the comments, EmC quotes this,

And adds,