Coastal Bobby 💙

Pro-Europe, environmentalist, animal lover, biological realist.

[Coastal Bobby 💙 @CoastalBobby]

What your mind

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I wrote the words below in April, about the UK left, and I'm retweeting them today for the benefit of some of the numbskulls in my mentions.

Women like me, and there are a lot of us, aren't and never have been far-right. We simply want the left to wake the hell up, because we're watching it do its utmost to alienate people it used to represent.

I'm not saying Trump's win was down to the gender stuff - I'm not an American voter, so can't judge. In any case, the Labour Party won the last UK election and they've embraced gender identity ideology whole-heartedly (although they won against a Tory government so enfeebled and unpopular it would have been miraculous if they hadn't, and their popularity since gaining office has plummeted.)

What I do know is that millions of women in the UK and across the developed world are extremely angry about men in women's sport, men in women's jails and the erosion of single-sex spaces. Parents are angry at being demonised because they don't want their troubled kids to undergo irreversible medical treatments of extremely questionable benefit. People are sick to the back teeth of being bullied and threatened for refusing to embrace an elitist, academia-generated ideology that's having severe real world consequences.

Large swathes of the left continue to be threatening and abusive to anybody who resists their attempts to impose ideological language or bully them out of wrongthink. Leftist activists jeer and sneer at erstwhile female allies for the crime of believing biological sex is real and matters. And leftist leaders still appear more interested in sucking up to gender activists than - to take a topical example in the UK - female nurses whose crime is not wanting to undress in front of a fully intact male.

So to those screaming 'bigot' and 'fascist' at me, you should know two things. Firstly, I'm completely indifferent to your disapproval, as I'd have thought you'd have realised by now. Secondly, and far more importantly, the only thing more harmful to your cause than your pseudo-religious belief in gender identities is your astounding, self-righteous arrogance.

[Paul Anleitner @PaulAnleitner]

I don't study politics, but I do study culture, and here are some of the signs that a cultural shift has been brewing for years in America that most of the professional political analysts just completely missed.

Some of these may seem absurd, but hear me out. 🧵
We'll start with this one:

[🇭🇹💋EXSTACY💋🇭🇹 @RoseSensu]

I love when they say the quiet part out loud

[Pam Ayres MBE @PamAyres]

I hate bonfire night. All I can see are countless insects and small animals being burned alive.

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

I think we are getting closer to a critical mass of people understanding the gravitas of our situation - that we have allowed the fossil fuel industry to lie and destabilise the planet - and if we don’t act urgently an enormous number of us are going to die. This is really happening.

[Brendan May @bmay]

Pete Buttigieg is one of the smartest and most capable political communicators on the planet. This is extremely insightful on Trump.

[Esther Choo, MD MPH @choo_ek]

We’ve all told these stories so many times. It’s not a healed thing. We said at the time we’d never forget and even then I think we knew it’d be impossible.

[Trussell @TrussellUK]

BREAKING 🚨 Almost half of people claiming Universal Credit ran out of food in the last month and did not have enough money to buy more.

Universal Credit is falling short and pushing people to food banks. People cannot wait for an economic turnaround to improve their current situations.

We urge the Government act. People facing hunger need immediate relief, and strong services in their communities.

The upcoming budget must strengthen social security to tackle hardship at the root.

[Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone]

This is doing the rounds again and rightly so - it’s Brexit in a nutshell. Britain becoming isolated by accident because the people running the country had no idea what they were doing.

[Shabnam Nasimi @NasimiShabnam]

Women in Afghanistan are being obliterated—no voice, no face, no existence. The Taliban’s latest decrees are nothing short of barbaric: women banned from singing, reciting poetry, or even speaking aloud in public. Their faces and bodies must hidden from the world.

This isn’t just an Afghanistan tragedy; it is a stain on the global conscience, brought about by our failure to act.

[MrMenno 🇳🇱🏳️‍🌈🎶 @MrMennoTweets]

1 / Mammoth thread 🧵🦣 Had a challenging chat yesterday with a dad (an old friend) whose son started 'puberty blockers' a few months ago. Had to navigate a very complex conversation on the spot:

▶️ what to say
▶️ what not to say
▶️ how to communicate certain things to make sure they landed
▶️ giving him enough space to process what I was saying
▶️ noticing his body language and facial expressions
▶️ giving him enough space to ask questions and share whatever he wanted to share
▶️ ensuring he felt comfortable enough to share deeply personal stuff in the first place, and to be able to do so without feeling like he was being judged as a parent
▶️ how to not let my own emotions get in the way or become a distraction - this situation was first and foremost about a worried dad and his distressed son

We talked for hours and were both so happy to have been able to have this kind of conversation, but it was also upsetting as it put certain dark realities into very sharp focus.

I'm posting about it here in the hope it will help some of you navigate these conversations when you're faced with them, and would love to hear your thoughts on what you've found to be helpful from your experiences.

We cannot underestimate the importance of these conversations and the impact they may have. There is no magic formula but together we can work out some key pointers for 'best practice'.

I'll add annotations in italics.

M = Menno
F = Friend

OK, let's go...

#KeepSpeakingKeepPeaking

[Teresa Strasser @teresastrasser]

Parents, take your kids to all those birthday parties. Here's why.

Once upon a time, a million years ago, in a San Fernando Valley far, far away, my mother had a birthday party and nobody showed. Not a single kid.

With school starting, I wanted to share the story.

A thread 🧵

[Cathy Devine @cathydevine56]

For those who have never watched the Rio 2016 Olympic Women's 800m final please watch this.
Commentator: '(Semenya) has destroyed them'.
How grim that sounds now.
The female athletes lost 10 years at the pinnacle of their sport. Medals, earnings, careers.
https://t.co/RnXdhzG1iB

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

This is Florida, USA.
‘The collapse of civilisation is on the horizon’ Sir David Attenborough https://t.co/aKAv8KylR6

[Keith Olbermann @KeithOlbermann]

What's especially tragic here is that this will NOT be the lead story on @ThisWeekABC or @MeetThePress or @FaceTheNation because... horse race

HEY IDIOTS. TRUMP JUST ANNOUNCED 'NO MORE ELECTIONS'

Do. Your. God. Damn. Jobs.