michael fletcher

Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington. Studied literature, economics, social policy. Socialist. Biology is real, sex is binary.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

As a smug 12 year old, I was horrified to see the teacher had written on the top corner of the blackboard the names of three of the laziest kids in class under the heading "Outstanding Projects"

[Bill Manhire @pacificraft]

". . . a collection of relentlessly high quality and endless reward."

Quite a review to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

https://t.co/RwDuP4sWwg

[Nancy Dollar @we_dollar]

The brilliant @pacificraft strikes again. (Listener)

[Seb Coe @sebcoe]

The philosophy that we hold dear in World Athletics is the protection and the promotion of the integrity of women's sport. It is really important in a sport that is permanently trying to attract more women that they enter a sport believing there is no biological glass ceiling. The test to confirm biological sex is a very important step in ensuring this is the case.

We particularly want to thank our Member Federations for their support and commitment in the implementation of these new regulations.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

@donal_curtin Great graph! and yes, makes a lot of sense. (But what happened in about 2003 to 2007?)

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

🙄The fringe idea that we all have a 'gender identity' that may or may not match our biological sex is the whole point of this discussion. Trans activists act as though the existence of 'gender identity' is a settled, self-evident point, when to the vast majority of the world it's unevidenced, quasi-religious, pseudoscientific nonsense, which has been imposed top down on our society with serious consequences for vulnerable women and troubled youth in particular.

Meaningful discussion about competing needs and rights cannot happen inside an elitist ideological bubble where everyone is forced to adopt gender ideology's approved jargon, accept its self-contradicting slogans as fact and pretend fact-light assertions and feeble sophistry are critical thinking.

You tell us to 'educate' ourselves, by which you mean, 'adopt our beliefs unquestioningly,' but at this point, most of us know your arguments off by heart. These include, but are not limited to: feelings trump facts and unless we agree we're 'erasing people from existence'; women and girls aren't definable entities, so why should they be entitled to their own sports and single-sex spaces; clownfish and people with DSDs mean sex is 'on a spectrum' and 'woman' is a set of stereotypes associated with the female sex class, so it doesn't matter if you've got a penis, if you identify with those stereotypes you're 'valid'.

The reason we haven't been won over by these talking points and remain so tragically 'uneducated' isn't that we've failed to grasp the sophistication of your world view. It's that we think you're talking unadulterated bullshit and making fools of yourselves.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Wonderfully ambiguous comment from the search expert guy: "I don't think they've gone too far" https://t.co/DXpeazW7vN

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Having read up on a fair bit of everything written about Alice Munro over the last couple of months, I think my conclusion is never judge a book by its mother

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

The big four gentailers have been gouging consumers for decades. Massive excess profits year after year. The sector needs total reform. Here's an article I wrote for @NorthandSouthNZ magazine last year.
Power Play https://t.co/LZtvYemOsf

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Being ripped off by a cosy cartel of gentailers has been going on for years. We need a total reform of the sector. This is the article I wrote for @NorthandSouthNZ last year.

[North & South Magazine @NorthandSouthNZ]

Excessive electricity profits is nothing new: - here's our investigation from Nov 2023

https://t.co/cjlNwlH0r2

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

High court rules the UK ban on puberty blockers is lawful. We seem, at last, to be moving back to treatment for vulnerable youth based on evidence-based medicine, as opposed to the unevidenced claims of ideological lobby groups. https://t.co/fHqaZvv5Oq

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

@tommygun1964 @MaxRashbrooke I'm now an ardent reader of Regional News. Three copies picked up from the supermarket are enough to light the woodburner for a week.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Ha! But has he actually been stolen, Michael? Or just sent back to NZ as a 501 and is currently somewhere near Christchurch?

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Listening to #budget2024 this afternoon I am struck by how the word 'beneficiary' has two quite different meanings. The beneficiaries of @chrisluxonmp's and @NicolaWillisMP's Budget are a quite different group of people than the one most of us mean by the word.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

This story just gets creepier and more ghastly with ever paragraph.

[Hadley Freeman @HadleyFreeman]

Well this, by the brilliant @jennykleeman, is totally gripping/horrifying

https://t.co/1TrypOIKDo

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

@coughlthom Oh, I don't know. We did tightly cropped in earlier times too

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

#pathoftotality2024

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Remember how the meteorologists' term "Perfect Storm" entered the common vernacular, even to the point of cliche, a while back? I so hope "Path of Totality" does the same in 2024.

[michael fletcher @fletchermj]

Remember how the meteorologists' term "Perfect Storm" entered the common vernacular, even to the point of cliche, a while back? I so hope "Path of Totality" does the same in 2024.