Other people’s identities…

Ireland’s descent into authoritarianism continues.

This is Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly weaponising the concept of “safety” to justify censorship and other encroachments on freedom of speech.pic.twitter.com/qdD59IDE07

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) June 15, 2023

…and if your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.

What does that even mean?

At this particular moment we know that “people’s identities” means the raging insistence of a small number of men that they are women and that women must not say they are men.… Read the rest

Reduxx reports:

A prominent trans activist has been sentenced for the 2016 triple homicide of a California lesbian couple and their son. Dana Rivers, born David Chester Warfield, has been handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“It is a horrible thing to sentence someone to die in prison, and I don’t take that lightly,” Judge Scott Patton said during the court hearing held today. “But this is the most depraved crime I ever handled in the criminal justice system in 33 years. Frankly, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

…

Rivers’ crimes date back to November 11 of 2016, when police were called in response to the sound

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Originally a comment by latsot on Preserving mystery in legislation.

I’ve lived a sort of double life as part scientist and part engineer, so I like to come at these things from two directions. On the one hand we have the big-picture thinking described well by iknklast and Holmes: this is a terrible idea for freedom and democracy. It will be used to serve political goals, that’s inevitable. Over in the UK, we’ve installed Police and Crime Commissioners as political appointments; these are the people who would be in charge of how hate laws are implemented in practice, which makes me more than a little uneasy. The entire principle of policing in the UK is that police are supposed … Read the rest

Make it make sense.

Women have shared their concern about the erasure of “all female identities” after Johns Hopkins University used the phrase “non-man” to describe lesbians.

The Baltimore-based university received backlash online after defining “lesbian” as “a non-man attracted to non-men” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The update, which has since been removed from the website, was initially meant to be inclusive of non-binary individuals, who may still identify as lesbians.

That last bit. What can possibly be the point of being “inclusive” of a tiny tiny tiny fragment of the population, which has a fatuous delusion that it’s something labeled “non-binary,” which doesn’t mean anything, at the expense of over half of the population? Why … Read the rest

Katha Pollitt on Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation:

Sometimes, the censors get lucky. The latest writer to cancel herself is Elizabeth Gilbert, the immensely popular author of Eat, Pray, Love and other memoirs, novels, and self-help tracts. On Monday, Gilbert announced on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that she is “making a course correction” and pulling her upcoming novel, The Snow Forest, from publication. The novel, she explains, is about a Russian family that withdraws from Soviet society in the 1930s and remains isolated for many years in Siberia. “Over the course of this weekend,” she writes, “I have received an enormous massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers, expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that

… Read the rest

“The reason we haven’t defined hate crime in our bill banning hate crime is that then people would know what the crime is.” They’re going with that?

[Ireland’s Minister for Justice Helen] McEntee also defended the proposed hate crime and hate speech bill, and said she believes the majority of people want to see it enacted.

…

“Firstly, when it comes to the hate speech and the hate crime legislation, the reason that we haven’t defined hate is by defining hate and using another word, you then have to try and describe essentially what that means. And you’re potentially leaving a gap where certain prosecutions might fall or where it may be more difficult to have prosecutions under this legislation.”

… Read the rest

Dang, self-important much?

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668547072549699585

Definitely! So especially important for some boutique genderperson to cross the pond to rescue Britain from the parching lack of boutique genderpersons. Thank god she has arrived to do her advocacy work!!

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668699649362784256

Even Parliament is asking her what it should do! I’m impressed now.

https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1668747621161406465

Hmmmmmm. Do we think that really happened? Google News doesn’t even turn up news of her arrival. … Read the rest

Don’t bring up Anne Frank only to talk about something else.

Today is Anne Franks's birthday

In Uganda, Afghanistan & Somalia, LGBTs are being hunted like Anne was

They hide in rooms like she did – fearing arrest, torture & execution

In the name of #AnneFrank NEVER AGAIN!@benjamincohen @benjaminbutter @BenWeinthal @sanditoksvig pic.twitter.com/av7b1z3VPZ

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) June 12, 2023

Uganda Afghanistan and Somalia are not havens of human rights, for sure, but if you’re going to talk about Anne Frank, then talk about Anne Frank. Don’t bring her up just to point to something else.… Read the rest

Fucking hell.

I am hoping the Metropolitan police will reconsider their decision on the criminality of the first tweet threatening to kill me in the light of the second tweet threatening not just my life but that of 2 other MPs @RosieDuffield1 & @JNHanvey https://t.co/WXJiJUjUQT pic.twitter.com/R9MD0c2RK4

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) June 14, 2023

… Read the rest

Trump says the law is not the law.

Hours after he was fingerprinted, booked and entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court in Miami, former President Donald Trump defied the very premise of the federal government’s case against him, claiming presidents have an “absolute right” to keep any and all documents they want. 

Which is funny because that’s the opposite of the truth.

“Whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It’s an absolute right. This is the law,” Trump said. 

The law is the opposite of that. The exact, clearly worded, explicit opposite. At noon on January 20 all presidential records become the property of the National Archive. That… Read the rest

News from Queensland:

Trans and gender-diverse Queenslanders will be able to change the gender on their birth certificates without having to undergo surgery, in a development that advocates have called “life-changing”.

Previously, people could only apply to change the sex on their birth certificates where they’d undergone sexual reassignment surgery – an invasive, costly procedure that isn’t readily available.

The new laws remove that provision and instead require people to supply a supporting statement from someone they’ve known for 12 months or longer.

Well let’s not stop with gender. Let’s have laws saying people can change their species on their birth certificates. First you’d have to make species a category on birth certificates, because as of now it’s just … Read the rest

The very first words of the Newsweek piece are a lie.

A small subset of conservatives online has expressed outrage at Johns Hopkins University over its non-binary-inclusive definition of “lesbian” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The people outraged are far from exclusively “conservatives” and there’s nothing “inclusive” about defining women as non-men – especially when the Johns Hopkins definition of “gay” does not match that insulting (and useless) definition of “lesbian.”

The Baltimore-based university, a major hub of medical research in the U.S., maintains an extensive glossary of definitions for terms relevant to the broad LGBTQ+ community. The definitions are often updated with greater inclusivity in mind, and as the medical establishment’s understanding of gender and sexual identity evolves.

… Read the rest

Victory!

We won. Women still will be women. My guess is that the revelation that the author of the @JohnsHopkins LGBTQ Glossary was a transwoman activist erasing only women and not men sealed the fate of the glossary.

Never hesitate to fightback. Oh, and Happy Pride Month! pic.twitter.com/2vYFrE5rrH

— Fred Sargeant (@FredSargeant) June 13, 2023

… Read the rest

CNN goes through some of Trump’s lies about his activities:

In his speech in Georgia on Saturday, Trump mentioned a photo that was included in the indictment. The photo, which was taken at Mar-a-Lago, shows a toppled box from which papers had spilled out onto the floor.

Trump said: “I looked – it looked so orderly and nice. Somehow somebody turned over one of the boxes. Did you see that? I said, ‘I wonder who did that? Did the FBI do that?’”

Facts First: The suggestion that it’s even possible that the FBI might have turned over this box is nonsense. According to the indictment, the photo was taken in December 2021 by Trump aide and accused co-conspirator

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It’s all or nothing, I tells ya, all or nothing.

Jess Phillips is so ignorant of trans people – particularly trans women. Says she’s never met anybody trans who considers themselves to have changed sex. Is she getting trans mixed up with drag queens? 🤷‍♀️ Anyway, in the bin @jessphillips . Gender Critical Labour.

— Indiala Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) June 13, 2023

In the bin with her! She doesn’t do it abjectly enough so into the bin.

Yes – virtually your opening line. You don’t class me or others who’ve had to transition as a women or female. I and other trans peeps didn’t change gender, Jess. We changed sex to match the gender we were born with. Hiving trans

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Well when you put it that way…

The memes, tho #TrumpArraignment pic.twitter.com/jxfhjtRzNc

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 13, 2023

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This is an interesting little detail. Trump isn’t even paying Walter Nauta: he’s making the campaign pay him. I think we’ve been reminded that’s illegal via all the other ways Trump has flouted campaign laws.

When Trump left the White House, Nauta was part of the post-presidency transition, serving for another six months while still in the Navy. Trump indicated in a social media post that at some point, Nauta “retired” from military service and “then transitioned into private life as a personal aide.”  

Federal Election Commission records show that beginning in August 2021, Nauta was paid by Trump’s “Save America PAC,” compensation that included salary, travel expense reimbursement and bonus. He later appeared on Trump’s 2024 campaign payroll. He has remained

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So far I can’t find any news media reporting this. Speak Up for Women has a statement on Twitter:

Speak Up for Women statement regarding the granting of diversion for Albert Park assailant.

New Zealand has a shameful record of family and sexual violence. A main driver of this is that male violence is excused and minimised. This Court decision to grant diversion to the man who assaulted the 70 year old grandmother at the Let Women Speak event in Albert Park is part of a dangerous cultural shift the political class has endorsed – that the use of physical violence is to be expected and excused in retaliation for words or beliefs that don’t align with theirs.

Men

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For some reason Trump has been unable to hire new lawyers to help him clear up this little misunderstanding.

Trump and his legal team spent the afternoon before his arraignment interviewing potential lawyers but the interviews did not result in any joining the team in time for Trump’s initial court appearance scheduled for 3pm ET on Tuesday after several attorneys declined to take him as a client.

Trump has also seemingly been unable to find a specialist national security lawyer, eligible to possess a security clearance, to help him navigate the Espionage Act charges.

The last-minute scramble to find a veteran trial lawyer was a familiar process for Trump, who has had difficulty hiring and keeping lawyers to defend him

… Read the rest

It all makes sense now – straight people can be “queer.” Who knew?!

Just as it’s possible to be bisexual in a long-term relationship with someone of the same gender, it’s possible to be queer in a long term relationship with someone of another gender.

— Kirsty Blackman (@KirstySNP) June 13, 2023

Then what does “queer” mean? Interesting? Special? Better than all those boring beige people in long term relationships (commonly known as “marriages”) with someone of another gender?

Dennis isn’t having it.

This gets on my nerves.

Kirsty.

I am gay, I am married to a bloke.

So are you, that means you have a straight marriage and you're living a straight life mate.

Please stop co-opting my community

… Read the rest