Hilarity:

As fallout from Donald Trump’s meeting with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes continues, a far-right activist has claimed the meeting was a set-up, meant to “make Trump’s life miserable”.

Sigh. Now I have to catch up with the Trump news. I overlooked the meeting and the fallout.

NBC News reported that in an attempt to “send a message” to the former president, Milo Yiannopoulos, a rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor, helped arrange for Fuentes to travel to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for a dinner between Trump and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Trump ate with the pair. He’s been criticized for doing so.

Ye, who like Trump is running for president in 2024, said he

Wait who is doing the obsessing here?

Arwa Mahdawi wrote a column on creepy advertising by Tampax and Balenciaga, but in the process she managed to take a swipe at The Designated Enemy.

If any brand has licence to make jokes about things being up vaginas, it’s Tampax. Sexualising tampons, however, is revolting. Still, the tweet had the intended effect, I suppose, which was to get people talking about Tampax. The gender-neutral language also sparked a heated argument about trans people because, hey, what doesn’t spark a heated argument about trans people these days? While I admit spending 60% of my life on Twitter isn’t healthy, it’s not as unhealthy as spending 99.99% of your waking hours obsessing over

Alex Massie in The Spectator:

Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon spoke at an event celebrating 30 years of the charity Zero Tolerance and its long running – and essential – commitment to ending violence against women. In a revealing sign of the times in Scotland today, organisers emailed those attending the event to warn them certain subjects should be ignored. As they put it: ‘We wish to create a safe and supported environment for our guests and ask you to support us in this aim by refraining from discussions of the definition of a woman and single sex spaces in relation to the gender recognition act.’

But…how then will they know what anyone is talking about? If they don’t know people … Read the rest

Good grief.

First I see this:

Then I see a reply saying Lady SH is Lady Susan Hussey so I hie me to Google for information on Lady SH and find a bouquet of headlines saying she’s resigned. I chose the BBC:

Lady Susan Hussey quits over remarks to charity boss Ngozi Fulani

The late Queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Susan Hussey has apologised and resigned after she repeatedly asked a black British charity boss where she was from.

Ngozi Fulani, a charity founder, was questioned about her background at the charity event at the palace on Tuesday. Ms Fulani said she was “totally stunned” by Prince William’s godmother’s comments.

The palace described the comments as “unacceptable and deeply regrettable”. An

The Telegraph solemnly reports:

A non-binary senior US nuclear official has been charged with stealing a suitcase at an airport.

The owner of the suitcase however is non-non-binary. She’s not a man, even half.

Sam Brinton, 35, became the most prominent genderfluid person in the US government in June, overseeing the disposal of nuclear waste.

He’s a man non-binary as opposed to a woman non-binary.

The appointment of the MIT graduate, who uses the pronouns “they” and “them”, was hailed at the time by diversity campaigners.

By laughably credulous “diversity campaigners.” A pale man who calls himself “them” and has a high-up government job is not much of a blow for diversity.

When Brinton took up the post in

Found guilty.

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes of seditious conspiracy for leading a months-long plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for three days before finding Rhodes and a co-defendant guilty of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transition of presidential power. Rhodes and all four co-defendants on trial were also convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election. Both offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

…

The indictment brought against Rhodes, 56, and other Oath Keepers

I’m looking for more on this claim by anthropologist Dan Hicks that Bentham “contested immediate emancipation.”

It’s certainly possible in the abstract, given utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number” principle. The obvious objection is that lots of people can be made happy about the sufferings of a smaller number of people, so let’s not do it that way. Actual utilitarians wrestled with the problem; working imperialists, not so much. How about in the concrete? Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has a relevant article:

Classical Utilitarianism, on one reading, is the view according to which an action, rule, policy or social institution is right if and only if it is designed to advance aggregate well-being, hedonistically construed. Relying on some

Hipster captioning.

Taken by a friend at the Wellcome Collection. This is real. pic.twitter.com/ylciJ6pa65

— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) November 27, 2022

The full caption:… Read the rest

Suddenly the BBC is being a good deal more blunt:

A trans woman who groomed and had sex with a 14-year-old girl, making her pregnant, has been jailed.

The defendant – named by police as “David Orton, also known as Danielle Rose Gemini” – was found guilty of penetrative sexual activity with a child following a trial.

…

The offender, whose name was recorded as Danielle-Rose Gemini by Leicester Crown Court, was jailed for nine-and-a-half years.

Leicestershire Police – who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman at the time of the offences – were not able to give a current gender identity.

That “who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman” is two layers of skepticism right there … Read the rest

End violence against women…

…unless of course that might inconvenience men who call themselves women.

A charity event to push for an end to male violence against women and girls has banned discussion about single sex spaces.

Push for an end to male violence! But don’t push hard – in fact push as gently as you possibly can.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is scheduled to give the main speech to the 30th anniversary gathering by Zero Tolerance in Edinburgh today. The charity‘s core belief is that male violence should not be tolerated.

Unless the male “identifies as” a woman. Then the violence is quite all right.

A note sent to attendees said it wanted “to create a

Won’t someone please have some sympathy for the poor beleaguered fragile trans laydee who makes racist taunts?

He’s deleted the tweet but there are many many screengrabs.

The enlightened sympathize with India but also remember to be intersectional.

She’s a cunt, but you’re better than this. Please be better than saying something racist to prove a point.

— Cis (@angel_in_a_cage) November 28, 2022

But don’t ever ever ever be better than calling a woman a cunt. That’s absolutely fine, in fact it’s obligatory.… Read the rest

And how are we defining equality exactly?

We are proud to be trans allies.

We stand with the LGBTQIA+ community.

We support women, girls and marginalised people.

We do not police who is a woman that’s reserved for the patriarchy.

— Right to Equality (@Right2Equality) November 28, 2022

What does it mean to “police” who is a woman? It doesn’t seem like something anyone can police. Either you are or you aren’t. It’s commonplace to police things like who is a citizen, who is a lawyer, who is a doctor, who is an Olympic medalist – that is, there are criteria for all those things, which can be lied about or faked. You don’t want a pretend dentist messing with … Read the rest

Still working on the government by force thing.

2:30 AM post: “Kari Lake should be installed Governor of Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Nxm4h08U8L

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 28, 2022

And who should do the installing? The military?

Rolling Stone has more:

Much of Lake’s Trump-backed campaign was centered around bolstering unfounded claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, and the former TV anchor has lived up to her commitment to only accept election results if she won.

Lake, who lost her bid for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has refused to acknowledge the election results, instead filing a lawsuit requesting public records from Maricopa County that would detail which voters experienced issues casting their ballots, and information regarding errors

News from museum world:

A museum in London is closing one of its main exhibitions following concerns over “racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”.

The Wellcome Collection says the Medicine Man display is ending after a 15-year run. Founder Henry Wellcome, who died in 1936, collected more than a million objects to give an insight into global health and medicine. The museum has marked the closure as a “significant turning point”.

Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.

It’s pretty obvious why that would be controversial. I wonder if they could just mark it historical with a note … Read the rest

Party time!

I miss you too, babes pic.twitter.com/Zmp31aYHT3

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) November 28, 2022

This obsessive hounding of Kathleen is horrible and deeply strange.

Academia still has not learned the necessary lessons from this.

We need to stop coddling the bullies. https://t.co/ErSuQbGSCu

— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) November 28, 2022

Alice is right. I am very disappointed in (many of) my professional colleagues in philosophy. They seem to think this is all a bit unseemly and they would rather avert their gaze from misogynist bullying and pass on by.

I thought they had more guts. https://t.co/einldEW7yd

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) November 28, 2022

… Read the rest

Zoe Williams at the Guardian tries to rebuke Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for not having approved opinions:

Five years ago, the writer said in an interview: “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.” She has written extensively about the fire she came under after that.

…

This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm. “So somebody who looks like my brother – he says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’, and she’s transphobic?” We break briefly so I can look at a photo of

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What Jesus had.

Hang on. “Evidence” based on “Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion” is from images created centuries after the event being depicted, interpreted through the lens of gender-theoretical wishful thinking invented centuries later still. That is a helluva long chain of evidence, but then if you’re a gender studies “scholar” you can just make shit up as you go along, without the tedious burden of proof. Assertion is sufficient; it’s self ID for “evidence.”

But maybe there’s more to it than we’re giving credit for; perhaps one of these artists came into posession of a contemporaneous, eyewitness sketch made on Golgotha? We already know that depictions of … Read the rest

Speaking of rights, and “trans rights,” and the refusal ever to define exactly what “trans rights” are – a gaggle of “trans activists” have scored another self-defeating triumph.

Yet again women are being censored. The fightback will have to get even tougher and more organised https://t.co/vQxsvJRPuO

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) November 27, 2022

Just got to Nottingham for @AHFdoco to the trans activist shower who have managed to get the film showing cancelled. A film about women with a full room of women wanting to view it. And these men and their handmaidens have stopped us. We will still meet and talk. pic.twitter.com/VgEJuiz5kN

— Jean Hatchet (@JeanHatchet) November 27, 2022

“Trans rights are human rights” they chant idiotically, as if … Read the rest

Trans rows are splitting the Greens, the Times says.

…the Green Party has now been accused of neglecting its core aims after becoming so embroiled in arguments about gender that three prominent members are suing over the issue.

The trio allege they were disciplined, abused and even assaulted over their views on trans rights. 

Wait. That’s not the right way to frame it. That makes it sound as if dissenters want to remove actual rights from trans people. We don’t. The point is that there are endless wild claims about putative trans rights that aren’t rights at all, for anyone. I don’t have any right to force people to agree that I’m a tree or a tank or … Read the rest

So would I.

Once again, I would like to know, why is this happening? pic.twitter.com/DpmPtPXwjd

— Dr Liz Asher (@Dr_LizAsher) November 26, 2022

On the one hand, anyone with a cervix. On the other hand, anyone with a prostate men aged 50 and older.

On the one hand, anyone with a cervix. On the other hand, real people who matter.… Read the rest