Robert Reich writes:

A quarter-century ago, I and other members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet urged him to reject the Republican proposal to end welfare. It was too punitive, we said, subjecting poor Americans to deep and abiding poverty. But Clinton’s political advisers warned that unless he went along, he would jeopardize his reelection.

And obviously his reelection was more important than keeping people out of deep and abiding poverty.

That was the end of welfare as we knew it. As Clinton boasted in his State of the Union address to Congress that year: “The era of big government is over.”

Until Thursday, that is. Joe Biden signed into law the biggest expansion of government assistance since the 1960s –

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Mind you, Jim Crow has always worn a suit and tie.

Stacey Abrams has described Republican efforts to restrict voting rights in Georgia as “racist” and “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie”.

It wasn’t just sheriffs and guys in pickup trucks, it was legislatures and judges and mayors.

The bill in Georgia, SB241, includes various measures including ending the right to vote by mail without having to provide an excuse, and other new identification requirements. Republicans have held up what they say is a risk of voter fraud as justification for the legislation despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

And despite the fact that we all know the point of these laws is … Read the rest

Bristol University’s Student Union is bullying a women’s group for being a women’s group. Mustn’t allow the witches to organize, you know.

The following is a copy of the letter that feminist student society Women Talk Back! has sent to the Minister of Education Gavin Williamson regarding sanctions imposed by the Bristol SU for being a single-sex feminist society. The Bristol SU also seeks to ban the president of our student society, PhD student Raquel Rosario Sanchez, from leadership roles for defending women’s right to privacy, dignity and safety during an incident that took place in March 2020. The students are seeking support in what they regard to be an attempt to erode their rights to free speech,

… Read the rest

But in Hackney…

https://twitter.com/HackneyReSiste2/status/1370816521837105152 https://twitter.com/LesleySemmens/status/1370872038680887297

In a feminine way, of course.… Read the rest

London is not a happy city tonight.

Unnecessary heavy police presence at #SarahEverard vigil.

Tensions are high because #Sarah was allegedly murdered by a metropolitan police officer so you would think they would handle this vigil with some sensitivity. #notallmenbutallwomen pic.twitter.com/ezi3YcHcao

— Ahmed Kaballo (@AhmedKaballo) March 13, 2021

You would think that, wouldn’t you.

A woman is arrested by Metropolitan Police officers at a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard on Clapham Common, London. Photograph by @jackhillphoto pic.twitter.com/qhp8GFibNr

— Alastair Johnstone (@a_lastair) March 13, 2021

I feel sick pic.twitter.com/wCKWzwLyRk

— Elizabeth Sankey (@sankles) March 13, 2021

https://twitter.com/sophie_mzy/status/1370814488539234306

Tense scenes at Clapham Common memorial for Sarah Everard, crowd shouting “shame on you” and “arrest your own” #saraheverard #clapham #claphamcommon pic.twitter.com/V98tZ5CZGi

—

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Here he is with two working arms, stating the case.

H/t latsot… Read the rest

All women.

There should be no limits of the types of women protected from hate crime says Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, as she begins her consideration of whether Scotland requires a standalone offence to tackle misogynist abuse.

Well duh. Of course there should be no such limits. Misogyny doesn’t limit itself so why would a law against misogynist abuse limit itself?

Ok I’ll stop playing dumb now. We know why.

Kennedy is immediately clear on how she would define the scope of specific protection she is charged with: “This is about hatred. Trans women, gay women, journalists, parliamentarians, all women get a whole lot of horrible stuff slung at them – disproportionately – and I’m not narrowing down those

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Best laugh in days.

Terrifying; children now don’t have the human reflex that they when you smile at them they smile back. I’m seeing kids with their lower faces hanging inertly, absolutely unmoving facial muscles, when they take their masks off. Dark circles under eyes from low oxygen. Lassitude.

— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) March 12, 2021

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This happened last night in Montreal.

https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1370526998011973636 https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1370550694168702977 https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1370550679606018050 https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1370577428733640704

That’s broken all right.

https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1370589591728717824… Read the rest

Jeffrey Trachtenberg at the Wall Street Journal reports:

Amazon Inc. said it recently removed a three-year-old book about transgender issues from its platforms because it decided not to sell books that frame transgender and other sexual identities as mental illnesses.

The company explained its decision in a letter Thursday to Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The senators had written last month to Chief Executive Jeff Bezos requesting an explanation of why “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” was no longer available on Amazon nor on its Kindle and Audible platforms.

How I hate to … Read the rest

If anyone wants to know why Jess Phillips didn’t read any names of men who identify as transwomen in the list of women killed by men since IWD last year, it’s largely because there were none.
There were 118 women though. One hundred and eighteen. Why do you overlook them?

— Dr Karen Ingala Smith (@K_IngalaSmith) March 11, 2021

It’s disheartening to see a Labour MP gloss over transphobic language (“men who identify as transwomen”) which is at odds with the law, which recognises transgender women as women. You can and must do better than this.

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) March 12, 2021

It’s not “at odds with” any law to say that trans women are men who identify as … Read the rest

Remember when the Amazon was a carbon sink? Good times.

Historically, the Amazon rainforest has been one of the planet’s most important sources of carbon sequestration, caching billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. For decades, scientists have cautioned us not to take this crucial service for granted, warning that in just 15 years, the Amazon could meet the fate of other large forests and become a source of greenhouse gases. Devastating new research shows that bleak scenario has likely already begun.

Oops.

A groundbreaking study published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change on Thursday suggests that the Amazon rainforest is exhaling at least as many greenhouse gases as it breathes in. The

… Read the rest

Grooming much?

It’s for 5-9 year olds. Class is once a week. Classes are all sold out!

Description

Class Experience

This group is for our youngest learners who might be binary transgender, nonbinary transgender, gender-expansive, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, agender, queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or exploring their gender or sexual orientation. Neurodivergent learners and/or learners with disabilities are very much welcome. The aim of this group is to be as multisensory and multimedia as possible in an online setting, and to rely less on verbal discussion than in my older groups.

Youths will interact via live video chat. This youngest group has been created at the request of parents of students who have felt that the elementary LGBTQ clubs are “too

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Hey, whatever moves the product, right? If it’s a man talking about his boobs right next to a row of murdered women, them’s the breaks.

1/ Thread: The front page of the guardian juxtaposes a narcissistic man with what he calls “boob envy” with the faces of women murdered by men. It’s a work of calculated cruelty, a visual language not of a category error, but trolling women by way of reduction into body parts. pic.twitter.com/Os1qsdHXsj

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) March 12, 2021

On your left, murdered women; on your right, a man “making her pronouns permanent” and “shouting down abuse.”

4/ This category imprecision has conceptually bloated the ranks of the blessed and protected to the point the

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Trans women are twice as oppressed as women.

Transgender women are targeted because of their gender, just like cisgender women are, and *also* because of transphobia. That's like how women of colour can be targeted both on the basis of misogyny and race.

Marginalising these women even more contributes to violence. https://t.co/hZ1GgIn9mI

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) March 11, 2021

Twice as targeted, so obviously they get to shove women aside and take up all the oxygen. … Read the rest

Good timing. Good front paging.

Front page of tomorrow's Guardian. Can't wait to find out how one is promoted to she. pic.twitter.com/Sysnnm5O5T

— Margaret Nelson (@Flashmaggie) March 11, 2021

The headline at the top is a man bragging about being a woman while directly under that is more coverage of a woman who was grabbed off the street and murdered.

If being a woman were a promotion, if it were an honour, women wouldn’t get grabbed off the streets and murdered.

I’m so tired of this self-indulgent self-centered nonsense that shoves women aside for the sake of narcissistic men who play at being women. So tired of it.… Read the rest

Scotland has a shiny new hate crime bill that doesn’t include women.

Scotland’s controversial hate crime bill is set to pass later on Thursday amid anger about its current exclusion of women and assurances that the legislation will not criminalise those whose views are considered by some to be transphobic.

It did pass.

The final vote was delayed from Wednesday, after a marathon five-hour debate over a lengthy series of amendments resulted in one of Holyrood’s latest sittings and concluded the rocky passage of the bill. It is intended to consolidate existing hate crime laws but also creates a new offence of “stirring up hatred” on the grounds of religion, sexual orientation, age, disability or transgender identity.

But not … Read the rest

Councillor Dom Armstrong wrote Tuesday:

It is with great sadness that I tender my resignation to the Green Party.

I have been a member since 2015 and a councillor since May 2019 in Washington/ Sunderland, a role which I will also be giving up.

In that time they accomplished good things.

I joined the Greens, and agreed to stand for public office, simply because I have two daughters. I did hope that through joining the Greens, and fighting climate change, this would be a worthy way to honour them. They didn’t always understand, especially when they were younger, why their Dad was working at nights, or at weekends, or posting leaflets in the snow, or responding to emails during

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Well now we all want to know what “dinner party TERFs” are and why we haven’t been invited.

It’s some guy called Ryan Broderick who came up with the label, but it’s very misty what he meant by it. It’s something about Glenn Greenwald and a NY Times reporter called Taylor Lorenz which is too uninteresting to describe further.

Greenwald is part of a cadre of writers who position themselves as neither left or right-wing, instead focusing on culture war Twitter drama about being “canceled” and trans people in bathrooms and woke college students to make the actually very standard and traditional right-wing status quo that they’re defending sound slightly less tedious. Other writers in this network are people

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Rachel Hewitt makes an interesting point about street harassment and who own public space.

The disappearance of Sarah Everard while she walked through Clapham, south London, at 9pm on 3 March gives horrific shape to the hum of fear that women constantly feel in public spaces. My social media timelines are full of women who are distressed by Sarah’s disappearance, and terrified that it could have been them. Men have asked what they can do to help women feel safer. But what’s needed beyond the education of individuals are urgent political solutions to counter men’s attempts to claim public spaces as their exclusive domain.

Street harassment of women by men is so common that there are no women … Read the rest