All entries by this author
Jan 24th, 2021 4:10 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
https://twitter.com/KateVWilliams/status/1353320597191876608
https://twitter.com/KateVWilliams/status/1353320859444899840
https://twitter.com/KateVWilliams/status/1353322307188649985
Feminism can’t defend women if it’s forced to speak for those who do not share this experience.
Why are we being forced, or at least bullied and bullied and bullied, to speak for the people who don’t share our experience? What is that? I still can’t take in how it’s grown and then swallowed everything.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Jan 24th, 2021 12:56 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The end:
Trump left the White House with his wife, Melania, at about 8:20 a.m., refusing to take questions from the press. He walked to Marine One with an ominous send-off: “I just want to say goodbye, but hopefully it’s not a long-term goodbye. We’ll see each other again.” Later, in a brief departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews before flying to Florida, he gave a familiar and repetitive summation of what he views as his accomplishments in office. He of course neglected to mention the incident that will come to overshadow everything else that happened over the past four years: a lethal insurrection carried out by his supporters after a rally in which he’d again falsely claimed that
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15 comments
Jan 24th, 2021 11:46 am |
By Ophelia Benson
They didn’t mean it, they were just overexcited.
A Texas man who participated in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January has been charged with threatening to “assassinate” the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges arising from his participation in the pro-Trump riot, including “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted buildings or grounds without lawful authority” and making threats.
According to court documents, he allegedly tweeted: “Assassinate AOC.”
He is also charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, obstructing or impeding any official proceeding, and certain acts during civil disorder.
High spirits! The thrill of the moment!
[His lawyer Clint] Broden said: “Mr
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5 comments
Jan 24th, 2021 11:12 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump thinks he can still call the shots.
Trump spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, splitting rounds of golf with discussions about maintaining relevance and influence and how to unseat Republicans deemed to have crossed him, the Washington Post reported.
Trump, the Post said, has said the threat of starting a Maga (Make America Great Again) or Patriot party, gives him leverage to prevent senators voting to convict, which could lead to him being prevented from seeking office again.
Or, it might piss them off so much they not only vote to convict, they urge other Rs to do the same.
Also, there’s something else that might prevent Trump from seeking office again: the fact that … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
3 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 6:00 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Slogans instead of thinking. Always, because that’s all there is. Jessica Valenti glaring at feminists who don’t want women and girls to have to share their sports with men who identify as women:
I hate to give oxygen to the kind of thinking that pits cisgender women against trans women, and so I can’t bring myself to link to the uninformed and often downright hateful arguments being bandied about by those claiming to be feminists. The short version is that there’s a fear that cis women and girls will be somehow harmed if they are in the same bathrooms or on the same sports teams as trans women and girls. That by protecting the rights of trans students, cis students
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13 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 5:36 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Interesting.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr David Bell, who served as a staff governor at the Tavistock Trust, wrote an internal report in 2018, raising the concerns brought to him by colleagues about the way the Gender Identity Development Service was treating patients.
He faced disciplinary action.
But after 24 years working with the Tavistock, Dr Bell, a former President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, has recently retired, and in his first television interview since then, he began by outlining his worries about the service.
… Read the rest
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5 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 4:46 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The English department will stop teaching English literature.
The University of Leicester will stop teaching the great English medieval poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer in favour of modules on race and sexuality, according to new proposals.
Management told the English department that courses on canonical works would be dropped in favour of modules that “students expect” as part of plans now under consultation.
Foundational texts such as The Canterbury Tales and the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf would no longer be taught, under proposals to scrap medieval literature. Instead, the English faculty will be refocused to drop centuries of the literary canon and deliver a “decolonised” curriculum devoted to diversity.
Why not do both? Why not have English literature with Chaucer … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
33 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 12:00 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
None of this is normal or ok.
Trump’s legacy is armed and dangerous people in Congress.
Over the past couple of weeks, Republicans have been having temper tantrums about new safety protocols that have been put in place in the US Capitol following the deadly 6 January insurrection. Lawmakers are now supposed to walk through metal detectors to enter the chamber and vote but a number of Republicans have been ignoring the rules. “You can’t stop me,” Louie Gohmert, a Texas congressman, reportedly sneered at Capitol police, as he shamelessly skirted a metal detector…
…“Nah, I’m not going to do that,” the Georgia congressman Rick Allen reportedly told officers who attempted to scan him after he set off the
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9 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 10:47 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Hadley Freeman tells us about a new Pixar movie:
Obviously, there will be spoilers here, so look away, easily spoiled people. Soul is about a jazz musician, Joe (Jamie Foxx), who has a terrible accident just as he gets his big break. He starts to go up to “the Great Beyond” but, desperate to return to Earth, agrees to mentor a soul about to be born in the hope of sneaking back himself. Joe is assigned the notorious soul 22, whose constant negativity drove previous mentors, including Muhammad Ali and Carl Jung, to despair. Soul 22 is voiced by Tina Fey and, understandably, given she’s yet to be born, Joe asks, “Why do you sound like a middle-aged white
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6 comments
Jan 23rd, 2021 10:14 am |
By Ophelia Benson
I missed this – hero Capitol cop who lured the insurrectionists away from the Senate chamber got a promotion and a glam assignment.
Vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, were escorted at Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony by Eugene Goodman, the Capitol police officer hailed as a hero for single-handedly leading the mob that broke into the Capitol two weeks ago away from the Senate chamber.
Goodman has also been promoted to acting deputy sergeant-at-arms for the Senate, one of the most prominent positions in the Capitol Hill security force, according to an official announcement at the ceremony.
That’s good.
Congress peeps are still pressing for him to get a Congressional Gold Medal as well.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jan 22nd, 2021 5:58 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
So that’s it then, no more women’s sports in the US.
Joe Biden’s first day in office delivered an incremental victory for transgender athletes seeking to participate as their identified gender in high school and college sports.
That is, Joe Biden’s first day in office delivered an incremental victory for male athletes seeking to participate as female in high school and college sports, and a loss for girls and women.
In Idaho, a law signed in March by the Republican governor, Brad Little, became the nation’s first to prohibit transgender students who identify as female from playing on female teams sponsored by public schools, colleges and universities. The legislation was overwhelmingly supported by the state’s Republican-dominated house and the
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11 comments
Jan 22nd, 2021 3:15 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
From last week:
Several Republican members of Congress on Tuesday complained about — or outright bypassed — the metal detectors to enter the House floor, which were ordered put in place by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., after last week’s deadly riot at the Capitol.
…
Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve Stivers of Ohio, Van Taylor of Texas, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Debbie Lesko of Arizona and Larry Bucshon of Indiana, among others, were seen not complying with police at checkpoints or complained about the measure’s implementation, according to press pool and media reports.
Boebert, a newly elected member who vowed in a viral video to carry a gun in the Capitol, was seen in an apparent dispute
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12 comments
Jan 22nd, 2021 11:16 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A bit of Senate history, from the Senate Historical Office, which I didn’t know there was such a thing.
On May 22, 1856, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” became a combat zone. In one of the most dramatic and deeply ominous moments in the Senate’s entire history, a member of the House of Representatives entered the Senate Chamber and savagely beat a senator into unconsciousness.
The inspiration for this clash came three days earlier when Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts antislavery Republican, addressed the Senate on the explosive issue of whether Kansas should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state. In his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, Sumner identified two Democratic senators as
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10 comments
Jan 22nd, 2021 10:08 am |
By Ophelia Benson
I should think so.
A group of Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint Thursday against Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz over their objections to the Jan. 6 certification of the presidential election results that coincided with the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
By objecting to the certification, Cruz, and Hawley, “lent legitimacy” to the violent mob of pro-Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, the letter sent to incoming Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Chris Coons, D-Del., and Vice Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., said.
The letter, spearheaded by Rhode Island Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, asked for an investigation into the two members to “fully understand their role” as it relates to the attack on the Capitol and to
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Jan 21st, 2021 5:10 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
New brooming.
President Joe Biden is forcing out two Trump-era counsels from the National Labor Relations Board, the first time in more than 70 years a president has exercised that power over the agency.
I wonder why it’s been so long. Republicans are not what you’d call pro-labor.
National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Peter Robb, a Trump appointee, was fired Wednesday after refusing a request from Biden to step down from his post. On Thursday, Biden asked for the resignation of Robb’s replacement, Deputy General Counsel Alice Stock, by 5 p.m. or said she would be dismissed.
Robb’s dismissal — hailed by union officials and their Democratic allies, who blame him for what they say is a pro-management
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2 comments
Jan 21st, 2021 4:26 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh wait hold the phone we have to stop being pleased that Kamala Harris is VP. It’s transphobic to be pleased! Stop it at once or I’ll tell the authorities.
https://twitter.com/genderisharmful/status/1352358345840189453
Maybe it’s satire. Is there any chance it’s satire?… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
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