Another step into the sunshine of utopia: we now get to know what pronouns courtroom lawyers “use.” Well, we don’t, but the lucky people of British Columbia do.

In an effort to be more inclusive of transgender people, the Provincial Court of B.C. has created a new policy asking lawyers to provide pronouns when introducing themselves and their clients in court.

While some lawyers have already started including pronouns in their introductions, the court will now expect everyone to share how they wish to be referred to.

In a press release, the provincial court provided an example of such an introduction: “My name is Ms. Jane Lee, spelled L-E-E. I use she/her pronouns. I am the lawyer for Mx.

… Read the rest

Hindu nationalists are still trying to bully the much-admired historian Romila Thapar.

Romila Thapar is the preeminent historian of ancient India, an octogenarian feted the world over for her scholarship excavating answers to questions at the heart of the country’s past. She holds honorary doctorates from top universities including Oxford, is the recipient of the Kluge Prize — akin to the Nobel in social sciences — and has lectured at colleges across the world.

All this makes her a fine target for religious fanatics.

At the age of 89, Thapar is the subject of attacks by supporters of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, who view her as an opponent to be discredited.

“In the early days, I used

… Read the rest

Yo FBI listen up.

The President, in a phone call with GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, appeared to solicit election fraud by asking him to “find 11,780 votes.” Our letter with @RepKathleenRice making a criminal referral to @FBI Director Wray to open an investigation: pic.twitter.com/9FZeVKN07Y

— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) January 4, 2021

… Read the rest

Well then.

New – Statement from new Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis on Trump/Raffensperger pic.twitter.com/9AWJQYc5yV

— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) January 4, 2021

A felony violation of Georgia law, she says (to underline the obvious). State crime. State crime=not federal crime. Trump can’t pardon himself out of this even if he does try the self-pardon thing (the legality of which is a matter of dispute).

And…you know…it’s not as if this is some triviality. It’s actually very non-trivial. He committed the felony in aid of trying to steal an election.… Read the rest

This is amusing:

The blockbot that blocks all the terven:

The column farthest to the right is followers. You can see that Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have quite a few.… Read the rest

Did Trump break the law by making that call? Well, yes, but don’t go getting any wild ideas that he’ll be charged.

“It seems to me like what he did clearly violates Georgia statutes,” said Leigh Ann Webster, an Atlanta criminal defense lawyer, citing a state law that makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage” in election fraud.

Which is what he did; we heard him do it.

But the meandering nature of the phone call and the fact that the president made no apparent attempt to conceal his actions as other call participants listened could allow Mr. Trump to argue that he did not intend to

… Read the rest

Oh good, Ichikawa the Good has a new Open Letter in the works. Of course he does.

Dear philosophers, it’s a disgrace that Stock got an honour, we must support our darling beloved fragile trans siblings at all costs and drive transphobic philosophers out of the profession entirely, yours, Jon the Pious.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1345775629485092864

I know, that’s why I said what a patronizing self-important smug goon he is here, instead.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1345773414922014721

It seems to be pretty normal for Jonathan Ichigawa at least. His level of smugness would break the smugness meter if there were such a thing.

Brian Leiter calls him smarmy.

Professor Antony Duff (emeritus, Stirling), a distinguished philosopher of law, sent me the letter, with this apt observation:

… Read the rest

This again. Yet again. No, dude, it’s not your call. We don’t need your permission. You’re not the boss of us.

This is your periodic reminder, in case anyone still needs reminding, that feminist philosophers (like feminists generally) are trans-inclusive.

Recent trans-exclusionary discourse attempts to co-opt the feminist label, but is discontinuous with real feminism

(Thread from 2019) https://t.co/8ZBRp4MLWO

— Jonathan Ichikawa (@jichikawa) January 3, 2021

Feminism has nothing to do with being trans, so there is zero reason for feminism to be “trans-inclusive.” If the claim being smuggled in is that feminism has to “include” men who identify as women in feminism then it’s obviously bullshit, because feminism doesn’t have to “include” men any more than BLM has to … Read the rest

Here’s the audio.… Read the rest

Trump the hit man tries again.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

That’s the restrained journalistic version. The reality is that Trump bullied and leaned on Raffensperger and his lawyer in an overtly “an offer you can’t refuse” kind of way. I listened to a four minute sample from the recording on Twitter just before it (apparently) got removed from everywhere, including the Post itself. I felt sick as I listened.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged

… Read the rest

Ugly.

As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example of the divide.

Israel transports batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine deep inside the West Bank. But they are only distributed to Jewish settlers, and not the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living around them who may have to wait for weeks or months.

What does that sound like?

Israeli officials have suggested they might provide surplus vaccines to Palestinians and claim they are not responsible for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, pointing to 1990s-era interim agreements that

… Read the rest

Maya Forstater on gender fluid people in the workplace:

The case of Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover has been trumpeted as a “landmark”  employment tribunal decision recognising that people who identify as non-binary or gender-fluid can be covered by the Equality Act protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.  

The case concerns Mr/Ms Taylor, a man who began to wear women’s clothing to work in 2017 as part of a process of exploring his gender.

It makes me feel tired already. Work is work, it’s not therapy, it’s not your living room, it’s not a place to “explore” your anything. Do your exploring and navel-gazing and self-actualizing and diary-keeping and mirror gazing on your own time, away from the job and … Read the rest

Republicans continue the effort to break what’s left of democracy in the US.

Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where results are contested by Donald Trump’s campaign, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit is completed”.

Which is anti-democracy, because they’re “contested” because Trump wants to steal the election. It’s like going into someone else’s house and screaming “This house is mine!!!” and then announcing that the ownership of the house is contested.

Cruz and Johnson were joined in issuing a statement on Saturday by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike

… Read the rest

It started earlier. It started Thursday.

Too many of you fail to rage daily about transphobia when as everyone knows it’s BY FAR the most urgent brand of phobia in the entire world. Fear and hatred of women, of infidels, of other races, of immigrants, of workers, of lesbians and gays, of foreigners, of Jews, of socialists, of witches – all those are trivial compared to transphobia.

And of course by transphobes he means not people who harass others in public places, but people who disagree with the truth claims about men who say they are women and women who say they are men.

I doubt that he has the power to make gender skeptics unwelcome anywhere he works (how … Read the rest

BLOCK EVERYONE. Just to be on the safe side.

Dominic Berry is (according to his profile) a historian and philosopher of science.

Yeesh. He cares so much that he goes to the trouble of figuring out how many of his followers also follow Nigel, and he then tries to use that knowledge as a cudgel to convince them to stop following Nigel. I in that situation would of course stop following the dictatorial intrusive cudgel-waver instead. I would first tell him off for being so intrusive and dictatorial.

And this goon is a philosopher.

https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1345333853112721409

Ah good, they’re doing that very thing.

“You must choose! You must choose between following Warburton or following me!”

“Ok bud, that’s an easy … Read the rest

First,

Next,

I’m proud to have several colleagues @OU_Philosophy with skin in different gender debates. As we support all of them & to ensure fair debate, we don’t take sides from our departmental account. I removed yesterday’s tweet in support & out of respect of all my esteemed colleagues.

— Manuel Dries (@manueldries) January 1, 2021

A couple of weeks ago,

.@SophieGraceCha1 has spent 3 years writing a book on epiphanies ('wow' or 'euraka' moments) for @OUPAcademic as part of a @LeverhulmeTrust Major Research Fellowship.

Watch her give a talk on it here to Barnes Philosophy Club: https://t.co/uJZjWRPtyS pic.twitter.com/Q9kZFT6Yr5

— Open Uni Philosophy (@OU_Philosophy) December 15, 2020

https://twitter.com/OU_Philosophy/status/1338878340254625793

So it’s “taking sides” to congratulate Kathleen Stock on an honour, but … Read the rest

Allison Bailey is deeply unimpressed by Judith Butler.

1/ Judith Butler once again demonstrating that a minority of women are capable of being woman-hating, penis pandering, vicious zealots. All the while imagining that they’re being deliciously transgressive.

Woman-hatred is not new. It’s not radical. It’s just disgraceful. https://t.co/NQ8ksIFJpL

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) January 1, 2021

3/ Butler accuses JKR & therefore all survivors of having “fostered hatred & misunderstanding & perhaps capitalised on a history of sexual trauma”.

It‘s a special kind of woman that would say such a thing, of another named woman, who has been bombarded with threats & abuse.

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) January 1, 2021

4/ Pay attention. Butler & her ilk are driving this attack

… Read the rest

Feminist “icon” Judith Butler is shitting on women from a great height. Very iconic.

https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345057369949167624 https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345108677720760321 https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1345125890544570369 https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1345096279446212613

Sexual trauma as something scheming, duplicitous women "capitalise on". Honestly, that is the most disgusting, rape-apologist trope and to hear it from a 'feminist' professor is so demoralising.

— Ellen Pasternack (@pastasnack_e) January 1, 2021

It is. It’s stunningly disgusting.… Read the rest

Party? What party?

Guests who paid four-figures for tickets to President Donald Trump’s annual New Year’s Eve party were left to party with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, his two adult sons and various figures from the conservative media — none of whom wore masks — after the President made a last-minute decision to ditch the event and return to Washington.

No refunds, folks. In fact, kindly donate another four figures, or why not make it five, to my campaign to remain president for all eternity and to buy more ice cream for me.

No official explanation for the President’s early departure from Mar-a-Lago was given, though he remains consumed with efforts to overturn the election results and tensions are

… Read the rest

Also –

Piecing the news together this morning and anyone bragging about getting an OBE looks like a right mug to a lot of people who think the empire was bad actually

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

“Everybody loves a bit of eugenics/moral panic” but to the tune of “maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner”

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

But on the other hand –

trying to work out if I can set this and the whole class of Dolezaling white women up as an intro example or it’ll just have to be some paper in it’s own right?!

— Zara B (@zaranosaur) December 31, 2020

So a white woman saying she’s black is still … Read the rest