All entries by this author

Preserve the documents

Feb 10th, 2021 10:11 am | By

The long arm of the law is getting longer and longer

Prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, are investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the southern state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to a letter, in the second criminal investigation faced by the former president.

In Georgia! How dare they! Georgia was supposed to be solidly in the white supremacist yay-trump column. That’s the whole point of suppressing the black vote.

The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has sent a letter asking state government officials to preserve documents, including those related to the then president’s call to the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” more votes.

“This matter is of high priority, and I

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Outcome

Feb 9th, 2021 5:38 pm | By

Trans man knows what it’s like.

I am a 48-year-old transgender man. I was thrilled when the medical community told me six years ago that I could change from a woman to a man. I was informed about all the wonderful things that would happen due to medical transition, but all the negatives were glossed over. Since then, I have suffered tremendously, including seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage. All this, and yet I cannot sue

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They talked about many things

Feb 9th, 2021 4:44 pm | By

Trump is mad that his lawyers are so sucky. Well, Mister Sir, that’s what happens when you’re such a horror that nobody wants to defend you – you can’t get the pick of the crop.

A Trump advisor told the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman that Trump attorney Bruce Castor’s confusing, meandering performance was a “deliberative strategy.” designed to lower the emotion in the room, though, I’d counter, a master strategist wouldn’t need to put out a background statement explaining their strategy.

No that too is to get everyone to calm down.

Other reviews also not great.

“The president’s lawyer just rambled on and on,” said senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas. “I’ve seen a lot of

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Not only prosecutors but also survivors

Feb 9th, 2021 4:28 pm | By

Meanwhile today the impeachment trial has started.

Democrats are aware that the trial outcome is a foregone conclusion – another Trump acquittal, barring sensational new evidence – and that the stakes are lower because he has already left office. But sometimes symbolism is the point. The impeachment trial is a test of accountability, stability and rule of law before a global audience.

Like a criminal lawyer, Democrats are seeking to appeal to not only the head but also the heart. They are not only prosecutors but also survivors of the rampage, a point brought home with visceral force by Jamie Raskin in a closing argument that had the chamber silent and spellbound on Wednesday.

“And then there was

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Out jumps the tiger

Feb 9th, 2021 11:51 am | By

It gets worse. (This is interesting because he’s not Owen Jones or Adrian Harrop, but…it seems he might as well be.)

Might as well be.… Read the rest



Why does this woman keep talking?

Feb 9th, 2021 11:38 am | By

Yes of course these issues should be discussed – but obviously not by you, because you’re much too informed and concerned about them.

Thank god he’s not at all prejudiced against anyone himself.

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Women can never, ever jump through enough hoops

Feb 9th, 2021 10:32 am | By

Never enough.

https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359159758159249416 https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359161073979506697 https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359170482289975299

Always jam tomorrow.… Read the rest



They had a brilliant Q and A

Feb 9th, 2021 9:55 am | By

Julie comments on the sudden stab in the back:

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Readings regrets

Feb 9th, 2021 9:49 am | By

16 hours ago:

Two hours later:

https://twitter.com/ReadingsBooks/status/1358973500577308676

Bam, that’s Julie Bindel thrown under the bus to make way for a man who identifies as a woman.

Imagine a bookstore doing this to, say, Isabel Wilkerson or Ta-Nehisi Coates to make way for a white person who identifies as black.

It wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen, and the white person would be excoriated and chastised.

Why is it ok to do it to feminist women?… Read the rest



“The politics of woundedness”

Feb 8th, 2021 6:12 pm | By

Her book is like that, too. A review from LSE:

In Me, Not YouAlison Phipps builds on Black feminist scholarship to investigate how mainstream feminist movements against sexual violence express a ‘political whiteness’ that can reinforce marginalisation and oppression and limits the capacity to collectively achieve structural change and dismantle violent systems. This short and accessible book challenges us to think deeply about how the politics of woundedness, outrage and carcerality are embedded within the feminist movement and our own organising, writes Lili Schwoerer, and serves as another encouragement to explore and engage with alternative imaginaries.

So what should we have then, feminist movements for sexual violence?

Also, if we’re talking about marginalization and oppression, and … Read the rest



The rape victim may not say “his” penis

Feb 8th, 2021 5:09 pm | By

Shahdin Farsai wrote an opinion piece for Canadian Lawyer Magazine in October, titled British Columbia’s practice directions on preferred gender pronouns in court are problematic. Yesterday the magazine removed the article.

The article is archived.

On December 16, 2020, both the BC Supreme and Provincial courts issued practice directions to lawyers that require parties and/or lawyers to state their preferred gender pronouns at the beginning of all court proceedings, which are “to be used” by all participants appearing before the courts including judges.

My antennas naturally went up as a lawyer. I see these practice directions as problematic for three central

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If you can’t win, cheat

Feb 8th, 2021 4:36 pm | By

Voting rights are being attacked again. Ari Berman at Mother Jones:

Georgia Republicans have already introduced an avalanche of new laws that would radically limit voting options in the state. On Monday—the first day of Black History Month—Republicans in the state Senate introduced nine bills to restrict access to the ballot, including eliminating automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and mail ballot drop boxes, as well as prohibiting third-party groups from sending mail ballot applications, and banning people who move to Georgia after the general election from voting in runoff elections. Many of the bills were sponsored by Republicans who backed Texas’ unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to throw out election results from Georgia and other states

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One of the most disgusting

Feb 8th, 2021 9:44 am | By

See also

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Sauce for the goose

Feb 8th, 2021 9:21 am | By

But white tears when it’s Phipps telling us about them are a whole different story, it seems.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1358735744769134593 https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1358764000796938242

So…when she doesn’t feel safe she retreats, and that’s not white tears. Imagine how trans people feel! Don’t imagine how women feel, except me, but do imagine how trans people feel.

There are lots of flattering and sympathetic replies, and she doesn’t reject any of them as being too sympathetic and flattering to white tears.… Read the rest



This abject fucking gaslighting

Feb 8th, 2021 8:43 am | By

Jane Clare Jones expresses the disgust at Alison Phipps’s sneers better.

That. Why is it now the done thing for a feminist academic to sneer at women who report sexual … Read the rest



Veto on detransition research

Feb 8th, 2021 8:17 am | By

From the new Glinner update week in the war on women

THE TELEGRAPH: The psychotherapist blocked from researching detransition is taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

James Caspian is a psychotherapist who has specialised in counselling trans people for over 10 years. He has worked with numerous de-transitioners and had planned to conduct an academic study into this massively under-researched area. However, Bath Spa University rejected Caspian’s MA proposal. He was told, “Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university.” 

And the university is too fragile to cope with “attacks on social media”? So much too fragile that it vetoes research on something one … Read the rest



Speaking of “attachments to the self”

Feb 8th, 2021 8:03 am | By

We get to read Alison Phipps’s “don’t hit me, hit those other white women” paper.

The actual title, lest we forget, is “White tears, white rage: Victimhood and (as) violence in mainstream feminism.” It’s a white woman sneering at white women, specifically for talking thinking campaigning as feminists.

Speaking out can attract political dividends: in earlier work (Phipps, 20162020) I have theorised experience, especially of the traumatic kind, as a form of investment capital in what Ahmed (2012 [2004]: 45) calls the ‘affective economies’ of testimonial culture. Trauma can be disclosed or ventriloquised to generate further capital in the form of feeling, creating political gain.

Most of the key figures in the viral iteration

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Outraged & in pain etc etc

Feb 7th, 2021 5:36 pm | By

Someone is watching.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1358183205740961792

I don’t want to brush off or belittle concerns about racism, but at the same time…I’ve seen too many self-righteous Letters of Outrage lately not to recognize this as another example. “Our community is outraged and in pain”? I doubt it. I bet their community was in a fever of righteous exhilaration.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe McNeil really did fling around racist insults with cheerful abandon…but I doubt it. Jesse Singal doubts it.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1358187089540624387

David Aaronovitch doubts it.

There’s a fad in my neighborhood, and for all I know in all neighborhoods, to festoon one’s front garden with yard signs carrying little homilies and … Read the rest



The nail-studded bat

Feb 7th, 2021 3:23 pm | By

This is one way we know trans women are not women.

That’s not “activism.” It’s not struggle, it’s not consciousness raising, it’s not social justice. It’s just an image of an angry man brandishing a bat studded with nails, by way of telling us we are under orders to agree with him that he is a woman, and that refusal will be met with murderous violence.

I don’t want to be any kind of ally with men who threaten to smash women to death for failing to agree that the … Read the rest



Mandatory

Feb 7th, 2021 12:10 pm | By

Oh ffs.

Trump lawyer wants to suspend the trial during his “sabbath” because it’s “mandatory” for him.

David Schoen, 62, has written to senior figures of both main parties in the US Senate asking for an agreement that the trial [be] postponed from 5.24pm on Friday until Sunday so that he can observe the Sabbath. In the letter, reported by the New York Times, the lawyer apologises for any inconvenience, adding that “the practices and prohibitions are mandatory for me … so I have no choice.”

Blah blah blah. Mandatory according to whom? A particular version of the imagined sky daddy. He might as well say it’s mandatory for him to take two days off to say prayers to … Read the rest