The stand up comedian Ria Lina was groped on the street…and took a photo of the groper.

It’s a wide pavement where I walked, along London’s High Holborn, and the streets were not crowded at 10.30am. But a man was walking in the opposite direction towards me; directly towards me. There was no need for him to walk anywhere near as close as he did.

As he approached, he took his hand out of his pocket. That set off a signal in my mind: I immediately put my hand to my jacket pocket over my phone, because I assumed he might be about to attempt to pickpocket me. How wrong I was.

Now he was so close I had no time to change direction. As I swerved to avoid him he reached out with his hand, grabbed what he could, and brushed his full body alongside mine – and then kept on walking, as if nothing had happened.

I watched as he casually put his hand back in his pocket, not changing speed and only marginally straightening his path as he left me – his quarry – in the distance.

She was at a loss for a moment – and then she wasn’t.

So I turned around and followed the man back up the street. Racing through my mind were all the times I watched videos on the internet and thought “wasn’t it fortuitous someone thought to film this”. Here was a coming together of all those little thoughts into one moment of action: I took out my phone, camera at the ready, and the man stopped and turned to look before he crossed the street; I took his picture.

No more anonymity for you, buster. You might have got your sexual kicks when you grabbed me for a second or two, but I have your face. In my phone. And, now, on Twitter – forever.

With that, I turned around and kept walking. He didn’t follow me, though I was prepared to run, scream and raise hell if he tried anything. He did what any coward would: pretended it wasn’t him. But it was him. He knows it and I know it. And now, thanks to almost 1,000 retweets (and climbing), so do a whole lot of other people.

Police have taken a statement and are circulating the picture as they don’t believe it was a first offence.

Here’s that tweet and that photo.

Ria Lina ‏@EttieBoo
This man just reached out and groped me on High Holborn. Do you know him?
#shoutingback

Oh gawd there’s so much silliness in this NY Times think piece on How Do We Count the Trans Children?

How many students needing inclusive restrooms are we talking about? the Times asks plaintively.

No one knows for sure. Researchers have not figured out how to obtain consistent, reliable answers from teenagers, much less younger children.

Ah now why might that be, do you think? Could it be because the concept is ridiculously fuzzy, and constantly expanding and shifting, bulging here and collapsing inward there? Could it be because people aren’t even talking about the same thing half the time? (Half?! What am I saying? How about 99% of the time?) Could it be because the whole idea is quite new but nevertheless fenced around with unbelievably harsh taboos and punishments and ostracisms?

The best estimate, Jan Hoffman says, is that it’s under 1% of the population.

There are no national surveys.

Pediatricians generally do not ask patients about their gender identity, and if they do, they do not usually report findings in national health registries.

Again – why would they? When “gender identity” is such a tendentious and hotly politicized concept, why would pediatricians ask patients about theirs? If you think “gender identity” is more akin to souls and auras than it is to the kidney or the lungs, you don’t see a whole lot of point in putting it on medical questionnaires.

In 2006, the Boston Youth Survey asked 1,032 public high school students, “Are you transgender?” The responses were 1.6 percent yes, 86.3 percent no, and 6.3 percent “don’t know.” An additional 5.7 percent skipped the question.

Some believe that these estimates are low, “because trans identity has become more salient and acceptance has increased,” said Jody L. Herman, a scholar of public policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law’s Williams Institute. “But we don’t have any way of knowing that.”

You could put it that way, or you could put it another way. Yes in a sense trans identity has become more “salient” – in the sense that a lot of people won’t shut up about it. But in other senses it hasn’t become more salient so much as it’s become more trendy. How do experts tell the difference? What even are “experts” on this subject, and how do we know?

Interestingly, in surveys, a higher proportion of teenagers than adults tend to identify themselves as transgender.

Of course they fucking do. See above – it’s trendy. Also, teenagers are teenagers, and they don’t  know everything yet, and they’ve been told a lot of horseshit about what it means to “identify oneself as transgender” – so naturally more of them are buying into the dogma than adults are. Of course it could be that they’ve seen a new truth or possibility that the more habituated adults can’t see because of the habituation…but it could also just be that they’re believing what they’re told about a new and evolving concept while the more habituated adults are more skeptical.

Children are even more of a black box, surprise surprise. (Of course they are – they’re children.)

Almost no research has been done on child gender identity. One challenge is that much of the information would have to come from parents. Dr. Conron, who has worked with parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths, said, “Parents often do not know that a child’s gender identity is different from their assigned sex at birth until their child, or another person, often in adolescence, tells them so.”

That expresses it as if there’s a definite fact of the matter, that a child has a gender identity that is different from their assigned sex at birth, and that that fact is knowable, but perhaps not until adolescence. But what if there is no such definite fact of the matter, and we’re just talking about fuzzy variable elusive indefinite feelings as opposed to facts? What if that’s the case and it’s actually not all that helpful to reify “gender identity” as if it were something you can have the way you can have Tay-Sachs disease or sickle-cell anemia? What if it would actually be better to talk about this as a matter of feelings rather than a Thing? What if that would reduce all the anxiety there is around this subject?

Some developmental psychologists say that children as young as 2 or 3 can express a gender identity that is at odds with the one defined by their genitalia.

Bullshit. What that always boils down to, when people describe it, is children wanting to wear skirts or play with dolls, liking blue and hating pink, being noisy and physical or quiet and cuddly. In short, it boils down to the most fatuous stereotypes. Not fitting a small and stupid collection of stereotypes is not necessarily a matter of “identifying” as the other sex, for the simple reason that the stereotypes are stupid. A girl “as young as 2 or 3” who likes to wear shorts and get muddy is not expressing a gender identity that is at odds with the one defined by her genitalia, she is just being a kid, with the normal range of variations in taste and behavior and personality. There is no need to label that as a “gender identity.”

Younger children whose behavior and preferences may not be solidly masculine or feminine are increasingly called “gender-creative” or “gender-fluid” by educators, psychologists and parents.

There is no “solidly masculine or feminine” – there is only stereotyping. Where have all these people been for the last 50 years? We talked about this, I know we did!

Pour the Kool-Aid down the drain, and then run.

This story is from 2010 but worth noting anyway, especially given the fact that nothing has changed. How people in Saudi Arabia treat foreign domestic servants:

Doctors have removed 13 nails and five needles from a Sri Lankan housemaid who said her employer in Saudi Arabia hammered them into her body.

LP Ariyawathie, 49, told staff at Kamburupitiya Hospital her employer inflicted the injuries as a punishment.

X-rays showed that there were 24 nails and needles in her body.

The nails were up to two inches (5 centimeters) long.

Ms Ariyawathie travelled to Saudi Arabia in March to become a housemaid.

Last week, she flew back to Sri Lanka and was admitted to hospital in the south of the island, where she told doctors she had undergone abuse for more than a month.

The doctors found 24 metal pieces in her legs and hands.

Behold the X-ray:

You think that might hurt a little??

She could not sit down or walk properly, doctors said.

Yet Saudi Arabia is one of the most god-ridden countries on earth. Religion is supposed to make people more compassionate and generous. It doesn’t.

Well all right – finally there’s a move to make the RFRA not quite such a poisonously theocratic intrusive law. The CFI press release:

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) applauds and supports the introduction of the “Do No Harm Act,” an amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that would prevent its use in situations that involve third-party harm, helping to end the law’s sanctioning of religious discrimination and imposition.

The measure, introduced this morning by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA), would amend RFRA by adding language stating that RFRA should not be interpreted to allow the imposition of one’s religious views or practices upon another, to authorize discrimination against others because of one’s religious views, or to sanction any kind of meaningful harm through a legal exemption. In addition, the amendment guarantees that RFRA cannot be used to deny goods or services to beneficiaries served by government contracts and grants.

“Freedom of religion is a fundamental right that protects all Americans, but this freedom does not include the right to restrict or control the behavior of others,” said Nicholas Little, Vice-President and General Counsel for the Center for Inquiry. “At its inception, CFI was one of very few voices cautioning that RFRA would permit religiously motivated discrimination, whether against religious minorities, the non-religious, women, or LGBTQ Americans. Sadly, we were right. But this fix would help ensure that the law could no longer be used as a weapon to impose one person’s religious beliefs on other unwilling parties.”

“We thank Reps. Scott and Kennedy for taking a bold and important step today to protect the religious freedom and equal rights of all Americans,” said Michael De Dora CFI’s director of public policy. “Members of Congress should put aside their partisan differences and approve this fair-minded amendment. We look forward to working with our partners on Capitol Hill, including religious, non-religious, church-state, and civil rights groups, to move this important measure forward.”

One of the things Michael does as director of public policy is lobby Congress. I suspect this bold and important step is not unrelated to that sort of lobbying, also done by Amanda Knief at AA and the people at FFRF and maybe the Humanists and who knows what-all.

The Guardian has an excerpt from Ensaf Haidar’s new book. It’s about the day Raif called to tell her he was going to be flogged the next day, and the immediate aftermath of that for her and for their children.

A friend told her there was a video.

It wasn’t hard to find. By now some of my Facebook friends were referring to it. It also appeared immediately on YouTube when you searched for “Raif Badawi” and “lashes”. It was as if I was being operated by remote control. With trembling hands I clicked on the video to set it in motion. I saw Raif’s delicate frame from behind, in the middle of a big crowd of people. He was wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, and his hair hung down to his shoulders. He looked thin. His hands were cuffed in front of his body. I couldn’t see his face. The men around him were wearing the usual white gowns and shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

A big crowd of men, surrounding a thin man in handcuffs who was about to be whipped, shouting “God is Great.” The hell it is. That god is a god of bullies – and that god is a bully. That god hides itself from human beings, but expects those human beings to torture to death anyone who doesn’t bow down to that hidden god. What a loathsome trick.

The man himself could not be made out in the video. But I saw clearly that he was striking Raif with all his might. Raif’s head was bowed. In very quick succession he took the blows all over the back of his body: he was lashed from shoulders to calves, while the men around him clapped and uttered pious phrases. It was too much for me. It’s indescribable, watching something like that being done to the person you love. I felt the pain they were inflicting on Raif as if it was my own.

The men I had seen in the video might as well have put me in a square and flogged me. But worst of all was the feeling of helplessness. I sat on my sofa, wrapped my arms around my legs and wept. I don’t know how long I sat there for. The phone rang several times, but I didn’t answer. How was Raif now, I wondered. How severe were the wounds that he had suffered from this brutal abuse? Had they broken his bones? The violence of the blows almost made me suspect as much. Did he get medical treatment for his wounds? If only I could have done something for him!

If only human beings would walk away from the Bully God.

Originally a comment by Freemage on #WhereAreWomen.

Disney actually triggered a fairly major ‘feminist consciousness’ moment for me, back in the day.

My then-girlfriend and I had just gone to see Mulan in the theaters, and loved it. So we left the movie humming the songs and talking about the film and then, as we were walking through the mall, decided to check out the Disney store. Since Mulan had just come out, of course, there were shelves and shelves of toys set out. And guess what the ONLY Mulan figurine was?

Bridal Fucking Mulan.

The white-faced, gown-wearing version of her that exists for just a few minutes in the film solely to be rejected by her before the end of that scene.

Of course, there were lots of armor and swords available for boys who wanted to be Shang. But nothing for little girls who wanted to be the STAR OF THE GODDAMNED MOVIE. (I think there was also one figurine of “Secret Messenger Mulan” or somesuch, which might’ve been moderately okay if she had ever taken on a spy/courier role in the movie.)

Ahem. Sorry. It’s still a bit of a sore spot for me. It was also the first time I ever ranted in public. I think I went on for a good fifteen minutes griping about how completely absurd it was.

Oh fuck this shit. I am so sick of it. Fuck it. Women exist, god damn it. We’re not some afterthought, some nonentity, some bit of decor, some piece of sweater fluff it’s fine to brush off. We are people too.

Shane Black, the director and co-writer of Iron Man 3, has said he was forced to change the gender of the film’s villain from female to male after pressure from the production company Marvel, which feared toy merchandise would not sell as well.

In an interview with Uproxx, Black said the original Iron Man 3 script featured a female version of Aldrich Killian, eventually played by Guy Pearce. “We had finished the script and we were given a no holds barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.”

No women. No women no women no women, none at all, ever, in any entertainment, because women are a drag and nobody will pay any money to watch or play or read anything that has even one women in it, ever. Except porn. You need them in porn, obviously, but that’s absolutely it. Women are garbage.

It is the second time this year Disney has been embroiled in controversy over their superhero merchandise strategy. In January a Star Wars-themed Monopoly game was released by Hasbro without a figurine of Rey, the lead character of the latest chapter of the film franchise. It followed complaints she was also under-represented in figurine packs, with fans rallying under the hashtag #WheresRey on social media.

Disney was contacted but declined to comment.

Too busy erasing women.

Via Maryam:

Isfahan Friday prayers leader says women cycling makes society unsafe. It’s the regime that makes it unsafe for women and everyone.
اين رژيم است كه جامعه را نا امن ميكند …

The Hebden Bridge Handmade Parade is June 26th.

This is from last year’s:

Sarah Ditum has a long, brilliant piece in The New Statesman, What is gender, anyway? What is it indeed. It’s a vexed subject at the moment, she said with a polite cough.

The conversation about trans gender has moved, Ditum points out, from physical transition to more ethereal kinds of “transition” like identifying as or expression. On the other hand there is the essentialist view of for instance Simon Baron-Cohen,

Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, who has written extensively on what he calls “the essential difference”, claiming that the male brain is inherently systematising and the female brain inherently empathising, leading to a natural division of roles on the basis of a physical difference. (Baron-Cohen does allow that “not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain”, but the fact that “systematising” roles occupied by men tend to be well-paid and prestigious, while “empathising” ones performed by women are less valuable or even entirely unpaid, is regarded as an unfortunate coincidence.)

Haha. That’s a bitter joke.

Feminist analysis has vigorously challenged that view. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that “one is not born, but rather one becomes, a woman”, stressing that gender (one’s social role as a woman or man) is something that must be learned – and that this learning process is enforced on the basis of sex.

And feminism could be described as the endless, difficult, frustrating work of trying to change that Thing that must be learned. Feminists want everyone to have bigger, looser, more swappable (aka fungible)  social roles as a woman or man. The reason there is this ongoing tension (another polite cough) between feminism and the narrower versions of trans activism is that we (feminists) want to erode the boundaries of gender while the narrower versions of trans activism want to build taller walls around them.

Ditum goes into the details of this with brilliant clarity, then considers the difficulties.

It is impossible to talk about gender without talking within it. All of us have a position within its class hierarchy, and that position is dictated not by a subjective feeling, but by the way other people respond to us over a lifetime, educating us in the part we are supposed to play. And yet the theory of innate gender requires us to believe that gender is both natural and good, while its application to women’s politics and women’s spaces replicates ancient misogynistic habits of denying women their own limits. As this goes on, the needs of gender-nonconforming individuals who might not be best served by gender identity theory are disregarded to an alarming degree…

Meanwhile, we are building a political and legal edifice on foundations which are, to say the least, scientifically shaky. There is no doubt our society can be unkind and even violent to those who do not conform to gender norms. But is accepting a theory of innate gender identity, with all its associated costs for those born female, really the best way to stamp out that prejudice?

I don’t think we’ve given the other way of doing it – making gender nonconformity the property of everyone, and routine, and no big deal, and not a reason to bully or censure or mock people – a good enough try. Not even close.

Brazil’s coup has restored power to its natural owners, white men.

Most Brazilians backed Rousseff’s impeachment but in one of the world’s biggest racial and cultural melting pots, where more than half the 200 million people identify themselves as black or mixed, the makeup of Temer’s government raised alarm.

Leftists, minorities and many lower-income Brazilians fear that a deep economic recession, and the spending cuts that the new government says are essential to spur a recovery, could mean rolling back progressive policies.

“The rallying cry right now is the economy and that can become an excuse to scrap anything related to matters of inclusion, equality or culture,” says Esther Solano, a sociologist at the Federal University of São Paulo.

She points to one of the first decisions by Temer: to fold a ministry of women, racial equality and human rights into the far-bigger ministry of justice, led by a man.

That sounds familiar – never mind women’s rights, we want human rights. All lives matter. I don’t see color.

Aides say the new Cabinet was selected quickly from the ranks of parties who would support the new government. “We tried to look for women,” said Eliseu Padilha, Temer’s new chief of staff, “but it wasn’t possible.”

That’s what they all say.