Ars Technica says hang on, there’s some bad reporting of the “nightmare” “superbug” going around. Read the whole thing; I’ll share a few takeaways.

It’s important to note that we don’t know exactly how long mcr-1 has been hanging around in bacteria or where it first came from. It may have spread around the globe in months or been lying low and spreading quietly for years. Either way, it was inevitable and expected that mcr-1-carrying bacteria would pop up in the US. (Although, in weeks of testing other bacteria from the Pennsylvania clinic where the patient was identified, no other mcr-1-carrying bacteria have been found.)

While concerns still stand, the alarmist headlines are unnecessary—and so are the errors.

Here’s what you can ignore

First, the “first” bit. The first line of the Post’s article states: “For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort.”

Nope—this isn’t even close to true. This is absolutely not the first time a person in the US has been found with a bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic. There are several last-resort antibiotics, and many bacteria over the years have shown up with resistance to them—including colistin.

So…the news is terrible, it’s just that it’s not all that new.

Here’s the quick take-away

Thursday’s report of a mcr-1-based colistin-resistant bacterial infection in a US patient is concerning, but unsurprising. The plasmid based resistant gene threatens to spread to other bacteria, potentially to ones that are already resistant to last resort drugs, such as CRE. However, the trajectory of mcr-1’s emergence and its contribution to drug resistant infection trends is not yet clear. For now, the case serves mostly to highlight the ongoing crisis of rising antibiotic resistance and furthers the need for better stewardship of old antibiotics and development of new ones.

Well I was already plenty scared of the ongoing crisis of rising antibiotic resistance, so…ok.

This is a very cool story. I heard about it yesterday, before it was in the papers, on Facebook via my friend Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will. Her name has always reminded me of The Maneuver, of course, but I always assumed it was just coincidence. It’s not.

Dr Henry Heimlich uses Heimlich manoeuvre for first time at 96

The surgeon who gave his name to the simple but dramatic procedure used to rescue people from choking saved someone’s life with the Heimlich Manoeuvre for the first time this week aged 96.

Dr Henry Heimlich’s technique for dislodging food or objects caught in people’s throats has been credited with saving untold thousands of lives around the world since he invented it in 1974 – but he had never once had cause to use it in an emergency situation himself.

Last Monday, however, the retired chest surgeon encountered a female resident at his retirement home in Cincinnati who was choking at the dinner table.

Without hesitation, Heimlich spun her around in her chair so he could get behind her and administered several upward thrusts with a fist below the chest until the piece of meat she was choking on popped out of her throat and she could breathe again.

Bam. Job done.

“It was very gratifying,” Heimlich told the Guardian on Friday by telephone from Cincinnati.

“That moment was very important to me. I knew about all the lives my manoeuvre has saved over the years and I have demonstrated it so many times but here, for the first time, was someone sitting right next to me who was about to die.”

She was too startled to talk at the time, but he sat there beaming. They had dinner together the next night to celebrate.

Standard practice for dealing with choking prior to 1974 was to thump the afflicted person on the back. But Heimlich argued then, and still does, that that can force the obstruction further into the gullet, not dislodge it.

He worked on various theories until he finally came up with the procedure in 1974, designed for use by the general public, not just medical personnel, of putting one’s arms around the casualty and exerting upward abdominal thrusts, just above the navel and below the ribs, with the linked hands in a fist, until the obstruction is dislodged.

The last line of the story though…

After her brush with death, Patty Ris wrote Dr Heimlich a note, saying: “God put me in this seat next to you,” she told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

But then why didn’t God just magic the bit of meat down or out, instead? Or cut it smaller? Or liquefy it just before she swallowed? Or change the menu to salmon? Why does God always do these weird patches?

Amnesty made it official yesterday.

Amnesty International has formally adopted a policy calling for the legalization of prostitution around the world. The organization’s senior director for law and policy, Tawanda Mutasah, said:

“Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination. Far too often they receive no, or very little, protection from the law or means for redress.”

He fails to mention that, under legalization, these human rights abuses are amplified, nor does he consider how or why the law would address said abuses, once sanctioned under law.

It’s a bizarre thing to say. Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination, so let’s legalize pimping and johnning. Wut? The rape and violence and extortion are inherent in the “sex work.” Making it legal to rent a woman doesn’t change that.

This neoliberal policy, in the works for some time but now formalized, was developed, in part, by pimps and traffickers. Despite the fact that the system of prostitution exists in direct conflict with the human rights of women and girls, and despite ample evidence to show that legalization only increases abuse and exploitation, Amnesty International pushed forward with this policy, effectively abandoning any semblance of respect for women.

I get that there are plenty of libertarian feminists who think pimping should be legalized, but does Amnesty not get that there are plenty of sex workers who think it shouldn’t?

Cartoonists for peace:

Cartoonists Gado and Zunar were presented the 2016 Cartooning For Peace award on World Press Freedom Day at a ceremony in Geneva’s Palais Eynard.  The award is given out every two years by Cartooning For Peace to cartoonists who have shown courage in their fight for freedom of expression.  Zunar, who has seen his books banned and confiscated by the Malaysian government since 2010, is now facing a possible 43-year prison sentence for a series of tweets in 2015.  Gado, who has been called “the most important cartoonist in Africa,” was fired by the Kenya-based Nation Media Group newspaper chain because of — in Gado’s words — “corporate and political pressure.”

An open-air exhibition of cartoons by Zunar and Gado along Geneva’s Lac Leman — along with the cartoons of other artists in support of Cartooning For Peace —will continue through June 4, 2016.  The catalogue of cartoons on display can be accessed here.  An educational supplement to the exhibition catalogue can be seen here.

“Gado and Zunar remind us how fragile this liberty remains in Africa and in Asia as well as in other regions of the world. Through their commitment towards open and transparent societies, Gado and Zunar, who have received threats in their countries of origin and can no longer practice their profession, confront us with our responsibility to preserve freedom of expression and act in order to support the combat of those who cannot express themselves through their art” — Kofi Annan, Honorary President, Cartooning For Peace Swiss Foundation

“For having had the courage to draw the king naked, Gado and Zunar are faced with a power machine that seeks to silence them. What this Prize seeks to do is just the opposite: to amplify their voices, which are those of democracy and justice” — Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte, co-founder of Cartooning For Peace

A press release from the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush has welcomed Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s decision to join mayors from across Europe and the United States in signing an AJC pledge to take action against antisemitism in their communities.

The Board of Deputies, Community Security Trust and the London Jewish Forum approached Mayor Khan to sign the pledge, which has been endorsed by more than 150 mayors from 30 European countries.

The pledge is part of the Mayors United Against Antisemitism initiative, developed by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in July 2015 and launched in Europe later that year. The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was the first European Mayor to sign the pledge, followed by those from Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan and Copenhagen. More than 300 mayors from 50 American states also supported the project.

Jonathan Arkush, said: “Antisemitism is one of the greatest challenges facing Jews in London and across the country. Just two weeks into the job, Sadiq Khan has signed up to AJC’s campaign against antisemitism. Taken together with his attendance at the Yom HaShoah Holocaust commemoration event, this sets a very positive tone that we hope will be replicated throughout his mayoralty. We also thank Barnet and Camden Assembly Member Andrew Dismore for his particular role in championing this initiative in City Hall.”

Mayor  Khan, said: “Sadly, for many Londoners, antisemitism is a very present problem.  As a British Muslim, I am no stranger to discrimination and prejudice. That’s why, as Mayor for all Londoners, I am determined to fight racism in all its forms and will make challenging hate crime a priority. I am proud to sign the Mayors United Against Anti-Semitism pledge and I will encourage other Mayors across the country and Europe to do the same, to help send the message far and wide that anti-Semitism is totally unacceptable and can never be justified.”

David Harris, Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Committee, said: “The Mayor’s support for this initiative is special for three reasons. First, as Mayor, he has demonstrated continuity in opposition to all forms of antisemitism, as his predecessor Boris Johnson was also a signatory. Second, with all the recent concerns expressed about currents within Britain’s Labour Party regarding antisemitism, this is a particularly welcome and important development, since he is such a prominent member of the Labour Party. And third, Sadiq Khan is the first mayor of the Muslim faith of a major Western capital. Thus, his signature sends a very powerful message not only to the London Jewish community, but well beyond, about potential friendship, support and cooperation.”

Well done Sadiq Khan.

To make up for the antibiotic resistance story, have some Verreaux’s Sifakas shaking their booties.

It’s over. We’re about to lose antibiotics.

For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could signal “the end of the road” for antibiotics.

The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Defense Department researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery “heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria.”

Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for a horrific strain of supberbugs, some of which kill half the infected people.

Health officials said the case in Pennsylvania, by itself, is not cause for panic. The strain found in the woman is treatable with some other antibiotics. But researchers worry that the antibiotic-resistant gene found in the bacteria, known as mcr-1, could spread to other types of bacteria that can already evade other types of antibiotics.

It’s the first time this colistin-resistant strain has been found in a person in the United States. In November, public health officials worldwide reacted with alarm when Chinese and British researchers reported finding the colistin-resistant strain in pigs, raw pork meat and in a small number of people in China. The deadly strain was later discovered in Europe, Africa, South America and Canada.

“It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics — that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in an interview Thursday.

It’s like the opening scene of a horror movie, except that it’s not a movie. You know the Black Death? It took out a third of the population in much of Europe; in some places it took half. Think about it.

Scientists and public health officials have long warned that if the resistant bacteria continue to spread, treatment options could be seriously limited. Routine operations could become deadly. Minor infections could become life-threatening crises. Pneumonia could be more and more difficult to treat.

That secure feeling we’ve all grown up with, that most diseases and infection are treatable? That’s over.

Ouch. This is sad. The NY Times:

She was a 66-year-old woman who wandered off the Appalachian Trail in the thick Maine evergreen forest and waited for nearly a month for help that never came.

“When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry,” Geraldine Largay wrote in her black journal, about two weeks after she got lost and set up camp on high ground, as hikers are trained to do. “It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.”

Geraldine Largay at the Poplar Ridge Lean-to on the Appalachian Trail in Maine on July 22, 2013. This photo, taken by a hiker who crossed paths with Ms. Largay, is the last known image of her. CreditDottie Rust, via Maine Warden Service

They looked for her, but failed to find her.

Ms. Largay tried to text her husband to tell him she was lost. She got herself to high ground, perhaps hoping to be seen by an airborne searcher. And she kept a diary, in which she seemed to come to terms with the idea that she would not be found alive.

The file, which was first reported by The Boston Globe, is a detailed accounting of one of the biggest search operations in this state’s history that offers a glimpse of Ms. Largay’s monthlong fight for survival, and her calm preparation for the end. Rescuers have said they believe they came maddeningly close to Ms. Largay — perhaps as near as 100 yards — but, in Maine’s impermeable forests, even that distance might as well be miles away.

Sad sad sad.

I used to watch those Bear Grylls reality tv shows where he got dropped off somewhere remote with a knife and a camera crew, and used his survival training to get back to Notremoteland. I wish Geraldine Largay had made it out.

According to the case file, Ms. Largay knew she was lost the day before she was supposed to meet her husband. On July 22, she attempted to text him, but the message was never delivered, probably because of bad reception.

“In somm trouble,” read the message. “Got off trail to go to br. Now lost. Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. Xox.”

The following day, she tried to text again.

“Lost since yesterday,” Ms. Largay wrote. “Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. Xox.”

Her remains were found in October.

Be careful out there.

They tell us it’s National Spelling Bee day. I learn that there’s such a thing as “the dreaded schwa.”

Ultimately, the Bee is its own very strange world, and most of us visit for only a day or two a year. It’s a word where the hushed ESPN announcers think nothing of referencing the “dreaded schwa” — a schwa is the sort of “uh” sound that can be made in a word by any of several vowels, like the “a” in “against” or the “o” in “melody.” If it shows up in a word you don’t know, it can be very hard to figure out which letter to choose when spelling the word from hearing it pronounced. Thus: the dreaded schwa.

Oh, sure – you get that in writing, too, of course – those flashes of doubt about a particular schwa in a not very common word. Sometimes spellcheck helps you, and sometimes it doesn’t even know the word – mine didn’t recognize “rebarbative” this morning. Seriously?! Such an excellent word, plus I’ve used it before and your spellcheck is supposed to know you.

There’s a guy on local public radio here – Bill O’Grady – who drives me crazy by over-enunciating so much that he pronounces e-schwas as if they were ee. Beelieve, reeject, deecide, and so on. He’d make a hash of writing poetry, because he keeps turning iambs into dactyls.

The Times talked to Richard Dawkins the other day, and The Australian republished the interview.

He is thrilled that The God Delusion was recently translated, unofficially, into Arabic and circulated online. “It’s been downloaded ten million times, mostly in Saudi Arabia, but also in Iran and Iraq. I get very encouraging messages; there’s a substantial underground of nonbelievers in those countries. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a secular uprising?”

Hey you know what? It was also recently translated into Kurdish, by the guy who translated Does God Hate Women? I passed a few questions on to Dawkins for him, and also helped him with some English idioms. The translation was published a few weeks ago, and I helped the translator get copies to Dawkins. I share his view about the benefit of the Arabic translation. Whatever our disagreements, I think that’s a good thing.

But then there’s the other stuff.

Dawkins blames the rise in extremism on a confusion between religion and politics. “In the case of Islam, religion has got bound up with a sense of identity. It would be very nice if people did identify with science, but we don’t say, ‘Join the science party, join the rationality party.’ Maybe we should.” The West should be more confident about its values, he says. “We should have a sense of identity as rationalists. We should be more proud of that and it should take on some of the gentle decency of the Church of England. Rationality ought to be polite and humorous. Aggressive atheism is sometimes attributed to me, but I think wrongly.”

That’s the self-knowledge problem again. He still thinks it’s wrong to call him aggressive, after who knows how many aggressive tweets. He still apparently thinks his rationality is polite and humorous, after who knows how many rude tweets.

Ah well, we all have our faults. I’m glad he’s recovering.

The Guardian, on…um…

It’s easy to laugh at a grown man in a rubber dog suit chewing on a squeaky toy. Maybe too easy, in fact, because to laugh is to dismiss it, denigrate it – ignore the fact that many of us have found comfort and joy in pretending to be animals at some point in our lives.

Secret Life of the Human Pups is a sympathetic look at the world of pup play, a movement that grew out of the BDSM community and has exploded in the last 15 years as the internet made it easier to reach out to likeminded people. While the pup community is a broad church, human pups tend to be male, gay, have an interest in dressing in leather, wear dog-like hoods, enjoy tactile interactions like stomach rubbing or ear tickling, play with toys, eat out of bowls and are often in a relationship with their human “handlers”.

Ok, so my first question is, how do they make a living with that? Do they wear the rubber dog suit to work?

In the documentary, we see Tom, AKA Spot, take part in the Mr Puppy Europe competition in Antwerp, a mix of beauty pageant, talent show and Crufts; David, AKA Bootbrush, talk to camera in a leather dog mask; two pups walk through London pretending to wee on lampposts to raise awareness of their identity; and lots of men jumping up for “treats”, barking and wagging their mechanical tails.

It’s sweet that they’re walking around (quadripedally? don ‘t tell me they cheat and walk upright – that would be horribly dishonest – but walking quadripedally for an extended time is very uncomfortable for humans – our arms are too short, our pelvises are not tilted that way, our wrists are too weak, our backs are arched the wrong way – I could go on) – it’s sweet that they’re walking around pretending to piss on lampposts to raise awareness of their identity. I guess. Depending on what comes next. If we’re soon hearing from pups on Twitter raging at us about our species privilege and our radical feminist pup exclusion, it might not be so sweet after all.

When I speak to Tom, he is keen to point out that puppy play is about more than just outfits and surface-level power games: it’s about being given licence to behave in a way that feels natural, even primal. “You’re not worrying about money, or food, or work,” says Tom, who works as an engineer in a theatre.

Oh. That seems to imply that Tom doesn’t wear the rubber dog suit to work (or pee on  his boss’s leg or eat out of a bowl on the floor of the break room). So they’re not full time pups, it’s just something they put on and take off.

For now.

Tom learned about puppy play gradually – then he went all in, and the result was “a breakup with his former fiancee Rachel” (meaning, I think, that she left him) and having a new “relationship” with his new “handler,” Colin.

“I wouldn’t say it was the catalyst, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Tom. “Then I had this moment of panic because a puppy without a collar is a stray; they don’t have anyone to look after them. I started chatting to Colin online and he offered to look after me. It’s a sad thing to say, but there’s not love from the heart in me for Colin – but what I have got is someone who is there for me and I’m happy with that.”

That’s not sad so much as tragic. It’s horrifying. He’s so into pretending he’s a dog that he decides he has to have a “handler” even though he (clearly) doesn’t much like him? A grown man?

The psychiatrist Carl Jung argued that our conscious minds contain intuitive, emotional, sensation and thinking archetypes. Are the sort of men drawn to puppy play simply exploring their intuitive self? “Absolutely,” says David. “Puppy play is exactly that – play. There is an immense amount of pleasure from gambolling around in a club playing with squeaky toys because you’re making people laugh, you’re being a cute little puppy.”

Guys, you’re doing it wrong. I hate to tell you. It’s true that dogs can provide a lot of fun and play, but that’s if the dogs are dogs and the humans are humans. Cooper gets huge joy out of chasing his squeaky snake toy and bringing it back to me to throw again, and I get fun out of giving him the fun and watching him be absurd – and I’m goofy with him and talk in silly voices and the whole nine yards, but I’m still not down on the floor racing him for the squeaky snake toy. Also I get bored after a few minutes and go do other things. We’re all different, and life’s a pageant, and all that, but…you’re doing it wrong.

Kaz, another pup, argues that for some, being a puppy isn’t just a fun mask to try on – it’s how they identify; it’s who they are. “Even when I worked in PC World I would sometimes walk up to people and nip at their shirt,” he says, laughing. “I got in trouble once; someone walked into the PC repair centre and I had part of their dad’s computer in my mouth. But the other staff knew I was like that to everyone. They didn’t find it weird.” For Kaz, pup play can be summed up in the phrase: “Be dog”. He will socialise as a pack, enjoy physical closeness with other pups and always eats out of a dog bowl at home. “It’s just nice, it makes me feel comfortable,” he explains, before adding “But I always eat with a knife and fork and at a table. Otherwise it’s time-consuming and you can’t watch TV.”

But what about how he identifies then? He said it’s who he is. If it’s who he is, how can he eat with a knife and fork and at a table? Why does he want to watch TV?

Then, of course, there is the sex. Puppy play is often part of a larger sexual practice that crosses over with leather folk, furries and BDSM. But, as Kaz is keen to point out, not always. “People automatically jump to the conclusion that this is gear we wear to have sex. I used to get asked awful questions like, if I liked having sex with dogs. But it’s certainly not that, and it’s not always sexual. Members of my pack, we spend a lot of time together at home just being dogs. There’s nine of us and my partner is our handler. A big part of it is a feeling of family and belonging; we’re there to look after each other.”

Woof.

Jonathan Martin at the NY Times notes that Trump isn’t playing by the rules (now there’s a surprise) – he’s spouting gutter-press conspiracy theories that the more (cough) conventional Republican candidates leave for political operatives to handle.

But that is precisely what has many Republicans, and some Democrats, nervous.

“He’s never been involved in policy making or party building or the normal things a candidate would do,” said Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist. “His whole frame of reference is daytime Fox News and Infowars,” a website run by the conservative commentator Alex Jones.

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s former chief of staff, said Mr. Trump was making common cause with “the lunatic fringe,” citing his willingness to appear on the radio show of Mr. Jones, who has claimed that Michelle Obama is a man.

And Barack Obama is a frog! And Ted Kennedy came here from his home on Mars! And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the Queen of the Illuminati!

But at least in the short term, Mr. Trump’s willingness to hurl the most incendiary charges has given him an overwhelming advantage.

“He is winning the day,” Ms. Dunn said, “if you define winning the day by dominating the coverage.” She made clear that she did not.

In the next breath, though, Ms. Dunn wryly braced for more incoming. Half-jokingly imagining Mr. Trump dredging up the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., she said, “We haven’t heard ‘David Koresh’ yet.”

Or Roswell! Or fluoride! Or the Lindbergh baby!

I’ve been wondering about this. Jeannie Suk in the New Yorker on “the looming Title IX crisis”:

…on May 13th the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (O.C.R.) and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued a Dear Colleague letter announcing to the nation’s schools that, under Title IX—the 1972 law banning sex discrimination by schools that receive federal funding—transgender students must be allowed to use rest rooms that are “consistent with their gender identity.”…

In chastising North Carolina, the Justice Department explained that if non-transgender people may use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity, then denying transgender people access consistent with their gender identity constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. Similarly, the Dear Colleague letter states that the federal government “treats a student’s gender identity as a student’s sex for the purposes of Title IX.”

That’s the part I’ve been wondering about, that last bit – the assertion that the feds treat a student’s gender identity as a student’s sex for the purposes of Title IX. I’ve been wondering about it because potential problems occur to me. It seems like an awfully large claim to make in a Dear Colleague letter.

These interpretations of federal anti-discrimination law are new and surprising. It is not at all obvious that the “sex” in sex-discrimination law means not sex but gender, let alone “an internal sense of gender,” as the Letter says.

It’s not at all obvious, but despite not being obvious, it is in a sense mandated – that is, it’s imposed via strong social pressure.

But it is also reasonable to interpret sex-discrimination law to prohibit discrimination against transgender people. Given that single-sex bathrooms have never been seen as constituting sex discrimination, the tricky question is whether limiting them based on biological sex, rather than gender, does indeed discriminate on the basis of sex.

And what will follow from deciding that it does.

Quite apart from a possible legal right, it is reasonable to think that the appropriate bathrooms for transgender people to use are ones fitting their gender identities. But the parents’ rhetoric of federal overreach on Title IX is not off base. It is of course unexceptional for the federal government to enforce federal law. But, unlike the Education Department’s many regulations, the Dear Colleague letter is not law, because it wasn’t enacted through legal procedures, involving public input, that federal agencies must follow when making law. The Education Department’s rule that schools must provide prompt and equitable grievance procedures to hear complaints of Title IX sex discrimination results from that required process and is legally binding. But the agency chose not to have such a process for its missive on transgender students.

It just put out an executive branch fiat, and from what I can gather via lawyer friends and lawyers who say things on the internet, that’s…let’s say a tad high-handed. High-handed apparently equals non-binding; lawsuits will litter the scene.

This is a familiar but controversial O.C.R. strategy. Its last Dear Colleague letter about Title IX, in 2011, said that sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment and is therefore sex discrimination. It detailed how colleges and universities must discipline perpetrators and prevent such incidents. It too came with a threat to cut off federal funds, and O.C.R. proceeded to investigate hundreds of schools for noncompliance.

I remember that, and I remember thinking it seemed fair enough. Fair enough isn’t the same as legally binding though.

Whether or not the federal government acted unlawfully, it has now set in motion a potential Title IX collision course between its directives on sexual violence and on bathrooms. Schools attempting to comply with the federal bathroom policy have at least two possible ways of doing so: allow students to use sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity, or move away from sex segregation of such facilities. The latter, gender-inclusive arrangement, which was in place in my college dormitory more than twenty years ago, is not uncommon on campuses, and a social movement to desegregate at least some portion of bathrooms is growing. Some colleges have made every bathroom on campus open to any gender, and this solution could well become a practical choice at K-12 public schools.

But there is also a growing sense that some females will not feel safe sharing bathrooms, shower rooms, or locker rooms with males. And if a female student claimed that a bathroom or locker room that her school had her share with male students caused her to feel sexually vulnerable and created a hostile environment, the complaint would be difficult to dismiss, particularly since the federal government has interpreted Title IX broadly and said that schools must try to prevent a hostile environment.

I must say, “there is also a growing sense that some females will not feel safe sharing shower rooms with males” seems laughably understated. Why would college girls feel safe sharing shower rooms with college boys? In this world of nonstop rape threats all over Twitter?

Continuing to have segregated bathrooms could also put schools in a bind on Title IX compliance. According to the federal government, a transgender girl who is told to use the boys’ locker room, or even a separate and private stall, instead of the girls’ facility, has a claim that the school is violating Title IX. A non-transgender girl who’s told she must share a locker room with boys may also have a claim that the school is violating Title IX. But would she not have a similar claim about having to share with students who identify as girls but are biologically male? Well, not if her discomfort and “emotional strain” should be disregarded. But this week, in a letter, dozens of members of Congress asked the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education to explain why they should be disregarded. The federal government is putting schools in a position where they may be sued whichever route they choose.

It’s not clear to me why the girls’ discomfort should be disregarded, especially given the fact that girls are told to feel “discomfort” in a long list of situations that fall short of getting naked in a room with naked boys. Girls are told to feel “discomfort” about drinking too much in a bar or going to a boy’s room or wearing a sexy top – so why would girls be expected to override their “discomfort” with taking all their clothes off and showering in a room where boys have taken all their clothes off?

The debate around which bathrooms transgender people should use has given rise to deeper questioning of why we even have a norm of gender segregation for bathrooms in the first place. But a push to make those spaces open to all genders comes up uneasily against feelings of female sexual vulnerability and their effect on an equal education or workplace. To make things more complicated, the risk of sexual assault and harassment of transgender females in male bathrooms is a salient reason for providing access to bathrooms according to gender identity, while many worry about transgender males being sexually bullied in male bathrooms.

The common denominator in all of these scenarios is fear of attacks and harassment carried out by males—not fear of transgender people. The discomfort that some people, some sexual-assault survivors, in particular, feel at the idea of being in rest rooms with people with male sex organs, whatever their gender, is not easy to brush aside as bigotry. But having, in the past several years, directed the public toward heightened anxiety about campus sexual assault, the federal government now says that to carry that discomfort into bathrooms is illegitimate because it is discrimination.

I find that part hard to understand. It is discrimination, of course, but so is refusing to go to a boy’s room for fear of assault. Why are girls being told to be hypervigilant and self-effacing in all public spaces except rest rooms and showers? Why is fear of attacks and harassment carried out by males being made into a reason to put females at risk? It all seems quite incoherent.

Maybe it’s time to do something about the hypertrophied financial “industry” that has an unfortunate tendency to break the global economy ever few years?

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) headlined an event that launched a new coalition calling itself “Take On Wall Street.”

The group includes lawmakers like Warren, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), labor leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka and the AFT’s Randi Weingarten, as well as civil rights groups, community groups, and the organizing giant Move On. It aims to put pressure on lawmakers at all levels to pass stricter rules governing the financial system.

Operating on two principles — “No cheating, and no pushing the risks on taxpayers,” as Warren put it — it’s making five key demands: breaking up the biggest banks; ensuring access to non-predatory banking products, including through the United States Post Office; ending the carried interest tax loophole that allows hedge fund managers to use a tax break for investment income on the income they make at work; reining in executive bonuses; and imposing a financial transaction tax.

It seems like a good idea to me. They award themselves too much money, and they break everything.

In her remarks, Warren noted some of the accomplishments that have been achieved under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, particularly the $10.1 billion in consumer relief brought about by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But she argued that things have to go further. “We have made a lot of progress under the Dodd-Frank financial reforms,” she said. “But we’ve also got a lot more to do.”

In particular, she called for a reinstatement of a “21st century Glass-Stegall,” a law that previously separated riskier investment banking activities from commercial deposits, and to “break up the big banks.” Given that banks have grown larger and more concentrated since the financial crisis, she warned that taxpayers are still not free from the possibility of having to bail them out again in the future. “Dodd-Frank imposed some discipline, but let’s get real,” she said. “Dodd-Frank did not end too big to fail.”

Too big to fail should end. Enough already.

In Bill Cosby news:

There is enough evidence that Bill Cosby assaulted a woman just over a decade ago to bring a criminal case against him to trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

…

Defense attorneys have tried to get the charges thrown out, arguing that a deposition Cosby gave for a civil suit could not be used against him and that the prosecution is politically motivated. District Attorney Kevin Steele charged Cosby after defeating former DA Bruce Castor, who had declined to prosecute the case when it initially emerged. That decision became an issue in the election.

“The underlining theme of these, and each of those charges, that based upon what he did to the victim and giving her the substance he gave her she’s incapable of consent,” Steele said during Tuesday’s hearing. “What we’re dealing with is what happened on that night in his house.”

The allegations had already been aired in documents. Still, the public recitation of the details by attorneys and police officers, with Cosby forced to take them in from a defendant’s chair, marked a rare and humiliating moment in Cosby’s downfall.

If he didn’t do it, that’s very sad. If he did, then it seems only fair. If he did do all or even some of the things he’s accused of, he did quite a lot of humiliation of women over the years.

Clementine Ford explains the double bind that women are caught in. We’re taught a long list of don’ts that are all about rape-avoidance. If we get raped or otherwise assaulted or abused anyway, we get scolded for recklessly disobeying the Don’ts List. (Have you ever noticed how the Don’ts List is a kind of abstraction of purdah and hijab – or how purdah and hijab are still with us in the form of all these don’ts? Of course you have; it’s obvious.)

The great irony is that women, chided as we are for behaving as if we might have the right to move through the world like autonomous adults, are also punished whenever we take overt and declarative steps to actually enforce the preventative measures expected of us. A good example of this comes in a recent news story detailing the Mother’s Market in the Indian province of Manipur. Dating back to the 16th century, the market is reserved solely for the use of women and acts as a safe and sexual harassment free zone for local women to gather, commune and do their shopping. Despite being established by women as a means of taking back control of their safety (as we’re so often directed to do), it’s still treated by far too many people as some kind of misandrist nightmare in which the men of India (and by extension, the world) are subjected to horrifying sexism and exclusion.

Gee – why would women and girls in India want safe zones? I just can’t imagine. It must be pure unmotivated prejudice against men.

The deck is always stacked against us. Do the ‘wrong’ thing, and we’ll be blamed for being silly enough to invite risk. Take preventative measures (and worse, talk about what those measures might be), and we’ll be blamed for lumping all men into the same box and perpetrating equal if not greater sexism against the poor, beleaguered blokes out there who don’t deserve to all be tarred with the same brush by feminists who are probably just upset no one wants to fuck them.

It’s our own fault for being women.

Portland schools won’t be teaching “skepticism” about climate change from now on.

In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.

“It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”

The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible. The resolution also directs the superintendent and staff to develop an implementation plan for “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”

Skepticism should be part of science education, but there are plenty of areas where fruitful questions and competing hypotheses can be explored without wasting limited school time on pseudo-controversies. Also, it’s better not to use materials paid for by corporations with an interest in particular conclusions.

Bill Bigelow, a former PPS teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a magazine devoted to education issues, worked with 350PDX and other environmental groups to present the resolution.

“A lot of the text materials are kind of thick with the language of doubt, and obviously the science says otherwise,” Bigelow says, accusing the publishing industry to bowing to pressure from fossil fuels companies. “We don’t want kids in Portland learning material courtesy of the fossil fuel industry.”

In board testimony, Bigelow said PPS’ science textbooks are littered with words like might, may and could when talking about climate change.

“ ‘Carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants and other sources, may contribute to global warming,’ ” he quotes Physical Science published by Pearson as saying. “This is a section that could be written by the Exxon public relations department and it’s being taught in Portland schools.”

The kids now in school are going to have to deal with climate change, so it’s only fair to give them a decent education in the subject.

Last week Muirfield golf club voted not to admit women. Sounds like a good idea, but it means they don’t get to host a big championship.

GOLF CHIEFS have stripped course Muirfield of the Open Championship after its members threw out a proposal for women to join the East Lothian club in a move branded “simply indefensible” by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The decision by members of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which owns and runs the club, also drew the ire of Prime Minister David Cameron who said the move was “outdated.”

Yeah, women have had time to learn to play by now.

Henry Fairweather, the club captain, and his committee had recommended that women should be offered membership on the same terms as the men at the 272-year-old allowed in the club. However they were left to rue the decision of a minority of fellow members as the proposal failed by just 16 votes at the end of a two-year review of the membership.

You can’t blame them though – all those high squeaky voices would ruin their concentration.

Within minutes of Mr Fairweather announcing the result of the vote in front of the Muirfield clubhouse, the R&A announced it would not be taking The Open back there under the current membership set-up.

“The R&A has considered today’s decision with respect to The Open Championship,” said Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the St Andrews-based organisation that runs golf’s oldest major, which has been staged 16 times at Muirfield, most recently in 2013, when American Phil Mickelson claimed the Claret Jug. “The Open is one of the world’s great sporting events and going forward we will not stage the championship at a venue that does not admit women as members.”

Kate Smurthwaite wrote in the Indy about Muirhead’s Boys Only policy three years ago.

The thing is I’d never heard of Muirfield Golf Club until today and the nearest I’ve been to a golf club in my life involved trying to get the ball over the miniature bridge into the little windmill.  When I raised the subject this morning on Facebook the overwhelming reaction seemed to be that the R&A (the sport’s organising body, I had to look that up) are tangentially doing all us girls a favour by keeping us away from something we’re not interested in.

Well that is not the point. That’s like telling Rosa Parks “the back of the bus is actually safer if there’s a crash”. It’s why gay rights activists want marriage as well as things-that-look-like-but-aren’t-actually-marriage. Equality is not about making “good” choices on behalf of other people, it’s about giving them the freedom to make the same good or bad choices as everyone else.

I don’t want golf clubs deciding how much dessert I can eat, either.