Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Objectively terrible.

There is a new book out that has received extremely favourable reviews from people I respect: The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas & Power in Our Time, by Yascha Mounk, professor of the Practice of International Affairs at John Hopkins University, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It arrived yesterday, and I have been skimming it. It is very well and fairly written, shows how the ideas you find in Critical Race Theory, for example, derive from thinkers like Foucault & Deleuze, and addresses the arguments (and fights) over transgender people, among many other things.

What I like about Mounk is that he takes arguments, from whatever side, seriously, and addresses them in a responsible and critical manner. He shows also how readily what were originally philosophical positions, the historical reasons for which he clarifies in the course of criticising them, have been reduced to slapstick ideological slogans, such as we see on the internet and in politics, particularly in the USA, Canada, & Britain, and how this derives from the nature of the original philosophical positions (though I never thought, after reading Foucault many years ago, that his ideas could be taken seriously, even though some of his insights are worth consideration. His Les Mots et les Choses is merely a parody of the Hegelian idea of history that replaces Hegel’s rational progression with a studiedly irrational progression, as Foucault plucks ‘epistemes’ out of thin air and pretends that they determine the course of each new age.) (Not that I have much time for Hegel’s idea of history, either.)

Mounck rightly pleads for universalism & humanism. and demonstrates how identity politics actively damages progress towards equality.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

MADISON – Assembly Republicans passed legislation Thursday that would ban transgender girls and women from competing on high school and college women’s sports teams and bar doctors from providing gender-transition treatment for minors.

Lawmakers approved the three bills in a 63-35 vote, with all Democrats voting against the measures and nearly all Republicans voting for the measures.

…

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised to veto the bills.

Girls’ and women’s sports aren’t for girls and women any more, they’re for girls and women and any boys and men willing to claim they are transgender. Do what I may, I can’t see that as anything but unfair to girls and women.

Democrats pushed back on Vos’ claims during an Assembly floor session Thursday and said allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports that match their gender fosters acceptance and belonging.

Does it? Why is it more important to foster acceptance (on the wrong team) and belonging (to the wrong team) than it is to foster fairness and chances for girls and women? Why is it more important to coddle boys who claim to be girls than it is to be fair to girls? Why doesn’t it bother them that it doesn’t harm boys at all but is terrible for girls?

“The fact that legislators are creating an environment that pushes specific groups of children out of existence and sports teams in service to a political agenda is objectively terrible, it’s discriminatory and it’s cruel,” said Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton.

Nobody’s pushing anyone “out of existence.” Stop that. Be an adult, not some screamy idiot on Twitter. And which twin has the “political agenda” here? The no side just has the agenda of keeping female sports for female people as opposed to female people plus a selected few male ones.

H/t J.A.

Attempt to cancel women fails:

TRANS rights activists have lost a battle to cancel a conference they claimed was transphobic after the venue was threatened with legal action.

Glasgow Trans Rally launched an unsuccessful campaign to have [the] Glasgow venue [called] Platform ditch an event planned to go ahead by FiLiA, a gender-critical feminist charity.

FiLiA said Platform, in the former site of The Arches nightclub, had initially caved in to pressure and cancelled until they were threatened with legal action and reinstated the event.

You want pressure? We’ll give you pressure. See this contract?

Organisers hailed the outcome as a victory for “freedom of speech”. 

Confirmed speakers at the event include SNP politicians Ruth Maguire and Joanna Cherry, who expressed reservations about the Scottish Government’s blocked transgender law reforms, as well as Scottish poet Jenny Lindsay, who experienced an online pile-on when she raised concerns about an article advocating for violence against trans-exclusionary radical feminists.

Yeah, gee, what a bitch, saying let’s not batter women who have the audacity to organize as women without any help interference from men.

Speakers will include a long list of international feminist campaigners, including anti-violence against women campaigners, female healthcare campaigners and academics.

We can’t have that, now can we.

What “glasgow_trans_rally” said:

This weekend (13th-15th of October) a transphobic ‘women’s rights’ conference will be held at platform_gla.
Prominent transphobes such as J*anna Ch*rry and J*lie B*ndel will be speaking, amongst many many others.

These “transphobes” are so demonic that it’s necessary to bleep out two letters in each of their names, to avoid The Curse Of The Tits-having Dragon.

STAND WITH US in telling platform_gla that Glasgow DOES NOT ACCEPT THIS and that they MUST DROP THE EVENT

Not bossy at all, are they.

Um.

Some parents are concerned that their daughter might miss out on a scholarship. They might miss out on playing for this team or that team. [long pause] Boy, that doesn’t sound like community, that sounds like selfishness, I’m sorry to label it that way but that sounds like what it is to me.

And it’s not selfish at all for a boy who claims to be a girl to take away a girl’s chance at a scholarship, no no no no no, that’s pure altruism. It’s almost saintly.

The Times on that Edinburgh “protest”:

Attendees of a book launch about gender politics at Edinburgh University have described being intimidated and “assaulted” by trans rights demonstrators. About 70 people answered calls from the local branch of the University and College Union (UCU) to demonstrate against the publication of Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, claiming that the book is transphobic.

The activists attempted to block access to the launch venue, a lecture theatre at the foot of 40 George Square, the building formerly known as David Hume Tower. Protesters chanted “shame on you” at each person who entered the building, as well as “trans rights are human rights”. They also held rainbow placards.

Marion Calder, a director of the campaign group For Women Scotland, said that some demonstrators, sitting on the ground by a security barrier, had attempted to prevent people entering the building. “Women who came along for a book were crying because their legs were being grabbed by people as they tried to get by the barrier,” Calder said. “It’s incredible to think you can be assaulted at a book launch.”

It’s all too credible in Edinburgh though.

The accusation of transphobia is described as libellous by the book’s editors, Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd, both distinguished academics.

They’re distinguished Karens amirite?

AND this. It’s being a day.

No lesbian events for you, Karens.

Background:

THE University of Edinburgh has once again been accused by a trade union of hosting an event which “contests the legitimacy of trans people and their rights”.

On Wednesday (October 11) the university is set to host a launch event for an anthology of essays titled ‘Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader’ published by academic publisher Routledge. 

However, the Edinburgh branch of the University College Union (UCU) has sent an e-mail to principal Peter Mathieson and senior management staff condemning the event and calling for it to be cancelled.

In the e-mail, which was also sent to all members of UCU Edinburgh, the union accuses university management of failing to protect transgender staff and students from transphobic abuse and harassment by allowing the event to take place. 

Some “union.” They might as well be campaigning for the rights of scabs.

In April, a second attempt to screen the film Adult Human Female on campus, organised by the group Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom, was thwarted after a small number of activists unconnected to a protest endorsed by UCU blocked the entrance.

Oh yes, so they did. No wonder they did the same thing yesterday! Gotta keep those Karens from plotting amongst themselves right?

The e-mail criticises two of the book’s contributors – Jo Phoenix and Jane Clare Jones – who also appeared in Adult Human Female. 

The UCU also criticise Shereen Benjamin – a founding member of Edinburgh AFAF and a senior lecturer in primary education at the university.

They say her framing of transgender people and their rights as “gender ideology” seeks to delegitimise their existence.

The e-mailed continued: “It [the book] also includes Shereen Benjamin, who continually uses the strategy of framing trans people and their rights as ‘gender ideology,’ with the fait accompli that trans people’s existence – like any ideology or theory – can be ‘debunked.’

This is the “strategy” email we saw yesterday.

Clumsy use of “fait accompli” there.

But to the point: if the existence of trans people is not an ideology why has it taken us so long to discover it? If it’s just a cold obvious uncontested fact, why haven’t we always known it?

“This persistent attempt of the book at dehumanization and reducing trans people to an abstract anomaly or sinister cabal whose existence can be debunked or exposed not only represents a form of harassment in its implication for trans people’s legitimacy but goes against the recognition by human rights organizations such as the European Court of Human Rights (2002) as well as the U.K.’s Equality Act (2010) that trans identity constitutes a legally recognized and protected characteristic with fundamental rights.”

So they’re hinting that the book is or should be illegal.

The co-editors of the book, Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd, have written to Mathieson and accused the UCU of making libellous allegations against Phoenix, Jones and Benjamin.

They said: “This is an astonishing demand which suggests that opponents of pluralism, rigorous scholarship, and open discussion at the University of Edinburgh have been pandered to and emboldened.

“The letter from Edinburgh UCU has also been sent to the entire branch mailing list, which we are told covers over 2,000 people. The letter makes libellous allegations directed at the authors of the book as a whole, and also singles out named individuals: Shereen Benjamin, Jane Clare Jones and Jo Phoenix.

“These libellous allegations of transphobia and denying trans people’s existence constitute harassment and contribute to a hostile and discriminatory environment for staff and students at the University of Edinburgh who have the protected characteristic of gender critical belief, which can be summarised as the belief that sex is real and sex matters.

“The allegations against Professor Jo Phoenix are notably idiotic and indefensible.

“We appreciate that the university does not control UCU communications. Nevertheless, the university has a duty of care to staff and students.

“It cannot be acceptable to allow staff to send mass defamatory emails which are intended to prevent academics from organising events and from expressing factual and evidence-based views. It cannot be acceptable that staff face no consequences for such unlawful and bullying behaviour.”

But of course they will face no consequences.

This Johnny fella who turns out to be not an especially dim-witted undergraduate but a post-doc is a real piece of work. Flippant, ignorant, and malicious, while full of self-righteous hatred of women who don’t submit.

See also: “I’d only read about Christianity when the book is written by a Christian”; “I’d only read about Scientology when the book is written by a Scientologist”; “I’d only read about Nazism when the book is written by a Nazi”; “I’d only read a book about Trump when the book is written by a fan of Trump.”

What if the law said humans can fly? Would he jump?

The story there turned out to be that a few protesters were sitting in front of the entrance blocking people from going in, and grabbing the legs or ankles of women brazen enough to persist in going inside anyway.

I suspect this last one will get him in trouble. Hope so.

People told him to share that “abusive, threatening” email but he said he didn’t want to make “Shereen” look bad.

Just in case there haven’t been enough insults yet today…

Sigh.

Sorry, lezzers, you have to let men in. Sux 2 b u.

The insults just keep rolling in.

Cancel that book.

Academics at the University of Edinburgh have accused their own union of attempting to stifle debate after it called for the launch of a book on sex and gender to be scrapped.

Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader features essays from figures such as the philosopher Kathleen Stock and is edited by Selina Todd and Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London (UCL) who gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament last year on the Scottish Government’s gender reforms.

Selina Todd is a professor of history at Oxford. Don’t ask me why that was omitted.

The University and College Union (UCU) Edinburgh branch committee has written to the university’s principal, Sir Peter Mathieson, saying it has “concerns about the launch of a transphobic book on campus”.

UCU Edinburgh has previously been criticised for preventing free speech after it supported demonstrations on two occasions that stopped the screening of the film Adult Human Female on the university campus.

The union argues that the book launch continues with the strategy “that trans people’s existence – like any ideology or theory – can be ‘debunked’” and that essays in the book reduce “trans people to an abstract anomaly or sinister cabal”.

The union argues what? How can a statement of fact be a “strategy”?

In their letter to management, the UCU Edinburgh branch committee said: “The book being launched at the event continues with this strategy by using this false framing that trans people’s identity represents an ‘ideology’ and/or ‘lobby’ and that anyone supportive of trans people’s rights is a ‘gender-identity theorist’ or part of the ‘gender identity lobby’.”

It’s not a “strategy”; it’s reality. It’s not a “strategy” to say that men are not and cannot be women; it’s not a “strategy” to point out that insisting that men can be women is based on an ideology that claims people can be the sex they are not.

The UCU urged the university’s management to show “its support for its trans staff and students” and to demonstrate a recognition that trans people are “not an ideology to be debunked” but a “vulnerable minority” under the Equality Act 2010 and the university’s policies.  

But what makes them a “vulnerable minority”? What makes them different from everyone else in a way that makes them a “vulnerable minority”? What makes enormous square-jawed men in lipstick “a vulnerable minority”? It’s a belief system that does that: a set of beliefs about the magic of an internal sense of being the sex that is the opposite of the body’s sex. This set of beliefs was unknown until the last ten or twenty years or so.

They added: “It is also time that you recognised – again in alignment with human rights organisations such as the United Nations – that ‘free speech’ must be balanced with responsibilities and restrictions relating to harm caused by certain types of speech, such as those that advocate and disseminate misinformation and smears against the validity of disempowered minorities.

What does “smears against the validity of disempowered minorities” mean? What is the “validity” of a “minority”? What does it have to do with rights or social justice?

It means, of course, pretending that it’s true that if a man says he’s a woman, he is in fact a woman – he is “valid” as a woman. It’s an idea straight out of clown college.

Has to be parody doesn’t it?

Guy is there to protest the event, guy tells interviewer he doesn’t know what it’s about, doesn’t know what the book says, doesn’t know what the protest is about, but by god he’s there anyway because [insert miracle here]

The CBC is being a little bit bashful in its wording here…

Dead “as a result of the conflict”? Meaning what, dead of a broken heart?

But, I’m grateful to them in a way, because that silly periphrasis introduced me to this guy:

What was that we were saying the other day (or maybe I was the one saying it) about how rape is basically legal in the UK? (Not that it’s much better in the US.) Tiny fraction reported; tiny fraction of those prosecuted; tiny fraction of those convicted.

Now we can add tiny fraction of those punished. It must be down to a thousandth of a rapist per annum by now.

Scottish man who R*ped a 13 year old girl smiles as he leaves court as his conviction is DROPPED due to liberal laws enacted by the Scottish government. The 22 year old man repeatedly r*ped the 13 year old girl when he was aged 17 and was originally sentenced to do ‘unpaid work’ for his crimes. In April this year, he was spared jail by Judge Lord Lake at the High Court in Glasgow and given just 270 hours of unpaid work for his punishment. He has now had his conviction overturned because he is under the age of 25. Under new court guidance in Scotland, criminals under the age of 25 are treated more leniently because of their alleged brain immaturity.

So! Young men of Scotland! Get out there and help yourselves until your 25th birthday. Enjoy!

The Outside article with the subhead “Banning trans women from competitive cycling is an insult to all women” is written by…wait for it…a man who claims to be a woman. Well he would say that wouldn’t he – anything to fool or cheat or bully women into obedience.

My career as an athlete is a little complicated, though. As a trans woman, bike racing has always felt like a lose-lose proposition for me. If I do well, I risk getting called a cheater, or even worse, becoming a Fox News headline.

That’s because you are a cheater, bro.

Even before transitioning in 2020, seeing the hate directed at trans women athletes made me feel like competitive sports was a dead end for me.

Put that aside for a moment. Imagine how women feel.

I decided to risk life and limb in the high-risk sport of freeride mountain biking, where instead of competing against each other, we test our skills riding the biggest and hardest things we can find.

And having a male body remains a massive advantage.

On July 8, I finally lined up for my first race, the Sturdy Dirty, an all-women’s enduro hosted annually in North Bend, Washington. I went because the event organizers and a number of pro cyclists encouraged me to compete. Lining up for that race was the scariest thing I’ve done on a bike. I was venturing into the very place I swore to avoid for my own mental health and safety.

Diddums. Now think about how women feel.

They never do though, do they. They can’t. If they did, they would be forced to notice – if only internally and in silence – the unfairness of it.

Dishonest and stupid in one.

First of all nobody proposes “banning trans women from cycling.” The issue is that trans women have zero right to compete against women, because it’s unfair to the women.

Second, the insult is not to trans women, it’s to women. Letting men who call themselves women compete against women is a profound and multifaceted insult to women.

What a nightmare girls must live in.

“Most people aren’t able to do this job for more than two years.” It was a strange comment for an introductory training session, but it wasn’t an average first day of a new job. I was 27, living in Herne Hill and learning how to be an online sex and relationships advisor for young people on a salary of around £24,000 a year. “There’s no shame in quitting,” my trainer reassured me. “This type of work really takes its toll on a person.”

Because there’s so much of it? Because of all the research? Because too sedentary?

I realised there was one issue coming up over and over that shouldn’t be considered normal, but extremely concerning.

Is it normal to have sex you don’t want to have?

My boyfriend is pressurising me to have anal sex.

Sex with my boyfriend really hurts but he doesn’t seem to mind.

I woke up to find my boyfriend having sex with me.

I said no but he had sex with me anyway.

Almost every shift, it would happen again. A young girl writing in, describing what was quite clearly a rape, but not fully understanding that’s what had happened to her — almost always with a boy she was in a relationship with.

Every day, young girls would describe being pressured, coerced, manipulated, and downright forced to have painful sex, degrading sex, violent sex, and sex like their boyfriends had seen in porn. This charity wasn’t a rape crisis charity, but it was becoming one. I wasn’t a rape crisis worker, but I was becoming one. Quite quickly, I started to dread my shifts. After I’d clocked out, I didn’t feel fulfilled for my altruistic contribution to the world, but a deep rage at what was happening to young girls.

And what young boys are becoming.

How sick is it that a whole generation (and maybe all future generations until climate change shuts everything down) has been taught that good sex for men=torture of the woman, and that good sex for men is the only relevant issue? Good sex for women? Pff. No torture of women? HEY that would ruin men’s fun!

The impact of pornography appeared to infiltrate every shift. It happened in overt ways, like girls worried about the safety of being choked, or being expected to have anal sex, and then there were boys writing in, getting increasingly addicted to porn, unable to be turned on by a ‘real’ girl, and worried about their penis size or how long they can last. But there was a worrying covert impact too. A mass miseducation about what sexual consent really meant, sold to a generation raised on free, explicit, violent porn where up to 90% of the content shows physical aggression or violence, and women were the targets of this violence 97% of the time. Women in porn are almost always depicted as responding to this violence with pleasure or neutrality, meaning a generation of teens are internalising assumptions and expectations about the ‘sex’ expectation of young girls.

Torture isn’t sexy, pain isn’t sexy, sadism isn’t sexy, violence isn’t sexy.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), on atrocities and the moral high ground and international humanitarian law:

Hamas’s appalling attack on Israeli civilians has been widely described as the country’s “9/11 moment”. It is an appropriate description of such wanton cruelty. But the analogy carries a cautionary note as well.

The US government lost the world’s sympathy, and the moral high ground, when its response to 9/11 degenerated into a highly abusive war in Iraq, systematic torture, and endless detention without trial in Guantánamo. The Israeli government should be careful not to replicate this path to opprobrium. Indeed, such an abusive response may be exactly what Hamas wanted to provoke.

Hamas also thinks it’s on Team Allah, which naturally means that whatever it does is ok. George Bush thinks he’s on Team Baby Jesus, so there you go. Thinking you’re on Team God, aka theocracy, is practically a guarantee that human rights are entirely off the table, as is ordinary compassion.

Yes, Palestinians were understandably frustrated as Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government kept expanding the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, boxing in the people of Gaza with a punitive blockade, and imposing a discriminatory and oppressive rule on millions of Palestinians under occupation that has been widely described as apartheid. To make matters worse, one Arab government after another has been normalizing relations with Israel after at most token concessions to the Palestinians that did nothing to change their persecution. Still, none of that justifies resort to war crimes, as Hamas has done.

Especially when the war crimes are punishing people who are not Netanyahu and his far-right government.

It is a basic premise of international humanitarian law that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other. Of necessity, given the passions, charges and counter-charges of most wars, the duty to comply with the rules designed to spare civilians as much as possible the hazards of war is absolute, not contingent on the behavior of opponents.

But Hamas doesn’t care and neither does Netanyahu.

The Israeli government already seems to be flouting those rules. The declared siege of Gaza, blocking food, water, and electricity, violates the duty to allow humanitarian aid to civilians in need, as the people of Gaza certainly are as they suffer massive Israeli bombardment. In the first day of those airstrikes, the Israeli military targeted four large apartment towers. In the past, Israel has purported to justify such attacks because of an ostensible Hamas office somewhere in the complex, but the civilian cost of rendering hundreds of Palestinians homeless is wholly disproportionate.

One attack hit a market, reportedly killing dozens. The UN says two hospitals have been hit.

Though apparently less frequently than in the past, the Israeli military has at times been issuing warnings to Palestinian civilians, which it is required to do whenever feasible, but that does not provide carte blanche to attack. In the 2006 war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military issued similar warnings and then attacked anyone who remained as if they were all Hezbollah fighters, even though many civilians were unable or unwilling to flee. In Gaza, the Israeli military is reportedly flattening neighborhoods after such warnings – attacks that not only endanger any civilians who remain but also seem more designed to punish the civilian population than to target Hamas fighters who impose their will on the people of Gaza by force.

Well it’s like this: it’s easier to bomb the civilian population than it is to find Hamas and bomb them.

There is also something cruel and otherworldly about the Israeli government’s warning to the people of Gaza to flee. Where? From one densely populated Gaza neighborhood to another as they are pummeled in turn? To Egypt, which has helped Israel reinforce the blockade and has shown no inclination to welcome the 2.2 million residents of the territory? After the warning, the Israeli military bombed the crossing to Egypt. And if people escaped Gaza, would Israel ever let them return, or would this be another one-way flight as in 1948?

There seems to be no escape for anyone.

Harvard students don’t actually know everything.

A letter from Harvard University student groups blaming Israel for violence in the region has drawn a backlash from prominent alumni and US lawmakers.

The letter, authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, stated that students “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”.

Glad they’re not dogmatically absolutist about it.

“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years,” the letter added.

And what was going on 75 years ago? 76 years ago? 77, 78, 79? That might have given Jews the idea that they needed a Jewish nation?

I overlooked this news last week:

Donald Trump has dropped his $500 million lawsuit against Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer who is now a key witness in a criminal case against him, Cohen and a Trump spokesperson said Thursday night. But the former president did not waive his right to sue again.

Trump had accused Cohen of “spreading falsehoods” “with malicious intent” and causing “vast reputational harm” for talking publicly about hush-money payments made to women during Trump’s 2016 campaign that are at the heart of criminal charges he faces in New York. Trump has also accused Cohen of breaking a confidentiality agreement that he signed as a condition of his employment.

In other words Trump has accused Cohen of causing “vast reputational harm” by belatedly telling the truth about Trump. The truth will do that when you’re a crook and a liar.

“Given that President Trump is required to sit for deposition in a civil matter on Columbus Day, when he is scheduled to be in the Great State of New Hampshire, and while the President is fighting against the meritless claims that have been lodged against him in New York, Washington D.C., Florida, and Georgia, as well as continuing his winning campaign … President Trump has decided to temporarily pause his meritorious claims against Michael Cohen,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Obviously dictated by Trump. That stupid “great state of” – he always does that. He’s so corny.

H/t Screechy Monkey