Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Portents.

I think that for a long time, pro-choice advocates were regarded as the boy who cried wolf. “You keep saying that Roe will be overturned, but it never is, and all these abortion laws mostly get struck down by the courts and the abortion clinics survive the ones that aren’t anyways. I’m not pro-life, but I’m gonna vote GOP because [taxes etc.]”

And indeed for a long time, there was a school of Savvy Punditry that insisted that Republicans didn’t want Roe overturned anyway, and that’s why it would never happen. (My take is that the first part of that was largely true — there were definitely a lot of GOP strategists who liked having the issue to rally voters but didn’t care about it and certainly didn’t want to deal with a post-Roe backlash — but the second part was wrong because when you appoint and confirm anti-choice justices, they don’t care that you had your fingers crossed when you did it.)

Anyway, all those voters who are pro-choice but didn’t vote on it because they took Roe for granted have now had a rude awakening. And having seen Republicans pass all sorts of draconian laws and abortion clinics shut down, they’re not likely to buy the new focus-group-tested GOP spin that they just want “reasonable restrictions” on “late-term abortions” and certainly don’t want bans no why would you say that such a crazy thought never mind what our party platform says and what most of our elected officials said up until two months ago.

It’s not a great consolation for losing Roe, of course. But at least there’s some consequences.

Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia.

Abortion rights advocates won major victories Tuesday as voters in conservative-leaning Ohio decisively passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion, while those in ruby-red Kentucky reelected a Democratic governor who aggressively attacked his opponent for supporting the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

In Virginia, a battleground state where Republicans pushed a proposal to outlaw most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Democrats were projected to take control of the state legislature after campaigning heavily on preserving access.

Women push back.

Boots said what??

Good that they’ve corrected it now but what the hell.

Now there’s a fine impartial headline from the CBC:

Nurse tells B.C. hearing she’s not transphobic, but calls gender identity ‘metaphysical nonsense’

There’s no “but” needed in that headline. There’s no contradiction. “Transphobic” means “mean and horrible to people who claim to be trans.” It’s neither phobic nor mean & horrible to know that “gender identity” is metaphysical nonsense. It would be metaphysical nonsense to say that people can be rabbits by thinking they are rabbits, and the same applies to all the other nouns that name something one can’t turn into via the power of thought. People can become teachers, pilots, parents, friends, colleagues, reporters, nurses, and the like. People can’t become trees or planets or watermelons. It’s not phobic to grasp this overarching distinction.

When legislatures decide they get to define women.

A man who is pretending to be a woman is not a woman, no matter how long he has been doing the pretending.

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Anne Frank wasn’t diverse enough.

This is the second time this specific article has crossed my radar in the last twenty-four hours, whereas none of my normal German sources have even mentioned it, which I think is somewhat telling. Let me trawl for an actual German article…ahh, yes, a bunch of highly-motivated right-of-centre rags…some respectable publications…no highly-motivated left-of-centre rags…

Ahh, there we are, something actually readable and vaguely objective that isn’t publicly-financed (which is nearly unnecessary to qualify, as publicly-financed media in Germany are often barely readable and quite rarely objective).

Firstly, let’s clarify a few points of confusion or misconceptions. “Kindergarten”, though it is a German word, means something different in Germany than it does to Anglophones — namely, it is a daycare centre for young children (from three years on) which can (but not must) serve as a sort of pre-school for its older wards, and is usually only open to lunchtime or early afternoon. This story doesn’t involve a Kindergarten, however, but rather a Kita (short for Kinderstätte), which takes children for the whole day and theoretically has no lower age limit and is even less likely to have a heavy emphasis on pedagogy (though it also can for its older wards). In East Germany there are relatively few Kindergärten and many more Kinderstätten, and while the difference may seem academic and opaque to foreigners, they are not the same thing. In short, the institution in question is much more like a daycare than a pre-school or the first cohort of a public school.

And the AfD, while admittedly stronger in East Germany and undeniably a right-wing nationalist party, are neither Nazis nor at all relevant to this discussion; the mayor of the town is an independent, and while he doubtless does not wish to anger AfD voters (or at least not attract their attention away from their anger at the Federal Republic), there is absolutely no evidence that he or his council have based their decisions with respect to the daycare upon the AfD or its voters in any way. And the new proposed name, Weltentdecker, translates to “world explorer”; this is hardly a name designed to appease a right-wing nationalist. In point of fact, according to Wikipedia, the AfD received just under 12 percent of the vote and only got 3 out of the 28 seats in the council. We can effectively rule out pleasing the AfD as a motivation for this change.

In further point of fact, the quotes about anti-Semitism growing “among the Far Right” and the implication that the AfD is dangerously antisemitic are doing a lot of work here; the AfD has Jewish wings in its federal and several state parties, though of course these are not uncontroversial in the broader Jewish community in Germany. But, as this is entirely a red herring to the current discussion, it bears no further investigation or exposition here.

To the point of the article, the proposed name change is just one of several progressive reforms to supposedly “modernise” the daycare, which has apparently been in progress for the last 14 months. Other reforms include no longer grouping the children by age and allowing children to follow their own interests and desires rather than having a more uniform, strictly-regimented day.

The mayor writes in an address to the town (probably as a result of the outcry):

Weit vor den aktuellen Diskussionen und Ereignissen ist bereits Anfang 2023 auch die Diskussion aufgekommen, diese grundlegende Konzeptionsänderung durch einen anderen Namen der Einrichtung auch nach außen hin sichtbar zu machen, um diesen fundamentalen Neuanfang sichtbar zu markieren

which translates to

Far removed from the current discussions and events, we have already been discussing since the beginning of 2023 how to make this foundational conceptual change externally apparent through changing the name of the facility, in order to visibly mark this fundamental new beginning

which is a fine example of a German politician covering his arse, but does put paid to the idea that the name change is in response to the recent flare-up of the interminable Levantine brawl. In fact, the Hamas attack has likely drawn far more attention and enhanced the outcry, including getting national reporters in England to sensationalise local news in East Germany.

It is unlikely the name will be changed at this point, but I am not sure what difference that will make in the long run. There is a narrative worth exploring here, of Germany’s continuing evolution and its reconstitution through migration, and what the ethnic Germans of yesterday and today owe the increasingly-non-ethnic-Germans of today and tomorrow (and vice-versa). In some of these Kitas in the major cities, the share of non-ethnic-German children can exceed 80 percent, and there are precious few where this proportion is far below 50; if this continues, there will be a demographic shift in this country within our lifetimes that is essentially unprecedented in the history of the world.

That cannot but have consequences. If the only parties anticipating and discussing those consequences get called Nazis for doing so, then either only Nazis will do the discussing or the term “Nazi” will so lose its meaning and potency that nobody will care when actual neo-Nazis do actual neo-Nazi shit.

In particular, what do these new peoples who have come to Germany owe to Anne Frank? These peoples, who have virtually no connection to the Holocaust or any other part of German history, who bear no collective guilt for the industrial massacre of European Jews in the middle part of the 20th Century? These peoples who tend to see Germany not so much as a land of opportunity but as a rich lifeboat whose byzantine bureaucracy they must navigate in order to get free accommodations and an allowance without having to (or in many cases even being legally allowed to) work?

These are very important questions with very important answers. And as Germany sacrifices its economy in order to punish Russia’s malfeasance, we are only going to see more and more ethnic Germans asking them, and, should those answers prove unsatisfactory, the next round of questions may be even less to our liking.

Siiiiiiiiiiigh

Aw yeah, nothing better for increasing yer inclusion & diversity than putting a white guy with bangs in charge of it.

Oddly enough the Institute of Physics turned off replies.

Updating to add:

There are a lot of furious and/or contemptuous replies and then one outlier.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on ‘Microaggressions started out as a legitimate issue’.

Like, I can see putting a hand on someone’s knee as being actually innocent, even though invasion of personal space is always suspect. I had a coworker who always put his hands on people’s backs when talking to them at their desks, for instance. It made me uncomfortable, for obvious reasons, but I didn’t attribute ill intent to it, because the dude was probably autistic. On the other hand, it can absolutely be anything but innocent, and there’s no way for a woman (or much less often a man) to know the intent motivating the incoming hand. For some reason, we have yet to evolve the ability to read each other’s thoughts. So we either condemn hands on knees entirely or try to determine which hands on which knees are problematic. The former option is, of course, easier to implement, but as Thomas Sowell says, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs,” and it’s hard to predict what the trade-offs. Chesterton’s Fence and whatnot.

But the crotch-to-backside thing? How could anyone, even a male, not recognize that as sexually aggressive? Nothing could epitomize more perfectly what sexual harassment is than pressing clothed cock against clothed butt. It’s miming the act. It’s a velvet glove, a veiled threat, a transgression with just enough ambiguity to allow plausible deniability. Do these male friends not believe that there are men who actually do that kind of shit? Is the issue the same kind of oblivious theory of mind failure that lets people believe that Putin wouldn’t use nuclear weaponry if Russia were losing a war or that no man would ever dress like a woman just in order to get into women’s intimate spaces?

This is actually one of the reasons I hate “microaggressions”. In order to render the claimant infallible, the concept makes actual harm irrelevant to the claim’s truth. But this means that actual harm is irrelevant to the discussion! Imagined and performative victimhood is put on the same moral footing as actual, genuine, real victimization. Sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are reduced to mere perceptions and thoughts in your mind. It’s just that your mind makes it “real” in the Matrix-like way of social constructivism.

Further, the “micro” part is really the standpoint epistemology component. The aggression is micro in the sense that those in the oppressor class cannot see it with their own eyes, instead requiring the assistance of someone with the appropriate social positionality to see for them. That is to say, it’s in principle impossible to construct an argument that would allow a man to understand why any particular behavior is harmful to women.

This is a fun heads I win tails you lose Trump has going here. If he pitches fits in court and calls the judge names why that’s because he’s The Victim Of A Conspiracy. If he doesn’t, same deal.

Mr Trump was combative on the stand. He took direct aim at the judge, leading to some heated exchanges, and drew his rebukes for airing broad grievances when they were not directly relevant to the question.

Is this because he’s a goon who acts like that at all times? Or is it a cunning plan?

“I think he is trying to goad the judge into doing something he can argue on appeal shows prejudice on his part,” Prof McMunigal said. “Maybe he makes a comment they can use to support a bias case later.”

Or he can just do that regardless, as he always does.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told the BBC that Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, appeared to view the trial as an opportunity to campaign.

“[His] behaviour suggests that he may view the trial as an opportunity to play the victim of an unfair justice system and, thus, attempt to capitalise on the trial to score political points,” Professor Tobias said.

Head he wins, tails we lose.

Oh, good idea, Germany.

A German kindergarten has said it will drop Anne Frank from its name in favour of a “more diverse” alternative, adding fuel to the national debate over anti-Semitism amid the Israel-Hamas war.

More “diverse” than Anne Frank. (I have no idea what the German for the buzzword “diverse” is, or even if it’s comparable to the Anglo buzzword.) More “diverse” how? Adding anti-Semites? Nazis? Neo-Nazis? Fans of genocide?

In what way is there a need for more “diversity” than a name that symbolizes the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazi regime? To put it another way, why is it a good idea to change the subject when the subject is Anne Frank/the Holocaust?

“We wanted a name without a political background,” Linda Schichor, the kindergarten’s director, told a local newspaper.

Ms Schichor said that the story of Anne Frank was difficult to explain to small children, while immigrant families had “often never heard of her” or her diary about her family’s attempt to remain hidden from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam.

Well yes, which is why it’s quite a good idea to teach about her/memorialize her. That’s not to say schools shouldn’t also teach about other persecuted groups, but once you have an Anne Frank kindergarten it’s kind of a bad look to erase her name.

…coming at a time when Germany is engaged in soul searching over whether the lessons of the Nazi era are being forgotten, the name change has caused a national scandal.

Christoph Heubner, the deputy head of the International Auschwitz Committee, appealed for the name change decision to be reversed in a letter sent to the local council.

“If one is prepared to forget one’s own history so easily, especially in these times of renewed anti-Semitism and Right-wing extremism, one can only feel fear and anxiety about the culture of remembrance in our country,” he said.

Quite so. Expand the history, but don’t hide or downplay the bit between 1933 and 1945.

Jewish organisations have raised concerns in recent months about growing anti-Semitism from both the far-Right and immigrant communities from the Middle East.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews has warned that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is polling at over 20 per cent, “embodies Nazi ideals”.

Senior figures in the AfD have played down the crimes of the Nazi era, with one leader calling it “a bird sh-t” on German history, while others have questioned why there is a memorial to the Holocaust in the centre of Berlin.

Not a good moment to take down Anne Frank’s name.

Meanwhile let’s get this straight. There’s a prolific women-hater on Twitter named David Leavitt but he is NOT repeat NOT the novelist named David Leavitt. They are two different people.

I don’t know if the novelist is on Twitter, but the journalist definitely is. He’s a very bad man.

Also either dishonest or stupid. Rowling does not say what he claims she says in the tweet he singles out to demonstrate her saying the thing she didn’t say.

A very bad man. Not the novelist.

The most marginalized…

But don’t ever ever ever suggest that trans “activism” is just a tiny bit inclined to abuse and threaten women. No no no no no don’t you dare or we’ll tell you cunts exactly how we want to slaughter you.

BBC yet again cheering on the destruction of women’s sports:

Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya says she is “not going to be ashamed” of being “different”, and will “fight for what is right” amid her ongoing dispute with athletics authorities.

Some lede. Should read: Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya, who competed against women, says he is “not going to be ashamed” of cheating women, and will continue to cheat amid his ongoing dispute with athletics authorities.

Semenya, 32, was born with differences of sexual development (DSD) and cannot compete in female track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.

What kind of differences of sexual development? Odd that the BBC doesn’t say. Why be so cryptic about it?

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Breakfast’s Sally Nugent, Semenya says:

• She felt she was “different” from the age of five but “embraces” her differences
• She will not conform “to be accepted”

He “embraces” the differences that enable him to cheat women in sports.

He will not stop cheating women in sports.

• She wants to empower women to “have a voice”

Fuck all the way off.

“For me I believe if you are a woman, you are a woman,” said Semenya, who won Olympic 800m gold in 2012 and 2016 and is a three-time world champion over the same distance.

Is that how that works? And if you believe you are a dolphin you are a dolphin?

Anyway, that’s not a useful criterion, because no one can know what other people “believe.” It’s a black box. You could just be pretending to believe.

JKR nails it again.

The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my ‘anxiety’ about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’

That assurance is welcome, although I note that he’s addressed the matter only after it was raised publicly. No such exemption is mentioned in the Practice Note, which takes the ideological position that the ‘use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect’. The natural inference is that a woman would be considered guilty of disrespect if she, alone in the courtroom, described her male attacker as a man, while all court officials were addressing and describing him as a woman. This is not a hypothetical situation. The judge will be aware, if he’s informed himself – as he implies I have not – that I’ve already cited an example where a 60-year-old woman was violently assaulted by a 26-year-old trans-identified male. She was chided by the judge for displaying ‘bad grace’ by not using her attacker’s preferred pronouns.

The Practice Note does not acknowledge that in sexual and violent crimes committed by men against women, there is a clear clash of rights. The woman has a right – indeed, a legal duty – to speak truthfully about the male violence/sexual violence to which she was subjected. Meanwhile the Practice Note says that court officials should respectfully use female pronouns for the attacker if he says he identifies as a woman. The likely effect on a traumatised woman of hearing her attacker addressed and described as a female by the court is neither mentioned nor addressed in the Practice Note. Respect, it seems, goes only one way.

Millions of women are losing confidence in judicial systems that have adopted an ideological position with which they do not agree. In the very place where they go to seek justice, a woman may now be obliged to listen to court officials asserting they were raped or beaten by a fellow woman. Such women are not merely ‘anxious’, they are furious, about the apparent inability of certain men, judges or not, to understand how dystopian this situation seems to those of us who have suffered male sexual violence.

And about the equally apparent indifference to their own inability to understand. They just don’t care.

Oh goody, an activist.

Erm. So that’s “The transformative future of #womensports” in the sense of being women’s sports played by men? That’s “embracing intersectionality and solidarity” in the sense of embracing men who invade women’s sports and thus destroy them for women?

Well why is there no solidarity with women? Can anyone explain?

Who is this Natalie Washington?

Natalie Washington is a British football player and activist, best known for her work as campaign lead for Football v Transphobia.^[1][2] She also serves as a trustee for Trans Pride Brighton.^[3]

She began playing as a midfielder for Rushmoor Community FC in the Hampshire County Women’s Football League in 2017, after training with the team since 2015.^[4][5] She also appeared in charirty matches for TRUK United FC.^[6] She has spoken out about facing transphobia in the sport, including an incident where she had to be substituted off the field for her safety.^[7][8]

In January 2017, she was allowed to play in women’s football after she had six months off for genital reconstruction surgery. Her teammates on the women’s team were very supportive, this had helped her feel more welcomed and accepted.^[9] This motivated her to become a trustee and organizer for the Trans Pride Bridgton & Hove and Campaign Lead for the Football v Transphobia campaign, which campaigns to make football a better place for transgender people.^[10]

Which campaigns to make football a better place for transgender people and a worse place for female people. Men win, women lose. How transformative.

So much warping of buzzwords here. Human rights, activist, transformative, intersectionality, solidarity, Pride, supportive, welcomed, accepted. All those words hijacked to glorify a man spoiling a women’s sport when he ought to be condemned and rebuked.

The Post on what Trump is planning for us:

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymityto describe private conversations.Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

More like terrifying and unconstitutional. Not surprising, to be sure, but still terrifying.

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act…

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

We can only hope his head explodes first.

The NY Times is live-reporting Trump’s testimony.

Trump’s acknowledgement of some involvement in assembling the documents in question can’t be stressed enough. The modus operandi of Trump and most around him is to lay the blame at staff’s feet, or consultants’ feet or lawyers’ feet.

Trump is being asked about why he decided to drop the value of Seven Springs, one of his properties in Westchester County, N.Y., on a financial statement. “I thought it was high,” Trump says, yet again admitting his involvement in the process.

Trump appears not to realize that, because here the value was lowered, these admissions of his involvement in manipulating the financial statements are damning.

But it was good manipulating. Surely he should get points for that.

Trump was just asked his involvement in the 2021 financial statement. He tried to answer saying that he was busy with the presidency, focused on “China, Russia and keeping our country safe.”

Wallace, the state lawyer, reminded him that he was not president in 2021.

Picky picky picky.

Trump is asked how big his triplex in Trump Tower is. He says that he wouldn’t know, except for the trial, but that it’s about 11,000 feet. That’s accurate, but then he started adding thousands, saying it may be 12,000 or 13,000 feet. This is Trump’s problem in a nutshell: He exaggerates.

Hahahahaha and he even does it in court.

At times, the late morning testimony has felt like travel brochure for Trump properties. When it happens, people around me sitting in the courtroom chuckle.

Trump is mak[ing] a long ode to Aberdeen, calling it an “artistic expression,” and the greatest golf course ever built. The judge is frowning but again says nothing.

Justice Engoron finally loses patience and breaks in as Trump is calling Aberdeen, Scotland, where he has a golf club, the oil capital of Europe. “Irrelevant, irrelevant. Answer the question,” the judge says.

Trump is asked about what Wallace characterizes as an inaccuracy in a 2014 statement of financial condition. Trump ducks the question. And finally, the judge explains why he hasn’t been interrupting since the break: He is following Wallace’s lead, he says, and Wallace seems to be fine with Trump’s rambling. As we’ve noted, that rambling is helping the attorney general.

To be continued.

The protocol.

The protocol “does no more than allow lawyers and others to inform the court of the correct pronunciation of their name and their preferred gender pronoun”

Stop right there.

That’s smuggling. That’s smuggling the concept of “preferred gender pronoun” concealed by “correct pronunciation of their name.” Those two items are not the same thing. Preferred is not the same as correct, and pronouns are not a thing one gets to customize.

I suppose it’s possible to think of ways the correct pronunciation of their name could be misused the way luxury pronouns are. I suppose people could claim that “Alice” or “Fred” is pronounced “Fuck” or “Arthur Two-sheds Jackson” or similar. But if they did the court would say nope.

The two things are not the same kind of thing. Pronunciations of names can vary, and there’s little or nothing at stake when they do. I suppose Americans could say “the correct pronunciation of my name is Charles, Charrrrles, not Chahlz.” I suppose if they did it would make no difference, because you can’t order people to speak in a different accent, but even more because it doesn’t matter. Pronouns, on the other hand, do matter, especially in a court of law. “She raped/assaulted/abused me” is very different from “He” did all that.

So it’s very unnerving to see a judge bundling the two together.

Of course.

I would have linked straight to the source but you have to click through eleventy times to get to that set of nominations…but by having done so I did get to learn (to my complete lack of surprise) that 1. the male nominations appear first and 2. the male nominations are all men.

Yes, Yasmin Finney is a trans woman.

Ahh poor Fiona the lonely sheep stranded at the bottom of a cliff has been rescued at last.

The sheep, called Fiona and wearing a huge fleece, had been stranded at the foot of cliffs on the Cromarty Firth for at least two years, with an animal welfare charity having deemed rescue attempts “incredibly complex”.

But five farmers managed to haul her up a steep slope, and now plan to deliver her to a farm park.

A real farm park, not the pretend kind kids are told about when Flopsy dies in the night.

Jillian Turner first spotted the sheep two years ago while she was paddling along the coast of Sutherland with her kayak club. She assumed the sheep would make it back to wherever home was by itself and thought no more of it.

When she took the same journey again recently she was horrified to see the same animal.

Recalling her first sighting of the sheep, Turner told the Northern Times: “About half a mile before turning into the Cromarty Firth we spotted a sheep on a shingle beach at the bottom of some steep, rocky coastline.

“She saw us coming and was calling to us along the length of the beach following our progress until she could go no further. She finally turned back, looking defeated.”

The sighting made an impression on Turner and she couldn’t quite believe it when she saw the same sheep on the recent trip.

“She called out on our approach and once again followed the group along the shore jumping from rock to rock, calling to us the whole way,” Turner said.

The sheep’s fleece was “huge” and touching the ground at the back, she said, with Turner describing the experience as “heart-rending”.

“We honestly thought she might make her way back up that first year. The poor ewe has been on her own for at least two years. For a flock animal that has to be torture, and she seemed desperate to make contact with us on the two occasions we’ve gone past her.”

And now she’s saved. Well done, five guys.