The Guardian last month on Orwell and women:

George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, made his work possible at the cost of her own by taking on the household drudgery and typing up his writing instead of completing her master’s in psychology. But Wifedom, a remarkable new book by Anna Funder, shows there was much more to a woman who appears only fleetingly in her husband’s work and is poorly served by his biographers. Shortly before meeting Orwell she wrote a dystopian poem titled End of the Century, 1984; she suggested that he write an animal fable instead of an essay denouncing Stalinism; and she noted her husband’s “extraordinary political simplicity”. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell mentions a shopping trip they make to buy stockings in Barcelona – but not that she had a political job in the offices of Poum (the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), for whom he fought in the civil war; nor that she took significant risks to get them and others out of the country after Stalin ordered his men to liquidate the party. She took risks, too, to save the manuscript.

But she was a woman, so he couldn’t really see her. He was one of those men.

Funder greatly admires Orwell’s work; she does not want it to be “cancelled” by her unflattering portrait of him, especially his shoddy treatment of his wife. But she also notes that O’Shaughnessy “has been cancelled already – by patriarchy”; that is, “buried first by domesticity, and then by history”. Funder says she writes for the same reasons Orwell himself gave – “because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention”…

“Women have always been 50% of the population, but only occupy about 0.5% of recorded history,” the historian Dr Bettany Hughes has observed. Even those who are remembered, she notes, “aren’t allowed to be characters … they have to be stereotypes”: Cleopatra is remembered as a seductress, not for her talents in maths and philosophy. 

That’s what I mean by not really seeing. Women are like shadows, ghosts, passing thoughts. They don’t matter much. They have little substance. Nobody cares. (“Nobody” of course means “no men” – women don’t get to be anybody or somebody. Neutral nouns of that kind refer to generic men, not generic people.)

Aw, sad – Vivian Wulf had to close that petition to tell Peter Tatchell to shut up, because The Wrong People found it. I’m embarrassed and ashamed and queasy that I am one of those Wrong People – I found it, I shared it, I made fun of it. Oh dear, I seem to be making fun of it again, even now. What is wrong with me?

SEP 20, 2023 — Contrary to their bleating on social media GCs clearely love having Tatchell on air if it means trans people don’t ge a voice. He is the perfect strawman for them. They can attack trans people by attacking him and simultaneously his presence helps keep trans voices out of the mainstream. He misrepresents us constantly and helps to confuse the public about who trans people are. Which is what the Gender Criticals want.

So even my earnest plea to have trans voices in the mainstream media and for cisgender men to stop speaking for and over us has been silenced in this instance by the vicious and spiteful bullies of the GC movement.

Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry! I’m so very sorry to be such a vicious and spiteful bully, in sharp contrast to the benevolence and generosity of such paragons as India Willoughby and Freda Wallace and that Montgomerie fella.

But I will not stop working to replace Tatchell and others like him in the media with trans voices. We deserve a platform. We deserve to be heard and not misrepresented by proxies.

Nothing about us without us.

And Fuck TERFs.

I’m sure the Big Bosses of Big Media are conferring right now on how to ban Peter Tatchell from all journalistic outlets and replace him with the many eloquent brilliant thoughtful spokespersons for trans ideology – like Vivian Wulf for instance, renowned author of the punchline “And Fuck Terfs.”

Deepities flying.

Ah the normativity of it. It’s so normative (and white and cis and Republican) to say that ospreys are not mammals or that whales are not plankton. Don’t be like Norman Normative; reach for the stars; call your dick a girl-dick and live on Cloud Freedom forever.

Bad definition to say that male people are male. Male people are not male if they utter the magic word “trans”! That’s not normative at all. Also: you’re stupid.

Hi, a literal scientist here with something of a claim to the title "biologist" as well:

What you just said was very very stupid. The physical universe does not decide on what the definitions of our words are. Words are invented by humans.

— Nicolas Bray (he/him) (@yarbsalocin) September 19, 2023

Therefore, all meanings are arbitrary (and normative); therefore, all words mean what we say they mean – but not what you say they mean of course. Just us, the cool kids.

On the one hand, women standing up for women’s and lesbians’ rights. On the other hand, men (and some women?) screaming at them “You’re fucking fascists!!”

Crisply said.

The whole thing without the irritating break at the end:

“Nonsense, Andrea. People who identify as trans have the exact same rights everyone else has. The problem is that at least some who identify as trans seek a privilege–to require others to accept trans beliefs and to give up their rights to accommodate those beliefs. That is something NO other group gets. So perhaps it should be “Human rights for thee and a whole lot more for me.”

Another stanza of the epic Men Are Better at Everything:

Missouri High School Crowns Male Student as “Homecoming Queen”

It’s tempting to say “Let them have that one” because wtf is a “homecoming queen” anyway? There is no homecoming king, nor are there beauty pageants for men in general, so why does this creaky antiquated “all women can do is stand around and look pretty” brand of competition keep hanging around?

But, it does keep hanging around, so it is just one more insulting theft for men to insert themselves into such contests.

A high school in Kansas City, Missouri, is facing mockery after crowning a trans-identified male student as “Homecoming Queen” this past weekend. After the news hit social media, Oak Park High School quickly turned [off] the ability for the public to comment on their X post congratulating High School senior Tristan Young. 

The girls he cheated are of course expected to smile and hug him and pretend they’re ecstatic.

That’s funny.

Truer than he (Brand) perhaps intended – Orwell was indeed a shit to women.

Drop whatever you’re doing and listen up: there’s a Statement:

ETFO strongly condemns anti-2SLGBTQ+ protests

Today, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) issued the following statement responding to 1 Million March 4 Children protests that are scheduled to take place across Canada this week:

“Any actions or events that seek to undermine the rights and dignity of the 2SLGBTQ+ community must be denounced. As such, ETFO strongly condemns this week’s planned protests, and calls on the government and school boards to do the same.”

What about actions and events that do in fact undermine the rights and dignity of women, of lesbians and gay men, of children and adolescents and adults, of people who can recognize bullshit when they see it?

There is no room for hate in our province or our hearts. Yet we are seeing a disturbing increase in public discourse centred on anti-2SLGTBQ+ hate.

Are they though? I think the discourse is about resistance to trans ideology, not “hate.”

Recently, Premier Doug Ford accused school boards of indoctrination. Education Minister Stephen Lecce scolded boards for upholding students’ human rights related to gender identity, and 

Wait wait wait, slow down. What do you mean by “students’ human rights related to gender identity”? What exactly are those? How do you know they are rights? Have you thought at all about how such rights might conflict with the rights of women, children, lesbians, gay men? Are you quite sure you haven’t just leapt onto a bandwagon without checking the wheels?

We encourage all Canadians to engage in constructive conversations, to listen to differing perspectives, to reject bigotry, and to work together to build a more inclusive and equitable society for all.

No you don’t. You’re demonstrating with this very petition that you don’t. You’re telling us NOT TO LISTEN to differing perspectives.

Through education and respectful dialogue, we can bridge gaps and create environments where everyone feels safe, valued, and respected.

Not when men are determined to steal everything women have gained over the past half century we can’t.

In this time of emboldened hate, let us stand together against transphobia and homophobia, and protect those who are targets of bigotry and discrimination. We commend school boards for their unwavering commitment to ensuring all students feel safe and included.

ETFO will continue to advocate for members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and work to protect the rights of vulnerable individuals who continue to be discriminated against, marginalized, and harmed.

Except women and girls. No biggy.

A petition!

The trans community calls for Peter Tatchell to shut up and let us speak for ourselves

Says Vivian Wulf.

Peter Tatchell is everywhere speaking for us.

On several occasions he has offered opinions contrary to what the majority of trans people believe.

He scolds trans activists for things he considers “bad optics”.

He has a history of questionable statements that could lead one to believe he supports pedophilia making his “optics” less than ideal.

He has used the threats and harassment trans people receive as an excuse for why he is always the person called onto TV shows rather than an actual trans person saying that trans people won’t do it so he has to. This is a lie – many trans people speak very publicly about trans issues using their own name and face on social media and all of us receive harassment and death threats on a regular basis anyway. Many would much prefer to risk further harassment by speaking for themselves and our community than having a cisgender man with such a shady history misrepresent the goals of our movement and the majority beliefs within our community.

This is a petition for Peter Tatchell to shut the fk up about trans people and instead when he is contacted for TV, Radio, Paper or indeed any other form of media to speak on trans issues for him to recommend one of the many trans people who speak out in favour of their community instead.

Kids these days, they got no gratitude.

Well…

Ok let’s try to figure this out.

“I just want transgender people to be accepted in every single way that other people are.”

What does that mean though? What does “be accepted” mean? Nobody is “accepted” in every possible sense, so what are we even talking about?

Where and when we have to “accept” trans people actually is an issue, so maybe it’s safe to assume she means the familiar points of contention, like women-only spaces and prizes and promotions. Well, if that’s what she means, saying she “just” wants that is pretty damn rude. “I just want you to let men who claim to be women steal every single thing you have, that’s all.”

We don’t have to “accept” anyone in every possible space or every possible sense, so Webberley is just repeating the usual “WE JUST WANT TO TAKE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE” shouting. Ok you just want that and we just say no.

“To be able to live their lives equally to anyone else.”

That’s just gibberish. How does one live her life equally to anyone else? How does one live life equally?

Also, news flash for Webberley: lots of people encounter difficulties while living their lives. In fact, all people do.

To grow old, have families, make mistakes, laugh, cry, and love.

Awww, that’s poetry. It belongs in a Hallmark card.

To have the same opportunities as everyone else.

No she doesn’t; she wants them to have extra opportunities that are not like the opportunities everyone else has.

To look in the mirror and be proud of who they see facing back at them.

Sounds like a personal problem, as we used to say to whiners when I was in school. It’s not our responsibility to make people who think they’re the other sex feel proud of who they are, especially since what Webberley means is proud of who they are not.

And I want to be remembered as one of the people that helped to make that happen.

Is that too much to ask?

Uh, yes, it is, quite obviously and embarrassingly. Expecting to be remembered at all for anything, and admitting it in public, is cringe-worthy.

Apparently one thing Trump has been doing with all those stolen classified documents is cutting them into “note cards” on which he tells his employees their tasks for the day.

One of former President Donald Trump’s long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.

As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that — more than once — she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.

So he stole the documents because they made a nice free supply of scratch paper?

Debbie Schipp of the Daily Telegraph (Australia) on Russell Brand’s blatant contempt for women and how long it went unrebuked:

I don’t know if Russell Brand is guilty of the specific rape and sexual assault and harassment claims being levelled against him. I do know I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for him to be called out as an allegedly predatory and controlling creep.

I do know that when I walked out of a one-on-one interview (actually, there was one of me, and then him and the tittering entourage he played to in the room) with Brand more than a decade ago, I’d just met a very unprofessional and decidedly ordinary human being.

I’d been witness to — and the subject of — a Russell Brand performance he’d spent countless press tours perfecting which featured a specialist misogynist using a facile, lowbrow stunts dressed up as humour to disarm and humiliate women trying to go about their jobs and remind them he was in charge.

It’s so easy to picture, just from that. We’ve all seen the kind of thing. We’ve all been targets of it from co-workers and the like.

I’d been told by other female journalists who’d had the dubious pleasure of interviewing Brand how it would go. Russell would pick a feature … your boobs, your legs, your butt, the length of your dress, early in the meeting. It would be masked as a compliment, and then it would get creepy, unprofessional and uncomfortable as he’d inevitably riff on it again and again.

…

I had written sport for ten years before I switched to entertainment, and in that round had met a thousand Russell Brands: blokes who didn’t like that a female would have the audacity and temerity to write about serious subjects like racing and rugby league.

And it’s so easy to let those pesky women know how contemptible you find them. So easy and so without consequences.

I had plenty of time to watch other journos emerge from their time with him. The majority of them were women. Stony-faced. I can’t recall what he was selling on that trip to Australia. But within seconds it was clear it wasn’t professionalism. As I walked in and offered my hand to shake his, he looked me up and down, carefully assessing me, then slowly met my eyes.

“Hello, Debbie Schipp,” he said, a faint mocking tone as he used my full name and his gaze returned to my legs.

He went on to persist in running away from the interview to talk to random people passing by, until Schipp had had enough and left.

I’d admired the irreverent and offbeat Brand as an entertainer with a formidable intellect who went where few dared, and skewered with smart humour. Resorting to lame commentary on a woman’s physical attributes and palming it off as a joke was lazy humour. Easy pickings. Not the slightest bit clever. I thought he was edgier than that.

It wasn’t funny then. It’s not funny now. Russell, the position you find yourself in now isn’t some mysterious plot engineered by faceless powerful people and angry women to bring you down. You did that all by yourself.

H/t Rev David Brindley

Who you callin’ mentally fogged?

Donald Trump has long attacked Joe Biden, his likely opponent at the polls next year, as “Sleepy Joe”, portraying the 80-year-old president as too old and too mentally fogged to occupy the Oval Office.

Trump, on the other hand, is just plain stupid.

Trump is 77 but polls show significantly fewer voters think he is too old to return to power. 

But is he too stupid? Too vicious, too reckless, too self-dealing, too corrupt, too law-breaking, too sexist, too racist, too xenophobic, too rude, too trashy, too sadistic, too ignorant? Hell yes.

Biden says he is fit to serve. So does Trump, telling NBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday “there should be a competency” test for presidents, of the sort he “aced” while in the White House. That prompted memories of previous national mirth, when in summer 2020 Trump, then 74, bragged about successfully recognising “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in a cognitive exam.

And added that everyone was amazed and asked, “How did you do that?!”

Gaby Hinsliff on why it matters when a sleb dude is revealed as not entirely a feminist:

The most haunting moment for me of last weekend’s joint investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, the Sunday Times and the Times wasn’t the admittedly horrific allegations of rape and sexual assault (which Brand denies, insisting that even at his wildest all the sex was consensual). It was the way Dispatches spliced footage of Brand onstage – joking about his enthusiasm for rough sex, for blowjobs that left women choking and gasping and with mascara running down their faces – together with footage of a woman named only as Alice, describing how she allegedly experienced just that with Brand when she was only 16 and he a grown man of 30. When comics talk about themselves on stage, often it’s an act. But what if it wasn’t? What if the audience laughing eagerly along were really rewarding and normalising something we now call abuse, while behind them the mainstream TV and media industry he now makes a career out of railing against was enthusiastically doing the same?

Making women the butt of jokes has been a commonplace of pop culture as long as pop culture has existed. The point of view is the male one; the plot is will he or won’t he succeed in nailing her. She isn’t a person, she’s a goal. Score!

Listening to clips of that show now – the interview in which he offers a female aide to Jimmy Savile effectively as bait, or the lewd remarks about a female newsreader – it’s hard to believe they were ever broadcast.

Is it? (I don’t know, I haven’t heard them.) Lewd guy v frigid bitch is a staple of movies, tv shows, pop songs, novels, you name it.

Some will question why the allegations against him are only surfacing now, though the obvious answer is that the timing matters a whole lot less than the substance of what these women have to say. But look how long it took female surgeons to volunteer last week’s awful accounts of being groped in operating theatres, only to be lectured by one retired anaesthetist in a letter to the Times about needing to “toughen up”. Imagine how police might have responded a decade ago to women reporting being attacked by a notorious womaniser, after willingly entering his home; consider too the torrent of hate and threats that has previously greeted women identified online as accusing high-profile footballers of rape.

Nothing new under the sun.

It’s never at all about narcissism though, never never never.

So it turns out all these indictments of Trump are Trump’s political strategy.

Donald Trump is intent on leaning into his criminal cases to boost his 2024 campaign through the election next year, according to multiple people close to the former president, after he tested that strategy through multiple indictments and decided it gave him major political advantages.

That’s great. The more of a criminal he is the more votes he gets. What a shining city on a hill we are.

The summer also gave Trump the confirmation that blurring the lines between the legal effort and political effort was perhaps his best overall strategy, in the gamble that he could use the criminal cases to benefit his campaign, which he could then use to benefit himself.

The conclusion has precipitated the joke internally that Trump is not so much running for the White House in 2024 but for his freedom, because were he to win, he could appoint an attorney general to dismiss any pending cases or potentially pardon himself if already convicted.

“Joke”? What joke? Internally or externally? That’s exactly what he plans to do and if he does get elected it’s exactly what he will do. Nobody is joking. Also, funny it isn’t.

Nope, still not getting it.

Boebert takes another stab at “apologizing” and fails again for the same reason – the classic mistake of framing the behavior one is “apologizing” for as lovably passionate or eccentric or too intense or whatever the self-flattery organ comes up with.

See, this is the thing: if you do something wrong, you can’t apologize by telling us you did it because you’re so awesome. That doesn’t work. We can all see that you’re trying to convince us that you’re a fabulous person instead of apologizing.

In an interview on Sunday with the conservative One America News Network, the far-right Colorado congresswoman attributed the behavior – recorded on security camera footage – to what she described as her being “maybe overtly animated”.

Yeah that’s cute, Loz, but it won’t fly. You were being loud and rude and intrusive, you were vaping, you were dry-humping the guy next to you. That’s not being “animated,” it’s being a noisy obnoxious crude brat spoiling other people’s theater experience.

“I was laughing, I was singing, having a fantastic time, was told to kinda settle it down a little bit, which I did, but then, my next slip up was taking a picture,” she told the network about her date a week earlier. “I was a little too eccentric … I’m on the edge of a lot of things.”

More self-flattery.

It’s so basic. Never combine an apology with self-flattery. Never. Self-flattery simply cancels out the apology, and adds a new layer of conceit and self-serving.

The adults are getting involved. Sure took them a long time.

The equalities regulator has said the Government must urgently publish its delayed trans guidance for schools to provide teachers with “much needed clarity”.

Marcial Boo, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s chief executive, revealed that the watchdog had been privately urging the Department for Education (DfE) to “expedite” their new guidance, amid wrangling in Government over how to respond to children seeking to change their gender identity in schools.

Wrangling in government over it – as if they were “activists” on Twitter.

Writing to campaigners, Mr Boo also admitted that the EHRC’s own official guidance, in place for almost a decade, had been wrong to tell teachers that they would automatically be guilty of anti-trans discrimination if they referred to a “previously female pupil” as a girl. He said the regulator was urgently correcting “inaccuracies” in its “technical guidance” on the application of the Equality Act in schools.

This has been their mistake all along: equality has nothing to do with it. It’s not equality to force people to pretend that men are women, and it’s not inequality to say that men are not women. It’s not about equality. It’s about identity, which is a much squishier category, and therefore a much trickier one to try to enforce. That is obviously all the more true when the “identity” issue is people claiming to be the other sex. Equality really has nothing to do with that.

Campaigners for women and children’s rights described the EHRC’s admission that its own guidance was incorrect as “enormously welcome” and a “crucial step towards the |Government producing sound guidance for schools”.

Yes, it seems like a big deal. I wish we could have something similar here…without having to take Trump along with it.

…in a letter to the Sex Matters campaign group, which alerted the EHRC to “errors” in the guidance, Mr Boo said: “You raise important and complex areas of equality law. For example, as you suggest, it may not be directly discriminatory for a school not to refer to a child by their preferred gender (where it differs from their legal sex). However, schools must carefully consider how they justify and consistently apply their policies on this matter to avoid any risk of indirect discrimination.”

Well done Sex Matters.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said: “When Sex Matters wrote to the EHRC, we argued that a school refusing to refer to a boy as a girl, or a girl as a boy, is not discriminating against a ‘trans child’. In fact it is protecting that child, because biological sex is a crucial factor in safeguarding.”

Call young Sally “Sam” and let her change clothes with the boys, and see what happens.

Hmmm. If I were a passer-by I’m not sure I would find that a very persuasive slogan.

I get the thinking, maybe…It’s about being defiant, unafraid, in our face, unashamed, bold, brassy, blunt, real. It’s a sort of imitation of feminism, in a way – feminism that said all along we’re not ladies and we’re not girls, we’re women, with all that that implies. It’s not a dainty business, being a woman – you try pushing an infant human being through a small hole in your body. Feminism said all along that we’re not asking, we’re telling; we’re not begging, we’re taking. We’re not pleading or coaxing or simpering or apologizing, we’re just demanding what’s ours. Feminism was often deliberately sweary and coarse. Maybe trans activism sees itself as doing the same thing.

But of course it doesn’t work if it’s men telling women to suck the men’s trans balls. It doesn’t work because it’s punching down, fairly literally. Women don’t rape men; men do rape women. Orders to suck someone’s balls are inescapably linked to rape. Trans activists with any brains should be able to figure that out. I’m forced to conclude, then, that these people are thick as two short planks.

Originally a comment by Sastra on A policy vacuum filled with loonies.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that, due to a confluence of factors, modern society has become entangled in a cultural version of the Savior Complex. The psychologically exaggerated need to save other people has lead to the inadvertent creation of those who need saving: in this case, the Trans Child. Here the combined influence of Therapy Culture and nostalgia for civil rights battles seduces people into loving the pure and innocent Authentic Self suppressed by the Orthodox and bullied by Oppressors. These kids are vulnerable, weak, needy, hurt. They’re just like gay kids used to be in the bad old days. But they can save them! Today, in the here and now! All that’s needed is the courage to believe them, and to continue to believe them, despite whatever obstacles the “reasonable” may try to put in their path.

Psychologists point out that those with Savior Complex can often harm those they try to help by overestimating their capabilities, misdiagnosing the problem, and/or inhibiting the natural growth and development of the designated Victim. Again, that seems to apply here. Teachers deal closely with children; it’s especially easy for them to be seduced into a role of noble advocate rescuing their charges from an unfeeling world.