Laurie Penny anthology recommendation:

Trans ideologist behaving badly.

After JKR tweeted that, he did remember to share the note…but that’s all he did: simply share it. No apology, no discussion…and he closed replies.

There are many many quote tweets pointing out what crappy journalism and crappy behavior this is.

Just one example:

Well this is the thing, isn’t it. Trans rights. What are they? What, exactly, are they? Is it a “right” to force everyone to agree that one is something one is not? If so, how do we know that’s a right? What chain of reasoning or history of injustices shores up the claim that that is a right? Is it a “right” for men to help themselves to everything set aside for women on the grounds that they are trans women? If so, how, why, on what grounds, and what about women who object?

Well I for one do indeed question both gender ideology and claims about “trans rights” that never ever ever explain exactly what these rights are and how they were discovered or established or justified or explained or anything at all besides asserted.

Is there a right for men to take everything women have on the grounds that the men are trans, i.e. that they claim to be women? Is there? Is that universally agreed to be a right? So universally that it fits seamlessly into the UDHR, the actual official written down Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Can Laurie Penny tell us where to find a record of this universal agreement? Can she explain how that can be a right without canceling women’s rights? Can she explain how and why that would be fair and just?

Many people have asked in reply to that tweet. Naturally she hasn’t responded.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Seeking to balance inclusivity.

It can’t be inclusive at all times though. Competitions can’t be inclusive. The whole point of competitions is that some people win and others lose.

Emotional blackmail using word games. Just as “inclusivity” is not necessarily good, “discrimination” is not always bad. Discrimination is choosing. Choosing a winner distinguishes the winner from all those who did not win, discriminating against them specifically, by design. Even before any official competition, a whole bunch of would-be competitors are removed because they are not good enough to participate. At all. Everybody knows this is how sport works.

Note that the only “inclusivity” trans activists are interested in is that which lets men compete against women in the women’s division. Are they interested in “including” children into adult leagues? No. Do they want to include athletes not good enough to make the cut? No. Do they want to include men not claiming to be “trans” into the women’s division? No. So all the bleating about “inclusivity” is for trans identified males and TiMs alone, so they can beat women and take women’s prizes. They want a special dispensation, a papal sporting indulgence that lets them officially cheat, as much as they want. Specifically, they want to cheat and win. They don’t want anyone else to benefit from the supposed openness and inclusivity they’re demanding for themselves.

NBC reported, confusedly, on the decision by British Rowing that has Peter Tatchell so distraught.

British Rowing has banned transgender athletes from competing in elite female races, but has created three different categories that allow transgender participation, with the policy set to come into effect on Sept. 11, the sports body said on Thursday.

British Rowing said only athletes who are “assigned female at birth” will be eligible to compete in its women’s competitions and represent Britain or England in international events.

Apart from the women’s category, all athletes will be eligible to compete in an ‘open’ category, while a ‘mixed’ category can be offered by organizers if 50% of crew are eligible from the women’s category.

Transgender rights have become a major talking point in recent months as sports seek to balance inclusivity while ensuring there is no unfair advantage.

…

“British Rowing is committed to promoting an environment in which rowing is accessible and inclusive and to ensuring that we provide opportunities and enjoyment for everyone,” the organization said in a statement.”

It can’t be inclusive at all times though. Competitions can’t be inclusive. The whole point of competitions is that some people win and others lose. Some people aren’t even qualified to compete. That’s just how it works. You can’t “balance inclusivity while ensuring there is no unfair advantage” because it’s unfair to include everyone.

Peter Tatchell got a “readers added context” on a dishonest tweet he dropped a few hours ago.

There is no ban on trans athletes, the note says. The tweet is an intentional lie, the note says.

Rev David Brindley tells us

A Tasmanian woman has been “outed” as a NAZI because she tweeted “DAY 88 of being investigated for ‘inciting hatred’ for stating the truth….”. Yep. 88 = HH so NAZI! Too bad for all those people filling out forms where their birth date is 1988, or who live at number 88, or perhaps even want to order 88 yards of curtains.

And it’s true!

How long do we have before all the numbers become Nazi numbers?

Laurie Penny getting things backward again.

Is she…unaware of the professional consequences for gender-critical women? Is she unaware of Kathleen Stock? Is she unaware of the actual police persecution of gender-critical women? Is she unaware of pretty much everything but herself?

A star is born.

In a conference room near the Capitol, young conservatives gathered in April to learn how to run for office — how to win and wield government power.

Among the keynote speakers at the summit, hosted by a group devoted to “training America’s future statesmen today,” was Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department official who in 2020 sought to use federal law enforcement power to undo then-President Donald Trump’s defeat.

Cool cool. Young “conservatives” gathered to learn how to seize power by force.

The criminal indictment of Trump unsealed on Tuesday depicts in vivid detail Clark’s alleged role in the conspiracy prosecutors accuse Trump of orchestrating. The indictment identifies Clark only as “Co-Conspirator 4,” but includes details that match existing reporting about Clark’s post-election role. It portrays him as a linchpin of plans to bypass the acting attorney general and use the imprimatur of the Justice Department to spread “knowingly false claims of election fraud” and deceitfully substitute legitimate electors for sham alternates supporting Trump.

That’s justice: do whatever it takes to win.

Last year, he landed a top job at a think tank laying the groundwork for a possible second Trump term. A once-obscure government bureaucrat, Clark now appears as a pundit on conservative television and podcasts. In July, he was spotted at a party celebrating the publication of an authorized biography of former Fox host Tucker Carlson at Washington’s swanky Metropolitan Club.

A biography of Tucker Carlson! Authorized no less.

Clark has not been indicted by the special counsel, Jack Smith, who brought Tuesday’s indictment. But Smith has said his investigation is ongoing. A district attorney in Georgia is also probing Clark’s actions. And a D.C. Bar disciplinary office is pursuing ethics charges against him that could ultimately strip him of his law license. The charges, filed by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel last summer, allege that Clark engaged in dishonest conduct and attempted to interfere with “the administration of justice.”

Yeah but those are all deep-staters who think Covid is real.

Clark directed questions to a spokesperson for the think tank where he works, the Center for Renewing America. The spokesperson, Rachel Cauley, said, “The regime hates those who don’t blindly obey, it insists on criminalizing and destroying those who disagree, and when that doesn’t work, it uses its scribes at The Washington Post to further abuse and intimidate us into submission.”

“It’s a good thing Jeff Clark and the Center for Renewing America are made of tougher stock than that,” Cauley added. “We are fighting alongside every American who has been taunted, abused, tailed, and staked out by our regime media and federal government.”

So it’s a think tank for lunatics.

How they will do it if and when they get the chance:

Out of the many new details revealed in former President Donald Trump’s third indictment, the most chilling one may be a discussion between Trump’s White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin and “Co-Conspirator 4” — who, based on the Jan. 6 Committee report, appears to be Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official in the Trump administration. That discussion, in which the man believed to be Clark suggests using the Insurrection Act, underscores how Trump’s inner circle wasn’t simply seeking ways to delay Trump’s departure from the White House, but actively gaming out how he could stay in power even in the face of a mass movement to restore democracy — using military force.

That is, even if he simply unmistakably “stayed in power” by naked force, he could make it stick despite mass resistance. How? The Insurrection Act.

According to the indictment, Philbin repeatedly discouraged Trump and his loyalists from trying to stay in the White House beyond the end of his term. In December, he allegedly told Trump, “There is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House [o]n January 20th.” Then on the afternoon of Jan. 3, Philbin apparently tried to dissuade “Co-Conspirator 4” from trying to assume the role of acting attorney general as part of a reported bid to overturn the election results with Trump. He allegedly told that person that “there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if the Defendant [Trump] remained in office nonetheless, there would be ‘riots in every major city in the United States.’” The indictment alleges that Clark responded, “Well … that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”  

Why there’s what? Why there’s an act empowering the president to send troops to shut down protests.

This stunning statement marks not just an authoritarian posture, but an authoritarian strategic vision. The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military domestically to put down a rebellion or unrest. The law has been invoked a handful of times in the past century, most recently by then-President George H.W. Bush to put down the Los Angeles riots in 1992 after the police beating of Rodney King. Civil liberties experts have criticized the law for giving the president too much power: The Brennan Center for Justice’s Joseph Nunn has described it as “ripe for abuse,” cautioning against the president’s “almost limitless discretion to deploy federal troops in cases of civil unrest” under the law and Supreme Court rulings on presidential power. In many ways the American public is at the mercy of the president to use the law in discerning and limited ways to deal with emergencies, not as a tool for quashing dissent.

But when the president is Donald Trump, there is no such mercy to be at.

I can’t find any news coverage of this (yet) so the bird will have to do for now.

It’s not Nazism to know that men are men and not women.

Updating to add: wrong address in the tweet – correct one is the ipaper.

News from Ireland:

Dangerous inmate Barbie Kardashian has been transferred to a male prison – but remains under a restricted regime for the safety of others, we can reveal. Sources say that Kardashian, who identifies as a trans woman after she secured a gender recognition certificate, has been moved into Limerick Prison’s D block in recent days in the men’s side of the jail. The lag had been housed in an isolation unit of the now-old female part of the prison, which has since closed after the opening of a brand new facility there recently.

Golly, they don’t write very well at the Irish Mirror – but I guess we get the idea.

A factor behind the move to the male prison is because of Kardashian’s behaviour towards women. But measures are in place for the safety of others. This means that she is only allowed out of her cell when other inmates are locked into theirs.

More bad writing. I guess the point is that he was moved to the male prison because he’s dangerous to women, but he’s also just plain dangerous, so he can’t leave his cell unless the other male inmates are locked into theirs. Yer Hannibal Lecter type, who can break through all shackles.

A number of prison officers must also be present when she is outside her cell. A source explained: “This individual is an absolute nightmare to deal with. She is extremely violent towards women and poses a huge threat to inmates and staff. She is in the men’s prison now which is a change-up but it’s only recently. There haven’t been any incidents of note yet but there are still huge fears around her. So with that, staff are taking no chances and she’s on a restricted regime and there’s a number of factors around that. But it’s in place for the safety of prison officers and inmates, that’s the priority here.”

The pronoun nonsense is especially irritating here.

Well knock me down with a 2 by 4.

Oliver Brown in The Telegraph:

British Rowing is expected to announce a dramatic abandoning of its controversial transgender policy on Thursday by restricting the women’s category solely to those born female, Telegraph Sport can reveal.

All right. Now all other sporting bodies all over the world kindly follow suit. Restore fairness to women!

After months of intense discussion at board level, the governing body has decided to follow the majority view of its 31,500 members, more than 80 per cent of whom are understood to have urged a change in approach that would ensure the fairness and integrity of the female category.

It is about. fucking. time.

Rowing is the last of the major Olympic sports in Britain to scrap its hugely contentious rules around transgender inclusion in women’s races, with athletics, swimming and cycling all having banned biological males from female competition. In May, Telegraph Sport revealed how, at the 2015 Boat Race, a place in the Cambridge University women’s reserve crew had been taken by Sarah Gibson, who was born male and who attended an elite boys’ school.

Never again, ok?

Awww Free Willy wants to be an advertising model. Poor guy must be jealous of Dylan Mulvaney.

He was such a star on that Big Brother thing all those years ago.

Sarah Smith at the BBC leans on the same aspects of the indictment as I did.

Some US commentators have introduced another reason why they think these charges are the most serious. They see in Mr Trump’s alleged conduct a threat to the ideals that underpin the bedrock of the country.

Not since the nation’s founding has any president “voted out of office been accused of plotting to hold onto power in an elaborate scheme of deception and intimidation that would lead to violence in the halls of Congress,” writes Peter Baker in the New York Times.

He goes on: “As serious as hush money and classified documents may be, this third indictment in four months gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.”

Mr Smith also made a similar point in the indictment, that Mr Trump created “an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and eroded public faith in the administration of the election”.

Exactly so. You’d think everyone would see it that way – including Republicans.

Peter Baker on the implications of the indictment:

But not since the framers emerged from Independence Hall on that clear, cool day in Philadelphia 236 years ago has any president who was voted out of office been accused of plotting to hold onto power in an elaborate scheme of deception and intimidation that would lead to violence in the halls of Congress.

What makes the indictment against Donald J. Trump on Tuesday so breathtaking is not that it is the first time a president has been charged with a crime or even the second. Mr. Trump already holds those records. But as serious as hush money and classified documents may be, this third indictment in four months gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.

That is, will it cease to be any kind of democracy and become just a series of dictatorships.

At the core of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed during that summer in Philadelphia. Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ the authority of the government to overturn the will of the voters without consequence? The question would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, but the Trump case raises the kind of specter more familiar in countries with histories of coups and juntas and dictators.

Exactly. This is Pinochet territory, Berlusconi territory, Mussolini and Hitler territory.

In a 45-page, four-count indictment, Mr. Smith dispensed with the notion that Mr. Trump believed his claims of election fraud. “The defendant knew that they were false,” it said, and made them anyway to “create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

And, in fact, in the country itself, and its political system, and its relationship to justice, truth, fair dealing, law…pretty much ever broadly liberal ideal you can think of. It’s eroded mine down to something smaller than an ant.

A legal eagle, Randall D. Eliason, takes us through the third indictment.

The charging decisions in the indictment reflect smart lawyering by the special counsel Jack Smith and his team. The beauty of this indictment is that it provides three legal frameworks that prosecutors can use to tell the same fulsome story.

It will allow prosecutors to put on a compelling case that will hold Mr. Trump fully accountable for the multipronged effort to overturn the election. At the same time, it avoids legal and political pitfalls that could have delayed or derailed the prosecution.

Good to know. I woke up this morning brooding on the two cliffs we’re racing toward – the climate one and the prolific criminal elected president again and destroying everything he can reach.

The conspiracy charge, which makes up most of the indictment, encompasses the tentacles of the scheme to overturn the election results. Pressuring state officials to overturn their elections, recruiting slates of fake electors from seven states, trying to corrupt the Justice Department to further the scheme, pressuring Mike Pence to throw out lawful votes and directing the mob to the Capitol on Jan. 6 — all are included as part of a single overarching conspiracy to defraud the United States.

A conspiracy requires two or more people who agree to participate. This indictment lists but does not yet charge or formally identify six Trump co-conspirators. Mr. Smith clearly has enough evidence to charge those unindicted co-conspirators but has chosen not to — for now. This, too, is a smart tactical decision.

Proceeding against Mr. Trump alone streamlines the case and gives Mr. Smith the best chance for a trial to be held and concluded before the 2024 presidential election. It’s possible some of the unindicted co-conspirators will cut a deal and testify for the prosecution. If not, there is plenty of time to charge them later.

Seems right to me. Focus on Trump because he’s the great peril here.

Counts 2 and 3 are conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of a proceeding, under 18 U.S.C. Section 1512. Prosecutors have successfully used this statute to charge hundreds of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, with disrupting the joint congressional proceeding to certify the election results.

But when it comes to Mr. Trump and the senior people around him, this obstruction charge is much broader than the assault on the Capitol. The conspiracy to obstruct justice again encompasses all the different methods he and his allies used to seek to overturn the election results by thwarting the proceeding to certify the election. In addition, his dispatching supporters to the Capitol and then taking no steps to stop them for three hours potentially makes him liable for aiding and abetting that obstruction — even though he did not set foot in the Capitol himself. And aiding and abetting is part of the theory of the obstruction charge in Count 3.

He wanted to set foot in the Capitol. He meant to. The Secret Service wouldn’t take him there.

This indictment presents detailed and overwhelming allegations. It reflects sound legal and tactical decisions that should allow the government to move quickly and put on a powerful case. The most significant prosecution of Mr. Trump is off to a strong start.

Hope so.

Hahahaha I for one, unlike SOME people, never wear either baseball caps or shades. I’ll cop to being “bitchy” though – but not in the way Mr Willoughby means it.

(It’s very telling though. Men wear shades and caps; women are bitchy. Clearly there’s not a misogynist bone in Will’s body. Clearly.)

The “friendly” atheist again, at Religion News Service:

Richard Dawkins has abandoned science to justify his transphobia

Even the title is ridiculous. It’s not “abandoning science” to know that men are not women. Trans ideology is not scientific, it’s all about the fee-fees.

Subhead:

It’s jarring to see the world’s most famous atheist use his massive platform to downplay or deny trans identities.

Wait. Are we talking about science here, or idenninies? They’re not the same, to put it mildly.

And how is it “jarring” to see an atheist deny that claims about idenninies can trump physical realities?

For decades, the renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins urged his readers to use science and reason to counter religious misinformation. Now Dawkins is abandoning both to spread anti-transgender rhetoric embraced by religious conservatives.

Other way around, bro. Trans ideology has nothing to do with either science or reason. It’s about fantasy, and bullying everyone into endorsing other people’s (frankly tedious) fantasies. Neither science nor reason tells us we must or should do that.

The podcast episode dropped days after Dawkins wrote an essay for the British magazine The New Statesman answering the question, “What is a woman?” Dawkins’ reductive response boiled down to “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes,” as if the absence of a single chromosome answers the question.

Reductive shmeductive. The absurd baroque explanations of trans ideology are too complicated by half.

And author J.K. Rowling, whom Dawkins called “very brave” in his podcast, has couched her inflammatory rhetoric in biological terms.

How very dare she! We’re not biological, we’re divine airy souls self-created by our own sacred minds. How could a famous atheist like Dawkins not understand that???

I can no longer recommend Dawkins’ books to people who want to educate themselves about evolution.

It would damage his soul if he did.

It’s also maddening because Dawkins remains the go-to atheist for reporters and media outlets. There are more atheists who are LGBTQ, women and people of color than ever before, yet it’s Dawkins who often takes center stage whenever there are public conversations about atheism. That’s not his fault, of course: He literally wrote the most popular book on the subject. But it’s irresponsible to use his platforms to spread ignorance on a topic that critics have repeatedly said he doesn’t understand and often gets flat-out wrong.

Which critics are these though? The ones who adhere to the gender ideology. Critics of gender ideology on the other hand take a different view. I for instance think Hemant Mehta is flat-out wrong about nearly everything he says in this sloppy piece.

Bros line up to brosplain trans ideology for Dawkins. (That is, they line up that way on my Twitter, because they would, wouldn’t they.)

And what is the “expertise” that tells us men are women if they say they are? Having a trans significant other, of course. What more do you want?

There’s no such thing as “their” pronouns. Pronouns aren’t something we can own.

It’s true that bullies can use opposite pronouns as insults – referring to a man as “she” implies he’s girly, and referring to a woman as “he” implies she’s too butch. We still don’t own any pronouns.

More to the point, it’s not “respect” to pretend men can be women. It’s that other thing, that opposite thing.