Hmmm. Something odd here. Ohio Capital Journal July 25:

Male anti-abortion religious leaders mull murder charges for pregnant people at a national event.

An all-male panel of anti-abortion religious leaders from around the country met Friday night to discuss the strategies that should be used to end abortion in every state at any stage of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape and incest, and with criminal punishment for the pregnant person in line with existing criminal penalties for murder, which includes the death penalty.

Odd. We are told the sex of the people discussing the strategies but not the sex of the people they are planning to punish and kill.

Why’s that? Why is it ok to specify men and males but not women and females?

Friday’s speakers included Wisconsin-based Operation Save America Director Jason Storms and former OSA director Rusty Thomas, along with Arizona-based End Abortion Now communications director Zachary Conover, Georgia Right to Life President Ricardo Davis, and Gabriel Rench, a member of the extremist Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

How does the reporter, Kelcie Moseley-Morris, know all those speakers are men? Is it because of the names? Jason, Rusty, Zachary, Ricardo, Gabriel? Names are unmistakable but pregnancy is not?

The panel focused on legislation they call “equal protection” bills, such as Georgia’s House Bill 496, also called the Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which was introduced in February but did not advance in the state’s House of Representatives. An “equal protection” bill, by their definition, is one that adds criminal penalties to a pregnant person for the intentional termination of a pregnancy at any stage, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The law would make an exception if the abortion was performed to prevent the pregnant person’s “imminent death or great bodily injury.”

It’s a funny thing, this. Surely the point of saying these are all men is that it’s part of the never-ending war on women – that it’s men forcing women to stay pregnant against their will – that it’s men taking rights away from women – that it’s men forcing physical labor and pain on women – that it’s men forcing women to do something that men will never have to do. But that point is thrown away if you then go on to claim that pregnancy is something that happens to “people” rather than specifically women. Why make the point that this is men working to enslave women and then cancel your own point by pretending the victims are people in general?

H/t Mike B.

Originally a comment by Sonderval on Too small to measure.

I think this topic is so popular with politicians because it is like a towel in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost.”

Support for “trans rights” is like a towel: If you express vocal support for “trans rights”, you can automatically be assumed to be right on all the other issues the left cares about. “Trans rights” are optimal here for three reasons:

1. They negatively affect only something deemed unimportant by most (women’s rights).

2. Implementing measures to ensure “trans rights” is easy and does not interrupt existing power structures. If you were to fight for racial equality, for the poor etc., you would have to actually DO something about it (increase taxes for the rich, improve social measures for the poor, fight against racial prejudice etc.). Trans rights are like an easy-to-carry-along towel: You can simply say “Let everyone be considered a woman who wants to” and you’re done and everyone will assume that you would also fight for other social justice measures even if you never do.

3. They are so contrary to common sense that you also signal to be a person of great sophistication who is able to overcome wrong misconceptions and prejudices (and if you can do this here, the towel effect makes sure that people will believe you do it everywhere). It is the ultimate virtue signalling.

A tiny step in the right direction, perhaps.

A senior member of the Labour frontbench has offered an apology to a fellow MP, Rosie Duffield, who has said she felt ostracised by the party because of her views on gender reforms.

Duffield had also accused male party colleagues of trying to shout her down in the Commons earlier this year when she spoke to back the government’s move to block gender reforms proposed in Scotland.

Well it’s not just a matter of “accusation”; we saw them do it.

“There are times when Rosie’s kind of tweeted or liked certain things and I’ve been really upset and there were times where, you know, I’ve taken a much more defensive position around trans equality and Rosie’s felt that [I] personally, and others, haven’t listened.”

What the hell is “trans equality” and what does it have to do with anything? Nobody on Team Gender Critical wants to make trans people “unequal” in any way. That’s a massive part of this whole problem: we’re accused of wanting to take away “trans rights” or taking a wrong position on “trans equality” when those are not the issue. It’s trans-identifying men who want to encroach on or just destroy women’s rights; it’s not the other way around.

A tiny tiny step.

Wait a second Don, there’s more.

A former Trump White House lawyer said the evidence against the former president over his handling of classified documents was now “overwhelming” and would “last an antiquity”, after new charges were filed in the case on Thursday.

New charges. New charges!

“I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity,” Ty Cobb told CNN. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”

In June, the special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 counts regarding his handling of classified records after leaving the White House.

On Thursday, in a superseding indictment filed in a Florida court, four more charges were outlined. A second Trump staffer, the Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, was charged, alongside Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet. Nauta previously pleaded not guilty.

Trump was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence. He also faces a new count under the Espionage Act, for keeping a document about US plans to attack Iran which he memorably discussed on tape.

I missed the superseding indictment. Good news. Also disgusting news that he’s dragged yet another powerless underling down with him.

Xander Elliards at The National [Scotland] recycled The Herald’s story on Police Scotland’s friendliness toward men who punch women in the head, with an original addition of his (xir?) own in the final two paragraphs.

At the protest, the WWW group represented the “gender critical” side of the debate around gender reform. They believe that someone’s sex is immutable and as such transgender people should be barred from women’s only sports and spaces.

A counter-protest of trans rights advocates saw demonstrators hold signs suggesting that WWW were wrong to focus on attacking trans people’s right to exist rather than women’s rights issues such as the gender pay gap or domestic violence.

Poisonous young shit should be fired.

The Herald [Scotland] on the legalization of punching women in the face:

Police Scotland is at the centre of a human rights storm after a woman was assaulted during a women’s rights event in Aberdeen. Julie Marshall said she was punched in the arm and head at a rally organised by Women Won’t Wheesht in the city’s Duthie Park on Sunday. The man responsible received a recorded police warning, sparking anger from campaigners about the leniency of the punishment.

In a letter to Sir Iain Livingstone, Police Scotland’s Chief Constable, the policy analysis collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, expressed concerns over the caution.

The police brushed it off.

Police defended the decision, saying they were acting ”in line with the Lord Advocate’s guidelines.”

Those guidelines are not public.

“It is fine for us to do nothing about a man who punched a woman in the face, neck, and arm in public, because our secret guidelines that you can’t see say so.” That’s justice, that’s standing up for women.

Ms Marshall, who said she was in “excruciating pain” after the attack, told The Herald: “I’m really, really angry at Police Scotland. I feel that giving this man a caution after an unprovoked attack, they’re just saying you can punch these women that you don’t agree with and steal their property with impunity and all you are going to get is a slap on the wrist.”

Ms Marshall said the police had not contacted her since she gave them a statement in Duthie Park. “They didn’t call me to let me know that they’ve given the person a caution. They have had absolutely no contact with me at all.

“And I find that absolutely shameful. Women, or any person regardless of what sex they are, who have suffered an episode of violence should be treated with more bloody respect to be quite honest.”

But especially women because we are at a physical disadvantage compared to men, which (coming around full circle) is exactly why men don’t get to pretend to be women in the first place. It’s why we object to this ideology, it’s why the whole thing is such a ludicrous inversion of fairness and rights and respect.

What about that “warning”?

When the women have it coming they have it coming. Understood?

Joan Smith on police indifference to a violent attack on a woman:

Following the assault on Julie Marshall in Aberdeen last weekend, the policy analysis collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie has written to Sir Iain Livingstone, Police Scotland’s Chief Constable. Their letter asks how the caution [issued to the assaulter] squares with public bodies’ obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights to protect freedom of speech and assembly. Just two months ago, Livingstone admitted the existence of institutional sexism and misogyny at Police Scotland. 

Marshall’s experience points to a very specific problem, however. She has photographs of her injuries and gave a statement to police after the assault, but she was not even informed of the decision to let her assailant off with a warning. It is hard to imagine other circumstances in which an assault, in front of dozens of witnesses and in the presence of police officers, would be treated so lightly. 

The situation seems to be that the women in these situations are viewed by the police as already almost criminals – as at fault, as provoking violence, as having it coming. Women who won’t wheesht are the bullies, the violent, the equivalent of Proud Boys or Nazis or white nationalists. They’re viewed as deserving to be punched in the face by men.

All because they don’t think men are women.

Quite a Catch22, isn’t it. You can’t disagree with men who say they are women, because if you do you become an outlaw with no protection from men who want to (quoting) “punch them in the fucking face” and who put their urge to punch into action when they get the chance.

This is all the more interesting when you keep in mind that women who punch men in the fucking face are unlikely to break anything, while men who punch women in the fucking face are very likely to break something.

Police Scotland claims that handing a caution to Marshall’s assailant is in line with the Lord Advocate’s guidelines which, very conveniently, are not publicly available. But it reinforces the idea that police up and down the country still don’t take violence against women seriously — especially when the victims are feminists.

In fact it reinforces the idea that the police welcome violent against women who know that men are not women.

Also rewarding to read the replies to Jon Pike:

I wonder if the staffers who wouldn’t let the New Statesman publish Dawkins’s article without a contrary view are regretting it now.

It’s both entertaining and cheering to read the many replies to Andy.

It’s a funny thing that the Staggers decided to publish the Jacqueline Rose piece, because it’s so obviously bad and weak and empty. That’s the best they could do? Tells us something, doesn’t it.

Our experience is not hypothetical.

It’s not real persecution; it’s persecution envy. They want to be among The Persecuted not The Persecutors…although not…you know…really persecuted. Just…you know…the pretend kind. The kind no one actually cares about. The kind that’s a pretext for bullying other people. From a position of privilege.

“I am not ‘sir.'” Yeah right up there with do not get rich off my labor, do not rape me or kill me, do not enslave me or lynch me.

Then he tries to bully one of the workers.

He’s right you know.

Headline news: man says women are adult females.

Keir Starmer repeats anti-trans dogwhistle, claiming a woman is an ‘adult female’

Claiming? What else would a woman be? An infant male?

Sir Keir Starmer has said a woman is an “adult female” in response to being probed over the “penis question”, echoing language used by the Tories and gender critical’ campaigners to attack the trans community.

Hey now. Sophie Perry (the author of this absurd piece) is also echoing language used by Tories and gender criticals. She used the word “said” for instance – Tories and GCs use that word all the time. Isn’t it shocking?

Furthermore, we don’t define women accurately “to attack the trans community.” If “the trans community” decides it gets to change the meaning of the word “women” we get to say no you don’t. That’s not attacking, it’s just saying no. Women are allowed to say no, yaknow.

The term “biological women” is seen by many as a transphobic dogwhistle, and has been used by anti-trans campaigners as a term to stoke division between trans rights and women.

Here’s a thought. Maybe it’s the people who decided to start insisting, with menaces, that trans women are literally women in every sense who are stoking division.

The New Statesman introduces:

We asked two thinkers to address one of the most vexed questions of our time: “What is a woman?”
Here, Jacqueline Rose argues against the claim that sexual differentiation is “reality”.

Why not ask “what is a man”? Why is it only “what is a woman?” that is one of the most vexed questions?

Jacqueline Rose “argues”:

“What is a woman?” The formulation has the merit of suggesting that to be a woman, far from being obvious, is a question, and one susceptible to more than a single reply. This is encouraging at a time when the fight over the definition of what a woman is has taken on such virulence. Being a woman is at risk of becoming a protected category, as the binary man/woman hardens into place. This is happening even though it has always been a central goal of feminism to repudiate the very idea of womanhood, as a form of coercive control that means the end of freedom.

As the binary man/woman hardens into place? This is happening now, as we speak? It hadn’t already happened? We didn’t know there was a difference between women and men until recently? Then how could feminism even have existed? What did the word mean?

No feminism I know of ever had repudiation of the very idea of womanhood as a central goal. More the opposite. The central goal could be described as bringing women out of the shadows and hinterlands, out of seclusion and purdah, out of neglect and ignoring, to be as central and visible and part of things as men.

Ironically, this appeal to the category of woman as pre-given, unquestionable, is being made in the name of women’s safety, another core objective for feminism over the centuries…In the most prevalent version of this argument, trans women, who were once men, must be excluded from women-only spaces – which they threaten by dint of being, deep down, still a man – regardless of the lengths to which they have gone to leave that identity behind.

It doesn’t matter what “lengths” men go to; they can’t become women. Being a woman isn’t mere “identity.” People can’t become rabbits; men can’t become women.

They are frauds whom women should fear. But the case only holds if we are confident that we know what a man or a woman is in the first place.

Well, yes, but we are confident of that, with good reason.

Her punchline is meant to be inspiring:

“What is a woman?” Speak for yourself. Who on Earth can presume to answer the question on behalf of anyone else? In the end, it is a matter of generosity and freedom.

What is a man?

The grid is there for a reason. You can’t just walk out the door and go live off the grid. You have to know how to live off the grid, and make intelligent choices about exactly where off the grid you decide to live. You also have to know when it’s time to go back to living on the grid, if you don’t want to be a pile of rotting remains found months after you stop living on or off anything.

Three members of a Colorado family died while attempting to live “off the grid” in the Rocky Mountains, family members and investigators say. The emaciated remains of sisters Christine and Rebecca Vance and the latter’s 14-year old son, were found in a remote campsite this month. On Tuesday a coroner ruled that they probably died from starvation or exposure during the cold winter.

It appears that the group began camping last summer and died over the winter.

Camping is all very well, but once you run out of food it’s time to go back inside, where the grid is.

Rebecca Vance’s stepsister Trevala Jara, told the Washington Post on Wednesday: “She didn’t like the way the world was going, and she thought it would be better if her and her son and Christine were alone, away from everybody.”

The group – including the sisters who were in their 40s – had no outdoor survival experience and had watched online videos to learn about how to survive in Colorado’s rugged backcountry, Mrs Jara told US media.

They should have read Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and stayed on the grid, instead.

As if cooking ourselves isn’t enough, we also let a Kennedy run around causing multiple deaths.

(Ignore the Biden photo, the clip is Paul Offit.)

Much of the US is under an extreme heat warning. Really much of it.

Some of it has been for weeks.

Missouri and Iowa:

Illinois:

New York and environs:

Minnesota:

California:

When mature adults talk like addled teenagers.

Rosie Duffield and Putin both know where to look for the sun at dawn, but that doesn’t make them friends or allies. Claiming Putin is a friend of Rosie’s is fatuous.

Again – it’s not fascist to know that men are not women. How is Ghul not embarrassed to talk such childish drivel?

Again – fatuous. We’re not advocating for the marginalisation and erasure from public life of anyone. Men who claim to be women can go right on being in public life even though we point out that they are men. We’re not denying their right to existence as an equal human being – and saying we are is quite outrageous as well as fatuous. People’s right to existence as equal human beings does not depend on forcing everyone to agree with their fantasies about themselves. And it’s not “regressive” to know what women are.

Is she…just seriously stupid? I guess?

Updating to add even more fatuity.

R U 6?

But what does any of this have to do with equality?

What is “the self-identification principle”? In what way is it a “principle”? What besides sex is covered by the “principle”? Is self-identification as a squirrel a principle? How about self-identification as an MSP? How about self-identification as Maggie Chapman? In other words, how can it be a “principle” that people can self-identify as something they’re not and that we all have to accept and agree with their self-identification? Please explain.

What does identifying as something one is not have to do with equality? Please explain.

How is identifying as something one is not a very basic equality principle? How is it any kind of equality principle at all? How will making it possible for people to identify as something they are not ensure a fairer and more equal future for Scotland? Please explain.