Daughters excluded from peerage due to gender outraged by trans Tory standing for Lords seat

Matilda Simon, the 3rd Baron of Wythenshawe, is tipped to stand in a by-election to replace the Liberal Democrat Viscount Falkland, voted on by all sitting peers, with entries closing on May 15.

If successful, [he] would become the only woman, self-identified, among the chamber’s 92 hereditary peers, despite holding a title because [he was] born a man.

Daughters who have been shunned from their families’ hereditary lines because they are not men have called on Matilda Simon to “stop having her cake and eating it”.

His. His cake. That’s the whole point, isn’t it. He gets to be a Baron because he is a man.

Matilda Simon, born in 1955, inherited the title because they were born male. 

Their elder sister, Margaret, who was born two years earlier, would have inherited the title if Matilda Simon had been born a woman.

Women aren’t good enough to inherit titles, you see. Only men can do the title-inheriting. Those cudgels are heavy.

Under a legal loophole in the Gender Recognition Act 2014, a person changing gender “does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour”. 

Calling it a “legal loophole” is very polite. It’s a gaping cavern of unfair rules-engineering. Heads he wins, tails she loses.

With more by-elections looming, even if Matilda Simon does not stand this time to replace Viscount Falkland, who was elected in 1999, women have hit out at the “absolute farce” and labelled it an “absurd” situation.

Sigh. There it is again. Objected to; criticized; fumed at; denounced. Talk like a grownup.

Lady Simon graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, before becoming a lecturer at Manchester University. Now a furniture maker, she describes herself online as a feminist, socialist and LGBT+ advocate.

He is emphatically not a feminist.

Tom Holland a couple of weeks ago pondered the religiosity of the coronation hoopla.

The United Kingdom is alone in Europe in marking the accession of a new monarch with a coronation. Key elements of the ceremony – that it should be presided over by the archbishop of Canterbury, that two bishops should escort the king, that the congregation at the end of the service should join in acclaiming the newly crowned monarch – date back to the coronation in 973 of Edgar, the great-grandson of Alfred the Great. Dunstan, the formidable archbishop who composed the order of service, had in turn drawn on even older exemplars: some native to Britain, others reaching back to Roman times.

Oldest of all, however, and most imbued with a sense of the sacred, was one ritual in particular: an anointing. The inspiration for this, older than England, older than the house of Wessex, older than Christianity itself, was to be found in the Old Testament: “Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king.” This same verse, chanted at Edgar’s coronation and famously put to music by Handel, will be sung as well during Saturday’s service. Charles III will share in a ritual that originally marked out the kings of Israel – Saul and David and Solomon – as the adopted ones of God. The 21st century will be joined by means of a living ceremony to the bronze age.

It’s very archaic and it’s very theocratic. That’s one compelling reason to object to the whole thing, and indeed to protest it, even though that leads to 12 or 13 hours of imprisonment in today’s Britain. Charles is just another human, and a ceremony of “anointing” doesn’t change that, but everyone is supposed to pretend it does.

The British are an immeasurably more secular people than they were when the last coronation was staged 70 years ago. Almost 40% of the population of England and Wales described themselves in the most recent census as belonging to “no religion”. Meanwhile, the Churches of England and Scotland, both of which the monarch is constitutionally pledged to defend, are in decline relative both to various other Christian denominations and to religions that had barely registered in Britain when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne.

There are many in the country who are not just hostile to Christianity but wholly ignorant of its history, its doctrines, its ceremonies. That its head of state rules by virtue of claims that are rooted not merely in the supernatural, but in a specifically Christian understanding of the supernatural, is an aspect of the constitution that often remains discreetly veiled. There will be no hiding it, though, at the coronation. The insistence of Charles III on following the example of his mother, and refusing to allow his anointing to be screened on TV, will serve only to heighten viewers’ sense of the sacral quality of the ritual. A British coronation stands in a line of descent from the age of Solomon or it is nothing.

Most people watching the service next weekend probably will not care very much. A spectacle is a spectacle, after all, no matter its theological underpinnings. Yet it is likely that a substantial minority of people in Britain, rather than being dazzled by the display in Westminster Abbey, will find their distaste both for the monarchy itself and for its supernatural pretensions only confirmed by the pomp and ritual of the coronation. Catherine Bennett, writing in this paper recently, despaired of how arguments for a secular coronation “appear to have dented neither the church’s coronation ambitions nor the palace’s matching enthusiasm for spiritual choreography and knick-knacks”.

God-bothering plus servile adoration of rank. I’m not a fan.

Scottish PEN trips and falls down in the last sentence.

Regret blah blah atmosphere blah blah pursuant to which blah, disinvited, canceled, not to offend, Oscar Wilde, not to offend, opposition to the suppression –

AND BY THE WAY DON’T GO THINKING WE SUPPORT HATE SPEECH.

Why do this?

Really: why? Why send a man who is a walking talking smirking parody of women to talk to a woman about her novel about an adolescent girl? Why do that? What is the point? The only point that springs to mind is to mock and belittle and taunt women. So…why do that?

H/t Mostly Cloudy

All we can do is hope his head explodes.

One day he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The next he was on prime-time television pushing election lies, defending his own coup attempt and refusing to back Ukraine.

…

…Even though McConnell and others privately loathe Trump and wish him gone, they dare not alienate his fervent support base. Rick Wilson, a former Republican consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, sums it up in one word: fear.

“They are afraid of the mob, they’re afraid of the horde, they’re afraid of the anger and the craziness and the rage and the threats that come any time a Republican elected official really stands up and opposes Donald Trump,” Wilson said.

He added: “None of the major elected officials – McConnell, McCarthy, the big state governors – are going to come out and say what they believe and know: that he is a monstrous figure and he is a dangerous figure.”

Because their selfish personal desires are more important than disavowing a dangerous monstrosity.

This week, in a civil case, a New York jury determined that Trump sexually abused and defamed the writer E Jean Carroll, awarding her $5m in damages (Trump is appealing the verdict). That alone would be enough to sink most political careers but McCarthy repeatedly dodged the issue when asked to comment by reporters on Capitol Hill.

Other Republicans went further in expressing their fealty to Trump. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told reporters: “That jury’s a joke. The whole case is a joke.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added: “When it comes to Donald Trump, the New York legal system is off the rails.” Former vice-president Mike Pence told NBC News: “I would tell you, in my four and a half years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behaviour of that nature.”

What happened to “thou shalt not bear false witness?” We know that can’t possibly be true, because Trump is what he is. Trump goes in for defamation every time he opens his mouth.

I suppose Pence justifies that absurd lie via the word “behavior” – i.e. he never saw Trump grab a woman by the pussy.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “They have refused to divorce themselves from someone that they know is both a political loser for them and who represents things that are completely destructive to our democracy. After everything that we have seen, after everything that the Republican party itself has endured in terms of its underperforming in multiple election cycles, the only reason why they haven’t divorced themselves from Donald Trump is because they don’t want to.”

They’re all hoping he’ll grab them between the legs.

Mark Cunliffe writes about the repressive policing of coronation protests last weekend:

It became very clear early on Coronation Saturday that things were not right. Reports emerged that police had targeted vans belonging to #NotMyKing protesters, and that others were also targeted by police before they had even begun to protest. 

Many MPs were quick to condemn the actions of the police with Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome tweeting: “Protest is fundamental to democracy. People must have the right to oppose having an unelected head of state, or more than £100m of public funds being spent on a coronation when millions rely on food banks. These arrests should concern us all.”

Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana tweeted “It is deeply disturbing that organisers of the #NotMyKing protest in London have been arrested this morning, before the protest even began. Whatever you think of the monarchy, the right to peaceful protest is fundamental to democracy. This is a chilling violation of that right.”

And why on earth should the monarchy be immune from protest anyway? Nobody asked for the monarchy, let alone voted for it; why shouldn’t people express their opinion of it?

Perhaps even more sinister is that the CEO of Republic, Graham Smith, who was one of 64 arrested at the Coronation, repeatedly stated that he had been in close conversation with the Met for four months prior to the event, that they knew all the details of the protest and had approved them.

This is the same Met that’s notoriously riddled with misogyny, right? The one that included Wayne Couzens in its ranks? Now it pretends to approve protests in advance and then goes “Hahaha busting you anyway, suckaaaaaaaaaaaaas.”

[O]n coronation day the Conservative party’s deputy chair, Lee Anderson Tweeted “Not My King? If you do not wish to live in a country that has a monarchy the solution is not to turn up with your silly boards. The solution is to emigrate.” It’s not quite as easy as that: Brexit took away our rights to live, work and retire in 27 other European states and we are now restricted to just 90-day visits. 

Also that’s not the solution anyway. People are allowed to object to aspects of government, and say so, and protest them. They’re allowed to do that and go on living in the country in question.

Or they could but perhaps under Rishi Sunak’s Public Order Bill they no longer can.

Is it being melodramatic to compare our government’s new laws and the subsequent police action to those of Russia or North Korea? The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, recently warned:

“This new law imposes serious and undue restrictions on these rights that are neither necessary nor proportionate to achieve a legitimate purpose as defined under international law. This law is wholly unnecessary as UK police already have the powers to act against violent and disruptive demonstrations.”

He added: “It is especially worrying that the law expands the powers of the police to stop and search individuals, including without suspicion, defines some of the new criminal offences in a vague and overly broad manner and imposes unnecessary and disproportionate criminal sanctions on people organizing or taking part in peaceful protests.”

Grim.

One good thing about Trump’s campaigning: he keeps incriminating himself.

During a town hall event on CNN Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump made multiple incriminating remarks about his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s responses will further hurt his case should Special Counsel Jack Smith charge the former president in connection with his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol and other attempts to hold onto power unlawfully. Trump’s statements were also valuable to Fulton County DA Fani Willis in her investigation and possible prosecution.

Consider what Trump had to say about former Vice President Pence. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out that Pence has blamed Trump for endangering his life. Trump interjected with a lie. “I don’t think he was in any danger,” Trump claimed.

That is clearly false. Some of Trump’s followers erected a hangman’s gallows outside of the Capitol. And the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Pence!” Shortly after the Capitol was breached, Secret Service agents had to whisk Pence away to safety (which Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Al) told Trump as it happened). Even so, the rioters came within 40 feet of the vice president.

The main reason the rioters focused their anger at Pence was because Trump repeatedly told them that the vice president had the power to alter the outcome of the election. That is where Trump’s statements Wednesday night were important from a legal perspective.

Trump stated: Pence “did something wrong. He should have put the votes back to the state legislatures. I think we would have had a different outcome, I really do.” The reason that puts the former president in legal jeopardy is because Trump’s own legal adviser (John Eastman) admitted during an Oval Office meeting that the Electoral Count Act would not allow Pence to take such action. Trump’s remarks on CNN provide additional evidence that he does not and did not care about the scope of Pence’s actual legal authority.

Trump is dumb as a stump, so he can say he didn’t know about pretty much anything, but Eisen et al. are saying that legally speaking he can’t. There’s a limit to how much you can just throw up your hands and say you had no idea.

Trump acknowledged during the Jan. 4, 2021 meeting that the vice president didn’t have the legal authority to return electoral votes back to the states. Yet, Trump still demanded that he do so (and defended that unlawful option again on CNN).

Now, Trump is Trump, and it seems more than possible that he can acknowledge that Pence doesn’t have the authority to do X and. immediately after acknowledging, order him to do X without really noticing that he’s telling Pence to commit a crime, because he really is that thick. But legally speaking that doesn’t get him off the hook…unless of course it does, because the people deciding about the hook are trumpies.

Following the attack on the Capitol, Trump wanted to say he would issue a blanket pardon of the rioters, but White House lawyers strongly objected, and no such statement was made. Suffice it to say, Trump’s remarks on CNN exceeded what any reasonable defense lawyer would advise him.

Well that was…you know…more than two years ago. Might as well be two hundred. You can’t expect Trump to keep something in mind for more than two years.

Nor does the legal harm Trump did himself stop there. He also reaffirmed that he would make the damning Jan. 2, 2021 call to Brad Raffensperger again, despite the fact that it may lead to criminal charges by Fulton County DA Fani Willis this summer (and possibly by the Justice Department as well). That is important because it shows he is unrepentant, which is an added incentive for the DA to seek accountability (not as if she needed one).

And not as if Trump is ever anything but unrepentant. He’s incapable of even pretending to be repentant.

The BBC reports:

The comedy club which cancelled a Fringe show by SNP MP Joanna Cherry has reinstated the event.

The Stand had cancelled the show after staff said they were not comfortable with her views on transgender issues.

But the venue has now said the decision was “unfair and constituted unlawful discrimination against Ms Cherry”.

Ms Cherry said it was a “very welcome move by The Stand” and confirmed she will take part in August’s event as originally planned.

She did.

Yes!

Now nobody do this EVER AGAIN.

Bev Jackson tells us about a meeting.

Who is responsible for undermining the rights of lesbians and gays at the United Nations? Why, that would be Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the UN’s Independent Expert for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI). “What’s that?” you say. Shouldn’t he be protecting the rights of people who are attracted to others of the same sex? Ah, but SOGI is a way of getting round that. Having an advocate for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity is a bit like having one for Veganism and Chicken Farming. It doesn’t work.

Why? Because the GI bit insists that the SO bit has to buy into the ideology of the GI bit, which means lesbians have to pretend men can be lesbians and gay men have to pretend women can be gay men. Funnily enough, that’s not always a popular mandate.

Victor is a passionate advocate of gender self-ID. He has an impressive ability to claim over and over again, with a straight face, things that are untrue…One of Victor’s favourite untruths is that international human rights law requires the introduction of gender self-ID. This completely false notion relies on a little-known document — the Yogyakarta Principles or YP — which identifies as “best practice” when it is simply an activist manifesto. 

Which also describes trans ideology. It identifies as factual when it is simply an extended fantasy.

Victor maintains there is no conflict between the rights of LGB people and those claimed under the banner of “trans rights”. Whatever definition of “trans” you choose (and there are as many as there are scandals in the SNP), this is obviously untrue. Either people born male belong on a lesbian dating site, or they don’t. Either persons born female can be in a gay men’s sauna — without revealing their little secret — or they don’t belong there. Either it is fine to say you’re only attracted to people of the same sex, or it isn’t — because saying so out loud is hurtful and makes you a transphobe or a “sexual racist”, as Nancy Kelley (somehow still CEO of Stonewall) has been known to say. In this conflict you can jump one way or the other, but you can’t say no jumping is required.

Emphasis added. Brilliant summing up.

Victor also insists — and this is his favourite mantra — that self-ID has not caused any problems in any country in the world. He has been sent pages of evidence to the contrary: abuses in prisons in countries from Ireland to Canada, explanations that data is becoming impossible to collect, abuses in women’s and girls’ sport, the self-exclusion of women of faith from vital services.

But, it seems, he’s ignored all of it. Every bit. Bev goes through a long list and he claims to be ignorant of every single item.

At this stage there was little point in being conciliatory. Years of polite requests had produced no result. So we bluntly repeated all the things we have been telling him for years. Funnily enough, he professed ignorance of all of it. “Cotton ceiling” (the difficulty trans-identifying males experience getting into lesbians’ pants)? Never heard of it. Homosexual detransitioners — surely part of his mandate in the interests of “inclusion”? Hmmm … please send details of such persons. Keira Bell, Sonia Appleby? Never heard of them. Quote from Dr Hilary Cass on lesbians who had felt pressured to transition? Silence. Had he met with Dr Cass? Didn’t want to say. GIDS clinic due to close because an NHS review found it to be unsafe? Oh, hadn’t heard. David Bell? Who’s that?

And so on. It’s maddening.

The Times does a quick rundown of Trump’s horrors on CNN.

In little over an hour, Donald J. Trump suggested the United States should default on its debts for the first time in history, injected doubt over the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, dangled pardons for most of the Capitol rioters convicted of crimes, and refused to say he would abide by the results of the next presidential election.

…

In New Hampshire, the audience of Republicans lapped up Mr. Trump’s one-liners and slew of insults — to Ms. Collins (a “nasty person,” he jeered, echoing his old attack on Hillary Clinton), to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to E. Jean Carroll, the woman whom a jury this week found Mr. Trump liable of sexually abusing and defaming. And the crowd expressed no dissent as he again tried to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election loss.

“It was a beautiful day,” Mr. Trump said.

If he becomes president again, he said, he would “most likely” pardon “a large portion” of his supporters who were convicted over their actions on Jan. 6. “They were there with love in their heart,” he said of the crowd, which he beamed had been the “largest” of his career.

We’re doomed.

It’s interesting that Trump was found liable for defaming Jean Carroll and the next day defamed her all over again on a major news network.

Writer E Jean Carroll is considering suing Donald Trump for defamation again after the former US president made disparaging remarks about her during a televised CNN town hall just a day after he was found liable in a civil case for sexually assaulting her.

…

But during the Wednesday night CNN event in New Hampshire – which attracted widespread condemnation of the US broadcaster – Trump repeatedly insulted and demeaned Carroll and her experiences.

Trump said her account of a sexual assault was “fake” and a “made-up story” and referred to it as “hanky-panky”.

Meteor. Send the meteor.

Why the Australian Liberal Party expelled Moira Deeming:

The Victorian Liberal leader, John Pesutto, says he can’t see a way back into the party for controversial MP Moira Deeming, after her colleagues voted to expel her from their party room.

Liberal MPs voted 19 to 11 to expel Deeming during a two-hour party room meeting on Friday morning, meaning she will have to serve the remaining three-and-a-half years of her term on the crossbench of the upper house of the Victorian parliament.

…

Her ally, upper house MP Renee Heath, who accused Pesutto of bullying last week, was also stripped of her party secretary position in a separate motion.

No bullying here, no siree!

The expulsion motion was put forward by five MPs – Roma Britnell, Wayne Farnham, Matthew Guy, Cindy McLeish and James Newbury – who alleged Deeming was “bringing discredit” on the parliamentary team by threatening legal action against Pesutto.

But Pesutto is not bringing discredit on the parliamentary team by bullying Deeming? They’re confident about that are they?

Deeming had survived an earlier expulsion push six weeks ago, put forward by Pesutto, after she spoke at an anti-trans rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis, who performed the Sieg Heil salute on the front steps of parliament.

But “anti-trans” is a dishonest and malicious label for the rally and the concerns that motivated the rally. Letting women speak is “anti-trans” only if the cheerleaders for trans ideology are trying to prevent women from speaking. The rally was not an “anti-trans” rally, it was a LET WOMEN SPEAK rally. Calling it “anti-trans” is a sneaky way of nudging people to think the gender resistance wants to persecute trans people. We don’t want to persecute trans people, we want to defend and retain our own god damn rights.

Of course you know this means war. [B. Bunny]

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Samantha left her keys.

This one sentence is some carefully crafted, chock-full-of DARVO, primo emotional blackmailing bullshit.:

When someone refers to another person using the wrong pronouns, especially on purpose, that can lead to that person feeling disrespected and can lead to dysphoria, exclusion and alienation.

Tough. Not my problem, really.

It’s like a trans-activist Gish Gallop that takes a lot longer to unpack and refute than it takes to utter. Still, sometimes it’s worth the effort, because it helps to lay bare the underlying ethos and assumptions of the speaker, and clarifies the role that is being thrust upon the listener. It gives you the chance to ask if this is a role you feel comfortable being saddled with? My answer is Hell no!

So let’s have a look to see exactly what’s inside this toxic little nugget.

First of all, those pronouns aren’t yours. And they aren’t “wrong.” I’m the one who gets to choose the pronouns I use to refer to you, and I will decide which ones I deem appropriate based on my perceptions of the world. I will choose the right pronouns. On purpose. If my selection displeases you, well that’s too bad. Deal. As for “disrespect,” the shoe is on the other foot. It’s disrespectful to make such demands on anyone, let alone strangers. “Hi there; I want you to lie for me. Or else I’ll accuse you of plotting trans genocide.” Now there’s a strategy guarenteed to win heartsand minds.

If your “dysphoria” is so easily triggered, then maybe you’ve got bigger problems than just my use of language, and you should seek help before dictating how others speak. Wear earplugs if you have to.

Correctly sexing you via usage of appropriate pronouns does not “exclude” you from anything you’re not already entitled to do or participate in. There’s no thought here of the “alienation” of the people who are expected for some reason to accede to your demand for this extraordinary, reality-denying behaviour, mislabelled as “respect” and “courtesy.” You might not have the crown, scepter, and orb, but you’re demanding to be treated as royalty. I will not bow down; I will not kiss the ring. I will call you what I choose. I am not your subject, and you are not mine. You are perfectly free to make your claims; I should be equally free to ignore or dispute them. My failure to comply is not subjugating you. It is not violence. Neither is questioning or criticizing your demands, which I believe to be rude and unreasonable.

If you’re male, I’ll refer to you as “he.” There is nothing wrong about doing that. There is nothing wrong with being male and being referred to as such. In fact, using the incorrect ones might lead you to believe you’re entitled to spaces from which you would normally be barred, that I am agreeing to, and colluding with you in any attempt you make to enter female-only spaces. But the prohibition against your entry to any such space based on sex has nothing to do with my language use or anyone else’s; the use of the incorrect pronouns does not magically render you a member of the sex that you are not. Someone calling you “she” does not make you a woman. It cannot confer that status upon you; you cannot confer that status on yourself. Napoleon famously crowned himself Emperor. But you cannot crown yourself “woman.” Neither can anyone else. If you’re not one already, nothing and nobody can make you a woman. It’s delusional to believe otherwise. That’s a fact. It’s not a TERF plot, it’s not evil or wicked, it’s just the way the world is. The sooner you understand this, the better for you and all who interact with you, the sooner you can stop being a narcissistic, entitled asshole trying to make everyone around you believe the impossible. I mean think. Really, how rude is that?

Painting the accurate sexing of someone through correct pronoun use as rude or offensive is at best disingenuous, and at worst manipulative and bullying. It is an attempt to mask the utter rudeness and inappropriateness of the demand to comply (see above); it is also camouflage for obtaining access to female only spaces, on the strength of a gender “identity” that runs against the evidence of material reality. It is assuming a false identity as someone who should be considered harmless. “I’m perfectly safe! It’s those cis men you have to worry about! I’m not one of them, I’m one of you sister!” Pronouns are Rohypnol*. It’s like some kind of strange moebius-strip Trojan horse inside a trojan horse. Both the lie (“I’m not a man”) and its supposed candy coating (“My pronouns are she/her”) are equally poisonous. You shouldn’t be swallowing either. This kind of gaslighting and its attendant bullying is an immediate red flag that calls for even greater vigilance rather than its demanded surrender. The “request” itself is cause for suspicion and watchfulness. Someone has just identified himself as a potential threat by claiming not to be one, and thinks he’s being victimized by “an act of violence” when anyone doubts him. You can’t make this shit up.

*If you have not read this essay, do so now.

Pronouns

You’re welcome.

Joan Smith on horrible Chu and his horrible prize:

Pornography drips with misogyny. Teenage boys can easily find scenes of rape and sexual torture on their phones, changing the very idea of what constitutes “normal” sexual practices…

All a porn enthusiast has to do is link their habit with the magic word “transgender” and it is instantly transformed into something radical and progressive. It’s a form of cultural blindness so widespread that an author and academic who claims that violent porn persuaded him to “change” his sex has this week been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism. “Sissy porn did make me trans,” Andrea Long Chu, formerly Andrew, once wrote.

…

Chu clearly has a very distorted idea of what being a woman is, conflating the idea with being passive and victimised in language so extreme that it’s distasteful to quote. The writer describes being a “sad, pretentious boy, furious about rape, hopelessly addicted to pornography”, which he would look at for hours in the bathroom while his girlfriend was asleep. Apologies to sensitive readers, but what Chu learned from this experience is that “getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is”. 

…

Porn is a huge commercial operation that makes money by defining and controlling women’s bodies. It offers not just arousal but an ideology which integrates violence into sex, so much so that young women increasingly report demands for so-called “rough sex”, including strangulation.

It’s a perfect fit for the most extreme excesses of gender ideology, whose philosophy, like that of porn, is based on the idea of womanhood as performance. What they have in common is the idea that being female involves high heels, lipstick — and passivity.

High heels are an enforcer of passivity, just as bound feet were. You can’t run properly in them, in fact you can’t do anything physically demanding in them. They’re a hobble. They slow women down, keep them close to home, make sure they can’t run or fight back.

Trump came right out and said he expected Raffensperger to give him some votes so that he could win.

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had no regrets about his demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to reverse his election defeat, a recorded conversation that is at the center of an ongoing Fulton County criminal probe.

Pressed about the call at a CNN town hall by moderator Kaitlan Collins, Trump said Raffensperger “owed me votes because the election was rigged” and repeated false conspiracy theories about his defeat in 2020 by Joe Biden.

“Owed” him votes. That’s so interesting.

Legal experts said Trump’s remarks could bolster [Fulton County District Attorney Fani] Willis’ case as she nears an announcement, expected as early as July, whether she’ll seek criminal charges against Trump and key members of his inner circle.

“Subjects of criminal investigation aren’t usually reckless enough to go on national television and admit their corrupt intent, but Donald Trump just handed Fani Willis a new piece of evidence and tied a bow on it,” said Antony Kreis, a Georgia State University constitutional law professor.

“Trump stated in relatively plain terms that he felt entitled to votes as a matter of personal right, regardless of the evidence laid before him that he did not win Georgia, and that vote tallies and recounts be damned he is going to pressure Brad Raffensperger,” Kreis added.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Exploiting what looked like a principle of free speech.

We live in a world of finite resources, including credibility. Every time you give someone a platform, you are spending some of those resources, whether it’s the physical space, the staff time, the speaker budget, the attention span of your community, and/or your credibility as an institution.

There are thousands of crackpots out there churning out emails to physicists explaining how they have figured out that Einstein Was Wrong, that their pet Time Cube Theory or whatever explains life, the universe, and everything, etc. etc. And free speech demands that they are allowed to operate their badly-designed web sites without being shut down by the Grand Council of Physicists or whoever. But that doesn’t mean that they deserve broader exposure. All of them would be delighted to be invited to give a seminar at Prestigious University’s Department of Physics, and would forever brag about it afterward, and naive third parties would think “well, this guy was invited to speak at P.U., he can’t be a crackpot!”

There are multiple considerations at work aside from just the merits of the proposed speaker’s views, of course. Sometimes a ridiculous view is so popular that there is a real need to expose it to rigorous criticism — the value in having current believers hear the criticism outweighs the cost of potentially exposing more people to the nonsense. Creationism arguably falls into this category, though I think it’s very case-specific: the balance would be different for a small college in the Bible Belt than a prestigious research institution.

In a just world, Donald Trump would have so little support that Joe Biden could safely ignore him and cruise to a general election victory. That’s not the world we live in, so (assuming they are the respective nominees), Biden will have to at least be willing to debate him (though I would not be shocked if no debate occurs because they can’t agree on the rules/format). But that doesn’t mean that Biden should elevate RFK, Jr. or Marianne Williamson by debating them. (And in fact, I’m not aware of any incumbent president debating a primary challenger.)

Make it stop make it stop make it stop

Blah blah blah sob sob sob blah blah poor nice lady sob sob why won’t they let her compete sob sob

Halba Diouf “dreamed of” running in competition with women, which would give him a huge advantage. The problem with that is that it’s unfair to the women, so keep your sobs and sympathy to yourselves.

He hoped to cheat; he can’t; end of dramatic story.