A human rights storm

Jul 28th, 2023 10:35 am | By

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.



Scotland v women

Jul 28th, 2023 10:15 am | By

What about that “warning”?

https://twitter.com/CallieMac88/status/1684823320787640320

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



Women are fair game

Jul 28th, 2023 9:48 am | By

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.



Everyone should read it

Jul 28th, 2023 4:49 am | By

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.



The opposing view was utterly incoherent

Jul 28th, 2023 4:37 am | By

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.



Forced to undergo re-education

Jul 27th, 2023 3:04 pm | By

Our experience is not hypothetical.



Not Sir

Jul 27th, 2023 2:35 pm | By

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.



Time’s up

Jul 27th, 2023 11:06 am | By

He’s right you know.



Echoing

Jul 27th, 2023 10:40 am | By

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.



Whose generosity? Whose freedom?

Jul 27th, 2023 9:44 am | By

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?



Respect the grid

Jul 27th, 2023 6:45 am | By

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.



83 deaths

Jul 27th, 2023 5:21 am | By

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.)



Sea to shining sea

Jul 27th, 2023 5:01 am | By

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:



Dim bulb

Jul 26th, 2023 10:41 am | By

When mature adults talk like addled teenagers.

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1683900022822141965

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.

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1684013484030173184

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

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1684187489131692035

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.

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1684206628487196673

Is she…just seriously stupid? I guess?

Updating to add even more fatuity.

https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1684209434245971973
https://twitter.com/RayyaGhul/status/1684212964008529921

R U 6?



Words have meanings

Jul 26th, 2023 9:12 am | By
Words have meanings

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

https://twitter.com/MaggieChapman/status/1684175360181542913

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.



Lying rat concedes he is a lying rat

Jul 26th, 2023 8:09 am | By

Giuliani admits.

Rudolph W. Giuliani has conceded that while acting as a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump, he made false statements by asserting that two Georgia election workers had mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 election.

The concession by Mr. Giuliani came in court papers filed on Tuesday night as part of a defamation lawsuit that the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, had brought against him in Federal District Court in Washington in December 2021.

The suit accused Mr. Giuliani and others of promoting a video that purported to show Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss — who are mother and daughter — of manipulating ballots while working at the State Farm Arena for the Fulton County Board of Elections.

Let’s pause to reflect on the power and status of the two halves of this dynamic. On the one hand two election workers, on the other the former federal prosecutor and Mayor of New York and consigliere to Trump. Which half has more power to make the lives of the other half a nightmare? And get away with it?

In a two-page declaration, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that he had in fact made the statements about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss that led to the filing of the suit and that the remarks “carry meaning that is defamatory per se.” He also admitted that his statements were “actionable” and “false” and that he no longer disputed the “factual elements of liability” the election workers had raised in their suit.

But Mr. Giuliani, insisting that he still had “legal defenses” in the case, said that he continued to believe his accusations about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were “constitutionally protected” under the First Amendment. He also refused to acknowledge that his statements had caused the women any damage — a key element required to collect a judgment in a defamation case.

Let’s pause to wonder how his statements could possibly not cause the women any damage.

Last year, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss appeared as witnesses at a public hearing of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and told the story of what happened after Mr. Giuliani amplified the false claims that they had pulled thousands of fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in their vote-counting station and illegally fed them through voting machines.

Although Fulton County and Georgia officials immediately debunked the accusations, Mr. Giuliani kept promoting them, ultimately comparing the women — both of whom are Black — to drug dealers and calling during a hearing with Georgia state legislators for their homes to be searched.

Mr. Trump invoked Ms. Freeman’s name 18 times during a phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, on Jan. 2, 2021. In the call, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to help him “find” 11,800 votes — enough to swing the results in Georgia away from the winner, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman testified to the House committee, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

And Giuliani admits it, while also claiming it doesn’t matter and didn’t cause them any damage.



No support from City Hall

Jul 26th, 2023 5:01 am | By

How interesting.

Why is Joan Smith no longer co-chair of the Mayor’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board?

Because the Mayor in question abruptly removed her from it, without a word of explanation or thanks or apology – without a word of any kind, despite multiple requests, from Joan and from us tiresome women.

Maaaaaaaate indeed.



Looking pretty scary

Jul 25th, 2023 3:36 pm | By
Looking pretty scary

The water is hot.

Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have been abnormally warm this summer and scientists are concerned about potential environmental impacts.

On Wednesday, a 98-degree water temperature was recorded off the coast of Everglades National Park. The reading was taken in very shallow, dark water, known to heat up very quickly. Still, water temperatures around the southwest coast of Florida and around the Florida Keys have been running about five degrees above normal for this time of the year.

Ocean temperatures take longer to heat than air temperatures. This means that peak ocean heating in the Gulf and Atlantic is normally found in August and September. Heating this early in the season has scientists worried about coral heat stress and potential bleaching.

Corals only cover about one percent of the ocean floor, but scientists say that they are home to over a quarter of all marine life and are also important for coastline protection from storms and hurricanes by breaking wave energy as it comes to shore.

But we’re cooking them.

“Our reefs already have so few corals because of all of the years of bleaching events and human impacts, and overfishing and pollution, and things like that that have impacted our reefs,” says Williamson. “If we have this really severe, just intense bleaching event that kills what’s left, I really worry that our reefs will barely even be there, I hope I’m wrong about that, but it’s looking pretty scary at the moment.”



Define “accepted”

Jul 25th, 2023 11:25 am | By

Beware of dopey meaningless slogans.

What does that mean, “We believe that everyone deserves to be accepted without exception”? Accepted in what sense? As a lover, roommate, spouse, colleague, friend? Because if that’s what she means, of course Labour doesn’t believe that.

Maybe she thinks she means something like “not shunned or persecuted” – but then she needs to say that, and not what she did say.

What she probably means to imply, without spelling it out, is that Labour believes all men who claim to be trans women should be believed, no questions asked.

If that is what she means, she has rocks in her head. If that is what Labour means it’s a worse than useless, woman-hating political party.



Not going away

Jul 25th, 2023 11:10 am | By

Listen up Police Scotland.