Via What a Maroon I read a review by Jacob Brogan of a novel about lesbians which (as WaM noted) doesn’t use the word “lesbian” once. The word “queer” on the other hand appears nine times. I get that the word “queer” has been, according to some people, reclaimed or repurposed or seized or whatever you want to call it. There’s a parallel, I think, to the way the word “Negro” went out of favor to be replaced by its English language equivalent, “Black.” It was a move from the weirdly euphemistic to the blunt, because what the hell was there to be euphemistic about anyway? “Negro” came to seem tellingly squeamish. There’s also of course a parallel to the reclaiming (or claiming) of “dyke,” helped along by Alison Bechdel.

But…not all “queer” people endorse the reclaiming of “queer.” Many of them in fact hate it. I don’t really know what to think about it, myself.

Selby Wynn Schwartz’s first novel follows a meandering course through the late 19th century into the early 20th, focusing on the lives and overlapping connections of an array of real women. Many of them are boldface names from the queer and feminist cultural past — Virginia Woolf, Sarah Bernhardt and Colette, to name just a few — while others are less famous. 

…

For generations of queer writers, including many of the women who appear in “After Sappho,” deliberately composing in fragmentary styles — breaking their work into discrete, discontinuous chunks through grammatical, visual or narrative eccentricities — became a way to build new, more welcoming forms of community…

Sappho is an apt avatar for Schwartz’s project: The totalizing excess of queer art can overwhelm you with laughter or longing, blotting out the painful experiences it sometimes describes. But queer thought has most often thrived in fragments, its practitioners taking the world to pieces, the better to re-center those who’ve been pushed to the margins.

I wonder why the Washington Post decided to get a man to review this book. Maybe we could start queering that kind of thing a little?

In Argentina as in the US abortion is difficult or impossible to get.

María was 23 when she decided to have an abortion.

At the health centre where she had gone for treatment, she says she overheard one doctor saying to a colleague: “When will these girls learn to keep their legs closed?”

It’s always the girls who have to keep their legs closed, not the boys who have to keep their dicks in their pants.

María lives in Salta, a religiously conservative province in north-west Argentina, where many healthcare workers are still against abortion. She was eventually given a pill to end her pregnancy, but she says the nurses were reluctant to treat her and wanted to make her feel guilty: “After I expelled the pregnancy tissue, I could see the foetus.”

“The nurses put it in a jar to make sure I saw it and they told me, ‘This could have been your child.'”

It could have been, and so what? If you don’t want to have a child then you don’t want to. It’s the kind of thing you ought to want to do in order to do it well, because the consequences of doing it badly are so awful. Child-having of all the things humans do ought to be passionately voluntary.

Argentina relaxed its law on abortion in 2020, allowing a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy in the first 14 weeks, Previously, it was only allowed in the case of rape or if the woman’s life or health was at risk.

Argentina is more liberal on abortion than the US.

A letter to the Guardian wants us to know that Mormonism IS NOT SILLY.

While it was heartening to read that Lucy Mangan found those featured in the documentary The Mormons Are Coming to be “lovely – gentle, kind, sincere” (TV review, 28 February), her comment that they were “fill[ing] people’s emotional voids with their lies” attempted to perpetuate the derogatory caricature that Mormons are hapless simpletons.

But supernatural religious claims are just that: supernatural.

The review took aim at what Mangan termed “the essential absurdity” of Joseph Smith’s claim to have received ancient records from an angel. I doubt such remarks would be used to describe Moses before the burning bush, or Gabriel’s appearance to the prophet Muhammad.

Sure they would. The ones that mention Mohammed might be scarcer in the Guardian, but there are plenty of unabashed atheists who write for it and say unabashedly atheist things.

Sorry, but essential absurdity is part of the package.

Washington Post cartoonist sums up:

Trump took his show on the road yesterday.

The former president spent his wide-ranging, nearly two-hour remarks rehashing the “America First” agenda that has played well with his base.

With “wide-ranging” meaning rambling and incoherent.

“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” he said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

He’s downright biblical!

Speaking with reporters before the speech, Trump said he would stay in the race even if he is indicted in ongoing criminal investigations of his handling of presidential documents and his role in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

…

After months of attacking Fox News, which aired his Saturday remarks, he said in his speech that television personalities Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson should be awarded Pulitzer Prizes.

And Nobel Prizes and Oscars and a pony.

Bolsonaro was there too, and gave his own speech.

Bolsonaro was a fitting opener for Trump, given his numerous ties to the former president’s administration. He has been counseled by Trump advisers Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller, and, like Trump, stoked anger among his base after he lost the election, suggested the win by his left-wing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was fraudulent. Critics say his comments helped foment a Jan. 6-style riot in Brasília on Jan. 8 of this year.

…

Brazilian prosecutors are investigating him for spreading election misinformation, interfering with the federal police and leaking classified information.

He is also under investigation for genocide, with Indigenous groups and their defenders arguing that his public derision of them, and his refusal to stop illegal mining in the Amazon, sparked a widespread environmental and public health crisis that killed dozens. 

Nice company.

That’s nice. That’s charming. Oxfam Canada thinks women don’t get to have a day for themselves. Other subordinated groups get to have a day for themselves, but women don’t. Why’s that? Because we’re such Karens? Is that it?

Fighting for what rights? What rights do trans people – especially trans women – want that they don’t have? What rights do they have to fight for? The right to shove women aside and take all our stuff? That’s not a right. That’s just a continuation of the same old arrangement where men are in charge and women obey or else.

Fae Johnstone doesn’t have a “right” to be celebrate on International Women’s Day. He’s not a woman. He should get out of women’s concerns, leave women alone, stop taking what belongs to women. Oxfam Canada should stop cheering him on.

Also what tf is “the diversity of all identities” supposed to mean?

Andrew Sullivan on Murdoch and Fox:

The great and obvious flaw in the political right’s legitimate criticism of mainstream media bias is that the most dishonest, cynical, postmodern, post-truth, “everything-is-power” media enterprise is Fox News. 

You only have to watch it for a few minutes to immediately grasp this, which is why most visitors from other democratic countries are shocked that it exists at all, when they see it.

Same.

But it’s rare to get real, actionable, behind-the-scenes proof of the deception, and thanks to the Dominion lawsuit, we have it. It will be important to watch the trial, of course, and see how Fox tries to counter the specific claims. But it seems indisputable to me that many Fox journalists absolutely knew they were peddling lies without any foundation, from top to bottom, and broadcast them anyway for the sole purpose of ratings and money. 

Well, look at it this way – doing things for the sole purpose of money is a form of politics, and doing things for other purposes, like getting the truth out there, is also a form of politics, so it all evens out.

It’s a pretty simple and old-as-time story of corruption. After their own election analysts called Arizona for Biden, the brass immediately understood that if they remained true to even the most cursory journalistic standards, their ratings and revenue would take a huge hit.

So they lied and lied and lied, knowing they were doing it.

And the topic they were lying about was not some minor culture-war controversy, or some genuinely vexing congeries of electoral glitches that could be aired out. It was the core foundation of democracy itself — the basic public legitimacy of our elections, the charge that the fraud was “massive” and comprehensive and that democracy was over. Rupert Murdoch decided to throw the full weight of his media empire to give this lie oxygen — and thereby helped foment an armed insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power. 

And the continuing belief of around half the population that Murdoch’s lies are truth.

Then the continuing bullshit: “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing [the election lie] in hindsight,” he says at one point. Well, what’s stopping you now, Rupert? Cat still got your tongue? Can’t get booked on your own network to say this? The rank pusillanimity and shamelessness of it all.

…

What was Murdoch’s motive in all this? Money. That’s it. Money. Murdoch’s value above all values. A man with something like $8 billion to his name in his nineties still needs more. Always more. He needs it so much he prioritized it over the most rudimentary requirements of ethical journalism and, yes, democratic citizenship. He fomented an attack on the very base of our system of government because he still believes he is not rich enough. And he is utterly candid about this. Asked why Fox continued to feature loony Mike Lindell on the air, “Murdoch testified that Lindell ‘pays us a lot of money’ in advertising. And when asked why Fox continues to give a platform to Lindell, Murdoch agreed that ‘it is not red or blue, it is green.’” 

Money money money, it’s a rich man’s world.

Billy Bragg has trouble making up his mind. Yesterday as we saw he was all “do women really get to say things?”

And today he’s all “right to protest!!!” and “right to free expression!!!!!”

Originally a comment by Sastra on A myriad of other genders.

Near as I can make out, the “myriad” of genders comes in two forms:

1.) Genders that involve different ways of playing around with man (male) and woman (female.) Included are man, woman, neither-man-nor-woman, both-man-and-woman, switching between man and woman, switching between man and neither-man-nor-woman, and any other combination you can think of, in fluctuating circumstances. We can at least conceive of such genders because they conceptually draw from our prior understanding of man (male) and woman (female.) Gender and sex used to be synonyms.

2.) Genders that don’t involve man (male) and/or woman (female.) The connection to sex is tenuous at best. This is where we find people having the “gender of a cloud” or being Aesthetigender, a gender derived from aesthetics. Most of this either sounds like results from a teenage magazine personality test (“What Kind of Flower Are You?”) or is seriously incoherent. Included in this would be genders that are basically nothing more than attitudes towards gender(Cassflux: There is a fluctuating intensity of irrelevance toward gender.)

There’s a list of The 72 Genders here.

I personally fluctuate between Egogender: “a personal type of gender identified by the individual alone based on the person’s experience within the self” and Genderblank: “It is closely related to a blank space.”

I don’t see why a blank space can’t give birth.

Maryam Afshang at the BBC three days ago:

Almost 700 girls have been poisoned by toxic gas in Iran since November, in what many believe is a deliberate attempt to force their schools to shut.

No girls have died, but dozens have suffered respiratory problems, nausea, dizziness and fatigue.

“It became evident that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed down,” the deputy health minister said on Sunday.

Then he took it back. I wonder if we can guess why.

The first poisoning took place on 30 November, when 18 students from the Nour Technical School in the religious city of Qom were taken to hospital. Since then, more than 10 girls’ schools have been targeted in the surrounding province.

At least 194 girls are reported to have been poisoned in the past week at four schools in the city of Borujerd, in the western province of Lorestan. The poisoned girls have reported the smell of tangerine or rotten fish before falling ill.

And on Tuesday another 37 students were poisoned at the Khayyam Girls’ School in Pardis, near the capital Tehran.

Maybe they should try identifying as boys. Might help.

The poisonings have notably been concentrated in Qom, a city that is home to important Shia Muslim shrines and the religious leadership that forms the backbone of the Islamic Republic.

Like Rome, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Salt Lake City, or Ayodhya. Holy cities are dangerous places.

Since September, the clerical establishment has been challenged by the mass protests that erupted after the death in custody of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police for allegedly failing to wear her headscarf “properly”.

This of course is because women are all whores, who will defile the holy population by spreading their legs for thousands of men. They must be shrouded head to foot to prevent this whorish leg-spreading so that the men will be confident they’re not raising other dudes’ children.

Some Iranians have speculated that if the schoolgirls are being poisoned as “payback” for their role in the unrest. Social media was flooded with videos showing schoolgirls ripping off their headscarves and chanting anti-establishment slogans.

Others have speculated that the poisonings are the work of hardliners who want to “copy” the Taliban in Afghanistan and the militant Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria by terrorising parents to stop sending their girls to school.

Well it’s the same thing really. Ferocious, punitive control of girls and women, and ferocious, punitive response when the control fails to silence them.

Man with flailing hands and fast excitable way of speaking that he no doubt thinks make him terrifically feminine and thus a woman says “it’s not just women who give birth.”

Yes it is Sparky. When you’re talking about humans giving birth that is “just women.”

He hopes we can see it’s not rooted in erasure but trans inclusivity.

No can do, Sparky. Erasure is exactly what it is – erasure of the entire subordinated sex to flatter the vanity of people like you.

Also it’s eTcetera, not eKcetera.

Another eraser of women:

It’s not people in general who need abortion healthcare, it’s exclusively women.

For women living in the 24 states…

For every woman, everywhere.

Texas women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Take your “inclusion” and.

Also how revolting to see two women in government putting women’s safety at risk for the sake of this stupid ideology.

What’s in it for them? Not that politics should be about self-gain (thanks Mr. Trump!), but how do these two women see their efforts to ruin women’s sport? Certainly not as “efforts to ruin women’s sport” but that’s what’s going to happen if they get their way. Politics should at least be about being aware of the results of your actions, otherwise, why bother? If they’re not willing to talk to people who will be predictably and adversely affected by this proposal than they’re not doing their jobs. They’re not setting free a deprived, downtrodden minority, but inserting MEN into women’s rugby, with great potential for physical harm to those already in the league because they’re actually women. It’s not “liberation,” it’s a home invasion.

Still, one wonders, what are they thinking? What parts of the trans bullshit won them over? Do they really believe that TiMs are not male? Do they really believe that TiMs are disadvantaged more than women? Have these two cabinet ministers(!) consulted with women to see what they think? Have they talked to any uncaptured sports scientists who know the science behind male and female bodies? Unless of course they don’t care what this does to women, and are using this little exercise as a way to earn Stonewall points, and they’re not interested in anything other than looking virtuous and progressive to others who’ve swallowed this stupid ideology. News flash: outside of your little self-satisfied, self righteous bubble, there’s a bigger world of reality and policy that you’re blindly fucking around with, that results in lost opportunities and broken bones for women. If you’re not going to bother with little details like that while in government, then you shouldn’t be in charge of anything with more real-world impact than counting paperclips, or be allowed to operate any machinery more complicated than velcro.

Something our trans “sisters” will never have to worry about:

The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal — acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists.

An abundance of caution from the point of view of the pharmacy chain – not from the point of view of the women who need the pills.

Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company began distributing the drugs, which have become the nation’s most popular method for ending a pregnancy.

It’s that important to keep forcing women to gestate and give birth to babies against their will. Rebellious slaves must be taught who’s in charge.

The list includes several states where abortion in general, and the medications specifically, remain legal — including Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana. For example, Kansas’ law that patients only obtain the pills directly from a physician is blocked in court.

Legal shmegal – women must be made to submit.

“They’re denying people [women] agency over their lives,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy expert with the abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute. “When we’re thinking about states that have a lot of their population in rural areas, it’s much more likely that a pharmacy is nearby than a provider’s office, so these pharmacies play an outsized role in patient health and access to health care.”

They’re denying women agency, not people. It’s women who are not allowed to be full independent humans.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Take your inclusion and.

Hannah Blythyn, wrote that their “preferred position was to follow a case-by-case approach, rather than a blanket exclusion of transgender people”.

I’m gobsmacked by people who actually think it’s possible to decide whether to include or exclude trans-identified males from women’s spaces using a “case-by-case approach.” The nature of the claim, that transwomen are a TYPE OF WOMAN, completely precludes it. They’re built like an ox and just as strong? Some girls are big. They completely pass as female and nobody in the woman’s restroom would even know they’re trans? What about those poor transwomen who don’t? Where are we going to draw the line?

I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine who had never even heard of a liberal, feminist critique of including transwomen into all women’s spaces. Her responses were predictable. “There are so few.” “They pass.” “We should accept and love.” “That’s not happening.” And of course “we need to do things on a case-by-case basis, which would eliminate the problems you mention.” But … how?

The BBC reports:

Welsh ministers wrote to the Welsh Rugby Union expressing “concern” about its ban on transgender women competing in female-only games.

Concern about not allowing men to compete in women-only games. How did we get to such a stupid place and why can’t we get the hell out of it?

Their letter stated “inclusion” should be the “starting point” for decisions on transgender people’s participation in any part of society.

No it should not, because the issue is not “transgender people’s participation in any part of society,” it’s men’s intrusion on women. As always, calling it a “transgender” issue conceals the actual issue. Men aren’t shut out of women’s spaces and games and the rest because they’re “transgender” but because they’re men. Women sometimes need to get away from men, for our own safety or for fair competition or to have any hope of winning a prize. Women would almost never win Oscars for acting if there weren’t a separate category for women, because there are vastly more roles for men, and most of the roles for women get little dialogue and little to do. That’s just one example of many.

Introducing the ban in September 2022, the WRU said it was based on “current medical and scientific evidence”.

Evidence, that is, that competing against men in rugby is dangerous to women. Apparently the Welsh government doesn’t give a shit.

The Welsh government’s deputy sports minister, Dawn Bowden, and deputy minister for social partnership, Hannah Blythyn, wrote that their “preferred position was to follow a case-by-case approach, rather than a blanket exclusion of transgender people”.

Again. It’s not “transgender people”; it’s men.

Also how revolting to see two women in government putting women’s safety at risk for the sake of this stupid ideology.

The deputy sports minister also raised the issue at a meeting with WRU officials in January 2023, when according to the minutes she said the Welsh government was “disappointed in the difference in treatment between trans men and trans women”.

Excuse me, I have to go bang my head against the wall for a few hours.

But what are we meaning by “hate crimes” here?

Will saying a man is not a woman be included in the list of hate crimes?

The Philadelphia Inquirer screams

Hershey Canada Women’s Day campaign sparks transphobic vitriol on Twitter

Or to put it another way: Hershey hijacking of Canada Women’s Day sparks protests from women on Twitter.

The subhead is almost as stupid and dishonest as the headline:

For International Women’s Day, Hershey Canada launched a campaign spotlighting young women trailblazers on its chocolate bars. Their inclusion of transgender woman Fae Johnstone sparked Twitter hate.

It’s not “hate” to say that events for women should not feature men, just as events for workers should not include bosses.

The lede is also stupid and dishonest; three for three.

An ad campaign from Hershey Canada intended to highlight women trailblazers is being met online with transphobic hate.

Three venomous lying accusations in a row.

The writer, Emily Bloch, finally gets around to the particulars.

To mark International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8,Hershey Canada launched a campaign spotlighting five young Canadian women, whose faces appear on the brand’s chocolate bar wrappers. Each chocolate bar is meant to spotlight women using their voices and advocacy to contribute to systemic progress for women.

Right. Women. Because it’s Women’s Day. Women, as in women, not men larping as women.

Women featured on chocolate bars were Autumn Peltier, an Indigenous rights and water activist; Naila Moloo, a climate technology researcher; Rita Audi, a gender and education equality activist; Kélicia Massala, the founder of Girl up Québec; and Fae Johnstone, a human rights activist and the executive director of consulting firmWisdom2Action. Johnstone is transgender, which some hateful online voices are taking issue with.

“Hateful.” Women who don’t want men who call themselves women taking the place of women in women’s events are called “hateful” by the woman who wrote this poisonous article.

The campaign was meant to celebrate women’s progress and acknowledge the ongoing fight for equity, Hershey’s Canada said. The company is donating up to $10,000 to each of the five women’s organizations and an additional $30,000 to Girl Up, a group that focuses on women’s equity.

But online trolls are pushing a countercampaign, calling to boycott the Hershey Co.

Trolls. We’re trolls now. Transphobic, hateful, trolls – the activist vocabulary is complete.

According to Sarah McBride, the Human Rights Campaign’s national press secretary, TERF views — which exclude trans women from conversations about the gender — “deny the validity of transgender people and transgender identities.” TERF views are widely rejected by most feminists, LGBTQ supporters, and the mainstream medical community.

Geddit? “Everybody hates you. We’re the cool kids, you’re the losers. All the good people reject you. We’re awesome, you’re a bunch of toads.”

The tits guy is on paid leave. So that’s how to get an extra vacation!

A Canadian high school teacher has been put on leave after reportedly wearing prosthetic breasts in class.

Not just “reportedly”; there are photos.

Parents of students at Oakville Trafalgar High School southwest of Toronto, where Kayla Lemieux taught shop class, grew frustrated after months of debate regarding her appearance.

No, that’s not exactly right either. One, it’s his appearance, and two, it’s not so much his appearance as the obvious, in your face, insulting fakery of it. It looks not so much like identifying as a woman but rather insulting women in general. Plus it looks childish, or else kinky, or a weird mashup of both. At any rate, imagine if he wore vaudeville-style blackface to teach his class.

I doubt he would have been allowed to do that for weeks and weeks before getting paid leave.

The decision to place the teacher on leave came after The Post reported that journalists followed her and discovered she only wears prosthetics in class and appears to dress as a man while not at work.

The pronouns are on paid leave too.

Women-hating men who just can’t believe their luck that they get to throw bricks at women and collect virtue stamps for doing so.

Do we get a free pass to say whatever we want when discussing our rights…gee, that’s a tough one. I don’t know. Probably to be on the safe side we should get Billy Bragg’s permission before we say anything.

Billy Bragg is just having fun though. Wot larks Pip!