Why did Trump go to East Palestine? To pretend to be the guy who cares about East Palestine and the people who live there and the people who live in all the places like East Palestine.

Donald Trump is visiting the small Ohio town reeling from the toxic fallout of a Norfolk Southern Corp. train derailment in the hope of capitalizing politically on residents’ anger about the initial response by the Biden administration. But the trip also highlights the ex-president’s rolling back of rules that former regulators say could have improved rail safety.

He bragged constantly about getting rid of all the pesky regulations, as if they were swarms of gnats as opposed to measures to protect human health and the environment, protect worker and consumer safety, and protect people from industrial accidents and disasters like DERAILMENTS OF TRAINS CARRYING DANGEROUS FREIGHT.

The way he talked, along with the rest of the Capitalism Unleashed crowd, you’d think regulations existed just to annoy everyone. Bring on the toxic explosions, yeah?!

The Post on the Times:

The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.

The thing is…the topic isn’t just “sensitive”; it’s also…bizarre. An outlier. More bluntly, childish.

I was thinking the same thing while reading that dopy piece in The New Republic. I was thinking about how weird it is seeing adult publications and outlets like TNR and the Post and the Times, and the Guardian and the BBC and NPR and on and on, take this childish game of let’s pretend so very seriously. It’s bizarre watching them report on it as if it were entirely real and normal and like the rest of their subject matter, instead of being about adults treating their fantasies about themselves as both truth and of public interest and importance. On the one hand Ukraine, climate change, authoritarian governments, extinctions, famines, pandemics, poverty, corruption – on the other hand Mai Jenndur Idenniny. How did we get here? How did we get nudged into taking this personal make-believe so very seriously?

H/t Mike Haubrich

The New Republic has a polemic by a trans activist named Brynn Tannehill.

So far this year, Republicans have filed over 300 anti-transgender bills at the state and federal levels, and we haven’t even reached the end of February…The American Principles Project, a religious conservative think tank and super PAC whose goal is to ban all transition-related health care (even for adults), is making a full-court press on Republican candidates to use transgender people as the number one talking point during the 2024 election cycle.

It always relies on the language tricks. “Transition-related health care” isn’t health care as normally understood at all, it’s something quite different. It’s medical intervention to make people’s bodies fit their fantasies about their “genders.” Bills that attempt to protect people from such medical interventions are labeled “anti-transgender” bills, as are bills that aim to keep men out of women’s sports and women’s locker rooms and toilets.

What doesn’t change at all are the half-truths, lies, and deliberate omissions used as talking points at every one of these hearings.

The trans ideology relies on half-truths and lies and omissions.

Like this one:

They bring up the closure of the Tavistock clinic for transgender youth in the U.K., but leave out the part that it was closed so new clinics acting as regional hubs could open up scattered about the country in the interest of making care more readily accessible.

The NHS is setting up new clinics, but the Tavistock was closed because it was a disaster.

Perhaps the worst irony in all of this is that while Republicans are rejecting the accepted standards of medical care because they deem the evidence insufficient, they are embracing and endorsing a model of treatment that has no peer-reviewed supporting evidence in practice called “Gender Exploratory Therapy” (GET) . This is essentially a rebranding of the type of conversion therapy that presupposes that some undetermined trauma causes a person to be LGBT, and if you find and treat that trauma the individual will stop being LGBT. 

There’s no such thing as being LGBT. Being same-sex attracted is not the same thing as thinking you’re in the wrong body. Being lesbian or gay doesn’t involve surgeries or puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Being lesbian or gay doesn’t involve a massive delusion about the self. Being lesbian or gay doesn’t require bullying of women. LG is different from T.

The New Republic doesn’t say the author of this propaganda piece is trans.

Brynn Tannehill is a Naval Academy graduate, former naval aviator, author, and senior defense analyst. She currently lives in Northern Virginia with her wife and three children.  

That’s it, that’s the blurb.

There are always so many theological puzzles with these things.

Why should fundy Christians be ruling the country and passing the laws and re-enslaving women?

Why, because they’re right, of course.

How do they know they’re right?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

But other bible-readers and god-obeyers have different views.

They’re wrong!

How do you know they’re wrong?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

Then why doesn’t god do something about them? Why doesn’t god put a stop to the wrong believers – or convince them that they’re wrong? God can do anything, so why doesn’t he (you do consider him a he, right?) just impose his will? Why allow all this error to flourish? Why stand idly by while so many humans are led astray?

Because free will!

Oh is that it? Then why try to impose a fundy Christian government on all of us?

Return to start.

Christian Nationalism is flexing its theocratic muscles.

Long a shadowy force in American politics, Christian Nationalism is having a coming out party. The movement seeks a fusion of fundamentalist theology with American civic life. “They believe that this country was founded for Christians like them, generally natural-born citizens and white,” says Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Whitehead emphasizes that the danger of Christian Nationalism to democracy is that the movement “sees no room for compromise — their vision must be the one that comes to pass.”

Because their vision is god’s vision and obviously there’s no compromising with god’s vision – god is absolute so god’s vision is also absolute, end of story.

Ah, you ask, even if that’s true, how do they know what god’s vision is?

Tss. Stupid question. God told them.

[T]he Christian Nationalist movement now commands a burgeoning political powerhouse, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. A first-of-its-kind organization in U.S. history, NACL advances “biblical” legislation in America’s statehouses. These bills are not mere stunts or messaging. They’re dark, freedom-limiting bills that, in some cases, have become law. 

Not surprising; there’s a lot of freedom-limiting stuff in the bible. A lot.

NACL’s impact has already been felt nationally. The group played a significant role in the legal fight that culminated in the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. NACL member Bryan Hughes, who serves in the Texas legislature, led passage of S.B. 8, the bounty-hunter bill that all-but outlawed abortion in Texas by allowing private citizens to sue women who terminate pregnancies after six weeks, and their doctors, in civil court. 

The bible doesn’t allow women to have much freedom at all.

Dang that Marjorie Taylor Greene really has her eye on the ball.

Yessir!! That’s what matters!!

Zelensky dresses the way he does in solidarity with the soldiers resisting Putin’s invasion. MTG of course knows that. What’s her point? That Zelensky is the bad guy and Putin is the exquisitely dressed hero? She’s going with that?

Can Laurie Penny really be this stupid? Surely not?

As you can see, the origin is a conversation from last April, which got woken up today. I found LP’s reply as silly as most of her replies to most things, so I felt compelled to contradict her.

Her response? Oyyyyyy

Ok so the solution to my problem a few hours ago is excerpts.

It shall be so.

tigger_the_wing:

The hospital had a section for people who suffered severe traumatic brain injury. These people were particularly interesting. As their brains healed and grew new connections, and they learned to do literally everything all over again they became totally different people. They had no memories of their previous lives; those stories and photos which their families and friends showed them might as well have happened to someone else. I’ve had parents crying in my taxi because the son or daughter they thought would die a few years earlier…had returned to them a complete stranger.

Mike Haubrich:

Being transgender is not an experience, it is an explanation for what some people experience. It’s a diagnosis, but it’s not based on anything more than a simple idea that can’t be formulated into a testable hypothesis.

I do not deny their experiences, but what I doubt and am skeptical of is their diagnosis, or their explanation for why they have those experiences.

Sastra:

I’ve often wondered why the extreme intensity of the anguish felt by those who are convinced their mental-sex doesn’t fit their body is routinely assumed to support that assumption. A high level of obsessive rumination and fractured sense of self is generally associated with psychological pathologies, not with birth defects.

…

An intense, agonizing, inescapable feeling of an unfilled need for something you rationally reject doesn’t give me a lot of confidence on the self-diagnosis. That supporters don’t seem to notice this doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that they’re analyzing it properly, either.

iknklast:

I have done a lot of literature search on these things, partially because students are always coming up with things I need to address as a science teacher. Some of it sounds astonishing to me, that you know there are demons because you woke to one sitting on your chest. Even after I learned about sleep paralysis, it seemed odd that would lead to such an experience.

Then one morning I couldn’t move when I woke up. I had sleep paralysis. I felt fortunate that I knew about it before I experienced it; that allowed me to interpret my experience accurately. I’m sure I would never have jumped to the conclusion that a demon was sitting on me, but I might have thought I had some serious condition. We filter such experiences through our expectations.

Nullius in verba:

It’s vaguely reminiscent of the cosmological argument. Assuming the argument is entirely valid and sound, it still doesn’t establish the existence of any particular deity. Likewise, assuming the absolute sincerity and torture of cross-sex belief doesn’t establish its veridicality. When I’ve pointed this out before, believers have responded that I’m missing the point, immediately pivoting from “therefore it’s true and TWAW” to “therefore we ought to believe that TWAW”. That is, our moral convictions should logically precede and determine our beliefs about the world.

Your Name’s not Bruce?

“Gender affirming” “care” is competing with watchful waiting for the minds and bodies of children. Practitioners promoting the “trans” pathway have something to push, whether it’s pharmaceuticals, surgeries, or both. Patients have an excellent chance of becoming lifelong customers, as they are ushered along their “gender journey,” a never-ending chase for a fantasy goal that’s always, and ever will be, out of reach. As I’ve said before, “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” In contrast, those going the talk therapy route have little to sell but puberty. The end goal is independence and acceptance, however uneasy, of how things really are.

Bjarte Foshaug:

I keep returning to the the old “what if I see blue the way you see red” problem. If there is no way to describe “ways xyz”, if there is no way to specify what I mean when I claim to feel like a “woman” (apart from “I think or feel like the kind of person who thinks or feels like the kind of person who thinks or feels like the kind of person who thinks or feels like etc… etc.. ad Infinitum“), I can’t possibly know that anyone else who claims to feel like a “woman” is talking about the same thing. If Chase Strangio is a “man” then I’m not. If Chase Strangio claims to be what I am, it’s fucking disingenuous to go on talking as if this were all about trans people’s right to be “who they are”.

Don’t eat a jar of hot sauce just before bedtime.

Kevin McCarthy gave a whole lot of Capitol Hill riot footage to Tucker Carlson.

US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy is under fire for giving thousands of hours of footage from the Capitol riot to a Fox News host.

…

Access to the video has until now been restricted mainly to a congressional committee and lawyers for the rioters.

During his show on Monday, Carlson said: “Some of our smartest producers have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”

Great. Fantastic. We’re being governed by Fox News. What could go wrong?

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the release of up to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage to Fox as an “egregious security breach”.

In a letter to his fellow party members, Mr Jeffries said that “extreme Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans in the House have provided tens of thousands of hours of sensitive Capitol security footage to a Fox News personality who regularly peddles in conspiracy theories and pro-Putin rhetoric”.

Who regularly lies to the camera, is what he regularly does.

The release comes as a number of Fox News journalists, including Mr Carlson, were named in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that says the network broadcast false and malicious rumours about voter fraud that harmed its business.

A court filing last week revealed a number of Mr Carlson’s profanity-laced text messages to colleagues in which he disparaged Trump lawyers’ claims of a rigged election, but continued to allow voter fraud conspiracists a platform on his top-rated show.

Top-rated.

I hate it when we (the non-Fox part of the world) give Fox ammunition.

A children’s “chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds” and is targeted at kids ages 6 to 9 years old is set to release a book about Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021 who is now the new assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

Children’s book series about women who spoke up to do a book about a man. Progress!!!

Here’s me speaking up: this is bullshit.

The book, which includes an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, states it is the “perfect choice for kids who love learning and teachers who want to bring inspiring women into their curriculum” and provides a “list of ways that readers can follow in Rachel Levine’s footsteps and make a difference!” 

How is it the perfect choice when he is a man?! How is it a perfect choice when he benefited from being a man for 54 years before he “transitioned”? How is it a perfect choice when he had the manly right to speak up and rise up for the first 54 years of his life? How does that make sense?

The book, “She Persisted: Rachel Levine” by Lisa Bunker will be released on June 6, 2023, and was inspired by Clinton’s picture book series by the same title that tells the stories of women like Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Sotomayor and Greta Thunberg.

The stories of women. Not the stories of men who call themselves women.

“As the first openly transgender government official to hold an office that requires Senate confirmation, the first openly transgender four-star officer in uniform service, and the first female four-star admiral in the commissioned corps, Rachel Levine faced many obstacles throughout her life,” the book’s online description reads. “But she persisted through them all and showed kids of all genders that they can succeed in their dreams too.”

But he didn’t face the obstacles women face as women throughout his life, because for the first 54 years of it he didn’t even pretend to be a woman.

Remember Sam Brinton, the “non-binary” nuclear waste official who got busted for stealing luggage at airports?

One of his victims spotted him wearing her stuff.

That’s Sam in the photo on the right, carrying the TastyFreeze and wearing the beautiful top she designed and wore.

That whole Don Lemon thing? CNN talking head telling millions that women become worthless in their 40s? Pfft. Not a problem.

If you turned on CNN on Wednesday morning curious to see how Don Lemon would address his mini sexism scandal after his mini sabbatical and his “formal training,” the answer is that he wouldn’t address it, at least not on air.

A few moments before his show began, the news anchor tweeted that he appreciated “the opportunity to be back” and, to his colleagues and viewers, wrote, “I’ve heard you, I’m learning from you, and I’m committed to doing better.” Once “CNN This Morning” started, though, it was business as usual. Co-host Kaitlan Collins reported from Poland while Lemon and Poppy Harlow were back at their table, shuffling papers.

How old is Kaitlan Collins? How old is Poppy Harlow? Does Lemon think they’re both “past their prime”?

He was absent from the air Monday and Tuesday, and his return Wednesday came after CNN CEO Chris Licht promised via internal memo that Lemon had “agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn.”

Why does he need “formal training” at his age (he’s 56) to know that men don’t get to announce that women are worthless past age 40? Why does he need formal training to grasp that a woman running for political office shouldn’t be judged on whether or not Don Lemon thinks she’s fuckable. Why doesn’t he already know that???

His error was not borderline, as if he’d enthusiastically commented that Haley “looked great for her age.” His error was unforced and repeated. The noteworthy thing isn’t that Lemon believed that women, like steaks, have sell-by dates. The noteworthy thing is that he believed his opinions were so universal as to be unremarkable. Something he could say on air. He did not anticipate blowback.

…

Here is what bothers me about Lemon, and I’m sorry you had to read this whole thing for me to figure it out: Good journalists are curious about the world around them. They are interested in societal changes. In what is fair, what is accurate, what is just and in how understanding those concepts can change as we all evolve. Good journalists pay attention to things. It’s the bare minimum of the profession.

Corporate formal training tends to be good at helping employees keep their mouths shut before they say bad things. It’s less good at helping employees learn about the societal forces — centuries’ worth of casual misogyny — that infiltrated their brains to begin with.

This is what I’m saying. How the hell did he not know that women running for office should not be subject to “Nah not her she’s way too old and gross” from tv talking heads?

Don Lemon didn’t pay attention. He didn’t pay attention to the fact that his dismissive old-women tropes were no longer acceptable, that they would reflect badly on himself and would harm his colleagues. It definitely makes me question how great he is on women’s issues. It kinda makes me question how great he is at his job.

Not me. It makes me think he’s crap at his job.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Black and white thinking.

On the trans issue the thing I find most checkable in my thinking is what it feels like. Maybe the feeling is so intense, so agonizing, so impossible to get rid of, that…well, that what?

But at any rate, I can agree that I don’t fully understand what it feels like.

Neither can I. On the other hand, just because it feels like something doesn’t mean that’s what it is. People are not always the best judge of their own experiences. The explanations we reach for first might not be correct. We can be mistaken, or fooled; we can dream or hallucinate. Our subjectivity is no guaranty of accuracy or veracity; our proximity to the feelings and phenomenon might be the very source of our misperception rather than proof against it.

How can anyone feel that they “are” or “must be” something they’re not, and can’t ever be? I can understand that people feel terrible discomfort, but I don’t believe that they have any grounds to say “The discomfort I feel is because I’m really supposed to be, I really am the other sex.” How could they have any standard of comparison to make that claim? It’s like voting for the best restaurant in town when you’ve only ever been to one. Without eating at others, you can’t know there aren’t better. Well, when it comes to our selves we’re stuck in our one and only restaurant for life. The doors are locked, there’s no way out. I can only know what it’s like to be me. I will never have experiences as anyone but me. It’s like the old saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” You can’t get outside of yourself. No taste tests, no test drives. You can use imagination and empathy to inform yourself, to imagine and empathize, but you can’t be someone else . Not really. Not ever. However distressed or agonized I might be, I can not believably claim that I feel this way because I’m not actually the only person I’ve ever been (and the only one I will ever be) able to experience. Certainly you can agree that my discomfort and distress are real without accepting my claims about their origin.

Amputees experiencing “phantom limb syndrome” are experiencing something, but it does not, can not involve a continued connection to the limb that has been removed. Similarly, people suffering from the mistaken belief that their arm is not their own, but some sort of alien or robotic imposter are indeed suffering, but not because their arm is not actually theirs. The arms are not the problem, and it would be cruelly destructive to patients to tell them that they were correct. Even without the neurological underpinning that we now have to explain these strange claims and perceptions, we would have been under no obligation to agree with the sufferers’ preferred, but impossible rationalizations for these sensations. Claims of being “born into the wrong body” or “being the other sex” are entirely internal and private; there’s no publicly accessible stump, or bodily contiguity we can point to to refute these claims, but I believe they are just as impossible as phantom or alien limbs.

Is there any reason to believe in a “gendered soul” that must be given priority over our material bodies, for which we have more than sufficient evidence? Are we really readmitting Cartesian dualism into neuroscience? It would be like reintroducing phlogiston into chemistry. Without very good evidence, it is reckless to carry on as if drugging and carving the only body we will ever have in order to conform to the unquestionable demands of a gender “entity” that likely does not exist, consitutes a “treatment” for anything. It is no more effective than clothing a phantom limb or amputating an “alien” one.

Originally a pair of comments by Tim Harris on Imperialism: not THAT bad.

I came across a historian (English) who was educated at Cambridge, and taught at universities outside Britain; he was much exercised by anyone paying attention to slavery, and said the proper field of interest should be colonial history, by which he appeared to mean rehearsing the old tales of Clive of India, Cecil Rhodes et al. I remarked that slavery was an integral part of colonialism so that I did not see how it could be ignored. I find nothing positive, morally or otherwise, about slavery, the constant use of violence, and the extreme violence that was used if slaves rebelled; and I find nothing positive about the torture, mutilation, rape and murder of members of the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya in the last century, something that British governments sought to cover up for years.

One reason, of course, why India was ‘more complicated’ than the Americas was because the people of India were not susceptible to the Old World diseases that European adventurers brought to the New World. Africa, which is a continent, is a great deal more complicated than many people would like to suppose, and it always has been. But few people in the West are seriously interested in the history of Africa south of those nations bordering on the Mediterranean, largely because they don’t suppose it had a history, or, rather, many histories.

Australia seems to be at last coming to some sort of terms with the violent history of its treatment (which included many massacres) of the original people who settled there, as does New Zealand; and if that involves a bit of ‘woo’, I really do not care, since it is not going to change the present course of science – science that in the past included the kind of ideas that remain dear to the heart of the still extant James Watson.

No doubt there were some positives in colonialism, and I do not wish to deny them, but I am reminded by those who dwell on them of something my Japanese wife heard from a colleague at the music university where she taught, here in Japan. The colleague was complaining about Chinese ingratitude because, after all, ‘we Japanese’ had built railways there prior to the Second World War. I have heard the same words with respect to India from British people.

Look up the name of Ram Mohan Roy in connexion with suttee; you will find that its banning was certainly not due solely to the enlightened members of the East India Company. He also fought against polygamy, child marriage and the caste system, and for property inheritance rights for women.

As for the benefits of colonialism, Roy, as well as other Indians, criticised the ‘drain’ whereby around one-half of the total revenue collected in India ‘was sent to England, leaving India, with a considerably larger population, to use the remaining money to maintain social well-being.’ (See Wikipedia)

And here’s something from the Economic Times of India:

JAIPUR: The East India Company knew the best way to conquer India was to control its trade and that is why controlling of ports became so important for them, noted politician and writer Shashi Tharoor said here today.

Tharoor, who was speaking at a session at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival here, said the company indulged in “fair amount of loot” and was “ruthless” in exaction of taxes.

“They found they could not succeed by buying Indian textiles and have to destroy it (textile industry) and they did that systematically,” he said, noting that there were “vested interests” involved that kept the company going.

According to him, the “horrendous” organisation did not even spare weavers and cut their funds.

“The Company also cut the funds of the weavers. The largest exporter of textiles was reduced to importing textiles from England,” he said, adding that India also had a “sophisticated” banking system.

Tharoor was in conversation with historian William Dalrymple at a session titled, “The Dishonourable Company: How the East India Company Took Over India”, where he also talked about his latest book, “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” which attempts to challenge the notion that the British rule was beneficial for India.

He said the British were in India only for money and also controlled the revenue in the country.

Agreeing with Tharoor’s description, Dalrymple said the company was a “tiny multi-national which created mayhem”.

Trump went to East Palestine Ohio today and…handed out bottles of Trump-brand water. No word on whether he threw them or not.

In what one former GOP official told Politico was a “clear” political stunt, former President Donald Trump visited East Palestine on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after a catastrophic train derailment. The trip also comes one day ahead of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s own trip to the Ohio town.

And two years and six weeks after Trump tried to incite a mob to hand him the election he lost.

In his remarks, he seized the opportunity to bash Buttigieg, saying he “should’ve been here already,” and President Joe Biden, advising him: “Get over here.” The former president also said that he was bringing “thousands of bottle of water [sic]—Trump water, actually. Most of it. Some of it, we had to go to a much lesser quality water.”

Attaboy, flog that merch even during an disaster.

Asked about his administration’s rollback of rail regulations, including regular safety audits of railroads, Trump said he “had nothing to do with it,” according to WKBN. 

He had nothing to do with his administration. Interesting.

CNN outdoes even the Guardian. It’s breathtaking how malicious and ugly this is:

For years, J.K. Rowling, one of the best-selling authors of all time, has made inflammatory comments about transgender people, particularly trans women, using dehumanizing language and baselessly accusing them of harming cisgender women. Her words have disappointed legions of “Harry Potter” fans and even the stars who brought Rowling’s books to life.

It’s “for years” only in the most literal sense, i.e. more than one year. The comments are “inflammatory” only in the sense that easily incensed people like “Scottie Andrew,” the author of this inflammatory piece, urge each other to be inflamed about them. “Dehumanizing language” is a straight-up lie. It’s also a lie to say she “accuses trans people of harming cisgender women.” This is plausible deniability at its most punchable. “I didn’t say she accused all trans people of harming cisgender women…I merely implied it. Neener neener.”

The very title of this bowl of sick is disgusting, and indeed “inflammatory”:

What to know about the new J.K. Rowling podcast and her history of harmful anti-trans comments

What to know, as if it were a set of facts instead of a piece of hate-mail from one bratty CNN reporter. “Her history” – he sounds like J. Edgar Hoover. Her comments are not harmful and they’re not anti-trans. Is CNN written by and for teenagers now?

Now, a podcast called “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” indicates she’ll discuss the reaction to those anti-trans comments – in addition to discussing her journey as an author – with host Megan Phelps-Roper, a high-profile former member of the anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church. Even before its release, the podcast was met with criticism by LGBTQ advocates for seemingly siding with Rowling based on the title alone.

Thanks to people like Scottie Andrew who do their best to convince everyone she’s an evil witch.

H/t a reader who may or may not want to be named.

Is that another crack in the foundation?

Police Scotland has withdrawn from a diversity scheme run by Stonewall, the controversial gay and transgender rights group.

The controversial group that used to campaign for gay rights but now campaigns for trans rights instead, often at the expense of gay rights.

The charity has been criticised for its stance on trans issues. Police Scotland is understood to be the first high-profile Scottish public body to have quit the scheme, which has attracted the support of the Scottish government — currently 89th on Stonewall’s top 100 employers index.

The fanatical, destroy everything else support of the Scottish government.

In 2021, the BBC announced its withdrawal from Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme after concerns about impartiality. The House of Commons, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the House of Lords and Ofcom have also left.

…

Critics claim the scheme wields undue influence over some public sector organisations. The workplace equality index rewards employers for promoting LGBTQ+ ideology both internally and outside the workplace, allowing them to climb the rankings.

But more T ideology than LGB ideology. LGB rights don’t rely on an ideology in the way claims about T rights do. LGB rights don’t require people to lie and ignore and pretend the way purported T rights do.

Stonewall said: “We’re proud of our diversity champions programme, which supports workplaces to create LGBTQ+ inclusive environments where all staff can thrive.”

No it doesn’t. It supports workplaces to create environments where staff are bullied and punished and fired if they don’t agree that men can be women.

H/t Holms

The BBC does a much more adult job of reporting on Prime Suspect JKR’s conversation with Megan Phelps-Roper.

Rowling has attracted extensive criticism for a series of comments voicing concerns about how trans issues affect women’s rights, and her opposition to Scotland’s gender recognition bill.

How refreshing it is to see a news outlet say that in a way that doesn’t nudge the reader to recoil in shock at a woman’s defense of women’s rights.

Her position has been interpreted by some as transphobic, leading to calls for a boycott of the Harry Potter franchise…

By some. Not all, not most, not even many, just some.

The Beeb even allows her to make a persuasive, thoughtful case.

Rowling later said many questions do not necessarily have clear-cut answers.

“There is a huge appeal, and I try to show this in the Potter books, to black and white thinking.

“It’s the easiest place to be and in many ways it’s the safest place to be. If you take an all-or-nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades, you will easily find a community. ‘I’ve sworn allegiance to this one simple idea.’

“What I’ve tried to show in the Potter books, and what I feel strongly myself, is that we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain.”

This is a good sign.

The Guardian has a piece about JK Rowling’s life with her abusive first husband, and to make up for such a twanzphobic act, goes on to abuse her. Part One: here’s how bad it was; Part Two: here’s how bad she is. The two takes don’t mesh very well – the transition is awkward.

The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has spoken about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her former husband, saying he tried to lock away the unpublished manuscript of the series’ first book to stop her leaving him.

Speaking on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a podcast series released on Tuesday, the author described her relationship with Jorge Arantes as violent and controlling, saying she had to sneak pages of the work away in small batches to photocopy in case he burned them.

…

“That manuscript still meant so much to me. That was the thing that I actually prioritised for saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that, obviously, was my daughter, but at that point she’s still inside me, so she’s as safe as can be in that situation.”

End of Part One. Transition to Part Two:

Rowling was speaking to Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is known for its hateful views and frequent protests against the LGBT community and other marginalised communities.

Subtle, but not all that subtle. An oddly conspicuous nudge to remember that Rowling too has “hateful views” according to the new law of nature that lesbians and gay men are in a “community” with people who think they’re the other sex. Rowling of course is not a member of a marginalised community. Women are not marginalised, or oppressed or excluded or bullied or harassed or assaulted or raped or murdered.

Also “known for its hateful views” is a weirdly childish phrase for an adult newspaper, and “other marginalised communities” isn’t much better.

The reporter, Kevin Rawlinson, gives himself the snide last word.

Among those to criticise her take on gender identity are the stars of the Harry Potter film franchise Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

Some critics have accused Rowling of stirring transphobia, including through her mocking interventions on social media.

Rowling said she had received “so many death threats I could paper the house with them”.

The Guardian is pathetic.

The Telegraph is paying attention.

A council is facing a backlash after agreeing to allow a trans cartoonist with a “kink” for nappy fetish art to speak to children at a library.

It’s ok. He could explain them about what a nappy fetish is, and they could tell him about their nappies.

Ms Labelle, who identifies as a woman, has spoken publicly about her nappy fetish art, known as “diaperfur art”. It has been defined as images related to someone with an interest in anthropomorphic animal characters and an interest in wearing diapers, typically as part of a baby roleplay.

Sheds a whole new light on Winnie the Pooh, wot wot?