Fox has a second lawsuit to deal with.

Smartmatic USA Corporation’s lawsuit against Fox News has attracted only a fraction of the attention garnered by the legal action of Dominion Voting Systems. Yet both firms are suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, and both pose a serious threat to Fox’s finances and reputation.

Smartmatic is asking for more money.

So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London, lodged its defamation suit in February 2021. “The Earth is round,” was the complaint’s striking opening sentence. “Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election … ”

The earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Men are not women.

The complaint goes on to argue that, contrary to these indisputable facts, Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory. “Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.”

To prop up that story, the lawsuit claims, Fox needed a villain. That villain was Smartmatic.

Smartmatic claims that over 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.

Yebbut First Amendment. Fox might win because of First Amendment, but…one can dream.

I saw this from Hadley Freeman –

So I went looking. It’s New Yorker editor David Remnick talking to New Yorker writer Masha Gessen, who went all they/them recently, much to my surprise too (too along with Hadley Freeman). I’d thought she was a grownup. The interview is on what we talk about when we talk about trans rights. It’s beyond depressing to see adults carrying on this way.

Remnick first encountered Gessen in Moscow more than 30 years ago.

As a reporter for the Washington Post, I was trying to keep track of the countless ways in which Soviet society was changing. For a long time, despite all the other radical shifts consuming the country, discussion of gay rights was largely absent. In those days, public figures would sometimes proclaim that homosexuality was a repugnant peculiarity of the West and did not exist at home. In the late eighties, the official press declared that H.I.V. was alien to the Soviet Union and had been created by the U.S. defense establishment, in a bioweapons-research lab at Fort Detrick, in Maryland. But by 1990 or so this, too, began to shift. For me, at least, one of the embodiments of this change was the sight of a determined young journalist and activist at the head of a small gay-rights rally near the Bolshoi Theatre. This was Masha Gessen.

Gessen has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2017 and is best known for their writing on Russia, human rights, democracy and authoritarianism, and, for the past thirteen months, the war in Ukraine.

Thud. First paragraph, adult talking. Second paragraph, CLANG. That “their” – are we in high school all of a sudden? Masha Gessen is one person, not two or more. She’s also a woman.

Recently, not long after Gessen returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine, I sent them an e-mail pointing out some of the debates over the way trans issues are being covered and discussed. The latest flash point had been at the New York Times. I asked Gessen, who identifies as trans and nonbinary, how The New Yorker should be thinking about its own coverage and approach. The reply led to an interview on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Step one: don’t consult people who tell you to refer to them with “they/them” on this subject.

Remnick starts:

Masha, to hear many Republicans right now, you’d think that L.G.B.T.Q. rights are somehow as big a threat as the new Cold War, or nuclear war. I spoke with Michaela Cavanaugh, a Democratic state senator in Nebraska, who is fighting to block a bill that would withhold gender-affirming care from trans kids, including mental-health care.

There are no “LGBTQ” rights. T and Q rights are in conflict with LGB rights. And “gender-affirming care” is another verbal nudge to agree with dangerous bullshit.

Gessen: Note that Putin’s war in Ukraine goes hand in hand with extreme anti-L.G.B.T. rhetoric. In his last speech, he took time to assert that God is male, and that the crazy Europeans and the “Nazi” Ukrainians are trying to make God gender-fluid. I’m not kidding.

Remnick: Men are men and women are women, and that’s the end of the story.

Gessen: Right. That simplicity—women are women, men are men. There’s social and financial stability. Where relevant, there’s whiteness.

But men are men and women are women and tautologies are tautologies. Some women and men like to mix up gender conventions; that doesn’t mean they become the sex they’re not. A rabbit in a tutu is still a rabbit.

Gessen: Professionally, I started out in gay and lesbian journalism, as it was known, in the mid-eighties. At the time, it was obvious that, if somebody was doing gay and lesbian journalism, they were at least queer. Growing up, I was most definitely trans-identified, except I didn’t have words for it.

What does “queer” mean there? Something more than lesbian and gay? Or just a way of repeating lesbian and gay, but then why bother to say LG=queer? Does it mean something like “halfway to being trans”? I don’t know. I don’t know what she means.

Gessen: And then I went through puberty and I could no longer live as a boy so clearly. Then I was a lesbian for many, many years, or more likely queer. But I’ve always thought of myself as having more of a gender identity than a sexual orientation.

What does “queer” mean there?

Remnick: One of the things that became part of the language at a certain period of time was the following sentence: “Gender is a construct.” I think most people over the centuries thought of gender as something provided by biology. What is the origin of the notion of gender as a construct?

It’s simpler than that. Gender was just another word for sex, and useful because “sex” also means the activity, so “gender” disambiguates.

Gessen: Judith Butler, who certainly did not invent the phrase “gender as a construct” but did a lot to popularize that idea, and an idea of gender as performance, which I think is even more relevant to what we’re talking about—she said fairly recently—or, I’m sorry, they said fairly recently—in an interview that—

Remnick: I think it’ll be heartening for some to know that you made this mistake. We’re leaving it in!

More like profoundly irritating. See? See? This is one major reason it’s such a stupid idea – it’s impossible to remember and thus a source of pointless stress and distraction.

Gessen: One of the best quotes I’ve heard from somebody who studies gender and medical intervention was “Look, the gender of a five-year-old girl and a fifty-year-old woman is not the same.” I thought, You’re right. We think of these things as stable and knowable, but they’re not. They’re fluid by definition, and in our lived experience they’re fluid.

Oh shut up. Congratulations, you’ve discovered “personality.” It’s not the gender of a 5 and a 50 that is different.

Remnick: How would you approach talking about trans people? What is the state of the conversation? Where are we? Why is it so fraught and so often painful?

Gessen: I think it’s so painful and so fraught because it is very difficult, in discussing transness, in covering transness, to avoid engaging with the argument about whether trans people actually exist or have the right to exist. That is deeply painful to trans people—and, I would imagine, to people who love trans people. That’s actually something that should be off limits. 

Another manipulative ambiguity. She’s shocking. There is no “argument about whether trans people have the right to exist.” The issue is what people call themselves and try to force everyone else to call them, not anyone’s “right to exist.” No one is proposing a genocide of trans people. She knows that, but she’s pretending not to. It’s disgusting. Remnick should have interrupted there.

Gessen: That is deeply painful to trans people—and, I would imagine, to people who love trans people. That’s actually something that should be off limits. But it is very hard, because, for example, in Emily Bazelon’s excellent piece in the New York Times Magazine last summer about the battle over transgender treatment, there’s a [paraphrased] quote from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative gay journalist, who says, Well, maybe these people would’ve been gay—implying they’re really gay and not really transgender. That really clearly veers into the territory of saying “These people don’t exist. They’re not who they say they are.” So that’s why it’s so painful.

No, no, no. Disputing people’s descriptions of themselves is not the same as saying they don’t exist.

One expects this kind of dreck from The Independent or The Guardian, but not from The New Yorker.

Remnick: So you’re saying that Emily Bazelon should not have referenced Andrew Sullivan on that? I think it was a paraphrase of Sullivan rather than a quotation.

Gessen: I wouldn’t have. I think that piece would’ve been even better without that. As journalists, we’re not under obligation to quote every single view on an issue. I think we have the right to exclude the view that somebody’s not who they say they are.

So if we say Putin’s not who he says he is, that should be excluded? We “have the right” to exclude it?

By the way, Andrew Sullivan is pissed.

Hooboy. Donnie has a hit single.

A new single, “Justice for All,” featuring former President Donald Trump, from the J6 Prison Choir, reached No. 1 on iTunes’ top songs on March 11.  

The J6 Prison Choir is comprised of a group of men who were convicted after their participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The song includes the choir singing  “The Star-Spangled Banner” from jail before it climaxes with the prisoners chanting “USA! USA!” The “Justice for All” track has the performance of the national anthem interrupted by clips of President Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Armed insurrection is patriotic and loyal and everything good provided you sing this one song and shout USA USA over and over. Substance is nothing, appearance is everything. Amen.

Sorry but I have to sneer at Lauren Boebert some more.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has announced that she will be a grandmother at 36 next month when her 17-year-old son’s partner gives birth to a son.

Her son’s what? Do 17-year-olds have “partners”?

Boebert staffers on Friday confirmed the announcement. Breaking from a meeting for an interview, Boebert verified her son and his girlfriend are not married and declined to reveal the age of the girlfriend, other than to say she’s over 14.

Soooooo she’s 15. Great. 15-year-olds are definitely mature enough to be parents; that’s definitely an ideal time to start pumping out the babies.

Boeberty family values:

You’d think the ACLU would be embarrassed to tell obvious lies in public.

The second tweet gives away the fact that the first tweet is a lie. Clumsy.

A law that withholds funding from schools that let boys compete on girls’ teams is not a law “that would ban trans girls and women from sports nationwide.” The boys can still compete! On boys’ teams!

They may be at a disadvantage competing against boys if they’re taking cross-sex hormones, but that’s their problem; it’s not girls’ problem. It’s a grotesque demonstration of male privilege to force girls to pay the price for boys’ decision to take cross-sex hormones. The ACLU has become a gruesomely anti-woman organization.

The Telegraph says Gary Lineker is winning the fight the BBC tried to pick.

Gary Lineker is poised to return to work for the BBC next week as talks between the broadcaster and senior management figures continue. 

The Telegraph understands there is a growing confidence that the corporation’s lead sports presenter will return in time for next weekend.

It would bring a welcome end to the crisis that has seen sport coverage across the network disrupted or cancelled this weekend after fellow pundits, commentators and reporters refused to work in protest at the way Lineker had been treated.

…

Lineker has not said anything publicly since he was taken off air on Friday, spending his Saturday watching Leicester City 3-1 home defeat to Chelsea. But BBC director-general Tim Davie said on Saturday night that he wanted to “make sure he could come back” before describing the former England captain as the best sports presenter in the country.

In other words Lineker 1 BBC 0.

Remember when Republicans were the law n order party? It seems like only yesterday.

Even before the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the public would occasionally hear some Republican officials talk about cutting off funds to federal law enforcement. At an event last year, for example, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, the former chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, talked up possible priorities if the GOP took control of the House.

“There are things you can do,” the Arizonan said, reflecting on Congress’ power. “You start defunding some of these bad agencies. The FBI. The DOJ.”

So that…what? Ignorant sadistic real estate crooks could get away with more and more crimes?

After the search at Donald Trump’s glorified country club, however, similar talk became much louder. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, for example, became a leading proponent of “defunding” the FBI.

Just depends on whose ox is being gored, it seems.

A man telling lesbians what they can and can’t do, what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t think, how they can and can’t organize.

Serious questions should be asked.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The evidence behind this surge in treatment.

It could be that there was a huge underserved population of adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria and getting no help, or it could be that a huge population of unhappy adolescents has latched on to “gender dysphoria” as the source and meaning of their unhappiness. It could also be a mix of both.

I find it frustrating how the entire medical profession has to tip-toe around the subject of gender distress, holding back from saying things that are obvious. It’s patently obvious that this is the first generation of adolescents experiencing anything like this, in terms of the number of adolescents affected, and the degree to which they seem to be experiencing distress over sex and gender.

This is the only area of medicine I can think of that believes “an overabundance of caution” means caution about offending activists instead of caution about the health of vulnerable patients. It was out of an overabundance of caution over fears of being perceived as transphobic that they rushed to greenlight experimental treatments on vulnerable adolescents before they had any good data to back them up, and in the face of overwhelming data that shows none of this treatment is entirely necessary, plus a growing body of data that shows most of it may in fact be harmful.

“Gender dysphoria” is being defined ever more broadly, and treated more aggressively at the same time. Fifteen years ago it was “gender identity disorder” —a full-blown debilitating mental disorder. Now it’s just a feeling of distress. And plans are already underway to redefine it again, this time as “gender incongruence” — nothing more than a preference to be one sex over the other. But these softer thresholds aren’t being matched with softer treatments. It’s full-on sex changes for everyone; the more the better. So there it is, the underlying ideal, a bizarre new “human right”: sex is a choice.

A lot of people have drifted into the position that sex is a choice without properly examining it. It’s bad on multiple levels. At the lowest level, it’s not true: sex is not a choice; it’s something we’re all born with. Next level up: so-called “sex change” treatment doesn’t literally change anyone’s sex, because that’s impossible. This is all just cosmetics with sterility and other major medical problems as inconvenient side effects. And up on the social level, simply giving in to everyone’s desire to change their sex ignores the social factors that are influencing people to feel this way in the first place: namely, sexism and homophobia.

Because if men and women, gays and straights, were truly equal, and were truly free to live our lives the way we see fit, then why would anyone feel such an urgent need to switch their body from one sex to the other? Especially when they aren’t even really switching sexes; they’re just paying a massive medical price to undertake a lifelong pretence of switching?

This is so not a leap forward for humanity; it’s such an obvious lurch in the wrong direction.

The BMJ reports gender dysphoria in young people is rising—and so is professional disagreement.

In a new report from The BMJ Investigations Unit, Jennifer Block, investigations reporter, looks into the evidence base behind this surge in treatment.

More adolescents with no history of gender dysphoria are presenting at gender clinics. For example, a recent analysis of insurance claims found that nearly 18,000 US minors began taking puberty blockers or hormones from 2017 to 2021, the number rising each year.

Meanwhile, the number of US private clinics focused on providing hormones and surgeries have grown from just a few a decade ago to more than 100 today.

It could be that there was a huge underserved population of adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria and getting no help, or it could be that a huge population of unhappy adolescents has latched on to “gender dysphoria” as the source and meaning of their unhappiness. It could also be a mix of both. But I think one thing we can say is: it seems very unlikely that the explosion in attention to “gender dysphoria” has done nothing at all to nudge unhappy adolescents into latching on to it.

In short the BMJ is wondering if the spike in adolescents taking blockers or hormones and the spike in the number of clinics might have something to do with social contagion.

Ya think?

American medical professional groups are aligned in support of “gender affirming care” for gender dysphoria, which may include hormone treatment to suppress puberty and promote secondary sex characteristics, and surgical removal or augmentation of breasts, genitals, and other physical features.

And that fact is sad and alarming and baffling. “Hello Jane/John, nice to meet you, you’re unhappy in your body? Well let’s get you started on puberty blockers. Next month we’ll talk about lopping off those tits/that dick. See you then!”

Three organisations in particular have had a major role in shaping the US approach to gender dysphoria care: The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society, all of which have guidelines or policies that support early medical treatment for gender dysphoria in young people.

All because…what? I don’t know. What the reason for this stampede is I don’t know. These aren’t kids on Twitter, these are adult medial professionals, yet here we are. One answer could be “Because they’re right and you’re wrong,” but sadly another could be that the profession is subject to lurches into recklessness sometimes. Lobotomy is the go-to example.

These endorsements are often cited to suggest that medical treatment is both uncontroversial and backed by rigorous science, but governing bodies around the world have come to different conclusions regarding the safety and efficacy of certain treatments, notes Block. 

For example, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare, which sets guidelines for care, determined earlier this year that the risks of puberty blockers and treatment with hormones “currently outweigh the possible benefits” for minors.

And NHS England, which is in the midst of an independent review of gender identity services, recently stated that there is “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making” for minors with gender dysphoria, and that for most who present before puberty it will be a “transient phase,” requiring clinicians to focus on psychological support and to be “mindful” of the risks of even social transition. 

Pause pause pause.

Flood insurance in Florida was always going to be a disaster waiting to happen. It’s happening.

During the insurance claims process, it’s standard for field adjusters, who are trained to assess damaged homes, to collaborate with those back in the office to make minor edits, discuss aspects of the claim and alter line items if, for example, the carrier has evidence that damage was from a prior event, according to adjusters and insurance industry experts. That is how the system is supposed to work.

But that’s not what has been happening in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Lee and others said.

Insurers are motivated to find every way they can to reduce the payout, but they’re not supposed to just erase most of what the adjuster reports.

Instead, Lee and other adjusters contracted by regional insurance carriers say that managers have been changing their work by lowering totals, rewriting descriptions of damage and deleting accompanying photos without their approval. These actions to devalue damage are the latest example of the insurance crisis in Florida.

See, you don’t want to be a flood insurance company in Florida. Global warming is going to swamp Florida, and the process is already well under way.

After years of more frequent and intense storms, national carriers have pulled back from the market and smaller, regional carriers with smaller financial reserves jumped in.

Why? Are they stupid? Why would anyone Jump In on that?

In the wake of Hurricane Ian, those companies have been aggressively seeking to limit payouts to policyholders by altering the work of licensed adjusters, according to a Washington Post investigation. As a result, homeowners are left footing much of the bill for repairs, exposing an untenable gap between the cost of storm damage and what insurers are willing to pay to fix it.

Those companies shouldn’t have jumped in in the first place. What did they think was going to happen? Did they not figure out why the big insurers were getting out of Florida altogether?

It’s a sad sad story.

The Guardian Live on the BBC v Gary Lineker:

What we know so far:

Gary Lineker’s suspension from the BBC has been followed by dozens of presenters, pundits and contributors withdrawing from BBC duties this weekend.

As the corporation attempted to find a replacement host for Match of the Day on Friday, pundits Ian Wright and Alan Shearer announced they were pulling out of the show in solidarity.

Match of the Day is still due to air tonight, but without a presenter, pundits or commentators.

For My Fellow Americans: Gary Lineker is a former footballer turned BBC Match of the Day host; the BBC suspended him for tweets critical of Tory policy on refugees. People are lining up to point out the many examples of people who work for the BBC and say pro-Tory things in public with no murmur from the bosses.

Back to Guardian Live:

Roger Mosey, a former head of BBC TV News, has said the Lineker row highlights how BBC chairman Richard Sharp has damaged the corporation’s credibility and called for him to stand down.

In January, the Sunday Times reported that, before being appointed to the job by former prime minister Boris Johnson, Sharp helped Johnson secure an £800,000 [loan?]. The revelations have led to widespread questions about his suitability for the role.

More “we can do it but you can’t”:

Tom Peck, a columnist for the Independent, points out that Karren Brady, who appears as an adviser to Alan Sugar on BBC show The Apprentice, also sits as a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Peck says Brady’s votes as a member of the chamber are “arguably of more consequence than a tweet”.

Lineker’s suspension was sparked by a tweet in which he said a government plan to effectively ban anyone who arrives in the UK illegally from claiming asylum had been expressed in “language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

Commenting on Peck’s tweet, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde suggests that every time Brady “votes in favour of their legislation, government ministers should demand she [be] sacked by the BBC”.

The BBC should issue a statement saying it’s coming out as trans so please respect its pronouns.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Would risk a backlash.

Certainly, one might examine certain propositions more carefully because of their provenance, but I hardly think it true or sensible to say that ‘nobody has any reason to believe anything you have to say’ on a particular issue on the grounds that ‘you’ are sadly wrong on other issues.

Yeah, I get that on an intellectual level, but I’m looking at this from the point of view of someone who wants the Green Party (when it actually is green and not pink and baby blue) to do better and have a greater influence on the policy positions of more mainstream parties. In going all in on gender ideology, they’ve wrecked their reputation as advocates of scientific realism when it comes to dealing with environmental issues. It’s not just that they’re wrong or mistaken, they’re wrong and mistaken on an issue that has little to no bearing on environmental concerns; they’ve been fooled, and are passing on the foolishness. They themselves are not being sensible or true. They have turned themselves into a witness whose testimony can be shown to be unreliable on this issue. The fact that it’s outside their supposed core area of expertise and advocacy, and that they’ve gone out of their way to embrace it and promote it, only makes it worse. That shows a failure of judgement that doesn’t inspire confidence in their other positions. Their other policy goals and proposals might be marvelously brilliant, but in this one area, they’re poison. How does one balance one’s support when faced with that sort of dogged irrationality?

It’s also not a very good fit with Green aspirations to be open and transparent in their way of doing politics; the trans and Stonewall ethos and methodology has rubbed off on them without any apparent transfer of means and methods going in the other direction. It’s another instance of “Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.” Internal Green politics seems to have eagerly taken on the unsavoury bullying and intimidation we see coming from trans activism. Maybe the Greens were already like this and I just hadn’t noticed. But they certainly have not become better for having added trans activism to their laundry list. If elected Green representatives get more worked up about pronoun usage than environmental issues, then that’s a step backwards. Probably several. If one is so easily upset by people being mean, then maybe electoral politics isn’t a good fit ; environmental politics doubly so.

Certainly claims, statements, and policies should be examined on their own merits on a case by case basis, and sometimes you have to take the bad with the not quite as bad. In Canada, the only federal parties I’m ever likely to vote for have all gone for genderism at the expense of the rights of women and girls, and needlessly so. Even though the Conservatives would, on the whole, be worse for women (and everyone else), and I would only vote for them if all my other choices were further to the right, it still feels like a betrayal of women to support parties that spout such blatant lies on this one issue. These parties will support this bullshit until it costs them electoraly, and they may do so afterwards, depending on their blindness and commitment. They will blame defeat on any number of other things if they’re unable or unwilling to admit that espousing trans “rights” is a political liability. Unless and until the demand for trans “rights” is seen as the dangerous, anti-progressive, misogynistic garbage that it is, parties seduced by twitter activism will be inordinately eager to signal their “virtue,” even in the face of reality. If there was some way to bring this realization about, to rub their noses in it without handing right-wing parties governing power, forcing misguided leftists to do their soul-searching in the political wilderness, I’d be all for it. I hate having to hold my nose when I vote, but I see little choice for the time being.

Don’t mention the war climate disaster.

The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of David Sir Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

The BBC says not true, not true, they never planned to broadcast that episode. But…

Senior sources at the BBC told the Guardian that the decision not to show the sixth episode was made to fend off potential critique from the political right. This week the Telegraph newspaper attacked the BBC for creating the series and for taking funding from “two charities previously criticised for their political lobbying” – the WWF and RSPB.

The BBC should just kick back and watch the planet burn.

Laura Howard, who produced the programme and used to work at the BBC’s Natural History Unit, said she did not believe its messages to be political.

She told the Guardian: “I think the facts speak for themselves. You know, we’ve worked really closely with the RSPB in particular who are able to factcheck all of our scripts and provide us with detailed scientific data and information about the loss of wildlife in this country. And it is undeniable, we are incredibly nature-depleted. And I don’t think that that is political, I think it’s just facts.”

But you can make it political by screaming and complaining and kicking up a fuss because you want to keep doing what you’re doing and let the future people deal with the mess we’ve made.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “For the BBC to censor of one of the nation’s most informed and trusted voices on the nature and climate emergencies is nothing short of an unforgivable dereliction of its duty to public service broadcasting. This government has taken a wrecking ball to our environment – putting over 1,700 pieces of environmental legislation at risk, setting an air pollution target which is a decade too late, and neglecting the scandal of our sewage-filled waterways – which cannot go unexamined and unchallenged by the public.

“BBC bosses must not be cowed by antagonistic, culture war-stoking government ministers, putting populist and petty political games above delivering serious action to protect and restore our natural world. This episode simply must be televised.”

Sorry, would love to chat but have a plane to catch.

Mike Haubrich on being a Democrat and a gender skeptic:

I am the local party unit secretary in Minnesota for the DFL, which is an anachronistic reference to a 1940’s merger of the Democrats and the Farmer-Labor parties. Very few farmers in Minnesota belong to the DFL anymore as Minnesota is as reflective as the rest of the country in the rural-urban divide between Democrats and Republicans. Most labor unions work with the DFL, but I think that fewer members of the rank and file follow along with it. There are conflicts between environmentalists and labor, especially up on the Iron Range, as many people depend on iron ore extraction and refining for their livelihood.

Nothing is absolute, of course, and as someone who grew up in the rural northwestern part of Minnesota I witnessed much cooperation among people who vehemently disagreed on politics. Among the Blue-Green (labor-environmentalists) Alliance there were people who worked together to find solutions to both needs, those of jobs and protecting the environment. Nobody was called a laborphobe and kicked out of the party for hating mining. There may have been some angry words, and even drunken fist-fights near Silver Bay in the 1970’s, but Democrats remained Democrats even when they called each other crazy.

Gender, however, has created a whole new dynamic.

Read on.

News from the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine:

The UKOM report asserts that future guidelines must rely on a systematic review of evidence rather than cherry-picking studies, and that all hormonal and surgical interventions must be restricted to research settings to ensure clear protocols, safeguarding & adequate follow-up./2

The existing Norwegian treatment guidelines for gender-dysphoric youth, based on a 2015 report ”The Right to the Right Sex,” closely mirror WPATH SOC7 “gender-affirming” model. Medical gender affirmation is widely available to youth, with no psychological assessments required. /3

Under the current Norwegian guidelines, youth may receive puberty blockers at tanner stage 2, cross-sex-hormones at 16, and surgeries at 18. The report noted that these widely available interventions are irreversible, carry many risks, and rest on insufficient evidence. /4

The report criticized Norway’s current “gender-affirmative” guidelines as inadequate, noting a lack of specificity regarding assessment & determination of medical necessity of risky and irreversible interventions provided to youth whose identities are still forming. /5

The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board noted several worrying trends: the rapid rise of gender dysphoria in adolescents (esp. females), the high burden of mental illness (75%) & a high prevalence of neurocognitive conditions (ADHD/autism, Tourette) in the affected youth. /6

The recommendations by the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (NHIB/UKOM) align Norway with the changes among the growing number of European countries (Sweden, Finland, England) which aim to safeguard youth from harm by sharply restricting youth gender transitions. /7

However, unlike Sweden, Finland and England, Norway explicitly calls out the group of young adults whose development is still ongoing and who are at risk for erroneously undertaking gender transitions. The report notes that the age of consent for sterilization in Norway is 25. /8

NHIB/UKOM notes that the right to medical care does not include the right to experimental treatments. As an experimental intervention, gender transitions will be subject to heightened scrutiny around informed consent, eligibility criteria, and outcomes evaluation./9

Norway’s proposed model appears to resemble the model of care outlined in the Cass review. Gender dysphoric youth will receive care for their distress in local primary care settings with multidisciplinary support. Youth gender transitions will be an exception, not the rule. /10

The Board also comments on the highly polarized & unbalanced nature of the discussions surrounding care for gender-dysphoric youth, which stifles scientific debate. The Board calls on all parties to treat each other with professionalism, empathy and respect. /11

Slow down the fad for sterilizing children. Sounds like a good idea.

The net might be tightening around Trump. Then again they might all chicken out again.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.

…

Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president, and could upend the 2024 presidential race in which Mr. Trump remains a leading contender.

Nixon should have been indicted but wasn’t. Celebrity unindicted co-conspirator.

Mr. Trump has previously said that the prosecutors are engaged in a “witch hunt” against him that began before he became president, and has called Mr. Bragg, a Democrat who is Black, a politically motivated “racist.”

Sigh. Talk about darvo…

Gaby Hinsliff reviews Time to Think for the Guardian, very very cautiously and queasily, and laced with questionable assumptions.

BBC journalist Hannah Barnes’s densely reported account of events inside the Tavistock Centre’s Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) in London, the country’s only specialist clinic for transgender children…

The book traces Gids’s evolution from its foundation in 1989 – offering a non-judgmental therapeutic approach to exploring gender identity…

The first two paragraphs and already we can see the assumptions doing their work – there definitely is such a thing as “transgender children” and there also definitely is such a thing as “gender identity” and we all know what they are and that they are definitely real. It’s called reification, and it’s very deceptive. It deceives the people who use it as well as the people who hear or read it.

Last summer, a review commissioned by NHS England recommended Gids should close, with patients seen instead by regional units taking a holistic approach to mental and physical health.

Barnes sidesteps the broader social and political context to this, yet the two seem hard to disentangle. Some trans people saw attacks on Gids as attempts to stop children transitioning at all; some gender-critical campaigners treated its closure as vindication of wider arguments. Once being “for” or “against” the Gids treatment model was deemed synonymous with supporting or attacking trans rights generally, analysis of its clinical practices became incredibly difficult.

But what are “trans people” and how does anyone know? What are trans rights and how does anyone know and what do we do when they violate other people’s rights? How do we know “trans” is not iatrogenic? How do we know it’s not a phantasm created by people talking about it endlessly? How do we know it’s not a deceptively definite word for a particularly acute discomfort with being oneself?

Karen Ingala Smith on reading the names and not getting distracted:

Today, for the eighth year running, in the Parliamentary International Women’s Day debate, MP Jess Phillips read out the names of women in the UK who have been killed since the previous years IWD debate and where a man or men are principal suspects. This year the list contained the names of 107 women, the youngest, Holly Newton was just 15 years old, the oldest, Anne Woodbridge was 92.

I have been collating and commemorating UK women killed by men for 11 years, since the murder of 20-year-old Kirsty Treloar on the 2^nd January 2012.

I am grateful to Jess Phillips for amplifying my work and for doing something that I could not do without her: ensuring that those women’s names are afforded the respect of being recorded in perpetuity in the official parliamentary record. This year and last year, Jess invited members of families of women who have been killed by men, some of them whose names have been read out in previous years, to sit in the House of Commons public gallery to listen. Jess and I are frequently told how much this gesture means to those who knew and loved the women who are commemorated.

This year, following the suggestion of my Femicide Census co-founder and fellow Director, Clarrie O’Callaghan, two weeks ago the Femicide Census wrote to every MP who had one or more constituents whose names were going to be read out.  84 letters were sent and followed up by email. We asked MPs to honour their constituents and act to prevent further femicides. We told them that femicide is a local and national problem occurring within the broader context of men’s violence against women which inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Seven MPs acknowledged our letter: Rosie Duffield, Rushanara Ali, Lillian Greenwood, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, John McDonnell and Andrew Lewer. Others were visible in the parliamentary broadcast. However, like preceding years, the benches were noticeably empty. Whilst each man who chooses to end a woman’s life must be held to account and to justice, the names stand as a roll call of state failure, the government could be doing so much more to end men’s violence against women and girls. The almost empty chamber does not reflect well on political will to address men’s violence against women.

The almost empty chamber – that’s shocking to me.

H/t J.A.

The Telegraph on The Lesbian Project:

“I could never have imagined,” says [Kathleen] Stock, who today is launching – along with [Martina] Navratilova (who[m] she has never met in person) and writer Julie Bindel – the Lesbian Project, a group that intends to champion UK women who are same-sex attracted.

…

[I]ts existence will infuriate those who see her and Bindel, along with their ally – and heterosexual – JK Rowling, as a trio of arch-Terfs (trans exclusionary revolutionary feminists), largely because of the animosity between some trans activists who object to lesbians refusing to have sex with transgender women who have male genitalia.  

The reporter must have been writing in haste. It’s a quartet, not a trio, and I’m pretty sure the three Ls don’t see JKR as “their heterosexual.” Also no, the animosity is about much more than lesbians saying no to sex with men.

The idea that lesbians still need some kind of protective body may seem almost laughably anachronistic, not least since the 2013 same-sex-couples marriage act. But the project isn’t so much battling homophobia as preventing lesbians from being overlooked in favour of newer, more “fashionable” sexualities.

There you go, that’s better.

“We’ve got a report coming out that will show millions of pounds are going into LGBT but increasingly that funding is going to trans projects, while for lesbian-only projects it’s vanishingly rare,” Stock says.

Which is one major reason the acronym is so poisonous – it simply pulls a veil over this kind of neglect or just plain hostility. Same old sewer water in a shiny new bottle: women don’t matter, it’s men who claim to be women who matter.

Via Mick Hartley