Sam Smith agitates to make an award “gender-neutral” and when he succeeds he pretends to have a sad about the women.

Smith’s popularity is remarkable — 30 million more monthly listeners on Spotify than Adele — and the recent, riotous single Unholy feels like a statement. As does the new album, Gloria, which blends house, gospel and a blast of choral to create music of release, with lyrics steeped in “queer history”. Unholy earned Smith a Grammy nomination for the first time since that debut and is also up for best song at the Brit awards.

Ah, the Brits. The one step forwards, two steps back awards show. Smith will have to wait until next year’s ceremony to score a nod for best artist with Gloria — the first time the singer will be eligible for the gender-neutral prizes introduced last year, merging the best female and best male into an overall best artist category.

Yet the 2023 awards ceremony being held next month is already a nightmare. No women are up for best artist. Indeed, just 42 per cent of the nominations are for female artists. What’s this got to do with Smith? In 2021 the star called for the awards to be “reflective” and so became the figurehead for a landmark change, the Brits becoming the first big UK awards to become gender neutral.

And because he’s a man, it didn’t occur to him that gender-neutral will mean overlooking women, because it always does.

Women warned at the time that the change risked marginalising female artists. And so it has come to pass. Before the award went gender neutral, five women used to enjoy the spotlight in the annual race to become best female artist. This year the spotlight is basically on Harry Styles, Stormzy and George Ezra, without a woman in view.

Neutral isn’t always neutral.

“It is a shame,” Smith agrees. The singer looks genuinely bewildered that women have been forgotten, despite the bear trap the Brit jurors have walked into being so obvious. 

Thus demonstrating that he’s not gender-neutral at all, he’s a man, and typically oblivious to the ways women are ignored and overlooked and filtered out.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Smith says with a sigh. “It feels like it should be easy to do. [The Brits] just have to celebrate everyone because this is not just about artists getting awards. Awards are for kids watching on TV, thinking, ‘I can make music like this.’ When I was young, if I’d seen more queer people at these awards it would have lit my heart. Awards are there to inspire.”

Right. See also: women. Awards are for girl kids watching on TV, thinking “I can make music like this” as well as boy kids. If there are few or no awards for women, girls watching won’t be thinking that.

It really is quite astonishing – not in a good way – how accepted this stuff is.

Openly wanting us dead.

Ahh it’s the lovey kind of decapitation, how sweet.

“Decapitate Terfs” is trending.

I’m sure they’ll frown with concern for at least 5 seconds.

Cutesie murder threats – they’re the best.

The National [Scotland] on Those SNP women in front of the threat-posters:

SNP politicians have been pictured at a pro-trans rally standing in front of a sign reading “Decapitate Terfs[,]” sparking fierce criticism.

…

Glasgow Kelvin MSP Kaukab Stewart and East Renfrewshire MP Kirsten Oswald were pictured in front of the threatening sign at a rally outside the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday morning.

…

Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and an outspoken critic of her party’s transgender law reforms in Holyrood, said: “I’m sure my colleagues didn’t realise they were standing in front of a hateful sign threatening violence against women and will distance themselves from it.

“I’m due in court again soon to give evidence against a trans rights activist who threatened to kill me.”

The sign, in red and blue bubble writing, also featured an illustration of a guillotine.

The SNP is very concerned. Very very concerned. It’s wringing its hands very sincerely.

An SNP spokesperson said: “SNP MSPs and MPs attended today’s protest in defence of Scottish democracy and the rights of trans people. Violent or hateful language – of any kind – is unacceptable and has no place in the peaceful movement for LGBT equality and democracy.”

There are a couple of things wrong with that. One, it’s not a peaceful movement. Call it peaceful all you like, but we see the reality every day. It’s a testosterone-addled misogynist threatening movement that resorts to violent imagery not just occasionally but regularly. Two, nobody is opposing the rights of trans people. The issue is not the rights of trans people, which are the same as everyone’s, but new fictional unworkable preposterous pseudo-rights, like the “right” to be “validated” as a fiction. There is no “right” to impose one’s reality-denying beliefs on other people.

Hadley Freeman on the “passion” (actually the misogyny) of men like Lloyd Russell-Moyle:

It was inevitable the fantasies sold by gender activists would crash on the hard rocks of reality, and not just because of the endless internal contradictions (if gender is different from biological sex, and given that sport is segregated by sex, why are trans women now on women’s sports teams?). The movement is increasingly underpinned by a frothing misogyny that is becoming all too visible to even the most casual observers. Some insist it is impossible to engage rationally with this “debate” because, they say, “both sides are equally toxic”. Parliament last week gave the lie to that. When Rosie Duffield spoke on Tuesday, calmly — and rightly — saying that Scotland’s bill “clearly conflicts with the Equality Act and would have repercussions for women across the UK”, she was jeered by men in her own party, most obviously Ben Bradshaw and Lloyd Russell-Moyle. After the Conservative MP Miriam Cates spoke about the threats the bill poses to women’s “dignity and safety”, Russell-Moyle, pink with rage, called Cates’s speech “disgusting” and added, wagging his finger: “You should be ashamed!”

He shouted it, from a contorted rage-face, and his finger was stabbing the air rather than wagging. It was the full-on “I am this close to breaking your jaw” that far too many men allow themselves to use on women who dare to have their own views.

Yesterday Duffield wrote in The Times that Russell-Moyle then crossed over “to the Tory side of the chamber to sit on the side benches, very close to [Cates], staring as if to intimidate” the Conservative MP. He was so proud of his performance, he put a clip of it on his Twitter page, although he later issued a non-apology, saying he stood by his words but had “failed to control that passion”. Men — so emotional. Amirite, ladies?

Straight out of the bullies’ playbook. They’re not using their greater strength and bulk and vocal power to intimidate women, they’re passionate and concerned and exploding with solidarity.

Gender activism has become the permissible face of misogyny for a certain kind of allegedly progressive man. It gives him latitude to call women derogatory names and make spittle-flecked videos, insisting that anyone who has a problem with male-born people in women-only spaces is on the wrong side of history.

We’ve been watching this (and objecting to it and resisting it) for literally years, and it’s only getting worse.

Russell-Moyle has previously had to apologise to JK Rowling after accusing her of “using her own sexual assault as a justification for discriminating against a group of people who were not responsible for it”, ie trans women, ie male-born people. Perhaps he learnt something from that experience because he didn’t accuse Duffield — another victim of male violence — of exploiting her own lived experience. But it’s a shame he is so unwilling, or maybe just unable, to understand no matter how passionately he shouts at women, he cannot make them believe something as undefined as “gender” renders all differences between the two sexes — males are stronger, males are more violent — irrelevant.

His red-faced finger-stabbing shouting just underlines the fact that men are stronger and more violent and that’s why we refuse to agree that they are women if they say they are. Lloyd Russell-Moyle could wear a tutu and dance en pointe and we still wouldn’t believe he’s a woman.

Originally a comment by Steven on Nicotine frees your mind!!

There is this thing that happens as stars age.

A star can sit there for millions or billions of years slowly fusing hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, the star contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing helium into carbon. When it runs out of helium, it again contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing carbon into neon.

The star continues in this way, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. Each stage in the process produces less energy than the last, and goes by faster. The last stage fuses elements to produce iron, and takes about a day.

Iron is the endpoint. After iron, there is no more energy to be gotten from nuclear fusion. After that the star collapses and goes super-nova (i.e. it explodes).

The right-wing media machine reminds me of this. They are caught in a cycle where they have to tell more and more extreme–outlandish–stories in order to hold onto their audience. As the stories get more extreme, they get less actual return for them, so they have to spin the cycle faster and faster.

I don’t know what happens when they hit iron. Maybe Tucker Carlson’s head explodes.

This is the place where all the gears grind, isn’t it.

Ok she didn’t see that particular sign. But it’s not just that one sign, now is it. It’s the threatening woman-hating rhetoric of the whole movement, and she can’t claim she’s never seen that. She can’t claim that goes on behind her without her awareness. Why not? Because it doesn’t! It’s out in the open in full view of everyone, and given her job and her trans fandom it’s not possible that no one has ever told her about it.

Why doesn’t it bother her more? If she really does think the sign is inappropriate and offensive, why doesn’t she think the whole trans movement is also inappropriate and offensive?

I’d really like to know. The short answer is cognitive dissonance, but I’d still like the long answer. I’d like to know how she manages it.

Oh by the way, about that other frivolous lawsuit – never mind.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday morning voluntarily dropped a longshot federal lawsuit in Florida against New York’s attorney general — a day after the same judge in the case sanctioned him and his lawyer nearly $1 million for filing another, “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and many other defendants.

The judge, John Middlebrooks, had pointedly noted in a scathing sanction order Thursday evening in the Clinton case that he was also handling Trump’s complaint against Attorney General Letitia James in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Trump’s suit against James — which Middlebrooks last month warned appeared “vexatious and frivolous” — was filed in reaction to her office’s civil lawsuit against Trump in New York state court alleging fraud at his company.

…

Middlebrooks in his order in the Clinton case Thursday noted that last month he had ruled that Trump’s “attempt to sidestep rulings by the New York court by suing AG James individually rather than in her official capacity was plainly frivolous.”

The judge also had found that Trump had “no likelihood of success on the merits” of the case, and that he had urged Trump to consider dropping his opposition to James’ bid to get the case.

So Trump said “Ok!” and dropped his opposition.

No I’m not smirking, you’re smirking.

Meanwhile in Glasgow…

More from that silly clumsy piece on Artifacts Gallery:

[Rylee] Lee said the shop is also in violation of Athens City Municipal Code section 3.07.62 (b), which states “It shall be unlawful for any proprietor or his/her employer, keeper or manager in a place of public accommodation to deny any person, except for reasons applicable alike to all persons, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” 

But who says the shop has “denied” anyone? I assume “deny” there means refuse service, kick out, tell to go away. There’s nothing in the article to indicate that the shop has done any such thing.

Lee hopes the protest will help draw attention to Mangano’s opinion and to the boycott.

Yes how dare Mangano have an opinion?

“To the people who still shop at Artifacts, we see that you’re still giving business to this place that people have specifically expressed discomfort towards,” Lee said. “You’re giving your business to a place who does not believe feminism is for all women. And to Amy I would like to say feminism is for all women. Feminism does not give you the right to pick and choose what women you support.”

Errrr yes it does. Feminism isn’t alone in doing that, but the right to choose what people you support is certainly among the equal rights entailed by feminism. Plus of course feminism is for all women but not for men who shove women aside while shouting that they are women and furthermore they’re the most oppressed women. Part One: feminism is for all women. Part Two: men are not women.

News from Athens, Ohio:

At 2 W. State St. there lies a familiar Athens business that is the subject of current controversy: Artifacts Gallery. Some social media posts encourage a boycott of Artifacts Gallery and its owner, Amy Mangano, for accusations of transphobia. A protest against Mangano and the shop is scheduled for Saturday at 10:30 a.m.

Rylee Lee, a junior studying music education, helped organize the protest, and said it was sparked by social media posts about new signage on the door of Artifacts Gallery. From there, Lee joined forces with Kaycie Tillis, a sophomore studying psychology, to begin organizing a protest against the shop. The new signs and banners on the front door include messages like “humans can’t change sex” and “say no to men in women’s sports.” 

So humans can change sex? Men should be in women’s sports? Kids today; I tell you what.

Lee said the protest is important to support transgender individuals in Athens and to demonstrate Mangano’s verbiage is not something Lee and other protesters agree with. 

“T is for trans,” Lee said. “You can’t have LGBT without the T. It’s quite literally in there.”

Bahahahahahahaha well spotted. You also can’t have ZQr9& without the &. It’s quite literally in there.

Here’s a helpful tip though: you can have LGB without the T, because it’s quite literally not in there.

H/t Sackbut

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Teach that everything was always fine.

The issue isn’t that people are born racist, the issue is that we absorb racism from the world we live in, because we can’t help it.

Ditto with sexism. Racism and sexism; we’re soaking in it. Simply pointing this out can bring accusations of guilt induction, particularly among those who want to pass off the status quo as a pure meritocracy that justly rewards the “industrious.” Those who lag behind or can’t hack it just have to try harder to get that job or make it to the podium. (Does this sound familiar?) We’re not supposed to look too closely at the ways in which the dice are loaded and the game is fixed. And the cheating isn’t necessarily codified in law; it can be ingrained in the beliefs, values and attitudes of any number of gatekeepers who control entrance into whatever system you happen to look at. It doesn’t take laws to keep an “Old Boys Club” going, but it might take laws to dismantle one: the Old Boys aren’t going to go down without a fight.

The point of that clause is to make teachers afraid to talk about how it plays out.

Which makes it hard to discuss white privilege and male privilege. This isn’t dredging things up from the past, a settling of scores from the Bad Old Days, it’s current reality. You can’t let bygones be bygones if they’re still ongoing and not “gone.” If your first response is anger, guilt, or resentment towards those pointing out structural inequities, then maybe you’ve got something to feel guilty about. But the point isn’t to instill guilt, but to fix (or rather unfix) the system. Removing unfair advantages, dismantling unearned privilege, and tearing down obstacles to full participation in society, and its rewards and benefits, benefits everyone. We’re at a point in history where we can’t afford to waste human potential. We need all hands on deck, and useful ideas about how to get through the multiple crises we are facing could come from anyone or anywhere.

Repair or healing cannot take place without determining what’s wrong in the first place. Pretending things are perfectly fine, and that your position at the top of the heap is quite natural and justified might not be the position of neutrality you’ve been led to believe it is. It looks like you’ve got something to hide when you try to convince the people at the bottom of a hill that a ski slope is a level playing field.

But trans people are the most marginalized.

Why is the rhetoric of the trans movement so violent? I’ve never understood that. Is it just because the trans movement is mostly about trans women aka men, and the opposition to trans women taking what belongs to women is mostly from women? In other words just men being misogynist?

I don’t know. See, I would think a movement that purports to be lefty and progressive would not want that kind of threatening violent imagery and talk, if only because it doesn’t look progressive…but it seems they do want it, the more the better. Decapitate feminist women, rah rah, solidarity forever.

The Telegraph:

Transgender women could continue to be allowed to compete in the female category in international track and field under controversial plans drawn up by World Athletics.

No. Just say no. No men in women’s sports. No.

In a move that risks reigniting sport’s toxic trans row, Telegraph Sport can reveal the governing body has begun a consultation with its member federations over a proposed rule change that would stop short of an outright ban.

There’s your problem right there. An “outright ban” should be all there is to it: men should be banned from women’s sport because women’s sport is women’s sport. That’s not something you compromise or bargain or negotiate over, it’s just definitional. Women should be allowed to have things for women without men shoving in and breaking them. Men need to stay in their own damn lane no matter what stupid fantasies they have about their tiresome identities.

Documents seen by the Telegraph show World Athletics’ “preferred option” would instead see a halving of the maximum permitted plasma testosterone for trans women from 5 nanomoles per litre to 2.5 nmol/L and a doubling the period they must remain below that threshold before being allowed to compete from one to two years.

No. Just no. No men. Get out.

Sporting bodies will be encouraged to reach a compassionate position, but one where “fairness and safety” take precedence at elite and competitive level. This could include the creation of new “open” categories for transgender athletes to compete in.

Note the framing. Why is it “compassionate” to trash women’s sports?

Hahahahaha oh lord now they’re lecturing us on the glories of nicotine.

Rosie Duffield on the bullying:

I have lived through an abusive relationship and have spoken about it in Parliament. I was reminded of making that speech earlier this week — the daily trauma that inspired it, how hard it was to make and, afterwards, the overwhelming support of my colleagues. That was the Labour Party I joined.

On Tuesday, when two of those colleagues traded that sympathy for aggression, shouting down women in the Chamber, it felt like a very different Labour Party. I was defending the need to protect vulnerable women in single-sex spaces, and had just criticised Scotland’s Gender Reform Bill, when Ben Bradshaw yelled his disapproval at me. Sitting nearby, Lloyd Russell-Moyle went puce — perhaps less surprising — and started to heckle every woman who spoke of their similar concerns. Later, when Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP and friend, spoke of her concerns around safeguarding, he accused her of being a bigot before crossing over to the Tory side of the Chamber to sit on the side benches, very close to her, staring as if to intimidate her.

But it’s ok, because these men are just doing it to women. If it were racist bullying that would be a whole different story, but just intimidating women is no big deal.

“I recognise that I failed to control [my] passion”, was how he later “apologised”. In other words, he had done nothing wrong. It wasn’t his fault; it was ours for daring to disagree with him.

Ironically, or inevitably, what we disagree about is agreeing that men are women if they say they are, and part of why we disagree is exactly because of the whole bullying-intimidation-violence issue. Men are a potential threat to women, and the threat becomes the reality all too often; that’s one major reason we don’t and won’t and can’t agree that men can be women. Lloyd Russell-Moyle kind of makes our point for us by carrying on the way he does.

The Lloyd Russell-Moyle ragefest was even worse than I knew. He wasn’t satisfied with just shouting at Miriam Cates and stabbing his finger at her and making rage-face at her; he got up and went to sit close to her and stare at her. Sicko.

There are so many gaps in information to this story that it’s hard to form an opinion on it.

Florida Rejects A.P. African American Studies Class

Florida will not allow a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies to be offered in its high schools, stating that the course is not “historically accurate” and violates state law.

In a letter last week, the Florida Department of Education informed the College Board, which administers A.P. exams, that it would not include the class in the state’s course directory. Rigorous A.P. courses allow high school students to obtain credit and advanced placement in college.

“As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” the department’s office of articulation, which oversees accelerated programs for high school students, wrote on Jan. 12.

Inexplicably? My guess is that it’s altogether explicable: the AP people designed the course without checking “Florida law” because it’s not all that normal for states to have laws governing AP courses. By “not all that normal” I mean “deeply weird.”

The letter, with no name attached to it, did not cite which law the course violated or what in the curriculum was objectionable. The department did not respond to questions asking for more details. But last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed legislation that restricted how racism and other aspects of history can be taught in schools and workplaces. The law’s sponsors called it the Stop WOKE Act. Among other things, it prohibits instruction that could make students feel responsibility for or guilt about the past actions of other members of their race.

So that will be “teach nothing” then. Anything could make students feel responsibility for or guilt about the past actions of other members of their race. That can’t be helped, because we live in a country that was founded on and grew with and prospered from a system of chattel slavery. There’s always the potential for contemporary people to feel some guilt or responsibility for that fact.

The Baroness raises some interesting questions.

Why drag queens? Is there any equivalent butch woman story hour? Prostitute story hour? Stripper story hour? Kink story hour?

We don’t view minstrel shows as entertainment any more, let alone as entertainment for children.

How is it that we can see at a glance how insulting and destructive that is, but are fine with men mocking women?