Trade union catastrophizing:

“It’s great to be able to be loud and proud – and I will continue to be loud and proud against homophobia and loud and very proud to be a trans ally, and I will ensure that UNISON always remains the best trade union for LGBT+ workers.”

That was the pledge from UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea this morning, when she addressed the union’s LGBT+ conference in Edinburgh, as she applauded the fact that being “loud and proud” was the event’s central theme.

Proud to be against homophobia and very proud to be a trans ally – there’s always that little extra that signals the category “trans” is the most urgent, the most in need of allyship and love and concern and endless encouragement.

UNISON, she continued, had “always strongly advocated for trans rights.” The union’s “brilliant” trans equality campaign helps “give our activists the tools to combat the divisive political weaponising of trans issues,” which is damaging to trans people , but also to the “whole of society”.

What “weaponising” exactly? Mention of the conflict with women’s rights? Is that the weapon?

The past year had seen over 400 members trained on how to be a good trans ally, while there’s also been a “bump in members taking part in UNISON’s trans caucus.”

But Ms McAnea was clear that such things were needed precisely because anti-trans discrimination is “not going away and we have to be ever more vigilant.”

Ever more. Ever more and more and more and more. It will never end.

Endless relentless nagging:

Staff at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have been told they should not use the terms “gender critical” and “protecting women and girls” in order to be trans allies, The Telegraph can disclose.

But what if they want to be allies to women? What if they are women? What if they think being an ally to women – half of humanity – is vastly more urgent than being ally to a tiny minority of humanity in thrall to a delusion?

Thousands of officials were emailed for “transgender awareness week” and told it was “vital that we keep scaremongering and misinformation at bay”, with trans hate crimes up 56 per cent in a year.

“It is vital that we scaremonger and misinform about scaremongering and misinformation.”

Civil servants are warned in an introduction to the glossary: “It is important to recognise these words and phrases, understand their context and educate those you hear using them about the reasons why their use can be deemed offensive or upsetting, as people may have unknowingly used a term without being familiar with its meaning.

“Whilst passing uses of these phrases might not be considered misconduct, the importance of challenging their use cannot be overstated.”

“You must obsess about trans people all the time, every minute of every day, and you must police the language and thoughts of everyone you know or bump into in the corridor.”

Hmmm.

Politico a month ago:

Now, despite the setbacks Russia has suffered on the battlefield, [Fiona] Hill thinks Putin is undaunted. She sees him adapting to new conditions, not giving up. And she sees him trying to get the West to accede to his aims by using messengers like billionaire Elon Musk to propose arrangements that would end the conflict on his terms.

“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin,” Hill says.

And then they buy Twitter to be even more dedicated messengers for Putin.

Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing?

Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and the suggestion that the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia should be up for negotiation, because there should be guaranteed water supplies to Crimea. He made this suggestion before Putin’s annexation of those two territories on September 30. It was a very specific reference. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia essentially control all the water supplies to Crimea. Crimea is a dry peninsula. It has aquifers, but it doesn’t have rivers. It’s dependent on water from the Dnipro River that flows through a canal from Kherson. It’s unlikely Elon Musk knows about this himself. The reference to water is so specific that this clearly is a message from Putin.

…

This is a classic Putin play. It’s just fascinating, of course, that it’s Elon Musk in this instance, because obviously Elon Musk has a huge Twitter following. He’s got a longstanding reputation in Russia through Tesla, the SpaceX space programs and also through Starlink. He’s one of the most popular men in opinion polls in Russia. At the same time, he’s played a very important part in supporting Ukraine by providing Starlink internet systems to Ukraine, and kept telecommunications going in Ukraine, paid for in part by the U.S. government. Elon Musk has enormous leverage as well as incredible prominence. Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.

And now he owns Twitter.

Health Education England is some sort of government body, described slightly differently by each source I saw, and it came up with this new and exciting version of the usual sludge:

Health Education England statement of intent, publicly committing to trans inclusion and equality in support of the trans and non-binary community.

What is “trans equality”? What is the absence of “trans equality”? What are they talking about? In what way are trans people not already “equal”?

As for “inclusion,” we know what that means, and that’s the problem. It means men being “included” with women and (much less urgently and insistently) women being “included” with men. That’s a stupid idea of “inclusion.” We don’t have to “include” lawyers with doctors or doctors with lawyers; we don’t have to “include” students with teacher or teachers with students; we don’t have to “include” toddlers with adults or adults with toddlers; the list goes on. We don’t have to be “inclusive” of everything and everyone at all times and everywhere. We don’t have to “include” men with women, and we refuse to, and we’re not going to do it. Also we’re a “community” too, so how about being “inclusive” of us for a change?

And that’s just the title.

Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, Health Education England commits Health Education England to the below statement of intent:

All human rights are compromised if any one group is excluded. We are at our best when we stand together, and we all have a role in ensuring our NHS is a place where all our citizens are treated with respect, dignity, and compassion.   

Excluded from what though? Excluded from what??

In recent months, the public debate around trans and non-binary rights has intensified. As HEE’s leadership, we have growing concerns about the hostility that trans and non-binary staff & patients are experiencing.    

But those are two different things. Discussion of what “trans and non-binary rights” might be is not the same thing as hostility to trans and non-binary people. If the discussion of rights were more honest and less hostile to women, maybe the hostility that trans and non-binary staff and patients are said to be experiencing would cease to exist.

A fundamental promise of the NHS is that we exist for all and we have a duty of care to all. It is crucial that everyone, including trans and non-binary people, feel respected, safe and receive an equal level of care.

What about women? If men who claim to be trans are allowed to force themselves on women in wards then how can women feel respected and safe? What about them?

As a healthcare organisation we want to reiterate our commitment to implementing the spirit and the letter of the Equality Act – by striving to create an NHS that is fair and truly inclusive.

But if the NHS is “truly inclusive” of for instance men on women’s wards then it’s not truly inclusive of women. What about that?

Now, more than ever, is the time to educate ourselves and others to become active trans and non-binary allies. Within HEE, we have been making consistent efforts to understand and appreciate the experience of our trans and non-binary colleagues. We are having conversations, developing our own understanding, and continuing our learning. We have made progress, but we have a long way to go on our journey. We are confident that this is the only right way forward that reflects our values and the values of the wider NHS.

We stand with the trans and non-binary community.    

There’s no mention of women on the entire page. Not one. The word “trans” appears 11 times.

NHS Scotland wants to do more of it, faster.

Scotland’s NHS is planning to fast-track irreversible surgeries for transgender patients, documents seen by The Telegraph reveal.

Quick, before someone stops us.

An NHS Scotland report, suggesting new transgender treatment rules, calls for “barriers” to gender reassignment surgery to be removed and proposes radical measures to make operations more widely available.

These include allowing GPs, rather than specialists, to send patients for procedures and that a “single opinion” is enough to refer for surgery in most cases.

Let’s err on the side of reckless haste, because why not?

The report goes on to call for an “affirming” model of non-surgical care to still be delivered to children, despite an expert review for NHS England, conducted by the esteemed paediatrician Hilary Cass, raising concerns about the approach.

I wonder if, ten or twenty years down the line, NHS Scotland will be calling for an “affirming” model of care for children who identify as tigers or eagles or pythons.

David Bell, the consultant psychiatrist and Tavistock Clinic whistleblower, said it was “very troubling indeed” to see the Scottish NHS treat WPATH as an “authority” on matters of trans health, something he said was a “complete fiction”.

He also claimed that contrary to the document, clinicians had a responsibility to fully examine a patient’s mental health and background before referring them for irreversible surgeries which they may later come to regret.

Irreversible and very drastic.

“It’s a very disturbing situation,” Dr Bell said. “The attention of ministers seems to be more captured by groups representing an ideological movement, than those that represent an objective scientific approach to these matters, such as NHS England and the Cass Review.

“It is never a doctor’s job to affirm or not affirm, it is a doctor’s job to understand. That means understanding the narrative of a patient’s life, their childhood, how they developed particularly in terms of sexuality and gender, and how they’ve come to be the person they are.

“We have an ethical duty towards young people and adults not to treat things at face value. That is something that is completely incompatible with a proper clinical approach.”

But treating things at face value is portrayed as absolutely mandatory, on pain of ostracism and abuse, by the very ideology that’s capturing the attention of ministers and speeding up this already speeding train.

Uh…whut?

Of all the campaign groups in all the world you’d think this would be the least relevant to the trans ideology.

Endofuckingmetriosis??? Are you serious?!

Blah blah blah grovel grovel grovel trans trans trans. Meanwhile Sadiq Khan still has not explained why he dumped Joan Smith from her role as head of the Mayor’s Council for Women, or even had the minimal courtesy to tell her why, despite her repeated requests for an explanation.

Soppy gloppy blobby nonsense, issued by a parliament, an actual real world governing body.

What on earth do they think they mean, “everyone deserves the right to be exactly who they are”? People don’t need a right to be exactly who they are, they just are who they are, exactly or otherwise. What they mean, of course, but are too dim or too evasive to say, is that they want people to have a “right” to force everyone else to agree they are exactly who they are not.

It’s sanctimonious gibberish and it’s a campaign to force the entire world to lie about who is what sex. The hell with it.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The feminists seem to, as it were.

…he has many trans and intersex* friends who are “deeply upset” by JK Rowling.

Then their “upset” is not in good faith, and not based on facts. If trans activists and their allies can’t be bothered actually reading what Rowling actually wrote, but condemn her out of hand on the sayso of trans “thought leaders,” then their “upsetedness” is not worth paying attention to, or taking seriously.

In his dangerously honest and conciliatory understanding of Rowling’s position, Fry has unwittingly outed himself as a heretic. As Ophelia has noted, in trying to place himself in the “reasonable” middle ground, or above the pettiness of it all, he has found himself without any feminist equivalent to the trans’ TERF-shouting. It must be there somewhere, seemingly, as it were. Otherwise, he can’t be in the middle.

Since he now has nothing to lose, Fry should sit all these friends of his down, read Rowling’s words to them, and then ask them which parts are “hateful,” “hurtful,” or “transphobic.” If they are objecting to plain statements of reality (sex is real, binary, immutable, and determined at conception), or her defence of the legally protected characteristic of sex, then it’s not Rowling they have a problem with. It’s reality and the law that they’re objecting to. Hating on Rowling conveniently helps to conceal this fact. If she didn’t exist, they’d have had to invent her, or find someone else to vilify. Without their effigy to burn, they would have to rail against Reality itself.

A wider public understanding of this would likely lose them support, as their goals are unreasonable and unjust. That’s a much harder sell than fighting against vague, better-left-unspecified “transphobia,” perpetrated by “bigots.” Institutional capture has helped them avoid the public discussions that would normally surround the sorts of policy changes that trans activism has managed to engineer in secret. The press now treats it as a “fact” that Rowling is “transphobic,” and uses language that deliberately obscures reality (calling male offenders and athletes “she,” translating measures to protect female only facilities and positions as being “anti-trans” rather than male-excluding). This collaboration with trans activism does immeasurable heavy lifting for a movement that would otherwise fail.

It is ironic that transactivism has chosen to turn Rowling into its Emmanuel Goldstein. In scapegoating her, in trying to turn her into an example to warn others, they have failed spectacularly. To be sure, in the short term, to the extent that people believe the lies and smears they broadcast, they’ve won a tactical victory. But they did not count on her character. Certainly her wealth has offered Rowling some measure of protection, and made her Uncancelable, but there’s more to it than that. There are plenty of indviduals and institutions which fell at the first hurdle, surrendering their moral judgement to the frothing hatred of the liars and bullies. Unlike so many others, who have been subjected to little more than schoolyard taunts, she has not backed down. She has not kept quiet. She is the nail that refuses to be driven flat. She has stood firm and become a lightning rod, continuing to speak out when others could not, would not, or feared to do so.

Though they tried to burn Rowling as a witch, she has taken this fire and become a beacon. She did not have to do this. But remarkably, she did, and continues to do so. She could have stayed quiet and comfortable. She could have mouthed the platitudes. She could have used her fame and celebrity to jump on the trans bandwagon, joining in on the attack against women defending their rights (Hello Billy Bragg!). But she didn’t. She stood up and spoke the truth. She defended women when many others who should have did not. Good on her. Shame on them.

* I actually doubt this. As far as I know, their preferred terminolgy is not “intersex” but DSD. I’ve seen a number of DSD people (or at least people claiming to be DSD), ask that their condition not be used as a transactivist talking point or gotcha. They are all still male or female, not evidence that sex is not real, or a spectrum, or that there are any more sexes than just the two. So just as Ophelia doubts that he has many “trans friends,” I doubt that he has many “intersex” ones. And what has Rowling ever said about them? Here I think Fry has fallen for the forced teaming. I suppose we should be happy he hasn’t lumped in the (presumably much larger number of) LGB friends he probably has.

The Times also reported on the Cambridge debate on the right to offend:

Noisy protests were held outside a Cambridge Union debate as an academic abused for her views on gender told students they were terrified of causing offence.

Some kinds of offence. They’re not a bit worried about causing offence to feminist women.

Students angered by the presence of Professor Kathleen Stock banged drums and chanted slogans outside the chamber during the event, even though the philosophy professor was not speaking about transgender rights.

Never you mind what she was speaking about, she’s a contaminant. She could be speaking about lilacs and roses and she’d still be a contaminant.

One of the students due to speak in favour of the motion instead argued at length that Stock should not have been invited. Kass Caldicott from Trinity College said: “The environment for trans people in particular in the UK at present, is abhorrent and the hatred perpetuated by certain people in this room should be a damning indictment.”

What environment? From what I can tell the environment for trans people is downright obsequious.

Stock, who won the debate, said during her speech that she was not going to address personal accusations by previous speakers.

She said society had progressed because of the right to cause offence by overthrowing prevailing beliefs: “The right to offend is good, because every single moral improvement towards a just society has involved massive amounts of offence, and if we restrict offence, we effectively constrain the ways in which society can get more progressive.”

A lot of moral disimprovements towards a just society have also involved lots of offence – look at Trump! – but that’s a subject for another day, or at least another post.

Stock and Professor Arif Ahmed, a philosophy professor who also spoke at last night’s debate, were invited by Lara Brown, president of the union. Prof Ahmed said: “The opposition has spent a lot of time arguing against things that nobody defended and have made up some sort of fairytale castle which they then proceeded to demolish.”

And all the witches and goblins came running out and did a dance on the rubble.

Alex Massie in The Times:

In the spring of 2018, Katie Dolatowski, then aged 18, sexually assaulted a ten-year-old girl in a supermarket lavatory in Kirkcaldy. A month earlier, Dolatowski had been apprehended filming a 12-year-old girl in another supermarket toilet. She — for although Dolatowski was born male, convention now decrees that she be referred to by her preferred pronouns — received a three-year community payback order and was banned from engaging with, or otherwise contacting, children.

A few weeks ago he was found living in a women’s refuge in Leeds. He was arrested for not alerting the police to his change of address.

Last week, Falkirk sheriff court heard Dolatowski admit to attacking another inmate at Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution while serving a previous sentence for another assault. Though a biological male, she has now been transferred to Cornton Vale women’s prison.

It is worth mentioning all of this because Dolatowski’s story is precisely the kind of thing we are repeatedly told just will not happen. 

Why will it not happen? Why would it not happen? Even if you’re a trans ally or trans – why would it not happen? It’s not a rejection or expression of hatred of trans people to say it will happen, because the men who will do it don’t have to be trans. This is something your ordinary humdrum not-trans men can do because it is something they can do – it’s an opportunity. It’s like opening the bank vault and saying you’ll be back in a week or so. Of course it will happen.

But it is shockingly, irresponsibly delusional to think that predatory males will not take advantage of any openings offered them. That is their entire modus operandi.

Because why wouldn’t they?

Victoria Smith, as usual, zooms right in on the matter.

And those some people are…you know who.

He said it starting at 10 minutes:

Hide all the women.

The word “woman” could be erased from specialist NHS clinics dealing with female health issues under proposed new transgender inclusivity rules.

Weird how “transgender inclusivity” always means erasing women. Never men.

A report proposing new NHS treatment guidelines in Scotland suggests “a general move away from gendered healthcare” and warns that trans people are put off attending services if they are targeted at a certain sex.

If that’s true then trans people need to grow the fuck up.

It also calls for laboratories to “decouple” reference ranges in test results from “gender markers”. Men and women have different healthy ranges on a series of criteria, for example in blood tests.

The report claims ranges should instead be “relevant to the individual.” The suggestion was branded a denial of reality by doctors.

Denial of medical reality is not a very brilliant idea.

“It seems that the Scottish NHS is in the grip of a science-denying cult,” Susan Smith, a director at the For Women Scotland campaign group, said.

“Gender, including non binary identities, are an irrelevance in medicine, but sex matters. This move will, almost inevitably, rebound on women.

“Progress to improve standards in women’s healthcare has been hard won – this will set the clock back on those gains by decades.”

But it’s only women, so it doesn’t matter.

Louise Irvine, a retired GP who is co-chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, raised concerns at repeated references to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in the report.

She said the association’s guidelines were “very poor” and potentially harmful for patients and questioned why the advice of respected Scottish experts had not been preferred.

“Proposals to change whole systems of IT, language and clinics is timorous, unhelpful and potentially dangerous,” Dr Irvine said.

Also insulting to women.

“You can’t move entirely away from sexed healthcare, because everyone has a biological sex, even if they take additional hormones to affirm or appear differently.

“To interpret test results safely you need to know a person’s sex, as well as their age, conditions and drugs. To suggest otherwise simply denies reality.”

Denying reality seems to be the whole point.

Stephen Fry is anxious about his trans friends. (Does he have a lot of them? It seems unlikely. There aren’t many trans people, and most of them are very young.)

Stephen Fry has urged calm in the debate over transgender issues, but said he has many trans and intersex friends who are “deeply upset” by JK Rowling.

Many? Come on.

“I know that JK Rowling doesn’t want to see trans people bullied, alienated, shut out of society, made to feel ashamed, guilty, laughed at, all those things.

“But I also know that there are people who believe that safe feminine spaces and the idea of difference between sex and gender is very important, and that they repudiate with all their strength the Judith Butler – the idea of created gender and so on.”

Aha, so he does get it. That’s way more than most fans of the trans ideology will admit to knowing.

He does get it, but he wants us to just get over it.

“It is not an argument I want to get involved in because it is upsetting to both sides and I would wish them both to retreat and to consider that is possible for trans people to live full, accepted lives according to their terms in society, and for women to have all the rights and dignities they demand.”

No, it isn’t possible. It absolutely isn’t. What it means for “trans people to live full, accepted lives according to their terms in society” includes allowing men to intrude on anything and everything that is for women, thus ruining it for women, endangering women, displacing women, taking prizes and jobs and medals that were intended for women.

“But it isn’t possible if each side looks on the other as an enemy and the trans people just shout ‘terf’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and the feminists seem to, as it were, undermine the dignity and rights of the trans community, if I can use the word community – it is a bit of a greasy word, but there you go.”

How fascinating that he knows very well what the trans people shout at women but can’t come up with an insult from us. The “as it were” is rather telling, too, especially right next to “seem to.” Do we really seem to as it were, undermine the dignity and rights of the trans community? Or is that just a formulaic accusation with no referent? There is no “right” for men to take women’s promotions and prizes and spaces.

The NY Times four days ago:

Elon Musk continued cutting Twitter’s work force in his third week of owning the social media company, firing employees who had criticized him and eliminating contractors.

So his filter for employees is personal vanity as opposed to skills. How might that go wrong?

Early on Tuesday, Mr. Musk’s team ordered nearly two dozen Twitter employees who had pushed back publicly and privately against him to be fired, three people with knowledge of the matter said. The billionaire, who completed a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last month, later confirmed the exits on the platform and mocked the former employees.

Thus no doubt inspiring remaining employees to think very highly of him.

Mr. Musk’s team was asked to comb through messages in Twitter’s internal chat platform and make a list of employees who were insubordinate, people briefed on the plan said. They also sorted through employees’ tweets, looking for criticism. Those deemed rule breakers received emails around 1:30 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, notifying them that they were fired, according to emails viewed by The Times.

Mustn’t have criticism. Must have nothing but flattery at all times. Infallible recipe for success.

Several Twitter employees who shared news of Mr. Frohnhoefer’s firing in internal chats were cut, said six people familiar with events. They were told that they had been terminated for “violating company policy,” according to emails seen by The Times.

The brand new company policy that no one knew about, the one that mandates nothing but flattery of Musk at all times.

“I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses,” Mr. Musk tweeted sarcastically on Tuesday. “Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.” In another tweet, he mocked a former employee, suggesting the person’s Twitter posts about him were caused by “a tragic case of adult onset Tourette’s.”

I’m not sure I think Mr Musk is a very admirable person.

Anything to win:

Washington’s Seattle Academy High School girls’ cross-country team qualified for the state championship thanks to trans student, Aspen Hoffman. 

Last year, Hoffman was a mediocre cross-country runner on Seattle Academy’s boys’ team. During freshman year, Aspen Hoffman competed as a boy and finished 72nd in the League finals. Now, as a sophomore competing as a girl, Hoffman broke Seattle Academy’s school record in the girls’ 5000-meter category and ranks 1st in League.

Seattle Academy competes in the Emerald Sound Conference which is comprised of 14 schools. Libs of TikTok spoke with a coach in the conference who told us, “allowing [Hoffman] to compete against biological girls deprives other girls’ teams of the chance to compete at State (which is a big deal).  If [Hoffman] competed in the boys’ division, [Hoffman] would place 56th on the boys’ team.” 

Since this is a team, he gives his team an advantage. It’s the other teams that are being cheated, as opposed to individuals as with “Lia” Thomas. Still cheating.

Parents are terrified to even raise concerns about Hoffman’s presence on the girls’ team. Another parent noted, “parents are upset but they know it has to go to the state committee, which isn’t politics, it’s the state high school board, and unless there’s any kind of pressure put on them to change the rule nothing’s going to happen.” 

Well if all the other teams just replace one girl with a boy it will all be fair again.

This is a long thread, and very disturbing. I didn’t read all of it. The Dr Gallagher is Sidhbh Gallagher, of yeet the teets.

Many horrifying tweets later:

Rylan is still vehemently pro the ideology though, still eager to call doubters terfs.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Dr Brat.

I’m under no illusion that free speech in any way guarantees that the best evidence and the strongest arguments will rise to the top in the “marketplace of ideas”. Despite what Movement Skeptics™ might like to think, judging evidence and arguments on their merits is not a straightforward matter, but something that requires a great deal of experience and accumulated pre-knowledge in its own right.

Also, the strongest indicators of truth vs. falsehood objectively speaking rarely coincide with what seems most subjectively persuasive to a lay audience. Playing by the rules of science, critical thinking, and intellectual honesty is nothing if not limiting while the peddlers of nonsense are free to say whatever it takes to impress people. In the absence of the necessary pre-knowledge, critical thinking skills etc. all your average lay person can be expected to get out of the kind of “rational debate” that believers in the “marketplace of ideas” like to imagine, is that one side comes across as far more confident and assertive, more aggressive etc. while the other side is forced to use conservative language (“seems to indicate”), talk about statistical probability and error bars, acknowledge doubt and uncertainty, and introduce caveats, conditions, and qualifiers at every turn. No need to specify which side is the scientific one, and no need to specify which side your average lay person is going to find most persuasive.

Still, while free speech may not guarantee that the truth prevails, at least it guarantees that it gets a fighting chance. As I’m sure many of us still remember the late great Christopher Hitchens explicitly invoked Holocaust denial as an example of the kind of thing that has to be allowed if free speech is to mean anything at all, precisely because it’s the kind of thing most of us would like to silence. If anything I think old Hitch’s question “Who gets to decide?” is even more pressing today. After seeing how easily institutions like courts, the mainstream media, and even universities can be captured by agenda-pushers of various kinds, it’s unfathomable to me how people can still trust anyone else to decide for us what we’re allowed to read or hear.

Movement or just more delay?

Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

The presence of classified documents=Trump’s theft of classified documents.

Though the appointment installs a new supervisor atop the probes — both of which are expected to accelerate now that the midterm elections are over — the special counsel will still report to Garland, who has ultimate say of whether to bring charges.

The role will be filled by Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington and who later served as the acting chief federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Obama administration. More recently, he has been the chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague that is tasked with investigating international war crimes.

But law people are saying this is just another unnecessary extra step. Never mind yet more investigating whether to charge him, just charge him already!

Always remember kids – knowing that men are not women is bigotry. The right, moral, just, decent, humane view is that men are women if they say they are. Knowing that mere saying isn’t magic, and that while declaration can change some kinds of reality, it can’t change all of them, is evil, shameful, malevolent, deserving of every kind of hostility and ostracism.