I’ve been putting this one off for a couple of days, but time is up. It’s about that guy in New Hampshire who won a scholarship by winning a beauty pageant.

The photo makes it all too clear what kind of body type is considered good, appropriate, conforming, acceptable in female people – extremely small, thin, dainty, with one permanently bent knee and a short skirt. That’s the right kind of body and presentation and skirt to have, but it’s not the kind to win. The winner is built like a fullback and wears a dress that trails on the sidewalk. He’s also a male person. The competition appears to be for female people, but a man was allowed to compete and he won despite his failure to conform to the apparently preferred body type and his not so skimpy dress.

He also won a $7500 scholarship, so that’s a female person who lost one.

I don’t think “beauty pageants” should exist, myself – I think in a sane world they wouldn’t exist any more than they exist for men. I don’t think scholarships should be awarded for prettiness (hint: scholar doesn’t mean pretty person). But they do and they are, so I don’t think men should muscle in on them.

Geneticist tells us women don’t actually exist. Honestly they don’t, he says.

He’ll have to let us into a rather shocking secret, researcher Gordon Strathdee says. “The reason us [sic] scientists find this question so hard to answer is that women don’t actually exist. Honestly they don’t. They’re all just a figment of your fevered imagination.

The reason is that “woman” and “man” are just categorisations that humans have invented to make communication easier. But these things are concepts, that exist only in human minds. They don’t actually exist in the physical world.”

Interesting. So…how does it make communication easier to use words that name things that don’t exist in the physical world? I get why many words are abstract, of course, and don’t name a physical object, but I stumble at the assertion that all words are like that. How easy would communication really be if they were?

“Could you let the dog out?”

“The what?”

“Get in the car, we’re late.”

“In the what?”

“I’ll have an apple please.”

“A what?”

You see? It would take forever to say anything except on a very high Platonic plane.

Trump is fuming.

Former President Donald Trump ripped Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a flurry of posts on Truth Social on Thursday, calling him an “average Republican governor with great Public Relations.”

In a public statement also posted on Truth Social, Trump unleashed on his one-time ally, offering a taste of the potential insults to come if the two face off in 2024. The Florida governor is seen as a potential 2024 presidential hopeful, which could challenge the former president’s hold on the GOP should DeSantis decide to run for president.

…

“And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday. In another post, Trump took credit for DeSantis’ first run.

Ah yes, Donald Trump, prince of loyalty and class.

DeSantis has not said whether he plans to serve out his full second term as governor as the 2024 general election rolls around. And Trump has not been taking the prospect of a matchup against DeSantis quietly.

“If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign.”

Psst – he’s telling us DeSantis is pussywhipped. A real man doesn’t let women run anything.

Once the glaciers melt, they’re gone, so the rivers go too. That’s happening in the Camargue:

People have always been attracted to the Camargue because of the abundance of species and resources it contains despite the challenges of living between the ebb and flow of an ever-evolving delta. Its nutrient-rich wetlands contain an enormous amount of biodiversity, making it one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. The Rhône river has long served as the Camargue’s lifeline, bringing fresh water from the Alps and dampening salt levels in the Camargue. As rain and snowfall decrease, it’s becoming a less reliable fresh water source, with researchers estimating the river’s flow has reduced by 30% in the last 50 years. It is expected to only worsen.

“Glaciers which are in the process of melting at an incredibly high rate have already passed the point of no return, so probably in the years to come, the 40% of river flow that arrives in Camargue will be reduced to a much smaller percentage,” said Jean Jalbert of Tour du Valat.

If you melt your glaciers, they’re gone.

Do it now or you won’t be able to do it at all.

Mary Trump, former president Donald Trump’s niece, has warned that the clock is ticking for the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide on whether to indict her uncle now that the midterm elections are over.

…

The former president’s niece argued that the decision whether or not to indict her uncle [will] have to take into account not just the amount of evidence against him, but also the actions he might take in retaliation.

“I guess it comes down to one — I guess if they feel that they have enough evidence to indict, which it would be shocking if they didn’t. Cause I think we all know that they did like two years ago,” she said.

Mary Trump, former president Donald Trump’s niece, has warned that the clock is ticking for the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide on whether to indict her uncle now that the midterm elections are over.

…

The former president’s niece argued that the decision whether or not to indict her uncle [will] have to take into account not just the amount of evidence against him, but also the actions he might take in retaliation.

“I guess it comes down to one — I guess if they feel that they have enough evidence to indict, which it would be shocking if they didn’t. Cause I think we all know that they did like two years ago,” she said.

“And two, just the — if they understand, what Donald’s about to do in terms of playing this very cynical card of, ‘If I’m announcing then any attack on me will be a political one’. Right? Or ‘Any indictment of me will be politically-motivated’. So I think the DoJ has about a week,” she added.

Mind you, he’ll say that no matter what.

Oof. This rivals the daisy ad in power.

Victoria Smith on Izzard and not being trendy:

Like many, I saw Izzard as someone who got it, who understood that women, like men, are full, complete human beings, not a set of stereotypes to be put on and taken off at will. Izzard’s descent into boorish sexism has surprised me; I thought he was better than that. Then again, his boorishness is in fashion, whilst the resistance of women such as [Rosie] Duffield and me is forever out of date. 

…

Whilst numerous studies have indicated that younger men are no less sexist than their fathers — that, on the contrary, they may be more so — this has not dented the view that the young, supported by older males such as Izzard, have a more sophisticated understanding of sex and gender than their boring old mummies, who still believe that statements such as “I campaign for politics in girl mode … I just switch, change, take off your heels, flat shoes” smack of male chauvinism. 

It’s the myth of eternal progress. People get more enlightened, aware, awake, with every generation – hell with every week, every day, every hour. We’ll be perfected just in time for climate armageddon.

What’s actually happening is just people chasing new fashions. It’s no more enlightened than that.

We need to distinguish between what is fashionable and what is actually a challenge to existing power structures. There is something insane about the idea that young people have cracked the code to millennia of misogyny and it is … rehabilitating the word “women” so it includes the proper humans — the ones who have penises — and not letting female people organise as a class, because that way everyone will forget to exploit them. This is fashionable, but what does it actually change?

Well, it makes everything worse; will that do?

My own view is that older women are the true gender radicals, both inherently — as the act of ageing subverts the link between femaleness and youth-coded femininity — and actively, in our willingness to challenge male entitlement even when it lowers our social status to do so. When we are told we are out of date, we’re really being told to get on board with a shiny, all-new iteration of patriarchy. Feminism for female people is old! Shut up and listen to an ageing comedian tell you why the most basic rules — female people exist, matter and deserve resources for themselves — no longer apply! 

An ageing male comedian at that, dress or no dress.

Gender fluidity is supposed to operate in a way similar to the great invisible hand of the free market, sorting everyone into their ideal, true self roles without anything so inconvenient and restrictive as male people being told they’ll have to give things up as opposed to gaining access to even more stuff.

Older women are the eternally uncool mummies, pointing out that no, it will take more than changing pronouns and shoes to end violence and redistribute wealth and power. Patriarchy is the eternally raging teenager, convinced he’s invented the same structures used by his dad, and his dad before him. 

Lecture us all you like. Tell us we need to get with the programme. The changes that happen — the ones that actually transform lives — are enacted by those who don’t care about appeasing 21st century sexists. Your tactics might be novel; your aims haven’t moved on at all. 

Props on the makeup though.

A sign at the The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London:

A scramble to apologize without any mention of what was wrong with the “signage.”

The statement issued:

Earlier today on-campus signage at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) was shared on social media.

Our intention, following discussions with our student community, had been to communicate the definition of TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) to help clarify what we considered to be growing misconceptions around what the term means.

It’s not a “term.” It’s an incendiary device, like “cunt” and “bitch” and “whore.” It’s an epithet. The point of it is to invoke and inflame hatred of women. Trying to “clarify” its “definition” is like trying to clear up the meaning of “nigger.” This isn’t a dictionary thing, it’s an incitement of hatred thing.

We got it wrong. 

The signage is clunky and we can see how it can be misinterpreted as an ICMP view and/or policy. 

The signage has now been removed and we apologise profusely for any offence caused.

The sign is not “clunky”; the sign is a frank and open incitement to hatred of women.

The issue is not “offence” so much as fear. Men are afraid women will laugh at them; you know the punchline. It’s not unusual for men to inflict physical violence on women, including murder. Institutions putting up signs saying “Here’s a reason to hate women who are defending their rights” are not merely “causing offence,” they’re putting women at literal physical risk.

The “profuse” apology is rejected with prejudice.

I’ve just spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the Equality and Human Rights Commission is, with not much success. I can’t tell what its relationship to the government is. They don’t explain it very clearly.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is Great Britain’s national equality body and has been awarded an ‘A’ status as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) by the United Nations.

What’s a national body? What’s a body in this context?

As a statutory non-departmental public body established by the Equality Act 2006, the Commission operates independently. We aim to be an expert and authoritative organisation that is a centre of excellence for evidence, analysis and equality and human rights law. We also aspire to be an essential point of contact for policy makers, public bodies and business.

I guess that explains it some, but it’s still not clear whether it just says things or has enforcement power.

We use our unique powers to challenge discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and protect human rights. We work with other organisations and individuals to achieve our aims, but are ready to take tough action against those who abuse the rights of others.

What kind of tough action though? Are we talking cops, jail, court, prison?

In closely related news – how are we defining women when we talk about improving gender balance?

The Scottish government is facing a judicial review over plans to include transgender women in legislation aimed at improving gender balance on public boards.

See this is where we start screaming and throwing things. Let men wear skirts and lipstick, fine, knock yourselves out, but you cannot improve gender balance by putting more men in lipstick on public boards. You can’t improve gender balance in any other way than including more women. More women, not more men in skirts.

Aidan O’Neill KC, for the campaign group For Women Scotland, said the court of session’s ruling would have significant implications for the protection of single-sex spaces across the UK, as well as proposals to simplify how transgender people can alter their birth certificate currently being debated by the Scottish parliament.

O’Neill was speaking before Lady Haldane on the first day of the judicial review of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act, which was passed in 2018.

It has been the subject of a long-running court action by the campaign group, which resulted in a ruling on appeal earlier this year that the legislation should not have included transgender women in its definition of “woman” as this “conflated” two distinct groups that are protected in law.

It should not have included transgender women because they are men, and it’s women who need more representation, not men who claim to feel like women.

For Women Scotland is now challenging revised guidance from the Scottish government that the definition of “woman” should include transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

It really really really should not.

This shit is so insulting and I’m so sick of it. It underlines for us every day that women are the one set of people it’s ok to shove aside and replace this way.

O’Neill argued that the Equality Act, when read as a whole, demanded that specific statutory definition of the word “sex” as meaning biological sex.

…

Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill will introduce a system of self-declaration for obtaining a GRC, removing the need for a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria, reducing the time someone must have been permanently living in their gender before they can apply from two years to three months, and dropping the age at which people can apply from 18 to 16.

For Women Scotland has held a number of rallies at the Scottish parliament protesting against the reforms, the most recent one supported by the author JK Rowling, who tweeted a photograph of herself wearing a T-shirt reading “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights”. The bill passed its first stage in Holyrood last month but the vote resulted in the SNP’s biggest backbench revolt in 15 years in power.

Men aren’t women. Next question?

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph talks to a woman who had to race against “Lia” Thomas:

The day after she watched Thomas – who until starting hormone therapy was ranked a mere 554th as a man – vanquish every female rival in the country, she found that they would be direct competitors in the 200-yard freestyle final. They finished, ultimately, in a dead heat for fifth. 

Except, only Thomas was allowed to hold the fifth-place trophy, with Gaines told by an official that it was “for photo purposes”. She would need, she was told, to make do with the award for sixth.

They both won the fifth place but she was ordered to take sixth. Insult to injury.

Thomas became emblematic of many sports’ efforts, in defiance of compelling scientific literature, to incorporate trans athletes into the female category. Here was a swimmer who carried all the cardiovascular advantages of male puberty, but who could, with a short course of testosterone suppression, compete against women at the highest levels in America. 

Cardiovascular advantages along with all the other advantages. Lists of them are easy to find. Bones, muscles, body structure.

Gaines was an extreme rarity in that she was prepared to put a name to her concerns. 

“Women are intimidated by their universities,” she says. “They’re told that they will never get into graduate school, that they will never get a job. The women are emotionally blackmailed, told that if trans athletes emotionally harm themselves after someone speaking out, then they are solely responsible. It’s a lot to put on 18- to 22-year-olds.”

It’s especially a lot to put on 18- to 22-year-olds when it’s so grossly and obviously unfair.

They weren’t even warned about having Thomas getting naked in their locker room.

“We were not forewarned about Thomas sharing our space. That’s absolute insanity to me. All of a sudden, the place goes silent and there’s a 6ft 4in biological male towering over everyone else, starting to undress. You feel this sense of total discomfort. It was the most bizarre experience. I walked out of there thinking, ‘Am I missing something? Why are people in authority not talking about how this is wrong?’”

We’re not the ones who are missing something.

Arrgghh.

Current numbers:

Frisch: 155,579

Boebert: 155,506

Arrgghh.

Update: it seems the remaining ballots are from Frisch-leaning counties. Hoping! I long to see her return to obscurity.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Donors are disgusted.

but the new bit is thinking feminism and anti-racism didn’t work that way, why is that? Well why is that? Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

I think part of it that campaigns against sexism and racism were eager to argue their position, to have the opportunity to present the facts of the matter to the court of public opinion, to win hearts and minds in order to win the rights that women and African Americans had been denied. Both movements were struggles for justice. Trans activism wants to skip the whole making their case bit and move right on to getting what they want. They want what they want handed to them without discussion or debate because their demands, and the justification for them, would not survive the encounter with reality. That’s why we are never told what trans “rights” are; what is it that they are being denied? What is the injustice they are fighting? A good argument might win them more support, but they don’t have any good arguments; their demands are not for rights but for privileges. They’re not being exploited or abused. In Western society, they have the same basic rights as everyone else. And that’s a problem. What they want is more. They want more cookies and ice cream and television. Quick, give them what they want before they faint dead away or kill themselves!.

These days, EVERYONE is fragile. I am urged to say and do nothing in my classes that might offend or hurt any group of people, including trans, LGB, veterans, youth, climate change deniers, farmers…the list goes on and on.

Strange, given that “trigger warnings” were originally intended as WARNINGS about WHAT IS GOING TO BE TALKED ABOUT, and that prospective audience members should join in or stay away as they deemed appropriate for themselves. Like warnings about physical effects like smoke, strobe lights, gunshots etc. posted at theatres as a courtesy to those who might be adversely affected. These were warnings to NOT COME IN if you were prone to such negative reactions. Other warnings covering coarse language, nudity were, similarly, warnings to STAY AWAY if you were at risk of having your sensibilities offended. Now the warnings are going in the other direction, speakers themselves are to STAY AWAY from “offensive” material, at the risk of being shut down, fired, whatever.

Playing the easily triggered snowflake is a way of objecting to the presentation of information you object to without having to show why it’s wrong. Being told you are “hurtful” by someone is harder to argue against than being told you are “factually incorrect.” How can you argue against someone’s feelings?. You can’t. And that’s the point. Being accused of hatefulness puts you on the defensive. Claiming hurt is less work than having to argue your points, especially when you have no argument. Used in this way, it’s the rhetorical equivalent of stamping your foot, or holding your breath until you turn blue. Apparently too many adults are flummoxed when confronted with another adult engaging in this behaviour. They’re all too ready to hand over the cookies, ice cream and TV, along with the rights to safety and dignity of half the human population: women. Mustn’t argue; mustn’t offend.

The general idea seems to be that “hurt feelings”, “offense” etc. become especially worthy of sympathy and respect when coming from people who otherwise threaten to make your life Hell at best, and end it at worst.

Indeed. And feigning weakness and claiming to be the aggrieved party is good camouflage for the underlying threat if demands are not met. It also helps hide the fact that these demands are themselves offensive, intrusive, and illiberal. In the finest DARVO tradition, attacks (verbal or otherwise) on opponents can be presented as “self-defence.” The whole “marginalized community” bit lets those claiming “marginalization” to get away with a lot. It appeals to, and exploits, traditions of not exploiting the weak and vulnerable, of fairness, “sportsmanship”, and not “kicking a man while he’s down.” To oppose or question anything they want is deemed churlish and mean-spirited, when their own actions are churlish and mean-spirited to start with. Here we have a group that is exploiting the idea of weakness and vulnerability itself. Not a bad bit of jujutsu for a group consisting largely of straight, white males, one of the least weak and vulnerable “communities” on Earth.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Donors are disgusted.

VanitysFiend wrote:

The idea that the religious, be they liberal or conservative, deserved to be treated with kid gloves, and people like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris etc were being highly disrespectful when they called religious beliefs silly, wrong, or worst of all, bad. The idea that the mainstream progressive liberal left would move on from defending conservative Islam to something like Transgenderism isn’t that far fetched to me, what’s bizarre is that the sceptics and atheists followed them on this.

I used to call that the “Little People Argument “ — that being skeptical and honest was a position of power and that the religious were little people, not big people like us. They can’t handle the truth. They need comfort more. They can’t figure out how to be moral. That’s why we shouldn’t make rational arguments meant to persuade. The New Atheists jeered at this Accomodationism because we saw religion as power. But I noticed that enthusiasm for “Draw Mohammed Day” started waning when expecting Muslims to act like adults became increasingly associated with conservative views. Atheists who’ve primarily gotten into activism because they see it as a progressive social justice position are sometimes less wedded to epistemic integrity, I think. Prominent New Atheists started becoming charged with Islamophobia by other New Atheists who thus left the movement.

Back in the 80’s and 90’s rationalists started complaining about what was called Therapeutic Culture, a growing interest in getting therapy, giving therapy, recommending therapy, and applying therapeutic principles to everyday life. What in reasonable doses would be a good thing quickly started spiraling out of control, till resilience became identified with privilege. Wendy Kaminer’s 1992 I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: the Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions was a favorite with skeptics. If we’re looking for the roots of the “fragility as virtue” meme, Therapeutic Culture is probably one of them.

Robert Reich points out that it’s a bad idea to let raging narcissists have a lot of power.

Like Donald Trump and Elon Musk for example.

First is Elon Musk, who last Friday fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation – and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off.

This was after he fired Twitter’s executives to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they’re owed. And after posting an article suggesting without evidence that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was in a drunken fight with a male prostitute.

Attention: the fox is inside the chicken coop.

But this has been his MO all along.

Taunting opponents. Treating employees like dung. Bullying adversaries. Demeaning critics. Craving attention. Refusing to be held accountable. Attracting millions of followers and gaining cult status. Spreading misleading information. Making gobs of money.

Impetuous. Unpredictable. Ruthless. Autocratic. Vindictive.

I don’t know anything about any of this because I’ve never paid attention to Elon Musk. I have no idea how he made those gobs of money – I know it’s to do with a car, but why that one car=richest guy in the known universe I have no idea (and don’t care).

Reich says he’s not Trump 2 but he is all too similar.

But both represent the emergence of a particularly American personality in the early decades of the 21st century: the wildly disruptive narcissist.

That’s unfortunate, because narcissists are horrible even if they’re not wildly disruptive. Why are they? Because they’re focused on self. That’s never a good thing. Self is small and the world is big – there are far more important things to focus on than self. Self just doesn’t matter that much. It matters; we wouldn’t be able to survive and get something done with no sense of self; but it doesn’t matter that much. And another thing about it of course is that it doesn’t matter to anyone else as much as it matters to its owner. Self always looms large and that’s a distortion that we have to learn to correct for. I don’t suppose we can correct completely, but we can do better than the trumps and musks of the world.

Both wield sledgehammers to protect their fragile egos. Both are utterly lacking in empathy. Both push baseless conspiracy theories (such as the one cooked up about Paul Pelosi).

Zero empathy is a weird spectacle. I wish we hadn’t been forced to spectate so much of it over the past seven years.

This is what I mean. They meet, they say words, they wring their hands, but they’re not going to do anything. They’re locked into it. They take private jets to conferences to talk about climate change.

Data from FlightRadar24 shows 36 private jets landed at Sharm el-Sheikh between 4 and 6 November, the start of the summit.

A further 64 flew into Cairo, 24 of which had come from Sharm el-Sheikh.

The COP27 website says delegates should use either airport.

…

Flights produce greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) – from burning fuel. These contribute to global warming.

Emissions per kilometre travelled are significantly worse than any other form of transport.

Locked in.

Trump “warns” DeSantis not to compete with him.

Donald Trump has warned Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis against running for president in 2024, saying doing so would harm the Republican Party.

Which of course is code for would harm Donald Trump. Dump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican party, it’s himself he cares about.

He also threatened to release unflattering information about the 44-year-old, without providing details.

Speaking of unflattering information, Don…we have some on you. How much time do you have?

He told US network Fox News that the Florida governor should stay out of the race.

“I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t think it would be good for the party.”

He says everything twice, says everything twice.

By “hurt himself” of course he means he, Dump, would hurt him in any way he could. Adding that he doesn’t think it would be good for the party is sheer camouflage. Again: he doesn’t care about the party, he cares about his precious self.

The elections haven’t been the bloodbath that was predicted.

It’s not that there were no disappointments. There were some painful losses for Democrats: the odious Peter Thiel acolyte JD Vance has won a Senate seat in Ohio; candidates that perennially capture the imagination and hope of national democrats, like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams, lost.

Beto O’Rourke doesn’t capture my imagination, but losing Stacey Abrams is a bitter pill.

The much-watched state of Georgia provided perhaps the most embarrassing result for Trump: Brian Kemp, the candidate he campaigned hardest against, was comfortably re-elected governor, while Herschel Walker, his hand-picked Senate candidate, polled almost 5% behind Kemp and is probably facing a highly uncertain runoff against Raphael Warnock.

I hope Trump is lurching around Maralago screaming and throwing things and breaking windows.

The Guardian reports on the LGB Alliance hearing:

The creation of LGB Alliance has promoted constructive debate on “difficult and problematic issues” of sex and gender, the Charity Commission told a court on Monday, during final arguments over whether the gay rights group should have been given charitable status.

…

Mermaids, which supports transgender, non-binary and gender diverse children and their families, launched an appeal last year against the Charity Commission’s grant of charitable status to LGB Alliance. Mermaids has argued that the group was set up to lobby the government to restrict legal rights afforded to transgender people.

And to non-binary people and gender diverse children. Let’s make sure to get all the adjectives in every time, even if they do all mean pretty much the same thing.

Summing up, Michael Gibbon KC, counsel for Mermaids, said LGB Alliance’s “worldview and objectives are based on conflict and confrontation. This makes its approach fundamentally unpleasant, aggressive and corrosive of public discourse.”

What an absolutely idiotic thing to say. You could say that about Doctors Without Borders or anti-war groups or let’s not destroy the climate groups or any groups with a purpose. You could say it about anti-racism movements and feminist movements – you could say it about anything other than sitting still and saying nothing.

He said LGB Alliance had repeatedly described Mermaids in derogatory terms, accusing the charity of promoting a “gender identity ideology”, of inappropriately medicalising children, “of child abuse, basically”, and of having homophobic views.

Yes, and? Are they supposed to lie?

Steele set out the law on the granting of charitable status, assessing whether or not the purposes of LGB Alliance were “exclusively charitable” and “for the public benefit”.

“An institution whose purpose is to promote the rights and fair treatment of lesbian, gay and bisexual people will be acting for charitable purposes,” he said. “The issue is whether LGB Alliance was actually established to pursue the pro LGB purposes it set out or whether it really has anti trans purposes.”

“Anti trans” is ambiguous. There are trans people (people who call themselves trans), and then there is trans ideology. One can dispute the ideology without being “anti” trans people.

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Donors are disgusted.

Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

They need the argumentum ad misericordiam. Their movement relies on it to garner support. Why are we subjected to a “Trans Day of Remembrance,” when it’s easy to demonstrate that trans people aren’t any more likely to be murdered than anybody else? Why are gender critics constantly told we’re responsible for trans suicide and violence against “the trans community”?

It’s a rhetorical trick that’s very useful when your argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Appeal to pity. OK, so, maybe, no matter how hard you try, you can’t make yourself really really believe that Rachel Levine is a woman. It doesn’t matter, don’t you see? It’s so hard, being trans, so dangerous, a lot of Bad People are hurting them–but you’re not a Bad Person, right? You’re a compassionate person who doesn’t want people to suffer. So, use the pronouns. (They’re just words, and it means so much.) Be inclusive. (There aren’t really that many trans people anyway, what difference does it make in the scheme of things?) Just BE KIND. (It’s easy!)

But remember, being trans has nothing to do with mental illness. “The trans community” wouldn’t be so fragile if the Bad People would just stop hurting them. It’s called minority stress. (I keep meaning to look up minority stress; I don’t recall any other liberation movement appealing to it. But there I go, thinking with my head instead of my heart, like a Bad Person.)

Pippa Rogerson still dealing with blowback from her venomous attack on Helen Joyce:

Prof Rogerson joined Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, in vowing to boycott the talk. They emailed all of the students  stating Ms Joyce’s views were “offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here”.

…

The intervention by the college chiefs – before Ms Joyce spoke – led to donors telling The Telegraph they were “embarrassed, appalled and absolutely disgusted” and would not give any more without a retraction and apology.

Pardon me while I interrupt myself for a moment, because an idea about this has occurred to me. It’s about fragility, in particular fragility used as a cudgel. As I read what Spencer and Rogerson said, again, I wondered for the millionth time why there’s so much heavy breathing about offensive insulting n hateful in connection with this one set of people (aka “community”) when there never has been for other oppressed sets of people. Why are trans people talked about as if they were made of crystal or bone china? Why is it all so maudlin, why does it all depend so heavily on fragility? Millionth time, as I said, but the new bit is thinking feminism and anti-racism didn’t work that way, why is that? Well why is that? Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

I don’t know. I’d love to know. Is it for a kind of gotcha? Men are stronger than women therefore haha we’ll punish those pesky feminists by pretending men are more fragile?

End of interruption.

But in her letter, Prof Rogerson refused to apologise, instead telling alumni “we expressed our personal opinions – as is our right”.

Nonsense. They weren’t purely personal opinions, they were opinions in their roles at Cambridge University. They used their roles at Cambridge to get their opinions heard. They used their roles at Cambridge to bully and demonize Helen Joyce.

She said a cancellation of the event was not considered and “free speech is fundamental”, but added pointedly: “I hope it is possible for reasonable people to disagree and that freedom of expression is available to everyone, including me.”

Including freedom to use her Cambridge position to cast aspersions on a guest speaker? That’s not so much freedom as it is an abuse of power.