Julian Baggini talks to fellow philosopher Sophie Grace Chappell at Prospect:

Eight years ago, Sophie Grace Chappell came out as the UK’s first trans philosopher.

Well, not trans philosopher. Real philosopher in the sense of having the right academic credentials; no “identifying as” required. Trans woman, i.e. man who identifies as a woman. His self-renaming is interesting. He started out as Timothy David John Chappell, which is a lot of male names to have to deal with. For his transformation he chose two female names that are also flattery names – I wonder if he and Sophie LaBelle are friends or rivals. (If you’re wondering why “Sophie” is flattering, it’s because “sophia” in Greek means wisdom. Philosophers of course are well aware of the etymology.)

I think this is kind of relevant. It’s almost as if he’s signaling. “I’m a trans woman, and I like to flatter myself.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s true of a lot of trans women? That the fad for being a trans women tends to attract self-flattering men and/or men who seek attention?

“We have a society at large where a lot of frankly very transphobic stuff has been normalised,” says Chappell. “It’s also a problem that a lot of the time people see this as a debate with two sides in a way that they wouldn’t see debates that are comparable about race or being gay.”

There’s a reason for that. Here’s the reason: it’s because they’re not comparable. Being trans isn’t like being Of Color or gay. It’s very different in several important ways. Sophie Grace Chappell is not like John Lewis or Alan Turing.

Chappell and her allies consider many gender-critical views to be transphobic. Nonetheless, she insists that “there are no questions that I refuse to engage with.” It’s the questioners she avoids, when she judges that they’re not “in good faith” or “getting it.” 

Back atcha, pal.

So what are the things that gender-critical feminists say which Chappell believes shows they’re not listening? “I’ll give you three examples. First of all, trans women—they don’t normally talk about trans men in this context—are sexual predators, a threat to women’s safety. Secondly, there’s no such thing as a trans kid, and thirdly, trans people are delusional.”

The first one is dishonest. We don’t say trans women in general are sexual predators, we say we don’t know who is and the trans label is a perfect cover for men who are sexual predators.

The second one – how does Chappell know there is such a thing as a trans kid? How does he know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that kids who call themselves trans know they are trans and are not simply joining a trend aka a fashion?

The third one – does Chappell know for certain that all trans people really are the sex they say they are, which is the opposite of the one their bodies indicate? If so, how does he know that? The way I see it is that sex just is what the body indicates and that it’s absurd to insist that one is literally in every sense the Other sex. I’m not sure I would say “trans people are delusional” just like that, but I do think they’ve bought into a mass delusion. Once a mass delusion has taken hold, it’s not exactly delusional to buy into it, because buying into what other people have bought into is how we function in the social world. It’s more that they’re conforming to a delusion.

Julian points out that the more serious gender critical feminists don’t say such things.

“There can sometimes be inconsistencies between people’s comments on social media and what they put in their books, and often it’s not actually very clear which of two conflicting positions people really take,” she responds, at pains to avoid naming names. “You also find prominent people in that ideological neck of the woods who are quite happy, for example, to give approbation to people on social media who one would think of as much more violent activists, who say things like: ‘We should have guards with guns in women’s loos to keep the “transes” out.’”

More violent activists? The violence hasn’t been coming from the feminists. And anyone can make up stupid “say things like” pseudo-quotations, but I haven’t seen much if any talk of guards with guns.

Chappell would prefer to be on the same side as the gender-critical feminists, fighting for women’s rights against the patriarchy. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t agree some targets and work together towards those targets,” she says, such as resisting the attack on bodily autonomy represented by the overturning of Roe v Wade. Given the mistrust and animosity on both sides, however, such a united front looks distant.

For the same reason that BLM activists don’t always want to work together with white people. We don’t have skin in the game in the same way, so sometimes we just need to step back. It’s the same with men, however they identify: we don’t always want to work together with them to fight the patriarchy. The overturning of Roe v Wade isn’t an attack on Chappell the way it is on women. If he were a woman he would probably get that.

Judith Butler blows up her own argument in the middle of a sentence – and doesn’t correct it, even though it’s not a live conversation but an email exchange with a New Statesman writer.

When Justice Ginsburg established “sex” discrimination as a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to be treated equally, she underscored that equality was the basis for feminist legal victories. What if access to certain kinds of healthcare, including abortion, is a matter of equality? If men have adequate healthcare, and women do not, then women, or those who are pregnant, suffer discrimination. 

No, you can’t flip your own argument mid-sentence like that. You end up with gibberish. “If men have adequate healthcare, and women do not, then women, or men who are pregnant, suffer discrimination.” Wut? But you just said men have adequate healthcare, in contrast to women, not in contrast to women or men. Sometimes remembering to be incloooooooosive makes nonsense of your argument. 

Then it’s stupid in a different way.

Something similar is happening with trans healthcare. If people who are not trans get the healthcare they require, and trans people face discrimination at healthcare facilities, then they suffer discrimination.

That argument should be “If people who are not trans get the healthcare they require, and trans people don’t get the healthcare they require, then they suffer discrimination.” I wonder if she changed it because of unease – possibly unconscious – about the nature of that “healthcare.” As many of us point out several times a day, it is at the very least questionable that trying to change people’s sex with surgeries and cross-sex hormones can be called “health care.” I for one don’t think it is health care, I think it’s quackery and health damage.

This is an email interview, not a live one. You’d think she could do better.

Consider, then, that when we say that the denial of abortion rights is discrimination on the basis of sex, we may be saying that sex plays a role in the judgement to deny those rights that is unfair and unjust. We do not need to adjudicate whether the denial of abortion rights gets the sex right – probably not. So it is not on the basis of sex as it is that discrimination occurs. Discrimination makes reference to sex in unfair and discriminatory ways, and the only “sex” that legally matters is the one figured and operative in a discrimination action.

I have no idea what she thinks she means by that.

So when some feminists now make claims like, “the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems”, it can sound like those reproductive systems are the cause of the oppression. That is muddled thinking, wrong, and does not advance feminist aims. It is the social organisation of reproduction that leads to the conclusion that abortion should or should not happen. The state is claiming that it has interests in the womb, and it is figuring the womb as its province, rather than the province of those who actually have them. It is precisely the anti-feminist forces that figure the womb in that way that we must oppose. Otherwise, we attribute the existence of oppressive systems to biology, when we should be asking how those oppressive systems contort biological claims to their own ends.

Wut?

No the state isn’t claiming it has “interests in the womb.” The state, aka the collective of anti-abortion fanatics in Congress and state legislatures and the courts, is claiming it gets to force women to stay pregnant. It’s not about disembodied wombs, it’s about the treacherous sneaky selfish inferior beings who have those wombs. It’s about women’s ability (and purported duty) to produce babies, but not disembodied from the women themselves. There’s sadism and resentment and power-tripping involved here along with the Baby Imperative, and if you think there isn’t you’re on the wrong drugs.

Texas lawmakers test just how much they can punish women for being women.

Republican lawmakers have sent legal threats to Texas organizations that offer to fund out-of-state travel for abortions, potentially setting up a showdown between abortion law and long-held constitutional rights such as freedom of association and freedom of travel.

The Texas Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of Republicans in the state legislature, sent a letter on 7 July to a law firm that offered to cover employees’ expenses if they travelled for abortion. It threatened Sidley LLP with felony charges, claiming Texas can criminalize anyone who “furnishes the means” for an abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurs. The letter cites a 1925 law which was not formally repealed after the supreme court codified the right to abortion in Roe v Wade in 1973; last week, the Texas supreme court confirmed the 1925 law can be applied.

The “freedom” caucus. Whose freedom? What kind of freedom? When do women get to have some?

The lawmakers also outlined proposed legislation that would allow individuals to sue anyone who financially assists with a Texan’s abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurs. The law proposes that such assistance be considered criminal even if a Texan travelled out of state for a medication abortion and took part of the drug in Texas.

Third paragraph, so naturally it’s time to break out the awkward replacements for “a woman.” A Texan what?

The letter is just the latest move by rightwing lawmakers, lawyers and activists to crack down on abortion provision in Texas. Last week, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued the Biden administration for mandating that states provide abortions in medical emergencies. In March, a state legislator, Briscoe Cain, sent a cease and desist letter to Citibank, who had announced a policy to pay for employees’ out of state abortion expenses.

Ken Paxton wants women to die in medical emergencies. He’s probably planning to go watch, with popcorn enough for several hours of viewing pleasure.

“Rightwing activists, lawyers and legislators have taken on a coordinated effort to intimidate and threaten anyone who advocates for helping people women obtain reproductive care, without any concern for whether their actions are legal or constitutional,” said Jennifer Ecklund, a lawyer for Thompson Coburn, which is currently working on behalf of most abortion funds in Texas.

“If they can scare everybody out of supporting pregnant people women who need care, then they’ve achieved their end, no matter what a court says two years from now,” she added.

I hope two years from now everyone will at least be able to say “women.”

Ominous:

To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”

Levitsky is co-author of the influential book How Democracies Die which traces the collapse of once-proud democratic nations – in some cases through wrenching upheavals, but more often in modern times through a tip-toeing into authoritarianism. Levitsky is also an authority on Latin America, a region from which he draws a compelling parallel.

Levitsky told the Guardian that the Trump who emerges from the hearings was a coup leader, “but not a very sophisticated one. Not a very experienced one. A petty autocrat. A type of leader more familiar to someone like me, a student of Latin American politics.”

There was nothing very sophisticated or experienced about Hitler, either. He was a punk, but that didn’t stop him.

The media bubble is not the only barrier standing between the January 6 committee and a major repair of the country’s damaged democratic infrastructure. While the hearings focused heavily on the figure of Trump, Levitsky argues that an arguably even greater threat is now posed by the Republican party which enabled him.

“In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rules of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long,” Levitsky said. “The party has revealed itself, from top to bottom, to be a majority anti-democratic party.”

Levitsky cites an analysis by the Republican Accountability Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, of the public statements made by all 261 Republicans in the US House and Senate in the wake of the 2020 election. It found that 224 of them – a staggering 86% of all Republicans in Congress – cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s win in what amounted to a mass “attack on a cornerstone of our democracy”.

Levitsky warns that the hearings have illuminated two great dangers for America, both relating to Republicans. The first is that the party’s strategists have acquired, through Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a roadmap to the vulnerabilities of the electoral system.

“They discovered that there is a plethora of opportunities for subverting an election, from blocking certification to sending alternate slates of electors to Congress. Armed with that knowledge, they may well do it much better next time.”

The second lesson for Levitsky relates to accountability, or the lack of it. The Republicans who played with fire, openly backing the anti-democratic movement, found that they were largely immune to the consequences.

“They learned that if you try to overturn the election you will not be punished by Republican voters, activists or donors. For the most part, you’ll be rewarded for it. And to me, that is terrifying.”

Same.

Local residents astonished that desert basin is desert basin.

The few who live along the shores of Mono Lake are accustomed to the peculiarities of this high desert basin.

Famously strange limestone spires known as tufa towers rise from the water. The lake contains so much salt that it’s barren of fish. In the arid sands beyond, sagebrush thrives, and that’s about it.

But the alkali flats that are emerging from the lake’s surface, ghost white, aren’t just another nod to the uniqueness of this ancient place. They’re a sign of trouble. Amid a third year of drought, the sprawling lake on the remote east side of the Sierra Nevada is sharply receding, and the small towns and wildlife so closely tied to the water are feeling the pinch.

Drought? Drought??? Who could possibly have seen that coming?

The drought bearing down on Mono Lake and the rest of California picks up on a two-decade run of extreme warming and drying. It’s a product of the changing climate that has begun to profoundly reshape the landscape of the West and how people live within it. From less alpine snow and emptying reservoirs to parched forests and increased wildfire, the change is posing new, and often difficult, challenges.

Now why would reservoirs be emptying just because the planet is heating and people keep building new houses in deserts? I just can’t figure it out, can anyone?

For eight decades, the city of Los Angeles has piped water from four creeks that feed the lake to its facilities 350 miles to the south, sometimes diverting almost all of the inflow. It’s a familiar California tale of old water rights yielding inordinate benefit.

“Excuse us, we need this water for our city 350 miles from here, thanks, bye.”

The concerns at the lake, though, were supposed to have been resolved. In 1994, after a lengthy environmental campaign that spurred “Save Mono Lake” bumper stickers on vehicles up and down California, state water regulators put caps on L.A.’s exports. Slowly, lake levels rose. But they did not rise as much as they were supposed to.

Scold them. Tell them they’re not living up to their part of the bargain. Remind them it’s a signed agreement.

Drought, on top of a climate that’s changed faster than expected, has slowed progress. On April 1, the typical start of the lake’s runoff season, the water level measured 6,379.9 feet above sea level, about 12 feet short of the state target. Before Los Angeles began drawing water from the creeks here, the lake was nearly 40 feet higher.

Who knew that if you use something up then it’s gone?

So this is what it looks like when you build ever more new houses in a desert and the water dries up.

As the Southwest enters its second decade of megadrought, and the Colorado River sinks to alarmingly low levels, Rio Verde, a largely upscale community that real-estate agents bill as North Scottsdale, though it is a thirty-mile drive from Scottsdale proper, is finding itself on the front lines of the water wars. Some homeowners’ wells are drying up, while others who get water delivered have recently been told that their source will be cut off on January 1st. 

Because it’s a desert. Did anyone mention that it’s a desert before you bought new houses there? Did you look out the window at all?

The Southwest’s water issues are at a point of crisis. “What has been a slow-motion train wreck for twenty years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told Congress earlier this year. Arizona is one of seven states that, along with parts of Mexico, draw water from the Colorado River, which accounts for about a third of the state’s supply. (In the nineteen-seventies, Arizona built an extensive aqueduct system to channel river water to the central and southern regions of the state, in part to allay fears that it was overtaxing its finite supply of groundwater.) But the agreement divvying up the Colorado’s water was made at a time when flows were higher than they are now. In recent years, states that rely on that supply have had to contend with shortages, and experts predict that the situation is only going to get worse.

Probably because there are more and more people there, and none of them can survive without water. Also, it’s getting hotter.

Most Foothills residents draw their water from wells, but several hundred homes sit on land without reliable access to water, so the inhabitants rely on cisterns, which they fill with a delivery from a water truck every month or so. 

Ahhh the water is trucked in. That sounds like an excellent plan. Not at all grotesque.

In 2018, Phoenix, concerned about its own supply, stopped selling water to haulers who serviced New River, an unincorporated community north of the city. Nabity grew worried that Scottsdale might make a similar decision and cut off supply to Rio Verde Foothills. If that happened, the water haulers could look for other sources, but trucking water in from farther away would cost significantly more. And what if other communities also stopped wanting to sell their scarce water to outsiders? Nabity, a real-estate agent, worried that water insecurity could prevent her from selling her home someday. But, when she and others began raising the issue, some of her neighbors accused her of fearmongering. Scottsdale promised to be a good neighbor, they insisted. The Foothills weren’t going to get cut off.

Because the water supply is infinite, even in the desert. Really.

Then, last August, the Department of the Interior issued its first-ever formal water-shortage declaration for the Colorado River. A few months later, Scottsdale became the first city in Arizona to announce that it had entered Stage One of its drought-management plan. (Several other cities have since followed suit.) The city asked Scottsdale residents to decrease water consumption by five per cent. It also informed the water haulers that, starting in 2023, they could no longer buy Scottsdale water to deliver outside city limits—including to the Rio Verde Foothills.

Oops.

“Where does new water come from in the Southwest? That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Loquvam said. “All the low-hanging fruit has been picked, water-wise. There is a second tier of water resources—it exists. But they are significantly more expensive than the existing water supply. Water prices that seem expensive right now will probably seem reasonable in ten years. There’s going to be a lot of outrage.”

Pssst. It has to do with living in a desert.

epcor has been eying one of those second-tier options: groundwater from the Harquahala Valley basin, west of Phoenix. Arizona law mandates that, while a political subdivision such as a dwid can purchase groundwater from the basin, private companies such as epcor cannot. In recent years, though, the state has expanded private companies’ ability to buy water. In 2020, the Arizona Department of Water Resources endorsed a plan that would allow an investment company’s purchase of rural farmland in order to sell water access to developers in a Phoenix suburb.

Yes! Brilliant idea! Convert farmland to a water source for suburban development in a desert! What could possibly go wrong? Besides totally using up every last drop of water?

After all the discussions I’d had with Foothills residents about water scarcity, it was disconcerting to drive down the community’s mostly unpaved roads and see dozens of new houses under construction. Despite the ruptures within the community, the one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that there was way too much development in the Rio Verde Foothills. Last year, Maricopa County added more residents than any other county in the country. 

God people are stupid.

Many of the new homes will rely on hauled water—if it’s available. Arizona has long been aware of its finite water supply; a 1980 law requires developers to secure a hundred years’ worth of water for their projects. But the Foothills is plagued by what are known as wildcat builders. Because the hundred-year law applies only to subdivisions of more than five houses, wildcat builders often split parcels into five or fewer lots.

Great! “Here’s your new house. By the way there’s no water. Bye-eeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Many of the new houses in the Foothills were built by Morgan Taylor Homes, one of the biggest developers in Maricopa County. Instead of sprawling ranches, they are mostly two- and three-bedroom houses. Their prices, however, are not particularly modest: one eighteen-hundred-square-foot house near Riddle’s was listed at a little less than six hundred thousand dollars. “Who’s gonna spend five hundred ninety-five thousand dollars for a house with no water?” Riddle asked incredulously.

For a house in the Arizona desert with no water! By the way note the meaning of the name “Arizona.” They weren’t joking.*

As the January 1st deadline approaches, many Foothills residents still don’t know where their water will come from. The uncertainty and drama that keeps Nabity up at night doesn’t seem to be dissuading newcomers, though. “I just sold my daughter’s house, next door,” she said, shaking her head. “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.”

Therefore the county will perform an act of magic, and the Colorado river will fill all the way up in 3.5 hours.

*Wrong. See Skeletor’s correction. Google confirms.

Melted brains.

In the months before she started nursery, my four-year-old daughter would often say she was a boy. 

Little kids say they’re lots of things.

It came unprompted, bubbling up from somewhere pure and certain inside her.

Little kids can be certain of all kinds of things that aren’t true. Certainly is almost always a bad thing, and in a child of four it means nothing.

But the obstacles to her sense of self have started looming, ever since she started nursery in September 2021. 

After she’d been attending for a few weeks, she said to me again she was a boy. But then she looked troubled and added that her teacher told her she’s a girl, that she’s always a girl. 

Teachers are not there to lie to the children they teach.

I suspect her teachers don’t think she’s ‘old enough’ for gender nonconformity, despite published research confirming that children as young as two to three recognise their gender, and can identify their own transness.

Published where? TikTok?

Sometimes she still broaches the topic of wanting to be a boy. She’s pointed to male characters in books and said she looks like them. We say teachers can’t tell her who she is, but she comes back with the same contradiction – if my teacher said this, it must be true.

Well, ya know, in this case, given that the kid’s parents have mush for brains, she’s right – the teacher is more likely to be right than the parents are.

No matter how much you’ve taught them yourself, in the end their teachers become their educational authority. My child’s already learning from her teacher to doubt her thoughts and fear her mind, her very self.

Or maybe she’s learning from her teacher not to believe her daydreams are all true.

Plot twist:

Anti-bullying policies aren’t cutting it. Not for my daughter, or for anyone in the trans community – as a trans man, I know this firsthand.

Ohhhhhhh – you should have said.

No wonder the kid started saying she was a boy.

This poor kid is going to have one confusing childhood.

Another direct insult, as direct and insulting as nominating William “Lia” Thomas Woman of the Year:

The National Women’s History Museum’s current Biography page:

All three are men.

The pope “apologized” about the residential schools, but not really. (“About” rather than “for” is deliberate.)

Pope Francis made a public statement today to the delegations of Indigenous people who met with him this week to discuss personal experiences in residential schools or their harmful legacies.

His statement included the words “I am very sorry,” and is being reported as an apology for residential schools.

Journalism is so deferential to the popes. Why is that? The Vatican is a religious version of the Mafia; it’s not something to defer to.

There are several kinds of wrongs associated with residential schools. There were abusive and often criminal actions by individuals who worked in these institutions. Those in authority covered up abuses and failed to protect children. And the residential school system advanced an assimilationist policy.

Individual criminal responsibility and general institutional responsibility may also overlap. The many unmarked graves and unheeded calls to address deathly conditions in the schools speak to the wrongs and traumatic legacies of these institutions.

Pope Francis most clearly addressed the abusive actions by individuals — the “deplorable conduct” of “a number of Catholics” — about which he expressed sorrow and shame. He also acknowledged the painful experiences of those who shared their stories with him.

The Pope did not acknowledge that the church as an institution embraced assimilationist policy in its decision to run the schools.

And that’s the most important bit. The nuns who ran Goldenbridge were horrible to the children locked up there, but it matters far more that the church supported and administered the entire system of imprisonment and punishment of children.

As is unfortunately common in many church apology statements, when those who utter the apology use the passive voice, it’s unclear who was the agent of the actions in question.

Pope Francis spoke about “a colonization that lacked respect for you,” and acknowledged that “great harm was done to your identity and your culture.” But who was responsible? He spoke about “attempts to impose a uniformity” to which “great numbers of children fell victim” that were based on “programs devised in offices.” But which offices?

The Pope positions the church as being on the side of outrage and sorrow for this colonization — “sadly, this colonial mentality remains widespread” — and as a partner in overcoming it, rather than as an active agent of its perpetration.

Very active indeed.

Yay let’s trans toddlers! What could go wrong?!

Originally a comment by Catwhisperer on Does Dwight Schrute write tweets for Tampax?

Radio 4 has a 28-part series about the menstrual cycle (28ish Days Later, if anyone wants to check it out) which I thought was an impressive amount of time to dedicate to the subject. I’m most of the way through but struggling a bit now – it started off with the interesting detailed biology stuff and then went off into New Age Moon Goddess hippy dippy territory. Anyway. The presenter explains right at the start that they will be mostly saying “women” but of course not everyone who has a menstrual cycle identifies as a woman blah blah blah but they stay reasonably on track after that I think.

There is a whole episode with the first transman to front a period product campaign (how did I miss that happening!?). It was…. interesting. Things that stood out for me:

If I worked this out right, this kid was 15 in 2010, at an all girls school, convinced she was a boy, and presumably with everyone around her playing along, in the UK. I didn’t realise that’s where we were 12 years ago. It’s always worse than you think!

First period was traumatic because “the narrative” was that only girls get periods and she was a boy. Her mother didn’t tell her this would happen because she thought it would be too upsetting. Seriously? More upsetting than getting your period when you believe that you are somehow exempt because of how you feel? Poor kid.

The dissociation from her body to the point of total absurdity such as “there’s not enough research into trans bodies” – what does that even mean? Aren’t trans bodies the same as other bodies? Isn’t it their mind that we are told is different?

The obligatory reference to “harm”. Messages from trans people who didn’t agree with her doing the ad campaign were upsetting because she didn’t like the idea that she had “harmed” people in her “community”. When your own movement bullies you, something’s not right.

Message of support from someone she went to school with: “I’m so glad you exist!” What? Who says that to anyone, on any occasion? Unless the poor girl has been so confused by the nonsense about how evil transphobes don’t want trans people to exist that she thinks this is the right way to be supportive?

It’s worth a listen just to hear from a gender-confused female person for a change.

The Guardian on that stealth deletion of women’s rights from an already signed statement I mentioned the other day:

The UK government is coming under growing pressure from European countries and human rights groups to explain why commitments to abortion and sexual health rights have been removed from an official statement on gender equality.

The question shouldn’t be why so much as when are you going to put them back.

Norway and Denmark have approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “to protest against the substantive changes” that were made to a paper that resulted from a UK-hosted conference on freedom of religion and belief, opened by Liz Truss earlier this month, the Guardian has learned.

More than 20 countries, including those now complaining, had signed the original text, which included a commitment to the repeal of any laws that “allow harmful practices, or restrict women’s and girls’ … sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy.”

See they’d already signed it. It’s pretty outrageous to change a statement after people or countries have signed it, because then the statement is not what they signed.

Plus why put women’s rights in if you’re only going to take them out later?

Plus why tf take them out? Plus why do you think women shouldn’t have rights?

In an open letter to Truss, the foreign secretary and Tory leadership candidate, published on Friday, more than 20 human rights, pro-choice, and international aid groups demanded the government reverse the deletions immediately and explain why they were made.

They get to demand that, because the statement had already been signed. Changing the wording after that is fraudulent.

The international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) was held in early July in London. The prime minister’s special envoy on FoRB, the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, was heavily involved in the event. Bruce is co-chair of the all-party parliamentary “pro-life” group of MPs.

The resulting, amended, statement on gender equality makes a commitment to challenging “discriminatory laws that justify, condone, or reinforce violence, discrimination, or inequalities on the grounds of religion, belief or gender and that restrict women and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of human rights”. It makes no mention of sexual or reproductive rights or bodily autonomy.

Absolute shower.

Marie Juul Petersen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights who was close to the process of drafting the first statement, said the second version of the text came as “a big surprise” and a great disappointment.

“I saw the original statement as such a big step forward because this has been a very conflict-ridden area – the relationship between freedom of religion and belief and gender equality.”

Seriously. See: Does Got Hate Women?

Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, also said the government was duty bound to withdraw the amendments.

“The government must surely be aware that, given the recent events in the United States, abortion rights are under threat. To amend an agreed statement in such a manner, omitting these rights, is therefore particularly poorly timed,” he said.

“Unfortunately, this supplanting of individual freedom under the guise of “religious freedom” is an example of the right to freedom of religion or belief being abused in order to infringe the rights of others.”

Almost as if that’s what it’s for.

H/t Freemage.

You don’t get to blow off a subpoena just because you once worked for Trump.

A federal jury has found former Trump adviser Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The verdict: After nearly two days of hearing evidence and witness testimony, the jury reached a unanimous verdict on the two contempt charges in less than three hours.

Bannon smiled as the verdict was read, looking back and forth between the courtroom deputy and the foreperson. Bannon’s team did not mount a defense during the trial, and he did not take the stand. Speaking to reporters after the conviction, his attorney David Schoen said they planned to appeal the verdict, calling it a “bullet proof appeal.”

In a Justice Department news release touting the conviction, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves said that the “subpoena to Stephen Bannon was not an invitation that could be rejected or ignored.”

Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Jon Pike tweeted a link to an interesting study.

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.

Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

…

Results We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

Read the whole thing.

I missed this one from September last year.

Not a fact. All people with periods are women. (Some are girls, but by some definitions once they have periods they’re women, and anyway this stupid tweet didn’t mean “Because some are girls!!”) No men have periods. We don’t need to “celebrate” the sexual “diversity” of “people who bleed.”

Also everyone bleeds – see Shylock: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

But men don’t menstruate. Men don’t gestate babies so they don’t need a place to gestate babies so they don’t need a uterus, and they also don’t need to feed gestating babies so they don’t need an endometrium so they don’t need to shed part of it once a month to make room for the next installment. Hope that helps.

Liz Cheney was talking to her fellow Republicans:

“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the committee’s vice chair. “It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.”

Some of those people quit their Trump administration jobs on January 6.

The hearing on Thursday detailed Trump’s repeated refusal to quell the deadly mob, even when he knew that some of them were armed and that Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger. Cheney suggested the former President’s supporters should view his behavior related to that day as disqualifying for future office as many of Trump’s former allies do.

Why? Because he’s dangerous. He’d do anything. He’d invite Vladimir Putin to annex Boston and Seattle, and give him the weapons to do it.

The committee also showed video outtakes from Jan. 7, when Trump recorded a video message that aides had scripted to tell the public he knew the election had ended. He refused to go that far. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump says to aides in the room, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump. “I just want to say that Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, OK?”

I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to!! Waaaaaaaah!

Greens Leader, MP for Melbourne, calls himself a “dad” in his Twitter profile.

Of course “birthing parent” excludes anyone. It excludes mothers, which is a word that applies only to women, so it excludes women. It excludes half of humanity, which is not a small or trivial exclusion.

It never stops taking my breath away to see how comfortable men are excluding and erasing women.

Here’s the clip that shows Trump discussing the Speech to the Seditionists before giving it. It doesn’t reveal any hitherto concealed intelligence or eloquence or rational thought or awareness of moral obligation.

The January 6 hearing was lively yesterday.

The committee used Thursday’s hearing to show how Trump not only failed to act, but chose not to as he watched the violent assault on the US Capitol unfold.

Several witnesses with first-hand knowledge of what was happening inside the White House on January 6 told the committee that Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the Capitol attack was unfolding, according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday’s hearing.

The panel said it “confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, and DC government officials: None of them — not one — heard from President Trump that day,” Luria said.

The committee used that testimony to make the case that Trump’s refusal to intervene amounted to a dereliction of duty.

…

That testimony fit with other evidence presented on Thursday, like the outtakes of Trump’s videotaped speech on January 7, where he tried to water down some of the prepared language and told his aides, “I don’t want to say the election’s over, OK?”

No, sir, not ok. There are rules here.

See this is why it’s not a great idea to pick a flamboyant tv personality gang boss real estate hustler criminal as head of state. Laws don’t even make it into his consciousness: he sees everything through the one and only filter of What He Wants.

Updating to add what Representative Luria thinks of his speech: