Trump’s people seem to be confusing him with someone else.
Allies of Trump see his conspiratorial messages and insults based on race as anything but productive. They want him to focus his attacks on policy issues, such as immigration and the economy, rather than personal attacks against Harris.
But personal attacks are the fun part for him. Talking about policy issues is work, and talking smack about people is sheer play. He’s not a spinach before dessert kind of guy.
This by Mireia Garcés de Marcilla in the LRB is what used to be known as “too clever by half”:
All the same, those of us who are concerned about the reactionary weaponisation of gender might do better to rethink rather than cement our commitment to the category of womanhood. We should ask what being a woman means, how womanhood is defined, and against what (and whom) womanhood is ‘defended’. Instead of insisting that Khelif is a ‘real’ woman, we should ask how dichotomous ideas of gender have been solidified in the discourse that is being mobilised against her. We should interrogate the colonial roots of medical accounts of female and male embodiment, and the construction of femininity through (and conflation with) whiteness. We should listen to athletes whose womanhood is doubted not only because of their outstanding athletic performance, but because their bodies are at odds with Western notions of femininity. In 2009, when Semenya was banned from competing for eleven months after winning the 800m at the World Championships in Berlin, the head of South African athletics asked: ‘Who are white people to question the make-up of an African girl?’
Puhleeze. As if we haven’t been ordered to do all that a billion times already. As if we haven’t been doing that for decades.
Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” – i.e. knowing that women are not men and that men are not women – we can’t defend or argue for women’s rights. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t effectively campaign for our rights, we can’t challenge misogyny and sex-based exclusion, contempt, indifference, hostility. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t say what’s so fucking horrible about the Taliban. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t have feminism.
A serious commitment to fairness and equality has to resist the drive to read bodies along racialised gendered lines.
Oh shut up. No one is doing that. Women don’t have biceps like Khelif’s or necks like Khelif’s or shoulders like Khelif’s. Male puberty is real, and pretending otherwise is the opposite of a serious commitment to fairness and equality.
An obsessive focus on physical traits that can been read as proxies for gender overlooks the extent to which being a competitive athlete is not only a matter of anatomy but also of resources and access. In order to become Olympians, athletes need a healthy diet, the time and space to train, opportunities to compete and financial support.
No shit, Sherlock, but it does not follow that the physical traits don’t matter.
U.C.L.A. Can’t Let Protesters Block Jewish Students From Campus, Judge Says
What is this, Nazi Germany? Of course it can’t.
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred the University of California, Los Angeles, from allowing protesters to block Jewish students from having access to the campus and facilities such as libraries, classrooms and gathering places.
You mean like…
Judge Mark C. Scarsi’s preliminary injunction order came after three Jewish students sued the university over protests in the spring concerning Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The demonstrations roiled the campus, and more than 200 people were arrested after pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israel counterprotests turned violent.
During those demonstrations, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment with plywood and metal barricades in Royce Quad, a major thoroughfare. The judge said they had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them,” blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel” from entering the encampment and other areas of the campus.
Sometimes it’s a wristband, other times it’s a yellow star. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.
(Of course, he’s been boring all along, but also morbidly interesting the way a fire or an earthquake is interesting.)
It began with 40 minutes of technical difficulties and only got worse. In more than two hours of aimless ranting and ego-stroking with Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump garbled through the greatest hits of his grievances, praised strongmen like Vladimir Putin, and painted his opponent Kamala Harris as an existential threat to America: “If she’s going to be our president, very quickly, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said to Musk—whose X campaign launch for Ron DeSantis last year was beset by similar technical issues. Absent from the proceedings? Anything coherent or compelling. “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself,” the Harris campaign said in a statement afterward. “Self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”
The Trump Show has, indeed, grown old and stale, and lately, the Republican presidential nominee finds himself desperate to regain any of the momentum he lost once Harris became the Democrats’ new star.
…
He had hoped to regain his footing Monday night with Musk, who has become one of his most prominent backers. Instead, he underscored the personal “weirdness” Harris’s campaign has sought to highlight—and the extremism of his agenda, as seen in his praise of Musk firing striking workers, his vow to shutter the Department of Education, and his comments in support of climate change because, he said, global warming will mean “more oceanfront property.”
Billions of people dead, but more oceanfront property. Good tradeoff.
Musk said Monday that his goal with this livestream was to help people “understand how [Trump] talks when it’s a conversation, rather than an interview.” “Nobody is quite themselves in an interview,” Musk posted, “so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like.” Turns out, though, that Trump is always like this—and after eight years of the same old bullshit, perhaps Americans are finally ready to move on.
Surely we already knew that Trump is always like this. We saw him being always like this for four horrible years, so it’s no surprise that he’s still like it.
The workers retort.
U.A.W. Files Labor Charges Against Trump and Musk Over Interview
It won’t succeed, but it’s a good poke in the eye.
The United Automobile Workers union filed charges with federal labor regulators on Tuesday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk of threatening workers during a livestreamed conversation a day earlier.
The union, which has backed Vice President Kamala Harris, accused Mr. Trump of violating the law by voicing support for the practice of firing workers when they go on strike, an approach the former president suggested Mr. Musk had embraced.
In the glitch-delayed conversation on X, Mr. Trump described Mr. Musk as the “greatest cutter” of workers. He claimed Mr. Musk has responded to striking workers by saying, “That’s OK — you’re all gone.” Mr. Musk, the billionaire leader of Tesla and SpaceX, laughed in response, but did not directly address Mr. Trump’s remark before the former president changed the topic.
They mean, before the former president lurched into a totally different subject because he has the attention span of roadkill.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Brian Hughes, called the complaint against Mr. Trump a “shameless political stunt intended to erode” the former president’s support from American workers.
It’s fascinating that he doesn’t call Trump’s “Hahaha you’ll just fire them all hahaha” a shameless political remark but does call a reaction to it a shameless political stunt. Which of the two is the more shameless? For real?
Refugee Olympic Team’s historic first medalist Cindy Ngamba hopes to inspire millions
The story of Cindy Winner Djankeu Ngamba is one of resilience. Living up to her middle name, she became the first-ever athlete to win a medal for the Refugee Olympic Team, claiming bronze in the women’s boxing 75kg class at the Summer Olympics in Paris.
Born in Cameroon, Ngamba faced many challenges growing up. At the age of 11, she moved to the United Kingdom in search of a better future. After arriving, she struggled to gain citizenship and was sent to a detention camp over paperwork issues.
Around the age of 15, she discovered her passion for boxing. “Every day is a learning day in boxing. You have your ups and downs, just like in life in general,” Ngamba told CNN Sport’s Amanda Davies.
Discovering a passion for something can be a lifeline.
The Refugee Olympic Team gives forcibly displaced athletes an opportunity to participate on the highest sporting stage. Made up of 37 athletes at this year’s Games, the team wants to demonstrate to the world that refugees are an enrichment to society.
Being a refugee is not as much fun as you think.
H/t Blood Knight
All sympathy must always be for the male. No exceptions.
Nobody should be “it”. Pet owners are offended if a beloved dog or cat is called “it”. Yet that’s how Khelif would have returned to Algeria, had a significant number of public voices had their way. As an “it”. Dehumanised, dispossessed.
Except that nobody advocated for Khelif to be called “it”.
Yet no thought appears to have been given to Khelif’s existence outside the boxing ring. No discussion of how a person might conceivably exist going forward has been inspired by this story.
A person? No. You mean a man. Your empathy is all for the man; the women who were battered and cheated by the man don’t intrude on your attention for a second.
We heard a lot about mortal danger in Paris, yet nobody dallied greatly on the mental wellbeing of a competitor arriving a woman and denounced as a man. A punch hurts, but it is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen to a boxer if sport does not handle this issue with care.
Says the man cheerfully, on account of how it’s not his face that would take that punch, it’s just some bitch’s face. The punch will hurt her but who cares, because she’s just some bitch.
The Teamsters International president, Sean O’Brien, has been accused by senior members of the union of disgracing it by agreeing to an unprecedented appearance at next week’s Republican national convention.
Wtf. Trump is not a friend to the workers. The Republican party is not a friend to the workers.
O’Brien’s decision was branded “unconscionable” by John Palmer, vice-president at large at the Teamsters, who accused him of lending support to the “most anti-union party and president” in a generation.
Or perhaps in our entire history.
Earlier this year James Curbeam, national chairman of the Teamsters National Black caucus, warned members that Trump was a “scab masquerading as a pro-union advocate” in a letter, reported by the New York Times, responding to O’Brien’s meeting with the former president.
As O’Brien prepares to speak in Milwaukee, Palmer sounded the alarm.
“A speaking engagement at the Republican national convention by Teamster president Sean O’Brien, regardless of the message, only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable,” he wrote in his letter, outlining anti-union policies being pushed by Trump and the Republican party.
Palmer pointed to the recent supreme court decision overturning the Chevron decision which paves the way for corporate challenges to rules meant to protect workers, and cited the open opposition to union drives from Republican leaders.
“It is unconscionable for any labor leader to lend an air of legitimacy to a candidate and a political party, neither of which can be said to have done, or can be expected to do, anything to improve the lives of the workers we are pledged to represent,” he added.
Class treason.
H/t Helicam
“Get the tits out” has a whole new meaning.
A report from the Manhattan Institute this week revealed that “gender-affirming” mastectomies for patients under 18 are more common than previously believed.
While cross-sex genital surgeries are rare in the US for both adults and minors, mastectomies — also known as “top surgery” in the context of transgender medicine — are widely available to minors and are the most common transgender surgery for this population. Around 5,000 to 6,000 girls underwent “gender affirming” double mastectomies in the US from 2017 to 2023, according to the Manhattan Institute, and at least 50 of those patients were younger than 12-and-a-half years old.
…
The actual prevalence of these surgeries is likely considerably higher than the latest estimate, since it relies on health insurance data and therefore does not include procedures obtained without using insurance.
“First do no harm” is so last millennium, ya know?
Trump’s brilliant new wheeze is to talk about firing workers who go on strike.
The hours-long live-streamed conversation between Trump and Mr Musk featured a wide array of topics, including the attempted assassination attempt against the former president, government regulations and worker strikes.
Trump praised Mr Musk for firing workers who went on strike. Trump said that if workers strike, “you say ‘that’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone.’ So everyone is gone.”
Spoken like a boss.
But federal law says companies cannot fire striking employees.
On Tuesday, the UAW filed Unfair Labor Practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board. “When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean. When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien echoed those sentiments. “Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said on Tuesday.
It’s class warfare, it’s the plutocracy grinding the faces of the workers, it’s privilege making war on the underlings.
Take deep breaths before reading.
Autism school signed up to LGBT charter pushing ‘pseudoscientific’ trans ideology
The commas are in the wrong place. Headline should be:
Autism “school” signed up to “LGBT” charter pushing pseudoscientific trans ideology
A school for severely autistic children has signed up to a controversial LGBT charter pushing “pseudoscientific” transgender ideology.
Experts accused Kaimes School in Edinburgh, which takes children from age five, of “breathtaking” recklessness over how it teaches concepts of biological sex and gender to vulnerable pupils.
The pupils are vulnerable specifically in the sense that autistic children don’t do skepticism. They’re sitting ducks.
Studies suggest “transgender and gender-diverse individuals” are up to six times more likely to be autistic, as reported in the Cass Review. Documents show that Kaimes School has overhauled its curriculum to become “trans inclusive” in a bid to win “charter status” from activist charity LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS).
There shouldn’t even be such a charity, because the T is not the same thing, and mashing them together is nothing but a ploy to sneak the T in without due diligence.
Messages on school notice boards dedicated exclusively to LGBT issues tell pupils to “come out for LGBT”. Other slogans include: “LGBT+ matters, be a part of us”. Statements such as “trans women are real women” have also been put on display.
It seems dubious for a school for severely autistic children to put any political messages on school notice boards, because surely severe autism plus childhood means they’re not equipped to evaluate them for themselves. Am I wrong?
Reading materials in the school include a book titled Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? written by the trans activists Sarah Fisher and Fox Fisher and endorsed by LGBTYS and Stonewall.
Carolyn Brown, a retired former educational psychologist who helped the Scottish Government draw up a national autism strategy, described the approach taken by the school as grossly irresponsible.
“This is the opposite of what a specialist school in autism should be doing,” she said. “These youngsters will interpret things very literally and see the world in black and white.”
That’s what I was thinking, so ok, I’ll conclude I’m not wrong. The more literal-minded the children are, the less the school should be indoctrinating them, especially in the bullshit of Magic Gender.
“You would expect schools, especially ones that specialise in autism, to respond very cautiously and with great care in this area. Instead, youngsters are being fed pseudoscience, presented as fact, and so are the staff. It is shocking and breathtaking.”
While experts say they do not yet understand the link between autism and gender distress, materials produced by Kaimes School suggest it is explained as autistic people are “willing to examine social constructs”. It cites its source as an American YouTuber.
I apologize for my people and their YouTubers.
J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif.
Is it harassment to point out that a man is cheating by competing against women and/or that he is putting women in danger by competing against them? What are we supposed to do, just silently watch him do it?
Khelif — who on Saturday won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 66 kilogram boxing competition — spent much of the 2024 Olympics in Paris at the center of a noisy and unpleasant dispute about her gender eligibility that reverberated around the world. Despite being born female and not identifying as transgender or intersex — and being backed by the International Olympic Committee, who asserted “scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman” — Khelif faced a torrent of accusations and abuse over her gender.
So here’s Variety buying into the absurd claim that Khelif is a woman, and trying to convince us that he is.
Most of the attacks came via social media, particularly on X/Twitter, and the controversy was escalated when high-profile figures stepped into the fray. In one message to her 14.2 million followers, Rowling posted a picture from Khelif’s fight with Italian boxer Angela Carini, accusing the former of being a man who was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.”
So here’s Variety expressing disapproval that Rowling pointed out a man enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, rather than expressing disapproval of a man enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head. Why is Variety doing that? Why would anyone do that? Why are so many people delighted to see a man punching a woman in the head?
Variety exults:
Bullying is it? But it’s not bullying for Imane Khelif to punch women? Why is that exactly?
Khelif — who on Saturday won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 66 kilogram boxing competition — spent much of the 2024 Olympics in Paris at the center of a noisy and unpleasant dispute about her gender eligibility that reverberated around the world.
Unpleasant was it? Imagine how unpleasant it was for women to be punched by Khelif, and to lose to Khelif.
The BBC dashes up panting with more news about The Trans Communniny:
Trans rapper praises safe space university
So the trans rapper is what? An opera singer? Someone who can neither rhyme nor rhythm? A sheep farmer?
A transgender rapper has written a song that praises his university for being a safe space during his transition.
Why is the BBC telling us this? How is this news?
In the song, Mr Ethan-Watson, who is from the city, said he questioned how he would make it through his degree. “My whole identity was about to change, including my name,” he explains in the recording. “I thought I’d find it hard to try and explain, but everyone was accepting and showed me kindness.
“I knew this was a place I could be free to express the real me. Uni helped me find my tribe, a safe space to be who you want to be.”
Again: why is the BBC telling us this?
Can the adults please return?
Ahhhhh fuck off.
First transgender athlete to compete in Paralympics and bravely shares her story
Typo in the title; always a good sign.
Valentina Petrillo, an Italian sprinter, is making history as the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Paralympic Games. Set to represent Italy in Paris, Petrillo will participate in the T12 classification for visually impaired track athletes, taking on the 200m and 400m races.
That is, Valentino Petrillo is openly cheating in the Paralympic Games. How impressive.
At 50 years old, Petrillo told BBC Sport that her presence at the Games stands as a “important symbol of inclusion” as she bravely shared her story.
No, Bud, it stands as a repellent symbol of widespread male cheating.
“The historic value of being the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics is an important symbol of inclusion.”
Nope. Cheating. Not the same thing.
From 2015 to 2018, Petrillo dominated the T12 classification as a male athlete, racking up 11 national titles. After transitioning in 2018 with her wife’s support and starting hormone therapy in January 2019, she experienced profound changes.
Whatever. He didn’t turn into a woman. He’s cheating.
Bracing for potential criticism at the Paralympic Games, Petrillo said: “This is not a lifestyle choice for me, this is who I am. And the way I am, like all transgender people who do not feel they belong to their biological gender, should not be discriminated against in the same way that race, religion or political ideology should not be discriminated against.”
No, not the same, because cheating.
Sorry! Internet was down this morning and I ran away from home for several hours. Normal service to resume.
Welp. The end may be in sight at last.
The main justification for “gender-affirming care” for minors in the United States has been that “all major U.S. medical associations” support it. Critics of this supposed consensus have argued that it is not grounded in high-quality research or decades of honest and robust deliberation among clinicians with different viewpoints and experiences. Instead, it is the result of a small number of ideologically driven doctor-association members in LGBT-focused committees, who exploit their colleagues’ trust. Physicians presenting different viewpoints are silenced or kept away from decision-making circles, ensuring the appearance of unanimity.
So doctors get the same kind of bullying and silencing we civilians do. How interesting (and horrifying).
As the U.K.’s Cass Review pointed out, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the U.S. Endocrine Society were especially important in forging this consensus, and they did so by citing each other’s statements, rather than conducting a scientific appraisal of the evidence.
I’ll quote you if you quote me, and you can quote me because I will quote you. It will all go perfectly.
But the U.S. consensus now appears to have its first big fracture. In July, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a major medical association representing 11,000 members and over 90 percent of the field in the U.S. and Canada, told me that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.” ASPS acknowledged that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”
…
Sheila Nazarian, a plastic surgeon who practices in Beverly Hills, California, told me that colleagues in her field are increasingly expressing concern about the use of hormones and surgeries to help minors who experience distress associated with their sex. Many, however, fear that voicing these concerns will bring professional and social blowback. “It’s a real problem when colleagues are afraid to debate any medical treatment or procedure, and especially when minors are the patients,” Nazarian says. “I have been following the international debate on youth gender medicine for some time now and know we [in the U.S.] are far behind in recognizing the lack of evidence for long-term benefits, something that our European colleagues have done.”
So it turns out that doctors work pretty much the same way the frothing lunatics at Pharyngula do – they keep each other in line via shouting and bullying, with the result that nobody thinks but everybody shouts and bullies.
One obstacle to having productive discussions, Nazarian said, is the partisan divide over youth gender medicine, which leads physicians to believe that disagreement with the “gender-affirming” approach is driven by political or ideological considerations. This perception is understandable, given that the debate is in fact polarized along partisan lines, though it has become less so in the last two years as a number of Democrats in state legislatures have voted in favor of (or abstained from voting against) age restriction laws. It’s possible that advocates of “gender-affirming” interventions see benefit in the partisan framing, as it may deter liberal doctors from examining the issue in greater depth and speaking up when they detect problems.
Why yes, it may, and that’s why the partisans frame it that way.
The U.S. is one of the few Western countries where minors can receive gender surgeries, according to a new report. Teens under 18 cannot undergo double mastectomy in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Luxemburg, Sweden, the U.K., and three Canadian provinces. Countries that allow these procedures typically do so only in “rare cases,” after age 16, and with parental consent. In the U.S., WPATH Standards of Care, Version 8, widely followed and endorsed by the Biden administration, specifies no age minimums for gender surgeries, with the exception of phalloplasty (but even that can be performed if “significant, compelling reasons” exist to do so). In June, unsealed court documents revealed that WPATH eliminated age minimums for political reasons, and under pressure from U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman.
That punchline is a horror show all by itself.
To be continued.
H/t J.A.
No listen they can explain. It’s totally feminist and free speechy to attack and lie about a feminist speaker in an attempt to get her forcibly silenced.
The University of Sydney Philosophy Department has listed Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, as one of its speakers in its Semester 2 seminar series. The casual seminar format is open to all, and features interstate and international academics on a weekly basis.
Lawford-Smith, who labels herself a “gender critical feminist”, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism), has been previously called out for her transphobic views and posts on social media.
“Called out” by whom you may wonder, but that’s none of your business, because “calling out” is a sacred ceremony that cannot be viewed or questioned by heathen outsiders like you.
Also we’re the ones who get to label people, not you and not the people. She can say she’s a gender critical feminist all she wants but we know for a fact that she’s actually a trans-exclusionary radical feminist which is a terf which is a witch who needs to be burned.
This includes Lawford-Smith referring to transgender women as “trans-identified men” or “men who identify as women”
Which should be a crime punishable by the death penalty. Transgender women are men who are women. Saying anything else is worse than murder by torture.
When contacted for comment, organiser of the lecture series and Associate Lecturer of Philosophy Ryan Cox redirected Honi Soit towards Chair of Philosophy Department and Professor Kristie Miller.
…
Miller explains the department’s decision, “Lawford-Smith is a well respected political philosopher with views on a wide range of matters. The department of philosophy supports academic freedom to explore issue of moral, political, social, and other import, even when these may be difficult or controversial. The department is looking forward to hearing Holly’s thoughts about feminist philosophy and its connection to political action.” [sic]
That “sic” is pathetic. There are no grammar or spelling mistakes, so the sic is meant to imply that the whole quoted passage is a mistake. No YOU are.
SRC Women’s Officers Rand and Eliza Crossley explained, “This University prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, however, including a known trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) in a lecture series contradicts this entirely, by platforming harmful ideas that directly deny the identity of many students.”
No, stupid children, it does no such thing. It’s not “exclusionary” to say that men are not women any more than it’s “exclusionary” to say that lions are not butterflies or universities are not bottle factories or students are not daffodils. It’s not “exclusionary” to know what things are. It’s not “exclusionary” to define things accurately. It’s necessary for our functioning to know what things are and what they’re not. We’re allowed to do that. Women are especially allowed to do that in the case of men, because there are situations in which women need to avoid men, for our own safety or equality or both.
And it’s nobody’s job to worry about the “identity” of students, especially when what’s meant by “identity” is actually fantasy. It’s certainly no academic’s job to pretend a student’s fantasy about the self is reality. The people who’ve been telling you it is are horribly and drastically wrong, and they’ve ruined your ability to think.
Silence the woman! Silence her we say!!
