Brendan O’Neill is not a huge fan of Grace Lavery’s book.

I have never liked the term male privilege, but it’s hard to know what other term to use to describe a man writing a book about his ‘bellend’ – he uses that word – while fully expecting that everyone will acknowledge his ‘womanhood’ – he uses that word, too. His womanhood is his most ‘cherished’ thing, he says, which I found shocking because I had assumed it was his knob. If male privilege means anything, surely it is the fact that a dude can publish a book whose front cover features a photo of him with a five o’clock shadow and an iffy wig and still demand that everyone refer to him as ‘Miss Lavery’.

It’s male privilege in a dress.

Lavery is an associate professor of English at Berkeley in California. (Jesus Christ.) This book is about his gender transition. It is one of the most misogynistic books I have ever read. The way it talks about women and their bodies is repellent. Lavery tells his doctor he wants ‘titty skittles’ – that is, progesterone supplements to ‘enlarge one’s breasts’. Hot tip for Mr Lavery: women don’t refer to their breasts as titties.

That’s the whole point though. The whole point is to do it better than we do, to set us straight on how to do it, to let us know how boring and lame we are compared to daring witty say it all him. Women are horrible, it’s only trans women who are any good. New misogyny just like the old but with more taunting.

It is testament to both transgenderism’s and porn culture’s degradation of women as people with ‘front holes’ – as people with titties, people who bleed – that men can now openly fantasise about having a ‘pussy’ and be praised as progressive for doing so. The dehumanisation of women as ‘pussy’ is the prerequisite to their exploitation in pornography and the means through which their biology can be caricatured and appropriated by men who claim to be women. Porn and trans activism, as Mr Lavery perhaps unwittingly demonstrates, are not unrelated.

Very wittingly, I think. Lavery’s whole thing is being more “paradoxical” and “ironic” and “startling” than the next guy.

Of course he has a pop at Mumsnet. The woke set’s loathing of Mumsnet is such a red flag. They just cannot believe that mothers and other ordinary women are allowed to associate freely and have critical conversations. Shouldn’t they be in the kitchen or chestfeeding their kids? Lavery goes on to say that there is ‘something stranger’ underneath ‘the whole phenomenon of British gender-criticals’ – he calls it ‘the problem [of] leaky boobs and the school run, the revenge of feminist grievance against feminist pleasure’. The ‘sourness’ of these harridans who dare to say men aren’t women represents a ‘loathing of the trans woman as a figure of pleasure embodied’, he says.

Nah not a figure of pleasure embodied, a figure of leaving all the cooking and dishwashing and laundry and childcare to that other person in the house, the one who doesn’t matter.

I was tempted to refer to Lavery as the Rachel Dolezal of transgenderism. But actually, he’s far worse than Dolezal. To be like Lavery, Dolezal would need to go on endlessly about the glistening skin of blacks, and how she longs to achieve their full-lipped look, and how she longs to see and grasp those famous full-bodied black cocks. If Dolezal did any of that, we would recognise it instantly as vile racism. So why are so few people willing to call out the sexism of trans activists who believe that blokes can become women simply by announcing that they are women, simply by imagining that they have a pussy, simply by taking some titty skittles so that they can look like those sluts in porn films? Ms Dolezal is white, and Mr Lavery is a man. We just have to start saying this now, out loud.

Been saying it out loud, for years now.

Kathleen Stock on the importance of being “queer”:

And what else is a a female-led theatre company fronted by a white woman and founded in a middle-class Cambridge Sixth Form to do these days, except announce itself as “queer”? Unlike being black or disabled, saying you are queer or do queer work is a completely unverifiable proposition. It’s entirely compatible with being straight and conventional in practice – but at the same time, it apparently gives you endless cultural clout. So it would be kind of stupid not to, no? I’m not saying that anyone deliberately sets out to mislead people here. I’m saying that you probably come round to thinking of yourself that way, little by little, and the world starts to reward you for it.

Emphasis added. See also: Laurie Penny and a thousand more like her.

This is very performative, very self-refuting, very watch this backfire, very corroborative of the thing it claims to deny. This is Trump telling a crowd he’s not stupid, and demonstrating how stupid he is by doing so.

I think it’s diagnostic, that inability to talk in complete sentences, the helpless self-interrupting whenever a new thought intrudes. Isn’t it? That’s not normal cognitive functioning, surely. He’s trying to tell the adoring crowd how not stupid he is, but he can’t not interrupt himself to say who “Doc Ronny” is and then to interrupt that to say he’s now a Representative and then to interrupt that to say how many votes he got – fifdee doo – and so on and on. He’s too stupid to realize how he’s coming across, too stupid not to reveal his own stupidity second by second.

Business Insider

During Saturday’s rally in Ohio, Trump detailed once again that he aced a cognitive test in 2018. “I don’t like being called stupid,” Trump said. 

…

The test Trump referenced is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. It is not an IQ test but rather a tool to spot early signs of dementia and other memory issues. 

Person woman man camera tv.

Dang, humanism has really gone to the dogs lately; I hadn’t realized.

That’s humanism? I’m shocked. It looks like ignorance, aggression, sexism, and a desperately impoverished vocabulary.

Besides, she has a hobby.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The bottom rung of the ladder.

Felker-Martin’s work is highly disturbing for reasons that go much further than the characters and plot, which centres on two transgender women hunting down and killing ‘TERFs’ in a battle for survival.

N.B. Much, if not most, of the following, is speculative, as I have not read Manhunt and have no intention of doing so. I have no qualms about trashing or maligning it sight unseen. I have no qualms about taking feminist critiques of it at face value. I have not been given any reason whatsoever to doubt their presentation of the facts of the matter in this conflict. The trans activist side has sacrificed the presumption of innocence and good faith so many times over that I’m done with giving it the benefit of the doubt. Ever. Am I “piling on?” Maybe. If that makes me a “hateful bigot” I can live with that. I am not demanding that the authour and his supporters be hounded and harassed, and that the publisher withdraw his book from circulation. If someone wants to buy it and read it, go ahead. I’m not going to feign neutrality. I’m not going to be “nice.” In the words of Magdalen Berns, “I’d rather be rude than a fucking liar.”

In an earlier thread about this novel, someone here on B&W had commented on the misandry at play in the portrayal of men. Perhaps, but from what I’ve heard about the book, as far as males turning into murderous beasts, they can’t help it. It’s a consequence of the malady used to create the dystopian arena in which the surviving “human” characters play out the story. What is this other than “boys will be boys” turned up to 11? By turning them into mindless killers, the author has effectively removed men as men from the calculus of moral responsibility. As thoughtless drones, they might even be objects of pity, best put out of their misery. They are made as blameless as a virus. To be stamped out and killed, to be sure, but it’s nothing personal. The real enemies, it would seem, are TERFs. TERFs are the true opponents of the story’s trans heroes. Can you really hold a man who has become a mindless zombie to the same level of guilt and responsibility as a cold-blooded, calculating cis-woman bent on harming trans identified males for the hell of it?

Is this not just an extrapolation of the current state of trans activist belief? TERFs bear the entire moral responsibility for the murder of trans identified males (let’s face it, they’re the only trans people that TAs really gve a shit about), despite the fact that it’s males who do the actual killing. Men might be the ones engaging in violence, but they can’t help it. It’s the feminists who are planning trans genocide who are to blame. How exactly critiques of Judith Butler and the vigourous defence of women’s words and single sex spaces becomes the motivation for males killing trans identified males is never explained, but SHUT UP TRANSPHOBE! The appropriation of the murders of Brazilian prostitutes and the ignoring of the complicating factors of race, sex”work” and drug use is also SHUT UP TRANSPHOBed away. In the trans activist imagination, cis “privilege” gives TERFs a degree of power and influence that feminists can only dream of. That believing that this is how our world actually works requires a greater suspension of disbelief than the apocalyptic revenge-fantasy scenario conjured up by this novel really says something about the level of delusion and dishonesty within which trans activism operates. That trans activist delusions of feminists plotting trans genocide is a pure projection of their own subconcious (and not so subconcious) desires is truly frightening.

It’s only natural that the TA fantasy of TERF power in the real world would get carried over into the fantasy world of this novel. Other aspects of our world do, however, have a more hauntingly familiar echo in the novel. In our world, the entire onus of acceptance of TiMs is on women. It is up to women to give up their spaces for the protection of men who claim to be women, against the violence of males. TiMs claim to be “widening the bandwidth” of what it means to be a woman, rather than demanding changes in what it means to be a man. This would be more honest, but much harder to do. Better to find an easier target, one that doesn’t demand changes in patriarchal rules and expectations.

Though it is male violence that TiMs are seeking to escape by violating women’s single sex spaces, the violence of men is somehow women’s fault. Women are, as ever, expected to accept and accommodate the demands of men. Rather than fighting patriarchy, trans activism uses it. It’s just more male entitlement. Somehow patriarchy is not the enemy, feminism is. Patriarchy is just the way things are, the way things will always be. Boys will be boys. But if some boys want to be women, then it’s women’s respnsibility alone to accommodate them. In the novel, men have become murderous beasts. There is no arguing or changing them; boys will be boys. They are absolved and bear no responsibility. Trans safety now depends on taking that which women will not share. But our trans heroes are the bearers and inheritors of male entitlment and violence. The violence must be excused and justified. It must be seen as righteous. So, the trans heroes must prove themselves against the real villains of the piece, not the poor, mindless males who can’t help themselves and can’t be argued with, but the evil TERFs keeping them out of the clubhouse of womanhood. Seeking a trans-safe place of their own is out of the question. Defeating the TERFs is the true path to salvation and validation. Taking away women’s power and space is just punishment and the only true victory, the only way for the trans heroes to show that they are the better “women” and are the rightful owners of the name, the only true women.

Ah manly men. Afraid of nothing, they are. Women on the other hand – they’re afraid of everything, like for instance being killed or raped or beaten up or all three.

JKR is “too chicken” to mention the stupid violent bloodthirsty woman-hating fantasy porn this revolting goon wrote. He on the other hand is so non-“chicken” that he included his fantasy about her dying violently in his filthy book. Takes a lot of courage, that does.

This was fun to watch happen:

Wait for it.

I wonder how many of the members of that earlier book group are gnawing their fingers with rage and envy.

The NY Times tries to figure out what’s so wrong with some math textbooks that Florida officialdom didn’t want:

After the Florida Department of Education rejected dozens of math textbooks last week, the big question was, Why?

The department said some of the books “contained prohibited topics” from social-emotional learning or critical race theory — but it has released only four specific textbook pages showing content to which it objects.

That’s a bizarre pairing – social-emotional learning or critical race theory. Really? Both of those? Were they in combination? If so, how? Color me skeptical.

The Times looked at some publishers’ samples to try to get a sense of the reasons, while saying that it’s necessarily guesswork because Florida is being secretive.

In most of the books, there was little that touched on race, never mind an academic framework like critical race theory.

Imagine my surprise. I guess the state officials just threw the race thing in there to…well, to invoke racism in aid of a different objection altogether. That’s nice.

But many of the textbooks included social-emotional learning content, a practice with roots in psychological research that tries to help students develop mind-sets that can support academic success.

Well we can’t have that. If they don’t already have the mind-set when they get to school then they can just drown, so there.

The bugbear appears to be something called “social-emotional learning.” Ed schools can be squishy, I’ve gathered from various sources, but that doesn’t mean school children should be treated like information-intake devices.

But right-wing activists like Chris Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, have sought to tie social-emotional learning to the broader debate over the teaching of race, gender and sexuality in classrooms.

That’s a broader debate all right, or to put it another way, it’s a completely different debate.

In a March interview conducted over email, Mr. Rufo stated that while social-emotional learning sounds “positive and uncontroversial” in theory, “in practice, SEL serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism.”

Really? In practice, that sounds as if he’s bullshitting.

“The intention of SEL,” he continued, “is to soften children at an emotional level, reinterpret their normative behavior as an expression of ‘repression,’ ‘whiteness,’ or ‘internalized racism,’ and then rewire their behavior according to the dictates of left-wing ideology.”

That’s even less convincing. What “normative behavior”?

Mr. Rufo also raised concerns that social-emotional learning requires teachers “to serve as psychologists, which they are not equipped to do.”

Wait. We’re talking about schoolchildren here, not adults, not even young adults. You can expect college students to know how to be students, but with children it’s just not that simple. Schoolteachers can’t be just information-output devices any more than their students can be intake devices. Teachers need to have some sense of how to get kids interested, how to keep them from getting discouraged, how to prevent them from tormenting each other, and so on. My wild guess is that they do need to know something about child psychology.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has spoken more generally about social-emotional learning as a distraction, in his view, from math itself. “Math is about getting the right answer,” he said at a Monday news conference, adding, “It’s not about how you feel about the problem.”

Yes, but, if learning math is making a kid or several or many kids feel like shit then maybe it would be a good idea to fix that.

Julie Bindel on that “novel”:

Most of you, I suspect, will be unfamiliar with the work of self-professed ‘horror author’ and trans woman Gretchen Felker-Martin.

Latterly a little-known film and culture writer, Felker-Martin’s name reached wider circulation this week following the recent release of a debut novel — although not, it must be said, for the quality of the writing.

…

Felker-Martin’s work is highly disturbing for reasons that go much further than the characters and plot, which centres on two transgender women hunting down and killing ‘TERFs’ in a battle for survival.

Hunting down and killing radical feminist women, as one does.

Felker-Martin has apparently seen fit to exact a deeply unpleasant fictional revenge, depicting the successful writer’s gruesome death after being crushed by a burnt-down castle.

…

So here we are, arrived in a place where a mainstream publisher — Manhunt is published by Tor Nightfire, an offshoot of publishing giant Macmillan — sees fit to release a novel featuring aggressive and violent fantasies about a living, breathing woman.

And onlookers giggle and applaud and hug themselves in glee.

JK Rowling is someone who cares about people on the bottom rung of the ladder, whatever their creed or sexuality, and she uses her wealth, privilege and power to their benefit.

Her reward? To be hounded, villainised and now fictionally crushed to death to the delight of her blinkered hate-filled detractors.

The very worst thing is that the people who peddle this hatred and misogyny know the truth. They are quite aware JK Rowling isn’t bigoted, and that she is not the demon that they claim she is.

But she doesn’t bend the knee to their exciting new religion, and that merits a death sentence.

Another snapshot of the ship slowly slowly changing course.

The chairwoman of the equalities watchdog has warned there is a “slow-burn toxicity” around trans rights as she urged campaign groups to co-operate with her.

…

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, chairwoman of the EHRC, said she had been surprised “by the saliency of the issue of sex and gender, and the balance of rights issues”.

…

She said it was “deeply unfortunate” that Stonewall and other LGBT groups had asked the UN to review the EHRC’s accreditation, noting that the attempt had been dismissed.

Her remarks come after publication of the EHRC’s guidance that organisations such as refuges and gyms can legally exclude transgender people from single-sex services in certain scenarios, such as to prevent trauma.

In other words the ruling idea here is that trans idenniny is more important than women’s trauma.

Maybe just maybe people should slow down and think a little harder about this. Maybe it’s not the best idea in the world to halt or swap puberties the instant a child expresses dismay or confusion.

Vulnerable children are wrongly being given gender hormone treatment by the NHS, Sajid Javid believes, as he prepares to launch an urgent inquiry.

The health secretary thinks the system is “failing children” and is planning an overhaul of how health service staff deal with under-18s who question their gender identity.

Step one: understand that “gender identity” is a novel concept, that its meanings are disputed, that it’s subjective and malleable at best, and that it’s not nearly clear or sharp-edged enough to justify something as drastic as halting or exchanging puberty via hormone “treatments.”

Clinics in London, Leeds and Bristol run by the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust are England’s only specialist services for children and young people who identify as transgender. Critics have accused the trust of rushing children into life-altering treatment and being too willing to give puberty blockers to young teenagers.

What exactly is a “specialist service” for such children anyway? What is its knowledge base? How do its providers test their findings? How do they know which children really need their “service” and which don’t?

However, the Court of Appeal last year upheld the right of the trust to give puberty blockers to under-16s if they are deemed capable of consenting.

That’s an extremely bizarre way of looking at it. Maybe it’s just clumsy wording, but maybe it’s not. Why would it be the “right” of the trust to give blockers that needs to be upheld when the issue is the well-being of the children taking them? The issue surely is not the “rights” of the trust but the needs of the trust’s patients.

Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has been leading a review into NHS gender identity services for children. In interim findings last month, she said children were being affected by a lack of expert agreement about the nature of gender identity problems, a “lottery” of care and long waiting lists.

Yeah no shit. This “lack of expert agreement” is what I’m talking about. How do they know any of this? When so much of it has simply been invented over the past few years? Mostly by rage-fueled “activists”?

Javid is said to be particularly alarmed by her finding that some non-specialist staff felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” to transitioning and that other mental health issues were “overshadowed” when gender was raised.

Gender is the elephant in the room. Once it enters, everything else tends to get squashed.

“That overly affirmative approach where people just accept what a child says, almost automatically, and then start talking about things like puberty blockers — that’s not in the interest of the child at all,” the ally said.

Or anyone else. It’s a lose-lose.

It’s odd, you know, when we hear so much about how tragic and agonizing it is to be trans, yet people are in such a mad rush to “affirm” and “validate” trans idennninies. Sometimes, to be fair, affirming and validating is just the ticket. There’s never been any good reason for homophobia, so Pride and affirmation made sense and made a difference. Trying to change sex is like an inversion of that, and it’s not working.

The inquiry will form part of Cass’s final report but Javid is understood to want to begin making the NHS change its approach immediately. This week he told MPs: “The NHS services in this area are . . . bordering on ideological.”

They would be, wouldn’t they, because the whole thing is ideological.

A spokesman for Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: “Being respectful of someone’s identity does not preclude exploration. We agree that support should be holistic, based on the best available evidence, and that no assumptions should be made about the right outcome for any given young person.”

But what does “being respectful of someone’s idenniny” mean? Why is the spokeser talking about it in connection with medical issues? What does anyone’s idennniny have to do with trying to turn puberty inside out? If a child identifies as short do you cut off her legs?

Majorie Taylor Greene says she doesn’t remember and besides lots of people used her Facebook account to say things so it could have been anyone.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia insisted under oath that she does not remember expressing support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s execution in 2019.

She’s busy. She can’t remember every little thing.

Lawyers from Free Speech for the People, the group challenging Greene’s candidacy, presented the congresswoman with a print-out of a CNN article that documented Greene’s prior support for political violence against some Democrats.

“She’s a traitor to our country, she’s guilty of treason,” Greene said of Pelosi in a 2019 Facebook video, according to CNN. “She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That’s what treason is. And by our law representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government. And it’s, uh, it’s a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.”

But asked about those comments at the hearing on Friday, Greene insisted she had no recollection of making those remarks.

“According to this CNN article I did,” she quipped when asked repeatedly by both the lawyers and the judge presiding over the hearing. “I don’t recall saying all of this, but I do recall having said this about the — I totally disagree with the border issue.”

…

“I’ve had many people manage my social media account over the years, I have no idea who liked that,” she insisted. “I do not know.”

So she’s had many people impersonate her on Facebook by “managing” her account? And she’s let them do it? That seems pretty stupid.

Are there any makeup artists who can do before and after brains? She could do with a massive brain makeover.

This is so depressing I can barely believe it.

Why why why on earth would anyone prefer the zombie blow-job doll to the gorgeous real woman on the left? Apparently lots of people or this “makeup artist” wouldn’t be doing it, but…I can’t understand why. Zombie blow-up doll looks like exactly that – a porn image, a photo from a failing fashion magazine, a completed mannequin for a store window. You wouldn’t want to talk to her, let alone live with her for the rest of your life.

I was so repulsed I went looking, and found a collection of 21 of these nightmares. The ones on the right all look alike, like zombie blow-job doll. The ones on the left all look human. One has a rash or acne or something that I can see why she’d want concealed, but other than that the TransforMations are all a horrible mindless mistake. What is wrong with people?

PCC Lisa Townsend says Nope.

Surrey’s police and crime commissioner has snubbed a complaints panel decision and refused to explain herself to Reigate’s MP after her transgender tweet caused offence. Lisa Townsend was found to have breached her office’s code of conduct by tweeting about “men who keep telling us they are women”.

She has now rebuffed councillors by refusing to carry out their proposed remedy. She said she would “not be writing to explain myself to” complainants, including Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, as was requested by the panel that oversees complaints against her following a two-and-a-half hour long discussion in February.

Women saying men are not women; whatever next?!

Back in December the PCC retweeted and commented on a post from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling implying biologically male rapists are not female, enraging the trans community.

That “implying” is artful. “Are you implying that biologically male rapists are not female??!!?!”

If “the trans community” is enraged to hear that biologically male rapists are not female, it needs to get over itself. Not that we don’t already know that.

Mr Blunt – who chaired an LGBT group in parliament – and two other men reported her to Surrey County Council’s police and crime panel, and its complaints sub-committee found the language she used was a breach. Four against three members decided that her words “We will not accept this gaslighting from men who keep telling us they are women” failed to treat others with dignity and respect.

Hey. They don’t treat us with dignity and respect. Pay attention.

The Reigate MP came under fire this month for questioning the jury conviction of his fellow MP Imran Ahmad Khan who sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy in 2008. Mr Blunt said the Wakefield MP was the victim of a “dreadful miscarriage of justice”, which met with such a backlash he had to apologise and resign from his role on the cross-party LGBT group.

But he’s still bullying Lisa Townsend. Chutzpah.

The ACLU has a page for Women in Prison.

I wonder if they really mean women in prison, in the sense of women in prison. The first link we see suggests they don’t.

How Women’s Rights Paved the Way for Gender Justice at the ACLU

Many recent legal battles for the rights of trans and non-binary people are rooted in the same cases that pioneered women’s rights decades ago.

So much for women in prison, and women in general.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972, she recognized that laws that stereotype by gender hurt everyone — no matter your gender.

Then why did she call it the Women’s Rights Project? Why doesn’t the ACLU have a page for All Lives Matter? Why is it only women who get shoved into the All category by the ACLU?

That’s why some of WRP’s early cases involved men who had been discriminated against — and it’s why many of our recent legal battles for the rights of trans and non-binary people are rooted in the same cases that pioneered women’s rights decades ago.

Oh piss off. Women still need to work for our own rights just as other subordinated groups do. We still get to talk about our rights without being told to talk about those other people’s rights too and instead and at the same time.

Today, WRP is headed by Director Ria Tabacco Mar. Below, she explains more about why women’s rights are inextricably linked to the broader fight for gender justice.

How has the ACLU’s women’s rights work evolved into a broader fight for gender justice?

So they admit it. I don’t think I’ve seen them spell it out that explicitly before. They no longer fight for women’s rights, they fight more “broadly” for gender justice. All genders matter.

So many of the cases that we are litigating in the LGBTQ space were built on early victories in women’s rights. Those were cases that were initially fought by cisgender women who were considered to be the wrong kind of women, either because they were mothers of young children or because they were, “too macho” and didn’t wear jewelry. Being fired because you’re a transgender woman is just another variation of the same problem.

No it isn’t; not unless you oversimplify the “problem” drastically. Transgender “women” can’t be mothers of young children, for example, because they’re men. A lot of the restrictions and injustices imposed on women were indeed related to their reproductive role, as the subordination of women always has been. Being fired because you’re a man who calls himself a woman is not a variation of that problem.

Gender justice is really about ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to structure their lives and thrive, regardless of gender, unlimited by gender stereotypes.

Which is why it’s no use to women, in exactly the way All Lives Matter is not a useful slogan for anti-racism activists. It’s not only “gender stereotypes” that interfere with women’s ability to structure our lives. It’s not a “gender stereotype” that women need abortion rights in a way that men don’t, however desirable men may find abortion rights. It’s anatomical. The woman makes the baby inside her body; the man does not.

The ACLU has completely lost the plot.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is in court.

The far right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was cheered into court in Georgia on Friday, for a hearing in an attempt by a coalition of voters and liberal groups to bar her from Congress under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for aiding the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Some people in the courtroom cheered and applauded as Greene took her seat.

As the hearing began, Greene tweeted: “Only the People have the right to choose who they send to Congress.”

Well, no, it’s not that simple. Suppose a candidate is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison, and then elected to Congress – does the candidate get to leave prison and report for duty as a legislator? I don’t think so.

The 14th amendment, passed after the civil war, says: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

That’s one of the very unsettling things about this whole clusterfuck – we’ve been here before, the insurrection was very real, the violence was brutal, the death toll was huge. We think of ourselves as a nice stable democracy, an example to others, but the reality is rather different.

Organisers of events in Washington on January 6 have tied Greene to their efforts. Greene has denied such links and said she does not encourage violence.

In October, however, she told a radio show: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”

Who is the tyrant? Show us on the doll where the tyrant is.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? in Miscellany Room 8.

Canada’s Global News reports on Manhunt author’s fantasized depiction of Rowling’s death in novel.

The reporter, Kathryn Mannie, begins with a brief description of the book:

The book is set in an apocalyptic scenario in which people with a sufficient amount of testosterone get turned into monstrous beasts. All that remains of humanity are cisgender women, non-binary people, transgender men and transgender women.

(I wonder if, in this future, fully intact “transgender women” also turn into beasts? Or do they all have testosterone dutifully reduced to the level that would allow them to join the Penn women’s swim team? And what about transmen? Is Chase Strangio’s T level still low enough to prevent her from becoming a monstrous beast, moustache notwthstanding? Not that I’m interested enough to read it and find out. I’d pay for a root canal before buying (or reading) Manhunt .)

Even with this bare bones outline, we’re in trouble already. The ideas of “cisgender women”, “non-binary people” and “transgender” men and women are plopped in without definition. We’re already supposed to know who and what these entities are. Anyone outside of the trans/GC Twitterverse would have little idea what the hell any of that really meant. Any one without the requisite familiarity with these terms of art will be counting on Mannie as their guide. That, it turns out, will be a mistake.

Then a bit of well poisoning:

In the book, the Rowling character travels with her TERF friends to a castle, where they all perish after it collapses in an inferno.

TERFs are feminists who exclude transgender women in their fight for women’s rights — Rowling is considered by some as a TERF due to transphobic tweets she has shared on social media.

The definition of TERF given here shows that the writer has taken a side, and hidden this fact from the view of most of her readers. The very definition she uses smears women and sneaks TiMs in as women in a few deceptively simple words. Anyone who didn’t know the meaning of TERF before has been given an inaccurate description cloaked in presumed journalistic “neutrality. “Pro-woman is painted as “anti-trans.” How much differently that would have come across if it were rewritten thus:

TERFs are feminists who exclude trans identified males from single-sex organizations, facilities, and institutions intended for women only.

The phrase “transphobic tweets” links to a story about the “backlash” against her “Wimpund” tweet, which is portrayed as a tone-deaf equation of “womanhood” with menstuation that “erases” trans men, as opposed to it being a satirical comment on the erasure of women in messaging intended to convey lifesaving medical information, in the interests of “inclusion”.

Here’s what I consider the least dishonest part:

Several news outlets have reported on a number of negative reviews the book has received on Amazon.

“I have no idea how this even got published. The existence of this book proves once again that misogyny is alright as long as you identify as a member of a certain group,” one reviewer complained. “If you want to read a messed-up individual’s unhinged violent sexual fantasies against women then this is the book for you!”

A handful of other reviews also deride the novel for being misogynistic and promoting violence against women. One reviewer wrote that the book “describes horrible violence towards an actual living person which could be interpret (sic) by extreme activists as an instruction manual.”

But it’s okay, all those bad reviews are by evilTERFs who have axes to grind:

In response to the online backlash, the author is claiming that supporters of Rowling are flooding the Amazon and Good Reads pages for her book with negative comments….Some reviews on Amazon are acknowledging the controversy the book has whipped up, with one person writing, “This book is being bombed with one star reviews because it’s written by a trans woman. The terms ‘misogyny’ and ‘women hating’ are being thrown around because cis women can (sic) handle the fact that a trans women (sic) has written one of the best dystopian books we’ve seen of the last century.”

It ends with quotes from the glowing NPR review, concluding the piece on an upbeat note for our Brave and Stunning trans author.

One of the problems I see with this story is that it focuses too much on the whole “Let’s kill off JKR” theme. Not that fantasizing the death of an actual living, breathing woman isn’t bad. It’s terrible, cruel, and uncalled for. The biggest problem for me is that it takes for granted that Rowling, as well as her supporters and followers, actually want to murder trans people. It’s taken as read that this supposed desire is an accurate and truthful portrayal of what feminists believe, that this could be a possible future if they had their way. It’s another installment of the transperbolic lie that “THEY WANT US ALL DEAD!” The journalist’s definition of TERF reinforces the “anti-trans, not pro-woman” portrayal of feminists, making this dystopian exaggeration into a legitimate artistic act of pre-emptive “self-defence”, instead of a sick, misogynistic projection.

It’s curious that a movement that views “misgendering” and “deadnaming” as unspeakably violent, is so unabashedly and self-righteously violent in its own rhetoric on social media. And now, long form fiction. The writer of this Global piece would be hard pressed to find anything at all from the feminist side that comes anywhere close to the years of demonization, harassment, and threats that trans activists and their allies have heaped upon women who dare to say “no” to male entitlement dressed in a frock. This extreme asymmetry suggests that the question of exactly who, if given the opportunity, would be killing whom a somewhat different answer than Felker-Martin is positing in his screed. If feminists had been threatening rape and murder against TAs, it would have been front page news; the writer of this article would pointed it out. It would be being retweeted over and over. But rape and death threats to women? Same old same old. This book is just more of the same. It sounds like little more than a bog standard trans activist’s “Shut up, TERF; choke to death on my dick!” tweet, padded out to the length of a novel. Dead women can’t say “No.”

Hmmm let’s see.

Correct yourself briefly and move on.

No. I was right, so I’m not going to correct myself.

Interrupt people with quick corrections.

Not in a million years. They weren’t wrong, so I’m not going to correct them any more than I’m going to correct myself, and anyway I wouldn’t correct them if they were “wrong.” Officiously interrupting people to correct them on something that doesn’t matter in the first place is not a fun hobby.

Don’t complain about how hard it is!

Don’t tell me what to complain about! Who do you think you are? Anyway I don’t care how hard it is, because I have no intention of doing it in the first place.

Say “thank you” when someone corrects you.

How about “fuck off”? Will that do? It will have to do, because I’m certainly not going to say thanks.

Try practicing new pronouns with a friend!

You think my friends are that tedious and dim-witted? You must be thinking of your friends.

Last: don’t apologize profusely.

Oh that’s an easy one. See if you can figure out why.

BBC headline:

Queen gets her own Barbie for Platinum Jubilee

Really? Only now? You’d think she could have had one right away when they first came out. They were only $3.

Jon Pike on the use of passive and speculative wording to arrive at one’s desired conclusion:

It’s always female sport that needs conceptual engineering. Funny how that works.

They’ve given up on the claim that T reduction is all that’s needed, he says, and that’s good, that’s an advance, but…

Oh for fuck’s SAKE was my initial response, and then my ongoing response. Unique individuality in a pig’s eye. Lia Thomas’s advantage is not part of his “unique individuality,” it’s all too generic. Get a fucking clue.

Seriously. Anything “could be” regarded as anything; the Amalgamated Union of Weasels issues a complaint of plagiarism.

His PhD students need to suck it up. The point is crucial.

Then he goes in for the kill.

Bam.