Fake Gay History:

A recent video of a young teacher…shows her awkwardly speaking into a camera: “There is a way to be sneaky about supporting, say, queer students in your classroom, and I want to show you it.”

The camera pans to a homemade-looking pink triangle on her dry-erase board. The teacher continues, “The pink triangle was used in concentration camps to identify gay women and also people who were asexual and now has been co-opted by the queer community to be a symbol of a safe space. Dropping a pink triangle somewhere in your room makes a huge difference, because kids look for that.”

No it wasn’t. The pink triangle was the equivalent of the yellow star, and it was for gay men.

The Nazis didn’t, in fact, systematically persecute lesbians. Nor did they target “asexuals,” who didn’t claim their status as a distinct sexual identity until well after World War II. Homosexual men were persecuted, and the pink triangle was used to designate them as such within the camps. Before the symbol was apparently co-opted by the generalized “queer community,” it was used by AIDS activists at the height of the crisis to symbolize the US government’s perceived silence and indifference, which they believed was tantamount to a state-imposed “death sentence” against patients.

The video’s one true statement—that some ambiguous “queer community” has co-opted the pink triangle—reinforces the general trend of writing gay people, usually men, out of their own history and expanding it to include all “queer people.” The modern use of the term queer itself represents this flattening phenomenon well. It is a “reclaimed slur,” used increasingly by people who would have never had it hurled at them as an insult, and who never claimed it back when it would have resulted in social condemnation, rather than celebration. The term’s vagueness allows it to be used by virtually anyone—including, apparently, the journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr, who recently “came out,” stating he was “attracted to a wide range of women, but not men at all.”

In other words like most men, so what’s “queer” about him? Not one thing.

The problem precedes the march of apparent heterosexuals into the “queer community.” Overstating or outright fabricating the place of minorities within the community happens often. And these “histories” are often written like mad libs: Insert the name of a group, add an adjective, a verb, and a place, until somebody’s son comes home from school asking about the asexuals at Treblinka.

In short, the Nazis were not queerphobic. Next?

Interesting ranking system the Guardian has.

Depp was asked to leave because of plausible claims of violence against his former wife, and Ezra Miller was videoed grabbing a woman by the throat, but that’s “small beer” compared to JKR having unapproved opinions.

It’s classic. We’re accused of “inciting violence” against “the trans community” by saying things, and men who perpetrate actual physical violence on women are too trivial to discuss compared to JKR saying things.

“Taking ownership” ffs. Jumped up little mimes.

The Guardian edited out “small beer” later.

Too Online Academia is a very good word for it. It always does make me cringelaugh to see actual academics engaging in this playground name-calling no YOU’RE the evil karen seven-headed beast nonsense out in the open where anyone can see them. Imagine the fun of taking a class taught by one of those people.

Woof woof don’t you dare woof woof this is MY bone.

Huh. I saw this one by accident, following a trail via Jesse Singal.

But we don’t “seek to cancel THE VERY EXISTENCE” of anyone. That would be murder. We’re not murderers and we don’t advocate murder.

Ah the community of right-minded people. Ok, I’ll shelve the plans to do whatever that was meant to be, then.

The NY Times on the scabbing of PhDs:

The job would be on a “without salary basis,” as the posting phrased it. Just to be clear, it hammered home the point: “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

The posting last month caused an immediate uproar among academics across the country, who accused the university of exploiting already undervalued adjunct professors, and suggested this would never happen in other occupations. Under pressure, U.C.L.A. apologized and withdrew the posting.

But the unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.

They have to keep the bulk of their funds for the football program.

Very often, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are asked to do unpaid work that is presented not as free labor but as a way to hone their own credentials, according to union activists and some instructors who have received such requests.

Well of course the universities don’t present it as free labor. It’s a privilege to teach at UCLA for bupkis! You get bragging rights!

UCLA advertised an academic job with no pay.

The job listing for an assistant adjunct professor was very clear: “The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an assistant adjunct professor on a without salary basis.  Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

Sure, that seems normal. Skip minimum wage: we’re talking no pay at all.

The listing went on to describe what the person hired could expect: “Responsibilities will include: teaching according to the instructional needs of the department. Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or equivalent discipline and have significant experience and strong record in teaching chemistry or biochemistry at the college level. The University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry are interested in candidates who are committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities, and to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.”

All that, for $00,000 dollars a year. (This works out to $00.00 an hour.)

Candidates were asked to submit a CV, cover letter, a statement of teaching (and an optional statement of research) and three to five letters of reference.

UCLA wants the best, in exchange for nothing at all.

They got some angry emails. They’d tell us how many but that requires expensive math skills.

And of course several people compared the unpaid position for an academic with a Ph.D. to the $4 million salary the university pays its head men’s basketball coach, Mick Cronin.

Basketball is important. Simple.

I listened to the Trans Women in Sport segment of Today, which starts at about 1 hour 40 minutes and ends at 1:48. It’s not a conversation between “Veronica Ivy” and Sharron Davies; Ivy gets a segment and then Davies gets one.

Ivy says around 1:41: “Here’s the thing about Emily in particular: because she was a member of the British Cycling academy, they have years of her power data, they know how much her power numbers went down, so they know for a fact that she does not have an unfair competitive advantage.”

Wait. What? Emily’s numbers went down, therefore it’s a fact that he does not have an unfair competitive advantage. But we don’t know how much the numbers went down, or how they compare to women’s numbers. A mere “Emily’s numbers went down” tells us nothing.

That’s especially true because we already know that such numbers go down a little, but we also already know that the gap is large, which is why women’s sports exist. We also already know, and the presenter points out to Ivy, that much of male physical advantage is baked in: males are bigger, heavier, with bigger bones, wider shoulders, straighter thighs, bigger rib cages, yadda yadda.

In short, Doctor Ivy bullshits his share of the discussion.

It seems BBC Radio 4’s Today program had Sharron Davies on along with…Rhys McKinnon aka Rachel McKinnon aka Veronica Ivy. How insulting.

This Veronica Ivy:

That was a race at Burnaby Velodrome in March, which he won, as always by cheating.

This is horrifying.

Alabama lawmakers, she says, have been put on notice “that laws and policies preventing care that healthcare professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the constitution and federal law. To be clear, every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming healthcare for transgender kids is a best practice and potentially lifesaving.”

Just like that. So every kid who says “I’m trans” or maybe even “I think I’m trans” should be put on the path to trying to change sex? There’s no potential for harm, no risk at all?

Horrifying.

A very subtle thinker here.

He’s convinced you, right?

I hope this gets Junior a prison sentence for sedition.

“Moral high ground” ffs. How do you reckon?

CNN reports:

Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned.

Translating “we have operational control”: we’re in a position to steal the election.

In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all.”

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

The November 5 text message outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake “Trump electors.”

If all that failed, according to the Trump Jr. text, GOP lawmakers in Congress could simply vote to reinstall Trump as President on January 6.

Just boys being boys, yeah?

“organized transphobic violence”

She doesn’t “have to say” that of course; she chose to.

Arguing that gender is not something to celebrate but a system of oppression which should be rejected is not “organized transphobic violence.”

But this guy knows better.

Reading that gender is a system of oppression will encourage violence!

What must it be like being an academic now? Can you imagine having to teach students who believe all this crap? To say nothing of having colleagues who do.

Oh yeah? And they’re the only ones, are they?

The Guardian reports:

The mental health of the UK’s transgender community is at crisis point, with many people “hanging by a string”, professional bodies and support groups have told the Guardian.

The stark warnings follow a week of intensified public discussion of transgender rights as the government moved to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion practices.

What are “transgender rights”? They’re so often mentioned and so rarely spelled out.

And, for the umpteenth time, “conversion” is the wrong word – the loaded word, the inaccurate word, the thumb on the scale word. It’s not a form of “conversion” to provide therapy and discussion before making permanent physical changes that could be regretted. The phrase “conversion therapy” was coined to name the practice of trying to talk people out of being lesbian or gay. Being lesbian or gay involves zero permanent physical changes – no surgeries, no binders, no hormones, no puberty blockers, nothing.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission also published guidance saying transgender people could legitimately be excluded from single-sex services if the reasons were “justifiable and proportionate”.

That is, men could legitimately be excluded from women’s spaces. For the millionth time it’s not a generic “transgender people” issue, it’s a women’s right to women-only services issue.

The focus on such issues has raised concerns among experts, who see a direct line between statements made by politicians and individual wellbeing. “There is strong evidence that minorities experience greater levels of stress when their rights are being debated,” said Dr Adam Jowett, the chair of the British Psychological Society’s Sexualities Section.

And so do women. We’re not literally a “minority” but we are a set of people treated as inferior to the other set of people. We get stressed when our rights are being debated, and dismissed and ignored, too. But, you know, yawn yawn – all those millions of boring women, telling you to hang your coat up – we can’t be bothered to care about their rights and their stress. Trans people are so much more exciting.

Helen Belcher, the chair of the education and advocacy group TransActual and a Lib Dem councillor, said: “I am furious that our equalities body is telling me that I am a second-class citizen and can only do things if everyone else is OK with it. Now every trans woman in the country is gearing up to fight to have a wee. It’s vile.”

But women who want to have a wee without men in the adjoining cubicles? Meh.

Another meeting at the corner of Inclusion and Fairness.

“And what this UK sport document says is,” says Ed Milliband at 1:00, “look, inclusion is important in sport but so too is fairness.”

But inclusion isn’t “important in sport” in any blanket sense, for the very simple and obvious reason that much of sport is competitive, which rules out being generally “inclusive.” Competition is necessarily, inherently, non-inclusive. Competition excludes.

You can of course have “friendlies”; you can play games for the fun of it, you can decide not to keep score, you can bring everyone in and just run around and have a blast. But sport qua sport has winners and losers, so a generalized “inclusion” just is not part of the picture. Fairness, on the other hand, is not in tension with winning and losing.

And in conclusion, at 1:19, “I think there are tricky issues here, but I think, I come back to this point, which is: how would you be feeling as a trans person after the debate, the kind of debates that we’ve had in the last few weeks – I think you’d be feeling awful.”

But Mr. Milliband, what do you think women are feeling? Why don’t you come back to that point? Why do you think only about how a trans person is feeling? Why don’t you think also about how a woman is feeling? Why? Seriously, why? Why have trans persons shoved women off this bit of space where politicians and rights organizations and news media think about people who are feeling awful? Why are women no longer on the radar? Why do you single out trans people and ignore women?

A dishonest headline:

The usual lie told in the usual way – by concealing “men who identify as women” under the blanket “transgender.” Men can’t compete against women at British Cycling elite events.

They’ve now changed the headline, no doubt in response to a torrent of furious replies to that tweet. It now says:

Transgender women no longer able to compete at elite female events run by British Cycling

Men no longer able to force themselves into women’s races. Finally.

From the story:

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week he did not believe transgender women should compete in female sporting events – a view he conceded might be “controversial”.

In response, LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall said: “Trans people deserve the same opportunities as everyone else to enjoy the benefits of sport, and blanket exclusions on trans people participating are fundamentally unfair.”

Same old lie. It’s not a “blanket exclusion on trans people participating,” it’s exclusion of men from women’s competitions.

The Stonewall lie is the last sentence in the piece. Of course it is.

One day in North Dakota –

Scientists believe they have been given an extraordinary view of the last day of the dinosaurs after they discovered the fossil of an animal they believe died that day.

Awkward sentence, but you get the idea. They think they’ve found a fossil dinosaur that was killed by the asteroid that smacked what’s now the Gulf of Mexico and wiped out nearly all animal life on the planet.

The perfectly preserved leg, which even includes remnants of the animal’s skin, can be accurately dated to the time the asteroid that brought about the dinosaurs’ extinction struck Earth 66m years ago, experts say, because of the presence of debris from the impact, which rained down only in its immediate aftermath.

The debris is there. I call that exciting.

“It’s absolutely bonkers,” said Phillip Manning, a professor of natural history at the University of Manchester.

…

He said the team had also discovered the remains of fish that had breathed in impact debris from the asteroid strike, which occurred 1,864 miles (3,000km) away in the Gulf of Mexico.

That and the presence of other debris that rained down for a specific period immediately after the asteroid strike allowed them to date the site much more accurately than standard carbon dating techniques.

Don’t look up.

Hadley Freeman on the breaking of the spell:

The great advantage sport has over, say, prisons and refuges is that it happens in public: people can see it and they are interested in it. That’s why when historians write about that relatively brief but extremely toxic time when gender extremism gripped western countries, and they describe the moment when that grip loosened, they will start with the photos of Lia Thomas, the Ivy League trans swimmer, towering over her teammates. These caught the mainstream interest in a way feminist arguments about trans women in prisons never have: here is an issue where even Homer Simpson can see the obvious problem.

There aren’t the same kind of visuals coming out of prisons. At all. Lia Thomas is an absolute poster boy for This Is Not Fair. (It would be funny if it turned out he’s a double agent.)

Encouraged, no doubt, by the openness of the arguments about Thomas, protests kicked off again when it was announced that 21-year-old Emily Bridges — who, until last month, was racing as a man — would compete in the women’s British National Omnium Championship. Bridges was ruled out at the last minute when someone realised she was, rather awkwardly, still registered as a male cyclist. But a change of tone was palpable in British Cycling’s announcement afterwards that “fairness is essential”, and Sara Symington, the head of Britain’s Olympic cycling programme, said the UCI needed to change its policy of allowing transgender riders to compete against women.

The cracks are widening. There’s still an awful lot of widening left to do though.

Two weeks ago, the Times’s chief sports writer, Matt Dickinson, wrote on Twitter, “Are we really talking about fairness in sport in the transgender debate – or fear and prejudice?”

“Fairness” replied hundreds of women, including some from his own paper. The only replies agreeing with Dickinson were from other male sports writers, insisting that the way the trans women athletes had been treated was “horrendous and disgusting” (John Cross, Daily Mirror ) and “awful” (Martyn Ziegler, The Times) It’s sweet how males always stick together, isn’t it?

Sweet as in poisonous, yes.

Last month, Angela Rayner came up with a solution: “I think we should be taking it off social media and taking it away from commentators,” she intoned solemnly. Ah yes, censorship from the left. That always plays so well! Oddly, only a month earlier Rayner had been loudly insisting that the next leader of the Labour party will be a woman. Presumably that kind of woman-chat is permitted by Rayner, just not what a woman actually is.

I wonder if Rayner would think that prediction had come true if a trans woman became leader of the Labour party. I wonder if she wouldn’t think at all that it’s just more of the same but with lipstick.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg says he hasn’t given up on the Trump investigation.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, publicly discussed his office’s investigation into Donald J. Trump for the first time on Thursday, insisting that the inquiry has continued despite the recent resignations of two senior prosecutors who had been leading it.

Did they just misunderstand?

Mr. Bragg said in an interview that his office had recently questioned new witnesses about Mr. Trump and reviewed additional documents, both previously unreported steps in the inquiry.

But citing grand jury secrecy rules, Mr. Bragg declined to provide details on the new steps in the investigation, which has focused on whether Mr. Trump committed a crime in inflating the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other properties.

I wonder if it’s really focused on whether he did as opposed to whether they can prove it in court. Not the same things.

In December, Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., directed the two senior prosecutors leading the inquiry, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, to present evidence to a grand jury with the goal of seeking an indictment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg, two months into his tenure, halted that presentation after disagreeing with Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne on the strength of the case.

Their subsequent resignations led to public criticism of Mr. Bragg, particularly after The New York Times published a copy of Mr. Pomerantz’s resignation letter, in which he said he believed that the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable. In the letter, Mr. Pomerantz also said that the investigation had been “suspended indefinitely.”

It’s reminiscent of the chickenshit club – what James Comey called prosecutors who were proud of never losing cases when he worked in the office of the SDNY US Attorney, because it hinted they avoided taking on cases they were likely to lose.

Adding

Lavery interview part 2 (I needed a break from transcribing).

At 35 minutes: Emma Barnett: “You have written ‘I’m quite sure that women’s rights are not, have never been, and must never be sex-based.’ [Lavery says “Yeah.”] But to those women who believe that they must have sex-based rights for a variety of reasons ranging from sport to women-only spaces for different purposes – you’ll be very familiar, our listeners will be as well – how can you say that with such surety?”

Lavery: “Well again I say it on the basis of twenty years of [? access? experts?], research, and teaching in the field, I have been doing this work for a long time.”

He’s an expert, you see. She’s not, we’re not, but he is. Credentials, my dear; you wouldn’t understand.

“The notion of sex-based rights is a very recent phenomenon,” he continues, “it hasn’t existed for more than a few years and it’s a really bad deal [or idea] for women.”

No. Rather, what’s happened in those “few years” is that men like him have tried to appropriate both womanhood and feminism, so we’ve been forced to keep pointing out that men like him are not women and do not get to take our stuff.

Lavery: “Here’s the thing, Emma, I actually had a debate with one of my GC friends -“

Barnett interjects to say GC=gender critical feminists.

” – I would say gender critical activists because I think many of them are explicitly not feminists, but I’m happy with whatever, but -“

Barnett [interrupting with some energy]: “Hang on, hang on, I’m sorry, Grace, Grace, just pause that thought – if you don’t want a world where the borders of what it is to be a woman are policed, why are you trying to police the borders of what it is to be a feminist, and what some women are meant to care about?”

Boom.

I’ll leave it there.