No don’t ask those people, ask the experts!

Lia Thomas, a 22-year-old senior on the Penn women’s swim team, holds the fastest swim times in the country among NCAA women in two freestyle events. She also happens to be a trans woman.

Happens to be? That’s ridiculous; being trans is something no one “happens” to be. It’s something you do, not something that happens to you.

Her success has put her in the center of a national debate on trans women’s right to play sports.

No, the debate is about men’s “right” to play women’s sports. There is no such right. It’s women who have the right: the right to have women’s sports.

Michael Phelps, Caitlyn Jenner, and Jordan Peterson are being asked to weigh in on an issue that they haven’t worked on in any substantial way.

…

My recommendation is that those having conversations about trans people — whether at home, in the news, on the deck of a swimming pool, or in a state legislature — consult experts with a known track record in what they are talking about. There are many fantastic voices to choose from.

Veronica Ivy has done a stellar job addressing inexpert arguments about unfair advantages in sports.

“Veronica Ivy” is Rhys McKinnon, a massive bully of a man who stole prizes from women in cycling races. He’s not the guy to consult on this subject.

The true conversation has nothing to do with testosterone or science, and everything to do with fear — specifically, people’s fear about their own gender identity and fear of people who don’t have a gender identity that’s easy to read.

Nope. Next question?

Yes please do look into that.

Britain’s leading equalities watchdog has been urged to scrutinise the appointment of a trans woman as head of a Scottish rape crisis centre after a legal ruling over the definition of “what it is to be a woman”.

It never should have happened in the first place. Of all the ways to insult and shame and intimidate women, putting a man in charge of a rape crisis center is a real standout.

You want to know why? Apart from the obvious? Men who call themselves women don’t like women. Most of them seem to hate us. It’s a massive mistake to think that because they call themselves women therefore they feel friendly toward women and are in solidarity with women. On the contrary – they resent us and want us to get out of their way. It’s like ordinary unthinking male superiority but with added envy and venom.

Feminist campaign groups want the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to examine the appointment of Mridul Wadhwa as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, a position that was advertised as open to women only.

Appeal judges at the Court of Session ruled last week that an attempt by the Scottish government to expand the definition of “woman” to include trans women breached equality law. A 2021 ruling had backed the government, but appeal court judges ruled that the definition in the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 could only cover biological women.

Imagine attempting to “expand the definition of black people to include white people.” It makes just as much sense.

Bodies play sport, not identities.

Trump made so many messes they’re still having to fix them.

The Biden administration has halted a Trump-era plan to approve a mining road in Alaska that would cut through indigenous land and alter one of the last roadless wildernesses in the US.

That’s so Trump. How he must have loved it – indigenous land and roadless wilderness to harm and damage and ruin. Not one act of destruction but two; what larks!

The road “represents a fundamental threat to our people, our subsistence way of life and our cultural resources,” said Brian Ridley, president of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which represents 42 tribes in Alaska. “We appreciate that the federal government recognized the flaws in the previous administration’s decisions to permit the road.”

One more bin to empty.

In Brighton the other day –

Brighton and Hove News reports:

A newly-selected Green party candidate has announced they have quit the party after reportedly accusing another member of “intimidating” questions over the campaign against a philosophy professor.

“They” – he’s a he.

Tom Pashby was widely quoted supporting the campaign against Professor Kathleen Stock, which led to her quitting the University of Sussex.

…

Some Green party members objected after Mx Pashby, who identifies as non-binary, was selected as a candidate for the Regency ward for next year’s elections.

He can identify as a clock tower if he wants, but that doesn’t make him a clock tower. Or a “Mx” either.

On Saturday, the local party met to be introduced to all its new candidates.

But Mx Pashby walked out after being questioned by another member, Steve Moses, as to whether he was critical of the campaign against Professor Stock.

This afternoon, he posted on Twitter: “I have resigned my membership of the Green Party of England and Wales, and from my role as a candidate for Regency ward in Brighton for the 2023 elections.

It turns out you can harass and abuse women at university but not everywhere.

Don’t report rape in Qatar.

A female World Cup official is facing a sentence of 100 lashes and seven years in jail for ‘extramarital sex’ after she reported being raped while working in Qatar. 

Paola Schietekat, 28, from Mexico, was working for the World Cup organising committee when she complained that she was raped by an associate who broke into her apartment and threatened to kill her.

She reported the June 6, 2021 attack to the Qatari authorities, which responded by accusing her of having an affair and charged her with ‘extramarital sex’, which is illegal in the Gulf state.

Lawyers told her she could marry the rapist, but for some reason she decided to get out of Qatar instead. Rapist goes on his way rejoicing, she loses a job she loved.

The news media just will not report it honestly.

Scott Morrison backs ‘cruel and divisive’ bill excluding transgender people from single-sex sport

No, that’s wrong. The issue is “excluding” men from women’s sport. That’s it. Nobody is trying to exclude trans people from sport, or from “single-sex sport” in general. Nobody.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of supporting a “cruel and divisive” push from a Liberal Senator to allow sporting groups to exclude transgender people from single-sex sport.

No. Men from women’s sport.

Mr Morrison on Tuesday threw his support behind Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler’s proposed private member’s bill titled “save women’s sports”, which aims to amend the Sex Discrimination Act.

See? Women’s sports. Not all sports, not sports in general, but women’s.

National LGBTIQ+ group Equality Australia have responded by renewing calls for the Senate to oppose the laws, claiming they would “exclude trans and gender diverse kids and adults.” 

But that’s a lie.

“It seeks to ensure that women’s single-sex sport is protected and encouraged, and that a male person is not entitled to demand inclusion into women’s sport on the basis of gender identity.” 

See? It’s simple, and it’s fair. It would be nice if news outlets would report it accurately.

H/t Rev David Brindley

TraitorTrump is the hashtag.

I listened. It’s sick-making as always. Braindead overstuffed pillow talks hoarsely about genius Putin and how it neva woulda happppened on his watch.

He was talking to a right-wing pod person called Buck Sexton, who asked him what went wrong.

Well what went wrong was a rigged election, and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there, and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.

It may look as if I punctuated that oddly but that’s how he said it – there was no pause between “what he’s doing” and “went in yesterday.” And “went in”? Went in where? He talks like a small child. Small children assume people know what they’re talking about without being told, because small children don’t have theory of mind yet. Trump is 75. “There was a television screen” – where? Whose? There was a tv screen, and he said oh this is genius. You do the math.

So Putin is now saying it’s independent, a large section of Ukraine.

Yes, he said the whole thing twice. The exact same thing, twice.

“I said, ‘How smart is that?'” the former U.S. president continued. “And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well, very very well, by the way this never would have happened with us had I been in office, not even thinkable, this would never have happened, here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,’ he used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”

Yes we all saw how firmly Trump drew the line with Putin when he had the job.

Blockhead has issued a “statement” saying Volodya would never have done it while he was prezzedennt.

Be sure to click on Shop and Contribute.

Oh look, the LA Times even knows and admits that the guy convicted of assaulting a child could be faking the trans thing but still it refers to him as a woman.

As he’s faced increased criticism from law enforcement, elected officials and his own staff, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has staunchly defended his handling of a politically fraught case: the prosecution of a transgender woman charged with sexually assaulting a child in a Denny’s restroom.

…

In an interview Monday afternoon, Gascón said he first learned of the recordings Thursday through an email from a Fox News journalist. He described himself as “very, very upset” and disgusted with Tubbs, who he said had taken advantage of his office, by among other things, potentially identifying as transgender in a bid to get more lenient treatment.

Gee, ya think???

Who wouldn’t do that? For more lenient treatment and being locked up with women instead of men? It’s a win-win for the violent man who does it. Not so much for the women he’s locked up with, but for him it’s all good. So why do we keep referring to men who do this as women?

“It’s unfortunate that she gamed the system,” Gascón said. “If I had to do it all over again, she would be prosecuted in adult court.”

He. He gamed the system. He gamed it partly by claiming to be a she.

And by the way he wasn’t claiming to be a she when he ruined that girl’s life.

The victim, who has moved out of state and is still receiving therapy, released a statement Sunday describing the assault as “beyond horrible.”

“Not only do I have to live with that awful memory for the rest of my life, but I’m also given no true justice as to what happened to me,” she said.

Tubbs assaulted the girl in the restaurant bathroom in 2014, grabbing her by the neck and locking her into a stall. At the time, Tubbs had not transitioned to female and went by a male name. She was also charged under that name. The crime went unsolved until 2019 when DNA evidence pointed to Tubbs, who had by then amassed an adult record of arrests for battery, assault, drug possession and other crimes.

Emphasis added.

Yet the DA and the Times still piously refer to this loathsome man as “she.”

One of those random headlines you see, and almost don’t notice, and then back up to look at again…

Why Gascón reversed himself on sentencing of woman who assaulted 10-year-old

Wait, woman who what? What who assaulted a 10-year-old? What was that again?

Of course. The headline lies about it, the body tells the truth.

As he’s faced increased criticism from law enforcement, elected officials and his own staff, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has staunchly defended his handling of a politically fraught case: the prosecution of a transgender woman charged with sexually assaulting a child in a Denny’s restroom.

Right. So don’t call him “woman” in the headline. Women don’t sexually assault children in Denny’s restrooms. They just don’t. Men’s crimes don’t become our crimes just because one of the men claims to be trans.

The sudden reversal came after Gascón’s staff learned that Fox News was preparing to publish jailhouse recordings in which Tubbs crowed about receiving a light sentence and spoke derisively about the victim, a 10-year-girl she attacked in a Palmdale bathroom.

He. He attacked a 10-year-old girl.

Paul Farmer:

Dr. Paul Farmer, global health champion, Harvard Medical School professor, anthropologist and co-founder of the nonprofit health organization Partners in Health, has died at age 62. PIH confirmed his death in a tweet on Monday.

According to the tweet, Farmer “unexpectedly passed away today in his sleep while in Rwanda,” where he had been teaching for the past few weeks at the university he co-founded. A source close to Farmer said he had been in Rwanda for the past several weeks teaching at the University of Global Health Equity, the medical school that he helped found with the country’s former minister of health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.

…

In addition to starting hospitals in Rwanda and Haiti, Farmer helped bring lifesaving HIV drugs to the people of Haiti in the early 2000s. But those who work with him say his legacy is even more sweeping than that.

…

In 1987, Farmer co-founded Partners in Health in Haiti with the mission to provide high-quality care to patients from impoverished backgrounds and those living far from health care facilities. Over the next three decades, PIH expanded to countries across Africa and Latin America, to Russia and to the Navajo Nation in the United States. Writer Tracy Kidder profiled Farmer in his 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, which later became required reading for many a student and practitioner in global health.

The Free Speech Union writes to the Minister for Education about a situation at Cardiff University:

We’ve written to Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education, urging him to intervene in the situation at Cardiff University where several of our members and their colleagues, all academic staff, have been targeted by trans activists in a long-running campaign of intimidation. It began in June 2021 after the academics urged Cardiff to reconsider its continuing participation in the Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme. Following this, a leaflet was distributed on campus picturing a woman holding a gun, the names and pictures of the signatories, and the caption “ACT NOW”. A student whistleblower then revealed violent threats being made on the Facebook page of the Cardiff LGBT+ Society. This evidence was all presented to the University and the police, but neither Cardiff University authorities nor the police responded robustly to protect these academics. The University failed to conduct a thorough investigation in a timely manner and misplaced evidence. It defended messages referring to academics as an ”ignorant fuckface” and a call to kneecap them as legitimate expressions of free speech, even after one of the signatories had his car window smashed.

Incitement of violence is not a legitimate expression of free speech.

I suspect the University would confirm that if anyone were threatening to kneecap trans activists.

Originally a comment by Papito on People’s Republics.

“Me,” the most charitable interpretation anyone could make of your remarks is ignorance. I will try to be charitable. I will lay out the fundamental reasons, as I see it, that opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in the national interest of all Western democracies.

Nobody here believes Washington always has the interests of everybody in the world at heart. Such a belief would not be supported by historical events. The American government has done terrible things the world over. However, nobody except the most insular of right-wing zealots believes that Biden – a man who has spent his life in service to his country – hates America. If one claims that Biden’s actions are not intended to protect America, that is an extraordinary claim which would require extraordinary proof.

The US government has never proposed protecting America by sending American troops to fight Russian troops in Ukraine; that has neither strategic nor tactical value, and is just a red herring in a long series of red herrings. The US government, however, does have an inherent interest in stopping the progress of totalitarianism in Europe and in supporting the spread of democracy. Ukraine is a democratic country, with competitive elections, and Russia is a totalitarian state with the penalty for political participation frequently being death.

Much to our surprise, history did not end with the fall of the Soviet bloc. Instead, though the periphery of the former Soviet bloc turned to a variety of systems of government, some more democratic and others more authoritarian, the centre of that bloc, Russia, turned to an authoritarianism that would make former fascists envious. Based on a concept of historic grievance, Russia turned itself towards the destruction of Western democracy – in a way a continuation of the Soviet project, but this time with more appeal to a fifth column within Western countries, which was never comfortable with the extension of the franchise to all. Divisions within Western democracies have been exploited and amplified by a remarkably competent psyops war waged by Russia.

The historic Soviet infiltration pales in comparison to the effectiveness of the new Russian fascist infiltration. America has a more divided society than at any time since the Civil War, and that has a lot to do with Russian influence. America suffered, for the first time in its history, a coup attempt, led by a president who was not wanted as president by the majority of Americans, and who would not have secured that position without Russia’s help. The Soviets never accomplished so much; their attempts to draw attention to the divisions in American society were clumsy at best.

Internationally, Russia’s goal is to bring an end to the relatively peaceful period of history, during which Western democracies have grown. After WWII, no armed conflict emerged among major Western nations, and no nuclear weapons were used in open conflict. The lack of major conflict in Europe sets this period of history apart from all previous. After the collapse of the USSR, the Pax Americana had a chance to live up to Kennedy’s dreams:

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

The formation of international institutions such as NATO and the European Union was fundamental to the maintenance of this peace, a peace which has allowed democracy to grow. To the autocrat, such as Putin, nothing can be so threatening as the prospect of democracy – democracy ends in a noose for the tyrant. Thus it is in the autocrat’s interest to undermine democracy wherever possible – in America by fomenting division and propping up a patsy; in Britain by supporting its separation from the EU, and in those wavering nations close to Russia’s borders by supporting autocracy or insurrection. The goal is as much inward as outward: in order to maintain power, Putin must prove that democracy is impossible in Russia.

For the person who believes in the classical liberal values on which Western democracies were founded, support of democracy abroad appears desirable. For the person who can read the room, and sees it rapidly filling with autocrats (to Putin, add Orban, Lukashenko, Maduro, Erdogan…), support of democracy abroad appears essential to the survival of democracy at home.

The Western interest in Ukraine isn’t about coal mines in Donetsk or trains in Luhansk. It’s about the idea that democracy should be growing now, instead of autocracy, about the idea that Ukrainians should be able to elect their own government and decide how their country belongs in the world. There is a new global struggle now, and it’s a struggle for the survival of democracy. Putin has no intention of stopping at the line of control in Donetsk and Luhansk, no intention at stopping at the borders of those two oblasts, and no intention of stopping with Ukraine. His goal is the recreation of a Russian sphere of influence – this time more fascist than communist – and, ultimately, the destruction of the West.

Which side are you on?

Suzanne Moore rebukes the New York Times:

[T]his New York Times ad is more than idiotic – it is dangerous. Imagine a world in which JK Rowling did not write the books we know she did. What happens to the author in this scenario, her intellectual property? Will her creation be removed in some Maoist obliteration? Imagine she does not exist. What does that actually mean? Let me spell it out.

Every death threat I have ever had, every woman I have spoken to about being stalked or abused, has heard these words. They have “no place”, they have “no right to exist”. It is a threat, and I felt sick when I saw that fox-killing egomaniac lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, tweet about the Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who is already anxious about her own security, saying: “There should be no place for her in progressive politics.” 

Fox-killing egomaniac piggy misogynist Jolyon Maugham.

Not everyone is happy to see the demonisation of a woman who stands up for women, which is all JK Rowling has ever done. That someone should whip up more hatred against her to sell newspapers shows a complete loss of moral fibre and a condescending attitude to readers. If you want publications edited by Twitter, then all you will get are publications without analysis, reportage and argument.

That this, again, involves tying a woman to the pyre and asking for a match – and thinking this is attractive – is a new low.

There seems to be no bottom.

The BBC did a story on the Ukraine famine last week.

Resentment of Moscow in Ukraine has deep historical roots. In the Great Famine of the 1930s, as many as four million Ukrainians died during the forced collectivisation of farms by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The BBC’s Fergal Keane has been to the eastern city of Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, and met some of the last survivors of the famine.

…Petro Mohalat, now aged 95, remembers the first food raids in the winter of 1932.

He was five years old when the communist “brigade” arrived in the village. His grandmother told the children to hide anywhere they could.

“It was very scary. The brigade had pitchforks and they came to every house searching for bread,” he recalls. “They used crowbars to come inside. Then they went to all the barns trying to find any buried bread.”

Acting on the orders of Stalin, Communist officials seized food and prevented peasants from leaving their villages to search for supplies. They were being punished for resisting the forced collectivisation of farms.

Ukraine calls the deaths of an estimated four million people in the famine of 1932-33 the Holodomor – killing by starvation.

Putin is against all this Critical Famine Theory.

Russia denies that Ukrainians were politically targeted for starvation because Joseph Stalin feared nationalist sentiment. Just over a decade before they had fought to establish an independent nation – but were defeated by the Red Army.

It says much for official attitudes that Russia’s Supreme Court recently ordered the closure of Memorial, Russia’s oldest NGO devoted to uncovering Soviet-era oppression.

Do they call it the 1934 Project?

Dr Drobovych is keen to point out that responsibility for the horrors of that period doesn’t lie with Stalin alone. The repression and the forced collectivisation could not have happened without the participation of vast numbers of Ukrainian Communist officials.

He sees in modern day Russia’s attempts to impose its will on Ukraine worrying echoes of the Soviet past.

“They protect Stalin, they hide truth, they attack us. They don’t recognise us as an independent country, why? We don’t understand why.”

The usual reason. The same reason trans activists and allies don’t recognize women as an independent sex. It’s a power play, it’s dominance, it’s Us Up and You Down, it’s aggression, it’s We Win You Lose.

As all nations know, memory is a powerful weapon. The story of the Holodomor is central to Ukraine’s idea of itself as a country that defies Russian domination.

So Putin is telling them oh no you don’t.

The Atlantic October 2017: Anne Applebaum on the famine Stalin created in Ukraine:

In the years 1932 and 1933, a catastrophic famine swept across the Soviet Union. It began in the chaos of collectivization, when millions of peasants were forced off their land and made to join state farms. It was then exacerbated, in the autumn of 1932, when the Soviet Politburo, the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, took a series of decisions that deepened the famine in the Ukrainian countryside. Despite the shortages, the state demanded not just grain, but all available food. At the height of the crisis, organized teams of policemen and local Party activists, motivated by hunger, fear, and a decade of hateful propaganda, entered peasant households and took everything edible: potatoes, beets, squash, beans, peas, and farm animals. At the same time, a cordon was drawn around the Ukrainian republic to prevent escape. The result was a catastrophe: At least 5 million people perished of hunger all across the Soviet Union. Among them were nearly 4 million Ukrainians who died not because of neglect or crop failure, but because they had been deliberately deprived of food.

This wasn’t the potato famine. The grain didn’t rot in the fields, it was seized by the state along with all the other food, and the doors were locked.

Foreign journalists didn’t report on the famine, partly because they were threatened with expulsion if they did and partly because they were limited in where they could travel (Ukraine was forbidden). An aide of Lloyd George’s named Gareth Jones got off the train south early and walked through part of Ukraine, uncovering the truth. Journalists united to say he was nuts, an opportunist, deluded, blah blah blah – he was a terf, in short. His story was largely buried.

On March 31, just a day after Jones had spoken out in Berlin, [Walter] Duranty himself responded. “Russians Hungry But Not Starving,” read the New York Times headline. Duranty’s article went out of its way to mock Jones:

There appears from a British source a big scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with “thousands already dead and millions menaced by death and starvation.” Its author is Gareth Jones, who is a former secretary to David Lloyd George and who recently spent three weeks in the Soviet Union and reached the conclusion that the country was “on the verge of a terrific smash,” as he told the writer. Mr. Jones is a man of a keen and active mind, and he has taken the trouble to learn Russian, which he speaks with considerable fluency, but the writer thought Mr. Jones’s judgment was somewhat hasty and asked him on what it was based. It appeared that he had made a 40-mile walk through villages in the neighborhood of Kharkov and had found conditions sad.

I suggested that that was a rather inadequate cross-section of a big country but nothing could shake his conviction of impending doom.

It wasn’t the popular narrative at the time, so Duranty laughed it off, knowing it was true.

Duranty continued, using an expression that later became notorious: “To put it brutally—you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” He went on to explain that he had made “exhaustive inquiries” and concluded that “conditions are bad, but there is no famine.”

But there was, and he knew there was. He wanted to stay in Moscow and keep his role as the bigshot NY Times reporter on the Soviet Union, so he waved away Jones’s reporting.

Misogyny spotted in the wild.

Speak out, the man says, so a woman speaks out, and he swats her away as if she were a mosquito. I do not like this Michael Cashman.

Internecine war continues.

Is he?

Yes.

Not wrong. Claimed rights of trans people – that aren’t actually rights, but the ideology insists that they are – to be “validated” as the other sex and to take over the other sex’s spaces and prizes and sports and jobs do indeed conflict with the rights of women. Lia Thomas is one current illustration of how that works. Cashman is either wrong or lying when he says trans rights don’t conflict with the rights of women. No skin off his ass is it, since they’re not his rights.