Gail Dines in Ms on Hugh Hefner and Playboy:

“I am a feminist,” boasted Hugh Hefner, the iconic founder of Playboy.  But the first two episodes of a new the documentary series that premiered January 24 on A&E, Secrets of Playboy, showed what feminists always knew: Hefner was a vile misogynist. 

A feminist misogynist.

Feminism was never about presenting women as sex objects or, as Hefner and his magazine called them, “Playmates.” Nor would feminism ask “Bunnies,” dressed in hypersexualized costumes, to serve drinks to men in Playboy Clubs. And now, as many saw the other night on television, we have irrefutable proof that Hefner’s empire was built on the horrific abuse of women. 

Playmates, forsooth. Imagine women referring to men as “playmates.” What does that imply about women? Apart from the fuckability? That women are an afterthought, an accessory, a toy – a child, a bit of fluff, an outsider, an irrelevance to the important business of life. They’re vital, because fucking, but they’re still empty and trivial and inferior.

“These chicks are our natural enemy,” Hefner once wrote about feminists in an internal memo. “We must destroy them before they destroy the Playboy way of life.”  He was right. And feminism must do exactly that—destroy the misogyny that Hefner lived. Behind the carefully polished veneer of Playboy, life for the women under Hefner’s rule looked like a typical scene on Pornhub: sexual slavery. This is his enduring legacy.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Prone to psychological and medical contagions.

The error we’ve made, I believe, is thinking that the emergence of more mainstream secularism was the same thing as a reduction in religious thinking. Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case. There has been no wholesale rewiring of the Mark 1 human brain. We simply have replaced the repetitive indoctrination that religions provided with that provided by asshats on social media. The programming is the same.

For a time, public education provided enough immersion in enlightenment thinking that our cognitive biases were directed at productive social issues, which is one of the reasons reactionaries targeted that system for destruction. The Inquisition has given way to the Internetition. People are still reviled and any deviation from the equally revealed truth of the new orthodoxy makes one an apostate who deserves to burned on the web.

Of course the libertarian free speech adherents will argue that there is nothing to be done about any of this because of, you know, freedom, but since our notions of freedom are predicated on an outdated model of how actual brains function, we are pretty much screwed.

Valerie Tarico tells us how the Progressive Champions have trashed a local Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood in Seattle recently fired a CEO who has been a hero of the reproductive health and rights sector for the last forty years. It’s not hard to find public examples of the Left eating our own to the detriment of real change (here, here, here, here). But when it comes to reproductive health and rights, this is one of the most stark examples of form over substance that I have witnessed. And given the expected evisceration of Roe v Wade, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Chris Charbonneau was terminated abruptly under a cloud of implied racism after she accurately described, behind closed doors, a donor’s use of the “n-word” to characterize how women in Texas are being stripped of dignity and bodily autonomy with six-week abortion bans. I’ll come back to that story. But first, I want to underscore that Planned Parenthood has just sidelined one of the most strategic thinkers, unflinching fighters, and accomplished leaders in reproductive health and rights—one who has been formally recognized by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Bill Clinton and others for her tireless work in underserved communities. If I were a conservative Catholic bishop, I would think that God had just answered my prayers.

Now go read Valerie’s piece for the detailed account of Charbonneau’s success stories.

It’s only the “progressives” who do this – who kick the legs out from under our own work via warped purity campaigns.

None of this was enough to keep Charbonneau from being fired after she uttered the words “quote-unquote n*****” out loud, loud in a private space when asked to recount “exactly” the frustrated donor’s comment to her VP of Development, Erika Croxton. According to various insiders, Croxton reported the transgression to a board member, complaining further that Charbonneau had failed to reprimand (humiliate?) the donor at the time. A subset of board members then hired an external DEI consultant, who concluded that no harm had been intended and advised sensitivity training. That took place, and Charbonneau believed the affair was settled.

There was no need for consultation. Three words should be enough: use-attribution distinction. These two things are not the same: calling someone a [nigger or cunt or faggot] and mentioning someone else’s use of derogatory epithets of that kind.

When Croxton found that Charbonneau was not to be fired, she quit along with Chief Learning Officer Anna Kashner who called Charbonneau’s failure to reprimand the donor and her use of the n-word “inexcusable and unforgivable.” Croxton said, “I cannot in good conscience continue to be part of an organization that fails to seriously respond to this degree of racism.” (Note 1: Both Croxton and Kashner are white.)

Of course they are. It’s that hideous dinner party all over again – the one where two prosperous women of color are lavishly paid to lecture women of pallor about their privilege over a luxury dinner provided by one of the pallid women. It’s a form of literal puritanism: looking for hidden forgotten “sins” so that self-chastisement can begin.

Fearing a broader staff exodus and public accusations, the board anointed an ad hoc committee of three, led by Jeff Sprung and Colleen Foster, who opened a second inquiry, this time soliciting opinions from staff broadly via a remote town-hall event. (Note 2: All of this coincided with COVID-strained relationships and fiscal challenges within Planned Parenthood, pay cuts, rising Millennial resentment of older white leaders in the nonprofit sector, and the Great Resignation.) Not surprisingly, the process elicited a variety of dissatisfactions and disagreements with leadership style or decisions. As one nonprofit leader put it, “None of us would survive that kind of a process right now.”

I wonder if the resentful Millennials think the older white leaders in the nonprofit sector should all just retire right this minute, taking their experience and knowledge with them.

Some Black critics call this sort of public outrage performative anti-racism—an attempt on the part of (often white) progressives to loudly signal “I see racism” by being first to call out smaller and smaller transgressions of verbal or behavioral taboos. 

How many gold stars can you earn?

In some progressive advocacy communities, historical hierarchies based on race and gender have been inverted, and privileged white people can compete for status only as allies. But we humans are hierarchical social animals, instinctively vying for inclusion and rank, and progressive activists are no exception. Nuns compete by trying to out-humble each other; chickens peck, squirrels bite, some progressive activists strive to be the most activist-y allies in the room. Melodramatic displays of vicarious outrage have become all too familiar, followed by firings and groveling on the part of self-protective nonprofit boards or corporate managers.

Emphasis mine, because I love that sentence.

This type of behavior is called performative by Left-leaning critics (ranging from Black linguist John McWhorter in the center to Black Sanders-Socialist Briahna Joy Gray to queer Marxist Freddie DeBoer) because it typically does little to nothing for the people who are struggling with consequences of bigotry, or cascading intergenerational effects of historic racism, or residual racism in our cultural institutions. In this case, the actions of Croxton did tangible harm to the populations Charbonneau served.

But…they’re fun? Valerie doesn’t exactly say that, but I’m pretty sure it’s the case. Displays of righteous anger are fun, and when they’re directed at a “Karen”…well, you know the rest.

Read on.

What is and what is not disgusting, Twitter Activist version.

Update: Oh wait there’s more – on the very same day. I guess January 27 was call people disgusting day in his world – “disgusting” for knowing that men aren’t women, and saying so.

When the police drop by to check up on your thinking:

Nicola Murray was left “shocked and panicky” when detectives arrived at her door after an online announcement by Brodie’s Trust [which she founded] that it would no longer refer women to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

Talking to the officers, Murray, from Stanley, near Perth, was taken aback when she said they told her: “We need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.”

Murray, 43, founded Brodie’s Trust in 2018 to support women from all over the world “who’ve suffered pregnancy loss through domestic violence or forced termination” by directing victims to local services for help.

It’s the inverse of support for abortion, in a way, but just as necessary. Many women in India are forced to abort female fetuses, as we’ve seen.

She and a colleague determined its revised policy towards ERCC following statements by Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman appointed its CEO last year, who claimed “bigoted” victims of sexual violence should expect to be “challenged on their prejudices”.

In case it’s not enough that a pretend-woman was appointed CEO of a rape crisis centre in the first place.

In September Murray posted a message on social media on behalf of Brodie’s Trust saying: “Due to deeply concerning comments made by the current CEO of ERCC we have taken the decision to no longer signpost to this service. We cannot in all conscience send vulnerable women to the service in its current state.” The message continued: “We have no interest in our clients’ religion, sexuality nor political views . . . We are a women-only service run by women for women and will not be intimidated into changing our stance on this matter.”

Naturally the police accepted the challenge.

Detectives from Edinburgh arrived at her door on November 4. Murray said: “I ushered them through to the living room. The first thing they said was, ‘Some of your tweets have been brought to our attention.’”

If her tweets were threats of violence and murder I could see it, but of course they weren’t anything like that.

“They said, ‘Yeah, we just have to speak to you. You’ve not said anything hateful, there isn’t a crime here.’

“I said: ‘So why are you here?’ They said, ‘Because we need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.’”

Why? Why do they need to do that? In the absence of violent threats, why do they need to do that?

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie said: “Hate crime and discrimination of any kind is deplorable and entirely unacceptable. Police Scotland will investigate every report of a hate crime or hate incident.”

Well, not if the people reporting are women they won’t.

At Inside Higher Ed Angie Kirk, an English professor and former college athlete, explains what fair competitive sports policy would look like:

In the past year, legislators in several states have introduced or passed bills that would ban persons who are biologically male from competing on women’s sports teams…These bills are in contradiction to President Biden’s executive order regarding athletics, which overturned Trump-era policies prohibiting genetically male individuals from competing on women’s teams, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s recent policy change allowing each sport to make its own rules.

It’s pathetic that Trump is right about this and Biden is wrong, but that’s where we are. (No, no, exclaim the Folx Brigade, it’s YOU that’s wrong. No YOU, I reply. ∞)

To put a face to the damage caused by biological males infiltrating women’s competitive sports, consider the experience of Connecticut high school runner Selina Soule, along with her female peers. Soule lost the opportunity in 2019 to compete for a spot in the New England Regional Championships in the 55-meter dash because two biological males with gender dysphoria (a biological male feeling or desiring to be female) competed in her event and came in ahead of her.

We don’t actually know the two males had or have gender dysphoria. It’s kind of an odd coincidence, two boys in the same school in the same sport…which is to say I don’t believe it, myself.

Kirk goes on to set out the issues the way people who are not bewitched by trans ideology understand them, and to argue for clarity and accuracy of language in discussing them.

For example, the title of the most recent legislation in Florida, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, puts in the forefront the reality it hopes to highlight and uses terms factually. We need to use concrete, factual language whenever possible and note when others are and are not. Factually, we are discussing individuals who are biologically male but who believe or wish themselves to be female, with or without the use of drugs. Labeling them as such, as biological males who believe or wish themselves to be sexed female, or as biological males with gender dysphoria, is vastly different than calling these individuals transgender women.

It is indeed. Men who wish they were women are still men, and there are many compelling reasons not to lose sight of that fact.

A Daily Kos staffer called Marissa Higgins throws the usual mudpies.

As Daily Kos has continued to highlight, state-level lawmakers have really come out against trans folks over the last few years.

Getting the “folks” in early, just in case the title isn’t clear enough. (
English professor fired off a vehemently anti-trans op-ed in a big news outlet.)

Republicans across the nation have pushed a variation of the same anti-trans bills to see what they can get away with—

Just the kind of obfuscation Angie Kirk points out. The bills aren’t “anti-trans.” They’re pro rights for girls and women. It’s not persecution of trans people to preserve women’s sports for women. It gets extremely boring having to repeat this endlessly, but clearly that’s where we are.

Unfortunately, whether or not these bills are actually signed into law, giving these anti-trans, discriminatory, exclusionary perspectives prime time space does make some people feel validated in their transphobia. We shouldn’t be debating whether trans kindergarteners should be playing sports with their friends—it’s a pandemic, and that’s foolish and inhumane, anyway. And yet—perhaps emboldened by Republican rhetoric, perhaps not—people are spewing their views and recycling anti-trans language day in and day out. And as is the case in a recent op-ed appearing in Inside Higher Education, they’re getting major platforms for offensive, inaccurate speech. 

So, that’s the level of fairness, accuracy, argument, civility we get from the trans activist side.

There’s a lot more but it doesn’t get any better, so that’s enough.

H/t Sackbut

The Times of India reports:

New Delhi: A woman was allegedly sexually assaulted and paraded in the Shahdara area of the national capital on Wednesday.

The woman was attacked by a group of people who chopped off her hair, tore her clothes, blackened her face and then paraded her in the streets with a garland of slippers.

The accused are said to be illicit liquor sellers in the area. It has been alleged that the woman was also gang-raped.

…

A source privy to the investigation told IANS that the victim woman has been living in Shahdara area for the past few years. The woman is married and has a child. A man who used to live in her neighbourhood was in a one-sided affair with her. She had spurned his advances many times. A few days ago, the man had allegedly committed suicide.

There’s no such thing as a “one-sided affair” with someone. There’s a crush or obsession or stalking, but there’s no affair.

Meanwhile, Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal issued a notice to the Delhi Police in connection with the matter.

H/t What a Maroon

Carol Tavris at Skeptic (the Shermer one):

American culture is prone to psychological and medical contagions. An idea catches fire, seeming to be a plausible and important explanation of a familiar problem — depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sexual dissatisfaction. The idea outruns evidence. Experts emerge to treat people suffering from the problem, exploiting the most credulous. They open clinics. They give prestigious lectures and write books. They make fortunes. They blur the diverse possible origins of a person’s difficulties, attributing them all to the latest explanation.

Throughout the 1980s, the hot explanation was childhood sexual abuse: you have an eating disorder? Your father (or grandfather, or uncle, or close family friend) probably molested you. You don’t remember that? You repressed the memory. In the 1990s, it was Multiple Personality Disorder: your other personality remembers the bad stuff; let me give you a little sodium amytal to bring it out. In the 2000s, it was PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), said to apply to all traumatic experiences from war to an unwanted touch on the shoulder. Tearful sufferers tell horrific personal stories, and who could doubt them? Who wants to be accused of being misogynist, antifeminist, or simply cold and heartless?

There were also tributaries, like the Satanic Panic and UFOs/close encounters.

I am old enough to have lived through too many of these social contagions, seeing how they rise, generating more and more believers and patients while trampling skeptics and doubters; and how, over time, as patients’ symptoms worsen, as cases of family devastation escalate, as recanters begin telling their stories, we start hearing the other side — from researchers, practitioners, and intrepid journalists.

I hope we get to that hearing the other side part soon. The other side has been talking all along, but the hearing part is still way down the road.

Today, once again, the public is hearing only one side of an emotionally compelling issue: the transgender story. Once again, distinctions are ignored, this time between people for whom identification with the other sex began in early childhood and those whose rapid onset gender dysphoria started during adolescence. Yet the difference between the two groups is itself a fascinating and puzzling phenomenon. Historically and cross-culturally, it is not uncommon for some very young children, mostly boys, to reject their natal sex early on and grow up to be gay or to live in an official, socially accepted category, a “third sex,” such as berdache among Native Americans (the term is now “two-spirit”), hijra in India, muxe in southern Mexico. But the last decade has seen an explosion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is occurring mostly among adolescent girls who are unhappy with their bodies and their sexuality and are persuaded that this discomfort is a sign they might be transgender.

If only they could be persuaded that this discomfort is a sign that they might be feminists.

More later.

Lia Thomas continues to troll the women he is bullying.

Sharing a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has become a point of contention for some of her University of Pennsylvania teammates, who feel uncomfortable changing in the private space with someone undergoing gender transition, the DailyMail.com can reveal.

‘It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,’ one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

In other words he’s forcing them to see his erections.

‘Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,’ the UPenn swimmer said. ‘But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.’

Men win, women lose, just like the good old days.

‘It’s really upsetting because Lia doesn’t seem to care how it makes anyone else feel,’ the swimmer continued. ‘The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.’

It’s a goldmine for selfish narcissistic male bullies.

She said UPenn’s handling of the locker room issue is emblematic of the school’s overall approach to the Lia Thomas controversy, with school bending over backwards to make Thomas feel welcome without seeming to care how it affects her teammates.

Which, in turn, is emblematic of trans activism in general. Everything for the trans person, nothing for the women shoved aside and ripped off.

This is the wrong question:

America’s hottest city is nearly unlivable in summer. Can cooling technologies save it?

America’s hottest city shouldn’t be a city at all, because it’s in a desert. We shouldn’t be expanding cities in deserts as global warming gets worse, we should be shrinking them. It’s stupid to squander resources on cities that are doomed by global warming.

Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, is accustomed to a hot desert climate, but day and night temperatures have been rising due to global heating and the city’s unchecked development, which has created a sprawling urban heat island.

It’s the unchecked development that’s the problem. The development needs to be checked, starting yesterday.

“Phoenix is already unlivable in summer for far too many of our residents, who literally didn’t live because it was too hot. Every death is preventable and shows that there’s much much more for us to do to make the city livable and comfortable for everyone,” said David Hondula, the recently appointed director of Phoenix’s heat response and mitigation office.

There’s much more for them to do to discourage people from moving to Phoenix and to encourage people who have to move away.

Phoenix is the country’s hottest and fifth most populous city, where businesses and people began flocking when affordable air conditioning became available in the 1950s. The population growth has led to a huge expansion in concrete infrastructure (buildings, roads and carparks) and a reduction in green areas, which has created heat islands – dangerously hot urban areas that absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes.

In other words it was all a huge mistake and the goal now should be to undo the mistake as far as possible.

Another sensitive and critical area is the city’s property development gravy train, which for years has been forging ahead faster than its ad hoc mitigation efforts.

What I’m saying. Cut that whole thing off first, because trying to mitigate it when it’s already there is wasteful and stupid.

Big Sibling is reading your mail.

A teacher and mother-of-three has been questioned under caution by Merseyside Police for sending a letter to Girlguiding UK raising safeguarding concerns.

Ok then, I guess if anyone has any safeguarding concerns about Girlguides UK, she’d better keep them to herself. Sorry girls! You’re on your own.

Her story begins in November 2021 when it emerged that Girlguiding UK had appointed a local commissioner called Monica Sulley, a role that involves overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. 

Sulley is a trans woman who posts photos of himself on Instagram…

…wearing dominatrix clothing, one of which was captioned “Now behave yourselves or Mistress will have to punish you #mistress.” She had also posted a picture in which she wielded what appeared to be a fake assault rifle. 

Maybe not ideal for Girlguides then, eh?

The Merseyside woman, who does not wish to be named, wrote two emails expressing safeguarding concerns about the appointment: one to Girlguiding UK, and one to the local Girlguiding organisation in Southwell.

Others also wrote letters.

The woman received a formal acknowledgement of her email from the national organisation, which didn’t address the particular issue she’d raised. She then heard nothing more until 7 January this year, when a police officer came to her house and told her she needed to attend the police station for an interview under caution, which “meant that I could attend voluntarily, but that if I chose not to attend I could be arrested.”

Because she wrote to Girlguides about a man who puts photos of himself as a dominatrix on social media, questioning whether he’s the right person to be overseeing young girls.

I don’t think it’s possible that the people who run Girlguides are unaware that some men prey on young girls – that so many men do this, or some men do it with such dedication, that it’s hard to find a female person who has zero experience of grown men molesting or flashing or otherwise preying on them. Surely it’s a key part of the job of running Girlguides to know this. So why why why are they 1. hiring a man for such a job 2. hiring a man who shows off his creepy kinks in public 3. ignoring public concern at this situation 4. reporting concerned onlookers to the police???

It’s just nuts. Apparently Girlguides now officially doesn’t care about the safety of the girl guides, and does care about the cheeriness of kinky men who want to “supervise” some girl guides, and translates those preferences into reporting critics to the police.

It’s batshit crazy and sinister as fuck.

On 13 January, she was interviewed under caution at Smithdown Lane Police Station in Liverpool. During the interview, which lasted an hour, she was asked about the contents of the email and why she sent it. She was told that she could be charged under the Malicious Communications Act.

Why? Why are women not allowed to air concerns with people in charge of organizations that collect young girls? It’s as if Girlguides has suddenly decided to become an organization of pimps.

She didn’t have difficulty answering the questions, she says: “I’d been a teacher and a mum for years and am old enough to feel certain and confident that there was a breach in safeguarding. I kept referring to the unsuitability of such a person for the role, and that it meant that young girls in this case were threatened, that their safety and privacy were threatened.” 

She also told the police officer that safeguarding rules exist to protect women and girls from the minority of biological males who are predatory. At the prompting of the duty solicitor, she pointed out that when Girl Guides go to camp, they share accommodation and showers, and that “to have male-bodied men in that setting, I believed, was a safeguarding concern.”

Well done duty solicitor.

At the end of the interview, she was told that her case would be sent to the CPS for consideration. Her duty solicitor, she reports, “said he had never been more baffled in his life.” When the solicitor asked the police officer whether it was necessary to proceed to the CPS, the police officer replied, she says, that the email was considered a “hate crime”. 

It’s good to know the duty solicitor was baffled. He’ll have some knowledge of the law, unlike me, so at least I’m not obviously completely wrong about how grotesque all this is.

O rilly?

Who’s this guy? He’s a former Assistant DA for New York state, who prosecuted Trump “university.” He’s probably not just making this up.

I would like to watch him lose everything, and go to prison.

Sarah Ditum reviews Laurie Penny’s new book in the Times.

“This is a story about the choice between feminism and fascism,” Laurie Penny announces in the first line of Sexual Revolution. That’s not true. Actually, it is a story about Laurie Penny, a 35-year-old manic pixie dream person (pronouns they/them) who blundered to public attention as an angry young woman blogging about feminism, went on to chronicle the Occupy movement, and has spent the following years maintaining a white-knuckle grip on whatever the latest trend for the online left happens to be.

Just as the online left itself has, which economically explains why it’s so horrible.

“Fascism” is nothing but a placeholder here for “things Laurie Penny thinks are bad” and the concept of “feminism” is similarly abused. The traditional understanding of it as a movement for women’s rights is, alas, tainted by the fact that only very embarrassing and uncool people would use the word “woman” in its ordinary sense these days. (In Penny’s moral universe, one of the worst criticisms you can make of something is that it’s “embarrassing”.)

So Sexual Revolution cycles through ungainly formulations such as “women and femmes”, “women and queer people”, and “people who can become pregnant”. Roughly translated, these mean “women and anyone who wears make-up”, “women and anyone who claims to be mildly kinky”, and “the people formerly known as women”. In what sense these groupings make a plausible political class is never explained, although it is unlikely that any explanation would improve things.

If only Laurie Penny could write as well as Sarah Ditum…but then she wouldn’t be Laurie Penny any more, because to write that well you have to think that well, and Laurie Penny…doesn’t.

The biggest question left by this book, though, is: “Why?” Penny claims not to be a woman, and claims furthermore that women have no shared qualities as a group, so why identify with feminism at all? Why not leave the politics to the people who know what they’re talking about, and just spend more time doing whatever it is you get up to in Berlin?

Really. Why is a woman who says she’s not a woman writing about the choice between feminism and fascism? What’s it got to do with her? Why should anyone pay attention to her?

Suzanne Moore on Laurie Penny’s attempt to claim oppression by Julie Bindel:

I do find it bizarre how an actual lesbian, à la Bindel, can be criticised by a person (I won’t use the offensive word woman) in a heterosexual marriage to a bloke for putting down “LGBTQ authors”. (I don’t know if said bloke is self-identified as a bloke, and care even less.) Penny plays as ever to their American audience; Bindel doesn’t play this game at all. She doesn’t have the time; she has actual feminism to do. 

…

I do realise it is very “bio-essentialist” of me to refer to myself being the mother of an actual young person, because the Penny persona depends on being young, tiny, and odd when they is in fact 35 years old and a married, successful adult. 

And here’s the thing: 35 is quite a lot too old to be still thinking of oneself as tiny and odd. Really. You should be getting over that the minute you’re out of high school, and all the way over it by…30? 29? 31? In there somewhere.

These people are increasingly desperate to find some way in which they are not privileged. But now you don’t even have to be gay and suffer the prejudice that goes with it, you can just declare oneself open to possibility. For Penny, it is this whole bollocky queer deal which is an utter confusion between sexual orientation and some contrived notion of innate gender ID. I think it just means they is bi. 

Or, as Moore hinted, it just means she is Special.

Penny is not cis and nor am I. The very idea of one being what other people think you are is an anathema to me. I am my own special creation, yet at the same my body does all sorts of peculiar things I wish it wouldn’t. Blood leaks of out it, milk too, other people have been grown inside it. I have been raped because of it. I am paid less because of it. I am prone to certain illnesses because of it, and I understand had I been born in a different place all sexual pleasure would have been denied to me because of it. 

None of this makes me transphobic, it simply makes me an embodied person. And when Penny speaks of their distress as an anorexic kid, I feel deeply for them. They write fantastically well about it. But feeling unhappy in your body always involves the fantasy of “the other”. That other who feels happy and comfortable in their body. Guess what? I have never met that woman.

This idea of a fit between the inside and the outside is a fantasy for trans people as it is for straight and gay people. It is how it is to be human in a culture of human mirrors.

On the inside everyone is odd.

In short, no one feels the things that others imagine they do. Penny is so invested in defending those they see as outsiders when there is a huge blind spot: women, boring, working-class people. Women who are utterly alienated in ways Penny projects onto her necessary “other”: trans people and sex workers. Who is more “genderqueer” I wonder, Katie Price or Caitlin Jenner?

You know it has become ridiculous when lesbians like Bindel have to kowtow to a white, bourgeois, married woman in the name of what, radicalism? Give over. You cannot misgender someone if you don’t believe in the concept of gender, however suck-ass the business of publishing now is. 

And you can’t be “cis” if you never agreed to the gender rules in the first place.

The Times on the police abuse of Jennifer Swayne:

Jennifer Swayne, 53, was detained for more than 12 hours after placing posters around Newport that made claims about trans women in prisons and said “humans never change sex” and that men in dresses should stay out of women’s spaces.

She accused Gwent police of operating “like the Stasi” after they raided her home and took a book of essays on “the theory and practice of transgendering children”. Edited by Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, an academic previously no-platformed by university students, the book contends that politics rather than science accounts for the rise in the number of transgender children. Swayne said that police did not say why they took the book, which contained her handwritten notes.

I haven’t seen reports of those posters before; at least these make a little more sense of claims that the posters were about trans issues. Do they make more sense of claims of transphobia? Of course not.

Fair Cop, which campaigns against the criminalisation of free speech, accused Gwent police of “unlawful interference”. Harry Miller, the group’s co-founder who won a landmark legal victory against another force when he was accused of alleged transphobic tweets, said that Gwent police were “out of control”.

Miller claimed that the posters that Swayne put up around the Welsh town were a “political statement” that did not come near the criminal threshold.

I wonder if the Gwent police have ever arrested a male person for misogynist graffiti.

Sarah Phillimore, also of Fair Cop, said that the removal of the book was “concerning” and she awaited a knock on the door by police because she also owned it.

Seriously what possible business can police have seizing an academic book from someone’s bookshelf?

Superintendent Vicki Townsend of Gwent police said: “We’ve received several reports in relation to posters containing offensive material appearing in Newport between October and January. Officers on patrol in Newport saw a woman spraying stickers to two lamp posts.” The force refused to detail the nature of the stickers while the investigation was continuing.

I daresay the Gwent police have received several reports of rape, too, but cops don’t seem to dash into action in quite the same way for rape reports. I get that finding stickers on lampposts is a lot easier than finding solid evidence that Mr X raped Ms Y, but that’s not actually a reason to come down like a ton of bricks on women who put stickers on lampposts.

Swayne said they were posters she had made at home. Phrases included “no child is born in the wrong body, humans never change sex”; “respect women’s spaces”; and “Woman = Adult Human Female”. Her other posters said that women were in danger in prisons from transgender sex offenders and called for “no men in women’s prisons”. One asked: “Are you happy for your 13-year-old daughter to shower next to an adult man, yes or no?”

Imagine being a cop strolling around Newport and seeing a bunch of anti-racism posters on lampposts. Would it seem like a good idea to pounce on the first person you saw putting up anti-racism posters? No? What if the force had received “several complaints” from racists? Then would it become a matter of urgency? Just wondering.

Swayne said that police did not tell her why they had taken the transgender book — a collection of essays entitled Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body.

Brunskell-Evans, who edited the book, said that the police appeared to be operating within a “very narrow, partisan view of what it is legitimate to have on your bookshelf”.

“That is dangerous for liberal democracy. A book that has been published, is in the public domain and has been for years, and does not break the law in any way whatsoever, should be of no concern to the police.”

We’re allowed to read books. We’re allowed to have books on our shelves. We don’t have to ask the police for permission first.

Gwent police said it had received six complaints about offensive posters. The force said that it was required to respond when members of the public reported they were offended by posters.

Wait. What does “respond” mean? Respond to what? Respond by arresting the first person they see putting up posters? But the complaints are necessarily about other posters, ones that were already there, not new ones that are being put up after the police got the complaints. How can they know the complaints would apply to new posters that didn’t exist when the complaints were made?

Gwent police said that it had put out a public safety message a few days before the arrest because it had been reported that stickers had “sharp objects” attached behind them.

Finally a news source manages to say “it had been reported that” instead of just reporting it themselves. Apparently this basic journalistic caution is unknown to the BBC.

The BBC also did a sloppy lazy story yesterday on how the Newport police abused a woman for putting stickers on lampposts. Some of the wording is identical to that of the trainee reporter for the South Wales Argus; I don’t know if one copied the other (or which came first) or they both drew from another source. Anyway it’s bad and insidious crap.

A 53-year-old woman has been arrested after stickers were placed around a city “directed towards the transgender community”.

A sloppy lazy unsupported claim right in the lede. Who says that’s how the stickers were “directed”? Why say that in the lede when in fact the stickers don’t mention “the transgender community”? Why tilt the story so heavily right at the beginning when there is zero evidence for what you’re claiming?

Also stop calling people you’re nannying a “community” while you don’t call people you’re throwing under the bus a “community.” What about the women’s community, eh? Why don’t we get the kid gloves “community” treatment? You could add the disabled “community” too while you’re at it.

The public has been advised not to remove posters in Newport after sharp objects had been found behind them.

That’s a claim, not a fact. The BBC should not be reporting it as a fact. The police should not be reporting it as a fact. The source of the claim seems to be one frothing trans “activist” in Cardiff who brags about his exploits on Twitter.

“This public safety message was intended to make the public aware of the dangers of potentially removing a poster, after glass and pins had been stuck behind the posters,” said Supt Vicki Townsend.

“We would reiterate that if anyone finds such a poster that they leave it to the relevant authority to remove it safely rather than risk injury.”

Is Townsend telling us that the police found glass and pins? Or does she mean this guy in Cardiff told them that he found glass and pins. I think it’s the latter.

Gwent Police said it was aware of a yellow sticker on social media which states “3+ women are killed by men each week” and “domestic violence kills”.

It said the 53-year-old woman from Newport was not arrested in relation to this sticker and its contents.

The force said it could not confirm the content of the stickers, as this falls into an active investigation, but said “the content of the stickers is directed towards the transgender community”.

I don’t believe them.

A guy in India has set out to persuade men to stop treating women’s bodies as swear-words.

The speaker, Sunil Jaglan, begins with a question, “Raise your hand if you have used cuss words that name mother’s, sister’s or women’s intimate body parts?”

People smile sheepishly, looking around for moral support before awkwardly raising their hands, “Everyone here has used gaali, sir, this is normal,” says one man.

…

“But, is it right?” asks Jaglan.

To this, the women shout: “Of course not! Why target us or our body in your slurs? Why don’t people understand when they use misogynist profanities they actually target their own mothers and sisters? Is this what we are teaching our kids?”

Yes, it is, and it’s what most people are teaching their kids.

Jaglan has since gone from village to village to spread the word, rapidly gaining support from women fed up with a culture of sexist slurs.

…

“It is difficult for males who don’t like to listen to womenfolk. India is a patriarchal society and such things are expected, but we are also determined to fight back,” says 19-year-old volunteer Anjali from Sarmathla village, who is at studying Haryana University.

But everywhere is a patriarchal society. India does seem particularly bad in some ways, but misogyny is global.

The UK is another country where it’s quite normal to insult people by calling them slang words for the female genitalia. Even feminists call people cunts and twats.

It’s not pro-life, it’s anti-women. The pregnancy is everything, the woman whose pregnancy it is is nothing.

The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.

The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

Don’t go to hospitals named The Blessed Virgin Mary if you can possibly help it. Try to make sure in advance that you can help it – find a secular hospital.

The first foetus died in the womb on 23 December, but doctors refused to remove it, quoting the current abortion legislation, and Agnieszka’s family claim “her state quickly deteriorated”. The hospital waited until the heartbeat of the second twin also stopped a week later, and then waited a further two days before terminating the pregnancy on 31 December.

That’s just murder. She had a decaying corpse inside her. Refusing to remove it is murder.

Her death follows that of a woman known as Izabela last September, who died after being denied medical intervention when her waters broke in the 22nd week of her pregnancy. Her family claim the 30-year-old was denied an abortion or caesarean section and that the hospital cited the country’s abortion laws. An investigation found “medical malpractice” led to Izabela’s death and the hospital was fined.

It’s Savita Halappanavar all over again.

Just as you can’t “cut ties” with the Supreme Court.

It’s very Trumpy to say you’re cutting ties with a supervisory board you can’t cut ties with.

Libby Brooks at the Guardian has more:

The UK’s equalities watchdog has written to the Scottish government asking it to pause plans to simplify the legal requirements for gender recognition.

LGBT+ equality campaigners hit back at the unexpected intervention by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, describing its approach as “deeply troubling” and “failing to stand up for equality for trans people”.

That is they reacted; they didn’t hit anyone. I do wish UK journalists would drop this “hit out/hit back” rhetoric, it sounds so childish.

The EHRC, which monitors equality and human rights across England, Scotland and Wales, told Shona Robison, the minister responsible for the reforms, that “more detailed consideration” was required.

…

The letter, sent from ECHR chair, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, to Robison on Wednesday afternoon, raised concern “at the polarised debate” around transgender law reform.

Kishwer Falkner wrote that “some lawyers, academics, data users and others have increasingly expressed concerns about the potential implications of changing the current criteria for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate”.

“The potential consequences include those relating to the collection and use of data, participation and drug testing in competitive sport, measures to address barriers facing women, and practices within the criminal justice system, inter alia”.

You know, little things, like measures to address barriers facing women.

More indignation.

These organizations don’t seem to have paused to ask themselves what human rights are, ever at any time. The result is that they end up sounding like small children who think they have a “right” to all the ice cream they want right now this second.

Rights aren’t simple. They’re not a matter of just “I want this therefore I have a right to it.” They have to be judged on the basis of their impact on other people. They’re a balancing act. The T+ people seem to think it’s just a matter of demands.