Always reframing.

The current gender wars are not a fight against the binary roles that constrict our society, instead this particular manifestation of the culture wars is a battle against trans women in particular. Most of the debate concerns what services trans women should or should not be allowed to access, from public toilets to public services.

And why would that be? Because trans women are men, and women need protections from men in certain circumstances.

Perhaps all of this was to be expected, and perhaps it is just part of a larger backlash against the mainstreaming of LGBTQ+ rights over the decades.

No, it isn’t, because “LGBTQ+ rights” aren’t a big pudding, they’re a bag of rocks, and the rocks are not all compatible with each other. The T “rights” aren’t always rights, and the ones that aren’t rights are often in conflict with actual LG rights. The T “rights” are mostly about being ratified as the other sex, and that is in fact not a genuine right, any more than it’s a genuine right for me to identify as two feet tall and get in brawls with toddlers.

This debate may remain contentious for some time, but any lesbian, gay or bisexual person, in particular, supporting the current war on trans people, should remember that while T is near the end of our acronym, the other letters are just further back in the queue.

Uh…okay.

Any talk of the movement going too far, or the community getting too broad is just a shameless display of exclusion, pointing at someone else you think is weirder than you and saying they are the real problem.

No, that’s wrong. It’s just handwaving. There are real issues, and declaring them automatically invalid because the T is near the G is just empty sloganeering.

So naturally I had to look it up.

Oh yeah?

The Trouble With White Women:

(Let me guess. They’re all Karens. Do I win?)

Subtitle: A Counterhistory of Feminism with Kyla Schuller; author journalist Anne Helen Petersen.

I spent the first two decades of my conscious life figuring out how to confidently declare my feminism. I’ve spent the next (nearly) two decades of my life trying to figure out how to leave white feminism behind. That doesn’t mean that I’m trying not to be white and trying not to be a feminist: it means that I’m trying to leave behind the priorities of “white feminism” as a posture, an ideology, a way of thinking of what we should be fighting for and who should be leading the fight.

But why do you call it white feminism? Why do you put scare quotes on it if you take it seriously? Why do you take it seriously?

Some feminist women are, of course, more privileged than other feminist women. There are all kinds of ways people can be more privileged, and they overlap each other, so calling it “white feminism” is at the very least simplistic and unhelpful. Class, money, education, looks, height, weight, age, occupation, intelligence, talent, strength, skills – all those and more confer or withhold privilege. It doesn’t all boil down to “white,” and by the way why is it white feminism specifically? What about white Men’s Rights Activism? What about white Trumpism? Why is it feminism that’s singled out for the disdainful “white” label?

Which is why I find Kyla Schuller’s new book, The Trouble with White Women, so valuable. She’s highlighting the fundamental brokenness of white feminism, in part by showing just how long feminists of color have been doing this work…

What work? The work of blaming Karens for everything?

Just in case you were wondering (I was) – Kyla Schuller:

So what is the trouble with the karens?

I landed on the title The Trouble with White Women (after some hesitation, tbh) because I like its double register. There’s the trouble white women pose, but also the trouble white women face. The trouble they pose is in creating a feminism that understands gender to be the primary, sometimes even the singular, power hierarchy they contest. The idea that feminism is about gender equality may initially seem a no-brainer… until you start to wonder about what happens to other systemic injustices. Where do structural racism, wild wealth disparity, and climate collapse fit within this framing?

Good question! Also where does pastry fit within the framing of coal mining? Where does weather fit within the framework of Eine Kleine Nacthmusik? Where does plankton fit within the framework of Instagram?

Yes, feminism is about women. What the fuck else would it be about? Women are allowed to be a whole entire subject all on their own just like everyone else. Is Schuller asking these stupid questions of BLM or Stonewall? Of course not, but women aren’t allowed to have their own movement for equality, women have to share everything, even womanhood.

Meanwhile, well-off white women are lured by the rights and opportunities their brothers, fathers, and perhaps boyfriends or husbands possess. The men of their social world set their standard, and they confuse attaining those privileges as true equality. 

But that’s about money, not specifically whiteness. The two are of course linked because of the long history of racism aka white supremacy, but linked is not identical.

This seems to be all there is to her, frankly. She mashes together “white” with all the other kinds of privilege and then adds “women” so that she can join the chorus of people yelling at “Karens.” It’s crude and stupid and intensely anti-feminist.

And then we get to the “blame TERFs” part.

In your chapter on transfeminism, you write that “double essentialisms characterize the TERF position: biological essentialism and experience essentialism. The former assumes that women have a common embodiment and the latter that women’s experiences of those bodies are likewise shared. Both positions are two sides of the same white feminist coin.” Can you unpack that more? And, if you’re up for it, what can the history of TERFism tell us about why it’s gained such a foothold in the UK in particular right now?

To put it bluntly, TERFs, or trans-exclusionary radical feminists, are a type of white feminist. It’s not immediately obvious, because the TERF position that “sex is real” and that trans people violate the basic laws of nature, seems at first to have nothing to do with race or racism.

That’s not the TERF position, but anyway.

It seems to be straightforward biological essentialism —that is, the idea that biology is destiny. And TERFs are biological essentialists! But that position is saturated by the history of racism and race science. Going back to my academic work, their belief that sex is real refuses the extent to which the absolute male/female binary itself was invented by race science over the decades. But bodies and lives belie the binary. This, by the way, will likely be the topic of my next general audience book — Sex is Not Real: The Racist History of the Male/Female Binary.

So there was no male/female binary (“absolute” or otherwise) before 19th century race science? Then how were people? Who made them? How did they do it?

TERF thinking contains another essentialism, too. Experience essentialism, which is probably a term I’m making up, identifies the fantasy that there is a universal Woman. This fantasy says Woman has the same girlhood, a similar sexuality, a common experience of menstruation, and illness, and partnerships, and family. Trans women, TERFs say, can’t be women because they weren’t raised with this universal experience of Woman. But Woman is a white fantasy!

No that’s not what we say, and no women are not a white fantasy.

It’s embarrassing to read this kind of thing.

The BBC:

An ex-police officer has won a legal challenge against a national policy for forces to record gender-critical views as non-crime “hate incidents”.

Almost as if it’s a bad idea to have the police recording that women who don’t believe men can become women have perpetrated a “non-crime hate incident.”

Humberside Police visited Harry Miller in January 2020 after a complaint over alleged transphobic tweets he made.

It was recorded on a national database as a non-crime hate incident.

But the Court of Appeal ruled on Monday the guidance was wrongly used and it had a “chilling effect” on Mr Miller’s freedom of speech.

And ours. Very much and ours. Mind you I suppose you could say it also had a heating effect, since the outrage only made many of us even louder.

Dame Victoria Sharp, one of England’s most senior judges, said: “The net for ‘non-crime hate speech’ is an exceptionally wide one which is designed to capture speech which is perceived to be motivated by hostility… regardless of whether there is evidence that the speech is motivated by such hostility.

“The volume of non-crime hate speech is enormous and the police do not have the resources or the capacity to investigate all the complaints that are made.

“There is nothing in the guidance about excluding irrational complaints, including those where there is no evidence of hostility and little, if anything, to address the chilling effect which this may have on the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.”

How about some specifics.

In one tweet Mr Miller wrote: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.”

This tweet was among several others which were reported to Humberside Police as being allegedly transphobic and Mr Miller was visited by officers at his workplace.

See also: Marion Millar, Ceri Black.

And there’s more.

It has??? If so that’s huge news. This “recording non-crime hate incidents” is utter bullshit, and a tool for bullies.

Legal eagles are all busy reading the full judgement.

Yeeha – this just in – Harry Miller won.

A conference takes shape.

Let’s read it.

The first UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy will take place over two days on 24th and 25th March. Whilst nominally based at the University of Glasgow, the workshop will take place online.

Trans philosophy – philosophy that speaks to the experiences of, politics, and cultural production of transgender people – is one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary philosophy. In addition to hallmark papers such as Kapusta (2016), Bettcher (2013, 2019), and Dembroff & Wodak (2018), last year saw the publication of the ground-breaking volume of trans political theory and philosophy Transgender Marxism (Gleeson and O’Rourke 2020). Beyond the realm of published work, a new generation of PhD and early career trans philosophers is beginning to produce exciting new thought.

Trans philosophy identifies as philosophy but is actually wankery.

This rapid growth has come against a difficult political background, especially in the UK. Transgender people have become the political football du jour in the UK, facing what Meg John Barker (2017) has called a “moral panic” that has only intensified in the past three years.

Hilarious that they think they have to name someone as the source for the familiar phrase “moral panic.” It’s like giving a citation for “pain in the ass” or “pile of sick.”

Anyway I’m sure it will be very trans scholarly and trans fascinating.

More from the Let’s everybody shun JK Rowling file:

The real-life sport of quidditch will be known as something to be determined once it changes its name and distances itself from author J.K. Rowling, who created the game in her best-selling Harry Potter book series.

Because she has cooties.

US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch announced on Thursday that they have started the process of changing their names because of financial limitations and because they want to “distance” themselves from Rowling “who has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years.”

And by “distance themselves” they mean “show off how sensitive and correct we are.” There’s no objective need to “distance themselves” and no objective payoff for doing so, it’s just a bit of showing off – virtue signaling, as they say. Nobody on the planet gives a fuck what they call their stupid game, but somehow they got the Washington Post to report on it.

Two teams have seven players each on the field, with brooms between their legs at all times. Players score points by throwing a volleyball through three hoops fixed at either end of the field as dodgeballs are used to take players out of the game temporarily. In the books, the players fly on broomsticks; in the real iteration, they run.

On account of how they can’t fly. Pardon me while I collapse in hysterical laughter.

It turns out porn isn’t good for girls.

Speaking on the Howard Stern Show on Sirius XM radio on Monday, [Billie]Eilish, who turned 20 on Saturday, said viewing porn at a young age had caused her emotional damage.

“I think porn is a disgrace. I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was, like, 11,” the top-selling US singer said, adding that it helped her feel as if she were cool and “one of the guys”.

“I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she said, adding that she suffered nightmares because some of the content she watched was so violent and abusive. Eilish said that it had an impact on her first sexual relationships. “The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to,” she said.

Why do men and boys need sex to be violent and abusive?

This week, a joint committee of MPs and peers recommended sweeping changes to the online safety bill, which imposes a duty of care on tech companies to protect children from harmful content.

Again, as with shorter or longer waiting periods for trans people, this isn’t the real issue. The issue isn’t that children shouldn’t be drinking in sexual violence as sexy fun times, it’s that no one should be. It’s that no one should even want that.

President of the Human Rights Campaign. A woman. Throwing away women’s rights and opportunities for the sake of a hulking man with long hair who is smashing women’s rights and opportunities.

That hulking young man doesn’t need a “safe space” to thrive. It’s the women he’s shoved aside who need that.

Replies are scathing.

Yes but this all misses the point.

Scottish ministers are facing a massive public backlash over their planned gender recognition reforms, according to a poll.

A Panelbase survey suggests the vast majority of voters in Scotland (71 per cent) oppose their plan to let people officially change gender quickly without providing medical evidence of gender dysphoria. Ministers plan to allow trans people to apply for a gender recognition certificate after declaring that they have lived in their acquired gender for three months, and then wait just three months for the certificate to be granted.

The plan follows complaints that current procedures, which can mean transgender people wait for two years for formal recognition, are bureaucratic, invasive and humiliating. This month the Scottish government announced £2 million of funding for gender identity services to help cut waiting times for trans healthcare.

One, what would “medical evidence of gender dysphoria” be? That’s a real question, not a sarcastic one. Dysphoria is a mental state; how does one provide medical evidence of a mental state?

But two, length of time really shouldn’t be the issue or the solution. People should be able to “change gender” at a moment’s notice, just as they can change their political allegiances, their religion, their taste in literature, their favorite color, their haircut. People can’t change their sex, and changing gender needs to be understood as similar to changing an allegiance, not as actually magically becoming the opposite sex.

The poll finds a high level of concern over the implications of gender recognition reforms for spaces currently confined to those who are biologically female, a concern shared by some of the SNP’s own parliamentarians.

Just over two thirds (67 per cent) believed trans-women should not gain full access to female-only spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards and women’s refuges if they still have a penis, while a third who expressed an opinion thought they should.

At the same time, 86 per cent believe that women and girls have the right to expect to be able to receive care, including intimate care, from biologically female staff in hospitals, care homes and rape crisis centres while 14 per cent disagree.

The first is penis or no penis, the second is woman or not. I think the woman or not bit matters a lot more than the penis or no bit.

The SNP MP Joanna Cherry, a vocal critic of aspects of the proposed gender recognition changes, said: “These poll findings are stark and demonstrate very significant public opposition to the government’s current proposals for self-identification of sex.”

She said that Scotland had very good rights-based protections for women and girls and for trans people but warned: “We are at risk of undermining this if we do not seek to address the significant problems with the planned legislation.”

At risk of driving a tank through it.

Marion Calder, co-founder of For Women Scotland, a feminist group, said that ministers were “rushing into legislation with no regard as to the impact on women’s rights, and have completely forgotten as to why we sometimes need to separate spaces by sex”.

She added: “Allowing the teaching in schools of the ideology that it is possible to change sex will have far-reaching and damaging consequences for Scottish children, which the Scottish government will have to address in the not-too-distant future. Unless halted it will be their shameful legacy.”

It occurs to me that if everyone stopped sleeping at the wheel and said “just forget the whole idea of changing sex, it’s not possible, just accept that all you can do is perform various customs that you consider typical of your preferred gender, and leave it at that,” then people would have to do that, and the idea of bullying women into agreeing that men can be women would die a swift natural death. That would be nice.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “We recognise concerns raised by some women’s groups. Our proposals to reform the current gender recognition act do not introduce any new rights for trans people or change single-sex exceptions in the equality act.”

He said the government is committed to making changes “to improve and simplify the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition”.

He added: “We will do this while ensuring we uphold the rights and protections that women and girls currently have under the equality act.”

That sounds sweet, but it isn’t fucking possible. The whole idea of “legal recognition” is stupid and bad. Nobody needs legal recognition to swap jeans for skirts, and doing more than that is doing too much. The point of “legal recognition” is to make the whole world play along with the fantasy that sex can be changed. We don’t want to play along with the fantasy.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Imagining way too many possibilities.

If someone claims to be sexually attracted to members of their own sex and behaves accordingly — demonstrates romantic attachments and physical intimacy with members of their own sex— that’s pretty damn straightforward (so to speak.) We don’t have to question whether sex exists, wonder what a man or woman is, rewrite evolutionary biology, or exercise huge amounts of trust in their subjective reliability in “knowing their own sexual orientation.” Catch a couple of teens canoodling under the bleachers and there’s the objective diagnosis. Sexual attraction isn’t complicated.

Someone claiming to be the opposite sex in their mind would be equally straightforward, if all we were looking at were their personal feelings and beliefs. Instead, we have to overhaul pretty much everything, from epistemology to ontology to biology to psychology to feminism. “Affirming trans identities” isn’t just problematic because of the medical commitments being made on behalf of young children and teens. It’s a twisted and contorted commitment made on behalf of pretty much everything.

I can understand why teachers and others consider transgender claims and see a superficial resemblance to being gay or lesbian. But only years of looking at religious, paranormal, and pseudoscientific beliefs helps me catch a glimmer of understanding concerning how they seem to be able to stop looking so easily. It’s fascinating, in a macabre, depressing sort of way, I guess. And it’s wrong enough and testable enough that it may eventually be looked back on in surprise.

Sarah Phillimore on grooming in the schools:

On 16 December 2021 I saw a very distressing video of a mother, Jessica Konen, speaking at a school board meeting in Salinas, California, objecting to the school going behind her back to counsel her suicidal 12-year-old daughter about her claimed “transgender status”. The anger, pain and misery in her voice was evident.

Local press reported that two teachers at the Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas were recorded coaching other teachers how to conceal the nature of LGTBQ clubs from parents.

The teachers led a workshop about how to run a “Gay-Straight Alliance” club in “conservative communities” at a California Teachers Association conference held in October, called “Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities”. The teachers described the obstacles they faced as “activist teachers” to conceal the activities of GSA clubs from parents. These teachers were later suspended pending an independent third-party investigation.

There’s helping kids who are lesbian or gay, and then there’s coaching kids to think they’re “trans gender.”

I suppose there’s potential for overlap in both, because schools might want to make sure kids know it’s fine to be lesbian or gay and they don’t need to feel shy or awkward or scared about coming out – so that could veer into persuading kids they’re lesbian or gay. The same could apply to kids who think they have an interesting gender identity, but that’s complicated by the fact that it’s not at all clear that it’s fine to be trans. There are several reasons for that, but maybe the most relevant one for young teenagers is the drastic reduction in the dating pool.

No one could reasonably object to a school making efforts to ensure that its pupils — regardless of their sexuality or claimed gender identity — are able to learn in an atmosphere free from abuse or intimidation. This incident in Salinas reveals serious concerns that such clubs may go much further than merely supporting children, but cross a line into “affirming” young children with transgender identities and deliberately concealing this information from their parents.

And affirming transgender identities is more drastic than affirming being lesbian or gay. It’s more drastic, more magic-based, more eccentric, more linked with narcissism. The existence of lesbians and gays enriches the human story, in my view, while the claim to be the other sex very much does not.

Given that this path of affirmation appears to lead inexorably to medical and possibly surgical “transition”, and given what we know of the sparse evidence base for the efficacy of such treatments, most parents would be extremely concerned to think these matters were being discussed in secret by medically unqualified teachers with their 12-year-old children.

That, but also – what does it even mean? Does anyone know? Do these teachers know? Lots of people have a lot to say about it as if they do know, but what they say is less than convincing. The trans ideology comes across as more like an obsession with UFOs or Satanic Panic than like a dot on the map of human sexual variety. It’s creepy if schools are coaxing children to join a cultish new Gender Circus based on the kind of nonsense talked by trans activists.

Activists need to be aware of the distinction between a sexuality and a “gender identity”. The first does not require either medication or surgery to maintain it and a child is unlikely to “grow out” of feelings of sexual attraction. By contrast, the majority of children with “gender identity” issues left to undergo a normal puberty desist from any further desire to “change sex”.

In other words people are mistaking the shock of puberty for gender dysphoria, and acting accordingly – and schools are joining in the fun. It’s a recipe for absolute disaster.

Another way to get rid of female people:

TikTok is flooding teen users with videos of rapid-weight-loss competitions and ways to purge food that health professionals say contribute to a wave of eating-disorder cases spreading across the country.

A Wall Street Journal investigation involving the creation of a dozen automated accounts on TikTok, registered as 13-year-olds, found that the popular video-sharing app’s algorithm served them tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within a few weeks of joining the platform.

Some included tips about taking in fewer than 300 calories a day, several recommended consuming only water some days, another suggested taking laxatives after overeating.

Others suggested walking in front of speeding trains, jumping off tall buildings, swimming with sharks.

TikTok said it would fix things.

Eating disorders for young people are surging across the U.S. in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Health professionals say the disorders often come with other issues such as depression, anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and have worsened as kids have spent more time on their screens in isolation.

Other social-media platforms popular with teens have been criticized for not doing enough to address content promoting eating disorders. The Journal reported in September that researchers at Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., found that the photo-sharing app made some teen girls who struggled with their body image feel worse about those issues.

And then there’s the fad for deciding you’re the other sex.

Eating disorders are complex, can be difficult to treat and are potentially deadly, health professionals and researchers say. People who already have body-image issues are more likely to be inspired by videos like those on TikTok that glamorize thinness. The pandemic’s loneliness likely worsened the situation.

Does that sound familiar? It does to me. Being trans is glamorized too, especially on social media.

Speaking of amateurs who refuse to trust professionals –

Guests invited to a holiday party at the home of the leading anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr were urged to be vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 because, Kennedy said, he is “not always the boss at my own house”.

The what?

Why would he be “the boss” at “his own” house? He’s married, so it’s not exclusively his house, is it, and he’s not “the boss,” is he. What a stupid, piggy, ugly way to talk, even assuming he was sort of joking. That kind of joke rests on a lot of piggy assumptions. All that and he’s an anti-vaxxer.

Speaking to Politico, which reported the request before the party in California last week, Kennedy said his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, was behind it.

…

Amid widespread criticism, Doug Heye, a Republican operative, wrote: “The ol’ blame-the-wife-for-wanting-people-to-be-safe-when-you’re-an-anti-vaxxer move. Classy.”

Even a Republican operative can see it.

Kennedy has campaigned on environmental issues but is also a leading vaccines conspiracy theorist and activist against shots including those approved to combat Covid-19, which has killed more than 805,000 in the US and more than 5.3 million worldwide.

Earlier this year, Kennedy was removed from Instagram, for sharing misinformation about Covid-19. His Facebook page remains active, as does his Twitter account.

Last month, Kennedy released a book in which he attacks targets including Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. Its title, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, has been no obstacle to bestseller status on Amazon.

Subtitle: Masons, Jews, Fluoridation of Water, UFOs, Manly Men.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Kennedy’s anti-vaccination non-profit, Children’s Health Defense, more than doubled revenue in the first year of the pandemic, reporting $6.8m raised.

That’s just great. He’s using his inherited fame to encourage people to catch a lethal virus.

According to the AP, CHD has recently expanded the reach of its newsletter, launched an internet TV channel, started a movie studio, opened new US branches and established outposts in Canada, Europe and Australia.

The AP also said CHD had become a leading “alternative and natural medicine site”, with millions of users, in part by targeting groups that may be more prone to distrust vaccines, including mothers and African Americans.

Dr Richard Allen Williams, a cardiologist and founder of the Minority Health Institute, said Kennedy was leading “a propaganda movement” and “absolutely a racist operation” particularly dangerous to Black Americans.

“He’s really the ringleader of the misinformation campaign,” Williams said.

Nice legacy.

Edzard Ernst informs us:

Yesterday, it was reported that one of Austria’s best-known opponents of vaccination has died as a result of coronavirus infection. He vehemently refused treatment in hospital. Instead, he insisted on treating himself – and tragically, he is not an isolated case.

“Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) is being promoted as a treatment for all kinds of diseases – including, of course, the coronavirus. But MMS is nothing more than the bleach and disinfectant chlorine dioxide, or CDL for short. It made headlines when Donald Trump suggested it as a remedy against Covid-19. Subsequently, CDL became highly popular amongst the anti-vax brigade.

Johann Biacsics was one of the leading figures of the anti-vaccination scene in Austria. On 11 November, he was seen in a Vienna hospital with an acute corona infection. At this stage, he had already taken chlorine dioxide because of fever complaints. Biacsics was, of course, not vaccinated and refused treatment. He was firmly convinced that he had already overcome the infection thanks to his treatment with chlorine dioxide.

The senior physician at the Vienna hospital saw things differently. His condition was “life-threatening”, she said. But instead of accepting treatment in hospital, Biacsics discharged himself and said he would rather treat himself. Once home, Biacsics put in an IV line with chlorine dioxide and sodium chloride. Two days later he was dead.

Well, we have a choice. We can accept what we are told by professionals and the institutions staffed and led by professionals, or we can accept what we are told by random opinionators on social media. I’m a random opinionator myself, and for that reason (along with others) I think it’s a safer bet to trust the professionals and institutions. I say “trust” because I don’t have medical knowledge and because most people don’t, so most of us do have to rely on the people who do have medical knowledge. But it seems strange that so many people opt to do the opposite – to trust Donald Trump raving about injecting bleach at a press conference instead of people with the relevant knowledge and training saying don’t inject bleach.

Wisey the Pretty having a snit.

The replies are many and scorching.

I’ll just quote others, so as not to keep repeating the original.

Men have been allowed to be “powerful” over women for centuries. Society is male dominated. And here you are celebrating yet another example of that dominance, pretending that the power to strip women of their rights and categories is something new. Cowards. @therestofus5

So you’re totally fine with girls being told they need their heads examined because they object to a man cheating them out of their places and records. Not so much Human Rights as Man Rights. @carolinmcmillan

As long as it’s not women living their truth. Their job is to let the males collect all the medals in women’s sport, quietly and submissively, which is a less incredible and powerful feeling. But you wouldn’t know that. @yatakalam

The problem being Lia’s truth tramples all over the truths of the female swimmers. So if we all have individual ‘truths’ how do we decide who’s truth counts for more and whose for less. Oh yes. As you were. Males are primary and females secondary. Male truth counts for more @Penn @cathydevine56

And lots more in the same vein.

I guess human rights don’t include women.

Where to begin. One, “living your truth” is a soppy empty slogan more suitable for advertising than human rights discourse.

Two, truth is universal or it’s not truth. Truth isn’t subjective, truth isn’t personal, truth doesn’t need possessive pronouns.

Three, it’s not his truth, is it, it’s his lie.

Four, what about when “living your truth” is a matter of trampling all over other people, people who are at a major physical disadvantage compared to you? Even the Human Rights Campaign probably wouldn’t be cheering Lia on if he were demanding to join a children’s swim team, but when it’s mere women it’s fine. Why is that?

Five, how about some god damn solidarity with women for once? Some women are lesbians, after all, and surely the Human Rights Campaign isn’t more in solidarity with trans women than it is with lesbians? Is it? IS it?

Six, if you’re in solidarity with all athletes who compete in the sports they love why aren’t you in solidarity with the women Lia is ripping off?

This is why we can’t do anything.

The [Bureau of Land Management] hasn’t had a permanent, Senate-confirmed director in 5 years. [In other words Trump never bothered.] And Stone-Manning’s tenure begins as the Biden administration is under intense pressure to end all fossil fuel development on federal land in the West. Environmentalists see that as a key component to fighting the climate crisis. But the oil and gas industry still expects the US government to afford it new drilling opportunities.

It’s that “But” – that’s why. On the one hand: we need to “fight” the climate crisis because it’s an existential threat to the planet, to humans, to everything that depends on the planet. On the other hand, an industry wants to continue making $$$. Those two things should not be treated as equally important or urgent or impossible to ignore. The existential threat should knock the profit-desire all the way out of the picture with a single blow, but it never does.

It’s up to Stone-Manning to strike that tricky and some say contradictory balance.

“Some say” – yes, NPR, it’s just a quirky eccentric opinion of some wacky people.

It shouldn’t be up to Stone-Manning to strike any kind of “balance” between trying to slow climate change and what The Oil And Gas Industry wants.

… the oil and gas industry has warned that stopping all new – and discouraging existing – development could cost local economies in the West tens of billions of dollars.

Wait til they see what the rise in sea level is going to cost, to name just one item.