Oops.

Sam Smith, the pop singer whose gender identity is non-binary, has been excluded from the gendered categories at the 2021 Brit awards.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. Or was he expecting to be nominated in both categories as opposed to neither?

The awards system has maintained its usual artist categories, with prizes for British solo male and British solo female. That means there is no room for Smith…

It’s not that there’s no room for him (poor little baby Jesus), it’s that he doesn’t fit. If you’re a sculptor you can’t expect to be nominated for a Booker prize, either. You have to fit the categories.

In a statement on Instagram, Smith said: “The Brits have been an important part of my career … Music for me has always been about unification not division. I look forward to a time where awards shows can be reflective of the society we live in. Let’s celebrate everybody, regardless of gender, race, age, ability, sexuality and class.”

All must win, all must have prizes!

Hm.

Well, no doubt, because it’s more soothing to be cuddled and flattered than it is to be disputed and asked for reasons, but the fact remains that we can’t have good policies or ideas or institutions if we refuse to think carefully about what they are.

Like, what does Bartram mean about being LGBTQ+? Does it mean being all those things? Some of which are incompatible with each other?

And if we don’t know the answer to that question, how can we know what it is that’s being loved and affirmed? You don’t want to go around loving and affirming pure evil, so you really do have to know what you mean before you say it, instead of just singing a few words as if they’re poetry and leaving it at that.

And by praising Jolyon Maugham’s presumptuous question, Bartlam is withholding love an affirmation from a fellow member of the alphabet community, so how does that work? Love and affirmation for me but not for thee?

It’s all just “shut up and don’t ask questions,” and it’s not a good trend.

Uh huh. What I said. They can’t and won’t. They can’t because we won’t – we won’t give up the luxuries we’re used to, and if they try to force us they’ll lose.

China and India will have to explain themselves to climate-vulnerable nations, COP26 President Alok Sharma has said as the summit ends. It comes after the two nations pushed for the language on coal to change from “phase out” to “phase down” in the deal agreed in Glasgow.

By which they mean “do as little as possible.”

Mr Sharma said the deal struck in the Glasgow climate pact was a “fragile win” and urged China and India to “justify” their actions to nations that are more vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

I think the justification is “we can’t and we won’t.”

The post by Naomi Cunningham that Maugham calls “profoundly offensive to trans people and their allies”:

Mridul Wadhwa is the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. The job was advertised as being restricted to women, under schedule 9 of the Equality Act 2010. 

So they hired a man.

At this point I must digress briefly. I have written before about “misgendering” (here and here). In writing about Wadhwa’s appointment to this role, I will use the nouns and pronouns appropriate to his biological sex. I do not apologise for doing so. I do so because I am writing about a situation in which sex matters. I have a serious point to make, and I intend to make it as clearly and powerfully as I am able to; I am not prepared to obscure my message with misplaced politeness.  

Indeed. The more we obscure our message by going along with the fantasy that some men are women, the less we can resist this relentless pressure to shut up about losing all our rights.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre didn’t have to hire Wadhwa, but it did anyway, despite advertising the job with “only women need apply.”

They declared an occupational requirement to be a woman in their job advert; but when Wadhwa applied for the job, they waived it in his favour. 

…

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s misuse of its schedule 9 freedom to restrict a role to women has received wide public attention and has been the subject of many news reports. Its appointment of a man to its CEO role has operated – whether by accident or design – as a prominent show of strength: a demonstration to abused and traumatised women that there is no sanctuary for them where they can be sure that no men are present, and sure that no men are making decisions.

I’m sure they saw it as a much-needed warning to terfs.

But let’s cut to the chase.

That’s the legal situation as I understand it. But in truth, the legalities of the situation are peripheral. What really matters is the concrete reality. The concrete reality looks like this. 

Wadhwa is a man who has secured and continues to hold an appointment as CEO of a rape crisis centre that purports to provide an all-women space, to the profound dismay of many of its potential users (see e.g. Jo Bartosch’s account in her powerful piece in The Critic of the flood of responses from survivors that she received to a call for information; and this blog). 

Wadhwa is a man who has prioritised his own needs over the needs of service users, and has brought his male body into a space that should be wholly controlled by women; entered only with their consent, freely given. He has done that despite vociferous objections from many of the women concerned. He has implicitly characterised service users who object as “bigots.” 

No man should be made CEO of a rape crisis centre that purports to offer a female-only service; but especially not a man whose actions have demonstrated the open contempt for women’s boundaries that Wadhwa’s have. 

Wadhwa should resign.

Emphasis on “a man who has prioritised his own needs over the needs of service users” mine.

That’s the thing, see. It’s not even just that He’s A Man, it’s also that he’s the kind of man who puts what he wants ahead of the needs of abused women. It’s that it’s that it’s that. On the one hand women who have been through a hideous trauma and need help from fellow women who will understand the nature of the trauma, and on the other hand a selfish overbearing aggressive man who wants what he wants and does not care that it’s exactly what those women want to get away from. It’s appalling, and utterly disqualifying. His desire to get the job should have disqualified him from having the job.

The arrogance of this guy.

This isn’t Maugham talking to Middle Temple, this is Maugham bullying Middle Temple in public.

It clearly doesn’t concern him at all that appointing a man CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre is profoundly offensive to women.

Now to discuss that Naomi Cunningham post.

A BBC boss had to tell staff to get used to encountering ideas they don’t like. One wonders what job they thought they were in, if they needed to have that spelled out to them.

Fran Unsworth, who is due to leave the corporation in January, was speaking on an often-hostile Zoom call with the BBC’s Pride network on Friday morning.

The meeting, in which Tim Davie, the director-general, also tried to reassure staff that he was concerned about LGBT inclusivity, was held in the wake of the corporation’s departure from Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme, under which it paid for advice and assessment from the charity.

There’s no such thing as “LGBT inclusivity” though. You can’t be incloosive of all the claims of all four categories because some of them are in tension with others. The T is not the same as the L and the G, so the claims aren’t all going to be compatible with each other.

Two sources who attended the meeting said Unsworth, 63, told staff: “You’ll hear things you don’t personally like and see things you don’t like — that’s what the BBC is, and you have to get used to that.” She added: “These are the stories we tell. We can’t walk away from the conversation.”

Again: it’s a large news organization. Of course you’ll hear things you don’t like.

A BBC journalist said: “Fran was totally calm but determined about it. She was reacting to questions from the network that implied people shouldn’t come across views they disliked. To me, it felt like she was having to explain journalism to idiots.”

There you go. That’s exactly what it sounds like.

A BBC source added that the meeting was “extremely hostile” towards Davie, 54, who was previously chairman of a lesbian, gay and bisexual working group at the BBC. “He was told by one member of staff that he was not in a position to make decisions on this issue, because he’s not trans,” the source said. “Another said the BBC was institutionally transphobic.”

Which is exactly why all this has to stop. We’ve all been told, constantly, that trans demands and taboos outrank all others, including all others combined. That means lesbians and gays and women just have to shut up and listen while our rights are dismantled. We don’t agree and we refuse to shut up. We will listen, but we will then go on to say what bullshit we just listened to. The trans dogma is utter nonsense, and that fact is finally becoming more apparent to the movers and shakers.

A culture war has long been simmering in BBC newsrooms over its handling of transgender issues. Some staff, especially younger employees, argue that the rights of the minority group should not be debated; others believe that the BBC had become in thrall to Stonewall and journalists were not allowed to challenge the charity’s views. The latter group, many of whom are older female staff, believe that some of the policies transgender campaigners advocate infringe upon women’s rights, such as the right to single-sex spaces including refuges.

Not so much a belief as an unmistakable fact. Where the belief comes in is when we discuss whether that matters or not. We pesky older female people think it fucking well does matter and that it’s sheer misogyny to wave it away.

Some said they felt unable to express such views at the BBC. “If you mention it, it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers: everyone goes quiet and their faces go blank. Since Wednesday, conversations are already a lot freer,” one added.

Brilliant. Keep that going.

It gets stupider and stupider by the day.

You’ll never guess – never never never never.

Sasha Jane Lowerson doesn’t identify as a transgender woman, just simply a woman with a “trans-experience”.

Just simply a man wearing a dress and doing a stupid thing with his foot.

But the Mandurah surfer is making a difference for all transgender people with her quest for more equality in her sport. In her former life, Lowerson was among the top longboard surfers in the country and the world but now living her full truth, as her authentic self, she said the sport that helps her feel “as free as a bird” is now caging her in like a criminal.

More equality? How is it more equality for a middle-aged man to pretend to be a woman?

In December 2020, she began her journey to be given the right to compete as the gender with which she identifies.

In other words to exploit his male advantage in order to disadvantage the women he’d bee competing against. “Her quest for more equality” forsooth. Ask those women.

“I want change for myself as an elite athlete but I also want to see fairness in community-level sport and for a better future for the next generation,” she said.

Oh yes? Then get out of women’s sports. All the way out, and don’t come back.

The 43-year-old said if the rules were to changed she would feel included in the sport that she has given so much to.

If the rules were changed to give him an unfair advantage he would feel included. Yes I daresay he would. Ask the women.

“I’m not doing it to take over, trans-girls aren’t going to take over the world, we just want to be included, we’re humans too.”

He’s forty-three. He ain’t no girl.

More on those “jokes” of the Unite the Right crowd:

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt told a jury in Charlottesville Wednesday that she was shocked by the extent to which antisemitism defined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.

She’s the historian David Irving sued for libel because she called him a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust. He lost. He lost because Richard Evans was able to show that he was in fact a Holocaust denier, via minute checking of Irving’s evidence.

“There was a great deal of overt antisemitism and adulation of the Third Reich throughout the evidence I looked at,” said Lipstadt, an expert witness in a case against rally organizers.

…

Defendant Christopher Cantwell, on trial alongside white nationalist pundit Richard Spencer and 12 other men for what plaintiffs injured in the Unite the Right rally allege was a conspiracy to commit racist violence, briefly cross-examined Lipstadt.

He attempted to suggest that many of the statements and symbols Lipstadt had identified as evidence of strident antisemitism by organizers of Unite the Right were, in fact, jokes.

“There’s no such thing as an innocent antisemitic joke?” Cantwell asked Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish studies at Emory University.

He later followed up: “If somebody was going to make a joke about the Jewish people, would the Holocaust be an easy target?”

“I find it hard to imagine using a genocide, which killed six million people, irrespective of their religion, their identity, their nationality, as a topic of jokes,” replied Lipstadt, a former Forward Association member and former Forward columnist.

Richard Spencer, not so much.

Dahlia Lithwick tells us the Charlottesville defendants are pretending it was all a joke.

The federal civil trial of the 20 alleged organizers of Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally features a grab bag of white supremacists, some of whom are representing themselves in court. This has meant that from the first day of opening arguments, we’ve heard white supremacist Chris Cantwell, the “Crying Nazi,” hold himself out as a purveyor of a podcast “product” (sign up now!), cite Mein Kampf, and use the N-word. He’s described himself as a “professional entertainer,” “talented,” and “good-looking.” As part of his opening statement Cantwell told the jury he’d dabbled in stand-up comedy, then read out the URL for his website, urging the jury that, “I hope you can all become diehard fans, and together we can save the country.”

…

Cantwell, who is currently incarcerated for an unrelated extortion incident, would watch Tucker Carlson’s show with a group of fellow white supremacist prison inmates to prepare for trial, according to BuzzFeed News. Indeed, a central component of the white supremacist end game here lies not in prevailing at trial, but in using the trial to feel famous and to become more so.

Both can be true of course. I’m sure they’re enjoying their notoriety and chance to show off and so on, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real white supremacists. Lots of racists and women-haters and gay-bashers think they’re funny.

One of the tricks for getting famous is to be entertaining. Another is to be funny. Defendant Matthew Heimbach, founder of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party, certainly knows the drill—in one court exchange, he cheerfully described the alt-right leader Richard Spencer as “bougie,” saying, “I kind of always viewed you as a bit of a dandy,” to which Spencer retorted, “Did you ever see me wear boat shoes?” Good fun all around. Cantwell at one point asked Heimbach to tell his “favorite Holocaust joke.” He asked Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, one of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses on the symbols of antisemitism, if it was ever OK to tell Holocaust jokes.

That sounds familiar, oddly enough. It sounds like those strange people at the “slyme pit”; they fancied themselves comedians.

These joking little exchanges are all part of the “we were only kidding” defense, already deeply entrenched in the alt-right, as is the “we were just trying to trigger the liberal snowflakes” defense. 

Yes, that’s what I mean. It sounds very slime pit, very Twitter troll, very bros just wanna have fun.

Even Boris Johnson’s people are pushing the Stonewall line.

A group of Boris Johnson’s most senior advisers are allowing government policy on trans rights to be dictated by Stonewall, a former aide to the prime minister has warned.

It seems that Stonewall are viewed as The Experts when in fact they’re The Quacks.

Nikki da Costa, who stood down as Johnson’s director of legislative affairs in August, claimed the prime minister was being presented with “skewed” advice by a powerful lobby in No 10 that was undermining women’s rights.

Maybe that’s the appeal.

She alleged this extended to deciding what Johnson saw in his red boxes and refusing to arrange meetings with people who would present opposing views. She added it was having a “chilling” effect on some staff who risked being seen as “difficult” by the most senior political officials.

…

Da Costa claimed the prime minister was only getting the view of Stonewall on the clash between sex-based rights and those based on gender identity. “The PM is not receiving the range of opinions on the debate around gender identity that he should,” she said.

…

Da Costa cited the government consultation on banning conversion therapy that could potentially make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex.

The consultation period was halved from the normal 12-week period to six weeks, which Da Costa said was “driven” by a desire “to get a good news story” in time for next year’s government-backed LGBTQ equality conference.

“The fear is that if we don’t get this right then therapists, doing perfectly legitimate work, particularly supporting vulnerable children, could find themselves in court accused of coercing someone into not undergoing gender alignment surgery. There’s no reason why the government can’t take a few more weeks, even a couple months to get this right.”

Especially when getting it wrong could mean hundreds or thousands of teenagers permanently ruining their own lives.

Law and order! Respect for authority! Duty!

No not that kind.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did not appear for a deposition on Friday in front of the House select committee investigating January 6, sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN, setting up a potential showdown that could lead to the panel beginning a criminal referral process against him.

Committee staffers had been prepared to go forward with the interview and waited in a room on Capitol Hill with a stenographer, but started to file out of the room nine minutes after the deadline passed.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said in a statement on Friday that Meadows’ actions force the panel to consider criminal contempt of Congress, but they stopped short of saying that is the path they will officially pursue.

Why just consider it? Why not do it?

A federal appeals court rescues our precious freedom to spread lethal diseases.

A federal appeals court has kept its block in place against a federal mandate that all large employers require their workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to weekly testing starting in January, declaring that the rule “grossly exceeds” the authority of the occupational safety agency that issued it.

Because it’s not occupational safety to be able to go to work without risking death by Covid? Sounds like occupational safety to me. Working with assholes can be very unsafe indeed.

“From economic uncertainty to workplace strife, the mere specter of the mandate has contributed to untold economic upheaval in recent months,” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote.

He added: “Of course, the principles at stake when it comes to the mandate are not reducible to dollars and cents. The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions — even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials.”

What’s so “intensely personal” about it? Yes, it’s a needle in the personal arm, but lots of things impinge on our bodies and we don’t think of them as “intensely personal.” Our feet make contact with the sidewalk; we breathe the public air along with everyone else; we go into buildings that contain other people. It’s not particularly “personal” that I can see, and it’s definitely not exclusively personal. That’s the whole point: it’s about everyone. We protect others as well as ourselves by getting it, and they do the same. The protection is mutual. It’s a public and reciprocal matter much more than it’s a personal one.

Maybe he means it’s “intensely personal” because it rests on a belief – a wrong, stupid, unreasonable belief. Hey, that sounds like religion! Religion is “intensely personal” (as well as very public and as mandatory as we can make it), so refusing to get vaccinated must be too. You can’t make me get vaccinated because I have an intensely personal wrong belief about vaccinations, so there.

In a filing asking the Fifth Circuit to withdraw its stay this week, the Justice Department argued that requiring large employers to force their workers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing was well within the authority granted by Congress to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. It also said blocking the mandate would have dire consequences.

Keeping the mandate from coming into effect “would likely cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day, in addition to large numbers of hospitalizations, other serious health effects and tremendous costs,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “That is a confluence of harms of the highest order.”

Meh, said the three Republican judges. We don’t care.

This response to Tatchell prompted me to read Dr Em on forced teaming.

Why are ideologies antithetical to each other being presented as natural allies? Feminism argues that gender is a mechanism of a system of oppression, that gender consists of socially constructed sexist stereotypes which are then used to exploit women. [For instance] [t]he notion that because one is female one naturally wants to care and clean, one by nature of one’s female sex is submissive, polite. LGB rights rest on the idea that same-sex attraction is real and normal and should be afforded the same rights and respect as heterosexuality.

Transgenderism/transsexualism, in contrast, claims gender – women’s oppression and sexist stereotypes – are innate, or sometimes that the body has to be altered to conform because of oppression discomfort disorder. Gender dysphoria claims that the person is wrong, not the cultural sexism, exploitation or oppression. It avows ‘change the person, not the system’!

And so, the two are at odds. They don’t make a team. Feminism can’t be [fully or literally] “inclusive” of trans ideology because trans ideology is antithetical to feminism. That’s not a form of phobia, it’s just clarity about rival ideologies or activisms.

Neither feminism nor LGB rights are comfortable bed fellows with the men’s rights activism which emerged in the late sixties and early seventies in the form of transgenderism/transsexualism. This deliberate coupling of opposing ideologies is an example of wide-scale forced teaming.

Of what? Tell us more.

Forced teaming is a term employed by those who work on abuse, grooming and predation. It was originally coined by Gavin De Becker in his work The Gift of Fear and is also used as a concept regarding criminal activity such as con-artists and romantic scamming. The predator will create the idea that there is a shared goal, or an attitude of we are all in this together, we are allies, in order to disarm, gain trust and manipulate his target. The social contract that most people have been educated or raised in – that we should try not to offend others, be polite, be accommodating – makes forced teaming incredibly difficult to resist. In general, we don’t want to be rude and say ‘actually, your problems or goals are different to mine and so no, we should not work together’ or ‘no, I don’t feel comfortable with this’.

Except of course when we do. Forced teaming with Trumpists is pretty damn easy to say no to. But trans ideology has had a lot of success at branding itself as the latest wave of progressive improvement, and thus in the same broad category as anti-racist ideology and feminist ideology and anti-homophobic ideology. But it doesn’t belong there.

Forced teaming, when applied to movements, can be as large as many men claiming feminism should work towards their goals not women’s, or that the LGB should work towards heterosexual entitlement.

And sure enough, here we are!

Forced teaming is behind the dictate of inclusiveness. It is by this way that manipulative males gain access and can control and change the goals of movements. It is how individual males have entered formerly women’s groups and formerly LGB pressure groups and can both watch what is being said and direct the narrative.

So when we hear “inclusiveness” we should be thinking “forced teaming.” Very useful. Thank you Dr Em.

That’s a lot of wrong and dishonest in one tweet.

Kathleen Stock’s views are not “trans critical.” They can be called gender critical, though I don’t know if she calls them that or not, but “trans critical” is wrong, and wrong in a harmful and probably malicious way. (I doubt that Tatchell is unaware of the label “gender critical”.) In this context the word “trans” names people, while “gender” names an ideology. Tatchell is manipulating us to think Stock is Mean to a set of people as opposed to having a philosophical view on a new and contested ideology. He’s portraying her as bullying people when what she’s doing is dissenting from some ideas.

But that “SOME on BOTH sides” is even more brazen. Utterly utterly false. We’re not the ones who fantasize aloud on Twitter about doing violence to Them. We don’t rave about stabbing burning choking shooting trans people, but there are way too many “trans activists” who do all that and worse in their campaign to silence the people they call “terfs.”

It’s interesting that he “stands with trans people” AND supports “protection for women.” Notice a difference? On the one hand his friends, his people, the ones he stands with, on the other hand, some weakling weirdos who need “protection” and he’s ok with letting them have it. I for one don’t want Peter Tatchell’s grudging “protection,” I want him to fuck off out of our way and let us defend out rights without any insulting Both Sides patronage from him.

And no, not unity and solidarity with people who are appropriating our rights and freedoms and literal identities. No. We don’t tell Peter Tatchell to have unity and solidarity with theocratic and authoritarian homophobes, and he doesn’t get to tell us to have them with trans bullies. His cutesie photo of “diverse” teenagers isn’t going to change that, either.

WHAT THE FUCK??????????

Not like the yellow star! The end point of the yellow star was the Auschwitz gas chambers! Not being refused entry to Safeway but Zyklon B dropped into a sealed room full of people. Not comparable!

Bannon indicted.

Stephen K. Bannon, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides early in his presidency, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress, the Justice Department said.

Mr. Bannon, 67, had refused last month to comply with subpoenas for information issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The House voted last month to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress after he refused to testify or provide documents sought by the committee, a position taken by a number of former aides to Mr. Trump.

They refuse because they consider themselves a rival government in temporary exile.

Mr. Trump had directed his former aides and advisers to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.

Is there an “executive privilege” to overthrow the legitimate government?

While many of those who received subpoenas have sought to work to some degree with the committee, Mr. Bannon claimed that his conversations with Mr. Trump were covered by executive privilege, even though he has been a private citizen since 2017. He said he would not comply with the committee’s requests.

Each count of contempt of Congress carries a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail, as well as a fine of $100 to $1,000.

In other words not much.

It’s been pouring rain here so the flood warnings are out. They’re a kind of poetry, thanks to the beautiful names in this bit of the world.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on The rough sex defence.

So, I haven’t delved into this very far, but my impression from the article and twiliter’s comments is that there are two separate legal issues here: the victim’s consent, and the killer’s intent.

Consent is an affirmative defense to some crimes. To give a trivial example: you can’t convict a boxer for assault and battery because he punched his opponent during a match. There have always been some acts to which the law deems that consent is not applicable. It would appear that the Domestic Abuse Act clarifies that “a person cannot consent to the infliction of serious harm or, by extension, to their own death, for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification”

But that is a separate issue from the question of intent. Most crimes have some sort of intent (mens rea) requirement, whether it’s negligence, recklessness, or intent, and you can break some of those categories down further (gross negligence, general vs. specific intent). That’s why, e.g., murder is different from manslaughter which is different from negligent homicide.

It sounds like technically this was not an issue of meeting the elements of the offense, but the exercise of discretion in sentencing, but either way, the court is considering the issue of intent. It would appear that the Domestic Abuse Act disallows a “consent” defense based on “rough sex,” but that doesn’t mean that a defendant can’t dispute the issue of intent by saying “I didn’t intend to kill her or even injure her, I only intended to engage in rough sex.”

You could probably make a good argument for having a rule that punishes all deaths from “rough sex” as homicide or manslaughter, something analogous to the felony-murder rule — basically, this kind of thing is so dangerous that if you want to engage in it, you’re deemed to have intended all the consequences that might result. But that does run counter to the modern trend; the felony-murder rule has been abolished or limited in many places.

But then, this may not be a problem with the law at all, but rather with the “fact-finding” — courts may be a little too willing to believe that these deaths are accidents.

Billy Bragg admits it’s all about being trendy.

Billy Bragg has changed the lyrics of his hit song “Sexuality” in support of transgender rights.

In the original version of the song, Bragg sings: “And just because you’re gay I won’t turn you away/If you stick around I’m sure that we can find some common-ground” in support of gay rights. But, in recent live performances of the song, he has changed “gay” to “they” in support of transgender people.

Ooh, bold step. “Just because you’re they” – that’s a fine use of language right there.

Explaining why he chose to change the lyrics, Bragg wrote on Twitter: “Times changed. Anyone born since the song was released would wonder why it’s a big deal to find common ground with a gay man. The front line now is trans rights.”

And by “front line” he means “fashion.”

Gay men are kind of yawn now, and as for lesbians – could anyone be more boring and pointless? To men? No, so let’s just ignore them entirely and chase the fashion instead.

Bragg also criticised women who did not support trans rights, stating: “TBH it breaks my heart to see people who claim to be feminists siding with people who would deprive them of their rights in a moment.”

We don’t “claim” to be feminists. Billy Bragg doesn’t get to tell us we’re not feminists.

Women’s bodies are public property chapter eleventy billion:

When a 21-year-old Native American woman from Oklahoma was convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage, people were outraged. But she was not alone.

You remember this story from a few weeks ago.

Brittney Poolaw was just about four months pregnant when she lost her baby in the hospital in January 2020.

This October, she was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for the first-degree manslaughter of her unborn son.

As if the four month old fetus inside her were an independent person she killed.

Yet Poolaw’s story is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of the National Advocates of Pregnant Women (NAPW), a pro-choice advocacy group.

Huh. The W word. It’s not NAPP but NAPW. I wonder how much pressure they’re under to change that.

The organisation is helping with Poolaw’s appeal, and has been tracking arrests and cases of “forcible intervention” against pregnant women in the US.

…

The recent explosion of criminal cases is part of a “uniquely American phenomenon” at the crossroads of America’s ‘War on Drugs’ and the personhood movement, said Ms Sussman.

That is, the movement to convince everyone that a pregnancy is a person. It’s a bit like the trans movement in the reliance on magical invisible Personyness that everyone has to defer to and protect.

… several US states have passed laws making it more difficult to obtain an abortion. While people oppose abortion for different reasons, often moral or religious, one part of the argument has come to focus on the notion of personhood.

“The concept of personhood is actually quite simple,” said Sarah Quale, president of Personhood Alliance Education, a pro-life organisation.

“Personhood declares that humans are human and that our equality is based on our humanness. Nothing changes the scientific fact that we are biologically human from the very beginning until the very end. Therefore, as humans, we deserve equal protection under the law because we possess inherent, natural rights.”

Yes but what is “the very beginning”? A fertilized egg isn’t a person. It’s a human fertilized egg, but that’s not a person. If one sat next to you on the bus you wouldn’t ask it to put its mask on.

The personhood movement has helped push forward laws that go beyond regulating access to abortion, to extend rights and protections to the foetus as if it were a born citizen of the state.

Which if the state is Texas or North Dakota isn’t such a treat as it may sound.