Lawmakers trying to make corporations defy the legal process.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have warned telecommunications companies against sharing information with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

McCarthy and Greene on Tuesday both suggested that the companies would face repercussions for complying with the committee’s request for data once Republicans are in control of the government. The committee asked 35 telecommunications and social media companies to supply it with the records on Monday.

They didn’t “suggest” it, they said it.

“This is leading us into waters that we’ve never been in in America,” Greene said during an appearance on Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson Tonight. “America was never meant to be a Communist country. But these are the tactics that Democrats are wanting to use.”

“These cell phone companies, these telecommunications companies, they better not play with these Democrats,” added Greene. “Because Republicans are coming back into the majority in 2022 and we will take this very serious… if they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that’s a promise.”

See? Not a suggestion, a promise – a promised threat.

The foul Texas anti-abortion law has gone into effect, courtesy of the Supreme Court’s refusal to do an emergency review. Reporting on the subject is badly undermined by the near-total avoidance of That Word.

A near-total abortion ban in Texas empowers any private citizen to sue an abortion provider who violates the law, opening the floodgates to harassing and frivolous lawsuits from anti-abortion vigilantes that could eventually shutter most clinics in the state.

“Abortion access will be thrown into absolute chaos,” says Amanda Williams, executive director of the abortion support group the Lilith Fund, a plaintiff in the suit that challenged the law. “Unfortunately, many people who need access the most will slip through the cracks, as we have seen over the years with the relentless attacks here in our state.”

There it is already – “people” who will need access. But it’s not “people”; if it were the law wouldn’t exist. “People” don’t get pregnant, women do. This is all political, and we can’t talk intelligently about the politics if we can’t even name the class of people that is being deprived of rights. It’s women who get pregnant, and that’s not just a random attribute, it’s a core reason women are subordinated and dominated and deprived of rights. Women are all-important because of the power to make new people, and because of that fact, women are treated as bad suspect rebellious slaves. Women, not people.

“It is unbelievable that Texas politicians have gotten away with this devastating and cruel law that will harm so many.”

So many what?

In the days leading up to the law’s enactment, Texas clinics say they have been forced to turn away patients who need abortion care at the law’s cutoff point this week and into the near future.

Women. They’re not patients if they’re turned away, and it’s important to keep it front and center that this is a full-on attack on women.

“We are all going to comply with the law even though it is unethical, inhumane, and unjust,” Dr Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Texas abortion provider and OB-GYN, said. “It threatens my livelihood and I fully expect to be sued. But my biggest fear is making sure the most vulnerable in my community, the Black and Latinx patients I see, who are already most at risk from logistical and financial barriers, get the care they need.”

Latinx? They’re Latina.

The law will force most patients to travel out of state for care, increasing the driving distance to an abortion clinic twentyfold – from an average of 12 miles to 248 miles one-way, nearly 500 miles round-trip, the Guttmacher Institute found. And that is only if patients have the resources to do so, including time off work, ability to pay for the procedure, and in some cases childcare.

Women. It’s women this is being done to.

Many abortion-seeking women are expected to be delayed until later in pregnancy and others will be forced to carry pregnancy to term or try to end their pregnancies without medical oversight, abortion providers caution. As with most abortion restrictions, low-income women and women of color will bear the greatest burden under SB8.

There we go. Finally. But do that all through.

Rob Jessel tests Scotland’s shiny new Hate Crime and Public Order Act:

As Lucy Hunter Blackburn explained in her superb analysis of the Bill, feminists were alarmed by its failure to address speech about sex and gender, arguing that it would increase the chilling effect on debate. The Scottish Government breezily responded that people would not be criminalised for making basic statements about the nature of sex and gender identity, in ordinary language. 

But they were joking. Jessel went to Glasgow Sheriff Court to support Marion yesterday along with a bunch of other people. What to wear?

As a minor but grizzled combatant in the gender wars, I have acquired a number of t-shirts stating biological facts, including one emblazoned with the basic, incontrovertible statement “Transwomen are men”. I thought it wise to ask the police if I’d be committing a public order offence or, worse, a hate crime, should I put it on.

The constables’ answer was textbook: “As far as we’re concerned, you’re free to wear what you like. But if it offends anyone and they complain to us, you will have committed a hate crime.”

Which textbook is that, one wonders. If someone complains to the police, you will have been accused of committing a hate crime. There’s a not very subtle distinction there.

At least in normal world that’s the case. Apparently in Scotland it really isn’t? The accusation really is the same thing as conviction?

This is the same Looking Glass world that Fair Cop has been exposing in England and Wales, where any complainant is automatically afforded “victim” status and the accused is recorded (often without their knowledge) as having committed a “non-crime hate incident” — all without due process of law. The difference is, however, that south of the border we’re only dealing with College of Police guidance. In Scotland, this is on the statute book.

I guess the fact that it’s recorded as an incident rather than a crime makes it ok to skip the due process part. (The cops chatting to Jessel seem to have been wrong on the facts.)

I know we’ve been around this track before but it keeps causing my brain to go into whirly mode.

Bear in mind that Marion is being charged under the old law. The new version will make it even easier for people to maliciously report other people, since they do not even have to prove an underlying criminal offence.

In this light it’s a very good thing that David Paisley is leaving Scotland.

On the one hand a feminist woman gets arrested and persecuted for gender critical tweets, on the other hand Fox News and Republican members of Congress openly incites violent insurrection with impunity. It’s like a kind of displacement behavior – the alpha male bites a junior so the junior bites not the alpha male but someone even more junior. Fox and members of Congress are powerful; feminist women who tweet not so much, so lets go after the feminist women who tweet.

In a Monday night monologue targeting the White House and military leaders over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Carlson demanded resignations. He also said: “When leaders refuse to hold themselves accountable over time, people revolt. That happens.

“We need to change course immediately and start acknowledging our mistakes. The people who made them need to start acknowledging them or else the consequences will be awful.”

When did Trump ever hold himself accountable? Name one time.

On Sunday, the North Carolina Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn, a gadfly on the extreme right of the party, said at an event in his state that Joe Biden was not properly elected.

He also said widespread election fraud, which supporters of Donald Trump continue to claim without evidence, would “lead to one place, and that’s bloodshed”.

“And I will tell you,” Cawthorn said, “as much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there’s nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American. And the way that we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states.”

We already have election security. Voter fraud is extremely rare. What he wants is voter suppression.

Can we hold him accountable?

Can you say “reversal”?

Always always ask who has the power, says Jolyon Maugham, by way of underlining that it’s women.

This was carefully timed.

To understand the careful timing we have to go back to June, and a post by Women Are Human dated June 10:

Airdrie, Scotland. A 50-year-old mother-of-two has been charged with a hate crime after an extremist transgender advocate reported her to police for retweeting a photograph of green, white and violet women’s suffrage ribbons.

Police Scotland confirmed that Marion Millar, an accountant, business owner and gender-critical feminist campaigner, was arrested. Ms Millar, who has since been released on bail, is accused of posting six tweets in 2019 that run afoul of the Communications Act 2003.

The women’s suffrage ribbon, which was tied to a chain-link fence in front of a tree outside the Glasgow studio where a BBC soap opera is shot, appears to be a central focus of the police investigation.

The BBC soap is the one that employs David Paisley.

The complaint is rumored to have been filed by David Paisley, an aged 42, heavily muscled, tattooed actor who stars as Rory Murdoch on the Glasgow soap River City. There is no official confirmation that Mr Paisley filed the complaint.

The complainant purportedly told police that the bow of ribbons shared by Ms Millar represented a hangman’s noose, putting the complainant in fear of his life as a transgender advocate who is also a gay man.

The C-list entertainer tweeted that he has fled his home and is in hiding. He claimed that police have “put my home on rapid response,” and that he is in contact with a local victim and mental health support team.

Now he’s tragically leaving Scotland altogether and it’s all the fault of those horrible witchy women.

Updating to add:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

I have recently taken an almost obsessive interest in the study of cults. I have thus far been reading Cults Inside Out by Rick Ross, Losing Reality by Robert Lifton, and Cults in our Midst by Margaret Singer [1]. Rather than write a separate summary or review of each book, I will try to make a synthesis of what I take to be some of the main points. “Cult apologists” often dismiss the cult label as a pejorative to stigmatize new or unconventional religions. All the authors are therefore careful to stress that cults are defined by their behavior rather than their beliefs, and while many cults are religious in nature, almost any cause, ideology, or belief system can form the basis of a cult. There are cults based on political ideologies, philosophies, business plans, health fads, alternative lifestyles, self-help programs, meditation techniques, martial arts etc. Even abusive and controlling relationships can be understood as a kind of “Cult of One” (cf. Ross) and display much of the same dynamics as larger cults.

Robert Lifton provided what still seems to be the most widely accepted definition of a “destructive cult” [2] based on 3 main criteria (my formulation):

1. The group is centered around a charismatic leader (or, in some cases, a small ruling elite) with little or no meaningful accountability. The leader is believed to possess some unique insight or knowledge and increasingly becomes the subject of worship until – no matter what the group was initially supposed to be about – the “cause” mutates into “whatever the leader says”.

2. The group uses certain highly coercive persuasion techniques – known as “thought reform” or (in everyday speech) “brain washing” – to gain undue influence and control over its members, the end result being that the members become increasingly dependent on the leader and end up making decisions that are clearly not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of the leader.

3. The leader uses his/her influence over the members in harmful ways, ranging from financial exploitation and the extraction of unpaid labor to medical neglect, criminal acts, sexual exploitation, violence, terrorism, mass-suicide, mass murder etc.

One common myth is that only people who suffer from other major problems join cults. While it is certainly true that people going through a difficult period in their lives are especially vulnerable to recruitment by cults, no one is immune. In fact, cults are usually not interested in “damaged goods”, but are mainly looking for healthy, intelligent, resourceful individuals who can do useful work for the group and bring in a steady stream of cash. The Church of Scientology famously specializes in recruiting celebrities – hardly a notoriously weak group – and Aum Shinrikyo (infamous for the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway) disproportionally recruited scientists.

Nobody deliberately joins a cult. Indeed, another common feature of destructive cults is the use of deceptive recruitment techniques. More often than not potential members are first recruited into a “front group” with no obvious connection to the cult. The first encounter might be a perfectly innocent looking course, lecture, or seminar on some interesting topic, a political meeting, a personality test, a therapy session, a yoga class etc. Only after luring potential recruits more deeply into its web does the group start gradually revealing its true nature as well as its more eccentric doctrines. E.g. scientologists go through years of “auditing” and indoctrination before hearing a single word about Xenu the evil galactic overlord.

Expressions like “thought reform”, “mind control” and “brain washing” conjure up associations to all sorts of science fiction-like techniques for “reprograming” people’s brains and turning them into mindless robots or zombies (Winston Smith, Darth Vader, the Winter Soldier, Peeta Mellark, Dreykov’s Widows etc.). By comparison the real thought reform process is almost disappointingly mundane (or at least that’s my impression). Some cults do indeed employ more “exotic” techniques like hypnosis (in itself not all it’s cracked up to be in popular fiction), guided imagery (to instill false memories), hallucinogenic drugs, various methods for inducing hyper-ventilation and dizziness (to be re-interpreted as spiritual epiphanies) etc. Cult leaders like Jim Jones also bolstered their credibility by performing what appeared to be miraculous healings and by appearing to have access to uncannily accurate information about total strangers, seemingly through direct revelation from God. However, by far the most common (and almost certainly the most effective) techniques are all familiar from non-cultic setting, e.g. (non-verbal) social cues, deference to authority, conformity and peer-pressure, overwork, sleep-deprivation etc. What’s different about the thought reform process is both the intensity and the coordinated nature of the persuasive effort as well as the recruit’s own ignorance that any such effort is going on.

After the initial encounter the next step is usually trying to lure the potential recruit to a more isolated setting free of external influences. The recruit is met with “love bombing” and made to feel special, chosen, part of an exclusive elite on a mission of cosmic significance. By observing the other members, the recruit quickly hones in on what the expected behaviors are and learns to model his/her own behavior on theirs. Since no explicit orders or instructions are given, everything feels voluntary and even spontaneous. What follows is a systematic process of destabilizing and breaking down the recruit’s sense of self by inducing shame and guilt (the “unfreezing phase”). Depending on the particular teachings of the group this may take the form of confessing your “sins”, confronting your inner demons, or overcoming the “excuses” that are “holding you back” and preventing you from “taking control” of your life etc. The details are irrelevant, since anything other than total surrender and obedience to the leader will be turned back against you and re-framed as sinful, pathological, excuses, signs of weakness, lack of commitment etc. Through endless attacks and confrontations combined with intense peer-pressure, physical and mental exhaustion, sleep-deprivation etc., the recruit is finally reduced to a state of helplessness and dependency. In this state the recruit learns to parrot back whatever the group wants him/her to say (the “changing” phase). This in turn is met with social reward and re-interpreted by the group as a cathartic experience, a sign of progress, proof of finally “getting it” etc. (the “refreezing” phase).

To prevent backsliding, cults do everything in their power to monopolize the time and attention of their members and cut them off from other perspectives or sources of information. This can include anything from geographical isolation to demands that members shun friends or family members that are critical of the cult. Another method is simply keeping the members engaged in endless cult-led activities, which has the double benefit of limiting communication to other cult members while simultaneously keeping everyone too busy to think too deeply or carefully about anything. Most cults also develop an internal jargon that encourage circular reasoning and reliance on thought-terminating clichés while at the same time making it significantly more difficult to have an intelligible conversation with outsiders. Finally, cult members learn to fear and demonize everyone outside the cult, engage in self-censorship, and only trust information coming from the leader. Ironically, one common perception is that people join cults because they’re too “trusty”, or “naïve”, or “gullible”. On the other hand, most cults are into all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and quite often see themselves as the only people on the planet who have not been “brainwashed”, “taken the blue pill”, “drunk the Kool-Aid” etc. It’s the “sheeple” and the “systemites” outside the group who are living in the Matrix while the enlightened few on the inside are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened and see the world as it really is. Apparently extreme distrust, suspicion, and cynicism (especially of the selective kind) can be manipulated as easily as trust, naivety, and gullibility.

I don’t think any of the authors specifically mentions cognitive dissonance or justification spirals, but it’s clearly implied in various places. Once a concession to the cult has been made, you have a stake in defending it: “If this were a con game, only an idiot could fall for it. But I’m not an idiot, so it can’t be a con game”; “If this were immoral, only a despicable person would do it. But I’m not a despicable person, so it can’t be immoral”. The same justifications used to rationalize concessions a,b,c make it very hard to resist concessions d,e,f without looking inconsistent or hypocritical even to yourself (practically the definition of cognitive dissonance). On your path over to the dark side, you never “cross a line” where things instantly and abruptly change from “definitely ok” to “definitely not ok”, and before you know it you have gone all the way to x,y,z and burned all bridges behind you, and now there is no longer any “face-saving” way of turning back. There is also the closely related Sunk Cost Fallacy: More misery may be easier to accept than the realization that all those former sacrifices were in vain.

[1] I have also been watching Jonestown – Terror in the Jungle, The Jonestown Massacre- Paradise Lost, and Going Clear – Scientology and the Prison of Belief, all available for free on YouTube.

[2] It has become a bit of a cliché to talk about how a certain group or movement (trumpists, QAnon, TRAs etc.) is “just like a cult”. Others are quick to identify the various ways in which said group/movement does not meet the formal definition of a cult and conclude that any comparison is therefore fallacious in principle. As Timothy Snyder has pointed out we see something similar in the case of “fascism”. There are people eager to portray everything about the current surge of authoritarianism as just “like the 1930s”, while others argue that since what we’re seeing now is not like the 1930s in every way, there are no lessons to be learned from the history of fascism that are at all relevant to our current situation. The latter clearly doesn’t follow. A movement can display cultish or fascistic traits to a lesser or greater extent, and the differences can be as enlightening as the similarities.

The Beeb:

Marion Millar faces homophobic and transphobic charges

Do journalists/headline writers get no training these days? They don’t mean the charges were “homophobic and transphobic” but that’s what they said.

A feminist activist has appeared in court accused of sending homophobic and transphobic tweets.

Marion Millar, 50, allegedly behaved in a threatening or abusive manner between October and June within the Glasgow area and in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire.

Prosecutors state she repeatedly posted content on social media that was of a “homophobic and transphobic nature”.

Bollocks.

Joanna Cherry told the court why she wanted “to continue without a plea”:

“The first is practical. Miss Millar only saw the complaint, with charges from the Crown, 10 minutes prior (to this hearing).”

“The second is that the communication charges are not compatible with guidelines, so it’s not appropriate to plead with.

“The third is it raised serious questions about Miss Millar’s European human rights.”

We have a human right to say that men are not women and that we have the right to say so.

Perhaps I can help. Yes, this prosecution does go against Marion’s human rights. We can see that from all the way over here.

What kind of tweets don’t get prosecuted in Scotland?

You know.

But Marion does.

Why didn’t they consider that before arresting her and charging her? Why didn’t they think “Oh wait, all she did was say what she thinks in a tweet or two, and she didn’t say anything like ‘all ___s should be exterminated,’ so what are we doing? We can’t arrest her for that – we’d have to arrest everyone in the fucking world.”

I can’t make any sense of it at all. It enrages me as it enrages so many, but I also just can’t even make sense of it. What prosecutor would think this is worth prosecuting? And why?

Adjourned until October, it seems.

Oh there are matters of human rights to be considered all right. They should have been considered in the first place.

What on earth is this nonsense doing in Scientific American?

Nonbinary Scientists Want Funding Agencies to Change How they Collect Gender Data

The title might as well be Tooth Fairy Scientists Want Funding Agencies to Change How they Collect Fairy Data.

Every year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) send a series of surveys to students and researchers around the country. The surveys are used to monitor changing demographics and track levels of financial support for scientific research, and filling them out is required for anyone who receives NSF funding. There are limited gender options in these surveys: male, female and, on some surveys, “do not wish to disclose.”

That’s because female and male are all there are. The issue is what sex people are, and there are only two. You don’t need extra “gender options” for tigers or whales or birds so why would you need them for humans? There are only two.

As scientists who exist outside the gender binary, many of us do wish to disclose our gender, but are unable to do so because these terms do not reflect our identities. 

But you don’t “exist outside the gender binary.” You’re female or male; that’s it. You may think you’re special and interesting, but that’s a different subject, and of no interest or relevance for tracking demographics. People’s luxury “identities” are a social, cultural, political matter, but not a scientific one. Scientists of all people should know the difference.

Nonbinary scientists and other scientists outside the gender binary experience gender beyond the typical man-and-woman dichotomy, and often identify as transgender.

But the issue is what sex you are, and what you think you “experience” is beside the point. You are either female or male. How you experience that is of deep interest to you but not to anyone else.

Being unable to accurately report our gender precludes accurate data collection for these organizations, and further marginalizes nonbinary scientists.

No it doesn’t, because what they’re looking for is how many women and men there are. They’re not looking for “accurate data” on how silly faddists claim to “experience” their “gender.”

Nonbinary identities are increasingly common; most nonbinary people are under the age of 29, and members of Gen Z are more than twice as likely to identify as nonbinary, genderfluid or nonconforming than older generations.

And what does that tell you? That young people can be sadly credulous.

It is time for the NSF and the NCSES to update their policies and language to better quantify and support this growing transgender and gender diverse population.

If they want to quantify that for some reason they can add a new question, but what they obviously should not do is ruin their own statistics by changing the existing question into gobbledygook.

Marion’s trial is under way.

Seriously. One percent of reported rapes go to trial – but prosecuting women for saying men are men is a whole other story.

It’s fucking open war on women.

Ron DeSantis is energetically promoting a treatment for Covid.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Monday morning in Jacksonville to give an update on monoclonal antibody treatment centers across the state.

…

DeSantis has been touring the state recently to open additional sites. So far, 21 state-run sites are open and offering Regeneron treatments. More than 30,000 treatments have been administered since the first site opened in Jacksonville, according to the governor.

Ok but he’s also obstructing all efforts to get people vaccinated, so what’s his point? It’s like stabbing people and then promoting this really awesome kind of bandage.

Somehow I’m not very reassured.

Royal College of Nursing chief denies hostility to women

The chairman of the Royal College of Nursing was suspended over allegations that he was “openly hostile” towards women weeks before the organisation cancelled its annual congress.

I wonder if anyone thought to appoint a woman as chair of the Royal College of Nursing. Wild, I know, but it just might work.

Dave Dawes, a bondage expert who has led workshops in the practice, was suspended last month over the allegations, which also include that he was dismissive of staff concerns about discrimination and included sexual references on his own social media account. He was suspended weeks before the decision to cancel the conference over allegations of sexual harassment which Dawes says are separate.

A “bondage expert”? Why does the Times drop that in there as it might drop “an amateur violinist” or “a birdwatcher”? I suppose possibly as a hint at some of the reasons for thinking he’s hostile to women (cue the cries of “kink isn’t hostile to women!!”) but who knows.

One of the complaints against him includes sexual references in social media accounts dating back more than a decade. Dawes is openly poly-amorous and has led workshops on open sexual relationships and rope bondage.

I don’t need to know all that…unless it has something to do with the claims that he’s hostile to women.

And then sometimes it just goes terribly wrong.

She thinks that “inscribed on the body” makes her sound clever.

Uh oh. Emma’s a biologist.

Aaaaaaaaand there you have her, the true LP, claiming “abuse” and crying with exhaustion, because she’s in way over her head.

One lie after another, not to mention the laughable idea that Emma could get “genuine learning” from Laurie and should be sitting at her feet to drink in the wisdom.

Don’t be that activist.

Honesty research and fake data:

A landmark study that endorsed a simple way to curb cheating is going to be retracted nearly a decade later after a group of scientists found that it relied on faked data.

Now there is a lede. Crisp, clear, and a great punchline.

According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times.

The paper also bolstered the reputations of two of its authors — Max Bazerman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke University — as leaders in the study of decision-making, irrationality, and unethical behavior. Ariely, a frequent TED Talk speaker and a Wall Street Journal advice columnist, cited the study in lectures and in his New York Times bestseller The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves.

But now some outside researchers have found one of the experiments underlying the data was faked. It’s not clear who faked it.

And this is not the first time questions have been raised about Ariely’s research in particular. In a famous 2008 study, he claimed that prompting people to recall the Ten Commandments before a test cuts down on cheating, but an outside team later failed to replicate the effect.

Why “the Ten Commandments” in particular I wonder. I suppose because it’s the only Official List of Rules that nearly everyone has heard of, but that’s tragic because it’s such an awful list of rules. Several of the items are wasted on how best to grovel to the imaginary deity, and the rest are so obvious they’re pointless. There’s not a word about generosity or mercy or solidarity or any such social goods.

Behold the Female Motivational Speakers Agency:

The Female Motivational Speakers Agency is a booking bureau dedicated to inspiring businesswomen, female athletes and equality advocates across the globe.

Established in 2003 and based in London, we are part of a larger agency launched in the early 2000s. Such relevancy combined with decades of professional experience makes our team the best in the business. Our booking agents have years of experience working with some of the biggest brands and female speakers on the circuit, ensuring your event is in safe hands.

It has a treat for us: ten quotes to “empower women” in prepraration for International Women’s Day 2022, all from clients of the agency.

Here’s Joanne Lockwood’s empowering wisdom:

“Diversity is good for business, but it is also the primary factor of being good for people.”

Awesome.

Katie Neeves:

“Nature doesn’t do black and white; it is a whole spectrum – so is sex and gender.”

So empowering.

Kellie Maloney:

“We all want to be included in the human race – that’s the most important thing…”

Empowerful.

All three of these empowering women are men. “Ten quotes to empower women,” three of which are from men who call themselves women. Somehow I don’t feel all that empowered.

Professional Judy at Lesbian and Gay News on that Manchester Pride incident:

As far as I can tell a mob – including self-described “queer woman” April Preston – surrounded Alex, the crowd chanting ‘Trans Lives Matter’ in the same way football hooligans chant their thought-terminating mantras against the other side before using beer bottles to smash their heads in. Preston later tweeted: “Five mins in got a terf removed – happy with that #mcrpride”. 

If you can stomach it, the video is harrowing. You can feel the tension and the naked rage from the crowd whipped up into a frenzy by people like Preston, who is the Liberal Democrat’s candidate for Withington, and I found myself genuinely worried about poor Alex’s safety. He is pushed at one point, his hat is stolen, and the police have to intervene in order to keep him safe.

(Not all that worried, surely, since Alex was known to be safe by the time anyone saw the video. A small detail, but I like accuracy in details.)

What we witnessed happening to him on that video for that crime is the culmination of a campaign of lies and smears that has stretched right back to LGB Alliance’s inception. A vicious war of hate played over social media directed at the only group standing up for same-sex attracted men and women. A group whose crime is to assert the biological reality of sex and to highlight that it’s key to the rights of LGB people. A group who can count among their members trans people, and a group who has spoken in support and defence of trans people around the world when they’ve faced persecution.

Yes but they don’t include the T. That’s literally all that matters.

Of course, in their haste to align themselves with the mob they’ve helped to create, Guardian writer Owen Jones and soap actor David Paisley don’t really mention those sickening tweets directed towards a gay man for being a gay man, but they instead glorify the baying mob and present it as the most wonderful thing they’ve seen.

They are in blood stepped in so far, that, should they wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.