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.

JoMo says fear not, brands will save you.

Consumer brands know what the future holds. That’s some top-class epistemology right there.

Ben Hunte is angry at the BBC. (He used to be “BBC LGBT Correspondent” according to his profile, and now works at Vice.)

But what does he mean LGBTQ employees? Does he mean several have quit as in a coupla lesbians a coupla gay men a couple bi people a coupla trans a coupla queer? Or does he mean several trans people? It would be useful to know, but the LGBTQ formula prevents us from knowing.

What about women? Does Tim Davie worry about them at all?

It was consensual manslaughter.

A man jailed for choking a woman to death during sex will not have his prison sentence increased, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Sam Pybus, 32, was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting the manslaughter of Sophie Moss, 33, at her home in Darlington on 7 February. Attorney General Suella Braverman said the sentence was unduly lenient and referred it to the Court of Appeal.

But three judges said nah, it’s all good. He was drunk, you see.

Pybus, who was married, had told police he and Ms Moss had been in a casual relationship for three years and that she encouraged him to strangle her during consensual sex.

Ah those sweet carefree casual relationships where the man casually strangles the woman during sex.

Or as Julie puts it…

It’s all about impartiality.

The BBC retreated from Stonewall’s divisive Diversity Champions scheme because it needs to be “squeaky clean” on impartiality, an executive said.

He and Emma Barnett had a long conversation about it: he kept pressing a distinction between Stonewall’s advice on employer policy and making everyone feel included, and editorial decisions about content.

Fair enough, but as he said it over and over I kept wondering how much the BBC worried about making women feel included. I wondered, and still wonder, what it did about the imbalance between hand-wringing concern over about 400 trans employees and, I’m guessing, a rather larger number of women employees. I wondered and still wonder why he got such an anxious tone when he insisted on the inclusion bit, and why at the BBC as at so many institutions the worry about trans feelings seems so massively out of proportion to the worry about women’s feelings. I wonder why it seems as if women are so last century, and so thoroughly Included and not disadvantaged or overlooked or treated differently in any way, compared to the emergency status of trans people.

It was just a few years ago that there was that big uproar about the massive pay gaps between women and men at the BBC. Where was all the anguish about inclusion then? Why didn’t that scratch everyone’s conscience until the blood ran? Why are women seen as both old news and completely without any disadvantage compared to other people, like for instance men?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. I’d quite like to.

Critics say that the initiative acts as a lobbying vehicle. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that Stonewall has, for example, instructed public bodies to remove gendered words such as “mother” from their human resources policies.

Yes and this matters, you see, and it matters particularly because women are not part of the privileged demographic who don’t have to worry about words. If you start erasing women from the language you’re not going forward, you’re going backward. It’s not like changing “men” to “people” in news stories when in fact people really is what you mean – it’s the obverse of that. It’s not progress, it’s regress. Women still get overlooked in a way that men don’t, so Stonewall busily erasing us isn’t just partiality, it’s also bad for women.

Talfan Davies acknowledged that retreating from Diversity Champions had led to “some real tension and discomfort internally”. Tim Davie, the director-general, and Fran Unsworth, director of news, are expected to try to reduce the tension by addressing members of BBC Pride, a network for LGBT staff, yesterday morning. “The key thing is to engage with those staff groups to discuss our thinking and our reasoning and to listen to their responses,” Talfan Davies said.

Yes but what about women? It’s not only LGBT staff who have a stake in this, it’s also women. What about engaging with women? What about listening to women’s responses? Why does nearly everyone think the concerns of trans people are vastly more urgent and profound than those of women? Why does nearly everyone think (or pretend to think out of terror) that when there is any conflict between the two it must be trans people who get their way?

Emma Barnett, the Woman’s Hour presenter, pressed Talfan Davies on specific issues that BBC journalists may face when reporting on gender identity stories. She asked if it would be offensive for a sports reporter to describe a trans woman, competing in a female category at the Olympics, as a “biological male”. Talfan Davies said that a discussion would be had prior to broadcast and it would be right to consider what is “appropriate and sensitive”.

Why sensitive? Why is there never talk about being sensitive to women’s concerns? Why is all the sensitivity and handholding reserved for trans people, while women are expected to suck it up and do what they’re told?

Also this happened today – a ruling that Mermaids can’t share documents with the Good Law Project (aka Jolyon Maugham), because of the obvious risk that he’ll blab everything on Twitter. Mermaids and Maugham are trying to get the LGB Alliance’s charitable status taken away.

Let’s look at the Pregnant People bit.

Emma Barnett: There are guests who come on this show who talk about “pregnant people.” What should I do, live in the moment – should I get them to clarify themselves because only biological women can be pregnant?

Long, telling pause

Rhodri Talfan Davies: Well, “pregnant people” isn’t inaccurate, it’s clearly one way of framing the statement

Me, interrupting: Now wait just a damn minute. Accuracy isn’t the only relevant quality here, and anyway it could be called inaccurate in some senses. It’s not the usual, familiar, standard, unsurprising way of saying it. Don’t go pretending not to know that. And because it’s not the standard way of saying it, and because the BBC is a news organization (and news organizations mostly don’t say things in eccentric ways), and because it drops the word that refers to the subordinated (and childbearing) half of humanity, and because it pisses off a hell of a lot of women, it is a highly tendentious “way of framing it.” His tone of voice is all “as you know perfectly well, why are you even mentioning this” but he’s the one who is pretending not to know what he does know perfectly well. The BBC doesn’t normally say “people” when it means “women” because in general that would be inaccurate from a reporting point of view.

And this move to erase women whenever the word “pregnant” appears is beyond inaccurate, it’s intensely insulting and misogynist. So don’t give us that “one way of framing” shit.

Emma Barnett comes back with yes but I’m asking you, as representing the BBC, what is the BBC’s line on that?

Davies: Forgive me, you’re asking me, in an instant, on a live radio programme, to make complex –

All of which I tell you so that you’ll understand this commentary.

The stations of the cross.

I wonder how Asexual Visibility Day is celebrated.

Whoaaaa the ground is shifting.

Doc Stock on the “But but but you wrote a piece for The Spectator!!” expostulation:

I am on the left — or at least, a version of the left that doesn’t involve trying to get employees sacked by bosses, which may or may not be the left as we now know it. One frequent preoccupation of fellow left-wingers is the potential for guilt by association with those on the right. When feminists like Julie Bindel and I share a platform with a Tory, or write something for The Spectator, isn’t that just grist to the mill of our enemies? And, over time, won’t this heinous practice increase the likelihood of our own politics becoming less feminist? My usual response is to point out that an ideology with ambitions to erase fundamental categories like ‘woman’ and ‘man’ will annoy nearly everyone, right-wingers included (usually adding that if the Guardian ever want me, they know where to find me). But these days I feel more bullish. As far as I can see, rather than feminists like Julie Bindel becoming more right-wing by appearing in The Spectator, Spectator readers are becoming more feminist by reading articles by Julie Bindel. And that’s fine by me.

Now if only we could figure out a way to make readers of The Guardian more feminist.

Sorry, can’t do the anti-vax rally, have Covid.

A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota will miss his Monday rally opposing vaccine mandates because he has COVID-19. Instead, Rep. Jeff Hoverson said he will stay home and take a cocktail of medications including the unproven anti-parasite drug ivermectine and the malaria remedy Hydroxychloroquine.

He must be a very intelligent man.

Hoverson has battled mask mandates. He was barred from boarding a flight with his wife at Minot International Airport late last month after taking issue with a TSA patdown. Hoverson said he and his wife were traveling for their anniversary.

Covid doesn’t care what you’re traveling for.

H/t Holms

GCs don’t know better than teenagers? That’s just a blanket absolute rule is it? No gender critical adults know better than teenagers?

Come on. Teenagers don’t know everything. They’re young, and their brains haven’t finished developing yet. Of course they don’t know best on all occasions no matter what.

Lavery is an academic in the English department. Academics in the English department have a bad habit of considering themselves some kind of Universal Intellectual in a way that most other academics don’t. They talk as if they’re doing philosophy when they’re really not. We could blame Derrida and Foucault, or we could blame Leavis, or we could blame compensation (what does anyone even need a PhD in English for?), but either way it’s a thing. Lavery’s confidence in his own genius is unearned.

Disturbing indeed.

Disturbing footage posted to social media shows a fight breaking out at a Brazilian school allegedly after a girl confronted a trans-identified male in the women’s bathroom.

Or changing room (or both), I think, because the girl is barefoot.

A newly-posted recording uploaded to Twitter from inside a Brazilian public school caught a violent scene breaking out between a trans-identified male student and a young female. The male can be seen pulling the girl from the women’s restroom by her hair and throwing her to the floor where he begins to thrash and kick her repeatedly.

The fight purportedly broke out after the girl expressed discomfort with the male’s presence in the women’s restroom.

So the male showed her how mistaken her discomfort was by throwing her to the floor and stomping her.

The violence continues until a student in red shorts steps in and pulls the trans-identified male off of the girl, who quickly gets up and begins yelling “você não é mulher!” – or, “you are not a woman!”

The trans-identified male attempts to charge at the girl once again, but the student in red shorts continues to keep him at bay.

Red shorts guy is brilliant. He’s about 7 feet tall, and when trans boy tries to get at the girl again he (red shorts) just spins him around like a rag doll.

The footage, which has almost 500,000 views across all uploads as of this publishing, has ignited a wildfire of concern across Brazilian social media.

As it should. None of this is ok.

Watch.

When “activism” has a price.

Translation: Jolyon Maugham doesn’t get to see the case papers in the LGB Alliance appeal because everyone can see he would tweet about them.

Sigh. Et tu Washington state?

What I’m saying. Letters to the Guardian:

The results of this survey are sad but unsurprising (Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds, 7 November). At the weekend, I took my 12-year-old son by bus across west London to his football match. While the world discusses how to address climate change, everyone in west London is out driving a 4×4.

The vast majority of children going to play football and rugby on the pitches where we spent the morning were driven there. The roads were gridlocked, the car parks were full, and tempers were fraying. Yet the parents will make the same choices next weekend – and no doubt what I saw is reflected up and down the country. In London in particular there really is no excuse: the city has a comprehensive public transport system, with free buses for children. When will people wake up to the fact that they themselves are the traffic, the congestion and the pollution?

Never. The cruise ships go in and out (the season ended a couple of weeks ago but will resume in the spring), the planes fly overhead, the cars choke all the streets and sit with their engines running on every block.

Feel-good story:

Marcus Rashford has vowed to keep campaigning to lift children out of poverty after receiving his MBE, saying he will give the medal to his mum.

The England footballer, who last year forced two major government U-turns to extend free school meals into the school holidays, received his MBE for services to vulnerable children at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.

Rashford, 24, has helped raise enough money since March 2020 to help the food waste charity FareShare distribute more than 21m meals for families experiencing food insecurity.

Rashford was outspoken in his opposition to the government’s axing of the £1,040-a-year – £20-a-week – universal credit uplift on 6 October.

It’s not a particularly glamorous or sexy cause. Respect.

The Manchester United striker said he would continue to campaign to “give children the things I didn’t have when I was a kid”, adding: “If I did have, I would have been much better off and had many more options in my life.

“For me, it is a punishment for them not to be getting things like meals or supplies of books.”

A punishment and a handicap. Meals and books are basics for education, and education is basic for more options.