But it isn’t “a row over transgender rights” – nobody wants to take any rights away from trans people. It’s always framed that way, and the framing is wrong.

A ROW over transgender rights has broken out on the opening day of the SNP conference, with activists demanding the party whip be withdrawn from a prominent MP.

The party’s official LBGTQ+ wing, Out for Independence, signed an open letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Westminster leader Ian Blackford urging action against Joanna Cherry QC.

The signatories, who included SNP, Scottish Green and unaligned campaigners, also called on the SNP to launch an investigation into transphobia in the SNP’s ranks.

It isn’t transphobia, either.

They’re talking about the “conversion therapy” bullshit – the framing of caution about drastic changes to the body as the same kind of thing as trying to talk people out of being same-sex attracted.

In a tweet earlier this month, the Edinburgh South West MP [Cherry] said conversion therapy, which is soon to be banned, was something which “any right thinking person must oppose”.

She then added: “We must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex.”

Because the two are not the same.

Just think: being lesbian or gay doesn’t involve any drastic changes to the body. What a bonus! No slicing off of penis or breasts, no cross-sex hormones, no puberty blockers – nothing medical at all.

Last week, Ms Cherry wrote a newspaper column about her beliefs on conversion therapy, and said: “Of course I’m against conversion therapy. What I want to preserve is therapy for young girls who are gender confused. Please ignore the distortions & the witch hunt”.

But of course the distortions and the witch hunt continue.

The BBC November 13:

Durham University has defended its decision to offer training sessions to help students involved in sex work.

Further Education Minister Michelle Donelan had accused it of “legitimising a dangerous industry which thrives on the exploitation of women”.

But the university said it was acting responsibly by offering students advice on how to stay safe.

Last week its students’ union offered staff and students guidance for people involved in the sex industry.

The best way to stay safe is not to sell access to your body to anyone willing to pay. The danger is inherent.

November 18:

Last week Durham University defended its students’ union’s decision to offer training sessions to those working in the industry alongside their studies.

Anna said she would have found training helpful as “there were times where I felt quite scared of what I was doing”.

She said she had a support network of other sex workers her age but said many felt “quite isolated” and she was sometimes threatened.

“They can be really scary people and you can find yourself in scary situations that you get yourself into through this line of work,” she said.

Which is why you should avoid this line of work.

Yesterday:

Many johns are telling her how wrong she is.

Ilhan Omar says cool story but she made it all up.

The Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar called the Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert a buffoon, a bigot and a liar, for claiming to have joked about terrorism when sharing an elevator in Congress.

“Fact,” Omar wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “This buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny and shouldn’t be normalised. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”

…

Boebert is a first-term far-right Trump ally who consistently seeks controversy. Her connections to the deadly attack on the Capitol on 6 January remain under investigation.

She’s that, yes, but so much more. She appears to be a horror in every way – dishonest, aggressive, malicious, stupid, conceited.

The remarks raised calls for Boebert to face formal censure – as recently did Paul Gosar of Arizona, for tweeting a video which depicted him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, another prominent progressive, and threatening Joe Biden.

Boebert’s reference to “the other night on the House floor” was to remarks in support of Gosar in which she called Omar “the Jihad Squad member from Minnesota” and repeated rightwing conspiracy theories about her.

It used to be normal for the US to call itself the world’s greatest democracy (which is kind of Boebertesque itself). Those days are over.

H/t Sackbut

It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Twelve year old girl killed in Liverpool.

A murder investigation has been launched following the death of Ava White. She was killed when out with friends on Thursday night during the annual switch-on of the Christmas tree lights on Church Street.

Four males – one aged 13, two aged 14 and one aged 15, all from the Toxteth area of Liverpool – have been arrested on suspicion of murder, Merseyside police said.

…

Ava was one of two females to die in suspicious circumstances in Liverpool on Thursday, the very day the city launched a three-year strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. The mayor, Joanne Anderson, said: “This is an absolute priority for me and my administration.”

A 47-year-old woman was also found dead in a house in Stoneycroft in east Liverpool on Thursday afternoon. Her death is being treated as “unexplained”. Three men – a 21-year-old and 57-year-old from Stoneycroft, and a 46-year-old from Norris Green – were arrested on suspicion of murder.

The two deaths occurred on White Ribbon Day, a global campaign to end violence against women. Liverpool landmarks were lit up in orange to mark the start of the 16-day initiative, including Merseyside police headquarters.

Progress is slow.

Wait who is jealous?

It’s lesbians who are jealous? Of trans people? It’s not trans people who are jealous of people of their coveted sex, so jealous that they literally pretend to be that coveted sex no matter how batty and misogynist and intrusive that makes them look?

You coulda fooled me.

So that’s ugly.

Won’t somebody please think of the role models?

A Tory MP has linked young men turning to crime to women playing traditionally male roles in TV and film.

Nick Fletcher said “female replacements” in shows like Doctor Who were robbing boys of good role models.

…

“Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?,” he asked MPs taking part in a debate on International Men’s Day.

I don’t get it. The male Doctors Who are still there; the female one is in addition, not instead of. Also there are still lots and lots of male role models besides Doctor Who and other tv shows. So many. Why would new versions in which a woman plays the heroic figure cause young men to commit crimes?

But later, Mr Fletcher tweeted a statement, saying his “rather nuanced point” that there were “increasingly fewer male role models for young boys” had been “misconstrued”.

But there aren’t increasingly fewer, because we live in the Fun New World of technology, in which the existing versions remain available for your viewing pleasure.

Mr Fletcher said: “Everywhere… there seems to be a call from a tiny, but very vocal, minority that every male character or good role model must have a female replacement.

“One only needs to look at the discussion around who will play the next James Bond.”

But he said it went further than 007, adding: “In recent years we have seen Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Luke Skywalker, the Equaliser, all replaced by women, and men are left with the Krays and Tommy Shelby.

“Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?”

But it’s not replacement, it’s supplement. It’s not instead of, it’s in addition to.

He sounds like the marchers in Charlottesville – “Jews will not replace us.”

Guy tries to bully Rosie Duffield, does pratfall.

Nobody thinks “trans women aren’t biological.” Nobody.

Reading a piece about Kant by Robert Gressis at The Electric Agora. It starts with rude parking behavior, and goes on to discuss Utilitarianism versus Kantian deontology.

Because I know Kant better than I know Utilitarianism, and because I think Utilitarianism is significantly easier to apply than Kantian deontology, I’ll explain why Kant thinks such bad parking is not just irritating but out-and-out immoral, and why Kant thinks that bad parkers are not just rude but out-and-out evil.

To oversimplify: on Kant’s view, morality is about universalizability. At least from the moral point of view, everyone is not only of great value, but also of equal value. Consequently, morality is not only about treating other people well, but also about not treating yourself or your in-group as though they’re deserving of more rights or privileges than others.

That’s a biggy. Everyone should pay more attention to that.

It’s hard work, you know, because it’s just how things are: everyone knows only her own point of view from the inside. We can work hard to imagine other people’s points of view, and to empathize with their sorrows, but we can’t share the actual points of view and sorrows. We imagine other people’s and we feel our own, so naturally our lust for the last piece of chocolate is stronger than our awareness of someone else’s lust for the same piece of chocolate.

So anyway, respect the dibs on a parking space.

Girl Scouts/Guides: not just for girls anymore.

Girlguiding bosses have launched an investigation into one of their Commissioners who is a trans woman after she allegedly posed for a saucy picture in a dominatrix-style outfit.

Why is there a male Commissioner of Girl Guides?

Bus driver Monica Sulley, 58, reportedly became a guiding Commissioner in July this year, overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.

Her appointment has upset some feminist campaigners who argue that biological males identifying as women should not be given leadership roles in the movement.

That is, some feminist campaigners object to giving men leadership roles in the movement. It’s not about being “upset,” or having the vapors, either.

Girlguiding has described itself in recent years as being a ‘girl-only organisation with a trans-inclusive Equality and diversity policy’.

Meaning it’s not a girl-only organization.

A statement on its website says: ‘We treat trans girls and women according to the gender they have transitioned, or are proposing to transition, to. Meaning trans girls and trans women are welcome to be a part of our great charity.’

Meaning girl guides is no longer for girls.

‘The benefits to Girlguiding of being fully-inclusive are significant. We recognise the huge impact Girlguiding can have on each young member and volunteer.

‘And it’s vital that trans girls and women – like all other girls and women – can contribute their experiences, time, commitment and skills to our charity.’

Then why not just drop the “Girl” part? If you don’t mean it, why keep saying it? And trans girls and women are not “like all other girls and women,” because they’re boys and men.

Reading the verdict.

Back in September –

A former Georgia prosecutor was indicted Thursday on misconduct charges alleging she used her position to shield the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery from being charged with crimes immediately after the shootings.

A grand jury in coastal Glynn County indicted former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson on a felony count of violating her oath of office and hindering a law enforcement officer, a misdemeanor.

The indictment resulted from an investigation Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr requested last year into local prosecutors’ handling of Arbery’s slaying after a cellphone video of the shooting and a delay in charges sparked a national outcry.

“While an indictment was returned today, our file is not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice,” Carr, a Republican, said in a statement.

Sometimes a national outcry is required.

The BBC reports:

Travis McMichael was found guilty on all counts.

Greg McMichael, his father, was found not guilty of malice murder, but guilty on the other eight counts.

Their neighbour William Bryan was found guilty on three counts of felony murder, one count of aggravated assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of criminal attempt to commit a felony.

So their attempt to persuade the jury that they were simply defending themselves while trying to make a “citizen’s arrest” failed.

You never know how these things are going to go. George Zimmerman got clean away with killing Trayvon Martin, claiming self-defense.

Originally a comment by Michael Haubrich on Gender is the expected, coerced, and enforced default.

Gender expectations put incredible demands on our behavior, and I don’t find it surprising that the resulting dysphoria has been identified. What dismays me is that most of society has come to accept the idea that bodies must be altered to resolve the issue in place of working with the person to find ways to overcome the problem. With the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse becoming more apparent seemingly every day, it hardly seems surprising that children and teens are trying to find a way to work through it, and here comes social media to tell them there is a “fix” that will align their gender to their bodies – by altering and disfiguring their bodies to look like the other sex.

I was known as a “pussy” in my small midwestern town because I was risk averse and didn’t see the point in scuffling to have fun, and I wasn’t athletic and our family hunted gophers, squirrels, and rabbits rather than big game such as deer and bears. There were a lot of boy skills I just didn’t have, and I got along great with girls as friends. But, I learned how to fake it as I grew up and eventually came to be comfortable with who I am. And, being straight, my experience with making friends with girls as girls rather than objects, certainly helped me in my sexual relationships.

This early intervention in puberty may seem kind in one sense, but I do believe it serves to prevent human development as an adult. Telling kids that they were born wrong and that the solution is to “pause” puberty until they can decide if they are really boys or girls inside deflects some of the pain of being gender non-conforming because it is an answer and for the rest of society it certainly makes things easier. We can forget about addressing the problems that gender stratification causes if all we need to do is medicate our kids to accommodate it.

Plus, there’s always the parents so bored with Indigo Children they have moved onto transing their kids.

And when the kids grow and realize that they still have the pain of having been mistreated, molested, or sexually abused since they never had true help, well, then, that’s not our problem anymore.

We have these bad stats on suicides by teens who don’t get, as Chase so deceptively calls it, “trans healthcare,” but do we have any stats on the suicides of those who want to detransition but find the road so hopeless that they commit suicide?

This guy.

Boris Johnson once again flouted official requests to wear a mask as he watched a performance of Macbeth at a busy theatre in north London on Tuesday night, witnesses say.

The prime minister was in the audience to see the Shakespearean tragedy at the Almeida theatre in Islington, after a torrid few days in which backbench Tories have accused him of losing the plot.

Three fellow audience members said Johnson was not wearing a face covering during the performance, despite the theatre’s requests for visitors to wear one at all times when not eating or drinking. He was photographed in the auditorium with a mask around his chin and again inside a public area of the theatre without a mask on at all, alongside someone believed to be a member of his family.

Those chin people – they drive me crazy. I see them on the buses now and then. “You’re already wearing it, just pull it the hell up already. Your chin is not the problem, it’s your mouth and nose. Pull it UP.”

One audience member sitting near him in the auditorium said Johnson had “coughed and spluttered” during the performance without wearing a face covering and was “talking throughout” which had added to an impression of “arrogance”.

Added to an impression of arrogance AND SPREAD HIS AEROSOLS EVERYWHERE.

Ticket-holders were emailed before the performance, saying: “Remember to wear a face covering at all times throughout the building unless you are exempt.”

The theatre has a message on its website saying it was asking all patrons to wear a mask in the theatre, including during the performance, to protect “all our staff, cast and other audience members from Covid”. Theatre goers were told to wear masks as they went in and there were signs up around the building requesting mask wearing.

But the prime minister couldn’t obey the public health rules for a couple of hours.

A second witness sitting in a different part of the room said most people in the theatre were complying with the rules but the prime minister only slipped his mask back on at the end as the lights went up.

And a third audience member on the other side of the auditorium said she had seen him not wearing a mask through the first half, and while he was in the bar area with his fellow guest. It is believed he had his mask round his chin during the first half, and off completely during the second half.

It’s just so piggy.

Downing Street did not deny that Johnson had not worn a mask at the theatre but said he “follows all Covid rules”.

Well he doesn’t, and everyone can see he doesn’t.

Johnson’s apparent decision not to wear a mask at the Almeida comes after he was previously criticised for not wearing a mask while sitting next to 95-year-old David Attenborough at the Cop26 summit, while with medical staff in a corridor at Hexham hospital, and on a train in Manchester. 

Piggy. Piggy piggy piggy.

Not what you want the police doing at the murder scene.

Two Metropolitan police officers who shared photos of two murdered sisters and referred to them as “dead birds” have been found guilty of gross misconduct.

PC Jamie Lewis, 33, will be instantly dismissed from the force, while former PC Deniz Jaffer, 47, had already resigned.

They were posted to guard the scene where the bodies of Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, were discovered in June 2020 after they had been stabbed to death by a teenager obsessed with Satan.

To guard the scene; not to treat the scene as a source of jokes and photoshops.

The officers were posted to guard the cordon after the bodies were found in Fryent Country Park in Wembley, north-west London, in the early hours of 8 June. Photos were shared on WhatsApp, with both former officers using the derogatory terms “dead birds”.

The tribunal was told Lewis sent a picture message of the dead women in a police WhatsApp group shortly before 4am, writing: “Unfortunately I’m sat next to two dead birds with stab wounds.”

Jaffer used the offensive term “two dead birds” in a later WhatsApp message group, which included members of the public.

Lewis then sent a “selfie style” photo of himself superimposed, with the victims visible in the background, to Jaffer. Both officers failed to report each others’ criminal conduct.

I’m guessing police have to develop a thick skin to be able to do the job without falling apart, but there has to be a limit.

The criminal case heard Jaffer left the post he had been assigned to and went into bushes where the women had been left by their killer. The officer took out a mobile phone and took pictures of the bodies.

He sent four images to Lewis, who edited one of the photos and superimposed his face on to it with the two murdered women visible in the background. 

That skin had become way too tough.

Originally a comment by Rob on But let’s talk about precarity, replying to iknklast’s “If we didn’t think our body should be A, B, and C, we wouldn’t be disturbed when our body wasn’t A, B, and C.”

That’s certainly how I understand it and feel personally. When I was a young teen in the mid ’70s I wore a lot of homemade and hand-me-down clothes. Nothing was fashionable and some of it was decade old sixties stuff. In the socially staid and conservative town in the (at the time) socially staid and conservative NZ, the heights of young male fashion was a grey, brown, blue or green sweatshirt, worn with blue jeans of just the right leg width and a pair of sneakers or nomads. Anything else much got you branded a poof, weirdo, or both with consequential ostracism, hazing and occasionally beatings. At that age I didn’t understand why this should be so. I knew I wasn’t gay. I also knew I didn’t fit the stereotype, although my god I wanted to just to make the punishment stop. By the time I was at University I’d earned money to be able to afford three changes of acceptable clothing, had become physically imposing enough to deter casual aggressors and removed myself from a good chunk of the social fuckwit circle. I remember lamenting to a female friend that it was unfair that men faced shit in their lives if they wore bright, colourful or flamboyant clothes. Ah well, I soon learned not be oblivious to the shit in women’s lives.

I’ve never had any problem with my biological sex. I briefly, consciously, examined my sexuality and decided I’m into women. I have always hated, and continue to hate, the way gender is the expected, coerced, and enforced default in society. I don’t think the trans movement, if you can call it that, does anything at all to weaken gender stereotypes. On the one hand they actually reinforce the regressive idea that certain modes of dress, makeup and behaviour are innately male and female; and on the other they treat it like a toy or performance to be played with. All the while we observers are told we must accept what they, the brave trans, say about gender in general and their gender identity specifically, while we must shut up about our own views and experiences because we’re not special.

As others have noted more eloquently and with greater intellectual rigour, it’s shit.

Nancy Kelley urges us to read…Chase Strangio. Really?

Strangio’s “brilliant and devastating thread” is unhinged.

“bills to make trans survival harder…banning health care for minors…That we should not get health care. That we should not survive.”

Unhinged…and dishonest. Strangio is talking about surgeries and puberty blockers to change the physical manifestations of a person’s sex, which is not health care but something else, which doesn’t really have a name yet. It’s medical tweaking to try to swap “gender,” and has nothing to do with physical health at all. Psychological or emotional health maybe (but the trouble is it could be bad for mental health, especially long term, instead of good for it), but not physical. The bills are not efforts to make trans people not survive.

Unhinged.

Just activism, right?

femboy has locked Their account, which is shocking, because femboy should have been ejected from Twitter altogether.

It’s impossible not to laugh. Anti-vax doctors get together for a jamboree, get Covid.

Seven anti-vaccine doctors fell sick after gathering earlier this month for a Florida “summit” at which alternative treatments for Covid-19 were discussed.

“I have been on ivermectin for 16 months, my wife and I,” Dr Bruce Boros told the audience at the event held at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, adding: “I have never felt healthier in my life.”

This “alternative” label is interesting. Alternative to what? To the normal, reliable ways of determining which medications prevent or treat and which don’t. What an odd thing to seek an alternative for. Should we have alternative parachutes, the kind that don’t open? Alternative seat belts, the kind that let you smash into the windshield? Alternative fire departments, the kind that don’t show up when your house goes up in flames?

The 71-year-old cardiologist and staunch anti-vaccine advocate contracted Covid-19 two days later, according to the head event organizer, Dr John Littell.

“Staunch” is another word that is only as good as it is. Being staunchly stupid and dangerous is not all that praiseworthy. “Obstinate” would be a better fit.

Littell, an Ocala family physician, also told the Daily Beast six other doctors among 800 to 900 participants at the event also tested positive or developed Covid-19 symptoms “within days of the conference”.

Littell raised the suggestion the conference was therefore a super-spreader event but rejected it, vehemently saying: “No.

“I think they had gotten it from New York or Michigan or wherever they were from,” he told the Beast. “It was really the people who flew in from other places.”

Ah yes, New York or Michigan – you know, where all the [whispers] black people are.

I realize trial lawyers do what they have to do in the adversarial system, but…all the same. I recoiled last night when I saw the clip via Maddow.

The defense attorneys for Gregory and Travis McMichael, who are charged with Arbery’s murder, repeatedly have tried to present Arbery as a criminal. On Monday, Laura Hogue, one of Gregory McMichael’s lawyers, went further.

“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue told jurors.

ExCUSE me? He went running! Like millions of other people! And those last three words are just…

In that moment, Hogue took the opportunity to portray Arbery as a “runaway slave,” said Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights attorney and former prosecutor.

“Her word choice was intentional, her descriptions were unnecessary. And the description ultimately is inflammatory,” Coleman told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

It was an “attempt to sort of really trigger some of the racial tropes and stereotypes that may be deeply embedded in the psyche of some of the jurors,” Coleman told Brown.

I don’t know, I would think there are subtler and less hair stand on end-ing ways to do that.