Much as I dislike sharing anything from Andy Ngo…

A male ego so bloated it blocks out the sun women.

A woman says she doesn’t want a male gynecologist; a man (who is an actor) says “You know I played a male midwife, right?”

Oh sir, I’m so sorry sir, I said a thing without taking into account your expertise on the subject of women not wanting a man poking around between their legs. How could I have been so rude? Of course performing a scripted role as a midwife is exactly equivalent to training and work as a midwife, and how dare I say anything about it to you with your vastly greater experience and education.

But seriously – David Paisley isn’t 3. He’s more than old enough to know that there are such things as predatory men, and that some of them are doctors, and some of those are gynecologists. He should be able to see the difficulty, and acknowledge it, and back off, but instead he pulls non-existent rank and then waves away the existence of male gynecologists who assault their patients.

It’s not comparing, it’s saying that some of them are, and as with trans women in prisons and shelters and rape crisis centers, we can’t know who is which, so we take the reasonable precautions. A decent human being would understand that. Paisley is indecent.

A tweet of Maya’s alerted me to some more abject groveling.

Do you think the words “trans and non-binary” appear often enough in that short extract?

It’s Professor [and Vice-Chancellor] Anthony Forster on the University of Essex staff blog:

Our commitment to our trans and non-binary staff and students

That’s nice, but is there any commitment to your female students? Any at all?

I met with trans and non-binary students and staff last Friday and we discussed the Reindorf Review, the publication of the Report (.pdf) and the actions (.pdf) agreed by Senate and Council in response to the recommendations in the Review, and the impact they have had on both the trans and non-binary community and the wider Essex community. In the meeting we discussed how hurt people feel about the outcome and the very negative impact that this has had and continues to have on trans and non-binary staff and students.

What about women? What about the impact on women?

I am committed to ensuring that everyone is made to feel welcome at the University and we discussed a range of actions that we can take to ensure that this is the case.

I don’t think he’s committed to that at all. He seems much more committed to making women feel unwelcome…unless they slavishly submit to the trans dogma, and put “trans and non-binary students” first at all times and in all disputes.

My personal view is that the current law in the UK does not fully respect and protect the identities of trans and non-binary people. I understand that, in meeting our obligations to respect academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law, we have given the impression that we might not care about the lived reality of trans and non-binary people. As we revise our equality, diversity and inclusion policies and procedures we will continue to go beyond the minimum standards required by law, wherever we can, to ensure that we recognise, respect and protect the identities of trans and non-binary people. Listening to our trans and non-binary staff and students will be central to us understanding the changes that will have the most impact in creating a welcoming, supportive and inclusive environment – and ensuring the lived experience of our trans and non-binary staff and students is positive.

And ensuring that the lived experience of our female staff and students will be complete crap.

We have received other suggestions as to how the University can demonstrate its commitment to our trans and non-binary staff and students. These include: allocating greater funding and resources for mental health services; putting in place a trans and non-binary support group for students facilitated by a trans/non-binary member of staff; identifying a common room/space for trans and non-binary students; encouraging positive action to support and promote greater diversity within leadership and across the University; respecting personal pro-nouns; further developing support and training for staff in leadership positions and across the University; and creating a Working Group to combat transphobia on our campuses.

Women, meanwhile, can get in the sea.

I have been asked to provide a number of apologies including: to anyone who felt excluded from or affected by the process of contributing to the Review; for the manner in which the Reindorf Report was released, and in particular for the timing of the release at the start of the examination period and for how this has felt during Pride Month; that the Report and the actions agreed by Senate and Council have required considerable time from our students to address the impact on them and on other students and especially students in leadership roles, in a context in which some have not received appropriate training; the public scrutiny this has focused on some of our students; and for any harassment or bullying that has taken place and for anyone having been made to feel unsafe as a result of the Review. I am sincerely sorry for this. We have a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and bullying and I am committed to taking action when needed to ensure that we treat everyone in our community with dignity and respect. I have been asked to make apologies to three students and will do this today, and I will also send an apology to our trans and non-binary staff through the LGBTQ+ staff forum Chair.

But not women. Never women. Shut up about women. We do not care.

Kurt Eichenwald says there are sharks underneath.

…this means it cannot readily convert its assets into cash as needed.

Worse, because of the incredible incompetence and business idiocy of Trump, cash on hand (and access rapid loans through what is known as the commercial paper market) is small. So, the company survives on loans against assets.

Trump originally depended on bank loans, then jumped into high-yield (junk) bond market, which is why so many of his businesses went bankrupt: Junk bonds gave him lots of cash to spend, but he was too stupid to apply an analysis beyond “I’m great” to figure out how he was going to generate enough cash to pay interest on bonds.

He couldn’t. With his dad, he tried laundering money through Trump Castle to get past a requirement with his bank loans brought on by his junk debt, but got caught.

Everything crashed down so, the bottom line: Trump knows how to borrow money, he doesn’t know how to manage it.

Then came The Apprentice, which gave him lots of cash. Of course, he spent it all, then used assets he purchased as security to borrow from banks on apparent assumption that “I’m great” would fix any cash flow problems. He now has huge amounts of debt against assets that are plummeting in value because of January 6 and his toxic brand name. He *needed* the presidency to survive financially.

I have always believed, that is why he is so desperate to keep it, because if he was president, he could hit up the Russians, Saudis, etc to bail him out. Now, with him toxic and a threat to the country, those nations know that any secret payments they make to him run a huge risk of being discovered. Which brings us to today’s charges.

All bank loans with a business come with “lending covenants.” These are basically a series of requirements, some of which include “you’ll behave” in minor character. But *the most important part* of any loan covenant is the “books and records” portion. It is included in every covenant for a bank loan to a business. The terms are simple: You maintain truthful books and records, you attest to us that they are truthful, and we are allowed to review them at any time. There is no “You can lie *just a little bit* on your books and records” – it’s all or nothing, like pregnancy: You either are or you arent. The books and records either are truthful or they aren’t.

Which brings us to count 12, which I think you can now understand the significance of:

Ah. I see. He relies on loans; the loans require him to keep honest books; he doesn’t keep honest books; he’s charged with falsifying the books.

Eichenwald continues:

Forget Weisselberg. That is every every corporate defendant, every entity that could have a loan covenant in its name. Every Trump Org bank lender in the world, right now, is looking at this indictment, looking at their covenants, and calling the Trump Org demanding they turn over every relevant book and record pertaining to these issues. If they refuse…BOOM. Loans pulled. If they do and the banks don’t like what they see…BOOM. Loans pulled. If the loans come due (which 100s of millions do next year) no way they get refinanced.

There may be something I am missing here, but I do not see how the Trump Org survives this without some sort of corrupt deal overseas. But even that seems far-fetched. Instead, it may be the biggest real estate corp bankruptcy in history and given that those of us who covered his business for decades – back when he was a democrat/reform party/whoever would have him – and always knew he was a crook, all I can say is, what the hell took so long?

Now, I and countless others still want to see him shackled and humiliated, prosecuted and convicted, imprisoned and silenced. But financial ruin is better than nothing.

SexMatters on that ruling:

The judgment, and the Ministry of Justice policy, use phrases like “transgender women” and “non-transgender women”; the “gender with which they identify”; and the “biological sex assigned to them at birth”.

This language obscures what is really happening. Male prisoners, including rapists, are being housed in women’s prisons, and female prisoners and prison officers are forced to pretend that these male people are women.

The language always obscures what is really happening. That’s what it’s for.

When the judges talk about “transgender women”, these are some of the people they are talking about:

https://transcrimeuk.com (from 2021/2020 convictions) 

That’s one of the three rows. Look at them all.

Currently, under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, being a convicted sex offender with a penis and testicles – and no intention of ever having them removed – is no impediment to a man qualifying for a certificate declaring him to be a woman. And the prison service’s policy is that, with or without a gender recognition certificate, a male prisoner can be housed in a women’s prison, subject to risk assessment.

It’s utterly disgusting.

Now on to James Kirkup in the Spectator:

For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate.

Many of them are there for sexual offences but hey let’s put them in with the women anyway, and then watch and laugh.

The judge acknowledged the risk, as we’ve seen. He acknowledged lots of things, all of which should have point to Nope Nope Nope.

The judge also found that female prison[er]s, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender:

Many people may think it incongruous and inappropriate that a prisoner of masculine physique and with male genitalia should be accommodated in a female prison in any circumstances. More importantly for the Claimant’s case, I readily accept that a substantial proportion of women prisoners have been the victims of sexual assaults and/or domestic violence. 

I also readily accept the proposition … that some, and perhaps many, women prisoners may suffer fear and acute anxiety if required to share prison accommodation and facilities with a transgender women who has male genitalia, and that their fear and anxiety may be increased if that transgender woman has been convicted of sexual or violent offences against women.

It’s nice of him to accept all this so readily. Very nice. Heartwarming.

However, the court found that prison service policy remains lawful, because that policy must reflect not just the interests of female prisoners but also the interests of transwomen prisoners:

Well, one, this ruling stomps on the interests of female prisoners while cuddling and snuggling those of the male prisoners, and two, the female prisoners’ interests are in not being raped while the male prisoners’ interests are in preying on and terrorizing the women, and three, the policy does not reflect the interests of the female prisoners, and four, what do you mean not just the interests of the female prisoners when you’re ignoring those interests?

Excuse me while I pant rapidly like a dog for a few minutes.

the subjective concerns of women prisoners are not the only concerns which the Defendant [the Justice Secretary] had to consider in developing the policies: he also had to take into account the rights of transgender women in the prison system.

What do they mean the subjective concerns??? Is wanting not to be raped classed as a subjective concern? It seems pretty fucking objective to me! And why is women’s desire not to be raped a “concern” while men’s desire to pretend to be women “the rights”?

This is so fucked up.

The debate about sex and gender is complicated and often fraught, not least when it reaches the courts. But there are two, fairly simple, points that I think everyone should draw from that court ruling.

The first is that the High Court has confirmed that accommodating the interests of transwomen and women leads, in some circumstances, to ‘competing rights’. Sometimes, giving something to transwomen means taking something away from women. There is nothing transphobic or otherwise hateful about saying so. It is, as the court ruling shows, a simple statement of fact.

That leads to the second point. In this case, the state has given to some transwomen offenders the right to be imprisoned in the female prison estate. That decision, made to accommodate the interests of those transwomen, comes at the expense of women in the female estate. The court found that those women are exposed to an increased risk of sexual assault and to anxiety and fear of such sexual assault.

The court found that, and shrugged its judicious shoulders and said tough shit. Women are exposed to an increased risk of sexual assault and to anxiety and fear of such sexual assault, and we think that just doesn’t matter as much as men’s desire to pretend to be women. On the one hand, terror of rape, and rape, and on the other hand, let’s pretend. Which would you choose?

The court further found that, under the law as it stands, it is legal for ministers to implement a policy that exposes women prisoners to that increased risk and to ‘understandable’ fear, because – assuming proper mitigation is in place – that risk and that fear are an acceptable price to pay to accommodate the interests of transwomen prisoners.

I’m not going to bother saying what I think of this situation, because I suspect I don’t need to.

I on the other hand am going to shout and swear and kick things.

Instead, I will conclude by saying that the High Court ruling has confirmed beyond doubt something that a great many women have been trying to say for several years, often meeting with aggressive rejection and accusations of bigotry. The court confirmed that in some circumstances, accommodating the interests of male-born transwomen means imposing costs and burdens on women.

And that raises a question that society as a whole still needs to answer: why should women pay and suffer to serve the interests of people who were born male?

Just what I’ve been asking all day, with ungenteel language.

So it is. Well spotted.

And even the “feelings” of said chattering classes aren’t that important. The feelings are seven or eight times removed. It’s not really any skin off the ass of the chattering classes if men in prison don’t get to pretend to be women in order to be housed in the women’s prison. It’s a political “feeling” of sorts, but not the kind we should feel either compassion for or solidarity with. It’s a feeling of fabricated and exaggerated “caring” about men who identify as women coupled with a brutal indifference to women. It’s not like the feeling of compassion for and solidarity with starving refugees fleeing violence in Nigeria or El Salvador, or for workers trying to unionize meatpacking plants in Wisconsin, or for women beaten and tortured and murdered in Afghanistan. It’s sentimental exaggerated “concern” for men in rich countries who want to pretend to be women.

The worst-case scenarios didn’t predict a Lytton. That’s scary all by itself. That tells us it’s going to be worse, faster, than the knowledgeable people thought.

The US president, Joe Biden, and Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have warned worried populations to brace for more. Shocked climate scientists are wondering how even worst-case scenarios failed to predict such furnace-like conditions so far north.

Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the recent extreme weather anomalies were not represented in global computer models that are used to project how the world might change with more emissions. The fear is that weather systems might be more frequently blocked as a result of human emissions. “It is a risk – of a serious regional weather impact triggered by global warming – that we have underestimated so far,” he said.

Heat domes, droughts, wild fires – it wouldn’t take many to be a Pompeii for the planet.

In Lytton, the Canadian national heat record was broken on Monday, smashed on Tuesday and then obliterated on Wednesday when the local monitoring station registered 49.6C (121F).

It was the hottest place and it burst into flames…which hints that future heatwaves could trigger multiple Lyttons.

David Paisely is trying to understand (or claims he is).

I wonder what it was that made him decide to be gender uncritical. I wonder if there was a particular thing that drove him towards that mode of thinking.

(I don’t really. I think he’s just dumb and conformist, and there’s nothing more interesting than that about it.)

Hm. So it’s not believing in magic swappable gender that’s like god-belief. Interesting.

And how do we “seek to harm” trans people? By our wicked failure to “validate” them? By declining to take their absurd reality-denying claims at face value? Are we really classifying that as seeking to harm people now? Just, not believing other people’s fictions and fantasies?

Oh, I don’t think he thought that. I think he wanted to pick a fight.

Women just don’t matter at all.

It is lawful for transgender women to be housed in female jails in England and Wales, the High Court has ruled.

A female prisoner, known as FDJ, had challenged the Ministry of Justice over aspects of the policy.

She claimed she had been sexually assaulted by a trans prisoner but the MoJ did not say whether it accepted this alleged incident had taken place.

The judge ruled barring all trans women from female prisons would ignore their right to live as their chosen gender.

But what about women’s right to live away from male violence?

Why isn’t that right vastly more important than some fanciful made-up “right” to live as a “chosen” i.e. not real “gender”?

Why does the physical safety of imprisoned women have to give way to men’s desire to pretend to be women? Why is men’s fun and games more important than women’s safety?

I’m honestly so stunned by the evil backwardness of this I can barely take it in.

Women’s prisons can house inmates who were born male but identify as female, regardless of whether they have gone through any physical transformation or have obtained a gender recognition certificate.

“Women’s prisons can” but women cannot – cannot escape, cannot hide, cannot say no, cannot be safe.

The MoJ argued the policy pursued a legitimate aim, including “facilitating the rights of transgender people to live in and as their acquired gender (and) protecting transgender people’s mental and physical health”.

What about the rights of female people to live in safety from male violence? Why aren’t those rights more important than men’s right to live out their fantasies? What about protecting women’s mental and physical health?

I’ve never seen anything that so thoroughly drives home the relative value of the two sexes. Men want to play dressup so by all means unleash them on imprisoned women to do their worst. What happens to the women just does

not

matter.

The claimant in the case, FDJ, had said she was sexually assaulted in prison in 2017 by a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The woman had convictions for serious sexual offences.

Which woman had convictions for serious sexual offences? The actual woman, or the man playing at being a woman? Almost certainly the second, since women mostly don’t commit sexual offences.

Her lawyers argued that placing transgender women in the female prisons exposed others to higher risk, citing a claim that transgender inmates were five times more likely than non-transgender prisoners to commit a sexual assault on a non-transgender prisoner.

Oh fuck off BBC – the issue is not trans v not-trans, it’s male v female. You know this.

In a judgement handed down via email, Lord Justice Holroyd accepted the statistical evidence showed proportion of trans prisoners convicted of sexual offences was “substantially higher” than for non-transgender men and women prisoners.

But he said this specific claim was a “misuse of the statistics, which… are so low in number, and so lacking in detail, that they are an unsafe basis for general conclusions”.

And we simply have no statistics on male violence? Is that it?

The judge said he “fully understood” the concerns of FDJ, and that women prisoners “may suffer fear and acute anxiety” if housed with a transgender woman who has male genitalia.

They may also suffer rape and general violence. Does he “fully understand” that?

But he added that the rights of transgender women prisoners must also be considered.

But it’s not “also,” it’s “instead.” If you put men in women’s prisons you’re not considering the women’s rights at all.

It’s disgusting.

So…it looks as if this phenomenon could set whole continents on fire.

Lightning strikes cause fires. The horrific fire season in California last year was partly caused by thousands of lightning strikes.

This is not good.

H/t Your Name’s not Bruce?

You got the science wrong no you got the science wrong.

I think he has an extra “not” in that last sentence.

Why yes, it does. I thought so at the time, especially since he was so pissy to me during the DJ Grothe/TAM brouhaha. Allyship with Grothe and TAM then, and allyship with Our Trans Siblings now. Never allyship with feminists, because I guess that would just be too boring.

Why, what could go wrong? Apart from self-mutilation and whatnot.

Okaaaaay so now we’re just not bothering with any kind of consistency.

She totally sees the contradiction, yes? Not quite.

Nobody’s body is a threat, and the denial of the reality of male violence is as much a part of the way power operates as the violence itself.

If you can make those two claims consistent with each other, you get the Nobel Prize for Broken Reasoning Repair.

More on Lytton:

Like those videos from Paradise when it burned to the ground.

An entire British Columbia town has burned up.

The fire started in the late afternoon and by 6 p.m., the mayor had issued an evacuation order for the entire town of Lytton. …

Ninety per cent the small B.C. village has burned in a devastating wildfire, the town’s local member of Parliament says. 

Brad Vis, who represents Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, says the fire that tore through Lytton and forced the entire community to evacuate Wednesday has led to significant structural damage including in the town’s centre.

…

“We heard that we lost our hospital again, plus the ambulance, and it sounds like the whole town’s burning,” said Terry Wagner, an evacuee, late Wednesday.

Lytton Mayor Jan Polderman ordered an evacuation for the entire village of about 250 people at around 6 p.m. Wednesday. Evacuees were asked to register at the Emergency Social Services building in Merritt, and told they will be provided three days’ worth of supports if needed. 

…

Lytton made headlines this week after breaking the record for highest temperature recorded in Canada three days in a row. The record now stands at 49.6 C, beating the all-time heat record for Las Vegas. 

It’s here.

Does she understand anything?

If it were true that nobody’s body is a threat then rape would not exist. There would be no word for it because there would be nothing for the word to name. If it were true that nobody’s body is a threat then physical violence would not exist.

On this one I can’t even guess what she thinks she’s thinking. It’s not that she doesn’t know that rape exists, but her next step in the reasoning eludes me.

Also, perception of a threat is not contempt. It’s more like the opposite. Perception of a threat is fear, it’s not contempt.

Glinner on the destruction of Green Party Women:

This, from Mumsnet, has been circulating on Twitter today. It concerns drug pusher and abusive male, Kathryn Bristow.

Graham shares a message from a Green Party member:

“I am writing with the latest antics of Kathryn Bristow, who has now declared themselves the sole chair of green party women.

A couple of days ago Kathryn Bristow decided that it was a bad idea for women to be able to interact and speak freely in the internal members-only  Green Party women discussion space. It began with him removing posts on LGBT issues, in order to make it a ‘safe space for all women and non-binary people’.

Women objected, Bristow made threats of legal action. Women continued to object, Bristow made threats of deletion and disciplinary action.

The uppity women continued to object, so Kathryn showed his true colours by locking down the space, deleting all the contributions and comments of women since his last post in March, and declared that going forward the communication would be one way only- from him to the members.

This is a man, remember, silencing all the women in the Green Party women’s party…including the co-chair, who is an actual woman, unlike the man who silenced her.

Read Glinner’s post for all the grotesque details.

Ari Berman (author of the voting rights classic Give Us the Ballot) on the horrific ruling:

Nina Totenberg says the Voting Rights Act is basically dead.

The U.S. Supreme Court for all practical purposes rendered the landmark Voting Rights Act a dead letter on Thursday.

The 6-to-3 vote was along ideological lines, with Justice Samuel Alito writing the decision for the conservative court majority, and the liberals in angry dissent.

At issue in the case were two Arizona laws. One banned the collection of absentee ballots by anyone other than a relative or caregiver, and the other threw out any ballots cast in the wrong precinct. A federal appeals court struck down both provisions, ruling that they had an unequal impact on minority voters, and that there was no evidence of fraud that would have justified their use. But on Thursday the Supreme Court reinstated the state laws, declaring that unequal impact on minorities in this context was relatively minor, that other states have similar laws, and that states don’t have to wait for fraud to occur before enacting laws to prevent it.

It’s no big deal, everybody else does it too, there’s no reason not to. The Supreme Court as teenage rebel.

Just because voting may be “inconvenient for some,” Alito wrote, doesn’t mean that access to voting is unequal.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh yes it does. That’s exactly what it means. As he knows perfectly well, of course.

Who is better equipped to deal with “inconvenient” voting rules? People with cars, money, nannies, upper level jobs that allow them free time whenever they need it? Or people without cars, without spare cash, without anyone to watch the kids, with zero at-will free time? You do the fucking math.

And “the mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone and equal opportunity to vote. ”

Yes it does. That is exactly what it means.