From George Eliot’s “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” courtesy of Project Gutenberg:

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic.  But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity—that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species.  The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond.  Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues.

Do admit – “her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity.” Five stars.

We had imagined that destitute women turned novelists, as they turned governesses, because they had no other “ladylike” means of getting their bread.  On this supposition, vacillating syntax and improbable incident had a certain pathos for us, like the extremely supererogatory pincushions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a blind man.

Oh zing – she could do malice too.

Women’s silly novels, we are now convinced, are written under totally different circumstances.  The fair writers have evidently never talked to a tradesman except from a carriage window; they have no notion of the working-classes except as “dependents;” they think five hundred a year a miserable pittance; Belgravia and “baronial halls” are their primary truths; and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if not a prime minister.  It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-colored ink and a ruby pen; that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers’ accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains. It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life.  If their peers and peeresses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople, and cottagers are impossible; and their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness.

“The peculiar impartiality” – she’s funny. She’s a great deal slower about it than Jane Austen, but she is funny. Mr. Brooke in Middlemarch is very funny indeed.

The most pitiable of all silly novels by lady novelists are what we may call the oracular species—novels intended to expound the writer’s religious, philosophical, or moral theories.  There seems to be a notion abroad among women, rather akin to the superstition that the speech and actions of idiots are inspired, and that the human being most entirely exhausted of common-sense is the fittest vehicle of revelation.  To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is the best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the knottiest moral and speculative questions. 

You see why she used a male pseudonym…

Berkeley News headline:

Truly changing sex is possible, says Berkeley trans scholar Grace Lavery

No it isn’t. Next?

An associate professor of Victorian literature, Lavery first became interested in trans studies after reading the work of George Eliot, a 19th-century writer — born Mary Ann Evans, who went by a masculine pseudonym.

“There was this thread that I couldn’t stop pulling on,” said Lavery. “We know that Eliot was read as a male writer by many, many people and wanted to be read as a male writer. Those things are interesting and important. It was something that I thought very deeply about.”

She didn’t “want to be read as a male writer” as such, she wanted not to be dismissed as a female writer. She wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted to be understood as an intellectual as well as a novelist. None of that was available to her as a woman at that time. That does not mean that she wanted to be a man, much less that she was a man or thought she was a man.

Trust a man who thinks he’s a woman to fail to understand that.

After reading several unsatisfactory explanations about why Eliot used a masculine pseudonym, Lavery began to do her own scholarly research on the subject and is now one of Berkeley’s experts on trans studies.

That must have been some shit “scholarly research” then, because Eliot’s reasons for using a male pseudonym are pretty god damn obvious.

Grace Lavery: … There is a kind of conservative feminist position that argues that sex is set in stone, is assigned at birth. And I don’t agree with that. Most scientists I’ve spoken to seem pretty comfortable with the idea that sex, like any other biological category, is not a cast-iron law, but rather a sort of set of contingencies that can be played with and culturally reinforced or not culturally reinforced.

Nice manipulative choice of metaphors – set in stone, cast-iron law. Also nice unmarked shift from the reality of female and male sex to play and cultural reinforcement. Of course we don’t disagree that sex can be “played with” and culturally deinforced. We disagree that it can be literally swapped.

One of the things that I encountered in some of the literature when I was beginning to transition was that people would say, “If you want to be treated as a woman, speak less and ask more questions and direct comments more specifically to other individuals.” And I was like, “Well, to me, that feels fairly misogynist, actually” — that I was supposed to make myself smaller, and I’m not really prepared to do that. I do understand how these things work, but that’s not a deal I’m willing to make.

Good. Great. Now take that thought and apply it to women in general, and turn your energy to demolishing those stereotypes instead of trying to make them apply to you.

The Times defends Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work again.

I don’t actually agree with the principle as they state it. I don’t think schools should be free to teach, say, that Emmett Till deserved what he got. Is the 1619 Project the obverse of that? I don’t think so.

More on that:

A legal red light district is set to be scrapped after a “significant” reduction of sex workers in the area.

Why is it called a “red light district”? That’s a euphemism. Who is shielded by that euphemism? The men who pay to rape women. “Red light district” conveys zero information. It’s a district where men pay women to be sexual toilets for them.

The Managed Approach (MA) area in Holbeck, Leeds, allowed sex workers to operate without fear of prosecution, but was paused in March 2020.

Ah yes it was all about compassion for the “sex workers,” wasn’t it, nothing to do with compassion for the johns. There’s another way to spare “sex workers” the fear of prosecution, and that’s the Nordic model. Prosecute the punters, not the women.

One piece of good news, which is actually just a piece of bad news undone.

Once more for those in the back: access to women’s bodies is not a right.

That guy who calls himself Wisey the Pretty isn’t happy that Maya won her appeal.

You might have heard about Maya Forstater, who made being “gender critical” a protected belief in the UK last weekend. I made this comic to summarize the situation in case you weren’t following. We can’t let that embolden and radicalize TERFs all around the world.

Not your call, bro. You don’t get to decide what we’re allowed to think and say.

Sure, because before the ruling, we weren’t allowed to think these thoughts in private. Our thoughts were public property.

Peggy Orenstein has an op-ed in the NY Times on why porn literacy is needed.

Parents often say that if they try to have the sex talk with their teens, the kids plug their ears and hum or run screaming from the room. But late last month, those roles were reversed: After a workshop for high school juniors at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School promoting critical thinking about online pornography, it was parents who flipped out. Some took to the media — The New York Post, Fox News, The Federalist and other like-minded outlets jumped on the story — accusing the school of indoctrinating children.

That may be because it was unclear, at least in the source I read, that the workshop was promoting critical thinking about porn. The title was Porn Literacy, which is not quite the same thing and in fact suggests a different approach.

The free content most readily available to minors tends to show sex as something men do to rather than with women. It often portrays female pleasure as a performance for male satisfaction, shows wildly unrealistic bodies, is indifferent to consent (sometimes in its actual production) and flirts with incest.

The clips can also skew toward the hostile. In a 2020 analysis of more than 4,000 heterosexual scenes on Pornhub and Xvideos, 45 percent and 35 percent, respectively, contained aggression, almost exclusively directed at women.

Well, you see, in male people the brain drawer for aggression is right next to the brain box for sex, so they just can’t help mashing the two together. Plus the culture teaches them that women are stupid and worthless and Karens, so what does anyone expect?

Boys I interview typically assure me that they know the difference between fantasy and reality. Maybe. But that’s the response people give to any suggestion of media influence. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psych to know that what we consume shapes our thoughts and behavior even — maybe especially — when we believe it doesn’t.

And even if they do know the difference, that doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy playing out the fantasy. “Hey I know this isn’t real but I’m going to do it to her anyway. Hot.”

Among college men, pornography use has been associated with seeing women as disposable and, for both sexes, a stronger belief in rape myths — such as that a woman “asked for it” because of what she wore or how much she drank. The combination of exposure and perception of porn’s accuracy has also been associated with an increased risk of sexual aggression, which was defined as pressuring someone into intercourse who has already refused.

Because porn isn’t erotica. Sex without violence (by the man, on the woman) is seen as vanilla. Bring on the ghost peppers, bitch!

Critical Race Theory may be a mixed bag that includes some very silly or sinister ideas, but on the other hand there’s this kind of thing.

In other words “history” as presented by Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind.

The acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs:

Pregnant women. The word for those people is women. Stop erasing us.

“All you Karens” and “panties in a bunch” right out of the gate. Top class doctoring.

Areas with more people vaccinated are found to have lower rates of infection. I’m tempted to add “You don’t say!” but the Post reports that in fact that wasn’t true until now.

As recently as 10 days ago, vaccination rates did not predict a difference in coronavirus cases, but immunization rates have diverged, and case counts in the highly vaccinated states are dropping quickly.

…

But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.

…

Local public health officials fear the public is tuning out the danger as they see news reports of cratering infections and scenes of reopened bars and entertainment venues across the nation, assuming vaccinations are no longer necessary.

Missouri’s Polk County — where less than a quarter of the population of roughly 30,000 is fully vaccinated — has reported nearly 90 new infections in one week, an increase after several months of decline.

Just get the damn shots, people. This isn’t a game.

Kim Lionberger, director of the [Sweetwater, Wyoming] county board of health, said her staff is doing the best they can to provide scientific facts about the virus and the vaccines. But they are also competing with skeptical residents who prefer affirmation to information and find it from anti-vaccine doctors and questionable reports on Facebook.

“The mentality of people in Wyoming is that rugged individualism where they do their own thing and don’t want people telling them what they should be doing because they are going to do what they want to do,” said Lionberger.

Also known as utter heedless selfishness.

Stachon isn’t sure what she would do if a highly contagious variant tears through the community and some have already been detected. The Wyoming legislature restricted the powers of public health officials like her to put disease control measures in place.

“For me to try to say we need to go back and mask or do anything like that, I would almost think I need police protection,” Stachon said. “It’s just sad. You feel impotent.”

Sad and infuriating. More infuriating than sad, really, because the heedless selfishness harms others as well as the heedless selfish people.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:

The idea that will and money could create success was at the heart of the Reagan Revolution. Its adherents championed the idea that any individual could prosper in America, so long as the government stayed out of his (it was almost always his) business.

Critical Race Theory challenges this individualist ideology. CRT emerged in the late 1970s in legal scholarship written by people who recognized that legal protections for individuals did not, in fact, level the playing field in America. They noted that racial biases are embedded in our legal system. From that, other scholars noted that racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other biases are embedded in the other systems that make up our society.

Historians began to cover this ground long ago. Oklahoma historian Angie Debo established such biases in the construction of American law in her book, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes back in 1940. Since then, historians have explored the biases in our housing policies, policing, medical care, and so on, and there are very few who would suggest that our systems are truly neutral.

Very few historians, I guess she means. Certainly there are very many people in general who would suggest exactly that, and others who would suggest that no actually our systems are biased in favor of Those People.

So why is Critical Race Theory such a flashpoint in today’s political world? Perhaps in part because it rejects the Republican insistence that an individual can create a prosperous life by will alone. It says that, no matter how talented someone might be, or how eager and dedicated, they cannot always contend against the societal forces stacked against them. It argues for the important weight of systems, established through time, rather than the idea that anyone can create a new reality.

It acknowledges the importance of history.

H/t guest

Course description for Law 266 – Critical Race Theory at UCLA Law.

General Course Description:

Throughout American history, race has profoundly affected the lives of individuals, the growth of social institutions, the substance of culture, and the workings of our political economy. Not surprisingly, this impact has been substantially mediated through the law and legal institutions. To understand the deep interconnections between race and law, and particularly the ways in which race and law are mutually constitutive, is an extraordinary intellectual challenge. That is precisely the project of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This course will pursue this project by exploring emerging themes within CRT. Contrary to the traditional notion that racial subordination represents a deviation from the liberal legal ideal, this body of work recasts the role of law as historically central to and complicit in upholding racial hierarchy as well as hierarchies of gender, class, and sexual orientation, among other others.

It certainly seems like an interesting (and important) subject, and worth exploring. I’m not sure exactly what “a deviation from the liberal legal ideal” means in this context. Is the liberal legal ideal the whole set of principles we are (in theory) governed by, or is it more narrowly legal than that? In other words is it wrong to think Jefferson and co really did contradict themselves by saying all men are created equal while also enshrining slavery in the Constitution?

We will focus on the origins of the critique and the contrasts between CRT and liberal and conservative analytical frameworks on race and American law and society. We will also examine some of the questions and criticisms raised about CRT, from both inside and outside the genre, as well as the impact of the work on legal and political discourses. The point of departure for the course is an exploration of race itself—what exactly is race?—and the role law plays in constructing race and alternatingly ameliorating and perpetuating racism.

CRT refers to a surge of legal scholarship, starting in the late 1980s and blossoming in the 1990s, that challenged conventional anti-discrimination thinking. According to the conventional narrative (then and probably still dominant in legal thinking about racial discrimination), discrimination on the basis of race could be effectively alleviated by expanding constitutional or statutory rights and then allowing aggrieved parties to file claims seeking remedies from governmental or private wrongdoers. In contrast, CRT scholars view racism as institutional and as baked into both American law and society. They have sharply criticized doctrines such as the intent requirement (the idea that discrimination must be intentional in order to be actionable) as overly narrow and reformist rather than structural in nature, to provide just one example.

That seems true to me. Think of redlining for instance. It doesn’t have to be explicitly racist to do its work – you just frame it as a matter of real estate values. Look here, for some reason houses in this area go for much lower prices than houses in this other area, so from an investment point of view you really ought to avoid the lower prices area, which we’ll just color red here on the map so that it will remind you to Stop. If you’re white, that is; obviously if you’re not white those considerations don’t apply.

Not intentionally racist! So then what? We just shrug and move on?

CRT as a course is part intellectual history (the story of the scholarly movement in the legal academy) and part deep exploration of the far-reaching implications of viewing race and racism in this light. We will consider criticisms of CRT, including conservative critiques, but mostly looking at challenges from within the field. We will put CRT into conversation with the most innovative social scientific formulations of racism and “race” as a concept, asking how they illuminate past and present challenges such as: reparations for past race-based injustice; social movements to combat racism; police violence against and incarceration of disproportionate numbers of people (especially men) of color; laws and policies toward migrants. The course will situate racism as operating through and in conjunction with inequality based on class, gender, national (national original and citizenship), and sexual orientation/expression.

A note at the end says the course is open only to students specializing in Critical Race Studies.

H/t twiliter

Has there ever been an NHS badge signifying a pledge to show support for women?

Some NHS staff won’t want to take that pledge because of the way the T bullies and coerces and threatens women. What will happen to them if they refuse? Will they be reported and punished? Will they be fired?

What’s a “true self”? What does it mean for people to be free to be their “true selves”? What does it have to do with the NHS?

Badge up or be fired yeah?

Continuing the effort to pin down what Critical Race Theory actually is, I find an explainer from the American Bar Association (which I figure is establishment enough that it won’t be accused of Marxist postmodernism or modern postMarxism).

CRT is not a diversity and inclusion “training” but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship. [ Kimberlé ] Crenshaw—who coined the term “CRT”—notes that CRT is not a noun, but a verb. It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice.

Yeah that’s not a good start. It is a noun; if you want to have a verb for it then make one. And saying it can’t be confined to a static definition sounds like…what’s the word? Oh yes, bullshitting. [Updating to add: I took her too literally; see Harald’s reading in comment #12.]

It critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers.

I see no problem there, and I certainly think that job needs doing. (On the other hand isn’t that something that activists and scholars have been doing for some time? Is it really particular to CRT?)

CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others.

Uh oh.

Notice that sex – the one that relegates women to the bottom tiers – is hidden in “and others.” Why isn’t sex important enough to be named while “gender identity” is? Maybe the ABA isn’t so establishment after all (or it’s a different kind of establishment).

CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation. 

But surely it’s not alone in that. The problem here seems to be not that CRT is wild and crazy but that there’s nothing particularly new about it.

Then it gets more specific.

While recognizing the evolving and malleable nature of CRT, scholar Khiara Bridges outlines a few key tenets of CRT, including:

Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant. It recognizes that science (as demonstrated in the Human Genome Project) refutes the idea of biological racial differences. According to scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, race is the product of social thought and is not connected to biological reality.

What are they scholars of? Biology or something else?

Acknowledgement that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality. This dismisses the idea that racist incidents are aberrations but instead are manifestations of structural and systemic racism.

Is that wrong? It doesn’t seem wrong to me. Of course racism is embedded within systems and institutions (in the US at least); it would be strange if it weren’t.

Rejection of popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few “bad apples.” CRT recognizes that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy. CRT rejects claims of meritocracy or “colorblindness.” CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.

Is that wrong? I don’t think so.

Recognition of the relevance of people’s everyday lives to scholarship. This includes embracing the lived experiences of people of color, including those preserved through storytelling, and rejecting deficit-informed research that excludes the epistemologies of people of color.

Oh yes that one – we’ve seen that one before. Standpoint epistemology yadda yadda. That I do think is a crock of shit. By all means embrace lived experiences and storytelling, but don’t claim they’re the same thing as systematic inquiry and testing.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Trying to Figure It Out.

Fair questions.

Or, she concludes, “is it about adding more empty praise to the teaching of history and completing the sanitization of history that already is the case? If so, why?”

Because it’s more cheerful, I suppose.

Open Democracy erases women from a discussion of abortion rights. Much democracy, very open.

“Mum!” “Murderer!” “Give your baby a present – a birthday!” For close to 25 years, pregnant people were harassed by anti-choice protesters as they made their way into the MSI Reproductive Choices clinic in Ealing, west London.

No, not pregnant people, pregnant women. However butch any of them may have been, they were still women. If you can’t say the word “women” you can’t defend women’s rights.

Thanks to successful campaigning by Sister Supporter – a group of grassroots activists that I am part of – this is no longer the case. Our activism has also spread nationally, protecting women from anti-choice harassment outside clinics that provide safe abortion care in Richmond upon Thames and Manchester.

There you go! That’s the word. Use it passim please, not as an afterthought.

Our work continues. According to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), since 2018 there’s been an anti-abortion presence at 42 clinics across England and Wales. More than 100,000 women and pregnant people, according to BPAS research, were subjected to anti-choice harassment while attending an appointment in 2019.

Just women. Men don’t need abortion rights.

The group did good work. It shouldn’t be obscured by this fad for erasing women.

Sister Supporter is a pro-choice, anti-harassment grassroots organisation that was founded in November 2015 after an Ealing resident, Anna Veglio-White, returned home from university and was shocked that the anti-abortion groups she remembered seeing as a child were still standing outside the clinic, many years later.

That same week, she placed an advert in the local paper with a call to action: come to a pro-choice counter-demo at the weekend. More than 20 local residents turned up with home-made placards, and Sister Supporter was born.

(Sisters are women.)

Over the years, we had holy water thrown on us, were called ‘murderers’ and were told repeatedly that we were going to hell. Our policy in response has been to ‘not engage’. While we managed to block clinic users’ view of the protestors, and vice versa, we couldn’t drown out the sound of their anti-choice chants, prayers and songs.

We also collected evidence to build local support for our campaign and look for solutions. This formed the basis of our petition to Ealing Council, which received 3,593 signatures (more than any previous petition by local residents).

In April 2018, a public spaces protection order (PSPO) – a tool defined in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 – came into force, meaning that protesters could no longer go within 100 metres of the MSI clinic.

Well done.

Another pebble added to the pile, or piece of scaffolding removed [standard note that the source is the Daily Mail]:

Kate Grimes, a former chief executive of Kingston Hospital in South-West London, has joined a growing chorus calling on organisations to withdraw from the Stonewall scheme.

…

Ms Grimes accused Stonewall of ‘undermining’ the NHS’s ability to keep patients safe, ‘stifling’ free speech and creating a ‘culture of fear’ among some NHS staff.

And she warned [that] some advice risked ‘opening up NHS organisations to litigation and reputational damage’.

Ms Grimes recalled how she received offensive messages when she came out as a lesbian in the late 1980s, her pride at running one of the country’s leading HIV/AIDS services, and appreciation for Stonewall’s campaign for greater equality.

But she said the charity’s recent lobbying over trans issues had culminated in the ‘incorrect notion’ that a man who identifies as a woman is allowed by law to access female-only spaces. As a result, she added, female patients no longer have access to single-sex accommodation in wards and bathrooms.

‘The implications for patients are significant,’ she added. ‘Female patients are exposed to the distress and dangers of sharing private space with men at a time when they are vulnerable.’

And you know what? Female people should never be forced to share private space with men, even when they’re in perfect health and fully dressed. Private space is private, so it’s kind of definitional that no one should be forced to share it.

Ms Grimes [said]: ‘Hospital workers are losing their rights, enshrined in law, to separate bathroom and changing facilities. Anyone who speaks up may face disciplinary action, as policies are brought into line with Stonewall’s view.’

Who made Stonewall god? It turns out, no one.

Utopia at last: free binders and packers for the people.

Trans students in Edinburgh are being offered free prosthetic breasts and “packers” that help give the appearance of having a penis.

Edinburgh University’s students’ association (EUSA) is paying for “gender-empowering” items that also include breast-binders and compression underwear to hide male genitalia.

“Gender-empowering”? What does that even mean?

For Women Scotland, the women’s rights group, said it was “horrified” to learn about the programme.

It said: “Breast-binding is a dangerous and regressive practice that destroys healthy tissue and causes breathing problems and damage to the ribcage. It restricts young women’s capacity to participate in normal activities and if done for long periods will cause permanent damage.”

But in exchange the young women are “gender-empowered.” Well worth it, I’m sure.

How interesting – Katy Montgomerie doesn’t want men in his spaces.

He doesn’t want men in his spaces, but he does want to be in women’s spaces.