We can’t have herd immunity because people are too stupid.

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

Like car crashes and flu and diabetes, I suppose.

The sad joke is, the more modest goal will be another reason for people to decide not to get vaccinated, which will make the modest goal harder to reach.

The endpoint has changed, but the most pressing challenge remains the same: persuading as many people as possible to get the shot.

So it’s too bad that so many “influencers” are shouting on social media that it’s all a deep state plot, or even Nazism.

“Kapos” ffs.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre puts the lotion on its skin.

Who wouldn’t be delighted to welcome a man as head of a rape crisis centre?

Trevor Phillips warned of the problem back in 2018.

The disaster of the public consultation process on gender recognition has revealed a government so terrified of being labelled transphobic that it is ready to destroy half a century of painstakingly assembled anti-discrimination legislation to the detriment of every woman, person of colour and disabled individual in Britain. Under the current law, a change of gender requires a two-year period of reflection, medical checks and possible physical alterations. It is a gruelling process and proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act rightly aim to make the process less bureaucratic.

However, agitation by a guilt-tripping band of “trans” activists has corralled MPs into contemplating a wholly unnecessary and dangerous further step. It is seriously being suggested that we should do away with any objective test of gender, and leave the decision as to whether an individual should be treated as male or female entirely in the hands of the person themselves. In short, a man would be able to declare himself a woman, and immediately have every right to enter spaces reserved for women — changing rooms, lavatories, prisons.

And lo it came to pass!

The problem is this: if self-declaration becomes established as a principle for one protected characteristic — gender — why should it not apply to all of the other eight, including disability or race?

How indeed? Nobody has actually said, other than shouting louder.

I can already hear outrage at the comparison. The activists will complain that equating gender with disability is yet another example of galloping transphobia. But why shouldn’t a society ask individuals to pass objective tests to acquire identity status? Without criteria other than personal preference, it would be impossible to decide whether some groups truly suffer disadvantage — a big issue for women and people of colour.

Can confirm.

So apparently Rudy Giuliani should be allowed to break whatever laws he chooses now, because if he’s not then that’s fascism?

Attorney Alan Dershowitz on Sunday criticized federal agents’ raid on Rudy Giuliani’s apartment last week, telling radio host John Catsimatidis that it was reminiscent of conduct seen in authoritarian countries.

“In banana republics, in Castro‘s Cuba, in many parts of the world when a candidate loses for president, they go after the candidate, they go after his lawyers, they go after his friends,” Dershowitz said. “That’s happening in America now. They’re going after Rudy Giuliani.”

So Rudy Giuliani should have permanent total immunity now? Because he was Trump’s lawyer and fixer and enforcer? Is that how that works?

Federal agents seized electronic devices in an early-morning raid on Giuliani’s apartment on Wednesday, as part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation. Agents sought communications between Giuliani and a number of Ukrainian officials, along with evidence related to former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Investigators are reportedly pursuing a theory that Giuliani pushed to oust Yovanovitch as ambassador at the behest of Ukrainian government officials, in exchange for information on Biden family business dealings in Ukraine. Such an action could be considered a violation of federal lobbying laws, however Giuliani has strenuously denied the allegation.

But Giuliani is not the most trustworthy witness in the world, is he. He did a lot of lying for Trump. We don’t have to believe his denials, even the strenuous ones.

More on Mridul Wadhwa, from Stuart Campbell at Wings Over Scotland:

Party insiders like the former Trade And Industry spokesman Iain Lawson have been shining light on the arcane and opaque processes of “vetting”, whereby people who want to be candidates themselves astonishingly have the power to block potential rivals and where “woke” candidates are receiving extremely preferential treatment, but the fait accompli is almost complete – by the time the party belatedly elects a new NEC in six weeks, candidates will be in place and it’ll be too late to change anything.

And of course, what’s revealing is who HAS been passed to stand for nomination as well as who hasn’t. Readers, meet a man called Mridul.

The person in the picture above with Nicola Sturgeon is both biologically and legally male – he has no Gender Recognition Certificate. His name is Mridul Wadhwa (Mridul is a male name in India, where he’s from) and he’s the manager of Forth Valley Rape Crisis, a job he obtained by concealing the fact that he was a man – something he appeared to enjoy bragging about before suddenly deleting his tweets on the subject.

He said no one asked but that’s not true: the application form does ask. Also the job description does specify a woman.

(Schedule 9, Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010 is the section which specifically allows employers to limit applicants to those of a particular biological sex, even if they’ve undergone legal gender reassignment, which Wadhwa has not.)

So he never should have had that job at all, much less been jumped to the new job – never should have even in their own terms, let alone the terms of women who don’t agree that men become women by saying so.

And there’s more.

On and on it goes, ratcheting ever up.

Hooray hooray as a man is named CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.

Mridul Wadhwa takes over from Caroline Burrell who has led the organisation for 16 years.

Mridul said: “I am very excited to be moving to ERCC. Having been involved in the violence against women and equality sectors in Scotland since 2005, I am really looking forward to leading the committed team of women who do such incredible work supporting survivors of sexual violence. 

“I am especially pleased to be joining the organisation at a time when it is seeking to increase its accessibility to and inclusion of survivors of gender based violence from marginalised and easy to ignore communities. As a passionate, loud and consistent advocate for the rights of trans women and Black Minority Ethnic women, I look forward to working alongside my new colleagues to ensure that we provide inclusive and flexible support.

Ah yes those marginalised and easy to ignore communities such as men who pretend to be women and steal their top jobs in organizations that exist to protect or lobby for actual women. It doesn’t get a whole lot more in your face than that. “Hahaha bitch I’m the boss of your fancy ‘rape crisis’ club now so you’d better get used to it.”

This business of men who pretend to be women portraying themselves as an extra-marginalised kind of woman because of their being men – it’s such a brilliant con game and so fucking infuriating because it is. Women are now the privileged powerful domineering callous aristocracy tormenting the quivering helpless exploited…men. And the men are getting away with it.

Kathryn Dawson, Chair of ERCC’s Board of Directors, said: “Mridul brings a wealth of experience to ERCC, from her work in the wider rape crisis and women’s movements, to her activism and campaigning on trans rights, BME rights and other equalities issues. We are delighted that a woman with such a strong track record in improving the lives of women and campaigning against all forms of inequality will be leading our organisation into the future.”

But he’s a man. That job should go to a woman, not a man. That should be too obvious to say.

I don’t believe that pianos can become oranges, but I do believe that trans oranges are oranges. Just like trans apples are apples.

If a bunch of cranks can just decide by fiat that the word that has always named the female half of humanity now includes men, then they can decide by fiat that anything means anything and we will never be able to make any kind of sense ever again.

The word “women” is already taken, and random Michaels don’t get to grab it away from us.

Just another woman.

A serving police community support officer whose body was found in woodland died from “significant head injuries”, police said.

The body of Julia James, 53, was found in Akholt Wood, Snowdown, near Dover, on Tuesday.

…

Ms James, whose body was found a few hundred yards from her house, had been taking her dog for a walk when she was killed. The pet was found unharmed at the scene.

…

Ms James joined the force as a PCSO in 2008 and had more recently been working with victims of domestic abuse while based in Canterbury.

Mr Richards said: “She was a hugely-devoted, passionate individual who was completely committed to serving the people of Kent.

But also a woman, so, you know.

The UN points out that the torrent of online threats and abuse aimed at women journalists is not a good thing.

The avalanche of misogynistic abuse and threats is not only damaging women working in media, it is also weaponised “to undercut public trust in critical journalism and facts in general”, a report commissioned by the UN’s cultural agency Unesco has found.

‘The Chilling: Global Trends in Online Violence Against Women Journalists” draws on interviews with 901 journalists from 125 countries. Journalists from diverse backgrounds faced particularly intense attacks, as misogyny mixed with racism, homophobia, religious bigotry and other forms of discrimination, the report found. “Online violence against women journalists is designed to belittle, humiliate, and shame; induce fear, silence, and retreat; discredit them professionally, undermining accountability, journalism and trust in facts,” the report found, adding that it also aimed to freeze women out of public debate.

See also: Karens, TERFs.

In-depth case studies analyse more than 2.5 million posts on Facebook and Twitter directed at two prominent women journalists. The first is Maria Ressa who heads the news outlet Rappler in the Philippines, and was recently awarded the Unesco annual press freedom prize. Her reporting has made her a target of her country’s judiciary and online hate campaigns, and at one point she was receiving 90 hate messages an hour on Facebook, the report found.

The second is the award-winning Carole Cadwalladr who writes for the Observer and the Guardian in the UK. The report found more than 10,000 instances of obvious abuse on Twitter alone, nearly half laced with sexist and misogynistic language.

Well you can’t expect people to abuse women without sexist and misogynistic language. Tools for the job, innit.

[The report] also detailed how online violence is increasingly spilling offline. Case studies included the vandalising of an academy run by Sri Lankan journalist Sharmila Seyyid, and people coming to the home and workplace of April Ryan, White House correspondent for the Grio, specifically to abuse her.

The report analysed multiple forms of online violence, including threats of sexual and physical violence, harassing private messages, coordinated “dog-pile” attacks from large groups, hacking and “doxxing” – publishing personal information online.

As a result of the exposure of personal details, a number of journalists had to move home or even country, with cases in the US, Sri Lanka, the UK and South Africa.

The report also covered less well known forms of attack, including misrepresentation through spoof accounts and manipulated or fake content, and flooding search results on sites like Google with false and hateful content to drown out professional journalistic work.

Yes but never forget, they have cis privilege.

Okay then! There are very tall men, therefore it’s fine for men to compete against women in women’s sports. We can all go home now.

Rachel Cooke at the Guardian talks to David Bell:

Bell, a distinguished psychiatrist and practising psychoanalyst, is the doctor who in 2018 wrote a controversial report about the activities of the gender identity development service (GIDS), a clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in north London, where he worked in adult services from 1995 until his retirement earlier this year.

That’s the one that Keira Bell sued.

(The Tavistock is to appeal; the case will be heard in June. David Bell will be what is technically called an intervenor in the appeal, which means he can give evidence.)

Bell’s report anticipated the concerns of the high court and he feels vindicated by its judgment. “It was jaw-dropping,” he says. “Because it was very strong.” As he read it, he was struck by details that have not been widely reported, particularly those involving a lack of data, a problem he had raised himself (GIDS was unable to produce for the court any data relating to outcomes and effects, whether desirable or adverse, in children who had been prescribed puberty blockers; nor could it provide details of the number and ages of children who had been given them). But the experience was painful, too: “I felt concerned that we’d moved away from the values [of care] the trust has embodied for so long.” He is astonished the judgment seems to have had so little effect on the organisation of GIDS. “Ordinarily, heads would roll,” he says. “The management structure has changed slightly, but it feels like window-dressing.”

Instead of rolling, the heads tried to bully and silence him.

There is anger on both sides of the debate. But given his politics – Bell describes himself to me as a “Corbyn-supporting Jew” – he has been most shocked by the reluctance of the left to engage with the issues. “They think this is to do with being liberal, rather than with concerns about the care of children. Mermaids and Stonewall [the charities for trans children and LGBTQ+ rights] have made people afraid even of listening to another view.” It surprises him that the left is unwilling to consider the role played by big pharma. In the US, a journal that published a paper about the effect of puberty blockers on suicide risk recently had to disclose that one of its co-authors received a stipend from the manufacturer of another drug.

It’s as if the left itself has taken a powerful drug that erases the brain’s memory of what it used to know. “Financial interest? What does that mean?”

When he appeared on Channel 4 News earlier this year, Bell was asked if he feared being on the wrong side of history. “I’ve often thought about that question,” he says. “It’s a good one. Psychiatry has a sad past. Homosexual men were given behavioural therapies and so on. But history isn’t always right. What matters is the truth. I hate the weaponisation of victimhood, the fact that the fear of being seen to be transphobic now overrides everything.” The current campaign to ban so-called gay conversion therapy is, he believes, likely to become a Trojan horse for trans activists who will use it to put pressure on any clinician who does not immediately affirm a young person’s statement about their identity, decrying this, too, as a form of “conversion”. For Bell, the prospect of not being able to talk openly about such things is a tyranny: just another form of repression. “This is about light and air,” he says. “It’s about free thinking, the kind that will result in better outcomes for all young people, whether transgender or not.”

More light.

Lest we forget –

The administration of former President Donald Trump obstructed an investigation looking into why officials withheld about $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico following the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, one of the deadliest U.S. natural disasters in over 100 years, a new report says.

Or to put it another way, the Trump administration withheld about $20 billion in desperately needed hurricane relief for Puerto Rico and then obstructed an investigation into this brutal theft.

The Trump administration’s OMB also insisted on overhauls to Puerto Rico’s property management records, suspension of its minimum wage on federal contracts and other prerequisites to access relief funds, according to the report. Some HUD officials worried such requirements were potentially beyond HUD’s authority to impose on grantees.

Trump steals millions if not billions, and shields his billions from taxation, while he makes sure to prevent people in Puerto Rico from getting the minimum wage for federal work.

Throughout his term, Trump repeatedly opposed disaster funding for Puerto Rico while disputing and failing to acknowledge Maria’s death toll. Trump had also told top White House officials “that he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico,” the Washington Post reported in 2019. “Instead, he wanted more of the money to go to Texas and Florida.”

More white people there, you see. More people like Trump there.

The federal government has allocated nearly $69 billion to help the island recover from Maria as well as other disasters that have hit the island over the past few years. But most of the money, specifically funds for housing and infrastructure relief, hasn’t made its way to communities on the island. Puerto Rico has received $19 billion, according to the Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency.

$50 billion here, $50 billion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up.

H/t Holms

As Skeletor mentioned in Miscellany Room, Caitlyn Jenner got something right for a change.

Guess who doesn’t approve.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What comfortable looks like.

And it isn’t resolved by transferring the problem to GC feminists, and attacking them as the enemy. They are the ones with the most understanding of the real problem, because we feel it ourselves. We live with it every day, and somehow manage without cutting off healthy parts, changing our name or our pronouns, or adopting the stereotypical image of the opposite sex.

It’s amazing how allegedly progressive people and organizations have bought into gender ideology, which is irredemably regressive and reactionary. Gender critical feminists are actually fighting the real war.

In the eyes of trans activists, GC feminists are the enemy, and for good reason. The huge increase in FTM transitioners is a symptom of the bigger picture that feminists see. The epidemic of ROGD can be seen as a “rational” response by young women, trapped within a sexist, patriarchal culture, attempting to escape the burdens placed on their sex. Trans activism denies that ROGD even exists, and by doing so, attempts to try to find any sort of “cause” or “pattern” behind this non-existent phenomena must be derailed. Young women are supposed to just conform to sexist stereotypes, either by submitting to femininity, or “identifying” into maculinity. And of course, there’s always the option of “sex work.”

The locus of change, and the onus of responsibility for change, is thus shifted to female minds and bodies, and directed away from the toxic standards from which they are trying to escape. Within trans activism, “gender non-conformity” is the freedom to switch from one cage to the other, leaving bodies broken, and sexist, patriarchal stereotypes safely intact. This is a feature, not a bug.

This atomization, the attempt to prevent anyone from connecting the dots, the denial of the sheer numbers of “isolated incidents” of ROGD, is an attempt to conceal the bigger picture that is driving this. To borrow Margaret Thatcher’s phrasing “There is no such thing as patriarchy, just individuals and their gender identities.” Or, to quote The Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

Another crack in the dam.

Exactly.

Very damn disturbing indeed.

The thread is all the more encouraging when you see that Rustin is a leader writer at the Guardian.

I didn’t know the Australian PM is an evangelical.

Scott Morrison has asked a national conference of Christian churches to help him help Australia, while revealing his belief that he and his wife, Jenny, have been called upon to do God’s work.

In video that has emerged of the prime minister speaking at the Australian Christian Churches conference on the Gold Coast last week, Morrison also revealed that he had sought a sign from God while on the 2019 election campaign trail, and that he had practised the evangelical tradition of the “laying-on of hands” while working in the role of prime minister.

He also describes the misuse of social media as the work of “the evil one”, in reference to the Devil, and called on his fellow believers to pray against its corrosive effect on society.

It’s unnerving, that kind of thing. If you believe in “the Devil” and “God’s work” and “the laying on of hands” then what other magical beliefs do you have? People in government should have real-world beliefs.

The prime minister travelled to the conference from Sydney using his taxpayer-funded aircraft. No video of the address has been promoted on his Facebook or official pages, nor has his office released a copy of his speech, as usually occurs when he is speaking in his official capacity as prime minister.

Oh he kept it kind of secret, did he. Sinister.

The video, which was broadcast by Vineyard Christian church then distributed by the Rationalist Society, gives rare insight into Morrison’s personal religious practice and the beliefs that guide him and the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement in Australia.

Why is the insight rare? Surely it should be public knowledge.

H/t Omar

On Any Questions yesterday, starting at 33:50 minutes, a caller named Arthur asked “What is a woman?”

Jackie Baillie, Labour, starts with “I’m supportive of the Gender Recognition Act,” then says she recognizes “there are women who will identify as being a women based on their sex”

Ok let’s pause there – that’s a “recognize” too many. Women don’t “identify as being women based on their sex.” They just are women. Women are women, based on their sex. Sticking the I-word in there adds nothing but confusion.

She continues “and there are trans people whooo you know may be born as a different gender who will identify as women and I think we should demedicalize the process and enable them to live as they feel they should do.”

So, she doesn’t answer the question.

The presenter says let’s take a step back, we’re talking about a conflict of rights, between people who identify as blah blah blah many words blah, tiny pause, “and women, and Jackie you would expand the rights for trans people…” In other words the important issue is these people who need many words to explain, not those stupid people who are just the one dull word “women.” The hell with women, let’s talk about expanding the rights of the enthralling mesmerizing fascinating exciting men who say they are women.

Next up, Lorna Slater for the Scottish Greens, who announces that it’s not a question asked in good faith, it’s an anti-trans position. Cool, so much for women then, because who cares. The presenter says hang on, you’re assuming Arthur’s motives, that’s not fair. Slater says it’s a dog-whistle question that tries to make it seem as if women’s rights are threatened by trans people which they are not, absolutely no conflict between women’s rights and trans rights, trans women are women. Human rights are human rights, she concludes. Breathtakingly stupid and fanatical and, if she only knew it, misogynist.

There’s more; maybe later.

How the headline looks on the BBC front page:

Whoever is in charge of that front page is sending a signal. Nicely done.

The BBC solemnly reports on “Elliot” Page’s conversation with Oprah Winfrey.

Elliot Page says having transition surgery has been a “life-saving” experience.

So what the BBC is doing here is promoting the idea that getting your healthy breasts cut off can be life-saving. That is, the BBC is encouraging girls and women to think it can be good to get your healthy breasts cut off. Why is the BBC doing that?

The Canadian-born actor, 34, said having top surgery had allowed him to “feel comfortable in my body for probably the first time”.

And why is the BBC calling it “top surgery”? Why is the BBC, a grown-up institution, using baby talk for amputation of healthy breasts? There’s no such thing as “top surgery”; that’s political slang for removing healthy body parts, an act usually seen as a sign of mental illness.

Top surgery involves the removal of the breast tissue to create a masculine chest.

Healthy breast amputation involves the removal of the healthy breasts so that the owner can pretend to have a “masculine chest.”

Page said the surgery had given him a new energy, “because it is such a freeing, freeing experience”.

And she said it while looking as wan and low-energy and pallid and profoundly miserable as it’s possible to look.

Page also used the interview to criticise moves by some US states banning transgender athletes from competing in girls sports teams.

Yet another respectable news organization repeats the lie.

“If you’re not gonna allow trans kids to play sports, children will die,” Page said. “And it really is that simple.”

Baby talk all the way down.

Someone is shocked and hurt in Halifax.

“Shocked and hurt” is how Alicia Frederick says she felt when she learned about a new book purchased by Halifax Public Libraries.

Public libraries buy a lot of books. It’s not really a worthwhile project to try to monitor their purchases for what makes you, Random Person, shocked and hurt. Libraries don’t and can’t filter their acquisition process according to what might possibly make someone feel shocked and hurt.

The library currently owns two copies of the book by Abigail Shrier, called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. As of this writing, 21 people have it on hold. The book’s description on the library website says:

Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators.

We’re supposed to think that’s stupid and wrong. Go take another look at “Elliot” Page to see how stupid and wrong it isn’t.

On March 17, Nicole Nascimento, another mother of a trans child, expressed concern about the book in a Facebook post, and linked to a letter* written by Elm Klemic, who had addressed it to the Ottawa Public Library, asking that library to not include the book in its collection.

…

The letter says that the book “has the potential to cause great harm.” It cites statistics on the high levels of harassment and violence trans youth report, as well as the alarming percentage of those who have made at least one suicide attempt.

The usual nonsense, in short, along with the obligatory threat of suicide which, as mental health professionals keep pointing out, is considered very bad practice because it promotes suicidal ideation. But hey, trans activism trumps all the rules.

Now that the library has put the book into circulation, Nascimento said in a message to the Examiner that she was “concerned.” She wrote, “It surprises me that our library would carry a book that would risk the lives of trans youth simply for the sake of intellectual freedom. It is incredibly irresponsible, especially given the fact that the book in question has little to no scientific ground to stand on.”

The book doesn’t exist “simply for the sake of intellectual freedom.” Shrier wrote it to say something that needs to be said. It’s a substantive book with a substantive argument, and that’s why she wrote it and the publisher published it and Halifax readers are requesting it from the library.

Earlier this week, Mila McKay launched a new online petition calling on the library to remove the book from its collection. The petition says, “Transgender Identity is not a choice, a Craze, or a Fad” and that the inclusion of the book in the library’s collection has “increased ease of access to parents and other adults who work with youth who may believe the hateful messages in the book and subsequently act in ways that endanger trans children.”

But Mila McKay doesn’t know that trans identity is not a choice or a craze or a fad. How could she know that? Does she have infallible insight into the minds of all people who identify as trans? How could anybody know what she claims to know?

McKay, a trans/non-binary anti-poverty activist and sociology student at Mount Saint Vincent University, said in an interview she was “very angry” about the library’s decision. She does not think the book should be censored — but that removal from the library collection does not constitute censorship. It “isn’t stopping [Shrier] from selling her book or publishing her book… There are all kinds of books [Halifax Public Libraries] don’t shelve. They don’t buy just any book. So why this book?”

Who put her him them in charge of what books Halifax library adds to its shelves? Why this trans/non-binary anti-poverty activist and sociology student?