Robert Reich writes:

A quarter-century ago, I and other members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet urged him to reject the Republican proposal to end welfare. It was too punitive, we said, subjecting poor Americans to deep and abiding poverty. But Clinton’s political advisers warned that unless he went along, he would jeopardize his reelection.

And obviously his reelection was more important than keeping people out of deep and abiding poverty.

That was the end of welfare as we knew it. As Clinton boasted in his State of the Union address to Congress that year: “The era of big government is over.”

Until Thursday, that is. Joe Biden signed into law the biggest expansion of government assistance since the 1960s – a guaranteed income for most families with children, raising the maximum benefit by up to 80% per child.

Yet Biden was one of those “big government is over” Democrats back then; he was one of the most conservative Dems.

By the time Clinton campaigned for president, “ending welfare as we knew it” had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs. (In Britain, enlarged child benefits actually increased employment among single mothers.)

But along came Covid and walloped everyone except the super-rich, who got super-richer.

The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. For years, conservative economists argued that tax cuts for the rich create job-creating investments, while assistance to the poor creates dependency. Rubbish.

Bidenomics is exactly the reverse: Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone. This is far more plausible. We’ll learn how much in coming months.

While more people get vaccinated.

Mind you, Jim Crow has always worn a suit and tie.

Stacey Abrams has described Republican efforts to restrict voting rights in Georgia as “racist” and “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie”.

It wasn’t just sheriffs and guys in pickup trucks, it was legislatures and judges and mayors.

The bill in Georgia, SB241, includes various measures including ending the right to vote by mail without having to provide an excuse, and other new identification requirements. Republicans have held up what they say is a risk of voter fraud as justification for the legislation despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

And despite the fact that we all know the point of these laws is not to prevent voter fraud but to make voting more difficult. Added difficulty is more of a barrier to people with fewer resources. People with fewer resources are more likely to vote D. It’s not subtle.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Abrams said the moves by lawmakers in Georgia would significantly curtail voting access after a record number of voters propelled Democratic victories in the 2020 race.

Curtailing access is the goal. It always has been.

“And so, instead of celebrating better access and more participation, their response is to try to eliminate access to voting for primarily communities of color. And there’s a direct correlation between the usage of drop boxes, the usage of in person early voting, especially on Sundays, and the use of vote by mail and a direct increase in the number of people of color voting.”

Make voting a privilege again!

Bristol University’s Student Union is bullying a women’s group for being a women’s group. Mustn’t allow the witches to organize, you know.

The following is a copy of the letter that feminist student society Women Talk Back! has sent to the Minister of Education Gavin Williamson regarding sanctions imposed by the Bristol SU for being a single-sex feminist society. The Bristol SU also seeks to ban the president of our student society, PhD student Raquel Rosario Sanchez, from leadership roles for defending women’s right to privacy, dignity and safety during an incident that took place in March 2020. The students are seeking support in what they regard to be an attempt to erode their rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and to single-sex spaces.

Dear Mr Williamson,

Following your announcement of proposed legislation to protect academic freedom against “rising intolerance” within universities in February (‘Turning the tide on cancel culture will start with universities respecting free thought,’ The Telegraph), we would like to inform you of an on-going threat to student’s free speech and freedom of association, both inside the Bristol SU and the University of Bristol. 

We are Women Talk Back!, a University of Bristol student society that holds regular female-only consciousness-raising meetings where we engage in lively discussion and debate, while centring our experiences as women living under patriarchy. We are open to all women, regardless of student status, age, income or background. The group was set up informally among students and affiliated with the Bristol Student Union in 2018, gathering weekly inside the University’s Multifaith Chaplaincy. 

But of course by “all women” they mean all women, not all women and men who say they are women.

The issue of male violence and its impact on women and girls, is discussed in virtually in all our meetings. Our attendees have stressed how important it is that we protect their rights to privacy, safety and dignity when discussing such sensitive matters. Therefore, when affiliating to the Bristol SU, we consulted with discrimination lawyers to help us explain why we utilise the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act 2010. As well as regular discussion groups, Women Talk Back! holds larger, public events, inviting feminist speakers to discuss topics such as sexual assault, prostitution and academic freedom. 

We welcome the fact that there are hundreds of student societies open to everyone, including another feminism-themed one, but we proudly prioritise women’s lives and experiences in ours. After we became affiliated, the cornerstone of our student society being our women-only status, the Bristol SU changed its bylaws to modify its definition of ‘women’ to mean:

“All who self define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities that include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women.” 

But of course that’s not what the word means, or should mean or can mean. If everyone agreed that’s what the word means we would need a new word for what “woman” used to mean. We need a word for that. It’s not some minor or niche thing, like a word for a particular piece of machinery, it’s the word for half of humanity, the half without which there can be no humanity. We can’t just blithely say now it means something quite different and proceed as if nothing significant has been lost.

By the way the Bristol SU hasn’t provided a new definition of “men.”

On the evening of 1st March 2020, Women Talk Back! held a consciousness-raising meeting titled ‘Boundaries and Feminism’. We described this meeting as: 

“One of the core foundations of human relationships comes out of boundaries. Where do I end and where does the other begin? My space. My will. My rights. All of these interact and are negotiated when we encounter others. Most often than not, women’s lives seem to be bounded by social conventions, laws, traditions, culture… rather than boundaries being the result of a balanced negotiation between a woman’s needs and desires, and other people that surround her.”

A couple of student trans activists, including a self-identifying transwoman, turned up to the session. All information regarding our society clearly state that our consciousness-raising meetings are women-only (as opposed to our larger events that are open to everyone). The male student stated being aware that Women Talk Back! operates under the single-sex exemptions of the Equality Act 2010, but said they thought that by showing up in person and “being nice” to us, they would be able to circumvent our boundaries. We recognised these student trans activists from their previous targeting of some of our larger events and protesting feminist events hosted by other student societies, including a time when they had to be removed by security (paid by students) after attempting to hijack the meeting.

Thus underlining how stereotypically male they are. Entitled, demanding, and entirely indifferent to the needs and wants of women.

Following the 1 March 2020 incident, the Bristol SU retroactively claimed that we were never single-sex to begin with, which is a curious assertion because our women-only status has been the most pressing bone of contention in our relationship with the Bristol SU during these past three years. 

The Bristol SU opened up an investigation into this complaint and Women Talk Back! provided three witness statements (aside from our President’s separate account) from women who were present that night in which we detailed the intimidating nature of this incident and how we felt threatened into being forced to weaken our boundaries for fear of retaliation from student trans activists. The result of this investigation was the Bristol SU sanctioning our student society and banning our President from leadership roles. The Student Union ordered:

Mandatory diversity training so we accept males into our women-only space

Our President must step down from her role, and cannot run as a committee member on any other society’s committee for two years

The group is not allowed to be female-only, and we must make it clear on our social media pages and our page on the SU website that our group is ‘open to everyone’

It’s infuriating.

But in Hackney…

In a feminine way, of course.

London is not a happy city tonight.

You would think that, wouldn’t you.

Adding:

Here he is with two working arms, stating the case.

H/t latsot

All women.

There should be no limits of the types of women protected from hate crime says Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, as she begins her consideration of whether Scotland requires a standalone offence to tackle misogynist abuse.

Well duh. Of course there should be no such limits. Misogyny doesn’t limit itself so why would a law against misogynist abuse limit itself?

Ok I’ll stop playing dumb now. We know why.

Kennedy is immediately clear on how she would define the scope of specific protection she is charged with: “This is about hatred. Trans women, gay women, journalists, parliamentarians, all women get a whole lot of horrible stuff slung at them – disproportionately – and I’m not narrowing down those who receive it.”

She’s not “narrowing it down” to women. Then why call it misogynist abuse?

Kennedy and her six-person panel – “hand-picked by me” – have a year to resolve whether the creation of a standalone offence or adding sex to the list of other protected characteristics, such as race and religion, would better tackle misogynist abuse.

While a working definition of misogyny is for the panel to deliberate, Kennedy suggests it should target conduct like street harassment, sexual bullying in the workplace and online abuse of women in public life. She particularly mentions a survey published last week by Holyrood magazine, which found almost a third of female MSPs who responded had received a threat of sexual violence.

She is clear about the significant and long-lasting impact of such hatred: “It ends up eating away at your self-confidence, your sense of safety, it creates fear and anxiety … We’re talking about the whole backdrop of inequality and how women are treated in society.”

Specifically women. It’s true that men can be subject to abuse for not being Manly enough, and that that does stem from hatred and fear of everything to do with the dreaded female, but it’s still a separate issue.

The Scottish government’s own hate crime bill has attracted a huge amount of controversy and, while it was always the intention to examine this standalone option, the timing is far from ideal. As it stands, the bill that is passing through Holyrood criminalises, among other things, the stirring up of hatred against cross-dressing people, thereby protecting men who dress as women, but not the stirring up of hatred against women, while the decision on protections for women won’t be made until Kennedy’s working group reports back in 12 months’ time.

Well you know how it is, it’s just so hard to remember that women exist at all.

Best laugh in days.

This happened last night in Montreal.

That’s broken all right.

Jeffrey Trachtenberg at the Wall Street Journal reports:

Amazon Inc. said it recently removed a three-year-old book about transgender issues from its platforms because it decided not to sell books that frame transgender and other sexual identities as mental illnesses.

The company explained its decision in a letter Thursday to Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The senators had written last month to Chief Executive Jeff Bezos requesting an explanation of why “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” was no longer available on Amazon nor on its Kindle and Audible platforms.

How I hate to agree with Rubio and Hawley on anything.

“When Harry Became Sally,” written by the conservative scholar Ryan T. Anderson, was published in February 2018. The book focuses on a variety of issues including gender identity.

It’s not only conservatives who don’t agree that Harry can become Sally though.

“Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” said Mr. Anderson and Roger Kimball, the publisher of Encounter Books, the New York-based nonprofit that published the book, in a statement Thursday in response to Amazon’s letter.

“There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria,” they added, calling their book “an important contribution” to that conversation. “Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process,” they said.

Do we want Amazon deciding what books we can acquire? I don’t think so.

It’s not “at odds with” any law to say that trans women are men who identify as women or as trans women. It’s the literal truth and there are (so far) no laws that forbid at. There’s massive social pressure, and maybe Ash Sarkar thinks the two are the same, but they’re not.

Trans women are men who identify as women; that’s what the word “trans” means. (They also identify as trans women, while shouting that “trans women are women,” so people get so bored with the tautology that they go do something else.)

It’s unpleasant to notice that Ash Sarkar ignores the 118 murdered women to focus on how to refer to non-murdered men who identify as women.

I think Sarkar is the one who must do better. Whether she can or not is a different question.

Remember when the Amazon was a carbon sink? Good times.

Historically, the Amazon rainforest has been one of the planet’s most important sources of carbon sequestration, caching billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. For decades, scientists have cautioned us not to take this crucial service for granted, warning that in just 15 years, the Amazon could meet the fate of other large forests and become a source of greenhouse gases. Devastating new research shows that bleak scenario has likely already begun.

Oops.

A groundbreaking study published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change on Thursday suggests that the Amazon rainforest is exhaling at least as many greenhouse gases as it breathes in. The analysis, conducted by more than 30 researchers from North and South America, is the first to ever assess the cumulative cycle of all the planet-warming gases the jungle emits compared to what it sucks up and stores in plants and soil.

…

Deforestation is weakening the forest’s ability to suck up carbon, and is also making the soil even more unhealthy, causing it to produce more nitrous oxide. When the forests are left bare, they also absorb more heat from the sun, which can further dry the soil and trees and cause both to emit even more warming gases. And the climate crisis—itself driven by many of the industries behind deforestation—is increasing warming in the region, amplifying that effect. All this could leave the Amazon cleaved in two, and leave the planet’s greenhouse gas balance increasingly out of sorts.

But that’s just trivia. The really important thing is how Eddie Izzard is identifying today.

Grooming much?

It’s for 5-9 year olds. Class is once a week. Classes are all sold out!

Description

Class Experience

This group is for our youngest learners who might be binary transgender, nonbinary transgender, gender-expansive, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, agender, queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or exploring their gender or sexual orientation. Neurodivergent learners and/or learners with disabilities are very much welcome. The aim of this group is to be as multisensory and multimedia as possible in an online setting, and to rely less on verbal discussion than in my older groups.

Youths will interact via live video chat. This youngest group has been created at the request of parents of students who have felt that the elementary LGBTQ clubs are “too old” for their students. The group does not require any previous knowledge of LGBTQ terminology and does not require any reading or independent internet use. Visuals/handouts may be used at times, but will be explained verbally.

Groups will be provide a combination of education and support. Time will be spent explaining concepts such as pronouns and gender roles as these topics come up. Educational content will be responsive to topics raised by group members and the needs of the group in terms of energy level and comfort level. Groups will at times include structured activities such as reading of LGBTQ-affirmative stories or watching LGBTQ-affirmative video clips. This group will generally be more teacher-led than the elementary/tween groups and will particularly accommodate students who might be just beginning their journey as gender-nonconforming and are more comfortable participating passively than engaging in discussion. Opportunities will be given to participate by singing, moving, drawing or self-reflecting rather than a sole focus on verbal discussion.

Good plan; that way none of it has to make any sense.

As Outschool is an educational platform, these are primarily social and educational groups, and not a therapeutic/medical service. Facilitator and peers may provide advice of a general nature regarding situations discussed in class, but the group is not a therapeutic process group and is not a substitute for individual professional services.

NOTE: Youths who are more familiar with LGBTQ terminology and more solidly established in an LGBTQ identity might be more comfortable in my tween group. There is intentionally an overlap in ages between these groups. The tween group includes more verbal discussion, written materials, and is geared toward more independent learners.

Groom groom groomy groom groom.

Via Flash Maggie

Hey, whatever moves the product, right? If it’s a man talking about his boobs right next to a row of murdered women, them’s the breaks.

On your left, murdered women; on your right, a man “making her pronouns permanent” and “shouting down abuse.”

Trans women are twice as oppressed as women.

Twice as targeted, so obviously they get to shove women aside and take up all the oxygen.

Good timing. Good front paging.

The headline at the top is a man bragging about being a woman while directly under that is more coverage of a woman who was grabbed off the street and murdered.

If being a woman were a promotion, if it were an honour, women wouldn’t get grabbed off the streets and murdered.

I’m so tired of this self-indulgent self-centered nonsense that shoves women aside for the sake of narcissistic men who play at being women. So tired of it.

Scotland has a shiny new hate crime bill that doesn’t include women.

Scotland’s controversial hate crime bill is set to pass later on Thursday amid anger about its current exclusion of women and assurances that the legislation will not criminalise those whose views are considered by some to be transphobic.

It did pass.

The final vote was delayed from Wednesday, after a marathon five-hour debate over a lengthy series of amendments resulted in one of Holyrood’s latest sittings and concluded the rocky passage of the bill. It is intended to consolidate existing hate crime laws but also creates a new offence of “stirring up hatred” on the grounds of religion, sexual orientation, age, disability or transgender identity.

But not sex. I guess there is no stirring up of hatred against women.

On Wednesday, an amendment to add sex to this list of protected characteristics at this stage was voted down, after MSPs cross-party raised concerns about why women were excluded. … Joan McAlpine, who broke with the SNP whip on a number of amendments, told colleagues: “The thing that finally turned me to my current position was the government’s decision to expand the definition of transgender identity to include cross-dressers who are not trans identified…It will seem bizarre to many people that men who enjoy cross-dressing are protected from hate crime, but women are not.”

Bizarre, yes, but it’s more that it’s evil.

Councillor Dom Armstrong wrote Tuesday:

It is with great sadness that I tender my resignation to the Green Party.

I have been a member since 2015 and a councillor since May 2019 in Washington/ Sunderland, a role which I will also be giving up.

In that time they accomplished good things.

I joined the Greens, and agreed to stand for public office, simply because I have two daughters. I did hope that through joining the Greens, and fighting climate change, this would be a worthy way to honour them. They didn’t always understand, especially when they were younger, why their Dad was working at nights, or at weekends, or posting leaflets in the snow, or responding to emails during holidays. Thankfully, they do now!

During the last couple of months I have become increasingly uneasy about my party’s stance on women’s rights. I have had discussions on social media with party members and activists, where, because I have politely disagreed, I have been called a transphobe, a homophobe, and worse. I have witnessed female colleagues issued with death threats and threats of rape by trans rights activists, so in comparison, I have only had a small taste of this vile behaviour.

I am also dismayed by the fact that a co chair of our women‘s committee is a biological male, who works for a company (GenderGP) that in 2018 was found guilty of illegally supplying puberty blockers to children as young as ten. The Green Party are not concerned by this, in fact this person holds another FOUR senior party roles, and gloats on social media when some women (who they are meant to represent) feel so uncomfortable about this, they leave the party.

There are many trans extremists who are very active in the party and appear to have the leaderships approval. When an emergency motion was tabled for this weekend’s conference, to discuss the issue of GenderGP’s practises, it was deliberately blocked. There was no discussion. Senior party members indicated that it was a “transphobic” motion, not worthy of debate, and there was filibustering, tactical manouvres, and political deviousness which resulted in another motion being discussed instead. This was a motion meant to discuss the safety of children!

Perhaps even worse than this, when a motion to have women’s sex based rights recognised (the day before International Women’s Day) was put forward, again the Green Party leadership were horrified, how could women dare ask for safe spaces in prisons, or ask for a fair chance in sport? The LGBTIQ+ group declared that there was no historical evidence that women had been oppressed on the basis of their sex. Women are oppressed because they ‘look like women.’ To say otherwise was declared oppressive to trans people, a hate motion, which deserved to be righteously overcome.

What???

The LGBTIQ+ group declared that there was no historical evidence that women had been oppressed on the basis of their sex. Women are oppressed because they ‘look like women.’ To say otherwise was declared oppressive to trans people, a hate motion, which deserved to be righteously overcome.

I don’t have enough swears for that.

It almost feels like I am making this up, I still can’t believe this is the party I’ve given 6 years of my life to. I witnessed appalling behaviour by the most senior people in the party, many of whom I’d admired for years (apart from Jenny Jones, who was magnificent). The dawning of this reality was quite crushing, but sobering too. What’s worse is the fact that many of our senior figures profess to hold the high moral ground on many issues, but in fact they are as bad, if not worse, than our political foes.

I feel that the party’s elite are not willing (or able) to stand up to the bullying, and in this they are complicit. The damage this is doing to the trans community (especially the children) is heartbreaking. And the lack of concern for girls and women is damning. The effects of these doctrines are already being felt; in Brighton, a women’s refuge has been denied further council funding because they insisted on female only safe spaces.

And even in the last 2 days, the party has begun its purge. Senior (mostly, again, female) party members are being harassed, and even suspended, for having the audacity to disagree with the party’s dogma.

I cannot stay in a party that puts ideology before women and children’s safety. I can’t continue to serve as a councillor without the motivation to do so 100%, and in good conscience, take the money that the council pay me, when I know I’ll no longer do the role justice.

How did we get here?

Well now we all want to know what “dinner party TERFs” are and why we haven’t been invited.

It’s some guy called Ryan Broderick who came up with the label, but it’s very misty what he meant by it. It’s something about Glenn Greenwald and a NY Times reporter called Taylor Lorenz which is too uninteresting to describe further.

Greenwald is part of a cadre of writers who position themselves as neither left or right-wing, instead focusing on culture war Twitter drama about being “canceled” and trans people in bathrooms and woke college students to make the actually very standard and traditional right-wing status quo that they’re defending sound slightly less tedious. Other writers in this network are people like former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, Jesse Singal, and, I’d argue, Slate Star Codex writer Scott Alexander Siskind, as well. There are more. They are becoming more closely connected to the “dinner party TERFs” in the UK and Ireland. Almost all of them use Substack as their home base.

Ah, you think, there’s the clue to what he meant by it: follow the link. But no, the link is just to Graham Linehan on Substack. The rest of the piece is just a lot of inside baseball that makes my eyes glaze over after ten words, and I still don’t know what I have to do to get a dinner around here.

Are the dinners at TERF dinner parties cooked by Karens?

Rachel Hewitt makes an interesting point about street harassment and who own public space.

The disappearance of Sarah Everard while she walked through Clapham, south London, at 9pm on 3 March gives horrific shape to the hum of fear that women constantly feel in public spaces. My social media timelines are full of women who are distressed by Sarah’s disappearance, and terrified that it could have been them. Men have asked what they can do to help women feel safer. But what’s needed beyond the education of individuals are urgent political solutions to counter men’s attempts to claim public spaces as their exclusive domain.

Street harassment of women by men is so common that there are no women who’ve never experienced it.

Street harassment is how men mark out public spaces as their own, making women into trespassers on male territory. Behavioural psychologists have observed how male pedestrians crowd women’s personal space at cashpoints and traffic lights, how all-male groups take up more pavement space, and how men make more antisocial noises in public than women, considering it more acceptable to speak on mobile phones at checkouts or in train carriages.

…

By abusing and harassing women, men make public spaces their own – and by entering those spaces, they perceive that women acquiesce to their abuse. 

(That is, I think she means, men see women who enter public spaces as acquiescing to abuse.)

Women are meant to be at home, sitting on eggs.

What’s missing from discussions about women’s fears is a focus on men. Men’s harassment and assault of women is part of a sustained, long-term attempt to roll back advances in women’s rights and restrict our presence in public spaces. Some well-intentioned individual men ask how they can change their behaviours to make us feel calmer and safer, and are advised to cross the road to ensure they do not walk behind us at night. But we need solutions that rise above individual behaviour, and tackle men’s abuse and intimidation of women as a systemic problem. This is an urgent frontier for women’s rights.

Instead we have men who say they are women upping the abuse and intimidation.