Trump got to put on his party suit and give a speech again!

A long long speech which started 50 minutes late because he couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.

Who you calling impotent?!

90 minutes they’ll never get back again.

Ructions!

Oh no! Splitters! Where did it begin? This maybe?

Sad sad sad. Next you’ll see Mike Pence falling out with Donald Trump and then where will we be?

Or maybe this is where it started?

Who knows. Anyway it’s funny.

That explains it.

Leading gay, lesbian and bisexual rights charity Stonewall has recognised CQC’s commitment to equality in the workplace by placing it in the top 100 UK employers in the Stonewall Equality Workplace index for the first time.

They forgot the T.

That was back in 2015. They’re not forgetting it any more. Not allowed to, mate.

The top 100 list is based on the results of Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2015, the eleventh published by the charity. The index is based on a range of key indicators which include a confidential questionnaire of lesbian, gay and bisexual staff, with over 9,700 participants. This consistently revealed that employees from organisations ranked in Stonewall’s Top 100 exhibited higher levels of staff satisfaction and loyalty. CQC has been placed 94 in the index, a rise of 17 places from a ranking of 111 last year. Over 800 employers took part in the index.

Still no T. What a difference 6 years can make.

It’s on Facebook, too. Not faring well.

Many sharp comments.

I would find it rather creepy/threatening and definitely intrusive if I was being cared for by a health professional who was wearing badges, written in a faux childish script, announcing ‘I am straight’ and ‘I like women’.

As a doctor myself, I would be concerned that some patients might take it as a license to be inappropriate as well. Plus, given how little time I have as it is to see patients – regrettably – I just don’t have the time to get into chats about ‘music’ and ‘cats’ and I wouldn’t want to set up expectations that I couldn’t fulfil in the moment.

These badges are unprofessional and possibly dangerous. Sexual feelings are largely concealed in the workplace for a good reason! Who you want to sleep with shouldn’t be relevant to your day job in health and social care and this gimmick is potentially damaging to HCW/patient relations. Please put a stop to it. It’ll only lead to trouble.

Another experienced professional:

Is this meant to be serious?

I’m sure I’m not alone in finding it deeply disturbing.

I worked in the NHS for most of my working life. It was not considered professionally appropriate to bring your sexuality, your personal life and your political views into work.

Being at work is not All About You.

It’s rather like religion. We don’t want people in medical settings greeting us bedecked with religious symbols either. It’s not our concern, and we don’t care. That’s not what we’re there for.

Why have professional organizations forgotten this basic fact?

And speaking of changing everything for the sake of a handful of narcissists…

In a medical setting? People getting vaccinated or treated for Covid are supposed to want all that in their faces? Are you joking?

Philosophy academic at Georgetown:

That’s a puzzlement I’ve always had about the trans issue – the whole business of reversing everything we know about sex, dimorphism, who is which, feminism, oppression, language, and more, because a tiny fraction of the populace has emotional reactions.

But that’s not what this is.

What??? Women who can’t pretend that men are women are an example of the impulse to organize everyone’s entire world around the emotional reactions we have? We’re an example of that while the people who order us to do so are not?

Bonkers.

How can we stop this troublesome woman?

More bullying, and more, and more, and more! There can never be enough!

So much hilarity.

Another bad thing undone:

The Biden administration’s Bureau of Land Management on Friday rescinded a grazing permit that was granted to Eastern Oregon ranchers who were previously convicted of arson on public lands.

It reverses the decision by former President Donald Trump’s Interior secretary, David Bernhardt. He had granted the permit to Dwight and Steven Hammond on Trump’s final day in office. The permit gave the Hammonds the right to graze livestock on public land for 10 years.

…

In its notice, the BLM wrote that it had remanded the decision for additional consideration after finding flaws in how the previous administration had made its decision to issue the permit. The government failed to immediately alert the public, resulting in confusion and preventing people from having the full 15-day period to object to such a decision, as required by federal rules.

Remember these guys?

The Hammonds’ arson conviction in 2012 led to the revocation of their previous grazing permit. The case was central to the armed takeover in 2016 of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which devolved into a 41-day armed standoff. A jury later acquitted leaders of the takeover, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy.

A jury acquitted them even though they did the whole thing out in the open.

Trump pardoned the Hammonds two years later.

Of course he did.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on What do we lose?

On a related note, one of the take-home messages common to authors who have studied the rise of authoritarian populism (Snyder, Mounk, Applebaum, Temelkuran, Levtisky/Ziblatt etc.) that I think applies to the Gender Wars as well is to not concede the other side’s language with its implicit framing of the issue (the “ordinary”/”real” people who vote for the populist vs. the “elite” who don’t etc.). This is why I cringe whenever gender critical people start talking in terms of “cis” vs. “trans” women etc. As I have previously written, “cis woman” is not another word for “biological female”. Indeed, referring to biological females in Genderspeak is no more possible than referring to political freedom in Newspeak. Even “cis” women are entirely defined in terms of “female”/”feminine” ways of thinking and feeling* (best left unspecified), while anyone who fails to think/feel in the ways required doesn’t qualify as a “woman” of any kind. The only relevant difference is that the “cis” women accept the “gender” they were “assigned at birth” (with all its implicit cultural “baggage”) while the “trans” women do not.

Buying into the “cis” vs. “trans” framework, concedes the idea that there is indeed such a category as “women” (once again, defined in terms of “female”/”feminine” ways of thinking and feeling) that “cis” and “trans” women are both different versions/subsets of, to the exclusion of both “cis” and “trans” men (defined in terms of “male”/”masculine” ways of thinking and feeling), but the “TERFs” are arbitrarily choosing to exclude one subset of “women” out of pure bigotry and hate (hence the obligatory attempts to lump in “trans women” with “black women”, “disabled women”, “working class women” etc.).

Instead of conceding their framing we should make it clear that TIM’s and biological females are not different versions of “women” any more than flying mammals and clubs for hitting baseballs are different versions of “bats”. There is no non-trivial definition that applies to both at the same time. Being a “man” or “woman” is about biological sex or it isn’t about anything at all. If biological sex is not a valid category, then neither is “man” or “woman”. There is no such thing as a “male” or “female”, “masculine” or “feminine” way of thinking or feeling, which means there is no “gender” which means there is no “gender binary”, which means there is no “cis”, which means we’re pretty much all “non-binary” or “gender non-conforming” or – even better – “agender”. If the gender concept applies to people on the trans spectrum (or their allies who will say anything to make the TRAs right and us wrong), they are pretty much the only ones to whom it applies as far as I’m concerned. If trans women are women, they are the only “women”. If trans men are men, then I’m not.

*They are women₂ rather than women₁ as I have previously put it.

A Waterstone’s in a former Victorian wool exchange in Bradford:

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Almost 100 academics have demanded the University of Melbourne take “swift and decisive action” in response to a website created by one of its lecturers that has been labelled “transphobic” and potentially in breach of the university’s own guidelines on research integrity and inclusion.

And how are the almost 100 academics defining “transphobic”? With the precision and care expected of academics? Or with the wild abandon of Twitter “activists”?

On Tuesday, Holly Lawford-Smith, an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Melbourne, launched www.noconflicttheysaid.org in response to legislation in Australia and elsewhere designed to be inclusive to transgender people but which, she says, “replaces sex with gender identity”.

The site calls for women assigned female at birth (“cis” women) to anonymously share stories about any time they have felt threatened by transgender women.

“We’re worried about the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces,” the website introduction says, “including but not limited to: changing rooms, fitting rooms, bathrooms … rape and domestic violence shelters.”

“I think it’s outrageous that these changes are being introduced and people aren’t even acknowledging the possibility of a conflict of interest,” Dr Lawford-Smith said of her motivation for creating the site. “No governments are gathering data on this, there’s no place in the world for people to report where creepy things are happening in women’s bathrooms or women’s changing rooms or rape support groups.

I do think there’s an inherent pitfall in the project: the fact that the stories are anonymous means they can’t be authenticated. But I also know there’s massive pressure to shut up about any stories, so that’s part of the picture too.

The two dozen writers of the open letter said “they were concerned that material promoted and produced by Dr Lawford-Smith and taught to students “conflicts with the faculty commitment to diversity and inclusion”.”

But what does “diversity” mean? What does “inclusion” mean? Does “diversity” really mean “people who pretend to be what they’re not”? Does “inclusion” really mean women including men in everything, regardless of their need for safety or privacy or solidarity?

Concerns with the site were first raised on Wednesday by fellow Melbourne University academic Hannah McCann, a senior lecturer in cultural studies, who labelled the site transphobic, saying it “promotes the vilification of transgender people”.

There is a photo of McCann, who looks very inclusive.

Dr McCann also believes the site “is in conflict with the values of the university as a safe and inclusive space”.

Safe for whom? Inclusive of whom?

One little word.

The [UK] government has agreed to change its bill allowing ministers to take maternity leave, so that it uses the term “mother” rather than “person”.

The Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill would ensure up to six months’ leave on full pay.

But the House of Lords rejected the use of the word “person” in its text.

The government initially argued this was in line with “drafting convention” but has changed its view, saying use of “mother” is legally “acceptable”.

I strongly doubt that it’s any kind of “convention” to use “person” in single-sex legislation. I think the goal when writing legislation is to be as precise and clear as possible, so if a law affects one sex only, what would be the added precision in using “person”?

The problem isn’t boys on girls’ teams, the problem is bad coaches!

The February 26, 2021 passage of the Equality Act in the US House of Representatives piqued conservatives into a moral panic.

The bill, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, had a terrifying potential for Republicans: the presence of trans girls in high school sports.

No, not the presence of trans girls in high school sports, the presence of boys in girls’ sports. And it’s not just Republicans or just conservatives who think this will be unfair to girls.

All this language of the need to “protect,” the need to root out other children from “bathrooms” and “locker rooms,” is hard to square with reality.

It’s not “other children,” it’s boys; it’s not “bathrooms” and “locker rooms” but girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.

It’s no coincidence that the wording is always evasive this way. It has to be evasive, because if it were precise and accurate, the problems would be way too obvious.

Which means that at some level they know they’re talking shit, and shit that is oppressive to girls and women…but they do it anyway.

Abigail Weinberg then tells some stories of abusive coaches, then wraps it all up.

As scandal after scandal emerges about the pervasive abuse of young athletes, it’s time we reevaluate our priorities. Trans athletes aren’t the problem.

Again, the issue is not trans athletes but boys competing against girls. And that is a problem, and we can pay attention to both problems – abusive coaches and unfair competition.

Men who identify as women can invade women’s sports, but maybe not those contests where people score women on how fuckable they look in bathing suits. For that kind of thing the customer wants an actual woman, by golly.

Beauty queen Anita Noelle Green competed in the Miss Universe pageant, was the first transgender contestant for Miss Montana USA and title holder for Miss Elite Earth Oregon 2019. Only one pageant has excluded her on the basis that she’s not a “natural born female” — Miss United States of America. A federal judge OK’d that policy on Thursday.

It’s a consumer issue. If you buy a steak at the grocery store you don’t want to unwrap it at home to find it’s pickled herrings.

Green sued Miss United States of America in December 2019, claiming its gender identity discrimination violates Oregon’s Public Accommodations Act and infringes on her First Amendment rights to free speech and free association.

But the pageant claims it, too, has the First Amendment right to free association: in this case, the right to deny access to “non-biological females.” The pageant says in court documents that its mission is geared toward “natural born women” and that including Green would “undermine its vision” and mar its “message of biological female empowerment.”

The pageant’s motion to dismiss repeatedly misgenders Green, referring to her as “a biological male who identifies as female” and “a man who identifies as a woman.”

How is that “misgendering”? Trans women are men who identify as female, so where’s the misgendering in saying so? That’s what “trans” means.

Green clarified in a declaration to the court that she has “always been a woman.”

“I never altered my gender or sex,” Green said. “I simply affirmed my underlying gender identity as female based on a realization of who I deeply was.”

That’s a religious belief, and as such, cannot be imposed on unwilling others.

Green says she wants the voices of all women to be heard in pageants like Miss United States of America.

Oh please. Ugly women? Average women? Short women, fat women, old women? Beauty pageants are not “inclusive”: exclusion is the whole point of them.

Green is debating whether to appeal or not.

This is so maddening. Go ahead, guys, say you’re trans and presto you can compete against women and be guaranteed to win.

The Biden administration has withdrawn government support for a federal lawsuit in Connecticut that seeks to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ high school sports.

Notice what that doesn’t say – that the suit seeks to ban boys from competing in girls’ sports. That would make the reasons way too obvious, whereas if you say “transgender athletes” instead of “boys” it sounds cruel and vaguely homophobic.

Connecticut allows high school athletes to compete in sports according to their gender identity. The lawsuit was filed a year ago by several cisgender runners who argue they have been deprived of wins, state titles and athletic opportunities by being forced to compete against two transgender sprinters.

Same again. The issue isn’t “transgender” this and “transgender” that, the issue is boys competing against girls. Carefully not saying that is dishonest and also sexist as fuck.

The Trump administration’s intervention in the case last year came as state legislatures around the country debated restricting transgender athletes’ participation to their gender assigned at birth. Seventeen states considered such legislation, and Idaho passed a law. The Republican-controlled Mississippi legislature overwhelmingly approved a similar bill earlier this month.

Again, carefully obscures the issue. This isn’t accidental; they know damn well the issue is much clearer if they state it accurately.

Supporters of restrictions on transgender athletes argue that transgender girls, because they were born male, are naturally stronger, faster and bigger than those born female.

Finally they spell it out…but they do so implying it’s some wack minority view that males have physical advantages over females.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said Tuesday he was pleased with the Justice Department’s decision to withdraw Barr’s statement.

“Transgender girls are girls and every woman and girl deserves protection against discrimination. Period,” he said in a statement.

Period yourself. (“Transgender girls” don’t get them.) Transgender girls are boys, and every girl and woman deserves fair competition in sports.

Oh Senator.

Yes but that wasn’t last week or last year or ten years ago.

H/t Roj Blake

More on Cruz –

“Orlando is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancun, but it’s nice,” Cruz began, referring to the scandal he sparked when he left storm-ravaged Texas for Cancun with his family last week.

A child died in his bed in storm-ravaged Texas, but heeheehahahoho let’s make jokes about it anyway.

Here are some other highlights from Cruz’s speech:

Mask-wearing is virtue-signaling: “We’re gonna wear masks for the next 300 years,” Cruz said. “And by the way, not just one mask — two, three, four — you can’t have too many masks! How much virtue do you wanna signal?”

…

There were no “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations in Houston last year because of the Second Amendment: “In Houston where I live, I have to tell you, there weren’t any rioters because let’s be very clear, if there had been, they would discover what the state of Texas thinks about the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Cruz said.

By “rioters” of course he means BLM protesters. He definitely does not mean those nice people who tore up the Capitol and killed 3 cops.

No it isn’t.

No, all the people who give birth are women, no matter how they “identify.” Pretending otherwise is not “making room” but deleting, denying, concealing. What you – and, much more important, what all women – lose by doing that is the ability to talk coherently about the issues that affect women. That’s a very big thing to lose.

It’s asking too much, though.

Democratic plans to include a gradual raise to $15 in Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus bill were effectively ended on Thursday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it should not be part of the package.

…

Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15. Low-wage workers and unions have campaigned for a rise since 2012, and its inclusion in the coronavirus stimulus bill had been seen as a major victory.

While the proposal faced universal opposition by Republican senators and skepticism from some Democrats, Senator Bernie Sanders and others were confident that it could be pushed through with a simple majority in the Senate, where the Democrats hold a slim majority.

Why skepticism from some Democrats? Why skepticism over paying workers halfway decently?

Other progressive Democrats have proposed a less drastic solution [than removing the parliamentarian] – overruling her.

“The Senate parliamentarian issues an advisory opinion,” congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in a tweet. “The VP can overrule them – as has been done before. We should do EVERYTHING we can to keep our promise, deliver a $15 minimum wage, and give 27 million workers a raise.”

Total workers in the US are around 155 million, so 27 million is not a tiny fraction.

I hate this about the US. Hate it. It’s contemptible and awful.

In Europe, many people scoff at the US as a country of low-wage McJobs with paltry benefits – often no paid sick days, no paid vacation and no health insurance. In Denmark, a McDonald’s hamburger flipper averages $22 an hour (with six weeks’ paid vacation), while in the US, fast-food jobs pay half that on average.

Plus no health insurance.

You might wonder: how can the United States, the world’s wealthiest nation, be a low-wage economy? Of the 37 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the unofficial club of rich and near-rich nations, the US has the third-highest percentage of low-wage workers, with nearly one in four workers defined as low-wage. Only Latvia and Romania are worse. (That study defines low-wage as earning less than two-thirds of a nation’s median wage.) In another study, Brookings found that 53 million Americans hold low-wage jobs, with a median pay of $10.22 an hour and median annual earnings of $17,950.

Yet we’re a rich country. There’s no excuse.

The US also has the lowest minimum wage among the G7 industrial nations in terms of purchasing power. America’s $7.25-an-hour federal minimum is 38% lower than Germany’s and 30% lower than Britain’s, Canada’s and France’s. This helps explain why the US has among the worst income inequality of the 37 OECD nations – only Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica and Bulgaria have greater inequality. And the US has the third highest poverty rate; only Hungary and Costa Rica are worse.

Yet we’re richer as a country than any of those.

Corporations, along with their Republican allies, overwhelmingly oppose a $15 minimum; in doing so, however, they ignore the will of the vast majority of Americans. According to a Pew poll, Americans favor a $15 minimum by 67% to 33%. While low-wage workers would be most vulnerable to any job losses caused by a higher minimum, lower-income Americans shows even greater support for a $15 minimum. Pew found that 74% of Americans making under $40,000 a year support a $15 minimum wage, as do 56% of Republicans making under $40,000. Last November, Floridians – even as their state went for Trump – voted 61% to 39% in favor of raising their state’s minimum to $15, joining eight other states that have approved a $15 minimum.

Despite such strong public backing for a $15 minimum, it looks doubtful that even one Republican senator – even though the Republican party now describes itself as the party of workers – will vote for a $15 minimum.

Well you see it’s like this – the Republican definition of “worker” is “racist white man with guns and MAGA cap.” It’s got nothing to do with wages or unions or benefits.