The BBC has a prominently placed news item about an attack on Laverne Cox:

Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox has said “it’s not safe if you’re a trans person” after being caught up in a transphobic attack in Los Angeles.

Cox posted a 10-minute Instagram video explaining she had been walking with a friend in a park on Sunday when a man “aggressively” asked for the time.

He then proceeded to ask the friend if Cox was a “guy or girl?”

The man then physically attacked her friend, according to the star, who said she was “still in shock”.

“The guy is like hitting my friend, and then my friend is going toward him,” said Cox.

“I pull out my phone and I call to dial 911, and all of a sudden it’s over and the guy is gone.”

That sounds very unpleasant, and scary.

However. The physical attack was on Cox’s “friend,” who I’m guessing is probably male, because surely Cox or the BBC would have spelled it out if the friend had been female.

I’m just wondering how often the BBC does a big news item about such an incident involving a woman and a man walking in a park. A guy comes up, act aggressive, then throws some punches at the man, then departs the scene. Would that be any kind of news item?

Maybe if the woman were a tv star it would be…but I can’t say I recall seeing a lot of stories of that kind.

The rest of the article is about transphobia.

The 48-year-old said she had “been harassed and bullied my whole life” and felt “lucky and grateful” that her friend was there this weekend. The attack, she said, was a reminder that “it’s not safe in the world”.

“It’s not safe if you’re a trans person. Obviously, I know this well. It’s just really sad,” she sighed.

“It doesn’t matter who you are. You can be Laverne Cox, you know, or whatever that means. If you’re trans, you’re going to experience stuff like this.”

Last month, UK crime statistics obtained by the BBC showed there had been a 25% increase in reports of transphobic hate crimes in the UK.

Again – it sounds like a nasty and upsetting incident. It shouldn’t happen. People shouldn’t accost and throw punches at other people in parks. It’s a bad thing to do. But is it worse because Cox is trans? Is it headline news because Cox is trans and a tv star? Is the BBC frantic with worry about transphobic violence while it barely notices violence against women?

I wrote a thing about William Barr’s hypocritical pretense to care about morality while lying and cheating to help the most immoral human slug on the planet do whatever he wants.

He unloaded his deep wisdom at the Catholic college we Yanks call Noder Daym last year, including this inspiring gem:

On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint, you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites, and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.

This from a guy who enables Donald Trump. You’d laugh if it weren’t so sickening.

I probably posted about it here last year, but Barr’s revolting behavior since has only underlined the grotesquery.

The gender wars have been hot today. Most of the heat has come from…male barristers calling women names and accusing them of horrors. This guy in particular:

Quite a contrast, isn’t it. Maya’s critical of Simon Cox, but she doesn’t call him names. He calls her, and all of us, names.

Jolyon Maugham QC has been at it too, and he, notoriously, blocks everyone who disputes him no matter how mildly, so there is no argument or dissent to be seen via his Twitter. It’s all quite disturbing. I could understand it if we were calling for harm to befall someone, but all we’re saying is that men are not women and that sex is not something you can change the way you change your socks or a library book. That’s it. There is no “therefore trans people should be harmed.” People like Maugham and Cox seem to see it there, but they are hallucinating.

Cox has succeeded in scaring a young woman who works near him.

He doesn’t though. The things he said to Maya don’t fit that description.

Originally a comment by Omar on Milk, eggs, and a hug from the god.

God is held to be omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient: everywhere, all-powerful and all-knowing. If you ask me, that trilogy is actually a bit of a swamp that God has created for himself and suddenly found himself in, and with consequences. If those consequences were unexpected, then we can forgive him: he is only human (or a human creation) after all. But if those consequences were expected, then unfortunately, God only has himself to blame.

God’s omniscience means not only that he knows your thoughts, but being omniscient, he knows them before you know them yourself. That means also, that God knows exactly what any given prayer will contain, before it even forms in the mind of the faithful believer who is about to pray it. So, on the face of it, there is no need for it to be prayed out loud for it to reach the awareness of God. The preacher and the separate members of the congregation only have to think their separate prayers inside their separate heads, and God will not only know in advance what each and every one will contain, he will know before those thinking them know.

The only reason praying needs to be done out loud is because the god it is addressed to is the congregation itself. The group is worshipping itself. (h/t Emile Durkheim.) Believing is the means to belonging. It does not matter what we believe, as long as we all believe it together. 100%; no dissent, exceptions or heresies please.

When God himself set up that Garden of Eden with its talking snake, before Eve had been sweet-talked by the said snake into taking a chomp out of that fateful apple and then passed it across to Adam, God must have known that he was setting them both up for The Fall. No need for God to play dumb, and wander about calling “Adam, where the hell are you? Did you eat the fruit of that tree I told you not to touch?” or some such; while knowing all along what the answer to that question had to be.

All the disputes, murder, mayhem, wars, tyrannies and revolutions of history are down to that one decision by God. Himself; to create that tree and forbid its fruit. But does he take any blame for it all?

Is the Pope a Presbyterian?

Wait what? I missed this one. Too much trump-watching no doubt.

Outsports sets the scene:

Hannah Mouncey is an athlete of unique distinction. She’s been part of a men’s national team that qualified for the World Championships, and she has also done it with her country’s women’s team.

Not many athletes — if any — can make that claim.

Well, no, because most male athletes wouldn’t consider it fair or sporting – let alone any kind of achievement or “distinction” – to compete against women. The fact that Mouncey is cool with it isn’t really a distinction, it’s more of a gross imposition.

Now on the latest episode of Five Rings To Rule Them All, she opens up about those experiences, playing Aussie rules football and being banned by the AFLW hours before the league’s draft, overcoming homelessness and mental illness through her transition, and the notion that she and other trans women are safety risks to other female athletes.

It’s not a “notion,” it’s just a damn fact. He’s built like a truck.

She also chronicles her struggles with Handball Australia, and the fight over her use of the locker room that she says ultimately left her thousands of miles away from the competition during the 2019 World Championship.

Ah yes the fight over his use of the women’s locker room – I posted about that a year ago. Mouncey said:

I can confirm that yes, I was left out of the team for the World Championships because there was a group of players within the team, supported by the team manager, who did not want me showering or using the change rooms before or after the game. This was in turn the sole reason given to me by our coach for my non selection.

I later had it confirmed by someone else within Handball Australia who had done some digging that: “From everything I’ve been told, you’ve basically not been picked because you’re not liked.” And the reason I’m not liked is because I told our manager, and by extension those players, exactly where he and they could go in trying to tell me where I could change and shower.

In other words he told the manager and players exactly where they could go for not wanting to get naked next to him. What a mensch.

This is going to happen over and over, and eventually you become very comfortable in saying no to people, regardless of how forceful you need to be. So many people spend their whole lives trying to please others and giving in to everything that is asked of them, and being able to develop the skills and confidence to say no is truly wonderful.

But this of course is only for the Hannah Mounceys. It’s not at all for the women who don’t want to compete against him or break their legs in a tangle with him or shower with him. They don’t get to say no, and their skills and confidence to say no are nothing but evil transphobia.

But never mind, now they’ve realized the error of their ways.

Handball Australia seeks to improve LGBTQI+ inclusion policy to better meet member needs. In furtherance of this, we acknowledge that at the Asian Championships in November 2018, a request was made of Hannah Mouncey which in hindsight was inappropriate. We recognise that this caused Hannah distress, anger and to feel isolated.

Meaning, it was inappropriate not to let him take his clothes off with the women.

Handball Australia regrets and acknowledges the hurt caused and extends a sincere apology to Hannah for not being able to resolve the issue before it impacted Hannah’s relationship with the sport and organisation. We hope that in time she will feel comfortable returning to the sport in some capacity.

And the women who would be forced to take their clothes off next to him? Has anyone talked to them?

In this vein, Handball Australia is committed to improving our member inclusion and protection policies. As a result of ongoing discussions, Hannah; a long-time Handball player and 2018 Victorian LGBT Sportsperson of the Year, has kindly agreed to work with Handball Australia in improving its inclusion policies and participant education, using her experience to help improve and pave the way for current and future players. She will be drawing on her 10-year playing career and experiences – nationally and internationally – to help significantly update the LGBTQI+ aspects of the policy and inform Handball Australia’s practical implementation for players, officials, and administration.

Handball Australia adopted the IOC guidelines around transgender participation published in 2016. SportAUS launched their transgender and gender diverse inclusion guidelines in mid-2019. We will be using these guidelines to further inform our member inclusion and protection policies.

All for the Mounceys, nothing for the women.

Laurence Tribe and Michael Dorf write about the Supreme Court ruling that puts “religious freedom” ahead of public health:

The Roman Catholic Diocese ruling is also far-reaching in its substance. The unsigned majority opinion decries what it deems discrimination against religion because worship services were subject to capacity limits while some essential business were not. Likewise, Justice Neil Gorsuch complains in a concurrence that under some circumstances, New Yorkers in a hot zone were permitted to crowd into a liquor store or a bike shop but not a church, synagogue or mosque. Justice Brett Kavanaugh registers the same complaint about grocery stores and pet shops.

Those comparisons are inapt. Government discriminates illicitly when it fails to treat like cases alike. One needn’t discount people’s spiritual needs to recognize that liquor stores, bike shops, groceries and pet shops differ from churches, synagogues and mosques with respect to public health. The risk of coronaviral spread is not merely a function of the number of people at a venue; it increases dramatically as they linger in a stationary position, especially when they speak or sing.

Going to a store to get needed supplies is less risky than spending an hour in a crowd inside with praying and singing – even if the supply-getting takes longer than you would like because other people need supplies too.

But another point occurs to me. These religious gatherings in buildings – they’re to get together to talk about and petition and sing about an absent entity. The god isn’t sitting there, wearing robes or scrubs, in the flesh, touchable and smellable and solid. The god is in their heads. Even if you believe in the god you don’t think it’s sitting there among you in the same sense that you and the imam or rabbi or priest are. Religion is all about the unseen – it will say as much itself, while treating it as a virtue. You don’t go to mosque or chapel to pick up supplies you can’t get anywhere else, you go there to pay your respects to the god. In short you’d think it would be the kind of thing believers could easily transfer to another setting when there’s a contagion loose.

Religion is also about getting together, it’s about praising the god with other people, and the fellow believers are a major reason people lean on the institutions…but still, you would think they could go all-spiritual temporarily, to protect the other believers if not themselves.

On the other hand if you think of it as just another front in the great theocratic war, it makes perfect sense.

A historic first for Argentina! A man is allowed to join a women’s football team. Celebrate!

Mara Gomez is set to become the first trans woman to play in Argentina, after the AFA confirmed her registration to play for Villa San Carlos.

Gomez will make history by taking her place in the Women’s first division in Argentina, and is likely to make her debut against Lanus on December 5th.

…

On her social media post Gomez said, “Today I am officially a player of the highest category of Argentine soccer.

“The road was long, there were many obstacles, many fears and sorrows. That which one day made me think that I would not be anyone, that I would never have the opportunity to be happy in my life today is reversed.

You know what? The road was long for women, too. Women too have faced many obstacles, fears and sorrows. Women too have been made to feel they will never be anyone. Gomez doesn’t seem to be devoting any thought to that.

Mara, a striker, had been playing in the Platense Football League for Las Malvinas before her big move that was accepted by the AFA after a testosterone test proved she had acceptable levels in her blood.

He’s still a lot bigger than the women though.

Bigger. He’s trying to minimize it by crooking that knee, but it can’t be done. Bigger arms, bigger torso, bigger shoulders, bigger neck…he’s just bigger. Women on rival teams are going to be at a disadvantage.

More on (and from) Colm O’Gorman.

Did Colm O’Gorman pause for one minute to consider how that open letter might have an impact on women as people? Given our history? To be told we shouldn’t have legitimate representation?

Glinner has helpful background on Amnesty Ireland and its move to shun Irish women who don’t obey the Gender Priests.

A few years ago, my wife and I did our bit in trying to repeal the eighth amendment in Ireland. The Eight Amendment was a hangover from Ireland’s priest-ridden past which prevented women from receiving an abortion, even in cases such as ours where the child had no chance of surviving. We worked with Amnesty International, who shot a moving and powerful video that I like to think had some influence on the final result of the referendum, which was a resounding success for Irish women.

As soon as the result came in, Colm O’Gorman, who had accompanied us while we travelled Ireland doing interviews and forums, stabbed those same women in the back.

O’Gorman is the Executive Director of Amnesty Ireland.

Without pausing for breath, Amnesty Ireland robbed Irish women of their greatest victory over the religious ideologues who had controlled their lives for decades. ‘Pregnant people’ was an early sign that the organisation had committed to the erasure of women’s reality because of the demands of trans rights activists. 

On the one hand we’re “wine moms” and on the other hand we’re “pregnant people” – we get it from all sides.

If I had known then what I know now about that organisation, we might have shopped around a bit before we settled on working with them. I didn’t realise that Amnesty had been ideologically captured by fashionable misogyny. I didn’t realise that they had a policy of placing dangerous males with vulnerable women. I didn’t realise they supported the destruction of women’s sports, the removal of their safe spaces, and of their right to equal representation in political life.

And now they’re issuing open letters calling for the shunning of feminist women.

How insulting is this?

Is the article as insulting as the tweet? Pretty much. What’s the argument? That the fact that a slim majority of white women usually vote Republican=white women vote Republican.

Exit polling indicates that Trump’s support had increased among White women, with some major polls putting it at 55 percent.

…White women are not a swing voting bloc. In the past 18 presidential elections, they have repeatedly voted for the Republican candidate, breaking only for Lyndon B. Johnson and for Bill Clinton’s second term.

That is, a slim majority of them have. What about white men? Oh look, a swan.

This is because, as a political force, White female rage has long been better at enforcing patriarchal norms than dismantling them. Why? Quite frankly, White women benefit from the status quo, while change would require burning down that system and building a new one — one where they and their children might lose the shared superiority and protection they get by being attached to powerful White men.

But why are we singling out white women? What about those white men? Oh look, a swan.

Sociologist Joseph O. Jewell has described the role White women played in maintaining institutional racism in the late 19th century; his work examines specific instances of what he calls “social mothering” in San Francisco and New Orleans, when White mothers pushed policies that established school segregation.

Of course; and, white men?

Little has changed. Indeed today, that logic is more insidious: To many White women, equality means dominating the system like men rather than dismantling it to make it fair for everyone.

Speaking of men…what about men? Why are we just focusing on women?

Because Amy Cooper, Lyz Lenz explains.

Of course, all women, conservative and liberal, at all levels of society, face real discrimination and sexism — but that makes donning the mantle of victimhood while perpetuating the patriarchy an even more cynical game.

But it’s not at all cynical to call a slim majority of white women “white women” and to forget to check how many white men vote Republican.

As we continue to sift through the wreckage of the Trump years, a process that should not stop on Jan. 20, the Democratic Party should stop wasting so much time on the lost cause of suburban wine moms and start listening to the voices that form the core of the party’s base.

Or to put it another way – people who are already comfortable and safe are more likely to vote Republican, so the Democratic Party should stop wasting so much time on the lost cause of prosperous white people and start listening to the voices that form the core of the party’s base. That makes sense; singling out white women not so much. (Referring to them as “wine moms” even less.)

Part of a response from Amnesty International to a complaint:

First…

For example, the letter asks for media and politicians to not give legitimacy to those spreading vitriol or misinformation. This is being framed as a call to take away their political representation, which anyone reading the letter will clearly see is not what it means.

Ahem. Cough cough cough. FROM THE LETTER:

We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division.

See? I’ll repeat, with emphasis added.

We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation

The letter SAID “legitimate representation.” It did not say “to not give legitimacy.” It said what it said, not what it did not say, yet this “Charlie” says it said what it did not say and blames the complainant for complaining of what it DID SAY. That takes quite a lot of gall, or just plain stupidity. What “Charlie” meant was: “Amnesty was talking about legitimacy as opposed to literal representation, we apologize for wording it so badly.” Wording things badly is just a mistake, and easy to apologize for, but instead “Charlie” lied about what Amnesty said and rebuked the complainer for objecting to what Amnesty did in fact say. This is not what one might call acting in good faith.

Second.

Allowing self-determination of our bodies is a basic principle of feminism and human rights.

No it isn’t.

Not least it isn’t because it’s not clear what that even means. In general, sure, it’s nobody else’s business what people do with their bodies, but there are limits. We can’t use our bodies to beat people up (except in self-defense). People who are delirious due to fever or cocaine may be protected from themselves if they start to saw a finger off. But more to the point, that’s not even the issue – the issue is forcing everyone else to agree that our bodies are those of the opposite sex even though they aren’t. That’s not “self-determination of our bodies,” it’s interference with the minds of everyone but us. Sure, decide your body is a woman’s body, knock yourself out, but you can’t force me to agree with you, and you can’t force anyone else to agree with you.

And finally of course the claim that genitals have nothing to do with a person’s sex aka “gender” is just childish.

Amnesty has been taken over by children, children besotted by fatuous ideas about sex and gender, which they’re forcing on all of us. It’s a mess.

Bad.

A teenager has been taken into care in Australia’s first known case of parents being judged abusive and potentially harmful for failing to consent to their child’s self-declared transgender identity and wish for irreversible cross-sex hormone treatment.

In other words the state is telling parents “You have to let your child take cross-sex hormones or we will take the child away from you.”

A state children’s court magistrate cited the risk of self-harm when making the protection order in October — almost a year after the teenager, who was born female and cannot be named for legal reasons — was removed from the family by police at 15 after discussing suicide online.

How do we know the teenager won’t be discussing suicide again in 5 years, this time because of the irreversible hormones?

The parents said they knew their daughter had been depressed and in need of help, but they wanted an independent psychologist to consider all possible underlying causes, not just gender issues, and to look into non-invasive treatment options.

But the state knows better?

Queensland University’s dean of law Patrick Parkinson, speaking in a personal capacity as a family law expert and critic of “gender affirming” medical treatment for young people diagnosed with distressing “gender dysphoria”, said he believed the child removal was the first of its kind and “a very troubling development”.

…

Stuart Lindsay, a former Federal Circuit Court judge and critic of how the Family Court has handled gender treatment cases, said the request for a Supreme Court appeal was “an opportunity for a fresh look at this hotly contested area of medicine”.

But lawyers acting for the teenager have filed separate action — on November 7 they applied for approval to begin hormone therapy, with a preliminary hearing on Tuesday in the Family Court. It will be the first such case in which both parents oppose treatment.

It’s outrageous.

Another big No for Donny Tinydesk.

President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat in court Friday as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.

Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”

I think that assessment means the Supremes are likely to decline to take the case.

“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel.

Giuliani’s sweat and Trump’s tantrums don’t count.

The three judges on the panel were all appointed by Republican presidents. including Bibas, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor appointed by Trump. Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, sat on the court for 20 years, retiring in 2019.

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” Bibas said in the opinion, which also denied the campaign’s request to stop the state from certifying its results, a demand he called “breathtaking.”

In fact, Pennsylvania officials had announced Tuesday that they had certified their vote count for President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the state. Nationally, Biden and running mate Kamala Harris garnered nearly 80 million votes, a record in U.S. presidential elections.

Fake news.

Joan Smith reminds us that footballers and movie stars can also be men who punch women in the face.

Imagine a man hitting his partner. The picture that comes to mind probably involves a scruffy individual, his hand raised and his face contorted with fury. We can all condemn that, can’t we? But what if the angry face is familiar, seen thousands of times in a very different context? If it belongs, say, to the world’s most famous and admired footballer, Diego Maradona?

He was very good at getting the ball into the net, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a violent bully. That’s a very complicated thought, I know, but it’s true.

Domestic abuse is routinely overlooked or rendered invisible, especially if the alleged perpetrator is an elite sportsman or famous actor. When the Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, commentators initially bought his story that he believed she was an intruder. It was only much later, and after protracted legal proceedings, that Pistorius was found guilty of murder.

…

Last month glowing tributes were paid to the Scottish actor Sean Connery – recipient of a knighthood, among other honours – who had died at the age of 90. Like Maradona’s, his biography had an irresistible rags-to-riches element, with lots of references to the fact that he left school at 14 and did manual labour before becoming a hugely successful actor. “Our nation is today mourning one of our best-loved sons,” said Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

Predictably, most of the accounts of his life glossed over allegations that Connery was violent towards his first wife, the Australian actress Diane Cilento, leaving her bruised and battered. In her autobiography, published in 2006, Cilento described locking herself in a bathroom for protection after Connery hit her in the face, knocking her to the floor, and a second blow “sent me flying”.

It’s not even as if he was a repentant abuser. “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman – although I don’t recommend doing it in the same way that you’d hit a man,” he said in an interview with Playboy in 1965. “An open-handed slap is justified, if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning.”

Nothing particularly wrong with that, eh what?

Another sarcastic photo and caption:

Caption:

Donald Trump speaks with members of the military via videoconference on Thursday.

Heeheeheeheeheehee

Pathetically, it’s news that Trump was pushed into admitting that at some point he will have to get out.

Donald Trump has said that he will leave the White House in January if the electoral college votes for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, in the closest the outgoing president has come to conceding defeat.

Which is not very close, because he said it in reply to a very narrow question, and he instantly qualified it and undercut it with more shouting about fake votes blah blah blah.

Speaking to reporters on the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump said if Biden – who is due to be sworn in on 20 January – was certified the election winner by the electoral college, he would depart the White House.

Not exactly. He started by saying: “This election was a fraud.” He then elaborated on the fact that Biden won states that Trump won in 2016, as if that were somehow impossible and an obvious indicator of fraud. “So, no, I can’t say that at all,” he earnestly admits. In other words he says no I can’t say that I will admit Biden won.

Then he throws the “Don’t talk to me that way” tantrum, then he calls on a different reporter who asks the same question all over again – “So, if the electoral college does elect President-elect Joe Biden, are you not going to leave this building?” Seeing as how he had just said that – “So, no, I can’t say that at all.” This time he rears back, throwing up tiny hands, and says “Just so you – certainly I will. And you know that,” he adds, with the “come on” tilt of the head. So Trump. He says he won’t, he pitches a fit at the reporter who presses for confirmation, he calls on a different reporter, he says certainly he will and rebukes her for pretending she doesn’t know that.

Trump’s administration has already given the green light for a formal transition to get underway. But Trump took issue with Biden moving forward.

“I think it’s not right that he’s trying to pick a Cabinet,” Trump said, even though officials from both teams are already working together to get Biden’s team up to speed.

But he’s totally going to leave and we all know that and it’s just rude and rebellious of us to pretend we don’t.

Trump won’t like it that news outlets are reporting on his tiny desk and tiny hands and big diapers.

For a US president obsessed by size – his hands, his wealth, his crowds – Donald Trump made something of a bold U-turn on Thursday night by addressing the country from a desk seemingly designed for a leprechaun.

Or a very naughty boy.

The hashtag #DiaperDon swiftly trended on Twitter, with people mocking the president as an infant banished to the children’s table for Thanksgiving.

The headline for today is Trump Tantrum.

Nah, Spanky, we’re gonna talk to you as the angry greedy self-centered goon you are. You reap what you sow, blowfish-lips.

Also he looked funny.

Narcissist meets masochist, hilarity ensues.

I posted the other day about an open letter that purports to be “from the Irish LGBTQ+ community” and against “transphobia.” There’s more to say about it.

Let us say unequivocally that the statements of newly launched organisations that seek to defend biology or fight gender identity and expression do not represent the wider LGBTI+ community nor feminists in Ireland. More importantly, they are not organisations at all, they have no governance, no accountability, and are simply Twitter accounts. Further, they are not supported by the wider Irish community.

On the one hand there are newly launched organizations that say things, on the other hand the newly launched organizations are not organizations at all, but just Twitter accounts. But you just said…

In addressing these accounts it is simple enough to refute them by stating they are not radical, they are not inclusive, and they are not feminists. They are simply misinformed and transphobic. The vitriol and disinformation these accounts and people share does not represent the beliefs of the legitimate organisations and signers of this letter, and together we repudiate their beliefs, and call for an end in giving airtime to their despicable brand of harassment. In Ireland we exist as a strong coalition of intersectional solidarity. As LGBTI+ and feminist organisations we stand together, we march together, we advocate together. We will not allow transphobia to grow and our history of work together will only continue to propel us to a more equal future for all marginalised people.

Apparently the open letter is calling for these unspecified Twitter accounts to be…erm…deprived of air time. Meaning what? Not invited to talk on tv or radio or podcasts? Suffocated? Either way, since they’re not named or otherwise specified…it’s hard to know what action is being sought.

But then it gets a little clearer.

We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division. These fringe internet accounts stand against affirmative medical care of transgender people, and they stand against the right to self-identification of transgender people in this country. In summation they stand against trans, women’s and gay rights by aligning themselves with far right tropes and stances. They have attacked LGBT+ education in school, attacked anti-bullying campaigns, and attack access to medical services. They stand to remove equality, and cause a legacy of damaging discrimination.

They want media and politicians to stop providing legitimate representation? What can that mean? That this enemy population should be made stateless? It’s an extraordinary demand.

And the things they say after that are just lies – nasty, destructive, reckless lies.

And Amnesty Ireland and Amnesty International signed that open letter.

Amnesty Ireland has a pinned tweet endorsing that nasty dishonest abusive letter.

Institutional capture.