John Lewis wrote us a farewell letter in the New York Times, which is not behind the paywall.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Morgan Freeman reads the letter.

The news that Jared Kushner wanted the virus to kill off Democrats hasn’t gone over well with everyone.

In the wake of devastating new reporting by Vanity Fair, a chorus of voices Friday called for the immediate resignation of Jared Kushner, a top White House advisor and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for disastrous—and deadly—failures by the administration that appear to have put the political desires of the president above the public health needs of the American people.

“Imagine the administration had intel on an imminent terrorist attack that would kill over 100,000 people, and chose to do nothing because it was politically easier,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on his personal account. “That’s what we have here. We need to be talking about accountability. For all of it.”

If only he would go poof into thin air.

Apparently it has finally dawned on Trump that a lot of people really don’t like him. Really don’t like him.

You’d think he would have known that all his life, given what an up front unabashed asshole he is…except he’s a narcissist so if you understand about narcissists you wouldn’t think that. Understanding narcissists is not easy.

In a week that saw a devastating global pandemic worsen, a record economic meltdown confirmed and an all-out bid to stoke racial tensions for political gain deepen, Trump is finding himself more and more the odd man out: absent and detached from the leadership of either party, locked in antique cultural battles and increasingly unpopular among voters.

In other words most of us detest him more than we’ve ever detested anyone in our whole lives. He’s literally the worst person we’ve ever experienced.

Even his staunchest Republican allies flatly rejected his suggestion that November’s voting be delayed, some actually laughing at what, by most accounts, was a serious (if toothless) proposal from the President to undermine the election.

The nation’s civic leadership, including three of Trump’s four living predecessors, gathered without him in Atlanta to honor the late Rep. John Lewis, making the sitting president’s absence conspicuous if unsurprising.

Ain’t nobody ever gonna talk about Trump the way mourners talked about John Lewis.

In an attempt to boost his mood, Trump’s advisers scrambled to assemble a scaled-down political event on a baking Florida tarmac on Friday, where Trump addressed a mostly mask-less crowd standing inches from one another. Other events in the state that Trump had scheduled for Saturday were canceled as a storm approached.

Scaled-down is right – there were maybe a couple of hundred people on that tarmac.

Party’s over, Don. Go home.

Alexander Vindman

After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career.

…

At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.

Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished.

But he still has hope.

When I was asked why I had the confidence to tell my father not to worry about my testimony, my response was, “Congressman, because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.”

To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.

To be honest I think that’s only part of the story. I can’t really believe any blanket “in America, right matters.” Our history with regard to people of African descent is the biggest reason – if it were true that in America right matters, then that history wouldn’t have been what it is.

But respect to Vindman all the same.

Melodrama and hyperbolic overreaction and loud fits of rage are always a winning political strategy, right? Always the way to win people over to your side? Always the cue to open the floodgates of sympathy and solidarity?Especially when based on an ideological commitment and command to deny material reality as the basis of the belief system?

Deeply. Deeply worried. Deeply worried and saddened. Deeply worried and saddened at the comments and actions.

What “comments and actions” caused this tragic attack of worry and sorrow? Saying that a part of the female anatomy is a part of the female anatomy.

So profound and agonizing is this state of worry and sadness that they can’t even wait for a new paragraph before rushing to tell the poor crumpled sobbing heap of trans people that they – Canterbury Young Labour, or at least the member of Canterbury Young Labour in charge of their Twitter account – extend their unconditional solidarity and love to trans people – all of them, sight unseen, no questions asked, no conditions leveled, just love love love. It’s so wet – it’s wetter than fotherington-tomas at his very wettest. This isn’t politics, it’s amateur therapy, and by the way it’s not working.

It’s not “transphobic” to say an accurate thing about female anatomy. Telling the truth about female anatomy does not “harm trans people,” and telling lies about female anatomy and bullying women when we object does harm women. Funny how there are never any heaps of sobbing allies offering us unconditional solidarity and love.

Oh look at that, how interesting. There’s a thing – a campaign? group? website? all of the above? – called Prostate Cancer UK. It’s quite unabashed about saying it’s men who get prostate cancer. Men, we are with you, it says on the front page. Twice.

Men, men, man, men, in just one bit of the home page.

Scroll down – lots more use of the word.

And they’re on Twitter. Not abashed about the M word there either.

The latest tweet:

Where are all the angry cries about exclusion?

Labour Campaign for Trans Rights – i.e. some trans “activists” who created a website – has “issued” a “statement” saying why MP Rosie Duffield is in their view “transphobic.”

We in the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights are shocked by the comments made by Rosie Duffield today. To insist that “only women have a cervix” denies the existence of trans men and many nonbinary people. Not all women have cervixes, and not everyone who has a cervix is a woman.

Shocked, shocked.

Saying that only women have a cervix does not “deny the existence” of anyone. That claim is idiotic. An activism founded on idiotic claims of that kind (and not much else) is an activism that is doomed to failure. Women who call themselves trans men still exist, and they can still call themselves trans men (or men, or raccoons, or goblets) despite the existence of other women who point out that women and only women have female anatomy. Issuing outraged statements any time a woman mentions female anatomy is a stupid childish footling kind of “activism.”

Inclusive language harms nobody and costs little; it is a simple act of support for trans people in a political culture that is increasingly hostile towards us.

But “inclusive language” is just a label, and a pretty meaningless label at that. Who ruled that “people with cervixes” is inclusive while “women” is exclusionary? What about all the people who point out that it not only excludes women by not mentioning us even as our anatomy is the subject, it also obfuscates the very thing it’s trying to promote – the need to screen for cervical cancer? How about including us for a change?

Another one in the crosshairs:

What terrible thing did she say?

Ah no, you would never dream of politicizing anything.

Don’t mess with Fauci.

Shirtsleeves Jordan’s “point” is that people are told not to go to church so why won’t Fauci tell people not to go to protests?

Which is stupid because as Fauci keeps pointing out, it’s not his job to make laws, it’s his job to give medical advice.

Jim Jordan is a representative because he gets to run in a rather peculiar district.

That’s not a normal, non-gerrymandered shape for a Congressional district.

Diddums.

A trans footballer who endured online abuse after announcing she was joining a professional team said the experience has been “hurtful.”

That is, a man who wants to play football against women has received some pushback.

Sammy Walker, 29, from Bristol, was targeted by Twitter users who labelled her a “paedophile” and claimed she was stealing places from female players.

Because he is stealing a place from a female player. That’s how that works. If the team gives a place to him then there’s a woman who didn’t get that place.

“I fought tooth and nail to be me, and it obviously hurts,” she said.

Heedless of how his tooth and nail fighting affects women, isn’t he. Male-typical obliviousness. Also what he fought for was not “to be me” but “to be universally recognized as something I’m not.”

The FA’s policy on trans people in football states “gender identity should not be a barrier to participation”.

But gender identity is not the issue, the issue is a man playing against women. It’s not to do with identity, it’s to do with bodies – muscles, lungs, pelvises, heights, weights.

Trans individuals who wish to play professionally are judged on a case-by-case basis. Players must submit blood samples to prove their testosterone levels do not give them a physical advantage.

That’s woefully inadequate. Men have an array of advantages and they’re not all determined by testosterone.

“It’s frustrating that people think my participation is a risk to women’s sport in general,” she said.

But it’s also frustrating that his participation is a risk to women’s sport and that he doesn’t give a shit. It’s frustrating that he’s so eager to take a place from a woman and put the women on his team at risk by his presence. It’s frustrating that the BBC is reporting this story so incompetently.

While the club she has signed for has been supportive, Ms Walker, who played academy football before transitioning, says the experience has been “upsetting.”

…

“I’ve got a thick skin and it will take more than words on a screen to deter me,” she added.

He’s got a thick skin and he doesn’t give a good god damn about the women he’s cheating and endangering.

I always wonder how Jolyon Maugham QC can be so confident about the wack things he says. I don’t wonder it so much about Adrian Harrop and Owen Jones, because they’re rather childish and undisciplined and silly, but I have this idea that QCs have to do better than that. (To be sure, Harrop is a medical doctor and you’d hope that would apply to him too, but he’s just so goony that it seems futile to wonder further.)

Like this thing for instance.

How does he manage to be so confident that there is such a thing as a “transgender child” and that it is easy to know which children are transgender and that there are never any mistakes about it? How can he be so confident that all that is known and established and well beyond question? How can he be so very confident of all that that he thinks the only right course of action is prescribing puberty blockers? How can he be so confident that puberty blockers are in no way risky or undesirable or damaging such that if there is a mistake and the transgender child in question later turns out not to be transgender, that child will wish the puberty blockers had not been prescribed?

How can he be so confident that there are only two choices, prescribe puberty blockers (yay! happy transgender child) or do nothing (boooo! sad transgender child)? How can he be so confident that therapy, watch and wait, caution are not also choices? How can he be so certain that all children who say they are transgender are entirely right about it and also not at all influenced by the public relations campaign to make being trans the hippest best wokest thing ever? How can he be so confident that fashion and political rhetoric and social media and roleplaying games (thanks Sastra) have not created a new way for kids to make themselves special? How can he be so confident that the stories people tell about themselves are transparently uncomplicatedly true? A lawyer of all people!

The revival of feminism started decades ago, in the late 60s, and still many men don’t get it, think women are shit, can’t be bothered, don’t care. The trans craze has been raging for a few years and here are smug domineering women-hating men like Jolyon Maugham QC embracing it without a hint of doubt or skepticism.

Vanity Fair has a big new article on how Prince Jared made himself the boss of the administration’s coronavirus testing plan, and how that plan just disappeared because they’re all fools and hacks.

By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it would soon be shared with President Trump and announced by the White House. The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point. Simply working together as a nation on it “would have put us in a fundamentally different place,” said the participant.

But the White House said Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah we don’t need to do that.

Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

So, you know, let’s just do nothing. Sound good? Ok then, nothing it is.

But wait, it gets worse.

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

Ah. Cool. They’re happy to kick back and watch people in “Democratic states” die by the thousands, because that’s an effective political strategy. Good to know.

Experts are now warning that the U.S. testing system is on the brink of collapse. “We are at a very bad moment here,” said Margaret Bourdeaux. “We are about to lose visibility on this monster and it’s going to rampage through our whole country. This is a massive emergency.”

This morning Jim Jordan has been yammering at Fauci about churches and protests. We’re all doomed.

So let’s read this piece about violence against women in Turkey.

Feminists in Turkey have called on the rest of the world not to forget the original context of Instagram’s #challengeaccepted trend, which was supposed to draw attention to skyrocketing rates of gender-based violence in the country before it was co-opted by western celebrities.

Femicide, violence against women and so-called “honour” killings are deeply rooted issues in Turkey. Last week, the country was rocked by the brutal killing of Pınar Gültekin, a 27-year-old student, who was allegedly killed by an ex-boyfriend.

Why would that be? Funnily enough, the Guardian story doesn’t mention the word “Islam” or the word “religion.”

Campaigners are also deeply worried about fresh efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party to repeal a Council of Europe treaty known as the Istanbul convention, groundbreaking legislation from 2011 that protects victims of domestic and gender-based violence and effectively prosecutes offenders.

Interesting. What kind of authoritarian is Erdoğan? A theocratic kind. Erdoğan wants Turkey to be more theocratic, more Islamist, more governed by religious laws. Funnily enough those religious laws are very male-favoring and female-dominating, very patriarchal, very misogynist. It’s almost as if they were created by men.

Sometimes the juxtapositions on Twitter can be…I dunno, striking, ironic, poignant, something like that.

One:

Two:

Violence against women in Turkey. Not “individuals with a cervix,” not generalized “people,” not “non-men”; women.

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on A woman is whoever wants to be a woman.

‘Childhood pretending’ – I am reminded of doing mask-work while doing acting training (which can be alarming – some odd things come out, and the emotions called forth can be overwhelming), and of the way a Noh actor (the shite – which is pronounced, roughly, ‘shte’ and not the way you might suppose, though it may be there are some real shites among Noh actors, as there are among all actors), having put on his mask, looks into a mirror to allow the spirit of the character to enter him. And I feel that when you are acting well, it is as though you have a kind of second skin an infinitesimal distance from your actual skin, and that this leads you. It is like a mask. You are no longer in control – though there remains a constant sort of double focus, since you know the role is leading you, and allow it do so. I have come across some actors, in nearly every case, poor ones, who so lose themselves in what they suppose to be their role that they will behave violently towards other actors in rehearsal and then excuse themselves, first of all, usually, to themselves (since they feel this loss of control shows that must be good actors) and only then to others if they do so at all.

The Danish anthropologist Rane Willerslev has written very interestingly on Siberian hunting tribes, whose members enter the animal world in dreams and are given tips by the Mistress of Animals where to go on the following day or in a few days’ time. The hunters, if hunting an elk, will, after spotting an elk, so move that the elk supposes they are an elk and will at times come towards them. They have, while retaining human form, as it were put on the skin or mask of an elk and allow this to guide them. At the same time, however, the hunters told Willerslev, you must not allow yourself to be too caught up into the world of animals, for you will eventually lose your humanity, and, it seems, this occasionally happens, so someone will actually become mentally deranged. There is a sort of double focus here, too, which it is important to maintain.

This kind of thing is profoundly connected with all the arts – and very obviously in the case of imaginative literature, where a good playwright or novelist or poet enters deeply into the skin of a character, whether of the same sex as the writer or not. I recall the composer and violinist George Enescu speaking, concerning the composing of his great opera ‘Oedipe’, of struggling to to build an almost unbearable tension in order to depict the victory of Oedipus over the Sphinx. Ah, I’ve found the place in the book: ‘To describe the howling of the Sphinx, he had “to imagine something unimaginable.” “When I finished that scene,” recalls the composer, “it seemed to me that I was going mad.”‘

But he didn’t go mad.

There is this fluidity, if you like to call it that, in all of us, and it is a great part of what makes us human. And, particularly in youth, one’s imagination can seem to be all too real – particularly if it is in part a defence against some traumatic experience, as in the case of that poor young girl quoted in a thread here some days ago, who, having experienced abuse at the hands of a cousin, and having discovered that she was attracted to someone of the same sex, declared that she was a boy called ‘John’, and absolutely denied that she was a lesbian. And, certainly, there is something called gender dysphoria which may be connected with this fluidity.

Which all seems to me pertinent to the case of claiming to be a sex other than you are, particularly in the case of the behaviour of the most vociferous of the trans-females, a number of whom sport beards, wear male clothing, and who behave like bad actors and real shites. 　

Did you know that women menstruate? How gross is that? Let’s never mention it again.

Offensive, crude, vulgar, unnecessary, embarrassing and grotesque. That’s Tampax’s current television ad – now banned – according to complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland.

The advertisement features the host of a talkshow called Tampons & Tea asking her studio audience how many of them ever feel their tampon. When her guest, a young woman, raises her hand to indicate that she does, the host tells her that she shouldn’t and that it might mean her tampon is not in far enough. “You gotta get ’em up there, girls!” the host says. The ad then shows how to insert a tampon correctly – “Not just the tip, up to the grip!”

But that’s the Gateway to Hell they’re talking about so casually!

So what’s the big deal? The ASAI has prohibited the ad from being shown again in its current form after it received 84 complaints. The authority rejected claims that it demeaned women, was unsuitable for children and contained sexual innuendo, but it did accept that the advert caused widespread offence. Catholic Ireland, how are you?

Flourishing, it seems.

Procter & Gamble, which makes Tampax – and in the United States is using Amy Schumer to talk about tampons and vaginas – says the ad was created in response to findings that suggested 42 per cent of women who use applicator tampons do not insert the applicator correctly and that 79 per cent experience discomfort while wearing tampons. So people clearly require more guidance, particularly as this isn’t a topic necessarily taught in schools or spoken about at home. Hence the need for “You gotta get ’em up there, girls!”

Some viewers told the ASAI they found the messaging in the Tampax ad, which is for its Pearl Compak range, “provocative” or “suggestive”. I’d say it’s refreshingly plain-speaking and informative, as well as a welcome alternative to traditional menstrual-product advertising. Ads showing women rollerblading in white leotards on the first day of their periods are far more offensive than this one. And don’t get me started on the ads that substitute an unidentified blue liquid for blood.

It’s a good ad – funny, straightforward, helpful.

Ciara Kelly is even better.

Interesting observation.

Just imagine Trump there. Trump who was sued along with his father for racial discrimination in housing.

The Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management in order to obtain a settlement in which Trump and his father would promise not to discriminate. The case eventually was settled two years later after Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for $100 million for making false statements. Those allegations were dismissed by the court.

…

The lawsuit was based on evidence gathered by testers for the New York City Human Rights Division, which alleged that black people who went to Trump buildings were told there were no apartments available, while white people were offered units.

Just yesterday, he publicly announced he’s bringing back racial discrimination in housing.

So, yeah, his presence at John Lewis’s funeral would not have been welcome.

What has happened to people? What have they done with their brains?

Why do people – especially women, especially feminist women, but really any people – say things like that? When they’re so obviously absurd? So like baby talk? It’s just not true that a woman is whoever wants to be a woman, any more than it’s true that a tree is whoever wants to be a tree or a shark is whoever wants to be a shark. I’m pretty sure Naomi Wolf realizes that about other categories, so why does she think the rules suddenly vanish into thin air when the wants-to-be is a woman? Why does she think woman is the only category that’s fungible in that way? Why does she think that if Trump decided he wants to be a woman he would be a woman simply because he wants to?

Trump last week on John Lewis:

Trump today on Herman Cain: