Today I learned it’s Pride Month. Kathleen Stock is not entirely enthusiastic.

I know what you’re thinking: haven’t we already had it? Perhaps you’re thinking of LGBT+ History month in February. Or maybe you’re remembering the Tolkienesque-sounding IDAHOBIT — otherwise known as International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia — a fortnight ago. Later in the year there will be Ace (asexual) Week and Transgender Awareness Week; and don’t forget the Pride and Trans Pride parades scattered throughout the summer. The Catholic church has fewer holy days of obligation than the modern LGBTQI+ movement, and is arguably a lot less guilt-tripping.

On the other hand the Catholic church uses its enormous power to force women to have babies against their will. Credit where it’s due: the alphabet community doesn’t do that.

Just as early Christians made conversion easier by mimicking pagan rituals, so the rainbow gang has relaxed its entry criteria to ensure that straight people feel part of things too…

What is true, though, is that some people feel unwelcome at Pride parades. Paradoxically, many are lesbians and gay men, ideologically excluded because of their antiquated beliefs about the importance of biological sex to the definition of sexual orientation. For them, a male person can never be counted as a lesbian, no matter how high the heels or pink the lipstick, and even the most hirsute or muscular of female people could not accurately be called a gay man. They believe that stating they are attracted to people of the same sex, not the same gender identity, matters — particularly on behalf of confused young people coming to terms with their atypical orientation.

Yet the organiser, Pride in London, has made it obvious there’s no place for such heinous views at its events. The code of conduct even goes rogue from official Equality Act wording: “gender” and “gender identity” are listed as protected characteristics that may not, it is stressed, be “targeted” by “signage”. In plain terms: lesbians may not march with placards saying things like “lesbian = female homosexual”. The last time a group tried this in 2018, Pride in London denounced them as “shocking and disgusting”, demonstrating “a level of bigotry, ignorance and hate that is unacceptable”.

Because…a lesbian is not a female homosexual?

H/t J.A.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To bring communities together.

Conscious decision to place this on the 1st day of Pride month….

There are so many Whatever “Months” and Whatever “Days Of” Something throughout the year that any feminist pushback against trans hegemony and colonialism is going to be deemed “too close” to some Sacred, Appropriated Calendrical Stretch of Time. So basically it’s perpetually “Shut up and Obey All Year Long” Day.

And again, thanks for reiterating the fact that if women defending and asserting their sex-based rights is assumed to be nothing but “anti trans” activism, we can safely assume that any efforts to “extend” trans “rights”, and “equality”, are by definition anti woman. Also, your forced teaming is showing, because the simple statement of fact that woman are adult human females has no impact whatsoever on lesbians, gays, and bisexual people. This statement is not a threat to anyone. It only puts a crimp in the desire of trans identified males to violate women’s boundaries and appropriate women’s spaces. Those who claim it is any kind of threat, insult, or provocation, are in fact threatening, insulting, and provoking women. TiMs wouldn’t feel “targeted” or singled out or uncomfortable by this statement of fact if they were not already guilty of acting in bad faith. What they want and demand is only available through the abolition of proper, standard safeguarding procedures around women’s spaces, and the punishment of those women who say No to any such stripping of their rights.

The swift removal of these symbols of resistance shows how frightened trans activists are of any kind of resistance, of any show of dissent from the monolithic facade of officially enforced Corporate and Civic Happy Rainbow LGBT Solidarity (Or Else), that is expected of the conquered, occupied populace. Allowing the prolonged display of any signs of opposition to imposed trans orthodoxy is proof of a recalcitrant refusal to accept what has been decreed, and dangerous evidence of unacceptable dissatifaction amongst what was supposed to be a safely cowed, conforming “community”. Such shows of independent thought, and outright rejection of demands for obedience and compliance, are an unacceptable sign of transactivism’s inability to win the hearts and minds of everybody, and puts the lie to the Official Story that there is NO CONFLICT between trans “rights” and women’s rights. The angry response is like that of an abusive parent, who insists that everyone under their control must swear to the “fact,” and maintain at all costs, the fiction that theirs is One Big Happy Family, bruises and PTSD be damned.

Originally a comment by Sonderval on DSDs are not halfway houses “between” the two sexes.

And of course, there is the usual mistake of equating “is on a spectrum” with “is difficult to determine”/”can be assigned at will”. A spectrum is a spectrum exactly because points on it can be determined uniquely and objectively. (Monochromatic) colors lie on a spectrum because each wavelength (which can be determined exactly) causes a different stimulation of the three color-perceiving cone cell types we have. So if sex were a spectrum, this would imply that there is an objective way of determining it. Yes people with DSD exist, but this still does not and cannot imply that a man can be a woman, in the same way that the existence of colors like purple does not mean that red is blue.

The fact that the Lancet repeats the standard phrase “exists on a spectrum” without even thinking what that means just shows how far the institutional capture has come and how quickly supposedly critical scientists stop thinking critically if it suits their ideological needs.

To me as a scientist and science communicator, this is one of the saddest things of this whole debate: How quickly scientists stop thinking critically and repeat the dogma without thinking – because they really convinced themselves, because they think that this is the kind thing to do and kindness has to trump truth, because they do not really think about these things or perhaps even out of fear of being shunned.

Elon Musk has way too much power.

Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House. The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.

Meanwhile, Musk is turning up the volume and frequency of his anti-Biden harangues on Twitter/X, the platform he owns.

Way too much power.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, Musk has posted about the president at least seven times a month, on average, this year. He has criticized Biden on issues ranging from Biden’s age to his policies on health and immigration, calling Biden “a tragic front for a far left political machine”.

“Far left.” Biden. Come on.

The Times analysis showed that over the same period of time, Musk has posted more than 20 times in favor of Trump, claiming that the criminal cases the former president now faces are the result of media and prosecutorial bias.

This is no small matter. Musk has 184 million followers on X, and because he owns the platform he’s able to manipulate the algorithm to maximize the number of people who see his posts.

We’re doomed.

Pro Publica tells us Trump has been bribing witnesses dealing out some conveniently timed rewards.

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Don’t get too excited though.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.

White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in — in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the boss who is under investigation.

Trump doesn’t do things ideally.

The Guardian has a long piece on Mhairi Black, who is retiring from her job as as MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.

Swinney took up his position as first minister with a pledge to “govern from the mainstream” and many of Black’s colleagues have expressed concern at a growing perception among voters that the SNP is distracted and divided over gender issues at the expense of their doorstep concerns.

With a general election looming, Black is a pragmatist. “I think that progressing trans rights is absolutely the right thing to do, but during a cost of living crisis I can understand why people get frustrated with it,” she says. While she provoked anger when she dismissed gender-critical feminists as “50-year-old Karens”, she says she is proud for “sticking up for trans people. I think that I will look back on it in years to come and think: ‘Fair play to you, that wasn’t easy, it wasn’t popular, but it was the right thing.’”

Well of course she thinks that, because it’s what she’s thought all along. And of course she’s not ashamed of her contempt for women, because she thinks she’s on The Right Side of ______. And of course there is no pause to spell out exactly what “trans rights” we’re talking about, and whether or not they impinge on women’s rights, and whether or not Mhairi Black really ought to give a shit about it.

Oh ffs. Is it still 2015? Did I just imagine the last 9 years? Or does CNN need to read the room?

Maryhope Howland gave birth to a baby she thought was a boy. But at 6 years old, the child asked her questions such as “Mom, am I a boy? How do you know I’m a boy?”  

“Once I clued in, I said, ‘The doctors make a best guess based on your body … but only you can know, and we love you no matter what,’” said Howland, now co-lead for the Families United for Trans Rights, an organization of transgender kids and their loved ones.

No the doctors didn’t make a “best guess.” Children ask a lot of very basic questions like that, because they’re children, and they don’t know much yet.

Her child’s questioning didn’t stop there. It marked the beginning of a yearslong evolution not just for her daughter, who came out as nonbinary at age 8 and transgender at 10. 

Oh shut up you imbeciles – children don’t “come out” at age 8 or 10. Children are children; they don’t know much yet.

It was also a journey for Howland and her husband as they navigated what it means to be trans, ways of affirming their daughter’s gender identity, their responsibilities as parents, and the grief associated with “letting go of one idea of what our life is going to be,” Howland said.

If they’d had a lick of sense they could have skipped all that. Let the kid wear and play with whatever he wants and don’t tell him silly lies about what sex he is.

“One of the hardest things for us to do as parents is pause when that vision gets interrupted and really listen to what our kiddos are saying to us,” said Nova Bright-Williams, a trans woman who is head of internal training at the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis organization for LGBTQ+ youth.

Yeah well men who claim to be women want company, aka recruits.

The Rev. Rachel Cornwell’s child, Evan, was assigned female at birth and had been showing aversion to the trappings of girlhood. When Cornwell asked Evan at age 4 if he were upset he was born a girl, Evan’s answer shocked her: “Yes, Mommy. I told God when I was a star in the sky that I was a boy, but God made me a girl, and now I just have to live with it.”  

“It seemed that my child knew something very deep and true about himself, and that he had an awareness of how his identity was also wrapped up in his relationship with God,” Cornwell, a pastor at Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, and author of “Daring Adventures: Helping Gender-Diverse Kids and Their Families Thrive,” said via email. “We started to go to therapy as a family and just after Evan turned 6, he decided that he wanted to use male pronouns and a new name.”

So that’s that kid’s life messed up.

Shock-horror in Beeston.

The aim is to bring communities together and not to divide. Hm.

Which communities?

You’re not bringing all communities together with this endless bullying of women, now are you. You’re driving a fuck of a lot of women away, very far away, so far they’ll probably never come back.

It’s very creepy, this blather about “communities” to shore up the silencing and punishment and exile of women. New boss exactly like the old boss.

Extend them where exactly? How? Into what? What rights are missing?

As for “equality now” – what does that even mean? In what sense are trans people not “equal”? In what sense are they treated as not equal? In no sense that I know of. Idenniny isn’t about equality, it’s about pampering the self at the expense of everyone else.

Man sues politician for calling man a man:

The first transgender woman [aka man] to be awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival filed a legal complaint on Wednesday over a “sexist insult” from a far-right politician after her win.

It’s not a sexist insult to call a man a man.

Karla Sofía Gascón and co-stars jointly received the accolade on Saturday for their performances in French auteur Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set narco musical Emilia Perez.

In the film, the 52-year-old Spanish actor – who lived as a man until she was 46 – plays a Mexican drug trafficker both before and after gender reassignment surgery.

After her win, French far-right politician Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, posted on X: “So a man has won best actress. Progress for the left means the erasure of women and mothers.”

Say “far right” all you want, but it’s still true that a man won best actress.

Gascón, through her lawyer, told AFP: “We need to stop such comments.” Her lawyer Etienne Deshoulières said she had filed a legal complaint for “sexist insult on the basis of gender identity”.

We need to stop such legal complaints.

Gascón, who has a wife and daughter, dedicated her win in Cannes to “all the trans people who are suffering”.

He has a daughter, does he? And what was his contribution to the making of that daughter? It wasn’t the egg, so…

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on However, these constructs exist along a spectrum.

Probably unlikely, but I wonder if this is another instance of activist interns taking over an organization’s coms? It’s quite a coup for gender ideology to capture a prestigious, authoritative journal such as The Lancet, despite the fact that its surrender to them diminishes and devalues the very prestige and authority they coveted it for in the first place.

And what have they won? what do these guidelines do? From the excerpt here in the original post, The Lancet is now endorsing several key goals and concepts of gender ideology, but in a very slippery way. It doesn’t come straight out and say that sex is a social construct, but makes this claim by sidling up to it through elision:

Sex and gender are often incorrectly portrayed as binary (female/male or woman/man), concordant, and static. However, these constructs exist along a spectrum that includes additional sex categorisations and gender identities, such as people who are intersex/have differences of sex development

(DSD), or identify as non-binary. (my bolding)

Here, sex has been slyly lumped together with gender as a social construct, without having argued for or providing any evidence to support this claim in its listing of the definitions of sex at the beginning of the paragraph. And look what else they slip into this sneaky little paragraph. They claim that sex is “incorrectly portrayed” as “binary,” and “static.” But sex is binary: there are only two sexes. And sex is static; humans can’t change sex.

It’s interesting that this guidance uses both “intersex” and “DSD”: the former offers the possibility of a continuum between the poles of male and female (which is why I believe it was included, despite the persistant requests of people with DSDs not to use “intersex”), while the latter does not. Sex is not a spectrum. “People who are intersex/have differences of sex development” no more prove that sex is a “spectrum” than polydactyly or oligodactyly prove that the number of fingers or toes on humans is a “spectrum.” Yet DSDs are not halfway houses “between” the two sexes. These conditions are, in terms of normal development, dead ends. They are mistakes made by errors in the growth program which is normally supposed to produce a male or female body. They are result of a process that has in some way gone wrong, not an additional, expected pathway of development as usual. They aren’t stable, desired outcomes. They are not additional “colours” on a “spectrum”, they are the equivalent of typographical errors in a text, or incorrectly assembled components on an assembly line; outcomes that were never intended, but which occurred nonetheless. They are the rare, particular outcomes of particular disorders specific to each sex, not some sort of amorphous no-man’s-land between the conditions of male and female.

You’d think that something called a “spectrum” would exhibit a larger percentage of members at places other than the two “ends” of its supposed “range.” Compared to the expected “male” and “female” bodies that normal growth and development produce, the numbers of people with DSDs is very small; certainly not enough to merit their deployment to argue that sex is a “spectrum.” Using DSD conditions in this way to argue against the sex binary is dishonest and deceptive. They do not prove or support the claim they are making. They must know this. This is not an error or mistake. This is an ideologically driven position, not a medical or physiologically mandated one. It is politics, not medicine. There is no science that disproves the binary, immutable nature of sex in humans, otherwise the discoverers of any such disproof would have won Nobel Prizes for medicine. Until the writers of this guidance for The Lancet show up in Stockholm to collect their awards, I will count them as liars.

*”Concordant” doesn’t really enter the picture if “gender” does not exist. Interestingly, there is no claim in this excerpt for “gender” being the “inner sense of identity” that can be “born in the wrong body.”

Oh no – women have become too mouthy. They’re supposed to be silent and fun to look at, or else absent. We’re not here to listen to women talk ffs. By “we” I mean real people; women are just toys.

“Look, let’s just be frank. Women have become too mouthy. As the Black man in the room, I’ll say that.”

That’s a quote from Minnesota Senate candidate Royce White, the man recently endorsed by the state Republican Party in its primary contest to face off against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the fall.

See? See what I mean? What the hell is Senator Amy Klobuchar doing being a senator? It’s so mouthy!

White made the comments in July on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, before rambling on with a sexist attack on MSNBC’s Joy Reid and peddling conspiracy theories about women in the workplace. The comments resurfaced in video clips that were circulating on social media over the weekend.

Yeah, well, women who talk on tv are mouthy, and women in the workplace are mouthy. Obviously. Women are supposed to be inside a house, not talking.

From way back in the obscure past and an excellent listen: John McWhorter on the ways Trump has no clue how to talk like a grownup.

The Center for Reproductive Rights still uses That word.

Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications

The Texas legislature and its Supreme Court want women to die rather than get an abortion.

Today the Texas Supreme Court denied claims brought by 20 women denied abortion care despite facing dangerous pregnancy complications and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion bans. The ruling in the high-profile case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, left physicians without clarity about the circumstances under which they can use their own medical judgement to provide abortion care without fear of prosecution.

And without that clarity they have abundant reason to fear the consequences of using their own medical judgement. This is, obviously, dangerous for women who develop pregnancy complications. The fetus is everything, the woman who carries it is nothing.

The pregnant plaintiffs in this case experienced complications such as preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) and pregnancies with severe developmental problems and no chance of survival. Denied abortion care, some of the women developed health- and life-threatening infections, some traveled hundreds of miles out of state during their medical crises to obtain care, and others were forced to remain pregnant against their will and deliver babies that were either stillborn or died soon after birth.

The Texas Supreme Court looks at this result and finds it pleasing.

In its ruling, the Court largely ignores the women denied abortion care who filed the case. The ruling states that abortions are not permitted in situations where the fetus has a lethal condition and will not survive, unless the pregnant patient also has a life-threatening condition. The Court also dismissed claims that the Texas law violates patients’ constitutional rights to protect their lives and health.

While the Court clarified that exceptions can be made for life-threatening conditions such as PPROM, the Court refused to say when, in the course of a patient’s deteriorating health situation, the exception would apply.

The Court also threw out an injunction issued by a Texas district judge in August 2023 that blocked the state’s abortion bans and would have allowed abortions for severe pregnancy complications and fatal fetal diagnoses. The state had immediately appealed the judge’s ruling, blocking it from taking effect mere hours after the opinion was issued. 

So determined to force women to die of pregnancy.

“This ruling utterly fails to provide the clarity Texas doctors need for when they can provide abortion care to patients with serious pregnancy complications without risking being sent to prison. To add insult to injury, the opinion erases the women we represent as though their pain and experiences didn’t exist or matter,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center. 

We do unfortunately get a couple of “pregnant peoples” as if to throw a small rabbit into the jaws of a roaring lion, but they’re swiftly followed by a return to reality.

While Texas’s abortion laws contain an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person, the state’s hostile abortion landscape has made physicians afraid to rely on the exception. These extreme bans criminalizing abortion have stoked fear and confusion among pregnant people and doctors throughout the state.   

Physicians found to have violated Texas’s abortion laws face fines of at least $100,000, up to 99 years in prison, and revocation of their state medical licenses. Such legal risks, combined with the bans’ unclear language, are deterring Texas physicians from providing their patients with abortion care—a necessary, life-saving procedure crucial for treating many dangerous pregnancy conditions.  

Zurawski v. State of Texas is the first lawsuit brought on behalf of women denied abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and cleared the way for states to ban it entirely.

“As women across the country are finding out, exceptions to abortion bans are illusory and it is dangerous to be pregnant in any state that bans abortion. Pregnancy complications should be managed by doctors, not courts and politicians,” added Northup. “We are enormously proud of the women in this case who stood up to Texas’ unjust law. We will continue to pursue every available legal avenue to address the suffering happening in Texas and are currently assessing what, if anything, remains of our clients’ claims in this case.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed lawsuits and complaints in several states on behalf of dozens of women who were denied abortion care despite such serious complications, and physicians who are unable to provide the medically necessary abortion care their patients need because of the harsh criminal, financial, and professional penalties they face.  

The eagerness to kill pregnant women just never stops surprising me.

More on the inspiring theme of Republicans declaring war on the criminal justice system:

Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party’s presidential candidate for the November election — in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case against the former president or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.

In fact, any Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan of Maryland, were instantly bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to “leave the party.”

They might as well all be jumping into a swimming pool filled with pig shit. It would make just as much sense.

Rather than shunning Trump’s escalating authoritarian language or ensuring they will provide checks and balances for a second Trump term, the Republican senators and representatives are upturning longstanding faith in U.S. governance and setting the stage for what they plan to do if Trump regains power.

That longstanding faith in U.S. governance bit is what makes it so baffling and hard to believe. How does anyone get from longstanding faith in U.S. governance to unconditional support of a trashy mean vulgar stupid greedy lying pig of a convicted felon?

On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded the prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo appear for a June hearing on the “weaponization of the federal government” and “the unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump — despite the fact that Biden, as president, has no authority over the state courts in New York.

Jordan is weaponizing Congress to accuse Biden of doing something he has no power to do.

Where did all the grownups go? Why did they leave us alone with these lunatics?

So the plan now is to attack judges and prosecutors.

Throughout Washington, Trump’s allies – some of them jockeying to be his running mate – responded Friday with a series of escalating calls for retribution on his behalf.

As one does. Republicans have always been staunch enemies of…the judicial system.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, an attorney in the prosecutor’s office, testify next week “about the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.” Several Republican senators – including vice presidential contenders Marco Rubio of Florida and JD Vance of Ohio – signed a letter signifying they would not work with the Biden administration to pass legislation, confirm his judicial nominees or increase nonsecurity spending.

Vance, during a Friday appearance on Fox News, vowed to “fight back” with investigations of Democrats and their donors and by subpoenaing Merchan and his daughter. The judge’s daughter, who served as president of a campaign consulting firm that works with Democratic candidates, became a target of Trump’s attacks before Merchan included her in his gag order.

Sure, that makes sense. If you don’t like a verdict in a criminal case, attack the judge’s children. Law and order doncha know.

Trump’s campaign is already making clear it intends to call out Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal in this moment. When Larry Hogan, a former Maryland governor and Republican Senate candidate, called for Americans to “respect the verdict and the legal process,” Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita responded on social media: “You just ended your campaign.”

Nice little campaign ya got here, be a shame if anything was to happen to it.

It was that courthouse.

As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial this week, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that.

It’s the same courthouse where five Black and Latino youths were wrongly convicted 34 years ago in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. The former president famously took out a newspaper ad in New York City in the aftermath of the 1989 attack calling for the execution of the accused in a case that roiled racial tensions locally and that many point to as evidence of a criminal justice system prejudiced against defendants of color.

“Famously” and appallingly, disgustingly, outrageously. Yet NBC saw fit to amplify his hideous “celebrity” by making him a tv star. Isn’t capitalism fabulous?

But on Friday, a day after making history as the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes in a court of law, Trump blasted that same criminal justice system as corrupt and rigged against him.

To add to the multiple ironies, he’s a prolific rapist himself.

Some Black Americans found irony in Trump railing against the injustice of his own conviction, in a courthouse where five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongly convicted in a case Trump supported so vociferously.

Ya think?

The Lancet.

The Lancet!!!

This is healthy and reasonable:

Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution.

After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.

Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.

“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.

On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”

But it can definitely be fixed by “capping leftys.”

Originally a comment by KBPlayer on Shortcut.

The activists have succeeded in forcing the Edinburgh Book Festival to drop sponsorship from Baillie Gifford because of their threatened disruption. The activists are such little shits – book festivals are about the safest place around to let off smoke bombs or whatever crap they do. This will damage the book festival, and of course the writers involved. According to Jenny Lindsay, the poet who was hounded out of Edinburgh by transactivists, one of her worst tormentors is part of this anti-book crusade.

There is an open letter from about every well-known Scottish writer, excluding Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and J K Rowling (who is English rather than Scottish but has lived here for decades) lamenting the loss of sponsorship.

“We are writers who are profoundly concerned about the fate of the UK’s book festivals and other cultural events, and the likely consequences of calls for boycotts related to festival sponsorship by Baillie Gifford. In particular we are deeply concerned about the future of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF).

As citizens, we are absolutely right to keep up the pressure for fossil fuel divestment. We also call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and for the release of hostages.

However, a strategy of protest which results in EIBF being left without a principal sponsor will jeopardise its future: this would be a Pyrrhic victory, and merely deprive writers and activists of platform and influence.

As public discourse deteriorates and divisions widen, we believe that books and book festivals offer an increasingly rare opportunity for the community of writers and readers to come together in the free and civil exchange of ideas. Many of our number are actively involved in climate action, environmental and social justice issues. Book festivals allow writers subject to discrimination or harassment in their home countries to have their work and their cases heard (we think of the PEN Imprisoned Writers readings, a daily feature of EIBF).

Invitations to UK book festivals are a way for writers from places of conflict, including Palestine and Ukraine, to travel and share their stories.

For this vital cultural work we require a cultural infrastructure. We believe that boycotts which threaten such platforms, and which pressure other writers to comply, are deeply retrograde. Protest is of course our right and duty, but protest actions that risk the collapse of book festivals are ill-thought-out. For whom, exactly, would this be a victory?

To have any effect on investment practices we must exert the kind of influence only friends have over each other. We believe that story-telling, witness, theatre, poetry, conversation, reading and argumentation are crucial to this process, and that it would be perverse to destroy the means of our own political leverage and influence.

Our work depends on the robustness and integrity of the platforms that allow us to broadcast and promote our words, and to engage and meet our readers. Without the support of EIBF and other book festivals, and without the spaces provided by theatres and other cultural venues, our voices will merely grow quieter, and our young and emerging writers may never be heard at all.

Here in Scotland we recall that the Edinburgh Festivals – now a global phenomenon – were established as gestures of peace-making after WW2. The EIBF is a more recent addition, and we are proud of its success and the mutual support it has established with Scottish authors and authors worldwide. If the EIBF loses its long-term sponsor the reach of these authors will be palpably reduced. We call on writers and book workers to engage in dialogue to find ethically acceptable solutions whereby our festivals are not silenced.”

Alan Riach; Alexander McCall Smith; Ali Millar; Alistair Moffat; Andrew Greig; Andrew Neilson; Andrew O’Hagan; Bernard McLaverty; Catherine Czerkawska; Chris Brookmyre; Claudia Daventry; Colin Grant; Dan Richards; David Farrier; David Greig; Denise Mina; Don Paterson; Doug Johnstone; Elaine Morrison; Esa Aldegheri; Ever Dundas; Fiona Rintoul; Gavin Francis; Gerda Stevenson; Gerry Cambridge; Hannah McGill; Prof. Ian Brown; Ian MacPherson; Jackie Kay; James Robertson; Jen Stout; Jenny Colgan; Jenny Lindsay; Jim Crumley; John Glenday; Karine Polwart; Kathleen Jamie; Lesley Harrison; Linda Cracknell; Lisa Brockwell; Liz Lochead; Magi Gibson; Marisa Haetzman; Marjorie Lotfi; Mark Billingham; Merryn Glover; Michael Longley; Neal Ascherson; Niall Campbell; Peter Dorward; Peter Ross; Polly Clark; Raja Shehadeh; Richard Holloway; Ricky Ross; Robert Crawford; Robert Dawson Scott; Rodge Glass; Ron Butlin; Sam Baker; Sara Sheridan; Sarah Moss; Sean O’Brien; Stewart Conn; Stuart Kelly; Sue Lawrence; Tom Pow; Val McDermid; Zinnie Harris;

Scottish writers criticise ‘perverse’ protest over Edinburgh book festival as Baillie Gifford sponsorship ends (scotsman.com)