News:

The American Conservative Union announced on Saturday that one of the attendees at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, has tested positive for coronavirus.

President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials attended the conference, though the ACU says the attendee did not come into contact with the president or vice president, nor did they attend events in the main hall.

Ah but the attendee is not necessarily the only attendee carrying the virus. Maybe several people there, or many people there, would test positive if anyone tested them. You never know.

Do I hope Trump is pissing himself right now? Oh you bet I do.

The White House confirmed in a statement that it was aware of an individual testing positive for coronavirus after attending the CPAC conference.

“At this time there is no indication that either President Trump or Vice President Pence met with or were in close proximity to the attendee. The President’s physician and United States Secret Service have been working closely with White House Staff and various agencies to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy,” according to the White House.

Fine, there’s no indication as of now, but that doesn’t mean much. Even Trump probably understands that, what with his uncle having been an engineer and all. The contagion spreads.

The ACU noted that it has been in contact with the state of Maryland’s health department and would follow guidance from health experts.

…

“Our children, spouses, extended family, and friends attended CPAC. During this time, we need to remain calm, listen to our health care professionals, and support each other. We send this message in that spirit,” the group said.

You took your children to CPAC; that’s on you.

Do I hope Trump gets the virus? Oh hell yes.

Updating to add another layer of irony:

Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman on why women have a right to call ourselves women:

For all the hard-won successes of the first and second waves of feminism, from the right to vote to the right to choose, women and girls are still second-class citizens.

From unequal pay to the US Supreme Court seriously considering whether or not to limit abortion rights, the battle for equality grinds on. Indeed, 50 years after the first Women’s Liberation event held in Oxford, it seems to be getting harder to argue against the patriarchy, especially when it is disguised in high heels and a blonde wig.

I could not have been the only woman of certain age who was aghast on Wednesday when a respected feminist, a woman who has spent her whole life fighting for equality, had to stand up in the Scottish Parliament and argue for the right to be called a woman.

MSP Elaine Smith objected to her colleague Patrick Harvie’s use of ‘cisgender’ to effectively mean a woman during, of all things, a debate to mark International Women’s Day.

What’s the problem? The problem is that there is no such thing as “cisgender women,” there are only women. Women are women, just as we always have been, and we don’t need a stupid new word to differentiate us from men who pretend to be women. Only women are women; men who pretend to be women are men. Feminism is not for men who pretend to be women, and women are not also-rans in their own category.

And as women died for the right to vote and marched for the right to have power over their own bodies, they held on to their right to call themselves, proudly, defiantly, women.

Not girls, not ladies, women. Not bitches, not cunts, not slags, not whores, not honeys, not witches – women. Just women.

But here we are on the eve of International Women’s Day 2020, and a woman’s inalienable right to be a woman is being eroded by a small – but powerful – group of activists who have persuaded naïve policy makers that biological sex does not exist.

The new truth says that being a woman is a choice and the term ‘woman’ belongs to anyone who believes they are female.

Those of us born biological females must therefore be described as cisgender, or even non-trans, so that trans women (biological males who believe they are women) can feel equal.

Even George Orwell would have rejected such doublethink as too outlandish for his dystopian fiction, but this is the reality of Scotland’s political debate today – women are no longer women. We are cisgender. Non-trans. Non-people.

There is a lot of marching still to do, sisters, and it starts this afternoon outside the Scottish Parliament at 2pm, when women from across Scotland will demonstrate for their right to be, well, women.

Oh now what.

What concerns?

Patrick Strudwick at Buzzfeed presents a typically opaque version of events:

Hundreds of staff and contractors at the Guardian have signed a strongly worded letter to the editor in protest of the newspaper’s “pattern of publishing transphobic content”.

Careful, and unhelpful. His use of quotation marks hints that he doesn’t want to defend or even spell out what this “transphobic content” actually is, but he does want to get the claim out there.

The letter has 338 signatures, Strudwick says proudly. Buzzfeed got to see a copy on the understanding that no names would be named – which is convenient. Some are household names though, Strudwick assures us.

The letter, which was organised over the last few days in response to a column by Suzanne Moore that has been widely criticised as anti-trans, said the staff were “deeply distressed” by the resignation of a transgender member of staff who said they’d received anti-trans comments from “influential editorial staff” and who criticised the publication of the Moore’s column at the editorial morning conference.

But how was the column “anti-trans”? Spell it out. Explain. Give examples. Let us see. But no, he doesn’t do that.

The column was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the trans employee said, following a series of pieces that pitted trans people against women and against women’s rights. One leader article — the publicly stated position of the newspaper — claimed that trans rights are in “collision” with women’s rights.

Tell us how they are not. Explain why that’s not true. Offer us reasons. Don’t just repeat the labels endlessly.

We get the full letter.

As employees across the Guardian, we are deeply distressed by the resignation of another trans colleague in the UK, the third in less than a year.

We feel it is critical that the Guardian do more to become a safe and welcoming workplace for trans and non-binary people.

We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media. But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees.

We strongly support trans equality and want to see the Guardian live up to its values and do the same.

We look forward to working with Guardian leadership to address these pressing concerns, and request a response by 11 March.

Same problem, you see? Generalities, stale generalities, with no examples, no explanations, no specifics, no reasons. What, exactly, are these “anti-trans views” that they say the Guardian keeps publishing? What, exactly, is the “transphobic content”? How is the Guardian “hostile to trans rights and trans employees”? What do they mean by “trans equality”?

Labels and epithets do all the work for this brand of “activism.” Labels and epithets aren’t enough, because we need reasons before we agree to pretend that men who say they “feel like” women actually are women. We need reasons and the reasons in turn have to be good reasons. “Because we say so” won’t cut it.

The Guardian too was unimpressed by Trump’s performance yesterday.

Donald Trump used a freewheeling press conference on Friday, intended to provide updates on the coronavirus, as an opportunity to attack Democrats, praise his own intelligence, lash out at CNN and spread false and misleading information about the status of the outbreak, as a slew of new cases were confirmed aboard a cruise ship off the California coast.

Speaking at the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) main campus in Atlanta, Georgia, while wearing his red “Keep America Great” re-election campaign hat, the president went on a rant criticizing Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, as a “snake” and saying he disagreed with his vice-president’s complimentary remarks toward the Democrat. Inslee, who ran for president last year, is overseeing the response to the most serious outbreak in the US.

Oh yes the red campaign hat. I griped about it yesterday but I forgot about the campaign aspect. It seems grotesquely inappropriate to mash those two occasions together. “Sorry about the virus, folks, now vote for me!”

In a moment that some commentators have called one of the most “disturbing” and “frightening” remarks of Trump’s response to the public health crisis, the president also said he would prefer that cruise ship passengers exposed to the virus be left aboard so that they don’t add to the number of total infections in the US.

“I like the numbers being where they are,” said Trump, who appeared to be explicitly acknowledging his political concerns about the outbreak: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

Breathtaking, isn’t it.

It is frightening. It’s frightening that anyone can be that ego-imprisoned.

Trump has a new chief of staff: Tea Party birther Mark Meadows.

With his choice, Trump tapped a lawmaker who was first elected in the post-Tea Party wave of 2012 and served as chairman of the Freedom Caucus. Meadows has been a key Trump ally since 2016 and the two reportedly talk frequently. During the impeachment battle, Trump and Meadows, who was instrumental in designing the president’s defense, talked several times a day.

Meadows also shares something else with the president, a past questioning of former President Barack Obama’s nationality. While campaigning in 2012, Meadows was asked if he would pursue an investigation to find out if Obama really is a citizen. “Yes,” Meadows responded. “If we do our job from a grassroots standpoint, we won’t have to worry about it. We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is.”

Here’s the bit where he starts babbling about his uncle and about him him him him him. He’s there to talk about a disease outbreak and instead he talks about his alternative career.

Also…that collar.

Pink News tells more lies about non-compliant feminists:

More than 200 feminists have written to British newspaper The Guardian rejecting the argument that transgender rights are a threat to women.

The letter was organised in response to Monday’s column by The Guardian writer Suzanne Moore: “Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced.”

But of course Suzanne Moore didn’t say “transgender rights are a threat to women.” Here’s what she did say:

Female oppression is innately connected to our ability to reproduce. Women have made progress by talking about biology, menstruation, childbirth and menopause. We won’t now have our bodies or voices written out of the script. The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with.

That’s not saying “transgender rights are a threat to women”; it’s saying that some versions of trans ideology redescribe women – actual women, not trans women – in a way that puts our rights in jeopardy. Trans ideology is not the same thing as trans rights. No feminist wants to take any rights away from trans people – real rights, that is, not invented rights like the right to be called the sex you are not or the right to get feminist women excluded from public life.

Nim Ralph, a community activist who signed the pro-trans letter, said: “The Guardian keep giving space to these ‘thought’ pieces amplifying a small subsection of the feminist movement who want to pit trans people against cis women, as an outside ‘other’ subhuman category.

Big fat damaging lie right there. No feminist is calling trans people subhuman.

More on Trump’s ridiculous outing to the CDC. (Why did he wear his play clothes to the CDC? His play clothes are for throwing paper towels at people who survived a hurricane, not for visiting a government institution. Nobody else there was in play clothes.)

Trump, wearing his “Keep America Great” campaign hat while discussing the global worry, tried once more to quell growing alarm about the spread of the virus in America. But he quickly ventured into side matters and political squabbles.

Because he has the attention span of a flea.

The president touted the accuracy of the test to detect the coronavirus, which members of his administration have acknowledged is not available to all who wants it, declaring it was “perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”

Ah yes, that’s appropriate, bringing up his criminal behavior toward Ukraine while pretending to do something about a disease outbreak.

Despite calling this week for bipartisanship during the crisis, he said he told Vice President Mike Pence not to be complimentary during his Thursday meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, where more than a dozen people have died, because “he is a snake.”

“Let me just tell you we have a lot of problems with the governor and, that’s where you have many of your problems, OK?” Trump said. “So Mike may be happy with him but I’m not, OK?”

This is not a 5-year-old in a tantrum, this is a 73-year-old who is supposed to be a president of the US dealing with a crisis.

Trump also said he talked on the phone with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about the 3,500 people stuck on a cruise ship anchored off the coast of California. Trump, at the CDC, advocated for the passengers to remain on the ship — in part so they would not count against the total number of victims in the United States.

Well it’s the numbers, you see, that’s what counts. Numbers of electoral college votes, numbers of people attending his inauguration, number of pounds he weighs, number of inches he is tall, numbers of coronavirus cases. If they’re on a ship THEY DON’T COUNT. Yay him.

The president, while touring the CDC, also boasted about his ability to understand the virus, even though he has repeatedly misstated how long it would take for a vaccine to be developed and available.

“You know my Uncle was a great — he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for a record number of years. He was a great super genius, Dr. John Trump,” the president said. “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. … Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Oh god oh god oh god

Oh did he.

Actually it was even worse than that. He spent a minute and a half explaining how much he hates Inslee, announcing that “he’s not a good governor by the way,” and inventing scenarios in which Inslee would do the wrong thing. It’s a disgusting contemptible sick-making display. The Tacoma News Tribune has video of the whole 80 minutes.

No really that’s ok we can do this ourselves, we don’t need help. Really. We’re doing it. Your help is not needed or requested. Dude, seriously, back off.

Every woman is a woman, yes, thank you for the tautology. That doesn’t mean that every (or any) man who calls himself a woman is a woman, and in fact, it’s not the case that every (or any) man who calls himself a woman is a woman. Every woman is a woman, and only women are women.

That’s about it really. It’s not complicated.

And Bozo is doing what they told him to do.

Trump just reiterated his lack of worry about the spread of the novel illness in the US. Perhaps problematic, though is that, to many, he’s coming across as casually dismissive and posturing, not measured, and reassuringly presidential.

“You have to be calm,” he said, at the White House this morning before departing to tour the tornado damage in Tennessee and just after signing an $8.3 billion emergency spending bill to deal with the virus.

And the best way to be calm is to have the government hide the truth from you. Better calm and dead than agitated and alive, right?

“It will go away,” he said. “We have very low numbers [of confirmed cases] compared to many countries throughout the world, our numbers are lower than almost anyone…deaths, is it 11?” It is.

It was. Now it’s 14. Also…we have low numbers now, because contagion doesn’t go from zero to a billion in one day. Other countries have more because that’s where it started, not because The God of Epidemics and Stock Markets made it so.

“This came unexpectedly, it came out of China, we closed it down, we stopped it, it was a very early shut down,” he added.

Sure, just wave your tiny hands and say we shut it down, that’s all it takes.

Ok they’re not looking out for our health and safety but at least they are doing everything they can to protect profits.

Another developing nightmare for the White House is growing fears that the travel industry — an important driver of the economy — could face a catastrophic blow as conferences are canceled and families mull whether to hold off on vacation plans.

After United Airlines announced cuts to capacity on domestic and international flights, the CEO of Southwest Airlines warned the domestic carrier may soon make the “gut punch” decision to cut flights owing to a falloff in bookings that started last week.

Trump met airline executives at the White House on Wednesday and they asked him not to publicly discourage Americans from taking planes since their business were at risk, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN’s Kevin Liptak.

Oh did they. Did they really. That’s fascinating because planes are known to be disease vectors like almost nothing else. The airlines don’t bring in new air during flights because it costs more, so they circulate the same stale re-breathed virus-laden air for the whole two or five or twelve hours of the flight. But hey, never mind that there’s a building epidemic, the important thing is the CEOs’ paychecks. These shitheads sat in Trump’s office and asked him not to issue appropriate health warnings but to shut up about it instead for the sake of their bank accounts.

Is that ruthless enough?

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Women deserve better:

The more I read this line, the more it bugs me.

Feminism is nothing without women of colour, migrant, disabled, queer, trans, Black and sex working women.

Feminism has included racists, xenophobes, eugenicists, homophobes etc… throughout its history.

And their bigotries did not render their calls for an end to gender inequality null, any more that MLK Jnr’s homophobia rendered his calls for racial equality null.

If you eliminated racism, xenophobia, homophobia etc… feminism would still have its place in fighting sexism.

To proclaim that feminism or any other social justice activism is “nothing without…” is an all or nothing fallacy that inherently demands a higher standard of behaviour from allies than you would demand from enemies.

You cannot solve every problem all at once, you can make progress by breaking problems up into manageable chunks. Pushing the feminist movement into being the everything movement inherently devalues feminism by removing its core idea from the discussion, and removing its focus.

And that is not to say that feminism is better without the listed groups, or that the various groups are wrong to organise or demand recognition from the feminist movement, but to point out that the core idea of gender equality is a thing in and of itself that can provide common ground to people of otherwise very different ideologies.

These people can work together within the context of feminism even if they don’t like each other very much outside of that context. This is how movements win, not by achieving a broad based intersectional agreement on all points, but agreement on a few points that allow majorities to develop behind them, allowing progress on those points.

By requiring agreement on all points, intersectionality minimises support for all points, thus slowing and even reversing progress on any given point.

Whoopsie! Big surprise for Mister Barr.

A federal judge Thursday criticized Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the Mueller report when it was released last spring, saying Barr’s early description of the report didn’t match the special counsel’s actual conclusions.

This is a Republican judge, appointed by Bush.

Judge Reggie Walton asked if Barr’s actions were a “calculated attempt” to help President Donald Trump and opined the attorney general had a “lack of candor” with the public and Congress.

“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote on Thursday. Barr’s initial publicly announced interpretation of the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller “cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”

…

Walton said he will review the full Mueller report himself to make sure the Justice Department didn’t over-redact it for public release.

What are the odds? You think he’ll find it just fine and dandy? I don’t.

Walton’s decision effectively puts the Mueller report — which has never been released to the public in its entirety — in the hands of the court under seal. Walton said he will review it confidentially. He could potentially then order the Justice Department to make more of the report available, under the Freedom of Information public records access law.

Let’s hope so.

Trump made some “remarks” yesterday at a coronavirus briefing with airline bosses, which the White House duly transcribed for us.

In a certain way, you could say that the borders are automatically shut down, without having to say “shut down.”  I mean, they’re, to a certain extent, automatically shut down. 

Impressive, isn’t it? We’re in good hands. But then he gets to the important part.

But it’s affecting the airline business, as it would.  And a lot of people are staying in our country, and they’re shopping and using our hotels in this country.  So, from that standpoint, I think, probably, there’s a positive impact.  But there’s also an impact on overseas travel, which will be fairly substantial.

That’s the important thing – people are stuck in the US because of a disease outbreak, so they’re forced to spend more time in OUR HOTELS, thus causing more money to go into the pockets of people who OWN HOTELS, which is pretty much the most important consideration on the planet. Yay disease outbreak, more $$$$$$$$ for Donnie!

Then he hands it over to Pence, who mostly says how awesome Trump is and how everything good was his idea.

So, Mr. President, as you said, it is a whole-of-government approach, but in a very real sense, it’s a whole-of-America approach.  And I’ve already expressed, and I know you feel a great deal of gratitude to our partners in industry and in the airline industry for acting on your priority to put the safety and health of the American people first.

THE PRESIDENT:  Good, Mike.  Thank you very much.  I just want to add, if I might — and to go a little bit further — the Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing.  And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion.  That was a decision we disagreed with.  I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made.  But we’ve undone that decision.

The Times reported on that last “remark” and said it’s a crock.

It was not entirely clear what he was referring to. Health experts and veterans of the government during Mr. Obama’s presidency said they were unaware of any policy or rule changes during the last administration that would have affected the way the Food and Drug Administration approved tests during the current crisis. Moreover, if there were, Mr. Trump did not explain why his administration did not change the rules during its first three years in office.

In other words he told a big ol’ lie.

Mr. Trump appeared intent on focusing attention on the Obama administration at a time when his own handling of the outbreak has come under intense criticism. He made a point of using the former president’s name in comments to reporters during a White House meeting with airline executives, called to discuss the economic effect of the virus.

Among other things, critics have pointed to the dismantling of a White House effort set up by Mr. Obama to respond to global health emergencies. The officials involved have left and not been replaced over the past two years, a point made by Obama administration veterans in recent days.

So obviously the thing to do is say some vague handwavey shit about “a decision on testing” and then use the word “detrimental,” which will surprise everyone so much they’ll forget to notice the handwaving.

Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, whose members had complained that the Food and Drug Administration took too long to approve their tests, said there were some discussions during the Obama administration about whether to tighten restrictions on laboratories that developed their own tests, but “nothing was ever put into place.”

She said the association, which represents state and local government labs, was not aware of any Obama-era rules that changed how the labs were regulated or how applications in a public health crisis were reviewed.

Yeah but Trump knows. He does. He has inside dope. He knows what NOBODY else knows, including anyone who was in the Obama administration.

Dr. Sharfstein said that the Trump administration hindered itself by giving first approval for a coronavirus test to the C.D.C., which meant that private labs could not conduct testing for clinical reasons without their own approval.

“They didn’t have to do it in the first place,” he said. “They’re reversing a decision that they themselves made.”

Oh so they’re correcting their own unnecessary rule about testing. And saying it was Obama’s. Well that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. Standard operating procedure.

This is horrifying. I mean really horrifying, as in you feel fear and horror.

Some replies:

• This sounds like medical malpractice. The patient is in clear physical discomfort. A responsible doctor would tell them to stop and let their body repair itself. Does the @gmcuk have a view on this?
• Would this “doctor” give an anorexic teenager tips on how to starve herself further? This is shocking.
• I’m not sure how to express what the current output from you make me feel, but I do know the overarching reaction is terror. What are you doing? Why are you promoting this? Please direct me to somewhere in your output where you tell young people there are alternatives, to pause
• I want this woman to know that butch lesbians are beautiful – to be celebrated and lifted up and that she can have the freedom to be one. Please stop mutilating vulnerable teens & kids!!

What’s all the fuss about an occasional rib “popping out”? And not being able to breathe or run, and constant pain, yes yes, but why all the fuss?

Dan Orr’s manifesto or campaign pledge or promo or whatever it is:

Women deserve better from our university. Sexual violence and harassment remain prevalent, and women are too often held back by misogyny and its intersections. As co-chair of Oxford SU’s Women’s campaign I helped bring women together to discuss feminism, establish support networks and campaign for change. From working with Irish activists in demonstrating and fundraising for the Repeal the Eighth campaign to tackling sexual violence on campus I learnt that the strength of the feminist movement is in its diversity and in the solidarity we have for each other. I want to bring the women at this university together to enact real lasting change. As a trans woman I have been lucky to work with and be supported by some deeply compassionate women activists and I want to extend the same support to women who are often excluded from certain types of feminism. Feminism is nothing without women of colour, migrant, disabled, queer, trans, Black and sex working women. As women’s officer I intend to focus on ensuring harassment is dealt with appropriately, sex working students receive support, student parents have a place to study and that we remain a pro-choice SU. Vote Dan Orr for women’s officer.

Women are “held back by misogyny and its intersections” – what are the intersections of misogyny?

Why was a man co-chair of Oxford SU’s Women’s campaign?

Why was a man needed to help “bring women together to discuss feminism, establish support networks and campaign for change”?

He learned “that the strength of the feminist movement is in its diversity and in the solidarity we have for each other,” by which he must mean its eagerness to include men in its feminism.

He wants “to bring the women at this university together to enact real lasting change” – like a shepherd guarding sheep.

I guess it’s the head-tilt that makes him a woman.

Another one.

A university students’ union is under fire for rebranding International Women’s Day to include trans women.

Leicester students’ renaming of the celebration as International Womxn’s Day follows their election of a trans woman to the post of women’s officer. Dan Orr will represent the views of women on campus, speaking out about sexism and misogyny.

Which he doesn’t understand from the inside, on account of how he’s a man.

A female student at Leicester University told The Times that she was “very upset” by the election but feared speaking out publicly in case she was disciplined by the university.

“I am sure Dan Orr will try her best, but she has not grown up with the same prejudices that face girls and women [and] the stereotypes they have had to deal with that are related to the female body. I know she will have had her own prejudices to deal with but they are not the same,” she said. The Leicester students’ union has an LGBT+ officer and a trans and non-binary officer.

So trans people get two officers and women get zero. Women are half the population but…

The university will call the day by its traditional name. However, in a newsletter to students, it said: “We use the term ‘womxn’ as a more inclusive spelling of ‘women’ that includes any person who identifies as a womxn.”

But that’s the wrong kind of inclusive. I don’t get to go to a refugee camp and “identify as” a refugee and take up some of the scant resources there. Nobody does. Include me out.

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, said: “Concepts aren’t ‘umbrellas’ or ‘shelters’ for whoever wants to come in — that’s not what concepts do. They’re cognitive tools,” adding that Ms Orr’s election was “a backwards step”.

Off a cliff of stupid.

Last week:

Two of Scotland’s best known libraries are under attack for their conflicting stance on trans rights as the “culture wars” escalate in the country’s arts scene.

Feminists have railed against the Glasgow Women’s Library after a women’s campaign group opposed to gender self-declaration law changes were denied access.

Their fury was inflamed by news that trans rights activists had been permitted to hold a training day at the publicly funded venue, led by two men.

In a statement online, the Glasgow Women’s Library said: “We will only accept venue hire bookings from organisations that align with our values and we always do our best to make sure of this when bookings are made.”

So the values of a Women’s Library are that men training other men (presumably on how to pretend to be women) are welcome but women pointing out that men are not women are not welcome. At a Women’s Library. Women get out, men come right in. At a Women’s Library.

But answer came there none.