The “let’s smear Fauci” plan doesn’t seem to be going all that well.

Business Insider notes that not listening to Fauci is one thing (Trump listens to no one and wouldn’t understand if he did) and smearing him is another.

Sidelining Fauci is one thing. Actively defaming him is much worse, though entirely expected from this White House.  Trump and his lackeys are smearing Fauci, probably the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, as wrong “about everything” and even circulating a list of Fauci’s alleged mistakes to reporters, as though it’s dirt on a political rival. 

President Trump tolerates only one kind of relationship with his employees, toadying. Everyone who won’t boot lick ends up fired, libeled, under investigation by Bill Barr, or all of the above. Since Fauci is a civil servant he can’t be fired, and he hasn’t yet been investigated by Barr — but don’t count that out! — so instead he’s just being defamed.

This White House has proved time and time and time again during the pandemic that it doesn’t want truth. It wants good news, even when it’s false. Trump prefers happy lies to grim truths, and thanks in part to his negligence, the pandemic is proving to be a long roster of grim truths — testing catastrophes, spiking caseloads, surging deaths, a failed lockdown.   

Because there are some situations that lying just can’t change. You can draw new hurricane paths on the map with a Sharpie all you like, but it won’t change what the hurricane actually does. You can say the virus is going away all you like, but the virus pays no attention.

But then Trump doesn’t want to change the path of the hurricane or the infection rate of the virus, all Trump wants to change is how people think of [the National Weather Service/Fauci/everyone] in relation to how they think of him. Trump’s lies are all in aid of convincing everyone that he is Immortal Perfection and all others are scum.

Dan Scavino, the guy who helps Trump with his tweeting (he spells the hard words except when Trump forgets to ask him), posted on Facebook yesterday:

Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly — and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks. See you tomorrow!

Schools and…oh my god…football!!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile no of course Trump is not trying to silence Fauci, why would you even think that?

Now Trump is just saying the CDC is lying about the pandemic to damage him.

He needs to be taken away and locked up.

President Donald Trump retweeted a tweet Monday morning which accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of lying about the coronavirus in order to obstruct his reelection. 

The original tweet was written by Chuck Woolery, the original host of “Wheel of Fortune,” who is also a conservative. 

I don’t know what “Wheel of Fortune” is, beyond “some game show or other.” Fabulous that the president is sharing the views of a game show Personality in order to persuade us that the CDC is lying about a pandemic.

The tweet reads: “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. 

“I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.”

Ask the people on ventilators what they’re sick of. They won’t be able to answer, because they’re on ventilators, but ask them. Some will die while you’re asking them, but keep trying.

No.

“Center the trans person.”

No.

Now about this business of Trump and Pence and DeVos working to kill off teachers…

As coronavirus case numbers soar across the country, continuing to reach record highs in many states, the nation has begun to confront the uncomfortable questions of if and how schools should open in the fall. While there is near universal agreement on the need for the education system across America to provide classes to students, the question is how?  Should schools open up physically, risking the spread of the highly communicable virus among students, teachers, and ultimately to those who they live with? Or should there be a greater emphasis on virtual and distance learning, which sacrifices a significant part of the educational experience, but has a better chance of keeping students, teachers and families safe?

To spell it out even further: is retaining the significant part of the educational experience that is being in a classroom with a teacher and fellow students worth killing a lot of people? Or are we faced with a situation in which we have to give up (temporarily, we hope) many significant goods in the effort to avoid killing a lot of people?

For their part, both President Trump and Vice President Pence have been adamant that schools plan on physically opening. Both men have been openly advocating for an in-person start to the school year and have been dismissive of the strict guidelines the Centers for Disease Control has issued to help school leaders make decisions. On Wednesday, President Trump tweeted that the CDC guidelines, intended to protect students and teachers from the deadly virus, are “very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools.” The President also threatened to cut off federal aid to schools that don’t reopen.

See this is where they go off the rails. Trump calls the guidelines “tough” – tough in a bad way, which is unusual for him. He loves bullies and bullying if they’re on his team, but not if they’re on anyone else’s. At any rate he calls the guidelines tough, when the point of them is not being tough but avoiding killing people. He’s confused. He’s too ignorant and too selfish to grasp that rules intended to get control of a pandemic are not attacks on him, and are not punitive or belligerent or violent.

During a White House coronavirus task force press briefing last week following the President’s tweet, Vice President Pence similarly addressed the CDC guidelines. “The president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence said. “That’s the reason why, next week, CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”

There again, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. There’s no such thing as “too tough” in this situation; toughness is irrelevant. The virus doesn’t care how tough we are, nor does it care how weak we are. The urgent need is to avoid letting the pandemic get completely out of control, because the results of that would be much much worse than any “too tough” guidance on how to slow the spread. It’s just stupid to call the necessary measures “too tough.” That’s like saying it’s “too tough” to tell people they can’t try to have a picnic on the freeway.

Oh good, now we’ve done our best to spread the virus to Okinawa.

The governor of Okinawa island in Japan has demanded that a United States military commander take tougher prevention measures and have more transparency after officials were told more than 60 marines at two bases have been infected with the coronavirus over the past few days.

On Sunday Okinawan officials reported 61 cases, 38 of them at marine corps air station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since 7 July.

Sorry, sorry. Our bad. These things happen. We’ve put the bases into lockdown now; are we good?

The disclosure of the exact figures came only after repeated requests.

Hey we’re busy. It’s just the sniffles; keep your hair on.

Okinawa is home to more than half of about 50,000 American troops in Japan under a bilateral security pact, and the residents are sensitive to US base-related problems. Many Okinawans have long complained about pollution, noise and crime.

And now on top of all that they get a lethal disease. Thanks, Murka!

Now there’s a profound question.

Will Boystown become Queerville, Legacy Street, New Town or Spectrumville?

Spectrumville??

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Boystown? What the hell is that? I thought it was some corny movie about Catholic priests with a deep interest in boys.

Under pressure from a Change.org petition that complains about the gendered nature of the name Boystown, particularly in the context of local incidents of sexism, racism and transphobia, business leaders in Chicago’s most prominent LGBTQ neighborhood have begun the process of considering a name change.

Oh, that’s what it is. Seems confused. Why Boystown if it’s for L as well as G?

More than 900 people have signed a Change.org petition calling on the Northalsted Business Alliance to stop marketing the neighborhood as Boystown. Introduced two weeks ago, the petition says that “systemic transphobia, racism, and sexism have plagued our neighborhood for decades, and it begins at the top, with the all-male board of the Northalsted Business Alliance. It begins with the BOYSTOWN signs down our street announcing that this neighborhood is ‘for the boys.’”

Why does the petition put “transphobia” first? Why is everyone so confused?

Anyway, I think they should change the name to Spectrum Regis.

Breathtaking. (Literally. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds herself holding her breath for several seconds when reading an exceptionally foul news item.)

The White House is seeking to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, as President Donald Trump works to marginalize him and his dire warnings about the shortcomings of the U.S. coronavirus response.

As a pandemic soars out of control thanks to the malevolent incompetence of the people in the aforementioned White House.

In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official said Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.” The official gave NBC News a list of nearly a dozen past comments by Fauci that the official said had ultimately proven erroneous.

Lots of things “ultimately prove erroneous,” dumbfuck, because circumstances change and knowledge is cumulative. Nobody knew everything there was to know about the virus on January 1 or March 1, and nobody does now, either, but Fauci at least tried to get it right. Trump and his goons just make shit up.

It was a move more characteristic of a political campaign furtively disseminating opposition research about an opponent than of a White House struggling to contain a pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people, according to an NBC News tally.

Naturally, because the White House isn’t struggling to do that, it’s struggling to convince us that Donald Trump isn’t a pool of toxic sludge in an ugly suit who will kill us all.

In recent days, Fauci has deviated from Trump by disputing that the U.S. is “doing great” and by faulting the decision in some states to reopen too quickly and to sidestep the task force’s suggested criteria for when it’s safe to loosen restrictions. In a particularly alarming prediction, Fauci said he wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. [were] soon adding 100,000 new cases a day — a figure that would reflect an abject failure to slow the spread.

…

Fauci, who has served in the federal government for decades, can’t be directly fired by the president, and there were no signs that Trump was seeking to get rid of him altogether. Rather, the White House salvo appeared aimed at undermining the public’s trust in the renowned immunologist in hope that Americans will be more inclined to believe Trump’s far more optimistic version of events as the November election marches closer.

And thus go back to normal life and thus increase the spread of the virus so that hundreds of thousands more of us will die so that Trump can get re-elected to slaughter even more of us.

Updating to add:

Florida is breaking records.

The grim news from Florida continues: The state reported 15,000 new cases on Sunday. That breaks not only the record for a state in the US in a single day but is also more new cases than any European country has reported in a single day during the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and India have reported more new cases in a day than Florida did on Sunday.

Yikes.

Florida’s population is 21.5 million. Germany’s is 83 million.

Hospitals are under strain in Florida as the virus surges, and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has refused to introduce a statewide mandate requiring people to wear masks in public. He has also pushed for schools to reopen.

Fewer but better Floridians?

The Republican National Convention, where Donald Trump will be confirmed as the party’s candidate for president, is due to take place in Jacksonville, Florida, in late August.

Should be fine.

The campaign to get us all killed continues.

She’s right that being kept out of school is itself a health risk for children, especially children with fewer resources. But that’s pretty much all she’s right about.

“Where there are little flare-ups or hotspots, that can be dealt with on a school-by-school or a case-by-case basis,” she said, without providing any recommendations for what schools should do if outbreaks occur.

But there aren’t “little flare-ups”; there are whole states whose rates of infection are skyrocketing, and whose hospitals have zero beds and zero medical staff available. We are in deep shit, and the first necessity is to stop spreading the god damn virus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Bash later in the program that CDC guidelines should be a requirement and called DeVos’ comments on schools being safe for students a “malfeasance and dereliction of duty.”

“This is appalling,” said Pelosi, a California Democrat. “The President and his administration are messing with the health of our children. We all want our children to go back to school. Teachers do, parents do and children do. But they must go back safely.”

See this? From the CDC:

Wrong direction.

And the more it does that the more it will do that, because it’s putting more and more virus into circulation. That’s not what we want to be doing.

Matt Lodder, who just had to apologize for tweeting damaging lies about Maya Forstater, is an academic. It’s my impression that academia has strong norms against lying – that, like the legal profession, it has powerful vocational reasons for valuing truth and truth-telling and disfavoring lies and slander.

Caroline Dodds Pennock is also an academic – a historian.

That was about eight hours ago, before Matt Lodder admitted he’d told lies about Maya. But this is after he admitted it:

So what I wonder is why does she think that? Why does she think it’s PERFECT to express solidarity with a male colleague who told damaging lies about a woman? When people ask her that, why does she reply with stupid gifs?

What is wrong with everyone?

Dude tells lies, bad lies, about a woman. Dude is firmly informed the lies are lies, and bad lies at that. Dude gives the most minimal grudging apology possible.

He casually announced, on Twitter, that Maya harassed and bullied people. It’s a lie. He learned that it’s a lie. He said he apologizes for “any distress [he] caused her.”

What does he mean “any”? Why does he limit it to “distress”?

This academic dude announced publicly that a woman harassed and bullied people which is not true, and instead of apologizing for publishing damaging lies about a woman he simply apologizes for potential bad feefees that may have resulted. It’s basically “I’m sorry you’re so upset that I ran over your child. Bitch.”

The thought-terminating cliché strikes again.

Except that she’s not “challenging the humanity of trans people.” Not even close.

Disputing some of the truth claims made by some trans ideologues is not challenging the humanity of trans people. Rowling is not challenging any claims of the type “trans people are human” or “trans people are human and deserve human rights” or “trans people are human and should not be persecuted.” Not even close, not even slightly.

Fight fair for a change.

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on It’s almost as if there’s a pattern.

I do not think it was ‘vast swathes’ of Japanese intellectuals who suppressed or discounted the Nanking Massacre. Certainly a number of nationalists, many of whom could barely be called ‘intellectuals’, did (and do). Modern Japan had the misfortune to be re-born as a modern nation at the height of Western imperialism and racism, and was one of the only Asian nations never to be made a colony. In 1919, Japan proposed a ‘racial equality’ clause to be included in the Treaty of Versailles. This was turned down by Anglo-Saxondom – the British because of the Empire, the Australians because of the ‘White Australia’ policy, and the USA for obvious reasons (which included of course Woodrow Wilson’s appallingly racist beliefs). The Japanese certainly perpetrated terrible atrocities before and during the Second World War, particularly in China, and behaved badly wherever they went – a great mistake & misfortune, I think, for they came as new masters when they could have come as liberators: but one of the consequences of Japan’s invasions was the collapse, in Asia and subsequently elsewhere, of Western colonialism, whose own atrocities, which continued well after the Second War when they sought to recover their colonies, the ‘civilising’ Westerners chose, and choose, to forget – the Vietnam War, as well as the massacres throughout Indonesia in the sixties, aided & abetted by the USA, Australia & the UK, constituting an important part of the aftermath of colonialism. In March of this year, the Dutch finally apologised for massacres of Indonesians in 1947 when they were trying to claw back their colonies, and paid reparations to families whose ancestors has been murdered by Dutch troops.

There is a great deal of bad faith in the continued Western criticism of Japan’s behaviour, and it derives from the fact that the Japanese were the first to defeat a white Western nation decisively (the Russo-Japanese war), and then defeated, tellingly though temporarily, various Western nations in colonial Asia.

Regarding history textbooks, etc, I suspect you will find little in British textbooks about British behaviour in Kenya during the Mau-Mau uprising – in 2011 the Foreign Office agreed to release a great number of carefully and illegally hidden documents concerning torture and massacre in the attempt to put down the uprising, and in mid 2013 the government agreed to pay £19.9 million in compensation to over 5,000 claimants who had suffered abuse during the Mau Mau Rebellion. Until 2015, British tax-payers were still paying off government debts incurred as a result of ‘reparations’ made to British slave-owners after the abolition of slavery – there had been of course no reparations made to the slaves themselves.

Also Trump is playing the “not you” game with Fauci.

… as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

Because Trump’s personal grudges are way more important than the survival of hundreds of thousands of people.

During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci’s assessment that the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly: “I disagree with him.”

Trump of course knows nothing about it, and he’s the one who’s made a lot of mistakes, not Fauci.

A White House official released a statement saying that, “Several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” and attaching a lengthy list of the scientist’s comments from early in the outbreak.

Yes that’s what we need from the White House now, official statements of Trump’s whiny envious grudges.

White House communications officials, who must approve television appearances related to the coronavirus, responded by allowing Fauci spots this week on PBS NewsHour, a CNN town hall with Sanjay Gupta and NBC’s “Meet the Press” during the prime Sunday morning slot, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Three opportunities to inform a mass audience about the best current advice and knowledge. But no.

Then Fauci joined a Facebook Live event on Tuesday with Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), disputing Trump’s assertions that a lower death rate showed the country’s progress against the pandemic. Fauci called it “a false narrative” and warned, “Don’t get yourself into false complacency.”

Fauci did not end up making any of the scheduled appearances. The White House canceled them after his Tuesday remarks, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate behind-the-scenes conversations.

The White House canceled communication of health advice during a pandemic because Disgusting Don wanted to punish Fauci for being smarter than he is.

Fauci has argued that parts of the country experiencing surges should shut down, “but there is no buy-in for that,” said an official with direct knowledge of the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Four months ahead of Election Day, Trump wants to “reopen and move on,” said another senior administration official…

Well we can’t “move on” – the virus isn’t “moving on.” What they mean is Trump wants to reopen and shrug his shoulders at the millions of deaths that will result.

Trump is also galled by Fauci’s approval ratings. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that 67 percent of voters trusted Fauci for information on the coronavirus, compared with 26 percent who trusted Trump.

Well I suppose they could replace Fauci with Bozo the Clown, or a dog, or a gallon of cider. They wouldn’t get higher ratings than Trump.

A friend says Fauci is unhappy about the whole situation.

“What he cares most about is not his influence, but what’s happening — that things are going so badly and it’s going to cause so much disease and death,” Barr added.

Trump is unhappy about ratings and being disagreed with. Fauci is unhappy about disease and death.

People who are close to Fauci say the public undermining of scientists and public health experts has frustrated and saddened him because it adds to the chaos the country is already experiencing from the pandemic.

And for no good reason. It’s just bad people doing bad things for bad reasons.

Among those crusading against Fauci internally is Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, who has clashed with Fauci over his opposition to adopting the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, to treat covid-19 before its effectiveness had been proven.

When Trump and Navarro repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus, Fauci pushed back both internally and at task force briefings, arguing there was only anecdotal evidence about the drug’s efficacy. The Food and Drug Administration eventually revoked its temporary authorization after evidence showed it was not effective against covid-19 and could be dangerous for some patients.

“Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on,” Navarro said.

Like that. Bad man with bad reasons.

Dipshit has allowed himself to be persuaded to wear a mask this one time, but he’s not going to go all politically correct and say they should be worn whenever necessary. Dipshit must get his way! Ok so it costs millions of lives, but Dipshit don’t care.

President Donald Trump — who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure — has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President’s aides practically begged him to agree to and hope will encourage skeptical Trump supporters to do the same.

Dipshit is very proud of being such a dipshit that people had to beg him to take a simple action to help stem a pandemic. It takes a real dipshit to be proud of that.

“I’m going to Walter Reed to see some of our great soldiers who have been injured. Badly injured. And also see some of our Covid workers, people who have such a great job,” Trump said. “And I expect to be wearing a mask when I go into Walter Reed. You’re in a hospital so I think it’s a very appropriate thing.”

Meaning it’s not appropriate in other crowded places. He’s that stupid.

Trump’s visit to Walter Reed Saturday will come just hours before he rallies his supporters in New Hampshire and advisers hope his decision to wear a mask will encourage rally attendees to do the same.

The Trump campaign is now “strongly encouraging” attendees to wear masks — a notable difference from Trump’s political events over the past several weeks, where mask-wearing was scarce and few steps were taken to encourage it. But the President has resisted suggestions to make mask-wearing mandatory at the rally. Even as he said he would wear a mask Saturday, Trump refuses to wholeheartedly encourage others to wear one.

“It’s fine to wear a mask if it makes you feel comfortable,” he said.

There’s that abject stupidity again. It’s not a matter of feeling comfortable, it’s a matter of not spreading the virus. The virus does not give a damn how you feel.

I’m reading some of the comments on Sophie Grace Chappell’s letter to Rowling, and # 7 by Jean (comments don’t have separate links there) is…informative.

I am so exhausted by all this. I’m disappointed that you only engaged with one point of the 5 Rowling made, but OK, I’ll meet you on the ‘bathroom’ issue. It’s extraordinarily disingenuous for you and others to assume that the ‘bathroom’ issue is about ordinary women going about their days. It is not. It’s about trauma and whose rights matter more.

I live on the west coast of Canada, where Trans dreams have largely all come true. And here is what I know:

I used to volunteer extensively at a charity for vulnerable women – indigenous women, sex workers attempting to escape, domestic violence victims, rape victims. Women who are struggling to get survive. Two years ago our main funding body (initials UW) gained a new transwoman board member, and sweeping funding changes were implemented. We were told that unless we offered all our services to natal and transwomen equally, we would be immediately and irrevocably defunded. We pointed out that many of these women were terrified of male-bodied people, and had repeatedly been traumatized by male-bodied people, but there was no sympathy for such an argument. Apparently women who refuse to take part in therapy or other programs with transwomen were ‘transphobic’, and therefore undeserving of any charity or help. We suggested offering similar, parallel services, and were denied. So we acquiesced, and opened our programs to all who wanted them, even transwomen who made no attempt to pass. Our clients dropped out in droves, but not before one was assaulted by one of the new transwomen clients. The organization is now being sued, but I and others have since dropped away. The charity is now a shell of what it once was.

That takes my breath away. We’ve read about it before, but still…I suppose because it comes from a participant (if she’s telling the truth), it horrifies anew.

I have not doubt that you’ll call me a TERF, declare me transphobic if you respond at all. But I am still a woman, not a menstruator or whatever you want to call me. I am not going to go away or be silenced by anyone. Most women I know all believe the same, even if they are too scared to speak out publicly.

Definitely a sign of a progressive movement: people are too scared to tell the truth about it.

“Sophie Grace” Chappel wrote an open letter to Rowling last month; it was posted at Crooked Timber.

There are several paragraphs about the way Chappel derived understanding of his trans nature from reading fantasy novels including Rowling’s, and an expression of sympathy for Rowling’s experiences of abuse, and then the “but you’re wrong” part.

But I urge you to look a little more closely, and from a different angle, at some of the issues that you’re raising.

First, a quick harrumph of exasperation. You wrote on twitter that “If trans people were suffering discrimination on the basis of being trans then I would march with them”. To be honest, that tweet took my breath away. If we were suffering discrimination?? Trans people are one of the most discriminated-against groups in the world! What have you been reading for three years, if you haven’t noticed that?

Ah but what have you been reading if you take it for granted that that claim is true? We are indeed constantly told that trans people, especially trans women (i.e. men), are the most discriminated-against, but it’s always just telling. It turns out to mean that trans women who are sex workers are subject to a lot of violence.

But let’s let that pass; perhaps it was a Saturday-night lapse. Let’s move on to some points of simple and straightforward agreement. 

And here we are already: the patronizing man bursts out from behind the girly mask. That’s how men talk to women they disagree with, “Sophie-Grace” – it’s a tell.

The climate of hatred does none of us any good. And it is particularly toxic for trans women who, like me, have grown up (at school and elsewhere) in an atmosphere of derision and rejection. I see from what you say that you understand how that kind of hatred can be internalised if you’re exposed to it long enough. When trans-unsympathetic feminists deliberately misgender trans women, or deride our appearance, or tell us “You’re men really”, or stigmatise us as perverts and predators, just the same thing is going on. It’s a raw nerve for us, and angry (and sometimes inexcusably violent) responses are evoked by that kind of hate-speech, because we ourselves have had to battle our way to self-acceptance, in the teeth of our own internalised transphobia.

He has no clue what it’s like to be female, does he. Despite the years of marriage, despite the daughters – still no clue. It’s only his experience that counts.

After that he gets into the shared spaces issue and zzzzzzz and sorry but I skipped ahead to his summing up:

Ms Rowling, it’s certainly not my intention, or the intention of any trans activists whom I personally know, to erode or erase the biological reality of (cis) women’s experience. Certainly not. Natal females start in a different place from trans women, and have a different journey and a different story, and undergo different things both good and bad. All these stories are worthwhile and valuable, and no one should be trying to prevent any of them from being told. Like the rest of the world, I look forward eagerly to seeing which of all these stories, in the future, you yourself choose to tell.

Patronizing git.

The headline:

UK’s only trans philosophy professor to JK Rowling: Harry Potter helped me become a woman

So a trans philosophy professor is not a professor and knows nothing of philosophy?

Anyway, tell us a story.

In the autumn of 1969, a five-year-old boy called Timothy Chappell, in his first term at school, had an idea. Could he, he asked his mum, go to class as a girl? “My mother looked at me,” says Timothy – now Sophie-Grace – “and there was both terror and fury in her eyes. And she said to me: why?”

“Sophie-Grace.” Ffs. It’s as bad as “Sophie Labelle” who does that gruesome “Assigned Male” cartoon. Man becomes woman, names self wise-grace. But hey this movement has nothing to do with narcissism, oh hell no.

Chappell says her entire story is contained in that exchange: Timothy’s bemused but certain knowledge that he is in the wrong body; his mum’s understanding about that and her horror about what it could mean; and her anger at the little boy for naming it.

This is a philosophy professor? A philosophy professor thinks a child of five can have certain knowledge? A philosophy professor cites a child of five as evidence that a man really truly is a woman because he was certain of it when he was five?

He “lived as a man” until 2014 – so that’s 50 years of male privilege, however uneasy he felt with it.

“For decades I’d hated myself, hidden who I was. But in the end it simply didn’t work, and the wonderful thing about transitioning was that I was able to finally stand up and say: this is who I truly am.”

The person she said that to most recently, in an open letter, was JK Rowling, who on 7 July signed a letter warning of the dangers of censoriousness and intolerance, after publishing a broadside in June on transgender issues.

Except that it wasn’t a broadside, it was a thoughtful careful article. The language must be carefully shaped to flatter the trans person and denigrate the mere woman. To make sure we don’t get confused, the Guardian includes a photo of Rowling captioned:

The author JK Rowling in June published a broadside on transgender issues. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

DID YOU GET THAT READERS? IT WAS A BROADSIDE. SHE IS A BAD PERSON.

But the bottom line, for Chappell, is this: “I think we can liken it to adoption. Trans women are like adoptive parents, who want to be accepted as being the same as biological parents. And they are accepted as such, despite the differences in how they became parents in the first place; and if society could do the same for trans women, we’d be in a better place.”

Sure, we can liken it to adoption, but the two are not the same, and if society treated it as if it were, we would be in a worse place – we already are in a lot of ways.