Vaishnavi Sundar finds out what it’s like to be canceled:

I am a filmmaker, writer and a women’s rights activist. I spend my time advocating for equal opportunities, contraceptive rights, education and the empowerment of women and girls. I centre women in all my work. When I started screening my film on workplace sexual harassment across India, I was hoping to raise public consciousness. But What Was She Wearing? was India’s first feature-length documentary on the subject.

However, I encountered strong resistance to the film from liberal feminist gatekeepers. Women who would send me private messages asking for professional favours and contacts, and congratulate me on the film, refused to acknowledge my presence on their public timelines or retweet anything about the film. At first, I thought this was my eternal bad luck or some flaw in my personality.

Then the rejections started, from lefty publications that had snapped up everything she sent in the past.

Last month, I discovered the reason I had become a social outcast in liberal-feminist bastions. I was in the US for an exchange programme, and I wanted to use the opportunity to screen my film at various places while I toured the country. One screening was scheduled in New York, organised by the Polis Project. The proverbial i’s were dotted, posters designed and I was even introduced to a female Indian moderator. But a week before the screening, the organiser (also a woman of Indian origin) sent me an email. She said the event would be cancelled because of my ‘transphobic’ views.

So feminist work on subjects like sexual harassment is worth nothing compared to the outrage of “transphobic” views. In other words the hell with what women are concerned about, are they being accommodating enough to men???? This from left-wing outlets.

Many moons ago I got into a Twitterspat about pre-op trans women in women’s shelters, prisons, bathrooms and women’s sports. And someone had brought the tweets in question to the organisers’ attention. As a result, the Polis Project thought it was only fair to shelve a screening of a film about a pressing topic that affects women across all social strata in society. All because the filmmaker believes biological sex is not a social construct, that women’s sex-based oppression is real, that housing people with male genitalia in spaces with victims of male sexual violence can be harrowing to women inmates, that mental illnesses like autogynephilia and other dysphorias can cause dangerous, irrevocable damage, and that gender theorists are erasing women, much like patriarchy does.

Feminism just doesn’t matter now because men who long to wear fuck-me shoes matter so much more.

I have since confronted the editors of the publications that blacklisted me. It appears that Indian trans-rights activists googled my name and wrote to every outlet I had ever been published in, telling them about my ‘TERFy’ tweets.

That’s the way to win hearts and minds.

How can so many liberal feminists call themselves ‘liberal’ and laud pornography, an industry in which women are brutalised (and often killed)? How can you encourage children to be ‘drag queens’ performing sexual acts for adults, in the name of gender ideology? I wish they wouldn’t call it a movement anymore. It is a cult that extols men, who are often not really ‘queer’ but who want to take advantage of ‘self-identifying’ as a woman in order to gain oppression points and external validation.

Feminism 2020: all about the men now.

Lisa Nandy did an interview with the Guardian the other day. She sounds quite good in many ways. But…

We are meeting a couple of days after Harvey Weinstein received his guilty verdict in a New York courtroom. Nandy says she is appalled that there are women in the Labour party whose sexual harassment cases have still not been resolved years after they made complaints. “We’ve failed a lot of women over recent years,” she says. “It’s very reminiscent of what happened with antisemitism where there are a number of cases which quite simply haven’t been dealt with. It gives the green light to people who harass women to believe they can find a home in the Labour party.” She says she would allow a committee of women to determine what harassment is, introduce an independent complaints process, and robust protections for whistleblowers. Aiming fire at Jeremy Corbyn she says: “There cannot be one rule for friends of the leader and another rule for others.”

Recently Nandy has landed herself in hot water with some feminists over her decision to sign, along with Long-Bailey, a pledge from the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights that calls for the expulsion of members who hold “bigoted, transphobic views”. It describes Women’s Place UK – which wants to protect single-sex spaces – as a “hate group”. Does she regret it? “No, I don’t. I care deeply about safe spaces for women. I know from personal experience there is a generation of women who fought very hard to create and protect safe spaces, that it matters. Where you have women who want to have a genuine debate about how better to protect them, it’s a very welcome debate. But that has to start with the recognition that trans men are men, trans women are women and that they exist.”

And if it doesn’t then that’s a “hate group.”

We have to start with “the recognition” of a lie, that men who think of themselves as women literally are women. We have to, and if we don’t, Lisa Nandy will call us a hate group.

Progressive movements of the past haven’t ordered people to “recognize” lies. They didn’t say workers were plutocrats, much less that plutocrats were workers. They didn’t order us to “recognize” that white people who want to be black actually are black. This is a new thing on earth, and it speaks of a truly deep contempt for women, so deep that women share it too.

Keir Starmer talks a lot of crap and makes a lot of false analogies, as Allison Bailey points out.

Cowley is an car-factory town just outside Oxford. The juxtaposition is rather like Columbia/Harlem or Yale/New Haven or Berkeley/Oakland.

There’s something missing in this story…I can’t quite put my finger on it…

BBC reports:

A transgender man who has given birth to a child has begun an appeal to be legally registered as the “father” or “parent”, rather than the “mother”.

Freddy McConnell is fighting a decision made by a High Court judge last year that a person who carries and gives birth to a baby is legally a mother.

Mr McConnell, a single parent from Kent, lives as a man following surgery, having been assigned female at birth.

What is it, what is it…what is being left out…oh yes, I get it!

This shithead is suing to ensure that her child will have no mother.

Not “no mother” as in the mother died or left, but no mother as in there never was any mother.

Is shithead thinking at all about the child? At all about what the child might want as it grows up?

Notice also that the BBC used the fatuous “assigned at birth” for the reality of what sex McConell was born as and remains.

Mr McConnell has said the High Court’s decision breached his human right to respect for private and family life. If the appeal succeeds his son would become the first person born in England and Wales to not legally have a mother.

And is that a good thing? Is that a first that anyone aspires to for a child? Is McConnell really showing more respect for family life than the judge is?

Iain Macwhirter at The Herald Scotland:

WHEN I started writing about the trans self-identification issue nearly two years ago it was with the utmost trepidation. Questioning, or even discussing, the proposal that men should be able legally to become women merely by making a declaration of such, was regarded as transphobia, homophobia, bigotry.

…

Cultural and health bodies, and even the Scottish Government, were ceasing to use the very word “woman” in case it offended male-bodied transwomen. Bizarre substitutes like “womxn”, “menstruators” and “ciswomen” were being deployed in the cause of inclusivity.

Which – to belabor the obvious – is a very warped way to use the word “inclusivity.” The word should mean not excluding people from public events and institutions and the like for no good reason: a public quarantine during an epidemic is a good reason; misogyny and xenophobia and racism are bad reasons. The word should not mean including white people in the category “black people” or bosses in the category “workers” or gentiles in the category “Jews” or men in the category “women.”

Inclusivity used to mean including all women in the category women, and more specifically doing the work to include all women, by reaching out and recruiting and making room. It did not mean including men, and it didn’t give a rat’s ass how men “identified.” But that was then.

Nicola Sturgeon evidently regarded Self-ID as the new frontier of progressive legislation. With the minimum of public discussion, she committed the Scottish Government to abolishing the very definition of woman as “adult human female”. (That phrase is regarded as hate speech by some police forces).

Well, times change. This issue is now out in the open. More and more women are speaking out against the undermining of sex-based rights.

…

Influential figures in the SNP, like the former communications guru, Kevin Pringle, are now urging Nicola Sturgeon to follow the UK Government. But the Scottish Equalities Secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, apparently intends to press ahead with legislation to allow self-ID. Mr Pringle is speaking for many in the party who now realise that the growing backlash against Self-ID could threaten the SNP’s chances in next year’s Holyrood elections.

…

It has been left to genuinely courageous women like Joan McAlpine MSP and Joanna Cherry, MP, to fight for reason. For doing so they have been the target of astonishing abuse on social media, and from the trans activists embedded in the SNP.

…

But there is an equitable solution. Of course allow transwomen to identify as female without needless bureaucratic obstacles. But the Government should make clear in the legislation reforming the Gender Recognition Act that this does not mean abolishing the biological definition of sex or infringing women’s sex-based rights under the Equalities Act.

You’d think that a feminist like Nicola Sturgeon would regard that as self-evident. Perhaps she does. But if so she needs to say it loud and clear before half the voting population – women – turn against the SNP.

Here’s hoping.

Now you want to know what damn fool or set of fools was doing a Womxn’s Day Speaker Series, right? Well it was the Gates Foundation, blast their eyes.

We’re celebrating International Womxn’s Day by hosting the United Way’s Emerging Leaders 365 Speaker Series here at the Discovery Center, featuring a panel of powerhouse womxn who are entrepreneurs and doing incredible work to give back to our community. Moderator: Mika Yamamoto with Panelists including Laura Clise – Founder & CEO of The Intentionalist, Nourah Yonous – Founder and Executive Director at African Women Business Alliance, and Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno – Co Founder of Future For Us. Admission is a suggested donation of $10 to United Way’s Emerging Leaders 365.

STOP CALLING WOMEN WOMXN. Stop lumping women in with people who are not women by changing the E to X. Stop it. Women are not a formless lump of matter that anyone gets to redefine just by swapping out a letter or two. The word “women” is not up for grabs any more than the words “black” or “lesbian” or “working class” or “disabled.” Knock it off.

The Gates Foundation is about a 20 minute walk from where I live. Maybe I should go down there (it’s at the bottom of the hill) and yell at them.

You can’t escape it even when it’s not the topic. I’m reading a piece from NBC on how the virus is affecting Seattle, and then thud.

Down a normally crowded hallway, Market Magic & Novelty Shop also remained quiet. A family bought a small keepsake and then walked out. No one came in after.

“We’re rethinking our business model, that’s for sure,” owner Sheila Lyon said. “People are scared. They don’t want to be in public spaces.”

…

Lyon and her husband make up a little money on the weekends, but every day seems to bring fewer and fewer customers. As a result, Lyon, who has owned her business for 47 years, is turning to social media to entice customers. But even that comes with a caveat, she said.

“Our wholesaler gets his supplies from China,” she said. “He told me he only has six months’ worth of products left.”

Kind of an odd example to choose – someone who sells imported tat to people trawling for tatty souvenirs. Pike Place Market also has crafts shops and of course food, so why single out a “novelty” shop? Maybe because it gets its tat from China. Still makes an odd example for a story on how a disease outbreak is affecting shoppers and sellers.

But that’s not what I was getting at. What I was getting at is…

Lyon is worried about how the emergency declaration will affect her bottom line. King County has already canceled big events scheduled for this week, such as the Womxn’s Day Speaker Series and the Cultural Crossroads Festival.

Oh for fuck’s SAKE – not again. I didn’t know there was such a series, and I would have been fine not knowing.

This person didn’t like Suzanne Moore’s piece at all.

What’s next after what threat? There was no threat. There was a woman saying that Selina Todd should not have been told not to give her talk and that Woman’s Place UK clearly isn’t a hate group and that female is a biological classification that applies to all living species. None of that is any kind of threat, or anything like a threat, and women do have a right to organize and campaign as women without being screamed at and accused of terrorizing helpless male employees who identify as women. Jess was never in any danger from Suzanne Moore.

So today…

The Huffington Post UK has details:

A deepening row about The Guardian’s coverage of trans rights issues saw a trans woman dramatically announce her resignation in front of colleagues on Tuesday, HuffPost UK understands.

It is the third resignation from the paper’s UK office in months over the issue.

The worker confirmed to HuffPost UK she had handed in her notice a few weeks earlier, but chose to speak out in the busy news meeting on Tuesday over what she called “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

That is, the worker decided to leverage his resignation into a new way to bully and manipulate anyone who doesn’t agree that men become women by Saying the Words.

The Guardian’s approach to covering trans rights issues has been the subject of internal battles. In 2018, three of the paper’s US staff publicly criticised the decision to run an editorial that they said “promoted transphobic viewpoints”.

Meaning, they published viewpoints that aren’t identical with the reality-denying bullshit that is trans ideology.

Last year, BuzzFeed reported the Guardian had lost two trans employees over its coverage of the issue, with one accusing the newspaper in an email to staff of being “an incredibly transphobic organisation”.

Meaning, an organization that includes some people who don’t agree with every item in the reality-denying bullshit that is trans ideology.

It’s not phobia to decline to believe or pretend to believe reality-denying bullshit. We have a right to resist lies and bullshit. That right is considerably more important, and of longer vintage, than the mythical “right” to be ratified as the sex one is not.

All about…her?

So many people telling her to take as many days off as she likes.

Jane on the other hand has some tips.

H/t KBPlayer for the LP tweet.

Even in Missouri?

It’s “Women’s HERstory Month” at Missouri State so…

The Office of Multicultural Programs and the Department of Gender Studies are excited to announce the return of the annual Womxn of Distinction Awards.

I assume the Office of Erasing Women and the Department of Centering Men were involved too.

A yearly part of Women’s HERstory Month, the Womxn of Distinction Awards honor women and femme identified individuals who have excelled academically, contributed to the success of the Missouri State and Springfield communities, and demonstrated commitment to positively influencing the lives of others.

Women and “femme identified” people…because women can’t have anything that’s just for women any more. We have to share everything with men who claim to be “femme identified” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) now.

A Slate article a couple of years ago explained why “women and femmes” is such a stupid pairing:

Before we go into what’s wrong with “women and femmes” as a linguistic device, maybe we should clear up what femme means (for those who don’t know their Ellen Page from Ellen DeGeneres). Femme is a term that comes from working-class lesbian culture. It was originally used to describe lesbians who were feminine in their appearance and clothing, and sat in opposition to butch lesbians, who were masculine in their appearance and clothing. (If you’re interested in reading more about the height of butch/femme culture then I suggest reading Leslie Feinberg’s seminal novel Stone Butch Blues.) Femme was about femininity released from the chains of obligation to men and their gazes. It was a defiant and knowing femininity, performed for oneself and for other women, rather than in service of the heteronormative status quo, which maintained that women were naturally feminine, men naturally masculine, and that the only acceptable desire was between these two kinds of people.

In short it applied to women. It was about women. It came from women. It was by women.

But then it got appropriated. Of course it did.

Suzanne Moore says some things in the wake of the disinviting of Selina Todd:

The radical insight of feminism is that gender is a social construct – that girls and women are not fated to be feminine, that boys and men don’t have to be masculine. But we have gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a construct. It is said that sex is merely assigned at birth, rather than being a material fact – actually, though, sex is recognisable in the womb (which is what enables foetal sex selection). Sex is not a feeling. Female is a biological classification that applies to all living species. If you produce large immobile gametes, you are female. Even if you are a frog. This is not complicated, nor is there a spectrum, although there are small numbers of intersex people who should absolutely be supported.

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.

And that would be bad. Doing away with women’s sex-based rights would be bad, because we need them.

I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed transphobic by an invisible committee on social media. It has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement. I also know that the most vicious stuff takes place online and not in real life. Still, I can’t stand by. As Roman Polanski was being rewarded for his latest film at the César awards, Todd was being silenced.

Always gotta get back at Mommy, right?

If the idea of women organising autonomously is transphobic you are walking into a cul-de-sac, which absolutely traps people in boxes that benefit the patriarchy. Because there is nothing the patriarchy fears more than women who no longer rely on male authority. We revert to a society where women have to be chaperoned, not trusted to make decisions about their own reality. Meanwhile, men-only spaces are how half the establishment operates and no one considers that to be transphobic. None of this discussion is about men giving up space for trans men; it is always about what women must accept.

Which is all the more ironic given the fact that women are no threat to men but men are a threat to women. Trans men aren’t going to be raping men if they share their locker rooms; we can’t state the obverse so confidently; yet it’s women who face all the bullying. It makes no kind of sense.

Women have the right to call out the violent men who rape. We have the right to speak and organise without being told that speech is itself dangerous. You can tell me to “die in a ditch, terf” all you like, as many have for years, but I self-identify as a woman who won’t go down quietly.

There are more of us than you think.

And we’re pushing back.

Thick as ten short planks.

President Donald Trump held a Cabinet Room meeting with pharmaceutical executives Monday, pressing them to deliver a vaccine for coronavirus as the epidemic spreads across the U.S.

Helpful. I’m sure they’re just being lazy, and if he presses them they’ll sigh and say “Oh all right” and come up with the vaccine by this afternoon.

At one point, Trump asked whether the normal flu vaccine could be used to prevent the spread of the current COVID-19 strain of coronavirus that is causing global disruption. “You take a solid flu vaccine,” Trump said, “you don’t think that would have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

“No,” came the response. Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease, added, “Probably not,” as the president nodded.

A really solid one? Not one of those flimsy ones that break so easily, but a really solid one with good foundations and steel I-beams?

Trump has been criticized for his response to the spread of coronavirus and his apparent lack of understanding about the epidemic.

Apparent? You mean “obvious” and “staggering.”

Experts raised concerns about the president’s knowledge gap last week when he admitted he was “shocked” to learn that the flu generally kills more than 30,000 Americans each year.

And on Monday, Trump said “maybe a cure is possible” for coronavirus and that a vaccine would be ready “relatively soon.”

And that exciting things are happening, and that they’re happening very rapidly.

The president’s desire for a quick vaccine was evident when meeting with the pharmaceutical executives in the Cabinet Room. Trump told Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day that his work on a therapy to alleviate symptoms was “very exciting,” and instructed him to “Get it done, Daniel. Don’t disappoint us.”

That will make all the difference.

Fauci and Health Secretary Alex Azar noted that vaccine work is complex, time-consuming and prone to failure, pointing out the difference between having a vaccine ready for tests and one ready for the market. But the president kept returning to the executives’ promising pitches.

Because that’s how thick he is.

Trump said he had “heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But if you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

Heard where? At the golf resort? Inside his head? From Princess Former Liberal Hope Ivanka?

Trump said he had “heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But if you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

Just write it down somewhere with a Sharpie and then show it to us. That’ll work.

Oh god.

It’s a little unfortunate that the dumbest guy in the UNIVERSE has that job right now.

Hey, remember when liberals pinned their hopes on Ivanka Trump?

No, neither do I.

Maggie Haberman says they did though.

(I went to follow Soledad O’Brien on reading that and found that she follows me. Whaaaaat)

See the man. See the man say words. See the man say words that don’t mean anything. See the man make remarks. See the man flap his lips while an epidemic takes hold and he has no clue what to do.

Originally a comment by Claire on It doesn’t.

This is actually dangerously incorrect information. Yes, for the most part endometriosis doesn’t kill (although it does slightly increase the risk of ovarian cancer). But it is a terrible condition nonetheless.

But if you say 1 in 10 people, you’ve now screwed up the statistic. It’s not 1 in 10, because almost half the population is not at risk at all. And they can’t say 1 in 10 people with a uterus because it is possible to get the disorder without one in places such as the fallopian tubes, pelvic cavity, and even the bowel.

Now imagine if we were talking about something that does kill people but has differential risks for men and women. Breast cancer is common in women but rare in men. Lifetime risk of breast cancer in women is 1 in 8, for men it is 1 in 833. If you say 1 in 8 people instead you are grossly distorting the statistics. There’s no way I can think of that positively separates those at high risk and those at low, other than the word women. Even if you have a mastectomy, breast cancer is still possible (which is why prophylactic mastectomy by BRCA1/2 positive women is not very smart). You could I suppose say cis women and trans men, but that still doesn’t cover the non-binary and whatever the hell queer is supposed to mean these days.

Here’s another, more immediately relevant example: the risk of death from coronavirus seems to be higher in men than women by a considerable degree. Now, because most of the statistics we’re relying on come from China, we don’t know if that is true or whether there is confounding by smoking (~50% of Chinese men smoke compared with ~1-2% of Chinese women). Nevertheless, if it holds up, this needs to be communicated and quickly. Coronavirus don’t care how you identify.

But even tweeting that one in ten people get endometriosis didn’t save Sefton Council from the wrath of Doctor Harrop.

Apparently they were too busy replying to angry women who were pointing out that only women get endometriosis to do what Doctor Harrop told them to do, so he summoned reenforcements.

That did it – 15 minutes later he was crowing about his knockout punch.

But women? Bah, they can get in the sea.

Robin Buckallew is honoring Women’s History Month by writing something every day of the month that is in her words “about women, for women, by a woman.”

She introduces today’s item:

Well, here it is. March 1. Day One of Women’s History Month, and the first day of my third annual Women’s Writes marathon. For the next month, I will post something for you every day, unless in that time period I am rendered unable by external forces beyond my control. I will start this year with something yanked from my own life, the story – modified, of course – of something that happened to me because I am a woman.

I know it may be difficult to believe; it was difficult for me to believe when it happened. But the conversations about women between Diane and her male co-workers actually happened, from their mouth to my ear – and now to my page. I have changed their names, and many details, but the incident and the conversations occurred. Ryan is not the same as my boss; Ryan is a composite of many bosses, but not a good descriptor of the boss I had at the time. The ending of the story is much different than what I experienced; the solution Diane uses is not something I had available. The company I describe at the end did not at that time – and does not now – exist in Oklahoma City. Too bad. I would have loved to be able to take that path.

Read on.

Oh godddddd the stupid.

Awareness month! So inaccurate misleading language is vital! It’s VITAL I tell you!

When queried on this gross mistake, Sefton Council replied with a smirk.

Editing to add: they’re rubbing our noses in it.

I saw a tweet saying that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had made its toilets [restrooms in American English] gender neutral, so I decided to take a look at how it describes itself.

Our specialist trauma-informed support services are open to women, all members of the trans community, non-binary people and young people aged 12 – 18 who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any time in their lives, by abusers of any gender. This includes rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.

So their services are not open to men over 18 who don’t describe themselves as trans or non-binary, but they are open to men over 18 who do describe themselves that way.

I wonder what the reasoning is.

We will listen, believe and support young people (aged 12 -18) and women and all members of the trans community of any age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity (and non-binary people), religious and cultural background.

But not men over 18 who are not “members of the trans community.” (God what a stupid sanctimonious way of putting it – as if there were an election process for “membership” and as if there were a “community” as opposed to a set of people who attach silly labels to themselves.) Why is being trans seen as the opposite of being a man over 18?

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI) people may may experience negative attitudes in society and prejudice, and have concerns about public revelation of their sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. All our support workers have been fully trained to be sensitive and respectful through awareness raising training from the Scottish Transgender Alliance. Trans men and non-binary people will be provided with specially tailored individual services with respect to their identities. Trans women will be provided with the same quality of individual and group support as other women.

“Have we groveled enough? Will that do? Are you going to punish us again?”

But wait – they have women-only spaces.

Women only spaces

We offer women only spaces (which are inclusive of trans women) in our centre on Tuesdays 4pm – 7pm, Wednesdays 12.30pm – 4pm and Fridays 9am – 12.30pm. The rest of the week we offer appointments to people of all genders.

Oh. So not women-only spaces then.