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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Center for Reproductive Rights still uses That word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So determined to force women to die of pregnancy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the plan now is to attack judges and prosecutors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was that courthouse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ya think?

The Lancet.

The Lancet!!!

This is healthy and reasonable:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally a comment by KBPlayer on Shortcut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Putting ideology before science.

I think when it comes to medical or other technical subjects, we’re all forced to take shortcuts and rely on some heuristics. It’s just not possible to become an expert in gender medicine, climate science, evolutionary biology, and virology and infectious disease, to name just a handful of science-related controversies. So we look at things like what side do most of the credentialed experts take, how good are the best arguments made by their critics, what are the economic incentives and biases of the disputants, who seems to be arguing in good faith, etc.

And a lot of the time, this works quite well. You don’t have to look very hard at evolution/creation arguments before you notice that creationists tend to offer an argument on Tuesday that is shown to be an outright lie that even they don’t bother to defend, only to make that same bogus argument on Thursday to a different audience. And that they’re almost invariably arguing in support of a religious agenda, even when they try to hide it (“no, we’re cdesign proponentists!”) Etc.

And yeah, one of the criteria you might look at is who seems to be the “good guys.” Which can absolutely go wrong.

On gender medicine, you have a significant number of credentialed experts who insist that the science is settled, and they just want to help people live their lives, and a nontrivial amount of the opposition comes from religious right types who seem motivated by disgust and hatred rather than good faith intellectual disagreement. Sure, if you take a not-very-deep dive into the details, it becomes apparent that there’s a lot more going on, but very few people do that.

Texas wants women to die of pregnancy complications.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to the state’s strict abortion ban — a response to a lawsuit filed last year by a group of women who had serious pregnancy complications.

The ruling was unanimous. All of the nine justices are Republicans.

Five women brought the lawsuit in March 2023, saying they were denied abortions even when issues arose during pregnancy that endangered their lives. The case grew to include 20 women and two doctors.

That’s what happened to Savita Halappanavar, and what happens to women in Catholic-run hospitals in the US. Texas wants all pregnant women in Texas to run that risk. Texas wants all pregnant women to die rather than survive by terminating the pregnancy.

Zurawski v. Texas was the first legal challenge to the state’s bans that focused specifically on women with complicated pregnancies.

One of the lead plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski, has said she nearly died in August 2022 when doctors delayed giving her a medically necessary abortion after she had catastrophic complications while 18 weeks pregnant. After her health deteriorated, her doctors eventually performed an abortion. She said she later went into sepsis and spent three days in the intensive care unit.

The Texas legislature wants more of that.

Convicted felon Trump gave a news conference packed with the usual lies.

Mr. Trump, in a rambling and misleading 33-minute speech, derided the trial as “rigged” and attacked the judge in his first public comments since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. He also made numerous misleading statements about the case and what took place at the trial.

“Misleading statements”=lies.

Mr. Trump said he would appeal. Long before that appeal is heard, he will be enmeshed in the gears of the criminal justice system. A pre-sentence report, made by probation officers, will make recommendations based on the defendant’s criminal record — Mr. Trump had none before this case — as well as his personal history and the crime itself.

That’s very interesting, because his personal history is packed full of fraud and lies. Voters can (and sadly do) ignore that, but probation officers not so much.

Trump claims, implausibly, that he never thought of Michael Cohen as a fixer. He says he thought of him purely as a lawyer. In reality, Trump assigned Cohen to do many jobs that had nothing to do with lawyering, such as threatening contractors and trying to rig an online CNBC poll to make Trump seem more popular than he really was.

So Threatening Contractors isn’t Law 101? Who knew?

Trump is now talking about Michael Cohen, who was the prosecution’s star witness against him. He says Cohen was an “effective” lawyer who turned out to be a “sleazebag.” This is ultimately part of the prosecutors’ case against Trump: he was trying to blame Cohen for everything, but Cohen was who Trump himself chose to defend him for a decade.

It’s hilarious that Trump calls anyone a sleazebag. Trump is the sleaziest sleazebag who ever sleazed. Everything he touches or mentions or looks at turns into sleaze. He’s the mildew of sleaze.

Where Trump looked both dismayed and upset in his brief remarks yesterday, he is back to familiar form, essentially lecturing the news media, and the public, at length about his views on the case, the trial, the judge and prosecutors.

In terms of daily life as opposed to larger matters, that’s one of the worst things about him – how much he talks at us and lectures us on his views in his horrible grating voice using his short stupid words to say brutal stupid things. It’s as if a bratty 8-year-old child got to yammer at us all day every day.

Darren Johnson on the Green party’s refusal to heed the Cass Report:

Labour’s Wes Streeting admitted that he had got things wrong in the past and called the review a “watershed moment” for the NHS. Even in Scotland, the previously gung-ho SNP belatedly welcomed the findings and it is hoped that changes will be made to provision there. 

But sadly, that wake-up call does not appear to have been heard by the Greens. In the Scottish Parliament Green MSPs now stand completely isolated on the Cass findings. Their co-leader, Patrick Harvie, was reluctant to even accept the report as a valid scientific document. 

In London, Zoë Garbett, the Green mayoral candidate last month (who now sits as a London Assembly Member after her predecessor resigned her seat just days after getting elected) joined Harvie in attempting to undermine the findings.

Which, as Johnson goes on to emphasize, is quite a reckless thing to do when the issue is the future health of children and Zoë Garbett probably knows less about it than Dr Cass.

This casual dismissal of such a landmark report was absolutely gut-wrenching for me. I had twice stood as the Green Party’s candidate for mayor of London and spent 16 years representing the Greens as a London assembly member. Throughout that time, children’s health featured high on my list of priorities, whether it was pushing for tough measures on air pollution or fighting for better homes for families living in overcrowded conditions. How dare leading Greens be so dismissive of a well-researched, scientific review tackling a shameful medical scandal. 

My guess is that they dare because they don’t think of it as a medical issue but as a justicey one. They see it as not technical but political, and thus wide open to attack and dismissal on political as opposed to medical grounds.

I reacted with fury. “Vote Green if you want to completely ignore medical evidence and see more children pumped full of harmful drugs.” I wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to that awful, glib video from Garbett. 

He knew it was risky, and he took the risk.

I am beyond despair that the political party I’ve been a member of for decades, that has always said “trust the science” when it comes to climate change or air and river pollution, is apparently putting ideology before science when it comes to pushing untested medical treatments for children. 

Trust the science; no not like that.

Holy shit that was fast.

The jury is reciting the verdict. Up to 20 guilty at this moment.

Next moment: guilty on all 34.

Updating to add some er commentary.

Update: It’s fun to see each one recited.

Yet another field of battle: literary festivals.

Last week, in the days leading up to the Hay Literary Festival – the UK’s most prestigious literary event which, each May since 1987, has brought together high-profile speakers from across the world – a crisis was unfolding. 

Those scheduled to appear had received an email from an organisation called Fossil Free Books, urging them to protest against the festival over its sponsorship deal with the Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. The email asked them to denounce Baillie Gifford – which invests two per cent of its portfolio in the petrochemical industry and which, FFB argue, also profits from “Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide” – or read aloud a poem by a Palestinian author, or withdraw from Hay entirely. 

Speakers were also encouraged to sign a letter of protest, while a second email gave details of several pro-Palestinian demonstrations scheduled to take place at the festival, with details on how speakers could support them. Various publicists and publishers found the tone of this email “quite threatening”. There was unease about safety concerns, and that authors would find themselves caught up in the protests. 

Well look at it from the point of view of the activists. How much trouble is it to send a bullying email to lots of people compared to actually doing something useful?

Speaking at Hay on Thursday on the subject of control being exerted over the arts, the novelist Howard Jacobson said: “The idea that anybody can come along and say ‘you can’t read this and you can’t read that’… is a desecration. It’s a desecration of books, it’s a desecration of the idea of literature”. He also described feeling “sorry for the people who organise this festival, because they have been subjected to the most cruel and objectionable pressure.”

And frankly it just seems too meta to make any difference to climate change. There are too many steps. It looks more like performing Doing Something as opposed to actually doing something.

Toby Mundy, who runs the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, previously known as the Samuel Johnson Prize – the £50,000 prize is run entirely independently from Baillie Gifford, who merely provide “a substantial sum” to finance it – says: “I was dismayed and disappointed that [Hay] chose to make this decision. Baillie Gifford play an indispensable role in the cultural life of this country. They fund public spaces in the form of book prizes and literary festivals where issues can be debated openly, without seeking to control in any way what happens in those spaces.”

…

“People with very strong views feel they have the right to impose them on other people. It puts institutions like Hay in a very difficult position,” says the novelist Joan Smith, who last appeared at Hay in 2019. “It’s authoritarian. It worries me that individual authors will find themselves under pressure to sign their statement for fear that, if they don’t, people will think they are a climate-change denier. Yet it’s very hard to see how the call to cut ties with Baillie Gifford will have the slightest influence on climate change. The Middle East in particular is far too complex a situation to be solved by these sorts of single-issue campaigns.” 

What I’m saying. It’s drama rather than really doing something. I suppose there’s an argument that all such actions are about raising awareness and thus worth doing, but there’s also an argument that they’re just performances.

Baillie Gifford argues that the accusations levied against its investments are misleading. They point out that its two per cent investment in the petrochemical industry is far below the industry average, which is five to 11 per cent. Mundy, who as a member of the Baillie Gifford Prize board regularly carries out due-diligence checks, suggests that Baillie Gifford also “invest much more than that in companies working in clean energy”. 

Ok but on the other hand punishing Baillie Gifford is easier than working in clean energy.

Snappy headline:

Scottish Greens drop candidate who called JK Rowling a ‘cow’

A SCOTTISH Greens election candidate has been deselected by the party after calling JK Rowling a “torn-faced cow”.

Sophie Molly has been blocked from standing as the party’s candidate in Gordon and Buchan at the upcoming General Election after a Scottish Green Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday night. Green members in Molly’s area had complained about her social media conduct and accused her of bringing the party into disrepute.

So now he’s tweeted that he’s ditched the Greens and joined the SNP. Frying pan/fire springs to mind.

She added: “They will afford me the respect and dignity that a proud trans woman like me deserves. I will no longer be voting Scottish Greens.”

Why does a “proud trans woman” like him deserve respect and dignity, particularly? Why is proud transitude especially respect-worthy?

For people who pause to think about it for more than two seconds, it’s rather the opposite. Thinking you’re the other sex is a delusion, at best. (At worst it’s a cynical fraud.) Why does being delusional deserve exceptional respect and dignity? Mentally ill people of course deserve basic rights and respect like everyone else, but Molly Sophie Molly is claiming he deserves enhanced respect & dignity because he’s proudly trans. I beg to differ.

Is it “sexist” for a woman to object when a man who pretends to be a woman wins a best actress award?

The first transgender woman to be awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival filed a legal complaint on Wednesday over a “sexist insult” from a far-right politician after her win. Karla Sofía Gascón and co-stars jointly received the accolade on Saturday for their performances in French auteur Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set narco musical Emilia Perez. In the film, the 52-year-old Spanish actor – who lived as a man until she was 46 – plays a Mexican drug trafficker both before and after gender reassignment surgery.

He didn’t “live as a man” until he was 46. He simply was a man, and he still is.

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

I’m sorry she’s the granddaughter of Le Pen, but she’s still right. Men stealing women’s awards is men stealing women’s awards, and yes it is erasure.

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

If a kid puts on a bear suit and a parent reminds the kid “You’re not actually a bear” does the kid have grounds to sue?

H/t Sackbut

Last week:

Action on the floor of the House of Representatives paused for more than an hour Wednesday after Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., listed off the criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

“We have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it,” McGovern said during debate on the House floor, suggesting that House Republicans had prohibited any honest discussion of Trump’s trials. “A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.”

House Republicans quickly pushed back against McGovern’s words, with the back-and-forth leading to a lengthy delay as House staff members figured out how to proceed. His remarks were eventually ruled out of order.

Any port in a storm, eh?

The situation started when McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, referred to the Republican members of Congress who have attended Trump’s hush money trial in New York. “Maybe they want to distract from the fact that their candidate for president has been indicted more times than he’s been elected,” he said.

Rep. Jerry Carl, R-Ala., who was in the chair presiding over debate, reminded McGovern to “refrain from engaging in personalities” toward the presumed presidential nominees.

It’s not just “personalities” though is it. What’s wrong with Trump goes way beyond “personalities.”

[McGovern] then asked why a Republican member last week could call the Trump trial a “sham” on the House floor and not face the same admonishment by the chair. During a floor speech May 15, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, repeatedly referred to the “sham trial against the former president in New York,” which he said “relies on an unreliable witness being presided over by a biased judge.” 

But that’s completely different because.

Well whaddya know.

Starmer is currently on a mission to oust the few remaining leftwing Labour MPs from the party ahead of the snap election. On Monday, Labour sources leaked to the Times that Diane Abbott would not be permitted to stand as Labour’s candidate in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, despite having had the whip restored.

Amidst intense backlash, including from Tony Blair’s former director of communications and Starmer’s own party racism inspector, Starmer appeared to backtrack, denying to the BBC that Abbott had been barred from standing for Labour.

Whatever. Good news that Russell-Moyle is hobbled.