More from the Hooray For Guns rally.

Brilliant.

Just imagine if they were not white men.

Aw, swell, just what we need.

Caitlyn Jenner is using her voice to speak out for transgender rights.

The activist and former Olympian, 70, took the stage at the Women’s March in Los Angeles on Saturday and declared her desire to change the direction the country is taking.

Oh, at the Women’s March. A man who won medals at the Olympics and killed a woman with his car “took the stage” at the Women’s March, because anything for women is always improved by having a man take over. Always.

Dressed in a white blazer, lavender skirt and heels, Jenner shared her delight to be attending her very first Women’s March.

If you report on a woman you have to say what she’s wearing. It’s only courteous.

“Together as women, trans women and cis[gender] women, we have the power to influence our communities, our families, our friends and colleagues, and turn this country around!” she told the crowd, Deadline reported.

No. He’s not a woman and we’re not “together as women” with him. By all means help turn the country around, but get out of women’s spaces and marches.

Though she supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Jenner has since said she was wrong to advocate for him, based on his treatment of transgender people.

Yeah never mind everyone else.

Jenner is an asshole, and calling himself a woman doesn’t make him one tiny bit less so.

No, really? That’s not fake?

It’s not fake; I found them.

Male

and

Female

On the one hand, the sex that produces spermatazoa, and on the other hand

The traditional definition of female was “an individual of the sex that bears young” or “that produces ova or eggs”. However, things are not so simple today. Female can be defined by physical appearance, by chromosome constitution (see Female chromosome complement), or by gender identification. Female chromosome complement: The large majority of females have a 46, XX chromosome complement (46 chromosomes including two X chromosomes). A minority of females have other chromosome constitutions such as 45,X (45 chromosomes including only one X chromosome) and 47,XXX (47 chromosomes including three X chromosomes).

Female can be defined by physical appearance or gender identification. Male? Oh that’s a whole other story.

Some people were chatting about the LGB Alliance.

But what does that mean, “exclusionary”?

All groups “exclude” some people, necessarily, because if they don’t they’re just “everybody.” They may be open to all who want to join, but they still “exclude” those who don’t want to join.

This is ok. It’s allowed. It’s not automatically evil. Of course there can be exclusion for bad reasons, but exclusion by itself is neutral.

The LGB umbrella has been expanding by adding letters for years, so much so that it’s an easy joke, but there are in fact substantive reasons to ask if the expansion really makes sense. The reality is that being trans is not the same thing as being same-sex attracted, and in some ways the two conflict. Cotton ceiling, anyone? Lesbians don’t necessarily want to have sex with men who identify as women, and they don’t much want to be bullied for that preference, either.

It’s not obvious that it’s evil or phobic or “exclusionary” in the pejorative sense for LGB people to want a group for just them and not also trans people.

But never mind all that, just keep repeating “exclusionary” until the rocks melt into the sea.

And there’s the trendy angle.

What I don’t get about this, and probably never will, is why it’s trendy. What’s so trendy about it? What’s the outcome? Lesbians become…straight men? I’m not seeing the trendy.

Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather have more lesbians than more straight men. There’s no great shortage of straight men in the world, so what’s the burning need to make more of them by magicking lesbians?

Call me old-fashioned and boomer and TERF and all the rest of it, but I still think lesbians and gays (and feminists) do far more to uproot and disrupt and sabotage the rules and restrictions of gender than The Magic Gender Party on its best day.

This happened last night:

If we’re thinking that lesbians and gays and bisexuals should be able to have alliances and groups for lesbians and gays and bisexuals, Owen Jones is here to tell us we’re wrong to think that.

But why does “the LGBTQ movement” have to be that and only that? Why is it some kind of law of the universe that all those items belong together, and not just together but always together, and not just always together but always together on pain of expulsion from bars and chastisement from Owen Jones?

Here’s the thing: T is not the same as L and G. In some ways it’s in sharp tension with L and G, just as in some ways it’s in sharp tension with feminism.

But Owen Jones knows better; Owen Jones knows that’s just hate speech.

Hmm. Smells like projection.

Ah yes, the Amish. Who would ever have thought that a religious sect that isolates its members would turn out to have a nasty habit of raping its own daughters and sisters? Besides everyone who thinks about it for a minute?

As a child, Sadie* was carefully shielded from outside influences, never allowed to watch TV or listen to pop music or get her learner’s permit. Instead, she attended a one-room Amish schoolhouse and rode a horse and buggy to church—a life designed to be humble and disciplined and godly.

And very safe for rapey boys and men.

By age 9, she says, she’d been raped by one of her older brothers. By 12, she’d been abused by her father, Abner*, a chiropractor who penetrated her with his fingers on the same table where he saw patients, telling her he was “flipping her uterus” to ensure her fertility. By 14, she says, three more brothers had raped her and she was being attacked in the hayloft or in her own bed multiple times a week. She would roll over afterward, ashamed and confused. The sisters who shared Sadie’s room (and even her bed) never woke up—or if they did, never said anything, although some later confided that they were being raped too. Sadie’s small world was built around adherence to rules—and keeping quiet was one of them. “There was no love or support,” she says. “We didn’t feel that we had anywhere to go to say anything.”

All rules, and no love. Lots of rape, and no way to escape from it.

This god sure as hell hates women.

So she kept quiet, even when the police asked questions.

Even on the day when, almost two years later, Abner was sentenced by a circuit court judge to just five years’ probation.

And even on the day when, at 14, she says she was cornered in the pantry by one of her brothers and raped on the sink, and then felt a gush and saw blood running down her leg, and cleaned up alone while he walked away, and gingerly placed her underwear in a bucket of cold water before going back to her chores. A friend helped her realize years later: While being raped, she had probably suffered a miscarriage.

It’s as if the males in her family saw her as an appliance, not a person. Did they get that from their god?

Sarah McClure, the author of the piece, says it’s everywhere:

Over the past year, I’ve interviewed nearly three dozen Amish people, in addition to law enforcement, judges, attorneys, outreach workers, and scholars. I’ve learned that sexual abuse in their communities is an open secret spanning generations. Victims told me stories of inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to genitals, digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex, and rape, all at the hands of their own family members, neighbors, and church leaders.

And these men all, it seems fair to assume, see themselves as particularly godly and devout and holy and thus “good” – yet they have no compunction about repeatedly raping their own sisters and daughters.

In my reporting, I identified 52 official cases of Amish child sexual assault in seven states over the past two decades. Chillingly, this number doesn’t begin to capture the full picture. Virtually every Amish victim I spoke to—mostly women but also several men—told me they were dissuaded by their family or church leaders from reporting their abuse to police or had been conditioned not to seek outside help (as Sadie put it, she knew she’d just be “mocked or blamed”). Some victims said they were intimidated and threatened with excommunication. Their stories describe a widespread, decentralized cover-up of child sexual abuse by Amish clergy.

“We’re told that it’s not Christlike to report,” explains Esther*, an Amish woman who says she was abused by her brother and a neighbor boy at age 9. “It’s so ingrained. There are so many people who go to church and just endure.”

Wait. It’s not Christlike to report. But is it Christlike to rape?

Why is the onus on the victims to shut up and endure the constant assaults, and not on the boys and men to refrain from assaulting their sisters and daughters? What about telling the men to be “Christlike” first?

T here’s no one reason for the sexual abuse crisis in Amish Country. Instead, there’s a perfect storm of factors: a patriarchal and isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure to police, coaches, or anyone else who might help them; an education system that ends at eighth grade and fails to teach children about sex or their bodies; a culture of victim shaming and blaming; little access to the technology that enables communication or broader social awareness; and a religion that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishment or rehabilitation. Amish leaders also tend to be wary of law enforcement, preferring to handle disputes on their own.

But the religion seems to prioritize repentance and forgiveness not just over punishment or rehabilitation but also over not raping. Over stopping. Never mind punishment, what about stopping? What exactly is the repentance if the raping never stops?

It’s common for Amish victims to be viewed by the community as just as guilty as the abuser—as consenting partners committing adultery, even if they’re children. Victims are expected to share responsibility and, after the church has punished their abuser, to quickly forgive. If they fail to do so, they’re the problem.

When the rare case does end up in court, the Amish overwhelmingly support the abusers, who tend to appear with nearly their entire congregations behind them, survivors and law enforcement sources say. This can compound the trauma of speaking out. “We’ve had cases where there’ll be 50 Amish people standing up for the offender and no one speaks for the victim,” says Stedman.

Does God hate women? Looks that way.

Man who identifies as a woman bullies woman (and Labour MP) to agree that he is a woman.

That is, trans woman Juno Dawson grills Labour MP Jess Phillips on why she retweeted the Women’s Party UK and does she understand why that retweet “caused some concern”?

Think very carefully before you reply.

Well?

Oh did they now.

The Post reports:

The large color photograph that greets visitors to a National Archives exhibit celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage shows a massive crowd filling Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

The 49-by-69-inch photograph is a powerful display. Viewed from one perspective, it shows the 2017 march. Viewed from another angle, it shifts to show a 1913 black-and-white image of a women’s suffrage march also on Pennsylvania Avenue. The display links momentous demonstrations for women’s rights more than a century apart on the same stretch of pavement.

There’s just that one tiny problem.

The Archives acknowledged in a statement this week that it made multiple alterations to the photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum, blurring signs held by marchers that were critical of Trump. Words on signs that referenced women’s anatomy were also blurred.

You know…there’s a reason there were words on signs that “referenced women’s anatomy”…i.e. used the word “pussy.” The reason is the fact that Trump himself used it in a bro-chat aka “locker room talk” in which he bragged about grabbing women by that bit of their anatomy. Blurring it in a photo of the march protects Trump, and no one else. It’s Trump who uses hostile contemptuous language to talk about women in the company of other men. That’s an important part of the story the Archive is curating, so they shouldn’t be blurring it out.

In the original version of the 2017 photograph, taken by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama, the street is packed with marchers carrying a variety of signs, with the Capitol in the background. In the Archives version, at least four of those signs are altered.

A placard that proclaims “God Hates Trump” has “Trump” blotted out so that it reads “God Hates.” A sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word Trump blurred out.

If they’re too squeamish to stage a display critical of the current president then they shouldn’t do the display at all.

“As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said in an emailed statement. “Our mission is to safeguard and provide access to the nation’s most important federal records, and our exhibits are one way in which we connect the American people to those records. Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.”

Then just don’t do it. If displaying it requires censorship then don’t display it.

Archive officials did not respond to a request to provide examples of previous instances in which the Archives altered a document or photograph so as not to engage in political controversy.

Because there aren’t any? Or because they haven’t found any yet?

They explained that the image is a “graphic design component” but not an “artifact” and that they alter only the former, not the latter. It’s clear enough that a reproduction at the entry is not the same thing as archival material, but it still seems completely grotesque for the national archive to distort by censoring a reproduction of one of its images.

When told about the action taken by the Archives, prominent historians expressed dismay. “There’s no reason for the National Archives to ever digitally alter a historic photograph,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said. “If they don’t want to use a specific image, then don’t use it. But to confuse the public is reprehensible. The head of the Archives has to very quickly fix this damage. A lot of history is messy, and there’s zero reason why the Archives can’t be upfront about a photo from a women’s march.”

Quite so – if they feel they can’t use the photo without censoring it, then don’t use the photo. Don’t lie to us.

Wendy Kline, a history professor at Purdue University, said it was disturbing that the Archives chose to edit out the words “vagina” and “pussy” from an image of the Women’s March, especially when it was part of an exhibit about the suffragist movement. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the 2017 march in the District, which was widely seen as a protest of Trump’s victory.

“Doctoring a commemorative photograph buys right into the notion that it’s okay to silence women’s voice and actions,” Kline said in an email. “It is literally erasing something that was accurately captured on camera. That’s an attempt to erase a powerful message.”

But then, silencing women’s voices and actions is kind of the hot new trend right now.

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker tell us about Trump’s contempt for everyone who isn’t Trump:

There’s a room in the Pentagon nicknamed “the Tank” where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet to make consequential decisions.

One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.

By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located.

They figured they needed to tutor him a little, get him up to speed on the basics. “Now, over here, this is Europe…”

So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.

Bit of a loss of control of subjects and objects there – let’s try “Not only did they fail to get him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, but Trump began to tune out” and so on.

The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.

…

Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe.

Huh? Wozzat? Point is, that Angela person, she doesn’t respect the Donald. They all don’t respect the Donald. The Donald goes in front for every photo; that’s the law.

For the next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

Well that’s no fun. What’s fun is smashing it all, and taking credit for the smashing.

Anyway, Trump, of course, couldn’t grasp what they were telling him.

His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him to launch in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some countries.

That’s the thing. He has the mind of a toddler, literally. He can’t understand a complete sentence; he grabs at an individual word because that’s the maximum he can process. “Base”: oooh I know that word.

They did a round on South Korea and how they should be paying rent, then NATO and how they should be paying dues, then Iran and how Trump wanted out, then Afghanistan.

Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.

“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

They tried to explain what was actually going on in Afghanistan.

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

This is the guy, Leonnig and Rucker remind us, who got the bone spurs exemption.

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”

Gosh darn it? I think not.

Pence sat very still. People thought he would speak up, especially since he has a son in the Marines, but he just sat very still and uttered not a peep.

Tillerson is the one who spoke up, and told Trump he was wrong.

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.

“He’s a fucking moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

Ah that’s when he said the immortal words. Good to know.

However bad we already know it is – it’s always worse. There’s always worse that we don’t yet know about.

Trump has been busy today honoring some athletes.

At the White House today, Donald Trump is honoring the 2019 college football national champions before heading to Mar-a-Lago.

Before heading to Mar-a-Lago to put many thousands more $$ in his pocket at our expense.

He told the players, speaking about the presidency and himself: “You’ve got a good one now, even though they’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch. Can you believe that?”

Cool cool, but for the punchline, look at that photo.

Feminist women to give a talk on being canceled.

Oops, no, wait, scratch that – the talk has been canceled.

You can’t make this up: The New York Public Library has canceled an event, scheduled for Friday at the main branch, that was to feature women who have been canceled.

Organized by the Women’s Liberation Front, a feminist organization that supports a biological definition of gender, the “Evening with Canceled Women” was to feature “five fearless feminists” speaking out about “women’s rights to a life free of pervasive harassment, silencing, coercion, violence, forced lying and endless punishment.”

Well we can’t have that, now can we. Whatever next? Leaving the house without permission?

In a blog post, the WLF’s Natasha Chart recounted how she was informed last week, just a day before the deposit for the room rental was due, that the library wouldn’t be hosting the event. The library gave no reason for the cancellation — which came even though earlier it had assured the women that “the contract was in process.” The NYPL didn’t respond to my request for comment.

…

All of the women slated to appear have been victims in one way or another of cancel culture, including social-media bans, protests and hecklers — all for asserting the not-long-ago common view that gender is based in biological facts, not subjective feelings.

Now the trans movement is telling them to shut up and let biological men decide what it means to be a woman. But in the tradition of powerful feminist voices in the past, these women won’t shut up or be nice.

And we won’t repeat the lies, either.

Jane Clare Jones also objects to Alison Phipps’s assertion that “‘Reasonable debate’ cannot counter unreasonable ideas,” calling it “a pretty staggering statement from someone who is supposedly in the business of dealing with ideas.” Isn’t it though? Isn’t it just self-undermining as all hell for an academic?

If taken at face value, ‘unreasonable’ here would mean something like ‘lacking in reasoned argument,’ or ‘not capable of being justified with compelling reasons.’ Maybe this is what Phipps means, but if so, she would have to, y’know, actually demonstrate that the many reasons we have given for our position are not, in fact, reasonable. Which would, indeed, be the entire point of asking her to intellectually engage with us, rather than just doing an endless ‘tut and move away’ manoeuvre.

The first thought that leaps to mind is that ‘tut and move away’ is simply easier, but the second thought is that it’s more theatrical, more demonstrative, more showy. It does more to dramatize one’s impassioned loyalty and concern for “trans folx” than reasoned argument would do. It’s more like marching to Selma and less like writing an opinion on Brown. Marching to Selma is certainly part of what’s required, but it’s not supposed to displace reasoned discussion altogether.

Of course, we’re going to conclude from Phipps’ swerve that she knows full well that she can’t answer our reasoned objections, and no surprises there – this absolute refusal to deal with the substance of the issue has been the core political tactic of the TRM from the start, and it’s because, simply, they can’t deal with reasoned objections. What they can, and have done, inveterately, instead, is weave a web of analogical relations to explain why we’re evil, why everything we say is evil, and why they don’t have to engage with us or anything we ever say because we’re SO. DAMN. EVIL.

This is actually what Phipps is saying when she calls us ‘unreasonable.’ It can’t be a (potentially) demonstrable claim about our position ‘lacking reasoned argument’ because if it were, the claim that ‘reasonable debate cannot defeat unreasonable ideas’ would make no sense. What it is, rather, I’d suggest, is a moral claim – a claim that we and our ideas are so morally delinquent that we can, and should, be excluded from the community of legitimate speaking subjects.

Exactly so. That’s why I ended up leaving Freethought blogs: they wouldn’t let me try to discuss the ideas, try to make distinctions, try to separate the political from the ontological. That was noisily and then venomously Forbidden.

For a group of people so profoundly concerned with questions of recognition, validation, and the harms of dehumanisation and exclusion, it is marked how absolute and implacable the TR position is when it comes to refusing anyone who questions their ideology or political agenda the merest hint of basic recognition. We are never to be taken as good actors who have genuinely motivated concerns or objections grounded in our own political analysis of the world. We will not be interpreted or understood in anything resembling our own terms, but are, instead, a venomous horde of boogeywomen summoned by the projections of our opponents.

Funny how Jane and I both land on the word “venomous” independently – I hadn’t read that far when I wrote the previous paragraph. (I do it that way sometimes – comment as I read rather than reading it all and then commenting.) The venom is noticeable and strange. It’s one thing that sets this “movement” apart. It feels…it feels like mental illness, to tell the truth. It feels like mutual widespread socially-contagious mental illness. It doesn’t feel healthy at all.

Can we fix it?

Top mediocrity at the New York Times David Brooks has perpetrated another fatuous column, this one saying vast inequality of wealth is because the top people create eleventy billion times as much value as the ants at the bottom. Paul Krugman raises an eyebrow.

But don’t go thinking that’s just because the plutocrat class rewards itself – no no – it’s totally merit. A plutocrat screwup is emphasis on the plutocrat dammit.