Oh good lord will people ever get a grip?

Sam Smith, who, I read, is a celebrated singer:

Today is a good day so here goes. I’ve decided I am changing my pronouns to THEY/THEM ❤ after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out…

And who he am is “they/them.” Cue the trumpet fanfare!

Or to put it another way, who gives a fuck?

The “politics” of self-obsession is not a pretty sight. Embrace yourself all you like, but don’t be telling us about it!

But he does. He does tell us about it.

I’m so excited and privileged to be surrounded by people that support me in this decision but I’ve been very nervous about announcing this because I care too much about what people think but fuck it!

It reads like parody but apparently isn’t. He needs people to support him in saying “his” pronouns are they them? He must be as fragile as a soap bubble.

I understand there will be many mistakes and mis gendering but all I ask is you please please try. I hope you can see me like I see myself now. Thank you.

I don’t see you at all, or care.

P.s. I am at no stage just yet to eloquently speak at length about what it means to be non binary but I can’t wait for the day that I am. So for now I just want to be VISIBLE and open. If you have questions and are wondering what this all means I’ll try my best to explain…

Ah that’s all you want, is it, to be visible. Narcissist much?

It’s catnip to narcissists, this pseudo-political fad. Catnip.

Not a smart shopper.

At a mid-August fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Ivanka Trump was asked to name the personality traits she inherited most from her parents.

Without much of a pause, Trump told the crowd of roughly 120 high-end donors that her mother gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman.

Uh, no. Her mother was married to Donald Trump. Not powerful, not successful.

And her father? He passed onto her his moral compass, she said, according to two event attendees.

His…………

What could he possibly have shown her? What could it be, that she mistook for a “moral compass”?

Ivanka Trump‘s comment about the traits she inherited from her father echoed a similar comment she made at the Republican National Convention in 2016, when she told the audience: “My father taught my siblings and me the importance of positive values and a strong ethical compass.”

But he didn’t though. We know that. He has no “positive values” and he sure as hell doesn’t have a strong ethical compass. All his compasses point to him. His idea of just and right is whatever is gratifying or flattering or profitable to him and painful to his enemies. Princess Ivanka is probably telling the truth that he taught her to see things the same way, but that’s not what anyone else would call “ethical.”

Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian raises the burning question of pronouns.

Little attention used to be paid to pronouns. In recent years, however, they have become a cornerstone of the culture wars.

It’s all been such a mistake. It should have been prepositions that became a cornerstone of the culture wars. We could argue over whether “in” is patriarchal, whether “with” is heteronormative, whether “for” is socialist.

Pronoun preferences are a favourite joke among unimaginative reactionaries who use them as proof that “snowflake millennials” just want to feel special.

Meaning, people who make pronouns a cornerstone of the culture wars are imaginative? I don’t see it, myself. I think the pronoun wars are peculiarly dull and empty, and not imaginative at all.

Meanwhile, pronoun introductions have become an established feature of some progressive spaces and university campuses. Many view this as a positive step towards a more nuanced understanding of gender. As Darius Hickman, a 23-year-old non-binary poet in New York says, these introductions mean people who don’t conform to traditional views of binary gender don’t feel alienated.

But you see that isn’t a more nuanced understanding of gender. It’s the opposite. Darius Hickman’s claiming to be non-binary positions other people as binary, in other words as conforming “to traditional views of binary gender,” in other words as less special than he is. That’s not nuanced, it’s self-promoting. A more nuanced understanding of gender would involve realizing that nobody conforms 100% to traditional views of binary gender, and remembering that feminists have been quarreling with traditional views of binary gender for more than half a century. Darius’s view of himself as more special than most people should not be mistaken for a more nuanced understanding of gender.

“Relying on clocking people’s gender based on appearances is harmful, especially since some people – oftentimes non-binary folks – can happen to look strictly binary, and a simple pronoun check makes things easier for everyone, including folks whose gender isn’t easy to tell.”

Maybe there could be a law? Like the yellow star law? Everybody has to carry either a purse or a gun or a unicorn, so that we can clock everybody’s gender at a glance – wouldn’t that solve it?

Also, as I keep pointing out, memorizing special pronouns for a bunch of strangers in no way makes things easier.

Mahdawi gets there too, which is a relief.

I should probably note that although I identify as a Progressive Lesbian™, the pressure of pronoun introductions often makes me feel uncomfortable. Actively announcing myself as a she/her makes it seem like I’m making my entire identity about my gender, which feels regressive.

Further, while pronoun introductions are supposed to be about recognizing that gender is complex, it sometimes seems as though they – paradoxically – reinforce gender binaries. Announcing yourself as a “she”, “he” or “they” would appear to buy into the notion that a “he” is completely different from a “she” – and if you don’t subscribe to traditional gender roles you should identify yourself as a “they”.

Quite so. That’s not more nuanced, it’s less nuanced. A lot less.

That’s no good.

A Republican state lawmaker from Texas has caused outcry for tweeting “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis” after Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke pledged to ban and confiscate AR-15 military-style rifles.

That’s no good. People shouldn’t have military weapons if they’re not in the military, people shouldn’t threaten to kill people who want laws saying we can’t have military weapons if we’re not in the military. That’s no good at all.

Within hours, Twitter took down Briscoe Cain’s post, which O’Rourke’s campaign labeled a “death threat”. “It violates our rules for threats of violence,” a company spokesperson said late Thursday night.

…

Earlier, Cain, a 34-year-old “conservative Republican” lawyer who represents a district outside of Houston, Texas, had mocked Twitter users who called his comment a threat of violence. “You’re an idiot,” he told one commenter. When O’Rourke called the tweet a death threat, and said it proved that neither Cain nor anyone else should own an AR-15, Cain responded, “You’re a child, Robert Francis.”

Because telling someone your assault rifle is “ready for you” is so adult?

Cain, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment, appeared to defend his tweet as simply a version of a popular slogan among American gun rights activists – “Come and take it” – which generically dares any politician to try to confiscate their guns.

Meaning, if any politician tries, the brave gun rights activists will shoot them. That is indeed a threat of violence. That’s the whole point of it.

This is no good.

What higher purpose could a billionaire have than to get poor people thrown off food stamps and Medicaid?

Last December, an innocuously named nonprofit, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), wined and dined Republican politicians and White House staffers at a Walt Disney World resort, according to a new report from the Center for Public Integrity. The pitch: make it harder for poor Americans to access government programs meant to help them get on secure financial ground, especially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and Medicaid.

In other words, make already poor people even poorer. Take the already pathetic hanky of a “safety net” and shred it more.

FGA is heavily financed by a powerful Wisconsin foundation birthed by the wealthy, conservative Bradley brothers, multiple nonprofits affiliated with rightwing billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, and two dark money vehicles funded by Koch and Bradley charitable nonprofits. A number of FGA executives and board members work or have worked for other connected Bradley- and Koch-funded think tanks and political groups.

Filthy-rich people using their filthy riches and their time and effort to make the poor poorer. Not to make the poor less poor; not to lift every boat; but to take the little bit of assistance they get away from them. What a life goal.

(I know how they do it. They think of it as “teaching them self-reliance”; as “weaning them off dependence on government handouts.” That’s how they do it. The filthy swine.)

It’s enough to make you wish you believed in hell.

Someone has commented on Know her name, the post about Chanel Miller and the guy who raped her. It’s a first-time comment and I’m not going to let it appear on the post like a normal comment. I’m going to quote it in a post instead, like an abnormal comment.

Only 3 months? Brock Turner’s life was completly ruined. He lost his scholarship to Stamford was banished from the campus for life, lost his membership in the amateur swim association so he can never swim in competion again, lost his once in a lifetime bid to try out for the olympic swim team, is now a convicted felon and sex offender so he can never enroll in any school in this country and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life so that 50 years from now when he’s 70 something he still has to deal with the mistake he made thinking that this drunk party girl wearing a “skintight” dress (see police report) wanted to hookup. Nobody else involved in this nightmare takes ANY responsibility. Now Chanel Miller has a huge grin on her face and the adoration of millions of maladjusted so called “victims” and some may very well be victims but not Chanel Miller she will now make millions on a worthless dishonest book. Yes she looks so traumatized probably the most traumatized millionaire in history.

Please, tell us more about the cis privilege women have.

Dirtier more toxic water please; that’s what we want.

The Trump administration is changing the definition of what qualifies as “waters of the United States,” tossing out an Obama-era regulation that had enhanced protections for wetlands and smaller waterways.

Thursday’s rollback is the first step in a process that will allow the Trump administration to create its own definition of which waters deserve federal protection. A new rule is expected to be finalized this winter.

The repeal ends an “egregious power grab,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler says. He adds that the 2015 rule had provoked 31 states to file complaints and petitions for legal review.

“We’re delivering on the president’s regulatory reform agenda,” Wheeler says.

It’s not “regulatory reform.” It’s throwing out regulations protecting water and wetlands for the sake of profits for the few. Laughably, it’s the Environmental Protection Agency doing it. The Trump EPA.

The EPA chief unveiled the shift in U.S. water policy Thursday during an event at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters in Washington, D.C. Wheeler spoke alongside Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James, who joined him in signing the repeal of the 2015 rule.

Adding that the EPA has already finalized 46 deregulatory actions under President Trump, Wheeler says the agency has “an additional 45 actions in development.”

Down with clean water! Up with pollution! Down with wetlands, up with floods and vanishing birds and fish!

In response to the EPA’s action, Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, issued a statement saying, “This unsubstantiated action is illegal and will certainly be challenged in court.”

Trump first ordered a review of the Waters of the United States rule in February 2017. He said at the time that while it is “in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s navigable waters are kept free from pollution,” the policy must also promote economic growth and minimize regulatory uncertainty — and not overstep states’ authority.

Yeah. Let’s keep promoting economic growth until the entire Amazon rain forest disappears and all the tundra melts and more of Greenland turns to water. There will be three very rich humans left.

Sometimes an unpopular opinion is unpopular because it’s kack. This one for instance:

Unpopular opinion: hating on astrology is masculine distaste for female-coded interest in emotions and psychology which feeds misogyny that denies women access to scientific spaces

Say what? If you’re interested in emotions and psychology talk about them. What’s astrology got to do with it? Also astrology is pre-scientific handwaving. Also defending astrology seems like a pretty inept way to give women access to “scientific spaces”…whatever those are.

The tweets @karenmcgrane was replying to:

Unpopular opinion: your just-for-fun flirtation with astrology apps is normalizing belief in anti-scientific bullshit that undermines important, life-and-death public health and policy debates.

I used to work at a company that sold daily horoscopes as a service, delivered by text message. The underlying system was a text file containing 100 lines of general advice. Every day it would join together 3 at random for each horoscope and send them out. It was very profitable.

A very profitable scam. I don’t think criticism of that scam is masculine distaste for female-coded interest in emotions and psychology.

Holly Lawford-Smith on what we mean when we talk about gender and gender norms:

Radical and gender critical feminists think the best way to understand gender is as a set of harmful norms, which are applied to people on the basis of their sex. A female person, for example, is subjected to norms that tell her to take great care over her appearance, to be helpful, kind, caring, and warm. A male person is subjected to different norms, for example telling him to be strong, bold, clever, and stoic, to not care much about his appearance. What’s key here is the subjection part: norms are applied to us by others, throughout our early childhood socialisation, both inside the family and in school and by peers and extended family members, and all the way through our lives. Some kinds of violations of the norms are tolerated; people are not generally too bothered about a kind boy. Other kinds of violations are policed: a boy likes to play with dolls, and his uncle berates him for being ‘gay’ or a ‘sissy’; a girl is full of ideas for play and takes the lead with other kids, the parents of the other kids call her ‘bossy’ or ‘too big for her boots’. Understanding gender as a set of harmful norms has a lot of explanatory power. It accounts for why particular male or female people are subject to bullying, social sanctioning, or victimisation—namely because they fail to conform to the norms applied to their sex. Feminists have for a long time preferred to understand gender in this way, and to advance the claim that those norms are pernicious and constraining. There’s nothing that one has to be like simply because one is female, or because one is male, they say. Be whatever you want to be.

Feminists are motivated to advance that claim because the norms that women are subjected to are ones that at least are compatible with, and at most enforce, subordination. Some of the norms, considered by themselves, are good ones – by all means be helpful and kind. But if they are especially enforced on girls and women, and neglected or even discouraged for boys and men, then they become just a cuddly way of making sure women stay submissive and, as the Quiverfull types call it, “sweet.”

Men don’t have that particular motivation. The gender norms they are subjected to are the ones suitable for the dominant class. On the other hand men can of course grasp this fact and want to reject the whole idea, just as white people can want to reject white privilege. (Whether anyone can really succeed at rejecting privilege I don’t know.)

Recently, this view of gender, and this ‘advice’ dispensed to male and female people, has become contested. Some insist now that gender is not harmful norms but rather is identity. Gender-as-identity is the view that everyone has an internal, subjective sense of their own gender, and that this—rather than their sex—is what determines how they should be treated by other people, and by the law.

Feminists want to shake free of gender, and gender favorable people want to grapple it to their souls with hoops of steel. I say we haven’t given the shake free option nearly enough of a try yet. If we had there couldn’t be such a thing as The Real Housewives of Topeka.

What is peculiar about this issue is that one side, radical and gender critical feminists, approach it as a reasonable disagreement. They argue for their views in popular and accessible venues, and defend the views on social media. They are willing to debate with their opponents, and they are willing to read what their opponents have to say. They are able to articulate what the concerns of their opponents are, accurately, and give responses to those concerns.

The other side, however, approach it as an unreasonable disagreement. For them, radical and gender critical feminist speech is hateful speech or harmful speech. Those who utter it are reprehensible humans and should be treated as such. Engaging with such speech only dignifies it, which makes engagement into a kind of complicity.

Instead the thing to do is call those who utter it every foul name in the big book of foul names, in the hope that it will cause them (us) to creep away and hide deep in the earth, never to be heard from again.

Like for instance…

There was an example of this clash of perspectives recently, with a retraction statement authored by several academics on the side of gender-as-identity. The Institute of Art and Ideas had asked academics and activists to contribute to a forum, giving 200-word answers to the question “How can philosophy change the way we understand the transgender experience and identity?” The forum featured contributions from Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, and myself, on the gender-as-harmful-norms side, and Robin Dembroff, Rebecca Kukla, and Susan Stryker, on the gender-as-identity side. As soon as they found out they were “co-platformed” alongside (which, note, merely means appearing on the same page as) us, Dembroff, Kukla, and Stryker called for their contributions to be withdrawn, and made statements on social media to this effect. In their co-authored statement they went a lot further, accusing the gender-as-harmful-norms side of speech acts that are “acts of violence”, as well as comparing engagement with us to participation in conversation with holocaust deniers, white supremacists, and over the question of “whether corrective rape should be used to cure lesbianism”.

If this is not hate speech, then it’s something awfully close to it. Stock, Bindel, and I are all lesbians. The choice to use that example was obviously intended to target us with violent, lesbophobic, and degrading imagery; to put us in our place. Our conception of gender-as-harmful-norms helps to explain it: we have violated the gender norm “be accommodating of males” by refusing to accept the claim that when a male asserts that he is a woman, he is in fact a woman. We are being subject to misogynistic policing (in this case, even more disappointingly, by two female people) in the form of a reminder of what male people can do to female people who don’t conform to the norms. This kind of policing is completely unacceptable in any context, and certainly in a disagreement between academics over what the right conception of gender is.

It’s also completely unacceptable to appropriate other social groups’ genuine and horrific suffering, including the genocide of the Jewish people, slavery and colonization of people of colour, and rape of lesbians, for political point-scoring against people who hold a philosophical position you don’t like. In making the last move against lesbians, Dembroff, Kukla, and Stryker use speech that is more hateful than that they accuse us of using. Buried underneath the hyperbolic and incendiary rhetoric, there is a reasonable disagreement over what the correct conception of gender both is and should be. Kathleen, Julie, and I will continue to articulate our side of that disagreement in accordance with the norms of our respective professions. We look forward to Dembroff, Kukla, and Stryker doing the same in the future. If not, we request that they at least leave the rape talk out of it.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Good.

From Speak Up for Women New Zealand:

This morning the Green Party has been presented with a letter calling for them to clarify the party’s position on women’s rights. It has been signed by hundreds of people, including some of New Zealand’s most prominent feminists: Sandra Coney, Prue Hyman and Dr Alison Laurie.

The letter was triggered by the Party’s decision to remove an article written for their newsletter by Jill Abigail – a feminist activist and long standing Party member.

Dr Alison Laurie, says “Jill Abigail’s well reasoned, moderate letter raised points that need further discussion. Bullying and silencing her is indicative of an authoritarian culture within the Green Party.”

Marama Davidson, the Greens co-leader, dramatically claimed that the article contained “hateful views” and “puts trans rights to exist up for debate”.

Ani O’Brien, spokeswomen for Speak Up for Women, the feminist group that penned the letter, says: “Women, particularly lesbians, need the Green Party to confirm if they believe people born female deserve their own spaces, services and opportunities, and if they accept that some people are exclusively same-sex attracted.”

The letter also asks if the Green Party understands that in the New Zealand Human Rights Act ‘sex’ is a protected characteristic and that there are specific exceptions to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of women.

Dr Alison Laurie, says “The campaign for trans rights was initiated in New Zealand by MP Georgina Beyer. This was to add a separate category of “gender” to the Human Rights Act. The proposal was defeated, the view being that transgender people could be covered under the existing category of “sex”. This subsuming of gender under sex can lead to negative outcomes for both females and for trans people. Any changes to legislation need to be discussed and debated accordingly.”

Jill Abigail says: “The censorship was a strategically unwise move by a faction of the Greens. But it has opened up a conversation that needs to be held, and it’s clear that my article spoke for many women and men both inside and outside the party.”

We await developments.

More shit news:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday granted a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to fully enforce a new rule that would curtail asylum applications by immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a key element of his hardline immigration policies.

That is to say, his hardline racist immigration policies. It’s brown people he’s hell-bent on keeping out, not people in general.

The court said the rule, which requires most immigrants who want asylum to first seek safe haven in a third country through which they traveled on their way to the United States, could go into effect as litigation challenging its legality continues.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

…

The rule would bar almost all immigrants from applying for asylum at the southern border. It represents the latest effort by Trump’s administration to crack down on immigration, a signature issue during his presidency and 2020 re-election bid.

In her dissent from the decision to lift the injunction, Sotomayor said that the government’s rule may be in significant tension with the asylum statute. “It is especially concerning, moreover, that the rule the government promulgated topples decades of settled asylum practices and affects some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere — without affording the public a chance to weigh in.”

One of the Republican president’s main objectives has been to reduce the number of asylum claims primarily by Central American migrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in large numbers during his presidency.

Because they need it the most.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Funny kind of public engagement.

One of the signs in that picture really pisses me the fuck off, as it perfectly encapsulates the doublethink involved in this whole goddamn process. It reads, “Don’t look for society to give you permission to be yourself.”

You know what? That’s what feminists have been saying since the beginning. A woman should not need to fight for social license to study physics, be a doctor, drive a race car, have short hair, or wear goddamn pants. A man should not need to fight for social license to study dance, be a nurse, do interior decoration, have long hair, or wear frilly, lacy sleeves. We should all be free to be ourselves, regardless of our bodies’ reproductive functions.

Daniel Kaufman’s article “Feeling Like a Man” reminded me of a book, record, and VHS tape I had as a child—and watched quite a bit—called “Free To Be You And Me”. Apparently I’m not the only one who grew up with that message so thoroughly ingrained in my brain that the very notion that someone would face negative social repercussions for having girlish/boyish interests is hard to grok. It is so obviously retrograde that I have difficulty accepting that other people don’t share that perspective. Have you ever talked to a “moderate” or “liberal” Christian who simply refuses to believe how widespread literalist/fundamentalist beliefs actually are? I often feel like I’m the Christian when it comes to the gender thing. I suspect that many people supporting the transgender movement have a similar problem when it comes to engaging with potential causes of gender identity disorder.

And that’s the thing: for some number of transgender teens, their cross-sex identity arises from the belief that certain behaviors, thought patterns, preferences, etc. are all the exclusive/proper domain of the other sex. Do you like trucks and MMA and watching football with the boys? You must be a boy. Do you like cooking and musical theater and pink unicorns? You must be a girl. Time to change your name, start dressing differently, taking those hormone blockers, binding your chest, and surgically altering your body—all so that your outward appearance matches your inner self.

This is not freedom to be yourself. This is freedom to undergo a “transition” that gives social license—that is, permission—to be (some subset of) yourself. Truly not needing society’s permission to be yourself would mean that a boy should feel utterly free to play with dolls and have magical tea parties, and his sister should feel utterly free to play in the mud then come back inside and code, solder, and troubleshoot a Raspberry Pi-powered robot. They should both be able to do that without any sort of strange looks or comments from anyone, and they should not have to go through a transition in order to reach that point of default, background, banal, unremarkable acceptance.

The sign nominally supports personal freedom while in fact perpetuating a system that unjustly curtails freedom. But whoever wrote and proudly carried that sign will never recognize the problem, and that saddens me on behalf of all the young people who are being and will be told that they can’t just be themselves. On behalf of my little nieces and nephews who will have to navigate this nonsense:

Fuck you, sign writer. Fuck you, I say.

Another exchange with Alice Roberts:

I don’t seek to promote any ideology, just to make sure science isn’t misrepresented and misused to justify certain political ends. And biological essentialism is especially dangerous – having been used variously to excuse racist, homophobic and anti-trans ideology in the past.

DrFondOfBeetles:

Do you think it’s fair for transwomen to participate in female sports?

[an hour later] This is a very simple question. Did you miss it or are you ignoring it?

Here is Selina Soule. She used to win sprint races.

Now she loses sprint races. Now she fails to qualify for junior championships. Because now she has to race against males.

These males. These males who believe they are females (whatever, knock yourselves out). These males who have been given space in those female races by people like you.