Metaphors and slogans are all very well, but it helps if they get it right.

Dawn Butler:

I think I would replace pie with cake. @UKLabour

EQUAL RIGHTS

FOR OTHERS

DOES NOT MEAN

LESS RIGHTS

FOR YOU.

IT’S NOT PIE.

Fewer rights, they mean, but never mind that. Pie or cake, whichever, it’s still not true. It’s not true because it depends. Anything can be called a right, and it’s not difficult to imagine purported rights that would indeed mean fewer or no rights for other people. Look at US history for example – the ruling class in the South and much of the rest of the white population thought the federal government was violating their “right” to own slaves. They considered themselves to be the aggrieved party.

Think of “right to work” laws. What those are in fact is laws that weaken unions, and weak unions means employers are free to impose dangerous working conditions and crap pay and benefits. The word “rights” can be used to disguise exploitation or oppression. It depends.

Laws against domestic violence interfere with the “rights” of husbands to bash their wives. Laws protecting children interfere with parents’ “rights” to bash the kids when they make too much noise.

It’s depressing that a Labour MP and Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary doesn’t get this, or pretends she doesn’t.

gender is harmful tweets:

It seems, the promotion of violence against women is, quite literally, ‘in Vogue’… at least in visual form, in an article for @voguemagazine.

This is how emboldened, patriarchal violence against women has become folks. Here it is in plain sight for a Vogue article. 👀

The article is not about baseball.

Yet again, Meghan Murphy tries to explain.

In Canada, famous for niceness, feminist Meghan Murphy is a woman whose words are weapons — or such is the cry from activists for trans­gender rights who see nothing odd about using threats of violence to try to silence her.

Murphy has no quarrel with trans people having rights or freedoms. “Really, it’s about public policy and legislation,” she says.

“It’s one thing to live your life the way you want, it’s another thing if you’re going to start forcing people to say you’re literally ­female when you’re male and that means you should be allowed to enter women’s and girls’ spaces (such as toilets, change rooms, shelters, refuges or prisons).”

And that means you have just as much to say about women’s experiences, women’s rights, policy regarding women, women’s sport, and so on as women do, and that you should and must be “included” in all women’s projects and events and gatherings and politics, whether women want you there or not. It means your presence on a panel or in government or on an all-women’s shortlist equals the presence of a woman, thus displacing actual women from efforts to make the world less male-dominated.

Like other “gender-critical” feminists wearily familiar with harassment, death threats and being miscast as merchants of hate speech, she is still gobsmacked by how upside down the world of trans identity politics has become.

“Hate speech is a specific thing; it’s inciting violence or genocide against a group of people — I’ve never done that. It seems a lot of people just don’t value free speech. In progressive circles they seem to think they can determine which speech is acceptable,’’ Murphy says.

She’s no rightwinger, and as a graduate and journalist, she’s dismayed to witness mainstream media outlets and universities not challenging evidence-free campaigns to shut down debate.

And she’s not the only one.

H/t Lady Mondegreen

Trump in his long conversation with Fox News repeated his lie that Ukraine blah blah blah.

Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and said he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he withheld aid over the summer. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the center of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly $400 million.

But he repeated his assertion that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime, a theory his own advisers have dismissed.

“They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” Trump said. “I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”

CrowdStrike is not owned by any Ukrainian, rich or poor or supernatural or anything else. It’s a California company.

In fact, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born U.S. citizen who immigrated as a child and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

So that makes him Ukrainian. Don’t you get it? That’s how they fool us!

The president repeated his claim one day after Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser on the White House National Security Council, admonished Republicans for pushing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill testified before the House impeachment inquiry panel. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

And that’s why Trump is echoing it.

Jane Clare Jones has more on the Labour are they or aren’t they question.

I think we all have a right to be wondering what the hell is going on. As I tweeted earlier, from my perspective – and based on conversations with people who were involved in getting the pledge into the manifesto – what is going on is the surfacing of a fundamental split inside the party, which mirrors the basic division over the debate. That is, I believe that those who were instrumental in getting the pledge put into the manifesto did so with genuine intent, and that the TRA-faction lost the debate on this point at the ‘Clause V’ meeting when the manifesto was formulated (see here for info on Clause V). However, it is evident that not everyone in the party is on board with the results of that process, and have, effectively, decided to start legislating Labour party policy from the frontbench, in direct contravention of the party’s own internal democratic procedures. (Julie Bindel quotes several Labour Party insiders on this here). Given the utter contempt for due democratic process we have witnessed from TRAs and their allies over the years, I have to say I find this behaviour not even remotely surprising.

None of this tells us anything about how this will play out. I will say that I don’t think it’s the result of the Labour Party pulling some kind of deliberate bait and switch or making pronouncements to mollify us which they never intended to honour. Rather, as I said, I think it evidences the genuine divisions inside the party, and how completely impossible it is to get people dosed up to their eyeballs on the Kool-Aid to abide by any social or democratic conventions which don’t serve their ends. This may well not reassure anyone, and I think we are all wise to be sceptical here, especially given the contempt with which we have been treated by all major political parties on this question. Given what is happening now, people are right to question if the pledge made in the manifesto would have force were Labour to win the election, and to judge where to place their vote as their both their conscience and intuition dictates. They are also right to worry about how this would interact with the ongoing commitment to reforming the GRA. Even if the pledge in the manifesto stands, there would need to be a great deal of concerted work to ensure that the exemptions could be practicably enforced given how thoroughly Stonewall et al. have muddied the water by running all round the country disseminating legal bullshit.

Concise account of the worry: if people can “identify as” the other sex and thus legally be the other sex, how will women still be able to have single-sex changing rooms and toilets and the like? Reform of the GRA stands for identifying as being all it takes.

That all said, even with my most pessimistic hat on, I do think yesterday’s announcement is significant. Firstly because I think a Labour Party that is openly split on the issue is still a massive improvement on a Labour Party that is unthinkingly reciting TRA-dogma and straightforwardly colluding with the silencing of women’s legitimate concerns. This may not help us all make a decision with respect to this benighted election. But with respect to the long slow grind of this conflict, it is a move in the right direction. For those of us born and bred on the left, who have been putting sweat and soul into making the case for why the trans rights movement is neither progressive, nor good for women, it’s important that the debate is now squarely, and openly, situated inside the Labour Party. We’ve spent the last several years being called Nazis and fascists and segregationist bigots, enduring endless lectures from blue-haired anime avatars about how our position could only indicate a fundamental conservatism. That story no longer stands up. The left is divided on this question. Just as we have always maintained.

The second thing is even more significant. All that the Labour Party did yesterday was reaffirm its commitment to upholding our existing rights as given in law. And the consequence of a political party affirming its commitment to our existing rights in law is an enormous amount of screaming, obfuscation and witch-burning bullshit. What this demonstrates decisively – what this clearly unconceals – is that the objectives of the present form of the trans rights movement is the removal of our existing legal rights.

Why yes, so it does.

Anti-intellectualism, indeed anti-thought, flourishing in the University and College Union, the UK trade union and professional association for academics, lecturers, trainers, researchers and academic-related staff in higher education:

UCU’s Equality Groups Conference is meeting in Birmingham today – members are currently hearing from General Secretary Jo Grady about the wide range of work the union is doing to tackle inequality in FE and HE and beyond 1/

…

Jo also reaffirmed the union’s unequivocal support for trans rights and trans inclusion 4/

And for not asking what it is we’re supporting:

“We need to shift our focus away from definitions and abstract debates about competing rights, and try to quantify and understand the real violence and discrimination that bears down on marginalised groups in our society” /5

But if we shift our focus away from definitions how do we know what we’re talking about? How do we know we’re all talking about the same thing? How do we know what “discrimination” is, what “marginalised” means, what we’re talking about when we talk about “our society”?

Alessandra Asteriti nailed it:

Privileged people can eschew definitions. Because they define reality around them and do not need to be defined by it. This is really making me boil with rage

Her field is international law, so she would know.

The Guardian live is startled by Trump’s performance on Fox “News” this morning.

Donald Trump has had quite a morning of it already. The president called into Fox & Friends for an extraordinary, at times bizarre, 55-minute interview during which Trump:

•Reiterated the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election

•Said his own EU ambassador’s sworn testimony was “total nonsense”

•Called Nancy Pelosi “crazy as a bedbug”

•Suggested he wanted to be impeached, saying: “I want a trial”

•Complained that former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch took too long to hang his picture in the Ukraine embassy

•Said people praised Yovanovitch – a highly regarded official – because “she’s a woman, you have to be nice”

•Described Rudy Giuliani as “one of the great crime fighters of all time”

The Fox & Friends hosts were largely bystanders during what effectively became a Trump monologue.

Trump sounded slightly hoarse as he ran through some of his greatest hits: his 2016 election victory, how much he has invested in the military and the highly dubious claim that “no one” has done as much during their first term.

He sounded very hoarse. He usually does. The reason is obvious: he never shuts up. He’s That Guy Who Never Shuts Up. What does that tell us? How profoundly narcissistic he is. Normal people understand that others have things to say too; narcissists think They Alone are interesting.

What he said about Yovanovitch:

This ambassador, who everybody says was so wonderful, she wouldn’t hang my picture in the embassy, ok? She’s in charge of the embassy, she wouldn’t hang it, it took like a year and a half or two years for her to get the picture up. She said bad things about me, she wouldn’t defend me, and I have the right to change an ambassador – and Rudy didn’t say good things but he wasn’t crazy about her, it wasn’t like you know a major topic – but I have the right to change. This was an Obama person – didn’t want to hang my picture in the embassy,  it’s standard is you put the president of the United States’ picture in an embassy, this was not an angel, this woman, OK? And there were a lot of things she did that I didn’t like, and we will talk about that at some time.

Bad things, I have the right, good things, the right, Obama person, my picture the picture my picture the president of the United States’ picture, a lot of things.

In that one passage you get the hatred of women, the narcissism, the tiny shrunken vocabulary and thought process, the bullying, the emptiness and spite and rage. It’s a disgusting collection.

There is much confusion right now about Labour and its position on women and what exactly it is trying to say.

Yesterday @Womans_Place_UK tweeted:

WPUK is pleased to see that @UKLabour recognises the importance of the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act is committing to upholding them. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf 1/2

But now there is waffling, or there isn’t but there is the appearance that there is.

Dawn Butler, Labour Women & Equalities Secretary, says nothing has changed.

.@UKLabour will reform the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people.

We will remove outdated language from the Equalities Act.

And there is no way spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people. That is illegal and it will stay illegal.

So when they say single-sex based exemptions (such as changing rooms and toilets) will be enforced they don’t mean it? Or they do, and Dawn Butler is resisting? The situation is unclear.

Sarah Ditum observes:

Labour putting a sensible-sounding position on gender identity and women’s rights in the manifesto, then giving an outrider the contradictory version the faithful want to hear, is such a dishonest idiot’s version of politics

I mean, it’s smart in that it puts the sane version where the sane people will see it, and the one for the Twitter nutters where the Twitter nutters can see it, and both groups get tell themselves they’re the wife and the other one’s the mistress

But if Labour is ever in power, there is no way here to write a functional policy. Then again who gives a fuck about policy when it only affects that capricious group of semi-humans called women

Kathleen Stock:

Like @helenlewis I’m deleting earlier tweets suggesting @UKLabour finally recognise that women are distinct group who need legal protection. I continue to hear from well-placed people this doesn’t reflect intention of manifesto but position’s destructively ambiguous to say least.

Do they? Don’t they? It’s up in the air.

In other news, the event involving Kathleen Stock went ahead.

Happy to report that talk went ahead without incident. Turns out 6.3k likes for no-platforming campaign translates to 5 individual emails sent against me; meanwhile 3 emails were sent in support, one of which had over 300 signatures. (Thank you so much to all who wrote & signed).

I did. There were over 300 I think.

Being Human Festival has details on the subject matter and participants:

Diversity has become a divisive issue in today’s society. In this debate philosophers at the front line will be picking at its complexities and difficulties. What are the different forms of diversity? Why do they matter? Should we be promoting or managing diversity? Should we even be reducing it in the name of greater cohesion?

For this year’s Royal institute of Philosophy debate the antagonistic for/against format will be abandoned and instead speakers have been invited to have a more collaborative discussion in which increased mutual understanding matters more than winning. In an increasingly polarised society, people need to be brought together more than ever. Confirmed speakers include Tommy J. Curry, Onora O’Neill and Kathleen Stock with the BBC’s Ritula Shah as the chair.

Sounds interesting, to me, and well done dropping the tedious antagonistic for/against format, which I’ve never found interesting.

A thread by Sarah Phillimore on the Fair Cop judicial review:

Home again after a hectic two days at #FairCopJR. Feel a lot more optimistic tonight than I did this morning. It’s hard to pick favourite moments out of so many but my Top Three have to be:

1. Judicial recognition that TERF is a slur
2. Both College of Policing and Humberside making it clear they didn’t understand the Equality Act
3. The carefully redacted document that was hiding the fact that the ‘victim’ had used hateful language herself

But the – possibly unseemly – glee provoked by watching someone stuff up their own case, line by line is tempered by the growing realisation that the Government have farmed out policy on such important areas to axe grinding pressure groups.

And that if more people don’t wake up, and soon then we risk huge damage to the rule of law and the structure of our society. Are the judiciary the last line of defence? I think they might be. I will await the judgment with great interest.

And well done to all @WeAreFairCop. Proof that we are greater than the sum of our parts and everyone has played to their strengths. I have learned a lot about the power of collaboration.

So I guess she is one of the Fair Cop team. Good on her, and them.

About that custody battle over the kid whose mother wanted to trans him while his father did not –

The Younger case has gained much media attention, in the U.S. and beyond. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC all seem to cast the father as the villain, in particular for his refusal to agree that his child is transgender. Rolling Stone opines that the Younger story has become a “terrifying right-wing talking point.” Vox is worried about Republican state legislators’ trying to introduce bills prohibiting chemical and surgical interference with the sexual development of children who say they’re transgender, and “what [this] could mean for families nationwide” when “legislators want to have a say in whether Luna Younger should be allowed to socially transition.” For the Left, the Younger story is a tale of backwards attitudes victimizing a child.

Not the whole left though – there are quite a lot of us who think it would be victimizing the child to let this fantasy ruin his life before he’s old enough to understand what people are doing to him.

Since there are no objective tests to confirm a transgender diagnosis, all of this is arbitrary and dependent on a child’s changeable feelings. To make aggressive treatment more acceptable, its advocates have come up with a media-friendly euphemism, “gender affirmation.” If it’s affirming, activists say, it’s also kindness, love, acceptance, and support. The opposite, trying to help a child feel more comfortable with his body, is a rejection: abuse, hatred, “transphobia,” or “conversion therapy” likely to lead to child suicide. This is a lie — a lie designed to obscure a critical truth: that neither a child, nor his parents on his behalf, can truly consent to experimental, life-altering, and irreversible treatments for which there is no evidentiary support.

More.

A side note in Fiona Hill’s testimony at the impeachment hearing is of interest:

This is a bit of a sidebar to her testimony but Hill’s low estimation of the professional environment in the UK has not gone unnoticed.

“Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England,” Hill testified. “I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent.”

Julian Borger tweets:

Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. She’s saying even in 1980’s 1990’s, you couldn’t get recognition for your talent and expertise if you had a working-class accent.
It was an indictment of Britain. https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1197538764731629568 …

Robbie Gramer
✔
@RobbieGramer
In new testimony, Fiona Hill issues scathing rebuke of 1960’s England

That is, her rebuke was not just of 1960’s Britain but of 1980’s 1990’s, in fact decidedly the latter since she was born in 1965 so she wasn’t starting her career in the 60s.

She continued:

In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America. For the better part of three decades, I have built a career as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional focusing on Europe and Eurasia and especially the former Soviet Union.

The White House issues a statement:

Shifty Schiff thinks he hasn’t gotten enough camera time. So during a brief break, he’s doing a press conference.

New hoax. Same swamp.
8:12 AM · Nov 20, 2019· TheWhiteHouse

Not a hoax.

Things from the past:

Many centuries ago, a cat walked over an Italian manuscript, leaving its paw prints on the document forever. 1445

You’re welcome.

Speaking of that Times article…

A feminist artist who was due to speak at Oxford Brookes University yesterday had her talk cancelled at the last minute after students accused her of holding transphobic views.
The event featuring Rachel Ara, hosted by the university’s fine art research unit, was called off after the LGBTQ+ society sent a letter to Anne-Marie Kilday, the pro-vice-chancellor, condemning her invitation.

That’s all it took. One letter, from stupid uninformed people complaining of the sharing of two tweets.

The letter to Professor Kilday was signed by a number of people, including the chairman of the university’s Labour Party Club and the president of the LGBTQ+ society.

They should have read it more carefully.

Ara, 53, said that her art was clearly “too challenging for today’s youth” and lamented that “the world has gone slightly mad”.

She added: “I was going to be talking about feminism and art, and the difficulties that exist for women trying to break through. It was nothing to do with trans issues. I’m not transphobic. I have been openly gay for 35 years. I think this movement is misogynistic — they are only targeting other women.”

It’s unmistakably misogynist.

Also happening today – because there’s not enough going on?? – is that Fair Cop is in court tweeting the case of Harry Miller aka Harry the Owl, whose account was suspended for evilthought.

A selection of the tweets:

Opening by Harry’s counsel. Plainly a very important case involving freedom of speech in the internet era. Won’t go through all background facts but take the court to important documents. #FairCopJR

The involvement of the police in social media discussion about this. Judge interjects – want to lay down a marker. What is said against you is that recording a hate incident is not a sanction so not interference. And said your client is robust enough to comment.

Judge – suppose I find that combination of recording and remote potential for it to be disclosed and I find that PC Gul created impression that your client should stop – would all of that be sufficient to interfere with Art 10, not because it impacted YOUR client –

– but had chilling effect on others? Answer – yes. Recording under this policy, the publicity around what the police can do… if they had some deterrent effect on others that is sufficient – absolutely. #FairCopJR

Judge accepts that some of HM’s posting is capable of contributing to debate but not all. Counsel – will need to look in context.

Further discussion about putting ‘offensive’ speech in context of national conversation. The consequences of amendment to GRA are far reaching.

Judge – I note in the Times this morning that Oxford Brookes have ‘disinvited’ a speaker.

Why? Because she shared two tweets that some “activists” disliked.