In his Shout at the Reporters session this morning Trump pretended he can change the Constitution all by himself.

Nah. He can’t.

Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was seriously looking at ending the right of citizenship for U.S.-born children of noncitizens and people who immigrated to the United States illegally.

“We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby – congratulations, the baby is now a U.S. citizen. … It’s frankly ridiculous,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

He can look at it very seriously all he wants, but he can’t do anything about it.

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War to ensure that black Americans had full citizenship rights, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

It has since routinely been interpreted to grant citizenship to most people born in the United States, whether or not their parents are American citizens or legally living in the United States.

He can’t just wave his pudgy little fist around and make that go away.

Sure sure, we want more women, definitely, just not right now.

Labour has been warned it could be “going backwards on equality” by two senior MPs who expressed their alarm at the decision not to replace some departing female colleagues with all-women shortlists.

The concerns of Labour MPs Gloria De Piero and Harriet Harman follow criticism of the party’s procedures by the Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, who accused the Labour leadership of “trading” seats intended for female candidates in order to allow “favourite sons” to take up the safest Labour seats.

De Piero, who has said she will step down as the MP for the hyper-marginal seat of Ashfield at the next election, said she was pleased her seat would be replaced with an all-women shortlist but said she was angered that was not the case in other seats.

Well you see it’s like this, women are so brilliant and talented that they can achieve equality even when they’re only 10% of the total.

A guy goes to the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and shows his penis to a housekeeper. It doesn’t work out well for him.

The man exposed himself to a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta hotel and the housekeeper informed hotel security, according to Atlanta Police Department Investigator James White III.

When security personnel attempted to confront the man, he tried to escape by leaping from one balcony on the 11th floor to another. That’s when he fell, police said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene after the incident on Monday. His identity has not been released.

Hotel housekeepers are not there to do involuntary inspections of the male guests’ equipment. Keep your pants zipped and live to eat breakfast in the morning.

What a difference a ______ makes.

The Guardian last June:

Edinburgh LGBT+ committee resigns in row over speakers at feminist meeting

• University network says opposition to event was censored
• Speaker Julie Bindel left ‘shaken’ after alleged abuse

The Guardian three days ago:

Owen Jones attacked outside London pub

Guardian columnist claims attack was ‘premeditated assault’

I wonder what accounts for the differences.

Peter Tatchell is permanently confused.

I speak out against transphobia. Gender is more than genitals. New science suggests that trans identity is rooted in different brain structures. As feminists USED to say: Biology is NOT destiny. Now some say it IS destiny. LISTEN 1 hr 3 min http://ow.ly/lt4S50vBsqk @MunroeBergdorf

No, we’re not taking instruction in feminism from Peter Tatchell thank you very much. He’s not a feminist and he knows nothing about feminism.

We’re also not taking instruction in anything from Munroe Bergdorf. Feminist women really don’t need or want instruction from men who think being a woman=being like Munroe Bergdorf.

No, feminism has not shifted from saying biology is not destiny to saying it is destiny. The point of “biology is not destiny” was to say that your sex doesn’t determine your skills or talents or interests or personality or anything other than your literal physical sex. We still say that. What we don’t say is that you can flip your sex either through the Magic of Words or the technology of surgery and hormones.

It’s not complicated. The refusal to get it is the offspring of misogyny and entitlement.

The Institute of Art and Ideas asked philosophers to say a little on How Can Philosophy Help Us Understand Transgender Experiences? Rebecca Kukla is one of the philosophers who said a little. It’s interesting.

Much of my own research is in the philosophy of language. What does this have to do with the lives and experiences of trans folks? I am interested in thinking about the pragmatic effects of speech acts such as calling someone by a name or pronoun – one that they identify with, one they have asked to be called by, or one they have asked not to be called by. Sometimes people act as though verbal disagreements over what name or pronoun to use for someone are simple disagreements over fact, in which people are making competing assertions. In contrast, I think that addressing someone by a name or pronoun is a speech act more complex and with more morally significant effects than merely describing them accurately or inaccurately. Recognizing someone as having a gender or name places them in social space, and helps determine concrete facts about how they will be treated, what expectations will be placed on them, and what they can and cannot do.

(First, an aside – “folks” again? Really? Must we? It’s so annoying.)

Surprise ending: I agree with her. I agree that addressing someone by a name or pronoun is a speech act more complex and with more morally significant effects than merely describing them accurately or inaccurately. I think she’s quite right that using a particular name or pronoun places people in social space and helps determine concrete facts about how they will be treated, what expectations will be placed on them, and what they can and cannot do. That’s exactly why I object to making it mandatory to use fake ones. I think for instance using “she” and “her” and a woman’s name in reference to a trans woman nudges us into thinking of that trans woman as literally a woman. That may be harmless sometimes, but it’s not harmless at all times. When it’s a male rapist in prison? When it’s a man playing cricket against women or a man winning all the cycle competitions or a male wrestler winning gold medals that should have gone to women or male runners ditto? Then I don’t think it’s harmless.

A reckless claim for a philosopher to make:

Absolutely it means that we shouldn’t tell anyone who they are

I know I’ve pointed this out more than once before, but it’s just such an absurdity, and especially for a philosopher (or people in law enforcement, or psychologists).

Introspection is fallible. Self-knowledge is fallible. There are some kinds of knowledge that can only be gleaned from the knower in question, but it’s far from true that all knowledge is like that or that we have any obligation to pretend it is.

People can for instance claim to be the least racist person you’ve ever met. I’d be suspicious of people like that if I were you. That applies to most or all defensive claims of that type.

Also, the world is full of cheats and frauds and liars and manipulators. If we make it an absolute rule that that we shouldn’t tell anyone who they are then we’re at their mercy. Let’s not be at their mercy.

People can pretend to be passionately progressive and enlightened while actually being angry belligerent bullies. There are times when we need to tell those people who they are, lest they take over our book group or circle of friends or political movement.

I think there are things people should tell Rebecca Kukla about herself.

(That’s unkind, but she was being worse than unkind to a friend of mine just before she said that silly thing.)

Oh for god’s SAKE, people.

Professor who discussed James Baldwin in class allowed to keep her job:

Laurie Sheck, the poet and professor who was investigated by her university for quoting James Baldwin’s use of the N-word in a graduate class, has been cleared of charges of racial discrimination.

After assigning Baldwin’s 1962 essay The Creative Process to her class at the New School in New York, Sheck had asked the students to discuss how the 2016 documentary about the writer and civil rights activist, I Am Not Your Negro, altered Baldwin’s actual quote, in which he had used the racial slur. A graduate student, who, like Sheck, is white, had objected to her language.

TWO WORDS. THAT’S ALL, JUST TWO.

Use. Attribution. Mention.

That’s it. End of story, end of fuss, end of student’s idiotic objection.

Imagine a teacher attempting to discuss The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a class.

That too, by the way, is mention as opposed to use. Twain didn’t use the word in his own voice, he put it in Huck Finn’s mouth because it’s what a Huck Finn would have said at that time in that place.

PEN America, stressing that there “is a distinction to be made between a racial slur wielded against someone and a quote used for pedagogical purposes”, warned that Sheck was protected by the principle of academic freedom.

Indeed there is, and it even has a name: it’s the use/mention distinction.

I have discussed the use of the word “cunt” many times, for reasons quite radically different from the reasons of people who call women “cunts” in anger.

That complaint should never have happened. That student needs remedial classes.

Oh Pink News do stop lying.

Star cricket player attacked for being trans after scoring four centuries

No. Criticised for competing against women, i.e. cheating.

A rising star of women’s cricket has become the target of an anti-trans campaign group.

Because it’s women’s cricket, and the “rising star” has a large male body. The rising star has an unfair advantage, which is cheating.

Maxine Blythin has wowed cricket fans in her first season for Kent Women’s Cricket, hitting four centuries and amassing a batting average of 124.

Because of the male body. Makes it look easy, doesn’t it.

Her position on the team has led to anti-trans abuse from the group Fair Play for Women, who have misgendered her and questioned the validity of her place on the team.

That’s not abuse. What Blythin is doing is abuse; saying so is not. There is no “validity” to Blythin’s place on the team, because it’s a women’s team and Blythin has a male body.

Pink News is a misogynist sewer.

The controversy du jour is how dare the NY Times make a big deal of slavery and how dare anyone hint that slavery is any kind of blot on our record.

Newt Gingrich steps up:

GRIFF JENKINS (FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT): Newt, I want to ask you about The New York Times Magazine, I know you read it as much as you can, launching a new crusade to reframe America as defined by slavery and racism. Here’s the headline, I want to show it to you. The 1619 Project, and the quote inside says, “It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the story tell we tell ourselves about who we are.” You are a historian. Your reaction?

NEWT GINGRICH (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Yeah, the whole project is a lie. Look, I think slavery is a terrible thing. I think putting slavery in context is important. We still have slavery in places around the world today, so we recognize this is an ongoing story. I think certainly if you are an African American, slavery is at the center of what you see as the American experience. But, for most Americans, most of the time, there were a lot of other things going on.

Yes but that’s the point, surely. For most Germans there were a lot of other things going on in 1942 and 1943, too – a lot of things – but that doesn’t change the importance of the genocide. Of course for “most” Americans, by which he means white Americans, there were other things going on, but that’s one reason slavery went on for so long. That’s always one reason atrocities continue: they are perpetrated on only some of the people, and the rest of the people proceed with their lives, ignorant or indifferent or both. White people underestimate it and its aftermath because they were and are largely immune to both.

Anyway why shouldn’t we put the consequences of slavery at the very center of the story tell we tell ourselves about who we are? It seems to me it is at the very center, along with the genocide of the people who were here before the Europeans.

A review from the Edinburgh Festival:

This is a play of knives and fireballs. Marking the final show in Emma Frankland’s performance series None of Us is Yet a Robot, which explores the politics of gender identity and the process of transitioning, Hearty is a ferocious cry for the safety of trans women.

With an injured tail and wings made of knives, Frankland is our guide in the apocalypse. The trans artist hunts for safety in a burning world where trans bodies are policed, activism is commercialised and violence is fuelled by fear. She sharpens the knives protruding from her shoulder blades and builds herself a den to protect herself from the violence outside. This is about survival.

In other words Emma Franklin is a man who identifies as a woman. Wings made of knives sound somewhat different worn by a man as opposed to a woman. If a woman wore such a thing it would likely be seen as self-protective; when a man does it reads as aggressive. “This is about survival,” the reviewer tells us – but whose survival? Is Frankland really performing self-defense as opposed to aggression? It doesn’t sound like it.

There is a charged immediacy to this piece. As reported hate crimes against trans and non-binary people rocket, the world Frankland creates is only a sliver away from our own.

The headline on that link is not “hate crimes against trans and non-binary people rocket,” it’s
“Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes surge in England and Wales.” Quite different.

Also, what about hate crimes against women? Is Frankland concerned about that at all?

When she begs us individually: “Please don’t hurt me,” we realise how much potential threat each new face can hold when society tells you to be ashamed of your own identity.

But there are all those knives on the wings, plus Frankland has a male body. What Frankland is doing here – and what trans activism in general often does – is appropriating the physical vulnerability that goes with being female. That form of physical vulnerability doesn’t belong to Frankland. We wish it didn’t belong to us, but it does, and we’re stuck with it. Frankland is more likely to hurt us than the other way around. Look at those arms:

Rafael Shimunov points out some people who got to visit Israel while two American members of Congress were refused entry:

Sebastian Gorka, who wore the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organisation Vitezi Rend, a group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany, visited Israel with no restriction for a conference in 2017. Andras Heisler, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, said at the time that wearing such insignia “isn’t a good message for a democratic society”.

Founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, said during his trip to Israel that Jews in Israel have a “whiny paranoid fear of Nazis” and posted an article detailing “10 things I hate about Jews”. McInnes publicly claimed to have left the group in 2018, after the FBI reportedly categorised it “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism”.

Milo Yiannopoulos, following a stunt where he created a mock Western Wall to pray against immigrants, with “ICE” emblazoned on a Jewish kippa, was celebrated by enough Israeli youth that a movement to invite him was sparked by fans.

[Narendra] Modi, the far-right Hindu nationalist PM of India, who oversaw the Gujarat State Board where textbooks glorified Hitler, was a state-honored guest of Israel, along with Italian former fascist sympathiser Gianfranco Fini and far-right leader Matteo Salvini. Antisemitic Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has also been courted by Israeli politicians.

This propaganda would have you believe that these are friends of Jews, and that the true anti-semite is Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who found the strength and solidarity with Jews to opine that even in the midst of near total destruction of her homeland, and daily humiliation of her people, it gave her comfort to at least know that it was Jews fleeing the Holocaust who found refuge in Palestine as they fled those very same European antisemites.

Subjugation to Donald Trump is a powerful drug.

An open letter from “feminists” in support of “birth certificate reform” in Victoria (the one in Australia):

We the undersigned stand in support of the Victorian Government’s proposal to amend the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1996, to allow transgender and gender non-conforming people to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates without being forced to undergo medical or surgical intervention.

In other words to amend the law so that people can insert lies into their birth certificates. I can remember when birth certificates were nothing but cold, dull, bureaucratic statement of a few facts about a person. That’s all they were: just facts: not poetic invocations of personality or inner essence.

This amendment will provide transgender and gender non-conforming people in our community with access to legal affirmation of their identities without being required to undergo coercive sterilisation as a requirement to legally change their sex and gender identity documents.

But that’s the thing, birth certificates aren’t about “affirmation of identities”; they’re about documenting a minimum of cold hard facts.

As feminists we have long fought for people to be freed from the violence that the strict policing of gender and sex promotes, and any law that fundamentally equates one’s body parts with one’s identity and possibilities in life only furthers that violence.

Oh no no no no no. That’s not feminism. That’s not what feminism has been fighting. Feminism isn’t about “the strict policing of gender and sex”; it’s about a system of male domination that casts women as the inferior and subordinate sex. Feminists have never thought that the way to end the system of male domination that casts women as the inferior, subordinate sex was to “identify as” men (while leaving other women behind to go right on being cast as inferior and subordinate). We’ve always thought that the way to end the system of male domination that casts women as the inferior, subordinate sex was to end that system. Policing gender and sex has nothing to do with it; getting rid of male domination has everything to do with it.

We recognise that it is not just cisgender women who face gendered violence and discrimination, but that the transgender and gender diverse community face disproportionate discrimination across all facets of their lives including healthcare, employment, housing, and other aspects of daily life. Trans femmes and trans women and girls in particular also experience misogyny and any attempts to claim otherwise are simply excluding one part of our feminist community.

Men don’t experience misogyny. Men can experience bullying for not being masculine enough, but that isn’t itself misogyny. Feminists are allowed to keep feminism for women and girls and we are under no obligation to “include” the part of our feminist community that is male.