Holly Lawford-Smith on bad news out of Australia:

I know the sex self-id bill was expected to pass, but I’m still kind of in shock that it did, 56 v. 27 at Lower House yesterday. It’s just surreal, that Labour & the Greens are supposed to be progressive parties (whose members would probably call themselves feminists), and yet they’re pushing through legislation that replaces sex (an objective characteristic that affects how people are treated) with gender identity (a subjective characteristic that may play no role at all in how you are treated). Women in Australia still face a range of serious issues, including but not limited to pregnancy and breastfeeding discrimination, insufficient research into female-specific medical problems, subjection to domestic violence, subjection to rape, sexual assault, & harassment, underrepresentation in politics.

These parties have been acting like women are completely invisible. They never talk about what this legal change means for women, unless it’s to dismiss (always without evidence) the idea that there is any risk to women or women’s spaces. They talk incessantly about how important it is for trans people to have their “identities affirmed” on legal documents. What is identity affirmation worth, though, if you put it on the scales against all the interests that are protected by an accurate category of sex in law? (Including those interests women have in single-sex spaces). It makes me feel sick to think that it’ll take a range of horrible incidents like have happened in the UK, Canada, and US to show just how bad sex self-identification really is as a policy. Why should women have to lose their businesses (Canada), have to go through human rights proceedings (Canada), be assaulted in female bathrooms (Scotland), be re-traumatised in women’s shelters (Canada), be assaulted in women’s prisons or be re-traumatised by having to share intimate spaces in women’s prisons (UK), lose places in non-competitive sporting competitions (US, New Zealand)? And what about all the other ways in which women will start to self-exclude, from women’s gyms, or women’s groups, as male-bodied people start to self-include?

I’m just lost for words. Judith Butler wrote a stupid book, some academic disciplines liked the stupid book a bit too much, and now somehow here we are, with the completely mental idea that your sex is a matter of your beliefs rather than your body and your biology, making its way into state law and stamping out sex-based protections. I am furious.

For years, decades, centuries women have been struggling to get men to stop speaking over us, and now we’re expected to stop that struggle if the man says he’s a woman. Now we’re expected to share even our feminism with men. We’re expected to go back to having men speaking over us, but now they’re doing it in the guise of actually being women, when they’re not. We can’t even have our own fucking sex, even while we continue to be domineered over and silenced because of it.

Buy Greenland jokes:

David Frum:

Buy Greenland. Tow it into the Gulf of Mexico. Airflow over melting ice cools Texas and Florida. Global warming problem solved!

Yoni Appelbaum:

Honored sirs, I am PRINCE KIELSEN and I am contacting you with exciting opportunity. I recently inherited an island but need a small amount of cash. Send a money order for $600,000,000 to my account and I will give you “Greenland.”

John Noonan:

All I’m saying is why settle for Greenland when Canada is right there for the taking

Robby Soave:

Uh, we should definitely buy Greenland. Have any of you looked at a map? It’s like, gigantic. It’s bigger than freaking Africa.

Donnie Two-Scoops wants to buy Greenland.

In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.

I can see it now – casinos, golf courses, condo towers with DONALD TRUMP in letters 60 feet high, shooting ranges stocked with the last remaining elephants and lions, McDonalds and Burger King on every corner, only white people allowed.

Patrick Strudwick at BuzzFeed reports that two trans people have quit The Guardian because they consider it “transphobic.”

A transgender employee of the Guardian — which once called itself the “world’s leading liberal voice” — has resigned, accusing the newspaper in an email to staff of being “an incredibly transphobic organisation”.

In a cutting resignation letter sent last month, the employee said the paper “fundamentally not only stands against my own values but also against what I am”. A second trans staff member resigned weeks later, also citing the “harm” they say the newspaper is doing to trans people.

Following the leak of the email to BuzzFeed News, the trans employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she felt complicit in the newspaper’s “transphobic” reporting by continuing to work there, and revealed the damaging effect the Guardian’s coverage of transgender people has had on her well-being. This included fear of using the women’s toilet at work.

Such editorial lines, she said, are a “blind spot” for the largely progressive publication, which last month published a long read criticising other news outlets for their stigmatizing coverage of refugees, another marginalised group.

Ding! Note the comparison. On the one hand refugees, on the other hand two former Guardian employees who are uncomfortable with their birth sex.

For Victoria, the turning point came in October 2018, when the Guardian published what became a notorious editorial. In the leader article, the paper set out its official position on trans rights — which, it said, “collide” with women’s rights and put women at risk. This was despite LGBT organisations and many prominent feminists and women’s groups asserting the opposite.

But Victoria’s immediate concern was that she had to go to work the next day, knowing what her employer’s publicly stated position was on her. “It suddenly became real,” she said before characterising her thought process that morning: “I’m entering this building with people who are denying my humanity.”

Ding! No. They were not denying the employee’s humanity, they were taking a position on whether or not men can become women that the employee disliked. The two are not the same and they’re not comparable.

She raised concerns about the editorial with her line manager, who promised to take it further, but, Victoria said, “I never heard anything more from it.” The daily morning conference would also have provided an opportunity to respond to the editorial, but Victoria feared a hostile reception. “I thought, I’m not walking in that room, me, alone, against this bunch of people to discuss this. I think they understand perfectly what they are doing. There’s power in that room and power differences — we are not all equals.”

He’s a man though. Let’s not forget that part. The constant use of “she” and “Victoria” conditions us to think of him as a woman, but literally speaking he’s a man. He has much less reason to be physically afraid of walking into that room than a woman does. That doesn’t meant a hostile reception wouldn’t be very unpleasant, but since he’s talking about power differences, if there were women in that room then that’s another power difference, one that puts him on the more power side, not the less one. I think this kind of “poor fragile vulnerable me” rhetoric coming from people with male bodies is a form of appropriation.

The effects for her personally have been far-reaching. “I have lost some trans friends over this, from working with the ‘enemy’,” she said. “The worst part is that whether I like it or not, I have internalised parts of this.” It has contributed, she said, to her self-loathing because of “working in an environment where this [anti-trans] culture is not contested in any way.”

Instead, she said, the reporting is not balanced or objective. “Cherry-picking” of stories is done in such a way as to further stigmatise trans people: If a trans person does something wrong, it is seized upon, just as tabloids pounce on the tiny minority of asylum-seekers who transgress.

Ding! There it is again. “Victoria” is not vulnerable in the way asylum seekers are. That too is appropriation.

In July, a front-page story in the Observer, the Guardian’s sister title, ignited fury from some staff because of its accompanying tweet, “Young people not getting objective advice because of trans lobby pressure,” and the unchallenged views of a sole “expert” who opined that children were being fast-tracked into transition because mental health professionals were scared of being called transphobic.

Because…there’s no such thing as trans-lobby pressure? Come on.

The Guardian has more details:

Omar and Tlaib were planning to see the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah and to spend time in the disputed city of Jerusalem. They would have had to pass through Israeli security checks to enter both the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Former Israeli diplomats also spoke out against the ban, arguing that the country should instead attempt to show Israeli perspectives during the women’s trip.

Alon Pinkas, formerly Israel’s consul in New York, said the country should “engage Omar and Tlaib, [and] show them where they are wrong or have a partial and skewed perception of reality.”

It could have been a chance to show Omar and Tlaib the point of view of Israelis up close and personal.

Trump, a close ally of Netanyahu, has sought to make political support for the Jewish state – long a consensus foreign policy for both major US parties – into a partisan issue, painting Democrats as anti-Israel. He has claimed, without evidence, that Omar and Tlaib “hate Israel, they hate our own country.”

David Brinn, the managing editor of the rightwing Jerusalem Post, wrote that a ban would be “shortsighted and deeply flawed”. He wrote: “A quashed trip is only going to further deepen the divide between Democrats and Israel – moving moderate Democrats away from a positive view of the country – and raise the spectre that Israel is behaving in something less than a democratic fashion.”

Not really a spectre now, is it.

Barak Ravid:

I want to tell you a secret: A month ago when Netanyahu decided to allow Omar and Tlaib into the country they alreadty supported BDS and he knew it back then. There is only one reason for Netanyahu’s backtracking today – the pressure from Donald Trump

Jennifer Rubin:

The ban is a stunning, unprecedented step, one that signals Israel, long a bastion of democracy in the Middle East, cannot tolerate criticism. For Netanyahu it sends message that he is Trump’s puppet, willing to damage the long-term relationship with US

Michael McFaul:

Prime Minister Netanyahu respected the independence of our legislative branch when he accepted the invitation of the U.S. Congress to speak even though the executive branch was not enthusiastic about that address.

CNN Politics:

NEW: Prominent pro-Israel group AIPAC splits with Trump and Netanyahu, backs visit by Omar and Tlaib to Israel.

When even AIPAC doesn’t agree…

My friend @marstrina sums it up nicely:

At the end of the day I think the fundamental philosophical difference at stake in this contestation is about social embeddedness: does our image of ourselves require external referents & feedback, or is it self-generated and unique?

The attraction of the latter view is the illusion of liberty and autonomy it offers. But a world populated entirely by self-contained individuals whose innermost selves are neither accessible to nor influenced by anyone else is a zombie dystopia, if you stop and think about it.

That whole idea that we can transcend social embeddedness to be self-generated and unique and oh so special makes my skin crawl. It’s Trumpism, basically. It’s egotism, it’s grandiosity, it’s delusional self-adoration.

Absolute liberty and autonomy are indeed an illusion, and one that people are supposed to grow out of as their prefrontal cortex matures.

Updating to add:

Meanwhile Israel – or Netanyahu – has joined Trump in demonizing Tlaib and Omar.

Israel announced Thursday it was barring the entry of two US congresswomen after Donald Trump encouraged the move, a remarkable step both by the US President and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to punish political opponents.

Deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely told CNN on Thursday of Israel’s decision to ban Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the country. The announcement came shortly after Trump said Israel would be showing “great weakness” by allowing them to enter the country.

Ah, so this must be more of that tough-guy masculinity we’re told Trump represents.

Trump has criticized the two lawmakers — who are the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — in harsh and sometimes racist terms. But his move to call for their ban in Israel reflects a new chapter in his grudge and a further erosion of presidential norms, which in the past sought to avoid instilling partisanship in foreign affairs.

Trump tweeted three hours ago:

It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!

That’s a horrific thing to say, especially the “all Jewish people” bit.

Back to CNN:

Israel passed a law in March 2017 which allows the country to bar entry to anyone who supports the BDS movement. The controversial law, passed by Israel’s right-wing and centrist parties, was roundly criticized by human rights organizations. If used to deny entry to Tlaib and Omar, it would be by far the most high-profile implementation of the law.

Just another day in Trump World.

H/t What a Maroon

Yesterday it was neo-Nazis in Seattle:

Neo-Nazis affiliated with the anti-Semitic Daily Stormer Book Club plastered racist fliers on three Seattle synagogues.

The fliers were posted over the weekend by a masked man and featured an illustration of Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts biting an arm marked America, according to Patch.com.

The flier read “Send them back” and “deport the commie brown infestation.” The first phrase echoes recent language from President Donald Trump, who called on the freshman lawmakers, known as “The Squad,” to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”

I think the neo-Nazis are confused. What do synagogues have to do with Tlaib, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley? Two are Muslim and none are Jewish.

David Goldstein tweeted:

Yesterday, the 3 synagogues in my Southeast Seattle neighborhood were plastered with racist, Trumpist, anti-Semitic flyers touting the Nazi website, Daily Stormer. Actual Nazis are promoting themselves using Trump’s own language. But, you know, both sides!

I’m not really seeing the anti-Semitism though, aside from the vandalism of posting them on synagogues. But that’s probably too literal – I’m sure the Stormers don’t trouble themselves over nice distinctions of that kind. Thurr all commie brown MusloJews from Mexico, right?

How’s that again?

Cosmology grad student issues statement of support for trans women.

Trans women are women. Period. As a cis woman, I promise I will not leave you out, ever. Keep being fabulous

With three tiny dancing laydee emojis which become enormous when copied here.

Let’s think about this. I was going to talk about the words and the thread that ensued but first let’s talk about this “keep being fabulous” and that emoji – coming from a woman talking to men who Identify As women. What is that?

Why, I mean, is an actual woman equating being-a-woman with keeping being fabulous and being a blonde laydee with big hair dancing in a red dress?

Why isn’t she for instance equating being-a-woman with being in a lab coat with short practical hair looking into a telescope? Why does an actual woman think “woman”=blonde laydee with big hair dancing in a red dress? What is that?

It’s as if there are actual, boring, real-life, dull normal, “cis” women who can be dressed any old how and doing any old job you can think of, but trans women are special magical fairy-dust Beautiful Laydeez in red dresses dancing the night away.

Well, why? Why does a cosmology grad student see that as the way to pledge her allegiance to the womanitude of trans women?

I don’t suppose she intended it, but it looks like buying into the trope that trans women are the ones who do womaning the right way, the ones who are more womany than “cis” women because they don’t take being womany for granted but instead perform it every minute of every day.

What it thus can’t escape also doing is buying into the trope that “cis” women are inferior to trans women because we take it for granted and don’t perform it, with a few gorgeous exceptions like the Kardashians.

It’s a bit like telling Rachel Dolezal to keep being fabulous with a row of basketball player emojis.

Oh dear, some of Trump’s people want him to do the right thing and he’s not interested – who could have seen that coming?

Donald Trump’s top aides are urging him to back Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, but the president isn’t interested, multiple people familiar with the administration’s internal debates say.

In recent days, national security adviser John Bolton, China hands at both the National Security Council and the State Department, and several economic advisers have pushed for a more assertive posture on the Hong Kong demonstrations, which have paralyzed the former British colony and roiled markets.

They are finding little traction with a president focused more narrowly on trade negotiations with Xi Jinping — and worried that criticizing the Chinese leader’s efforts to stamp out dissent in Hong Kong will scuttle the possibility of inking a deal this winter.

They have a great reelayshunship. Who cares about Hong Kong or human rights compared to that? Trump even gave Xi a big prezzy ahead of the G-20 in June.

When the two spoke by phone ahead of the international gathering, Trump surprised his aides when he told Xi that he would not condemn the Chinese government over a crackdown in Hong Kong. He understood it was an internal issue in which the U.S. would not interfere, he said.

Much the way Hitler’s “crackdown” on the Jews was an internal issue.

Former officials in both parties have been critical of the administration’s approach to China, though there is broad agreement that the U.S. needs to be tougher on Beijing.

“What I see is kind of a basic arithmetic: a lack of coherence within the administration, plus a lack of real understanding about how China works, equals no good results,” said Daniel Russel, who served as a senior national security aide to President Barack Obama.

Yeah well. That’s two different universes.

On it goes.

The England and Wales Cricket Board is reviewing its transgender policy before its £20m semi-professional women’s competition starts next year.

Under ECB rules the eligibility of players in women’s domestic cricket is determined by a player’s own self-identified gender, with no medical requirement for those who have transitioned from male to female to lower their testosterone levels.

In other words it’s entirely verbal and unilateral. Player says he’s a woman, he’s a woman, end of story. Shut up you there in the back. Player says he’s a woman, player gets to play on women’s team. That’s inkloooosive. It’s also totally fair because women can do exactly the same thing.

However, Claire Connor, the managing director of women’s cricket, hinted that the policy could be tweaked at the elite level so that any trans woman playing in the ECB’s new eight-team competition would have to bring her testosterone down in line with International Olympic Committee guidelines.

But muscles, skeleton, lung capacity, speed? Pfffff. None of your business, and don’t you want to be inkloooosive? You bitch?

“The ECB’s currently isn’t a medically driven policy. It’s a more socially inclusive policy and we will be reviewing that over the coming months,” said Connor…

To put it another way, the ECB’s current policy is social rather than physical. But sport is physical. The issue isn’t medical so much as it is physical, and the ECB is just blithely ignoring the physical differences between female bodies and male bodies. Being “socially inclusive” is a good in many contexts, but not all of them. Look at ballet for instance. Professional ballet isn’t “inclusive,” because it places enormous physical demands on the dancers, and only those who can meet the demands get to perform before a paying audience. That’s how that works. Sport works the same way, and because humans are sexually dimorphic, it is only fair to divide sports accordingly. The ECB is weirdly pretending to be unaware of any of that.

The ECB later said it reviewed all its policies on an annual basis. “Our position on transgender participation will be reviewed as part of our ongoing commitment to regularly review all governance policies,” a spokesperson added. “In our current policy, the eligibility of players is based on one’s own self-identified gender, with no medical requirement. We are unlikely to make any unilateral changes to this stance. We are proud that this model promotes an inclusive environment for all participants in domestic and recreational cricket.”

But it doesn’t. It promotes an environment that excludes women for the sake of men who say they are women. That’s not an inclusive environment for all participants.

Ok this tweet is breaking my heart so I guess it might as well break yours too.

This is Antonio Basco. His wife of 22 years, Margie, was murdered in El Paso. Mr. Basco says he has no other family so he’s inviting anyone, who wants to come, to attend his wife’s services in El Paso: Friday, August 16th Perches Funeral Home Northeast 4946 Hondo Pass 5-9pm

Let’s learn more about that University of Otago study.

New Zealand researchers say trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage over other women and sport needs to fix binary gender categories.

The advantages trans athletes have over female competitors are considerably large and sport needs to look hard at fairness, along with their inclusion policies, Otago University Associate professor of physiology Lynley Anderson says.

The issue became hot because of Laurel Hubbard.

Male to female trans athletes have been allowed to compete in women’s divisions since 2015 provided their testosterone level does not exceed 10 nanomoles per litre.

However, the average amount of testosterone for a cis female (born female) ranges from .870nmol/L. to 1.7nmol/L – nearly ten times less than that limit.

So it’s kind of like saying we’ll give this group of competitors only a five minute head start.

In a paper published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, Anderson and fellow Otago University researchers, Alison Heather and Taryn Knox, found the 10nmol/L level permitted by the International Olympic Committee was “significantly higher than that of cis-gender women, whose sex and gender align as female”.

Heather, also a professor of physiology, says the rule book needs to change.

“It is ten to 20 times higher than a cis female, so this is one of my major concerns.”

“At the moment we are really targeting inclusiveness for our trans females to compete in a female division and in that aspect we are not considering a fairness issue for cis females.”

“Inclusiveness” is such a manipulative buzzword. I know I’ve said it a billion times, but “inclusion” is not the goal in every circumstance, which ought to be blindingly obvious. Filters, criteria, qualifications are not always and everywhere arbitrary and discriminatory. Separate sports for women are a necessity given the sexual dimorphism of humans.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee stands by its policy around transgender athletes, but welcomes the research.

“The issue of transgender athletes in elite sport is extremely complicated as it requires a balance to be struck between protecting an individual’s human rights and ensuring the field of play remains fair,” a spokesperson told Stuff.

No it doesn’t. There is no “human right” for a male to compete against women, no matter how he identifies.

Heather said the advantages go well beyond a testosterone level test.

A trans athlete has prior exposure to testosterone, which develops larger muscle mass, muscle distribution and even the amount of oxygen the athlete can accumulate.

“All these factors are not considered. We just say your testosterone level is under 10mnol/L. It is still much higher than a cis female and none of the rest is being considered.

“It’s not just your here and now testosterone that matters, there is also prior exposure to testosterone. Testosterone even form a fetus is defining a males brain, a male’s bone structure and lung structure.”

“They have a different bone structure so they are able to put more power in their jumping and anything that involves having to lift something, they have more power in their legs through their knees to hip ratio.”

But inclusion blah blah human right blah blah transphobia blah blah.

I don’t see any changes in the near future.

New Zealand’s own Rachel McKinnon:

History might well record that we reached peak craziness on July 20, 2019. That was when I read a story in the sports pages about a champion New Zealand mountain biker named Kate Weatherly, who was born male but “transitioned to female” from the age of 17.

Weatherly was reported as objecting to a University of Otago study which found, surely to no-one’s surprise, that transgender female athletes have an advantage over rivals who are born female.

Her own record seems to prove the point. According to the story, Weatherly went from being an “average” men’s downhill mountain biker to winning the women’s elite national championship.

Just like McKinnon, and Hubbard, and Miller and Yearwood. Duds as males, stars as females. What a coincidence; how can it possibly be explained?

Weatherly resents being described as transgender and disputes the finding that she enjoys an advantage over her rivals. “I’m not a transgender,” she insists. “I am a woman who happens to be transgender. As a result I want to be able to compete with my fellow women.”

In order to whup them all. I’m sure his fellow women are deeply touched.

It was all coolly set out by one of the authors of the Otago University study, physiology professor Alison Heather, in an in-depth interview for the Stuff website.

Weatherly, who has been having hormone treatment since she was 17, says her testosterone is tested every three months and has never been above 1.4 nanomoles per litre, which is within the average range for “cis” women – those who are born female. The implication is that she enjoys no advantage from having been born male.

But as Heather points out, many of the physical advantages men have over women in sport – such as bigger and different-shaped bones, greater muscle mass, larger hearts and superior oxygen capacity – are formed in the womb and continue to develop through puberty.

Fiddling with testosterone levels doesn’t magically undo all of that.

@UN_Women goes to bat for…men displacing women in sport, I guess.

Trans and intersex athletes often face discrimination in competitive sports, including being banned from events and stripped of their achievements. Let’s show our support and tell the world to #LetThemPlay!

Do they though? When, where?

Maybe trans men are banned from playing US football – the kind that specializes in concussions – for safety reasons? I don’t know, but if that is the case…is it discrimination or is it safety?

But what we’ve been seeing lately is the opposite: men who claim to be women being allowed, and indeed encouraged, to compete against women, using their physical advantages to win all the prizes.

Why is @UN_Women cheering that on?