What just happened to the Bahamas? There will be more of it.

While the science has yet to come in on the specifics of just how much worse climate change made Dorian, we already know enough to say that warming worsened the damage. Because it’s not a coincidence that Dorian was one of the strongest landfalling storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, with the strongest sustained peak winds east of Florida, and the strongest ever to hit the Bahamas. This comes less than a year after Florida withstood the first landfalling category 5 hurricane in decades, on 5 October – the latest ever in the season for a storm that strong.

On a basic physics level, we know that warm waters fuel hurricanes, and Dorian was strengthened by waters well above average temperatures. The fact that climate change has heated up our oceans means Dorian was stronger than it would have been had we not spent the past 150 years dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Sea surface temperatures were more than 1C warmer in the region where Dorian formed and strengthened than they were before we started burning fossil fuels.

And the air is warmer too, and warmer air holds more moisture, which turns to torrents of rain in monster storms.

And we know that as climate change has melted glaciers and ice around the world, that water has gone into the oceans. The extra water, along with the expansion of water as it’s warmed, means that sea levels have been raised. That means when a storm like Dorian makes landfall, there’s more water for its storm surge, already bolstered by stronger winds, to push further inland.

All that extra water makes hurricanes even more deadly, since it’s generally not the wind but the water that kills people. So although Dorian’s 220mph gusts were incredibly dangerous (and sped up thanks to climate change), it was the 20-plus feet of storm surge and torrential rains that were the most destructive elements.

And neither one is something you actually want battering a small island.

Also hurricanes are getting worse more quickly and then staying put longer – worst of both worlds.

Had Dorian been moving at a regular pace of a few miles an hour, the devastation in the Bahamas would have been much less severe. But because it sat in place, basically stationary, the damage has been catastrophic. Again, Dorian is far from unique in moving slowly, as a study last year found a 10% decrease in speed for storms like this globally, while a similar study found a 17% decrease along the east coast of the US. While neither of these studies directly tie that slowdown to climate change, the theory that climate change is changing the jet stream in ways that would lead to stalling storms (a phenomenon one of us has researched) is growing increasingly convincing.

When all these factors combine in one storm, as it has for Dorian, it is truly a nightmare scenario – and a preview of the climate crisis to come. The only question is whether we have the foresight to address it.

Some of us do, but the ones in power, nope.

No, Morgane Oger is not Martin Luther King, and the “rights” he is talking about are not comparable to the rights King was talking about, and the civil rights struggle is not Oger’s struggle to steal for his own purposes.

Opposing civil rights legislation or decisions is, in fact, dissenting from a society’s ethical and moral frameworks.

That’s not you, Morgane. That crowd is not a crowd of men who say they are women. There is no “right” for men to be accepted as women. That’s not how the word “rights” is understood. That’s not the dream King had that day.

Her name is Chanel Miller.

She was known as Emily Doe when her victim impact statement, read out in the sexual assault trial of Brock Turner, went viral.

Now, she has revealed her identity as 27-year-old Chanel Miller as she prepares to have her memoir published.

The case sparked controversy when Turner, then a Stanford University student, was sentenced to six months in jail. He served three.

Ms Miller’s book, Know My Name, is being released later this month.

Yes but swimmer. He’s a swimmer. That matters more than some mere woman.

In 2016, a jury would find Turner – then 20 – guilty of three charges: sexually assaulting an intoxicated victim, sexually assaulting an unconscious victim[,] and attempting to rape her. He was sentenced to six months and three years’ probation. Prosecutors had sought a six-year sentence.

…

While writing Know My Name, published on 24 September by Viking, she found out further details of her own case, through court documents and witness statements she had not had access to during the trial.

The case happened before the #MeToo movement, but Ms Miller – who started writing her book in 2017 – added to her memoir and expanded its scope as the spotlight was shone on sexual violence.

I have to say, I don’t know why #MeToo is treated as some sort of Official Landmark of when we started taking sexual violence against women seriously. I was taking it seriously long before #MeToo, and so were millions of other women. I had plenty to say about Brock Turner at the time.

The dogmatic certainty argument for god:

Jesus and Mo on Patreon

The ACLU gets the whole thing completely wrong and backward, starting with the headline.

A New York Jail Forced a Trans Woman Into a Men’s Facility

As opposed to what, ACLU? As opposed to forcing women to deal with a man in their facility.

Jena Faith’s experience in the Steuben County Jail was a living nightmare.

The military veteran spent four weeks in the jail awaiting trial last spring. She was initially housed in the jail’s women’s facility without incident, but things changed when officials suddenly transferred her to the men’s facility, despite the fact that she is a woman.

But he’s not a woman, so there is no “fact” that he’s a woman. He’s a man who wants to be or identifies as or presents as or thinks of himself as a woman.

And how confident can we be that his being housed in the jail’s women’s facility was really “without incident,” given the ACLU’s appalling blindness to the needs of women? How confident can we be that even assuming it was without overt or violent incident, all the women locked up with this man were perfectly at ease with the situation?

During the weeks that Jena spent as a woman in a men’s jail, she was routinely targeted with physical and verbal harassment from other incarcerated people and guards. On her first day in the men’s facility, a fellow incarcerated person started touching her body and blowing kisses at her, making her feel scared and uncomfortable.

If that’s true it’s bad. Jails should prevent physical and verbal harassment by guards or inmates or both. It doesn’t follow however that the women in the jail should pay the price for men’s physical and verbal harassment.

On August 22, the New York Civil Liberties Union, along with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund and the law firm BakerHostetler, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jena. It argues that what happened to her is a violation of numerous state laws designed to protect the rights, dignity, and humanity of trans people.

What about the rights, dignity, and humanity of women? Why does Jena’s fantasy identity trump all those women’s actual literal physical sex, which makes them a target of men? Why does the ACLU think that the way to protect a man who says he’s a woman from violent men is to force women to protect him? What if it turns out that he’s a danger to them? How can the ACLU possibly be so sure that will never be the case?

While Jena’s experience was harrowing, it’s not unique. Across the state, trans people are often held in jail and prison facilities that are not consistent with their gender, even though state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and courts have held that it’s discriminatory to refuse to treat a person consistently with their gender identity.

How many trans men are there who clamor to be housed with the men? Any? Any at all?

If you were a trans man would you clamor to be housed with the men? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Why? Because I’d expect to be toast if I were so housed. (That shouldn’t be the case. Jails shouldn’t be dangerous for the inmates. The solution however is not to make women the shields.)

In part because they are housed incorrectly, trans people are exposed to overwhelming levels of abuse and harassment while behind bars, and they are far more likely than cisgender people to be targeted for the worst types of violence and mistreatment.

Trans people? Or trans women only? I suspect it’s the latter, and I suspect the ACLU does this trick knowingly.

Meanwhile have a bit of Geneva Convention:

Geneva Convention III
Article 25, fourth paragraph, and Article 29, second paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention III provide that in any camps in which men and women prisoners are accommodated together, separate dormitories and conveniences shall be provided for women.
Geneva Convention III
Article 97, fourth paragraph, and Article 108, second paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention III provide that women prisoners of war undergoing disciplinary punishment or convicted of an offence shall be confined in separate quarters from men and shall be under the immediate supervision of women.
Geneva Convention IV
Article 76, fourth paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV provides that women accused of an offence “shall be confined in separate quarters and shall be under the direct supervision of women”.

Maybe in his head Jena Faith genuinely thinks he’s a woman, but whether he does or not, women still have the right to be safe from him.

Sorry to fuss about details but honestly. A woman writes a piece for Inside Higher Education about the desuetude of the faculty lounge, and the tweet promoting it looks like:

A professor laments the widespread disappearance of the faculty lounge (opinion)

Bonnie J. Morris laments the widespread disappearance of a traditional campus oasis.

Come on. Academics are supposed to be hip to semiotics, aren’t they? Which should include people who work at Inside Higher Ed? That picture could be worse only if the women were crouched on the floor covering their heads.

First of all the guy is in the middle, facing outward, so our eyes are drawn to him as if on a string. Then he’s holding his arms out and has an ankle propped on the other knee – he’s taking up space, he’s relaxed, he’s the master of ceremonies. Third, he’s talking. Fourth, he’s the only one talking. Fifth, he’s flanked by two women, both facing him and listening submissively while he kicks back and tells them what’s what. Sixth, they’re not doing anything – they’re in suspended animation, watching him perform. Seventh he’s much older than they are.

No doubt there’s more; feel free to add.

It wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t a woman who wrote the piece, but it is, so it is.

Headline:

Brexit: Boris Johnson defeated as MPs take control

Tory rebels and opposition MPs have defeated the government in the first stage of their attempt to pass a law designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

The Commons voted 328 to 301 to take control of the agenda, meaning they can bring forward a bill seeking to delay the UK’s exit date.

In response, Boris Johnson said he would bring forward a motion for an early general election.

Jeremy Corbyn said the bill should be passed before an election was held.

In total, 21 Tory MPs, including a number of ex-cabinet ministers, joined opposition parties to defeat the government.

After the vote, Downing Street said those Tory MPs who rebelled would have the whip removed, effectively expelling them from the parliamentary party.

Race ya off the cliff!

No.

R. McKinnon says:

Show your support for trans and intersex athletes: #SportIsAHumanRight shirts, tanks, hoodies, leggings, and more!

The trouble is, what McKinnon means by “support for trans and intersex athletes” here is support for men who want to compete against women. He means men like him, who couldn’t win anything racing with other men, but has won medals by racing with women. So, no. Not going to show any support for that shit.

The New Zealand feminist magazine Broadsheet posted Jill Abigail’s article on Facebook so we all get to read it after all.

Jill Abigail’s post on NZ Green Party politics on trans rights versus women’s rights has in fact been removed from the Te Awa website where it was first posted. So here please find the full text of that original piece.

Solutions that are fair to everyone? JILL ABIGAIL

I am writing a personal response to Jan Logie’s words in the last Te Awa, where she says: “We continue to push for progress on LGBTQI+ freedoms, and resist the backlash that’s trying to undermine our trans and gender diverse whanau and roll back their hard-won rights”.

Who is the “we” in this statement? Is it the Rainbow Greens? I am a lesbian, supposedly under their umbrella, but I am part of the backlash. Is it the whole Green Party? I am a long-time Greens member, but I am part of the backlash. If the Greens caucus is acting on policy that feelings of gender identity over-ride biological sex, then some of us older feminists in the party have strong concerns about its implications.

Transpeople are a vulnerable group that until recently has been excluded from general consideration and now justly claim their right to be treated with equal respect. However, the hard-won rights Jan alludes to include those of male-bodied trans-women to be treated just like natal women and allowed to enter any space or role designated as females-only. Trans rights activists argue that if a man says he feels like a woman, he is one. Women must accept him as one of them, even when he retains his male bodily features.

Many feminists are concerned to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls, whose disadvantaged position under patriarchy is based exactly on our biology and whose primary problem is male violence. Hence sex-based rights include the right to female-only spaces and activities. But feminist analysis of patriarchy seems to be completely lacking in gender ideology. Indeed, feminists who have worked for decades to achieve the rights now enjoyed by younger women are being vilified.

I am horrified by what is happening overseas: the shutting down of free speech; the silencing and abuse of academic experts; young children being taught they can be in the ’wrong’ body, thus reinforcing stereotypes; women’s refuges and rape crisis centres no longer safe sanctuaries; lesbians being accused of transphobia if they insist on same-sex relationships; male-bodied athletes entering women’s sports and taking the prizes; the very language changing to erase females/women, in the name of ‘inclusiveness’.

In New Zealand, meeting venues and publicity have been denied to gender-critical feminists, who are accused – sometimes very violently – of hate speech. The Abortion Law Reform Association now speaks of “pregnant people”, not “pregnant women”. Wellington Lesbian Radio has changed its name because ‘lesbian’ is not “inclusive”. Most serious of all is the medicalisation of children. I recently met a woman who had taken her 11-year-old daughter to a doctor because of a sore throat. The daughter is a tomboy, with short hair. The doctor asked the mother if she wanted the girl to go on puberty blockers. An 11-year-old goes to the doctor with a sore throat and is given a suggestion of puberty blockers?

Gender-critical feminists have allies among some transpeople themselves, who see this ideology as a misogynist, homophobic, men’s rights push. No previous extensions of human rights for new groups have involved taking away the rights of others needing protection. It would be progressive of the Greens to be working for solutions that are fair to everyone, rather than reinforcing the current divide.

From New Zealand:

The Green Party has caused outrage among its members by publishing an article criticising the party’s push for trans rights in its official magazine.

The article, written by long-time Green Party member Jill Abigail, appeared in the latest edition of party publication Te Awa and said some “older feminists” within the party were concerned the party was putting gender identity over the rights of biological women.

Abigail was particularly critical of MP Jan Logie’s comments in a previous issue that: “We continue to push for progress on LGBTQI+ freedoms, and resist the backlash that’s trying to undermine our trans and gender diverse whanau and roll back their hard-won rights”.

“I am a lesbian, supposedly under their umbrella, but I am part of the backlash,” Abigail wrote.

She said while trans people were vulnerable and “justly” claiming their right to equal treatment, the free speech of those who opposed “male-bodied trans women” entering “female-only spaces” was being shut down with accusations of hate speech.

There were protests, and the article was taken down after about a week. Women must not say they have a right to women-only toilets.

In a statement, a spokesman for the party said the board had apologised.

“We regret that the article was published without a response or right of reply from the affected community, and that our party policy wasn’t made clear,” he said.

“The Green Party upholds the value of diversity and inclusion and we want to reassure members of this.”

Diversity of what, inclusion of what? Magic words don’t answer all questions. There isn’t an actual need for “diversity” of women in the sense that men get to count as women on the grounds of “diversity.” It’s ok for women to mean just women, women only, literal women, real women, women with women’s bodies. We get to have that. There’s no more need for “diversity” and “inclusion” in the sense of adding men to the category “women” than there is for “diversity” and “inclusion” in the sense of adding white people to the category “black people.”

A long-time member and former candidate for the Green Party, speaking on condition of anonymity, called for the board to resign to allow for fresh elections.

“They were … not sorry, didn’t see a problem, that it would stay up, and felt we were overreacting.”

The member said the inference trans women were not real women was offensive and “tremendously unfair”.

It’s true though. Men are not women. “Trans women” are men who identify as / say they are / live as women, and that’s not the same thing as being women. You can say that’s “offensive” until cows grow testicles, but that won’t make it untrue.

“Trans people already struggle enough with not being able to have gender reassignment surgery without women being scared they’re going to be sexually assaulted by them because they still have a penis. It can’t get more bigoted than that.”

Actually, it can’t get much more dismissive of women and their concerns than to brush off fear of sexual assault by people with penises.

MP Logie took to Facebook, outlining the party’s position amid the criticism.

“We have an urgent human rights challenge to realise the rights of trans and non-binary people,” she said.

“I don’t think it’s in anyway acceptable to suggest those rights threaten anyone else.”

Even though they do? Everyone just has to bury that, because the putative “rights of trans and non-binary people,” meaning the right to say they are what they are not and force everyone else to agree, are infinitely more important than the rights of women?

Why? Why are they? Why do trans women matter more than women?

Because they’re better at bullying, seems to be the only real reason.

The Green Party. They…what?

It’s about their regional council – not a particularly interesting subject in general, but somewhat interesting in specific:

You can learn more about GPRC from the GPRC Handbook.

Information about the GPRC meetings, including past minutes and agendas, can be found in the Resources tab above.

Regional Council Members:

GPRC Co-Chairs:

• Self identifying Non-Male Co-Chair: Liz Carlton (Eastern Region)
• Self identifying Non-Female Co-Chair: Rob Grant (West Midlands Region)

Excuse me?

There are a bunch of regional members listed below that, all without the “Self identifying Non-Female/Non-Male”weirdness…maybe they’re introducing it gradually.

But: what? What do they mean by it?

Also Boris Johnson lost his majority when one Tory moved over to join the Lib-Dems.

Trump AND Pence are violating all the norms and laws against using the presidency for $$$ today.

Jim Acosta:

Both Trump and Pence are at Trump properties at this moment on Labor Day. Trump is at his golf course in [Virginia] while Pence is staying at a Trump golf course in Ireland, per pool. (CNN photo below)

More:

President Donald Trump spent Monday visiting his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, and tweeting political grievances as a massive hurricane prepares to barrel up the East Coast of the United States.

Trump’s visit to Trump National marked the 289th day he has spent at a Trump property and the 227th day he has spent at one of his golf clubs as President.

Yesterday he was letting people think he would be at Camp David today.

Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew

President Trump visited one of his golf courses for several hours Saturday as Hurricane Dorian bore down on the coastline.

Trump gave the impression that he’d spend Saturday at Camp David with experts monitoring what has developed into a Category 4 storm.

If he went to Camp David that would do nothing to enrich his golf club.

Awwwww nice, Nate Berg at the Guardian tells us how awesome it is for cities to provide barns for sex workers so that man can have drive-through sex:

The city [Köln] reasoned that if sex work was going to happen, it should be in a safe and clean space. It was decided that sex work would be allowed only in certain parts of the city – and in order to encourage both sex workers and their customers to abide by this rule, in one of the permitted areas the city built a facility specifically for sex.

Located on the edge of town, the result is a kind of sex drive-through. Customers drive down a one-way street, into a roughly two-acre open air-space where sex workers can offer their services. Once hired, the sex worker accompanies the customer into a semi-private parking stall. For safety, each stall allows sex workers to easily flee if necessary – the stall is designed so that the driver’s door can’t be opened, but the passenger one can – and there’s an emergency button to call for help. Social workers are present on site and offer a space to rest, stay warm and access services.

[Updating to add the alluring photo]

Henning Kaiser/AFP/Getty Images

So…the work is dangerous, the women who do it might need to flee at any moment, and if they can’t there’s an emergency button to push, plus there are social workers on site…but hooray all the same?

The attitude that if sex work is inevitable it should be safe has spread across the city.

Right. And if slavery is inevitable it should be safe. If child marriage is inevitable it should be safe. If female genital mutilation is inevitable it should be safe. If torture is inevitable it should be safe. If war is inevitable it should be safe.

I’m ruminating on the dissenting comments about the rhetoric of reason post, and the puzzle of how the slave society justified itself to itself, and the related puzzle of how abolitionists – whose cause seems so self-evident to us now – were seen as raving maniacs and extremists, and from there I arrived at James Fitzjames Stephens’s review of John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, which I consider a classic of the genre.

Stephens begins with the opposition of vehement passion and chilly reason:

Mr. Mill’s small volume or long pamphlet on “The Subjection of Women” is intended to prove “that the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes– the legal subordination of one to the other– is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.” The whole volume is written in that tone of vehement moral indignation and passionate excitement, finding vent in sustained eagerness of style and thought, which so much attract some readers to Mr. Mill’s writings, and so much repel from them men of his own way of thinking in many respects, but disposed to take a colder view of human nature, its prospects, and its capacities.

Stephens’s colder view of human nature produces this:

One fundamental and unalterable inequality between men and women is that, whereas the orderly and reasonable satisfaction of passions which in the case of both men and women more or less distinctly and consciously affect every part of human life, is in normal cases essential to the happiness of each, its satisfaction in the case of men is a strong spur to exertion in active professions, whilst in the case of women it physically incapacitates them from everything of the kind. Active life, therefore, must be as abnormal in the case of women as it is normal in the case of men; and to refuse to recognize this fact in social and professional legislation appears to us to be precisely the same absurdity as to refuse to extend the suffrage to the working classes when they have virtually become a great political power, or to ignore the superiority which a conquering race has proved over those whom it has conquered by legislating as if no conquest had taken place.

I think that’s the kind of thing Fairbanks is talking about.

Rick Wilson (anti-Trump Republican pundit) asks:

Why’s it so hard for us to say out loud that Trump has lost his mind?

Reporter Joy Reid has an answer that I don’t really get.

Chalk it up to the powerful media compulsion to normalize him as president. He is president, so the things he says and does are done in the name of the office, and so media writ large strains to import even the crazy stuff into the normal formula for covering a president.

I don’t get why it’s not the other way around. I don’t get why the media compulsion is to normalize him as president as opposed to normalizing the office by refusing to normalize him. Why him at the expense of the office rather than the office at the expense of him?

Why, in other words, don’t they see the office as more important than and less temporary than this one aberrant guy?

Especially since a great many of the things he says and does really are not done in the name of the office. They’re done while he is president, but not in the name of the office. His ridiculous blurts about Debra Messing and Kanye West and similar irrelevancies aren’t done in the name of the office, they’re just explosions from his id, which (I would think) is exactly why the guy ought to be reported separately from the office much of the time.

She might just mean they do it so that they can go on being White House reporters after Trump is back in Manhattan, which would be not so much compulsion as self-interested ass-protecting.