Via Acolyte of Sagan, a hideous crime in Argentina:

An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.

11. She’s 11. ELEVEN.

The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.

They wouldn’t let her end the pregnancy that was criminally forced on her, then they ripped her open. In other words the rapist raped her and then the authorities committed GBH on her.

Lucía told the psychologist at the hospital to which she was admitted after two suicide attempts: “I want you to remove what the old man put inside me.”

Lucía, the youngest of three sisters, became pregnant after she was abused by her grandmother’s 65-year-old partner. She was placed under her grandmother’s care in 2015, after her two older sisters were reportedly abused by her mother’s partner.

So I guess the authorities felt her life hadn’t been shit enough yet, and they needed to make it much more so.

No surprise, but still horrifying. The (non-)mystery of Prince Jared’s security clearance is solved:

President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Sure, that’s fine – that scummy little weasel of a real estate hustler can’t possibly do any harm with access to top-secret intelligence, any more than his wife’s father can do any harm with access to top-secret intelligence and nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

Yeah great. They wrote memos. That’ll fix everything.

Trump lied to the Times about it last month. Of course he did.

Kushner’s lawyer lied about it. Princess Ivanka lied about it.

Asked on Thursday about the memos contradicting the president’s account, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

We hand them out to criminals and gangsters, and we lie to anyone who asks us about it, but we don’t comment. Peasants.

Mr. Kushner has spent this week abroad working on a Middle East peace plan. Among his meetings was one with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

He’s not qualified to be “working on a Middle East peace plan.” He’s a crooked little weasel with no relevant education or training or experience. He should be selling cheap condos in Pierre, South Dakota.

Another clash between people who oppose the buying and selling of women and people who favor it:

A London sex-work researcher is adding her voice to the growing dismay over the police decision to begin releasing the names of men accused of buying sex, as a petition demanding police reverse the policy is launched.

Chief John Pare announced the new policy at last week’s police board meeting, touting the move as another tool in the fight against human trafficking.

The change was championed by the London Abused Women’s Centre and others advocating for an end to prostitution, but it drew a swift backlash from organizations representing sex workers and their allies advocating for the continuation of prostitution.

“I don’t know how the decision was made. It is a perfect illustration of ignoring research in favour of moralizing,” said Treena Orchard, a health studies researcher at Western University.

Moralizing? It’s moralizing to work to prevent trafficking? It’s worth sneering at those efforts in order to make sure prostitution remains a job option?

Experts have identified London as a hub for human trafficking — defined as the exploitation of people for profit through force, fraud or coercion — because of its location along Highway 401 between Toronto and the U.S. border.

Tut, more moralizing.

H/t YNNB

Hmm.

President Trump called @mattgaetz last night from Hanoi to talk the Cohen testimony and the threats (since rescinded) Gaetz made about Cohen.
"I was happy to do it for you. You just keep killing it," Gaetz was heard telling him.
(Gaetz told me he doesn't discuss calls w/POTUS)

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) February 28, 2019

Interesting, but full of holes. “Gaetz was heard” by whom? Where was this? Would Gaetz really exchange criminal chitchat with Trump in the presence of witnesses? How does Dovere know it was Trump? How does whoever heard what Gaetz said know it was Trump?

Unsubstantiated.

Michael Cohen kept me from other things yesterday, so now: Cardinal Pell found guilty.

Of what?

Raping children.

Cardinal George Pell, once the third most powerful man in the Vatican and Australia’s most senior Catholic, has been found guilty of child sexual abuse after a trial in Melbourne.

…

Pell, who is on leave from his role in Rome as Vatican treasurer, was found guilty of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 16 as well as four charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16. The offences occurred in December 1996 and early 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, months after Pell was inaugurated as archbishop of Melbourne.

…

Pope Francis, who has previously praised Pell for his honesty and response to child sexual abuse, has yet to publicly react, but just two days after the unreported verdict in December the Vatican announced that Pell and two other cardinals had been removed from the pontiff’s council of advisers.

Pell’s conviction and likely imprisonment will cause shockwaves through a global Catholic congregation and is a blow to Francis’s efforts to get a grip on sexual abuse.

It comes just days after an unprecedented summit of cardinals and senior bishops in the presence of the pope at the Vatican, intended to signal a turning point on the issue that has gravely damaged the church and imperilled Francis’s papacy.

Well, if they will insist on claiming to be representatives of Mister God, raping children isn’t a good look on them.

H/t Rob

Rod Liddle congratulates the men winning women’s competitions:

Already a Democratic party representative, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, is insisting that the US powerlifting tournaments allow transgender women to compete, so that people who look very much like Geoff Capes, and have the same chromosomes as Geoff Capes, and the same bone structure and musculature, can compete against women. Meanwhile, the fastest female college sprinter in the US is CeCe Telfer, who, once again, is not what you or I or science would call a lady, and one of the world champions in women’s cycling is a chap called Rachel McKinnon, whom I have mentioned here before.

…

Those who support the rights of transgender women to compete in women’s sports often cite the only piece of research done on the issue which ‘proves’ that it is a myth that transgender women have an advantage over normal women. This study was published in 2015 and is cited every time the issue arises — but I have one or two problems with it, to tell you the truth. First, it concerned a total of just eight athletes, which is a smallish sample (no control group, either). Second, it was not carried out by a qualified geneticist or social scientist, but by a ‘medical physicist’ by the name of Joanna Harper. And third, Joanna Harper, once an athlete herself, was, um, how can I put this, not always called Joanna. She was raised as a boy and transitioned to being a fairly fast lady in her thirties. So she has skin in the game and we might surmise that she, or he, set out to prove a thesis, rather than, in good Popperian practice, trying to disprove it.

Other than that…

Charles Pierce is blistering about the Republicans’ performance in that hearing yesterday.

Not one Republican asked a question about the specific offenses that Cohen had illuminated in his opening statement.

Why is that? I suppose because they don’t doubt any of it? But then why do they continue to support him? Because it’s worth it to them to stick it to women, stick it to the poor, stick it to brown immigrants, stick it to people of color generally.

And everybody kept yielding time to the egregious ranking Republican member, Jim Jordan of Ohio, or to Jordan’s fellow Freedom Caucasian, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, and those two jamokes couldn’t get out of their own way.

Jordan insisted that some dark—Dare he say, Clintonian?—forces were behind Cohen’s testimony, using the name of Lanny Davis, the old Clinton hand who is Cohen’s attorney, as a conjuring word. Jordan expressed surprise that Cohen might have consulted with the chairmen of other committees before which he might testify. He got so insufferable that Steve Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, went all Southie on Jordan’s mug, running through a litany of people connected with the Trump campaign and/or the administration* who have been arrested, indicted, convicted, or copped a plea.

Crime isn’t crime unless it happens in Chicago.

This was a vivid look into the chronic ward of the prion disease that has eaten away the higher functions of American conservatism—and, thus, those of the Republican Party as well—since Ronald Reagan first served up the monkey brains almost 40 years ago. These are the complete creatures of the talk-show culture, the perfect products of two and three generations of gerrymandered in-breeding. These are the monsters from inside The Bubble.

And the gerrymandering continues, so they will only get worse.

A theme emerges.

https://twitter.com/sarahditum/status/1101147666938056704

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1101145818730500098

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1101147269099859968

When people say "what has Julie Bindel ever done for women in prison" – her tireless and fearless campaigning for women is humbling. https://t.co/etz11iLvn0

— sianushka (@sianushka) February 28, 2019

That’s one way of putting it.

Across the U.S. and in many places abroad, transgender athletes are breaking barriers in high school, college and pro sports and being embraced by teammates and fans. But resentments can still flare when transgender women start winning and dominating their sport.

Well now what do we mean by “barriers”? Not all barriers need breaking. If you have a barrier between you and the local grizzly bears, you don’t much want it broken, do you.

And they’re not really breaking “barriers” anyway, because there are no “barriers” labeled “No Trans People Allowed.” What they’re doing is breaking the rules, which doesn’t sound quite so progressive. People with male bodies are breaking the rules to play against women and girls, leaving a little heap of injured women and girls in their wake.

Transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon holds hands with Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen during the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Carson, California, in 2018.Craig Huffman / via AP file

So touching and adorable, but look how massive McKinnon is next to Van Herrikhuyzen. Maybe not really so adorable after all. McKinnon is looking down at her as if she’s a puppy.

The AP solicited and received a comment from McKinnon, then went on to accuse women who want to compete against women of “vitriol.”

Helen Carroll, a longtime college athletic director, basketball coach and LGBTQ-rights activist, said many trans women athletes train extra hard to offset hormone treatment and face undeserved skepticism when they excel.

“As long as trans people are losing and are not the best, everything is OK,” Carroll said. “As soon as they start winning, that’s when the vitriol comes out about how they’re really still a man.”

The vitriol can surface even at the high school level. In the track and field community in Connecticut, the dominance of transgender girl sprinters Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood has stirred resentment among some competitors and their families.

Yes, and? Why shouldn’t it?

The AP never manages to explain.

Another Pronouns War:

A debate about the gender identity of Dr James Barry, the pioneering Victorian who adopted a male persona to become the UK’s first female-born doctor, has erupted after the award-winning author EJ Levy was accused of disrespecting Barry’s legacy by using female pronouns in a forthcoming novel.

Levy announced last week that she had sold a novel about the “true story” of Barry, titled The Cape Doctor. The forthcoming book, which will be released by Little, Brown, will trace Barry’s life story: born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Ireland, the future doctor became Barry at the age of 20 and left for Edinburgh to study medicine as a man. Barry joined the army after graduation, the start of a distinguished career as a military surgeon that spanned Cape Town, St Helena and Trinidad and Tobago. In 1865, Barry returned to the UK with dysentery, and died. A maid discovered the doctor’s biological gender after the death.

When Levy, winner of the Flannery O’Connor award, announced the news of her novel by describing Barry as “a heroine for our time, for all time”, other authors began to question Levy’s reference to Barry as “she”, including novelist Celeste Ng, who told Levy: “I’m now seeing you use she/her pronouns for Barry even as many are telling you Barry himself used and wanted he/him pronouns. I hope you and L,B will listen to these concerns and take them into account.”

But Barry “used and wanted he/him pronouns” at a time when people with she/her pronouns were not welcome to study medicine in Edinburgh and become doctors, and then to practice medicine. There were a few pioneers but it was a very uphill battle. Given that, we can’t know whether Barry really “wanted” male pronouns or simply resorted to them in order to get the freedom and the work she/he wanted to do.  Barry didn’t leave a collection of tweets taking a position on pronouns.

Barry’s gender identity has been overwhelmingly framed as female by writers over the past 150 years, said Cardiff University professor Ann Heilmann, author of Neo-/Victorian Biographilia and James Miranda Barry: A Study in Transgender and Transgenre, exceptions being Patricia Duncker’s 1999 novel James Miranda Barry and Rachel Holmes’s 2002 biography The Secret Life of Dr James Barry.

…

“While I understand that emotions run very high (understandably so, given the difficulties trans people face and in light of ongoing tensions between feminism and the trans community), I don’t think that Barry can be that easily mapped on to contemporary trans thought,” she said. “Though of course there have always been trans people, the lived and felt gender identity of an 18th and early 19th-century person would have been very different from our contemporary identity politics.”

And that person would not have called it a “gender identity” or understood what you were talking about if you used it.

Jeremy Dronfield, co-author of Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time, said: “In my biography, I used male pronouns for Barry. He was, at least outwardly, a man. But whether Barry qualifies as transgender in modern terms is complicated. When Margaret became James, it wasn’t primarily because she wanted to be a man. She wanted to live the kind of life which in 1809 was impossible for a woman. Once the persona had served its purpose, Margaret intended to discard it. Circumstances prevented that. There’s evidence that Barry missed being a woman. But we also know that he relished being a man, his behaviour exceeding what was necessary for disguise. However, the claim made online that Barry left a will asking to be remembered as a man is false. He left no statement of identity.

“If Margaret had been born in 1989 instead of 1789, free to be a surgeon and soldier, would she have chosen to become a man? On balance, I don’t think so, but Margaret might have identified as non-binary. I have no argument with seeing James Barry as a transgender icon, or Margaret as a feminist role model. I do take issue with those who insist on recognising one and erasing the other.”

And bullying people who refuse to comply.

Ok the Republicans are the minority and they’re hostile, while the Democrats are the majority and…not friendly, not affectionate, but not hostile in the sense of hostile to Cohen’s presence and testimony. Grant all that. It’s Democrats versus Republicans, with all that follows from that.

But if the two were reversed would Democrats be this assholish? This challenging, this stern, yes, but it’s more than that – there’s also taunting, sneering, raging, screeching. Do Republicans give themselves permission to be Trump-like in the era of Trump in a way they wouldn’t have before?

Update: Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, thinks it’s “a game” to establish whether or not Trump is a criminal.

It’s not a game, Representative Miller. It couldn’t possibly be more serious.

Update: Oh, Miller is angry that they have postponed hearings on child separation to do this one. Well who does she think is behind the child separation policy?!

Maybe this answers my question about would the Democrats carry on so grotesquely if they were in the hot seat.

The other thing we’re learning is there’s a really low bar to be in Congress in a red district. These people are dumb AF.

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) February 27, 2019