Good god.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1132413516063870977

A guy called Will Roberts has written a post disputing the article by Sophie Allen, Jane Clare Jones, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, and Kathleen Stock on bad arguments against gender critical feminism. The first item snagged my attention.

Section one: fallacious arguments

1. ‘Your position has been historically associated with far right-wing thought, and hence fails’.

The authors write: “Associating our intellectual position with a far right-wing one, because some far right-wing thinkers would agree with us in some of our conclusions, and insinuating that our position is all the worse because of it, is an ad hominem. Ad hominems are widely recognised as inappropriate in philosophy.”

Political arguments are different from purely philosophical arguments. The fact that one group of political advocates makes the same, or similar, arguments as another – politically dangerous and loathsome – group is not irrelevant to the political assessment of those arguments. It is true that “the fact that person shares a conclusion with a far right-wing person could never show, on its own, that the conclusion was false.” However, when people claim “that women, by definition, are adult human females,” and conclude, on this basis, that “no trans woman is correctly categorised as a woman,” this is not like happening to agree with a far right wing person about what day of the week it is.

The “gender critical” position is a reactionary political position – in the sense that it is a “backlash” position, reacting to trans people’s progress towards social and political liberation…

That last bit is what snagged my attention. The trans movement, or the gender uncritical position, is not about social and political liberation. It’s about universal compelled agreement that people can change sex (and gender) by self-declaration. It’s not about wanting the same rights everyone else has, it’s about wanting new, peculiar rights, that are in tension with existing rights that other people have. Its fans want it to be like the previous liberation movements, but it isn’t. Roberts doesn’t get to make it that just by saying the words.

Isn’t this where we came in?

There’s a choice bit later on that Jane Clare Jones pointed out on Twitter, which must not be missed.

But, the authors assure us, the “gender critical” position is not “that trans women don’t have full moral personhood. We emphatically and repeatedly assert that they do, emphasising their full human rights.” “The question is not whether they are human,” the authors continue, “but whether they are female, and on the basis of being female should be able to access spaces designed to protect the comparatively greater vulnerability of female people.” “No one thinks a man is denied his full and equal humanity merely because women-only spaces exist, and the same reasoning applies to trans women. Not giving people everything that they desire is not a denial of their humanity.”

Wow. I don’t think the authors have thought through what having your full and equal humanity denied might actually look like.

Emphasis added. This is a man, disputing an article by several women.

You couldn’t make it up.

The Telegraph on the awkwardness of having a new union boss who uses a blocker to block a hefty proportion of union members:

Feminist academics have complained that their new union boss cannot uphold free speech because she has refused to listen to opposing views in the transgender debate.

Dr Jo Grady, who was elected on Friday as the new general secretary of the University and College Union, used a controversial “Terf-blocker” which is a tool on Twitter that allows users to block a list of accounts.

A very long list of accounts. I’m on it, which I know because a lot of people I’ve never heard of or interacted with (before seeing “Has X blocked you too?” tweeted) have blocked me. It’s a stupid reason to mass-block people: not for being rude or abusive but for having an officially disapproved opinion on whether people can change themselves into the opposite sex by saying so.

Ms Grady has defended her past use of a “Terf-blocker”, which she said is an “easy mechanism for blocking large numbers of accounts that have been identified as articulating transphobic views”.

Except that “transphobic” is the wrong word. We’re supposed to think “transphobic” is parallel to racism and misogyny, but the word includes people who simply don’t agree that people can change sex with an assertion. That isn’t phobic.

Prof Selina Todd, an expert in modern history at Oxford University, said that she and many colleauges consider “Terf” to be an “abusive term”.

Refusing to debate with people whose views you disagree with is not a suitable approach for a representative of academics, she said.

Prof Rosa Freedman, Reading University’s chair of law, conflict and global development, said that by using a Terf-blocker “legitimises” the narrative that anyone who expresses gender critical views poses a danger to transgender students.

“She is in a position of leadership and is supposed to defend all academics and academic freedom,” she added.

It’s in the job description.

Also let’s get people in low-paid jobs fired or reprimanded or whatever we can successfully demand for Not Using The Correct™ Pronouns™ all power to the firing class yeah?

https://twitter.com/MelzDot/status/1132233737268269056

Did MelzDot ask “the security” (rather a dehumanizing way to refer to a person) what his pronouns were? Are Bespoke Pronouns only for the privileged few who speak at a TRANS Conference and not the riffraff who guard them?

There follows a long maudlin thread of people offering Mr Dot massive sympathy for this hideous unparalleled tragedy.

https://twitter.com/incognegraux/status/1132271161872662534

It’s all like that or worse.

This isn’t good. It’s not healthy. Even if you agree that people can change sex by assertion, it’s still not good or healthy. Frenzied maudlin over-reaction to something as trivial as a complete stranger not consenting to use “the pronouns” you order him to use is not reasonable or sane or healthy or any kind of way to go about living in the world. It just isn’t. Proportion is absolutely key to being an adult. We don’t argue that fact very much because it’s so obvious and we’re so used to fellow adults knowing that and acting accordingly. Adult public life doesn’t feature watching another adult have a screaming meltdown because the coffee is lukewarm. You know? Even if you want to have a screaming meltdown, because it’s been a bad day and your nerves are shredded and it feels like just the last thing in a long list and you want to freak out – you don’t, because you still know it would be all out of proportion and you would start to feel like an asshole about ten seconds in. Right?

But this shit – it’s all about the narcissistic rages over utterly minor wounds to the ego. It’s all about running to Twitter to stage a “you won’t believe what those devils did to me!!” tantrum in order to collect replies saying “what an utter disgrace” “that’s absolutely disgusting” “absolutely unacceptable transphobia” “absolutely disgraceful” “horrendous” (all actual labels in replies). That’s not political activism, and it’s sure as hell not political analysis or discourse; it’s nothing but childish attention-seeking and histrionics. It’s…

…absolutely disgraceful.

Political discourse today, state of.

good morning @the_point_mag i do not appreciate criticism of my work being put in the same category as the deplatforming of a full blown card carrying terf!!!!! whose “comments on sex and gender identity” you do not even bother to describe!!!! pic.twitter.com/LzjDNro67m

— wife of the mind (@andrealongchu) May 25, 2019

There’s a card you can carry? An official card, with your name on it, issued by the head office? Why wasn’t I told?

deplatforming isn’t predicated on some elitist notion of “protecting” the public from “threatening” ideas, it’s about taking money and resources away from our OBVIOUS ENEMIES, milo’s deplatforming was literally about bankrupting him AND IT WORKED

— wife of the mind (@andrealongchu) May 25, 2019

Oh yes, all about taking money and resources away from our OBVIOUS ENEMIES, feminist women who don’t agree that men can become women by assertion. Much obvious, very enemies.

And in conclusion –

as i believe mao zedong once said, “that bitch is a terf”

— wife of the mind (@andrealongchu) May 25, 2019

Tell us again how “TERF” is not a slur.

Originally a comment by cluecat on We are talking about identity here.

How people cannot see that this is a male-supremacist idea/movement is beyond me, I’m afraid.

If it was really about Identitay, and everyone being able to force others to see them as they see themselves, women & girls would be able to make everyone see us (and therefore treat us) as Real People. This would mean much less sexual violence committed by males against us, the obvious fact that bodily autonomy trumps anyone else’s wants regarding using us as brood mares, the pay gaps/work gaps would vanish (the Second Shift would be a thing of the past), and so on.

What we get instead is this deliberate conflation between biological sex, and sex role stereotypes. It should be obvious, but apparently it isn’t.

What it comes down to is: Doodz get to do whatever they want, as usual. Whatever ridiculous pronouncement a dood makes is to be taken as word from On High. If dood puts on a frock, it MUST make him a Laydee, because he says so.

Women & girls apparently only exist as accessories to the Very Important Journey of these doodz. We can’t possibly be an actual group of people with specific characteristics that differ from those of males, because that would spoil all the fun. Women are what men say we are, and any actual differences must be ignored.

Again, it seems to come down to the fact that we are the ones who make Life. Males cannot have babies, and they hate the idea of us doing something they can’t. Something that is outside their direct control, and punctures their fantasy of being in charge of everything.

The bit I really don’t get is, how can these women arguing in favour of male supremacy not see how much men hate us? They really do. That “breath play” thing that’s mentioned (in a later post) – choking someone is not an action performed towards someone one loves. Women don’t need to be told that it’s unsafe and cruel. It would never occur to someone who isn’t obsessed with having power over others.

I can see why so many girls & young women are desperately trying to be Anything But Female. They see the hatred and degradation being heaped upon us, and are rightly terrified – “If that’s what Female means, I want none of it!”. What I don’t understand is the women who are happy to beat down any of her “sisters” who notice the problem. The problem being MALES, and their fixation on death, humiliation, cruelty, torture and destruction.

Facebook isn’t helping.

Facebook says it will continue to host a video of Nancy Pelosi that has been edited to give the impression that the Democratic House speaker is drunk or unwell, in the latest incident highlighting its struggle to deal with disinformation.

What struggle? Saying “no” isn’t a struggle. Saying “no” is dead easy.

The viral clip shows Pelosi – who has publicly angered Donald Trump in recent days – speaking at an event, but it has been slowed down to give the impression she is slurring her words. Several versions of the clip appeared to be circulating.

The president’s personal lawyer, the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, was among the Trump supporters who promoted the story. He tweeted – then deleted – a link to a copy of the video on Facebook with the caption: “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre.”

Despite the apparently malicious intent of the video’s creator, Facebook has said it will only downgrade its visibility in users’ newsfeeds and attach a link to a third-party factchecking site pointing out that the clip is misleading. As a result, although it is less likely to be seen by accident, the doctored video will continue to rack up views. Facebook only took the action following inquiries from the Washington Post, which first reported the story.

Giuliani tweeted.

https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1131911083801960448

That’s a fairly halting tweet, but whatever.

In case he deletes it, I’ll quote it.

ivesssapology for a video which is allegedly is a caricature of an otherwise halting speech pattern, she should first stop, and apologize for, saying the President needs an “intervention.” Are

sic

The viral success of the crudely produced video highlights the challenges in fighting online disinformation when individuals are willing to share material that backs their own political views, even when it is accompanied by warnings.

The administrator of the Politics WatchDog page polled readers on whether to remove the video, with most voting for it stay online. They defended the decision to keep the video live, insisting “it’s a free country”.

Blah blah blah; fake videos aren’t a matter of “freedom.” It’s a free country, but we don’t get to strangle each other.

A Facebook spokesperson said: “There’s a tension here: we work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community, and we believe that reducing the distribution of inauthentic content strikes that balance. But just because something is allowed to be on Facebook doesn’t mean it should get distribution. In other words, we allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we’re not going to show it at the top of News Feed.”

What pathetic mealy-mouthed horseshit.

Naomi Wolf has a new book out. In it she says that a teenage boy was executed for sodomy in 1859, but in fact he was paroled two years after he was convicted.

Silver, who was 14 when he was convicted, is just one of several cases cited in the book but, according to the writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, the error stems from a simple misreading of a historical record and raises wider questions about the argument Wolf puts forward.

In Outrages, which was published by Virago, Wolf examines the effect of 19th-century legal changes on the lives of Victorian poets such as John Addington Symonds and argues that the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 marked a turning point in the treatment of gay people.

“People widely believe that the last executions for sodomy were in 1830,” Wolf told the Observer. “But I read every Old Bailey record throughout the 19th century, so I know that not only did they continue; they got worse.”

According to Sweet, who first challenged Wolf on Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas, her error concerning Silver stems from a misunderstanding of “the very precise historical legal term, ‘death recorded’, as evidence of execution, when in fact it indicates the opposite”.

You can hear him telling her so. It’s a painful moment.

The historian Richard Ward agreed, adding that the term was a legal device first introduced in 1823. “It empowered the trial judge to abstain from formally pronouncing a sentence of death upon a capital convict in cases where the judge intended to recommend the offender for a pardon from the death sentence. In the vast majority (almost certainly all) of the cases marked ‘death recorded’, the offender would not have been executed.”

So it’s like saying “duly noted” when you plan to ignore the thing noted? I guess.

While Wolf only quotes the “death recorded” verdict in Silver’s case, Sweet challenges the wider argument put forward in Outrages.

“I think her assumptions about ‘death recorded’ have led her to the view … that ‘dozens and dozens’ of Victorian men were executed, and that one of the main subjects of her book, the poet John Addington Symonds, grew up with the fear of execution hanging over his head. I have yet to see evidence that one man in Victorian Britain was executed for sodomy.”

Wolf’s argument that 1857 saw a brutal turn against consensual sex between men runs counter to most scholars, Sweet continued, who suggest that it was only in 1885 that a less tolerant legal climate developed. “She argues that historians have misread this moment and we should see that 1857 was a more significant date. I think she is wrong.”

If you’re going to challenge most scholars you need to do all your homework.

Seen on Facebook:

How to strangle a woman during sex SAFELY. (Funny how it’s the woman getting strangled, isn’t it.)

Nah, I say forget strangling people SAFELY, don’t strangle them at all.

What is a doula? Ask the Google.

dou·la
/ˈdo͞olə/
noun
a woman, typically without formal obstetric training, who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor.
“from admission through delivery, a doula stayed at her assigned patient’s side”
a woman employed to provide guidance and support to the mother of a newborn baby.
“my mother-in-law hired a postpartum doula to help me for a couple of weeks”

So what do we find?

That Doula Guy

That’s not a “taboo,” it’s a fact. Men can’t give birth; just a fact, ma’am.

Tell us about yourself, Mac Brydum.

“That Doula Guy” is Mac Brydum.

Specializing in comprehensive doula support, including labor support, postpartum care, infant sleep consulting, and lactation support.

Mac enthusiastically offers LGBTQ-inclusive, empowering, compassionate care for ALL families.

Also offering consulting for professional organizations on LGBTQ inclusion.

Don’t you want him for your lactation support?

But the last line gives it away a little – really he’s about the LGBTQ inclusion, and really what that means is the T inclusion. What’s best for women in childbirth isn’t his concern.

It’s so irritating, and so male-entitled, this move to have men take over everything women do. I’m making an educated guess that doulas are women because women don’t actually want to hire a man to hold their hand and cheer them on at that particular project. They’ve had to accept male doctors for generations because women doctors were so scarce, but there’s no reason they should have to accept men doing the female support person job too. No doubt some women will sign Mac Brydum that doula guy right up because women are expected to be sweet and accommodating, but a man who knew how to give a shit about anyone other than himself wouldn’t make women feel obliged to make him feel “included.” Women in labor shouldn’t have to be “inclusive” in that way.

Meanwhile Trump is also abusing his power by trying to muscle the Army Corps of Engineers to buy its new border wall from a company he favors because he’s a corrupt mob boss.

The Post reports:

In phone calls, White House meetings and conversations aboard Air Force One during the past several months, Trump has aggressively pushed Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Industries to Department of Homeland Security leaders and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the Army Corps, according to the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions.

It may be a not-very-subtle sign of the frustration in the Army that the news leaked to the Post the same day that Trump called General Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, to the White House and once again pressed him.

Is Fisher good at Wall though? Is it a leading expert when it comes to Wall?

Fisher is a curious choice. The company is already suing the government after being rejected for any Army Corps contract for the border wall. Fisher was one of the companies that participated in a prototype exercise outside of San Diego in 2017, but the company’s wall didn’t meet the specifications laid out by the Department of Homeland Security, which wanted a wall through which agents could see.

Interjection: a wall agents could see through. The “rule” against ending a sentence with a preposition is a bogus rule and it often produces clumsy obscure phrasing like that.

Instead, Fisher pushed a more expensive concrete wall, similar to the one that Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign. But the Fisher prototype was late and over budget. CEO Tommy Fisher criticized the steel-bollard design that the government chose. Now, Fisher is promising a steel wall, and it says it can build it cheaper and faster than any other contractor.

Fisher Industries has some assets, though. Tommy Fisher is a major GOP donor. He has North Dakota’s Republican Senator Kevin Cramer in his corner. He’s already working on a private-sector attempt to build a barrier on private land in New Mexico, which is backed by close Trump allies like Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist; Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Kris Kobach, the former vice chair of Trump’s voter-fraud commission, who was under consideration as his “immigration czar.”

Moreover, Tommy Fisher has wisely made himself a fixture on Fox News, which the president watches obsessively. He’s used those appearances to pitch his company’s plan.

throws up hands in disgust

Oh, really?

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1131964691746574336

Edward Lord is the boss of the move to take women-only spaces away from women in London. Edward Lord has also blocked every single obstreperous woman on Twitter whether he’s ever interacted with them or not, in other words he uses a sweeping block list. Women who object to having women-only spaces taken away may not tell Edward Lord of their objections; he won’t allow it. Lord indeed.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1131966804778213376

So I’m reading the Telegraph article.

The architect of a gender identity drive who campaigns for transgender rights has been forced to defend their membership of the Freemasons amid accusations of hypocrisy.

Edward Lord chairs the City of London’s establishment committee, which has launched a consultation on ending sex segregation in its women-only spaces such as public lavatories and changing facilities at well-known landmarks including Hampstead Heath ponds, the Barbican arts centre, Tower Bridge and the Museum of London.

Man who claims to be “non-binary” takes right to privacy from pervy men away from women.

A Twitter row erupted yesterday as it emerged that Lord, who identifies as non-binary and asks to be described by the pronoun “they,” is a Freemason, an institution that has famously refuses to allow women to join its men-only lodges.

Oh well that’s easy to explain. Men have a right to privacy, including men who call themselves “non-binary.” Women have no such right. Clear?

Quinta Jurecic on why Trump has to be impeached:

Here are the facts: The president is unsuited to his office. That should have been obvious well before the release of the special counsel’s report, but the text of the report, even with a smattering of redactions, makes his unfitness brutally clear. He shows no understanding of the responsibilities of the presidency. He delights in the abuse of his power. As Memorial Day approaches, he is reportedly planning to celebrate the holiday by pardoning, among other service members accused of war crimes, a Navy SEAL scheduled to stand trial for the murder of multiple unarmed Iraqi civilians.

Because hooray for murdering unarmed civilians in foreign countries; that’s what we stand for now. My Lai? Our finest hour.

Jurecic notes that Pelosi opposes impeachment for pragmatic reasons: because it will energize his base.

This is a very practical argument. But there is value to an impeachment inquiry—and to impeachment—as an act in itself, regardless of whether the Senate will convict or what the president’s supporters will think.

Pelosi and the more hardheaded Democratic strategists regard this position as overly idealistic. That’s the point.

Trump is absurd in the colloquial sense, she goes on, but also in the philosophical sense.

What better to emphasize the gap between the desire for the Constitution to mean something and the reality of the document as some words on paper than the scene of Donald J. Trump swearing an oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”?

The Constitution is what Camus would call a “closed universe”—a space of “coherence and unity” in an incoherent world, in which words carry weight and actions have consequences. Trump’s disrespect for the law is a reminder of how fragile that structure of meaning can be. For that reason, there is a real service in using impeachment proceedings to push back against the notion that, in the parlance of the internet, “lol nothing matters.”

Susan Hennessey and I have argued that the House of Representatives has a duty to begin an impeachment inquiry insofar as representatives swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “well and faithfully” execute the duties of their office. Another way of saying this is that an impeachment inquiry depends on an insistence that this oath really means something—and that the president’s oath means something as well. Keith Whittington, likewise, has written that impeachment is partially a matter of “norm creation and norm reinforcement.” And Yoni Appelbaum argued that the impeachment of Andrew Johnson “drew the United States closer to living up to its ideals.”

Let’s have a little norm reinforcement around here.

Hmmm.

WATCH: Is biological sex binary?@JoanMcAlpine MSP says women are discriminated against because of their biological sex. @MaggieChapman argues that the issue of reforming the Gender Recognition Act, is about identity not sex. See the full #scotnight debate at 10.40pm tonight. pic.twitter.com/NEgOU0mHhh

— ScotlandTonight (@ScotlandTonight) May 23, 2019

JM: Women are discriminated against because of their biological sex, and we can’t erase that because if we erase that we’re erasing women.

MC: But we know that biological sex is not binary…Biological sex is not binary. We are talking about identity here Joan…

What is identity then? What are people using it to mean? It’s become a magic word that means whatever you need it to mean in the moment and then its opposite a few seconds later. An “identity” that flatly contradicts the identity-haver’s biology is…what? I don’t know what to call it. An item of magical thinking; a fantasy dressed up as something more respectable and adult.  We can, I suppose, decide that our “identity” is that we are ten feet tall and slender as an aspen, but can we, reasonably, try to impose that “identity” on other people? Can we demand, with menaces, that the rest of the world believe in our “identity”? We can in the sense that it’s physically possible, but can we in the sense that it’s a reasonable, workable, justifiable thing to do? Not that I can see.

Oh, Pakistan tells WordPress to block Jesus and Mo, does it?

Pakistan authorities ask WordPress to block posts showing J&M strips, and WordPress says "sure" https://t.co/9uZOAgCfTA

— AuthorJ&M (@JandMo) May 23, 2019

Okay then.

The purge begins.

….during the 2016 Presidential election. The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2019

….Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.” @PressSec

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2019

Show trials. Executions at dawn. Reprisals.

Whoa. So Barr has the sole authority to declassify info related to the Trump investigation over the objections of the original classifying authority – CIA, NSA, etc. A huge accumulation of power and discretion to the AG that I believe is unprecedented. https://t.co/xDTiurMyff

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 24, 2019

Oy.

Trump is unbelievably egotistical pic.twitter.com/eKm38oyjRZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 23, 2019

Oyy.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1131672516622209024