Also

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1131523362415624193

An associate editor of @VICE wants to milkshake me, @HadleyFreeman and @helenlewis, women journalists who disagree with her views on gender. Right. I’d quite like to see the rules on who deserves physical assault and why. Seems only fair. https://t.co/7oososR3ud

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) May 23, 2019

Is Emma Garland embarrassed? Hahaha don’t be silly.

https://twitter.com/emmaggarland/status/1131527830817443840

The Guardian reports a policy change:

Transgender women have had their right to use Hampstead Heath ponds formalised in a new policy.

The City of London Corporation (CoLC), which manages Hampstead Heath and its ponds, announced that it had adopted a new gender identity policy to make sure services in the area “are fully compliant with the Equality Act 2010, and do not discriminate against trans people”.

In January, the City of London, confirmed that the ladies’ pond – which counts people such as the actor Helena Bonham Carter and novelist Esther Freud among its swimmers – was open to transgender women. That was formalised in an announcement on Thursday that the new rules would “ensure a robust and consistent approach to gender identity”.

But what is “gender identity”? And why does the City of London need to have a robust and consistent approach to it? And, most to the point, what about the other rights? Why is the supposed right of transgender women to use the ladies’ pond more important than the right of women to use it? Why is it bad to discriminate against trans people but fine to discriminate against women? What is the point of having a pond for women and then ruling that men can use it too while bragging about rights?

Edward Lord, the chair of the establishment committee, which leads on the CoLC’s workforce and inclusion policies, said: “All communities should be fully respected, and equality and basic human rights upheld.”

Except those of women.

I could see it if the City of London had decided that sex segregation at the Hampstead ponds was an anachronism and a bad idea in light of moves to segregate Muslim women at university events and the like, but that’s not what this is. This is keeping the sex segregation but saying a particular subset of men have the “right” to creep on women while pretending it’s a matter of respect and equality and basic human rights.

A statement on the CoLC website said the new approach would “minimise potential issues of exclusion and discrimination”.

Will it? How can they know that? How can they know there won’t be women who wonder how anyone one will know that all the trans women are genuinely trans women, with not a single opportunistic dude among them?

The announcement comes after a consultation on attitudes to gender identity held last year received nearly 40,000 responses, of which 21,191 were deemed valid. CoLC said 65% of those valid respondents favoured ensuring trans people did not suffer discrimination.

In other words they threw out nearly half the responses in advance. Well that’s one way to get the desired result.

Hmmmm, really?

Morning @Womans_Place_UK . Being transgender is an innate part of the human condition. The only debate to be had about that is how best to deliver trans rights and healthcare.

You can have a thousand sweaty meetings in secret locations, and that will never change.

— Aidan Comerford (@AidanCTweets) May 23, 2019

Being transgender is an innate part of the human condition? So everybody is trans – which is pretty much the same as saying nobody is trans. If everybody is trans we just carry on as before.

But if that is true, why were we never told it before? Why in all this time, when humans were inventing agriculture and trade and alphabets and yoga and the Mars Rover, did no one tell us that being transgender is an innate part of the human condition?

Men who have nothing but contempt for women have a gold mine in trans activism.

Oh wow @NewStatesman went full TERF. This article is one of the most bad faith hateful pieces of writing I've read in a while.https://t.co/ApphkebBf3 pic.twitter.com/1VjUx7f7SP

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) May 22, 2019

He must not read anything at all, then, because it isn’t.

But never mind. He knows how to put women in their place.

the only upside to being astroturfed by radicalized mumsnet users is they think I'm actually capable of growing a beard https://t.co/phStWFAC0U

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) May 22, 2019

Ooooooh radicalized mumsnet users – a tactful way of saying “stupid bitches.” Stupid women with their “babies” and “children,” what can they possibly know about anything, they should leave writing and thinking and talking to the men.

Meanwhile…

Remember the planned redesign of the $20 bill that was going to include the first African American woman to appear on U.S. currency?

Well, don’t expect to see Harriett Tubman on your $20 any time soon.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed Wednesday what had been apparent for some time: The currency redesign pursued by his Obama administration predecessor Jacob Lew not is going to happen during the Trump administration.

Well of course it’s not. Trump has a plan to put war criminals on your $20 so Harriett Tubman will just have to go back to Mexico where she belongs.

Mnuchin said a new design for the $20 bill will not come out until 2028. The $10 and the $50 will come out with new features before that.

In 2016, Lew announced with great fanfare that Tubman, a freed slave who became a 19th century abolitionist, would replace Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, as the face of the $20, and that portraits of suffragists including Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony would be on the back of the $10 note.

But Trump and his enforcers obviously weren’t going to stand for that.

The new designs were to be revealed next year, which is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote.

But President Trump derided the new currency as “pure political correctness” before being elected and suggested Tubman be put on the rarely used $2 bill instead.

Trump is also known to be a fan of Jackson.

The Trail of Tears guy. Of course Trump is a fan.

Currency is for white guys.

Hey kids, let’s play Pretend Feminist for ten seconds before we go back to cheering for forced birth.

After Trump abruptly left legislative leaders meeting today, Kellyanne Conway asked Pelosi if she wanted to respond to what Trump had said. "I'll respond to the president, not staff," Pelosi said. "Wow, that's really pro-woman of you," Kellyanne Conway said back, per aides.

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) May 22, 2019

Ursual Le Guin on abortion:

My friends at NARAL asked me to tell you what it was like before Roe vs Wade. They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke….

What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […]

It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child.

But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children.

The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents….

But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear.

H/t J.A.

The Telegraph introduces the UK to Meghan Murphy:

As one of the lone voices unequivocally arguing that identifying as a different gender does not change one’s chromosomal sex (and, ergo, that trans-women are not actually women) Murphy was swiftly labelled a ‘radical’ feminist, as well as a bigot and a transphobe by her detractors, many of whom also accuse her of being Right-wing.

To Murphy, a once proud socialist with a Marxist father, it’s a laughable claim. But she feels betrayed by the Left. ‘The NDP [Canada’s equivalent to Labour] has fully vilified women who speak out about this,’ she says. ‘They won’t even have a conversation.’

On Monday evening she spoke at a sold-out event on women’s rights in Bloomsbury, where she received something of a rock star’s welcome, with extended applause and whoops of appreciation as she walked onto the podium. It makes our meeting at one of Camden’s most rock ‘n’ roll pubs the following afternoon feel quite appropriate.

The reason for Murphy’s visit is because a similar ideological battle is taking place on this side of the Atlantic. Last year the Government launched a public consultation on ‘gender self-ID’, a policy which would require little more than signing a statement – and no medical oversight – for anyone to obtain a legal gender change. The debate in the UK has been equally fraught, with accusations of transphobia liberally hurled at those who dare raise the potential practical impact of such sweeping legislative reforms.

Liberally in one sense but very illiberally in another.

Murphy has genuine sympathy for those suffering from gender dysphoria (the belief they have been born the wrong sex) but it is outweighed by her concern that trans activists’ increasingly rapacious demands, particularly in the name of trans-women, many of whom, it is believed, opt to retain their male anatomy, will have potentially devastating consequences for women and children in a plethora of areas from professional sports to domestic violence provision.

In Vancouver, she points out, a women’s rape shelter which denied services to trans-women was deemed ‘transphobic’ by local politicians, who subsequently voted to cut its government subsidies. ‘Women who are escaping male violence need somewhere to go,’ Murphy says. ‘And these places are going to lose funding unless they cave [to the demands of trans activists].’ It is for erstwhile uncontroversial statements such as these that Murphy has attracted such opprobrium.

Despite her public aura of bravado, Murphy admits the incessant harassment has taken its toll. In Canada she has lost friends who are afraid to associate with her for fear of damaging their ‘woke’ credentials, received obscene telephone calls, and even been reported to the police for alleged transphobia. ‘They obviously thought it was silly,’ she says, but nevertheless a policeman warned her to ‘be careful’.

‘I’m scared for my safety,’ Murphy confesses. ‘Lots of women are. I know people who’ve lost their jobs over this. Women are being silenced.’

Yes but pronouns. Pronouns, I tell you.

The Times on Donnie’s tantrum:

President Trump abruptly blew up a scheduled meeting with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday, lashing out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi for accusing him of a cover-up and declaring that he could not work with them until they stopped investigating him.

He then marched out into the Rose Garden, where reporters had been gathered, and delivered a statement bristling with anger as he demanded that Democrats “get these phony investigations over with.” He said they could not legislate and investigate at the same time. “We’re going to go down one track at a time,” he said.

Before the White House meeting Pelosi had been meeting with Democrats to talk about impeachment.

She emerged from that meeting with Democrats accusing Mr. Trump of a “cover-up.”

When she and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, arrived at the White House, Mr. Trump was loaded for bear. He walked into the Cabinet Room and did not shake anyone’s hand or sit in his seat, according to a Democrat informed about the meeting. He said that he wanted to advance legislation on infrastructure, trade and other matters, but that Ms. Pelosi had said something “terrible” by accusing him of a cover-up, according to the Democrat.

Well, yes, it’s terrible, because his cover-up is terrible. If you don’t want people saying terrible things about you, don’t do terrible things.

After just three minutes, he left the room before anyone else could speak, the Democrat said. From there, he headed to the Rose Garden, where a lectern had been set up with a sign that said “No Collusion, No Obstruction” and gave statistics intended to show that he had cooperated with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

“Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t do cover-ups.”

He’s been doing cover-ups his entire life. He hides his school and university transcripts, his taxes, his wealth, his sexual assaults, his infidelities, his thefts, his lies, his dirty tricks, his mistakes, his cheating at golf – he tries to cover up things we see him saying and doing on camera. He does do cover-ups. They probably number in the hundreds. He’s a cheat and a thief and a liar. Of course he does cover-ups.

Mr. Schumer expressed shock at the outcome. “What happened in the White House would make your jaw drop,” he said.

He suggested that the real reason Mr. Trump blew up the meeting was that he had not come up with a way to pay for such an enormous spending package and therefore was looking for other excuses. He said it did not make sense that investigations would cause such an eruption because they had met late last month to discuss infrastructure.

So it’s another cover-up, by the guy who doesn’t do cover-ups.

But hey, it makes him look good, right?

Boys’ Club gets boy in trouble yet again. Boys just wonder how come all the rules got changed alla sudden and nobody ever told them.

Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, a Republican, said on Tuesday he plans to step down from his position after lewd and racist text messages between him and his former chief of staff were leaked to the media.

…

Opposition to his leadership snowballed after texts were leaked to the media in which Casada and his now-former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, traded lewd remarks. Sent in the summer of 2016, the messages show Casada egging on the aide as he bragged about a sexual encounter in a restaurant bathroom, as one example.

The leaks also included a text message in which Cothren disparaged African Americans calling black people “idiots.” Only one of those went to Casada, and it is not clear if he responded.

Casada first questioned the authenticity of the texts, then wrote them off in an interview as “locker room talk.” Finally, Casada conceded that the texts were real and apologized.

What is this idea that “locker room talk” is some kind of escape clause? That of course is what Trump said, dismissively, about his “you can grab them by the pussy” brag – the one that cost Billy Bush his job and the respect of his daughter. So what is this idea? Who decided that when men talk contemptuous sexist shit about women in a locker room it doesn’t count? Why the fuck wouldn’t it count? Of course it counts! Locker rooms and other all-guy let your hair down places are where boys and men learn to talk contemptuous sexist shit about women. It’s where they learn they’re expected to talk contemptuous sexist shit about women, and that they’ll be mocked and bullied and ostracized if they don’t.

The fact that the contemptuous sexist shit about women is “locker room talk” doesn’t make it one tiny bit less contemptuous and sexist and guaranteed to train men to look down on women. Not.one.tiny.bit.

Did McGahn surprise us all and heed the subpoena? Nah.

“Our subpoenas are not optional,” Mr Nadler said during his opening remarks on Tuesday. “This committee will hear Mr McGahn’s testimony even if we have to go to court.”

Mr McGahn could be held in contempt for defying the subpoena from Congress.

“We will not allow the president to block congressional subpoenas, putting himself and his allies above the law,” Mr Nadler added.

…

Both the Department of Justice and White House released statements on Monday arguing that Mr McGahn was under no obligation to give evidence.

You might as well say “the Five Families released statements on Monday arguing that Mr McGahn was under no obligation to give evidence.” It’s every bit as meaningful. Trump’s grotesquely compliant employees released statements on Monday arguing that Mr McGahn was under no obligation to give evidence; of course they did; they’re all in for their mob boss.

Not good.

Today, Governor Jay Inslee declared a drought emergency that now expands across nearly half of Washington, with snow pack under 50 percent of normal across highlighted areas.

Hotter, drier conditions lead to more wildfires. This drought is a reminder that we expect 2019 will be a tough fire season. We are preparing as best we can to meet this challenge, but ask you to take caution and be vigilant when doing activities that may spark fires.

Fires in all directions, it will be.

The constitutional crisis rolls on, with Congressional Democrats being irritatingly feeble.

Donald Trump has blocked the former White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying before Congress about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference.

Donald Trump can’t “block him” from testifying. It’s just a power play and McGahn should ignore it, but he’s not, he’s said he’ll obey this arbitrary demand from someone he no longer works for.

In a legal opinion released on Monday, the justice department said lawmakers on Capitol Hill cannot compel McGahn, who was subpoenaed by the House judiciary committee, to answer their questions under oath.

Because “the justice department” is wholly in the bag for Trump. It’s not a justice department, it’s just a branch of the Trump operation.

The White House’s intervention was condemned by Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the judiciary committee. “The Mueller Report documents a shocking pattern of obstruction of justice,” he said in a statement. “The President acted again and again – perhaps criminally – to protect himself from federal law enforcement.

“Don McGahn personally witnessed the most egregious of these acts. President Trump knows this. He clearly does not want the American people to hear firsthand about his alleged misconduct, and so he has attempted to block Mr McGahn from speaking in public tomorrow.”

The move is the latest example of the Trump administration’s “disdain for the law”, added Nadler, who said the committee will meet as planned on Tuesday morning and still expects McGahn to appear.

Yes, groovy, but what are they going to do? Anything?

McGahn was subpoenaed by Nadler last month and, under instruction by the White House, failed to meet an initial deadline to appear before the committee. Nadler threatened to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress if he did not meet a second deadline of 21 May.

So do it. Don’t threaten; do it.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, tweeted on Monday: “This WH position can’t POSSIBLY be the law when the House is exercising its power to investigate whether the president has committed impeachable offenses. The OLC [Office of Legal Counsel]/ Cipollone view would rip the Impeachment Power root and branch out of the Constitution.”

And the Dems will just stand around and watch, looking pained.

Saw this by Mike Twohy in the New Yorker: