Sorry! The power went out. Blammo at 5:45 a.m. It’s now 8:45 p.m. – the power blinked back on about 5 minutes ago. Whew. It was getting grim – the light fading, no ability to warm up food, freezing cold. I went out for a little walk, to have something to do and to see if I could sense any progress. There were a lot of City Light trucks lined up and several guys in a hole in the sidewalk – more guys than you would think would fit. I did a broad loop and on the homeward stretch there were four people playing fiddle music on a porch – playing it really well. Cheered me up a good deal. And then finally ping and a light came on and the fridge started up. Fooooood.

Ahhhhhhhhh that makes all the difference.

That’s fine then. That’s how it works. He doesn’t use the term “nigger” on all Black people, just the ones who do something he dislikes. That’s absolutely fine, and very fair and helpful and above all progressive.

What does Desmond in San Francisco say to women who say something he dislikes?

This:

The glorious future looks brighter with every day, wouldn’t you agree?

Scottish DARVO:

A senior SNP politician has accused JK Rowling of wasting police time and attacking Scottish “societal values” by testing new hate crime laws.

Rowling is wasting police time? I’d say it’s the SNP lawmakers who are wasting police time.

Karen Adam, who is convener of Holyrood’s equalities committee, launched a thinly veiled attack on the Harry Potter author in a defence of Humza Yousaf’s controversial legislation, which she hailed as an “incredible example of our commitment to justice”.

It’s incredible all right, but not as an example of any kind of commitment to justice.

On the first day that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force, Rowling deliberately “misgendered” a series of high-profile trans women, calling them men and challenging Police Scotland to arrest her.

You mean Rowling called some men “men.” What’s your point?

Writing in her column in The National, a pro-independence newspaper, Ms Adam took aim at “deliberate provocations seen in recent times where individuals had tested the boundaries of the legislation”. She added: “[They] do more than just waste police time, they strike at the very core of our societal values. These actions aren’t just about challenging a legal framework, they question our collective resolve to build a community where hatred finds no home.”

Hatred finds lots of homes in Scotland: hatred of women who know what a man is and won’t shut up is rampant there. Ms Adam is demonstrating it herself.

More on Tickle v Giggle:

The case is the first time alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by the federal court and goes to the heart of how gender identity – and being a woman – is interpreted.

I can remember when being a woman – the brute fact part of it – didn’t require interpretation. A tree is a tree, a bird is a bird, a woman is a woman. What follows from that is infinitely discussable, but the mere word, not so much.

On Tuesday, federal court justice Robert Bromwich heard Tickle has lived as woman since 2017, has a birth certificate stating that her gender is female, had gender affirmation surgery and “feels in her mind that psychologically she is a woman”.

But what does “has lived as a woman” mean? Especially when it’s a man who claims to have done so? You can pretend to be a woman, you can fantasize being a woman, you can live according to your ideas of how a woman lives, but just plain “has lived as a woman”? The meaning is somewhat opaque. Seeing as how that’s what the case is about, such opaque claims should be avoided.

In her opening remarks, Tickle’s barrister Georgina Costello KC said that “Ms Tickle is a woman” but that “the respondents flatly deny that fact”.

That’s because it isn’t a fact. The respondents flatly deny it because it’s not true. A mere twenty years ago everyone knew it wasn’t a fact that this guy here is a woman. Now we’re required to lie about it. We refuse.

Making it look a little too easy there, Sport. People are bound to get suspicious.

Random person says “I was beaten up” and shares random photo. Is the photo of the person who claims to have been beaten up? I see no reason to think so. I see no reason to believe what random person says, either. I don’t even believe random person is in Coventry! When I get skeptical I don’t mess around.

And then the instant follow-up with “Here’s where to send me money” doesn’t make it more believable. It provides a motive, you see – a motive beyond mere attention-seeking. If people are gullible, why not slap random photos of bruised faces up on Twitter and then give directions on where to send $$$? It’s like taking candy from a baby, but without the drool.

Furthermore, if you read some replies, you find that this jessica has done it before, and not once but several times. Ooh ahh ow I got beaten up send me money.

It’s kind of trans ideology summed up, in a way. “Hello I’m trans I’m special reward me now.”

Climate change is a human rights issue (as well as an issue under other headings).

A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate.

…

The ruling is binding and can trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK.

The Court ruled that Switzerland had “failed to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change” and that it had violated the right to respect for private and family life. It also found that “there had been critical gaps” in the country’s policies to tackle climate change including failing to quantify reductions in greenhouse gases – those gases that warm Earth’s atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.

Does anyone have to pay attention? Yes.

Decisions made in the European Court of Human Rights influence law across its 46 member states. Estelle Dehon KC, a barrister at Cornerstone Barristers in the UK, said “the judgement deals with difficult issues that also vex the UK courts in a way that may be persuasive. It comprehensively dismisses the argument that courts cannot rule on climate legal obligations because climate change is a global phenomenon or because action by one state is just a ‘drop in the ocean’,” she told BBC News.

So, it’s a start.

Can it get any more maddeningly idiotic?

Females-only app that banned trans woman says it was creating a ‘safe space’

Lawyers for trans woman Roxanne Tickle have argued she is a woman and was discriminated against when she was banned from using a female-only app.

Then lawyers for trans woman Roxanne Tickle are talking deranged nonsense. Women are women; trans women are men. That’s what “trans” means. It means fake, pretend, fantasy, delusion. A person’s sex is not something that can be switched via argument or declaration or assertion or claim or announcement.

There are two separate problems here and in all these conflicts. One is the desirability or otherwise of pretending that people are the other sex, and forcing others to pretend the same thing, and the other is the brute reality of human sexual dimorphism. The first is open to argument; the second is just a fact. If Tickle’s lawyers are “arguing” that he’s a woman they’re “arguing” something that’s not subject to “argument.” It’s pointless and silly to “argue” impossibilities. Adults should stop doing that.

The question of whether someone is a woman is not just biological but also social and psychological, a court has heard on the first day of a landmark trans-rights lawsuit.

No it isn’t, not in the sense that a man can be literally a woman despite being a “biological” man. Being one or the other of course brings a lot of social and psychological baggage with it, but that doesn’t make men women.

The app and its founder, Sall Grover, illegally discriminated on the grounds of gender identity, Tickle’s lawyer Georgina Costello told a Federal Court hearing in Sydney on Tuesday. “The evidence will show that Ms Tickle is a woman,” Costello said. “She perceives herself as a woman. She presents herself as a woman.”

Doesn’t matter. He can “present himself” as an armadillo, he can say he perceives himself as an armadillo, but he remains not an armadillo. Perception is reality for some things, but not for others. It’s generally quite a good idea to know which is which. You want that bridge over the ravine to be real, not a figment of your imagination.

The Guardian reports via the Associated Press:

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which oversees smaller US colleges, announced a policy Monday that essentially bans transgender athletes from women’s sports.

The NAIA’s council of presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote on Monday, according to CBS Sports. The NAIA, which oversees about 83,000 athletes at schools across the US, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.

According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports. In contrast, only athletes whose biological sex is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women’s sports. A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.

Shockingly, the Guardian (or the Associated Press) for once (albeit several paragraphs in) admits there’s a reason for keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports. The males have a built-in physical advantage and the trans men have a physical advantage via doping aka “hormone therapy.”

“With the exception of competitive cheer and competitive dance, the NAIA created separate categories for male and female participants,” the NAIA said. “Each NAIA sport includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes. As a result, the NAIA policy for transgender student-athletes applies to all sports except for competitive cheer and competitive dance, which are open to all students.”

If you blinked you missed it, but it’s there – “providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes.”

But what it gives it takes away. The photo the Guardian chose to illustrate this story on women in sports is a row of girls’ thighs and crotches. Subtle.

H/t Sackbut

The Scottish Feminist Network speaks up:

From The Scottish Daily Express:

Police chiefs are facing an angry backlash over their handling of a women’s free speech rally on Saturday, which saw feminists and trans protesters clash, it can be revealed. Up to 1000 gender critical women and trans activists faced off in Edinburgh during outspoken women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak rally, the first major test of Scotland’s controversial new hate crime laws.

To put it more bluntly, feminist women held a free speech rally and trans “activists” did their best to drown it out.

While Ms Keen publicly thanked Police Scotland “for keeping women safe at the event”, many among her supporters were left angry and frustrated. Several complained about being “corralled” into too small a space while being surrounded on three sides by trans activists hurling abuse at them throughout the two-hour event.

In other words the trans “activists” had quite a lot of success in their efforts to shout over women talking about women’s rights.

They were labelled “Nazis” by mega-phone wielding trans activists close to where the women were gathered and at one point officers “contained” the section of trans activists as they shouted and chanted insults at the women. Many women told of their anger and anxiety at being “kettled” and encircled by a hostile crowd with whistles, sirens, megaphones and horns in a bid to drown out the women’s event.

They turn up with sirens and horns but the women are the “Nazis.”

One woman posted on Twitter/X: “It was extraordinary. Struggling to think of any other situation which would be policed this way. Watching police stand by and allow men to surround and scream abuse at a peaceful gathering of women, even facilitating their actions, felt deeply uncomfortable.”

Another at the event said: “We are now quite crushed in the cage. We have asked police several times to move the barriers back to give us a bit more room. We have disabled and elderly people here and we are absolutely crammed in.” While another wrote: “The number of people who were contained behind barriers with only one exit what on earth were #PoliceScotland thinking?”

Probably what they’re usually thinking: women don’t matter.

Agent-free passive voice and periphrasis dialed up to 1000:

H/t Sackbut

We’re not going to get any eclipse fun here in Seattle, because it’s all clouds up there. Nothing will change. It won’t even get darker.

But while we’re on the subject – this is a puzzle that doesn’t get discussed enough – how utterly bizarre is it that from here on this planet, the moon, which is practically next door, and the sun, which is way the fuck out there, ARE THE SAME SIZE???

I mean what are the odds? Eh? You wouldn’t place a bet on them. And yet there it is: from here, the moon can neatly block the sun such that only the corona is visible.

It’s downright creepy, is what it is.

Someone called Wren Sanders wrote a deferential piece on Judith Butler. Before we read it let’s find out who Wren Sanders is.

Wren Sanders (she/they) is an award-winning journalist and the editor of Them’s Community Section. Since joining the site in 2019, she has explored subjects such as Arca’s divine mutations, the case against LGBTQ+ military inclusion, and the power of trans monstrosity. As an editor, she is drawn to stories of resilience and insurgent joy, critiques of contemporary culture and politics, and visions of more livable worlds.

Is insurgent joy like trans joy, or is it a different kind of joy altogether? How do they both relate to intersectional joy? I’ll put research on that question aside for later, or never. So:

To be trans in the United States today is to live with a preternaturally high tolerance for the absurd. It was just a few years ago that conservative lawmakers in Ohio were faced with the mortal and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and chose to turn the state’s legislative focus to the “issue” of five transgender girls, out of some 400,000 high school athletes, competing in youth sports. 

Ah; so that’s where we are. We are of the school of thought that sneers when anyone says it’s not fair for male people to infiltrate women’s sports.

Hundreds of anti-trans bills later, it seems abundantly clear, if not painfully obvious, that there must be something deeper than rank transphobia fueling the right-wing fixation with our bodies and lives.

So Wren is a man who pretends to be a woman and treats the rights of actual women as disposable. Just the right fella to do another love letter to Butler.

The philosopher Judith Butler has spent the last several years searching for the roots of this gender panic. In their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the famed critical theorist frames the scourge of anti-trans legislation here in the U.S. as just one tentacle of a global neo-fascist crusade. 

Oh dear. Wren is trying to write with style or panache or something, so we get a crusade with tentacles.

The “anti-gender ideology movement,” as Butler calls it, exists everywhere from Bolsanaro’s Brazil to Putin’s Russia to the TERFs of the United Kingdom and beyond. And though it may take slightly unique forms

Hahahaha “slightly unique” – this guy is a real ringer.

The interview itself is dull and badly written and edited. There is one interesting bit though where Butler just makes a dumb mistake. Not her usual word-salad “sophisticated” mistake but just a clunker. Wren invites her to demonize JKR some more and we get:

God, why does she do this? I’m going to just look this up…Oh here it is: “Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilized, resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses.” I see, so she’s making fun of us.

You know, I’m a parent. I didn’t give birth to anybody. I’m no less of a parent than somebody who did. When she talks that way, she’s putting down adoptive parents, she’s putting down blended families, she’s putting down all kinds of kinship arrangements where kids end up with new guardians or new parents after having lost theirs — in war, or through forcible migration, or any number of issues.

Except she’s not, because she didn’t say “parent,” she said “birthing parent.” See? Birthing. The point of that was to specify the kind of parent that gives birth as opposed to the kind that doesn’t.

Not one of Butler’s better chats.

Kara Dansky a few weeks ago:

I have been thinking about the potential conflict between laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” in places of public accommodation and criminal laws that prohibit voyeurism and indecent exposure at least since 2021, when a man named Darren Merager decided to parade his naked body (complete with erection) around the women’s section of Wi Spa, a Korean-style nude spa in Los Angeles.

You remember that incident, I’m sure.

A video of a woman named Cubana Angel complaining about the incident went viral. In the video, she is seen asking staff: 

I just want to be clear with you: It’s okay … for a man to go into the women’s section … He’s a man … HE IS A MAN … He’s not no female. 

The staff member refers to a law and Cubana Angel replies:

Really? What law?

The law the staff member was referring to is California Civil Code § 51, also known as the Unruh Act. That law, among other things, prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation (like spas, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc.) on the basis of sex. Section (e)(5) of the Act states that sex includes, but is not limited to:

a person’s gender. “Gender” means sex, and includes a person’s gender identity and gender expression. “Gender expression” means a person’s gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

Ok but I was just reading about the Unruh Act, before I read Kara’s post, and here’s the thing: it was passed in 1959. Legislators weren’t burbling about “gender expression” and similar bullshit in 1959. Section (e)(5) must be a very recent update, perhaps written by the ACLU and smuggled in in a box of cough drops.

At any rate the point of it, of course, is that all these driveling idiots have made it, or are trying to make it, legal for men to prance naked into women’s locker rooms and illegal for women to insist on locker rooms without naked men prancing around, and the ACLU simply cannot contain its joy.

Can a gym or spa deny me service, or exclude me from gender-segregated spaces, because I’m transgender and/or nonbinary?

No. Under the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code § 51), business establishments in California may not deny anyone “full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services” because of their sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression (as well as other traits like race, national origin, religion, and disability). This means people who are transgender or nonbinary have the right to full and equal participation in a gym or spa experience, including access to locker rooms and other spaces based on their gender identity.

But it also means that people who are women or girls do not have the right to full and equal participation in a gym or spa experience, including access to locker rooms and other spaces without boys and men in them.

I hate the ACLU with such a passion.

The argument from they exist:

Compelling.

Likewise, frimblz exist and frimblz are frimblz. Why, because frimblz exist, that’s why.

You can’t argue with that.

Willz is now reporting people to the police for laughing.

The cells are going to fill to the brim before you can say “knife.”

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Shelf life.

Trans women like Patiha are among the most affected by extreme weather linked to climate change, as well as suffering disproportionately when disasters strike.

“Women, the elderly, and people with disabilities are mentioned, but there is no provision for sexual and gender minorities,” Darmawan said.

Perhaps TiMs are more absorbent, or prone to melting than mere mortals in the face of climate change. They are, by their own admission, “the most vulnerable and marginalized” ever, of everyone. Their misery and poverty is ever so much worse than anyone else’s. They are uniquely disadvantaged and targeted amongst all humans, and most endangered species. Why shouldn’t they also be preferrentially prone to any kind of misfortune, human or natural? So we should be expecting them to demand special mention, attention, and provision in other disaster warnings and responses. It’s only fair, right?

In earthquakes, they are more squishy than everyone else. (If they’ve been on puberty blockers, with their resultant bone loss, this is doubly true.) They get first crack at all the seismology alerts, and the safest spots to stand.

In fires, they are extremely flammable. (Think of all the product in their hair.) They get all the fire extinguishers.

In volcanic erruptions, they attract lava and pumice. And don’t get me started on pyroclastic clouds! They get evacuated first.

In thunderstorms, they are like lightning rods. They get all the rubber soled shoes.

In Tornado Alley, they’re like human trailer parks. They get their own portable storm cellars, strategically placed every hundred yards or so, for their exclusive use.

On airliners, their seats must be more robustly built and crash-survivable than even the flight data recorders.

When the sun goes nova, they’re on the first ships to leave.

Etc.

No cost is too high to protect the Most Vulnerable of All, Ever, and Always. If you haven’t planned for their safety and protection specifically, above and beyond all other so-called marginalized and “at risk” groups, it’s because you want them DEAD.

What was the US justice system thinking?

Every night since August 2022, a small crowd has gathered outside the Washington DC Central Jail, through frigid winter nights and under spring rain, to protest against the US justice system.

The protesters outside the red-brick buildings of the facility pray, discuss the news, and broadcast telephone calls with prisoners inside the jail, where hundreds of accused or convicted rioters have been held in the three years since the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol.

What are the protesters protesting? Is the thinking here that violent assaults on the federal government should be legal?

In recent months, as Donald Trump has gripped the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, the protesters have taken heart from the ex-president’s vocal public support for those who attacked Congress.

If we’re really really lucky he’ll be president again by this time next year, and laws will cease to exist.

At rallies, Mr Trump plays a version of the national anthem recorded by the J6 Prison Choir – an anonymous group of prisoners thought to include several violent offenders. On Wednesday, he posted a video of the song on his Truth Social account, describing them as “January 6th hostages” – a term he has increasingly used in reference to the rioters.

…

When a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters breached the US Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, the images of police and security officers under attack and armed rioters surging into the centre of American democracy shocked the country.

Around 140 police officers were assaulted, according to justice department figures. In total, more than 1,350 people have been arrested since then. Nearly 30 January 6 inmates are reported to be currently held in the DC jail, most of them charged with assaulting officers.

30. I was confused by the bit where the BBC said “prisoners inside the jail, where hundreds of accused or convicted rioters have been held” because that sounded like way too many, but now I get it: they meant hundreds over the past four years, not hundreds now. Werdz are tricky.

There’s a tiny thread of hope here.

Polling, however, suggests the idea that the Capitol rioters are being treated unfairly is broadly rejected by most Americans.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey in December 2023 found that nearly three-quarters of respondents believed punishments had either been “fair” or “not harsh enough”. And a recent survey by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found two-thirds of Americans thought the riot was “very” or “extremely” violent.

…

Gunner Ramer, political director of Republican Accountability, a political action committee opposed to Mr Trump, said the campaign rhetoric about January 6 “hostages” could be particularly damaging among voters that might ultimately determine the outcome of the election.

“Trump talking about ‘political prisoners’ activates victimhood grievance politics and connects with Republican primary voters,” he said. “But when you’re talking about swing voters – those who supported Trump in 2016 but not in 2020 – they are absolutely repulsed by January 6.”

Maybe it will be his undoing. Fingers crossed.

Originally a comment by Athel Cornish-Bowden on Local misogyny.

Kaspar Zeta-Skeet said there was an “assumption” among some teenagers he taught “that women are things just to be observed”

I fear that that is indeed a common assumption of boys, made much worse by social media.

In France, we are experiencing a particularly nasty series of violent attacks on teenagers by other teenagers — three in three days, not all girls. The first concerned a young girl of 13 in Montpellier. She had been bullied for around 18 months, especially by a somewhat older girl who considered that she wasn’t a proper Muslim because she wore normal clothes and joined in regular school activities. This older girl, or one of her friends, sent a telephone message to many people at her school asking them to meet outside the school to teach the younger one a lesson. About 20 people, mostly or all teenagers, did exactly that, and gathered outside the entrance. Three of them (including the older girl) knocked the victim down and kicked her, on the head and elsewhere, until she was unconscious and had a brain haemorrhage. She was taken to hospital and fortunately her life is no longer in danger. What the other 17 were doing I don’t know, maybe just enjoying the spectacle, or taking videos on their telephones.

The second occurred in the outskirts of Paris the next day and concerned a boy on his way back from school. He was attacked by five older boys in balaclavas and left unconscious in the middle of the road. Tragically, the doctors weren’t able to save him, and he died. They’ve not revealed any information about the apparent motives. The boy was called Shemasedine, so maybe this also had a religious motive.

The third occurred in Tours the following day, but they haven’t revealed any details.

In the1990s and earlier hazing was a big problem in the cours préparatoires for preparing for the examinations for the Grandes Écoles. The then Minister of Education, Ségolène Royal, ended it in 1998 almost from one day to the next by announcing the principals of Lycées would be held personally responsible for any hazing that occurred and if they said that they couldn’t prevent it they would be relieved of their positions and replaced by someone who could. Suddenly they all found that they could prevent it. That was in 1998; in 1999, when our daughter went to the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles, which had had some of the worst cases, there was no hazing at all, and she loved the two years she there. I think something along the same lines with schools that today don’t prevent bullying and sometimes violence might have a good effect.

So is Mr Menno.

His rage is heartwarming.