Oh honestly. Men.

First, Joe Biden.

Mr. Biden, speaking at a University of Miami rally to combat sexual assault, said, “A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,’ ” according to an Associated Press report.

That’s not what Trump said though. He said he can grab them by the pussy and he did not say she likes it. He said “they let you do it.” Big, huge difference there. It’s not at all about what she likes, it’s about what he can force on her. It’s weird and depressing that even Biden doesn’t know that. Trump is bragging about being so famous that women are afraid to slap his hand away. He’s bragging about being able to do things to women that they didn’t invite and don’t want.

But that’s not even it.

Mr. Biden was referring to an Access Hollywood audio recording in which Mr. Trump is heard boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. Mr. Biden continued, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

Oh shut up. One, nobody needs more stupid boasting and chest-beating. Two, really? You sure about that? Three, what would that even prove? Four, you know that will just set him off. Five, shut up, it’s not about you, nobody asked you to make ludicrous historical-fiction woulda coulda ex post facto threats, that’s not what women need.

Oh, and seven – Anita Hill. You left Anita Hill to twist in the wind, so shut up shut up shut up.

Second, Donnie TwoScoops.

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!

The sitting president, everybody.

Uh oh. Crops rotting in the fields.

Vegetable prices may be going up soon, as a shortage of migrant workers is resulting in lost crops in California.

Farmers say they’re having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News.

Mind you, when I see those claims I always think they’re leaving something out: Farmers say they’re having trouble hiring enough people at low enough wages. But still, this is also a wholly foreseeable consequence of Trump’s racist war on immigrants.

The ongoing battle about U.S. immigration policies is blamed for the shortage. The vast majority of California’s farm workers are foreign born, with many coming from Mexico. However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

To make the jobs more attractive, farmers are offering salaries above minimum wage, along with paid time off and 401(k) plans, but even that’s not proving enough.

“Even”? The work is backbreaking and often hazardous, and “above the minimum wage” isn’t exactly wealth. But still, for many people it’s both a step up and a ladder up and out for their children. Anyway – this is Trumpland now, so get used to it.

Kris Kobach really doesn’t want to stop suppressing votes.

A Kansas federal judge had sharp words for Republican Secretary of State [of Kansas] Kris Kobach during a contempt hearing Tuesday, accusing him of misleading the court and failing to inform voters whose registrations were previously suspended that they are eligible to vote.

In May 2016, Judge Julie Robinson issued a preliminary injunction ordering Kobach “to register for federal elections all otherwise eligible motor voter registration applicants,” whether or not they have shown a documentary proof of citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit challenging Kobach’s proof of citizenship law, argued that Kobach was failing to add voters to the rolls, making eligible voters cast provisional ballots, and failing to send voters affected by the preliminary injunction a postcard that would notify them of their registration status.

He didn’t send them or tell the counties to send them; the judge rebuked him for this; he said “But you didn’t tell me to!”

“Why would I order something you told me you’d take care of?” the judge said, according to ProPublica’s Jessica Huseman, who was in the courtroom. “You are under ethical obligation to tell me the truth… that’s why lawyers are licensed.”

And they can be de-licensed aka disbarred if they don’t.

Melania Trump campaigns against cyberbullying.

The jokes write themselves, and so do the exclamations of outrage. If she can’t persuade that monstrosity she’s married to, what sense does it make for her to try to persuade anyone else?

With a particular focus on social media, Melania Trump, the first lady, has long said she wants to curb online bullying and harassment as part of a nascent effort to improve the lives of American children. There’s one problem: Mrs. Trump’s efforts often clash with the president’s longtime habit of using social media to insult people.

A habit which continues even now that he is president of the US, and thus automatically has more power and clout and influence than anyone he insults on social media. He’s a bully three times over.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Trump invited representatives from Facebook, Snap, Google, Amazon and Twitter to the White House for a round-table discussion on the topic. In a speech, she said that she had received letters from children who have been bullied or feel threatened on social media.

“I am well aware that people are skeptical of me discussing this topic,” Mrs. Trump said on Tuesday. “I have been criticized for my commitment to tackling this issue, and I know that will continue. But it will not stop me from doing what I know is right. I am here with one goal: helping children and our next generation.”

Does she know why people are skeptical of her discussing this topic? It’s not random or arbitrary, let alone unfair, so saying it won’t stop her misses the point. Her husband is the world’s single worst cyberbully, and she hasn’t left him, so she’s kind of forfeited the high ground on this subject.

The old “human right” switcheroo:

When Roger Severino tells his story, discrimination is at its heart.

“I did experience discrimination as a child. And that leaves a lasting impression,” he tells me.

Severino directs the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When I meet with him at his office in the shadow of the Capitol, he talks about his childhood as the son of Colombian immigrants growing up in Los Angeles.

“I remember a white kid coming up, as I was in the pool, [who] said a racial epithet,” Severino recalls. “My response as a kid was — I was confused, in a way. Why would they say such a thing?”

In high school he was steered toward vocational training but he said no thank you, honors classes for me, and on he went to Harvard Law.

But now he’s using civil rights talk as a screen for imposing conservative Catholic dogma on all of us.

Severino — a devout Catholic and political conservative — has put the right to religious freedom front and center in his fight against discrimination in health care.

In public appearances he refers to religious freedom as “the first freedom.” Since coming to HHS he has issued a rule that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control as part of their employee health insurance plans, if employers have a religious or moral objection to contraception.

Rights can be in tension with each other, of course. Rights to equal treatment are in tension with “rights” to treat people unequally. That’s what’s going on here: Severino wants to create and protect a “right” to deny people medical treatment on religious grounds.

And earlier this year he created an entirely new division within the civil rights office — the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom. Its mission, he says, is to ensure that health care workers and health care companies, are never forced to participate in particular medical services — such as abortion, assisted suicide or gender reassignment surgery — if they object.

…

Just a few weeks after he started at HHS, Severino met with representatives from several different advocacy groups — including Judith Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

She says Severino billed the meeting with about 20 people as a “listening session.”

“He opened the meeting telling us his heartfelt story about knowing and understanding discrimination,” she says. “And, frankly, stories will get you just so far.”

Because he was “listening,” Lichtman says, Severino declined to answer questions about his own positions on specific issues. But she believes his actions since then — including creating the religious freedom office — point to a desire to limit women’s access to reproductive health services.

“Abortion is a legal health care service in this country,” Lichtman says. “And if, indeed, what Mr. Severino is intending to do is to undermine protections for women who are seeking a legal health care service, I’d say that’s pretty abhorrent.”

Well, maybe abortion won’t be a legal health care service for much longer. Problem solved?

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on They can’t see what they can’t see.

I get frustrated with the way this debate gets framed. It’s not that the “ideas” that Damore and his ilk promote are “off limits,” as Coyne would have it. It’s that they are such inferior ideas when it comes to explaining our present reality.

I have no quarrel with the abstract notion that women and men may differ, whether biologically or for culture-driven reasons that we don’t wish to change, in ways that mean that not every profession will end up with a 50/50 split of men and women even when we have achieved complete and utter Gender Equality Utopia. Call this the Gender Differences Hypothesis.

What I do quarrel with is the claim (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied) that all observable deviations from a 50/50 split can be explained by the GDH, and therefore we can declare that discrimination is trivial or non-existent and that we are already in Gender Equality Utopia. Not when virtually all of those deviations from a 50/50 split seem, curiously, to fall in such a way that men are disproportionately represented in those professions that are most powerful, well-compensated, and respected. Not when we have all sorts of scientifically rigorous, peer-reviewed research that show that (e.g.) the same behavior that is perceived as strong leadership from a man is seen as bitchy and pushy from a woman, that women somehow got hired more often for symphonies when auditions were made gender-blind, that women professors are discriminated against on student evaluations.

You know — the sort of hard scientific evidence that critical thinking scientists claim to value over feelings and anecdotes and folk legends. Unless those folk legends involve speculation about how women like pink because their evolutionary forebears handled the berry-picking.

Back when the United States passed Title IX and required that colleges receiving federal funds provide equal access to athletic programs for women, there were many who declared that this was absurd because women just weren’t as interested in sports as men, it was obvious, and trying to force it to be otherwise was an exercise in “social engineering.” Well, it turns out that women and girls were a lot more interested in sports than they were generally given credit for. Once those opportunities were provided, college women were interested. And younger girls, given something to aspire to, got interested, too.

Twenty years ago, if asked about these things, I probably would have agreed with the Damores and Blackfords and Coynes of the world. The reason I changed my mind isn’t because I decided to put feelings or abstract utopian goals ahead of cold hard facts; it was that I looked at the cold hard facts and realized that some of my assumptions were wrong.

To circle back to the original point (finally!): the GDH isn’t “off limits” any more than “God did it” is “off limits” as an explanation of the creation and diversity of life forms on this planet. It just comes up short as an explanation.

I wrote a post on Facebook a bit ago:

You know what I’m sick of? I’ll tell you what I’m sick of. I’m sick of men writing think pieces explaining why women should be perfectly happy to see men writing think pieces about how women just happen not to be suited to all those careers in which they’re a minority, because it’s their temperament to be too nurturing and cuddly to be suited for [desirable job X].

I’m sick of seeing those men never pause for one second to take into account the fact that being seen as unsuited for [desirable job X] IS ITSELF AN OBSTACLE and that they themselves are adding to the obstacle by lecturing us on why we shouldn’t be “offended” by such claims but just smile acceptingly and take it all on board.

That’s what I’m sick of.

Then I decided to talk about it here including saying what the source irritant was. It was a pair of articles, by Russell Blackford and then by Jerry Coyne linking to Russell, on the Damore memo and how reasonable it was and how mistaken it is to think otherwise.

Russell first:

In August 2017, James Damore, a Google software engineer, was fired for writing an internal memo that offered views about sex-related differences in interests and emotions.

Damore had suggested that part of the over-representation of men in software engineering at Google might be due to psychological differences between women and men: not intellectual differences, but differences in what activities the sexes find attractive and enjoyable. He argued that Google should focus on equality of opportunity for individuals, without necessarily expecting equality of outcomes across its workforce.

Damore’s firing from Google was an example of an increasing intolerance of inconvenient or controversial ideas within democratic societies. Here, then, is one great moral challenge of our time. Once an issue becomes politically toxic, we may reject inconvenient viewpoints out of hand. We may reject opponents – viewing them as ill-disposed people – without listening to them, and we may even try to punish them for their views.

But this wasn’t a disinterested discussion at a think tank. It was a non-supervisory male employee writing up his unsolicited opinions on why there are fewer women than men in jobs like the ones at Google – in other words a contribution to a hostile work environment. It’s not just a matter of “oh my god this man’s valuable academic opinion on a completely random abstract subject has been suppressed!!” – it’s also a matter of person from favored group explaining to disfavored group that it’s disfavored because of its own psychological quirks, in the workplace. If one put it in racial or ethnic terms it would probably be more obvious how grotesque and discriminatory that is – “Oh you see it’s just that Indians are mystical and contemplative so they don’t want coding jobs, it’s quite natural” – but when it’s women, the dudes just don’t see it.

Damore explained that these are statistical differences, discernible at the level of populations, and that there is a large overlap in the distribution curves for the respective sexes. For example, many individual men might be more oriented to feelings and people than most women. Thus, he emphasised, these findings should not be used to stereotype or prejudge individuals.

No indeed, they should simply be used to explain why there are so few women at Google and there’s no need to do anything about it, especially not telling dudes to quit telling women why they won’t like working at Google.

Now Coyne’s:

As a scientist, I’m appalled when certain ideas that may be true, but offend some group or other, are considered off limits, even when those ideas—like global warming—must be accepted and discussed if we’re to save the planet. Psychological differences between men and women aren’t as dangerous to the welfare of Earth as a whole, but if we’re to figure out the reasons for sex disparity in professions, we have to take them seriously and figure out what effect, if any, they have on gender parity.

But the point isn’t that the ideas “offend”; the point is that they can contribute to an environment perceived as hostile. They certainly don’t have to; research and inquiry into the reasons for sex disparity in professions can obviously be a feminist and a feminist-compatible project; but random coder guy putting out a memo explaining it’s because women would rather stay home with the babies is not that inquiry. Yes, that’s hyperbole; I find the refusal to see this extremely annoying. The point is that Damore is not a researcher or scholar in evo psych or the reasons for sex disparity in professions, and there are sound and compelling reasons to ask why he thought he needed to put out a memo on the subject the upshot of which was “it’s because they don’t want to, not because we don’t let them, so there’s no need to do anything about it.”

Again: I think this would be blindingly obvious to them if it were about race, and I find it infuriating that they can’t see it when it’s about women.

About Cambridge Analytica…

Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers.

In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.

If law enforcement does that it’s entrapment, and it’s not permissible. If freelancers do it…I guess it’s blackmail? Which is illegal.

They also talked about offering bribes, filming it and putting it on the internet.

Offering bribes to public officials is an offence under both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Cambridge Analytica operates in the UK and is registered in the United States.

It’s also nothing to do with Cambridge University.

The admissions were filmed at a series of meetings at London hotels over four months, between November 2017 and January 2018. An undercover reporter for Channel 4 News posed as a fixer for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.

Mr Nix told our reporter: “…we’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you.”

We’re bit players in someone else’s drama.