More from the Times on Darren Osborne.

He had family problems and was known by locals as belligerent and aggressive, with a drinking problem. He had Muslim neighbors, who described his behavior as fairly unremarkable, and his children had Muslim friends.

No one on the cul-de-sac in Cardiff, Wales, where Darren Osborne, 47, lived could readily explain what he is believed to have done: rented a van, driven it 150 miles to London and plowed into a crowd of Muslims as they finished prayers at the Finsbury Park Mosque early Monday.

Numerous residents here said that Mr. Osborne was often agitated, even disturbed, but few described him as frightening and none said he had expressed political sentiments, much less anti-Muslim or far-right ones — until last weekend, when he was kicked out of a local pub, the Hollybush, after a drunken tirade.

“My son was at the pub on Saturday night and said he got kicked out because he was scribbling all over the tables and shouting racist comments about Pakistanis and Muslims,” a resident, Ross Johnson, said Tuesday outside the pub.

So the next day he headed for Finsbury Park.

Several residents in and around Glyn Rhosyn, the street where Mr. Osborne lived in a semidetached two-story house, said he at times seemed disturbed and volatile.

Chris Peter, a car mechanic, said that he used to work with Mr. Osborne but that he had found Mr. Osborne to be “unreliable” and “erratic.”

“You just didn’t know what you’re going to get with Darren,” Mr. Peter said. “One minute he’s fine, the next he’s drunk, cursing and vile. He was a nut job.”

It’s odd that few people said he was frightening then. I find that kind of thing very frightening, because it seems to be on the edge of violence.

Mr. Peter added: “I stopped working with him because he had anger problems. One day, he came in stinking of booze and sweat and started shouting his mouth off, throwing tools. I haven’t seen him in a while, but my mate said he’s been sleeping out in the woods in a tent because his lady kicked him out the house.”

Jennifer Mears, who lived a few houses away from Mr. Osborne, said she considered him scary.

“My husband and I called him the ‘mad man,’ ” she said. “He would always zoom up and down the road in various cars that he would bring here. I think he bought and sold lots of cars, and it was annoying that he would park them all down the street.”

One resident described a time when Mr. Osborne had shouted at his family and thrown things around his garden.

“He threw a plastic swing, and it went over the fence and almost hit his neighbor,” said the resident, Laura Granger, who witnessed the episode. “When they complained about it, he swore at them and then went inside and started shouting at his children.”

She added: “We heard him scream at his wife, and he said, ‘Don’t make me get the cricket bat.’ ”

Frightening. Definitely frightening.

Damn but misogyny is casual sometimes. Ben Mathis-Lilley lets it all hang out at Slate.

Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff lost a special House election in Georgia on Tuesday to Republican Karen Handel. It’s the fourth high-profile special election Dems have lost since November. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the leader of the House Democrats. Should she be replaced, as some rabble-rousers are starting to suggest?

Oh yeah, obviously, because the Speaker of the House is to blame when a same-party candidate loses.

Reasons to put Nancy Pelosi on a raft in the Hudson Bay (metaphorically):

Ahhh fuck you, dude. That’s “metaphorically” the way “die in a fire” is metaphorically.

• She’s both unpopular and, for a congressional figure, relativelywell-known. (In other words, most people who have an opinion don’t like Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, but more people have an opinion on Pelosi than they do on McConnell.)

Might there be a reason for that, that’s not to do with some special Unpopularity Essence that Pelosi has and McConnell doesn’t? Might it be pervasive contemptuous knee-jerk misogyny, which this shitty piece is feeding right into?

It really comes down to the question of whether you think there’s something particularly problematic about Pelosi—maybe anyone in charge of leading congressional Democrats would become just as much of a villain as she is. On the other hand, when things aren’t working, it often helps to try a new thing instead of the old thing that hasn’t been working.

Cute.

The man who died in the Finsbury Park terror attack died of injuries from the attack, as opposed to dying of whatever had caused him to collapse on the pavement before the attack. He was Makram Ali.

Makram Ali moved to Britain from Bangladesh when he was 10. He and his wife raised four daughters and two sons. He loved strolling in parks with his two grandchildren. His family was about to take a vacation in Canada.

Mr. Ali, 51, was returning from Ramadan prayers early Monday morning when he collapsed on a street in North London; he was known to have a weak leg.

First aid arrived, and Mr. Ali was receiving medical assistance. He appeared to feel better, and said he wanted to go home. Then, a van suddenly crashed into a crowd of Muslims, including Mr. Ali, outside the Finsbury Park Mosque and the Muslim Welfare House, a community center.

Mr. Ali, who lived nearby in the borough of Haringey, died from multiple injuries, the Metropolitan Police said on Thursday, citing a postmortem examination.

Four people are still in hospital, two in critical condition.

“Our father was a quiet, gentle man,” his daughter Ruzina Akhtar said in a statement on behalf of the family on Thursday, after meeting with the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Cressida Dick. “He didn’t get involved in political or social discussion; he instead took comfort and enjoyment spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren, and he was always ready to make a funny joke when you least expected.”

The guy driving the van is not a quiet, gentle man.

Darren Osborne, 47, who lives in Cardiff, Wales, has been arrested on suspicion of committing, preparing or instigating terrorism including murder and attempted murder.

Neighbors have described Mr. Osborne as belligerent and aggressive, but have said that he did not express anti-Muslim sentiments — until this past weekend, when he was kicked out of a local pub after a drunken tirade.

From drunken tirade to terror attack in one weekend.

Max Ehrenfreund at the Post says Republicans have had good success at putting a halt to current progressive policies but not so much at reversing them. I think the 1994 Congress did a fair bit of reversing, but that may be an exception.

Throughout the modern history of Congress, lawmakers have inexorably expanded progressive social policies, and while conservatives have successfully forestalled expansions to the social safety net, they’ve had very little success in reversing them.

Right now, however, Republicans have a chance to buck that trend, as they prepare legislation aimed at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Senate bill released on Thursday, coupled with the House bill passed earlier this year, would be exactly the kind of cuts to the welfare state that conservatives have consistently failed to achieve.

The repeal measure, which follows weeks of unusual secrecy in its drafting, would bring down taxes, eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in outlays on the social safety net, and curtail the federal government’s involvement in a crucial sector of the economy.

Thus leaving most people at the mercy of The Market. The Market doesn’t give a rat’s ass about people with low earnings and high medical bills. The Market shuts the door on people like that without losing an instant of sleep.

The Times summarizes the Senate Republicans’ health insurance bill.

Senate Republicans, who have promised a repeal of the Affordable Care Act for seven years, took a major step on Thursday toward that goal, unveiling a bill to cut Medicaid deeply and end the health law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

The 142-page bill would create a new system of federal tax credits to help people buy health insurance, while offering states the ability to drop many of the benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, like maternity care, emergency services and mental health treatment.

The Senate bill — once promised as a top-to-bottom revamp of the health bill passed by the House last month — instead maintains its structure, with modest adjustments. The Senate version is, in some respects, more moderate than the House bill, offering more financial assistance to some lower-income people to help them defray the rapidly rising cost of private health insurance.

But the Senate measure, like the House bill, would phase out the extra money that the federal government has provided to states as an incentive to expand eligibility for Medicaid. And like the House measure, it would put the entire Medicaid program on a budget, ending the open-ended entitlement that now exists.

The people who want to slash Medicaid are of course the same people who want to keep wages low so that they can have cheap house cleaners and gardeners and factory hands. They want an ample supply of poor people to draw on and they also want to punish poor people for being poor. That’s The Market.

It would also repeal virtually all the tax increases imposed by the Affordable Care Act to pay for itself, in effect handing a broad tax cut to the affluent, paid for by billions of dollars sliced from Medicaid, a health care program that serves one in five Americans, not only the poor but almost two-thirds of those in nursing homes. The bill, drafted in secret, is likely to come to the Senate floor next week, and could come to a vote after 20 hours of debate.

Oh well. If Medicaid uses up its budget there’s always euthanasia.

Remind us how Kushner managed to get a security clearance? And why he still has it?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want to see White House records on the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his security clearance and his access to classified information.

In a letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the oversight panel’s 18 Democrats question why Kushner’s security clearance hasn’t been revoked.

The Democrats say Kushner, one of President Trump’s closest advisers, had meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank. They say he failed to disclose the meetings as he applied for security clearance and allowed administration officials to say he’d had no such meetings.

“It is unclear why Mr. Kushner continues to have access to classified information while these allegations are being investigated,” says the letter, which seeks similar records on former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn was asked to resign in February after misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts and conversations with Kislyak during the transition period.

Trump and his gang have blown off hundreds of congressional letters of inquiry.

It is also brandishing a legal opinion, crafted by the Justice Department, holding that most of Congress lacks the constitutional power to conduct oversight of the executive branch.

He thinks he has absolute power. He’s getting away with it.

The Justice Department’s legal opinion takes a dismissive view toward individual members of Congress. It says the Constitution limits oversight powers — the authority to ask executive branch agencies for information on what they’re doing — to committee chairs. That freezes out even most Republicans, the overwhelming majority of whom don’t chair committees — and every Democrat on Capitol Hill.

Under this policy, when your local representative writes a letter asking questions about some problem, the agency most likely blows it off.

House Democrats now keep lists of their letters ignored by the administration. The total so far: 260, on issues ranging from infrastructure priorities to possible records of Russian financial ties to President Trump and his family.

In an interview with NPR, [Charles] Grassley said the administration policy runs counter to “everything that every eighth-grade student has studied about checks and balances of government.” Citing language from the presidential oath of office, he said the policy “eliminates the check of most members of Congress to see that the laws are faithfully executed by a president.”

He’s a Republican.

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., contrasts the administration’s position with Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric last fall. He told NPR, “They certainly put an emphasis, with this idea of draining the swamp, on accountability and transparency. But so far, they seem to have moved in the complete opposite direction.”

The Trump administration may also stumble over the bipartisan institutional loyalties that run deep on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in an interview, “The idea that the legislative branch would willingly go along with this kind of an assault on its powers by the executive branch runs contrary to the interests of every senator.”

One would think.

Nothing like bringing an archbishop in to convince people to shut up about lethal corporate malfeasance.

Ford South Africa has been having a tiny issue over cars that burst into flames. (The Ford Pinto had that problem back in the 70s.) The family of a guy named Reshall Jimmy, who died in a Ford SUV that caught fire, have been battling Ford via social media.

Since his death over 50 Kugas have caught alight across South Africa with the National Consumer Commission placing the company under official investigation.

Police and private forensic investigators maintain that the fire was caused by an electrical fault behind the dashboard on the passenger side of the vehicle. Ford believes the fire started at the back of the car‚ but have been unable to explain what caused the blaze.

Reshall’s sister Renisha Jimmy told The Times that outgoing Ford SA CEO Jeffrey Nemeth had requested a meeting with her and her ailing mother Polly‚ overseen by Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.

An archbishop? Why? The Jimmy family, by the way, are Hindus.

Renisha said: “My mother was initially reluctant‚ but the family persuaded her on the belief that Nemeth wanted to make amends and take responsibility for Reshall’s death.”

She said in the months leading up to the meeting‚ Nemeth had told her in Whatsapp messages that he was travelling to the US to seek a mandate from Ford Global to settle the matter and bring them closure.

The Times is in possession of Whatsapp messages sent between Nemeth and Jimmy which indicate how he wishes to meet her mother‚ how he has a mandate from Ford to settle the matter‚ that he felt a connection with the family‚ how the saga was taking an emotional toll on him and his children and how he “would be judged by my actions‚ my ethics and intent by my God“.

But surprise surprise, that’s not how the meeting went.

[Renisha Jimmy] said Nemeth had traumatised her mother through accusations that Jimmy was murdered and that the company was not responsible for his death.

“From the onset he led us to believe that he wanted to help and bring us closure before he returns to the US. We trusted him‚ especially when he suggested we meet the Archbishop.

“Initially at the meeting he seemed genuine‚ but it changed when he told us that they had additional information and that Reshall was murdered and that they had witness statements‚ which contradicted the post mortem report.”

It was all bullshit, contradicted by the police reports.

Jimmy said Nemeth’s settlement offer was to give the family another Ford and have the company pay off the money Reshall still owned on his car.

“In the meeting he told us he was coming to us as a human being not a company CEO‚ that Ford’s senior management were selected on their spirituality and closeness to God‚ but from what he told us‚ the lies that Reshall was murdered‚ and that Ford’s settlement offer was another Ford to pay off his car‚ was just an insult.”

Presided over by an archbishop.

No low too low, eh.

H/t Bruce Gorton

The BBC reports a second arrest in connection with the Finsbury Park terror attack.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of posting an offensive Facebook post about the London Finsbury Park attack.

Police said a 37-year-old, believed to be the son of an owner of the Rhondda Cynon Taff company whose van was used in Monday’s attack, is in custody.

Richard Evans allegedly posted: “It’s a shame they don’t hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then.”

Oy.

That’s a disgusting thing to say, and it should have been (and probably was) reported to Facebook, and Facebook should have removed it promptly and perhaps suspended the poster. But arrested?

It’s straightforwardly a crime in the UK to post “an offensive Facebook post”?

I post arguably “offensive” Facebook posts multiple times every day. There are whole large busy Facebook groups that post nothing but unquestionably offensive – and sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic etc – commentary and images. I wonder if the London police have found all the offensive posts about Finsbury Park, and considered charging all the perps.

No, I don’t really, because I’m confident they have far more urgent things to do. But then why this?

Guest post by Lady Mondegreen.

There are numerous parallels between the way trans women are depicted in the media and the way that they have been depicted by some feminist theorists. While many feminists—especially younger ones who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s—recognize that trans women can be allies in the fight to eliminate gender stereotypes, other feminists—particularly those who embrace gender essentialism—believe that trans women foster sexism by mimicking patriarchal attitudes about femininity, or that we objectify women by trying to possess female bodies of our own.

Last time, I looked at Julia Serano’s discussion of media depictions of trans people, specifically trans women. Today I’m going to finish up with chapter 2, which is mainly given over to complaints about feminist criticisms of trans ideology.

As you can tell from the bit quoted above, Serano is more interested in instruction than in argument, and she has little use for those decrepit old Second Wavers who fail to support trans gender theory in all its particulars. (Gender essentialism? Feminists who criticize trans theory are most definitely not “gender essentialists.” They don’t think gender has anything to do with anyone’s sex. In fact they tend to be anti-gender. But Serano defines “gender” however she likes; perhaps here she’s using it as a synonym for “sex” and calls the belief that “people can’t really change their sex” “sex essentialism.”)

Many of these latter ideas stem from Janice G. Raymond’s 1979 book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, which is perhaps the most influential feminist writing on transsexuals.

I haven’t read Janice Raymond’s book, and unfortunately the Los Angeles Public Library system doesn’t have a single copy. The book is out of print and used copies are expensive. So I can’t say much about Raymond’s argument; all I’ve got to go on is what Serano says about it. According to Serano, Raymond

focuses almost exclusively on trans women, insisting that they transition in order to achieve stereotypical femininity. She even argues that “most transsexuals conform more to the feminine role than even the most feminine of natural-born women.” This fact does not surprise Raymond, since she believes that femininity itself is an artificial by-product of a patriarchal society. So despite the fact that trans women may attain femininity, Raymond does not believe that they become “real” women.

This sort of sloppy argument makes my teeth ache, and Serano resorts to it time and again in Whipping Girl. “Attaining femininity” and being a “’real’ woman” are two separate things, and one does not lead to the other except in the heads of the sort of people who think Real Men don’t eat quiche and Real Women are submissive and sweet. Serano would surely agree that non-women can “attain femininity,” so what is that “despite” doing there? If Janice Raymond does not believe that trans women are women, her reason(s) can have nothing to do with whether or not they attain femininity.

Thus, Raymond builds her case–

(I’m not sure you’ve presented her case, there, Lou.)

—by relying on the same tactics as the media: She depicts trans women as hyperfeminine (in order to make their female identities appear highly artificial) and she hypersexualizes them (by playing down the existence of trans people who transition to male).

Unlike the media, Raymond does acknowledge the existence of trans women who are not stereotypically feminine, albeit reluctantly.

Oy.

Being that Raymond believes that femininity undermines women’s true worth, you might think that she would be open to trans women who denounce femininity and patriarchal gender stereotypes. However, this is not the case. Instead, she argues, “As the male-to-constructed female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level.”…She says, “although the transsexual constructed lesbian-feminist does not exhibit a feminine identity and role, he does exhibit stereotypical masculine behavior.” This essentially puts trans women in a double bind. If they act feminine they are perceived as being a parody, but if they act masculine it is seen as a sign of their true male identity….Both Raymond and the media ensure that trans women …will invariably come off as “fake” women no matter how they look or act.

I can’t speak for Raymond or for the media, but look here: If womanhood has something to do with behavior, then the “double bind” Serano speaks of here is truly unfair. But if being a woman is not about how a person behaves, all this talk about behavior has nothing to do with who’s a woman and who isn’t. It’s a red herring.

Serano then talks about the now-defunct Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (“Michigan”). The festival (which was still being held annually when Whipping Girl was published,) enforced a “womyn-born-womyn”-only policy that spurred a lot of conflict and animus. Serano mentions two reasons trans women were excluded from “Michigan,” one reasonable and one silly.

…[O]ne of the most cited reasons that trans women are not allowed in the festival is that we are born with, and many of us still have, penises….It is argued that our penises are dangerous because they are a symbol of male oppression and have the potential to trigger women who have been sexually assaulted or abused by men.

OK. Penis-as-symbol doesn’t strike me as a serious problem there, but the other part is reasonable enough, when you consider the fact that at Michigan, women were free to walk around naked. What is Julia Serano’s answer to women who have been assaulted or abused by men, who would prefer not to be around people with penises for a weekend of music?

So penises are banned from the festival, right? Well, not quite: The festival does allow women to purchase and use dildos, strap-ons, and packing devices, many of which closely resemble penises. So phalluses in and of themselves are not so bad, just so long as they are not attached to a trans woman.

What.

WHAT?

Does Serano really believe sex toys and human penises are the same thing?

Does she think women walked around Michigan wearing strap-ons?

I suspect the main problem Michigan had with trans women was that the festival was intended to be for women only, and the organizers defined “women” as “biologically female people.” For some reason Serano does not mention this possibility, any more than she acknowledged that Janice Raymond’s definition of “woman” might not hinge on feminine or not-feminine behavior.

Serano:

[

A]nother reason frequently given for the exclusion of trans women from Michigan…that we supposedly would bring ‘male energy’ into the festival.

OK. I’m certainly not going to defend that: I don’t believe that energy is sexed (or even gendered). And I must say that this notion inspires one ofSerano’s rare moments of lucidity:

Not only is this an insult to trans men…

OK that’s not the lucid part–

…

but it implies that ‘male energy’ can be measured in some way independent of whether the person expressing it appears female or male. This is clearly not the case. Even though I am a trans woman, I have never been accused of expressing “male energy,” because people perceive me as a woman. When I do act in a “masculine” way, people describe me as a “tomboy” or “butch,” and if I get aggressive or argumentative, people call me a “bitch.” My behaviors are still the same; it is only the context of my body (whether people see me as female or male) that has changed.

Welcome to womanhood, Julia.

Sadly this realization on Serano’s part does not lead her to skepticism about gender. Instead, she ends the chapter with some weapons-grade fallacious reasoning:

T

o believe that a woman is a woman because of her sex chromosomes, reproductive organs, or socialization denies the reality that every single day, we classify each person we see as either female or male based on a small number of visual cues and a ton of assumption.

There you have it, folks. A potential for misclassification means the class in question can be redefined at will. Melville was right: Whales are fish!

Followed by the tautology we looked at last time:

The one thing that women share is that we are all perceived as women and treated accordingly….

And with that, I bid you all adieu.

Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The Way Forward.

All this huggy-bear stuff is bullshit.

That said, there’s a point to bear in mind that stands out starkly to me as a former right-wing fundie. My therapist made the cogent observation that the attraction of zombie movies is that zombies represent what jingoists want the enemy to be: relentless, implacable, utterly non-human, incapable of reason, incapable of showing mercy and undeserving of mercy.

When the enemy is literally beyond the reach of reason, literally relentless in their efforts to kill you without mercy or quarter, then there’s only one thing you can do: either you shoot them in the head, or they eat your brains. Separation is useless because they will chase you. Negotiation is useless because they can’t even understand you. Imprisoning them all is a practical impossibility. They have to be killed — there’s no other solution.

Unfortunately if that’s true then we’re fucked. For one thing, they have all the guns. For another, we have all the pacifists. (A zombie pacifist, like a zombie vegetarian, is an oxymoron.) Oh and remember, they regard us more or less the same way — as single-mindedly devoted to their destruction, incapable of compromise and therefore incapable of negotiation. They already more than half believe that a crisis is inevitable in which they will finally be cornered and forced to defend themselves with deadly force. When they talk about AmRev II (American Revolution 2.0), or debate the correct caliber for zombies (a stand-in for liberals, police, or UN shock troops, depending on context), they’re talking about that behind the thinnest of veils.

So while hugging them is absurd, and overlooking the harm they’re doing is suicidal, I sure as hell hope that they’re not in fact zombies. If they are, then we’re heading for an inevitable violent conflict that they will win. I draw some hope from the fact that I switched sides.

Originally a comment by iknklast on The way forward.

Funny how much of this we hear, but few people point out that the women, people of color, and foreign-born citizens that Trump and his supporters hate (with a passion that exceeds anything I’ve ever seen from the other side) might be lost and afraid. That we might need some support. That we might need some sympathy. And that all of these pundits (I read tons of this) saying WE are the problem because of our “identity politics” and determination that we want to be part of the voice in this large, diverse, noisy country is the reason Trump won. I see tons of this on the so-called left, beating their chest and berating themselves (and mostly, us, the “identities”) for allowing Trump to win by not “reaching out” to the white male (and too many female) voters who hate the rest of the country. None of them ever point out that our worldview includes a place for all of those people, and their worldview includes no place for us. The problem is that, in our worldview, that particular group of people does not automatically get to be at the top, make all the decisions, and keep the rest of us as servants and lowly sandwich makers. This is the world Trump supporters want – they tell everyone else what to do, and everyone else does it. If they say “leave the country, faggot”*, all the LGBTQ pack up and leave. If they say, “leave the country, Commie”, all the liberals pack up and leave. If they say “leave the country, bitch”, all the feminists pack up and leave. If they say “leave the country, n***”, all the people of color pack up and leave. If they say “make me a sandwich”, all the remaining women bow down, kiss their feet, and hop out to the kitchen to return with a beautiful three course meal. At which time, they scream because what they really wanted was a sandwich, and is that really too much to ask, and said woman returns to the kitchen, pitches the three course meal down the garbage disposal, and returns with a PBJ sandwich and never, ever asks them to take out the garbage, wash the dishes, or even put their plate in the sink. Meanwhile, the few people of color they have allowed to remain are mowing their lawn (free of charge), and playing football on the TV to entertain them. This is the world view of the Trump supporters I know (and believe me, I know a lot!). They believe they are superior to the rest of us. They believe the rest of us are usurping resources, such as air and water, that are intended for them.

I have to live and work with Trump supporters every day. My whole family is full of Trump supporters. I have lived my whole life with these people, and they are not nice to me. They have no sympathy for me. They think I should sit down, shut up, and quit voting. Why the hell should I waste one minute of my time crying over their “woes”?

*not my phrase, but the phrase of the haters that have seized our country

Terry Gross talked to Roxane Gay yesterday.

GROSS: So when you were in college, you fell in love with theater. I guess earlier than that you fell in love with theater. You went to Yale, in part, because of their theater department. And you worked behind the scenes. Was that a way of being involved with storytelling and with people but also being kind of invisible because you were literally offstage?

GAY: Absolutely. It was a way of being a part of something because I’m not a joiner. I never was. And so I was never really interested in extracurriculars. I did them because that’s what you do to get into a good college. But theater is where I found my passion in being behind the scenes because I didn’t want to be seen. I just wanted to be useful. And technical theater allowed me that space. It was the – I had – the best memories I have of high school and the first two years of college are connected to theater.

GROSS: I suppose writing gives you that, too – the ability to say what you want and have people look at your work without looking physically at you.

GAY: Well that’s what I hoped.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: You’re too famous now. You can’t get away with it.

GAY: (Laughter) No.

GROSS: There’s the internet. And, you know, you travel all over, giving speeches. And you’re on TV. I mean, people know what you look like.

GAY: They do. You know, one of the many reasons I’m a writer is because I didn’t want to be, like, an actor on a stage or on the screen.

GROSS: (Laughter) Too late.

GAY: Whoops.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So how is that for you?

GAY: Oh, it’s – you know, I’m afraid of public speaking, so I’ve had to learn how to do it. And it’s gotten much better. And I actually do enjoy doing these events and connecting with audiences because I have a really passionate audience. And it’s a privilege to do. I hate doing television not because I’m on television but because when I go on TV, the amount of hate mail and the amount of trolling I get on social media is unbearable. And so I try not to make myself that kind of a target as often as possible.

GROSS: So when you’re trolled on the internet and social media, do you think that has to do at all with describing yourself as a feminist? Because there’s so much, like, anti-feminist trolling.

GAY: Oh, yeah. Like, I would say 40 percent of my trolling is because I’m a feminist. Thirty percent of my trolling is because I’m black. And 30 percent of my trolling is because I’m fat.

GROSS: I love that you have it broken down into percentages.

(LAUGHTER)

GAY: I do. I have so many trolls.

GROSS: Is there any percent where it’s, like, all three?

GAY: Oh, God, yes.

GROSS: They hate you because you’re black and feminist and fat?

(LAUGHTER)

GAY: Yeah. The Venn diagram of my trolls would be a circle.

It looks sort of brutal in the transcript, all that (LAUGHTER), but if you listen, it’s not.

GROSS: You’re a feminist. And you write…

GAY: I am.

GROSS: …(Reading) I’m a feminist, and I believe in doing away with the rigid beauty standards that force women to conform to unrealistic standards. And you also write, (reading) I’m not comfortable in my body. Nearly everything physical is difficult. So – and you say, as a fat woman, you’re not supposed to take up space. But as a feminist, you’re encouraged to believe you can take up space – so, again, more contradictions you have to deal with.

GAY: Always. I mean, you always want to be the best version of yourself and the best feminist you can be and as inclusive as you can be in your thinking and in your behaviors. At least for me, that’s something I want. But it’s really hard when you are also just human, and you are dealing with the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. And so I absolutely believe that people should be able to live in this world free from harassment and cruelty at any size and that people should be allowed to be healthy and happy at any size. But I struggle with it sometimes. I absolutely do.

It’s an interesting interview.

The BBC reports a horrifying statistic:

About 1,300 US children under the age of 17 die from gun-related injuries per year, a government study has found.

Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that guns seriously wounded about 5,800 children each year.

We’re horrified by all the people who died or were injured in Grenfell Tower, and this number dwarfs that.

“Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among US children aged one to 17 years and contribute substantially each year to premature death, illness and disability of children,” said CDC’s Katherine Fowler, who led the study.

“About 19 children a day die or are medically treated in an emergency department for a gunshot wound in the US,” she told Reuters.

CDC researchers examined national data in what they describe as “the most comprehensive examination of current firearm-related deaths and injuries among children in the United States to date”.

The study found a 60% increase in gun suicides from 2007-15, according an analysis of national injury records.

A Grenfell Tower every few days, not because a tower block catches fire but because there are way too many guns floating around in this country.

Boy, that Shakespeare guy, he had a hell of a nerve, right? Insulting our president that way. Somebody ought to go spit on that church in Stratford – in Connecticut is it? Alabama? Idaho? I forget. Anyway they should, and all his novels should be banned out of the schools and libraries, and his descendants should be thrown out of their local churches what denominationsoever they may be. Plus those government art Nazis should all be fired.

Several theatres in the US have received threats and complaints after a show in New York depicted the assassination of a Julius Caesar made to look like President Donald Trump.

Messages wished death upon theatre staff at unrelated establishments in an apparent mix-up.

It appears complainers did not check which theatre they were angry about.

Never mind that, smarty, it’s all part of the same conspiracy.

Although the show’s run has now ended, protesters have been getting in touch with theatres with Shakespeare in the name to voice their disgust.

Shakespeare Dallas, in Texas, has had 90 emails, while Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts has had nearly 50, plus about 10 angry phone calls.

I should hope so. That guy was a Democrat, and a Muslim, and a faggot, and a witch-hunter, and an FBI director. He was a bad hombre.

Shakespeare & Company shared some of the messages with the BBC. (Some have been edited to remove swearing.) They included:

• “Your play depicting the murder of our President is nothing but pure hatred. You are vial [sic] despicable excuses for human beings. I wish you all the worst possible life you could have and hope you all get sick and die.”

• “Hope you all who did this play about Trump are the first to die when ISIS COMES TO YOU… scumbags.”

• “What exactly were you idiots thinking about producing a play that depicts the killing of our President? Does anyone over there have an ounce of morality, decency, and or common sense? Your organization is a disgrace to the community and to the arts. If you have a problem with the president protest, as is your constitutional right or just vote him out. I will do my best to ensure taxpayers’ dollars are not used in the future to fund your disrespect and stupidity!”

And your dressing rooms, and your roof, and your costume department, so there!