Item 23 from Amy Siskind’s list – C-Span being interrupted by RT during testimony by Maxine Waters. It happened but C-Span considers it a glitch as opposed to a sinister move by the Rooskies.

The NY Times:

At 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Representative Maxine Waters was on the floor of the House of Representatives, arguing for the importance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“At this time,” Ms. Waters, Democrat of California, said, “with a bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the S.E.C., and literally obliterate ——”

Alas, politics junkies, news editors and anyone else who was watching the broadcast online did not learn how that sentence ended. Ms. Waters was cut off. Instead, they heard the jangling music of a feed from RT, a state-run Russian television network that has been accused of helping its government interfere in the American election.

Some on social media immediately assumed that the interruption, which lasted about 10 minutes, had nefarious implications.

C-Span, in a statement, had a simpler explanation: It was probably a technical error. C-Span’s television broadcast continued uninterrupted.

Probably.

Noting that RT is among the news feeds it regularly monitors, it said: “We don’t believe we were hacked. Instead, our initial investigation suggests that this was caused by an internal routing error. We take our network security very seriously and will continue with a deeper investigation, which may take some time.”

So that one’s a question mark.

I hunted down the column in which Dan Savage gave the advice that Jocelyn MacDonald quoted, to see if it’s really as one-sided as she said. It is.

It’s from May 2015.

I’m a lesbian who has been pretty successful at online dating. Lately, however, I’ve had a few women contact me who turn out not to be cisgender. I’ve tried to remain open, but I have never been attracted to a trans woman. I don’t rule out the possibility that it could happen. But one great thing about online dating is that you can express preferences before going on a date, and I’d rather not unknowingly walk into these potentially awkward and painful situations. Is there something I could put on my profile expressing my preference for cisgender women that is not offensive to trans people? It’s important to me that I remain an ally.

Can I Say?

You can put “not into trans women” in your online dating profile, CIS, but you’ll have to hand in your Trans Ally card. Gay men are likewise free to put “no fats, no femmes” or “white guys only—just expressing my preference” on their profiles, and too many do (and not all of them are white guys), but gay men who do that have to hand in their Not an Asshole cards. Occasionally having coffee with someone you’re not into—and having to tiptoe through the awkwardness—isn’t something you can avoid in online dating. You would have to do that even if only cis lesbians responded to your ads, as you’re presumably not attracted to all cis lesbians. Having a coffee now and then with a trans woman you most likely won’t find attractive—but you never know—is a small price to pay to make the online dating world a less shitty place for trans people. It’s what an ally would do.

See? It’s weird. Instead of saying “Gay men are likewise free to put ‘no trans men’ on their profiles, and too many do” he says “no fats, no femmes” and “white guys only.”

Ally to whom, exactly?

At Feminist Current, Jocelyn MacDonald notes that a lot of people have been asking about the disappearing lesbian.

For those of us in rainbow community, it’s not really a head-scratcher. We’ve watched lesbian culture be beaten back, redefined, and undermined — in many cases with the gleeful participation from the other letters in LGBTQ.  For lesbians, it seems obvious that this is happening because we are in the midst of a backlash against feminism and women’s rights.

A ferocious, noisy, and very hostile backlash.

(It depressed me to notice a moment in Obama’s farewell address when he singled out every marginalized group…except the biggest one.

For blacks and other minority groups, it means tying our own very real struggles for justice to the challenges that a lot of people in this country face — not only the refugee, or the immigrant, or the rural poor, or the transgender American, but also the middle-aged white guy…)

Back to the Feminist Current piece.

In the last couple years, I’ve moved from identifying as a bisexual/queer woman, to identifying as a lesbian. I offer this personal information because, as I’ve moved away from dudes and ever deeper into community and intimacy exclusively with women, I find the opposite is occurring in the communities where I once felt at home. More and more women call themselves queer (whether or not they engage in homo sex) and are going so far as to position lesbianism as an outmoded, “problematic” lifestyle. In queer circles, “lesbian” is synonymous with second wave feminism.

And second wave feminism is synonymous with practically dead, with stale and conservative and outmoded and wrong wrong wrongity wrong.

Queer women owe their rights to the radical resistance and separatism of their lesbian foremothers, but are embarrassed by lesbian culture and history. Christina Cauterucci contributed an entire article explaining why queers hate the term “lesbian,” in unironically self-hating terms:

“In the space between ‘lesbian’ and ‘queer,’ my friend and I located a world of difference in politics, gender presentation, and cosmopolitanism. Some of our resistance to the term lesbian arose, no doubt, from internalized homophobic notions of lesbians as unfashionable, uncultured homebodies. We were convinced that our cool clothes and enlightened, radical paradigm made us something other than lesbians, a label chosen by progenitors who lived in a simpler time with stricter gender boundaries.”

Yeah – lesbians are indistinguishable from those 50s sitcoms in which Mom ran the vacuum cleaner in a starched dress and high heels.

Cauterucci thinks the 70s were simpler times and that gender boundaries were not something women played with, defied, and remade in their own image. She admits an internalized homophobia is responsible for her unfair characterization of lesbians, but still refuses the term and the legacy that goes with it.

Queers hurl “lesbian” sneeringly at assigned-female-at-birth homosexual women, recharacterizing females as “cis” women, which in the twisted logic of queer is equated to “privileged women.” In the superwoke queer community, privilege is finally, inexorably, another way of saying “you need to shut up, take up less space, and admit that it’s an unearned honour to have had your life shoved into a tiny pink box.” This cannot come as a surprise, as the term lesbian has always been weaponized to silence and deride women.

Well, yes, but not so much by the more radical feminists, and not by lesbians themselves.

Queer culture demands that female homosexuals redefine our sexuality away from female bodies and toward gender roles, those which are traditionally associated with femininity.

Take trans comedian Avery Edison, who said this on the topic of lesbians dating people with male bodies:

“Look, it’s not like I require the women I date to be cool with having my dick inside them. In fact, I’m fine if that never happens. But being shut off from the very idea of it, not even considering that having my penis inside you is different from having a man’s penis inside you? That hurts.”

Gaymous cultural icon and sex columnist Dan Savage offers this advice to a lesbian:

“Having a coffee now and then with a trans woman you most likely won’t find attractive — but you never know –is a small price to pay to make the online dating world a less shitty place for trans people. It’s what an ally would do.”

Both of the above are examples of people socialized with male privilege telling women that they should not listen to or trust their own instincts. In order to protect the feelings of people socialized with male privilege, women should “interrogate their sexual preferences” for signs of bigotry, and then bring their newly inclusive political analysis into practice by dating people who they are neither romantically nor sexually attracted to. This is quite rich coming from Savage, a man who posits that gayness is an inborn, unchangeable biological condition.

Does Dan Savage go on dates with trans men I wonder? I kind of doubt it. Men don’t think they’re supposed to “pay a small price” of that kind, but they do think they’re entitled to push women to do so. Funny how that works.

Beatrix Campbell posted a letter to the Working Class Movement Library to offer support for their invitation to Julie Bindel.

May I share some of my own experience with you — in the hope that it might encourage you to withstand the hostility.

I have been involved in working class, progressive politics all my adult life and I have received many awards and honours for my writing. I came out as gay in my early 20s — in the 1970s — and like many other gay people I have felt over the past few years that what was once an open, inclusive, exhilarating politics, which has been spectacularly successful in advancing gay rights, has become overwhelmed by a toxic element of trans activism, a campaign of authoritarian silencing in the name of ’safe space’. Many gay activists, particularly women, are now deeply alienated. Some years ago I wrote an article in the Guardian opposing the NUS no-platforming of Julie Bindel.

I should say that she is a friend, I’ve known her since the 1980s when I made a TV documentary on battered women who kill their assailants, and since Justice for Women and Southall Black Sisters campaigned successfully for the release of Kiranjit Aluwhalia.

Julie Bindel is one of the founders of Justice for Women, a pathbreaking movement supporting women who live with violence, and an enduring campaigner against violence and sexual exploitation of women, and for gay rights.

We have disagreed about many things — not least the Green Party, for whom I’ve been a local and Parliamentary candidate. But I would go to great lengths to defend her right to write and speak and, just as important, for people’s opportunity to hear her in person and to challenge her. She is always interesting, adroit and sometimes very witty and, yes, offensive.

I support the Index on Censorship approach to this: there is no right to not be offended.
During the 2010 General Election, trans gender friends in the Green Party alerted me to some trans activist  threats to picket me at hustings — they offered to attend the hustings in the event of trouble. There was no trouble, those making the threat never turned up.

In the last couple of years the movement to no-platform people who are against the sexual exploitation of women, who support the ’Nordic model’, or who have a critique of some trans positions on gender, have also found themselves being subjected to harassment.

It was in response to this that myself and Prof Deborah Cameron (also a working class lesbian, by the way) organised a letter to The Observer opposing no platforming. The 130+ signatories included people who are transgender, and who have been involved in prostitution.

This was repudiated by another letter the following week, initiated by Sara Ahmed.

I suggested to a couple of publications — a progressive Oxbridge journal, and a lesbian magazine — that they host a round table to air the issues. My contact on the Oxbridge journal rejected the idea on the grounds that it was universities’ duty to provide students with a safe space, a ‘home’ away from home. The lesbian magazine editor rejected the proposal — the editor, very committed to trans people, admitted to me that she was afraid.

I also wrote a couple of letters to the London Review of Books in response to a long feature by Jacqueline Rose which had failed to address these controversies, and which did not engage with trans activists who do not support no platforming, and who have a critique of some trans people’s theories of gender…

You may, of course, not be interested in all of this. You may disagree with me.
But whatever your position on trans gender debates might be, there are vital ethical and political issues at stake here for all of us:

The claim that critique or analysis or debate amount to ‘killing’ is an abuse of language.
And what is being suppressed by no-platforming is not only the right to speak, but other people’s right to listen, to participate and to challenge.

It has taken centuries of heroic effort for oppressed and marginalised people to find their voices; Julie Bindel is one of those voices; the Library is a monument to those efforts and to its founders, Ruth and Eddie Frows’ commitment to honouring them.

Please don’t be afraid. Be brave, be normal, keep on doing what you do so well — showing the richness of working class life and struggles.

Yours in solidarity
Beatrix Campbell

I second that.

The Republicans are still trying to vote forced pregnancy into law.

Press Release

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Steve King released the following statement after introducing “The Heartbeat Bill,” that would require physicians to detect the heartbeat and prohibit the abortion of a baby with a beating heart:

“Since Roe v. Wade was unconstitutionally decided in 1973, nearly 60 million innocent babies’ lives have been ended by the abortion industry, all with a rubber stamp by the federal government,” said King. “Human life, beginning at the moment of conception, is sacred in all of its forms and today, I introduced a bill that will protect the lives of voiceless innocents.

My legislation will require all physicians, before conducting an abortion, to detect the heartbeat of the unborn child. If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.

America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God. All human persons have a right to life. How then could we confer that those rights allow the killing of a baby? I believe our most important responsibility that God has bestowed upon us is to protect innocent human life, and I will continue to dedicate my life to that responsibility.”

Issues:

Traditional and Family Values

Rewire comments:

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant [woman] but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

King worked on the bill with anti-choice activist Janet Porter, the Faith2Action leader deemed too extreme for Christian talk radio, the congressman’s spokesperson said. Porter was behind Ohio Republicans’ recent failed attempt to push through a total abortion ban. Anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed the measure the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported in October.

Misogynists gotta network.

The Times gives a rundown of what will go away as the Republicans dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

The health law reduced the number of uninsured Americans by an estimated 20 million people from 2010 to 2016. One of the primary ways it did so was by creating online markets where people who didn’t get insurance through work or the government could shop for a health plan from a private insurer. The law offered subsidies for Americans with lower incomes to help pay their premiums and deductibles.

What would happen? The Republican bill is expected to eliminate the subsidies. This would make insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans and sharply reduce the number who buy their own health coverage.

The Republicans want to make sure that millions of people will be unable to afford health insurance. Why? Because they’re just that awesome, I guess.

With many fewer people buying coverage, the insurance markets are likely to become increasingly unstable. Many insurers will stop offering policies, and the remaining customers are likely to be sicker than current Obamacare buyers, a reality that will drive up the cost of insurance for everyone who buys it, and force more people out of the markets. The Urban Institute estimates that the change would cause a total of 22.5 million people to lose their health insurance.

But the people doing this will be fine, because they get high quality insurance through their jobs – their jobs taking health insurance away from people who make less money than they do.

2) Obamacare insured millions more by expanding Medicaid.

The health law provided federal funds for states to offer Medicaid coverage to anyone earning less than about $16,000 for a single person or $33,000 for a family of four. Not every state chose to expand, but most did.

What would happen? The Republican plan is expected to eliminate federal funding for the expansion. An estimated 12.9 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, according to the Urban Institute’s projections.

Sucks to be them.