Performance

Jan 16th, 2022 3:27 pm | By


Noise and quiet

Jan 16th, 2022 10:41 am | By

The noise issue:

Last month, I spent a cold morning wandering around Hampstead Heath, one of London’s largest green spaces, with a sound designer named Nicholas Allan. For many, the Heath is an escape. There are almost 800 acres of it: meadows and woodland, hollows and springs, hills and ponds.

I once lived in a bedsitter just off the Heath, so I spent a lot of time exploring it. There are several similarly vast parks in Seattle, which I spend a lot of time exploring.

In July, Allan awarded the Heath “Urban Quiet Park” status. He was acting on behalf of Quiet Parks International, or QPI, a non-profit based in Los Angeles that is “committed to saving quiet for the benefit of all life”. QPI’s purpose is to identify locations around the world that remain free from human-made noise for at least brief pockets of time. As humanity grows louder, these places are in danger of extinction, the organisation argues, even though they are integral to our wellbeing and to the health of the natural world.

At least one of the Seattle parks is one of those locations, I’m pretty sure. There’s a main trail that can be crowded on sunny weekend days, but there are also large meadows where you can stop and look around and see not a single human.

Allan spent four days in the park in total, monitoring decibel levels. To pass the QPI test, noise levels must remain below 40 decibels, similar to the hush of a library, for at least an hour.

The hush of a library? Is he kidding? There is no hush in a library; that whole idea has been banished. Maybe in the UK there still is but not in the brash loud US.

Though many of us drive, and fly, and listen to music, and turn the volume of our TVs up very high, and drill and saw and hammer, and live in busy cities, which are relentlessly loud, we do seem to broadly understand that too much noise is bad for us. To escape, some turn to wellness practices – meditation, sensory-deprivation tanks, silent retreats – which have turned quiet into a consumable product. 

Just go to a good park instead. If there’s not a festival or something going on (and if you’re not near any sports area), it should be quiet enough for a break from noise. Unless of course parks department people are mowing or blowing leaves or trimming hedges – I worked as a parks department people in the past and we made noise. Too much noise. The backpack blowers in particular seemed like an unnecessary intrusion to me.

Studies have shown that experiencing quiet can reduce stress and anxiety, bring down heart rate and blood pressure, improve mood, cognitive ability and concentration, and increase pro-social behaviours, such as generosity and trust. It is helpful to experience silence in long periods, though every little helps – a 2006 study found that even a minutes-long session can be beneficial.

There are also sounds that feel beneficial though. The sound of a brook or river, or waves on a beach, or wind in trees, or heavy rain – sounds that aren’t sharp, that are more or less regular, that are benign and natural.



Back of the line

Jan 16th, 2022 6:58 am | By

Trump says white people can’t get the vaccination.

Yeah let’s have that guy back.



Not a diss

Jan 16th, 2022 6:11 am | By

Jo Grady, the very pro-trans and anti-feminist General Secretary of the University and College Union, agrees with the “auntie is an affectionate compliment” take.

That’s an utterly stupid thing to say. If a student called Jo Grady “Granny” would she consider it a mark of respect?



Of what a silly old bint the complainant was

Jan 15th, 2022 4:07 pm | By

Speaking of “aunties” who talk a lot of piffle that wise compassionate alert progressive young people know better than…



Girls suffer from body image?

Jan 15th, 2022 12:30 pm | By

School urges girls to wear “shapewear” to deal with body image issues. Mother not impressed.

So this is what my 8th grade daughter brought home from school today. I am beyond pissed, though I’m not sure if I’m more pissed at the fact that they had the “balls” to send this home or the VERY IGNORANCE of the “counselors” at the school.

So you begin this masterpiece detailing how damaging a negative body image is for girls, how the stress of conforming to an impossible perceived image can adversely affect their mental health, and then OFFER TO GIVE THEM SPANX SO THEY CAN BETTER FIT THE PERCEIVED IMAGE?!? What. The. Very. F@$&. How, in the hell, are you promoting a positive body image by saying “here, you’re too fat. You need shapewear to make you look thinner.” Are you freaking kidding me?

No photo description available.

That is honestly the battiest thing I’ve seen in some time. A school handing out bras and other “health products”? Even apart from the twisted message, isn’t that just a tad intrusive? Not to mention “shapewear” – what used to be called “girdles.” I’ve always thought it was progress that girdles went out of fashion; little did I imagine schools would start pushing them.



Getting a huge break

Jan 15th, 2022 12:17 pm | By

Cunning plan: give convicted rapists the option of joining the army instead of going to prison.

Brandon Scott Price, a former Kentucky jail guard convicted of sexually assaulting a female inmate, was recently told his one-year sentence would be probated (meaning no jail time) if he joined the US military. “You’re getting a huge break,” the male judge said. Price may have a little trouble enrolling, however, as an army spokesperson has said you’re not eligible for enlistment if you’re convicted for a sex offense. Which seems sensible since the military already has a massive sexual assault problem: female service members are reportedly more likely to be sexually assaulted by a colleague than shot by an enemy combatant at war.

Also let’s think about what rapey soldiers might get up to when they leave the barracks.

Price is hardly the only man to have a judge try and spare him jail time. In Illinois, 18-year-old Drew Clinton had his sexual assault conviction overturned this month after a judge said a prison sentence was “not just”. Last November a private school kid called Christopher Belter was given eight years’ probation instead of jail time for assaulting four teenage girls during parties at his parents’ house. The judge said he thought incarceration wasn’t “appropriate.”

You know what’s even less appropriate? Sexually assaulting girls at your parents’ house.



It’s been going on for millennia

Jan 15th, 2022 11:14 am | By

She was out for an afternoon run by the canal.

Vigils are taking place across Ireland and the UK in memory of murdered 23-year-old teacher Ashling Murphy.

Irish police are continuing to hunt for the killer of Murphy, who was found dead on Wednesday after going for a run on the banks of the Grand Canal in Tullamore, County Offaly. The Garda Síochána said it had made “significant progress” in its investigation amid reports that detectives had identified a person of interest.

The canal. Canals are good places to walk and run. I seek them out, myself. There are canals here that link Lake Washington to Puget Sound; I like to walk along them. The first morning of my stay in Dublin for an atheist conference I went exploring and scored a walk along the canal. Women should be safe doing that.

Thousands of people gathered in the late afternoon in Tullamore, Dublin and Belfast on Friday, as Ireland continues to reel from the murder of Murphy, with echoes of the national reckoning that was sparked in the UK last year by the murder of Sarah Everard. Events also took place in Belfast, Dublin and other towns and cities on Friday.

The death of Murphy has sparked fresh debate about the safety of women in Ireland, with many asking how such an attack could happen in broad daylight.

“We, as a society, need to face up to this. There is an epidemic of violence against women. It’s been going on for millennia, quite frankly,” Leo Varadkar, the deputy prime minister, said on Friday.

And it’s not over. You get an actor from the Harry Potter movies calling the author of the Harry Potter novels an “auntie” because he dislikes her views, and you get Fox News raging over the “narcissism” of…Hillary Clinton. It’s not just about rape, it’s also about contempt and disgust for women as such.



To an auntie

Jan 15th, 2022 8:58 am | By

Yeah. Women are either fuckable or My Auntie, i.e. old boring stupid wrong female woman.

She only wrote the thing that is the only reason anyone has ever heard of Rupert Grint let alone gives a shit what he thinks of her. Ungrateful misogynist little toad.



The boundaries are already blurring

Jan 14th, 2022 4:34 pm | By

So now it’s your sexual preferences.

Yers it’s “rigid” to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Truly decent people are omnisexual, not that we’re judging you or anything, we’re just judging you.

Image

Nobody should ever be pressured, but everybody should definitely be judged. Nancy Kelley is judging you.



Urban wildlife

Jan 14th, 2022 4:16 pm | By

I took my dog friend/client to Union Bay Natural Area this afternoon. It’s on top of what used to be a garbage dump but is now teeming with wildlife.

Union Bay Natural Area | An Escape From City Life in Seattle | Seattle  Bloggers

The trees were bare, unlike in this photo, but you can see what it’s like. On our way in I thought I saw an eagle perched up ahead then decided nah then decided oh, yes it is, and it was. Looking around, and then grooming under a wing. Cooper and I kept going after I watched the eagle for a while, and we were somewhere along this trail in the photo when I saw a couple of swans fly by, and then saw a whole group of them on the water. I counted at least 13, so there are at least 15 hanging out there. I didn’t know they stopped off in Seattle at all. Not too shabby.

I googled later and found a bird watcher’s log: they’re Trumpeter Swans. He saw 16.



Omigod he means ALL women

Jan 14th, 2022 12:15 pm | By

Is it still 2015?

How original. ALL women, including men. Yes dear, we know, we’ve heard it before. We’ve replied before. It seems a bit dim to be saying that at this late date as if it were a brand new and interesting thought.

Also, big, small, short, tall, aren’t the same kind of modifier as “not.” Big and small women are of course women. Men who call themselves women are not comparable to big or small women for purposes of argument. Men are not women by definition, so no, you can’t just say “Wull small women are women so why can’t men be women?” It’s dumb.

And then “transphobic bile” and “my mentions” – you sound like a teenager. Do you want to sound like a teenager?

Apparently he does.

Inherent dignity has nothing to do with claiming to be something you’re not and then bullying anyone who doesn’t passionately agree with you and talk solemn nonsense about your inherent dignity. Nothing.

“Transphobic rant,” “my mentions” [again!] – it’s all so childish. Maek you look silly. And “summarily” blocked? What, because we were expecting trial by jury? Get over yourself.



She compares herself to Jackie Robinson

Jan 14th, 2022 11:08 am | By

Life with Lia:

The crux of the swimmers’ complaints is the biological advantage that Lia has over female teammates. The swimmers were promised competition between females, not men who want to be female. Yet, there’s also the matter of an apparently inflated ego.

“She compares herself to Jackie Robinson,” the female swimmer told me. “She said she is like the Jackie Robinson of trans sports.”

But Lia Thomas isn’t in trans sports. If he were there would be no problem. Lia Thomas has forced his way into women’s sports, thus ruining it for the women. He’s not the Jackie Robinson of trans sports, he’s the comet striking women’s sports.

“I try not to be around her because the whole situation makes me so mad,” the swimmer added. “I don’t think Lia is a bad person. She’s very quiet and kind of introverted … It’s just really hard for me to respect her at all because of what she’s doing to my team and what she’s doing to women in general and not caring.”

Well that is a bad person though. That describes a bad person.

Mind you, he’s also young, and could become a better person over time. But what he’s doing, and his indifference to the consequences for people who are less strong than he is, is bad, and that makes him at least situationally a bad person.

“She laughs about it and mocks the situation,” the female swimmer told me. “Instead of caring or showing that she cares about what she’s doing or what she’s doing to her teammates, she’s not sympathetic or empathetic at all. Lia never addressed our team. She never asked if it was OK. She never asked how we felt. She never tried to explain how she feels. She never has said anything to us as a group. She never addressed anything.”

“All she does is make comments to people like, ‘At least I’m still No. 1 in the country,’ and those kinds of cocky things,” she said. “She doesn’t care how all this is affecting us and how this is affecting our relationship to swimming. She doesn’t care, and it makes it really hard to like her.”

Indeed, and that difficulty in liking is a pretty good sign of a Bad Person.

“On our last training trip, we were told not to wear Penn gear on our trip to Florida, on the off chance that we would get harassed or anything,” she said. “So, everyone went out of their way — now, about 75% of our athletic wardrobe is Penn — we went out of our way to not pack any Penn stuff. Except Lia. Every single day at the airport and at the gym, Lia made sure to wear a big Penn shirt with ‘Penn Swim and Dive’ on it. And she was the only one. We weren’t allowed to wear it because of her, and she did it every day.”

“She was doing it just to make a point,” the swimmer said. “We all went out of our way for her.”

In other words he was rubbing the women’s noses in it. I say not a good person.

The school has warned the swimmers to be careful in what they say in response to inquiries about the situation because they did not want to see anyone “jeopardize their future.”

Is that a threat? That sounds like a threat to me. “It would be a shame if anything happened to this nice little future of yours.”

“We were told, ‘You guys can say whatever you want, but we don’t want you to ruin your future. So, we will help you, whatever you want to say,’” the swimmer said.

Whatever you want to say that won’t ruin your future according to us, the people who are forcing you into this grotesque unjust farce.



Firsty

Jan 14th, 2022 10:17 am | By

What a bizarre way to “make history.”



What violent sex offenders do

Jan 14th, 2022 9:59 am | By

Accused.

Yesterday evening Professor James Treadwell, a criminologist at Staffordshire University, announced his dismay on Twitter at being accused of “transphobia”. The details are vague, even to him. He has not been presented with evidence and he doesn’t and may never know who has accused him. 

The issue is Professor Treadwell’s tweeting in favour of the right of female inmates to a single-sex prison estate. In a series of tweets on 27 December 2021, Professor Treadwell outlined his experience of the manipulative behaviour of violent sex offenders who will use loopholes to “game” the criminal justice system. He was clear that his tweets were not directed at the transgender community. He wrote:

“The idea that sex offenders are manipulative individuals who would exploit systems and laws could only be unreal to those who do not know how manipulative sexual offenders can be. All groom, seek to exploit and control.”

We’re talking about men convicted of sex crimes here. Why wouldn’t they be manipulative and prone to exploiting systems and laws where possible? Why wouldn’t they pretend to be trans women? It’s not “they’re trans, therefore evil,” it’s “they’re convicted sex criminals, therefore they have every motive to pretend to be trans women.”

“It isn’t about trans people, it’s about bad people who will exploit the law from self interest and work within a legal framework (that could protect women’s spaces) to do as they want and get what they want. You think that won’t happen, you don’t know how many sex offenders act.”

And you’re not even considering the obvious likelihoods.

Today, Professor Treadwell is in the awful position of fearing for his job; for a few tweets about a subject that he is specifically qualified to speak on. Meanwhile an effective message is simultaneously sent to his academic colleagues nationwide, that they could be targeted next. He is not the first and he won’t be the last. Many criminologists are choosing to look the other way. Professor Treadwell felt that he could no longer do so. His professional integrity appears to be exactly what he is being persecuted for.

Much the same thing happened to Jean Hatchet, who wrote the above.

This is the problem. Once the word “transphobia” is uttered, little else matters. Once it is written down the battle begins. It is like being blindfolded before being flung into a gladiatorial arena. You have no idea who or what you are fighting, and you have no weapons. You experience paralysing terror at what these unfounded accusations might do to your life. The loss of your job, home and everything you hold dear. A cold descends upon you and fear replaces the initial confidence that you have done nothing wrong. You can shout all you want about the unfairness, about your good character, your right to a personal belief, the boundary to your private life; but when the word “transphobia” is flung in your face, that incorporeal mud sticks immediately and it is up to you to prise it off over agonising months. 

And of course “transphobia” can mean simply not believing that people can change sex. We have two choices: say we believe the magic, or risk losing everything.

We must keep speaking. Women in prison don’t have a voice and we must be the voices that protect and safeguard them. The criminal justice system has failed these women by placing sexually violent men amongst them. Society has failed many of them before they even get to prison. 82 per cent are incarcerated for non-violent or petty crimes like shoplifting. Much of this “crime” is the result of poverty and debt and committed by women who have been brutalised by men over and over again. 

And they don’t have the out that men have. Saying they’re trans men and want to transfer to the men’s prison is obviously not a solution, and neither is staying where they are once men who call themselves trans are added.



Untoast

Jan 14th, 2022 9:42 am | By

Remember that story about the landslide last week? And that I added in a comment that one dog was killed and another was missing so probably also toast?

Well…



Some of the drug regimens bring long-term risks

Jan 13th, 2022 4:29 pm | By

A breach in the defenses perhaps:

An upsurge in teenagers requesting hormones or surgeries to better align their bodies with their gender identities has ignited a debate among doctors over when to provide these treatments.

An international group of experts focused on transgender health last month released a draft of new guidelines, the gold standard of the field that informs what insurers will reimburse for care.

How about informing the well-being of the patient first?

A new chapter dedicated to adolescents says that they must undergo mental health assessments and must have questioned their gender identity for “several years” before receiving drugs or surgeries.

How about questioning the very idea of “gender identity”? How about not treating it as a real and detectable thing, as opposed to an idea in search of people to believe it?

Some of the drug regimens bring long-term risks, such as irreversible fertility loss. And in some cases, thought to be quite rare, transgender people later “detransition” to the gender they were assigned at birth. Given these risks, as well as the increasing number of adolescents seeking these treatments, some clinicians say that teens need more psychological assessment than adults do.

Ya think? It’s almost as if teenagers are easily influenced by their fellow teenagers, with whom they spend most of their time.



A quick reaction force

Jan 13th, 2022 11:59 am | By

Oath Keepers guy charged with sedition.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged with seditious conspiracy for organizing a wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol last Jan. 6 and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, federal law enforcement officials said.

I think that might be a fairly serious crime.

The arrest of Mr. Rhodes was a major step forward in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and the case marked the first time that prosecutors had filed charges of sedition.

The Oath Keepers, along with the Proud Boys, have emerged as the most prominent far-right extremists to have taken part in the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors have collected reams of evidence against them, including encrypted cellphone chats and recordings of online meetings. They have charged its members not only with forcing their way into the building in a military-style “stack,” but also with stationing an armed “quick reaction force” at a hotel in Virginia to be ready to rush into Washington if needed.

In other words they can’t plausibly claim to have been just protesting, just telling Congress how they felt, just demonstrating their loyalty to the coward Trump. My guess is that a lot of people who were there can plausibly claim that, and that it’s true of some of them, but it’s always appeared that some were organized and not messing around.

Their cover story is that they were there to provide security for people like Roger Stone.

But at least four Oath Keepers who were at the Capitol that day and are cooperating with the government have sworn in court papers that the group intended to breach the building with the goal of obstructing the final certification of the Electoral College vote.

Mr. Rhodes has been a fixture on the far right almost from the day in 2009 that he announced the creation of the Oath Keepers at a rally in Lexington, Mass., the site of a famous Revolutionary War battle.

At the event, Mr. Rhodes laid out an antigovernment platform for the current and former law enforcement and military personnel who joined his group, saying that his plan was for members to disobey certain illegal orders from officials and instead to uphold their oath to the Constitution.

During the years that President Barack Obama was in office, the Oath Keepers repeatedly inserted themselves into prominent public conflicts, often playing the role of heavily armed vigilantes. In 2014, for instance, they turned up at a cattle ranch in Nevada after its owner, Cliven Bundy, engaged in an armed standoff with federal land management officials.

Of course they did. What cause could be more glorious than helping individuals steal public lands?

But after Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers pivoted away from their antigovernment views and appeared to embrace the new spirit of nationalism and suspicions of a deep-state conspiracy that had taken root in Washington. Like other far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers also opposed — often physically — the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis.

See this is where mention of BLM and George Floyd is relevant. When calling JK Rowling names, not so much.



A colonized mind

Jan 13th, 2022 11:33 am | By

I find I have to go back to the dreadful Quisling LSE blog post by Ilaria Michelis, because there are just too many irritations and outrages to ignore.

The impact of their rhetoric and political action has been and will continue to be devastating for trans people, from the halting of reforms to the Gender Recognition Act despite public support, to ever more intense levels of transphobic violence taking place online and offline.

What is online violence? Besides an oxymoron? And note the very selective catastrophizing. Oh oh oh trans people; women, meh.

I explore the function of so-called ‘gender critical’ feminism as a reactionary response to anti-racist and decolonial campaigns…

And by “explore” she means “make up.”

In July 2020, JK Rowling infamously decided to take a very public stance on the issue of trans rights and women’s safety through a series of tweets and an essay.

“Infamously.” JK Rowling dared to say something, in public of all things, and another [white!!] woman calls that infamous and hints that it’s brazen or rude or privileged to be so public about it.

As Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests spread around the world in response to George Floyd’s murder, and as Edward Colston’s statue was toppled to highlight Britain’s lack of accountability towards its colonial past, the novelist’s choice to use her substantial platform to reignite the debate on trans rights appeared highly insensitive and a product of her current class and race privilege

What utter bullshit. Censorious, creepy, witch-hunty bullshit. It is not the case that people stopped talking about other things as BLM protests spread, nor was it expected or demanded that they should.

Alyosxa Tudor asks “How bored and annoyed must JK Rowling be that she thinks the perfect moment in which she can reheat her […] comments is the height of Black Lives Matter?” (emphasis mine).

Emphasis hers; emphasis stupid. People are always talking about more than one thing. Feminists are allowed to talk about feminist issues even at “the height of” BLM. Michelis is of course carefully ignoring the fact that many gender critical feminists are Black.

One of the core arguments of so-called ‘gender critical’ ideology is that trans women cannot be fully ‘accepted’ as women because their experience of womanhood is not identical to that of cis women

Ah ah stop right there. It’s not that it’s “not identical,” it’s that it’s the opposite. It’s that male people can’t have “their experience of womanhood” because their experience is necessarily, by definition, experience of manhood.

… and trans women can therefore not fully comprehend or empathise with the supposedly universal subordination of women. This argument rests on the fiction of a single female experience, a fiction which has routinely silenced and side-lined women who experience racism, colonial domination and other forms of oppression that cannot be singularly attributed to their gender.

No no no no. Not the same thing at all. A dishonest manipulative piece of rhetoric.

Depictions of trans women as deceitful monsters seeking to violate the purity of innocent young women and their ‘safe spaces’ recall all too clearly the starkly racist representations of Black men during the Jim Crow era.

All too clearly? More like a window plastered in mud.

Media and public attention towards BLM and global struggles against racism and coloniality have increasingly challenged white women, including white feminists, to consider their own participation and complicity in systems of white supremacy and imperialism. Concepts like “white fragility” and “white women’s tears”[5] have become mainstream…

Indeed they have, and guess why. Guess whose interests that diversion promotes.

Perhaps JK Rowling was indeed quite annoyed because BLM and other anti-racist movements had decisively shoved the conversation away from the narrative of white women as the ultimate victim towards the long overdue recognition that Black, Brown and other racialised and minoritised groups, and amongst them Black trans women, suffer incredible levels of daily violence which many white women can barely imagine.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps Ilaria Michelis is aligned with the Eating People’s Faces Party…or perhaps not, but let’s just throw it out there for credulous people to embrace. That’s the approach of the whole piece.



If he’s toxic, ma’am

Jan 13th, 2022 9:39 am | By

But he identifies as royal; surely that’s all that’s required?

The Queen has removed a range of military affiliations and royal patronages held by Prince Andrew, Buckingham Palace has said. The move comes after a US judge gave the green light for her second son to face a sexual assault civil lawsuit.

Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Thursday: “With the Queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and royal patronages have been returned to the Queen. The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”

The dramatic move comes hours after more than 150 military veterans wrote to the Queen to ask her to strip Andrew of his honorary military roles amid what they described as their “upset and anger”. The palace had said earlier on Thursday that it had no comment on their open letter.

It’s almost as if the whole system is archaic and impossible to justify. Why does he have a whole string of honorary military roles in the first place?

The veterans add in their letter, which was partly coordinated by the campaign group Republic: “Officers of the British armed forces must adhere to the very highest standards of probity, honesty and honourable conduct.

“These are standards which Prince Andrew has fallen well short of. It is hard not to see, when senior officers are reportedly describing him as ‘toxic’, that he has brought the services he is associated with into disrepute.

“We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged.”

Now that would be interesting.