Small but rich

Dec 2nd, 2020 8:51 am | By

Of course they did.

Sweeping data released by the Small Business Administration on who benefited from pandemic relief programs raises questions about the equitability and distribution of loans intended for small businesses, an initial analysis by NBC News shows.

The analysis found that properties owned by the Trump Organization as well as the Kushner Companies, owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, profited from the program.

Does that sound corrupt? Just a little.

After months of litigation, the SBA released the dataset Tuesday night on every small business that received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) loan.

Over 25 PPP loans worth more than $3.65 million were given to businesses with addresses at Trump and Kushner real estate properties, paying rent to those owners. Fifteen of the properties self-reported that they only kept one job, zero jobs or did not report a number at all.

So more than half of the properties didn’t use the PPP loans to protect any paychecks (or only one paycheck) but did keep paying rent to TrumpKushner. That’s nice. No corruption there at all.

The loans to Trump and Kushner properties included a $2,164,543 loan to the Triomphe Restaurant Corp., at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City. The company reported the money didn’t go to keeping any jobs. It later closed.

After Trump took his cut.

“Many months and broken promises later, the court-ordered release of this crucial data while the Trump administration is one foot out the door is a shameful dereliction of duty and flagrant mismanagement of a program that millions of workers and small businesses needed to get through this pandemic,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, an accountability watchdog, said in a statement.

Make Murka Great by funneling more $$$ to Trump and his anemic son-in-law.

The PPP programs’ original stated intent by officials was to help with payroll for small businesses struggling under the effects of coronavirus lockdown measures. The loans aimed to provide a bridge through the summer for what was hoped to be an improved economic and health climate in the fall.

I suspect that by struggling small businesses they didn’t mean fancy restaurants in Trump Tower.

Businesses owned by people of color without strong banking relationships found themselves with limited access and forced them to find other routes for funding. There was also the persistent question of what defined a “small business,” after lobbying by the hotel and restaurant industry ballooned the maximum number of employees allowable to 500, even though over 98 percent of the small businesses in America have fewer than 100 employees.

Whatever. Trump got his cut.



An impassioned but doomed plea

Dec 1st, 2020 5:30 pm | By

The Guardian has more on that furious plea to stop the lies:

One of Georgia’s top election officials has made an impassioned plea to Donald Trump to tone down his rhetoric disputing the election results, saying the president is “inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence”.

He wants to though. He would love to see violence erupt because of his lies. I’m completely serious: he does, he would, that’s what he is.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, also issued the stark warning that if Trump does not rein in his supporters then “someone is going to get hurt”.

Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said last week that he had police protection around his home because of threats he received after election results were announced. Trump lost Georgia to Biden by around 13,000 votes.

Sterling also said that the wife of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had received “sexualized threats”.

Raffensperger has been the target of constant attacks from the president over his defeat in Georgia, and he recently told the Guardian he had received death threats. Last week, Trump had called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people”, Sterling noted, adding: “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of crap.”

And Trump wants them open and he won’t do one thing to close them. No chance.



It has to stop

Dec 1st, 2020 5:02 pm | By

He really mad.

He’s the voting implementation manager in Georgia.



Nice gig

Dec 1st, 2020 11:46 am | By

Trump is getting a lot of money from this country-destroying grift of his.

President Trump’s political operation has raised more than $150 million since Election Day, using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election to shatter fundraising records set during the campaign, according to people with knowledge of the contributions.

As we know, 60% of that money is for him, to pay off campaign debts, not for the purpose it says on the label.

Much of the money raised since the election is likely to go into an account for the president to use on political activities after he leaves office, while some of the contributions will go toward what’s left of the legal fight.

Oh and for future political activities – of course. Tell destructive lies about the rival government so that you can get more bales of cash to promote your destructive lying “political activities.” Fabulous.

The surge of donations is largely from small-dollar donors, campaign officials say, tapping into the president’s base of loyal and fervent donors who tend to contribute the most when they feel the president is under siege or facing unfair political attacks. The campaign has sent about 500 post-election fundraising pitches to donors, often with hyperbolic language about voter fraud and the like.

500?!! So it’s what, 17 or 18 a day? That’s…a lot.

“Our democracy and freedom is at risk like never before, which is why I’m reaching out to you now with an URGENT request,” reads an email to donors from Vice President Pence. “President Trump and I need our STRONGEST supporters, like YOU, to join the Election Defense Task Force. This group will be responsible for DEFENDING the Election from voter fraud, and we really need you to step up to the front lines of this battle.”

Pence the “Christian.” What a guy. Conning money out of people who don’t have much of it, by telling outrageous lies about the election, to help out the rapist bullying lying thieving corrupt incontinent obscene Donald Trump.

The donations are purportedly being solicited for the Official Election Defense Fund, which is blazed in all red across the Trump campaign’s website, with an ominous picture of the president outside the White House.

There is no such account, however. The fundraising requests are being made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee that raises money for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. As of Nov. 18, that committee also shares its funds with Save America, a new leadership PAC that Trump set up in early November and which he can use to fund his post-presidency activities.

Which is outright fraud. It’s outright and it’s also right out there in the open, where anyone can see it.

The money raised since Nov. 3 is a massive haul for such a short period, especially after the election, when losing campaigns typically ramp down their fundraising operation. By comparison, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee raised $125 million in the second quarter of 2020, according to federal records. The campaign account’s best single month was September, when it raised $81 million, according to available data.

But now they’ve pulled in $150 million in less than a month. Via fraud.



Social rather than sovereign

Dec 1st, 2020 11:27 am | By

Suzanne Moore asks a crucial question in a post on the Tavistock ruling.

Again, we must ask what is causing this misery for girls and why suicide rates are rising. Why are female bodies such an uncomfortable place to be?

That question needs to be thrown back to society and not always located in the psyche of the individual. This is why I find parts of trans activist discourse so totally conservative. There is no analysis of how gender operates, of how bodies and definitions do not exist in isolation, how the notion of a true self may itself be false.

Very likely is false, from what I’ve read of psychology and philosophy. The self isn’t a thing, and it ebbs and flows and mutates constantly, so preaching about a “true” or “authentic” self just doesn’t mean very much.

So much thinking that underpins the trans ideology of selfhood, is that selfhood is sovereign rather than social. It has much more in common with right wing thinking than it does with left wing thinking. That so much of the left has rushed to embrace it is a sign of the times.

Yessssssssss. That’s the quote of the day.



Pardon?

Dec 1st, 2020 10:47 am | By

Giuliani is curled up on Trump’s lap begging for a pre-emptive pardon.

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giulani, discussed with the president as recently as last week the possibility of being granted a “pre-emptive pardon,” according to the New York Times, which cited two anonymous sources.

Pardon for what? Not known, but best guess is that whole Ukraine thing. The Times wrote:

Such a broad pardon pre-empting any charge or conviction is highly unusual but does have precedent. George Washington pardoned plotters of the Whiskey Rebellion, shielding them from treason prosecutions. In the most famous example, Gerald R Ford pardoned Richard M Nixon for all of his actions as president. Jimmy Carter pardoned thousands of American men who illegally avoided the draft for the Vietnam War.

So Rudy wants to be coupled with Nixon. Ok.

And yesterday, conservative commentator Sean Hannity said on his radio show that Trump “needs to pardon his whole family and himself.”

So Hannity admitted they’re all criminals. Seems fair.



Of the other gender

Dec 1st, 2020 10:21 am | By

The Tavistock ruling part 2.

The Tavistock deals with cases referred to it from across England and Wales. Until 2011, puberty blockers were only available at GIDS for those aged 16 or older.

In the year 2019-20, of 161 children referred to GIDS, three were aged 10 or 11 and 95 under the age of 16.

95 out of 161. Eeeeesh.

Diagnosis of gender dysphoria involves children demonstrating at least six of a series of behavioural traits as well as an “associated significant distress or impairment in function, lasting at least six months”.

Ah yes behavioral traits, like wearing the “other” clothes for example. The patterns include:

• A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.

• A strong preference for wearing clothes typical of the other gender.

• A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play.

• A strong preference for toys, games or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender.

• A strong preference for playmates of the other gender.

• A strong rejection of toys, games and activities typical of one’s assigned gender.

• A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.

• A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender.

The whole thing rests on the social rules about “gender.” The language in almost every item makes that plain. “Clothes typical of the other gender,” “cross-gender roles,” “stereotypically,” “the other gender,” “assigned gender,” “experienced gender.” The only purely physical one is the “strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.”

Lots of people dislike the social rules about gender, and rightly so, because they’re stupid. Get rid of the damn rules! And in the meantime, defy them. It’s a win-win: it’s easier than drastically altering your body, and it avoids all the drawbacks to drastically altering your body.

In short, dislike of social conventions isn’t something that requires chemical sex reversal. Social conventions are social, not physical, so trying to medicate them away is futile as well as harmful.

Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the ruling, Keira Bell said she was “delighted” with the ruling: “This judgment is not political, it’s about protecting vulnerable children … I’m delighted to see that common sense has prevailed.”

Paul Conrathe, the solicitor who represented both claimants, said the ruling was “an historic judgment that protects children who suffer from gender dysphoria … This may have led to hundreds of children receiving this experimental treatment without their properly informed consent.”

And who speaks for the other side?

Lui Asquith, from the trans children’s charity Mermaids, said: “It’s frankly a potential catastrophe for trans young people across the country and it cannot be exaggerated the impact that this might have, not only on the population of trans young people that require hormone blockers, but it may potentially open the floodgates towards other questions around bodily autonomy and who has the right to govern their own body.”

Or maybe it’s a rescue for “trans young people” who wake up from their delusion a few years down the road.



The Tavistock have suspended new referrals

Dec 1st, 2020 9:47 am | By

There’s a ruling in Bell v Tavistock:

Children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, the high court has ruled.

Even in cases involving teenagers under 18 doctors may need to consult the courts for authorisation for medical intervention, three senior judges have ruled in an action brought against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs the UK’s main gender identity development service for children.

An NHS spokesperson welcomed the “clarity” the decision had brought, adding: “The Tavistock have immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under 16s, which in future will only be permitted where a court specifically authorises it. Dr Hilary Cass is conducting a wider review on the future of gender identity services.”

The 19-page judgment in effect introduces guidelines for the way in which the London clinic handles young patients who experience gender dysphoria – the condition where they are distressed because of a “mismatch between their perceived identity and … their sex at birth”.

But is that in fact a “condition”? Or is it just a feeling, an idea, a desire, a longing, a persistent mood? Is it a medical “condition” or an existential one? Have the people in charge been a tiny bit hasty in agreeing that it is a medical “condition” that can be treated by opposite-sex hormones?

What does it even mean to talk about a mismatch between one’s “perceived identity” and…pretty much anything? What is “perceived identity”? What is a perceived identity that doesn’t match the facts about the person who claims to have it?

The whole idea is vague enough and questionable enough and recently imposed enough that it seems incredibly reckless to stuff children with cross-sex hormones to “fix” it.

In their decision, Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the Queen’s bench division, Lord Justice Lewis and Mrs Justice Lieven, said a child under the age of 16 may only consent to the use of medication intended to suppress puberty “where he or she is competent to understand the nature of the treatment”.

Such an understanding must include “the immediate and long-term consequences of the treatment, the limited evidence available as to its efficacy or purpose, the fact that the vast majority of patients proceed to the use of cross-sex hormones, and its potential life changing consequences for a child”.

Which is more than most adults seem to have, so how children could have it is anyone’s guess.



51 more days of this crap

Nov 30th, 2020 5:53 pm | By

He mad.

Why is the governor certifying Biden’s win? I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it’s because Biden won.

Ducey betrayed the people of Arizona by not helping Trump steal the election. Hmm.

Don retweeted a bunch of people saying how bad and awful it is that the Governor signed off on an election instead of helping Trump steal it.

Psycho liar continues to lie.

I’ll tell you what’s sad for our country.



“Lawyer”

Nov 30th, 2020 5:13 pm | By

More threats from the losers:

On Monday President Trump’s campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that fired Trump cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be executed for saying that the election was the “most secure in United States history.”

DiGenova, appearing on the Howie Carr show, which simulcasts on Newsmax, took aim at Krebs as an aside during a wheels-off segment full of false claims about how the United States election had been rigged.

“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity [for Trump]. That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova said.

This is not just a random Parler troll trying to get attention. This is an attorney speaking on behalf of the President of the United States’ re-election campaign. And while it may read like a macabre joke, the direct nature of diGenova’s comments make it impossible to interpret as anything other than a real wish/threat against a public servant for offering truthful testimony.

Not normal, not okay.



Guest post: God was voted out of the Constitution

Nov 30th, 2020 4:50 pm | By

Originally a comment by Papito on The unbridled pursuit of personal appetites.

Barr is, of course, historically ignorant. Our country was explicitly founded without a state religion, and declared by our founding fathers not to be a Christian nation. God was literally voted out of the Constitution.

Several of our founding fathers, for example Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin,Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, John Adams, and George Washington, were more philosophical Deists, or outright atheists, than Christians.

Let’s see what Washington had to say on the matter:

The blessed Religion revealed in the word of will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances, be made subservient to the vilest of purposes.

and

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Washington never wrote about God, or Christ, only about such things as “the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men,” and “the benign parent of the human race.”

Not good enough? How about John Adams? “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Adams was a materialist:

When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.

or

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries…. The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

Thomas Paine, of course, wrote an entire book on the subject, The Age of Reason.

What Barr is trying to do in his historical revisionism is to lay the groundwork, or establish a justification for, removing the franchise from non-Christians, or making non-Christians second-class citizens. He, like many of his ilk, want to remake America as a Dominionist nation. In this, he goes directly contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. America was founded as a nation by people fleeing from religious oppression, not people seeking to create new religious oppression. But, as you said, to hear such a scoundrel as Barr talk about morality beggars belief.



Cox by name

Nov 30th, 2020 12:59 pm | By

This guy continues to fascinate me in his cold-blooded outrageousness.

One person called him a “twunt” – just one, just one time. He says it’s all of us, and when challenged, refuses to admit.

I don’t love this “gender-crit” label either.

https://twitter.com/radicalhag/status/1333313882627207168

There. Like that. He gets one, we get a million, we point this out, he says he doesn’t think his complaint about his one and indifference to our million is unjust. Why doesn’t he think it’s unjust?

So one woman calling him a “twunt” one time is a deliberate strategy of intimidation? He’s a male barrister and she’s a female academic and he thinks she thinks he will be intimidated by being called a “twunt”? Puh-leeeeze.

Yesterday I asked him for examples of the threats. He wouldn’t oblige.

So that’s not very helpful.

I wasn’t the only one.

That’s all – just go through thousands of tweets looking for them. He’s not going to produce them because ……….??????

There it is again. He says threats; we say show us; he says read thousands of tweets to find them; we say we did, show us; he says you read all those???! He’s like a school bully.

https://twitter.com/TKAMDamnHam/status/1333183964702535680


Normal is four decades of stagnant wages

Nov 30th, 2020 11:56 am | By

Robert Reich points out that Biden’s “normality” compared to Trump is a relief but not enough.

Normal led to Trump. Normal led to the coronavirus.

Normal is four decades of stagnant wages and widening inequality when almost all economic gains went to the top. Normal is 40 years of shredded safety nets, and the most expensive but least adequate healthcare system in the modern world.

Normal is also growing corruption of politics by big money – an economic system rigged by and for the wealthy.

Normal is worsening police brutality.

Normal is climate change now verging on catastrophe.

Normal is a GOP that for years has been actively suppressing minority votes and embracing white supremacists. Normal is a Democratic party that for years has been abandoning the working class.

All true and all unlikely to change.



Aggressively asking for the time

Nov 30th, 2020 11:38 am | By

The BBC has a prominently placed news item about an attack on Laverne Cox:

Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox has said “it’s not safe if you’re a trans person” after being caught up in a transphobic attack in Los Angeles.

Cox posted a 10-minute Instagram video explaining she had been walking with a friend in a park on Sunday when a man “aggressively” asked for the time.

He then proceeded to ask the friend if Cox was a “guy or girl?”

The man then physically attacked her friend, according to the star, who said she was “still in shock”.

“The guy is like hitting my friend, and then my friend is going toward him,” said Cox.

“I pull out my phone and I call to dial 911, and all of a sudden it’s over and the guy is gone.”

That sounds very unpleasant, and scary.

However. The physical attack was on Cox’s “friend,” who I’m guessing is probably male, because surely Cox or the BBC would have spelled it out if the friend had been female.

I’m just wondering how often the BBC does a big news item about such an incident involving a woman and a man walking in a park. A guy comes up, act aggressive, then throws some punches at the man, then departs the scene. Would that be any kind of news item?

Maybe if the woman were a tv star it would be…but I can’t say I recall seeing a lot of stories of that kind.

The rest of the article is about transphobia.

The 48-year-old said she had “been harassed and bullied my whole life” and felt “lucky and grateful” that her friend was there this weekend. The attack, she said, was a reminder that “it’s not safe in the world”.

“It’s not safe if you’re a trans person. Obviously, I know this well. It’s just really sad,” she sighed.

“It doesn’t matter who you are. You can be Laverne Cox, you know, or whatever that means. If you’re trans, you’re going to experience stuff like this.”

Last month, UK crime statistics obtained by the BBC showed there had been a 25% increase in reports of transphobic hate crimes in the UK.

Again – it sounds like a nasty and upsetting incident. It shouldn’t happen. People shouldn’t accost and throw punches at other people in parks. It’s a bad thing to do. But is it worse because Cox is trans? Is it headline news because Cox is trans and a tv star? Is the BBC frantic with worry about transphobic violence while it barely notices violence against women?



The unbridled pursuit of personal appetites

Nov 29th, 2020 5:24 pm | By

I wrote a thing about William Barr’s hypocritical pretense to care about morality while lying and cheating to help the most immoral human slug on the planet do whatever he wants.

He unloaded his deep wisdom at the Catholic college we Yanks call Noder Daym last year, including this inspiring gem:

On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint, you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites, and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.

This from a guy who enables Donald Trump. You’d laugh if it weren’t so sickening.

I probably posted about it here last year, but Barr’s revolting behavior since has only underlined the grotesquery.



Wait, who are the thugs?

Nov 29th, 2020 5:07 pm | By

The gender wars have been hot today. Most of the heat has come from…male barristers calling women names and accusing them of horrors. This guy in particular:

Quite a contrast, isn’t it. Maya’s critical of Simon Cox, but she doesn’t call him names. He calls her, and all of us, names.

Jolyon Maugham QC has been at it too, and he, notoriously, blocks everyone who disputes him no matter how mildly, so there is no argument or dissent to be seen via his Twitter. It’s all quite disturbing. I could understand it if we were calling for harm to befall someone, but all we’re saying is that men are not women and that sex is not something you can change the way you change your socks or a library book. That’s it. There is no “therefore trans people should be harmed.” People like Maugham and Cox seem to see it there, but they are hallucinating.

Cox has succeeded in scaring a young woman who works near him.

He doesn’t though. The things he said to Maya don’t fit that description.



Guest post: No need for God to play dumb

Nov 29th, 2020 1:10 pm | By

Originally a comment by Omar on Milk, eggs, and a hug from the god.

God is held to be omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient: everywhere, all-powerful and all-knowing. If you ask me, that trilogy is actually a bit of a swamp that God has created for himself and suddenly found himself in, and with consequences. If those consequences were unexpected, then we can forgive him: he is only human (or a human creation) after all. But if those consequences were expected, then unfortunately, God only has himself to blame.

God’s omniscience means not only that he knows your thoughts, but being omniscient, he knows them before you know them yourself. That means also, that God knows exactly what any given prayer will contain, before it even forms in the mind of the faithful believer who is about to pray it. So, on the face of it, there is no need for it to be prayed out loud for it to reach the awareness of God. The preacher and the separate members of the congregation only have to think their separate prayers inside their separate heads, and God will not only know in advance what each and every one will contain, he will know before those thinking them know.

The only reason praying needs to be done out loud is because the god it is addressed to is the congregation itself. The group is worshipping itself. (h/t Emile Durkheim.) Believing is the means to belonging. It does not matter what we believe, as long as we all believe it together. 100%; no dissent, exceptions or heresies please.

When God himself set up that Garden of Eden with its talking snake, before Eve had been sweet-talked by the said snake into taking a chomp out of that fateful apple and then passed it across to Adam, God must have known that he was setting them both up for The Fall. No need for God to play dumb, and wander about calling “Adam, where the hell are you? Did you eat the fruit of that tree I told you not to touch?” or some such; while knowing all along what the answer to that question had to be.

All the disputes, murder, mayhem, wars, tyrannies and revolutions of history are down to that one decision by God. Himself; to create that tree and forbid its fruit. But does he take any blame for it all?

Is the Pope a Presbyterian?



He wanted to share the women’s locker room

Nov 29th, 2020 1:03 pm | By

Wait what? I missed this one. Too much trump-watching no doubt.

Outsports sets the scene:

Hannah Mouncey is an athlete of unique distinction. She’s been part of a men’s national team that qualified for the World Championships, and she has also done it with her country’s women’s team.

Not many athletes — if any — can make that claim.

Well, no, because most male athletes wouldn’t consider it fair or sporting – let alone any kind of achievement or “distinction” – to compete against women. The fact that Mouncey is cool with it isn’t really a distinction, it’s more of a gross imposition.

Now on the latest episode of Five Rings To Rule Them All, she opens up about those experiences, playing Aussie rules football and being banned by the AFLW hours before the league’s draft, overcoming homelessness and mental illness through her transition, and the notion that she and other trans women are safety risks to other female athletes.

It’s not a “notion,” it’s just a damn fact. He’s built like a truck.

She also chronicles her struggles with Handball Australia, and the fight over her use of the locker room that she says ultimately left her thousands of miles away from the competition during the 2019 World Championship.

Ah yes the fight over his use of the women’s locker room – I posted about that a year ago. Mouncey said:

I can confirm that yes, I was left out of the team for the World Championships because there was a group of players within the team, supported by the team manager, who did not want me showering or using the change rooms before or after the game. This was in turn the sole reason given to me by our coach for my non selection.

I later had it confirmed by someone else within Handball Australia who had done some digging that: “From everything I’ve been told, you’ve basically not been picked because you’re not liked.” And the reason I’m not liked is because I told our manager, and by extension those players, exactly where he and they could go in trying to tell me where I could change and shower.

In other words he told the manager and players exactly where they could go for not wanting to get naked next to him. What a mensch.

This is going to happen over and over, and eventually you become very comfortable in saying no to people, regardless of how forceful you need to be. So many people spend their whole lives trying to please others and giving in to everything that is asked of them, and being able to develop the skills and confidence to say no is truly wonderful.

But this of course is only for the Hannah Mounceys. It’s not at all for the women who don’t want to compete against him or break their legs in a tangle with him or shower with him. They don’t get to say no, and their skills and confidence to say no are nothing but evil transphobia.

But never mind, now they’ve realized the error of their ways.

Handball Australia seeks to improve LGBTQI+ inclusion policy to better meet member needs. In furtherance of this, we acknowledge that at the Asian Championships in November 2018, a request was made of Hannah Mouncey which in hindsight was inappropriate. We recognise that this caused Hannah distress, anger and to feel isolated.

Meaning, it was inappropriate not to let him take his clothes off with the women.

Handball Australia regrets and acknowledges the hurt caused and extends a sincere apology to Hannah for not being able to resolve the issue before it impacted Hannah’s relationship with the sport and organisation. We hope that in time she will feel comfortable returning to the sport in some capacity.

And the women who would be forced to take their clothes off next to him? Has anyone talked to them?

In this vein, Handball Australia is committed to improving our member inclusion and protection policies. As a result of ongoing discussions, Hannah; a long-time Handball player and 2018 Victorian LGBT Sportsperson of the Year, has kindly agreed to work with Handball Australia in improving its inclusion policies and participant education, using her experience to help improve and pave the way for current and future players. She will be drawing on her 10-year playing career and experiences – nationally and internationally – to help significantly update the LGBTQI+ aspects of the policy and inform Handball Australia’s practical implementation for players, officials, and administration.

Handball Australia adopted the IOC guidelines around transgender participation published in 2016. SportAUS launched their transgender and gender diverse inclusion guidelines in mid-2019. We will be using these guidelines to further inform our member inclusion and protection policies.

All for the Mounceys, nothing for the women.



Milk, eggs, and a hug from the god

Nov 29th, 2020 10:53 am | By

Laurence Tribe and Michael Dorf write about the Supreme Court ruling that puts “religious freedom” ahead of public health:

The Roman Catholic Diocese ruling is also far-reaching in its substance. The unsigned majority opinion decries what it deems discrimination against religion because worship services were subject to capacity limits while some essential business were not. Likewise, Justice Neil Gorsuch complains in a concurrence that under some circumstances, New Yorkers in a hot zone were permitted to crowd into a liquor store or a bike shop but not a church, synagogue or mosque. Justice Brett Kavanaugh registers the same complaint about grocery stores and pet shops.

Those comparisons are inapt. Government discriminates illicitly when it fails to treat like cases alike. One needn’t discount people’s spiritual needs to recognize that liquor stores, bike shops, groceries and pet shops differ from churches, synagogues and mosques with respect to public health. The risk of coronaviral spread is not merely a function of the number of people at a venue; it increases dramatically as they linger in a stationary position, especially when they speak or sing.

Going to a store to get needed supplies is less risky than spending an hour in a crowd inside with praying and singing – even if the supply-getting takes longer than you would like because other people need supplies too.

But another point occurs to me. These religious gatherings in buildings – they’re to get together to talk about and petition and sing about an absent entity. The god isn’t sitting there, wearing robes or scrubs, in the flesh, touchable and smellable and solid. The god is in their heads. Even if you believe in the god you don’t think it’s sitting there among you in the same sense that you and the imam or rabbi or priest are. Religion is all about the unseen – it will say as much itself, while treating it as a virtue. You don’t go to mosque or chapel to pick up supplies you can’t get anywhere else, you go there to pay your respects to the god. In short you’d think it would be the kind of thing believers could easily transfer to another setting when there’s a contagion loose.

Religion is also about getting together, it’s about praising the god with other people, and the fellow believers are a major reason people lean on the institutions…but still, you would think they could go all-spiritual temporarily, to protect the other believers if not themselves.

On the other hand if you think of it as just another front in the great theocratic war, it makes perfect sense.



The road was long

Nov 29th, 2020 7:53 am | By

A historic first for Argentina! A man is allowed to join a women’s football team. Celebrate!

Mara Gomez is set to become the first trans woman to play in Argentina, after the AFA confirmed her registration to play for Villa San Carlos.

Gomez will make history by taking her place in the Women’s first division in Argentina, and is likely to make her debut against Lanus on December 5th.

On her social media post Gomez said, “Today I am officially a player of the highest category of Argentine soccer.

“The road was long, there were many obstacles, many fears and sorrows. That which one day made me think that I would not be anyone, that I would never have the opportunity to be happy in my life today is reversed.

You know what? The road was long for women, too. Women too have faced many obstacles, fears and sorrows. Women too have been made to feel they will never be anyone. Gomez doesn’t seem to be devoting any thought to that.

Mara, a striker, had been playing in the Platense Football League for Las Malvinas before her big move that was accepted by the AFA after a testosterone test proved she had acceptable levels in her blood.

He’s still a lot bigger than the women though.

Bigger. He’s trying to minimize it by crooking that knee, but it can’t be done. Bigger arms, bigger torso, bigger shoulders, bigger neck…he’s just bigger. Women on rival teams are going to be at a disadvantage.