Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Fox and Owl and Drew.

I despise people who worry about being “seen as.”

People who were worried about being “seen as”, let gangs of rapists sexually enslave little girls in the North of England, because when the rapist is Muslim one has to worry about being called racist.

And this isn’t a knock on the Muslim community, the Catholic Church covered up child rapers for decades if not centuries, because it was worried that if word got out that they were basically a giant pedophile and money laundering ring their moral credibility would be undermined.

During all this time, they didn’t stop raping kids or embezzling money the Irish state gave them to run orphanages, they just covered it up because they were more worried about being “seen as” than actually doing anything about the abuse. The abuse you see, made them money.

Fuck the optics, reality matters, and reality requires that people are free to disagree. That’s what this all boils down to.

JK Rowling doesn’t agree with all of trans ideology, there are bits she disagrees with, there are bits she questions and because of that there is this tremendous pressure to shut her down.

Oh, but she’s rich and powerful, who cares? Well, its like this, if Rowling can be shut down, anybody can be shut down. If a publisher can be pressured to give up an author who nets them billions of dollars, what about all the critical authors who don’t?

A while back, I read a few Wild Cards stories, its a series of short stories curated by George RR Martin. One of the stories was about “Golden Boy” – a superhero during the setting’s version of the McCarthy trials.

The whole point of the story was how HUAC broke the titular character, and why did they break him? Because if they could break him, they could break anybody. Because he broke, nobody was safe from the witch hunts.

That is the case with Rowling. I personally don’t actually like the Harry Potter books, but I have to stand by her for the sake of all the good authors who might come along who don’t buy into what is a modern orthodoxy.

This isn’t even really about trans issues. This is the same issue that hit Amelie Wen Zhao, a native of Beijing who had the temerity to write a novel involving slavery in a non-western, non-racial context. You see to the “seen as” crowd, popularly known as the woke, not being racist pile of trash is less important than not being “seen as” a racist pile of trash.

So forcing their cultural lens onto writers who do not share that lens isn’t being colonialist bastards its tooting their virtue horn. She’s “anti black” because she was more influenced by the history of China, where she’s from, than Alabama.

And if they can toot that horn so loud Rowling falls, they’ll toot that horn at anybody over any perceived slight to their holy wokeness (provided the person has a vagina, you’ll be amazed at the shit you can get way with if you’ve got a penis) just to demonstrate that they can.

One doesn’t give bullies a pass because you think they’re “punching up” – there are a lot of much smaller people who get flattened if Rowling falls.

In which the doctor backs himself into a corner, to the amusement of onlookers.

How the contagion happens:

Six months into the coronavirus crisis, there’s a growing consensus about a central question: How do people become infected?

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

(All the same I do wish people would move away when they can. It does annoy me when they stick to the middle of the sidewalk when it would be so easy to just veer to the side.)

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

These emerging findings are helping businesses and governments devise reopening strategies to protect public health while getting economies going again. That includes tactics like installing plexiglass barriers, requiring people to wear masks in stores and other venues, using good ventilation systems and keeping windows open when possible.

Keep those windows open.

“We should not be thinking of a lockdown, but of ways to increase physical distance,” said Tom Frieden, chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit public-health initiative. “This can include allowing outside activities, allowing walking or cycling to an office with people all physically distant, curbside pickup from stores, and other innovative methods that can facilitate resumption of economic activity without a rekindling of the outbreak.”

All of which of course underlines how appalling it is that Trump insists on doing rallies. Crowds, enclosed spaces, people talking loudly…

Something I always wonder about this guy.

He’s not a random young woke “activist” on Twitter, he’s an adult QC, yet he echoes the childish woke rhetoric as if there were nothing childish about it. It sounds bizarre coming from establishment figures like QCs.

Specifically, what makes him think that men who say they are women are “the most vulnerable in society”? That claim entails thinking that men are vulnerable to women; how did he get there? What sense does that make? Why does he believe that, or pretend to believe it?

I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out. Life is frustrating that way.

Trump’s people think it’s time to change the plan, but Trump doesn’t wanna.

In what amounts to a relaunch of a relaunch, Trump now travels to Arizona, a battleground state, to embrace his most comfortable signature issue with an event marking the 200th mile of his wall on the US-Mexico border (most of the construction has in fact replaced existing barriers).

The president will then speak at a “Students for Trump” event in Phoenix. Despite soaring cases of coronavirus in Arizona, his campaign team will be hoping for an enthusiastic turnout to get back on track.

In other words despite the fact that cases are swiftly rising in Arizona, Trump is eager to put more people at risk of illness and death because he enjoys shouting at crowds. What a mensch.

Observers argue that Tulsa was a warning that he needs to reset, not least because of the health risks of big indoor rallies – but there appears to be little chance of him heeding advice.

“From what I’ve been told, Trump just insists on these rallies and he wants more and not fewer compared to 2016 because he’s got all of the trappings of office and he can fly Air Force One low so people can be awed and all the rest of it,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

He doesn’t care that he’s killing people so that he can fly Air Force One low so people can be awed. His fun in being in Air Force One when it flies low is more important to him than any number of deaths.

“Obviously, he didn’t calculate properly for the pandemic and other factors. He thinks they can correct it and go on. He wants one every couple of weeks or more frequently. He didn’t learn a thing. His campaign staff would gladly give them up, along with the tweets, if they could. But they can’t.”

Well, that’s Trump, isn’t it. He doesn’t learn things because he’s incapable of learning, and his staff can’t persuade him to do less-stupid because he prefers more-stupid.

Trump wants to see cruel and unusual punishment for people who make political gestures he dislikes.

Trump referred to the protesters who tried to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue near the White House as “vandals” and “hoodlums” who don’t love America.

“We are looking at long term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators,” the president told reporters shortly before leaving for Arizona.

He wants people in prison for years for a minor property crime.

“Call them whatever you want. Some people don’t like that language, but that’s what they are. They’re bad people. They don’t love our country. And they’re not taking down our monuments. I just want to make that clear.”

Not his call. He’s not a god-emperor, he can’t stop us taking down monuments. They’re ours, not his, and we can collectively decide we don’t want monuments to genocide or slavery or Jim Crow.

Andrew Jackson was a genocider, so yes, there damn well is something very dubious about having a statue of him in Lafayette Park.

Granted, I don’t expect The Authorities to stand around and watch people destroy it, but that doesn’t make long prison sentences the appropriate response.

More rally!

Even as more of his campaign staffers test positive for coronavirus, Trump is still scheduled to hold a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, tomorrow.

The president will speak at a “Students for Trump” event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, despite Arizona seeing a rise in its number of coronavirus cases.

In a video, two of the church’s leaders said they have installed cutting-edge technology that “kills 99.9% of Covid within 10 minutes.”

Oh yes? What “technology” is that exactly? Why isn’t it being installed everywhere?

These two fellas explain it. It’s ionization. Or ionizidation. The one guy isn’t quite sure. Anyway it cleans out all the particulates and the virus can’t live in that. They said so. Thank god for technology, they also said. (So why didn’t god give us the technology back in October?)

They’re very upbeat about the whole thing.

That crude old technology of wearing masks won’t be mandatory though. Whew! Freedom freedom freedom freedom.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said on Sunday that the city’s policy requiring face masks to be worn in public will not be enforced during President Donald Trump’s upcoming event at a Valley megachurch…

She added that she is hopeful Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey — who will attend the event — will take the opportunity to set an example regarding mask usage.

Well that’s good enough. Just hope. Just hope the governor will set an example, and hope people will wear them even though they don’t have to, and hope no one catches the virus, and hope the event won’t cause a huge spike in cases. Just hope. Maybe say a little prayer.

“We would hope that our governor … can send a strong message,” she said. “He believes in masks and he could be a great spokesman for telling the young people who are there to wear masks. But the best spokesman would be the president — if he told everyone at that rally it was important to wear masks, I believe they would do it.”

But it has to be voluntary. The city won’t be enforcing the policy, it will just be hoping people set a good example. That’s responsible and wise and adult.

White House press secretary has no problem with Trump’s racism.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked if Trump regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe coronavirus during his Saturday rally. McEnany replied that the president “never regrets putting the onus back on China” for the coronavirus pandemic.

But that wasn’t the question. The question was whether he regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe the coronavirus. Lying Fox News sleaze changed the subject.

Another reporter noted that, earlier this year, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway described the phrase “kung flu” as offensive and wrong.

Asked repeatedly whether the White House disagrees with Conway’s characterization, McEnany ignored the question and then called on someone from the far-right website One America News Network.

Of course she did.

People in Lebanon can no longer pay their Ethiopian “maids” who are really their slaves…so they take them to the Ethiopian embassy and leave them there.

Lebanon’s economy is collapsing with the country’s currency losing 70% of its value in the past six months.

Now many of the country’s middle class claim they can no longer afford to pay their domestic maids.

More than 100 Ethiopian migrant workers have been dumped outside their embassy in the capital in recent days.

There’s a video at the link. It’s worth watching.

A rather sad account of transgender life:

Am I a woman? I used to believe I was. I used to have stars in my eyes. My role model was the Bond girl (and self-described “Transsexual Supermodel”) Caroline Cossey. She was gorgeous and glamorous. If she could do it, couldn’t I? Me, a socially awkward boy who struggled to find brotherhood in the company of boys, who more easily made friends with girls. Why not?

I have a lot of sympathy for that struggling to find brotherhood in the company of boys. I had friends who were boys who struggled that way. It wasn’t that they “felt like girls,” as far as I remember, so much as it was that they were nerdy aka bookish aka intellectually inclined aka not particularly keen on sports. The company of boys can be tiring.

In the very early days of the modern Internet, there was a non-commercial predecessor to Facebook and Twitter called IRC, or Internet Relay Channel [Chat]. Using login credentials borrowed from a teacher, I used this chat network to seek out help. And I found it. For a misfit like me, finding a group of people who were accepting and validating was amazing. Maybe even intoxicating. These people understood me—or, even if they didn’t quite understand me, they would at least listen to me. Crossdressers, transvestites, and transsexuals—people who were gender non-conforming—a community where I belonged. Finally.

A community with a belief system.

“Born in a man’s body” became the accepted device for explaining our existence as transsexuals. To “cure” this condition, we were expected to take feminizing hormones and whatever other treatments were necessary to achieve femininity, commonly including hair removal (through the process of electrolysis, predating laser depilation), facial feminizing surgery, tracheal shaving to reduce the prominence of the Adam’s apple, surgery to change vocal pitch, rib reduction surgery, a list of implants including breast, hip, buttock, and cheek, and then finally sex-reassignment surgery.

…

You might be wondering about the women who wanted to transition to become men. They were hardly around. And truth be told, they weren’t particularly welcome in a space populated by gender-bending men. Antipathy toward the female sex is the norm in these trans spaces. It’s hard to make believe in the presence of the real deal.

I’ve noticed that. Boy howdy have I noticed that. I wish more people would.

While I wasn’t paying attention, a new thing called the “Transgender Community” arose to take the place of the thing I’d previously known as simply community. Whereas the community I’d transitioned with was mostly middle-aged white men of all different political views, this new community was mostly middle-aged white men of radically leftist ideology. Before, we had been a group of individuals brought together by an unusual commonality. Now, it’s a whole identity movement. What’s more, the previous antipathy toward women has become more intense. 

So very intense.

My ignorance of the transgender cuckoo’s egg was corrected when I started that blog, which I used to explore the intersection of transgenderism and feminism. While there was heat on both sides of the divide, it was immediately obvious that only one side used threats of violence, violent (often sexual) imagery, and harassment as part of its strategy to confront its counterpart. I was shocked by the misogyny coming from “my side,” and spoke out against it.

If only more people would.

As I came to accept myself, and accept my choices, the depression lifted. I wrote more, trying to work out and understand my life through a different lens. Events and encounters that had previously left me confused and anxious started to make more sense when I realized I’d experienced them as a transsexual and not as a woman. In fact, my spiral of misery was practically an assured outcome given my effort to assert a womanhood that never existed and never can or will.

Since then, I’ve learned I’m not the only transsexual to have this revelation. The transgender community (such as it is) talks about authenticity, about true selves, about becoming ourselves. Why did I need to become a lifelong medical patient and have a dangerous surgery to reveal my “authentic” self?

Is there even any such thing as an “authentic self”? Hume said the self is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”

Now I’m 45. Almost certainly more than half-way to wherever I stop. If I keep taking estrogen, I risk a stroke and deep vein blood clots. If I stop, I risk skeletal deterioration. Teenage me had no way of appreciating the choices middle-age me would have to make. Do I regret my choices? As a child growing up during the AIDS crisis, and watching some of my friends damaged by drug addiction, there’s a chance that my choices left me better off than I might otherwise have been. If I regret anything, it’s that so few people helped me to understand the weight of my decisions, and that I was discouraged from believing in my own agency.

Of course there’s also a chance that those choices didn’t leave Corinna Cohn better off.

This one however is brilliant.

Trump’s niece really doesn’t like him.

“I think he’s freaking out,” said Michael D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. “He will treat her savagely.”

On Sunday, Axios reported that Trump insists Mary Trump is “not allowed” to write her book, because doing so would violate a non-disclosure agreement she signed.

Trump told Axios: “She’s not allowed to write a book. When we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with – she’s got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total … signed a nondisclosure.”

It’s interesting how he extorts NDAs from people. I guess he must have something to hide?

Mary, 55, is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr, the president’s older brother, who died in 1981 at the age of 42 from a heart attack linked to alcoholism. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature, as well as a PhD in clinical psychology from Adelphi University in New York, according to Forbes.

Meaning she’s a whole lot smarter than Trump. Trump at this point would flunk second grade.

D’Antonio commented: “It makes her someone that Donald would fear on a very elemental level. She thinks for herself, she’s analytical when it comes to humans and she can express herself, so this is a nightmare for him.”

We can hope so.

The president is now reportedly considering suing Mary over the memoir, due to be published on 28 July by Simon & Schuster. It is expected to disclose Mary was a key source of confidential documents for a Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times investigation into Trump’s personal finances.

Squirm, Donnie. Squirm and sweat and lose sleep.

So now Don is furious at Brad and so are Jared and Princess, but Brad is furious at the news media and the news media are…reporting the news.

The Tulsa fire department said 6,200 people attended. The Trump campaign claimed 12,000. The arena holds 19,000.

Who ya gonna believe, the fire department or the Trump campaign? Hahaha just kidding.

Trump’s demeanour on returning to Washington was widely scrutinised. He was initially quiet on Twitter on Sunday but the president was reported to be “furious” at the “underwhelming” event, which followed a week of controversy about whether it should even be held. According to NBC, Trump was “particularly angry that before he even left DC, aides made public that six members of team in Tulsa tested positive for Covid-19”.

Right. Everything about Covid-19 should be kept completely secret, because it’s better for Trump that way. Stop testing, stop mentioning, stop reporting, stop saying “wear a mask.” Stop all of it. Pretend there is no Covid-19.

In a statement, Parscale blamed the low attendance on “a week’s worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of Covid and protesters”, which he said “coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally”.

Look at that. Just look at it. This filthy hack is shouting at the news media for reporting that a huge indoor rally would be unsafe during a lethal pandemic. This filthy hack wants them to have shut up about that so that more people would “bring their families and children to the rally” – and get infected.

As Covid-19 cases in Oklahoma rise, public health officials had warned against holding a large indoor gathering. The Trump campaign did not require attendees to wear masks. Some observers speculated fear of Covid-19 may have stopped some supporters from attending the rally.

Oddly enough, not everyone wants to risk death for the sake of watching Trump scream into a microphone.

Oh that’s gotta hurt.

Four authors represented by JK Rowling’s literary agency have resigned after accusing the company of declining to issue a public statement of support for transgender rights.

Ouch. Four! Resigned! Will the agency even survive?

Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir said they could no longer work with the Blair Partnership, the London-based agency that represents all aspects of the Harry Potter author’s work, because they were not convinced the company “supports our rights at all avenues”. One other author is understood to have also quit the agency but wishes to remain anonymous.

Who?

In a joint statement, Fisher, Davies and Jónsdóttir said that following Rowling’s recent intervention on transgender rights, they had asked the agency “to reaffirm their commitment to transgender rights and equality”.

“Intervention”? What intervention? She wrote some words. She didn’t intervene in anything. That’s a snide way of implying she was aggressive and “violent” because she wrote some words, words that were partly about her own experience with literal violence.

However, following private talks, they said: “We felt that they were unable to commit to any action that we thought was appropriate and meaningful.”

Oh the horror. They told their agency to do some things and their agency declined to obey. How dare the agency not jump when they said jump.

A spokeswoman said it would always champion diverse voices and believe in freedom of speech for all but it was not willing to have staff “re-educated” to meet the demands of a small group of clients.

Good. Note that the Guardian puts scare-quotes on “re-educated” but not on “intervention.”

The authors’ public resignations pose a challenge for the publishing industry, which has traditionally prioritised freedom of speech but is facing rebellions from staff and clients over the views of authors.

No they don’t. The public resignations of nobodies don’t pose a challenge for the publishing industry.

Earlier this month, it was reported that staff at Rowling’s publishing house, Hachette, were told they could not refuse to work on her new children’s book because they objected to her views on transgender rights.

See? Not a challenge. Just say no – or, indeed, fuck off.

The Blair Partnership – which was founded in 2011 with Rowling as its key client – represented about 80 individuals before the resignations, including the boxer Tyson Fury, the cyclist Chris Hoy, and the former Labour politician Tom Watson.

And now represents about 76 individuals after the resignations, and will continue to flourish. (Tom Watson was a friend of my beloved friend Maureen Brian, so I know he’s good people.)

Jónsdóttir, also known as Owl Fisher, said they were happy with the Blair Partnership on a professional level but had asked the agency to make a public declaration of support for transgender rights following Rowling’s comments. The co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide suggested the literary agency should conduct staff training with the group All About Trans but “these requests weren’t met positively by the management”.

Good. Excellent. If the agency had made such a statement it would have been joining the public bullying of Rowling as well as endorsing fatuous bullshit about Magic Gender, so it’s very good that they refused to do so, and to be re-educated.

The Blair Partnership said:

“We are disappointed by the decision that four clients have taken to part ways with the agency. To reiterate, we believe in freedom of speech for all; these clients have decided to leave because we did not meet their demands to be re-educated to their point of view. We respect their right to pursue what they feel is the correct course of action.”

Shorter: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Life in the USofA:

Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests against police violence erupted nationwide in late May.

At least 18 are categorized as deliberate attacks; another two dozen are unclear as to motivation or are still under investigation, according to a count released Friday by Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Weil has tracked vehicle-ramming attacks, or VRAs, since protests began.

The 20 people facing prosecution in the rammings include a state leader of the Virginia Ku Klux Klan, as well as a California man who was charged with attempted murder after antagonizing protesters and then driving into them, striking a teenage girl. Video footage of some attacks shows drivers yelling at or threatening Black Lives Matter protesters before hitting the gas.

On the one hand protests, on the other hand people trying to kill the protesters. There’s a certain disproportion there.

“The use of car attacks against peaceful protesters is increasingly a deliberate terror tactic for white supremacists,” said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit that’s leading a civil suit on behalf of Charlottesville ramming victims. The goal of the suit is to bankrupt and dismantle several hate groups that helped organize the rally.

“As detailed in our lawsuit, the Charlottesville violence was planned months in advance online — including discussions of hitting protesters with cars,” Spitalnick said.

It’s very American, isn’t it. Cars keep you from every having to walk anywhere and you can kill pesky libbruls with them.

Remember that awful, sloppy, book-length post by Laurie Penny last week?

Oh. Well ok then.

Yes well you can see how that would be frustrating, having the press focus on a highly contagious virus that has killed 122,000 Americans in the past four months when it could be focusing on the awesomeness of

Wait a minute. He’s frustrated because the press is focusing on a lethal disease that is burning through the population when it should be focusing on him? He’s FRUSTRATED?

Tells you almost all you need to know, doesn’t it. This is supposed to be the grown-up, less frivolous and callous explanation of Trump’s horrible determination to hide the fatality stats, and that’s the best they can do? He’s pissed off because the press is not all about him?

The less grown-up explanation is even worse.

Tongue in cheek, cool, just a joke, everybody likes jokes, Trump’s a funny guy

But what’s funny about a lethal pandemic?

Why would a president be making funny about a virus that has killed 122 thousand of us so far and will go on to kill a lot more? I’m not seeing the humor.

This is quite a good campaign video…until the end.

What’s at the end?

Har har. Let’s shit on women. Har har.

Careful, the thought police are watching.

The bit where he says we have to test for the virus less, so that we won’t know how bad it is.

The crowd cheers this murderous claim.

2.19 minutes on his Adventure Going Down the Ramp – and he’s only begun.

He claims he had a whole conversation with the general about the ramp when we know he didn’t – we saw the clip where the general makes the “here we go” sign with his hand and off they go. There was no conversation.

A hand puppet would make a better president.