Guest post: Gender ideology seems to be all about Doublethink

Dec 21st, 2019 11:20 am | By

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on That turning of the tide has been slow.

To me the most memorable and useful concept from 1984 was Doublethink (I believe the closest You get to a synonym in Oldspeak is “compartmetalization”):

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

Gender ideology seems to be all about Doublethink (covered up by the wordmagic of Genderspeak):

• On the one hand we’re obliged to accept that being a “woman” is all about thoughts and feelings and has nothing what so ever to do with physical traits. On the other hand we’re also supposed to accept that trans “women” automatically belong in all the same groups and spaces as the people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, many (most? all?) of whom might not think or feel the required ways (and hence qualify as “women” in the Genderspeak sense) at all.

• On the one hand gender ideologues themselves are the ones who insist that there are distinct, identifiable “male” and “female” ways of thinking and feeling, thus establishing a “gender binary” that applies to pretty much anyone other than themselves (hence their special snowflake-status). Yet those who think this makes everyone non-binary, thus basically negating that the “gender binary” is even a thing, are the ones accused of reinforcing it.

• On the same note gender ideologues themselves are the ones who insist some perfectly real and vitally important* difference in ways of thinking and feeling makes certain people “female” to the very core of their being, regardless of any physical traits, thus justifying dividing people into separate groups requiring separate vocabularies, separate dress-codes, separate toilets, separate sporting events etc. Yet those who don’t think being “female” says anything about You other than the most superficial, irrelevant and unimportant physical traits are the ones accused of “gender essentialism”.

• Etc. etc.

* So important, in fact, that being called by the wrong word or placed in the wrong box is comparable to actual violence and even murder.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 17 comments


Call me Meryl

Dec 21st, 2019 10:23 am | By

For some reason this stupid banality from Laurie Penny, similar or identical to millions of others, has gotten on my nerves.

It’s banal, we’ve seen it a billion times, but all the same, it’s infuriating – because it’s so stupid. It’s not “basic good manners” at all, it’s a new and clunky and sometimes totalitarian bit of etiquette, which if pushed to the extreme becomes impossible to comply with.

No, actually, if “someone” tells you they would prefer to be called Napoleon or Hitler or Julia Child or Amy Klobuchar no it isn’t basic good manners to respect that. It’s the opposite of basic: it’s baroque and twisted and fanciful. It’s the other way around: people demanding to be called Something Special are making rude entitled onerous demands.

In a sense we probably don’t get to tell anyone else “how to identify,” whatever that even means, but anyone else also doesn’t get to tell us what special names or pronouns to call her him them. Basic good manners is not making extraneous demands of random people.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments


A difference between legal and ontological anything

Dec 21st, 2019 9:41 am | By

Jane Clare Jones’s analysis of Judge Tayler’s ruling is mammoth (in a good way!) so I’ll take small bites.

Judge Tayler’s operating ontology surfaces in his refusal to recognise that for women to adequately express their political critique of trans activist demands it is necessary to point to sex and sometimes, even, to the sex of specific individuals – a refusal which effectively corresponds to an easy dismissal of the political stakes for women, and a blunt lack of respect for our specific political interests. The half-explicit denial of sex is also central to Tayler’s refusal of Maya’s claim that the GRA creates a legal fiction, a refusal that makes sense only on the basis of denying that there is any difference between legal and ontological sex.

This is the exact distinction I made in that comment thread on Freethought blogs, that caused all the wheels to come flying off. I said “political” as opposed to “legal” but the distinction is the same: legal or social or political on the one hand and ontological on the other. Will I agree to pretend that trans women are women versus will I agree that trans women literally are women in every sense. The distinction is crucial and if we’re not even allowed to make it then we’re in bedlam. Tayler takes us into bedlam.

By suggesting that there is only the man-made structure of ‘legal sex,’ Tayler is effectively asserting the priority of the ideal/cultural over material/biological reality. Here, legal sex (like it’s conceptual twin ‘gender identity’) trumps/erases biological sex, and the judgement itself turns out to be a perfect performance of the core of the ideology we were seeking to show we had a lawful right to resist.

And one of the ironies is…if there weren’t so much ferocious insistence on that, the social fiction would probably be a lot easier.

While women’s political interests or specific feelings are entirely ignored, Tayler judges trans people’s distress of such significance that it’s taken to easily trump both material reality (which he’s more or less handwaved anyway) and women’s concerns (which he never even bothered to consider) to such a degree, that, like the movement whose logic it so closely resembles, the judgement then lapses into ontological totalitarianism.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog


The obsessive return to biological sex

Dec 21st, 2019 8:55 am | By

From the other direction…

It is though. Being female, aka having a female body, is what makes her a woman. It’s what follows from that that is a choice, and that should be a free choice.

But that’s there anyway. We deal with it via rights, justice, arguments, regulations, organization. We don’t deal with it by saying “Look, some women have male bodies, therefore you can’t say women aren’t as strong as men!”

No. It’s not “policing women’s bodies” to say that men are not women, because the bodies in question are not women’s bodies. It’s not “policing women’s bodies” to say that people with penises don’t get to take over feminism by announcing that they are women.

And it’s tortured reasoning to say that you can’t struggle for equality and liberation if you “allow women to be solely defined by biology” when the whole point of feminism is that having female biology doesn’t make people inferior or subordinate.

It’s fair to say that biology doesn’t exhaust the meaning of “woman” but it’s absurd to say that biology is not relevant to the meaning of “woman.” Biology may not be sufficient but it damn well is necessary.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments


A male’s wish is his, and our, command

Dec 21st, 2019 8:37 am | By

A thread by Alessandra Asteriti:

Short thread on Forstater case. I am not going to examine the law, I leave that to experts of equality law. I’ll focus on the language used by the judge, as revealing of male supremacy and incapacity to adopt the female point of view, or empathise with it.

In para 92, the judge states as follows

What is he saying here? He is saying that saying ‘transwomen are women’ is not harassment of women, but saying ‘transwomen are men’ is harassment of transwomen. He is saying what men want always takes precedence over what women want, or even need. He is saying men are offended if women point out that they are not women, even if biologically they are not, so women are only telling the truth. But women cannot be offended if men tell them woman is just a word invented by men and that can be modified by men.

Women’s lived reality means nothing, and any man can erase it by getting a certificate, or even by self-declaring that he is now also a woman. We cannot be offended by a man reducing all our lives to a wish in his head, but men can be offended if we remind him that his wishes (even ‘enshrined’ in law) do not change material reality. Especially because women’s reality is a reality of oppression. TW do not want to partake of the oppression and do nothing to minimise it. They tell us they are women because they ‘present as women’. We are women because we are women.

We are women in the world, because we were girls, and if we survived selective abortion, female infanticide, lack of care, FGM, period huts, childbirth deaths, rapes, dowry deaths, we become adults. In one simple sentence, the judge ignored the reality of women’s existence and elevated the wish of a subsection of men to demand we submit to their vision of who they are, thereby negating our very existence. If any male can declare himself a woman, what is a woman? Who am I, and how am I different from the men who abused me, belittled me, discriminated against me, scared me, pursued me, cursed me? The judge does not care, a male’s wish is his, and our, command.

Very crisply put, I think.

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Oh THAT guy

Dec 20th, 2019 4:29 pm | By

Ohhh I’ve just been reminded who Gregor Murray is – the guy Maya Forstater “misgendered” so outrageously that she lost her contract. I was reminded by Jarvis Dupont at The Spectator:

Yesterday we witnessed a stunning and brave victory of tolerance over reality. Vile TERF, Maya Forstater lost her case at an employment tribunal for, amongst other things, referring to former SNP councillor and non-binary transgender individual, Gregor Murray as ‘he’…

… Before quitting the party, Gregor had been suspended for ‘abusing a woman on Twitter’. They has obviously been targeted because in my opinion, calling an ignorant TERF a ‘cunt’ is a perfectly legitimate way for a non-binary politician to behave.

Oh, thought I, that’s familiar, thought I, didn’t I once…

So I looked it up and yes, I did. We’ve met Gregor Murray before. It was July 12, 2018:

The pitfalls of being woke:

The pitfalls of being woke:

Dundee’s children and families convener has apologised after being blasted over a series of expletive-laden outbursts on social media.

Not just expletives though. “Expletive” is a bit of a euphemism, as so many words that name this behavior are. There is swearing, and then there is…that thing there is no one word for, that is about expressing hatred of people for being female or not white or lesbian or gay or foreign and so on. Saying fuck is one thing, and calling people cunts or niggers is another. The Dundee guy did both.

You’ll never guess.

The councillor, who identifies as gender non-binary, described a group of women blocking the front of the march as “utter cunts” and asked a fellow Twitter user, “where’s your fucking solidarity you transphobic b*****?”. Cllr Murray added: “Get to fuck with your medieval views, you horrible bigot. Stonewall started with trans people. Don’t you fucking dare sully it with your anti-trans bullshit.”

So that’s who he is. Yet he gets solemn sympathy from a judge because a woman “misgendered” him.

Cllr Murray, the authority’s equality spokesperson, was also called out last year by then Scottish Labour Kezia Dugdale for “blatant sexism” after he branded a women’s group campaigning for equal representation as “absolute roasters”.

Which means nothing to Americans, but in Scotland is much the same as “cunts.”

He also called it a load of piss when First Minister Alex Salmond suggested a 40% female quota in boardrooms.

James Kirkup in the Spectator last year also noticed the surprisingly tactful way the BBC and others reported on Murray’s views on women:

Cllr Murray of Dundee identifies as non-binary and prefers “they” as a pronoun. Cllr Murray recently quit as convenor of children and family services, and as SNP equal opportunities spokesman.

“Trans councillor leaves roles after ‘threats to life’” was the BBC headline on the story about this last week.

A casual reader might have taken the impression that this was a simple, sad tale of bigotry in modern Britain, a transgender person hounded out of a prominent public role by the nasty prejudice that too many trans people do indeed suffer. What that reader would not have learned is that Cllr Murray’s resignation came about after a series of incidents in which Cllr Murray published obscene and offensive comments about women who disagreed with him. Among those comments, he described a group of lesbians who took part in a public protest as “utter c***s”.

Yet the BBC looked carefully in the other direction.

I’m not sure Gregor Murray is the ideal poster child for Why Everyone Must Use the Mandated Pronouns.

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Peak veronica

Dec 20th, 2019 3:27 pm | By

Veronica Ivy (formerly known as Rachel McKinnon) has another piece on How Evil Are The Feminists. It’s almost as if this trans thing is an excellent grift for Veronica Rachel.

Still full of lies though. Lies are not a great look on a philosopher.

Hate speech has no place in a free and democratic society. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of that speech. And yet, constantly, people in a position of relative power or authority seem to be saying that they should have the right to say or write rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things about their fellow citizens. But even more, they think that they should be legally protected from any and all consequences of those actions, even if their speech has negative consequences on the people to whom it is addressed.

By “rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things” he of course means things like “he.”

In early September 2018, Forstater had been a consultant to the Center for Global Development, which focuses on economic inequality, when she began using her personal Twitter account to tweet about her opposition to potential changes to the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act, writing, “I share the concerns of @fairplaywomen that radically expanding the legal definition of ‘women’ so that it can include both males and females makes it a meaningless concept, and will undermine women’s rights & protections for vulnerable women & girls.”

He actually thinks (or is pretending to think, which would be much less surprising) he’s presenting an example of “rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things.”

Later that month, in a long series of tweets, she repeatedly misgendered Credit Suisse senior director Pips Bunce, who identifies as gender fluid, referring to her as “a man who likes to express himself part of the week by wearing a dress,” “a part-time cross dresser” and “a white man who likes to dress in women’s clothes.” As part of that discussion, she also tweeted, “I think that male people are not women.”

How is that misgendering? What’s the pronoun for gender-fluid? Is there one? How many pronouns do we have to memorize, and how many rules for knowing who is what?

He goes on to say that Bunce has said he “defaults to” she, but if he expects us to think that’s a binding law that applies to all of us, he expects in vain.

This, then, is what Forstater wanted the courts to uphold: Her right to make her co-workers uncomfortable; her right to place her nonprofit organization in an untenable position vis-à-vis potential donors (like Credit Suisse senior directors); her right to be, even as she defines it, rude and disrespectful in social and professional contexts; and her right to disrespect U.K. law, which defines transgender women as women and transgender men as men if they jump through the right legal hoops. (As Judge James Tayler noted in his ruling against her: “If a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate that person is legally a woman. That is not something that the Claimant is entitled to ignore.”)

The judge said we’re not entitled to ignore other people’s “Gender Recognition Certificates”? We’re not? So because people have a certificate, we’re required to believe or pretend to believe they are the sex we don’t perceive when we perceive them?

Well, I guess I’ll have to become an anarchist now.

Courts, of course, tend to look askance at being asked to rule that an employee should be allowed to harm their employers and co-workers based on “philosophical beliefs” they’ve decided are both “biological truths” and tantamount to religious canon.

What? They do? It comes up that often? I’m betting it doesn’t come up at all, this case excepted. McKinnon does make such sloppy claims for a philosopher. If he’d stopped at “co-workers” he’d have had a point, but the rest of it is just absurd.

Then he rants about Rowling for a few paragraphs, and sums up:

So, J.K. Rowling: Write whatever you please. Call yourself “gender critical,” if you like. Support any transphobic adult who’ll discriminate with you. Live your best life with your piles of Muggle money. But force cis, trans or intersex women to live with hostile work environments because of the fairytales that transphobes tell themselves? No. #TransRightsAreHumanRights #WhatDrillAreYouTalkingAbout

Ah yes the fairytales that people who don’t believe men can become women tell ourselves – we’re the ones living on fantasies.

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For non-example

Dec 20th, 2019 2:49 pm | By

DOCTOR McKinnon did a piece for Vice attacking Rowling yesterday, because of course he did. The byline is Veronica Ivy, and a sentence at the end says:

Veronica Ivy, PhD, is a philosophy professor and athlete who has previously gone by Rachel McKinnon.

Before that he went by Rhys McKinnon. Anyway – the usual lies are summoned.

“Gender critical” is a neologism that refers to a loose collection of people focused on opposing equal rights for trans people, and specifically trans women.

Big lie. We do not oppose equal rights for trans people.

They claim that, for example, trans women are really male/men and should be excluded from women-only spaces, and should not have the legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being women.

And that’s not equal rights, is it, so it’s not “for example,” it’s “for non sequitur.” It is true that we say men should not have legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being women, any more than white people should have legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being black people. That’s what “discrimination” means.

The U.K. has had a recent rash of news media, demonstrations, and events targeting the rights of trans women.

What rights though? The “rights” of trans women to demand all the protections in theory offered to women (though we often have a struggle to find them) while retaining all the entitlement and aggression of men?

Some “gender critical” people have tried to claim that trans women are male and, as Forstater claimed, that sex is immutable, or unchangeable. They use phrases like “biological reality” and “sex matters” to express this sentiment. Their view is that since trans women are really “male,” then allowing trans women equal rights as women removes the rights of cisgender women to be in female-only spaces.

But this is, of course, nonsense. Legally and medically speaking, trans women are women; trans men are men.

Spoken like a true philosopher: if the legal and medical disciplines label men as women then that’s the end of it; there are no other categories. Similarly, if priests and rabbis say there is a god, it is nonsense to say there isn’t. Nonsense of course.

J.K. Rowling’s use of the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, expresses Rowling’s support for Forstater’s legal battle for her right to express anti-trans hate speech.

Another obvious, vulgar lie.

I would go so far as to say that Rowling, who claims she wants people to “live your best life in peace and security,” is contributing to a violation of trans people’s basic human dignity, and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, and offensive environment, like Forstater. And as Judge Tayler put it, “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

What kind of environment has Veronica Ivy-Rachel McKinnon been creating for female athletes, I wonder.

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But the law does not protect our right to call men men

Dec 20th, 2019 12:13 pm | By

This bit of the ruling – the most crucial bit, probably – seems to have some ambiguity to it.

The total of what Forstater is saying there seems to be that she called Gregor Murray “he or him” on a particular occasion because she forgot that he was “non-binary” and wants to be called “they/them,” and that she doesn’t consider it “transphobic” to see men as men, and that she shouldn’t be punished for calling men “he or him” in general.

The judge says he concludes from that that she will refer to men as men even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment.

But those are not the same thing. Forstater is saying she called a man “him” on one occasion because she forgot he was “non-binary” and that she doesn’t see that as a punishable crime, but she’s not saying she will call all men “him” on all occasions. She should be able to say that without punishment, but the point is, she didn’t say it, but the judge “concluded from this” that she did. But she didn’t. But he decided she did. But she didn’t.

I’m not sure why the judge gets to interpret what she said more broadly than she in fact said it.

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Frank Capra never made that movie

Dec 20th, 2019 11:33 am | By

Soraya is pretty obviously right about this.

Do we think a woman whose job experience for being president consisted of being a small town mayor would get any traction?

Don’t make me laugh.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments


Difficulties with understanding

Dec 20th, 2019 11:02 am | By

Hmmm.

Ardent ally just cannot understand it.

She made it about her? Really? I missed that – I didn’t think it was about her at all, but rather about reality.

Let’s see it again.

No, I was right – it’s not about her at all. It’s about this subject a lot of us have been talking about – are women women, or is it actually men who are women. It’s not about her; she doesn’t even use the first-person pronoun except in the hashtag.

I guess by “made it about her” Comerford means she said it while famous. Ok but then does he object when “Caitlyn” Jenner says things? Does he object when Jenner appears on the cover of Vanity Fair in a bathing suit age 66? I bet he doesn’t.

And then this business of “a great ruling for trans people” – what about the women whose rights are being taken away? Why does that part not give him any pause?

And then, “the abject cruelty” – it’s not cruelty to say that men are not women. It just isn’t.

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A perplexing inability to pipe down

Dec 20th, 2019 10:19 am | By

Another Witchfinder General points and hisses at Rowling.

It starts badly.

J.K. Rowling spent Thursday once again demonstrating a perplexing inability to pipe down and enjoy her millions. 

Why the hell should she “pipe down”? Why should anyone? I bet Rachelle Hampton (the witchfinder in this instance) doesn’t want to be told to pipe down, so where does she get off telling Rowling to do so? What’s perplexing about the fact that Rowling, like god knows how many other people, says things on Twitter?

Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a tax expert whose firing from a think tank over transphobic comments and subsequent court battle has generated a great deal of controversy in the U.K. In so doing, Rowling seemed to align herself with a virulently anti-trans group of otherwise liberal women, most often referred to as trans exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs.

Wait. One, calling Forstater’s comments “transphobic” is well-poisoning. Two, “generated controversy” is meaningless, and an only slightly more subtle brand of well-poisoning. Lots of things “cause controversy,” including good things that people oppose for bad reasons. Three, “virulently” is intense well-poisoning. Four, “anti-trans” is more well-poisoning and also a lie. Five, “otherwise liberal” is another lie. Six, “most often referred to” is chickenshit, since the word is a harsh pejorative and we reject it. That’s a lot of bad wording for two sentences from the opening paragraph.

Rowling’s tweet was immediately met with disappointment and anger, with critics pointing out that she fundamentally misrepresented the Forstater case.

Rowling’s tweet was also immediately met with admiration and celebration. Hampton doesn’t bother to mention that part.

Forstater’s contract with the Center for Global Development was not renewed due to a series of transphobic comments made in multiple forums. She repeatedly tweeted statements like, “I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.”

This is the problem right here: those three sentences are not transphobic.

It’s not legitimate to make up new meanings for words, such as turning “phobic” into “stating material facts,” and then do your best to trash people’s lives by branding those phony new definitions.

It’s not any kind of “phobic” to say that men are not women. It’s just reality. It’s also, by the way, not any kind of “philic” (opposite of phobic, i.e. loving) to say that men are women. It’s not particularly loving to encourage adults to live in a fantasy world, and it’s certainly not loving to attack people who refuse to give up their grip on the truth.

In short, there is nothing in any way “phobic” about saying ” I think that male people are not women.” It’s ludicrous that we’ve arrived at a place where adults are claiming it is, with menaces.

In a workplace Slack she wrote, “But if people find the basic biological truths that ‘women are adult human females’ or ‘transwomen are male’ offensive, then they will be offended.” 

And? Still not seeing the phobia.

Forstater also purposefully misgendered a nonbinary councilor on Twitter, and when they complained, she wrote, “I reserve the right to use the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’ to refer to male people. While I may choose to use alternative pronouns as a courtesy, no one has the right to compel others to make statements they do not believe.”

Still not seeing the phobia. “Non-binary” doesn’t even mean anything. “Woman” is just wrong when it’s a man, but “non-binary” is just blather.

And in conclusion:

Rowling’s support of Forstater and apparent endorsement of her anti-trans views isn’t as surprising as it might seem at first glance. As Katelyn Burns noted in a March 2018 them.article, Rowling has liked tweets that refer to trans women as “men in dresses” and arguably trafficked in anti-trans tropes in books she wrote under her pen name Robert Galbraith. Thursday’s tweet was her most overt example of transphobia to date and demonstrates that, despite previously positioning herself as an ally, Rowling cannot be considered a friend of the LGBTQ community.

It does no such thing. Pipe down.

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Define “malevolence”

Dec 20th, 2019 9:04 am | By

It’s nice that the discussion is so reasonable, so nuanced, so careful and thoughtful and temperate.

That person has 90 thousand followers.

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This president has dumbed down the idea of morality

Dec 19th, 2019 5:27 pm | By

There’s much buzz about the fact that Billy Graham’s mag Christianity Today says Trump must go.

Much of what it says about why is wrong, of course, but not all of it.

We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion.

Wait. Why have the Democrats had it out for him from day one? It’s because he’s a bad mean cruel malicious bully. Yes it’s also about policy, but the Dems were and are not wrong to have opposed him from day one: he’s a very bad man and has been from the beginning. Since that’s their point you’d think they could admit that the Dems have said that all along.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

Indeed, also its insults, taunts, mean “jokes,” rages, rants, boasts, and muffled cries from the inferno within.

They quote themselves on Clinton from twenty years ago and then comment:

Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

Oh but hang on – the 10 commandments say nothing about Trump’s most horrendous behaviors. There is no commandment against cruelty, or bullying, or sadism. The creator of the big ten left most of the important stuff out, while wasting a lot of space on groveling to god and not groveling to any other god besides god.

Anyway, it’s interesting that they’re cutting him loose. Expect fireworks.

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Melania at the Year End Sales Event

Dec 19th, 2019 12:21 pm | By

David Roth on what the Trump aesthetic tells us about the Trump:

As with most things about Trump, there’s not a lot to unpack here. Unrelenting artlessness has been Trump’s signature for as long as he has been a public figure, and that is something that cannot and will not change. The man himself cultivates and inhabits a world of luxury that’s frozen in the 1980s, and he’s spent most of his life doing the same things over and over again. They’re things that, as a friend once put it to me, are what a child thinks a rich person would do, like take a limo to McDonald’s or wear a suit to a baseball game.

Or have a living room FULL OF GOLDY STUFF. We learned that about him three years ago, while bracing ourselves for the start of the real horror.

Trump’s version of Citizen Kane’s Rosebud would not be a child’s sled—it would be a tufted settee that somehow has shoulder pads, or a photo of himself with two Cincinnati Bengals cheerleaders taken at Joe Piscopo’s 40th birthday party…

I love this guy. Love him.

Melania did another Xmas video.

Melania strides through the White House’s halls in an overcoat and high heels, unaccompanied but observed at a respectful distance by various staffers. Meanwhile, the sort of music that usually plays in television commercials under the words Toyota’s Year End Sales Event twinkles determinedly on the soundtrack. At the end of this year’s, she personally seasons some ornaments with fake snow…

Even though Melania is also a cipher whose relationship to her powerful husband has for years seemed tragicomically ceremonial, her Christmas video delivers an insight into a crucial mystery of the Trump aesthetic: Why is all this always so shitty? How is it possible for something so fancified to feel so repellent and cheap?…

The blank and baffling overstatement of it—the First Lady personally sifting plastic dandruff onto a spruce, as one does, the simultaneous clutter and emptiness, the combination of voluminousness and absence—might be poignant under other circumstances. There’s no fun in it, of course, because Trump and his family are not people who are into fun. What’s spooky about it goes beyond Melania’s personal uncanniness or Trump’s world-historic tastelessness or the built-in stiltedness of White House ritual. The pure anhedonic cheerlessness of it all points back to a deeper psychic deficit: an inability to understand what any of this might even be for, if not to spite or defeat someone else. Of course there’s too much of it. They don’t know when to stop—they never have known when to stop, they do not know how to stop—because they have never really understood why they got started in the first place.

I keep calling him empty; I think Roth is talking about the same thing. Trump is the emptiest person I’ve ever seen. He all but rattles.

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That turning of the tide has been slow

Dec 19th, 2019 11:35 am | By

James Kirkup points out that many people have been staying quiet despite concerns, some even despite having plenty of money and clout.

Yet slowly, slowly, things are starting to change. More people are starting to talk, calmly and sensibly, about a matter of policy and culture that needs more discussion. Bit by bit, more people are starting to see that this is an issue that can and should be talked about.

That turning of the tide has been slow and modest, but today the pace quickened, a lot. The gender debate has seen an event that many people have been waiting for. JK Rowling has spoken.

In a single tweet, the woman who gave us Harry Potter, has quite deliberately entered a debate that many people have avoided for too long.

And she did so why? Because of the outrageous ruling in Maya Forstater’s case, that we are required to refer to other people by their special chosen reality-contradicting pronouns, or risk losing our jobs.

In narrow terms, the judgment might well have a chilling effect on that debate. But the broader effect of the Forstater case is that issues of sex and gender, the implications of transgenderism for society and individuals, are now going to be talked about by more people.

Because JK Rowling, lovely JK Rowling, is involved. JK Rowling who has 14 million followers on Twitter and a good claim to being one of the most popular and even beloved women in the world today. And as a result, people are going to talk about this, and about her.

I do not underestimate the courage it has taken for Rowling to do this. It’s easy to say ‘well, she’s got billions and a huge platform – what took her so long?’ but I think that’s unfair. With that fame comes pressure and scrutiny that the rest of us cannot imagine. By entering this arena, she is exposing herself to significant risks, volumes of criticism beyond anything most of humanity will ever experience. I applaud her.

Words matter, and with just a few words, JK Rowling has changed the gender debate for the better. The tide is turning, the waves are getting bigger. Thank you, JK.

Words matter, and truth matters.

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6

Dec 19th, 2019 10:48 am | By
https://twitter.com/AmnestyUK/status/1207683758725509121

Human rights are human rights. What are “trans rights” exactly? If they mean trans people should be free from persecution and oppression, then sure, of course trans rights are human rights, just as other branches-of-human rights are. But if they mean special “rights” crafted specifically for trans people, then it depends. The right not to be bullied for wearing “the wrong” clothes? Sure. The right to force everyone to agree you are the other sex? No.

Well, Amnesty UK? Are you?

H/t KB Player

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Riffing shmiffing

Dec 19th, 2019 10:20 am | By

No. Absolutely not. No.

There’s my “absolutist belief” for you, if you want one.

No, Trump was not “just riffing.” They don’t get to brush off disgusting sadistic contemptuous cruelty that way, least of all coming from the president of the US.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday on ABC’s Good Morning America that she did not know why Trump decided to suggest that Dingell was in hell. “You’d have to talk to the president about that,” she said.

But Grisham added that Trump is a “counter-puncher,” and suggested Trump was venting his frustration after being impeached by the House. “It was a very, very supportive and wild crowd and he was just riffing on some of the things that had been happening the past few days.”

No. You don’t get to shrug off Trump’s foul sadism with “just riffing.” You don’t get to excuse it because he was “venting his frustration.” Trump is not six, he’s a grown man, and he’s not a random guy shouting at clouds, he’s the president of the US. No.

This is Trump, it’s always been Trump. He’s a bully; he enjoys sticking the verbal knife in people. He enjoys hurting people. It’s one of his favorite activities. He’s a very bad man.

Debbie Dingell tweeted her response, telling Trump: “Mr President, let’s set politics aside. My husband earned all his accolades after a lifetime of service. I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.”

He’ll be pleased about that. It’s what he intended. It’s what he wanted. He likes hurting people; that’s what he is.

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Her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”

Dec 19th, 2019 10:03 am | By

Even The Guardian doesn’t seem entirely convinced by the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case.

A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex has lost a test case because her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”.

You can read that as straight-up reporting, but you can also think there may be a hint of skepticism that it’s really “absolutist” to think that people can’t literally change sex any more than they can change age or species.

In a keenly anticipated judgment that will stir up fresh debate over transgender issues, Judge James Tayler, an employment judge, ruled that Maya Forstater’s views did “not have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief”.

Is that because it’s too obvious to be a philosophical belief? Or is it because it’s (in the judge’s view) too wrong to be a philosophical belief?

[I]n a 26-page judgment released late on Wednesday, Tayler dismissed her claim. “I conclude from … the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

But how do we know that referring to people by their actual physical sex (not, as the judge tendentiously puts it, “by the sex she considered appropriate”) violates anyone’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment?

Also, is there any possibility that it violates people’s dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment when bosses force employees to call other employees something they are not?

There certainly are ways of referring to other people that violate their dignity and create a hostile degrading environment – I could sum them up with the single word “trump.” Sexist epithets, racist epithets, generalized epithets like “ugly,” “fat,” “stupid,” “old,” “worthless,” – you can see there’s a large supply. Some of them can refer to true or plausible facts, and still be hostile and degrading – the aforementioned “trump” gives many examples.

But does pronoun use fit in that category? I’m not convinced.

Louise Rea, a solicitor at the law firm Bates Wells which advised the CGD in the case, said: “Judge Tayler held that ‘the claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others’. He observed that the claimant was not entitled to ignore the legal rights of a person who has transitioned from male to female or vice versa and the ‘enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering a person’.

But what fundamental right is that, exactly? How fundamental can it really be when no one had ever heard of it fifteen years ago? How was it overlooked so long if it’s really fundamental?

I don’t think there is such a thing as a fundamental right to be called the sex you are not. It may be a courtesy, a kindness, an agreement among friends, a generosity – but not a fundamental right.

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Stand with Maya

Dec 19th, 2019 9:16 am | By

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