Originally a comment by Artymorty on We can’t tell.

Trans activists have insisted their goal is to remove all distinctions between transwomen and women, but they have an unspoken secondary objective: the removal of all distinctions between transwomen and men. And when your group is literally indistinguishable from men, you don’t get to simultaneously argue that your group is distinguishable from them. If these people insist they aren’t men, why the hell are they working so hard to dismantle every possible metric, every check and balance that could be used to separate “genuine” transwomen from ordinary men?

It’s trans activists who insisted on removing all material distinctions between transwomen and men, complaining that womanhood was being guarded by “gatekeepers.” Once, transwomen were distinguished from men by the degree of “meaningful” transition they made, which was overseen by psychiatrists and doctors. Thanks to trans activism: no longer. There’s no certification process, no need to have sex-reassignment surgery; trans activists no longer recognize the relevance of different degrees of transition. Any man who says he isn’t a man isn’t a man, period. Any attempt to put a measure in place to distinguish men from transwomen for the obvious sake of protecting women from men is furiously attacked by transactivists. When your movement explicitly works to dismantle the gatekeeping that protects women from men, you don’t get to complain when women become alarmed that your movement is dismantling the gatekeeping that protects women from men.

It’s trans activists who have insisted that people’s motives are irrelevant: anyone who wants to be taken as a woman anytime is “genuinely” trans, and to even privately wonder why someone wants you to act as though they’re a woman is a thoughtcrime. Once, the reason someone wanted to transition was the most important factor in their journey: clinicians worked with patients over a long time to examine the underlying “why,” to ensure they wouldn’t be harming themselves or others. Thanks to trans activism: no longer. Trans activists will never violate a person’s declared pronouns even when he is an obvious conman, troll or predator. When your movement explicitly bars anyone from even examining the possibility that some men are taking advantage of the open barriers to women’s spaces your movement has created, one has to wonder whether your movement’s alliance is exclusively to men’s interests and not women’s, and that perhaps on some deep level you still see yourselves as a subset of men, and not a subset of women.

The definition of trans has been systematically loosened and broadened; every step of the way trans activists have worked to bring trans-identifying males closer to women while simultaneously working to stay connected to their own manhood. Back in the days before we started calling transsexuals transgender, I might have been more sympathetic to the idea that trans women are women. Now that any Tom, Dick or Yaniv can be a woman whenever he wants, no questions asked, forget it.

Men do pose a danger to women. Of that there’s no question. And transwomen are men because, as William James said, a difference which makes no difference is no difference.

So why did Essex cancel the seminar? Well it’s like this…

Oh no, clearly it’s something else altogether. Mice in the walls, perhaps?

Ohhhhh, concerns were raised about the speaker. Say no more. In that case what could the university possibly do but cancel the seminar? Concerns. [shudder] It doesn’t bear thinking about.

They literally just raised concerns! That’s all! There is nothing sinister about that at all whatsoever, and it is never a herald of glass-shattering levels of outrage and protest and shrieking and threats.

Let us all pray that no one ever Raises Concerns about us.

A story in three tweets.

Well, that takes care of that.

Really this Wollaston confusion is central to the whole mess. It’s the conflation of “men will take advantage of the new rules to prey on women” and “trans women will take advantage of the new rules to prey on women.” The second is not what gender critical feminists are saying! What we are saying is that we have no way of knowing who is which and that it’s neither fair nor safe to put the burden of figuring it out on women.

The US has always had a massive anti-intellectual streak, but as with everything else, Republicans have been energetically making it worse since McCarthy, or the New Deal, or Coolidge.

Some argue that this worldview has become even more prevalent in the era of Trump, who while campaigning for the presidency appeared to dismiss the expertise often found at institutions of higher education.

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a lot of things,” Trump said in March 2016 on MSNBC, when asked who he consults on foreign policy issues. “My primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”

He doesn’t though.

That certainly seemed to be the case Thursday when Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, lit into the academics — particularly Karlan, while talking to Trump supporters watching Fox News.

If you went to work today to manicure nails, to manicure lawn, if you went to work with a jackhammer, or a welding machine, or mechanics’ tools, or a carpentry belt, that woman yesterday looks her nose down on you, she thinks you are less than her!

She thinks you’re less than her, and I’ve had it. Who the hell are you, lady, to look down at half of the country?

Right. It’s all about “looking down your nose” and nothing whatever to do with good wages, unions, health insurance, decent housing, good schools, public transportation, abundant parks and libraries. It’s all style and zero substance. Trump can steal billions from us while kicking people off food stamps and out of health insurance, and it’s all dandy because he pretends not to look down his nose at working stiffs. (The reality? Of course he looks down his nose at them. He has a solid gold living room and they don’t; you do the math.)

“The point is of course that there will be a very tiny number of individuals who will seek to exploit this”

But that isn’t what the point is, because she can’t possibly know that the number will be “very tiny,” and the reality is that it almost certainly won’t be tiny, because once it becomes possible and legal and respectable for men to be in women’s spaces then more than a “tiny number” of men will rush to take advantage of the opportunity. Note that that is not saying that lots of trans women will do this, it’s saying that lots of men will do this, because they can. It can be true that few or no trans women do it, but that’s beside the point, because there will be no way to distinguish between them. How Sarah Wollaston can fail to see this is beyond me.

This is every bit as weird as it seems, and weirder.

Oh here we go.

This is happening next February 1:

So of course yells of rage are rolling in. The chief librarian writes:

Dear patrons, I wanted to share some information about a private event scheduled at the Central Library this February 1, 2020 that is already generating a lot of attention, questions and concern.

A nonprofit group called the Women’s Liberation Front made a booking last month for space at the Central Library to hold a private event labeled as a women’s rights talk and presentation. It appeared to be a very simple booking request that was processed like any other. Our Event Services staff followed Library protocol, as always. Per our Intellectual Freedom and Meeting Room Booking policies, any group can book meeting spaces; and any group that books a private event at the Central Library can charge for the event.

Library leadership became aware of this booking and its controversial nature just yesterday. Similar events held at two other public libraries this year have been met with significant community protest in relation to the group’s views on transgender rights. We have been working to get up to speed on the implications of this event as they relate to our legal responsibilities, our role as a public institution, and our role as a safe, socially conscious space.

We have heard from patrons who believe we should not let this event happen in a Library space due to the group’s views. We have heard from others who say that not allowing this event to happen will endanger the Library’s founding principle of intellectual freedom. As a library valuing intellectual freedom, inclusivity, and community respect, our leadership is considering every option to ensure we respond to concerns about this event thoughtfully and in line with our values.

Controversial groups like these can test our limits as democratic centers of free speech and intellectual freedom, as well as our limits as a united community and organization. I hope you can recognize the difficult situation this has created for us. We are exploring every option we have in response to this moment, talking to other libraries who have been through it, scheduling discussions with our transgender staff and community, and consulting with the City of Seattle’s legal department on our options.

I want to thank those of you who have reached out to us to share your opinions on this event. Your comments are being taken seriously. We will communicate again as soon as we can.

I just emailed him to say please don’t be misled as to the nature of the group or the event and please don’t cancel. Probably futile.

I’m disappointed to see this from an excellent and witty local journalist and hell-raiser (in a good way):

No, not on the grounds that “they” (all trans women) would sexually assault women, but that some men who claim to be trans women could sexually assault women and there would be no way to filter them out.

I emailed the chief librarian urging him not to be misled about the nature of the group or the speakers or their subject matter. I’m not especially optimistic.

Oy, another “someone said it therefore it’s true and you’re wrong to question it” from a philosopher. Yes, that one, of course.

It’s McKinnon by the way, he’s moved to a new account blah blah who cares.

The fact that the International Olympic Committee said it doesn’t make it true. The NRA says it’s a sacred right to have an unlimited number of guns of unlimited fire power, but that doesn’t make it true. People say things, organizations say things; the saying doesn’t magically make the said things true.

McKinnon himself would be the first to agree when it’s feminist women who don’t believe men can become women saying something. When women say we have a right to safety from men in locker rooms and similar places McKinnon doesn’t agree at all. When female athletes say they have a right to compete against other female people rather than male people McKinnon writes columns in the New York Times saying how wrong they are.

Also, as I’ve said before: the issue isn’t whether or not sport is a human right but whether male people competing against female people is a human right. Surely a philosopher ought to be able to keep that straight.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Misogyny forever for the union makes us feeble.

When gender apologists speak of “inclusion” and fighting for the liberation of “all women” (as opposed to “only ‘cis’ women”), clearly what we are meant to envision is taking the circle that already includes the ‘cis’ women and expanding it to also include the ‘trans’ women. As always when it comes to alt-left slogans (Not arguments. As we all know, the alt-left isn’t in the argumentation business), we’re supposed to hear it, let it resonate just long enough to have some warm fuzzy gut reaction and then think about it no more.

If you do think about it (and are therefore guilty of “transphobia”, “transmisogyny”, “denying trans people’s right to exist”, “literal violence” etc.) it quickly becomes obvious that redefining “woman” to include people with innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers doesn’t simply “expand” the circle, but replaces it entirely.

We know for a fact that the old circle included roughly half the world’s population. How many does the new one include? It’s pretty much tautologically true that it includes trans people with innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers, since the Genderspeak definition of “woman” pretty much boils down to “whatever trans people with innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers happen to be” (or at least “people who think or feel in whatever way trans people with innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers happen to think or feel”). How many people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (the people formerly known as “women”) does that include? Let’s just say I’m… unconvinced… that the end result is a bigger circle than before.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Fiery, what fiery?

That, I think is the real problem with the Democrats, its as Machiavelli put it:

A prince is also much respected but he is either a true friend or a downright enemy. In other words, when he declares himself without any reservation in favour of one party against the other. This will always be more favourable than remaining neutral.

Or to put it another way – the Democratic Party has pushed so hard towards this sort of centrist “we can appeal to the other side” thing that they’ve lost a lot of what appeal they once had. It is often better to pick a side.

The line I thought that summed up best why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 was this from Chuck Schumer:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

And that’s the exact same thinking with Biden. He is in the lead on “electability” – but I honestly think he’s the worst option the Dems could go with in this election.

If you’re going after Trump’s sexism, you can’t pick “Handsy uncle Joe”. If you’re going to go after Trump on racism, well, who bragged about working with segregationists during this primary? If you’re going to go after Trump on corruption – Hunter Biden pretty much killed that angle.

I mean what makes Biden electable is fundamentally that he has name recognition and is awful enough that you could imagine holding your nose at the ballot box, and I can’t see that unseating a presidential incumbent. The Dems need somebody people actually like, and the first step in finding that somebody is picking someone in the primary they actually like.

And I think Warren fits that bill. She’s not perfect, nobody ever is, but she’s at least got credibility for standing up for what she believes in, for not being the neutral party – and even for those who disagree with her, that’s something that is at least respectable in a way Biden just isn’t.

But of course the Democratic supporters have been trained to see some great virtue in compromise, even when it is both unnecessary and deeply undermining the party.

Why would anyone need regulations on dangerous chemicals? We all have sense enough to stay away from dangerous chemicals without any damn government bureaucrat telling us to, don’t we?

A few days ago in Texas:

Early Wednesday morning, inside a chemical manufacturing complex just southeast of Beaumont, a building erupted in a ball of flames, injuring eight people and sending acrid smoke wafting over southeast Texas. The explosion and subsequent fires at the Texas Petroleum Chemicals (TPC) Group plant, located near a residential area in Port Neches, knocked out the windows and damaged roofs of surrounding homes. The day before Thanksgiving, residents within the four-mile radius of the plant were ordered to evacuate.

Ok…well…so don’t live four miles from a chemical plant then, right?

Fires burned throughout the weekend, and all but one was put out by Tuesday. The TPC plant, which has a long history of violating state and federal environmental laws, manufactures butadiene, a known human carcinogen that can cause blurred vision, nausea, unconsciousness, and respiratory paralysis. Officials also have warned that residents could be exposed to asbestos. “I just worry about what we’re breathing in,” one resident told the local ABC affiliate. Another resident told the TV station, “You don’t really realize how close you are to danger until something like that happens in your own backyard.”

And, bonus, once you do know you can’t leave (unless you’re renting) because who’s going to buy your house near the chemical explosion?

The EPA estimates that 177 million Americans live near high-risk facilities that store or use potentially dangerous chemicals. One in three children attend school in those areas, with particularly high concentrations of schools in vulnerable zones in the Houston and Beaumont-Port Arthur metro areas.

Despite the well-documented risks of living near these facilities, just before the latest Texas explosion, the Trump administration rolled back plant safety rules that could make people who live, work, and learn near such facilities safer.

But it would be bad to make people who live, work, and learn near such facilities safer, because then they would be dependent on the deep state instead of free and upstanding and riddled with cancer.

The Guardian reports:

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry, is now proposing a joint US-Ukrainian probe to investigate potential corruption by officials from both countries.

He says that as if we were eagerly awaiting his thoughts on how to bring the US and Ukraine together, when in fact he’s almost the very last person we want to hear from on that subject (unless it’s under oath in a courtroom). Rudy Giuliani isn’t the boss of how Ukraine and the US get along. He’s Trump’s personal lawyer, not the Secretary of State.

The Guardian continues:

The tweet, which is unlikely to generate any legitimate interest, comes the same week that Giuliani traveled to Europe to meet with former Ukrainian officials who helped spread baseless corruption allegations against Joe Biden.

“Unlikely to generate any legitimate interest” – that’s cold. I like it.

Trump’s first pick as ambassador to the UN (January 2017-January 2018), Nikki Haley, thinks Dylann Roof “hijacked” the Confederate flag.

Here is this guy that comes out with this manifesto, holding the Confederate flag [look of sorrow and anguish]. And had just hijacked everything that people thought of in – we don’t have hateful people in South Carolina, there’s always the small minority that’s always gonna be there, but you know people saw it as service, and sacrifice, and heritage, and – but once he did that there was no way to overcome it, and the national media came in in droves [in droves gesture], they wanted to define what happened, they wanted to make this about racism

Say what??? It was the media who made it about racism? It wasn’t the fact that Dylann Roof chose that church, and the fact that the victims were all black while Dylann Roof is so white he looks anemic, and the fact that he EXPLICITLY SAID THAT’S WHAT IT WAS ABOUT when he opened fire?

Why indeed.

I would really like to know that too. The obvious surface-level reason is years of yammering and bullying and shunning (as in Graham’s lost friends), but that reason is better at explaining silence and looking in the other direction, it doesn’t so much explain active support, not to mention joining in the yammering and bullying and shunning.

You have your instructions.

The NY Times gave “Rachel” McKinnon an op ed slot to instruct the world on why it’s fine for him to compete against women despite the physical advantages that a male body gives him.

People love to claim that I cheated. I didn’t. Cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, has no doubts that I followed all of the rules. I completed an antidoping test to ratify my world record. I didn’t use any suspicious or dangerous tactics in any of my races.

This from a philosopher. “Look, this official body has no doubts, therefore it is absolute truth that I didn’t cheat! There’s no other way to look at it! It can’t be that the official body is wrong and that I’m exploiting a fashion in order to cheat and win medals and fame and op ed slots at the Times! There is absolutely no difference of any kind between what an official body says and the actual truth of the matter. None!” Very philosophy, much rational.

Many want me to race against men. I have news for them: I’m not allowed. I’m legally female. My birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, U.S. permanent resident card, medical records and my racing license all have an “F” on them. The Union Cycliste Internationale, USACycling, Cycling Canada, the Canadian and United States governments and the state of South Carolina all agree that I’m female.

The rules require me to race in the women’s category. That’s exactly where I belong: I am a woman, after all. I am female as well.

“After all” is the argument. Convincing, yeah?

Trans women are women. We are female. And we are not taking over. No openly trans woman has set an open elite world record in any sport (remember: mine is in masters racing). No openly trans woman has won an elite world championship in any sport, let alone a medal.

There haven’t been any reported cases of gender fraud, where a male athlete is given a female passport or birth certificate by an unscrupulous nation, for the purposes of slipping a “man” into a women’s Olympic event. If there were going to be mass gender fraud, we’d have seen it by now.

Another killer professional-philosopher knock-down argument: we’d have seen it by now!

We have seen it by now, in fact, it’s just that shits like him are pretending otherwise. We have seen multiple cases of men who say they are women taking prizes away from women or knocking them down or breaking their legs or smashing their faces or all of the above. We have seen it already, and it’s early days; the longer it goes on the more of it we will see. He is part of it, and he’s an academic of sorts, so the Times publishes his gossamer-thin “arguments” in support of this grotesque injustice.

Women don’t get to have women’s history. Sorry laydeez!

Harper’s Bazaar has refused to print a retraction for an article in which Eileen Miles calls lesbian icon, Stormé DeLarverie, “they,” “he,” and “him,” and claims ” ‘He’ was Stormé’s chosen pronoun.”

If “he” was “Stormé’s chosen pronoun,” as Miles claims, the people she was closest to would’ve known. And her circle certainly wouldn’t be running around giving interviews that didn’t reflect her wishes. In fact, the people in her circle are the type of people who would acknowledge that sort of thing—no problem—had it been the case.

Eileen Miles—who identifies as trans, and as “they/them,” and as a lesbian—made a decision to change Stormé’s identity, and the ripple effect of doing so, has only just begun… Morgan Page, a writer at The Nation, who also identifies as trans, recently wrote an article using “he” and “him” and “himself” to describe Stormé DeLarverie, using Miles’ Harper’s Bazaar article to justify doing so.

Why would one writer get to decide that DeLarverie was a man just on her own say-so?

When I wrote to Harper’s Bazaar, politely requesting they print a retraction/apology, I explained that because Stormé only recently died, the New York lesbians who knew and loved her are still here. I explained that a friend of mine—a wonderful lesbian who became Stormé’s legal protector when Stormé grew too unwell to care for herself—has verified who Stormé was many times. They could easily find several accurate interviews she’s given on Stormé. There are plenty of fact-checked articles about Stormé floating around. And Stormé also did a number of interviews while she was alive.

Stormé was a butch lesbian and a professional male impersonator. I also explained to Harper’s Bazaar that as someone who’s done ‘drag’ myself—and ran a show that incorporated various interpretations of drag for many years—I can say that it’d be completely disingenuous for any writer to take that persona (or any other tidbit of my ‘gender deviant’ behavior, for that matter), and proclaim me as “he” and “him” after I die.

But Harper’s doesn’t care.

After some back and forth, Harper’s Bazaar wrote, on Dec 3, to inform me that they can decide to rewrite one of our greatest lesbian sheros as “he” and “him,” and they can do it while stating it’s what Stormé chose. Their response, in full, was, “Julia, We appreciate your letter and take this issue very seriously, but we’re comfortable with the decision the writer made here. Thanks again.” Well… So long as they are comfortable.

As a NY dyke who’s friends with Stormé’s chosen NY fam, I take this very seriously. Harper’s Bazaar doesn’t get to make a decision that involves recreating a lesbian’s identity, postmortem—that involves rewriting lesbian history. It’s not their history to rewrite.

But they’re re-writing it anyway.

Biden is covering himself with glory.

Joe Biden lashed out at an Iowa town hall Thursday after a man suggested the former vice president helped his son get a sweetheart deal in Ukraine and was “selling access” like President Donald Trump does.
The fiery exchange with the man, who only identified himself as a non-Republican Iowa farmer, ended with Biden challenging him to a contest of push-ups, running or an IQ test before he yelled at him.

Brilliant. The age issue isn’t about doing push-ups, it’s about the likelihood of dying on the job. Ok it’s also about stamina and cognitive faculties and so on but it’s especially about that whole sell-by date thing. Biden is 77. He would turn 80 two years into his term if he were elected. That’s not ideal. I’m a geezer myself and that doesn’t stop me thinking geezers are not an ideal choice. Biden’s face lift could be seen as evidence that he knows that but doesn’t care enough to do the right thing.

And he has a hell of a nerve getting stroppy about the Hunter issue. It is an issue; he shouldn’t have let it happen; it’s an example of profiting from the office and we don’t need more of that in the Trump era.