Narrator: It is. https://t.co/WsY9CPVUiK

— Nick Offerman (@Nick_Offerman) April 28, 2019

Sarah Ditum tells us she failed at combating gender stereotypes with her own children. She couldn’t bring herself to let her son age 4 go off to school with painted nails like hers because it could have led to teasing. We can’t just brush that off, can we, because it damn well might have…or, for that matter, though Sarah doesn’t say this, it could instead have led to teachers’ concluding he must be trans.

The idea of letting him break the boy code in such a visible way, and sending him off to school where he might have been teased for it by other children, was too much to take. So I did the work of the prospective bullies before they could. That’s the trouble with “gender-neutral parenting” – the world gets in.

And the world is getting less gender-neutral instead of more so. Who saw that coming?

And it matters. Nail polish is just nail polish, CBeebies is just CBeebies, and a “pretty like mummy” T-shirt is just a T-shirt – but it adds up to a rigorous training in how to be a girl or boy, which turns into strictly held ideas about how to be a woman or man. According to polling for the Fawcett Society to support its newly announced commission on gender stereotyping in early childhood (for which I’m a commissioner), more than half of those who recognised gender stereotyping had affected them said it constrained their career choices, while 44% said it had harmed their personal relationships.

We don’t know how much gender differences in behaviour are innate and how much they’re learned but we do know that much of what we think of as essential is thoroughly cultural. In some societies, women are deemed the chatty sex; in others, men. In some eras, male flamboyance has been the height of masculinity, while other periods have deemed it effete and shameful.

Whatever the shifting rules, they’re inextricably bound to social power and sexism. The stereotypes we absorb as children shape the adults we become. I failed at gender-neutral parenting, but any individual – or even family – alone must fail. The Fawcett Commission report is a chance for all participants to get it right. If we want to create a fairer world for women and men, we need to start with girls and boys.

A fair wind to them.

The ultimate in intersectional wokeness: getting working class people fired.

[Dud tweet because account now protected]

A supermarket security guard and a cleaner on a council estate, fired for “misgendering” and “deadnaming.” A better world is just over the horizon!

Whose big idea was “likability,” anyway? Historian Claire Potter says it was a guy thing.

As Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and others jumped into the race, each seemed to affirm the new power of women in 2019, a power that was born when President Trump was sworn into office, exploded during #MeToo and came into its own during the 2018 midterms.

But no female candidate has yet led the polls. The men keep joining — Michael Bennet this week, Joe Biden the last — and keep garnering glowing press coverage. Although Mr. Biden fumbled two previous presidential bids, we are told he has “crossover appeal”; Bernie Sanders has been admired by this newspaper as “immune to intimidation”; and Pete Buttigieg, who would be the first openly gay man nominated for president, is “very authentic.” By contrast Ms. Harris is “hard to define”; Ms. Klobuchar is “mean”; and Ms. Warren is a “wonky professor” who — you guessed it — is “not likable enough.” Seeing comments like this, Mrs. Clinton said wryly in January, “really takes me back.”

It turns out women just aren’t likable. God knows everyone has tried – tried and tried and tried – but it’s hopeless. Women always have something wrong with them. You can’t always quite specify what it is, but you know you don’t like her.

As presidential candidates put advertising experts in charge of national campaigns, perhaps it was inevitable that likability would jump explicitly to politics. In 1952, some of the first televised election ads sought to highlight Dwight Eisenhower’s likability. The advertising executive Rosser Reeves put Eisenhower in controlled settings where his optimism, self-confidence, humor and nonpartisanship could be emphasized over his political inexperience and what Reeves viewed as his “inept” speaking style.

So he doesn’t know jack shit about governing, so what, he’s called Ike, he’s likable!

Yet if the history of likability in America tells us how important it has become, particularly to politics, it also teaches us there is nothing immutable about a concept that was created and refined by men from Horatio Alger to Dale Carnegie to Roger Ailes. Women haven’t benefited much from the likability standard as it stands. But to recognize that it’s an invention is to dream that they could.

What would it mean if we could reinvent what it is that makes a candidate “likable”? What if women no longer tried to fit a standard that was never meant for them and instead, we focused on redefining what likability might look like: not someone you want to get a beer with, but, say, someone you can trust to do the work?

The overwhelming success of female candidates in the 2018 midterms is a sign that this might already be happening. It was, for many people, a turn to a new kind of member of Congress — female, of color — who could be trusted in the face of a White House that can’t seem to get its facts straight and a president who had proclaimed Washington to be a swamp only to put his boots on and wade right in. If Americans can learn to like and trust women in Congress in record numbers, maybe they can learn to trust women as presidential candidates too — and maybe even like them.

Well let’s not go crazy here.

Well now here’s an interesting thread.

It's getting to me how common that's been for me. that now I know over 5 or so people that have transitioned. It only gets to me because I am exclusively attracted to men and it's so common that it has me wondering what it is about me that makes this so common.

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

And I feel selfish and shitty for having the reaction I do because I want to be happy for people, but the commonality of this makes me feel uneasy and wonder why that is. Ultimately I'm happy they found themselves.

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

I'm always very confused by why these people just show up with a different gender and expect me to swallow it like we didnt' have sex and I wasn't attracted to them specifically because of how manly I saw them. It's always just this weird "hey" and I'm expected to accept it

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

Ahhhhhh don’t you love that fifth one? “One of the things I’m coming to terms with in life is that I am going to be seen as this amazing inspiring fascinating person to a lot of people and that’s as deep as any relationship they have with me will go”? I know I do. I love it for its hilariosity and I love it for its evidentiary worth. It can be everyone’s “NOW do you see the narcissism??” resource.

But also…”It’s always just this weird “hey” and I’m expected to accept it.” Oh yes? Is that what it’s always? And you don’t always feel like accepting it? What might that be like, I wonder?

I have a very deep resentment against this idea that because I am transgender I need to accept certain things. I need to be open minded about certain things and I need to just be okay with certain things. I think most people would give cis women some time to adjust.

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha yeah right, most people who go “Hey I’m trans” give cis women alllllllllll the time in the world to adjust and never call them hard names or threaten them or ostracize them in any way at all. We’ve been seeing that for several years now.

Like there has been SO MUCH time between then and now that in a way I don't really care. In a way, I support that they've changed and they're happier. It's just hard for me to swallow how common this has become for me and it makes me wonder how many more emails I'm gonna get.

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

I feel transphobic for having the reaction I have, but at the same time I don't think it's unreasonable to have this reaction when more than 5 people I've slept with have transitioned and had much of the same reaction. They wouldn't spring this on a cis woman the same way.

— Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) May 3, 2019

Definitely not. They treat cis women with the utmost respect and generosity and don’t at all bully or silence them for any reason whatever.

If you’re wondering who Kat Blaque is, Wikipedia can help:

Blaque was born in Lynwood, California and raised in Walnut, California. She is adopted.^[2] In middle school, Blaque began to question her gender identity and started to identify as genderqueer.^[3] She began identifying as a trans woman in college.^[4] Blaque graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2012 with a BFA in character animation.^[1]

Bless.

Nothing to see here folks, move on.

Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2019

Trump is with Kim Jong-un. Trump is not with the EU, or NATO, or Merkel, or the UN, or Schumer, or Mueller, or Obama, but he is with Kim Jong-un. Interesting.

South Korea isn’t quite so with Kim.

South Korea initially reported Saturday that a single missile was fired, but later issued a statement that said “several projectiles” had been launched and that they flew up to 200km (125 miles) before splashing into the sea toward the north-east.

If it’s confirmed that the North fired banned ballistic missiles, it would be the first such launch since the North’s November 2017 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. That year saw a string of increasingly powerful weapons tests from the North and a belligerent response from Trump that had many in the region fearing war.

Experts say the North may increase these sorts of low-level provocations to apply pressure on the US to agree to reduce crushing international sanctions.

Well, Trump is with Kim, so no doubt he’ll be obliging.

Conservative Democrats always think they know that only the most conservative possible platform can get Democrats elected. Pelosi is warning us away from any wild and crazy ideas like universal health insurance, you know like what every other developed country has had for decades.

Sitting in her office with its panoramic view of the National Mall, Ms. Pelosi — the de facto head of the Democratic Party until a presidential nominee is selected in 2020 — offered Democrats her “coldblooded” plan for decisively ridding themselves of Mr. Trump: Do not get dragged into a protracted impeachment bid that will ultimately get crushed in the Republican-controlled Senate, and do not risk alienating the moderate voters who flocked to the party in 2018 by drifting too far to the left.

“Own the center left, own the mainstream,” Ms. Pelosi, 79, said.

“Our passions were for health care, bigger paychecks, cleaner government — a simple message,” Ms. Pelosi said of the 40-seat Democratic pickup last year that resulted in her second ascent to the speakership. “We did not engage in some of the other exuberances that exist in our party” — a reference to some of the most ambitious plans advocated by the left wing of her party and some 2020 candidates, including “Medicare for all” and the Green New Deal, which she has declined to support.

Well what is “health care” supposed to mean? Everybody thinks health care is a good thing, apart from the religious maniacs who decline it on principle and watch their children die in agony. The issue isn’t health care, it’s the ability to pay for it if you’re not rich. The issue is whether or not to treat it as a public good like schools and libraries, or a profit generator like cars and shoes. It’s not “exuberance” to think health insurance should work the way Medicare does; other prosperous countries do it that way and we could too.

There’s also nothing “exuberant” about thinking we have a responsibility to take climate change seriously as opposed to just shrugging it off because we won’t be alive to see the worst of it.

Dispatch from Swansea Pride:

#GetTheLOut Swansea Pride. Lesbians forcibly removed by police for stating lesbians don’t have penises.

From last summer: Why I Put Pronouns on my Email Signature (and LinkedIn profile) and You Should Too.

Pronouns…on your signature?

looks around confusedly as if having just landed on an alien planet

What does that even mean? Signatures don’t have pronouns.

Never mind what it is; the point is it doesn’t cost you anything.

For a cisgender person (a person whose gender is in alignment with the sex they were assigned at birth- more on that another time!) there is little to no risk in sharing your pronouns. When you’ve never questioned what pronouns people use for you, or even thought about the idea of pronouns after you learned about them in 2nd grade, sharing your pronouns on digital profiles is easy and costs you nothing.

Emphasis in the original.

I beg to differ. It would cost me my self-respect, my unconscious feeling of having some clue about how to do basic things like walk through doors, buy food at the supermarket, wear clothes, not fall over. I would feel like a damn fool if I started signing things with My Name + me me me me. That’s a cost.

For a person who is transgender or nonbinary, sharing pronouns can be a bit riskier. If someone is transitioning at work and only a few people know about it, sharing pronouns may out them before they’re ready. For a nonbinary person, sharing they/them pronouns often only sparks a lengthier conversation (*coughthisarticlecough*) rather than simply inform people.

That’s why we ask cisgender people to lead the change by sharing pronouns.It normalizes the process, has little risk, and actually makes for a safer environment for everyone.

What process? Signatures don’t include pronouns, for anyone, not even trans people, so what process?

Finally he explains. (Or maybe it’s not “he”? Despite the name Max Masure and the photo of a man? Am I committing a social crime by assuming he’s a he?)

At Argo Collective, we always have our workshop attendees make a commitment before the close of each session. One of our clients committed to adding his pronouns on his LinkedIn profile. Two days after he added “He/Him” after his last name, a University reached out to him and said they noticed he and some of his colleagues added pronouns on LinkedIn. The University told him they had a transgender student who was looking for an internship placement and this company seemed like a safe environment for the student to begin their career.

Oh, that’s what it means: adding it in parentheses after your name, as some people do on Twitter.

No. It’s stupid and otiose and I’m not doing it.

Now at this point in my reading, I start to have a familiar thought: the intention here is to be kind, and it’s making me feel sick, and isn’t there something dubious about feeling sick at intentions to be kind?

So I pause to think about it.

There could be. Certainly a lot of the struggle against “political correctness” smacks of that. Carl Benjamin smirking at the camera and saying he guesses he would rape Jess Phillips if pressed enough but really there isn’t enough beer – that’s definitely about being pointedly hateful for the sake of being pointedly hateful.

But scorn for people who obsess over pronouns? I don’t think so. There’s such a thing as cruelty, there’s bullying, but there’s also misdirected kindness. I think pronoun follies are infantilizing rather than kind, however kind the intention may be. You can want to be kind to a toddler and give her chocolate until she throws up; a mistaken form of kindness.

One way the mistaken kindness of a lot of “allies” of trans people goes wrong is that it fosters narcissism. Trans ideology seems to attract narcissists as it is, and the ever-ratcheting-upward campaign to “center” them just makes it more attractive to narcissists. It’s inherently narcissistic to believe that one’s own inner feelings can contradict physical reality, and the more people coo over that belief and offer to do it favors even when signing emails, the more narcissistic the believer becomes. I think that’s probably the core reason this “movement” is so fucked up and so filled with idiotic claims and rules.

So, no. I think saying “Don’t be ridiculous about pronouns” is not cruel or bullying the way saying “I guess I’d rape her if pushed” is.

Oh and by the way seven foreign governments have been renting space in Trump World Tower since 2017, without so much as a whisper of Congressional approval. Note that this is not Trump Tower but a different building, next to the UN.

The U.S. State Department allowed seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York’s Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, in what some experts say could be a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Could be a potential, or just plain is a snap of the fingers at the emoluments clause.

Congressional staffers confirmed to Reuters that the Trump World Tower lease requests were never submitted to Congress. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been “stonewalled” in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump’s businesses.

“This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses’ potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,” Cummings said in a statement to Reuters. “The American public deserves full transparency.”

A State Department spokesperson referred Reuters to the Justice Department because the subject involved “matters related to ongoing litigation.” The Justice Department declined to comment. The White House referred a request for comment to the State Department and the Trump Organization, which declined to comment before publication.

In other words they all stonewalled, just as Cummings said.

Priorities.

I find it really sad that people think that calling out a predator like JY requires deadnaming/misgendering her, as if respecting identity is a reward for good behaviour bestowed by the 'normal' people and able to be withdrawn if we don't like them anymore.

— Fiona Robertson (@FionaSnp) May 3, 2019

Fiona Robertson is the SNP’s National Women’s and Equalities Convener, and she thinks “respecting” Jonathan Yaniv’s “identity” is important, and not just important but so important that she needs to express sorrow over a putative insult to it despite the abundant reporting on what an aggressive punitive woman-hating shit Yaniv is.

It’s nuts.

At least Donnie and Volodya are still buddies. That’s a comfort.

President Trump spoke with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin by phone for more than an hour Friday about topics including the outcome of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, the White House said.

How sweet.

The two touched “very, very briefly” on Mueller’s findings, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters.

“It was discussed, essentially in the context that it’s over, and there was no collusion, which I’m pretty sure both leaders were very well aware of long before this call took place,” Sanders told reporters at the White House.

But was there Russian interference? Oooooooh let’s not talk about that.

Trump later tweeted about the call, referring to the Muller investigation as the “Russian Hoax.”

“As I have always said, long before the Witch Hunt started, getting along with Russia, China, and everyone is a good thing, not a bad thing,” he wrote. “We discussed Trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, Nuclear Arms Control and even the ‘Russian Hoax.’ Very productive talk!”

What about getting along with Venezuela? Cuba? Iran? Is that a good thing, not a bad thing? Do they count as “and everyone”?

Next up is David Frum.

I feel that these two sentences from Volume II of the Mueller report have not gotten anything like the attention they deserve (My retyping; my highlighting) pic.twitter.com/DfXAlmiftS

— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 3, 2019

“But the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover” – not might uncover, please note, but would uncover – “facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes…”

They were crimes outside the scope of his inquiry, but a thorough FBI probe would find them.

Interesting.

Oh but surely there’s no law against an Attorney General of the US lying to Congress under oath.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Thursday that the US attorney general, William Barr, committed a “crime” when he told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month that he was unaware that special counsel Robert Mueller was unhappy with his portrayal of the findings from his investigation into Russian meddling.

“What’s deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi said on Thursday morning during her weekly press conference with reporters. “And that’s a crime.”

Mimi Rocah agrees, sort of:

…Barr has over and over during this process deceived the American public. Mueller reportedly told Barr he should release his executive summaries to the public, which makes sense given that these summaries contain almost no redactions — clearly they were written so they could be widely distributed and read. After Mueller said this, however, Barr testified before Congress. He could have used this opportunity to be honest about the differences in opinion between himself and the special counsel. Instead he said nothing. In fact, he went one step further and misled Congress and the American people.

When asked by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., if Mueller supported his conclusion, Barr replied, “I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.”

But he did know. He knew that Mueller felt his report was not being properly contextualized and wanted more information to be released so that voters and lawmakers could make their own determinations on several questions not definitively answered by the report — especially whether or not the president had obstructed justice. Prosecutors can debate if this fits within the exacting requirements of the statute used to prosecute false statements made under oath to Congress, 18 USC Section 1001 — or whether Barr, a savvy lawyer, walked the line just enough to avoid breaking the law.

But that cannot be the standard for an attorney general of the United States. We should expect and demand objectively, neutrality, honesty and integrity from our top law enforcement official.

It’s debatable whether he committed a crime or not, but why should we grin obediently and accept an Attorney General who just barely didn’t quite break the law but is lying to us in service to a crooked filthy sadist masquerading as a president? Why should we?

Say what now?

The terms on the right are interesting, in that this is the sort of language you would expect to be used by robots or space aliens who had absolutely no cultural understanding of real-life human mothers… er, I mean, gesto-lactational uterine-supply humanoids. pic.twitter.com/YzDY0rSc21

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) May 2, 2019

Where is this??

Ah.

Source:https://t.co/mN0wmpi2Tm

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) May 2, 2019

Ok so I’m reading the Ledge Bit Kyooeea Inclooosiv Pregnancy n Birth Care post.

Pregnancy and birth care professionals fulfill a wide range of roles and functions in the lives of the people and families we serve. However, as a whole, our goal is to provide compassionate, respectful, culturally appropriate care to all of our clients.

I hope they spare a little attention for the medical aspect of the whole thing.

Most of the resources available to birthworkers are not centered on the lived experience, identity, and needs of people whose gender identity and sexual orientation fall outside of heteronormative mainstream definitions of sex and gender.

What are these “needs” though? Lesbians probably don’t want to be asked questions about their husbands, but surely that’s not all that difficult to manage with notes on the chart or similar, unless the setting is some churchy hospital in the boondocks. It doesn’t seem to require a vast amount of “centering”; just a little would do. Other than that…what? The fact that some pregnant women say they are men? Put another note on the chart and move on.

1. ASK, DON’T ASSUME!
Just because someone “looks like” a particular gender doesn’t mean they identify that way. Ask them what name and pronoun they use, note their name and pronouns on intake and medical history forms—and use them consistently.

But…how? How do you use third person pronouns in two person interactions? You don’t. Also…if it annoys or upsets a trans person not to be asked what pronouns They use, might it upset a person who is not trans to be asked? Might it upset or annoy almost everyone who is asked? Is that something to take into account at all? Are there some contexts in which it actually is better to assume than to ask? Think, for instance, of people who are asked “Where are you from?” when they’re not immigrants but are, say, browner than the majority. Asking what the pregnant woman’s pronouns are could feel like that.

Many (but not all!) LGBTQIA people have complicated relationships with their body. Asking them what terms they use for their body and/or body parts, and then using those terms, can help them feel empowered and affirmed.

Hmmmm. So one person calls her Birth Entryway “Muffy” and another calls it “Love Canal” and another calls it “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree” – won’t it get a little tricky for the birth care professionals to remember them all?

I see a future in which all the birth professionals are in a huddle trying to remember which name they’re supposed to apply to this particular Birth Entryway while the baby just makes its own way out.