Alistair Magowan at the BBC asks

Transgender women in sport: Are they really a ‘threat’ to female sport?

Helpful of them to put the scare-quotes right in the headline, so that we’ll be primed to answer the question correctly.

The unburied lede:

Rachel McKinnon estimates she has received more than 100,000 hate messages on Twitter since she won her UCI Masters Track World Championship title in October.

Bolding theirs; they always bold the lede. We’re being carefully guided what to think. Wow, more than a hundred thousand hate messages; she she her. It’s all priming.

Magowan says the victory “was controversial in some quarters,” which primes us to think of a minority of angry wackos.

Others have said further examples may “threaten” the participation of women in sport – a view described as “sensationalist” by transgender racing driver Charlie Martin, and as “transphobic” by McKinnon.

More scare quotes. Mind you they may also, or instead, be accurate attribution quotes…but they come across as scare quotes either way, don’t they.

It is a sensitive topic, which poses some difficult questions about how gender is seen in sport, and some “dangerous” ones – according to transgender handball player Hannah Mouncey – about the fundamental right of athletes to participate in sport.

A scare quote for “Hannah” Mouncey…but after a stream of them for the people who think huge men shouldn’t steal prizes from women.

Critics say it is unfair to have a trans woman competing in female sport with a biologically male body, though McKinnon says that view goes against point four of the International Olympic Committee charter, which says: “The practice of sport is a human right.”

And yet that doesn’t say “the practice of sport as a male-bodied woman is a human right.” Lots of charters and constitutions say free speech is a human right; that doesn’t mean we all have a human right to interrupt speeches or shout into people’s windows or threaten people etc etc. Nobody is saying McKinnon must not practice a sport; many people are saying McKinnon should not compete with women in that sport because of the unfair advantage a male body bestows.

Then we get to Hannah Mouncey, who is given many paragraphs to explain how it’s actually women who have the advantage. Then McKinnon and trans racing driver Charlie Martin get many many many paragraphs to explain why they are right. Critics get a name check and that’s about it.

I guess we can tell what we are expected to conclude.

Well this is a nauseating display – the White House press secretary echoing the mob boss language of Donald Trump to accuse the FBI of “ambushing” Michael Flynn and saying “Look, we know Michael Cohen to be a liar…”

Judge Sullivan just made Mike Flynn take back, under oath, the core of his last court filing — which argued maybe he’s not that guilty because the FBI was mean to him. https://t.co/FfmtaqnYlb

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) December 18, 2018

Good. I found that “But the FBI agents TRICKED me into lying to them” dreck from Flynn intensely annoying, especially in light of “LOCK HER UP.”

The judge is the same judge who said “Turn that plane around,” I learned via Twitter.

Also, Flynn.

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, got a harsh warning from a federal judge on Tuesday that he could face prison for lying to federal investigators about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition and his role lobbying for Turkey.

At Mr. Flynn’s sentencing hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called Mr. Flynn’s crimes “a very serious offense” and said he was not hiding his “disgust” at what Mr. Flynn had done.

“All along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser,” the judge told Mr. Flynn. “Arguably that undermines everything that this flag over here stands for. Arguably you sold your country out.”

And not even arguably, he doesn’t get to pretend he just had no idea what the rules are.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Sullivan questioned Mr. Flynn and his lawyer about their earlier suggestion that F.B.I. agents might have tricked Mr. Flynn by failing to inform him before they interviewed him nearly two years ago that lying to them would constitute a federal crime.

Mr. Flynn told the court that he was not challenging the circumstances of the interview and that he knew lying to the F.B.I. was a crime.

If someone in his job with his job history doesn’t know that…something is very fishy.

Prosecutors dismissed the claims that Mr. Flynn had been tricked as a poor excuse, saying that as a high-ranking White House official and the former director of an intelligence agency, he was well aware that misleading federal authorities was a felony offense.

This is what I’m saying. It’s a bad excuse and it’s absurd.

Don’t worry, it’s just kink, just BDSM, just “rough sex.” Don’t kink-shame the nice man.

A multi-millionaire who left his injured and bleeding partner to die after “rough sex” has been jailed for three years and eight months.

Seeing as how she died, “rough sex” seems just a tad euphemistic.

Natalie Connolly had suffered more than 40 separate injuries, the court heard.

Broadhurst, 40, told a 999 operator he found his partner “dead as a doughnut” at their home in Kinver, Staffordshire, in December 2016.

At least he kept his sense of humor.

Ms Connolly was pronounced dead on 18 December 2016 after Broadhurst called paramedics to their rented home. She died from acute alcohol intoxication and blunt force injuries.

In mitigation, defence Stephen Vullo QC, said Broadhurst, of Wolverley, knew his partner was bleeding but did not think she would come to any harm.

Sure; blunt force trauma never harmed anyone.

He mad.

Russia isn’t messing around with the disinformation campaign.

Our report, announced by the committee on Monday, concludes that Russia was able to masquerade successfully as a collection of American media entities, managing fake personas and developing communities of hundreds of thousands, building influence over a period of years and using it to manipulate and exploit existing political and societal divisions.

…

In official statements to Congress, tech executives have said that they found it beyond their capabilities to assess whether Russia created content intended to discourage anyone from voting. We have determined that Russia did create such content. It propagated lies about voting rules and processes, attempted to steer voters toward third-party candidates[,] and created stories that advocated not voting.

I wonder how much of trans activism is shaped by Russian efforts.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on There must be reprisals.

Questioning their claims is not questioning their existence.

But refuting their claims to womanhood, allowing questions to even be asked, is tantamount to saying the Emperor is naked. The charade ends, the parade is over and those who praised the elegance and refinement of His Majesty’s raiment are shown to be a frauds and liars The little boy in the story who did not get the memo to bow and scrape and oooh and aaah is not to blame for the monarch’s nudity or embarassment. He only pointed out the truth as he saw it, the facts on the ground. Trans extremists’ claim to womanhood disappears in a puff of logic if their claim to it is not unquestioningly accepted and affirmed. To even question the assertion shows its weakness and dependence upon bluff and intimidation. Hackneyed formulae and magical thinking will only take you so far in the face of embarrassing, unyielding facts on the ground. Without some sort of reprisal, punishment or penalty, those who are silenced by fear rather than agreement may peel away from compliance with the demand for obedience to the asserted truth, as their going along with the demand in the first place was not out of any heartfelt loyalty or assent. While in the thrall of intimidation, they may however fetishize and display their own, superior wokeness by pointing out the lack of enthusiasm in others. (Reminding me of the tale told of the spontaneous, enthusiastic, thunderous applause with which a speech of Stalin was always greeted. Starting to clap was a no-brainer. The problem arose once one’s hands became sore. Sore hands or no, nobody wanted to be the guy who stopped clapping first…)

It’s a much more extreme example, but the assassination of atheists in Bangladesh I think, also springs from a similar desire to remove from consideration completely any hint of doubt or questioning of unevidenced assertions of fact, in this case the existence of a particular god. In this case the secret being guarded at all costs is not that The Emperor has no clothes, but that there is no Emperor at all. Allowing the brazen expression of blasphemy to go unpunished is seen as a sign of weakness, and represents a chink in the armour that protects the whole empty construct. It then becomes a competition amongst True Believers to demonstrate the depth of zeal and fervour with which one deals with or eliminates the doubters, blasphemers and apostates, both as a demonstration of the solidity, strength and orthodoxy of their own belief as well as a warning to others to keep silent.

The same goes for the violent response to the cartoon depictions of Muhammad; being able to coerce others into accepting your beliefs and to impose your rules and proscriptions is an exercise in power and, for a short time at least, a method of attempting to create a reality out of nothing but sheer will (and threats or acts of violence). Getting everyone else to go along with it is the tricky part, requiring silence from those who would oppose or criticize. But fear doesn’t always work, or if it sometimes does, not forever.

Criticism is not violence. Speech is not genocide. Baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire are not rhetorical devices.Calling for the death of TERFs is not reasoned argument.

H/t Sackbut

Another Elinor Lipman gem:

It rained all weekend—very SAD!
When I can’t golf, I’m boiling mad.
No Caesar salad; no parade.
Plus ICE removed my favorite maid.
Hate-tweeting while I watched TV,
…And wondered “Can I pardon me?”

— Elinor Lipman (@ElinorLipman) December 17, 2018

People; honestly.

A guy asked this question on Facebook (public post):

I usually run at night so don’t encounter many people. However, when I run during the day (as I did early this morning) I always find walkers to be inconsiderate. Runners coming in the opposite direction will usually move to the left. Walkers rarely do. Pairs of runners change position to free up the pavement. Pairs of walkers don’t – they expect me to get off the pavement.

Why would that be? I don’t think it’s a personality problem. I’m pretty sure that the normal variety of human kindness is present among the individuals I encounter. I am guessing it’s something about the activity, but can’t think what it might be. Any ideas?

I’ve always noticed that a lot of runners are entitled and oblivious like this but I haven’t seen it put down in writing before. “Any ideas?” forsooth. Yes, bozo: you are going faster, in a place that’s intended for people who are walking, so it’s on you to get out of the way and, indeed, ideally to slow down. It’s just physics. If you crash into a walker it’s the walker who is going to hit the sidewalk, not you, therefore you have to get out of the way. It’s not “inconsiderate” for walkers not to try to dodge runners; trying to dodge a runner is likely to be more dangerous – to the walker – than maintaining position. You could dodge only to find that the runner dodged too just in time to slam into you. The runner’s momentum fractures the walker’s skull or neck or arm or pelvis, not the other way around.

People. Especially runners, especially male ones.

UKIP guy is upset.

STOP THIS MADNESS! The Scottish Parliament has banned gingerbread men in case they cause offence, declaring they must be called 'gingerbread people' instead. https://t.co/qiaclO5uPN

— David Kurten ن (@davidkurten) December 16, 2018

Oh no! Without gingerbread men, who will impregnate the strawberry shortcake?