Just a bit of an invitation, isn’t it

Mar 13th, 2017 5:10 pm | By

Here’s another:

H/t Stewart



Trolls in real life

Mar 13th, 2017 4:43 pm | By

Now this is familiar.



Otherwise intelligent

Mar 13th, 2017 3:29 pm | By

Oh good lord.

At Pink News one Josh Jackman explains what women are.

There seems to be an epidemic of otherwise intelligent, respectful, feminist people suddenly blurting out that trans women “aren’t real women.”

*grits teeth*

One, he mentions two people (and things Germaine Greer said years ago); two is not an epidemic. Two, it’s neither stupid nor disrespectful nor unfeminist to say that trans women are not women in every sense of the word. Three, nobody “blurted out” anything; two women made reasoned arguments.

After that, Josh Jackman (I don’t dare say “he” lest I be accused of misgendering…them) gets down to the hard work of explaining why it’s wrong to say that trans women are not women in every sense of the word.

It’s really very simple.

No-one switches gender.

Being misgendered and living in the wrong body is not a privilege.

Trans women are women. Trans women are women.

That’s it. That’s the substance, from start to finish. All that’s left is a smartass list of things that aren’t women, illustrated with photos. A can of paint, a guitar, Corsica – hahaha laydeez, do you feel stupid enough yet?

And in conclusion, and in big letters:

Also, anyone who self-defines as a woman. Got it?

No, I don’t got it, because I consider it bullshit. I consider it magical thinking and eyes-tight-shut denial. It doesn’t apply across the board, so why should it apply to “a woman”? It’s not true that anyone who self-defines as a crocodile is a crocodile. It’s not true that anyone who self-defines as a Russian is a Russian. It’s not true that anyone who self-defines as Shakespeare is Shakespeare. Making a simple-minded simplistic crude claim like that a matter of mandatory belief on pain of noisy social media bullying and shunning is a ridiculous way to carry on. It shouldn’t be treated as a crime to say that starting out male makes a difference and that there are some differences between the experiences of trans women and those of women. There shouldn’t be a mandatory dogma on the subject.

Glosswitch as always summed it up beautifully:

Stop ignoring the conscripts.



When women dare to spark

Mar 13th, 2017 12:27 pm | By

Now Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s daring to say that she thinks trans women are trans women has become a news item. I guess it’s shocking when women say things like “trans women are trans women.”

The LA Times tendentiously headlines:

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie angers transgender community

And the Motoons “provoked the Muslim community” and Charlie Hebdo “sparked outrage” and on and on it goes.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and outspoken feminist, drew criticism from transgender activists after suggesting that the experiences of transgender women are different from women whose gender was assigned female at birth.

Which is ridiculous, because of course the two sets of experiences are different. In other contexts that’s seen as the whole point.

The Washington Post is slightly less accusatory, but only slightly.

Women’s issues are different from trans women’s issues, feminist author says, sparking criticism

Her comments propelled her to the center of a nuanced, long-running gender identity debate between some feminists and transgender rights activists. The dilemma is based on the belief that most trans women were born assigned to the male gender and were raised male until they decided to transition. As a result, some feminists argue, transgender women spent a fraction — or large part — of their early lives experiencing male privilege.

Which many trans women agree is true.

In response to Adichie’s comments, Julia Serano, author of “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity,” called out non-transgender women who feel the “audacity” to comment on the experiences of transgender women without having personally lived them.

Meanwhile, Serano has previously written that before her transition, “nothing could have truly prepared” her for what male privilege would entail.

“I underestimated just how frustrating, infuriating and hurtful it would feel to have strangers regularly hurl cat calls and sexual innuendos at me, or to have men speak down to me, talk over me, and sometimes even practically put on baby-talk voices when addressing me,” she said.

Well that’s our point exactly. She underestimated just how frustrating, infuriating and hurtful it would feel to have strangers regularly hurl cat calls and sexual innuendos at her or talk down to or over her – which is another way of saying that she experienced male privilege. Not living through years of cat calls and being talked down to is what we mean when we talk about the different experiences. I do not see why we can’t just agree on that and move on.



Locked up for Holi

Mar 13th, 2017 11:21 am | By

Michael Safi reports from Delhi:

As India’s raucous spring festival of Holi approached this year, a memo circulated among two women’s dormitories at the University of Delhi.

Undergraduate women would be locked inside the student halls from 9pm on Sunday until 6pm on Monday, it read – well after most Indians had finished smearing each other in dye, dancing or drinking from cups of bhang lassi, a milky cannabis-based concoction.

The decision of the hostels highlights a darker side to one of India’s most joyous festivals: as inhibitions decrease, many women say the street harassment endemic to Delhi life also surges.

And naturally the solution to that is to imprison the women. Literally imprison them for 21 hours. Literally imprison them during a festival that they might actually want to participate in (without being harassed or beaten up or raped, oddly enough).

“It’s a very sexualised thing. You get touched or hit on your buttocks or your breasts,” said Devangana Kalita, an activist and researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“There’s a particular targeting of women’s genital parts,” added Shristi Satyawati, who on Saturday tried to lodge a police case against a group of young men who pelted her with water balloons “on my breasts and bum”.

The police said they can’t do anything – it’s Holi.

Delhi police announced they had posted around 25,000 officers around the city to prevent hooliganism during the festivities.

Nonetheless, Delhi University’s two female dormitories were locked up for the day, along with several others across the city, to the chagrin of women’s and student’s groups.

“The men can remain free and roam about, but the women who are the supposed victims need to stay – it’s atrocious,” Naqvi said.

It’s lose-lose for women, isn’t it. They can have the burqa, or imprisonment, or sexual assault – those are the choices. Men can do whatever they like.

Rumblings have been growing against the tight curfews on women studying in Delhi’s student hostels and grew louder last week, when India’s minister for women, Maneka Gandhi tried to defend the restrictions.

“When you are 16 or 17 you are hormonally very challenged,” she said. “So to protect you against your own hormonal outbursts, perhaps a [boundary] is drawn.”

Pinjra Tod, a student group fighting against discriminatory rules for women’s hostels versus the men’s accommodation, said in a statement: “The rise in sexual violence and harassment that women experience around Holi is barely addressed. Instead, women are once again locked up for their ‘own safety’ with arbitrary restrictions.”

Oh well. I’m sure someone remembered to bring them food and water.



It is amazing

Mar 13th, 2017 10:46 am | By

Donnie from Queens showing his usual dazzling self-awareness and insight.

Ah yes, he’s such an expert at avoiding rudeness. He’s so good at being nice. Du wut he sez, nott wut he duz.



The potential for surprises

Mar 12th, 2017 5:20 pm | By

Poor Angela Merkel. She has to go visit Trump on Tuesday. Yuck. I hope he doesn’t try to hold her hand.

German officials say the detail-oriented Merkel, 62, has been preparing assiduously for her trip to Washington.

She has watched Trump’s speeches and [pored] over his interviews, including a lengthy Q&A with Playboy magazine from 1990 in which he floats many of the controversial ideas he is now trying to implement as president, they say.

Members of her entourage have also analyzed Trump’s encounters with other leaders – including Britain’s Theresa May, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Canada’s Justin Trudeau – and have had exchanges with some of their counterparts on how to handle the unpredictable former reality-TV star, the officials added.

“We have to be prepared for the fact that he does not like to listen for long, that he prefers clear positions and does not want to delve into details,” said one senior German official.

Sigh. In other words, they have to be prepared for the fact that he’s a giant stupid baby, who refuses to do the most basic tasks that the job requires. He has no attention span, he’s lazy, and he wants everything made simple and easy as if it were a toddler’s dinner cut up into itty bitty bites. It’s so shaming.

One of the biggest concerns in the chancellor’s camp before the visit is the potential for surprises.

Japan’s Abe had an awkward 19-second handshake with Trump, while May was criticized in some sections of the British media for holding hands with Trump during a stroll at the White House, apparently after he reached out to steady himself.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump last month, he and his team spent the day before running through endless scenarios, lines of questioning and role-plays to ensure they were prepared for any scenario.

But in the end, they were still taken aback when Trump spoke off the cuff at their news conference on the sensitive issues of settlements and a future Palestinian state.

In other words he has no idea how to behave, and no inclination to find out, so he’s almost certain to do something inappropriate and embarrassing, or rather, many such things.



Penny wise

Mar 12th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

The health commissioner of Baltimore ponders what she would have faced if she had had no health insurance when she got pregnant.

Even though I’m a relatively healthy 34-year-old, I have several medical conditions that call for more frequent monitoring. My doctor recommended that I return every two weeks for a physical exam and ultrasound. Closer to delivery, I should plan to see him every week.

I didn’t hesitate to follow my doctor’s recommendations. I have excellent health insurance with no copay for doctor’s visits and a minimal cost for tests.

But what would I have done if I didn’t have insurance?

One obstetrician visit would cost $150. With an ultrasound each time, it would be $400. A Pap smear would cost $53. One set of blood tests would add another $300. All told, my prenatal care with all visits and tests included would be over $10,000. This is not counting labor and delivery, which in my area is estimated to be up to $30,000 for a vaginal birth and $50,000 for a cesarean section.

Facing these astronomical costs, would I be forced to pick and choose care based on my ability to pay, rather than the best available medical evidence? What services would I forgo, and with what consequences?

If she had no insurance, of course she would be forced to pick and choose according to what she could pay for. That’s why universal insurance should be the universal goal.

The Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act would drastically cut Medicaid, which provides health coverage for women, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. In Baltimore, where I serve as the health commissioner, the majority of pregnant women are insured through Medicaid. Thousands of low-income women could lose coverage and have to pay out-of-pocket for services; others who have insurance may only be able to afford bare-minimum plans that don’t cover needed services.

As a physician who worked in the ER before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, I have seen what happens when patients forgo needed interventions because of cost. I have treated patients who end up in irreversible comas because they couldn’t afford seizure medications. I have treated people who died from drug overdoses because their insurance didn’t cover addiction treatment. And I have treated women who were priced out of prenatal care, whose babies suffered the consequences in the form of preventable diseases, prematurity, birth defects, and even death.

Women without prenatal care are seven times more likely give birth to premature babies, and five times more likely to have infants who die. The consequences are not only poor health, but also higher cost passed down to taxpayers. The average medical cost for a baby with problems of prematurity is $79,000, compared to $1,000 for a healthy newborn. Hospitalizations for a preemie in the first year can be upwards of $500,000; intensive care can cost in the millions.

Conversely, studies have shown that for every dollar spent on prenatal care, there are expected savings of nearly $5. Early intervention saves lives and cuts cost. Our health care system should incentivize prevention and discourage rationing of needed services.

It’s better for the people who need the care, and it’s much cheaper overall. But hey – the Republicans want to punish the poor and cut taxes for the rich, so whaddya gonna do.



They are not an afterthought of nature

Mar 12th, 2017 12:29 pm | By

Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid’s Tale:

Over the years, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has taken many forms. It has been translated into 40 or more languages. It was made into a film in 1990. It has been an opera, and it has also been a ballet. It is being turned into a graphic novel. And in April 2017 it will become an MGM/Hulu television series.

In this series I have a small cameo. The scene is the one in which the newly conscripted Handmaids are being brainwashed in a sort of Red Guard re-education facility known as the Red Center. They must learn to renounce their previous identities, to know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.

The Handmaids sit in a circle, with the Taser-equipped Aunts forcing them to join in what is now called (but was not, in 1984) the “slut-shaming” of one of their number, Jeanine, who is being made to recount how she was gang-raped as a teenager. Her fault, she led them on — that is the chant of the other Handmaids.

Although it was “only a television show” and these were actresses who would be giggling at coffee break, and I myself was “just pretending,” I found this scene horribly upsetting. It was way too much like way too much history. Yes, women will gang up on other women. Yes, they will accuse others to keep themselves off the hook: We see that very publicly in the age of social media, which enables group swarmings. Yes, they will gladly take positions of power over other women, even — and, possibly, especially — in systems in which women as a whole have scant power: All power is relative, and in tough times any amount is seen as better than none.

Yes, women will gang up on other women. Yes, they will accuse others to keep themselves off the hook. Oh hell yes.

Which brings me to three questions I am often asked.

First, is “The Handmaid’s Tale” a “feminist” novel? If you mean an ideological tract in which all women are angels and/or so victimized they are incapable of moral choice, no. If you mean a novel in which women are human beings — with all the variety of character and behavior that implies — and are also interesting and important, and what happens to them is crucial to the theme, structure and plot of the book, then yes. In that sense, many books are “feminist.”

Why interesting and important? Because women are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that. Without women capable of giving birth, human populations would die out. That is why the mass rape and murder of women, girls and children has long been a feature of genocidal wars, and of other campaigns meant to subdue and exploit a population. Kill their babies and replace their babies with yours, as cats do; make women have babies they can’t afford to raise, or babies you will then remove from them for your own purposes, steal babies — it’s been a widespread, age-old motif. The control of women and babies has been a feature of every repressive regime on the planet. Napoleon and his “cannon fodder,” slavery and its ever-renewed human merchandise — they both fit in here. Of those promoting enforced childbirth, it should be asked: Cui bono? Who profits by it? Sometimes this sector, sometimes that. Never no one.

There’s a great deal more.



She had to convince clients to respect her

Mar 12th, 2017 11:51 am | By

What happens when a man accidentally uses a woman’s name on the job?

Martin R. Schneider, an editor for the movie-reviewing site Front Row Central based in Philadelphia, realised men and women are treated differently in the workplace after he accidentally signed off on emails using his female co-worker’s signature

He tweeted the experience that made him realise women do not get the same respect in the workplace. The tweet that has been liked nearly 7,000 times and shared more than 5,400 times at the time of writing.

Mr Schneider, at the time working at another company, said that his colleague Nicole was getting criticism  from their boss for taking longer than he did on tasks that involved communicating with clients.

As her supervisor Mr Schneider thought this was due to his higher level of experience, until one day he noticed one of his clients acting unusually difficult.

“He is just being IMPOSSIBLE. Rude, dismissive, ignoring my questions,” he said, adding “Telling me his methods were the industry standards (they weren’t) and I couldn’t understand the terms he used (I could).”

He realised the problem was coming from his signature – Mr Schneider was accidently signing all his emails with the name “Nicole” since they shared an inbox and she was handling the project before.

So he corrected the mistake and you’ll never guess what happened next hahahaha of course you will.

“IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. Positive reception, thanking me for suggestions, responds promptly, saying ‘great questions!’ Became a model client,” Mr Schneider said.

“Note: My technique and advice never changed. The only difference was that I had a man’s name now,” he added.

He and his colleague then did the switch for two weeks; nightmare for him, bliss for her.

“I realised the reason she took longer is because she had to convince clients to respect her.By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client,” he said.

“For me, this was shocking. For her, she was USED to it. She just figured it was part of her job,” he concluded.

Yep.



Complicit

Mar 12th, 2017 11:16 am | By

Saturday Night Live went after Ivanka Trump this time.

Yet again this weekend, “Saturday Night Live” trotted out Alec Baldwin doing a Donald Trump impression for its cold open. And yet again, that wasn’t even close to its harshest political sketch.

That distinction this week was reserved for “Complicit,” a faux Ivanka Trump perfume ad that is liable to really ruffle some feathers.

The basic idea is pretty clear: As an outspoken woman known to be very close to her father, she is complicit in the things Trump does — and for not doing something about them.

Daddy boasts of grabbing women by the pussy, Daddy calls Senator Warren “Pocahontas,” Daddy accuses Obama of a felony based on something somebody said on Fox News. Daddy lies, Daddy cheats, Daddy steals. Daddy wants to take health insurance away from poor people, Daddy wants to make rivers and streams dirty again, Daddy hates brown foreigners. Ivanka’s right there with him.

SNL last week ran a very similar sketch about Republicans being unwilling to stand up to President Trump. But the decision to go after Ivanka Trump is certainly an interesting one — and one that her father is very likely to take notice of. Back when Nordstrom dropped her line, Donald Trump tweeted about it and Kellyanne Conway appeared to break ethics rules by telling people to buy Ivanka Trump’s products.



She was opened to a certain level of hostility

Mar 11th, 2017 5:56 pm | By

Emma Brockes interviewed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a week ago for the Guardian.

Last year, at a writing workshop she was teaching in Lagos,

a young man rose to ask the famous novelist a question. “I used to love you,” she recalls him saying. “I’ve read all your books. But since you started this whole feminism thing, and since you started to talk about this gay thing, I’m just not sure about you any more. How do you intend to keep the love of people like me?”

Of people who are not sure about this whole feminism thing and this gay thing? Perhaps she has no such intention.

Adichie and I are in a coffee shop near her home in the Baltimore suburbs. We have met before, a few years ago, when her third novel Americanah was published, a book that examines what it is to be a Nigerian woman living in the US, and that went on to win a National Book Critics’ Circle award. A lot has happened since then. Half Of A Yellow Sun, Adichie’s second and most famous novel, about the Biafran war, has been made into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton. Her essay, We Should All Be Feminists, adapted from her 2013 TEDx talk, has remained on the bestseller lists, particularly in Sweden, where in 2015 it was distributed to every 16-year-old high-school student in the land. The talk was sampled by Beyoncé in her song Flawless. Adichie has become the face of Boots No7 makeup. And she has had a baby, a daughter, now 15 months old.

Adichie is still somewhat in the blast zone, not entirely caught up on sleep, but has published a short book, Dear Ijeawele, Or A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions, an extended version of a letter to a friend who, after having her own baby girl, asked Adichie’s advice on how to raise her to be feminist. I have had twin girls myself since our last meeting, so I am curious about her approach, not least because one of my two-year-olds currently identifies as Bob the Builder and the other as Penelope Pitstop. I would like to equip them to be themselves, while resisting whatever projections might be foisted upon them. We show each other baby photos and smile. “Welcome to the world of anxiety,” Adichie says.

What are selves in the absence of other people’s projections? It’s a tricky business trying to have some sort of “genuine” or “authentic” self when the self doesn’t really mean anything in isolation.

But some projections are much much worse than others.

The success of We Should All Be Feminists has made Adichie as prominent for her feminism as for her novels, to the extent that “now I get invited to every damned feminist thing in the whole world”. She has always been an agony aunt of sorts, “the unpaid therapist for my family and friends”, but having the feminist label attached has changed things, and not just among her intimates. “I was opened to a certain level of hostility that I hadn’t experienced before as a writer and public figure.”

This is partly why she has written the new book, to reclaim the word feminism from its abusers and misusers, a category within which she would include certain other progressives, and to lay down in plain, elegant English her beliefs about child-raising.

A depressingly large proportion of progressives are hostile to feminism now.

Dear Ijeawele is, in some ways, a very basic set of appeals; to be careful with language (never say “because you are a girl”), avoid gendered toys, encourage reading, don’t treat marriage as an achievement, reject likability. “Her job is not to make herself likable, her job is to be her full self,” she writes in reference to her friend’s daughter, a choice Adichie has come to elevate almost above any other.

Even when many progressives think your full self is…problematic.

 

Later they talk about Trump – Adichie lives in the US and Nigeria.

“Someone said to me, ‘Now that this is happening in the US, do you think of moving back to Nigeria?’ And I thought, no, because it’s not any better there. I admire America. I don’t think of myself as American – I’m not. So it’s not mine. But I admire it, and so there’s a sense that this thing I built in my head, it’s been destroyed.”

There is also, she says, something familiar about it all. “American democracy has never been tested. You might have disagreed ideologically with George W Bush, but he still kind of followed the rules. Here, it feels like Nigeria. It really does. It’s that feeling of political uncertainty that I’m very familiar with, but not a feeling I like. It’s ugly. But even worse, because America is so powerful, and so much at the centre of the world, these things have consequences for everyone. Nigeria doesn’t have that kind of reach, so our problems remain our problems.”

Trump’s erosion of language is one of the most frightening things about him, but even progressives, Adichie says, can be sloppy on this front. In response to her new book, a reporter emailed her the question: “Why not humanism?” (instead of feminism). To which, she says, “I thought, what part of the fucking book did this person not read?”

It’s like the people who go around saying All Lives Matter, I say, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. “Right, which I find deeply offensive and very dishonest. Because we have to name something in order to fix it, which is why I insist on the word feminist or feminism.”

This, she says, in spite of the fact that many of her friends, particularly black women, “resist that word, because the history of feminism has been very white and has assumed ‘women’ meant ‘white women’. Political discussion in this country still does that. They’ll say, ‘Women voted for…’ and then, ‘Black people voted for…’ And I think: I’m black and a woman, so where do I fit in here?”

As a result, “Many of my friends who are not white will say, ‘I’m an intersectional feminist’, or ‘I’m a womanist’. And I have trouble with that word, because it has undertones of femininity as this mystical goddess-mother thing, which makes me uncomfortable. So we need a word. And my hope is we use ‘feminism’ often enough that it starts to lose all the stigma and becomes this inclusive, diverse thing.”

That would be good.



Lego NASA Women

Mar 11th, 2017 1:03 pm | By

Via Heroic Women to Inspire Game Designers

Lego NASA Women:

AMAZING NEWS: It’s official — Lego NASA Womenhas been approved by the LEGO Ideas Review Board and will soon be a real LEGO set. Everything is AWESOME!!!

Designers at LEGO are already hard at work planning the set’s ultimate look and feel. Set creator Maia Weinstock will continue posting updates as they become available, so stay tuned… As ever, THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported and cheered for this celebration of all the women who’ve contributed to NASA History!

Update: For those asking, an on-sale date is not yet determined, but will be sometime late 2017/early 2018.

From the LEGO ideas blog:

Women of NASA
A big congratulations to 20tauri on becoming the next official LEGO Ideas fan designer! As a science editor and writer, with a strong personal interest for space exploration as well as the history of women in science and engineering, Maia Weinstock’s Women of NASA project was a way for her to celebrate accomplished women in the STEM professions. In particular those who’ve made a big impact through their work at NASA.

We’re really excited to be able to introduce Maia’s Women of NASA set for its inspirational value as well as build and play experience.



Yer fired

Mar 11th, 2017 12:09 pm | By

So the Trump people solved the problem by firing Preet Bharara.

On Friday, acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente began making calls to 46 prosecutors asking for their resignations. Such requests are a normal part of a transition of power from one administration to another, and about half of the 94 Obama-era U.S. attorneys had already left their jobs.

But Boente’s call to Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, appears to have left some confusion in its wake, in large part because President Trump met with Bharara soon after the election and had asked him to stay on.

During Friday’s call, Bharara asked for clarity about whether the requests for resignations applied to him, given his previous conversation with Trump, and did not immediately get a definitive answer, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

So that sounds less like a show of defiance from Bharara than simply uncertainty about what was going on. It also sounds like clumsy rudeness and incompetence on the part of the Trump people…but perhaps I’m being too generous, and they meant to be rude and abrupt-for-no-reason.

When asked Friday whether Bharara was also being asked for a resignation letter, one White House official not authorized to speak publicly said, “Everybody’s gone,” and would not engage further on the issue. Two people close to the president said the president’s chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions want a clean slate of federal prosecutors and are unconcerned about any perception that the White House appears to have changed its mind about Bharara. The ouster of former president Barack Obama’s federal prosecutors is about asserting who’s in power, these people said.

It’s about asserting who’s in power despite having decisively lost the popular vote and unprecedentedly low ratings in the polls, along with the ever-expanding knowledge base about Putin’s influence on the election.



It’s about the way the world treats us

Mar 11th, 2017 11:17 am | By

Uh oh. Uh oh uh oh. A woman said a wrong thing, again. A feminist woman. A feminist woman who is an author and widely respected. Uh oh uh oh uh oh; everybody get ready to throw things.

Feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has found herself at the center of a controversy over gender identity after comments she made about transgender women during an interview, which can be viewed in the clip above, recently went viral.

I like that “has found herself” – it’s so passive-aggressive.

Speaking earlier this week with the U.K.’s Channel 4, Adichie, who is promoting her new book Dear Ijeawele Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, said, “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.”

Her argument appears to stem from her idea that because many trans women have been assigned and raised male from birth until whatever point they decided to transition, she believes the male privilege they may have received fundamentally sets their experiences apart from those of cisgender women.

Silly silly woman, right? To have an “idea” that people raised male from birth have the experience of being raised male from birth. Where would anyone get such a zany and wicked idea?

“I think the whole problem of gender in the world is about our experiences,” she said. “It’s not about how we wear our hair or whether we have a vagina or a penis. It’s about the way the world treats us, and I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man with the privileges that the world accords to men and then sort of change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning as a woman and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.”

While she did also add that she supports transgender people’s existence, saying they should be “allowed to be,” she ultimately asserts that their experiences should not be “conflated” with women’s experiences.

Adichie, who is perhaps best known for her critically and commercially acclaimed book Americanah and a guest spot on Beyoncé’s track “Flawless,” was almost immediately called out on Twitter for her comments.

Of course she was. No woman can be allowed to talk like that without being “called out” on Twitter.

She wrote a post about it earlier today:

Of course trans women are part of feminism.

I do not believe that the experience of a trans woman is the same as that of a person born female. I do not believe that, say, a person who has lived in the world as a man for 30 years experiences gender in the same way as a person female since birth.

Gender matters because of socialization. And our socialization shapes how we occupy our space in the world.

To say this is not to exclude trans women from Feminism or to suggest that trans issues are not feminist issues or to diminish the violence they experience – a violence that is pure misogyny.

But simply to say that acknowledging differences and being supportive are not mutually exclusive. And that there is space in feminism for different experiences.

Crazy, huh?



When Sean Hannity says “jump”

Mar 11th, 2017 10:30 am | By

So now Fox News is not only the chief source for Trump’s wild assertions, it’s also giving Trump instructions on what to do. Fox News.

The Trump administration moved on Friday to sweep away most of the remaining vestiges of Obama administration prosecutors at the Justice Department, ordering 46 holdover United States attorneys to tender their resignations immediately — including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

The abrupt order came after two weeks of increasing calls from Mr. Trump’s allies outside the government to oust appointees from President Barack Obama’s administration. Mr. Trump has been angered by a series of reports based on leaked information from a sprawling bureaucracy, as well as from his own West Wing.

Several officials said the firings had been planned before Friday.

But the calls from the acting deputy attorney general arose a day after Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator who is a strong supporter of President Trump, said on his evening show that Mr. Trump needed to “purge” Obama holdovers from the federal government. Mr. Hannity portrayed them as “saboteurs” from the “deep state” who were leaking secrets to hurt Mr. Trump.

Sean Hannity is telling Trump what to do now.

Several Democratic members of Congress said they only heard that the United States attorneys from their states were being immediately let go shortly before the Friday afternoon statement from the Justice Department. One senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of the United States attorney in that state, said that an Obama-appointed prosecutor had been instructed to vacate the office by the end of the day.

Although it was not clear whether all were given the same instructions, that United States attorney was not the only one told to clear out by the close of business. The abrupt nature of the dismissals distinguished Mr. Trump’s mass firing from Mr. Clinton’s, because the prosecutors in 1993 were not summarily told to clear out their offices.

There’s a difference between saying “Hi, we’re a new administration, we’re replacing all of you, thank you for your service” and saying “Get out by the end of today.”

It is not unusual for a new president to replace United States attorneys appointed by a predecessor, especially when there has been a change in which party controls the White House.

Still, other presidents have done it gradually in order to minimize disruption, giving those asked to resign more time to make the transition while keeping some inherited prosecutors in place, as it had appeared Mr. Trump would do with Mr. Bharara. Mr. Obama, for example, kept Mr. Rosenstein, who had been appointed by George W. Bush.

The abrupt mass firing appeared to be a change in plans for the administration, according to a statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“In January, I met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once,” she said. “Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement.”

Trump doesn’t understand concepts like “orderly” and “continuity.” Only libbruls care about things like that.

And while I was reading that article, the Times flashed a breaking story – one of the lawyers told to quit isn’t quitting:

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan federal prosecutor who was told to submit his resignation along with 45 others on Friday, has no plans to do so — forcing a potential showdown with President Trump and the Department of Justice.

Mr. Bharara, whose office is overseeing a case against a top aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and an investigation into people close to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, has told several people that he did not hand in a resignation on Friday, as he was ordered to do by the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente.

He also does not intend to do so over the weekend, he said in conversations with associates, a move that could force the hand of the Trump administration.

Meaning what? Trump will send in the National Guard to escort him out? I don’t see that happening.

Mr. Bharara was asked by Mr. Trump to remain in his current post in a meeting in late November, a few weeks after the presidential election. Mr. Bharara met with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower, and then addressed reporters afterward, saying that he had been asked to remain and had given the president his promise to do so.

But Mr. Bharara was one of the 46 holdovers from the Obama administration who abruptly received a call on Friday telling him to vacate.

So Trump personally asked him to stay, and then included him on a list of people abruptly ordered to gtfo. Trump or Sessions or whoever could just say oops, Bharara was on the list by mistake, he stays. Trump or Sessions or whoever could even apologize, which would be the right thing to do, since Trump personally asked him to stay.

But I guess with Sean Hannity issuing instructions it’s a little silly to expect reasonable behavior.



Guest post: The presenters are expected to be expert in this field

Mar 10th, 2017 5:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by Rob on A personal and professional impossibility.

Both the BBC and RNZ (our version of the Beeb) have a long and proud tradition of long running shows that cover a wide range of issues that broadly fall within a generic header. The presenters are expected to be expert in this field, to be able to collate years, even decades long shows that maintain interest by being fresh, topical and challenging. Whatever your interpretation of the printed standards and your supposition about what is in an employment contract – let alone the interpretation of that – the practice promoted by both organisations is to expect and encourage the presenters to use their expertise to bring the greatest value possible from an interview.

Every god-damned day I hear presenters express personal views, couched as questions, which are designed to challenge the interviewee and thus draw forth more information. Sometimes these conversations are collaborative, an intellectual dance in which each participant takes inspiration from the other and the interview takes on an organic life of its own, returning to the pre-scripted questions only when an interesting thread is exhausted. other times the interviews become combative, when one side or the other feels a statement or position is bullshit and requires challenging. Sometimes the interviewee gets eaten alive, sometimes it’s the interviewer.

This is what I, and many others I think, expect and want from such shows. Not a pissing match or an exposition of one persons views. A real life discussion that brings in the listener as a silent but active participant who is forced to consider, to really think about, the competing views being argued.

In my opinion Murray has done nothing less than her job and the BBC should be ashamed of its unjustified and downright weasily editorial interference. Murray’s job is to be an expert on things that affect women. She is. She distanced herself, carefully and explicitly, from hate speech against trans people, but took to task a specific aspect of the actions and philosophy of a certain class of tran-activism. One which frankly seems to adopt something halfway between pre-feminist thought and the wishy washy choice-feminism that has zero intellectual and political backbone.



Because he told porkies under oath

Mar 10th, 2017 4:29 pm | By

It’s almost as if the Attorney General is supposed to be especially punctilious about not breaking laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his testimony to a Senate committee that he had no communications with the Russian government.

The complaint, filed with the Alabama State Bar’s disciplinary commission, comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing in January.

Well you see he didn’t know they meant that kind of communications with the Russian government. He thought they meant the other kind. He didn’t think it worth the trouble to give a full answer and let the senators decide whether chatting with the ambassador was or was not what they were asking about. He thought it would be better to decide they didn’t mean that, and so say nothing at all about it.

Chris Anders, deputy director of the ACLU’s legislative office in Washington, claims that Sessions had violated Alabama’s rules of professional conduct preventing lawyers from engaging in “conduct involving dishonest, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,’” according to the complaint, which cites The Post’s story.

The complaint, filed Thursday, says the report of the meetings with the Russian ambassador “does not square” with Sessions’s sworn testimony in the Senate.

Yes but he explained all that – he thought the Russian ambassador was not one of the Russians they were asking about. He really thought that; it wasn’t a lame excuse at all.

Following The Post’s article, Sessions acknowledged briefly speaking with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July and again at his Senate office in September. But he said there were no discussions about the Trump campaign.

And everyone should totally take his word on that. He’s an honest guy. We know that from how high and far out to the side he holds his hand up when he’s being sworn in.

Image result for jeff sessions oath

Anders said Sessions’s communications with the Russian ambassador during the presidential campaign raises two concerns.

“One is that it’s highly corrosive of a democracy to have a future AG make false statements to the Senate related to a matter that’s under investigation,” he said. “And then, as part of that, the underlying matter of whether a foreign government illegally influenced the U.S. election goes to the very heart of our democracy and the sanctity of the election process. You can’t have a functioning legitimate democracy if foreign governments are influencing the outcome.”

Ok, you can’t have a functioning legitimate democracy, but you can have a functioning nightmare.



It’s become so normalized in the military

Mar 10th, 2017 12:41 pm | By

The Washington Post reports that the Marines-sexual shaming scandal is spreading throughout the military.

Sunday, March 5:

The Naval Criminal Investigation Service, or NCIS, said it was launching an investigation into the drive, while Marine officials said the drive had been taken offline. Additionally, the Marines’ highest-ranking officer, Gen. Robert B. Neller issued a statement calling the incident “distasteful” but did not address the investigation directly.

“Distasteful”? My god, that’s feeble. It sounds as if he’s concerned about the nakedness instead of the lack of consent, the stalking, the degradation, the loathing.

Tuesday, March 7: 

Female Marines subjected to online harassment on Marines United and other pages began to come forward, detailing that the problem was larger than any one group.

“It’s Marine Corps wide,” Marine Pvt. Kally Wayne, 22, told The Washington Post. Wayne joined in 2013 and was removed from the service three years later for disciplinary problems.

Erika Butner, a Marine who left the service recently, told American Military News that “this scandal has never been a new incident within the military, but I am glad it is finally getting the recognition it deserves.”

“As a rape survivor, I can tell you that this exact behavior of sexualizing and objectifying women is why so much sexual harassment runs unchecked in the Corps. It’s become so normalized in the military that women just have to deal with it alone,” she added.

Sexualizing and objectifying and at the same time expressing hatred and contempt: eros linked to loathing – that too is normalized.

Wednesday, March 8:

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, said on the House floor that “heads should roll,” and called on Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to remove the Marines who participated in the incident. Speier had issued a similar statement Saturday. After another incident in 2013 involving unofficial Marine Corps Facebook pages, Speier called for greater oversight.

Neller also issued a video message Wednesday to the Marine Corps, saying that the incident is “embarrassing to our Corps, to our families and to our nation.” Neller mentioned the guiding ethos of the Marine Corps and that “unfortunately, it appears that some Marines may have forgotten these fundamental truths, and instead have acted selfishly and unprofessionally through their actions on social media.”

Jeezus, he really has no idea what the problem is.

Thursday, March 9

James LaPorta, a journalist and former Marine, shared with CNN that the Marines United Group had splintered and formed another group, called Marines United 2. LaPorta also said that the original cache of photos that Marine officials said were taken down had actually migrated to a new Dropbox folder and was still being shared.

Semper fi.

The military site Task and Purpose also reported Thursday that service members and veterans from the Marines United page had begun uploading images and videos to pornography websites following the War Horse’s initial report Saturday.

I guess that’ll teach those bitches not to make a fuss.



The case centred on a Twitter exchange

Mar 10th, 2017 10:29 am | By

Katie Hopkins done for libel:

The writer and food blogger Jack Monroe has won a libel action against the Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins and been awarded £24,000 damages, in a row over tweets suggesting Monroe approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall.

The case centred on a Twitter exchange in May 2015, in which Hopkins confused two well-known anti-austerity commentators: Monroe and Laurie Penny, a columnist for the New Statesman. Penny had tweeted about a memorial to the women of the second world war in Whitehall having been vandalised with the words “Fuck Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.

Commenting on the graffiti, Penny tweeted from her account @PennyRed that she “[didn’t] have a problem” with the vandalism as a form of protest, as “the bravery of past generations does not oblige us to be cowed today”.

Hopkins attributed the opinion to Monroe and tweeted to her then account @MsJackMonroe: “Scrawled on any memorials recently? Vandalised the memory of those who fought for your freedom. Grandma got any more medals?”

When Monroe, who is from an armed forces family, responded furiously and demanded £5,000 for a migrants’ charity on threat of a libel action, Hopkins deleted the original tweet but followed it up with one asking what the difference was between “irritant Penny and social anthrax Monroe”.

Shortly after Hopkins’ original message, Monroe, a contributor to the Guardian, tweeted in response: “I have NEVER ‘scrawled on a memorial’. Brother in the RAF. Dad was a Para in the Falklands. You’re a piece of shit.”

Monroe later sent a second message asking Hopkins to apologise: “Dear @KTHopkins, public apology + £5K to migrant rescue and I won’t sue. It’ll be cheaper for you and v satisfying for me.”

Hopkins deleted the first tweet but shortly afterwards tweeted: “Can someone explain to me – in 10 words or less – the difference between irritant @PennyRed and social anthrax @MsJackMonroe.”

Monroe’s lawyers argued that the second tweet carried an innuendo that Monroe approved or condoned the vandalism, which would cause lasting damage to her reputation. Monroe told the court the exchange had led to abuse from others on Twitter including death threats, and that the affair had been “an 18-month unproductive, devastating nightmare”.

I wonder if the verdict will have a dampening effect on Twitter abuse. That’s a branch of “free speech” I would be happy to see die out.