I’ll skip that one, thanks.

The organisers deplatforned Selina, capitulating to the bullies who issued this word salad. “Woman is a umbrella” etc. Then having got their way, the women who defamed Selina, didn’t even show up! So they derailed a feminist conference for nothing. Well done! pic.twitter.com/ID9UP8070h

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) February 29, 2020

Lessons to conference organisers: never give into bullies. They’re all cowards. Some women DO things, others just smash stuff up and run away. ✊ pic.twitter.com/lxKXwcgAjS

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) February 29, 2020

… Read the rest

In local news…

One person in King County has died due to a novel coronavirus infection, Public Health – Seattle & King County officials announced Saturday morning. It is the first death attributed to the virus in the United States.

Two people connected to a Kirkland long-term care facility have tested positive, officials said Saturday afternoon. A resident in her 70s is in serious condition, and a health employee in her 40s is stable. The long-term facility in Kirkland has 108 residents and 180 employees, according to the CDC.

At the Kirkland facility, 27 residents and 25 employees have symptoms.

So that’s not good.

Kirkland is 11 miles from where I’m sitting.

All local cases announced Saturday were acquired

About those “people who were pulling out” – this is one:

So, it's become clear that at least one the factors in the no-platforming of @selina_todd by @womenslib_50 was because @lolaolufemi_ decided to pull out.

Here is Lola's statement just read out at the conference.@Womans_Place_UK #IStandWithSelina pic.twitter.com/8eCG3eed4l

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) February 29, 2020

Lola Olufemi believes that feminism is “a political methodology that we can use to make demands for our freedom and the freedom of others” – why others? Why can’t women advocate for our own freedom? And feminism isn’t a “political methodology,” whatever that would mean, and it isn’t about “making demands” and it’s far broader than demands for “freedom.” In short her feminism … Read the rest

Well, that’s one I haven’t seen before.… Read the rest

Filia has the short talk that Selina Todd would have given this morning if she hadn’t been abruptly pushed out at the last minute.

I am delighted to be here today. I owe my life to Ruskin College and my career to feminism. My parents met at Ruskin in 1967. My mum was one of 6 children who grew up in a working-class family in Leeds. She was the only girl. Here’s something she wrote recently about her childhood: ‘As a five- or six-year-old I had refused to touch my parents’ birthday present of a doll with a pram, sensing the restriction such a role-defined toy would place on me. My brothers would never have been offered such a present.

I’m now 14 minutes into the video.

The two women doing the explaining are getting increasingly frustrated that the audience won’t just say ok and settle down and keep their issues about Selina Todd’s exclusion for lunch and breaks, so that the event can proceed.

But the audience in turn is frustrated that the two women doing the explaining don’t seem to grasp the outrageousness of the last minute disinvitation of Selina Todd.

The “explanation” in part is that Todd wasn’t on a panel or giving a talk, she was simply doing a two-minute thank you for the history department. That’s all! Two minutes! A thank you! It doesn’t count! One of them actually says it’s not a no-platforming … Read the rest

So.

I will be at the conference tomorrow and I will be publicly denouncing their decision to bully Selina out of the event

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) February 28, 2020

And she was and she did.

https://t.co/AT0PxUK3E5

— Kath #IStandWithMaya (@GenderfreeCamp) February 29, 2020

I’ve watched 7 minutes so far. It’s maddening to watch – maddening to see the women academics explaining to other women academics that they simply had to push Selina Todd aside because “people were pulling out.” Julie and others keep asking “But why were they pulling out, what explanation did they give?”

Julie is…magnificent, as always.… Read the rest

Yes, he really did say it. Here he is saying it.

Trump earlier today on coronavirus:

“It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better, could maybe go away, we’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.” pic.twitter.com/icBPCr71jP

— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) February 28, 2020

CNN has more:

President Donald Trump is hoping for a “miracle” that will make the coronavirus disappear but tanking stock markets and signs the disease is stalking America are delivering their verdict on his scattershot management of the crisis.

…

“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump said at the

None of this inspires confidence.

The briefing, led by CDC Director Robert Redfield and NIH infectious disease specialist Tony Fauci, was called to update members [of Congress] on the state of the coronavirus’ spread.

Redfield stressed that the risk to Americans remained low. But Fauci was more blunt, according to one person in the room, telling lawmakers that they need to accept there will be many more cases in the United States.

Fauci said the coronavirus is “unlikely to disappear” any time in the near future, according to the person. The remarks contradicted Trump’s declaration Thursday night that the disease was “going to disappear” one day “like a miracle.”

Siiiiigh.

Fauci also emphatically denied reports that the White House

We cannot fight for #womensliberation and the end of #maleviolenceagainstwomen alone. We are extremely grateful for all the support we've received today and in the past few days – having you all join us, speaking in support, and writing into the #VancouverCityCouncil. #UntilWeWin

— VancouverRapeRelief (@VanRapeRelief) February 27, 2020

Sister Outrider is not submitting.

Solidarity with @VanRapeRelief. If you want to remove the need for single-sex shelters, work to challenge and end male violence against women and girls – don’t target the services that support women through the aftermath of that violence.

— Sister Outrider (@ClaireShrugged) February 27, 2020

Across Britain women’s refuges are systematically decimated by funding cuts from a right-wing government. Women are being turned away.

Late last night –

So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of “Trump”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2020

Why is he talking about himself in the third person? Why did he put his own name in quotation marks? Who knows. The important thing is, everything is all about him.

The WHO has other priorities.

The coronavirus outbreak has reached a “decisive point” and has “pandemic potential”, World Health Organization head Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus says.

…

For a second

The WH continues to treat the coronavirus as a PR problem instead of a public health crisis. It is failing and flailing in the face of the first crisis it did not create. Its previously successful formula — stonewalling and lying — won’t work here. https://t.co/stbz3rCy0b

— Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich) February 28, 2020

So Pence’s press secretary is filtering what we get to learn from the government about this potential pandemic. They’ll be sending it to Fox News for approval next.… Read the rest

Oh, man, here we go. The Trump gang is getting it wrong already. Very very wrong.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.

The whistleblower is seeking federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns

Democracy Now has a brief but terrible report:

In Mexico, a radio broadcaster was shot to death Tuesday afternoon outside her home in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She was known as Bárbara Greco on air. The 37-year-old had recently spoken out on violence against women and children in Mexico in response to the recent killing of a 7-year-old girl in Mexico City. Her friends and colleagues reported that her real name was Teresa Aracely Alcocer. Last December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Mexico had suffered the second-highest number of journalist killings in 2019, after Syria.

The punishment for speaking out on violence against women and children is…death by violence.… Read the rest

The loathsome Morgane Oger is gloating about Vancouver’s withdrawal of education funding for Vancouver Rape Relief, because VRR is an all-women organization.

Tonight, a supremacist organization with a purity test on womanhood learned that cultivating exclusion and discrimination really does have a price.

I profoundly encourage Vancouver Rape Relief to reconsider its untenable policy to arbitrarily exclude some women.

— Morgane Oger (@MorganeOgerBC) February 27, 2020

A “purity test” he calls it. A man who pretends to be a woman calls a women’s organization for women who have been raped “a supremacist organization with a purity test on womanhood”…because it doesn’t agree with him that he is a woman. It’s as if Michael Bloomberg were a trans poor person and … Read the rest