It’s #transawarenessweek

Trans men are men. Trans women are women. End of.

Ignore the #terfs and haters.

Image courtesy of @dinoman_j pic.twitter.com/Fa3JqsgeMc

— LGBTPlusProud (@LGBTPlusProud) November 17, 2020

“End of” is not a persuasive rhetorical device, let alone an argument.

The word “are” is not magic. Saying Xs are Ys doesn’t change reality. I can say “houses are turnips” but that doesn’t make it true, not even if I go on to say “End of.”

Women are human. Women are people. Those are reasonable claims, and true if we all agree on what “women” means and what “human” and “people” mean.

People have rights. That’s a moral claim more than it is a factual claim, and there’s a lot of … Read the rest

Well that’s crossing a line.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), to question the validity of legally cast absentee ballots in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state.

SENATOR Lindsey Graham has been pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to get rid of legal ballots.

That’s…a crime, isn’t it? Isn’t there a federal law against trying to mess with votes and/or intimidate voters? Isn’t that just a straight-up you can be prosecuted crime?

(looks it up)

Yes, it is. There are state laws and federal laws against doing this shit.

Raffensperger and his wife … Read the rest

The Glinner update tells us there is a social worker, therapist and adjunct associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California called Ken Howard who thinks JK Rowling needs to be punished.

Ruth spotted him commenting on a thread about JK Rowling on the LGBTQ Nation Facebook page. In comments he now appears to have deleted, Howard stated that Rowling’s defence of women’s sex-based rights needs punishing “by way of a traumatic vaginal injury”.

It’s weird what a lot of angry trans activists or allies go straight to that. Not she’s wrong, not she’s wrong and doing harm, but she needs to be violently attacked in the genitals.

But Rowling isn’t stoking and abetting violence against … Read the rest

Good question.

Why is it that even at the highest level, women have to signal obedience to the patriarchy, which currently manifests as worship of gender?
Case in point:
Why does @KamalaHarris have pronouns in her bio but @JoeBiden does not? pic.twitter.com/Utym8TNU4g

— la scapigliata (@lascapigliata8) November 16, 2020

I answered it by, basically, expanding on the “women have to signal obedience to the patriarchy” point, but there are probably further reasons (which is not to say that any of them are good reasons). The VP has more room for experiment, I think. If Biden did it it would look flaky and pathetic, like trying to be down with the kids. Partly it’s probably as simple as “Harris is young … Read the rest

Is it a coup or is it not? Ece Temelkuran has relevant experience:

President Trump’s refusal to concede to his successful challenger is “giving great comfort” to “authoritarian regimes” around the world, said Joe Biden’s biographer on CNN. “This is a source of delight [for them] … ” Turkey, my country, falls into that category of authoritarian regimes. But I can tell you that what is happening in the US is a source of horror, not delight, for those on the ground. We know the signs of when a political crisis becomes a de facto coup – so here’s a word of warning.

…

[A] spectre of hesitation is haunting Washington. While the Trump administration is doing its best

Sorry but this is just silly. Obama doing the book promo:

“I think about the classic male hero in American culture when you and I were growing up,” Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic. “The John Waynes, the Gary Coopers, the Jimmy Stewarts, the Clint Eastwoods, for that matter. There was a code … the code of masculinity that I grew up with that harkens back to the 30s and 40s and before that.

“There’s a notion that a man is true to his word, that he takes responsibility, that he doesn’t complain, that he isn’t a bully – in fact, he defends the vulnerable against bullies. And so even if you are someone who

The Detroit Free Press reports:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday denounced as shocking and reckless a call from a Trump administration official for Michigan residents to “rise up” over new coronavirus restrictions she announced Sunday.

“It’s just incredibly reckless, considering everything that has happened, everything that is going on,” Whitmer said in a call with Capitol reporters.

On Sunday night, Whitmer announced a three-week closure of indoor service at bars and restaurants, closure of the Detroit casinos and suspension of in-person learning for high school and college students, starting Wednesday, along with other measures aimed at bringing down surging coronavirus numbers.

Soon after Whitmer’s news conference, Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump’s top coronavirus adviser, tweeted: “The only way

Trump really wants to get that pesky wildlife refuge destroyed.

In a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies.

That sets up a potential sale of leases just before Jan 20, Inauguration Day, leaving the new administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed drilling in the refuge, to try to stop the them after the fact.

“The Trump administration is trying a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal group in Washington. “They

And this has happened:

I have left The Guardian. I will very much miss SOME of the people there. For now thats all I can say. pic.twitter.com/tUb123CnId

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) November 16, 2020

Her profile now says

“She left because she understood the value of defiance”

so I bet we can figure out what her defiance is about.… Read the rest

Quite the sexist pig, Glenn Greenwald is.

Regardless of one's views on the trans/TERF debate, JK Rowling's victimhood complex is suffocating & narcissistic.

She's one of the world's richest & most famous people, but views herself as a supreme victim because she endures what all public figures endure: harsh criticism. https://t.co/1zjgGQZCWM

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 11, 2020

She had it coming, right? She talked back? She didn’t obey? She refused to submit?

Here's an attempt to explain the British pathologies that caused the UK — and specifically its centrist/liberal media — to become Ground Zero for anti-trans fanaticism. Reading UK websites, you'd think trans people were their greatest societal plague: https://t.co/yPoypdzm1r

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2020

Hur … Read the rest

Trump has a low opinion of most Americans.

Progress! https://t.co/K0NrpChXuI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020

Who?

Oh.

Tiny as in smaller than most high schools. But good enough for Trump!

In all fairness, we hate him right back. Our reasons are better though.… Read the rest

Lisa Allardice talks to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

The reason for our call is the announcement that Adichie has won the public vote in the Winner of Winner’s award, celebrating 25 years of the Women’s prize for fiction. She won the award, when it was sponsored by Orange, in 2007, for her epic war novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, beating many of the biggest names in contemporary fiction.

The prize that was necessary because the people who awarded prizes kept overlooking women.

She hopes that the election of Biden will usher in a return to public civility. “I’m really excited at the idea that the discourse across the country will not sound like childish name calling. There’s

Oh goody – another man on a site purportedly for women, raging about a woman who writes something he dislikes.

Remember went J.K. Rowling went fully mask off about her transphobia in June, publishing an essay on her personal website about how she thinks trans women pose a threat to cis women’s personal safety? And how she, the second-highest paid author in the world worth at least $670 million, feels “police[d]” by trans randos on Twitter who don’t like her tweets (and all while failing to mention the concurrent worldwide uprising against the actual police that was just getting started at the time, to boot)? I know! Truly bananas! If I were a multimillionaire who hated trans women,

Yikes. They go on thinking it’s fake even when they have it.

I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that

Patricia Marx in the New Yorker last July:

With so many people homebound these past few months, indoors has become the new outdoors. It is where you exercise, digitally chat with friends, and, of course, work. But it is also still the indoors, where you sleep, eat, and putter. This can make for frequent wardrobe changes. Or you can give up and wear the same shredded sweatpants day after day. In April, a Florida circuit judge named Dennis Bailey sent a letter to local lawyers about proper attire during Zoom court hearings. “It is remarkable how many attorneys appear inappropriately on camera,” he wrote. “We’ve seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in

There’s always a tweet.

Trump: He won

Also Trump: I concede nothing.

Trump 4 years ago: "Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: '[I]t is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity.' So true!" pic.twitter.com/QGvThUv0Op

— Jon Hutson (@JonHutson) November 15, 2020

Trump: not losing with dignity.

Early this morning:

He won because the Election was Rigged. NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more! https://t.co/Exb3C1mAPg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020

Oops he slipped up, he said “He won” – … Read the rest

Nicely done.

We delved into the Trump team’s lawsuits and court cases to see what Republican officeholders are giving so much deference to: https://t.co/mT5xr0eGoO

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 15, 2020

… Read the rest

More on the misogyny and murder issue:

The police – waylaid for 18 months by a hoax and having only started to take the case seriously once “innocent young girls” (their words) and not just sex workers had been killed – had shifted the responsibility for public safety on to women themselves, urging them not to go out after dark.

But on 25 October, with her boyfriend away in London on a CND march, Lea decided she would not stay at home. She went to the pub to plan her 21st birthday party and after a few drinks walked through Leeds University’s Headingley campus to get her bus home. It was then she was approached by a man who

Joan Smith on Peter Sutcliffe and misogyny:

I am so angry, all these years later. When I heard that this insignificant little man had died, more than four decades after he ruined the lives of so many women, the anger and hurt came rushing back. I remember it as though it were yesterday: the fear we lived with in the north of England, the suspicion about neighbours and colleagues, the sense that we couldn’t rely on the police to protect us.

We couldn’t even rely on them to catch him, even though Peter Sutcliffe was hardly anyone’s idea of a criminal mastermind. He spoke to the women he targeted, letting them hear his Yorkshire accent and see his

Benjamin Wittes on Trump’s Tantrum:

There exists no law or rule that compels a president to acknowledge the legitimacy of his defeat—or even the fact of it—except in the very limited sense that he has to vacate the office.

And he doesn’t have to do that until January 20. Until then he can tantrum his wee socks off.

So yes, the president is allowed to sulk. He is allowed to be the sorest of sore losers. He is allowed to once again display before the entire world the complete triumph of ego over patriotism, of self-interestedness over public-spiritedness, within his heart. There is, actually, nothing to do about it if he wants to play it this way; there is