Katha Pollitt on Philip Roth and Blake Bailey and dudely misogyny:

By now the whole world knows why Norton made its decision. Four former students from [Bailey’s] days in the 1990s teaching middle school have accused him of showering them with sexualized attention in eighth grade and after, and then pouncing on them as young adults. One has accused him of rape. (Another subsequently came forward to accuse him of attempted rape in 2005.) A few days later, Valentina Rice, a New York publishing executive, went public with a claim that he raped her in 2015.

Just the guy to write a biography of Philip Roth, frankly.

I have so many questions. Could the Times have dug deeper?

Hey did you know Jolyon Maugham had been on a humbling journey away from know-it-all-ism? Because I sure didn’t know that. I have to say I think he must have gotten off at the wrong stop.

A kind piece from @vicparsons_ about my humbling journey away from the know-it-all-ism that turns too many like me into opponents of the progressive change they think they want. https://t.co/li6mvkAOFq

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) April 27, 2021

… Read the rest

First it’s Tucker Carlson on Fox ranting that wearing masks is a crime against human rights, now it’s a New York Post reporter quitting after she was forced (she says) to write a lie about Kamala Harris. The right-wing “news” media really aren’t very scrupulous, are they.

The New York Post reporter whose byline was attached to a false story that kicked off a days-long right-wing media outrage cycle has quit.

“Today I handed in my resignation to my editors at the New York Post,” reporter Laura Italiano posted to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. “The Kamala Harris story—an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against—was my breaking point. It’s

Is this “cancel culture”? Or is it something else?

More than 200 members of staff at Simon & Schuster have signed a petition calling for the publishing house to cancel its seven-figure book deal with former vice-president Mike Pence and commit to not signing any more book deals with members of Donald Trump’s administration.

I think it’s something else. Mike Pence is no intellectual giant or eloquent advocate or free spirit with a lifetime of experience to enlighten us with. He’s a pipsqueak and a religious fanatic with nothing of interest to say, and he’s also a coward. Nothing of value is lost if Mike Pence doesn’t write a book. (In any case he will write a book, of course: … Read the rest

Naturally the reporting on Maya Forstater’s appeal has to be dishonest. Robin Moira White and Molly Mulready in the Independent:

Maya Forstater is at the heart of a controversy about transgender people, free speech, and harassment at work. Her view is that transgender women are men and the law should protect her right to say so at work, including if a transgender woman happened to be her work colleague.

Forstater wants to refer to that woman as “he”, regardless of the pain that would cause.

That’s a deceptive way of putting it though. Maya isn’t appealing for the freedom to call trans women “he” at all times no matter what, she’s appealing for the freedom to do so … Read the rest

The Daily Beast transcribes much of Tucker Carlson’s anti-masking rant.

“Masks have always been incompatible with a free society,” he fumed. “We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals, transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us and alienate us to shut us off from one another, they prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you.”

You know what does that even more? A ventilator. More again? Being dead.

It’s a temporary measure to slow a pandemic, not a totalitarian plot to hide all our faces forever. Get a grip.

“The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They’re the aggressors. It’s our job to

This is batshit crazy.

Tucker Carlson is now telling his audience to harass people who wear face masks outside.

If they see children wearing masks, Tucker says the response should be no different than when you see a kid being abused — "call the police immediately, contact child protective services" pic.twitter.com/4svVH0JY3s

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 27, 2021

… Read the rest

I’m reading Joshua Rozenberg’s post on today’s hearing and I stopped to re-read one bit from the original ruling.

In a judgment he delivered at the end of 2019, Tayler held that Forstater’s belief in the difference between sex and gender was not a philosophical belief protected by the Equality Act:

I consider that the claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. She goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a gender recognition certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned.

Stop right there. She what? How would that even be possible? What does it mean? People in the legal profession choose their words … Read the rest

Maya’s hearing is happening today.

Good morning.

The Sex Matters team will be live tweeting proceedings from the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Central London in the case of Maya Forstater v CGD Europe.

We will be using the hashtag #MayaAppeal

Proceedings should being at 10.30 am.

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) April 27, 2021

BC is Ben Cooper QC, Maya’s team.

Has the court adopted the dogma of gender identity such that it is undemocratic to express that belief in the immutability of sex?

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) April 27, 2021

Quite a question, isn’t it. Has The Law really decided that we have to subscribe to the belief that sex is every bit as mutable and voluntary as what socks … Read the rest

Yessssss certainly this is a fine idea, nothing can possibly go wrong.

12-year-old was “assigned female at birth” but should be fine sleeping/showering/changing around boys, right? pic.twitter.com/GmOj6WTpTM

— ♥️ (@LabelFreeBrands) April 27, 2021

I can’t imagine why she thinks “something bad might happen to him,” or what the “something bad” might be.… Read the rest

Ah what a nice way to observe Lesbian Visibility Day. Via Queensland Council for LGBTI Health – QC:

I’m Evie, and I feel I am pansexual, and attracted to people not so much the gender. I also Identity as female and happily in love with my female partner for 10 years, and I call this a lesbian relationship. I work for Open Doors as an alcohol and other drugs worker, I’m a keen skate boarder, make short queer films, and plug into virtual reality a lot, and I’m part of a group that’s called We Skate Brisbane.

I spent most of my life searching for lesbian and queer visibility, it’s like oxygen for my soul to meet others, and

Francine Prose was supposed to interview Blake Bailey, who has just published a hefty and admiring biography of Philip Roth, but the interview was called off because uh oh.

This was the first I’d heard about what the email termed the “recent developments surrounding Blake Bailey”. But it took just two key strokes to learn that several women have come forward with extremely disturbing allegations about the biographer. These range from accounts of reckless behavior with female students he’d taught in a New Orleans junior high school (dirty jokes, encouraging girls to write about their sex lives) to more recent and highly believable accusations of rape. No charges have been made. Bailey has denied all allegations. His publisher has cancelled

Originally a comment by Enzyme on That stat in a vacuum.

…a false conclusion that insinuates…

Yeah, but no. What’s gone on here – and I think it’s a fairly common mistake – is a slide from inference to implication or (in this case) insinuation.

Why does a disease apparently hit some populations harder than others? It might be that biological explanations can be quickly eliminated; but they aren’t wild, and they don’t imply or insinuate anything as morally loaded as the idea that there is something inherently wrong with the more vulnerable.

For example: imagine that the genetic lottery has thrown up a gene that makes carriers that bit more resistant to a certain pathogen. And imagine that … Read the rest

Things not to care about:

Many Muslims consider it offensive to depict the Prophet Mohammed in any circumstances – even if those depictions are not intended to be mocking.

I don’t care. I just really don’t care, in any way. You might as well say many hoopoops consider it offensive to depict hurpurps in any circumstances. It’s not my problem. Now if you were offering a chain of reasoning to explain why Xs consider Y offensive, with some real-world harm at the end of it, I might care, but just the stand-alone finding offensive is a big fat nothing. Or it’s worse than a nothing, because it becomes a pretext to punish and threaten and kill people, for an … Read the rest

Remember, kids – women are never allowed to have anything just for them. Never never never never.

Here in London you are free to be who you want to be and love who you want to love.

Today, on Lesbian Visibility Day, the flag flies outside City Hall in celebration of London's lesbian community and to show solidarity with LGBTQ+ women around the world. #LesbianVisibilityDay pic.twitter.com/4RTwwYs4gS

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) April 26, 2021

Today, on Lesbian Visibility Day, we will change the subject.… Read the rest

It tends to be hard to pin down what people are talking about when they talk about Critical Race Theory. Is it that nonsense from Robin DiAngelo (who is white) claiming that a whole list of good things like reading and thinking carefully are white? Or is it people patiently reminding us that mass incarceration isn’t just some random accident?

TIME attempted an explainer.

Here’s a specific current example: consider the fact that a disproportionate amount of people from Black and Latinx communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, Black and Latinx people are twice as likely die from the virus as white people. A person considering that stat in a vacuum

Miserable theocratic shits.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been sentenced to a further year in prison and a one-year travel ban after being found guilty of propaganda against the regime in Iran.

Her lawyer said she was accused of taking part in a protest in London 12 years ago and speaking to the BBC Persian service.

Iran doesn’t have jurisdiction over what people do in London.

The British-Iranian charity worker was first jailed in Tehran in 2016.

She has always denied the spying charges levelled against her.

Confirming the latest sentence, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the court’s decision was a bad sign and “clearly a negotiating tactic” by the Iranian authorities – who are in the middle of discussions over

I can’t get used to this business of the police “investigating” people saying things. Last October:

Historian Dr David Starkey has said he is being investigated by police over an interview in which he made controversial comments about slavery.

The police investigate controversies? Isn’t that a tad outside their remit?

Dr Starkey made the remarks on YouTube to conservative commentator Darren Grimes, who is also being investigated.

Dr Starkey has apologised for saying in June that slavery was not genocide because “so many damn blacks” survived.

He said he did not “intend to stir up racial hatred” and would “defend myself robustly” against the allegation.

The Metropolitan Police said it was investigating “a public order offence relating to a

Will the march of political correctness never end? They’re going to make us drink plant-based beer now?!

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has joined a flood of social media users gleefully trolling Larry Kudlow after the former economic adviser to Donald Trump complained that Joe Biden wanted Americans to drink “plant-based beer”.

Kudlow made the indignant claim on his Fox Business show on Friday, saying Biden’s climate policies and attempt to slash emissions would force Americans to “stop eating meat, stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy and animal-based fats”.

“OK, got that? No burgers on 4 July. No steaks on the barbecue … So get ready. You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts

That’s not Woman’s Hour.

Charlie Craggs is a man who identifies as a woman, aka a trans woman. Woman’s Hour is supposed to be for and about women.

Also I hate that word “pampering” in this context. It’s so patronizing, so infantilizing, so “aren’t women adorable sweet empty-headed bunnies whose idea of luxury is some uncomfortable body-modification shit.” Keep your god damn “pampering” to yourselves.… Read the rest