All entries by this author

It must provide certain documents

Oct 3rd, 2016 12:07 pm | By

The Times has more on Trump’s little difference of opinion with the New York state AG.

Mr. Trump’s foundation has come under increasing scrutiny amid questions about his fulfillment of large charitable pledges and his lack of financial support in recent years.

The foundation’s compliance with the rules that govern nonprofit groups has also been a concern. The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Trump’s foundation does not show up on the charity registers in many states and The Washington Post subsequently reported that the foundation did not have the certification necessary to solicit money in New York.

Well he’s a very busy man. Very busy. So many women to insult, so many contractors to cheat, so … Read the rest



As though yet another man had stripped a woman naked

Oct 3rd, 2016 11:17 am | By

Bina Shah just posted a brilliant piece on the outing of Elsa Ferrante. She discovered the novels this summer and was smitten.

“Reading” doesn’t describe what I did; “devoured” is the better word. I couldn’t put the novel down until I was at the last page, and then I immediately picked up the next one, like a chain smoker who wants the next cigarette before the first one is even finished (Here’s my Dawn article about the series, if you want to know more).

She didn’t care that she didn’t know Ferrante’s real identity, but other people did.

Particularly men, who claimed that perhaps the author was actually a man, because how could a woman write so well

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Trump’s fraud has caught up with him

Oct 3rd, 2016 11:00 am | By

A brief interlude in my fulminations at the outing of Ferrante – yes that’s going to be continuing for a bit – to share the breaking news that a judge has ordered Trump’s “foundation” to stop soliciting donations.

The New York attorney general has notified Donald Trump that his charitable foundation is violating state law — by soliciting donations without proper certification — and ordered Trump’s charity to stop its fundraising immediately, the attorney general’s office said Monday.

James Sheehan, head of the attorney general’s charities bureau, sent the “notice of violation” to the Donald J. Trump Foundation on Friday, according to a copy of the notice provided by the press office of state Attorney General Eric

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She felt she had gained a space of her own

Oct 3rd, 2016 10:50 am | By

Ruth Spencer at the Guardian compiles a collection of observations by Elsa Ferrante on why she wants to be anonymous.

“The wish to remove oneself from all forms of social pressure or obligation. Not to feel tied down to what could become one’s public image. To concentrate exclusively and with complete freedom on writing and its strategies.” – The Guardian

“I’m still very interested in testifying against the self-promotion ­obsessively ­imposed by the media. This demand for self-promotion diminishes the ­actual work of art, whatever that art may be, and it has become universal. The media simply can’t discuss a work of literature without pointing to some writer-hero. And yet there is no work of literature that is

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She writes so well about the ways men humiliate women

Oct 3rd, 2016 10:20 am | By

Suzanne Moore is disgusted at the violation of Elena Ferrante’s privacy by a loathsome man and the NYRB.

It does not matter who she really is. She is not accountable to us in any way. Oh, but apparently she must be treated like a fraud or a criminal or dodgy celeb and stripped of her privacy …

An appalling, pompous private investigator claims to have found her through examining the financial and real estate records of a translator who lives in Rome. This literary doxxing by this self-appointed arbiter of “truth” is a nasty violation. Claudio Gatti has no right to unmask this author. His excuse is that because Ferrante had said she may “lie on occasion”, she has relinquished

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We just think that this kind of journalism is disgusting

Oct 3rd, 2016 9:15 am | By

A woman novelist writes under a pseudonym. Her books sell. One of them is nominated for the Booker. So what has to happen next? A man has to rip away her pseudonymity, that’s what. The New York Review of Books, of all publications, has to help him do it by publishing his sleuthing work.

An Italian journalist who published the true identity of the “anonymous” author Elena Ferrante has said he did so because she is “a public figure”.

Claudio Gatti published a story in the New York Review of Books outing the author, who writes under a pseudonym, as Italian translator Anita Raja.

He said: “Millions of [Ferrante’s] books are bought by readers.

“In a way I think

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Guest post: It’s back to reinforcing our mind-forged manacles

Oct 2nd, 2016 5:29 pm | By

Originally a comment by Seth on It means whatever you want it to mean, darling.

Shit like this makes me despair. I’ve spent most of my politically conscious life believing that the endgame of gender politics was removing the notion of gender entirely—breaking that all-too-human need to categorise things that’s resulted in certain behaviours being considered ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. In my vision of society, it shouldn’t *matter* if some people who grow beards like to wear earrings and dress in pink and be in touch with their emotions (in fact all people should do more of the latter), and it shouldn’t *matter* that some people who lactate prefer to be firefighters or lumberjacks, and none of that should keep … Read the rest



Fascista Americano

Oct 2nd, 2016 5:23 pm | By

Latino Rebels reports:

Mexican Literary Magazine Just Published the Most Powerful Trump Cover Ever

Leave it to a Mexican literary magazine to boldly go where few media outlets in the United States have gone. Here is what Letras Libres 

tweeted on Wednesday night:

Every inch a fascist.… Read the rest



Gender sucks!

Oct 2nd, 2016 5:09 pm | By

Gender sucks!

I am an adult human female. I do not identify as cis. I am not cis. I am a woman trying to fight with every fibre of my being against everything that my “gender identity” tells me to be. Woman as defined by society is not my gender identity. My gender identity is fuck this oppressive bullshit, and let me be a human fucking being.… Read the rest



Unfaithful man sneers at woman married to unfaithful man

Oct 2nd, 2016 12:14 pm | By

Trump is still attacking Clinton because her husband fucked around without telling her, as if that were her fault.

Donald J. Trump suggested during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday that Hillary Clinton was not “loyal” to her husband, former President Bill Clinton, an insinuation about their relationship that plunged the 2016 presidential race further into a personal battle.

Mr. Trump told the crowd in Lancaster County, about 70 miles west of Philadelphia, that Mrs. Clinton’s only loyalty was to her donors and herself. He added: “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, you want to know the truth. And really, folks, really, why should she be, right?”

Trump fucked around on his first wife. No doubt he considers … Read the rest



Not the fun kind

Oct 2nd, 2016 11:30 am | By

After revisiting the nonsense of “femmes” and how much better they are than those horrible people called “women,” we need Meghan Murphy on our need to be braver.

We live in a time wherein basic feminist ideas have become unspeakable, while anti-feminist slurs and smears are widely accepted and even celebrated by those who claim to be social justice activists and progressives.

Regardless of the risks, I cannot, in good faith, support the neoliberal, individualistic notion of “gender identity”  — not as a feminist who understands how patriarchy came to be and continues to prevail or as a leftist who understands how systems of power work. I do not wish to be silent in the face of regressive and

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Women steal everything

Oct 2nd, 2016 10:49 am | By

Like a leopard going back to a rotting carcass, I’m going back to that “Roundtable” on what we mean when we talk about femme, even though I said yesterday I couldn’t stand any more of it. Maybe if I just limit myself to the parts where the awesome femmes throw shit at women, I can get through it.

In my experience, many cis women of all ages feel that my identity as a non-binary femme somehow invalidates theirs. Lots of people like to consider themselves radical without actually being able to make any space for people coming from a different place. My experience of femininity is linked to empathy and understanding that to be feminine is to be less

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Another fine bishop

Oct 2nd, 2016 9:53 am | By

It’s Trump’s world, and we have to live in it.

A GOP candidate for Kentucky’s state house was caught posting racist images of the Obamas — and his defense was that “Facebook’s entertaining.”

Dan Johnson, who is also the bishop of the Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, KY, posted and shared at least two photos of the Obamas portrayed as apes. A sign in front of his church reads: “Jesus and this church are not politically correct.”

Right. It’s “politically correct” to refrain from publishing photoshops of people as chimpanzees.

Johnson went on to insist that the offensive posts are the norm for presidents throughout history and, therefore, not racist.

“I looked this up. There has been no president

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He knew we could use the tax code to protect him

Oct 2nd, 2016 8:43 am | By

Somebody sent the NY Times three pages from Trump’s 1995 tax returns. You’ll want to go to the source, if you haven’t already, because it has all the documents and the extras.

Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into

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It means whatever you want it to mean, darling

Oct 1st, 2016 5:26 pm | By

So, Sincere “women and femmes” Kirabo included a link for the “femmes” part: a link to What We Mean When We Say “Femme”: A Roundtable. So let’s read it. It’s guaranteed to put us off our dinner, but let’s read it anyway. It’s from July, so not too out of date yet.

Femmes. We live in different places. We’re different ages. We have different gender identities. Some of us are people of color, some of us are white. In this representative sample, we are Autostraddle writers, or artists, or musicians, or educators, or all of these things. The only thing we have in common is that we’re queer and that, in our own deeply personal way, we breathe life

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Just women

Oct 1st, 2016 12:16 pm | By

Huh. It turns out that Women in Secularism isn’t about women. It’s about “women and femmes.” I have no real idea what that’s supposed to mean, since it obviously doesn’t mean femme lesbians, because they are of course women so there’d be no need for an “and.”

At least, it’s about that according to Sincere Kirabo, who attended the one last weekend. It’s not about that according to CFI, which holds the conference, but hey what do they know.

This past weekend, my colleague Jessica Xiao and I had the honor of attending the Center For Inquiry’s Women In Secularism 4(WIS).

The honor? Attending isn’t an honor. That sounds like having the honor to ride the bus or … Read the rest



Fabulous mighty girl daughter wants to be a firefighter for halloween

Oct 1st, 2016 10:46 am | By

A Mighty Girl:

“my fabulous mighty girl daughter wants to be a firefighter for halloween. because of this, we have had to endure the following from lovely, well-meaning people:

– oh, she wants to be a firefighter? does she have brothers? (no, shockingly, she has thoughts of her own! all by her girl self!)
– while holding ava: hi, where are your firefighter costumes? how old is he? she’s almost 3. what size is he? she’s a 3. does he need a hat? (aaaaarrrrgggh!)
– a firetruck! so cute! do you put your dolls in it? (do you ask boys this question?)
– she’s going to be a fireman? (if she can say ‘firefighter’ at TWO, i’m sure you

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A stream of needlessly cruel insults

Oct 1st, 2016 9:47 am | By

The New York Times tries not to laugh at Trump’s Twitterstorm.

The tweets started around 3:20 a.m. on Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water.

On his Android phone, Donald J. Trump began to tap out bursts of digital fury: He mocked Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe and a popular Latin American actress, as a “con,” the “worst” and “disgusting.”

In a final flourish, before the sun came up, the Republican presidential nominee claimed — without offering any evidence — that she had appeared in a “sex tape.”

It’s ludicrous, and in that sense funny – but it’s also … Read the rest



He lies. He bullies. He threatens. He calls women names.

Oct 1st, 2016 9:05 am | By

Also? Trump’s persona, his demeanor, his shtick dovetails alarmingly neatly with that of the domestic abuser. I don’t think I’d thought of it exactly that way before, but reading it caused zero surprise. Of course it does.

Or, another way of putting that is simply what I and many others have said often, which is just that he’s a bully. His bully characteristics are blindingly obvious. Naturally a bully and a domestic abuser are going to overlap neatly.

He lies. He bullies. He threatens. He calls women names. And he’s the Republican nominee for president.

Donald Trump and his bombastic, truth-free persona is still baffling to many. But for one select group of people ― survivors of domestic

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Trump points out that he’s way nastier than Clinton

Oct 1st, 2016 8:35 am | By

Now for that interview in the Times.

Donald J. Trump unleashed a slashing new attack on Hillary Clinton over Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions on Friday as he sought to put the Clintons’ relationship at the center of his political argument against her before their next debate.

Hard to believe. A skeevy serially-unfaithful man attacks a woman because her husband is a skeevy serially-unfaithful man. Hard.to.believe. A woman’s faults are hers, and a man’s faults are hers too. Men have a free pass, women are blamed for men’s bad behavior.

In an interview with The New York Times, he also contended that infidelity was “never a problem” during his three marriages, though his first ended in an ugly divorce

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