AND another:

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has struck back after critics mocked her for using the phrase “menstruating person.”

In a CNN interview regarding Texas’ new anti-abortion law, Ms Ocasio-Cortez had carefully used the phrase to include trans men, non-binary Americans, and others who menstruate in addition to women. Some conservatives ridiculed her choice of words, but AOC fiercely defended it.

She “used the phrase” in talking to Anderson Cooper, and what she said is that she thinks Texas Governor Abbot “doesn’t understand a menstruating person’s body.” This isn’t a matter for ridicule but for outrage. Governor Abbot is ruining the lives of women; he’s waging war on women; he’s using state power to grind women into … Read the rest

You can’t fire us, we’re incompetent!

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that 11 Trump appointees to military service academy advisory boards, among them former press secretary Sean Spicer and adviser Kellyanne Conway, were asked to step down – or be fired.

Imagine putting Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway on any kind of advisory board, unless it’s for the Institute of Lying Hacks.

Conway released a letter in which she criticised Biden’s performance in office and said: “I’m not resigning, but you should.”

She tweeted it, too.

President Biden, I'm not resigning, but you should. pic.twitter.com/HuRYM4bLYP

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

What’s the “Honorable” doing in front of her name? Is that a usual title bestowed … Read the rest

You could pay for quite a few school lunches with $160 billion.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.

And they’re the ones who need it least.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.

Aw, spoilsports. All those nice billionaires do so much for the country, inflating the price of housing and useful shit like that.

Republicans in Congress and lobbyists for business are united in opposition to the proposal to shore up tax enforcement.

Law and order? Fiscal responsibility? One … Read the rest

H/t Dave Ricks… Read the rest

They just can’t get it right.

On Tuesday, the Guardian published an interview with the American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, which included a scathing critique of so-called “gender critical” transphobes and trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who don’t believe trans women are women, and oppose the right of transgender people to exist in gendered spaces, such as a bathrooms.

We don’t oppose anyone’s right to exist anywhere. That’s a sly way of putting it that nudges people to think we want trans people dead. Trans people don’t have a “right” to be in women’s spaces if they are men. Men don’t have a “right” to intrude on women, no matter how they define their “gender.”

Then the … Read the rest

Ok so I have to read the Nussbaum essay again, for the ___th time. I have to share some of the particular gems.

Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action.

See also: tweeting seditiously.

Trained as a philosopher, she is frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker about gender, power, and the body.

Much more. Much much much more. People in literature and people on Twitter.

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult

No, LP, anyone who is paying attention doesn’t know that, and neither do you.

Yes, but anyone who is actually paying attention knows that GC/Terf talking points feed directly back to the language of right-wing extremists. If she wasn’t talking about Bolsonaro/Orban, she should have been.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) September 7, 2021

Mind you “feed directly back” is confusing in itself – does she mean gender critical feminist talking points nourish right-wing extremist discourse, or does she mean they draw strength from them? Are we supposed to be aiding and abetting right-wing extremist discourse or is it supposed to be aiding and abetting us? Or both?

Or neither? Probably what she means is just that there is some overlap … Read the rest

JL at the Glinner Update has details on the guy who asked Judith Butler those leading questions.

Butler has, not surprisingly, become a pin-up girl of the gender identity cult. She can always be relied upon to throw proper feminists under the bus when gender zealots like those at the The Guardian need to wheel out a talking head who has at least a veneer of academic authority.

On this occasion, Butler was interviewed by Jules Gleeson, a trans identified male.

Gleeson is the co-editor of a book called Transgender Marxism. He has written in the past about the ‘noxious views’ of lesbians trying to defend their sex-based rights and has likened gender critical feminists to religious reactionaries

Quite a large chunk was cut, as it turns out.

Here's the cut to the Butler piece. The entire 'oh yes WiSpa those bitches are fascists' section has gone. https://t.co/tXAwfDLtdA

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) September 7, 2021

Here’s one I can actually read. Thanks Roz!

In a truly shocking moment of bigoted dishonesty, the Guardian has censored Judith Butler. pic.twitter.com/G6UZInA1av

— Roz Kaveney (@RozKaveney) September 7, 2021

There were “developments” you see.… Read the rest

It seems the Guardian edited that interview with Judith Butler.

The TRAs are rending their garments because apparently The Graun blinked when it realised it had called a bunch of women with completely solid left wing credentials fascists.

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) September 7, 2021

It did?

No, edited out the bit that implied that we're fascists.

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) September 7, 2021

So first thing I did was find that bit in my post from this morning, so that I could see how much was cut.

The Terfs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and the so-called gender critical writers have also rejected the important work in feminist philosophy of science showing how culture and nature

Oops you’re not supposed to say it out loud.

Joy Everingham is a Methodist deacon in Canterbury. This isn’t a parody.… Read the rest

Now there’s a headline.

NWHL changes its name to remove ‘women’s’ from title

Yayyyyyyyyyyy wait what?

The National Women’s Hockey League is history. Welcome, Premier Hockey Federation.

North America’s first women’s professional hockey league to pay players a salary announced on Tuesday it is adopting the new name as part of a rebranding strategy.

Well then why not name it the Hotties Hockey Federation? Or how about the Pumpkin Spice Latte Hockey Federation?

“We felt it’s time for our players to be defined by their talent and skill,” Tumminia said. “It’s not like they’re female phenomenal. You’re just phenomenal.”

And the way to underline that point is, as always, to delete the word “women.” Sure.

Metropolitan Riveters captain Madison Packer

Greg Olear starts with the Texas law and the Supreme Court’s “Sure, go right ahead.”

After a day of excruciating silence, the Court voted 5-4 to let it be, citing some pusillanimous procedural technicality. Chief Justice Roberts sided with the three “liberal” justices, but the five other Federalist Society stooges on the bench—Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh—gave Texas the green light to go full Fascist, thus confirming what most of us feared all along: that Roe v. Wade is not safe, that the government is at war with women, that the radical Catholics who took over the Court are pro-tyranny.

We’re stuck with them except maybe for Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh is different.

I’m reading Jesse Singal’s review of Helen Joyce’s book in the Times, and I’m interrupting my reading to say this one thing.

A primary goal of those who adhere to gender-identity ideology is to enact “gender self-identification,” or the idea “that people should count as men or women according to how they feel and what they declare, instead of their biology,” into norm and law. According to self-ID, as I’ll call it henceforth, once an individual reveals their gender identity, that trumps anyone else’s understanding of it. If you say you are a man or a woman, or both or neither, that is exactly what you are.

When followed faithfully, gender-identity ideology has important implications. 

Yes, it does, but … Read the rest

Brazil could be having its own insurrection moment.

Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pushed through police barriers to advance towards Congress in Brasilia on Monday night, the eve of a day of planned demonstrations to back the far-right leader in his dispute with the judiciary.

Trucks honked their horns as hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters dressed in the green-and-yellow national colors cheered them through, videos posted on social media showed.

But they failed however to reach their target of surrounding the Supreme Court, which some demonstrators have planned to occupy in a protest modeled on the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

…

Thousands of demonstrators are expected to march in the

It’s announcing plans day north of the border.

Nicola Sturgeon is to set out the Scottish government’s plans for the year to come at Holyrood.

So she did that and @theSNP tweeted them all.

FM: "It will make the existing process of gender recognition less degrading, intrusive and traumatic.

It will make life easier for one of the most stigmatized minorities in our society. I think that is something any Parliament should feel a responsibility to do." #ScotPfG

— The SNP (@theSNP) September 7, 2021

FM: "And, in some parts of the world, from lawmakers intent on taking away basic freedoms and removing the rights of women to control our own bodies." #ScotPfG

— The SNP (@theSNP) September 7, 2021

Eliza speaks the truth.

"We need to rethink the category of woman"—but don't worry, the new crop of abortion bounty-hunters, sex-traffickers & johns, & religious fundamentalists of all stripes will still know exactly who they're targeting. The rest of us just won't be able to talk about it. pic.twitter.com/ZX4dPf9akK

— Eliza Mondegreen (@elizamondegreen) September 7, 2021

For the sake of the Twitter haters I’ll just arrange the rest of what she said as an essay.

Gender identity problematizes, denounces, and confuses what women need to make clear: Our sex matters.

Women’s healthcare depends on the recognition of sex difference on the part of medical providers, scientific researchers, health communicators, and patients.

Gender identity trades clear language and targeted research into

Speaking of that interview with Judith Butler…

Right @guardian. I will be lodging a formal complaint about your apparent policy of blaming and shaming victims of sexual offending in your pages.

We have known for some time that the man who entered the WiSpa changing rooms is a sexual predator. This is outrageously defamatory pic.twitter.com/05g43PFrgv

— Lydia Lambfruit (@Kings_of_Lydia) September 7, 2021

And so she did. It’s an excellent letter.

Sent. pic.twitter.com/2wTL8GlNxK

— Lydia Lambfruit (@Kings_of_Lydia) September 7, 2021

… Read the rest

Judith Butler doing her tedious thing:

…what it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade. The category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way. Politically, securing greater freedoms for women requires that we rethink the category of “women” to include those new possibilities. The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated.

Yes, of course: what it means changes, the category changes, and obviously securing greater freedoms entails that, not least because it’s the same thing. We change the meaning by gaining the freedoms. That doesn’t mean we “change” it by including men in it. That’s not change … Read the rest

Wow. Years of collaboration just torched as if they had never been.

They WHAT??

First, the claim:

Next, the email:

Is it August 2015 again? The echo is strong. There were three SBM editors and Hall was one of them, but suddenly a minor contributor becomes “an editor” to bolster the Gorski-Novella excuses for plunging the knife into Hall’s back.… Read the rest