Trump is mad that his lawyers are so sucky. Well, Mister Sir, that’s what happens when you’re such a horror that nobody wants to defend you – you can’t get the pick of the crop.

A Trump advisor told the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman that Trump attorney Bruce Castor’s confusing, meandering performance was a “deliberative strategy.” designed to lower the emotion in the room, though, I’d counter, a master strategist wouldn’t need to put out a background statement explaining their strategy.

No that too is to get everyone to calm down.

Other reviews also not great.

“The president’s lawyer just rambled on and on,” said senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas. “I’ve seen a lot of

… Read the rest

Meanwhile today the impeachment trial has started.

Democrats are aware that the trial outcome is a foregone conclusion – another Trump acquittal, barring sensational new evidence – and that the stakes are lower because he has already left office. But sometimes symbolism is the point. The impeachment trial is a test of accountability, stability and rule of law before a global audience.

…

Like a criminal lawyer, Democrats are seeking to appeal to not only the head but also the heart. They are not only prosecutors but also survivors of the rampage, a point brought home with visceral force by Jamie Raskin in a closing argument that had the chamber silent and spellbound on Wednesday.

“And then there was

… Read the rest

It gets worse. (This is interesting because he’s not Owen Jones or Adrian Harrop, but…it seems he might as well be.)

Just got a lovely little message from the "LGB Alliance", I hope they understand where I'm coming from and I hope I wasn't too vague regarding where I stand on their anti-trans hate agenda. pic.twitter.com/MNS03wGkG2

— Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) February 9, 2021

Might as well be.… Read the rest

Yes of course these issues should be discussed – but obviously not by you, because you’re much too informed and concerned about them.

I think they absolutely should be discussed, but I think they should be discussed by people who aren’t so evidently and extremely prejudiced against trans women such as yourself.

— Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) February 9, 2021

Thank god he’s not at all prejudiced against anyone himself.

You do you Janice, you’re the one with the daily megaphone, not me. Nobody is out here silencing you, you are free to broadcast your anti-trans campaign & earn a handsome wage for it. That’s your prerogative, my prerogative is to label your bilious hateful agitprop for what it is

—

… Read the rest

Never enough.

https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359159758159249416 https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359161073979506697 https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1359170482289975299

Always jam tomorrow.… Read the rest

Julie comments on the sudden stab in the back:

Thread: During a book tour in Australia I was invited to do one of those 'an evening with' events during which I read from my book (on the horrors of the global sex trade) and conversed with the women and men in the audience. Almost three years later……https://t.co/QLpk9S52NJ

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) February 9, 2021

read all my articles and prided himself on remembering one on rape from 2010. They sold a load of my books. It was one of my favourite events of the tour. Now I see the witch burner generals are out, denouncing me in their efforts to be invited to join the

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj)

… Read the rest

16 hours ago:

We are honoured to be hosting an event with @junodawson in conversation with @_budgie
about Dawson's brilliant new book, What's the T?

Join us for this online event Thursday 25 February by booking here: https://t.co/zPdXkt4dW1 pic.twitter.com/oRRTq66gAF

— Readings (@ReadingsBooks) February 9, 2021

Two hours later:

https://twitter.com/ReadingsBooks/status/1358973500577308676

Bam, that’s Julie Bindel thrown under the bus to make way for a man who identifies as a woman.

Imagine a bookstore doing this to, say, Isabel Wilkerson or Ta-Nehisi Coates to make way for a white person who identifies as black.

It wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen, and the white person would be excoriated and chastised.

Why is it ok to do it to feminist women?… Read the rest

Her book is like that, too. A review from LSE:

In Me, Not You, Alison Phipps builds on Black feminist scholarship to investigate how mainstream feminist movements against sexual violence express a ‘political whiteness’ that can reinforce marginalisation and oppression and limits the capacity to collectively achieve structural change and dismantle violent systems. This short and accessible book challenges us to think deeply about how the politics of woundedness, outrage and carcerality are embedded within the feminist movement and our own organising, writes Lili Schwoerer, and serves as another encouragement to explore and engage with alternative imaginaries.

So what should we have then, feminist movements for sexual violence?

Also, if we’re talking about marginalization and oppression, and … Read the rest

Shahdin Farsai wrote an opinion piece for Canadian Lawyer Magazine in October, titled British Columbia’s practice directions on preferred gender pronouns in court are problematic. Yesterday the magazine removed the article.

Statement regarding a recent opinion posted on our website https://t.co/iCHBe3SfFa

— Canadian Lawyer Magazine (@CanLawMag) February 7, 2021

The article is archived.

On December 16, 2020, both the BC Supreme and Provincial courts issued practice directions to lawyers that require parties and/or lawyers to state their preferred gender pronouns at the beginning of all court proceedings, which are “to be used” by all participants appearing before the courts including judges.

My antennas naturally went up as a lawyer. I see these practice directions as problematic for three central

… Read the rest

Voting rights are being attacked again. Ari Berman at Mother Jones:

Georgia Republicans have already introduced an avalanche of new laws that would radically limit voting options in the state. On Monday—the first day of Black History Month—Republicans in the state Senate introduced nine bills to restrict access to the ballot, including eliminating automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and mail ballot drop boxes, as well as prohibiting third-party groups from sending mail ballot applications, and banning people who move to Georgia after the general election from voting in runoff elections. Many of the bills were sponsored by Republicans who backed Texas’ unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to throw out election results from Georgia and other states

… Read the rest

See also

So reporting a rapist is like 'Karen demanding to speak to the manager' and white women who get upset (cry white tears) when we are raped are white supremacists. Shame on her. Who needs men's rights activists?

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) February 8, 2021

… Read the rest

But white tears when it’s Phipps telling us about them are a whole different story, it seems.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1358735744769134593 https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1358764000796938242

So…when she doesn’t feel safe she retreats, and that’s not white tears. Imagine how trans people feel! Don’t imagine how women feel, except me, but do imagine how trans people feel.

There are lots of flattering and sympathetic replies, and she doesn’t reject any of them as being too sympathetic and flattering to white tears.… Read the rest

Jane Clare Jones expresses the disgust at Alison Phipps’s sneers better.

I have so much cortisol in my brain I can't fucking concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing this afternoon now.

Guess that's me weaponising my trauma again.

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) February 8, 2021

unwavering witness and compassion of my best friend, to even start to process… this abject fucking gaslighting of young women in the name of feminism….

This flagrant sneering at one of the greatest burdens of trauma carried by any population in history.

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) February 8, 2021

That. Why is it now the done thing for a feminist academic to sneer at women who report sexual … Read the rest

From the new Glinner update week in the war on women –

THE TELEGRAPH: The psychotherapist blocked from researching detransition is taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

James Caspian is a psychotherapist who has specialised in counselling trans people for over 10 years. He has worked with numerous de-transitioners and had planned to conduct an academic study into this massively under-researched area. However, Bath Spa University rejected Caspian’s MA proposal. He was told, “Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university.” 

And the university is too fragile to cope with “attacks on social media”? So much too fragile that it vetoes research on something one … Read the rest

We get to read Alison Phipps’s “don’t hit me, hit those other white women” paper.

The actual title, lest we forget, is “White tears, white rage: Victimhood and (as) violence in mainstream feminism.” It’s a white woman sneering at white women, specifically for talking thinking campaigning as feminists.

Speaking out can attract political dividends: in earlier work (Phipps, 2016, 2020) I have theorised experience, especially of the traumatic kind, as a form of investment capital in what Ahmed (2012 [2004]: 45) calls the ‘affective economies’ of testimonial culture. Trauma can be disclosed or ventriloquised to generate further capital in the form of feeling, creating political gain.

…

Most of the key figures in the viral iteration

… Read the rest

Someone is watching.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1358183205740961792

I don’t want to brush off or belittle concerns about racism, but at the same time…I’ve seen too many self-righteous Letters of Outrage lately not to recognize this as another example. “Our community is outraged and in pain”? I doubt it. I bet their community was in a fever of righteous exhilaration.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe McNeil really did fling around racist insults with cheerful abandon…but I doubt it. Jesse Singal doubts it.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1358187089540624387

David Aaronovitch doubts it.

‘Respectfully, intent is irrelevant’. Idiots.

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) February 6, 2021

There’s a fad in my neighborhood, and for all I know in all neighborhoods, to festoon one’s front garden with yard signs carrying little homilies and … Read the rest

This is one way we know trans women are not women.

…yes they are.

In fact, the more violent your threats…the more urgent the debate becomes.

(Image from 'Trans Army' FB page). pic.twitter.com/5uFP6ZLg8P

— gender is harmful (@genderisharmful) February 7, 2021

That’s not “activism.” It’s not struggle, it’s not consciousness raising, it’s not social justice. It’s just an image of an angry man brandishing a bat studded with nails, by way of telling us we are under orders to agree with him that he is a woman, and that refusal will be met with murderous violence.

I don’t want to be any kind of ally with men who threaten to smash women to death for failing to agree that the … Read the rest

Oh ffs.

Trump lawyer wants to suspend the trial during his “sabbath” because it’s “mandatory” for him.

David Schoen, 62, has written to senior figures of both main parties in the US Senate asking for an agreement that the trial [be] postponed from 5.24pm on Friday until Sunday so that he can observe the Sabbath. In the letter, reported by the New York Times, the lawyer apologises for any inconvenience, adding that “the practices and prohibitions are mandatory for me … so I have no choice.”

Blah blah blah. Mandatory according to whom? A particular version of the imagined sky daddy. He might as well say it’s mandatory for him to take two days off to say prayers to … Read the rest

Interesting. Liz Cheney is thinking about criminal investigation of Trump.

In extraordinary remarks on Fox News Sunday, Cheney made specific reference to the “massive criminal investigation” on the Capitol insurrection that is now sweeping the country. She said that the probe would cover “every aspect” of the events of 6 January and look at “everyone who was involved”.

But she reserved her most pointed words for Trump. “People will want to know what the president was doing,” she said. “They will want to know whether the tweet that he sent out calling Vice-President Mike Pence a coward while the attack was underway was a premeditated attempt to provoke violence.”

The impeachment trial in the Senate starts Tuesday.

Last

… Read the rest

This is a puzzler. I’m seeing people laughing at a column by Virginia Heffernan for its clueless entitled snobbery crossed with self-righteous “liberalism,” which sounded odd to me because when I first encountered her writing she was a libertarian with some modest leanings in a more leftish direction. Also, she was sharp, and the writing in this piece is very dim – so the piece must be a parody, right? Surely? Poe’s law?

Let’s see…

Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

How am I going to resist demands

… Read the rest