Quote of the day:

I’m looking forward to the ACLU’s fight for the inclusion of sawhorses, seahorses, and pommel horses in the next running of the Kentucky Derby.

–Your Name’s not Bruce?… Read the rest

The current right-wing gotcha is claiming that Ocasio-Cortez lied about being in the Capitol during the attack. “She wasn’t even there!! She was in her office next door!!! Doesn’t count!!!!”

But some have questioned her story, with conservative critics mentioning that her office is in the nearby Cannon House, not the main Capitol building. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, whose office is close to Ocasio-Cortez’s, tweeted: “Insurrectionists never stormed our hallway.”

That’s fascinating, but how would AOC or anyone else have known that at the time?

Ocasio-Cortez has vigorously defended her account of the day. She shared a tweet by the alt-right activist Jack Posobiec, who claimed that the congresswoman was “not in the Capitol building at the

… Read the rest

Speaking of carefully choosing photos for your “Hooray for transwomen in sport!” tweets…

Anyone else notice how when an athlete comes out as a transwoman, the press only show photos of them alone, so they look lonely, isolated, harmless? This is cyclist Emily Bridges 1/ pic.twitter.com/iWVfs5SIYb

— miri #IStandWithJKRowling (@MirandaNewsom) January 22, 2021

But soon, Emily will be competing against female riders, because that will make Emily happy. What about the girls, you ask? Yes, what about them? If Emily is winning and happy, isn’t that enough? Won’t that be fairness, equality, justice? 4/ pic.twitter.com/Z2q18zTZ7Z

— miri #IStandWithJKRowling (@MirandaNewsom) January 22, 2021

Cross-country is a lonely business. 6/ pic.twitter.com/FOHwDFHU21

— miri #IStandWithJKRowling (@MirandaNewsom) January 22, 2021

Of course when you

… Read the rest

The Guardian reported a few days ago that Maajid Nawaz (who, from what I’ve seen, has been moving ever farther to the right lately) has been talking up trumpish conspiracy theories.

The prominent radio presenter and activist Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of a respected British anti-extremist thinktank and a one-time government adviser, has alarmed former admirers and academics with his interest in conspiracy theories about the lockdown and voter fraud in the US election on his Twitter account.

As an LBC radio host, he regularly takes provocative stances, but now a string of controversial and potentially harmful tweets is prompting further questions.

Followers were initially alarmed when Nawaz, who set up the Quilliam Foundation in 2008, inspired by his

… Read the rest

Well knock me down with a feather – a Washington Post cartoonist gets it.

Oh hey, I found another. pic.twitter.com/lIJjNwXpEo

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) February 4, 2021

… Read the rest

I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not, until I scrolled down and saw that she’s blocking anyone who asks, so that’s a no. She actually means this.

Today for #NationalGirlsAndWomenInSportsDay, I’m celebrating the incredible strength and bravery of trans women & girls who live and compete authentically & are forced to fight for their inclusion. Trans women are women & every woman deserves the opportunity to thrive in sports. pic.twitter.com/QsLaLRD6tu

— Emily Adams (@eaadams6) February 3, 2021

It’s national women and girls in sports day, so she’s celebrating the “bravery” of men who beat women in sports by claiming to be women. Also their “strength,” which is kind of the issue.

Laurel Hubbard (@laurelHubbard11)

… Read the rest

This just in: women talk too much.

The president of the Tokyo Olympics has refused to resign after igniting a storm of criticism by saying that women do not belong on committees because they talk too much.

Yoshiro Mori, the 83-year-old former prime minister and president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, made the remarks at a meeting of the Japan Olympic Committee on Wednesday.

…

Speaking at an online JOC meeting about proposals to increase the number of female directors, Mr Mori said that in his experience at the Japan Rugby Football Union, women made meetings last too long.

“It takes twice as long. Women have a strong sense of rivalry. If one raises her hand to speak

… Read the rest

Facebook targets pro-violence advertising to – naturally – the people most likely to use it.

As part of my research while working as a consulting producer on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, I made many pro-Trump social media accounts. The accounts were a window into the Trump echo-chamber, where the unhinged threats and vitriol posted by radicalized users are chilling. Yet as shocking as the posts can be, they make perfect sense if you look at the ads that bombard those accounts.

Roughly four out of five ads shown to my pro-Trump profiles sell tactical gear clearly intended for combat. This is not a new thing – it has been going on since I started looking at these accounts in June 2019,

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The ACLU is digging in.

FACT ONE: Trans girls are girls. pic.twitter.com/R5OWNl5ooI

— ACLU (@ACLU) February 3, 2021

But that’s not a “fact.” It’s an ideological construct, of a peculiarly fatuous kind, and it’s not true; it’s the opposite of a fact.

FACT THREE: Including trans athletes will benefit everyone. pic.twitter.com/H0Fpt8xb4X

— ACLU (@ACLU) February 3, 2021

Nonsense.

Say it with us: Trans people belong EVERYWHERE — including on sports teams. https://t.co/3e7Or90lZ5

— ACLU (@ACLU) February 3, 2021

Include trans people on sports teams by all means, just not male people on female teams, because it’s unfair.… Read the rest

USA Today reports:

A group of high-profile women athletes and women’s sports advocates is taking on the contentious issue of transgender girls and women in sports by proposing federal legislation to exempt girls’ and women’s competitive sports from President Joe Biden’s recent executive order that mandates blanket inclusion for all transgender female athletes.

In the Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, signed on Inauguration Day, the Biden administration said that any school that receives federal funding must allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls’ sports teams or face action from the federal government.

But the group of women’s sports leaders, including tennis legend Martina Navratilova, several Olympic

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1356629545626042371 https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1356632007086927874… Read the rest

Why was NPR talking about “multiracial whiteness”? Because of a Washington Post think piece by Cristina Beltrán, who is an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU.

The Trump administration’s anti-immigration, anti-civil rights stance has made it easy to classify the president’s loyalists as a homogenous mob of white nationalists. But take a look at the FBI’s posters showing people wanted in the insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol: Among the many White faces are a few that are clearly Latino or African American.

So! Rather than try to figure out how brown people manage to be fans of murderous bullies who despise brown people, we have to decide that that’s “whiteness.”

Yes, Trump’s voters — and

… Read the rest

It’s not just Alison Phipps – it’s a whole new item. “Whiteness” now means…you know…everything. All the bad things.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1356729450654797824

Oh yes, “multiracial whiteness.” That’s kind of like multisex karenness.

https://twitter.com/BenjaminDanard/status/1356939904979238912… Read the rest

A clean sweep at the Pentagon:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has dismissed every member of the Pentagon’s advisory boards in a sweeping move fueled by concern that the Trump administration had rushed through a series of last-minute appointments, defense officials said Tuesday.

Along with a concern that those appointments were highly likely to be stooges for him as opposed to people who ought to be on a Pentagon advisory board.

The move affects several hundred members of about 40 advisory boards, including dozens of people who had been named to the posts in the closing days of former President Donald Trump’s tenure.

Among those who were dismissed are highly partisan figures such as Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 presidential

… Read the rest

Very granola, very crunchy person turns trumpian insurrectionist:

Before the pandemic, Rachel Powell, a forty-year-old mother of eight from western Pennsylvania, sold cheese and yogurt at local farmers’ markets and used Facebook mostly to discuss yoga, organic food, and her children’s baseball games. But, last year, Powell began to post more frequently, embracing more extreme political views. Her interests grew to include conspiracy theories about covid-19 and the results of the Presidential election, filtered through such figures as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Infowars founder Alex Jones.

Some more time passes and she turns up at the January 6 insurrection.

Videos show her, wearing a pink hat and sunglasses, using a battering

… Read the rest

One more visit with Alison Phipps.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1351524730499706883

“…the cultural power of white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears.”

It’s so…hit them don’t hit me. So chickenshit. So malicious. She’s lily-white herself and she’s climbing the academic ladder by heaping shit on white women. She makes scholarship look like a con game.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1351847234917294086

Hur hur radical feminists, they’re exactly like Brexiters and men’s rights activists, hur hur hur.

We’re all doomed.… Read the rest

Alison Phipps says we’re “stalking” her “profile,” which apparently means seeing one of her tweets. How very dare we.

https://twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1356554125006225410

Reading the Definition of Political Whiteness from Her Book does not, oddly enough, convince me that her way of deploying it is clever and enlightened.

Nope. Not convincing. Why “whiteness”? Why that word instead of another? Why not maleness or richness or powerfulness?

I haven’t read her book so I don’t know, but I suspect it’s because it sounds good. It sounds hip and knowing and like what the cool kids say. It’s sort of like jazz or blues or hip hop, ya know? But academic. Academicish.

So, does that help her make the case that we nasty … Read the rest

I thought Chase Strangio couldn’t get any worse. Silly me.

Cis folks, especially cis women, today would be a good day to affirm your support for full inclusion of trans people, your love for trans people, and the fact that the presence and existence of trans people does not hurt cis people.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) February 2, 2021

There’s a lot to fume at in that tweet, but I especially bristle at that “especially.” Why especially? Why women especially? WHY WOMEN ESPECIALLY?… Read the rest

Moira Donegan on AOC and what she told us:

On Monday night, after making several public allusions to the gravity of her experience, AOC used Instagram Live to describe her experience of the Capitol attack on 6 January. She spoke of hiding in her office as the mob breached the Capitol; she hid behind the door in a bathroom as she heard people ransacking the rooms outside. Someone came into the bathroom where she was hiding, their face on the other side of the door that she hid behind. At one point, a voice yelled, “Where is she? Where is she?” That turned out to be a Capitol police officer, but he did not identify himself; Ocasio-Cortez describes feeling

… Read the rest

The question is answered: yes Trump’s new “legal team” is willing to repeat his lies.

Donald Trump’s legal team for his second impeachment trial has filed a 14-page brief defending his actions on January 6, when the then-president incited a violent insurrection at the US Capitol.

On January 6, Trump repeated his baseless claims that Joe Biden won the presidential election because of widespread fraud, and he encouraged his supporters to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol as Congress certified Biden’s victory.

He encouraged them to do more than march to the Capitol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLCIWDPz4Yo

“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he said. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

The president’s

… Read the rest