Illinois is taking care of business.

A bill that establishes a “fundamental right” for women to get an abortion in Illinois cleared the state Senate late Friday night, sending the sweeping measure to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who already has signaled his support.

As the clock approached midnight Friday, the Senate voted 34-20 in favor of the abortion legislation, which comes amid an increased sense of urgency among advocates looking to protect abortion access as a series of states have passed laws essentially banning the practice.

Laws which the Supreme Court will uphold in part or in full, thus taking us back to the pre-Roe days when a few states allowed abortion but most did not. This is … Read the rest

Department of There Are Sick Fuckers Out There:

https://twitter.com/TheHipsterRebbe/status/1134623895347220480

What is the “it” that leads to violence, medical mistreatment, and suicide? I guess it’s fanatical TERFitude that slows the progress of normalization of trans and nb people. So, women arguing that however marginalized trans people may be, it still doesn’t follow that men are literally in every sense women, and that women too are marginalized and abused and need to be able to continue to name that oppression – arguing that leads to violence, medical mistreatment, and suicide? Is that right? What is the chain of causation? Do the kind of people who are violent toward trans people spend a lot of time following feminist arguments? Is there any evidence … Read the rest

So now the Executive Branch is defying the Judicial Branch as well as Congress. That’s a dictatorship.

Federal prosecutors on Friday declined to make public transcripts of recorded conversations between Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the United States in December 2016, despite a judge’s order.

…

Prosecutors also failed to release an unredacted version of portions of the Mueller report related to Flynn that the judge had ordered be made public.

…

The government’s unusual response came after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered earlier in May that the Justice Department make public various materials related to the case, including transcripts of any audio recordings of Flynn, such as his conversations with Russian officials.

An “unusual … Read the rest

Steve Bannon meets Catholic reaction meets Danish bank meets fraudulent signature – and then Godzilla appeared! No but really:

The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon’s plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right.

It makes sense, doesn’t it. You want conservative? I’ll give you conservative: how about a medieval fucking monastery?! That’s right! I said medieval monastery!

But then it all fell apart.

Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000)

Today’s TERF outrage is the NY Times itself, daring to hint ever so gently that binders might not be all that beneficial to the people who wear them.

Binders are not classified as medical devices, but some doctors and parents have concerns about their safety. (Common-sense binding guidelines include: Don’t use Ace bandages or duct tape, don’t bind at night, limit a binder to eight to 10 hours a day, don’t shower in it, don’t wear two, and don’t wear one that is too small.)

Hmm. Doesn’t all that, taken together, make it appear that wearing them at all isn’t a particularly good idea?

For transgender or gender-nonconforming teens who cannot afford binders, which start at around $30, there are

My, that’s cynical.

Attorney General William P. Barr said in an interview broadcast Friday that he returned to the Justice Department to protect the institution during a period of “intense partisan feeling” and is not bothered by criticism from Democrats about how he’s handling the job.

To protect the institution? But…he’s not. He’s not doing that. That’s not what he’s doing. He’s protecting Trump. He’s protecting Trump who shits on the institution every chance he gets.

Barr, 69, who served in the George H.W. Bush administration, said he knew it would “only be a matter of time” before he was attacked for his actions, given he is serving during a “crazy, hyperpartisan period of time.”

“Nowadays, people don’t care

That absurd “the TERFs have FORCED me to quit philosophy” piece is, somewhat to my surprise, getting a lot of attention today, especially (it seems) from philosophers. I was thinking yesterday it would be just another rant that few people would notice, if only because the quality is so dire. But Brian Leiter shares information that indicates otherwise:

A number of philosophers have written me about this noxious, and I suspect fraudulent, display, and I apologize that I can’t respond to everyone as I’m participating in an intellectual event, and so trying to avoid engaging with the usual social media grandstanding and narcissism as much as possible. But I will share one set of comments from a philosopher elsewhere,

Well, that’s…modest.

TERFs: If we admit trans women are women we'll have no away of referring to females!
Trans people: You could try the term "cis woman" or "AFAB" – we're cool with those
TERFs: NO! Those are bad! We must be able to refer to females!
Trans people: But…you can. We just told you how

— @rachelwilliams@hachyderm.io (@rach_a_williams) May 31, 2019

… Read the rest

And then this pile of fetid dingo’s kidneys by “t philosopher”:

To the academic philosophy community:

I am a trans woman and a philosophy grad student, and I have decided to leave the discipline and seek a non-academic job because of transphobia in the academy.

t p has been at it a long time, t p has published research, t p has taught undergraduate classes, t p is the real deal.

I have not chosen to quit philosophy because I have fallen out of love with the work, or I want something else to do with my life. I am leaving academia ONLY because of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) — so called “gender critical feminists” — and those

Ahhhhh now that’s worse. The Trump people did more than just tell the Navy to hide the name McCain.

Although Navy officials insisted they did not hide the ship, the John S. McCain, they did give all of the sailors aboard the day off on Tuesday as Mr. Trump visited Yokosuka Naval Base.

Two Navy sailors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the McCain sailors were not invited to hear Mr. Trump speak that day aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp, while sailors from other American warships at the base were.

A Navy service member based on Yokosuka said that all of the American warships in the harbor

This question about rights again…

That SNP Students tweet –

At SNP students, we have one simple belief. Trans rights are human rights. No ifs, no buts.

It’s a simple belief, yes, so simple that we don’t even know what it means.

What, exactly, are trans rights? Specifically trans rights? SNP Students says human rights, but if that really is what they mean there’s no issue. The controversy isn’t because trans people want the same rights everybody else has, because no one questions their right to that. The controversy is because trans people want new rights special to trans people, that in fact, however loudly they deny it, conflict with the existing rights of non-trans people, especially women.

What … Read the rest

Use loaded titles much?

Transgender women’s right to use Hampstead Heath ponds acknowledged

There definitely is a definite right for men who claim to be women to use the women’s pond at Hampstead Heath. Definitely.

They do it all over again in the subhead.

The rights of transgender women to use a women-only pond in north London have been acknowledged in a new policy.

What other “rights” are going to be “acknowledged” in this peremptory way? The rights of men to take over all women’s teams, win all women’s prizes, be 1-10 on all-women shortlists, be top officers of all women’s organizations, talk over women at every opportunity, require sexual access on demand, impregnate at will, walk away at will … Read the rest

Another apology extorted:

The vice-provost for education at Imperial College London, Professor Simone Buitendijk, has apologised for sharing anti-trans content on social media.

Buitendijk first offered her apologies to the university’s student newspaper Felix last Friday (May 10) in response to a letter by 86 members of the university’s staff and student body raising concerns about her “engagement with transphobic material and social media accounts.”

The letter referred specifically to Buitendijk following and ‘liking’ content from Twitter accounts belonging to anti-trans groups such as Transgender Trend—who campaign against supporting young trans people in their transition—and individuals.

That’s tendentiously, aka unfairly, worded. An alternative wording would be: “who campaign for supporting children and adolescents in rejecting gender stereotypes without … Read the rest

There’s a petition to prevent women from talking.

We are members of the University of Edinburgh staff and student community concerned about the rise of transphobia on our campus. As a collective of PG students, we write this statement to unequivocally condemn transphobia.

The recent announcement of a transphobic ‘Women’s Sex-Based Rights’ event hosted by Edinburgh University Moray House on the 5th of June is unacceptable.

But was it in fact an announcement of a transphobic event? I’m betting it wasn’t. Let’s ask the Google.

Nope, that’s not what it’s called.

Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does (and should) the future hold?
by The University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education

Nothing about transphobic. Let’s read the details.… Read the rest

Well that’s nice.

Over Memorial Day weekend, everyone who cares about the future of women’s sport saw their worst fears become a reality.

Transgender woman CeCe Telfer, who was born and raised as Craig Telfer and competed on the Franklin Pierce University men’s track and field team during her first three years of college, won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national title at the 2019 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Telfer dominated the competition, winning in 57.53 as second place was way back in 59.21.

Let’s all give CeCe a great big hand!

Prior to joining the women’s team this season, Telfer was a mediocre DII athlete who never came close to making it to nationals