Originally a comment by Artymorty on Use them or else.

I have to wonder if at some level, some of this madness is a symptom of the executives and those in power not caring enough about “the gender thing”, rather than them being utterly preoccupied with it.

The heads of these institutions don’t believe in gender nonsense. Rather, they consider their actions: they do an ad-hoc cost/benefit analysis in their heads, comparing the cost of taking one side over the other. If they side with the gender critics, the actions required to put a stop to gender lunacy signal immediate cost to themselves — unrest and pushback from within the institution; headaches from activists. The appearance of being “anti-LGBTQ”, etc. It would all just be so terribly unpleasant for the brass to stop it.

On the other hand, the costs involved in playing along with it are paid downstream: they’re paid by women, they’re paid by vulnerable people, they’re paid by those who don’t have power.

This is the same shape of so many catastrophes playing out right now: there are collective action problems that cannot be solved because of the power imbalance in society, and because whatever checks and balances were once in place to at least try to correct against these kinds of imbalances have eroded. There were supposed to be watchdogs and regulators to put a stop to these kinds of collective-action runaway trains.

I compare it to the real estate crisis in Canada:

Everyone sees that the country’s caught up in an absurd system that doesn’t make any sense. We’ve built literally hundreds of thousands of “investment vehicles” — more-or-less fake apartments, units so small and uninhabitable that virtually no one will occupy them. But stopping the system — admitting that we were just slapping up towers of fake housing for immediate profit — would have required those in power (the banks and the real estate developers) to pay a cost, whereas keeping the scheme going offloaded the cost downstream to those less in-the-know, mom-and-pop investors and such. It didn’t take long before most people at the top figured out it was bullshit, but by then a kind of pyramid scheme had emerged, so the system kept going anyways, because as long as other people still hadn’t caught on ot the scam, the safer, more lucrative bet was to go along with it — for now. Well, “for now” was then. Now now, the whole thing’s gotten so out of hand that the entire country’s economy is on the brink. The game’s over and the pyramid’s collapsing.

I think that structure maps almost perfectly onto gender nonsense: they’re building up fake “genders” — even fake genitals — that nobody’s really buying. But stopping it at this point would incur too much cost at the top. Each individual executive sees it as a problem better dumped on those below. It may be bullshit, and it may be doing catastrophic harm to those below you, but if you’re an executive, your short-term cost/benefit says it pays to play along, for now. The cost to women’s rights, to gay and autistic people’s bodies, to freedom of speech… those costs are beginning to add up, and the pyramid of gender is beginning to wobble.

I fear that only after everything’s collapsed will they admit they were cowards.

It seems Trump thinks he can overrule the Supreme Court. One wonders what he thinks “Supreme” means.

Trump on Monday threatened countries around the world to abide by any tariff deals they agreed to, despite the U.S. Supreme Court striking down many of his far-reaching taxes on imports.

Any country that wants to “play games” with the Supreme Court decision, Trump posted, will be met with “a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to.”

So it’s playing games to heed the Supreme Court, but it’s not playing games for Trump to pretend he can ignore the Supreme Court?

He really doesn’t get the separation of powers thing, does he.

Trump has already signed an executive order enabling him to bypass Congress and impose a 10% tax on global imports, starting on Tuesday, the same day as his State of the Union speech.

He should impose parking tickets on them too. Why not?

Oh goody, pronouns guidance.

An NHS trust has said the pronouns “Xey/Xem” can be used by staff at work.

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in south London also urged staff to apologise if they used the “wrong” pronouns for colleagues.

Well don’t stop there. What about Mey/Mem? Zey/Zem? Key/Kem? Is the NHS trust being alphabetically exclusionaryist?

A training document called Pronouns and the LGBTQ+ Community lists several examples of pronouns, including I/me, She/her, He/him, They/them, Ze/Zir, Xey/Xem or It/Its.

The trust said it was “up to each individual to identify what their pronouns are”, stressing it was a great way “to create an inclusive environment and demonstrate inclusion in the workplace”.

But, as I’ve said a billion times, there’s no such thing as “their” pronouns. We don’t own the pronouns used to refer to us. What they are is impersonal and a matter of grammar, not personal and a matter of rights or idenniny or extra-special specialness.

It adds that if pronouns “aren’t important to you, it’s even more important to use them”.

I see. If you recognize what bullshit this is, you have to be bullied even harder.

The training, revealed in a freedom of information request, also urges trust employees to correct others if they see or hear them misgendering someone.

Yeah good idea. Do this especially during a surgery, downing tools and giving the miscreant a good old sermon on the subject.

The document emerged after Jennifer Melle, an NHS nurse, was threatened with the sack for “misgendering” a transgender patient.

Ms Melle would not call the patient “she” while working at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey, in May 2024. The patient was a serving inmate from a men’s prison.

All the more reason to call him “she”! Poor lamb he she must have been so traumatized.

Trump is busy micromanaging…uh…Netflix?

Trump on Sunday threatened Netflix, suggesting it would “pay the consequences” if it didn’t “immediately” fire Susan Rice, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under the Obama administration.

I don’t think he’s the president of Netflix. I don’t think government bosses are supposed to order businesses to fire people the government bosses don’t like.

On Sunday, the president posted on Truth Social that Netflix should “fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences.”

• “She’s got no talent or skills – Purely a political hack! HER POWER IS GONE, AND WILL NEVER BE BACK. How much is she being paid, and for what???” he added.
• The president’s words came in response to a post from right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who criticized Rice and called Netflix an “anti-American” and “woke” company for having her on its board.

Yes that’s a big thing with Trump – see someone on Team Him spitting venom at Person X and enthusiastically join in, but with 100 times the amount and toxicity of venom.

Reality check: The president doesn’t have direct authority to kill media deals, except for those that could pose a national security threat.

…

Yes, but: President Trump’s comments could still have an impact on investors and regulators who might feel pressure from the executive branch.

And he knows that, so he happily subverts the rules governing his job in order to give his malice a good airing.

The fix is in.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.

Of course she did. She’s the underqualified judge who owes her promotion to Trump, so of course she’s going to reward him when she gets the chance.

The Trump-appointed judge said releasing the report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice” because the case never reached a jury. It could also risk revealing information protected by attorney-client privilege and grand jury secrecy, she said.

Speaking of basic notions of fairness and justice, has she been following the career of one Donald Trump, real estate mogul from Queens?

Cannon has drawn scrutiny for rulings that favor Trump and cut against longstanding practice and precedent. She delayed the classified documents case for months when she installed an independent overseer to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago — until a federal appeals court overturned her decision.

Of course she did. She owes him.

A new crazy.

Greenland to Trump: No thanks.

Greenland has said it does not need medical assistance from other countries, after Donald Trump said he was sending a hospital ship to the autonomous Danish territory he wants to acquire.

The US president said he would dispatch the vessel in a social media post on Saturday, claiming that Greenlanders were not getting the healthcare they needed.

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“It’s on the way!!!” he added.

That’s so funny because here lots of people are “not being taken care of” because they can’t afford it and there is no National Health service or similar. I don’t see Trump sending “boats” to them.

“That will be ‘no thanks’ from us,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the Greenlandic prime minister, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday.

“President Trump’s idea to send a US hospital ship here to Greenland has been duly noted. But we have a public health system where care is free for citizens,” he said.

Quite unlike the US, where illness is a source of profit.

Hmm. An article in the Nation assumes matters not in evidence.

Rather than do something, anything, about the abysmal state of healthcare in the United States, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has doubled down on its attacks against trans youth, their families, and the web of providers who work to ensure young people can live comfortably and fully in their truths.

Their whats? What does “in their truths” mean?

Aw come on, we know what it means. It means their fantasies about themselves. It seems to me that people’s fantasies about themselves are not something anyone else has to do anything at all to assist or affirm or publicize. They’re personal and individual; they’re the opposite of social.

Of course it’s not just HHS. Last summer, the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court ruled that it isn’t discriminatory to discriminate against trans youth.

No it didn’t. The issue wasn’t “discriminate against trans youth: yes or no?” – it was “puberty blockers and hormone therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors: yes or no?”.

It’s interesting how consistently reporting on magic gender has to distort the facts in order to…well, distort the facts.

Daaaamn this is nuts. I can’t look away.

Commissioner welcomes decision protecting LGBTQ people from hate speech

For the millionth time: what on earth are LGBTQ people? There are no such people, because it’s not possible to be both a lesbian and a gay man, let alone be lesbian and gay and bi and trans and whatever tf Q means at any given moment.

Forced teaming. Way to sneak the T in there whether the L and the G and the B like it or not. The Q is just a decorative whorl.

The BCTF v. Neufeld case began when the BCTF filed a complaint with the Tribunal after Barry Neufeld, a then-Chilliwack School Board Trustee, made a series of statements about trans and queer-inclusive education. The Tribunal found that some of these statements amounted to hate speech and that Mr. Neufeld discriminated against LGBTQ teachers based on their sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in relation to their employment, given Mr. Neufeld’s role as a school trustee.

The Tribunal found that six of Mr. Neufeld’s publications expose LGBTQ people to hatred or contempt based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and 24 were in violation of discrimination protections. The Tribunal differentiated between statements constituting hate speech and those that indicated discrimination, although some statements fell into both categories. The Tribunal agreed with the Commissioner’s submission that a political opinion that is based on mis or disinformation and that is expressed publicly may cause harm by seeking to promote laws and policies that entrench barriers for equality-seeking groups and that such opinion can be discriminatory or hateful.

So men who claim to be women are an “equality-seeking group” now?

The Commissioner intervened in this complaint before the Human Rights Tribunal to provide submissions on the legal test for discriminatory speech. Previously, it was not clear that publicly expressed political opinions could be considered discriminatory, as opposed to just offensive speech that does not breach B.C.’s Human Rights Code. The decision makes clear that all forms of public speech that cause harm to a person based on a protected characteristic may be found to be discriminatory, even if they do not name that specific person.

Well doesn’t that just sum it up. “Before, we hesitated, because we’re not supposed to squelch political speech, but now we’ve come up with a way to squelch political speech every day and twice on Sunday. Go us!”

Jolyon still grifting.

What does that even mean, “they don’t want to”? How does he know? Who are “they”? Is he claiming that every single woman in the Women’s Institute longs to have men in flouncy dresses take it over? What business is it of his anyway?

The underwear question.

A ruling that an NHS manager discriminated against a transgender employee by asking if they took off their underwear in a women’s changing room has “deeply worrying” implications, an MP has said.

The worker, who was born a man, successfully sued Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for gender reassignment discrimination in July. Employment judges heard that a manager had questioned the employee after concerns were raised that they had been naked from the waist down in the women’s changing room.

HE! That HE had been naked from the waist down. Don’t pander to this shit in the very act of reporting on it.

Sarah-Jane Davies, the tribunal judge, said in the ruling: “This was a communal changing room with a shower cubicle. [It did not seem] likely that there would have been a concern about a cisgender woman in a state of undress while changing in such a changing room.” The ruling means the trans woman will be entitled to damages, which will be allocated later.

God almighty are people simply melting their brains down with blowtorches? Of course women have “a concern” about men getting naked in such a changing room while not having the same concern about women doing so.

Miriam Cates, the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, wrote to Kirsten Major, the chief executive of the hospitals trust, pointing out that she had a “narrow window” of time to appeal against the ruling. The trust chose not to appeal, however, and Cates told The Times that “the implications of this judgment, and the failure to challenge it, are deeply worrying”.

In her letter to hospital bosses, Cates said it had emerged during the hearing that the trust had “instructed” biological women employees that they had “to deny reality in order to be inclusive and keep their jobs”. She asked: “Why are women being re-educated to suppress their natural and understandable discomfort about being forced to share intimate facilities with a man?”

Because trans ideology.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it was aware of concern about the tribunal judgment. “We are interested in clarifying the law where rights between different protected characteristics overlap,” the commission said.

“Trans” shouldn’t be a protected characteristic. It just shouldn’t. If it is, it obliterates women’s rights, and that’s not a good outcome. When trans rights=men get to be in women’s spaces and get naked whether the women like it or not, that’s not a good outcome.

Big Brudda has arrived.

A large banner featuring Donald Trump’s face was hung on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters on Thursday in a physical display of the Republican president’s efforts to exert power over the law enforcement agency that once investigated him.

While Trump banners have been hung outside other agencies across Washington, the decision to place one on the storied Justice Department building amounted to a striking symbol of the erosion of the department’s tradition of independence from White House control.

It’s not erosion, it’s seizure.

Trump officials have rejected accusations that they have weaponized the Justice Department for political purposes, saying the Biden administration was the one that politicized law enforcement with two federal criminal cases against Trump that were abandoned after he won the 2024 election.

So what were they supposed to do, ignore the crimes? Wouldn’t that have been for political purposes? And also bad?

Huh. Denmark airlifted a US sailor from a US submarine because he needed medical care, and Trump responded with the usual.

This is all very completely normal.

The Financial Times gives us some background:

Trump has called on Netflix to sack former Democratic national security official Susan Rice from its board or “pay the consequences”, as the streamer battles to buy Warner Bros Discovery.

The US president weighed in on the issue at the urging of Maga influencer Laura Loomer. “Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences. She’s got no talent or skills — Purely a political hack!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, reposting an X post by Loomer urging him to “kill the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger now”.

Rice was national security adviser and US ambassador to the UN under former president Barack Obama. She was also on former president Joe Biden’s domestic policy council. She served on Netflix’s board from 2018 to 2020 and was reappointed in 2023.

Therefore it’s completely normal and reasonable for Trump to shout at her on social media, right?

Trump is pitching a fit.

At this time last year, President Trump warmly shook hands with Chief Justice John Roberts at the State of the Union address, thanking him for the opinion he authored granting Trump and other presidents in the future expansive immunity from prosecution for their official acts after leaving office. But on Friday, after the Supreme Court invalidated Trump’s tariffs, the president was singing a decidedly different tune.

At a hastily called press conference, an agitated Trump railed against the conservative Roberts and two of the courts other conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees.

“They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” Trump said.

With his usual eloquence and fair-minded reaonability.

Trump called the three conservatives “disloyal, unpatriotic,” and at one point he launched into a rant about how the court should have invalidated the election results in 2020, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Disloyal, eh? Thus making it embarrassingly clear that he thinks the ones he nominated should rule the way he wants them to rule – that in short they owe him.

Trump suffered a massive defeat at the Supreme Court. Writing for a hefty 6-to-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that the nation’s founders deliberately and explicitly placed the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, with Congress, not with the president.

As the Chief Justice put it, “Having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by taxes imposed on them” by the King of England without their consent, the Framers wrote a Constitution that gives Congress the taxing power because the members of the legislature would be more accountable to the people.

Try telling that to Trump.

Trump and the Supreme Court have broken up.

Yebbut he can’t do that.

Trump vows $10 billion contribution to his own Board of Peace

But not contribution of his money, contribution of our money. To his plaything. He can’t do that.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday a $10 billion U.S. contribution to rebuilding Gaza at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, describing the organization as the premier world body for international peace and harmony.

See there? U.S. contribution – our money, not his money. He’s not allowed to do that. He’ll do it anyway if he’s not stopped (and if he doesn’t get bored and wander off to do something else), but he’s not allowed to.

Trump has framed the board as a supplement — or possibly an alternative — to the United Nations, which he has dubbed an ineffectual organization and put at risk of imminent fiscal collapse by withholding the United States’ mandatory dues that make up nearly a quarter of its operating budget as well as other contributions.

Hmm. Nice little global organization you got here, would be a shame if something happened to it.

The meeting was held at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the congressionally established independent nonprofit that the administration seized last year and renamed after Trump, a move that is still the subject of litigation.

So now it’s called the US Institute of Trump?

The meeting came as Trump has recentlyboasted about military action in Venezuela and as U.S.forces have been surged to the Middle East in advance of a potential conflict with Iran. In remarks opening the event, he described last week’s round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program as “good” and said that “maybe we’re going to make a deal. Maybe not. You’re going to be finding out over the next, maybe, 10 days.”

That is peace. Trump throwing his weight around is peace. I’m reminded of that famous quotable from Tacitus – ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. Where they make a wilderness and call it peace.

During his near hour-long speech, Trump mused about the wealth or good looks of some of the people in the room. He gave a shout-out to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been criticized for anti-democratic actions such as curtailing independent media and is struggling in an upcoming election campaign. “Not everybody in Europe loves that endorsement, but that’s okay,” Trump riffed.

He delved into familiar politicalgripes and grievances and congratulated members of his own administration. He panned speeches at the Munich Security Conference by political opponents California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

He recounted the various wars he claims to have stoppedand revisited his very public disappointment at not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Norway has agreed to host an event bringing together the Board of Peace,” Trump said of the country, where a nongovernmental committee awards the prize. “Oh, I thought when I saw this note. … I thought they were going to say that they’re giving me the Nobel Prize. Oh, this is less exciting. … I don’t care about the Nobel Prize. I care about saving lives.”

Ho yus, he doesn’t care a bit about the Nobel Prize, that’s why he keeps ranting about it.

Dang. Has Canada gone stark raving mad?

Or maybe it’s just British Columbia.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ordered former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 for violating the Human Rights Code by publishing hate speech and discriminatory content against 2SLGBTQ+ people.

“Mr. Neufeld invoked negative and insidious stereotypes about LGBTQ people, especially trans people, which denied their inherent dignity and, in some cases, reflected the hallmarks of hate against them as a group,” the tribunal said in a decision Wednesday.

I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if they are in fact talking about T people only. We know from a million examples that they love to make it about the L and the G and the B, including when it’s not. It’s dishonest and manipulative, and journalism should avoid it like the plague.

Neufeld was one of the “loudest critics” against the B.C. government’s move in 2017 directing school boards to update codes of conduct to address bullying based on “SOGI,” or sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the tribunal’s decision.

Did the BC government by any chance treat skepticism about swappable gender as “bullying based on SOGI”? In other words did it sneak the SO part in there even though it was absent, to provide cover for the outrageous move to force people to agree that men can be women just by saying so? My guess is that they did, because we’ve seen that very thing so many times.

“For five years, he publicly denigrated LGBTQ people and teachers and associated them with the worst forms of child abuse,” said the tribunal members, adding that the effect was a discriminatory work environment for 2SLGBTQ+ teachers in the district.

Did he? Or was he talking solely about the T? We can’t tell, because mainstream journalism consistently lies about this.

The tribunal found six of his publications were likely to expose trans, gay and lesbian people to hatred or contempt based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

“These publications demonize and delegitimize trans people (and in one case, lesbian and gay people) and cast them as a powerful menace threatening the security of children and their families.”

Aha! There it is, finally – the admission. Only once was it also the L and the G.

One unnamed teacher, who uses she/they pronouns, testified before the tribunal that Neufeld’s comments made the people in their life ask them “to reconsider going into teaching.”

If the teacher uses she/they pronouns why does the CBC use solely they pronouns in that sentence? Could it be because the their/them is so much more irritating?

They said they chose not to be out as a queer person professionally because they and their family feared for their safety, which they described as a tough and isolating experience.

An even worse sentence! Incoherent! Who is the “they” in “they described” – the teacher or “their” family? We’ll never know.

The teacher said not being out affected their ability “to show up in the classroom as their best self.” The tribunal quoted the teacher: “I think that teachers teach with their heart, and a lot of our personality goes into that, and without being able to be your authentic self, you’re not able to show up wholly.”

But it’s not your authentic self, it’s your fake, silly, fatuous one. Furthermore, teachers need to teach with their brains. They can’t do that while playing let’s pretend about their “gender”.

Useful.

Trump’s Bizarre Behavior Has a Clinical Name: Disinhibition

Colby Hall, January 20.

One of the earliest and most underreported warning signs of certain forms of dementia is not memory loss. It is disinhibition — a deterioration of impulse control, judgment, and social restraint that often manifests as reckless behavior, inappropriate speech, and diminished concern for consequences. By the time forgetfulness becomes obvious, the disease process is often well underway.

That framework matters because it closely tracks what President Donald Trump has been displaying with increasing frequency.

And increasing revoltingness.

Grievance has long shaped Trump’s behavior. His fixation on the 2020 election, anger over criminal investigations, and instinct for escalation remain constant. What has changed is the degree to which those impulses now appear untethered from outcome. Actions that weaken alliances, undercut stated objectives, and generate chaos without payoff suggest something beyond anger or strategy at work.

Disinhibition offers a framework that fits the observable pattern.

…

Clinically, disinhibition often appears before memory loss, particularly in frontotemporal dementia. Individuals may seem energetic, confident, even dominant. What erodes first is judgment. Filters weaken. Social norms lose force. Behavior becomes impulsive, inappropriate, and unconcerned with consequence. That framework does not establish a diagnosis. It explains why behavior changes in ways that feel abrupt and destabilizing.

Trump himself has intensified attention on the issue. In recent weeks, he has repeatedly and unpromptedly defended his cognitive fitness, boasting about mental sharpness and tests no one was publicly challenging. Clinicians recognize this pattern. People respond defensively to doubts that have already begun to surface.

…

Trump’s recent behavior presents a coherent and escalating pattern. The loss of restraint is public, persistent, and increasingly disconnected from consequence. Disinhibition is a clinical concept, not a political insult, and it describes how judgment can fail before memory does.

The danger lies not only in the behavior itself, but in the absence of any visible response to it. Advisers remain quiet. Party leaders defer. Congressional oversight is dormant. The presidency is operating as if impulse carries authority and escalation requires no check.

It all seems to fit.

Meet Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender.

Imagine if Barack Obama had invited Rachel Dolezal, the would-be African American, to discuss the impact of Donald Trump’s policies on black America. Hillary Clinton did the equivalent this week at the Munich Security Conference where she moderated a town hall titled “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights: Fighting the Global Pushback.” Clinton’s Rachel Dolezal figure was Sarah (né Timothy) McBride, celebrated as the first transgender member of the US Congress.

Why bring a man in to talk about women and fundamental rights? Why a man instead of a woman?

The problem is not McBride’s preferred pronouns but rather the lawmaker’s preferred policies, which elevate an ill-defined feeling known as “gender identity” over the immutable reality of biological sex. Ironically, given the title of Clinton’s town hall, these policies have undermined the fundamental rights of women and girls. They compel females to cede hard-won sports opportunities and medals to males. They require girls and women to change in locker rooms in front of boys and men. Horrifically, the priority given to “gender identity” forces female prison inmates to share close quarters with violent male felons. Under the Biden administration, the Centers for Disease Control issued health guidance for “pregnant people” and “lactating individuals,” erasing the very words “women” and “mothers.”

Erasing those words is a really really really bad thing to do. Erasure is the very thing that feminism exists to do away with. Women are not feeble shadowy afterthoughts who make no contribution and should be ignored. You’d think Hillary Clinton of all people would know that.

After this overview of the international “pushback,” Clinton teed up “the US Congresswoman from the state of Delaware, a gender rights champion,” to talk about the travails of trans people. McBride shared a tale of fellow members of Congress raising a ruckus when a woman who supposedly looked like McBride tried to enter a ladies room in the Capitol. The Delaware rep concurred with the previous speaker that “we are facing . . . a well-organized, well-funded right-wing regressive movement.” The central target of this movement, according to McBride, are trans people—with consequences for “women of all backgrounds.” McBride continued, “They use trans people as the tip of the spear,” to sanction gender policing—dictating how people should look and act based on “one perception at birth.” This policing, McBride argued disproportionately hurts “non-transgender women.” Women of all backgrounds. Non-transgender women. Did someone advise McBride to avoid the term “cis?” Clinton performed her familiar bobble-head nod as the Congressperson appropriated women’s struggles.

Why? Why do that? Even if you admire McBride, why get him to talk about women’s rights instead of a woman?