There’s this guy Taki Theodoracopulos who passes for a journalist of some sort, or at least a commentator. He’s very rightwing and very rude, but he also seems to consider himself an adult. He once had a column at the Spectator.

He has a website he calls Taki’s Magazine, and there he has a pile of childish abuse.

TIME magazine has selected German Chancellor and part-time nude model Angela Merkel as its “Person of the Year,” because to call her “Man of the Year” would be sexist, even though she looks like a man.

…

The magazine’s glowing profile of the dumpy, toadstool-like alleged woman with the Moe Howard haircut…

So because she’s opened her legs spread-eagle to at least a million Middle Eastern “migrants” by the end of this year, TIME has designated her a hero rather than a traitor.

And in Chicago, tiny-fingered part-time Jewish ballerina Mayor Rahm Emanuel…

It should be obvious why British feminist Julie Bindel is a lesbian—because she looks like a sullen warthog and no self-respecting heterosexual man would touch her with a ten-foot dildo.

Any time you feel a bit fed-up or futile, just pause to remember that you’re not Taki Theodoracopulos.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown went to an LGBT summit the other day and wrote it up for Reason.

During a lunch break at The Atlantic LGBT summit Thursday, attendees were invited to watch an informal panel discussion on transgender civil rights. Panelists included several transgender activists, as well as several non-trans panelists included for their expertise on legal issues (such as Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Chai Feldblum) or proximity to the conversation (such as an Atlantic staff writer who covers social justice). This, it turns out, was problematic.

Erasing marginalized people from discourse about their own communities has long been a problem, of course. But the fact remains that, at the moment, there are no trans EEOC commissioners. There is no trans executive of the American Civil Liberties Union D.C., or on the White House outreach team. Considering that this was not a panel on the trans experience per se but a dialogue on legal barriers to equality, the inclusion of cisgender people who work directly on these issues hardly seems a mystery or a microaggression.

Commissioner Feldblum and moderator Steve Clemons pushed back slightly, defending the inclusion of non-trans panelists on these grounds. No good. Before long, those who thought having cis people on the panel was OK were branded complicit in the fact that trans people are often the targets of physical violence. Once again, nods and murmurs of approval from the audience.

Were they told they have blood on their hands?

here’s some other conventional wisdom gleaned from the summit:

• Being “safe” means not just freedom from actual or threatened physical violence but also avoiding offensive or hurtful language.
• Gender identity is established in early childhood (“between three and six years old,” according to Hattaway Communications research associate Nicholle Manners); for parents, helping children transition to their preferred gender identity at a young age is the only humane position.
• Laws that are redundant or practically unenforceable are still worthwhile for their “symbolic” power. (Says Scott Shackford: “I remember when people defended anti-sodomy laws as symbolic.”)
• Anything short of unconditional affirmation of minority-activist goals is a form of “erasure.” The correct response when talking about politics and policy is to assess who has the most potent victim-profile and then defer to them. By assessing people on things like race, gender expression, and sexuality rather than the content of their ideas, we are showing them proper respect.

The urge to police people’s language at the summit was also strong—comically so, at times. During one Q&A session, an aggrieved audience member suggested panelists watch their use of the word “states” when referring to American land, as it was exclusionary to those who live in U.S. territories.

And it was impossible not to notice a contradictory impulse in so many of those gathered. At the same time as people praised the non-binary “gender spectrum,” they reinforced old tropes about masculinity and femininity, and the centrality of biology to both. One speaker said he knew his daughter was trans from a young age because Nicole—assigned male at birth, like her twin brother—liked to dress in pink and avoided boy toys. Another speaker described a man as being “in touch with his feminine side” because “he cries a lot.” (Nothing regressive and gender-stereotypical to see here!)

That’s one I still haven’t seen any sensible explanation or reconciliation of. I don’t think I’ve even seen any acknowledgement that it is contradictory. I still want to know – why is non-binary seen as on a continuum with trans when in fact it’s the opposite?

For years, feminists have fought against the idea that there’s something inherent in girlhood or womanhood that explains most of the gendered preferences and traits foisted on us. Now this viewpoint gets a pass, as long as it’s espoused by the LGBTIQ community rather than the usual old patriarchy.

Not from me it doesn’t.

I’ve just learned that all the museums have made paintings and books of paintings available to all of us to download for $0.00. The Rijksmuseum for instance.

So have that street in Delft.

Robert Jensen on sex, gender and patriarchy, from June 2014.

Today’s existing sex-role differentiation is the product of a patriarchal society based on male dominance. In that system, males are socialized into patriarchal masculinity to become men, and females are socialized into patriarchal femininity to become women.

In patriarchy, sex-role differentiation supports male power and helps make the system’s domination/subordination dynamic seem natural and normal. Moral, intellectual, and emotional traits are assigned differentially to each sex, creating what we today typically call gender roles. This patriarchal system of control—which is complex, adapting to changing conditions and to resistance—is designed to justify and perpetuate male dominance.

I’m not sure “designed” is the right word there, since it’s not really designed at all in the ordinary understanding of the word. “Functions to” maybe?

The gender roles in patriarchy are rigid, repressive, and reactionary. These roles constrain the healthy flourishing of both males and females, but females experience by far the most significant psychological and physical injuries from the system.

In patriarchy, gender is a category that functions to establish and reinforce inequality.

Ah look, he said “functions to” himself. Better.

Anyway – yes, and that’s why the claims that gender is a precious essence or an inner feeling or an identity are so dubious.

In contemporary culture, “radical” is often used dismissively as a synonym for “crazy” or “extreme.” In this context, it describes an analysis that seeks to understand, address, and eventually eliminate the root causes of inequality.

Radical feminism opposes patriarchy and male dominance. Radical feminism, which challenges the naturalizing of the process by which patriarchal societies turn male/female into man/woman, rejects patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender roles.

And now that whole project is being relentlessly and steadily demonized by people who want to embrace gender roles instead of rejecting them.

It’s sad.

The latest Jesus and Mo:

How do people of the book think they know the book is actually “God’s word”? How do they manage to be so confident about it? That’s one of the things I can never figure out about that kind of religious belief. It’s so trivially easy to pretend something is “God’s word”…so why do people so readily believe it of just one book out of the millions of books there are? Why do they think the goddy authorship is established and doubt-proof?

I don’t know. That’s one of the infinite number of things I don’t know.

The latest collection of Jesus and Mo strips, with a foreword by ME.

The Patreon.

The Alberta government has had the audacity to pass farm safety legislation. We can’t have that.

Alberta’s premier and some NDP MLAs have been targeted with violent threats over their controversial new farm safety legislation.

Rachel Notley’s government saw Bill 6 pass in the legislature on Thursday; it will become law on Jan. 1, 2016.

Someone on Twitter took screenshots of the threats.

Someone’s gotta man up and kill her…

…put a pitchfork through notley’s neck?

We honestly need to start killing off politicians.

Maybe we need to go back to the old west and just shoot her already.

Because farming should be dangerous, right?

It’s not just Oklahoma cops, it’s not just US cops. Via teslalivia in a comment: Tammy Mills at the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Police officers with histories of sexually exploiting vulnerable victims of crime were given responsibility for family violence and sexual offences investigations, a damning anti-corruption report has found.

The Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission inquiry into predatory behaviour by Victoria Police found officers preyed on vulnerable victims of crime, particularly victims of family violence, and misused the power and trust placed in them.

The small minority of officers, the report stated, misused their authority to “devastating effect” by commencing or attempting to commence an intimate personal or sexual relationship with victims of crime.

Priests and cops. They get their victims handed to them on a platter.

The report, released on Wednesday, found family violence victims were the most common victims of predatory police officers in its examination of 142 allegations of predatory behaviour by Victoria Police over the past decade.

It examined complaints ranging from sexually inappropriate comments or relationships, through to stalking and assault.

…

Another case IBAC examined concerned a male officer who allegedly sexually assaulted a female victim of family violence whom he had met on-duty.

A number of female police officers came forward during the internal investigation to state they too had been subjected to sexual harassment and assault by the officer.

Some had reported the conduct to their superiors, but no action was taken.

The investigation identified the officer also frequently misused the Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) database to access personal details of women he met on-duty to pursue for sexual relationships.

Some were vulnerable women with mental health issues or family violence victims.

The more vulnerable the better, right?

A new cartoon from Assigned Male:

Sophie Labelle

I’m not transitioning because”I want to become a girl” ; I’m transitioning because I AM a girl.

Same for boys and non-binary folks. heart emoticon

Then what does “I’m transitioning” mean?

The birth of another theocracy.

The Gambia has been declared an Islamic republic by President Yahya Jammeh who said he wanted to further distance the west African state from its colonial past.

The tiny, formerly secular country – named after the river from which British ships are said to have fired cannonballs to fix its borders – joins the ranks of other officially Islamic republics such as Iran and Afghanistan.

And Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – such lovely, rights-respecting states, all of them.

“In line with the country’s religious identity and values I proclaim Gambia as an Islamic state,” said Jammeh on state television. “As Muslims are the majority in the country, Gambia cannot afford to continue the colonial legacy.”

Nonsense. Gambia could perfectly well continue to be secular; there’s nothing inherently colonialist about secularism.

Also…Islam? Very colonialist. How does Jammeh think it got to Gambia, exactly? On the breeze, like pollen?

Despite strong commercial ties with Britain and other European countries whose citizens are regular visitors to the Gambia’s white-sand beaches, relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years.

The European Union temporarily withheld aid money in 2014 over Gambia’s poor human rights record. The Gambia, whose main industries are agriculture and tourism, ranks 165 out of 187 countries on the UN development index.

The blogger Sidi Sanneh, a former foreign minister who has become a US-based dissident, said: “Starved of development funds because of his deplorable human rights record and economic mismanagement, Jammeh is looking towards the Arab world as substitute for and source of development aid.”

So the guff about colonialism is just cant; Jammeh wants money.

He could always try a GoFundMe.

Meanwhile, it’s perfectly all right to make little kids feel excluded and weird because they’re not from godbothering families.

Valentine Doyle (6) sits at the back of her class for 30 minutes every day and “draws”, while her classmates are taught religion.

“She feels left out, different, excluded,” says her father, Devin. “She says she wants to ‘do the God thing’ now because the other kids are doing it. They were doing the sign of the cross and some of them told her she should do it too. So she wants to.”

The parents had been living in France, where the state schools don’t teach religion.

“Vallie went to school in France. There you just go to the local school. It’s completely secular. If parents want their children to do religious education, they go to Sunday school or private schools. We knew there would be an issue here, so we put Vallie’s name down for a lot of Educate Together schools, but she didn’t get in. They were all full.”

They found her a place in a National school, one with the charming and inclusive name Christ the King National School.

They were nice to her there, they tried to make her feel included, but the fact remains…

…opting out of religious instruction means sitting at the back of the class for 30 minutes each day. “She draws. She sits on her own and she doesn’t like it. She feels excluded and different.

“She’s a curious kid and asks about religion. We’d like her to be able to opt in and learn about all religions. We have told her religion is a thing people use to explain about love with stories, but that we think there are better stories to understand love.”

But the teaching of religion there isn’t comparative, as the name probably suggests. It’s brand-name religion. It is, in short, Catholic.

So Vallie sits in the back and feels like a weirdo.

Here’s a shining example of the kind of thing that is sundering so many friendships and alliances: Aaron Kappel on why women and feminists are so horrible.

The piece starts with an unpleasant fantasy about peeling off a strip of skin, unpleasant enough that I skipped over most of it.

The fluidity of gender is complicated; it is messy and it is beautiful. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I cannot say with any real sense of authenticity or certainty that I know who or what I am–not fully. I lived as a cis heterosexual man for the first 22 years of my life. I then lived as a cis homosexual man for another decade. Today I am something much closer to myself.

I identify as non-binary because at this point in my life–as I deconstruct obstructions that have confined my existence thus far–I understand that there is a deeper truth found within that I have yet to unearth.

The important thing is, Kappel is a special snowflake.

Now that I have a deeper understanding of who I am, now that I know I am not male, the rejection of my humanity is visible all around me. Just as my mother did, there are those who insist that because of my body, I cannot be who I am.

And sometimes, those doing the insisting, the hurting, are self-described feminists.

Of course. It’s always the feminists. It’s never the big looming drunk guys in bars, it’s always the feminists. Let’s all sit down and get cozy and have yet another session of Bash the Feminists.

One Friday night earlier this fall, my partner and I were having drinks at a dark, dank dive bar in center city Philadelphia with his brother’s fiancée (let’s call her Kelly) and her best friend. I was ambivalent going into the planned happy hour–something we do together every few months–in part because it would be the first time I’ve seen them since I’ve been living as non-binary. Happy hour quickly turned into many hours.

Several pitchers in, I returned from the restroom to find that pronouns were being discussed. My partner had just finished telling Kelly that because I am non-binary, I use gender-neutral pronouns, they/them.

Notice something missing? There’s nothing about Kelly’s feminism. There’s nothing to suggest that she is a feminist, apart from the fact that this story follows Kappel’s mention of feminists.

As I sat down, Kelly decided to bombard me with questions about, and alternatives to, how I identify. At one point she, in all seriousness, suggested using “it” as a pronoun instead.

“No,” I stated sternly.

“I’m only asking to understand,” she replied.

“I am not an it!”

Maybe that is why my body shook and my breath lost its rhythm; my eyes flooded, then evaporated, and my skin lost all its moisture.

It’s sad about Kappel’s eyes evaporating. The part about the skin though – couldn’t that be from the many hours in the dark dank dive bar and the several pitchers of beer? Alcohol is dehydrating.

Maybe that is why I had to use one hand to help lift the other hand, and why I fumbled erratically, wrapping my ankles around the legs of the chair so as not to fall off and into the void below–for the entire room fell away. The floor disappeared and there was nothing but an eternal darkness.

All because of feminism! Or, you know, because of being drunk.

Where does feminism fit into my experience? Specifically, where do I fit into feminism? I know that for feminism to be successful and beneficial, it must be intersectional–yet even in alleged intersectional feminism, there is exclusion, erasure, or outright dismissal of people like myself.

Bullshit. Feminism is about women’s rights, so no, it should not “center” people who lived as men for 32 years. Feminism should not be so “intersectional” that it stops being about women’s rights.

I told Kelly that I was not her encyclopedia, that her using me to gain understanding was a problem. She continued to question my humanity, even after I became visibly and audibly upset, while her friend said nothing and permitted the abuse to continue.

I muttered, “This isn’t about you,” and Kelly began crying. In a matter of seconds, she centered herself as the victim.

As I sat between the two women, I clung to my chair, grasping for the support an inanimate object is incapable of providing. Then I rose and walked out into the night, sobbing, panting, shaking my way home.

In other words Kappel had a massive tantrum, and now uses the tantrum as evidence of the harm that Kelly did. That too is bullshit. Kelly may have been very obnoxious or may not have, but Kappel’s panting and shaking – not to mention the evaporated eyes – does not count as evidence that she was.

This is merely one example of what happens when feminists reject intersectionality. That rejection is violence, and people like myself are the recipients of that violence.

When feminists speak about feminism and address their audience by saying he or she as a means to be inclusive, I am excluded. When they speak to or about other feminists and use only female-specific pronouns and descriptors, I am excluded. When women call for equity and inclusion but exclude those who reject the gender binary, we feel the same oppression these women are purportedly contesting. If intersectional feminism does not include trans people of all stripes, then it is not intersectional.

Blah blah blah blah – feminism has to be about me me me me or it is not intersectional. Feminists have to stop talking about women, dammit!

The narcissism and self-absorption and spite are obvious and disgusting. Kappel goes on for many more paragraphs explaining why feminism should be all about Kappel and how very special Kappel is. It’s as painful to read as tearing off a strip of skin would be.

In Oklahoma City:

A former Oklahoma City police officer was convicted Thursday of 18 of the 36 counts he faced, including four counts of first-degree rape, related to accusations that he victimized 13 women on his police beat in a minority, low-income neighborhood.

Daniel Holtzclaw, 29, sobbed as the verdict was read aloud. He could spend the rest of his life in prison based on the jury’s recommendations, which include a 30-year sentence on each of the first-degree rape counts. Among the other charges he was convicted of were forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery and second-degree rape.

…

The allegations against Holtzclaw brought new attention to the problem of sexual misconduct committed by law enforcement officers, something police chiefs have studied for years.

During a monthlong trial, jurors heard from 13 women who said Holtzclaw sexually victimized them. Most of them said Holtzclaw stopped them while out on patrol, searched them for outstanding warrants or checked to see if they were carrying drug paraphernalia, then forced himself on them.

It’s one of those jobs, like being a priest, that give you access to victims and a veneer of authority.

Surprisingly, for once, the jury believed the victims.

[D]espite the number of victims, the case presented prosecutors with several challenges.

Many of the women had arrest records or histories of drug abuse. Most hailed from the same neighborhoods in the shadow of the state Capitol. Two women took the stand wearing handcuffs and orange scrubs because they had recently been jailed on drug charges. Another woman admitted on the stand to slipping out of her motel room the night before and procuring marijuana and the hallucinogen PCP.

Holtzclaw’s attorney, Scott Adams, made those issues a cornerstone of his defense strategy. Adams questioned several women at length about whether they were high when they allegedly encountered Holtzclaw. He also pointed out that most did not come forward until police identified them as possible victims after launching their investigation.

Ultimately, that approach did not sway the jury to dismiss the women’s stories.

All of the women are black. Holtzclaw is half-white, half-Japanese. The jury appeared to all be white, though Oklahoma court officials said they did not have race information for jurors. Some supporters of the women questioned whether the jury would fairly judge their allegations.

And yet he was convicted.

Hooray for tolerance and acceptance and general friendliness, right? Including for parents who don’t vaccinate their children, including when you are a parent with children in the same school, right?

It’s right according to the principal of Brunswick North West Primary in Melbourne, Trevor Bowen. Slate quotes from his message to parents:

We expect all community members to act respectfully and with tolerance when interacting with other parents and carers who may have a differing opinion to their own. This includes an opposing understanding about child immunisation.

People from both sides of the discussion have expressed their thoughts in terms of the wellbeing and ongoing health of the children they care so much for. This is most admirable. I ask all community members to interact respectfully at all times and with a sense of tolerance and acceptance of diversity.

The Independent has a heartwarming story about a little girl in Toronto.

A Canadian transgender father left behind a wife and seven children to begin a new life as a six-year-old girl.

Stefonknee (pronounced ‘Stephanie’) Wolschtt, 46, had been married for 23 years when she realised she was transgender.

She’s now living with an adoptive family, and says she does not “want to be an adult right now”.

She realized she was transgender and six years old? How? How does an adult age 46 realize she is six years old? What’s that like? What does it mean? How does it work? Six year old girls, for instance, don’t have seven children, so doesn’t having seven children interfere with realizing one is six years old?

“I can’t deny I was married. I can’t deny I have children. But I’ve moved forward now and I’ve gone back to being a child,” she said in a video series by The Transgender Project, published by Daily Xtra.

She’s moved forward. So where have her children moved to?

Feeling rejected by her family, Ms Wolschtt left and now lives with her adoptive family, who she says are “totally comfortable with me being a little girl”.

She explains how her new parents’ youngest granddaughter wanted a little sister and decided Ms Wolschtt should be younger than her.

“We have a great time. We colour, we do kid’s stuff,” she says.

“It’s called play therapy. No medication, no suicide thoughts. And I just get to play.”

Maybe the granddaughter will realize she’s a 46-year-old man.

In an earlier part of the series, Ms Wolschtt spoke of how she became suicidal and was hospitalised a month after taking part in the first Toronto transgender march in 2009.

After she was discharged, her wife accused her of harassment and assault, and pressed charges against her to achieve a restraining order.

But she’s not at all a danger to that granddaughter she plays with because…reasons.

The Independent left some stuff out of this story.

Via IKWRO on Twitter, those dedicated campaigners:

The press release on the One Law For All event today:

On Thursday 10 December 2015, Southall Black Sisters (SBS), One Law for All, Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO), Centre for Secular Space and British Muslims for Secular Democracy will attend 10 Downing Street to hand deliver a letter signed by nearly 400 individuals and organisations urging David Cameron to hold an inquiry into the discriminatory nature of Sharia ‘courts’ and other religious arbitration forums.

These women’s and human rights organisations also led successful campaigns preventing public authorities such as the governing body of UK Universities (UUK) and the Law Society from incorporating aspects of Sharia laws into their public policies. With regards the question of parallel legal systems, they argue that in these times of draconian austerity measures and cuts to legal aid, these unaccountable, arbitrary and religious ‘courts’ presided over by fundamentalist religious forces are increasingly filling the vacuum that is created. They dispense a second rate system of justice that denies vulnerable women and children access to equality and human rights.

Campaigners are calling on the government to exclude Sharia and all other religious forums, including the Jewish Beth Din from presiding over divorce and family matters; to reinstate legal aid; to stop the repeal of the Human Rights Act and to re-affirm the principle of the separation of religion and the law. The law is a key component of securing justice for citizens and one law for all.

Pragna Patel of SBS says:

“Discriminatory religious codes are very much a part and parcel of the continuum of domestic and gender based violence and other abuses that BME women face in their daily lives since they reinforce discrimination, deny exit and prevent women from accessing justice or from asserting their right to equality…For these reasons and more, parallel legal systems must not be allowed to exist.”

Maryam Namazie of One Law for All says:

“Dismantling religious courts isn’t a denial of people’s right to religion, it’s a defence of human rights, and particularly women’s rights vis-a-vis the religious-Rightwing and their attempts at restricting women’s rights in the family. By allowing religious courts to operate, we are saying that Muslim or Jewish women do not have the same rights as others in this country. This is unacceptable.”

Gita Sahgal of Centre for Secular Space says:

“Sharia Councils drag women into living out a fundamentalist vision of Islam. They do this by promoting ‘Islamic law’ as higher than the law of the land and by marketing divorce as a solution for a problem they have created. It is a disgrace that they are tolerated by the authorities and allowed to become charities. All parallel legal systems are discriminatory and undermine women’s rights under the law. It is time that they are dealt with.”

Diana Nammi of IKRWO says:

“The whole premise of religious ‘courts’ is discrimination to women, they represent a major barrier to women’s rights and not only do they deny women justice, they also distance women from the mainstream court system and safety measures, such as civil protection orders, which can have dire consequences. Given that religious ‘courts’ are community based and often mediate, there are dangerous implications including locking women within violent marriages and “honour” based violence. The government must prioritise women’s safety by ensuring access to mainstream justice and preventing the proliferation and deepening entrenchment of these parallel legal systems.”

Nasreen Rehman of British Muslims for Secular Democracy says:

“Government, Parliament and the courts have a duty to protect the rights and prevent the exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society. But all too often we find they abrogate this responsibility by condoning parallel systems of justice that promote cruel and discriminatory practices perpetuated by obscurantists and fanatics in many faith communities – often, falsely pleading divine sanction as a smokescreen for cruelty. The only way to ensure equality and justice is to stand together for clarity and ‘one law for all.’ This does not mean that we do not accept religious, cultural and ethnic diversity; rather we raise our voices against injustices perpetuated in the guise of faith and culture.”

For more information, contact:

Pragna Patel
Southall Black Sisters
pragna@southallblacksisters.co.uk
020 8571 9595
@SBSisters

Maryam Namazie
One Law for All
maryamnamazie@gmail.com
077 1916 6731
@MaryamNamazie

I guess Donald Trump is to the Right what George Galloway is to the Left. Galloway considers himself on the Left in some sense, but I (along with of course many others), despite being on the Left, consider him a terrible person. So it apparently is with Peter Suderman, a senior editor at Reason magazine, when it comes to Trump. His article is elegantly titled Donald Trump Is a Bad Person.

His declaration yesterday that he would close the United States to all Muslim immigrants, including tourists and Muslim American citizens abroad trying to return home, confirmed both his fascistic tendencies and his undisguised bigotry, and made something else clear in the process: that he is simply a bad person.

As much as anything, this is the undercurrent that runs throughout the stories that have defined Trump since the beginning of his campaign: He mocked Vietnam POW John McCain for being captured during the war; he lobbed sexist jibes at Fox News host Megyn Kelly for daring to confront him about his history of misogyny; he mocked a disabled reporter, then falsely claimed he’d never met the man; he smeared immigrants as rapists; he’s Tweeted snide remarks about the wife of one of his competitors; when the crowd attacked a Black Lives Matter protestor at Trump campaign event last month, Trump sided with the crowd, saying he “should have been roughed up”; he insisted, contrary to all evidence, that thousands of Muslims celebrated the terror attack of 9/11 on camera; he lies constantly, flagrantly, and without shame.

And that all adds up to a bad person – someone who is mean and belligerent and a bully, as well as a liar. I agree that that adds up to a bad person.

And yet he’s very popular. What does that say about the US? Nothing good. Nothing at all good.

That gleeful, unapolagetic incivility is at the root of what makes him a bad person, and also at the root his approach to politics and policy. Most of his proposals, to the limited extent that they can be understood as remotely serious, are insults in policy form.

In addition to last night’s ban on Muslim travel to the U.S., he has called for the forcible government closure of mosques. When asked recently, he said Muslims should be tracked via government database. He promised that as president he would simply deport 11 million immigrants in short order after taking office, an impossible maneuver intended mostly to demonstrate his disdain for immigrants. He does not merely want to deport people who came to United States illegally; he also wants to deport millions of their children. He has repeatedly voiced enthusiastic support for federal seizure of private property through eminent domain, and, as a real estate investor, taken advantage of it himself.

And yet he’s widely liked and admired.

Trump’s penchant for authoritarianism frequently blends with his total lack of interest in the operational details of his policies, as well as the fact that he simply appears to be wildly uninformed about the world.

In a campaign speech last night, for example, Trump not only repeated his declaration that Muslims should not be allowed into the country, he said that the United States might have close to down the Internet in some places in order to stop terrorism.

“We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”

Every bit of this is dumb. It starts dumb, and then gets dumber. It is like a mad lib designed to show how dumb Donald Trump is about tech companies, the Internet, federal power, freedom of speech, and the Constitution, all at once.

And it is dumb in a particular way that helps demonstrate what a bad person he is. It is not just that he says stupid things that demonstrate his ignorance. It is that, in his stupidity and ignorance, he only ever imagines doing awful, authoritarian things, the way a bad person would.

And that, Suderman concludes, is why he’s so popular.

Mother Jones reports on a brilliant plan for next weekend:

Gun rights activists in Texas are planning to stage a mock mass shooting at the University of Texas this weekend in protest of both gun-free zones and President Barack Obama’s continued calls for tougher gun control legislation.

According to the website Statesman, gun rights supporters will begin the day by marching through Austin with loaded weapons and conclude their walk with a “theatrical performance.”

A spokesman for the two participating gun rights groups, Come and Take It Texas and DontComply.com, told the site the event will involve using fake blood and bullhorns to mimic gunshot noises.

By way of persuading the people of Austin and perhaps the Texas legislature that we desperately need more guns.

“In the wake of yet another gun free zone shooting, Obama is using it to aggressively push his gun confiscation agenda,” a Facebook page for the event read. “Now is the time to stand up, take a walk, speak out against the lies and put an end to the gun free killing zones.”

Because if only there were guns everywhere, there would be no more mass shootings.

There’s a new Fellowship for young writers in Australia.

The Kat Muscat Fellowship

Express Media is honoured to announce the inaugural Kat Muscat Fellowship to support and develop female-identifying young writers and editors from around Australia.

The annual Kat Muscat Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $3,000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young person. The Fellowship aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian women.

Kat Muscat was a brilliant young mind of the Australian writing community, whose formidable talent was demonstrated through her incisive writing and perceptive editing. Kat was an integral part of Express Media for many years, before becoming Editor of Voiceworks from 2012 to 2014. Throughout her 10 years with Express Media, Kat helped to shape the career of young writers and editors from all around Australia.

Kat’s writing embodied her personal mantra of feminism, empathy and defiance, and the recipient of the Fellowship will take up her notion of challenge: exploring bold subjects, thinking deeply and critically about the world and the culture we consume, and reflecting and building on the craft of writing or editing.

The Kat Muscat Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $3,000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young person. The work must respond to the above values and provocation, continuing Kat’s legacy and further developing the future of defiant and empathic young Australian women.

Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible, applicants must:

• Be female identifying: including trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people
• Be aged 16 to 30 at the commencement of the fellowship
• Be an Australian citizen or permanent resident of Australia

Good luck, all you female identifying applicants.

The linguist Deborah Cameron dissects the damaging allure of neuroscience for non-scientists who write books about female and male brains.

For every scientist doing her best to communicate the complexity of contemporary brain research, there are a hundred non-scientists—self-help gurus, life-coaches, marketing consultants—churning out what has been labelled ‘neurobollocks’, a species of discourse that purports to be scientific, but is actually, in the words of one article on the subject, ‘self-help books dressed up in a lab coat’.

You can picture them on the shelves at Barnes & Noble or Waterstones, in the Men Are From Mars section.

The language connection explains why over the years I have felt obliged to read such classics of neurosexism as Why Men Don’t Iron, which proclaimed on its cover in 1999 that ‘men’s brains are built for action and women’s for talking: men do, women communicate’; and The Female Brain, a bestseller in 2006, whose author was so convinced that women’s brains are built for talking, she reproduced the invented statistic that men on average utter 7000 words a day whereas women on average utter 20,000.  (As I explained in an earlier post, real research shows that women don’t talk more than men: where there’s a difference, it usually goes in the other direction.)

Anecdotally, I’ve never noticed men being shy about dominating conversations.

At the end of last month, the mainstream media were full of headlines like ‘Scans prove there’s no such thing as a “male” or “female” brain’ and ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus? New brain study says not’.

What occasioned these headlines was a research study which looked at a large number of structural features on MRI scans of over 1400 people’s brains, and found that only a small minority of those brains displayed consistently ‘male’ or ‘female’ characteristics. The majority were a mixture: they showed some of the characteristics previous research has associated more with male than female subjects, and some of the characteristics that previous research has associated more with female than male subjects. The conclusion the researchers drew was that if you examine the brain as a whole, there aren’t two distinct types that could sensibly be described as ‘male’ and ‘female’.

So will the people who write the “women gossip and men do math” books stop writing those books? Cameron doubts they will.

Maybe they should, but I very much doubt they will, because this is not the kind of popular science that’s written for laypeople with an interest in science. As the article quoted earlier observes, it’s more like self-help in a lab coat. Rather than starting from current debates in neuroscience, writers begin with familiar gender stereotypes (things like ‘men don’t listen’ and ‘women talk all the time’), and then cherry-pick a few studies whose results appear to support the argument they want to make (that these behaviours are ‘hard-wired’ in the brain).

…

Readers who buy books with titles like Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps are not looking for a nuanced, scientific discussion of sex and gender. They’re looking for a story that confirms their beliefs about how men and women are different, and reassures them that men and women will always be different no matter how much feminists shout and scream. It’s not about the science, it’s about the politics.

Men and women will always always be different. Some women will have male bodies, and some men will have female bodies, but that’s just a surface phenomenon that doesn’t mean anything. The real Woman and Man is inside the head, in the brain, choosing either the pink frilly skirt or the black tailored trousers. That’s that sorted.

Every generation of scientific sexists disclaims the errors and biases of its predecessors and assures us that today’s science is different. Yet in one fundamental respect it isn’t different at all: contemporary scientists may be offering a new explanation for sex-differences, but the differences they’re trying to explain are the same old collection of stereotypes and myths. Occasionally one of these does fade into obsolescence (no one today suggests that education shrivels the ovaries); but many are in the category of ‘zombie facts’ which have been around forever (sometimes they’re older than science itself), have never been supported by good evidence, and still refuse to die.

The belief that women are the ‘more verbal’ sex is a case in point. Every time I encounter yet another discussion of what neuroscience might have to tell us about this (and such discussions appear in the scholarly literature as well as the popular bollocks), I feel as if I’m reading an account of how unicorns evolved. How compelling I find the explanation is beside the point: there are no unicorns, and women don’t talk more than men.

Well ok maybe women don’t talk more than men…but women certainly are way more irritating than men when they talk, which if you think about it is kind of the same thing. That’s science.

That’s why I’m cautious about hailing the ‘no such thing as a male/female brain’ study as a great leap forward, politically as well as scientifically. I do think the findings of the study are interesting, and I’m glad to see research evidence casting doubt on the idea of brain-sex. But I don’t think that gets to the root of the problem. The beliefs that are most damaging to women are not beliefs about the brain as such, they’re beliefs about sex-specific abilities and behaviour (like ‘women are no good at maths’ or ‘men can’t express their feelings’) which at the moment are often justified by appealing to supposed facts about the brain. Those beliefs may be reinforced by ‘the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations’, but they existed long before those explanations became available, and they could survive if those explanations were discredited.

No matter how much feminists shout and scream.