Let’s think about this.

There’s more than one stumbling block here.

One: why “free”? Is that the issue? Are lesbians and gay men and bisexual people all locked up or enslaved or otherwise restrained or confined?

Two, why the T? What does the T have to do with the LGB?

Three, is it true that none are free until all are free?

The first one. “Free” is used as a kind of catchall for social justice movements, but I think it shouldn’t be, because it just muddles things. Freedom isn’t really the issue here, although it was in the past, when people could be prosecuted for being lesbian or gay. (Or at least gay. I don’t actually know if lesbians were.) It’s more about acceptance, about an end to disgust, about normalization.

The disagreements over trans ideology aren’t generally about freedom, they’re about truth, safety, bodily integrity, competing rights, medical ethics, and the like. Yes, you can make it about freedom by talking about the precious freedom to mutilate your own body, but the freedom part isn’t really the core dispute.

And the slogan illustrates that. In what way are lesbians and gay men less “free” if people are not encouraged to try to change their sex? I can’t think of any such way.

What slogans like this are doing is ripping off other social justice movements to make the gender ideology look better. We’re supposed to think this is the Civil Rights movement redux. Well guess what: it’s not. The two are not the same in any way, and forced teaming them is gross.

The second. Why the T? Well because forced teaming. See above. The more trans ideology can hook itself onto genuine human rights issues, the more plausible it looks. That’s why we have to push back.

Three, is it true? Of course not. It’s political rhetoric, intended to manipulate. Nobody’s rights or freedoms depend on agreeing that men are women if they say they are.

Oh god this is a genre of writing I absolutely cannot stand, it brings me out in a mental rash before I’ve finished reading the first sentence. The genre is the person – a guy, in my experience – who thinks he has a delightful subtle and erudite wit but doesn’t. You know what I mean, right? In love with his own writing voice, and completely blind to how tedious and unamusing and pompous it is?

It’s a nameless fool on Twitter trying to condescend to JK Rowling as if he were her beloved great uncle and knows far better than she ever will. He’s fingernails on a blackboard, I tells ya.

You see what I mean, right? It’s obvious in just that short opening.

“Once more into the fray” – oh that’s so cute, playing Henry V, only you ain’t Shakespeare. And that patronizing “I see,” as if he were the cops. You see: big deal: it’s on Twitter, so anyone can see. Nobody asked you for a report.

“With the fervor you’ve thrown into this latest proclamation” – dude that is shit writing. Rethink your whole life. You’re not good at writing; do something else. You can’t “throw” fervor, and there is no “proclamation,” and if you’re tired of reading JKR’s “latest” then go read something else. A lot of horrible for just nine words. And it’s all like that. I hate hate hate that kind of thing – the mix of pomposity and patronizing makes me go blue with rage.

KnowwhatImean?

Update: This story is from 2010, as diligent readers pointed out.

Ya think?

Right. By the same token, don’t report murders, because that might promote murderophobia. Don’t report torture because that might promote torturerophobia. Don’t report genocide because that might promote genociderophobia.

I’m well familiar with the line of thought because of Does Got Hate Women? There were worries about it, and discussions, and cautions. I did a BBC4 chat about it with a few women from various religions, and the woman who was there to defend Islam made an objection the gist of which was “people tell all these stories about brutality to women.” Well, yes, and? You’re saying the stories should be buried?

The organizers who canceled this event are saying exactly that.

Either way, there are always men intimidating women. The guy in the blue T shirt is an actual academic, who teaches students.

He gets in her face, he raises his arms inches from her face, he follows her as she tries to get away, he addresses her with the underlined “bitch” – he’s just the flip side of the coin.

NBC News reports on the aftermath:

An Arizona State University postdoctoral research scholar is on leave as the institution investigates his confrontation with a woman in a hijab that was captured on video, the school said Tuesday. The confrontation happened Sunday during a pro-Israel rally just outside campus in Tempe. Viral cellphone video shows the scholar, Jonathan Yudelman, and another man, not identified, confront the woman, who was wearing a hijab.

It’s not clear what happened before the video captures Yudelman facing off with the woman, but in the clip, he said, “I’m literally in your face — that’s right.”

The woman backs away as Yudelman repeatedly advances, sometimes with his hands raised, and gets inches away from her.

“You’re disrespecting my religious boundaries,” the woman says.

“You disrespect my sense of humanity, bitch,” Yudelman says back.

NBC of course didn’t spell out the whole word.

On Tuesday, the university responded to the video and criticism of Yudelman. “ASU is aware of the allegations against Jonathan Yudelman and is investigating them,” it said in a statement. “Dr. Yudelman is on leave and will remain so pending the outcome of the investigation.”

When you don’t know what else to do, find a woman to bully. It’s so much easier.

Speaking of tawdry…

Laurence Fox has been slammed online after he posted an unearthed upskirt photo of a TV host.

The actor-turned-politician, 45, took to X to mock Jeremy Vine and GB News star Narinder Kaur as he posted a compromising paparazzi photograph of the 51-year-old television star in the back of a vehicle. The photo in question shows Kaur without any underwear on. Fox has been slammed by countless X users, who have claimed that his decision to post the picture was “low, even for him”.

Wtf? We need harsher language for this kind of bullying crap. “Paparazzi” and “compromising” are way too mild.

Upskirting is a criminal offence in the UK, and the photo was removed from picture sites following it becoming a criminal offence. The photo was taken without Narinder’s knowledge or consent when it was sent to pictures sites by the paparazzi.

And apparently the “picture sites” cheerfully published it. Why stop there? Why not plant hidden cameras in showers to photograph women’s genitals in more detail? Also don’t forget to keep sending those unsolicited dick pics.

Further installments of squalor and piggishness:

With the third week of testimony drawing to a close, the case that ultimately hinges on record-keeping returned to deeply technical testimony — a sharp contrast from Daniels’ dramatic, if not downright seamy, account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump that riveted jurors earlier this week. Trump denies they ever had sex.

Daniels’ story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump was a crucial building block for prosecutors, who are seeking to show that the Republican and his allies buried unflattering stories in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to illegally influence the race.

Trump walked out of the court in a rage Thursday, angrily telling reporters, “I’m innocent.” His attorneys pushed for a mistrial over the level of tawdry details Daniels went into on the witness stand, but Judge Juan M. Merchan denied the request.

If Trump doesn’t want us to know how tawdry he is, he could always try not being so tawdry.

Witnesses in the case have seesawed between bookkeepers and bankers with often dry testimony to Daniels and others with unflattering stories about Trump and the tabloid world machinations meant to keep them secret. Despite all the drama, in the end, the trial is about money changing hands — business transactions — and whether those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.

Influence it how though? Influence it by concealing how very tawdry Trump really is. It’s ironic, or something, because most of the time Trump loves letting us know how tawdry he is. “You can grab them by the pussy” is the real Trump. His stupid little fist in the air, his stupid permanent scowl, his stupid blue suits and red ties, his stupid boasting about sexual assault – it’s all the same thing.

Until he wakes up and finds himself in front of a judge.

Ohhhh the hell with it, let’s put the Confederate names back.

After a meeting that lasted for hours, the Shenandoah County school board voted early Friday morning to restore the names of three Confederate officers to schools in the district.

With the vote, the district appears to be the first in the country to return Confederate names to schools that had removed them after the summer of 2020, according to researchers at the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative.

The vote rolled back a decision made four years ago, when the killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide demands for a racial reckoning. At a virtual meeting in July 2020, the summer of pandemic and protests, the board voted 5-1 to drop the names of two schools — Ashby-Lee Elementary and Stonewall Jackson High — that it deemed incompatible with a recently passed resolution condemning racism. The schools were renamed the next year as Honey Run and Mountain View.

Because it’s not altogether benign to name schools after military officers who officered on the side of a lethal centuries-long human rights violation on a massive scale. Ok? It’s not.

But a fury had been unleashed in the rural county in the mountains of Virginia. People crowded into school board meetings, denouncing the naming process as secretive and rushed, and voicing deeper resentments about cultural changes they saw as being foisted upon them.

What “cultural changes”? You mean attempts to get rid of baked-in racism rooted in centuries of injustice? Diddums.

After a re-vote ended in a tie in 2022, the name changes stood. But opponents swore that Stonewall Jackson would be revived. And on Friday, he was.

“When you read about this man — who he was, what he stood for, his character, his loyalty, his leadership, how Godly a man he was — those standards that he had were much higher than any leadership of the school system in 2020,” said Tom Streett, one the board members. Then he and four of his five colleagues voted to bring Jackson and the other names back.

What he stood for, eh? Well that would be the system of slavery. His loyalty was to the system of slavery. His leadership was of soldiers fighting to maintain a system of slavery. How “Godly” he was must have been consistent with his military defense of slavery, which should tell you all you need to know about this “God” fella.

The Times in July 2020 on why Black instead of black:

“We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover,” said Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, and Phil Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, in a memo to staff.

Conversations about the change began in earnest at The Times and elsewhere after the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, said Mike Abrams, senior editor for editing standards. Several major news media organizations have made the same call including The Associated Press, whose stylebook has long been an influential guide for news organizations.

“It seems like such a minor change, black versus Black,” The Times’s National editor, Marc Lacey, said. “But for many people the capitalization of that one letter is the difference between a color and a culture.”

As tensions rose across the country, Mr. Abrams noticed members of the newsroom raising questions about the capital B and sharing articles on the subject in Slack, the workplace chat platform. He talked with editors at other publications, including The A.P. and The Washington Post, about conversations happening in their newsrooms. And he talked with Times staff members: more than 100 of them, by phone, email and Slack.

“The lowercase B in Black has never made sense to me as a Black woman, and it didn’t make sense to me as a Black girl,” said Destinée-Charisse Royal, a senior staff editor in the Graphics department and one of the editors consulted on the change. “My thought was that the capital B makes sense as it describes a race, a cultural group, and that is very different from a color in a box of crayons.”

It’s all somewhat confusing, in my view. I don’t object to it, I just don’t quite understand how it works. One could have said the same about “Negro” in the past, yet that word sounds and looks simply terrible now. That must be because it was used before the Civil Rights movement really got going, while the shift to “black” started with the radicals. M.L. King said “Negro”; Angela Davis said “black.” (Or did she say “Black”? I don’t know.) (Of course there were and are plenty who used that other word.)

The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.

Hm. What do they mean? Again, I’m not disagreeing, just not clear on the argument.

I suppose what they must mean is that white doesn’t represent the long struggle that Black does. The “shared culture and history” is a shared history of abuse and injustice and exploitation, a shared history of creating a fuck ton of wealth for white people while being gripped in poverty themselves. It’s also a shared history of surviving that, and of struggling for justice and civil rights.

H/t Nullius in Verba

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I don’t need to know how it works. It’s preferred, and not in the way “IT’S MA’AM!!!” is preferred, so I use it.

Joyce Vance on the state of play:

Lots going on, most notably news that neither the Fulton County case nor the classified documents prosecutions [is] going to see the light of day before the election. Although that already seemed preordained, it’s now formal.

• In Fulton County, the Georgia Court of Appeals will review Judge McAfee’s decision that Fani Willis can stay on the case. Whichever side loses the appeal will likely apply to the Georgia Supreme Court for another bite at the apple. The process will take months.
• In Florida, Judge Cannon has removed her May 20 trial date from the calendar. She refused to set a new one, but scheduled almost all of the pending motions in the case—she’s let them pile up—for hearings between now and July. Just the unresolved issues regarding the possible use of classified information by the defense could hold this case up past November. It’s a straightforward prosecution that should have gone to trial early this year.

So the criminal tyrant will be allowed to criminally tyrannize over us because the law grinds slowly. Fabulous.

Tomorrow, Stormy Daniels returns to the witness stand in Manhattan. On Tuesday, we learned from the daily transcript that the Judge held a sidebar conference with Trump’s lawyers because Trump was “cursing audibly” while Daniels testified. The Judge was concerned that might intimidate Daniels, which seems logical and also something of an understatement given the situation.

Judge Merchan also commented that Trump was going on in full view of the jury. There is no doubt they took note. While Trump’s lawyers claimed Stormy Daniels’ testimony went too far and asked for a mistrial, which the Judge denied, if anything prejudiced the jury against him yesterday, it was Trump’s own behavior.

But so many people think he’s another Penrod or Huckleberry Finn or Holden Caulfield. A benevolent scamp!

From Slate a few months ago:

Homicide Is a Leading Cause of Death for Pregnant People. Abortion Bans Are Making Things Worse.

You know what else is making things worse? Pretending violence against women is violence against people. Pretending violence against women is not specific to women and thus not in any way linked to hatred and contempt and disgust for women.

When Julianne McShane wanted to report on how some of the most vulnerable women in the United States were dealing with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she knew exactly where she needed to go: Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oklahoma is where two realities collide. It is one of 16 states that have banned abortion almost entirely. “And it has some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence nationwide,” McShane said. “People might not realize how dangerous it is to be pregnant in the context of an abusive relationship, and abortion restrictions, obviously, just make that even more difficult.”

The article itself says women, but the headline says people. Why did Slate do that? Would Slate tweak the headline of an article on racism so that it applied to generic people as opposed to the non-white kind?

On a recent episode of What Next, we spoke about how the new abortion landscape is causing chaos for domestic violence advocates and for victims. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mary Harris: Before talking about how the Dobbs decision is impacting domestic abuse survivors in this country, I asked Julianne McShane to lay some groundwork for me. At the top of the show, she called pregnancy dangerous for American women. I asked her why.

Julianne McShane: Homicide is actually a leading cause of death for pregnant people in the United States, which is probably pretty shocking to a lot of people. And researchers say that this is probably due to the prevalence of both firearms and intimate partner violence, and obviously widespread access to firearms in this country is something that facilitates intimate partner violence. Many of the experts I talked to pointed out also that domestic violence tends to start or intensify during pregnancy.

How not to “lay some groundwork”: change “women” to “people” when it is in fact women who are the subject of the conversation. “Let’s discuss violence against women.” “Ok but I’m going to make it violence against people instead.”

Particularly if there’s stress about money, if the pregnancy was unplanned—those are things that could drive someone who’s abusive to become more abusive, or to be abusive for the first time. There’s also a paradox. Oftentimes, abusers will actually purposefully try to get someone pregnant to keep them under their control. But then, once they become pregnant and the reality of a future child becomes more clear, abusers can actually get jealous about the fact that a future child is going to take attention away from them. And so that can also be another factor.

Not a single female or male pronoun in that paragraph; result: meaningless gibberish. Who is this mysterious someone? Who is this other someone, or are they the same? Who are “they”? Which “them”?

There’s even this phrase, reproductive coercion, to explain what’s going on here.

Reproductive coercion refers to any kinds of threats or violence against someone’s reproductive health or decisionmaking capacity. That’s how the National Domestic Violence Hotline describes it. This could look like forcibly getting someone pregnant, refusing their access to birth control, sabotaging birth control during sex—also, forcing someone to get an abortion, although evidence suggests that that’s rare and not a widespread issue.

Someone someone their someone – who is that someone exactly?

Why does Slate do this? Why does anyone?

If you don’t have the goods, just make something up.

A barrister who championed LGBT+ charity Stonewall has been disbarred after making false homophobia claims. Barry John Harwood was found to have knowingly misled the Bar Standards Board (BSB) after fabricating parts of “serious” allegations against fellow barristers. Mr Harwood, who was the deputy director of advocacy at City law firm DWF, complained about a colleague’s behaviour towards him in March 2019.

What behavior? Referring to Harwood’s partner as his “husband” despite knowing they were in a civil partnership aka not married.

Take your time digesting the horror of it.

But anyway, however trivial, it’s not even a fair cop.

However, the BSB found Mr Harwood had in fact referred to his partner as “husband” and the two of them as “married” in previous WhatsApp messages with the accused.

There was another whopper about a racist nickname that never happened.

Mr Harwood was disbarred by an independent disciplinary tribunal last week and told to pay £5,500 in costs. The barrister watchdog said Mr Harwood failed to act with honesty and integrity, behaving in a way likely to diminish trust and confidence in the legal profession.

Mr Harwood is a long standing advocate of LGBT+ rights with campaign group Stonewall and was named the North [East] senior ‘champion of the year’ at the charity’s regional awards in 2018.

Ah, well there you go. He hung around with a bad crowd.

A BSB spokesman said: “Dishonestly and deliberately making false allegations to a regulator, especially in relation to serious matters such as discrimination and harassment, is wholly incompatible with membership of the Bar and the tribunal’s decision to disbar Mr Harwood reflects this.”

He currently works for a real estate agency based in Dubai. Real estate is not an industry that cares deeply about truth and honesty, so maybe he’ll be fine.

A win, for a change.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Science Based Medicine says what?

Remember back in 1997, the Pokemon seizure episode? Hundreds of children reported symptoms, including seizures, after watching a specific episode of the Pokemon cartoon that includes a sequence of flashing alternating red and blue lights. The press reported the episode at face value, attributing the reaction to a known phenomenon of photosensitive epilepsy. However, later reviews found that the majority of cases were not seizures, and in fact occurred during later viewings of the episode, after the story was widely reported.

Widely reported, eh? So we’re talking suggestibility here? Social contagion?

The episode is a great example of a mass hysteria – a story spreading widely in the public that triggers some form of psychological reaction. This could involve a report of a UFO sighting leading to many further reported sightings, or the belief that something toxic is making people in a building sick leading to many people reporting symptoms, even if ultimately there is no underlying cause.

Or………………………….

I don’t think I saw this one last October.

Traitors. Backstabbers. Thieves. Haters of women.

Why do they continue to call themselves a women’s law center? It’s grotesque. They’re not just standing by while men grab women’s sports, they’re actively helping.

It’s not “bullying” for women to have their own sports and keep men out of them. It’s just utterly disgusting for this “Women’s” organization to say it is. They’ll be saying women ask to be raped next.

It turns out that by “doing more” the Premier meant doing more to promote “family and domestic violence.”

This week, his @walabor government is trying to pass a law that will allow men to change their legal sex to female, and self-identify into female-only spaces, like bathrooms and refuges.

Here is the Premier on the day the Bill was introduced, pictured with WA Attorney General John Quigley, alongside the bill’s poster boy, Dani (Dean) Laidley.

Laidley is a man who identifies as a woman, who pleaded guilty to stalking his ex-girlfriend and breaching a family violence order, and who reportedly called her a “slut” and a “c*nt” and threatened to run her down in his car.

They are literally using a man who terrorised a woman, to promote a law that will be exploited by predatory men, during a time where there is national outrage about violence against women in this country. Well, where is the outrage now?

Laidley is a very large man who identifies as a woman. Nothing intimidating about him, no siree.

The kids are not all right.

Delegates at a National Union of Students (NUS) conference voted in a breakout meeting to stop recognising their Jewish members’ main representative body because of its support for Israel, the JC can reveal.

The non-binding vote against the continued affiliation of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) was carried overwhelmingly at the NUS conference in Blackpool last month during a session that began with calls to “dismantle” the Jewish state as a “racist project of colonialism”.

So in other words shun the Jews. We’ve been here before, chums.

At the Oxford protest camp, participants have been asked to agree that as a “colonised” people, Palestinians have the “right to resist against occupation”.

They have also been told they must support the Thawabit, a set of demands issued by the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s that would lead to the end of the Jewish state, including a right of return for six million Palestinian refugees and their descendants. One Jewish student was reportedly refused entry to the camp when he declined.

…

Unreported at the time, the move to expel the UJS took place at an NUS conference session on Palestine. It began with an invasion of the stage by a group of students claiming the only way to bring peace was to “dismantle the Israeli state” founded on “ethnic cleansing”, and that Zionism was a “racist ideology” and a “colonial project”.

One of the conference organisers then asked delegates whether the UJS should continue to be the “representative for Jewish students”.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Jewish student who was present told the JC: “The session had an incredibly hostile atmosphere, especially when delegates began to vilify the UJS. The proposal to disaffiliate from it was backed by a vast show of hands in support, which in a room of non-Jewish students felt isolating and wrong. Students with no skin in the game had decided that their place was to speak on matters impacting Jewish students.”

The skin in this particular game is all too literal.

Sigh.

Huh – for some extremely mysterious reason the jovial Fred “Freda” Wallace is in Twitter jail.

But not to worry! He’s using his other account, which is against the twitty rules.

Serious abuses eh? Remember Fred at that discussion facing the audience with his skirt up around his neck and his balls on display? Such a character.

Top climate scientists say we’re screwed.

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

All of which is unsurprising, given the rate at which we continue to do the things that roast the climate.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.

And those that have already struck are plenty bad enough.

Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

That can happen you know. Ruin the climate enough and you won’t be able to produce enough food any more.

The climate crisis is already causing profound damage to lives and livelihoods across the world, with only 1.2C (2.16F) of global heating on average over the past four years. Jesse Keenan, at Tulane University in the US, said: “This is just the beginning: buckle up.”

Nathalie Hilmi, at the Monaco Scientific Centre, who expects a rise of 3C, agreed: “We cannot stay below 1.5C.”

The experts said massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical. Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”

…

The experts were clear on why the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis. A lack of political will was cited by almost three-quarters of the respondents, while 60% also blamed vested corporate interests, such as the fossil fuel industry.

The thing about political will is that it has to be almost universal to be able to make a difference. If it’s not it just gets voted down. The two are inextricable – the refusal to stop blasting out carbon and the rejection of governments that try to slow (let alone stop) the carbon blasting.