The trumpies lose one.

Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Democrats, was acquitted on Tuesday of a felony charge that he lied to the F.B.I. about having no client in 2016 when he shared a tip about possible connections between Donald J. Trump and Russia.

The jury returned the verdict after about six hours of deliberations split by a holiday weekend. It was a blow to the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration three years ago to scour the Trump-Russia investigation for any wrongdoing, and a vindication for Mr. Sussmann’s decision to fight the case before a jury.

Good. The more blows to Durham the better.

Yeah right.

If that were true he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing. If that were true he would go on competing against men, or give up competitive swimming. If it were true he would make very sure he did nothing whatever to take advantage of his True Self at the expense of women. If it were true he would be sharply aware that exploiting his advantage over women to cheat them out of medals and opportunities would be a terrible look. He would find the very idea painful, and flinch away from it. He would know he had no right to make the mix-up of his birth into the wrong body a problem for women. He would look at himself in the fucking mirror and say no way and that would be the end of it.

What kind of difference though?

The Crown Prosecution Service seems like a branch of government that should be particularly unpolitical. Sophie Cook is a man who identifies as a woman.

That sounds benign, but male trans activists tend to have a particular idea of EDI – equality, diversity, inclusion – that is very far from unpolitical…or uncontroversial or uninsulting to women. In other words I think putting a man who calls himself a woman in charge of helping to embed EDI at the Crown Prosecution Service is a punch in the face to women.

Women aren’t included yet. Women don’t have equality yet. Why put a man in this job rather than a woman? Why, especially, put a man who pretends to be a woman in this job? It’s a double insult – passing over women in the usual way, and then giving the job to a pretend-woman who is in thrall to an ideology that treats women like a costume? Why not give the job to, say, Allison Bailey instead?

Updating to add what I didn’t notice – he has replies turned off. Yay, Speak Out Champion, helping with incloosion and diversitee, and doesn’t want to hear from the peasantry.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Claiming to believe.

It’s the choice to believe this, coupled with the smug, arrogant forcing of that belief on others that is so bafflingly infuriating. Creasy wouldn’t be so condescendingly flippant if she wasn’t backed up by a virtual army (and actual police forces) ready, willing, and able to punish wrongthink. Fortunately, more and more people are willing to speak out against this insanity. Sometimes just repeating what transactivists say (i.e. Ricky Gervais) is enough to show just how insane the “required” beliefs and compelled speech are.

To the extent that trans activism has operated behind the scenes to influence laws and regulations outside the bounds of open, democratic debate, it really is an “elite” movement. It really is a conspiracy. And, it might just be the reaction of the great, “unwashed masses” of people outside the rarified, indoctrinated bubble of social media that helps to turn this around.

I’ve hated the fact that some on the Left have handed the Right this big pink and blue cudgel with which to beat us. While branding any disagreement or criticism as fascist bigotry, they are helping actual fascist bigots. I’ve hated the fact that media outlets have destroyed their credibility in the course of pandering to gender ideology. Their dishonest reporting on the everything from TiMs in women’s sports, male rapists “identifying” their way into women’s prisons, and the gutting of single sex spaces for women represents actual, unironic, no scare-quotes fake news. And all of this in the midst of an accelerating climate disaster, an ongoing pandemic, and a war in Europe. Bravo, you stupid, selfish assholes. (Slow clap). They should all be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps, someday, some of them will be.

Today is the day we learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Bill Gates grows fake meat in a peach tree dish.

“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said.

“They want to know when you are eating, they want to know if you are eating a cheeseburger which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”

She’s both – stupid and ignorant. Win-win.

Jo Bartosch on Stella Creasy’s confused ramblings of the past few days:

[I]n an interview for the Telegraph on Friday, Creasy made her contempt for women’s rights campaigners clear. She claimed to believe that ‘some women were born with penises’ and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’. In the interview she complained about being a victim of sexism while feigning frustration and bemusement that some women, like JK Rowling, continue to hold on to the belief that biological sex matters.

Funny thing: it’s actually sexist to express frustration that Rowling, or any woman, continues to be aware that biological sex matters.

At this point, Creasy had two choices: she could eat a slice of humble pie and slink off to do some learning, or she could persist and await the inevitable serving of her own bruised arse. Predictably, she chose the latter and what followed was a less-than-edifying online temper tantrum, during which she tried to cast those asking legitimate questions as Twitter trolls.

But wait, it got even worse! There was the part about saying she’d spoken to all the women’s groups, and the women’s groups saying no she hadn’t, nope, no, not us, no, never met her.

She has nowhere left to go but clown shoes.

Originally a comment by Rob on Collective frustration.

Winning at sport is a hugely compelling motive for people who are into sports. Even if there’s no money involved, even if there are no scholarships at stake.

I can certainly attest to that. While I played some sport at high school, it was not a focus for my life, but as an adult I took up a high risk aviation sport and discovered that I was very highly competitive – even though the most recognition that got you was a ‘nice flight’ from peers. Competitive enough that I’ve more than once put my life on the line, which once back on the ground was clearly stupid, but in the air seemed like a carefully reasoned and absolutely proper thing to do.

Athletes in whatever sport aim to be the best they can, and preferably to win. I see that in my partner and her multi-sport friends. None of them is ever going to win a major contest, but they devote enormous resources in both time and money to maintaining and incrementally extending their performance. And this is middle aged women doing it for kicks, not people chasing life changing scholarships, promotional deals, and representative team slots.

I remember a couple of decades ago a large number of college and potential Olympic athletes were anonymously polled whether they would use a performance enhancing drug that would guarantee an Olympic win, but lead to a dramatically shortened lifespan. An eye popping number (I recall it as being between 20-30%) said they would.

I don’t have any idea what goes on in William/Lia’s head, but I have no problem in believing that winning and fame at any cost is lurking in there somewhere.

Government and heads of schools differ over the “What To Do about students who say they are trans” problem.

School leaders have described advice from the attorney general, Suella Braverman, to “take a much firmer line” with pupils who identify as transgender as “unhelpful” and potentially damaging to children’s mental health.

In an interview last week, Braverman said schools in England do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender and are under no legal obligation to address them by a new pronoun, or let them wear a different uniform.

They shouldn’t have to or be under a legal obligation to, it seems to me. Schools aren’t required to play along with all students’ fantasies, after all, so why is this one fantasy singled out for Careful Handling? Especially when the basic job of schools is to educate, and that requires not lying.

Headteachers, however, who are increasingly having to navigate their way through these issues, fear that not listening to young people “would risk damaging mental health” at a time when pupils have already suffered during the pandemic.

Maybe it would, but here’s the thing: maybe so would “listening to young people” in the sense of agreeing that they are the other sex. Maybe both are risky. Maybe both are risky but one is more risky than the other and it’s not clear which one. Maybe the listening and agreeing approach is more risky over time – a palliative now but the source of disaster in two or five or ten years. It’s really not the case that humoring the belief system is obviously and clearly and reliably the safer option.

The attorney general told the Times that under the law, under-18s cannot legally change their gender, so schools are entitled to treat all children by the gender of their birth. She also said some teachers were effectively encouraging gender dysphoria by taking an “unquestioning” attitude.

This prompted criticism from Caroline Derbyshire, the executive head at Saffron Walden county high school, leader of the Saffron academy trust and chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable – a non-party political headteachers’ group operating as a thinktank.

She said: “No good can come of any young person being forced to adopt a gender they feel miserable with. It certainly won’t improve their learning.”

How about letting the young persons dress (and cut their hair) however they like, and just set aside all the My Gender Is stuff until later. (It’s hard to know what “adopt a gender” even means. A girl isn’t “adopting a gender” if teachers continue to call her “her.”

“Schools do all kinds of things to safeguard the welfare of young people that they are not ‘bound’ to do by law,” she went on. “I am a believer in rules and following them, but I think that not listening to young people and their parents on this quite particular and personal matter would risk damaging mental health.”

But what if agreeing to young people’s fanciful and socially-induced ideas about their Magic Gender would also risk damaging their mental health? Which, if you think about it, seems pretty damn likely.

Some schools have already adapted their uniform codes to remove distinctions between boys’ and girls’ schoolwear in an effort to accommodate transgender students. Dysphoric or transgender pupils at Brighton College, a private day and boarding school that takes pupils from reception to sixth form, can choose between wearing a traditional blazer, tie and trousers, or skirt and bolero jacket.

That. Do that. Relax about the clothes, and then stop thinking about them. Don’t draw wild conclusions about teenagers being the other sex because they don’t like the clothes they’re made to wear. In fact why can’t they wear trousers and a bolero jacket? Why can’t they wear trousers and a turtleneck? Why make them wear ties for god’s sake? They’re not working in office towers. Loosen up on the clothes, and leave “gender” for much later, when it’s someone else’s problem.

Even apparent adults do it. Roger Pielke seems like an adult:

Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001. He is the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics. Roger’s research focuses on science, innovation and politics. In 2011 he began to write and research on the governance of sports organizations, including FIFA and the NCAA. Roger holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science, all from the University of Colorado. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. Roger also received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Impressive. Serious. And yet…

Updating: Naif informs us Pilke’s a climate change denier.

Holly Lawford-Smith says unions shouldn’t persecute women. Seems sensible.

THE Universities and College Union (UCU), which represents academic and related staff in UK universities, meets for its annual Congress this week.

…

UCU has chosen to include in the agenda a highly divisive motion celebrating a lesbian feminist academic losing her job after a relentless campaign of bullying and harassment.

Anyone seeing the images of masked activists on campus demanding the sacking of Professor Kathleen Stock must have wondered how political debate on women’s rights could sink so low.

The UCU Sussex branch notably failed to offer any solidarity to Stock, who had been a loyal member for decades.

The failure to support her right to participate in public policy debates about women’s rights sets a precedent that can only damage the labour movement.

…

Motion 38 is wilfully divisive. It depicts as “transphobes” anyone who holds “gender critical views,” which means the view that sex matters in a range of contexts, from sports to single-sex service provision.

The motion denounces anyone who disagrees with the erasure of sex as a legal category, and anyone who criticises the corporate lobby group Stonewall, or opposes “affirmation-only” therapeutic approaches for children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria.

Wouldn’t you think we’ve had enough of denunciations?

Motion 38, “Defend trans and non-binary people’s rights,” reads:

Congress notes:

1. Government hostility towards Stonewall for its support for trans rights, including disaffiliations by the BBC and government bodies;

2. Government’s refusal to implement Self-ID in the Gender Recognition Act;

3. Government’s failure to recognise non-binary as a legitimate identity;

Wait a second. What is a legitimate identity? What does it mean for a government to “recognize” anything as a “legitimate identity”? What other “identities” does government “recognize”?

That doesn’t sound like government language to me at all. What business is it of governments what “identities” people have? The word can mean anything and nothing – by meaning anything it ends up meaning nothing. And then add “non-binary” to the mix and you have meaningless nonsense cubed.

4. The EHRC’s [Equality and Human Rights Commission] attempts to delay anti-conversion therapy legislation for trans people and undermine the Scottish government introducing Self-ID;

5. The Tories’ anti-conversion therapy Bill that dangerously presents equivalence between oppressive anti-trans conversion therapy and pro-trans affirmative intervention.

Congress:

a. Congratulates Sussex University UCU for their solidarity with student protests against ‘gender critical’ views;

Ohhhh that’s ugly. That is ugly. They’re wanting the union to congratulate the Sussex branch for bullying and terrorizing Kathleen Stock out of her job there, because they hate her view that men can’t literally become women.

b. Welcomes the founding of the Feminist Gender Equality Network, committed to opposing transphobia on campuses and more broadly;

c. Resolves to oppose ‘gender critics’ and transphobes promoting ‘gender ideology’ and trying to undermine trans and non-binary people’s rights and promote divisions between women’s and trans people’s rights.

They want the university union to bully and punish women who don’t think men can become women. They might as well go full Vatican.

Sonia Sodha on the “cotton ceiling” issue:

If policing people’s sexual preferences through the lens of race feels deeply unpleasant, when it comes to sexual orientation, it is wrong and dangerous. Yet we are in the extraordinary position where lesbians are now being told by some activists that it is bigoted for them to say they are not attracted to trans women who are biologically male. This is not a fringe belief: the chief executive of LGBT charity Stonewall recently said in relation to a BBC story about lesbians feeling pressured into dropping their boundaries: “Sexuality is personal… but if, when dating, you are writing off entire groups like people of colour or trans people, it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction.”

What are “entire groups”? How do we define them? Are trans people the same kind of “entire group” as people of color? How about poodle-havers? Quiche eaters? Fans of Antiques Roadshow? How do we know when we’re “writing off entire groups of people” when there are so many possible groups to consider?

Last week, a QC on the Bar Council’s ethics committee defended the concept of overcoming the “cotton ceiling” – the offensive idea that a lesbian’s lack of desire for trans women is rooted in bigotry rather than their same-sex attraction – and compared it to initiatives to promote racial integration in post-apartheid South Africa.

Which outraged not only because it compares lesbians to supporters of apartheid, but also because it compares people who call themselves trans to victims of apartheid. It’s hard to know which is more disgusting.

Cotton ceiling is a reference to lesbians’ knickers. It is a riff on the glass ceiling and posits that just as the professional advancement of women is hindered by sexism, the sexual acceptance of trans women is impeded by the “transphobia” of lesbians attracted only to females. It was Cathryn McGahey QC, a witness for Garden Court, who drew the analogy between this workshop exploring how “ideologies of transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire” and South African racial integration and who implied it was possible in a non-coercive way to persuade a same-sex attracted lesbian she might want to have sex with a trans woman.

And on what planet would this “non-coercive way” be found? Certainly not this one. Trans “activism” is the most coercive “social justice” movement I’ve ever witnessed.

Stella Creasy continues to disappoint (and that’s putting it politely).

But of course she didn’t meet “with a number of women involved in all your groups.” There are no such women. The People’s Front of Judea part is insulting. She’s being dismissive and contemptuous and hostile…to feminist women, when she claims to be a feminist woman herself.

Would she like to hear from some gender critical women now?

No.

It seems she once held an online workshop along with Stonewall on…wait for it…misogyny. Yes, let’s bring Stonewall in to inform us about misogyny. Women who argued were booted out.

There is to be no arguing with Stonewall. If Stonewall explains misogyny to women then women are to shut up and listen. They’re not there to argue with Stonewall. Stonewall is never wrong.

For Women Scotland weren’t thrown out, but that’s because they were never allowed in. What do women know about misogyny?! It’s Stonewall that’s the expert! God knows they’ve had a lot of practice.

More genius thinking from Billy Bragg.

That’s not about trans women, it’s about violence against women!

How the hell does he think he knows the difference? How does he think anyone does? How does he think women do?

We can’t. That’s the point. That’s why all this self-ID nonsense is such bullshit – because it’s an open door the size of Texas for predators. There doesn’t happen to be any Magic Filter Device that turns purple when a “male predator” disguised as an innocent Trans Lady enters the women’s toilets. There’s nothing. We can’t tell, and we don’t want to be forced to have to try to tell. It shouldn’t be dumped on us. The end.

Piers Morgan says he did not either censor Kate Smurthwaite on his tv chat show. Kate says he did.

On the list of alleged subjects to avoid was Morgan’s “vindictive obsession” with Meghan Markle, according to comedian and political activist Kate Smurthwaite…Smurthwaite continued: “They didn’t want me to get ‘too personal’ with Morgan. They didn’t want me criticising or seeking to explain his ‘vindictive obsession’ with [Meghan Markle].

“The main thing they didn’t want me to say was: ‘You know that no matter how many hours you spend slagging her off, she’s still not going to shag you?’. True. Funny. Insightful. What’s not to love?”

Not a thing.

Stella Creasy says she met with the groups; the groups say we’d be happy to meet with you Stella, just name the date.

Oh she has done so?

Maybe it was trans sitting down with? Identifying as sitting down with?

Updating to add another:

And another.

And one more so that’s ALL of them.

Another one.

The theft of Title IX:

Equality for women in sports followed decades of struggle. Fifty years ago, President Nixon signed Title IX, which banned discrimination in higher education. This opened doors to previously all-male classes and led to many more female teams and scholarships.

The result is a massive increase in women’s sports.

Some trans activists are challenging aspects of Title IX, specifically its implicit acknowledgment of biological difference. And supporters, not least the Biden administration, say transgender girls should be permitted on girls’ sports teams. They have pushed for a federal Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, education, employment and credit.

Only that’s not equality, it’s something else. Forced endorsement of other people’s fantasies, combined with a complete takeover of women’s sports by men calling themselves trans women.

The legal rationale for keeping women’s sports sex-segregated would fall away. “We are bringing a male body into a female sport,” Dr. Coleman said. “Once you cross that line, there’s no more rationale for women’s sport.”

Some trans activists and academics welcome that. Nathan Palmer, a lecturer at Georgia Southern University, wrote in Sociology in Focus: “Nature loves diversity, but humans love simplicity. Separating males from females may be socially useful, but when the dividing lines limit and oppress, we have to acknowledge they are social constructions.”

Limit and oppress whom?

If they succeed in putting an end to women’s sports there will be very few women in sports. Apparently that’s the goal.

Today in the NY Times:

The women on the Princeton University swim team spoke of collective frustration edging into anger. They had watched Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who swam for the University of Pennsylvania, win meet after meet, beating Olympians and breaking records.

So we’re going to talk about this now? In the Times? At long last?

The team met with the executive director of the Ivy League athletic conference, Robin Harris. They enumerated the physical advantages males have. Harris said she wasn’t going to change the rules in the middle of the season.

The battle over whether to let female transgender athletes compete in women’s elite sports has reached an angry pitch, a collision of competing principles: The hard-fought-for right of women to compete in high school, college and pro sports versus a swelling movement to allow transgender athletes to compete in their chosen gender identities.

It’s all about the swelling, isn’t it.

Sebastian Coe, the Olympic champion runner and head of the International Association of Athletics Federations, which governs world track, speaks of biological difference as inescapable. “Gender,” he said recently, “cannot trump biology.”

The American Civil Liberties Union offers a counterpoint. “It’s not a women’s sport if it doesn’t include ALL women athletes,” the group tweeted. “Lia Thomas belongs on the Penn swimming and diving team.”

The ACLU doesn’t “offer a counterpoint,” it insults us with lies. ALL women athletes are women athletes; Lia Thomas is a man. He – obviously – does not belong on any women’s team.

Ms. Thomas herself has chosen silence. In March, after winning the 500-yard freestyle in the N.C.A.A. women’s championship in Atlanta, she skipped a news conference. She has of late spoken only to Sports Illustrated, saying, “I’m not a man. I’m a woman, so I belong on the women’s team.”

It’s a harmful mistake to refer to Thomas as Ms. Thomas and she. It’s doubly true in his case, because it’s not just that trans women are men, it’s also that it seems very unlikely that Thomas is even a trans woman. It seems much more likely that he’s just cheating, without any illusions about himself.

Even nomenclature is contentious.

Well of course it is – nomenclature is all there is. It’s the most purely linguistic form of “activism” ever seen.

Descriptive phrases such as “biological woman” and “biological man” might be seen as central to discussing differences in performance. Many trans rights activists say such expressions are transphobic and insist biology and gender identity are largely social constructs.

Gender identity is of course social, and stupid besides. Biology, no.

So the Telegraph gets to report that Labour doesn’t know what women are.

Stella Creasy was wrong to assert that a woman can have a penis, a Labour minister has said, as the party continues to flounder with the issue of defining womanhood. 

What oh what is a woman? We just don’t know…except when we want to know which people to catcall on the street, which people to pay less, which people to forget to promote, which people to rape, which people to boss around.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour Party chairman, was asked on Sunday if she agreed with Stella Creasy, her fellow Labour MP, that a woman can be someone who was born with a penis. 

Ms Dodds, who is also shadow women and equalities secretary, said: “No, I don’t agree with her. Biological females obviously aren’t. Of course, there are also trans women who have made a transition in their gender, but sex is not the same as gender. Obviously, I have a huge amount of respect for my colleague Stella Creasy, she has done a huge amount of campaigning for women – but on that issue around biology, I do have a different opinion.”

The Telegraph points out that this is a shift from what Dodds was saying just a couple of months ago.

This “gender” ploy is pretty absurd, really. It’s like saying adult humans can put on costumes and pretend to be Eleanor Roosevelt or Shakespeare or Rosa Parks or Vladimir Putin and we will all say they’re not literally those people but they are pretend-those people so we’ll be polite and play along with their game. We don’t do that. We don’t play let’s pretend games with adults…with the single large but clearly demarcated exception of acting, in the sense of movie and theater acting. We do the willing suspension of disbelief thing as audiences at plays and movies, but we don’t carry it on beyond that. Why is “gender” so different? Why is the word “trans” so magical?

Stella Creasy continues to…do whatever this is.

How can “we” work on prison reform when Creasy insists that men are women if they say they are? That claim has major implications for how prisons operate, so no, we can’t work “together,” because we have a fundamental disagreement on who and what women are.

There needs to be some honesty here??? From Julie and the rest of us disobedient women???? We’ve BEEN honest, over and over again every day. We’re not the ones who pretend that people’s fantasies about themselves are reality while the blunt physical facts about them are airy nothings.

The kicker: I’ve learned from the back and forth that Creasy benefited from being on an All Women Shortlist: she got elected. Talk about pulling the ladder up after you.