A random accident?

Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood building was engulfed in flames early Friday morning and is a total loss.

Fire crews were called about 6:40 a.m. as heavy smoke was coming out of the back of the structure, Assistant Chief Brent Seymour said. There were no injuries to report. The building was being renovated and the clinic had not been used in some time.

Seymour said it’s too early in the investigation, with parts of the building unsafe to enter, to be able to say what caused the fire.

We can make some educated guesses though.

In January 2021 someone fired a shotgun at the doors of this Planned Parenthood clinic, shattering the glass and lodging bullet holes in the reception area. At the time of the shooting, the clinic was closed and unoccupied.

Pro-life eh?

My god, this guy!

Shrill. You couldn’t make it up.

Oh sir, please sir, sorry sir, we’re sorry our shrill squeaking voices hurt your ears, but you see sir, we’re made that way sir, we have higher voices than you strong wise large better people do, which is why we have such a struggle to get people like you to listen to us, and why we don’t want to share all of our spaces and prizes and protections with the deep-voiced kind of people. We’re afraid they might assault us you see sir, because some of you have been known to do that sir. It’s probably because of our shrill voices sir, for which again we apologize sir, but we can’t help it sir.

I wouldn’t call it reflection, exactly.

He doesn’t reflect on it so much as explain why he was right about it.

He tells us he found what Kellie Jay said deeply uncomfortable, and compared it to “the stereotypes and tropes that were used twenty years ago to describe gay people and to um not allow them the human rights that thankfully we have in today’s world” – about what’s taught in school, and predators, “it was all being repeated.”

And he thinks it’s the same thing, exactly the same thing, as we’re all supposed to think, as we’ve been coached to think by the addition of the T to the LGB. But it’s not the same thing. And he’s too uninformed to know that, so he just went with his gut, and talked a lot of ignorant dreck. And now he’s telling us how right he was, in defiance of our awareness of how completely wrong and uninformed he was.

After that he starts burbling about treating minorities badly, which allows him to ignore the fact that women are treated badly, because hey after all we’re not a minority, we’re just treated badly, and you have to tick both boxes for it to count. Yes, Mister Max, some minorities are treated badly, and so are women. (Not all minorities. Not billionaires. Not royals. Not clueless male radio hosts.) He never does grasp that point though. He mentions it, but as a grievance, not as a thing he needs to take into account.

Points still being missed.

It doesn’t have to be a trans person, it doesn’t have to be a man who identifies as a woman, it can be a man who has no delusions about being a woman at all but uses the new rules to prey on women.

He really has no idea what he’s talking about but he’s busily talking about it anyway. Oh for the confidence of a mediocre man…

I have to say, full marks to Kellie-Jay for that interview. Starred double first. I have different political views from hers in general, but she’s exactly what’s needed for the James Maxes of the world. She’s direct and calm and decisive, and men like him can’t stand that. He interprets it as “she is evil” when all she’s doing is telling the truth, very crisply. Her performance and his freakout over it are a master class in The Marriage of Trans Dogma and Misogyny. He would take her presentation for granted in a man, but in a woman it looks like creepy supernatural power.

James Max is responding to people on Twitter and with each response he underlines how clueless he is about the issue and how contemptuous he is toward women. He must be peaking people in their hundreds and thousands.

Baroness Nicholson has asked to do an interview with him. It must happen.

No YOU’RE the baddy.

“The hostile argument KJ deployed” – except of course she didn’t. This is an absolutely textbook example of women being framed as aggressive and evil for knowing what they’re talking about and saying it without simpers or apologies or disclaimers. He would take her manner for granted in a man, but when a woman does it, to him, he can feel his testicles shrinking as if he’d jumped into a freezing pond.

He’s doing us a service, in a way, putting it all out there so shamelessly.

This guy – honestly.

To be fair, he was somewhat taken aback by the fact that KJ is sharper than he is and knows a lot more about the subject than he does and was not shy or deferential about it. In short he reacted to her the way your average clueless sexist bloke does react to an uppity woman who is cleverer than he is.

Kellie-Jay eviscerates that smug conceited prat in the Spectator:

‘I just get the impression she hates men’, said a wound-licking James Max, on TalkRADIO, after he interviewed me on Wednesday. It’s a familiar accusation from those who fail to drum up rational arguments for the destruction of women’s rights.

He got that impression because she’s a great deal more intelligent than he is, not to mention skilled at arguing on live radio. Naturally a woman who makes him look stupid by being cleverer than he is must hate men.

The tone was set when Max tried to link the views of J.K. Rowling to the notorious outing of George Jamieson by the Sunday People in 1961 — four years before to Rowling’s birth. He claimed that Rowling’s recognition of women as adult human females contributed to the suffering of trans people.

It seems too obvious to point out, but Max is talking about men who claim to be women, rather than women who claim to be men. That is the nature of most of the conversations I ever have on this topic. Be in no doubt, this is a men’s rights movement.

James Max did an outstanding job of underlining that.

Unfortunately, as I tried to point out, we have yet to be able to tell which men are the bad ones — and until we do, we must ensure the best possible safeguarding for women by keeping all of them out. Men who do not wish to harm women, or cause us any discomfort, are okay with staying out of our spaces.

For making that point, Max called me hateful, disturbing and unpleasant. I am not any of those things, but I am also not afraid of these tactics to bully me into surrendering the rights women before me fought for. I am not fearful for any legal repercussions either. I am fearful for women across the country who can no longer guarantee a female-only rape crisis centre, a female-only domestic violence shelter, for the girls in schools losing their right to female-only changing rooms and toilets, who are threatened with accusations of unkindness for feeling uncomfortable. I am fearful of the great untruth being fed to us through our media, government and institutions.

Via puffed-up mediocrities like James Max.

Look behind the curtain, see how they plot the manipulation.

It’s all about them there “effective opening values” – which turn out to be the inevitable banal “freedom to be ourselves” – which in fact is not any kind of progressive (let alone left-wing) value at all but sheer narcissism.

Also, it’s funny how they say “a race class gender narrative” but then go on to ignore class entirely…as they always always do. Class just doesn’t have the glamour of race n gender, and it doesn’t offer the same opportunities for bullying women. Mention class at the outset and then ignore it entirely in the substance.

James Max is still digging.

What is the “much darker truth”? He doesn’t say. I guess we’re supposed to surmise that she wants them all killed, or something. Very respectable way to argue.

So he thinks the “physicalities” don’t exist? So, what, then? We’re all just spirits?

Really not a clever man.

Ghislaine Maxwell found guilty on all but one of the charges.

Maxwell has been found guilty on five of six counts – including the most serious charge, that of sex trafficking of a minor.

This carries a possible 40-year sentence, which means the 60-year-old could spend the rest of her life behind bars.

This charge relates to the testimony of Carolyn, who testified about being paid for sex during visits to Epstein’s Florida home between 2001 and 2004.

At the time of her first visit, she was just 14.

Maybe she should decide she’s a man.

Stupid person makes bid for glory, fails utterly.

Oooooh brave and daring, saying he’s all for trans rights, as if that’s The Unpopular View in his circles.

Vanity aside, what does he mean? Does he think feminists who don’t agree that men can be women are not “behind trans rights”? This is where the stupid comes in. We’re not opposed to trans rights, unless they are some special new arbitrary dogmatic set of rights that aren’t really rights at all…but of course that’s exactly what he means. He thinks there are “trans rights” that make it fine for men to compete against women in sports, and take jobs reserved for women, and win awards intended for women, and all the rest of it. None of that is a right.

And I don’t believe his claim that he’s “heard all the arguments,” because if he had his tweet wouldn’t be so stupid.

And nobody is arguing that equality “doesn’t apply” to trans people, whatever he thinks he means by that. Nobody thinks trans people shouldn’t have rights, nobody thinks they shouldn’t have equality; the issue is novel “rights” to shove women aside and take everything we have struggled for.

Of course he won’t be answering questions, he’s clearly not bright enough to.

Another front in the war:

Also, why would sex offenders not do that? Why would they ignore a golden opportunity like that? Being sex offenders and all? It takes deep enthrallment to an ideology to think otherwise.

And, again, why wouldn’t they?

So a couple of days later we get:

Another oh so confident man telling a woman how stupid she is for not believing that sex is all in the mind.

The end? Hardly.

What does it mean to “feel they are one sex”? Nothing, really. Do we “feel we are” humans? Primates? Mammals? Do we feel we are alive now at the end of 2021 as opposed to 1921? Do we feel we live on planet earth as opposed to Mars?

It’s not about what we “feel,” it’s about some basic facts that don’t depend on our thoughts and feelings. We’re free to feel or imagine or pretend we’re all kinds of things – an infinite array of things – but that doesn’t translate to an obligation for everyone else to agree with what we imagine.

And when it’s men trying to usurp the state of being female from people who are female, we really are not obliged to agree.

The beginning.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Verification.

when a trans person says they are male or female, that is what they are and that is how we should treat them. It is damaging to them to say otherwise.’

If the second statement is removed, would that change the truth of the first statement? In other words, is “a transwoman is female and a transman is male” dependent on “ trans people are damaged when other people say otherwise?”

If so, then the damaged trans people would be conclusive evidence of their sex, in the same way the fact that people believing in God is conclusive evidence that God does, in fact, exist. Or, a closer argument: because religious people need their belief in God to buttress their morality and provide comfort and meaning, then 1.) atheists should keep their views to themselves and 2.) God exists.

If a TRA thinks those Arguments for the Existence of God are crap, then they’re going to have to separate the presumed neediness and fragility of trans people from the question of what sex those transpeople are. They’re going to have to make a scientific case for something which did not come out of scientific investigation, but emerged from the social justice concern over protecting vulnerable people — with the science then playing catch-up to the moral mandate.

It doesn’t work. And they know it doesn’t work because they keep going back to the Argument from Damage.

My god this subject brings out the stupid in people.

Explains? Explains?? Explains what? That’s not an explanation, it’s a stupid and dogmatic assertion.

I’m pretty sure we all used to know that we don’t have to believe whatever people tell us about themselves, because some people lie sometimes.

That becomes all the more the case when what the people are telling us is patently not true. If someone says to me “I am a moose” I’m not required to believe it, not as a matter of good manners and certainly not as a matter of epistemology. A moose wouldn’t be able to say “I am a moose.” A moose doesn’t even know she’s a moose. We’re allowed to keep these things in mind, and form our beliefs accordingly.

What a display.

The vastly condescending James Max tells Kellie-Jay that “somebody can be born in somebody else’s body” and two minutes later that “you can never be in the brain and body of somebody else.” Well which is it?

He reminds me of Jolyon. The smugness twins.

This is where the stapling on of the T to the LGB has been such a destructive mistake:

Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs

Hm, I thought when I saw the headline. Are we talking about LGB, or T?

This fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

So far so good. GSAs are a good thing, and gay kids need support.

Speaking about recruiting students, Baraki said, “When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork. One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Uh.

Maybe they meant “recruitment” that little bit too literally.

Shortly after the October conference, a surreptitious recording of the presentation was handed to a conservative writer known for asserting that transgender adolescents are part of a dangerous “craze.”

Guess who that “conservative writer” turns out to be. Abigail Shrier, of course. Danielle Echeverria at the Chronicle seems very confident that teenagers thinking they’re trans isn’t part of a dangerous craze. So there’s no danger at all in puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, amputation of healthy breasts or penises?

She published a story Nov. 18 headlined “How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids,” criticizing Caldeira and Baraki for actions they had seen as proper: keeping club members’ identities confidential from parents and finding a couple of potential members by viewing their online activity in class.

The trouble here is that the two are different. Suppose some teenagers are unsure about whether they’re gay or straight, and they lean toward gay and join a gay-straight alliance and later change their minds. What happens? They change their minds, that’s all. They haven’t had their breasts cut off, they haven’t disrupted their puberty with blockers, they haven’t set themselves up for health problems in adulthood. In short it’s not a problem. It may be an emotional upheaval but then adolescence is that.

Needless to say the same is not true if teenagers think they might be trans and join some school LGBTQ+ club or group or union, and proceed to the medicalization stage. Then change their minds later.

But the Chronicle wants us to think it’s all the same basic thing, L and G and T, and it’s only evil people who worry about teenagers being nudged (or shoved) into thinking they’re trans.

So the club was suspended and the teachers were placed on leave.

The controversy has roiled the small district south of Salinas and east of Monterey, alarming advocates for LGBTQ youth and marking one of a number of recent incidents in which influential conservative voices have forced the hands of local officials.

But this isn’t about left v right in any clear-cut bright lines way. Supporting lesbian and gay teenagers is one thing, and rushing teenagers into thinking they’re trans is another. That kid could have Googled Trans Day of Visibility out of curiosity or any number of other non-transitioning reasons.

On the other hand I sure as hell don’t want schools closing down gay-straight alliances or any other efforts to support and protect lesbian and gay students. It’s complicated.

Trans journalist group tells us what we can say about trans people:

A trans journalist group which advises media on how to cover trans-related topics has published a style guide encouraging media outlets to “kill” stories on trans criminals, censor detransitioners, and erase all references to biological sex.

Next up: rapist journalist group publishes a style guide encouraging media outlets to call rapists “heroes” or “rapscallions.”

And by “accurately” they mean…not accurately.

In one section, titled “guidance on covering anti-trans hate and disinformation,” the TJA encourages media to avoid coverage of certain topics, including detransitioning – wherein a person ceases a gender transition – which the TJA states have been “overemphasized” as well as “sensationalized and given a disproportionate amount of weight in the media.”

In sharp contrast to trans activism, which doesn’t get any weight in the media at all, right?

The association also encourages media to “avoid giving a platform to TERFs or so-called “gender critical feminists,” going on to state that “when reporting on fringe groups and hate groups, instead of calling them TERFs or gender critical feminists, use language like transphobic, anti-trans, etc. Avoid referring to anyone as a feminist when they are spreading anti-trans hate.”

Silence feminists; lie about trans people. Sterling advice for purported journalists.

More egregiously, the TJA encourages writers to avoid any negative press directed at criminals who are transgender. In the section titled “guidance on respectful coverage,” the TJA states that journalists should note the consequences for a trans person to have their criminal history disclosed, writing “publishing such information is rarely in the public interest,” and that journalists should “Consider killing a story if [they] have no alternatives.”

Well we wouldn’t want people to know that some men who identify as women are rapists, would we.

Despite rejecting the concept of biological sex, the TJA also discourages writers from marking transgender people as ‘identifying as’ whatever gender they do, stating: “This language questions a trans person’s gender by calling it an “identity” instead of just stating someone is non-binary or a man/woman.” In all cases, the guide seems to steer journalists towards simply never identifying a person as being trans save for instances it is overtly positive coverage.

Awesome Trans Woman Breaks Glass Ceiling type of thing.

In March, Open University Philosophy of Sport Senior Lecturer Jon Pike had one of his articles on trans-identified males in women’s sports edited without his consent to abide by the TJA style guide.

Without his consent or knowledge.

It’s a massively important distinction.

It doesn’t seem the least bit trivial.

Worried about losing all your brain cells?