National Organization for Women (aka NOW) on Facebook three days ago:

All women should have access to the gender-affirming care they want and need, including those who are incarcerated.

They linked to an article at The 19th with the headline

Incarcerated trans women won sweeping prison reforms in Colorado

Er. Meaning what? That men who claim to be women get to be in the women’s prisons?

Yes, of course that’s what they mean. This is NOW, remember. The W stands for women.

The state signed a legal agreement meant to make prisons safer for transgender women, who are often the targets of violence and harassment.

By “safer for transgender women” they of course mean much more dangerous for women. Did I mention that this is NOW?

The piece goes on to rejoice that

Now, Colorado’s prison system must provide the same gender-affirming health care covered by state Medicaid, and trans women must have the option to be housed with other women.

Which will mean, of course, that those “other women,” the ones who have the bad taste to be just boring old real women, will not have the option to be housed with other women. Men who claim to be women will, and women will not.

This is the National Organization for Women.

Transgender women across the country face life-threatening circumstances behind bars — and the majority of them are forced to live with men. 

Because they are men. But now that will change! Now these men can live with women, while the women cannot refuse to live with the men. What progress!!! Life-threatening circumstances behind bars will be women’s alone to enjoy.

Stupid AND bossy.

Just shut up. You’re not the boss of JKR, you’re not the boss of us.

That’s the bad manners part. Now the bad epistemology part.

Is that right? Is it basic decency to call people what they want to be called? What if they want to be called Hitler? How about Hannibal Lecter? Timothy McVeigh? Stalin?

Booby McBoobtits? Pussy Galore? Slutty Slutface? Katy Cunty?

Marc Lépine? OJ Simpson? Killer O. Women?

Just shut up. It’s basic decency.

The Telegraph taunts the French for being just as stupid as the British about the whole knowing the difference between women and men thing. The French ffs! Cue lascivious Maurice Chevalier-type laughter.

France is failing to learn from Britain’s transgender mistakes, two French feminists who received support from JK Rowling after receiving death threats have told The Telegraph.

Dora Moutot, 36, and Marguerite Stern, 33, have been thrust into the spotlight after releasing Transmania, their bestselling gender-critical book.

Or, to put it another way, Moutot and Stern have written a bestselling gender-critical book. Naturally some spotlight goes along with that, thrust or no thrust. Meanwhile: will you look at that now?! Gender-critical book is best seller! So ha!

Making simple assertions such as “women are Homo sapiens females and men are Homo sapiens males” has become impossible without coming under attack or being censored, they wrote.

After a first run of 15,000, its publisher has printed a further 20,000 copies. However, critics, including Paris’s Socialist town hall, have branded the pair “transphobic”. Both strenuously deny the accusation.

Of course they do. We all do. It’s not phobic to know the difference. Au contraire, without the difference, there wouldn’t be any humans to know the difference or be phobic. Our existence as a species depends on the difference.

While sales have surged, they say they have been censored by many French bookshops and attacked by Paris’s Socialist town hall, which pressured the capital’s billboard company JCDecaux to pull posters advertising the book.

“Sexual orientation and gender identity are not an ideology”, said Emmanuel Grégoire, Paris’s deputy mayor, for whom “the dissemination and promotion of such discourse runs counter to the values espoused by the city of Paris. Transphobia is a crime. Hatred of others has no place in our city. Paris must not be used as a platform for this intolerance.”

Eeeesh. Where is the famous French cleverness and wit? No, “transphobia” – aka knowing that men are not women – is not a crime, even if France has been stupid enough to make laws saying it is. It’s not a crime to know which people are women and which people are men. It’s not a crime and it’s not even a phobia. It’s not even hatred. And saying hatred of others has no place in Paris is just ludicrous, especially when doing so in order to stir up hatred of the people you’re talking about. You can’t rule a basic human emotion out of a city.

The pair have been sued for “incitement to hatred” by two LBGT+ rights groups, including SOS Homophobie, which has received €350,000 in funding from Paris and “has hijacked the struggle of women to submit to trans dogma”, they assert.

Ms Moutot has also been charged with “incitement to anti-trans hatred” after appearing on a chat show in 2022 beside France’s only trans local mayor, Marie Cau, who[m] she refused to call a woman and instead described as a “trans-feminine male”. She faces a four-month suspended sentence. Ms Cau has likened the authors to “Nazis”.

Oh yeah? Well I liken Mr Cau to “Nazis” so there nyah. It’s not “Nazi” to say that a man is not a woman, and by the way why is the Telegraph calling Mr Cau “Ms”?

On Sunday [May 5], chants calling for Ms Moutot to be thrown into the Rhine in the Strasbourg protest – one of several around France against “transphobia” – were picked up on by Ms Rowling.

“As someone whose death has been demanded on placards for exactly the same reason (knowing ‘woman’ isn’t a feeling in a man’s head), I send @‌doramoutot love and solidarity,” she tweeted to her 14.1 million followers.

…

The pair faced even more direct threats on Monday when they turned up to give a talk on their book at Pantheon-Assas University, in Paris. Protected by 15 vans of riot police upon arrival at the university, the pair were branded “Terfs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists) by protesters chanting: “A Terf, a bullet, social justice.”

Wait which people are the Nazis here?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Oh no she compared a man to a man.

Transition is literally about the self. It’s definitionally a self-centered phenomenon, based on an assumption of entitlement to not just spaces and benefits and language, but to the perceptions and thoughts of others.

Excellent points. But there’s still the issue of how to explain the acceptance of their pretense of womanhood by so many. How does the thinnest application of stereotypical “womanface” make up for the complete lack of the basic, and again stereotypical, markers of female socialization?

In World War Two, in the run-up to D-Day, the Allies used crude decoy trucks, tanks, and aircraft to fool the Germans into thinking that the imminent invasion of France would be launched across the Pas de Calais rather than in Normandy. These phantom units looked convincing from thousands of feet, and were good enough to pass for the real thing in high altitude photos, but would have fooled nobody on the battlefield.

Flash forward eighty years, and somehow, governments and corporations have surrendered to crude decoys of women. Institutions which have always known exactly who and what women were have now, seemingly, been taken in by lipstick and bad wigs, giving away women’s rights, with a wink and a nod, to any guy effecting a pout and a tilted head, even as they indulged in aggressively assertive behaviour that would have traditionally been condemned as “unwomanly”.

California to women: sucks to be you.

A California surf competition has been told it must allow a transgender woman to compete in the women’s division or it will be in violation of state law. The California Coastal Commission said surf competitions could “not discriminate based on gender”.

So surf competitions can have women’s divisions, but they have to let men compete in them. That means women will never be able to win their own competitions, because there will always be men eager to take advantage of the California Coastal Commission’s idiotic rule.

Why is it ok to discriminate on the basis of sex but not on the basis of gender?

Stupid question: so as to enable men to cheat women out of any hope of winning. Duh.

Next question: why don’t the men who do this shit hate themselves? How do they sleep at night?

Todd Messick, whose American Longboard Association organises the competition, had announced on 25 April that the contest would not allow transgender women to compete in the women’s division, saying he wanted to “offer an equal playing field for all athletes”. He told the BBC he was “surprised by the amount of anger” that the decision generated, but added: “What I found too is that there was a lot of people very appreciative of me speaking up.”

Cool that the California Coastal Commission has ruled against a level playing field. Cool for men; end of competition for women.

Lowerson – an Australian who previously won men’s events in her home country – said she had encountered mostly positive attitudes in the world of competitive surfing when she began living as a woman.

Stop with the lying, Beeb. He’s a man, gloating over his power to cheat women.

Since transitioning, she has contributed to the development of new guidelines adopted by Australia’s national governing body allowing transgender women surfers to compete in women’s events.

That is, he has contributed to the development of new guidelines adopted by AusSurfers like Hamilton who oppose transgender women participating in the women’s event argue that they have an unfair strength advantage.Surfers like Hamilton who oppose transgender women participating in the women’s event argue that they have an unfair strength advantage.tralia’s national governing body allowing male surfers to compete in women’s events, thus destroying the events for women. Stop with the oily flattering lies, Beeb. The guy’s a shithead.

Surfers like Hamilton who oppose transgender women participating in the women’s event argue that they have an unfair strength advantage.

Of course they fucking do. Everybody knows they do. The BBC knows they do, it just pretends not to.

The surfer said that despite the furore she would continue to enter women’s events. “I’ve inadvertently become a poster-child for trans women in surfing,” she said. “Not that I wanted to do that, but it just kind of happened.”

That is, the guy said that despite women’s objections he would continue to enter their events and ruin them for women. Why is the BBC licking his bum so fervently?

“Sport is about community,” she added. “It’s about sharing and having fun with other like-minded people, and the fact we’re losing sight of that is really sad.”

Oh fuck you. The fact that you’re cheating women out of fair competition is what’s sad, you pious thieving cheating piece of crap. And fuck you too for quoting him, Beeb.

Shock horror as woman compares a straight white bloke to a straight white bloke.

Author JK Rowling has been accused of cruelty for mocking the world’s first openly transgender football manager, comparing her to a ‘straight, white, middle-aged bloke’. The transgender referee is the first trans manager in the top five divisions of English Women’s football.

But he’s not a trans manager, he’s a trans man. He’s a real manager. The owners wouldn’t let him be a manager if he were a trans one, they need the real thing.

In the [tweet], JK Rowling said: When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.’ Social media users were quick to blast the author calling the author’s post ‘cruel’.

Cruel shmuel. A guy who’s brazen enough to pretend to be a woman is not going to cry himself to sleep because people know he’s a man.

Pride posted a photo of the referee with her famous pink whistle and a red card with her dark brown hair falling waves around her shoulders.

HAhahahahaha the Mail is trolling. Obvious wig is obvious.

Take some deep breaths before reading this from M. K. Fain at 4W:

Natalie* had been housed with Tremaine Carroll in a prison cell in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) for just a few days when she says he attacked her in the shower and raped her. According to charges filed by the Madera County District Attorney’s office – which includes enhancements because Tremaine has prior sex offenses – there was at least one other victim at the prison besides Natalie.

Before California passed SB 132, “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act”, the law already allowed males who had surgery, and were deemed to not pose a “management and security risk”, to request housing in women’s facilities. However, the law did not allow men with penises, or those who were considered too dangerous, to be housed with women, regardless of gender identity. That all changed when California passed SB 132, which went into effect in 2021.

So the California Senate in its wisdom passed a law making it legal for men who pose a threat to be housed with women in prison.

After serving nearly two decades of his sentence, Tremaine began identifying as a woman and seeking transfer to a women’s facility shortly before SB 132 went into effect. The law was intended to facilitate the transfer of male inmates like Tremaine, who had penises and did not meet security standards for “gender identity” based housing in the women’s prison.

The transfer to women’s prisons, I take it she means. Hey let’s pass a law facilitating men’s access to women whether the women like it or not! Let’s pass a law basically raping women in prison!! Look how enlightened we are!!!

SB 132 is being challenged by four women who have already experienced harm from this policy: Janine Chandler, Krystal Gonzales, Tomiekia Johnson, and Nadia Romero, who are represented by the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).

Tremaine is one of four intervenors in the lawsuit, represented by the ACLU of Southern California and other advocacy groups supporting the right of male prisoners to self-identify into women’s prisons. Even if they have ordinary male anatomy. Even if they are sex offenders.

AUUUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!

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………………………….