Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Because Feminism is Hated.

The philosophy professor said that she will now speak from outside the academy so [that] she is not being constantly watched for a mistake.

It might be more accurately called a misstep than a mistake. The latter implies, as in logically implies, fault. The former allows for mere transgression.

Feminism is so disliked that apparently a large percentage of girls and young women refuse to wear the label. I suspect this’s primarily because they want to be cool, not the uptight fun police. Feminists are harpies, witches, bitches. They want to say yes, to be inclusive, to be liked. They don’t want to be “boomers”. Unfortunately, the very essence of feminism is incompatible with this impulse toward social approval.

Feminism is (duh) supposed to be about the flourishing of female people, requiring at minimum being able to distinguish between the sexes. Otherwise, it’s impossible to focus attention on females or to recognize sexism when we can’t tell who’s male and who’s female. You can only say that people are affected by some phenomenon. (Some might argue that such language would be intrinsically good due to its inclusivity.) The same problem arises from completely ignoring race: it’s impossible to recognize racism when we can’t tell who’s one race and who’s another. Feminism requires not being inclusive of males. It requires telling someone, “This is not for you.”

Being a vocal feminist means pointing out when something constrains female flourishing, but the “cool girl” who fits in with the guys would never do that. It sometimes means standing in opposition to what others in your peer group deem acceptable. It means telling people from whom you probably want approval that their actions or beliefs are wrong, even harmful. Few things are more likely to shrink popularity than that. Marking exclusion immoral assuages the cognitive dissonance that this all generates.

Thus we see the metamorphosis of feminism into its modern form, that ridiculous movement for all oppressed groups, because for females to have their own movement wouldn’t be sufficiently “inclusive”. “No, guys,” it says, “we’re not like those ugly, old, boomer bitches. We’re young and cool and always DTF.”

Chase Strangio is mad at the Times.

Oh no, how will they go on?

Who tf is PP? Besides Posie Parker, who isn’t a Times columnist. So I had to go to all the trouble of Googling. It’s a column by Pamela Paul on Queering the LanGuage. Is Pamela Paul generally known as PP? Is she a household name? Not that I know of.

So anyway.

Last month, the new president of the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, posted a six-and-a-half-minute video to introduce herself and frame the mission of her organization, which was founded 40 years ago by the gay activist Steve Endean to help fund political campaigns for pro-gay-rights candidates. In the video, Robinson talked about voting rights. She talked about transgender kids in school. She talked about abortion access and workers’ rights. She said a lot of things, including getting “to a world where we are free and liberated without exception — without exception — without anyone left behind.”

Not once, however, did she say the word “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.”

Aha, another one of those disappearing words situations. Planned Parenthood and NOW avoid ever saying the word “women,” even when talking about abortion rights, and now we’re told the Human Rights Campaign avoids “gay” and “lesbian.”

The word “gay” is increasingly being substituted [displaced] by “queer” or, more broadly, “L.G.B.T.Q.,” which are about gender as much as — and perhaps more so than — sexual orientation.

Which means among other things that precision is being lost. The umbrella initials are an umbrella, and sometimes one is talking specifically about lesbians or gay men, in which case an umbrella gets in the way of precision and clarity.

“It is quite often a generational issue, where younger people — millennials — are more fine with it. Gen Xers like myself are somewhat OK with it. Some you might find in each category,” Jason DeRose, who oversees L.G.B.T.Q. reporting at NPR, said of the news organization’s move toward queer. “And then older people or boomers, maybe, who find it problematic.”

Blah blah blah – but it’s not just a matter of “being ok with it” or not. It’s a matter of being able to say what you mean as opposed to having to veil your meaning behind a lengthening string of initials. NPR in its usual mush-brained way confuses verbal precision with feefees. Chase is embarrassed by the Times and I’m embarrassed by NPR.

Let’s be clear: Many lesbians and gay people are fine with this shift. They may even prefer umbrella terms like “L.G.B.T.Q.” and “queer” because they include people who identify according to gender expression or identity as well as sexual orientation.

But those are not the same things, and it’s not always useful or even “kind” to include more and more items in a definition. Language can’t be infinitely “inclusive” that way or it ceases to function as language.

 “Queer” can mean almost anything, and that’s the point. Queer theory is about deliberately breaking down normative categories around gender and sex, particularly binary ones like men and women, straight and gay. Saying you’re queer could mean you’re gay; it could mean you’re straight; it could mean you’re undecided about your gender or that you prefer not to say.

So everyone can join the club, all shall have prizes. But if you want to talk about lesbians? Well, sorry, that makes you suspect, so you’ll have to go back 500 turns.

“Queer” carries other connotations, not all of them welcome — or welcoming. Whereas homosexuality is a sexual orientation one cannot choose, queerness is something one can, according to James Kirchick, the author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.” Queerness, he argues, is a fashion and a political statement that not all gay people subscribe to. “Queerness is also self-consciously and purposefully marginal,” he told me. “Whereas the arc of the gay rights movement, and the individual lives of most gay people, has been a struggle against marginality. We want to be welcomed. We want to have equal rights. We want a place in our institutions.”

Also, there are far more interesting and useful ways to be marginal. Be more thoughtful or useful or generous or altruistic than most people. Surprise us!

Speaking of hating feminism…

“We do not permit events etc that promote hate” and we’ve decided you promote hate.

But Standing for Women doesn’t “promote hate” of trans people, it promotes clarity on who is a woman and who is not. That’s not hate and it’s not promotion of hate…but It Has Been Decided that yes it is. How are these decisions made, exactly?

Consider the endless ongoing struggle against racism. Does opposing racism equal hatred of white people? Does opposing homophobia equal hatred of straight people? Does union organizing equal hatred of owners and bosses? Does pacifism equal hatred of the military and/or political leaders who trigger wars?

You could say yes to all those, I guess. There’s always an element of opposition, necessarily – if there were nothing to oppose there would be no struggle, no movement, no campaign. They’re all about something, they all contest a status quo, so they’re all oppositional, so there is potentially hatred for at least situations and arrangements and institutions, and thus potentially for the people in charge.

So how do you choose? If you’re Eventbrite do you reject pacifists and anti-racism activists? Or is it only feminists who say men are not women who are seen as too oppositional to promote?

The Telegraph reports on a conversation at the LGB Alliance conference yesterday:

Kathleen Stock said that academic institutions treat students like customers and the “grown-ups” no longer tell anxious young people that someone saying something that they disagree with is not actually harming them.  

The philosophy professor said that she will now speak from outside the academy so [that] she is not being constantly watched for a mistake. 

Or rather a “mistake,” i.e. a reasoned claim that some bile-infused teenager takes a dislike to.

She was joined by campaigner Julie Bindel who warned that the bitter debate is “about misogyny” which allows men to try [to] silence feminists.

“The reason why so many people have latched on to this, why it’s captured the liberal masses, why it’s captured our institutions is primarily because feminism is hated,” she told the audience to applause.

“This is the old intolerance by the way, not the new. Feminists like me that speak about male violence, and point the finger at male perpetrators, are hated, including by men on the left.” She said that the trans debate had “given them an opportunity” to criticise feminists in a way “they never could before” and still be seen as “being on the right side of history”.

It’s the truth. Just before reading this story I made the same point in a quote tweet.

Feminists are hated, and feminists are hated because women are hated.

The Guardian talks to Maggie Haberman:

The 45th president lived down to her expectations. She was on the receiving end of both his insatiable desire for attention and his poison-pen responses to critical coverage. A month after taking office, Trump, while developing a symbiotic relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, branded the New York Times and other outlets “the enemy of the American people”.

Haberman comments: “He has endangered journalists with that language and that language has been used by authoritarians in other countries to legitimise anti-press crackdowns. I don’t think Donald Trump has any sense of what the role of the free press is in a democracy. None.”

Naturally not. It’s not the kind of thing that interests or concerns him. He’s very flat in that way – very thin, diminished, airless. His interests are few and trivial and shallow.

Was there anything, amid the four-year madness of all caps tweets, hirings and firings, insults and lies that shocked even her? Haberman picks the day that Trump stood on the White House podium floating the idea that coronavirus patients might inject themselves with bleach. “He was feeling competitive with the doctors because he gets competitive with everybody. That was a pretty striking moment.”

In a way that’s part of his flatness. If he had any mind, if he knew how to think, he wouldn’t be competitive with everybody, because he would understand the value of knowledge and expertise. Having an empty brain, he can’t understand how medical experts could know more than he does about medical issues.

Some White House alumni have been condemned for cashing in by writing memoirs. Haberman herself has been accused of holding back pearls of news for her book rather than publishing them in the Times immediately. Critics seized on its revelation that, following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump told an aide: “I’m just not going to leave.” His state of denial culminated in a deadly insurrection by a mob of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6.

Political consultant Steve Schmidt tweeted: “Was it important information for the public to know Trump said he wasn’t leaving after losing an election? Yes. Was this information deliberately concealed for an economic reason that took higher precedence than the truth and the public right to know? YES.”

Haberman flatly denies the charge, saying that she would have published the story if she could have confirmed it at the time but she only nailed it down long after Trump left office. When, during research for the book, she did land a scoop about Trump apparently trying to flush documents down a White House toilet, she alerted the Times and printed it right away.

“Books take time. They’re a process of going back and interviewing people again and revisiting scenes that have happened. I turned to this project in earnest after February 2021 and the second impeachment trial. My goal was to get confirmed, reportable information in print as quick as possible and, if I had known these things in real time, and had them confirmed, I would have published them.”

For Confidence Man she spoke to 250 people, some of whom were more willing to speak for a book than a here-today-gone-tomorrow news story.

I saw a lot of those “Haberman saved the biggest stories for her book” rants, and wondered if they were fair or not. (The same criticism is made of Bob Woodward.) It’s good to see some arguments from the other direction.

There’s finally news on the damage to Salman Rushdie and it’s bad. He’s lost the use of one eye and one hand.

[I]n an interview with Spain’s El País, Andrew Wylie explained how serious and life-changing the attack had been.

“[His wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye,” said Wylie. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack.”

Allah is wise, merciful.

Maya Forstater tells us:

Last night, after the LGB Alliance Conference, Helen Joyce and I went to the Westminster Arms pub around the corner from the conference centre for a quiet drink. Helen had a glass of wine and I had a gin and tonic.

Before long around 20 protesters turned up, having broken away from the main protest outside of the QEII Conference Centre. We were told they were there because Helen was inside.

Ah well yes of course, two women in a pub talking – we can’t have that. Women must get permission from angry adolescents before they go somewhere, or talk, or think.

They stood facing the entrance to the pub chanting slogans for around 40 minutes. Two policeman provided an escort for us to leave the pub.

Now, we’re not talking corporate predators here, we’re not talking people who market addictive drugs, or tobacco, or oil, or assault rifles. We’re not talking about warmongering politicians, or exploitative bosses, or torturers, or environmental vandals. We’re talking about two feminist women who publicly defend the rights of women. Squawk squawk.

Owen Jones, hinting that people who attend LGB Alliance conferences are…what, not sexually attractive enough for his taste? Too ugly, too old, too informally dressed, too female? It’s hard to be sure, but “without comment” is definitely a juvenile sneer of some kind. Maybe we’re meant to take it as a juvenile sneer of every kind, for our own convenience.

Also, “without comment” makes it not without comment, so there’s that.

People need to stop dumping fishing gear in the ocean.

These guys get most of the lines off but the last bit is the riskiest, because they’re that much closer to the whale. In this instance the whale throws his head back (at 40 seconds) and sinks, thus escaping the snare.

How about if you take off your hats and sign the letter with your first names? Will that do it?

Helen Joyce replies to Pipps and Andy:

Dear Pippa and Andrew (if I may),

Well they did say their poison letter was from Pippa and Andrew, so I think we all may, and especially Helen may, being as how she is the target of their venom.

I’m writing to respond to your ignorant and insulting characterisation of me to Caius students and academics, which you must have known would be shared more widely and then become public. [The text of that email is appended to this post.]

I am of course sadly used to people who should know better—people with high-profile posts in great academic institutions—making a show of defending free speech, open debate and academic standards out of one side of their mouths, even as they say “however” out of the other. I am also sadly used to being casually defamed: such is the fate of everyone who, like me, refuses to be frightened off talking about the baleful impacts of gender-identity ideology on vulnerable groups, including women, children and same-sex attracted people.

Why are we so used to it, she asks? Because of people like Pipps and Andy, including Pipps and Andy.

You said in your email to Caius students and fellows that my views are “offensive, insulting and hateful”. Caius, you said, “should be a place for the highest quality of research to be produced and discussed, rather than polemics”. What “highest quality of research” on gender-identity issues have you or Caius produced or discussed? What about my work is polemical? Have you even read my book?

How offensive insulting and hateful is it for Pipps and Andy to make such a claim? Pretty god damn offensive insulting and hateful, I’d say.

You also say that you both work hard to make Caius an “inclusive, diverse and welcoming home for our students, staff and Fellows”, and that my event “will not contribute to this aim”. How inclusive and welcoming do you think this sort of shunning makes your college feel to students, staff and Fellows who care about sex-based rights? To those who want to attend my talk, but are frightened that there will be protests, enabled by your unwillingness to give unqualified support for free speech? To women who understand their identities as based on biology, not tired sexist stereotypes? To the people—and some do still exist in Cambridge; even if you don’t hear from them, I do—who still care about the highest ideals of academia, and watch despairingly as it is shredded?

The word “inclusive” has shifted meaning over the past decade or so: it now applies solely to people who claim to be the other sex (and mostly to the male people in that category).

You tell the little totalitarians of Caius College that you will not be attending the event on Tuesday. Why not? If you truly thought I, and what I say, are so awful, surely you’d like to point out my errors and show me up? Why not come and tell me to my face that I’m offensive, insulting and hateful? Why not critique my book and tell the world what I have got wrong?

Seriously. Why don’t they tell Helen that to her face?

I mean, it’s not difficult to think of people who really would merit such a face to face telling. Trump leaps to mind of course, and there’s Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani – they’re all writers and polemicists as well as “activists,” and we really could back up the telling with evidence. But Helen?

If you don’t have the decency to come to the event on Tuesday, let’s meet up on another occasion. I’d like to hear from you directly, in person, why you thought it was all right to characterise me as bigoted to an entire academic community, without so much as getting in touch first to find out more about me or my work. Please suggest a few days and times.

Come on, Pipps and Andy. Either accept the request or withdraw the venomous lies about Helen and apologize. Abjectly.

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph takes a cold hard look at that letter from “Pippa and Andrew”:

A Cambridge college master is engulfed in a transgender row with professors after boycotting a “hateful” gender-critical speaker.

It’s about the letter rather than the boycott. No one would have cared if Pipps and Andy had just stayed away.

Gonville and Caius College, the university’s fourth oldest, is hosting a talk on Tuesday by Helen Joyce, an author and former journalist at The Economist, about cancel culture.

And as we all know, her views are Unacceptable, Unapproved, Unendorsed. Her views are, in short, evil, the most evil views anyone has ever had, views that make Hitler and Putin look like Cookie Monster.

Tutors are even opening a “safe space” welfare tearoom for students during the talk, blaming “understandable hurt and anger for many students, staff and fellows at Caius” caused by the invitation.

Understandable? Go soak your heads, all of you. No it’s not understandable. Helen Joyce doesn’t advocate genocide or forced pregnancy or stoning women for not wearing bags over their heads. Helen Joyce simply doesn’t buy into the new and stupid ideology of magic gender, and she explains why you shouldn’t buy into it either. That’s all. The most you can say about her views is that people who have adopted the trans ideology feel angry about them, and that is nowhere near enough to justify fatuous driveling claims about students needing a “safe space welfare tea room” for fuck’s sake.

Now, in an unprecedented intervention, the college’s master Prof Pippa Rogerson – the most senior position – has emailed all students rebuking her own staff for hosting it. 

Unprecedented. Nobody did this for workers, or women, or Jews, or immigrants, or any other neglected and despised set of people, but somehow pampered middle class people who think they’re the other sex merit all this screaming and tearing of hair and welfare tea rooms when anyone disbelieves their fantasies. The more trivial the cause the louder the wailing has to be, is that it? Compensation? “Well guys, this is really a pretty stupid banner to carry, so we’re gonna have to really ham it up to get anywhere. Let’s pretend opposition makes us disintegrate into tiny pieces before their very eyes.”

Prof Rogerson, writing alongside Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, said that while freedom of speech is “a fundamental principle… on some issues which affect our community we cannot stay neutral”.

It’s a fundamental principle which we are going to ignore because otherwise trans people will disintegrate into tiny pieces before our very eyes.

Their letter, seen by The Telegraph, adds: “We do not condone or endorse views that Helen Joyce has expressed on transgender people, which we consider offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here.”

So what? Who cares? What’s their point? They don’t have to condone endorse views that other people speak aloud in talks at Cambridge. That’s not a criterion or filter for such talks. Their feverish emotions have nothing to do with Helen Joyce or her talk.

Ms Joyce, the author of best-seller Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, added: “When I was a student at Cambridge I would have been disgusted and embarrassed to receive a communication like that; Pippa and Andrew sound like CBeebies presenters.

“Why are they staying away? If they think I’m that much of a bigot they should turn up, hear what I have to say and tell me I’m wrong. A pair of intellectual cowards who do not deserve to be in two of the best jobs in all the world’s universities.”

Seriously. They sound like absolute chumps.

Celebrating Salman:

Writers including Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes and Nigella Lawson will gather this week at an event to celebrate Salman Rushdie.

An Evening for Salman Rushdie will be held at the British Library in London on 13 October, with members of the public invited to take part by attending in person or watching a live stream.

So we missed it, sorry, but it’s good to know it happened.

Others taking part by sharing readings or reflections include Mona Arshi, Melvyn Bragg, Mariella Frostrup, Meena Kandasamy, Kathy Lette, Pauline Melville, Margie Orford, Philippe Sands, Burhan Sönmez and Alan Yentob.

…

The British Library event on Thursday is being described as a gathering to celebrate Rushdie’s “strength and dedication as a writer, activist, and a champion of free expression”.

You’re damn right. He stood up for Charlie Hebdo when way too many Manhattan trendies called them “Islamophobic.”

Jesus & idenniny.

It’s a nice elbow in the ribs to The Atheist Communinny and the Skeptic Communinny, because it is indeed true that way too many members of said communninnies laugh other absurd claims out of court but when it’s a man who idennifies as a woman suddenly they can’t recognize an absurd claim any more.

The Patreon is here.

Steve Bannon sentenced to not nearly enough time in prison:

Donald Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to four months in federal prison and $6,500 in fines after he was convicted with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply last year with a subpoena issued by the House January 6 select committee.

The punishment – suspended pending appeal – makes Bannon the first person to be incarcerated for contempt of Congress in more than half a century and sets a stringent standard for future contempt cases referred to the justice department by the select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

Bannon wanted favors.

Bannon, 68, had asked the court for leniency and requested in court filings for his sentence to either be halted pending the appeal his lawyers filed briefs with the DC circuit court on Thursday or otherwise have the jail term reduced to home-confinement.

But Nichols denied Bannon’s requests, saying he agreed with the justice department about the seriousness of his offense and noting that he had failed to show any remorse and was yet to demonstrate that he had any intention to comply with the subpoena.

Sometimes there’s a price to pay for being an unrepentant asshole.

Judge nails DeSantis’s bullshit:

A Florida judge has rebuked Ron DeSantis’s much publicized “office of elections integrity” and dismissed charges against one of the defendants the Republican governor insisted would “pay the price” for criminal election fraud.

DeSantis staged a media event in August announcing what he said was an “opening salvo” in his administration’s efforts to crack down on election fraud, namely the arrest of 20 felons he said had illegally voted.

But it soon emerged that most had been sent voter registration cards by authorities and accordingly believed they were eligible to vote. And earlier this week, footage emerged of the bewilderment and confusion of law enforcement officers and those being arrested.

Bewilderment and shock horror despair of those being arrested. This isn’t a game. DeSantis is a sadist.

On Friday, Miami judge Milton Hirsh dismissed charges against Robert Lee Wood, 56, who was facing up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines for voting in the 2020 election.

DeSantis’s office of the statewide prosecutor (OSP) had no authority to be bringing such a case, Hirsh ruled. Any such crime must have taken place in two or more judicial circuits, or be an organized criminal conspiracy, neither of which occurred in Wood’s case, he said, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

There’s a stench of Jim Crow around DeSantis’s actions.

It turns out that buying children can get expensive.

A heartbroken Dublin dad “cried the whole plane journey home”, after he had to leave his surrogate triplets in Kenya.

His what? What the hell are surrogate triplets?

Edward O’Reilly, who lives in Santry Cross, left the African country with just the birth certificates rather than his three newborn daughters.

His? Isn’t there someone missing from this scenario?

Briella, Camilla, and Renesmee were born almost two months prematurely on September 1. Edward and his partner flew over to collect their children four days later. 

His partner? Their children? The children were born in Kenya while their parents were in Ireland? How does that work?

Also why were they thinking they could just “collect” two months premature triplets as if they were so many grapefruits?

They used a surrogacy service which cost €50,000 and were told all expenses were covered in the initial payment. However, they were asked for a further €16,000 when they arrived.

Ohhhhhhhh you mean they rented a woman to gestate and push out the babies for them. How very elegant.

Then they were asked for another €12,000 in hospital bills for the babies’ medication and food, along with an extra €11,000 to pay the medics. They cannot bring their daughters home until these costs are paid. 

Aw jeez that’s so unfair. You should be able to buy babies cheaply. Also Kenya should pay for their medical needs, obviously.

“It’s like a nightmare. We wanted to be parents and now that we finally are, we’re not allowed to have our babies,” Edward said.

Except they finally aren’t. Someone else did all the work of “being parents” so far, and she hasn’t even rated a mention in this disgusting article. She might as well be a machine.

“From the beginning, we always knew we were going to be a family. We talked about having a kid on our first date and we’re together six years now.

“Last March, we finally started contacting agencies. We thought we could do it and we could afford it. Our family members were willing to help and put a few bob together.”

Agencies. That’s how people have babies, you know: they contact agencies.

great. Everything was going to plan, the clinic was really nice, everything looked perfect.

“We found out that we were pregnant this March. In June we were told it was triplets and we were absolutely ecstatic,” Edward (33) said.

Jesus fucking christ. They weren’t pregnant; a woman in Kenya whom they still haven’t mentioned was pregnant.

“But we also knew there could be health complications during the pregnancy. Through those months we prayed every day for the surrogate and that she’d be okay.”

There it is at last: the first mention of the fully human being – “the surrogate” – who made their baby for them.

The rest of the story is that there were big medical bills, which is not particularly surprising with very premature triplets, and he couldn’t pay them, and here’s his Go Fund Me. What about “the surrogate”? Nothing. Not a word. She’s just a machine.

That was a different person.

A man in Spain who beat his female partner for opposing his transition has avoided charges of gender-based violence by legally changing his identification to “female” and adopting a woman’s name.

Well that seems only fair. Since he now has a woman’s name, he obviously can’t have beaten up his female partner in the past.

Earlier this year, Spain’s Cabinet of Ministers approved a new draft law on gender identity, one which allow anyone over the age of 16 to legally change their name and sex without any medical consultation or intervention. Minors between the ages of 14 and 16 will be allowed to change their name and sex with parental consent, and those as young as 12 can do so with a Judge’s authorization.

All the men will be able to beat up all the women!

“Katy” Montgomerie peddling the usual lie:

Nobody insisted on “cis” anything. A woman stipulated female only care. “Cis” has nothing to do with it.

Another nasty contemptuous hostile dismisser of women.

Karen AND twat – we can tell how that “genderfluid”? “nonbinary”? – person thinks of women. Somehow I suspect that underneath it all J is a man. You can claim to be trans all you like but then when the misogyny comes bubbling out everyone can see the reality.