Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Whatout?

    The dishonest reporting files:

    Truthout:

    Students at McGill University in Montreal Protest Anti-Trans Speaker

    The speaker, Robert Wintemute, is a member of the anti-trans hate group LGB Alliance.

    The students did more than “protest” and the speaker is not “anti-trans” and the LGB Alliance is not anti-trans and not a hate group. That’s a lot of lies for just the headline and subhead.

    The story seems to have been written before the “protest” happened.

    Lawyer Robert Wintemute is giving a speech at the university entitled “The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T.” Wintemute is a member of the United Kingdom-based LGB Alliance, which claims to advocate for lesbian, gay and bisexual causes but which activists at McGill have pointed out is actually part of a “Christian right-supported campaign to ‘divide and conquer’ the LGBT community.”

    Activists at McGill haven’t “pointed out,” which implies accuracy. They’ve said, or claimed, or lied.

    There is no “LGBT community.” Beware of that word “community,” which all too often is a disguise for forced teaming. Lesbians and men who call themselves lesbians are not a “community.” Feminists and trans activists are not a “community.” People allergic to bullshit and trans activists are not a “community.”

    LGB Alliance, which is listed on the website of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism as an extremist hate group, espouses anti-transgender views under the guise of being pro-gay and pro-women.

    Oh well then there’s no more to be said. If this one group is listed on this one website, we know all there is to know.

    This is the corner where all the crashes occur. That’s because “transgender views” are riddled with nonsense and wishful thinking and domineering assertion. We oppose the “views” not because we’re evil and akin to racists but because the views are bad and stupid. The “views” tell us that huge abusive men are women just as we are provided only that they say so. We have a problem with that. Lying about us isn’t going to make that problem go away.

    Further, the group has actively worked against the interests of people it supposedly seeks to protect — it has endorsed conversion therapy for gay and lesbian people, for example…

    Has it? First I’ve heard of it. Given the wild detours around the truth in this piece, I don’t believe it.

    The group’s charitable status was challenged last year when LGBTQ advocates noted that it doesn’t actually work to help lesbian, gay or bisexual people.

    Again. There are no “LGBTQ” advocates. The LG is not the same as the T or the Q, let alone both mashed together. The “advocates” in question are Mermaids, all T and no LG.

    By granting LGB Alliance members a platform to share their transphobic views, McGill University is “actively contributing to the genocide of trans people across the world,” student organizers wrote in an open letter challenging Wintemute’s presence on campus.

    And what a ludicrous thing to write it is, but Truthout presents it as meaningful and damning.

    That’s how this whole conversation is conducted. It’s an embarrassment.

  • The influence can’t be tackled

    Why we can’t have anything nice ever:

    Schools across the UK are encountering increasing numbers of pupils who admire [social media misogynist Andrew] Tate – and so teachers are having to work out how to respond.

    Some are actively putting out guidance on how to talk about him, as part of a concerted attempt to tackle his influence.

    …

    “A lot of the boys can see that there’s parts of Andrew Tate that they respect and admire, and then there’s parts that they don’t – they know that he says a lot of terrible things,” says Ms Carson, 46, who teaches Learning for Life and Work – Northern Ireland’s equivalent of PSHE in England’s schools.

    They know he says a lot of terrible things that their teachers disapprove of, but that’s what they like. We can’t have feminism without having also the reaction against it.

    Like this guy. He does it as a deliberate provocation, and says so. There are always going to be Tates and Urquharts.

  • What qualifies him?

    Male barrister who claims to be a woman calls Helen Joyce “this numpty”.

    He also claims she got the spelling of “trans women” wrong because a third party quoted her as saying (not writing) “transwomen.” How can the male barrister be sure she didn’t say “trans women”? How can the male barrister be sure the third party didn’t misquote her? How can the male barrister be such a numpty?

  • It feels like 2023 Twitter

    Steal everything. Steal the oppression and subordination of women, and when women push back, steal the genocides of the Nazis.

    https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1613164909499670528

  • The world we live in

    The porn-soaked kind.

  • “This isn’t bullying!”

    Eliza Mondegreen has, fortunately for us, written up her experience of trans activist “protest” yesterday.

    At first it was just a few saddos, and she felt almost sorry for them.

    But just as I was stuffing the flyers into my backpack, feeling a little pity for the poor turnout, a surge of protesters arrived and the energy turned menacing all at once. The mob blocked access to the lecture hall. A friend and I tried to get to the doors and were pushed around as though lives depended on turning us back. We just wanted to hear a human-rights lawyer talk about a conflict in human-rights law.

    It’s surreal, honestly, to be pushed and shoved and grabbed by people who are screaming about “nonviolence.” We were TERFs, transphobes, and (curiously) ‘scabs.’ A wild-eyed young man screamed: “I’M NOT GOING TO BE ERASED BY YOU PEOPLE.” We had no place at McGill. We were pinned in the middle of a raging crowd and screamed at to “GET OUT,” while prevented from going anywhere at all. I kept looking around for anyone not participating, anyone who looked uncomfortable with the way this peaceful protest had gone. But all the activists were chanting or shouting or screaming. The jumpy activists I’d observed a few minutes ago had transformed themselves into a mob, with the license of mobs. There’s no reaching people in that state, which is why it felt like anything could happen, especially after they’d already manhandled us.

    It’s a very bad combination – a set of ludicrous fantasy-based beliefs and crowd energy. Their opinions are bullshit and their rage is amplified.

    The activists particularly harassed two women, pushing one to the ground, and blasting them with bullhorns. At one point, the activists jeered: “Why are you even staying?” One of the women responded, very bravely, I could just hear her over the noise: “We don’t want to surrender to that kind of bullying.” And the activist shouted back: “What bullying? This isn’t bullying!”

    That’s brilliant. “Why are you even staying [when we’re making it so physically unpleasant and dangerous for you]?” plus “This isn’t bullying!” Threat plus not bullying, oooookaaaaaay.

    When we went outside to get away from the crush, a hulking man (who identifies as a woman and a lesbian, naturally) followed us. He said he knew all about people like us because he used to be a neo-Nazi himself.

    Scratch the “used to be,” bub.

    Meanwhile, back inside, the activists pushed through the doors, interrupting the talk, unplugging the projector, and throwing flour on the speaker, Professor Robert Wintemute.

    …

    I have no idea what went wrong with campus security. They were outside. The police were outside, too. Inside, it was completely chaotic and it would have only taken one person slightly more unhinged than the rest to send it to a very bad place. And now the activists will be emboldened. They won because they stopped anyone from saying anything they didn’t want anybody else to hear. And they won because Canadian media won’t cover the way it went down. The CBC attached the subhead “Advocates say debating trans women’s rights is harmful to all women” to its piece about activists shutting down free inquiry on campus.

    Interesting that the CBC said trans women’s rights as opposed to trans rights. Almost as if the CBC knows what the problem is but doesn’t dare say so. Also, of course, absurd that the CBC says “trans women’s rights” without spelling out that that means men’s rights to force everyone to agree that the men are women, which doesn’t sound quite so rightsy and justicey.

  • Trans barrister deploys manly voice

    You don’t make law based on people’s fantasies about themselves, either.

  • Barrister stoops to petty insults

    And in another part of the forest –

  • A crowd of jeering bullies

    Here they are in “action”:

  • The talk was canceled before anyone said anything

    McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism advertised a discussion scheduled for today:

    The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T

    About

    By Professor Wintemute: Since 2018, there has been a debate in the United Kingdom about whether or not the law should be changed to make it easier for a transgender individual to change their legal sex from their birth sex, and about exceptional situations, such as women-only spaces and sports, in which the individual’s birth sex should take priority over their gender identity, regardless of their legal sex. This debate inspired the foundation in 2019 of an organisation, LGB Alliance, which rejects the political coalition of LGB and T and challenges some transgender demands, on the basis that they conflict with the rights of lesbian and bisexual women or the rights of children who might grow up to be LGB adults.

    The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism took care to disavow their own event beforehand:

    CHRLP note: the CHRLP invited Professor Wintemute to give this talk based on his record as a human rights and LGB scholar. We note that Professor Wintemute is also a trustee of the LGB Alliance. The CHRLP does not endorse the views of the Alliance or of any speaker. The CHRLP is committed to a respectful and inclusive space for debate.

    Well thanks, good to know you don’t actually mean it about the pluralism, or in fact the human rights.

    Speaker:

    Robert Wintemute (McGill LLB and BCL 1982) is a Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London, UK. Since 2003, he has participated as a lawyer for the applicants or third-party interveners, or as an expert witness, in 15 successful cases challenging discrimination against LGB individuals or same-sex couples in the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the United Kingdom Supreme Court.  On 23 March 2022, he argued the case of Macate v. Lithuania before the 17-judge Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (restrictions on a book of children’s stories because it included a princess who fell in love with a woman and a prince who fell in love with a man). The Court’s judgment will be published on 23 January 2023. 

    Commentator (which here seems to mean dissenter or other side or similar):

    Darren Rosenblum. Professor Darren Rosenblum’s scholarship focuses on corporate diversity, with emphasis on remedies for sex inequality. They joined the Faculty of Law of McGill University as a Full Professor in August 2021, from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Among many other publications, they wrote the first law review article of queer legal theory “Queer Intersectionality” (1994) and the first law review article on transgender prisoners “Trapped in Sing Sing” (2000). They have taught Sexuality, Gender and the Law since 2003 at Fordham, McGill, NYU, Pace and U.Penn. They were appointed Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) in 2022.

    A they.

    Anyway, it didn’t happen. Instead the predictable thing happened. The CBC reports:

    Trans rights advocates stormed into a talk Tuesday afternoon at McGill University led by a speaker associated with a group they say is “notoriously transphobic and trans-exclusionary.”

    The talk was ultimately cancelled shortly after it started.

    McGill University’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP) hosted the event, titled Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T. It was led by McGill alumnus Robert Wintemute.

    …

    “The T (trans) is so much more vulnerable than the rest of LGB. I think there’s tons of scientific evidence speaking to that,” said Celeste Trianon, a trans activist who led the protest against the event.

    Trianon said Wintemute’s talk excludes transgender people’s rights and is transphobic, further discriminating against the community.

    But Wintemute, the man at the centre of the controversy, maintains he does not promote transphobic views and describes the reaction to his talk as “hysterical.”

    He says he has a 37 years’ experience defending LGB human rights and he would never associate with any group that “promotes hate.” He said he came to McGill to promote the message that women have human rights too, but they feel intimidated by the trans rights movement.

    “So I have to thank the protesters for giving me first-hand experience of that intimidation,” said Wintemute after the event. “Probably the majority of women in this country disagree with some of transgender demands but they refuse to say so because they will be seen as intolerant.”

    And mercilessly bullied.

  • Or chestfeed

    Sigh. Washington State health department. It couldn’t be California or Wisconsin or New Jersey, no, it has to be Washington.

  • More and more wells sit abandoned

    Speaking of aquifers drying up…the Ogallala aquifer is one of them.

    After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left.

    …

    Fly over these dry plains and you won’t see many rushing rivers or glimmering lakes. You’ll see circles. Mile after mile of green geometric crop fields spun into the near-desert landscape by wells that tap water hidden beneath the surface and the center pivot irrigation sprayers splayed around them.

    Which could make you think “Dang, human ingenuity, aren’t we clever.” Or it could make you think “Dang, I bet that water under the surface isn’t actually infinite.”

    But across western Kansas, more and more wells sit abandoned as underground water levels drop and drop some more. Vast swaths of the region have seen more than half of their water disappear since the dawn of irrigation. Wallace County on the Colorado border has lost roughly 80%.

    Story of the planet in miniature. Yes, it’s big, it’s huge, it’s massive, but it’s not infinite. If you treat it as infinite you will eventually bump up against its limits.

    The subterranean reservoirs of the sprawling Ogallala aquifer make life possible here — from powering the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy to filling up cups at the kitchen sink.

    But after decades of large-scale crop irrigation, that water is running out. And now farmers and state leaders struggle to agree on how to save the future of life in western Kansas without choking the livelihoods of the people who live here.

    Good luck to them.

    H/t iknklast

  • Identifying as field work

    When words have more than one meaning…

    Yes, language can be powerful, but it can also be complicated. For instance the word “field” can mean something other than a piece of land where a crop is planted. I have a feeling that migrant workers and descendants of slaves aren’t really all that bothered by anthropologists who talk about their field work.

    And speaking of words being powerful, I think it’s something of an abuse of power for academics to claim that talking about field work equals “white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies.” Also they’ll need to get the Field Museum to change its name.

    “Words are powerful, but even more so is action.” Clarity is useful, but even more so is pretentious opaque bafflegab. When you want to sound deep, reverse your word order for no reason; it impresses the peasants I mean the people in the field I mean the people of pastoral identity.

    I think the label “virtue signalling” is applied too broadly, but this little item strikes me as absolutely textbook virtue signal. Round of applause for USC Social Work.

  • To avert a catastrophe

    Oops, we’ve broken Great Salt Lake.

    Emergency measures are required to avert a catastrophe in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, which has been drying up due to excessive water use, a new report warns. Within years, the lake’s ecosystems could collapse and millions will be exposed to toxic dust contained within the drying lakebed, unless drastic steps are taken to cut water use.

    Will drastic steps be taken? Of course not. They never are. We just sit here stupidly watching the lions and wolves and hyenas and tigers approach.

    A team of 32 scientists and conservationists caution that the lake could decline beyond recognition in just five years. Their warning is especially urgent amid a historic western megadrought fueled by global heating. To save the lake, the report suggests 30-50% reductions in water use may be required, to allow 2.5m acre-feet of water to flow from streams and rivers directly into the lake over the next two years.

    …

    …Already, the lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area, as trillions of litres of water are diverted away from it to supply farms and homes. As a result, the lake is becoming saltier and uninhabitable to native flies and brine shrimp. Eventually, the lake will be unable to sustain the more than 10 million migratory birds and wildlife that frequent it.

    …

    A legacy of water overuse is the main threat to the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere, and huge water diversions to irrigate vast operations to grow alfalfa and hay are no longer sustainable in Utah, Abbott said, nor are lush lawns in cities and suburbs.

    Tick tick tick.

  • Amateur anthropology or tourism?

    On the one hand this is just a typically infuriating usurpation aka “appropriation”; on the other hand it’s an interesting point about an outsider point of view.

    Men who call themselves women of course don’t “understand the experience of womanhood” better than women do. On the other hand they do have the advantage of the outsider point of view, which is at least different from the insider one, and has at least the potential to offer insights.

    It’s like being a foreigner (which, in turn, is like being an anthropologist or a sociologist, minus the training). You’re clueless about a lot but you’re in a good position to make comparisons, which can be interesting and/or useful.

  • Being less kind with language

    Someone looking for a libel suit, I’m guessing.

  • Guest post: We will still need

    Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on We cannot even manage those minor changes.

    Even IF we can slow, or reverse the rising temperatures, we are still doomed.

    The world may come to run on 100% renewable electricity and 100% hydrogen, but there are still limits.

    We will still need oil, not for ICEs, but for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, etc.

    We will still need plastics, not for excessive packaging, but for all its other myriad uses in medicine, science, engineering, etc.

    We will run out of silica sands for making solar panels. Fraser Island has enormous deposits of almost 100% pure silica, but mining has been banned since the 70’s. But will that ban hold as silica supply exceeds demand?

    We will still need to mine iron ore, copper, and all the other metals needed to build solar panels, and wind turbines, connect them to the grid and distribute the electricity. South Australia has a huge uptake of rooftop solar on homes and commercial properties, but not everywhere in the world is blessed with that amount of sunlight, even in winter.

    And then we still have the pollution problem, the industrial waste to dispose of. Solar panels don’t last forever, and there is currently no way to recycle them. A similar problem exists with the blades of wind turbines.

    And, that is just the beginning of future problems.

    None of that is to argue we should give up the fight, because even if we achieve nothing but cleaner air and water that will be a massive win.

    This has been your daily dose of doom and gloom.

  • Guest post: The want to break things party

    Originally a comment by iknklast on Existential crisis.

    Trumpists are neither conservative nor liberal; they want to break things. Conservatives don’t want to break things, they want to keep them intact the way they are. They also don’t want change to their own lives; liberals want to make changes to the overall system.

    I actually think Trumpists are confused about what they want and about how possible it is for a society to work the way they want. Most of them are the ones who failed seventh grade civics and think the teacher had it in for them because of some sort of liberal bias that kept her from seeing their brilliance.

    They don’t understand government; they don’t know what it does. They just know they hate it. They know they hate paying for it. They have been convinced that it does nothing for them, and does everything for the people they hate.

    And they perceive that everyone has it better than they do. That’s not really the case, though some of the working class could claim a lot of people have it better than they do…just often not the people they think it is. The ones who have it better than they do are often the ones they vote for, believing them to be just like the “average American” voter – in short, themselves. The rich gaudiness of a Trump merely indicates he has reached what they want to attain, and he is the one to help them attain it.

  • Cleaning up

    BBC Live on the news from Brazil:

    A joint statement has been issued at a North America summit in Mexico City, with the leaders of Canada, the US and Mexico condemning what they describe as “attacks on Brazil’s democracy”.

    US President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated they all “stand with Brazil, as it safeguards its democratic institutions”.

    “Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil,” the three leaders said in their statement.

    The CIA used to overthrow elected governments in Central and South America whenever the mood struck them.

    “Influencers” are doing their bit to track down the perps.

    One of them is Felipe Neto, a Brazilian Youtuber and one of the loudest critics of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro. He wants his 16 million Twitter followers to share “screenshots that show the faces of those involved in the terrorist invasion of the National Congress”.

    A lot of people have noticed similarities to Sedition Hunters, an online group that helped find those who attacked the US Capitol two years ago.

    Fact-checking news outlet Agencia Lupa has also set up a database to gather “anti-democratic posts in recent days on social networks or messaging applications” that led to the riots.

    On its website, it says its intention is “to understand how the acts of vandalism seen in Brasília were organised.”

    They should have a chat with Steve Bannon.

  • Existential crisis

    Trump’s army did its bit.

    The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago – and there are deeper connections as well.

    “The whole thing smells,” said a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, one day after the first round of voting in the Brazilian election in October last year.

    The race was heading towards a run-off and the final result was not even close to being known. Yet Mr Bannon, as he had been doing for weeks, spread baseless rumours about election fraud.

    It’s a bizarre hobby.

    Along with other prominent Trump advisers who spread fraud rumours, Mr Bannon was unrepentant on Sunday, even as footage emerged of widespread destruction in Brazil.

    “Lula stole the Election… Brazilians know this,” he wrote repeatedly on the social media site Gettr. He called the people who stormed the buildings “Freedom Fighters”.

    …

    Bolsonaro supporters railed online about an existential crisis and a supposed “communist takeover” – exactly the same type of rhetoric that drove the rioters in Washington two years ago.

    Little Nazi Germanys everywhere.