A couple of months ago:

A retired teacher said it was “ridiculous” that a smoothie company had unfollowed her on Twitter amid accusations of transphobia. Innocent Drinks unfollowed Margaret Nelson, 76, from Hadleigh, Suffolk, after another Twitter user suggested it should not be “endorsing her”.

The firm acknowledged the move had made “some people on Twitter quite cross”. But it said Ms Nelson’s Twitter content was not in line with its “values of inclusivity and respect”.

It’s not the unfollowing that’s ridiculous, it’s the making a public display of it. I suspect that’s what Maggie said or meant, and the BBC muddled it in a pretty typical way – the same way it always ascribes “offense” to people whether they’ve actually used that word for themselves or not.

Ms Nelson, who has also been a humanist celebrant, said she did not accept she was transphobic, adding it was “a meaningless term used to describe anyone critical of the claims made by some transgender people”.

She attracted publicity two years ago when a police officer asked her to tone down some of her tweets, which he said were causing offence.

There it is again! Attributing blame to people targeted by a Twitter mob. She didn’t “attract” publicity, publicity happened to her. The Beeb just refuses to report this stuff honestly.

The officer said complaints had been received about some of her posts, such as “Gender’s fashionable nonsense. Sex is real.” He highlighted a blog in which she said “trans women are not women, no matter how many times you say it’s so”.

The officer bullied her for saying two true things.

The Suffolk cops later said sorry, it was a mistake.

Ms Nelson said she was one of a number of people who were “stalked by trans activists”, who did not like her “defending the rights of women”. She said she had not been aware Innocent was following her @Flashmaggie account and found the situation “amusing more than anything”.

See this is why I think the Beeb muddled the first sentence – I really don’t think she told them she thought it ridiculous that anyone unfollowed her, because that would be so silly and she’s the opposite of silly. I think she answered a catch-all question like “What do you think of the fuss about your tweets?” and they back-translated what she said as being about The Unfollow.

Maybe they simply asked her about the inane tweet itself.

That’s ridiculous all right!

Won’t someone please think of the man who wants to get a job around abused women?

Wight is Isle of Wight and DASH is domestic abuse support hub. Women are more vulnerable to domestic abuse than men are, so abused women are not invariably going to want to be around stranger men who identify as women when they (the abused women) are seeking help.

Ordinary people with ordinary understanding and empathy understand that. Narcissistic men and their deluded female allies either don’t understand that or think it’s trivial compared to a narcissistic man’s desire to act out his fantasies in the presence of women.

The latter group needs to grow the fuck up.

Why do people insist on being so stupid? (And destructive and reckless and neighbor-teasing?)

A New Hampshire family’s gender reveal party was such a blast that it set off reports of an earthquake, and could be heard from across the state line, police said.

Police in Kingston, a town not far from the Massachusetts border, received reports of a loud explosion Tuesday evening. They responded to Torromeo quarry where they found people who acknowledged holding a gender reveal party with explosives.

Stop with the farking “gender reveal” parties. Or have friends over for dinner if you like, but leave it at that.

One “gender reveal party” set off a wildfire during wildfire season near LA last summer. Smart move.

The source of the blast was 80 pounds (36 kilograms) of Tannerite, police said. The family thought the quarry would be the safest spot to light the explosive, which is typically sold over the counter as a target for firearms practice, police said.

The safest spot would be nowhere. Put the explosives down, turn around, and go home. Stay there.

Some people’s houses had cracks in their foundations after the blast.

In March, two pilots were killed when their plane crashed into the waters off Cancun while it was streaming a pink substance as part of a gender reveal, Fox News reported.

Good reason to die. Sensible.

In 2020, smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used as part of a California gender reveal party caused a fire that damaged more than 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) of land. In April 2017, an off-duty US border patrol agent, Dennis Dickey, caused $8m of damage to 19,000 hectares (47,000 acres) of Arizona forest when he shot at a target full of blue-coloured explosive as a means of announcing the gender of his unborn child.

People don’t half think they’re important, do they.

That’s not good.

While an average of nearly 1.9 million people a day came in to get their first dose of the vaccine during the week of April 11, the average for the week of April 16 was around 1.47 million. The total doses the U.S. has administered nationwide since vaccines were first authorized has also flattened out over the past few days, CDC data show, interrupting the exponential growth of the last few months.

And on Wednesday, a daily update from the Department of Health and Human Services showed numbers were down this week to an average of just over 3 million shots administered a day, when on Friday, the country was averaging about 3.35 million a day.

The decline started one day before the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was suspended, suggesting the nationwide “pause” might not be the primary factor, even if it may have contributed.

It may also have to do with logistics, and who has more ability to overcome obstacles.

“Not everyone can get to a mass vaccination site; not everyone can use the existing web tools,” Brownstein said. “Even though we may see a map that has a lot of sites, it’s not necessarily the most convenient, especially for those that are essential workers who can’t take the time off work.”

I’m lucky that way; I live in a big city with a pretty good public transportation system. All I had to do was walk down the hill and hop on the number 8 bus. Towns, villages, suburbs are more difficult.

Biden listed some policy solutions, like increased vaccine supply to local pharmacies and federally run clinics so that 90% of Americans are within 5 miles of a vaccination site. He also called on all businesses to give employees paid time off when they get their shots or need to recover from any side effects. Biden announced a new tax policy that would allow all small and medium-sized businesses to apply to be reimbursed for the time off they give their employees.

Let’s get this thing done.

Caitlyn Jenner says he is running for governor of California.

Why? Based on what? What relevant experience or education does he have? He appears to be woefully ignorant, plus he’s part of that whole nightmare Kardashian famous-for-nothing circus, plus he killed a woman with his car. What on earth makes him think he would be even a minimally competent governor of a state that’s bigger than many countries?

Olympic hero, reality TV personality and transgender rights activist Caitlyn Jenner announced Friday that she has filed paperwork to enter the race to become California’s next governor.

He’s not a hero. He’s a good swimmer athlete. That doesn’t make you a hero. Being a reality tv “personality” is a reason not to hold public office. He’s not a woman.

“California has been my home for nearly 50 years,” Jenner said. “I came here because I knew that anyone, regardless of their background or station in life, could turn their dreams into reality. But for the past decade, we have seen the glimmer of the Golden State reduced by one-party rule that places politics over progress and special interests over people. Sacramento needs an honest leader with a clear vision.”

Honest? He doesn’t even tell the truth about what sex he is.

India is in trouble.

India’s healthcare system is buckling as a record surge in Covid-19 cases puts pressure on hospital beds and drains oxygen supplies.

Families are left pleading for their relatives who are desperately ill, with some patients left untreated for hours.

Crematoriums are organising mass funeral pyres.

On Friday India reported 332,730 new cases of coronavirus, setting a world record for a second day running. Deaths were numbered at 2,263 in 24 hours.

Not a per capita record though, I think.

This wave is worse than the first one.

On 10 February, at the start of the second wave, India confirmed 11,000 cases – and in the next 50 days, the daily average was around 22,000 cases. But in the following 10 days, cases rose sharply with the daily average reaching 89,800.

Experts say this rapid increase shows that the second wave is spreading much faster across the country. Dr A Fathahudeen, who is part of Kerala state’s Covid taskforce, said the rise was not entirely unexpected given that India let its guard down when daily infections in January fell to fewer than 20,000 from a peak of over 90,000 in September.

Big religious gatherings, the reopening of most public places and crowded election rallies are being blamed for the uptick. Dr Fathahudeen said there were warning signs in February but “we did not get our act together”.

“I said in February that Covid had not gone anywhere and a tsunami would hit us if urgent actions were not taken. Sadly, a tsunami has indeed hit us now,” he added.

Hospital beds are filling up.

The shock, the outrage, the scandal – a gymnast actually wore clothing at a competition.

She did not break any rules, but Sarah Voss’s full-body suit at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Switzerland defied convention.

What convention is that exactly? Is there a convention that gymnasts compete naked?

Until now women and girls have only covered their legs in international competition for religious reasons.

Ohhhhh that convention – the one where men wear clothes and women wear bathing suits. Let’s not just rush ahead, let’s talk about that. Why is that a convention? Why does the same convention apply in figure skating competitions? Why do men wear clothes while women wear bathing suits? What the hell is that? The women aren’t there to get sexual attention or leers or gropes, they’re there to compete in their sport, so why is that the convention? I’ve never understood it, and I’ve never understood why people don’t object to it and make it stop.

Voss – from Germany – was supported by her country’s gymnastics federation and said she was proud of her decision.

“We hope gymnasts uncomfortable in the usual outfits will feel emboldened to follow our example,” she said.

Better yet the convention should just change. The existence of the convention makes it look as if the women – and the women only – are competing partly on hotness as well as on sport. It’s irrelevant, and it introduces an element of unfairness.

The convention could be changed by going the other way, by the way – having the men wear bathing suits. There’s something to be said for being able to see the muscles on the legs that do those vaults and flips, but then show us all the muscles.

The German federation (DTB) said its gymnasts were taking a stand against “sexualisation in gymnastics”, adding that the issue had become all the more important to prevent sexual abuse.

Yes but even without sexual abuse – why should it be sexualised at all? Why can’t it just be gymnastics?

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate on the horrible ruling in Jones v Mississippi:

In an appalling 6–3 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court effectively reinstated juvenile life without parole by shredding precedents that had sharply limited the sentence in every state. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion in Jones v. Mississippi is one of the most dishonest and cynical decisions in recent memory: While pretending to follow precedent, Kavanaugh tore down judicial restrictions on JLWOP, ensuring that fully rehabilitated individuals who committed their crimes as children will die behind bars. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, pulls no punches in its biting rebuke of Kavanaugh’s duplicity and inhumanity. It doubles as an ominous warning that the conservative majority is more than willing to destroy major precedents while falsely claiming to uphold them.

And “conservative” is putting it politely. Brutal, racist, and reactionary is closer to the truth.

The Supreme Court strictly curtailed the imposition of juvenile life without parole in two landmark decisions: 2012’s Miller v. Alabamaand 2016’s Montgomery v. Louisiana. In Miller, the court ruled that mandatory sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed automatically upon conviction—violate the 8th Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishments.” It explained that children’s crimes often reflect “transient immaturity”; because their brains are not fully developed, young offenders are “less culpable” than adults and have greater potential for rehabilitation. In Montgomery, the court clarified that discretionary sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed at the discretion of a judge—are generally unconstitutional, as well. It then applied these rules retroactively, allowing all incarcerated people who were condemned to life without parole as children to contest their sentences. Taken together, Miller and Montgomery held that JLWOP is unconstitutional for “all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.” And they forbade judges [to impose] JLWOP unless they found that the defendant’s crime reflected “irreparable corruption.”

On Thursday, Kavanaugh overturned these decisions without admitting it. His majority opinion in Jones v. Mississippi claims fidelity to Miller and Montgomery while stripping them of all meaning. Kavanaugh wrote that these precedents do not require a judge to “make a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility” before imposing JLWOP. Nor, Kavanaugh wrote, do they compel a judge to “at least provide an on-the-record sentencing explanation with an implicit finding of permanent incorrigibility.” Instead, a judge need only be granted “discretion” to sentence a child to less than life without parole. So long as that discretion exists, Kavanaugh held, the 8th Amendment is satisfied—even if the judge provides no indication that they actually considered the defendant’s youth, gauged their potential for rehabilitation, and nonetheless decided their crime reflected “permanent incorrigibility.”

In other words “discretion” is magic. Judge can do whatever judge wants!

As Sotomayor noted in her extraordinary dissent, “this conclusion would come as a shock to the Courts in Miller and Montgomery.” Those decisions explicitly required the judge to “actually make the judgment” that the child is incorrigible. They also “expressly rejected the notion that sentencing discretion, alone, suffices.” Kavanaugh claimed that he followed these precedents, Sotomayor wrote, but he “is fooling no one.”

All this because a stupid sadistic crook was on a popular tv show.

“The Court simply rewrites Miller and Montgomery to say what the Court now wishes they had said, and then denies that it has done any such thing,” Sotomayor declared. “The Court knows what it is doing.” Then she used Kavanaugh’s own words against him, quoting his past statements claiming to support stare decisis, or respect for precedent, to illustrate how he has abandoned his own purported principles. “How low this Court’s respect for stare decisis has sunk,” Sotomayor wrote. “The Court is willing to overrule precedent without even acknowledging it is doing so, much less providing any special justification. It is hard to see how that approach”—and here, she quoted Kavanaugh himself—“is ‘founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.’ ”

Speaking of Kavanaugh…

And not only without the shame and stigma, but also with the confidence and sense of entitlement. Men are not raised (by the culture as well as parents) to be apologetic or assume their rights are secondary. Women are.

But, of course that couldn’t be allowed.

No, men have not had miscarriages. You need a uterus to miscarry. You need a uterus with a fetus in it to miscarry. Men don’t have those. Women do. Men don’t.

If Evan has had miscarriages then Evan is not a man.

Jones v Mississippi:

Holding: The Eighth Amendment does not require a finding that a juvenile is permanently incorrigible before imposing a sentence of life without parole.

Judgment: Affirmed, 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh on April 22, 2021. Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Breyer and Kagan joined.

This can be such a brutal country.

This happened:

I think there are some complications skipped over in the letter. I think “reason requires that a diverse range of ideas be expressed and debated openly, including ones that some people find unfamiliar or uncomfortable” is true in its way but it steps around some of those complications. I don’t think that reason requires diverse ideas such as “women are stupid” “Jews should be eradicated” “black people should be enslaved” “lesbians and gays are an abomination and should be stoned to death” to be expressed and debated openly. I think the claim is a little bit more limited than that. It’s difficult to spell it all out, but I think it’s a mistake to skip over it, especially in cases like this, precisely because the ideologues and enforcers of the trans dogma absolutely think “men are not women” belong in that category. I think they’re drastically wrong about that, but we can’t argue the point if we step around it instead of spelling it out.

That said, though, I’m glad they did this letter. I’m a huge fan of Rebecca’s, and have email-interviewed her a couple of times for B&W, here in 2005 and here in 2014.

A giant of the House.

All 14 pages. My god the sacrifices people are expected to make just to do their jobs as legislators. They’re actually expected to read the bills before voting on them. It’s inhuman.

(Actually, they’re not, at least not by themselves and their higher ups, not all the time, because we’ve seen those genuinely massive (i.e. more than 14 pages) bills whiz from introduction to passage in a few hours when McConnell is cracking the whip.)

Thoughts and prayers to Rep. Greene in these trying hours.

News from Hartlepool:

A registered sex offender has been confirmed as a candidate in the upcoming Hartlepool by-elections.

Christopher Killick, who is on the ballot for the May 6 vote, was sentenced for voyeurism last year for filming a naked woman in a hotel room while she was asleep.

“Sex offender” doesn’t even cover it. That offends privacy, safety, women’s ability to leave the house and exist in public space, the ability to feel like a person among other persons – it turns a woman into a masturbation prop for men, a thing, an object, a tool. It’s funny how the purported feelings of men who say they are women are all-important while the unavoidable feelings of violated women are worth nothing at all.

Police dropped the rape charge due to a lack of evidence, but during their investigation they discovered a 62-second video of the woman lying naked on the hotel bed which Killick admitted to having taken for his later sexual gratification.

Prosecutors told the victim that his filming was not illegal multiple times, which led to her crowdfunding for a judicial review.

…

Asked whether he intended to tell the electorate about his convictions, he said: “I started this process planning to tell everyone, but I got a bit frightened.

“I do understand how it will be difficult for some people, perhaps everyone, to trust me.”

Especially when they learn that he tried to campaign for this office while keeping his disgusting violation of a woman’s privacy and safety secret.

Leya makes a point I wish people would make more often, and much louder.

See, identities are so much more fun than wages and benefits and hours. So much more sexy, so much more ersatz-clever, so much more about dressing up and haircuts.

Leya goes on:

It is a politics of privilege. It is wholly lacking any reality based analysis re changes that would make a difference to the lives of those facing real hardships & injustices.

The only structural changes arising from woke politics is that institutions can ignore addressing the hard issues in practical & informed ways, & instead perform the right language & forms of signalling & pretend this is making progress.

It is how we are in the position where generally working class people are ignored as marginalised by the very bodies & decision makers who should be working to lessen & address that marginalisation, despite working class people being the most economically & politically marginalised class of people.

This is why I fight the woke takeover of our governments & institutions. It offers no challenge to actual material oppression, patriarchy, or neoliberalism. And @janeclarejones points out, it is so, very American.

It is. We’ve been crap at the labor part and the class part and the genuine, class- and money-based inequality part for generations.

I think a lot of the worked-up unconvincing fake-seeming fervor around the trans thing has to do with envy of the real lefty politics of all those generations ago. Then again I also think it’s to do with our fundamental frivolity and self-obsession. We should harness angry Twitter to talk about that for a few years instead of Who Is the Transphobe of the Week This Time Lulubelle?

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on In understanding and analyzing any claim.

I think TRAs have kind of weaponised a lot of the shortcut memes which the rest of the left didn’t realise were bad ideas at the time.

I mean “JAQing off”, was originally a criticism of anti-feminists wasting everyone’s time, by asking questions which were unproductive and which had been answered repeatedly over a course of decades.

I think what we didn’t realise was that we had created an ideology which had this neat out from having to answer those questions at all, where asking those questions was an immediate marker of an enemy.

To JAQ off should be to ask questions without reading the basic easily findable FAQ, it should not be to ask questions for which there are no comfortable answers.

There really is no way to answer “What is female” without either endorsing sexist ideology or going with blunt biology. If there was a way of doing this, I think we’d have seen it by now.

And the whole trans issue is fundamentally a matter of semantics, what do you mean by woman? What exactly are you talking about when you call someone a man?

We can talk about how gender is socially constructed. Great. Lots of things are socially constructed that we don’t really get a say in – they’re things that society decided to label us with.

Which means there is room for acceptance of trans ideology in all of this. That includes trans racial ideology.

But it isn’t undisputed room, because the damage done by these labels aren’t things that people chose to have done to them. The social roles that come with these labels are not good.

And dealing with the injustices to these labels requires figuring out who the injustices are being done to, and there are questions around whether the damage was chosen. There are a lot of definitional questions that need to be asked.

With examples of trans racial individuals, we understand that by making race a matter of choice, we undermine the fight for racial equality by giving the impression that say, a black man who is being oppressed could just decide to be white. We build the impression that being black is something that white people may well choose to be in order gain some sort of benefit.

We can see how it is problematic when it comes to making arguments against racism.

Trans, when it comes to sex, has the same problem.

Just what does it mean to identify with your gender? If it means fitting the gender role assigned to you at birth, is trans ideology validating those roles, if not how they are assigned in the first place?

These aren’t comfortable questions, and they aren’t being answered. Rather than answering these questions, there are accusations of denying people their humanity, as if a he or a her isn’t human. So far as I can see, the trans think they’re the only humans and that the rest of us are something else.

I have a developed a big problem with “dog whistles” – in that I am not a dog. I do not think people engaged in these discussions are dogs. The TRAs seem to think they are arguing with canines, and frankly it is a losing argument because they do not answer the questions being posed to them.

Instead of answering the questions, the TRAs attack the motives of the questioners, and it slowly turns into a situation where those of us who don’t particularly care about sports, aren’t really het up over bathrooms, and who honestly don’t give a damn about your pronouns and thus are happy to use whatever you prefer, we look at it and we increasingly find ourselves on the other side of the debate.

Because if the questions are so terrible, the answers must be worse.

Another one.

They say “to view the full category criteria” but they don’t mean it – if you follow the link you don’t find the full category criteria. You have to ask – if you ask they admit it: they don’t mean women.

So not an award for women after all.

But apparently many do.

Ew. You hafta rinse them.

Ew.

Darkly interesting.

In other words Trump and Fox leadership are urging their fans to get COVID.

Ah well, why am I surprised.

Originally a comment by Sackbut in Miscellany Room 6.

The various discussions about transracialism and transgender ideology spurred some thoughts that I couldn’t quite fit anywhere, so I thought I’d put them here. It’s possible I’ve already related this story before, but it came to mind again.

My father was black, my mother was white, and I am one of those light-skinned people who might be considered black by the One Drop Rule. When I was in high school, decades ago, before all this “identity politics” and postmodern Critical Theory stuff became current, I was considering applying for an Achievement Scholarship, an award from the same outfit that does the National Merit Scholarship, but reserved for black students. The criteria for qualifying as “black” were not about measuring ancestry, nor were they specifically about any internal sense of identity, but rather “perceived as black by one’s peers”.

I often said I was black, and I have been accepted as black in certain circles, but I never really lived as black. I didn’t have a large number of black friends; I didn’t follow black musicians; I didn’t use black vernacular or slang; I didn’t wear clothing or hair styles popular among black people my age. In contrast, I knew other light-skinned people for whom being black and immersing themselves in black culture was an important aspect of their lives; that was very much not me.

I mentioned the possible scholarship application to some friends, and they obligingly agreed to refer to me as black if asked.

It occurred to me to compare this with transgenderism. Someone who has light skin and has little or no experience dealing with life as a black person suddenly decides to declare he is black and to take resources set aside for black people, and he asks people suddenly to acknowledge him as black, because he was born black and has always known, despite not living that way. This strikes me as somewhat parallel to the case of man who grew up male, lived with all the attributes of being male in modern society, suddenly “discovering” he is female, always has been, and demanding both resources set aside for women and acknowledgment that he is now a woman. The big difference is, of course, that I have a genuine factual basis for my claim, and this other man doesn’t.

But this other man demands society cater to his declaration, counterfactual as it is, and society bends over backwards to oblige, including changing policies and laws. People who even question his claim get called bigots and risk losing their platforms, jobs, children, friends. It makes no difference that he grew up and lived a male life, and it doesn’t matter if he changed his living pattern to mimic the stereotypical situations of women; the declaration is sufficient.

But someone like Dolezal gets excoriated and shunned for making her parallel claim. Dolezal was actually living as black. She was working for the advancement of black people. She would meet the criteria for the scholarship on that basis, despite the pesky factual issue. I, on the other hand, did none of these things. My great-grandfather was one of the founders of the NAACP, but I was never a member and I never worked with them. I just had the right bloodline. My biology was correct, but the scholarship required more than that.

I noted, too, that the scholarship required outside validation of blackness, that this was important. We know that, for people who identify as trans, this outside validation of their “identity” is of paramount personal importance, hence all the emphasis on pronouns and all the policies and laws that require people to validate a trans-identified person’s “identity”. I can’t imagine a similar set of draconian rules requiring validation of declared racial “identity”.

My Discuss: of course they do, because they can’t do anything else, because the confused thinking is baked in, because the whole idea is confused and absurd and solipsistic.

Or maybe not? Maybe it’s all just gloriously simple.

Ohhhhhhh…now I get it. A woman pretending to be black is not the same as a man pretending to be a woman. Cool! We can all go home now.

But the two are not the same. Claiming that gay men are not men is not the same as saying that men are not women. I suppose I would be annoyed if someone I respected called me broccoli or Albania or Ted Cruz, but that’s not the same as saying that men are not women. One of these things IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER.