Matt Gaetz says they were just good friends.

The Florida politician, a close ally of Donald Trump, claimed during the Tuesday night interview that he was the victim of an extortion plot by a former justice department official, and questioned the motivation behind Tuesday’s original reporting by the New York Times.

Gee, yes, what motivation could a newspaper have for reporting such a thing?

Gaetz, 38, claimed his lawyers had been informed that he was the subject of an FBI inquiry “regarding sexual conduct with women” and that the official was attempting to extort $25m from his family “in exchange for a commitment that he could make this investigation go away”.

Uh huh. Sure.

According to the New York Times, Gaetz was under investigation by the justice department to determine whether he violated federal sex trafficking laws and had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, and whether he paid her to travel with him.

The investigation was launched in the final months of the Trump administration under attorney general William Barr, the newspaper said, and was part of a broader investigation into a Republican party official and political ally in Florida, Joel Greenberg, indicted last summer on charges of sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, including at least one underage girl.

So it’s all kind of Jeffrey Epstein without Jeffrey Epstein. Was Andy Windsor there too?

Adding to the intrigue was a story reported by Axios earlier on Tuesday, just hours before the Times published its allegations, that Gaetz told associates he was considering resigning his seat in Congress to take a job with the rightwing media outlet Newsmax.

Totally normal thing to do.

Joan Smith points out that it’s a bit much to tell girls in school to be sure to report rape when in reality reporting rape tends to be a dead end, with a lot of misery on the way to the dead end. “Be sure to report rape, even though it’s futile and will also bring a world of bullying down on your head.”

Suddenly everyone is talking about a “rape culture” in schools. Not for the first time, it has to be said, but influential MPs, headteachers and senior police officers are urging anyone who has been attacked to report their experiences. “Every victim who comes forward will be believed, will be listened to and dealt with sensitively,” according to Simon Bailey, the national police lead for child protection. Really?

“Really?” is exactly what I was saying as I read that. No, of course not really. It is not true that every victim who comes forward will be believed. The truth is pretty much the opposite – every victim will be doubted.

Official figures tell the story: on average, about 1,060 women report a rape to the police in England and Wales each week. Only 40 of those rapes will lead to a prosecution, and about 27 will end in a conviction. More than 1,000 men a week are getting away with rape, in other words, and that’s only the cases known to the police. Many more go unreported, never featuring in the statistics.

Far more than do get reported, I think. Women know how this plays out, so mostly they don’t report it, because futile plus miserable. Thanks anyway but no.

When public figures urge girls to report rape, they should be honest about the fact that they are directing victims into a completely broken system; rape has all but been decriminalised, encouraging a culture of impunity among perpetrators. Hardly any rapists end up in prison, so what do they have to fear?

Especially when they get to shame and humiliate the accuser on the way to not going to prison?

There are now more than 8,000 posts on the Everyone’s Invited website, but it does not seem likely that they will change this atmosphere of corrosive distrust towards victims. Bailey’s statement that girls who come forward will be believed is hard to square with pronouncements from the country’s most senior police officer, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, who in 2018 reversed her force’s policy of believing individuals who report rape.

…

We live in a society where half the population faces an ever-present threat of sexual harassment and assault at school, at work and in our own homes. But the criminal justice system is so intent on protecting the interests of men and boys accused of rape, it no longer does its basic job of providing justice for victims.

Keep wearing those shorts under the school uniforms, girls.

An arrest has been made in that violent attack on a woman in NYC yesterday. The suspect has previous.

An arrest was made early Wednesday in a brutal attack on a 65-year-old Asian woman that drew widespread outrage after footage of the assault was released.

It does tend to draw outrage, that kind of thing – kicking a woman in the abdomen so hard that she falls on the sidewalk, then stomping on her head three times. Yes, we get riled when we see something like that. Most people have enough compassion for such a reaction.

New York City police identified the suspect as Brandon Elliot, 38, who was charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count each of attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault.

He was already on lifetime parole for fatally stabbing his mother in 2002, authorities said. He was freed from prison in November 2019, according to police. No other details about the murder were released.

I’m going to guess he doesn’t like women very much.

Early Tuesday, the Brodsky Organization, which manages the luxury apartments, said the company suspended the apartment building staff members who witnessed the attack and appeared not to come to the woman’s aid.

In a statement posted on Instagram, the company said it “condemns all forms of violence, racism, xenophobia, and violence against the Asian American community.”

The company said that “the staff who witnessed the attack have been suspended pending an investigation in conjunction with their union.” It was working to identify a “third-party vendor present during the incident so that appropriate action can be taken,” according to the statement.

Officials decried the attack and had strong words for the witnesses who appeared to watch the attack without trying to stop it.

Watching them just stand there is painful, but I don’t know their circumstances. I don’t know what rules their employer has laid down or what reasons they might have had to stand back. I don’t really think their failure should ruin their lives.

Another win!

Bowls England say they are updating their “historical and outdated” guidance on transgender bowlers after a trans female was barred from competing.

Stella Moore, 67, who has lived for three years as a woman, is unable [to] play for her Hampshire lawn bowls club.

There’s no such thing as “living as a woman,” any more than there’s such a thing as living as a bear or a tulip or a recycling plant.

Also, is Moore really unable to play for her club? Or is it just that she’s unable to play “as a woman”?

The Portsmouth and District Women’s Bowling Association say they have been following guidance published in 2014.

It required gender reassignment surgery three years before or for Stella to hold a gender recognition certificate.

The guidance is crap; men shouldn’t be allowed to play on women’s teams at all.

Stella, from Hayling Island, is continuing to campaign to be allowed to play in women’s competitions and for the guidelines to be changed after some of the tone and language upset her.

Well we can’t have this guy called Stella upset, can we.

“I was distraught, I love bowls” she told BBC South Today.

“I get it that if it’s boxing a guy can’t suddenly go, ‘I want to be a woman and fight other women’, but this is bowls.”

Actually he can, and then he smashes a woman’s skull in the first minute of the “fight.”

Stella is on hormone treatment to increase her female characteristics and reduce her strength, meaning she now has “the strength of a 30-year-old woman”, which she says can be clinically proven by her GP and the gender clinic.

People can say anything. It’s still not true.

“We are in the process of developing a new trans and gender-diverse policy,” chief executive Jon Cockroft said.

“Whilst the physical demands of bowls are more modest than most sports, it is still a gender-affected sport.

“Our new policy is being designed to balance a desire for inclusivity, so everybody can feel welcome in bowls, with the importance of ensuring fair competition.”

Don’t do that. Don’t “balance” fairness to the women with the man’s desire for “inclusivity” that is unfair to women.

The debate on bowls updating its policy comes at a time when World Rugby has banned transgender women from competing at the highest levels of the women’s game.

Because World Rugby draws the line at breaking women’s necks for sport.

Another day another bullying.

A gender studies professor at University of Rhode Island is facing backlash for comparing transgender people with far-right conspiracy theory-driven website QAnon, according to the Daily Mail.

Professor Donna Hughes wrote a piece for a radical feminist site. Oh the horror.

…saying that people who think they can change their gender are suffering from a “trans-sex fantasy.” Hughes also said that transgender people, just like QAnon with the right, has radicalized the left. Going further, Hughes said the left is using transgender issues to further an agenda that harms children.

“The American political left is increasingly diving headfirst into their own world of lies and fantasy and, unlike in the imaginary world of QAnon, real children are becoming actual victims,” she wrote.

Hughes taps into the prevailing anti-trans, dog-whistling rhetoric of the right…

Blah blah blah, but even the right isn’t wrong about everything – in fact the truth is that everyone agrees on most things. The parts we disagree on are a small fraction of the whole, they just seem bigger because we focus on them. If the right also thinks it’s not beneficent to tell people they can change sex and to give them hormones for that purpose, then that’s just one more thing we agree on.

Annie Russell, director of the university’s Gender and Sexuality Center, said Hughes’ comments are “beyond the pale.” Russell told The Providence Journal, “trans people are people, period.”

See? Yet another place where we agree on one thing while disagreeing on another. We too think that trans people are people! So much do we think so that we’ve never said otherwise. What else would they be? Chairs and birds and rocks don’t think they can change sex. Another thing we think though is that people who disagree with us shouldn’t cheat by implying that we don’t think trans people are people. Annie Russell is cheating by implying that Hughes would disagree with her that trans people are people. Dirty pool.

Furthermore, she added, students at the university are upset by Hughes’ comments, which are “not only outdated, it’s never been a part of the gender and women’s studies movement.”

What’s never been a part of the gender and women’s studies movement? The understanding that men are not women? If that’s the case, what the hell is women’s studies? What do those two words even mean?

University of Rhode Island issued a statement, saying, “The University does not support statements and publications by Professor Donna Hughes that espouse anti-transgender perspectives and recognize that such discourse can cause pain and discomfort for many transgender individuals.

“The University is committed to transgender rights and the need to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence aimed at transgender individuals and the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Well shame on URI for doing that. My brother’s first academic job was at URI, so I take it a bit personally. What a cowardly shitty abject thing to do.

Hughes, of course, is not happy about the backlash, problematically claiming her right to free speech is being trampled upon.

What a witless sentence. The article isn’t signed; maybe a machine wrote it.

Vaccination passports are as dystopian as it gets? I’ll give you dystopian.

Here’s your dystopian.

The security guard inside closed the door from inside instead of going to help her. I saw someone say that’s their job, to secure the building, their job isn’t to monitor what’s happening outside. I say the hell with that, it’s not about “the job,” it’s about interrupting an attack. The attacker kicked the woman in the head three times – if the guard had rushed out the second and third wouldn’t have happened.

This is your dystopia – street violence and bystanders closing the door while it happens.

This one is even worse to watch, because it goes on for a long time after the attacker walks off, and no one helps the woman.

It doesn’t? Really?

I can think of way more dystopian it can get. Lots of it. Surveillance cameras in every room, recording-transmitting devices on every surface, militarized police everywhere you go, food shortages, criminalization of all dissent, closure of all independent sources of knowledge and discussion, harsh prison sentences for the smallest infractions, death penalties for the smallest infractions, mandatory prostitution, mandatory impregnation and childbirth, disfavored races and ethnic groups and immigrants sent to camps in miserable climates, most people denied health care, schools eliminated…and so on and so on.

It’s laughably easy to think of more dystopian societies than ones that issue proof of vaccination at the height of a lethal pandemic.

Originally a comment by maddog on Cyclist and expert.

Let boys compete in girls’ competitions, but don’t count their wins

^^ This suggested model is a “solution” that doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: Why should boys compete in the girls’ division at all? There already exists a solution for boys who want to play sports: they can play in the boys’ division. “Where can boys play sports?” has NEVER been a problem. Wailing about, “where can this boy play?” is a ridiculous non-problem

He can play in the boys’ division, that already exists for him. Boys’ sports get the lion’s share of attention and resources, just as it always has been. Historically, girls haven’t had nearly as many opportunities to play sports, and still get fewer resources.

There’s no reason to even raise a question about “how much” of the resources devoted to girls’ sports should be diverted to boys instead. It doesn’t matter if the boys who enter girls’ sports don’t win, or if their wins “don’t count.” Every boy who plays in the girls’ division has stolen the resources that should have gone to a girl. Every single spot occupied by a boy has been stolen from a girl. “Not counting” a boy’s win does nothing to compensate the girl who was robbed of a chance to enter her own competition.

The thing about being an academic in English (the discipline) is that it’s pretty hard to say anything original, given the huge number of academic colleagues who precede you. So what do you do? In some cases you bullshit. Might as well, right?

“Unquestionably” – that’s rich. It’s questionable.

More:

Lavery told us that he was going to talk about a eugenicist (Marie Stopes) and a charlatan (L. Ron Hubbard) though ultimately [he] never gave us the lowdown on Stopes’ support for eugenics and Hubbard was given only a very passing mention in the Q&A.

… but if I confess to attempting to animate within realism, the erotic frisson that might derive from a fantasy of being brainwashed, I will feel myself safe, because George Eliot was unquestionably a trans author, and transition, whatever else it may be, can hardly escape the condition of brainwashing and those upon whom it does its work, would hardly wish it to.

Yep, you heard it here first (or maybe not). George Eliot was trans because she pretended to be a male author, the fact that women were not permitted to author books at the time is of course immaterial.

Yes but being trans is just that easy: you are if you say you are, and that’s all there is to it, and of course “being trans” means also being the sex you are not, which of course you are if you say you are, again, and that’s all there is to it, again. So, ya know, basically everyone was trans, because why not, right? So everybody was the other thing. And vice versa. So really nothing is different – only the labels. Have another glass?

They what?!

Arkansas banned health care for a group of people? How can that be?

That’s how – by wording it deceptively. Arkansas didn’t ban health care for trans teenagers, it banned “gender affirming” care, i.e. puberty blockers and amputations. The NBC headline is honest, the Washington Post one is fuzzy, the Insider one is just a lie, like the ACLU tweet.

From the NBC story:

The Arkansas Senate passed a bill Monday that would ban access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors, including reversible puberty blockers and hormones.

But puberty blockers are not entirely reversible.

It’s interesting how much obfuscation and lying appears to be necessary for this fad to keep going.

“I really worry about the fact that we’re just a few votes away from some of the most sweeping and damaging and potentially genocidal laws from ever being passed, and we barely have a mention of it in the bigger national conversation of what’s going on in this particular moment in U.S. history,” [Chase] Strangio said.

Lots of us worry that we’re telling so many teenage kids that it’s lifesaving and fabulous to try to be the opposite sex by taking puberty blockers and maybe having bits of yourself cut off. Maybe that’s actually more “genocidal” than not doing it. Lesbians are becoming horribly scarce.

Strangio said the consequences of all of the bills are the same: People are going to lose health care. “I don’t think I ever imagined a world where we would start ripping health care away from people, essentially forcing them to detransition by government coercion,” Strangio said.

But it isn’t health care. Cutting off people’s breasts or penises not for medical reasons but because of a socially-generated idea in the head is not health care.

It may be that the law, under these circumstances, is too brutal. I don’t know. But this rush to convince everyone that change of sex via hormones and surgery is the best thing ever is way too brutal.

Never mind girls, pay attention to trans girls [who are boys]. Lawyers, Guns & Money:

The right-wing freak out that transgender girls could dominate girls’ sports at the high school level (as if right-wingers care about women’s sports except when it is useful in their culture wars) is so very, very frustrating. Claire Thornton decided to do what few journalists have done–actually talk to transgender girls and their families about it.

Well that’s mind-numbingly obtuse. How about talking to girls about it? Especially girls who have already lost out to boys who call themselves trans and take all their prizes?

Of course there are higher principles [in] play:

Civil rights experts said competitive sports are the latest facet of life targeted by anti-transgender legislation.

“It’s a proxy for them having lost the bathroom war,” said Veronica Ivy, a competitive cyclist and expert on transgender rights whose research on sports demographics has  contributed to International Olympic Committee policy.

Ah yes “Veronica Ivy” aka Rachel McKinnon formerly Rhys McKinnon; such a fine, disinterested, thoughtful civil rights expert – one who heaps verbal abuse on women who don’t agree that he is literally a woman in every sense. Also he’s “a competitive cyclist” who competes against women half his size, and – surprise surprise – defeats them, and then snarls at them on Twitter if they refuse to hug him for the photo ops.

This is also great stuff:

Legislators in more than 20 states have introduced bills this year that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams in public high schools. Yet in almost every case, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation has caused problems.

The Associated Press reached out to two dozen state lawmakers sponsoring such measures around the country as well as the conservative groups supporting them and found only a few times it’s been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.

In South Carolina, for example, Rep. Ashley Trantham said she knew of no transgender athletes competing in the state and was proposing a ban to prevent possible problems in the future. Otherwise, she said during a recent hearing, “the next generation of female athletes in South Carolina may not have a chance to excel.”

That’s great stuff? Really?

Of course there haven’t been many examples yet: it’s a new thing. It’s a new idea and a new practice, so there hasn’t been time for many examples. Also don’t forget the vicious social pressure – as in the LGM post itself – applied to people who don’t agree that boys can be girls. But yes, if it goes ahead and becomes settled custom then girls will lose out. Laws do often aim to prevent future likelihoods. There are laws against murder even in places where murder is very rare.

The whole stupid smug post doesn’t say one word explaining how boys don’t have physical advantages over girls.

Speaking of international commerce…

Customs officials in Ecuador discovered 185 baby tortoises packed inside a suitcase that was being sent from the Galápagos Islands to the mainland on Sunday.

The reptiles had been wrapped in plastic and were found during a routine inspection at the main airport on the island of Baltra.

Ten of them had died, officials said.

One of the biggest threats to Galápagos tortoises is illegal trading for animal collectors and exotic pet markets.

Many of the Galápagos tortoise subspecies are endangered. Also, wrapping live animals in plastic and shipping them in a suitcase is inhumane and disgusting.

Ecuador’s environment minister, Marcelo Mata, described the incident as a crime against the country’s wild fauna and natural heritage.

Also a crime against the specific 185 tortoises.

Staff from the Galápagos National Park are helping with the care of the seized tortoises

Dislodged and on the move.

Tug boats honked their horns in celebration as the 400m-long (1,300ft) Ever Given was dislodged on Monday.

Traffic is set to resume in both directions through the canal at 19:00 local time (17:00 GMT), according to local authorities.

…

The vessel was being towed for safety checks to Great Bitter Lake, which sits between two sections of the canal to the north of where the ship got stuck.

…

According to Lloyd’s List, there are currently more than 370 ships waiting to pass through the canal, including container vessels, tankers, and bulk carriers. Clearing that backlog is expected to take several days.

Some economies of scale aren’t.

She can go lower. Can and does.

Not that she’s gone at all conspiratorial in her thinking.

It seems that if a woman “identifies as” a gay man then that’s what she is. Simples.

Who is Chiyo? I had to look it up. The BBC last August:

Being judged on his masculinity is something Chiyo feels every time he steps outside the front door.

Chiyo is transgender and, in April next year, he’ll be standing on stage with a group of other men – who aren’t trans – to be judged in what is ultimately a male beauty contest.

He’s a finalist in the (coronavirus-delayed) Mr Gay England 2020.

In other words Chiyo is a woman, who next month will be standing on stage with a group of other actual men to be judged in a male beauty contest.

But no no how very dare we? Chiyo is “living his life as a gay man” therefore he is one. Only, how would anyone even know that? What does it mean? It’s not as if there’s an Inspectorate sending inspectors out to do surprise checks. Chiyo could be lounging around the house in girl-mode, as Eddie Izzard so obnoxiously calls it, and no one would be the wiser. “Living one’s life as” is just obfuscatory-speak for playing Let’s Pretend. It doesn’t transform you into what you’re pretending to be except in your own head, as an imaginative game or mind-expansion or whatever you want to call it. It’s fine to pretend; it’s not fine to force other people to say you are what you’re pretending to be, much less to punish them for refusing.

The gay man bullied by the Mr Gay England Twitt has deleted his account.

Graham Linehan boosts the message of a woman currently suspended by His Majesty the Twitter:

Trade unions are trade unions. What makes them think it’s their job to force women to call men “women” if the men demand it?

Hubble’s response:

No, I wouldn’t like to talk about it. I have not said one thing that is transphobic (which has become a meaningless word as it is used so often). I proudly stand for the rights of women and the single-sex exemptions that are enshrined in equality law, and if that is considered transphobic then the problem is with the definition not with my stance.

I believe in biological reality and do not subscribe to the notion of gender identity especially when it damages women and girls – the oppression of women is based on biology not gender identity and this movement is seeking to remove not only every protection women and girls have but to redefine what it means to be female.

The left is eating itself with identity politics and it pains me to witness it. Centuries of oppression and fighting to even be recognised as deserving of equality have been eroded in just a few years. Ask yourself this question, is it OK for me to identify as black because I feel black and I listen to Bob Malrley? Would it be fine for me to then claim to be more oppressed than those who don’t get to choose the colour of their skin? Is it OK for a person to claim to be disabled because they “feel disabled” and claim all the protections and systems put in place to allow disabled people to be equal within society? If the answer to those questions is no (rightly so) then why is it OK for a man to claim womanhood based on how he feels and what he wears?

Exactly what I keep wondering. For literally years I’ve been wondering it…and I’m not the only one.

Women and girls cannot identify out of their oppression in the same way that black and disabled people cannot identify out of theirs. I would never and will never discriminate against anyone nor would I treat anyone any differently based on their identity, in fact I have campaigned for LGBT rights and will continue to do so. I have been a left wing trade unionist and feminist my whole life and I will not apologise for my belief that a person who is born male cannot magically change sex and become more oppressed than females. I don’t think you or any man (no disrespect) can understand how upsetting it is to see so many left wing men, who have spent the past 5 years telling women like myself, to shut up, sit down, don’t talk, and calling them bigots, transphobes and TERFs for standing for their rights, suddenly “stand in solidarity with women and girls” because it is the latest cause celebre. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing and the intellectual disconnect involved in this is staggering.

Read on.

They’re building those things too damn big.

Over the past decade, out of the sight of most consumers, the world’s container ships have been quietly ballooning in size. A class of vessels that carried a maximum of about 5,000 shipping containers in 2000 has doubled in size every few years since, with dozens of megaships now traversing the ocean laden with upwards of 20,000 boxes.

The ocean can deal with it; canals, not so much.

The ships’ rapid growth has outstripped the capacity of marine infrastructure to follow. The Panama canal was expanded at a cost of more than $5bn (£3.6bn) more than a decade ago to meet the size of new container ships – only to be left behind as even larger vessels rolled out of Asian shipyards.

…

The Suez canal has been in the process of expansion to allow for larger ships and two-way traffic at its northern end. But its southern side was still one-way and narrower: vulnerable when one of the largest container ships in the world tried to pass through on a windy morning.

Sometimes economies of scale aren’t.

Updating to add:

Ted Cruz tries to go all Apocalypse Now and everybody just laughs at him.

In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.

Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.”

Despite his claims that the border situation is a direct result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, residents in the Rio Grande Valley have said no such crisis exists. In fact, the number of border crossings under the Biden administration largely mirror those under the former Trump administration.

Oh now cut that out, it’s a great big sweaty emergency and Cruz is a HERO for going down there to look at it.

After claiming he ran into heckling cartel members and saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande, Cruz was derided by many, including former congressman Beto O’Rourke who said: “You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).”

And crocodiles! Sharks! Killer whales that jump and bite!

A Saturday soppy. Abandoned dog keeps returning to a store to try to take possession of a purple plush unicorn.

The business in Kenansville, North Carolina, called animal control on Sisu, a large male stray dog, because of his repeated thievery. He had come to the store five times to steal the same stuffed unicorn.

However, instead of being left empty-handed, the Duplin County Animal Control officer who went to pick him up ended up buying the toy for Sisu instead.

And Duplin County Animal Control advertised him on Facebook.

This is what happens when you break into the dollar general consistently to steal the purple unicorn that you layed claim to but then get animal control called to lock you up for your B & E and larceny but the officer purchases your item for you and brings it in with you.

Sisu

Male

Stray

1 yrs old

67.1 lbs

He’s been adopted.