Georgia is still busy suppressing that pesky black vote.

Georgia’s state House passed a bill this week that includes several measures that restrict voting access, including a ban on automatic voter registration, a limit on Sunday early voting days and ballot drop boxes, and a number of restrictions and ID requirements for absentee voting. The bills come after former President Donald Trump made baseless claims of a rigged 2020 election, saying there had been widespread voter fraud in Georgia.

It also comes after the terrible Supreme Court ruling in Shelby.

In a 5-4 vote, the court struck down a formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law that required certain states and localities with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get changes cleared by the federal government before they went into effect.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of this decision. The power of the Voting Rights Act was in the design that the supreme court gutted – discriminatory voting policies could be blocked before they harmed voters. The law placed the burden of proof on government officials to prove why the changes they were seeking were not discriminatory. Now, voters who are discriminated against now bear the burden of proving they are disenfranchised.

Back to CNN:

[Cliff] Albright [co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter] said the proposals directly target the methods used to mobilize Black voters. He said limiting Sunday early voting, for example, is a direct attack on “Souls to the Polls”– which is a get-out-the-vote campaign led by Black churches. A CNN analysis found that Black voters made up 34.6% of the voters who cast early ballots on the three weekend voting days that could be eliminated under the proposal from Georgia lawmakers.

The bill also prohibits free food and drinks from being served to people standing in line to vote. Volunteers often served pizza and chips to voters who stood in line for several hours at predominately Black precincts in the Atlanta area.

“Clearly, the attack is based on when it is and how it is that they know Black voters are being mobilized to turn out,” Albright said. “They know that they can’t win elections if we actually expand access to voting or even if we just maintain it.”

And the Supreme Court made it all possible.

Happy International Genders Day.

President Biden marked International Women’s Day on Monday by signing two executive orders geared toward promoting gender equity, both in the United States and around the world.

In a statement, Biden said: “In our nation, as in all nations, women have fought for justice, shattered barriers, built and sustained economies, carried communities through times of crisis, and served with dignity and resolve. Too often, they have done so while being denied the freedom, full participation, and equal opportunity all women are due.”

With you so far.

The first executive order establishes a Gender Policy Council within the White House, reformulating an office from the Obama administration that was later disbanded by the Trump administration, and giving it more clout.

“Reformulating” it how?

Under former President Barack Obama, the office was called the White House Council on Women and Girls. The name change to the Gender Policy Council is intentional, according to Council co-chair Jennifer Klein, who has worked on women’s issues going back to the Clinton administration.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

So by the same token shouldn’t Black Lives Matter be renamed Race Lives Matter? Or would that sound too much like All Lives Matter?

“We are very inclusive in our definition of gender,” Klein said in a White House briefing Monday. “We intend to address all sorts of discrimination and fight for equal rights for people, whether that’s LGBTQ+ people, women, girls, men.”

So there you have it: that is literally all lives matter. Discrimination against women will now be folded into discrimination against people, and “feminism” will become an obsolete word.

The Council’s staff will include a special assistant to the president to focus specifically on “policies to advance equity for Black, indigenous and Latina women and girls of color,” Klein said, in recognition of the historical and disproportionate barriers those groups face.

Women and girls? But she just said it was for men too.

By establishing the council, Biden said, his administration shows its commitment “to ensure that every domestic and foreign policy we pursue rests on a foundation of dignity and equity for women.”

For women? Or for people of gender? Or for women plus LGBTQ+ people plus men?

By establishing the council, Biden said, his administration shows its commitment “to ensure that every domestic and foreign policy we pursue rests on a foundation of dignity and equity for women.”

They seem to be confused.

In observance of International Women’s Day…

Julie Bindel tells us:

At the Green party spring conference this weekend, a motion which sought to introduce a party policy on women’s sex-based rights was defeated. A whopping 289 delegates (out of 521) voted to not include biological females in the party’s list of oppressed groups.

All the motion aimed to do was simply add a paragraph to the Green party’s ‘Our Rights and Responsibilities Policy’. The motion reads:

‘This is to include the protected characteristic of sex as currently our Record of Policy statements supports the other eight characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race, maternity, religion/belief, marriage/civil partnership) but not that of sex discrimination – aimed primarily at women…’

The motion was opposed because, in essence, it is considered ‘transphobic’ to recognise that women are targeted by male oppression precisely because of their female sex.

Why is that considered “transphobic”? Because men who say they are women want it all – they want to be hugged and cuddled and tied up in wool because they are oppressed as women and they want to keep women out of all that because it should all belong to them and they want to bully and threaten women and they want a whole other consignment of hugs and cuddles because they are oppressed as trans women. Everything is for them, nothing is for women. Women are either cuddlers of men or death-deserving terfs and Karens; there is nothing in between.

The Green party leader Sian Berry, who has declared that she wishes London to be the most ‘trans inclusive’ city in the world, seemed to see this as a victory. In a series of tweets following the vote, Berry stated: ‘Motion E01 was defeated. My party voted for inclusive women’s rights and someone is having a big old cry. Thank you Greens!’ Berry signed off with, ‘Vote for inclusion and kindness!’

So can trans black people, i.e. white people who say they are black, take over all the anti-racism groups and kick black people out of them? Or is it only women we get to do this to.

The Green party leadership has long capitulated to the trans Taliban. Take Caroline Lucas, the former Greens leader. Prior to 2016 Lucas steadfastly supported the feminist campaign to criminalise paying for sex as a way to deter men from creating the demand for prostitution. She told me back in 2008 that she wanted to see an end to the sex trade because she understood it to be exploitative of women and a barrier to equality. But in 2016, having been told off by trans activist Paris Lees (who is of the view that feminists that campaign to end prostitution are posh, white prudes) Lucas did an about turn, offered to meet up with Lees, and has since supported the campaign to decriminalise pimps, brothel owners and punters.

Paris Lees, of course, is not a woman. It’s not obvious why his telling off would convince a feminist woman that prostitution is a boon for women.

The yelling went on and on, along with throwing things.

Andrew Sullivan has form.

It’s not “pointless” to call male athletes who are displacing female athletes in female competitions “male,” because that’s what they are and because it gives them an advantage over females that everyone used to know was in fact an advantage. It’s not some random thing to call them, it’s the whole issue, and it’s certainly not pointless, it is exactly the point.

And it’s not “offensive” unless you buy into the whole silly narrative about being “in the wrong body” or having “a woman’s soul in a man’s body” or having “known she was a girl since she picked up a doll at age two weeks.” It’s the silly narrative that’s offensive, not the refusal to echo it.

And there’s nothing “accurate” about “trans female.” Male people are not any kind of female, so the only “accurate” word to put in front of “female” would be “not.”

And it’s not the women who are being bullied and shunned who are being “callous and hurtful.” It’s the male people who rob them of athletic prizes and the people who cheer on this unfair dishonest trick who are being callous and hurtful.

And saying male people are male people is not a slur, much less a “hurtful slur.” We might better ask why everyone rushes to be so melodramatically concerned about the hurt feelings of males who are hell-bent on invading women’s spaces and sports and scholarships and everything else they can grab.

Women are people too, Mr. Sullivan.

Andrew Sullivan catches it and then drops it.

Lots of people are telling him that it can’t be the right thing to do if it isn’t fair, which I agree with but think misses his point. He’s not so dim as to be unaware of the paradox in his claim. There can be necessities that are nevertheless unfair to someone.

But having said that, I still find it annoying that he says it may be the right thing to do, because…come on. A guy’s desire to compete against women because he thinks of himself as a woman (assuming he’s not pretending) doesn’t make it the right thing to do. It’s just his desire, that’s all, so why should it trump someone else’s desire when it’s not fair? His life doesn’t depend on it, his health doesn’t depend on it, his basic needs don’t depend on it. He just wants to. That’s not enough to override the “it’s not fair” part.

The whole point of trans activism could be summed up as converting desires to needs in this way, and that’s why it churns out such unconvincing rhetoric.

It was Sex Week at Ohio State University last month! We missed it!

It was under the umbrella of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Department.

What is that about? Why are women and sexuality lumped together? Do men have nothing to do with sexuality? It’s hard not to conclude that the lumping together is because women are the consumer good, rather than because men have nothing to do with sexuality. It’s like this, see: when people (i.e. men) think about women they think about sex, so the two go together as an academic department. What non-people (i.e. women) think about when they think about men is of no interest or importance. Disciplines are organized according to what men think about, and women are just the raw material.

Anyway. Sexuality week is guaranteed to be fun and sex-positive.

Student Advocates for Sexual Health Awareness (SASHA) is hosting The Ohio State University’s annual Sex Week! Sex Week is dedicated to creating a judgement-free, inclusive, relatable space for the OSU community to explore sexual health. The week will include presentations and discussions on various topics including sex education, abortion stigma, pleasure, sex work, and more!

With no judgement! Of any kind! Always desirable in an academic setting.

Monday, February 15th

• “Kiss me Thru The Phone: Cybersex during COVID-19” (2:00pm – 3:00pm)
• “Beyond the Gender Binary with Alok” (5:00pm – 6:00pm)
• “The Policy on Our Bodies: A Panel on Current Legislation” (6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tuesday, February 16th

• “They Work Hard for the Money: Sex Work with Dr. Teela Sanders” (3:00pm – 4:00pm)

Who do? Pimps? Pimps don’t work hard for the money.

Friday, February 19th

• “Smashing the Stigma on Sex” (11:00am – 12:00pm)
• “Not Your High School Sex Ed” (2:00pm – 3:00pm)
• “Plan B(ingo)” (6:00pm – 7:00pm)
• “Kink 101” (7:30pm – 8:30pm)

Send your daughter to Ohio State to learn how to love being strangled during sex!

SASHA is a student organization that advocates educating the student body about sexual health in all its forms. Realistic sexual health is interdisciplinary and includes healthy relationships, methods of protection, and STI awareness, gender equality, and body acceptance.

Co-sponsored by The Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Feminism? What’s that got to do with anything?

Cage fight.

There’s an ambiguity in there, which Dawkins corrects with the first two words of his second sentence. “Science” refers to the human discipline and also to the realities it uncovers. Gorski assumes Dawkins is talking about the first, but that requires him to ignore the “Science’s truths” bit. Perhaps because…

So is transgender science the socially constructed kind or the “scientific facts” kind?

Dawkins did clear it up, while (characteristically) claiming it was OBVIOUS what he meant (it wasn’t – see above about the ambiguity).

The struggle continues.

Wut?

Well I certainly hope they decided to stop calling it OBGYN, given what the GYN stands for. Filthy business, filthy. (I actually once knew someone who considered “gynecologist” a dirty word. This panic-loathing around all things female comes from somewhere.)

So…

The old version starts with “This 4-week clerkship emphasizes health care for women…”; the second replaces that with “This 4-week clerkship emphasizes sexual and reproductive care…”

The word “women” is gone. Sabina Spigner is “stoked” to have gotten the word “women” removed from a course description for OBGYN students. Stoked.

Bully plans to go all the way from Florida to Alaska, without Air Force One at his disposal, in order to bully a woman he doesn’t like.

Trump is making official his plans to target Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, vowing to travel to Alaska to campaign against her ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Campaign against her meaning what? Running for the senate? Or just throwing his weight around.

In a statement to POLITICO on Saturday, Trump said: “I will not be endorsing, under any circumstances, the failed candidate from the great State of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski. She represents her state badly and her country even worse. I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad Senator.”

Spoken like a petulant illiterate, as always.

But if he’s going to be in Alaska all next year that’s fine. He’ll hate it.

Trump says images of him belong to HIM. Get your dirty mitts off them.

Donald Trump has told the Republican National Committee and other party bodies to stop using his name and likeness in fundraising efforts, it was reported on Saturday.

“President Trump remains committed to the Republican party and electing America First conservatives,” Politico quoted an unnamed adviser to the former president as saying about the legal cease-and-desist notice, “but that doesn’t give anyone – friend or foe – permission to use his likeness without explicit approval.”

Wrong! Anybody can use images of him without his permission unless he has copyright.

Spiteful little fucker isn’t he.

Relief bill passed.

Joe Biden hailed “one more giant step forward on delivering on that promise that help is on the way”, after Democrats took a critical step towards a first major legislative victory since assuming control of Congress and the White House, with a party-line vote in the Senate to approve a $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill.

One senator was able to see to it that unemployed people would be kept poorer.

The marathon “vote-a-rama” session that preceded the final Senate vote featured the longest recorded vote in Senate history, just shy of 12 hours, on Friday, as Democrats scrambled to strike a deal with Manchin, a moderate who mounted a last-minute push to scale back unemployment benefits.

Bowing to Manchin, the resulting compromise will keep benefits at $300 a week instead of $400, as proposed by Biden and approved by the House. However, the benefits will be extended until October rather than August, and Democrats added a provision to provide up to $10,200 in tax relief for unemployed Americans.

Let them eat stones.

Early on Friday, the Senate rejected a proposal by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage increase, a top liberal priority and a key plank of Biden’s economic agenda.

Despite widespread public support for raising the federal minimum wage, Democrats remain divided over the measure. On Friday, eight joined all Republicans in blocking the amendment, which would have required 60 votes to pass.

If people can’t live on $7.50 an hour well they should have thought of that before they got born.

That very first sentence is pretty astounding. What does it even mean to say “I am contacting you within my role as head of trans inclusion at Stonewall”? What does some “role” at some political organization have to do with sending peremptory bossy complaints about what one woman says on Twitter to her employer?

Has there ever been any organization that could do that on behalf of women?

Perhaps it’s just a racket, plain and simple.

Allison Bailey today made public the complaint that Stonewall sent to her chambers.

Uh oh. A foot wrongly placed.

Who doesn’t know that sexual attraction is based on chemical reactions as opposed to weird irrelevant shit like bodies and faces and genitals and chest-ornaments? Nobody pays any attention to bodies and faces and genitals and chest-ornaments. What a warped medieval idea.

Repent!

It’s very cis to think clarifications have to be related to what they’re supposed to clarify.

Hoping desperately that saying it would be all that’s required.

And trying to make people choose or learn it would be conversion therapy, so…kinda makes ya think, don’t it.

NPR should be better than this.

“Detransition narratives” they say – but I bet they don’t talk about “transition narratives.” I bet their internal editor would tell them “that’s transphobic!!!” before they even finished typing it. Detransition is a fairy tale, but transition is glorious and healthy and never fails to make everything perfect.

In short, NPR has decided that trying to “change sex” is a good and wise thing to do, and that being skeptical of that view is evil and forbidden. Why? Why has NPR decided that?

Also note the “weaponized against trans people” bit. It’s not “weaponized against arm-having people” to say that amputating your arms for no reason would not be a good idea. It’s not “weaponizing” against anyone to point out that humans can’t change sex, and that trying to change the obvious physical markers of sex is probably futile and quite likely to cause problems.

Also detransition doesn’t “belong to” anyone, and the people who have experience of it aren’t trans any more, so why should they be shoved aside by people who think detransition is a “weapon”?

There is so much dishonest manipulative language in this movement that it should be obvious to onlookers that it’s not the broad sunlit path to happiness it’s cracked up to be.

We don’t seem to be very good at learning, in the US. The fact that the number of new cases has fallen from a peak is not the same as PANDEMIC IS OVER EVERYONE JUMP INTO THE POOL AGAIN.

Public health experts encouraged Americans to continue social distancing and wearing masks at a potentially critical inflection point in the pandemic – one in which highly effective vaccines could provide relief, but fervor [eagerness] to reopen public life could unintentionally spread new Covid-19 variants.

The warnings come the same week Texas and Mississippi flung open the doors to normal social life in their states.

No doors should be flung open yet. Not even close.

Coronavirus cases have declined across much of the United States since mid-January, a point when the peak of the third wave saw upwards of 4,000 Covid-19 deaths a day. However, cases remain “extremely high” according to data watchers, and could plateau at a point equivalent to the peak of summer 2020.

See, the peak was very high, so cases can decline and still be too high.

On Wednesday, following a crippling winter ice storm Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, ended all pandemic restrictions and opened the state “100%”. The Republican governor of Mississippi soon followed suit, and lifted mask mandates on all activities except schools and large arenas.

…

The moves prompted immediate outcry. Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, called lifting pandemic restrictions a “systemwide state leadership failure”, while Joe Biden called the decision “Neanderthal thinking”.

Pause for explosions of wrath over “Neanderthal.” The Neanderthal Pride Association could not be reached for comment.

Bolsonaro to the people of Brazil: suck it up!

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has triggered a wave of revulsion by telling citizens to stop “whining” about a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 260,000 people.

The far-right populist made the inflammatory declaration on Thursday, as Brazil’s already dire Covid situation deteriorated and its average daily death toll rose above that of the United States.

“Stop all this fussing and whining. How long are you going to keep on crying?” Bolsonaro asked supporters in the midwestern state of Goiás, where nearly 9,000 people have died.

What’s there to fuss and whine about after all? Hospitals overrun, nurses and doctors stretched beyond the limit, people suffering – who cares?

The composer Zeca Baleiro tweeted: “A president who says ‘stop whining and fussing’ at the most critical, painful and heart-rending moment the Brazilian people have faced since the start of the pandemic isn’t just a bungling politician, a bad man or a moron. He’s an incurable sociopath.”

There are people who compete with each other on Twitter to see who can say the most psychopathic things about the pandemic.

Getting closer.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that it has arrested Federico Klein, one of former President Donald Trump’s appointees to the U.S. Department of State, for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Klein, 42, was picked up by federal agents in Virginia, according to a spokesperson for the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C. Court documents obtained by ABC News show Klein has been charged with assaulting federal law enforcement personnel during the deadly riot earlier this year.

Gee I thought Trump and his people were big fans of law enforcement.

Charging documents filed Tuesday in federal district court in Washington, D.C., accuse Klein of taking part in one of the day’s most violent interactions between authorities and the mob seeking entrance at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol building. Investigators said law enforcement body-worn cameras purportedly captured Klein as he “violently shoved a riot shield that apparently had been taken from an officer, towards the officers trying to stop the mob from gaining access to the building.”

Investigators said Klein allegedly “pushed the riot shield in between the doors to the Capitol, preventing officers from closing the doors,” according to the court documents.

Investigators said other videos posted on social media purportedly show Klein “inciting the mob and trying to break through the police line in the Lower West Terrace tunnel and into the Capitol building.” In one instance, as a crowd of rioters assaulted and struggled with authorities, investigators said Klein was purportedly captured on video repeatedly “calling back to the crowd behind him, ‘We need fresh people, we need fresh people,'” according to the court documents.

But if you believe Trump is the god-emperor that’s not a crime, it’s a patriotic and devout act.

On Jan. 20, the FBI posted a bulletin showing individuals who it said had made unlawful entry into the Capitol building and assaulted law enforcement personnel on Jan. 6. The list included Klein, who was given the moniker “136-AFO.” The FBI then received a tip from an individual who identified 136-AFO as Klein. The tipster told the FBI that Klein was their neighbor and “had exhibited extreme behavior to include displaying inflammatory rhetoric on their vehicle about President Biden, Vice President Harris, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the ‘ANTIFA’ movement,” according to the court documents.

Investigators determined that Klein had been an employee of the U.S. Department of State until resigning his position on Jan. 19, the day before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Klein also possessed a top-secret security clearance, according to the court documents.

So he wasn’t just a file clerk.