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.

This is happening:

Welcome to Sex Matters:

A launch message from Rebecca Bull, Naomi Cunningham, Maya Forstater and Emma Hilton.

The Era of “No Debate” is over

In the last 12 months, the UK government has dropped plans to change the law in England and Wales to enable people to change their legal sex status through self-declaration. The Department for Education has told schools to stop saying children can be ‘born in the wrong body’. The Crown Prosecution Service has withdrawn guidance for schools equating dissent to “hate.” In Scotland the Forensic Medical Services Bill was amended to clarify that rape victims should be allowed to request the sex not the “gender” of the medical professional examining them. And the High Court has ordered doctors to take a much more cautious approach to treating children with gender dysphoria.

Step by step.

Should we be furious about Dr. Seuss, or elated, or neither?

On Tuesday, the publishing imprint Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it would cease publishing six books by Dr. Seuss that include offensive images. In the statement, which was published on the author’s birthday, the publisher said it reached its decision after working with a panel of experts, including educators, in the service of its mission “of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.”

The six shelved books are all comparatively obscure works in the Seuss canon: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. Beloved classics like The Cat in the Hat and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! remain untouched. But the decision, which caused enormous uproar across the right-wing infosphere, is part of a larger debate raging across the children’s literature community.

The thing is, though, books go out of print all the time. Were people thinking all books, once published, stay in print forever? If so, get out your hankies: they don’t. Most books don’t stay in print long.

That includes relatively unpopular books by authors whose more popular books are still in print. It happens.

For decades, the works of Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Seuss Geisel) have been considered both iconic childhood classics and bastions of liberalism. They are lauded for their celebration of all that makes us different, and Seuss books like Horton Hears a Who and The Sneetches appear frequently in anti-racism curricula for children.

But in recent years, the Dr. Seuss brand name has lost some of its shine. Read Across America Day, an annual day of programming designed by the National Education Association to get kids excited to read, is traditionally held on or around March 2, Geisel’s birthday. It usually features a lot of Cat in the Hat paraphernalia and other beloved Seuss branding. But when the NEA’s contract with Dr. Seuss Enterprises ran out in 2018, it chose not to renew the terms, leading to a lot less Dr. Seuss merch getting distributed to different schools. And this year, the NEA has pivoted away from Dr. Seuss entirely. Instead, it’s using Read Across America Day to spotlight children’s books by authors of color.

That’s not the end of the world. Variety is good. Give other books a turn. That’s fine.

And now Dr. Seuss Enterprises has decided to cease publishing six of Dr. Seuss’s books, all of which include racist caricatures.

Notably, in If I Ran the Zoo, the narrator declares his intention to put a “chieftain” (illustrated as a man in a turban) on display in the zoo; a pair of African characters are portrayed as monkeys; and a group of Asian characters, described as “helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant” from “countries no one can spell” carry a caged animal on their heads. The other books contain similar Orientalist caricatures.

Well, you know, there’s not really any pressing reason a publisher has to keep publishing those books. Publishers stop publishing particular books all the time, that’s just how publishing works. If the reason is not just “not all that popular any more” but also “also racist” then so be it.

Times change. Racist caricatures used to be normal, and that wasn’t a good thing. Lots of things used to be normal that shouldn’t have been.

Hm. Sounds like one of those political practical joke type things.

Mansfield today is waking up to the stunning news that their headline-hunting MP, Ben Bradley, has been appointed to the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons.

Who is he? Well…

He has repeatedly whined that white men do not get enough of a break and called for a ‘Minister for Men’.

He has either avoided or voted against legislation promoting equality and human rights, including abortion and same-sex marriage.

…

He’s cool with police brutality and has encouraged officers to ‘splat the chavs’ with water cannons.

He pushed back against Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign, supporting the idea that vouchers given out in his constituency go straight to crack dens and brothels.

So, basically, not a fan of women or equalities.

Heh.

If trans women are women then what does “trans” mean?

“Trans” isn’t a word like tall or young or clever or Irish or working or famous. It’s not purely descriptive, purely an add-on that doesn’t change what the noun means. “Trans” does change what the noun means…it changes it to mean “not literally” but we’re supposed to pretend it doesn’t.

“Trans” means not really or pretend or make-believe or fake. We’re supposed to pretend it names a spooky magical process by which some men (but far more than we used to think, lots and lots and lots more) are actually women underneath the alien shell of maleitude, but the reality is that the shell of maleitude aka the male body is what makes a man a man. We are our bodies and our bodies are us. I can’t have the body of a blue whale and neither can anyone else. I can call myself a trans whale all I like, but doing so doesn’t magically transform me into a blue whale in everything but mere physical reality.

Point missed.

Calls have been growing in India for the chief justice of the Supreme Court to resign “without a moment’s delay” after his recent remarks in two cases of alleged rape.

What remarks?

Justice Bobde, who was heading a three-judge bench, asked a 23-year-old man accused of raping a girl whether he would marry her.

“If you want to marry (her) we can help you. If not, you lose your job and go to jail,” he said.

His comments shocked many, especially considering the horrific accusations the girl – who was 16 at the time of the alleged rapes in 2014-15 – had made against the man, a distant relative.

According to the letter, he “is accused of stalking, tying up, gagging, repeatedly raping a minor school-going girl, and threatening to douse her in petrol and set her alight, to hurl acid at her, and to have her brother killed”.

It added that “the rape came to light when the minor school-going victim attempted suicide”.

This is where patriarchy gets things so very wrong. From the patriarchal point of view, what the rapist has done is to use and spoil and make dirty the female piece of property. If he marries her that won’t matter any more. She will be married and thus under firm control, and her dirt will get on no one but the man who made her dirty, so that’s fair.

But from the human point of view, what the rapist has done is to terrorize and torture her. Marriage to him would be nothing but more torture and terror, but the judge is apparently blithely unaware of or indifferent to that fact. He thinks of her as a filthy leaking vagina walking around dirtying up Pakistan, while she thinks of herself as a human who doesn’t want to be used like a rag.

Her family was fine with it though. It’s not clear whether she was fine with it too or simply had no option.

The girl’s family also alleged that they had agreed not to go to the police because they were promised by the accused’s mother that once the girl became an adult, they would marry the two.

In a country where victims are often blamed for rape, and sexual assault carries lifelong stigma, her family agreed to the arrangement.

But after the accused backtracked from his promise and married someone else, the survivor went to the police.

…

Gatherings of village elders in rural communities steeped in patriarchy are known to offer such a compromise formula to broker peace between families, and over the years, there have been several instances of the judiciary trying to play matchmaker between the victim and the accused.

“Village elders” of course are all male, and patriarchy treats women as fucktoys/babymachines.

It’s SO unfair.

Actually it’s another two months. April is between March and May and it’s only March 4 now so…two.

The Daily Beast:

The self-described white nationalist who stormed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and posed for gleeful photos during the Capitol riot doesn’t believe he should be in jail—and he’s had a temper tantrum in court to make his opinion known.

“They’re dragging this out. They’re letting everyone else out,” Richard “Bigo” Barnett yelled during his Thursday court hearing, insisting that “it’s not fair” that he is still in jail while a slew of his fellow rioters have been released pending trial.

Well, different people did different things. Different people pose different levels of flight risk. Judges have discretion. Also if we’re going to talk about “fair,” it’s not all that fair to smash your way into the Capitol and into Nancy Pelosi’s offices and then to vandalize those offices and steal some of the contents.

Barnett’s outburst was futile. After a five-minute recess, his lawyers told the judge they intended to file a new bail motion. The judge said he would rule on whether to release Barnett after that is filed, then abruptly ending the hearing. His next court date is May 4.

…

Prosecutors allege that during the Jan. 6 siege that forced lawmakers to hide for hours, Barnett was photographed carrying a stun gun and walking into Pelosi’s office. He posed for photographs sitting in Pelosi’s office with his feet propped on a desk, according to a criminal complaint.

Prosecutors allege that plus we’ve all seen the photographs.

Another photo shows Barnett, who previously described himself as a white nationalist who was prepared for a violent death, holding an envelope addressed to Pelosi. Once outside the Capitol, he appeared to brag about his behavior, all while still holding the personalized envelope he stole from Pelosi’s office.

“I did not steal it. I bled on it because they were macing me and I couldn’t fucking see so I figured I am in her office. I got blood on her office. I put a quarter on her desk even though she ain’t fucking worth it,” Barnett told one news outlet, according to the complaint. “And I left her a note on her desk that says, ‘Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.’”

And now he’s there.

Jean Hatchet on Blame the Woman for Everything:

I have been objecting to the term “parental alienation” for a long time now. This is a term, backed by a growing section of the counselling/therapeutic industry, which is being used against women in the Family Court by men who have abused them.

When a woman, in an effort to keep her children safe, reveals to the Family Court the domestic abuse she has suffered, an abusive man will now frequently counter this by suggesting that, instead, it is the woman who is abusive because she is using “parental alienation” to prevent him having rightful access to his children. He and/or his legal representatives will allege that she is lying about the abuse she says she has suffered.

And he and/or his legal representatives will likely be believed, because it’s astonishing how many people think that women are lying “personality disordered” witches.

One in four women between the ages of 16-64 will suffer some form of domestic abuse. The odds themselves suggest that the majority of these women are not lying.

Abused women are often more inclined to hide the abuse than to go public about it…until it becomes a matter of protecting their children.

Against this court backdrop, and faced with a determined perpetrator, the poor woman will be fighting like hell to make sure he does not have access to her children so that they can be free of his abusive and controlling presence. His barrister will most likely be well aware that the claim of “parental alienation” is very useful in ensuring their client gets what he demands. Cafcass appear to be complicit and accept the term. This is despite the term itself having no statistical validity and with a lack of any robust research to confirm its existence. It is like a particularly vicious whisper that has been spread like gossip through the Family Court system until it is believed. It is becoming an effective way to further distress women who have escaped an abusive male partner with whom they had children.

And it joins up with the diffuse, taken for granted contempt for or loathing of women that is so unpleasantly accessible in the news and commentary and social media.

The men who claim “parental alienation” are organizing.

I have encountered these men online. They have a worrying network. One of them in particular has become a fairly unhinged stalker of a number of women, revealing, in a repetitive and obsessive fashion, details about them such as their real name and workplace and even where they live in some cases.These dangerous men organise in groups and give themselves legitimacy with titles such as “Parental Alienation UK” etc. But access to some of their “secret” groups reveals a far darker side to them. On Facebook they can be found discussing the women they have abused as “c*nts” and discussing how they “didn’t really abuse my kids I only smashed things at the side of their heads, I only ever hurt her!” and many of them empathise.

You know how the insurrectionists organized the insurrection on social media? Misogynist men organize on social media too. (So do feminists, but, you know…We’re kind of outgunned, sometimes literally.)

Ah good news at last.

Well done Maryam.

The DoJ changed the definition.

January 6, 2012

The following post appears courtesy of Susan B. Carbon, Director of the Office on Violence Against Women. In a victory for survivors of rape and their advocates, the Attorney General announced a newly revised definition of rape for nationwide data collection, ensuring that rape will be more accurately reported nationwide. The change sends an important message to all victims that what happens to them matters, and to perpetrators that they will be held accountable.  It was because of the voices of survivors, advocates, law enforcement personnel and many others that FBI Director Robert Mueller was able to make this important change within the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Summary Reporting System (SRS).  “Forcible rape” had been defined by the UCR SRS as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.”  That definition, unchanged since 1927, was outdated and narrow. It only included forcible male penile penetration of a female vagina. The new definition is:

“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” 

I’m not seeing how that’s an improvement. I’m not seeing why “sexual assault” couldn’t be the crime when women do it while “rape” goes on meaning specifically what men do to women. Changing it to mean anyone poking anything into any orifice without invitation depoliticizes it, and I don’t think we should be depoliticizing rape. I think rape is political, and that we should go on being able to talk about it that way.

They want to do it again.

Federal authorities on Wednesday warned that people associated with identified militia groups have been discussing plans for another to attack on the US Capitol with the aim of removing Democratic politicians on or about 4 March.

This is fine, this is totally normal.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Capitol police department has obtained intelligence pointing to a possible plot to “breach the Capitol by an identified militia group” on Thursday, the agency said on Wednesday.

…

Thursday marks the date when some rightwing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the former president, Donald Trump, will be sworn in for a second term in office despite the fact that he lost the November presidential election and left the White House on January 20 just before Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president.

I suppose someone could “swear him in” in the sense of going through the correct motions in Trump’s golf hotel, but it would just be a pageant. It wouldn’t make him the actual president.

Definitely. Pimps are just doing an honest day’s work. Johns are wise consumers keeping the economy going. Traffickers are forward-looking globalists. Being raped for cash is a career any parents would want for their daughters. Liberty liberty liberty.

A lot can happen in three hours.

It took more than three hours for former President Donald Trump’s Defense Department to approve a request for D.C.’s National Guard to intervene in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the commanding general of the outfit told senators on Wednesday.

…

“At 1:49 p.m. I received a frantic call from then-Chief of U.S. Capitol Police, Steven Sund, where he informed me that the security perimeter at the Capitol had been breached by hostile rioters,” Maj. Gen. William Walker told the Senate Homeland and Rules committees in a joint hearing.

“Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill and requested the immediate assistance of as many Guardsmen as I could muster.”

Walker said he “immediately” alerted Army senior leadership of the request. He was not informed of the required approval from then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller until 5:08 p.m., he said — “3 hours and 19 minutes later.”

Make that a lot can happen in three hours and nineteen minutes.

The Army major general testified that the day before the insurrection, he received a letter with the “unusual” restriction from deploying any Quick Reaction Force service members, unless granted explicit approval by then-Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy.

“I found that requirement to be unusual, as was the requirement to seek approval to move guardsmen supporting the Metropolitan Police Department to move from one traffic control point to another,” Walker said.

It was about the optics.

Walker said that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt and Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn were concerned about optics of sending the National Guard to the scene of the uprising.

“They both said it wouldn’t be in their best military advice to advise the secretary of the Army to have uniformed guards members at the Capitol during the election confirmation,” Walker said.

Funny how the optics are not a concern when it’s about the military pushing protesters out of Lafayette Park so that Trump can wave a bible, but they are a concern when it’s a matter of preventing armed Nazis and racists from smashing their way into the Capitol.

Return of Pence:

Michael Richard Pence, the former Vice President of the United States, is a living monument to the sunk-cost fallacy. When his political career was close to death in Indiana, his interests momentarily converged with those of a comically heathen real-estate grifter from Manhattan who needed some Evangelical credentials on the Republican ticket.

So this theocrat who boasts of his own sanctity joined forces with an openly brutal and sadistic crook. Not even the fact that Trump’s lies about the election nearly got Pence killed is enough to turn him away.

Pence’s instincts for physical self-preservation have taken a back seat to those for political self-preservation, maybe because he feels he already sold too much of his dignity to get nothing out of the deal. Sunk cost. So here he is in an op-ed for the Daily Signal:

After an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.

Dude’s bearing false witness.

Don’t do that.

Headline:

Child rapist threatened to kill herself when undeclared device found during visit

You already know the punchline. There aren’t a whole lot of female “rapists.” There may be some female sadists who shove things up children, but rape is anatomically impossible for women, as well as being just not something women want to do or feel driven to do. It’s not cute to pin male crimes on women because “pronouns!!!”.

A convicted child rapist who is banned from owning internet devices unless approved threatened to kill herself when one was found at her home.

That is, “to kill himself when one was found at his home.” That’s a man, who committed a peculiarly and particularly male crime.

Alex Smith, who is transitioning from male to female and is formally known as Matthew Burren, was arrested after officers carried out an unannounced visit to her home in Beaulieu Close, Toothill, Swindon, yesterday (1 March).

…

At Swindon Magistrates’ Court today, the 28-year-old admitted breaching the terms of a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) – which prevents her from owning internet-enabled devices without seeking permission from probation service officers prior – by failing to declare the device for inspection.

Taking into account four previous breaches of the SHPO and that the sentencing starting point for the offence is 12 months in custody, district judge Joanna Dickens adjourned the case so the defendant can talk through a report with the probation service.

Bailing the defendant without conditions, she said: “Obviously people have concerns about you, but I’m going to take a chance”.

I wonder if the judge decided to take a chance because she’d been nudged into thinking of the defendant as a woman, thanks to all the pronoun palaver.