Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A strange union.

If we were to replace trans exclusionary with racist, misogynistic or antisemitic would we be expected to define every word that would be included?

Expected to define each word that would be considered racist? No. Expected to define the list itself of words to be proscribed, as opposed to the words on that list? Yes, absolutely. Expected to be able to provide a coherent definition of racism consistent with common usage? You’d better goddamn believe it. If you’re going to curtail fundamental liberties like speech, then you are obliged to provide a full account of who, what, when, where, and why. I can define racism, sexism, misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobia in clear terms. I can define the extent and bounds of behavioral restriction I believe appropriate for any given context. It should be easy, and you should welcome the opportunity to clearly establish what constitutes transphobic behavior.

But y’all mah’f-kz won’t do that, because you can’t do that. You can’t, because your ideology is nonsensical, apophatic, self-justifying, self-negating, utterly incoherent bullshit. You can’t, because you know that definitions are inherently limiting, and having a fixed definition would mean being unable to deploy conflicting ones in rhetoric. You can’t, because clear definitions are easily communicated, and you can’t let normal people get a clear picture of your ideology’s tenets.

You can’t, because you’re lying liars who lie. God damn, this “I shouldn’t have to define my terms” routine is seriously craven.

Robyn Blumner, the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, has a much discussed editorial in the current Free Inquiry about a split that she describes as between identitarians and humanists. It starts with a couple of definitions, or a definition and an affirmation.

Identitarian: A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

“The Affirmations of Humanism”: We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for the common good of humanity. (Paul Kurtz, Free Inquiry, Spring 1987)

I think the Urban Dictionary is a less than ideal source of definitions if you’re trying to be fair to the side you oppose. For a start I think “identitarian” is a pejorative more than it is a standard noun, and for a continue I think the Urban Dictionary’s definition is not all that careful. Also, of course, the UD is not and doesn’t claim to be any kind of scholarly source.

I think I’d define “identitarian” as someone preoccupied with identity politics, but I would not go on to claim that identity politics=”group identity is the most important thing about a person.” I think that’s quite wrong (and I suppose that’s why I think Blumner should have looked for a better source). People who practice or perform or promote identity politics are aware that various identities are more or less favored, and they think life would be fairer if the most basic, comes-with-birth type identities didn’t have to overcome a Less Favored status. One doesn’t at all have to make that politics the most central thing in her life, let alone thinking a disfavored identity is the most important thing about a person. I’m a feminist, for example, and that’s an important thing about me, especially now when it’s all being thrown on the bonfire, but it’s not the most important. I think that’s true of most people.

So, in short, the editorial about identity politics v humanism starts with a non-scholarly definition of idpol from a famously non-scholarly source, and proceeds from there. The well is a tad murky from the outset. The dice are loaded.

And Kurtz’s affirmation sounds nice but it too has that ignoring the realities problem. It’s all very well to talk about transcending “divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,” but the trouble is that some people – most people in fact – can’t transcend them, because everyone else remains fully aware of them. Jews in Nazi Germany couldn’t “transcend” their pesky Jewishness; you do the math.

It’s true that people can get very bogged down in the identity stuff, and it can be tedious or clogging or beside the point or all those, but still, we’re not free to “transcend” our identities in the eyes of everyone else.

Blumner says we need to work together particularly now, so this split is a bad thing.

The division has to do with a fundamental precept of humanism, that enriching human individuality and celebrating the individual is the basis upon which humanism is built. Humanism valorizes the individual—and with good reason; we are each the hero of our own story. Not only is one’s individual sovereignty more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation, but fighting for individual freedom—which includes freedom of conscience, speech, and inquiry—is part of the writ-large agenda of humanism. It unleashes creativity and grants us the breathing space to be agents in our own lives.

It’s too Ayn Randian for my taste. In particular, “one’s individual sovereignty [is] more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation” comes across as ruthlessly Me First. Yes, it’s good for people to have lots of freedom and independence, but it’s also good for people to take heed of others, and give up some freedoms in order to live and work with others. The freedom to have a rave on your front lawn at 3 a.m. isn’t a freedom worth protecting. The freedom to destroy the planet isn’t a freedom worth having.

Janice Turner mentioned a union in her Times piece on gender indoctrination in the civil service:

The head of the union says nuh-uh:

But what counts as “exclusionary” or “discriminatory”? That’s the issue, isn’t it. Trans dogma defines “exclusion” as “not including men in the category ‘women’.” We don’t agree that that’s a reasonable definition. It’s not “exclusionary” to exclude salmon from a recipe for chocolate cake, and it’s not exclusionary to exclude men from definitions of women. That ought to be obvious, but in the real world we are accused of being evil exclusionizers for not including men in our definition of women. That’s what unions shouldn’t be supporting.

But he seems to think it’s exclusionary to ask him to define “exclusionary.”

Good point except for the fact that “transphobic” is not comparable to racist or misogynist. This is the whole point. Trans proselytizing and ideology are parasites on older social justice movements, stealing their categories and vocabulary for a very different and non-progressive brand of politics.

That’s it. We’re called transphobic for saying that men are not women. This doesn’t work for us.

Heyyyyy I’ve found one that hasn’t made the big switcheroo. Meet National Advocates for Pregnant Women:

NAPW defends women who are pregnant and have abortions, experience pregnancy loss, use drugs or alcohol, and who continue their pregnancies and give birth. Our work, however, is not limited to criminal or parent defense work, nor is it limited to any single issue, strategy, or niche.

NAPW works to ensure that women do not lose their constitutional and human rights as a result of pregnancy; that addiction and other health and welfare problems women face during pregnancy are addressed through public health and social welfare systems, not the criminal law system; that families are not needlessly separated based on medical misinformation about pregnancy and drug use; and that all people, including those who can get pregnant, have access to all of the health care services they need, including abortion and maternity care.

A little wobble in that last sentence perhaps, but the word “women” appears 21 times on that About Us page, so I won’t quibble about it.

Matt Walsh last September:

Matt Walsh claimed on Tuesday that female sports reporters were seeking to “feminize” football, which he said is a “mostly male space,” and said at least one woman journalist was failing to “assimilate.”

Walsh made the remarks on The Matt Walsh Show, while discussing Lindsey Gough, sports director with southeast Georgia’s WOTC 11 TV station. Gough had tweeted on September 5 about the behavior of fans after Georgia defeated Clemson.

Gough posted a video of football fans apparently engaging in harassing behavior and even some men touching her without her consent as they passed her broadcast.

But that’s male behavior, and it’s awesome, and it must not be challenged, much less altered or done away with. Harassing and groping women is a sacred right of masculinityfull masculine manly people.

“I must say, this situation only demonstrates why I, personally, prefer for sports broadcasts, especially football broadcasts, to be handled mostly by men,” Walsh said.

“Lindsey, though worse than the average—even as far as female sports reporters go—is definitely not the only female to enter into this mostly male space and seek to feminize it.”

“She wants the football stadium to be quiet and gentle, considerate, respectful of personal space. She wants it to be a more feminine environment. She’s not trying to assimilate herself into the culture of football fans, she is rather hoping that they assimilate themselves to her,” he said.

So objecting to men harassing and groping her equals wanting the football stadium to be quiet and gentle? I’m not seeing it. I think people can be loud and rowdy and enthusiastic without bullying and assaulting women. In fact I think this is a distinction kids are taught to make in…what, first grade? Second grade? “Use your words” – isn’t that the lesson? Don’t shove or punch or bite or kick; use your words. Does Matt Walsh really consider sexual abuse of women inherent to men, men in general, all men? I think I have a better opinion of men than he does.

O excellent judge.

A trans-identified male pedophile has avoided jail after after a judge deemed that prison would make it too difficult for him to “cope” with his transition and anxiety.

Huh. It’s my understanding that prison makes it difficult for people to cope with pretty much everything, and that that’s the point – it’s a punishment. There are compelling arguments against the whole idea of punishment as such, but it seems quite original to say it’s bad for a trans person in particular because of the difficulty of coping.

Peter Selby, 68, was found with over 125,000 pieces of child sexual abuse media after a police raid in 2019, some of which depicted children as young as three years old. Selby is male but identifies as a transgender ‘woman.’

Of the images, over 2,400 were classified as Category A, the most serious type of child sexual abuse media. Images and video in this category can depict penetrative sexual activity, bestiality, and/or sexual sadism.

But, he’s a trans laydee, so he would find it difficult to cope.

According to the Shields Gazette, during sentencing on June 1, the presiding Judge stated that no one would seek out child sexual abuse media “unless they have a sexual interest in children to start with,” yet declined to sentence Selby to an immediate prison sentence.

“You identify as transgender and that has caused issues for you and anxiety for you in how you would cope with that if you were sent immediately to prison,” the Judge said, adding: “You are someone who identifies as transgender and the impact of custody would be significant for you in the circumstances.”

Compared to……………………………….?

The Mail on that insulting “hey laydeez come race against some men and lose” arrangement:

An ‘inclusive’ cycling race that saw male-born trans athletes trounce women competitors has been condemned by critics.

“Inclusive” means “women guaranteed to lose.”

Gold in the ThunderCrit race at Herne Hill velodrome in South-East London went to Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist who was barred from a woman’s race in March and who had competed in men’s events only the month before.

Because he’s a man.

In second place was Lilly Chant who, despite identifying as a woman, is still designated as male on official records.

Yes but his name is Lilly. End of.

In an attempt to devise an ‘inclusive’ event, the ThunderCrit organisers created two new non-binary races called ‘thunder’ and ‘lightning’.

Its website said: ‘Thunder category is for cis men, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns most with cis-men, trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-men.

‘Lightning category is for cis-women, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns with cis-women and trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-women.’

So Bridges and Chant should have raced in the Thunder category, because their performance “aligns most closely” with men, because they’re men.

About that race that “Emily” Bridges “won” –

In what sense does “Emily” Bridges’s physical performance “align most closely” with women? Why do both trans men and trans women compete in the women’s category?

Also interesting that “cis people cannot choose their racing category.” It should have a “nyah nyah nyah” after it for the full effect.

The stupid is up past our upper lips now. Drowning is imminent.

The census could ask “do you menstruate?” instead of “are you female?” to be inclusive of transgender people, a taxpayer-funded study has suggested.

One, how fucking insulting.

Two – are they serious? Spot the flaw? Women over 50 or so don’t menstruate, so if they answer truthfully, the census won’t be a census. (There are also women who’ve had hysterectomies etc.)

The Future of Legal Gender Project, led by King’s College London, has assessed how legal sex would be abolished in England and Wales and replaced with a single “gender” category, with an aim of contributing to policy discussions.

Contributing what to policy discussions? An inability to talk about women and policy? What kind of “contribution” would that be?

The study, which received £579,717 of taxpayer funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, acknowledged the concerns from campaigners who argue biological sex provides vital binary data, and that trans women are not women.

But the research said that in surveys such as the census, respondents understand the question on their sex in different ways – some “assume the question is about their genitals, about their legal status or about the sex they were registered as having at birth”.

Oh shut up. No they don’t – not unless they’re nitwits or fanatics bent on making their stupid “point.” People know perfectly well what the census means by female/male.

As a result, the researchers said: “In some contexts, more precise questions may help to avoid distortions or inaccuracies, for example, ‘do you menstruate?’ or ‘are you perceived or treated as a man at work?’ rather than, or in addition to, ‘are you male or female?’.”

That’s not more precise. Would you like to know what it is? I’ll tell you. It’s much much much much much much less precise.

In their final report last month, the seven academics who carried out the study from KCL, Kent and Loughborough universities added: “For medical purposes, good practice means asking questions at a higher level of specificity. ‘Are you menstruating?’ rather than: ‘what is your sex?’”

Woman age 60 replies No. Higher level of specificity achieved!!

And where law mentions gendered physical processes, the researchers suggested it could say “gestational or birth parent rather than mother or woman – this recognises that people other than women also become pregnant”.

So it recognizes a stupid childish lie. There are no “people other than women” who become pregnant.

What is wrong with everyone.

Cheats “win” cycle race:

This one is some of each.

These female health-care workers won a huge WHO honor. They’d like a raise, too

India’s task force of over a million female health-care workers has won a prestigious award from one of the highest institutions in global health.

But their pay remains insultingly low.

Ghugare works as an ASHA, short for Accredited Social Health Activists. It’s a program run by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that provides health care to rural and low-income communities in the country. They are not medical professionals but are entrusted with a long list of crucial health-care responsibilities, from advising new mothers about breastfeeding to raising awareness about COVID vaccines.

…

They earn around $60 a month on average and have few benefits. In recent years, the government has raised monthly pay by a few tens of dollars, but workers say this is still too low. Many ASHAs, as the workers are known, and those in the global health community hope this moment can put pressure on the government to bump up their salaries, among other job improvements.

…

When the ASHA program began in 2005, the health workers were envisaged as volunteers working about 2 to 3 hours a day and a bit extra on some days, according to the National Health Mission, a program that’s part of India’s Ministry of Health. But over the years, ASHAs say their responsibilities have increased multifold.

At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Archana Ghugare says she was working 14 hours a day. And even today, she’s got a full workload. She’s been going door-to-door to identify people in the community who have a variety of medical needs, from pregnant people to kids under the age of 14 eligible for COVID vaccinations.

Pregnant people. Even in a story about exploited women, the Pregnant People have to raise their buzzcut heads.

Oh look, another one.

It was only 50 years ago this month that the first female rabbi was ordained

For many American Jews, seeing a female rabbi is a pretty regular part of life. But it’s a fairly recent development. Sally Priesand – the first American female rabbi – was ordained just 50 years ago, on June 3, 1972.

This groundbreaking ordination changed women’s roles, and the course of Judaism itself.

Although Priesand had strong support from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where she was enrolled in seminary, a lot of people still didn’t want to see her in the role.

“There would always come a time where some person would come up to me and tell me why women shouldn’t be rabbis,” says Priesand. “And I would say, ‘Thank you for sharing your opinion.’ And I would walk away.”

Priesand even reports a faculty member asking her boyfriend at the time when he would marry her, and “get rid of her.”

So women do exist, and they do matter, and they have faced discrimination and exclusion, and they have fought for their rights, and that too does matter.

So why does that change when abortion rights are the issue?

I would really love to know how NPR squares this.

Hey, sometimes NPR does manage to use the word “women” – for instance in a story that talks about the “gender imbalance” in China. They must have worked out, after a lot of hard thinking, that you can’t have a “gender imbalance” if gender (aka sex) can be swapped for its opposite at a moment’s notice.

Just as in the United States, people born after the 1980s in China are facing the prospect of worse outcomes than their parents. Property prices rise beyond their reach; college graduates have to compete over limited jobs; and a gender imbalance favoring males — made worse by decades of the one-child policy — puts marriage out of reach for poorer men. Hard work no longer seems to be worth it.

Males? Males? What are males? Why don’t they just put on skirts and watch the marriage proposals roll in?

Mike B commented:

Yesterday, my partner and I listened to a long segment on NPR on abortion. Not once was the word “woman” used. In its place, “somebody,” “a person/people,” “patient.” The verbal gymnastics was astonishing, like watching horses run an obstacle course.

So I went looking. I found a segment from today, so not the one Mike listened to (unless they tweaked the date), but it fits the description – the only use of “woman” is in the name of a women’s center, which NPR is not at liberty to “correct.” Other than that, zilch. What we get instead is:

Following the leaked Supreme Court decision that suggests Roe v. Wade will be overturned, many Americans of childbearing age are wondering what they can do now to prepare for that possibility.

…

Robin Marty is the operations director for the West Alabama Women’s Center, and the author of Handbook for a Post-Roe America. Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosely is a practicing OB-GYN and the CEO of Power to Decide, a sexual health and planning nonprofit. They both joined NPR’s All Things Considered to provide some guidance on what reproductive healthcare might look like in the future, and how people can keep themselves informed and prepared if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

NPR whispers that the interview has been “lightly edited” – I’m betting that means all mentions of women changed to People or Americans or Cunt-havers.

On what options a pregnant person has in an anti-abortion state:

Robin Marty: There are a number of different options that a person can undergo. Some of them involve trying to go to a clinic outside of their state. That requires research.

Their state? Her state.

There are abortion funds and practical support groups that can help provide financial assistance and logistical support. But also, what we’re seeing is that most people, especially in the South, have an immense amount of difficulty to be able to afford all of the bus tickets, plane tickets, time off of work. That’s simply not going to be doable for a lot of them.

Women. Most women have an immense amount of difficulty. This burden falls on women. Men can of course share it, but for them it’s optional. For women it’s inside their own bodies. The burden is on women.

Robin Marty: I actually put together a checklist of questions that people can ask their doctors. So it’s a checklist that a person can go through and say, ‘How do you feel about abortion?’

Woman is a dirty word now.

Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosely: I just wanted to chime in from a medical perspective and point out, realizing that someone may not have the opportunity to fully vet a provider, it’s important to realize that if someone is having prolonged bleeding, or may need medical attention after having a medication abortion, with medications that they obtained themselves, or with the care of a provider, that very much looks like a miscarriage. So someone can potentially present to an emergency room and to their provider and say, ‘I’m having cramping and bleeding, and I had a positive pregnancy test’, and receive the care that they need without having to reveal that they have taken abortion medications.

It’s women who have to deal with this. If it were men, there would be nothing to deal with.

Janice Turner informs us that civil servants (in the UK) are being told appalling drivel as official “training” – by people who are secretive about it.

Here are some facts I learnt by watching an “inclusion workshop” for civil servants. A brain in a jar “knows” if it is male or female and, if transplanted into the “wrong” body, would exhibit distress. This country has no legal sex-based rights. It is impossible to define what “woman” or even “female” means. There is zero conflict between women’s rights and trans rights, so beware colleagues asking too many questions; they’re probably bigots.

So by “inclusion” the people who send civil servants to these workshops mean exclusion of women. Interesting.

A:gender, “a network supporting all trans and intersex staff across government”, trains thousands of civil servants annually, from the NHS to the Cabinet Office, yet it forbids its presentations being recorded. Having endured 90 minutes of anti-scientific, legally fallacious twaddle, I can see why it avoids scrutiny.

Ok so why, I wonder, does government assign that job to this particular network? Why does government have civil servants attend such ludicrous and damaging “training”? They might as well send them to Catholic mass.

This A:gender session is conducted by Emma, who tells us she is intersex, having a vagina and uterus but XY chromosomes. She claims that as many people are intersex — 1.7 per cent — as have green eyes. The more precise figure is about 0.018 per cent. But intersex here is deployed to muddy the very idea that human sex is binary.

Indeed, the difference between sex (biology) and gender (a social construct) seems to confuse Emma. “You’d look at my nails and make-up and realise I am female,” she says. We are asked to position ourselves on spectrums of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” and told if some days we wake feeling more manly or womanly than others, we may be “gender fluid”.

This is indoctrination government employees are told to listen to by their employers.

This might just be tiresome gender woo-woo if it wasn’t being taught as fact to people who write and implement the small print of public equality guidance. Emma warns that defining a woman as an “adult human female” is a transphobic dogwhistle, equivalent to antisemitism. She claims that sex-based rights, which feminists speak of defending, don’t even exist. “We have equal rights!” she cries.

…

Then Emma turns to the controversial debate about reform of the Gender Recognition Act. The government recently decided not to introduce “self-ID”, whereby a person can change the sex on their birth certificate with a simple declaration. “Many anti-trans groups spoke out in a very clever way [to stop it],” says Emma. “Like you could wake up and identify as a man and we’d be legally obliged to treat a person that way. If that was the case, there’d be nothing to stop someone identifying as trans in bad faith, a violent male prisoner could be transferred to the female estate.”

Er, yes, which is what does happen. Paying attention much?

“I’m a civil servant,” says Emma. “I’m not allowed to be an activist. I’m just sitting in my back bedroom in fluffy slippers.” But she is training government employees to disregard laws, while agitating for change. Most concerning, she tells us to perceive colleagues who defend existing sex-based protections as transphobic.

Women civil servants say they are scared to speak up for fear of bullying and suffering professionally. Their union, the FDA, won’t protect them. It has passed a conference motion stating there should be “boundaries” on gender-critical speech, while banning “trans-exclusionary language”, which could just mean insisting that NHS cervical smear guidance retains the word “woman”.

The Emmas are ruining everything.

Some tipping points:

The second is the loss of the Amazonian rain forest. Deforestation is drying it out, and when it reaches a tipping point, there will be no going back. (We’re in the lucky generation that gets to watch Bolsonaro making it happen. On purpose.)

…with a significant loss of trees, less water will enter the atmosphere so areas of the Amazon will become drier and drier as the water cycle breaks down. This is already happening in the southern and eastern Amazon, where dry seasons have become longer for at least the past 2 decades.

Global warming will intensify this damage. Along with deforestation, it will lead to increased forest fires, regional droughts and flooding, and biodiversity loss.

The Amazon will pass a tipping point when the water cycle is so badly ruined that areas of the forest stop producing enough rain for a rainforest to grow. It would be permanently lost and transformed into degraded savannas.

TBC

Tipping.

More on the drought:

The megadrought currently choking the western United States is the worst drought in the region in more than 1,000 years. It’s having an enormous impact across many states and on several major reservoirs including Lake Mead, a water source for millions of people in the West. 

…

This week, local officials in Southern California started restricting water use, including watering of lawns to once or twice a week, for about six million residents. It’s also having a major impact on Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for agriculture and for millions of people in the American West.

Ok hang on – why not just ban watering lawns entirely? Lawns make no difference to anyone apart from a stunted kind of aesthetics. Lawns can come back. Lawns don’t feed anyone. Lawns don’t matter. When it’s a choice between crops and lawns why in hell are lawns getting any water at all?

The megadrought is connected intimately with climate change, of course. And our story is part of our ongoing coverage of the Tipping Point.

The Colorado River Basin, a lifeline of the American Southwest, is shrinking. And, with it, the country’s two largest reservoirs are going dry. Just 30 miles east of Las Vegas sits Lake Mead on the border of Arizona and Nevada. It’s the largest manmade reservoir in North America.

It’s not good when a country’s two largest reservoirs go dry.

Lake Mead gets water from Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the country. Its water supply is around a fourth of what it used to be.

States in the Southwest have started limiting some of their use of the Colorado River Basin. And, last month, federal officials took unprecedented action to temporarily keep enough water in Lake Powell, one of the country’s largest reservoirs, to continue, generating hydropower for a million homes.

Is the situation going to improve?

No.

Meanwhile, drought.

A once-in-a-lifetime drought in the western part of the US is turning up dead bodies – but that’s the least of people’s worries.

It’s not once-in-a-lifetime any more. Lifetimes are going to be radically different in the future (the future meaning now and tomorrow and so on – not some distant prospect beyond the horizon).

Sitting on the Arizona-Nevada border near Las Vegas, Lake Mead – formed by the creation of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River – is the largest reservoir in the United States and provides water to 25 million people across three states and Mexico. Here, the stunning scale of a drought in the American west has been laid plain for all to see.

Used to provide.

If the lake keeps receding, it would reach what’s known as “dead pool” – a level so low the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to produce hydropower or deliver water downstream.

And why would it not keep receding? It’s not as if we’re doing anything differently.

Nasa, which monitors changing water levels, is warning that the western United States is now entering one of the worst droughts ever seen.

“With climate change, it seems like the dominoes are beginning to fall,” Nasa hydrologist JT Reager told the BBC.

“We get warmer temperatures, we get less precipitation and snow. The reservoirs start drying up, then in a place like the West, we get wildfires”.

Not next century or next decade or next year but now.

75% of Lake Mead’s water goes to agriculture. 75% of not much is not much.

Over a third of America’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California. But tens of thousands of acres lie idle because farmers can’t get enough water to grow crops.

There it is – the bottom line I keep mentioning in climate disaster posts: crop failures. Something the most obliviously optimistic of humans can’t ignore forever.

Now there’s a surprise.

When Hillary Clinton ran for the US presidency in 2016, she received sexist comments “on a constant basis” and her team had “no idea” how to deal with them, her former aide Huma Abedin has said.

Abedin, who worked closely with Clinton on her campaign, recalled that the former secretary of state was deluged with openly sexist remarks as well as unhelpful advice, or instructions to emulate male politicians.

Really? Women get abuse? I thought it was only trans people – especially male trans people. We’ve been told for years that women are the evil domineering phobic cruel sex, but now it seems that a woman running for high office has to expect nonstop sexist abuse?

Abedin said these started when Clinton sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 and continued when she ran for president in 2016, and “nothing changed over that period”, which took place before the #MeToo movement began in 2017.

What would #MeToo have to do with it? Does the Guardian really think sexism had faded away, or that feminism had, before #MeToo came along?

Speaking to the Hay festival to promote her recent memoir, Both/And, Abedin said Clinton and her team would feel obliged to laugh off offensive remarks from conservative commentators such as the newsreader Tucker Carlson, who said: “When Hillary Clinton shows up on TV I inadvertently cross my legs.”

Awhawhaw geddit? Castrating bitch! A woman with power is a castrating bitch Karen! Any woman who’s not sexy but compliant but hawt but obedient is gonna cut your balls off with a rusty paring knife.