Lawyers should not be making decisions on trans issues! Except when they should!

It’s been two weeks since three High Court judges in London ruled that trans children would not be able to consent to the reversible treatment of puberty blockers, a landmark decision that sent waves of anxiety through the trans community.

It’s not reversible, and it’s not treatment. That’s the issue. Lying about the issue in the first paragraph does not bode well.

It also caused shock at the Good Law Project, a non-profit campaign group launched in 2019 with the objective of using legal scrutiny to challenge abuses of power and injustices.

“None of the lawyers that I had spoken to thought that the case had a snowflake’s chance…and no one expected it to win,” says Jolyon Maugham QC, the Good Law Project’s founder. “Because these questions that the court has decided around…are not questions in relation to which judges have any expertise, right? The notion that a treatment should be denied by judges…just seemed like madness.”

But it’s not madness for Jolyon Maugham, a lawyer, to campaign for puberty blockers?

And, to repeat, it’s not a treatment. That’s the whole point. It’s a very harmful intervention in normal puberty, purported to reduce misery from a socially-created “condition” of having a brain that doesn’t match the body. It’s experimental quack medicine that leaves teenagers infertile and with fragile bones. That’s not “treatment,” it’s quackery.

Maugham is a prominent lawyer, prolific tweeter, and sometimes unfortunate over-sharer. He acknowledges that trans rights is a slightly unusual cause to fight for as a member of what he calls “his tribe”.

“I’ve moved a long way in my conceptualisation of what privilege really means, and quite how extraordinarily stupid and thoughtless and arrogant my tribe can be,” he says over a Zoom call. “[They] always think they know better and never fucking listen.”

Says Jolyon Maugham who…always thinks he knows better and never fucking listens, especially to women.

Maugham is referring to the prevalence of transphobia amongst an affluent and loud minority of middle class women and men, something the High Court’s ruling effectively institutionalised in England and Wales.

Jolyon Maugham is middle class and loud*, and extra-loud when he’s talking to women.

“You effectively find yourself in a world where a child and a parent, both of whom want that child to have access to puberty blockers, have to go and ask some judge for permission,” says Maugham. “So if you’re a parent, the court is saying to you, some judge knows better than you what is in the interest of your child. That’s an astonishingly morally offensive and logically nonsensical position for the law to find itself in.”

Just as it’s astonishingly morally offensive and logically nonsensical for judges to overrule Jehovah’s Witness parents who refuse to get medical treatment for their critically ill children? Parents don’t always make the right choice for their children, sadly, so yes, sometimes the state has to step in to protect those children. I suspect Jolyon Maugham knows that perfectly well in other contexts.

“What’s pretty troubling to me is that those charities which I understand to be really worried about this stuff aren’t coming out and speaking,” Maugham tells me, “and they’re not coming out and speaking because they’re afraid of what a small influential vocal group of feminists will say about that stance.”

What small influential vocal group of feminists is that? I don’t know of any such group that has made people too afraid to speak.

*Updating to add: and very very affluent, much more affluent than any radical feminists I know of.

Update 2: Jolly’s digs:

Kayleigh McEnany is still helping Trump get his lies out there.

Asked about the electoral college vote, McEnany said: “The president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election. Yesterday’s vote was one step in the constitutional process so I will leave that to him.”

…

Asked whether Trump would support the Senate taking up Biden’s cabinet nominees before he is sworn in on 20 January, McEnany called the scenario a “hypothetical” and said Trump has taken all steps to ensure a “smooth transition or a continuation of power.”

There is no “or.” Transition is the only option. The dish is baked and done.

Mitch McConnell has finally, weeks after the election was declared, admitted that Biden was elected. Big of him.

The Republican leader had for weeks declined to acknowledge Biden as the winner of the presidential election.

Declaring that the Electoral College “had spoken,” McConnell congratulated Biden in a speech delivered from the Senate floor on Tuesday morning.

Trump on the other hand is still committing treason in full public view.

The president re-tweeted a conservative lawyer who suggested Trump jail Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, after they certified Biden’s victory in the state.

So that’s Trump agreeing that he should jail state officials for doing their jobs.

The officials, both Republicans, resisted pressure and verbal attacks from Trump, who demanded they reject the result of their state’s election even though multiple recounts that affirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia.

Trump has been pressuring the justice department for years to prosecute his political foes, including his Democratic opponent, Biden, and his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Often, these brazen directives are treated as the rantings of a leader railing against his fate, rather than an extraordinary attempt by a democratically-elected president to exert his authority over the criminal justice system.

And not just to exert his authority over the criminal justice system but to use it to commit crimes against public officials. It’s a crime to imprison people simply because you don’t like what they’re doing.

So I had to go looking for what Burchill said.

It seems to have started here.

Maybe it was “ya SOW” that did it. It is a lot ruder than “ya donkey,” which to me just suggests ya fool, twit, twerp, clown. “SOW” is both sexist (ironically) and a pork-related taunt, which has been a popular category in religio-cultural battles since forever – it works for taunting Jews as well as Muslims.

I think it’s worth Twitter putting her on the naughty stool for a bit. Worth a publisher dropping her book? Hardly. It’s not as if she’s not already famous for being abrasive.

Next round:

Why did Burchill want to talk about something that happened 15 centuries ago?

It does matter that Mohammed married a child, because the fact (or legend if it’s a legend) is seen as justification for men who see him as The Prophet to do the same. That is worth talking about. It’s not a reason to call a woman a sow, but it is worth talking about.

It’s complicated, because of issues around immigration and racism and persecution and all the rest of it, and complicated subjects aren’t helped with shouts of “ya SOW,” but it still has to be discussable.

1. (leyla sanai [↩]

Another clash – another book “canceled” – another taboo violated – another uproar roaring.

The Guardian reports, with startlingly squeamish ineptitude:

The journalist Julie Burchill has had a book contract cancelled after her publisher said she “crossed a line” with her Islamophobic comments on Twitter.

Notice the lack of quotation marks on “Islamophobic,” and notice also the use of the word “Islamophobic,” which is a notoriously and obviously ambiguous and trouble-making and slyly theocratic word. What is the Guardian saying? Did Burchill’s tweets express hatred of Islam? Or was it hatred of Muslims? The Guardian of course never says.

Burchill’s publisher, the Hachette imprint Little, Brown, said it had decided not to publish Welcome to the Woke Trials because she had used indefensible language when communicating with the journalist Ash Sarkar.

What was the indefensible language?

Sarkar said Burchill “quite openly subjected [her] to Islamophobia”.

Yes but what does “Islamophobia” mean? And what was the language?

Believe it or not, the Guardian never does say. It writes a whole story on this but never tells us what Burchill said – so we are left to imagine an ugly racist outburst.

Little, Brown said Burchill’s comments on Islam were “not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint” and they “crossed a line with regard to race and religion”. It added that her book had become “inextricably linked with those views”.

Ok but what were these comments? If you’re going to heap all this ordure on Burchill you could at least give us the relevant information.

“We will no longer be publishing Julie Burchill’s book,” the statement said. “This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We believe passionately in freedom of speech at Little, Brown and we have always published authors with controversial or challenging perspectives – and we will continue to do so.”

Except when we don’t.

The book had been billed as being “part-memoir and part-indictment” of what happened to Burchill after she wrote an article for the Observer in 2013, which was removed after criticism that it contained transphobic language. At the time, the paper apologised for the offence caused in what it described as a “highly charged debate”.

We’re not told what that language was, either.

Fair Play for Women has a distressing account of a hearing on gender bullshit:

If the latest inquiry into Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform by the Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC) is to be productive and worthwhile, it needs to be conducted in a genuine spirit of inquiry and neutrality. Our analysis of the questions asked in the first two hours of oral evidence suggests there is still work to do. Everyone was asked how to make things better for trans people, while the needs of women were not raised with trans panellists. The sympathetic tone and framing of questions to the transgender panellists was in marked contrast to the challenging approach taken with the academics asked to represent women’s concerns. The framing and tone of questions revealed an underlying stance that self-ID was necessary and any discussion to the contrary leads to the trans community being harmed and ignored.

How did this happen? How did government bodies get captured so thoroughly so quickly? Why are so many adults in government so credulous about all this?

For the first hour, MPs on the committee asked a series of gentle, empathetic, and sometimes leading, questions of the trans witnesses. They expressed sympathy with their position, and did not challenge or request evidential back-up for a single claim. That their sympathies lay with trans people and not women was clear from the start.

…

Peter Gibson’s questions were based on the premise that the needs of trans community had simply been ignored by the government rather than fairly balanced alongside all stakeholder groups in society:

“Could you outline to us what impact that being ignored in the government’s proposals will have on the trans community?” and

“if you could outline for us, your views on what the impact on the trans community would be by this being ignored as a result of the consultation.”

But they apparently didn’t ask the academics representing women’s concerns for their views on being ignored.

Somehow women have become the settled, permanent, hidebound, rich and powerful ruling class, while men who say they are women are the forlorn quivering victims of those cruel cold ruthless women.

Repeatedly the MPs asserted that there were difficulties for trans people and asked the women what should be done. They did not ask the trans academics what should be done for women.

Angela Crawley:

“What are the consensus of women’s views around what they feel would perhaps alleviate the fears and concerns but would also address some of these inequalities that are faced by trans community?”

Questions like that for the “trans community” but no questions like that for the female community.

It’s as if everyone’s hypnotized. I don’t get it.

Barr is leaving. The cover story is that he wants to spendmoretimewiththefamily.

NPR has a rundown of his more unsavory actions.

In March 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton called Barr’s handling of the Mueller report “distorted” and “misleading.” Walton, a George W. Bush appointee who was presiding over a lawsuit seeking redacted portions of the Mueller report, said Barr’s actions raised questions about the attorney general’s credibility.

…

Democrats bristled over Barr’s statement that he believed the Trump campaign was “spied on” during the 2016 race, and his decision to appoint a veteran prosecutor, John Durham, to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.

…

He didn’t show up for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee during a nadir in tensions with Democrats. DOJ initially didn’t give Congress the whistleblower complaint that detailed many of Trump’s actions in the Ukraine affair.

And Barr overruled career prosecutors in Washington D.C. in the case of Trump’s adviser Roger Stone; Barr instructed them to ask for a lighter sentence.

He also intervened in the case against another former Trump insider, Michal Flynn. The former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

The Justice Department, with Barr’s approval, moved to drop its prosecution of Flynn, although the presiding judge in the case balked.

And yet with all this, Barr managed to resent it when people thought he was Trump’s tool.

Barr grew frustrated by the president’s tweets and public statements about the department’s ongoing cases, people close to Barr say. The attorney general was sensitive about the perception that he wasn’t an independent officer but a political factotum of the president.

Then he went to work for the wrong guy, didn’t he.

Some people regret the whole thing.

By age 14, Eva became convinced she was a transgender boy. By 16, she had come out to her teachers and classmates.

Her family wasn’t pleased but trans activists and a Toronto therapist had a solution.

She could move into the Covenant House youth shelter, and then freely go on hormones to push ahead with medical transition.

Hell yes. Mess with your body at age 16; what could go wrong?

“They thought it was so important for me to be on testosterone that it was OK if I left home and probably didn’t graduate high school,” recalled Eva, who asked that her last name not be published to preserve her privacy around sensitive issues. “Even at that point in life, when I was 16 and totally believed this was the only thing that was going to save me, I was more rational about it.”

So she didn’t mess with her body. Wise move, but others are not so wise.

A few years later she changed her mind about the whole thing.

Eva, now 24, is part of a controversial cohort known as detransitioners and desisters, transgender people who come to rethink their decision, often having already undergone drug and surgical treatments.

In October she founded an organization – Detrans Canada – she hopes will support individuals she said can feel ostracized by the LGBTQ community.

She believes transition is essential for some gender dysphoric youth, but questions a treatment approach she said pushes young people too forcefully in that direction.

If it’s really essential for some, why has it taken so long for humanity to figure that out? I know medical thinking changes over time, and is cumulative, and there’s a lot that humans didn’t know in the past, and so on, but still…why has it taken so long? Since it has taken so long, why are we so very confident that it’s a real thing and in some cases requires body-altering treatment?

I may be abnormally averse to needless body-alterations. I never even wanted pierced ears, when all my cohort was getting them. I’m horrified by what fashionable shoes do to women’s feet, and don’t get me started on FGM. But even if it’s an abnormally intense aversion, it’s still not irrational. You only get the one body, so why damage it for stupid frivolous reasons? Why not take care to preserve it instead?

“I feel a little bit angry, more than a little bit, because other people who’ve been in this position went much further than me,” said Eva. “I have lesbian friends who have no uterus, no ovaries, no breasts and are 21-years old. I’m angry that every single doctor and therapist we saw told us this was the one and only option.”

It’s mass lobotomies all over again.

Greta Bauer, the CIHR chair in gender and sex science at Western University, said she’s aware of no research indicating destransitioners’ ranks are expanding. She said many don’t regret their choice, they have simply stopped taking hormones for various other reasons.

“What concerns me is that some people seem to think that the existence of any regret justifies denying or delaying care for everyone who needs a treatment,” said Bauer. “This is not the standard by which we evaluate any other medical treatment.”

But is it care? Is it treatment? Is it medical treatment? What if it’s none of those things, but just a batshit fad for an invented condition with invented drastic “treatments”? What if it’s a deeply muddled conviction that a psychological state is in fact a bodily medical condition when it isn’t? What then?

Trump is tantrumming because a baseball team is going to stop calling itself an insulting name.

The team has been known as the Cleveland “Indians.” Needless to say the team did not restrict its members to Native Americans.

Native American groups and some sections of the team’s fanbase have argued the name is racially insensitive for years. The move, which was first reported by the New York Times and later confirmed by ESPN, is likely to be formally announced in the coming days. Washington’s NFL team decided to stop using a name considered a slur towards Native Americans earlier this year and are now known simply as the Washington Football Team. Cleveland may follow a similar convention while the team decide on a new name.

Yes, “Redskins” is a slur all right. There are no teams called the [City] Whiteskins.

The New York Times reports that Cleveland will continue with their present name for the 2021 season before cutting “Indians” in 2022. The team dropped their Chief Wahoo logo, the grinning, red-faced caricature used since 1947, from their uniforms in 2018 after decades of complaints that it was racist.

Gee, it only took until 2018. How impressive.

“Chief Wahoo”:

Is it always racist?

Three other major league teams who use Native American names, MLB’s Atlanta Braves, the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks have no plans to change their branding. The latter team say they have no intention of changing their name as it honors a historical figure, Black Hawk, who was a prominent figure in Illinois history.

Dozens of college and high schools teams are named after Native American tribes in their local areas. In 2005 college sports’ governing body, the NCAA, looked into the use of Native American names. Some teams stopped using Native American names and iconography that were deemed offensive, but others who received approval from local tribes continued to do so.

Perhaps the most famous example is the Florida State Seminoles. The tribe’s council approved the use of the name as well as other traditions involved with FSU’s teams.

That’s interesting. The particulars make a difference.

Another one of these. Spotify updated its “new policy around hate content and conduct” in June 2018.

The second part of our policy addressed hate content. Spotify does not permit content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence against people because of their race, religion, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. As we’ve done before, we will remove content that violates that standard. We’re not talking about offensive, explicit, or vulgar content – we’re talking about hate speech.

Again – race, religion, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation are protected from content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence on those grounds, but sex is not. People who have a “gender identity” are protected, but women are not.

There’s the bone density issue.

That seems very undesirable indeed.

This is rather galling:

White House staffers to receive Covid-19 vaccine ahead of general public

The people who have been busily spreading the virus as widely as they can are going to get the vaccine before we do, we who have been following the pandemic rules for the past nine months.

High-ranking White House officials are set to receive some of the first coronavirus vaccines in the United States, according to a White House official and a person familiar.

Those vaccinations, which could begin as soon as this week, would come while the vaccine is in extremely limited supply and only generally available to high-risk health care workers.

…

The President and other White House staff have regularly flouted US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for safety during the pandemic such as the wearing of face masks and social distancing.

There have been several Christmas parties held at the White House recently where those guidelines weren’t followed, and Trump held many events during the campaign where large crowds gathered, maskless.

But they get the first round of vaccinations anyway. Very let them eat cake.

Northwestern University wipes its hands of Joseph Epstein.

Joseph Epstein has not been a lecturer at Northwestern since 2003.

While we firmly support academic freedom and freedom of expression, we do not agree with Mr. Epstein’s opinion and believe the designation of doctor is well deserved by anyone who has earned a Ph.D., an Ed.D. or an M.D.  

Northwestern is firmly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, and strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views.

Freedom of expression is a value, but there’s also such a thing as editorial discretion. Editors at the WSJ should have rejected that one, or at least required a searching re-write. (Then again maybe a polite argument that Dr. Jill Biden should not use her credential would have been more insidious because not so childish and venomous.)

The English department delivers The Cut Direct.

The Department is aware that a former adjunct lecturer who has not taught here in nearly 20 years has published an opinion piece that casts unmerited aspersion on Dr. Jill Biden’s rightful public claiming of her doctoral credentials and expertise. The Department rejects this opinion as well as the diminishment of anyone’s duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university.

You’d think the English department could come up with the word “diminution,” but whatever.

I daresay non-Doctor Joseph Epstein is happy, because even the BBC is reporting on his rude sexist pugnacious attack on Dr. Jill Biden. Global notoriety!

Joseph Epstein called Jill Biden “kiddo”, comparing her doctorate in education to an honorary degree.

“‘Dr Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

But social media users argued that the article reflected sexist attitudes faced by many women in academia.

Well, yes – calling her “Jill” and then “kiddo” for example.

Let’s be clear about this – it was obviously very deliberate. He knew it would cause outrage, and that must be why he did it, because why the hell else would he do it? He doesn’t write a humorous etiquette column in the style of Miss Manners, and he didn’t have to word his column so insultingly, so he was going for the outcry. Attention!

Or maybe he’s a secret agent, teaching us lessons about the patriarchy from deep under cover.

But seriously, he wanted the outrage and we’re giving him the outrage so we’re giving him what he wants so maybe we should just ignore him. Maybe, yes, but I refuse, because I am so sick of people with more social clout throwing buckets of shit over people with less. Jill Biden herself has plenty of social clout now, of course, but women in general don’t, women as such don’t, and that’s the point here. Epstein is sneering at all women who have the gall to get a credential or honor or top job. He’s telling us all we’re just little girls called by our first names, just “kiddo,” and to stop thinking we get to hang out with the adults.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris responded: “Dr Biden earned her degrees through hard work and pure grit. She is an inspiration to me, to her students, and to Americans across this country. This story would never have been written about a man.”

“I am so sick of the way accomplished, educated, successful women like @DrBiden are talked about in the media by misogynistic men. BEYOND SO SICK OF IT,” wrote Meghan McCain, daughter of late senator John McCain.

Some pointed out that many women and members of minority groups often choose to use their titles “to insist people… not overlook their real credentials”.

Northwestern University, where the author of the article taught until 2002, said it “strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views”.

Figures in other administrations have used the non-medical title of doctor: they include Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state under presidents Nixon and Ford, and Sebastian Gorka, a former aide to President Donald Trump.

This is not the first time the issue of women using their academic titles has caused controversy online. In 2018, UK historian Fern Riddell started the hashtag #ImmodestWomen after receiving a backlash for referring to herself as Dr.

Punchline: the BBC style guide “uses the title Dr to refer to doctors of medicine, scientific doctors and church ministers who hold doctorates, when relevant.” So it won’t be calling Dr. Jill Biden Dr. Jill Biden.

A new nightmare looms.

Speculation about the post-White House career of Ivanka Trump is now centered on Florida, where the soon to be ex-first daughter and senior aide to her president father has reportedly bought an expensive plot of land for a house and may be considering a run for Senate.

She’s a twerp, she’s pig-ignorant, she defends everything her evil daddy does, she’s corrupt, and she’s a criminal. Also she’s entitled, arrogant, self-dealing, empty-headed, and narcissistic. Other than that, awesome choice for the Senate.

Ivanka Trump is not the only member of her family potentially eyeing up a political future post-Trump. Donald Trump Jr – who is popular with his father’s conservative base – is often seen as likely to make a serious bid to enter politics in his own right. Meanwhile, daughter-in-law Lara Trump has been mentioned as a potential candidate for the Senate in North Carolina.

Iiiiiiiiick. They’re like bedbugs.

Just a few responses…

It turns out the Proud Boys like violence. Who knew?

Thousands of maskless rallygoers who refuse to accept the results of the election turned downtown Washington into a falsehood-filled spectacle Saturday, two days before the electoral college will make the president’s loss official.

The Post sounds a bit fed-up. I don’t blame it.

In smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be Marine One.

In short, hooray for violence and lies, hooray for lies enforced by violence and for violence justified by lies, hooray hooray hooray.

Four people were stabbed near a Proud Boys hangout bar (it’s not clear whether it’s a regular hangout or just where they collected yesterday). The victims are in hospitals; it’s not known which team they were rooting for.

At first, officers in riot gear successfully kept the two sides apart, even as the groups splintered and roamed. In helmets and bulletproof vests, Proud Boys marched through downtown in militarylike rows, shouting “move out” and “1776!” They became increasingly angry as they wove through streets and alleys, only to find police continuously blocking their course with lines of bikes.

But the police couldn’t cover every inch of ground so fights broke out because hooray violence.

As the Proud Boys appeared at rallies earlier in the day Saturday, Trump cheered on all of the supporters who showed up to falsely claim that the election was stolen from him, tweeting “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.”

The king of violence and lies himself.

The speakers painted a picture of a country in a battle between good and evil, in which God himself would ultimately ensure Trump remained in power. Sebastian Gorka, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump, said that when he heard the Supreme Court had dismissed an election case from Texas on Friday night, he told himself to “stop, take a deep breath, count to 10, read the Bible and pray.”

“We, thanks to our lord and savior, have already won,” Gorka claimed.

Sadly there’s a lot of truth to the good v evil picture, but they have the sides reversed. Not that I think the Democratic party stands for Pure Goodness, it’s just that I do think Trump stands for Nearly Pure Evil and drags his fans into that stance too.

Originally a comment by Papito on Kiddo.

As one whose book-learning is also piled higher and deeper, I only doctor when doctored at. I recall a work colleague introducing a visiting scientist as Dr. Fulano, and I said pleased to meet you Dr. Fulano, I’m Dr. Zutano. My colleague did a double-take before he recalled that my amazing skillz were acquired in the school of hard books.

I taught at a few universities, and I much preferred teaching at a state university over the more highly ranked university up the road. I found the students more engaged, more serious, more respectful, and more likely to actually use what I was teaching. Apparently the feeling was mutual, as the dean offered me a tenure-track position when it opened up, but I had already pivoted to a more exciting and remunerative career.

My mother also disliked being called Dr., because she wasn’t a medical doctor. But, like iknklast, it was the only way she could get any respect from some people. Did you know there are parts of this country, or people from them, who will insist on calling a fully-grown woman Miss Firstname? If being called Dr. Lastname bothered her, that was nothing compared to being called Miss Firstname. So Dr. Lastname it was. I made her a plaque in shop class that said Dr. Lastname, and it traveled to every desk thereafter.

It’s too bad there’s not a parallel to “Miss” for men, because nobody deserves to be Mirr Josephed more than this withered peduncle. Perhaps he needs to be called “Joey” more often. Like this:

Monsieur Columnist – Mr. Epstein – Joey – kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small matter to you, but which is important to others. Any chance you might stop belittling women? Making fun of women who actually did the work to get a doctorate, unlike yourself, sounds and feels very petty, not to say a touch jealous. Dr. Biden did original work, which she will build upon in her position as First Lady, on a matter of not just local but national importance. If this nation could in fact meet students needs, and thereby increase retention, at the community college level, this nation would benefit greatly – more than it has from anything you’ve done. We are fortunate to have a new First Lady whose project will be of national value, rather than something so vapid as the wife of the world’s foremost bully claiming to be against bullying, or another kept woman reciting stultifying anti-drug mantras. Think about it, Joey, and forthwith drop the act.

You taught at a national university for decades, without a doctorate. Congratulations: you got an academic job at a time when they went begging. Every new PhD graduate in the country already had a job, and they had to work down the list until they got to you. This is not a measure of how great you are, but of how easy your life has been, in comparison to those of later generations. Has it been as fun to judge soldiers of younger generations who actually had to fight, from your experience as a barracks polisher, as it has been to scoff at those who earn PhDs but can’t get the academic jobs that unqualified elders such as yourself sat on for decades?

Many are aware that getting a doctorate has been and, for many, still is, an arduous proceeding. I assure you that if you had to sit through my oral examination you would require that glass of water. Mine was in three foreign languages simultaneously, and I was expected to answer questions in the language in which they were asked. Like many newly-minted doctorates, I had to interview with people whose would never hire me because their abilities and publications looked small in comparison. People like you, Joey. I notice that you received your job without any publications, without any linguistic abilities, without any original research. Your first publication was fifteen years after you got a BA. Do you know that nobody from a younger generation would be hired with your credentials? And now you criticize others for not passing a trial you never even considered. Isn’t that a sort of academic stolen valor?

You go on, in your intolerant boasting, to ridicule honorary doctorates because, horror of horror, they are not only given to white people. Isn’t anything left just to us, you wail. Well, the truth is, Joey, that not only are many women more qualified, and more serious than you are, but many black people have contributed more generously than you have to American society and culture. You bemoan the coarsening and cheapening of academic credentials, without having any of your own, and it seems more and more like you are just crying about people you consider inherently lesser than yourself passing you by. We are living through a period with no great American writers, you say? Perhaps you should read more broadly, and consider that people who aren’t old white men like yourself may be producing the great literature of our era, it’s just that you won’t read it. Our literature lacks “gravity,” you say, but perhaps you mistake inertia for gravity. Does Yaa Gyasi lack gravity? Junot Díaz? Marilynne Robinson? They all have gravity to spare, even if it’s the gravity of realities you want to ignore. As does Dr. Biden. Isn’t your real problem that they’re not talking about you? Joey? Kid?

From the Daily Beast:

Federal law enforcement authorities say they are aware of a website that sprang up over the weekend and began doxxing federal and state government officials at odds with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

That is, government officials doing their jobs as opposed to helping Trump trash everything.

The site, which appears to have been created on Sunday, contains the home addresses, pictures of homes, personal emails, and photos of state and local officials who have pushed back on or questioned the president’s legal campaign.

The FBI confirmed it knows about it but wouldn’t say anything more.

Among the officials targeted—literally—by the enemiesofthepeople website were Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), multiple people affiliated with the company Dominion Voting Systems, and Christopher Krebs, the former top federal cybersecurity official who was fired last month for publicly debunking many of the conspiracy theories floated by Trump and his legal team.

“If blood is spilled, it is on the hands of the president,” Krebs’ attorneys wrote in a Wednesday statement regarding the website. The specific threats, they noted, “may be domestic or foreign actors trying to stoke the violence.”

This is why we can’t have nice things.

What was that we were just saying about men patronizing women? That Diana (formerly David) Thomas thinks it’s nbd as long as women get their own way?

He wouldn’t know, of course. He wouldn’t know how corrosive the effect is, because he still knows it doesn’t apply to him, even if he doesn’t fully realize he knows it.

Anyway, men patronizing women.

He obviously did it on purpose, with malice aforethought. It’s obviously calculatedly insulting, since he can’t possibly think she wants to be called either “Jill” or “kiddo” by a conceited condescending shit like him.

There was a time when I made an effort to find Joseph Epstein interesting. I found some of the same things irritating as he did (if you follow me), so I kept trying to read him, but I found him just not a good writer. Not a bad one in the sense of mistake-ridden or illiterate or anything, but just lifeless, and self-important and self-admiring with it. You can see it just in that short passage – “what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant” oh fuck off. And then “Your degree is, I believe” – if you’re not sure then look it up. If you are sure then don’t pretend you’re not. It was that kind of thing – pompous filler instead of getting to the point. Kind of like “Steersman,” if anyone remembers that Top Bore from way back then.

So he’s a crap writer, and he made a cold decision to express his contempt for the woman who is married to the president-elect who managed to defeat that sack of garbage Donald Trump – and to top it all off he pretends it’s “unpromising” for academics in education to research student retention at community colleges. That’s nice; that’s generous. Community colleges are a path to a better life for millions of people not born with a ticket to the Ivy League. Community college can be a step to getting a four-year degree and even scholarships, and they cost a tiny fraction of what the for-profit “universities” charge the students they defraud.

So…what’s his point? I guess that women should just be called Mrs. Mansname and leave it at that?