From the Department of New Milestones for Women –

A transgender female prisoner received her gender confirmation surgery after three years of legal battles, her attorney Lori Rifkin confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

Adree Edmo has been in custody of the Idaho Department of Correction since 2012 and petitioned for her gender confirmation surgery in 2017.

She was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he was sleeping, according to court records.

That is, he was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he (the boy) was sleeping. That isn’t something a woman did, it’s something a man did. Statistics on crime need to be accurate. Women are much less likely to rape teenage boys than men are. Reporting on crime need to be accurate too, especially crimes of violence, especially predatory violence.

Goodness, he is cross.

Barr’s performance on Capitol Hill last week underlined how thoroughly he works for Trump and not for us.

During the five-hour session on Capitol Hill in Washington this week, Barr made clear why he has been dubbed Donald Trump’s faithful protector and personal henchman. He defended using federal forces in US cities, denied giving Trump’s allies favorable treatment and demurred on issues such as foreign election interference or whether November’s poll can be postponed.

For critics, it was proof positive that Barr’s unswerving loyalty to the president has torn down the wall that separates the White House and justice department and ensures law enforcement operates independent of politics. Some believe he now poses an existential threat to democracy itself.

That seems true by definition. If the guy at the top of the legal system is working for the criminal president instead of for the country, of course that’s an existential threat to democracy at least in the US.

“Because of his position as the attorney general, he has control over a lot of what’s acceptable and what isn’t under the law up until the point where the federal judiciary can stop him. It makes him very dangerous, especially when you’re dealing with a president who has no regard for the constitution or the rule of law,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.

A president who has no regard for the constitution or the rule of law and is in fact a life-long criminal.

Matthew Miller, a former director of the justice department’s public affairs office, said: “Bill Barr has gone off the deep end like the entire Republican party. His journey is just the same journey the rest of the Republican party has gone on which is very conservative, but also he’s had his brain pickled by years of Fox News.”

Miller added: “I think he has all of Trump’s bad intentions but with little of Trump’s incompetence. You combine Trump’s bad intentions with someone who is actually competent and mastering the levers of government and it’s fairly dangerous.”

Meanwhile they’re killing the post office in order to kneecap the election. Bumpy road ahead.

Oh look, how funny, haha.

K-9 demonstration of dogs attacking a guy in a Kaepernick shirt.

The Guardian reports the Navy says it’s sorry.

The US Naval Special Warfare Command said Sunday it is investigating a video that showed military working dogs attacking a stand-in wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration at the Navy Seal Museum last year.

The video, first posted to Instagram in January 2019, resurfaced on social media on Sunday morning. The caption read: “Colin Kaepernick stand in Josh gets attacked by 5 Navy SEAL dogs for not standing during the National Anthem at a Navy SEAL Museum fundraiser.”

Yes, that’s hilarious, staging dog attacks on an activist for protesting our pesky habit of murdering black people who go for a run or buy Skittles or sell cigarettes. How dare an activist protest police murders instead of getting all reverent and solemn about our precious National White Anthem? Send in the dogs.

“The inherent message of this video is completely inconsistent with the values and ethos of Naval Special Warfare and the US Navy,” the statement said. “We are investigating the matter fully, and initial indications are that there were no active duty Navy personnel or equipment involved with this independent organization’s event.”

The Navy Seal Museum, located in Fort Pierce, Florida, is a non-profit “dedicated solely to preserving the history of the US Navy Seals and their predecessors,” according to its website.

So the museum is independent of the Navy? Not a government institution? If so the Navy probably can’t tell them to knock it off.

The authors of the paper issued a statement on the attempt to shut them up:

This time last year, our article ‘Losing sight of women’s rights: the unregulated introduction of gender self-identification as a case study of policy capture in Scotland’ was published in the journal Scottish Affairs.

A couple of months prior to publication, we were made aware of an effort from within the publishing house, Edinburgh University Press (EUP), to prevent publication on the grounds that our article was transphobic.

This clarifies a point I didn’t fully grasp via the Times article – EUP simply publishes the journal Scottish Affairs, it doesn’t edit it or oversee it. The officious complainer works for EUP, not for Scottish Affairs. That makes the intervention all the more ludicrous and outrageous.

When EUP senior staff received an internal memo with this accusation, which we strongly dispute and which was evidenced only by a disagreement over our use of the word “woman”, they shared it outside the organisation. Before doing so, they appear to have made no further assessment of its reasonableness and gave us no opportunity to comment. Without our knowledge, despite the article having been accepted for publication by the journal editor, EUP editors sent the unanonymised article to the University of Edinburgh legal team, on the basis that two of us were understood to be employees of the University.

EUP is on the record as having done this to establish whether the content of our article breached the University’s Dignity and Respect policy, an internal guidance document setting out behaviour expected of University staff and students.

This was an exceptional breach of normal practice.

The University legal team declined to give an opinion on compatibility with internal university policy, citing academic freedom and the right of the journal’s editorial board to publish. The EUP, quite exceptionally, also subjected the journal to questions about its internal processes.

It’s as if all the rules get re-written for this one tiny category of people – men who say they are women.

This was a shocking experience for the three of us, both at a personal and professional level, and also because of the implications for freedom of speech and academic freedom. We included an account of this episode in our submission to the Scottish Parliament on the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, as we believe that had this happened with the provisions in the bill enacted, the proposed “stirring up” provisions could easily have been invoked by those making wholly unreasonable accusations against us, and the stakes would immediately have been much higher for all concerned, however much we contested the reading of our piece.

We remain grateful to the journal for standing by its original decision to publish.

Dr Kath Murray, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie

It’s grotesque.

Let’s shut it down just in case.

Three female academics have complained about an attempt to censor an article that had been accepted for publication in an academic journal published by Edinburgh University Press (EUP).

The women say they were falsely accused of being transphobic as a way to silence their views and stifle academic freedom. In recent years several women academics have had talks cancelled, articles refused or speaking dates withdrawn after transgender activists accused them of transphobia.

PhD student Lucy Hunter Blackburn and research fellow Dr Kath Murray, both at Edinburgh University, together with independent policy analyst Lisa Mackenzie make their claim in a submission to the Scottish parliament.

They are giving evidence in a consultation on a hate crime bill, which would make it an offence to “stir up hatred” in relation to transgender people.

Ah yes “stir up hatred” – by saying for instance that only women have a cervix.

Blackburn, Murray and Mackenzie think the bill is a bad idea because such accusations are way too easy to make, and they cite their experience trying to publish an article that argues “that organisations ignored the effect on women when making policies to improve the treatment of transwomen in prisons and other places.” As in: make things nicer for trans women in prison by housing them with actual women, and never mind what the actual women think about that, let alone what will actually happen to them.

The article was peer-reviewed and accepted by the journal Scottish Affairs, published by EUP. Before it appeared in print the women say “an attempt was made from within [the]… publisher to prevent publication”.

They say “a member of EUP staff, who […] would not normally have any role in relation to journal content, wrote in an internal note that they had been passed the article and had concerns about it”. The note complained that the article “both expresses anti-trans sentiment and also uses terms that are discriminatory and insulting towards trans women (for example, the use of the word ‘women’ as specifically excluding trans women)”.

Which sounds as if some very young very clueless woke person read the article sniffing for Forbidden Words and found a couple – joy! A chance to shut down a woman – no, better than that, three women! Three women defending women’s rights! Ecstasy!

Senior staff at EUP contacted Professor Michael Rosie, the editor of Scottish Affairs, to highlight the concern, without telling the authors. The press also sent a copy of the article to the university’s legal team. The academics believe this was an attempt to see whether the article contravened policies on “dignity and respect”.

One wonders why. One wonders why senior staff didn’t just ignore the member of staff who would not normally have any role in relation to journal content. In fact one wonders why senior staff didn’t tell the member of staff to fuck all the way off.

Fortunately the lawyers in effect did it for them, declining to get involved and saying it was a question of academic freedom. But! Irrelevant member of staff still gets revenge.

The article was published after the board was consulted and backed publication. The journal has since commissioned a “formal critical response” to the women’s article, which will be published in Scottish Affairs in January.

Don’t bother, we know what it will say.

Hunter Blackburn said: “It was really shocking to discover that an internal email written by a member of staff at EUP had been shared outside the press without our knowledge.” She said the note “made horrible claims about our motivation, alleging transphobia. We are not transphobic. Of course, I understand that people will disagree about issues but we were simply trying to have a debate and put our point of view.”

Ah but the definition of “transphobic” is “anything I [random person of the moment] disagree with.” This means there’s no such thing as not being transphobic.

Trump continues to think he knows better than Fauci.

Donald Trump has again publicly contradicted Dr Anthony Fauci, claiming the US’s top infectious disease expert is “wrong” to attribute the surge in US coronavirus cases to the country’s failure to sufficiently shut down its economy.

The US president came in hot on Saturday after a lengthy-for-him 15-hour hiatus from Twitter, responding to a clip of Fauci’s testimony before Congress from Friday with the largely debunked claim that Covid-19 cases in the US are surging exclusively due to increased testing.

“Wrong!” Trump said. “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors worked hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!”

A guy who confuses testing with creating thinks he knows enough to say Anthony Fauci is wrong about the numbers.

The idea that case numbers are high only because diagnostic testing has exp[a]nded has been continually shot down by Trump’s own top public health officials, as the increase has also revealed the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is climbing across nearly the entire country.

“A high rate of positive tests indicates a government is only testing the sickest patients who seek out medical attention and is not casting a wide enough net,” according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, a primary source of updated information on the pandemic.

How about we stop testing anyone, and then it will disappear. Right?

John Lewis wrote us a farewell letter in the New York Times, which is not behind the paywall.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Morgan Freeman reads the letter.

The news that Jared Kushner wanted the virus to kill off Democrats hasn’t gone over well with everyone.

In the wake of devastating new reporting by Vanity Fair, a chorus of voices Friday called for the immediate resignation of Jared Kushner, a top White House advisor and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for disastrous—and deadly—failures by the administration that appear to have put the political desires of the president above the public health needs of the American people.

“Imagine the administration had intel on an imminent terrorist attack that would kill over 100,000 people, and chose to do nothing because it was politically easier,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on his personal account. “That’s what we have here. We need to be talking about accountability. For all of it.”

If only he would go poof into thin air.

Apparently it has finally dawned on Trump that a lot of people really don’t like him. Really don’t like him.

You’d think he would have known that all his life, given what an up front unabashed asshole he is…except he’s a narcissist so if you understand about narcissists you wouldn’t think that. Understanding narcissists is not easy.

In a week that saw a devastating global pandemic worsen, a record economic meltdown confirmed and an all-out bid to stoke racial tensions for political gain deepen, Trump is finding himself more and more the odd man out: absent and detached from the leadership of either party, locked in antique cultural battles and increasingly unpopular among voters.

In other words most of us detest him more than we’ve ever detested anyone in our whole lives. He’s literally the worst person we’ve ever experienced.

Even his staunchest Republican allies flatly rejected his suggestion that November’s voting be delayed, some actually laughing at what, by most accounts, was a serious (if toothless) proposal from the President to undermine the election.

The nation’s civic leadership, including three of Trump’s four living predecessors, gathered without him in Atlanta to honor the late Rep. John Lewis, making the sitting president’s absence conspicuous if unsurprising.

Ain’t nobody ever gonna talk about Trump the way mourners talked about John Lewis.

In an attempt to boost his mood, Trump’s advisers scrambled to assemble a scaled-down political event on a baking Florida tarmac on Friday, where Trump addressed a mostly mask-less crowd standing inches from one another. Other events in the state that Trump had scheduled for Saturday were canceled as a storm approached.

Scaled-down is right – there were maybe a couple of hundred people on that tarmac.

Party’s over, Don. Go home.

Alexander Vindman

After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career.

…

At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.

Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished.

But he still has hope.

When I was asked why I had the confidence to tell my father not to worry about my testimony, my response was, “Congressman, because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.”

To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.

To be honest I think that’s only part of the story. I can’t really believe any blanket “in America, right matters.” Our history with regard to people of African descent is the biggest reason – if it were true that in America right matters, then that history wouldn’t have been what it is.

But respect to Vindman all the same.

Melodrama and hyperbolic overreaction and loud fits of rage are always a winning political strategy, right? Always the way to win people over to your side? Always the cue to open the floodgates of sympathy and solidarity?Especially when based on an ideological commitment and command to deny material reality as the basis of the belief system?

Deeply. Deeply worried. Deeply worried and saddened. Deeply worried and saddened at the comments and actions.

What “comments and actions” caused this tragic attack of worry and sorrow? Saying that a part of the female anatomy is a part of the female anatomy.

So profound and agonizing is this state of worry and sadness that they can’t even wait for a new paragraph before rushing to tell the poor crumpled sobbing heap of trans people that they – Canterbury Young Labour, or at least the member of Canterbury Young Labour in charge of their Twitter account – extend their unconditional solidarity and love to trans people – all of them, sight unseen, no questions asked, no conditions leveled, just love love love. It’s so wet – it’s wetter than fotherington-tomas at his very wettest. This isn’t politics, it’s amateur therapy, and by the way it’s not working.

It’s not “transphobic” to say an accurate thing about female anatomy. Telling the truth about female anatomy does not “harm trans people,” and telling lies about female anatomy and bullying women when we object does harm women. Funny how there are never any heaps of sobbing allies offering us unconditional solidarity and love.

Oh look at that, how interesting. There’s a thing – a campaign? group? website? all of the above? – called Prostate Cancer UK. It’s quite unabashed about saying it’s men who get prostate cancer. Men, we are with you, it says on the front page. Twice.

Men, men, man, men, in just one bit of the home page.

Scroll down – lots more use of the word.

And they’re on Twitter. Not abashed about the M word there either.

The latest tweet:

Where are all the angry cries about exclusion?

Labour Campaign for Trans Rights – i.e. some trans “activists” who created a website – has “issued” a “statement” saying why MP Rosie Duffield is in their view “transphobic.”

We in the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights are shocked by the comments made by Rosie Duffield today. To insist that “only women have a cervix” denies the existence of trans men and many nonbinary people. Not all women have cervixes, and not everyone who has a cervix is a woman.

Shocked, shocked.

Saying that only women have a cervix does not “deny the existence” of anyone. That claim is idiotic. An activism founded on idiotic claims of that kind (and not much else) is an activism that is doomed to failure. Women who call themselves trans men still exist, and they can still call themselves trans men (or men, or raccoons, or goblets) despite the existence of other women who point out that women and only women have female anatomy. Issuing outraged statements any time a woman mentions female anatomy is a stupid childish footling kind of “activism.”

Inclusive language harms nobody and costs little; it is a simple act of support for trans people in a political culture that is increasingly hostile towards us.

But “inclusive language” is just a label, and a pretty meaningless label at that. Who ruled that “people with cervixes” is inclusive while “women” is exclusionary? What about all the people who point out that it not only excludes women by not mentioning us even as our anatomy is the subject, it also obfuscates the very thing it’s trying to promote – the need to screen for cervical cancer? How about including us for a change?

Another one in the crosshairs:

What terrible thing did she say?

Ah no, you would never dream of politicizing anything.

Don’t mess with Fauci.

Shirtsleeves Jordan’s “point” is that people are told not to go to church so why won’t Fauci tell people not to go to protests?

Which is stupid because as Fauci keeps pointing out, it’s not his job to make laws, it’s his job to give medical advice.

Jim Jordan is a representative because he gets to run in a rather peculiar district.

That’s not a normal, non-gerrymandered shape for a Congressional district.

Diddums.

A trans footballer who endured online abuse after announcing she was joining a professional team said the experience has been “hurtful.”

That is, a man who wants to play football against women has received some pushback.

Sammy Walker, 29, from Bristol, was targeted by Twitter users who labelled her a “paedophile” and claimed she was stealing places from female players.

Because he is stealing a place from a female player. That’s how that works. If the team gives a place to him then there’s a woman who didn’t get that place.

“I fought tooth and nail to be me, and it obviously hurts,” she said.

Heedless of how his tooth and nail fighting affects women, isn’t he. Male-typical obliviousness. Also what he fought for was not “to be me” but “to be universally recognized as something I’m not.”

The FA’s policy on trans people in football states “gender identity should not be a barrier to participation”.

But gender identity is not the issue, the issue is a man playing against women. It’s not to do with identity, it’s to do with bodies – muscles, lungs, pelvises, heights, weights.

Trans individuals who wish to play professionally are judged on a case-by-case basis. Players must submit blood samples to prove their testosterone levels do not give them a physical advantage.

That’s woefully inadequate. Men have an array of advantages and they’re not all determined by testosterone.

“It’s frustrating that people think my participation is a risk to women’s sport in general,” she said.

But it’s also frustrating that his participation is a risk to women’s sport and that he doesn’t give a shit. It’s frustrating that he’s so eager to take a place from a woman and put the women on his team at risk by his presence. It’s frustrating that the BBC is reporting this story so incompetently.

While the club she has signed for has been supportive, Ms Walker, who played academy football before transitioning, says the experience has been “upsetting.”

…

“I’ve got a thick skin and it will take more than words on a screen to deter me,” she added.

He’s got a thick skin and he doesn’t give a good god damn about the women he’s cheating and endangering.

I always wonder how Jolyon Maugham QC can be so confident about the wack things he says. I don’t wonder it so much about Adrian Harrop and Owen Jones, because they’re rather childish and undisciplined and silly, but I have this idea that QCs have to do better than that. (To be sure, Harrop is a medical doctor and you’d hope that would apply to him too, but he’s just so goony that it seems futile to wonder further.)

Like this thing for instance.

How does he manage to be so confident that there is such a thing as a “transgender child” and that it is easy to know which children are transgender and that there are never any mistakes about it? How can he be so confident that all that is known and established and well beyond question? How can he be so very confident of all that that he thinks the only right course of action is prescribing puberty blockers? How can he be so confident that puberty blockers are in no way risky or undesirable or damaging such that if there is a mistake and the transgender child in question later turns out not to be transgender, that child will wish the puberty blockers had not been prescribed?

How can he be so confident that there are only two choices, prescribe puberty blockers (yay! happy transgender child) or do nothing (boooo! sad transgender child)? How can he be so confident that therapy, watch and wait, caution are not also choices? How can he be so certain that all children who say they are transgender are entirely right about it and also not at all influenced by the public relations campaign to make being trans the hippest best wokest thing ever? How can he be so confident that fashion and political rhetoric and social media and roleplaying games (thanks Sastra) have not created a new way for kids to make themselves special? How can he be so confident that the stories people tell about themselves are transparently uncomplicatedly true? A lawyer of all people!

The revival of feminism started decades ago, in the late 60s, and still many men don’t get it, think women are shit, can’t be bothered, don’t care. The trans craze has been raging for a few years and here are smug domineering women-hating men like Jolyon Maugham QC embracing it without a hint of doubt or skepticism.