Sometimes the juxtapositions on Twitter can be…I dunno, striking, ironic, poignant, something like that.

One:

Two:

Violence against women in Turkey. Not “individuals with a cervix,” not generalized “people,” not “non-men”; women.

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on A woman is whoever wants to be a woman.

‘Childhood pretending’ – I am reminded of doing mask-work while doing acting training (which can be alarming – some odd things come out, and the emotions called forth can be overwhelming), and of the way a Noh actor (the shite – which is pronounced, roughly, ‘shte’ and not the way you might suppose, though it may be there are some real shites among Noh actors, as there are among all actors), having put on his mask, looks into a mirror to allow the spirit of the character to enter him. And I feel that when you are acting well, it is as though you have a kind of second skin an infinitesimal distance from your actual skin, and that this leads you. It is like a mask. You are no longer in control – though there remains a constant sort of double focus, since you know the role is leading you, and allow it do so. I have come across some actors, in nearly every case, poor ones, who so lose themselves in what they suppose to be their role that they will behave violently towards other actors in rehearsal and then excuse themselves, first of all, usually, to themselves (since they feel this loss of control shows that must be good actors) and only then to others if they do so at all.

The Danish anthropologist Rane Willerslev has written very interestingly on Siberian hunting tribes, whose members enter the animal world in dreams and are given tips by the Mistress of Animals where to go on the following day or in a few days’ time. The hunters, if hunting an elk, will, after spotting an elk, so move that the elk supposes they are an elk and will at times come towards them. They have, while retaining human form, as it were put on the skin or mask of an elk and allow this to guide them. At the same time, however, the hunters told Willerslev, you must not allow yourself to be too caught up into the world of animals, for you will eventually lose your humanity, and, it seems, this occasionally happens, so someone will actually become mentally deranged. There is a sort of double focus here, too, which it is important to maintain.

This kind of thing is profoundly connected with all the arts – and very obviously in the case of imaginative literature, where a good playwright or novelist or poet enters deeply into the skin of a character, whether of the same sex as the writer or not. I recall the composer and violinist George Enescu speaking, concerning the composing of his great opera ‘Oedipe’, of struggling to to build an almost unbearable tension in order to depict the victory of Oedipus over the Sphinx. Ah, I’ve found the place in the book: ‘To describe the howling of the Sphinx, he had “to imagine something unimaginable.” “When I finished that scene,” recalls the composer, “it seemed to me that I was going mad.”‘

But he didn’t go mad.

There is this fluidity, if you like to call it that, in all of us, and it is a great part of what makes us human. And, particularly in youth, one’s imagination can seem to be all too real – particularly if it is in part a defence against some traumatic experience, as in the case of that poor young girl quoted in a thread here some days ago, who, having experienced abuse at the hands of a cousin, and having discovered that she was attracted to someone of the same sex, declared that she was a boy called ‘John’, and absolutely denied that she was a lesbian. And, certainly, there is something called gender dysphoria which may be connected with this fluidity.

Which all seems to me pertinent to the case of claiming to be a sex other than you are, particularly in the case of the behaviour of the most vociferous of the trans-females, a number of whom sport beards, wear male clothing, and who behave like bad actors and real shites. 　

Did you know that women menstruate? How gross is that? Let’s never mention it again.

Offensive, crude, vulgar, unnecessary, embarrassing and grotesque. That’s Tampax’s current television ad – now banned – according to complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland.

The advertisement features the host of a talkshow called Tampons & Tea asking her studio audience how many of them ever feel their tampon. When her guest, a young woman, raises her hand to indicate that she does, the host tells her that she shouldn’t and that it might mean her tampon is not in far enough. “You gotta get ’em up there, girls!” the host says. The ad then shows how to insert a tampon correctly – “Not just the tip, up to the grip!”

But that’s the Gateway to Hell they’re talking about so casually!

So what’s the big deal? The ASAI has prohibited the ad from being shown again in its current form after it received 84 complaints. The authority rejected claims that it demeaned women, was unsuitable for children and contained sexual innuendo, but it did accept that the advert caused widespread offence. Catholic Ireland, how are you?

Flourishing, it seems.

Procter & Gamble, which makes Tampax – and in the United States is using Amy Schumer to talk about tampons and vaginas – says the ad was created in response to findings that suggested 42 per cent of women who use applicator tampons do not insert the applicator correctly and that 79 per cent experience discomfort while wearing tampons. So people clearly require more guidance, particularly as this isn’t a topic necessarily taught in schools or spoken about at home. Hence the need for “You gotta get ’em up there, girls!”

Some viewers told the ASAI they found the messaging in the Tampax ad, which is for its Pearl Compak range, “provocative” or “suggestive”. I’d say it’s refreshingly plain-speaking and informative, as well as a welcome alternative to traditional menstrual-product advertising. Ads showing women rollerblading in white leotards on the first day of their periods are far more offensive than this one. And don’t get me started on the ads that substitute an unidentified blue liquid for blood.

It’s a good ad – funny, straightforward, helpful.

Ciara Kelly is even better.

Interesting observation.

Just imagine Trump there. Trump who was sued along with his father for racial discrimination in housing.

The Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management in order to obtain a settlement in which Trump and his father would promise not to discriminate. The case eventually was settled two years later after Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for $100 million for making false statements. Those allegations were dismissed by the court.

…

The lawsuit was based on evidence gathered by testers for the New York City Human Rights Division, which alleged that black people who went to Trump buildings were told there were no apartments available, while white people were offered units.

Just yesterday, he publicly announced he’s bringing back racial discrimination in housing.

So, yeah, his presence at John Lewis’s funeral would not have been welcome.

What has happened to people? What have they done with their brains?

Why do people – especially women, especially feminist women, but really any people – say things like that? When they’re so obviously absurd? So like baby talk? It’s just not true that a woman is whoever wants to be a woman, any more than it’s true that a tree is whoever wants to be a tree or a shark is whoever wants to be a shark. I’m pretty sure Naomi Wolf realizes that about other categories, so why does she think the rules suddenly vanish into thin air when the wants-to-be is a woman? Why does she think woman is the only category that’s fungible in that way? Why does she think that if Trump decided he wants to be a woman he would be a woman simply because he wants to?

Trump last week on John Lewis:

Trump today on Herman Cain:

Flynn case not over yet.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says it has scheduled oral arguments in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Aug. 11.

A smaller panel of judges within the D.C. Circuit ruled earlier that a lower-court judge must terminate the case against Flynn, as requested both by his attorneys and — in an unusual wrinkle — the Justice Department.

That lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, said he wanted to probe the reasons for the government’s move, but the smaller appellate panel ordered him to stop that work and simply end the matter.

Sullivan asked for the full appeals court to consider the case, and it agreed on Thursday.

I hope Barr has sand in his britches.

Murderous.

Vanity Fair says that’s just a fraction of it.

After Congressman Louie Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, Capitol Hill staffers sounded off on the apparent public health nightmare that is working for Republican lawmakers. Responding to reporting on Gohmert’s diagnosis, an aide told Politico’s Jake Sherman that the far-right representative hadn’t just refused to don a mask himself—he’d also “berated” the staff he required to work in the office for wearing them, seeking to, in his words, “be an example to America on how to open up safely.”

Other Republican aides soon chimed in, revealing a reckless and dangerous Capitol Hill office culture among several GOP lawmakers. Several Republican staffers described being discouraged or ridiculed for wearing masks, even as the members of congress forced them to come into the office. “If you asked me to give you a breakdown of mask usage in member offices, it’s nearly universal in Democratic offices based on my random observations,” a tech staffer told Politico. “Within Republican offices, it’s probably under 50%.”

Because somehow it’s a Republican value to sneer at science and urge everyone to take stupid risks and spread a lethal pandemic more widely? They’re going with that?

“Some GOP offices ask why you are wearing a mask, which puts our staff in an awkward position,” the staffer continued. “Do you say because of the pandemic and risk the office taking that as a political stand? Do you take it off to make them feel better?”

The notion of wearing protective face masks during a pandemic being a “political stand” at all is maddening. But it’s especially wild now, months into this once-in-a-century public health crisis, which has been dramatically escalating in the United States in recent weeks. Without a vaccine or proven treatment, masks have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of infection; in fact, as former Obama Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Andy Slavitt has pointed out, universal mask-wearing could help bring the coronavirus to heel in less than two months. But Trump and other Republicans dragged masks into the culture wars, framing mask mandates as an infringement on individual liberties. “I want people to have a certain freedom,” Trump told Fox News’ Chris Wallace earlier this month. 

No he doesn’t. He wants white Republican men to have a certain freedom, and everyone else to obey orders from white Republican men. He sure as hell doesn’t want BLM protesters to have a certain freedom, or workers in chicken processing plants, or immigrants, or prosecutors investigating his corrupt business practices.

Pompeo is talking to the Senate foreign relations committee.

Mike Pompeo has been questioned on the decision announced yesterday to pull nearly 12,000 US troops out of Germany, bringing 6,400 of them back to the US, and how that squared with Pompeo’s claims to be leading a tough policy towards Russia. He confirmed the state department was “very involved at the strategic level” but argued that bringing the troops home did not mean they were “off the field.”

Uh…that’s exactly what it means.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked him whether the impact on relations with Germany had been taken into account, to which Pompeo replied: “This is personal for me I fought on the border of East Germany when I was a young soldier I was stationed there.”

Pompeo was stationed in West Germany as an army lieutenant in the late eighties. There was no fighting there.

Hey it was a moral fight! A political fight. A spiritual fight.

Mitt Romney, who continues to be the only Republican senator to seriously challenge the administration, picked up the issue in his own remarks, saying: “I have heard from the highest levels of the German government that this is seen by them as an insult to Germany, and I can’t imagine, at a time when we need to be drawing in our friends and allies so that we can collectively confront China, we want to insult them.”

We don’t, maybe, but Trump does. Trump threw a handful of candies at Angela Merkel; I think it’s safe to say he’s happy to offend Germany.

Rape is basically not a crime except in very rare cases.

The number of people prosecuted and convicted for rape has fallen to the lowest level since records began, prompting outrage and concern from campaigners, who say the crime is being decriminalised.

People? They mean men. Women can’t rape. It’s men who are being allowed to rape with impunity, not people.

Prosecutions and convictions more than halved in three years while rapes increased. Fewer rape cases were referred by police and in turn the Crown Prosecution Service took an even smaller number of those cases to court.

Police recorded 55,130 rapes but there were only 2,102 prosecutions and 1,439 convictions in England and Wales in 2019-20. Three years earlier, 41,616 rapes were recorded, a third less than currently, and there were 5,190 prosecutions and 2,991 convictions.

…

Sarah Green, the director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, said: “Today’s figures show starkly that we are right to say rape has been effectively decriminalised. What else can you call a 1 in 70 chance of prosecution?

“The DPP’s constant exhortation to victims that they must come forward is frankly too much to take. How can he say that in any sincerity when the outcomes are so disastrous and when he is casting doubt on previous prosecutions?”

Thursday’s figures also show the highest conviction rate on record, at 68.5%. The data prompted critics to argue that the high conviction rate is a clear result of a covert policy change in how rape cases are treated.

In other words they’ve become more risk-averse: they’re upping their conviction rate by prosecuting fewer cases. If the result is that rapists feel pretty confident that they’ll get away with it, well, that’s just the price someone has to pay.

Maybe now they will pay attention?

Herman Cain, a onetime Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, has died from coronavirus, according to an obituary sent from his verified Twitter account and Newsmax, where he was launching a television show.

I wonder how he caught it.

As a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, Cain was one of the surrogates at President Donald Trump’s June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma — which saw at least eight Trump advance team staffers in attendance test positive for coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh has told CNN that Cain did not meet with Trump at the Tulsa rally.

Trump was out face to facing with people in Texas yesterday, not wearing a mask.

Oh no, it turns out Kamala Harris is too ambitious to be Vice President. So unlike Biden, who thinks he’s just the right guy to be president even though he’s 78 years old and has a scary shiny facelift.

… reporting on deliberations inside the campaign suggests their decision-making is being shaped by the same sexist concerns about women in leadership that helped keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House four years ago. While it’s unclear if the accounts are accurate or present a complete picture, the story they tell is deflating, familiar, and harmful—that the campaign is distrustful of women who are ambitious or who otherwise display leadership traits that somehow don’t seem to bother people when exhibited by men. They want a woman, just not that kind of woman. Sound familiar? 

The issue seems to mainly come up in talk of Kamala Harris, the California senator and former presidential contender. Harris has been the most obvious choice for months because she checks so many boxes; she has plenty of experience, she’s endured the national spotlight, and she’s a woman of color just like the base of the Democratic Party.

But uh oh, uh oh – she’s ambitious. (How can you do a job like that if you’re not ambitious? It’s not a slacker kind of thing.)

Ambition, campaign insiders fret, might drive her somehow to be disloyal to Biden, meaning she can’t be trusted. In one Politico article, someone described as a “close Biden ally” explained that the problem with Harris (and, for that matter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren) is that she is not a team player. The story does not attempt to explain why she isn’t a team player, and instead just takes for granted that the junior senator from California, who has co-sponsored lots of legislation alongside other senators, is somehow not a team player. This designation, without any explanation, sounds a lot like a euphemism for female ambition and the fears tied up in it.

Besides, being a “team player” isn’t really part of the job description, is it? Isn’t that part of the point? It’s not the Congress, it’s the presidency. (The whole thing is turning out to be a mistake, given the havoc a narcissistic moron can create with it, but until we change it that’s what it is.)

Biden is one of the most ambitious politicians alive; he served in the Senate for decades, ran for president twice, served as vice president, and then in his seventh decade decided to run for president again. Now, somehow, he reportedly thinks that an ambitious woman won’t support him even as he desires—as his confidants whisper to the press—a vice president like he was to President Barack Obama…

… It seems like the ultimate insult to a woman vice presidential pick that in order to clinch the post she has to convince the campaign that she possesses just the right amount of ambition—enough to rise to the top tier of American politics but not so much that she cannot be trusted to actually do the vice president’s job of putting the president first.

Well let’s face it, women just can’t be trusted.

Chase Strangio is not an honest interlocutor.

That’s not honest. He’s telling a lie. (Sue me, Chase!) We don’t want trans people to die, and what would be the point of wanting them to “disappear”? People don’t “disappear.” We want trans people to stop trying to force us to share or agree with or endorse or celebrate or act in accordance with their magical claims about themselves. That’s all. We want trans women to stop trying to take over women’s spaces, prizes, shortlists, awards, firsts, and the like. We want trans women to stop trying to appropriate the category “woman.” That’s all.

ACLU publicists should not tell lies, and they should especially not tell lies about a category of people that has had to struggle to get the civil liberties that are seen as the birthright of men.

More on Trump’s “you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood” tweet.

Because he didn’t want to bother his tenants by making them live among people who were not white.

All those perfectly good babies going to waste in a Kyiv hotel because the borders are closed.

In a cash-strapped economy however, where the average wage is £300 a month and the war with Russia and its proxies continues, many impoverished women, especially in small towns and rural areas, are still lining up to carry babies for money, even if they are paying a heavy health and psychological price, as campaigners believe.

And people who want babies are lining up to pay those impoverished women to do it.

There are no official statistics, but it is estimated that several thousand children are born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine each year. Eighty per cent of these babies are for foreign couples, who choose Ukraine because the process is legal and cheap.

And women are machines for making babies.

I think trans women should take over this kind of work.

Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.

Sometimes it can seem as if Trump almost gets it…is sort of kind of paying attention…is managing to look as if he’s doing his job for a few minutes – but then he always talks to someone else and it all falls apart again.

Midday [on Monday], Fauci and others gathered in the Oval Office to update Trump on the 30,000-person Phase 3 trial launched by Moderna. Trump later told reporters it was a “great meeting” and participants walked away believing the President was sincere in his efforts to convey more leadership on the outbreak.

“We had a lot of our wonderful doctors and researchers with me,” Trump said. “I think the meeting went really well.”

While the meeting focused almost exclusively on the vaccine trial, and not on Trump’s response to the virus more broadly, it seemed to participants like the President was engaged — unlike some previous meetings that became derailed with unrelated topics and complaints.

Hold your breath…tiptoe…nobody say anything – oops no it didn’t work.

But as the day progressed, Trump heard from several others who reinforced a different message than the one being offered by the administration’s health experts. His hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro — who recently published an op-ed in USA Today trashing Fauci without running it past the White House but was never formally reprimanded — traveled alongside Trump to North Carolina, where the President broke with health experts by calling on governors to reopen.

“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening,” Trump said, countering the advice being offered by Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx for states to rethink how they are lifting restrictions.

So the midday meeting might as well not have happened.

The same day, Trump spoke with Robert Herring, the chief executive of far-right OANN, about an unproven anti-malarial that Trump has long touted and even took himself, despite a lack of clear evidence on its efficacy in preventing or treating Covid.

“Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to President Trump about hydroxychloroquine,” Herring later wrote on Twitter. “I gave him a list of doctors we have interviewed. I know he wants to help & put people back to work. Hope he talks to real doctors & not Dr. ‘Farci.’ ”

Yes, it’s Fauci who’s not a real doctor and people who promote random medications for no clear reason who really know their medical stuff.

An item in the latest Week in the War on Women made my hair stand on end:

Twitter user, Sarah Stuart, shared her experience of an online gender workshop she attended.

Wait what? A workshop on “gender identity” for KIDS 6 TO 12???

That’s not a “workshop,” that’s indoctrination. That’s brainwashing. That’s grooming.

Participants received a Zoom meeting link, without password, and an email warning that adults must ‘remain silent observers’. Sarah Stuart reports that most of the children onscreen were without supervision and only one had an adult present.

The workshop trainer was a trans identified female and trans rights activist called Joshua Jernigan. Based in North Carolina, Jernigan founded the Gender Education Network, an organization with “A goal to educate everyone about gender diversity”.

I wonder how Josh feels about the receding hairline.

Jernigan told the watching children that JK Rowling’s recent statements were “harmful” and “wrong” and the ensuing workshop was full of ideological rhetoric; sex is a spectrum, “same-gender attraction” supplants homosexuality, being a woman is not defined by biology, “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are verboten etc. Jernigan also discussed hormones, surgery and social transitioning and told children that they can change their pronouns as often as they like; ‘Try it on and see if it fits’.

I read the whole thread. It’s creepy as fuck.

All bluster and no mask.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, has tested positive for coronavirus, a person familiar with the situation told CNN on Wednesday.

Gohmert has frequently refused to wear a mask while at the Capitol amid the pandemic. He has spent ample time on the House floor during votes speaking to aides and lawmakers — without a mask or social distancing.

Well he’s a Republican you see. Republicans are for statues of pro-slavery generals and federal agents beating up non-violent protesters, and against environmental protections and masks during a pandemic. Principle first!

Gohmert had been scheduled to fly aboard Air Force One on Wednesday with President Donald Trump to Midland, Texas, where the President is fundraising and touring an oil rig. He tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday morning during a pre-flight screening at the White House, a person familiar with the situation told CNN. Because of the positive test, Gohmert is not traveling with the President.

A senior Republican aide told CNN the test results have caused issues on the Hill where “a lot of staffers” were ordered to get tests before they can go to meetings and resume activity. Some are sequestering in their offices until they can get tested. Gohmert’s office notified Republican leaders, who notified House medical staff and the protocol kicked in for further notification, the GOP aide said.

Made all the more urgent by the fact that Gohmert mostly didn’t wear a mask.

Gohmert told CNN last month that he didn’t wear a mask because he had been tested and he didn’t yet have the virus. “But if I get it, you’ll never see me without a mask,” he said.

Which is idiotic, because you can spread it before you test positive, and you can also spread it after you test negative but before you get another test. It’s not the case that a negative test means “there is no chance that you will spread the virus before the next time we test you.”

He is just one of several conservative Republicans who have pushed back on mask-wearing, sometimes causing tension during committee meetings.

During Tuesday’s hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler urged a handful of Republican members to keep their masks on.

“I would remind Mr. Jordan, Mr. Biggs and Mr. Johnson to stop violating the rules of the committee, to stop violating the safety of the members of the committee, to stop holding themselves out as not caring by refusing to wear their masks,” the New York Democrat said, referring to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

But freedom.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, also responded to the news. “I’m concerned about the irresponsible behavior of many of the Republicans who have chosen to consistently flout well-established public health guidance, perhaps out of fealty to their boss, Donald Trump, who is the head of the anti-mask movement in America,” Jeffries said at a news conference. “That’s a concern.”

But freedom. Freedom freedom freedom. Our ancestors didn’t fight for freedom for white people only to be shackled by a damn face mask. Freedom freedom.

It’s time to beeeeeeeeeeeee

INSPIRED

Then you can return to earth.