Peak Trans on Billingham:

These two tweets were directed at me during a Twitter spat I had with James Billingham a couple of months ago. Yes, he really is one of those men who presume to adjudicate on what feminism is. I can’t in all seriousness believe he thinks I care what he would “love” to see me do. Rather, I think these tweets were intentionally condescending to me in order to virtue-signal to his followers, who will probably applaud the insufferable arrogance of a man telling a woman old enough to be his mother how she should be doing feminism.

In order to virtue-signal and in order to tell a woman how she should be doing feminism. He loves it – he would love it even if no one applauded.

I am still against anti-feminists in the ‘atheist movement’, as he calls it – especially the ones in Humanists UK, whose numbers are growing. What has happened is that Billingham has joined their ranks as an honorary member of the trans Taliban (hat-tip to Julie Bindel for coining that very apt sobriquet). That he has done so exemplifies why we should be wary of men who self-identify as feminists. Men who genuinely want to support us know better than to do so. If your feminism includes men who talk over women – as they are wont to do – it’s not feminism.

And if your feminism “centers” men who say they are women and bullies women, it’s really not feminism.

Years ago, he was responsible for creating a ‘block bot’ on Twitter, about which Martin Robbins wrote,

The Block Bot started as a tool to create a safe space for women online and turned into a weapon to bully and silence women the community disagreed with.

There’s a great deal more about what a dedicated, persistent bully James Billingham is.

Glinner takes a cold hard look at the ineffable James Billingham:

This is James Billingham, a man who has numerous sock accounts online, such as Kilgore Sprout, Sprout of Wrath, the only Sprout and Oolon, who appears to have a burning hatred of women who are invested in safeguarding women’s or children’s rights.

Billingham spends an inordinate amount of time doing the dirty work of some of the creepiest and most dangerous gender identity extremists. He minimised the vicious assault by a large man on Maria McLachlan as a slap ‘on the shoulder’ and suggested that McLachlan, a pensioner, was ‘by far the most violent person there’, an assertion completely contradicted by footage of the attack, for which Tara Wolf was convicted.

…

Billingham takes great pleasure in infiltrating or encouraging others to infiltrate feminist groups on Facebook. He then reveals out-of context messages, leaks membership lists or doxxes members in order to cause maximum distress and disruption. The wonderful Man Friday campaign for single-sex spaces ended after screenshots that outed some members of the group were leaked and publicised by a Sprout sock account via #TERFleaks. More recently, he set up a domain name almost identical to that of the LGB Alliance, which was linked to Stonewall’s site. The LGB Alliance tracked Billingham down and raised a dispute with Nominet Dispute Resolution Service, which they won.

He’s a giggling sadist whose sadism is directed at women. He’s as creepy as Buffalo Bill.

Wadhwa continues his attack on women’s rights:

Women who oppose plans to make it easier to change gender have given a platform to “fascists who want to eliminate trans people”, according to the head of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.

Bad lede. We don’t care about changing gender, what we oppose is the absurd dogma that people can change sex, and we oppose that because it results in outrages like domineering male Mridul Wadhwa becoming the head of a rape crisis centre, where he can bully women into obeying him or simply kick them out altogether.

Mridul Wadhwa, 43, a trans woman who was appointed chief executive in May, accused those protesting against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill of legitimising far-right discrimination of trans people.

Wadhwa is a man and thus the wrong sex to be head of a rape crisis centre. It doesn’t matter what he “accuses” us of or what he thinks we give a “platform” to; what matters is that he’s a man who has the fucking gall to go after and get and occupy a job as head of a rape crisis centre.

Step one.

The Justice Department [has] asked a federal judge in Texas to temporarily block enforcement of the state’s new law that bans abortions after about six weeks.

This step, a major move by the Biden administration against the highly controversial law, follows a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department last week. The Biden administration asked the court late Tuesday to implement the preliminary injunction while the lawsuit plays out in federal court.

Texas’ abortion ban essentially stops the procedure in the country’s second-largest state. Most people WOMEN don’t know they are pregnant before six weeks.

In court documents, attorneys for the Justice Department said Texas’ law, also called SB 8, is unconstitutional and cannot stand.

A preliminary injunction “is necessary to protect the constitutional rights of women in Texas and the sovereign interest of the United States in ensuring that its States respect the terms of the national compact,” the attorneys say. “It is also necessary to protect federal agencies, employees, and contractors whose lawful actions S.B. 8 purports to prohibit.”

At least the Justice Department still knows this law is an attack on the rights of women.

No.

No. Feminism is not a movement “based on” (or aiming to or meant to or about or for) liberating “all of us.” It’s about liberating women. Women are allowed to have our own movement, and it’s called feminism.

It’s not anyone’s movement to give away to “all of us,” because it’s specifically and explicitly about women, not people in general.

And gender critical feminism is not “ganging up on transgender people,” it’s critical of the ideology that says men magically become women by saying so.

Pandemic, you say? Well then we’ll just make sure health officials can’t take necessary steps to deal with it.

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.

Because what mad impetuous fool wants to be protected against infectious diseases?

A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.

God we’re a stupid people.

President Joe Biden last Thursday announced sweeping vaccination mandates and other covid measures, saying he was forced to act partly because of such legislation: “My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions.”

…

Much of this legislation takes effect as covid hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic, and children are back in school.

It’s as if they think the pandemic is an angry god and they can appease it by backing off prevention. Imbeciles.

Trivia, but too funny to pass up.

There’s plenty of ahem ahem Chuck Berry HELLO – and I would add Motown I mean come on – but also when did Obama ever say young white men (or any other people) aren’t allowed to have angst? When did he ever say anything that even vaguely resembled it?

I will say this: a lot of rock & roll is about what whores women are. That aspect can get pretty annoying.

Funny how states and provinces that are particularly heavy on the anti-vax trend are also heavy on the getting Covid trend. Alberta for instance:

A surge in coronavirus cases has pushed the healthcare system in the Canadian province of Alberta to the verge of collapse, as healthcare workers struggle against mounting exhaustion and a growing anti-vaccine movement in the region.

More and more cases, so let’s get more and more people campaigning against vaccinations. Brilliant. As the fire consumes more and more of the house, throw more and more stones at the firefighters.

The province warned this week that its ICU capacity was strained, with more people requiring intensive care than any other point during the pandemic – nearly all of them unvaccinated.

…

Alberta has long boasted of its loose coronavirus restrictions – including advertising the previous months as the “best summer ever” as it rolled back those few restrictions. It has also been the site of North America’s highest caseloads.

Weird thing to boast about under the circumstances. “Look at us, we’re the best at letting people get the deadly virus!”

In a province with a long history of skepticism towards government, the pandemic has become fertile ground for protests and anti-vaccine rhetoric, including from elected officials, firefighters and police officers. During the ongoing federal election, the People’s Party of Canada, a fringe rightwing party that has come out against public health measures has seen its largest support base in rural Alberta.

That skepticism towards masks and vaccines has come at a steep cost, say frontline workers.

…

In recent weeks, a number of anti-vaccine protests have been held across the country, including out front of hospitals in Calgary and Edmonton, compounding the exhaustion and frustration of frontline healthcare workers.

“I don’t have the energy to make sense of it any more,” said the nurse. “I’m barely functioning as it is, because we’re pouring from the cup that has a hole. We never get to fill it.”

Instead, nurses say they are left pleading with a narrow minority of the public that increasingly is ending up in the hospital.

And they get told it’s all their fault.

No shit. In a world that still watches placidly as cruise ships burn 80 thousand gallons of fuel a day each, it turns out that nobody, nobody, is living up to the Paris climate agreement.

Every one of the world’s leading economies, including all the countries that make up the G20, is failing to meet commitments made in the landmark Paris agreement in order to stave off climate catastrophe, a damning new analysis has found.

Less than two months before crucial United Nations climate talks take place in Scotland, none of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries have made sufficient plans to lower pollution to meet what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

This means the world is barreling towards calamitous climate impacts.

But that’s the future; right now people are enjoying those cruises. There are 323 of those ships toddling around.

Under the Paris deal, nations vowed to prevent the world’s average temperature rising 1.5C above pre-industrial times in order to avoid disastrous heatwaves, flooding, storms, drought and other consequences that are already starting to unfold. But the new analysis, by Climate Action Tracker, finds almost every country is falling woefully short of that commitment.

Well you can’t expect people to give up cruises. It would be inhuman.

This intransigence comes despite the looming climate talks and increasing signs of the climate crisis manifesting itself in catastrophic weather events, including massive floods in Germany and China, severe wildfires in the US and dangerous heatwaves sweeping several countries.

108F here in Seattle in June.

“An increasing number of people around the world are suffering from ever more severe and frequent impacts of climate change, yet government action continues to lag behind what is needed,” said Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, another partner in the new study.

Elected governments can’t do much, and unelected ones don’t give a shit.

[John] Kerry risks entering the talks with no major climate victory to brandish, with emissions reduction provisions as part of a huge $3.5tn piece of Biden’s legislative agenda still a matter of disagreement even among Democrats in the US Congress.

This is what I’m saying. Reducing emissions isn’t popular, and elected governments are necessarily about what’s popular.

We’re just walking through an increasingly hostile wilderness toward the edge of a cliff.

She’s still at it.

That’s a stupid way to describe Joan Smith. I don’t know if Rafia Zakaria is really stupid or not but by god she says a lot of stupid things. That’s one of them. Joan Smith is the author of the classic Misogynies. She’s a feminist thinker and columnist and activist. She’s a star. She’s not “anti-trans,” she’s skeptical of some of the claims of the ever-expanding trans ideology.

To be the subject of a book review by Joan Smith is a high honor and a massive thrill. I don’t like to brag, or at least I don’t like to be too obvious about it, but I’ll brag about this: Joan Smith reviewed Does God Hate Women? and to me that was a very big deal.

Of course, it’s less pleasing if she thinks the book is crap, as she did Zakaria’s book, but then that’s the problem with writing a crap book. Zakaria’s bone-headed description of Joan as “committed to the status quo” just gives us all the more reason to think she (Zakaria) is uninformed as well as abusive. Women committed to the status quo don’t tell the Mayor of London why he should not have removed her from her position as co-chair of the violence against women and girls board. Women committed to the status quo don’t have such positions in the first place, because the status quo is that violence against women and girls is just part of life, not worth objecting to, not all that serious.

The voting rights struggle continues:

Senate Democrats united on Tuesday around a pared-down voting rights bill, escalating their efforts to build a case for aggressive action by Congress to push past Republican opposition and counter a rash of new G.O.P.-written ballot restrictions in states around the country.

Why do Republicans write all these voting restrictions? Because they can’t win if everyone can vote without interference.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, quickly dismissed the measure, reiterating his view that the legislation represented unnecessary federal meddling in elections that have historically been the province of the states.

Yes and historically some of the states allowed slavery, too. Fuck “historically.”

“There is no reason for the federal government to take over how we conduct elections,” Mr. McConnell, a longtime foe of Democratic election and campaign proposals, told reporters on Tuesday. “It is a solution in search of a problem, and we will not be supporting that.”

Oh really? No reason at all for the feds to protect voting rights?

I was listening to a useful and interesting conversation on Fresh Air about the Supreme Court’s intention to kill Roe v Wade and then I hit a bump.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my interview with Ian Millhiser, who has been writing about the recent Supreme Court order allowing a restrictive Texas abortion law to go into effect. He’s also been writing about the court’s voting rights decisions, the increasing use of the shadow docket and the court’s larger move to the right. In his new book “The Agenda: How A Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America,” he writes that while Congress has become increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has become the locus of policymaking in the U.S., and the policies are largely conservative. Three of the six conservative justices were appointed by President Trump. Millhiser says some of the court’s least understood and most arcane decisions are fundamentally reshaping our nation. He’s a senior correspondent for Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution and threats to liberal democracy in the U.S. Millhiser is a lawyer and clerked for a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

So if the Supreme Court either out and out overrules Casey or Roe or uphold restrictions that are so severe that it leaves no time to get an abortion, that would be a federal ruling, but states would still be able to make their own laws, right?

MILLHISER: That’s right. So for the moment, the fight that we are having is over whether or not states can pass abortion bans or very severe abortion restrictions. I suspect that the next chapter in this litigation fight, you know – anti-abortion groups, there are some that believe in a theory called fetal personhood, which – you know, basically what fetal personhood means is it’s a way of reading the Constitution to say that the Constitution bans abortions. And so if fetal personhood were to become the law of the land, that would mean that abortions would be banned in all 50 states.

But I think the thing to understand here is that we are primarily talking about rulings that impact poor women and, you know, women who do not have means – I shouldn’t just say women, you know, women, trans people, nonbinary people, people who can become pregnant – who do not have the means to cross state lines.

There, obviously, is the bump.

Yes you damn well should “just say women.” It’s women who get pregnant, including when they don’t want to. It’s women who need abortion rights. It’s women who will be harmed if Roe is overturned. Women, women only, “just” women; not men. No you shouldn’t say “people” instead or in addition, because that just obscures the reality that attacks on abortion are attacks on women’s freedom and autonomy. Don’t obscure the reality.

Billingham continues his persecution of feminist women:

He hopes they will silence ALL the feminist women.

Astounding. And horrifying.

Inc “work to ensure LGBT is embedded across South Yorkshire” ….they intend to target all commissioners

“At Edinburgh rape crisis we had to cleanse our history of not being trans inclusive” JFC – Wadwha is talking about “cleansing” the women’s movement.

Not sure of the stats on this…. “The rape crisis movement is largely run by white, cis, heteronormative women”….

No, really?! The rape crisis movement is run by women? What an outrage!

Desperately want to say something …. Wadwha talking about how Scotland is engulfed in transphobia and suggesting *this* is why service users are afraid to access rape crisis! They have to learn not to be “transphobic” @ForwomenScot

Now framing it as opposition from the right wing. Wadwha talking about Scottish women “exposing themselves in recent weeks …as right wing and …working with fascists” @ForwomenScot

Wadwha “there was a protest outside Scottish Parliament the week before last – organised by those who oppose the GRA reform …and also those who oppose the existence of trans people”

Liar.

“We have been listening but at that protest there were people – that group of women were joined by fascist groups” @ForwomenScot

“They have given that space to them and that’s quite scary” …. Lies are scary Wadwha. Lies are really scary.

Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

Importantly Wadwha was just discussing what you do to be more inclusive as an org. The language used terrified me. Talked of transphobic views surrounding us in society so Wadwha knows those views have been absorbed …

“We have to acknowledge those views in our organisations and see if they are views that can be changed or if they are permanent…. Can do this anonymously… it’s a journey”

The implication here is that anyone not in favour of admitting trans identified men to a women’s single sex service must be “found” and “changed” …. Honestly the most sinister talk I’ve been at

Laurie Penny decided to go all-in.

Imagine you’re throwing a party and somebody kicks off. It was going so well. You spent ages deciding on drinks and making a playlist, and now some blowhard is off on a homophobic rant. He’s not holding back, either. He’s getting loud and mouthing off with the vilest bigotry you can imagine, and people are getting uncomfortable. It’s your party. What do you do?

Well, one, it wouldn’t happen, because I don’t throw parties, and I have zero interest in drinks or playlists. Two – why would you invite “some blowhard” to your own party? If he’s “some blowhard” to you – some random unpleasant guy you don’t even know – what’s he doing at your party? So, three, I don’t believe your little thought experiment in the first place. Never mind, it’s not a real thought experiment. It’s a circuitous path to calling Graham Linehan names in a Substack post.

This is my first post on Substack, and it’s partly about why I’m on this platform, given that Substack continues to host and profit from the propaganda of, among others, transphobic hatemonger Graham Linehan.

Like that.

She’s a bit of a “hatemonger” herself, isn’t she – at least, those four words certainly look like hatemongering.

But wait, she’s not finished.

The best and most comprehensive breakdown of Linehan’s behavior and why it’s so abhorrent comes from Grace Lavery, also on this platform. I share her conviction that Substack ought to throw this deranged bigot out of their party right now, before anyone else gets hurt.

Does “deranged bigot” count as hatemongering? Or is that only when They do it?

I told my contacts at Substack that they ought to ban Linehan, along with anyone else doing deliberate, wilful, hateful harm to any oppressed minority.

Item 3. I think accusing someone of “doing deliberate, willful, hateful harm to an oppressed minority” is hatemongering.

What does it mean, then, when a company like Substack chooses to host this sort of malicious hate speech…?

She says “this sort” as if she had provided examples, but she hadn’t. She gave zero examples, she simply asserted – and in very strong language at that. This is childish. “Joey said bad things. Horrible things. Really really mean things. Joey must be expelled right now for this sort of malicious hate speech.”

Graham responded a couple of days later.

Grace Lavery is all excited.

Not just “vile bigot” I think. That could perhaps be defended as opinion (I don’t know enough about UK law to skip the “perhaps”). But hatemonger? Doing deliberate harm? Those claims look much harder to defend.

A pretty story:

A former Met Police counter-terrorism officer has admitted using spy cameras to secretly film naked models.

What kind of models?

Pretending to be a pilot, Det Insp Neil Corbel arranged fake photoshoots in hotel rooms, flats and Airbnbs.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard he hid devices in tissue boxes, phone chargers, an air freshener and glasses to video his victims.

He was caught after a woman became suspicious of a digital clock and found it was a spy camera.

Oh a woman – that kind of model. I wonder if he asked them how they identified first.

Police found images of some 51 women on Corbel’s hard drive and were able to identify 19 victims willing to make statements against him.

51! He’s industrious about it.

“He set up the rooms well in advance with covert devices planted in strategic places capturing the women while they were undressing before the shoots,” said the prosecutor.

Mr Alabi said Corbel manoeuvred the models so that intimate parts of their bodies were filmed.

Uh huh; right up between the legs, no doubt.

Never mind, they were probably all Karens.

Ah well who would know better than Amy Coney Barrett?

Claiming the supreme court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”, Amy Coney Barrett told an audience at a Kentucky center named for the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties”.

For sure, and she was not nominated and approved for the court by partisan hacks from a political party but by disinterested legal experts like for instance Mitch McConnell. Yup yup yup yup.

Speaking alongside McConnell a little more than a week after she and four other conservatives on the court declined to block a Texas law which all but outlaws abortion in the state, the devout Catholic also insisted the panel does not judge cases based on personal beliefs.

Right, except that they do.

Barrett’s remarks met with widespread skepticism.

Gee I can’t think why.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, wrote: “Not ‘partisan hacks’? Then explain 80-0 partisan 5-4 record for big donors. And explain judicially conservative principles rolled over to get those wins for donors who put you on the court.”

She can’t, she’s looking at a squirrel.

Rafia Zakaria apparently deleted the stupidest of her tweets from yesterday attacking Joan Smith for her review of Zakaria’s book on “white feminism.” Or most of them, but not quite all.

She doesn’t really care what the review says, which is why she composed all those childish “nyah nyah Karen na na Boomer” about them.

I’ll grant her one point: she didn’t care enough to find out who Joan Smith is.

“They’re”?

So Zakaria knows Joan Smith is a woman long enough to call her a Karen, but not long enough to refrain from calling her “they.”

Yay feminism. Feminism is for everyone except terfs, boomers, Karens, white women, and women who write unflattering reviews of Rafia Zakaria’s book.

“And likely all her entitled and racist views”? Name one. Document it. Show us your work.

No, that’s incorrect. It could just be that Zakaria’s book is not a good book – and judging by her tweets it’s hard to see how it could be much good. Her thinking is crude at best.

Yes I think I’ll just skip reading Lol White Feminism Lol.

Updating to add one that I missed:

At what age does Rafia Zakaria think women should be put to death? 70? 65? 55? At what age, exactly, are we too old to be useful and too repellent to be allowed to continue cluttering up the place?

Is she aware that, barring accident, she will reach that fatal age herself in due course?

Update 2:

Zakaria’s book sounds only slightly less contemptuous and hostile than her social media persona. Joan Smith reviewed it in the Times (so Zakaria thought it would be clever to lob stupid insults at her on Twitter in response, which is very adult and sensible).

“White feminism” as a derogatory term, caricaturing it as a movement that imposes its preoccupations on women who are not white or middle class, has been around for a while. People claim it is reflective more of a state of mind than skin colour; even Pragna Patel, a founding member of Southall Black Sisters, has been accused of being a “white feminist”.

In other words it works pretty much the way “terf” does – as an excuse to shit on women without seeming like a common or garden misogynist.

Building bridges is definitely not what this book is about, and everywhere she finds feminists who accept “the benefits conferred by white supremacy at the expense of people of colour”. Defining people in terms they would not recognise or accept is a key ploy of identity politics, and feminists are lumped together and traduced throughout.

Much the way Katie Edwards did in the Independent today, then.

The book’s most serious flaw lies in its singularly ill-informed account of modern feminism. If the movement has a single unifying feature it is an analysis of the way oppression of women is linked to female bodies, regardless of race, class, age, religion or sexual orientation. Yet this is precisely what Zakaria denies: “An aversion to acknowledging lived trauma permeates white feminism, which in turn produces a discomfort and alienation from women who have experienced it.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. In this country refuges for victims of domestic and sexual violence were built by feminists who insisted they should be open to all women.

Never mind that, they were white feminists just the same.

Identity politics is rife with such facile judgments, designed to make its advocates feel superior. Zakaria appears to have missed the irony of dismissing every species of feminism but her own in the name of a supposedly more egalitarian politics. But when I see feminists being pitted against each other in this mean-spirited way, I can almost hear the patriarchy laughing.

So I guess Zakaria decided to use Twitter to demonstrate just how mean-spirited (and fatuous) she can be when she really puts her mind to it.