Now on to James Kirkup in the Spectator:

For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate.

Many of them are there for sexual offences but hey let’s put them in with the women anyway, and then watch and laugh.

The judge acknowledged the risk, as we’ve seen. He acknowledged lots of things, all of which should have point to Nope Nope Nope.

The judge also found that female prison[er]s, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender:

Many people may think it incongruous and inappropriate that a prisoner of masculine physique and with male genitalia should be accommodated in a female prison in any circumstances. More importantly for the Claimant’s case, I readily accept that a substantial proportion of women prisoners have been the victims of sexual assaults and/or domestic violence. 

I also readily accept the proposition … that some, and perhaps many, women prisoners may suffer fear and acute anxiety if required to share prison accommodation and facilities with a transgender women who has male genitalia, and that their fear and anxiety may be increased if that transgender woman has been convicted of sexual or violent offences against women.

It’s nice of him to accept all this so readily. Very nice. Heartwarming.

However, the court found that prison service policy remains lawful, because that policy must reflect not just the interests of female prisoners but also the interests of transwomen prisoners:

Well, one, this ruling stomps on the interests of female prisoners while cuddling and snuggling those of the male prisoners, and two, the female prisoners’ interests are in not being raped while the male prisoners’ interests are in preying on and terrorizing the women, and three, the policy does not reflect the interests of the female prisoners, and four, what do you mean not just the interests of the female prisoners when you’re ignoring those interests?

Excuse me while I pant rapidly like a dog for a few minutes.

the subjective concerns of women prisoners are not the only concerns which the Defendant [the Justice Secretary] had to consider in developing the policies: he also had to take into account the rights of transgender women in the prison system.

What do they mean the subjective concerns??? Is wanting not to be raped classed as a subjective concern? It seems pretty fucking objective to me! And why is women’s desire not to be raped a “concern” while men’s desire to pretend to be women “the rights”?

This is so fucked up.

The debate about sex and gender is complicated and often fraught, not least when it reaches the courts. But there are two, fairly simple, points that I think everyone should draw from that court ruling.

The first is that the High Court has confirmed that accommodating the interests of transwomen and women leads, in some circumstances, to ‘competing rights’. Sometimes, giving something to transwomen means taking something away from women. There is nothing transphobic or otherwise hateful about saying so. It is, as the court ruling shows, a simple statement of fact.

That leads to the second point. In this case, the state has given to some transwomen offenders the right to be imprisoned in the female prison estate. That decision, made to accommodate the interests of those transwomen, comes at the expense of women in the female estate. The court found that those women are exposed to an increased risk of sexual assault and to anxiety and fear of such sexual assault.

The court found that, and shrugged its judicious shoulders and said tough shit. Women are exposed to an increased risk of sexual assault and to anxiety and fear of such sexual assault, and we think that just doesn’t matter as much as men’s desire to pretend to be women. On the one hand, terror of rape, and rape, and on the other hand, let’s pretend. Which would you choose?

The court further found that, under the law as it stands, it is legal for ministers to implement a policy that exposes women prisoners to that increased risk and to ‘understandable’ fear, because – assuming proper mitigation is in place – that risk and that fear are an acceptable price to pay to accommodate the interests of transwomen prisoners.

I’m not going to bother saying what I think of this situation, because I suspect I don’t need to.

I on the other hand am going to shout and swear and kick things.

Instead, I will conclude by saying that the High Court ruling has confirmed beyond doubt something that a great many women have been trying to say for several years, often meeting with aggressive rejection and accusations of bigotry. The court confirmed that in some circumstances, accommodating the interests of male-born transwomen means imposing costs and burdens on women.

And that raises a question that society as a whole still needs to answer: why should women pay and suffer to serve the interests of people who were born male?

Just what I’ve been asking all day, with ungenteel language.

So it is. Well spotted.

And even the “feelings” of said chattering classes aren’t that important. The feelings are seven or eight times removed. It’s not really any skin off the ass of the chattering classes if men in prison don’t get to pretend to be women in order to be housed in the women’s prison. It’s a political “feeling” of sorts, but not the kind we should feel either compassion for or solidarity with. It’s a feeling of fabricated and exaggerated “caring” about men who identify as women coupled with a brutal indifference to women. It’s not like the feeling of compassion for and solidarity with starving refugees fleeing violence in Nigeria or El Salvador, or for workers trying to unionize meatpacking plants in Wisconsin, or for women beaten and tortured and murdered in Afghanistan. It’s sentimental exaggerated “concern” for men in rich countries who want to pretend to be women.

The worst-case scenarios didn’t predict a Lytton. That’s scary all by itself. That tells us it’s going to be worse, faster, than the knowledgeable people thought.

The US president, Joe Biden, and Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have warned worried populations to brace for more. Shocked climate scientists are wondering how even worst-case scenarios failed to predict such furnace-like conditions so far north.

Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the recent extreme weather anomalies were not represented in global computer models that are used to project how the world might change with more emissions. The fear is that weather systems might be more frequently blocked as a result of human emissions. “It is a risk – of a serious regional weather impact triggered by global warming – that we have underestimated so far,” he said.

Heat domes, droughts, wild fires – it wouldn’t take many to be a Pompeii for the planet.

In Lytton, the Canadian national heat record was broken on Monday, smashed on Tuesday and then obliterated on Wednesday when the local monitoring station registered 49.6C (121F).

It was the hottest place and it burst into flames…which hints that future heatwaves could trigger multiple Lyttons.

David Paisely is trying to understand (or claims he is).

I wonder what it was that made him decide to be gender uncritical. I wonder if there was a particular thing that drove him towards that mode of thinking.

(I don’t really. I think he’s just dumb and conformist, and there’s nothing more interesting than that about it.)

Hm. So it’s not believing in magic swappable gender that’s like god-belief. Interesting.

And how do we “seek to harm” trans people? By our wicked failure to “validate” them? By declining to take their absurd reality-denying claims at face value? Are we really classifying that as seeking to harm people now? Just, not believing other people’s fictions and fantasies?

Oh, I don’t think he thought that. I think he wanted to pick a fight.

Women just don’t matter at all.

It is lawful for transgender women to be housed in female jails in England and Wales, the High Court has ruled.

A female prisoner, known as FDJ, had challenged the Ministry of Justice over aspects of the policy.

She claimed she had been sexually assaulted by a trans prisoner but the MoJ did not say whether it accepted this alleged incident had taken place.

The judge ruled barring all trans women from female prisons would ignore their right to live as their chosen gender.

But what about women’s right to live away from male violence?

Why isn’t that right vastly more important than some fanciful made-up “right” to live as a “chosen” i.e. not real “gender”?

Why does the physical safety of imprisoned women have to give way to men’s desire to pretend to be women? Why is men’s fun and games more important than women’s safety?

I’m honestly so stunned by the evil backwardness of this I can barely take it in.

Women’s prisons can house inmates who were born male but identify as female, regardless of whether they have gone through any physical transformation or have obtained a gender recognition certificate.

“Women’s prisons can” but women cannot – cannot escape, cannot hide, cannot say no, cannot be safe.

The MoJ argued the policy pursued a legitimate aim, including “facilitating the rights of transgender people to live in and as their acquired gender (and) protecting transgender people’s mental and physical health”.

What about the rights of female people to live in safety from male violence? Why aren’t those rights more important than men’s right to live out their fantasies? What about protecting women’s mental and physical health?

I’ve never seen anything that so thoroughly drives home the relative value of the two sexes. Men want to play dressup so by all means unleash them on imprisoned women to do their worst. What happens to the women just does

not

matter.

The claimant in the case, FDJ, had said she was sexually assaulted in prison in 2017 by a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The woman had convictions for serious sexual offences.

Which woman had convictions for serious sexual offences? The actual woman, or the man playing at being a woman? Almost certainly the second, since women mostly don’t commit sexual offences.

Her lawyers argued that placing transgender women in the female prisons exposed others to higher risk, citing a claim that transgender inmates were five times more likely than non-transgender prisoners to commit a sexual assault on a non-transgender prisoner.

Oh fuck off BBC – the issue is not trans v not-trans, it’s male v female. You know this.

In a judgement handed down via email, Lord Justice Holroyd accepted the statistical evidence showed proportion of trans prisoners convicted of sexual offences was “substantially higher” than for non-transgender men and women prisoners.

But he said this specific claim was a “misuse of the statistics, which… are so low in number, and so lacking in detail, that they are an unsafe basis for general conclusions”.

And we simply have no statistics on male violence? Is that it?

The judge said he “fully understood” the concerns of FDJ, and that women prisoners “may suffer fear and acute anxiety” if housed with a transgender woman who has male genitalia.

They may also suffer rape and general violence. Does he “fully understand” that?

But he added that the rights of transgender women prisoners must also be considered.

But it’s not “also,” it’s “instead.” If you put men in women’s prisons you’re not considering the women’s rights at all.

It’s disgusting.

So…it looks as if this phenomenon could set whole continents on fire.

Lightning strikes cause fires. The horrific fire season in California last year was partly caused by thousands of lightning strikes.

This is not good.

H/t Your Name’s not Bruce?

You got the science wrong no you got the science wrong.

I think he has an extra “not” in that last sentence.

Why yes, it does. I thought so at the time, especially since he was so pissy to me during the DJ Grothe/TAM brouhaha. Allyship with Grothe and TAM then, and allyship with Our Trans Siblings now. Never allyship with feminists, because I guess that would just be too boring.

Why, what could go wrong? Apart from self-mutilation and whatnot.

Okaaaaay so now we’re just not bothering with any kind of consistency.

She totally sees the contradiction, yes? Not quite.

Nobody’s body is a threat, and the denial of the reality of male violence is as much a part of the way power operates as the violence itself.

If you can make those two claims consistent with each other, you get the Nobel Prize for Broken Reasoning Repair.

More on Lytton:

Like those videos from Paradise when it burned to the ground.

An entire British Columbia town has burned up.

The fire started in the late afternoon and by 6 p.m., the mayor had issued an evacuation order for the entire town of Lytton. …

Ninety per cent the small B.C. village has burned in a devastating wildfire, the town’s local member of Parliament says. 

Brad Vis, who represents Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, says the fire that tore through Lytton and forced the entire community to evacuate Wednesday has led to significant structural damage including in the town’s centre.

…

“We heard that we lost our hospital again, plus the ambulance, and it sounds like the whole town’s burning,” said Terry Wagner, an evacuee, late Wednesday.

Lytton Mayor Jan Polderman ordered an evacuation for the entire village of about 250 people at around 6 p.m. Wednesday. Evacuees were asked to register at the Emergency Social Services building in Merritt, and told they will be provided three days’ worth of supports if needed. 

…

Lytton made headlines this week after breaking the record for highest temperature recorded in Canada three days in a row. The record now stands at 49.6 C, beating the all-time heat record for Las Vegas. 

It’s here.

Does she understand anything?

If it were true that nobody’s body is a threat then rape would not exist. There would be no word for it because there would be nothing for the word to name. If it were true that nobody’s body is a threat then physical violence would not exist.

On this one I can’t even guess what she thinks she’s thinking. It’s not that she doesn’t know that rape exists, but her next step in the reasoning eludes me.

Also, perception of a threat is not contempt. It’s more like the opposite. Perception of a threat is fear, it’s not contempt.

Glinner on the destruction of Green Party Women:

This, from Mumsnet, has been circulating on Twitter today. It concerns drug pusher and abusive male, Kathryn Bristow.

Graham shares a message from a Green Party member:

“I am writing with the latest antics of Kathryn Bristow, who has now declared themselves the sole chair of green party women.

A couple of days ago Kathryn Bristow decided that it was a bad idea for women to be able to interact and speak freely in the internal members-only  Green Party women discussion space. It began with him removing posts on LGBT issues, in order to make it a ‘safe space for all women and non-binary people’.

Women objected, Bristow made threats of legal action. Women continued to object, Bristow made threats of deletion and disciplinary action.

The uppity women continued to object, so Kathryn showed his true colours by locking down the space, deleting all the contributions and comments of women since his last post in March, and declared that going forward the communication would be one way only- from him to the members.

This is a man, remember, silencing all the women in the Green Party women’s party…including the co-chair, who is an actual woman, unlike the man who silenced her.

Read Glinner’s post for all the grotesque details.

Ari Berman (author of the voting rights classic Give Us the Ballot) on the horrific ruling:

Nina Totenberg says the Voting Rights Act is basically dead.

The U.S. Supreme Court for all practical purposes rendered the landmark Voting Rights Act a dead letter on Thursday.

The 6-to-3 vote was along ideological lines, with Justice Samuel Alito writing the decision for the conservative court majority, and the liberals in angry dissent.

At issue in the case were two Arizona laws. One banned the collection of absentee ballots by anyone other than a relative or caregiver, and the other threw out any ballots cast in the wrong precinct. A federal appeals court struck down both provisions, ruling that they had an unequal impact on minority voters, and that there was no evidence of fraud that would have justified their use. But on Thursday the Supreme Court reinstated the state laws, declaring that unequal impact on minorities in this context was relatively minor, that other states have similar laws, and that states don’t have to wait for fraud to occur before enacting laws to prevent it.

It’s no big deal, everybody else does it too, there’s no reason not to. The Supreme Court as teenage rebel.

Just because voting may be “inconvenient for some,” Alito wrote, doesn’t mean that access to voting is unequal.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh yes it does. That’s exactly what it means. As he knows perfectly well, of course.

Who is better equipped to deal with “inconvenient” voting rules? People with cars, money, nannies, upper level jobs that allow them free time whenever they need it? Or people without cars, without spare cash, without anyone to watch the kids, with zero at-will free time? You do the fucking math.

And “the mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone and equal opportunity to vote. ”

Yes it does. That is exactly what it means.

The right-wing Supreme Court approves voting restrictions.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for states to enact voting restrictions, endorsing Republican-backed measures in Arizona that a lower court had decided disproportionately burdened Black, Latino and Native American voters and handing a defeat to Democrats who had challenged the policies.

So, that’s it, that’s the ballgame. We’re fucked. Republicans can now pass all kinds of laws that make it harder for poor people, working people, immigrant people, brown people to vote, thus expanding and consolidating their power from this moment on. We are fucked.

The Arizona ruling clarified the limits of the Voting Rights Act and how courts may analyze claims of voting discrimination.

The “mere fact there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote,” Alito said.

The Republican worldview in a nutshell.

The Arizona legal battle concerned a specific provision called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bans voting policies or practices that result in racial discrimination. Section 2 has been the main tool used to show that voting curbs discriminate against minorities since the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

Davin Rosborough of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project said the decision “adopts a standard for proving violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that is unduly cramped and at odds with the law’s intent of eradicating all voting practices that are racially discriminatory in their effects on voting opportunity, whether blunt or subtle.”

We’re fucked.

Hello hello yes please do walk all over me, it’s what I’m here for, can I do anything else for you?

A retiree in Suffolk has made history as the first transgender woman to star on the front cover of the Women’s Institute magazine.

A man has “made history” as the first man to star on the front cover of the Women’s Institute magazine. It’s extremely history-making for men to appear on the front covers of magazines.

WI member Petra Wenham, 74, has spoken to WI Life – the publication for the group’s members – after she was asked to discuss her work as as a speaker and activist for a Suffolk chapter of the branch, Cake and Revolution.

Never mind about the women of the WI, they’re boring, let’s hear about the men of the WI.

As well as sharing cake and conversations with her friends, Ms Wenham tours other WIs to bust myths and misinformation about transgender people.

The 74-year-old added: “I’ve given my trans awareness talk to six WI groups this year alone. It’s been wonderful to have this opportunity to cut through the negativity a lot of the transgender community face.”

It’s been wonderful to have this opportunity to make the WI focus on men who say they are women.

Melissa Green, General Secretary of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), said:“We were delighted to interview Petra in the latest issue of WI Life. The work she does as a speaker and activist is so inspiring, educating other members and the wider community on the issues that trans people face today.

“At a time when the transgender community are experiencing prejudice and exclusion, it is so important that trans voices are heard and amplified in the WI and society.

“We want to make it clear that not only are trans women welcome to join the WI, but they are celebrated and truly enrich our membership and our values as a bold and inclusive organisation for women.”

But it’s not an organisation for women if it includes men. The virtue of being “inclusive” depends on what it is you’re including. If you’re making a women’s organization no longer a women’s organization by “including” men (and then paying them lots of attention and letting them take over the conversation) then you’re no longer being “inclusive” of women.

You can’t do everything. It isn’t possible. You can’t both be an organization of and for women, and be “inclusive” of men.

Another victory in the war on Karens:

Bill Cosby is being released from prison after the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania vacated his 2018 conviction on sexual assault charges and judgment of sentence. Victoria Valentino, one of Cosby’s accusers, told CNN she was “stunned” by the court’s decision.

Valentino said she had recently received a letter stating that Cosby’s parole was preemptively denied due to a lack of remorse and a refusal to participate in programs for abusers.

She said that when she first heard about Cosby’s release she was “shocked.” Valentino said her phone was bombarded with messages from media, loved ones and survivors.

“For this to come out of left field is — it’s a gut punch,” Valentino said. “There’s no other way to describe it.”

Valentino said the decision sends Cosby’s accusers “back to square one.”

Serves them right. They’re Karens.

Andrea Constand and her attorneys said today’s opinion to vacate Bill Cosby’s conviction is disappointing and could discourage others survivors of sexual assault from coming forward.

“Today’s majority decision regarding Bill Cosby is not only disappointing but of concern in that it may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant or may force a victim to choose between filing either a criminal or civil action,” the statement said.

Just because they can’t possibly win and the whole process is humiliating? That’s no reason. Karens.

Laurie Penny tries to rehabilitate herself.

That’s good, isn’t it? She accuses us of bad faith while in the same breath claiming we want to “make the case for excluding minority groups.” Way to have the discussion in good faith. No, Comrade, we don’t want to make the case for excluding minority groups. That’s not accurate or fair.

I tell you what, I don’t have good heuristics for figuring out what the hell Laurie Penny is trying to say.

I do grasp her meaning in the second tweet though, and that one is just wrong. It’s not a general and universal truth that no request that a particular group or person be accommodated is ever a demand that other, potentially conflicting needs be sidelined. Sometimes a request for accommodation is a demand that other, potentially conflicting needs be sidelined. That can happen. It can happen, and it does happen, and it has been happening in all these demands – and they are demands, not requests – that trans women be “validated” and “included” in anything and everything belonging to women.

The rest of the thread is just blither and handwaving. She’s really not very sharp.

If it doesn’t convince anyone the first 500 times, try again.

The dishonesty battles with the stupidity for first prize.

As always, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s anxious adherence to the rules or genuine delusional belief – in fact it’s impossible to tell just as it’s impossible to tell if any given naked man in a women’s changing room genuinely believes he’s a woman or is just taking advantage of the bizarro-world new rules.

Also she’s wrong about the homophobia. It wasn’t about thinking lesbians and gays would be raping people, it was about thinking same-sex love and attraction are weird and ooky. That’s all. It was just irrational squick, picked up from the culture because it had always been that way.

And she doesn’t matter because…………….?

But it’s not “cracking down.” It’s not punishment, it’s not deprivation, it’s not torture, it’s not imprisonment. It’s just barring male people from spaces where women are vulnerable. That’s all; that’s it.

Men’s desire to be “validated” as women should not be seen as more important and pressing than women’s need to be safe from predatory behavior by men. Men who really do think of themselves as women should be able to understand that in a heartbeat. If they don’t, and they refuse even to try, then in what sense are they women? For what reason should we sympathize with their desire to be accepted as women? Why should we prioritize men who put their own desires ahead of our needs? Why are men encouraged to put their wants first while women are ordered to put our needs last? What could be more patriarchal and unjust than that?