Wait wait wait hold the phone.

So Trump is going to have to be quarantined?

Thoughts and prayers, people, thoughts and prayers.

It’s the turn of the NY Times to run a think piece by a trans woman full of empty slogans and bereft of argument.

A contentious row began last month, when the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights announced itself with 12 pledges, which ranged from recognizing trans people’s oppression — at risk of hate crime and denied equal access to public services, health care, housing and employment — to supporting the expulsion of members who express transphobic views.

Some people had the gall to object, especially to the threat to expel members who commit a crime with no definition or examples offered.

To many, the sight of a center-left party failing to support trans rights without equivocation must be baffling — not least to American Democrats, whose party, divided in many ways, is firmly united in its support for trans and nonbinary people. But really, it’s no surprise. Transphobia, constantly amplified by the country’s mainstream media, is a respectable bigotry in Britain, shared by parts of the left as well as the right.

But, again, what are “trans rights”? What is “support for trans and nonbinary people”? What is “transphobia”?

Jacques does make a tiny stab at defining, so props for that.

There are two main types of British transphobia. One, employed most frequently but not exclusively by right-wing men, rejects outright the idea that gender might not be determined only by biological traits identifiable at birth.

Not a good definition though. The point is that sex is determined “by biological traits identifiable at birth.” Calling it “gender” confuses the issue. Of course it’s not determined at birth whether little Miracle will wear jeans or skirts, but that’s not where the disagreement lies.

The other type, from a so-called radical feminist tradition, argues that trans women’s requests for gender recognition are incompatible with cis women’s rights to single-sex spaces. At its core, such an argument is not at odds with the first type — both rely on the conceit that trans and nonbinary people should not determine their own gender identities — but it is this second strain that is often expressed on the British left, from the communist Morning Star to the liberal New Statesman and The Guardian.

It’s not a “conceit” that people can’t determine their own sex, it’s just a fact. People can’t determine their own ____ identities in a great many cases. It’s far more a conceit – in the sense of frivolous ornament – to insist that they can.

There follows a lot of complaining that Labour hasn’t been quite fanatical enough on the “trans rights” side of things, and telling Keir Starmer he has to pick a side. Remember, kids, trans people must always get what they want.

Laurie Penny is at it again.

Will you look at that. ” The question is ‘are trans women people?’” No it isn’t! Nobody says trans women are not people. Skeptics of trans dogma say trans women are men, and correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure men count as people.

Bingo.

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on The patriarchy that oppresses us all.

I refuse to be defined by MY biology. That’s what more than a century of feminism has been fighting for.I will be defined by MY values, MY ambitions, the company I keep, the work I do, the mistakes I make, the entertainment I enjoy and the people who love me.

At least she appears to admit she has a ‘biology’, though she appears to prefer to be without it. One notices that it is first of all by ‘MY values, MY ambitions’ that she would be defined, and then by a few things that ‘I’ do or enjoy, and in last place by ‘the people who love me’, by which, one can only suppose, she means people who agree or, perhaps out of politeness or fear of getting an ear-full and being de-friended on Facebook, do not publicly disagree with her. Much like Donald Trump. What of those people who look on with disenchanted (which is not synonymous with ‘hostile’) eyes? One is not, first of all, defined by oneself. Even Lorna Slater lives in a social world, where, like it or not, you are constantly being judged by others (and judging others). Your ‘self’, your values, your ambitions, etc are not your inalienable property, existing in some vacuum that you can shape merely by assertion. One has the sense that that Lorna and those many others who behave like her are merely clamouring in the echo-chamber that consists in the remarkably solipsistic idea of the self that she entertains, an echo-chamber within which one feels all-powerful.

I hardly think that more than a century of feminism has been fighting for what Lorna Slater asserts it has been fighting for. But of course, stuck in the little echo-chamber of her self, she doesn’t have to take account of history or anything else beyond her own infantile assertions.

David Remnick on the horror of having Trump in charge during a potential epidemic:

Donald Trump is incapable of truth, heedless of science, and hostage to the demands of his insatiable ego.

Recall, since the start of the coronavirus crisis, the litany of bogus assurances, “hunches,” misinformation, magical thinking, drive-by political shootings, and self-stroking:

“We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

“By April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

“The Obama Administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be detrimental to what we’re doing . . . ”

“We’re going very substantially down, not up. . . . We have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job.”

“As of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test [can have one], that’s the thing, and the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect—the transcription was perfect.”

“They would like to have the people come off [the Grand Princess cruise ship, off the coast of California]. I would like to have the people stay. . . . Because I like the numbers being where they are.”

Physicians and public-health officials told me, as they have told many other journalists, that they are dispirited by the President’s public pronouncements, saying that he has added to the danger of the crisis by minimizing its scale and the need for rigorous precautions. Has there ever been a less serious President?

Voters in the past didn’t have the advantage of watching The Apprentice.

Public-health officials worry that the consequences of living with a President and a general disinformation universe that undermine facts and science could have increasingly dire consequences. He is serving no one well. When you see a Trump supporter at a rally telling a reporter for CNN that she doesn’t believe that coronavirus exists, that it is an invention of the political opposition, there are reasons for that thinking. And such disbelief in the facts might well lead such a person to inadvertently make bad decisions about her health and her family’s health.

We’re doomed.

What is wrong with these people?

As Congress worked to pass an $8.3 billion emergency funding to address the mounting coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida wore a large gas mask on the House floor.

Gaetz posted an image of himself wearing the mask on Twitter Wednesday, later tweeting that he had ultimately decided to back the funding bill, but “didn’t feel good” about its cost.

Hurr hurr. Nothing funnier than a disease outbreak that kills people.

Just two days later, Florida announced that two people had died after contracting the virus, including one of Gaetz’s own constituents.

Whatsamatta, lost your sense of humor?

Philosopher Jennifer Saul jumps on the “bash Suzanne Moore train:

Suzanne Moore, a columnist at the Guardian, says she identifies as “a woman who won’t go down quietly.” But to many, she’s a trans-exclusionary radical feminist — a TERF. Some say TERF is a slur. It isn’t. But it is a misleading term for anti-trans activists like Moore.

So Suzanne Moore doesn’t get to identify as a woman who won’t go quietly, but men do get to identify as women. Moore is to be doubted and called names, but men who say they are women are to be shielded from those nasty women (like Moore for instance) at all costs. Meet the new feminism, the opposite of the old.

Over the past year, disputes between two groups of people, both calling themselves feminists, have erupted on the internet and off — and drawn considerable interest even outside feminism. These disputes concern the status of some of the most discriminated against and marginalized women: trans women.

But they’re not some of the most discriminated against and marginalized women, because they’re not women at all. However difficult their lives may be, however much bullying they face from gender-policing men, they are still men, and they don’t get to claim to be some of the most discriminated against and marginalized women. They don’t get to grab what we are and wrap themselves in it, any more than white people get to grab blackness and wrap ourselves in it. The categories are not up for grabs; they’re not there for the taking by anyone who feels like it.

I’m a scholar not only of feminism but also of language, and I currently work on the use of language to foment hatred. (I’ve also done a lot of work to try to improve things for women in philosophy.) Battles over terms like TERF and woman are central to my work.

I wonder if she works at all on the use of language about “TERFs” to foment hatred against women. From the rest of what she says here I’m guessing she doesn’t – I’m guessing it’s all about “TERFs” fomenting hatred.

So-called TERFs think the term is inaccurate too, but for a different reason: they insist that they’re not trans-exclusionary because they include trans men in the category of women. This is technically accurate on a very literal-minded understanding of what it is to be trans-exclusionary. However, including people against their will in a category that they reject is not what is normally meant by inclusion.

Oh. But it’s ok to call gender critical feminists “TERFs” even though it’s a category that we reject. How does that work exactly?

I hesitate to attach the label feminist to any view that is committed to worsening the situation of some of the most marginalized women.

But they’re not women. However marginalized they are, they’re not women. Also, gender critical feminists are not committed to worsening their situation – that’s a pretty disgusting accusation.

This crap isn’t philosophy, it’s just rhetoric, and sloppy abusive rhetoric at that.

Alex Massie at the Spectator wonders why so many people who work at the Guardian appear to hate journalism.

That is the first and most glaring conclusion to be drawn from the extraordinary letter signed by 338 Guardian and Observer employees lamenting the paper’s willingness to run a column written by the great Suzanne Moore earlier this week, in which Moore argued that “we have gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a construct” and that “you either protect women’s rights as sex-based or you don’t protect them at all”.

The signatories to the letter sent to Kath Viner, the paper’s editor, deplore what they deem the Guardian’s “pattern of publishing transphobic content” though, vexingly, the letter itself provides no evidence of this alleged transphobia and instead merely assumes it.

What I keep saying. The “activists” merely assume everything, to the point where they think endless repetition of slogans is absolutely all that’s required.

 According to Buzzfeed News which received a copy of the complaint – as, doubtless, was intended all along – staff at the paper were “deeply distressed” by the resignation of a transgender employee earlier this week who had, allegedly, received or overheard what are described as “anti-trans comments” from “influential editorial staff”. No details of what these remarks may have been has been furnished by Buzzfeed.

Or anyone else. Details are never furnished by anyone.

Again, according to Buzzfeed’s account, this all followed what is described as “a series of pieces that pitted trans people against women and against women’s rights”. One editorial column even had the temerity to argue that trans rights are sometimes in “collision” with more orthodox interpretations of women’s rights.

Because they are, as Massie goes on to say. If there is no collision what are they protesting about?

The evident implication of the letter sent by the disappointed 338 is that the paper should cease publishing opinions with which some Guardian employees might disagree. A question arises, then: should the Guardian remain a newspaper at all? It is difficult to avoid the thought that 338 of its employees think it should not. As it is, many of them appear shocked by the discovery they have inadvertently wandered into a workplace in which they may discover a range of views. Perhaps they should reconsider their positions.

Check the help wanted adds under “freelance fanatics.”

Trump isn’t going to like this.

The government’s top infectious disease expert on Sunday said that the coronavirus outbreak is getting worse and warned elderly and sick people to think twice before traveling or circulating in crowds.

The remarks from Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, signaled a change in tone from health officials representing the Trump administration, making it clear that the outbreak is past the point where it can be prevented from spreading or easily tracked. That contrasted with the more measured language from some Trump officials including Vice President Mike Pence.

“Measured” is a flattering word for it. I would call it recklessly minimizing.

“If you get infected, the risk of getting into trouble is considerable, so it’s our responsibility to protect the vulnerable,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “When I say protect, I mean right now, not wait until things get worse, say ‘no large crowds, no long trips, and above all, don’t get on a cruise ship.'”

The cruise industry is going to take a wallop. I see 10 or more a week going in and out here from April through October. I bet that’s going to change.

Former Trump FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb predicted the coming weeks will “change the complexion in this country,” adding that lockdowns of certain states or cities “are going to need to happen” or health systems will get exhausted and fatalities will rise quickly.

What’s a lockdown? What does it mean to lock down a city or state? Telling people who can to stay home, I suppose, but I wonder what else. Seattle and environs will be first on the list.

The Associated Press reported late Saturday that the White House overruled a CDC warning that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines. Trump administration officials denied the report.

Trump administration officials lie a lot.

Current and former administration officials have said President Donald Trump’s eagerness to downplay bad news has undercut his own administration’s efforts to contain the outbreak.

No shit.

He’s still doing it, too.

I hope he catches it.

Even the UN.

Not in the other languages, mind – those other women get to keep their name. But Anglophone women? Nah, they’re too second wave and privileged and phobic.

News:

The American Conservative Union announced on Saturday that one of the attendees at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, has tested positive for coronavirus.

President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials attended the conference, though the ACU says the attendee did not come into contact with the president or vice president, nor did they attend events in the main hall.

Ah but the attendee is not necessarily the only attendee carrying the virus. Maybe several people there, or many people there, would test positive if anyone tested them. You never know.

Do I hope Trump is pissing himself right now? Oh you bet I do.

The White House confirmed in a statement that it was aware of an individual testing positive for coronavirus after attending the CPAC conference.

“At this time there is no indication that either President Trump or Vice President Pence met with or were in close proximity to the attendee. The President’s physician and United States Secret Service have been working closely with White House Staff and various agencies to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy,” according to the White House.

Fine, there’s no indication as of now, but that doesn’t mean much. Even Trump probably understands that, what with his uncle having been an engineer and all. The contagion spreads.

The ACU noted that it has been in contact with the state of Maryland’s health department and would follow guidance from health experts.

…

“Our children, spouses, extended family, and friends attended CPAC. During this time, we need to remain calm, listen to our health care professionals, and support each other. We send this message in that spirit,” the group said.

You took your children to CPAC; that’s on you.

Do I hope Trump gets the virus? Oh hell yes.

Updating to add another layer of irony:

Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman on why women have a right to call ourselves women:

For all the hard-won successes of the first and second waves of feminism, from the right to vote to the right to choose, women and girls are still second-class citizens.

From unequal pay to the US Supreme Court seriously considering whether or not to limit abortion rights, the battle for equality grinds on. Indeed, 50 years after the first Women’s Liberation event held in Oxford, it seems to be getting harder to argue against the patriarchy, especially when it is disguised in high heels and a blonde wig.

I could not have been the only woman of certain age who was aghast on Wednesday when a respected feminist, a woman who has spent her whole life fighting for equality, had to stand up in the Scottish Parliament and argue for the right to be called a woman.

MSP Elaine Smith objected to her colleague Patrick Harvie’s use of ‘cisgender’ to effectively mean a woman during, of all things, a debate to mark International Women’s Day.

What’s the problem? The problem is that there is no such thing as “cisgender women,” there are only women. Women are women, just as we always have been, and we don’t need a stupid new word to differentiate us from men who pretend to be women. Only women are women; men who pretend to be women are men. Feminism is not for men who pretend to be women, and women are not also-rans in their own category.

And as women died for the right to vote and marched for the right to have power over their own bodies, they held on to their right to call themselves, proudly, defiantly, women.

Not girls, not ladies, women. Not bitches, not cunts, not slags, not whores, not honeys, not witches – women. Just women.

But here we are on the eve of International Women’s Day 2020, and a woman’s inalienable right to be a woman is being eroded by a small – but powerful – group of activists who have persuaded naïve policy makers that biological sex does not exist.

The new truth says that being a woman is a choice and the term ‘woman’ belongs to anyone who believes they are female.

Those of us born biological females must therefore be described as cisgender, or even non-trans, so that trans women (biological males who believe they are women) can feel equal.

Even George Orwell would have rejected such doublethink as too outlandish for his dystopian fiction, but this is the reality of Scotland’s political debate today – women are no longer women. We are cisgender. Non-trans. Non-people.

There is a lot of marching still to do, sisters, and it starts this afternoon outside the Scottish Parliament at 2pm, when women from across Scotland will demonstrate for their right to be, well, women.

Oh now what.

What concerns?

Patrick Strudwick at Buzzfeed presents a typically opaque version of events:

Hundreds of staff and contractors at the Guardian have signed a strongly worded letter to the editor in protest of the newspaper’s “pattern of publishing transphobic content”.

Careful, and unhelpful. His use of quotation marks hints that he doesn’t want to defend or even spell out what this “transphobic content” actually is, but he does want to get the claim out there.

The letter has 338 signatures, Strudwick says proudly. Buzzfeed got to see a copy on the understanding that no names would be named – which is convenient. Some are household names though, Strudwick assures us.

The letter, which was organised over the last few days in response to a column by Suzanne Moore that has been widely criticised as anti-trans, said the staff were “deeply distressed” by the resignation of a transgender member of staff who said they’d received anti-trans comments from “influential editorial staff” and who criticised the publication of the Moore’s column at the editorial morning conference.

But how was the column “anti-trans”? Spell it out. Explain. Give examples. Let us see. But no, he doesn’t do that.

The column was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the trans employee said, following a series of pieces that pitted trans people against women and against women’s rights. One leader article — the publicly stated position of the newspaper — claimed that trans rights are in “collision” with women’s rights.

Tell us how they are not. Explain why that’s not true. Offer us reasons. Don’t just repeat the labels endlessly.

We get the full letter.

As employees across the Guardian, we are deeply distressed by the resignation of another trans colleague in the UK, the third in less than a year.

We feel it is critical that the Guardian do more to become a safe and welcoming workplace for trans and non-binary people.

We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media. But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees.

We strongly support trans equality and want to see the Guardian live up to its values and do the same.

We look forward to working with Guardian leadership to address these pressing concerns, and request a response by 11 March.

Same problem, you see? Generalities, stale generalities, with no examples, no explanations, no specifics, no reasons. What, exactly, are these “anti-trans views” that they say the Guardian keeps publishing? What, exactly, is the “transphobic content”? How is the Guardian “hostile to trans rights and trans employees”? What do they mean by “trans equality”?

Labels and epithets do all the work for this brand of “activism.” Labels and epithets aren’t enough, because we need reasons before we agree to pretend that men who say they “feel like” women actually are women. We need reasons and the reasons in turn have to be good reasons. “Because we say so” won’t cut it.

The Guardian too was unimpressed by Trump’s performance yesterday.

Donald Trump used a freewheeling press conference on Friday, intended to provide updates on the coronavirus, as an opportunity to attack Democrats, praise his own intelligence, lash out at CNN and spread false and misleading information about the status of the outbreak, as a slew of new cases were confirmed aboard a cruise ship off the California coast.

Speaking at the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) main campus in Atlanta, Georgia, while wearing his red “Keep America Great” re-election campaign hat, the president went on a rant criticizing Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, as a “snake” and saying he disagreed with his vice-president’s complimentary remarks toward the Democrat. Inslee, who ran for president last year, is overseeing the response to the most serious outbreak in the US.

Oh yes the red campaign hat. I griped about it yesterday but I forgot about the campaign aspect. It seems grotesquely inappropriate to mash those two occasions together. “Sorry about the virus, folks, now vote for me!”

In a moment that some commentators have called one of the most “disturbing” and “frightening” remarks of Trump’s response to the public health crisis, the president also said he would prefer that cruise ship passengers exposed to the virus be left aboard so that they don’t add to the number of total infections in the US.

“I like the numbers being where they are,” said Trump, who appeared to be explicitly acknowledging his political concerns about the outbreak: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

Breathtaking, isn’t it.

It is frightening. It’s frightening that anyone can be that ego-imprisoned.

Trump has a new chief of staff: Tea Party birther Mark Meadows.

With his choice, Trump tapped a lawmaker who was first elected in the post-Tea Party wave of 2012 and served as chairman of the Freedom Caucus. Meadows has been a key Trump ally since 2016 and the two reportedly talk frequently. During the impeachment battle, Trump and Meadows, who was instrumental in designing the president’s defense, talked several times a day.

Meadows also shares something else with the president, a past questioning of former President Barack Obama’s nationality. While campaigning in 2012, Meadows was asked if he would pursue an investigation to find out if Obama really is a citizen. “Yes,” Meadows responded. “If we do our job from a grassroots standpoint, we won’t have to worry about it. We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is.”