You can’t escape it even when it’s not the topic. I’m reading a piece from NBC on how the virus is affecting Seattle, and then thud.

Down a normally crowded hallway, Market Magic & Novelty Shop also remained quiet. A family bought a small keepsake and then walked out. No one came in after.

“We’re rethinking our business model, that’s for sure,” owner Sheila Lyon said. “People are scared. They don’t want to be in public spaces.”

…

Lyon and her husband make up a little money on the weekends, but every day seems to bring fewer and fewer customers. As a result, Lyon, who has owned her business for 47 years, is turning to social media to entice customers. But even that comes with a caveat, she said.

“Our wholesaler gets his supplies from China,” she said. “He told me he only has six months’ worth of products left.”

Kind of an odd example to choose – someone who sells imported tat to people trawling for tatty souvenirs. Pike Place Market also has crafts shops and of course food, so why single out a “novelty” shop? Maybe because it gets its tat from China. Still makes an odd example for a story on how a disease outbreak is affecting shoppers and sellers.

But that’s not what I was getting at. What I was getting at is…

Lyon is worried about how the emergency declaration will affect her bottom line. King County has already canceled big events scheduled for this week, such as the Womxn’s Day Speaker Series and the Cultural Crossroads Festival.

Oh for fuck’s SAKE – not again. I didn’t know there was such a series, and I would have been fine not knowing.

This person didn’t like Suzanne Moore’s piece at all.

What’s next after what threat? There was no threat. There was a woman saying that Selina Todd should not have been told not to give her talk and that Woman’s Place UK clearly isn’t a hate group and that female is a biological classification that applies to all living species. None of that is any kind of threat, or anything like a threat, and women do have a right to organize and campaign as women without being screamed at and accused of terrorizing helpless male employees who identify as women. Jess was never in any danger from Suzanne Moore.

So today…

The Huffington Post UK has details:

A deepening row about The Guardian’s coverage of trans rights issues saw a trans woman dramatically announce her resignation in front of colleagues on Tuesday, HuffPost UK understands.

It is the third resignation from the paper’s UK office in months over the issue.

The worker confirmed to HuffPost UK she had handed in her notice a few weeks earlier, but chose to speak out in the busy news meeting on Tuesday over what she called “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

That is, the worker decided to leverage his resignation into a new way to bully and manipulate anyone who doesn’t agree that men become women by Saying the Words.

The Guardian’s approach to covering trans rights issues has been the subject of internal battles. In 2018, three of the paper’s US staff publicly criticised the decision to run an editorial that they said “promoted transphobic viewpoints”.

Meaning, they published viewpoints that aren’t identical with the reality-denying bullshit that is trans ideology.

Last year, BuzzFeed reported the Guardian had lost two trans employees over its coverage of the issue, with one accusing the newspaper in an email to staff of being “an incredibly transphobic organisation”.

Meaning, an organization that includes some people who don’t agree with every item in the reality-denying bullshit that is trans ideology.

It’s not phobia to decline to believe or pretend to believe reality-denying bullshit. We have a right to resist lies and bullshit. That right is considerably more important, and of longer vintage, than the mythical “right” to be ratified as the sex one is not.

All about…her?

So many people telling her to take as many days off as she likes.

Jane on the other hand has some tips.

H/t KBPlayer for the LP tweet.

Even in Missouri?

It’s “Women’s HERstory Month” at Missouri State so…

The Office of Multicultural Programs and the Department of Gender Studies are excited to announce the return of the annual Womxn of Distinction Awards.

I assume the Office of Erasing Women and the Department of Centering Men were involved too.

A yearly part of Women’s HERstory Month, the Womxn of Distinction Awards honor women and femme identified individuals who have excelled academically, contributed to the success of the Missouri State and Springfield communities, and demonstrated commitment to positively influencing the lives of others.

Women and “femme identified” people…because women can’t have anything that’s just for women any more. We have to share everything with men who claim to be “femme identified” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) now.

A Slate article a couple of years ago explained why “women and femmes” is such a stupid pairing:

Before we go into what’s wrong with “women and femmes” as a linguistic device, maybe we should clear up what femme means (for those who don’t know their Ellen Page from Ellen DeGeneres). Femme is a term that comes from working-class lesbian culture. It was originally used to describe lesbians who were feminine in their appearance and clothing, and sat in opposition to butch lesbians, who were masculine in their appearance and clothing. (If you’re interested in reading more about the height of butch/femme culture then I suggest reading Leslie Feinberg’s seminal novel Stone Butch Blues.) Femme was about femininity released from the chains of obligation to men and their gazes. It was a defiant and knowing femininity, performed for oneself and for other women, rather than in service of the heteronormative status quo, which maintained that women were naturally feminine, men naturally masculine, and that the only acceptable desire was between these two kinds of people.

In short it applied to women. It was about women. It came from women. It was by women.

But then it got appropriated. Of course it did.

Suzanne Moore says some things in the wake of the disinviting of Selina Todd:

The radical insight of feminism is that gender is a social construct – that girls and women are not fated to be feminine, that boys and men don’t have to be masculine. But we have gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a construct. It is said that sex is merely assigned at birth, rather than being a material fact – actually, though, sex is recognisable in the womb (which is what enables foetal sex selection). Sex is not a feeling. Female is a biological classification that applies to all living species. If you produce large immobile gametes, you are female. Even if you are a frog. This is not complicated, nor is there a spectrum, although there are small numbers of intersex people who should absolutely be supported.

Female oppression is innately connected to our ability to reproduce. Women have made progress by talking about biology, menstruation, childbirth and menopause. We won’t now have our bodies or voices written out of the script. The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with.

And that would be bad. Doing away with women’s sex-based rights would be bad, because we need them.

I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed transphobic by an invisible committee on social media. It has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement. I also know that the most vicious stuff takes place online and not in real life. Still, I can’t stand by. As Roman Polanski was being rewarded for his latest film at the César awards, Todd was being silenced.

Always gotta get back at Mommy, right?

If the idea of women organising autonomously is transphobic you are walking into a cul-de-sac, which absolutely traps people in boxes that benefit the patriarchy. Because there is nothing the patriarchy fears more than women who no longer rely on male authority. We revert to a society where women have to be chaperoned, not trusted to make decisions about their own reality. Meanwhile, men-only spaces are how half the establishment operates and no one considers that to be transphobic. None of this discussion is about men giving up space for trans men; it is always about what women must accept.

Which is all the more ironic given the fact that women are no threat to men but men are a threat to women. Trans men aren’t going to be raping men if they share their locker rooms; we can’t state the obverse so confidently; yet it’s women who face all the bullying. It makes no kind of sense.

Women have the right to call out the violent men who rape. We have the right to speak and organise without being told that speech is itself dangerous. You can tell me to “die in a ditch, terf” all you like, as many have for years, but I self-identify as a woman who won’t go down quietly.

There are more of us than you think.

And we’re pushing back.

Thick as ten short planks.

President Donald Trump held a Cabinet Room meeting with pharmaceutical executives Monday, pressing them to deliver a vaccine for coronavirus as the epidemic spreads across the U.S.

Helpful. I’m sure they’re just being lazy, and if he presses them they’ll sigh and say “Oh all right” and come up with the vaccine by this afternoon.

At one point, Trump asked whether the normal flu vaccine could be used to prevent the spread of the current COVID-19 strain of coronavirus that is causing global disruption. “You take a solid flu vaccine,” Trump said, “you don’t think that would have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

“No,” came the response. Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease, added, “Probably not,” as the president nodded.

A really solid one? Not one of those flimsy ones that break so easily, but a really solid one with good foundations and steel I-beams?

Trump has been criticized for his response to the spread of coronavirus and his apparent lack of understanding about the epidemic.

Apparent? You mean “obvious” and “staggering.”

Experts raised concerns about the president’s knowledge gap last week when he admitted he was “shocked” to learn that the flu generally kills more than 30,000 Americans each year.

And on Monday, Trump said “maybe a cure is possible” for coronavirus and that a vaccine would be ready “relatively soon.”

And that exciting things are happening, and that they’re happening very rapidly.

The president’s desire for a quick vaccine was evident when meeting with the pharmaceutical executives in the Cabinet Room. Trump told Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day that his work on a therapy to alleviate symptoms was “very exciting,” and instructed him to “Get it done, Daniel. Don’t disappoint us.”

That will make all the difference.

Fauci and Health Secretary Alex Azar noted that vaccine work is complex, time-consuming and prone to failure, pointing out the difference between having a vaccine ready for tests and one ready for the market. But the president kept returning to the executives’ promising pitches.

Because that’s how thick he is.

Trump said he had “heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But if you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

Heard where? At the golf resort? Inside his head? From Princess Former Liberal Hope Ivanka?

Trump said he had “heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But if you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

Just write it down somewhere with a Sharpie and then show it to us. That’ll work.

Oh god.

It’s a little unfortunate that the dumbest guy in the UNIVERSE has that job right now.

Hey, remember when liberals pinned their hopes on Ivanka Trump?

No, neither do I.

Maggie Haberman says they did though.

(I went to follow Soledad O’Brien on reading that and found that she follows me. Whaaaaat)

See the man. See the man say words. See the man say words that don’t mean anything. See the man make remarks. See the man flap his lips while an epidemic takes hold and he has no clue what to do.

Originally a comment by Claire on It doesn’t.

This is actually dangerously incorrect information. Yes, for the most part endometriosis doesn’t kill (although it does slightly increase the risk of ovarian cancer). But it is a terrible condition nonetheless.

But if you say 1 in 10 people, you’ve now screwed up the statistic. It’s not 1 in 10, because almost half the population is not at risk at all. And they can’t say 1 in 10 people with a uterus because it is possible to get the disorder without one in places such as the fallopian tubes, pelvic cavity, and even the bowel.

Now imagine if we were talking about something that does kill people but has differential risks for men and women. Breast cancer is common in women but rare in men. Lifetime risk of breast cancer in women is 1 in 8, for men it is 1 in 833. If you say 1 in 8 people instead you are grossly distorting the statistics. There’s no way I can think of that positively separates those at high risk and those at low, other than the word women. Even if you have a mastectomy, breast cancer is still possible (which is why prophylactic mastectomy by BRCA1/2 positive women is not very smart). You could I suppose say cis women and trans men, but that still doesn’t cover the non-binary and whatever the hell queer is supposed to mean these days.

Here’s another, more immediately relevant example: the risk of death from coronavirus seems to be higher in men than women by a considerable degree. Now, because most of the statistics we’re relying on come from China, we don’t know if that is true or whether there is confounding by smoking (~50% of Chinese men smoke compared with ~1-2% of Chinese women). Nevertheless, if it holds up, this needs to be communicated and quickly. Coronavirus don’t care how you identify.

But even tweeting that one in ten people get endometriosis didn’t save Sefton Council from the wrath of Doctor Harrop.

Apparently they were too busy replying to angry women who were pointing out that only women get endometriosis to do what Doctor Harrop told them to do, so he summoned reenforcements.

That did it – 15 minutes later he was crowing about his knockout punch.

But women? Bah, they can get in the sea.

Robin Buckallew is honoring Women’s History Month by writing something every day of the month that is in her words “about women, for women, by a woman.”

She introduces today’s item:

Well, here it is. March 1. Day One of Women’s History Month, and the first day of my third annual Women’s Writes marathon. For the next month, I will post something for you every day, unless in that time period I am rendered unable by external forces beyond my control. I will start this year with something yanked from my own life, the story – modified, of course – of something that happened to me because I am a woman.

I know it may be difficult to believe; it was difficult for me to believe when it happened. But the conversations about women between Diane and her male co-workers actually happened, from their mouth to my ear – and now to my page. I have changed their names, and many details, but the incident and the conversations occurred. Ryan is not the same as my boss; Ryan is a composite of many bosses, but not a good descriptor of the boss I had at the time. The ending of the story is much different than what I experienced; the solution Diane uses is not something I had available. The company I describe at the end did not at that time – and does not now – exist in Oklahoma City. Too bad. I would have loved to be able to take that path.

Read on.

Oh godddddd the stupid.

Awareness month! So inaccurate misleading language is vital! It’s VITAL I tell you!

When queried on this gross mistake, Sefton Council replied with a smirk.

Editing to add: they’re rubbing our noses in it.

I saw a tweet saying that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had made its toilets [restrooms in American English] gender neutral, so I decided to take a look at how it describes itself.

Our specialist trauma-informed support services are open to women, all members of the trans community, non-binary people and young people aged 12 – 18 who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any time in their lives, by abusers of any gender. This includes rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.

So their services are not open to men over 18 who don’t describe themselves as trans or non-binary, but they are open to men over 18 who do describe themselves that way.

I wonder what the reasoning is.

We will listen, believe and support young people (aged 12 -18) and women and all members of the trans community of any age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity (and non-binary people), religious and cultural background.

But not men over 18 who are not “members of the trans community.” (God what a stupid sanctimonious way of putting it – as if there were an election process for “membership” and as if there were a “community” as opposed to a set of people who attach silly labels to themselves.) Why is being trans seen as the opposite of being a man over 18?

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI) people may may experience negative attitudes in society and prejudice, and have concerns about public revelation of their sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. All our support workers have been fully trained to be sensitive and respectful through awareness raising training from the Scottish Transgender Alliance. Trans men and non-binary people will be provided with specially tailored individual services with respect to their identities. Trans women will be provided with the same quality of individual and group support as other women.

“Have we groveled enough? Will that do? Are you going to punish us again?”

But wait – they have women-only spaces.

Women only spaces

We offer women only spaces (which are inclusive of trans women) in our centre on Tuesdays 4pm – 7pm, Wednesdays 12.30pm – 4pm and Fridays 9am – 12.30pm. The rest of the week we offer appointments to people of all genders.

Oh. So not women-only spaces then.

Hmm.

Yes, that is striking, striking in being so very wrong. (That may be what Carlos Lozada meant; my disdain is for Biden, not him.)

Never before walked away from it? Is he kidding? Does he remember what “we” did to the people who were here first? The genocide, the mass expulsions, the theft, all that? Does he remember slavery?

Of course we’ve walked away from it before. We’ve failed to go anywhere near it at any time, before. We’re not unusual that way but the invasion and expropriation of the Americas are more recent and conspicuous than others, so we have less right to preen ourselves on being always sort of kind of pro-equality. As a country, we were not; that’s not our history. It’s just slush to say otherwise.

The UN reports:

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has warned against complacency on women’s rights at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, a landmark agenda for the empowerment of women.

…

“Women’s rights are threatened and attacked” on many fronts, she warned, adding that there over this period there has been “a backlash and the resurgence of gender inequality narratives based on age-old discrimination”.

And the surgence of male appropriation of everything belonging to women including the word “women.”

However, for the UN human rights chief, women’s rights are not negotiable: “they cannot be an optional policy, subject to the changing winds of politics,” she warned. According to Ms. Bachelet, the women’s rights agenda must not be torn apart by the establishment of a hierarchy between what is acceptable and what is deemed “too sensitive”.

Or what is deemed too “transphobic” or too “cis” or too much about women as opposed to men who claim to be women.

Ms. Bachelet also welcomed the speech delivered to the Human Rights Council by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday.

As part of his Call to Action for human rights, Mr. Guterres called on every country to “support policies and legislation that promote gender equality, to repeal discriminatory laws, to end violence against women and girls and to strive for equal representation and participation of women in all areas”.

In his speech, Mr. Guterres also worried about “setbacks to women’s rights, alarming levels of feminicide, attacks on women’s rights defenders, and the persistence of laws and policies that perpetuate submission and exclusion”.

“Violence against women and girls”, he said, “is the most widespread human rights violation”.

But we keep being told that trans people – especially trans women – are the most oppressed of all, and that it’s mostly women who oppress them.

First you have to know that Jo Grady is the General Secretary of the University and College Union aka UCU.

So this is the General Secretary of the UCU cheering on Lola Olufemi’s success at getting Oxford feminist historian Selina Todd barred from giving her scheduled talk at a feminist history event.

It’s enough to make you lose your lunch.

GENITAL

PREFERENCES

ARE

TRANSPHOBIC

As is everything else. Food preferences, weather preferences, dog preferences, book preferences, politics preferences – any kind of preference is transphobic, because.

You have been told.

Now see that you obey.

As usual, truth is the first victim. Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian:

The coronavirus crisis is a war against a disease, but it’s also the most serious battle yet in the war on truth. That much was clear from the start, as China moved to hush up the first outbreak and gag the doctor who had spotted it. It was a classic case of what we might call Chernobyl syndrome: the tendency of authoritarian systems to react to disaster by rushing to downplay or cover up the problem, focusing more on shifting blame than tackling the threat head on.

But this time it’s not just the openly, explicitly authoritarian states that are lying and hiding.

… this time, the familiar authoritarian v democratic contrast has become muddled. That’s because the current leader of the world’s most powerful democracy, the US, has the same instincts as the authoritarian rulers he so admires, and those instincts have coloured his response to coronavirus. The result is that what for many must have seemed an abstract concern – Donald Trump’s assault on facts, experts and science – is now a matter of life and death.

I don’t think many people thought of Trump’s assault on facts, experts and science as an “abstract concern.” It warps everything he does, including getting elected.

So while US medical officials have been at pains to brace Americans for the inevitability of coronavirus – a matter of when, not if – Trump and his outriders have worked hard to minimise the threat. On Thursday, Trump repeatedly referred to the figure of “15” cases in the US, when the actual figure was 60, and promised that that number would go down rather than up: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Lying is so natural to him that he may not even know he’s doing it. He says what is useful to him, always, and truth doesn’t come into it. Very young children are like that, because human brains take a long time to develop, but most people are not like that once they mature.

One of the administration’s most influential propagandists – for whom Trump paused his state of the union address this month so that his wife, Melania, might garland him with America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has been telling his vast audience that “the coronavirus is the common cold, folks”, and that it had been “overhyped” and “weaponised … to bring down Donald Trump”.

It’s hard to know what to say about that. Limbaugh isn’t Trump, Limbaugh knows he’s lying. Why would he tell dangerous lies about a growing epidemic to flatter Donald Trump? I don’t know. I can’t fathom it.

[Trump’s] first instinct is that of the Manhattan hustler-hotelier loudly assuring guests that the strong smell of burning coming from the ground floor is merely the chef trying out a new barbecue rather than a sign that the building is on fire. Crucial to that effort is talking loudly over the fire marshals, or even gagging them altogether.

You could see that when Trump spoke in the White House briefing room, brazenly contradicting the experts by his side. But it’s now become formal policy, with Trump’s insistence that all federal officials – including those with deep scientific expertise – are to say nothing that has not first been authorised by the White House.

Note the fate of Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. On Thursday he dared say that “we are dealing with a serious virus” with a higher mortality rate than regular flu. That was deemed insufficiently upbeat for the great leader. According to the New York Times, “Dr Fauci has told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.”

Well, a few thousand or million lives are a small price to pay for Donald Trump’s continued grip on power.

Trump has gutted the very agencies that the US will now desperately rely on. In 2018, he slashed health spending by $15bn, binning the Obama-era programmes and teams established for the express purpose of leading the US response to a pandemic. Among those cut: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – now in the frontline against coronavirus – which was forced to reduce by 80% its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak. The consequences are clear enough: only eight of the US’s 100 public-health labs are now even able to test for Covid-19.

But we saved money, so Amazon can pay less in taxes.