Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Call him Babycakes

    Very special man with pink hair interrupts this broadcast to tell us he has brand new twin babies but he doesn’t love being called Daddy.

    ‘Daddy’s right here for you, okay?,’ said the neonatal medic to my newborn identical twins as they wheeled them to the special care unit.

    This was the first time someone had referred to me by this name, but as well as finding it sweet and overwhelming in a good way, I also found it quite jarring. 

    As an assigned male at birth (AMAB) non-binary person, being referred to as ‘the dad’ or ‘daddy’ – which are clearly masculine-gendered terms – didn’t fit with my gender identity. 

    Way to make it all about you, bro. Way to conjure up some kind of rebukey petulant gripe in order to talk about yourself right after the woman who did all the work did all the work.

    But as the options for gender-neutral titles aren’t great – and deviating from the traditional binary gendered parent names is fraught with risks like people not being able to work out what my relationship is with my children – I’ve had to learn to make peace with being misgendered in this way ever since. 

    I wish that we as a society had already established gender-neutral parent words which everyone is aware of, to allow me to be recognised as my full self, but the poor state of LGBTQIA+ education means this feels like a distant possibility.  

    But having a special luxury word would do nothing to allow you to be recognized as your full special glorious platinum self, for the extremely simple reason that NO ONE GIVES A FUCK.

    Are you really old enough to impregnate a woman but still unable to grasp that other people don’t care about you the way you care about you? That trying to tell the world how special you are is supremely childish?

    There’s much more of the same and it’s all just as infantile. His twins are smarter than he is.

  • He gots a picksher

    This is what’s holding us hostage. This.

  • High noon

    This will go very well.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington for President Donald Trump’s law enforcement crackdown to start carrying firearms, the Pentagon said Friday.

    …

    The step is an escalation in Trump’s intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members have been stationed in the heavily Democratic city, with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.

    Trump initially called up 800 members of the District of Columbia National Guard to assist federal law enforcement in his bid to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration. Since then, six states have sent troops to the city, growing the military presence.

    That’s cool. Send some tanks why doncha?

    Alex Wagner, a former chief of staff to the Army secretary and assistant secretary for the Air Force during Democratic administrations, said asking troops to carry firearms is a “recipe for disaster.”

    He said most National Guard members don’t have the right training for Trump’s law enforcement crackdown and are being put in a “no-win situation”

    “Do they have any role that would require them to have firearms? No,” he said.

    Yes they do! They’re there to crush the enemy!

  • The hell it won’t

    He done undercut the principle again.

    When federal agents armed with a search warrant showed up at John R. Bolton’s home outside Washington at dawn on Friday, it was a display of one of the government’s most intimidating powers, in this case deployed against a fierce and high-profile critic of President Trump.

    It is not yet clear what evidence the Justice Department cited in convincing a federal judge to sign off on the search warrant, or what culpability Mr. Bolton might have in an on-and-off investigation into whether he mishandled classified information dating back to when he served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term.

    But the episode illustrated how Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution has undercut the principle that law enforcement should keep a substantial distance from politics, stoking questions about whether even legitimate investigations are colored by the president’s insistence on putting his perceived enemies through the same treatment he faced as a target of multiple inquiries.

    Ya think??? I know it’s hard to imagine that Trump would ever allow investigations to be colored by his determination to get revenge on anyone who pisses him off, but on the other hand we’ve seen him do it many many many times so maybe we should start to entertain the thought that he’s not better than he seems.

    In the case of the search of Mr. Bolton’s home, the developments were accompanied by almost gleeful statements from administration officials. Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, who before taking office listed Mr. Bolton as a member of an executive branch “deep state,” posted on social media: “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.” The deputy F.B.I. director, Dan Bongino, reposted Mr. Patel, saying: “Public corruption will not be tolerated.”

    What? What? WHAT???

  • The impact

    The Australian:

    A parliamentary committee examining the impact of stillbirth on mothers has prefaced its evidence by acknowledging that men who have transitioned or are transitioning to become women should also be part of the conversation around the loss of babies during labour and pregnancy.

    What???

    Obviously fathers are affected by stillbirths, but that’s not what this says. This singles out fathers who pretend to be women, and what the hell is the point of that?? I can guarantee you that men who pretend to be women are not physically affected by stillbirths the way women are, so what remains? There’s no reason to think fathers who pretend to be women are emotionally more affected than fathers who are just plain humdrum men are. If anything it’s probably the reverse – men who pretend to be women are necessarily self-centered, so they may well be less distraught over a stillbirth than men who are not that type or degree of self-centered.

    Despite the medical impossibility of former men ever becoming pregnant or enduring the hardship of miscarriage, one of South Australia’s most senior health bureaucrats opened her evidence to an SA parliamentary committee by reassuring that her use of the terms “women” and “woman” was not intended to be exclusionary in the context of stillbirth.

    Well then she might as well have opened her evidence by saying none of her words mean anything.

    The select committee has been formed after lobbying from groups representing affected and grieving mothers to examine ways to make the health system more attuned to the needs of women who experience the trauma of miscarriage.

    But SA Women’s and Children’s Health Network chief executive Rebecca Graham used her opening statement to the committee last week to reassure intersex and transgender women that they should also feature in discussion around stillbirth.

    But they shouldn’t. Intersex maybe, but “transgender” of course not.

    “In our discussion today, the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women’ will be used, and this is in line with the current research and evidence,” Ms Graham said. “It is intended to include those with diverse sexualities as well – intersex women and transgender women too. SA Health seeks to acknowledge inclusivity and individual family and community preference and identity in what we are describing.”

    But inclusivity and preference and idenniny don’t apply here. It’s wrong to be “inclusive” of men in discussions of the impact of stillbirth on the woman who experiences one.

    Ms Graham sought to clarify her remarks when contacted by The Australian. “It is important to acknowledge that anyone can be impacted by the loss of a child through stillbirth,” she said in a statement.

    Weasel wording. What kind of “anyone”? You mean just random people? Shove a microphone at someone on the street to ask “Are you ‘impacted’ by the stillbirth of someone you don’t know?”

    Anyway it doesn’t matter, because the committee was examining the impact of stillbirth on mothers. The people who have that experience with their bodies. Not everyone, not just anyone, not even both parents, but specifically the mother, because it’s her body that goes through it.

  • Hermano

    I couldn’t find any Anglophone news on this but for what it’s worth…

    If it’s true it’s hard to think of anything more calculated to insult and harm women.

  • Sir sir you could issue a statement

    Why does he do this on “social media”? Why not just run around DC writing it on the walls of toilets?

  • Making up the footnotes

    Wait a second…

    Citation Justice – what it is and how you can practice it

    Citations play a powerful role in academia, both institutionally and for individual careers. They form the bedrock of research assessment practices and are increasingly influential in job applications, promotions, grant applications and university rankings. There is no denying that citations matter. However, there is increasing evidence that women, people of colour, and other minoritised groups are systemically under cited, serving to exclude and silence many voices from scholarly and academic debates. Take a look at the paper you’re writing, or the texts in your reading lists: how many of these authors are men and/or white? How many women or people of colour have you cited? Are those that you are citing only established authors, or have you made space for new and emerging voices? All of these questions will reflect the extent to which you are representing the diversity of thought and authorship in your field.

    But…I hate to belabor the obvious, but that’s not how citations work. Academics seek sources that are relevant to their subject matter, and high quality. They don’t seek them in order to tick some boxes. I know that’s a bromide whenever the subject of affirmative action comes up, but still, when it comes to academic research, the content and quality and relevance are what count.

    Citation justice is using the power of citations to address the historical and persistent undercitation of certain groups by changing citation practices. As part of Birmingham Business School’s Decolonisation Project, we have been exploring the issue of citation justice within our own research culture. Working closely with the Library Services team, we’ve begun to look at citations in both our research and our teaching, to understand how these can be changed.

    But it isn’t about “justice.” It’s about content. It’s certainly true that, for instance, women and non-white people have been left out of a lot of history, so urging historians to seek out areas that are not 100% pale male to research makes sense. If a particular book ignores women and/or non-white people when they were right there the whole time, say that. But telling scholars to change their citations for demographic reasons is just silly.

  • Roughly half

    Sounds interesting.

    Period pain and heavy bleeding linked with lower school attendance and GCSE results – new study

    The article is by two women, in fact two women named Gemma.

    Menstrual cycles are experienced by roughly half of the population for half of their lives. The experiences of menstruation on teenagers are incredibly important, especially as young people are starting periods earlier. Our research shows that this impact extends to their school attendance – and GCSE results.

    Previous studies have reported that many young people take time off school and struggle to concentrate in school because of difficult experiences related to menstruation.

    By roughly half the population is it? Any particular half? Teenagers, young people, yes, but can you share with us which teenagers/young people?

    Menstrual-related pain and heavy bleeding are commonly experienced menstrual symptoms. For many, these symptoms may be minor and have few consequences. For others they can be severe and have a significant impact on daily life.

    Normalisation of these symptoms makes it difficult for people, especially young people, to identify whether their symptoms are problematic. Societal pressures to hide or conceal menstruation and menstrual stigma also foster feelings of shame, making it challenging to have conversations about periods or ask for help. As a result, many people struggle with menstrual symptoms that affect their health and wellbeing.

    Ah yes social pressures – thank you for bringing that up. Speaking of social pressures, any thoughts on the intense social pressure to delete words like “women” and “girls” and “female” from the language?

    The results from this study fit with many previous studies that have shown menstrual issues can result in more absences and difficulties focusing and concentrating. They also provide further evidence that qualifications can be affected. This shows that menstrual difficulties can restrict the ability of young people to reach their full potential, with possible implications on access to further education or employment prospects.

    Talk about laboriously concealing your own point. What they’re telling us is that menstruation is a giant hindrance to girls’ efforts to do well on exams and thus go on to higher education. That’s what the article is about and yet they deliberately conceal it.

    Final two paragraphs:

    Teenagers can face challenges managing menstruation at school. These may include restrictions on when they can go to the toilet, or inaccessibility of period products.

    This can lead to many feeling that school is not a safe and supportive environment when menstruating. They may end up missing school entirely, or struggling to concentrate if they do attend school due to worries about managing and coping with menstruation and associated symptoms. Better support is needed for young people who menstruate and who struggle with problematic menstrual symptoms, so they are able to achieve their full academic potential.

    It’s just astounding. They go to all that trouble only to hide the very point they’re trying to make. It doesn’t get more idiotic than that.

  • Dominant groups

    Well this took my breath away. The NPR article is about Trump’s plan to meddle with all the museums, not just the federal ones, and that’s breathtaking enough, but then it got even more so.

    In a statement to NPR Wednesday, the president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums, Marilyn Jackson, framed the issue as one of creative and scholarly independence. She wrote:

    “The idea of extending federal reviews to the nation’s 22,000 museums misunderstands how museums operate. The vast majority are independent nonprofits, guided by professional standards and community trust. Museums cannot and should not be subject to government review of their exhibitions. The integrity of museums depends on their independence, and that’s what makes them so valuable to the public.”

    …

    Trump Administration critics, including multiple Democratic Congressional representatives, like Rep. Bennie Thompson, have said this year that the President is trying to erase “Black voices and history.” The New York City Bar released a statement in June saying that it seemed like the president and his administration are trying to dismantle the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

    “The common thread running through all these orders and actions is that the civil rights laws can and should be invoked to justify protecting a dominant group (i.e., white people or cisgender girls) at the expense of the rights of minority groups and in contravention of the transformative purpose of these laws,” the NYC Bar statement read.

    EXCUSE ME???

    Since when are girls the dominant group? Since never, that’s when. That’s not the pattern. That pattern is inside out and backwards. It’s not white people & girls have privilege while people of color and boys do not have privilege.

    And it’s the NYC Bar saying that outrageous thing!

  • A pretty girl is like a melody

    Hoist by their own petard much?

    A German neo-Nazi will be allowed to start serving an 18-month sentence in a women’s prison after he used a new government policy to register a change in gender.

    Sven Liebich, who has been photographed at far-Right rallies wearing a Nazi-style uniform, will be sent to the Chemnitz women’s prison in Saxony, according to FAZ, a German newspaper.

    Because he’s obviously not taking the piss, right? Totally sincere?

    Also of course there’s the issue of the safety of actual women in the prison, but meh, that doesn’t matter.

    Dennis Cernota, a senior prosecutor in Saxony, said that Liebich would be interviewed upon arrival to check whether it was appropriate for him to be placed among female prisoners. If it is decided that Liebich poses a threat to other inmates, or to law and order inside the prison, he may be transferred, Mr Cernota added.

    And they’ll be able to figure that out by interviewing him, because of course he won’t lie and manipulate, right?

    Liebich was able to switch genders via reforms introduced last year by Olaf Scholz’s centrist coalition, which simplified the process of changing a person’s name and gender on official documents.

    The reforms were supposed to support transgender, intersex and non-binary people in Germany, but their use by a neo-Nazi to avoid male prisoners has plunged them into controversy.

    Bashes head against wall

    How many billion times have we pointed out that any man can “use” such reforms to avoid male prisons and make female prisons extra-special dangerous for women? How many billion times have we pointed out that’s why there are separate prisons in the first place, and that if you make exceptions then you’re opening the door to men doing exactly what Herr Nazi is doing? How many more times do we have to explain it???

    When Mr Scholz was in power, he justified the reforms on gender changes as a key step forward for German society and its respect towards minorities.

    “We show respect to trans, intersex and non-binary people, without taking anything away from others. This is how we continue to drive the modernisation of our country. This includes recognising realities of life and making them possible by law,” he said.

    You can’t, you absolute buffoon. You can’t do that because it is not possible. You can’t let men into women’s prisons without “taking away” women’s safety from men in prisons. You have to pick one.

  • Unappealing

    Hot news from the Trans Legal Clinic –

    [Does that mean self-identified Legal Clinic? So not a real legal clinic?]

    The Trans Legal Clinic have launched our new Strategic litigation service in partnership with legal heavyweights at W Legal. Joitnly, we have today filed an application on behalf of Dr Victoria McCloud to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging the United Kingdom following the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v the Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16.

    They might want to hire a decent editor while they’re at it.

    Anyway. Is it really the job of courts to force everyone to agree that this man here is actually a woman because she says so?

    I hope not.

    For the first time, a case will be taken to Strasbourg by a trans-led legal team. That fact is significant in itself: a case concerning the participation of trans people in legal and political life is being advanced by those directly affected.

    Or to put it another way, a case will be taken to Strasbourg by people in thrall to a fiction that people can change sex and thus men can become women. It’s significant because some of the deluded people in question are the ones “advancing” this case.

    Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal.

    They really need that decent editor. One who knows how to finish sentences.

    For the trans community, this principle speaks to a longstanding truth: there must be no more conversations about us, without us.

    But you’re crazy. Or deluded. This “conversation” you mention is about a deranged ideology that has massive effects on other people, especially women. We have to have conversations about it, in order to make it go away. We want to do it without you because you are crazy or deluded. We have to do it without you for that reason.

    Dr Victoria McCloud said:“This case is about ensuring that fairness is not an abstract principle, but something lived and real. Trans people deserve the same rights of participation as anyone else when decisions are made about our lives.”

    But by “our lives” you mean your permanent fantasy of being women when you are in fact men. Men don’t have any “rights of participation” when women are resisting their attempts to usurp and silence and displace us.

  • Virtues n skills

    The very right-wing but not absolutely always wrong about everything American Enterprise Institute on that ridiculous chart about white culture in July 2020:

    In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests over police brutality, interest in “anti-racist” education has exploded among educators and advocates. The case that educators should seek to combat racism seems self-evident. What’s less clear is how the admirable cause of “anti-racism” is fueling, in some corners, the inclination to denounce universal virtues and useful skills as the product of “white culture.”

    Witness last week’s contretemps at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum, which bills itself as “the only national museum devoted exclusively” to educating the public on these topics, recently debuted the online guide “Talking about Race.” The guide included a chart cataloguing the “aspects and assumptions” of “white culture” that “have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.”

    What are these sinister aspects of “white culture,” you ask? Well, according to the Smithsonian, values like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” Indeed, it turns out that conventional grammar, Christianity, the notion that “intent counts” in courts of law, and the scientific method and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking” are all proprietary to “white culture.”

    The self-destructiveness just leaps off the page, doesn’t it. Really, Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture? You really want to make all those things the provenance of wypipo? Are you sure?

    There are several things that might be said about all this. But the place to start may be by observing just how insidious it is to teach black children to reject intellectual and personal traits that promote personal and civic success — in the U.S. or anywhere else. After all, in what land are students well-served when they’re encouraged not to work hard, make decisions, think rationally, or be polite and on time?

    And not even just success. You want those traits because they are good in themselves – intrinsically good as opposed to instrumentally. Being polite is better than being rude for the kinds of reasons that explain why being decent is better than being a shit.

    After an online outcry, the Smithsonian removed the chart on Thursday night — but not with any denunciation of the chart’s content, only the bland understatement that the chart turned out to “not contribute to the productive discussion” they had wished for. Of course, the lack of “productive discussion” shouldn’t have surprised, given the shoddy scholarship it reflected. The original chart contained a single footnote linking to a one-page PDF asserting, sans evidence, that traits such as “hard work,” “self-reliance,” and politeness “are common characteristics of most U.S. White people most of the time.”

    Somebody was taking a stab at comparing capitalist virtues to some other kind, which is far from a novel line of thought. One can generally see the outlines of a point – capitalist virtues help you get ahead yadda yadda but there’s more to life than getting ahead blah blah. True enough, but be careful what you argue for.

  • Candidates must

    All you need is to idennify as.

    It’s really very odd to word it that way. “Candidates must identify as” – well which is it? Must, or idennify as? The two are in opposition. Must=mandatory, while idennify as is as optional as it gets.

    These days of course it’s easy to get away with idennifying as female, but the postdoctoral level researcher is not quite so simple. Or do they just take people’s word for it on that subject too? If so they might as well just let all of us be candidates.

  • Ignorant armies clash by night

    Fox News runs everything.

    Several of Fox News’s most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help Mr. Trump shortly before and after the 2020 presidential election, according to a tranche of court documents released on Tuesday in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company.

    In one text message, Mr. Watters, who now hosts “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, said to his colleague Greg Gutfeld: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” a reference to the movement trying to overturn the results of the election.

    Apart from anything else, isn’t it thrilling that the drive for commercial success plays such a large role in the governance of the US and thus the future of the planet.

    The hundreds of pages of documents — largely newly unredacted versions of previously released ones — were filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. Smartmatic has accused Fox News of knowingly implicating the company in false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election.

    Smartmatic filed its lawsuit against Fox in February 2021, and the documents are the fullest picture yet of the evidence it says it has compiled against the network. Smartmatic is arguing that Fox, facing a growing backlash after calling Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr., pivoted to a narrative about election fraud to placate its viewers despite knowing it was not true.

    This is what I’m saying. The petty personal concerns of people at a sleazy commercial entertainment network —> the entire planet is at the mercy of a greedy ruthless crook. It’s not The Iliad or Macbeth, it’s The Simpsons.

  • The process

    Both sides.

    The UK’s first transgender judge has launched a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.

    The retired judge Victoria McCloud, who is now a litigation strategist at W-Legal, is seeking a rehearing of the case, arguing that the supreme court undermined her article 6 rights to a fair trial when it refused to hear representation from her and did not hear evidence from any other trans individuals or groups.

    Ok so suppose a group of people declare themselves judges, and the supreme court rules that trans judges are not judges. Would the court be expected to include trans judges before it can rule that trans judges are not judges?

    In other words is this a general rule? People who declare themselves Xs have to be included in any court case that rules on whether self-declaration is magic or not?

    It seems like an infinite regress. “You can’t rule that we are not included in this category because you didn’t include us – the frauds – in the decision-making.”

  • Brightness falls from the air

    Don’t forget the museums. Gotta micromanage the museums. They have to show how grate America is.

    President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has ordered his attorneys to conduct a review of Smithsonian museums, calling their portrayal of U.S. history too negative and focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.”

    Trump said he would subject the museums to “the exact same process” his administration has conducted of universities, with the goal of making the Smithsonian less “woke.”

    Because without woke, nobody would think slavery was a bad thing.

    Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

    But what was that success based on?

    A lot of it was based on the unpaid labor of people kidnapped out of Africa and their children and grandchildren for generations. Cotton made some people very rich, and it entrenched a system of enslavement that lasted for way too many years. Those facts were tactfully veiled for generations but then finally the lid blew off. The facts in question may not be important to Trump, but then his grandparents didn’t grow up chopping cotton in the Mississippi Delta.

    The Trump administration last week began conducting an unprecedented review of exhibits at the Smithsonian ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary in an effort to make sure they comply with Trump’s vision of history.

    But Trump’s “vision of history” is the cartoonish dream of pale people from Germany and Scotland moving to Ahmericah to make tons and tons of money so that a little boy called Donald would one day put his great big fist through everything and laugh like a drain.

  • What else even is there to talk about?

    Peak Comerford.

    Women are telling him we don’t talk about bras, actually, but he knows better.

  • Nandy’s fashion statement

    Do what?

    UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy is coming under fire for wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Protect the Dolls’ at Wigan Pride on Sunday.

    If you keep up with trans-activist trends, the ‘Protect the Dolls’ slogan might sound familiar. Celebrities such as Pedro Pascal, Tilda Swinton, Alan Cumming and Madonna have all worn t-shirts bearing the phrase. According to the t-shirt’s creator, a New York-born fashion-school grad now living in London, ‘the dolls’ supposedly in need of protection are transwomen. In other words, blokes.

    So men need protection and women don’t?

    ‘In queer communities, “doll” is a term of affection, pride and belonging – a coded word that speaks volumes without explanation’, claimed a piece in Forbes when the t-shirt first appeared at London Fashion Week earlier this year. Apparently, the term is ’emotional, not clinical, protective, not patronising’.

    If it’s coded how can it speak volumes without explanation? That makes zero sense.

    And I still want to know why men and not women.

    Nandy’s fashion statement is merely the latest proof that when it comes to trans ideology, Labour really hasn’t learned a thing. Last year, Jess Phillips, ironically the women’s safeguarding minister, said that she would be ‘happy to refer to transwomen as women’. Work and pensions minister Andrew Western responded to the UK Supreme Court ruling on gender by raising ‘the fear and distress’ that men might suffer if they are barred from using women’s loos.

    Carefully not mentioning the far more realistic fear and distress of half the population if men are not barred from women’s loos. On and on it goes.

  • Not your billboard

    Yosemite Biologist Who Hung Trans Pride Flag From El Capitan Is Fired

    Real biologist or self-idennified?

    The National Park Service has fired a wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park who helped drape a large transgender pride flag from El Capitan in May, saying that the demonstration had taken place in a prohibited area and lacked the required permits.

    The former employee, Shannon Joslin, 35, who studies bats and has a Ph.D. in genetics, received a termination letter from the Park Service on Aug. 12.

    A PhD in genetics but thinks people can change sex.

    In the letter, the park’s acting deputy superintendent, Danika Globokar, wrote that Dr. Joslin, who is gay and identifies as nonbinary, had “failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct” by taking part in the May 20 demonstration.

    Wait what? How can you be gay and nonbinary? If you’re nonbinary what can “gay” even mean? You’re either both sexes or neither, so you can’t be a lesbian or a gay man.

    Is this just greedy grabbing everything you can reach before somebody smacks your hand? The ice cream and the pie and the cake and the chocolates?

    On May 21, the park’s acting superintendent signed a new rule outlawing the display of large flags, banners and signs at El Capitan — the park’s iconic cliff — and most of the California park altogether. The move coincided with a broader push by the federal government to limit political demonstrations on public lands, especially those critical of the policies of the Trump administration.

    Frankly I’m surprised this hasn’t always been a rule. Who the hell wants to see banners in national parks in the first place? It seems like draping advertising over all the paintings in the Rijksmuseum.

    The spokeswoman, Rachel Pawlitz, said that the Park Service would not comment about personnel actions or criminal investigations.

    “Several unauthorized demonstrations involving El Capitan generated numerous complaints from visitors,” Ms. Pawlitz said. “Yosemite National Park was designated by Congress to highlight the beautiful natural and cultural features of the area. No matter the cause, displaying signs, banners, and flags outside of designated First-Amendment areas detracts from the visitor experience and the protection of the park.”

    Even if this is Trump-approved or Trump admin-approved, I agree with it. Don’t be sticking personal tat on natural beauty or human works of art. Leave them alone.

    In February, before the rule took effect, a small group of protesters hung an inverted American flag — a signal of distress that began with sailors — off the side of El Capitan to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to the Park Service.

    Plenty of eyes were already fixated on El Capitan for the annual phenomenon known as firefall, when the light from the setting sun causes a seasonal waterfall to glow orange.

    The display occurred shortly after at least 1,000 Park Service employees were abruptly dismissed from their jobs, part of a sweeping federal work force downsizing initiative that was once overseen by President Trump’s now-estranged ally Elon Musk.

    Welllll that’s a little different. The flag was at the side, which I take to mean it didn’t obscure what people go there to see, and it was about an issue that does affect Yosemite and national parks in general.

    But in general? Don’t stick your tacky posters on the sunset.