Nailed it.

Actor James Dreyfus today slammed trans activists as ‘misogynistic guys in skirts’ for waging a war of hatred against Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

The Gimme, Gimme, Gimme star, 52, claimed those involved were ‘angry, young, anarchist people’ who harboured a deep hatred of women and ‘what they represent’.

He also accused them of being behind an alleged campaign of threats to kill and rape women in order to ‘put them back in their place’. 

Gee, where would he get that idea? Apart from Twitter and Facebook day in and day out.

A group of trans activists condemned Dreyfus last year when he was among 50 actors, writers and journalists to sign a letter in support of JK Rowling following backlash to her views on trans people.  

…

Dreyfus said he had been ‘cancelled’ after showing support for the author in the letter as he criticised social media as ‘a monster we have created’.

See also: Trump on Twitter.

Instagram bars a vax denialist:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now blocked from Instagram after he repeatedly undercut trust in vaccines. Kennedy has also spread conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, accusing him of profiteering off vaccines and attempting to take control of the world’s food supply.

“We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, told NPR on Thursday.

Kennedy has been a prominent voice in the anti-vaccine community for years, speaking out against childhood vaccines and promoting controversial and disproven claims that seek to link vaccines with autism.

In the past year, Kennedy’s beliefs about vaccines have intersected with the COVID-19 pandemic. He has told his followers not to trust “mainstream media, government health officials” and doctors who say the coronavirus vaccines are safe, recently highlighting a rare and tragic case in which a woman died hours after receiving the vaccine.

Someone should tell him about the much less rare cases in which people die of the coronavirus.

In early 2017, Kennedy met with then-President-elect Donald Trump, urging him to create a commission to study vaccines’ safety. It was an instance, as NPR reported at the time, of “Trump embracing the fringe when it comes to the science of autism and vaccinations.”

In response to that meeting, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement saying “vaccines protect children’s health and save lives.”

While Kennedy works hard to stop them.

Helen Saxby wrote about Allison Bailey and Garden Court Chambers and Stonewall in October 2019.

Garden Court Chambers is ‘investigating’ Allison Bailey for being a founding member of the LGB alliance. This is no surprise given its associations.

Two years ago, on Tuesday October 3rd 2017, I attended a meeting in central London entitled ‘Progress and Challenges in Advancing Equality for Trans People in the UK’. It was held at Garden Court Chambers, in association with the Human Rights Lawyers Association.

That was just two weeks after the assault on Maria MacLachlan at Speakers Corner, Saxby points out.

Bex Stinson of Stonewall was first to speak. We were told that the Trans Inquiry was incredibly important regarding the recommendations it published, but that the government response to the report was lacklustre. We learned that trans people are demonised and dehumanised, and that there is a hostile environment at the moment: every week there is a new piece in the press attacking trans people. The language we’re seeing now is like Section 28 all over again: trans people face hostility. The new GRA should recognise all identities, there should be right of autonomy, no diagnosis of dysphoria should be needed. We need strategic legislation: human lives are involved. We’re facing a serious tide of anti-trans sentiment.

Next up was Michelle Brewer of Garden Court Chambers and the Trans Equality Legal Initiative (TELI). Brewer started by pronouncing that chambers is a safe space: there would be NO DEBATE about trans rights existing. TELI, we were told, was a group of human rights lawyers and trans rights activists, set up to educate the legal community and to support grass roots organisations. We need to be educating ourselves – in court at the moment there is apparently misgendering and deadnaming. It is the responsibility of lawyers not to use ‘cis-normative’ language. It needs to be safe. There is a hostile environment. The example was used of the appalling deaths of trans people in prison, including one just last week.

We’re in the weeds already, you see, because sometimes in court it matters who is a man and who is a woman. In Maria MacLachlan’s case it mattered, because the judge ordered her to refer to the young man who assaulted her as “she” and “her.” Under oath.

Jane Ryan of Bhatt Murphy was next to speak. Ryan told us that trans people know more than she does because she hasn’t read enough Butler and Foucault. She went on to expand on the problems trans people face in prison: the criminal justice system is inherently binary, and often gender ID is not respected. Strip-searching by a prison officer of the opposite ‘gender identity’ to the prisoner is an example of unlawful discrimination.

But forcing a female victim to call her male assailant a woman is not, apparently.

There was then a Q and A which was mostly used up by requests for Bex Stinson to talk about transitioning at the bar, and for Bernard and Terry from GIRES, who were in the audience, to stand up and speak about their work. My companion that evening, Julia Long, kept her composure long enough to ask a question about the changing meaning and definition of ‘gender identity’, and Michelle Brewer answered with an assertion that ‘what gender means to the individual’ is the best way forward for trans people to explain themselves, so this is the definition needed in legislation.

Legislation based on what X means to the individual…what could possibly go wrong.

The rights of women were never on the table. Female prisoners expected to be housed with potentially violent males, female prison officers expected to intimately search male bodies, female asylum seekers expected to be housed with males, female litigants expected to refer to their male attackers as ‘she’, female crime statistics expected to incorporate male rapists, females in general expected to take a man’s word for it rather than believing what their own experience is telling them: none of these examples apparently merit a human rights approach when they are set against the perceived rights of trans people. The ease with which women’s rights can be sidelined, by people whose job it is to uphold the law, highlights the vulnerability of those rights: we cannot take anything for granted. Everything could be taken away tomorrow, not necessarily by legislative change, but simply by policy capture instigated by lobby groups while nobody was looking.

Lobby groups like Stonewall, for instance.

Two years on from the ‘Advancing Trans Equality’ meeting, and this week a barrister from Garden Court Chambers became the subject of a public shaming on social media for the sin of expressing her views on gender. Allison Bailey is a founding member of the new LGB Alliance, a group which has been formed to do the job which Stonewall once did, and look after the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. A lesbian herself, Bailey has publicly voiced her support for those who are same-sex orientated, in opposition to Stonewall’s new insistence on same-gender attraction. She compounded her transgression by chairing the Woman’s Place UK meeting in Oxford on Friday October 25th. The backlash has been instant and severe, including a Twitter pile-on instigated by Owen Jones, a call to arms from Gendered Intelligence (since deleted), and subsequent complaints to her employer, which Garden Court Chambers are ‘investigating’.

Apart from their association with TELI, Garden Court is also home to other trans activists and allies. Alex Sharpe is a prominent trans activist on Twitter, unafraid to use offensive slurs against women. Sharpe submitted written evidence to the Trans Inquiry in 2015, as did Claire McCann. Both pieces of written evidence ignore women’s existing sex-based rights. Despite this, Garden Court members know they can wear their trans-allyship with pride, and they are duly celebrated on social media for doing so. The same pride cannot be assumed by those standing up for women, or for same-sex attraction. On the contrary, to be seen as an ally to women is often to invite condemnation. There is little support out there for the supporters of women. A law firm, especially one which has signed up as a ‘Stonewall Diversity Champion’, can promote the rights of one group of people at the expense of another and be applauded for it, as long as the group they are overlooking is women.

Replace the word “women” with “Karens” and it all makes sense.

It’s on.

A…what?

Yes, There’s a Safe Way to Have a Cannibalism Fetish.

A…what?

As a fetish educator, I’m so tired of seeing the Armie Hammer allegations used against the BDSM community.

A what educator? The what community?

But most stories and commentary have remained focused on the sensationalism of his supposed cannibalism fetish and have ignored the real issue: that the foundation of true BDSM relationships is consent. We spoke to Jet Setting Jasmine, a master fetish educator, licensed clinical psychotherapist, and co-owner of Royal Fetish Films, to discuss why this is so damaging.

Ah yes consent. As long as you consent it’s fine if this strapping lad starts cutting away bits of you for dinner. I’m guessing that the “cannibals” are men and the dinners are women. Just a hunch.

Here’s what I’ve been seeing people get wrong in the conversation around Armie Hammer and the abuse allegations against him: His alleged cannibalism fetish itself isn’t the problem. The problem is, if the allegations are true, whether he used his power to groom these women into participating in a lifestyle they had truly not consented to.

That’s a lifestyle now? Someone chowing down on your flesh is a lifestyle? And the women who are devoured are “participating” in that “lifestyle”?

A cannibalism fetish, or vorarephilia, is characterized by a person who fantasizes about consuming someone or being consumed. The key word there is “fantasy.” The fetish never goes so far as actually eating or killing someone, of course—that’d be illegal. Just having the conversation around eating someone, and being sexually stimulated by that, is considered a cannibalism fetish.

And it’s fine, because people never – literally never – go from fantasy and talking about it to actually doing it. That would be illegal. Nobody ever does anything illegal. That would be illegal. Never mind the fact that there are many documented cases of people going from fantasizing about illegal act X to performing illegal act X; this is completely different because is that a bottle of steak sauce?

Any form of grooming into a lifestyle without consent is a violation. Consent is the difference between BDSM and non-BSDM encounters. We cannot actually consider an encounter true BDSM if there isn’t consent involved. The minute that a hookup does not have clear consent, it has already fallen out of BDSM and into an inappropriate interaction.

Well yes, that is inappropriate, but it’s too late to do anything about it, because he’s already killed her.

Can these people really be that stupid???

This week’s Jesus and Mo:

There are, naturally, some sanctimonious comments about “punching down” – because of the obscure but binding rule that if a man puts on a skirt and tilts his head coquettishly he becomes the most marginalized person in the universe.

The Patreon

Massive surprise – some of the insurrectionists have a history of violence against women. Who could possibly have predicted that?

The message popped up on Katya Brock’s phone just after 10 a.m. one morning in September: “Do the right thing and kill yourself already.”

She was alarmed, but no more so than she had been by all the other messages: “I have better things to do than speak to a whore”; “Nobody loves you”; “Narcissistic whore.” Her ex-husband, Larry Rendall Brock Jr., had been sending them like clockwork for three years. A court had ordered the couple to communicate through a specialized portal while their contentious divorce was finalized. Larry often used it for threats.

And Larry was at the Capitol on January 6. Knock me down with a feather.

Larry, a 53-year-old Air Force veteran, is one of the hundreds of insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 and is now facing federal charges. He sported a combat helmet, a bulletproof vest and carried zip-tie handcuffs. His threats to Katya also went beyond those messages ― HuffPost uncovered numerous 911 calls from their home for domestic disputes, including one in 2016 in which Larry was described as making a “terroristic threat of family/household,” according to a police summary of the call.

Larry’s history of abusive behavior is part of an alarmingly common trend among the rioters who have been arrested so far for their roles in the insurrection. After reviewing police reports and court filings, a HuffPost investigation found that at least nine insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol have a history of violence against women ― ranging from domestic abuse accusations to prison time for sexual battery and criminal confinement.

That number seems very low. They must have only started digging.

Another one. (You’re ok with this, ACLU? This is what you want? This is what you consider a civil liberty?) Another man wins a women’s race. I hate having to cite The Federalist, because I really do not like their politics on any other subject, but nobody else is reporting on it.

Sherry Mix puts in 10 to 15 hours a week training for elite-level mountain and fat-tire bike races in the region. The Verona, Wis[consin] woman says it’s hard work but rewarding to the women who ride.

But as “equity” politics are further infused into just about every aspect of life, including competitive sports, cyclists like Mix are forced to compete on an unequal course. Last month, Mix finished third in a Snow Crown Fat Bike Series event in De Pere billed Fattyshack. The winner of the USA Cycling-sanctioned event was Kenzie Statz, a cyclist who was born male and now identifies as a transgender woman.

…

Statz has been finishing in the money in a number of races. Before transitioning and competing in the women’s events, it appears Statz didn’t fare nearly as well in the men’s competitions.

Mix said Statz is a really nice person, and she has nothing against transgender people wanting to compete in a terrific sport. But Statz, like other men who identify as women, often have a distinct physiological advantage over their fellow female opponents that cannot be denied.

“We’re just trying to figure out what we can do. You get these guys actually training, they’re just naturally faster and stronger than women. It’s just science, how bodies work,” Mix said.

I doubt that Statz truly is a really nice person, because a really nice person would be sharply aware of how unfair it is for someone with a male body to compete against women in most sports. A really nice person wouldn’t do it.

Also…I don’t think the competing against women is just happenstance, just an odd little exception in an otherwise decent guy’s life. The reason I think that is that Statz has to know what an advantage he’s giving himself, and that that advantage is exactly why he shouldn’t dream of doing it. It’s unfair and selfish and a bully move, so no, however pleasant he is in person, I don’t believe he’s really nice.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden vowed to use the Department of Education to investigate and address any violations of transgender students’ civil rights, including removing federal funding or risking legal action. Sure enough, one of President Biden’s first acts in office was to issue an executive order that, in part, demands transgender students be allowed to compete on opposite-sex sports teams.

One of his first acts. I didn’t post about it because I wanted to ignore it for the time being, but I sure as hell wondered what the big fucking hurry was.

A few weeks later, Montana’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter used Biden’s executive order to threaten the state’s federal funding if it passed legislation protecting women’s sports by banning men who identify as women from participating.

So that’s how “I apologize for not answering the question” woman got to recite the mantra.

“I understand they’re [transgender athletes are] looking for a place to belong, but I don’t think putting them in the women’s category is the right answer,” Mix said.

She said other cyclists feel similarly, but they’re afraid to speak out for fear of being labeled bigots and the threat of losing their licenses to compete. USA Cycling-sanctioned races require a license to enter.

“People are scared to say anything. It’s deemed bullying,” Mix said. “They can tell you you can’t race. They can kick you out of a race. I could have my license taken away.”

It’s another twist in the left’s conflicted culture wars. The losers, critics say, are the women who have worked so hard to advance the rights of women to compete.

“Most of us are riding 10 hours a week, easily 15 hours a week in the summer. We train every day for this,” Mix said. “To have a guy come in and take that away, that’s why women fought so hard to protect our equal rights. It’s like taking those equal rights away.”

That’s exactly what it is.

I’ve been meaning to get back to that paper by Alison Phipps, kind of the way one gets back to a mosquito bite.

Reactionary feminisms, which coalesce around debates about sex workers’ rights and transgender equality, magnify the political whiteness of the mainstream and deliberately withhold womanhood and personhood from marginalised Others.

Now there’s an outright lie. Feminism that opposes pimping doesn’t withhold womanhood or personhood from prostituted women, it argues that prostitution exploits women. Gender critical feminism doesn’t withhold womanhood or personhood from anyone, it simply doesn’t repeat the lie that men can become women by identifying as women. It’s not “witholding womanhood” from men to say they are men, any more than it’s witholding bearhood from rabbits to say rabbits are rabbits. Being a bear is not an option for rabbits and being a woman is not an option for men. We are what we are. We can comfort ourselves with fantasies, but we can’t bully and threaten other people into pretending our fantasies are reality.

Trans women are defined as ‘biological men’ while trans-exclusionary feminists are ‘adult human females’. Sex workers’ rights are juxtaposed with ‘women’s safety’, a manoeuvre in which the womanhood of sex workers is implicitly denied.

She can’t be that stupid, can she? Prostitution is extremely dangerous for the prostitutes, aka sex work is extremely dangerous for the sex workers. How does saying that implicitly (or explicitly) deny the womanhood of sex workers? Farming is also extremely dangerous, as is mining, as is construction work, as is meat processing – is it denying the manhood or womanhood or humanity of the workers in those industries to say that? Hardly; it’s the first step in reforming the industries and improving the protections for workers in them.

This reasserts the normative economically productive body and reproductive sex. It conjures up colonial sex difference and bourgeois white womanhood as a symbol of moral order, set against the racialised and enslaved inhabitants of colonised and settled territories and the multi-racial, ‘dangerous, immoral, and libidinal lower classes’ of the metropolis…

She’s not really even trying to say anything there. There’s no real meaning, and no real thinking, it’s just deploying a set of Approved words and phrases so that people will think she’s one of the Good Ones. It’s frivolous, it’s vain, it’s self-admiring, it’s careerist – all while pretending to be very very extra enlightened and left-wing. It’s such crap.

Meanwhile today –

Attending and reporting on in tweets.

Much of the reporting is procedural, on questions like whether names can be redacted.

I have a problem with that claim. It’s true in a literal sense, which may be how he means it (literal in the sense that discrimination is just choosing this instead of that, like pears instead of apples for instance), but if he means the political version of the word, I think I differ. Racist views are widely held but I don’t think it’s an unjust form of discrimination to call them bigoted.

Hearing will resume tomorrow.

They weren’t playing.

The evidence is now undeniable. What we saw on Wednesday was the definitive proof that what broke into the Capitol last month was a hunting party. They came to kill people. “Hang Mike Pence” was not a metaphor. Hearing the hunters caroling, “Nannnnnn-cy? Nannnnnnnn-cy?” in that horror-movie sing-song was to hear the trilling of murderous intent. They came to the Capitol to kill people. Mitt Romney probably was saved by Officer Eugene Goodman, and this was before Goodman saved everyone else. (A security camera caught Goodman encountering Romney outside the Senate chamber as Romney was headed unwittingly into the teeth of the mob. Romney pivots like genuine Barry Sanders and beats feet in the other direction.)

What the clips yesterday showed us is also how very close it was. It appears that there are multiple instances in which if the rioters had been just a little faster or the cops or the fleeing legislators and staffers just a little slower then there really would have been some murders on that day.

The House managers brought this evidence through a series of enormously gifted storytellers, and storytelling always has been an important part of legal proceedings. This was particularly true of Stacey Plaskett, a former NYC prosecutor who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands as their delegate to the Congress.

Oh she’s a former prosecutor. That explains it. She did indeed do a hell of a job. It helps to have such…abundant material.

He’s reading it correctly.

Bookshop boss now says he now regrets apology for apology. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Who Will Apologize Last?

The Sydney Morning Herald on that slimy apology for letting Julie Bindel speak:

In 2018 Bindel, a campaigner against male violence, spoke at a Hawthorn bookshop event about her book, The Pimping of Prostitution, about the global sex trade.

On Tuesday, Readings issued a statement on its website saying it “regrets programming Julie Bindel in 2018”. The independent bookseller apologised for “any hurt caused by highlighting the work of an author whose current stance is to divide our community”.

Bindel told The Age that she believed the apology was directly linked to an online event with transgender author Juno Dawson, which Readings would be hosting later this month.

Why would she believe that? Because Readings posted a tweet about the Juno Dawson event, and the very next tweet after that, two hours later, was the one throwing mud at Julie. Gee, imagine seeing a connection.

“Readings have publicly humiliated me and insulted me,” she said. “They have cowardly capitulated to bullies when for decades they have supported a diverse range of writers and publishers.”

…

The apology was welcomed by Transgender Victoria media representative Sally Goldner, AM, and Dylan O’Hara, from Vixen Collective, Victoria’s peer-only sex worker organisation.

Ms Goldner said: “Her views have no reasonable and rational basis and they cause ridicule, vilify and could reasonably incite harm against transgender people.

“To say we don’t exist, or to use twisted terms like to call someone like myself … a so-called biological male, just denies that my sense of self exists.”

It’s not using “twisted terms” to say that a person with a male body is a man.

As for denying someone’s “sense of self exists” – what can that even mean? It’s an impersonal general truth-claim to say that people with male bodies are men, and is nothing to do with anyone’s “sense of self” and whether it exists or not. This gruesomely narcissistic idea that public discourse has to take into account some random guy’s “sense of self” is infantile and thick as a brick.

Plot twist: Readings apologized for the apology. Then another plot twist: Readings decides not to apologize for the apology after all.

Very impressive.

That depends on what you mean by that innocent little word “be.”

Looked at one way it’s just an empty platitude. Looked at another way it’s an insulting lie. Suzanne Moore looks at it that second way.

The right way to react to this ridiculous mantra is surely to feel murderous. What is this slogan for? Who is it for? These endless attempts at inclusivity mean that being a woman can now even be a feeling in a man’s head. Eddie Izzard, I saw the other day, had been voted the best female comedian. Sorry, but I am not laughing.

There is no wrong way to be a woman. Are they serious? Let me list the ways. I and many women live with them every single day.

One of them is to live in fear. One woman is killed every three days in this country – a figure which has become much higher in lockdown.

And many more women are raped, groped, slapped, punched, beaten up, strangled – you get the idea. There are some drawbacks to being the weaker member of a dimorphic species.

Another wrong way to be a woman is to refuse to stop talking about what it is like living in a female body: periods, endometriosis, childbirth, miscarriage, infertility, menopause and that icky stuff. Speaking of this apparently excludes those women whose bodies don’t do those things.

And the response is torrents of threats to punch slap strangle kill the women who exclude “those” women. There’s always some good reason to get violent with the nearest woman.

Another very wrong way to be a woman is to think of yourself as more than a collection of body parts: lactators, menstruators, birthers, cervix havers. You do have to wonder what the word “woman” even means now that some organisations have banned us from saying it altogether.

One thing is clear though – if you are a woman the message you receive from birth is that you are pretty much always doing it wrong. That you will never be good enough.

But if you’re a man who identifies as a woman…you will always be good enough.

My god this is infuriating.

I don’t know what hearing this is. There was a hearing on a bill on transgender athletes in Montana in January and I couldn’t find one on a federal bill so this is probably Montana, but I don’t know for sure.

But anyway – it’s astounding. He asks the obviously relevant question, if in 20 years there is a women’s team that is all “biological males” would you support that? And she doesn’t answer. She’s so flummoxed she asks him to repeat it, so he does, and she just outright refuses to answer, and even says “I apologize for not answering the question,” and then robotically repeats the moronic formula. Answer the fucking question!! If this new dispensation becomes normal and males take advantage of it and “women’s teams” become all-male, will you still think that’s a fine thing?

Yes or no?!

Pretty harrowing to listen to.

Very progressive.

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has opened a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to interfere with Georgia’s election, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. While the former president faces potential criminal liability in several states, including New York, now that he has left office, the Georgia probe may pose the most immediate threat. All available evidence suggests that prosecutors are considering charges that amount to election fraud—a felony offense under Georgia law, and the very crime that Trump claimed he sought to stop.

The focus is on that call to Raffensperger.

As election law expert Rick Hasen noted at the time, there is no question that Trump was asking Raffensperger to manufacture enough votes to overturn the Georgia election on the basis of paranoid delusions. The former president’s call was thus not only corrupt, but very likely criminal. Under Georgia law, it is illegal to falsify any records used in connection with an election, or to place any false entries in such records. And any person who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person” to falsify voting records is guilty of “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree.” The crime is a felony offense, punishable by up to three years in prison (and no less than one year). An individual is culpable even if they failed to induce fraud.

Trump importuned. He importuned as hard as he could, complete with threats. Cleverly he did it over the phone, so that it could be recorded.

Willis noted in the retention request that the investigation includes potential violations of Georgia laws “prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.” This lengthy list of possible offenses indicates that the district attorney is focusing on the most obvious charge, solicitation of election fraud, but also looking at a broad range of criminal laws in building her case against Trump. In her letter to state officials, Willis described the Trump investigation as a “high priority” and said the case will go before a grand jury as early as March, with subpoenas to follow shortly thereafter.

This is good, and not just because I want to see Trump brought down with a crash, but because nobody should be able to do that with impunity, not even a vulgarian from Queens with a tiny tiny tiny vocabulary.

Also new.

New item.