Not for the squeamish.

The optics don’t look good here. So, you are recommending, inter alia, advice for teenagers on sex / masturbation techniques? Who will provide this? There is something deeply creepy about old men who have an interest in teenage sexuality. Don’t you get this? #RSE #PeterTatchell

— Neil Moran (@museofwoolwich) May 9, 2019

Mandatory school sex ed that will include teaching the students how to masturbate. Er…really?

Really.

Teachers who have specialist training will do it

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) May 10, 2019

Listen, you’re supposed to get that kind of sex ed on the street, behind the bike shed, from your first (or second or tenth) sex partner…anywhere but school.

Also, Tatchell has been known to defend “adult-child sexual relationships”, and people with expertise in the subject say that adults “teaching” children how to masturbate is grooming. Tatchell appears to be promoting mandatory, can’t opt out sex ed in school that will include grooming. Not his best idea.

Meanwhile Carl Benjamin is on the outs with YouTube.

YouTube has demonetised Carl Benjamin’s Sargon of Akkad video channel after the political commentator turned UKIP candidate made comments about raping a woman MP.

Earlier this week, West Midlands police announced an investigation into Benjamin’s remarks made in a YouTube video about Labour MP Jess Phillips, where the UKIP European election candidate questioned whether he’d rape her before concluding “nobody’s got that much beer”.

I was just objecting to Twitter’s permanent banning of a woman who told a boy he is not a lesbian. Should I also, to be consistent, object to YouTube’s demonitization (you should forgive the word) of Carl Benjamin’s YouTube?

There are two (or more) ways of looking at it. One is that no one should mess with anyone’s access to media outlets ever for any reason. Another is that no one should mess with anyone’s access to media outlets ever for stupid footling childish reasons. My way of looking at it is, clearly, the second. I don’t think Twitter should kick back and look dreamily at the sky while men use its outlet to hurl shit at women in their thousands and tens of thousands, and I also don’t think Twitter should banish a woman for telling a boy he’s not a lesbian. I realize it’s a terribly subtle and nuanced view, but there it is.

When contacted for comment on Friday, Benjamin sent BuzzFeed News an unrelated political statement about knife crime. Several of his online followers have been tweeting a statement claiming to be from Benjamin.

“YouTube let us know today that they have demonetised my YouTube channel, which as you know is my primary source of income, and how I support my family and team,” the statement reads.

It’s very profitable, talking trash about women on YouTube.

One of the better headlines:

UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin in Truro milkshake melee

Not a Truro milkshake melee!? The horror.

Two protesters have thrown milkshake at UKIP European election candidate Carl Benjamin at a rally.

Mr Benjamin was holding a gathering on Lemon Quay in Truro, Cornwall, with British activist Milo Yiannopoulos.

It is understood a man and a woman tried to target Mr Benjamin with the milkshake but missed.

So not really much of a melee then. Fortunately, by way of consolation, the Beeb provided a photo of blobs of what could be bird shit or puke or melting snow or a vanilla milkshake, helpfully captioned “Milkshake could be seen on the ground after the incident.”

It gets better though.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesperson said: “A milkshake was reportedly thrown over a member of the public by a man wearing black clothing and a white mask.

“Police carried out inquiries but the ‘victim’ did not make themselves known to officers.

“No official complaint has been received.”

A female protester was also prevented from throwing kippers at Mr Benjamin.

Try a handful of kedgeree next time.

Remember this from a few days ago?

So this is what @jsoosty was banned for. Pictures explain: what she tweeted and what she was replying to. #TwitterHatesWomen pic.twitter.com/Z3ILtbWVEM

— anya in jail (@anyabyke) May 6, 2019

Now Twitter has made the ban permanent.

So @jsoosty’s appeal against her permanent suspension has been denied. Apparently tweeting at someone “you are not a lesbian” breaks Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct. This is absolutely staggering. It is not hateful to disbelieve someone’s self-perception. pic.twitter.com/rEHpaufToP

— boodleoops (@boodleoops) May 10, 2019

Twitter is calling it “hateful conduct” to tell that boy he is not a lesbian. Twitter is saying that to tell that boy he is not a lesbian is “to promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people.”

Meanwhile relentless harassment and verbal abuse of women goes on unabated.

Sometimes…

Huge increase in UK same-sex couples seeking IVF and surrogates https://t.co/S7p16EdCMx

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) May 10, 2019

That is, huge increase in gay male couples seeking to rent women’s bodies to make them their very own bespoke baby. Lesbian couples don’t need to rent women to make a baby; men think they’re entitled to rent women to get whatever they want. Isn’t it funny how men don’t recognize or acknowledge the exploitation of renting women’s bodies, yet do manage to remember to disguise what they’re doing by talking about “same-sex couples” in the headline and the tweet?

Originally a comment by latsot on A roar rose from the crowd.

The UK is lost in a mire of racist sentiment. We’re sinking into the lie that things were better back then even when “then” means times like the 70s when absolutely everything was absolutely bad and the only reason we managed to keep our heads above the shit floating on every surface was… you know… those immigrants. Coming over here, the bastards, rescuing our economy and being totally fucked over because of it. You know, like those Windrush people, who we tricked into coming here to do the jobs we didn’t want to do and then we tried to deport their children and grandchildren? You know, those people? That great big fucking wedge of our society that makes Britain in the daylight such a brilliant place to live? That fucking wedge of society we turn against every time we’re feeling fucking petulant?

Racism has always been a seething undercurrent in Britain. That nice Mr Hitler was generally approved until he became a threat and when I grew up in the 70s my little town’s treatment of the not-so-white was horrific, even then. I mean, fucking horrific. And it hasn’t got much better, 40-odd years later. It’s a sickness that seems to invade people I used to think were friends. Are they getting worse? Am I getting better? Is it just that our society is increasingly fucked? I do not know.

But seriously, America. You buggers recently make us look like the most tolerant nation in history, even after we stole most other nations and made their people do what they were told. Including fucking America.

FOR FUCKS SAKE sort yourselves out.

Jennifer Rubin on Giuliani’s travel plans:

Democrats should call this out for what it is: Betrayal of, and disloyalty to, the United States.

Beyond that, the House should expeditiously pass a law making it mandatory for a campaign to report all contacts with foreign officials, prohibiting solicitation of information or action from a foreign government for the purpose of influencing a campaign, and making it illegal to knowingly use material provided directly or indirectly from a foreign government in a campaign.

Should Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refuse to take up the measure, he would confirm the moral degradation of the Republican Party and the same unpatriotic attitude that prompted him to oppose a robust warning in 2016 about Russian interference in the election.

Not that he needs to do any further confirming at this point. He’s already confirmed and confirmed and confirmed.

This would be nothing less than a repudiation of democracy, a willingness to become a vassal of hostile foreign powers for the sake of winning the election. In such a circumstance, Democrats should come right out and say it: The Republicans want to get hostile powers to help them win elections because those powers figure that Republican presidents will be patsies.

I am often asked whether the Republican Party can be rehabilitated. A party is made up of individuals; in this case, a group of elected leaders who uniformly invite foreign intervention in our election should be permanently disqualified from holding office. They have violated their oaths in the most egregious manner possible and cannot be entrusted with power again. Ever.

Too bad we can’t enforce it.

The theocrats are sneaking bible study into public schools via bullshittery.

Bible classes in public school could become increasingly common across the United States if other states follow Kentucky’s lead in passing legislation that encourages high schools to teach the Bible.

The bible is a historical document and a literary work, or rather a collection of literary works, and it’s also a religious text. It could be taught in public schools under the first two categories but the third one doesn’t belong there.

Activists on the religious right, through their legislative effort Project Blitz, drafted a law that encourages Bible classes in public schools and persuaded at least 10 state legislatures to introduce versions of it this year. Georgia and Arkansas recently passed bills that are awaiting their governors’ signatures.

Among the powerful fans of these public-school Bible classes: President Trump.

“Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible,” Trump tweeted in January. “Starting to make a turn back? Great!”

Trump is illiterate, so his opinion on the subject is worthless.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonpartisan advocacy group organizing opposition to the state laws, takes a dark view of Project Blitz. The organization coordinated a statement signed by numerous religious groups that oppose Project Blitz’s efforts — including the Union for Reform Judaism, the Hindu American Foundation, Muslim Advocates, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church.

Leave religious proselytizing to the professionals.

At least one judge is fast-tracking.

Very big. Overarching q for me has been whether judges would respond to Trump’s unprecedented stonewalling tactics by speeding things up. At least one is. https://t.co/byasjDEgXD

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 9, 2019

CNN reports:

Congress and Donald Trump’s fight over his financial records is now on the fast track.

Judge Amit Mehta plans next week to weigh the major legal issues raised in President Donald Trump’s challenge of a congressional subpoena for his accounting firm’s records, according to an order issued Thursday — putting the case on an even faster track than it previously looked to be.

Congress has subpoenaed Trump and his business’ accounting records from the firm Mazars USA, and Trump’s personal legal team sued to stop the records from being turned over.

A hearing is now scheduled for May 14.

Will he have time to incite murder again before the heavy hand descends on his shoulder?

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1126464067873452032

I’m not tearing up, you’re tearing up.

Let’s find out more about these here United Constitutional Patriots.

CNN a couple of weeks ago:

They’d been keeping watch near the border for weeks, drawing little notice as they shared live videos from their desert outpost.

But after posting videos last week showing armed men wearing military fatigues detaining migrants who just crossed the border into New Mexico, a militia group known as the United Constitutional Patriots now finds itself under fire.

State authorities in New Mexico have condemned the group. The American Civil Liberties Union accuses the militia of kidnapping migrants. And now a leader of the group is facing charges of illegal weapons and ammunition possession brought by the FBI.

Hey what’s a little private army or two among friends? Especially when they’re patriots?

It’s between 12 and 20 people. Trivial, in one sense, but then again, it doesn’t take many. Timothy McVeigh got a lot done all by himself.

Videos shared on the United Constitutional Patriots New Mexico Border Ops Facebook page purport to show members of the group detaining migrants, including families with children, who have just crossed the border.

They show people often in full military fatigues, with handguns strapped to their sides, wearing gloves and black masks. Armed men order migrants to stop, force them to sit on the ground and then apparently call Border Patrol to pick them up. At least two videos posted on the group’s Facebook page depict a man in fatigues verbally identifying himself as “Border Patrol” as he stops a group of migrants.

New Mexico’s attorney general told CNN that an armed group had detained nearly 300 people near the border.

What I’m saying – it doesn’t take many. They dress up to look official and hey presto, their victims think they’re official (and wouldn’t much want to resist heavily armed men even if they’re not official).

We need a break from the horror of watching a president of the US laughing gleefully at the recommendation to shoot immigrants at the border, so how about we reminisce about the days of Gamergate:

Most women who were working in or around the video games industry in late 2014 know exactly who Benjamin is. He was one of the more vocal figureheads of Gamergate, an online “movement” that began when an aggrieved ex-boyfriend spread malicious gossip about his game-developer ex-girlfriend. It metamorphosed into a coordinated harassment campaign against a huge number of women, under the smokescreen of anti-censorship and concern over ethics. It is now impossible not to see Gamergate as a foreshadowing of a disease that has since engulfed political and public life.

But long before Gamergate – three years before to be exact – there was Elevatorgate, which was another such foreshadowing.

What people like Benjamin want, with his disgusting speculation on whether female politicians are rape-worthy, is to bring the rank misogyny of the worst online spaces into public dialogue. It is Trumpian trolling transferred into British political life. People like Benjamin believe in a form of consequenceless free speech that dictates that if women wish to exist publicly, create things or have an opinion, they should expect all the harassment and degrading commentary and ceaseless mean-spirited scrutiny that will inevitably follow. This was the message of Gamergate, back in 2014.

And of Elevatorgate back in 2011.

For many women this abuse got bad enough to get the police involved. This largely turned out to be pointless, because the police’s advice to victims of online harassment essentially amounted to “why don’t you stay off the internet?”, as if the internet were some parallel universe that had no bearing on real life.

This kind of rhetoric is just as prevalent in the real world: on the streets outside Westminster, in politics, behind presidential pulpits, in Charlottesville. So, thanks for that, law enforcement. Perhaps it might have been an idea to hold people responsible for their targeted, sometimes violent harassment or hate speech, rather than making it the victim’s responsibility to avoid looking at it. Instead people like Benjamin, who established themselves as anti-feminist mouthpieces in 2014, have forged alliances with other alt-right agitators – including Milo Yiannopoulos, who recently announced he will be joining Benjamin on the campaign trail – and are now speaking at Brexit rallies and running as an MEP for Ukip.

…

I wonder sometimes what could have happened if people had properly listened to the women subjected to the worst of the Gamergate movement, instead of writing infuriating, prevaricating think-pieces gamely digging for legitimate grievances within the mountain of straightforward gendered harassment. Instead it took Trump’s election two years later, led by some of the exact same forces (including Steve Bannon and his coterie of alt-right Breitbart shock jocks), to prompt the tech platforms and wider society to notice that something very bad was going on and that online discourse was definitely enabling it.

If the women of the games industry had been listened to more closely in 2014, would it have taken five more years before toxic bullshitters such as Alex Jones and Yiannopoulos were banished from Twitter and Facebook? Would it have taken so long for online hate speech to become a prosecutable offence? Might white supremacy have spread so easily online, along with misogyny? Would an anti-feminist YouTuber have gained enough of a platform to be running for the European parliament?

Or if the women of the skepticism-atheism industry had been listened to more closely in 2011, would it have taken eight more years before toxic bullshitters such as Jones and Yiannopoulos were taken seriously? Probably, but they weren’t, so here we are.