There was a conversation on violence against women (“domestic abuse”) on Fresh Air yesterday. The subjects were Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises, and Suzanne Dubus, CEO of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center. Guess what: narcissism came into it.

GROSS: I want to bring up narcissism because, Rachel, you mentioned narcissism as being one of the characteristics that a lot of abusers and murderers have. How does narcissism figure into domestic violence?

SNYDER: Narcissism is one of the key components of an abuser. You know, we have, I think, a vision of what an abuser is. Right? Even in – even when you see media reports of domestic violence, the pictures of – that most often accompany those media reports are really dark. You know, even, like, the coloration – they’re, like, gloomy, dark, dangerous; they’re portentous. And people don’t recognize themselves in those pictures because, of course, they have a much larger context of just a single moment.

And so abusers, in fact, are not people with anger problems, generally speaking. They are about power and control over one person or the people in their family. So they tend to be very – they’re often very gregarious. Only about a quarter of the abusers fit that stereotypical definition of someone who is, you know, generally angry. And so the narcissism plays out in the idea that they are owed something – in the idea that they are entitled to their authority, that their partners have to be subservient to them. There’s very often traditional gender dynamics in abusive relationships.

It’s the same thing, really – entitlement and “traditional gender dynamics” that cash out as “I, the man, get whatever I want.” That crap brings narcissism with it.

GROSS: I guess the narcissism probably figures into the coercive control part of the relationship? The wife and the children – these are people who the man can control or thinks he can control, tries to control. He can’t control the world around him, but he can control them. And it seems like that would be – that that would fit a narcissistic personality who wants the world to just revolve around him.

DUBUS: In our works with survivors, we also notice that abusers typically really do feel like their home is their castle and that everything must be adjusted and retrofitted and – to his whim, to his mood, to his needs. And there is, you know, quick and rapid punishment when it’s not. And to me, that is narcissism, when the world revolves around you and everybody better get into their constellation and do what they need to do to support, to prop up, to make him feel better – whatever it is he needs that day.

SNYDER: Yeah. It’s very black-and-white thinking. Right? Like, it’s my way, and this is it.

Very black-and-white and very very very selfish. This idea that you are the sun and everyone else is a mere planet – it’s poison.

I don’t consider Julie Burchill the best of the Julies, but she says good things at (sorry) Spiked:

Paradoxically, redrawing the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate’ in order not to make anyone feel ‘excluded’ actually has the counter-productive effect of literally excluding many groups from both social media and public platforms: ex-Muslims espousing atheism, women querying the rights of the transgendered to play them at sport, and lesbians not attracted to a penis even if it has a frock over it. A whole page of last week’s Sunday Times was entirely composed of items reflecting what I call the Perils Of Inclusivity: ‘Tax expert fired for saying trans women aren’t women’ – ‘Gallery covers up art after complaints by Muslim viewers’ – ‘Anonymous journal lets academics publish and not be damned’. All in aid of preventing hurty feelz!

And now sexual perverts (among whom, on occasion, I happily count myself) are the latest group to demand ‘inclusion’. Please! When I was young, we thought nothing more desirable than being An Outsider – why are the young of today so obsessed with getting a tick on the register, rather than playing hooky? There is a happy place between believing that no one should be excluded on the basis of race, sex or social class, and believing that official validation of every life choice any person freely makes are the same. Someone who likes dressing up in a gimp mask is not Rosa Parks, and I find the increasing lack of ability to differentiate between the two in some quarters highly risible at best and downright insulting at worst.

Too right about the official validation bit. The plaintive cries of “I am valid!” are indeed both hilarious and insulting. What are you, a bus pass? Why do you need “validation” from the world in the first place?

The latest snowflake flutter is ‘Don’t kink-shame me!’. At a Vancouver university last year, a man insisting he was an ‘adult baby’ pestered a university nurse to change his dirty nappy and perved over his repulsed female classmates. A whistle-blowing workplace-safety director was sacked for standing up for the women. In Wolverhampton a few months back, a tattooist calling himself ‘Dr Evil’ was charged with grievous bodily harm after slicing ears and nipples from paying customers. He was reported as having support from ‘the body-modification community’ who set up a petition in his favour.

Say…what? Why were we not told? Does ‘the body-modification community’ get together to validate each other’s plans to body-modify other people?

Consults Google.

It’s true.

A body modification artist known as Dr Evil has been jailed for carrying out ear and nipple removals and splitting a customer’s tongue.

Brendan McCarthy carried out consensual procedures without using anaesthetic.

…

Judge Amjad Nawaz said the body-modification industry was unregulated and McCarthy was only registered as a tattooist and cosmetic piercer.

He said McCarthy “had no qualifications to carry out surgical procedures or to deal with any adverse consequences which could have arisen”.

…

An online petition which attracted 13,000 signatures was set up to support the “knowledgeable, skilful and hygienic” body-piercer, who was refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The BBC quotes one guy who says if he’d known the whole thing wasn’t legal he wouldn’t have had his ear sliced off, because he certainly wasn’t that desperate to have it done.

Back to Burchill:

I’m a broad-minded broad, so I’m not offended by these people – but I do despise them for being so wimpy that they need their kink validated by straight society. When did perverts start being ashamed to be perverts and need to be a community? ‘Community’ used to be such a jolly word, redolent of cheery singing or a nice place to land on the Monopoly board. Now it just means a bunch of whiners whining about stuff.

So I would say this to the youth of today: grab your outsider status and wear it with pride. Don’t demand that society alters to accommodate you, because that’s the way of the wimp. And try to remember that narcissism is not rebellion next time you call yourself ‘genderqueer’ on the occasion of your heterosexual marriage, Miley Cyrus, when so many genuinely queer people are still being murdered for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality all across the world. Don’t wear a crown that’s been paid for with the blood of others.

There should be a line of T shirts with “narcissism is not rebellion” on them in big scarlet letters.

A Twitter thread with much wisdom.

The mad thing is, every feeling or lived experience in "gender dysphoria" can far more readily be explained by the clinical characteristics & traits of many other psych conditions. It's forbidden to speak of this. Through our dysregulated emotions & incessant rumination, >>>

— Hacsi Horvath (@dontkillfrogs) May 4, 2019

There’s a thread reader but I’m just going to knit it all together for ease of reading, because I think it’s that useful.

The mad thing is, every feeling or lived experience in “gender dysphoria” can far more readily be explained by the clinical characteristics & traits of many other psych conditions. It’s forbidden to speak of this.

Through our dysregulated emotions & incessant rumination, we become susceptible to the full range of GD/GID symptoms, which we’re told are unique & special. It’s not unique at all. It’s garden variety identity disturbance & diffusion. The only thing somewhat different is the emphasis on wanting to be the opposite sex. This is a combo of cognitive bias and gaslighting by the trans industry.

Men & women develop GD/GID for completely different reasons, and while many are uncomfortable with their bodies, sex roles etc. they can usually manage all right & even work through their discomfort. It’s not a crisis of “identity” for them, there isn’t a relentless unstoppable drive to “transition.” Until: They learn about transgenderism, see a film, read a magazine article, etc. Suddenly there begins the whole pathological process of rumination, disavowal, idealization and “splitting.” This almost always happens during a time of high stress. It becomes a crisis.

The experience has very close parallels with the emergence of borderline personality disorder, with the difference being that the trans industry harnesses the energy of your disturbed identity to sell us a costume and tell us we’re a real girl/boy now. That’s the gaslighting. Had we seen a film, read a book, however we learned about it, without the accompanying lie that our secret wish will now come true, we would not have taken the bait.

Young or old, if we bite the hook, the clinical progression is similar. It’s just our minds under pressure, and when an impossibility is presented as an option, the tension becomes extreme. It’s iatrogenic (caused by medical industry) & also mediagenic. Meanwhile, all the same processes have been studied intensely for decades, with explicit exception of GD/GID.

Further reading in the final tweet:

…have been studied intensely for decades, with explicit exception of GD/GID.

If anyone is unsure what I'm going on about, consider reading this thread:https://t.co/vzVh64yT31

…and looking at some of the titles, here:https://t.co/mhAHgPV3lS
(feel free to download, too)

— Hacsi Horvath (@dontkillfrogs) May 4, 2019

In short, what we have here is a manufactured “condition” or “identity” or whatever you want to call it. Being trans isn’t a thing, it’s an idea, a thought process, a fantasy, a contagion, a product of incessant rumination. It’s an invention, and not one of the better ones. It’s an idée fixe, and those are usually considered more a hindrance than a help.

It’s not that I think fantasy is always a bad thing. I think it can be quite helpful, as long as it continues to be recognized as fantasy. But not all fantasies are helpful, and the one about being the opposite sex has jumped the tracks into a nightmare. Combine personality disorder with rumination with narcissism with the internet, and what would you expect to come up with?

Via Hell No, We Won’t Go 2:

Asia Bibi has escaped Pakistan and arrived in Canada.

Pakistani government officials did not reveal her destination, or say when she left.

But her lawyer Saif ul Malook told the BBC she had already arrived in Canada, where two of her daughters are understood to have been granted asylum.

Asia Noreen – commonly known as Asia Bibi – was kept at a secret location while arrangements were made for her to leave the country.

The Supreme Court’s quashing of her sentence last October led to violent protests by religious hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws, while more liberal sections of society urged her release.

The thing is, though, you can “support strong blasphemy laws” and still not insist on applying them to people who didn’t commit any blasphemy. You shouldn’t, and no country should have laws against it, any more than it should have laws against saying men are men, but even if you do it still makes no sense to apply it to people who didn’t do anything.

The Guardian took the bait. Eejits.

A production of Don Giovanni opening this weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stars a transgender woman in the title role.

While operas around trans themes are starting to emerge, Tulsa’s take on Mozart’s classic represents the first time a professional opera company in the United States has hired a trans person to sing the lead in a standard work.

But is it the first time a professional opera company in the United States has hired a man to play the male lead in a standard work? Well, no. But if you put it that way how would an opera company in Tulsa, Oklahoma get a story in the Guardian?

Lucia Lucas, the woman charged with playing one of the opera canon’s best-known protagonists, is a rising star. The 38-year-old singer has performed on major stages in Europe and Asia. Next season, she will make her debut with the English National Opera in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. And all this using the dramatic baritone voice with which she launched her international career, before she transitioned, a decade ago.

In other words Lucas has a dramatic baritone voice and will be using it to sing the part of Don Giovanni. As one does.

Opera has long featured non-traditional presentations of gender. For hundreds of years, female singers have been playing young men and boys on stage in so-called “trouser roles”, from Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel to Octavian in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. And then there is the once popular, now defunct tradition of male castrati gushing out florid Handel arias in the upper echelons of the human vocal range.

Yet Lucas says she has encountered prejudice since coming out. “I have had opera administrators say to me, ‘It’s not that we don’t like you. But our public, what would they think?’”

She says attitudes towards trans people have become more open over the past five years, since trans characters have started proliferating in movies and on TV. It’s no accident that she only felt ready to make her transition in 2014. “If I would have come out before my audition for Germany in 2009, they probably wouldn’t have taken me,” she says. “Things have changed a lot since then.”

Quite so, but there’s more than one way to look at that. You can see it as a sudden surge in acceptance of an existing category of people, or you can see it as a proliferating fashion that people are drawn into via Twitter and YouTube.

Tulsa Opera’s Don Giovanni is an expression of that change. “The potential doors that this is now opening for trans singers is a very exciting step forward,” says Matthew Shilvock, the director general of the San Francisco Opera.

Why? What’s exciting about it? What’s even interesting about it?

One of the best experiences of her career so far, Lucas says, was playing Wotan in Die Walküre last autumn in Magdeburg, Germany. She feels a particular affinity for Wagner, and she loved playing the Norse God in a straightforward way.

“There was no extra story about being trans, or a female baritone, or anything like that. It was simply the story done as it is always done, in traditional masculine dress.”

Right. A man playing a male part in “traditional masculine dress.” But we’re supposed to see this as Special and Exciting because the man playing the male part tells us he’s a woman? Still not seeing the excitement here.

A first! Another door thrown open! Another marginalized group represented!

Lucia Lucas makes her debut in Don Giovanni at Tulsa Opera tonight, making her the first trans woman to perform a principal opera role in the US.

Lucia Lucas is a transgender woman who has a baritone voice. And she is about to make her US debut, singing the title role in Mozart‘s Don Giovanni.

First ever trans woman to play a principal man in an opera! And the title role at that!

Artistic director of Tulsa Opera, Tobias Picker said: “Making history, Tulsa Opera presents baritone, Lucia Lucas in her American operatic debut as a transgender woman. Lucia Lucas’ appearance here will mark the first time a trans woman has performed a principal role on the operatic stage in the United States.”

And not only that but it’s kind of trans doubled, if not squared. A trans woman playing a male part…it breaks every taboo there’s ever been. So transgressivothrilling!

This is from last September but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t seen it until just now, though I’m well familiar with South Yorkshire Police’s dedication to scouring out “hate crimes” in places like Norfolk.

In addition to reporting hate crime, please report non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing. Hate will not be tolerated in South Yorkshire. Report it and put a stop to it #HateHurtsSY pic.twitter.com/p2xf6OLoQZ

— SouthYorkshirePolice (@syptweet) September 9, 2018

Hate crime is an incident or crime, which is perceived to be motivated by prejudice or hostility against a person’s race, faith, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity.

So much to question in that. First, hate crime is an incident or crime? A crime can be a crime or an incident? I.e. not a crime, but an incident? But so then how is it a crime? How can it be not a crime and a crime? The tweet clears that right up by saying “in addition to reporting hate crime, please report non-crime hate incidents.”

Then – notice anything missing? It’s the one that’s always missing. Sex. It’s quite all right to insult women, you see. “Gender identity” is protected, “faith” is protected, but sex is not. Women just have to put up with it, including threats as well as insults. Jess Phillips for instance:

Just leaving Westminster and and man ran down the street along side me asking me about why Carl Benjamin shouldn't be able to joke about my rape. Shouting "I pay your wages".

— Jess Phillips (@jessphillips) May 7, 2019

Then – faith? Really? So I can’t talk publicly about the Catholic church’s relentless campaign for forced pregnancy? I can’t ask why women are required to “cover up” while men are not? I can’t object to the arrest of an artist in Poland for having posters of “the Virgin” Mary with a rainbow banner wrapped around her head?

Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against cities campaigning against bullying and harassment. I think bullying and harassment should go all the way away.

But the particulars matter.

The UN has a warning:

THE BONDS THAT hold nature together may be at risk of unraveling from deforestation, overfishing, development, and other human activities, a landmark United Nations report warns. Thanks to human pressures, one million species may be pushed to extinction in the next few years, with serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on Earth.

“The evidence is crystal clear: Nature is in trouble. Therefore we are in trouble,” said Sandra Díaz, one of the co-chairs of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. A 40-page “Summary for Policy Makers” of the forthcoming full report (expected to exceed 1,500 pages) was released May 6 in Paris.

Based on a review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources and compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries, the global report is the first comprehensive look in 15 years at the state of the planet’s biodiversity. This report includes, for the first time, indigenous and local knowledge as well as scientific studies. The authors say they found overwhelming evidence that human activities are behind nature’s decline. They ranked the major drivers of species decline as land conversion, including deforestation; overfishing; bush meat hunting and poaching; climate change; pollution; and invasive alien species.

The Post reports:

More than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he holds.

The statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.

The statement is on Medium so let’s read it:

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

Multiple felony charges.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

They give details on his efforts to fire Mueller and to get Sessions to reverse his recusal.

All of this conduct — trying to control and impede the investigation against the President by leveraging his authority over others — is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions.

And, he did some of it right in front of us, while we watched.

The Special Counsel’s report establishes that the President tried to influence the decisions of both Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements; other such behavior was done via private messages through private attorneys, such as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani’s message to Cohen’s lawyer that Cohen should “[s]leep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.”

Of course, these aren’t the only acts of potential obstruction detailed by the Special Counsel. It would be well within the purview of normal prosecutorial judgment also to charge other acts detailed in the report.

We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment. Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. In our system, every accused person is presumed innocent and it is always the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.

He might as well have been carrying a sign saying “I’m doing my best to obstruct justice.”

As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk. We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.

If you are a former federal prosecutor and would like to add your name below, click here. Protect Democracy will update this list daily with new signatories.

Powerful stuff. Now if only there were something we could do about it.

What happens when one non-material “identity” competes with another non-material “identity”? Do they stare at each other in blank confusion? Do they start competing to see who can make the most accusations of ___phobia?

Vice asked some otherkin in 2016:

But something that is common within the otherkin community are struggles with mental health. “A lot of otherkin who don’t struggle with mental illness are older and usually have well established identities by this point. They’re aware of who they are and don’t necessarily have to talk about it online anymore.”

Ooh. What would that be like? Having an identity and not talking about it online anymore? That just sounds weird, man.

This is true for 17-year-old Miranda, who is a member of Riviera’s Facebook group and identifies as a dog. “I’m constantly thinking about [my identity]. Most animals share common features, making it harder for me to see who I really am,” she says. “As I learn and experience more, I am hoping I will find clarity to my true self.”

The debate between transgenderism and otherkin is one area Miranda would like to see evolve. “It seems that many people of the transgender community think that otherkin is a mock version of transgenderism and are very hateful of it,” she says. “This is not the case for us of course, as many of us are in the LGBT+ community.”

Oh no – they’re otherkinphobic?

Riviera, who is both otherkin and transgender, says the “raging debate where people think that otherkin are appropriating transgenderism is something that I find a little bit frustrating being trans myself.

“When much of the world is actively hostile, if not outright murderous toward you, it stops mattering if someone is suicide baiting you for being trans or for being otherkin—the result is the same.”

But who is appropriating whom? That’s the key question. Let’s ask this male lesbian over here what he thinks.

It’s a big No on the tax returns.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday told House Democrats he would not furnish President Trump’s tax returns despite their legal request, the latest move by Trump administration officials to shield the president from congressional investigations.

The latest move by Trump administration officials to shield the corrupt thieving cheating lying president from congressional investigations.

Mnuchin added that requests from Congress “must serve a legitimate legislative purpose” and that the request from Democrats does not.

A number of legal experts have said it would be unprecedented for Mnuchin to refuse to turn over the tax returns, as the power for lawmakers to seek the returns is written explicitly in a 1924 law.

In other words administration hacks are just making it up as they go along while Barr smirks in approval.

The chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have had the authority since 1924 to obtain the tax returns of any American, and the law stipulates that the Treasury secretary “shall furnish” the information once it is requested. This law was put in place during the Harding administration because of financial improprieties that stemmed from the Teapot Dome scandal.

And Trump’s financial improprieties (that is to say, crimes) are being concealed and protected by Trump’s gang of crooks in defiance of that law.