One more Guardian piece on Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, this one from a month ago:

Ukip is expected to choose a controversial YouTube activist, who has been accused of triggering rape threats against a Labour MP, as a candidate if Britain takes part in the European elections, it has emerged.

A party selection process this weekend is likely to confirm the candidacy of Carl Benjamin, a self-styled free speech activist who has been banned from Twitter and some other platforms because of his views, Ukip sources said.

Carl Benjamin is not a “free speech activist.” That’s just a screen. It’s not “free speech activism” to spew misogynist venom at women and xenophobic venom at pesky foreigners. It’s just spewing venom.

Benjamin, who calls himself Sargon of Akkad after the ruler of a Mesopotamian empire, first became known for his anti-feminist commentary, and has also expressed controversial opinions on immigration, race and other issues.

In 2016 he tweeted “I wouldn’t even rape you” to the Labour MP Jess Phillips, in a message featuring the tag #feminismiscancer. Phillips said she subsequently received 600 rape threats.

Benjamin, who is among a trio of social media-based activists who joined Ukip last year, has previously used racially charged language, accusing alt-right critics during one live web interview of “acting like a bunch of niggers”. He added: “You think white people act like this? White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another.”

Not free speech activism. Just common or garden shit-talking, bullying, race-baiting, bullying. Not free speech activism and not classical liberalism, either.

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on A history of oppressing a marginalized group.

Which of the following would most likely have a genuine claim of being oppressed?

a) A male-bodied, female-identifying person being told that, no, you cannot take a role of rape counselor to women and girls at this rape crisis centre. Women and girls tend not to want to share the most intimate details of their abuse with any stranger, but more-so with a male-bodied stranger. They are also understandably likely have a fear of male-bodied people, but fear and trust do not tend to go hand-in-hand, and a counselor must have the trust of the person being counseled in order to be effective.

b) Women and girls being told that, yes, they must accept a male-bodied, female-identifying person as their rape counselor at this rape crisis centre. It doesn’t matter that they’re unwilling to share intimate details of their abuse with a male-bodied stranger, and may not trust a male-bodied counselor sufficiently to be able to recieve effective counseling, because that attitude is just bigotry and genital hang-ups; they are the problem, not the male-bodied person wanting to counsel them when they’re at their most vulnerable.

Same question.

a) A male-bodied, female-identifying person being told that, no, you do not qualify for a place at this refuge for women suffering domestic abuse. There is a strict no men policy in place here because the women we shelter are, in general, scared to be in close proximity to men and this refuge is a safe-space for abused women.

b) Women fleeing domestic abuse being told that they must share this shelter with male-bodied people despite being scared to be in close proximity to men, and if they don’t accept that condition they must go elsewhere.

Karellen, your initial post equated trans people with women and with people of colour, but there is no equivalence between trans people and the latter two groups. Both women and people of colour are biologically and physically women and/or people of colour. Their status as women or people of colour are undeniable, well-defined and provable facts. A persons’ sex or colour is clearly identifiable at birth and is neither reliant on nor changeable by an individual’s sense of self. Transgender is solely a personal, psychological phenomenon, its existence being totally reliant on the individual’s sense of self and liable to change as the individual’s sense of self changes over time.

To conflate transgender people with women and with people of colour is a disingenuous tactic in the same vein as the conflation of transgender and intersex by the use of ‘assigned at birth’. It is only a superficially convincing argument, one that falls apart as soon as one gives it more than superficial thought.

Just as with religion, there’s a very good reason why trans activists do not welcome discussion and debate over their claims, demanding straightforward compliance instead, and that reason is that the claims tend not to stand up to scrutiny.

Last June the Guardian reported that Ukip had welcomed a trio of Twitter trolls, Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) being one.

Ukip has allowed a trio of social media activists linked to the “alt-right” to join the party.

The arrival of Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan – better known to YouTube viewers as Count Dankula – and Carl Benjamin, who posts videos as Sargon of Akkad, will alarm some senior Ukip members already concerned at the struggling party’s direction under Gerard Batten.

…

All three are vocal on social media, with large followings and often controversial views. Watson, who has 875,000 Twitter followers, is a senior editor at Infowars, the US-based website that deals partly in conspiracy theories, such as arguing that the Sandy Hook primary school shooting was a hoax.

Watson describes himself as a “classical liberal”, but mainly offers posts condemning immigration and Islam, and seeking to bait leftwingers.

“Classical liberal” in the sense of xenophobic and bullying; ok.

A spokesman for the group Hope Not Hate, which monitors far-right groups among others said: “There are attempts afoot to forge an alliance between extreme figures who have made their names online, those involved in electoral politics, and those out on the streets, around an anti-Muslim and pro- ‘free speech’ agenda.

“In following the path he’s chosen, Batten is leading Ukip down a dangerous route, and the acceptance of figures such as Watson is further evidence of this.”

Oh don’t worry, they’re classical liberals.

Twitter troll hits the big time – Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad is a Ukipper.

A leading Ukip candidate for the European elections argued that feminism was responsible for a rise in the number of men carrying out mass murders, because the killers felt disenfranchised and “out of options”, it has emerged.

Carl Benjamin, a social media activist who previously tweeted “I wouldn’t even rape you” to the Labour MP Jess Phillips, argued in a now-deleted YouTube video that feminism had caused male mental health to deteriorate, prompting more mass killings.

“This is what feminism has wrought – a generation of men who do not know what to do, who are being demonised for what they are,” said Benjamin, who uses the name Sargon of Akkad on social media.

“Before your stupid social justice feminist bullshit, it didn’t happen on this scale. It’s crazy – this is a disease of the modern age,” Benjamin said in the 2014 video, recorded after the murder of six people in California that year by a 22-year-old man who said the killings were a response to women rejecting him sexually.

“You are responsible for perpetuating it, by disenfranchising these poor fucking guys who don’t have any options left,” Benjamin said.

Benjamin is second on Ukip’s regional list for MEP candidates in the south-west of England should next month’s European parliament elections take place in the UK.

He was among two candidates paraded by Ukip’s leader, Gerard Batten, at a fractious press conference last Thursday, at which Benjamin responded angrily to journalists’ questions about the tweet to Phillips, saying he was being accused of “crimes against political correctness”. Phillips has said she received 600 rape threats after Benjamin’s tweet.

Oh yes, it’s just crazy PoLitical CorRectness to think men shouldn’t use social media to bully women.

“The question you and all of your stupid fucking feminist cultists need to be asking is, why are these men becoming misogynists in the first place? What is this feminist-run society doing to them that is causing them to go insane?” he says.

He adds: “When someone takes the option of absolute, insanely last resort, you have to wonder what kind of system is producing them. And I tell you what, Laci, it is a fucking feminist system that’s doing this.”

The Guardian has asked Ukip to comment.

Mob boss Trump and his mob boss “company” are suing Representative Elijah Cummings for daring to investigate the mob boss’s activities.

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization are suing Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to block a subpoena for years of financial records from several Trump entities.

The lawyers filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying the subpoena for records from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, “lacks any legitimate legislative purpose, is an abuse of power, and is just another example of overreach by the president’s political opponents.”

It doesn’t need a “legitimate legislative purpose,” because the goal is oversight. It’s right there in the name of the committee. If there’s any president who has ever needed oversight it’s Donald Mob Boss Trump.

“We will not allow congressional presidential harassment to go unanswered,” Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said in a statement. “Harassment” is a phrase Trump often uses to attack his critics in Congress.

The lawsuit argues that House Democrats have “declared an all-out political war against President Donald J. Trump” and that “subpoenas are the weapon of their choice.” It goes on to say Democrats are “obsessed” with finding something that could “damage the president politically.”

That’s a lawsuit? It sounds like Trump’s Twitter garbage, not a lawsuit. Cummings says the same thing.

Cummings said in a statement Monday afternoon that Trump “has a long history of trying to use baseless lawsuits to attack his adversaries, but there is simply no valid legal basis to interfere with this duly authorized subpoena from Congress.”

“This complaint reads more like political talking points than a reasoned legal brief, and it contains a litany of inaccurate information,” he continued. “The White House is engaged in unprecedented stonewalling on all fronts, and they have refused to produce a single document or witness to the Oversight Committee during this entire year.”

Presidential harassment!

One of the men on Trump’s Bros To Maybe Hire Possibly lists has left a trail of sexist contempt for women. Now there’s a surprise!

One of President Donald Trump’s picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board has written that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or beer vending at men’s college basketball games, asking if there was any area in life “where men can take vacation from women.”

Stephen Moore, an economic commentator and former Trump campaign adviser, made those and similar comments in several columns reviewed by CNN’s KFile that were published on the website of the conservative National Review magazine in 2001, twice in 2002 and 2003.

There’s conservative, and then there’s casually misogynist. The two aren’t necessarily the same. Conservatives don’t have to express contempt for women as a condition of membership.

In a 2000 column, Moore complained about his wife voting for Democrats, writing, “Women are sooo malleable! No wonder there’s a gender gap.” In another column in 2000, Moore criticized female athletes advocating for pay equality, writing that they wanted “equal pay for inferior work.”

He says he was joking. Hurr hurr.

The columns are attracting renewed attention as his prior views and statements face scrutiny ahead of what could be a contentious confirmation process to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Trump said in March he intends to nominate Moore to the position, but Moore has not officially been nominated yet.

The resurfaced comments come as Trump’s other pick for a seat on Fed board, Herman Cain, faces scrutiny over allegations of sexual harassment that ended his 2012 presidential campaign.

It’s almost as if Trump prefers sexist men.

Now there’s a compelling argument.

pic.twitter.com/MmTd4JCUsU

— Rebecca Watson (@rebeccawatson) April 22, 2019

Oh dear, I thought that we “cis” people were not at fault for being “cis”; I thought it was just a fact about us, not a condemnation. How many times have I seen “Cis just means identifying with your assigned sex, that’s all it means”? Many. Many many. I’ve seen it a lot because I’ve seen a lot of conversations about the way “cis” is used as a pejorative, like “racist” or “misogynist”; orthodoxy-policers always rush to say no no no no it’s not a pejorative at all, it just means “not trans.”

Maybe there was a memo? Apparently that’s not the orthodoxy any more.

“Cis”, like “white” or “straight”, describes a privileged group with a history of oppressing a marginalized group.

Sometimes the marginalized will use the term in frustration: “White BS” “Cis nonsense”.

If you take it personally & get defensive, you need to ask yourself why.

— Amanda Jette Knox (@MavenOfMayhem) April 20, 2019

So now people who are not trans have a history of oppressing trans people? How? How do we oppress trans people? By not being trans? But we can’t help that, after all. There are probably lots of people in the world – “cis” people – who’ve never so much as heard of trans people, so how do they oppress them?

Needless to say, Amanda Jette Knox doesn’t explain.

If you get upset at “cis” sometimes being used negatively, maybe you don’t understand what’s at stake or what trans people have endured. You don’t know what micro-aggressions feel like or how often they occur.

Or maybe you’re just a bigot and you don’t want to admit it.

— Amanda Jette Knox (@MavenOfMayhem) April 20, 2019

Yeah, not explanatory. I am none the wiser as to how I, for instance, oppress Morgane Oger, for instance, simply by being cis.

Maybe further enlightenment will be forthcoming.

Robert Reich asks how can we make sure Trump doesn’t get re-elected.

Most Americans hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40% who have held tight to Trump regardless.

So how to reach the 11% or 12% who may decide the outcome?

Reveal his moral loathsomeness.

Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.

I don’t. Abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights have nothing to do with real morality – they’re targets of fake, religious morality, which is all too often profoundly immoral. I don’t shy away from talking about morality, and I’ve harped on the pervasive immorality of Trump to the point of nausea.

Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it. Trump enlists others to lie. He lies to his staff.

Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He yells at them. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

He acts like a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

This is a portrait of a morally bankrupt man.

And there’s so much more. He’s cruel. He’s mean. He’s a bully. He enriched himself by cheating thousands of people, from workers and contractors to tenants in his father’s and his apartment buildings. He insults people in public. He mocks people in public. He punched his kid to the floor in front of the kid’s friends. He grabs women by the crotch.

The issue of Trump and morality came up in a back and forth between Giuliani and Jake Tapper.

“There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians,” Rudy Giuliani tells @jaketapper. #CNNSOTU https://t.co/Fe78m3aDWq pic.twitter.com/wfcU38vTWX

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 21, 2019

Giuliani said there’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians, and Tapper pressed him on it. At 2:00 Tapper says “But you say there’s nothing wrong with doing that – ” and Giulian interjects “There’s no crime!” Tapper says “I’m not talking about crime, I’m talking about ethics, morality” while Giuliani talks over him “You’re talking about morality?!” There’s a tiny pause and then Tapper says “Yeah.” As in, “Yeah, of course.” It’s a nice moment. There’s an unspoken “Yeah, of course, and why aren’t you?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt have occasion to say it again: Trump is morbidly interesting in the thoroughness of his bad. It’s interesting in a sick way that there is nothing redeeming about him. I’ve never known anyone like that in real life (and I don’t have any ambitions to, either). He’s not amusing, he’s not a good talker, he’s not charming, he’s not clever, he’s not informative…nothing. There’s nothing but rot from top to bottom.

The donations are rolling in.

The devastating fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris led to an immediate outpouring of donations and an ambitious pledge by the French president to rebuild within five years. But a continent away, the blaze also spurred more than $1.8 million in donations to rebuild three historically black churches burned in suspected hate crimes in Louisiana.

The fires at the three churches in St. Landry Parish occurred over 10 days beginning at the end of March. Authorities said they were deliberately set and have arrested a suspect.

As of [last] Sunday, a GoFundMe campaign seeking donations for the churches had raised only about $50,000. By Thursday morning, donations had soared to more than $1.8 million. The money is to be distributed equally among the three churches, which were all a century old.

The churches are small and not ornate, so $600 k each should be a real help.

In the wake of pledges to rebuild Notre Dame, the GoFundMe campaign was shared widely on social media by prominent figures like Hillary Clinton, journalists such as CNN’s Jake Tapper and Yashar Ali, and various celebrities who pledged to match donations.

The first of the fires was reported on March 26 at St. Mary Baptist Church, the next on April 2 at Greater Union Baptist Church and the third on April 4 at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church. There were no reported injuries at any of the fires.

Police later arrested Holden Matthews, 21, the son of a deputy sheriff, and he faces hate crime and arson charges.

“Redemption” is not over yet.

Updating to add: the sum now is $2,155,640.

Morgane Oger continues to assert that it’s feminist women’s fault that Jessica (formerly Jonathan) Yaniv predated on young girls.

Amy hamm incites hatred against trans women because of who we are. Maybe she didn't get the memo, so I'll say it more explicitly: She and @FeministCurrent enabled Yaniv, creating social cover by inciting repulsive hatred instead of researching the facts and reporting. #DoYourJob https://t.co/orpUBQrLve

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) April 20, 2019

The reason Yaniv had cover was the methods used by TERFs

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) April 21, 2019

Two Feminist Current authors have been banned from Twitter over their anti-transgender campaigns.

There is no place on social media for supremacists.

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) April 21, 2019

I remain fascinated by Sarah Sanders’s intransigence. There is something morbidly fascinating, at least to me, in that kind of determination to continue being evil and never relent.

After admitting to investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that she delivered a false statement from the White House podium, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, defended herself in Trumpian fashion on Friday morning. She counterattacked.

It’s like Morgane Oger, blaming Meghan Murphy and other feminists for the predatory acts of Jonathan Yaniv. “I’m not the shameless liar, you’re the shameless liar!”

Asked on “Good Morning America” if the report had damaged her credibility, Ms. Sanders responded that she had made the statement in the heat of the moment, and that it was not “a scripted talking point.”

But then she added, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a robot like the Democrat Party that went out for two and a half years and repeated time and time again that there was definitely Russian collusion between the president and his campaign.”

Seattle on a bright spring afternoon.

https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/1119706794840948736

Just a month ago, when the Vancouver City Council voted to withdraw future funding from Vancouver Rape Relief, Morgane Oger was one of those leading the charge.

The defunding is the latest flashpoint in an ongoing struggle between transgender activists and feminist organizations who maintain that female-born and male-born women should remain distinct groups.

One of the figures leading the defunding charge against Vancouver Rape Relief was Morgane Oger, a longstanding transgender advocate and vice president of the B.C. NDP.

In comments before a March 13 city committee meeting, Oger called Vancouver Rape Relief “noncompliant with Canadian law” and guilty of “systematic, consistent misbehaviour.” She also said that it is the last B.C. women’s shelter to continue denying services to the trans community.

Biting hands that feed it:
Tax-funded @VanRapeRelief pushes prejudice in an indignant online rant about discrimination despite a one-year grace period to catch up to Canada's discrimination laws by @CityofVancouver.#vanpoli #inclusion #bcpoli https://t.co/btX2RQo7ZQ

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) March 17, 2019

That’s Morgane Oger accusing VRR of “pushing prejudice” because they think men who identify as women are not women in the same sense that women are.

“I can open any organization I want and discriminate against the people I don’t like … but when I start to bring taxpayer funding into this it makes this entire room responsible for my actions,” she said.

That was Oger a month ago, rejoicing at getting educational funding taken away from a women’s anti-rape organization.

Today Oger is talking about something else.

People in marginalized communities are extremely sensitive to the misbehaviour of their own, especially when it reinforces prejudice. The instinct to band together and be unyielding is strong, and I reject the prejudice that surrounds this story. Sometimes we resist exposing difficult conversations to the outside. Jessica Yaniv is forcing such an awful conversation.

None of the allegations I write about today have been proven or ruled on by a court. This article is based entirely on eyewitness accounts, which are always highly subjective.

I wish it wasn’t a transgender person or someone saying they are part of the LGBTQ+ community who has been doing what Jessica Yaniv has reportedly been doing for years – as far back as 2013.

We then get a couple of paragraphs explaining, or insisting, that what one person does must not be seen as saying anything about an identity that one person shares with others. Once we’ve underlined that a few times…

But the things that people have told me Jessica Yaniv has done to them are awful and can’t be swept out of our consciousness. Awful things have been reported and need to be taken seriously.

What things? Oger never says. Maybe that’s for legal reasons; maybe it’s fair enough to issue a warning without going into specifics. On the other hand there are public sources for some of what Yaniv has done, so surely Oger could cite those? There’s not a word about “wax” in the whole piece, when one of Yaniv’s conspicuous little games was calling up women who ran small businesses yanking women’s hairs out so that he could sue them when they politely declined to wax him. Maybe Oger thinks that’s a perfectly fine thing to do.

Some time after that first conversation I learned more about the specifics of Yaniv’s actions and her history and actions. In the only other conversation with her when she called me at my Trans Alliance Society number in early 2019 I advised her that she did not seem to me to be the appropriatd person to fight for trans women’s rights to services for women – on the basis of her documented past history.

With the help of other women who pointed the way in recent months, I tracked down and heard witnesses with first-person accounts of Jessica’s online behaviour spanning 2013 to 2018.

Their stories included reports and evidence of outrageously inappropriate acts, some towards children who are tweens and teens. Some of the material has survived as screenshots, and what I saw shows what strikes me as a pattern of predatory behaviour. I am not in law enforcement or a lawyer but as the mom of kids under 14 I was horrified by what the women told me happened and I believe them.

That’s it. That’s all the information we get. What predatory behavior?

We know what predatory behavior, that is we know some of it. Wanting to show young girls how to insert tampons was one item. No doubt Oger, with inside sources, knows more, but Oger isn’t telling.

I spoke to four women. Three of whom had awful experiences with Jessica Yaniv. All were young women and girls at the time.

They are all adults now. I urged each woman to make a complaint with police on the basis of the things they said happened. I hope this has an effect and with enough police reports there may be a case.

There’s always Vancouver Rape Relief…

That’s about halfway through; almost all of the rest is about saying don’t you dare think of Yaniv as saying anything about other men who identify as women. The concern is all for the trans “community” rather than women and girls.

It was impossible for me to speak about allegations so steeped in transphobia because every transgender person is familiar with the transgender-woman-as-predator model used by hate groups advocating to marginalize us. Without real evidence, this horrible story is simply indistinguishable from the copious hate propaganda that clogs my social media.

People who claim that allegations against Yaniv were public knowledge for years before this post must be deeply frustrated that people who could have helped act were unaware or not listening. I have a simple message for them:

There are ways to bring valid concerns to the attention of the affected community leaders and xenophobic hatred is not the appropriate way to get results. Nobody reached out to anyone I know to express concerns about this person beyond throwing insults and accusations over social media. Next time, instead of passively demonizing people please pick up the phone and call somebody with power or influence.

It’s unlikely public figures are the monsters your social media silo tells you they are. There is no cover under the trans umbrella for predators.

In the future, please consider what these allegations sound like from my community’s side of the fence in the context of our experiences. Perhaps center your fury on the people who prey on transgender women with their alarmist fairy tales that made this incident undetectable from dominantly hateful narrative.

When there is a predator among us, we can’t hear you if you bury your words in hatred and if you don’t reach out.

DARVO much?

Updating to add: now Oger is just plain saying it’s Feminist Current’s fault.

Amy hamm incites hatred against trans women because of who we are. Maybe she didn't get the memo, so I'll say it more explicitly: She and @FeministCurrent enabled Yaniv, creating social cover by inciting repulsive hatred instead of researching the facts and reporting. #DoYourJob https://t.co/orpUBQrLve

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) April 20, 2019

When Jordan met Slavoj:

The event was billed as “the debate of the century”, “The Rumble in the Realm of the Mind”, and it did have the feel of a heavyweight boxing match: Jordan Peterson, local boy, against the slapdash Slovenian Slavoj Žižek, considering “Happiness: Capitalism vs Marxism” in Toronto.

In other words the event was hyped, so as to bring in more gullible punters and thus more cash. Woopeedoo.

The great surprise of this debate turned out to be how much in common the old-school Marxist and the Canadian identity politics refusenik had.

One hated communism. The other hated communism but thought that capitalism possessed inherent contradictions. The first one agreed that capitalism possessed inherent contradictions. And that was basically it. They both wanted the same thing: capitalism with regulation, which is what every sane person wants. The Peterson-Žižek encounter was the ultra-rare case of a debate in 2019 that was perhaps too civil.

Imagine bothering to pay a lot of money for tickets to listen to that.

And they both agreed, could not have agreed more, that it was all the fault of the “academic left”. They seemed to believe that the “academic left”, whoever that might be, was some all-powerful cultural force rather than the impotent shrinking collection of irrelevances it is. If the academic left is all-powerful, they get to indulge in their victimization.

And that was the great irony of the debate: what it comes down to is that they believe they are the victims of a culture of victimization. They play the victim as much as their enemies. It’s all anyone can do at this point.

No bang, much whimper.

Two boorish, woman-hating middle-aged white men meet up to bitch at each other and it's a "meeting of minds". If only they had a fraction of the wit and insight of Mumsnet.https://t.co/dvCF0N2TqD

— Victoria Smith (@glosswitch) April 20, 2019

"She lied about her lie to people who knew she was lying." https://t.co/hCEzAi57OE

— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 20, 2019

“She lied about her lie to people who knew she was lying. That, truly, is pathological lying.”

Jonah Mix has an absolute stemwinder of a piece on the hot fashion of guys lolling around on Twitter explaining how complicated biology is. I stashed a couple of sentences to remember and then I gave up because it was all that good.

It’s so easy to get sucked into this debate, to get that hot indignation in your stomach that comes when a foolish claim is so proudly asserted. And I don’t even have skin in the game — binary or not, my sex will still land me squarely in the “paid more, raped less” category.

That’s the first one I stashed, that second sentence.

The point is, debating “what is a woman, really?” is a luxury, given the facts.

Isn’t it odd that sex was never so complicated before? There was nothing ethereal about biology when it came to allocating the right to vote, or own property, or walk down the street at night without fear. We knew perfectly well what made someone female when that female-ness guaranteed a life of subservience and pain. Only when women began to say no did their bodies become a concept.

That’s the second bit I stashed, and it’s where I stopped stashing because it’s all like that to the end.

So many feminists have made this point, over and over again. I see them say it. I know you read it. Did you listen? If not, why? And why do you always respond when I say it? It seems you do know who has a female body, when it comes to deciding which perspective gets ignored.

Don’t they though.

Sex is such a mystery to you when women want shelters for themselves, meetings for themselves, words for themselves. Pardon me for asking, but is it equally mysterious when you log off Twitter and move over to Pornhub? The true nature of a female body is so complex when you lecture. Does it become simple again when you masturbate? Who does the laundry in your house? Were you somehow able to navigate an inchoate soup of X’s and Y’s to saddle your girlfriend with the dishes?

As a friend said on Twitter, scorching.

As long as pimps, priests, and politicians know what a female body is, I do too. The moment they’re confused — the moment they hesitate, the moment they qualify, the moment they adopt the restraint and caution you demand from the targets of their abuse— then I’ll happily open myself up to ambiguity. Until then, I beg you. Reserve your philosopher’s curiosity, your scientific rigor, for the ten thousand other questions that don’t make a thought experiment out of an atrocity.

Bam.