A couple of comments on Jennifer Block’s Facebook post reporting and denouncing the removal of her hit-piece on Jen Gunter:

Maya Shetreat You hit a nerve because you’re taking aim at the misogyny of medicine and of patriarchy in general. How dare you imply women are capable of making educated decisions on their own?! You are describing a paradigm that is deeply threatening to the establishment.

It doesn’t feel good when the haters swarm, but know it’s because what you’re saying is deeply important and resonates with many people. Otherwise they’d ignore you…

Jennifer Lang Maya Shetreat It’s nice to see you here. I KNOW you understand what happens when the dominant narrative gets challenged in a poignant and insightful way. Grateful to have your voice and wisdom here.

Jennifer Lang was cited by Block in the hit piece because she’d written an open letter to Gunter on Facebook hitting the same themes.

All these catch-phrases – patriarchy, women are capable, describing a paradigm, the establishment, the dominant narrative – they can reflect a truth but they can also be used as tokens, symbols, substitutes for thought. It can be true that some doctors are too dismissive of women’s concerns and that Jen Gunter is pretty much the worst example of that that Block could have come up with.

Maya Shetreat Also, can you imagine in a million years someone saying that men should only listen to the medical experts, because they will otherwise be misled by potentially non-scientific options? 😒

Uh…yes? That is, if she means “can you imagine in a million years someone saying that men should pay attention to medical professionals on medical issues rather than Gwyneth Paltrow or Doctor Oz,” then yes, I can easily imagine that, in under a second.

News from Pakistan:

A ten-year-old girl in rural Pakistan was stoned to death by family members after a tribal council decided she had been planning to elope, according to local reports.

Gul Sama, a resident of the village of Shahi Makan, in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, was killed on November 22. Local activists and residents were threatened with death by the tribal council, or jirga, if they spoke about it. However, social media posts showing the girl’s grave went viral with activists calling for justice. The police stepped have arrested the dead girl’s parents and Mushtaq Laghari, a cleric who conducted the funeral in secret.

“Her face and head were unrecognisable and she was brutally killed,” a resident of the village said.

Ten.years.old.

Trump is on his way to London to embarrass us and disgust everyone else some more. He told some more lies before getting on the plane.

Speaking to reporters before he left for London, Trump falsely claimed the Ukrainian president had cleared him of wrongdoing in a recent interview with Time magazine.

“The Ukrainian president came out and said very strongly that President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. That should be case over,” Trump told reporters. “But it will never end it because [Democrats] want to do what they want to do.”

In reality, Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticized Trump for holding up Ukraine’s military assistance and said that the US president had harmed his country’s economic propsects by calling it corrupt.

“Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing,” Zelenskiy told Time magazine. “But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”

That doesn’t sound much like ” The Ukrainian president came out and said very strongly that President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” does it.

No.

How does the word “anti-vaxxer” marginalize women specifically? There are plenty of male anti-vaxxers, and there’s nothing sex-specific about being an anti-vaxxer, so I’ll thank her not to rope us into her bullshit.

But Steelclaws said it better.

Updating to add:

Hmm.

Is it simplistic or just simple?

Sure, “there isn’t one” is simple, and easy to say, and kind of bare bones – indeed boring, but that’s not really much of a reason to abandon atheism for christianity is it? Baroque complication may be more fun but that doesn’t make it true.

I don’t know. There’s too much empty space. Everything is way too far apart. None of it is cozy or manageable enough to make the human idea of a “God” at all believable. It even smells weird in space – a burnt metal sort of smell. That’s simplistic, if you like.

Again with this crap.

No, they can’t, because trans women are male people, so they can’t be sisters so we can’t find “sisterhood” with them. Men are not our sisters. That’s not some terrible thing, it’s just reality. White people shouldn’t run around flapping their hands and trying to force people of color to accept us as fellow people of color because we’re not. Same with women.

What ever happened to “respect boundaries”? Wasn’t that a thing for awhile?

You what now?

So the problem is that boardmembers of a women’s center want the women’s center to be for women?

That is, board members of a woman’s center don’t want to be “inclusive” of men, because it’s a women’s center. Morgane Oger finds this scandalous. If he were a woman maybe he would understand why women want to be able to organize and meet as women without having to be “inclusive” of men all the time, even men who tell us they are women trapped in male bodies.

Updating to add more information via a comment by Naif:

As a founding member of the Nelson Women’s Centre with a long history of involvement as both a volunteer and board member, I feel compelled to present the other side of this story.

When the leadership of the centre decided to change its mandate to include all genders, they contravened the West Kootenay Women’s Association’s constitution that for 46 years has guided an organization for women, serving the needs of women in the community.

At the 2018 annual general meeting, a resolution to include all genders in the membership of the society was discussed. The resolution did not receive sufficient votes to pass. Yet the leadership of the centre ignored this result and proceeded as if the resolution had passed.

The decision by the leadership to change this 46-year-old mandate without proper procedures and without respecting the membership resulted in disagreement and confusion. Questioning or challenging the new direction became defined as “bullying.” But the “bullying” referred to was not one-sided, as the article implies.

Women who’ve been long-term volunteers, former board members and supporters of the women’s centre have been “bullied” by being banned from the centre and some threatened with legal action if they come to the centre. So who is bullying whom?

Where does Goop come in?

Here, for one:

A mouthpiece for conventional obstetrics and gynecology, eh? As opposed to being a mouthpiece for Goop?

Jennifer Block is rallying her troops on Facebook.

Hey all, yes, my piece got pulled. You can still read it in the archive (see link in comment) and read The Daily Beast’s take on what happened (also in comment). It’s been a wild Thanksgiving! I need to say more and figure out in what forum. Meanwhile, Dr. Gunter has blocked me on Twitter (@writingblock if you want to follow me, though be prepared!) I managed to stay present, connecting with people in the real world for much of the holiday, and just this evening posted some responses to the criticism (some reasonable) and unfounded accusations. I guess I hit a nerve. Anyway, thanks for being here.

Uh huh the old “I hit a nerve” defense. Well, yes, it is true that telling a lot of hostile lies about a person is likely to hit a nerve, but that by itself does not make the lies true or valuable.

And now we can combine our two themes of the morning.

Some further responses from Jen Gunter:

Jennifer Block is angry that Scientific American removed her bad hit-piece on Jen Gunter.

Of course it’s not “anti-science to acknowledge people’s lived experience,” whatever that may mean, but it is anti-science to substitute “lived experience” for properly conducted research,

Wellllll no. Gunter’s “public rhetoric” is about substantive issues around quack remedies and “wellness” and Block’s piece made claims about those substantive issues.

Yes this is definitely an important hill to die on – the freedom to call women you don’t like “evil little cunt.” Our ability to reason and argue and discuss will wither and die without that freedom! Freedom freedom FREEDOM.

Good. It never should have been posted in the first place, but good that it’s been removed.

Jen Gunter a few hours ago:

The post about me has been removed from @sciam for not meeting editorial standards. Thank you everyone for your support. Half truths, obfuscations, and lies help no person have agency over their body.

Note where the article used to be:

Editor’s note. The post that originally appeared here has been removed because we’ve determined that it doesn’t meet our editorial standards.

Jen Gunter a couple of hours later:

Removing this piece was important not just for me, but for health care. Naturopaths, anti-vaccine doctors, and people who claim they can “balance hormones” with food etc were celebrating my “take down” in @sciam seeing it as proof that they are right.

The acting editor in chief apologized to me by phone this morning and I have accepted his apology.
And so let’s move on to leftovers, puppy and kitten videos, shoes, coffee, wine and, of course, science.

News for New Hampshire:

Transitional Housing Unit Resident on Escape Status

The New Hampshire Department of Corrections announces that a minimum-security resident of the North End Transitional Housing Unit in Concord failed to return home as scheduled on Wednesday, November 27.

Shaun Cook, 41, was placed on “escape” status just after 6 p.m. Wednesday night.

Cook is described as a white transgender female, 5’8”, 179 pounds with brown hair and
brown eyes.

She has a scar on her chin and left cheek. Cook prefers female pronouns and
will often go by the first name, Summer, however, that is not her legal name.

Cook has been imprisoned for several crimes throughout the years. Most recently, she is
serving time for a reckless conduct charge in 2014.

Seen on Twitter:

Not “murdered woman’s body found in freezer” but “woman whose body was found in a freezer was a bitch.”

Women are blamed for their own murders.

Howard Jacobson remembers Clive James:

Clive James never failed to get a joke. Or to go on to make a better one. This wasn’t because he was overly competitive: rather, like Dr Johnson, whom he often quoted, he believed that conversation obliged us to keep the ball in the air. People lacking the grace that is a sense of humour also lacked common sense, he once told Martin Amis. “A sense of humour,” he went on, “is nothing but common-sense dancing.”

…

His practice as a critic, which was to abolish distinctions between high and low (but not between good and bad) was exemplary. The catholicism of his interests made his television columns for the Observer not only the most enjoyable but also the most discussed critical writing of the time, and it diminished his capacity to tackle the tough stuff (as witness the brilliant erudition of Cultural Amnesia) not a jot.

I found a copy of Cultural Amnesia in a Little Free Library a few weeks ago, not having heard of it but having a high opinion of Clive James. It sits on the stack waiting for me.

In an extra turn of the screw, the first named victim of the London Bridge murders was working on prisoner rehabilitation.

The first victim of the London Bridge attack has been named as Jack Merritt, a 25-year-old who worked for a programme aimed at improving prisoner rehabilitation.

Merritt’s death was confirmed by his father, David, who described him as a “champion for underdogs everywhere”.

Merritt worked as the course coordinator for Learning Together, a programme run by the University of Cambridge’s institute of criminology which had been running a course at Fishmongers’ Hall next to London Bridge on Friday.

Two people were killed and three were injured when 28-year-old Usman Khan launched a knife attack. Khan was arrested in December 2010 and released on licence in December 2018, wearing an electronic tag.

David Merritt posted on Twitter on Saturday: “My son, Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily.”

His words came as Boris Johnson, said the system of automatic release from prison was flawed.

Merritt said: “Cambridge has lost a proud son and a champion for underdogs everywhere, but especially those dealt a losing hand by life, who ended up in the prison system.”

A Facebook friend of mine taught him at Manchester before he went to Cambridge. He describes Jack Merritt in similar terms.

Jennifer Block explained the other day why she wrote that hit piece about Jen Gunter at the Scientific American blog:

I’ve been mulling this one for a while, about a troubling authoritarian streak in one prominent OB/GYN in particular. Then she went after Our Bodies Ourselves, as well as the fantastic Cosmopolitan Magazine piece on LEEPs, and Jennifer Lang wrote an open letter. So here’s my contribution.

There is no “troubling authoritarian streak.” It’s not “authoritarian” to say bullshit is bullshit; the reality is it helps people resist being conned and fleeced by people who sell quack “remedies” for big bucks. Gwyneth Paltrow is not being a friend to the downtrodden by peddling jade eggs and herbal miracle drinks. And as for Jennifer Lang’s open letter – Gunter points out that Lang is on the board of an anti-vaccine group.

Jennifer Block posted an hour ago to complain of being “trolled” on Twitter. What I’ve seen has been not trolling but reasoned criticism.

Thankfully I have a lot of support (and this Daily Beast piece calls my piece “the longest and most in-depth critique of Gunter’s work, drawing on the history of groups like Our Bodies Ourselves to explain how women taking control of their own health—and occasionally rebuffing their doctors—can be a feminist act.”) But damn, this is my first experience being trolled on Twitter. Wow what a cesspool. Thanks in advance for any supportive tweets/replies, but what a bad place for any meaningful discourse.

Meaningful discourse about the value of jade eggs and vaginal steaming, and the wickedness of saying they’re both useless and dangerous?

Hmm.

“Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman.”

It won’t you know. It can’t. It doesn’t. It won’t. A man can’t “become” a woman. You can call it the male-to-female transition all you want, but it still won’t result in becoming a woman. Not even eventually. Not ever. This isn’t because we’re too mean to open the door of the club house, it’s because that’s not how it works.

But hey, I’m sure if he “learns to stand and walk like a woman” no one will ever suspect that he’s a man, because having a special dainty but seductive way of standing and walking is just that crucial to the whole thing.