Steve Bannon meets Catholic reaction meets Danish bank meets fraudulent signature – and then Godzilla appeared! No but really:

The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon’s plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right.

It makes sense, doesn’t it. You want conservative? I’ll give you conservative: how about a medieval fucking monastery?! That’s right! I said medieval monastery!

But then it all fell apart.

Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery, but now will have to search for another spot.

The Italian state allowed the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) to use the building early last year. Bannon happens to be a trustee of the institute, and planned to convert the space into a “gladiator school for cultural warriors,”where students would learn philosophy, theology, history, and economics, and receive political training from the former Trump aide himself.

Can’t you just see Bannon gladiating?

Yep, that’s Bannon all right.

But earlier this month, Italian newspaper Repubblica reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. The letter had the signature of an employee of Danish bank Jyske, but the bank said that employee hadn’t worked there for years, and called the letter fraudulent.

Oops. Oh well, he didn’t want to wear sandals anyway.

Today’s TERF outrage is the NY Times itself, daring to hint ever so gently that binders might not be all that beneficial to the people who wear them.

Binders are not classified as medical devices, but some doctors and parents have concerns about their safety. (Common-sense binding guidelines include: Don’t use Ace bandages or duct tape, don’t bind at night, limit a binder to eight to 10 hours a day, don’t shower in it, don’t wear two, and don’t wear one that is too small.)

Hmm. Doesn’t all that, taken together, make it appear that wearing them at all isn’t a particularly good idea?

For transgender or gender-nonconforming teens who cannot afford binders, which start at around $30, there are free binder programs. FTM Essentials runs an application and lottery for those age 24 and under. Point of Pride, a transgender nonprofit based in Eugene, Ore., ships binders free to people of any age who express need and has sent over 4,000 nationally and internationally.

Does anybody ship Jimmy Choo shoes to people who express need?

A 17-year-old in Phoenix who binds daily and asked to be identified only by the initials J.M. said he started binding at 13. To maximize the compression, he bought a binder one size too small and wore it at night. “My arms and hands would feel numb and tingly off and on,” he emailed, “from how tight the material was around that area.” When he removed the binder, he found his skin “severely chafed and raw.”

He added: “The divots left behind from those times took months to heal. In all honesty, I couldn’t have cared less about the damage being created, just that my chest was flat.”

Healthy? Empowering? Liberating?

Though there have been no studies on binding and adolescent health, because of ethical concerns about research on minors, a 2017 study by students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Boston University School of Medicine, and the Boston University School of Public Health looked at 1,800 transmasculine adults with a median age of 23. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they had bound for over a year, over half bound an average of seven days a week, and 66.6 percent were interested in top surgery. An additional 13.1 percent had already had the surgery.

Participants reported a statistically significant improvement in mood after binding. They also reported decreased gender dysphoria, anxiety and depression. As for physical effects, 97.2 percent of the group that bound reported at least one negative physical symptom, such as back pain, overheating, chest pain and shortness of breath. Other symptoms included numbness, bad posture and lightheadedness.

I wonder if there’s any chance at all that a statistically significant improvement in mood could be achieved by explaining that breasts don’t determine personality.

The American Academy of Pediatrics does not have an official position on binding. But in a policy statement last year on care of transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents, it advocated a “gender-affirmative care model,” where providers convey that “variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity.”

But some worry that parental efforts to affirm a young person’s identity by supporting binding may contribute to self-hate. Jane Wheeler, a co-founder of an organization called Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics, which examines standards of care for gender-variant children and youth, said binding “feeds into a normalization of body hatred, that some forms of body hatred are O.K.”

Like for instance the kind that interferes with breathing and physical activity.

Brie Jontry is the spokeswoman for 4thWaveNow, which describes itself as “a community of parents and others concerned about the medicalization of gender atypical youth.” Her daughter, now 15, told Ms. Jontry that she was trans at 11 and wanted a binder. Ms. Jontry bought her a running bra, but her daughter felt it was not constricting enough, refusing to leave the house until she got a binder.

The first one she tried, at age 12, was too tight, Ms. Jontry thought, so they returned it and ordered a larger one. Her daughter, who was home-schooled, bound at home and every time she went out. She stopped running, rock-climbing, backpacking and swimming.

“We would go for our evening walk and she would get winded and dizzy,” Ms. Jontry said. “She stopped climbing trees. She stopped doing things where any degree of upper-body flexibility was important.”

Just like all those Victorian women in the tight corsets! So very affirmative.

My, that’s cynical.

Attorney General William P. Barr said in an interview broadcast Friday that he returned to the Justice Department to protect the institution during a period of “intense partisan feeling” and is not bothered by criticism from Democrats about how he’s handling the job.

To protect the institution? But…he’s not. He’s not doing that. That’s not what he’s doing. He’s protecting Trump. He’s protecting Trump who shits on the institution every chance he gets.

Barr, 69, who served in the George H.W. Bush administration, said he knew it would “only be a matter of time” before he was attacked for his actions, given he is serving during a “crazy, hyperpartisan period of time.”

“Nowadays, people don’t care about the merits and the substance,” he said. “Everything is gauged by politics. And . . . that’s antithetical to the way the department runs, and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital, and I realize that, and that’s one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on, because I think at my stage in life, it really doesn’t make any difference.”

But that’s nonsense. It gets everything backward. Trump is a hateful immoral bad man, who does harm to people and then brags about it. It’s only “politics” that prevents the Republicans from admitting that.

“I think one of the ironies today is that people are saying that it’s President Trump that’s shredding our institutions,” Barr said. “I really see no evidence of that. From my perspective, the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring.”

Well, one, he wasn’t “democratically elected.” He lost the “democratic” part. He won in the Electoral College, which is calculatedly not democratic. But two, and more to the point, we do have to stop this president, and he has provided countless more reasons to do so since he was inaugurated.

If Barr is so keen to protect the institutions, especially the Justice Department, then what about Trump’s constant libelous lies about Comey, the FBI, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Mueller, Sessions, Rosenstein? What about his and Tillerson’s gutting of the State Department? What about putting industry lobbyists in charge of the EPA? What about those merits and that substance?

That absurd “the TERFs have FORCED me to quit philosophy” piece is, somewhat to my surprise, getting a lot of attention today, especially (it seems) from philosophers. I was thinking yesterday it would be just another rant that few people would notice, if only because the quality is so dire. But Brian Leiter shares information that indicates otherwise:

A number of philosophers have written me about this noxious, and I suspect fraudulent, display, and I apologize that I can’t respond to everyone as I’m participating in an intellectual event, and so trying to avoid engaging with the usual social media grandstanding and narcissism as much as possible. But I will share one set of comments from a philosopher elsewhere, since it makes clear the absurdity of this essay:

In what amounts to an AI-driven performative contradiction of its thesis, I’ve seen numerous philosophers on my Facebook feed share the article as something with immense moral import, with exactly zero of my hundreds of philosopher Fb friends offering even the mildest criticism. (One friend of a friend tried to do so, and was promptly told to take it elsewhere.)

I’m staggered by that. The piece is not even credible as being written by a grad student in philosophy. It reads like a typical social media-style rant. It has no trace of argument. It shows no sign of any philosophy training at all.

It’s too invasion of the body snatchers for me. Have they all lost their minds? Have they all been replaced by pods?

The note to Brian continues:

All this praise is for an article that,

(i) Frames as a “hateful” and “phobic” practice of “debating my existence” any philosophical discussion of gender which “does not proceed from [the] initial assumption … that trans people are the gender they say they are” (though NB many gender-critical types insist that they are concerned with sex, not gender, and are happy to let people be what they say in the latter respect as long as this doesn’t mean that they can share prisons and rape shelters with people of the opposite sex) — including under this umbrella not only the infamous Kathleen Stock (and Becky Tuvel I think??), but also yourself and Justin Weinberg, i.e. he of “moral resisters” fame; and further

(ii) Calls for a total no-platforming of gender-critical philosophers and philosophical arguments in journals, at conferences, and on blogs and social media.

Striking, isn’t it. And philosophers themselves are cheering this on? What is wrong with them?

Philosophers sharing this article, which in my feed have included several who were on hiring committees for departments I interviewed at in the past, have made it quite clear to everyone in the audience that it is people like me who are not welcome in the profession — that my existence as a non-hateful or -phobic scholar who thinks that “gender identity” might be a pseudo-concept, or that biological sex isn’t a matter of inner feeling, is very much up for debate — and that even the mildest refusal to toe the party line on gender means being framed as the moral equivalent of a white supremacist.

One such philosopher, on Twitter as opposed to Facebook:

Her essay lays out a serious problem in academic philosophy that some of us have been noticing and talking about for a while now. It is stark evidence that the problem isn't merely intellectual: it is chasing diversity out of our profession.

— Jonathan Ichikawa (@jichikawa) May 31, 2019

A “heartbreaking personal essay”? A self-obsessed hyperbolic attack on feminist philosophers by someone with no philosophical training is more like it. But Ichikawa isn’t some random woke bro, he teaches philosophy at UBC (BC=British Columbia).

And apparently there are many more like him, adding to the pile of stones to throw at Kathleen Stock.

Well, that’s…modest.

TERFs: If we admit trans women are women we'll have no away of referring to females!
Trans people: You could try the term "cis woman" or "AFAB" – we're cool with those
TERFs: NO! Those are bad! We must be able to refer to females!
Trans people: But…you can. We just told you how

— @rachelwilliams@hachyderm.io (@rach_a_williams) May 31, 2019

And then this pile of fetid dingo’s kidneys by “t philosopher”:

To the academic philosophy community:

I am a trans woman and a philosophy grad student, and I have decided to leave the discipline and seek a non-academic job because of transphobia in the academy.

t p has been at it a long time, t p has published research, t p has taught undergraduate classes, t p is the real deal.

I have not chosen to quit philosophy because I have fallen out of love with the work, or I want something else to do with my life. I am leaving academia ONLY because of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) — so called “gender critical feminists” — and those who amplify their voices.

Blame the women. If you get a chance, burn them.

I am writing this letter because I want people to know that there are real, concrete, macro-level consequences to allowing hate speech to proliferate in philosophy under the guise of academic discussion. In sharing my pain and anger at being forced out of a career that I once loved, I hope to stir some of you to greater action.

Of course he does. He hopes to stir some of them to do even more shunning and bullying of women who don’t agree that men who say they are women are women. He hopes to stir them to banish those women from academic philosophy altogether. By the way, saying that men who say they are women are not women is not hate speech, it’s just stating obvious facts.

The past two years have taken a toll on my mental health because of the amount of hateful discourse regarding gender identity and “biological sex”, starting with the Hypatia/Tuvel affair, and most recently concerning the actions of Kathleen Stock and her co-conspirators, Brian Leiter, and to a lesser degree, Justin Weinberg.

Notice that “t philosopher” is anonymous, and that that doesn’t stop him naming other people in hopes of getting them shunned or expelled or both.

I think that transphobia is particularly pernicious and harmful to trans philosophers (as compared to trans folks in other non-academic careers) for a few reasons. Firstly, a significant amount of professional socialization occurs on social media among philosophers. There is an opportunity cost to professional philosophers who choose not to use social media. Philosophers who stay off Facebook and Twitter miss out on job openings, conference opportunities, and networking. However, social media is also where gender identity discourse about trans people happens. An article will appear on Medium or Daily Nous, professional philosophers will start sharing and talking about it, and then the article and related comments will appear in my feed, letting me know that once again my colleagues are debating my existence.

No they’re not. Saying a man is not a woman is not “debating his existence.” The man continues to exist despite not being a woman.

It goes on in the same vein. Stress, vulnerability, anger, pain, feeling unsafe. I wonder if he’s ever given a second’s thought to women who feel those things routinely because of the conditions of life for women.

I can easily imagine running into Kathleen Stock or some other transphobic philosopher at the APA or an invited talk. It is reasonable to consider the possibility of there being a transphobic talk at the APA or another professional event, in light of Stock’s recent invitation to the Aristotelian Society. How can I be expected to attend professional events where people deny and question such an integral part of my identity and act like that is tolerable or normal?

Won’t somebody please do something about Kathleen Stock so that this guy can have everything his own way?

How can I be expected to attend professional events and participate in a professional culture where others allow this to happen? As a trans person, I deal with oppression on a daily basis. It is not hyperbole to say that I am fighting for survival.

raises hand Yes it is! Hyperbole is exactly what it is! The whole piece is hyperbolic.

Finally, because of the very subject matter that constitutes philosophy, I am expected to tolerate constant public discourse about the nature of my gender identity, whether I “count” as a woman, and what rights I am due in virtue of my gender. I am expected to tolerate public discourse regarding the things that demonstrate other people’s respect for me as a human being. I am expected to tolerate questions about fundamental aspects of my being, questions about my legitimacy as a person.

My gender is not up for debate. I am a woman.

But if he’s telling the truth about being a trans woman (and who knows, since who knows who t philosopher is) then he’s not a woman. He doesn’t get to issue a unilateral order that his claimed “gender” is not up for debate. Even putting it in bold doesn’t make it true or binding on other people.

Then there’s a list of bolded instructions for all the ways everyone is to expel wrong-thinking women from academic philosophy.

I have strong doubts that t p is a philosophy graduate student at all.

H/t Lady Mondegreen

Ahhhhh now that’s worse. The Trump people did more than just tell the Navy to hide the name McCain.

Although Navy officials insisted they did not hide the ship, the John S. McCain, they did give all of the sailors aboard the day off on Tuesday as Mr. Trump visited Yokosuka Naval Base.

Two Navy sailors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the McCain sailors were not invited to hear Mr. Trump speak that day aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp, while sailors from other American warships at the base were.

A Navy service member based on Yokosuka said that all of the American warships in the harbor were invited to send 60 to 70 sailors to hear Mr. Trump’s address, with the exception of the McCain. When several sailors from the McCain showed up anyway, wearing their uniforms with the ship’s insignia, they were turned away, the service member said.

That’s disgusting. It’s mean, and small, and taking a small petty bratty grudge out on underlings doing a hard job far from home. Big bloated greedy hateful Trump turning sailors away because they’re from a ship named after McCain ffs! He says it wasn’t his order but it was an order by people who know what a bloated greedy hateful turd of a human he is.

Joyce Vance said this earlier today and she’s not wrong. There is just so much.

Imagine the clamor if Obama had given free advertising to Maddow or Bush to Morning Joe. We’ve got to get back to being outraged over all of the ways Trump demeans the presidency & corrupts its ethical obligations. We have to stop giving him a pass because there is just so much. https://t.co/RaKu1JWXUy

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 30, 2019

This question about rights again…

That SNP Students tweet –

At SNP students, we have one simple belief. Trans rights are human rights. No ifs, no buts.

It’s a simple belief, yes, so simple that we don’t even know what it means.

What, exactly, are trans rights? Specifically trans rights? SNP Students says human rights, but if that really is what they mean there’s no issue. The controversy isn’t because trans people want the same rights everybody else has, because no one questions their right to that. The controversy is because trans people want new rights special to trans people, that in fact, however loudly they deny it, conflict with the existing rights of non-trans people, especially women.

What are we talking about when we talk about rights? In the most general terms? We’re talking about foundational principles like

• Xs are not inferior to Ys
• Xs should not be subordinated by Ys
• Xs should not be persecuted or ostracized by Ys
• Xs should not face systematic disadvantages because they are Xs

But what are trans rights? Judging by the current dogma, the core right is to be “validated” as the alter-sex and to be “included” as such by all members of the alter-sex.

Is that a right like the rights we’re used to? Can you get to that right via the foundational principles? Did I omit any relevant foundational principles?

How about the right not to be ostracized by the dominant group? Can we get there via that route?

I don’t think so, because the ostracism in question is broad. People have a right not to be ostracized from the public square and from public goods and a shared public life. People don’t have a right to be welcomed into every single category and grouping there is in all circumstances and with no questions asked. White people don’t have a right to be welcomed into black activist groups, for instance; some groups may welcome them and others may not and everybody’s rights remain intact.

Is there a right to be taken at face value? A right to be believed without question no matter what you claim? A right to be embraced no matter how abrasive and domineering your behavior is?

I don’t think so.

Use loaded titles much?

Transgender women’s right to use Hampstead Heath ponds acknowledged

There definitely is a definite right for men who claim to be women to use the women’s pond at Hampstead Heath. Definitely.

They do it all over again in the subhead.

The rights of transgender women to use a women-only pond in north London have been acknowledged in a new policy.

What other “rights” are going to be “acknowledged” in this peremptory way? The rights of men to take over all women’s teams, win all women’s prizes, be 1-10 on all-women shortlists, be top officers of all women’s organizations, talk over women at every opportunity, require sexual access on demand, impregnate at will, walk away at will while refusing to pay child support?

Just wondering.

Another apology extorted:

The vice-provost for education at Imperial College London, Professor Simone Buitendijk, has apologised for sharing anti-trans content on social media.

Buitendijk first offered her apologies to the university’s student newspaper Felix last Friday (May 10) in response to a letter by 86 members of the university’s staff and student body raising concerns about her “engagement with transphobic material and social media accounts.”

The letter referred specifically to Buitendijk following and ‘liking’ content from Twitter accounts belonging to anti-trans groups such as Transgender Trend—who campaign against supporting young trans people in their transition—and individuals.

That’s tendentiously, aka unfairly, worded. An alternative wording would be: “who campaign for supporting children and adolescents in rejecting gender stereotypes without resort to surgery or hormones.” The point is not a refusal to support young people but a disagreement about what is the best way to deal with gender nonconformity and dysphoria.

Most of the vice-provost’s social media activity relates to promoting women in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, opposition to sexism and misogyny[,] and support for LGBT rights and related events such as LGBT History Month.

But a closer look at the content she engaged with revealed a certain hostility to trans rights activism.

Maybe that’s because trans rights activism is so thoroughly and aggressively misogynist and often so antagonistic to LGB rights.

Joanna Wormald, deputy editor of the Felix newspaper, collected more than 50 screenshots, spanning at least six months, attesting to the vice-provost’s social media activity.

Thank god for the Joanna Wormalds of the world, yeah?

Among the content that the vice-provost has since deleted was a tweet dated October 30 in which she shared an article from TheGuardian article titled: “UK universities struggle to deal with ‘toxic’ trans row.”

In her tweet, she wrote: “As a feminist, M.D. and child health researcher, I find the notion of sex being fluid and gender being biological, engrained and dichotomous deeply troubling. That does not contradict that as VP Education I should protect trans students’ rights. We need respectful debate.”

And that’s forbidden, is it? So forbidden that she has to be forced to delete it and apologize, and Pink News needs to report breathlessly on it as if she were a mass murderer?

There are more examples of her thought crime which to not-crazy people look like thoughtful analysis.

Josef Willsher, a third year Physics student at Imperial College, first discovered Buitendijk’s apparent support for anti-trans views in April, by accident—Twitter suggested he followed certain accounts due to Buitendijk following them.

“I wasn’t the first to notice that but I was the first to consider writing a letter. I thought as a student it was my responsibility to bring this up,” he told PinkNews.

He approached the university’s Physics LGBT Allies Network, which he had joined soon after the group was formed last year, asking for advice on how to proceed. A few days after the group began drafting the letter and looked for backers, word of their effort reached the college management, who decided to meet with the network to discuss their concerns.

Buitendijk was present at two meetings, engaging in the discussion that, at times, became “quite heated,” in Willsher’s words.

“We appreciated the quick response from college and their willingness to meet with us. It was reassuring to see how they had taken it seriously and the discussions were productive,” he said.

The student also said Buitendijk got in touch via email over the Easter weekend—which fell in between the two meetings—to express how thankful she was that they came to her and how it was important they could raise the issue.

While they agreed to a resolution, Willsher felt it was important to bring the issue to the attention of the wider community. The letter was published in the student newspaper alongside statements from the university publicly acknowledging the issue, as well as Buitendijk’s apology.

It goes on and on and on. It’s all sickening.

There’s a petition to prevent women from talking.

We are members of the University of Edinburgh staff and student community concerned about the rise of transphobia on our campus. As a collective of PG students, we write this statement to unequivocally condemn transphobia.

The recent announcement of a transphobic ‘Women’s Sex-Based Rights’ event hosted by Edinburgh University Moray House on the 5th of June is unacceptable.

But was it in fact an announcement of a transphobic event? I’m betting it wasn’t. Let’s ask the Google.

Nope, that’s not what it’s called.

Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does (and should) the future hold?
by The University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education

Nothing about transphobic. Let’s read the details.

The Institute for Education, Teaching and Leadership at the University of Edinburgh invites you to a discussion on the future for women’s sex-based rights, featuring a distinguished panel of feminist academics and activists. Whether you’re already familiar with the topic or whether you’re wondering what all the fuss is about (or somewhere in between), we’d love you to come, listen and participate in the discussion.

Earlier this year, feminists from across the world launched a Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. The Declaration is premised on the belief that women’s rights, as enshrined in the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), are at risk and need to be reaffirmed. The writers of the declaration say that, “Recent changes replacing references to the category of sex, which is biological, with the language of ‘gender’, which refers to stereotyped sex roles, in United Nations documents, strategies, and actions, has led to confusion which ultimately risks undermining the protection of women’s human rights. The confusion between sex and ‘gender’ has contributed to the increasing acceptability of the idea of innate ‘gender identities’… ultimately leading to the erosion of the gains made by women over decades.”

With sexism and misogyny still sadly much in evidence, are the writers of the Declaration justified in their belief that women’s sex-based rights are potentially being undermined? What protections are still needed? And what can, and should, be done to reassert and protect those rights, globally and here in Scotland? This multi-disciplinary panel will consider future ways forward for women’s rights in a world of complex sex and gender relations. There will be plenty of time for open discussion and all viewpoints are welcome, though we remind all participants that dialogue should be measured and respectful in tone.

Speakers:

Julie Bindel: Writer; co-founder of law-reform group Justice for Women
Professor Rosa Freedman: Professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development, University of Reading
Lucy Hunter Blackburn: Policy analyst, MurrayBlackburnMackenzie
Dr Louise Moody: Research Associate, Philosophy, University of York
Professor Sarah Pedersen: Professor of Communication and Media, Robert Gordon University

Chair:

Dr Gale Macleod: University of Edinburgh

It sounds good, doesn’t it. I’d go if it were nearer.

But the people behind the petition think it sounds evil. They want it stopped.

We are calling for this event to be cancelled immediately on the grounds that it: (1) affords credibility in an academic context to views expressing hate and phobic sentiments towards members of the University community, (2) puts our trans and non-binary colleagues and friends at risk of physical and psychological harm, (3) provides material support to speakers with a transphobic agenda, and (4) seems to contravene the University’s own policies on equality and diversity.

We disagree with the notion of transphobia as a legitimate academic debate. As feminist academics we welcome debates on the complexities of gender and sexuality but strongly believe that debates that are premised on denying the rights and legitimacy of a marginalized group in society are not fair debates.

There it is again. What rights? What rights are being denied? The putative right to say you’re a woman when what you mean is that you feel like a woman in your head despite having a male body? And to force the rest of the world to agree with your claim?

The University of Edinburgh should not be a safe-haven for hate speech. In facilitating this event, the University is allowing a situation to go ahead that will leave students and staff feeling unsafe, excluded, and unwelcome.

So let’s exclude women who want to talk about women’s rights. Fair?

Well that’s nice.

Over Memorial Day weekend, everyone who cares about the future of women’s sport saw their worst fears become a reality.

Transgender woman CeCe Telfer, who was born and raised as Craig Telfer and competed on the Franklin Pierce University men’s track and field team during her first three years of college, won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national title at the 2019 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Telfer dominated the competition, winning in 57.53 as second place was way back in 59.21.

Let’s all give CeCe a great big hand!

Prior to joining the women’s team this season, Telfer was a mediocre DII athlete who never came close to making it to nationals in the men’s category. In 2016 and 2017, Telfer ranked 200th and 390th, respectively, among DII men in the 400 hurdles (Telfer didn’t run outdoor track in 2018 as either a man or woman). Now she’s the national champion in the event simply because she switched her gender (Telfer’s coach told us that even though she competed on the men’s team her first three years, her gender fluidity was present from her freshman year).

Ah yes, of course it was. It sloshed around like a glass of beer on a sailboat. But what is “gender fluidity” exactly? Is it the propensity to become a woman when it’s time to run a race?

Ostensibly, the NCAA has a policy in place to protect cisgender women athletes and prevent male-to-female transgender athletes from dominating the women’s category. The NCAA transgender handbook states that an MTF transgender athlete must take “one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment” in order to compete in the women’s category, but the vagueness of that statement is remarkable. There is no mention of a minimum testosterone level that must be achieved or a minimum level of medication that must be taken, nor how those levels are to be monitored.

Never you mind. We must respect trans rights. Trans rights are human rights. Not respecting trans rights is transphobia. Is that clear?

The coach says Telfer won because he worked harder. Uh huh.

Again with the issue of truth versus free speech: Think Progress on Facebook’s breezy indifference to truth:

The latest instance of Facebook doubling down on its failure to avert the spread of misinformation came after an altered video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went viral on the social media platform last week. Facebook was widely criticized for refusing to take down the video — even after admitting that it had been doctored to make her look like she was slurring her words or drunk.

What was particularly shocking is that in defending this move, Facebook told the Washington Post, “We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true.”

We now live in a world where “information” doesn’t have to be true.

Equally stunning is what Monika Bickert, the company’s head of global policy management, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday. “We think it’s important for people to make their own informed choice about what to believe,” Bickert said. “Our job is to make sure that we are getting them accurate information. And that’s why we work with over 50 fact-checking organizations around the world.”

But how can a doctored video be considered “accurate information”?

Facebook didn’t say.

This kind of thing.

SNP Students puts out a Statement (or Declaration or Affirmation or Prose Poem) on Twitter that is full of…no one can tell what.

At SNP students, we have one simple belief. Trans rights are human rights. No ifs, no buts. #TransAlly pic.twitter.com/8qEn1XWtfr

— SNP Students (@SNPStudents) April 17, 2019

Trans rights are human rights.

Ok, fine, but what are we talking about? What are trans rights exactly?

We believe that regardless of someone’s sexuality or gender identity they should be respected.

Ok, fine, but what are we talking about? “Respected” how? Not bullied or persecuted? Well, agreed, of course. Not disagreed with? That’s not “respect” and it’s not a “right.”

SNP Students will stand up for the rights of the trans community, we will continue to push for trans rights to be expanded and we will not hesitate to call out transphobia wherever we see it.

Ok, fine, but what are we talking about? Again, what rights exactly? And if they are expanded, what will those rights be? And what exactly is “transphobia”? Is it hatred and bullying? Or is it disagreeing?

It makes a difference.

The Guardian reports:

Boris Johnson has been summoned to court to face accusations of misconduct in public office over claims that he lied by saying Britain gave £350m a week to the European Union.

This stems from a crowdfunded private prosecution.

Johnson lied and engaged in criminal conduct when he repeatedly claimed during the 2016 EU referendum campaign that the UK handed over the sum to Brussels, Westminster magistrates court was told last week by lawyers for a 29-year-old campaigner who has launched the prosecution bid.

The judge in the magistrates court has ruled that there’s enough to go to trial. There will be further hearings before a trial. By the time it goes to trial BoJo could be prime minister.

Acting for Johnson, Adrian Darbishire QC, told the court last week that the application by Ball had been brought for political purposes and was a “political stunt”.

“Its true purpose is not that it should succeed, but that it should be made at all. And made with as much public fanfare as the prosecution can engender,” he said. “The application represents an attempt, for the first time in English legal history, to employ the criminal law to regulate the content and quality of political debate. That is self-evidently not the function of the criminal law.”

However, in her ruling , the judge said she was satisfied there was a prima facie case for the allegation that there had been an abuse of the public’s trust in a holder of office.

She referred to statements provided by Ball’s team from members of the public that addressed the impact that “the apparent lie” had had on them. She also cited the contention by Lewis Power QC, counsel for Ball, that “there will seldom be a more serious misconduct allegation against a member of parliament or mayor than to lie repeatedly to the voting public on a national and international platform, in order to win your desired outcome”.

This is a recurring issue. Is lying part of free speech? Should believers in free speech be defending people’s right to lie?

Last week Facebook refused to take down a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi that made her look drunk or sick. Facebook said people should make up their own minds. But how can people “make up their own minds” about a doctored video? How can people “make up their own minds” about any lies or fakery when the whole point of lies and fakery is to convince people of an untruth?

There was no immediate reaction from Johnson but a source close to the MP said: “This prosecution is nothing less than a politically motivated attempt to reverse Brexit and crush the will of the people.”

But that just goes around the issue. What about the issue? Is it fair and legitimate free speech for a public official to tell a factual lie in aid of a desired political result?

The ruling was also criticised by fellow pro-Brexit Tories, including David Davies, who said it was “deeply sinister” that Johnson faced being “dragged” into court. He added on Twitter: “EU supporters falsely claimed that a leave vote would collapse the economy. No action being taken against them.”

Not the same thing. A mistaken prediction is not a lie. If BoJo had said “at the rate we’re going we will end up giving £350m a week to the European Union” that would not have been a lie. Predictions entail uncertainty; the claim that Britain gave £350m a week to the European Union was specific and checkable and false.