I saw this

https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1104344845257199616

so I looked at the source, authors Lyric Thompson and Rachel Clement. There are some odd things.

The degree to which Sweden’s practice lives up to its policy has been critiqued. On rights, it has been criticized for a binary focus on women rather than gender. The policy largely ignores the rights and needs of LGBTQ individuals, with the exception of LGBTQ sexual reproductive health and rights being noted in the health component of the agenda. Positioning LGBTQ people as a key population in health interventions, rather than as part of their broad rights-based agenda is overly limiting and a missed opportunity for a feminist approach.

That looks like the all too familiar move from “intersectional” to “stop talking about women.” It’s not at all clear why a feminist policy should be expected to “center” or otherwise not-ignore “the rights and needs of LGBTQ individuals.” Lesbians are of course women so already not ignored, but why does feminism have to include G? Why can’t feminism be feminism? They don’t really explain.

As an intersectional movement, certainly one of the most readily apparent [areas where improvement is needed] is the tendency of governments to use the word feminist when they mean “women and girls.” This reinforces the binary and undermines work to overcome white, ethnocentric and western-centric, cis feminism’s historical (and current) sins.

Uh. What? Feminism does mean “women and girls” – that’s the whole point. How does it “reinforce the binary” more than the absence of feminism does? Remember the absence of feminism? Look at some old sitcoms if you need help. That was some reinforced binary right there. As for “cis” feminism and its “sins”…I’ll leave my choice of swears to your imagination.

That’s a starting point for debate, but hardly responsive to our interests in anchoring our definition in a focus not just on women, but on power relations and gender equality more broadly, and utilizing an explicitly rightsbased and intersectional understanding of feminism.

They’re trying to come up with a definition of feminist foreign policy by anchoring it “in a focus not just on women” – in other words feminism can’t be “just” about women any more, it has to be more expansive than that. Women are the giving, sharing, self-abnegating sex, therefore they don’t get to have even feminism to themselves.

Finally, we acknowledge that Sweden’s “rights, resources and representation” framework is, both as a first and as the most ambitious example to date, often regarded as definitional. We consider the framework useful, although not necessarily radical—reducing a policy to these three, vague components says nothing that is explicitly feminist and does not assert the commitment to intersectionality that we seek. It is, nonetheless, important to include, and a useful framework to build upon. As such, we offer the following draft definition for discussion: “Feminist Foreign Policy is the policy of a state that defines its interactions with other states and movements in a manner that prioritizes gender equality and enshrines the human rights of women and other traditionally marginalized groups, allocates significant resources to achieve that vision, and seeks through its implementation to disrupt patriarchal and male-dominated power structures across all of its levers of influence (aid, trade, defense and diplomacy), informed by the voices of feminist activists, groups and movements.”

Emphases theirs.

So, Feminist Foreign Policy is the policy of a state…that prioritizes gender equality and enshrines the human rights of women and other traditionally marginalized groups.

Emphasis mine.

The human rights of women and everyone else too, except men who can tick every privilege box there is along with any future privilege boxes. Feminism is, thus, not feminism any more, because in its woken splendor it has moved beyond anything so greedy and selfish as a focus on women’s rights. Good bye feminism! It was nice knowing you.

This means foreign policy that is not only by women or for women, but goes further, taking a nonbinary, gendered lens that recognizes and seeks to correct for historical, patriarchal, and often racist, and/or neocolonialist imbalances of power as they play out on the world stage. Further, our vision of feminist foreign policy is not limited to a single lever of international relations—”feminist diplomacy” or “feminist international assistance” or the like, nor, certainly, is any single assistance program or initiative a feminist foreign policy. Rather, for us feminist foreign policy is a complete, consistent and coherent approach to a body of work encompassing all auspices of foreign policy and international relations. If done right, the approach will include aid, trade and defense, in addition to diplomacy, using all the tools in the foreign policy tool box to advance a more equitable world. And most importantly, it will be informed by and amplifying the voices of the rights-holders it seeks to celebrate and support. This is good news for people of all genders: feminism is an agenda everyone can promote, an agenda that seeks equity for all, not the dominance of one over another.

They might as well be Fox News or the prime minister of Australia.

And there’s the “never let this woman speak anywhere ever again because we say so” thing.

Transgender advocacy groups and supporters have demanded that Leeds Lit Festival ban Dame Jenni Murray from speaking amid accusations of transphobia.

An open letter, signed by TransLeeds, Non-binary Leeds, Yorkshire Mesmac and 13 other groups, says Dame Jenni is ‘an active transphobe’ and that ‘there is no debate as to whether trans women are women’.

Oh but there is debate, it’s just that the narcissistic wing of trans activism wants to wipe it off the map. Saying “there is no debate” is an attempt to enforce the absence of debate by demanding that all dissenters be forcibly prevented from dissenting where anyone can hear them.

Dame Jenni, who was born in Barnsley, is due to appear at The Leeds Library on Saturday to talk about her book A History of the World in 21 Women.

Leeds Lit Festival and The Leeds Library have said they are standing by their position.

See here is one compelling reason to think, and to continue to say, that trans women are not literally women: it’s because of this lust to silence a well-known woman talking about women. There are anti-feminist women, of course, but even they mostly don’t try to prevent women from talking at literary festivals in libraries about their books about women. That bit of specialness is pretty much confined to trans “women”…which makes it ever more difficult to ignore their raging hostility to women.

The open letter to The Leeds Library and Leeds Lit Festival reads: “Jenni Murray is clearly hostile towards the trans community, but especially towards transgender women.

“This isn’t feminism. It is misogyny. This is not free speech or radical discussion. Far from it.

“It is hate speech against a vulnerable minority that in the last year alone has been the subject of a hateful campaign by the British media, both nationally and locally here in Leeds.”

No. Saying that men who “identify as” women are not [literally/in every sense] women is not misogyny. You can call it anti-trans if you want to, but it’s nothing to do with misogyny. Saying a dog is not a cat is not canephobia. It’s not misogyny at all, and calling it that is appropriation of a word that names what keeps women down.

It’s also not hate speech, and the flag-waving about “a vulnerable minority” is, again, appropriation of women’s oppression to dress up narcissistic entitlement as “political.”

The event has happened (or not) by now, but so far I can’t find anything about how it went. I hope it went well, with no raging misogynists in lipstick standing in the way.

Some photos from yesterday’s International Women’s Day rally in Melbourne:

Poster held by a guy with shaved head and beard; very appropriate at a feminist event. About like white people at a racial justice event holding posters saying SHUT UP AND PICK SOME COTTON.

Someone in front of Real Jobs guy has a poster saying, I surmise, “SOME WOMEN HAVE PENISES GET OVER IT”.

News from Pakistan:

Afzal Kohistani had warned for years his life was in danger after he brought public attention to the apparent killing of women seen clapping and singing in a video of men dancing.

…

Mr Kohistani was shot dead on Wednesday in the city of Abbottabad, in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He first emerged into the public eye in 2012 by calling for justice in a case involving his family in remote Kohistan district.

Two of his younger brothers were seen dancing in a wedding video that also showed four women singing and clapping. The four women, along with a fifth, were later killed for “breaching the honour” of their family, it is alleged.

Such “honour killings” occur regularly in Pakistan, especially in rural areas, and Mr Kohistani’s decision to expose the alleged murders sparked a blood feud, with three of his other brothers later killed.

Nothing like a pile of corpses to establish one’s “honour.”

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka “Tommy Robinson” takes his right-wing provocations to a new level by harassing journalist Mike Stuchbery in the middle of the night:

For the last few months, I have written about the methods used by “Tommy Robinson” to intimidate and harass those who dare to criticise him. I do this because he’s the most visible figure in a surging UK far right, feted by politicians and media figures alike.

Tonight he paid me a visit. Twice.

Stuchbery had tweeted that Yaxley-Lennon was about to be served papers for defamation.

The first we knew of it was a loud, frantic rapping on my door at around quarter to 11. The shouted voice that accompanied it was unmistakable.

“MIIIIIKE! I JUST WANT TO CHAT!”

There is no “just wanting to chat” when you’re banging on a stranger’s door late at night.

Notifications started pouring in, because Yaxley-Lennon was livestreaming his ambush on Facebook.

The banging went on and on as Stuchbery and his wife waited for the cops. They arrived and got Yaxley-Lennon to leave.

Until it started again at 5am. The thumping began anew, manic this time, loud and booming. The house rattled.

This time the defamatory statements began almost straight away – he seemed almost incoherent now, perhaps even intoxicated. His voice was breaking. He urged others to seek me out, to come find me, before, in an utterly surreal fashion, he announced he was off to the gym, and would be back afterwards.

He just wanted to chat.

A journalist intimidated at home at 5am, live streamed. Women colleagues facing rape and death threats installing panic buttons. The torrent of online abuse undermines democracy and free speech. We must act to stop the online world turning into a cesspit of hate. pic.twitter.com/6G4fSjEue7

— Tom Watson (@tom_watson) March 7, 2019

Arkansas State Senator Stephanie Flowers spoke up.

Flowers, A democrat from Pine Bluff and the lone black face on the state’s eight-member committee, wanted more time to debate the merits of [the] “stand your ground law,” which argues that civilians have the rights to use their firearms when they feel threatened, because it disproportionately targets people of color.

“It doesn’t take much to look on the local news every night and see how many black kids, black boys, black men are being killed with these ‘stand your ground’ defenses that these people raise, then they get off,” she said. “So I take issue with that. I’m the only person here of color, OK? I am a mother, too. And I have a son. And I care as much for my son as y’all care for y’alls. But, my son doesn’t walk the same path as yours do, so this debate deserves more time.”

She added: “For a long time since I’ve been back here in Arkansas, I have feared for my son’s life.”

…

She also pointed to gun rights enthusiasts who openly carry guns in front of the Arkansas courthouse and how uncomfortable that makes her feel because she doesn’t know if any of these people are crazy. She called them bullies.

“In front of my doggone office,” she said; in front of the courthouse and in front of her office. Random people walking up and down with guns; no thank you very much. It’s scary enough seeing them on cops.

The bill failed.

A particularly absurd Trump lie:

President Trump on Friday seized on a portion of a federal judge’s remarks during the sentencing of his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in a financial crimes case to again criticize the Russia investigation and falsely declare a finding of “no collusion.”

Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia. But the Witch Hunt Hoax continues as you now add these statements to House & Senate Intelligence & Senator Burr. So bad for our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2019

Except the judge didn’t.

What Judge Ellis actually said Thursday was that Mr. Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election.”

Which is not the same thing at all. That’s like saying “the judge said there’s no such thing as murder” when the judge actually said that “Mr. Trump is not before this court for anything having to do with murder.” Saying a particular person is not before a particular court for anything to do with a particular crime is not the same thing as saying there is none of that particular crime, or even that Mr. Trump is not suspected of that particular crime. Particular trial is particular.

There was “no collusion” because Mr. Manafort was not charged with or convicted of any crimes of collusion, a word that has no legal definition but has become a term of art for the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

But has also become Trump’s all-purpose word for everything he absolutely never did and is totally innocent of – it’s meaningless trump-jargon.

Mr. Manafort’s attorneys used the same false talking point as the president on Thursday, saying in a brief statement after the hearing, “There is absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved in any collusion with any government official or Russia.”

False talking point=meaningless trump-jargon.

He tried and tried and tried to talk her into continuing the pregnancy, apparently unperturbed by the fact that he was trying to persuade her to endure ever-increasing discomfort and disability for months and then anguish for several hours to have a baby she didn’t want to have.

In an unprecedented move, an Alabama judge is allowing a man to sue a clinic because his ex-girlfriend terminated her pregnancy without his consent. The incident took place in February 2017, when he was 19 and she was 16, The Independent reports. (The age of consent in Alabama is 16.) At the time she terminated the pregnancy, she was six weeks along, making the embryo about the size of a sweet pea. Now, for the first time in United States history, a probate court has recognized an aborted fetus as a person with rights.

In court documents filed on March 6 by Ryan Magers, he claims that he begged his ex-girlfriend to carry the pregnancy to term and give birth. She refused and opted to terminate the pregnancy by taking the so-called “abortion pill,” which is actually two pills, containing mifepristone and misoprostol. The wrongful death lawsuit names both the Alabama Women’s Center and the pharmaceutical company that made the medication.

Because everybody on the planet has the right to veto a woman’s decision to stop being pregnant, apparently.

“I’m here for the men who actually want to have their baby,” Mager explained to ABC 31. “I just tried to plead with her and plead with her and just talk to her about it and see what I could do, but in the end, there was nothing I could do to change her mind.”

So he’s getting his revenge by attempting to create a new right for men to veto women’s abortions.

The case has alarmed reproductive rights groups, who are concerned the “personhood” movement might spread. On Twitter, Ilyse Hogue, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America, called the case “very scary” because it “asserts woman’s rights third in line,” behind the man who impregnates her and the dead fetus. Salon writer Amanda Marcotte agreed, saying any man who “vetoes” an abortion is “not fit to be a father or a partner. Any such man is by definition, an abuser.”

Or we could just give up and agree that women aren’t really people at all but merely devices for the creation of people (males) and more devices for the creation of people (males).

H/t Holms

Aw, sweet. Scott Morrison tells women to be careful not to succeed too much:

Scott Morrison has spoken at an International Women’s Day breakfast at the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia.

In the speech he does battle with a straw-person by suggesting that a certain strain of feminism is about tearing men down:

“One of the other female members of my cabinet, Kelly O’Dwyer, our minister for women, said at the Press Club last year gender equality isn’t about pitting girls against boys.

“See, we’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down to lift others up. That’s not in our values. That is an absolutely Liberal value, that you don’t push some people down to lift some people up. And that is true about gender equality too.

“We want to see women rise. But we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse. We want everybody to do better, and we want to see the rise of women in this country be accelerated to ensure that their overall place is maintained.”

And yet, Scott Morrison is Prime Minister. How does he know he didn’t get there at someone else’s expense? In fact he must have, right, if there were other candidates? Is it only women who are not allowed to do anything if everyone else doesn’t get to do it too? Is it only women who get told not to be ambitious?

Ahhh that’s a good look – State Department tells journalist she will get a Women of Courage Award then says “oh wait no you won’t” when it discovers she’s critical of The Leader. Foreign Policy reports:

Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia’s propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a “regrettable error,” but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro’s social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.

Well you see it’s all about how you understand “courage.” Courage is exposing other people’s propaganda machine, not Trump’s.

There is no indication that the decision to revoke the award came from the secretary of state or the White House. Officials who spoke to FP have suggested the decision came from lower-level State Department officials wary of the optics of Pompeo granting an award to an outspoken critic of the Trump administration. The department spokesperson did not respond to questions on who made the decision or why.

The “optics”?

What about the “optics” of Pompeo granting an award to an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and thus demonstrating the administration’s ability to rise above personal spite? What about the “optics” of spitefully snatching the award away in a huff?

They don’t think carefully, these people.

“[When] I was informed about the withdrawal out of the blue, I felt appalled and shocked,” Aro told FP. “The reality in which political decisions or presidential pettiness directs top U.S. diplomats’ choices over whose human rights work is mentioned in the public sphere and whose is not is a really scary reality.”

Quite so. The “optics” of that are nothing to be proud of.

“I use Twitter to exchange ideas and share information freely,” Aro said. “I find the idea of U.S. government officials stalking my Twitter and politicizing my perfectly normal expressions of opinion deeply disturbing.”

Because it is.

After first being notified she would get the award, Aro filled out forms and questionnaires at the request of officials and cancelled paid speaking engagements to travel to Washington to attend the March 7 ceremony in Washington. The State Department also sent her an official invitation to accept the award and planned an itinerary for a corresponding tour of the United States, complete with flights and high-profile visits to newspapers and universities across the country.

They sent her an official invitation, and then snatched it back. Not cool.

Daniel Golden wrote a Pro Publica piece just after Trump stole the election, and it’s being re-upped now. It’s about the puzzle of how Jared Kushner got into Harvard.

I bet you’ve guessed already.

My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

That’s the story of their lives, all of them – Donnie Two-scoops, Princess Ivanka, Prince Jared, Donnie2 the thug – they all bought their way into power.

Golden was doing research on rich people and donations to Harvard and enrollment of rich donors’ children. The name Kushner caught his eye.

Charles and Seryl Kushner were both on the committee. I had never heard of them, but their joint presence struck me as a sign that Harvard’s fundraising machine held the couple in especially fond regard.

The clips showed that Charles Kushner’s empire encompassed 25,000 New Jersey apartments, along with extensive office, industrial and retail space and undeveloped land. Unlike most of his fellow committee members, though, Kushner was not a Harvard man. He had graduated from New York University. This eliminated the sentimental tug of the alma mater as a reason for him to give to Harvard, leaving another likely explanation: his children.

Sure enough, his sons Jared and Joshua had both enrolled there.

Charles Kushner differed from his peers on the committee in another way; he had a criminal record. Five years after Jared entered Harvard, the elder Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to tax violations, illegal campaign donations, and retaliating against a witness…Charles Kushner had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities. Kushner then had a videotape of the tryst sent to his sister. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

That’s who Prince Jared’s father is, let’s never forget. These people are rotten all the way through. (Jared could be a rebel child who repudiates his father’s loathsome ways…but of course he’s not.)

PJ’s daddy bought him entry to Harvard and then PJ’s wife’s daddy made him a prince with a security clearance he shouldn’t have and responsibility for the Middle East and Mexico and who knows what else he shouldn’t be allowed within miles of.

From fatuous drivel like this good lord deliver us. The BBC yesterday:

Like many little girls, nine-year-old Autumn Norris loves dressing up and experimenting with make-up.

She has identified as a girl for the past two years, after telling her mother she felt she was in the “wrong body”.

Autumn had just had a bath when she first spoke about these feelings. She wanted two towels, one for the hair and one for the body, “like a woman”.

“She then came out of the bathroom with her two towels, saying: ‘I’ve got something to tell you Mum, I’m not Anthony, I’m not a boy, I’m a girl’,” says Fran Norris.

Fran Norris, bizarrely, was struck all of a heap. I guess she’d never heard of “pretending” and “fantasy” and “play”?

Ms Norris, from Shifnal in Shropshire, believes it had been on Autumn’s mind for a long time and she had engaged in “feminine role-play” to explore her identity.

She would often come to her and ask to wear her clothes, put on make-up, do her nails or wear hair extensions.

tears hair

I know we’ve all said this a bazillion times but honest to fuck! Trivial external arbitrary conventions of dress do not make people this sex or that. Putting on lipstick does not magically make a boy into a girl and wearing jeans does not magically transform a woman into a man. Clothes, makeup, nails, hair extensions are just bits of flotsam that people put on and take off. I could put sour cream and chives on my head, it wouldn’t make me a fucking baked potato.

There’s more of the same bullshit and similar bullshit, for paragraph after paragraph.

I think the BBC is being held hostage.

ARE YOU KIDDING

A handful of male lawmakers dressed up for a hearing they presided over Tuesday in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, donning pearl necklaces as activists testified about their experiences with gun violence.

Pearl necklaces??

Ohhhh…right. ARE YOU KIDDING!!!!

Images from the statehouse — where legislators were considering arguments over a bill that would make it easier to take guns away from potentially dangerous people — caromed across social media as critics lobbed accusations of sexism and insensitivity at the necklace-wearing men.

The implication was clear, they said: These politicians thought gun-control activists were “clutching their pearls” in overwrought and self-righteous outrage — and, specifically, female outrage.

Because what, thinking gun violence is a bad thing is for sissies aka women? Because real men like gun violence? Because let’s laugh at women who don’t want to see their children shot at school or traumatized by seeing other children traumatized by the latest school shooting?

We’re on a downward slope to the pit of hell.

[Shannon] Watts, who attended the hearing, said she counted at least five representatives — all men — wearing pearls and sitting on the committee that held the hearing. One of them also appeared to sport a pin in the shape of a semiautomatic rifle on his lapel. She snapped photos of the lawmakers and posted them on Twitter, where she has nearly 300,000 followers, sparking outrage near and far.

Of the 13 person ERPO hearing committee, 10 of the lawmakers are men; half of them are wearing pearls to mock @MomsDemand volunteers. Meanwhile, their constituents are in tears as they testify about gun suicides and domestic gun violence in their families. #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/eVIS73yfoR

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 5, 2019

Pit of hell.

Robin Buckallew is doing Women’s History Month again:

Here we are again, Women’s History Month. It seems like only yesterday…and at the same time it seems like a million years ago. So, since there are still women around the world who are penalized merely for being a woman, I will continue my pledge. I will once again write every day of the month, and focus on women.