US Attacks Iran

Almost two year ago to the day, I wrote:

"If Trump remains in office for a full term, I think it is very likely that he will manufacture a war or crisis in order to bump up his approval ratings and pressure Congress to stop investigating his ties to Russia."

After having just been impeached, and with the 2020 presidential election looming, Trump appears to be doing just that with the recent US strikes that killed a top Iranian General.

Republicans in Congress will back Trump in going to war (or him just attacking states without declaring war), and he can also count on the support of many within the mainstream media to cajole the citizenry and Democrats into dropping this impeachment business and rallying behind "the President" similar to how they did with George W. Bush's immoral wars, for the sake of "patriotism," thus helping to ensure a second term in office.

On-the-cusp-of-war reminder that the people who have normalized Trump are terrible people who should be deeply ashamed and ostracized from civil society. pic.twitter.com/G9SOGzxEUu

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) January 3, 2020

On Cougar 2020

One of the weirder aspects, and there are many, to the made-up "sex scandal" that a known compulsive liar and fraudster who shall remain nameless is alleging against presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is the fact that literally the only people who would be so offended by a grown woman engaging in consensual sex with a strapping young Marine are people who would never vote for Warren, or any woman, or any Democrat anyway.

I'm reminded of the people who try to "excuse" the actions of Donald Trump, who has admitted on tape to grabbing women's genitals without their consent, by noting that a lot of women - including feminists - like 50 Shades of Grey.

There's this perception that anything that is non-missionary-sex-engaged-in-by-a-man-and-a-woman is deeply scandalous and, worse, vulgar!  Consent isn't even part of the equation under this sexual worldview, and so all sex acts and assaults that are deemed "vulgar" are equated with one another.

Anyway, the "statement of fact and belief" is, um, I think the two best things to liken it to would be fanfic written by a 14-year-year old male virgin trying to contemplate the wackiest, kinkiest sex story he can and/or a deep psychosexual fantasy of a conservative Christian grown adult man.

Perhaps the most damning of the "details" is that Warren allegedly ordered a lime green dildo with a rubbery smell, when everyone knows she clearly would have opted for liberty green.

I just, so the story is that Warren is a decisive, experienced dom, but also doesn't come prepared and says "surprise me!" when asked about sex toy preferences? Checks out. 💯🧐

— Spooky Fannie Cougar Werewolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) October 3, 2019

Whew. Talk about this, or other stuff!

Republican Administration Seeking Federal Regulation of Speech on Social Media Sites

Via Politico:

"The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies, according to a White House official and two other people familiar with the matter — a month after President Donald Trump pledged to explore 'all regulatory and legislative solutions' on the issue."
...

'If the internet is going to be presented as this egalitarian platform and most of Twitter is liberal cesspools of venom, then at least the president wants some fairness in the system,' the White House official said."

Part of the "justification" here is that many conservatives are aggrieved that non-governmental entities don't grant them wanton freedom to spread hateful lies, violent rhetoric, and conspiracy theories.

Social media sites' banning of righwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for instance, is an oft-cited example of "bias" against "the conservative viewpoint," which is one of the biggest indictments of 21st-century conservatism in the US.

What's also neat here is that so many formal and informal checks on the Executive Branch are sort of just accepting that Trump can do whatever he wants, especially regarding "culture war issues," by merely issuing an Executive Order.

There's also this relevant tidbit:

"Trump said Monday that he wants the government to work with social media 'to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,' and the White House has invited internet and technology companies for a discussion on violent online extremism with senior administration officials Friday."

If you actually believe the goal of such "tools" would be to prevent rightwing-inspired domestic terrorism, rather than to persecute the people Trump identifies as his political enemies, I have a large wall to sell you that will be paid for by Mexico.

MAGA Dipshits Try to Comey the Midterms

I think one of many mistakes one can make when trying to pay women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against a powerful white man is to assume that even actual commitment of sexual assault would destroy the man's career.

But, leave it to rightwingers, misogynists, and other variations of anti-feminists to use false sexual assault allegations in the most cynical, projection-laden way imaginable. They constantly accuse women of wantonly lying about rape just for the fun of destroying men's careers (or of being paid to do so), but they jump at any opportunity to do exactly that. To such people, women's bodies aren't attached to human beings, we're just weapons for men to use to take down this, that, or the other political opponent.

A lot of it, too, is a perverted reversal. Women are regularly denied career opportunities for reasons far less severe than "committed sexual assault." We're too ambitious, too difficult, to devoted to our families, too emotional, too aggressive, too passive, too passive-aggressive, and, well you get the point, all-around too female.

What's funny-sad is that a lot of Russian trolls seem to understand US political nuance much better than the typical MAGA dumbass who is so used to his rightwing white-man bubble that he doesn't realize how irrational his thinking process, such as it is, is.

After all, despite many men's apparent hyper-reactive fear of being falsely smeared by conniving women, it's their man Donald Trump who helped normalize the reality that even an admitted sexual predator, like say one who has admitted on tape to grabbing women by the genitals without their consent, can rise to the very tippy-top in this nation. 

You don't get to be on Team Trump n' Kavanaugh and then act like you give a fuck about women. Ever.

This cynical use of false allegations isn't going to "prove" that Democrats "don't care about sexual assault" and therefore depress voter turnout in the 2018 midterms. Rather, it's going to remind a lot of women of how desperately vile Trump and his fanboy club of deplorables are.

And yes, "Comey" is a verb now.

Choirboy Kavanaugh and Rightwing Women

Whereas Donald Trump will thumb his nose at the left on the daily, performatively admitting to his fans on Twitter that he knows what despicable behavior he can get away with, Trump fan and National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) president Brian Brown on the other hand treats the citizenry like credulous, cherubic nimrods.

Desperate and salivating to see Obergefell overturned, watch how Brown (in a 9/21/18 NOM blogpost, which I'm not linking to) describes Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (emphasis in original):

"...[R]ight on cue, came the dirty trick they are hoping will derail or at least delay Kavanaugh's confirmation, the infamous 'sexual assault' allegation against him from his time as a high school student!
 
This is so predictable. They did the same thing against Clarence Thomas when he was nominated to the Supreme Court decades ago. They tried to use this against President Trump in the 2016 presidential election. And now they are using it against a supremely qualified nominee, someone who is a devout believer in Jesus Christ, who devotes himself as a volunteer to the less fortunate, who dearly loves his wife and family and who has gone out of his way to promote and mentor young women who wish to pursue a career in the law."

It's a little hard to know where to start breaking this one down, isn't it?  First, there's the reality that Donald Trump admitted to sexual assault on tape, tape that is in the public record. Yet, Brown acts as though Democrats making a big deal about that is some sort of unfair bit of fake news. Then, there's the implication that a "devout believer in Jesus Christ" couldn't possibly be a sexual predator. That would be big news to the Catholic Church. And, I suppose it didn't cross the mono-manic Brown's mind that, perhaps, many sexual predators position themselves as mentors to young people because it gives them greater access to targets.

Yet, what I really want to highlight here is how the conservative pretense for giving a damn about women really falls away here. In Right Wing Women, one of Andrea Dworkin's observations was that conservative women choose conservative anti-feminism because they believe it offers them a safe harbor from the rape culture misogyny on the left (which, yes, exists). They - particularly white Christian women - give up equality in exchange for being protected by, and privileged within, white Christian patriarchy.

Of course, a lot of the "protection" is a sham. The reality for women is that men across the political spectrum can be abusive and we're all making choices within a flawed system rigged for elite men.

Yet, what's interesting in this political moment is the extent to which conservative elite men are now openly admitting to the sham. No serious person can in good faith believe Trump treats women well. And, far from being the saintly protector of women, Kavanaugh himself was part of a frat-bro culture that relished in the homosocial humiliation of women. Brown, too, completely throws women's, and victim's, rights under the bus in his zeal for his obsessive, anti-LGBT "one man, one woman" campaign.

Since the 2016 election, we in the US have been living within a new wave of both feminism and intense, overt misogyny. The way I see it, many women, even conservative white Christians, have the capacity to be reached either by feminist messaging or to retreat backwards in fear, internalizing the misogyny, lashing out at women (especially feminists), and seeking more protection from abusive, shitty men.

This dynamic underscores just one of the many reasons it's imperative that the left continue to seriously address allegations of sexual assault, abuse, and predation committed by those on the left. Not only is it the right thing to do, but we must offer women - all women - a better, safer experience than what they're getting on the right.

Area Man Terrorized By Obscure, Fake Manifesto; Promotes It On His Popular Website

Yesterday, at his blog, conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher posted a hyperventilating, novella-length piece about a document purporting to be a manifesto for helping pedophilia become socially-acceptable via using the same strategies that the LGBT community used.

Dreher begins, "I want to share with you the most disturbing thing I have read in a very long time. You need to know about it." He then shares large excerpts from this "manifesto," which by the way was originally posted anonymously at 8chan, even adding his own annotations throughout, stressing the urgent direness of the situation:

"It’s actually a reasonable strategy document — 'reasonable' in the narrow and amoral sense of it makes sense as a strategy to get society to accept something totally evil. We know that this can work because it has worked with other sexual minorities."

"Other sexual minorities."

So, yeah. To anyone with even an ounce of skepticism, the document is an obvious, right-wing fabrication. Dreher himself half-acknowledges that in his original post, but then admits that he doesn't really want to look too deeply into the matter because that would be too dark:

"I am unwilling to do the kind of digging online in this darkness to nail down with certainty that this is an authentic document. I will only caution you that I have not seen it verified yet. Nevertheless, it is out there, and it most definitely has the air of plausibility."

There is a certain dipshitted deliciousness to watch a man who regularly mocks college students for being oversensitive snowflakes confess that he can't be bothered to ascertain the authenticity of a document that denigrates LGBT political gains by suggesting that gains for pedophiles logically follow.

His admitted ignorance about this text's authenticity, however, doesn't stop Dreher from treating this slippery slope "threat" as 100% real. In fact, as it becomes more and more clear to him, in real time, that the document is a fake, he only digs in further, stressing that "we" still need to be on guard anyways.

After people began commenting on his post, he added two updates.

In the first, he acknowledges that it might be a fake, but insists that "we" still ought to think about how "we" would respond to such a manifesto if it were real. In the second, he says he read it again and now doubts its authenticity. Even so, he insists that the very fact that some readers might think that this obscure fake manifesto was authentic, which he initially promoted on his website as authentic, "tells us something about the current cultural moment."

Indeed it does, good sir.

He then goes on to approvingly cite Ross Douthat's recent "redistribution of sex" garbage fire of a piece that was somehow published over at The New York Times, which is really the PERFECT on-brand capstone to Dreher's clusterfuck of manufactured outrage. 

Dreher also sees TERFs as allies now because they're all-aboard the anti-trans train, which is also PERFECT, obviously.


Related:

I know 2018 has brought us a lot of weird and misogynistic shit, but even I was not expecting Ross Douthat to tell us that the "the organs of establishment opinion" need to entertain the extremist notion that sex ought to be provided to men as a prophylactic to femicide.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) May 3, 2018

Mediocre White Man Is Mediocre At WaPo

The fact that Richard Cohen's absurd piece defending white men from being reversely discriminated against was written by himself, a grown-ass man, and published in The Washington Post and not, instead, written by an adolescent for his high school paper tells us pretty much everything we need to know about how real and widespread discrimination against white men is in the real world.

That Richard Cohen gets space in The Washington Post to publish his opinions is indicative of how white men are much more often rewarded for their status-quo-perpetuating mediocrity than they are treated reversely-sexist.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) April 18, 2018

Here are some telling quotes from the piece itself. He acknowledges that discrimination against women/people of color is (was?) a very real and widespread thing:

• "Let me concede right at the top that it was always better to be white in America than black. Let me further stipulate that in the workplace, it has usually been better to be a man than a woman."
• "My first real job was with the New York office of a national insurance company. Sexual harassment was a problem, for sure."
• "Our office was exclusively white and not by accident. When I asked my boss why we had no black employees, he told me directly that it was his policy not to hire any."
• "When I went into journalism, it was mostly a guy’s thing. It was rare for a woman to be a foreign correspondent, rarer still for one to cover a war. My career surely benefited from that. There are women around today who I am glad I didn’t have to compete against when I was starting out."

Here, Cohen acknowledges that his own career benefited precisely because he didn't have to compete against women/people of color, who were widely and very blatantly excluded from his profession.

Yet, watch and observe this display of Peak White Man:

"Once I was passed over for a newsroom position I very much wanted. 'We needed a woman,' an editor told me. I said nothing, although I seethed. In short order, I was made a columnist, so I didn’t even get a chance to cry. But the instant rush of utter unfairness lingers. The woman chosen was qualified, but her qualification had nothing to do with her sex. I was told she was just a needed statistic.

The way women have been treated in the workplace is wrong — everything from pay disparity to sexual harassment to outright discrimination. But the past does not obliterate the solemn obligation to treat people as individuals, not primarily as members of a sex or race. Fairness demands it. Democracy requires it."

One time, Cohen wanted a job, a qualified woman got it instead, and then he got a different job he wanted anyway, and still.... he seethed with anger at the injustice to himself. 

Cohen talks a big game at the end, uttering platitudes about fairness and the "solemn obligation" to treat everyone as individuals, and yet what, if anything, has he ever done about discrimination against women/people of color in his career except benefit from it?


And yet, just think. If Cohen had had to compete against women/people of color since the very start of his career, we all might have been spared this cold-diarrhea analysis in favor of something much, much more embiggening to the public discourse.


Related: 

• Richard Cohen was accused of sexually harassing a colleague in 1998
• Richard Cohen engaged in rape apologia

State of the Union? War, Likely

If Trump remains in office for a full term, I think it is very likely that he will manufacture a war or crisis in order to bump up his approval ratings and pressure Congress to stop investigate his ties to Russia.

Via PBS:

"Trump spoke about creating a more united country during a lunch with a number of television news anchors. Trump said the United States has long been divided, including during the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton. Trump also said that Americans usually come together during times of suffering.

'I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity,' Trump said. 'Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.'"

Trump pays lip service to not wanting a "major event" to occur, but he is also a well-documented liar and thus not reliable narrator of his own beliefs or reality.

As I've noted before, Trump regularly tweets references to nuclear war with North Korea not just because he seems obsessed with holding the power to obliterate billions of human beings, but because he's also an abuser who enjoys keeping the people of the US and in other countries living in terror.

His more recent language about "major events" that might unify the nation is a similar sort of signal.

As I noted over at Shakesville, in August 2017:

"At least some of the lingering unrest about the electoral process [due to the US Supreme Court handing George W. Bush the presidency], from what I remember, seemed to be quelled after 9/11, when the American public rallied behind George W. Bush. Before the attacks, Bush's approval rating hovered in the mid-50s. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, his approval ballooned to the high point of his two terms at 90%.

That is, 9/11 seems to have bolstered the legitimacy of George W. Bush's presidency, at least inasmuch as legitimacy is derived from the approval of the populace. Although, by the end of his second term he had become one of the most unpopular presidents in US history, in part because he squandered his legitimacy by leading the nation to war on the basis of lies.

A lesson from George W. Bush's presidency, then, is that a security crisis can confer legitimacy to a President who begins his term lacking it. And, the people will hunker down and rally behind an undeserving leader during a scary time, out of a sense of fear, loyalty, and nationalism. History shows that bad leaders will squander this trust, rather than accepting it with responsibility and grace.

For these reasons, my first point today is that we ought to be gravely concerned that the man who holds this office today is historically unpopular, obsessed with his popularity, and is widely seen as illegitimate.

It's coming.

As for Donald's State of the Union speech last night, I didn't watch the artifice. But, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I express my hope that the well-off white guys are still having lots of fun with all this.

"Breaking News": Donald's Not a Feminist

Less than a week after women led millions of people in massive protests against him, Donald Trump surprised absolutely no one by publicly acknowledging that he's not a feminist, in an interview with Pier Morgan.

He said, "No, I wouldn't say I'm a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I'm for women, I'm for men, I'm for everyone'."

Mind you, even if we were to believe that Trump had this sort of "I don't even see gender" mentality, and I don't think he does given that he's an admitted sexual predator, what that mentality means 99.9% of the time is that the person actually means is, "I don't even see sexism against women."

The other thing I want to note about this, in light of the upcoming State of the Union address to be given by this man, is what I noted on Twitter:

The real story isn't that "Trump isn't a feminist." It's how many mainstream pundits and journalists are going to slobber all over him anyway, after his State of the Union, despite his admission to opposing equality for half of the country.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 29, 2018

A man doesn't have to actually be for women's equality in order to be either a US President or perceived as "presidential" by the mainstream pundit class. In fact, given the number of misogynists and predators in the US, it's probably better for his chances of winning if he's not.

Trump the Unqualified Autocrat

Susan Glasser at Politico has written a terrifying summary of Trump's first year of, to put it mildly, lacking foreign diplomacy skills.

To give you an idea, here Glasser is referencing a September 2017 dinner among Trump and leaders of four Latin American countries (emphasis added):

"After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. 'Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,' the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. 'Is that right? Are you sure?' Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind.

 By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. 'Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,' the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. 'The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”"

The portrait painted here is that Trump is, at best, an incompetent front man (as some of his Republican "reassurers" suggest) while more level-headed folks actually run the show and, at worst, he's an incompetent autocrat who can't actually be controlled.

I think it's the latter.

Trump has given no indication that he has even a rudimentary understanding of the US political system or that he is aware of, let alone would respect, checks and balances. I doubt he could even pass a citizenship test. Per former State Department employees, he also rejects expertise in the arena of foreign diplomacy, per Glasser's account, and instead demands that policy be set by his own ignorant "instinct" and/or according to what Presidents Obama and Bush had previously done (in which case he does the opposite).

All of this is likely how he ran his businesses: petty, abusive, unqualified, self-obsessed, imbued with toxic masculinity.

We are in trouble. We may not (at least obviously) see the effects of this dangerous incompetence immediately, but one day, we will. And, his Republican Party, which controls Congress yet heartlessly and recklessly fails to take meaningful action to oppose or remove him, has full complicity.

Who could have predicted that Trump would see the "nuclear button" as an extension of his white dick? (Everyone. Literally everyone. Except, I guess, The New York Times which is super impressed by his Twitter usage).

"President Trump has brought a reality-show accessibility to a once-aloof presidency, invigorating voters who felt alienated by the establishment." - @nytimes tweet, 2 days ago. pic.twitter.com/PbDbXErfba

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 3, 2018

Don't forget, folks: All of this, or a woman! 

Man In Party Devoted to Regulating Evil Sneers at People Who Want to Regulate Evil

In response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Republican Matt Bevin, Governor of Kentucky, tweeted a scold:

To all those political opportunists who are seizing on the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for more gun regs...You can't regulate evil...

— Governor Matt Bevin (@GovMattBevin) October 2, 2017

This stance on "regulating evil" would be news to many of us, yes?

As I tweeted, I'm old enough to remember that trying to regulate (what it deems as) evil has long been the very core of Republican Party politics, whether via the regulation of sex, masturbation, sex toys, reproductive rights, birth control, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, non-missionary-position sex, uppity women, gender non-conformity, bathroom usage, non-Christian religious and spiritual beliefs, among other acts, beliefs, or persons deemed "evil" by its predominately-white Christian base.

That an actual sitting politician would sneer that people who live in terror of gun violence are political opportunists primarily demonstrates that the modern Republican Party is a hopeless death-cult of despair and cynicism.

Establishment Republicans Lose in Alabama

Via the Washington Post, Roy Moore, has won the Republican primary in the Senate race to fill Jeff Session's seat, beating his Mitch McConnell-back opponent:

"Unable to match the [Republican-led] ad campaign against him, Moore was defended by a loose grouping of anti-establishment conservative activists, including Bannon, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, 'Duck Dynasty' star Phil Robertson and conservative talk radio broadcasters including Laura Ingraham.

But in significant ways, his campaign differed from any other Senate effort in recent memory. On the stump, Moore made his belief in the supremacy of a Christian God over the Constitution the central rallying point of his campaign.....

In a 2002 legal opinion, he described homosexual conduct as 'an inherent evil,' and he has argued that the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage should not be considered the rule of law. He was suspended from Alabama’s court a second time for defying the higher court’s marriage decision, and he later decided to retire from the bench.

If elected to the Senate, Moore has promised to be a disruptive force who will directly challenge the leadership of McConnell."

Palin? The Duck Dynasty guy? Laura Ingraham? These people are the fringe of the fringe.

Sure, this election happened in Alabama, but it's becoming more and more clear that Republicans, after having stoked bigotry for decades to win elections, have lost control of the monster they've created.

Now, if only someone had warned us that so many of our fellow citizens might fall into a, how shall I say this, basket of deplorables.

The GOP Base in One Sentence

Musician Kid Rock is apparently contemplating a Senate run as a Republican.

Via PinkNews, here's pretty much the perfect encapsulation of the GOP base right now:

 "Polling has shown [Kid Rock] has massive support among the GOP base, despite his lack of experience or policy knowledge or stated political agenda."

Importantly, Kid is willing to publicly act like a bigot by, for instance, expressing his transphobic thoughts, as detailed in the PinkNews article.

All that matters to many people is that Kid Rock is "politically incorrect." That is the only relevant qualification a candidate need have, at least if he's a white guy. That he's otherwise completely unqualified doesn't matter. Lock her up, etc.

What a cool party, Republicans. And, to be quite frank, any person on the left still gaslighting us about the bigotry the GOP stokes can fuck off forever.

Have a nice day!

#Winning

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) held its annual anti-equality "March for Marriage" in Washington, DC over the weekend.

Per Right Wing Watch, about 50 people attended what seemed to be an awkward display:

"Fifteen minutes before the event was scheduled to begin, about 20 adults were milling around an empty stage while several children worked to unfurl large red and blue banners to carry during the march. One passerby wondered whether they were going to a kite festival. Gradually, a few more participants arrived, including five men wearing the signature capes of the group Tradition, Family and Property and carrying a 'Honk for Traditional Marriage' sign."

Despite this sad showing, NOM activists are reported to be looking forward to the opportunity for the US Supreme Court's composition to change and, accordingly, for the Obergefell decision to be reversed.

It's tempting at this juncture to scoff at their chances, but I advise against overconfidence.

Anti-LGBT activists talk a lot about "the will of the people," but they don't seem all that interested, actually, in the will of the people.

As I noted recently, Donald Trump is a deeply-unpopular politician who lost the popular vote in the 2016 election. In addition to these factors, that he is also under investigation for having ties to a country that tampered with the election in which he lost severely undermines his legitimacy.

The day after his Inauguration, the largest protest in US history took place, with approximately 2-4 million attendees - vastly outnumbering NOM's little event.

Same-sex marriage, in contrast to Trump's unpopularity, is now accepted by 64% of Americans.

To think that Trump, with his questionable legitimacy and historic unpopularity, could appoint another fringe conservative to the Supreme Court who would potentially overturn a popular decision .... well, that's a lot of things - chief among them a constitutional crisis, perhaps. What it definitively would not be is "the will of the people."

NOM and the far right have forever lost that argument in the United States.

Of course, we've known all along that the "will of the people" argument was usually a mask that covered more unsavory opinions about queers.

Again, via Right Wing News, a quote from one of the speakers at the NOM march:

“We left God,” she said, “then we allowed ourselves to be aligned with ungodly movements. This gay rights movement is ungodly, it’s from the pit of hell.”

If a Trump-stacked Supreme Court ultimately strips same-sex couples of marriage rights, make no mistake that bigotry like this will have enabled it.

Reporting Live From the "Nothing Is Racist: A White Memoir" Files

It seems to me that one of the lowest possible bars that white people have for not being racist toward Black people is to not say the n-word.

But, take Bill Maher saying it recently, for instance, and my oh my all the passes white people - even those on the left - give him for it. One of the general arguments I saw many a white person make  is that Maher was "just joking." Some of them then jumped to the conclusion that comedy would cease to exist if white people couldn't say the n-word anymore, which mostly is a statement to how pathetic some white people's sense of humors are.

Another argument I saw was that Maher opposes Trump, so if Maher says the n-word, it's "divisive" or "damaging" to "the resistance" to call him racist. More divisive, we are to suppose, than being racist.

This whitesplaining fits into the larger leftbro narrative that nothing really is racist if you just understand where white people are coming from, "identity politics" are unimportant side issues, and it's wrong in general to call people racist or, gods forbid, deplorables.

"Rabid liberal." Yeah. https://t.co/LgQgRWhrts

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) June 4, 2017

Oh. Also, I have a new Personal Twitter Rule: Pre-emptively block anyone who follows me who has anything resembling "No sense of humor? Easily offended? F*ck you!" in their Twitter bio, even if they hate Donald Trump.

"Reparative" Therapy Leader Dies

[CN: mention of suicidality]

Joseph Nicolosi, advocate and practitioner of "reparative" therapy that seeks to "change" gay, lesbian, and bisexual people's sexual orientation to "heterosexual" and to prevent trans people from affirming their gender identity, died last week.

Nicolosi founded the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization that grew widely discredited over the years for the promotion of, as Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented, junk science. Still, he billed himself as the "foremost expert" on this form of "therapy."

If there is a way to quantitatively measure Nicolosi's responsibility for the culture of stigmatization and harm to individual LGBT lives, I don't know of it. And yet, his responsibility seems, in my opinion, undeniable.

I came of age as a lesbian in the 1990s and early aughts when Nicolosi published most of his works. Nicolosi had influenced, and/or collaborated with, notorious leaders of SPLC-identified anti-LGBT hate groups, including historical revisionist Scott Lively, who argued that gay men were responsible for the Holocaust. NARTH regularly submtted amicus briefs in court cases opposing gay rights, arguing that sexual orientation could be changed.

Even in the late aughts, nearly every anti-LGBT person I encountered at various anti-LGBT blogs and forums relied to varying degrees on NARTH and Nicolosi's work. I regularly engaged with anti-gay people who believed I was intrinsically mentally ill for being gay and, if they were Christian, also believed I was innately sinful (yeah yeah, "everybody is," blah blah).

Mainstream health organizations have now widely critiqued "reparative" and "conversion" therapies. And, back in 2009, I wrote about the American Psychological Association's review of the scientific literature examining "reparative" therapy. which summarized that: "efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm." This harm includes loss of sexual feeling, depression, suicidality, and anxiety.

Now, six states and fourteen cities ban "reparative" or "conversion" therapy for minors.

I have nothing kind to say about Joseph Nicolosi. To my knowledge, he died without ever having apologized to the LGBT community.

Instead, I will use his death as an opportunity to suggest that we should not become complacent with the progress we gained on LGBT issues during the Obama years.

• Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has been described as a conservative in the mold of Antonin Scalia, who deeply opposed LGBT rights;
• Trump has already reversed guidelines stating that public school should allow transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity;
• The Republican Party platform includes a dog whistle inclusion of support for "reparative therapy," which Mike Pence, an anti-LGBT conservative Christian, has also signaled dog whistle support for.

We will not go backwards.

On Feminists "Owing" People Things

I reject sexist attacks against Kellyanne Conway.

Her behavior and statements are abominable and should be attacked on their substantive merits without resorting to attacking her on the basis of looks or any of the myriad ways female public figures are disproportionately attacked. 

Some of the conversations about sexism against Conway, and against conservative women in general, are always ....something though, right?

Better framing: What do the left, right, and center owe women, when the entire political spectrum is steeped in misogyny? https://t.co/CjDKrhrVKT

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) March 6, 2017

While Stassa Edwards, in the cited Jezebel piece, suggests we should let sexist attacks against Conway ride because to do otherwise is to "protect the integrity of white women like Conway," I argue that we should oppose such attacks. Whatever weapons we employ in politics in furtherance of our aims - hacking, leaking, doxxing, sexism, racism - we explicitly or implicitly legitimize their use against our movements as well.

In the case of sexist attacks, if we support their use against women like Conway, we legitimize their use as weapons against all women - even if that's not our intent. Because, trust me, misogynists won't grasp the "nuanced" take of "Oh wait, when I called Conway an ugly bitch, I didn't mean you should call Hillary Clinton one!"  The misogynist sees calling one woman a bitch as a license to call any imperfect woman one, as well. And also trust me on this, the misogynist thinks a lot of women are imperfect!

Also, note the horrendous title of the Jezebel piece. Namely, the notion that it might be feminists who uniquely "owe" Kellyanne Conway something.  It's this same entitlement to feminist work that lets MRAs demand our time, effort, writing, and advocacy for their pet issues.

But, where is this mythical place where feminists have pervasive power to halt world misogyny if we just, I don't know, tried harder for all these various ingrates whom we owe our work to?

The truth is, well, don't the people writing these takes ever notice that it's feminists who are constantly maligned, harassed, and abused by the political left, right, and center for demanding that the political left, right, and center treat women decently?

In light of these conditions, at what point does the question become: What exactly do non-feminists owe women?  And if your answer to that is "nothing," then you should at least have the decency of leaving us alone and getting out of our fucking way while we do this work.

I Found It

The most Donald Trump statement to ever Donald Trump. His summary of his first month's performance, via The New York Times:

"Mr Trump gave his presidency an A so far in an interview broadcast Tuesday morning, but he added that he would only give himself a C for communicating how great he has been."

While we're discussing our flaws, I'd say my biggest problem is that I just work too hard, really. Well, that, and the chief complaint my sex partners have about my penis being too big.

Not This Shit Again

Meanwhile, the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is urging its supporters to pressure Trump into signing the recently-leaked anti-LGBT, anti-choice, anti-sex Executive Order.

I have a brief observation, over at Shakesville.

McConnell Fuels the Resistance

You might be super surprised to learn that I had some thoughts about Republican Mitch McConnell silencing Senator Elizabeth Warren two days ago, as she attempted to read the words of Coretta Scott King in opposition to racist Jeff Sessions' nomination as US Attorney General.

I wrote about it Shakesville today.