Interesting Links for 15-09-2020

[andrewducker]

Apparently there are empty Covid testing centres in England which are turning people away because the booking systems are fucked.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1305208471273566208.html
(tags:testing pandemic epicfail uk OhForFucksSake )

JK Rowling's latest book is about a murderous cis man who dresses as a woman to kill his victims

(tags:jkrowling OhForFucksSake )

Why political parties can't just be based on "what people think"

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1305434347852517376.html
(tags:polls politics UK )

Arm's fired China CEO refuses to leave, company reps banned from Arm China premises

(tags:business China wtf computers )

Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

(tags:Ocean data Microsoft technology Scotland )

Brexit and the break-up of the UK

(tags:UK Europe Doom )

Public Health Wales had a data breach of Covid sufferers

(tags:pandemic dataprotection fail OhForFucksSake wales )

Whistleblower: There Were Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Facility

(tags:crime USA OhForFucksSake )

A Massachusetts Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism

(tags:USA crime racism police )

Beautifully preserved cave bears emerge from Siberian permafrost

(tags:Russia Bears prehistory )

There's an awful lot of overclocking out there

(tags:Windows computers fail )

Comments

[lilysea]

Re: JK Rowling, my favourite local bookshop had this to say:

Rabble Books & Games: "Hey Rabblers, we want to talk about JK Rowling. We are always trying to make Rabble a safer space for our community, and part of that is trying not to put books by transphobes on the shelves, when we know about them.
.
Here is where we’re at: we’re not going to stock new JK Rowling books and we won’t be keeping Robert Galbraith books (her pseudonym for crime novels) on the shelf anymore*. Though we don’t sell many, we’re going to phase out the Harry Potter books too. We know that HP means a lot to a lot of people and that often you want to share them with the youngsters in your life. We will always be happy to order them in for you, as with any books we don’t stock. For any we do sell, we’ll be donating our profits to transfolkofwa. We’re physically a very small shop, and this opens up so much space for awesome books by Jessica Townsend, Jeremy Lachlan, Tamara Moss, Rebecca Lim, Ambelin Kwaymullina and Akwaeke Emezi and other amazing writers with middle grade and young adult fantasy adventure books.
.
Whilst stocking a book isn’t an endorsement (good grief, that would be a minefield), and we will always take orders for books that aren’t in stock, there are more worthy books to put on the shelf, books that don’t harm communities and won’t make us sad to unpack them.
.
*Just a note about this pseudonym - Robert Galbraith Heath was a psychologist who helped develop conversion therapy. Hard to imagine that’s a coincidence. Maybe read Dervla McTiernan and Tara Moss instead?
.
What I’d love to hear is your suggested alternatives - what are some queer and trans positive fantasy books for young people and crime books for adults?
.
There’s a link in the comments for more info about JK’s latest book, with a heavy CN for transphobia and transmisogyny.
— Nat
.
Image from them [Image is a black background with BOYCOTT TRANS-PHOBES written in block letters, rainbow coloured with a left-to-right blend.]

#TransRightsAreHumanRights

[andrewducker]

That is awesome!

[lilysea]

They're a great bookshop! In pre-COVID times they used to have regular drag queen story times for children...

and every #IndigenousLiteracyDay they donate that days profits to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

[dewline]

A very good counter-strategy right there.

[flick]

Here's (I understand) the relevant passage from the new JKR:

[context: On page 75, Strike [the main character] is listening to the son of an investigating officer tell him what he knows about Creed [the serial killer].]

'He had his failures you know. Penny Hiskett, she got away from him and gave the police a description in ’71, but that didn’t help them much. She said he was dark and stocky, because he was wearing a wig at the time and all padded out in a woman’s coat. They caught him in the end because of Melody Bower. Nightclub singer, looked like Diana Ross. Creed got chatting to her at the bus stop, offered her a lift, then tried to drag her into the van when she said no. She escaped, gave the police a proper description and told them he’d said his house was of Paradise Park.'

That's it. Don't believe the hype. You (and Pink News) have been taken in by a click-bait Telegraph writer.

[andrewducker]

Alas there is far far more.

"Rowling portrays villain Dennis Creed’s habit of wearing dresses as a guise that masks the violent monster underneath. His effeminate tendencies cause some people he encounters to believe he is gay—which can feel further reminiscent of the homophobic arguments of the 1970s and ’80s, which cast gay people as predators similarly to how anti-trans movements now frame trans people. Rowling’s protagonist Cormoran Strike says at one point that Creed’s victims “had been hoodwinked by a careful performance of femininity.”

But most harmful are the passages that mock Creed using the language of transphobes. There’s a fixation, at times, on Creed’s ability to “pass”—including an entire retrospective on a doctor’s office debating whether an unregistered patient was a “lady” or a man in a dress. The book frames Creed’s interest in women’s clothing as the result of abuse he suffered as a child, and casts him as a voyeur who uses the cloak of womanhood for his own twisted purposes—again, pernicious anti-trans tropes."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-transphobic-is-jk-rowlings-new-novel-troubled-blood-very

[flick]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/sep/15/rowling-troubled-blood-thriller-robert-galbraith-review

Even the Guardian thinks it’s been overblown.

[andrewducker]

This would be the same Guardian which has been so transphobic that it's American staff had to write an open letter about it?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/guardian-staff-trans-rights-letter?ref=mobile_share

The one that commissioned research and then fudged the research to make transgender people look bad?

https://mobile.twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/status/1284453823310893060?s=09

Yeah, I have zero interest in their opinions on trans matters.

[andrewducker]

To be clear, if you can find a trans friendly paper/organisation who are saying "We think this is inaccurate, and here's why." then I'm definitely prepared to listen. Stuff definitely can get blown out of proportion. I'm just not convinced it has been here.

[flick]

If you’re going to say that the Guardian, which got a $250,000 Grant from the Open Society Foundations to report on gender, is not trans-friendly because of one editorial saying “maybe there needs to be some balance here”, then you’re asking for something in a very narrow range. Could you give me some examples of outlets you think are reliable?

Obviously the BBC is out, after the Panorama investigation into Tavistock. The Times reports that the public doesn’t support transwomen being in female-only spaces, so they’re out. Stonewall’s employees report persistent anti-trans discrimination, so they’re out. I’m assuming you’ll reject anything in a right-leaning outlet, even if it’s by a trans person, so anything by Debbie Hayton is out....

Do you see my point?

[andrewducker]

To categorise that article as being about one editorial is arguing in bad faith. That's not at all what the piece says. I'm willing to have a discussion about this, but not with someone who going to say things that are blatantly not true.

[flick]

That article says “The letter, [...] was organised over the last few days in response to a column by Suzanne Moore that has been widely criticised as anti-trans”. It gives no other examples, just makes a vague claim.

So, do you have any examples of reputable news sources that you accept are “trans friendly”?

[andrewducker]

Right, so you're going to ignore the rest of the content of the article?

That's deeply unimpressive.

And, sure, https://www.pinknews.co.uk/

[flick]

The article cites one opinion piece, and then makes vague claims about there being other examples. If there are so many, why doesn’t it reference any of them?

Pink News? Wikipedia rates it as only “generally reliable”, way below many other UK sources. Are you serious, you rate PN’s content over that of, say, the BBC?

[andrewducker]

The letter, from hundreds of Guardian employees says:
"We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views...But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees"

I'm afraid I trust those hundreds of Guardian employees to know what they're talking about.

I'm not aware of the BBC publishing pieces saying whether something is bigoted or not. They tend to be very against that kind of thing. Have they made a statement, because I would be interested in reading it if so.

[andrewducker]

I just realised that I was stupidly thinking of UK ones only, which is why I was struggling. Liberal US publications are baffled as to why the UK is the way it is, to the point where they have been publishing explainer articles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/opinion/britain-transphobia-labour-party.html

Or

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/06/jk-rowling-transphobia-feminism

For example.

So I'll happily take either of those two. Or the Washington Post.

[flick]

Nothing in the NY Times or WaPo yet, I’m afraid: I dare say they do book reviews in the weekend editions.

Wall Street Journal? Their reviewer didn’t even think a serial killer wearing a wig and woman’s coat to get close to potential victims to be comment-worthy, which probably shows what a minor plot point it is: https://archive.is/sVYNv

[andrewducker]

Ah, people avoiding talking about bigotry (or claims thereof) doesn't really carry any weight.

If there was a claim that X was anti-semitic, I'd be looking for Jews (or Jewish-allies) to either say "Yes, of course it is", or "No, actually, this is being overblown, and brings other claims of antisemitism into disrepute, because it's a ridiculous assertion."

I'm looking for something similar here.

Edit: Or something with sufficient detail to make my own mind up more - which the one I linked to above had more of in it than I've seen elsewhere.

[andrewducker]

You'll be delighted to hear that I've now seen a couple of reviews from friends who I trust on this stuff who say that there are things they don't like (which you'd expect from a lot of writers), but that, indeed, the Telegraph was exaggerating things to get people wound up.

(Which was a relief, because I'd hope that I would have friends who would value perspective over being partisan. And I didn't want you thinking that I'd go on believing untrue things for partisan reasons either.)

[dewline]

1. That's just frightening. Ottawa's testing centres are consistently facing 'round-the-block-sized lineups during their "open" hours right now. I can't tell you about Gatineau.

2. Yeah, not interested in that book. Now or ever.

3. All of this is true. And cause for ongoing concern.

4. This is just disturbing for reasons I'm not entirely clear on.

6. Echoing some of Charlie Stross' thoughts there.

8. This one looked dubious at first and seems to have garnered more credibility overnight. I see echoes of crimes against Indigenous women in Canada by our medical community and government across the decades in this.

[cmcmck]

She is clearly so determined that it happens against all the evidence to the contrary that she writes a book about it?

How sad is that?

[agoodwinsmith]

Holy Moly - I thought the Rowling thing was satire. It's a good thing my jaw is attached.

[ninetydegrees]

I think the irony is that she doesn't seem to even know that crossdressing and transgenderism are two different things. She's only showing *again* how ignorant she is. Hope this tanks.

So many WTF lately. The world is terrifying.

[andrewducker]

I believe that the gender critical line is that transgender women *are* just men in dresses.

[anna_wing]

Perhaps she does. I have not read the book, so will not comment on it, but the description is compatible with the idea that the risk to women is from men, taking advantage of the general societal impression of women as non-threatening, rather than from transgender women.

[andrewducker]

Except that she's constantly repeating the talking points of the transphobic groups who refer to trans women as "men in dresses".

So she's burned through any good will that it might be a coincidence that she spends a lot of her time on the internet spreading awful lies about trans women and then just happens to have a character in her book who is a man in a dress.

[flick]

Just search for “cross-dressing serial killer”: it’s very common.