Mick Hartley

The Drake Family

Photos by Arthur Rothstein of the musical Drake family, at the Farm Security Administration's Mercer Evans camp in Weslaco, Texas. From February 1942:

Fiddler Nathan Drake

Nathan Drake on fiddle; on banjo and guitar are his sons Jasper ("Sleepy") and Weldon.

Nathan Drake, Jasper "Sleepy" Drake, and behind him brother Weldon Drake

The Drake family playing at a Saturday night dance.

That Saturday night dance again.

Weldon Drake

Jasper "Sleepy" Drake on banjo,  sister Monnie on guitar.

Back from the Saturday shopping trip.
[Photos: Shorpy/Arthur Rothstein]

A campaign of terror against the small child

Still in Ireland, here's a case in point:

A 32-year-old who routinely sexually assaulted his young step-son and threatened to break his arms and legs is serving out a six-year sentence in women’s prison. A solicitor for the child sex abuser is appealing the sentence, arguing that the prison time is far too difficult for a “transgender woman.”

The man, whose identity is being withheld from the public in order to protect the identity of his victim, had become romantically involved with a woman and moved into the home where she lived with her four-year-old son.

Between September 2011 and September 2013, the man had engaged in a campaign of terror against the small child, abusing the boy whenever his mother was not looking.

In several instances, the man pulled the child’s trousers down and made him lie on the bed, where he was subjected to sexually abusive acts. In addition, the man often slapped the child and threatened to break his arms and legs.

The man’s abuse of his step-son came to light when neighbor’s witnessed him shouting at and threatening the boy.

On December 9, 2019, convicted of 10 counts of Sexual Assault Contrary to Section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1990 and a count of Child Cruelty. The man has since begun identifying as a woman.

This man has had no treatment - not even cross-sex hormones - but he's in possession of a gender recognition certificate, which is what really matters.

Though even a spell in a women's jail is too much for him:

Senior Counsel Roderick O’Hanlon is appealing the convicted child sex abuser’s sentence on the grounds that the sentencing judge did not have sufficient regard to the difficulties a “transgender woman” would face in prison.

And the number of female child sex abusers has been going through the roof recently. Have you noticed?

A staggering betrayal of Irish women

Julie Bindel on the situation in Ireland, where an open letter signed by major Irish NGOs, including Amnesty International (AI) and the National Women’s Council (NWC), has called for the removal of media and political representation for women who won’t capitulate to the demands of trans activists.

‘We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division,’ reads the letter. ‘These fringe internet accounts stand against affirmative medical care of transgender people, and they stand against the right to self-identification of transgender people in this country… they stand against trans, women’s and gay rights by aligning themselves with far-right tropes and stances.’

"Far-right tropes and stances" - as, for instance, the idea that biological sex is real, or that trans women - biological men - have no place in women's prisons.

Dr Christine Gaffney is a social scientist specializing in gender equality and a member of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Alliance Ireland (LGBAI). She is furious about Amnesty’s latest stance: ‘Why have human rights organizations like Amnesty abandoned women and girls? Is it simply policy capture? Either way, they have sold women out.’Rachel Moran is an Irish writer and feminist who’s spent 10 years campaigning for global women’s rights. What she has to say about the NWC is no more flattering than White’s assessment of AI.

‘The idea that the NWC speaks for Irish women is laughable. They have dismissed, sidestepped and flat-out ignored direct questions regarding the adult male sex offenders walking around the women’s wings of our Irish jails,’ says Moran. ‘To refuse to address this is reprehensible, and classist to the core.’ Moran is right. The women in Mount joy and Limerick prisons are among the most vulnerable in society, and the vast majority have been sexually violated by men. ‘An organization that willfully ignores the psychological violence of incarcerating women alongside sex-offending men has no right pretending to speak on behalf of women,’ says Moran. She calls the NWC-signed letter ‘a direct and totalitarian act of aggression and a staggering betrayal of Irish women’....

For Ceri Black, a founder of LGBAI, extreme transgender ideology leads to the bullying and silencing of lesbians. Black says the women supporting the notion that ‘trans women are women’ are the most privileged, with the least to lose.

‘To hear rich, white, self-proclaimed “feminists” expound from inside their gated communities and ivory towers the thesis that trans women are women and belong in women’s spaces sticks in my throat. It is the absolute definition of elitism. There they sit, smugly proclaiming, facing none of the consequences of their dangerous words. “For thee, peasant, not for me.”’

This comes after Amnesty stripped Alexei Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status after they were "bombarded" with complaints highlighting xenophobic comments that he'd made in the past, even though an Amnesty spokesman admitted that the wave of requests to "de-list" Navalny seemed to be part of an "orchestrated campaign" to discredit Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic and "impede" Amnesty's calls for his release from custody. 

They seem to have rather lost their way.

Madrileño brutalism

No, I didn't know there was any brutalism in Madrid - but there is, and Italian photographer Roberto Conte has been there to capture it:

He decided to capture Madrid's architecture, with a specific focus on brutalism as Conte felt it hadn't been fully documented previously.

"I focused on brutalism in particular both because it's a 'concrete line' that has driven my personal research for many years and because it's a term that usually not associated with Madrid," he explained.

"The city that automatically triggers other associations and that makes it even more interesting in my point of view."

Nearly all the buildings in the series were built by architects who were from Spain, and sometimes from the city itself. They were largely constructed in the 1960s, 70s and 80s in "a period of gradual and progressive liberation of Spain from Francoism," said Conte.

The Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain

The Beatriz building from 1968

The Department of Information Sciences from 1971

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Inside the Cultural Heritage Institute, nicknamed the Crown of Thorns

The 25-storey Torres Blancas

Edificio Princesa, with verdant hanging gardens

Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Filipina

Los Cubos, 1974, the only building in the series designed by a non-Spanish architecture team

[Photos: Roberto Conte]

Sheer evasion

Rachel Levine is Joe Biden's nomination for assistant health secretary, and also happens to be a trans woman. She was questioned by Senator Rand Paul during the confirmation hearings. You can see the exchange here. Rand asks - twice - whether Levine thinks that children are capable of making life-changing decisions such as changing sex. And twice Levine simply avoids the question. It's quite extraordinary.

Madeleine Kearns in National Review is astonished by the US media reaction. Blinded by the sacred aura of trans-ness round the blessed Levine, they ignore her refusal to answer Paul's perfectly reasonable concerns, and concentrate solely on the supposed transphobia of anyone who dares to to ask hard questions of such a brave gender pioneer:

Yesterday, I noted on the Corner the perplexing reaction (from all the usual suspects) to Senator Rand Paul’s entirely legitimate line of questioning aimed at Rachel Levine, Biden’s pick for assistant health secretary. The absurd headlines and “hot takes” keep on coming.

“Exchange between GOP senator, transgender nominee draws fire from Democrats,” reports the Washington Post. “Rand Paul’s ignorant questioning of Rachel Levine showed why we need her in government,” opines a writer for the same publication.

“1st transgender nominee deflects inflammatory questions from GOP senator,” reports ABC News. “Rand Paul Launches Into Transphobic Rant Against Trans Nominee,” opines The Daily Beast.

“Rachel Levine Responds to Rand Paul About Transgender Medicine,” reports the New York Times, neglecting to mention that Levine’s “response” was one of sheer evasion.

Talk about burying the lede. Contrary to what progressive pundits insist, the real story of interest here is not Levine’s transgender status, but rather the fact that Levine refused to answer a crucial and highly topical question related to child welfare.

Rand Paul cited the Keira Bell case here in the UK, when the judges decided that children were unlikely to be capable of making life-changing decisions about changing sex at such a young age. As a result the whole gender dysphoria industry, centred on the Tavistock Clinic, has ground to a halt. It's not likely to happen in the US, though.

The Keira Bell decision happened in Enlightened, secular Britain — and at the behest of impartial and liberal-minded judges. Unfortunately, in the absence of a similar judicial intervention — or indeed of a centralized health-care system — the situation in the United States is far more out of control.

There are currently 40+ transgender-youth clinics (and counting) in the United States, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The largest transgender-youth clinic in Los Angeles saw more than 1,000 patients in 2019; the youngest patient was four years old. And the director of that clinic has admitted to personally recommending double mastectomies for “probably about 200” adolescent females, a decision she has justified by the argument that “they don’t identify as girls,” thus breast removal is actually “chest reconstruction.” Similarly, a study entitled “Age Is Just a Number,” published in 2017 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, reveals that eleven out of the 20 surgeons interviewed admitted to having performed vaginoplasty — that is, castration followed by the inversion of the penis to form a pseudo-vaginal canal — “1 to 20” times on males under the age of 18.

If the British judges think that minors can’t consent to taking drugs and hormones to halt puberty, how likely is it that a minor can consent to having his or her sexual organs removed or mutilated?

Here’s another question worth pondering: If the Democratic nominee for assistant health secretary won’t answer basic questions related to child welfare — and the liberal media and political class won’t hold that nominee to account — how likely is it that this dangerous ideological agenda is about to get worse?

Happy Motoring!

An Enco gas station in Navajo County, Arizona, 1971. Just by Baby Rocks.

[Photo: Shorpy/Don Cox]

Antisemitism is re-grouping in academia

I was noting earlier how universities are the last place nowadays for free and open discussion, with the rush to close down, say, any gender-critical feminists. But there's one area where the academics are indeed prepared to come out and put themselves on the line in defence of freedom of speech - and that's the right of Bristol University's David Miller to keep churning out his deranged fantasies about Israel, accusing Jewish students of being agents of Zionist imperialism.

Almost 200 academics have signed an open letter in defence of Bristol’s Professor David Miller, claiming the outcry over his remarks is an attempt to “crush academic freedom.

Miller, a lecturer of sociology, sparked a backlash in the Jewish community and beyond when he called for an “end to Zionism” and then accused Bristol’s Jewish student society of being “pawns” of Israel.

This week, a rally involving leading figures in the community such as Countdown’s Rachel Riley and Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl, slammed Bristol for not taking action over Miller’s “intimidation” of Jewish students.

But now high-profile academics including Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler, have signed an open letter in defence of Miller, praising him as an “eminent scholar.”

“We oppose anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate,” state the group.

Dave Rich, director of policy at Community Security Trust branded the letter a “list of shame”. He said: “The signatories are closing ranks around a proponent of antisemitic conspiracy tropes while he slanders Jewish students as racists and Islamophobes. They bring disgrace on academia and shame on every university listed on this letter.” 

More from David Hirsh at the JC:

Miller is reminiscent of antisemitic “experts in the Jews” from bygone eras. He produces highly complex diagrams which purport to uncover the hidden unity of ostensibly distinct Jews and Jewish organisations. He tells Muslims that interfaith efforts function as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to smuggle Zionism, and therefore Islamophobia and racism, into mosques. It is dangerous to make chicken soup with Jews, he warns.

Miller likes to articulate his worldview clearly. Like Ken Livingstone, he enjoys chasing the logic of his fantasies all the way down the rabbit hole. But his defenders are a little more careful. They, describe Miller’s output, for example as an “honest” response to a query on “Israel-Palestine”. They say the Board of Deputies want him fired because he is “critical of Zionism”. They hope people don’t read Miller’s work but rely on their own description of it. You can assume that many of the signatories themselves have not read his work.

The Macpherson Principle states that when somebody says they have experienced racism, you should assume that they are telling the truth, and that should be the starting point of any investigation. The Miller Principle would seem to be that when Jews say they have experienced antisemitism, that is evidence that they are agents of Israel secretly trying to sow racism and Islamophobia in Britain. [...]

Miller, and his defenders, are not just playing clever word games, they are forging an intellectual system which has the potential to be dangerous to Jews. It looks plausible but it portrays the overwhelming majority of Jews and their community as a cunning, hidden, racist threat to the rest of society. It positions Jews as a formidable block in the way of any movement which hopes to change Britain for the better.

Miller is not just an eccentric individual. He has been promoted to Professor, he brings in research money, he is published in the journals, he speaks at conferences and he teaches students. And a long list of academics is jumping to his defence. Miller is part of an antisemitic culture and he is protected by academic institutions and by the academic union.

Antisemitism is being driven out of the structures of the Labour Party but it is still present in significant layers of left wing and academic thinking. It is present emotionally, offering an object onto which people can project their own fury, fear and fantasies. Antisemitism is re-grouping in academia, not least around the campaign against the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which it finds threatening because it suggests that hostility to Israel may, in certain contexts, be antisemitic. This campaign employs the language of free speech and academic freedom, but it aims to strip people who have the courage to speak out against antisemitism of their confidence and of any hope of institutional protection.

Empowering women

UNISON’s Empowering Women – Live! online event began last week, as reported on their website - ‘Empowering women is what this union does’:

Empowering Women in UNISON – Live! was opened by UNISON’s national women’s committee chair, Emma Procter. “Women have had to deal with the most extraordinary set of challenges in the pandemic,” she said.

“In the UK, women do the majority of caring, whether paid or unpaid, doing three times more unpaid care than men.

“As the UK’s largest trade union, we intend to keep growing so we can make a difference to even more women.”

And here is Emma, in person:

This is how the roles of women in public life are being filled by males who identify as trans. Meanwhile women die as these great boundaries are crossed and celebrated as “diversity”. It is an insult to women to talk of “empowerment” whilst replacing them as spokeswomen. pic.twitter.com/6jB2vGXKVc

— Jean Hatchet (@JeanHatchet) February 26, 2021

Perfect. What better way of showing how strongly they feel about empowering women than having a man as chair of their national women’s committee.

Catkins

On a corkscrew willow (I think) at The Hill garden, Hampstead:

 

Glasgow to Melbourne

Clearly the last place you want to go to get ideas discussed nowadays is a university. Yesterday it was Glasgow:

The University of Glasgow has been accused of capitulating to “wokeism” after it called off a talk by an academic whose research was said to be “eugenicist”.

Gregory Clark, professor of economics at the University of California, was due last week to deliver a seminar at the Adam Smith business school on the effect of genetics on social outcomes.

The talk, entitled For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: A Lineage of 400,000 Individuals 1750-2020 Shows Genetics Determines Most Social Outcomes, was postponed after a backlash by students.

Clark, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, claimed that the university asked him to change the title of his lecture. It is a reference to The Bell Curve, a controversial 1994 book co-written by Charles Murray, a social scientist who has claimed that black and Latino genetics are linked to intellectual inferiority.

The historian and author Niall Ferguson, who was born in Glasgow, tweeted: “As if to illustrate my warnings about wokeism at UK universities, Greg Clark’s talk at the University of Glasgow was just ‘postponed’ because of objections to the title.”

Ferguson, a senior fellow of Stanford University in California, dismissed criticism of Clark on campus, claiming that it had originated from “woke elements in the sociology department”, adding: “To call Greg Clark a ‘eugenicist’ is grotesque. He is a brilliant and original economic historian, whose books I highly recommend.”

Clark, who was raised in Scotland, said that his event had coincided with the publication of the university’s report Understanding Racism, Transforming University Cultures, setting out an action plan to create “an inclusive space for all”.

He said: “My talk was regarded as a provocation in this situation. I had a half-hour Zoom meeting with the dean. He would reschedule the talk if I agreed to change the paper title to not have any reference to ‘bell curve’. I have refused.”

Today it's Melbourne.

Associate Professor Dr Holly Lawford-Smith set up a website, No Conflict, They Said, as a place for women to tell their stories about "the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces, including but not limited to: changing rooms, fitting rooms, bathrooms, shelters, rape and domestic violence refuges, gyms, spas, sports, schools, accommodations, shortlists, prizes, quotas, political groups, prisons, clubs, events, festivals, dating apps, and language. If we can't collect data, we can at least collect stories. Please tell us how your use of women-only spaces has been impacted. All stories will be published anonymously." This is in response to Australian legislation designed to be inclusive to transgender people, but which, she claims, replaces sex with gender identity - with potentially disastrous consequences for women.  

The result? Some 100 academics have written demanding that the University of Melbourne take "swift and decisive action" against what they claim to be a transphobic site, in breach of the university's guidelines on research integrity and inclusion.

There's a good eight-minute interview with Lawford-Smith here, where she expresses her bafflement at how so many modern feminists are now trying to be maximally inclusive, "making feminism this thing that’s really about not hurting men’s feelings than actually protecting women”.  All that's needed is for men to state that they're now women, that trans liberation is the next progressive thing, and claim that as trans women they're being uniquely oppressed, and these new feminists just roll over - undoing all the brave work by previous generations of feminists.