Mick Hartley

Embarrassed, appalled and absolutely disgusted

Something of a backlash to that Helen Joyce Cambridge affair:

Cambridge University alumni are pulling funding from their college in an intensifying row over the master announcing she was boycotting a “hateful” gender-critical speaker.

Helen Joyce, an author and former Economist journalist, was invited to Gonville and Caius College last Tuesday by Prof Arif Ahmed, a fellow, for a debate on gender ideology.

But in an “astonishing” intervention before she spoke, its master, Prof Pippa Rogerson – the most senior post – joined Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, in telling all of the students that Ms Joyce’s views were “polemics”.

The head of Cambridge’s sociology faculty also apologised to students for the “distress caused” by sending them an email invitation to the talk.

Ms Joyce believes that men and women are being redefined by trans activists, with laws and policies “reshaped to privilege self-identified gender identity over biological sex”.

Around a hundred protesters, some masked, gathered outside the talk chanting “trans rights are human rights” and banged drums. Witnesses claimed a fire door was hit and microphones had to be turned to full volume because Ms Joyce was inaudible.

Now, many alumni have written to the college, Cambridge’s fourth oldest, with major donors telling The Telegraph they are withdrawing their funds and bequests unless a retraction is issued.

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has also written to Cambridge’s vice-chancellor asking him to confirm that future speakers will not be "denounced and defamed by senior leaders”, while a new group called Alumni For Free Speech has alleged breaches of equality legislation....

One of the flurry of alumni to send protest letters since is Nick Sallnow-Smith, 72, who graduated from Gonville and Caius in 1973 and now convenes its Hong Kong chapter.

“I have been extremely upset by the way in which the master and senior tutor have behaved… it’s absolutely disgraceful,” he told The Telegraph.

“I certainly won’t donate anymore – with people like that in charge I will never donate again,” Mr Sallnow-Smith added.

“Saying sorry on Friday and expecting money on Monday is not going to work because it’s clear from their attitude of mind that they do not support the idea of an academic college that I was part of which is free speech, free enquiry, allowing people to present their viewpoint without vilification.

“We don’t have that anymore, they’re now vilified before they even attend.”

Another alumnus, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I am embarrassed, I am appalled and I am absolutely disgusted with the stance taken by Professor Rogerson, the master of the college and the senior tutor.

“I think it is an appalling way to treat a woman who has gone out of her way to express her point of view and if we do not respect free speech in our universities, then the whole purpose of a university is gone.”

The alumnus added: “Certainly I would not wish to put the college in my will, the way things are at the moment. If Professor Rogerson does not issue a retraction or come to some sort of more reasonable statement, [I will] withdraw any financial support – I do contribute regularly – I would not wish to continue that.”

Numerous others have told the college and this newspaper they are withdrawing bequests. Another has told the college she is now “discouraging” her son from applying to Cambridge.

Hit 'em where it hurts - the cash flow.

More from the Times today:

Students at the University of Cambridge will be given free-speech training in an effort to tackle so-called “cancel culture” against guest speakers.

The sessions by two academics will aim to teach undergraduates to tolerate views that they disagree with and could be rolled out to more universities if successful.

The move comes after warnings from the university watchdog that free speech could be stifled on campuses after record numbers of events were cancelled last year.

Many events have been cancelled after pressure from students or societies who claim that the views of some speakers are offensive.

Cambridge alumni threatened to pull funding from Gonville and Caius College after its master boycotted a gender-critical speaker last week. Helen Joyce, an author and former Economist journalist, was invited to the college by one of its fellows for a debate on gender ideology.

However, before she spoke, Professor Pippa Rogerson, the college’s master, joined Dr Andrew Spencer, the senior tutor, in telling students that Joyce’s views were “polemics”.The head of Cambridge’s sociology faculty also apologised to students for the “distress caused” after sending an email out inviting them to the talk.

About 100 protesters gathered outside the talk, where they banged on drums and chanted “trans rights are human rights”.

Susan Lapworth, the chief executive of the Office for Students, has said she is concerned that “lawful views are being stifled” and that views “some may find offensive or controversial must be open to free debate” on campuses and across research communities.

The new training scheme is being led by Arif Ahmed, an outspoken Cambridge philosophy professor, who will host a two-part series of free-speech training sessions at Gonville and Caius College next month.

He said it did not matter what degree students were studying but that a key part of university was learning to respect other views.

“Whatever subject you are studying, it is an essential part of university education that you understand the need for tolerance of a wide range of views, even ones that you find shocking or offensive,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “That’s why an education in the basic principles of free speech could be useful for all students.”

He said the training sessions were for students but he would consider opening them up to fellow academics and suggested that some employed by universities refused to tolerate views they disagreed with.

He added: “As we have seen recently there are also many academics who don’t understand the importance of tolerating views that they find offensive. It may be that similar training is necessary for academics — as much as it horrifies me to say that.”

Still no word from Pippa and Andrew.

Back up

Apologies for the break in service. Problems with Typepad - hopefully now fixed.

[Though there does seem to be a problem still with images.]

A lab accident was “most likely” responsible for the pandemic

More fuel on the lab-leak theory of Covid origin. Propublica with Vanity Fair have published a report suggesting that there was some kind of emergency at the lab in November of 2019 requiring high-level intervention.

Vanity Fair and ProPublica downloaded more than 500 documents from the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virolgy] website, including party branch dispatches from 2017 to the present. ...we sent key documents to experts on CCP communications. They told us that the WIV dispatches did indeed signal that the institute faced an acute safety emergency in November 2019; that officials at the highest levels of the Chinese government weighed in; and that urgent action was taken in an effort to address ongoing safety issues....

The interim report also raises questions about how quickly vaccines were developed in China by some teams, including one led by a military virologist named Zhou Yusen. The report called it “unusual” that two military COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones even faster than the major drug companies who were part of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program.

Vanity Fair and ProPublica spoke to experts who said that the timeline of Zhou’s vaccine development seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. Two of the three experts said it strongly suggested that his team must have had access to the genomic sequence of the virus no later than in November 2019, weeks before China’s official recognition that the virus was circulating.

The report isn't clearly written in my view, but it does add more weight to the belief that the Wuhan lab was the source of the pandemic.

The authors of the interim report do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery of COVID-19’s origin. “The lack of transparency from government and public health officials in the [People’s Republic of China] with respect to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 prevents reaching a more definitive conclusion,” the report says, adding that its conclusion could change if more independently verifiable information becomes available.

Throughout the pandemic, the WIV has largely remained a black box, owing to the Chinese government’s refusal to cooperate with international probes. By mining the WIV’s own records, Toy Reid and Senate researchers unearthed new clues that support the interim report’s assessment that a lab accident was “most likely” responsible for the pandemic.

To make “Kimjongunism” an official doctrine in the future

At last, a monument honoring Kim Jong Un, from the renowned Mansudae Art Studio:

The Workers’ Party’s Central Committee recently ordered the erection of a monument at Central Cadres Training School to honor North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first lecture at the academy, Daily NK has learned. 

A Daily NK source in North Korea said Wednesday that the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee had ordered Mansudae Art Studio to build the monument at the Central Cadres Training School this year, “a deeply meaningful year concluding the first decade of the Supreme Leader’s first 10 years of revolutionary leadership.”

Mansudae Art Studio specialises in dictatorship kitsch, with statues of the preceding Kims  - Great Leader and Dear Leader - all over North Korea. Their most famous work outside North Korea is undoubtedly Senegal's African Renaissance Monument:

Though a statue of a muscle-bound Kim Jong-un is, to be fair, unlikely.

The placing of a monument to Kim Jong Un at the Workers’ Party’s leading training facility for cadres, alongside pre-existing monuments with the teachings of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, aims to demonstrate that the youngest Kim has joined the ranks of his predecessors, while also bringing his first decade in power to a conclusion.

The source said the leadership is lending significance to the effort to produce and erect the monument, declaring that Kim’s commemorative address — which “creatively elaborated on the theory of Juche-based Revolutionary Party Building, the essence of the revolutionary ideology of the Kim Jong Un age” — was worth “engraving in splendid manner” as an event “worthy of attention in the Workers’ Party’s history.” 

The source said the leadership is telling Mansudae Art Studio that erecting the monument to the youngest Kim after erecting monuments with the handwriting of Kim Il Sung in 1948 and Kim Jong Il in 1998 is “highly significant.”

In short, it appears that the leadership is praising Kim’s commemorative address at the Central Cadres Training School as an important act in establishing a new revolutionary theory that opened an era in the history of the party, possibly as groundwork to make “Kimjongunism” an official doctrine in the future.

Meanwhile, students at provincial, city and country cadre schools nationwide have begun intensive studies of Kim’s lecture at the Central Cadres Training School, during which the North Korean leader stressed, “The cause of party building is precisely a revolutionary cause, and the level of party building can be called the level of revolutionary development.”

Completing another Eddie challenge

Eddie Izzard is now operating in "girl mode" - which means he can use women's toilets, and be rude to people like Labour MP Rosie Duffield who believe in the reality of biological sex. Well, he was always something of a narcissist. Here's what I wrote back in March last year:

I used to think that if you were a man who really wanted to dress up in women's clothes occasionally, then people like Eddie Izzard and Grayson Perry showed the way to do it: not too seriously, and never to the extent of actually believing you were a woman. Well, that was a mistake. Eddie Izzard has come out recently in what he calls, somewhat distastefully, "girl mode". He's gone the full trans route, and would like to be referred to as "she". 

It's not a huge surprise. He's a fine comedian and his live shows are very funny, but he is, clearly, a narcissistic prat. The Guardian front page today shows a picture of the lovely Eddie with cascading hair and lipstick ("make up by Dani Richardson") - "I've been promoted to she. It's an honour" -  unfortunately but tellingly placed over pictures of sixteen women from among the 118 named in parliament yesterday by Jess Phillips as having been killed this year by men. Real women, that is - not pretend ones.

Inside, Eddie talks happily of his boob envy...

Oh yes. A touch of the old autogynephilia, maybe?

Janice Turner in the Times today:

Is womanhood a costume male people can pop on at whim, for reasons emotional, erotic or politically strategic, then remove again when it suits them better to be a man? This is the crux of why Eddie Izzard enrages women and, in seeking selection as Labour candidate for Sheffield Central, has become yet another gender conundrum for Sir Keir Starmer to fudge on phone-ins.

First, the pronouns. This week Izzard self-defined as “gender fluid”, saying that while “she/her” is preferable, “he/him” is fine. So, since gender is indeed ephemeral, superficial and based on regressive stereotypes, but sex is immutable, I’m going with “he/him”. I realise this means I’ve failed what has become a quasi-religious test. Unlike TV presenter Lorraine Kelly I won’t squeal “You go, girl!” at a 60-year-old man, as I don’t believe he’s a woman — but then I don’t think Eddie does either.

Because in his Guardian interview, Izzard said he was “not sure” trans women should take places on all-women shortlists and wouldn’t himself. That alone contradicts both the “trans women are women” mantra and Labour Party policy, thus making him as evil as Labour MP Rosie Duffield and JK Rowling.

The sad thing is women, particularly feminists, once adored Izzard. Not only the greatest 1990s stand-up, he was truly brave. On stage and off, in lipstick, leather skirts and sparkly eye-shadow, he subverted rigid ideas about what men could be. “These aren’t women’s clothes,” he’d say. “They’re my clothes.” He called himself a “transvestite”: a heterosexual guy who sometimes wore frocks. And while some men abused him in the street, women thought he was cool.

Then “transvestite” became an unfashionable term and the concept of “gender identity” took hold. Whether you’re a man or woman was defined not by your sexed body but your inner, soul-like essence. So Izzard started talking about having “boy genetics and girl genetics”. Now his cross-dressing wasn’t a peccadillo, it was part of his DNA.

It's sad. He could have taken the transvestite route: yes, I enjoy and indeed get a kick out of dressing up as a woman - or at least a caricature of a "sexy" woman with pink lippy and the rest - but I know perfectly well that I'm not really a woman. Instead he's taken the currently fashionable route and adopted gender ideology.

He spoke of oscillating between “girl mode” and “boy mode”. His position changed from “I’m a guy who likes pretty nails” to “because I like pretty nails I’m a girl”. In 2019, the US podcaster Joe Rogan asked how he moved from girl to boy mode, and Izzard replied: “I take off my heels.” Women, many with unadorned fingers and flat shoes, boiled at the arrogance of a man defining the female condition by the sexist crap they’ve long abhorred.

Moreover, Izzard seems cynical and opportunist. He told Rogan he appears in “dramatic films in boy mode”. Although his IMDB entry is headed “actress” he’s only ever played men, from a Nazi general in Valkyrie to a master thief in Ocean’s Twelve, and at premieres walks the red carpet in sharp suits. Although now he’s “living in girl mode” he’ll appear next year as Vincent in the TV series Culprits. Could it be he pops into boy mode to secure lucrative male Hollywood roles?

Perhaps Iranian protesters defying compulsory hijabs, girls in Afghanistan fighting for an education or mothers experiencing terrible maternity care in British hospitals should all just switch into “boy mode” when reality gets too much. I’m sure the Taliban would understand....

Izzard told Rogan he campaigns in “girl mode”. Well, of course: trans identity overwrites his privilege as a rich, white, male celebrity. He listed his considerable achievements: performing stand-up in four languages, running 70 marathons, adding that next year “I’m going into politics”.

It is hard not to feel that Izzard cares less about improving the lives of people in Sheffield Central than completing another Eddie challenge. But he will be a better MP than a “supercharged local councillor” candidate, he says, because their activism is local and “mine has been national and international”. Perhaps ex-steel workers and single parents relying on food banks will prefer global grandstanding to diligent case work.

But if he doesn’t win the selection, never mind: Izzard is already working on a “one-woman Hamlet” — and there’s always “boy mode”, if he just changes his shoes.

Yes, the cynicism and the privilege is a little hard to take. And the double standards: if a woman of Izzard's age was dressed like that, with bright pink lipstick, it'd be all - oh dear, someone should really tell her she looks ridiculous, "mutton dressed as lamb", and so on. But for Eddie it's, ooh, you're looking fabulous...

Jerry Lee 1935 - 2022

Just to mark the passing of the great Jerry Lee - not the usual Great Balls of Fire etc., but some Country. Hank Williams in fact. 

Never mind the Rock'n'Roll: that's a great Country singer.

The new US ideological orthodoxy

Michael Lind has a long article in Tablet on the capture of American institutions by woke ideology - The New Gatekeepers:

"On or around December 1910, human character changed,” wrote Virginia Woolf. Between 2010 and 2012, American culture changed. Within a few years, what had been obscure concepts in politicized university departments like gender studies and ethnic studies became orthodoxy not only in the academy, media, and the nonprofit sector, but also in the boardrooms of national and global corporations, banks, and in professional associations like the American Bar and Medical associations.

In 2010, if you had said that unisex bathrooms in public schools were necessary to accommodate nonbinary students, hardly anyone, even among progressives, would have known what you were talking about. Then in 2016 the Obama Education Department suddenly threatened to cut off federal funding to K-12 schools that did not allow students suffering from gender dysphoria to use bathrooms reserved for the opposite sex. The Obama Justice Department threatened to sue North Carolina for passing a law requiring people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. By the time it rescinded the law, HB 2, in 2017, the state of North Carolina had lost billions of dollars thanks to simultaneous boycotts by the National Basketball Association, the National College Athletic Association, Deutsche Bank, PayPal, and other corporations and financial institutions.

In isolation, the transgender controversy might have been viewed as a strange aftershock of the gay rights movement, which achieved its much more moderate goals of civil and marriage equality for gay men and lesbian women by the first decade of the 21st century. But the imposition of transgender ideology through economic compulsion by the federal government and major private sector institutions was only the beginning. It was followed by the march through the institutions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) based on “critical race theory” (CRT), a sectarian ideology that holds that all whites and “white-adjacent” Asian Americans, no matter how poor and powerless, are “privileged,” while all Black and Hispanic Americans, no matter how rich and powerful, are “marginalized” members of “underserved communities.”

By the 2020s, at one university after another, applicants for faculty positions were required to submit “DEI statements,” listing the ways that they would personally advance this particular ideology through their work as teachers and researchers. Campus commissars were appointed to ensure that faculty reading lists and guest speaker panels had the appropriate race and gender makeup. In corporations, banks, universities, and government agencies, the relatively anodyne “diversity training” of the late 20th century, designed to minimize the possibility of racial or sexual discrimination lawsuits, gave way to DEI trainings. The goal of such exercises was not to promulgate knowledge of specific anti-discrimination rules and procedures, but to engage staff in Maoist-style struggle sessions designed to break down the personalities and identities of non-Hispanic white Americans and Asian Americans through confession of “microaggressions” and “racial privilege.”

Meanwhile, large corporations and banks, universities and major foundations, and the Democratic Party—now the party of college-educated whites and most of the super-rich—ostentatiously signaled their virtue as one new social justice cause succeeded another: Black Lives Matter, climate change, gender radicalism. Ironically, the rainbow flag of the gay rights movement became the logo of U.S. corporations and U.S. embassies, even as gay men and lesbians who questioned the new orthodoxy were hounded out of the T- and Q-dominated LGBTQ+ acronym alliance for the sin of “transphobia.”

He views these developments as the result of "entryists" - a term beloved of Trotskyists back in the day - who've pulled off an astonishingly successful infiltration of US institutions.

The center left of the political spectrum has historically been vulnerable to entryism by small, radical sects of zealots. Today’s illiberal radicals, like yesterday’s communists, have profited from a “no enemies to the left” policy among liberals. Mild-mannered liberals and progressives believe in civil rights, so therefore something called “anti-racism” must be worth supporting, even if there are a few problems here and there: Ibram X. Kendi’s sectarian lunacy thus hitches a free ride on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Similarly, adding “T” and “Q” to LGB legitimated public acceptance of radical gender ideology, as though insisting that controversial and often dangerous “gender transitions” are a natural and unobjectionable continuation of the campaign to allow same-sex couples to marry. [...]

The three gateways are college education, professional accreditation, and commercial services, particularly new online media platforms like Twitter, sales platforms like Amazon, and financial platforms like PayPal. All three wield variants of the same power: the power to exclude people from the economy. Good Trotsky-style entryists that they are, woke activists, knowing that they would be defeated in free elections and in open public debates, have sought to infiltrate institutions to control key chokepoints or gateways, which empower them to be gatekeepers.

Well, it's all a bit conspiratorial for my tastes, but he certainly hits some targets.

Piece by piece, woke activists are assembling a private version of China’s social credit system, which can cut off individuals who run afoul of ideological orthodoxy from acquiring educational credentials, practicing a trade, or engaging in political speech. While Trotskyist entryists spent decades trying to infiltrate and influence social democratic parties and trade unions, woke entryists in only a decade and a half have captured many of the leading communications, sales, and financial platforms in modern society, along with professional associations and universities. Leon Trotsky would be impressed. 

Lind's somewhat depressing conclusion is that debate is a waste of time at this stage: only "a massive and permanent expansion of the regulatory powers of American government" will work. Hmm. I'm unconvinced, but then again I'm not American. Read it all if you're intrigued...

Lobby groups

The BBC has something of a reputation for its coverage of Jews, as the Jewish Chronicle regularly points out. Indeed the JC has just launched an online petition demanding a parliamentary inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of Jews and Israel.

The move comes after a string of controversial stories by the BBC caused concern in the Jewish community — followed by BBC responses that only deepened that concern.

This week, the BBC admitted unfairly criticising Israel in a report on the beheading of a gay Palestinian by other Palestinians. And six weeks ago, an open letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie demanding impartiality on Jewish issues was ignored.

And then there's BBC Arabic. From last February:

The BBC’s Arabic service stands accused of ignoring the corporation’s own impartiality guidelines as a JC investigation reveals large numbers of examples of apparent anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies.

Alleged infringements include systematically downplaying terror attacks on Israelis; repeatedly using Hamas-inspired language; showcasing extreme views without challenge; and publishing a map in which Israel was erased.

A detailed dossier of apparent breaches was handed to Broadcasting House this week. A BBC spokesperson responded: “BBC Arabic shares exactly the same principles of accuracy and impartiality as BBC News in English, and we strongly reject the suggestion that its impartiality is compromised.”

Today, the JC discloses that the BBC was forced to acknowledge 25 mistakes in its Arabic coverage of Israel in just over two years, issuing on average nearly one correction every month.

The most recent issue concerns the regular use of London-based anti-Israel commentator Abdel Bari Atwan, who also features regularly on MEMRI TV with his diatribes: here he is, for example, singing the praises of Jordanian soldier Ahmed Daqamseh, who shot and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls, aged 13 and 14, in cold blood. After pressure from the JC the programme featuring Atwan was eventually cancelled.

Not everyone was happy about this though, as Jonathan Sacerdoti now reports:

The BBC news programme that featured an Islamist pundit who praised terrorism has been cancelled, with its editor blaming “a particular group, government [or] lobby groups”.

Dateline London, presented by Shaun Ley and formerly Gavin Esler, was produced by TV Talk, which claimed up to 15 million viewers a week for 25 years. Episodes were aired on BBC News and BBC World nine times every weekend.

Controversial anti-Israel commentator Abdel Bari Atwan was a regular pundit. The JC has repeatedly exposed Mr Atwan for praising terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians as “martyrs” and describing a Palestinian gunman’s attack in Tel Aviv as a “miracle”. He also defended the 1972 Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team, expressed sympathy with the views of the man who stabbed Salman Rushdie, and said that if Iran attacked Israel, he would dance in Trafalgar Square.

In a further revelation, the JC this week discloses that Atwan claimed that the Palestinian “Nakba” was worse than the Holocaust.

In a speech at a farewell party, editor Nick Guthrie criticised the BBC for cancelling his programme. “Just because a particular group, government, lobby groups, whatever, object to views expressed by others does not mean the BBC has to kow-tow,” he reportedly said.

"Lobby groups". Whatever could he be referring to?

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said: “Perhaps Mr Guthrie would care to enlighten us as to who it is who exercises such power over the BBC. British Jews could then direct our concerns, which the BBC seems routinely to dismiss, to them.” ...

Last year the BBC was forced to apologise after Dateline London presenter Shaun Ley said that the Oslo Accords obliged Israel to give Covid vaccinations to the Palestinians.The BBC later conceded that the agreements “give the PA oversight of public health under the principles of self-determination.”

But it was Mr Atwan’s appearances that sparked most controversy. Over the last two decades, Mr Atwan has been one of its most frequent pundits.

Speaking on Dateline London after the Rushdie attack, he described The Satanic Verses as “blasphemy, completely, and it is offensive”.

He went on: “To talk about the wives of the Prophet is really very, very dangerous… About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims.”

BBC Director-General Tim Davie this week defended using the hardliner, saying his inflammatory statements “reflected the views of many in the Muslim world who view The Satanic Verses as blasphemous.”

He did not comment on why Mr Atwan’s remarks about the Rushdie attack went unchallenged, or why the Islamist was repeatedly given airtime despite his extremism on other platforms, as revealed by the JC.

In 2012, former Dateline presenter Gavin Esler hosted a launch for Mr Atwan’s book After bin Laden: al-Qa’ida, the Next Generation, praising the firebrand for “showing us in many ways how to see things from a different end of the telescope”.

Many BBC staff, it would seem, see things from exactly the same end of the telescope as Mr Atwan.

Trans Brazil

Men make the best women - the Brazilian edition:

This week, Glamour Magazine‘s Brazil franchise announced the winners of its Generation Glamour event honoring women. Out of 15 categories, 2 of the female-focused awards went to trans-identified males — including Woman of the Year.

Linn da Quebrada, a male social media influencer, took home the top award despite the fact he has stated he does not identify as a woman, and does not believe women ‘exist.’

In an interview with presenter Pedro Bial, a journalist from Globo Television Network, Quebrada stated “I’m not a woman, I’m a transvestite,” going on to say: “let’s be honest, there’s no such thing as ‘a woman.'”

An interesting take there. I suppose if anyone can be a woman then the term does rather lose its descriptive force. But still, he's happy to accept the "Woman of the Year" award. 

Earlier this year, Quebrada did a Mother’s Day photoshoot in which he wore a fake pregnant belly. The social media influencer claimed he wanted to be a “mother” one day, and dreamed of getting pregnant.

And of course manages to look more "glamorous" than any boring ordinary pregnant woman would. 

There's a history here:

Quebrada and Heliodoro’s awards recall a recent controversy in which another well-known magazine named a trans-identified male pimp as one of Brazil’s top “Inspirational Women’s Rights Advocates.”

On December 20, 2021, Marie Claire Brazil posted a year-end slideshow to its Instagram featuring “7 women making a difference for human rights in Brazil.” The list was intended to feature female human rights activists, but emphasize those who specifically made an impact on the lives of other women.

The magazine’s 6th slot was given to Indianara Siqueira, a biological male prostitute who was convicted of aggravated pimping in France in 2007, and served a 3-year prison sentence in the country as a result....

Brazil is a hotbed of sex-based violence, with femicide rates increasing despite the country’s overall murder rate going down. According to the most recent data, four girls under the age of 13 are raped every hour in Brazil, with the majority of sexual violence victims being “shockingly young.”

Despite women’s rights movements falling flat in the country, which is now ranked among the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, Brazil is seeing little political progress for sex-based rights, with the nation having an extremely low rate of female political representation.

In 2020, a trans-identified male politician elected to the São Paulo City Council was named the “most voted for woman” in Brazil.

Could it be that the glorification of trans women parading their sexualised caricatures goes hand in hand with a profound misogyny? Well who could have guessed?

Greenwich Street

Stanley P. Mixon in downtown New York for the Historic American Buildings Survey, 1940:

September 7, 1940. New York. "Greenwich Street Study (plot plan). Looking south along west side of Greenwich Street toward Battery over elevated structure (demolished Fall)." The Ninth Avenue El, centre stage, just about to be torn down.

March 22, 1940. New York. "Rear of #68 and #70 Greenwich Street showing dormers and stable ell back of #73 Washington Street at left. Houses built circa 1825." 
[Photos: Shorpy/Stanley P. Mixon for the Historic American Buildings Survey]