Glad we finally got a new miscellany room! I had some lousy news last night. My step-mother has COVID; we’re waiting for the test results on my father. He’s 88, and even though he’s in generally good health, he has a history of respiratory illness (possibly asthma, but not diagnosed as such), so we’re pretty worried.
I’m really sorry to read that, iknklast. If it’s any consolation, my mother caught it back in January (she turned 86 in March) and although she said it was worse than the worst flu she’s ever had (and she had it in the pandemic back in the fifties), she has recovered fully. Mind you, she is considerably fitter than I have ever been, and was still running last year. She even nursed my father through his final illness with no help until his last week.
Oh, I should add – Mum didn’t go to the hospital, because no-one was even admitting that the coronavirus was in the country at that time, let alone publicising the symptoms. Since she thought it was flu, she didn’t even call her GP because she knows that antibiotics don’t work on viruses.
I had eight weeks of odd, ever shifting symptoms myself back in February. Bad asthma. Sore throat. Days in which I felt hit by a sledgehammer. Endless dry cough. Nobody else I am around every caught anything and the local HMO (Kaiser) never suggested a COVID test. I just got steroids and al buterol for the asthma.
Was it COVID? The lack of any transmission suggests not, but still…Another coworker had a spell of endless dry cough as well…even before I did.
Brian M, my wife had a nasty cough-till-you-puke cold last January; I caught it when she had pretty much recovered, but for me it was like a ghost cold–I felt like I had symptoms coming on, but they never really amounted to anything. But since then I’ve had some low-level chest congestion almost constantly. Neither of us has been tested, but I wonder.
I have friends who claim that they or people they know had COVID as early as November 2019. I am very skeptical of such claims, because they require that (1) these individuals were extraordinarily unlucky to be the rare first few infections in the U.S. (which is improbable because none of them had recently returned from an overseas trip, etc.), or (2) that COVID was actually fairly widespread back then (which is improbable because, while these individuals just had flu symptoms and treated it at home, statistically speaking there should have been a spike in patients showing up in the ICU and needing ventilators, and even if health care professionals didn’t notice it at the time they surely would have looked at the data in retrospect).
Ordinary flu still existed in 2019-2020, as did a whole bunch of other infections. In July, I had some symptoms consistent with COVID, but my test was negative. When I asked what else it could have been, the doctor shrugged and said there are plenty of viral infections that would be consistent with my symptoms. Of course, she also said that it could have been COVID, because that test had a false negative rate estimated around 30%. To this day I have no idea whether it was or not; last time I bothered to check, you had to pay for the antibody test and I just wasn’t that curious, especially since the question of acquired immunity is uncertain anyway.
My father had a negative COVID test; he has to wait now for a second test, especially since the retirement home he lives in has a rapid spread. One person – one person took off their mask while there, and…this.
Because the coronavirus can linger on surfaces for multiple days, a team deployed by the General Services Administration will go over every part of the White House’s East and West Wings touched by human hands in the hours after Trump departs and Biden moves in, a spokesperson from the agency confirmed to POLITICO. That includes plans to “thoroughly clean and disinfect” all furniture, doorknobs, handrails and light switches, before Biden and his team move in. Additionally, a private contractor will provide “disinfectant misting services” to clear the air of lingering droplets.
“This climate of fear serves nobody well, least of all trans people.
“I believe everybody should be free to live a life that is authentic to them, and that they should be safe to do so. I also believe that we need a more nuanced conversation around women’s rights and around the huge increase in numbers of girls and young women who are seeking to transition.
“Some of the most heartbreaking letters I’ve received have been from young women who regret the irreversible surgeries they’ve undertaken. These stories need to be told.” Her comments follow a high court ruling in the UK last week that children under the age of 16 are unlikely to be able to give informed consent to undergo treatment with puberty-blocking drugs.
Trans people everywhere are being erased. Trans rights are being trampled. Grease fires are being prepared. The Witch Bitch must be burned!
“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.
“At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
Of course it’s hateful to say so when you are claiming for yourself something that trans people don’t have – growing up as female. How dare you deny our authentically lived experiences as growing up as boys while we were really women and then living as men while we were really girls.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been reading up on the topic of democratic breakdown lately, if not to look for hope, then at least to move the sense of existential dread from a purely visceral “gut” level to something that can be understood and dealt with intellectually. These books include:
“The Road to Unfreedom” by Timothy Snyder
“The People vs. Democracy” by Yascha Mounk
“Twilight of Democracy” by Anne Applebaum
“How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Snyder (who had a major best-seller a couple of years ago with his short pamphlet “On Tyranny”, another must-read!) spends a lot of time on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed “The Road to Unfreedom” began as a book about the Russian invasion and the accompanying propaganda war (a test that the West failed), but evolved into a book about Europe and the U.S. in the aftermath of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Snyder contrasts two a-historical conceptions of time. The West has for a long time been under the spell of the what he calls the “Politics of Inevitability” (democracy, peace, prosperity, and progress are inevitable, there are no alternatives etc.). When this spell is broken, it tends to give way to the “Politics of Eternity” (history is just an endless cycle of attacks on the innocent nation by outsiders), the latter being dominant in Russia right now. In either case we are absolved from any responsibility to do anything: If progress is inevitable there is nothing we need to do. It everything is just and endless cycle of repetitions, there is nothing we can do. Snyder emphasizes the Russian link more than any of the other writers, not to explain away the failings of West, but precisely because the Russian propagandists in many ways understood our problems better than we did (at least in part because of our naive belief in the inevitability of progress) and were thus able to effectively use them against us. He compares Russia to a doctor who gives you a correct diagnosis in order to make your illness worse. The doctor doesn’t have your best interests in mind, but the diagnosis is pretty much spot on. As a country that has gone further down the Road to Unfreedom than America or Western Europe, Russia also provides a useful warning about where we might be heading. Besides weakening the West an important part of Putin’s motivation was to prove to his own people that the so-called “democracies” of the West are just as corrupt as Russia (indeed worse, since at least the Russians are not hypocritical about it), that all this talk about “democracy”. “freedom”, or “the rule of law” is just a sham and hence nothing to strive for. It’s interesting to note that some of the first people to predict the victory of both Trump and the brexiters were Eastern Europeans (Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles) who had seen the same game play out before and knew how it ended.
Mounk describes how authoritarian populists all peddle some version of the same basic message: The problems facing the nation are ultimately easy to solve. The only reason they remain unsolved is that the mainstream politicians are corrupt and self-serving. The populist alone speaks for the people, hence anyone who opposes the populist is by definition “against the people”. All the people needs to do is put the populist in charge, so he can “drain the swamps” and make the nation “great again”. In reality, of course, it’s never that simple, so when the populist has indeed been elected and needs to explain why the promised Utopia fails to materialize, the solution is to blame outsiders as well as “traitors” and “enemies of the people” (the political opposition, independent media, neutral institutions etc.) that must be stripped of power and replaced by loyalists. Mounk sites some alarming poll results that seem to indicate a dramatic decline in the support for democracy from older to younger generations (another point in favor of iknklast’s skepticism that millennials are going to solve every problem), a trend that is borne out by people’s behavior at the ballot box where populist parties like Front National and Alternative für Deutschland have gone from fringe to major forces to be reckoned with. He argues that the stability of democracy in the West after World War II may not have been inherent, but rather contingent on certain preconditions that are no longer present. He identifies three important trends that coincide with the rise of populist parties all over the Western world. First the stagnation of living standards: Most of the support for authoritarian populists does not necessarily come from today’s losers, but from those who fear (often with good reason) to end up as tomorrow’s losers. Second increasing ethnic pluralism (or, in the case of the U.S., erosion of the racial hierarchy that used to allow non-whites to be safely ignored). Third the rise of social media which allows extremist views, crazy conspiracy theories, and outright fabrications that would previously never have made it through the editorial process of any reputable newspaper to spread like wildfires all over the internet.
Applebaum focuses on the treason of right-wing intellectuals who used to see themselves as defenders of liberal democracy against communism but have since gone on to become peddlers of far-right conspiracy theories and in many cases staunch defenders of the one-party state. Many of the same people have abandoned capitalist ideas of “meritocracy” for a system that rewards party loyalty over achievement. Applabaum – an old-school fiscal conservative who has done more than anyone to document the atrocities of the Soviet Union – can hardly be accused of leftist bias, and many of the people she writes about used to be her friends. She doesn’t offer a single explanation for why these people – who are neither poor nor marginalized, have not been “left behind” by globalization, do not live in forgotten rural communities etc. – could become full-fledged authoritarians. In some cases Applebaum argues that the motive is personal resentment about not achieving the degree of power, status or success they felt entitled to. Others are opportunists for whom sucking up to the ruling elite of any system is just another way of achieving their personal ambitions. Applabaum also identifies an “authoritarian predisposition” that manifests as an aversion to complexity, disagreement and argument and leads people, on the left as well as the right, to long for a strong leader who will silence the dissenters and restore simplicity, order and harmony. Finally there’s what she calls “cultural despair” – a sense that something deeply important about one’s culture has been lost – combined with a “restorative nostalgia” that not only gets a warm fuzzy feeling from contemplating the (imagined) past, but actively seeks to bring it back (“Make America Great Again” etc.).
Levitsky and Ziblatt look at how democracies have failed elsewhere and identify common patterns. Most modern day demagogues and authoritarians are democratically elected, often with the aide of mainstream politicians who – out of opportunism or miscalculation – hope to use the popular appeal of the demagogue to their advantage and believe they can control him: A Faustian bargain that backfires badly. Once in power, the demagogue starts gradually eroding and subverting the very system that helped him get elected to make it practically impossible to be un-elected. The authors stress that the best way to protect democracy is to prevent authoritarians from coming to power in the first place and emphasize the gate-keeping function of parties. Most usefully they provide a handy “litmus test” for identifying would-be authoritarians ahead of time:
1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game (e.g. refusing to accept the result of elections).
2. Denial of the legitimacy of opponents (e.g. portraying opponents as “crooked” and threatening to “lock her up”)
3. Toleration or encouragement of violence (e.g. hinting that “the 2nd amendment people” take care of one’s opponent).
4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.
The authors also emphasize the role of unwritten democratic norms that uphold the “spirit” of the law above the “letter” of the law. Indeed, many of the subversive actions that help autocrats cement their power are not technically “illegal”, although they certainly violate the spirit of the law. The most basic of these norms are what the authors call “mutual toleration” (i.e. recognizing the legitimacy of political opponents) and “forbearance” (i.e. not abusing the powers granted to you according to the letter of the law in ways that subvert the spirit of the law). To explain the erosion of such norms, Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize extreme polarization where parties start viewing each other as enemies, traitors, criminals, illegitimate, or even an existential threat (in violation of the norm of mutual toleration), thus justifying doing whatever it takes to keep them out of the Halls of Power (in violation of the norm of forbearance).
Some points that I take to be common to most or all of the authors are the following:
• History is not over. Democracy is neither inevitable nor the only game in town. There are always alternatives, even in wealthy nations and even where democracy has endured for decades.
• The death of democracy doesn’t have to involve tanks in the streets or armed men in uniforms storming the national assembly. Gradual erosion over time can cause as much destruction as a sudden explosion. Whether authoritarians rise to power through elections or military coups, the end result is pretty much the same.
• Constitutions and democratic institutions do not guarantee the survival of democracy. Nor do they protect themselves. Democracies can be killed without violating the letter of the constitution. Indeed many of the anti-democratic reforms are passed off as attempts to make democracy function better (eliminating voter fraud etc.). Under authoritarian rule laws and institutions are turned into a shield for the government and a weapon against the opposition. Institutions do not protect us unless we protect them first.
• Although there are important similarities, modern authoritarian regimes are in relevant ways different from the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (and this is where references to Orwell etc. may be more misleading than illuminating). Elections do not have to be abolished, only rigged. The truth doesn’t have to be silenced completely, only neutralized, discredited, or drowned out by misinformation. People are not required to believe the lies of the government, only to doubt everything.
• The main purpose of modern day propaganda is not to inspire belief but to sow doubt, distrust, suspicion, and cynicism. As Snyder put it in “On Tyranny”: “If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights”. If everyone is a crook, you might as well support the crook who claims to be on your side.
• Crises and emergencies of any kind – whether real or fabricated – are precisely the opportunities that would-be authoritarians are looking for to suspend normal procedures and claim dictatorial powers.
• In the digital age perceptions are as important as facts, e.g. whipping up hysteria about mass-immigration works even in countries that have hardly seen any immigration at all. There is no shortage of people who will sacrifice democracy to keep out hordes of immigrants that only exist on the internet or as an idea in their own heads.
• Support for demagogues does not require suffering in the present, but usually goes hand in hand with deep pessimism about the future. If the people on the other side are infinitely bad, there is nothing we can possibly do to keep them out of the Halls of Power that’s worse than failure to do so. Even people who neither trust nor like the demagogue – indeed see him as unfit for office – may end up voting for him because they think every other option is even worse.
Bjarte, thank you for that excellent set of recommendations and reviews. I’ll bookmark it, and add some of those to my list (“On Tyranny” is already there). Your efforts and comments are much appreciated.
Tulsi Gabbard has introduced legislation that specifies Title IX protections for women apply in fact to women, rather than men who claim to be women. The gnashing and wailing has already begun. The article below at least attempts to present the information accurately, rather than framing the issue as “transphobic” or “anti-trans”.
One thing that concerns me: the claim that gender-critical or radical feminists are not “hate groups” because an organization devoted to tracking “hate groups”, SPLC, has not declared them such. SPLC spouts the gender identity ideology line in some of their material, although it’s not nearly as emphatic as it is for ACLU. I don’t hold out hope that the lack of designation will remain true. SPLC has designated people and organizations “hateful” (or whatever the term is) simply for criticizing Islam; the gender-critical case is sufficiently similar to be equally concerning.
The ruling in Scottow’s case (available here) is pretty interesting to me.
I don’t have much experience with reading opinions from UK courts, so if anyone else does I’d like to hear about it, but I’m really struck at the tone of it. U.S. appellate courts are generally pretty mild even when they are reversing a lower court; it’s usually just “the trial court erred in ruling….” But here the decision really seems to take a dim view (for good reason, in my opinion) of the trial judge:
This is an unstructured approach that lacks the appropriate rigour. The Crown evidently did not appreciate the need to justify the prosecution, but saw it as the defendant’s task to press the free speech argument. The prosecution argument failed entirely to acknowledge the well-established proposition that free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another. The Judge appears to have considered that a criminal conviction was merited for acts of unkindness, and calling others names, and that such acts could only be justified if they made a contribution to a “proper debate”. Neither prosecution nor Judge considered whether some more demanding interpretation of s 127 or addressed the question of what legitimate aim was pursued, or, more importantly, whether the conviction of this defendant on these facts was necessary: whether it was a proportionate means of responding to some pressing social need.
The entire case below seems to have been a farce. It’s appalling that a judge in an ostensibly free society could utter what the trial judge here did:
We teach our children to be kind to each other and not to call each other names in the playground and there is no reason why, simply because some thing is on social media, we should not follow that rule as adults and think about what is being written before sending messages, and not send ‘stupid throw away comments’, as described by you in xx.
What infantilizing nonsense! Imagine thinking that it is your place as a judge to convict someone of a criminal offense for not being nice. I can only imagine what else District Judge Margaret Dodd thinks falls within her purview. Failing to RSVP for a party?
The appellate opinion goes on to note the dubious legality of the gag order imposed on Scottow as a condition of her bail, and also reassigns the civil proceeding in which an injunction was sought against her. A pretty comprehensive (and deserved) victory.
I am not, mind you, endorsing everything that Scottow posted or tweeted. But that’s kind of the point — people have the right to say things that I disagree with or even are offended by. Amazing that it took an appeal to explain that to Judge Dodd and the Crown.
I read an article today about an apparent racial incident in Colorado. The details are not important, but I can dig up the link if needed. The woman telling the story is Black, and she says she is the only woman in the neighborhood who “identifies as Black”. The person who is the transgressor “identifies as white”. These phrases are presented without explanation, and there is no indication in the narrative that there are any people in the story who “are” Black or “are” white without identifying as so.
I know, given the principle of hypodescent, that some people might “identify as Black” without appearing that way, and there are people of Black ancestry who didn’t consider themselves Black but who were nonetheless slaves by ancestry. I know that there are some anecdotes about dark-skinned Black people who insist they are white, and some even express racist sentiments toward Black people, but I don’t know if those are real stories or play-acting. We all know about people like Rachel Dolezal who claim to be Black but in fact do not have any known Black ancestors. So we are aware that there are some instances where appearance and claims of racial background don’t match.
However, this story seems to have gone completely the way “gender identity” has: that no person “is” white or “is” Black, they only “identify as”. Whether the white transgressor was queried as to what race she “identified as” was unclear; she has light skin, so what she “identified as” seems to be a presumption. It seems to me the language in this instance has become distorted, that “identifies as” is the way you say “is” when talking about things like race and ethnicity, at least for some speakers. This is troubling.
I think I can see where some of that comes from though. Look at Obama for instance – he does pretty much “identify as black” but he will also point out when it’s relevant that there’s the other half of him. I remember being foolishly surprised once when he reminded us all that those pale Middle America types that some on the left make fun of are his people too. It’s complicated. But sex isn’t complicated that way, apart from rare DSDs, yet it’s the “identity” that’s now treated as 100% transferable.
I should have included examples like Obama (or myself, for that matter), people who have widely accepted reasons to “identify as” members of multiple racial or ethnic groups. I agree it’s not nearly as simple as sex.
But I nonetheless found the language jarring. Obama isn’t going to be accepted as white, no matter how he identifies, and nobody really asks obviously white people how they identify. If someone is of mixed Polish and German ancestry, they may care about one side or the other more, but they don’t generally get asked how they “identify”, in so many words. It’s a strange way to put it. Certainly it would be odd for people to look at a person with Asian features and say he “identifies as” Asian without even asking; the person perhaps “looks” Asian, or perhaps “is” Asian (pending evidence to the contrary).
It would be like looking at an unknown woman and saying she “identifies as” a woman; we can’t tell her mental state. We can tell she “is” a woman (or perhaps we are mistaken), and we can consider her mental image irrelevant. It’s this sleight-of-hand where mental state is truth, and “identifies as” is the same thing as “is”, that bothers me here.
A lack of self-awareness? Blatant hypocrisy? Straightforward denial? You decide.
Over at FTB, the odious Giliel has a post on Affinity about the supposedly terrible world-building in the Harry Potter series* (G used to be a big fan of the stories until she noticed these problems, and her post was in no way motivated by Rowling revealing herself to be a ‘racist Queen Terf’, apparently).
One of the comments is from ‘Allison’, a TiM who wonders whether such writing is down to the author not understanding the realities of physics, populations, economics, etc. or just not caring because it’s just a wish-fulfillment fantasy where things don’t have to make sense: it’s just fiction so don’t ask questions, just enjoy the fun things that happen. However, that last part – basically that in fantasy tales truth doesn’t matter – leads Allison to:
[T]he sneaking feeling that people frequently approach real-world things with the same attitude. You can believe “facts” which don’t fit together or make sense because they’re part of a daydream of how things really are that you find satisfying. Things like QAnon, or the fantasy that Trump really won the election. Basically, things are “true” if you want them to be true.
Yup, here is a TiM worrying that people are believing things to be true just because they want them to be true. My ghast has never been so flabbered.
Today my province of Ontario set a new one-day record for new infections, also becoming the first province to pass 3,000 new cases in a day, and my local health unit posted a new one-day record of 119 new cases (following 91 yesterday and 100 the day before). I wonder how many of those were the result of the delayed provincial lockdown, originally planned for Dec. 23, then changed to Dec. 26. The provincial Finance Minister was forced to resign after returning home from a Caribbean holiday over Christmas.
The White House* said Nunes “had the fortitude to take on the media, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, the Democrat Party, foreign spies, and the full power of the Deep State. Devin paid a price for his courage. The media smeared him and liberal activists opened a frivolous and unjustified ethics investigation, dragging his name through the mud for eight long months.”
It called Nunes “a public servant of unmatched talent, unassailable integrity, and unwavering resolve. He uncovered the greatest scandal in American history,” an apparent reference to baseless, conspiratorial claims by Trump that the Obama administration and the FBI, among many others, plotted to tie the 2016 Trump campaign to Russia.
*That is, Trump (though perhaps passed through someone who knows the conventions of English orthography).
Just reading a book which is largely set in the Pacific Northwest. Orca: How we Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator, by Jason. M. Colby. His argument is that our current understanding and appreciation of Killer Whales was a result of human exposure to captive members of the species, and that without this exposure to them in marine parks and shows, our attitudes would have likely remained fearful and hostile.
It’s well written, but tough going, because so much of the early parts of the book involve recounting the casual slaughter and careless destruction of these animals at the hands of humans seeing them as pests, dangers, and competition. I find as I get older I find it harder to read such things, particularly in regards to animals.
Also learned a new geographic term for the area: The Salish Sea.
Today’s Savage Chickens cartoon seems to me an apt description of a wannabe dictator currently (still!) infesting the White House. Not a coincidence, I imagine.
And by coincidence, I happened to tune in to CNN just now, as they confirmed the vote count from Wyoming and wrapped up the proceedings in the senate. A rare moment of sanity in a mad world!
Somebody please hold my hair while I vomit (actually, I’ve no hair to hold but the sentiment remains).
Eddie Izzard choked up [why couldn’t ‘up’ have been a typo?] live on air while thanking Lorraine Kelly for supporting her gender-fluidity….Kelly told Izzard: “You’re a fantastic woman and a fantastic human being. Thank so so much and good luck with all that you’re doing.” Visibly emotional, Izzard replied: “And thank you for being so supportive… you really have been so supportive.”
Bletch! I almost forgot the for fuck’s sake, Izzard, do you never hear what you’re saying out loud? bit.
Izzard said that she is “fighting for… the right to have a fair chance in life”
It is thought that some of the police authorities in there area were actually in on the attempt quietly, and supported the coup attempt by deliberately setting aside normal protocol for a threat like this to give the rioters an easier time accessing the building.
It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defence, is often on standby too.
So the idea is that somebody high up blocked that coordination.
Interesting twitter thread I found via Stonekettle. It looks at “patriot” posts before Jan 6 and includes footage taken by the tweeter during the coup.
-Communications the author monitored beforehand did not seem very precise or co-ordinated. Some people were complaining about the lack of detail and specificity regarding what people were supposed to actually do.
-“Stochastic priming” Online rhetoric ramped up over time to include killing police officers as well as traitorous politicians.
On Jan 6 itself:
-There did not seem to be any overall plan amongst those marching on the Capitol, whose numbers were not great.
-Police presence minimal. Clear, open pathway to the Capitol. The author (who reportedly had been in BLM demonstrations) was continually bracing for an unleashing of police resonse that never came. Many police seemed to have no gear, no shield.
-Police who arrived on the scene latter are not very active or concerned, making no effort to create a perimeter or control crowds.
How can you look at these videos and not conclude that the police, not just the Capitol police but any police on the scene, received a stand down or minimal force order of some sort?
We’re looking at the greatest Capitol security breach since 1814 and police barely responded.
By and large, I believe this to be a #StochasticCoup, but if I was looking for evidence of coordination, I would start with the following:
1) Was the FBI pressured to minimize the risk of the Capitol being attacked?
2) Did Capitol Police leadership issue a stand down order?
3) Did anyone inside the Capitol, either police officers, staffers, or members of Congress, assist the insurrectionists?
There were quite a few of the coup plotters who had sophisticated gear and either police or military training.
However…
Did those individuals really use that training or gear? From what I can tell, insurrectionists pushed their way into the Capitol or were let in.
They didn’t use the tunnels they were so obsessed with. They didn’t use any special tools.
As far as I can tell, the coup plotters only had two advantages:
1) White privilege
2) Inside help
And that was enough to almost take down our whole government.
But the question decent Americans are asking today is the same one we were asking on January 6th, the same one we’ve been asking since November of 2016:
a revolution of what?
What precisely were they overthrowing?
What exactly were they protesting?
How specifically had this nation so grievously wronged them?
As critical as those questions are, they are a fruitless endeavor, because the truth of the matter is—they would not be capable of a response.
This was a nothing revolution: an empty display of cheap anger formed in staggering privilege, made of fake oppression, inflamed by a massive lie—and directed toward a man who fully embodies them: one who has had everything in this life handed to him and is perpetually outraged when cannot have more.
Good article in the NY Times (from a fellow Maroon) about Hawley and Christian Nationalism. (I’m neither a Christian nor a nationalist, but somehow I don’t see nationalism as consistent with the supposedly universalist message of Christianity.)
In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.
The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words reprovingly: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”
In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian and onetime prime minister Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.
Light police presence noted; crowd expected police to join them : reviled those who did not.
4) There were also no clear crowd rules imposed for Stop the Steal like there were for all the other protests we have attended. All of the “liberal” protests of the last four years we attended had a long list of things you could not bring that were enforced at the Capitol. 16/22
At these protests, there were no poles or sticks, no backpacks, no weapons or body armor, etc. There were sometimes security check points to go through to get onto the mall or Capitol grounds. 17/22
None of these standard rules applied to Stop the Steal. There were poles and flags and backpacks and body armor EVERYWHERE. We didn’t see any guns or knives. But there were certainly people brandishing flag poles as if they were weapons. 18/22
5) These people are serious and they are going to keep escalating the violence until they are stopped by the force of law. There were many, many people there who were excited by the violence and proud and excited about the prospect of more violence. 19/22
At least since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the conservative world has become a place of ever more extreme language, ever more widely distanced from real-world events. Conservative talkers would say things like Obama “is literally at war with the American people,” and then be greatly shocked and offended that anyone would connect their words to the growth of extremist violence. The words did not mean anything to the cynics who spoke them, and so they found it difficult to imagine that the words might mean anything to those who heard them.
In the same spirit, Republican elected officials repeated Trump’s outlandish claims about the 2020 election while privately accepting the election outcome as valid and accurate. The lesson that Republican political professionals drew from 2020 was not that Biden’s 81 million votes were fake. The lesson they drew was that they must use their power over elections at the state and local level to prevent that many people from voting in the future.
They mouthed Trump’s complaints about voter fraud in 2020 while they devised their own, rational plans for voter suppression in 2022 and 2024. They counted on the rest of the political world being responsible enough to apply the brakes before Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election got too far out of hand. In the meantime, they had TV spots to book and funds to raise.
A lot of modern conservatism is a species of affinity fraud. If rank-and-file conservatives are dumb enough to be separated from their money by fantastic lies, well, there are conservative elites who feel they would be remiss not to do the separating. As for Trump himself, some figured, what harm could he possibly do at this point? The American system has been peaceably transitioning presidential power for a very long time; who could seriously imagine that system blowing up in 2021? They knew the road was closed, so they went along for the ride—thinking that the driver must stop when he reached the barrier. Except this time, Trump was not just whining as usual. He crashed right through the barrier. The ride led here: to the dumb-as-rocks fiasco that abruptly severed the long tradition of the peaceful transition of power in the United States.
Seventy-four million people voted for Trump, and surely the great majority of them reject political violence in all its forms. President Trump is in so much political trouble right now precisely because even those who voted for him reject his violence. But Trumpism as a cause has been tainted from the start by its openness to political violence to take and keep power.
There’s too much guilt here for Trump to shoulder all by himself, although of course he bears the largest individual weight. Many are guilty, a very great many—even if they never intended for things to spin out of control. They may have wanted only to score some TV time for themselves, or to pad their social-media followings, or to extract a few dollars from angry viewers or readers.
But if the conservative world is to pull itself out of the moral wreck into which it has been led by Trump, its leaders will have to do better than Rubio did in his blame-everybody-but-me video. They will have to reckon with a long record of inflammatory deceit, a reckoning with a politics founded on nothing bigger than fear and resentment.
There is no redemption without repentance. There is no repentance without accountability. There is no accountability without consequences. Republican support for the impeachment and removal of President Trump, and his disqualification from ever again holding office, is the first step toward the renewal and recovery of the party that will otherwise bear the mark of Trump even after he departs office.
An ex-conservative friend of mine told me a story about a conversation she had with someone who remained much more active in the conservative movement. The active conservative had raged about “liberal elites” until finally my friend could stand it no longer: “You went to law school. Why aren’t you an elite?” The active conservative paused, reflected, and then answered, “Well, what do you want me to call the people I hate?”
Maybe it’s time to stop hating so many people. Maybe that’s the beginning of the way back from following Trump to rejoining America.
Mind you, Politico goes on to say “Sherrill did not identify the lawmakers she was referring to, how she was able to describe their activities as “reconnaissance” and how she knew they were connected to the riots that consumed the Capitol the following day.” It sounds very surmise-like.
Today, while walking on my way to work for my weekly “check to see if there are packages for the store at the post office during lockdown” visit, I saw four Bald Eagles, quite close-up. I saw the first one, a juvenile, while I was crossing a major bridge. It had just taken off from a tree, and landed a few farther trees down. I spotted another as I was watching the first. While still on the bridge, I saw one of them grab a small fish out of the river, returning to a tree to eat it. I backtracked off the bridge, and went down into the floodplain park area where the trees were, where I also saw an adult up in a tree. I pointed the eagles out to someone passing by, who spotted a fourth eagle (a third juvenile) in another tree. I’ve never been as close to wild, free eagles before. It was quite thrilling, and it made my day.
I had thought about bringing my camera with me on my walk, but had decided not to. Probably just as well, because if I’d had my camera, I would have been taking pictures as I walked along (which always slows me down), and would not have been crossing the bridge at the time the first eagle flew nearby, so I might not have seen any of them! So, I recorded the experience in my memory instead. I told a number of others who were walking along the path about the eagles, and they were very appreciative when I pointed them out. They really are quite impressive birds: apart from swans, they’re the biggest birds I’ve seen around here.
On the homeward journey a couple hours later, I saw a pair of adult Bald Eagles, climbing, banking and circling.
Probably a mated or courting pair. One of them might have been the adult I’d seen earlier, but there’s no way to be sure. So at least five eagles in one day, maybe six. Not bad!
Growing up in the 60s and 70’s in Southwestern Ontario, I never saw Bald Eagles at all, probably thanks to DDT. I didn’t see my first one until 1988, on a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, when I looked up to see what a bunch of gulls were squawking at, and saw a Bald Eagle, along with the protesting gulls, wheeling high overhead. Now I see Bald Eagles on a fairly regular basis, but it’s still exciting. To see four at once, and being able to approach them as closely as I did, is especially so.
Ahhhhh cool. I know exactly how you feel. I see them quite often, there’s a resident pair a couple of miles due west of my window (literally – the tree is in a park just past where the east-west street I live on the corner of which ends, and the tree lines up with the street) and they fly over now and then, though more often they fly over the water and I see them there. I always alert people if they haven’t noticed. Last time was a week or two ago, just as the bird swooped in front of me and the couple I alerted; they were quite thrilled.
I haven’t seen them catching a fish though! That’s very cool. I did see an osprey catch one in Lake Washington though.
I remember the first time I EVER saw them flying around in Seattle, high in the sky above a park next to Puget Sound (miles north of the one across from me). Some time in the 80s. I was beyond excited. Then gradually I saw more and more, because yes, they’ve made a big comeback. There are a bunch of permanent nests in Seattle.
Here’s another item on the question of possible insiders in the Capitol attack: the panic buttons of a congress member’s office are alleged to have been torn out ahead of the attack.
More looting at the White House, but this time not a rioter in sight. It does make one wonder: if they can be so blatant in apparently taking small-value (financially: not the only measure of value, of course) items of government property, what items of a greater value will be carried out concealed in packing cases? I’m sure that Chicken Caesar and his family don’t have to worry about their deposit being witheld until an audit of the place is completed.
As a part of my ongoing efforts to study the rise of authoritarianism I recently finished reading This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev. Here are what I take to be some of the main points.
Where the totalitarian movements of the 20th century used to peddle some official story (an ideology, a philosophy, a world view etc.) that purported to be true and back it up with appeals to supposedly objective facts and rational arguments, the new authoritarians have adopted a more “postmodern” approach. Rather than claiming the truth for themselves, the likes of Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan are content to put so much conflicting information out there that people finally just give up trying to understand what’s going on. Apart from creating general confusion, the idea is to sow as much doubt, distrust, suspicion, cynicism, and paranoia as possible in order to convince people that nothing is what it claims to be and everything they hear – including any criticism of the authoritarians themselves – is all just part of somebody else’s hidden agenda or nefarious plot. If everyone is always lying, you might as well go with the lies that are most favorable to your own tribe. If everyone is a crook, you might as well support the crook who claims to be on your side.
Even back in the “pre-post-truth” era politicians, commercial interests, and ideological pressure groups of every kind did, of course, employ the whole arsenal of outright lies, subtle lies, bullshit, bending the truth, half-truths, spin, and a practically endless store of disingenuous and self-serving “framings”. But even if people often failed to live up to the established norms and standards of honesty and truthfulness, at least it used to be implicitly understood that there were such norms and standards, which is why even liars (at least the clever ones) would usually make some effort to cover their tracks, make sure there was “plausible deniability” etc. Being caught telling obvious, outright, shameless lies used to be embarrassing pretty much no matter who you were, and hardly anyone ever walked away from such an exposure without being at least temporarily weakened. The logic of the post truth era has turned this situation on it’s head. As Pomerantsev puts it:
…what seems novel is that they seem to be making a thing out of showing that they don’t care about whether they tell the truth or not. When Vladimir Putin went on international television during his army’s annexation of Crimea and asserted, with a smirk, that there were no Russian soldiers in Crimea, when everyone knew there were, and later, just as casually, admitted that they had been there, he wasn’t so much lying in the sense of trying to replace one reality with another as saying that facts don’t matter. Similarly the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is famous for having no discernible notion of what truth or facts are, yet this has in no way been a barrier to his success. According to the fact-checking agency PolitiFact, 76 per cent of his statements in the 2016 presidential election were ‘mostly false’ or down-right untrue, compared to 27 per cent for his rival. He still won.
Paradoxically, in a world of collective distrust and suspicion, the person who lies most openly and “blatantly” may end up being perceived as more “honest” than those who “pretend” to be telling the truth.
The libertarian trope that the truth always prevails in a free “marketplace of ideas” was, of course, always on shaky ground. The idea that new media – simply by making all kinds of information more readily available – would inevitably lead to a new enlightenment was only ever a Utopian dream. The same technologies that have made it easier than ever to spread true information and good ideas have also made it easier than ever to spread false information and bad ideas. Still, it used to be a common perception that free speech, as well as more information in general, favored the side of truth and democracy while censorship was the tool of oppressive regimes who were afraid of the truth and could only survive in a climate of forced orthodoxy. With the rise of social media authoritarians have managed to co-opt many of the tools of pro-democratic movements, including free speech, e.g. by framing organized disinformation campaigns by thousands of trolls and bots as “concerned citizens exercising their right to free speech”. Meanwhile, faced with this sudden onslaught of disinformation and fake news, some of the people on the pro-democracy side do indeed start calling for censorship, thus enabling the authoritarians to claim that their opponents are the ones who are afraid of the truth and have no choice but to silence their critics because they don’t have any counter-arguments.
Another tool that authoritarians have taken from the playbook of their opponents is to assemble a mass-movement by uniting widely disparate groups behind a lowest common denominator that should be so vague and nonspecific (disaffection with the “elite” or the “establishment”, wanting “change” etc.) that everyone can find an interpretation they can get behind. Indeed, another advantage of not being committed to a coherent ideology is that you are free to selectively target different groups with different messages especially tailored to their tribal prejudices and biases. The algorithms of social media platforms like Facebook have made it easier than ever to identify people’s predispositions, and frame your message in terms of what they are already afraid of or angry about. If you’re on the far left, say, you might find your timeline flooded with messages portraying Ukrainian protesters as nazis;. If you’re on the far right they’ll be portrayed as representatives of the international Jewish conspiracy. If you’re part of the BLM movement you’ll be targeted by messages portraying Hillary Clinton as a racist; If you are a racist, you’ll be told that she loves black people and is in favor of wide-open borders. The fact that these messages can hardly be true at the same time doesn’t matter as long as the people on both sides live in separate information bubbles and never compare notes.
Not only are people especially susceptible to information that confirms their pre-held views, but hardly anyone is immune to group conformity and tribalism. Bots, trolls and cyborgs exploit this by disguising themselves as ordinary citizens and members of the same tribe as their targets, thus creating the impression that certain views are both immensely popular and widely accepted among those you consider part of your ingroup:
Today bots, trolls and cyborgs could create the simulation of a climate of opinion, of support or hate, which was more insidious, more all-enveloping than the old broadcast media. And this simulation would then become reinforced as people modified their behaviour to fall in line with what they thought was reality. In their analysis of the role of bots, researchers at the University of Oxford called this process ‘manufacturing consensus’. It is not the case that one online account changes someone’s mind; it’s that en masse they create an ersatz normality.
Once this “climate of opinion” or “manufactured consensus” or “ersatz normality” has been established, you hardly even need the trolls and bots anymore. People will eagerly and enthusiastically keep spreading the disinformation all by themselves.
I often talk about the things New Zealand gets right, and to be fair I think we do get a lot right. Not everything though. There are things we get badly wrong. One of them is the treatment of vulnerable women and children. It’s a cancer in our society. We have terrible statistics around abuse and murder of young children. Our youth suicide rate is appalling and far too many girls and young women end up as prostitutes, especially if they are Maori, Pasifika and South-east asian.
Our laws against trafficking were recently amended. The government has been looking at various policy applications that could work in concert with this law to reduce the trafficking of vulnerable people. The linked story says it all. men (exploited migrant labour) got all the attention, despite making up only around a quarter of the total of trafficking victims. At least the Department responsible has been shamed into taking a second look.
For four years I’ve openly lamented the poison your presidency has so effortlessly generated.
I’ve watched our country imploding on your watch, witnessed our public discourse become polluted in your presence, and seen our political climate grow ever more corrosive with you overseeing it.
At first, I wrongly assumed you were to blame, but in recent years I’ve come to understand that you haven’t manufactured our current national ugliness at all—you’ve simply revealed it.
You’ve uncovered who we have always been, and for those like myself who have been afflicted with privileged or were criminally uninformed because we were able to be—that felt sudden and shocking, though it shouldn’t have.
By saying the irresponsible, mean-spirited, ignorant things you’ve said so freely and so frequently, you’ve given other like-minded people license to do the same: unapologetically admitting who they always were but were previously fearful of declaring.
You became the flag they could proudly wave in defiant hatred of so many.
You’ve made bigotry, misogyny, and racism socially acceptable again and that has been a kind of twisted gift because it’s allowed me to really see people; not as they pretend to be on the surface—but in the very depths of their wounded, weaponized hearts.
For years your supporters would tell me that they loved you because you “spoke your mind”. That was never the real story. The truth is, they loved you because you’ve spoken their minds.
Well, what we are seeing on the right at this moment is the creation of a new dolchstoß myth. Trump refuses to admit that he was beaten. And he indisputably was.
He knew–particularly after his epic failure to deal with Covid–that he was likely to lose, so long before the election he started lying about the outcome. If he won, it’d be legitimate. If he lost, he was cheated.
He could not ever admit the possibility of a legitimate loss. It’s just beyond his narcissistic mind. So he’s lied endlessly about how he really won in a landslide and of course the right wing propaganda machine has backed his play.
The direct consequences of this was the coup attempt on January 6. We will almost certainly see more political violence this week and beyond. Because the American right now has their own dolchstoß.
I can’t remember if this was mentioned in the Navalny posts already here, but apparently Navalny called a Russian intelligence agent and tricked him into spilling details by impersonating another agent.
Grace Tame was groomed and raped by her 58-year-old mathematics teacher, when she was 15 years old.
He was found guilty and jailed.
However, for many years, Grace could not speak out due to Tasmania’s sexual assault victim gag laws.
Now, Ms Tame is being honoured for being an advocate for survivors of sexual assault, for demonstrating extraordinary courage, for advocating for legal reform and for raising public awareness about the impacts of sexual violence.
(…)
Medicine student and social entrepreneur Isobel Marshall from South Australia has been awarded the Young Australian of the year.
Ms Marshall co-founded TABOO when she was 18-years-old to help women globally by breaking down stigma around menstruation and providing women greater access to feminine hygiene products.
Ms Marshall’s organisation TABOO partnered with Vinnies Women’s Crisis centre, providing free access to pads and tampons for women experiencing homelessness in South Australia.
I’m sure you’ve all read that Biden rescinded Trump’s “transgender ban” for the military.
On some public post about this move, I think the White House FB page, a music equipment vendor I know (not well, but I’ve seen him in discussion forums and I’ve done business with him) expressed disagreement with the change, using a meme that mocked Biden, referring to him as a clown. To my view, silly, but a simple criticism.
In a private music group, this vendor is now being raked over the coals, and lots of people are declaring their intention to cease business with him and calling for a boycott of his store. For posting a rather mild expression of disagreement using his own personal Facebook account.
I find this utterly jaw-droppingly strange. I have never seen anyone call for a boycott of a music equipment vendor over misogynist remarks or racist remarks, and I cannot believe such things have never happened. This particular vendor I don’t think suddenly started posting reactions on public pages today. From what I know of him, I’m sure he’s had choice words to post on various topics before. But this, posting a silly meme on a post about transgender people, THIS is what gets people riled up? THIS is what inspires a public demand for a boycott? What the heck is wrong with people?
Seth Abramson reports on a Jan. 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel in DC that included Don Jr. Giuliani, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (the one that Trump was trying to reach during the attack on the Capitol) among others.
Well after dark on January 5, 2021—just 15 hours before an insurrection against the United States government incited by the President of the United States—Nebraska Republican Charles W. Herbster, at the time the National Chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee for the Trump administration, attended a private meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, January 6 organizers, and at least one member of the United States Senate at Trump International Hotel in Washington.
In attendance at the large and only recently uncovered meeting, conducted “in the private residence of the President” at his hotel, were, according to Herbster’s account, the following individuals (Note: Donald Trump’s presence at the meeting, either in person or via speakerphone, as yet remains unclear, so his name is temporarily absent from this listing):
Donald Trump Jr., eldest son of the president
Eric Trump, second-eldest son of the president
Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to the president
Peter Navarro, Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and National Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator
Corey Lewandowski, 2016 Trump campaign manager
David Bossie, 2016 Trump deputy campaign manager
Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association
Tommy Tuberville, United States senator from the State of Alabama
According to research by political strategist and regular CNN, MSNBC, The Hill, CBS, and Fox News contributor Cheri Jacobus, Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck claims he was at the January 5 meeting also, and that additional attendees at the gathering included the following three people:
Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to the President of the United States
Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr.
Michael Lindell, Trump donor and MyPillow CEO
That Herbster would have access to Trump’s inner circle is clear. But less clear is why the Trumps had invited, to a private residence outside the White House—and on the eve of an insurrection—(1) Michael Flynn, a man who that very day had organized a D.C. rally to protest the 2020 election, and would the next day conjoin his Jericho March with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America that Trump was to speak at; (2) Peter Navarro, a man who would later say on live television that he believed Trump had the unilateral authority to postpone Biden’s inauguration; (3) Tommy Tuberville, the U.S. senator who in a matter of hours Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would be calling by telephone to demand that he fraudulently contest ten states’ Biden electors (far more than the five Giuliani had publicly declared contestable); (4) Adam Piper, who in a matter of days would resign from the Republican Attorneys General Association when it was found that he had helped orchestrate robocalls advertising the Stop the Steal/March to Save America event; and (5) Trump’s former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager—Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, respectively—two men known for their bareknuckle politics and (in Lewandowski’s case) an alleged penchant for violence (see here, here, and here). Meanwhile, the presence of Trump’s personal attorney at the meeting all but ensures that Trump himself was aware of the event.
While of course there’s less question about why Don Jr. and Eric were at the January 5 meeting at their father’s Washington hotel, it’s useful to note that both men would speak alongside their father at the January 6 rally in D.C. that incited an insurrection, and that both (particularly the former) arguably uttered words during their speeches that helped incite that insurrection. Meanwhile, it remains unclear why Trump would have given his sons access to his private residence in Washington if he was not either planning to attend the meeting with them, planning to attend it via speakerphone—a longtime practice of the president in dealing with sensitive meetings, and a practice for which he has become infamous—or expecting his sons to debrief him immediately. Giuliani would also have been expected by his client to offer an immediate debriefing, and Mike Lindell, another meeting participant, was known to have Oval Office access to the president at the time.
But the two men of most importance here, undoubtedly, are (1) the organizer of the Jericho March, and (2) the organizer of robocalls promoting the Stop the Steal/March to Save America—as their presence at a private Team Trump strategy meeting the night before an armed insurrection affirms that the president’s inner circle was in fact coordinating with the very men who were at that moment busy creating an armed mob for Trump to command on January 6. Just so, if Guilfoyle did indeed call Ali Alexander from the meeting, it means that one of the chief Stop the Steal organizers was involved in at least one high-level meeting with Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, and a key member of the United States Senate the night before the January 6 insurrection.
Alexander had been caught on camera earlier in the evening of January 5 leading a crowd in a chant of “Victory or death!” Shortly thereafter, he was on the phone with the most powerful figures in Trump’s inner circle.
Nor must we guess what these fifteen men and women discussed on the eve of the insurrection, as the Omaha World Herald has already reported on what Herbster and his compatriots were doing: “discuss[ing] how to pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.”
This seeming footnote in a mid-size newspaper may become one of the most startling revelations of the ongoing federal criminal investigation of the January 6 insurrection: it means that one of the organizers of the now-infamous Stop the Steal/March to Save America event met with Trump’s top advisers and family members—and possibly, if a speakerphone was employed, Trump himself—on the night before the insurrection to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.” It also means that the organizer of the Jericho March, Flynn, which had been timed to coincide with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America, also met with this corps of Trump advisers to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress.” And for reasons we still don’t know—but perhaps can guess at—the fifteen (minimum) participants at the meeting decided that they couldn’t meet in the White House. A call from the hotel to Alexander may offer an explanation for this.
Not only does this meeting appear to confirm that Trump’s team helped orchestrate the events of January 6, but that it participated in the calibration of those events to exert maximum “pressure” on members of Congress in the midst of them executing a grave constitutional duty. Moreover, it participated in that calibration in the presence of a member of the United States Senate, who was therefore—we can now conclude, from the reporting of the Omaha World Herald—working in private with the president’s team to advise Trump on how to generate that maximum pressure on his Senate peers.
It’s evident that the meeting participants did not anticipate that such “pressure” would come from political persuasion—but from the large, angry gatherings that Flynn and Piper had personally helped foment. Indeed, how could a “peaceful” gathering of Trump voters standing well off Capitol property possibly have exerted “pressure” on members of Congress to “object” to state-certified Biden electors inside the building?
The answer is likely to be clear enough to federal investigators: the events Flynn and Piper orchestrated, along with Alexander, could only exert extraordinary pressure on members of Congress if the participants in those events illegally entered Capitol grounds.
While we cannot know if these co-conspirators discussed the possibility of violence on January 6, that they contemplated the crime that most of the January 6 insurrectionists have now been charged with—Unlawfully Entering a Restricted Building—is all but certain, as is the fact that the purpose of such entries was to put improper pressure on government officials to reverse course on a government action.
In simpler terms, the purpose of the January 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. was arguably seditious conspiracy—as it appears to have been intended to promote and incite criminal acts by a mob whose purpose was to intimidate federal officials engaged in the certification of a democratically elected branch of government.
I saw that! One of the people who reported this meeting on Facebook has been trying to walk it back, but there is edit history, there are screenshots, and there are photos.
For something like the fourth or fifth time now, the Supreme Court has put off deciding on whether or not to accept Missouri’s challenge to a ruling from the 5th Circuit enjoining a Missouri anti-abortion law, seen as a vehicle by the right to overturn Roe and Casey.
On the one hand, this could be nothing. The conservative justices may just be waiting for political tensions to cool a bit before they grant certiorari (agree to hear the case) and eventually deal the death blow to abortion rights in this country.
On the other hand, even granting cert would still mean that a hearing is months away, and a decision longer than that, so political considerations may not be key. So it’s possible that there’s some reluctance on the part of the justices to take this case. And since abortion rights advocates won below, every day that SCOTUS doesn’t intervene is a victory of sorts.
So… I don’t even know if I’d say “cautious optimism,” more like “slightly relaxed pessimism”?
An eight-year-old girl has been expelled from a Christian school in Oklahoma because she had a crush on another girl. Various news outlets are reporting this mostly as an incident of anti-gay sentiment. The mother is criticizing the school’s actions over “something my daughter probably doesn’t know or fully understand”. Of course, she’s only eight, she doesn’t know anything about this stuff.
And I’m thinking how different the narrative would be if she declared that she’s a boy because she likes this other girl.
I was arguing with someone about JKR being “transphobic” just now, and it occurred to me that I did not know whether her name was Joanne or Joanna. Thinking that I probably ought to know given she was the subject of the argument, I googled “JKR” and… well, see if you see what I don’t.
For me, a link to her web site was about 20-30 entries down the page. I had never heard of the designer at the top of the listings; that was… interesting.
I found it, I just found it remarkable that JKR the author was not on the first page when entering that search term; I vaguely recall Google openly admitted to tinkering with their search algorithm to put extremists, nazis, climate deniers etc. further down the rankings and it seems to me that they are doing the same with JKR. I am sceptical that “Jones Knowles Ritchie” and “Jabatan Kerja Raya” are the more famous JKRs.
On the other hand, I just searched for ‘JK’ and Rowling was the first result. I suspect the high rankings for ‘Jones Knowles Ritchie’ and ‘Jabatan Kerja Raya’ are due to both been organisations and are therefore being known by their initials. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rowling referred to as ‘JKR’.
I saw a post that was a Twitter screenshot from someone who claimed to have gone through well over ten thousand TERF accounts (Twitter, I presume) and presented what he “found”. No evidence, no explaining terms, of course. Many of these accounts purportedly followed misogynists, many supported conversion therapy, many followed anti-LGBT hate groups, about eight items, mostly guilt by association, none of course having anything to do with any actual gender-critical argument. I went to look up the original tweet to see if there was follow-up or pushback, but the account has been suspended.
I find it really distressing how people I know, people who are otherwise careful with backing up claims, being clear about terms, and so on, are so utterly careless when dealing with gender identity issues. The person who posted this threatened to cut out the tongue of anyone who tried to use feminism to justify such things as not having men-who-say-they’re-women in women’s sports. I have been resisting disconnecting from this person for some time, but I think I may have reached my limit.
I know, boy how I know. So many people like that I used to know – people who are otherwise careful with backing up claims, being clear about terms, and so on – just threw all that out the window on this subject. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand why. It must have to do with believing the intensely ominous claims about driving people to suicide etc etc, but then I just wonder why they believe all that. They wouldn’t believe it from the Proud Boys or Marjorie Greene or someone urging them to click on this link, so why believe it from people who claim to be magically the other sex?
Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for their role in negotiating four normalisation deals between Israel and Arab nations known as the “Abraham Accords”…..The two former deputies to then-President Donald Trump were nominated by American attorney Alan Dershowitz, […] Dershowitz defended Trump in his first impeachment trial last year and told the Wall Street Journal on 20 January that the Senate should dismiss the article of impeachment against the former president, as he was no longer in office.
If employers try to insist that employees either internally or outwardly accept that “trans women are women” in every possible sense, and there are no circumstances in which biological sex matters, they are imposing not merely a behavioural code on their employees, but a positive belief system. They are not entitled to do that: disciplining employees for politely expressing their dissent from the Stonewall creed is likely to be unlawful discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. (The employment judge who decided Forstater v CGD Europe at first instance may have taken a different view, but that decision does not set a binding precedent and has been heavily criticised, e.g. by Karon Monaghan QC on the UK Human Rights Blog. It seems unlikely to survive the scrutiny of the Employment Appeal Tribunal.)
Occupational requirements raise further tricky problems. It is lawful to restrict certain jobs to one sex or the other, if being of one sex or the other is an occupational requirement, and the application of that requirement is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Marks & Spencer are undoubtedly entitled to restrict jobs as bra fitters to women. The legitimate aim is to secure the privacy and dignity of customers seeking help with choosing a bra that suits them; and restricting the work to women is proportionate, because the overwhelming majority of women will prefer not to take their bras off in the presence of a man they do not know. But if Marks & Spencer (who are a Stonewall Diversity Champion) decide that those jobs can be given to self-identifying trans women who do not have a GRC, then they will have destroyed the legal basis on which they restricted them to women in the first place. Any man may apply, and then sue for sex discrimination when he is not short-listed because he is a man.
More from the above linked look at Stonewall programs. It’s very good.
There’s a more diffuse way in which being a Stonewall Champion could make an employer more vulnerable to discrimination claims, too. Think back to Edinburgh University’s “Trans Inclusion Policy.” It is the only equality policy the University has which is specific to a single protected characteristic.
Imagine a substantial organisation with a staff population of 1000, which happens to be as near as possible an exact demographic mirror for the population of the UK as a whole. The total trans population of the UK is estimated to be between about 0.3% and 0.75%. of the total. About 51% of the UK population is female. About 16% of adults of working age have disabilities. About 1.3% are Hindu. About 6% have diabetes. About 3.4% of adults of working age are Black. On the basis of those percentages, our imaginary organisation employs 510 women and 490 men; 160 staff with disabilities of whom 60 have diabetes; 40 Black staff; 13 Hindus; and maybe between 3 and 8 trans staff.
Now imagine that this organisation has – like Edinburgh University – adopted a specific Trans Equality Policy (with all the training, mentoring, monitoring, social media presence, rainbow merchandise and so on that that entails). But – also like Edinburgh University – it has no similar policy or programme of activities focusing on sex, race, disability, age, religion and belief, maternity or marital status.
In other words, it has made a clear public statement about its priorities. Its 3-8 trans staff appear to be absorbing a grossly disproportionate amount of its time and attention compared to any of the other minority groups it employs – and especially as compared to its majority of 510 staff who are biological women. And many of the respects in which it has decided, at Stonewall’s instigation, to gold-plate trans rights represent blatant incursions into women’s rights in particular. In a suitable case, that statement about an organisation’s priorities could legitimately form part of the material giving rise to an inference of discrimination on grounds of sex.
Workplace health and safety obligations
Regulations 20, 21 and 24 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require employers to provide single sex toilet and changing facilities, unless instead they provide separate lockable rooms to be used by one person at a time. Trans people who do not have a GRC are still as a matter of law of the sex with which they were registered at birth; that is, their biological sex. It follows that employers which permit trans people to use facilities provided for the use of the opposite sex on the strength of self-identification are in breach of those regulations. Such breaches can be prosecuted as a criminal offence.
I wrote this to my MP today in regards to Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy) a Government bill about to go to third reading. It criminalizes “conversion therapy” which is defined as
…a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.
I’m late to the party, but better late than never. Discussions on this blog helped immensly in the writing of this letter. Please forgive its length; it was hard not making it longer!
Letter follows:
I have some concerns regarding Bill C-6 about which I would like some clarification and reassurance. Unfortunately, I’m not sure either is really possible.
The Bill’s preamble, in part says:
Whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because, among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation and gender identity, including the myth that a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity can and ought to be changed;
Some myths of “gender identity” in relation to sex are actually being propagated by supporters of the concept themselves.
I’m wondering what the definition of “cisgender” is for the purposes of this bill. I have never come across a definition of “gender identity” that does not fall back on sexist stereotypes of what girls and boys, women and men, are “supposed” to like or how they are “supposed” to behave. much of the concept of “gender identity” seems to be rooted in socially constructed, patriarchal concepts of what is deemed “appropriate” behaviour for each sex. This does not break down sexist stereotypes: it reinforces them. The concept of “gender identity” and the claim that one can be born in the “wrong” body rely upon further claims of a mind/body dualism that is not in evidence. Some claim the existence of so many different “genders” as to render the whole concept virtually meaningless, so the definition used in this legislation is important. There are no such problems with the definition of same sex attraction. Without a clear, coherent, robust, non-circular definition of what exactly a “gender identity” is, this proposed change to the Criminal Code is going to cause problems.
My concern is that many young people going through difficult times in childhood and puberty are going to be shunted off into a “trans” identity that sets them on a lifelong course of medical intervention (puberty blockers, “corrective” surgery that involves the excision of healthy tissues and organs to better conform to the target “identity”, and wrong-sex hormones), which may fail to alleviate the underlying causes of any depression and anxiety they are be dealing with. In the United Kingdom, more and more young people who had been encouraged to go down this path are now regretting it. Detransitioners like Keira Bell are calling into question this approach to issues surrounding psychological problems arising in and surrounding puberty. For example, many detransitioners, had they been provided with counseling and therapy that did not suggest that they had somehow been born into the “wrong” body, would have grown up to be gay men, or lesbian women, so for them the “transgender” path actually amounted to conversion therapy in opposition to their sexual orientation! Social pressure, and “trans affirming” parents, teachers and therapists might encourage “gender non-conforming” girls and boys to believe they might be the other sex, rather than just girls who are tomboys, or boys who like to play with dolls. In those instances, these children would be having a “gender identity” forced upon them. Would this count as “conversion therapy?” How does the current legislation safeguard against that? What does it do to avoid this obvious conflict? It would seem possible that under the legislation, in which
320.101 In sections 320.102 to 320.106, conversion therapy means a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour. For greater certainty, this definition does not include a practice, treatment or service that relates
(a) to a person’s gender transition; or
(b) to a person’s exploration of their identity or to its development,
counseling and therapy which questioned or challenged someone’s “gender identity” instead of affirming and validating it unquestioningly (such as Ms. Bell now wishes she had received), would be considered “conversion therapy”.
Not all self-evaluation is accurate. If a similar model of affirmation and validation were followed in the treatment of someone suffering from anorexia, it would result in the patient’s death through starvation. Affirmation and validation of an anorexic’s inaccurate body self-mage as an overweight or obese person is not in that person’s best interests. Challenging such inaccurate beliefs, in a compassionate and understanding way, is a better path to that individual’s healthy self-understanding and acceptance than agreeing with them that they really are overweight or obese, and that further limiting their eating is the right thing to do to make their bodies conform to their incorrect beliefs about themselves. Would you classify psychological counseling and therapy which instead helped a person realize and accept an accurate perception about their own body a form of “conversion therapy?” Shouldn’t the same standard apply to the treatment of someone suffering from an inaccurate belief that they are “really” the other sex? Humans cannot change sex. Changing one’s “gender identity” does not change this fact. Neither does the conflation of “sex” and “gender” by trans advocates and activists. If one’s “gender identity” does not “align” or correspond with one’s sex, why is it considered a good idea to follow a path that attacks the body with medication and mutilation in a futile and harmful attempt to force such an impossible physiological “agreement?”
Unfortunately, I fear this amendment of the Criminal Code will create more problems than it solves. Without strict guidelines and safeguarding, the potential is there for a hasty, reckless application of “therapies” and interventions using the ill-defined and regressive idea of “gender identity” resulting in children and teens who might have otherwise growing up to be homosexual being “transed”, and subjected to exactly the sort of conversion therapy, in opposition to their sexual orientation, that this bill is supposed to outlaw.
Found on Twitter via Transgender Trend, retweeted by la scapigliata: A Quillet piece that’s a preview of an upcoming book written by a husband -wife team of psychologists who used to work at and with Tavistock GIDS.
By now, we knew that raising concerns through formal channels at the Tavistock would likely be fruitless, as its leadership seemed incapable of any kind of institutional self-examination that conflicted with the established dogma of (1) speedily “affirming” a trans-identified child’s announced identity, and (2) claiming, without evidence, that puberty blockers are “fully reversible.” So, following a consultation with a legal team, Mrs. A and I agreed we would request a judicial review as to whether children can indeed give informed consent to hormone blockers. In October 2019, we applied to the High Court, and the request was accepted. We then started gathering a multinational group of expert witnesses, one of whom was Keira Bell, a name many readers will know. Keira—now a 23-year-old detransitioner (i.e., someone who once presented as transgender, but no longer does so) believed that her co-morbid psychological difficulties had not been sufficiently assessed or treated at GIDS before she was started on blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments at the age of 15.
In January 2020 our evidence was submitted at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for review. Then in February, Keira took my place in the case, joining with Mrs. A as co-claimant. In October, the three-judge review took place at the High Court. And on December 2nd, the judges ruled against the Tavistock GIDS, and put limits on GIDS’s ability to medically transition non-adults. In their judgment, they concluded that it was “highly unlikely” a child under 13 could give informed consent to such treatment; and that, even in regard to those aged 14 or 15, “doubtful” that they fully understand the implications of these medication regimes. The judges added that it would be appropriate for clinicians to involve the court in any case where there may be doubt as to whether the long-term best interests of a 16- or 17-year-old would be served by such clinical interventions.”
But of course, our goal was never to make it more difficult for gender dysphoric children and their families to obtain help and treatment. What we wanted was for these families to get the right treatment. There is currently no gold standard, long-term research in the area of childhood medical transition. Carl Heneghan, Director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, has called puberty-blocking treatments “an unregulated live experiment on children.” And so, in parallel with the above-described legal process, Marcus and I set about creating something substantial to help children, parents, and professionals faced with these cases. This took the form of a book manuscript, due to be published this spring. This article offers a précis of the ideas that the book will contain.
…he faces five charges including extortion, possession of child pornography, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and criminal harassment, the BC Prosecution Service confirmed.
…
Amanda Todd died by suicide after being cyberbullied after sexualized images of her that were being shared online.
She brought cyberbullying to mainstream attention by posting a video on YouTube in which she told her story with handwritten signs, describing how she was lured by a stranger to expose her breasts on a webcam.
I remember that case. Watched her video too. It was heartbreaking. And of course that piece of shit calling himself “The Amazing Atheist”, having decided that the bullying that drove her to suicide wasn’t enough, just had to add to the pile-on by posting a parody mocking her desperate plea for help after her death. If there were justice in the world her stalker would be driven to suicide himself. The Amazing Atheist too.
Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness.
If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.
Say fellow Aussies, are you also enjoying the news regarding our own mini-Trump family, the Packers? This is fucking delicious. And, the poor dear blames a previously secret bipolar disorder for his shittiness in emails.
Doubtless many of you have seen this article already, but for those who haven’t: it’s by a TIF (“transman”) who is very much opposed to trans ideology, especially when it comes to children. Really solid points made, lots of links. I liked the differentiation between “gender dysphoria” and “transgenderism”, I think it’s helpful for clarity. Really good read.
It’s disheartening when someone who’s views you usually find thoughful and interesting posts something that violate what you thought was their good judgement. It’s like finding out that such a person believes in astrology, or the magic healing powers of crystals.
In this case, it’s gender identity, and the shitty arguments used by those promoting it. Stonekettle/Jim Wright retweeted this from Charlotte Clymer:
Every transphobic argument can basically be boiled down to: “I actually don’t know the science at all or have a good argument here, but trans people challenge my long held view of the world and it’s very uncomfortable and everyone should be expected to move around my discomfort.”
Clymer looks like he’s already sanitized his feed, as almost all responses are completely supportive. We see the usual nuggets of bullshit sprinkled throughout. Religious right wing?
A few loud voices and their cult-like following make all the noise. Their devotees’ sense of belonging is more important than exposing themselves to things they don’t “know.” What they “know” they got from evangelical conmen seeking money-makers to champion.
Check.
Sex is complicated in non-humans, therefore a spectrum in humans, therefore trans?
I saved this a while ago. On point science:
Quote Tweet
Open Ocean Exploration
@RebeccaRHelm
· Dec 19, 2019
Friendly neighborhood biologist here. I see a lot of people are talking about biological sexes and gender right now. Lots of folks make biological sex sex seem really simple. Well, since it’s so simple, let’s find the biological roots, shall we? Let’s talk about sex…[a thread]
Check.
No conflict between trans rights/demands and anyone else’s?
What kills me is that trans people attempting to live their truth impacts other people’s lives in exactly zero ways. Just mind your business, trans people do not owe you any explanation about anything.
Check.
Opposing trans rights puts you in the same camp as forced birth advocates?
I’ve been pretty aghast at the debates that have broken out on this in the UK. Not sure there is the understanding that the women who are leading the charge on this in the US, in the name of feminism, are the very women who would force a woman to have a child against her will.
Check.
White supremacy?
It’s the violent argument of white supremacy.
Check.
Bathrooms and genital obsession?
I had to listen to a lot of that nonsense last night at a school board meeting. I’m on the board and we’re about to set new policies in accordance with the Virginia Department of Education guidance. Fears of rape in the bathroom (which is really about Male sexual predators more than it is about transgender individuals). I’m telling you, cis people are a lot more obsessed with sex and bodies than transgender people ever will be.
Check. I think I’ve got a BINGO.
Clymer is couching “transphobic” discomfort as irrational, hysterical, reprehensible disgust. C’mon, it’s just a little discomfort.) And anyway, why shouldn’t women feel discomfort at trans demands to women’s spaces and resources? Are they not allowed any discomfort? Is there discomfort any less real than whatever discomfort trans people experience?
I can summarize three arguments that don’t involve “mere” discomfort without breaking a sweat.
1) Self ID has already made it harder for women to challenge predatory males seeking access to formerly female-only spaces. Women using these spaces have already been attacked by men claiming to be “trans.”
2) Trans identified male athletes who have gone through male puberty, giving them unfair physiological advatages have already denied women and girls athletic victories which would have led to records, scholarships, endorsements, etc.
3) Trans identified males have already taken formerly women only positions, posts, or prizes, unethically denying female participation, representation and acclaim that should have rightfully been theirs
None of these arguments are hypothetical or academic. In all these cases potential trans “discomfort” has been prioritized over actual female health, safety, recognition and remuneration. That’s not just a little “discomfort” we’re talking about here. If women’s sex based rights are seen as “transphobic” then there’s something seriously wrong with the formulation of trans “rights,” and women a right to organize to oppose them.
Really disappointed in Jim Wright. He’d retweeted Clymer before, but on non-trans issues. Sometimes he’ll retweet (or post a screencap if he doesn’t want to give a link and clicks) of a political comment or statement, which he then criticizes or ridicules. This sure looks like it was an amplification, a retweet-as-endorsement, as he made no personal comment on it after posting it to his feed. Those who choose to believe in astrology and crystals are, usually, primarily fooling and harming themselves. Gender ideology is a well funded and powerful imposition that harms others whether they subscribe to it or not. In many instances, those who do not believe are singled out for punishment and ostracism.
I’ve taken as read that Clymer’s definition of “transphobic” would encompass the legitimate defence of women’s sex based rights, seeing as his definition of “lesbian” includes himself. Having read about the Washington D.C. nightclub incident for which he claimed discrimination fter the establishment ejected him for having used the women’s restroom, I’m not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
If anyone can point to evidence that contradicts this assumption, I’ll be happy to see it.
Re #108, I recently saw a post (Facebook, probably) about Twitter bubbles and why people believe this nonsense. The gist, if I recall, used Twitter as a main example, noting that you see the people you follow and their interactions with the world, nobody else; there is a whole set of people and viewpoints and arguments that are completely foreign because you never see them. In this case, people see those with scientific credentials making bad arguments, and they never see the criticisms, retractions, rebuttals. The few times something gets through, it’s dismissed as bigoted and the work of lone transphobic cranks.
This came out about a month ago, but I didn’t come across it until today: California’s Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of Meghan Murphy’s lawsuit against Twitter, in a 3-0 decision, which appears correct to me.
The time to file a petition for review in the California Supreme Court has not yet expired, but I would say that the chances of that court even taking the case are slim.
Remember, folks, the rich deserve all their money because they earned it by being much smarter than the rest of us. That’s why this “financier” gave $2.5 million to an organization that promised to prove Trump won, after a 20-minute phone call. Now he is shocked, shocked to learn that it was a scam.
It is certainly reasonable for attention to be paid to male victims of sexual abuse. But the first sentence of this article (as well as the subhead) references people who “identify as male”. This distorts the problem. There is a set of women and girls who “identify as male”. Some of them were abused or raped; in some cases this abuse was an impetus to “identify as male”, perhaps to attempt to escape the abuse. In other cases, women and girls were abused as female despite their claiming to be male. The emphasis on identity is going to take some cases from the female side of the ledger and slide them over to the female side, both missing the real issue and distorting the statistics. I hope that, whatever form this tracking effort takes, it keeps track of sex. I would expect the nature and frequency of abuse to be different for men and for “women-who-claim-to-be-men”.
Screechy @112, yeah I also saw that in the last day or so. I agree that the decision looks to be legally correct (as much as a layperson can understand such things). I still think Twitters decision was bad, but bad things can still be legal. What annoys me is the number of mostly male legal and tech commentators I’ve seen trashing Murphy. Fine, they disagree with her taking the case because of their views in the first amendment and S230. It’s that there is often an undertone that she also got what she deserved because she’s a bigot. What is broadly referred to as ‘Law Twitter’ seems to be firmly in the trans camp, possibly because there are a couple of prominent first amendment lawyers who are trans women. Possibly also because when you’re coming from a position of male privilege you just don’t get the potential and actual harm to women. Or maybe because so many of them see it as nothing more or less than a free speech exercise and they are absolutists on that point.
Speaking only for myself, I have no opinion on whether or not Murphy is a bigot or got what she deserved. Certainly I’m aware of the skewed nature of the debate over trans issues and the casual accusations of transphobia; on the other hand, I haven’t scrutinized her writings enough to form an opinion.
For me, it’s just a sense that this kind of thing doesn’t belong in court. I won’t go so far as to say this was a frivolous lawsuit, but it was a utterly predictable and correct result in my opinion, as both a descriptive matter (current law pretty clearly precludes it) and a normative one (that body of law is wise and prudent in this regard).
I don’t know of any principled way to say that Murphy gets to have a judge or jury rule on whether Twitter’s moderation decisions are correct, but Donald Trump and Milo Yiannopolous don’t. Or every Slymepitter who got banned from B&W or Pharyngula don’t get to have a judge decide if Ophelia or PZ acted fairly and consistently. Of course you can say that Murphy’s banning was a bad decision and those other ones were good, and I might agree, but this is a question of who gets to decide that and how.
If disgruntled people can drag social networks and message boards and bloggers into court every time they’re unhappy, you’re not going to like where that leads. The threat of litigation alone is going to make moderation risky, especially for smaller players. People with deep pockets or access to interest groups with free lawyers are going to get deferential treatment from litigation-averse platforms. Terms of service and moderation decisions will get less nuanced so that companies can say “hey, we’re completely consistent, we ban these precise words and nothing else” (or whatever). This is also why I cringe at all the “repeal section 230” proposals from politicians of every stripe.
And all of those bad effects are true even if the courts do a super awesome job of sitting as the Twitter Judicial Review Panel. Which they most certainly would not. I assure you, there are many many judges who you do not want anywhere near these decisions, and here I’m talking less about political or other issue biases and more about simple ignorance — even in 2021, there are a shocking number of judges who are complete Luddites when it comes to the internet.
I don’t know if that makes me a free speech absolutist or not. That terminology gets a little confusing here anyway, in that many people would claim that Murphy is on the side of free speech here because she is fighting against “punishment” for her speech, so then we get into arguments about state action, and free speech rights of platforms vs the rights of their users… and to me that’s all unnecessary, because I think the pragmatic argument against this kind of litigation is so strong that you don’t even need to get into all that.
It looks as though Trump has sacked Giuliani. It was inevitable and predictable but…. I’d kind of got used to the idea of the two of them bickering away alone together like Saruman and Wormtongue in Orthanc.
I think you mean two Wormtongues. As I recall, the book described Saruman as commanding, masterful, deep in knowledge etc. etc. and was worthy of the mighty Christopher Lee for portrayal.
Rush Limbaugh has died. I can’t say I’m heartbroken-so many cruel narcissists like that, including ones I know in my own life, seem to hang on forever fueled by spite or whatever else.
I finally have a term for what people do with definitions of words, be it”woman” or “gender” or “feminism” or “racism”. Changing the referent of a word while attempting to retain (and thus capitalize on) its moral valance in order to make your arguments more persuasive or harder to rebut is a “persuasive definition“. (Alternatively, wiki.) I knew I couldn’t be the only person to recognize that move as illicit.
So the next time someone says something to the effect of, “That’s not the real definition of XXXXX. The real definition is [insert fashionable nonsense],” we know exactly what name to give that bullshit.
We would like to hear stories from gender critical university staff (academic and professional services) and students. What is it like to take a gender critical position in HE? What are your experiences of speaking out or keeping quiet? We’d like to know what has happened to you, what you’ve witnessed, and how it has made you feel.
We want universities, policymakers and the wider public to understand the effect the current ‘no debate’ culture is having on those of us who work and study in Higher Education. We recognise the isolation that people face and want this to be a space where we can collate stories about our experiences and concerns, and for others to realise that we do not stand alone. Help us break the silence.
There are lots of stories there.
Needless to say, the site has been mass reported as a hate site and is now being blocked by some ISPs.
Anyone been following this New York Times/Slate Star Codex/”Rationalist community” blowup?
Short version: NYT reporter decides it might be interesting to do a story about SSC, a blog run by a guy using the pseudonym Scott Alexander. But it’s a not-very-well-kept secret that Alexander’s real name is Scott Siskind — like, ten seconds of Googling would get you that info, it’s a little like how the blogger Orac’s real name was an open secret. So the reporter notes to Siskind that look, I can’t promise not to use your real name in the story because of NYT editorial standards. Siskind promptly freaks the fuck out, posts on his blog that he’s taking the entire blog offline because the NYT is threatening to “dox” him, and if there’s no blog, there’s no story. His fans then proceed to harass the reporter and her editor. This, predictably, causes the reporter to go “what the fuck is going on here, why is this guy so terrified of a story about his writings?” and results in this piece. This, of course, is now being denounced by the “Rationalist community” as a vicious hit piece that proves that the reporter and the NYT generally were out to get Siskind from day one.
My take on the Times piece is that it’s certainly not a flattering piece, and the reference to Charles Murray is a bit of a cheap shot because apparently Siskind was citing him favorably on a subject unrelated to Murray’s views on race, but overall it doesn’t seem out of line or unprofessional.
I was only vaguely aware of SSC and the so-called Rationalists. They seem like a very familiar story to me: a bunch of people, mostly dudes, who are really really big on using evidence and data and reason and logic (which is good!), but along the way become convinced that they are the rational logical ones, free from the biases that plague other people, while those who disagree with them and/or try to point out their biases, are self-evidently irrational and biased and wrong, because — hey, it says there on the label that I’m rational and logical!
Will Wilkinson has a rather lengthy but good summary here. He’s somewhat sympathetic to the Rationalists but thinks that their Vulcan-like confidence that they are creatures of pure logic and everyone else is irrational leaves them with some huge blind spots that, in turn, hurt their own ability to communicate and persuade anyone outside their niche:
Members of “rah-rah Reason!” communities, just like members of any other sort of community, can always find a way to trap themselves inside their bubble. It’s a homo sapiens specialty! That’s why it can be hard to see that the biases you [are] not concerned about and let each [other] get away with dismissing make you untrustworthy — and that that’s why you’re not more widely trusted.
This part in particular reminded me a lot of the “skeptical movement.” Indeed, I assume there’s a fair bit of overlap among the groups.
“I’m a transgender woman, and I was not born biologically male. I was born biologically transgender female.” – My new record for Most Idiotic TRA Comment Seen So Far.
A soon-to-be father was killed in New York this weekend when the machine he was constructing for an upcoming “gender reveal party exploded, police said.
Christopher Pekny, 28, died Sunday when the device went off, according to a statement from Major James C. Michael of the New York State Police. The explosion also injured Pekny’s 27-year-old brother, Michael, and both the state police and the bomb disposal unit are currently investigating the incident.
“Who cares what gender the baby is?” Myers Karvunidis challenged in her post. “I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.”
The mother of three went on to share her family’s “PLOT TWIST” — that her older daughter Bianca, a.k.a. Bee, “the world’s first gender-reveal party baby, is a girl who wears suits!”
A girl who wears suits. Not a trans boy, just a girl going against gender norms. (I would argue that we knew in 2008 that focusing on a baby’s “gender” [sic] was not healthy.)
Wow, that second article. “… assigning focus on gender at birth…” Had to work in “assign” and “at birth”, didn’t she? And “gender”: just a few lines above that, the article mentions learning the SEX of unborn children.
Of course there are problems with making a big deal out of the sex of children. Of course focusing attention on stereotypical gender roles “leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.” One might hope that a sex reveal party is of no more consequence than an eye color reveal party. Nobody talks about “eye color assigned at birth”, though.
I couldn’t tell from the article if she was taking a woke stance, or a gender critical stance. “Assigning focus on gender at birth” is so artlessly worded that it could be an attempt to talk about “gender assigned at birth”, but it could also be her way of saying that gender norms are bs. I lean a bit toward the latter, mostly because she makes a point to say that her daughter likes to wear suits. But I dunno, she may just not be very aware of the distinction between TERFs and TAs, hard as that is to imagine.
My guess is that she wasn’t taking a stance at all; she’s heard all about “sex/gender assigned at birth” and not defining people by “what’s between their legs”, and it all sounds so modern and science-y and equality-ish that she doesn’t look at the details. Certainly the TAs accuse gender-critical people of being “gender essentialists” very frequently, despite how nonsensical such an accusation is.
As you pointed out, this woman’s daughter likes to wear suits, which makes her simply a gender-nonconforming girl, not a (gender-conforming!) boy in the wrong body. It is the TAs who insist that only boys like suits, only girls like dresses.
Social contagion. It’s not “cool” to be a plain old normal teenager having questions about sexuality anymore. Got to fit under that ever-broadening trans umbrella so you can sneer at the people outside of it.
Unbelievable. Mr Potato Head is just going to be Potato Head. Gender neutral. No mention of a renaming of Mrs Potato Head, but perhaps they weren’t sold separately.
Oo, I’ve got that one! Bet it’s from the same person, too.
Well, the possibility of women keeping our sex-based rights just received a huge blow here in the US. I don’t see how GC feminism is ever going to recover.
I don’t mean the passing of an unrevised version of the Equality Act. I mean Rep Marjorie Taylor QAnon Jewish Space Rays Insurrectionist Greene becoming the spokesperson for the dangers of trans ideology.
In case anybody was wondering about the Potato Head situation, I looked into it further. It appears that what Hasbro is doing is simply rebranding the toy line. Many toy lines have a name like Cabbage Patch Kids or Beanie Babies, with individual toys given names, but the toy line name is the big draw. Mr Potato Head was a toy, with Mrs Potato Head a separate toy added later, but now both will be items in the Potato Head line, with “Mr Potato Head” or “Mrs Potato Head” in smaller print elsewhere. The “LGBTQIAXYZ+++” community has apparently confused the situation. The toys are not being given gender neutral names; you still buy a Mr Potato Head or a Mrs Potato Head, just like you buy Applejack or Benjamin from the Beanie Baby line.
The woman who (claims to have) invented gender [sic] reveal parties has come out against them.
My guess is that she wasn’t taking a stance at all; she’s heard all about “sex/gender assigned at birth” and not defining people by “what’s between their legs”, and it all sounds so modern and science-y and equality-ish that she doesn’t look at the details.
I wonder if the choice of “gender reveal” was made because having a “sex reveal party” sounds creepy or kinky. Some people just use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, with some favouring the latter because it sounds nicer to say in polite, or puritanical company.
People who are outside social media, and not paying attention to the online discussions of GC/TA issues, probably have no grasp of the differences between “sex” and “gender” as used by the two camps. In most people’s lives, “sex” and “gender” are not the same “terms of art” they are here at B&W and other GC venues. They aren’t going to be as carefully used by “civilians” and the lay public. (It doesn’t help the cause of understanding amongst bystanders that the trans activist side actively conflates and confuses the terms, switching from one to the other in the course of their claims and “arguments.” ) I think M.T. Greene herself may have fallen victim to this confusion when she posted the sign outside her office proclaiming that “There are TWO genders. MALE & FEMALE “Trust the science!” Quite apart from the fact that “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene is pretty much the last person I would ask regarding the science of anything, she’s using the SEX words “male” and “female,” while talking about two GENDERS. It would have been a stronger statement if she had used the word “sexes” instead. I wonder if her choice of “genders” was out of sloppiness, her own prudishness, or a misguided attention to the delicate sensibilities of her base’s prudishness?
In the UK, the census has been launched a month early in order to avoid the court challenge launched by Women’s Place UK over the guidance for the sex question:
Because of the move by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) to launch the to the census early, FPFW has suddenly had to extend their crowdfunding camapaign to cover the additional legal costs of accelerating their court proceedings.
I’ve read the bill. The rationale is solid: it has perfectly reasonable summary of the state of knowledge regarding puberty blockers; it notes that teens left alone tend to desist; it points out the lack of any studies showing that transition has long-term benefit and reduction in suicide risk; and it cautions about the removal of perfectly healthy body parts. It is well-written, surprisingly. This is all garden-variety science that trans activists like to dispute or suppress or call bigoted.
The bill requires that teachers not encourage children to hide their gender dysphoria, and not facilitate such hiding. I think this is a good thing. Kids should be encouraged to be open to their parents, not told that their parents are their worst enemies. Sometimes parents are terrible, but not usually. (Abigail Shrier has a lot to say about schools hiding such things from parents. I had no idea it was as bad as it is.)
The bill makes it illegal for anyone to provide or prescribe puberty blockers or cosmetic surgery to minors for the purpose of making them appear to be the opposite sex (or to allow them to perceive themselves as the opposite sex). It also makes it illegal to keep it secret from parents that a child thinks of themselves as the opposite sex.
I have some issues with the legal stuff, but the basic bill seems narrowly focused and rational.
There is a big opposition rally planned. Lots and lots of local progressive organizations and people are behind the rally, and lots of people I know are trying to drum up attendance. My admittedly faulty memory does not recall quite this much furor over the many anti-abortion bills that constantly come up, but perhaps that’s protest fatigue. I understand the ideological stranglehold affecting so many progressives, but it is bewildering that they have chosen this bill as the hill they wish to die on. There is a lot of crap coming through the pipeline; this bill affects very few people (and those it affects, it helps, no thanks to progressives).
This has got to be an ALEC bill or something like that. There is no way in hell that Alabama legislators came up with this on their own. I haven’t heard whether other states are also introducing the same bill or a similar one; have any of you?
PZs put up a post which basically says that he rejects logical arguments and doesn’t care if he is thought to hold contradictory views on a subject (a very thinly disguised message to those who might call him out for the way his views on human sex conflict with his acceptance of sex in all other animals): he is, he says, a human, and humans are by nature illogical creatures so shut up. He goes so far as to describe himself as rational but flawed. Flawed, ffs! Isn’t that a rather Catholic view of humans?
Go ahead, catch me in a logical contradiction, and smoke won’t come out of my ears and I won’t stagger off to melt down in failure. My philosophy is that we are human beings, and humans are not intrinsically logical. We fail all the time, myself included. I am unbothered. Bring up a good contradiction in my views, and I’ll think about it, because that’s all you can ask of rational, flawed people.
[….]
You want to tell me that one module of my personality conflicts with another? I will agree. It’s probably true. Happens all the time.
It’s people who use logic that are the problem, you see: if they’d only stop holding on to reality they could be as wise and woke as PZ.
What I can’t abide, though, is these damnable Logicians. They’re the ones who bunker down in a set of premises they find comfortable and that they claim are absolutes, and then spend their life building rational defenses so that they never have to change, never have to face intellectual challenges, never experience the thrill of hammering a new idea into the rat’s nest of circuitry we call a brain.
Rational defences such as men are not women are just so blinkered, y’see.
So, utterly free from thought, rather than utterly defending freethought. It’s one of the weakest arguments someone in his position can possibly apply. It literally negates decades of his own past arguments. It makes his teaching worthless. It says he doesn’t believe in science or the scientific method (you can be wrong, that’s not a sin, but once someone demonstrates a flaw in your logic, willful wrongness is the worst kind). It’s just a retreat into ‘I’ve made my mind up and they’re nothing you can do.’ It’s akin to the bloke who holds down a day job as a petroleum geologist because it pays well, while belonging to a Church that teaches the Earth is a bot over 4000 years old. I consigned PZ to the irrelevant and sad pile years ago, looks like he’s determined to stay there.
I wonder at what point his employer begins to be concerned that the quality of his teaching might not be everything it could be?
I’m wondering if he’s maybe finally realised just how deep and dark a corner he’s backed himself into, or allowed himself to be backed into. Is it a good sign that he is at least prepared to consider his position as illogical even if he doesn’t go so far as to name the topic? Up until now he has defended his position as the one backed by the science, so this is quite a surprise in a way.
From here there are really only two possible routes for him: either he continues falling down the rabbit hole with his fingers jammed into his ears, or his once-admired scientific integrity re-awakens, slaps him around and he refutes the whole pile of shite he’s been building. What he cannot do is to just drop it without a word and pretend it never happened. Not if he is to salvage any credibility, that is.
It turns out I missed International Wheelchair Day yesterday.
Funny thing is, the trans-disabled community (that’s people who identify as disabled without being disabled (yes, really) not disabled trans people) didn’t decry it as trans-disabledphobic and try to make it about them. The police weren’t waving trans-disabled flags. Train companies weren’t ripping seats out of their trains to better accommodate our trans-disabled allies.
I wonder why that is*. I wonder why it’s so different to International Women’s Day**.
I wonder at what point his employer begins to be concerned that the quality of his teaching might not be everything it could be?
Well I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he’d posted that he was about do a lecture about sex. I didn’t read the post but I amused myself for a few seconds wondering how he’d square the circle. And then a lot longer worrying that he was going to be teaching his students indefensible bullshit. I’d go back and read the post to find out, but I think either possibility would depress me.
Andrew Cuomo is positively befuddled that someone could have interpreted his behavior as inappropriate. Why, it’s perfectly normal for a middle-aged-plus man to ask his 20-something female subordinates if they like older men, if they’re monogamous, and by the way did you know I’m totally cool with dating women in their 20s? Just utterly standard workplace banter, doesn’t mean a thing!
It’s funny, because I’ve been hearing for decades how men are utterly terrified of saying the wrong thing in the workplace to a woman, and that all this “anti-harassment” stuff has chilled friendly workplace banter, but apparently not so much.
PZ trashes a book he hasn’t read, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage (which I haven’t read yet, either, it’s on my list).
His main complaint seems to be that Michael Shermer has done a video about it. I’m no fan of Shermer’s and I wish he’d fade away, but I think I’ll take the – shall I say skeptical? – approach of reading the book regardless of what Shermer has to say about it, rather than assuming his endorsement renders it evil and wrong.
PZ’s post is eye-wateringly stupid, but the comments! There’s going to be a world shortage of hyperbole at this rate.
Look at your own risk. All I can say is MY EYES! MY BEAUTIFUL EYES!
That one person who tries to be reasonable (if misguided)? Just has to be absolutely vilified. There can be no conceding of points, even hypothetically. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Then there’s this:
I put , “Are trans people forcing children to transition” into Google and got nothing except some dubious fundie and right wing sources that have zero credibility.
Oh, OK, thanks. I was just about to google that myself. What is wrong with these people?
The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner found that the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Global LGBT+ rights, which Blunt chairs, has not been adequately transparent.
The main focus of the investigation was a position paper on gender self ID developed by the APPG, in consultation with transgender lobby groups.
But further reading shows that the guy wasn’t merely ‘inadequately transparent’, he also lied about the nature of the paper:
…Blunt as Chair of the APPG denied that it had been an APPG paper, saying it was only “an agreed position of the Officers of the Group”. He said this meant the paper was not required to be published it at all.
He said it was not an official APPG paper, so that it would be open for others to read. Anyway,
The APPG position paper:
-Called for people to be able to change their legally recorded sex without any medical diagnosis or treatment.
-Said women-only spaces and services should include “all women, including trans women”.
Goodbye, women’s spaces! And yes, I looked for equivalent language for men’s spaces. In vain. The passage that effective abolishes women-only spaces and services is the only time “X-only spaces and services” are mentioned.
-Supported medical and social transition of children, including in early childhood, and warned of “distress and lost opportunities” if this was not enabled.
-Called for a ban on “conversion therapy” in respect of both gender identity and sexual orientation, but said GIDS should be exempt from litigation.
So the children’s gender services are released from the need to obtain informed consent (!), and simultaneously freed from litigation! That’s a horrible double whammy. The full text is available. There might be more stupid / bad things in there – probably, actually – but that pair of one-two combos is quite enough to be glad that this was not adopted.
I guess they’re telling themselves it’s one of those ethical dilemmas like “would you lie to the Nazis and not tell them about the Jews hiding in your attic?”
(Btw, saw you reached peak with the Narcissist on FA. Toxic personality. I tried gray rocking for a bit, but it’s been almost a year since I responded or reacted to anything from that particular source. Psychologists themselves advise against it.)
All;
I’ve recently discovered Superstraight/Supergay/Superlesbian/Superbi, a rapidly trending movement which started out as satire and pushback against the transgender encroachments into sexual orientations. It’s a reaction against “If you like women/ men but don’t want to date/have sex with transwomen/transmen , then you’re a transphobe and we just might decide to destroy your life.” Instead, it’s “my orientation is sex-based, I’m valid, don’t shame me, bigot.” They’re gleefully turning the tables on the entitled rapey gits.
Several things are impressive. First, the transgender are reacting with their usual calm civility, and a lot of mainstream people who haven’t been aware of the problem, are now. And second, the support for lesbians in particular has been enormous. Again, most people had no idea how they were being harassed for not accepting “girl dick” (or harassed into accepting it and feeling horrible.) Now they know.
It’s on all sorts of social media, but till Reddit takes it down, can be found here:
I mentioned in #146 that the Alabama bill banning puberty blockers and medical transitions for minors smelled like an ALEC bill. As I suspected, the bills (both the medical bans and the ban on males in female sports) are quite widespread, filed in at least 35 states. Obviously organized; I don’t know who is doing the organizing.
Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville introduced a rider into the COVID relief bill that would have banned males from female sports at the high school level, but the rider was defeated. I am certain he didn’t come up with that himself.
Both of these articles have people calling for compassion, but none of them seem to care about compassion toward women and girls. Tuberville is asked by Senator Patty Murray to have compassion “for someone who doesn’t look or live exactly like you.” Er, how about women? I doubt Tuberville looks or lives exactly as a woman, yet he is making a show of protecting the rights of women. (He’s an idiot and a puppet, he isn’t proposing this out of compassion.)
The Senate version of the Alabama medical transition bill passed, and detractors are looking at corner-case problems, saying it would ban circumcision. Maybe it would, and maybe that’s not bad. But this is a reason I don’t like legislative solutions: these should be things doctors and medical experts simply do not do, because they are harmful and unnecessary; it shouldn’t be up to ignorant and politically motivated legislators to make these decisions.
It’s a huge day for all things TERFy and free-expressiony today in the UK.
First there’s Fair Play For Women who are legally challenging the ONS over the census mishandling. I’m a bit busy and I’ve only seen a little bit of the livetweeting of the case, but it looks as though it might be going well, the judge seems to have agreed some fairly important points. Although you never know with these legal types, next thing we know he’ll probably call a recess so he can bludgeon a fox.
Second is Harry Miller of Fair Cop’s case in the Court of Appeal. Some of Harry’s tweets were recorded as a non-hate incident (not a crime) and he’s arguing that it is absolute madness that the police can institute this sort of stealth punishment without due process. You can probably tell that I agree with Harry on this. Livestreamed from 2pm.
Third, Graham Linehan and Helen Staniland are speaking in the House of Lords about freedom of expression online. Livestreamed from 3pm.
(I haven’t put links for the livestreams because my comment would probably be held up in moderation. I’m sure you can find them if you want. Or find me on Twitter and I’ll tell you.)
RESULT: guidance to be amended to remove references to passports and ‘such as’ pending a full judicial review early next week.
For the census2021
Sex = sex on birth certificate or a GRC
Sex is NOT Gender identity.
/85
Judge has decided that FPFW has a “strongly arguable case” that the Guidance is unlawful. He has granted permission a full judicial review to be heard early next week to declare the guidance lawful or unlawful. /86
In the interim he orders that the Guidance is amended to remove any reference to documents that can show self-declared gender identity. The words ‘such as’ and ‘passports’ must be removed with immediate effect /87
Some recursive irony for you; I hope it doesn’t blister too much on the way down.
As I mentioned above, Graham Linehan and Helen Staniland answered questions today in the House of Lords about freedom of expression and social media. At one point, Graham read a prepared statement, the text of which is here:
Within a few minutes, people on social media were spreading lies about the content of the statement, while refusing to read it, despite the fact that the statement itself describes exactly that happening to JKR.
1996 archival comic Tom the Dancing Bug reprinted today: a twelve-year-old boy discovers a new gender. That is, “female”. My how times have changed since 1996.
Is the moral that Cultural Appropriation will result in farmyard deaths?
I remember being shown a cautionary film about crossing railway tracks at a school assembly, presented by some very serious looking police officers. That must have been circa 1991. My main takeaways from that were:
Stop, look and listen, before you squeeze through the hole in the fence and cross the railway tracks.
Tie your shoelaces properly.
Witnessing the consequences of failing to follow these rules may result in blindness.
We were lucky; we had Darth Vader come to teach us about the Green Cross Code.
Ophelia:
There’s probably nothing you can do about it but FYI I think the comments RSS feed is broken. And the ‘Notify me of followup comments via e-mail’ thing has been broken for ages. I’ll stop complaining now.
Re the comments RSS feed: that has happened several times before, and I share your annoyance. It seems to resolve itself after about a full day, and it loses some comments.
While we’re on the subject, the Contact link at the top doesn’t work (for me, anyway): I can write my thoughtful and erudite message, fill in the blanks with my name etc. but then it impudently demands to know “Are You Human?” with no apparent way to answer yes or no — and the message cannot be sent.
I wasn’t really complaining, Ophelia. I know this stuff is largely out of your hands. WordPress has a tendency to impose changes without warning and apparently at random which break existing stuff. I was just letting you know in case… Well, in case it was useful information, I suppose. I’m not sure why it would be, now I come to think about it.
Anyway, the feed is back. I had a quick glance at the raw feed last night and it was up to date but not being picked up by my reader for some reason. I was too tired to go through the XML to see if that was poorly formed or to investigate whether my feed reader was playing silly buggers.
I’m no WordPress expert, but if you’d ever like me to have a go at fixing any of these minor niggles, you know how to get in touch.
“Amazon to stop selling books that frame LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness”
The book that spurred this move, When Harry Became Sally, is by a conservative writer who opposes same-sex marriage, but it’s about transgenderism. I expect most (if not all) of the books that will be affected by this move will be about transgenderism.
Based on descriptions from the publisher, I’m not at all convinced that transgenderism is framed in the book as a mental illness. The book looks to me like several other books and articles that don’t accept the concept of “gender identity” at face value, don’t accept that people can change sex, and wish to look at factors other than “boy/girl in a girl/boy’s body” for the increasingly frequent claims of being transgender. That doesn’t sound like “mental illness” to me.
Here’s the response I got from my MP regarding my concerns about definitions used in the “Conversion Therapy” Bill, C6 (See #98 above for my original letter):
Thank you for reaching out to my office to share your position on Bill C-6.
This Bill bans forcing those under the age of 18 years to undergo a discredited, deeply traumatic practice termed conversion therapy that devalues someone’s worth as a human being because of who they are. It further prohibits advertising conversion therapy for financial gain.
Conversion Therapy, in using the term “therapy”, assumes that there is something wrong with an individual that needs to be fixed. This legislation protects the rights afforded by the Charter to LGBTQ2 Canadians, including young people just beginning to explore their identity.
Bill C-6 does not criminalize discussions between any person and a family member, friend, community leader or medical expert to discuss issues of sexuality or gender identity. Those will still happen.
I was proud to support this Bill and will continue to support it as written while it moves through the legislative process. It has been a long time coming.
But it does not “devalue someone’s worth as a human being because of who they are” to question their inaccurate self perceptions, which are not “who they are.” I don’t see what prevents a non-affirmation approach from being branded as “conversion therapy.” I’m betting this will be a matter of court cases.
International Transgender Day of Visibility takes place on March 31, this year on a Wednesday.[…] I’m still stuck working “male” in the day, but what can you do when no one will hire me as a woman?
So by his own standards, he’s a woman pretending to be a man when it benefits him, and that’s ok for some reason. But how is that any different from men pretending to be women when it benefits them? Yet we’re told that no man would make such a pretence just to gain victories in sports, for example: there are no fake trans, yet here he is, doing exactly that. Betcha can’t guess where this hypocrite has his blog. Of course you can. I don’t even see what the day job has to do with the opening to that paragraph, but when one considers that trans people claim that they just want to be accepted as the gender they identify as, trans visibility sounds a tad self-defeating. We’re not supposed to see a difference but they’re making damn sure that we know they’re different…we just aren’t allowed to say so.
And the bit of the quote I missed out? The blogger is a 40i-sh yr-old TiM, which makes this bit sound more than a little…erm…predatory:
International Transgender Day of Visibility takes place on March 31, this year on a Wednesday (Good! I’ll be able to attend Student Night at the bar!)
You know how some police departments in the UK have been calling people up to have a little chat about their perfectly legal social media posts? NYC mayor Bill de Blasio thinks that’s an awesome idea, and he’d like the NYPD to do it, too.
In the thread over there about awful Ophelia’s awful take on Elliot Page, and in a comment thread where people seem to be straining to have the silliest take, we get an entry into the all-time record books of idiocy:
Y’know, I wasn’t gonna mention this, but then I figured, “what the hell.” maybe someone will find it interesting. Many years ago, when I was 22, I was lying in bed on a sweltering summer night, trying to fall asleep. I was staring out the window when this feeling sort of crept over me. I sort of followed it with my mind as it grew, and for about 15 seconds, I became female. I kind of laid there experiencing the feeling, wondering at the strangeness and newness of it. Then, just as gradually, the feeling washed away. But for those 15 seconds, my whole identity was female! It was the most astounding thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always been male, I like being male; it’s who and what I am. But this just blew my mind. I lay there for a long time, thinking about it. I even tried to make ti happen again, without success. It’s as if my brain had been flooded with estrogen or something. Anyway, I thought it was the neatest thing. I still do. Maybe this is why I can empathize with trans folks.
He became female, folks. Definitely real and not a dream, despite being in bed and trying to sleep.
Well, a tricky one, isn’t it? There’s no way to condemn it without conceding more than they’d like. That’s the peril of refusing to define something so you can claim all sides at once.
Of course there’s no pushback, latsot, they were too busy hating on the commenter whose story was that she used to be criticised for being too ‘male’ but realised that not being stereotypically feminine was OK and didn’t mean that she wasn’t a woman. Apparently that was ‘too close to TERF talking points’ and denied the ‘lived experiences’ of trans people to be allowed to go unvillified. Clearly what they meant was that her narrative wasn’t in line with the permitted trans ideology at Pharyngula.
Holms, that ’15 seconds of being a woman’ post is indeed a masterpiece of idiocy, and not far below it in the thread comes a masterpiece of dishonesty by the master of dishonesty, the odious G:
“Traditional” feminist discourse has always centred on equality. Much of current transphobic discourse actually holds that women are truly less than men, and that we therefore need special protection, like, I don’t know, a panda bear. They also absolutely uphold the gender binary and want it rigorously policed and enforced. One of their “leading thinkers” (I’m using the term loosely here) K. Stock has proclaimed that she’s ok with having gender non conforming cis women kicked out of women’s bathrooms and spaces if that also means she gets to kick out non cis passing trans women.
OK, so far, so dishonest, just par for the course for the odious one, but the next part takes her into uncharted territory of misrepresenting an argument.
They also seriously seem to think that women’s oppression was actually due to our biology. Now, don’t get me wrong, reproductive control is absolutely a reason why people [who are] considered women are oppressed, but that is not founded in our biology. Seriously, neither my vagina nor my uterus nor my tits are oppressive. They don’t cause oppression.
(my emph.) I can’t get my head around that switch from women being oppressed because of their biology to the apparent claim that it is a GC feminist belief that it’s female biology itself that is oppressive. And her finale is both a terrible analogy and an internally self-contradicting one to boot.
They don’t make men magically lose control over their actions. that’s like saying black people are oppressed because of their skin colour, instead of of white supremacy that systematically exploits black bodies.
They’re not oppressed because they’re black, it’s just that their black bodies are exploited by white supremacy. She’s a teacher, for God’s sake!
Finally, while the ’15 seconds’ comment is hard to beat for stupidity, I would suggest the PZ’s own closing words on that post are a serious contender simply because of the professional status of the author:
P.S. Changing sex is completely real. People do it all the time. Why do TERFs deny reality?
Would it be unkind to call that bunch over there ‘truthphobic’?
Actor Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, spoke in favor of JK Rowling and against the mob recently. Predictably he’s getting pushback. This is sadly unremarkable, but I noted this bit in one article:
Oh man, doncha just hate it when a flock of ovaries rampages around the place and forces men to reluctantly oppress women? Jesus fucking christ, she lost all trace of good faith reading comprehension years ago.
And I would say ‘truthphobic’ is unnecessarily gentle.
Yes, I took special note of what amounted to a mystical experience of ‘sensing you’re a woman’ and immediately drew parallels between that, and believing in God. Assuming that the story is honest (and I’ve no reason to think it isn’t) In both cases the brain seems to have gone into a special state where something presumably happens in the way the nerves fire and there’s both a heightened sense of awareness and an indescribable sense of significance and knowledge. What the mystical experience points to isn’t God or Special Woman Feelings, but the ability of the brain to fool us.
I am surprised that a group of skeptics and atheists, at least some of whom have probably studied mystical experiences and/or why they aren’t proof of God, psychic powers, reincarnation, going to heaven, etc etc seemed to accept this without comment. Maybe they didn’t notice, or didn’t see the resemblance. Maybe they didn’t like it but didn’t want to say so. Or maybe the classic skeptics and atheists I remember have fallen away so that those concerned primarily with social justice and politics remain, and it’s not their area. I don’t know.
Nothing soothes, comforts, and amuses me more than reading angry, bizarre descriptions of what “TERFS” believe and why they believe it — unless it’s reading angry, bizarre descriptions of what *I*, specifically, believe and why I believe it. I guess I find it reassuring. I have a tendency to think I’m inadequately prepared to make whatever case I have to make: I haven’t read enough, studied enough, taken the right notes, remembered the right things, noticed the right ideas, understood enough of the concepts and expressed myself with enough clarity. And it’s important. There is a real problem that really matters.
And then someone says “you hate transpeople because you’re consumed with disgust and want to enforce gender roles” and I relax. Okay, technically speaking, I only have to be a little better at understanding the other side than they are at understanding mine, to move us both closer to what I see as improvement. I can do this. I’ve got extra time.
P.S. Changing sex is completely real. People do it all the time. Why do TERFs deny reality?
Yes, I claim precedence at pointing out this piece of special stupidity somewhere on another thread.
I think what PZ means by “changing sex” is not M2F or F2M because sex is a spectrum, right? That totally means that a change in one of the characteristics that defines or describes sex is a change in sex. So if, say, someone’s oestrogen level changes over time, then they have literally changed sex. And this does, after all, happen all the time…
I’m not saying this argument is either consistent or congruent with reality because it isn’t. But I think that’s what PZ means when he says stupid shit like this. I think he believes it.
P.S. Changing sex is completely real. People do it all the time. Why do TERFs deny reality?
I thought no one changes sex because when you feel like a women you are and always were a women and your sex was female and you had a female penis etc.?
Did nobody tell PZ that it is transphobic to say that people change sex because it is an immutable internal feeling (unless you are a non-binary person that may feel differently on different days, that it is a kind of mutable immutability, if I understand everything correctly…)?
Remember the Sokal Hoax Redux, as James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose liked to call their stunt where they (among other things) supposedly got a feminist journal to accept for publication a portion of Mein Kampf tweaked to use feminist jargon?
Well, someone actually bothered to take a close look at what they submitted and it turns out to be a hoax, right enough, just not the one they were claiming.
The submitted article was “based” on Mein Kampf only in the sense that it used some ordinary nouns, verbs, and adjectives that could be found in that book:
The best way to illustrate this is to highlight a section of what remained of Hitler’s text, spread out as it was over several paragraphs on several pages:
[…] to appeal to […] contented and satisfied, […] to embrace […].
[…] half-measures, by […] a so-called objective standpoint, […] the goal […]. That is to say, […] in the sense […] many limitations, […]. […] countered only by an antidote, […] only the […]. […] people […] neither […] nor […]. […] abstract knowledge […] directs their […]. […] is where their […] lies. […] receptive […] in one of these two directions […] never to a […] between the two.
[…] emotional […] stability. […] than respect, […] is more […] than aversion, […] weakness) […], […] will […] power.
The future of a movement is […].
Yeah, positive chilling that feminists are such Nazis! There’s some other good points in the article as well.
Mikael Nilsson says he finds it surprising that “none of the journalists reporting on the controversy actually bothered to compare the two texts”, that “the Affilia article didn’t contain anything that could be recognized as Mein Kampf even by a Hitler expert, let alone a lay person.” Hm. That’s quite the charge. What say we put it to the test using one of the lacunae Nilsson cites?
Quick. Without looking at either Mein Kampf or Our Struggle is My Struggle, which was written in English and which translated from German?
(12) The future of a movement is determined by the devotion, and even intolerance, with which its members fight […]. They must feel convinced that their cause alone is just, and they must carry it through to success, as against other similar organizations in the same field.
Seventh, the future of a movement that fights […] is predicated not on its tolerance, particularly of the intolerable, but upon its intolerance of […] in all its forms.
He claims that the “lacunae between these preserved pieces of text” are comparable to “[n]either the words nor the intent” of Mein Kampf. In fact, even a cursory comparison using free resources available to everyone on the Internet, plus ctrl-c, ctrl-f, and ctrl-v, tells a different story. In the first quotation, […] elides the phrase “for their cause”. In the second, […] elides “oppression”. Rather than finding that “[Hitler’s] intent was the very opposite,” we find precisely the same message in a type-instance relation.
I could go on with further counterexamples to Nilsson’s thesis, but that would be tiresome and verbose. And—*gasp*—I don’t find reading Hitler an enjoyable experience.
I came here to post a bit of a local story, but first: thanks, Nullius, for that analysis, it’s illuminating.
Anyway, here in Alabama the legislature is doing its usual task of throwing all kinds of “culture war” conservative outrage generation bills onto the calendar with little or no discussion. Liberal journalists are doing their usual job of criticizing the legislature. Two of the bills this year are about transgender issues: one is the puberty blocker bill I’ve mentioned, and the other is a ban on boys playing on girls teams. This latter one seems straightforward and appropriate to the role of state government, moreso than the other one.
It is distressing but not surprising that the journalists get these bills so wrong, especially the latter. Rather than focus on bills that could do a lot of harm to a lot of people, they focus on a bill that imposes restrictions on a tiny number of people. They game it as an “imaginary” problem and say the legislature is the one worrying about a tiny minority, missing that that’s what the journalists themselves are doing. And of course they miss the impact on women and girls, and of course they claim it denies the right of transgender students to play sports. It’s troubling that this issue is front and center when there is so much other crap going on.
1. Once upon a time ‘gender essentialism’ meant ‘thinking female people behave naturally in x or y way because they are female,’ or ‘thinking gendered behaviour arises naturally from being female.’
As we constantly point out, trans ideology is gender essentialist, but it’s a weird reverse gender essentialism. Where the trad conservative type of essentialism thinks ‘women do x,’ trans ideology thinks ‘people who do x are women.’
2. The core of the conflict is, of course, about whether ‘woman’ is a sex-based or gender based concept.
The TRAs are completely committed to the idea that ‘woman’ is a gender/social concept.
They therefore read the claim that ‘women are female’ not as we mean it, which is as an assertion that ‘woman’ is a sex-based concept, but as a claim that the social role of ‘woman’ can only be occupied be female people.
Note again, the reverse causality. It’s not ‘only female people can do the woman gendered stuff’ but ‘the people doing the woman gendered stuff must be female.’
That’s what they think we believe, which is why they think we are against gender non-conformity.
I’m beginning to think that rank stupidity (or ignorance, if we’re feeling charitable) is a far greater obstacle in this phenomenon than we typically credit. (This isn’t to say that there aren’t intelligent people with brains muddled by this nonsense or mere sociopaths who leverage it, of course.) To convince someone that they’re wrong intellectually requires getting them to apprehend and comprehend a point where their beliefs are inconsistent. But that comprehension requires (a) being able to recognize inconsistency and (b) understanding that (if not why) inconsistency is to be avoided. This appears more and more to be beyond the vast majority’s capacity.
Because how they want to identify as example women doesn’t match with there sex male so they change there gender to women they might change there appreance or nothing at all but there name or pronouns
In case that was utterly unintelligible, let me rewrite it to a second grade level.
Because how they want to identify (woman) doesn’t match their sex (male), so they change their gender to woman. They might change their appearance, or nothing at all but their name or pronouns.
Let’s draw this out. We begin with a male person who wants to identify as a woman. He changes his gender to woman. We end with a male, woman-gendered person who identifies as a woman. Simplified:
Before transition: sex = male, gender = man, identification = man
After transition: sex = male, gender = woman, identification = woman
Now, GD is supposed to be distress, discomfort, or suffering caused by a mismatch of sex and gender, and transition is supposed to make the one match the other. Yet here we see precisely the opposite of that. By this unintentionally honest account, transition in reality causes the misalignment it purports to cure. Not only that, it even contradicts the typical trans claims about the identification property!
Our humble explainer did not recognize the problem(s). One would think that a child still in elementary school would see it easily. My best explanation is raw stupidity. Yes, in this case, that judgment is backed up by the writing “style”, but the same contradiction blindness is evident just about every conversation, discussion, and debate I see on these topics. No amount of valid, logical argumentation is sufficient to persuade those who don’t understand logic. If you, for example, employ a proof by contradiction in the form of a reductio ad absurdum and arrive at the designated absurd conclusion, they will often complain, “I didn’t say that. You’re arguing against something I didn’t say.” They sincerely don’t understand concepts like material implication or entailment, so there’s no way to explain to them why showing that their belief materially implies a contradiction entails that their belief is false.
If valid argumentation can’t work, all that is left to us is the invalid. That’s a surreal prospect. I’m not even sure that I can make persuasive, fallacious arguments. I have decades of practice crafting valid arguments, but invalid? It’s like trying to recite a poem while forcing an opposite stress pattern. Intuitively, it should be a simple matter, but in reality …
tyGER, tyGER, burNING bright
in THE forEST of THE night,
what IMmortAL hand OR eye
COULD frame THY fearFUL symMETry?
I messed up reading it, even though I literally just typed it.
Bottom line: show “postponed” over “actor not trans” brou-ha-ha, even though creator of show (who acted the role on stage and screen, and isn’t trans) denies the character is “properly” trans and says anyone can play the role.
“Drag is a mask available to all and that’s why anyone should be able to play Hedwig.
Hedwig was forced into kind of an accidental trans state by political and by patriarchal pressures”
Let’s draw this out. We begin with a male person who wants to identify as a woman. He changes his gender to woman. We end with a male, woman-gendered person who identifies as a woman.
That may be what your incoherent example TRA might be trying to say, but that doesn’t seem to be what the ones I’m encountering seem to be saying. To nobody’s surprise, it’s not the clear, consistent kind of philosophical viewpoint which leads to everyone being on the same page.
I You’re leaving out presentation. I think it’s more like we begin with a person with a woman’s gender who identifies as a woman and presents as a man. He transitions to being a person with a woman’s gender who identifies as a woman and presents as a woman..
Sex is a spectrum without fixed points, and the assigned birth sex is only one aspect of sex. So we don’t refer to the “male” aspect unless there’s some fragmented bit which temporarily becomes relevant. Gender, on the other hand, is definitive — so much so, that the sex is usually considered a reflection of gender. Thus he changes his presentation — his outward appearance— to reflect his gender.
Sex=female; gender=woman;identity =woman; presentation = man
They don’t have to transition to be both a female and a woman. The superficial transition is only so others will acknowledge and validate what’s already there.
I’m not sure I agree with Jane Claire Jones’ assertion that “ The TRAs are completely committed to the idea that ‘woman’ is a gender/social concept.” What I keep seeing is that they think gender — the being of maleness and/or femaleness — and gender identity — the internal sense of being male or female— is fixed in the brain during gestation. I do not think that was the original dogma, but for at least some it appears to have morphed that way. In theory, there is no connection to sexual stereotypes. In practice, that’s all they’ve really got.
In some ways the TRAs remind me of alternative medicine proponents at a Wellness Faire. Although they can have radically opposed theories of disease and cures, they never argue with each other. The important thing is to be against mainstream medicine. Whether cancer is caused by liver flukes, impeded energy flow, or holding on to resentment is one of those flexible little details that different consumers decide for themselves.
Oh, another interesting bit I picked up on: they are not categorizing “feminine” behavior under Gender. They are putting it under Presentation. Transwomen only act girly so people will recognize they’re women. It’s social conditioning, same as it is for cis women. That’s why transgenderism cannot possibly a manifestation of internalized cultural ideas concerning how men and women behave. That part is performance.
They know our criticisms,, and are reshaping their explanation to ward them off.
This seems a very fair timelining of British MP John Nicolson’s attack on LGB Alliance. I’d say it’s overly fair, bending over backward to be fair, and Nicolson still doesn’t come out of it well.
Interesting thing I’ve seen a lot of references to lately: there’s a Gallup survey question with data going back to at least the 1940s, where they ask Americans whether or not they are a member of a church or other house or worship. From 1940 through 2000, there’s very little fluctuation — between the high 60s and low 70s. Since 2000, it’s been a steady decline to 47 percent today.
Of course, presumably this isn’t all people becoming atheists. There are plenty of people who aren’t members of a church and attend services rarely or never yet still are religious. (As I recall, there’s a faction of self-identified Evangelical Christians who fall into this category, and they were HUGE Trump supporters.) And I believe 47 percent is still much higher than in other developed nations.
It is indeed a remarkable change. With a lot of the purported benefits of church being membership in a community, this change means fewer people are availing themselves of that benefit and thus have incentive to parrot the dogma if they don’t believe it.
I read an article recently in which one of the people interviewed was an atheist Catholic, someone who didn’t believe in God but who nonetheless belonged to a Catholic Church and attended services because he got something positive out of doing so. He can’t be the only one.
#217: Those cursed Reverse Vampires, I knew they’d be behind it.
Whenever I see something batshit like this from Wolf, it looks to me as though she’s joking (see also the time-travelling nanoparticles). But then the context always shows that she’s clearly not, or she’s playing such a hell of a long game that the eventual punchline is going to be mind blowing.
This is hilarious. Crip Dyke put a long, long post up last week ‘analysing’ an argument that flared up on PZ’s latest post critical of OB. It started with this, from a comment by llyris:
25 years ago I felt like there was something wrong with my body because the way society viewed my body didn’t line up with my thoughts. Today I would probably be told I’m trans.
But I’m not. I’m a cis het woman. The problem was never my body but the hidden gender norms I was pushed into. And they are deeply hidden.
I wonder if some of the increase in trans and intersex expression is not so much a fundamental problem within a person, but a problem with how they intersect with society.
Crip Dyke spent much time explaining why that last paragraph was just wrong (CD being the fount of all trans knowledge, of course) because people simply don’t become trans because of societal expectations.
Fast forward to comment #8, from FTB regular and TiM, Allison. It’s a long-ish comment, but here’s the last paragraph:
Maybe if society were different, a lot of people who now transition would not feel a need to. I often wonder whether if, when growing up, my nature had been seen as a perfectly reasonable way for a male to be, I might have been happy to continue living as a man. But that’s not the society we live in. I have to live in society as it is. And how society is (and especially how it was when I was growing up) is what has made me the trans person I am.
A while back, when I was still exploring the ideas behind transgender ideology, I was over there and iirc asked a hypothetical:
Imagine a transgender person had been born into a society with the opposite gender beliefs: women were strong, stoic leaders who fixed cars and men were soft, compliant followers who cried at romantic movies, etc.etc. Would they still have been transgender?
I wish I could remember all the responses, or even most of them. I do remember it was hard to get a response. At least one person objected because “that’s not the world we’re in so why ask that?”( it’s a thought experiment to aid understanding, not a pop quiz) At least one person said “no.” And when I responded with “so being transgender tracks with stereotypes” or something like that, someone else piped up with a hearty “FUCK YOU!!!”
Sastra @ 220: Most people have a really hard time engaging with thought experiments. Willingness to participate in them regardless of topic is actually somewhat uncommon.
The fibercraft web site Ravelry is in the middle of some controversy because recent changes in the appearance of the site are claimed to be causing adverse reactions (headaches, seizures, and so on) in some users. Some of the reactions sound genuine and worth investigating. According to this article, though, one user claimed the new interface triggered gender dysphoria. I’m having trouble both believing that and wondering what the site could possibly do to address it.
(The article covers several recent controversies at Ravelry; this user interface one peaked in the last few days.)
A solemn holy day celebration from a different culture, submitted for your consideration:
In Poland, Easter Monday is Śmigus-dyngus, in which boys throw water over girls they like and spank them with pussy willow branches. Traditionally, Wikipedia says, “Boys would sneak into girls’ homes at daybreak on Easter Monday and throw containers of water over them while they were still in bed. After all the water had been thrown, the screaming girls would often be dragged to a nearby river or pond for another drenching. Sometimes a girl would be carried out, still in her bed, before both bed and girl were thrown into the water together. Particularly attractive girls could expect to be soaked repeatedly during the day.”
“… because they like you” for a certain definition of “like” that doesn’t translate to respecting you as a person. “Particularly attractive girls” are not being targeted for their intelligence, grace, and wit.
This sounds like it was written by someone who has never participated in any sporting activity at all. If we organized sports by weight class, body size, or skill level, no woman would ever play any sport again at anything remotely near the top level. It would spell the end of the WNBA, the LPGA, the WTA, and every other professional women’s sports league. Ditto for sports at the college level, and even for most of them at the high school level.
This is the kind of thing that makes normal people think that progressives are completely out of touch with reality. Where the hell does it come from?
Nullius @221: Reading those articles was very useful. I enjoy your posts on logic-do you have any recommended books for a novice to read from either a philosophy or mathematics perspective?
Thanks latsot. I was particularly impressed by the bit about how trans people are being constructed as a sacred caste and how Graham Linehan is particularly good position to debunk that nonsense.
In December 2020, while researching the influence of pornography on gender ideology, I noticed that Dier had reappeared on Reddit and Twitter, advertising homemade ’sissy’ pornography. Over the course of the past few months, Dier has been active in several subreddits, including both the r/rapefantasies and r/rape forums; the former focuses on rape-themed pornography, and the latter is a support group for victims. Even as Dier advertised in one forum by saying, “trans lesbian rapemeat needs to be f*cked straight,” he was simultaneously commenting in a support group for rape survivors.
Andi Dier is not an exception to the rule. It is imperative that this issue is understood as systemic, rather than being limited to merely a few instances; pornography is deeply entrenched at the centre of gender ideology’s view of womanhood. Recently, Reddit moderators staged a large-scale protest against the site’s employment of a trans-identified male, Aimee Challenor (née Ashton), with connections to known paedophiles. Transgender activist Dana Rivers (née David Warfield), who was responsible for organizing the protests that led to the cancellation of women-only, lesbian-centered Michfest, is currently in jail awaiting trial for the murder of a lesbian couple and their adopted son.
Many other, less visible instances of sexual abuse and predatory behaviour by those protected under the umbrella of “gender identity” go unnoticed or linguistically and statistically erased altogether. Hundreds of such instances are documented on the sites Women Are Human and Transgender Crime UK, both of which are run independently by those concerned about the erosion of boundaries and safeguarding policies under currently fashionable gender identity ideology. On these sites, you will find cases that are not widely known or reported.
Enjoy this twitter thread. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ratio so pure. Extra bonus violation of the irst Law of Holes, too.
Sex is not binary, and it is mutable. The sex of sea turtles is affected by the temperature of the sand their eggs are laid in. Moray eels start out as male and become female. You are so ignorant
I was just saying this. My son is a young teenager and I actually inculcate into him the idea that personal integrity matters more than temporary popularity, you do the right thing not the socially rewarding thing. This man is a clown. I suppose he has unresolved issues.
These people are so scared of being on what they have been told put them on the wrong side of history that they use anything to justify not being on that alleged wrong side, even if it means looking like a loon. Some of them still believe there is something they don’t fully [u]nderstand, a greater truth that proves all these bigots wrong, but they don’t quite know what it is. because if there isn’t an explanation then it means we are not the bigots, but they are.
It’s the people who should know better that I don’t get. I can almost get those who go along to “be kind,” but who haven’t really looked into the issues. As pointed out on B&W, many media outlets, particularly those that have been captured aren’t being honest in their portrayal of this conflict. (see for example “banning trans youth from sport.”) If someone’s awareness and understanding of trans ideology has only come through these avenues or through hearsay, the “be kind” almost makes sense, on a superficial level. Once you’ve been peaked, though, the belief and support of “credentialed” people is no longer compelling, but baffling, disappointing and infuriating. Bandwagon effect?
From the twitter stream of same Dr. Tanen who cried “Genocide,”it would seem that there are now going to be standards for changing names on scientific papers, post publication, to avoid the continued circulation of “deadnames.”.
High level principles for name changes in publishing
Transgender, non-binary, and/or gender diverse—here shortened to “trans”—authors seeking to receive full credit for their work face unique challenges and risks. Trans people do not receive the same legal protections against discrimination as cisgender people worldwide; they are subject to significant risk of discrimination, harassment, and violence; and many experience a particular form of personal trauma connected to their pre-transition identities that makes them especially vulnerable within the academic community. One significant source of epistemic labor, risk, and trauma for transgender authors, is the continued circulation of their previous name [1]. In this article, we present five high level principles for trans-inclusive name changes in academic publishing and consider the implications of such a paradigm shift within the scholarly world [2].
Changing a name in a scholarly publication currently requires significant time and effort from all parties. An author seeking a name change typically must persuade the publishers of their work to grant them one: a process that is heterogeneous, complicated, fraught, expensive, and time consuming. Similarly, a publisher seeking to implement a name change request must reconcile the needs of authors in their community with their obligations to the scholarly and/or legal record, as well as the lack of an established infrastructure through which to expediently find and correct instances of the scholar’s name within their records.
Unlike cisgender authors, trans individuals must shoulder the compulsory labor of negotiating for their basic human dignity on top of the complex and important research, teaching, mentoring, service, and other forms of labor that support their career. Trans authors have to argue for the right to be properly credited for their scholarship with decision makers who often neither understand nor care about the specific vulnerabilities they endure. Current practices in publishing make the task of correcting the scholarly record to reflect the identity of trans authors difficult, time consuming, expensive, uncertain, and emotionally fraught. It requires some of the most vulnerable members of the scholarly community to undertake significant personal labor, to expose themselves to ridicule and discrimination, and to have to repeatedly negotiate sensitive and private issues of personal identity with editorial boards, publishers, co-authors, citing authors, and other parties who have no real stake in the situation. The alternative is that many trans authors instead choose to abandon their previous scholarship, which produces a break in the scholarly record that harms our community by decoupling entire bodies of work from their creators.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics recently announced a call for evidence, on the care and treatment of children and adolescents in relation to their gender identity. This is a preliminary to them producing a position piece. 1/
In the call, they stress its highly open nature: “In particular, we would like to hear from anyone with personal experience of using gender identity services or supporting someone to use those services. Anyone is welcome to respond to this call for evidence..”2/
The project sounds good, right? After all, even if contested, there’s at least *the appearance* of adverse consequences for trans-identified children, should they move to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery. A body of prima facie credible sources suggests this. 3/
This open letter by Pearce is being retweeted with stirring emotion by other academics – as if all were engaged in some noble social justice project. Actually, though, they’re trying to politically strongarm an academic investigation into kids’ health. Which is different /end.
How about “NCAA Signals It Might Punish States For Supporting Female Athletes”? Or “NCAA Bullies States To Force Them To Allow Men To Compete In Women’s Sports”?
Mother Jones: NCAA Signals It Might Remove Championships From States That Target Trans Athletes
I bet somewhere in it comparisons are made with film companies pulling out of Georgia because of its recently passed voter supression measures. I like my blood pressure where it is, though, so I’m not going to read it myself to confirm.
When a queen Indian jumping ant dies, about 70 percent of the females in her colony enter a battle royale-style tournament that lasts up to 40 days where competitors beat one another with their antennae until a group of five to 10 victors emerges. These victors get to spend the rest of their days doing nothing but pumping out babies. As soon as the tournament begins, hormones drive the competitors to undergo an intense physiological transformation that turns them into reproductive queenlike ants, called gamergates.
(Emphasis added.) I checked, and this is not a belated April Fools’ joke.
An article in The Australian that I can’t get to has this lead-in:
Eddie Izzard is known for her surreal brand of humour, but the transgender star is keen to show off her dramatic abilities in her latest role as a male spy in Six Minutes to Midnight.
So I guess it’s all fine for a TIM to play a male (and for a TIM to play a female), even though we’re told it’s insulting for a male to play a TIM, even a TIM who doesn’t decide he’s trans until later in the story. It’s brave for a male actor to play a male character, if the actor is trans, but appropriation if only the character is trans.
I’ve previously expressed my disappointment Jim Wright/Stonekettle’s take on trans issues. He retweeted this w/o comment:
Rep. Carlos G Smith
@CarlosGSmith
The FL House just passed the worst anti-LGBTQ legislation in 23 years, expelling trans girls from team sports + prohibiting them from future participation.
This outrageous + disruptive bill harms our most vulnerable. The FL Senate has not yet passed this bill.
I know retweeting is not necessarily approval, but usually he’ll comment if he is retweeting something to point out his own take in disagreement. Or, if it’s a troll, he’screenshot it andcomment on it. So I’m pretty sure the above does represent approval.
Yet he’s so close here. Just a few more steps, a couple of connections and this tweet about the police killing of a 13 year old applies to kids being transed:
Children make bad choices, do dumb things, and don’t always understand the consequences of their actions or anticipate outcomes.
Because they are CHILDREN.
THEN we gives toys THAT LOOK EXACTLY LIKE GUNS to those children.
Somebody has to be the adult. It should be the COPS.
Anyone who has been in an abusive domestic relationship can recognize the patterns (I am speaking here primarily about domestic relationships between consenting adults, not parent/child abusive relationships, which involve different dynamics). At first, we don’t realize that the relationship is abusive, because we don’t want to believe it. We want to think the person loves us and is simply flawed. Often, we feel stupid for remaining in a relationship that is harming us. I felt this way for years.
It was only when the abuse escalated to being physical that I finally realized that something was very wrong, and that I ought to have been trusting my intuition the entire time. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the whole situation, so I called a domestic abuse hotline. After I explained the situation, the hotline woman told me that while she couldn’t tell me what to do, the abuse was likely to escalate, and I needed to contemplate my options. I wailed, “How could this happen? I am a strong and independent woman! I am a second-wave feminist!” She said, “Don’t blame yourself. These guys are master manipulators.” She was right. After a few more months of awakening and planning, I got out.
Waking up to the reality of the gender identity industry is exactly like this kind of waking up. Because the entire enterprise of “gender identity” is one giant narcissistic abuser. Or, in the words of Graham Linehan, “[t]he fad of gender identity is an undistilled, misogynistic sadism.” And all of humanity is its targeted victim. Women and girls are the hardest hit; it has gotten so bad that in some countries, rape victims are now required to refer to our rapists as “she” in court. But in the end, none of us will be spared.
The various discussions about transracialism and transgender ideology spurred some thoughts that I couldn’t quite fit anywhere, so I thought I’d put them here. It’s possible I’ve already related this story before, but it came to mind again.
My father was black, my mother was white, and I am one of those light-skinned people who might be considered black by the One Drop Rule. When I was in high school, decades ago, before all this “identity politics” and postmodern Critical Theory stuff became current, I was considering applying for an Achievement Scholarship, an award from the same outfit that does the National Merit Scholarship, but reserved for black students. The criteria for qualifying as “black” were not about measuring ancestry, nor were they specifically about any internal sense of identity, but rather “perceived as black by one’s peers”.
I often said I was black, and I have been accepted as black in certain circles, but I never really lived as black. I didn’t have a large number of black friends; I didn’t follow black musicians; I didn’t use black vernacular or slang; I didn’t wear clothing or hair styles popular among black people my age. In contrast, I knew other light-skinned people for whom being black and immersing themselves in black culture was an important aspect of their lives; that was very much not me.
I mentioned the possible scholarship application to some friends, and they obligingly agreed to refer to me as black if asked.
It occurred to me to compare this with transgenderism. Someone who has light skin and has little or no experience dealing with life as a black person suddenly decides to declare he is black and to take resources set aside for black people, and he asks people suddenly to acknowledge him as black, because he was born black and has always known, despite not living that way. This strikes me as somewhat parallel to the case of man who grew up male, lived with all the attributes of being male in modern society, suddenly “discovering” he is female, always has been, and demanding both resources set aside for women and acknowledgment that he is now a woman. The big difference is, of course, that I have a genuine factual basis for my claim, and this other man doesn’t.
But this other man demands society cater to his declaration, counterfactual as it is, and society bends over backwards to oblige, including changing policies and laws. People who even question his claim get called bigots and risk losing their platforms, jobs, children, friends. It makes no difference that he grew up and lived a male life, and it doesn’t matter if he changed his living pattern to mimic the stereotypical situations of women; the declaration is sufficient.
But someone like Dolezal gets excoriated and shunned for making her parallel claim. Dolezal was actually living as black. She was working for the advancement of black people. She would meet the criteria for the scholarship on that basis, despite the pesky factual issue. I, on the other hand, did none of these things. My great-grandfather was one of the founders of the NAACP, but I was never a member and I never worked with them. I just had the right bloodline. My biology was correct, but the scholarship required more than that.
I noted, too, that the scholarship required outside validation of blackness, that this was important. We know that, for people who identify as trans, this outside validation of their “identity” is of paramount personal importance, hence all the emphasis on pronouns and all the policies and laws that require people to validate a trans-identified person’s “identity”. I can’t imagine a similar set of draconian rules requiring validation of declared racial “identity”.
The U.S. Equality Act, which amends civil rights statutes to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, passed the House in May 2019 with unanimous Democratic support. Adopting a feminist perspective, I scrutinize the act from a largely neglected position, one that supports both LGBTQ and sex-based rights. Although laudable in its aims, the Equality Act is objectionable in form. The Act extends non-discrimination protections to LGBTQ individuals not by creating new protected classes but by redefining sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation, which is not only terminologically imprecise but also creates a clash between sex-based and gender identity-based rights. By defining gender identity as something that exists to be protected “regardless of sex,” the act undermines sex-based provisions, replacing them with provisions based on gender self-identification. Recognizing confusion over terminology, I describe key terms (sex, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation) and consider various usages. I conclude by discussing ways the bill might be modified so as to protect LGBTQ people without undermining women’s (sex-based) rights.
From farther into the paper:
Like many political issues at present, public debates around the Equality Act usually fall on left–right party lines with little debate on substance, including the gender identity theory implicitly endorsed by the bill. The Congressional discussion of the bill consisted of Democratic lawmakers lauding the bill (e.g., as “literally a life-saving bill”) with Republican representatives panning “the deep flaws” in the legislation (H.R. 5 Text, 2019). Much of the public seem largely content to adopt party-line positions without discussion or critical scrutiny. This lack of public discussion is objectionable in a democratic society, in general, but it is even more problematic in this case given the pronounced shift in American jurisprudence the Equality Act will institute from sex-based to gender identity-based protections. Many on the left supporting the bill appear unaware of the sweeping nature of this legislation and uninformed about the practical details.
Although laudable in its nondiscriminatory aims, the form of H.R.5 is problematic. The Equality Act extends federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBT people not by creating new protected classes or by protecting sexuality or gender expression under existing sex-stereotype protections but rather by expanding the definition of sex to “include sexual orientation and gender identity.” Departing from our creditable legal tradition of definitional precision, the Equality Act is terminologically imprecise, as it conflates distinct terms (i.e., sex, gender, and sexual orientation), defines gender identity vaguely and circularly, and fails to define gender at all. More concerning, however, is the bill’s prioritization of gender identity over biological sex. The Equality Act defines gender identity as something that exists to be protected “regardless of sex” without exception, thereby giving primacy to gender identity over sex when they clash (i.e., in determining eligibility for [otherwise or previously] sex-based provisions). The result is the erosion of females’ sex-based provisions, which include sex-separated spaces (e.g., prisons, locker rooms, shelters), opportunities and competitions (e.g., awards, scholarships, sports), and events (e.g., meetings, groups, festivals) (see Lawford-Smith, 2019c, for a discussion and justification). As I will discuss, female sex-based provisions remain important given both women’s historical disadvantages and different reproductive biology.4
For these reasons, while I support the Equality Act’s nondiscrimination aims, I submit that the bill, in current form, fails to strike a balance between the rights, needs, and interests of two marginalized (and overlapping) groups—trans people and females—and instead prioritizes the demands of trans people over the hard-won rights of female people. This imbalance led Rep. Lesko (2019) to argue that the bill should be called “The Forfeiting Women’s Rights Act.” In current form, the Equality Act’s elision of the distinction between biological sex and gender self-identification, with the prioritization of the latter over the former, amounts to an impracticable attempt to provide sex-based protections with sex-blind policies. Because, as I will discuss, gender identity is vaguely and circularly defined without the requirement for any verification or formal status change, any person can access opposite-sex provisions merely on the basis of first-person testimony through gender self-ID (e.g., “I identify as a woman”), no medical or legal gatekeeping or even presentation style (e.g., as feminine) required.5 Therefore, and unbeknownst to many, the Equality Act eliminates the right to sex-based provisions.
We can see here how the UK has become “TERF Island,” something that seems to puzzle non-UK TAs to no end. Because in UK law “sex” is a protected characteristic, women have a solid legal foundation from which to defend their rights. In the UK, gender critical feminists have a position to defend, meaning that trans activism can be portrayed, accurately, as trying to undermine and destroy women’s legal, sex-based rights. Women in the US and Canada , because of the way protection for “gender identity” has come to be incorporated into the law, have already lost that legal position, making regaining it that much harder.
Here’s how the journal describes itself, and we can see in a single word the genesis of Burt’s removal:
About this journal
Feminist Criminology (FC), published five times a year, is an innovative journal dedicated to research related to women, girls, and crime within the context of a feminist critique of criminology. The official journal of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology, this international publication focuses on research and theory that highlights the gendered (emphasis mine) nature of crime. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Here’s a link to a response to Burt’s piece above, by Nishant Upadhyay:
It’s not open access, but the abstract is heavily loaded with orthodox, anti-colonialist, “white-feminism” jargon:
Coloniality of White Feminism and Its Transphobia: A Comment on Burt Abstract
In this comment, I challenge Burt’s colonial epistemological framework in her theorizations of sex, gender, and transness. Drawing upon anti-racist, decolonial, and trans of color feminisms, I argue that transphobia is inherent to white feminisms due to its roots in colonialism. Heteropatriarchy and cisnormativity are products of colonialism, and feminists who espouse transphobic discourses invariably reproduce colonial and white supremacist frameworks of patriarchy and gender violence.
Sounds like well-poisoning bullshit to me. With all that name-calling in the abstract, I’d bet he addresses none of Burt’s actual arguments. If he could, he’d emphasize that in the abstract. Instead, he denounces her as a heretic.
The article is titled: ‘Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size’. These results are consistent with most of what I’ve read about studies of male/female brains, that there is no “pink” brain or “blue” brain. I think these results and others refute the idea of there being a “man’s brain in a woman’s body” (or vice versa) concept.
However, the title gives me pause, and the paper more so. They conclude that the brain is not sexually dimorphic, and they also talk about “gender”, which appears to have more than two states, and needs to be “reconsidered”. It seems to me they consider “gender” to be a real thing, perhaps with biological basis, rather than a personal decision, a personality characteristic. The paper notes that brains (like kidneys and lungs) do not exhibit sexual dimorphism, but other body parts do (although only gonads are mentioned). I would be concerned that these ancillary comments and the title would be interpreted to minimize the amount of sexual dimorphism in humans.
But I’m not a scientist, and I may be misinterpreting things here.
Excellent article about pronouns by “Angus Fox” on Graham Linehan’s site. It addresses say some length how English-centric this whole nonsense is. I think I’ll check out this “Angus Fox’s” own site.
Oh, the fucking irony! PZ, who regularly and with much mocking denies that anybody has ever been ‘cancelled’, is having a pity party in which one of his gripes is….being cancelled from the atheist/sceptic speaking and meet-up circuits and receiving nasty e-mails.
I used to enjoy getting out to events and talking with other people about science, or the folly of religious dogma, or the importance of social justice. I was traveling roughly every two weeks to meetings, and then, abruptly, that all dried up about 8 years ago. Sheesh, you expose just one high muckity-muck skeptic rapist, and your phone stops ringing. It was impressive how quickly and thoroughly the blacklist was implemented.
The fun was only beginning. I learned gradually that the movement I’d spent years promoting was infested with patriarchal asshats and harassers. I get so much hate mail now!
Granted, it was a shitty reason for blacklisting him, but then again many of the more recent cancellations have been implemented for literally no reason whatsoever. As for the hate mail, I wonder how many rape threats and death threats and threats of violence he’s subjected to on a daily basis? Nowhere near as many as the women who have publically – or even in leaked private conversations – questioned trans ideology is my guess.
Will PZ actually join the dots and realise that he enthusiastically encourages and supports infinitely worse abuse than he has received, to people far more vulnerable than he will ever be?
Questions about sex and gender are an area of important contemporary debate. The judge case adopted one particular viewpoint: that it is unacceptable in any circumstances to refer to someone other than in accordance with their gender identity.
The preliminary hearing was only supposed to consider the belief itself, but the judge made assumptions regarding how Forstater would act (the idea that she would harass someone at work, even though in practice she had not)
The judgment destroys the right to freedom of belief (which includes the freedom to hold controversial, offensive or uncompromising beliefs). The judgment also said that Forstater could be required to refer to a ‘trans woman as a woman’. This is compelled speech – obliging her to manifest a belief she does not hold.
The employment tribunal adopted an incorrect approach to balancing the (potentially) competing rights on freedom of speech by declaring that causing offence undermines the “fundamental rights or dignity of others”. The correct approach to consider competing rights is with an intense focus on the particular circumstances.
Incorrect reliance on the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The tribunal concluded that Forstater’s belief is incompatible with the rights and dignity of others because “she goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned.” But the GRA only gives the right to be treated as that sex in law (with some exceptions). It does not and cannot give people a right to actually be something they are not; nor can it impose obligations on private individuals to change their beliefs about a person’s sex, or about the nature of sex.
Incorrect approach to protection for lack of belief – The employment tribunal wrongly applied the test for whether a positive belief is protected to the question of whether Forstater’s lack of belief in gender ideology is protected. For a lack of belief to be protected, it is sufficient that the belief which is not shared is itself protected.
The ACLU is reporting (well, sharing an article with a brief comment) that a “transgender” 4th grader is getting death threats after testifying before the Texas legislature.
It should be obvious that nobody deserves death threats, especially a child. This is reprehensible.
One wonders where the ACLU is when women and girls receive threats of death, rape, bodily harm, and forcing out of a job, when those women and girls take stands against gender ideology. As we’ve discussed often here, the ACLU used to champion free speech rights for all speech, including speech not well-liked in liberal circles. The death threats against the girls suing to block the CT law don’t seem to matter to the ACLU; those girls are speaking out, too. They are (somewhat older) children, too.
Jenner, a former Olympic athlete who famously came out as transgender in 2015, waded into a controversial issue that has sparked Republican-backed legislation in states across the country.
“This is a question of fairness, that’s why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls sports in school,” Jenner told TMZ. “It just isn’t fair, and we have to protect girls sports in our schools.”
Jenner is running as a Republican to unseat Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in an upcoming recall election in the deep-blue state.
We knew Trump didn’t give a shit about Puerto Rico when it was slammed by a cyclone, but more reporting is coming out: his administration actively hindered the disbursement of funds.
I know Richard Carrier isn’t one of our heroes around here, but he made an important point in a book review of he posted on his blog a couple of days ago. The book is a definitive takedown of the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus, but this quote is applicable to a broad array of topics, especially one that the B&W community has been watching closely:
Getting someone to realize they are trapped in a delusion also requires teaching them the psychology they need to look out for, and getting them to recognize that as happening in themselves: … motivated reasoning (“wanting” something to be true rather than wanting to know what actually is true even if it’s not what we want), cognitive dissonance (escaping painful mental contradictions through often elaborate rationalization rather than any actually reliable methodology), and relying on our innately broken mechanisms of intuition rather than the tools that human civilization invented specifically to correct for their constant failings—namely scientific methods, logic and mathematics, a prophylactic understanding of rhetoric as a system of both public- and self-deception, and critical thinking.
And yet he defends the trans dogma and joined the dogpile on me back then…amusingly, weeks late, because he’d been busy elsewhere and missed the fun. I was long gone but he had to throw some stones anyway, just to make sure.
Oh, I’m sure he’s not implicitly referring to trans dogma here, and it probably hasn’t even occurred to him. But if the shoe fits (and it looks like a very good fit indeed), it could certainly be worn.
Just finished it. Good list. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I’m not sure these are all things people used to understand, but they are certainly out of favor currently.
I recently finished reading A Lot of People Are Saying – The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum. In it the authors make a distinction between “classical conspiracy theories” and what they call the “new conspiracism” which they describe as “conspiracy without the theory”. Where the former were at the very least attempts to explain real events and appealed to supposedly “scientific” data and “rational” arguments (e.g. the obsession of 9-11 truthers with the temperature of burning jet fuel and the melting point of steel), the new conspiracism don’t attempt to explain anything (more often than not, there isn’t even anything to explain), are based on nothing but assertion (“the election was rigged!”), insinuation, or innuendo (“there’s something there”, “a lot of people are saying”), and substitutes endless repetition, as well as “liking”, sharing, retweeting, forwarding etc. for evidence and argument. I do think the authors tend to give the classical conspiracy theorists more credit than they deserve, but that’s an argument for another day.
The new conspiracism doesn’t even require belief in the literal truth of the conspiratorial claims as stated, only the notion that they are “true enough” (“it’s entirely plausible”, “it wouldn’t surprise me”), which seems to jibe well with the logic of the post-truth era: “It might not be literally true that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring from the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington DC, but I’m going to go with it anyway. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would be capable of after all. Just look at the thing with the emails! I hate her, so anything I can use against her is fine by me. Who cares if its technically ‘true’ or not?! Everybody is always lying anyway, so I might as well go with the lies that favor my own tribe.”. There is also what I have called the “Superman Fallacy” because it’s almost the perfect flip-side of a straw man: As we all know, a straw man is a dishonest portrayal of the views of your opponents specifically designed to be easily refuted or even self-evidently absurd. A Superman by contrast is a dishonest portrayal of your own views specifically designed to be easily defended, e.g. claiming for a fact that Obama tapped Donnie’s phone, and then, when challenged, moving the goalpost to “it’s possible”, “it could be true” etc. Or if you want to have it both ways: use insinuation and innuendo to get the the idea of a conspiracy out there, and then abdicate any responsibility by claiming to be “just asking questions”, requesting more information (“somebody should look into that”, “what I already know is disturbing enough”) etc.
As people like Timothy Snyder and Peter Pomerantsev have pointed out, the new authoritarians are different from the tyrannies of the past in that they don’t actually require you to believe anything, only to distrust everyone enough to dismiss any criticism of authoritarianism as well as any appeal to “democracy”, “rights”, the “rule of law” etc. as part of somebody else’s nefarious plot or hidden agenda: In other words conspiracism! Even people who know perfectly well that there’s no truth to the claims often end up either actively endorsing them or passively failing to correct them, whether out of cynical opportunism, tribalism, or cowardice.
The result is delegitimation, beginning with the political opposition. Delegitimation goes deeper than any normal disagreement or conflict over policy. I.e. the opposition is not just portrayed as wrong, or misguided, or even dishonest, but outright criminal, treasonous, or even totally evil. There is no room for argument, negotiation or compromise with pedophiles, murderers, and traitors determined to destroy everything you hold dear in this world. You just do whatever it takes to stop them, and if that means playing dirty, cheating, throwing out democratic rules of the game, then so be it. Besides the political opposition the other main target of deligitimation are knowledge-producing institutions and expertise in general, from climate scientists to the FBI, and from Anthony Fauci to the free press. Again the explicit or implicit claim is that these institutions are not just flawed, or wrong, or even biased, but actively engaged in a criminal plot against the nation and its leader. The delegitimation of independent institutions obviously has the potential to become a self-fulfillimg prophecy: The initial accusations become a pretext for defunding the institution, filling it with loyalists, or ignoring it altogether. As a result the institution does indeed begin to look increasingly corrupt, dysfunctional, and illegitimate, thus providing further justification for getting rid of it entirely.
This goes beyond mere political polarization into what the authors call “epistemic polarization”, i.e. people are not just divided over what is in fact true, but what it even means to “know” something and ultimately who “owns reality”. The new conspiracism, based as it is on mere assertion, is very much like divine revelation in that it claims special insight into layers of reality that are hidden to everyone else, cannot be independently tested or verified, and must therefore be taken on faith. Ultimately this whole situation is incompatible with democracy. Without a shared set of facts, or even a common understanding of what it would take to get to an agreement, it becomes impossible to make informed decisions, have reasoned, intelligent arguments or even disagree in any meaningful sense. When that happens, there is nothing left to appeal to but brute force.
*the new conspiracism doesn’t attempt to explain anything […], is based on nothing but assertion…
(Tsk tsk… I really think the Illuminati has dropped the ball lately. These evil brotherhoods used to have lofty goals like world conquest and the New World Order, and now they are reduced to sneaking covfefe into people’s comments on blogs. Kind of pathetic if you ask me…)
We shouldn’t be so hasty. It might have just been an individual Illuminatum doing the ball-dropping. Is it at all fair to impugn an entire All-Powerful, Secret, Global, Secret, Over-Governmental, Mind-Controllling, Shadow-Cabal, just because one of its members failed to wash their hands as well as they should have, after enjoying a lunch of McNuggets?
When some feminists who seek to speak on our behalf disregard *clear boundaries* so many of us have voiced – that we reject presence of all men in our single-sex spaces – and reassure men that we are happy to include some of them, it is they who sabotage us.
Discussion here about Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls. Stock is critical of Julia Long’s critique of trans “women” (my quotes) who are against gender identity theory. The Long piece at issue is here:
This relationship is nowhere more obvious than in the phenomenon of ‘transgenderism,’1 which has over the past decade or so introduced a dizzying and seemingly endless proliferation of patently absurd new terms and concepts: ‘gender identity’, ‘trans woman’, ‘non-binary’. Given that these terms are based on false premises and easily exposed as fictitious, it is strange that the British gender critical2 movement has shown very little willingness to reject wholesale the pernicious language of transgenderism. High-profile groups such as A Woman’s Place UK (WPUK) and Fair Play for Women insist that they are in favour of the rights of ‘trans people’, habitually use the terms ‘trans woman’ or ‘transwoman’, and use ‘she’ pronouns for men who demand it. Paradoxically then, much of what is written and spoken in the name of British gender critical feminism in fact does the ideological work of transgenderists for them, promulgating their fictions as legitimate and valid through speaking their language.
The terms ‘transsexual’ and ‘transwoman’ are particularly glaring examples of this. It is striking that while gender critical feminists correctly insist that it is not possible to change sex, many breezily continue to use the term ‘transsexual’ or ‘transwoman’3 as if such a change were possible and as if such individuals exist. This oddly contradictory position is thoroughly normalised – mandated, even – at events held by groups like WPUK and Filia, and in the writings and speeches of media feminists like Julie Bindel and Sarah Ditum and academics such as Kathleen Stock and Selina Todd. Dissenters who point out this contradiction and straightforwardly name so-called ‘transsexuals’ as men are misrepresented and denounced as deliberately provocative, disrespectful and unkind.
The concern and contention being raised is that the individuals and organizations noted above, by hypocritically accepting some gender critcal TIMs as “real” or “genuine,” are undermining women’s struggle for single sex spaces.
Idaho has banned teaching critical race theory in schools. Some of the provisions seem innocuous, but one section in particular caught my eye.
(a) No public institution of higher education, school district, or public school, including a public charter school, shall direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any of
the following tenets:
(iii.) That individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin.
In isolation it sounds reasonable-what child born today should feel guilty about the slave trade or be castigated by students or faculty? Unfortunately in my home state similar laws have been applied to prevent any discussion of how factors like institutional/legal racism or manifest destiny impacts us today. If you are a teacher that wants to talk about US history from the perspectives of people already living here when the settlers showed up or of people’s brought here involuntarily tread carefully. Generally in my state there’s governmental hostility to any acknowledgement that our history isn’t a happy “how the west was won” tale, and don’t you dare suggest that past influences the present!
Ugh that’s appalling. To me it just looks like code for “We’re not responsible for what they did Way Beck Then therefore we get to ignore the whole subject forever amen.”
Now that I look closer, several other provisions look even more hinky in terms of how they could be used:
(2) The Idaho legislature finds that tenets outlined in subsection (3)(a) of this section, often found in “critical race theory,” undermine the objectives outlined in subsection (1) of this section and exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.
They don’t define CRT, and they don’t say how it contributes to division. Censorship in the name of unity doesn’t make for good education. Furthermore Twitter wokescolds aren’t the same as teachers in the classroom-are teachers really talking about the intertwining of racism, history, law, and institutions in a way that stokes division or is this formulation the product of misinformed conservative parents who freaked out the minute they heard that history class wouldn’t be only “God Bless America”?
(b) No distinction or classification of students shall be made on account of race or color.
On the surface good, but I wonder if this will just be another wedge to prevent scholarships or other interventions to help students disadvantaged by poverty and institutional racism.
I hate to mention the Queen’s Speech because it’s so embarrassing, but this year it was used to announce that the UK government will ban conversion therapy. Banning gay conversion therapy would be all well and good except for the fact that – as far as anyone can tell – it’s not happening in the UK anyway. The sudden, dizzying imperative, of course, is that TAs are pushing for any resulting law to include a ban on ‘gender conversion therapy’.
As I’m sure everyone here knows, this would be nothing less than a ban on any kind of ‘therapy’ other than total affirmation for children who are gender nonconforming and feel they might be trans or non-binary. Since we know that time+puberty makes the vast majority of gender-dysphoric feelings go away; and that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and reassignment surgery are at best one hell of a drastic step with enormous lifelong implications; and that there are such people as detransitioners; and since we know that a lot of children who feel they might be trans will turn out simply to be gay; and since any psychological issues the children might have will be left untreated; the doctrine of affirmation-only is a monstrous one. Children will be pushed into harmful medical pathways and therapists who dissent will be fined, fired and might go to jail.
But as Arty recently pointed out, it’s hard to convince people that this is really happening, because it all sounds so nuts.
Here’s how nuts it is. The government is presumably at least somewhat aware that banning ‘gender conversion therapy’ is harmful and insane. So it has promised to hold a consultation before passing any laws. Stonewall has gone apeshit about this. Rather than welcoming a consultation to better address the needs of gender nonconforming children, Stonewall has said that even talking about a law to ban talking about alternatives to affirmation-only is wrong: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-statement-conversion-therapy-consultation
This is deeply, deeply worrying. The sheer cynical deception of the whole move should have sirens blaring all over the place. Generations of children could be seriously harmed by this, all because a bunch of men want to feel validated in their sexual proclivities and a lot other people want to seem woke and kind. Johnson sees this as a personal priority. The Tory government has now twice committed (once under May and now again under Johnson) to some sort of legislation on conversion therapy. Any such law is likely to be passed this year. If trans activists manage to sneak a ban on ‘gender conversion therapy’ in under the guise of a no-brainer condemnation of gay conversion therapy and with consultation strongly discouraged as transphobic, then we have committed a truly monstrous act.
I came across this article about Liz Cheney’s ouster and the “post-truth”, “alternative facts” Republican Party, and it brought to mind I hadn’t considered before. “Truth” is derived from social power, historical knowledge is biased and unreliable: this sounded to me a heck of a lot like postmodern Theory. Yet the Republicans are the ones pushing back against Critical Race Theory. But they are not doing so because of CRT’s views about “colonialist science” and “black ways of knowing”, but rather because of other aspects, claims about racism and history. The Republicans seem roughly in agreement with Theory’s emphasis on subjective “knowledge”. I guess science and objective truth really are under attack from all sides.
That “pride” watch band features all the colors of the rainbow, plus black and brown, and also white which is now apparently the color claimed by the trans. And it’s only 99 bucks! Such a bargain!
Apple should also offer a “shame” watch band for people like me. But they’ve already used all the colors. Not so inclusive after all.
Recommended, with some reservations. The author of this review gives particular praise to Stock’s chapters on ‘A Brief History of Gender Identity,’ ‘What is sex?’ ‘Why does sex matter?’ and ‘What is gender identity?’ For these alone, she says, the book is worthwhile.
The reviewer takes issue with what she sees as a degree of “both siderism,” as well as too great an acceptance, on Stock’s part, of and tolerance for AGP fetishism.
Although I am immensely glad that Material Girls has been published, and will open the eyes of those who have not been following developments closely, I am critical of conclusions which the author reaches in the final chapter which jar with the experiences of many women. I am somewhat disheartened that a mainstream readership’s first exposure to “gender critical” analysis echoes what antifeminists have said for decades: they’re mean, man-hating harridans so “blinded” by their “animosity” towards the opposite sex that they can only see their own selfish demands for liberation. Difficult women, indeed. Onto whom the author unfortunately leaves room for the general public to project their misogyny, while reserving for the pragmatic appeasers a margin of comparative respectability. To ask women to tiptoe around the “needs” and “happiness” of male fetishists/dysphorics, lest they be de-platformed and denounced, is merely an extension of the social control enacted by institutions on behalf of the trans lobby. I have no better ideas about what to do about that than to continue pursuing non-partisan alliance between women, and men without fetishes/dysphoria who have no personal stake in dismantling our boundaries.
I can’t help concluding that, in the final chapter, the author departed somewhat from reality in her effort to offend all implicated readers equally, and occupy an illusory middle-ground between sex denialism and ‘sex matters.’ All of this will seem no more than a storm in a teacup to those who are innocent of the ideological rifts within feminism(s). The attempt at even-handedness does not acknowledge the un-level playing field on which trans-identifying men, and their enablers, antagonised defenders of women’s rights: only one side runs with the current of male power, maximising the disadvantages of female conditioning, relative dearth of resources, conflict-avoidance and empathy. Only women have to contend with suffocating demands that we “Be Kind” to those who subject us to a surreal existential onslaught which seeks to remove legal recognition of our embodied reality, and our needs. I think, in all honesty, that Prof Stock goes too hard on women who refuse to be gaslit, and too easy on women’s antagonists, considering all they have thrown at women over the years, and how frictionlessly the cultural mechanisms of misogyny work to prevent women uniting in an unqualified “no.”
Despite all this, I urge you–if you haven’t already–to get yourself a copy of Material Girls, make up your own mind, thrash out the issues, and reach your own conclusions. It’s exciting to see our unfolding history in print, and this book should be one of a growing body of literature about gender critical feminism. I will be buying an second copy for my mum—who is only now beginning to see what I’ve been banging on about for years—and another for my MP, to be delivered by hand. You might buy a copy for the relative who has been stonewalling you at dinner because they think you’re an enemy to ‘trans kids,’ and another for the old friend who de-friended you on Facebook for your heterodox views. There is no question that the facts, and the ‘GC’ arguments, need to be out there in the wild, tugging persistently at the tapestry of woo that is gender identity theory.
Lily Maynard has written extensive reviews of Material Girls, by Kathleen Stock, and Transgender Body Politics, by Heather Brunskell-Evans. Both reviews are quite detailed and thorough. Maynard has the same issues with Material Girls that several other reviewers have noted regarding “both sides” and referring to men-who-claim-to-be-women as “she”, but she is generally positive about the book, which I plan to read. I hadn’t heard much about Transgender Body Politics until this review, but it sounds excellent, and I’ll add it to my list.
Maynard has the same issues with Material Girls that several other reviewers have noted regarding “both sides” and referring to men-who-claim-to-be-women as “she”…
I particularly like this comparison:
Throughout the book Kathleen refers to men who claim to be women as ‘she’. I find this incredibly distracting, rather like somebody approaching me from behind and honking a loud horn in my ear while I’m trying to read.
Amy Cooper, a white woman who last year became an international symbol of the routine racism that Black people face in their daily lives, is suing her former employer for firing her, arguing that she is a victim of racial discrimination.
This is where things are going. A man, legally recognized as a man, who identifies as a woman, but who has had no cosmetic “gender” surgery (although he maybe has received opposite-sex hormones, I’m not clear about that), is set to compete in women’s events at the Tokyo Paralympics.
KAMLOOPS, B.C. – The remains of 215 children have been found buried on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation said in a news release Thursday that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist.
Casimir called the discovery an “unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”
She said it’s believed the deaths are undocumented, although a local museum archivist is working with the Royal British Columbia Museum to see if any records of the deaths can be found.
Some of the children were as young as three, she said.
The school was once the largest in Canada’s residential school system.
The Kamloops school was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1890 until 1969. It was then run as a day school by the federal government until it closed in 1978.
It is estimated more than 150,000 children attended residential schools in Canada from the 1830s until the last school closed in 1996.
The NCTR said about 4,100 children who died at the schools are identified in death records, by name or unnamed.
The exact number of children who died remains unknown, but the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said large numbers of Indigenous children who were sent to residential schools never returned home.
The evil is just breathtaking. On both the personal level of the cruelty and indifference shown to these children and because of the sheer scale at which this happened. My mind can barely get to grips with it. My emotions…. I’m not sure they can.
My mind can barely get to grips with it. My emotions…. I’m not sure they can.
When I came across the story, a cold chill ran down my spine. This is war crime level stuff. It might not have been fought by armies, but it was a war nonetheless, a deliberate effort to destroy peoples and their cultures, with the blessings and power of the state.
I think it’s time we moved beyond mere “reconciliation,” and start thinking of reparations. I would be happy to see significant portions of Canada reappropriated and returned to the descendents of the peoples from which it was stolen. Sure, much was handed over ‘legitimately” through the treaty process, but that process was heavily weighted in favour of white settlers, who usually had strength of numbers and technological superiority on their side. Even then, the treaties were not honoured. Private fortunes have been made, and public coffers filled through expoitation of resources that have been stripped from lands first cleansed of its original inhabitants. It’s time we returned more of that wealth to the peoples displaced (or poisoned) to extract it, and to restore the lands from which it was taken. We are a fortunate, prosperous nation, but our fortune and prosperity are founded on the disposession and impoverishment of those who were here before our country was founded. We congratulate ourselves on our luck, enjoying a heritage of thieves.
Too many Canadians (myself incuded) have for too long undeservedly prided our country for being “not as bad as the United States” in regard to our treatment of its original inhabitants. It’s only a matter of degree, and that difference is a lot smaller than we fool ourselves into thinking. I know that what I suggest above would hurt, and well it should. But the expense and disruption it would entail would never be any where near the pain, anguish, and death ourculture has inflicted, for which we can never fully atone. Call it “white guilt” if you want, but guilty is what we are. Acknowledgement of the crimes of the past is not an end: it is a beginning. What do we do with that knowledge? How do we repair the damage and injury? How do we work with the inheritors of our country’s cruel, genocidal policies to help restore their lives, cultures, and communities? Nothing will bring back the dead, but we should do all we can to help the living. If that means sacrifice and appropriation on the part of the “dominant” culture, so be it.
I don’t know what the answer is, what the right course of action would be. But we have to start asking. We have to find out. We’ve been on the wrong path for too long, and it has cost too much.
The Alabama Department of Public Health is offering free STD/HIV test kits to a select group of people:
residents who identify as men who have sex with men, individuals that identify as transgender, and to selected individuals who are on PrEP therapy
That sure leaves out a lot of vulnerable people, notably women. I doubt that “identifying” is the useful discriminant they think it is, and I doubt that “men who have sex with men” (or even identifying as a person who does this) is as relevant as something like having a large number of sexual partners.
If you think there’s another Kamloops just coming around the corner, there is one — trust me,” says Lyle Keewatin Richards, the child of a residential school survivor who is part of a group trying to preserve an unmarked cemetery near the former Red Deer Industrial School in Alberta.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, approximately 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended these residential schools. Estimates vary, but the commission put it at just over 4,000 dead, which would mean that more than one in 50 children who went to the schools died there. Most experts say the toll is likely higher.
It was a rate of death driven by far higher levels of malnutrition, disease and abuse than the norm at the time in white schools, experts say.
Many school officials refused to send bodies back, claiming it was too expensive. Many children were buried in mass graves that weren’t marked.
The Naomi Osaka situation is probably not of huge interest here, but I thought this article was good: about blatant sexism in the press conferences at tennis tournaments and other sporting events.
Stonewall’s audit goes far beyond policy. The organization must publicize “visible role models” in every one of the specified categories, including gay or lesbian, bisexual, binary transgender people, and non-binary people. Some letters are more equal than others: L and G together share one category, while T gets two categories. Stonewall emphasizes that “the person’s identity must be clear”: “It should not be left up to the reader or viewer to make assumptions.” What is privileged, in other words, is the person’s identity rather than their individual achievements or contributions to the organization’s mission.
Alongside LGBTQ+ role models, Stonewall creates a novel identity: the LGBT+ Ally. Oxford paid Stonewall £6,000 to train 26 Allies in 2017; this training is now replicated within the University. Allies must “visibly signal their commitment to LGBT equality” by means of “email signatures, badges, lanyards and mugs”. Oxford thus provides specially designed badges with the “A proud LGBT+ Ally” logo plus preferred pronouns. Virtue-signalling, however, does not suffice. The audit needs to know what the Allies have achieved. As Stonewall notes tartly, “‘Helped organise’ here, refers to allies taking an active involvement in the planning and execution of events. It does not mean allies simply turning up to events.” Indeed, Stonewall’s Ally training makes every person pledge aloud to the rest of the group: “As an inclusive and active ally I am…and the one thing I commit to is….” One newly fledged Ally at Oxford, for example, committed to organize a training session from Gendered Intelligence (with consequences to be discussed below). Another “Invited the Chair and Trans representative of the LGBT+ Advisory group to a peer-mentoring group of women in physics/engineering to discuss how cis-gender women can become better allies to trans women and non-binary colleagues”.
Stonewall requires the organization to enforce Stonewall’s doctrines on other organizations, too. One section of the audit covers “the steps taken to ensure LGBT inclusive suppliers are procured and held to account”. In this area, Oxford has evidently been remiss. Stonewall’s feedback on the 2018 audit (obtained through a Freedom of Information request) included this comment: “Pre-contract processes could be more explicit as to the level of scrutiny applied by the university to their potential providers, with clearer descriptions next year as to how this is done. Use Stonewall resources (and a possible lunch and learn with staff responsible for procurement) to advance this area.” Obediently, Oxford now plans to “Invite Stonewall to meet with the Finance team in charge of procurement over 100K to explore ways to strengthen the University’s approach”.
… and of course the NYT article mentions the transgender issue, it just does so without naming Strangio. My error, I don’t know how I missed what I was specifically trying to keep an eye out for.
As I’ve said before, let’s call it what it is – genocide.
The government wants to remove us from society, make healthcare inaccessible, bury all cultural references to us, and generally make sure we are gone.
TERFs want us all dead, period.
It’s genocide.
“This isn’t hyperbole.” Yes, thanks for that, it just points out even more that it is exactly that.
Here it’s only June 7, and they’re already playing the “genocide” card. Did nobody tell them about pacing? There’s not a lot of room for further escalation, so what are they gonna do for the rest of Pride Month? “TERFs planning to blow up the sun and spitefully end all life on Earth to block Trans Rights?” “TERF anti-matter bomb to destroy the Entire Universe so they don’t have to use our pronouns?”
I really don’t get where this comes from, unless it’s something like this:
TAs: GIVE US WHAT WE WANT OR WE”LL KILL OURSELVES!!!
GC Women: No.
TAs: YOU WANT US ALL DEAD! YOU”RE OUT TO MURDER US ALL!!!
If there were GC feminists who actually did want to round up trans identified people and have them all put to death, we would have heard about them already. Ad nauseum. TAs would be able to quote them, and would do so. It would be the gift that keeps on giving. Any such quote would figure prominantly in every gender ideologist’s website, every charity’s “About” page, every trans-cheering newspaper article. It would be part of Chase Strangio’s pinned tweet. It would be one of the most useful weapons they could possibly have in their campaign to center trans rights. But they can’t produce such quotes because they don’t exist. Only one side of this “discussion” uses violent, eliminationist imagery and speech. Only one side threatens, intimidates and villifies the other in order that their arguments remain unheard. Only one side weaponizes suicidal ideation as a bullying, blackmail tactic, to the detriment and continued emotional anxiety of the very people it claims to support and speak for.
All the above leads one to the conclusion that the origin of the “genocide” charge is pure projection. It’s an admission of what TAs would do themselves if they had the chance, masquerading as a fear of what they think their opponents want to do to them. This coming from a movement which has achieved so much through institutional capture of organizations and agencies (like police forces) that give it the power to have a material effect on the lives of its percieved enemies and opponents.
The 20 year old suspect, wearing body armour, was arrested outside the mall where I usually work. He’s been charged with four counts of first degree murder, one of attempted murder.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal today, exploring a different set of ramifications of words not meaning anything, of insisting that words have more expansive meanings, and everyone just goes along because it’s easier, until it’s too late. The cartoon is about CAPTCHA images; perhaps “institutional CAPTCHA” would be a good description.
My wife and I attended the vigil for the Muslim family members killed in Sunday’s terrorist hit and run attack. Thousands and thousands were there, including Prime Minister Trudeau. It was heartening to see this huge turn-out in support of the Muslim community.
One of the speakers talked about how a young niece had asked her in fear if wearing hijab made her look “too Muslim.”
The family’s evening walk together was something they’d done during the pandemic.
Nobody was taking any chances. The intersection nearest the mosque was blocked by municipal dump trucks, which offered more security than the more usual roadblock that would use police cars. Members of the police tactical squad in body armour were stationed on the roof of the mosque (located just a block away from where the suspect was arrested), keeping watch. At least one of the team had a high powered rifle. I am fortunate to live in a city and country where I can find these unusual and disturbing.
The suspect is a 20 year old white male, who worked part time in an egg packing plant in a town just outside of London. His co-workers were shocked that he could have been involved in anything like this, one of them describing him as a “home-schooled Christian boy.” At this time it is believed he acted alone; no information has been released regarding any obvious links to other extremists, or extremism, and media outlets didn’t find any social media accounts they could dig into.
YNnB, coming from Christchurch, I can understand the surreal nature of what you and the broader community must be feeling right now. I hope the spirit of togetherness holds as time passes nd the initial shock wears off.
I know what you mean about finding armed police and extra precautions being unusual and disturbing. I and many others had the same reaction here as all police were carrying weapons here for about a week after the mosque shootings, many with assault style rifles. Thankfully they returned to the normal unarmed state after that and additional security was reserved for the shooters Court appearances. I’m very thankful to live in a country where carrying weapons is still regarded as extraordinary.
Home schooled Christian is instantly a red flag to me. For that matter home schooled anything has become one. I do know a couple of people who home schooled because they felt they could do a better job of it than the education system. That was certainly true in one case. Most home schoolers I’ve met have some bug up their arses that they either want to indoctrinate their kids with, or prevent them from seeing the other side, or both. It’s invariably religion, unsavoury social/political beliefs, anti-taxing or some weird combo of the above.
Excellent article by Jennifer Bilek at 11th Hour Blog. She argues that it is an error to admit men to women’s spaces and resources if they’ve undergone certain medical procedures, that there’s no such thing as “true trans”. Extremely well put. I love the phrasing she uses, “performative body dissociation”.
Upon following a Twitter comment, I found a very interesting blog written by Shelley Wright, WrightingStuff.
She just started the blog this year, moving to this forum so as to be free “to write about the issues that are important to me without restrictions or fear of censorship.”
From her first post:
The issues I want to explore involve, first of all, women and girls, including feminism and all that movement’s different aspects and permutations. I identify myself as a “radical” feminist, although this hasn’t always been so. But, at least since I was in my mid-teens, I’ve seen myself as a girl or woman in a world that doesn’t necessarily value me because of that. I became a “second wave” feminist, dropped out of it, came back in an international context, left again, and now I’m back. I’ve also spent many years as an international human rights teacher, writer and advocate, and especially a student and teacher of Indigenous issues. My interests extend to history, law, international relations, intellectual and cultural property, and the Earth’s environment, especially climate change.
Her viewpoint is shaped by a number of basic premises:
Feminism is about the rights of women and girls. And women and girls are female human beings.
Science and scientific inquiry are the bedrocks of how we think about the world, both as it is now, but also how we got here, and where we might be headed.
The “Peoples of the Earth” – Indigenous, ancestral, rural people, the working poor – have developed ways of living on Earth that might show us how to find a way out of our current crises. Therefore Indigenous rights – like the rights of women and girls – are foundational.
History, however it can be discovered or deciphered, is a collection of all the stories that tell us who we are as humans on this planet. These stories can ground us in the Earth itself, or they can separate us from the planet and other living creatures, including other humans, in ways we are discovering can be alienating and dangerous. Understanding history, scientific knowledge and systems of inquiry, along with centering the basic rights of female human beings and all the peoples of the Earth, are the four basic premises we need moving forwards.
You know what makes for a wonderful evening and night? Being in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest with your AC on an overloaded breaker. And thus no AC. ‘Cause 80% humidity is awesome.
Well, at least saunas help lose weight, yeah? Yeah?
Yes, Jim Sterling has hopped aboard the trans cult theory in a big way, which is perhaps not surprising now that he identifies as a woman. There is no trans lie that he has not embraced, including that JK Rowling actively wants trans people to die.
Jim thinks he’s a woman now? Yeesh. I used to enjoy the Jimquisition, but I haven’t listened in over a year. I tend to unsubscribe when I hear someone say “terf” nowadays.
Anyway, there was a request for introductory books on logic waaaaaaaaaay back (Studebaker @ 233) that I totally forgot about. You’ll have to forgive me, as I was dealing with a goofy Doberman whose foot was sliced open and bleeding all over my bed. Sooooooooo …
Probably the easiest place to start is with one of the introductory texts listed at the Open Logic Project. They’re all freely available and used in actual university courses. For example, forall x is used at Calgary, Bristol, SLU, Cambridge, and more..
Actual books you might consider:
* First-Order Logic, by Raymond Smullyan. This was one of my first reads. Clear and concise, but very much academic. Anything by Smullyan is probably good. If you like logic puzzles, he’s your man. Also if you like math.
* Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking, by D. Q. McInerny. This is more a general purpose guide on reasoning rather than an textbook for sentential logic.
The comments have erupted in the expected direction.
I started reading but had to stop. I used to be a regular at SBM, and still like and admire many of the commentators who are now erupting in what for me is a very unexpected direction. Wtsf. I drift off, any they became unmoored.
Editor’s Note: Due to concerns about this post, it is currently under review by SBM editors for scientific accuracy, completeness, and context.
Bet it’s gone by the time you get there.
Some “expert” dropped a lot of dubious rebuttals and then said they could never, ever return to SBM. Probably that, in part at least. They were offered a chance to do a counter article. Not. Good. Enough.
One of his many points, as I understood it from a cursory reading, is that terminology and its meaning morphs really fast sometimes, and so when people talk about CRT, they talk past each other because they are really talking about different things. It seems worth a closer read. I will certainly go back to it when my time is a bit less squeezed than it is at the moment.
I’ve been thinking that by now it really should be Critical Race Theory 1 and 2 – 1 is the original, law school discipline, and 2 is the vastly broader category of anti-racism that goes beyond “well we have laws on the books so racism is over.”
This research network brings together a range of academics and scholars, all of which share a common interest in exploring how sexed bodies come to matter in their respective research fields and a common commitment to ensuring that a space within academia is kept open for those explorations. We will reflect on the importance of sexed bodies for health and welfare. We will critique the constraining stereotypes of gender. We will provide a hub through which theories and research can be shared and exchanged and will host workshops and an annual one-day conference. Our events will be maximally accessible. We aim to foster evidence-based and rigorous research in this burgeoning field and explore ways to foster maximum knowledge exchange, impact on policy and ideas and dissemination.
To hear about the Gender Critical Research Network and what we are about listen to our launching podcast
We encourage membership from across all faculties and from outside the University. We also encourage involvement from PGR, academics and researchers who are interested to understand and know more about what is meant by ‘gender critical’ research.
I recognized Kathleen Stock’s name among the people involved. Very welcome development.
In case anyone is interested, have just written to Andrew Sullivan about his latest piece about Critical Race Theory, particularly as it influences teaching in schools, on his blog, ‘The Dish’:
Dear Mr Sullivan,
Well, this on Critical Race Theory was rather better than your ready inclusion of ‘systemic racism’ as one of the horrible, ambiguous un-Orwellian terms in your last piece, although I think that as usual you exaggerate things. I agree with much of what you say, particularly with respect to those examples from schools, but was — I am sorry — amused by your comparing these examples unfavourably to the things taught in Catholic Sunday schools. It does seem to me that if you don’t like the one kind of inculcation, you should at the very least find the other very dubious. They do not seem to me to be fundamentally different, though you seem to find the one better than the other since you believe that Christianity is about ‘love, compassion, sin, forgiveness, dignity, God, Heaven’ (I rather admire your positioning of ‘sin’, followed by that quick ‘forgiveness’) — or, rather, that children should be taught this so that they may be primed to accept the more unsavoury aspects of Christianity later on. My irreligiousness was prompted at a very young age as a result of being subjected to such platitudes in (Anglican) Sunday school, as well as by the sense one had that behind these nice, comforting, sentimental things were lurking absolute power, fear, and punishment, not to mention Hell, for children hear of Hell about the same time they hear of Heaven. I do not really see that Christianity, whether of the Catholic variety or not, particularly as presented to impressionable children, is superior, in terms of morality or truth, to the platitudes about race trotted out in the examples you provide.
But, regarding ‘systemic racism’, I would say that Macpherson’s original term, ‘institutional racism’, is better than ‘systemic racism’ since it makes it clear these are faults of actual and reasonably clearly defined institutions, whereas ‘systemic racism’ is vague, and so allows abuse. You speak of ‘The legacy of this country’s profound racism, the deep and abiding shame of its genocidal slavocracy, the atrocities, such as Tulsa, which have been white-washed, the appalling record of lynchings and beatings…’ You might add to this gerrymandering and other on-going attempts by the Republican Party, particularly since the election of Biden, to suppress the African-American vote, the long sentences handed out to African-Americans for trivial offences, the constitutional allowance (Article 13) that ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ is permitted in the case of those who ‘have been duly convicted’ of a crime (an Irish friend of mine who travelled in the States in the last century was appalled to see chain-gangs working on the roads in certain areas), the destruction of African-American neighbourhoods by routing freeways through them, etc, etc.
These are all clear examples of present institutional racism. If it were clearly recognised that these things are examples of institutional racism, and reforms were made, the wind would be taken out of the sails of those who propose such an all-encompassing account of racism that any reform seems impossible, and only race-war seems on the cards.It would also make for a juster society. But I do not find in your fulminations any recognition of this possibility — instead you merely lash out at those whom you consider your ideological enemies without coming up with any positive and pragmatic ways of overcoming the present situation.
also re:341 The way she smugly talks about trans 4th graders, children who haven’t even started to understand sex or sexual maturity is outrageous. These people are extremely dangerous to kids. The indoctrinination and grooming needs to be outlawed with severe penalties.
My little ad hominem for the day: In the video she bears an eerie resemblance to Charlie Chaplin, if only she was as silent. :P
The Zan bill, an anti-discrimination bill in Italy (article is in Italian). The Vatican is upset about it.
I find the bill remarkable for several reasons. “Sex” is a key criterion, along with gender and gender identity. The wording of the bill does not conflate sex and gender. Incitement, not expression of views (“propaganda”), is prohibited; the bill is clear about that. It does not legalize gender self-identification.
Thee bill is a combination of several proposals to address discrimination and violence against various groups, including women, gay people, and trans-identifying people. Based on the analysis in the article, I think they’ve done a commendable job of constructing this measure.
He (to my view correctly) acknowledges that American liberals need to reject and criticize unreasonable statements from other liberals. He acknowledges that some of the reticence to do that is due to fear of being accused of wrongthink (“racist/sexist/transphobic/etc.”).
I think he misses the point that the reason accusations of wrongthink are a problem is because they can come along with pile-ons, harassment, doxxing, threats, deplatforming, smearing of reputations, boycotts, attempts at getting people fired and otherwise interfere with people’s livelihood, and so on. So, to me, the onus is not on the people afraid to speak up, but on the other people who would react so strongly against those who do speak up. Drum has previously dismissed concerns about internet trolling, because, so what, people say bad things about you, just block them. He doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the issue.
But yes, I suppose the corrective effort has to start with people speaking out, and speaking out also against the resultant harassment.
I came across this at Kevin Drum’s blog also, but the interesting part is in the article at the Guardian on why it took so long for “suitcases with wheels” to become mainstream. I would not have guessed the answer:
Resistance to the rolling suitcase had everything to do with gender. Sadow, the “official” inventor, described how difficult it was to get any US department store chains to sell it: “At this time, there was this macho feeling. Men used to carry luggage for their wives. It was … the natural thing to do, I guess.”
Two assumptions about gender were at work here. The first was that no man would ever roll a suitcase because it was simply “unmanly” to do so. The second was about the mobility of women. There was nothing preventing a woman from rolling a suitcase – she had no masculinity to prove. But women didn’t travel alone, the industry assumed. If a woman travelled, she would travel with a man who would then carry her bag for her. This is why the industry couldn’t see any commercial potential in the rolling suitcase. It took more than 15 years for the invention to go mainstream, even after Sadow had patented it.
In case it wasn’t clear, there actually are people arguing that there should not be male/female divisions in sports. The whole point of women’s sports is providing opportunities to women, not providing opportunities to a subset of the population that happens to be smaller and weaker on average, and I think this aspect is getting seriously lost amid all the argument about physical superiority and competitive fairness. Testosterone tests are not tests of strength, but rather they are supposed to verify whether someone claiming to be female actually is female, and transgender-identifying males just make a mockery of that entire concept.
Here’s a 2018 article from the BMJ that I came across while looking for something else.
I thought there was some discussion here of the free speech case recently decided by SCOTUS, but I can’t find it. The one where the cheerleader faced serious school consequences for swearing on her own social media account outside of school. This brief Guardian commentary makes the excellent point that this sort of punishment is overwhelmingly aimed at girls.
Daniel gently asked Joshua if he thought he was a boy or a girl.
He says: “Josh looked at me suspiciously and said, ‘I am a boy’. I said, ‘Yes, but you like it when you get your nails painted, especially when they’re pink and you like flowers. How do you feel in your heart? Josh looked at me and said, ‘I’m a girl’.”
It was only when Daniel then spoke to Joshua’s doctor about the conversation that he realised he was transgender too.
He said: “The doctor said, ‘We know that Josh will be fine because you know what this is’.
Decent NYT article about Caster Semenya. I’ve gone back and forth in my mind about this issue over several years, and for the moment I agree with:
Advocates for intersex athletes like to say that sex doesn’t divide neatly,” Lambelet Coleman wrote. “This may be true in gender studies departments, but at least for competitive sports purposes, they are simply wrong. Sex in this contest is easy to define and the lines are clearly drawn: You either have testes and testosterone in the male range or you don’t.”
And this means that Semenya is male for the purposes of athletics.
Although it is possible for a male (wIthout DSD) to have testes removed and testosterone reduced out of male range, that doesn’t turn the male into a female. I don’t know how internal testes with some DSDs affect puberty, bone growth, all that.
I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to suppress their natural hormone levels, just like I don’t support them raising their hormone levels for a performance advantage. Hormone tests are to help determine if someone competing in the female division is actually male, not to determine if someone male is sufficiently modified to permit competition in the female division.
Oh wow, this is completely insane. When I saw the headline, I thought it was going to be about COVID. Nope, it’s because “The five states newly added to the list have introduced bills in their legislatures this year that prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, block access to health care and allow the discrimination of the LGBTQ community, Bonta said.”
It’s intensely frustrating here in Alabama, one of those 17 states. The bill text is reasonable, but of course the social justice contingent is up in arms and pointing to this bill as the worst thing done by the governor. I hate these pile-on boycotts (I expect other states to follow suit, along with various companies and organizations).
The other bill being deemed “anti-trans” is banning medical transitions for minors. I agree with the sentiment, and the bill is actually well-written, but I am wary of a legislative ban. But this sports bill is within the scope of what the state should do, and it is painful to watch well-meaning people get so heated in opposition to this reasonable bill.
Recent Biden administration statements and recent SCOTUS actions imply to me that the federal government is likely to take action and force states to allow males into female locker rooms and sports teams. Grr.
What is the point of having sports teams for women and girls if men and boys can join them? What possible justification is there for segregating sports on the basis of “gender identity”? If sports were mixed-sex before, and they decided to create a second league, what reason might be given for “identifies as female” as the basis for a league?
There was a bit of a shock recently when Science-Based Medicine published a positive review of Abigail Schreier’s godawful conservative anti-trans book, Irreversible Damage, by Harriet Hall. It was surprising that such poor science could get a good review on a usually reliable science site, especially when the typical review pans it as “full of misinformation”.
Myers has said he has never read the book and doesn’t intend to, but that hasn’t prevented him from having an opinion. I don’t know whether he’s read Hall’s review, but he describes it as a “terrible article”.
He finishes:
I suspect that, like Freethoughtblogs, SBM gives their writers considerable autonomy, since they can generally trust everyone in their group. Every once in a while, though, something yucky will slip through, and then you have to do some retroactive peer review. I’ve been there. We’ve had a few dramatic incidents here, too. In this case, they announce that “Dr. Hall still remains an editor of SBM in good standing”. Here’s where we differ — if someone on FtB published something like that, there’d be a week or two of shrill in-house and public battles before the offending writer got the boot.
So now he’s just plain lying about it. Interesting. He did not want me to go. He told me so – but only in private, which I considered both cowardly and useless.
The commentariat is calling for Hall’s crucifixion, incensed by her continued “good standing.” A purity spiral is forming, like a proto-tornado about to hit land. You can smell it in the air.
It’s a problem. I sympathize — I went through all kinds of agonies when Ophelia Benson, a long time supporter of this network, revealed herself as a TERF. Kicking someone out is a major change, and I, for instance, was reluctant to do so. There’s always the hope that the offender will just shut up about their bad take, and if they won’t you get to take all the bad press of asking them to leave…or the drama of seeing them flounce. This piece was so strongly targeted against her opinion that maybe they’re hoping she’ll just leave.
Hall has a long history of regressive attitudes. I wouldn’t want to be on the SBM board right now.
So I went back into my email archive and found the one where he begged me not to leave. That’s not hyperbole: his exact words were: “So I’m making a last plea: please don’t leave. I NEED YOU HERE.” He then says why, but I won’t share that bit. I won’t share any more of it, tempting though it is, but I can tell you none of it is as grudging and hostile as that comment today. On the contrary. And he did not tell me to shut up about my bad take, or that he thought it was a bad take.
Also – what the fuck does he mean I was a “supporter” of the network? I was part of the network. I was behind only PZ and Ed in the stats.
To clarify a little more – in that email he was on my side, and angry at the people who were chewing on my ankles. He’ll never ever ever admit that now but it’s the truth.
Along with his reason and – apparently – his memory, PZ has lost his sense of humour. I very rarely look at Pharyngula now but when I do, it seems bitter, angry stuff. Not righteously angry, not crusading hellfire, just… angry. See also his recent sneering dismissal of Andy Lewis’ essay on largely irrelevant grounds.
Perhaps it was always like that and it’s just that my standards are higher these days, but it’s grim reading for whatever sensibilities I have have now. I hope PZ isn’t sad and angry and bitter; It’s been suggested, though, that one sure sign that someone has become a fanatic is that they completely lose their sense of humour about that aspect of their life. I don’t see that in the gen crits. I don’t see that at all. Those others? Different story.
Basically, Yvette Collin, a woman,of Native American descent / ethnicity, wrote a dissertation at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, in which she argues that horses are indigenous to North America because Native American stories mention them in their creation myths, and because of dodgy interpretations of some artwaork and misdatings of others. Based on these stories, she argues that the prehistoric horses of the Pleistocene never went extinct in America. She argues that scientific method is all “Western” BS, invented to exploit and colonize indigenous peoples, and therefore this PhD dissertation (!) will not use scientific method.
Just wondering if anyone heard about Bill Cosby being released. Seems there was some violation of his First Amendment Rights, so he’s a free man.
I think it’s a bit much to assume if someone does something wrong in your trial you should get a free pass. That puts bad actors back on the streets too often, while people who are innocent, or who have done nothing but smoke a joint in the wrong place, rot for years because our system doesn’t consider innocence a good reason for an appeal.
I think it should lead to a new trial, removing all the violation parts, with a new judge and jury. If they acquit him, then he can walk.
Of course, you know if it’s rape, they need to find a way to let the guy out. After all, it was only women he hurt. Now, if he’d misgendered any of them…
Just to say that a new mass grave for First Nations children has been discovered in Canada. Also, there is the following article in the Guardian about similar schools, many or most of which were run by Roman Catholics, in the USA: ‘My relatives went to a Catholic school for Native children. It was a place of horrors.’ By Nick Estes.
She argues that scientific method is all “Western” BS, invented to exploit and colonize indigenous peoples, and therefore this PhD dissertation (!) will not use scientific method.
This is, to me, the biggest problem with Critical Theory, the wholesale explicit rejection of scientific method.
(With the caveat that I know practically nothing about Critical Theory. I didn’t have to study that stuff when I was doing my PhD work. But I’m taking for granted that what Sackbut is saying is correct.)
What I know about Critical Theory is minimal; a number of articles, and “Cynical Theories” by Pluckrose and Lindsay. (I highly recommend the book, even though I have significant disagreements with some of the claims; it’s quite thorough and well put-together.) So take that for what it’s worth.
Just seeing GW@355. I’m hardly an expert on children, but even I can see how that line of questioning goes.
1. You, an authority figure, asks a child a question with only two possible answers, one of which seems obviously correct. (“Are you a boy or a girl?”)
2. Child looks confused that you would ask such an obvious question, and cautiously gives the obvious answer. (“I’m a boy.”)
3. You say “but….” followed by some arguments.
4. Child concludes that, since the obvious answer is apparently wrong, and there are only two apparent answers to the question….
I mean, this is pretty much how the Satanic abuse panics went down, isn’t it? Ask a child if something happened, then keep pushing and asking again if they say no. Kids are good at reading what adults want them to do/say.
I don’t know enough about CRT to defend it with any certainty, but I did read Lindsay’s critique of the 8 worst things about it on New Discourses. I wasn’t that impressed. In fact I felt that some criticism was either totally blinded by immersion in societal racism or plain dishonest.
His staunch defence of scientific method (and therefore all science) as being above reproach, whereas CRT wants people to ‘know’ things because of an oppressed groups lived experience was especially problematic.
As a scientist I know very well that it is possible to intentionally or not allow your preconceptions lead you into designing studies in a way that confirm your assumptions, and to interpret results in a manner that supports your desire. And that’s in hard sciences when you’re attempting to be objective. Consider social sciences, of which personally I place a lot more emphasis on the social than I do on the science. Application of statistics to a data set does not make a study well designed or objective in and of itself. Let’s not forget the wonders of the bell curve, racial IQ and craniology. All of which were the product of western scientific method at it’s best, well, accepted by peers and society at large at any rate. My point is, you don’t have to look that hard to find discredited and junk science when you go looking and a fair bit of it has been used to racially motivated ends over the years. Any claim of ‘that’s not proper science because the methodology was bad’ would be No True Scotsmanning.
I’m not at all sympathetic to traditional ways of knowing – such as the claim that an evil spirit lurks in the bog, off the coast or that the earth os 4000 years old. Then again, in the face of rigorous scientific analysis in Japan that sea walls were plenty high enough, despite centuries old stone tablets on hillsides saying ‘don’t build below here’, maybe science should take that into consideration. Same with many cultural precautions about eating or drinking certain things or hanging out in certain places. The reasoning and myth around why might be complete garbage, but in at least some of those cases the why not was spot on. poisoned water, dangerous geology, toxic plants, food that is prone too spoiling.
Scientists can be far too dismissive of cultural experience, just as culture warriors can be too suspicious ion science.
Across Canada, many communities cancelled Canada Day celebrations in the face of the continuing discoveries of unmarked graves of the victims of the residential school era. Instead, gatherings, walks and marches were held in many communities to mourn the dead and work. Flags across the country flew at half staff.
It looks like Conservative leader Erin O’toole has had to walk back some of his “canel culture” rhetoric in the face of growing response to recognize and face our troubled history as a nation:
In the wake of the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools, O’Toole told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday this year’s pandemic-enforced “subdued” Canada Day celebrations will be an opportunity to reflect on the country’s past.
“That’s how, I think, we build a great country,” O’Toole said.
“And we recommit to reconciliation and to making sure that dark chapters of our past, like the horrible residential school program, should fuel our desire to meet the calls to action that have been out for six years and provide a road map for us.”
A source close to O’Toole said the comment was not meant as an endorsement of the 94 recommendations, or calls to action, made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. Instead, O’Toole is calling for the federal government to provide a plan for locating and commemorating residential school cemeteries.
This response from across Canada gives me some hope that more than lip service will finally be paid to justice for the Original Peoples of our country. We’ll see.
@377: I think Sackbut is talking about Critical Theory in general, not specifically Critical Race Theory. I don’t know how much statements about one can apply to the other (since I know very little about either).
I very much respect Rob’s comment #377, and having now read some of Lindsay’s posts, I am in complete agreement with Rob’s judgement of them. I also liked his remark that social sciences are more ‘social’ than ‘science’, if one is taking, say, physics as the model for everything. But why should physics be the model for everything, as Lindsay & his ilk seem to suppose? The only thing I would take issue with is his remarks about traditional ‘ways of knowing’ — so-called ‘primitive’ peoples did in fact have considerable funds of genuine knowledge, as one learns when one reads some anthropology of the kind that does not begin with the presumption that ‘primitive’ people (they are not ‘primitive’ at all in fact) are ignorant idiots: the term ‘ways of knowing’, whether used favourably or unfavourably, is a modern sentimentalism. As for Japan, where I have lived for nearly 50 years, I would remark that Japan has a remarkable and centuries-old civilisation, which owes much to China, and those ‘old stone tablets’ on the hillsides (which I had not heard of – so thank you, Rob, for telling me of them) would almost certainly have been put there by local officials who had had experience of what could happen along those coasts.
notBruce @ 378 – god damn that’s terrifying. As in, it looks as if it could set off firestorms that would wipe out whole provinces or states. Or just plain everything.
I agree very much that “Science” is sometimes put on a pedestal, that people use it as a bludgeon to stifle disagreement, that there is a lot we can learn from social sources. I don’t think Critical Theory is useless. The problem I was referring to is the wholesale rejection of objective truth and the explicit abandonment of the scientific method, which I think is far too extreme a reaction to the problems in the conduct of science. In science, if evidence is wrong, if there are biases in research, the method is supposed to allow for correction. The response to new evidence, like the horse story, should be more science, better science, not the abandonment of science. Whether horses were in the Americas is an objective fact in dispute, not a personal truth.
I think Pluckrose and Lindsay were fair in regard to good aspects of Critical Theory and the incorporation of social information into science.
They had lots to say about Critical Race Theory in particular, and I had more disagreement with them in that section than most others. They don’t think systemic racism is a valid concept, they think racism is all about individual viewpoints about other people; I disagree. I did find more compelling their criticism of “Black ways of knowing” and, again, the wholesale rejection of the scientific method, which they documented with quotes and references. Their descriptions and examples fit well with other writing I had seen.
They also discussed Gender Theory, Critical Social Justice Theory, and several other areas. The identitarian movement and standpoint theory I found very helpful in understanding a number of current issues and many discussions. These all, to varying degrees, are based on rejection of objective truth in favor of the primacy of personal narrative.
One particular framing I found especially illuminating: the replacement of the individual with the intersection of identities. This person is less important as an individual than as a queer Black woman, for instance. For the most part I agree with them that this “intersecting identities” and viewing people by identity rather than as individuals has got out of hand. The framing explains a lot, and convincingly identifies why I found certain articles or arguments troubling.
I see this has ranged farther afield than I initially intended. I hope it’s useful.
Also, re Sackbut’s comment #372: 1) I really do not think that that vacuous and foolish dissertation, which should never have been accepted, has much or anything to do with Critical Theory of whatever kind; 2) instead of appealing to ‘scientific method’ as a standard for any intellectual endeavour whatsoever, I think it is worth asking what the scientific method is designed to do, and what its applications might be outside the realm of the natural sciences. Science can certainly throw light on the arts, for instance — I think of Aniruddh Patel’s splendid ‘Music, Language, and the Brain’, which incidentally takes issue with Steven Pinker’s ignorant remarks about music (for scientists can be as ignorant and foolish as any of us) — but human affairs are extraordinarily complex in a way that it is difficult to deal with by the ready application of over-arching theories: one may think of the failures of Marx’s, Hegel’s & (on a far lower level) Toynbee’s theories. And there is, apart from science, a long tradition of paying attention to facts and reason, and striving for intellectual honesty. Which is why I admire such a thinker as Judith Shklar, the first woman to gain tenure as a professor at Harvard, who did not apply scientific method in her works, and had no reason to do so.
Sackbut #384: you can find on Youtube a TED talk by by the inventor of the term ‘intersectionality’ by Kimberlé Crenshaw, in which she explains why she finds it useful. She comes nowhere near suggesting or even intimating that the ‘individual’ is erased in favour of some abstract ‘identity’ or ‘identities’. That is a complete misrepresentation of what she is saying.
It is noted that while this finding is disappointing/infuriating, the court apparently came to rational decisions on a number of points.
A short thread on today’s judgment on the Downview prison transgender unit.
Short version. Guess what, the High Court agrees that rights are a pie.
…
I always thought that this would be a difficult case to win. I’m disappointed that the Court decided against issuing a more robust defence of the rights of female prisoners in relation to male prisoners who identify as women. There is, though, a lot to welcome in this judgment.
The court accepts that the decision to house male prisoners who identify as women in women’s prisons means reducing the rights of female prisoners.
Rights are a pie, the Court agrees, and female prisoners are being expected to give up some of their share to accommodate males.
The Court also agrees that male prisoners who identify as women have a higher rate of sexual offending than female prisoners. In other words, their sexual offending patterns are more in line with males, not females.
The Court recognises that accommodating males who identify as women in women’s prisons does risk discriminating against female prisoners, and regardless of whether a male prisoner assaults a female prisoner. Their very presence could be enough.
The Court accepts that the housing of male prisoners in women’s prisons may cause female prisoners to “suffer fear and acute anxiety”. It’s not transphobic. It is a perfectly reasonable and grounded concern.
The Court also notes that the Prison Service data collection on trans prisoners “lacked clarity, and left many questions unanswered”, including in relation to the collection of sexual offences data.
So this is something of a pyrrhic victory for the Prison Service. It has been put on notice that its current approach undermines the rights of female prisoners (while doing so ‘lawfully’) and that it could be vulnerable to future legal challenge.
The Court ruled on “the lawfulness, not the desirability, of the policies”. The current undermining of female prisoners’ right in favour of a small sub-section of male prisoners is, currently, ‘lawful’.
Tim, I’m familiar with the concept of intersectionality. It has precisely nothing to do with what I was talking about. Perhaps “overlapping” would have been a better choice in my comment. I don’t think P&L were referring to Crenshaw, either. I think the concept they outlined has merit.
I’m a bit miffed; I think I explained my point, and you attribute it to misunderstanding Crenshaw.
Surely you see there are problems with “identity”, and surely you see that people are being rejected or solicited in certain situations because of their “identity”. Sometimes these factors are indeed relevant, but often enough not. Sometimes attempts at alleviating discrimination, an admirable goal, get bogged down in looking at “identity” in minute detail, with quotes and proportions, and with a result that sometimes individual qualifications are overlooked in favor of the “identity” mix. Surely you’ve seen this.
I recall an interview with some “queer” activist who was asked about her “intersectionality”. She was something like queer trans demisexual aromantic gobbledegook, and the interviewer was impressed. This had precisely nothing to do with Crenshaw, either, but both parties probably thought it did. It did, however, relate to the P&L identitarian criticism, because there is nothing impressive about someone based on their personal assessment of attributes of personality.
I’m not even sure we are arguing about the same thing. I see a number of Bad Things, policies and rules and demands and opinions, that I think are credibly viewed as derived from Critical Theory, and I found my one book, P&L, that helped me understand that connection. I thus see problems by inference in Critical Theory. You seem to prefer to defend Critical Theory, saying that these problems are either minor or not related to Critical Theory. But can we at least get to the point of agreeing whether the problems exist? Can we agree that the rejection of the scientific method in that horse study is at best poorly worded, but more probably ignorant and misguided?
I’m not trying to defend Pluckrose or Lindsay individually. I’ve read almost nothing else they’ve written. I don’t agree with the whole of the one book. But I do think they tried hard to be fair and thorough in that book, and I think I learned something from it.
I agree that they are not impressive. They reiterate a number of the points in P&L that I found less than compelling. A couple of points I think make sense, but not most of it.
The trouble with Pluckrose and Lindsay, from my point of view, is that they got famous as Twitter snarkers during that whole “let’s all bully feminists” phase, along with Peter Boghossian. I find it hard to take them seriously.
Sackbut #388. I’m sorry you are miffed, Sackbut, but you did use the words ‘intersecting identities’, which did suggest that you were referring to ‘intersectionality’. I am sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying. There is in fact a long history of scientific ideas and ideas from other intellectuaI fields being taken out of context and popularly misapplied, the idea that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity implied moral relativism, for example. I should have thought that my remarks about ‘that vacuous and foolish dissertation’ made clear my opinion of that thesis about horses in the Americas.
Been following some live-tweeting (mostly by Akiva M Cohen) of the sanctions hearing in Michigan federal court at which Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and various other Big Lie proponents were ordered to show why they should not be sanctioned for frivolous litigation.
It’s always dangerous to make predictions based on a judge’s comments or questions until you see the ruling, but it does not seem to be going well for Team Kraken.
Powell actually showed a shred of sense, mostly letting her own counsel handle things.
Wood decided to tell the court that he has no idea how his name ended up on the pleadings in this case, he wasn’t involved, etc. Given that he was served with the sanctions motion and failed to withdraw during the “safe harbor” period — and engaged in discussions about the case on Twitter — I suspect that’s not going to go well for him.
Two other attorneys, Heller and Klownhandler (yes, that is an unfortunate name), pretty much doubled down. Demanding an evidentiary hearing on their underlying claims (which have already been disposed of), interrupting the judge, etc.
The attorney hired to defend the attorneys seems like a competent person trying to do his best with a bad record.
The judge got deep into the facts. Went through several of the affidavits that plaintiffs submitted, questioning them on who prepare the affidavits, what efforts were made to verify the facially implausible assertions made in them, etc. That’s not a good sign for Team Kraken.
No decision today. There will be some further briefing submitted.
Hearing is now over. Only new thing to report is that Powell managed to screw up after all, making a closing statement in which she declared that she would do it all over again and file those same papers. That’s completely sabotaging her own defense — now she can’t rely on any claims that it was reasonable at the time, given the urgency and lack of time for a full investigation, to rely on these whacko affidavits and nonsense legal theories. Nor can the judge say that she’s learned her lesson and is repentant. This is practically daring the judge to sanction her.
In case anyone is wondering, the defendants (the parties moving for sanctions) have asked for the following:
1) reimburse the defendants for their costs of defending this nonsense
2) serious sanctions sufficient to punish counsel and deter future abuse of the legal system
3) refer the attorneys to the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan to determine if they should be disbarred from that court (each federal court has its own bar)
4) refer the attorneys to their home state bar associations for consideration of professional discipline
There was a forgettable article decrying the overuse of the terms “Nazi” and “fascist”. Nothing insightful. But it was accompanied by a photo of a protest, including a sign that said “Kill all Nazis”. The article didn’t address this at all. To me, the glib overuse of labels makes it easy to dehumanize opponents, to assume we know everything important about them, and to call for death with nary a second thought. To me, the dehumanization is the bigger problem compared to watering down definitions, but of course both are concerns.
Reader, I rolled my eyes. I know that’s not the kind or constructive thing to do when someone is brave enough to come out, but I’m afraid I couldn’t help it: my old gay eyes rolled involuntarily. That was partly due to amazement. When I came out, 20 years ago, I wasn’t worried that people might think I was declaring myself queer because it was cool – it was decidedly not cool. No, I was worried about getting beaten up. I’m not trying to win the oppression Olympics over here: I think it’s brilliant that we’ve gone from words like “gay” and “queer” being widespread slurs to something that the privileged offspring of politicians reckon is a badge of honour.
Still, I’ve got to admit that there was a dash of cynicism propelling the eye-rolling. Last time I checked, demisexuals weren’t exactly an oppressed minority fighting for equal rights. They are just people who aren’t sexually attracted to others unless they form a strong emotional bond with them first. (Congratulations, some of you may suddenly have realised that you are not actually the boring hetero you thought you were – you are an exciting demisexual! You even get your very own flag!)
I would seriously question that anyone’s personal journey that involves elaborate scouring of definitions, seeking a term with a definition that might be appropriate, constitutes “coming out”. It’s more like “This is how I am, I’m trying to find the right word” rather than “This word with a well-understood definition applies to me, revealing information you didn’t really have before”.
It’s irritating how people seem to think that putting “-sexual” at the end of some fancy prefix will automatically refer to a marginialized minority group.
My guess is that “demisexual” is considered a marginalized sexual orientation because “I’m sexually attracted to people I’ve formed a strong emotional bond with” is basically a rephrase of “hearts, not parts.”
As we know, this cute little slogan is used to batter down the idea that homosexuality is about … homosexuality (same-sex attraction.) Instead, being gay or lesbian means you’re attracted to others of the same gender. Lots of lesbians love girl-dick, and boy-pussy is (or should be) welcomed by all unbigoted gay men. You fall in love with the personality . Having a genital-fetish (an oxymoron if ever there was) is a kink that can be shamed, and if accompanied by an attempt to define being gay or lesbian, worse than shamed — totally condemned.
That’s an interesting connection I hadn’t thought of. I had assumed that “demisexual” was just another attempt by people who desperately want to be under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and aren’t satisfied with calling themselves an “ally,” with an added dose of the sanctimony I referenced earlier.
Apparently there is a counterpart to “demisexual” called “fraysexual,” for people who lose sexual attraction to someone once they develop an emotional bond, and therefore have to stop having sex with their partners. I heard this mentioned (not for the first time) on Dan Savage’s podcast, and Dan (who’s run afoul of the everybody’s-got-their-own-label-and-flag crowd before, but who mostly just sighs and goes along with it) couldn’t resist noting that this is what we used to call emotionally stunted.
No doubt someone is working on a term for “person who only has sex with people they find attractive, except when they’re drunk and then it’s anyone with a pulse.”
Apparently, though the real anger is directed towards those who interpret their fixation on genitals as having something to do with defining sexual attraction as gay or straight.
@Screechy Monkey;
I could certainly be wrong (and that counterpart supports that,) but it’s the first thing I thought of when I read the definition of “demi sexual.” Of course, I think I’d just been reading about the Cotton Ceiling and my mind was on the hearts-not-parts slogan. It sounds so noble, like marrying your fiancé after they lose their legs in a car accident.
CA Women’s Prisons Anticipate Pregnancy After Forcing Women to be Housed with Men
New pregnancy resources and free condoms appeared in CCWF in preparation for wave of male transfers under new “gender identity” law
Women incarcerated in California’s largest women’s prison are describing the conditions as “a nightmare’s worst nightmare” after the introduction of new pregnancy resources in the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) medical clinics. The new resources are a tacit admission by officials that women should expect to be raped when housed in prison with men, where all sex is considered non-consensual by default within the system.
New posters recently appeared in medical rooms outlining the options available to “pregnant people” in prison, including prenatal care, abortion, and adoption. The poster also declares that women have the right to “contraceptive counseling and your choice of birth control methods by a licensed health care provider within 60-180 days prior to scheduled release date.” However, the only methods available to incarcerated women to prevent pregnancy are condoms, which appeared shortly after the men, and Plan B emergency contraceptives.
I did not know of the existence of beach handball until this controversy, but the uniform requirements for beach volleyball and beach handball are similar. Women can wear bodysuits or midriff-baring shirts with bikini bottoms. Men’s uniforms include a full-length tank top and shorts at least 6 inches above the knee. Far more coverage in the men’s uniforms.
What struck me in particular was the juxtaposition of the two stories. We almost never hear stories of men being sanctioned or warned for not exposing just the right amount of skin in their sports uniforms. Women gymnasts get criticized for having the rear of their leotards creep up, and for wearing leg-covering suits. They can’t catch a break.
I just finished reading Trans by Helen Joyce, and found it both well-written and persuasive (as if any more persuasion were needed). Most of the arguments will be familiar to regular readers of B&W, but I still found it useful have all the separate pieces of the puzzle put together into a single coherent picture. It will no doubt be (indeed has already been) dismissed as hatespeech by the Usual Suspects, but we know what accusations like that amount to, don’t we… I may write a review when I have more time. In the mean time I highly recommend it.
You should also definitely watch Arty’s interview with the parent of a boy who is on the verge of wanting to transition. Arty is becoming a seriously good interviewer and the woman is also really good. The interview is very revealing.
What’s interesting to me about this case is that he is being charged with an attempted hate crime for targeting women. I have been keeping half an eye out for any use of “hate crime” that refers to misogyny, and this is the first one I can recall seeing.
Glad we finally got a new miscellany room! I had some lousy news last night. My step-mother has COVID; we’re waiting for the test results on my father. He’s 88, and even though he’s in generally good health, he has a history of respiratory illness (possibly asthma, but not diagnosed as such), so we’re pretty worried.
Sorry to hear the bad news; hoping for the best. This pandemic is so awful.
Sorry to hear Ikn, hoping for a speedy recovery.
That’s rough news iknklast. I hope it all turns out ok.
Sorry to hear that.
I’m really sorry to read that, iknklast. If it’s any consolation, my mother caught it back in January (she turned 86 in March) and although she said it was worse than the worst flu she’s ever had (and she had it in the pandemic back in the fifties), she has recovered fully. Mind you, she is considerably fitter than I have ever been, and was still running last year. She even nursed my father through his final illness with no help until his last week.
Oh, I should add – Mum didn’t go to the hospital, because no-one was even admitting that the coronavirus was in the country at that time, let alone publicising the symptoms. Since she thought it was flu, she didn’t even call her GP because she knows that antibiotics don’t work on viruses.
I had eight weeks of odd, ever shifting symptoms myself back in February. Bad asthma. Sore throat. Days in which I felt hit by a sledgehammer. Endless dry cough. Nobody else I am around every caught anything and the local HMO (Kaiser) never suggested a COVID test. I just got steroids and al buterol for the asthma.
Was it COVID? The lack of any transmission suggests not, but still…Another coworker had a spell of endless dry cough as well…even before I did.
Damn, iknklast, here’s to a quick recovery.
Brian M, my wife had a nasty cough-till-you-puke cold last January; I caught it when she had pretty much recovered, but for me it was like a ghost cold–I felt like I had symptoms coming on, but they never really amounted to anything. But since then I’ve had some low-level chest congestion almost constantly. Neither of us has been tested, but I wonder.
I have friends who claim that they or people they know had COVID as early as November 2019. I am very skeptical of such claims, because they require that (1) these individuals were extraordinarily unlucky to be the rare first few infections in the U.S. (which is improbable because none of them had recently returned from an overseas trip, etc.), or (2) that COVID was actually fairly widespread back then (which is improbable because, while these individuals just had flu symptoms and treated it at home, statistically speaking there should have been a spike in patients showing up in the ICU and needing ventilators, and even if health care professionals didn’t notice it at the time they surely would have looked at the data in retrospect).
Ordinary flu still existed in 2019-2020, as did a whole bunch of other infections. In July, I had some symptoms consistent with COVID, but my test was negative. When I asked what else it could have been, the doctor shrugged and said there are plenty of viral infections that would be consistent with my symptoms. Of course, she also said that it could have been COVID, because that test had a false negative rate estimated around 30%. To this day I have no idea whether it was or not; last time I bothered to check, you had to pay for the antibody test and I just wasn’t that curious, especially since the question of acquired immunity is uncertain anyway.
My father had a negative COVID test; he has to wait now for a second test, especially since the retirement home he lives in has a rapid spread. One person – one person took off their mask while there, and…this.
This tickled me:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/biden-covid-safety-transition-444040
Pretty much a Trump stench fumigation.
I saw a cleaning product called White House sanitizer in the supermarket. I thought it might be for exactly that purpose.
Oh NOES! She has done it again!
Trans people everywhere are being erased. Trans rights are being trampled. Grease fires are being prepared. The
WitchBitch must be burned!Of course it’s hateful to say so when you are claiming for yourself something that trans people don’t have – growing up as female. How dare you deny our authentically lived experiences as growing up as boys while we were really women and then living as men while we were really girls.
https://www.theage.com.au/culture/books/this-climate-of-fear-serves-nobody-well-says-j-k-rowling-20201210-p56ma0.html
iknklast #11
keep us posted. we hope for the best.
@iknklast
Yes, hoping the best for both your step- mother and father.
@Holms #12:
I think they’re just using Covid-19 as an excuse. They better sweep for bombs, too.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been reading up on the topic of democratic breakdown lately, if not to look for hope, then at least to move the sense of existential dread from a purely visceral “gut” level to something that can be understood and dealt with intellectually. These books include:
“The Road to Unfreedom” by Timothy Snyder
“The People vs. Democracy” by Yascha Mounk
“Twilight of Democracy” by Anne Applebaum
“How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Snyder (who had a major best-seller a couple of years ago with his short pamphlet “On Tyranny”, another must-read!) spends a lot of time on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed “The Road to Unfreedom” began as a book about the Russian invasion and the accompanying propaganda war (a test that the West failed), but evolved into a book about Europe and the U.S. in the aftermath of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Snyder contrasts two a-historical conceptions of time. The West has for a long time been under the spell of the what he calls the “Politics of Inevitability” (democracy, peace, prosperity, and progress are inevitable, there are no alternatives etc.). When this spell is broken, it tends to give way to the “Politics of Eternity” (history is just an endless cycle of attacks on the innocent nation by outsiders), the latter being dominant in Russia right now. In either case we are absolved from any responsibility to do anything: If progress is inevitable there is nothing we need to do. It everything is just and endless cycle of repetitions, there is nothing we can do. Snyder emphasizes the Russian link more than any of the other writers, not to explain away the failings of West, but precisely because the Russian propagandists in many ways understood our problems better than we did (at least in part because of our naive belief in the inevitability of progress) and were thus able to effectively use them against us. He compares Russia to a doctor who gives you a correct diagnosis in order to make your illness worse. The doctor doesn’t have your best interests in mind, but the diagnosis is pretty much spot on. As a country that has gone further down the Road to Unfreedom than America or Western Europe, Russia also provides a useful warning about where we might be heading. Besides weakening the West an important part of Putin’s motivation was to prove to his own people that the so-called “democracies” of the West are just as corrupt as Russia (indeed worse, since at least the Russians are not hypocritical about it), that all this talk about “democracy”. “freedom”, or “the rule of law” is just a sham and hence nothing to strive for. It’s interesting to note that some of the first people to predict the victory of both Trump and the brexiters were Eastern Europeans (Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles) who had seen the same game play out before and knew how it ended.
Mounk describes how authoritarian populists all peddle some version of the same basic message: The problems facing the nation are ultimately easy to solve. The only reason they remain unsolved is that the mainstream politicians are corrupt and self-serving. The populist alone speaks for the people, hence anyone who opposes the populist is by definition “against the people”. All the people needs to do is put the populist in charge, so he can “drain the swamps” and make the nation “great again”. In reality, of course, it’s never that simple, so when the populist has indeed been elected and needs to explain why the promised Utopia fails to materialize, the solution is to blame outsiders as well as “traitors” and “enemies of the people” (the political opposition, independent media, neutral institutions etc.) that must be stripped of power and replaced by loyalists. Mounk sites some alarming poll results that seem to indicate a dramatic decline in the support for democracy from older to younger generations (another point in favor of iknklast’s skepticism that millennials are going to solve every problem), a trend that is borne out by people’s behavior at the ballot box where populist parties like Front National and Alternative für Deutschland have gone from fringe to major forces to be reckoned with. He argues that the stability of democracy in the West after World War II may not have been inherent, but rather contingent on certain preconditions that are no longer present. He identifies three important trends that coincide with the rise of populist parties all over the Western world. First the stagnation of living standards: Most of the support for authoritarian populists does not necessarily come from today’s losers, but from those who fear (often with good reason) to end up as tomorrow’s losers. Second increasing ethnic pluralism (or, in the case of the U.S., erosion of the racial hierarchy that used to allow non-whites to be safely ignored). Third the rise of social media which allows extremist views, crazy conspiracy theories, and outright fabrications that would previously never have made it through the editorial process of any reputable newspaper to spread like wildfires all over the internet.
Applebaum focuses on the treason of right-wing intellectuals who used to see themselves as defenders of liberal democracy against communism but have since gone on to become peddlers of far-right conspiracy theories and in many cases staunch defenders of the one-party state. Many of the same people have abandoned capitalist ideas of “meritocracy” for a system that rewards party loyalty over achievement. Applabaum – an old-school fiscal conservative who has done more than anyone to document the atrocities of the Soviet Union – can hardly be accused of leftist bias, and many of the people she writes about used to be her friends. She doesn’t offer a single explanation for why these people – who are neither poor nor marginalized, have not been “left behind” by globalization, do not live in forgotten rural communities etc. – could become full-fledged authoritarians. In some cases Applebaum argues that the motive is personal resentment about not achieving the degree of power, status or success they felt entitled to. Others are opportunists for whom sucking up to the ruling elite of any system is just another way of achieving their personal ambitions. Applabaum also identifies an “authoritarian predisposition” that manifests as an aversion to complexity, disagreement and argument and leads people, on the left as well as the right, to long for a strong leader who will silence the dissenters and restore simplicity, order and harmony. Finally there’s what she calls “cultural despair” – a sense that something deeply important about one’s culture has been lost – combined with a “restorative nostalgia” that not only gets a warm fuzzy feeling from contemplating the (imagined) past, but actively seeks to bring it back (“Make America Great Again” etc.).
Levitsky and Ziblatt look at how democracies have failed elsewhere and identify common patterns. Most modern day demagogues and authoritarians are democratically elected, often with the aide of mainstream politicians who – out of opportunism or miscalculation – hope to use the popular appeal of the demagogue to their advantage and believe they can control him: A Faustian bargain that backfires badly. Once in power, the demagogue starts gradually eroding and subverting the very system that helped him get elected to make it practically impossible to be un-elected. The authors stress that the best way to protect democracy is to prevent authoritarians from coming to power in the first place and emphasize the gate-keeping function of parties. Most usefully they provide a handy “litmus test” for identifying would-be authoritarians ahead of time:
1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game (e.g. refusing to accept the result of elections).
2. Denial of the legitimacy of opponents (e.g. portraying opponents as “crooked” and threatening to “lock her up”)
3. Toleration or encouragement of violence (e.g. hinting that “the 2nd amendment people” take care of one’s opponent).
4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.
The authors also emphasize the role of unwritten democratic norms that uphold the “spirit” of the law above the “letter” of the law. Indeed, many of the subversive actions that help autocrats cement their power are not technically “illegal”, although they certainly violate the spirit of the law. The most basic of these norms are what the authors call “mutual toleration” (i.e. recognizing the legitimacy of political opponents) and “forbearance” (i.e. not abusing the powers granted to you according to the letter of the law in ways that subvert the spirit of the law). To explain the erosion of such norms, Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize extreme polarization where parties start viewing each other as enemies, traitors, criminals, illegitimate, or even an existential threat (in violation of the norm of mutual toleration), thus justifying doing whatever it takes to keep them out of the Halls of Power (in violation of the norm of forbearance).
Some points that I take to be common to most or all of the authors are the following:
• History is not over. Democracy is neither inevitable nor the only game in town. There are always alternatives, even in wealthy nations and even where democracy has endured for decades.
• The death of democracy doesn’t have to involve tanks in the streets or armed men in uniforms storming the national assembly. Gradual erosion over time can cause as much destruction as a sudden explosion. Whether authoritarians rise to power through elections or military coups, the end result is pretty much the same.
• Constitutions and democratic institutions do not guarantee the survival of democracy. Nor do they protect themselves. Democracies can be killed without violating the letter of the constitution. Indeed many of the anti-democratic reforms are passed off as attempts to make democracy function better (eliminating voter fraud etc.). Under authoritarian rule laws and institutions are turned into a shield for the government and a weapon against the opposition. Institutions do not protect us unless we protect them first.
• Although there are important similarities, modern authoritarian regimes are in relevant ways different from the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (and this is where references to Orwell etc. may be more misleading than illuminating). Elections do not have to be abolished, only rigged. The truth doesn’t have to be silenced completely, only neutralized, discredited, or drowned out by misinformation. People are not required to believe the lies of the government, only to doubt everything.
• The main purpose of modern day propaganda is not to inspire belief but to sow doubt, distrust, suspicion, and cynicism. As Snyder put it in “On Tyranny”: “If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights”. If everyone is a crook, you might as well support the crook who claims to be on your side.
• Crises and emergencies of any kind – whether real or fabricated – are precisely the opportunities that would-be authoritarians are looking for to suspend normal procedures and claim dictatorial powers.
• In the digital age perceptions are as important as facts, e.g. whipping up hysteria about mass-immigration works even in countries that have hardly seen any immigration at all. There is no shortage of people who will sacrifice democracy to keep out hordes of immigrants that only exist on the internet or as an idea in their own heads.
• Support for demagogues does not require suffering in the present, but usually goes hand in hand with deep pessimism about the future. If the people on the other side are infinitely bad, there is nothing we can possibly do to keep them out of the Halls of Power that’s worse than failure to do so. Even people who neither trust nor like the demagogue – indeed see him as unfit for office – may end up voting for him because they think every other option is even worse.
Bjarte, thank you for that excellent set of recommendations and reviews. I’ll bookmark it, and add some of those to my list (“On Tyranny” is already there). Your efforts and comments are much appreciated.
Thank you, Sackbut!
Tulsi Gabbard has introduced legislation that specifies Title IX protections for women apply in fact to women, rather than men who claim to be women. The gnashing and wailing has already begun. The article below at least attempts to present the information accurately, rather than framing the issue as “transphobic” or “anti-trans”.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/11/tulsi-gabbard-bill-title-ix-biological-sex/3893067001/
[…] a miscellaneous comment by Bjarte […]
Barr go bye bye (in the most ewww way possible)
Oh goody.
There is a really good response on Ovarit about that hatchet job against “TERFs” in The Atlantic.
https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/12170/the-secret-internet-of-terfs-a-rebuttal-from-ovarit
One thing that concerns me: the claim that gender-critical or radical feminists are not “hate groups” because an organization devoted to tracking “hate groups”, SPLC, has not declared them such. SPLC spouts the gender identity ideology line in some of their material, although it’s not nearly as emphatic as it is for ACLU. I don’t hold out hope that the lack of designation will remain true. SPLC has designated people and organizations “hateful” (or whatever the term is) simply for criticizing Islam; the gender-critical case is sufficiently similar to be equally concerning.
Kate Scottow has won her appeal: https://twitter.com/Kate_Scottow80/status/1339163288077299715
Original case referenced here: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/a-disproportionate-interference/
Something from John Pavlovitz:
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2020/12/17/republican-crimes-against-humanity/
Spot on.
YNNB @25,
The ruling in Scottow’s case (available here) is pretty interesting to me.
I don’t have much experience with reading opinions from UK courts, so if anyone else does I’d like to hear about it, but I’m really struck at the tone of it. U.S. appellate courts are generally pretty mild even when they are reversing a lower court; it’s usually just “the trial court erred in ruling….” But here the decision really seems to take a dim view (for good reason, in my opinion) of the trial judge:
The entire case below seems to have been a farce. It’s appalling that a judge in an ostensibly free society could utter what the trial judge here did:
What infantilizing nonsense! Imagine thinking that it is your place as a judge to convict someone of a criminal offense for not being nice. I can only imagine what else District Judge Margaret Dodd thinks falls within her purview. Failing to RSVP for a party?
The appellate opinion goes on to note the dubious legality of the gag order imposed on Scottow as a condition of her bail, and also reassigns the civil proceeding in which an injunction was sought against her. A pretty comprehensive (and deserved) victory.
I am not, mind you, endorsing everything that Scottow posted or tweeted. But that’s kind of the point — people have the right to say things that I disagree with or even are offended by. Amazing that it took an appeal to explain that to Judge Dodd and the Crown.
So now, Pat Robertson, an authority on alternate reality, says Trump is in an alternate reality with his denial of the election results. Ya think?
I read an article today about an apparent racial incident in Colorado. The details are not important, but I can dig up the link if needed. The woman telling the story is Black, and she says she is the only woman in the neighborhood who “identifies as Black”. The person who is the transgressor “identifies as white”. These phrases are presented without explanation, and there is no indication in the narrative that there are any people in the story who “are” Black or “are” white without identifying as so.
I know, given the principle of hypodescent, that some people might “identify as Black” without appearing that way, and there are people of Black ancestry who didn’t consider themselves Black but who were nonetheless slaves by ancestry. I know that there are some anecdotes about dark-skinned Black people who insist they are white, and some even express racist sentiments toward Black people, but I don’t know if those are real stories or play-acting. We all know about people like Rachel Dolezal who claim to be Black but in fact do not have any known Black ancestors. So we are aware that there are some instances where appearance and claims of racial background don’t match.
However, this story seems to have gone completely the way “gender identity” has: that no person “is” white or “is” Black, they only “identify as”. Whether the white transgressor was queried as to what race she “identified as” was unclear; she has light skin, so what she “identified as” seems to be a presumption. It seems to me the language in this instance has become distorted, that “identifies as” is the way you say “is” when talking about things like race and ethnicity, at least for some speakers. This is troubling.
I think I can see where some of that comes from though. Look at Obama for instance – he does pretty much “identify as black” but he will also point out when it’s relevant that there’s the other half of him. I remember being foolishly surprised once when he reminded us all that those pale Middle America types that some on the left make fun of are his people too. It’s complicated. But sex isn’t complicated that way, apart from rare DSDs, yet it’s the “identity” that’s now treated as 100% transferable.
I should have included examples like Obama (or myself, for that matter), people who have widely accepted reasons to “identify as” members of multiple racial or ethnic groups. I agree it’s not nearly as simple as sex.
But I nonetheless found the language jarring. Obama isn’t going to be accepted as white, no matter how he identifies, and nobody really asks obviously white people how they identify. If someone is of mixed Polish and German ancestry, they may care about one side or the other more, but they don’t generally get asked how they “identify”, in so many words. It’s a strange way to put it. Certainly it would be odd for people to look at a person with Asian features and say he “identifies as” Asian without even asking; the person perhaps “looks” Asian, or perhaps “is” Asian (pending evidence to the contrary).
It would be like looking at an unknown woman and saying she “identifies as” a woman; we can’t tell her mental state. We can tell she “is” a woman (or perhaps we are mistaken), and we can consider her mental image irrelevant. It’s this sleight-of-hand where mental state is truth, and “identifies as” is the same thing as “is”, that bothers me here.
A Happy Festivus to all the B&W folks — I look forward to another year of airing grievances together!
Thank you and likewise!
A lack of self-awareness? Blatant hypocrisy? Straightforward denial? You decide.
Over at FTB, the odious Giliel has a post on Affinity about the supposedly terrible world-building in the Harry Potter series* (G used to be a big fan of the stories until she noticed these problems, and her post was in no way motivated by Rowling revealing herself to be a ‘racist Queen Terf’, apparently).
One of the comments is from ‘Allison’, a TiM who wonders whether such writing is down to the author not understanding the realities of physics, populations, economics, etc. or just not caring because it’s just a wish-fulfillment fantasy where things don’t have to make sense: it’s just fiction so don’t ask questions, just enjoy the fun things that happen. However, that last part – basically that in fantasy tales truth doesn’t matter – leads Allison to:
Yup, here is a TiM worrying that people are believing things to be true just because they want them to be true. My ghast has never been so flabbered.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2020/12/27/harry-potter-and-the-horrors-of-world-building/#comment-56972
*Having neither read nor watched any Potter, I have no opinion on whether her criticism is justified.
A cheery thing for the new year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&feature=youtu.be
Man temporarily identifies as a woman to take the women’s deadlift record and make a point. From last year, but I missed it.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/24/i-became-a-woman-to-break-the-womens-deadlift-record/
Today my province of Ontario set a new one-day record for new infections, also becoming the first province to pass 3,000 new cases in a day, and my local health unit posted a new one-day record of 119 new cases (following 91 yesterday and 100 the day before). I wonder how many of those were the result of the delayed provincial lockdown, originally planned for Dec. 23, then changed to Dec. 26. The provincial Finance Minister was forced to resign after returning home from a Caribbean holiday over Christmas.
I’ll put this here, if you don’t mind:
There are better places for it to go but I’m too tired to look and it’s too brilliant a tweet not to put it somewhere.
It’s called Miscellany for a reason; of course I don’t mind.
Some enjoyable listening. A nice response to RW and PZM on a range of things centred on (of course) TWAW:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNR1CyRilRs
Neither of them come out of it very well.
Many thanks. It is indeed very enjoyable.
Trump continues to smash the china on his way out. Trump Gives Medal Of Freedom To Loyalist GOP Congressman Nunes:
*That is, Trump (though perhaps passed through someone who knows the conventions of English orthography).
Tomorrow it’s another one of the goons – I forget which one.
16 days.
Just reading a book which is largely set in the Pacific Northwest. Orca: How we Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator, by Jason. M. Colby. His argument is that our current understanding and appreciation of Killer Whales was a result of human exposure to captive members of the species, and that without this exposure to them in marine parks and shows, our attitudes would have likely remained fearful and hostile.
It’s well written, but tough going, because so much of the early parts of the book involve recounting the casual slaughter and careless destruction of these animals at the hands of humans seeing them as pests, dangers, and competition. I find as I get older I find it harder to read such things, particularly in regards to animals.
Also learned a new geographic term for the area: The Salish Sea.
Today’s Savage Chickens cartoon seems to me an apt description of a wannabe dictator currently (still!) infesting the White House. Not a coincidence, I imagine.
And by coincidence, I happened to tune in to CNN just now, as they confirmed the vote count from Wyoming and wrapped up the proceedings in the senate. A rare moment of sanity in a mad world!
Somebody please hold my hair while I vomit (actually, I’ve no hair to hold but the sentiment remains).
Bletch! I almost forgot the for fuck’s sake, Izzard, do you never hear what you’re saying out loud? bit.
Oh, please make the vainglorious man stop.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/eddie-izzard-woman-lorraine-kelly-she-her-b1783841.html
I saw that! Somewhere, probably Twitter. I too found it emetic.
All the millionaire international celebrity wants is “a fair chance in life” oh my god the man is blind!
But what I actually came here for was this very interesting development:
Some among America’s military allies believe Trump deliberately attempted a coup and may have had help from federal law-enforcement officials
It is thought that some of the police authorities in there area were actually in on the attempt quietly, and supported the coup attempt by deliberately setting aside normal protocol for a threat like this to give the rioters an easier time accessing the building.
That is interesting.
So the idea is that somebody high up blocked that coordination.
Interesting indeed.
Interesting twitter thread I found via Stonekettle. It looks at “patriot” posts before Jan 6 and includes footage taken by the tweeter during the coup.
https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1348249074953289730
Things pointed out:
-Communications the author monitored beforehand did not seem very precise or co-ordinated. Some people were complaining about the lack of detail and specificity regarding what people were supposed to actually do.
-“Stochastic priming” Online rhetoric ramped up over time to include killing police officers as well as traitorous politicians.
On Jan 6 itself:
-There did not seem to be any overall plan amongst those marching on the Capitol, whose numbers were not great.
-Police presence minimal. Clear, open pathway to the Capitol. The author (who reportedly had been in BLM demonstrations) was continually bracing for an unleashing of police resonse that never came. Many police seemed to have no gear, no shield.
-Police who arrived on the scene latter are not very active or concerned, making no effort to create a perimeter or control crowds.
Who is talking in the quoted passage?
Thank you for the thread & Stonekettle reference. I’ve just been trying to explore that issue myself.
That’s the summary of the thread creator @Literary Mouse.
My wife is on John Pavolvitz’s mailing list. This is his take on the coup:
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/01/10/a-nothing-revolution/
Another thank you.
Good article in the NY Times (from a fellow Maroon) about Hawley and Christian Nationalism. (I’m neither a Christian nor a nationalist, but somehow I don’t see nationalism as consistent with the supposedly universalist message of Christianity.)
Fabulous, a 100% absolutist theocrat in the Senate. Just wonderful.
Another thread from eyewitness Terry Bouton embedded in the Capitol coup attempt, also found via Stonekettle:
https://twitter.com/TerryBoutonHist/status/1348365375449268226
Light police presence noted; crowd expected police to join them : reviled those who did not.
David Frum in The Atlantic on the coup:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/conservatism-reaches-dead-end/617629/
The latest bombshell accusation:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/mikie-sherrill-capitol-hill-attack-458655
According to a Democratic member of Congress, opposition members of congress gave personally guided tours to people as reconnaissance.
Jaysus.
Mind you, Politico goes on to say “Sherrill did not identify the lawmakers she was referring to, how she was able to describe their activities as “reconnaissance” and how she knew they were connected to the riots that consumed the Capitol the following day.” It sounds very surmise-like.
And now for something completely different.
Today, while walking on my way to work for my weekly “check to see if there are packages for the store at the post office during lockdown” visit, I saw four Bald Eagles, quite close-up. I saw the first one, a juvenile, while I was crossing a major bridge. It had just taken off from a tree, and landed a few farther trees down. I spotted another as I was watching the first. While still on the bridge, I saw one of them grab a small fish out of the river, returning to a tree to eat it. I backtracked off the bridge, and went down into the floodplain park area where the trees were, where I also saw an adult up in a tree. I pointed the eagles out to someone passing by, who spotted a fourth eagle (a third juvenile) in another tree. I’ve never been as close to wild, free eagles before. It was quite thrilling, and it made my day.
I had thought about bringing my camera with me on my walk, but had decided not to. Probably just as well, because if I’d had my camera, I would have been taking pictures as I walked along (which always slows me down), and would not have been crossing the bridge at the time the first eagle flew nearby, so I might not have seen any of them! So, I recorded the experience in my memory instead. I told a number of others who were walking along the path about the eagles, and they were very appreciative when I pointed them out. They really are quite impressive birds: apart from swans, they’re the biggest birds I’ve seen around here.
On the homeward journey a couple hours later, I saw a pair of adult Bald Eagles, climbing, banking and circling.
Probably a mated or courting pair. One of them might have been the adult I’d seen earlier, but there’s no way to be sure. So at least five eagles in one day, maybe six. Not bad!
Growing up in the 60s and 70’s in Southwestern Ontario, I never saw Bald Eagles at all, probably thanks to DDT. I didn’t see my first one until 1988, on a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, when I looked up to see what a bunch of gulls were squawking at, and saw a Bald Eagle, along with the protesting gulls, wheeling high overhead. Now I see Bald Eagles on a fairly regular basis, but it’s still exciting. To see four at once, and being able to approach them as closely as I did, is especially so.
Ahhhhh cool. I know exactly how you feel. I see them quite often, there’s a resident pair a couple of miles due west of my window (literally – the tree is in a park just past where the east-west street I live on the corner of which ends, and the tree lines up with the street) and they fly over now and then, though more often they fly over the water and I see them there. I always alert people if they haven’t noticed. Last time was a week or two ago, just as the bird swooped in front of me and the couple I alerted; they were quite thrilled.
I haven’t seen them catching a fish though! That’s very cool. I did see an osprey catch one in Lake Washington though.
I remember the first time I EVER saw them flying around in Seattle, high in the sky above a park next to Puget Sound (miles north of the one across from me). Some time in the 80s. I was beyond excited. Then gradually I saw more and more, because yes, they’ve made a big comeback. There are a bunch of permanent nests in Seattle.
Here’s that pair in the park due west, taken by a blogger in 2014:
Here’s another item on the question of possible insiders in the Capitol attack: the panic buttons of a congress member’s office are alleged to have been torn out ahead of the attack.
https://www.newsweek.com/capitol-hill-riots-panic-buttons-torn-out-staffer-1561191
More looting at the White House, but this time not a rioter in sight. It does make one wonder: if they can be so blatant in apparently taking small-value (financially: not the only measure of value, of course) items of government property, what items of a greater value will be carried out concealed in packing cases? I’m sure that Chicken Caesar and his family don’t have to worry about their deposit being witheld until an audit of the place is completed.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-white-house-art-removed-illegal-national-archives-b1787948.html
As a part of my ongoing efforts to study the rise of authoritarianism I recently finished reading This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev. Here are what I take to be some of the main points.
Where the totalitarian movements of the 20th century used to peddle some official story (an ideology, a philosophy, a world view etc.) that purported to be true and back it up with appeals to supposedly objective facts and rational arguments, the new authoritarians have adopted a more “postmodern” approach. Rather than claiming the truth for themselves, the likes of Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan are content to put so much conflicting information out there that people finally just give up trying to understand what’s going on. Apart from creating general confusion, the idea is to sow as much doubt, distrust, suspicion, cynicism, and paranoia as possible in order to convince people that nothing is what it claims to be and everything they hear – including any criticism of the authoritarians themselves – is all just part of somebody else’s hidden agenda or nefarious plot. If everyone is always lying, you might as well go with the lies that are most favorable to your own tribe. If everyone is a crook, you might as well support the crook who claims to be on your side.
Even back in the “pre-post-truth” era politicians, commercial interests, and ideological pressure groups of every kind did, of course, employ the whole arsenal of outright lies, subtle lies, bullshit, bending the truth, half-truths, spin, and a practically endless store of disingenuous and self-serving “framings”. But even if people often failed to live up to the established norms and standards of honesty and truthfulness, at least it used to be implicitly understood that there were such norms and standards, which is why even liars (at least the clever ones) would usually make some effort to cover their tracks, make sure there was “plausible deniability” etc. Being caught telling obvious, outright, shameless lies used to be embarrassing pretty much no matter who you were, and hardly anyone ever walked away from such an exposure without being at least temporarily weakened. The logic of the post truth era has turned this situation on it’s head. As Pomerantsev puts it:
Paradoxically, in a world of collective distrust and suspicion, the person who lies most openly and “blatantly” may end up being perceived as more “honest” than those who “pretend” to be telling the truth.
The libertarian trope that the truth always prevails in a free “marketplace of ideas” was, of course, always on shaky ground. The idea that new media – simply by making all kinds of information more readily available – would inevitably lead to a new enlightenment was only ever a Utopian dream. The same technologies that have made it easier than ever to spread true information and good ideas have also made it easier than ever to spread false information and bad ideas. Still, it used to be a common perception that free speech, as well as more information in general, favored the side of truth and democracy while censorship was the tool of oppressive regimes who were afraid of the truth and could only survive in a climate of forced orthodoxy. With the rise of social media authoritarians have managed to co-opt many of the tools of pro-democratic movements, including free speech, e.g. by framing organized disinformation campaigns by thousands of trolls and bots as “concerned citizens exercising their right to free speech”. Meanwhile, faced with this sudden onslaught of disinformation and fake news, some of the people on the pro-democracy side do indeed start calling for censorship, thus enabling the authoritarians to claim that their opponents are the ones who are afraid of the truth and have no choice but to silence their critics because they don’t have any counter-arguments.
Another tool that authoritarians have taken from the playbook of their opponents is to assemble a mass-movement by uniting widely disparate groups behind a lowest common denominator that should be so vague and nonspecific (disaffection with the “elite” or the “establishment”, wanting “change” etc.) that everyone can find an interpretation they can get behind. Indeed, another advantage of not being committed to a coherent ideology is that you are free to selectively target different groups with different messages especially tailored to their tribal prejudices and biases. The algorithms of social media platforms like Facebook have made it easier than ever to identify people’s predispositions, and frame your message in terms of what they are already afraid of or angry about. If you’re on the far left, say, you might find your timeline flooded with messages portraying Ukrainian protesters as nazis;. If you’re on the far right they’ll be portrayed as representatives of the international Jewish conspiracy. If you’re part of the BLM movement you’ll be targeted by messages portraying Hillary Clinton as a racist; If you are a racist, you’ll be told that she loves black people and is in favor of wide-open borders. The fact that these messages can hardly be true at the same time doesn’t matter as long as the people on both sides live in separate information bubbles and never compare notes.
Not only are people especially susceptible to information that confirms their pre-held views, but hardly anyone is immune to group conformity and tribalism. Bots, trolls and cyborgs exploit this by disguising themselves as ordinary citizens and members of the same tribe as their targets, thus creating the impression that certain views are both immensely popular and widely accepted among those you consider part of your ingroup:
Once this “climate of opinion” or “manufactured consensus” or “ersatz normality” has been established, you hardly even need the trolls and bots anymore. People will eagerly and enthusiastically keep spreading the disinformation all by themselves.
[…] a post by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany […]
A different take on women’s spaces. :-)
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/exclusive
Gwyneth, wow. Just, wow!
Woopsie!
I often talk about the things New Zealand gets right, and to be fair I think we do get a lot right. Not everything though. There are things we get badly wrong. One of them is the treatment of vulnerable women and children. It’s a cancer in our society. We have terrible statistics around abuse and murder of young children. Our youth suicide rate is appalling and far too many girls and young women end up as prostitutes, especially if they are Maori, Pasifika and South-east asian.
Our laws against trafficking were recently amended. The government has been looking at various policy applications that could work in concert with this law to reduce the trafficking of vulnerable people. The linked story says it all. men (exploited migrant labour) got all the attention, despite making up only around a quarter of the total of trafficking victims. At least the Department responsible has been shamed into taking a second look.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/123976551/women-are-the-primary-victims-of-human-trafficking-new-zealands-plan-to-stop-slavery-forgot-them
At least, Trump’s Mexican Wall seems to be good for one thing.
But only one.
John Pavlovitz’s thoughts on the end of the Trump junta:
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/01/19/thank-you-president-trump/
Found this thread via Stonekettle’s twitter feed. From someone named Chris Pramas.
https://twitter.com/Pramas/status/1351292415475290114
Well, what we are seeing on the right at this moment is the creation of a new dolchstoß myth. Trump refuses to admit that he was beaten. And he indisputably was.
He knew–particularly after his epic failure to deal with Covid–that he was likely to lose, so long before the election he started lying about the outcome. If he won, it’d be legitimate. If he lost, he was cheated.
He could not ever admit the possibility of a legitimate loss. It’s just beyond his narcissistic mind. So he’s lied endlessly about how he really won in a landslide and of course the right wing propaganda machine has backed his play.
The direct consequences of this was the coup attempt on January 6. We will almost certainly see more political violence this week and beyond. Because the American right now has their own dolchstoß.
I can’t remember if this was mentioned in the Navalny posts already here, but apparently Navalny called a Russian intelligence agent and tricked him into spilling details by impersonating another agent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-55395683
Yikes, no, I missed that altogether; thank you Holms.
The Australian of the Year awards just came out, and all four are women. And when I looked closer, I was relieved to see all four were actual women.
Further to Holms, above
https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/audio/inspirational-women-honoured-at-australian-of-the-year-awards
And yet the plonkers at Newscorp report Grace Tame’s award under “Lifestyle”. FFS!!
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/who-will-be-crowned-aussie-of-the-year/news-story/40e47027ef5b15787d5121f82cf19518
I’m sure you’ve all read that Biden rescinded Trump’s “transgender ban” for the military.
On some public post about this move, I think the White House FB page, a music equipment vendor I know (not well, but I’ve seen him in discussion forums and I’ve done business with him) expressed disagreement with the change, using a meme that mocked Biden, referring to him as a clown. To my view, silly, but a simple criticism.
In a private music group, this vendor is now being raked over the coals, and lots of people are declaring their intention to cease business with him and calling for a boycott of his store. For posting a rather mild expression of disagreement using his own personal Facebook account.
I find this utterly jaw-droppingly strange. I have never seen anyone call for a boycott of a music equipment vendor over misogynist remarks or racist remarks, and I cannot believe such things have never happened. This particular vendor I don’t think suddenly started posting reactions on public pages today. From what I know of him, I’m sure he’s had choice words to post on various topics before. But this, posting a silly meme on a post about transgender people, THIS is what gets people riled up? THIS is what inspires a public demand for a boycott? What the heck is wrong with people?
Seth Abramson reports on a Jan. 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel in DC that included Don Jr. Giuliani, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (the one that Trump was trying to reach during the attack on the Capitol) among others.
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/january-5-meeting-at-trump-international
I saw that! One of the people who reported this meeting on Facebook has been trying to walk it back, but there is edit history, there are screenshots, and there are photos.
https://www.alreporter.com/2021/01/27/trump-appointee-put-tuberville-in-jan-5-meeting-at-white-house-before-editing-post/
Some possible good news?
For something like the fourth or fifth time now, the Supreme Court has put off deciding on whether or not to accept Missouri’s challenge to a ruling from the 5th Circuit enjoining a Missouri anti-abortion law, seen as a vehicle by the right to overturn Roe and Casey.
On the one hand, this could be nothing. The conservative justices may just be waiting for political tensions to cool a bit before they grant certiorari (agree to hear the case) and eventually deal the death blow to abortion rights in this country.
On the other hand, even granting cert would still mean that a hearing is months away, and a decision longer than that, so political considerations may not be key. So it’s possible that there’s some reluctance on the part of the justices to take this case. And since abortion rights advocates won below, every day that SCOTUS doesn’t intervene is a victory of sorts.
So… I don’t even know if I’d say “cautious optimism,” more like “slightly relaxed pessimism”?
An eight-year-old girl has been expelled from a Christian school in Oklahoma because she had a crush on another girl. Various news outlets are reporting this mostly as an incident of anti-gay sentiment. The mother is criticizing the school’s actions over “something my daughter probably doesn’t know or fully understand”. Of course, she’s only eight, she doesn’t know anything about this stuff.
And I’m thinking how different the narrative would be if she declared that she’s a boy because she likes this other girl.
https://www.fox23.com/news/local/owasso-second-grader-expelled-telling-another-girl-she-had-crush-her/5Q34TNAAFFB3DPPNC77GOOLSRQ/
I was arguing with someone about JKR being “transphobic” just now, and it occurred to me that I did not know whether her name was Joanne or Joanna. Thinking that I probably ought to know given she was the subject of the argument, I googled “JKR” and… well, see if you see what I don’t.
For me, a link to her web site was about 20-30 entries down the page. I had never heard of the designer at the top of the listings; that was… interesting.
Her web site says it’s “Joanne”.
https://www.jkrowling.com/about/
I found it, I just found it remarkable that JKR the author was not on the first page when entering that search term; I vaguely recall Google openly admitted to tinkering with their search algorithm to put extremists, nazis, climate deniers etc. further down the rankings and it seems to me that they are doing the same with JKR. I am sceptical that “Jones Knowles Ritchie” and “Jabatan Kerja Raya” are the more famous JKRs.
On the other hand, I just searched for ‘JK’ and Rowling was the first result. I suspect the high rankings for ‘Jones Knowles Ritchie’ and ‘Jabatan Kerja Raya’ are due to both been organisations and are therefore being known by their initials. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rowling referred to as ‘JKR’.
I saw a post that was a Twitter screenshot from someone who claimed to have gone through well over ten thousand TERF accounts (Twitter, I presume) and presented what he “found”. No evidence, no explaining terms, of course. Many of these accounts purportedly followed misogynists, many supported conversion therapy, many followed anti-LGBT hate groups, about eight items, mostly guilt by association, none of course having anything to do with any actual gender-critical argument. I went to look up the original tweet to see if there was follow-up or pushback, but the account has been suspended.
I find it really distressing how people I know, people who are otherwise careful with backing up claims, being clear about terms, and so on, are so utterly careless when dealing with gender identity issues. The person who posted this threatened to cut out the tongue of anyone who tried to use feminism to justify such things as not having men-who-say-they’re-women in women’s sports. I have been resisting disconnecting from this person for some time, but I think I may have reached my limit.
I know, boy how I know. So many people like that I used to know – people who are otherwise careful with backing up claims, being clear about terms, and so on – just threw all that out the window on this subject. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand why. It must have to do with believing the intensely ominous claims about driving people to suicide etc etc, but then I just wonder why they believe all that. They wouldn’t believe it from the Proud Boys or Marjorie Greene or someone urging them to click on this link, so why believe it from people who claim to be magically the other sex?
I cannot stop laughing.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/01/jared-kushner-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize
found this on la scapigliata’s twitter feed: https://mobile.twitter.com/lascapigliata8/status/1356298426099630082
This is an extended, detailed look at Stonewall Uk’s “Diversity Champion” and “Workplace Equality Index”.
https://legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/01/submission-and-compliance/
More from the above linked look at Stonewall programs. It’s very good.
Looks like Foreign Policy has made corrections to that piece by Grace Lavery about the Tavistock ruling:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1356628476493709313
Oh yes, I saw that yesterday, meant to get back to it, thank you.
For all the linguists and language aficionados on this site:
https://xkcd.com/2421/
Heh.
I wrote this to my MP today in regards to Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy) a Government bill about to go to third reading. It criminalizes “conversion therapy” which is defined as
https://parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/bill/C-6/first-reading
I’m late to the party, but better late than never. Discussions on this blog helped immensly in the writing of this letter. Please forgive its length; it was hard not making it longer!
Letter follows:
I have some concerns regarding Bill C-6 about which I would like some clarification and reassurance. Unfortunately, I’m not sure either is really possible.
The Bill’s preamble, in part says:
Whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because, among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation and gender identity, including the myth that a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity can and ought to be changed;
Some myths of “gender identity” in relation to sex are actually being propagated by supporters of the concept themselves.
I’m wondering what the definition of “cisgender” is for the purposes of this bill. I have never come across a definition of “gender identity” that does not fall back on sexist stereotypes of what girls and boys, women and men, are “supposed” to like or how they are “supposed” to behave. much of the concept of “gender identity” seems to be rooted in socially constructed, patriarchal concepts of what is deemed “appropriate” behaviour for each sex. This does not break down sexist stereotypes: it reinforces them. The concept of “gender identity” and the claim that one can be born in the “wrong” body rely upon further claims of a mind/body dualism that is not in evidence. Some claim the existence of so many different “genders” as to render the whole concept virtually meaningless, so the definition used in this legislation is important. There are no such problems with the definition of same sex attraction. Without a clear, coherent, robust, non-circular definition of what exactly a “gender identity” is, this proposed change to the Criminal Code is going to cause problems.
My concern is that many young people going through difficult times in childhood and puberty are going to be shunted off into a “trans” identity that sets them on a lifelong course of medical intervention (puberty blockers, “corrective” surgery that involves the excision of healthy tissues and organs to better conform to the target “identity”, and wrong-sex hormones), which may fail to alleviate the underlying causes of any depression and anxiety they are be dealing with. In the United Kingdom, more and more young people who had been encouraged to go down this path are now regretting it. Detransitioners like Keira Bell are calling into question this approach to issues surrounding psychological problems arising in and surrounding puberty. For example, many detransitioners, had they been provided with counseling and therapy that did not suggest that they had somehow been born into the “wrong” body, would have grown up to be gay men, or lesbian women, so for them the “transgender” path actually amounted to conversion therapy in opposition to their sexual orientation! Social pressure, and “trans affirming” parents, teachers and therapists might encourage “gender non-conforming” girls and boys to believe they might be the other sex, rather than just girls who are tomboys, or boys who like to play with dolls. In those instances, these children would be having a “gender identity” forced upon them. Would this count as “conversion therapy?” How does the current legislation safeguard against that? What does it do to avoid this obvious conflict? It would seem possible that under the legislation, in which
320.101 In sections 320.102 to 320.106, conversion therapy means a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour. For greater certainty, this definition does not include a practice, treatment or service that relates
(a) to a person’s gender transition; or
(b) to a person’s exploration of their identity or to its development,
counseling and therapy which questioned or challenged someone’s “gender identity” instead of affirming and validating it unquestioningly (such as Ms. Bell now wishes she had received), would be considered “conversion therapy”.
Not all self-evaluation is accurate. If a similar model of affirmation and validation were followed in the treatment of someone suffering from anorexia, it would result in the patient’s death through starvation. Affirmation and validation of an anorexic’s inaccurate body self-mage as an overweight or obese person is not in that person’s best interests. Challenging such inaccurate beliefs, in a compassionate and understanding way, is a better path to that individual’s healthy self-understanding and acceptance than agreeing with them that they really are overweight or obese, and that further limiting their eating is the right thing to do to make their bodies conform to their incorrect beliefs about themselves. Would you classify psychological counseling and therapy which instead helped a person realize and accept an accurate perception about their own body a form of “conversion therapy?” Shouldn’t the same standard apply to the treatment of someone suffering from an inaccurate belief that they are “really” the other sex? Humans cannot change sex. Changing one’s “gender identity” does not change this fact. Neither does the conflation of “sex” and “gender” by trans advocates and activists. If one’s “gender identity” does not “align” or correspond with one’s sex, why is it considered a good idea to follow a path that attacks the body with medication and mutilation in a futile and harmful attempt to force such an impossible physiological “agreement?”
Unfortunately, I fear this amendment of the Criminal Code will create more problems than it solves. Without strict guidelines and safeguarding, the potential is there for a hasty, reckless application of “therapies” and interventions using the ill-defined and regressive idea of “gender identity” resulting in children and teens who might have otherwise growing up to be homosexual being “transed”, and subjected to exactly the sort of conversion therapy, in opposition to their sexual orientation, that this bill is supposed to outlaw.
Thank you for your attention,
Found on Twitter via Transgender Trend, retweeted by la scapigliata: A Quillet piece that’s a preview of an upcoming book written by a husband -wife team of psychologists who used to work at and with Tavistock GIDS.
https://quillette.com/2021/02/04/first-do-no-harm-a-new-model-for-treating-trans-identified-children/
The accused cyber-stalker of Amanda Todd has been extradited to Canada from the Netherlands to face charges in her death:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7622978/amanda-todds-accused-cyberbully-extradited-canada/
YNnB #100
I remember that case. Watched her video too. It was heartbreaking. And of course that piece of shit calling himself “The Amazing Atheist”, having decided that the bullying that drove her to suicide wasn’t enough, just had to add to the pile-on by posting a parody mocking her desperate plea for help after her death. If there were justice in the world her stalker would be driven to suicide himself. The Amazing Atheist too.
Urgh. Thank you.
Sackbut@96,
Thanks for the laugh.
Maya Forstater puts together some excerpts of an essay by Vaclav Havel, within the context of gender identity ideology:
https://mforstater.medium.com/the-power-of-the-powerless-d930a92f5f05
Say fellow Aussies, are you also enjoying the news regarding our own mini-Trump family, the Packers? This is fucking delicious. And, the poor dear blames a previously secret bipolar disorder for his shittiness in emails.
Doubtless many of you have seen this article already, but for those who haven’t: it’s by a TIF (“transman”) who is very much opposed to trans ideology, especially when it comes to children. Really solid points made, lots of links. I liked the differentiation between “gender dysphoria” and “transgenderism”, I think it’s helpful for clarity. Really good read.
https://www.newsweek.com/we-need-balance-when-it-comes-gender-dysphoric-kids-i-would-know-opinion-1567277
I haven’t seen it; thank you.
Ugh.
It’s disheartening when someone who’s views you usually find thoughful and interesting posts something that violate what you thought was their good judgement. It’s like finding out that such a person believes in astrology, or the magic healing powers of crystals.
In this case, it’s gender identity, and the shitty arguments used by those promoting it. Stonekettle/Jim Wright retweeted this from Charlotte Clymer:
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1359511027155615747
Clymer looks like he’s already sanitized his feed, as almost all responses are completely supportive. We see the usual nuggets of bullshit sprinkled throughout. Religious right wing?
Check.
Sex is complicated in non-humans, therefore a spectrum in humans, therefore trans?
Check.
No conflict between trans rights/demands and anyone else’s?
Check.
Opposing trans rights puts you in the same camp as forced birth advocates?
Check.
White supremacy?
Check.
Bathrooms and genital obsession?
Check. I think I’ve got a BINGO.
Clymer is couching “transphobic” discomfort as irrational, hysterical, reprehensible disgust. C’mon, it’s just a little discomfort.) And anyway, why shouldn’t women feel discomfort at trans demands to women’s spaces and resources? Are they not allowed any discomfort? Is there discomfort any less real than whatever discomfort trans people experience?
I can summarize three arguments that don’t involve “mere” discomfort without breaking a sweat.
1) Self ID has already made it harder for women to challenge predatory males seeking access to formerly female-only spaces. Women using these spaces have already been attacked by men claiming to be “trans.”
2) Trans identified male athletes who have gone through male puberty, giving them unfair physiological advatages have already denied women and girls athletic victories which would have led to records, scholarships, endorsements, etc.
3) Trans identified males have already taken formerly women only positions, posts, or prizes, unethically denying female participation, representation and acclaim that should have rightfully been theirs
None of these arguments are hypothetical or academic. In all these cases potential trans “discomfort” has been prioritized over actual female health, safety, recognition and remuneration. That’s not just a little “discomfort” we’re talking about here. If women’s sex based rights are seen as “transphobic” then there’s something seriously wrong with the formulation of trans “rights,” and women a right to organize to oppose them.
Really disappointed in Jim Wright. He’d retweeted Clymer before, but on non-trans issues. Sometimes he’ll retweet (or post a screencap if he doesn’t want to give a link and clicks) of a political comment or statement, which he then criticizes or ridicules. This sure looks like it was an amplification, a retweet-as-endorsement, as he made no personal comment on it after posting it to his feed. Those who choose to believe in astrology and crystals are, usually, primarily fooling and harming themselves. Gender ideology is a well funded and powerful imposition that harms others whether they subscribe to it or not. In many instances, those who do not believe are singled out for punishment and ostracism.
Sorry for the length.
P.S. to the above.
I’ve taken as read that Clymer’s definition of “transphobic” would encompass the legitimate defence of women’s sex based rights, seeing as his definition of “lesbian” includes himself. Having read about the Washington D.C. nightclub incident for which he claimed discrimination fter the establishment ejected him for having used the women’s restroom, I’m not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
If anyone can point to evidence that contradicts this assumption, I’ll be happy to see it.
Not at all; good stuff.
Re #108, I recently saw a post (Facebook, probably) about Twitter bubbles and why people believe this nonsense. The gist, if I recall, used Twitter as a main example, noting that you see the people you follow and their interactions with the world, nobody else; there is a whole set of people and viewpoints and arguments that are completely foreign because you never see them. In this case, people see those with scientific credentials making bad arguments, and they never see the criticisms, retractions, rebuttals. The few times something gets through, it’s dismissed as bigoted and the work of lone transphobic cranks.
This came out about a month ago, but I didn’t come across it until today: California’s Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of Meghan Murphy’s lawsuit against Twitter, in a 3-0 decision, which appears correct to me.
The time to file a petition for review in the California Supreme Court has not yet expired, but I would say that the chances of that court even taking the case are slim.
Remember, folks, the rich deserve all their money because they earned it by being much smarter than the rest of us. That’s why this “financier” gave $2.5 million to an organization that promised to prove Trump won, after a 20-minute phone call. Now he is shocked, shocked to learn that it was a scam.
It is certainly reasonable for attention to be paid to male victims of sexual abuse. But the first sentence of this article (as well as the subhead) references people who “identify as male”. This distorts the problem. There is a set of women and girls who “identify as male”. Some of them were abused or raped; in some cases this abuse was an impetus to “identify as male”, perhaps to attempt to escape the abuse. In other cases, women and girls were abused as female despite their claiming to be male. The emphasis on identity is going to take some cases from the female side of the ledger and slide them over to the female side, both missing the real issue and distorting the statistics. I hope that, whatever form this tracking effort takes, it keeps track of sex. I would expect the nature and frequency of abuse to be different for men and for “women-who-claim-to-be-men”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/16/half-men-unwanted-sexual-experiences-uk-study-mankind
Screechy @112, yeah I also saw that in the last day or so. I agree that the decision looks to be legally correct (as much as a layperson can understand such things). I still think Twitters decision was bad, but bad things can still be legal. What annoys me is the number of mostly male legal and tech commentators I’ve seen trashing Murphy. Fine, they disagree with her taking the case because of their views in the first amendment and S230. It’s that there is often an undertone that she also got what she deserved because she’s a bigot. What is broadly referred to as ‘Law Twitter’ seems to be firmly in the trans camp, possibly because there are a couple of prominent first amendment lawyers who are trans women. Possibly also because when you’re coming from a position of male privilege you just don’t get the potential and actual harm to women. Or maybe because so many of them see it as nothing more or less than a free speech exercise and they are absolutists on that point.
Speaking only for myself, I have no opinion on whether or not Murphy is a bigot or got what she deserved. Certainly I’m aware of the skewed nature of the debate over trans issues and the casual accusations of transphobia; on the other hand, I haven’t scrutinized her writings enough to form an opinion.
For me, it’s just a sense that this kind of thing doesn’t belong in court. I won’t go so far as to say this was a frivolous lawsuit, but it was a utterly predictable and correct result in my opinion, as both a descriptive matter (current law pretty clearly precludes it) and a normative one (that body of law is wise and prudent in this regard).
I don’t know of any principled way to say that Murphy gets to have a judge or jury rule on whether Twitter’s moderation decisions are correct, but Donald Trump and Milo Yiannopolous don’t. Or every Slymepitter who got banned from B&W or Pharyngula don’t get to have a judge decide if Ophelia or PZ acted fairly and consistently. Of course you can say that Murphy’s banning was a bad decision and those other ones were good, and I might agree, but this is a question of who gets to decide that and how.
If disgruntled people can drag social networks and message boards and bloggers into court every time they’re unhappy, you’re not going to like where that leads. The threat of litigation alone is going to make moderation risky, especially for smaller players. People with deep pockets or access to interest groups with free lawyers are going to get deferential treatment from litigation-averse platforms. Terms of service and moderation decisions will get less nuanced so that companies can say “hey, we’re completely consistent, we ban these precise words and nothing else” (or whatever). This is also why I cringe at all the “repeal section 230” proposals from politicians of every stripe.
And all of those bad effects are true even if the courts do a super awesome job of sitting as the Twitter Judicial Review Panel. Which they most certainly would not. I assure you, there are many many judges who you do not want anywhere near these decisions, and here I’m talking less about political or other issue biases and more about simple ignorance — even in 2021, there are a shocking number of judges who are complete Luddites when it comes to the internet.
I don’t know if that makes me a free speech absolutist or not. That terminology gets a little confusing here anyway, in that many people would claim that Murphy is on the side of free speech here because she is fighting against “punishment” for her speech, so then we get into arguments about state action, and free speech rights of platforms vs the rights of their users… and to me that’s all unnecessary, because I think the pragmatic argument against this kind of litigation is so strong that you don’t even need to get into all that.
[…] a comment by Screechy Monkey at Miscellany […]
It looks as though Trump has sacked Giuliani. It was inevitable and predictable but…. I’d kind of got used to the idea of the two of them bickering away alone together like Saruman and Wormtongue in Orthanc.
I think you mean two Wormtongues. As I recall, the book described Saruman as commanding, masterful, deep in knowledge etc. etc. and was worthy of the mighty Christopher Lee for portrayal.
Rush Limbaugh has died. I can’t say I’m heartbroken-so many cruel narcissists like that, including ones I know in my own life, seem to hang on forever fueled by spite or whatever else.
I know. I decided not to say anything about it, because I couldn’t say anything nice.
I finally have a term for what people do with definitions of words, be it”woman” or “gender” or “feminism” or “racism”. Changing the referent of a word while attempting to retain (and thus capitalize on) its moral valance in order to make your arguments more persuasive or harder to rebut is a “persuasive definition“. (Alternatively, wiki.) I knew I couldn’t be the only person to recognize that move as illicit.
So the next time someone says something to the effect of, “That’s not the real definition of XXXXX. The real definition is [insert fashionable nonsense],” we know exactly what name to give that bullshit.
But that’s not the real definition of persuasive definition. The real definition is….
That made me giggle.
Latsot gets a cookie.
Some good news for a change. Perseverance successfully lands on Mars.
Score one for science and engineering.
I wasn’t here to talk about it because I was too busy watching. Woohoo!
We’re told time and time (and time) again that there’s no silencing of GC academics.
Not everyone agrees, to put it mildly. So a site (https://www.gcacademianetwork.org/) was set up:
There are lots of stories there.
Needless to say, the site has been mass reported as a hate site and is now being blocked by some ISPs.
There is no silencing of GC academics.
Anyone been following this New York Times/Slate Star Codex/”Rationalist community” blowup?
Short version: NYT reporter decides it might be interesting to do a story about SSC, a blog run by a guy using the pseudonym Scott Alexander. But it’s a not-very-well-kept secret that Alexander’s real name is Scott Siskind — like, ten seconds of Googling would get you that info, it’s a little like how the blogger Orac’s real name was an open secret. So the reporter notes to Siskind that look, I can’t promise not to use your real name in the story because of NYT editorial standards. Siskind promptly freaks the fuck out, posts on his blog that he’s taking the entire blog offline because the NYT is threatening to “dox” him, and if there’s no blog, there’s no story. His fans then proceed to harass the reporter and her editor. This, predictably, causes the reporter to go “what the fuck is going on here, why is this guy so terrified of a story about his writings?” and results in this piece. This, of course, is now being denounced by the “Rationalist community” as a vicious hit piece that proves that the reporter and the NYT generally were out to get Siskind from day one.
My take on the Times piece is that it’s certainly not a flattering piece, and the reference to Charles Murray is a bit of a cheap shot because apparently Siskind was citing him favorably on a subject unrelated to Murray’s views on race, but overall it doesn’t seem out of line or unprofessional.
I was only vaguely aware of SSC and the so-called Rationalists. They seem like a very familiar story to me: a bunch of people, mostly dudes, who are really really big on using evidence and data and reason and logic (which is good!), but along the way become convinced that they are the rational logical ones, free from the biases that plague other people, while those who disagree with them and/or try to point out their biases, are self-evidently irrational and biased and wrong, because — hey, it says there on the label that I’m rational and logical!
Will Wilkinson has a rather lengthy but good summary here. He’s somewhat sympathetic to the Rationalists but thinks that their Vulcan-like confidence that they are creatures of pure logic and everyone else is irrational leaves them with some huge blind spots that, in turn, hurt their own ability to communicate and persuade anyone outside their niche:
This part in particular reminded me a lot of the “skeptical movement.” Indeed, I assume there’s a fair bit of overlap among the groups.
Oops, it would seem that I “misgendered” the NYT reporter, who is male.
What an absolutely fascinating article. Thanks for sharing it here. It does make me think of the skeptical movement, especially certain corners of it.
“I’m a transgender woman, and I was not born biologically male. I was born biologically transgender female.” – My new record for Most Idiotic TRA Comment Seen So Far.
Another victim of a “Gender [sic] Reveal” party:
(Their lack of close quotes.)
The woman who (claims to have) invented gender [sic] reveal parties has come out against them.
A girl who wears suits. Not a trans boy, just a girl going against gender norms. (I would argue that we knew in 2008 that focusing on a baby’s “gender” [sic] was not healthy.)
Wow, that second article. “… assigning focus on gender at birth…” Had to work in “assign” and “at birth”, didn’t she? And “gender”: just a few lines above that, the article mentions learning the SEX of unborn children.
Of course there are problems with making a big deal out of the sex of children. Of course focusing attention on stereotypical gender roles “leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.” One might hope that a sex reveal party is of no more consequence than an eye color reveal party. Nobody talks about “eye color assigned at birth”, though.
Sackbut,
I couldn’t tell from the article if she was taking a woke stance, or a gender critical stance. “Assigning focus on gender at birth” is so artlessly worded that it could be an attempt to talk about “gender assigned at birth”, but it could also be her way of saying that gender norms are bs. I lean a bit toward the latter, mostly because she makes a point to say that her daughter likes to wear suits. But I dunno, she may just not be very aware of the distinction between TERFs and TAs, hard as that is to imagine.
My guess is that she wasn’t taking a stance at all; she’s heard all about “sex/gender assigned at birth” and not defining people by “what’s between their legs”, and it all sounds so modern and science-y and equality-ish that she doesn’t look at the details. Certainly the TAs accuse gender-critical people of being “gender essentialists” very frequently, despite how nonsensical such an accusation is.
As you pointed out, this woman’s daughter likes to wear suits, which makes her simply a gender-nonconforming girl, not a (gender-conforming!) boy in the wrong body. It is the TAs who insist that only boys like suits, only girls like dresses.
Social contagion. It’s not “cool” to be a plain old normal teenager having questions about sexuality anymore. Got to fit under that ever-broadening trans umbrella so you can sneer at the people outside of it.
New record as estimated 18m Americans identify as LGBTQ, poll finds
Unbelievable. Mr Potato Head is just going to be Potato Head. Gender neutral. No mention of a renaming of Mrs Potato Head, but perhaps they weren’t sold separately.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/business/mr-potato-head-gender-neutral.html
@Holms # 131
Oo, I’ve got that one! Bet it’s from the same person, too.
Well, the possibility of women keeping our sex-based rights just received a huge blow here in the US. I don’t see how GC feminism is ever going to recover.
I don’t mean the passing of an unrevised version of the Equality Act. I mean Rep Marjorie Taylor QAnon Jewish Space Rays Insurrectionist Greene becoming the spokesperson for the dangers of trans ideology.
I know, I know, it’s a nightmare.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/biden-administration-withdraws-transgender-athlete-case-n1258723
Ahhh shit.
In case anybody was wondering about the Potato Head situation, I looked into it further. It appears that what Hasbro is doing is simply rebranding the toy line. Many toy lines have a name like Cabbage Patch Kids or Beanie Babies, with individual toys given names, but the toy line name is the big draw. Mr Potato Head was a toy, with Mrs Potato Head a separate toy added later, but now both will be items in the Potato Head line, with “Mr Potato Head” or “Mrs Potato Head” in smaller print elsewhere. The “LGBTQIAXYZ+++” community has apparently confused the situation. The toys are not being given gender neutral names; you still buy a Mr Potato Head or a Mrs Potato Head, just like you buy Applejack or Benjamin from the Beanie Baby line.
I wonder if the choice of “gender reveal” was made because having a “sex reveal party” sounds creepy or kinky. Some people just use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, with some favouring the latter because it sounds nicer to say in polite, or puritanical company.
People who are outside social media, and not paying attention to the online discussions of GC/TA issues, probably have no grasp of the differences between “sex” and “gender” as used by the two camps. In most people’s lives, “sex” and “gender” are not the same “terms of art” they are here at B&W and other GC venues. They aren’t going to be as carefully used by “civilians” and the lay public. (It doesn’t help the cause of understanding amongst bystanders that the trans activist side actively conflates and confuses the terms, switching from one to the other in the course of their claims and “arguments.” ) I think M.T. Greene herself may have fallen victim to this confusion when she posted the sign outside her office proclaiming that “There are TWO genders. MALE & FEMALE “Trust the science!” Quite apart from the fact that “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene is pretty much the last person I would ask regarding the science of anything, she’s using the SEX words “male” and “female,” while talking about two GENDERS. It would have been a stronger statement if she had used the word “sexes” instead. I wonder if her choice of “genders” was out of sloppiness, her own prudishness, or a misguided attention to the delicate sensibilities of her base’s prudishness?
In the UK, the census has been launched a month early in order to avoid the court challenge launched by Women’s Place UK over the guidance for the sex question:
https://mobile.twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1365926931225583617
Because of the move by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) to launch the to the census early, FPFW has suddenly had to extend their crowdfunding camapaign to cover the additional legal costs of accelerating their court proceedings.
Campaign here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/sexinthecensus2021
Details of the legal challenge here: https://fairplayforwomen.com/legal-grounds-fpfw-v-ons/
Alabama HB1 is being slammed as an “anti-trans” bill. Information about the bill, including the full text, is here:
https://legiscan.com/AL/text/HB1/2021
I’ve read the bill. The rationale is solid: it has perfectly reasonable summary of the state of knowledge regarding puberty blockers; it notes that teens left alone tend to desist; it points out the lack of any studies showing that transition has long-term benefit and reduction in suicide risk; and it cautions about the removal of perfectly healthy body parts. It is well-written, surprisingly. This is all garden-variety science that trans activists like to dispute or suppress or call bigoted.
The bill requires that teachers not encourage children to hide their gender dysphoria, and not facilitate such hiding. I think this is a good thing. Kids should be encouraged to be open to their parents, not told that their parents are their worst enemies. Sometimes parents are terrible, but not usually. (Abigail Shrier has a lot to say about schools hiding such things from parents. I had no idea it was as bad as it is.)
The bill makes it illegal for anyone to provide or prescribe puberty blockers or cosmetic surgery to minors for the purpose of making them appear to be the opposite sex (or to allow them to perceive themselves as the opposite sex). It also makes it illegal to keep it secret from parents that a child thinks of themselves as the opposite sex.
I have some issues with the legal stuff, but the basic bill seems narrowly focused and rational.
There is a big opposition rally planned. Lots and lots of local progressive organizations and people are behind the rally, and lots of people I know are trying to drum up attendance. My admittedly faulty memory does not recall quite this much furor over the many anti-abortion bills that constantly come up, but perhaps that’s protest fatigue. I understand the ideological stranglehold affecting so many progressives, but it is bewildering that they have chosen this bill as the hill they wish to die on. There is a lot of crap coming through the pipeline; this bill affects very few people (and those it affects, it helps, no thanks to progressives).
This has got to be an ALEC bill or something like that. There is no way in hell that Alabama legislators came up with this on their own. I haven’t heard whether other states are also introducing the same bill or a similar one; have any of you?
PZs put up a post which basically says that he rejects logical arguments and doesn’t care if he is thought to hold contradictory views on a subject (a very thinly disguised message to those who might call him out for the way his views on human sex conflict with his acceptance of sex in all other animals): he is, he says, a human, and humans are by nature illogical creatures so shut up. He goes so far as to describe himself as rational but flawed. Flawed, ffs! Isn’t that a rather Catholic view of humans?
It’s people who use logic that are the problem, you see: if they’d only stop holding on to reality they could be as wise and woke as PZ.
Rational defences such as men are not women are just so blinkered, y’see.
PZ is officially closed to dissent.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/02/28/was-i-philosophically-checkmated-dont-think-so/
So, utterly free from thought, rather than utterly defending freethought. It’s one of the weakest arguments someone in his position can possibly apply. It literally negates decades of his own past arguments. It makes his teaching worthless. It says he doesn’t believe in science or the scientific method (you can be wrong, that’s not a sin, but once someone demonstrates a flaw in your logic, willful wrongness is the worst kind). It’s just a retreat into ‘I’ve made my mind up and they’re nothing you can do.’ It’s akin to the bloke who holds down a day job as a petroleum geologist because it pays well, while belonging to a Church that teaches the Earth is a bot over 4000 years old. I consigned PZ to the irrelevant and sad pile years ago, looks like he’s determined to stay there.
I wonder at what point his employer begins to be concerned that the quality of his teaching might not be everything it could be?
I’m wondering if he’s maybe finally realised just how deep and dark a corner he’s backed himself into, or allowed himself to be backed into. Is it a good sign that he is at least prepared to consider his position as illogical even if he doesn’t go so far as to name the topic? Up until now he has defended his position as the one backed by the science, so this is quite a surprise in a way.
From here there are really only two possible routes for him: either he continues falling down the rabbit hole with his fingers jammed into his ears, or his once-admired scientific integrity re-awakens, slaps him around and he refutes the whole pile of shite he’s been building. What he cannot do is to just drop it without a word and pretend it never happened. Not if he is to salvage any credibility, that is.
It turns out I missed International Wheelchair Day yesterday.
Funny thing is, the trans-disabled community (that’s people who identify as disabled without being disabled (yes, really) not disabled trans people) didn’t decry it as trans-disabledphobic and try to make it about them. The police weren’t waving trans-disabled flags. Train companies weren’t ripping seats out of their trains to better accommodate our trans-disabled allies.
I wonder why that is*. I wonder why it’s so different to International Women’s Day**.
* I don’t.
** I really don’t.
Sackbut@146:
Thanks for that.
Rob:
Well I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he’d posted that he was about do a lecture about sex. I didn’t read the post but I amused myself for a few seconds wondering how he’d square the circle. And then a lot longer worrying that he was going to be teaching his students indefensible bullshit. I’d go back and read the post to find out, but I think either possibility would depress me.
Andrew Cuomo is positively befuddled that someone could have interpreted his behavior as inappropriate. Why, it’s perfectly normal for a middle-aged-plus man to ask his 20-something female subordinates if they like older men, if they’re monogamous, and by the way did you know I’m totally cool with dating women in their 20s? Just utterly standard workplace banter, doesn’t mean a thing!
It’s funny, because I’ve been hearing for decades how men are utterly terrified of saying the wrong thing in the workplace to a woman, and that all this “anti-harassment” stuff has chilled friendly workplace banter, but apparently not so much.
Here:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/03/02/shermer-reliably-wrong-every-time/
PZ trashes a book he hasn’t read, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage (which I haven’t read yet, either, it’s on my list).
His main complaint seems to be that Michael Shermer has done a video about it. I’m no fan of Shermer’s and I wish he’d fade away, but I think I’ll take the – shall I say skeptical? – approach of reading the book regardless of what Shermer has to say about it, rather than assuming his endorsement renders it evil and wrong.
PZ’s post is eye-wateringly stupid, but the comments! There’s going to be a world shortage of hyperbole at this rate.
Look at your own risk. All I can say is MY EYES! MY BEAUTIFUL EYES!
Ok I took the risk. Urrggh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That one person who tries to be reasonable (if misguided)? Just has to be absolutely vilified. There can be no conceding of points, even hypothetically. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Then there’s this:
Oh, OK, thanks. I was just about to google that myself. What is wrong with these people?
#154 latsot
Trashing books on the basis of who wrote it / who endorsed it is very in in ‘sceptical’ circles right now.
NASA has named the landing site of the Perseverance rover “Octavia E. Butler Landing”.
I think that is nice. I discovered Octavia Butler only recently, but she is now one of my favourite science fiction authors.
While chasing something else, I found
Crispin Blunt MP ordered to apologise for breach of parliamentary rules over attempt to make secret deal on self-ID
But further reading shows that the guy wasn’t merely ‘inadequately transparent’, he also lied about the nature of the paper:
He said it was not an official APPG paper, so that it would be open for others to read. Anyway,
Goodbye, women’s spaces! And yes, I looked for equivalent language for men’s spaces. In vain. The passage that effective abolishes women-only spaces and services is the only time “X-only spaces and services” are mentioned.
So the children’s gender services are released from the need to obtain informed consent (!), and simultaneously freed from litigation! That’s a horrible double whammy. The full text is available. There might be more stupid / bad things in there – probably, actually – but that pair of one-two combos is quite enough to be glad that this was not adopted.
@ Holms #159:
I guess they’re telling themselves it’s one of those ethical dilemmas like “would you lie to the Nazis and not tell them about the Jews hiding in your attic?”
(Btw, saw you reached peak with the Narcissist on FA. Toxic personality. I tried gray rocking for a bit, but it’s been almost a year since I responded or reacted to anything from that particular source. Psychologists themselves advise against it.)
All;
I’ve recently discovered Superstraight/Supergay/Superlesbian/Superbi, a rapidly trending movement which started out as satire and pushback against the transgender encroachments into sexual orientations. It’s a reaction against “If you like women/ men but don’t want to date/have sex with transwomen/transmen , then you’re a transphobe and we just might decide to destroy your life.” Instead, it’s “my orientation is sex-based, I’m valid, don’t shame me, bigot.” They’re gleefully turning the tables on the entitled rapey gits.
Several things are impressive. First, the transgender are reacting with their usual calm civility, and a lot of mainstream people who haven’t been aware of the problem, are now. And second, the support for lesbians in particular has been enormous. Again, most people had no idea how they were being harassed for not accepting “girl dick” (or harassed into accepting it and feeling horrible.) Now they know.
It’s on all sorts of social media, but till Reddit takes it down, can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuperStraight/
I mentioned in #146 that the Alabama bill banning puberty blockers and medical transitions for minors smelled like an ALEC bill. As I suspected, the bills (both the medical bans and the ban on males in female sports) are quite widespread, filed in at least 35 states. Obviously organized; I don’t know who is doing the organizing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/541322-majority-of-states-considering-bills-limiting-transgender-access?rl=1
Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville introduced a rider into the COVID relief bill that would have banned males from female sports at the high school level, but the rider was defeated. I am certain he didn’t come up with that himself.
https://sports.yahoo.com/tommy-tuberville-introduces-anti-trans-amendment-to-covid-relief-bill-gets-voted-down-160042675.html
Both of these articles have people calling for compassion, but none of them seem to care about compassion toward women and girls. Tuberville is asked by Senator Patty Murray to have compassion “for someone who doesn’t look or live exactly like you.” Er, how about women? I doubt Tuberville looks or lives exactly as a woman, yet he is making a show of protecting the rights of women. (He’s an idiot and a puppet, he isn’t proposing this out of compassion.)
The Senate version of the Alabama medical transition bill passed, and detractors are looking at corner-case problems, saying it would ban circumcision. Maybe it would, and maybe that’s not bad. But this is a reason I don’t like legislative solutions: these should be things doctors and medical experts simply do not do, because they are harmful and unnecessary; it shouldn’t be up to ignorant and politically motivated legislators to make these decisions.
It’s a huge day for all things TERFy and free-expressiony today in the UK.
First there’s Fair Play For Women who are legally challenging the ONS over the census mishandling. I’m a bit busy and I’ve only seen a little bit of the livetweeting of the case, but it looks as though it might be going well, the judge seems to have agreed some fairly important points. Although you never know with these legal types, next thing we know he’ll probably call a recess so he can bludgeon a fox.
Second is Harry Miller of Fair Cop’s case in the Court of Appeal. Some of Harry’s tweets were recorded as a non-hate incident (not a crime) and he’s arguing that it is absolute madness that the police can institute this sort of stealth punishment without due process. You can probably tell that I agree with Harry on this. Livestreamed from 2pm.
Third, Graham Linehan and Helen Staniland are speaking in the House of Lords about freedom of expression online. Livestreamed from 3pm.
(I haven’t put links for the livestreams because my comment would probably be held up in moderation. I’m sure you can find them if you want. Or find me on Twitter and I’ll tell you.)
Court victory for Fair Play For Women census challenge!
https://twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1369294419321626633
Yes, this is very good news, I’m not sure it could have been better.
Yasssssssss
Some recursive irony for you; I hope it doesn’t blister too much on the way down.
As I mentioned above, Graham Linehan and Helen Staniland answered questions today in the House of Lords about freedom of expression and social media. At one point, Graham read a prepared statement, the text of which is here:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/full-text-of-my-house-of-lords-statement
Within a few minutes, people on social media were spreading lies about the content of the statement, while refusing to read it, despite the fact that the statement itself describes exactly that happening to JKR.
Randy Rainbow does Biden: https://youtu.be/XQTuFudB028
“They call you “sleepy” but you’re pretty woke”
Ha!
Since this room is for miscellany and because it came up in conversation elsewhere, I give you:
Public Information Films of 1970s UK – Apaches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0PUMmVU4qQ
They showed this to kids. I think there was another one set in a housing estate, but I lived in the country so we got this one. Enjoy your nightmares.
1996 archival comic Tom the Dancing Bug reprinted today: a twelve-year-old boy discovers a new gender. That is, “female”. My how times have changed since 1996.
https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2021/03/11
Is the moral that Cultural Appropriation will result in farmyard deaths?
I remember being shown a cautionary film about crossing railway tracks at a school assembly, presented by some very serious looking police officers. That must have been circa 1991. My main takeaways from that were:
Stop, look and listen, before you squeeze through the hole in the fence and cross the railway tracks.
Tie your shoelaces properly.
Witnessing the consequences of failing to follow these rules may result in blindness.
Banichi:
We were lucky; we had Darth Vader come to teach us about the Green Cross Code.
Ophelia:
There’s probably nothing you can do about it but FYI I think the comments RSS feed is broken. And the ‘Notify me of followup comments via e-mail’ thing has been broken for ages. I’ll stop complaining now.
Re the comments RSS feed: that has happened several times before, and I share your annoyance. It seems to resolve itself after about a full day, and it loses some comments.
While we’re on the subject, the Contact link at the top doesn’t work (for me, anyway): I can write my thoughtful and erudite message, fill in the blanks with my name etc. but then it impudently demands to know “Are You Human?” with no apparent way to answer yes or no — and the message cannot be sent.
I don’t have the tech savvy to fix things. Sorry.
Well, from time to time I’d like to send you a tip (or at least a funny) and I have lost your address…
I’ll send it to you right now.
re the tech side of things:
I wasn’t really complaining, Ophelia. I know this stuff is largely out of your hands. WordPress has a tendency to impose changes without warning and apparently at random which break existing stuff. I was just letting you know in case… Well, in case it was useful information, I suppose. I’m not sure why it would be, now I come to think about it.
Anyway, the feed is back. I had a quick glance at the raw feed last night and it was up to date but not being picked up by my reader for some reason. I was too tired to go through the XML to see if that was poorly formed or to investigate whether my feed reader was playing silly buggers.
I’m no WordPress expert, but if you’d ever like me to have a go at fixing any of these minor niggles, you know how to get in touch.
There are other booksellers, but this is bad.
“Amazon to stop selling books that frame LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness”
The book that spurred this move, When Harry Became Sally, is by a conservative writer who opposes same-sex marriage, but it’s about transgenderism. I expect most (if not all) of the books that will be affected by this move will be about transgenderism.
Based on descriptions from the publisher, I’m not at all convinced that transgenderism is framed in the book as a mental illness. The book looks to me like several other books and articles that don’t accept the concept of “gender identity” at face value, don’t accept that people can change sex, and wish to look at factors other than “boy/girl in a girl/boy’s body” for the increasingly frequent claims of being transgender. That doesn’t sound like “mental illness” to me.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/12/amazon-stop-selling-books-lgbtq-mental-illness
Here’s the response I got from my MP regarding my concerns about definitions used in the “Conversion Therapy” Bill, C6 (See #98 above for my original letter):
But it does not “devalue someone’s worth as a human being because of who they are” to question their inaccurate self perceptions, which are not “who they are.” I don’t see what prevents a non-affirmation approach from being branded as “conversion therapy.” I’m betting this will be a matter of court cases.
Well, talk about having your cake and eating it.
So by his own standards, he’s a woman pretending to be a man when it benefits him, and that’s ok for some reason. But how is that any different from men pretending to be women when it benefits them? Yet we’re told that no man would make such a pretence just to gain victories in sports, for example: there are no fake trans, yet here he is, doing exactly that. Betcha can’t guess where this hypocrite has his blog. Of course you can. I don’t even see what the day job has to do with the opening to that paragraph, but when one considers that trans people claim that they just want to be accepted as the gender they identify as, trans visibility sounds a tad self-defeating. We’re not supposed to see a difference but they’re making damn sure that we know they’re different…we just aren’t allowed to say so.
And the bit of the quote I missed out? The blogger is a 40i-sh yr-old TiM, which makes this bit sound more than a little…erm…predatory:
Maybe he just has no friends of his own age….
https://freethoughtblogs.com/intransitive/2021/03/14/i-hurt-everywhere-new-tattoos-for-yous/
Oyyyyyyyyyyy
I liked this very much…
Ha!
You might enjoy the writing of The Trans Widow. Here she is making points about pronouns we’ve made here before, put brilliantly:
http://thetranswidow.com/2021/02/21/pronouns-and-the-purpose-of-language/
All her posts are good, though. She makes them count.
You know how some police departments in the UK have been calling people up to have a little chat about their perfectly legal social media posts? NYC mayor Bill de Blasio thinks that’s an awesome idea, and he’d like the NYPD to do it, too.
https://twitter.com/chayesmatthew/status/1372562856315600900
Oyyy.
This is good: An Open Letter To the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real by Mayor Watermelon
https://genderarguments.com/openletterbiologicalsex/
In the thread over there about awful Ophelia’s awful take on Elliot Page, and in a comment thread where people seem to be straining to have the silliest take, we get an entry into the all-time record books of idiocy:
He became female, folks. Definitely real and not a dream, despite being in bed and trying to sleep.
Jesus skateboarding christ.
Holms,
You’re not wrong, I think anyone would struggle to find anything more stupid than that.
Is anyone taking issue with this account? You’d think the trans people there would be up in arms at the very least…
No one addressed it.
Well, a tricky one, isn’t it? There’s no way to condemn it without conceding more than they’d like. That’s the peril of refusing to define something so you can claim all sides at once.
Of course there’s no pushback, latsot, they were too busy hating on the commenter whose story was that she used to be criticised for being too ‘male’ but realised that not being stereotypically feminine was OK and didn’t mean that she wasn’t a woman. Apparently that was ‘too close to TERF talking points’ and denied the ‘lived experiences’ of trans people to be allowed to go unvillified. Clearly what they meant was that her narrative wasn’t in line with the permitted trans ideology at Pharyngula.
Holms, that ’15 seconds of being a woman’ post is indeed a masterpiece of idiocy, and not far below it in the thread comes a masterpiece of dishonesty by the master of dishonesty, the odious G:
OK, so far, so dishonest, just par for the course for the odious one, but the next part takes her into uncharted territory of misrepresenting an argument.
(my emph.) I can’t get my head around that switch from women being oppressed because of their biology to the apparent claim that it is a GC feminist belief that it’s female biology itself that is oppressive. And her finale is both a terrible analogy and an internally self-contradicting one to boot.
They’re not oppressed because they’re black, it’s just that their black bodies are exploited by white supremacy. She’s a teacher, for God’s sake!
Finally, while the ’15 seconds’ comment is hard to beat for stupidity, I would suggest the PZ’s own closing words on that post are a serious contender simply because of the professional status of the author:
Would it be unkind to call that bunch over there ‘truthphobic’?
Actor Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, spoke in favor of JK Rowling and against the mob recently. Predictably he’s getting pushback. This is sadly unremarkable, but I noted this bit in one article:
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2564607/harry-potter-actor-ralph-fiennes-shares-thoughts-following-jk-rowling-backlash
“While Ralph Fiennes didn’t speak to the the actual comments about transgender folks…”
Oh, the irony. Few if any of the criticisms of Rowling point out or address her “actual comments about transgender folks”.
Oh man, doncha just hate it when a flock of ovaries rampages around the place and forces men to reluctantly oppress women? Jesus fucking christ, she lost all trace of good faith reading comprehension years ago.
And I would say ‘truthphobic’ is unnecessarily gentle.
‘Flock of Ovaries’! An all-female A Flock of Seagulls tribute band?
Yes, I took special note of what amounted to a mystical experience of ‘sensing you’re a woman’ and immediately drew parallels between that, and believing in God. Assuming that the story is honest (and I’ve no reason to think it isn’t) In both cases the brain seems to have gone into a special state where something presumably happens in the way the nerves fire and there’s both a heightened sense of awareness and an indescribable sense of significance and knowledge. What the mystical experience points to isn’t God or Special Woman Feelings, but the ability of the brain to fool us.
I am surprised that a group of skeptics and atheists, at least some of whom have probably studied mystical experiences and/or why they aren’t proof of God, psychic powers, reincarnation, going to heaven, etc etc seemed to accept this without comment. Maybe they didn’t notice, or didn’t see the resemblance. Maybe they didn’t like it but didn’t want to say so. Or maybe the classic skeptics and atheists I remember have fallen away so that those concerned primarily with social justice and politics remain, and it’s not their area. I don’t know.
@AoS;
Nothing soothes, comforts, and amuses me more than reading angry, bizarre descriptions of what “TERFS” believe and why they believe it — unless it’s reading angry, bizarre descriptions of what *I*, specifically, believe and why I believe it. I guess I find it reassuring. I have a tendency to think I’m inadequately prepared to make whatever case I have to make: I haven’t read enough, studied enough, taken the right notes, remembered the right things, noticed the right ideas, understood enough of the concepts and expressed myself with enough clarity. And it’s important. There is a real problem that really matters.
And then someone says “you hate transpeople because you’re consumed with disgust and want to enforce gender roles” and I relax. Okay, technically speaking, I only have to be a little better at understanding the other side than they are at understanding mine, to move us both closer to what I see as improvement. I can do this. I’ve got extra time.
Wellll that would be true if they listened, but as it is…
AoS:
Yes, I claim precedence at pointing out this piece of special stupidity somewhere on another thread.
I think what PZ means by “changing sex” is not M2F or F2M because sex is a spectrum, right? That totally means that a change in one of the characteristics that defines or describes sex is a change in sex. So if, say, someone’s oestrogen level changes over time, then they have literally changed sex. And this does, after all, happen all the time…
I’m not saying this argument is either consistent or congruent with reality because it isn’t. But I think that’s what PZ means when he says stupid shit like this. I think he believes it.
I thought no one changes sex because when you feel like a women you are and always were a women and your sex was female and you had a female penis etc.?
Did nobody tell PZ that it is transphobic to say that people change sex because it is an immutable internal feeling (unless you are a non-binary person that may feel differently on different days, that it is a kind of mutable immutability, if I understand everything correctly…)?
Remember the Sokal Hoax Redux, as James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose liked to call their stunt where they (among other things) supposedly got a feminist journal to accept for publication a portion of Mein Kampf tweaked to use feminist jargon?
Well, someone actually bothered to take a close look at what they submitted and it turns out to be a hoax, right enough, just not the one they were claiming.
The submitted article was “based” on Mein Kampf only in the sense that it used some ordinary nouns, verbs, and adjectives that could be found in that book:
Yeah, positive chilling that feminists are such Nazis! There’s some other good points in the article as well.
Mikael Nilsson says he finds it surprising that “none of the journalists reporting on the controversy actually bothered to compare the two texts”, that “the Affilia article didn’t contain anything that could be recognized as Mein Kampf even by a Hitler expert, let alone a lay person.” Hm. That’s quite the charge. What say we put it to the test using one of the lacunae Nilsson cites?
Quick. Without looking at either Mein Kampf or Our Struggle is My Struggle, which was written in English and which translated from German?
He claims that the “lacunae between these preserved pieces of text” are comparable to “[n]either the words nor the intent” of Mein Kampf. In fact, even a cursory comparison using free resources available to everyone on the Internet, plus ctrl-c, ctrl-f, and ctrl-v, tells a different story. In the first quotation, […] elides the phrase “for their cause”. In the second, […] elides “oppression”. Rather than finding that “[Hitler’s] intent was the very opposite,” we find precisely the same message in a type-instance relation.
I could go on with further counterexamples to Nilsson’s thesis, but that would be tiresome and verbose. And—*gasp*—I don’t find reading Hitler an enjoyable experience.
I came here to post a bit of a local story, but first: thanks, Nullius, for that analysis, it’s illuminating.
Anyway, here in Alabama the legislature is doing its usual task of throwing all kinds of “culture war” conservative outrage generation bills onto the calendar with little or no discussion. Liberal journalists are doing their usual job of criticizing the legislature. Two of the bills this year are about transgender issues: one is the puberty blocker bill I’ve mentioned, and the other is a ban on boys playing on girls teams. This latter one seems straightforward and appropriate to the role of state government, moreso than the other one.
It is distressing but not surprising that the journalists get these bills so wrong, especially the latter. Rather than focus on bills that could do a lot of harm to a lot of people, they focus on a bill that imposes restrictions on a tiny number of people. They game it as an “imaginary” problem and say the legislature is the one worrying about a tiny minority, missing that that’s what the journalists themselves are doing. And of course they miss the impact on women and girls, and of course they claim it denies the right of transgender students to play sports. It’s troubling that this issue is front and center when there is so much other crap going on.
For the interested, Suzanne Moore’s columns for the Telegraph are paywall-free today (23rd March):
https://suzannemoore.substack.com/p/free-columns
There’s also a lot of good (but less well edited) stuff on her substack site.
Today in Purity Police news:
Teen Vogue Employee Who Championed Alexi McCammond’s Ousting Also Found To Have Posted Offensive Tweets
Live by the cancel; die by the cancel.
Excellent twitter thread by Dr. Jane Clare Jones that really clarifies what’s happening in many discussions of women’s rights and trans issues:
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1374623760217702401
I’m beginning to think that rank stupidity (or ignorance, if we’re feeling charitable) is a far greater obstacle in this phenomenon than we typically credit. (This isn’t to say that there aren’t intelligent people with brains muddled by this nonsense or mere sociopaths who leverage it, of course.) To convince someone that they’re wrong intellectually requires getting them to apprehend and comprehend a point where their beliefs are inconsistent. But that comprehension requires (a) being able to recognize inconsistency and (b) understanding that (if not why) inconsistency is to be avoided. This appears more and more to be beyond the vast majority’s capacity.
Consider this little gem from Monday:
In case that was utterly unintelligible, let me rewrite it to a second grade level.
Let’s draw this out. We begin with a male person who wants to identify as a woman. He changes his gender to woman. We end with a male, woman-gendered person who identifies as a woman. Simplified:
Before transition: sex = male, gender = man, identification = man
After transition: sex = male, gender = woman, identification = woman
Now, GD is supposed to be distress, discomfort, or suffering caused by a mismatch of sex and gender, and transition is supposed to make the one match the other. Yet here we see precisely the opposite of that. By this unintentionally honest account, transition in reality causes the misalignment it purports to cure. Not only that, it even contradicts the typical trans claims about the identification property!
Our humble explainer did not recognize the problem(s). One would think that a child still in elementary school would see it easily. My best explanation is raw stupidity. Yes, in this case, that judgment is backed up by the writing “style”, but the same contradiction blindness is evident just about every conversation, discussion, and debate I see on these topics. No amount of valid, logical argumentation is sufficient to persuade those who don’t understand logic. If you, for example, employ a proof by contradiction in the form of a reductio ad absurdum and arrive at the designated absurd conclusion, they will often complain, “I didn’t say that. You’re arguing against something I didn’t say.” They sincerely don’t understand concepts like material implication or entailment, so there’s no way to explain to them why showing that their belief materially implies a contradiction entails that their belief is false.
If valid argumentation can’t work, all that is left to us is the invalid. That’s a surreal prospect. I’m not even sure that I can make persuasive, fallacious arguments. I have decades of practice crafting valid arguments, but invalid? It’s like trying to recite a poem while forcing an opposite stress pattern. Intuitively, it should be a simple matter, but in reality …
tyGER, tyGER, burNING bright
in THE forEST of THE night,
what IMmortAL hand OR eye
COULD frame THY fearFUL symMETry?
I messed up reading it, even though I literally just typed it.
Especially for Iknklast…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/124663600/court-theatre-recasts-trans-role-in-new-play-after-casting-criticism
Apparently it’s not enough for actors to be able to, you know, act. They have to actually be.
Re: #210
Just a reminder, if NZ can be silly, we here in Aus can be worse:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/culture/2020/nov/18/its-not-about-cancel-culture-hedwig-and-the-angry-inch-postponed-after-trans-led-petition
Bottom line: show “postponed” over “actor not trans” brou-ha-ha, even though creator of show (who acted the role on stage and screen, and isn’t trans) denies the character is “properly” trans and says anyone can play the role.
“Drag is a mask available to all and that’s why anyone should be able to play Hedwig.
Hedwig was forced into kind of an accidental trans state by political and by patriarchal pressures”
NIV #209 wrote:
That may be what your incoherent example TRA might be trying to say, but that doesn’t seem to be what the ones I’m encountering seem to be saying. To nobody’s surprise, it’s not the clear, consistent kind of philosophical viewpoint which leads to everyone being on the same page.
I You’re leaving out presentation. I think it’s more like we begin with a person with a woman’s gender who identifies as a woman and presents as a man. He transitions to being a person with a woman’s gender who identifies as a woman and presents as a woman..
Sex is a spectrum without fixed points, and the assigned birth sex is only one aspect of sex. So we don’t refer to the “male” aspect unless there’s some fragmented bit which temporarily becomes relevant. Gender, on the other hand, is definitive — so much so, that the sex is usually considered a reflection of gender. Thus he changes his presentation — his outward appearance— to reflect his gender.
Sex=female; gender=woman;identity =woman; presentation = man
and after transition
Sex=female; gender=woman; identity = woman; presentation = woman.
They don’t have to transition to be both a female and a woman. The superficial transition is only so others will acknowledge and validate what’s already there.
I’m not sure I agree with Jane Claire Jones’ assertion that “ The TRAs are completely committed to the idea that ‘woman’ is a gender/social concept.” What I keep seeing is that they think gender — the being of maleness and/or femaleness — and gender identity — the internal sense of being male or female— is fixed in the brain during gestation. I do not think that was the original dogma, but for at least some it appears to have morphed that way. In theory, there is no connection to sexual stereotypes. In practice, that’s all they’ve really got.
In some ways the TRAs remind me of alternative medicine proponents at a Wellness Faire. Although they can have radically opposed theories of disease and cures, they never argue with each other. The important thing is to be against mainstream medicine. Whether cancer is caused by liver flukes, impeded energy flow, or holding on to resentment is one of those flexible little details that different consumers decide for themselves.
Oh, another interesting bit I picked up on: they are not categorizing “feminine” behavior under Gender. They are putting it under Presentation. Transwomen only act girly so people will recognize they’re women. It’s social conditioning, same as it is for cis women. That’s why transgenderism cannot possibly a manifestation of internalized cultural ideas concerning how men and women behave. That part is performance.
They know our criticisms,, and are reshaping their explanation to ward them off.
This seems a very fair timelining of British MP John Nicolson’s attack on LGB Alliance. I’d say it’s overly fair, bending over backward to be fair, and Nicolson still doesn’t come out of it well.
https://voidifremoved.substack.com/p/unreliable-narrators
Interesting thing I’ve seen a lot of references to lately: there’s a Gallup survey question with data going back to at least the 1940s, where they ask Americans whether or not they are a member of a church or other house or worship. From 1940 through 2000, there’s very little fluctuation — between the high 60s and low 70s. Since 2000, it’s been a steady decline to 47 percent today.
Of course, presumably this isn’t all people becoming atheists. There are plenty of people who aren’t members of a church and attend services rarely or never yet still are religious. (As I recall, there’s a faction of self-identified Evangelical Christians who fall into this category, and they were HUGE Trump supporters.) And I believe 47 percent is still much higher than in other developed nations.
But it’s a remarkable change nonetheless.
Re #215
It is indeed a remarkable change. With a lot of the purported benefits of church being membership in a community, this change means fewer people are availing themselves of that benefit and thus have incentive to parrot the dogma if they don’t believe it.
I read an article recently in which one of the people interviewed was an atheist Catholic, someone who didn’t believe in God but who nonetheless belonged to a Catholic Church and attended services because he got something positive out of doing so. He can’t be the only one.
And now I see that Naomi Wolf has weighed in on the decrease in churchgoing, and tracked it down to that diabolical Bill Gates:
https://twitter.com/davenoon1970/status/1376952282802053120?s=20
#217: Those cursed Reverse Vampires, I knew they’d be behind it.
Whenever I see something batshit like this from Wolf, it looks to me as though she’s joking (see also the time-travelling nanoparticles). But then the context always shows that she’s clearly not, or she’s playing such a hell of a long game that the eventual punchline is going to be mind blowing.
This is hilarious. Crip Dyke put a long, long post up last week ‘analysing’ an argument that flared up on PZ’s latest post critical of OB. It started with this, from a comment by llyris:
Crip Dyke spent much time explaining why that last paragraph was just wrong (CD being the fount of all trans knowledge, of course) because people simply don’t become trans because of societal expectations.
Fast forward to comment #8, from FTB regular and TiM, Allison. It’s a long-ish comment, but here’s the last paragraph:
Whoops! I bet that smarts.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pervertjustice/2021/03/22/trans-causation-2/
@AoS #219:
A while back, when I was still exploring the ideas behind transgender ideology, I was over there and iirc asked a hypothetical:
Imagine a transgender person had been born into a society with the opposite gender beliefs: women were strong, stoic leaders who fixed cars and men were soft, compliant followers who cried at romantic movies, etc.etc. Would they still have been transgender?
I wish I could remember all the responses, or even most of them. I do remember it was hard to get a response. At least one person objected because “that’s not the world we’re in so why ask that?”( it’s a thought experiment to aid understanding, not a pop quiz) At least one person said “no.” And when I responded with “so being transgender tracks with stereotypes” or something like that, someone else piped up with a hearty “FUCK YOU!!!”
That surprised me. It was quite some time ago.
Sastra @ 220: Most people have a really hard time engaging with thought experiments. Willingness to participate in them regardless of topic is actually somewhat uncommon.
Two articles on the subject:
Smartfounding: Four Grades of Resistance to Thought Experiments
Student Resistance to Thought Experiments
The fibercraft web site Ravelry is in the middle of some controversy because recent changes in the appearance of the site are claimed to be causing adverse reactions (headaches, seizures, and so on) in some users. Some of the reactions sound genuine and worth investigating. According to this article, though, one user claimed the new interface triggered gender dysphoria. I’m having trouble both believing that and wondering what the site could possibly do to address it.
(The article covers several recent controversies at Ravelry; this user interface one peaked in the last few days.)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/how-politics-tested-ravelry-and-the-crafting-community
A solemn holy day celebration from a different culture, submitted for your consideration:
Source:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/04/02/easter-fare/
Skipping over the math part (I have no idea if it’s true), that Easter stuff… (No idea if it’s true, either, but seriously…)
I’ll stick with marshmallow Peeps and chocolate crucifixes, thanks.
Ah yes the old “Boys do that to you because they like you” routine. Sheesh.
“… because they like you” for a certain definition of “like” that doesn’t translate to respecting you as a person. “Particularly attractive girls” are not being targeted for their intelligence, grace, and wit.
That is an important point. It can take female people years to grasp that distinction. Euphemistic wording of this kind doesn’t help.
For a certain definition of “like” you could also say that a cannibal “likes” people. It’s hardly the kind of “liking” that counts..
Like the last line of that famous Twilight Zone episode – “It’s a cookbook!!”
This being Easter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixmNZQH0NjU
You’re welcome.
From a youtube channel whose videos lurch from intriguing to incredibly vapid, I give you What does the world without the gender binary look like? | Trans Women & Non-binary People | Cut
Quite a few inadvertent admissions mixed in with the other stuff.
Do we have any readers in Birmingham?
Kevin Drum, previously at Mother Jones magazine, writes in his personal blog: A Mystery For the Ages: Why Do Women Play in Separate Sports Leagues From Men? He thinks it’s perfectly obvious. He ends:
That last paragraph: yep yep yep.
Nullius @221: Reading those articles was very useful. I enjoy your posts on logic-do you have any recommended books for a novice to read from either a philosophy or mathematics perspective?
Arty Morty’s article in Lesbian and Gay News:
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/04/arty-morty-graham-linehans-gender-blasphemy-exposes-the-fear-that-stifles-the-trans-debate/
It’s good, have it read.
Thanks latsot. I was particularly impressed by the bit about how trans people are being constructed as a sacred caste and how Graham Linehan is particularly good position to debunk that nonsense.
Quillette is doing a series on the TIM phenomenon from parents’ perspective. Depressing reading.
https://quillette.com/tag/when-sons-become-daughters/
Studebaker @ 233: Sure do. I’m at the vet right now, but I’ll throw together a list of stuff when I get home.
Here’s a Genevieve Gluck piece hosted by Glinner, looking at the social media return of an AGP paedophile, Andi Dier:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/rose-mcgowan-and-the-reversal-of
Enjoy this twitter thread. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ratio so pure. Extra bonus violation of the irst Law of Holes, too.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeltaBCDad/status/1381291839165136896
Extra bonus violation of the First Law of Holes, too.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeltaBCDad/status/1381293105412902912
Yes, it looks like Canada is bonkers about this.
Continuing from the above, but on a more serious note. “DeltaBCDad” claims to have a PhD in biology. Comments on the thread noted this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/henrymorganI/status/1381505851962327040
https://mobile.twitter.com/IseultOfErin/status/1381510437313908736
https://mobile.twitter.com/ladyduckpojok/status/1381510158887616514
It’s the people who should know better that I don’t get. I can almost get those who go along to “be kind,” but who haven’t really looked into the issues. As pointed out on B&W, many media outlets, particularly those that have been captured aren’t being honest in their portrayal of this conflict. (see for example “banning trans youth from sport.”) If someone’s awareness and understanding of trans ideology has only come through these avenues or through hearsay, the “be kind” almost makes sense, on a superficial level. Once you’ve been peaked, though, the belief and support of “credentialed” people is no longer compelling, but baffling, disappointing and infuriating. Bandwagon effect?
From the twitter stream of same Dr. Tanen who cried “Genocide,”it would seem that there are now going to be standards for changing names on scientific papers, post publication, to avoid the continued circulation of “deadnames.”.
https://twitter.com/TessTanenbaum/status/1351613973590798338
https://mailchi.mp/publicationethics/cope-digest-january-2021-name-changes
https://publicationethics.org/news/vision-more-trans-inclusive-publishing-world
DON”T EVEN THINK ABOUT STUDYING THIS!!!
https://mobile.twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1381517603118669828
Oh fer…
Mother Jones: NCAA Signals It Might Remove Championships From States That Target Trans Athletes
How about “NCAA Signals It Might Punish States For Supporting Female Athletes”? Or “NCAA Bullies States To Force Them To Allow Men To Compete In Women’s Sports”?
I bet somewhere in it comparisons are made with film companies pulling out of Georgia because of its recently passed voter supression measures. I like my blood pressure where it is, though, so I’m not going to read it myself to confirm.
Two takeaways from this article:
1. You need a smaller brain to be a royal.
2.
(Emphasis added.) I checked, and this is not a belated April Fools’ joke.
An article in The Australian that I can’t get to has this lead-in:
So I guess it’s all fine for a TIM to play a male (and for a TIM to play a female), even though we’re told it’s insulting for a male to play a TIM, even a TIM who doesn’t decide he’s trans until later in the story. It’s brave for a male actor to play a male character, if the actor is trans, but appropriation if only the character is trans.
I’ve previously expressed my disappointment Jim Wright/Stonekettle’s take on trans issues. He retweeted this w/o comment:
https://mobile.twitter.com/CarlosGSmith/status/1382442492767858688
I know retweeting is not necessarily approval, but usually he’ll comment if he is retweeting something to point out his own take in disagreement. Or, if it’s a troll, he’screenshot it andcomment on it. So I’m pretty sure the above does represent approval.
Yet he’s so close here. Just a few more steps, a couple of connections and this tweet about the police killing of a 13 year old applies to kids being transed:
.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Stonekettle/status/1383067719545856001
Found this via lascapigliatta on twitter:
https://www.karadansky.com/read/the-gender-identity-industry-is-a-narcissistic-abuser
Weird, I’ve just finished reading that, seen via ? on Twit – maybe Lascapigliatta, I don’t remember.
The various discussions about transracialism and transgender ideology spurred some thoughts that I couldn’t quite fit anywhere, so I thought I’d put them here. It’s possible I’ve already related this story before, but it came to mind again.
My father was black, my mother was white, and I am one of those light-skinned people who might be considered black by the One Drop Rule. When I was in high school, decades ago, before all this “identity politics” and postmodern Critical Theory stuff became current, I was considering applying for an Achievement Scholarship, an award from the same outfit that does the National Merit Scholarship, but reserved for black students. The criteria for qualifying as “black” were not about measuring ancestry, nor were they specifically about any internal sense of identity, but rather “perceived as black by one’s peers”.
I often said I was black, and I have been accepted as black in certain circles, but I never really lived as black. I didn’t have a large number of black friends; I didn’t follow black musicians; I didn’t use black vernacular or slang; I didn’t wear clothing or hair styles popular among black people my age. In contrast, I knew other light-skinned people for whom being black and immersing themselves in black culture was an important aspect of their lives; that was very much not me.
I mentioned the possible scholarship application to some friends, and they obligingly agreed to refer to me as black if asked.
It occurred to me to compare this with transgenderism. Someone who has light skin and has little or no experience dealing with life as a black person suddenly decides to declare he is black and to take resources set aside for black people, and he asks people suddenly to acknowledge him as black, because he was born black and has always known, despite not living that way. This strikes me as somewhat parallel to the case of man who grew up male, lived with all the attributes of being male in modern society, suddenly “discovering” he is female, always has been, and demanding both resources set aside for women and acknowledgment that he is now a woman. The big difference is, of course, that I have a genuine factual basis for my claim, and this other man doesn’t.
But this other man demands society cater to his declaration, counterfactual as it is, and society bends over backwards to oblige, including changing policies and laws. People who even question his claim get called bigots and risk losing their platforms, jobs, children, friends. It makes no difference that he grew up and lived a male life, and it doesn’t matter if he changed his living pattern to mimic the stereotypical situations of women; the declaration is sufficient.
But someone like Dolezal gets excoriated and shunned for making her parallel claim. Dolezal was actually living as black. She was working for the advancement of black people. She would meet the criteria for the scholarship on that basis, despite the pesky factual issue. I, on the other hand, did none of these things. My great-grandfather was one of the founders of the NAACP, but I was never a member and I never worked with them. I just had the right bloodline. My biology was correct, but the scholarship required more than that.
I noted, too, that the scholarship required outside validation of blackness, that this was important. We know that, for people who identify as trans, this outside validation of their “identity” is of paramount personal importance, hence all the emphasis on pronouns and all the policies and laws that require people to validate a trans-identified person’s “identity”. I can’t imagine a similar set of draconian rules requiring validation of declared racial “identity”.
Is it ok if I gp this? Normally I just high-handedly do it but thought I should ask. You have to say yes though. (jk) (sort of)
Wow, I’m honored. Sure, go ahead.
Thank you I will do that thing.
[…] a comment by Sackbut in Miscellany Room […]
Retweeted by Dr. Jane Clare Jones:
Apparently, her Thoughtcrime was to write this paper for the journal from whose editorial board she was removed:
Scrutinizing the U.S. Equality Act 2019: A Feminist Examination of Definitional Changes and Sociolegal Ramifications
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557085120918667
From farther into the paper:
We can see here how the UK has become “TERF Island,” something that seems to puzzle non-UK TAs to no end. Because in UK law “sex” is a protected characteristic, women have a solid legal foundation from which to defend their rights. In the UK, gender critical feminists have a position to defend, meaning that trans activism can be portrayed, accurately, as trying to undermine and destroy women’s legal, sex-based rights. Women in the US and Canada , because of the way protection for “gender identity” has come to be incorporated into the law, have already lost that legal position, making regaining it that much harder.
Here’s how the journal describes itself, and we can see in a single word the genesis of Burt’s removal:
Here’s a link to a response to Burt’s piece above, by Nishant Upadhyay:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1557085121991337
It’s not open access, but the abstract is heavily loaded with orthodox, anti-colonialist, “white-feminism” jargon:
Sounds like well-poisoning bullshit to me. With all that name-calling in the abstract, I’d bet he addresses none of Burt’s actual arguments. If he could, he’d emphasize that in the abstract. Instead, he denounces her as a heretic.
Here’s where you can find
him, sorry, them:https://www.colorado.edu/ethnicstudies/people/core-faculty/nishant-upadhyay
.
Takshak posted this link in the Jenner topic, but I figured I’d discuss it here.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804
The article is titled: ‘Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size’. These results are consistent with most of what I’ve read about studies of male/female brains, that there is no “pink” brain or “blue” brain. I think these results and others refute the idea of there being a “man’s brain in a woman’s body” (or vice versa) concept.
However, the title gives me pause, and the paper more so. They conclude that the brain is not sexually dimorphic, and they also talk about “gender”, which appears to have more than two states, and needs to be “reconsidered”. It seems to me they consider “gender” to be a real thing, perhaps with biological basis, rather than a personal decision, a personality characteristic. The paper notes that brains (like kidneys and lungs) do not exhibit sexual dimorphism, but other body parts do (although only gonads are mentioned). I would be concerned that these ancillary comments and the title would be interpreted to minimize the amount of sexual dimorphism in humans.
But I’m not a scientist, and I may be misinterpreting things here.
Excellent article about pronouns by “Angus Fox” on Graham Linehan’s site. It addresses say some length how English-centric this whole nonsense is. I think I’ll check out this “Angus Fox’s” own site.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/pronouns-are-about-power
Oh, the fucking irony! PZ, who regularly and with much mocking denies that anybody has ever been ‘cancelled’, is having a pity party in which one of his gripes is….being cancelled from the atheist/sceptic speaking and meet-up circuits and receiving nasty e-mails.
Granted, it was a shitty reason for blacklisting him, but then again many of the more recent cancellations have been implemented for literally no reason whatsoever. As for the hate mail, I wonder how many rape threats and death threats and threats of violence he’s subjected to on a daily basis? Nowhere near as many as the women who have publically – or even in leaked private conversations – questioned trans ideology is my guess.
Will PZ actually join the dots and realise that he enthusiastically encourages and supports infinitely worse abuse than he has received, to people far more vulnerable than he will ever be?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/04/24/pity-party/
Hahahahano.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room […]
Here’s the “skeleton argument” in Maya Forstater’s employment tribunal appeal:
https://hiyamaya.net/employment-appeal/
The ACLU is reporting (well, sharing an article with a brief comment) that a “transgender” 4th grader is getting death threats after testifying before the Texas legislature.
It should be obvious that nobody deserves death threats, especially a child. This is reprehensible.
One wonders where the ACLU is when women and girls receive threats of death, rape, bodily harm, and forcing out of a job, when those women and girls take stands against gender ideology. As we’ve discussed often here, the ACLU used to champion free speech rights for all speech, including speech not well-liked in liberal circles. The death threats against the girls suing to block the CT law don’t seem to matter to the ACLU; those girls are speaking out, too. They are (somewhat older) children, too.
“Caitlyn Jenner opposes boys who are trans playing sports on girls’ teams in school, says it is unfair”:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/caitlyn-jenner-opposes-transgender-sports-girl-teams
Maybe an “only Nixon could go to China” moment?
Fallon Fox, of all people, told him off on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/FallonFox/status/1388610520228392961
[…] Skeletor mentioned in Miscellany Room, Caitlyn Jenner got something right for a […]
We knew Trump didn’t give a shit about Puerto Rico when it was slammed by a cyclone, but more reporting is coming out: his administration actively hindered the disbursement of funds.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-probe-confirms-trump-officials-blocked-puerto-rico-receiving-hurri-rcna749
via Pakman.
I know Richard Carrier isn’t one of our heroes around here, but he made an important point in a book review of he posted on his blog a couple of days ago. The book is a definitive takedown of the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus, but this quote is applicable to a broad array of topics, especially one that the B&W community has been watching closely:
And yet he defends the trans dogma and joined the dogpile on me back then…amusingly, weeks late, because he’d been busy elsewhere and missed the fun. I was long gone but he had to throw some stones anyway, just to make sure.
Oh, I’m sure he’s not implicitly referring to trans dogma here, and it probably hasn’t even occurred to him. But if the shoe fits (and it looks like a very good fit indeed), it could certainly be worn.
I’m sure too, it’s just that “heed your own advice” type of thing.
25 things everyone used to understand:
https://theelectricagora.com/2021/05/02/twenty-five-things-everyone-used-to-understand/
I haven’t had time to read it yet, but it seems likely to be of interest.
Re #270
Just finished it. Good list. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I’m not sure these are all things people used to understand, but they are certainly out of favor currently.
I recently finished reading A Lot of People Are Saying – The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum. In it the authors make a distinction between “classical conspiracy theories” and what they call the “new conspiracism” which they describe as “conspiracy without the theory”. Where the former were at the very least attempts to explain real events and appealed to supposedly “scientific” data and “rational” arguments (e.g. the obsession of 9-11 truthers with the temperature of burning jet fuel and the melting point of steel), the new conspiracism don’t attempt to explain anything (more often than not, there isn’t even anything to explain), are based on nothing but assertion (“the election was rigged!”), insinuation, or innuendo (“there’s something there”, “a lot of people are saying”), and substitutes endless repetition, as well as “liking”, sharing, retweeting, forwarding etc. for evidence and argument. I do think the authors tend to give the classical conspiracy theorists more credit than they deserve, but that’s an argument for another day.
The new conspiracism doesn’t even require belief in the literal truth of the conspiratorial claims as stated, only the notion that they are “true enough” (“it’s entirely plausible”, “it wouldn’t surprise me”), which seems to jibe well with the logic of the post-truth era: “It might not be literally true that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring from the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington DC, but I’m going to go with it anyway. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would be capable of after all. Just look at the thing with the emails! I hate her, so anything I can use against her is fine by me. Who cares if its technically ‘true’ or not?! Everybody is always lying anyway, so I might as well go with the lies that favor my own tribe.”. There is also what I have called the “Superman Fallacy” because it’s almost the perfect flip-side of a straw man: As we all know, a straw man is a dishonest portrayal of the views of your opponents specifically designed to be easily refuted or even self-evidently absurd. A Superman by contrast is a dishonest portrayal of your own views specifically designed to be easily defended, e.g. claiming for a fact that Obama tapped Donnie’s phone, and then, when challenged, moving the goalpost to “it’s possible”, “it could be true” etc. Or if you want to have it both ways: use insinuation and innuendo to get the the idea of a conspiracy out there, and then abdicate any responsibility by claiming to be “just asking questions”, requesting more information (“somebody should look into that”, “what I already know is disturbing enough”) etc.
As people like Timothy Snyder and Peter Pomerantsev have pointed out, the new authoritarians are different from the tyrannies of the past in that they don’t actually require you to believe anything, only to distrust everyone enough to dismiss any criticism of authoritarianism as well as any appeal to “democracy”, “rights”, the “rule of law” etc. as part of somebody else’s nefarious plot or hidden agenda: In other words conspiracism! Even people who know perfectly well that there’s no truth to the claims often end up either actively endorsing them or passively failing to correct them, whether out of cynical opportunism, tribalism, or cowardice.
The result is delegitimation, beginning with the political opposition. Delegitimation goes deeper than any normal disagreement or conflict over policy. I.e. the opposition is not just portrayed as wrong, or misguided, or even dishonest, but outright criminal, treasonous, or even totally evil. There is no room for argument, negotiation or compromise with pedophiles, murderers, and traitors determined to destroy everything you hold dear in this world. You just do whatever it takes to stop them, and if that means playing dirty, cheating, throwing out democratic rules of the game, then so be it. Besides the political opposition the other main target of deligitimation are knowledge-producing institutions and expertise in general, from climate scientists to the FBI, and from Anthony Fauci to the free press. Again the explicit or implicit claim is that these institutions are not just flawed, or wrong, or even biased, but actively engaged in a criminal plot against the nation and its leader. The delegitimation of independent institutions obviously has the potential to become a self-fulfillimg prophecy: The initial accusations become a pretext for defunding the institution, filling it with loyalists, or ignoring it altogether. As a result the institution does indeed begin to look increasingly corrupt, dysfunctional, and illegitimate, thus providing further justification for getting rid of it entirely.
This goes beyond mere political polarization into what the authors call “epistemic polarization”, i.e. people are not just divided over what is in fact true, but what it even means to “know” something and ultimately who “owns reality”. The new conspiracism, based as it is on mere assertion, is very much like divine revelation in that it claims special insight into layers of reality that are hidden to everyone else, cannot be independently tested or verified, and must therefore be taken on faith. Ultimately this whole situation is incompatible with democracy. Without a shared set of facts, or even a common understanding of what it would take to get to an agreement, it becomes impossible to make informed decisions, have reasoned, intelligent arguments or even disagree in any meaningful sense. When that happens, there is nothing left to appeal to but brute force.
*the new conspiracism doesn’t attempt to explain anything […], is based on nothing but assertion…
(Tsk tsk… I really think the Illuminati has dropped the ball lately. These evil brotherhoods used to have lofty goals like world conquest and the New World Order, and now they are reduced to sneaking covfefe into people’s comments on blogs. Kind of pathetic if you ask me…)
**the Illuminati have dropped the ball lately
(Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk)
Sneaking in covfefe is pretty pathetic, yes, but messing with noun verb agreement, that’s an awesome power.
I knows…
We shouldn’t be so hasty. It might have just been an individual Illuminatum doing the ball-dropping. Is it at all fair to impugn an entire All-Powerful, Secret, Global, Secret, Over-Governmental, Mind-Controllling, Shadow-Cabal, just because one of its members failed to wash their hands as well as they should have, after enjoying a lunch of McNuggets?
[…] a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany […]
Via lascapigliata on twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/lascapigliata8/status/1390970992671997952
Discussion here about Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls. Stock is critical of Julia Long’s critique of trans “women” (my quotes) who are against gender identity theory. The Long piece at issue is here:
https://uncommongroundmedia.com/a-meaningful-transition-julia-long/
The concern and contention being raised is that the individuals and organizations noted above, by hypocritically accepting some gender critcal TIMs as “real” or “genuine,” are undermining women’s struggle for single sex spaces.
Idaho has banned teaching critical race theory in schools. Some of the provisions seem innocuous, but one section in particular caught my eye.
In isolation it sounds reasonable-what child born today should feel guilty about the slave trade or be castigated by students or faculty? Unfortunately in my home state similar laws have been applied to prevent any discussion of how factors like institutional/legal racism or manifest destiny impacts us today. If you are a teacher that wants to talk about US history from the perspectives of people already living here when the settlers showed up or of people’s brought here involuntarily tread carefully. Generally in my state there’s governmental hostility to any acknowledgement that our history isn’t a happy “how the west was won” tale, and don’t you dare suggest that past influences the present!
News story: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/06/idaho-critical-race-theory
Law text: https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2021/legislation/H0377.pdf
Ugh that’s appalling. To me it just looks like code for “We’re not responsible for what they did Way Beck Then therefore we get to ignore the whole subject forever amen.”
Now that I look closer, several other provisions look even more hinky in terms of how they could be used:
They don’t define CRT, and they don’t say how it contributes to division. Censorship in the name of unity doesn’t make for good education. Furthermore Twitter wokescolds aren’t the same as teachers in the classroom-are teachers really talking about the intertwining of racism, history, law, and institutions in a way that stokes division or is this formulation the product of misinformed conservative parents who freaked out the minute they heard that history class wouldn’t be only “God Bless America”?
On the surface good, but I wonder if this will just be another wedge to prevent scholarships or other interventions to help students disadvantaged by poverty and institutional racism.
I hate to mention the Queen’s Speech because it’s so embarrassing, but this year it was used to announce that the UK government will ban conversion therapy. Banning gay conversion therapy would be all well and good except for the fact that – as far as anyone can tell – it’s not happening in the UK anyway. The sudden, dizzying imperative, of course, is that TAs are pushing for any resulting law to include a ban on ‘gender conversion therapy’.
As I’m sure everyone here knows, this would be nothing less than a ban on any kind of ‘therapy’ other than total affirmation for children who are gender nonconforming and feel they might be trans or non-binary. Since we know that time+puberty makes the vast majority of gender-dysphoric feelings go away; and that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and reassignment surgery are at best one hell of a drastic step with enormous lifelong implications; and that there are such people as detransitioners; and since we know that a lot of children who feel they might be trans will turn out simply to be gay; and since any psychological issues the children might have will be left untreated; the doctrine of affirmation-only is a monstrous one. Children will be pushed into harmful medical pathways and therapists who dissent will be fined, fired and might go to jail.
But as Arty recently pointed out, it’s hard to convince people that this is really happening, because it all sounds so nuts.
Here’s how nuts it is. The government is presumably at least somewhat aware that banning ‘gender conversion therapy’ is harmful and insane. So it has promised to hold a consultation before passing any laws. Stonewall has gone apeshit about this. Rather than welcoming a consultation to better address the needs of gender nonconforming children, Stonewall has said that even talking about a law to ban talking about alternatives to affirmation-only is wrong: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-statement-conversion-therapy-consultation
This is deeply, deeply worrying. The sheer cynical deception of the whole move should have sirens blaring all over the place. Generations of children could be seriously harmed by this, all because a bunch of men want to feel validated in their sexual proclivities and a lot other people want to seem woke and kind. Johnson sees this as a personal priority. The Tory government has now twice committed (once under May and now again under Johnson) to some sort of legislation on conversion therapy. Any such law is likely to be passed this year. If trans activists manage to sneak a ban on ‘gender conversion therapy’ in under the guise of a no-brainer condemnation of gay conversion therapy and with consultation strongly discouraged as transphobic, then we have committed a truly monstrous act.
I came across this article about Liz Cheney’s ouster and the “post-truth”, “alternative facts” Republican Party, and it brought to mind I hadn’t considered before. “Truth” is derived from social power, historical knowledge is biased and unreliable: this sounded to me a heck of a lot like postmodern Theory. Yet the Republicans are the ones pushing back against Critical Race Theory. But they are not doing so because of CRT’s views about “colonialist science” and “black ways of knowing”, but rather because of other aspects, claims about racism and history. The Republicans seem roughly in agreement with Theory’s emphasis on subjective “knowledge”. I guess science and objective truth really are under attack from all sides.
https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/05/liz-cheney-epistemic-collapse-conservatism
Heaven forbid that your watch strap is insufficiently inclusive: https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-2021-pride-edition-bands-134245234.html
Latsot —
That “pride” watch band features all the colors of the rainbow, plus black and brown, and also white which is now apparently the color claimed by the trans. And it’s only 99 bucks! Such a bargain!
Apple should also offer a “shame” watch band for people like me. But they’ve already used all the colors. Not so inclusive after all.
Here’s a review of Dr. Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls
https://wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2021/05/14/review-material-girls-by-kathleen-stock/
Recommended, with some reservations. The author of this review gives particular praise to Stock’s chapters on ‘A Brief History of Gender Identity,’ ‘What is sex?’ ‘Why does sex matter?’ and ‘What is gender identity?’ For these alone, she says, the book is worthwhile.
The reviewer takes issue with what she sees as a degree of “both siderism,” as well as too great an acceptance, on Stock’s part, of and tolerance for AGP fetishism.
Lily Maynard has written extensive reviews of Material Girls, by Kathleen Stock, and Transgender Body Politics, by Heather Brunskell-Evans. Both reviews are quite detailed and thorough. Maynard has the same issues with Material Girls that several other reviewers have noted regarding “both sides” and referring to men-who-claim-to-be-women as “she”, but she is generally positive about the book, which I plan to read. I hadn’t heard much about Transgender Body Politics until this review, but it sounds excellent, and I’ll add it to my list.
I particularly like this comparison:
Well, it’s good to know that Amy Cooper learned her lesson from all that counselling she took after her false police report.
Wait, what’s this now?
This is where things are going. A man, legally recognized as a man, who identifies as a woman, but who has had no cosmetic “gender” surgery (although he maybe has received opposite-sex hormones, I’m not clear about that), is set to compete in women’s events at the Tokyo Paralympics.
https://www.womenarehuman.com/first-male-athlete-with-male-documents-to-compete-in-womens-sports-category-at-national-level/
A story posted yesterday by the Toronto Star:
The Kamloops school was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1890 until 1969. It was then run as a day school by the federal government until it closed in 1978.
Link: https://www.thestar.com/politics/2021/05/27/remains-of-215-children-found-at-former-residential-school-in-british-columbia.html?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMedia&utm_campaign=OpinionContributor&utm_content=remains215kids
Here’s CBC’s coverage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-emlups-te-secw%C3%A9pemc-215-children-former-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1.6043778
YNNB:
The evil is just breathtaking. On both the personal level of the cruelty and indifference shown to these children and because of the sheer scale at which this happened. My mind can barely get to grips with it. My emotions…. I’m not sure they can.
When I came across the story, a cold chill ran down my spine. This is war crime level stuff. It might not have been fought by armies, but it was a war nonetheless, a deliberate effort to destroy peoples and their cultures, with the blessings and power of the state.
I think it’s time we moved beyond mere “reconciliation,” and start thinking of reparations. I would be happy to see significant portions of Canada reappropriated and returned to the descendents of the peoples from which it was stolen. Sure, much was handed over ‘legitimately” through the treaty process, but that process was heavily weighted in favour of white settlers, who usually had strength of numbers and technological superiority on their side. Even then, the treaties were not honoured. Private fortunes have been made, and public coffers filled through expoitation of resources that have been stripped from lands first cleansed of its original inhabitants. It’s time we returned more of that wealth to the peoples displaced (or poisoned) to extract it, and to restore the lands from which it was taken. We are a fortunate, prosperous nation, but our fortune and prosperity are founded on the disposession and impoverishment of those who were here before our country was founded. We congratulate ourselves on our luck, enjoying a heritage of thieves.
Too many Canadians (myself incuded) have for too long undeservedly prided our country for being “not as bad as the United States” in regard to our treatment of its original inhabitants. It’s only a matter of degree, and that difference is a lot smaller than we fool ourselves into thinking. I know that what I suggest above would hurt, and well it should. But the expense and disruption it would entail would never be any where near the pain, anguish, and death ourculture has inflicted, for which we can never fully atone. Call it “white guilt” if you want, but guilty is what we are. Acknowledgement of the crimes of the past is not an end: it is a beginning. What do we do with that knowledge? How do we repair the damage and injury? How do we work with the inheritors of our country’s cruel, genocidal policies to help restore their lives, cultures, and communities? Nothing will bring back the dead, but we should do all we can to help the living. If that means sacrifice and appropriation on the part of the “dominant” culture, so be it.
I don’t know what the answer is, what the right course of action would be. But we have to start asking. We have to find out. We’ve been on the wrong path for too long, and it has cost too much.
The Alabama Department of Public Health is offering free STD/HIV test kits to a select group of people:
That sure leaves out a lot of vulnerable people, notably women. I doubt that “identifying” is the useful discriminant they think it is, and I doubt that “men who have sex with men” (or even identifying as a person who does this) is as relevant as something like having a large number of sexual partners.
The Toronto Star has compiled a list of institutions likely to have more unmarked graves of indigenous children who died in their “care”:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/06/01/theres-another-kamloops-coming-here-are-some-canadian-sites-believed-to-hold-more-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children.html
The Naomi Osaka situation is probably not of huge interest here, but I thought this article was good: about blatant sexism in the press conferences at tennis tournaments and other sporting events.
WaPo: At news conferences, male athletes get to be athletes. Female athletes like Naomi Osaka get pestered
It’s of some interest I think, I’ve been meaning to get to it.
In case you feel like listening to the Kimono-clad fox murderer: https://youtu.be/NavYfCrae4g
Annoyingly, Jane Goodall has won (and accepted) the Templeton Prize.
https://www.templeton.org/news/dr-jane-goodall-receives-prestigious-2021-templeton-prize
Re #300
I saw that! I agree it’s annoying, and I’m only slightly mollified by the fact that creationists are complaining about it.
Well, just today I ran across this quote from Christopher Hitchens:
source
Maybe they’ll force a posthumous Templeton Prize on him.
Sex Matters has posted a dissection of Oxford’s Stonewall submission:
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/oxford/
Interesting NYT piece on the tensions within the ACLU
Interesting piece indeed. I wish they had talked at least some about Chase Strangio and the gender identity issue. Nonetheless, very good article.
That piece seems to have struck a nerve. The ACLU released this essay just a short while ago defending their record.
… and of course the NYT article mentions the transgender issue, it just does so without naming Strangio. My error, I don’t know how I missed what I was specifically trying to keep an eye out for.
Well it was a very small slice of the long article.
Here’s a bit of transperbole that Jane Clare Jones screencapped:
https://mobile.twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1401573458941820932
And from the original source:
https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/1400456959908728832
“This isn’t hyperbole.” Yes, thanks for that, it just points out even more that it is exactly that.
Here it’s only June 7, and they’re already playing the “genocide” card. Did nobody tell them about pacing? There’s not a lot of room for further escalation, so what are they gonna do for the rest of Pride Month? “TERFs planning to blow up the sun and spitefully end all life on Earth to block Trans Rights?” “TERF anti-matter bomb to destroy the Entire Universe so they don’t have to use our pronouns?”
I really don’t get where this comes from, unless it’s something like this:
TAs: GIVE US WHAT WE WANT OR WE”LL KILL OURSELVES!!!
GC Women: No.
TAs: YOU WANT US ALL DEAD! YOU”RE OUT TO MURDER US ALL!!!
If there were GC feminists who actually did want to round up trans identified people and have them all put to death, we would have heard about them already. Ad nauseum. TAs would be able to quote them, and would do so. It would be the gift that keeps on giving. Any such quote would figure prominantly in every gender ideologist’s website, every charity’s “About” page, every trans-cheering newspaper article. It would be part of Chase Strangio’s pinned tweet. It would be one of the most useful weapons they could possibly have in their campaign to center trans rights. But they can’t produce such quotes because they don’t exist. Only one side of this “discussion” uses violent, eliminationist imagery and speech. Only one side threatens, intimidates and villifies the other in order that their arguments remain unheard. Only one side weaponizes suicidal ideation as a bullying, blackmail tactic, to the detriment and continued emotional anxiety of the very people it claims to support and speak for.
All the above leads one to the conclusion that the origin of the “genocide” charge is pure projection. It’s an admission of what TAs would do themselves if they had the chance, masquerading as a fear of what they think their opponents want to do to them. This coming from a movement which has achieved so much through institutional capture of organizations and agencies (like police forces) that give it the power to have a material effect on the lives of its percieved enemies and opponents.
Stonewall can’t fall soon enough.
Randy Rainbow is touring!
Should be good.
https://www.randyrainbow.com/tour
Deadly hit and run attack against Muslims in my home town of London, Ontario:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57390398
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-pedestrians-killed-man-in-custody-1.6056238
https://globalnews.ca/news/7928411/hyde-park-south-carriage-pedestrians-dead-london-ontario-police/
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/now-we-are-left-with-one-boy-crash-victims-remembered-as-model-family
The 20 year old suspect, wearing body armour, was arrested outside the mall where I usually work. He’s been charged with four counts of first degree murder, one of attempted murder.
Another Dylan Roof. How horrible.
Statue of Edgerton Ryerson, one of the founders of the Canadian residential school system, toppled at the Toronto university that bears his name:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world/us_and_canada
The above clip includes powerful footage of an indigenous woman wearing a jingle dress, dancing on the empty plinth.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ryerson-profs-name-change-1.6056260
The university has said it will not replace the statue, and will likely rebrand itself.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jun/06/criminalizing-miscarriage-why-spokane-police-inves/
Spokane police investigated a woman’s miscarriage as suspected mistreatment of a child…..
monsters
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal today, exploring a different set of ramifications of words not meaning anything, of insisting that words have more expansive meanings, and everyone just goes along because it’s easier, until it’s too late. The cartoon is about CAPTCHA images; perhaps “institutional CAPTCHA” would be a good description.
I almost posted that here, too!
My wife and I attended the vigil for the Muslim family members killed in Sunday’s terrorist hit and run attack. Thousands and thousands were there, including Prime Minister Trudeau. It was heartening to see this huge turn-out in support of the Muslim community.
https://twitter.com/KamilKaramali/status/1402435187628195843
https://globalnews.ca/news/7932059/trudeau-islamophobia-london-attack/
One of the speakers talked about how a young niece had asked her in fear if wearing hijab made her look “too Muslim.”
The family’s evening walk together was something they’d done during the pandemic.
Nobody was taking any chances. The intersection nearest the mosque was blocked by municipal dump trucks, which offered more security than the more usual roadblock that would use police cars. Members of the police tactical squad in body armour were stationed on the roof of the mosque (located just a block away from where the suspect was arrested), keeping watch. At least one of the team had a high powered rifle. I am fortunate to live in a city and country where I can find these unusual and disturbing.
The suspect is a 20 year old white male, who worked part time in an egg packing plant in a town just outside of London. His co-workers were shocked that he could have been involved in anything like this, one of them describing him as a “home-schooled Christian boy.” At this time it is believed he acted alone; no information has been released regarding any obvious links to other extremists, or extremism, and media outlets didn’t find any social media accounts they could dig into.
YNnB, coming from Christchurch, I can understand the surreal nature of what you and the broader community must be feeling right now. I hope the spirit of togetherness holds as time passes nd the initial shock wears off.
I know what you mean about finding armed police and extra precautions being unusual and disturbing. I and many others had the same reaction here as all police were carrying weapons here for about a week after the mosque shootings, many with assault style rifles. Thankfully they returned to the normal unarmed state after that and additional security was reserved for the shooters Court appearances. I’m very thankful to live in a country where carrying weapons is still regarded as extraordinary.
Home schooled Christian is instantly a red flag to me. For that matter home schooled anything has become one. I do know a couple of people who home schooled because they felt they could do a better job of it than the education system. That was certainly true in one case. Most home schoolers I’ve met have some bug up their arses that they either want to indoctrinate their kids with, or prevent them from seeing the other side, or both. It’s invariably religion, unsavoury social/political beliefs, anti-taxing or some weird combo of the above.
Just noticed our old acquaintance PZ is off to Seattle. Says won’t be gone long, and on his return (Monday) will have a Huuuuuuge announcement re FTB.
An apology to Ophelia, maybe?
Kicking out all the TRA’s?
Or retiring and handing the keys to Giliel?
Maya Forstater won her case!
Here’s her statement:
https://t.co/h2mbMO0MAp
This ends one of the main tactics TA bullies have instead of argument: trying to get their opponents fired.
Roj:
Merging with Pink News?
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I was half hoping I would wake up at 2:30 a.m. just so that I could find out immediately.
Yes yessitty yes.
Glosswitch’s latest essay is a work of particular genius, even for her:
https://tinyletter.com/Glosswitch/letters/the-ok-karen-32-you-won-get-over-it
Truth. For instance:
Excellent article by Jennifer Bilek at 11th Hour Blog. She argues that it is an error to admit men to women’s spaces and resources if they’ve undergone certain medical procedures, that there’s no such thing as “true trans”. Extremely well put. I love the phrasing she uses, “performative body dissociation”.
Feminists’ Self-Annihilating Investment in “True Trans”
Upon following a Twitter comment, I found a very interesting blog written by Shelley Wright, WrightingStuff.
She just started the blog this year, moving to this forum so as to be free “to write about the issues that are important to me without restrictions or fear of censorship.”
From her first post:
Her viewpoint is shaped by a number of basic premises:
You know what makes for a wonderful evening and night? Being in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest with your AC on an overloaded breaker. And thus no AC. ‘Cause 80% humidity is awesome.
Well, at least saunas help lose weight, yeah? Yeah?
#309 Bruce
Yes, Jim Sterling has hopped aboard the trans cult theory in a big way, which is perhaps not surprising now that he identifies as a woman. There is no trans lie that he has not embraced, including that JK Rowling actively wants trans people to die.
Jim thinks he’s a woman now? Yeesh. I used to enjoy the Jimquisition, but I haven’t listened in over a year. I tend to unsubscribe when I hear someone say “terf” nowadays.
Anyway, there was a request for introductory books on logic waaaaaaaaaay back (Studebaker @ 233) that I totally forgot about. You’ll have to forgive me, as I was dealing with a goofy Doberman whose foot was sliced open and bleeding all over my bed. Sooooooooo …
Probably the easiest place to start is with one of the introductory texts listed at the Open Logic Project. They’re all freely available and used in actual university courses. For example, forall x is used at Calgary, Bristol, SLU, Cambridge, and more..
Actual books you might consider:
* First-Order Logic, by Raymond Smullyan. This was one of my first reads. Clear and concise, but very much academic. Anything by Smullyan is probably good. If you like logic puzzles, he’s your man. Also if you like math.
* Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking, by D. Q. McInerny. This is more a general purpose guide on reasoning rather than an textbook for sentential logic.
A 14 year old in Vermont speaks out at a school board meeting. Found via la scapigliata’s twitter feed:
https://mobile.twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1403597629318045696
Did you ever cover this? It’s quite interesting.
https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2019/07/pseudoarchaeological-claims-of-horses-in-the-americas/
Christ, what an arsehole David Futrelle has become:
https://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2021/06/14/clueless-gender-critical-transphobe-loses-it-over-an-entirely-imaginary-trans-male-baby-boom/
As well as a coward. He never did answer me when I repeatedly asked him for evidence for his lies about the LGBA.
Harriet Hall over at Science-Based Medicine has just posted a favorable review of Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/irreversible-damage-the-transgender-craze-seducing-our-daughters/#comment-5422401140
The comments have erupted in the expected direction.
I started reading but had to stop. I used to be a regular at SBM, and still like and admire many of the commentators who are now erupting in what for me is a very unexpected direction. Wtsf. I drift off, any they became unmoored.
Harriet has guts.
*sigh*
Apparently the link goes to a comment I made. Scroll up, of course, to read the article.
Whoa, that was quick.
Bet it’s gone by the time you get there.
Some “expert” dropped a lot of dubious rebuttals and then said they could never, ever return to SBM. Probably that, in part at least. They were offered a chance to do a counter article. Not. Good. Enough.
Re the current efforts to understand CRT, John McWhorter has a recent post: You are not a racist to criticize critical race theory.
One of his many points, as I understood it from a cursory reading, is that terminology and its meaning morphs really fast sometimes, and so when people talk about CRT, they talk past each other because they are really talking about different things. It seems worth a closer read. I will certainly go back to it when my time is a bit less squeezed than it is at the moment.
Thank you Harald.
I’ve been thinking that by now it really should be Critical Race Theory 1 and 2 – 1 is the original, law school discipline, and 2 is the vastly broader category of anti-racism that goes beyond “well we have laws on the books so racism is over.”
I saw this announcement:
https://healthwellbeing.kmi.open.ac.uk/special-interest-groups/ou-gender-critical-research-network/
I recognized Kathleen Stock’s name among the people involved. Very welcome development.
Welcome but at the same time so depressing that it’s needed.
In case anyone is interested, have just written to Andrew Sullivan about his latest piece about Critical Race Theory, particularly as it influences teaching in schools, on his blog, ‘The Dish’:
Dear Mr Sullivan,
Well, this on Critical Race Theory was rather better than your ready inclusion of ‘systemic racism’ as one of the horrible, ambiguous un-Orwellian terms in your last piece, although I think that as usual you exaggerate things. I agree with much of what you say, particularly with respect to those examples from schools, but was — I am sorry — amused by your comparing these examples unfavourably to the things taught in Catholic Sunday schools. It does seem to me that if you don’t like the one kind of inculcation, you should at the very least find the other very dubious. They do not seem to me to be fundamentally different, though you seem to find the one better than the other since you believe that Christianity is about ‘love, compassion, sin, forgiveness, dignity, God, Heaven’ (I rather admire your positioning of ‘sin’, followed by that quick ‘forgiveness’) — or, rather, that children should be taught this so that they may be primed to accept the more unsavoury aspects of Christianity later on. My irreligiousness was prompted at a very young age as a result of being subjected to such platitudes in (Anglican) Sunday school, as well as by the sense one had that behind these nice, comforting, sentimental things were lurking absolute power, fear, and punishment, not to mention Hell, for children hear of Hell about the same time they hear of Heaven. I do not really see that Christianity, whether of the Catholic variety or not, particularly as presented to impressionable children, is superior, in terms of morality or truth, to the platitudes about race trotted out in the examples you provide.
But, regarding ‘systemic racism’, I would say that Macpherson’s original term, ‘institutional racism’, is better than ‘systemic racism’ since it makes it clear these are faults of actual and reasonably clearly defined institutions, whereas ‘systemic racism’ is vague, and so allows abuse. You speak of ‘The legacy of this country’s profound racism, the deep and abiding shame of its genocidal slavocracy, the atrocities, such as Tulsa, which have been white-washed, the appalling record of lynchings and beatings…’ You might add to this gerrymandering and other on-going attempts by the Republican Party, particularly since the election of Biden, to suppress the African-American vote, the long sentences handed out to African-Americans for trivial offences, the constitutional allowance (Article 13) that ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ is permitted in the case of those who ‘have been duly convicted’ of a crime (an Irish friend of mine who travelled in the States in the last century was appalled to see chain-gangs working on the roads in certain areas), the destruction of African-American neighbourhoods by routing freeways through them, etc, etc.
These are all clear examples of present institutional racism. If it were clearly recognised that these things are examples of institutional racism, and reforms were made, the wind would be taken out of the sails of those who propose such an all-encompassing account of racism that any reform seems impossible, and only race-war seems on the cards.It would also make for a juster society. But I do not find in your fulminations any recognition of this possibility — instead you merely lash out at those whom you consider your ideological enemies without coming up with any positive and pragmatic ways of overcoming the present situation.
Best wishes,
Tim Harris
Chasio is at it again >> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trans-physical-advantage-over-girls-and-women-in-sports-is-a-myth-aclu-183854026.html
also re:341 The way she smugly talks about trans 4th graders, children who haven’t even started to understand sex or sexual maturity is outrageous. These people are extremely dangerous to kids. The indoctrinination and grooming needs to be outlawed with severe penalties.
My little ad hominem for the day: In the video she bears an eerie resemblance to Charlie Chaplin, if only she was as silent. :P
Helen Staniland is back on Twitter!
It decided that, after all, she hadn’t violated any of the rules by asking a simple and important question.
None of her 50 or so appeals were successful, though, they decided this according to some mysterious, opaque ‘process’.
That’s not ideal, but she has a voice again, which is the main thing. But she should also have an apology.
Yay!
The Zan bill, an anti-discrimination bill in Italy (article is in Italian). The Vatican is upset about it.
I find the bill remarkable for several reasons. “Sex” is a key criterion, along with gender and gender identity. The wording of the bill does not conflate sex and gender. Incitement, not expression of views (“propaganda”), is prohibited; the bill is clear about that. It does not legalize gender self-identification.
Thee bill is a combination of several proposals to address discrimination and violence against various groups, including women, gay people, and trans-identifying people. Based on the analysis in the article, I think they’ve done a commendable job of constructing this measure.
Royal Academy tries to cover its ass, gets torpedoed by their comms director:
https://twitter.com/LottieHistory/status/1407665112119451650
Here’s there apology:
https://royal-academy-production-asset.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/b5758780-33b8-47a9-9dea-0b3312981235/Royal%20Academy%20statement%2023.06.21.pdf
As others have pointed out, they do not seem to be apologizing for the defamation.
Wow.
Kevin Drum, making points, missing points:
Liberals Need to Have the Courage to Call Out Our Own Nutcases
He (to my view correctly) acknowledges that American liberals need to reject and criticize unreasonable statements from other liberals. He acknowledges that some of the reticence to do that is due to fear of being accused of wrongthink (“racist/sexist/transphobic/etc.”).
I think he misses the point that the reason accusations of wrongthink are a problem is because they can come along with pile-ons, harassment, doxxing, threats, deplatforming, smearing of reputations, boycotts, attempts at getting people fired and otherwise interfere with people’s livelihood, and so on. So, to me, the onus is not on the people afraid to speak up, but on the other people who would react so strongly against those who do speak up. Drum has previously dismissed concerns about internet trolling, because, so what, people say bad things about you, just block them. He doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the issue.
But yes, I suppose the corrective effort has to start with people speaking out, and speaking out also against the resultant harassment.
People with DSD conditions fighting back against trans appropriation: https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/06/jo-bartosch-on-why-intersex-people-are-fed-up-with-their-medical-conditions-being-repurposed-as-a-transgender-identity/
Ooh, progressive!!! https://twitter.com/Iamthisnotthat1/status/1408045630883237893
(But I don’t know if it’s true.)
I came across this at Kevin Drum’s blog also, but the interesting part is in the article at the Guardian on why it took so long for “suitcases with wheels” to become mainstream. I would not have guessed the answer:
In case it wasn’t clear, there actually are people arguing that there should not be male/female divisions in sports. The whole point of women’s sports is providing opportunities to women, not providing opportunities to a subset of the population that happens to be smaller and weaker on average, and I think this aspect is getting seriously lost amid all the argument about physical superiority and competitive fairness. Testosterone tests are not tests of strength, but rather they are supposed to verify whether someone claiming to be female actually is female, and transgender-identifying males just make a mockery of that entire concept.
Here’s a 2018 article from the BMJ that I came across while looking for something else.
Time to dispense with the male/female binary in sport? Analysis of the cases of Laurel Hubbard and Mack Beggs
I thought there was some discussion here of the free speech case recently decided by SCOTUS, but I can’t find it. The one where the cheerleader faced serious school consequences for swearing on her own social media account outside of school. This brief Guardian commentary makes the excellent point that this sort of punishment is overwhelmingly aimed at girls.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/26/cheerleader-supreme-court-swearing
It doesn’t ring a bell with me, and a search of posts and one of comments for “cheerleader swearing” doesn’t find it.
So progressive and inspiring! Stunningly brave!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/worlds-first-fully-transgender-family-24403281
Re “transgender family”
Oh gosh, how awful. How can anybody look at that and not see it’s all about stereotypes?
Well I can look at it and see it’s all about abuse…
Decent NYT article about Caster Semenya. I’ve gone back and forth in my mind about this issue over several years, and for the moment I agree with:
And this means that Semenya is male for the purposes of athletics.
Although it is possible for a male (wIthout DSD) to have testes removed and testosterone reduced out of male range, that doesn’t turn the male into a female. I don’t know how internal testes with some DSDs affect puberty, bone growth, all that.
I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to suppress their natural hormone levels, just like I don’t support them raising their hormone levels for a performance advantage. Hormone tests are to help determine if someone competing in the female division is actually male, not to determine if someone male is sufficiently modified to permit competition in the female division.
Oh wow, this is completely insane. When I saw the headline, I thought it was going to be about COVID. Nope, it’s because “The five states newly added to the list have introduced bills in their legislatures this year that prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, block access to health care and allow the discrimination of the LGBTQ community, Bonta said.”
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1011253354/california-bans-state-travel-to-florida-and-4-other-states-lgbtq
ARRRGGHHH
@GW #359
It’s intensely frustrating here in Alabama, one of those 17 states. The bill text is reasonable, but of course the social justice contingent is up in arms and pointing to this bill as the worst thing done by the governor. I hate these pile-on boycotts (I expect other states to follow suit, along with various companies and organizations).
The other bill being deemed “anti-trans” is banning medical transitions for minors. I agree with the sentiment, and the bill is actually well-written, but I am wary of a legislative ban. But this sports bill is within the scope of what the state should do, and it is painful to watch well-meaning people get so heated in opposition to this reasonable bill.
Recent Biden administration statements and recent SCOTUS actions imply to me that the federal government is likely to take action and force states to allow males into female locker rooms and sports teams. Grr.
What is the point of having sports teams for women and girls if men and boys can join them? What possible justification is there for segregating sports on the basis of “gender identity”? If sports were mixed-sex before, and they decided to create a second league, what reason might be given for “identifies as female” as the basis for a league?
The crank PZ Myers has a…. take… on the kerfuffle over Harriet Hall’s review of Abigail Schreier’s book, Irreversible Damage.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/06/30/schreier-does-mean-noisy-troublemaker-in-german-shoulda-been-a-clue/
Myers has said he has never read the book and doesn’t intend to, but that hasn’t prevented him from having an opinion. I don’t know whether he’s read Hall’s review, but he describes it as a “terrible article”.
He finishes:
Oh rilly?
So now he’s just plain lying about it. Interesting. He did not want me to go. He told me so – but only in private, which I considered both cowardly and useless.
Reality ain’t his strong point, these days.
The commentariat is calling for Hall’s crucifixion, incensed by her continued “good standing.” A purity spiral is forming, like a proto-tornado about to hit land. You can smell it in the air.
Myers adds, in the comments:
Huh. I guess he saw my comment up there.
So I went back into my email archive and found the one where he begged me not to leave. That’s not hyperbole: his exact words were: “So I’m making a last plea: please don’t leave. I NEED YOU HERE.” He then says why, but I won’t share that bit. I won’t share any more of it, tempting though it is, but I can tell you none of it is as grudging and hostile as that comment today. On the contrary. And he did not tell me to shut up about my bad take, or that he thought it was a bad take.
Also – what the fuck does he mean I was a “supporter” of the network? I was part of the network. I was behind only PZ and Ed in the stats.
To clarify a little more – in that email he was on my side, and angry at the people who were chewing on my ankles. He’ll never ever ever admit that now but it’s the truth.
Along with his reason and – apparently – his memory, PZ has lost his sense of humour. I very rarely look at Pharyngula now but when I do, it seems bitter, angry stuff. Not righteously angry, not crusading hellfire, just… angry. See also his recent sneering dismissal of Andy Lewis’ essay on largely irrelevant grounds.
Perhaps it was always like that and it’s just that my standards are higher these days, but it’s grim reading for whatever sensibilities I have have now. I hope PZ isn’t sad and angry and bitter; It’s been suggested, though, that one sure sign that someone has become a fanatic is that they completely lose their sense of humour about that aspect of their life. I don’t see that in the gen crits. I don’t see that at all. Those others? Different story.
What’s gooing on here is really interesting:
https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2019/07/pseudoarchaeological-claims-of-horses-in-the-americas/
Basically, Yvette Collin, a woman,of Native American descent / ethnicity, wrote a dissertation at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, in which she argues that horses are indigenous to North America because Native American stories mention them in their creation myths, and because of dodgy interpretations of some artwaork and misdatings of others. Based on these stories, she argues that the prehistoric horses of the Pleistocene never went extinct in America. She argues that scientific method is all “Western” BS, invented to exploit and colonize indigenous peoples, and therefore this PhD dissertation (!) will not use scientific method.
Just wondering if anyone heard about Bill Cosby being released. Seems there was some violation of his First Amendment Rights, so he’s a free man.
I think it’s a bit much to assume if someone does something wrong in your trial you should get a free pass. That puts bad actors back on the streets too often, while people who are innocent, or who have done nothing but smoke a joint in the wrong place, rot for years because our system doesn’t consider innocence a good reason for an appeal.
I think it should lead to a new trial, removing all the violation parts, with a new judge and jury. If they acquit him, then he can walk.
Of course, you know if it’s rape, they need to find a way to let the guy out. After all, it was only women he hurt. Now, if he’d misgendered any of them…
Just to say that a new mass grave for First Nations children has been discovered in Canada. Also, there is the following article in the Guardian about similar schools, many or most of which were run by Roman Catholics, in the USA: ‘My relatives went to a Catholic school for Native children. It was a place of horrors.’ By Nick Estes.
This is, to me, the biggest problem with Critical Theory, the wholesale explicit rejection of scientific method.
Yes, how can a school of thought that rejects the scientific method call itself academic, and function within the world of academia? It’s insane.
(With the caveat that I know practically nothing about Critical Theory. I didn’t have to study that stuff when I was doing my PhD work. But I’m taking for granted that what Sackbut is saying is correct.)
What I know about Critical Theory is minimal; a number of articles, and “Cynical Theories” by Pluckrose and Lindsay. (I highly recommend the book, even though I have significant disagreements with some of the claims; it’s quite thorough and well put-together.) So take that for what it’s worth.
Just seeing GW@355. I’m hardly an expert on children, but even I can see how that line of questioning goes.
1. You, an authority figure, asks a child a question with only two possible answers, one of which seems obviously correct. (“Are you a boy or a girl?”)
2. Child looks confused that you would ask such an obvious question, and cautiously gives the obvious answer. (“I’m a boy.”)
3. You say “but….” followed by some arguments.
4. Child concludes that, since the obvious answer is apparently wrong, and there are only two apparent answers to the question….
I mean, this is pretty much how the Satanic abuse panics went down, isn’t it? Ask a child if something happened, then keep pushing and asking again if they say no. Kids are good at reading what adults want them to do/say.
I don’t know enough about CRT to defend it with any certainty, but I did read Lindsay’s critique of the 8 worst things about it on New Discourses. I wasn’t that impressed. In fact I felt that some criticism was either totally blinded by immersion in societal racism or plain dishonest.
His staunch defence of scientific method (and therefore all science) as being above reproach, whereas CRT wants people to ‘know’ things because of an oppressed groups lived experience was especially problematic.
As a scientist I know very well that it is possible to intentionally or not allow your preconceptions lead you into designing studies in a way that confirm your assumptions, and to interpret results in a manner that supports your desire. And that’s in hard sciences when you’re attempting to be objective. Consider social sciences, of which personally I place a lot more emphasis on the social than I do on the science. Application of statistics to a data set does not make a study well designed or objective in and of itself. Let’s not forget the wonders of the bell curve, racial IQ and craniology. All of which were the product of western scientific method at it’s best, well, accepted by peers and society at large at any rate. My point is, you don’t have to look that hard to find discredited and junk science when you go looking and a fair bit of it has been used to racially motivated ends over the years. Any claim of ‘that’s not proper science because the methodology was bad’ would be No True Scotsmanning.
I’m not at all sympathetic to traditional ways of knowing – such as the claim that an evil spirit lurks in the bog, off the coast or that the earth os 4000 years old. Then again, in the face of rigorous scientific analysis in Japan that sea walls were plenty high enough, despite centuries old stone tablets on hillsides saying ‘don’t build below here’, maybe science should take that into consideration. Same with many cultural precautions about eating or drinking certain things or hanging out in certain places. The reasoning and myth around why might be complete garbage, but in at least some of those cases the why not was spot on. poisoned water, dangerous geology, toxic plants, food that is prone too spoiling.
Scientists can be far too dismissive of cultural experience, just as culture warriors can be too suspicious ion science.
Across Canada, many communities cancelled Canada Day celebrations in the face of the continuing discoveries of unmarked graves of the victims of the residential school era. Instead, gatherings, walks and marches were held in many communities to mourn the dead and work. Flags across the country flew at half staff.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/no-reason-celebrate-canada-day-100605166.html
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/canada-day-vigil-protest-residential-schools-honour-indigenous-children-march-1.6087621
In my home town of London, Ontario, ten thousand people gathered for the Turtle Island Healing Walk:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/turtle-island-healing-walk-indigenous-peoples-london-ontario-1.6087278
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/canada-day-vigil-protest-residential-schools-honour-indigenous-children-march-1.6087621
It looks like Conservative leader Erin O’toole has had to walk back some of his “canel culture” rhetoric in the face of growing response to recognize and face our troubled history as a nation:
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/otoole-pitches-conservatives-as-canada-day-defenders-as-more-celebrations-cancelled
Still, the tone deafness shines through:
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/06/29/otoole-says-canada-day-is-a-chance-to-recommit-to-reconciliation-with-indigenous-peoples.html
This response from across Canada gives me some hope that more than lip service will finally be paid to justice for the Original Peoples of our country. We’ll see.
In other news, I learned a new word: pyrocumulonimbus
https://mobile.twitter.com/i/events/1410706568312614916
Fires in B.C. and Alberta sparked hundredsof thousands of lightning discharges over 15 hours.
Scary weather satellite imagery:
https://mobile.twitter.com/weatherdak/status/1410429592213413889
@377: I think Sackbut is talking about Critical Theory in general, not specifically Critical Race Theory. I don’t know how much statements about one can apply to the other (since I know very little about either).
@376: That’s what we would call “gaslighting”, right?
I very much respect Rob’s comment #377, and having now read some of Lindsay’s posts, I am in complete agreement with Rob’s judgement of them. I also liked his remark that social sciences are more ‘social’ than ‘science’, if one is taking, say, physics as the model for everything. But why should physics be the model for everything, as Lindsay & his ilk seem to suppose? The only thing I would take issue with is his remarks about traditional ‘ways of knowing’ — so-called ‘primitive’ peoples did in fact have considerable funds of genuine knowledge, as one learns when one reads some anthropology of the kind that does not begin with the presumption that ‘primitive’ people (they are not ‘primitive’ at all in fact) are ignorant idiots: the term ‘ways of knowing’, whether used favourably or unfavourably, is a modern sentimentalism. As for Japan, where I have lived for nearly 50 years, I would remark that Japan has a remarkable and centuries-old civilisation, which owes much to China, and those ‘old stone tablets’ on the hillsides (which I had not heard of – so thank you, Rob, for telling me of them) would almost certainly have been put there by local officials who had had experience of what could happen along those coasts.
notBruce @ 378 – god damn that’s terrifying. As in, it looks as if it could set off firestorms that would wipe out whole provinces or states. Or just plain everything.
@Rob #377
I agree very much that “Science” is sometimes put on a pedestal, that people use it as a bludgeon to stifle disagreement, that there is a lot we can learn from social sources. I don’t think Critical Theory is useless. The problem I was referring to is the wholesale rejection of objective truth and the explicit abandonment of the scientific method, which I think is far too extreme a reaction to the problems in the conduct of science. In science, if evidence is wrong, if there are biases in research, the method is supposed to allow for correction. The response to new evidence, like the horse story, should be more science, better science, not the abandonment of science. Whether horses were in the Americas is an objective fact in dispute, not a personal truth.
I think Pluckrose and Lindsay were fair in regard to good aspects of Critical Theory and the incorporation of social information into science.
They had lots to say about Critical Race Theory in particular, and I had more disagreement with them in that section than most others. They don’t think systemic racism is a valid concept, they think racism is all about individual viewpoints about other people; I disagree. I did find more compelling their criticism of “Black ways of knowing” and, again, the wholesale rejection of the scientific method, which they documented with quotes and references. Their descriptions and examples fit well with other writing I had seen.
They also discussed Gender Theory, Critical Social Justice Theory, and several other areas. The identitarian movement and standpoint theory I found very helpful in understanding a number of current issues and many discussions. These all, to varying degrees, are based on rejection of objective truth in favor of the primacy of personal narrative.
One particular framing I found especially illuminating: the replacement of the individual with the intersection of identities. This person is less important as an individual than as a queer Black woman, for instance. For the most part I agree with them that this “intersecting identities” and viewing people by identity rather than as individuals has got out of hand. The framing explains a lot, and convincingly identifies why I found certain articles or arguments troubling.
I see this has ranged farther afield than I initially intended. I hope it’s useful.
Also, re Sackbut’s comment #372: 1) I really do not think that that vacuous and foolish dissertation, which should never have been accepted, has much or anything to do with Critical Theory of whatever kind; 2) instead of appealing to ‘scientific method’ as a standard for any intellectual endeavour whatsoever, I think it is worth asking what the scientific method is designed to do, and what its applications might be outside the realm of the natural sciences. Science can certainly throw light on the arts, for instance — I think of Aniruddh Patel’s splendid ‘Music, Language, and the Brain’, which incidentally takes issue with Steven Pinker’s ignorant remarks about music (for scientists can be as ignorant and foolish as any of us) — but human affairs are extraordinarily complex in a way that it is difficult to deal with by the ready application of over-arching theories: one may think of the failures of Marx’s, Hegel’s & (on a far lower level) Toynbee’s theories. And there is, apart from science, a long tradition of paying attention to facts and reason, and striving for intellectual honesty. Which is why I admire such a thinker as Judith Shklar, the first woman to gain tenure as a professor at Harvard, who did not apply scientific method in her works, and had no reason to do so.
Sackbut #384: you can find on Youtube a TED talk by by the inventor of the term ‘intersectionality’ by Kimberlé Crenshaw, in which she explains why she finds it useful. She comes nowhere near suggesting or even intimating that the ‘individual’ is erased in favour of some abstract ‘identity’ or ‘identities’. That is a complete misrepresentation of what she is saying.
A judgement in a UK case has determined that it is “legal” to house men in women’s prisons:
https://twitter.com/RichardJGarside/status/1410917867990704129
It is noted that while this finding is disappointing/infuriating, the court apparently came to rational decisions on a number of points.
Tim, I’m familiar with the concept of intersectionality. It has precisely nothing to do with what I was talking about. Perhaps “overlapping” would have been a better choice in my comment. I don’t think P&L were referring to Crenshaw, either. I think the concept they outlined has merit.
I’m a bit miffed; I think I explained my point, and you attribute it to misunderstanding Crenshaw.
Surely you see there are problems with “identity”, and surely you see that people are being rejected or solicited in certain situations because of their “identity”. Sometimes these factors are indeed relevant, but often enough not. Sometimes attempts at alleviating discrimination, an admirable goal, get bogged down in looking at “identity” in minute detail, with quotes and proportions, and with a result that sometimes individual qualifications are overlooked in favor of the “identity” mix. Surely you’ve seen this.
I recall an interview with some “queer” activist who was asked about her “intersectionality”. She was something like queer trans demisexual aromantic gobbledegook, and the interviewer was impressed. This had precisely nothing to do with Crenshaw, either, but both parties probably thought it did. It did, however, relate to the P&L identitarian criticism, because there is nothing impressive about someone based on their personal assessment of attributes of personality.
I’m not even sure we are arguing about the same thing. I see a number of Bad Things, policies and rules and demands and opinions, that I think are credibly viewed as derived from Critical Theory, and I found my one book, P&L, that helped me understand that connection. I thus see problems by inference in Critical Theory. You seem to prefer to defend Critical Theory, saying that these problems are either minor or not related to Critical Theory. But can we at least get to the point of agreeing whether the problems exist? Can we agree that the rejection of the scientific method in that horse study is at best poorly worded, but more probably ignorant and misguided?
I’m not trying to defend Pluckrose or Lindsay individually. I’ve read almost nothing else they’ve written. I don’t agree with the whole of the one book. But I do think they tried hard to be fair and thorough in that book, and I think I learned something from it.
The Lindsay essay about Critical Race Theory Rob mentioned is here:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reasons-critical-race-theory-terrible-dealing-racism/
I agree that they are not impressive. They reiterate a number of the points in P&L that I found less than compelling. A couple of points I think make sense, but not most of it.
The trouble with Pluckrose and Lindsay, from my point of view, is that they got famous as Twitter snarkers during that whole “let’s all bully feminists” phase, along with Peter Boghossian. I find it hard to take them seriously.
Sackbut #388. I’m sorry you are miffed, Sackbut, but you did use the words ‘intersecting identities’, which did suggest that you were referring to ‘intersectionality’. I am sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying. There is in fact a long history of scientific ideas and ideas from other intellectuaI fields being taken out of context and popularly misapplied, the idea that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity implied moral relativism, for example. I should have thought that my remarks about ‘that vacuous and foolish dissertation’ made clear my opinion of that thesis about horses in the Americas.
Tim #391, thanks. I see now I did miss the gist of some of what you were saying, my apologies. I’ll bring donuts for the next discussion session.
And I’ll bring some, too!
Hmmm, civil conversation on the internet. How weird. All I can say is there better be enough donuts for all of us next time you two show up!
!
Transition is not the Solution: a Personal Testimony by Debbie Hayton, of whom we have spoke.
https://debbiehayton.com/2021/07/05/transition-is-not-the-solution-a-personal-testimony/
Worse than Laurel Hubbard, because the media aren’t claiming even that he’s a “transwoman” or “trans woman”, simply a “woman”.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/another-man-steals-a-womans-place
I wonder if it’s time for another Miscellany Room soon? The previous ones have fewer comments than this one.
– Just another drive-by comment –
Could be.
Slate says that the whole incident at Wi Spa was a “transphobic hoax”:
https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/36456/slate-is-now-labelling-the-wi-spa-incident-as-a-transphobic-hoax
Been following some live-tweeting (mostly by Akiva M Cohen) of the sanctions hearing in Michigan federal court at which Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and various other Big Lie proponents were ordered to show why they should not be sanctioned for frivolous litigation.
It’s always dangerous to make predictions based on a judge’s comments or questions until you see the ruling, but it does not seem to be going well for Team Kraken.
Powell actually showed a shred of sense, mostly letting her own counsel handle things.
Wood decided to tell the court that he has no idea how his name ended up on the pleadings in this case, he wasn’t involved, etc. Given that he was served with the sanctions motion and failed to withdraw during the “safe harbor” period — and engaged in discussions about the case on Twitter — I suspect that’s not going to go well for him.
Two other attorneys, Heller and Klownhandler (yes, that is an unfortunate name), pretty much doubled down. Demanding an evidentiary hearing on their underlying claims (which have already been disposed of), interrupting the judge, etc.
The attorney hired to defend the attorneys seems like a competent person trying to do his best with a bad record.
The judge got deep into the facts. Went through several of the affidavits that plaintiffs submitted, questioning them on who prepare the affidavits, what efforts were made to verify the facially implausible assertions made in them, etc. That’s not a good sign for Team Kraken.
No decision today. There will be some further briefing submitted.
Sorry, I should have checked it out — Klownhandler was a snarky name being used by Cohen to refer to the attorney named Kleinhelder.
Hearing is now over. Only new thing to report is that Powell managed to screw up after all, making a closing statement in which she declared that she would do it all over again and file those same papers. That’s completely sabotaging her own defense — now she can’t rely on any claims that it was reasonable at the time, given the urgency and lack of time for a full investigation, to rely on these whacko affidavits and nonsense legal theories. Nor can the judge say that she’s learned her lesson and is repentant. This is practically daring the judge to sanction her.
In case anyone is wondering, the defendants (the parties moving for sanctions) have asked for the following:
1) reimburse the defendants for their costs of defending this nonsense
2) serious sanctions sufficient to punish counsel and deter future abuse of the legal system
3) refer the attorneys to the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan to determine if they should be disbarred from that court (each federal court has its own bar)
4) refer the attorneys to their home state bar associations for consideration of professional discipline
More coverage at Talking Points Memo.
There was a forgettable article decrying the overuse of the terms “Nazi” and “fascist”. Nothing insightful. But it was accompanied by a photo of a protest, including a sign that said “Kill all Nazis”. The article didn’t address this at all. To me, the glib overuse of labels makes it easy to dehumanize opponents, to assume we know everything important about them, and to call for death with nary a second thought. To me, the dehumanization is the bigger problem compared to watering down definitions, but of course both are concerns.
Thank you Screechy.
Article on women and girls in the UK put through forced virginity tests:
https://news.sky.com/story/treated-worse-than-an-animal-women-and-girls-subjected-to-virginity-testing-at-unprecedented-rates-12347173
A good take on “demisexual”:
Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian: What does the dawn of demisexuals tell us? How sex-drenched society has become:
I would seriously question that anyone’s personal journey that involves elaborate scouring of definitions, seeking a term with a definition that might be appropriate, constitutes “coming out”. It’s more like “This is how I am, I’m trying to find the right word” rather than “This word with a well-understood definition applies to me, revealing information you didn’t really have before”.
It’s irritating how people seem to think that putting “-sexual” at the end of some fancy prefix will automatically refer to a marginialized minority group.
Calling it “coming out” just makes me want to bang my head on a wall. There is no “closet” for people who don’t fancy sex with strangers.
It’s not so much “coming out” as it is oversharing. Nobody cares what some stranger’s taste for or against hookups is.
https://twitter.com/martinradio/status/1415023793261645824
“A male has been nominated for best actress at the Emmys. Not content with stealing women’s sporting careers, acting is next.”
Well stated.
“Demisexual” always sounds to me like people searching for a hip way to declare “I’m not a slut!” Everything old is new again, I guess.
My guess is that “demisexual” is considered a marginalized sexual orientation because “I’m sexually attracted to people I’ve formed a strong emotional bond with” is basically a rephrase of “hearts, not parts.”
As we know, this cute little slogan is used to batter down the idea that homosexuality is about … homosexuality (same-sex attraction.) Instead, being gay or lesbian means you’re attracted to others of the same gender. Lots of lesbians love girl-dick, and boy-pussy is (or should be) welcomed by all unbigoted gay men. You fall in love with the personality . Having a genital-fetish (an oxymoron if ever there was) is a kink that can be shamed, and if accompanied by an attempt to define being gay or lesbian, worse than shamed — totally condemned.
This is the only kink that the woke will ever shame, amirite?
Sastra,
That’s an interesting connection I hadn’t thought of. I had assumed that “demisexual” was just another attempt by people who desperately want to be under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and aren’t satisfied with calling themselves an “ally,” with an added dose of the sanctimony I referenced earlier.
Apparently there is a counterpart to “demisexual” called “fraysexual,” for people who lose sexual attraction to someone once they develop an emotional bond, and therefore have to stop having sex with their partners. I heard this mentioned (not for the first time) on Dan Savage’s podcast, and Dan (who’s run afoul of the everybody’s-got-their-own-label-and-flag crowd before, but who mostly just sighs and goes along with it) couldn’t resist noting that this is what we used to call emotionally stunted.
No doubt someone is working on a term for “person who only has sex with people they find attractive, except when they’re drunk and then it’s anyone with a pulse.”
@CW
Apparently, though the real anger is directed towards those who interpret their fixation on genitals as having something to do with defining sexual attraction as gay or straight.
@Screechy Monkey;
I could certainly be wrong (and that counterpart supports that,) but it’s the first thing I thought of when I read the definition of “demi sexual.” Of course, I think I’d just been reading about the Cotton Ceiling and my mind was on the hearts-not-parts slogan. It sounds so noble, like marrying your fiancé after they lose their legs in a car accident.
Sastra:
I read that as “lose their legs in a cat accident.”
Those of you who are aware of Fortran will know why.
I just got this update from WoLF. Yikes!
Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey is on Twitter!
https://twitter.com/dildobuttmonkey
Quick update to the Kraken Sanctions Saga: the rules of the court prohibit any publication of the video or audio of the Zoom hearing.
Guess what Lin Wood did?
The court has ordered him to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned for this, too.
A nice overview of the criminal indictments hanging over the Trump organisation.
In the news today:
Woman athlete warned that her shorts were too short:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/19/paralympics-olivia-breen-speechless-briefs-called-too-short-inappropriate-team-gb-14952496/
Women athletes fined because their shorts were not short enough:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/20/norway-womens-beach-handball-team-fined-for-not-wearing-bikini-bottoms-14957011/
Do male athletes ever get called out or fined because of the coverage of their shorts?
Fined for not wearing bikini bottoms?!! Wtf???
I did not know of the existence of beach handball until this controversy, but the uniform requirements for beach volleyball and beach handball are similar. Women can wear bodysuits or midriff-baring shirts with bikini bottoms. Men’s uniforms include a full-length tank top and shorts at least 6 inches above the knee. Far more coverage in the men’s uniforms.
I know, I know, it enrages me.
What struck me in particular was the juxtaposition of the two stories. We almost never hear stories of men being sanctioned or warned for not exposing just the right amount of skin in their sports uniforms. Women gymnasts get criticized for having the rear of their leotards creep up, and for wearing leg-covering suits. They can’t catch a break.
The juxtaposition is striking, but I do find the forced bikini-wearing particularly grotesque and outrageous.
I just finished reading Trans by Helen Joyce, and found it both well-written and persuasive (as if any more persuasion were needed). Most of the arguments will be familiar to regular readers of B&W, but I still found it useful have all the separate pieces of the puzzle put together into a single coherent picture. It will no doubt be (indeed has already been) dismissed as hatespeech by the Usual Suspects, but we know what accusations like that amount to, don’t we… I may write a review when I have more time. In the mean time I highly recommend it.
If you do I’ll be happy to post it.
I haven’t had time to watch the whole of this yet, but it’s shaping up well:
Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUeqEoARKOA
You should also definitely watch Arty’s interview with the parent of a boy who is on the verge of wanting to transition. Arty is becoming a seriously good interviewer and the woman is also really good. The interview is very revealing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmbPY2_ZQSw
‘Incel’ Is Charged With Plotting to Shoot Women, U.S. Says
What’s interesting to me about this case is that he is being charged with an attempted hate crime for targeting women. I have been keeping half an eye out for any use of “hate crime” that refers to misogyny, and this is the first one I can recall seeing.