The police will be monitoring the dangerous woman
Meghan Murphy is doing a talk at the Vancouver Public Library in January.
So, naturally…this:
Statement regarding Feminist Current Event
This is not a VPL endorsed event. It is a room rental. While we don’t agree with the views of Feminist Current, we are committed to upholding free speech and intellectual freedom.
Statement here: https://t.co/iRh6YrTwyw pic.twitter.com/L1947xj1Vf
— Vancouver Public Lib (@VPL) November 28, 2018
Let’s read the statement:
Vancouver Public Library (VPL) is aware of concerns that have been expressed regarding an event with speaker Meghan Murphy scheduled for January 10th at the Vancouver Public Library.
VPL is not endorsing, or hosting this event; it is a rental of our public space. VPL has zero tolerance for discrimination and does not agree with the views of the Feminist Current. However, commitment to free speech and intellectual freedom are fundamental values of public libraries and are bedrock values for democratic society. As such, we will not refuse to rent to an individual or organization simply because they are discussing controversial topics or views, even those we find offensive. We seek to be a welcoming place for all, and actively find ways to support the trans, gender variant and two-spirit communities.
That’s a cowardly, confused, and traducing paragraph. The second sentence implies without literally stating that Meghan represents discrimination (of a bad, unjust, bigoted kind) but then the fourth sentence admits she is simply “discussing controversial topics” but then takes that back again by implying (again without stating it) that they find her way of discussing controversial topics “offensive.” Then they pat themselves on the back hard enough to raise a cloud of dust. Somebody who knew little or nothing of the subject would be baffled as to what Meghan’s crime is, but also highly suspicious that she’s up to no good.
VPL takes steps to ensure appropriate conduct occurs in its venues by clients who rent our spaces, including compliance with the BC Human Rights Code. VPL has explicit requirements in its rental agreements that govern the conduct of renters and has confirmed with Feminist Current their obligation to comply with all Canadian laws relating to the content of their presentation. We have advised the Vancouver Police Department of the event; they will be monitoring and will take appropriate action should conduct breach the Criminal Code. If we anticipate that this event will present a risk to public safety, additional security measures will be put in place.
That is downright shocking. They’re implying (and almost saying this time) that they expect Meghan to break Canadian laws and breach the Criminal Code, and that they’ve asked the police to monitor her talk. It’s disgusting, it’s horrifying, it’s perverse. Jonathan Yxnxv, who sues female beauticians who decline to remove the pubic hair from his genitalia and ruminates in public about teaching ten-year-old girls how to insert a tampon – he is fine and wonderful and a member in good standing of the “trans, gender variant and two-spirit communities”, while Meghan, who objects to Yxnxv’s extortion and perving, is treated as a likely criminal who will endanger the audience at the library.
We recognize that Meghan Murphy’s opinions are concerning. However, VPL is not in a position to take action intended to censor speech that is otherwise permissible under Canadian law. We have no indication that the event on January 10th will include content that violates the Criminal Code.
VPL cares deeply about respecting the diversity of our community – intellectually, socially, and culturally – and seeks to ensure that our locations are welcoming and safe for all patrons, including trans, gender variant and two-spirit individuals. We welcome any community group to rent our spaces, and our staff actively work towards access and equity in VPL services, spaces and programs. The programs that we partner on and host are aligned with these values.
While it is difficult for us as individuals and staff to accept a rental from an organization whose perspectives we disagree with, the fundamental role of libraries as a place for free speech and intellectual freedom must be upheld.
Christina de Castell, Chief Librarian
People have lost their fucking minds.
I am reminded of the early days of the women’s movement, when women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were considered dangerous, and were often locked out of venues for fear they would cause the downfall of society. Ernestine Rose was often kept off stage because she couldn’t even pretend to believe in God, and therefore was a double whammy of trouble. Police monitored those women, too.
One way or another, we must shut up the women. No matter what the cost. If it takes men identifying as women to shut up the noisy uppity females, well, that’s the tool we’ll use. Oh, and that one is particularly great – the left can use it, too! They can shut up women while looking progressive and woke. They’re not a bit misogynistic, oh no, they just want everyone to have rights, and if you happen to be one of those that claims that everyone includes women, and you use the word woman to make that point, well, you’re a reactionary right-winger who just wants to oppress trans-people and commit trans-genocide.
I only wish I could dispute any of that, but it’s the fucking truth.
What the everloving fuck is ‘two-spirit’? Vodka breakfast, whisky lunch? A way of saying ‘dualism’ without saying ‘dualism’?
Yeah, that VPL (really? Quite the ironic acronym, all things considered) statement is cringingly craven, but is it possible that it was written with an eye to reducing the risk of a screaming mob of transwomen setting up camp (no pun intended) outside the library and disrupting shit every day from now until the actual event.
It is badly written and full of insinuation, but there is a hint of those ‘confessions’ that hostages are forced to read for the cameras, exactly as written by their captors.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree with your own conclusion, Ophelia; people really have lost their fucking minds (or spirits). And when they start whining about the ‘violence and harm’ of being told “No!”; well, Putin himself couldn’t afford to pay me enough to give a single shit for their self-imposed and entirely imaginary ‘suffering’.
Can we make that Moscato breakfast, Zinfandel lunch? Then I can be two spirit, too!
Seriously, that sounds like one of those faux Native American things people come up with to sound “authentic”.
‘Two-spirit’ is a First Nations (or, for the US-ians, Native American) concept that’s one of the nouveau-mode ‘identities’ that all the cool kids have adopted. It’s a double whammy in its own right, because if you don’t make the right noises about it you’re a white supremacist as well as a TERF.
Normally I ignore these sorts of events (card-carrying introvert), but dammit now it looks like I’ll have to head into the city for this. Too bad the advance entrance-by-$5-donation is over, but somehow I think I can manage to swing the $16.29 ticket…
Here’s the current Eventbrite link, in case anyone here wants to play ‘find the fellow B&W reader’ ;-) https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gender-identity-ideology-and-womens-rights-a-talk-q-a-with-feminist-currents-meghan-murphy-tickets-53160857556
I would love to go. As a Seattleite employed full-time, I don’t think I can make it happen (weekday travel, border crossing, etc.). @ibbica, please report back!
Re “two-spirit”:
“… These supposedly progressive ways of viewing gender don’t come from cultures that actually treat women progressively. Not once.
“It’s very strange to watch the contemporary trans movement attempt to incorporate American Indian cultural conceptions of gender-nonconformity, because it’s so clearly an attempt to shoehorn people of the past into contemporary cultural labels. In some third gender societies, two-spirit was simply a way to handle homosexuality within the group: homosexual men were considered not fully men, a halfway gender that wasn’t quite ‘normal.’ In others, it was a way to handle intersexed people in societies with rigid sex binaries. In still others, it was for men who specifically preferred women’s work and roles, like weaving and cooking.
“In almost none of these societies did two-spirit people born male identify *as women*. We have no documented cases (in spite of documentation of other activities and feelings of ‘berdaches’ /two-spirits in history) of two-spirit men anguishing over an inability to be fully recognized as a woman or to have a woman’s body. They tended to identify as a different type of man, or something between masculine and feminine….
“The continuous use of two-spirit people as a way to show that transgenderism has existed in all societies–and the incredible lack of knowledge of the basics of indigenous North American cultures shown by many trans people who casually refer to there being transgender people in American Indian societies–is appropriative behavior. It is taking the parts of a society that you think you like, without studying them much or looking at their origins, and deciding that the culture they’re from must really be deep and would really get you. It’s de-contextualizing and de-humanizing, and erases differences between American Indian cultures as well as the fundamental ways those cultures historically were different from anything we have on the planet today.
“What’s instead true is that American Indian nations that had more rigid gender roles and assigned women less power historically felt the need to strip male/female identities from non-conformers, while more egalitarian societies with less gender socialization lack two-spirit people because of, rather than in spite of, their lack of emphasis on sex-assigned gender roles.”
https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/
-I strongly recommend everyone read the whole thing. It’s not long.
Thanks LM, that answers my unasked question. When I read that bit about two spirit earlier, my immediate thought was is this some kind of cultural appropriation and if it is just how wrong headed is it.
#1
Speaking of woke for the sake of woke, have you seen the story going round about a child teased by airport staff for having the name Abcde? Your comment reminded me not of the story itself, but of a commenter in PZ’s post on that story, here and here.
Hmmm…so cultural appropriation is a mortal sin unless you’re doing it in the service of shutting up women, in which case it’s totally woke. Have I got that straight?
I think a key difference here is the cops back then were really enforcing the will of society, enabling the tyranny of the majority. They were only too happy to shut down those crazy radical women.
Here I suspect the cops will not show up, and, if they do, after seeing the “threat” they were there to monitor, they will ask the library to not waste their time again.
(Unless Canada has woke police like the UK.)
LOL.
Of course, we cannot accept the truth that ‘Native American’ cultures differ as much from each other as they do from European cultures. So this bogus ‘Native American Culture’ claim can support just about anything.
I’m reading Hitler’s American Friends, by Bradley Hart. Sure enough, the Silver Shirt fascist movement claimed ‘Indian’ support and had a stooge in a feather bonnet as a regular feature of their rallies.
It is constantly being appropriated by the environmental movement, who also erase differences between the tribes and list them as “Native Americans” in a monolithic whole, and refuse to acknowledge that at least some of the Native American tribes were actively altering the ecosystems and managing them in a way that enhanced the purposes of the human communities.
Holms, your link doesn’t work. I don’t usually read comments on PZ’s blog, but I did read that article, and would be interested to know the comments you reference.
Re #8:
Excellent article, thanks for that.
Re #15:
The links worked for me. Here is the URL for the topic:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/11/30/you-will-be-mocked-if-you-fail-to-conform/
Comments are 1979071 and 1979119.
Nope, still not giving FTB the traffic, especially after I saw their new logo and tagline of ‘Reason. Discussion. Opinion.’
No fucking thank you.
FTB links not working for me either. Going to their front page also doesn’t work. Their site must be messed up.
“We have advised the Vancouver Police Department of the event; they will be monitoring and will take appropriate action should conduct breach the Criminal Code. If we anticipate that this event will present a risk to public safety, additional security measures will be put in place.”
I wonder if the VPL is scared that trans activists will turn up and be violent, but don’t dare say so, and so are implying that the cops have been invited in order to shut MM down*. This is how I interpreted the ‘implying but not actually saying that Ophelia noted. Which is still a pretty cowardly and crappy way to treat Meghan.
*How would this work actually? – how would the VPD or VPL decide if Meghan has breached the Criminal Code at any point? How clear are the relevant portions of the CC (and who decides which portions are relevant in these circumstances)? Are they actually quite vague and an easy mark for selective interpretation? Will we see men physically threatening women attendees and getting away with it, while Meghan gets booted out on a trumped up charge of language criminality, because a male in attendance had their feelings hurt by the mean lady’s discussion of the detrimental impacts of gender on women and girls?
I cannot imagine. Cops standing at the back of the room listening for WrongThink?
It’s just insane.
All of FTB seems to be down, I can’t reach Mano Singham either.
Works for me. *shrug*
I got onto FTB earlier (aroound 5pm, B&W time) but could only read, even refreshing the page gave an ‘error 500’ message, which means nowr to me other than ‘site’s buggered’.
I did notice, though, that the tweet from the ABC7 reporter said that Abcde is pronounced ‘Abcity, and several of the comments mentioned this and said that as Abcde’s parents were white, English-speaking Americans the pronunciation made sense, and I couldn’t respond to these fucking idiots because ‘error 500’.
Anyway, Abcde will not be pronounced ‘Abcity’ at all. Where are they getting that ‘t’ from? The parents are not English speakers, they are from that section of American-English speakers who think that ‘t’ and ‘d’ are interchangeable when they are followed by a ‘y’ in a word, so they will be pronouncing it the same way so many Americans pronounce duty ‘doody’, parity ‘parody’, etc, and so the child will be ‘Absidy’. They might intend* to say Abcity but are clearly pronouncing it Absidy.
Not a single one of the pompous pratts noticed this most glaring of errors, being busy as they were with not knowing which side to defend, how to work their own pet peeves (appropriation, for example. Appropriation of what? The fucking alphabet?), competing for which of them was bullied most or least as children for their own names, who’s own name was most often misprinounced, who cared less (or most) than anybody else what anybody called their kids.
I swear that a couple of the comments were just this side of claiming that parents naming their children was as bad as children having their sex assigned at birth! They were certainly saying that one should be allowed to decide one’s own name at the appropriate time, though there were no comments suggesting what I assume would have to be a name-neutral identifier to affix to every kid at birth and to use until such time as the dear offspring break their parents’ hearts by saying “Mum, I know you had your heart set on Dragonchilde Glutenfreest Momslilman Jones, and dad, you were rooting for Budchuggher Swordschlong Likehisdad Jones, but I’ve decided to go with Keith.
The *; I trust that you all remember what ‘intent’ is most certainly not an example of? Can you say it with me, girls and boys?
That ‘intent’ line cracked me up every time. It became the standard operating bullshit (S.O.B.) response to any comment found to be in violation of the ever-shifting dogma, whether or not it was actually relevant to the comment.
Nearly as funny as the time when they were trying to introduce a gender-neutral third-party pronoun to use when the gender of said third-party was unknown. The choice was down to varients of either ‘ze/zis’ or ‘xe/xis’. The only real agreement was that a singular ‘they/them/their’ was to be ‘bad’ because it was ableist, so very clearly suggesting multiple personality disorder if used to refer to an individual. I mean, just the fucking nerve of these people who a week earlier were going nuclear over ‘gendered slurs’ because calling somebody a prick insulted all men because a penis is a specifically male thing and calling someone a pussy insulted all women because a pussy was exclusive to women, yet were now deciding – all by their binary-gendered, cis-but-oh-so-SJW-selves – the official non-gendered pronouns (yes, just the one set!) on behalf of all of Transworld. Infuckingcredible!
Anyway, one regular commenter and high-ranking Horde member was telling a story about her own kids and was using the G-N pronouns. The precise wording escapes me (actually, even vague details of her post have vanished) but they don’t matter anyway. Both kids had wanted something or had something earthshatteringly banal to say to her – whatever – so “..eldest child came in and xe said yaddayadda then took xis leave…..youngest came to me, xe wanted a thing for xis doodahwhatsit and yaaaawwwn. Later, xey came to me together.. ”
Xey. Fucking XEY So desperate to retain top SJE status by being oh-so with-it she not only decided that her kids (a boy and a girl, I think. I know that until then she had tederred to then as he/she) were both gender neutral but that since ‘they’ was on the naughty-step she would do the right thing and use a gender-neutral pronoun for multiple people, whether of one, mixed, or uncertain gender.
Too clever to fall foul of Caine the Mighty by using banned words; too fucking stupid to realise that ‘they’ was the exact pronoun she needed.
As one of those American speakers, and a linguist by education, fuck off. Yes, we tend to pronounce both /t/ and /d/ as flaps between vowels; that is a typical phonological change that happens in every language; it’s not an “error” any more than, say, not pronouncing the /r/ at the end of a word like “car” is.
Or pronouncing “India and China” “Indier and China” or “law and order” “Laura Norder.” Which the odds are good AoS does.
I can guarantee you that I pronounce ‘law and order’ as three distinct and seperate words and ‘China’ and ‘India’ with a short ‘a’ rather than the longer ‘er’ sound (I do not, for example, say ‘India’ to rhyme exactly with ‘windier’).
I am a rather precise speaker (not ‘posh’, just precise). This is not a way of trying to disguise my working-class background or East Midlands accent, but simply because as a child and well into my teens I spoke at a million mph, entire strings of sentences came out as single, unbroken streams, and nobody understood a word I said. Slowing down obviously improved matters, and because I avoid running words together I tend to pronounce them distinctly. I might speak utter bollocks, but it will be carefully pronounced utter bollocks.
However, my criticism was not aimed at the American-English pronuciation (what’s not to love at the thought of a nation of patriots daily doing their doody?). All accents have their idiosyncrasies, and I wouldn’t criticise the American ‘ty-to-dy’ any more than I would knock various British local accents for changing ‘get off’ to ‘gerroff’ or ‘gedoff’. Further, had the report stated that the girl’s name is pronounced ‘Abcidy’ I wouldn’t have questioned it. The spelling ‘Abcde’ is questionable but I can see how that could be interpreted as ”Abcidy’.
I was aiming my comment at the ABC7’s reporter’s and PZ’s commenters’ apparent lack of understanding of the word ‘pronounced’. Yes, American-English speakers do often pronounce ‘t’ as ‘d’, but I cannot think of an example where the opposite is true (‘litre’ to ‘leeder’, yes, but does anyone pronounce ‘leader’ as ‘leeter’, for example?) so I fail to see why the reporter would say that the child’s name is pronounced ‘Abcity’* and why not a single commenter questioned that apparently ‘official’ pronunciation.
*unless she had been told by the child’s mother that ‘Abcde’ is pronounced ‘Abcidy’ and assumed that because when an American says ‘cidy’ they mean ‘city’, then the parent was simply mis-pronouncing ‘Abcity’)
[Apologies for the threadjack, but I suspect no one’s reading this thread anymore, and I get so few chances to be nerdy about linguistics.]
AoS, what you’re hearing as a /d/ is a flap–the tongue taps the alveolar ridge quickly without enough time to affect voice onset time, which is technically the difference between /t/ and /d/ in English (and most languages that have the t/d distinction). To your ears it sounds like a /d/ because it’s closest to that in your dialect, but to the ears of a Spanish speaker, for example, it often sounds like an untrilled /r/, as in “pero”, because it’s produced in a similar manner.
But there is a distinction in how we pronounce “duty” and “doody”–it’s in the length of the first vowel. If you listen carefully, you can hear that the vowel in the former is slightly (but noticeably) shorter that the vowel in the latter.
Ophelia, I grew up outside of Boston, and while I don’t drop my rs, I knew a lot of people who did. The history of r-dropping and the linguistics of the intrusive r are fascinating (to me), but I won’t bore you with that here.
Well you can if you want to!
AoS so you’re saying you never utter an intrusive r?
Ophelia, as far as I’m aware I always leave a small pause between those words which others might fill with an intrusive. Omitting the use of intrusives was one technique I used in learning to control my speech rate; I would now have to make a conscious effort to include them, and doing so feels unnatural. I suppose it might be said that although one should never say never, I would never say neveragain.
I don’t think that omitting intrusives is somehow correct or ‘better’ English, nor do I think the use of them is wrong, it’s just become a part of my normal speech pattern.
WaM, I understand the mechanics behind speech and pronunciation fairly well, which I think is partly why I can mimic many accents with a great degree of accuracy (speaking of which, is it just me who gets annoyed when people talk of ‘the’ English/American/Australian etc. accent?), and I get what you’ve said about the ‘flaps’, but I still cannot see why ‘Abcde’ would, as the ABC7 reporter claimed, have the ‘d’ pronounced as a ‘t’. Are you aware of any examples in any* variant of English where this does occur?
*not including Irish names; it often seemed to me that any connection between their spelling and pronunciation is purely coincidental.
But there is an actual R at the end of “never”! It doesn’t count as intrusive R when the R is actually there at the end of the word. I know UK speakers think it does but I say (as a non-linguist) it doesn’t.
Being a non-linguist, I’m free to say I find intrusive R rather absurd (oh look there’s another – pronouncing the R at the end of “rather” is not an intrusive R).
And another: “there at the end of the word” – thereat.
They’re bloody everywhere! I’d call it an invasion but it’s probably not as dramatic; more an intrusion, I suppose.
Oh, and although the vast majority of people over here use them without realising it, and wouldn’t recognise the term if asked, they bloody well notice when people do’t use them. I am aware that by not using intrusives I am very much in the minority, and it is one of the main reasons I am often accused of being posh or stuck up. I’d rather have that, though, than go back to having to constantly repeat everything I say because despite being said in my native accent, nobody can listen as fast as I used to speak (if you know what I mean).
AoS,
The point is that for most American English speakers, /t/ and /d/ are pronounced the same between vowels (e.g., there’s no difference in the pronunciation of the consonant in medal vs. mettle); if there’s any difference, it’s in the slight lengthening of the preceding vowel. So “abecity” and “abecidy” would sound almost exactly the same, and since neither is an actual word in English, whoever wrote down the perceived pronunciation would have to guess at what’s intended. And chances are their choice was influenced by words like “city” which are spelled with a “t”.
Ophelia,
The intrusive “r” is a result of overgeneralization, which is a fairly common phenomenon in language acquisition. Keeping in mind that we learn to speak language at a very young age, mostly without a conscious effort, and before we learn to read and write (if we ever do), the process works roughly like this: the first generation starts dropping /r/s after vowels, including at the end of words, but then if the next word begins with a vowel they pronounce the /r/. Their kids then have to make sense of all this, and some of them may come to the not unreasonable (though unconscious) conclusion that in English, whenever you have a word that ends with a vowel followed by another that begins with a vowel, you insert an /r/ between them. It’s only much later when you’re learning to read that you discover that some of those words have “r”s at the end while others don’t (and which is which probably seems quite capricious).
As AoS indicates it’s possible to change your pronunciation later in life, but that can be very difficult, especially if you don’t even realize what you’re doing.
What a Maroon – Ok but I read once in some encyclopedia of language or other, compiled by linguists for the general reader, that intrusive R is useful to as it were lubricate the two vowels. For real. I don’t remember the exact wording except that “lubricate” wasn’t it, but the idea was definitely that not having an R there is awkward or uncomfortable or difficult. I stared and laughed and couldn’t believe what I was reading. (I haven’t been able to find it again. I thought I knew what book it was in but didn’t find it so can’t share the exact wording.)
I think the book was from Cambridge U Press.
Alec Guinness said in his memoir that Gielgud once bit his head off at a dinner chez Gielgud for using an intrusive R.
Well, I can’t answer for Cambridge U textbooks….