Dominant groups
Well this took my breath away. The NPR article is about Trump’s plan to meddle with all the museums, not just the federal ones, and that’s breathtaking enough, but then it got even more so.
In a statement to NPR Wednesday, the president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums, Marilyn Jackson, framed the issue as one of creative and scholarly independence. She wrote:
“The idea of extending federal reviews to the nation’s 22,000 museums misunderstands how museums operate. The vast majority are independent nonprofits, guided by professional standards and community trust. Museums cannot and should not be subject to government review of their exhibitions. The integrity of museums depends on their independence, and that’s what makes them so valuable to the public.”
…
Trump Administration critics, including multiple Democratic Congressional representatives, like Rep. Bennie Thompson, have said this year that the President is trying to erase “Black voices and history.” The New York City Bar released a statement in June saying that it seemed like the president and his administration are trying to dismantle the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“The common thread running through all these orders and actions is that the civil rights laws can and should be invoked to justify protecting a dominant group (i.e., white people or cisgender girls) at the expense of the rights of minority groups and in contravention of the transformative purpose of these laws,” the NYC Bar statement read.
EXCUSE ME???
Since when are girls the dominant group? Since never, that’s when. That’s not the pattern. That pattern is inside out and backwards. It’s not white people & girls have privilege while people of color and boys do not have privilege.
And it’s the NYC Bar saying that outrageous thing!
I must be going to the wrong museums. I want to go to the ones where “cisgender” girls run the world. What kind of exhibits do they have?
I think it’s forced teaming again. The NYC Bar knows that there are things all reasonable people agree on—slavery was bad, African-Americans should have a museum of their own history, the President of the United States has no right to meddle with museum displays—and then they throw in “sad boys with ponytails should be able to play on girls’ sports teams, and the girls are mean and privileged if they don’t want this to happen” as an equivalent statement.
And the problem is, it’s working. Trump is always bringing up the trans sport thing because he sees that it gets people angry, on both sides. Trump’s people are completely indifferent to whether or not something is true. We are not, so we have to either deal with the awful cognitive dissonance of “sad boys with ponytails are girls” or be seen to agree with Trump on something.
What Piglet said!
Is this the new Trolley Problem?
Yebbut it’s not just “sad boys with ponytails should be able to play on girls’ sports teams, and the girls are mean and privileged if they don’t want this to happen” – it’s ALL women are privileged and dominant BECAUSE they are “cis” – which is a much more sweeping and much more ludicrous and insulting claim.
Ophelia: of course. But the reason that the NYC Bar statement said “cisgender girls” with no mention of women is because they’re trying to focus attention on school sports rather than on men trying to take absolutely everything that women have.
That and the obvious implication of transgender girls, taking advantage of the fact that “girls” evokes more vulnerability than “women”.
According to the social justice worldview, there’s no real distinction between domination and mere majority. Women simply ARE privileged and dominant in virtue of being “cis”, because “cis” is majoritized and hegemonic.
And yet somehow they said “cisgender girls” instead of “cisgender boys.” It’s a good point about no real distinction between domination and mere majority, but it’s that plus whatever this lunacy is that makes even women eager to pretend women are jackbooted Nazis.
The slippage between domination and mere majority is prima facie ridiculous, especially for anyone who thinks of themselves as even a tiny bit left-wing. Rich people dominate the rest of us, but numerically they’re a tiny minority.
from what I recall following members of what used to be call ‘law twitter’, the NYC Bar is a voluntary organisation that is more of a networking and special interest association. As opposed to some other Bar organisations that hold a professional standards/regulatory function. Another way America confuses the rest of us.
So, this is not great at all, but it’s better than if a regulatory Bar association had been captured.