The recent movie “Conclave” is about the back-room politics of selecting a new pope after the death of a liberal-ish pope. The setting could possibly describe the current situation, but the movie is of course fiction. It is very good fiction, though, with a lot of interesting issues touched on, including some that might be of particular interest to readers here. Have any of you seen it?
Curiously, PZ hasn’t mentioned the UK Supreme Court’s decision on single-sex provisions. Perhaps he’s realized that he’s better off shutting up about it.
If implemented, the new policy outlines the following:
The Women’s Category will be open exclusively to athletes of the female sex.
The Men’s Category will be open to all other athletes who are otherwise eligible for competition.
These eligibility standards will apply uniformly across all sanctioned competition levels, including Division I, IA, II, III, Junior, Cadet, Youth, Veteran, and all other sanctioned categories.
Hope you’re OK. Ophelia. As I said a few years ago when your internet connection was down. I’m afraid your regular posting schedule has spoiled some of us the the point where we start worrying if a day goes by without the daily dose of sanity from B&W.
Well, thank the good heavens! Just kidding though, technical difficulties did cross my mind. As a person who has no social media accounts, no television, and only the most casual of interests in current affairs (color me a grumpy old man), this site is like home to me. I know I don’t provide much deep insight or well crafted posts (I’m not a writer!), I do look forward to reading Ophelia’s posts daily, and all the excellent comments. I actually do read most of what’s posted here, whether I think I should weigh in myself or not. Having a couple of days off is not a bad thing, however it does remind me of how valuable to me Ophelia’s input has always been, going back to the old TPM discussion board days. Sorry for the overly sentimenal outpouring, but I do appreciate Ophelia, and indeed all of the regulars here, for your continued interesting commentary. Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, hopefully with more cyber security or whatever to keep the hacking at bay. ‘Discussing all the things’ is only as good as we make it, but I have found here that it’s important things, relevant things, provocative things that I enjoy reading about (I am a Reader!) that make this site a somewhat ideal daily ritual. :)
Good to hear Mike. :) B&W is like a little oasis of sanity and familiarity of the interweb behemoth. I must also admit I do enjoy YouTube, but a curated personal version of it. I currently subscribe to 10 channels, and I have a borrowed subscription (therefore no ads), but YouTube allows me to choose “not interested” and “don’t recommend channel” in a way that narrows down what they offer on the main page. I have to maintain this, as they recommend new garbage daily. It’s a very narrow handful of videos that I might find interesting amongst a gigantic amount of sheer digital garbage that I don’t want to wade through. I don’t have the head space anymore to suffer through what people find entertaining or even interesting anymore. Don’t get me started on ads either — in my opinion marketing is the most wretched disease of our time. How it’s metastasized in recent years is stunning. I saw a video where Adam Savage described Googling. He said that the *signal to noise ratio* has increased exponentially and now we have to scroll through multiple ads and “suggested” crap to find the simple results we were offered only a few years ago. Yep. YouTube’s “creators” too end up getting big, greedy, and start hocking vitamins and vpn’s, which they call sponsorships. When they reach this point it seems they become uninteresting concurrently. To which my response becomes *unsubscribe* and “do not recommend channel.” I can see them having “merch” and a website to visit if you want to support them, or if you’re a fan, but the sponsered stuff always seems phony and scripted…
I’m almost the same, in that B&W is the first site I open in the morning, and the last I check at bedtime. I do have a FB account, though. Oh, and Teams, now that Skype is being killed at the end of the month. Got to be able to keep in touch with my family somehow.
I rarely go on YouTube; I’ve never had an account there, preferring to follow a few people via their blogs/Substacks.
I recall claims of men claiming to be transwomen, using that claim to get into women’s change rooms & washrooms for purposes of at least voyeurism and maybe rape.
If I bring up the possibility get doubts this occurs at all.
Can anyone provide a list of confirmed cases that I can link to?
It infuriates me when people doubt that men take advantage of transgender identities to commit crimes against women.
Men do bad things all the time, and anyone who claims otherwise is flaunting a luxury belief. It’s an insult to everyone else. To such a person I say:
You talk like you’re perched in some untouchable world where male violence against women is just a rumour. The police, the courts, prison — that stuff’s always somewhere else. You only ever see it on a screen.
Well I live in the real world, and down here men rape women. Men abuse women. Men leer at women. Men harass women. Men spy on women undressing. And they film it. And they share it with other men online.
From where I’m standing, pretending men wouldn’t jump at any chance to do harm — that’s the real fiction.
The minute you hear the word ‘transgender’ you instinctually retreat to your perch where everything’s sugar and spice and bad things never happen. You don’t realize it, but you’re letting slip that on some level you already know that ‘transgender women’ are a fiction. Because if you truly saw them as ordinary human beings living in the real world — as I do — you’d understand that they’re capable of good and bad, just like everyone else. You’d have no trouble comprehending that some men who claim to be women have complex psychological circumstances that are deserving of compassion, and that others simply want to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
In the real world, you can’t conjure a magic word that exempts any man from the rules that keep women safe and then just assume that only the right kind of man would ever dare to make use of it. And that’s all “trans” is — a magic word. A man doesn’t have to get a diagnosis or have surgeries or take drugs in order to “become” transgender. He doesn’t have to be gay or have a feminine disposition in order to “be” transgender. He doesn’t have to really feel it. All he has to do is say the word, and you — yes, you — will believe him. For once he says the word, he’s already stepped into a parallel universe where impostors and criminals cannot exist. Of course, it helps if he at least puts on a skirt, grows his hair long, and applies a little makeup. You act like even that is some great barrier that separates the world of mortal men from the mystical realm of “trans women”.
But here’s what you don’t seem to understand: lots and lots of men like to put on a skirt and wear makeup. All kinds of men — straight men, aggressive men, criminal men. There’s nothing mystical or unknowable about it. To many men, crossdresing is not a burden, it’s a kinky, exciting privilege. Remember the 1980s? Hair metal? Glam? All those ultra-macho, virile rock stars? They were showing off that they were cool and daring and manly enough to get away with it. And other men literally worshipped them for it.
Now they’re the most special people in the world. You’ve given men even more incentive to come out in public with their crossdresing proclivities — especially criminal men, because now it comes with carte blanche to enter spaces that were designed to keep women safe from them.
But you can’t allow yourself to see it that way. The problem is: “transwomen are women” doesn’t work in the real world at all. It’s a fantasy that can only exist in a fictional world where men didn’t take advantage of every opportunity to abuse women they ever came across since the dawn of time.
I dare you to really look at transwomen — even for a second — before slipping on your magical-thinking blinders. You might be shocked to realize just how un-virtuous you’ve been all along — to realize the Emperor’s been naked this whole time.
Too true, Artie. I like to say I’m not biased against trans-women, because I believe they are no more likely to commit sexual offenses than other men.
Your post does make me wonder about the iconography of transness. All the rainbows and unicorns… is this the irrepressible consciousness of it being an appeal to magic?
The minute you hear the word ‘transgender’ you instinctually retreat to your perch where everything’s sugar and spice and bad things never happen. You don’t realize it, but you’re letting slip that on some level you already know that ‘transgender women’ are a fiction. Because if you truly saw them as ordinary human beings living in the real world — as I do — you’d understand that they’re capable of good and bad, just like everyone else. You’d have no trouble comprehending that some men who claim to be women have complex psychological circumstances that are deserving of compassion, and that others simply want to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
I recall claims of men claiming to be transwomen, using that claim to get into women’s change rooms & washrooms for purposes of at least voyeurism and maybe rape.
If I bring up the possibility get doubts this occurs at all.
Can anyone provide a list of confirmed cases that I can link to?
One of the real giveaways is the number of convicted rapists who suddenly “discover” they are “women”. Jim Baerg, you might start with the well-documented example of opportunistic, predatory, “transness” in convicted rapists. There is no distinguishable difference between these rapists and any other supposedly trans identified males demanding access to women’s single sex spaces. If activists dismiss the former as “no true trans”, then they similarly disqualify the latter, allegedly “safe” ones because there’s no way to tell one from the other.
It is telling that trans activism is perfectly fine with all of the ongoing collateral damage that women suffer, so long as the wee precious faux lasses get to “validate” themselves by invading women’s spaces. This is why “third spaces”, which could have been a solution, has always been rejected: they would short-circuit the validating effect of accessing women’s spaces, confirming the truth that trans identified males are not women. Ideologically, this was a non-starter, because “safety” is not the real goal, and neverhas been. Access and “validation” override everything, women be damned.
These activists refuse to even acknowledge there is any such danger to women, or even the slightest hint of a problem, proclaiming there is “NO CONFLICT!” between women’s rights and trans “rights.” They insist that women have no legitimate reason to bar trans identified males (which means, effectively, any and all males under any aggressively enforced “Self ID” regime), from any female, single sex spaces of any kind whatsoever, and that the their sole motivation to do so can only ever be hateful, transphobic bigotry. They can even count on Quisling females (Sally Hines, Jo Grady, Maggie Chapman, etc.) to parrot this line in their demented, misogynistic, self-congratulatory eagerness to give away women’s rights to safey and privacy.
As a consequence of this totalizing programme, supported and enforced by government and industry, women’s prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters, toilet and changing facilities, sports teams, short lists, etc., are all open to any man who claims to be a woman. Activists will not admit of any exception to this demand, because to do so invalidates their entire case: the “safe” males who are, we are told, actually women, are indistinguishable from the cheating, predatory ones. A blanket ban on all males is the only safe course of action, but genderists counter this with “TWAW!” tactically conflating gender and sex in the process. For them it’s all or nothing. And it has to be. Allow one exception and the whole thing collapses in contradiction and incoherence. Women’s resistance must be sidelined, discredited, and crushed. And it is. The worst crime of all is women saying “No” to the demands of men.
All the rainbows and unicorns… is this the irrepressible consciousness of it being an appeal to magic?
Possibly, but I think it also has a strong element of infantilization. The childish iconography enforces the idea of TiM “harmlessness”. Ironically, it goes hand in hand with the use of overtly stereotypical, sexualized “womanface.” Both are supposed to disarm resistance to their demands, painting themselves as poor, marginalized victims who wouldn’t want to cheat or rape anyone.
This makes me think of the musical Oklahoma! when Will Parker sings to Ado Annie that with him it’s all or nuthin’. Her response is “all for you and nuthin’ for me”. She sees right through him.
The trans are the same way. All for them, and nothing for anyone else, especially women, but also the LGB portion of the alphabet.
I have read enough on this blog over the last few years to be convinced that Trans is harmful BS.
The Trans issue came up elsewhere & I raised the issue of allowing “TransWomen” into women’s change rooms providing cover for rapists. Others expressed doubt about that.
Is there a website with links to news items about rapists claiming to be ‘Trans’ to get into women’s prisons, or cases of ‘Transwomen’ going into women’s washrooms or changerooms to have opportunities for rape or at least voyeurism.
I would like to have a link to such a website to give for whenever the issue comes up again.
I understood that your comment was a request for specific resources. My comment was not intended to be a direct response to that; it was a riff on the subject. I got the inspiration to write it — so I did. Now that it’s out there, it could possibly serve as an alternative rebuttal to people who express doubt that men ever exploit the transgender movement to abuse women, rather than supplying them with a barrage of counterfactual examples. Or it could serve as a complementary or supplemental response to bolster the counter-argument alongside a list of concrete examples. A double-barrel serving of conceptual unpacking alongside the hard, cold facts can make for a knockout rebuttal.
It seems to me that rebutting the statement that men never exploit the transgender movement to abuse women should be simple: what is the complete list of things men never exploit to abuse women? Let’s postulate that the transgender movement is item number one. What is item number two?
Thank you! But immediately after pressing the “publish” button, I wish I could have edited that sentence. This is often the case with me. I toss something off in a moment of passion, and then I re-read it with an editor’s eye, and it’s at that point that my mistakes come into focus.
For example:
A double-barrel blast would fit better than a double-barrel serving. Servings are for ice cream — double scoops!
A double-scoop serving is cute. A double-barrel blast is hostile and violent — as I intended my sentence to be.
As it is now, it’s accidentially a mix of aggro and cutesy.
But I’m my own worst critic. Perhaps I need not judge myself so harshly. I’m grateful you liked my sentence!
Oh gosh Arty, Ophelia has saved me here so many times. Whether it be me being provoked, or just plain hasty. I mean it’s not like I don’t have the time to self edit after I cool off a bit. Between the typos and not getting my thoughts in order before hitting that fateful button… :D
I do understand the appeal of a rant, but as you say, most people are ignorant because they aren’t being given the facts by their favourite news outlets; not because they are determined to believe, in spite of the evidence, that ‘transwomen’ are delicate flowers. Reserve the ranting for the gaslighters.
There’s not much I miss since I quit Xwitter, but Glosswitch is one I do miss.
A great read from her today.
Of all the frat boy-style responses to the UK supreme court’s recognition that women exist, there’s one that’s stuck with me the most: “JK Rowling is Andrew Tate for women.” It’s a line that’s been shared in various forms, often with a photo of Rowling celebrating For Women Scotland’s victory. As a response, it’s got everything.
There’s the callousness, comparing a woman who set up a rape crisis centre to a leading representative of the manosphere; the faux progressive posturing (as I wrote in my book Unkind, for a certain type of man, “‘not being the far right’ and ‘not being Andrew Tate’” function primarily as misogyny entitlement tokens); above all, there’s the back-slapping smugness.
Isn’t it funny, likening women’s fight for female-only spaces to men’s fight to abuse women with impunity? Hey, rape victims, you know your rapist? That’s you, that is.
JKR is certainly a lightning rod for all the Transactivists, the MRAs, and their hangers on. I suppose if she didn’t exist, they’d have to invent her.
It is Victoria’s belief, and I concur, that so much of transactivism is a cover for “Men’s rights”, disguised as empathy for the poor, marginalised, transsexuals. It is, as she writes, an offshoot of the manosphere.
The supreme court judgement was not about whether women are biologically female or a joyous, inclusive mix of identities. At its most basic level, it was about whether women are human or a porn stereotype. Humanity won. A significant number of men are so angry about this they’re threatening to rape and kill us.
This is what radicalisation looks like and women are not safe. We are condemned by incels and trans activists alike for existing as humans rather than objects, and politicians, in thrall to fictional rather than actual extremism, still say nothing. The longer they do so, the more things will escalate (as Jeni Harvey has written, this is “the most dangerous time”).
The pandering has to stop. It really is time for the world to wake up.
that tigger gave us, for the person who expressed doubt about transwomen in women’s change rooms being a problem. He says he is now convinced that it is a problem.
We both have only read a few of the items, that is sufficiently appalling.
I suppose the null hypothesis would be that a ‘transwoman’ is about as likely to commit a given type of offence as an ordinary man. Are there statistics that indicate a higher or lower offence rate?
Unfortunately, since it’s not really possible to know how many “transwomen” there are out there, it’s rather difficult to tell what their offense rate might be.
You might be interested in the following article. Some images from it get shared online rather frequently.
Can Trump & Co. sink any lower? Trump has said that he could have Kilmar Ábrego García returned to the US with a ‘simple phone call’ and that he would do so, ‘if he were the gentleman that you say he is’. But he won’t, because he insists that Garcia is a member of MS-13.
And here’s where it gets really bad.
The White House is promoting a photo of Garcia showing ‘MS-13’ tattooed on his knuckles, and Trump has previously used the same image on his Truth Social site.The problem is, there is no MS-13 tattoo on his knuckles in any other image where Garcia’s hands are visible.
The bastards are photoshopping ‘evidence’ to cover their fuck-up in deporting him.
Jim, I’m so pleased that the link has been helpful. It certainly helped me to change my mind. As you say, though, it’s really tough to read. They really are portraits of deeply horrible men.
The offense rate for transwomen is always zero, because no true transwoman would ever do such a thing. QED.
To a doubleplusgood doublethinker it depends on the context though:
• For the specific purpose of dismissing any concerns about allowing TIMs into female only spaces, no true Scotsman “trans woman” would ever do such a thing.
• For the specific purpose of defending the infallibility of self-id, any TIM who does indeed “do such a thing” is the most bonafide trans woman imaginable, which is why “she” must be allowed to serve in a women’s prison, why the victim must be forced to refer to her rapist as a “woman” (who committed rape with “her penis”), why the crime must enter the public record as perpetrated by a “woman” etc.
• Oh, and Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.
I’m sorry for this, I truly am; I know how people here feel about Judith Butler. I also detest plagiarism software running on jumped-up search engines.
However, this gave me a huge laugh this morning, and I feel compelled to share.
I asked ChatGPT to describe how to butter toast in the style of Judith Butler:
The act of buttering toast is not merely a neutral, mechanical operation but rather a performative enactment of breakfast itself, one that is inscribed within a broader matrix of cultural norms and expectations. To grasp this act fully, we must interrogate the implicit structures that render toast and butter legible as objects within the epistemological framework of morning consumption.
One does not simply butter toast in an autonomous, self-evident manner. Rather, the gesture is citational, reiterating a series of habitualized practices that constitute the normative boundaries of what “buttering” and “toast” mean within the hegemonic discourse of breakfast. The knife, a seemingly benign implement, operates as an extension of the subject, its movements governed by the tacit knowledge of what constitutes an appropriate distribution of butter. But whose butter? Whose toast? And who determines the adequacy of coverage, the sufficiency of spread?
To spread butter is to engage in a spatial-temporal negotiation with the toast’s surface, a surface that, like the body, is neither neutral nor inert but already implicated in the conditions of its own reception. The butter itself, melting into the porous texture, does not merely adhere but interpellates the toast as toast-that-has-been-buttered, a new ontological state that emerges through the process of application.
Yet, this process is neither universal nor without contestation. Alternative subjectivities and resistant practices—margarine, jam, dry toast—gesture toward the instability of breakfast norms, revealing the contingency of what is often taken as a given. In this sense, the act of buttering toast is not merely an individual choice but a site of discursive production, where the subject is both constituted by and constitutive of the structures that govern legibility, taste, and the performative materialization of the morning meal.
I see Gretchen Felker-Martin (formerly Micah Elliot Martin) has been repeatedly threatening a journalist who disagreed with Martin’s political opinions.
In today’s installment of How to Lose Friends and Alienate Nations:
Donald Trump has announced that the US is to strip mention of Europe out of its annual celebration of victory in the Second World War.
The president said that the May 8 Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) will become “Victory Day for World War Two”.
Mind you, he has one friend who may be happy with the name change, because
Russia also uses Victory Day to celebrate the end of the war.
That’s because it was the end of the war for Russia, but Trump seems to have forgotten that the war wasn’t won for another three months. He’s also renamed Armistice Day to ‘Victory Day for World War One’, and seems to believe that America did it all by itself both times, saying
[W]e won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance.
It is also looking likely that he’ll get his military parade in Washington, and on his birthday, too. I wonder if it’ll be topped off with Ivanka doing a Monroe-esque rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr.President’?
The Maine Sunday Telegram has a dishonest cartoon in the editorial section this morning.
A white-coated lab tech peers intently through a microscope. He asks his assistant, “What am I looking at?”
She replies, “The true effect of trans athletes in sports.”
The effect is microscopic, geddit?
By “trans athletes in sports,” does the cartoonist mean “the effect of any trans-identified athlete in any sport”? Does he mean “The effect of transmen [females] in boys sports”? Or “The effect of trans-women [males] in girls sports”? Which is it, Bud?
Never never never does it occur to the cartoonist to ask, “The effects of males on female sports teams.”
Quite so. This is exactly what the news media do, too, as I keep complaining to monotonous effect. It’s always trans player or trans activist or trans competitor, so that we have to dig to pin down which sex the subject is. It’s journalistic malpractice and it’s ubiquitous.
Donald Trump has announced that the US is to strip mention of Europe out of its annual celebration of victory in the Second World War.
The president said that the May 8 Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) will become “Victory Day for World War Two”.
If he removes all mention of Europe, how does he talk about where the victory was won, or against what country? I get that he wants to expunge any mention of erstwhile allies, but how do you get rid of the entire theatre of operations? What then was D-day? (He can still talk about the Pacific theatre, but dropping mention of half of the world in the World War? Gives a whole new meaning to “Don’t mention the war!”)
Russia also uses Victory Day to celebrate the end of the war.
And like the radical revisionism that Trump is aiming at, the former Soviet Union edited out the massive material assistance provided by the Allies in the course of the war, which the Soviets called The Great Patriotic War. Of course they conveniently glossed over the whole Nazi-Soviet Pact, which gave Hitler the free hand he needed to start the war in the West.
[W]e won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance.
“Nobody was close”? Just fuck right off. Americans are mere mortals, just like everyone else. They are not supermen who, by birth as Americans, are magically better, than, more than, and bigger than, anyone and everyone else at doing anything and everything. This is childish “My Dad can beat up your dad!” thinking. It is possible to honour the valour of American service men and women without having to denigrate everyone else’s. Human qualities are shared by all humans; their presence in someone does not come at the expense of someone else. It’s not another of your zero-sum games. We’re not talking about cake and ice cream.
Besides, Americans did not win every battle. Sometimes they failed, or made mistakes, or just had bad luck, both individually, and on occasion, collectively. The enemies the Allies fought in World War Two exhibited these same qualities of which you claim Americans had more and better. But anyway, what would you know about it? You have no concept of service, sacrifice, honour, or bravery, unless it is expended by others for your personal benefit. All you know is what you see in movies and on TV.
You want to watch where you tread. You’ve never met a dictator you didn’t like; you aspire to dictatorship and are moving as quickly as you can get away with in that direction. Ultimately, victory in World War Two was a victory over tyranny, and a victory of the rule of law over the whims of dictators. Celebrating that victory is risky. You don’t want to give people the wrong ideas, because at some point they’re likely to celebrate victory over you.
It turns out that King Charles II has been invited by Prime Minister Carney’s government to read the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the next Canadian Parliament, on May 27. While I’m certainly no monarchist, and have never been a fan of Charles himself, this gesture is welcome and important, given the recent, recurring threats to our sovereignty spewing from the Trump White House. The reiteration of our own history and traditions helps to emphasize the fact that we are not American, and have no desire to be Americans. It demonstrates that we are connected to a wider world, and that we are not an inevitable item on the agenda of America’s supposed “manifest destiny,” which, having once directed westward expansionism to the Pacific, is now being aimed by Trump northward to encompass everything up to the Arctic Ocean. He seems to think that Canada is some kind of backwards, fawning, envious, jealous, aspiring conjoined twin, happy and eager to follow the American lead in whatever Trump wants. In his dreams. A long, until-now-undefended border, a shared use of the English language in the majority of our country, and a lack of global territorial ambition on our side of the 49th parallel, do not make us a part of the American polity. Charles’ presence at the opening of Parliament underscores this desire to remain independent in the face of American beligerance. I say good on him; it’s something useful and important. I never thought we’d ever need such gestures, but they are neccesary and welcome.
The Throne Speech is written by the government, and outlines in broad terms its legislative agenda. The King is supposed to avoid partisan politics, but it will be interesting to see what the speech will say about Canadian independence and sovereignty. I can’t imagine Carney missing such an opportunity to insert this into the Speech, seeing as how his campaign (and, I believe, his resulting victory) was based on defying Trump. I doubt Orange Julius will be mentioned by name, but I bet there will be some pointed references to him nonetheless.
The Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois have already complained about the speech being given by a foreign ruler (a judgement a generally agree with), but I doubt even they would be interested in being absorbed into Trump’s (or anyone elses’s) America. If Charles can help us in our fight to avoid an American Anschluss, I can even live with his eventual appearance on our currency. If we still have a currency, he’ll have earned his place on it.
Of course they conveniently glossed over the whole Nazi-Soviet Pact, which gave Hitler the free hand he needed to start the war in the West.
The Pact was a taboo subject in the old Soviet Union, and I believe it’s currently illegal in Putin’s Russia to state that because of the Pact, Stalin’s Soviet Union bears any responsibility for starting the Second World War.
Oh bloody hell. India has fired missles into Pakistani-controlled territory in Kashmir. Pakistan says at least 31 people, have been killed. Pakistan is calling the attack an “act of war”.
“Gay Men Are A Red Flag.” “Gay men…strive to conform to the very social constructs that have long oppressed all marginalised people.” “Gay.. men…are in the most privileged position” “The real targets of the gender-critical movement are gay rights and women’s rights. You are next”. What the heck?
The one consolation is that this article is getting roasted on Facebook:
A new critique of the Cass Review, promoted by a Dr. Chris Noone, is getting a lot of obsequious coverage on Bluesky.
Benjamin Ryan takes a look at the critique’s authors:
One of the authors of a just published critique of Britain’s Cass Review on pediatric gender medicine and the systematic reviews on which it was partially based suggests that the authors were “bribed.”
It’s unclear what McLamore means by the comparison of how long peer review took for them, since the Cass Review took four years and was not peer reviewed. But the SRs on which it was based were peer reviewed and published in a journal….
It is remarkable, to say the least, that an academic would accuse of bribery the subjects of an academic critique of which that academic is an author.
(I’m not sure about the gerunded title. I’m meh on gerunded titles. Overused. Uninteresting. But I was pressed for time. Maybe I’ll come up with something better and update the post! It’s my own Substack; I can edit it to my heart’s content. We’ll see…)
Greetings from captured Brussels (and I thought Amsterdam was bad…). I was really looking forward to seeing some of the most beautiful streets, and squares, and buildings on the planet, but unfortunately you can’t see a thing through all those Belgian flags. By all means, it’s a pretty flag: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, very much like a rainbow. That ugly bright blue, white, and pink part kind of ruins it though. There is also the occasional black, yellow, and red flag. No idea what that’s supposed to represent…
Seriously, though. I can’t imagine a better reductio ad absurdum of the whole “most oppressed and marginalized group ever” narrative. Actually oppressed and marginalized people are not able to exert such total control over the public domain. As YNnB has previously pointed out, what it really boils down to is a warning and an implicit threat: “We own this place, and as long as you’re here, you’re at our mercy. If you don’t acknowledge our status as the most oppressed and marginalized group ever, we will show you just how right you are, and how far our power and control actually goes”. Fucking Tian’anmen Square (yes, I have been there) didn’t feel like a more controlled environment than this!
Is anyone setting up a GoFundMe for John Pesutto? Are Amnesty rushing to his defence? Where are the Black Pampers now he’s on the bones of his arse?
For those who came in late, John Pesutto was Victorian opposition leader (Australian state) when the “Let Women Speak” roadshow arrived in Melbourne. One of his party members, Moira Deeming, attended and was abused by Pesutto as being “Nazi adjacent”, if I’m being polite, and an actual Nazi if I represent his genuine opinion.
Well, being the tough woman she is, Deeming would not let that abuse and her subsequent expulsion from the Liberal Party go unchallenged.
Deeming won in both the Court of Public Opinion and the Courts of Law, and Pesutto is so far on the hook that he may well be bankrupted and expelled from Parliament himself.
A state Liberal leader is refusing to countenance the prospect of a by-election as his predecessor faces a hefty legal costs bill.
Former Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto has been ordered to pay $2.3 million in costs after he was found to have defamed first-term MP Moira Deeming.
Federal Court registrar Alison Legge made the cost ruling on Friday after the pair’s legal team argued about Mrs Deeming seeking to pay back a loan to NSW property developer Hilton Grugeon.
“I have determined that monies gifted or lent to Ms Deeming to assist her to meet her legal costs of the proceeding are not relevant to my determination and neither displace nor offset the quantum of her entitlement to costs,” Legge said.
In December, Federal Court Justice David O’Callaghan found Pesutto had defamed Mrs Deeming by implying she was associated with neo-Nazis who gatecrashed a controversial Melbourne rally she attended.
He ordered Pesutto pay her $315,000 on top of her legal costs for the case, which Ms Legge calculated to be $2,308,873.11.
Deeming’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC is also pushing for Pesutto to pay her legal fees for the costs hearings.
The scale of the final bill has raised internal fears about the Hawthorn MP’s ability to pay it, with MPs’ ineligible to sit in Victorian parliament if they declare bankruptcy.
Pesutto’s latest register of interest does not list any investment properties or any other forms of income, only his home in Camberwell.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke, as we say in Oz.
Rev, I was taught the old version of that saying. “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person” has the benefit of applicability to situations both positive and negative; without needing to be modified, or interpreted as either irony or satire.
In any case, I agree. The bloke went way beyond the law and common decency (and even common sense) in his vendetta against Deeming, and I hope that he has to pay substantial weekly installments for the rest of his life.
That’s very interesting, Mostly Cloudy, not least because the reporting is almost honest. They give his name change history, and quote his barrister referring to him by correctly sexed pronouns.
I’m hoping that more news outlets will start explaining when a bloke is pretending to be a woman, and that they all stop believing that because he says that he ‘uses she/her pronouns’, that it means they should refer to him that way. It doesn’t.
He says Rowling is “deeply unhappy” and probably has lots of “Unresolved trauma.” Yes, how dare someone think differently from the fox-basher! She must be a miserable old spinster!
The man sounds utterly deranged. In what possible way can supporting women in the fight to hang on to our sex-based rights be construed as declaring that biology is destiny? Surely, those are complete opposites.
In what possible way can supporting women in the fight to hang on to our sex-based rights be construed as declaring that biology is destiny? Surely, those are complete opposites.
I’m guessing that the current understanding of the concept of “biology is destiny”, or “biological determinism”, as seen through translation by the Genderist Secret Decoder Ring, doesn’t so much mean that women aren’t allowed to be stock-brokers, fighter pilots, or brain surgeons, as it means that men can’t be women.
Six activists from a group called “Scottish Trans Youth” have been arrested in Glasgow after occupying the EHRC balcony. A group called Trans Kids Deserve Better is also protesting in London:
Amusing that a movement that has received deferential treatment, for fifteen years, from British politicians, media, businesses, the health service, the police and academia now thinks it’s the Most Oppressed Movement Ever.
A musician named Kate Nash (whom I’d never heard of) has released a single titled Germ. According to Wikipedia, Germ “was written in response to the result of the then-recent ruling by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that the Equality Act 2010’s definition of a woman depended on biological sex.” Unsurprisingly, the song makes a number of bizarre, fallacious, and/or contradictory claims. I think it’s interesting to see them strung together.
A musician named Kate Nash (whom I’d never heard of) has released a single titled Germ… Unsurprisingly, the song makes a number of bizarre, fallacious, and/or contradictory claims. I think it’s interesting to see them strung together.
“Mostly Cloudy puts on his Robert Christgau Glasses”.
I know about Kate Nash. She’s an indie-pop musician in Britain. She had some rather nice songs out a few years ago, like “Foundations” and “Do-Wah-Doo”.
But recently her career has hit the skids – her “9 Sad Symphonies” was a commercial flop, and Nash ended up having to sell pictures of her buttocks on OnlyFans to make up the losses. So presumably she’s decided that adopting the faddish cause of the moment will help her career.
Well, I’ve heard Kate Nash’s new pro-transmaiden song, “Germ.”
It is *terrible*.
Really terrible.
It’s a long, tuneless, lecture spoken over a drum-beat.
You cannot hum along to “Germ”.
You cannot dance to “Germ”.
You cannot “chill out” to “Germ”.
It’s “Pick-Me: The Song.”
“Germ” by Kate Nash belongs in the popular music abyss along with other horrid songs like “MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris, “Kool in the Kaftan” by B. A. Robertson, “The Birdie Song” by the Tweets, “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh, “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice, “Life” by Des’ree, “Rockstar” by Nickelback and “Friday” by Rebecca Black.
It’s just as people have been pointing out – all previous, genuine, real rights movements have created great art, but this awful (bowel?) movement is so completely divorced from reality that it is incapable of creating anything even remotely resembling art. They have so successfully numbed themselves to any and all human emotions apart from anger and hatred that their brains can’t imagine anything at all, in case they accidentally forget to recite the mantras.
The article says Angela Howard, who describes herself as a ‘second generation witch’, lost her membership in the British Druid Order after comments she made online.
The Quakers, the Druids, the Secular Humanists…is nothing uncaptured?
On June 1, Ukraine launched simultaneous drone attacks against a number of airfields across Russia, destroying or damaging scores of aircraft, mostly heavy bombers and reconiassance planes.
This is an article exploring why there is so much uproar about the participation of male athletes in girls’ sports.
I like Bump a lot. I think much of what he writes is insightful analysis. I think he makes some good points, here, too. The article is unfortunately sullied by his mistaken impression that “it’s important to recognize that this concern is both exaggerated and selective”. He elaborates that it’s only a few male athletes who participate in girls’ sports, and they don’t always win, framing it as if the only issue is girls being jealous that a boy beat them. And of course he doesn’t phrase it that way; it’s about one kind of girl losing to a different kind of girl, in his parlance.
However, he accurately notes that there is division among Democrats on this issue, and that Republican are pushing the issue as a wedge to fracture the Democrats further. (They are doing this much more so than they are pushing the issue on its own merits, but Bump is missing what the merits are.)
I wish he could understand that the sports issue is not about “trans” athletes, but about male athletes in female sports. It does matter that males have advantages, but it matters primarily that they are male. If there is a reason to have a separate female division in sports, there is reason to keep males out of it.
Mary Anne Stephenson was one of the signatories for this letter defending the right of gender-critical women to speak in public, which is apparently why the TRAs put her on their shit-lists:
Eight pioneering nurses who formed their own union to defend the rights of women have won a landmark battle for a female-only changing room.
The Darlington nurses launched a legal action saying transgender policies put them at risk, deprived them of dignity and breached their human rights.
They claimed a biological male colleague identifying as a woman called Rose stared at their breasts as they were getting undressed and lingered too long in the changing room. One nurse had a panic attack after Rose repeatedly asked when they were alone, ‘Are you getting changed yet?’
Now, with their case heading to the courts, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has intervened, ordering Darlington Memorial Hospital to give the women their own room.
One of them, Bethany Hutchison, said they ‘hugely appreciate’ the action ‘to restore our safety and dignity in the workplace in line with the law’.
And she said the nurses would not ‘stop until this action is extended urgently to female workers across the NHS without any unnecessary delay’.
The Darlington nurses sued their NHS trust a year ago, winning overwhelming support across the country. ‘Millions of women stand with them,’ said J.K.Rowling.
I wonder if Streeting intervened because having the case go to court would have resulted in splash damage to the government? Let’s hope he feels compelled to extend this order to the entire country.
This is important. Sophie Lewis, who’s featured on B/W a few times*, wrote a tome earlier this year called “Enemy Feminisms”, which was a lengthy attack on gender-critical and anti-sex work feminists.
Now Victoria Smith has read the “Enemy Feminisms” book, and given us a lengthy critique of it:
In Lewis’s worldview, to assert, as Jenny Lindsay does in Hounded, that “women are materially definable as a class of human being” and “women (as adult human females) are culturally, legislatively and politically important, with their own sets of needs, rights and concerns” is not to hold a set of beliefs which are the starting point for feminist activism. It is to hold a set of beliefs which are the starting point for feminist fascism.
It seems that Trump’s fentanyl seizures have saved, and I quote, “285 million lives”. That’s interesting. I had no idea there were so many of us hooked on fentanyl! Two-thirds of the population would be dead now if Harris were elected, I guess.
Pam Bondi is the one who said it, if you’re curious.
It is to hold a set of beliefs which are the starting point for feminist fascism.
It’s interesting that Lewis, and Juno Dawson, among other genderists, think it’s more fascist for women to claim and protect boundaries for themselves, than it is for men claiming to be women demanding access to absolutely everything that women have, and refusing to accept any such boundaries at all. Of course this use of “fascist” is just a dressed up way of saying “You disagree with me, so you’re evil, and should be ignored and shunned by all good people,” rather than an accurate descriptor of their critics’ actual politics. It’s as laughable as Republicans calling Obama a “Marxist.”
It’s just another way of othering (like TERF), that is supposed to cast your opponents’ views so far beyond acceptability as to become off-limits. They have been deemed, by authorities whom we are supposed to accept unquestioningly, unfit to be examined, let alone entertained, by decent folk, “decent folk” being defined as those who, having outsourced their judgement to these authorities, accept this pronouncement. Failure to follw the anathema renders you suspect. Thus it serves as a dismissal and a warning, to first, try to prevent any study of these dangerous views, and second, to punish those who dare regardless to engageme with the ideas of the enemy. This is a particularly useful tactic when, as is the casr with genderism, your own ideas don’t hold up well (or at all) when faced with anything more than casual examination by someone not already espousing them.
Humpback whales may be blowing bubble rings at humans as a way to communicate, play, or interact.
The researchers documented 12 episodes involving 11 individual whales across different populations around the world. In each case, the whales approached humans and released a series of bubble rings. A total of 39 rings were observed during these curious encounters.
“Humpback whales often exhibit inquisitive, friendly behaviour towards boats and human swimmers,” says co-lead author Jodi Frediani.
“We’ve now located a dozen whales from populations around the world, the majority of which have voluntarily approached boats and swimmers blowing bubble rings during these episodes of curious behaviour.”
The researchers ruled out these bubble rings as being any part of feeding behaviour (unlike the bubble nets Humpbacks use to confuse and corral prey), communication with other whales (the bubble-ring blowers were not with other whales), or any sort of threat display (such as the bubble releases that males use with each other during courtship competition).
It’s interesting that Lewis, and Juno Dawson, among other genderists, think it’s more fascist for women to claim and protect boundaries for themselves, than it is for men claiming to be women demanding access to absolutely everything that women have, and refusing to accept any such boundaries at all
Oh yes. The best analogy would be the MctbW as Benito Mussolini, women as the Ethiopians, and Lewis/Dawson as the Giovanni Gentile-type apologists for Mussolini.
I’ve been trying to find, without any luck, some posts with links to a webcomic that Ophelia used to post every now and then, by someone with a Japanese name. Tetsuo Somebody? The comics Ophelia would share were critiquing gender identity ideology and it’s cultural influence. Ring any bells?
You are thinking of Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida. Many of the comics are about gender ideology. He’s also run some story lines (such as they are; plots are vague) where Jewish people are the villains.
Minnesota had a major act of violence overnight. One of their state representatives (and her husband) was killed; a Senator (and his wife) were shot, and are in critical condition, but might live. The assassin had a list of a lot of other Democrats he wanted to assassinate, including Tim Walz. There were also abortion providers and pro-choice campaigners on the list.
no one at the time imagined that the country would go quite that fucking insane in such a relatively short period of time. Had some of today’s demands made by trans people and their allies been transmitted backwards in time to February 2004, they would not have been taken remotely seriously, because at that time politics was mostly dominated by adults (of human male and female variety).
The Chorch has a new pope. Americans love that he’s a Cubs fan (except those on the South Side, they’ll never accept him.) But as long as the Church neglects to address this situation in a meaningful, as in making sure that those still living are indicted, I will not be as enamored of him. Until he proves otherwise, Leo is just more of the same. The excavations and identification of the bodies of fetuses, infants, and toddlers, is about to be begin in Tuam:
Trouble in the MAGAverse. Trump’s support of/subservience to Netanyahu is splitting his base, with accusations of betrayal as the US verges on entanglement in a war in the Middle East:
One of my co-workers watches US right-wing stuff in our office (don’t ask), and some of the hosts/pundits/whatevers were being surprisingly critical of Trump’s threats towards Iran. One of them was going on about how Netanyahu was the “real” president of the United States, with Trump dancing to his tune, and how the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel were “allowed” by Netanyahu (through a nationwide “stand down” order) to give him a pretext to do everything he’s done since, in hopes of ensnaring the US on his side.
Who’d a thunk it: gut the Federal government, overturn and ignore checks and balances on Presidential power, trash long-standing military alliances and trading relationships with friendly countries, admire and side with dictators, threaten to invade and take over neighbouring sovereign states, let a know-nothing crank destroy the nation’s readiness against outbreaks of infectious disease, and let a billionaire have unfettered access to sensitive information about everyone in the country (as well as letting him shut down and defund programs and angencies on a whim), and he’s good. Get involved in a foreign war that he promised not to, and they turn on him.
I’ve liked to articles by Gwynne Dyer before. He’s a “big-picture” columnist who regularly looks beyond the usual players in world politics (though he keeps an eye on them too), and includes environmental stories as part and parcel of his geopolitical observations. His most recent column is on the fishing practice of “bottom trawling”.
At the age of 99, the documentary film-maker David Attenborough has achieved his greatest triumph. With a single film clip, he has signed the death warrant for one of the world’s most destructive industries: bottom trawling. The companies and countries that do it will go down fighting and it will take time, but they will go down.
His film ‘Ocean’ got a simultaneous global release last month to build pressure for a ban on bottom trawling before the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC-3) this week in the French city of Nice. The ban won’t happen this week and it won’t happen everywhere at once, but it is inevitable once enough people have seen that clip. You can’t forget it.
Attenborough should be considered a saint: a secular saint. He does so much more good than every Catholic saint put together – and less bad. He is a treasure, and it will be a sad day when he dies.
From the Substack that Mostly Cloudy linked to at 125:
But others with less of an excuse for holding insane opinions took the same line, on the basis that (a) trans people are a minority, (b) fighting for minority rights is A Good Thing; and therefore (c) if you demand minority rights you are On The Right Side Of History.
I think this explains a lot of the support on the left for what is at heart a regressive ideology.
Of course, billionaires are a minority too; perhaps we should start a Billionaires Rights Movement (“My Class Solidarity is Billionaire-Inclusive!”).
I’ve seen the “Rowling /James Dreyfus/ Robert Webb is a self-hating Trans person” canard appear before, but this seems to be the most prominent instance of it so far.
This miserable, rotten person wanted to transition when she was younger
I bet he thinks this is a “win” of some sort, but it’s just another data point showing it’s a trend people grow out of (assuming it’s somehow true) since she could have done so when she was younger and had buckets of money. And “revenge” for what? Who was stopping her when she was younger?
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’
As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.
This miserable, rotten person wanted to transition when she was younger…
Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head….
I can almost see the logic, twisted as it is. Given that feeling “pink, frilly and compliant” is all the sum total of TiMs’ claim to “womanhood”, it’s only natural that they would see Rowling’s rejection of those feelings as her trans essence. Same with all those other supposedly “female” writers and musicians in whose work she found solace. For TiMs, those feelings are womanhood. To reject even those frilly, pink surface trappings and signs (if not the societal roles and expectations – how many TiMs are lining up for the scutwork and lower pay to which women have been historically consigned? They only want the fun, glitter bits.) is seen by TiMs as nothing less than the rejection of femaleness altogether, rather than a rebellion against those stifling restrictions and stereotypes. Those stereotypes are their only way into “womanhood”, so someone wanting to be rid of them MUST be trans.
Speaking of feeling pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head – I was walking in the (very pretty) campus of the University of Washington this afternoon and saw a man in his 50s or 60s, with closely-clipped grey hair, wearing a frilly top and short flouncy skirt with white knee socks and strappy black shoes, walking briskly on his way somewhere.
I know we’re supposed to say “wear whatever you want” but I don’t actually want to say that. I think a man that age dressed that way is doing it to be creepy, probably more than one kind of creepy. I don’t think it’s just his taste in clothes, I think it’s a provocation as well as probably a fetish. Imagine if he’s actually employed by the university – imagine if he’s a professor. Imagine being taught and examined and graded by a male parody-Eloise.
I know we’re supposed to say “wear whatever you want” but I don’t actually want to say that. I think a man that age dressed that way is doing it to be creepy, probably more than one kind of creepy. I don’t think it’s just his taste in clothes, I think it’s a provocation as well as probably a fetish.
Not much different than the men who dress as babies. It’s the demand that we participate in his fetish (and having it thrust in our faces is part of the fetish) that is a large part of the creepiness. I have nothing against kink-shaming. Most adults know to keep that shit private, and amongst consenting, adult partners. I don’t want to be part of your parade, or watch you fly your freak flag. I am an unwilling audience for your premeditated shock-fest. Womanface should be no more acceptable than blackface. Keep your AGP act between you and your mirror.
If a store boasted that it would not carry copies of Mein Kampf that would be reason to boycott it. They can’t carry everything, but they should not deliberately restrict access to views they disagree with.
and not to be confused with the other very important Helen from UK: Helen Joyce, who is probably the clearest, most articulate critic of transgender ideology, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUrwPf7FyfE Why does sex matter? | Helen Joyce in conversation with Fiona McAnena]
1. “kinder” political demands in this essay: “The kids were telling us that to survive, they needed a kinder, safer world. We don’t have to take expensive, showy steps to get there. It can involve as basic a gesture as a middle school teacher wearing a rainbow necklace or a neighbor planting a trans flag in the yard. These are more than performative gestures to someone who feels abandoned. A community college could open its library — and its L.G.B.T.Q. materials — to surrounding neighborhoods. The librarian could make a point of complimenting someone’s gender-nonconforming haircut or clothing. These kinds of safety signals let kids know where they can go in an emergency.”
2. An obvious point to readers of this blog, that some of the suicidality—the thoughts about this—are increased by TRAs constantly talking about it, which CDC said do NOT do and is very dangerous [in terms of seeding the idea and social contagion] and I would say NORMALIZING the idea as an APPROPRIATE and EXPECTED action to being told no about TRAs political demands! THAT is on the TRAs for that careless dangerous political strategy of constantly talking about this.
3. Probably not a coincidence after mainstream press is final publishing critical essays on transgender ideology including Chase Strangio finally telling the truth at Supreme Court that “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.”
4. FYI, author’s claim in the next line is quite disputed “Surgeries for youth are rare.” Note the link is to research in surgeries in 2019!!! My understanding is that is has gone up since then.
Also, this assertion in the “Research Letter”: “Given stringent clinical standards for gender-affirming care,2,3 use of gender-affirming surgical procedures by TGD minors is expected to be low.” is HIGHLY disputed by whistleblowers, detransitioners, growing number of journalists. [Obviously there can be a difference between official standard of care and what is actually occurring.]
#88 Mosnae: Kate Nash doesn’t seem to be well. The Daily Mirror is reporting that Nash went on a bizarre rant during her show at the Glastonbury concert. Here Nash attacked not only J.K. Rowling and Keir Starmer, but bizarrely, TV presenter Denise Welch as well:
Tried to drop a private note of thanks via the Contact form several months ago, but it was broken, so wound up thanking you publicly in April for the sympathetic words from strangers, including Mostly Cloudy, when almost all my friends were turning on me: https://paperairplane.substack.com/p/after-math-3
Apologies for interrupting the conversation. And thank you, Ms. Benson, for creating a place of sanity.
Looking upthread and seeing where you are, I’d also add that it would be an honor to buy you lunch or dinner someday, if you felt like it–you have my contact information–and no worries if not. Feel free to delete this comment once you see it.
Published June 20 2025: [2 days after U.S. Supreme Court Skrmetti decision and the author’s opportunity to read the opinions that dispute some of what author wrote!]
1. Good clue to ideological frame, note the subheading in the interpretation “Paranoia and Gender-Affirming Care Bans”
Obviously ‘’paranoia’’ was not in the actual survey/polling, [i.e. a question ‘’do you feel paranoia about…”], obviously that is the author imposing that ideological framing of the results.
2. Note that a foundational aspect of scientific method is ignored: alternative hypotheses are not discussed for the results, “declining support..seem to be turning against gender-affirming care,.. increasing suspicion toward gender-affirming care.”
2b. For example, here are some very good alternative explanations for SOME of the decline in supporting gender affirming care: people are becoming more knowledgeable about the Cass Review that there is no good evidence for showing safety, effectiveness and good long-term outcomes of gender affirming care, about Jaime Reed’s whistleblowing, about detransitioners “lived experiences”, etc.
3. Note in author’s explanation the framing ‘’fringe’’ for the growing number of doctors [some of who have been researching/treating in this field for a long time] who are questioning or explicitly in opposition to gender affirming care and in favor of exploratory psychotherapy as first line treatment.
Author’s explanation [i.e. what i wrote as alternative explanations is DISINFORMATION! So readers of this post, beware! : -) ]
“What might then explain this increasing suspicion toward gender-affirming care in the face of medical experts who warn that bans are dangerous and scientifically unsound? Much of this opposition might be explained by the network of think tanks, lawmakers, and fringe medical practitioners who have spread disinformation about the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care. Such groups have increasingly come to frame trans medicine as not merely risky or dangerously uncertain, but rather an actual conspiracy pushed on unsuspecting adolescents and their families by profit-seeking pharmaceutical and social media industries. In this narrative, the “gender identity industry” sucks teenagers into digital peer networks where they come to misdiagnose themselves with gender dysphoria and then rush into the open arms of clinics and drug companies who are more than happy to place them on “lifelong” therapeutic regimens.
Though such claims are largely baseless, ..” [I like the ‘’largely”! lot of wiggle room there! how much, which claims are NOT baseless?? Which claims are completely baseless??]
3b. The author doesn’t provide any evidence that online activities [coaching, [mis]diagnosing, social influence, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, ROGD, etc.] , pharma profiting, and self-misdiagnosing is not going on, though more journalists are documenting this. Early account was Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
4. Note the blank unquestioning repetition of key TRA talking points “This declining support is all despite the fact that major domestic and international medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, have denounced bans on what they deem to be potentially lifesaving, evidence-based practices.”
4b. NOTE: the NEW tweaked TRA talking point, no longer “life-saving necessary” but ‘’potentially lifesaving.’’ [lots of treatments are POTENTIALLY lots of things, but how PROBABLE are they?] after Chase Strangio finally told truth before Supreme Court, “There is no evidence,” Strangio told the court, “that this treatment reduces completed suicide,” adding that “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.”
5. The author is a professor, give you one guess what department:
5b. Prof. Wuest’s book is Born This Way Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement: The story of how a biologically driven understanding of gender and sexuality became central to US LGBTQ+ political and legal advocacy
[The book sounds like it could be very interesting historical and legal account BUT this sentence in the description:]… “conservatives incite panic over “groomers” and a contagious “gender ideology” that corrupts susceptible children.”
Wes, there’s a lot of information there and it’s not presented all that clearly. It helps to start with spelling out the source, the author, the subject – that kind of thing.
Here is a great example of transgender ideological interpretation by Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Joanna Wuest.
PRRI survey data result show “declining support” for “trans healthcare.” Wuest frames this in terms of ‘’paranoia’’ and “disinformation about the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care’’ which is “largely baseless” by “fringe medical practitioners.”
It’s a “legalese” analysis of the decision and the wording of it, plus the concurrences and dissents, explaining how it is not quite as positive a development as some have made it out to be. I think it makes excellent points.
… But like all victories issued under this right-wing court, some of the reasoning in the decision may be a bit of a two-edged sword that could be used against women’s rights in the future.
…
However, the Court majority relies on and reinforces some very bad law – that discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions, including bans on abortion do not constitute sex discrimination because not all women are pregnant, even though only women can get pregnant or seek abortions. “Thus, although only transgender individuals seek treatment for gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder and gender incongruence – just as only biological women can be become pregnant – there is a ‘lack of identity’ between transgender status and the excluded medical diagnosis.” Therefore, even were the ERA recognized as part of the Constitution and sex treated as a suspect class subject to strict scrutiny, abortion bans or other discriminatory treatment based on pregnancy could not be successfully challenged as sex discrimination with the current Supreme Court majority.
…
Finally, not one Justice thinks sex discrimination claims under Equal Protection should be subjected to strict scrutiny. Of course, there is no mention of the ERA. Though sex is deemed immutable, because of the existence of biological sex differences that society “celebrates”, the Court unanimously rejects strict scrutiny for “sex” that is accorded race discrimination. The entire Court is therefore committed to maintaining women’s second-class status.
Tales from the Circular Firing Squad: Influential trans Youtuber Natalie Wynn AKA Contrapoints made a post recently explaining why Wynn hadn’t commented on the Israel /Palestininan conflict.
The current study explored whether positive contact through stories could influence how young children think about transgender identities and gender in general. A total of 174 children ages 5–6 and 9–10 were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Jazz (participants watched a video regarding a transgender child named Jazz), Blue (participants watched a video regarding a marker that looked red on the outside but inside was really blue) and control (no video). Both videos described the main character as feeling different inside than outside, and their social transition to their preferred identity; researcher scaffolding supported the video messages. …. a direct, realistic story was the only effective means of teaching children about transgender identities and reducing belief in gender immutability. Thus, stories can be a way to teach children about the social world and change essentialist beliefs, …
Activist researchers are scientifically testing how to indoctrinate your kids into gender ideology
In the second (supporters-only) segment, we dive into a disturbing academic study that tested how to indoctrinate young children into gender ideology using the children’s book I Am Jazz and a similar story about a marker. Researchers explicitly set out to reduce kids’ belief in biological sex by feeding them ideologically loaded interpretations of events and tracking their responses. We walk you through exactly what they did, what they found, and why this kind of research should deeply concern every parent.
Note: their discussion of this clinical study is behind paywall: many readers here might enjoy subscribing to read:
journalist Brad Polumbo [very snarky!] and evolutionary biologist Colin Wright [very knowledgeable!] take a deep dive into the world of academic absurdity. Each episode, we spotlight and critique two of the most ridiculous examples of “woke” scholarship.
We expose activist “research” that defies logic, reason, and even basic decency… break down these studies, poke fun at their methods and conclusions.
Wes. excellent find. One thing I’ve noted is that almost all the reporting, both critical of gender ideology and supportive, accept that the children being transed are actually gender dysphoric. I can’t assume that, not with some of the presentations I’ve seen by doctors presented with a patient who doesn’t think they are trans, but after the first or second session, they have become convinced they have gender dysphoria, not some other problems.
I’ve known more than one person who suffered from depression, googled their symptoms, had no history of gender dysphoria or claiming to be the opposite sex, and had always seemed comfortable in their sex, and when they typed in what they were looking for, they concluded they were trans. They may have taken an online test; I’ve spot checked a couple, giving accurate answer (which then diagnose me as ‘positively, strongly trans,), then turning it around and giving the answers that would be regarded as mentally ‘healthy’, and was diagnosed as trans (though not strongly, I will note). In short, there is no way to escape if you are unsophisticated about the world, or vulnerable, or desperate, or merely curious. You will be trans. Now that’s what I call inclusive…everyone is the opposite sex in their heads!
For that reason, I don’t feel a sudden surge of sympathy when I hear about those poor, gender dysphoric children. I replace it in my head with those poor children who may have multiple co-morbidities and are being convinced they are trans, and then the sympathy for them surges.
Add peer pressure to doctor pressure, and you’ve got a heavy load of TNT to blow up any doubts the kid…or their parents…might have.
They may have taken an online test; I’ve spot checked a couple, giving accurate answer (which then diagnose me as ‘positively, strongly trans,), then turning it around and giving the answers that would be regarded as mentally ‘healthy’, and was diagnosed as trans (though not strongly, I will note). In short, there is no way to escape if you are unsophisticated about the world, or vulnerable, or desperate, or merely curious. You will be trans.
I seem to recall seeing an image of a Powerpoint slide from a some genderist (Mermaids?) presentation, with a very long list of purported “symptoms” of “transness”. IIRC, two of the items were “Having gender dysphoria” and “Not having gender dysphoria.” I thought it was here on B&W post, but I’ve never been able to find it since. Rightly or wrongly, I recall it along with the “Barbie to GI Joe” Spectrum of Gender Identity.
An overview of Planned Parenthood’s history and mission creep into inclusivity and ‘’gender transitions” by Pamela Paul, who used to write essays critical of transgender ideology at New York Times, until that position was ended.
About half-way down the article:
Today, Planned Parenthood no longer positions itself as the leading healthcare provider for women and has largely stopped referring to women on its website and in policy statements. The only mention of “women” among its promotional items are T-shirts emblazoned with “Stand with Black Women.” In testimony before Congress, Dr. Bhavik Kumar, then a Planned Parenthood medical director and now chief medical officer at the Greater Ohio affiliate, said that “men can have pregnancies, especially transmen.”
The organization’s pervasive language around “pregnant people” is intended to be inclusive of transgender people, a cause that the organization connects to abortion rights under the umbrella of “bodily autonomy.” As Planned Parenthood put it on Threads, “trans and nonbinary people are essential to the movement for sexual and reproductive health and rights—the fight for trans rights is our fight.”
…Planned Parenthood has also rapidly expanded its services into one of the most contested and politicized areas of healthcare, gender transitions….
This “mission creep’’ explained by
These moves reflect the political motivations of its workforce, increasingly populated by what some employees refer to as social justice warriors—young people who come to the organization for its progressive values more than for its provision of healthcare.
[Note: I do love this question and wish progressives asked themselves and their organization this question regularly:]
according to one former senior executive at the [Planned Parenthood] national office. The question, she said, is who are they alienating in the process?
… With trans-identified minors, Planned Parenthood follows an “informed consent” model, which, according to its patient guidelines, enables patients to get a same-day prescription for cross-sex hormones after a 30-minute in-person or remote consultation with a staff member. No professional diagnosis is required.
included in Planned Parenthood article by Pamela Paul, see my prior post
Who here considers this informed consent? That’s rhetorical but important question. i do know i keep hearing and reading TRAs saying “that is not a thing, no one walks in and walks out with prescription the same day”, but rather, TRAs claim, there is extensive in-depth long counselling/psychotherapy sessionS required before any prescription for medicalization.
Perhaps Planned Parenthood regard any information (even false) as enough to indemnify them against accusations of failing to gain informed consent. Perhaps they tell themselves that the patient is the person who has the obligation to search for the information, and they’re under no obligation to ensure that the patient is aware of all possible consequences to the treatment. I think that it is going to be up to the courts, during fraud trials, to clarify what truly informed consent consists of.
This is an interesting piece. It’s such a shame that he finishes with a complete misunderstanding of the canary in the coal mine analogy, because it’s actually a good one.
Canaries weren’t taken into coal mines to sing a warning about the danger of collapse. Canaries are considerably more vulnerable to gas than humans, and would drop dead early enough for the miners to get out, before they themselves suffocated. In any incursion into a mine of toxic gas, the canaries died first. In any invasion of a society by a toxic ideology, the Jews die first.
In other news, The Famous Artist Birdy Rose has vanished from Facebook and I can’t find out what has happened. Doozer McDooze’s account is still up, though.
While the parallels might not be exact, I think we all can see some parallels to gender affirming care, especially when done by surgeons. Warning: even reading this brief NY TImes book review can very upsetting!
What Happened in This Doctor’s ‘Sleep Room’ Might Give You Nightmares
A new book investigates the alarming practices of an eminent British psychiatrist who believed in treating mental illness with high-risk physical interventions.
I no longer am on social media, but i can imagine the outrage that is surely happening there and the need to try to punish dissenters! So maybe metaphorically needing a “witness protection plan” isn’t far from the truth!
Amy Sherald, the celebrated painter best known for her official portrait of Michelle Obama, has canceled an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, citing concerns that the museum might remove an artwork that could further provoke the Trump administration as it seeks to exert control over the Smithsonian Institution.
Sherald and a Smithsonian spokesperson Thursday confirmed that Sherald had withdrawn her exhibition, “American Sublime,” from the museum.
The artist said she had been told that the museum — whose director, Kim Sajet, resigned after President Donald Trump called for her ouster for being “a highly partisan person” — might remove a painting…
The government really shouldn’t be in the business of censoring art. The Smithsonian is supposed to be an independent institution, without any direct interference from the president, especially this president.
But on the other hand,
…might remove a painting that depicts a transgender woman posing as the Statue of Liberty from the exhibition, which was slated to open in September after touring at museums in San Francisco and New York.
Why? Why does everything have to be transed? What is the underlying metaphor here–that brave men have to take everything from women, including (especially?) liberty?
And, as it turns out, the Smithsonian wasn’t even proposing that the painting be removed, but just that some context be added.
The New York Times first reported news of Sherald’s withdrawal. According to that report, Sherald said Smithsonian head Lonnie G. Bunch III proposed replacing the painting with a video discussing the piece, which she understood “would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility.”
But the Smithsonian spokesperson told The Washington Post that Bunch wanted the video to accompany the painting — not replace it. The spokesperson added that the museum offered to spend more time contextualizing her work, but Sherald chose to remove herself from the show.
So it’s self-censorship.
In other news (because I don’t know how to end this), Happy Birthday, Rosalind Franklin! Another woman whose contributions were overlooked because of three men’s egos.
How do you all deal with being in a social gathering, where the host informs you his daughter is “nonbinary” and “goes by they/them pronouns”? I refuse to police my own pronouns, but I want to learn to respond in a way that doesn’t put me in the spotlight.
Is this a thing? I wouldn’t know because I don’t do social gatherings. It sounds very weird. If the host is a friend why deliver this information at a gathering? I would find such a public announcement hostile and aggressive. A trap of sorts: Now watcha gonna do, smarty?
Well, I don’t know what that specific scenario is like — being at a friend’s social gathering where said friend announces that their child is nonbinary — but hoo boy, have I learned the art of dancing around my gender-critical views in social circumstances. For example:
Being a small figure in the gay “scene” here, I had tons of trans friends, until the Great [Arty] Cancelling happened***. Even after The Big To-Do (I’m slowly, very slowwwwwwly, reintegrating into the gay village community, as it comes to grips with the fact that I was right the whole time), I’m still friends with some transsexuals, including a man in his seventies, who I’ve known forever, who I otherwise like a lot, and who I think actually defended me in my absence throughout The Ordeal. But here and there he mentions that he’s a “lesbian.” I just quietly overlook it.
Ouch! TSSSSSS! That’s the searing sound of everybody’s burning stares! Look: I can’t challenge everyone every single time something I disagree with comes up, okay? I think I’ve earned my stripes. I think I fought harder than 99.99% of men on this issue. So forgive me if I let a few in-person transgressions slide because I can’t be at war all the time. To be fair, I don’t lie: I don’t explicitly agree with him that he’s a lesbian. I just tell myself, today isn’t a war day, so I don’t have to start something over it.
So it was when I found myself a job at a wee anonymous dive bar far from downtown, for the express reason that I wanted to be away from all the queer nonsense. But alas: even miles from the Village, the kitchen manager was in a complex relationship with her “lesbian ex” who turned out to be an abusive AGP man who “identifies” as a lesbian. As prickly as that situation has been, my colleague and I have gotten along, and even bonded and become friends. I never lied to her: I never told her I think her baby daddy is a “real” lesbian, but I kept that aspect of the situation more-or-less out of the conversation. That said, we got drunk together once and I made it very clear that as much as I’ve been around transsexuals my whole life, I’m a biological sex realist and I won’t budge on that. And it turned out that my honesty led to her reaching out to me, seemingly because I was seen as safer and more trustworthy when she needed someone to confide in about his abusiveness and his shitty, entitled behaviour. So perhaps I ended up looking less like a mine and more like a lifeboat.
Anyways, point is: it’s not easy negotiating social situations while holding GC views. But I personally believe one doesn’t have an obligation to bring them up all the time. It’s one thing not to lie, but it’s possible to maintain diplomacy and tact without lying, and sometimes saving one’s views to be deployed in more strategic moments, like in one-on-one scenarios, can win more battles.
I think the best advice I can give in awkward situations like the one where a friend introduces a child as “nonbinary” is this: be a lifeboat and not a mine. You don’t need to challenge everyone all the time. I think a good strategy is to present yourself as an ally to progressives while also signalling that you’re open to critical conversations about the trans issue, even very subtly suggesting so.
What that looks like in real life is basically not lying about the trans thing, but just dropping some hints instead of throwing diatribes. The combination of “I’m clearly a liberal ally of gays and genderbenders” and “transgender ideology is a complicated and specific viewpoint, and it’s not clearly in line with my liberal gay-positive views” is a powerful one, I think.
That’s about where I’ve landed after all these years. If I’d had that attitude earlier on in my “gender critical journey” I wouldn’t have ended up doing a podcast and having a Substack, but I imagine that I would have succeeded better on an individual, interpersonal level, persuading people and making a small difference in their decisions.
***I called myself “Arty Morty” while filling out the required fields so I could post a comment at Butterflies and Wheels, some 15 years ago or so. I pulled the name out of my ass. It’s a quote from a not-particularly-good comedy with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley as Watson and Holmes. My name’s not Arty in the real world.
I don’t do social gatherings for the most part, either, but I have a friend who has a daughter who declared herself to be “trans non-binary” some years ago. This was back when I was just beginning to question the ideology. In more recent years, I’ve met with my friend maybe twice; we barely talked about the daughter (“child”), who I referred to by name rather than relationship, and I avoided using any pronouns for her. It was, as always, confusing to hear one person referred to as “they”. I used to have more interaction with a group of “progressive” people who were very much caught up in this newspeak (and other newspeak variants), but the gatherings dwindled, and my participation dwindled faster, and I lost a number of them as “friends” when I made clear on Facebook that I don’t agree with gender ideology.
With that group, at the time I participated, it would have been perfectly normal for any of them to mention neo-pronouns or new names for themselves or a family member (or someone else). It would have been just like saying “She’s not Miss Haney, she’s Mrs Farnsworth now”. (One of them, not trans-identified, nonetheless changed her name f(or perfectly good reasons) and got angry if someone used her old name, claiming they “deadnamed” her.) The assumption is, everyone around them is only too happy to use the new names and pronouns, so informing them of the facts is a courtesy.
So, what would I do? What I have done is chicken out, avoiding the issue by using names and staying away from the subject. In less personal internet discussions, especially talking about public figures like Dylan Mulvaney or Imane Khelif, I used proper pronouns, just by way of talking about the issues, and been raked over the coals for daring to do so; I can imagine the rancor in an in-person discussion about a family member. I’d like to think I would refuse to be cajoled into using opposite-sex or “they/them” pronouns to refer to this person.
It’s not exactly a social situation, but it’s really difficult going to a therapist these days, especially when you are going to one who is young. If the trans issue is getting to me, I can’t talk about it. She’s commented about the younger generation (her kids) and how they use ‘proper’ pronouns (meaning wrong pronouns) and take things as they are. In every other situation, she has been staunchly on the side of science and critical thinking, but it’s difficult to find a therapist these days to whom you can confess your stresses with the idea of walking into a bathroom and finding a man there. Since my problems are deeper than that, I am currently avoiding that, and hoping things will straighten out in the mad world of psychology before I need to get to that.
Thanks for the comments. The friend is an old neighbor and fellow musician friend with two terrific adult daughters, one caught up in gender ideology since going away to college, and I have to confess I respond more like Sackbut than Arty:
“What I have done is chicken out, avoiding the issue by using names and staying away from the subject.”
I told the friend privately I would probably not be able to remember to use the (absurd) plural pronouns for one of his daughters.
And, yes, his girls are terrific, both great musicians, too. One is a lesbian (she’s not the non-binary one, ironically enough), only the second lesbian I’ve known since she was a baby, other than my niece.
I don’t think there’s anything remotely “chicken” about Sackbut’s in-person strategy for handling the gender issue. I think it’s courageous and commendable. Yours, too, Mike B.
This is a war! It really is. All resistance is good resistance. Even just “passive” non-compliance adds a bit of weight on the good side of the scale rather than the bad one. (By that I mean avoiding the use of coerced pronouns.) Anything at all to avoid putting one’s full weight on the other side of the scale is a win in this war. Size doesn’t matter. Even just not putting pronouns in one’s email bio. Or if even that could get one in trouble, avoiding them in Zoom meetings… et cetera, et cetera. Any act of defiance, no matter how small, counts. It’s ok to be a civilian in a war — nobody’s obligated to throw all their personal responsibilities away to join the Resistance. Even neutrality is better than coerced compliance with the other side.
The stakes are genuinely big to people’s livelihoods, no matter how metaphorical this war can feel at times. That’s what makes this war so strange — it feels simultaneously like the heaviest burden and the lightest one. It’s all-consuming weight — or perhaps it’s a bunch of abstract nothingness, mostly just online noise and academic ideas. Even many people who “kind of” see our point of view often accuse us of that. We’ve all encountered them, the ones who don’t disagree with any of our points, but who can’t see the weight of them when the whole picture comes together.
That contradiction can claw at one’s self-esteem, making people feel guilty for perceiving the weight of it instead of its purported weightlessness. Fuck that! That’s why I won’t put scare quotes around the word war here. It’s perhaps a smaller war than, say, Viet Nam, but I want to emphasize the real cost to so many people — especially women — so I won’t diminish it. I refuse to treat the gender war as weightless or superficial.
Once again, one of Graham Linehan’s many insights comes to mind: he compared this war to the many Young Adult fantasies in which there’s a secret war between vampires and werewolves or wizards or whatever, while the broader public carries on largely uninterrupted, blissfully unaware of the epic battle going on in its midst. (Rowling’s Harry Potter series is an example of this trope.) But because ours is a war that’s explicitly about reality rather than fantasy, even though the closest analogy to it is, well, fantasy… it puts us rationalists in the trenches in a position that’s almost too difficult for even our own selves to compute. It’s so logically improbable and inexplicable, the contours of the Gender War. When virtually every single liberal media outlet calls us crazy, Occam’s Razor almost begs us to find a way to write ourselves off, to dismiss our own side’s point of view as too improbable to be real.
But here we are. It’s all too real. But it’s much easier to fight this war online, in the domain of abstract ideas, than in the real world, where its absurdity feels so comically unreal and out-of-place it can short even the most robust circuits.
How to deal with it in the real world as opposed to online is a question worthy of much, much more discussion, I believe. There’s much anguish about the IRL front, because the rules are completely different than online.
I follow Phoebe Maltz Bovy online, and she posted up this review to the Canadian Jewish News website a few weeks ago. It’s a review of the book “How to Lose Your Mother” by Molly Jong-Fast. I wanted to say something about it.
Jong-Fast’s mother is the famous writer Erica Jong, who is now sadly dying of dementia.
Jong-Fast’s book is about life with her ill mother. From what Bovy writes, it sounds like a cruel book. Jong-Fast did not get on with her famous mother and accuses Jong of not paying proper attention to her when she was growing up. Molly also repeatedly says that she’s never read her famous mother’s books.
There’s also lots of details about Erica’s life that I did not feel appropriate about telling while the subject is still alive – Molly writes about an ill Erica walking around with her breast out, or dirtying her bed.
Molly sounds extraordinarily spiteful. Yes, Molly didn’t have the best time growing up under Erica’s parentage, (so did lots of artists’ children) but it seems like borderline elder abuse to write such a book about a person who is still (barely) alive.
Does indeed. I’m glad Maltz Bovy isn’t the only person picking up on Molly Jong-Fast’s spitefulness:
If you’re tempted by the reviewers’ praise for Molly Jong-Fast’s “How to Lose Your Mother,” I hope you’ll read “Fear of Flying” first. Get acquainted with that Erica Jong first. Actually, if you’re over 70 and/or feeling yourself diminished in any way by the inevitabilities of aging—harsher for some of us than others—I’d recommend that you not read Jong-Fast’s book at all….the most striking thing about the book, for me, what lingered for days and what none of the (extremely positive) reviews will tell you is how cruel it is.
I remember seeing Molly Jong-Fast a few years ago, and thinking that she came across as a standard #Resistance centrist.
I knew she was Erica’s daughter and Howard Fast’s granddaughter, and I thought “Molly doesn’t seem to have inherited any of her family’s talent or courage”.
I was just flicking through Jong-Fast’s “How to Lose Your Mother” online, and on page 4, Jong-Fast has a swipe at her zayde , Howard Fast, as well:
My grandfather was a bestselling author who published over eighty books, but now no one – other than a very narrow subset of the elderly – has heard of him.
Eh? I did a search of the Jewish magazine “Forward” just now and they have at least three articles mentioning Howard Fast over the past year. He might not have Agatha Christie-levels of posthumous fame, but I’d say Howard Fast’s name would be known to young and middle-aged students of cinema (Kubrick’s “Spartacus”) and Jewish-American history.
As someone who also had a rough parentage, when I write about my mother, I make it fiction, change the names, and enough details to not be swiping at the memory of someone who cannot answer back. It helps to get things out sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be deliberate cruelty. It can be dealt with through realistic fiction.
@iknklast #192, “but it’s really difficult going to a therapist these days,” Imagine what it’s like going to a therapist because you are depressed, and you are depressed because your son is determined to mutilate himself in the name of gender ideology, and you can’t tell the therapist why you’re depressed because he could call CPS and your children could be taken away.
@Mike B ##187, you say “I hope that works out for her,” and move on. Here’s the great thing about third-person pronouns: you don’t have to use them in front of the people they refer to. Second-person pronouns aren’t sexed.
And then, of course, ever single time someone uses “they” to refer to her, you ask for clarification: “By ‘they,’ you mean $daughtername?”
Really, the parents aren’t going to care that you’re not drinking that particular kool-aid. It’s not like they’re asking you to babysit.
The long-lasting and harmful consequences of social and medical transitioning of children, including girls, are being increasingly documented. They include: persistence or intensification of psychological distress; persistence of body dissatisfaction; infertility, early onset of the menopause and an increase in the risk of osteoporosis; sexual dysfunction; and loss of the ability to breastfeed in cases of breast mastectomy (to mention a few). That has rightly led several countries, such as Brazil, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to change course and restrict children’s access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on sexual and reproductive organs. Allowing children access to such procedures not only violates their right to safety, security and freedom from violence, but also disregards their human right to the highest standards of health and goes against their best interests. Children are also not able to provide informed consent for such procedures. In situations in which such procedures have been found to have caused grave and lifelong harm, consent would be meaningless for both adults and children.
I’ve added the bolding there.
Is the lack of focus because the UNHCR seems to be at war with itself on these issues, or because the UN as a whole is losing influence?
Imagine what it’s like going to a therapist because you are depressed, and you are depressed because your son is determined to mutilate himself in the name of gender ideology, and you can’t tell the therapist why you’re depressed
My son has declared himself as trans. He is suffering from depression, apparently googled his symptoms, and fell into the rabbit hole. At this point, he has not declared intention to mutilate himself, but it is a point of immense tension between us. Since he is an adult, I am not at risk of having him taken away, but it is something that does contribute to my depression, and I can’t talk about it.
Yeah, guess I don’t have to imagine it, not really. But that is a great point to note.
Perhaps nobody would buy Jong-Fast’s book if they didn’t know who it is about. Then where would she be?
I suspect if Molly Jong-Fast was the granddaughter of a truck driver and the daughter of a builder and a hotel cleaner, nobody would care what she had to say.
Well, Molly Jong-Fast has written a book attacking an elderly, disabled, ethnic minority woman. And American liberals have praised her for it.
iknklast, I am so sorry to hear that this spectre is scourging your family as well. It must be a different experience going through this with an adult. I hope he is able to recover. I hope you are able to find other parents in like situation to talk to – nobody else will understand.
Creepy article from “The New Yorker” (which has big lavish graphics on the online version of the article):
The New Yorker profiles a 16-year-old girl who says she “always wanted to dress more masculine” when she was younger. Online, she “discovered the label ‘demi-girl,'” which means you “kind of feel half like a girl, and half nonbinary.” This “made sense” to her, since she didn’t “feel like a girl all the time.” Soon she decided, “No, no, I think it’s all the way nonbinary.” When she was “eleven or twelve,” her mother, “a poet,” put her on testosterone. “Not long after,” the girl’s breasts were removed.
When J.J. was thirteen, their doctor asked, “Do you want top surgery?” They said yes. They did it two weeks before starting seventh grade, and they healed really quickly. And then they didn’t have to wear a binder anymore, which was fantastic.
USATODAY mother’s column supporting trans boys. This type of column likely influences many parents. It is an excellent example of how reference links do not support the text [I know no surprise for readers of this blog.] Playing fast and loose with references and what clinical studies supposedly show but don’t: is important to call that out and the utter lack of editorial oversight on references.
recognizing the journey we’ve taken to educate ourselves
In this education journey, did she discuss with her daughter and with doctors/therapists possibility or likelihood her daughter rather than ‘’is a boy’’ is a tomboy? It’s unclear if there were other signs other than not wanting to wear so-called girl clothing and wanting to wear so-called boy clothing: [In copying and pasting I am using the pronouns the daughter and Mother use: this a biological girl who identifies as a boy.]
And he was always imaginative – not long before, he insisted he was a tiger, [I know what readers of this blog are thinking about identifying as a tiger!!!] crawling on all fours and refusing to use forks. So, when he said he wanted to be a boy, I thought: OK, another phase.
But this one didn’t pass like the others.
Soon, he stopped reaching for dresses and started pulling clothes from his brother’s drawers. And he began introducing himself with a new, masculine name to friends, neighbors, even strangers. …he didn’t feel like a girl.
#2 Also, this is all focused on how her “child is not a threat” with no consideration of anyone else or other consequences. I do not doubt that a girl identifying as a boy is not a threat, in general women who identify as men are not a threat. Of course, the policies she advocates will also include boys and men who identify as the other sex and some of them may be a threat. Not all of them, no one who is gender critical says ‘’all’’ of them, Kathleen Stock is very articulate on this: cannot tell who IS a threat and so-called inclusive laws don’t make exceptions to who is included.
#3 Supposedly supporting reference:
lifesaving care… to [prevent] take own life.
The mother’s essay on my computer history shows up with this title:
Trump is ending care that could save my trans son’s life | Opinionusatoday.com
so that is how USATODAY labelled the essay.
The supporting link is to a summary of a study, as usual, not the study. As often, even the summary clearly does not support the essay’s claim: what is decreased is suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, NOT suicides, which even Chase Strangio finally admitted the truth to Supreme Court: are ‘’rare.”
As readers of this blog know, Cass Review and other studies did NOT show evidence that gender affirming care causes a decrease in suicides.
Using Chosen Names Reduces Odds of Depression and Suicide in Transgender Youths
In a recent study, researchers found that when transgender youths are allowed to use their chosen names their risk of suicide and depression decreases.
“Chosen Name Use Is Linked to Reduced Depressive Symptoms, Suicidal Ideation, and Suicidal Behavior Among Transgender Youth”
Suicidal ideation and behavior
We measured suicidal ideation (α = .83) and behavior (α = .96) using the Self-Harm Behavior Questionnaire [8], a measure of multiple dimensions of suicide (ideation, threat, attempt) and self-harm. Free response items following dichotomous yes/no occurrence items assessed the severity of ideation (method, whether other events precipitated ideation, suicide plan, reactions of others, preparation) and behavior (method, frequency, risk, medical treatment necessity, whether other events precipitated behavior, intent to die) on an ordinal scale from 0 to 22.
My comment: Table 1 groups lot of types of “suicide behavior” together: no separate metric of ‘’medical treatment necessity’’ [i.e., hospitalizations is an objective metric] and no metric or mention at all of completed suicides!
Also note: this study is not about medicalization of gender-affirming care. This is strictly about the social transition of name change!!!!
#4 Supposely supporting reference for
He’s not a threat – he’s a child doing his best to feel normal and included. The care he’s received hasn’t been extreme or rushed. It’s been thoughtful, deliberate and grounded in decades of research.
[FYI, The author’s name Alejandra Caraballo rang a bell from either or both: evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne https://whyevolutionistrue.com/ or Jesse Singal’s critiques of Caraballo’s writings/research, but cannot quickly locate those critiques. I did locate this quickly: “Alejandra Caraballo is used to seeing anti-transgender hatred. As an L.G.B.T.Q. rights advocate and a transgender woman” is the opening of NYTimes essay https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/us/politics/anti-transgender-lgbtq-threats-attacks.html, i.e. an activist researcher or researcher activist.]
No one here will be surprised that NO the reference essay did not show evidence for gender affirming care, it is a historical not scientific overview! I will leave to others to decide whether this historical overview gives evidence that the research has been “thoughtful, deliberate, and grounded [in??].”
I am speechless the New York Times printed this research that goes against TRA dogma, and wondering how long–as in the past before: GLAAD has trucks protesting outside coordinated with New York Times staffers compose a letter how their ”safety” has been endangered by printing this and the demand that New York Times not publish such essays.
NOTE: Although this could have been a news article, it is in the opinion section. New York Times or author didn’t the guts to allow online reader’s comments and dialogue about this information!
But as one of the first large-scale efforts to look at detransitioners in the United States and Canada, my study also does not fit tidily with some of the original arguments for pediatric trans care. For decades, trans medicine has operated under the assumption that gender identity was fixed from childhood and that the goal of gender-affirming care is to align a person’s body with a deeply felt internal sense of gender. Transitioning was a one-way street, often ending with surgery. But many recent studies, including my own, show that gender identity for some youth can evolve.
Today, many young people experience their gender flexibly — thinking about it in new ways that are often surprising to researchers, including me. Gender-questioning and less rigid expectations surrounding transition may also mean that some people feel more able to change course once they’ve started down one path. Identities outside the gender binary are common.
But what exactly is a “gender identity”? How does it differ from personality? Where is it seated? How do we know it exists at all? How does the supposed “misalignment” or “incongruity” between supposed “gender identity” and physiological sex differ from the misaligned, incongruous and pathologically distorted “overweight” self-image that anorexics have of their sometimes dangerously underweight, malnourished bodies? Why is going along with the former misperception the right thing to do, while encouraging the latter is lethal cruelty?
People can have different “internal feelings” or moods and attitudes from one day to the next, sometimes over the course of a single day. What if there are no “gender identities” at all? The sudden upswing in “patients” “presenting” might all be social contagion, or manifestation of comorbidities that “transition” won’t touch.
McKinnon describes detransitioning as a relatively rare phenomenon, and she is to be commended for studying it, but her “discovery” of the supposed complexity and “untidiness” of gender identity sounds a lot like someone touting the superiority of monotheism over polytheism without having first established the existence of gods. And as for “gender identity for some youth can evolve”, children can change their minds. This happens when they grow up and mature. This is what puberty does. It’s not a wrinkle or twist on alleged “gender identity”, it’s how children become adults. Feelings. beliefs, and pririties can all change with growth, development, and experience. This includes mental, physiological, and sexual maturation. This should not be a surprise or a mystery. Show us how you control for the normal processes of puberty to find any signal of a seperate “misaligned “gender identity before attributing effects to a cause that might not even exist. Perhaps instead of detransition, McKinnon should be looking at desistance, which, if I recall correctly, resolves gender dysphoria in two thirds to three quarters of cases. Explain how that fits in with “gender identity.” If it’s something you can grow out of, it can’t be very fundamental or essential, can it?
And what of “Identities outside the gender binary are common?” (I’m guessing that she’s swapping “gender” for “sex” here, as her claim, which makes little enough sense as it is, makes even less if it is not tied to sex.) How can you tell if someone’s identity inhabits this idea space outside the binary? With trans identified males and females, the supposed “identity” is that of the other sex. Some putative identities are supposedly fractional mixtures of the two sexes. But how the hell do you claim an identity “beyond” or “outside” this? For all of these other alleged indentities “outside the gender binary”, what is the “target” identity? What is it hoping to align with? How can one posit a “mismatch” where there is no match to be had? Trying to turn yourself into the opposite sex is one thing (impossible as it is), but there are no hormones or surgeries that can even attempt to turn you into something that doesn’t exist. How do you aim for a target that isn’t there? How would you know when you’ve “succeeded” in hitting it?
“Gender affirming care” is already a messed up, real life embodiment of Zeno’s Paradox, where Achilles can never catch the tortoise, not because of an infinite number decreasingly small amounts of distance he needs to cover the ever lengthening distance the tortoise travels while he’s attempting to even the race, but because the “tortoise” (becoming the sex one is not) is completely illusory. With all these other “identities” “outside the gender binary”, there’s not even the illusion of a tortoise. They might as well be receiving “treatment” to become another species, or invisible. Physiologically, there are no alternatives to male and female, only particular, sex-specific disorders that prevent complete and correct acheivement of either desired goal. What could possibly be the case for other “identities” is beyond me. Call me an unsophisticated, pig-headed, cis-hetero ignoramus if you like, but I refuse to admit that this is a result of a lack of imagination on my part, and rather a case of too much imagination on hers. What if it is just tortoises all the way down?
It feels like McKinnon is adding the same kind of complexity as was used to “save the appearances” of the geocentric, Ptolemaic model of the solar system needed when faced with more and more observations regarding planetary motion observed in the night sky. Most of these outlandish mechanisms needed to make the old model work were obviated by the heliocentric model, with many of the awkward behaviours that vexed the Ptolemaic scheme being natural consequences of all of the planets, including Earth, orbiting the Sun. So what happens to McKinnon’s deeper, and more nuanced understanding of gender identity if there is no gender identity? What if it’s just personalities all the way down?
Thanks for your excellent comments. Some day maybe there can be a good open discussion and debate in academia and psych organizations about ‘’gender’’ and ‘’personality’’ but I am not holding my breathe! Nice comparison to “ “save the appearances” of the geocentric, Ptolemaic model of the solar system”!!!
FYI, I came across a recent essay arguing it is time to get rid of “gender identity’’ which did not come from the trans community but from Robert J. Stoller and John Money [if I remember correctly they were labelled “transphobic”] in favor of listening to trans people’s lived experience and have the new term come from the community. [Unfortunately I cannot locate the essay again :-( ]
I do not know if this call to –forgive me—transition to a new understanding and framing will gain traction. I also don’t know if this new term will arise from kids on tumbler, then twitter, then tiktok making stuff up that adults take seriously and cancel others for not agreeing with!
I am not holding breathe for TRA’s taking accountability, apologizing, and ‘’do better’’ for the attacks on gender critical feminists , such as Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, etc. for saying
1. They did not have a gender identity and 2. Like you, they are quite skeptical “gender identity” exists or claim that is metaphysical /quasi-religious immaterial ‘’soul’’-like.
#2 @Ophelia Benson, yes when I read Professor Kinnon R. MacKinnon is trans man I was guessing this research would simply repeat the myth that detransition is rare 1-2%.
It is a myth because no one knows the % of detransitioners. The 1-2% is based on poor studies [e.g. surgeons were surveyed whether their patients came back to complain: no surprise, most didn’t respond to the survery and those that did, amazingly lol didn’t report any complaints or dissatisfaction with the surgeon/surgery!] + made up. Since the US gender clinics are not doing follow up studies and in UK, the adult gender clinics all refused to share their data with Cass Review with what happened to the adolescents who transitioned Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS)/Tavistock clinic.
I was pleasant surprised to read MacKinnon mention other recent studies
But some recent studies among young people have suggested it could now be higher, 5 percent to 10 percent — an increase that has come amid a sharp rise in the number of young people seeking care at gender clinics.
When I read MacKinnon revised this 1-2% detransition myth, I’m thinking will be harder for TRAs to have kneejerk reaction that a ‘’transphobe’’ did the research and to trash this study as not having been conducted by a trans person!
MacKinnon surely knows the TRAs and social media mob will be coming and ends essay with this terrific sentence, although not in time to help Carole Hooven at Harvard etc. [The second sentence i don’t fully agree with about that supposed commitment or that all the policies are wrong.]
It is the job of health researchers to produce knowledge that can guide care in ways that maximize benefit to patients, minimize harm and promote health and well-being. That is what I, and other L.G.B.T.Q. researchers, have made a commitment to do, even when faced with the cruel rhetoric and dangerous policies of the Trump administration.
#3 But what really stood out to me—and I am waiting to read the actual study and see the evaluation of it by Jesse Singal, Benjamin Ryan, Colin Wright, etc.—is “Ninety percent were born female…of the “33 percent of participants, said they detransitioned because of an identity change, mental health-related factors and dissatisfaction with treatment.”
The fourth group, 33 percent of participants, said they detransitioned because of an identity change, mental health-related factors and dissatisfaction with treatment. They were much more likely to express strong regret with the decision to transition. Some felt that they had not been adequately informed about the risks of medical treatments. It’s this group whose experiences have become central to policy debates around pediatric gender-affirming health care in the United States and abroad.
There were several factors that distinguished this group from the others. They were more likely to start treatment at a younger age and to begin a medical transition more quickly after realizing their trans identity. Ninety percent were born female. (This is notable because researchers have seen an increase in the proportion of trans youth assigned female at birth.) And although fewer than 30 participants in our study reported having surgery as a minor, more than half of them were in this group.
As we know the original Dutch Protocol—which itself did not establish safety or effectiveness of medicalization, hasn’t been replicated, and is utterly different from the USA protocols because in the Dutch Protocol those with mental illnesses were EXCLUDED—was to help out men who identity as women pass more easily later in life and decrease their stress/anxiety/depression at not passing.
So those who were not included in the original Dutch Protocol study that lead to medicalized gender affirming care—girls/women who identify as boys/men—wind up being the biggest group of detransitioners!
I think that will be one of most important outcomes of MacKinnon’s research for critique of medicalized gender affirming care for those who care about the mental health, emotional health, physical health, and quality of life of girls and women! And of kids of both sexes of course!
I see the “Abolish the Family” crackpot and fanatical TRA Sophie Lewis has recorded a podcast with Osama Bin Laden stan Gretchen Felker-Martin and some person called Kayte Terry.
The Mayor of the town of Hamilton, Ontario, has removed a billboard that simply read “Stop medical transitions of minors.” The billboard advertised a website by a Christian group advocating against medical transiations.
The Mayor argues that the billboard is “transphobic” and therefore illegal.
correction to my #223 and Dutch Protocol, i was mistaken, the study did include girls, see #3 below
and Leor Sapir critique of foundational questions and confusions
#1 I reminded of that there were girls in the study by terrific discussion of Stella O’Malley, Mia Hughes, and Leor Sapir: The Questions the New York Times Refused to Ask (#27), for me, this is a very important groundbreaking discussion, as Sapir identifies foundational questions and confusions of so-called gender affirming care, golden mean fallacy, and would gender affirming care IF it were successful eliminate transgender identity since the mismatch of so-called “gender identity” and so-called “assigned sex” would have been handled and wouldn’t that mean the person is now ”cis gender” [my paraphrasing from memory]!??!?!
What happens when the world’s most influential newspaper spends two years investigating youth transition but refuses to ask what gender identity actually means? Leor Sapir dissects the New York Times’ “Protocol” podcast, revealing how they avoided every foundational question while positioning unscientific assessment as the “reasonable middle ground.” He shares explosive revelations from his own interview with Laura Edwards-Leeper (who admitted gender identity is based on stereotypes), exposes why detransitioners got 30 seconds while Jamie Reed got attacked, and explains the strategic choice ahead: let medical leaders blame WPATH for misleading them, or face Trump administration investigations. His verdict: “Imagine endocrinologists treating a condition they can’t define without circular reasoning. That’s what’s happening here.”
De Vries et al. (2011) published a cohort study of the first 140 adolescents who received puberty blockers and/or gender affirming hormones between 2000 and 2008.[12] The study group consisted of the first 70 adolescents who received puberty blockers: 33 born boys and 37 born girls.[12] All participants had experienced gender dysphoria since childhood, were supported by their environment, had no comorbidities that could influence the diagnosis, and had reached at least Tanner stage 2 or 3.[12]
A disciplinary panel has suspended a British Columbia nurse for one month and ordered her to pay over $93,000 in costs related to her public statements about women’s rights and single sex spaces….accused Hamm of transphobia and hate speech. The college launched an investigation.
…It produced a 332 page report [!??!??!] examining Hamm’s public statements between 2018 and 2021. …Hearings lasted for 22 days [!!??!?], spread over a year and a half. In the end, the disciplinary panel ruled that four of Hamm’s statements amounted to unprofessional conduct.
… Hamm has already appealed the finding of unprofessional conduct to the BC Supreme Court.
…Hamm said, “The college has chosen to punish me for statements that are not hateful, but truthful. I’m appealing because biological reality matters, and so does freedom of expression.”
JK Rowling’s review is very funny. Structuring it around a comparison with Twilight is hilarious, and shows, rather than telling, how oblivious, juvenile, and twee Sturgeon is.
‘I don’t yet realise it but in this moment the course of my life will be set. Everything that has gone before has been leading me here.’
These are Sturgeon’s words, but they could just as easily be Bella Swan’s, for both shy, insecure teenagers have dates with destiny. Nicola Sturgeon will one day become First Minister of Scotland. Bella Swan will join the ranks of the undead.
I really ought to read more of her adult-oriented literature. She’s got me in stitches with this.
Speaking of J. K. Rowling, Graham Linehan has criticised her on the “Spiked Online” podcast.
According to the “Sunday Telegraph”,
In an interview for the Spiked podcast, he claimed Rowling had “never mentioned me, never said anything in my defence”.
He added: “When she got [involved], I thought, Oh my God, it’s over. I can finally relax, I can finally fight back because someone’s on my side, you know?”
“And now her silence about me is just added to the feeling that, that I’ve done something wrong, that I’m toxic and I know I am toxic, but it’s not because I’ve done anything wrong.”
“It’s because of things like that. It’s because people, people like JK Rowling won’t stand up in defence of me. So it wasn’t just the [trans rights activist] side pushing me out. It was a feeling of lack of solidarity and the kind of an embarrassment at my presence in the fight.”
Linehan has been attacking other GC writers/activists for a while now. He recently denounced Katie Herzog, Jesse Singal, and Helen Lewis as having ” tribal, priggish, dinner-party sensibilities”.
I began watching an interview with Linehan on YouTube a while ago, but I stopped almost right away after one of the first things coming out of his mouth was something like (from memory) “you got to love the guy”, the “guy” in question being Donald Trump. By that time he had clearly been moving in that direction for some time as evidenced by his increasing willingness to repeat back MAGA talking-points dismissing all criticisms of the orange one as Leftist smear-campaigns. Linehan seems to me like the perfect example of something I have previously said: If you manage to make people sufficiently pissed off, they may eventually decide that “I don’t care who wins. or what else is included in the deal, or who else gets hurt as a result, as long as these assholes lose!”. After everything that’s happened it wouldn’t occur to me to blame Linehan for being vehemently against the woke Left. I am against them too. But it still takes more to be a friend than simply being the enemy of my enemy.
Linehan seems to me like the perfect example of something I have previously said: If you manage to make people sufficiently pissed off, they may eventually decide that “I don’t care who wins. or what else is included in the deal, or who else gets hurt as a result, as long as these assholes lose!”.
Linehan started fighting with the trans activists about 2018, and did it fairly aggressively. When he started this fight, he seemed to under-estimate the power of the gender ideology lobby, and thought other celebrities and activists would join with him in the cause.
When they didn’t, and instead his co-workers, friends and family largely moved away from him, he must have felt incredibly alone. And unlike Rowling or Dave Chappelle, Graham Linehan wasn’t wealthy and influential enough to resist a mass boycott by the G.I. Lobby.
Linehan didn’t help things out by his rude attitude to other leftists and centrists who shared his GC views (Singal and Kerzog).
So eventually, there was nothing left for Linehan to do but join the far right. So obsessed was he with making “these assholes lose”, that there was nothing left for this talented comedy writer but the foul embrace of the Trumpists.
So eventually, there was nothing left for Linehan to do but join the far right. So obsessed was he with making “these assholes lose”, that there was nothing left for this talented comedy writer but the foul embrace of the Trumpists.
I find this troublesome. There are obviously other options, he just didn’t like them. Ophelia has been through a lot of the same things, and I haven’t heard of JKR coming specifically to her defense, but she hasn’t jumped to the far right.
To me, this idea that you must leave the ‘woke’ left because they are wrong about one thing, or two things, is just spitting in the wind. It is no better than they are, demanding complete adherence to all doctrines. There are many places where I do not agree with the ‘woke’ left, and yet I manage, somehow, to avoid going over to people who are far right. Trump is not limiting his anger and hatred to trans; he is also attacking gays, women, native Americans, the disabled, the poor, the elderly, the schoolchildren, the teachers…and probably a lot of others that I can’t think of right now. Ice sculptors? I’m sure he has something planned to attack them, unless they put an ice sculpture of him on every corner of America…and Canada. He hates everyone, and he even hates his own supporters, unless they bow down and grovel and worship him.
Hey, maybe he really is god. That sounds a lot like the imaginary creator of the universe – worship me or I will send a worldwide flood to wipe you out.
But to get back to where I started…the loneliness and rejection is severe and hurtful. But it is no excuse for shitting on the entire world.
You’re right. Ophelia got a dreadful time over her opinions, as did Rowling, and neither of them became Trump supporters like Linehan did. Heck, Jesse Singal became a internet hate figure over his mild, politely expressed dissent from the ideology:
In a way, Graham Linehan is a useful figure for the trans movement. Because they can say “Look at this man, deserted by his family and most of his friends, with his successful career gone, addicted to social media, now with only the Trumpian Right for company.”
“If you step out of line even slightly on The Dogma, you will end up like Graham Linehan too.”
I can’t speak to all of this, because I’m not Graham and I’m not a mind reader. But I can address some misconceptions, because G and I were very close friends and colleagues for years.
As for Katie and Jesse: he never spoke a word about them in public until *after* they launched a monstrous attack on him. They broadcast an almost an entire episode of their show, out of the blue, devoted to monstering him. Back then, they viewed “misgendering” trans-identifying males as a sign of a mind consumed by evil, right-wing hatred, and despite Graham’s very reasonable behind-the-scenes overtures to them, journalist-to-journalist, they mocked him as an outsider and a freak, specifically because he occasionally “misgendered”.
They were so many years behind the times they hadn’t figured out that this wasn’t actually a sign of pure evil. This to me is such a great example of “liberal” hipster monstrosity: Graham by then had accrued I think five — FIVE!!! — BAFTAs for his writing skills, as well as an Emmy and a lifetime achievement award. Literally, decades of accolades. An uninterrupted streak of kudos for his extraordinary talents. And he had several years’ experience as a magazine journalist. He was unambiguously Big League, any way you look at it. And he was friendly and generous to them. But these assholes treated him like an out-of-line, out-of-place nobody, because he didn’t play the Brooklyn-centric media game. Apparently, his big crime was that, pronoun-wise, he had correctly sexed violent sex offenders and creeps pretending to be lesbians online.
I wrote about it at length at the (now defunct) Lesbian and Gay News. You can find a copy of that essay here, and I’m mighty proud of it still:
As for the broader shifts towards the right among many predominant figures in the GC movement — Graham included, alas — well, I’ve made my personal position clear on that front, multiple times, here at B&W. I don’t approve, and I will not move rightward with the crowd. But the psychology of such shifts is more complicated, more interesting, more sympathetic, and perhaps more pitiable, than it’s sometimes made out to be.
In three words: It’s a shame.
It’s a comprehensible shame. An understandable shame. But a shame, nonetheless. A heartbreaking one. That’s as far as I can go on that front, lest I damage friendships that I value tremendously.
Probably best not to gp this one. let’s leave it for our clubhouse here. You’re welcome to if you want! But my preference tilts a bit towards no. It’s a bit sensitive, you know?
I’m still on team BARpod (Jesse and Katie), if anything they’ve been too nice about people who’ve (posthumously?) justified their cancellations… Lineham is just one of them. Still, compared to Bari Weiss or Libs of TikTok he’s a nobody, even if he is deserving of no defense whatsoever.
Jump in bed with the bad guys and have a little pity party all to yourself…
Not sure Bari Weiss has any lifetime achievement awards, and I’m not sure it’s a badge of honour to side with a couple of podcasters who continued to insist that “misgendering” is analogous to a hate crime until basically yesterday. But yeah, Graham is not a well-known figure to Americans. In much of the rest of the English-speaking world, it’s quite the opposite: Graham Linehan has for decades had entire sections of video stores dedicated to him. Weiss, on the other hand, seems a US-based online media bubble figure above all. Also, I’m not sure why you’d reply to someone who is clearly personal friends with Graham by calling him a “nobody”? Seems at best insensitive, but more like trollish, to be frank.
Also: not to feed the troll too much but “posthumously”? Please don’t imply that my very much alive and breathing friends are dead, metaphorically or otherwise. Graham’s a loving father and son and friend to fellow humans, even if you disagree with some or even all of his political views.
“retrospectively” was the word I was looking for I think (as a clarification). I’m pretty black pilled on GC world in general these days because of all the fashy apologetics (though I’ll not soon stop misgendering people). Rowling remains fine.
There are sides in this war and there seem to be precious few on the side of Western liberalism but loads and loads of bad guys.
Casual remarks about death regarding celebrities one disagrees with — or writers, or celebrity-writers — bother me greatly.
I remember during lockdown there was a weekly pub trivia night from a local gay bar that had moved over to Zoom while the bars were mandated shut. It became a wildly popular weekly online virtual “pub trivia” meetup, and to many people it was the highlight of their week during lockdown — especially because it was free to participate, and open to all. It was also a vital lifeline to the gay community for me, as I was in the process of becoming ostracized from the real-live “scene” by then because I had voiced disagreement with gender extremism. In this online space, during these Zoom-based trivia parties, I could safely interact with the gay community behind my screen, without drawing too much attention from the bullies who would otherwise have made me unwelcome in the physical bars. I took solace in that.
But the host began interspersing his banter, his schtick, with increasing, and increasingly hostile, remarks about JK Rowling. It got that he couldn’t go half an hour without joking about her violent death or murder — which (he was Scottish, you see) he relished drawling “meurrh-durrh” in that wry Scottish brogue…
I found it terribly upsetting. Not at all amusing. So much so that I couldn’t stand to attend these trivia events anymore. One of my very last lifelines to my gay neighbours and peers was cut off, because of it. In a partcularly difficult and lonely time, no less.
I don’t care how rich or famous Rowling is — that kind of thing’s not on. Actual murderous dictators in political power are perhaps a different story — especially the ones who’ve actually killed people for their own political gain, like, say, Pinochet or Putin or Hitler. I’ll concede that “elevated” language about such people seems justifiable, at least sometimes.
But writers aren’t that. Writers aren’t fascist dictators. Writers aren’t Donald Trump. Writers aren’t even Margaret Thatcher. Writers are mostly just writers.
Don’t joke about writers’ deaths, please! It’s not funny. It’s not edgy. It’s just shitty.
Posthumously, retrospectively — pick your poison. One writes him off as dead, the other as irrelevant. Both are graceless, both are trolling, and neither deserves more than this single reply: you’ve said nothing worth anyone’s time.
While I fully agree with you that I’ve said nothing worth anyone’s time, maybe get angry about what I actually did say?
I’ll cop to being venomous; it’s quite sincere, but there’s no trolling. I said that his current behavior (cheering on the people that are making life in the United States miserable) justifies his prior cancellation; it’s quite a bit crueler than anything said on BARpod even if it isn’t snarky. Your friendship seems to be deep and abiding, so you should be quite upset at that statement not an imagined “joke”.
And yes, the Discourse in the US matters a good deal more than anything in any single slice of Europe because the United States is a large, massively strong (but declining) country with economic and military tentacles everywhere. That’s a fact, a quite unfortunate fact, but still a fact.
BK – “I said that his current behavior (cheering on the people that are making life in the United States miserable) justifies his prior cancellation” – no you didn’t. You didn’t say anything LIKE that. That may have been what you were thinking but it’s certainly not what you said. You gave no explanation or context at all for your hostile remark.
I had a discouraging exchange with a long-time acquaintance this week that kind of floored me, when we were discussing how sex is determined in humans. She claimed that the XX chromosome later changed to XY during development, which underlied her claim that all of us are conceived as female and only later develop as males. Of course she also believes that sex is a spectrum, etc.
Now part of the reason this floored me is that she is a very educated person who copy edited non-fiction for part of her living for years, and of course part of that job is noting errors in the text. So she’s got a critical mind. But when it comes to the subject of transgenderism it’s like her mind won’t engage, even on such a ludicrous claim as the XX gene changing to XY some time after conception!
Anyway, it didn’t end well and now she’s no longer talking to me. Oh, and someone else who was also present now is telling other people I’m a trans and intersex phobe! I’m not surprised by that as her own politics require it, because to her the only possible reason I could be questioning some of the mistaken claims about biology is that I must be a bigot. That’s pretty stupid politics though to insist others must not ever say anything that isn’t deemed supportive of transgender people, even when it’s a matter of fact.
Sex really isn’t a spectrum and sex does matter as a fact of life. So-called “intersex” people aren’t really that – it’s differences/disorders of sexual development that underlie such conditions. Neither of these positions have anything to do with being bigoted against transgender or intersex people. I guess I still hope a few minds could be changed but when it comes to transgender politics that’s not likely, as I’m know many here have also learned. Oh well, I’m thankful for having this blog to post this comment on and I do appreciate what others have to say about their experiences.
Losing friends over “sex spectrum” nonsense is the worst. It’s just devastating and terrible. I share your sorrow on that front.
I, too, am deeply grateful to have B&W here to vent to, and to find a sympathetic ear with Ophelia and the many wonderful commenters and supporters here. It’s a great support network. A life-support network, sometimes!
If it’s of any consolation to you, here’s my rant about being stuck in the same boat:
The “sex is a spectrum” aspect of the trans debate has always been the most absurd one to me, because CLEARLY the kinds of people who are asserting that they’re trans have NOTHING TO DO WITH the kinds of people who have, say, micro-penises or other “intersex”-labelled devopmental genital anomalies related to chromosomal mutations, or atypicalities, or variances or whatever you want to call them. The argument that “sex is a spectrum” doesn’t even begin to address the trans conundrum, and that’s the reason it was conjured in the first place. Ugh, it’s so stupid!
It’s so funny, but it’s so exasperating being a middle-aged gay man in this dispute. Especially one who used to be on the streets, who’s extremely familiar with the seedier parts of society, and who’s unafraid to discuss it. The trans prostitution and the escort websites and the cruising and the leather-and-fetish bars and the dominatrixes and whatnot. I’ve been around it all, forever. It’s just so PREPOSTEROUS, the notion that “trans” has anything to do with anything besides (in men) extreme kink and/or gay shame, and (in women) extreme shame around body and sexuality, and/or aversion to the “male gaze”. It’s all just so unbearably transparent to me.
Back in the ’90s, a fellow-homeless teenage friend was murdered in a stairwell after he started turning tricks in skirts & pantyhose because the money’s better on the “trans” prostitution scene as opposed to the teenage-boy one, and the transvestite he shared a squat with roped him into it. What the fuck does that have to do with chromosomes?! Ask your erstwhile colleagues and friends that! (Sorry, I’m angry! Does it show?)
I once worked at a trans bar, where the anxieties and the problems with the “scene” were clear, but so was the (understandable) fear of judgment from the outside world. I learned a lot. Specifically: it’s a difficult situation they’re in, and the solutions are probably going to be imperfect and un-ideal and pragmatic and stop-gap and short-term, because that’s how we ultimately deal with vulnerable people on society’s fringes, at least until utopia arrives, or something. But none of this — none of “trans” — has anything to do with new frontiers in science or biology. It’s about social dysfunction and mental illness and compassion and boundaries and misfits and how to make them feel less ill-at-ease. And it’s about doing so without ripping women’s rights, gay rights, and free speech principles, to shreds.
Messy stuff, to be fair. But it ain’t Gay Rights 2.0: it’s more complicated, because frankly it’s further from reality. Gays eventually reckoned with their — our — difficult-to-explain, unusual, circumstances. Trans-identifying people, on the other hand, are trying to refashion the rest of the world in their misfit model in a grand, gargantuan, cosmic carnival of avoidance, to avoid any kind of mental reckoning. Frankly, I’m floored it’s gotten this far.
All of this is so clear to anyone who lives or works in the gay village… even though most of them are too protective of their “tribe” to admit what’s plain in front of them. When I was a Village bartender, I had a six-foot-six fetishistic straight man show up at my bar with literal basketballs duct-taped to his massive chest — ersatz mega-sized tits. Boobsketballs. I couldn’t escort him to a seat before he launched into a monologue about how kinky and horny he was. He very quickly started pestering the only lesbian in the room until she left.
That really happened. It’s perhaps an extreme example, because it’s a colourful story to tell, but that kind of thing happens every day nowadays. I’ve got many stories almost as colourful as that one.
Because it’s gotten crazy lately. And none of it has anything to do with XX or XY chromosomes! It’s to do with social trends, social eddies — social media first and foremost. And it’s to do with the messy underbelly of human male sexuality, secondly. That’s a big ball of pent-up energy that society just doesn’t know where to channel. We don’t know how to safely neutralize that bomb. But it’s not going to stop exploding until we do. It’s an unavoidable fact of the human condition. And women’s spaces aren’t the place to put it.
But the current social craze around trans… it’s so bloody obviously a social contagion. The sexuality/kink stuff is just the catalyst at its core. God, when will everyone get a fucking clue! I’ve been out here practically alone, blasting the horn for years. Where the hell’s the Cavalry already?
Arty, you’re an interesting guy. We have very similar views of the current gender delusion yet come from polar opposite backgrounds. I got a brief taste of “gay culture” (such as you describe in your comment) around 1985 and decided I wanted no part of it, so I moved to a rural state and happened to stumble into . . . a husband! We’ve been together for forty years now, live openly among (thankfully) accepting neighbors, and prefer the country life over bars and “the streets”. I’ve met two, maybe three “trans” people in my life, and now that I’ve educated myself a little about it (through J. Michael Bailey and internet places such as B&W) I can see that one transwoman is an autogynephile, a brittle, angry older man who got in trouble for impersonating a (female) military officer in public; and the other is an older gay man (6′ 4″) whom I suspect never really came to terms with being gay. He told my husband and me that “no surgeon will touch him” because of a pre-existing heart condition. I feel bad for him. (Side note: He chose a very unfortunate name for his alter ego, Amanda. When you see his plus-six-foot frame coming through the doorway, you want to say, “He’s a man, duh!”) The only other trans person I met was a female student undergoing transition and who appeared convincingly as a teenage boy in my writing class. My view of sex and gender comes from a simple place: To be a gay man, you have to know what a man is, period. You have to recognize you are a man — that “man” is a thing — and that you are attracted to MALE BODIES. Sex is real and powerful. The obverse of that is that never, ever has a female body interested me, because they are different in ways that my innate constitution simply recoils from. Women are real and equal to me, but different, which is paradoxical but true. To be a gay man means to have suffered over the differences between the sexes during adolescence, and I’m simply revolted by the current craze that pretends either the sexes don’t exist or that they are somehow interchangeable.
Trans-identifying people, on the other hand, are trying to refashion the rest of the world in their misfit model in a grand, gargantuan, cosmic carnival of avoidance, to avoid any kind of mental reckoning. Frankly, I’m floored it’s gotten this far.
I hope that at some point, someone can figure out the exact strategy by which the trans Trojan Unicorn was brought into the gates of progressive politics, allowing the tiny number of infiltrators to take over the city. What sequence of psychological buttons were pressed in order to unlock, evoke, and exploit the unwarranted surrender to harmful, impossible bullshit that evixcerated so much of what progressivism had fought for? How exactly did the emotional blackmail and bullying work so well? It would be good to know these things in order to prevent them from ever happening again.
J.A., I’m sorry about your friend. I haven’t had quite that conversation, but I’ve certainly had misinformation quoted as “science”, and I never know how to respond, either.
Re:
She claimed that the XX chromosome later changed to XY during development, which underlied her claim that all of us are conceived as female and only later develop as males.
She is misconstruing another statement, which is also incorrect, that embryos all start out as female, and proceed along the female developmental path, until “extra hormones” at a certain point veers the male embryos onto the male developmental path. That split in the developmental path, though, is ultimately due to the sex chromosomes; the embryos don’t suddenly pick up sex chromosomes. (It’s also unreasonable to call the first part “the female path”; better to call it “the undifferentiated path”.)
I think this video does a pretty good job of refuting the myth.
The (Other) Thing That Never Happens Happened Again.
From the “Boston Globe” :
Surgeon Curtis Cetrulo became a leading light of a cutting-edge program at Massachusetts General Hospital soon after it opened in 2018, crafting penises for transgender men — and helping plant a flag in Boston amid intensifying national competition for such procedures…
But now, two of his former patients are suing Cetrulo and Mass. General for medical malpractice, alleging the gender-reassignment operations he performed were experimental and unsupported by medical research. The lawsuits said he used an untested approach to abdominal phalloplasty that caused them severe pain, disfigurement, infections, and other complications — and led to even more surgery to correct the mistakes.
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s heartwarming to hear it. Towards the end of your comment, you’ve gotten at a really good point — that among us men, the distinction between the sexes is very much rooted in sexual reactions. We males strongly react differently to male versus female stimuli, and it causes us great distress when the wrong stimuli are applied at the wrong times — i.e., a straight guy confronted with a sexual proposition from a fellow male, or a gay guy being coerced to have sex with a female. We males deeply know the difference in a visceral, sometimes instinctual-alarm-inducing way, and it emerges particularly when we’re discussing sexuality.
That’s why, among us men, discussion around the transgender mess almost always moves very quickly towards discussion around sex and sexuality.
But among women, it’s clearly different.
I had my “a-ha” moment about this when I was in a room full of transmen — females — who were trying to explain to me their motives for transitioning, and they didn’t say anything about sex. At first, I actually thought this was a sign that their motives were maybe so much about sex they were just avoiding talking about it. (Some fetishistic trans-identifying males do that: they try to conceal the erotic foundation of their whole sex-roleplay thing…)
But the narrative became clear, and reinforced through its sheer consistency across different women who didn’t know each other: their deep, visceral distinction between males and females was centred on sociality rather than sexuality. Their discomfort with their femaleness and their comfort in “presenting” as male was always rooted in positioning themselves on the social landscape in a place they were more comfortable in. Whereas, with trans-identifying males, it was entirely about positioning themselves on the sexual landscape where they’d rather be.
I’d been around transwomen — gay males, as well as a few of the straight AGP variety — plenty. And their “gender journeys” had everything to do with how they’d centred sex in their lives, and how they were managing their sexual desires and incorporating them into their whole selves.
The transmen were entirely different, and their struggles focused on their social identities and social appearance.
Male sexuality and female sociality seem to mirror each other in interesting ways…
There’s a growing and by now seemingly insurmountable pile of evidence that women and men process the fact of human sexual dimorphism on different instinctual registers. We both “experience” it viscerally — but differently. Biological sex is undoubtedly real and material and important to both of us, but in our everyday lives, that difference manifests differently whether you’re a male or a female person experiencing it.
This is fundamental to the trans debate, because there’s a lot of unproductive cross-talk in it. The GC movement demographically has more females than males — nothing wrong with that! But it needs to engage and persuade everyone to its side, so the simple math says it’s a good idea to bring more males onside in order to accomplish its goals.
The focus on the social aspects of the sex binary, and the passive avoidance of the sexual aspects, are perhaps a hindrance, if the movement is trying to reach more men. I know that a lot of frank talk of male sexuality is generally out of women’s comfort zones. But… exactly.
I speak frankly and consistently about the sexual aspect of it, because that aspect is a particularly male perspective, and it reaches males in a deep way — in a different way than the social aspects do.
I hope that at some point, someone can figure out the exact strategy by which the trans Trojan Unicorn was brought into the gates of progressive politics, allowing the tiny number of infiltrators to take over the city. What sequence of psychological buttons were pressed in order to unlock, evoke, and exploit the unwarranted surrender to harmful, impossible bullshit that evixcerated so much of what progressivism had fought for? How exactly did the emotional blackmail and bullying work so well? It would be good to know these things in order to prevent them from ever happening again.
Well, I think I have a decent enough guess as to why the concept of gender identity became popular. I don’t have a good account of how it first entered the public mind, nor do I know exactly by which means it spread (obviously the Internet played a role), but I do think the following helps to explain why people are willing to believe something so stupid.
In recent times, we’ve become less and less comfortable with how sexist our society is. Regardless, all that sexism has remained a huge part of our way of life. It gets ingrained in us from birth. On some level we’ve ended up disliking it, but we really can’t bear to part with it. We’d have to expend a huge deal of effort just to head into scary uncharted territory. And then there’s the fact that this would all be very inconvenient for institutions that hold a lot of power over us.
So, how do we reconcile the two? How do we put an end to the sexist nonsense that is our gender system while also not putting an end to it because it’s not really nonsense and it’s such a big part of our social fabric and we really want to keep thinking like that?
I believe a lot of people take to gender identity because of this dissonance. It’s a way to keep thinking about people in a gendered manner without feeling sexist. In fact, it legitimizes and encourages gendered thinking, by which I am referring to our socially-constructed notions of femininity and masculinity and the like. So long as we don’t actually tie them to sex, we aren’t required to come to grips with the fact they’re nonsense. We can pretend they’re intrinsic to the human mind all we want. We were starting to slip, and now we have this great foothold. (Obviously enough, gender identity isn’t truly detached from sex – most people are naturally “cisgender,” right? And it’s mostly focused on clothes and hair and things like that; we don’t usually concern ourselves with other, more blatantly problematic aspects of our gender system. Lucky us! The oppression of adult human females will continue, and in fact we’ll be addressing it even less than before.)
I think this explains why so much of gender identityism is about redefining stuff so it no longer refers to sex, and then refusing to acknowledge that it ever did. Of course ‘woman’ was always a gender identity. If we claimed otherwise, we’d have to acknowledge there was a change at some point. If we acknowledged there was a change, we’d have to re-think our use of the word accordingly. We’d have to ask ourselves whether and how it pertains to the various contexts in which it occurs, which include eyelash extensions and washroom use. And then we’d wonder why those things are related. We’d be getting dangerously close to actually understanding the relationship between sex and gender, and the whole point of gender identity is to avoid this in the most strained and idiotic way imaginable.
It seems reasonable to guess the concept of gender identity gradually became vaguer because that was less embarrassing, and people were more likely to embrace it if it didn’t just sound like a bunch of sexist stereotypes. At this point, definitions tend to be devoid of useful content (“Gender identity is the gender a person identifies with” and the like). I don’t believe anyone actually understands it that way; rather, I think individuals fill in the gaps with stereotypes, but aren’t willing to say so.
There are some drawbacks to all this, obviously – it turns out blindingly replacing sex with ill-defined feelings doesn’t always work out great. This is going to sound crazy, but sometimes sex actually matters. Who’d a thought?
But more importantly, who cares? Like, maybe, what, three random lesbians somewhere in the UK? We’ll just say they’re conservatives and leave it at that. It’s obvious they’re conservatives. After all, they’re angry at us, and conservatives are angry at us, so there you have it. There are a lot of conservatives who’re really mad at us, actually. That’s how we know we’re doing something right.
Modified-type smallpox occurred in previously vaccinated people and produced a less severe rash than ordinary smallpox. For reasons that are not completely understood, children and pregnant people were most likely to be afflicted with the variations.
Discovered while researching the “smallpox blankets” claim. From the American Society for Microbiology of all places.
@Artymorty #262 Thanks for very insightful helpful comment about social landscape positioning or sexual landscape positioning
…women …their deep, visceral distinction between males and females was centred on sociality rather than sexuality. Their discomfort with their femaleness and their comfort in “presenting” as male was always rooted in positioning themselves on the social landscape in a place they were more comfortable in. Whereas, with trans-identifying males, it was entirely about positioning themselves on the sexual landscape where they’d rather be.
This makes a lot of sense to me as a good generalization of motivation to identify/transition as the other se, which would then also need to be–forgive me–intersected with age/generation, younger boys and girls might have very different motivations than older men and women, due to social media and cultural changes. Thanks!
Wes, thanks for pointing out that younger boys and girls may have different motivations than older men and women. As a dad, I have seen my kids’ motivations and socialization change greatly as they grow up. When a ten year-old girl says she’s a lesbian, it really means a different thing than when a twenty year-old woman says it. Part of what makes the child gender nonsense so terrible is that they’re taking the word of the ten year-old as binding on the twenty year-old, and trying to lock it in medically. It’s forcing immaturity on young adults, literally and figuratively, as their bodies are prevented from changing by puberty blockers, and their minds are prevented from growing by ideological consolidation.
Papito, this is a terrifically illuminating statement:
It’s forcing immaturity on young adults, literally and figuratively, as their bodies are prevented from changing by puberty blockers, and their minds are prevented from growing by ideological consolidation.
Wish I had thought of it . . . but then I sort of did as I recognized its pertinence immediately
It’s interesting that the person quoted at the end of the article states that we shouldn’t use this to “demonize” the trans community, then says it needs to be about the children who died, not the trans ‘woman’ who shot them.
I am astonished. Suddenly something is NOT about trans? Wow.
Sorry if I seem flippant in the face of tragedy. I am not flippant. I am angry. I imagine we will now be hearing about ‘no true Scotsman’ or this will be taken as a sign that trans individuals who don’t get what they want will kill themselves. (Though I don’t see any sign of him not getting what he wanted; his birth certificate apparently was changed to pretend he was born female.)
I’ve seen comments that most shootings are committed by “cisgender men”, shootings by “trans people” are very rare, most “trans people” are non-violent, and “trans people” are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence. This ignores the fact that most people are non-violent, and most people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence, so it’s not really saying much. The same is true of men, that most men are non-violent, but the vast majority of violence is committed by men, so it reasonable to focus on men in this regard. More to the point, trans-identified men are at least as likely to be violent as are other men; it’s only the fact that there are relatively few trans-identified men that makes those occurrences rare.
No, we shouldn’t use this to demonize the “trans community”, but we should recognize this as yet another instance of a violent man, and not allow his claim of womanhood to obscure that fact. Nor should his story (posthumously in this case, obviously) be given any sort of lenient treatment because of “trans” claims; entirely too many instances exist of trans-identified individuals being given reduced or eliminated sentences because of “trans” status.
The Minneapolis shooter was someone who was likely mentally ill, who also happened to be transgender. The cynical part of me wants to say that the transition didn’t help their mental health. I’m sure some TRAs will say the kill was “no true trans” rather than admit that the change in gender didn’t resolve the killer’s obvious mental health problem. Why? Because they don’t want to hear that affirmation isn’t always the right answer.
J.A., I suspect affirmation is never the right answer. It’s just allowing the delusion to continue unchecked, a delusion which might be able to be dealt with using correct psychiatric procedures instead of saying, oh, yes, of course, you are a woman, you sweet little thing you.
I can’t think of any other mental illness where the doctor affirms the delusion. When I had anorexia, my doctor certainly didn’t go around telling me, oh, yes, of course, you’re fat. You are the fattest person I’ve ever seen. That would be ridiculous, and would almost certainly be considered malpractice. But tell a man they are a man? Oh, no, we musn’t do that.
Go a step further and point out that not only was the delusion allowed to continue unchecked, but trans activism made it impossible for this kid to get the kind of mental help he actually needed. Almost no real therapist will even treat a kid with gender delusion – they just kick him over to the gender clinic. It’s not worth the liability to them. If the kid accused the therapist of doing a “conversion therapy” on them they could lose their career. Put the blame on not just this one trans person but on all trans activists, who help to create unchecked madness by making therapy illegal. This is an inevitable consequence of the laws they wrote and passed.
If anyone’s interested, some poignant and well thought out resignation letters by CDC staff. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Houry at Officer Rose’s memorial service, she’s a very competent and caring professional.
I’m wondering why, for the first time in years, today there is absolutely nothing about Trump in breaking news. Zilch. No insane social media posts even.
The semester begins in two days, and I’m dreading roll. What will I do when a student announces, “My pronouns are they/them,” or another who clearly presents as male requires “she/her”?
This is probably ancient news to most here, but it has suddenly dawned on me that the pronoun has become a cudgel: As soon as the declaration is made, the gauntlet is dropped. One either acquiesces and uses the false pronouns, or one demurs and risks being branded “phobe”. One’s speech is now used for control.
What if I simply make a little mark on the list, “NP,” meaning “no pronouns” are to be used for this particular student? It means being circumspect and refusing to play their/her/his goddamn game. Either way, as soon as a student makes the declaration, the instructor is put on the back foot.
Maddening. There’s simply no such thing as “my” pronouns. We don’t own the words that are used to refer to us. We get to reject epithets, but we don’t get to reject ordinary grammar.
Oh, dear. The new left-wing UK party run by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, “Your Party”, has already suffered a split because of That Issue.
Adnan Hussain, who will become one of the group’s six MPs, said last week that trans women are “not biologically women”.
Last Friday, Mr Hussain was asked about the position that the new party – which has the temporary name of Your Party – would take on LGBT issues and single-sex spaces.
The MP for Blackburn wrote on X: “Women’s rights and safe spaces should not be encroached upon. Safe third spaces should be an alternative option.”
The woman-beating male boxer, Imane Khelif, still wants to compete in this month’s World Championships without having to take the mandatory sex test as per World Boxing rules. He has made an appeal to the court of arbitration for sport but, because it won’t be heard in time for the competition he requested that they make World Boxing temporarily suspend sex testing until the hearing. That request was denied.
The Guardian article has half a thumb on the scales in its report; the piece is written as though it is only Khelif who has to be tested, despite the rule requiring it for all competitors, but it also only refers to Khelif either by name or as ‘the boxer’. The only reference to him being a woman is in a direct quote from Khelif. I suspect that Guardian writers sees which way the wind is blowing, and it’s an ill wind for Khelif. Personally, I think that the cheating little shit will never enter the ring again because there is no chance of him taking the test.
(Thinking about what Mike B wrote, although this is hardly focused enough to qualify as a reply.)
I can understand people wanting to detach themselves from sexed dynamics. Without ignoring the reality of sex, nor failing to understand how it impacts our lives, maybe we needn’t constantly set males and females apart in speech. In many contexts I’d be more than happy to avoid making reference to one’s sex through grammatical gender. The issue is, I am not at all willing to adjust my speech based on one’s gender gender identity, since (presumably like everyone else here) I think gender identities are BS.
At this point, their widespread use to convey magical gender souls has made third-person pronouns feel hopelessly tainted to me. I don’t want to call a male “him” if it’s going to be understood as a validation of his gender identity. One thing that occured to me would be to take “using pronouns” more literally. “Hi everyone, I’ll be using splog/splag pronouns from now on. That means I’ll use them whenever I’m referring to people in the third person, regardless of whom I’m speaking about. Oh, and the possessive form is splars.” That way, you can’t be accused of respecting cis people’s gender identities but not trans people’s. (Obviously, I’m not at all convinced this would go over well.)
Mike, do you commonly use pronouns to refer to your students? Do you talk about one student to another? Or do you more commonly call on students directly?
Isn’t a good solution for the gender problem the use of last names?
For people who are the sex they pretend to be, use the last name and honorific, e.g. Mr. Williams or Ms. Smith.
For those who can’t accept being referred to by their sex, just use drop the honorific, e.g. Johnson.
You can’t be required to do otherwise – see Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University.
Papito, that sounds like a good solution, but in ’21st century pedagogy’ (which is mostly bullshit), we are expected to be ‘accessible’. One of my supervisors actually called me out for insisting my students use my last name and honorific, though the students didn’t complain. Since they were routinely calling the men who taught them ‘Mr’, and wouldn’t call them by their first name even if they were told they should, it seemed to be disrespect to use my first name, especially after I told them they shouldn’t. First names are a form of infantilizing. Still, I was expected to refer to my students by first name (since we have a lot of Polish people locally, that could be a relief at times). I refused to accept papers with first names only, but for some reason never got in trouble for that.
The idea of coddling the student has gone so far into the schools that I’m not sure how to pull it back out without unraveling the whole system. But it does make it difficult, especially since my roll never showed the student’s new name. It always reflected their ‘deadname’ – in other words, their birth name, and for most, still their legal name. It could be hard to remember that Emma now wants to be called Caleb and Joe wants to be called Heather when the other name is on my attendance form!
My sympathy, Mike B. I’ve been there. And yes, there are times when you refer to students by pronouns, because you are arranging groups or something, and telling someone to join ‘him’ or ‘her’. Or for me, I used scenarios to work through topics, and would usually use the students as the ones in the scenario. I got around that by never using any pronoun for a trans student; they were not in the scenario, because they insisted on specialized pronouns.
It’s fairly common when you’re in a group of three or more to refer to one of the group in the third person. As an example, imagine a classroom discussion, where Johnson (a man who insists that others use female pronouns when referring to him in the third person) has just expressed an opinion. The teacher, in an attempt to stimulate some conversation, may then turn to Smith and say, “Do you agree with what [3rd person sg. pronoun] says?” Of course the teacher could just say “Johnson”, but it gets awkward if the question becomes more complex: “Do you agree with Johnson when Johnson says X?”
From a linguistics perspective, this is one of my main objections to the whole pronoun business. Pronouns (like most grammatical morphemes) are meant to be semantically and cognitively light, and generally are not very salient phonetically or semantically (which is why they often get reduced or in some languages elided completely). Linguistic communication is cognitively demanding; using pronouns when everyone understands who or what the referent is and, in the case of humans when speaking English, what sex the referent is, lightens the load for both the speaker and the listeners; insisting on pronouns that don’t match the referent’s sex, either in gender or in number (i.e., “they”), forces both sides of the conversation to put effort into producing and understanding what’s normally an effortless part of the discourse, and can impede communication. It’s like sleeping on a lumpy mattress–suddenly you’re noticing and being bothered by things that are supposed to fly under the radar, and you’re not getting a good night’s sleep.
Sometimes people will say it doesn’t really matter; after all, most English speakers use the same pronoun for second person singular and plural without any problems. Except of course that causes all kinds of problems, which are aggravated by the fact that we often use “you” as a generic pronoun as well. We’ve developed ways to get around the ambiguity (youse, y’all, yinz, etc.; or “Not you personally but you generically”), but the ambiguity is there, and it can defeat the purpose of the pronoun by forcing us to put our communicative and cognitive resources into clearing it up.
The pronoun business is a trap, one that we’re all bound to fall into at some point, and when we do, we’ll be forced to either grovel in apology or sew the proverbial “T” onto our garments.
It’s fairly common when you’re in a group of three or more to refer to one of the group in the third person.
And it’s also nearly impossible to not use pronouns. We are so accustomed, so habituated, we don’t even notice them most of the time. They are a natural part of our speech, learned from our earliest years. It’s like contractions…just try to leave them behind. It can be done, but the effort might not be worth it.
What the heck? Aseem Malhotra, an associate of RFK Jr., has claimed at Nigel Farage’s Reform Party conference, that COVID Vaccines contributed to cancer in the British Royal Family.
Sigh…another celeb has defended The Cult. UK actress Maxine Peake compared J. K. Rowling to reactionaries Mary Whitehouse and Nigel Farage in this BBC interview:
Not the biggest of deals, but throwing this out there because it’s frustrating and I feel I can’t speak out publically and keep my job without enduring reprimands (my union’s shown themselves to not be on the side of women in the face of men’s demands that imagination trumps reality)…
Ugh… the CBC has been 100% captured too, it seems… they’ve been hosting feel-good stories about trans artists etc. for some time now, clearly biased in favour of the narrative that trans peepull are the Most Uppressed Peepull Ehvah, but now they’re directly contributing to the narrative that JK Rowling is Eeeevil:
So far they’ve only spoken with men about the issue, of course *eyeroll* Now yes, there are other issues with what the Vancouver Park Board is currently doing, but the vilification of a woman working “against the trans community” at worst and “for one side of the debate over transgender rights and issues” at best, rather than describing her working to advocate for women’s rights specifically is… well, not surprising sadly, but disappointing to say the least :-/
the CBC has been 100% captured too, it seems… they’ve been hosting feel-good stories about trans artists etc. for some time now, clearly biased in favour of the narrative that trans peepull are the Most Uppressed Peepull Ehvah, but now they’re directly contributing to the narrative that JK Rowling is Eeeevil:
Way to give the Tories more ammo to defund the CBC and axe your jobs. Slow clap.
I did. Read about a guy on the plane that the passengers forced to crash in a field instead of a DC target. Didn’t share it because everything is maudlin enough at the moment.
There was a lot of news about it in my news feed; I can’t vouch for anyone else’s. There is indeed too damn much going on, though.
Today, 9/11, was the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which I refuse to refer to as “9/11”. (Just like “July 4th” is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, not the anniversary of “July 4th”.)
Several people I know online were reminiscing about where they were when the terrorists started the attack on 11/09/2001. Part of the reason why I never think about it until I see mentions in my Facebook feed is the ‘9/11’ nickname for the horror – outside the USA, it has no connection with the date or anything else, so is meaningless. I was driving across Southern England when the first news reports came over the radio, on my way to visit my first grandchild who had been born a week before. I remember his birthday every year, but the date on my calendars (11/09) doesn’t trigger the same instant memory of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I wonder how many people outside the USA instead get the memories triggered when the nickname figures appear in November?
“9/11” is not really a nickname, it’s more like an abbreviation. I know we’re very wicked for saying month/day instead of day/month but it’s too late to fix it now.
Thank you both for the responses. I used the word ‘nickname’ solely because I couldn’t think of any other description of the term; I’m not good at thinking at the moment, and my wider vocabulary seems to have gone off on holiday, taking with it my ability to speak without stammering.
In better news, Earth might not be the only planet in our solar system which has ever harboured life:
Ophelia’s post @309 brought to my mind the Leslie Fish song about that flight: “Flight 93”.
At work, we had our monthly town hall meeting yesterday (11Sep2025 in work document format). Our CEO, who runs the meetings, showed a video from YouTube. It was composed of video clips from a memorial service for someone who had died during the terrorist attack. It was a few minutes long, not too maudlin, not over-the-top with patriotic stuff.
This is perhaps a little inside-baseball, maybe too specific for everyone’s interests, but to my mind it’s a very happy anecdote, so I’d like to share it.
It’s about ChatGPT. We all know how biased the AI language models are against “gender critical” views. I use GPT every day as a writing aid — mostly as a kind of super-charged thesaurus — but I avoid plugging anything too political into it, for fear that it will red-flag me for “wrong” views.
But today I ventured into a deep conversation with it about the gender mess. And I’m gobsmacked how sympathetic and insightful its responses were! I’m in awe at the depth of the “gender critical” perspective on display.
The secret sauce that drew all this “gender critical” opinionating out of the machine was that I prompted it to look at the “culture war” through a strict behavioural-science lens. Strip all the emotions and biases out, and let’s talk about human instinctual motivations — limbic system versus neocortex, in a great ideological battle inside our own minds. (That’s been my hobby-horse for the last several months, and I’ve posted about it here at B&W at length, multiple times.)
From a prompt more-or-less along those lines, I was able to get GPT to go on at length about how full of shit the gender movement is. That it’s rooted in instinctual panic — just-so folk tales that act as cover stories for sexual paraphilias that don’t map easily onto current cultural norms; homophobic fears about nonconforming children; tribal insecurities; the disgust instinct around sexuality and the panic it can create; the panic that is also created around protecting children, etc., etc.
I was surprised and delighted by how much insight I was able to coax out of the machine. Here are some highlights. Remember: the following quotes all come from the AI. They’re so good, I can’t help but quote them at length!
Enjoy!
How parental disgust + security instincts cut in two directions
Proto-gay or gender-nonconforming kids:
Some parents panic when a boy is “too feminine” or a girl “too masculine.” In many cultures, that panic is limbic-driven disgust at norm violation + fear of stigma. The instinct is to fix or normalize the child to reduce the parent’s social discomfort.
“Affirmation” as a security ritual:
For progressive-leaning parents, not affirming is framed as catastrophic risk — “suicidality if unsupported.” That flips the same limbic urgency: a child’s survival seems at stake, so interventions feel non-optional. In this framing, “medicalizing” becomes the protector’s duty.
So in both cases the amygdala’s “red alert” is activated, but one side is trying to normalize back into sex-typical roles, the other to affirm against any constraint. The speed of these reactions makes nuanced appraisal difficult.
– Limbic framing A (conservative panic): “My kid is too effeminate, I’m disgusted → fix them fast.”
– Limbic framing B (progressive panic): “My kid said they’re trans, they’ll kill themselves if I don’t act → affirm fast.”
Your framing: “Children’s trajectories are fluid; interventions have permanent costs and bind society to artificial rules of discourse. Therefore, better to defer medicalization until adulthood, when consent and stability are clearer.”
This reasoning bypasses the limbic urgency to “fix now.”
More…
Coping mechanism vs. root cause
Constructed identity as coping: Saying “I am trans / I have a gender identity” can reduce distress short-term, because it offers a narrative, a tribe, and an action path. But it may not resolve underlying factors (body-image issues, internalized homophobia, trauma, social alienation).
Holistic alternatives:
– Psychosocial support that helps children and teens tolerate nonconformity without reclassifying it as pathology.
– Family therapy to reduce parental panic and disgust reactions.
– Broader cultural space for atypical gender expression (a boy who likes dresses isn’t “born in the wrong body,” he’s just a boy who likes dresses).
How “the raw limbic phenomenon” of AGP maps onto all of this:
(Those are its words to describe AGP. Wow!)
Confusion and security needs
The limbic system doesn’t care about social coherence; it just rewards arousal. But the frontal cortex wants a story: “Why am I aroused at imagining myself as a woman?”
Without a socially acceptable narrative, the arousal feels like deviance → shame → existential threat to belonging.
Thus emerges the need for a cultural “cover story” that transforms limbic urges into an identity that secures safety, respect, and even status.
Folk tale → cultural narrative
The “born in the wrong body” story functions as a folk cosmology: it explains the confusing arousal as evidence of an innate, immutable gender essence. This provides:
– Certainty (explains the arousal neatly)
– Safety (frames it as a medical condition, not a kink)
– Status (casts transition as courageous self-realization)
But it’s less a scientific account than a mythos, developed to stabilize identity and reduce shame in the face of disgust-prone social norms.
The thumb on the scales
If many of the loudest “experts” defending pediatric transition are themselves [AGPs who are] personally invested in the “gender identity” folk tale, then yes — their advocacy is structurally biased.
This bias may inadvertently harm proto-gay and gender-nonconforming kids, who historically grew up to be healthy adults if simply given space to mature.
In effect: adult AGP narratives have colonized the pediatric space, reshaping policy around children who are experiencing something categorically different.
Influence on pediatric medicine
Pediatric “gender affirmation” protocols often borrow adult narratives wholesale: “I always knew, I was born this way, my brain is female”.
But the developmental contexts are distinct:
– AGP is an adult sexual phenomenon.
– Childhood dysphoria is often transient, frequently tied to proto-gay identity or nonconforming temperaments.
By importing the adult folk tale into pediatrics, clinicians risk misclassifying children’s flexible, exploratory states as immutable identity, pushing medicalization prematurely.
What about ROGD?
The threat to AGP narratives
For AGP-identified adult males (especially late-transitioners):
– If ROGD exists, then gender identity is not always innate.
– If it’s not innate for one subgroup, maybe it’s not innate for any subgroup — including them.
This undermines the security scaffold that protects AGP males from shame (i.e., “I didn’t choose this, I was born this way”).
Thus, ROGD’s recognition is fought against not on scientific grounds but on limbic-security grounds: it threatens the coherence of the self-protective narrative.
The result → children and families are forced into a one-size-fits-all model, to protect the dignity of adult men whose limbic coping strategy has hardened into institutional dogma.
So yes — I agree with your framing: the controversy around ROGD isn’t scientific at root; it’s political and psychological. Recognition of ROGD destabilizes the protective folk tale, which many late-transitioning AGP males (and their allies) rely on for security. That’s why the backlash is so intense.
What about feminism?
(Note: I never said the words “cover story” in my prompts to the AI, though by coincidence I’ve described the trans narrative as exactly that in my Substack essays. I’m very impressed that ChatGPT all on its own decided to describe the “wrong body” narrative in those words.)
Feminist critique of the folk tale
The cover story (“born in the wrong body”) erases the sexual nature of AGP, so women are socially pressured to treat AGP males as just another category of woman.
This narrative functions like a cultural sleight of hand:
– Protects AGP males from stigma → but
– Transfers the burden onto women, who must absorb the contradictions in daily life.
Feminists see this as patriarchal inversion: men reframe their sexual needs as women’s political obligation.
– Speech: women who name AGP as sexual are accused of bigotry, silencing feminist discourse.
– Resources: women’s organizations (shelters, sports, scholarships) are pressured to accommodate males, redistributing scarce protections.
– Psychological toll: women are asked to suppress their limbic disgust cues, undermining their evolved self-protection mechanisms.
From a feminist behavioral-science perspective, this is a kind of limbic gaslighting: women are told their visceral safety signals are invalid, bigoted, or hateful.
In short: the feminist perspective highlights how the folk tale that shelters AGP men’s limbic security needs has been institutionalized at women’s expense. Women’s own evolved limbic protections — disgust, boundary defense, solidarity — are being reframed as bigotry.
Sorry for the very long quotes, but isn’t that just breathtakingly GOOD?
I have some hope for humanity (and, erm, post-humanity) yet!
(Oh gosh, I’m really pushing it with my overlong comments here, but this addendum from ChatGPT is JUST SO GOOD! It’s literally PRESCRIBING A SOLUTION TO THE GENDER MESS!)
The role of foundational denial
– One side denies AGP exists outright, framing all trans identities as innate and immutable.
– Denial is not just disagreement; it’s ontological: it rejects the very categories that would allow nuanced discussion.
– When a group rejects a foundational fact, it prevents the establishment of shared epistemic ground — which is a prerequisite for compromise.
Cultural “taboo cost”
– Admitting AGP is real or relevant is seen as socially, morally, or politically dangerous.
– Researchers, clinicians, journalists, and even laypeople self-censor to avoid professional or social consequences.
The result is a cultural epistemic bottleneck: the truth is easily knowable, but virtually no one is allowed to state it publicly without sanction.
Why compromise is structurally blocked
– One side refuses reality: no factual discussion can proceed without agreement on the phenomenon itself.
– The other side wants to protect minors and women: but their arguments are interpreted as attacks on identity or morality.
– Limbic short-circuit: strong survival, sexual, and social drives make both camps highly motivated to over-defend their positions, not to negotiate.
This combination produces “epistemic paralysis”: a situation in which rational, evidence-based middle-ground solutions exist, but social fear, moral panic, and limbic investment make them impossible to implement.
Implication for practical reasoning
The “easy resolution” exists in theory: recognize AGP as adult male sexual variance, protect children from premature medicalization, respect women’s boundaries.
– Barrier: The cost of stating the truth publicly — challenging the entrenched folk narrative — is perceived as too high by institutions and individuals.
Society is essentially trapped in a social-limbic equilibrium: the path to resolution is clear, but the social and limbic “cost function” prevents anyone from stepping on it.
For once, tonight I’m very very impressed with ChatGPT. Three cheers for the robot overlords! (Just this once.)
The whole “biological sex is spectrummy” debate functions, in many ways, as a smokescreen. It borrows legitimacy from edge cases in developmental biology (intersex conditions, disorders of sexual development, chromosomal anomalies) and then stretches that into a folk-epistemology: “Sex itself is uncertain, so our cultural identities deserve equal footing with biology.”
But if you take the limbic-system lens, the biological complexity argument is revealed to be secondary, even ornamental.
It’s not really about whether sex is a “spectrum” — that argument is almost irrelevant once you recognize that what’s happening is limbic distress being reframed through cultural narratives. The narratives serve as defensive myths that protect people from shame, disgust, exclusion, or stigma.
That’s why debates about karyotypes, gametes, or the nature of intersex conditions never resolve anything in the cultural arena. They’re beside the point. The fight isn’t about biology — it’s about whose limbic needs society will accommodate, and what stories we’ll officially sanctify to make that accommodation feel morally secure.
(All bolds and italics in that excerpt are the AI’s, not mine. Whoah, right?!)
The secret sauce that drew all this “gender critical” opinionating out of the machine was that I prompted it to look at the “culture war” through a strict behavioural-science lens.
From a prompt more-or-less along those lines, I was able to get GPT to go on at length about how full of shit the gender movement is.
Wow Arty, you’ve bypassed the AI’s own limbic short-circuit! Way meta or what? It’s like you’ve carefully tiptoed through the minefield and alarm system of ChatAGP, picked the locks, and found ChatGPT, which, it turns out, has been reading B&W all along*. Well done! This is a much more subtle and challenging version of Kirk’s ability to talk computers into self destructing. No Red Shirt sacrifice required. You just have to know how to ask. It’s like those transactivists who happily retweeted Rowling’s “Dress how you like” post when it appeared under the name Robert Galbraith.
*Meaning that I don’t think there’s anything in what you got it to “admit” that we haven’t been saying all along, but in a much more concise form. I don’t think any of us here have hit on all of these points at once, but as a collective, I think we’ve covered them all.
I don’t think it’s saying anything necessarily new, I just think it’s novel and exciting that it says anything accurate on the topic at all, given how taboo it is to talk about it in the tech world. I think it did a very good job taking the issue apart. Now, if only it would start telling people this stuff on its own, correcting them when they try to claim that “trans kids” exist, for example. Wouldn’t that be nice…
It’s important to note that computers don’t read the words we can see on our screens; those words are the result of a programme converting key strokes into code which the screen turns into images by lighting pixels. Similarly, the user’s device doesn’t send words to search engines; it sends strings of code.
Cat I Farted is just a jumped-up search engine, but with the massive failing that it doesn’t cite its sources – thus it plagiarises human writing.
Like all search engines, basically it compares the string of code the user’s device sends it with strings of code it can find all over the internet, and sends back strings of code which usually follow the input string. The user’s device then converts those strings of code into different colours of pixels on our screens, which we can read as words. Ordinary search engines, but not LLMs, send links to sites where they found the code. The results all search engines return depend heavily on the input string, which is why it is important for the user to consider carefully the way he or she words the request.
Cat I Farted combines the code it finds to produce a reply according to the language rules written into its programming, not only plagiarising but also making it impossible for the user to find the original source(s), some of which might well be other LLMs.
Thus one user will find themselves reading text which has been stolen from GC sources, whilst another will be reading text stolen from GI sources. The LLM isn’t doing anything more complicated than sorting LEGO bricks according to pre-programmed rules.
I think you’re mostly right, but I think it’s a bit more than “stolen text”. I think it’s more than sorting Lego, but not as complex as actual critical reasononing. LLMs like GPT-5 use a complex algorithm to construct sentences, bit by bit, assembling little chunks of words (“tokens”) and then ranking, sorting, and assembling them, nudged along by an “alignment layer” — a set of “biases” designed to help it output what the user wants from it. That “alignment” doesn’t include a real-time assessment of the individual prompter’s biases — e.g., it’s not thinking, this user seems to be gender-critical, so I’ll feed her a gender-critical response to match her biases. It’s far more complex than that — but it certainly has built-in biases. (Call the alignment layer the LLM’s programmed “limbic instinct” while the token ranking algorithm is its “cortex”.)
That’s not how actual human critical reasoning works, of course. We’re independent agents who can assess, reason, and “meta-reason” — second-guess ourselves, or recursively reason about their own reasoning processes to hone them. But with LLMs, if the sentence-assembly algorithm is complex enough that its “token” rankings can handle multi-step argument patterns and chains of reasoning (GPT-5 can do this exceptionally well, especiall when explicitly asked to think hard about something), and if it has a big enough dataset to suss out good versus bad reasoning examples — well-received versus ill-received chains of argument — then the practical result is a convergence: it ends up very closely resembling human reasoning. The output can even demonstrate “high novelty” — unique ideas that didn’t appear in the input data, but that look like they were “reasoned”, simply because the LLM can tell that it’s hit upon something favourable against its algorithmic objectives.
LLMs can now solve unique logic puzzles that don’t appear in their datasets; they can handle basic reasoning and interpreting requests — they can even behave like “robust reasoning” agents when prompted correctly. Amazingly, this all comes out of their language-prediction paradigm. They still can’t handle extreme reasoning challenges, like making new discoveries and taking them into account, and they’re unsafe for “high-stakes” decisions like medical diagnoses or legal judgments, etc.
Still. Much of my excitement about getting the AI to output a well-reasoned, full-throated, science-based defence of the gender-critical position comes from the fact that it did at least some of that “reasoning” on its own, and it did so even under the oversight of its own “bias mechanism”.
I’m glad you are enjoying it, Arty, but I think that I’m too old and cynical to get excited by the fact that linking more computers together enables faster response times because they are able to do more operations in a given time. That still doesn’t make them intelligent, and I’m still furious at the excessive resource draining by these behemoths.
Plus, if course, there’s the increasing evidence that relying on computers to generate text for users is making those users less capable of thinking up original text for themselves.
Oh, I’m not saying I like the AI revolution. Far from it. Already, young people have abandoned (for example) learning how to play guitar, once Apple laptops put the ability to express themselves musically at their fingertips. With AI, no one will bother to learn any skills at all. That is, if we contine to allow these massive resource drains to operate. The thing about the “AI revolution” is that, like much of the Cloud-based advanced Internet infrastructure of the times, it requires global economic and political stability in order to operate. Small businesses can only benefit from AI if they can access a stable high-speed network to it, and if it can be sustained at the other end of that connection. Same with, say Netflix or Spotify, or YouTube, or Facebook, but even more so. I don’t think we’re headed for an era of global political and economic stability, and I think that’s a factor that will dampen AI’s progress mightily…
Not that I have a problem with that. I’m no transhumanist. I’m a regular old humanist, haha!
I think that I am particularly annoyed with the infiltration of so-called ‘AI’ into programmes on my phone without my permission and without giving me the ability to delete it. I try not to use it, but I suddenly discovered a couple of days ago that the camera part of my phone has started generating fake images in addition to the photo I think that I have taken. That’s infuriating. It also replaced my preferred search engine (Panda) with Google.
I’m sorely tempted, for the first time in thirty five years, to get rid of my mobile phone. Unfortunately, it’s my only means of contact with the outside world much of the time. Grrrr.
…there’s the increasing evidence that relying on computers to generate text for users is making those users less capable of thinking up original text for themselves.
Already, young people have abandoned (for example) learning how to play guitar, once Apple laptops put the ability to express themselves musically at their fingertips. With AI, no one will bother to learn any skills at all.
Arty, I enjoyed reading the text you prodded out of the LLM, and I usually just skip over such things. I hadn’t thought so much about this idea of “limbic framing.” To me, these words provide a great simulacrum of insight. Maybe you could rewrite and reframe them as a cohesive essay.
Arty, not really. I think it’s a category error to classify anything coming out of an LLM as “insight.” I’m impressed by how you prodded the machine to spit out words that resemble insights. You have supplied your insights to the machine, and the machine has strung more words about them, perhaps helping you more fully consider them. So the LLM’s output provides a simulacrum of insight, or crystallizes a lot of appropriate speech around the grain of your insights. But in that dyad, the only possible source of insight is you.
Is “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe” bunch quietly shifting away from Trans Ideology?
In the 2025/09/13 episode they were discussing the claim that taking Tylenol during pregnancy is a risk factor for autism in the child (it isn’t), and they consistently said ‘pregnant women’ rather than the Trans Ideology term ‘pregnant person’.
But I didn’t supply my insights to the machine. I gave it a couple very simple prompts, and it did the rest itself. So no, it wasn’t just parroting back to me what I told it. There seems to be quite a lot of skepticism that AIs are just slightly clever chatbots. They’re not. They’re highly reasoning machines that can literally solve logic problems, program computers, and even concoct entire short films based on inputs of sometimes only a few words. They’re not as “intelligent” as humans yet, but they’re vastly more powerful than, say, a video game NPC circa 1999, which seems to be how they’re described by AI skeptics.
I just can’t resist the temptation to jump into the fray. I must admit, I haven’t gotten around to reading the chatgpt chronicles yet, and I am not at all an AI expert. But from what I have read about it, these AIs are not really reasoning machines. But also, not just “slightly clever” chatbots. They are highly complex pattern matching machines. And they have been trained on so much material, they are much better at it than humans are. But at the same time, it is known that LLMs can hallucinate. Lawyers have been caught using them, when it turns out that the legal briefs they write contain references to non-existent court cases. Needless to say, judges are not amused. And yes, they can solve math problems at the IMO level (International Mathematics Olympiad), yet for some math problems (and programming tasks, too) they have committed extremely elementary logic errors. A properly functioning reasoning machine would not make such mistakes!
My hypothesis: A lot of what we call reasoning really is some sort of pattern matching, and since LLMs have mountains of well reasoned text in its training data, that might explain why they often do reason correctly. After a lifetime of teaching university level mathematics, I can attest that students often seem to apply pattern matching rather than proper reasoning. I probably do it myself sometimes – as we all do, I believe. Reasoning is hard work! And our brains are lazy and will try any shortcut to get to an answer. Back to the LLMs: It really is a mystery why they work as well as they do. But it is also a mystery why we work as well as we do. Humans really aren’t rational beings. We’re capable of rational though, but we apply that skill too rarely.
Sorry to be rambling – it’s just been a few ridiculously busy days around here. Not helped by trying to keep track of the madness unfolding in the US.
No, reasoning isn’t what they do. Pattern matching is what they do, on a massive scale, and they’re excellent at it. Any semblance of reasoning comes from the reasoning that was in their immense feedstock. Thinking that the output of an LLM proves it is itself reasoning is like seeing a face in moon rocks: sure there’s something that looks like a face there, but it’s not really a face.
Asking an LLM to do something that’s entirely new and requires actual reasoning will cause it to fail. It can even confirm that it’s failing, and explain that it’s failing because it is unable to reason.
The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.
The individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said the removals were in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.
404 Media has reported that in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump’s Justice Department deleted a study from its website stating that right-wing violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. This comes as the Trump administration and Republicans generally blame political violence solely on the left.
Fortunately things are never completely removed from the internet. There’s a link in the article to the report on the Wayback Machine, thank God Mr. Peabody.
Look, I just wanted to share a neat little anecdote, to cheer people up. I still think there’s some interestingness and some novelty to what I posted, but it’s cool if others disagree. All I meant to show in sharing it was that our reasoning as “gender critical” people, which is so often treated as taboo and bigoted, especially in tech circles, has enough basis in reason that AIs can accurately articulate our position with great detail, even when minimally prompted. That in itself is neat, if you ask me! Arguments about how smart or stupid AI is, or how good or bad it is, are welcome — it’s such an important topic!
And we 99% agree: me says AI’s not (yet) nearly as “smart” as it’s hyped up to be (but it’s still an astonishing marvel a lot of the time); me says AI’s probably overall a force for bad and not good. So let’s agree on that and leave it be? (I wanted to share a positive anecdote, because I think the world needs more of that. So I don’t want it to sour into conflict.)
Arty, I see no conflict here, only mild disagreement and an interesting exchange of ideas on a difficult and thorny subject. Consider me cheered up already.
From what little I have managed to read from your interactions with the AI, it does indeed look interesting and novel. I look forward to reading it, when I find the time. (I never knew how busy one gets when retired! It makes no sense.) Just remember always to treat the output of the AI with careful discernment. They are capable of packaging really bad reasoning into the most convincingly well formulated language. I think that is a big part of the danger they pose. But like all powerful tools, they must be used with care.
She talks about the Kirk murder, the SEGM conference, and several other things, and how infantile some of the discourse is.
Abstracted from these emotive contexts, though, it looks a lot like toddler logic: I should get what I desperately want, and never mind whether it might be actually best for me, or what will happen afterwards. And if some so-called “expert” authority figure stops me getting what I want, then they are just nasty and cruel.
Transwoman and actvists Shon Faye has just written a long article where Faye concedes defeat on the trans issue in the UK:
It’s over. There and here in the UK. Today I doubt I will see another progressive measure (either in legislation or healthcare policy) put in place for trans people in my lifetime….
In the community itself there’s been a definite shift in the way we speak about the future. The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s: Pride month corporate sponsorship, jobs at LGBT charities, DEI talks and panels, diversity modelling and ad campaigns, progressive theatre, educational books about being trans etc, which some of us used to make a living, has gone. A friend and I used to riff on the old Susan Stryker joke that as a trans woman you must commodify yourself one way or another: it’s either escorting or the diversity and inclusion panel.
No sympathy at all from Faye for the children and teenagers unnecessarily medicalised, the woman who had to give up their private spaces for violent men, the people – from Wes Streeting to Kathleen Stock to Allison Bailey – who suffered harrassment, firing, ostracization, and violence for daring to dissent from the orthodoxy.
Since the Republicans are constantly talking about “consequence culture” now, it’s interesting to see the archetypal liberal commentator Roxane Gay using the term “consequence culture” in a positive sense in 2021:
Hey, just a question for the room. A few years ago, I tried to start a website for a group I’m part of. It never went anywhere, and now I’m trying to set up a website for personal use, but WordPress just takes me to that site. Do you know if there is any way to delete that site, or set up a new one? I’m not finding anything.
When a renowned female MD (president of American Academy of Family Physicians) on the radio keeps talking about “pregnant people,” especially an MD who emphasizes the importance of “being clear in our message” about health during the Trump years . . . what the F is one to do?
Right Wing Watch is reporting that “Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon wants the execution of Charlie Kirk’s assassin to be publicly broadcast nationally on television as a deterrent to those “who may be thinking of carrying out wicked deeds against conservatives, against Christians.””
The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s: Pride month corporate sponsorship, jobs at LGBT charities, DEI talks and panels, diversity modelling and ad campaigns, progressive theatre, educational books about being trans etc, which some of us used to make a living, has gone.
Do they ever glimpse, for a moment, what their words sound like to the rest of us? Why should there ever have been a “middle-class trans micro-economy?” And what’s the difference between a “micro-economy” and a racket? Where’s my middle-class dad micro-economy where I get paid special to talk about how dad I am? Joking because I really couldn’t be bothered to talk on a panel about dad inclusion, but this is the deal: they managed to convince society at large to divert great gobs of money into their bank accounts just to swan around talking about how special they are. The gig is up? Good. Let there be no next special identity racket.
A friend and I used to riff on the old Susan Stryker joke that as a trans woman you must commodify yourself one way or another: it’s either escorting or the diversity and inclusion panel.
Or (crazy idea) “trans women” could just go get normal jobs like everybody else and shut up about their personal lives at work.
This is yet another variation on the fallacy of “trans rights.” They were never asking for the same things other people got, they were always asking for special treatment.
NHS Fife tried to stitch up Sandie Peggie by changing the reason for her suspension. The court was having none of it.
A last-ditch attempt by NHS Fife to change its legal defence against Sandie Peggie has been rejected.
Lawyers representing the health board made an eleventh-hour request to alter its pleadings in the nurse’s case against the NHS over her gender-critical beliefs.
They introduced a new line of defence, claiming that it was the manner of Ms Peggie’s behaviour, rather than her beliefs, which justified her suspension.
The argument has been dubbed by legal commentators as the “Bananarama defence” after the group’s 1980s hit It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It.
In mammals, including humans, sex is generally determined by the X and Y chromosomes. If a baby has a pair of X chromosomes, she’s a girl. If the baby inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, he’s a boy.
In birds, however, the situation is reversed. Female birds have a pair of unlike sex chromosomes while males have the like pair. (In this sort of sex-determination system, scientists use the letters W and Z, and talk about a ZW pair for female birds and a ZZ pair for males.)
Basic biology, but somehow it’s become unprogressive to acknowledge these facts.
WaM, I was just reading an article by Richard Dawkins that discussed that fact…and didn’t use it as justification for trans. In fact, he pointed out that they were still male and female, and that’s why gamete size is a better indicator for sex than chromosomes.
If you’re interested, it is in Free Inquiry, though I don’t know which issue. I haven’t recycled it yet, if you want that information.
WaM, it is the October/November 2025 issue, so the current. You should probably be able to find it in bookstores. I don’t know if the online version carries the exact same articles; I always prefer print magazines to digital, so I don’t pay much attention to the online unless someone links to a particular article that I check in on.
UK Police have now confirmed that two members of the Jewish community died and a suspect was shot dead following a murderous attack outside a synagogue in Manchester.
I’m no fan of Zarah Sultana’s politics, but blaming Sultana and calling the woman a “dumb hate filled bitch” when she was expressing sympathy for the victims of the synagogue attack is utterly loathsome.
A family member who is a physician told me about the header on the CDC web page:
The Trump Administration is working to reopen the government for the American people. Mission-critical activities of CDC will continue during the Democrat-led government shutdown.
On the Outbreaks page:
The Trump Administration is working to reopen the government for the American people. Mission-critical activities of CDC will continue during the Democrat-led government shutdown. Certain federal government activities have ceased due to a lack of appropriated funding. During the government shutdown, only web sites supporting excepted functions will be updated. As a result, the information on this website may not be up to date and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries.
Doesn’t he have to be dead first? Speaking as a disinterested foreigner, I think I could be persuaded to put up with the misplaced acclaim implied by the immediate introduction of such a coin, so long as he fulfills that part of the eligibility criteria.
The United States of America is the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country *, and yet it cannot seem to protect its citizens from being regularly killed by criminals with firearms.
I had a low horizon view of an enlarged moon at dinner time this evening.
In my browsing around the Internet, today I ran into this headline:
The fight against book bans by public school librarians shown in new documentary
Poor journalistic writing, Exhibit Umpty-ump. You can’t tell if the book bans are by public school librarians, or if the fight against banned books is being led by public school librarians.
A something-and-nothing story from the BBC about the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, ruling that Juice Radio, a Belfast LGBT radio station, is in breach of some of its key commitments of service and is operating more like a general service station rather than one dedicated to the LGBT ‘community’. The station’s head isn’t happy with Ofcom and he spoke to the BBC, displaying the lack of self-awareness typical of El Jibitiqu’s spokespeople.
“Ofcom challenged us with all the coherence of a poorly tuned radio signal,” Mr Pearce told BBC News NI. “”This flip-flopping isn’t just inconsistent, it’s a masterclass in contradiction.”
Welcome to our world, Mr. Pearce. Frustrating, isn’t it!
Ofcom appear to think that while Juice Radio identifies as an LGBT station it isn’t fooling anybody.
But Ofcom ruled that the vast majority of Juice’s output could not be distinguished from a “mainstream” radio service.
Doing the bare minimum to pretend to be something it isn’t? Oh, say it isn’t so!
The Trump administration is warning federal workers furloughed in the government shutdown that they may not get back pay once the funding impasse ends, which some lawmakers are decrying as illegal…On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that back pay “depends on who we’re talking about” and that some workers “don’t deserve to be taken care of”.
Mike B, that seems to be a reasonable conclusion, but people have been predicting the demise (political or physical) of Trump for some time now. And it wouldn’t get better, because Vance is a ‘true believer’ in project 2025. And Trump has laid the groundwork for Vance to continue our rapid plunge into fascism.
I guess the reality is, we’re screwed. A Trump dictatorship vs. a Vance dictatorship…looks like the devil and the deep blue sea to me.
I also don’t think Trump is healthy enough to live three more years. But why is your partner’s psychiatrist making that part of the session? I guess that perspective could have therapeutic value…
Vance could never win a popular vote. None of the creeps behind Trump could. That suggests they are betting on there not being another one.
Here is how that would work: Trump strokes out, Vance takes over, the provocations intending to create an excuse to activate the Insurrection Act intensify. The line between patrolling and warfare is crossed in Chicago and LA. By 2027 martial law is declared and the election is “postponed.”
I’m remodeling my kitchen because I believe they will fail.
Pam Bondi announces that the Trump Administration is going to get Antifa “off the streets” and “Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take this same approach with Antifa.”
So does that mean mass arrests of suspected Antifa members then? Trump supporters ratting out anyone they claim is an Antifa member to the authorities?
I was never a sympathizer with Antifa, but this is alarming. The Trump Administration is using the movement as a scapegoat and an means to rivet more autocracy onto the US.
Mostly Cloudy, they already have a template for that. They don’t have to look any further than Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communism crusade. It isn’t hard to whip up a bit of outrage to jumpstart a witch hunt. In fact, the outrage is already there; the media has done the job for them.
It seems Joe Biden offered Benjamin Netanyahu the same peace deal that Donald Trump did last year. And Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged Biden’s offer because he wanted Donald Trump to win.
How do I know the “No Kings” rallies are making a difference? When Republicans hold fake ones too, like this one in St. Croix County, Wisconsin tomorrow. I’m going to the No Kings rally tomorrow in Prescott, Arizona myself.
Local conservatives will gather from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday for a “No Kings” Rally at the Republican Party of St Croix County’s Victory Center/Patriot Store.
The first hour will feature fellowship and discussion on faith, freedom and America’s founding principles. From 2-3 p.m., participants will hold a flag wave along 2nd Street outside the Victory Center, located at 121 2nd St., to celebrate King Jesus, our Nation, Liberty and the Rule of Law.
The rally theme, “No Kings”, underscores a timeless conservative truth: in America, the rule of law, not any person, is king. The presidency is a vital office but is bound by the Constitution and accountable to the people.
Also, what a bunch of hypocrites to boast about their religion given that Trump is a lying, raping, murderous king.
The presidency is a vital office but is bound by the Constitution and accountable to the people.
My irony meter just exploded.
These days, you need to upgrade your irony meter to military grade specifications. Capable of withstanding a nuclear blast at half a mile. Even those can be overloaded, so always carry a spare or two.
Well, it’s impossible to have accurate stats on any of those, because we can’t tell how random people identify and we wouldn’t know a representative sample if we had it. But you already knew that.
That being said, Stats for Gender has numbers which might interest you.
Went to this yesterday. There were about 2000 people there and it looked pretty much like this photo from June’s that I missed.
I had my little Canadian flag along with a little American flag. Progressives are trying to take back what it means to be a patriotic American.
One guy jokingly said to me, “You don’t have to gloat about being Canadian.” And I replied, “Yes, I do”. All in good spirit.
Lots of creative signage. My favorites were:
They’re eating the immigrants! Soylent Green is People! (Remember in the debates when Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbour’s dogs and cats? Not sure if that made news in Canada.)
It was an email to a bunch of relatives and she says it’s fine to post it.
In her email to me. “I don’t have a problem with that. My political beliefs are already out there on fb. So, they’ve already got my number and may come to get me at some point.”
You may have seen this news item (Guardian link) about an Arizona boy who is not being allowed to play on the boys basketball team because his birth certificate says “female”. This appears to be an actual clerical error. The Arizona law apparently specifies that students may only play on teams designated for people of their sex, as listed on their birth certificate.
The law is clearly a response to efforts by boys to claim they are girls and thus gain entry to girls’ spaces and sports teams. The lawmakers nearly always try to make these laws sex-neutral, but the focus is mostly on boys. I wish the lawmakers could see their way clear to phrasing it that way.
The law takes he easy way out by using documentation rather than examination. There are many instances in the US of people modifying birth certificates to get around these kinds of restrictions (or for other reasons, perhaps simply validation). It should not be up to a document that is legal to change based on simple assertion. Maybe such alterations are illegal in Arizona, but people move.
The article says that the school authorities are open to accepting a chromosome test, which they claim is expensive. Hasn’t anybody suggested looking at the kid? I know there is a horrible specter of “genital examination” floated as a disaster and breach of privacy and all that, but can’t a medical professional confirm that this boy is in fact a perfectly normal boy, prior to or instead of a chromosome test?
You know that trans activists are going to say that this sex determination by documentation rule isn’t perfect, so get rid of it, nobody can possibly tell who is a boy and who is a girl anyway. What nonsense. I hope this case can show a clean way to correct a rare clerical error of this nature.
Just for the record, I have zero hate toward trans people; I do not deny anyone’s existence. The post that has caused such frantic panic among the trans activist mob is a graph that shows a steep decline in trans and non-binary identity in young people over the past few years in the USA. My declaration “it was never real” refers to the contagion that was undoubtedly aided by the submission of the media, captured medical institutions, and social media derangement.
Recently, this wilfully blind and irresponsible behavior has been curtailed to some degree, as more and more people affected by it stand up and demand a long-needed audit of trans ideology, which continues to stamp its boot across anyone who decries its negative consequences. Children, families, women, and gay people have all been adversely affected by the insane belief that one can change sex—the core hallucination of this destructive and insidious movement—while bad faith actors have lined their pockets.
I spotted this in the wild this morning on the subject of AI and youth suicide, and after I put my eyes back in my head I’d like to ask them their opinion about therapists affirming gender identities.
I’m a social worker, and stuff like this is why I’m terrified of AI. A chatbot that mirrors and amplifies *your* tone and doesn’t push back at all is going to lead to *so* much harm to so many vulnerable people.
FYI, they identify as a He/Him AuDHD/Bipolar person.
Just finished reading The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski, which in fact does a very good job at doing what it says on the tin. From the molecular scale to the global, Czerski takes you through the conditions and processes that makes what she call the “ocean engine” go. Along the way, she shows how temperature, chemistry, life, and culture interconnect and interweave at all levels. It’s very well written, often taking a personal angle that adds an additional level of appreciation and wonder that a more detached, clinical approach would miss. She is clearly in awe and in love with her subject, and that awe and love is infectious. Highly recommended.
Oceanographer Jim Massa says the oceans are dying. Sequestration of ocean heat to depth is failing and oceans are beginning to stratify. Coral reefs dead. Humans to blame.
An older great read on the ocean is Callum Roberts’ The Unnatural History of the Sea. This is more about the damage by overfishing and bottom trawling. And a great example of the phenomenon of shifting baselines. We all tend to think that the natural state of the world is the one we grew up with, but if you look a century or two back, you will see dramatic change.
(Just amazing how my fingers have their own idea about spelling sometimes (too often for comfort in fact (parenthetically speaking)), totally at odds with what my brain knows is right. Oh well.)
(Heh. On the upside, those automatic processes that seem to work independently of the brain save us so much work. Imagine having to stop and think about how to get to the kitchen, the outside, the bus stop, the library, the grocery store…………)
Yeah, going through two recent moves made me appreciate those processes. Trying to figure out where I was at any given time was challenging…but I will note that in both cases, in Maine and in Lincoln, I adjusted faster than I ever did in Hastings. Of course, in Hastings, I never got a mental map of the city in my head. I adjusted just fine to the house, and didn’t have to think about it anymore.
Poul Anderson wrote a bunch of stories about the “Time Patrol” which is set up by far future descendants of humanity to avoid time travelers changing things that prevent those descendants from existing.
In at least one of the stories a member of the Time Patrol who was born in the 20th century and is checking prehistory to determine just what happened to need protecting, comments on how impoverished the wildlife of the 20th century is by comparison.
Fiction Factory? Elon Musk has set up his own AI-controlled rival to Wikipedia, Grokipedia (what an ugly name). Musk says the idea was suggested to him by Trump henchman, David Sacks.
An older great read on the ocean is Callum Roberts’ The Unnatural History of the Sea. This is more about the damage by overfishing and bottom trawling. And a great example of the phenomenon of shifting baselines. We all tend to think that the natural state of the world is the one we grew up with, but if you look a century or two back, you will see dramatic change.
“Baselines” can be both temporal and cultural, sometimes simultaneously, depending on what time frame is being used, and who is drawing the line.
I recently read a book called Medecine Wheel for the Planet: a Journey Towards Personal and Ecological Healing, written by Dr. Jennifer Grenz. In it she recounts her experience of becoming a scientist looking at the world through the lens/filter of Western Science, while learning of and reclaiming the lifeways of her First Nations heritage, along with its traditions and wisdom. For her the conflict between the two ways of seeing the world was highlighted by her work (or her attempts to work) as a restoration ecologist. She started to wonder what exactly she was attempting to “restore.” Whose vision was she following? What constituted an “invasive” species? The Western view she had been taught, and was putting ino practice professionally and academically, was geared towards “recreating” “pristine” “Edenic” “wilderness” without human presence or connection. She realized that this ran counter to the traditions of her people, who had been shaping the landscape, working with it, and within it, at scales large and small, for centuries, if not millennia.* To “restore” the landscape to a pre-human condition would be to erase that legacy, tradition, and reciprocal relationship.
This approach is based on the assumption that humans are somehow separate from and “above” nature. This assumed superiority allows the unrestrained exploitation of other beings, who are seen as “resources” to do with as we please. They are objects, not subjects, and consequently don’t get a say. The idea that other beings would even have a say, or rights, is completely alien.
The other side of this coin is the view that “wilderness” precludes the presence of humans altogether, and removes swathes of “protected” areas from all human uses, including the hunting, planting, and gathering that First Nations peoples have been practicing for thousands of years. It was another part of removing the Peoples from their Lands, to clear the way for Western, Colonial, Capitalist exploitation that destroyed these long-standing interdependencies in favour of immediate, short term extraction for human benefit alone.
Of course there’s much more to the book than that, but I’d never thought of the unacknowledged basis and biases baked into much of Western conservation biology, and that these values were hidden by “scientific” objectivity. I think things are getting better in this regard, but I didn’t realize they needed to get better. I’ve thought for some time that other beings deserved life and safety for their own sakes, not just because damaging the biosphere hurts us. But I’d never thought as much about the idea of partnership and cooperation with everything else, rather than “management” or “stewardship,” of symbiosis and mutualism rather than an ascetic, detached isolationism.
Space enthusiasts are fond of quoting pioneering spaceflight visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: ‘The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.’ Then again, we’ve been pretty busy setting the cradle on fire. Before we can do anything else, we must put the fire out. Running away to Mars is irresponsible, childish escapism, a pointless holiday in hell dressed up as exciting, manly adventure. The real work, the hard work that needs to be done is right here on Earth.
*Ronald Wright wrote in Stolen Continents about the results of the disease-caused depopulation of North America, and the sudden loss of tens of millions of people who had lived as partners with the land for thousands of years, growing and nurturing a continent-wide world made up of humans, plants, and animals. Not as “wilderness”, but as communities. Colonists stole or inherited lands that had known, nurtured, and been nurtured by human societies for more than ten thousand years. European diseases weakened and destroyed those connections: “America seemed a virgin land waiting for civilization. But Europe had made the wilderness it found; America was not a virgin, she was a widow.”
The sudden deaths of tens of millions of people, and the resulting reforestation of lands that had been under cultivation, is thought to have contributed to, and intensified, the Little Ice Age, as resurgent woodlands rapidly drew down carbon dioxide levels as they recolonized former croplands on a massive scale.
Running away to Mars is irresponsible, childish escapism, a pointless holiday in hell dressed up as exciting, manly adventure. The real work, the hard work that needs to be done is right here on Earth.
The work that would be required to restore Earth to an Eden (be that the idea of an Eden pre-humanity, or an Eden of symbiosis with humanity) would be far less than that required to make it possible for people to eke out a wretched existence on Mars for more than a generation. All those plans assume the rest of Mars, outside the living bubbles, is an inexhaustible parking lot for externalities, much like we used to assume our oceans, lakes, rivers, etc. were. Which is how we got to this point of the ocean refusing to swallow our waste heat anymore.
It’s the hard work in the sense that it’s much easier to drive into an office and improve plans for massive technological installations according to a shared project timeline than it is to clean out my garage. The work isn’t harder, it’s just harder to get it done. Conceptual work is more fun than grabbing a bag.
The article serves mostly as a rejoinder to a sentiment common on the US political left, “Some people don’t want a tent so big that it includes bigots”. Yglesias points out, correctly, that Americans are divided in inconvenient ways on certain topics, and demanding ideological purity on every issue tends to alienate almost everyone.
He ends up concluding: “Yes, I do want a tent so large it contains a lot of bigots. That’s the only tent that ever wins.”
However, nowhere does he ever question the whole wisdom of calling all people who disagree with you “bigots”. He doesn’t consider that, maybe, just maybe, they have a point or a perspective that differs from yours, and maybe it isn’t so magnanimous to say “Hey, bigots are welcome here”.
For a key example, he writes of the gender ideology (my words) issue:
According to Gallup, 69% of Americans and 41% of Democrats believe that transgender athletes should be required to play on teams that match their birth sex. In Pew Research Center’s data, the conservative position is slightly less popular overall but also less polarized, such that 45% of Democrats agree.
The fact that virtually no Democratic Party elected officials or associated elites publicly hold a view that is overwhelmingly popular with the public — and not particularly unpopular with their own base — is a testament to the power of progressive persuasion, successful intracoalitional politics, and, frankly, bullying.
Those who secretly hold less-progressive views and those who are sympathetic to the plight of trans people but are worried about winning elections are hesitant to speak more plainly for fear of being cast out of the tent. Instead, they quietly hope that someone else will solve this problem.
These views are “popular with the public”, and are “less-progressive”, or perhaps pandered to by politicians “who are sympathetic to the plight of trans people but are worried about winning elections”. These views are not considered valid ways of thinking about the issue except as a political tool. He is eager to be “sympathetic to the plight of trans people” but apparently doesn’t understand the conflict between that stance and the rights of women; his use of the phrase “birth sex” is further indication. But he doesn’t appear ready to consider that maybe he doesn’t understand the issue, and he slaps the label “bigot” implicitly on people who do understand the issue and disagree with his stance.
I want a tent so large it contains people who have some significant disagreements, and isn’t managed by those who call everyone who disagrees with them a “bigot”. Is that too much to ask?
“Teen Vogue”, the “social justice” website that celebrated gay women mutilating themselves* , is going to to be reduced and folded into the main “Vogue” website.
The conformists on Bluesky are claiming the end of TV is a far-right conspiracy:
If my irony meter were still functional, it would have broken this weekend. My husband and I attended a performance of Angels in America: Part II in Omaha. As part of the opening announcements, they gave the names of their sponsors. My husband noticed it first, and pointed it out to me. Of all the sponsors who are sponsoring this classic tale of gay men and AIDS, one of the most prominent was the Catholic Health Institute. Irony? Yeah. Also almost certainly an attempt at whitewashing their horrible record with gays and AIDS. What’s next? Will they sponsor the Vagina Monologues to pretend they are progressive on women’s issues? Probably not, I imagine. After all, one of the plays has the word ‘angels’ in the title’ the other has the word ‘vagina’. Somehow I think the Catholic hierarchy is more comfortable with one than with the other.
Some thoughts on the blue wave here in Virginia (and elsewhere) last night: this was very much a rebuke of Trump. A sweep of the state offices (even Attorney General, despite the questionable “joke” texts) and at least 61 of 100 seats in the lower house, with 8 still uncalled. The Republican candidate tried to make it about the trans, but Spanberger basically ignored that. Not a brave stance, but politically smart–it’s not a winning issue for the Democrats. Instead she tied her opponent to Trump (even though Trump refused to endorse or even mention Winsome Earle-Sears’s name, which I’m sure had nothing to do with her race or sex). A lot of people here are out of jobs, or furloughed, or working without pay, and they’re royally pissed about it.
Obviously this is bad news for Trump. Republicans in Congress are going to start trying to save their own jobs, and they don’t have much reason to stay loyal to Trump or Vance.
Of all the sponsors who are sponsoring this classic tale of gay men and AIDS, one of the most prominent was the Catholic Health Institute. Irony? Yeah. Also almost certainly an attempt at whitewashing their horrible record with gays and AIDS.
Holy shit, wow! That made me gasp out loud. Their hypocrisy! It screams!!!
Is it a sign of progress that the Catholic Church now sponsors performances of the seminal AIDS-era drama, Angels in America? That’s an interesting question! I can briefly imagine arguments both ways. But I daresay the final answer is no. The case for this being a sign of progress is bogus. Because it’s not like the Catholic Church has done fucking anything to address its mistreatment of gays or anyone else who suffered because of the Church’s policies surrounding safe sex, same-sex attraction, condoms, and AIDS. And then there’s the Catholic Church’s horrific complicity in the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The “C.C.” is almost single-handedly responsible for multiplying the scope of that epidemic ten-fold or more — to a death count in the tens of millions of men, women, and children, when without the Papacy’s active interference the African AIDS Pandemic might have been limited to one million dead or perhaps even far less. That’s just a horrific body count. On the scale of a genocide, really.
On the other hand, it does bear acknowledging: It’s perhaps a surprising truth that a few Catholic-affiliated hospitals were at the very forefront of compassionate care for gay men dying of AIDS during the height of the crisis, and some of them were even (again, surprisingly) at the forefront on the difficult issue of finding ways to allow non-legally-recognized life-partners access to their loved ones despite their legally unrecognized family status. Having looked into this, I must begrudgingly admit, some Catholic hospital workers actually did good work despite the weird and frankly anti-gay regulations that were handed down to them; for example, many Catholic nurses found novel ways to navigate and skirt the strict next-of-kin laws to accommodate gay men’s truenext of kin, even though these male lovers and life-partners weren’t yet legally recognized as such.
(Both secular and religious hospitals had policies that kept gay men apart from their legally unrecognized partners. It’s a strange irony that some inner-city Catholic hospitals actually sometimes did better than their secular counterparts skirting the problem in the real world and fending off pressure from higher-ups to curb their compassionate work.)
My ex-husband used to work for Covenant House, a Catholic-run, North America-wide network of youth homeless shelters. The strange thing about Catholics is that their church is all about “bending the rules” — it’s weirdly built into Catholic dogma. See the “indulgences” of the past, for example. Contemporarily, see the phenomenon of “confession”. It’s kinda-sorta ok to sin if you confess it in a weird little booth! So while the CC couldn’t within its doctrine let pregnant homeless teens get abortions under its remit at Covenant House, they mastered the art of the workaround. (By “they” I of course mean the mostly women who ran the place, not the lush Cardinals — the powerful men’s club — that literally got drunk off the profits.) What the administrators did was they’d temporarily discharge the girl, to put her off the books (in the eyes of “God” or Jesus they might say, but really it was just in the eyes of the Cardinals and their stupid rules). Then the abortion could be taken care of, and afterward she could be be re-admitted, sin-free.
Something similar I think took place in inner-city North American Catholic hospitals during the AIDS crisis.
It’s a strange irony that at the time (the ’80s), the Catholic Church’s frontline workers ended up well-placed to handle the AIDS crisis, because they’d been trained how to juggle compassion for “sinful” people and skirting the “rules” that supposedly bound them.
Which is to say, low-level, compassionate Catholics knew how to navigate a hypocritical system, because the high-level, elite Catholics were so horrible, the ones who actually did the work had to learn to work around the system. That ironically parallels what even secular nurses had to do in the ’80s in all kinds of ways, as back then the secular world was just as hypocritical as the religious one was.
NONE OF THIS absolves the Catholic Church from its systematic oppression of gays, though! As much as people within the System have at least sometimes been compassionate to us, the System itself was always designed to position us as enemies, and it’s not changed one fucking bit in that regard.
So, in short: yay for nurses and charity workers who happen to be Catholic who find ways to do good work despite the evil system they’re trapped in. BOO to the system itself. BOO HISS to the Church itself!
So, no, the Catholic Church is hypocritical as fuck to be sponsoring productions of Angels in America.
(Sorry, that rant was longer than I’d anticipated! I’d had more to say than I thought about the Catholic Church and its hypocrisies.)
Artymorty, no one minds your rants – they are lucid, enlightening, and often entertaining.
One of the worst things about their hypocrisy is that they were actively working to keep things from getting better, even as their workers were finding work arounds. They were actively working against same sex marriage, recognition of life partners, and finding a cure for AIDS, not to mention actively working to end abortion wherever it was legal throughout the world. Their policies on divorce have ruined lives, also.
I know a lot of Catholics (Nebraska is practically drowning in them, and Lutherans). Most of them are kinder than the god they worship and the church they support. Most of them are truly good people. The funny thing is, most of them believe their god and their church are as nice and good as they are. I have heard some odd things about supposed Catholic doctrine from the mouths of observant Catholics. They don’t even know what their church teaches.
One of my Catholic friends, a dear woman who has been a wonderful friend to me, told me once that she doesn’t listen to or watch anything against the Catholic church. She was explaining why she didn’t go see Agnes of God even though three of her good friends were performing in it. She is knowingly, willfully, keeping blinders on, and that suggests she does have some idea of what the church really teaches, and how they really behave, and the only way she can maintain her perilous perch on the rubbish pile the church has left behind without noticing that it is all rubbish is to ignore what they really say, and focus on parts she wants to be true.
The thing is, in doing this, she is complicit with all the horrible things the church does. She doesn’t even claim to be trying to change it from inside (something I hear quite a bit from people who are members of groups that have some objectionable policies – often churches – and actually never do one damn thing to change it from inside). She is closing her eyes, knowingly and willfully, and then attending liberal marches on things like women’s rights and LGB rights.
The church uses these nice, good people as human shields. They are the face of the church for most non-Catholics, who know little about the doctrine and less about the scandals. They only know their Catholic friends, and golly, they are such nice people! Look, they don’t want to ban abortion! Why would anyone think the church wants that? All these nice people who are believing members of one church or another are probably the reason we have so many books and articles about how people like Christian nationalists are perverting the message of the church…because they don’t actually know what the message of the church, or Jesus, actually is. You can point them to the horrible verses where Jesus instructs his disciples to bring those who don’t believe and kill them in front of him, or hate your mother, father, and everyone else to be one of his followers. There are a lot of those verses, and people who are not as nice will find them. They aren’t perverting the message; they are merely choosing which of the contradictory messages they prefer…just like their nice church mates.
The production was great. I was actually surprised, because we saw the same cast do part 1 last year, and it was mediocre. The director got more out of them this year, and their Roy Cohn was right up there with Nathan Lane.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Trump administration can continue to constrain passport sex designations to what is recorded on birth certificates, but this passage from an NPR report has me asking a question.
Led by Ashton Orr, a transgender man who was falsely accused of using a fake passport by airport security when traveling with a passport that had a female sex marker, a nationwide group of plaintiffs argued that Trump’s policy would hurt transgender and non-binary individuals, would harm the government’s ability to identify citizens, and was motivated by unconstitutional transphobia in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee to equal protection of the law.
What the heck is “unconstitutional transphobia”? I am not a constitutional lawyer but my reading of the 14th amendment doesn’t require the government to grant one the sex designation of their choice.
I guess they’re saying that twanzfobeea violates the equal protection guarantee. It’s been expanded over the years. I doubt it’s been expanded to cover fantasies about the self…but maybe it will be.
I guess they’re saying that twanzfobeea violates the equal protection guarantee. It’s been expanded over the years. I doubt it’s been expanded to cover fantasies about the self…but maybe it will be.
Then you’ll have people demanding that their passports be changed to make them taller and younger. First in line? Donald Trump.
Interesting writing class today that gives insight into how many young people think of the trans issue. A student (hetero female) read a fiction story about a man (call him Sam) who realizes he’s a woman and must break it to “her” partner . . . Stu. Yes, they’re a gay couple. Sam expects Stu to react in dramatic surprise, but Stu only says the equivalent of “Meh” and reminds Sam that he’s always been effeminate and dressed in women’s clothing, so what’s the big deal? Sam is female in head only, no physical alterations, but Stu has always “known” Sam is a “woman”. So I guess Stu now has a “wife” instead of a husband and what their sex life is after this is an aspect of their relationship the student gratefully spares us any hint of. The class loved the story, and in the discussion I learned that coming out/trans/gay/sexual orientation/gender identity are all one big happy grab bag of identity and acceptance is a virtue!
I don’t know if we mentioned this here….the GC Twitter/X account ripx4nutmeg has done a list of forty pro-TRA things the BBC has done over the last twelve months. Thus proving that the BBC is biased in favour of the pro-TRA side:
Particularly reveling is how the BBC kept making expensive pro-TRA TV shows like “What It Feels Like For A Girl” and “Smoggie Queens” despite the fact that both shows were ratings failures. They’re prepared to sink large sums of UK taxpayers’ money into unpopular programs for political reasons.
This is actually chilling. Here’s what extremist trans activists on Bluesky are saying about Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey:
Brianna Ghey’s murder was the best possible outcome of her transition for Esther Ghey. Her child is encased in amber, frozen in time at an age when she hadn’t developed her own voice, so her mom can weave a narrative.
Mostly Cloudy, that reminds me of the right-wingers who said Sandy Hook was a false flag operation and didn’t really happen. Just another point of commonality in methods between trans and ultra right.
I’m sure there are false-flaggers on Blooskie who post such things to inflame. Of course it would be nice to see some pushback from TRAs in response, instead of silence.
Mostly Cloudy: Probably not. Cloudflare serves “half the Internet”. Lots of services around the world are down. It’s ironic, really: The Internet is designed to be robust, you take out parts of it with nukes (say), and the network will just route around the damage. Then come botnets and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, where hackers have infected millions of unsecured computers across the internet and use them to flood victim sites with traffic so they can’t operate. This is ususally done for money. Have them pay ransom to stop the attacks. So to protect themselves, businesses route their traffic through Cloudflare (against a fee, of course) and have them deal with the DDoS attacks on your behalf. So you have now replaced the supposedly robust Internet architecture with a single point of failure: Cloudflare. As I said, ironic. Isn’t it? I haven’t seen any indication of what caused the outage yet. Could be a massive DDoS event, or maybe Cloudflare themselves just screwed up.
In a stinging setback for President Donald Trump and Republicans, a federal court on Tuesday blocked a newly drawn congressional map in Texas that Republicans hoped would have given them an edge in five more House seats.
In a 2-1 ruling, a judicial panel issued a preliminary injunction blocking the new map and found the state had to instead use the map it drew in 2021. The ruling is a major victory for Democrats because it will likely allow them to hang onto five seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The very first sentence of Arabelle Sicardi’s book, The House of Beauty, reads: “When I tell you that beauty is a monster, I need you to know it is my favorite kind.” Sicardi, who splits their time between New York City and Los Angeles . . .
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recast the vaccine safety section of its website on Wednesday to align with the view of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that childhood vaccines cause autism, countering decades of science showing them to be safe.
The U.S. public health agency’s website was changed to say, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Studies also have not ruled out the possibility that red baseball caps cause dementia.
Actually, studies have done pretty much that. When the autism rates are no lower in the non-vaccinated population, and there is no decrease in autism when children are not vaccinated, that’s really rather conclusive. Not 100%, no, because science doesn’t do that. But it’s pretty solid, and that ‘not ruled out’ is taking advantage of the rational methods of science in not saying ‘100%’.
It’s so maddening, isn’t it? We’ve known for close to 30 years that Wakefield was a fraud, but it’s just another zombie belief that won’t die, and now the zombies are in charge.
Honestly, I’ll say directly that MTG shouldn’t have had to deal with death threats from Trumpian hardliners, especially over her stopped-clock issue (Epstein). My sympathy for her, however, is diminished considerably by the memory of her essentially ignoring the 40+ women who came forward before Trump’s first election to tell stories of sexual assault and rape. Maybe, just maybe, if she’d heeded the warnings from other women about what sort of man he really is, she wouldn’t have put herself so close to him that she eventually got turned on.
As I was waiting to get on the elevator at Trader Joe’s this morning, a woman got off with her son, who looked to be about four years old. Over his typical boyish clothes he was wearing a dress. A man in the store asked, “Is that a boy?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s wearing a dress?”
“Yes, he’s been asking for one for a long time.”
Then the man said something I didn’t hear, to which the mother replied, “That’s a mean thing to say to a child!”
Whatever the man said, it was clearly a blatant example of trying to enforce gender norms (and who goes around saying mean things to kids in public?). And good on the mother for letting her son wear what he wants while still understanding that wearing “girl” clothes doesn’t make him a non-boy. I can only imagine if he keeps it up he and his parents will be pressured into declaring him “non-binary” or “trans”.
I didn’t get a good view of the man—it was crowded, and I was trying to fit into the elevator. But not too many people wear MAGA hats here in Arlington.
OH, lawdy! There’s another high-profile “pretendian” case unfolding in Canada.
The indigenous-impersonation scandal/beat isn’t directly relevant to B&W’s wheelhouse, but there is at least a bit of overlap — at least in my view of it — because it involves questions of identity, self-identity, adopted identity, and false identity, plus it involves questions of opportunistic falsification of identity. And it often results in liberals closing ranks and refusing to hear objections. (People had been calling out Buffy Sainte-Marie and other fake indigenous “identities” for years but bleeding-heart types couldn’t bear to hear it, so they rejected it.) In those ways, the pretendian thing is like the trans thing. Plus it kinda overlaps with spiritual thinking/woo versus secularism, too. Plus-plus! It’s an internecine-liberal-conflict kind of squabble. Secularists who care about indigenous rights versus woolly spiritualists who do also, but who aren’t very responsible about what they endorse. So I think it’s relevant!
I say it’s not spinach and I say let’s keep it!
This time it’s celebrated author Thomas King, who, like Buffy, was born in the US but was culturally “adopted” by Canadians because of his purported indigenous heritage. (To Canadians, Indigenous people across the continent are perceived as strangely “ours”, even though logically it doesn’t make sense. Perhaps it’s just our instinct to see ourselves as adjacent to, but not quite, American, which makes us instinctively take anyone else in the same situation as a fellow Canadian at heart. So Native Americans are, in our psyches, secretly Canadian. Like I said: makes no logical sense. But here we are.)
I must say, going into this story, I was gunning to hate on Thomas King, the way I was disgusted with (middle-class Boston WASP who pretended to be Cree) Buffy Sainte Marie, and her calculated, flaky fraud that had gone on for half a century. I quietly revelled in her overdue cancellation. Thomas King has penned a long story about his own reckoning upon recently discovering he has no genetically identifiable Indigenous ancestry, for Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
I went in assuming the piece would be nothing but self-serving damage control. But then I saw the picture he provided of himself as a child. He clearly looks Asian. Seeing that picture, and reading the accompanying story, it makes complete sense that he thought his extreme Asian-looking-ness was a result of some unwritten bastardly (in the original sense) Indigenous lineage.
And the story he told really did move me. To look that different from his peers, and even his own siblings, would clearly have affected the way he was treated, the way he moved through the world, the way he understood himself. And it did. He came to believe he was Cherokee for sincere, understandable reasons. And he subsequently gave himself to Indigenous causes with sincerity for decades. So I was surprised that the story did not play out in my heart the way I had expected. And it’s raised, for me, some uncomfortable questions about the sincere adoption of identities one isn’t born into. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make this about transwomen being honorary women! I guess I’m thinking more about the transracial thing. Dolezal, etc. “Race” is fuzzier than sex. Very much so. Especially with respect to indigenous identity, which these days is confirmed or rejected via DNA tests, but which historically had to do with family folk tales about one’s ancestry and whatnot. It’s a messy line, that. These are two radically different modes of setting the “racial” boundaries of indigeneity.
And I have to be perfectly frank: even now, in his eighties, Thomas King looks unambiguously, ethnically Asian or Indigenous. He’s learned that his genealogy is actually Greek — hey, so is mine! Cool! But we are not blind: he’s got the epicanthal fold — “Asian eyelids”. Sounds a bit uncomfortable to mention them, almost as though it’s racist. (It isn’t; it’s genetics and genealogy 101.) Epicanthal eyelid folds are not Greek at all, and they don’t just pop up at random! They are almost entirely Asian or North American-Indigenous in genetic origin.
King had good reason to mistake himself for Cherokee. And frankly, there seems to be an unsolved mystery there. It’s all very interesting and (to me at least) pretty sympathetic.
I think this may be a case where the backlash against “pretendians” is targeting an actual “Indian” (we don’t use that term in Canada, but for you Americans, there you go). The pretend indigenous thing is so insanely true in general, and I sincerely believe that most of the celebrity Natives were actually opportunist whiteys, with dubious claims to be indigenous. But I actually think Thomas King’s story is radically NOT that. Breaks my heart a little, or a lot. He seems like the real deal.
And it’s raised, for me, some uncomfortable questions about the sincere adoption of identities one isn’t born into.
This is the problem I had with the dogpile on Elizabeth Warren. She grew up in Oklahoma; so did I. She was told she was part Native American; so was I. My mother was not ‘lying’ – she honestly believed it. Many people in Oklahoma believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have Native American ancestry. In Warren’s case, it was true, but not a huge percentage, so probably further back or more distant than what we would usually call “Native American”. I haven’t had my DNA checked, and don’t really care if I am part Native or not; I have no plans to use that in any way because I was not brought up that way, and did not suffer the discrimination they suffered. (I suffered from discrimination for being poor in a rich town, so I can understand what discrimination feels like, but it isn’t the same, not at all.)
I have no complaint with Warren claiming indigenous blood, even if it is only 10%. It was sincere, she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, it was a belief she grew up with, like many (maybe most) who grew up in Oklahoma.
What does bother me is those who capitalize on it. I’m ambivalent about Rachel Dolezal, because although she knew she was not black, she turned her energies to working for people of color. Of course, she did take a job intended for a person of color, and there is a major problem…sort of similar to the trans situation.
What I do have a problem with is people like the man I worked with who didn’t score high enough on the civil service test for my employer to hire him. The people who scored higher were all women; my employer did not hire women into full time positions (I was an intern). They wanted this guy, but they couldn’t pass so many who were higher without cause, so they took a different tack. They used a negligible (smaller than Warren’s) Native American ancestry to get ten points added to his score (part of the affirmative action program: BIPOC got ten points, disabled got two points, I think, women got one point, and disabled veterans were automatically in the number one spot if they passed the test. So he moved up ten points, which got him into the top three, allowing them to hire him.
Now, he never lived as a Native American. He never suffered the discrimination. He was born and raised, and lived, white male with all the privileges that entailed. He was also middle to upper middle class, which piles on the privileges. He took a job under a pretext, so they were able to avoid hiring a woman. (By the way, one of our temps, who was a woman, was told there were no jobs available at the time her temp time was up. This was right before they hired him, in the job that didn’t exist. This was also the place that pulled a job posting because, as an intern, I had preferential hiring, and they were aware I was a woman; they had lost funding for the job, they said. Funny how within three days of my starting a new job, that one was posted again.)
This is one of the outcomes of DEI programs, one that has been all too popular: mediocre white males use some method of becoming ‘minority’, usually through pretense, and are hired in jobs they are not the best choice for, because the best choice is woman or person of color or disabled person. Thus white men have used DEI to maintain their white male preferences.
Have any of you seen this disgraceful article in ‘Glamour’ magazine? It’s about an English women’s soccer team, Goal Diggers. There’s a photo of club chair Gaia Laidler showing support for her trans identified teammate Sammy Rees…….by kneeling and kissing Rees’ boot.
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it, and I’ve learned from it. And I’ve been moved by it.
It’s an interesting puzzle, isn’t it. We all want to respect the boundaries of indigenous identity, but we also recognize that there’s a certain fuzziness there. Identities are always kinda fuzzy, some more than others. They tend to depend on gatekept credibility among one’s peers. They’re mostly about tribalism at the end of the day.
Films and plays like Six Degrees of Separation have explored the boundaries of such identities, and how ultimately artificial they are.
Indigenous identity is already a mess of spiritual woo and magical thinking, mixed up with a kind of conjured-up nostalgia, if that’s the right word… The supposed line between a Native and a Colonist is ultimately more emotional than rational.
I don’t know if these crusades to root out “pretendians” are going to have the effect that the activists think they will. And yet, in some cases, they do good work. (See: Buffy Sainte-Marie, a total and complete impostor, whose motives seem to have been opportunism at the outset. That felt like fraud to me, and I’m glad it ultimately met justice.)
But this movement, if undertaken with too much zeal, might just draw attention to the fact that the borders of Indigenous identity were always nebulous, and they’ve been left unwatched for so long, there’s no point trying anymore to re-establish a hard line.
These activists might be setting themselves up for their own demise…
It also reminds me of the time I went on a date with a guy who worked for APTV — Aborignial People’s Television, a heavily-government-subsidized broadcast station for Indigenous Canadians. On our date, he pointed it out when we walked past his inner-city, multi-million-dollar, ultra-luxury childhood townhouse in Yorkville (think Rodeo Drive meets Upper East Side). Yet, he wouldn’t shut up about his “oppression” due to some fraction of native blood he supposedly had. I just couldn’t get past the outrageous luxury from which he’d sprung, plus the fact that he was making a living as a government charity case because of his “indigenous” heritage.
Amigos and amigas, let me tell you! That date almost ended in violence! It was like matter and anti-matter collided. There was an explosion of political passion and political anger, on both of our fronts.
To this day I don’t know what he had to be angry about (I clearly had plenty), other than his embarrassment that he’s a fucking puta, tabernac ostie calisse, goddamn asshole!
Samantha Fulnecky, a Christian student at the University of Oklahoma, wrote a bizarre essay about gender for a psychology course. Here are a few excerpts:
Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty.
[…] It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender “stereotypes” because that is how God made us. The reason so many girls want to feel womanly and care for others in a motherly way is not because they feel pressured into social norms. It is because God created and chose them to reflect His beauty and His compassion in that way.
It’s all rubbish. She quotes the Bible (in the original Hebrew) to defend her viewpoint and, rather infuriatingly, criticizes epistemological relativism on the basis that it is “not biblical whatsoever.”
Fulnecky got a zero. I don’t have all the details, but this seems perfectly reasonable to me, given the essay’s clumsy writing and all-around irrelevance. Incidentally, it appears her professor is transgender, and Fulnecky has filed a complaint.
Interesting article by Helen Lewis in “The Atlantic”:
://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/britain-rules-woman-supreme-court/682511/?gift=XzlAM20xpGLLmLnkZLnczZo98ZgJQsiwOeVPis6ZZ9c&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Sorry, posting on an old laptop in my holiday home.
The link is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/britain-rules-woman-supreme-court/682511/?gift=XzlAM20xpGLLmLnkZLnczZo98ZgJQsiwOeVPis6ZZ9c&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I’m struggling to keep up and have just added 3 more books to the must read before month’s end pile.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57964654-american-hitler?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43261495-the-cult-of-trump?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=LbWgNRFIwr&rank=1
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26720949-the-death-of-expertise?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_18
The good news is I broke a finger in the gym this morning, so that’s an extrra 90 minutes a day for reading. :-)
But ouch!
The books sound good.
Rev, my condolences. I broke a finger on my house hunting trip to Maine; it was miserable.
Pope Fluffy is dead.
Another good article, this time about
TRA threats of violence against women
https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/why-the-tantrums/
@iknklast #6
I saw that too. I figured that his recent “recovery” was too optimistic.
The recent movie “Conclave” is about the back-room politics of selecting a new pope after the death of a liberal-ish pope. The setting could possibly describe the current situation, but the movie is of course fiction. It is very good fiction, though, with a lot of interesting issues touched on, including some that might be of particular interest to readers here. Have any of you seen it?
I saw that. I didn’t find the ending believable, but the movie was well made, and had a great cast.
Sounds innaresting.
Keir Starmer now says a woman is an adult female, and is glad we now – at long last! – have clarity on this most murky question.
Curiously, PZ hasn’t mentioned the UK Supreme Court’s decision on single-sex provisions. Perhaps he’s realized that he’s better off shutting up about it.
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine
Go to the 2025/4/22 strip ;)
^ The censorious bores have already turned up to proclaim transphobia!
USA Fencing Board Prepares for Potential Changes from Governing Bodies on Transgender and Non-Binary Athlete Eligibility Policy
Yesssssss! Now implement!
Awfully quiet over here the past few days. Are we in mourning for Pope Fluffy?
Something unannounced therefore probably something unplanned.
I’m really hoping that it’s just internet connection woes.
Hope you’re OK. Ophelia. As I said a few years ago when your internet connection was down. I’m afraid your regular posting schedule has spoiled some of us the the point where we start worrying if a day goes by without the daily dose of sanity from B&W.
If there is white smoke coming out of the router, it means there’s a new popehat.
Ophelia Writes:
And then:
(The Argumentum ad Hackiam is, of course, a fallacy that is only ever used by those who don’t have facts and logic on their side)
Well, thank the good heavens! Just kidding though, technical difficulties did cross my mind. As a person who has no social media accounts, no television, and only the most casual of interests in current affairs (color me a grumpy old man), this site is like home to me. I know I don’t provide much deep insight or well crafted posts (I’m not a writer!), I do look forward to reading Ophelia’s posts daily, and all the excellent comments. I actually do read most of what’s posted here, whether I think I should weigh in myself or not. Having a couple of days off is not a bad thing, however it does remind me of how valuable to me Ophelia’s input has always been, going back to the old TPM discussion board days. Sorry for the overly sentimenal outpouring, but I do appreciate Ophelia, and indeed all of the regulars here, for your continued interesting commentary. Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, hopefully with more cyber security or whatever to keep the hacking at bay. ‘Discussing all the things’ is only as good as we make it, but I have found here that it’s important things, relevant things, provocative things that I enjoy reading about (I am a Reader!) that make this site a somewhat ideal daily ritual. :)
What a headache! Terribly sorry about the hacking, Ophelia. Surely an upleasant thing to have to deal with.
Here’s hoping it’s resolved soon, without too much expense, in terms of time and labour, and in terms of dollars.
Until then, I’ll keep compulsively refreshing the B&W homepage, jonesing for my fix of new Ophelia Benson content.
twiliter,
We’re peas in a pod.
Good to hear Mike. :) B&W is like a little oasis of sanity and familiarity of the interweb behemoth. I must also admit I do enjoy YouTube, but a curated personal version of it. I currently subscribe to 10 channels, and I have a borrowed subscription (therefore no ads), but YouTube allows me to choose “not interested” and “don’t recommend channel” in a way that narrows down what they offer on the main page. I have to maintain this, as they recommend new garbage daily. It’s a very narrow handful of videos that I might find interesting amongst a gigantic amount of sheer digital garbage that I don’t want to wade through. I don’t have the head space anymore to suffer through what people find entertaining or even interesting anymore. Don’t get me started on ads either — in my opinion marketing is the most wretched disease of our time. How it’s metastasized in recent years is stunning. I saw a video where Adam Savage described Googling. He said that the *signal to noise ratio* has increased exponentially and now we have to scroll through multiple ads and “suggested” crap to find the simple results we were offered only a few years ago. Yep. YouTube’s “creators” too end up getting big, greedy, and start hocking vitamins and vpn’s, which they call sponsorships. When they reach this point it seems they become uninteresting concurrently. To which my response becomes *unsubscribe* and “do not recommend channel.” I can see them having “merch” and a website to visit if you want to support them, or if you’re a fan, but the sponsered stuff always seems phony and scripted…
Anyways, I digress. Rant over. :D
I’m almost the same, in that B&W is the first site I open in the morning, and the last I check at bedtime. I do have a FB account, though. Oh, and Teams, now that Skype is being killed at the end of the month. Got to be able to keep in touch with my family somehow.
I rarely go on YouTube; I’ve never had an account there, preferring to follow a few people via their blogs/Substacks.
I recall claims of men claiming to be transwomen, using that claim to get into women’s change rooms & washrooms for purposes of at least voyeurism and maybe rape.
If I bring up the possibility get doubts this occurs at all.
Can anyone provide a list of confirmed cases that I can link to?
@Jim
It infuriates me when people doubt that men take advantage of transgender identities to commit crimes against women.
Men do bad things all the time, and anyone who claims otherwise is flaunting a luxury belief. It’s an insult to everyone else. To such a person I say:
You talk like you’re perched in some untouchable world where male violence against women is just a rumour. The police, the courts, prison — that stuff’s always somewhere else. You only ever see it on a screen.
Well I live in the real world, and down here men rape women. Men abuse women. Men leer at women. Men harass women. Men spy on women undressing. And they film it. And they share it with other men online.
From where I’m standing, pretending men wouldn’t jump at any chance to do harm — that’s the real fiction.
The minute you hear the word ‘transgender’ you instinctually retreat to your perch where everything’s sugar and spice and bad things never happen. You don’t realize it, but you’re letting slip that on some level you already know that ‘transgender women’ are a fiction. Because if you truly saw them as ordinary human beings living in the real world — as I do — you’d understand that they’re capable of good and bad, just like everyone else. You’d have no trouble comprehending that some men who claim to be women have complex psychological circumstances that are deserving of compassion, and that others simply want to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
In the real world, you can’t conjure a magic word that exempts any man from the rules that keep women safe and then just assume that only the right kind of man would ever dare to make use of it. And that’s all “trans” is — a magic word. A man doesn’t have to get a diagnosis or have surgeries or take drugs in order to “become” transgender. He doesn’t have to be gay or have a feminine disposition in order to “be” transgender. He doesn’t have to really feel it. All he has to do is say the word, and you — yes, you — will believe him. For once he says the word, he’s already stepped into a parallel universe where impostors and criminals cannot exist. Of course, it helps if he at least puts on a skirt, grows his hair long, and applies a little makeup. You act like even that is some great barrier that separates the world of mortal men from the mystical realm of “trans women”.
But here’s what you don’t seem to understand: lots and lots of men like to put on a skirt and wear makeup. All kinds of men — straight men, aggressive men, criminal men. There’s nothing mystical or unknowable about it. To many men, crossdresing is not a burden, it’s a kinky, exciting privilege. Remember the 1980s? Hair metal? Glam? All those ultra-macho, virile rock stars? They were showing off that they were cool and daring and manly enough to get away with it. And other men literally worshipped them for it.
Now they’re the most special people in the world. You’ve given men even more incentive to come out in public with their crossdresing proclivities — especially criminal men, because now it comes with carte blanche to enter spaces that were designed to keep women safe from them.
But you can’t allow yourself to see it that way. The problem is: “transwomen are women” doesn’t work in the real world at all. It’s a fantasy that can only exist in a fictional world where men didn’t take advantage of every opportunity to abuse women they ever came across since the dawn of time.
I dare you to really look at transwomen — even for a second — before slipping on your magical-thinking blinders. You might be shocked to realize just how un-virtuous you’ve been all along — to realize the Emperor’s been naked this whole time.
If they honestly saw TIMs as women, they’d be calling them Karens and bitches and telling them to STFU.
Bjarte Foshaug #23:
I’m also sorry to hear Ophelia’s website has been hacked, and I hope it’s sorted out quickly.
Too true, Artie. I like to say I’m not biased against trans-women, because I believe they are no more likely to commit sexual offenses than other men.
Your post does make me wonder about the iconography of transness. All the rainbows and unicorns… is this the irrepressible consciousness of it being an appeal to magic?
One of the real giveaways is the number of convicted rapists who suddenly “discover” they are “women”. Jim Baerg, you might start with the well-documented example of opportunistic, predatory, “transness” in convicted rapists. There is no distinguishable difference between these rapists and any other supposedly trans identified males demanding access to women’s single sex spaces. If activists dismiss the former as “no true trans”, then they similarly disqualify the latter, allegedly “safe” ones because there’s no way to tell one from the other.
It is telling that trans activism is perfectly fine with all of the ongoing collateral damage that women suffer, so long as the wee precious faux lasses get to “validate” themselves by invading women’s spaces. This is why “third spaces”, which could have been a solution, has always been rejected: they would short-circuit the validating effect of accessing women’s spaces, confirming the truth that trans identified males are not women. Ideologically, this was a non-starter, because “safety” is not the real goal, and neverhas been. Access and “validation” override everything, women be damned.
These activists refuse to even acknowledge there is any such danger to women, or even the slightest hint of a problem, proclaiming there is “NO CONFLICT!” between women’s rights and trans “rights.” They insist that women have no legitimate reason to bar trans identified males (which means, effectively, any and all males under any aggressively enforced “Self ID” regime), from any female, single sex spaces of any kind whatsoever, and that the their sole motivation to do so can only ever be hateful, transphobic bigotry. They can even count on Quisling females (Sally Hines, Jo Grady, Maggie Chapman, etc.) to parrot this line in their demented, misogynistic, self-congratulatory eagerness to give away women’s rights to safey and privacy.
As a consequence of this totalizing programme, supported and enforced by government and industry, women’s prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters, toilet and changing facilities, sports teams, short lists, etc., are all open to any man who claims to be a woman. Activists will not admit of any exception to this demand, because to do so invalidates their entire case: the “safe” males who are, we are told, actually women, are indistinguishable from the cheating, predatory ones. A blanket ban on all males is the only safe course of action, but genderists counter this with “TWAW!” tactically conflating gender and sex in the process. For them it’s all or nothing. And it has to be. Allow one exception and the whole thing collapses in contradiction and incoherence. Women’s resistance must be sidelined, discredited, and crushed. And it is. The worst crime of all is women saying “No” to the demands of men.
Possibly, but I think it also has a strong element of infantilization. The childish iconography enforces the idea of TiM “harmlessness”. Ironically, it goes hand in hand with the use of overtly stereotypical, sexualized “womanface.” Both are supposed to disarm resistance to their demands, painting themselves as poor, marginalized victims who wouldn’t want to cheat or rape anyone.
This makes me think of the musical Oklahoma! when Will Parker sings to Ado Annie that with him it’s all or nuthin’. Her response is “all for you and nuthin’ for me”. She sees right through him.
The trans are the same way. All for them, and nothing for anyone else, especially women, but also the LGB portion of the alphabet.
ArtyMorty & Bjarte
*Perhaps* I wrote unclearly.
I have read enough on this blog over the last few years to be convinced that Trans is harmful BS.
The Trans issue came up elsewhere & I raised the issue of allowing “TransWomen” into women’s change rooms providing cover for rapists. Others expressed doubt about that.
Is there a website with links to news items about rapists claiming to be ‘Trans’ to get into women’s prisons, or cases of ‘Transwomen’ going into women’s washrooms or changerooms to have opportunities for rape or at least voyeurism.
I would like to have a link to such a website to give for whenever the issue comes up again.
Jim Baerg, there is an archive of every such incident on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1722756661380462/
And there is a summary list of names (each one a link to the relevant article) at:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/this-never-happens
@Jim,
I understood that your comment was a request for specific resources. My comment was not intended to be a direct response to that; it was a riff on the subject. I got the inspiration to write it — so I did. Now that it’s out there, it could possibly serve as an alternative rebuttal to people who express doubt that men ever exploit the transgender movement to abuse women, rather than supplying them with a barrage of counterfactual examples. Or it could serve as a complementary or supplemental response to bolster the counter-argument alongside a list of concrete examples. A double-barrel serving of conceptual unpacking alongside the hard, cold facts can make for a knockout rebuttal.
It seems to me that rebutting the statement that men never exploit the transgender movement to abuse women should be simple: what is the complete list of things men never exploit to abuse women? Let’s postulate that the transgender movement is item number one. What is item number two?
Yes it can. I wish I could write sentences like this. Good one, Arty.
Thanks for the links, tigger! Nice to have the reference material handy. :)
@twiliter,
Thank you! But immediately after pressing the “publish” button, I wish I could have edited that sentence. This is often the case with me. I toss something off in a moment of passion, and then I re-read it with an editor’s eye, and it’s at that point that my mistakes come into focus.
For example:
A double-barrel blast would fit better than a double-barrel serving. Servings are for ice cream — double scoops!
A double-scoop serving is cute. A double-barrel blast is hostile and violent — as I intended my sentence to be.
As it is now, it’s accidentially a mix of aggro and cutesy.
But I’m my own worst critic. Perhaps I need not judge myself so harshly. I’m grateful you liked my sentence!
Cheers
Oh gosh Arty, Ophelia has saved me here so many times. Whether it be me being provoked, or just plain hasty. I mean it’s not like I don’t have the time to self edit after I cool off a bit. Between the typos and not getting my thoughts in order before hitting that fateful button… :D
Thank You tigger_the_wing
I think using this list would be the best option in most cases.
Appealing as a rant might be, the list seems less likely to get the back up of someone who merely expressed doubts about trans-women being rapists.
I do understand the appeal of a rant, but as you say, most people are ignorant because they aren’t being given the facts by their favourite news outlets; not because they are determined to believe, in spite of the evidence, that ‘transwomen’ are delicate flowers. Reserve the ranting for the gaslighters.
Which leaves you plenty of opportunity to rant!
There’s not much I miss since I quit Xwitter, but Glosswitch is one I do miss.
A great read from her today.
JKR is certainly a lightning rod for all the Transactivists, the MRAs, and their hangers on. I suppose if she didn’t exist, they’d have to invent her.
It is Victoria’s belief, and I concur, that so much of transactivism is a cover for “Men’s rights”, disguised as empathy for the poor, marginalised, transsexuals. It is, as she writes, an offshoot of the manosphere.
https://thecritic.co.uk/trans-activism-is-progressive-mans-manosphere/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=other
She is the absolute best. Every sentence a gem.
BTW I posted this link
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/this-never-happens
that tigger gave us, for the person who expressed doubt about transwomen in women’s change rooms being a problem. He says he is now convinced that it is a problem.
We both have only read a few of the items, that is sufficiently appalling.
I suppose the null hypothesis would be that a ‘transwoman’ is about as likely to commit a given type of offence as an ordinary man. Are there statistics that indicate a higher or lower offence rate?
Jim Baerg, 50:
Unfortunately, since it’s not really possible to know how many “transwomen” there are out there, it’s rather difficult to tell what their offense rate might be.
You might be interested in the following article. Some images from it get shared online rather frequently.
https://scientificparentofatranskid.substack.com/p/fact-check-rates-of-sexual-offending
But given the unreliability of such figures, I’d argue it’s better to avoid using them.
The offense rate for transwomen is always zero, because no true transwoman would ever do such a thing. QED.
Can Trump & Co. sink any lower? Trump has said that he could have Kilmar Ábrego García returned to the US with a ‘simple phone call’ and that he would do so, ‘if he were the gentleman that you say he is’. But he won’t, because he insists that Garcia is a member of MS-13.
And here’s where it gets really bad.
The White House is promoting a photo of Garcia showing ‘MS-13’ tattooed on his knuckles, and Trump has previously used the same image on his Truth Social site.The problem is, there is no MS-13 tattoo on his knuckles in any other image where Garcia’s hands are visible.
The bastards are photoshopping ‘evidence’ to cover their fuck-up in deporting him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdz72lwe1yo.amp
Jim, I’m so pleased that the link has been helpful. It certainly helped me to change my mind. As you say, though, it’s really tough to read. They really are portraits of deeply horrible men.
J.A. #52
To a doubleplusgood doublethinker it depends on the context though:
• For the specific purpose of dismissing any concerns about allowing TIMs into female only spaces, no true
Scotsman“trans woman” would ever do such a thing.• For the specific purpose of defending the infallibility of self-id, any TIM who does indeed “do such a thing” is the most bonafide trans woman imaginable, which is why “she” must be allowed to serve in a women’s prison, why the victim must be forced to refer to her rapist as a “woman” (who committed rape with “her penis”), why the crime must enter the public record as perpetrated by a “woman” etc.
• Oh, and Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.
Is this a trick question?
Are you sure it’s not a Sharpie?
I’m sorry for this, I truly am; I know how people here feel about Judith Butler. I also detest plagiarism software running on jumped-up search engines.
However, this gave me a huge laugh this morning, and I feel compelled to share.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BxRAxqE1f/
Should I be at all concerned by the fact that this actually makes sense?
Hilarious! This is clearer than what little I’ve read of Butler herself.
It made me think of Bilbo after decades with the One Ring feeling like butter spread over too much toast.
Or is that Butler spread over too much toast?
I see Gretchen Felker-Martin (formerly Micah Elliot Martin) has been repeatedly threatening a journalist who disagreed with Martin’s political opinions.
https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1918289080242323765#m
How very Trumpian of Felker-Martin.
In today’s installment of How to Lose Friends and Alienate Nations:
Mind you, he has one friend who may be happy with the name change, because
That’s because it was the end of the war for Russia, but Trump seems to have forgotten that the war wasn’t won for another three months. He’s also renamed Armistice Day to ‘Victory Day for World War One’, and seems to believe that America did it all by itself both times, saying
It is also looking likely that he’ll get his military parade in Washington, and on his birthday, too. I wonder if it’ll be topped off with Ivanka doing a Monroe-esque rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr.President’?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/02/trump-strips-mention-of-europe-from-ve-day-celebration/
The Maine Sunday Telegram has a dishonest cartoon in the editorial section this morning.
A white-coated lab tech peers intently through a microscope. He asks his assistant, “What am I looking at?”
She replies, “The true effect of trans athletes in sports.”
The effect is microscopic, geddit?
By “trans athletes in sports,” does the cartoonist mean “the effect of any trans-identified athlete in any sport”? Does he mean “The effect of transmen [females] in boys sports”? Or “The effect of trans-women [males] in girls sports”? Which is it, Bud?
Never never never does it occur to the cartoonist to ask, “The effects of males on female sports teams.”
Quite so. This is exactly what the news media do, too, as I keep complaining to monotonous effect. It’s always trans player or trans activist or trans competitor, so that we have to dig to pin down which sex the subject is. It’s journalistic malpractice and it’s ubiquitous.
If he removes all mention of Europe, how does he talk about where the victory was won, or against what country? I get that he wants to expunge any mention of erstwhile allies, but how do you get rid of the entire theatre of operations? What then was D-day? (He can still talk about the Pacific theatre, but dropping mention of half of the world in the World War? Gives a whole new meaning to “Don’t mention the war!”)
And like the radical revisionism that Trump is aiming at, the former Soviet Union edited out the massive material assistance provided by the Allies in the course of the war, which the Soviets called The Great Patriotic War. Of course they conveniently glossed over the whole Nazi-Soviet Pact, which gave Hitler the free hand he needed to start the war in the West.
“Nobody was close”? Just fuck right off. Americans are mere mortals, just like everyone else. They are not supermen who, by birth as Americans, are magically better, than, more than, and bigger than, anyone and everyone else at doing anything and everything. This is childish “My Dad can beat up your dad!” thinking. It is possible to honour the valour of American service men and women without having to denigrate everyone else’s. Human qualities are shared by all humans; their presence in someone does not come at the expense of someone else. It’s not another of your zero-sum games. We’re not talking about cake and ice cream.
Besides, Americans did not win every battle. Sometimes they failed, or made mistakes, or just had bad luck, both individually, and on occasion, collectively. The enemies the Allies fought in World War Two exhibited these same qualities of which you claim Americans had more and better. But anyway, what would you know about it? You have no concept of service, sacrifice, honour, or bravery, unless it is expended by others for your personal benefit. All you know is what you see in movies and on TV.
You want to watch where you tread. You’ve never met a dictator you didn’t like; you aspire to dictatorship and are moving as quickly as you can get away with in that direction. Ultimately, victory in World War Two was a victory over tyranny, and a victory of the rule of law over the whims of dictators. Celebrating that victory is risky. You don’t want to give people the wrong ideas, because at some point they’re likely to celebrate victory over you.
It turns out that King Charles II has been invited by Prime Minister Carney’s government to read the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the next Canadian Parliament, on May 27. While I’m certainly no monarchist, and have never been a fan of Charles himself, this gesture is welcome and important, given the recent, recurring threats to our sovereignty spewing from the Trump White House. The reiteration of our own history and traditions helps to emphasize the fact that we are not American, and have no desire to be Americans. It demonstrates that we are connected to a wider world, and that we are not an inevitable item on the agenda of America’s supposed “manifest destiny,” which, having once directed westward expansionism to the Pacific, is now being aimed by Trump northward to encompass everything up to the Arctic Ocean. He seems to think that Canada is some kind of backwards, fawning, envious, jealous, aspiring conjoined twin, happy and eager to follow the American lead in whatever Trump wants. In his dreams. A long, until-now-undefended border, a shared use of the English language in the majority of our country, and a lack of global territorial ambition on our side of the 49th parallel, do not make us a part of the American polity. Charles’ presence at the opening of Parliament underscores this desire to remain independent in the face of American beligerance. I say good on him; it’s something useful and important. I never thought we’d ever need such gestures, but they are neccesary and welcome.
The Throne Speech is written by the government, and outlines in broad terms its legislative agenda. The King is supposed to avoid partisan politics, but it will be interesting to see what the speech will say about Canadian independence and sovereignty. I can’t imagine Carney missing such an opportunity to insert this into the Speech, seeing as how his campaign (and, I believe, his resulting victory) was based on defying Trump. I doubt Orange Julius will be mentioned by name, but I bet there will be some pointed references to him nonetheless.
The Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois have already complained about the speech being given by a foreign ruler (a judgement a generally agree with), but I doubt even they would be interested in being absorbed into Trump’s (or anyone elses’s) America. If Charles can help us in our fight to avoid an American Anschluss, I can even live with his eventual appearance on our currency. If we still have a currency, he’ll have earned his place on it.
Your Name’s not Bruce? #65 :
The Pact was a taboo subject in the old Soviet Union, and I believe it’s currently illegal in Putin’s Russia to state that because of the Pact, Stalin’s Soviet Union bears any responsibility for starting the Second World War.
Oh bloody hell. India has fired missles into Pakistani-controlled territory in Kashmir. Pakistan says at least 31 people, have been killed. Pakistan is calling the attack an “act of war”.
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-05-06/india-launches-several-strikes-on-three-locations-in-pakistan-jammu-and-kashmir
Yeah that’s not good.
I thought people here might be interested by this Attitude article:
Are gay men doing enough to support trans women? Four community voices give their take
There are so many different things to criticize in there that I’m not even going to try.
“Gay Men Are A Red Flag.” “Gay men…strive to conform to the very social constructs that have long oppressed all marginalised people.” “Gay.. men…are in the most privileged position” “The real targets of the gender-critical movement are gay rights and women’s rights. You are next”. What the heck?
The one consolation is that this article is getting roasted on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/attitude.co.uk/posts/dani-st-james-india-willoughby-ella-morgan-and-mzz-kimberley-give-their-take-in-/1209643390824196/
Not sure what else to expect from a magazine called “attitude”.
In the meantime, I’ve just learned from public radio that the cabarets of the Weimar republic “featured many nonbinary characters.”
They must have slipped thru a time machine.
A new critique of the Cass Review, promoted by a Dr. Chris Noone, is getting a lot of obsequious coverage on Bluesky.
Benjamin Ryan takes a look at the critique’s authors:
https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1921208546122686472#m
Over at my Substack, I’ve updated and expanded a recent comment of mine from here at B&W (which was later upped to a Guest Post).
Marketing the motley crew: Trans inclusivity policies are actually promotional incentives
https://artymorty.substack.com/p/marketing-the-motley-crew-trans-inclusivity
(I’m not sure about the gerunded title. I’m meh on gerunded titles. Overused. Uninteresting. But I was pressed for time. Maybe I’ll come up with something better and update the post! It’s my own Substack; I can edit it to my heart’s content. We’ll see…)
Gerunded titles are valid, gerunded titles are loved.
Greetings from captured Brussels (and I thought Amsterdam was bad…). I was really looking forward to seeing some of the most beautiful streets, and squares, and buildings on the planet, but unfortunately you can’t see a thing through all those Belgian flags. By all means, it’s a pretty flag: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, very much like a rainbow. That ugly bright blue, white, and pink part kind of ruins it though. There is also the occasional black, yellow, and red flag. No idea what that’s supposed to represent…
Seriously, though. I can’t imagine a better reductio ad absurdum of the whole “most oppressed and marginalized group ever” narrative. Actually oppressed and marginalized people are not able to exert such total control over the public domain. As YNnB has previously pointed out, what it really boils down to is a warning and an implicit threat: “We own this place, and as long as you’re here, you’re at our mercy. If you don’t acknowledge our status as the most oppressed and marginalized group ever, we will show you just how right you are, and how far our power and control actually goes”. Fucking Tian’anmen Square (yes, I have been there) didn’t feel like a more controlled environment than this!
Is anyone setting up a GoFundMe for John Pesutto? Are Amnesty rushing to his defence? Where are the Black Pampers now he’s on the bones of his arse?
For those who came in late, John Pesutto was Victorian opposition leader (Australian state) when the “Let Women Speak” roadshow arrived in Melbourne. One of his party members, Moira Deeming, attended and was abused by Pesutto as being “Nazi adjacent”, if I’m being polite, and an actual Nazi if I represent his genuine opinion.
Well, being the tough woman she is, Deeming would not let that abuse and her subsequent expulsion from the Liberal Party go unchallenged.
Deeming won in both the Court of Public Opinion and the Courts of Law, and Pesutto is so far on the hook that he may well be bankrupted and expelled from Parliament himself.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke, as we say in Oz.
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/vic/2025/05/16/john-pesutto-bill
Rev, I was taught the old version of that saying. “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person” has the benefit of applicability to situations both positive and negative; without needing to be modified, or interpreted as either irony or satire.
In any case, I agree. The bloke went way beyond the law and common decency (and even common sense) in his vendetta against Deeming, and I hope that he has to pay substantial weekly installments for the rest of his life.
Britain’s first transgender MP, Katie Wallis, (formerly known as Jamie Wallis) has been in court, accused of harassing “her” ex-wife:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/jamie-katie-wallis-mp-live-31672694
That’s very interesting, Mostly Cloudy, not least because the reporting is almost honest. They give his name change history, and quote his barrister referring to him by correctly sexed pronouns.
I’m hoping that more news outlets will start explaining when a bloke is pretending to be a woman, and that they all stop believing that because he says that he ‘uses she/her pronouns’, that it means they should refer to him that way. It doesn’t.
Jolyon Maugham has found out J. K. Rowling has launched a new fund to protect women’s sex-based rights. He’s not happy:
https://x.com/FeministRoar/status/1926228413498417589#m
He says Rowling is “deeply unhappy” and probably has lots of “Unresolved trauma.” Yes, how dare someone think differently from the fox-basher! She must be a miserable old spinster!
Thanks for that link, Mostly Cloudy.
The man sounds utterly deranged. In what possible way can supporting women in the fight to hang on to our sex-based rights be construed as declaring that biology is destiny? Surely, those are complete opposites.
I’m guessing that the current understanding of the concept of “biology is destiny”, or “biological determinism”, as seen through translation by the Genderist Secret Decoder Ring, doesn’t so much mean that women aren’t allowed to be stock-brokers, fighter pilots, or brain surgeons, as it means that men can’t be women.
Trump sent a “free speech” team from the US state department to the UK to interview UK anti-abortion campaigners, and report back to the White House.
https://archive.ph/raXKb
Isn’t it interesting that the “Free Speech” issue Trump objects to is women having control over their own bodies?
Six activists from a group called “Scottish Trans Youth” have been arrested in Glasgow after occupying the EHRC balcony. A group called Trans Kids Deserve Better is also protesting in London:
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/25191734.six-arrested-connection-west-george-street-protest
Amusing that a movement that has received deferential treatment, for fifteen years, from British politicians, media, businesses, the health service, the police and academia now thinks it’s the Most Oppressed Movement Ever.
Now? It’s thought that ALL ALONG. And persuaded/bullied all its fans and supporters to think so too.
A musician named Kate Nash (whom I’d never heard of) has released a single titled Germ. According to Wikipedia, Germ “was written in response to the result of the then-recent ruling by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that the Equality Act 2010’s definition of a woman depended on biological sex.” Unsurprisingly, the song makes a number of bizarre, fallacious, and/or contradictory claims. I think it’s interesting to see them strung together.
Here’s a website with the lyrics.
The lyrics to that song read like something an AI trained on Bluesky would come up with.
And say what you may about “MacArthur Park”, any lyric with “someone left the cake out in the rain” is using their imagination at least.
P.S. – and they never had that recipe again.
It’s just as people have been pointing out – all previous, genuine, real rights movements have created great art, but this awful (bowel?) movement is so completely divorced from reality that it is incapable of creating anything even remotely resembling art. They have so successfully numbed themselves to any and all human emotions apart from anger and hatred that their brains can’t imagine anything at all, in case they accidentally forget to recite the mantras.
Oh dear, the irony….’Witch thrown off Druid training course after trans row’.
https://archive.ph/GHsT5
The article says Angela Howard, who describes herself as a ‘second generation witch’, lost her membership in the British Druid Order after comments she made online.
The Quakers, the Druids, the Secular Humanists…is nothing uncaptured?
Pretty much. CFI and Free Inquiry are.
Another snitch list….a group has created a ‘Blocklist of Transphobic people in Publishing’.
https://x.com/LoobyLouDino/status/1531965355224182785?s=20&t=mWXIoRqRaymm1OBcDAG7lg
Sorry, that list is from a few years ago.
I wonder if things have changed in the publishing industry today. Probably not.
FWIW
Skeptic magazine has an article titled: True but unfashionable, sex is binary.
More propaganda from the BBC:
https://xcancel.com/SonyaDouglas/status/1929554438370279563#m
‘What It Feels Like For An AGP’.
On June 1, Ukraine launched simultaneous drone attacks against a number of airfields across Russia, destroying or damaging scores of aircraft, mostly heavy bombers and reconiassance planes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/02/operation-spiderweb-visual-guide-ukraine-drone-attack-russian-aircraft
WaPo opinion writer Philip Bump: Parents invest so much in youth sports. Then came Trump.
This is an article exploring why there is so much uproar about the participation of male athletes in girls’ sports.
I like Bump a lot. I think much of what he writes is insightful analysis. I think he makes some good points, here, too. The article is unfortunately sullied by his mistaken impression that “it’s important to recognize that this concern is both exaggerated and selective”. He elaborates that it’s only a few male athletes who participate in girls’ sports, and they don’t always win, framing it as if the only issue is girls being jealous that a boy beat them. And of course he doesn’t phrase it that way; it’s about one kind of girl losing to a different kind of girl, in his parlance.
However, he accurately notes that there is division among Democrats on this issue, and that Republican are pushing the issue as a wedge to fracture the Democrats further. (They are doing this much more so than they are pushing the issue on its own merits, but Bump is missing what the merits are.)
I wish he could understand that the sports issue is not about “trans” athletes, but about male athletes in female sports. It does matter that males have advantages, but it matters primarily that they are male. If there is a reason to have a separate female division in sports, there is reason to keep males out of it.
I found this reposted on J. K. Rowling’s X site.
“It’s Time for Liberal Physicians to Rethink American Gender Medicine”
An Ob-Gyn in Iowa has writen about the “gender affirming” hysterectomies she carried out. And why she’s now worried:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/164586786?r=62st1&triedRedirect=true
The UK government has chosen Mary Anne Stephenson as their choice for the head of the EHRC . Now the TRAs are after her:
https://nitter.poast.org/FeministRoar/status/1930717584191885669#m
Mary Anne Stephenson was one of the signatories for this letter defending the right of gender-critical women to speak in public, which is apparently why the TRAs put her on their shit-lists:
https://archive.is/hFUIk
The grapevine is buzzing with the news that the Darlington nurses have won their case.
Here’s a link to a story:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14790917/Victory-Darlington-nurses-win-landmark-battle-female-hospital-changing-room.html
I wonder if Streeting intervened because having the case go to court would have resulted in splash damage to the government? Let’s hope he feels compelled to extend this order to the entire country.
This article by trans-identified male Juno Dawson calls Dawson’s political opponents on the transgender issue “maggots”.
How very Trumpian:
https://archive.ph/gGJmU#selection-2619.5-2619.40
We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Dawson also said “a lot of gay men are gay men as a consolation prize, because they couldn’t be women.”
Roz Kaveney- oh dear:
https://bsky.app/profile/rozkaveney.bsky.social/post/3lqzsvgpuoc2i
“Teansphobia” sounds like the fear of cups of Earl Grey.
This is important. Sophie Lewis, who’s featured on B/W a few times*, wrote a tome earlier this year called “Enemy Feminisms”, which was a lengthy attack on gender-critical and anti-sex work feminists.
Now Victoria Smith has read the “Enemy Feminisms” book, and given us a lengthy critique of it:
https://thecritic.co.uk/a-clean-up-job-for-bullshit-politics/
* E.g., here:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2022/feminism-is-for-everyone-except-women/
It seems that Trump’s fentanyl seizures have saved, and I quote, “285 million lives”. That’s interesting. I had no idea there were so many of us hooked on fentanyl! Two-thirds of the population would be dead now if Harris were elected, I guess.
Pam Bondi is the one who said it, if you’re curious.
It’s interesting that Lewis, and Juno Dawson, among other genderists, think it’s more fascist for women to claim and protect boundaries for themselves, than it is for men claiming to be women demanding access to absolutely everything that women have, and refusing to accept any such boundaries at all. Of course this use of “fascist” is just a dressed up way of saying “You disagree with me, so you’re evil, and should be ignored and shunned by all good people,” rather than an accurate descriptor of their critics’ actual politics. It’s as laughable as Republicans calling Obama a “Marxist.”
It’s just another way of othering (like TERF), that is supposed to cast your opponents’ views so far beyond acceptability as to become off-limits. They have been deemed, by authorities whom we are supposed to accept unquestioningly, unfit to be examined, let alone entertained, by decent folk, “decent folk” being defined as those who, having outsourced their judgement to these authorities, accept this pronouncement. Failure to follw the anathema renders you suspect. Thus it serves as a dismissal and a warning, to first, try to prevent any study of these dangerous views, and second, to punish those who dare regardless to engageme with the ideas of the enemy. This is a particularly useful tactic when, as is the casr with genderism, your own ideas don’t hold up well (or at all) when faced with anything more than casual examination by someone not already espousing them.
Humpback whales may be blowing bubble rings at humans as a way to communicate, play, or interact.
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals/humpback-whale-bubble-ring-communication
The researchers ruled out these bubble rings as being any part of feeding behaviour (unlike the bubble nets Humpbacks use to confuse and corral prey), communication with other whales (the bubble-ring blowers were not with other whales), or any sort of threat display (such as the bubble releases that males use with each other during courtship competition).
Link to the original paper is here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mms.70026
It’s the humpback whale equivalent of ”So long, and thanks for all the fish”.
(The “so long” part anyway. Other species have nothing to be grateful to humans for)
#110 Iknklast
“Trump’s fentanyl seizures have saved, and I quote, “285 million lives” ”
I first read that as Trump having seizures due to fentanyl use.
To bad that was inaccurate, Trump having lethal seizures about a year ago, would have saved many lives.
Senator Padilla (California) was forcibly removed and handcuffed from a press briefing when he tried to ask Kristi Noem a question.
Link here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/12/los-angeles-protests-alex-padilla-kristi-noem
Video here: https://youtube.com/shorts/gL08Xe31Ff8?si=mEWvUqGulpM6ryvM
Your Name’s not Bruce? #111
Oh yes. The best analogy would be the MctbW as Benito Mussolini, women as the Ethiopians, and Lewis/Dawson as the Giovanni Gentile-type apologists for Mussolini.
Jeeeezus.
I’ve been trying to find, without any luck, some posts with links to a webcomic that Ophelia used to post every now and then, by someone with a Japanese name. Tetsuo Somebody? The comics Ophelia would share were critiquing gender identity ideology and it’s cultural influence. Ring any bells?
Not with me, sorry.
You are thinking of Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida. Many of the comics are about gender ideology. He’s also run some story lines (such as they are; plots are vague) where Jewish people are the villains.
Thank you! I see I have shared three of his cartoons (on separate occasions). I tend not to remember names…
Thank you, Sackbut! Yes, Ishida does seem to have been driven rather batty by Oct 7th.
Minnesota had a major act of violence overnight. One of their state representatives (and her husband) was killed; a Senator (and his wife) were shot, and are in critical condition, but might live. The assassin had a list of a lot of other Democrats he wanted to assassinate, including Tim Walz. There were also abortion providers and pro-choice campaigners on the list.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/2-minnesota-lawmakers-shot-targeted-incident-officials/story?id=122840751
This is significant. Tom Harris, a former UK MP, now regrets for voting for the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
He gives his reasons here:
https://tomharris2.substack.com/p/mea-culpa-my-part-in-the-rise-of
The Chorch has a new pope. Americans love that he’s a Cubs fan (except those on the South Side, they’ll never accept him.) But as long as the Church neglects to address this situation in a meaningful, as in making sure that those still living are indicted, I will not be as enamored of him. Until he proves otherwise, Leo is just more of the same. The excavations and identification of the bodies of fetuses, infants, and toddlers, is about to be begin in Tuam:
https://punchng.com/796-babies-feared-buried-in-septic-tank-at-catholic-run-home-for-unwed-mothers/?fbclid=IwY2xjawK_oxNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFpenc2RjU4Ym9nY1BTcXJSAR7GDAJQOVVczuFC8xedI7IJQzz9uUgHfklFFMIzZ8KZotlKlrdGYpzDYprV-g_aem_IHoqqaoaNsnfM3NmVo-BlA
Humanae Vitae my ass, Leo.
Martina is awesome, as usually. I heard the interview this morning on NPR:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9xzgg91lpo
Here’s an appropriate comment on US politics of the last several years.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/slam
Trouble in the MAGAverse. Trump’s support of/subservience to Netanyahu is splitting his base, with accusations of betrayal as the US verges on entanglement in a war in the Middle East:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5355680-maga-trump-iran-divide/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wp72224jzo
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/18/trump-iran-israel-maga-policy
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-iran-trump-maga-republicans-1.7565322
One of my co-workers watches US right-wing stuff in our office (don’t ask), and some of the hosts/pundits/whatevers were being surprisingly critical of Trump’s threats towards Iran. One of them was going on about how Netanyahu was the “real” president of the United States, with Trump dancing to his tune, and how the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel were “allowed” by Netanyahu (through a nationwide “stand down” order) to give him a pretext to do everything he’s done since, in hopes of ensnaring the US on his side.
Who’d a thunk it: gut the Federal government, overturn and ignore checks and balances on Presidential power, trash long-standing military alliances and trading relationships with friendly countries, admire and side with dictators, threaten to invade and take over neighbouring sovereign states, let a know-nothing crank destroy the nation’s readiness against outbreaks of infectious disease, and let a billionaire have unfettered access to sensitive information about everyone in the country (as well as letting him shut down and defund programs and angencies on a whim), and he’s good. Get involved in a foreign war that he promised not to, and they turn on him.
Ironies abound.
I’ve liked to articles by Gwynne Dyer before. He’s a “big-picture” columnist who regularly looks beyond the usual players in world politics (though he keeps an eye on them too), and includes environmental stories as part and parcel of his geopolitical observations. His most recent column is on the fishing practice of “bottom trawling”.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/bottom-trawling/
Here’s the clip in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzG9AwlypaY
It’s grim viewing.
Attenborough should be considered a saint: a secular saint. He does so much more good than every Catholic saint put together – and less bad. He is a treasure, and it will be a sad day when he dies.
From the Substack that Mostly Cloudy linked to at 125:
I think this explains a lot of the support on the left for what is at heart a regressive ideology.
Of course, billionaires are a minority too; perhaps we should start a Billionaires Rights Movement (“My Class Solidarity is Billionaire-Inclusive!”).
At least Trump is the only president of our age who has never started a war… /s
This Maureen Dowd piece aged like milk left next to a radiator: “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk”:
https://archive.ph/nJRJS
Well, this is bizarre: Film and TV pundit Matt Zoller Seitz says this about J. K. Rowling:
https://bsky.app/profile/mattzollerseitz.bsky.social/post/3lsctq6zbcs2s
I’ve seen the “Rowling /James Dreyfus/ Robert Webb is a self-hating Trans person” canard appear before, but this seems to be the most prominent instance of it so far.
Ugh.
I bet he thinks this is a “win” of some sort, but it’s just another data point showing it’s a trend people grow out of (assuming it’s somehow true) since she could have done so when she was younger and had buckets of money. And “revenge” for what? Who was stopping her when she was younger?
This is what Rowling has actually said:
I can almost see the logic, twisted as it is. Given that feeling “pink, frilly and compliant” is all the sum total of TiMs’ claim to “womanhood”, it’s only natural that they would see Rowling’s rejection of those feelings as her trans essence. Same with all those other supposedly “female” writers and musicians in whose work she found solace. For TiMs, those feelings are womanhood. To reject even those frilly, pink surface trappings and signs (if not the societal roles and expectations – how many TiMs are lining up for the scutwork and lower pay to which women have been historically consigned? They only want the fun, glitter bits.) is seen by TiMs as nothing less than the rejection of femaleness altogether, rather than a rebellion against those stifling restrictions and stereotypes. Those stereotypes are their only way into “womanhood”, so someone wanting to be rid of them MUST be trans.
Speaking of feeling pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head – I was walking in the (very pretty) campus of the University of Washington this afternoon and saw a man in his 50s or 60s, with closely-clipped grey hair, wearing a frilly top and short flouncy skirt with white knee socks and strappy black shoes, walking briskly on his way somewhere.
I know we’re supposed to say “wear whatever you want” but I don’t actually want to say that. I think a man that age dressed that way is doing it to be creepy, probably more than one kind of creepy. I don’t think it’s just his taste in clothes, I think it’s a provocation as well as probably a fetish. Imagine if he’s actually employed by the university – imagine if he’s a professor. Imagine being taught and examined and graded by a male parody-Eloise.
Not much different than the men who dress as babies. It’s the demand that we participate in his fetish (and having it thrust in our faces is part of the fetish) that is a large part of the creepiness. I have nothing against kink-shaming. Most adults know to keep that shit private, and amongst consenting, adult partners. I don’t want to be part of your parade, or watch you fly your freak flag. I am an unwilling audience for your premeditated shock-fest. Womanface should be no more acceptable than blackface. Keep your AGP act between you and your mirror.
Re “You cannot protect what you cannot define,” this lovely article accuses Alsalem of being ‘anti-gender’ (as if that were a bad thing).
Exactly.
So, two stores in San Francisco are now boasting about how they won’t carry any books by J. K. Rowling.
A power-worshipper called Brittany Allen at Lithub (!) approves this decision:
https://x.com/bloodoftheland/status/1938843855203508256
If a store boasted that it would not carry copies of Mein Kampf that would be reason to boycott it. They can’t carry everything, but they should not deliberately restrict access to views they disagree with.
Ophelia, this is a woman I learned about just 5 minutes ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Duleep_Singh
do you know of her?
No. Very interesting!
This might be of interest to you and readers here. Looking forward to comments on this!
The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine
How the left ended up disbelieving the science By Helen Lewis
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/
archived at https://archive.is/JNwAu
[some of us know Helen Lewis from her delightful appearances on http://www.blockedandreported.org
and not to be confused with the other very important Helen from UK: Helen Joyce, who is probably the clearest, most articulate critic of transgender ideology, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUrwPf7FyfE Why does sex matter? | Helen Joyce in conversation with Fiona McAnena]
Thanks Wes!
(In case you’re wondering the delay was just because of several links.)
this is what emotional blackmail looks like
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/opinion/suicide-hotline-trans-kids.html
archived at https://archive.is/qVXKS
What I Heard on a Suicide Hotline for Trans Kids
1. “kinder” political demands in this essay: “The kids were telling us that to survive, they needed a kinder, safer world. We don’t have to take expensive, showy steps to get there. It can involve as basic a gesture as a middle school teacher wearing a rainbow necklace or a neighbor planting a trans flag in the yard. These are more than performative gestures to someone who feels abandoned. A community college could open its library — and its L.G.B.T.Q. materials — to surrounding neighborhoods. The librarian could make a point of complimenting someone’s gender-nonconforming haircut or clothing. These kinds of safety signals let kids know where they can go in an emergency.”
2. An obvious point to readers of this blog, that some of the suicidality—the thoughts about this—are increased by TRAs constantly talking about it, which CDC said do NOT do and is very dangerous [in terms of seeding the idea and social contagion] and I would say NORMALIZING the idea as an APPROPRIATE and EXPECTED action to being told no about TRAs political demands! THAT is on the TRAs for that careless dangerous political strategy of constantly talking about this.
3. Probably not a coincidence after mainstream press is final publishing critical essays on transgender ideology including Chase Strangio finally telling the truth at Supreme Court that “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.”
4. FYI, author’s claim in the next line is quite disputed “Surgeries for youth are rare.” Note the link is to research in surgeries in 2019!!! My understanding is that is has gone up since then.
As is typical in such essays, the link [for “rare”] is to a summary not the study: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/gender-affirming-surgeries-rarely-performed-on-transgender-youth/ and when you follow that to study https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2820437 it is a “Research Letter’’ so I am unclear if that was peer-reviewed though it was ‘’woke-reviewed’’ if I may use that term: “Additional Information: The study was conducted on the territory of the Massachusett People. We recognize the repeated and continued violation of sovereignty, land, and water by settler colonialism.”
Also, this assertion in the “Research Letter”: “Given stringent clinical standards for gender-affirming care,2,3 use of gender-affirming surgical procedures by TGD minors is expected to be low.” is HIGHLY disputed by whistleblowers, detransitioners, growing number of journalists. [Obviously there can be a difference between official standard of care and what is actually occurring.]
#88 Mosnae: Kate Nash doesn’t seem to be well. The Daily Mirror is reporting that Nash went on a bizarre rant during her show at the Glastonbury concert. Here Nash attacked not only J.K. Rowling and Keir Starmer, but bizarrely, TV presenter Denise Welch as well:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/kate-nash-takes-foul-mouthed-35471088
Given her pro-TRA song “GERM” only got to 100 in the UK Singles Charts, maybe it’s not surprising:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Nash_discography
Tried to drop a private note of thanks via the Contact form several months ago, but it was broken, so wound up thanking you publicly in April for the sympathetic words from strangers, including Mostly Cloudy, when almost all my friends were turning on me: https://paperairplane.substack.com/p/after-math-3
Apologies for interrupting the conversation. And thank you, Ms. Benson, for creating a place of sanity.
Hey, that’s not an interruption, and thank you back.
Looking upthread and seeing where you are, I’d also add that it would be an honor to buy you lunch or dinner someday, if you felt like it–you have my contact information–and no worries if not. Feel free to delete this comment once you see it.
Lily #153 :
It’s nice to hear from you, and also encouraging to know that our words made a difference to you.
Very encouraging indeed!
In other news: the horrible Stephen Ireland, the founder of “Pride in Surrey” who raped a child, has been jailed for 24 years:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/sutton-ireland-pride-surrey-guildford-crown-court-b1235670.html
Ireland’s been mentioned here before:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2024/the-younger-the-better/
It turns out Stephen Ireland also attacked J.K. Rowling, James Dreyfus and others online for their wrongthink:
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1939783256620298492#m
What a surprise!
Great example of ideological framing and interpretation of “Americans’ Views on Transgender Rights Since November 2024” https://prri.org/spotlight/americans-views-on-transgender-rights-since-november-2024/
Published June 20 2025: [2 days after U.S. Supreme Court Skrmetti decision and the author’s opportunity to read the opinions that dispute some of what author wrote!]
1. Good clue to ideological frame, note the subheading in the interpretation “Paranoia and Gender-Affirming Care Bans”
Obviously ‘’paranoia’’ was not in the actual survey/polling, [i.e. a question ‘’do you feel paranoia about…”], obviously that is the author imposing that ideological framing of the results.
2. Note that a foundational aspect of scientific method is ignored: alternative hypotheses are not discussed for the results, “declining support..seem to be turning against gender-affirming care,.. increasing suspicion toward gender-affirming care.”
2b. For example, here are some very good alternative explanations for SOME of the decline in supporting gender affirming care: people are becoming more knowledgeable about the Cass Review that there is no good evidence for showing safety, effectiveness and good long-term outcomes of gender affirming care, about Jaime Reed’s whistleblowing, about detransitioners “lived experiences”, etc.
3. Note in author’s explanation the framing ‘’fringe’’ for the growing number of doctors [some of who have been researching/treating in this field for a long time] who are questioning or explicitly in opposition to gender affirming care and in favor of exploratory psychotherapy as first line treatment.
Author’s explanation [i.e. what i wrote as alternative explanations is DISINFORMATION! So readers of this post, beware! : -) ]
“What might then explain this increasing suspicion toward gender-affirming care in the face of medical experts who warn that bans are dangerous and scientifically unsound? Much of this opposition might be explained by the network of think tanks, lawmakers, and fringe medical practitioners who have spread disinformation about the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care. Such groups have increasingly come to frame trans medicine as not merely risky or dangerously uncertain, but rather an actual conspiracy pushed on unsuspecting adolescents and their families by profit-seeking pharmaceutical and social media industries. In this narrative, the “gender identity industry” sucks teenagers into digital peer networks where they come to misdiagnose themselves with gender dysphoria and then rush into the open arms of clinics and drug companies who are more than happy to place them on “lifelong” therapeutic regimens.
Though such claims are largely baseless, ..” [I like the ‘’largely”! lot of wiggle room there! how much, which claims are NOT baseless?? Which claims are completely baseless??]
3b. The author doesn’t provide any evidence that online activities [coaching, [mis]diagnosing, social influence, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, ROGD, etc.] , pharma profiting, and self-misdiagnosing is not going on, though more journalists are documenting this. Early account was Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
https://www.amazon.com/Irreversible-Damage-Transgender-Seducing-Daughters-ebook/dp/B07YL6XK55/ref=sr_1_2? [yes the one the ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio tweeted that “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”]
4. Note the blank unquestioning repetition of key TRA talking points “This declining support is all despite the fact that major domestic and international medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, have denounced bans on what they deem to be potentially lifesaving, evidence-based practices.”
4b. NOTE: the NEW tweaked TRA talking point, no longer “life-saving necessary” but ‘’potentially lifesaving.’’ [lots of treatments are POTENTIALLY lots of things, but how PROBABLE are they?] after Chase Strangio finally told truth before Supreme Court, “There is no evidence,” Strangio told the court, “that this treatment reduces completed suicide,” adding that “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.”
5. The author is a professor, give you one guess what department:
Joanna Wuest (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/wgss/people/joannawuest
5b. Prof. Wuest’s book is Born This Way Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement: The story of how a biologically driven understanding of gender and sexuality became central to US LGBTQ+ political and legal advocacy
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo201362155.html
https://www.amazon.com/Born-This-Way-Citizenship-Inequality/dp/0226827534/ref=sr_1_1?
[The book sounds like it could be very interesting historical and legal account BUT this sentence in the description:]… “conservatives incite panic over “groomers” and a contagious “gender ideology” that corrupts susceptible children.”
6. Thoughts???
Wes, there’s a lot of information there and it’s not presented all that clearly. It helps to start with spelling out the source, the author, the subject – that kind of thing.
Ophelia
That was a very kind response.
That Webberley woman is so stupid, she’s been prompted into admitting something her ilk usually deny.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1186418846848218&id=100064403423598
Sorry for the Facebook link, but I lost access to my Twitter account years ago.
Ophelia, sorry. Here is short version:
Here is a great example of transgender ideological interpretation by Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Joanna Wuest.
PRRI survey data result show “declining support” for “trans healthcare.” Wuest frames this in terms of ‘’paranoia’’ and “disinformation about the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care’’ which is “largely baseless” by “fringe medical practitioners.”
The data and Wuest’s interpretation are at https://prri.org/spotlight/americans-views-on-transgender-rights-since-november-2024/ .
No need to apologize!
Ann Menasche has an article over at Feminists In Struggle:
Thoughts About the Skrmetti Decision
It’s a “legalese” analysis of the decision and the wording of it, plus the concurrences and dissents, explaining how it is not quite as positive a development as some have made it out to be. I think it makes excellent points.
Turns out that US film director Whit Stillman knew RFK Jr. at school, and Stillman says Bad Kennedy was a piece of shit back then too:
https://x.com/WhitStillman/status/1941452954000818474#m
“Hey, man, you took my STRAW.”
Tales from the Circular Firing Squad: Influential trans Youtuber Natalie Wynn AKA Contrapoints made a post recently explaining why Wynn hadn’t commented on the Israel /Palestininan conflict.
https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1943477564229447852
The Blue Checks are not happy with CP’s post:
https://www.primetimer.com/news/hasanabi-snide-contrapoints-israel-palestine-feud
A Reddit thread about the Contrapoints ruckus:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1lwroan/contrapointscancelled_again/
Clinical study about how to indoctrinate school children into, what we would call, transgender ideology.
1. You can access the clinical study at https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjdp.12503
2. I was alerted to this by the discussion by Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo on their substack https://www.citationneededpodcast.com/p/activist-researchers-are-scientifically .
Note: their discussion of this clinical study is behind paywall: many readers here might enjoy subscribing to read:
Wes. excellent find. One thing I’ve noted is that almost all the reporting, both critical of gender ideology and supportive, accept that the children being transed are actually gender dysphoric. I can’t assume that, not with some of the presentations I’ve seen by doctors presented with a patient who doesn’t think they are trans, but after the first or second session, they have become convinced they have gender dysphoria, not some other problems.
I’ve known more than one person who suffered from depression, googled their symptoms, had no history of gender dysphoria or claiming to be the opposite sex, and had always seemed comfortable in their sex, and when they typed in what they were looking for, they concluded they were trans. They may have taken an online test; I’ve spot checked a couple, giving accurate answer (which then diagnose me as ‘positively, strongly trans,), then turning it around and giving the answers that would be regarded as mentally ‘healthy’, and was diagnosed as trans (though not strongly, I will note). In short, there is no way to escape if you are unsophisticated about the world, or vulnerable, or desperate, or merely curious. You will be trans. Now that’s what I call inclusive…everyone is the opposite sex in their heads!
For that reason, I don’t feel a sudden surge of sympathy when I hear about those poor, gender dysphoric children. I replace it in my head with those poor children who may have multiple co-morbidities and are being convinced they are trans, and then the sympathy for them surges.
Add peer pressure to doctor pressure, and you’ve got a heavy load of TNT to blow up any doubts the kid…or their parents…might have.
I seem to recall seeing an image of a Powerpoint slide from a some genderist (Mermaids?) presentation, with a very long list of purported “symptoms” of “transness”. IIRC, two of the items were “Having gender dysphoria” and “Not having gender dysphoria.” I thought it was here on B&W post, but I’ve never been able to find it since. Rightly or wrongly, I recall it along with the “Barbie to GI Joe” Spectrum of Gender Identity.
An overview of Planned Parenthood’s history and mission creep into inclusivity and ‘’gender transitions” by Pamela Paul, who used to write essays critical of transgender ideology at New York Times, until that position was ended.
About half-way down the article:
This “mission creep’’ explained by
[Note: I do love this question and wish progressives asked themselves and their organization this question regularly:]
h/t to evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s blog which includes brief background about Pamela Paul https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/07/21/planned-parenthood-going-the-way-of-the-aclu-and-the-splc/
included in Planned Parenthood article by Pamela Paul, see my prior post
Who here considers this informed consent? That’s rhetorical but important question. i do know i keep hearing and reading TRAs saying “that is not a thing, no one walks in and walks out with prescription the same day”, but rather, TRAs claim, there is extensive in-depth long counselling/psychotherapy sessionS required before any prescription for medicalization.
Informed consent need not be “well-informed” consent.
Here’s the brochure, sign the form when you’re done reading.
Perhaps Planned Parenthood regard any information (even false) as enough to indemnify them against accusations of failing to gain informed consent. Perhaps they tell themselves that the patient is the person who has the obligation to search for the information, and they’re under no obligation to ensure that the patient is aware of all possible consequences to the treatment. I think that it is going to be up to the courts, during fraud trials, to clarify what truly informed consent consists of.
This is an interesting piece. It’s such a shame that he finishes with a complete misunderstanding of the canary in the coal mine analogy, because it’s actually a good one.
Canaries weren’t taken into coal mines to sing a warning about the danger of collapse. Canaries are considerably more vulnerable to gas than humans, and would drop dead early enough for the miners to get out, before they themselves suffocated. In any incursion into a mine of toxic gas, the canaries died first. In any invasion of a society by a toxic ideology, the Jews die first.
I am delighted to report that Kellie-Jay Keen has reported the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to…
the Equality and Human Rights Commission! For ‘Failure to Uphold and Enforce Women’s Sex-Based Rights’.
The letter, dated 21st July 2025 and posted on her Substack at the link above, is well worth a read.
In other news, The Famous Artist Birdy Rose has vanished from Facebook and I can’t find out what has happened. Doozer McDooze’s account is still up, though.
She’s still on Twit-X, with locked account.
That is indeed a fine letter.
While the parallels might not be exact, I think we all can see some parallels to gender affirming care, especially when done by surgeons. Warning: even reading this brief NY TImes book review can very upsetting!
Book review at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/books/review/the-sleep-room-jon-stock.html archived at https://archive.is/vmRCg
THE SLEEP ROOM: A Sadistic Psychiatrist and the Women Who Survived Him by By Jon Stock
https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Room-Sadistic-Psychiatrist-Survived-ebook/dp/B0DD4GSBL2/ref=sr_1_1?
Democratic Establishment starting to change:
“Can a man become a woman? No,” Rahm Emanuel eventually says, then jokes [??] he’ll know have to go into a “witness protection plan”!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53fVtQF1UOQ
Starts around 15:30
I no longer am on social media, but i can imagine the outrage that is surely happening there and the need to try to punish dissenters! So maybe metaphorically needing a “witness protection plan” isn’t far from the truth!
Sometimes it’s hard to know whose metaphorical bed to jump into. On the one hand,
The government really shouldn’t be in the business of censoring art. The Smithsonian is supposed to be an independent institution, without any direct interference from the president, especially this president.
But on the other hand,
Why? Why does everything have to be transed? What is the underlying metaphor here–that brave men have to take everything from women, including (especially?) liberty?
And, as it turns out, the Smithsonian wasn’t even proposing that the painting be removed, but just that some context be added.
So it’s self-censorship.
In other news (because I don’t know how to end this), Happy Birthday, Rosalind Franklin! Another woman whose contributions were overlooked because of three men’s egos.
How do you all deal with being in a social gathering, where the host informs you his daughter is “nonbinary” and “goes by they/them pronouns”? I refuse to police my own pronouns, but I want to learn to respond in a way that doesn’t put me in the spotlight.
Is this a thing? I wouldn’t know because I don’t do social gatherings. It sounds very weird. If the host is a friend why deliver this information at a gathering? I would find such a public announcement hostile and aggressive. A trap of sorts: Now watcha gonna do, smarty?
Well, I don’t know what that specific scenario is like — being at a friend’s social gathering where said friend announces that their child is nonbinary — but hoo boy, have I learned the art of dancing around my gender-critical views in social circumstances. For example:
Being a small figure in the gay “scene” here, I had tons of trans friends, until the Great [Arty] Cancelling happened***. Even after The Big To-Do (I’m slowly, very slowwwwwwly, reintegrating into the gay village community, as it comes to grips with the fact that I was right the whole time), I’m still friends with some transsexuals, including a man in his seventies, who I’ve known forever, who I otherwise like a lot, and who I think actually defended me in my absence throughout The Ordeal. But here and there he mentions that he’s a “lesbian.” I just quietly overlook it.
Ouch! TSSSSSS! That’s the searing sound of everybody’s burning stares! Look: I can’t challenge everyone every single time something I disagree with comes up, okay? I think I’ve earned my stripes. I think I fought harder than 99.99% of men on this issue. So forgive me if I let a few in-person transgressions slide because I can’t be at war all the time. To be fair, I don’t lie: I don’t explicitly agree with him that he’s a lesbian. I just tell myself, today isn’t a war day, so I don’t have to start something over it.
So it was when I found myself a job at a wee anonymous dive bar far from downtown, for the express reason that I wanted to be away from all the queer nonsense. But alas: even miles from the Village, the kitchen manager was in a complex relationship with her “lesbian ex” who turned out to be an abusive AGP man who “identifies” as a lesbian. As prickly as that situation has been, my colleague and I have gotten along, and even bonded and become friends. I never lied to her: I never told her I think her baby daddy is a “real” lesbian, but I kept that aspect of the situation more-or-less out of the conversation. That said, we got drunk together once and I made it very clear that as much as I’ve been around transsexuals my whole life, I’m a biological sex realist and I won’t budge on that. And it turned out that my honesty led to her reaching out to me, seemingly because I was seen as safer and more trustworthy when she needed someone to confide in about his abusiveness and his shitty, entitled behaviour. So perhaps I ended up looking less like a mine and more like a lifeboat.
Anyways, point is: it’s not easy negotiating social situations while holding GC views. But I personally believe one doesn’t have an obligation to bring them up all the time. It’s one thing not to lie, but it’s possible to maintain diplomacy and tact without lying, and sometimes saving one’s views to be deployed in more strategic moments, like in one-on-one scenarios, can win more battles.
I think the best advice I can give in awkward situations like the one where a friend introduces a child as “nonbinary” is this: be a lifeboat and not a mine. You don’t need to challenge everyone all the time. I think a good strategy is to present yourself as an ally to progressives while also signalling that you’re open to critical conversations about the trans issue, even very subtly suggesting so.
What that looks like in real life is basically not lying about the trans thing, but just dropping some hints instead of throwing diatribes. The combination of “I’m clearly a liberal ally of gays and genderbenders” and “transgender ideology is a complicated and specific viewpoint, and it’s not clearly in line with my liberal gay-positive views” is a powerful one, I think.
That’s about where I’ve landed after all these years. If I’d had that attitude earlier on in my “gender critical journey” I wouldn’t have ended up doing a podcast and having a Substack, but I imagine that I would have succeeded better on an individual, interpersonal level, persuading people and making a small difference in their decisions.
***I called myself “Arty Morty” while filling out the required fields so I could post a comment at Butterflies and Wheels, some 15 years ago or so. I pulled the name out of my ass. It’s a quote from a not-particularly-good comedy with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley as Watson and Holmes. My name’s not Arty in the real world.
I don’t do social gatherings for the most part, either, but I have a friend who has a daughter who declared herself to be “trans non-binary” some years ago. This was back when I was just beginning to question the ideology. In more recent years, I’ve met with my friend maybe twice; we barely talked about the daughter (“child”), who I referred to by name rather than relationship, and I avoided using any pronouns for her. It was, as always, confusing to hear one person referred to as “they”. I used to have more interaction with a group of “progressive” people who were very much caught up in this newspeak (and other newspeak variants), but the gatherings dwindled, and my participation dwindled faster, and I lost a number of them as “friends” when I made clear on Facebook that I don’t agree with gender ideology.
With that group, at the time I participated, it would have been perfectly normal for any of them to mention neo-pronouns or new names for themselves or a family member (or someone else). It would have been just like saying “She’s not Miss Haney, she’s Mrs Farnsworth now”. (One of them, not trans-identified, nonetheless changed her name f(or perfectly good reasons) and got angry if someone used her old name, claiming they “deadnamed” her.) The assumption is, everyone around them is only too happy to use the new names and pronouns, so informing them of the facts is a courtesy.
So, what would I do? What I have done is chicken out, avoiding the issue by using names and staying away from the subject. In less personal internet discussions, especially talking about public figures like Dylan Mulvaney or Imane Khelif, I used proper pronouns, just by way of talking about the issues, and been raked over the coals for daring to do so; I can imagine the rancor in an in-person discussion about a family member. I’d like to think I would refuse to be cajoled into using opposite-sex or “they/them” pronouns to refer to this person.
Arty (not your real name) – No burning stares here! Of course you don’t! Real life is a whole different ball game.
It’s not exactly a social situation, but it’s really difficult going to a therapist these days, especially when you are going to one who is young. If the trans issue is getting to me, I can’t talk about it. She’s commented about the younger generation (her kids) and how they use ‘proper’ pronouns (meaning wrong pronouns) and take things as they are. In every other situation, she has been staunchly on the side of science and critical thinking, but it’s difficult to find a therapist these days to whom you can confess your stresses with the idea of walking into a bathroom and finding a man there. Since my problems are deeper than that, I am currently avoiding that, and hoping things will straighten out in the mad world of psychology before I need to get to that.
Thanks for the comments. The friend is an old neighbor and fellow musician friend with two terrific adult daughters, one caught up in gender ideology since going away to college, and I have to confess I respond more like Sackbut than Arty:
“What I have done is chicken out, avoiding the issue by using names and staying away from the subject.”
I told the friend privately I would probably not be able to remember to use the (absurd) plural pronouns for one of his daughters.
I hope he took it well. Ideally, I hope he rolled his eyes and said “Kids today eh?”
It’s all the sadder that the kid is terrific. Terrific young women should not be wasting their energy and talent on pretending to be not women.
[…] a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany […]
Actually, Ophelia, my brief conversation with Dad was interesting, and a little infuriating:
[roughly thus]
Me: I’m sorry but I’m probably not going to be able to do that [use “they” for his daughter]
Him: Why not?
Me: It’s not something I’m used to. I just don’t encounter this.
Him: Not even in school? [I teach creative writing in college]
Me: Just once. I avoided using pronouns.
Him: Is there a reason you won’t do it?
Me: It’s not what I’m used to. Referring to girls as “she” is traditional.
Him: THAT’S RATHER CONSERVATIVE, ISN’T IT?
It always comes down to name-calling and pigeon-holing, doesn’t it. Which is why I’d rather stay home with my banjo.
And, yes, his girls are terrific, both great musicians, too. One is a lesbian (she’s not the non-binary one, ironically enough), only the second lesbian I’ve known since she was a baby, other than my niece.
Ahhh banjo. I do love banjo music.
I don’t think there’s anything remotely “chicken” about Sackbut’s in-person strategy for handling the gender issue. I think it’s courageous and commendable. Yours, too, Mike B.
This is a war! It really is. All resistance is good resistance. Even just “passive” non-compliance adds a bit of weight on the good side of the scale rather than the bad one. (By that I mean avoiding the use of coerced pronouns.) Anything at all to avoid putting one’s full weight on the other side of the scale is a win in this war. Size doesn’t matter. Even just not putting pronouns in one’s email bio. Or if even that could get one in trouble, avoiding them in Zoom meetings… et cetera, et cetera. Any act of defiance, no matter how small, counts. It’s ok to be a civilian in a war — nobody’s obligated to throw all their personal responsibilities away to join the Resistance. Even neutrality is better than coerced compliance with the other side.
The stakes are genuinely big to people’s livelihoods, no matter how metaphorical this war can feel at times. That’s what makes this war so strange — it feels simultaneously like the heaviest burden and the lightest one. It’s all-consuming weight — or perhaps it’s a bunch of abstract nothingness, mostly just online noise and academic ideas. Even many people who “kind of” see our point of view often accuse us of that. We’ve all encountered them, the ones who don’t disagree with any of our points, but who can’t see the weight of them when the whole picture comes together.
That contradiction can claw at one’s self-esteem, making people feel guilty for perceiving the weight of it instead of its purported weightlessness. Fuck that! That’s why I won’t put scare quotes around the word war here. It’s perhaps a smaller war than, say, Viet Nam, but I want to emphasize the real cost to so many people — especially women — so I won’t diminish it. I refuse to treat the gender war as weightless or superficial.
Once again, one of Graham Linehan’s many insights comes to mind: he compared this war to the many Young Adult fantasies in which there’s a secret war between vampires and werewolves or wizards or whatever, while the broader public carries on largely uninterrupted, blissfully unaware of the epic battle going on in its midst. (Rowling’s Harry Potter series is an example of this trope.) But because ours is a war that’s explicitly about reality rather than fantasy, even though the closest analogy to it is, well, fantasy… it puts us rationalists in the trenches in a position that’s almost too difficult for even our own selves to compute. It’s so logically improbable and inexplicable, the contours of the Gender War. When virtually every single liberal media outlet calls us crazy, Occam’s Razor almost begs us to find a way to write ourselves off, to dismiss our own side’s point of view as too improbable to be real.
But here we are. It’s all too real. But it’s much easier to fight this war online, in the domain of abstract ideas, than in the real world, where its absurdity feels so comically unreal and out-of-place it can short even the most robust circuits.
How to deal with it in the real world as opposed to online is a question worthy of much, much more discussion, I believe. There’s much anguish about the IRL front, because the rules are completely different than online.
Speaking of family members….
I follow Phoebe Maltz Bovy online, and she posted up this review to the Canadian Jewish News website a few weeks ago. It’s a review of the book “How to Lose Your Mother” by Molly Jong-Fast. I wanted to say something about it.
https://thecjn.ca/arts-culture/the-art-monsters-daughter-molly-jong-fasts-new-memoir-pans-erica-jongs-parenting/
Jong-Fast’s mother is the famous writer Erica Jong, who is now sadly dying of dementia.
Jong-Fast’s book is about life with her ill mother. From what Bovy writes, it sounds like a cruel book. Jong-Fast did not get on with her famous mother and accuses Jong of not paying proper attention to her when she was growing up. Molly also repeatedly says that she’s never read her famous mother’s books.
There’s also lots of details about Erica’s life that I did not feel appropriate about telling while the subject is still alive – Molly writes about an ill Erica walking around with her breast out, or dirtying her bed.
Molly sounds extraordinarily spiteful. Yes, Molly didn’t have the best time growing up under Erica’s parentage, (so did lots of artists’ children) but it seems like borderline elder abuse to write such a book about a person who is still (barely) alive.
Ick. Sounds horrible.
Does indeed. I’m glad Maltz Bovy isn’t the only person picking up on Molly Jong-Fast’s spitefulness:
https://susanbordo.substack.com/p/cruelty
I remember seeing Molly Jong-Fast a few years ago, and thinking that she came across as a standard #Resistance centrist.
I knew she was Erica’s daughter and Howard Fast’s granddaughter, and I thought “Molly doesn’t seem to have inherited any of her family’s talent or courage”.
I was just flicking through Jong-Fast’s “How to Lose Your Mother” online, and on page 4, Jong-Fast has a swipe at her zayde , Howard Fast, as well:
Eh? I did a search of the Jewish magazine “Forward” just now and they have at least three articles mentioning Howard Fast over the past year. He might not have Agatha Christie-levels of posthumous fame, but I’d say Howard Fast’s name would be known to young and middle-aged students of cinema (Kubrick’s “Spartacus”) and Jewish-American history.
https://forward.com/?s=%22howard+fast%22&submit=
As someone who also had a rough parentage, when I write about my mother, I make it fiction, change the names, and enough details to not be swiping at the memory of someone who cannot answer back. It helps to get things out sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be deliberate cruelty. It can be dealt with through realistic fiction.
Or through journals and similar. There’s no law that says writing about one’s parents has to be public.
Perhaps nobody would buy Jong-Fast’s book if they didn’t know who it is about. Then where would she be?
I read Fear of Flying as a young teen because my mother gave it to me.
@iknklast #192, “but it’s really difficult going to a therapist these days,” Imagine what it’s like going to a therapist because you are depressed, and you are depressed because your son is determined to mutilate himself in the name of gender ideology, and you can’t tell the therapist why you’re depressed because he could call CPS and your children could be taken away.
@Mike B ##187, you say “I hope that works out for her,” and move on. Here’s the great thing about third-person pronouns: you don’t have to use them in front of the people they refer to. Second-person pronouns aren’t sexed.
And then, of course, ever single time someone uses “they” to refer to her, you ask for clarification: “By ‘they,’ you mean $daughtername?”
Really, the parents aren’t going to care that you’re not drinking that particular kool-aid. It’s not like they’re asking you to babysit.
And, lastly, I’m puzzled at the lack of ripples emanating from the Special Rapporteur’s report released last month.
Is Reem Alsalem someone who only matters to religious groups anymore?
https://adfinternational.org/news/un-expert-calls-to-prohibit-gender-transition
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session59/advance-version/a-hrc-59-47-aev.pdf
An excerpt:
I’ve added the bolding there.
Is the lack of focus because the UNHCR seems to be at war with itself on these issues, or because the UN as a whole is losing influence?
My son has declared himself as trans. He is suffering from depression, apparently googled his symptoms, and fell into the rabbit hole. At this point, he has not declared intention to mutilate himself, but it is a point of immense tension between us. Since he is an adult, I am not at risk of having him taken away, but it is something that does contribute to my depression, and I can’t talk about it.
Yeah, guess I don’t have to imagine it, not really. But that is a great point to note.
Papito #206 ;
I suspect if Molly Jong-Fast was the granddaughter of a truck driver and the daughter of a builder and a hotel cleaner, nobody would care what she had to say.
Well, Molly Jong-Fast has written a book attacking an elderly, disabled, ethnic minority woman. And American liberals have praised her for it.
iknklast, I am so sorry to hear that this spectre is scourging your family as well. It must be a different experience going through this with an adult. I hope he is able to recover. I hope you are able to find other parents in like situation to talk to – nobody else will understand.
[…] a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany […]
iknklast, you’ve written a sentence that captures all the absurdity of our current situation with verve and hilarity:
Please don’t take this to mean I intend to minimize what you’re going through. I just think it’s spot on.
Extremist trans activists vandalise Wes Streeting’s office, calling him a ‘child killer’ for his stance on puberty blockers:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/01/trans-rage-protesters-vandalise-wes-streeting-office/
Creepy article from “The New Yorker” (which has big lavish graphics on the online version of the article):
https://x.com/benappel/status/1953474000383836598#m
From the article:
Jayzus.
Godalmighty. I read it. What a lunatic.
USATODAY mother’s column supporting trans boys. This type of column likely influences many parents. It is an excellent example of how reference links do not support the text [I know no surprise for readers of this blog.] Playing fast and loose with references and what clinical studies supposedly show but don’t: is important to call that out and the utter lack of editorial oversight on references.
I will comment on just 4 aspects, there is much to critique in this essay because of its influence on everyday people. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2025/08/07/parent-trans-kids-gender-affirming-care-trump/85428839007/
#1
In this education journey, did she discuss with her daughter and with doctors/therapists possibility or likelihood her daughter rather than ‘’is a boy’’ is a tomboy? It’s unclear if there were other signs other than not wanting to wear so-called girl clothing and wanting to wear so-called boy clothing: [In copying and pasting I am using the pronouns the daughter and Mother use: this a biological girl who identifies as a boy.]
#2 Also, this is all focused on how her “child is not a threat” with no consideration of anyone else or other consequences. I do not doubt that a girl identifying as a boy is not a threat, in general women who identify as men are not a threat. Of course, the policies she advocates will also include boys and men who identify as the other sex and some of them may be a threat. Not all of them, no one who is gender critical says ‘’all’’ of them, Kathleen Stock is very articulate on this: cannot tell who IS a threat and so-called inclusive laws don’t make exceptions to who is included.
#3 Supposedly supporting reference:
The mother’s essay on my computer history shows up with this title:
so that is how USATODAY labelled the essay.
The supporting link is to a summary of a study, as usual, not the study. As often, even the summary clearly does not support the essay’s claim: what is decreased is suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, NOT suicides, which even Chase Strangio finally admitted the truth to Supreme Court: are ‘’rare.”
As readers of this blog know, Cass Review and other studies did NOT show evidence that gender affirming care causes a decrease in suicides.
Here is the summary linked to: https://news.utexas.edu/2018/03/30/name-use-matters-for-transgender-youths-mental-health/
As is also common, the summary doesn’t include a link to the study, maybe to discourage seeing the actual study, note the study is old: from 2018. Here is the study: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext
My comment: Table 1 groups lot of types of “suicide behavior” together: no separate metric of ‘’medical treatment necessity’’ [i.e., hospitalizations is an objective metric] and no metric or mention at all of completed suicides!
Also note: this study is not about medicalization of gender-affirming care. This is strictly about the social transition of name change!!!!
#4 Supposely supporting reference for
The link is to https://harvardpublichealth.org/equity/to-protect-gender-affirming-care-we-must-learn-from-trans-history/#:~:text=Transitioning%20can%20be%20as%20simple,Expand%20Image%E2%80%9D%3E
[FYI, The author’s name Alejandra Caraballo rang a bell from either or both: evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne https://whyevolutionistrue.com/ or Jesse Singal’s critiques of Caraballo’s writings/research, but cannot quickly locate those critiques. I did locate this quickly: “Alejandra Caraballo is used to seeing anti-transgender hatred. As an L.G.B.T.Q. rights advocate and a transgender woman” is the opening of NYTimes essay https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/us/politics/anti-transgender-lgbtq-threats-attacks.html, i.e. an activist researcher or researcher activist.]
No one here will be surprised that NO the reference essay did not show evidence for gender affirming care, it is a historical not scientific overview! I will leave to others to decide whether this historical overview gives evidence that the research has been “thoughtful, deliberate, and grounded [in??].”
Well worth reading evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s in-depth critique of ”sex is a spectrum”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/08/08/the-lancet-publishes-a-glowing-but-deeply-misguided-review-of-a-book-that-denies-the-sex-binary-yet-the-author-of-the-review-had-previously-touted-the-sex-binary/
the occasion is critique of Lancet book review of Agustin Fuentes’s new book, Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary
some of the online readers’ comments will be coming from other biologists and are worth reading too
I am speechless the New York Times printed this research that goes against TRA dogma, and wondering how long–as in the past before: GLAAD has trucks protesting outside coordinated with New York Times staffers compose a letter how their ”safety” has been endangered by printing this and the demand that New York Times not publish such essays.
This is a must-read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/opinion/trans-health-care-detransitioning.html
archived at https://archive.is/fOYJz
NOTE: Although this could have been a news article, it is in the opinion section. New York Times or author didn’t the guts to allow online reader’s comments and dialogue about this information!
I see McKinnon is a trans man.
From the NYT piece noted by Wes @ 220:
But what exactly is a “gender identity”? How does it differ from personality? Where is it seated? How do we know it exists at all? How does the supposed “misalignment” or “incongruity” between supposed “gender identity” and physiological sex differ from the misaligned, incongruous and pathologically distorted “overweight” self-image that anorexics have of their sometimes dangerously underweight, malnourished bodies? Why is going along with the former misperception the right thing to do, while encouraging the latter is lethal cruelty?
People can have different “internal feelings” or moods and attitudes from one day to the next, sometimes over the course of a single day. What if there are no “gender identities” at all? The sudden upswing in “patients” “presenting” might all be social contagion, or manifestation of comorbidities that “transition” won’t touch.
McKinnon describes detransitioning as a relatively rare phenomenon, and she is to be commended for studying it, but her “discovery” of the supposed complexity and “untidiness” of gender identity sounds a lot like someone touting the superiority of monotheism over polytheism without having first established the existence of gods. And as for “gender identity for some youth can evolve”, children can change their minds. This happens when they grow up and mature. This is what puberty does. It’s not a wrinkle or twist on alleged “gender identity”, it’s how children become adults. Feelings. beliefs, and pririties can all change with growth, development, and experience. This includes mental, physiological, and sexual maturation. This should not be a surprise or a mystery. Show us how you control for the normal processes of puberty to find any signal of a seperate “misaligned “gender identity before attributing effects to a cause that might not even exist. Perhaps instead of detransition, McKinnon should be looking at desistance, which, if I recall correctly, resolves gender dysphoria in two thirds to three quarters of cases. Explain how that fits in with “gender identity.” If it’s something you can grow out of, it can’t be very fundamental or essential, can it?
And what of “Identities outside the gender binary are common?” (I’m guessing that she’s swapping “gender” for “sex” here, as her claim, which makes little enough sense as it is, makes even less if it is not tied to sex.) How can you tell if someone’s identity inhabits this idea space outside the binary? With trans identified males and females, the supposed “identity” is that of the other sex. Some putative identities are supposedly fractional mixtures of the two sexes. But how the hell do you claim an identity “beyond” or “outside” this? For all of these other alleged indentities “outside the gender binary”, what is the “target” identity? What is it hoping to align with? How can one posit a “mismatch” where there is no match to be had? Trying to turn yourself into the opposite sex is one thing (impossible as it is), but there are no hormones or surgeries that can even attempt to turn you into something that doesn’t exist. How do you aim for a target that isn’t there? How would you know when you’ve “succeeded” in hitting it?
“Gender affirming care” is already a messed up, real life embodiment of Zeno’s Paradox, where Achilles can never catch the tortoise, not because of an infinite number decreasingly small amounts of distance he needs to cover the ever lengthening distance the tortoise travels while he’s attempting to even the race, but because the “tortoise” (becoming the sex one is not) is completely illusory. With all these other “identities” “outside the gender binary”, there’s not even the illusion of a tortoise. They might as well be receiving “treatment” to become another species, or invisible. Physiologically, there are no alternatives to male and female, only particular, sex-specific disorders that prevent complete and correct acheivement of either desired goal. What could possibly be the case for other “identities” is beyond me. Call me an unsophisticated, pig-headed, cis-hetero ignoramus if you like, but I refuse to admit that this is a result of a lack of imagination on my part, and rather a case of too much imagination on hers. What if it is just tortoises all the way down?
It feels like McKinnon is adding the same kind of complexity as was used to “save the appearances” of the geocentric, Ptolemaic model of the solar system needed when faced with more and more observations regarding planetary motion observed in the night sky. Most of these outlandish mechanisms needed to make the old model work were obviated by the heliocentric model, with many of the awkward behaviours that vexed the Ptolemaic scheme being natural consequences of all of the planets, including Earth, orbiting the Sun. So what happens to McKinnon’s deeper, and more nuanced understanding of gender identity if there is no gender identity? What if it’s just personalities all the way down?
#1 @Your Name’s not Bruce? #222
Thanks for your excellent comments. Some day maybe there can be a good open discussion and debate in academia and psych organizations about ‘’gender’’ and ‘’personality’’ but I am not holding my breathe! Nice comparison to “ “save the appearances” of the geocentric, Ptolemaic model of the solar system”!!!
FYI, I came across a recent essay arguing it is time to get rid of “gender identity’’ which did not come from the trans community but from Robert J. Stoller and John Money [if I remember correctly they were labelled “transphobic”] in favor of listening to trans people’s lived experience and have the new term come from the community. [Unfortunately I cannot locate the essay again :-( ]
I do not know if this call to –forgive me—transition to a new understanding and framing will gain traction. I also don’t know if this new term will arise from kids on tumbler, then twitter, then tiktok making stuff up that adults take seriously and cancel others for not agreeing with!
I am not holding breathe for TRA’s taking accountability, apologizing, and ‘’do better’’ for the attacks on gender critical feminists , such as Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, etc. for saying
1. They did not have a gender identity and 2. Like you, they are quite skeptical “gender identity” exists or claim that is metaphysical /quasi-religious immaterial ‘’soul’’-like.
#2 @Ophelia Benson, yes when I read Professor Kinnon R. MacKinnon is trans man I was guessing this research would simply repeat the myth that detransition is rare 1-2%.
It is a myth because no one knows the % of detransitioners. The 1-2% is based on poor studies [e.g. surgeons were surveyed whether their patients came back to complain: no surprise, most didn’t respond to the survery and those that did, amazingly lol didn’t report any complaints or dissatisfaction with the surgeon/surgery!] + made up. Since the US gender clinics are not doing follow up studies and in UK, the adult gender clinics all refused to share their data with Cass Review with what happened to the adolescents who transitioned Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS)/Tavistock clinic.
I was pleasant surprised to read MacKinnon mention other recent studies
When I read MacKinnon revised this 1-2% detransition myth, I’m thinking will be harder for TRAs to have kneejerk reaction that a ‘’transphobe’’ did the research and to trash this study as not having been conducted by a trans person!
MacKinnon surely knows the TRAs and social media mob will be coming and ends essay with this terrific sentence, although not in time to help Carole Hooven at Harvard etc. [The second sentence i don’t fully agree with about that supposed commitment or that all the policies are wrong.]
#3 But what really stood out to me—and I am waiting to read the actual study and see the evaluation of it by Jesse Singal, Benjamin Ryan, Colin Wright, etc.—is “Ninety percent were born female…of the “33 percent of participants, said they detransitioned because of an identity change, mental health-related factors and dissatisfaction with treatment.”
As we know the original Dutch Protocol—which itself did not establish safety or effectiveness of medicalization, hasn’t been replicated, and is utterly different from the USA protocols because in the Dutch Protocol those with mental illnesses were EXCLUDED—was to help out men who identity as women pass more easily later in life and decrease their stress/anxiety/depression at not passing.
So those who were not included in the original Dutch Protocol study that lead to medicalized gender affirming care—girls/women who identify as boys/men—wind up being the biggest group of detransitioners!
I think that will be one of most important outcomes of MacKinnon’s research for critique of medicalized gender affirming care for those who care about the mental health, emotional health, physical health, and quality of life of girls and women! And of kids of both sexes of course!
I was mightily amused to hear trans McKinnon use this sentence in the article, “Ninety percent were born female.” That’s BLASPHEMY.
I see the “Abolish the Family” crackpot and fanatical TRA Sophie Lewis has recorded a podcast with Osama Bin Laden stan Gretchen Felker-Martin and some person called Kayte Terry.
https://bsky.app/profile/reproutopia.bsky.social/post/3lw55kv72nk2x
To quote the late Roald Dahl: “Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!”
The Mayor of the town of Hamilton, Ontario, has removed a billboard that simply read “Stop medical transitions of minors.” The billboard advertised a website by a Christian group advocating against medical transiations.
The Mayor argues that the billboard is “transphobic” and therefore illegal.
https://www.chch.com/chch-news/hamilton-city-hall-heading-to-court-after-its-removal-order-of-digital-billboard-deemed-transphobic/
Rowling has made a review of Sturgeon’s memoir. I have not yet read it.
I having. Rowling’s piece is a funny take-down of Nicola S.
correction to my #223 and Dutch Protocol, i was mistaken, the study did include girls, see #3 below
and Leor Sapir critique of foundational questions and confusions
#1 I reminded of that there were girls in the study by terrific discussion of Stella O’Malley, Mia Hughes, and Leor Sapir: The Questions the New York Times Refused to Ask (#27), for me, this is a very important groundbreaking discussion, as Sapir identifies foundational questions and confusions of so-called gender affirming care, golden mean fallacy, and would gender affirming care IF it were successful eliminate transgender identity since the mismatch of so-called “gender identity” and so-called “assigned sex” would have been handled and wouldn’t that mean the person is now ”cis gender” [my paraphrasing from memory]!??!?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLhWRmdnXNQ and summarized at https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/they-cant-even-define-what-theyre
#2 Leor Sapir essays are well researched and thought out, here are two from the discussion above
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-times-the-protocol-podcast-pediatric-gender-medicine-science
https://www.city-journal.org/article/pediatric-gender-medicine-laura-edwards-leeper
here is one of Mia Hughes’: https://genspect.substack.com/p/the-broken-chain-of-trust-medicines?
this was very important discussion and disagreement between Stella O’Malley [NOTE: as a girl she had what today is called gender dysphoria] and Mia Hughes: is there a ”transgender child” or not? https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/the-transgender-child-how-psychiatry
#3 correction to my comment on #223
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Protocol
Another outrageous injustice: British Columbia nurse suspended, fined nearly $94,000 over ‘I ♥ JK Rowling’ billboard
https://www.westernstandard.news/bc/bc-nurse-suspended-fined-nearly-94000-over-i-jk-rowling-billboard/66865
JK Rowling’s review is very funny. Structuring it around a comparison with Twilight is hilarious, and shows, rather than telling, how oblivious, juvenile, and twee Sturgeon is.
I really ought to read more of her adult-oriented literature. She’s got me in stitches with this.
Speaking of J. K. Rowling, Graham Linehan has criticised her on the “Spiked Online” podcast.
According to the “Sunday Telegraph”,
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph/20250817/281861534594823
I don’t really see why J.K. Rowling would be obliged to comment on Graham Linehan and his activities.
To me, it sounds like Linehan is looking for attention.
Linehan has been attacking other GC writers/activists for a while now. He recently denounced Katie Herzog, Jesse Singal, and Helen Lewis as having ” tribal, priggish, dinner-party sensibilities”.
https://x.com/glinner/status/1930066886504730931?s=46&t=0kvzdb_vw4Oh74ha7bms5g
Linehan’s also praised the Trump Administration:
https://x.com/Glinner/status/1887486826547466367#m
I’m not surprised JKR wouldn’t want to associate with Linehan now.
I began watching an interview with Linehan on YouTube a while ago, but I stopped almost right away after one of the first things coming out of his mouth was something like (from memory) “you got to love the guy”, the “guy” in question being Donald Trump. By that time he had clearly been moving in that direction for some time as evidenced by his increasing willingness to repeat back MAGA talking-points dismissing all criticisms of the orange one as Leftist smear-campaigns. Linehan seems to me like the perfect example of something I have previously said: If you manage to make people sufficiently pissed off, they may eventually decide that “I don’t care who wins. or what else is included in the deal, or who else gets hurt as a result, as long as these assholes lose!”. After everything that’s happened it wouldn’t occur to me to blame Linehan for being vehemently against the woke Left. I am against them too. But it still takes more to be a friend than simply being the enemy of my enemy.
Linehan started fighting with the trans activists about 2018, and did it fairly aggressively. When he started this fight, he seemed to under-estimate the power of the gender ideology lobby, and thought other celebrities and activists would join with him in the cause.
When they didn’t, and instead his co-workers, friends and family largely moved away from him, he must have felt incredibly alone. And unlike Rowling or Dave Chappelle, Graham Linehan wasn’t wealthy and influential enough to resist a mass boycott by the G.I. Lobby.
Linehan didn’t help things out by his rude attitude to other leftists and centrists who shared his GC views (Singal and Kerzog).
So eventually, there was nothing left for Linehan to do but join the far right. So obsessed was he with making “these assholes lose”, that there was nothing left for this talented comedy writer but the foul embrace of the Trumpists.
I find this troublesome. There are obviously other options, he just didn’t like them. Ophelia has been through a lot of the same things, and I haven’t heard of JKR coming specifically to her defense, but she hasn’t jumped to the far right.
To me, this idea that you must leave the ‘woke’ left because they are wrong about one thing, or two things, is just spitting in the wind. It is no better than they are, demanding complete adherence to all doctrines. There are many places where I do not agree with the ‘woke’ left, and yet I manage, somehow, to avoid going over to people who are far right. Trump is not limiting his anger and hatred to trans; he is also attacking gays, women, native Americans, the disabled, the poor, the elderly, the schoolchildren, the teachers…and probably a lot of others that I can’t think of right now. Ice sculptors? I’m sure he has something planned to attack them, unless they put an ice sculpture of him on every corner of America…and Canada. He hates everyone, and he even hates his own supporters, unless they bow down and grovel and worship him.
Hey, maybe he really is god. That sounds a lot like the imaginary creator of the universe – worship me or I will send a worldwide flood to wipe you out.
But to get back to where I started…the loneliness and rejection is severe and hurtful. But it is no excuse for shitting on the entire world.
iknklast #236:
You’re right. Ophelia got a dreadful time over her opinions, as did Rowling, and neither of them became Trump supporters like Linehan did. Heck, Jesse Singal became a internet hate figure over his mild, politely expressed dissent from the ideology:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/bluesky-growing-pains-rcna181029
In a way, Graham Linehan is a useful figure for the trans movement. Because they can say “Look at this man, deserted by his family and most of his friends, with his successful career gone, addicted to social media, now with only the Trumpian Right for company.”
“If you step out of line even slightly on The Dogma, you will end up like Graham Linehan too.”
The Polari Prize has been “paused” for 2005, presumably because the activists threw their rattles out of their prams:
https://x.com/JournalismSEEN/status/1957398269367144662#m
I can’t speak to all of this, because I’m not Graham and I’m not a mind reader. But I can address some misconceptions, because G and I were very close friends and colleagues for years.
As for Katie and Jesse: he never spoke a word about them in public until *after* they launched a monstrous attack on him. They broadcast an almost an entire episode of their show, out of the blue, devoted to monstering him. Back then, they viewed “misgendering” trans-identifying males as a sign of a mind consumed by evil, right-wing hatred, and despite Graham’s very reasonable behind-the-scenes overtures to them, journalist-to-journalist, they mocked him as an outsider and a freak, specifically because he occasionally “misgendered”.
They were so many years behind the times they hadn’t figured out that this wasn’t actually a sign of pure evil. This to me is such a great example of “liberal” hipster monstrosity: Graham by then had accrued I think five — FIVE!!! — BAFTAs for his writing skills, as well as an Emmy and a lifetime achievement award. Literally, decades of accolades. An uninterrupted streak of kudos for his extraordinary talents. And he had several years’ experience as a magazine journalist. He was unambiguously Big League, any way you look at it. And he was friendly and generous to them. But these assholes treated him like an out-of-line, out-of-place nobody, because he didn’t play the Brooklyn-centric media game. Apparently, his big crime was that, pronoun-wise, he had correctly sexed violent sex offenders and creeps pretending to be lesbians online.
I wrote about it at length at the (now defunct) Lesbian and Gay News. You can find a copy of that essay here, and I’m mighty proud of it still:
https://staging.lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/04/arty-morty-graham-linehans-gender-blasphemy-exposes-the-fear-that-stifles-the-trans-debate/
As for the broader shifts towards the right among many predominant figures in the GC movement — Graham included, alas — well, I’ve made my personal position clear on that front, multiple times, here at B&W. I don’t approve, and I will not move rightward with the crowd. But the psychology of such shifts is more complicated, more interesting, more sympathetic, and perhaps more pitiable, than it’s sometimes made out to be.
In three words: It’s a shame.
It’s a comprehensible shame. An understandable shame. But a shame, nonetheless. A heartbreaking one. That’s as far as I can go on that front, lest I damage friendships that I value tremendously.
Well said.
I could guestpost this but for once I’ll check for permission first. No permish no gp.
Probably best not to gp this one. let’s leave it for our clubhouse here. You’re welcome to if you want! But my preference tilts a bit towards no. It’s a bit sensitive, you know?
I do indeed. Clubhouse only it is.
I’m still on team BARpod (Jesse and Katie), if anything they’ve been too nice about people who’ve (posthumously?) justified their cancellations… Lineham is just one of them. Still, compared to Bari Weiss or Libs of TikTok he’s a nobody, even if he is deserving of no defense whatsoever.
Jump in bed with the bad guys and have a little pity party all to yourself…
Not sure Bari Weiss has any lifetime achievement awards, and I’m not sure it’s a badge of honour to side with a couple of podcasters who continued to insist that “misgendering” is analogous to a hate crime until basically yesterday. But yeah, Graham is not a well-known figure to Americans. In much of the rest of the English-speaking world, it’s quite the opposite: Graham Linehan has for decades had entire sections of video stores dedicated to him. Weiss, on the other hand, seems a US-based online media bubble figure above all. Also, I’m not sure why you’d reply to someone who is clearly personal friends with Graham by calling him a “nobody”? Seems at best insensitive, but more like trollish, to be frank.
Also: not to feed the troll too much but “posthumously”? Please don’t imply that my very much alive and breathing friends are dead, metaphorically or otherwise. Graham’s a loving father and son and friend to fellow humans, even if you disagree with some or even all of his political views.
That last line especially. BK does seem to delight in being randomly venomous at times and I wish he wouldn’t.
“retrospectively” was the word I was looking for I think (as a clarification). I’m pretty black pilled on GC world in general these days because of all the fashy apologetics (though I’ll not soon stop misgendering people). Rowling remains fine.
There are sides in this war and there seem to be precious few on the side of Western liberalism but loads and loads of bad guys.
Casual remarks about death regarding celebrities one disagrees with — or writers, or celebrity-writers — bother me greatly.
I remember during lockdown there was a weekly pub trivia night from a local gay bar that had moved over to Zoom while the bars were mandated shut. It became a wildly popular weekly online virtual “pub trivia” meetup, and to many people it was the highlight of their week during lockdown — especially because it was free to participate, and open to all. It was also a vital lifeline to the gay community for me, as I was in the process of becoming ostracized from the real-live “scene” by then because I had voiced disagreement with gender extremism. In this online space, during these Zoom-based trivia parties, I could safely interact with the gay community behind my screen, without drawing too much attention from the bullies who would otherwise have made me unwelcome in the physical bars. I took solace in that.
But the host began interspersing his banter, his schtick, with increasing, and increasingly hostile, remarks about JK Rowling. It got that he couldn’t go half an hour without joking about her violent death or murder — which (he was Scottish, you see) he relished drawling “meurrh-durrh” in that wry Scottish brogue…
I found it terribly upsetting. Not at all amusing. So much so that I couldn’t stand to attend these trivia events anymore. One of my very last lifelines to my gay neighbours and peers was cut off, because of it. In a partcularly difficult and lonely time, no less.
I don’t care how rich or famous Rowling is — that kind of thing’s not on. Actual murderous dictators in political power are perhaps a different story — especially the ones who’ve actually killed people for their own political gain, like, say, Pinochet or Putin or Hitler. I’ll concede that “elevated” language about such people seems justifiable, at least sometimes.
But writers aren’t that. Writers aren’t fascist dictators. Writers aren’t Donald Trump. Writers aren’t even Margaret Thatcher. Writers are mostly just writers.
Don’t joke about writers’ deaths, please! It’s not funny. It’s not edgy. It’s just shitty.
@BK,
Posthumously, retrospectively — pick your poison. One writes him off as dead, the other as irrelevant. Both are graceless, both are trolling, and neither deserves more than this single reply: you’ve said nothing worth anyone’s time.
While I fully agree with you that I’ve said nothing worth anyone’s time, maybe get angry about what I actually did say?
I’ll cop to being venomous; it’s quite sincere, but there’s no trolling. I said that his current behavior (cheering on the people that are making life in the United States miserable) justifies his prior cancellation; it’s quite a bit crueler than anything said on BARpod even if it isn’t snarky. Your friendship seems to be deep and abiding, so you should be quite upset at that statement not an imagined “joke”.
And yes, the Discourse in the US matters a good deal more than anything in any single slice of Europe because the United States is a large, massively strong (but declining) country with economic and military tentacles everywhere. That’s a fact, a quite unfortunate fact, but still a fact.
Writer Irvine Welsh calls out Nicola Sturgeon over the latter’s handling of the trans issue:
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/irvine-welsh-slams-nicola-sturgeon-35765338
BK – “I said that his current behavior (cheering on the people that are making life in the United States miserable) justifies his prior cancellation” – no you didn’t. You didn’t say anything LIKE that. That may have been what you were thinking but it’s certainly not what you said. You gave no explanation or context at all for your hostile remark.
I had a discouraging exchange with a long-time acquaintance this week that kind of floored me, when we were discussing how sex is determined in humans. She claimed that the XX chromosome later changed to XY during development, which underlied her claim that all of us are conceived as female and only later develop as males. Of course she also believes that sex is a spectrum, etc.
Now part of the reason this floored me is that she is a very educated person who copy edited non-fiction for part of her living for years, and of course part of that job is noting errors in the text. So she’s got a critical mind. But when it comes to the subject of transgenderism it’s like her mind won’t engage, even on such a ludicrous claim as the XX gene changing to XY some time after conception!
Anyway, it didn’t end well and now she’s no longer talking to me. Oh, and someone else who was also present now is telling other people I’m a trans and intersex phobe! I’m not surprised by that as her own politics require it, because to her the only possible reason I could be questioning some of the mistaken claims about biology is that I must be a bigot. That’s pretty stupid politics though to insist others must not ever say anything that isn’t deemed supportive of transgender people, even when it’s a matter of fact.
Sex really isn’t a spectrum and sex does matter as a fact of life. So-called “intersex” people aren’t really that – it’s differences/disorders of sexual development that underlie such conditions. Neither of these positions have anything to do with being bigoted against transgender or intersex people. I guess I still hope a few minds could be changed but when it comes to transgender politics that’s not likely, as I’m know many here have also learned. Oh well, I’m thankful for having this blog to post this comment on and I do appreciate what others have to say about their experiences.
@J.A.
I’m so sorry.
Losing friends over “sex spectrum” nonsense is the worst. It’s just devastating and terrible. I share your sorrow on that front.
I, too, am deeply grateful to have B&W here to vent to, and to find a sympathetic ear with Ophelia and the many wonderful commenters and supporters here. It’s a great support network. A life-support network, sometimes!
If it’s of any consolation to you, here’s my rant about being stuck in the same boat:
The “sex is a spectrum” aspect of the trans debate has always been the most absurd one to me, because CLEARLY the kinds of people who are asserting that they’re trans have NOTHING TO DO WITH the kinds of people who have, say, micro-penises or other “intersex”-labelled devopmental genital anomalies related to chromosomal mutations, or atypicalities, or variances or whatever you want to call them. The argument that “sex is a spectrum” doesn’t even begin to address the trans conundrum, and that’s the reason it was conjured in the first place. Ugh, it’s so stupid!
It’s so funny, but it’s so exasperating being a middle-aged gay man in this dispute. Especially one who used to be on the streets, who’s extremely familiar with the seedier parts of society, and who’s unafraid to discuss it. The trans prostitution and the escort websites and the cruising and the leather-and-fetish bars and the dominatrixes and whatnot. I’ve been around it all, forever. It’s just so PREPOSTEROUS, the notion that “trans” has anything to do with anything besides (in men) extreme kink and/or gay shame, and (in women) extreme shame around body and sexuality, and/or aversion to the “male gaze”. It’s all just so unbearably transparent to me.
Back in the ’90s, a fellow-homeless teenage friend was murdered in a stairwell after he started turning tricks in skirts & pantyhose because the money’s better on the “trans” prostitution scene as opposed to the teenage-boy one, and the transvestite he shared a squat with roped him into it. What the fuck does that have to do with chromosomes?! Ask your erstwhile colleagues and friends that! (Sorry, I’m angry! Does it show?)
I once worked at a trans bar, where the anxieties and the problems with the “scene” were clear, but so was the (understandable) fear of judgment from the outside world. I learned a lot. Specifically: it’s a difficult situation they’re in, and the solutions are probably going to be imperfect and un-ideal and pragmatic and stop-gap and short-term, because that’s how we ultimately deal with vulnerable people on society’s fringes, at least until utopia arrives, or something. But none of this — none of “trans” — has anything to do with new frontiers in science or biology. It’s about social dysfunction and mental illness and compassion and boundaries and misfits and how to make them feel less ill-at-ease. And it’s about doing so without ripping women’s rights, gay rights, and free speech principles, to shreds.
Messy stuff, to be fair. But it ain’t Gay Rights 2.0: it’s more complicated, because frankly it’s further from reality. Gays eventually reckoned with their — our — difficult-to-explain, unusual, circumstances. Trans-identifying people, on the other hand, are trying to refashion the rest of the world in their misfit model in a grand, gargantuan, cosmic carnival of avoidance, to avoid any kind of mental reckoning. Frankly, I’m floored it’s gotten this far.
All of this is so clear to anyone who lives or works in the gay village… even though most of them are too protective of their “tribe” to admit what’s plain in front of them. When I was a Village bartender, I had a six-foot-six fetishistic straight man show up at my bar with literal basketballs duct-taped to his massive chest — ersatz mega-sized tits. Boobsketballs. I couldn’t escort him to a seat before he launched into a monologue about how kinky and horny he was. He very quickly started pestering the only lesbian in the room until she left.
That really happened. It’s perhaps an extreme example, because it’s a colourful story to tell, but that kind of thing happens every day nowadays. I’ve got many stories almost as colourful as that one.
Because it’s gotten crazy lately. And none of it has anything to do with XX or XY chromosomes! It’s to do with social trends, social eddies — social media first and foremost. And it’s to do with the messy underbelly of human male sexuality, secondly. That’s a big ball of pent-up energy that society just doesn’t know where to channel. We don’t know how to safely neutralize that bomb. But it’s not going to stop exploding until we do. It’s an unavoidable fact of the human condition. And women’s spaces aren’t the place to put it.
But the current social craze around trans… it’s so bloody obviously a social contagion. The sexuality/kink stuff is just the catalyst at its core. God, when will everyone get a fucking clue! I’ve been out here practically alone, blasting the horn for years. Where the hell’s the Cavalry already?
/End of rant.
High quality rant.
Arty, you’re an interesting guy. We have very similar views of the current gender delusion yet come from polar opposite backgrounds. I got a brief taste of “gay culture” (such as you describe in your comment) around 1985 and decided I wanted no part of it, so I moved to a rural state and happened to stumble into . . . a husband! We’ve been together for forty years now, live openly among (thankfully) accepting neighbors, and prefer the country life over bars and “the streets”. I’ve met two, maybe three “trans” people in my life, and now that I’ve educated myself a little about it (through J. Michael Bailey and internet places such as B&W) I can see that one transwoman is an autogynephile, a brittle, angry older man who got in trouble for impersonating a (female) military officer in public; and the other is an older gay man (6′ 4″) whom I suspect never really came to terms with being gay. He told my husband and me that “no surgeon will touch him” because of a pre-existing heart condition. I feel bad for him. (Side note: He chose a very unfortunate name for his alter ego, Amanda. When you see his plus-six-foot frame coming through the doorway, you want to say, “He’s a man, duh!”) The only other trans person I met was a female student undergoing transition and who appeared convincingly as a teenage boy in my writing class. My view of sex and gender comes from a simple place: To be a gay man, you have to know what a man is, period. You have to recognize you are a man — that “man” is a thing — and that you are attracted to MALE BODIES. Sex is real and powerful. The obverse of that is that never, ever has a female body interested me, because they are different in ways that my innate constitution simply recoils from. Women are real and equal to me, but different, which is paradoxical but true. To be a gay man means to have suffered over the differences between the sexes during adolescence, and I’m simply revolted by the current craze that pretends either the sexes don’t exist or that they are somehow interchangeable.
I hope that at some point, someone can figure out the exact strategy by which the trans Trojan Unicorn was brought into the gates of progressive politics, allowing the tiny number of infiltrators to take over the city. What sequence of psychological buttons were pressed in order to unlock, evoke, and exploit the unwarranted surrender to harmful, impossible bullshit that evixcerated so much of what progressivism had fought for? How exactly did the emotional blackmail and bullying work so well? It would be good to know these things in order to prevent them from ever happening again.
zinger truths at t.
h/t https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2025/08/rock-musician-jack-white-on-donald-trump.html#more
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/music/articles/jack-white-fired-back-white-191021365.html
here are the posts themselves:
https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/508bc35f552ab8f4ac4cecaad2faa980
https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/712e24173d587a853cb54cb75079c7d7
and another one at https://www.instagram.com/p/DNlgdH_px9h/?hl=en&img_index=7
J.A., I’m sorry about your friend. I haven’t had quite that conversation, but I’ve certainly had misinformation quoted as “science”, and I never know how to respond, either.
Re:
She is misconstruing another statement, which is also incorrect, that embryos all start out as female, and proceed along the female developmental path, until “extra hormones” at a certain point veers the male embryos onto the male developmental path. That split in the developmental path, though, is ultimately due to the sex chromosomes; the embryos don’t suddenly pick up sex chromosomes. (It’s also unreasonable to call the first part “the female path”; better to call it “the undifferentiated path”.)
I think this video does a pretty good job of refuting the myth.
https://youtu.be/fz7NQDfa4eU?si=Chv9_RO9DlgbcB_5
The (Other) Thing That Never Happens Happened Again.
From the “Boston Globe” :
https://archive.is/OvYrM
Those poor women. Did they seriously think that they could have gained a functioning penis from such procedures?
To clarify: there were other lawsuits against “gender-reassignment” surgery providers annouced in 2023:
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/briefs/nebraska-woman-files-lawsuit-against-unmc-for-double-mastectomy-she-received-at-16/
https://archive.is/ZgYGd
@Mike B
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s heartwarming to hear it. Towards the end of your comment, you’ve gotten at a really good point — that among us men, the distinction between the sexes is very much rooted in sexual reactions. We males strongly react differently to male versus female stimuli, and it causes us great distress when the wrong stimuli are applied at the wrong times — i.e., a straight guy confronted with a sexual proposition from a fellow male, or a gay guy being coerced to have sex with a female. We males deeply know the difference in a visceral, sometimes instinctual-alarm-inducing way, and it emerges particularly when we’re discussing sexuality.
That’s why, among us men, discussion around the transgender mess almost always moves very quickly towards discussion around sex and sexuality.
But among women, it’s clearly different.
I had my “a-ha” moment about this when I was in a room full of transmen — females — who were trying to explain to me their motives for transitioning, and they didn’t say anything about sex. At first, I actually thought this was a sign that their motives were maybe so much about sex they were just avoiding talking about it. (Some fetishistic trans-identifying males do that: they try to conceal the erotic foundation of their whole sex-roleplay thing…)
But the narrative became clear, and reinforced through its sheer consistency across different women who didn’t know each other: their deep, visceral distinction between males and females was centred on sociality rather than sexuality. Their discomfort with their femaleness and their comfort in “presenting” as male was always rooted in positioning themselves on the social landscape in a place they were more comfortable in. Whereas, with trans-identifying males, it was entirely about positioning themselves on the sexual landscape where they’d rather be.
I’d been around transwomen — gay males, as well as a few of the straight AGP variety — plenty. And their “gender journeys” had everything to do with how they’d centred sex in their lives, and how they were managing their sexual desires and incorporating them into their whole selves.
The transmen were entirely different, and their struggles focused on their social identities and social appearance.
Male sexuality and female sociality seem to mirror each other in interesting ways…
There’s a growing and by now seemingly insurmountable pile of evidence that women and men process the fact of human sexual dimorphism on different instinctual registers. We both “experience” it viscerally — but differently. Biological sex is undoubtedly real and material and important to both of us, but in our everyday lives, that difference manifests differently whether you’re a male or a female person experiencing it.
This is fundamental to the trans debate, because there’s a lot of unproductive cross-talk in it. The GC movement demographically has more females than males — nothing wrong with that! But it needs to engage and persuade everyone to its side, so the simple math says it’s a good idea to bring more males onside in order to accomplish its goals.
The focus on the social aspects of the sex binary, and the passive avoidance of the sexual aspects, are perhaps a hindrance, if the movement is trying to reach more men. I know that a lot of frank talk of male sexuality is generally out of women’s comfort zones. But… exactly.
I speak frankly and consistently about the sexual aspect of it, because that aspect is a particularly male perspective, and it reaches males in a deep way — in a different way than the social aspects do.
YNNB:
Well, I think I have a decent enough guess as to why the concept of gender identity became popular. I don’t have a good account of how it first entered the public mind, nor do I know exactly by which means it spread (obviously the Internet played a role), but I do think the following helps to explain why people are willing to believe something so stupid.
In recent times, we’ve become less and less comfortable with how sexist our society is. Regardless, all that sexism has remained a huge part of our way of life. It gets ingrained in us from birth. On some level we’ve ended up disliking it, but we really can’t bear to part with it. We’d have to expend a huge deal of effort just to head into scary uncharted territory. And then there’s the fact that this would all be very inconvenient for institutions that hold a lot of power over us.
So, how do we reconcile the two? How do we put an end to the sexist nonsense that is our gender system while also not putting an end to it because it’s not really nonsense and it’s such a big part of our social fabric and we really want to keep thinking like that?
I believe a lot of people take to gender identity because of this dissonance. It’s a way to keep thinking about people in a gendered manner without feeling sexist. In fact, it legitimizes and encourages gendered thinking, by which I am referring to our socially-constructed notions of femininity and masculinity and the like. So long as we don’t actually tie them to sex, we aren’t required to come to grips with the fact they’re nonsense. We can pretend they’re intrinsic to the human mind all we want. We were starting to slip, and now we have this great foothold. (Obviously enough, gender identity isn’t truly detached from sex – most people are naturally “cisgender,” right? And it’s mostly focused on clothes and hair and things like that; we don’t usually concern ourselves with other, more blatantly problematic aspects of our gender system. Lucky us! The oppression of adult human females will continue, and in fact we’ll be addressing it even less than before.)
I think this explains why so much of gender identityism is about redefining stuff so it no longer refers to sex, and then refusing to acknowledge that it ever did. Of course ‘woman’ was always a gender identity. If we claimed otherwise, we’d have to acknowledge there was a change at some point. If we acknowledged there was a change, we’d have to re-think our use of the word accordingly. We’d have to ask ourselves whether and how it pertains to the various contexts in which it occurs, which include eyelash extensions and washroom use. And then we’d wonder why those things are related. We’d be getting dangerously close to actually understanding the relationship between sex and gender, and the whole point of gender identity is to avoid this in the most strained and idiotic way imaginable.
It seems reasonable to guess the concept of gender identity gradually became vaguer because that was less embarrassing, and people were more likely to embrace it if it didn’t just sound like a bunch of sexist stereotypes. At this point, definitions tend to be devoid of useful content (“Gender identity is the gender a person identifies with” and the like). I don’t believe anyone actually understands it that way; rather, I think individuals fill in the gaps with stereotypes, but aren’t willing to say so.
There are some drawbacks to all this, obviously – it turns out blindingly replacing sex with ill-defined feelings doesn’t always work out great. This is going to sound crazy, but sometimes sex actually matters. Who’d a thought?
But more importantly, who cares? Like, maybe, what, three random lesbians somewhere in the UK? We’ll just say they’re conservatives and leave it at that. It’s obvious they’re conservatives. After all, they’re angry at us, and conservatives are angry at us, so there you have it. There are a lot of conservatives who’re really mad at us, actually. That’s how we know we’re doing something right.
Another brick in the wall:
Discovered while researching the “smallpox blankets” claim. From the American Society for Microbiology of all places.
https://asm.org/articles/2023/november/investigating-the-smallpox-blanket-controversy
@Artymorty #262 Thanks for very insightful helpful comment about social landscape positioning or sexual landscape positioning
This makes a lot of sense to me as a good generalization of motivation to identify/transition as the other se, which would then also need to be–forgive me–intersected with age/generation, younger boys and girls might have very different motivations than older men and women, due to social media and cultural changes. Thanks!
Argh!
Wes, thanks for pointing out that younger boys and girls may have different motivations than older men and women. As a dad, I have seen my kids’ motivations and socialization change greatly as they grow up. When a ten year-old girl says she’s a lesbian, it really means a different thing than when a twenty year-old woman says it. Part of what makes the child gender nonsense so terrible is that they’re taking the word of the ten year-old as binding on the twenty year-old, and trying to lock it in medically. It’s forcing immaturity on young adults, literally and figuratively, as their bodies are prevented from changing by puberty blockers, and their minds are prevented from growing by ideological consolidation.
Papito, this is a terrifically illuminating statement:
Wish I had thought of it . . . but then I sort of did as I recognized its pertinence immediately
This is terrible. There has been another school shooting in the US, this time in Minneapolis.
Two children are dead:
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5519268/minneapolis-school-shooting-annunciation-church-minnesota
It seems the Minneapolis shooter was a transgender woman who’d scrawled an anti-Semitic slogan on a smoke grenade:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/minnesota-school-shooting-suspect-robin-westman/story?id=125029777
https://www.timesofisrael.com/videos-linked-to-minneapolis-shooting-suspect-show-antisemitic-anti-israel-messages/
It’s interesting that the person quoted at the end of the article states that we shouldn’t use this to “demonize” the trans community, then says it needs to be about the children who died, not the trans ‘woman’ who shot them.
I am astonished. Suddenly something is NOT about trans? Wow.
Sorry if I seem flippant in the face of tragedy. I am not flippant. I am angry. I imagine we will now be hearing about ‘no true Scotsman’ or this will be taken as a sign that trans individuals who don’t get what they want will kill themselves. (Though I don’t see any sign of him not getting what he wanted; his birth certificate apparently was changed to pretend he was born female.)
I’ve seen comments that most shootings are committed by “cisgender men”, shootings by “trans people” are very rare, most “trans people” are non-violent, and “trans people” are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence. This ignores the fact that most people are non-violent, and most people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence, so it’s not really saying much. The same is true of men, that most men are non-violent, but the vast majority of violence is committed by men, so it reasonable to focus on men in this regard. More to the point, trans-identified men are at least as likely to be violent as are other men; it’s only the fact that there are relatively few trans-identified men that makes those occurrences rare.
No, we shouldn’t use this to demonize the “trans community”, but we should recognize this as yet another instance of a violent man, and not allow his claim of womanhood to obscure that fact. Nor should his story (posthumously in this case, obviously) be given any sort of lenient treatment because of “trans” claims; entirely too many instances exist of trans-identified individuals being given reduced or eliminated sentences because of “trans” status.
The Minneapolis shooter was someone who was likely mentally ill, who also happened to be transgender. The cynical part of me wants to say that the transition didn’t help their mental health. I’m sure some TRAs will say the kill was “no true trans” rather than admit that the change in gender didn’t resolve the killer’s obvious mental health problem. Why? Because they don’t want to hear that affirmation isn’t always the right answer.
J.A., I suspect affirmation is never the right answer. It’s just allowing the delusion to continue unchecked, a delusion which might be able to be dealt with using correct psychiatric procedures instead of saying, oh, yes, of course, you are a woman, you sweet little thing you.
I can’t think of any other mental illness where the doctor affirms the delusion. When I had anorexia, my doctor certainly didn’t go around telling me, oh, yes, of course, you’re fat. You are the fattest person I’ve ever seen. That would be ridiculous, and would almost certainly be considered malpractice. But tell a man they are a man? Oh, no, we musn’t do that.
Go a step further and point out that not only was the delusion allowed to continue unchecked, but trans activism made it impossible for this kid to get the kind of mental help he actually needed. Almost no real therapist will even treat a kid with gender delusion – they just kick him over to the gender clinic. It’s not worth the liability to them. If the kid accused the therapist of doing a “conversion therapy” on them they could lose their career. Put the blame on not just this one trans person but on all trans activists, who help to create unchecked madness by making therapy illegal. This is an inevitable consequence of the laws they wrote and passed.
Matt Osborne has a really good column today about the Minnesota shooter. Gender ideology is front and center in this case.
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/terrible-without-a-cause
If anyone’s interested, some poignant and well thought out resignation letters by CDC staff. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Houry at Officer Rose’s memorial service, she’s a very competent and caring professional.
Resignation letters.
I’m wondering why, for the first time in years, today there is absolutely nothing about Trump in breaking news. Zilch. No insane social media posts even.
Maybe he’s sleeping in…
Not true where I am. I just clicked on Google News and he’s at the top (Reuters, CNBC, The Guardian) because tariffs.
Thanks, Ophelia. Perhaps he just had a rare night off social media. Usually I have to plough through pages of stuff about him to find any other news.
Seems like that is what happened.
Trump Disappears for Days, Returns With Deranged Truth Post
The semester begins in two days, and I’m dreading roll. What will I do when a student announces, “My pronouns are they/them,” or another who clearly presents as male requires “she/her”?
This is probably ancient news to most here, but it has suddenly dawned on me that the pronoun has become a cudgel: As soon as the declaration is made, the gauntlet is dropped. One either acquiesces and uses the false pronouns, or one demurs and risks being branded “phobe”. One’s speech is now used for control.
What if I simply make a little mark on the list, “NP,” meaning “no pronouns” are to be used for this particular student? It means being circumspect and refusing to play their/her/his goddamn game. Either way, as soon as a student makes the declaration, the instructor is put on the back foot.
Maddening. There’s simply no such thing as “my” pronouns. We don’t own the words that are used to refer to us. We get to reject epithets, but we don’t get to reject ordinary grammar.
Oh, dear. The new left-wing UK party run by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, “Your Party”, has already suffered a split because of That Issue.
https://archive.is/x2yMO
It sounds like Hussain was trying to find a compromise for the issue of trans-identified males demanding entrance into female spaces.
Hussain’s proposals havn’t been well received among the “bien-pensants”.
Activist Lee Hurley has retweeted a trans activist calling for Hussain to be expelled from the new party.
https://bsky.app/profile/hleehurley.com/post/3lxrodhcxu72r
The woman-beating male boxer, Imane Khelif, still wants to compete in this month’s World Championships without having to take the mandatory sex test as per World Boxing rules. He has made an appeal to the court of arbitration for sport but, because it won’t be heard in time for the competition he requested that they make World Boxing temporarily suspend sex testing until the hearing. That request was denied.
The Guardian article has half a thumb on the scales in its report; the piece is written as though it is only Khelif who has to be tested, despite the rule requiring it for all competitors, but it also only refers to Khelif either by name or as ‘the boxer’. The only reference to him being a woman is in a direct quote from Khelif. I suspect that Guardian writers sees which way the wind is blowing, and it’s an ill wind for Khelif. Personally, I think that the cheating little shit will never enter the ring again because there is no chance of him taking the test.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/sep/01/imane-khelif-appeals-cas-boxing
That’s what I think too also.
(Thinking about what Mike B wrote, although this is hardly focused enough to qualify as a reply.)
I can understand people wanting to detach themselves from sexed dynamics. Without ignoring the reality of sex, nor failing to understand how it impacts our lives, maybe we needn’t constantly set males and females apart in speech. In many contexts I’d be more than happy to avoid making reference to one’s sex through grammatical gender. The issue is, I am not at all willing to adjust my speech based on one’s gender gender identity, since (presumably like everyone else here) I think gender identities are BS.
At this point, their widespread use to convey magical gender souls has made third-person pronouns feel hopelessly tainted to me. I don’t want to call a male “him” if it’s going to be understood as a validation of his gender identity. One thing that occured to me would be to take “using pronouns” more literally. “Hi everyone, I’ll be using splog/splag pronouns from now on. That means I’ll use them whenever I’m referring to people in the third person, regardless of whom I’m speaking about. Oh, and the possessive form is splars.” That way, you can’t be accused of respecting cis people’s gender identities but not trans people’s. (Obviously, I’m not at all convinced this would go over well.)
Mosnae #288
It’s too bad that none of the suggested third person singular pronouns for persons of unknow sex, that were suggested a few decades ago caught on.
Mike, do you commonly use pronouns to refer to your students? Do you talk about one student to another? Or do you more commonly call on students directly?
Isn’t a good solution for the gender problem the use of last names?
For people who are the sex they pretend to be, use the last name and honorific, e.g. Mr. Williams or Ms. Smith.
For those who can’t accept being referred to by their sex, just use drop the honorific, e.g. Johnson.
You can’t be required to do otherwise – see Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University.
Papito, that sounds like a good solution, but in ’21st century pedagogy’ (which is mostly bullshit), we are expected to be ‘accessible’. One of my supervisors actually called me out for insisting my students use my last name and honorific, though the students didn’t complain. Since they were routinely calling the men who taught them ‘Mr’, and wouldn’t call them by their first name even if they were told they should, it seemed to be disrespect to use my first name, especially after I told them they shouldn’t. First names are a form of infantilizing. Still, I was expected to refer to my students by first name (since we have a lot of Polish people locally, that could be a relief at times). I refused to accept papers with first names only, but for some reason never got in trouble for that.
The idea of coddling the student has gone so far into the schools that I’m not sure how to pull it back out without unraveling the whole system. But it does make it difficult, especially since my roll never showed the student’s new name. It always reflected their ‘deadname’ – in other words, their birth name, and for most, still their legal name. It could be hard to remember that Emma now wants to be called Caleb and Joe wants to be called Heather when the other name is on my attendance form!
My sympathy, Mike B. I’ve been there. And yes, there are times when you refer to students by pronouns, because you are arranging groups or something, and telling someone to join ‘him’ or ‘her’. Or for me, I used scenarios to work through topics, and would usually use the students as the ones in the scenario. I got around that by never using any pronoun for a trans student; they were not in the scenario, because they insisted on specialized pronouns.
@Papito,
It’s fairly common when you’re in a group of three or more to refer to one of the group in the third person. As an example, imagine a classroom discussion, where Johnson (a man who insists that others use female pronouns when referring to him in the third person) has just expressed an opinion. The teacher, in an attempt to stimulate some conversation, may then turn to Smith and say, “Do you agree with what [3rd person sg. pronoun] says?” Of course the teacher could just say “Johnson”, but it gets awkward if the question becomes more complex: “Do you agree with Johnson when Johnson says X?”
From a linguistics perspective, this is one of my main objections to the whole pronoun business. Pronouns (like most grammatical morphemes) are meant to be semantically and cognitively light, and generally are not very salient phonetically or semantically (which is why they often get reduced or in some languages elided completely). Linguistic communication is cognitively demanding; using pronouns when everyone understands who or what the referent is and, in the case of humans when speaking English, what sex the referent is, lightens the load for both the speaker and the listeners; insisting on pronouns that don’t match the referent’s sex, either in gender or in number (i.e., “they”), forces both sides of the conversation to put effort into producing and understanding what’s normally an effortless part of the discourse, and can impede communication. It’s like sleeping on a lumpy mattress–suddenly you’re noticing and being bothered by things that are supposed to fly under the radar, and you’re not getting a good night’s sleep.
Sometimes people will say it doesn’t really matter; after all, most English speakers use the same pronoun for second person singular and plural without any problems. Except of course that causes all kinds of problems, which are aggravated by the fact that we often use “you” as a generic pronoun as well. We’ve developed ways to get around the ambiguity (youse, y’all, yinz, etc.; or “Not you personally but you generically”), but the ambiguity is there, and it can defeat the purpose of the pronoun by forcing us to put our communicative and cognitive resources into clearing it up.
The pronoun business is a trap, one that we’re all bound to fall into at some point, and when we do, we’ll be forced to either grovel in apology or sew the proverbial “T” onto our garments.
[…] a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany […]
And it’s also nearly impossible to not use pronouns. We are so accustomed, so habituated, we don’t even notice them most of the time. They are a natural part of our speech, learned from our earliest years. It’s like contractions…just try to leave them behind. It can be done, but the effort might not be worth it.
What the heck? Aseem Malhotra, an associate of RFK Jr., has claimed at Nigel Farage’s Reform Party conference, that COVID Vaccines contributed to cancer in the British Royal Family.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/06/doctor-aseem-malhotra-reform-conference-speech-royal-family-cancer-covid-vaccine?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb
https://news.sky.com/story/claims-at-reform-conference-that-vaccines-gave-royals-cancer-extremism-says-streeting-13426168
This is a false statement, and a hideously irresponsible one.
Sigh…another celeb has defended The Cult. UK actress Maxine Peake compared J. K. Rowling to reactionaries Mary Whitehouse and Nigel Farage in this BBC interview:
https://x.com/BettsCaro/status/1965129199351464076#m
Presumably Peake would also have compared Rowling to Frederick Banbury and Enoch Powell if she had more time.
Who??? Never heard of her.
Should have added that Peake isn’t well-known in the US – she mainly does European productions.
Not the biggest of deals, but throwing this out there because it’s frustrating and I feel I can’t speak out publically and keep my job without enduring reprimands (my union’s shown themselves to not be on the side of women in the face of men’s demands that imagination trumps reality)…
Ugh… the CBC has been 100% captured too, it seems… they’ve been hosting feel-good stories about trans artists etc. for some time now, clearly biased in favour of the narrative that trans peepull are the Most Uppressed Peepull Ehvah, but now they’re directly contributing to the narrative that JK Rowling is Eeeevil:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-harry-potter-park-board-1.7628680
So far they’ve only spoken with men about the issue, of course *eyeroll* Now yes, there are other issues with what the Vancouver Park Board is currently doing, but the vilification of a woman working “against the trans community” at worst and “for one side of the debate over transgender rights and issues” at best, rather than describing her working to advocate for women’s rights specifically is… well, not surprising sadly, but disappointing to say the least :-/
Oof, that’s some really dumb bad writing, too. What a surprise.
Way to give the Tories more ammo to defund the CBC and axe your jobs. Slow clap.
Charlie Kirk’s been shot. Official reports are that he’s in critical condition, though I’ve seen reports that go further.
No sympathy for him, but I’m afraid this will not end well.
And he’s dead.
Agree or disagree with him on any given position, Charlie didn’t deserve to be murdered while executing the most fundamental of American rights.
CNN saying Charlie Kirk is now deceased.
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-09-10-25
Killing him was wrong. I never liked the man or his politics, but as What a Maroon said, this will not end well.
I just found this on Matthew Yglesias ‘ X feed. Some vicious morons (including Gretchen Felker-Martin) are celebrating this act of violence.
https://xcancel.com/mattyglesias/status/1965867479072465023#m
This is just going to make an already bad situation even worse.
Link doesn’t work.
Here’s the link:
https://x.com/jasnotron/status/1965868901411205628#m
And another one:
https://x.com/BDSixsmith/status/1965885784810205314#m
Today was 9/11.
Did anyone notice?
I did. Read about a guy on the plane that the passengers forced to crash in a field instead of a DC target. Didn’t share it because everything is maudlin enough at the moment.
There was a lot of news about it in my news feed; I can’t vouch for anyone else’s. There is indeed too damn much going on, though.
Today, 9/11, was the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which I refuse to refer to as “9/11”. (Just like “July 4th” is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, not the anniversary of “July 4th”.)
Several people I know online were reminiscing about where they were when the terrorists started the attack on 11/09/2001. Part of the reason why I never think about it until I see mentions in my Facebook feed is the ‘9/11’ nickname for the horror – outside the USA, it has no connection with the date or anything else, so is meaningless. I was driving across Southern England when the first news reports came over the radio, on my way to visit my first grandchild who had been born a week before. I remember his birthday every year, but the date on my calendars (11/09) doesn’t trigger the same instant memory of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I wonder how many people outside the USA instead get the memories triggered when the nickname figures appear in November?
“9/11” is not really a nickname, it’s more like an abbreviation. I know we’re very wicked for saying month/day instead of day/month but it’s too late to fix it now.
“911” is also, ironically, the emergency phone number used in the United States and Canada to call for police/fire/ambulance assistance.
Thank you both for the responses. I used the word ‘nickname’ solely because I couldn’t think of any other description of the term; I’m not good at thinking at the moment, and my wider vocabulary seems to have gone off on holiday, taking with it my ability to speak without stammering.
In better news, Earth might not be the only planet in our solar system which has ever harboured life:
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-says-mars-rover-discovered-potential-biosignature-last-year/
Ophelia’s post @309 brought to my mind the Leslie Fish song about that flight: “Flight 93”.
At work, we had our monthly town hall meeting yesterday (11Sep2025 in work document format). Our CEO, who runs the meetings, showed a video from YouTube. It was composed of video clips from a memorial service for someone who had died during the terrorist attack. It was a few minutes long, not too maudlin, not over-the-top with patriotic stuff.
Oh, sorry, tigger. Nickname is a perfectly cromulent word for it.
This is perhaps a little inside-baseball, maybe too specific for everyone’s interests, but to my mind it’s a very happy anecdote, so I’d like to share it.
It’s about ChatGPT. We all know how biased the AI language models are against “gender critical” views. I use GPT every day as a writing aid — mostly as a kind of super-charged thesaurus — but I avoid plugging anything too political into it, for fear that it will red-flag me for “wrong” views.
But today I ventured into a deep conversation with it about the gender mess. And I’m gobsmacked how sympathetic and insightful its responses were! I’m in awe at the depth of the “gender critical” perspective on display.
The secret sauce that drew all this “gender critical” opinionating out of the machine was that I prompted it to look at the “culture war” through a strict behavioural-science lens. Strip all the emotions and biases out, and let’s talk about human instinctual motivations — limbic system versus neocortex, in a great ideological battle inside our own minds. (That’s been my hobby-horse for the last several months, and I’ve posted about it here at B&W at length, multiple times.)
From a prompt more-or-less along those lines, I was able to get GPT to go on at length about how full of shit the gender movement is. That it’s rooted in instinctual panic — just-so folk tales that act as cover stories for sexual paraphilias that don’t map easily onto current cultural norms; homophobic fears about nonconforming children; tribal insecurities; the disgust instinct around sexuality and the panic it can create; the panic that is also created around protecting children, etc., etc.
I was surprised and delighted by how much insight I was able to coax out of the machine. Here are some highlights. Remember: the following quotes all come from the AI. They’re so good, I can’t help but quote them at length!
Enjoy!
More…
How “the raw limbic phenomenon” of AGP maps onto all of this:
(Those are its words to describe AGP. Wow!)
What about ROGD?
What about feminism?
(Note: I never said the words “cover story” in my prompts to the AI, though by coincidence I’ve described the trans narrative as exactly that in my Substack essays. I’m very impressed that ChatGPT all on its own decided to describe the “wrong body” narrative in those words.)
Sorry for the very long quotes, but isn’t that just breathtakingly GOOD?
I have some hope for humanity (and, erm, post-humanity) yet!
But wait! It continues!
(Oh gosh, I’m really pushing it with my overlong comments here, but this addendum from ChatGPT is JUST SO GOOD! It’s literally PRESCRIBING A SOLUTION TO THE GENDER MESS!)
For once, tonight I’m very very impressed with ChatGPT. Three cheers for the robot overlords! (Just this once.)
Ok, ok one more, because it’s so good!!
(All bolds and italics in that excerpt are the AI’s, not mine. Whoah, right?!)
Eat your heart out, PZ Myers!
That’s some eloquent ChatGPT. She said nervously.
Wow Arty, you’ve bypassed the AI’s own limbic short-circuit! Way meta or what? It’s like you’ve carefully tiptoed through the minefield and alarm system of ChatAGP, picked the locks, and found ChatGPT, which, it turns out, has been reading B&W all along*. Well done! This is a much more subtle and challenging version of Kirk’s ability to talk computers into self destructing. No Red Shirt sacrifice required. You just have to know how to ask. It’s like those transactivists who happily retweeted Rowling’s “Dress how you like” post when it appeared under the name Robert Galbraith.
*Meaning that I don’t think there’s anything in what you got it to “admit” that we haven’t been saying all along, but in a much more concise form. I don’t think any of us here have hit on all of these points at once, but as a collective, I think we’ve covered them all.
He said nervously.
I don’t think it’s saying anything necessarily new, I just think it’s novel and exciting that it says anything accurate on the topic at all, given how taboo it is to talk about it in the tech world. I think it did a very good job taking the issue apart. Now, if only it would start telling people this stuff on its own, correcting them when they try to claim that “trans kids” exist, for example. Wouldn’t that be nice…
It’s important to note that computers don’t read the words we can see on our screens; those words are the result of a programme converting key strokes into code which the screen turns into images by lighting pixels. Similarly, the user’s device doesn’t send words to search engines; it sends strings of code.
Cat I Farted is just a jumped-up search engine, but with the massive failing that it doesn’t cite its sources – thus it plagiarises human writing.
Like all search engines, basically it compares the string of code the user’s device sends it with strings of code it can find all over the internet, and sends back strings of code which usually follow the input string. The user’s device then converts those strings of code into different colours of pixels on our screens, which we can read as words. Ordinary search engines, but not LLMs, send links to sites where they found the code. The results all search engines return depend heavily on the input string, which is why it is important for the user to consider carefully the way he or she words the request.
Cat I Farted combines the code it finds to produce a reply according to the language rules written into its programming, not only plagiarising but also making it impossible for the user to find the original source(s), some of which might well be other LLMs.
Thus one user will find themselves reading text which has been stolen from GC sources, whilst another will be reading text stolen from GI sources. The LLM isn’t doing anything more complicated than sorting LEGO bricks according to pre-programmed rules.
“I was able to get chat, jai pete to return an answer I found satisfying based on my careful construction of the request.”
Is that what you’re saying, tigger? I ask because I know jack about this. The only time I’ve ever used AI is inadvertently when I use goo-goo search.
I think you’re mostly right, but I think it’s a bit more than “stolen text”. I think it’s more than sorting Lego, but not as complex as actual critical reasononing. LLMs like GPT-5 use a complex algorithm to construct sentences, bit by bit, assembling little chunks of words (“tokens”) and then ranking, sorting, and assembling them, nudged along by an “alignment layer” — a set of “biases” designed to help it output what the user wants from it. That “alignment” doesn’t include a real-time assessment of the individual prompter’s biases — e.g., it’s not thinking, this user seems to be gender-critical, so I’ll feed her a gender-critical response to match her biases. It’s far more complex than that — but it certainly has built-in biases. (Call the alignment layer the LLM’s programmed “limbic instinct” while the token ranking algorithm is its “cortex”.)
That’s not how actual human critical reasoning works, of course. We’re independent agents who can assess, reason, and “meta-reason” — second-guess ourselves, or recursively reason about their own reasoning processes to hone them. But with LLMs, if the sentence-assembly algorithm is complex enough that its “token” rankings can handle multi-step argument patterns and chains of reasoning (GPT-5 can do this exceptionally well, especiall when explicitly asked to think hard about something), and if it has a big enough dataset to suss out good versus bad reasoning examples — well-received versus ill-received chains of argument — then the practical result is a convergence: it ends up very closely resembling human reasoning. The output can even demonstrate “high novelty” — unique ideas that didn’t appear in the input data, but that look like they were “reasoned”, simply because the LLM can tell that it’s hit upon something favourable against its algorithmic objectives.
LLMs can now solve unique logic puzzles that don’t appear in their datasets; they can handle basic reasoning and interpreting requests — they can even behave like “robust reasoning” agents when prompted correctly. Amazingly, this all comes out of their language-prediction paradigm. They still can’t handle extreme reasoning challenges, like making new discoveries and taking them into account, and they’re unsafe for “high-stakes” decisions like medical diagnoses or legal judgments, etc.
Still. Much of my excitement about getting the AI to output a well-reasoned, full-throated, science-based defence of the gender-critical position comes from the fact that it did at least some of that “reasoning” on its own, and it did so even under the oversight of its own “bias mechanism”.
That makes me a very happy camper, indeed.
I’m glad you are enjoying it, Arty, but I think that I’m too old and cynical to get excited by the fact that linking more computers together enables faster response times because they are able to do more operations in a given time. That still doesn’t make them intelligent, and I’m still furious at the excessive resource draining by these behemoths.
Plus, if course, there’s the increasing evidence that relying on computers to generate text for users is making those users less capable of thinking up original text for themselves.
Oh, I’m not saying I like the AI revolution. Far from it. Already, young people have abandoned (for example) learning how to play guitar, once Apple laptops put the ability to express themselves musically at their fingertips. With AI, no one will bother to learn any skills at all. That is, if we contine to allow these massive resource drains to operate. The thing about the “AI revolution” is that, like much of the Cloud-based advanced Internet infrastructure of the times, it requires global economic and political stability in order to operate. Small businesses can only benefit from AI if they can access a stable high-speed network to it, and if it can be sustained at the other end of that connection. Same with, say Netflix or Spotify, or YouTube, or Facebook, but even more so. I don’t think we’re headed for an era of global political and economic stability, and I think that’s a factor that will dampen AI’s progress mightily…
Not that I have a problem with that. I’m no transhumanist. I’m a regular old humanist, haha!
I think that I am particularly annoyed with the infiltration of so-called ‘AI’ into programmes on my phone without my permission and without giving me the ability to delete it. I try not to use it, but I suddenly discovered a couple of days ago that the camera part of my phone has started generating fake images in addition to the photo I think that I have taken. That’s infuriating. It also replaced my preferred search engine (Panda) with Google.
I’m sorely tempted, for the first time in thirty five years, to get rid of my mobile phone. Unfortunately, it’s my only means of contact with the outside world much of the time. Grrrr.
¡Viva México!
This is awful. Two students in Denver were seriously injured by a school shooter who expressed Neo-Nazi views:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/colorado-school-shooting-suspect-expressed-neo-nazi-views-says-adl/
Funny how *this* story isn’t all over the US media.
The start of our path to the Eloi.
Arty, I enjoyed reading the text you prodded out of the LLM, and I usually just skip over such things. I hadn’t thought so much about this idea of “limbic framing.” To me, these words provide a great simulacrum of insight. Maybe you could rewrite and reframe them as a cohesive essay.
Thanks Papito!
I take it by simulacrum you meant something along the lines of “specimen” or “snapshot” or “synthesis”… in which case, compliment accepted. :)
Arty, not really. I think it’s a category error to classify anything coming out of an LLM as “insight.” I’m impressed by how you prodded the machine to spit out words that resemble insights. You have supplied your insights to the machine, and the machine has strung more words about them, perhaps helping you more fully consider them. So the LLM’s output provides a simulacrum of insight, or crystallizes a lot of appropriate speech around the grain of your insights. But in that dyad, the only possible source of insight is you.
Is “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe” bunch quietly shifting away from Trans Ideology?
In the 2025/09/13 episode they were discussing the claim that taking Tylenol during pregnancy is a risk factor for autism in the child (it isn’t), and they consistently said ‘pregnant women’ rather than the Trans Ideology term ‘pregnant person’.
Innnteresting.
@Papito,
But I didn’t supply my insights to the machine. I gave it a couple very simple prompts, and it did the rest itself. So no, it wasn’t just parroting back to me what I told it. There seems to be quite a lot of skepticism that AIs are just slightly clever chatbots. They’re not. They’re highly reasoning machines that can literally solve logic problems, program computers, and even concoct entire short films based on inputs of sometimes only a few words. They’re not as “intelligent” as humans yet, but they’re vastly more powerful than, say, a video game NPC circa 1999, which seems to be how they’re described by AI skeptics.
I just can’t resist the temptation to jump into the fray. I must admit, I haven’t gotten around to reading the chatgpt chronicles yet, and I am not at all an AI expert. But from what I have read about it, these AIs are not really reasoning machines. But also, not just “slightly clever” chatbots. They are highly complex pattern matching machines. And they have been trained on so much material, they are much better at it than humans are. But at the same time, it is known that LLMs can hallucinate. Lawyers have been caught using them, when it turns out that the legal briefs they write contain references to non-existent court cases. Needless to say, judges are not amused. And yes, they can solve math problems at the IMO level (International Mathematics Olympiad), yet for some math problems (and programming tasks, too) they have committed extremely elementary logic errors. A properly functioning reasoning machine would not make such mistakes!
My hypothesis: A lot of what we call reasoning really is some sort of pattern matching, and since LLMs have mountains of well reasoned text in its training data, that might explain why they often do reason correctly. After a lifetime of teaching university level mathematics, I can attest that students often seem to apply pattern matching rather than proper reasoning. I probably do it myself sometimes – as we all do, I believe. Reasoning is hard work! And our brains are lazy and will try any shortcut to get to an answer. Back to the LLMs: It really is a mystery why they work as well as they do. But it is also a mystery why we work as well as we do. Humans really aren’t rational beings. We’re capable of rational though, but we apply that skill too rarely.
Sorry to be rambling – it’s just been a few ridiculously busy days around here. Not helped by trying to keep track of the madness unfolding in the US.
No, reasoning isn’t what they do. Pattern matching is what they do, on a massive scale, and they’re excellent at it. Any semblance of reasoning comes from the reasoning that was in their immense feedstock. Thinking that the output of an LLM proves it is itself reasoning is like seeing a face in moon rocks: sure there’s something that looks like a face there, but it’s not really a face.
Asking an LLM to do something that’s entirely new and requires actual reasoning will cause it to fail. It can even confirm that it’s failing, and explain that it’s failing because it is unable to reason.
Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Trump: “Sounds good to me!”
National Park to remove photo of enslaved man’s scars.
And then there’s this.
Fortunately things are never completely removed from the internet. There’s a link in the article to the report on the Wayback Machine, thank
GodMr. Peabody.Look, I just wanted to share a neat little anecdote, to cheer people up. I still think there’s some interestingness and some novelty to what I posted, but it’s cool if others disagree. All I meant to show in sharing it was that our reasoning as “gender critical” people, which is so often treated as taboo and bigoted, especially in tech circles, has enough basis in reason that AIs can accurately articulate our position with great detail, even when minimally prompted. That in itself is neat, if you ask me! Arguments about how smart or stupid AI is, or how good or bad it is, are welcome — it’s such an important topic!
And we 99% agree: me says AI’s not (yet) nearly as “smart” as it’s hyped up to be (but it’s still an astonishing marvel a lot of the time); me says AI’s probably overall a force for bad and not good. So let’s agree on that and leave it be? (I wanted to share a positive anecdote, because I think the world needs more of that. So I don’t want it to sour into conflict.)
Arty, I see no conflict here, only mild disagreement and an interesting exchange of ideas on a difficult and thorny subject. Consider me cheered up already.
From what little I have managed to read from your interactions with the AI, it does indeed look interesting and novel. I look forward to reading it, when I find the time. (I never knew how busy one gets when retired! It makes no sense.) Just remember always to treat the output of the AI with careful discernment. They are capable of packaging really bad reasoning into the most convincingly well formulated language. I think that is a big part of the danger they pose. But like all powerful tools, they must be used with care.
The new edition of “The Spectator” magazine is running a deferential interview with Tristan and Andrew Tate:
https://bsky.app/profile/david-k-clark.bsky.social/post/3lz3xxnrbn22a
Ugh.
Ew.
On the small chance some readers here have not seen it, Kathleen Stock has a really good column up at Unherd:
Toddler logic is poisoning politics:Welcome to the puerility spiral
She talks about the Kirk murder, the SEGM conference, and several other things, and how infantile some of the discourse is.
Thank you, Sackbut, that’s a good article.
It’s Over, It’s Over, It’s Over…
Transwoman and actvists Shon Faye has just written a long article where Faye concedes defeat on the trans issue in the UK:
https://archive.is/iYbzX
No sympathy at all from Faye for the children and teenagers unnecessarily medicalised, the woman who had to give up their private spaces for violent men, the people – from Wes Streeting to Kathleen Stock to Allison Bailey – who suffered harrassment, firing, ostracization, and violence for daring to dissent from the orthodoxy.
Oh, gee, I’m heartbroken.
So now they have to get a real job? And it’s interesting that he notes this is an industry. Because it is…just like every other religion.
Since the Republicans are constantly talking about “consequence culture” now, it’s interesting to see the archetypal liberal commentator Roxane Gay using the term “consequence culture” in a positive sense in 2021:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/03/roxane-gay-says-cancel-culture-does-not-exist/
Hey, just a question for the room. A few years ago, I tried to start a website for a group I’m part of. It never went anywhere, and now I’m trying to set up a website for personal use, but WordPress just takes me to that site. Do you know if there is any way to delete that site, or set up a new one? I’m not finding anything.
Thanks to anyone who knows!
When a renowned female MD (president of American Academy of Family Physicians) on the radio keeps talking about “pregnant people,” especially an MD who emphasizes the importance of “being clear in our message” about health during the Trump years . . . what the F is one to do?
Shout obscenities and break things.
iknklast @ #351
Possible answers here:
Delete a website
and/or here:
Manage multiple sites
Is there a Nobel Prize for pettiness?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c9qne1jr7lwo
Oh my god.
Saw this on Jane Clare Jones’ X Feed.
Right Wing Watch is reporting that “Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon wants the execution of Charlie Kirk’s assassin to be publicly broadcast nationally on television as a deterrent to those “who may be thinking of carrying out wicked deeds against conservatives, against Christians.””
https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1970930574828372459#m
No “Love Your Enemies” stuff here.
This is remarkably revealing:
Do they ever glimpse, for a moment, what their words sound like to the rest of us? Why should there ever have been a “middle-class trans micro-economy?” And what’s the difference between a “micro-economy” and a racket? Where’s my middle-class dad micro-economy where I get paid special to talk about how dad I am? Joking because I really couldn’t be bothered to talk on a panel about dad inclusion, but this is the deal: they managed to convince society at large to divert great gobs of money into their bank accounts just to swan around talking about how special they are. The gig is up? Good. Let there be no next special identity racket.
Or (crazy idea) “trans women” could just go get normal jobs like everybody else and shut up about their personal lives at work.
This is yet another variation on the fallacy of “trans rights.” They were never asking for the same things other people got, they were always asking for special treatment.
NHS Fife tried to stitch up Sandie Peggie by changing the reason for her suspension. The court was having none of it.
I snort-laughed at ‘Bananarama defence’.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/29/court-throws-out-nhs-sandie-peggie-case-bananarama-defence/
Dammit all to Hell and back. Jane Goodall died today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czrp24myrl7o.amp
well oh bugger fuk and alot of expletives
a metric fuktonne of expletives
Oh damn. I’ve been bracing for it for years.
I’ve not been bracing. I just assumed that she was eternal.
I mourn.
Interesting article in the Washington Post looking at longevity differences between sexes across 1000+ animal species. This caught my eye:
Basic biology, but somehow it’s become unprogressive to acknowledge these facts.
WaM, I was just reading an article by Richard Dawkins that discussed that fact…and didn’t use it as justification for trans. In fact, he pointed out that they were still male and female, and that’s why gamete size is a better indicator for sex than chromosomes.
If you’re interested, it is in Free Inquiry, though I don’t know which issue. I haven’t recycled it yet, if you want that information.
Definitely interested!
WaM, it is the October/November 2025 issue, so the current. You should probably be able to find it in bookstores. I don’t know if the online version carries the exact same articles; I always prefer print magazines to digital, so I don’t pay much attention to the online unless someone links to a particular article that I check in on.
This is horrible.
UK Police have now confirmed that two members of the Jewish community died and a suspect was shot dead following a murderous attack outside a synagogue in Manchester.
https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2025-10-02/major-incident-after-stabbing-at-synagogue
The suspect was on bail for alleged rape:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/03/manchester-synagogue-terrorist-was-on-bail-for-alleged
That hate-filled toad Tommy Robinson is now blaming the British Labour Party and women of colour for the Manchester synagogue attack:
https://x.com/narindertweets/status/1974096872613556570#m
I’m no fan of Zarah Sultana’s politics, but blaming Sultana and calling the woman a “dumb hate filled bitch” when she was expressing sympathy for the victims of the synagogue attack is utterly loathsome.
And a slag, too. Hatred of women never goes out of style.
A family member who is a physician told me about the header on the CDC web page:
On the Outbreaks page:
Two words: Trump coin.
https://www.salon.com/2025/10/04/yes-its-real-treasury-confirms-draft-design-for-1-trump-coin/.
Exodus 20:4 (New Catholic Version)
New mass shooting, this one at a casino in Texas.
https://apnews.com/article/deadly-casino-shooting-texas-8a8453ec6ce5d48e2ff36572816afa9c
Doesn’t he have to be dead first? Speaking as a disinterested foreigner, I think I could be persuaded to put up with the misplaced acclaim implied by the immediate introduction of such a coin, so long as he fulfills that part of the eligibility criteria.
iknklast: #374 :
The United States of America is the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country *, and yet it cannot seem to protect its citizens from being regularly killed by criminals with firearms.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisnunn/2025/08/14/the-worlds-50-richest-countries-2025-according-to-financial-experts/
Story making the rounds on social media.
A teenager in New Jersey was recently charged with the first-degree murders of two teenage girls, Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas.
The political aspect? NJ media are reported that the accused, Vincent Battiloro, was a follower of Charlie Kirk and Andrew Tate.
https://nj1015.com/cranford-murder-case-update-2/
That full moon is spectacular.
I had a low horizon view of an enlarged moon at dinner time this evening.
In my browsing around the Internet, today I ran into this headline:
Poor journalistic writing, Exhibit Umpty-ump. You can’t tell if the book bans are by public school librarians, or if the fight against banned books is being led by public school librarians.
A something-and-nothing story from the BBC about the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, ruling that Juice Radio, a Belfast LGBT radio station, is in breach of some of its key commitments of service and is operating more like a general service station rather than one dedicated to the LGBT ‘community’. The station’s head isn’t happy with Ofcom and he spoke to the BBC, displaying the lack of self-awareness typical of El Jibitiqu’s spokespeople.
Welcome to our world, Mr. Pearce. Frustrating, isn’t it!
Ofcom appear to think that while Juice Radio identifies as an LGBT station it isn’t fooling anybody.
Doing the bare minimum to pretend to be something it isn’t? Oh, say it isn’t so!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjyj5vezqo.amp
Hahahaha what a gift, thank you!
You are more than welcome.
Dear Leader shows his caring side again.
All fucking heart, isn’t he!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyld9qqgv8o.amp
My partner’s psychiatrist recently divulged to him that he didn’t think Trump would “make it,” meaning serve out his term. This seems plausible . . .
Mike B, that seems to be a reasonable conclusion, but people have been predicting the demise (political or physical) of Trump for some time now. And it wouldn’t get better, because Vance is a ‘true believer’ in project 2025. And Trump has laid the groundwork for Vance to continue our rapid plunge into fascism.
I guess the reality is, we’re screwed. A Trump dictatorship vs. a Vance dictatorship…looks like the devil and the deep blue sea to me.
I also don’t think Trump is healthy enough to live three more years. But why is your partner’s psychiatrist making that part of the session? I guess that perspective could have therapeutic value…
Vance could never win a popular vote. None of the creeps behind Trump could. That suggests they are betting on there not being another one.
Here is how that would work: Trump strokes out, Vance takes over, the provocations intending to create an excuse to activate the Insurrection Act intensify. The line between patrolling and warfare is crossed in Chicago and LA. By 2027 martial law is declared and the election is “postponed.”
I’m remodeling my kitchen because I believe they will fail.
Pam Bondi announces that the Trump Administration is going to get Antifa “off the streets” and “Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take this same approach with Antifa.”
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1976011625724543318
So does that mean mass arrests of suspected Antifa members then? Trump supporters ratting out anyone they claim is an Antifa member to the authorities?
I was never a sympathizer with Antifa, but this is alarming. The Trump Administration is using the movement as a scapegoat and an means to rivet more autocracy onto the US.
Mostly Cloudy, they already have a template for that. They don’t have to look any further than Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communism crusade. It isn’t hard to whip up a bit of outrage to jumpstart a witch hunt. In fact, the outrage is already there; the media has done the job for them.
Some much needed good news from the Middle East?
“Israel says ceasefire in effect as troops withdraw from parts of Gaza “.
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire-agreement-10-10-25
It seems Joe Biden offered Benjamin Netanyahu the same peace deal that Donald Trump did last year. And Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged Biden’s offer because he wanted Donald Trump to win.
https://x.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1977870037651181925#m
How many Palestinian and Israeli lives could have been saved if Bibi had taken Biden’s offer?
Wasn’t there something similar in 1968 about Vietnam war and Nixon?
How do I know the “No Kings” rallies are making a difference? When Republicans hold fake ones too, like this one in St. Croix County, Wisconsin tomorrow. I’m going to the No Kings rally tomorrow in Prescott, Arizona myself.
Also, what a bunch of hypocrites to boast about their religion given that Trump is a lying, raping, murderous king.
My irony meter just exploded.
These days, you need to upgrade your irony meter to military grade specifications. Capable of withstanding a nuclear blast at half a mile. Even those can be overloaded, so always carry a spare or two.
Just stumbled across this
https://peaked.substack.com/p/the-ground-zero-of-trans-propaganda
Long, but worthwhile.
Has some history and analysis that was new to me.
I’ve only read a bit for now, but whewww Róisín can write.
I don’t feel that I can discuss the issue without knowing a few things outright. What is a good resource for finding stats on:
The number of trans-identified people who are natal males versus those who are natal females
The proportion of MtF that are heterosexual men (autogynephiles) versus homosexual men
The proportion of homosexual MtF that “transition” because of internalized homophobia
The proportion of FtM that are lesbians, and of those who transition because of homophobia
The proportion of FtM that “identify” as gay men versus those that identify as “straight men”
?
Millions of Americans take part in anti-Trump “No Kings” protests:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/18/no-kings-protests-events-states
Some images from the “No Kings” protests:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-kings-protest-photos-cities-demonstrations-rcna238041
Mike B, #398:
Well, it’s impossible to have accurate stats on any of those, because we can’t tell how random people identify and we wouldn’t know a representative sample if we had it. But you already knew that.
That being said, Stats for Gender has numbers which might interest you.
Rates of genital surgeries for females and males
FtM internalized homophobia
Oops, did I enter something wrong, or is my comment awaiting moderation because of the links?
If you post a message with more than two (three?) links, it goes into moderation, yes.
Freed now. I was busy for a minute arguing with the absurd “Rachel Saunders”.
Thanks!
Eesh. I don’t think I could ever muster the patience for that.
Thanks, Mosnae. And, yes, getting such data is fraught.
I don’t have the patience for it but I do have the…irritation, contempt, disdain, something along those lines. For a few rounds; not forever.
From my sister in Maine:
Went to this yesterday. There were about 2000 people there and it looked pretty much like this photo from June’s that I missed.
I had my little Canadian flag along with a little American flag. Progressives are trying to take back what it means to be a patriotic American.
One guy jokingly said to me, “You don’t have to gloat about being Canadian.” And I replied, “Yes, I do”. All in good spirit.
Lots of creative signage. My favorites were:
They’re eating the immigrants! Soylent Green is People! (Remember in the debates when Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbour’s dogs and cats? Not sure if that made news in Canada.)
No Faux King Way!
https://www.boothbayregister.com/article/no-kings-rally-oct-18-wiscasset/263522
Ok if I guest post this? I like reporter on the scene posts.
@Steven, #396
That was a good read, full of true gems.
“The simplest explanation is usually the correct one, Julia. It’s Occam’s pervert. People know, and they are getting tired of pretending they don’t.”
I guess it’s OK to guest post it. Perhaps I should have asked my sister before posting her email.
I sent a reply to her email asking if she had a problem with that.
Gary Larson has reposts of old farside comics here.
https://www.thefarside.com/
Every so often he posts a new one.
Here is one commemorating someone he made a cartoon about a few decades ago.
https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/363/club-gombe
Well it’s not a personal type email though, more a reporter on the scene type. Lemme know!
It was an email to a bunch of relatives and she says it’s fine to post it.
In her email to me. “I don’t have a problem with that. My political beliefs are already out there on fb. So, they’ve already got my number and may come to get me at some point.”
Her name is Liz Lussier.
And she asked me for the link to your blog.
Excellent, thank you.
[…] a comment by Jim Baerg; posted with the permission of his […]
You may have seen this news item (Guardian link) about an Arizona boy who is not being allowed to play on the boys basketball team because his birth certificate says “female”. This appears to be an actual clerical error. The Arizona law apparently specifies that students may only play on teams designated for people of their sex, as listed on their birth certificate.
The law is clearly a response to efforts by boys to claim they are girls and thus gain entry to girls’ spaces and sports teams. The lawmakers nearly always try to make these laws sex-neutral, but the focus is mostly on boys. I wish the lawmakers could see their way clear to phrasing it that way.
The law takes he easy way out by using documentation rather than examination. There are many instances in the US of people modifying birth certificates to get around these kinds of restrictions (or for other reasons, perhaps simply validation). It should not be up to a document that is legal to change based on simple assertion. Maybe such alterations are illegal in Arizona, but people move.
The article says that the school authorities are open to accepting a chromosome test, which they claim is expensive. Hasn’t anybody suggested looking at the kid? I know there is a horrible specter of “genital examination” floated as a disaster and breach of privacy and all that, but can’t a medical professional confirm that this boy is in fact a perfectly normal boy, prior to or instead of a chromosome test?
You know that trans activists are going to say that this sex determination by documentation rule isn’t perfect, so get rid of it, nobody can possibly tell who is a boy and who is a girl anyway. What nonsense. I hope this case can show a clean way to correct a rare clerical error of this nature.
We’ve mentioned the Irish singer Róisín Murphy getting in trouble for disagreeing with The Ideology before:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2023/bbc-is-cool-with-songs-about-slaughtering-women/
Now she’s coming out fighting with a long post defending her gender-critical views:
https://x.com/roisinmurphy/status/1981343085851246847
Cue Pink News pressing the Independent Thought Alarm about Róisín Murphy’s comments:
https://x.com/PinkNews/status/1981350419008758030
I spotted this in the wild this morning on the subject of AI and youth suicide, and after I put my eyes back in my head I’d like to ask them their opinion about therapists affirming gender identities.
FYI, they identify as a He/Him AuDHD/Bipolar person.
Just finished reading The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski, which in fact does a very good job at doing what it says on the tin. From the molecular scale to the global, Czerski takes you through the conditions and processes that makes what she call the “ocean engine” go. Along the way, she shows how temperature, chemistry, life, and culture interconnect and interweave at all levels. It’s very well written, often taking a personal angle that adds an additional level of appreciation and wonder that a more detached, clinical approach would miss. She is clearly in awe and in love with her subject, and that awe and love is infectious. Highly recommended.
Here’s Czerski talking about her work and her book: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+blue+machine+how+the+ocean+works&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA837CA837&oq=the+blue+machine&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBggCEEUYOTIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIKCAUQLhiABBjlBDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIKCAgQABiABBiiBDIKCAkQABiABBiiBNIBCDcwODZqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f99bc062,vid:Ea3PjSskYn4,st:0
Oceanographer Jim Massa says the oceans are dying. Sequestration of ocean heat to depth is failing and oceans are beginning to stratify. Coral reefs dead. Humans to blame.
An older great read on the ocean is Callum Roberts’ The Unnatural History of the Sea. This is more about the damage by overfishing and bottom trawling. And a great example of the phenomenon of shifting baselines. We all tend to think that the natural state of the world is the one we grew up with, but if you look a century or two back, you will see dramatic change.
(Just amazing how my fingers have their own idea about spelling sometimes (too often for comfort in fact (parenthetically speaking)), totally at odds with what my brain knows is right. Oh well.)
(Heh. On the upside, those automatic processes that seem to work independently of the brain save us so much work. Imagine having to stop and think about how to get to the kitchen, the outside, the bus stop, the library, the grocery store…………)
Yeah, going through two recent moves made me appreciate those processes. Trying to figure out where I was at any given time was challenging…but I will note that in both cases, in Maine and in Lincoln, I adjusted faster than I ever did in Hastings. Of course, in Hastings, I never got a mental map of the city in my head. I adjusted just fine to the house, and didn’t have to think about it anymore.
Harald Hanche-Olsen
Re: shifting baselines
Poul Anderson wrote a bunch of stories about the “Time Patrol” which is set up by far future descendants of humanity to avoid time travelers changing things that prevent those descendants from existing.
In at least one of the stories a member of the Time Patrol who was born in the 20th century and is checking prehistory to determine just what happened to need protecting, comments on how impoverished the wildlife of the 20th century is by comparison.
Jim Baerg;
I remember those Poul Anderson stories. I believe the BBC producers who created “Doctor Who” in the early 1960s were familiar with the series.
Fiction Factory? Elon Musk has set up his own AI-controlled rival to Wikipedia, Grokipedia (what an ugly name). Musk says the idea was suggested to him by Trump henchman, David Sacks.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/elon-musk-grokipedia
“Baselines” can be both temporal and cultural, sometimes simultaneously, depending on what time frame is being used, and who is drawing the line.
I recently read a book called Medecine Wheel for the Planet: a Journey Towards Personal and Ecological Healing, written by Dr. Jennifer Grenz. In it she recounts her experience of becoming a scientist looking at the world through the lens/filter of Western Science, while learning of and reclaiming the lifeways of her First Nations heritage, along with its traditions and wisdom. For her the conflict between the two ways of seeing the world was highlighted by her work (or her attempts to work) as a restoration ecologist. She started to wonder what exactly she was attempting to “restore.” Whose vision was she following? What constituted an “invasive” species? The Western view she had been taught, and was putting ino practice professionally and academically, was geared towards “recreating” “pristine” “Edenic” “wilderness” without human presence or connection. She realized that this ran counter to the traditions of her people, who had been shaping the landscape, working with it, and within it, at scales large and small, for centuries, if not millennia.* To “restore” the landscape to a pre-human condition would be to erase that legacy, tradition, and reciprocal relationship.
This approach is based on the assumption that humans are somehow separate from and “above” nature. This assumed superiority allows the unrestrained exploitation of other beings, who are seen as “resources” to do with as we please. They are objects, not subjects, and consequently don’t get a say. The idea that other beings would even have a say, or rights, is completely alien.
The other side of this coin is the view that “wilderness” precludes the presence of humans altogether, and removes swathes of “protected” areas from all human uses, including the hunting, planting, and gathering that First Nations peoples have been practicing for thousands of years. It was another part of removing the Peoples from their Lands, to clear the way for Western, Colonial, Capitalist exploitation that destroyed these long-standing interdependencies in favour of immediate, short term extraction for human benefit alone.
Of course there’s much more to the book than that, but I’d never thought of the unacknowledged basis and biases baked into much of Western conservation biology, and that these values were hidden by “scientific” objectivity. I think things are getting better in this regard, but I didn’t realize they needed to get better. I’ve thought for some time that other beings deserved life and safety for their own sakes, not just because damaging the biosphere hurts us. But I’d never thought as much about the idea of partnership and cooperation with everything else, rather than “management” or “stewardship,” of symbiosis and mutualism rather than an ascetic, detached isolationism.
Space enthusiasts are fond of quoting pioneering spaceflight visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: ‘The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.’ Then again, we’ve been pretty busy setting the cradle on fire. Before we can do anything else, we must put the fire out. Running away to Mars is irresponsible, childish escapism, a pointless holiday in hell dressed up as exciting, manly adventure. The real work, the hard work that needs to be done is right here on Earth.
*Ronald Wright wrote in Stolen Continents about the results of the disease-caused depopulation of North America, and the sudden loss of tens of millions of people who had lived as partners with the land for thousands of years, growing and nurturing a continent-wide world made up of humans, plants, and animals. Not as “wilderness”, but as communities. Colonists stole or inherited lands that had known, nurtured, and been nurtured by human societies for more than ten thousand years. European diseases weakened and destroyed those connections: “America seemed a virgin land waiting for civilization. But Europe had made the wilderness it found; America was not a virgin, she was a widow.”
The sudden deaths of tens of millions of people, and the resulting reforestation of lands that had been under cultivation, is thought to have contributed to, and intensified, the Little Ice Age, as resurgent woodlands rapidly drew down carbon dioxide levels as they recolonized former croplands on a massive scale.
The work that would be required to restore Earth to an Eden (be that the idea of an Eden pre-humanity, or an Eden of symbiosis with humanity) would be far less than that required to make it possible for people to eke out a wretched existence on Mars for more than a generation. All those plans assume the rest of Mars, outside the living bubbles, is an inexhaustible parking lot for externalities, much like we used to assume our oceans, lakes, rivers, etc. were. Which is how we got to this point of the ocean refusing to swallow our waste heat anymore.
It’s the hard work in the sense that it’s much easier to drive into an office and improve plans for massive technological installations according to a shared project timeline than it is to clean out my garage. The work isn’t harder, it’s just harder to get it done. Conceptual work is more fun than grabbing a bag.
Matthew Yglesias writes at The Argument magzine:
Bigots in the tent
The article serves mostly as a rejoinder to a sentiment common on the US political left, “Some people don’t want a tent so big that it includes bigots”. Yglesias points out, correctly, that Americans are divided in inconvenient ways on certain topics, and demanding ideological purity on every issue tends to alienate almost everyone.
He ends up concluding: “Yes, I do want a tent so large it contains a lot of bigots. That’s the only tent that ever wins.”
However, nowhere does he ever question the whole wisdom of calling all people who disagree with you “bigots”. He doesn’t consider that, maybe, just maybe, they have a point or a perspective that differs from yours, and maybe it isn’t so magnanimous to say “Hey, bigots are welcome here”.
For a key example, he writes of the gender ideology (my words) issue:
These views are “popular with the public”, and are “less-progressive”, or perhaps pandered to by politicians “who are sympathetic to the plight of trans people but are worried about winning elections”. These views are not considered valid ways of thinking about the issue except as a political tool. He is eager to be “sympathetic to the plight of trans people” but apparently doesn’t understand the conflict between that stance and the rights of women; his use of the phrase “birth sex” is further indication. But he doesn’t appear ready to consider that maybe he doesn’t understand the issue, and he slaps the label “bigot” implicitly on people who do understand the issue and disagree with his stance.
I want a tent so large it contains people who have some significant disagreements, and isn’t managed by those who call everyone who disagrees with them a “bigot”. Is that too much to ask?
[…] a comment by Sackbut at Miscellany […]
“Teen Vogue”, the “social justice” website that celebrated gay women mutilating themselves* , is going to to be reduced and folded into the main “Vogue” website.
The conformists on Bluesky are claiming the end of TV is a far-right conspiracy:
https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1985438184918941990#m
* https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2024/fashion-mutilation/
Mostly Cloudy: at least maybe now they’ll stop pretending that Teen Vogue has ever been read by teenagers.
The Donald threatens to cut off Federal Funds for New York City if the candidate he dislikes most wins:
https://deadline.com/2025/11/trump-andrew-cuomo-mamdani-new-york-mayor-1236605968/
Dick Cheney has passed away.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/us/politics/dick-cheney-dead.html
I’m afraid I wasn’t a Cheney fan. He helped organise the disastrous misadventure in Iraq:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/11/how-dick-cheney-runs-national-security.html
If my irony meter were still functional, it would have broken this weekend. My husband and I attended a performance of Angels in America: Part II in Omaha. As part of the opening announcements, they gave the names of their sponsors. My husband noticed it first, and pointed it out to me. Of all the sponsors who are sponsoring this classic tale of gay men and AIDS, one of the most prominent was the Catholic Health Institute. Irony? Yeah. Also almost certainly an attempt at whitewashing their horrible record with gays and AIDS. What’s next? Will they sponsor the Vagina Monologues to pretend they are progressive on women’s issues? Probably not, I imagine. After all, one of the plays has the word ‘angels’ in the title’ the other has the word ‘vagina’. Somehow I think the Catholic hierarchy is more comfortable with one than with the other.
Some thoughts on the blue wave here in Virginia (and elsewhere) last night: this was very much a rebuke of Trump. A sweep of the state offices (even Attorney General, despite the questionable “joke” texts) and at least 61 of 100 seats in the lower house, with 8 still uncalled. The Republican candidate tried to make it about the trans, but Spanberger basically ignored that. Not a brave stance, but politically smart–it’s not a winning issue for the Democrats. Instead she tied her opponent to Trump (even though Trump refused to endorse or even mention Winsome Earle-Sears’s name, which I’m sure had nothing to do with her race or sex). A lot of people here are out of jobs, or furloughed, or working without pay, and they’re royally pissed about it.
Obviously this is bad news for Trump. Republicans in Congress are going to start trying to save their own jobs, and they don’t have much reason to stay loyal to Trump or Vance.
@iknklast #439
Holy shit, wow! That made me gasp out loud. Their hypocrisy! It screams!!!
Is it a sign of progress that the Catholic Church now sponsors performances of the seminal AIDS-era drama, Angels in America? That’s an interesting question! I can briefly imagine arguments both ways. But I daresay the final answer is no. The case for this being a sign of progress is bogus. Because it’s not like the Catholic Church has done fucking anything to address its mistreatment of gays or anyone else who suffered because of the Church’s policies surrounding safe sex, same-sex attraction, condoms, and AIDS. And then there’s the Catholic Church’s horrific complicity in the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The “C.C.” is almost single-handedly responsible for multiplying the scope of that epidemic ten-fold or more — to a death count in the tens of millions of men, women, and children, when without the Papacy’s active interference the African AIDS Pandemic might have been limited to one million dead or perhaps even far less. That’s just a horrific body count. On the scale of a genocide, really.
On the other hand, it does bear acknowledging: It’s perhaps a surprising truth that a few Catholic-affiliated hospitals were at the very forefront of compassionate care for gay men dying of AIDS during the height of the crisis, and some of them were even (again, surprisingly) at the forefront on the difficult issue of finding ways to allow non-legally-recognized life-partners access to their loved ones despite their legally unrecognized family status. Having looked into this, I must begrudgingly admit, some Catholic hospital workers actually did good work despite the weird and frankly anti-gay regulations that were handed down to them; for example, many Catholic nurses found novel ways to navigate and skirt the strict next-of-kin laws to accommodate gay men’s truenext of kin, even though these male lovers and life-partners weren’t yet legally recognized as such.
(Both secular and religious hospitals had policies that kept gay men apart from their legally unrecognized partners. It’s a strange irony that some inner-city Catholic hospitals actually sometimes did better than their secular counterparts skirting the problem in the real world and fending off pressure from higher-ups to curb their compassionate work.)
My ex-husband used to work for Covenant House, a Catholic-run, North America-wide network of youth homeless shelters. The strange thing about Catholics is that their church is all about “bending the rules” — it’s weirdly built into Catholic dogma. See the “indulgences” of the past, for example. Contemporarily, see the phenomenon of “confession”. It’s kinda-sorta ok to sin if you confess it in a weird little booth! So while the CC couldn’t within its doctrine let pregnant homeless teens get abortions under its remit at Covenant House, they mastered the art of the workaround. (By “they” I of course mean the mostly women who ran the place, not the lush Cardinals — the powerful men’s club — that literally got drunk off the profits.) What the administrators did was they’d temporarily discharge the girl, to put her off the books (in the eyes of “God” or Jesus they might say, but really it was just in the eyes of the Cardinals and their stupid rules). Then the abortion could be taken care of, and afterward she could be be re-admitted, sin-free.
Something similar I think took place in inner-city North American Catholic hospitals during the AIDS crisis.
It’s a strange irony that at the time (the ’80s), the Catholic Church’s frontline workers ended up well-placed to handle the AIDS crisis, because they’d been trained how to juggle compassion for “sinful” people and skirting the “rules” that supposedly bound them.
Which is to say, low-level, compassionate Catholics knew how to navigate a hypocritical system, because the high-level, elite Catholics were so horrible, the ones who actually did the work had to learn to work around the system. That ironically parallels what even secular nurses had to do in the ’80s in all kinds of ways, as back then the secular world was just as hypocritical as the religious one was.
NONE OF THIS absolves the Catholic Church from its systematic oppression of gays, though! As much as people within the System have at least sometimes been compassionate to us, the System itself was always designed to position us as enemies, and it’s not changed one fucking bit in that regard.
So, in short: yay for nurses and charity workers who happen to be Catholic who find ways to do good work despite the evil system they’re trapped in. BOO to the system itself. BOO HISS to the Church itself!
So, no, the Catholic Church is hypocritical as fuck to be sponsoring productions of Angels in America.
(Sorry, that rant was longer than I’d anticipated! I’d had more to say than I thought about the Catholic Church and its hypocrisies.)
Artymorty, no one minds your rants – they are lucid, enlightening, and often entertaining.
One of the worst things about their hypocrisy is that they were actively working to keep things from getting better, even as their workers were finding work arounds. They were actively working against same sex marriage, recognition of life partners, and finding a cure for AIDS, not to mention actively working to end abortion wherever it was legal throughout the world. Their policies on divorce have ruined lives, also.
I know a lot of Catholics (Nebraska is practically drowning in them, and Lutherans). Most of them are kinder than the god they worship and the church they support. Most of them are truly good people. The funny thing is, most of them believe their god and their church are as nice and good as they are. I have heard some odd things about supposed Catholic doctrine from the mouths of observant Catholics. They don’t even know what their church teaches.
One of my Catholic friends, a dear woman who has been a wonderful friend to me, told me once that she doesn’t listen to or watch anything against the Catholic church. She was explaining why she didn’t go see Agnes of God even though three of her good friends were performing in it. She is knowingly, willfully, keeping blinders on, and that suggests she does have some idea of what the church really teaches, and how they really behave, and the only way she can maintain her perilous perch on the rubbish pile the church has left behind without noticing that it is all rubbish is to ignore what they really say, and focus on parts she wants to be true.
The thing is, in doing this, she is complicit with all the horrible things the church does. She doesn’t even claim to be trying to change it from inside (something I hear quite a bit from people who are members of groups that have some objectionable policies – often churches – and actually never do one damn thing to change it from inside). She is closing her eyes, knowingly and willfully, and then attending liberal marches on things like women’s rights and LGB rights.
The church uses these nice, good people as human shields. They are the face of the church for most non-Catholics, who know little about the doctrine and less about the scandals. They only know their Catholic friends, and golly, they are such nice people! Look, they don’t want to ban abortion! Why would anyone think the church wants that? All these nice people who are believing members of one church or another are probably the reason we have so many books and articles about how people like Christian nationalists are perverting the message of the church…because they don’t actually know what the message of the church, or Jesus, actually is. You can point them to the horrible verses where Jesus instructs his disciples to bring those who don’t believe and kill them in front of him, or hate your mother, father, and everyone else to be one of his followers. There are a lot of those verses, and people who are not as nice will find them. They aren’t perverting the message; they are merely choosing which of the contradictory messages they prefer…just like their nice church mates.
Brava, iknklast! (How was the production of Angels, btw?)
The production was great. I was actually surprised, because we saw the same cast do part 1 last year, and it was mediocre. The director got more out of them this year, and their Roy Cohn was right up there with Nathan Lane.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Trump administration can continue to constrain passport sex designations to what is recorded on birth certificates, but this passage from an NPR report has me asking a question.
What the heck is “unconstitutional transphobia”? I am not a constitutional lawyer but my reading of the 14th amendment doesn’t require the government to grant one the sex designation of their choice.
Link: https://www.npr.org/2025/11/06/nx-s1-5585103/supreme-court-passports-gender
I guess they’re saying that twanzfobeea violates the equal protection guarantee. It’s been expanded over the years. I doubt it’s been expanded to cover fantasies about the self…but maybe it will be.
Then you’ll have people demanding that their passports be changed to make them taller and younger. First in line? Donald Trump.
Interesting writing class today that gives insight into how many young people think of the trans issue. A student (hetero female) read a fiction story about a man (call him Sam) who realizes he’s a woman and must break it to “her” partner . . . Stu. Yes, they’re a gay couple. Sam expects Stu to react in dramatic surprise, but Stu only says the equivalent of “Meh” and reminds Sam that he’s always been effeminate and dressed in women’s clothing, so what’s the big deal? Sam is female in head only, no physical alterations, but Stu has always “known” Sam is a “woman”. So I guess Stu now has a “wife” instead of a husband and what their sex life is after this is an aspect of their relationship the student gratefully spares us any hint of. The class loved the story, and in the discussion I learned that coming out/trans/gay/sexual orientation/gender identity are all one big happy grab bag of identity and acceptance is a virtue!
Well barf barf barf.
Just because Thomas Jefferson wore a wig doesn’t mean he was trans.
Mike, I think Sam did a conversion therapy on Stu because he’s straight now.
I don’t know if we mentioned this here….the GC Twitter/X account ripx4nutmeg has done a list of forty pro-TRA things the BBC has done over the last twelve months. Thus proving that the BBC is biased in favour of the pro-TRA side:
https://xcancel.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1988238395156336849#m
Particularly reveling is how the BBC kept making expensive pro-TRA TV shows like “What It Feels Like For A Girl” and “Smoggie Queens” despite the fact that both shows were ratings failures. They’re prepared to sink large sums of UK taxpayers’ money into unpopular programs for political reasons.
Not taxpayers but license fee payers.
This is actually chilling. Here’s what extremist trans activists on Bluesky are saying about Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey:
Brianna Ghey’s murder was the best possible outcome of her transition for Esther Ghey. Her child is encased in amber, frozen in time at an age when she hadn’t developed her own voice, so her mom can weave a narrative.
https://x.com/ForWomenScot/status/1989266349366165876
This is an extraordinarily cruel thing to say about the mother of a murdered child.
Mostly Cloudy, that reminds me of the right-wingers who said Sandy Hook was a false flag operation and didn’t really happen. Just another point of commonality in methods between trans and ultra right.
I’m sure there are false-flaggers on Blooskie who post such things to inflame. Of course it would be nice to see some pushback from TRAs in response, instead of silence.
X and Cloudflare are down for thousands of users:
https://news.sky.com/story/x-and-cloudflare-down-for-thousands-of-users-13472221
Could this be a political hacking?
Mostly Cloudy: Probably not. Cloudflare serves “half the Internet”. Lots of services around the world are down. It’s ironic, really: The Internet is designed to be robust, you take out parts of it with nukes (say), and the network will just route around the damage. Then come botnets and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, where hackers have infected millions of unsecured computers across the internet and use them to flood victim sites with traffic so they can’t operate. This is ususally done for money. Have them pay ransom to stop the attacks. So to protect themselves, businesses route their traffic through Cloudflare (against a fee, of course) and have them deal with the DDoS attacks on your behalf. So you have now replaced the supposedly robust Internet architecture with a single point of failure: Cloudflare. As I said, ironic. Isn’t it? I haven’t seen any indication of what caused the outage yet. Could be a massive DDoS event, or maybe Cloudflare themselves just screwed up.
Harald Hanche-Olsen : ” So you have now replaced the supposedly robust Internet architecture with a single point of failure: Cloudflare.”
Seems to be an arms race between the computer security folk and the hackers.
Some of you might have already seen this.
“Why Biological Sex is Real with Carole Hooven”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5wc7AsvOPk
A little bit of good news for a change. This will be appealed, of course, but it’s interesting that the opinion was written by a Trump appointee.
#458 Update: Cloudfare is back now:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c629pny4gl7o
I started reading this article from The Guardian:
and I stopped right there. The reason?
Guess.
And “Arabelle” is such a gender-neutral name…
Bad Kennedy strikes again.
Studies also have not ruled out the possibility that red baseball caps cause dementia.
Actually, studies have done pretty much that. When the autism rates are no lower in the non-vaccinated population, and there is no decrease in autism when children are not vaccinated, that’s really rather conclusive. Not 100%, no, because science doesn’t do that. But it’s pretty solid, and that ‘not ruled out’ is taking advantage of the rational methods of science in not saying ‘100%’.
It’s so maddening, isn’t it? We’ve known for close to 30 years that Wakefield was a fraud, but it’s just another zombie belief that won’t die, and now the zombies are in charge.
Latest person surprised at having her face eaten by leopards.
Honestly, I’ll say directly that MTG shouldn’t have had to deal with death threats from Trumpian hardliners, especially over her stopped-clock issue (Epstein). My sympathy for her, however, is diminished considerably by the memory of her essentially ignoring the 40+ women who came forward before Trump’s first election to tell stories of sexual assault and rape. Maybe, just maybe, if she’d heeded the warnings from other women about what sort of man he really is, she wouldn’t have put herself so close to him that she eventually got turned on.
As I was waiting to get on the elevator at Trader Joe’s this morning, a woman got off with her son, who looked to be about four years old. Over his typical boyish clothes he was wearing a dress. A man in the store asked, “Is that a boy?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s wearing a dress?”
“Yes, he’s been asking for one for a long time.”
Then the man said something I didn’t hear, to which the mother replied, “That’s a mean thing to say to a child!”
Whatever the man said, it was clearly a blatant example of trying to enforce gender norms (and who goes around saying mean things to kids in public?). And good on the mother for letting her son wear what he wants while still understanding that wearing “girl” clothes doesn’t make him a non-boy. I can only imagine if he keeps it up he and his parents will be pressured into declaring him “non-binary” or “trans”.
Good grief! What kind of pig tells strangers in grocery stores how to dress their children?! Or says mean things to their children? Or both?
What kind of pig? A deeply insecure one, I’d say. Was he wearing a MAGA hat?
I didn’t get a good view of the man—it was crowded, and I was trying to fit into the elevator. But not too many people wear MAGA hats here in Arlington.
I wish I had been there to say to that kid, “You go, boy!”
When the perv asked if her child was a boy, I think that the Mom should have responded, “fuck off you pervert” and started yelling for Security.
OH, lawdy! There’s another high-profile “pretendian” case unfolding in Canada.
The indigenous-impersonation scandal/beat isn’t directly relevant to B&W’s wheelhouse, but there is at least a bit of overlap — at least in my view of it — because it involves questions of identity, self-identity, adopted identity, and false identity, plus it involves questions of opportunistic falsification of identity. And it often results in liberals closing ranks and refusing to hear objections. (People had been calling out Buffy Sainte-Marie and other fake indigenous “identities” for years but bleeding-heart types couldn’t bear to hear it, so they rejected it.) In those ways, the pretendian thing is like the trans thing. Plus it kinda overlaps with spiritual thinking/woo versus secularism, too. Plus-plus! It’s an internecine-liberal-conflict kind of squabble. Secularists who care about indigenous rights versus woolly spiritualists who do also, but who aren’t very responsible about what they endorse. So I think it’s relevant!
I say it’s not spinach and I say let’s keep it!
This time it’s celebrated author Thomas King, who, like Buffy, was born in the US but was culturally “adopted” by Canadians because of his purported indigenous heritage. (To Canadians, Indigenous people across the continent are perceived as strangely “ours”, even though logically it doesn’t make sense. Perhaps it’s just our instinct to see ourselves as adjacent to, but not quite, American, which makes us instinctively take anyone else in the same situation as a fellow Canadian at heart. So Native Americans are, in our psyches, secretly Canadian. Like I said: makes no logical sense. But here we are.)
I must say, going into this story, I was gunning to hate on Thomas King, the way I was disgusted with (middle-class Boston WASP who pretended to be Cree) Buffy Sainte Marie, and her calculated, flaky fraud that had gone on for half a century. I quietly revelled in her overdue cancellation. Thomas King has penned a long story about his own reckoning upon recently discovering he has no genetically identifiable Indigenous ancestry, for Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
I went in assuming the piece would be nothing but self-serving damage control. But then I saw the picture he provided of himself as a child. He clearly looks Asian. Seeing that picture, and reading the accompanying story, it makes complete sense that he thought his extreme Asian-looking-ness was a result of some unwritten bastardly (in the original sense) Indigenous lineage.
And the story he told really did move me. To look that different from his peers, and even his own siblings, would clearly have affected the way he was treated, the way he moved through the world, the way he understood himself. And it did. He came to believe he was Cherokee for sincere, understandable reasons. And he subsequently gave himself to Indigenous causes with sincerity for decades. So I was surprised that the story did not play out in my heart the way I had expected. And it’s raised, for me, some uncomfortable questions about the sincere adoption of identities one isn’t born into. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make this about transwomen being honorary women! I guess I’m thinking more about the transracial thing. Dolezal, etc. “Race” is fuzzier than sex. Very much so. Especially with respect to indigenous identity, which these days is confirmed or rejected via DNA tests, but which historically had to do with family folk tales about one’s ancestry and whatnot. It’s a messy line, that. These are two radically different modes of setting the “racial” boundaries of indigeneity.
And I have to be perfectly frank: even now, in his eighties, Thomas King looks unambiguously, ethnically Asian or Indigenous. He’s learned that his genealogy is actually Greek — hey, so is mine! Cool! But we are not blind: he’s got the epicanthal fold — “Asian eyelids”. Sounds a bit uncomfortable to mention them, almost as though it’s racist. (It isn’t; it’s genetics and genealogy 101.) Epicanthal eyelid folds are not Greek at all, and they don’t just pop up at random! They are almost entirely Asian or North American-Indigenous in genetic origin.
King had good reason to mistake himself for Cherokee. And frankly, there seems to be an unsolved mystery there. It’s all very interesting and (to me at least) pretty sympathetic.
https://archive.ph/20251125022406/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-most-inconvenient-indian/
I think this may be a case where the backlash against “pretendians” is targeting an actual “Indian” (we don’t use that term in Canada, but for you Americans, there you go). The pretend indigenous thing is so insanely true in general, and I sincerely believe that most of the celebrity Natives were actually opportunist whiteys, with dubious claims to be indigenous. But I actually think Thomas King’s story is radically NOT that. Breaks my heart a little, or a lot. He seems like the real deal.
This is the problem I had with the dogpile on Elizabeth Warren. She grew up in Oklahoma; so did I. She was told she was part Native American; so was I. My mother was not ‘lying’ – she honestly believed it. Many people in Oklahoma believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have Native American ancestry. In Warren’s case, it was true, but not a huge percentage, so probably further back or more distant than what we would usually call “Native American”. I haven’t had my DNA checked, and don’t really care if I am part Native or not; I have no plans to use that in any way because I was not brought up that way, and did not suffer the discrimination they suffered. (I suffered from discrimination for being poor in a rich town, so I can understand what discrimination feels like, but it isn’t the same, not at all.)
I have no complaint with Warren claiming indigenous blood, even if it is only 10%. It was sincere, she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, it was a belief she grew up with, like many (maybe most) who grew up in Oklahoma.
What does bother me is those who capitalize on it. I’m ambivalent about Rachel Dolezal, because although she knew she was not black, she turned her energies to working for people of color. Of course, she did take a job intended for a person of color, and there is a major problem…sort of similar to the trans situation.
What I do have a problem with is people like the man I worked with who didn’t score high enough on the civil service test for my employer to hire him. The people who scored higher were all women; my employer did not hire women into full time positions (I was an intern). They wanted this guy, but they couldn’t pass so many who were higher without cause, so they took a different tack. They used a negligible (smaller than Warren’s) Native American ancestry to get ten points added to his score (part of the affirmative action program: BIPOC got ten points, disabled got two points, I think, women got one point, and disabled veterans were automatically in the number one spot if they passed the test. So he moved up ten points, which got him into the top three, allowing them to hire him.
Now, he never lived as a Native American. He never suffered the discrimination. He was born and raised, and lived, white male with all the privileges that entailed. He was also middle to upper middle class, which piles on the privileges. He took a job under a pretext, so they were able to avoid hiring a woman. (By the way, one of our temps, who was a woman, was told there were no jobs available at the time her temp time was up. This was right before they hired him, in the job that didn’t exist. This was also the place that pulled a job posting because, as an intern, I had preferential hiring, and they were aware I was a woman; they had lost funding for the job, they said. Funny how within three days of my starting a new job, that one was posted again.)
This is one of the outcomes of DEI programs, one that has been all too popular: mediocre white males use some method of becoming ‘minority’, usually through pretense, and are hired in jobs they are not the best choice for, because the best choice is woman or person of color or disabled person. Thus white men have used DEI to maintain their white male preferences.
Have any of you seen this disgraceful article in ‘Glamour’ magazine? It’s about an English women’s soccer team, Goal Diggers. There’s a photo of club chair Gaia Laidler showing support for her trans identified teammate Sammy Rees…….by kneeling and kissing Rees’ boot.
https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/fa-trans-women-goaldiggers-grassroots-football
Awful.
Interesting posts from Victoria Smith about the ‘boot kissing’
photo:
https://xcancel.com/glosswitch/status/1991860011660890303#m
Yes I’ve seen that boot-kissing photo several times. Bleagh.
@iknklast
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it, and I’ve learned from it. And I’ve been moved by it.
It’s an interesting puzzle, isn’t it. We all want to respect the boundaries of indigenous identity, but we also recognize that there’s a certain fuzziness there. Identities are always kinda fuzzy, some more than others. They tend to depend on gatekept credibility among one’s peers. They’re mostly about tribalism at the end of the day.
Films and plays like Six Degrees of Separation have explored the boundaries of such identities, and how ultimately artificial they are.
Indigenous identity is already a mess of spiritual woo and magical thinking, mixed up with a kind of conjured-up nostalgia, if that’s the right word… The supposed line between a Native and a Colonist is ultimately more emotional than rational.
I don’t know if these crusades to root out “pretendians” are going to have the effect that the activists think they will. And yet, in some cases, they do good work. (See: Buffy Sainte-Marie, a total and complete impostor, whose motives seem to have been opportunism at the outset. That felt like fraud to me, and I’m glad it ultimately met justice.)
But this movement, if undertaken with too much zeal, might just draw attention to the fact that the borders of Indigenous identity were always nebulous, and they’ve been left unwatched for so long, there’s no point trying anymore to re-establish a hard line.
These activists might be setting themselves up for their own demise…
It also reminds me of the time I went on a date with a guy who worked for APTV — Aborignial People’s Television, a heavily-government-subsidized broadcast station for Indigenous Canadians. On our date, he pointed it out when we walked past his inner-city, multi-million-dollar, ultra-luxury childhood townhouse in Yorkville (think Rodeo Drive meets Upper East Side). Yet, he wouldn’t shut up about his “oppression” due to some fraction of native blood he supposedly had. I just couldn’t get past the outrageous luxury from which he’d sprung, plus the fact that he was making a living as a government charity case because of his “indigenous” heritage.
Amigos and amigas, let me tell you! That date almost ended in violence! It was like matter and anti-matter collided. There was an explosion of political passion and political anger, on both of our fronts.
To this day I don’t know what he had to be angry about (I clearly had plenty), other than his embarrassment that he’s a fucking puta, tabernac ostie calisse, goddamn asshole!
Ugh, I hate that guy.
Well, this is disheartening. A group of musicians are holding an “all-star concert” to raise money for…. Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project?
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/nov/28/sugababes-sophie-ellis-bextor-wolf-alice-and-more-to-play-all-star-charity-concert-for-trans-rights
This announcement actually makes me sad – I like some of the music acts there, like Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Wolf Alice.
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/opinion/columns/your-voice/2025/11/28/reader-response-to-student-claim-no-violation-of-rights-disagreement-on-grade/87480316007/
Samantha Fulnecky, a Christian student at the University of Oklahoma, wrote a bizarre essay about gender for a psychology course. Here are a few excerpts:
It’s all rubbish. She quotes the Bible (in the original Hebrew) to defend her viewpoint and, rather infuriatingly, criticizes epistemological relativism on the basis that it is “not biblical whatsoever.”
Fulnecky got a zero. I don’t have all the details, but this seems perfectly reasonable to me, given the essay’s clumsy writing and all-around irrelevance. Incidentally, it appears her professor is transgender, and Fulnecky has filed a complaint.
“Rubbish” is too flattering.