Readers added context
It turns out the disheveled person in a T shirt who (incorrectly) told us it was not true that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheest was censored is not a random intern or even a junior reporter at The National; she is the editor.
She’s the editor and she’s casual about the truth. Not a good look, even before we talk about the T shirt.
What a way to carelessly, publicly, destroy one’s professional reputation. What does she get out of it? Who is going to reward her “sacrifice”? It seems a steep price to pay in defence of an unworthy cause, particularly one where the wheels have fallen off.
The joy of martyrdom?
The Freedom Of Information (linked to above) is quite a read. One thing I noticed is that they call being gender critical (meaning being able to distinguish males from females) an “ideology.” Is it any more of an ideology than knowing grass is green and the sky is blue? The belief that people can actually change sex and can become the opposite of their birth sex is definitely an ideology. How does that make challenges to ideologies ideologies in themselves (particularly when these challenges are based in fact)? I don’t believe in metaphysical claims, so what “ideology” is that exactly? Is doubt an ideology?
They throw these words around incomprehensively.
So the book isn’t banned from the whole library system, but that wasn’t the claim. The book was excluded (therefore banned) from a specific exhibition; that was the claim, and it’s true.
Well, you see, sky and grass colors are imperialist, colonialist, patriarchal ideas foisted on people who once thought the sky was cerise and the grass was mauve.
@twiliter
I believe it’s a deliberate reversal, one that began in response to gender critical thinkers characterizing the beliefs held by trans activists as an ideology.
(I’m OK with gender criticism being called an ideology, myself, if we’re defining “ideology” as simply a cluster of related ideas–though I get what you’re saying. We are about more than simple denial of trans claims, after all. Gender traditionalists, for example, oppose them as well, but often for different reasons.)
What about bluegrass, huh? What about when the sky is orangey-red? What about the dull brownish color of the Martian sky? There’s a whole SPECTRUM of colors of grass and skies, and here you are denying their existence.
And what about colorblind people? I bet you never even thought of them, did you. Bigot
/s
Yeah, the color thing (lol), I knew it was a mistake when I typed it. How about this: Knowing rain is wet and snow is cold (along those lines)? The trouble with ideologies is that they are not objective and are based on beliefs (or a collection thereof) in dispute, and often with elements in conflict with material reality as well. Not all ideologies are bad though, for instance liberalism, depending on who you ask, but even liberalism is not objective or uncontestable, which is why it’s not simply The Way Things Are. So if we consider being gender critical an ideology, then I suppose there are worse things, but I don’t think it fits the definition well at all.
Rain is wet & snow is cold are also subjective and about feelings/reactions. Math is more useful for this purpose.
Even better. :)