Originally a comment by Salalia on Leiter on Thought Crimes Watch.

It seems to me that this dispute can’t be understood without the background: Transgender issues have brought about something of a schism within academic feminism; the side that favors more extensively accommodating transgender politics within academic feminism has clearly “won” and has mostly succeeded in ostracizing and delegitimizing their (academic) opponents.

Tuvel and her critics are all on the same “side” on issues of gender (as far as I know neither side in the Hypatia dispute actually opposes transgenderism-within-feminism ideology). But her ideas (extrapolating “trans” concepts from gender to race) threatens to split the academic antiracism movement in the same way that transgender issues split feminism, except worse … Read the rest

Susan Matthews at Slate on that climate change denial column by the New York Times’s new mavericky guy Bret Stephens.

His debut column, “Climate of Complete Certainty,” published on Friday, supports my theory. The thesis of the column is that we would do well to remember that there are fair reasons why people might be skeptical of climate change, and that claiming certainty on the matter will only backfire. He casts himself as a translator between the skeptics and the believers, offering a lesson “for anyone who wants to advance the cause of good climate policy.”

He talks about the overconfidence of the Clinton campaign.

He then goes on to compare the Clinton failure and the science on climate

The Austrian president had an idea.

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has ignited debate in Europe after video appeared to show him supporting a woman’s right to wear an Islamic headscarf — and suggesting that all women should wear a headscarf to battle prejudice against Muslims.

Speaking to students at the House of the European Union in Vienna on March 24, Van der Bellen said that it is his opinion that women have a right to dress however they want. “If Islamophobia continues to spread . . . the day will come when we will have to ask all women to wear headscarves,” Van der Bellen said, according to video footage of the event. “All of them, in

Another, more detailed account of Amanda PL’s exhibit and the objections to it.

An art gallery in Leslieville has cancelled an upcoming exhibit after receiving complaints that works by a Toronto artist are offensive to Indigenous people.

The artist, who goes by the name of Amanda PL, in an April 26 email interview with The Beach Mirror, said her work is influenced by the Woodland style, an art form practiced by Aboriginal artist Norval Morrisseau. She recently rented Visions Gallery at 1114 Queen St E. for a guest-artist exhibit: The show titled Nature’s Landscape was set to run from Wednesday, May 10 to Sunday, May 14.

She rented the gallery; that’s an important detail that wasn’t in the other story.… Read the rest

A young Canadian artist was about to have an exhibition of her paintings at a gallery in Toronto.

Visions Gallery had planned to showcase the work of Amanda PL, 29, a local non-Indigenous artist who says she was inspired by the Woodlands style made famous by the Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau beginning in the ’60s, with a focus on nature, animals and Indigenous spirituality.

But within hours of the gallery’s email announcement promoting the exhibit, there was a backlash, with people alleging that PL had appropriated Indigenous culture and art.

So the gallery canceled the exhibit.

Chippewa artist Jay Soule was among those leading the charge. He argues PL blatantly copied Morrisseau with virtually no regard for the storytelling behind

Make America great again: make sure our precious children have access to all the sugar and fat they want. That’ll show that uppity Michelle Obama for trying to make school food healthy.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 centered on cleaning up school food. Getting the act passed became a key focus of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity.

Now, the new USDA Chief, Sonny Perdue, is expected to put forward a new rule on Monday that will give schools “more flexibility in meeting federal nutrition standards for school lunches,” according to a new report in The Hill.

The law required the federal government to use recommendations from the Institute of Medicine to make