I’m looking for more on this claim by anthropologist Dan Hicks that Bentham “contested immediate emancipation.”

It’s certainly possible in the abstract, given utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number” principle. The obvious objection is that lots of people can be made happy about the sufferings of a smaller number of people, so let’s not do it that way. Actual utilitarians wrestled with the problem; working imperialists, not so much. How about in the concrete? Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has a relevant article:

Classical Utilitarianism, on one reading, is the view according to which an action, rule, policy or social institution is right if and only if it is designed to advance aggregate well-being, hedonistically construed. Relying on some

… Read the rest

Hipster captioning.

Taken by a friend at the Wellcome Collection. This is real. pic.twitter.com/ylciJ6pa65

— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) November 27, 2022

The full caption:… Read the rest

Suddenly the BBC is being a good deal more blunt:

A trans woman who groomed and had sex with a 14-year-old girl, making her pregnant, has been jailed.

The defendant – named by police as “David Orton, also known as Danielle Rose Gemini” – was found guilty of penetrative sexual activity with a child following a trial.

…

The offender, whose name was recorded as Danielle-Rose Gemini by Leicester Crown Court, was jailed for nine-and-a-half years.

Leicestershire Police – who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman at the time of the offences – were not able to give a current gender identity.

That “who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman” is two layers of skepticism right there … Read the rest

End violence against women…

…unless of course that might inconvenience men who call themselves women.

A charity event to push for an end to male violence against women and girls has banned discussion about single sex spaces.

Push for an end to male violence! But don’t push hard – in fact push as gently as you possibly can.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is scheduled to give the main speech to the 30th anniversary gathering by Zero Tolerance in Edinburgh today. The charity‘s core belief is that male violence should not be tolerated.

Unless the male “identifies as” a woman. Then the violence is quite all right.

A note sent to attendees said it wanted “to create a

… Read the rest

Won’t someone please have some sympathy for the poor beleaguered fragile trans laydee who makes racist taunts?

He’s deleted the tweet but there are many many screengrabs.

https://twitter.com/Unbeknownst2Jo/status/1597338445265145857

The enlightened sympathize with India but also remember to be intersectional.

She’s a cunt, but you’re better than this. Please be better than saying something racist to prove a point.

— Cis (@angel_in_a_cage) November 28, 2022

But don’t ever ever ever be better than calling a woman a cunt. That’s absolutely fine, in fact it’s obligatory.… Read the rest

And how are we defining equality exactly?

We are proud to be trans allies.

We stand with the LGBTQIA+ community.

We support women, girls and marginalised people.

We do not police who is a woman that’s reserved for the patriarchy.

— Right to Equality (@Right2Equality) November 28, 2022

What does it mean to “police” who is a woman? It doesn’t seem like something anyone can police. Either you are or you aren’t. It’s commonplace to police things like who is a citizen, who is a lawyer, who is a doctor, who is an Olympic medalist – that is, there are criteria for all those things, which can be lied about or faked. You don’t want a pretend dentist messing with … Read the rest

Still working on the government by force thing.

2:30 AM post: “Kari Lake should be installed Governor of Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Nxm4h08U8L

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 28, 2022

And who should do the installing? The military?

Rolling Stone has more:

Much of Lake’s Trump-backed campaign was centered around bolstering unfounded claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, and the former TV anchor has lived up to her commitment to only accept election results if she won.

Lake, who lost her bid for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has refused to acknowledge the election results, instead filing a lawsuit requesting public records from Maricopa County that would detail which voters experienced issues casting their ballots, and information regarding errors

… Read the rest

News from museum world:

A museum in London is closing one of its main exhibitions following concerns over “racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”.

The Wellcome Collection says the Medicine Man display is ending after a 15-year run. Founder Henry Wellcome, who died in 1936, collected more than a million objects to give an insight into global health and medicine. The museum has marked the closure as a “significant turning point”.

Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.

It’s pretty obvious why that would be controversial. I wonder if they could just mark it historical with a note … Read the rest

Party time!

I miss you too, babes pic.twitter.com/Zmp31aYHT3

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) November 28, 2022

This obsessive hounding of Kathleen is horrible and deeply strange.

Academia still has not learned the necessary lessons from this.

We need to stop coddling the bullies. https://t.co/ErSuQbGSCu

— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) November 28, 2022

Alice is right. I am very disappointed in (many of) my professional colleagues in philosophy. They seem to think this is all a bit unseemly and they would rather avert their gaze from misogynist bullying and pass on by.

I thought they had more guts. https://t.co/einldEW7yd

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) November 28, 2022

… Read the rest

Zoe Williams at the Guardian tries to rebuke Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for not having approved opinions:

Five years ago, the writer said in an interview: “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.” She has written extensively about the fire she came under after that.

…

This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm. “So somebody who looks like my brother – he says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’, and she’s transphobic?” We break briefly so I can look at a photo of

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What Jesus had.

Hang on. “Evidence” based on “Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion” is from images created centuries after the event being depicted, interpreted through the lens of gender-theoretical wishful thinking invented centuries later still. That is a helluva long chain of evidence, but then if you’re a gender studies “scholar” you can just make shit up as you go along, without the tedious burden of proof. Assertion is sufficient; it’s self ID for “evidence.”

But maybe there’s more to it than we’re giving credit for; perhaps one of these artists came into posession of a contemporaneous, eyewitness sketch made on Golgotha? We already know that depictions of … Read the rest

Speaking of rights, and “trans rights,” and the refusal ever to define exactly what “trans rights” are – a gaggle of “trans activists” have scored another self-defeating triumph.

Yet again women are being censored. The fightback will have to get even tougher and more organised https://t.co/vQxsvJRPuO

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) November 27, 2022

Just got to Nottingham for @AHFdoco to the trans activist shower who have managed to get the film showing cancelled. A film about women with a full room of women wanting to view it. And these men and their handmaidens have stopped us. We will still meet and talk. pic.twitter.com/VgEJuiz5kN

— Jean Hatchet (@JeanHatchet) November 27, 2022

“Trans rights are human rights” they chant idiotically, as if … Read the rest

Trans rows are splitting the Greens, the Times says.

…the Green Party has now been accused of neglecting its core aims after becoming so embroiled in arguments about gender that three prominent members are suing over the issue.

The trio allege they were disciplined, abused and even assaulted over their views on trans rights. 

Wait. That’s not the right way to frame it. That makes it sound as if dissenters want to remove actual rights from trans people. We don’t. The point is that there are endless wild claims about putative trans rights that aren’t rights at all, for anyone. I don’t have any right to force people to agree that I’m a tree or a tank or … Read the rest

So would I.

Once again, I would like to know, why is this happening? pic.twitter.com/DpmPtPXwjd

— Dr Liz Asher (@Dr_LizAsher) November 26, 2022

On the one hand, anyone with a cervix. On the other hand, anyone with a prostate men aged 50 and older.

On the one hand, anyone with a cervix. On the other hand, real people who matter.… Read the rest

Trendy god-botherer says Jesus was maybe trans.

Jesus could have been transgender, according to a University of Cambridge dean.

Dr Michael Banner, the dean of Trinity College, said such a view was “legitimate” after a row over a sermon by a Cambridge research student that claimed Christ had a “trans body”, The Telegraph can disclose.

The “truly shocking” address at last Sunday’s evensong at Trinity College chapel, saw Joshua Heath, a junior research fellow, display Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion that depicted a side wound that the guest preacher likened to a vagina.

Time out. I have to spend a few minutes laughing here.

Right. Some medieval and Renaissance paintings of the crucifixion show a stab … Read the rest

Finn Mackay continues not to answer the many people who have asked “What rights are you talking about when you say ‘What do we want: trans rights, when do we want them: NOW.'”

It’s odd. It seems like a perfectly good opportunity to say what trans rights, so as to further public understanding of the trans cause.

Maybe Mackay understands that the purported rights aren’t actually rights? That no one has a “right” to force people to agree that people are a thing they visibly obviously unmistakably are not? That men don’t have a “right” to take over women’s sports? That men who say they are trans don’t matter more than women? Maybe Mackay realizes the shouting and threatening and … Read the rest

More on the friendly Florida teet-deleter:

Gallagher markets this surgery to teens on their app, with their slang and their pop songs. She has been reported to the FTC for allegedly engaging in deceptive marketing to minors. I did a deep dive into her social media and found a lot of evidence for that charge. pic.twitter.com/xq8IJU0KRt

— Sasha White (@iamGrushenka) November 24, 2022

Ah yes, that’s so funny, that face expressing confusion/disgust at the very idea that it’s not ethical to market mutilations, let alone performing them. Yes, doc, there are ethical reasons for not rushing to slice off teenagers’ breasts or penises on demand.… Read the rest

It was probably humans who killed off the megafauna.

For a long time, these extinctions were thought to be linked to natural changes in the environment – until 1966, when palaeontologist Paul S Martin put forward his controversial “overkill hypothesis” that humans were responsible for the extinctions of megafauna, destroying the romantic vision of early humans living in harmony with nature.

Well, it was harmony from the early humans’ point of view.

Prof Mark Maslin, from University College London (UCL), suggests that the unsustainable hunting of megafauna may have been one of the driving forces that led humans to domesticate plants and animals. People started farming in at least 14 different places, independently of each other, from

… Read the rest

The word seems to have gotten out at last that when trans people demand trans rights we need to get them to specify what rights. I said as much to Dr Finn Mackay and then saw that so had many other people.

https://twitter.com/Finn_Mackay/status/1596475413999407105

What rights? What rights does Mackay mean? What rights do trans people not have?

https://twitter.com/HackneyTerven/status/1596541795051409409

What are these rights you are seeking that you currently do not have?

— Ms H (@Ms_H_Survivor) November 26, 2022

I counted 12 more replies saying the same thing and then stopped counting.

Of course Mackay hasn’t answered.… Read the rest

London Fire Brigade institutionally misogynist and racist:

London Fire Brigade is “institutionally misogynist and racist”, according to a damning review into its culture.

A black firefighter had a noose put by his locker, while a female one received video of a colleague exposing himself.

Hey you know what other London institution is misogynist (and we might as well assume racist too) according to report? The police. So, that’s great.

The independent review was established by the London Fire Commissioner after a trainee firefighter took his own life in August 2020.

…

The review, conducted by the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England, Nazir Afzal, concludes that unless the “toxic culture” is tackled then other firefighters will take their

… Read the rest