Katie Edwards in the Independent:

Over 30 years ago now, Judith Butler wrote the gender studies classic Gender Trouble. Today, Butler expounded on those ideas in an interview with The Guardian.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her progressive approach over the decades, Butler suggested that we should rethink the category of “woman”. 

Progressive? What’s progressive about her “approach”? What’s progressive about suggesting that we should rethink the category of “woman”? Especially when what she means by that is “to include men”?

Butler advocates for trans women and their inclusion in the sisterhood.

Which is ridiculous at best, because trans women are men.

Although the “sisterhood” seems to have become something of an exclusive members’ club. Feminism, or more accurately,

Another woman bullied out of attending:

Elected in April 2020, Starmer will be hoping his initial year and a half leading his party will be enough to ensure a standing ovation.

One person who won’t be in that audience however is the MP for Canterbury Rosie Duffield. A poster girl for Labour’s surprise successes in the 2017 election, Duffield has attracted both praise and opprobrium for her views on transgender issues. Back in August last year, LGBT+ Labour demanded Starmer ‘take action’ against Duffield after she wrote on Twitter that ‘only women have a cervix.’

How does one go about “taking action” against an MP who states an anatomical fact? And why does one attempt such a thing? Why … Read the rest

Craig McLean promoted the open access copy of his paper on July 27, apparently to universal indifference; the turphs found it on September 4. They all say what we all say – the paper is remarkably bad for a working academic and it’s mystifying that it was accepted.

Senior lecturer?

Wow

FYI
UK Equality Act defines woman as females of any age

We are not 'cis-female (non-trans)'

What a collection of bias nonsense

— Marjorie Hutchins (@leakylike) September 4, 2021

https://twitter.com/NeurolawGuy/status/1434185027018010625 https://twitter.com/PhoenixRedRum/status/1434105993881964547 … Read the rest

From the abstract of an academic article by a sociologist…

This article examines the development of anti-transgender debates within the United Kingdom, which have gained traction due to proposed amendments to the country’s Gender Recognition Act (GRA). A group of determined lobby groups, taking their lead from like-minded organizations in the United States, has protested vigorously against the proposed changes to the GRA, especially with respect to “single-sex spaces”. As a result of this furor, the lives of transgender people have become the subject of open debate.

“The lives of transgender people have become the subject of open debate”? Is that academic language? Is it the language of sociology? Surely “the lives of” various categories of people is a … Read the rest

Aw yeah, coupla men who beat up women.

Bina Shah tweeted on September 8:

I just really need to know how Judith Butler’s definition of women applies to Afghan women who are being beaten on the streets by the Taliban. Have you ever considered that your academics really don’t fit the lives of women in the global South?

And if they don’t fit in the lives of those women (which they don’t), how well do they fit women anywhere?

She expanded on her thoughts the next day:

But it was Judith Butler’s statement that “we need to rethink the category of women” that got me going. It coalesced from quite a lot of thinking I’ve been doing about gender identity theory as it is being adopted in

Another exciting first – a man beats a woman in mixed martial arts.

Transgender mixed martial arts fighter Alana McLaughlin made a successful start to her career by choking out her opponent in the second round last night.

McLaughlin, who was born a man, was the first openly-transgender MMA athlete to compete in the US since 2014.

And having been rocked by opponent Celine Provost in the first of three scheduled rounds, McLaughlin fought back the second session to submit Provost by rear-naked choke.

In stepping into the cage, McLaughlin, 38, became just the second transgender woman to compete in the sport, following in the footsteps of Fallon Fox who was cageside in Miami.

Ah yes the footsteps of Fallon … Read the rest

Are books just clutter you should get rid of or an essential or something in between? Julian Baggini leans toward the first.

Having recently put everything into boxes for the less terminal adventure of a house move, we decided to strictly limit how much came out of them at the other end. However, we knew that there is one kind of object that defiantly resists the cardboard coffin: books. Like so many, we would happily decimate our wardrobes, clear out our cupboards and gut our garages, but would struggle to liberate our libraries. Why is it so hard?

For a lot of reasons. We want to read a lot more books than we get around to reading. Some books … Read the rest

Freedom! Private enterprise! The boss is always right! Innovation!

Except when…

Texas has made it illegal for social media platforms to ban users “based on their political viewpoints”.

Prominent Republican politicians have accused Facebook, Twitter and others of censoring conservative views. Former US president Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after a group of his supporters attacked the Capitol in January.

The social networks have all denied stifling conservative views. However, they do enforce terms of service which prohibit content such as incitement to violence and co-ordinated disinformation.

Well no wonder Greg Abbott doesn’t like that.

(What about jurisdiction though? Can states pass laws that restrict global communications? I wouldn’t have thought Texas has the power to … Read the rest

When Republicans take credit for the civil rights movement…

Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who previously served as Donald Trump’s press secretary, has released her first television ad, which is entitled “Who We Are”.

“I’ll never forget being a student at Little Rock Central High and watching my dad – a Republican governor – and Bill Clinton – a Democrat[IC] president – hold open the doors for the Little Rock Nine, doors that forty years earlier had been closed to them because they’re Black,” Sanders says in the ad.

…

“Good triumphed over evil,” Sanders says of the Little Rock Nine in her ad. “That is who we are. The radical left wants to teach our kids America

I have a feeling that’s not what Labour said.

This is not a joke, but deadly serious.

The Labour Party have officially placed @YoungLabour chair @JessicaLBarnard under investigation – for opposing transphobia.

Here is her letter sent to NEC members – passed to me – and here are the tweets she’s being investigated for. pic.twitter.com/qnzcC0fLWm

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 10, 2021

Barnard says in her letter to NEC members that the letter gave her notice that she’s “under investigation for challenging transphobia online.” Again, it seems unlikely that that’s what the letter said.

The trouble is that activists of the Owen Jones/Jess Barnard type treat the word “transphobia” as self-evident and universally understood, when in fact it’s a recently … Read the rest

It isn’t my womb that makes me a woman, Natasha Devon writes

Because it’s the large non-motile gametes?

Hahaha no don’t be silly.

Trans people have always been present in human society. Famously Marsha P Johnson, an American activist and trans woman, threw the first brick during the Stonewall riots in June 1969.

“Famously” inaccurate. Johnson was a drag queen.

Binary notions of gender – the idea that there are only men and women and everyone fits neatly into one of those two categories – are also a Christian invention, which spread across the globe as Christian countries colonised it.

Huh. So how were there humans before Christianity? If they had no idea which was which how did they reproduce?… Read the rest

Katie makes a good point.

Anyone who does even cursory research on the “trans murder epidemic” quickly realizes that the vast majority of these are not hate crimes. Trans people usually get murdered for the same reasons as anyone else—DV, drugs, random bad luck etc. HRC won’t say this but it’s true.

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 9, 2021

One of the more fucked up aspects of activists/journalists/etc who spread the false narrative of the “trans murder epidemic” is that they are terrifying the exact population they claim to want to protect. It’s not helpful to tell people they’re at risk when they aren’t. Stop it!

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 9, 2021

Well it’s not helpful to trans people … Read the rest

Peter Boghossian has quit his job at Portland State University and published his resignation letter on Bari Weiss’s Substack.

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.

He’s taught it even though it’s not his field. He has an EdD, a doctorate in education. I’ve never really understood why he gets to teach philosophy at a university without the usual advanced degree.

Anyway, his point is, he’s dedicated to free inquiry and he likes to invite speakers with all kinds of views to his classes so that the students can learn to think and question.

But brick

Originally a comment by Sastra on To promote well-being.

Phoenix has regular counselling with the psychologist, who judges that Phoenix’s distress is significant and enduring, and is not a symptom of an underlying psychopathology.

No, it appears that the psychopathology is draped right over the top, holding sparklers and dancing the Can-can.

I remember when the goal of enlightened feminism was for women, and the society they lived in, to minimize the significance of their sex and emphasize instead the importance of their character.. Yes, you are a woman, but that says little to nothing about your interests, capacities, talents, and goals, which constitute who you are. To constantly worry about whether you are WOMAN ENOUGH in the way … Read the rest

So the Lee statue is down and cut in half.

A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century.

One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, the equestrian statue was lowered to the ground just before 9 a.m., after a construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. A work crew then began cutting it into pieces.

Two pieces, that is: it was too tall for transport so they … Read the rest

An item from the Journal of Medical Ethics:

In this article, we analyse the novel case of Phoenix, a non-binary adult requesting ongoing puberty suppression (OPS) to permanently prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics, as a way of affirming their gender identity. We argue that (1) the aim of OPS is consistent with the proper goals of medicine to promote well-being, and therefore could ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle; (2) there are additional equity-based reasons to offer OPS to non-binary adults as a group; and (3) the ethical defensibility of facilitating individual requests for OPS from non-binary adults also depends on other relevant considerations, including the balance of potential benefits over harms for that specific

No trespassing:

HOLYROOD is changing its legal status to make it easier for the police to remove protesters.

Scottish Parliament bosses have asked the Home Office to designate the building and its grounds as a “protected site” in the interests of national security.

Of course protests and protesters aren’t a threat to national security. Insurrectionists are, as we’ve recently seen all too vividly, but protesters, no.

Legislation has now been laid in Westminster under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which is due to come into force on October 1.

At present, the police have limited powers to intervene if there is no substantive offence taking place, such as protesters making a prolonged noise outside the entrances.

DoJ gonna sue.

The Justice Department plans to file a lawsuit against Texas over its restrictive anti-abortion law that critics say is unconstitutional and has brought a halt to women’s reproductive rights in the state, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

…

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday the department was urgently exploring all options to challenge the Texas law. The department will use powers under the so-called FACE Act to provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack, Garland said.

Note that Bloomberg News said “women’s reproductive rights,” something which is apparently out of reach of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.… Read the rest

A genealogy of Foucault: pic.twitter.com/Tt4hCQuC4W

— Brian Leiter https://universeodon.com/@BrianLeiter (@BrianLeiter) September 9, 2021

… Read the rest