Reward

Dec 15th, 2024 5:55 am | By

That’s nice. Invite a guy who killed a homeless person to the game. How very trumpvance.

A New York City subway rider who was acquitted this week of killing a homeless man during a confrontation on a train has joined US President-elect Donald Trump as a guest of honour at a popular American sporting event.

Daniel Penny, who became a conservative cause celebre, was pictured attending the Army v Navy American football game near Washington DC with Trump and Vice-President-elect JD Vance.

A jury cleared Mr Penny of criminally negligent homicide on Monday for using a fatal chokehold to restrain Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, who had been shouting at other passengers and asking for money, last year.

So Trump decided to reward him for killing the homeless man.

Listen up. Shouting at people on public transportation (or pretty much anywhere) is crap behavior. There’s a lot of crap behavior on the buses in Seattle, because there are a lot of people ruined by fentanyl in Seattle, and that’s a bad thing. It is not, however, such a bad thing that it warrants killing people engaging in the bad behavior. Stopping the bus and telling them to get out, yes. Calling the cops if they won’t get out, maybe. Killing them, no.

Next point. Conspicuously rewarding people for killing a homeless person is not a good thing to do. It is, in fact, a vile, ugly, stomach-turning thing to do.

Speaking about Mr Penny’s acquittal earlier this week, Vance said this week on X that Mr Penny was “a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone”.

No, not for having a backbone. For killing someone. Note that Mr Penny ruined a guy’s life: the guy whose life he ended by choking him.

If Mr Homeless had been assaulting a passenger, it would be another story. But unless the reporting here is totally dishonest, he wasn’t. You don’t get to assault people just for shouting.

The incoming vice-president added that it was “a scandal” that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ever prosecuted the case.

Why? Is it really a virtuous act to kill a homeless guy because he is shouting at people on a bus? There are steps between “do nothing” and “chokehold.”

We’re in for a horrible four years.



Ownlee teezinng

Dec 14th, 2024 5:28 pm | By

Well, you can call it a “light jab,” or you can call it a stupid childish insult from the stupidest, most childish, peak epically vulgar head of state on the planet.

US President-elect Donald Trump took a light jab at his Canadian counterpart on Tuesday, referring to Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada”.

Imagine Trump considering it a “light jab” if some wag said he was the governor-elect of Florida.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump remarked that Canada should become the 51st US state – something that was “in no way a serious comment”, said Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc, who accompanied Trudeau to the dinner.

“The president was telling jokes, the president was teasing us,” he told reporters early this month.

No he wasn’t. He thinks he’s better than everyone else, so his “jokes” are never mere jokes or mere teasing (and “teasing” is in general lightly disguised bullying anyway, even when it’s not Trump doing it). People shouldn’t make light of Trump’s disgusting manners.



Butts on parade

Dec 14th, 2024 3:26 pm | By

Yeah this is totally normal, this is not disgusting at all, women have no reason to object to this, Yellow Shirt dude just wants to have fun.

Not creepy AT ALL, do you understand?



Curious alleys

Dec 14th, 2024 3:03 pm | By

I’m not surprised. I’d be happy to be surprised, but I’m not.

Remember Joyce Carol Oates when Charlie Hebdo was given an award by PEN America? She protested the award. Not the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo, but the award to Charlie Hebdo.

Also, she’s a very bad writer.



People ought

Dec 14th, 2024 8:55 am | By

Dim Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

President-elect Donald Trump has praised the polio vaccine as the “greatest thing,” but a lawyer affiliated with Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top health agency has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the vaccine used in the United States.

The lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates. Siri has been working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a vaccine skeptic and Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services – to choose officials to serve in the incoming administration.

I wonder if they have paused at all to think about the dangers of polio.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself a polio survivor, issued a warning about the issue Friday that was apparently intended for Kennedy.

“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease,” he said in a statement. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Well, Mitch, these are your guys.

If Kennedy is confirmed as head of HHS, he’ll oversee the FDA and could take the rare step of intervening in its petition review process. In a recent interview, Kennedy told NBC News that he wasn’t going to take away anybody’s vaccines but said, “People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information.”

No they oughtn’t. People ought not to have a choice to drive 120 mph on city streets and they ought not to have a choice to infect others with a dangerous disease.



100 reps

Dec 14th, 2024 8:44 am | By

Amnesty International is not an adult organization.

Once is enough.



Whose rights?

Dec 13th, 2024 5:39 pm | By

Amy Hamm in The National Post a couple of weeks ago:

Is it discrimination when doctors make care decisions that account for a patient’s extreme obesity? In British Columbia, astoundingly, it might be.   

A Canadian woman who identifies as an “unapologetically fat intersectional feminist” won her bid to bring an obstetrician to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) for alleged discrimination on the basis of her size and body mass index (BMI), of 46, after the physician referred her to a high-risk birth centre during her pregnancy. 

Sigh. He’s a doctor; he’s an obstetrician. He’s not some random person shouting insults, he’s not a bunch of people bullying her, he’s a doctor whose job it is know what’s a risk and what to do about it.

It’s also true that losing weight is not a simple thing, and for some or many people it just isn’t possible. The body fights back and tweaks the metabolism so that losing weight becomes more and more difficult, which eventually means it’s impossible.

Does it follow that the doctor should not have referred the woman to a high-risk birth centre? It does not. Whether she’s high risk or not is not a political question, it’s a medical one. It’s his job to make that call; it would be malpractice not to.

[T]he BCHRT has expressed an interest in exploring the “social construction of disability” in the forthcoming hearing. The tribunal’s latest ruling states that “disability under human rights legislation, including under the Code, extends beyond biomedical conditions and functional impairments to perceptions and stereotypes,” apparently including stereotypes about being fat.

Blah blah, but that won’t help the woman and/or baby survive the birth.

Glaringly absent from Lindberg’s entire case is any discussion of an infant’s right to a safe delivery guided by evidence-based care. The hospital where Lindberg wanted to give birth is classified as “low risk and without the benefit of specialized staff and equipment,” according to Fraser Health Authority. Obesity during pregnancy is linked to numerous health risks for both the mother and baby, including gestational diabetes — which Lindberg developed and required insulin for — birth defects, preterm birth, stillbirth, and a difficult delivery on account of the infant being oversized. That the human rights tribunal even mentioned, in its latest ruling, that Lindberg’s baby was born “without complication” can be none other than an admission that all parties recognize the risk that was inherent in her birth.

“Born without complication, no thanks to us.”

Lindberg got lucky with a healthy baby. Let’s hope her child does not require future therapy for the trauma of discovering that her mother fought so hard to prioritize “fat activism” over her own safe entry into the world. Because that is what this case ultimately comes down to: a fat activist performing a malicious and attention-grabbing stunt. 

At the expense of her passenger.



Its

Dec 13th, 2024 10:40 am | By

Whaddya know, Wisey the Pretty is still at it.

https://twitter.com/inksearcher/status/1867631171984928827


After millennia

Dec 13th, 2024 8:10 am | By

The tundra has flipped.

The Arctic tundra is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by frequent wildfires that are turning it into a net source of carbon dioxide emissions after millennia of acting as a carbon sink, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Tuesday. This drastic shift is detailed in Noaa’s 2024 Arctic Report Card, which revealed that annual surface air temperatures in the Arctic this year were the second-warmest on record since 1900.

“Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts,” said Rick Spinrad, a Noaa administrator.

Human-caused climate change is also intensifying high-latitude wildfires, which have increased in burned area, intensity and associated carbon emissions.

Wildfires not only combust vegetation and soil organic matter, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, but they also strip away insulating soil layers, accelerating long-term permafrost thaw and its associated carbon emissions.

In other words the news is bad bad bad.



Let’s make everyone sick again

Dec 13th, 2024 8:04 am | By

Junior Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

What more is there to say? Trump’s choice for health secretary wants to kill or maim thousand or millions of people.

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Polio wasn’t just “one of the most feared” diseases, it was one of the deadliest diseases. It was one of the most feared because it was so contagious and so terrible. The objective badness is much more to the point than how feared it was. Junior Kennedy fears vaccines, and he’s dead wrong to do so.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism.

That investigation has already been done. Many times, for many years. Nobody needs Junior Kennedy to “investigate” anything. The man’s an idiot.



Manchester Evening Fictions

Dec 13th, 2024 6:55 am | By

Newspapers should not lie to us.

And they should not lie to us even more when the lie is that women commit men’s crimes.

Manchester Evening News tells that very lie, repeatedly.

A judge has jailed a ‘dangerous’ woman for violent physical and sexual abuse.

The scare-quotes should be on “woman” on account of how the violent physical and sexual abuser is A MAN.

Angel Hill, 20, was handed an extended sentence for her crimes. Minshull Street Crown Court heard that Hill, who is transitioning from male to female, had demonstrated ‘violent, manipulative and controlling behaviour’.

He’s a man. Furthermore, he’s a man committing decidedly male crimes.

She pleaded guilty to assault by penetration, sexual assault, strangulation and threatening with a bladed article in relation to the victim. 

Oh really. Assault by penetration? Sure, it’s possible to use objects, but what “assault by penetration” generally suggests is rape, with a penis. Newspapers should not be lying and obfuscating this way, especially when it’s a matter of putting men’s loathsome crimes against women on women.

Manchester Evening News also for some reason obfuscates the sex of the victim, without even saying why.

In a statement read to the court, the victim told how the incidents had affected their mental health. Defending, Julian Goode said that the defendant is still a young person and has not yet reached full maturity.

Why is the victim a they? Why is the perp a she and the victim a they? Why report the case at all if you’re going to blur out most of the relevant facts?



Despite a damning judgment

Dec 12th, 2024 5:46 pm | By

Bad man refuses to get out.

State Opposition Leader John Pesutto has vowed to stay on in his role despite a damning Federal Court judgment finding he defamed ousted MP Moira Deeming and revelations the high-stakes case could have been settled for $99,000.

Pesutto was ordered on Thursday to pay $300,000 in damages and savaged over his time in the witness box in a 250-page judgment that found he injured Deeming’s reputation by repeatedly and falsely implying that she knowingly associates with neo-Nazis.

I think people of this type must actually persuade themselves that not believing in Magic Gender is pretty much the same thing as associating with Nazis. That’s how morally warped and confused they are.

Angry Liberal MPs were on Thursday night discussing whether to move against their leader of the past two years. Their mood was further darkened by the news that had Pesutto taken up a settlement offer from Deeming in February, the case could have avoided court.

A source familiar with negotiations leading up to the trial revealed Deeming offered to walk away for a payment of $99,000 plus costs with no other conditions. Her demands eventually ramped up towards $2 million with assurances of her return to the Liberal party room, which Pesutto refused.

On top of the $300,000 damages payout, Pesutto now faces a hefty legal bill with costs, yet to be determined, set to reach upwards of $1.5 million for Deeming alone, according to three sources familiar with the case. The state branch of the Liberal Party had refused to indemnify Pesutto’s legal costs.

Maybe the fashion for men bullying women over Magic Gender is starting to fade away?

Justice David O’Callaghan found Pesutto’s evidence contained untruths, that he was “infuriatingly unresponsive” during cross-examination, and that he had given “dubious” explanations and calculated answers in an attempt to defend Deeming’s claim against him.

Other than that…



On multiple occasions

Dec 12th, 2024 11:18 am | By

Moira Deeming won her case!

Ousted Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming says she expects to rejoin the party room after winning her defamation case against Opposition Leader John Pesutto.

Ms Deeming brought the lawsuit against Mr Pesutto, alleging he had defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser in the wake of an anti-trans-rights rally on the steps of Victorian parliament last year that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

In the aftermath of the rally, Mr Pesutto failed in a bid to have Ms Deeming booted from the parliamentary Liberal Party — she was instead suspended for nine months.

On Thursday, Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan ruled Mr Pesutto had defamed Ms Deeming on multiple occasions, including in radio and TV interviews which “caused or is likely to cause serious harm to her reputation”.

“The imputation found to be conveyed is that Mrs Deeming associates with Nazis and is thus unfit to be a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party,” Justice O’Callaghan said of an interview Mr Pesutto did with radio station 3AW in the wake of the rally last year.

“With respect to the ABC interview, the imputation found to be conveyed is that Mrs Deeming knowingly associates or sympathises with Neo Nazis and white supremacists, and is thus unfit to be a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party and Liberal Party.”

Read the whole thing.

She was awarded 300 k for non-economic losses; compensation for economic losses is still being worked out.

Onward!



FBI directors are supposed to be independent

Dec 12th, 2024 9:30 am | By

They flop over the instant he looks in their direction.

FBI Director Christopher Wray became the latest public official to remove his own spine and dissolve into a puddle of genuflecting goo for the greater glory of MAGA with his announcement Wednesday that he’ll resign before Trump’s inauguration.

FBI directors are supposed to be independent, and Wray still has more than two years left on his term. But Trump loathes Wray, who, among other things, pursued an investigation of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Which is slightly ironic, because Trump appointed Wray in the first place.

As Trump mentions in his post, he plans to replace Wray with unqualified craven bootlicker Kash Patel, who has promised to use the agency to target Trump’s enemies, terrorize the media (including imprisoning journalists), and crush political dissent.

Wray’s resignation enables Trump’s authoritarian designs. It means he can install Patel without having to pay the political price that would have come with firing Wray, who has clearly done nothing to deserve it. It will make it easier for Republican senators who might have been on the fence about voting for Trump’s new henchman to go along with the program.

Wray is a Trump nominee in his own right who rose to the top of the bureau in 2017 during one of the orange menace’s previous power plays, when he ignored the norms protecting FBI directors and fired James Comey for refusing to stifle the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Wray was suitably supine for most of Trump’s term; at Trump’s behest, he undermined the FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

So now we’ll get someone even worse.



Whose game of political football?

Dec 11th, 2024 4:55 pm | By

It doesn’t though.

It isn’t “gloating” to be glad children won’t be given puberty blockers for frivolous reasons. Blocking puberty isn’t “healthcare” except in the case of premature puberty. Gender skeptics are relieved that the harm of blocking puberty will be stopped. Hines doesn’t agree that it is a harm, but she ought to be able to grasp that many other people do.

I suppose for people like her trans ideology is like being in a club or a sorority or a cult, rather than a coherent set of ideas. It’s a badge, a secret handshake, a wink, a clubhouse, a mechanism for excluding the uncool.

The issue is the healthcare of a vulnerable group of young people, but not in the way Hines means it. It’s about keeping that healthcare out of the hands of gender fanatics before they ruin any more lives.



Guest post: Subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine

Dec 11th, 2024 4:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

We have all heard trans activism, or wokeism in general, described as a cult. On the other hand there are people who seem to suggest that because these movements don’t exactly meet the formal definition of cult, there is nothing to learn from the study of cults that’s at all relevant to the issue. Regardless of whether or not you think TRAs are a cult, I hope we can all agree that this is not a very compelling argument. Even if we accept the premise, the conclusion clearly doesn’t follow.

Robert Jay Lifton provided what still seems to be the most widely accepted definition of a cult in his article Cult Formation in 1981:

Cults can be identified by three characteristics:

1. a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power;

2. a process I call coercive persuasion or thought reform;

3. economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.

The most obvious way in which trans activism differs from this definition is that there is no clearly identifiable single leader with the authority of someone like Jim Jones or L. Ron Hubbard*. Also, while there is plenty of exploitation going on, I think there’s a fair case to be made that it’s less coordinated or organized than what we have seen in the case of, say, Scientology. Rather than one large confidence scheme, there are many smaller ones.

My focus in this analysis is on Lifton’s second characteristic. Perhaps the real issue isn’t whether or not TRAs are a “cult”, but whether or not they engage in thought reform (or “brain washing”). The latter does not presuppose the former. After all, Lifton’s original work on the topic was about the re-education of political prisoners in Communist China rather than cult indoctrination. In Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) Lifton breaks down the thought reform process into 8 “themes”. So let’s see how well these apply to gender ideology.

1. Milieu Control

The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also—in its penetration of his inner life—over what we may speak of as his communication with himself.

The applicability to gender ideology is obvious. What are the endless cancellations, dis-invitations, de-platformings, and book-bannings, not to mention mandatory DEI programs (all presupposing a gender ideology framework), demands for “safe spaces”, the endless days, weeks, or entire months dedicated to “trans something“, etc., other than milieu control on an industrial scale? If you can just coerce people into talking and acting as if they held the required beliefs and opinions, they have a stake in defending them which creates an incentive to make themselves actually believe them (“I’m not the kind of sucker who would cave to external pressure, so if I did say those things, they have to be true!”). The justification spiral does the rest.

2. Mystical Manipulation

The inevitable next step after milieu control is extensive personal manipulation. […]. Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment. This element of planned spontaneity, directed as it is by an ostensibly omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality. […] Included in this mystique is a sense of “higher purpose,” of having “directly perceived some imminent law of social development,” and of being themselves the vanguard of this development.

Among Lifton’s themes this is probably the hardest one to pin down since the manipulation, in order to make the planned behavior seem spontaneous, by necessity has to rely heavily on non-verbal social cues. Rainbow flags, gender-neutral restrooms, casual use of preferred pronouns or Genderspeak in general (#6) etc. may be among the less subtle ways of signaling what the officially “approved” beliefs and attitudes are. The part about “having ‘directly perceived some imminent law of social development,’ and of being themselves the vanguard of this development” seems to fit nicely with TRA rhetoric about being on the “right side of history”.

3. The Demand for Purity

In the thought reform milieu, as in all situations of ideological totalism, the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure.

Again the applicability to gender ideology is obvious. It doesn’t matter how far you go out of your way to stress that trans-identified people are entitled to the same rights, protections, dignity, and respect as everybody else. Unless you are prepared to uncritically accept the whole package of sex denialism, gender realism, the self-ID criterion of womanhood, the affirmation-only approach to gender dysphoria, the forced teaming of “LGB” and “TQ+” etc., not to mention tons of highly dubious postmodernist philosophy, Queer Theory, identity politics, social constructivism, standpoint epistemology, linguistic determinism etc. (#5), as part of the deal, you might as well be advocating for re-opening Auschwitz and resuming the mass-production of Zyklon B!

4. The Cult of Confession

Closely related to the demand for absolute purity is an obsession with personal confession. Confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal, and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself. There is the demand that one confess to crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that is artificially induced, in the name of a cure that is arbitrarily imposed. Such demands are made possible not only by the ubiquitous human tendencies toward guilt and shame but also by the need to give expression to these tendencies. In totalist hands, confession becomes a means of exploiting, rather than offering solace for, these vulnerabilities.

This fits nicely with the obligatory public displays of owning up to your “cis privilege” and how you, as a member of the oppressor class, can never understand what trans people are going through, how nothing you can possibly do to compensate for this alleged shortcoming will ever be enough etc. The same goes for the obligatory groveling apologies and self-denunciations (very similar to the “self criticisms” demanded in Mao’s China) required by anyone accused (rightly or not) of insufficient ideological purity (#3). Having conceded that the TRAs were right and you were wrong, you once again have a stake in proving your commitment to “doing better”.

5. The “Sacred Science”

The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. […]. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute “scientific” precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also “unscientific.”

Once again gender ideology gets full marks. Obvious examples of sacred science include the “sex spectrum”, the idea that a person’s “brain sex” (a.k.a. “gender”) can be different from the sex of their body, the alleged infallibility of a person’s ability to know his/her own brain-sex, the idea that the only way to solve the supposed mismatch between gender identity and physical sex is medically “correcting” the latter, the idea that “changing sex” is even possible etc. Other examples might include the claim that the “sex binary” is a recent Western invention and remains alien to indigenous peoples uncontaminated by Western cultural imperialism. And, once again, all of it ultimately rests on tons of highly dubious postmodernist philosophy, Queer, Theory, identity politics, standpoint epistemology, social constructivism, linguistic determinism etc.

6. Loading the Language

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. […] Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling’s phrase, “the language of nonthought.”

A complete analysis of the TRA use of loaded language would fill, not just a whole book, but an entire library. Not only are thought-terminating clichés (“Trans Women are Women!”, “Trans Men are Men!”, “Non-Binary Identities are Valid!”, “Trans Rights are Human Rights!” etc) ubiquitous, but hardly anything they have to say makes sense except in the light of a million unstated (and very shaky) premises and impossibly sloppy inferences. Even the most central premises of their arguments, including such obviously relevant “details” as the definition of “woman”, what is meant by “trans rights”, and how said “rights “ are supposedly violated by, say, women’s right to female only spaces, are best left unspecified. Apparently simple words and phrases like “trans”, “cis”, “gender”, “gender dysphoria”, “man”, “woman”, “(non-)binary”, “trans rights”, “transphobia”, “trans medicine/healthcare”, “LGBTQ+” etc. are all short-hands and Trojan horses for tons of extremely dubious truth claims, value judgements, tortured inferences, circular definitions, “bad puns” etc. that have to be accepted unconditionally and without asking for specifics. E.g. it is always framed (without the analysis to back it up) as a matter of being for or against “trans rights”, the right of “trans children” to “healthcare” etc. as if the specific content of said “rights” had already been more firmly established than the laws of thermodynamics, when, in fact, this is very much a point of contention. Woke standpoint epistemology and the obligatory admonishments to “educate yourself” (which is “not the responsibility of marginalized people”, remember!) provide a blanket excuse for not bothering with evidence and placing the burden of proof squarely on your opponents.

7. Doctrine Over Person

This sterile language reflects another characteristic feature of ideological totalism: the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine. This primacy of doctrine over person is evident in the continual shift between experience itself and the highly abstract interpretation of such experience—between genuine feelings and spurious cataloguing of feelings. It has much to do with the peculiar aura of half-reality which a totalist environment seems, at least to the outsider, to possess.

Once again, the applicability to gender ideology is only too obvious. If all your senses, as well as instincts evolved over millions of years to identify potential threats or mates, are telling you that that 7 feet tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, bearded person in the pink dress and blond wig is an obvious male, but the doctrine requires you to see “her” (with her “lady-cock”) as a “woman”, you have to reject the evidence of your senses and not only pretend to see a woman, but work to make yourself honestly mean it.

8. The Dispensing of Existence

The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right. […] Surely this is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant man making himself God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed.

Labeling opponents as “TERFs” and “transphobes” (#6) does not just offer a convenient excuse for dismissing anything they might have to say in advance, without addressing the actual substance of their arguments, but serves to mark them as beyond the pale, even undeserving of life (“Kill TERFs!”, “Die Cis Scum!”, “Die in a Grease Fire!” etc.). Any concern about, say, allowing biological males to self-identify into women’s changing rooms or medical experimentation on vulnerable children and teenagers is not seen as sincere, but only as an arbitrary excuse for blind, genocidal hatred and evil for the sake of evil. Anyone who fails to take on board all the baggage supposedly implied (for reasons best left unspecified #6) by “trans rights” is not just seen as misguided or wrong, but as a naked existential threat with whom no negotiations, compromise, or even peaceful co-existence is possible, someone who simply has to be crushed and defeated by any means necessary.

Lifton goes on to write:

The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychological themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform (or “brainwashing”).

I seem to remember cult-expert Rick Ross arguing that at least 6 of Lifton’s 8 themes need to be present for a coercive persuasion effort to be considered thought reform or “brainwashing”. If so, I think there’s a strong case to be made that gender ideology qualifies. I strongly suspect that theme 2 (Mystical Manipulation) is applicable to some degree, although it is hard to conclusively demonstrate for reasons I have already mentioned. As far as the other themes are concerned, I say TRAs have earned a perfect score.

* Not all cult experts see this as a necessary criterion being a cult, however. E.g. Steven Hassan seems to argue that any group that engages in coercive persuasion qualifies as a cult.



The oldest hatred

Dec 11th, 2024 10:09 am | By

Julie Bindel on the toppling of Pink News:

[T]oday’s revelations are grimly unsurprising: the outlet has reliably targeted any feminist who dares speak out publicly against the misogyny of trans activism, publishing a seemingly endless stream of baseless hit pieces about nasty, bigoted Terfs.

Many of the allegations against Cohen and James concern misogyny. Female members of staff say they were badgered to act as surrogates for the couple — a horrible abuse of power by bosses in a workplace, even if it were meant in jest. Given that some men have wombs, according to the ideology PinkNews promotes, it remains a mystery why they never asked any male employees to bear their child.

During my 18 months of litigation against PinkNews, someone close to the company told me Cohen wanted to cave, but was worried that the publication’s “brand” would be compromised if he were to back down and issue me an apology. This brand rested, naturally, on being able to say absolutely anything about “transphobic” lesbians.

It’s so interesting how many formerly feminist lefty dudes just cannot believe their luck getting to say absolutely anything about noncompliant women.



Pending further information

Dec 11th, 2024 9:50 am | By

The BBC reports further developments in the Benjamin Cohen/Anthony James story.

PinkNews director Dr Anthony James has been suspended from his job in the NHS, after a BBC News investigation heard allegations of sexual misconduct at the publisher.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said they made the decision to suspend Dr James from his role as associate non-executive director pending further information.

Following the publication of the investigation, more than 10 former PinkNews staff members have come forward to share their experiences of working there.

Their good experiences of working there, or the other kind?



When in doubt

Dec 11th, 2024 7:32 am | By

Is sanity slowly creeping back?

Puberty blockers for under-18s with gender dysphoria will be banned indefinitely in the UK after experts warned of an “unacceptable safety risk”.

The government said that following recommendations from independent medical professionals, existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of the drugs outside of clinical trials will stay in place.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said there was a need to “act with caution” and “follow the expert advice” in caring for this “vulnerable group of young people”.

Of course both sides of this dispute consider the young people vulnerable, but they seem them as vulnerable to different perils. To the trans ideologues they’re vulnerable to the evil transphobes who want to deprive them of the joy of changing sex. To the trans skeptics they’re vulnerable to trans ideologues who want to convert them.



Retrofitting the history

Dec 11th, 2024 6:58 am | By

It apparently didn’t occur to Peter Tatchell that we can all see the quoted bit and the image. They don’t mention any T+.

We can see it. We can read it. It’s right there in the Working Class History tweet. Lesbians & Gays support the miners. NO T IS MENTIONED.