Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Judges have ruled:

Judges have ruled that the UK government acted lawfully in blocking Scotland’s gender self-ID reforms. Legislation making it easier for people to change their legally-recognised sex was passed by the Scottish Parliament last year. The UK government blocked it from becoming law over fears it would [have an] impact on equality laws across Great Britain.

The Court of Session in Edinburgh has now rejected a Scottish government legal challenge to the veto.

The Scottish government can appeal.

Campaigners against the reforms warned the legislation could risk the safety of women and girls in same-sex spaces such as hospital wards and refuges. Supporters argued it would make the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC) easier and less traumatic for trans people.

And, shockingly, the Scottish Parliament were happy to sacrifice the safety of women and girls – half the population – for the convenience of trans people, who are a tiny fraction of the population. One has to wonder why letting a tiny set of confused people “change their sex” (which is impossible anyway) is worth putting the female half of the population at risk.

Popehat says people who paid attention to Elise Stefanik’s “yes or no” are credulous and stupid. He’s probably right.

America faces many problems. The easy ones we solve or ignore. We struggle with the hard ones. Hard problems raise complex questions that lack glib, one-word answers. The stubborn thirst for simple answers to hard questions is bad for America. It’s anti-intellectual, pro-ignorance, pro-stupidity, pro-bigotry, pro-reactionary, pro-totalitarianism, pro-tyranny, pro-mob.

Other than that…

He’s right though.

Take this week’s Congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses, titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.” A generous interpretation — a credulous one — would be that the hearing was designed to inquire why colleges aren’t protecting Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. A more realistic interpretation is that the hearing was a crass show trial primarily intended to convey that a wide variety of dissenting speech about Israel is inherently antisemitic, that American colleges are shitholes of evil liberalism, and that Democrats suck. Since Democrats do suck, they mostly cooperated.

The core Two-Minute Hate of this carnival was Rep. Elise Stefanik’s demand for yes-or-no answers to questions about whether policies at Harvard, Penn, and MIT would prohibit calling for the genocide of Jews. You might think Elise Stefanik is an unlikely standard-bearer for a crusade against antisemitism, given that she’s a repeat promoter of Great Replacement Theory, the antisemitic trope that Jews are bringing foreigners into America to undermine it. But if you bought Stefanik’s bullshit, you probably didn’t think that far.

Hey now, it’s not that I didn’t think that far, it’s that I didn’t know she’s a repeat promoter of Great Replacement Theory, and I didn’t pause to refresh my memory about her views and actions. Which is kind of the same as not thinking that far, but more ignorant.

He goes on to clarify in detail why her question was bullshit, and concludes with

I don’t blame Jews who feel under siege in America or on campus, even if I sometimes disagree with their interpretation of criticisms of Israel. Feelings are not right or wrong, and in the face of so much overt Jew-hatred, I understand a tendency to interpret ambiguous statements in the worst way possible. I think we should feel compassion and empathy for people who feel that way.

None of that is solved by pretending hard questions are easy. None of that is solved by letting demagogues and hucksters take advantage of the moment to push their agenda. None of that is solved by contributing to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner.

H/t ROB

Kristallnacht much?

A York University professor who wrote an award-winning book on the use of direct action in protest movements is among 11 people facing criminal charges in the defacing of a bookstore with red paint and accusations its Jewish founder supports genocide. Toronto Police have described the bookstore defacing as motivated by hate.

Lesley J. Wood, an associate professor, who chaired the university’s sociology department from 2017 to 2021, was charged this week with mischief over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence by Toronto Police. The allegations relate to red paint thrown on doors and windows at the Bay-Bloor outlet of Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, and posters depicting its founder and chief executive officer, Heather Reisman, on a fake book cover entitled Funding Genocide.

…

The incident at Indigo sent shock waves through the Jewish community, said Bernie Farber, founding chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

…

But pro-Palestinian activists said it was aimed at highlighting Ms. Reisman’s support of Israel, including her co-founding a scholarship fund for foreign soldiers who enlist in Israel’s army. Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No To Genocide Coalition, knows some of the accused and said groups of police officers broke open the doors of homes before dawn and arrested some individuals in front of their children. She called it an attempt to intimidate the protesters.

But they aren’t just protesters. They also (allegedly) vandalized the bookstore. Throwing paint over shop windows is not just protest.

Originally a comment by Freeminder on Referral.

The Enhanced DBS can go much, much further. Arrested but not charged, cautions, even interviews under caution (even not being a suspect) are recorded. Driving offences (speeding etc.) can appear.

It can also go deeper: contact former employers, check present and past addresses, so yes, gossip and personnel records can be examined.

Several government bodies (i.e. health, education, emergency services) regard not using pronouns as requested by an individual as a serious safeguarding issue, which can result in disciplinary procedures or dismissal. It is no surprise the DBS was consulted: it can be used to destroy someone’s career but then also make them virtually unemployable (too many jobs need DBS, from taxi driving to social work). Not being able to produce a clean DBS is sufficient for many companies or public bodies to withdraw job offers. This is a very heavy-handed way of bringing employees into line. Only an employer can refer to DBS, not an individual, so scaring others into compliance. I have seen first hand the damage a referral can do to a colleague: disciplinary, job loss and career gone. There is no appeal, no way back. And the DBS itself appears to have no one monitoring it, it can do what it wants and take as long as it wants.

Worse, many companies make a job applicant pay for the DBS check, in advance, but then add an ‘admin fee’ with a massive mark up. (I have seen 300%.) However the DBS in many cases cannot be transferred to another employer, and that means sometimes having to spend a lot of money or have a large deduction from the first wage slip.

In the UK, vetting is for police, prison and armed forces and goes into even greater depth (financial records, family history, relatives).

Now there is a catch 22.

Today, they’ve told me they can’t come to a decision. Even van driving jobs need DBS clearance.

What is DBS? You can see it under the “caseworker”‘s signature: “Disclosure and Barring Service.”

So there’s a “service” that runs around “disclosing” i.e. gossiping tattling ratting accusing whining pointing to prospective employers, and is in charge of “barring” the people it gossips about?

Seriously???

And in case that’s not bad enough they can also say “Soz we haven’t done you yet, maybe next month, kthanxbye.”

Really???

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Insult & injury=.

I think that what needs to be taught regarding First Nations and their history is that the “Noble Savage” concept is insulting and patronizing. What I have experienced as recently as 4 years ago in my 300 level course in diversity is not indoctrination about the poor natives or brown people but the necessity of broadening our experiences to better understand other cultures and how they have integrated into our own. Those students who have this fantasy about an idyllic pre-Columbian world are likely to have gotten it from anywhere but a UofT anthropology course, like perhaps social media. I think the same thing whenever I see someone claim that indigenous peoples worldwide didn’t have two separate sexes until Captain Cook (or whoever) forced them to.

Like Iknklast, I do not think that campuses are completely captured by postmodern fact-free thinking about gender and sex and world history; the bias of the news that we concentrate on receiving influences the perspective of what we read and see. There are student groups dominated by LGBTQ but I don’t think that you are forced to take an LGBTQIA+++ loyalty pledge to be a professor, student, or admin on campus. It may be necessary to be a closeted TERF in some situations, but Campuses are not the “woke hellholes” that some people paint them to be.

The events that are allowing trans ideology to dominate memorials of real women killed by violence from men are disgusting, and need to be turned back, but I do not know how we will get to that point with those who think that trans ideation of their oppression trumps all. We need to be able to convince those “allies” who claim it doesn’t harm anyone to let people believe that they are the other sex that this is a clear example of harm; and it’s enabled by using chosen pronouns, allowing males to enter wherever woman want to have their own spaces or groups.

And this definitely erases women’s experience of violence. Wasn’t there already a full month of remembrance of trans everything including violence?

Liz Cheney has a book out.

Republican Liz Cheney has made no secret of her criticism of former President Donald Trump. It’s what made her an outcast in her own party and cost her her job in Congress last year.

The former Wyoming representative was one of just 10 Republicans to back his second impeachment in 2021. She became one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, for which she explicitly blamed Trump.

Cheney’s vocal and sustained criticism of the former president led to her losing her leadership role as the No. 3 House Republican and, eventually, her primary campaign for reelection.

You know…the surprising thing is not that Cheney does this but that more Republicans don’t. At first blush it seems obvious why they don’t, but if you pause to think about it…why aren’t more of them disgusted and horrified at what he’s done and is doing to their party? Being conservative doesn’t have to mean being rude and trashy and disgusting, but with Trump at the wheel, it certainly looks as if it does. You know? It’s like Freethought Blogs. By the time I left that place I was ecstatic to get away from it. It wasn’t “oh damn I’ll miss all those thoughtful careful eloquent people,” it was “ew ew ew ew get me out of here.” Why isn’t it like that for more Republicans?

This week Cheney releases Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, a no-holds-barred accounting from inside the Republican party of the days before and after Jan. 6, Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election and her often-lonely role in trying to thwart them.

Cheney name-checks members of GOP leadership too, including former and current House speakers Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson.

Cheney tells Morning Edition‘s Leila Fadel that the dangers she describes in the book are ongoing, from Trump’s defiance of the institutions meant to check him, to the Republican politicians who she says put their own career ambitions ahead of their duty to the Constitution.

I guess that’s one answer to my question. It’s not the party, it’s their careers.

“People really, I think, need to understand and recognize the specifics, the details of what he tried to do in terms of overturning the election and seizing power and the details and the specifics of the elected officials who helped him,” she said. “I do think it’s very important for people to understand how close we came to a far greater constitutional crisis — and how quickly and easily — in a way that is, frankly, terrifying.”

Cheney does credit a handful of brave Republicans in state and federal offices from stopping “the worst of what could have happened.” But she says many of those people won’t be there the next time around. The stakes for the country, she adds, “couldn’t be higher.”

…

Cheney isn’t afraid to name names in her book.

Among them: She describes McCarthy, the former speaker, as a coward and hypocrite who knew Trump’s election claims to be false but defended them publicly anyway. She calls Johnson, the current speaker, an election denier who was easily swayed by Trump’s flattery well before he ascended to House leadership.

Many others were simply scared.

Cheney writes that some members of Congress told her at the time that they believed Trump should be impeached but couldn’t vote that way because they were afraid for their security and that of their family. She urged listeners not to gloss over that fact.

“People really need to stop and think about: What does it mean in America that members of Congress are not voting the way that they believe they should because they fear violence instigated by, then, the sitting president of the United States?” she adds, calling that “a place we haven’t been before.”

And she says once her colleagues took that position they were able to rationalize it, which helps explain where the party stands now.

“Once you’ve accepted something that is so indefensible, then it’s hard ever to sort of go back and say, ‘Well no actually, I should have stood against that.’”

So they didn’t, and we’re doomed.

Oh look, how sweet, NPR chose yesterday as the day to run a flattering story about trans “woman” Kai Cheng Thom. Who’s he? He’s the one who gave the keynote at the University of Toronto event nominally to commemorate the 14 women murdered for being women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. How adorable of NPR to puff him up on the very same day he had the unmitigated gall to center himself instead of the 14 murdered women and women in general.

The byline is Jess Kung, Lori Lizarraga, Leah Donnella, Dalia Mortada. All women? All trans women? Half and half? Three and one? Who knows. They’re all helping NPR insult and displace women. Fuck NPR and them.

What’s the story?

Kai Cheng Thom is no stranger to misanthropy. There have been stretches of her life where she’s felt burdened by anger, isolation, and resentment toward other people. And not without reason. Her identities, especially as a trans woman and a former sex worker, have frequently made her a locus for other people’s fear and hatred.

Diddums. Try being a woman locked in a classroom with a man who hates women and has a gun.

Here is the disgusting narcissist in person, whining about how “afraid” he is to be there, shoving dead women aside so that he can talk about his pretense of being a woman. He actually does have the gall to call it “pure spite” for us to object to his role as keynote speaker at an event remembering 14 women who were murdered for being women.

A very carefully defined version of “inclusion.”

Academic specialist in inclusion calls for ‘evil’ Jewish conference to be ‘blown up’

A senior academic at the University of Bristol who specialises in inclusion, inequality and discrimination has called for someone to “blow up” a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement.

Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol Harriet Bradley made the comment while reposting another remark about the gathering which read: “If you wanted to know where you can find every racist, n**ce and sh**house in Britain, now you know.”

Above that post, which included the poster advertising the JLM event, Bradley wrote: “Somebody blow up the venue!”

I’ve had a look at her Twitter and to be honest it’s hard to believe she’s not a troll. Her tweets are so simple-minded she sounds either 12 or a troll or soft in the head.

The ex-Labour councillor has since deleted the tweet but other inflammatory posts by Bradley remain online.

In one she says about the conference: “God preserve us. I’d walk through mud and nettles rather than listen to these evil people.”

Another message from Bradley, posted on 5 December, reads, “All Zionist supporters should go straight to hell. They are demons not human beings”.

Does that sound like an Emeritus Professor of anything to you?

Reduxx on another male usurpation of an event to commemorate women:

The University of Toronto invited a trans-identified male to speak at a memorial ceremony dedicated to the women who lost their lives during the École Polytechnique massacre. Despite it being the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada, the speech instead focused on “addressing transmisogyny.”

Hosted by the University’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Center, the event was held today at the St. George Campus in downtown Toronto. While the official announcement claimed the event was intended to memorialize the 14 women slaughtered during the École Polytechnique massacre, the keynote speech was almost completely unrelated to the horrific shooting.

The event was first introduced by two students of the University who began with a speech suggesting that pre-colonial Indigenous cultures did not practice any form of violence against women. 

And how would those two students know that exactly? And is it likely? Is it even slightly plausible? All cultures practice violence against women.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Vice-Provost Sandy Welsh also spoke before the keynote was introduced, with Welsh giving out a number of awards “recognizing individuals who’ve shown a commitment to ending gender-based violence.”

In other words they carefully, deliberately avoided saying “violence against women.” Quislings.

The keynote address was delivered by trans-identified male Kai Cheng Thom, who focused on the “rise in transmisogyny and violence against queer and trans women globally.” Thom, a writer and former prostitute, identifies as a “non-binary trans woman”

In other words he’s a man talking about himself at an event that should have been about 14 murdered women.

During his speech, Thom read poetry by a trans-identified male and condemned those who opposed his platforming at the event.

In other words he’s a narcissistic man berating people who think an event to commemorate murdered women should be about those women and violence against women, not about self-obsessed men like him.

During the keynote, the University of Toronto provided audience members with a website link they could use to propose questions for Thom to be asked during the Q&A. The submission link was quickly shut down after a barrage of inquiries were submitted asking why Thom had been invited to speak on transmisogyny on a day intended to commemorate a femicide.

Yes how dare people object to letting a man do all the talking at an event to remember the systematic slaughter of 14 women by a man. How frightfully rude to object.

This represents the third year in a row where an event commemorating the massacre centered a trans-identified male speaker focusing on transphobia rather than the femicide.

In 2022, Fae Johnstone, a trans-identified male, gave a keynote address at Durham College in North Oshawa, Ontario, during the 33rd anniversary of the massacre.

…

The previous year, in 2021, the Prince Edward Island Advisory Council on the Status of Women invited Anastasia Preston, a biological male who identifies as a woman, to speak on “gender-based violence” at a vigil honoring the women murdered in the École Polytechnique massacre.

One insult after another, year in year out.

Kemi Badenoch in action.

Encouraging.

I think Kendi needs to get around more. He’s very parochial. “Whiteness” just isn’t the root of all injustice in the world. Racism is not just white USians v everyone; there is racism among and between people of all hues. There is also rivalry, hostility, aggression, competition, war, oppression, exploitation among groups of every kind you can think of. Humans are very good at seeking out differences, no matter how slight, in order to create ingroups and outgroups. Believe it or not, at some times, in some places in the world, the people on top had darker skin than the people on the bottom. It happens.

In short “whiteness” isn’t as interesting as he thinks it is.

National WOMEN’S Law Center throws women under that bus yet again.

…and success in school sports depends on a whole range of factors including how hard you work, and coaching, and access to really good resources and facilities, and trans students participate in sports for the same reason as their kids: because it is fun, because it creates belonging and community, because it teaches so much about persistence and leadership and discipline, and last they learn to lose gracefully, hopefully, and often they learn to win with dignity, hopefully – um – they learn to do the sort of work that means you have higher grades and stay connected to school – I want every kid to have that chance – to have the chance to play.

So, in fact, contrary to the two tweets, she didn’t say female athletes have to learn to lose gracefully to men, at least not in this clip. She’s talking about the benefits of sports in general (and much exaggerating them, in my view, but then I always hated school sports), not the benefits to trans people or non-trans people or women or any other subset.

But what she is doing, of course, is ignoring the real issue in favor of saying things no one disagrees with. School sports good for kids; apparently I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t take that as gospel truth. Ok school sports good for kids; so what? What’s your point? Her point, as always in these disputes, is that school sports good for kids therefore boys must be allowed to play on the girls’ teams if they want to. It’s a ridiculous non sequitur, but it always is.

She says, with the usual pathos, “I want every kid to have that chance – to have the chance to play.” Her implication is that if boys aren’t allowed to play on the girls’ teams they won’t be able to play at all. That’s an idiotic implication. Of course they’ll be able to play: on the boys’ teams.

And in conclusion, it is indeed pathetic and disgusting that she’s making this flimsy “argument” on behalf of the National WOMEN’S Law Center.

It certainly is.

I pushed the button to watch it. I could hardly believe what I saw. The two presidents balked at saying that calling for genocide of Jews is harassment. Not is a crime, not is against the law, not is murderous, not is violent, just is harassment. I don’t normally find myself on Team Stefanik, but I don’t normally expect presidents of high-status universities to smile blandly at calls for genociding the Jews, either.

Politico reports:

Top university presidents defended their responses to antisemitism on their campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war before Congress on Tuesday as they faced a grilling from lawmakers.

Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, acknowledged an “alarming” rise in antisemitism at the university amid the tensions that have roiled campuses across the country since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and Israel’s military response in Gaza.

Gay testified alongside the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT at a House education committee hearing amid bipartisan concerns that many top higher education leaders haven’t done enough to stop hate on their campuses.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the chair of the panel, told the presidents that “institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions’ cultures.” Foxx and a slew of other Republicans sought to tie rising campus antisemitism to their longstanding complaints that higher education is too progressive and intolerant to conservative views.

Wait wait wait. Since when is antisemitism “progressive”? Since when is opposition to antisemitism “conservative”?

Gay and Harvard were the focus for many Republicans on the panel, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y), who has called for her resignation.

In several testy exchanges, Stefanik, a Harvard alum, pressed Gay over whether Harvard would punish students or applicants who advocate for the murder of Jews.

…

Stefanik later pressed all three university leaders on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their campus codes of conduct. Each university president responded that it would depend on the context of the antisemitic statement, such as whether it was targeted at an individual or amounted to harassment.

Wait, god damn it. Stop. Think about what you’re saying. Calling for genocide of the Jews isn’t merely “antisemitic.” Calling for genocide isn’t merely anti. Calling for genocide is a whole other level and should not be handwaved as mere “hate speech” and the like.

Get a god damn grip.

Yes by all means err on the side of letting violent men be housed in women’s prisons instead of on the side of never doing that ever.

Transgender inmates with a history of violence against women will not be housed in female prisons in Scotland, except in “exceptional circumstances”.

Fuck “exceptional circumstances.” Just don’t do it. There are no circumstances that mean women should take the risk instead of just not housing violent men with women.

The new guidelines confirm an “individualised approach” that any transgender woman with a history of violence against women and girls, and who is assessed as presenting a risk to women and girls, will not be placed in the women’s estate.

The history by itself should be enough, or rather the fact that they’re males should be enough. Just don’t do it.

[C]ritics suggested that the narrow focus on the potential risk of assault ignored the broader impact on fellow inmates. Lucy Hunter Blackburn, from the policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, said the prison service “needs to recognise how the presence of someone male might [have an] impact upon group of vulnerable traumatised women, held in spaces from which they cannot escape”.

Vic Valentine, the manager of Scottish Trans, welcomed that updated policy as “recognising that trans people in custody should not be considered to be a risk of harm to others simply because they are trans”, and supported decision-making “on the basis of evidenced risk assessment”.

Yet again the dishonest translation of “male” to “trans.” It’s not because they’re trans, it’s because they’re male. Yes males should be kept out of women’s prisons just because they’re male. That’s the whole point.

Katherine Rosman and Lisa Lerer in the Times:

The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”

Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.

One can imagine why.

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.

Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.

Does the UN hate Jewish women?

Israelis and many Jews around the world say they feel abandoned by an international social justice community — women’s groups, human rights groups, liberal celebrities, among others — whose causes they have supported in crises around the world.

…

Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles.

Oh really. The way it “violates Islamic principles” to stone women to death for being raped? The way it “violates Islamic principles” to force women to wear bags from head to foot with only a thick woven grill to peer through when outside? The way it “violates Islamic principles” to keep gils out of school? No brutality to women violates “Islamic principles”; those principles are all about treating women like rebellious seditious livestock.

But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.

And the UN has been studiously looking the other way.

The United Nations, and UN Women in particular, have become a primary focus — though hardly the only one — of mounting anger for their silence. Secretary General António Guterres immediately condemned the Hamas massacre, but not until late November did he issue a statement that the related sex crimes specifically must be “vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”

Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, an Israeli law professor and founder of a commission on Oct. 7 crimes against women and children, said that on Nov. 1, she sent a letter to UN Women, signed by dozens of scholars, calling for an “urgent and unequivocal condemnation of the massacre committed by Hamas,” including the use of rape as a tool of war. “They didn’t even respond,” she said.

Some women are more equal than others.

Decline from a not very great height.

“It’s kind of remarkable, I’ve been watching the clips from Trump’s visit to Iowa and I’m stunned having spent a lot of time with him in 2020 and years before—he is slowing down,” Griffin said. “There’s a lack of sharpness in what he’s saying and a lack [ ] of clarity,” she continued. Griffin was once in Donald’s inner circle–and was one of his most spineless sycophants. This gives her comments about his cognitive decline even more weight.

If only he would slow to a stop.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Confused stan.

So, that’s not the actual governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. It’s someone who “stans” him. That being said, Walz does go along with the gender woo stuff, as does the Lt Governor. He signed the bills making “affirmatiion only” treatment the law, allowing those who live in states that don’t provide transmogrifying medicine to children to travel here with a shield against prosecution to get transmogrifying medicine, and would likely sign a trans hate crime bill if it passed his desk.

But this business of “scientific consensus” is a statement that frustrates me on a forum such as X. (I don’t think we need to say “formerly known as” anymore.) A main reason that I am leaving it in a couple of days is that such posts are impossible to correct, and the more I try the more I realize that it takes a good bit of science education to go through and explain why it’s wrong. There is no “TL;dr” version that can be distilled into a single post, and it’s not long before we realize that the person with the anime avatar and pronouns in the bio is not really interested in understanding it.

As Sastra demonstrates, there is a whole lot of question-begging in this issue. I have read several science articles with the requisite peer review that rest on the presupposition of trans.

As a skeptic, I do not question the experiences that people have for not fitting into the gender expectations of their sex. Ellen Johnson, former President of the American Atheists, shared an image on Facebook of a description from someone who compares being trans to being left-handed and forced to write with their right hand. Okay, that’s an experience. Being left-handed was once punished, and we get the word “sinister” from the idea that left-handedness violated superstition. People seem to have bought into the idea that feeling like they have the wrong gender expression for their sex is prima facie evidence that their body is hosting the wrongly sexed mind. And they use the idea that sometimes the hormones that the mother transfers to the fetus overwrite the genetic hormones that the fetus produces in order to produce a feminine boy, or a masculine girl. (I have no clue what they think produces an NB.)

Feminine does not equal female. Masculine does not equal male. They are the gender expressions most commonly associated with a specific sex, but they are not evidence that anyone is really the “wrong sex for their gender identity.” If someone feels wrong for their assigned gender category, perhaps the idea of gender restrictions is wrong. It seems to me that this is the more likely explanation than somehow someone is “born into the wrong sex.”

And this is especially where the Professional Skeptics are frustrating. I know they know better. They write books that indicate that they know better. Harriet Hall knew better and her colleagues shot her down for it at SBM. So, really, the mystery is why are skeptics taking this path, and why do they denounce gender skeptics as bigots? It’s exposing those skepticism “stans” who just take what Steven Novella, PZ Myers, et al say on its face rather than follow on and do their own analysis of what they see and read and hear. Because Novella talks about scientific consensus, these disciples now don’t seem to have any idea what it is. It’s certainly not a definition published by the APA.