More on the Huxley issue:

Imperial College must not “disown” one of its founding fathers, Thomas Huxley, eminent scientists have warned as they urged the university not to remove his bust or rename a building named after him.

…

In a letter to The Telegraph, a group of 39 leading scientists – including 17 from Imperial College – are imploring Imperial College not to turn their back on him.

“Huxley was an ardent abolitionist who fought the virulent pro-slavery scientific racism of his day and publicly welcomed the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865,” they say.

“From childhood poverty, Huxley rose on merit to become President of the Royal Society and Privy Counsellor. ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, he fought for the theory of evolution, and first demonstrated our evolutionary descent from an ape-like ancestor.”

The letter acknowledges that early in his career he believed in a hierarchy of races but added that “as he aged he became sceptical of racial stereotypes”.

It goes on to note that Huxley “reformed London’s schools, was a principal of a working men’s college, wrote volumes of journalism, gave lectures for working people and opened his classes to women”.

The letter says: “He was instrumental in founding the Royal College of Science, later Imperial College, the very institution that now seeks to disown him.”

Statues of men who got rich off the slave trade are one thing, and Huxley is quite another.

Starts well, and then messes it up.

When Sapna Palep was younger, she was mortified by conversations about menstruation. “It was like, ‘Let’s not talk about this, I need to leave the room,’” said the 43-year-old mother of two. The mere mention of periods evoked “pure embarrassment and fear.”

Ms. Palep’s 9-year-old daughter, Aviana Campello-Palep, in contrast, approaches the topic with zero self-consciousness or hesitation. “When my friends talk about getting their period, they just talk about it,” Aviana said. “It’s just normal in a girl’s life.”

These frank conversations have led Ms. Palep and her daughters, Aviana and Anaya, who is 8, to create Girls With Big Dreams, a line of undergarments for tweens, which includes reusable period underwear that offers an environmentally friendlier alternative to disposable pads and tampons; their brand will launch in early February and be sold online.

Cool. Good idea.

The Campello-Palep girls are representative of two emerging trends that have become clear to period advocates, and anyone who casually follows #PeriodTok: Members of Gen Z and beyond are more forthcoming about their periods than generations past, and they are more likely to care whether the products they use are environmentally sustainable. The convergence of the two ideals may signify a cultural shift in how young people are approaching menstruation.

Hmm. Getting a little wobbly there.

“This whole movement is youth-driven,” said Michela Bedard, executive director of Period Inc., a global nonprofit focused on providing access to period supplies and ending period stigma. “Young menstruators are having a completely different experience in terms of managing their periods with reusables throughout their life.”

Aaaaaaaand we’ve lost the plot.

Reusable products represent only a fraction of menstruation supplies purchased in the United States — Americans spend $1.8 billion on pads and $1 billion on tampons yearly, which dwarfs sales of all other products combined.

American women, that is. Men don’t have this particular expense.

But the market share for reusable products is expected to grow through the next decade, according to forecasters, largely fueled by the wider acceptance and availability of menstrual cups in Western countries. Still, the average menstruator can use thousands of tampons in their lifetime.

This time it’s the Times itself calling women “menstruators,” and not someone they’re quoting.

Still, some young people can’t afford reusable products, especially in communities where period poverty — or the lack of access to menstrual products — is an issue. “Even though the investment in a $25 pair of underwear or a $60 cup would save you money, a lot of people don’t have that money every month,” said Ms. Bedard, whose organization serves the economically disadvantaged.

Again, this isn’t about people, it’s about women. It’s only women who have this financial burden. It’s not good journalism to conceal that fact.

The cultural stigma that plagues menstruation also stubbornly persists, despite the best efforts of young people to normalize periods. Patriarchal taboos around virginity, purity and “dirtiness” in many cultures and religions quash conversation and can impede the use of internal menstrual products, such as tampons or cups.

And the patriarchal taboos are aimed at? Female people. Not generic people, but specifically the female ones. It’s female people who are seen as dirty contaminants.

Corporate messaging still largely emphasizes discreteness and cleanliness, which makes periods seem dirty or bad, said Chella Quint, a menstrual activist, educator and author of “Own Your Period: A Fact-filled Guide to Period Positivity.” “For a long time, the disposable menstrual product industry was hugely responsible for propagating and perpetuating the sort of negative taboos that keep people down and frightened,” she added.

Sad that Quint is too down and frightened to say “women” instead of “people.” It’s not men who are kept down and frightened by these taboos.

Menstrual health is a public health issue and has no gender, Dr. Natterson said. To combat taboos around the subject, anyone, even those who don’t menstruate, should be able to speak freely about periods too, she said. Dr. Natterson said she’s made sure her 16-year-old son knows to hand his sweatshirt to a classmate who has a blood stain on their pants, and to have a tampon or pad to share.

Her. Her pants. Hers. Get rid of the taboo on menstruation but don’t replace it with a taboo on mentioning women.

Libs of Tik Tok is probably not a potential comrade from my point of view, but this is…piquant.

It’s about “ways to support your LGBTQ students” – which rather assumes “you” will have lots of them, which in fact is unlikely.

Step one, she says, is to “normalize pronouns in your classroom.”

You what? Nobody needs pronouns “normalized” in a classroom or anywhere else – they’re a core part of our language, which we start learning by osmosis in infancy. Children aren’t stumped for how to express “you” or “I” or “them” or any other pronoun, they’re dab hands at it by the time they’re in school.

A great way to do this, she goes on, is to use pronouns in “an icebreaker activity.” But…you use pronouns in any activity where you use language. There’s no need to make any special effort to “use” them because you use them constantly.

“So, ask for your students’ pronouns reeegardless of their idenniny.”

But your students don’t own any pronouns. That sounds like a very confusing question to ask young children, and I’m assuming she “teaches” young children because she seems too ignorant to teach older ones.

She also “shares” her own pronouns, which is again, of course, meaningless gibberish. She might as well talk about sharing her own verbs or conjunctions. Language doesn’t have “own” things because it has to be public and general as opposed to private and individual.

Another front in this exciting war, she says, is greetings. No gendered greetings, no no – she doesn’t use words like “guys,” she says, or “ladies n gennlemen” – well no, teachers of little children wouldn’t be saying “ladies n gennlemen,” that would be silly. Instead she uses words like “folks” or…”guys gals n nonbinary pals.” Yes she really says that: she doesn’t say guys, instead she says guys.

I’m hoping she’s not a teacher at all but just identifies as a teacher.

Scientists write a letter to Nature:

Once again a group of us—this time a different group—got together not to protest an article in Sci. Am. or Nature, but to make a public statement in Nature about the impending defenestration of a great scientist: Thomas Henry Huxley. As the Guardian and other sites have reported, Imperial College in London is pondering—and almost certainly will execute—the relocation of a statue of Huxley, and is also considering renaming one of its structures, the Huxley Building.

That’s annoying. Huxley was a progressive guy, more so than Darwin.

The Guardian wrote:

An investigation into Imperial College London’s historical links to the British empire has recommended the university remove a statue and rename buildings and lecture theatres that celebrate scientists whose work advocated eugenics and racism.

The recommendations by the college’s independent history group are intended to address racial inequalities and improve inclusivity at the Russell Group university.

The report identified a number of problematic renowned scientific figures who have been honoured with buildings, rooms and academic positions in their names.

For example, it calls for a building named after the English biologist and anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley, lauded for determining that birds descended from dinosaurs, to be renamed due to his racist beliefs about human intelligence.

The report says Huxley’s essay Emancipation – Black and White “espouses a racial hierarchy of intelligence, a belief system of ‘scientific racism’ that fed the dangerous and false ideology of eugenics; legacies of which are still felt today”.

Jerry Coyne responds:

As you’ll see if you investigate Huxley’s life (and I’ve put some relevant facts below the fold), while he said a few things that might be considered “problematic” today, he was nevertheless far more liberal and abolitionist than nearly all of his peers. His early views on races also changed over his life, becoming more tolerant. More important, he was an ardent advocate of evolution (Darwin was too timorous to defend it in person), and an advocate of women’s rights and of the education of working people. He spent much of his later life actually giving science courses to people from the working class, and trying to enact educational reform. There is nobody who can claim that, on balance, his life caused more harm than good.

In light of the misleading accusations of Huxley’s inherent racism, claims that can rest only on either ignorance or an drive to efface the past to make it palatable to today’s standards, a group of us from the U.S. and the U.K. wrote a short letter to Nature.  I’ve put it between the lines below. Nature summarily rejected our letter on the grounds of “we don’t take petitions”, but that’s completely disingenuous. It’s not a petition but a comment or a letter, and I can guess why Nature didn’t touch it.  (They are, of course, very woke.) As one of my colleagues said, “Cowardly f*****s—they have loads of self-righteous letters. Calling it a petition is a way of ducking the issue.”

Cowardly fuckers, that is. I don’t know why JC is squeamish about the word – maybe it’s to encourage restraint in his very large group of commenters.

Jupiter from the James Webb telescope September 12, 2019.

See comments for correction.

No racism here folks, move along.

Hours before a failed effort by Democrats to pass a voting rights bill in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was asked in a news conference on Wednesday for his message to voters worried about access to the polls during the midterm elections.

Mr. McConnell described those worries as a ginned-up controversy, and misleadingly cited data on voter turnout.

“Well, the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” he responded.

Note that he thinks African Americans are not Americans.

Leaving that aside however – come on. The issue is future elections, not past ones. The Republicans have been busily making it harder for African Americans to vote ever since the Shelby ruling and especially ever since Trump. There are new obstacles that won’t be in the statistics yet.

[H]igh voter turnout and perceptions that voting was easy in past elections do not prove that concerns about voting access in future elections are “misplaced,” as Mr. McConnell suggested. At least 19 states passed laws in 2021 restricting voting access. Georgia’s efforts in particular may have an outsize impact on Black voters.

What I’m saying. There are new restrictions. McConnell is a very bad man.

Today I learned there’s a thing called Pop ‘n’ Olly, which bills itself as “LGBT+ and Equality ‘Edutainment’ for children and young people”…without of course saying anything about what qualifies it to educate children and young people (or for that matter to edutain them).

It showed us…this.

It is – surprise surprise – absolutely dire. It starts by “explaining” how infants are “assigned” a sex and then says gender is different…without bothering to say what “gender” is. “A person’s gender is who they feel that they are,” it says in a smarmy voice, but of course that’s not what they mean at all, they just mean the usual gender bullshit. Here’s an interesting thing: there’s more to “who people are” than their sex or gender. Little children aren’t going to hear “who they feel that they are” and think girl or boy and nothing else.

Smarmy voice continues with “examples,” such as female, male, both, or neither, and then immediately proceeds to “Gender is usually something a person just knows about themselves.” The whole world of “who people are” is boiled down to female or male in an instant. It’s about as educational as a bowl of sick.

Also, by the way, what sex children are is not something they “just know” about themselves; they get told it. They get told it as they get told everything, as part of their development. Adults don’t remember being told it, so the gender fanatics among them jump to the conclusion that we “just know” it, which is a measure of how deeply stupid the whole ideology is.

I can’t watch past the first minute right now because it’s too nauseating.

The police can’t cope.

Scotland’s national police force has warned that it cannot comply fully with the demands of new hate crime laws until next year, as officers struggle to cope with a surge in reported offences caused by Twitter rows.

In its quarterly report Police Scotland said there were “hurdles to overcome” if officers were to carry out their duties within the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, passed nine months ago, with training and guidance still to be addressed, along with a requirement for new IT systems.

They want to postpone because they’re having trouble keeping up with people who call the police because they’re OfFended by something on Twitter.

A 76 per cent rise in reported crimes in which transgender issues was the aggravating factor contrasted with 6.1 per cent growth in all hate crime reports, and reflected the impact of online rows about trans rights and gender identity, according to the Scottish Police Federation.

And we know which side of those rows is calling the cops. It’s not the side that defends the rights of women, it’s the side that is outraged to be told it can’t trample all over the rights of women.

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Work in conjunction with justice partners is underway to ensure effective implementation of the Hate Crime Act so that, once in force, it offers greater protections to those targeted by hatred and prejudice.”

Spokesperson has the tedious bureaucratic jargon down pat, at least.

“Whilst the rise in hate crimes recorded by the police including a trangender identity aggravation may be attributed to a greater frequency of crimes occurring, it may also be attributed to an increased confidence in the reporting of instances of hate crime to the police – something that is to be encouraged.

“However, these figures are a reminder to redouble our efforts to tackle hate and confront prejudice towards our LGBTI communities.”

But not toward women of course. God no. Who gives a fuck about women?

Parody or serious effort to delete the word “women” from the language? It can be hard to tell.

According to two former competitors, players with vaginas received extra underwear on the latest season of “Survivor,” which aired in 2021. 

…

Wallace said it “makes sense” to give players with vaginas more than one pair of underwear because “we got stuff going on own there” and they have different needs than those with penises. 

…

Insider has reported that wearing the same underwear and clothes for an extended period of time can have potentially life-threatening consequences, with the health risks, such as severe urinary tract infections, being higher for people with vaginas. 

According to Wallace, shortly after she and her tribemates voiced their concerns, showrunners gave players with vaginas extra underwear. 

“They decided, yes, it makes sense to give people that have a vagina two pairs of underwear,” Wallace said. “That was something cool that I think is going to continue.” 

It’s unclear if players with penises also received extra underwear. 

Has to be parody, right?

This would be just one more example of a man who identifies as a woman verbally abusing feminist women, but this one is “Lead therapist for” GenderGP.

Trans people are human, but feminist women are animals. Hm.

Oh gee what do you know it turns out all those Christmas lights use a lot of electricity. I thought there had to be a special dispensation from someone that made them magically not part of our brisk destruction of our own ecosystem, but no.

With the world moving towards cleaner energy and looking to reduce emissions, there are questions to be asked about the heavy usage of Christmas lights.

Yes like why the fuck don’t people just stop doing it, seeing as how we’re racing toward disaster as it is.

I bet a lot of people think it’s “for the kids,” but if so that’s sad because guess who is going to be dealing with much worse effects of climate change than we adults are.

A 2008 study from the US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found festive lights accounted for 6.6 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity consumption every year in the US.

That may have just been 0.2% of the country’s total electricity usage, but that amount of energy could be enough to run 14 million refrigerators, according to the study.

And it’s completely optional and unnecessary. There’s no law that says you have to stick lightbulbs on your house in December. People are mostly inside watching Don’t Look Up after dark anyway, not outside gaping at your lightbulbs. The fact that it’s “only” 0.2% (which is actually a hell of a lot if you think about it) doesn’t make it ok to make the problem worse for no real reason. The need to stay warm in winter is one thing, the need to be able to read outside at midnight is another.

The people in my neighborhood are getting worse about it instead of better, too. More lights than ever, and left up apparently forever. The people across the alley from me – who have them all over a very large roof & deck & porch & god knows what else on the far side where I mercifully can’t see them – still haven’t taken theirs down, 26 days after Christmas, and they’re not the only ones.

It would also have been enough to provide electricity for the whole of El Salvador, where the Central American country’s consumption was 5.9 billion kWh in 2016.

What I’m saying. 0.2% of US consumption is not “only.”

To the surprise of absolutely no one:

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to act over four child abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich, a German probe into the Catholic Church has alleged.

Of course he did. That’s what the church did for generations until it finally got caught. What matters to the Catholic church is the Catholic church. Not people, just the church (and its clergy – those people matter).

[A] new report into historical abuse allegations carried out by a German law firm incriminated the former pontiff. Abuse continued under his tenure, it is alleged, and the accused priests remained active in church roles.

Because that’s what always happened. The church always put the church first.

In one instance, it is alleged he knew about a priest accused of abusing boys who was transferred to his diocese, but who then continued to work in pastoral care roles – this often involves visiting and supporting people within the community.

And sexually abusing children within the community. The kindly priest comes along to visit and support people, and molests children when no adults are looking. How supportive.

Oh isn’t that sweet – Princess Ivanka handing out apples to The Poor.

For sure. She’s not the crook child of a crook father, she’s not the corrupt daughter who gave herself a nepotistic job in the White House when her corrupt daddy was pretend-president, she’s not the object of an investigation by the New York DA, she’s a sweet dainty young girl who carries big boxes around in a snowy landscape and then tells us about it on social media. Arwa Mahdawi has a good laugh.

Ever since her father lost his job as president and she lost her job as special advisor to the president, Ivanka has been keeping a low profile in Miami and largely staying off social media.

On Tuesday, however, the former first daughter posted on Instagram and Twitter for the first time in eight months, showing off photos of herself distributing free food boxes to families upstate New York.

Not that that’s why she went there, you understand. Not that the whole point was the photo op. No no no no no, she does that kind of thing regularly. At least once a year. By the way is there anything in that big box she’s schlepping? She’s certainly carrying it as if it’s weightless. Maybe there are a few napkins in it.

Why would she stage a photo op right when the New York DA announces she’s being investigated? Gee, that’s a puzzler.

(Remember that story from a high school friend who recommended Richard Russo’s Empire Falls to Princess Ivanka and got told off for thinking the Princess might want to read a book about “fucking poor people”? That too is upstate New York. Funny coincidence.)

In short, you can see why Ivanka – who has always managed her personal brand a lot more carefully than her blowhard brothers have – might decide now would be a good time to post photos online of her benevolently helping the poor.

Because she’s stupid. If she weren’t stupid, she would realize what such a photo op at such a time would look like, and realize it was too late. She’s so stupid she thinks a photo op on the very day the DA announces the investigation is a wise move.

There aren’t enough eye roll emojis in the world.

The National Women’s Law Center is no longer about women’s law. Chalk up another win for institutional capture!

It tells us:

On January 19, 2022, the National Women’s Law Center, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., and 20 additional organizations committed to gender justice and LGBTQ rights submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Brandt v. Rutledge. We filed our brief in support of Dylan Brandt, Brooke Dennis, Sabrina Jennen, and Parker Saxton, transgender young people with gender dysphoria who the state of Arkansas has tried to bar from receiving gender-affirming health care, as well as their parents and two doctors.

What does that have to do with women’s law? Apart from eroding women’s rights?

For adolescents with gender dysphoria, gender-affirming care can dramatically reduce depression and suicidal thoughts; for some, it is life-saving health care.

It can also dramatically reduce long-term happiness and self-acceptance; for some, it is life-damaging malpractice. The NWLC is completely, and recklessly, ignoring the second potential outcome.

We also counter harmful and erroneous arguments raised by supporters of this law, who claim that banning gender-affirming care is necessary to protect transgender adolescents—they’re wrong, it harms them—and that protecting transgender individuals from discrimination will somehow undermine women’s rights—they’re wrong, it bolsters protections for all women and girls. 

No you’re wrong, it doesn’t. And “all women and girls” doesn’t include men and boys, even men and boys who insist that they are women.

At NWLC, we have long defended the rights of all patients to access health care free from sex discrimination, including LGBTQ patients and patients seeking reproductive health care.

Then why call yourself NWLC? Why not drop the W now that you no longer mean it?

This is…so American.

Ask them what they think the federal minimum wage is.

And that’s why we have the terrible, ludicrous politics we have, including the massive gap between rich and poor.

Even NPR reporters are bad at it.

Institutional capture:

Canadian Bar Association Demands “No Exception” To Male Transfers to Women’s prisons

Well, that’s women decisively thrown under the wheels of the runaway locomotive.

The Canadian Bar Association had issued a series of recommendations and directives to the Correctional Service of Canada demanding violent male criminals be accommodated in women’s prisons, and to ensure their biological sex is never recorded.

In a letter dated December 4, 2020 the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) denounced a draft proposal by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) that they claim was not lax enough in its treatment and transfer of trans-identified prisoners. The CSC Commissioner’s Directive currently takes into consideration operative status and any overriding safety concerns for staff and other inmates in the movement of trans-identified inmates, but the CBA claimed those policies were discriminatory.

“In our view, [Commissioner’s Directive 100] is based on the incorrect assumption that people are fundamentally men or women (or intersex) based on biology at birth,” the CBA writes, “we recommend that the policy be based on the assumption that people have the right to be placed in institutions that reflect their gender identity if that is their choice.”

The “incorrect” “assumption” that men are not women. It’s not incorrect and it’s not an assumption. What’s the alternative? That sex is like weight or hair length or muscle definition – changeable by the owner. Nope – that’s what’s incorrect, not the awareness that sex is not changeable by the owner. It’s not “incorrect” to understand that men are not women.

The CBA goes on to suggest that almost no health or safety concerns be taken into consideration in most cases, including in transfers and double-bunking. On page 4 of the letter, the CBA writes that transfers should be made “without exception.”

“We recommend that CSC implement a policy of gender identity placement if that is the preference, without exception. In practice, the application of this exception has led to some trans women being denied placement at women’s prisons based on risk speculation.”

What about the preference of women though? What about the preference of women not to be locked up in prison with men, especially violent men? Why doesn’t that matter? Why is it only trans people whose preferences are sacred?

Pakistan is such a hellhole.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a woman to death over allegedly blasphemous messages sent over WhatsApp and Facebook.

Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was found guilty and given a death sentence by a court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday after a complaint was registered against her under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime and blasphemy laws

Why not just let Allah deal with the problem? Why not concentrate on being good people themselves instead of handing out death sentences for private chats?

Pakistan is an Islamic state and has some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world, regularly handing down death sentences. In practice executions are not carried out and the accused spend their lives in jail.

Pakistan is an Islamist theocracy, and it’s a pit of hatred and revenge.

The issue of blasphemy remains highly sensitive in Pakistan. Last month a Sri Lankan national working in a factory in Pakistan was beaten to death and his body was set alight by a mob of hundreds of people after he was accused of committing blasphemy by removing religious posters from the factory walls.

A pit of hatred and revenge.

Stewart Rhodes was arrested last week.

From Day One of the Jan. 6 investigation, the FBI was after Person One — the Justice Department’s legal term for Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, a Yale-educated military veteran who founded the extremist group Oath Keepers.

He was not among the hundreds charged in the year after the attack with crimes ranging from assaulting a police officer to unlawfully entering the Capitol.

But he made frequent appearances in prosecutors’ court filings, which said that “Person One” was in regular contact with those who allegedly attacked Congress, pushing his disciples to prepare for an apocalyptic confrontation with those who would acknowledge Joe Biden’s presidential victory and the end of Donald Trump’s time in office.

In other words he wasn’t messing around.

On Thursday, a year and a week after the riot that rocked the U.S. Capitol, FBI agents in Texas arrested Rhodes, based on a newly unsealed indictment accusing him of the rare crime of seditious conspiracy.

…

Another newly charged Oath Keeper, Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, appeared briefly before a federal magistrate judge in Arizona, who ordered that he, too, should be held in custody until a detention hearing next week.

…

The last successful federal sedition prosecution came 26 years ago, when Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as the “blind sheikh,” and nine others were convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations, the FBI building in Manhattan, and bridges and tunnels between New Jersey and New York.

Not excited amateurs with horns on their heads but serious conspirators.

A good watch:

Andy tells us (which I didn’t know) that Aaron Rabinowitz writes regularly for The Skeptic, not the Shermer one but the UK one. Comes as a bit of a shock after his performance in that letter exchange.

This one is funny, in the usual “but horrifying” way Trump things are funny.

Heh heh heh. In 2015 his apartment was 30 thousand square feet, in 2017 it was 11 thousand square feet. Did it shrink in the laundry or what?