Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Marjorie

    Gee, I wonder why women get so angry about this kind of thing; I just can’t understand it.

    So there you go. Shut up and take it, women.

  • The worsening phenomenon of tribalism

    Paul Fidalgo has an interesting piece in Free Inquiry (where he is now the editor-in-chief).

    Tim Minchin Reaches across the Algorithmic Chasm

    Nice title, too.

    In a “lecture” portion of his show recently posted online, which is introduced as being a “TED Talk” on confirmation bias, Minchin (winner of CFI’s 2021 Richard Dawkins Award) teases apart what he sees as the worsening phenomenon of tribalism, wherein the political right has come to hold bewilderingly absolutist, contradictory, nonsensical, and bigoted beliefs, while progressives have turned on themselves, creating an endless fractal of mini-tribes that are constantly ejecting their members over increasingly minor ideological infractions.

    Also over what I would consider not infractions at all. Progressives have lost their grip on the difference between reality and fiction lately. Progressives now queue up to denounce people for not believing other people’s fantasies – which is a weird thing to denounce. It’s weird when it’s religion and it’s weird when it’s ideology.

    This is something I think about all the time, particularly from the position of someone who runs a secular humanist publication that is literally called “Free Inquiry.” It has to be okay to ask hard questions and to have a healthy skepticism of the beliefs held by those even within our own “tribes.” Just as it’s important to speak out against what is false, harmful, and wrong, it must also be okay to be wrong in the first place so that one can feel free to learn and grow.

    Which doesn’t mean you have to be wrong about everything all the time, like Trump.

  • All coming to grips

    Now we get to read the texts and phone logs and such from Trump’s Big Day.

    The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.

    The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win.

    This will keep us busy for weeks.

    Hope Hicks, to the surprise of no one, was agitated about her personal future.

    Trump aide Hope Hicks texted with Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford on the afternoon of Jan. 6 decrying Trump’s actions and lamenting that their careers were likely doomed.

    “All of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset,” Hicks wrote. “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

    Ya that’s the important thing: Hope Hicks’s career.

    There is a certain amount of humor though.

    The select committee also posted a journal entry produced by Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump White House press Secretary, from Jan. 6, describing some of the chaos and interactions she observed that day.

    “POTUS wanted to walk to capital [sic]. Physically walk,” she wrote. “He said fine ride beast. Meadows said not safe enough.”

    You can imagine what came between that “Physically walk” and “fine ride beast.” It’s not a short walk – it’s very doable, but it’s not five or ten minutes. Trump doesn’t like to walk.

  • Catholics from São Paulo to Paris

    In case anyone’s feeling like shedding a tear for Pope Benny (unlikely, I know), here’s a reminder from 2009:

    The Catholic Church (and Pope Benedict XVI) were presented with a public-relations powder keg in March when news broke that a 9-year-old Brazilian girl underwent an abortion after she’d been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather. Catholics from São Paulo to Paris were outraged by the swift public declaration of the local Archbishop, José Cardoso Sobrinho, that the girl’s family as well as the doctors who performed the abortion were automatically excommunicated.

    What, just because the local archbishop valued the “life” of the process inside the 9-year-old girl more than the very actual life of the girl herself? Because the archbishop swiftly declared that the unaware unconscious unsentient pregnancy forced on the child mattered more than the child herself? Because the archbishop declared that the child should have submitted to likely death rather than halt the life-threatening process forced on her by her rapist stepfather? Yes, just because all that.

    Monsignor Rino Fisichella, a solidly traditionalist Rome prelate considered to be close to Benedict, tried to soften the church’s approach to the case by writing in the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the girl “should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side.” 

    Fuck that noise. You’re a million miles from “her side” when you’re forcing her to go through agony and likely death after being raped by her stepfather. Imagine being a 9-year-old girl gestating twins!! There isn’t room in a child’s body for that.

    In a tucked-away “clarification” published on page 7 of a recent edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican produced a document that unequivocally confirmed automatic excommunication for anyone involved in an abortion — even in such a situation as dire as the Brazilian case.

    Because priestly power matters far more than the lives of mere little sluts who probably tempted their stepfathers in the first place. Bros before hos.

    Updating to add, reminded by tigger_the_wing’s comment:

  • The worst imaginable perversion

    Jordan Peterson is notoriously a stupid person’s idea of a smart person.

    Example:

    Ah yes, we live in that utopia where nobody decides were anybody can drive, so there are no freeways or highways or roads.

  • Squirming on the spot

    Oh ffs.

    And Sir Keir whines and gesticulates and flails like an idiot. He finally manages to utter the complete sentence “I don’t think discussing the issue in this way helps anyone.”

    It helps women you fucking fool. This exciting new fad for pretending men can become women by saying so is bad for women, and men in power brushing that off is also bad for women. It does help us to keep reminding men in power like you that letting men pretend to be women and invade our spaces and take over our sports and win our prizes is bad for us.

  • Check out the thighs on Tiffany

    Yet another one of these.

    “Tiffany” of course is not a woman.

    Sucks for Paula James, doesn’t it.

  • Honorable exception

    I could find only one headline that doesn’t lie about the murder of Carlo Secondino. Even the New York Post says “woman” in the headline. Newsweek is the one truth-teller.

    Who Is Nikki Secondino? Trans Woman Accused of Murdering Father

    A New York transgender woman has been arrested by police and is accused of killing her father and critically injuring her sister, according to reports.

    Why don’t they all report it that way? Why do they say “woman” and “daughter” in the headlines?

  • Don’t lie to us

    Actual literal journalists lying about the news. That’s useful. Reporter for CBS News:

    That’s all lies. His SON told police that. His SON is under arrest on suspicion of murdering his father and stabbing his sister.

    The hashtag is NotOurCrimes. It gets used a lot.

  • New women’s fiction

    Ah, I didn’t realize there was a Welsh publisher of women writers. Gwasg Honno Press: “Vibrant fiction, auto/biography, short stories, anthologies & Classics (@Honno_Clas) from Welsh women writers. Longest running UK independent women’s press.” (I still miss Virago.)

    But, it turns out…

    Never mind then, it’s not a women’s press after all.

    Mind you, they’ll get in trouble for that “or.” It’s not “if you’re a woman or you identify as a woman” because that implies that if you identify as a woman you’re not a woman. ERROR ERROR ERROR.

  • A noted change of policy

    Bolsonaro has urgent business up north.

    Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been sworn in as the new president of Brazil – the third time he has held the country’s highest office.

    …

    Lula and incoming Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin paraded through the city on an open-top convertible before proceeding to the Senate – at the start of the formal inauguration ceremony. The men have spent the past days selecting their cabinet and appointing supporters to key state owned businesses.

    In a noted change of policy from the Bolsonaro administration, Marina Silva – one of Brazil’s best known climate activists – was re-appointed to head the environment and climate ministry. She will be expected to achieve Lula’s pledge to reach “zero deforestation” in the Amazon by 2030.

    Noted and vitally important to the entire planet.

    Mr Bolsonaro himself reportedly flew to the US state of Florida after delivering a teary farewell to supporters.

    Ah, Florida. Hoping he has friends there, no doubt. Of course Trump hates “losers” so…

    The populist incumbent has repeatedly said he does not wish to attend the inauguration of his successor, where he would be expected to hand over the presidential sash in a sign of a stable transfer of power.

    Aw, iddn that sweet; so trumpy. Maybe Trump will let him kiss the ring if he promises to leave immediately afterwards.

  • Resting for the journey north

    Now that’s more like it.

    Scarborough’s New Year fireworks cancelled to protect walrus

    Priorities. Which is more important, a walrus or fireworks? The walrus, obviously. Good job Scarborough.

    A New Year’s Eve fireworks display had to be cancelled at the last minute to protect an Arctic walrus discovered in Scarborough.

    The event was called off over fears it “could cause distress to the mammal”. Council leader Steve Siddons said he was disappointed but “the welfare of the walrus has to take precedence”.

    The walrus, which has drawn huge crowds since arriving on Saturday, is believed to be the same one spotted on the Hampshire coast three weeks ago.

    If it’s drawn huge crowds that would seem to indicate it’s given some joy to a lot of people, so there’s some consolation for the canceled fireworks. There may not be a huge amount of overlap between the fans of marine mammals and fans of fireworks, but even so.

    More on the walrus, who seems to feel very comfortable catching up on sleep while the people of Yorkshire admire.

  • Guest post: Where the skeptics got confused

    Originally a comment by Arty Morty on Where are the skeptics?

    To go back to latsot’s analogy with other kinds of pseudomedicine, why is the skeptic community not going after the quack doctors peddling dangerous drugs and mutilating surgery to these genuinely distressed people?

    I’ve been racking my brain for years trying to figure this out, and the best I can come up with is this:

    “Gender medicine” is a treatment for a mental health disorder but people are terrified to make any kind of association between atypical gender expression and being mentally disordered. To which the obvious reply should be, “Then get rid of gender medicine, you idiots!” But instead, the reply from skeptics, progressives and everyone else is a strange collusion with the patients that they can still have all the “gender medicine” they want but they’re not disordered, it’s the whole rest of the world that needs fixing.

    The hypocrisy at the heart of the gender identity movement is best exemplified by the euphemistic term “gender affirming care.” It says, we’re giving you some kind of care but it’s not medical treatment for a medical disorder, no no, my goodness no! It’s just wholesome gender-stereotype-smashing affirmative progressive feel-good “care.”

    Under the “gender affirmation” euphemism, puberty blockers, genital reconstruction surgeries, synthetic hormones… none of this stuff needs the same scrutiny that any other medical treatment does, because none of it is really medical treatment, because that would imply that there might sometimes be a connection between gender expression and mental health disorders.

    Of course there’s a connection between gender expression and mental health disorders — and the gender identity movement is the thing that’s perpetuating it!

    Before the gender identity movement took over the medical establishment, there was the “watchful waiting” model, whose central premise was to reduce patients’ delusions about being the “wrong” sex with as much psychiatric care as possible before resorting to permanent medical body modifications, which would never literally “fix” the patients’ sex but which might help to alleviate their distress.

    This seems to be where the skeptics got confused: it turns out that “gender medicine” isn’t entirely bad — some patients do seem to benefit from it. So completely abolishing medical treatment for gender distress is off the table — that would be bad, regressive, harmful. But acknowledging that this stuff is treatment for a mental health disorder is also off the table. Having a mental health disorder is the thing that leads you to seek medical treatment, but the medical treatment is the thing that makes you “trans.” Literally by definition, being trans means having a mental health condition. And that simply cannot be allowed. Their hands are tied: they have to endorse “gender medicine” in principle, because they know that it works sometimes. But they can’t allow themselves any kind of scrutiny about how it works, who it works for, what it actually does, what the risks are, etc, because that’s a foul reminder that we’re talking about a connection between “gender identities” and mental health disorders.

    And right on cue, in swoop the charlatans and the quacks and the pharmaceutical hawks and all the other nasties looking to exploit a blind spot in everyone’s critical thinking. And boy are they making a killing.

    It’s such a bloody mess. And all we have to do to untangle it is to collectively sit down and face the fact that the entire gender identity movement is an attempt by people with mental health disorders to feed their delusions instead of overcoming them.

  • Is he the asshole?

    Sigh. Rule number one, plus two through six or seven hundred: don’t be an asshole.

    A controversial New Year’s Eve fireworks display at the billionaire owner of New York’s Empire State Building’s property outside Queenstown is understood to have caused a large scrub fire.

    Why was the fireworks display controversial? Well, because of the risk of fire. Cool that the guy did it anyway.

    Empire State Realty Trust chairman, president and chief executive Tony Malkin of New York had upset neighbours of his Dalefield property with plans for an extravagant 14-minute fireworks display to bring in 2023.

    Because fireworks are a necessity of life?

    Now, several neighbours who were watching the display closely with fears for their animals, believe that a sizeable blaze was started by the fireworks.

    Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) said there were three separate fires on steep terrain which spanned an estimated 1.2ha of land in Dalefield near Arrowtown.

    The guy could have just canceled the fireworks. They’re not in fact a necessity of life, and when they’re actively dangerous, how about just not setting them off and causing major harm?

    The New York property tycoon’s fireworks plans had enraged neighbours, the majority of whom owned horses and other livestock animals.

    So why couldn’t he just be a mensch, a decent neighbor, a decent human, and not do the hazardous thing?

    In a statement to the ODT before the event, the [fireworks-having] property owners said they had “deep and long-lived social and charitable connections” in the area.

    “As a courtesy, beyond any requirement, mindful of house pets and livestock, we have reached out to neighbours to ensure they are appraised of our plans,” the statement said.

    What a complete dickhead. Just don’t do it. Don’t set your barn on fire, don’t shoot at the neighbors’ children, don’t bomb the local school, don’t pour toxic chemicals into the nearest river, and don’t set off fireworks in an area likely to burst into flames. Just don’t.

    He rubbed salt into the wound by saying “We are sorry for any inconvenience.” Don’t pretend to be sorry; don’t do it.

  • Said she was a man

    Everything that’s yours is belong to us.

    An Australian transgender woman who says she was barred from using the female-only platform Giggle for Girls has sued the social media site for alleged discrimination.

    Female people must not be allowed to have anything that’s only for them. Not one thing.

    In a federal court lawsuit filed on 22 December, Roxanne Tickle claims she was unlawfully barred from using Giggle in September 2021 after the firm and its CEO, Sally “Sall” Grover, said she was a man.

    The activist is seeking damages, a written apology and complete access to the platform.

    Oh is that all.

    After initially suing Giggle and Grover in the federal circuit and family court in July this year, Tickle dropped the case, afraid of the legal costs after hearing the firm’s CEO would take the matter all the way to the high court if she had to.

    Maybe he can find some other way to silence women.

  • Women litter less

    What do you know, sometimes Scientific American does remember that men are not women and vice versa.

    Women have long surpassed men in the arena of environmental action; across age groups and countries, females tend to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Compared to men, women litter less, recycle more, and leave a smaller carbon footprint. Some researchers have suggested that personality differences, such as women’s prioritization of altruism, may help to explain this gender gap in green behavior.

    Or to put it more crudely, lots of men are of the “you can’t tell me what to do” mindset even in contexts where yes of course someone can tell you what to do, while women are better at accepting that living in society entails some rules. Lots of men dread being called a pussy more than anything else, while women know selfish behavior when they see it.

    Our own research suggests an additional possibility: men may shun eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their masculinity. It’s not that men don’t care about the environment. But they also tend to want to feel macho, and they worry that eco-friendly behaviors might brand them as feminine.

    Those are closely-related things. Altruism isn’t seen as “masculine.” It could be, but it isn’t. Wanting to feel macho=altruism is for bitches=I can do whatever I want.

    Ironically, although men are often considered to be less sensitive than women, they seem to be particularly sensitive when it comes to perceptions of their gender identity. In fact, a previous study suggests that men find it to be more difficult than women to choose between masculine and feminine versions of everyday food and household items and will usually change their preferences to be more manly when allowed time to think about their decisions. Something as simple as holding a purse, ordering a colorful drink, or talking in a high voice can lead to social harm, so men tend to keep a sharp eye out for any of these potential snares. 

    It’s something women don’t have to deal with, at least not as directly. We’re already in the disgraced category, so it’s pointless to be hyper-vigilant about markers of it; men on the other hand have their higher status to protect.

    Having said that though, I have to admit that there are lot of girly-marked things that I dislike, so maybe I’m just as hyper-vigilant even though it’s futile.

    It’s an interesting and depressing conundrum. I’ve been thinking about it since forever and still have no idea how to resolve it. We’re sexually dimorphic, men are stronger, ergo there is status anxiety, always.

    H/t Omar

  • A little more seriousness

    Recognised:

    A trans media activist who has been made an OBE said she was afraid of the backlash she might receive as a result.

    It’s a funny sort of gig, being an “activist” for pretending to be the sex you’re not. “Come on, kids, let’s get some more of you pretending to be the other sex! You boys especially – put some effort into it!”

    Helen Belcher, from Wiltshire, director of Transactual and trustee of Trans Media Watch, has been recognised in the King’s New Year’s Honours list.

    Claim to fame? Pretending to be a woman.

    The 59-year-old councillor said she was afraid of what the press reaction might be towards her.

    “I would hope it would mean things that we say are taken with a little bit more seriousness,” she added.

    But the things you say are based on a fantasy. That’s a considerable impediment to taking them seriously.

  • Guest post: Where are the skeptics?

    Originally a comment by latsot on Scary guy.

    I know we’ve all made this point a thousand times but I never claimed not to be boring: where are the skeptics?

    They (we) were right there front and centre when homoeopathy was a hot topic. You know what? In retrospect I think we probably exaggerated the harms, I don’t mind admitting it. Not the harms of believing nonsense, I don’t think those can be overstated, but the harms of fannying about with water for pretend ailments or ones that will eventually sort themselves out anyway*… there’s a case to be made that we might have had our thumbs on the scale when we raved about it as a scourge. Understand that I regret nothing and I’m no less opposed to fake medicine than previously, but I wonder in retrospect whether we had a bit of a perspective problem and I think my focus might be different if I did it all again.

    So if skeptics were – I hesitantly suggest – a touch over-zealous about quack medicine that was stupid and wrong and harmful – but perhaps not as harmful as we made out – why are so many of them cheerleaders for largely untested, off-label medicine which we know for scientific fact is extremely harmful and is being prescribed without adequate research, guidance or supervision?

    The roster of former movement skeptics who are openly critical of puberty blockers is depressingly small. Ophelia, of course. Andy Lewis. Our own Arty. Moley (who I had the pleasure of meeting recently!) There are not many others. Where is Ben Goldacre? He wrote a whole book on ‘medicine’ that does more harm than good and another whole book on the dubious practices of pharmaceutical companies in selling medicines that have not been shown by any reasonable standard to work or be safe. Where is he? We used to be fairly regular correspondents because we were both stalked by the same deranged individual but now he wont talk to me at all. If anyone should be taking a stand against puberty blockers, it’s Ben.

    He should be all over this.

    Where.

    Is.

    He?

    I made the point about our perhaps being over-zealous about the harms of certain quack medicines to throw the lack of outrage among movement skeptics about puberty blockers into sharp relief. Never mind the messy, politically-charged and deliberately-obfuscated business of whether humans can change sex or whether men should be allowed in women’s spaces**; this is an issue about whether a particular drug is safe and effective. It’s right up the skeptical movement’s alley. Where is everyone?

    * I know there are cases of homoeopathic nonsense being responsible for suffering and death. I’m being deliberately flippant to eventually get around to making a point.

    ** Can’t, shouldn’t.

  • Guest post: The lobotomy craze turned up to eleven

    Originally a comment by Cluecat on Scary guy.

    Strange, isn’t it, that just a few years ago there was a massive issue raised by the Skeptic/Autism Advocate communities about Autistic youngsters (primarily male) being fed Lupron as a supposed “cure” for their Autism – that was totally caused by mercury poisoning (somehow that none of these practitioners ever really managed to satisfactorily explain).

    There was a huge fuss about how chemical castration doesn’t cure a neurological developmental disorder, and that feeding these kids the same stuff that everyone decided was too harsh to give to literal sex offenders was correctly recognised as medical abuse (often driven by the kind of parent that won’t accept a “defective” child), and totally unacceptable.

    Whatever happened to all that outrage about poisoning children with drugs that affected every system in their bodies, that was well-documented to have horrific side-effects and long-term consequences?

    Whatever happened to those people who were saying that the Geiers and their contemporary quacks deserved to lose their licences to practice, and that many of the “Autism Warrior Parents” were participating in what looked an awful lot like Munchausens by Proxy?

    Whatever happened to the idea that this was a monstrous human rights abuse perpetrated against vulnerable youngsters by people who certainly didn’t have the child’s best interests in mind?

    Whatever happened to the evidence from the young women that had been given these meds for legitimate reasons (precocious puberty, childhood cancers) who had documented those horrific side-effects and long-term consequences of being on these meds for a year or so (osteoporosis, factured hips in their 20’s, teeth crumbling, constant pain & fatigue, some are full-time wheelchair users because their bones just fall apart, etc.)? Or does none of that evidence matter because nobody listens to women & girls?

    How did everyone suddenly switch to “it’s perfectly fine to sterilise and poison Autistic youngsters – and let’s add any potentially Lesbian and Gay kids, or anyone else who doesn’t fit into sex role stereotypes that would have been considered extreme during the 1950’s while we’re at it, and call anyone who objects ‘bigots’ who want to murder pwecious baybeez!”?

    Concern for the well-being of children over the long-term isn’t “hatred”.

    Wanting children to be able to live the best lives they can with the support they deserve isn’t “bigotry”.

    Nobody with any sense accused those previously documenting the effects of Lupron on Autistic youngsters of “enacting genocide”.

    The terrifying thing is that those people don’t see that this is the same lethal quackery it always was. The people who cheered as the Geiers were booted out of medicine are declaring the same “treatments” are “essential healthcare” and anyone with any concerns about what’s happening is “evil” and deserves to be tortured and murdered. How can they not see it? They’re not all making money from it.

    People who think they’re (identifying as?) progressive are cheering this on. How many youngsters have to suffer before reality comes crashing back in?

    And how many of the people cheering this on will ever take any responsibility for what they’re promoting?

    Even if they did (which they won’t – see all human history), what could they even do to help those whose bodies have been poisoned and whose lives have been blighted by this insanity?

    This is going to be the lobotomy craze turned up to eleven. How can humanity fail to learn from the same mistakes, over and over again?

  • Class? Politics? Economics? What’s that?

    The ACLU is promoting (on Facebook) a list it drew up last April of “10 Books Politicians Don’t Want You to Read.” Interesting. Something socialist no doubt, a communist item, an anarchist one, a Randesque libertarian one, maybe a Proud Boys tract, a sermon on gun rights…

    No, not so much. What do we get?

    Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”

    “Heather Has Two Mommies” by Lesléa Newman

    “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson

    Ok I haven’t heard of that one, what is it? (And by the way it should be Not All Boys Are Blue, not All Boys Aren’t. Everybody gets that wrong these days; it’s irritating.)

    In “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson writes about growing up Black and queer, including about his experiences being bullied, his first sexual relationships, and other stories throughout his childhood and adolescence in New Jersey and Virginia. The book is currently being targeted for removal by at least 14 states because of its LGBTQ+ themes.

    So Johnson is lesbian and gay and bi and trans and queer? Where does he find the time?

    4. “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe

    Nonbinary and asexual author Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, details eir journey through adolescence and coming into eir self-identity in “Gender Queer,” an autobiographical graphic novel about what it’s like to not fit into traditional norms of gender and sexuality.

    5. “Melissa”* by Alex Gino

    *Formerly published as “George” until April 2022

    So books are transing now?

    The protagonist of the children’s novel “Melissa” is a fourth-grader coming into her own identity as a trans girl in a world that knows her only as “Melissa.” The author, who goes by they/them/their pronouns and identifies as genderqueer, wrote the book due to a longstanding void of voices like theirs in literature. “I wrote it because it was the book I wanted to read,” Gino explained. “I wanted trans voices telling trans stories.”

    So that’s half of the ten, and four of the five are about lesbian/gay or trans stories. Four of the last five are about race and one is about “6-year-old Starr Carter, a student at an affluent prep school who comes from a low-income community.” That’s the closest they get to the Marxist or socialist or libertarian tract.

    The ACLU seems to be run entirely by very young people who don’t yet know much.