Oh has to be a garden, surely. Part of the churchyard? I don’t know, I just did an image search for tulips, because I keep stopping to stare at them on neighborhood walks right now, along with bluebells. In fact maybe I should have done a search for the pair.
It is probably the Hortus Bulborum in Limmen, the Netherlands. The grounds just behind the dunes are great for growing tulips. Farther to the south is De Keukenhof (google this), of course closed this year. In this area there are massive fields of blooming tulips, the product is the bulb, not the flower.it is a great tourist attraction.
Oh, thank you! Funny thing: just yesterday I saw a Facebook post by De Keukenhof saying they’re closed but we can take virtual tours so I took one and stashed the link to the collection for future tours.
I haven’t been out in a while (crazy-busy at work) but I’m going to go to bed early tonight, get up early tomorrow, and go to the woods to see if I can find any bluebells. Not sure if they’re done for the year yet.
I wish I could go to the woods. One thing about moving to Nebraska is how little anything is left here. In Oklahoma we had parks that were natural systems; we had protected land, even close to and inside Oklahoma City. In Texas, same thing. Right there in the greater DFW metro area, I could find what resembled wilderness.
Here all I will see when I go out is…corn fields. Gray factories turning food into fuel. More corn fields. An occasional bean field scattered in amongst.
To do anything like that, I have to drive at least an hour. Which I may have to do, since I know some places no one else ever goes. If I take sandwiches, I won’t even have to stop for lunch and risk contact. I am going crazy for anything other than my neighbor’s not yet bloomed peonies.
Thanks for the tulips. I used to hate tulips; thought they were a boring and ugly flower. I changed my opinion as I grew older.
Iknklast, if you are anywhere near the Platte River you have a chance at crane peeping. Long skeins of sandhill cranes in the sky and the grey in the corn fields is a frightening number of birds gleaning. Getting to see them near the river itself is harder to arrange and likely more so this year as social distancing is difficult packed in a blind.
Same here about tulips – I didn’t hate them but thought they were meh. I don’t know if people around here have upped their game or if I’ve just changed my tastes – maybe it’s some of each – but I’m seeing a lot of very not-meh tulips this year. My favorite is that different shades of orange one.
OK, here’s a bit of anecdotal local news. I have a neighbor who I talked to while out for a walk last week, and she was all excited when she heard that nail and hair salons, etc. were opening here on the 24th. I talked to her again yesterday, and she was disappointed to find out, when she called around and tried to make several appointments, that not even one of the salon owners would be opening for “at least another week.” So despite our flaky Governor, some of us here in the good State of Georgia are trying to do the right thing.
NinetyEight, I do live sort of near the Platte, and have gone crane watching. We were going to go again this year, until COVID. But it is still a 45 minute drive to get to the Platte from here. My town has a couple of mowed parks, a reservoir that is pretty meh, and…well, that’s about it. I do think I’m going to head down to Red Cloud sometime soon and lie on my back in the Willa Cather prairie looking up at the clouds. It’s been too chilly, but it’s now warming up, and should be able. I usually get down there at least a few times a year, and I’ve never seen anyone there but cows. The cows haven’t been there for a couple of years. Social distancing is easy if you know where to go.
Overheard this afternoon from a man talking to someone outside the local shop.
“There’s something not right about all this virus bullshit. I mean, I know a lot of people and I don’t know anyone who’s got it. I don’t even know anyone who’s been tested for it.”
I moved to where I’m living now in late January. There is not a day goes by that I don’t wake up and thank God-equivalent that I got here just in time; I could literally not be in a better place to ride this out. Among its many advantages, there are five huge park areas (one the grounds of a country estate–where I’m going this morning) within about a 20 minute walk–I’ve now been to each of them, but haven’t explored any of them thoroughly.
A friend of mine lives relatively nearby (a taxi ride away), and has been self-isolating for months as he has asthma–but even if he could go out I don’t think there’s anywhere near him that it would be worth walking to–no non-convenience grocery shops, no wild areas, I think one little park. Doesn’t seem to bother him, but I’d have been miserable.
I’m still not a huge fan of tulips–I find them big and awkward to put in vases, and they still look and feel very plasticky to me. And they don’t last very long in captivity–their big plasticky petals start to fall very quickly.
Until recently I didn’t actually know anyone who’d had it, but found out a few days ago that a friend’s husband has been sick in bed for more than three weeks–she says it’s been scary, and she couldn’t get any hospital treatment for him, but she thinks he’s improving now. She herself must have had it, but she said she barely noticed. They’re in London–I’d be amazed if you could be in London and not get it, frankly. I’m hoping this has convinced them to actually implement their fantasy of moving out to where I am.
Excellent opinion piece by Rebecca Traister discussing the bind faced by whoever the Democratic Party chooses as a VP nominee in light of Biden’s nomination for president. I think it makes excellent points that will likely play into the campaign, the VP choice, and the administration, whichever way the election goes. The fear of a backlash against women or against feminists in the event of a Biden loss is an extremely valid concern I hadn’t considered.
An interesting piece about how “purity” is counterproductive to feminism. The writer, Lydia Lambfruit, takes to heart (or tries to) Helen Lewis’s point from Difficult Women that one doesn’t have to like a woman to value her. In the author’s case, the woman in question is Jameela Jamil.
The motion also resolves to create a new SU Policy, entitled “Protection of Transgender, Non-binary, Disabled, Working-class, and Women* Students from Hatred in University Contexts”.
So important, women are. Not even a whole category. Instead, a category*, whatever the fuck that means.
The author attempts to justify using the term “violence”. These curriculum characteristics are abusive, and violence is abusive, therefore these characteristics are violence, something like that. It reminded me of some other claims that certain verbal actions are “literal violence”; possibly SPLC has made some of those claims.
This article discusses a new book about the true story of six teenage boys who were shipwrecked on a deserted island in the Pacific. They did not turn all Lord of the Flies.
This reminds me of all the sociological research that shows that generally speaking, people don’t turn into violent, panicked mobs in a crisis. Hollywood has worked hard to promote the notion that the second the lights go out or the structures of society weaken in any way, the looting and rioting will begin, because that’s what makes for dramatic stories. But it ain’t usually so.
Reality shows like Survivor actually have to work hard to crank up the interpersonal drama, by implementing rules that create conflict (voting people off, deciding who does and doesn’t get to share a reward, etc.), and otherwise stirring things up (alcohol helps).
It’s always bothered me that for some reason people interpret Lord of the Flies as some commentary on human nature, when it’s actually about the nature of one specific subset of humans–English public school boys. Rebecca Solnit wrote about her research on how people really behave in disasters: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/
This popped up in my Facebook memories from two years ago. No one even tried to guess who it was referring to. Any guesses here?
“He believed in force, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ in domestic as well as foreign politics… [He] was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics… [His] personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives…, as with asserting his will.”
So, apparently I’m an evil, amoral, uncaring person because I said I’m ambivalent about Amazon. The backstory: I live in the future Amazonia. There was a report in our local online news site about Amazon ordering a bunch of meals from a popular local gay bar to deliver to a local hospital. I posted that on a local Facebook group page with the following comment: “I always feel ambivalent about Amazon, but this is a nice gesture by the new kid in town.”
After some back and forth with one poster who listed all the evil things Amazon has done (and yes, Amazon does a lot of evil things!), I got this: “if you have all this knowledge and still choose the side of ambivalence, then what do you stand for at all? What are your morals? What do you care about? Its sad because you should care about humanity, and the environment and all the things outside of yourself, but by choosing ambivalence, you are acknowledging your lack of humanity.”
So, sorry, y’all, I guess you can just fuck off. Apparently I don’t care about you.
Here you go, proof that Trump can speak like an adult….
We have no choice, we have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super duper missile…
…..or maybe not.
Either 5 minutes before announcing this new missile somebody took great care to tell him what it was called but Trump wasn’t listening because voices other than his own don’t interest him, or he was told that they didn’t want to announce the name of a new weapon that’s only just at the beginning of development, but he had to say more than ‘missile’. Every loser has missiles, only BigBoy Trump has super duper missiles that are seventeen times better than their loser missiles. He even managed to confuse himself over that bit, too.
… “and I heard the other night [it’s] 17 times faster than what they have right now. You take the fastest missile we have right now,” Trump said. “You heard Russia has five times and China’s working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and it’s just got the go-ahead.”
“That’s right,” said the defense secretary, Mark Esper, standing to Trump’s right.
All credit to Esper; it must be hard to speak while your tongue is polishing the inside of the bosses anus.
Ambivalence is not unreasonable. Amazon does a lot of evil things on purpose and even more evil things happen because of it, but it’s more of a symptom than a disease. It does evil things because we allow it to. We don’t make it pay tax or treat its workers fairly. We don’t hold it to reasonable environmental standards. We allow it to monopolise whole industries by being both a publisher and the de facto default distributer (eg the book publishing industry, where it has a huge competitive advantage over other publishers whose books it sells). We allow ourselves, the customers, to become the product. And not a valued product, at that: customers and workers are entirely insignificant and large shareholders are everything. Boycotts and strikes will have no effect. Because we allow it.
We didn’t have to let Amazon become that monster but we did. We don’t have to let it stay that way but we will. I think it’s right to be angry at Amazon and to protest its many evils, but we can hardly do so without accepting a significant part of the blame.
See also: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple…..
The Obama appointed state department inspector general, Steve Linick, began an investigation into Pompeo for suspected abuse of office.
In totally unrelated news, Trump said that he no longer has full confidence in the state department inspector general, Steve Linick, and has fired him.
Thanks. Apparently you can’t mention the small good a company does without detailing all of their evil. Which I understand, but this was in a group about neighbors helping neighbors get through covid19, so I didn’t think it was appropriate or necessary. Anyway, you’ve laid out the issue nicely.
Her last lecture started with her scolding me for my apathy; I skimmed through the rest, which included a reference to Hannah Arendt, then pointed out that ambivalence isn’t the same as apathy. Her response: “sure”.
PZ writes on the recent admission from the deathbed of a major anti-abortion campaigner. As I understand it, she was previously the plaintiff in a landmark US court case on the subject, making her conversion to Team Anti-Abortion a major coup. Anyway, she admits that it was for money, and PZ makes a post on it. So far so reasonable… but check out the very first comment from one of the usual suspects. Utter idiocy.
Yeah, I struggle to get 100% behind the “Amazon is unmitigated evil” position, too. In part because I am skeptical of the lionizing of all the “Mom and Pop” businesses that Amazon (and Walmart, etc.) supposedly put out of business.
Some “Mom and Pop” businesses really suck. Some provide terrible customer service, don’t know their product and/or mislead their customers, are rude, and/or don’t take returns. Some of them exploit and mistreat their workers every bit as badly as the big companies do, benefitting in part from the fact that many labor laws only affect businesses with more than a certain number of employees, and other tools like class action suits or labor unions are impractical.
I thought this was really neat, not to mention the mosaics are incredible.
Newly discovered just outside of Verona, what could be this year's biggest discovery – an almost entirely intact Roman mosaic villa floor! pic.twitter.com/tZwy0yfvNL— Myko Clelland (@DapperHistorian) May 26, 2020
TERF’s, like all Nazis, have no right to a peaceful existence or steady employment. They have declared their support of fascism and have therefore declared their intent to directly harm the trans community wherever they’re found. They threaten the safety and dignity of others and therefore deserve none themselves until they choose to be human once more.
Hmmm, replace TERF with TRA and ‘trans community’ with ‘women and girls’ and that [paragraph makes as much, possibly more sense. It would also still be hyperbolic, aggressive and dangerous.
Normally I wouldn’t bother to link to a story about someone “coming out” as an atheist, especially someone I’ve never heard of, but it had to take some courage for the leader of a “Christian” rock band to do so.
I came across this poem today on Twitter. Apparently it’s by someone named Rachel Irischild. The earliest reference to it I can find online is from Facebook on August 2018, although I can’t find the original source. Anyways, I thought it was extraordinary and I wanted to share…
oh no! The formatting posted it all weird and double-spaced, that’s frustrating. Not sure why, must be WordPress/HTML being wonky. Sorry about that. Ah, WordPress…
Notable perhaps only because of the extraordinary but now familiar elementary logic fail of some of the commentariat. The argument is that since Rowling says that only women menstruate, she’s implying that women who don’t menstruate are not women. CHECKMATE, TERF. They wouldn’t accept this sort of argument in any other setting, but it’s a tour de force in this one. Nobody points this out and it’s safe to say that accusations of TERFitude would happen if anyone did.
Well, so far so Pharyngula. But there’s also this, apparently posted without irony:
If I recall correctly, she chose her name to sound “male” because of the stigma of women writing books for boys.
And now she is saying her life if defined by being female?
I’m not sure I can clap slowly enough to give this comment the appreciation it deserves.
In which the odious Giliell states that before transphobes can decide who does or doesn’t qualify as women they (the non-trans and allies) need to clearly define their terms.
Nice, open scepticism of the existence of sex. It was only a couple of years ago that they freely admitted that sex was a thing that existed, now they have abandoned even a perfunctory ‘sure, sex exists but…’.
I saw an article today about the withering of the Not One More protests. I wonder if the current protests against police brutality will be more effective. Thus far they seem to be. White people have joined black people in the protests. I don’t recall men joining women in Not One More. I see some pleas to remember female victims of police brutality.
The ACLU alerted people about the deaths of two transwomen. I don’t recall the ACLU saying anything about violence against women as a specific problem, or about Not One More. The ACLU, which has defended Nazis and claims to have a commitment to defending speech we hate, has said nothing whatsoever regarding any of the people under fire for daring to speak out against trans ideology. Surely, if they defend Jews against religious discrimination and Nazis against censorship, they could stick to their unscientific trans agenda while defending people who speak against it.
Quiz time. The following is the title of a post by PZ:
Does anyone on FtB think Rowling has a point? No.
IWhy does PZ believe this to be true? Is it because (tick all that apply):
a) Despite the wide range of diverse thoughts and opinions on display at FTB, this is the one topic that the entire network of freethinkers there all freely agree on:
b) Because those FTB bloggers who disagree are keeping their heads down and saying nothing, but since they aren’t actually dissenting then PZ is taking that as tacit agreement with his view:
c) Because PZ is aware of but chooses to ignore the fact that the powers-that-be at FTB have already hounded out those bloggers who dare to voice their own opinions that run contrary to the dogmatic groupthink that has replaced the concept of freethought there, and who refused to be browbeaten into accepting the trans agenda, the acceptance of which is now mandatory for both FTB bloggers and commenters.
“Photo regendering is not only right, but it’s also ethical. It’s portraying the past more accurately and authentically, as we lived it in our heads and imaginations when we were being most authentic with ourselves..”
It’s portraying the past more accurately and authentically, as we lived it in our heads and imaginations when we were being most authentic with ourselves.
… I can’t. I just can’t. “It’s A in that it’s not-A.”
That’s genius. Now I can re-touch my old photos to reflect my internal realities. Let’s see; when I was 6 I was a zookeeper, a year later a deep-sea diver, then an astronaut followed by soldier, police officer, surgeon; there was a phase when I was an alien being, and anot……bugger it, too much like hard work.
A while back we were discussing how people so often miss the point about Cassandra: that she was cursed to be always right, but never believed. Not surprisingly, though, Alexandra Petri gets it right:
In recent days, Cassandra has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a “second wave” of Greek attack that will soon come sweeping over us like the wrath of Poseidon and leave our city in ruins. Such panic is overblown. (Although, technically, “panic” is fear induced by the god Pan, so really this is not even panic at all. But whatever it is, it is overblown.)
Thanks to the leadership of King Priam and the courage and compassion of the Trojan people, our walled city is far stronger and even less pregnable than it was nine years ago, and we have won the fight against the Greeks. And if you doubt that, just look at this enormous and beautifully constructed wooden horse they have left for us, which is definitely not hollow and will absolutely not be filled with handpicked soldiers ready to pour out and devastate our city.
The Laocoöns and Cassandras are full of negativity about this horse. At least, I think that was what Laocoön was saying before he was seized mid-sentence and crushed to death by sea serpents, along with his two sons! Probably a sign that what he was saying was not important. And when has Cassandra ever been right about anything?
Sorry about the length of this rant. In my feeble defense, I didn’t have time to write shorter.
The Gender Wars
People have always noticed that human beings have different innate physical traits. Furthermore, the distribution of these differences is not entirely random. Some of the most obvious (let’s call them “sex differences”) seem to cluster into two sets of traits that tend to go together far more often than expected by chance. One of these sets (let’s call it the set of “male” traits) is clearly more representative of fathers than mothers while the opposite is true of the second set (let’s call it the set of “female” traits). Roughly half the people on the planet have a strong preponderance of traits from the first set, and roughly the other half have a strong preponderance of traits from the second set. But since “Person with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from the set of traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, or vice versa, is a rather awkward and cumbersome thing to say, most of us prefer a more convenient short-hand like “man” or “woman” respectively. As we might expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms, there is going to be some fuzziness around the edges, and not every person ever born is going to fit neatly under any of these labels. Luckily, this is not a problem since they’re just short-hands for sets of physical traits anyway, not cosmic revelations about who you are on the inside.
It remains a fact, however, that societies throughout history and all over the world have tended to put people with a strong preponderance of traits from the second set regardless of what you prefer to call them at a major disadvantage compared to people with a strong preponderance of traits from the first set (once again regardless of what you prefer to call them). The list is practically endless: Being granted the right to vote significantly later than the other sex (if ever), under-representation in position of power and influence, the pay gap, less chance of getting hired in the first place, objectification, getting judged by level of attractiveness or “fuckablility”, locker-room talk, “banter”, slut-shaming, cyber-bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, groping, domestic violence, rape, hyper-skepticism towards claims of rape and abuse, victim-blaming, gaslighting, forced pregnancies, getting jailed for having a miscarriage, forced marriages, child brides, being forced to cover up, not being allowed to leave home without a guardian of the other sex, not being allowed to drive, being denied an education, being considered “impure” and having to isolate during period, female genital mutilation, acid attacks, honor killings, witch-burnings, stoning, getting burned or buried alive along their deceased husbands etc… etc…
This system of oppression has been called the “patriarchy”, and the ideological life-support system upholding the patriarchy has been given various names like “sexism”, “misogyny”, “male chauvinism” etc. The movement working to debunk sexism and abolish the patriarchy has been called “feminism”. An essential part of the feminist struggle has always been combating the sexist stereotypes that portray women as naturally inclined towards everything that tends to please men and otherwise less suited for any role that men prefer to keep for themselves.
There’s a complication, however. There are people – commonly referred to as “Trans” – who insist on being called “woman”, ”female”, “she” etc. despite having a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from our first set, which is exactly what it means to be a “man” / ”male” according to our working definition [1]. There is also a loud and outspoken group of activists – henceforth referred to as Trans Rights Activists (TRAs for short) – who may or may not be Trans themselves standing by and ready to gang up on anyone (especially if biologically female) who fails to treat the claim of these biological males as anything less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In order to make sense, these people obviously have to dispute that being a “man” or “woman” has anything to do with physical traits. On the other hand, they don’t want us to stop using words like “man” and “woman” (as if they referred to something real) altogether [2] (after all, how can one claim to be a “real woman” if there are no real women?).
So while TRAs tend to reject the idea that our physical traits make us “men” and “women”, they pretty much have to insist that something else does, usually something about the person’s inner life, personality traits, way of thinking or feeling etc. Not only are “male” and “female”, “masculine” and “feminine” ways of thinking or feeling said to be a thing, but supposedly the only thing that makes a person “male” or “female”, “man” or “woman” in the first place. Thus referring to somebody as either “man” or “woman” in the lingo of these people is to make a factual claim about what’s going on inside his/her head. Exactly what’s being claimed is never made clear since all we ever get are tautologies (A woman is someone who thinks or feels in whatever way I happen to think or feel) and circular definitions (A woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as someone who identifies as… etc. etc. ad infinitum). In the rare event that any actual specifics are offered, the internal markers of with “womanhood” invariably turn out to be indistinguishable from the sexist stereotypes that feminist have been fighting to abolish.
Calling unrelated things by the same name (in other words, the use of homonyms) is not in itself a problem as long as nobody’s laboring under the delusion that we’re still talking about the same thing. After all, few if any real-world problem are attributable to the fact that flying mammals and clubs for hitting baseballs are both referred to as “bats” in English. Words don’t mean anything in themselves, but get their meanings from us. If somebody wants to apply the word “fish” to what the rest of us call “bird”, and vice versa, they are free to do so. But then it is either disingenuous, or stupid, or both to go on talking as if everybody else were using these words in the same way, pretend we’re still talking about the same thing, and demand to have it both ways (e.g. insisting that “birds” can still fly).
Unfortunately, the TRA use of language is very much of this latter kind. There is a reason why biological males who think or feel a certain way (let’s call them “women₂”) are so obsessed with being called the same as the people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (let’s call them “women₁”): Because they want everyone to accept that they are the same. However, since they don’t in fact have innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, they have to argue that something else makes them the same as women₁, or – more precisely – that something else makes women₁ the same as them, hence the strong insistence on “female” or “feminine” ways of thinking/feeling that women₁ supposedly share with them, thus making them the same “kind of people”.
From such a point of view it quickly becomes obvious that – despite the rhetoric – this is not simply about whether or not Trans women₂ have the right to define “who they are”, but whether or not they have the right to dictate who women₁ are as well (Basically saying: “Women₁ are whatever they have to be to make me one of them”). It is also obvious why the “certain way” that women₂ are supposed to think and feel is never specified. Most women₁ might not appreciate having all kinds of mental traits attributed to them (especially if said traits seem to be entirely derived from sexist stereotypes, pornography and male sexual phantasies). To keep the women₁ from protesting that this doesn’t apply to them at all and walking out in droves, better stick to tautologies and circular definitions and avoid specifics at all costs.
I am sure we are all familiar with Daniel Dennett’s concept of “deepities”, but anyway: A deepity is an ambiguous statement with two possible interpretations. One of these interpretations makes the statement true but trivial, while the other makes it profound but false. There is something similar going on in TRA discourse except that in this case the statement in question is either true but irrelevant or relevant but false depending on the interpretation. Take the following sentences:
• This toilet / sporting event / locker room / shower / domestic abuse shelter etc. is for women₁.
• Misogyny is discrimination of / hostility towards women₁.
• Feminism is a movement fighting the discrimination of women₁.
• Straight men₁ and lesbian women₁ are attracted to women₁.
• Bjarte Foshaug is a man₁.
As written, these sentences are all true (for certain values of “this” in the first example) but also irrelevant to any point that TRAs are trying to make. Substituting women₂/men₂ for women₁/men₁ respectively might make the sentences relevant to their point but also false. In good Orwellian fashion, there is usually a strong element of having it both ways by taking credit for the truth of the first interpretation and the relevancy of the second interpretation at the same time. There’s also a strong element of “word-magic” involved. Much of TRA rhetoric seems to boil down to the idea that you can take whatever’s applicable to X and make it applicable to Y by renaming Y as X (renaming fish as “bird” makes it true that haddocks and halibuts can fly etc.).
Since the existence of biological sex allows us to talk about women₁ as a group in its own right, regardless of what’s going on inside their heads, TRAs are at war with sex as a concept. At best, biological sex is said to be too complicated and messy to allow us to say anything in particular about the sex of individuals. At worst, the validity of biological sex as a category is denied altogether. In their war on biology TRAs have come up with an entire parallel vocabulary (I call it “Genderspeak”) in which every word pertaining to biological sex has a homonym (“man₂”, “girl₂”, “misogyny₂”, “feminism₂”, “lesbian₂” etc.) redefined in terms of “gender identity” or just “gender”. It has, of course, become quite common to use “gender” as a synonym for “sex” [3] (probably because the latter word has other denotations that are irrelevant in this context). It is important to note that this is not what TRAs mean by “gender”. Instead, “gender” supposedly denotes a perfectly real and vitally important [4] difference between sets of distinct and identifiable ways of thinking and feeling best left unspecified.
Let’s pause for a minute and notice the double standard: If biological sex is messy and not everybody falls neatly into either the “biological male₁” or “biological female₁” category (once again, as you’d expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms), that pretty much invalidates biological sex as a category. But if the supposed “gender” differences they’re talking about are so vacuous and ill-defined that most TRAs don’t even try to come up with a non-circular definition, that apparently makes them more firmly established than the laws of thermodynamics. If defining “man” and “woman” in terms of biological differences doesn’t meet their standards of accuracy and precision (despite describing the vast majority of people on the planet well enough to be quite useful), then you definitely wouldn’t expect any the circular non-definitions in terms of thoughts and feelings to meet those very same standards. Even if there were no basis for talking about biological sexes as distinct and identifiable categories, it still wouldn’t imply that being a “man” or being a “woman” is about something other than physical traits. What it would imply is that there’s no basis for talking about “men” and “women” either. If biological sexes are not a valid concept, then neither are “men” and “women”. If physical traits don’t make us “men” and “women”, then nothing does.
According to gender ideology, however, most people’s way of thinking or feeling really do make them either men₂ or women₂, thus establishing a “gender binary” that really does apply to the great majority of people on this planet. Besides man₂ and woman₂ there’s a vast number – or so we’re told – of other “non-binary” genders that only apply to a minority of people on the Trans spectrum. Everyone else is considered, by default, to be “Cis” (the binary opposite of “Trans”). It is important to note that “Cis woman” does not mean the same as “woman₁”. Genderspeak doesn’t have a name for women₁. “Trans women” and “Cis women” are both women₂ since thinking or feeling in a “female” or “feminine” manner (whatever that’s supposed to mean?) is the only thing that makes somebody a “woman” of any kind in the first place. Thus even the “Cis” label rests on an implicit claim about what’s going on inside other people heads. It’s just that the “Cis” people (allegedly) see themselves as the gender that society at large consider them to be while the “Trans” people do not. Suffice it to say that by those criteria I’m neither “Cis” nor a “man₂”.
Not only are TRAs themselves using every word in the Genderspeak sense, but hardly anything they have to say makes sense without presupposing (perhaps the most disingenuous part) that everybody else is doing so as well. For example, when I have to fill out one of these forms that require us to tick off a box labeled “M” or “F”, I tick the “M” box. My passport also has the same “M” in it. When I have to take a leak, I go to the “Men’s Room” etc. All of this doesn’t involve any act of “identifying as a man” on my part. It’s simply is the case that I have physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, which is all it means to be a man₁. Yet to TRAs that “M” is taken as an admission that I do indeed embrace the whole ideological framework of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking and feeling and personally subscribe to the former. In other words, that I’m a (Cis) man₂ as opposed to a man₁. It’s as if you were saying something about flying mammals (bats₁) and I started accusing you of talking about clubs for hitting baseballs (bats₂), claiming baseball bats can fly etc.
On the same note, Gender-critical feminists (labeled by TRAs as “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” – “TERFs” for short – and portrayed as a hate-group on par with violent white supremacists and neo-Nazis) don’t accept “gender” (in its Genderspeak definition) as a valid concept, and since there is no such thing as “gender” there can be no “gender binary”. Indeed, the closest we might get to an accurate representation of the gender-critical position in Genderspeak would be to say that everybody is “non-binary”, or “gender non-conforming ” [5], or even “agender”. As already mentioned, TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that there are distinct and identifiable “male” and “female” ways of thinking and feeling, thus establishing a “gender-binary” that really does apply to everyone except a minority on the Trans spectrum. Yet the gender critical feminists, who reject this whole framework, are the ones accused of “enforcing the gender binary”, “denying the existence on non-binary identities” etc.
Likewise TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that some perfectly real and vitally important mental differences make certain people “female” to the very core of their being, regardless of any physical traits, thus justifying dividing people into separate groups requiring separate vocabularies, separate dress-codes, separate toilets, separate sporting events etc. Yet gender critical feminists, who take the position that being “female” doesn’t say anything about you other than the most superficial and irrelevant physical facts, are the ones accused of “gender essentialism”.
Even the frequently repeated trope about gender being (arbitrarily) “assigned at birth” presupposes that everybody else is using words in the Genderspeak sense: When the nurse tells the expectant parents “It’s a boy”, I for one (and I strongly suspect most people) simply take it to be a mundane empirical observation regarding the child’s biological sex (meaning “It’s a boy₁”, not “It’s a boy₂”). “Gender” in the Genderspeak sense doesn’t enter into it all. According to the official TRA narrative, however, the nurse is pulling a factual claim about the child’s (future) inner life out of his/her ass and everybody else just goes along forever after. In the case of Trans people the nurse gets it wrong, and every evil ever to befall a Trans person goes back to this fatal mistake.
It really cannot be stressed enough that TRAs are in the exclusion business as much as anybody, since their definition of “woman₂” by necessity excludes anyone who fails to think or feel the right way about themselves. When they speak of “inclusion” and fighting for the liberation of “all women” (as opposed to “only ‘cis’ women”), clearly what we are meant to envision is taking the circle that already includes the ‘cis’ women and expanding it to also include the ‘Trans’ women. As always when it comes to alt-left slogans, we’re supposed to hear it, let it resonate just long enough to have some warm fuzzy gut reaction and then think about it no more. If you do think about it (and are therefore guilty of “transphobia”, “transmisogyny”, “denying the rights” of, or even advocating “violence” against Trans people), it quickly becomes obvious that redefining “woman” in terms of thoughts and feelings doesn’t simply “expand” the circle, but replaces it entirely. And this matters, since TRAs have made it abundantly clear that all of “women’s rights” are supposed to go with the name rather than the actual people. If they have their way, every right, every concession, every piece of progress that women₁ have managed to wrestle from the arms of the patriarchy throughout the ages will henceforth apply to people like them instead of the people for whom they were originally intended.
We know for a fact that the old circle included roughly half the world’s population. How many does the new one include? It’s pretty much tautologically true that it includes the tiny minority of men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ since the Genderspeak definition of women₂ pretty much boils down to “whatever men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to be” (or at least “people who think or feel in whatever way men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to think or feel”). How many women₁ does that include? I very much doubt that many women₁ would say they fit the definition of women₂ if they knew exactly how this requires them to think or feel. Indeed if you look past the warm fuzzy connotations of words like “inclusivity” and focus on what’s actually being said, the new circle is almost certainly going to be orders of magnitude smaller and more “exclusionary” than the old one.
But it’s actually worse than that. As previously mentioned, the discrimination of people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers is a very real problem in itself regardless of what you prefer to call them. Also, as many others have pointed out, there is absolutely nothing women₁ can do to “identify out of” the way they’re treated, and all the inclusive pronouns in the world are never going to make an ounce of difference. And yet, if you follow TRA logic to its ultimate conclusion, nobody at all will be allowed to stand up for the rights and interests of women₁, since even acknowledging the latter as an oppressed group in its own right with its own separate issues that are not entirely reducible to those faced by men₁ who prefer to be called “woman”/”she” is exclusionary to Trans women₂ and hence a hatecrime. So the Trans lobby’s ultimatum to women₁ everywhere boils down to “Shut up and let the oppression you face go forever unaddressed and unopposed, or have your name pulled through the dirt all over the internet”. A hostile ultimatum if ever there was one.
Of course, few if any TRAs are going to come straight out and say any these things. I will inevitably be accused of attacking strawmen, misrepresenting the TRA position etc. Apparently, nobody is denying that biological sex exists, that discrimination of women₁ is a problem in its own right etc. My response is that most of the alleged “TERFs” whom they have already attacked and vilified, whom they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to get fired from their jobs, whose voices they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to silence, whose names they have already dragged through the mud all over the internet are guilty of nothing more than saying those very same things they now claim “nobody is denying”. If you look at who actually said what, it usually turns out that the only crime of the gender-critical feminists was refusing to give away all of women₁’s rights to people who are not women₁ while all the supposed instances of “transphobia”, “denying the rights/dignity/existence of Trans women”, perpetuating “violence” towards and even “murder” of Trans people etc. were put into their mouths by the TRAs themselves. In this respect, the latter are very much like the corrupt cops often portrayed in gangster movies who plant drugs or weapons on an innocent person and then go on to arrest him/her for finding what they themselves planted there in the first place.
I also happen to know for a fact that even many of the “approved” feminists (the “trans-inclusive”, “intersectional”, “feminist₂” kind) have said things that could get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time (in fact, things for which they themselves have already demonized others as TERFs). E.g. I have personally been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “Trans allies” who, in the absence of telepathic powers, couldn’t possibly know how I think or feel about myself. I have also heard people like that talk about the “Bechdel Test” and how this or that movie only had X “women” in it, when the movie in question didn’t offer any clue about these people’s “inner sense of self”. This goes to show that even the supposedly “good” feminists are unable to consistently live up to what’s required of them: When specifically talking about Trans issues, words like “man” and “woman”, “male” and “female” refer to an inner state, but for all other purposes they still talk and act as if these words referred to something physical. Even the Trans women₂ themselves do not in fact treat biological sex as a non-issue. After all, why would anyone need any surgery or hormone treatment to make their bodies “align” with their “gender identity” if bodies are completely irrelevant to gender and no body type is any more or less “aligned” with being a “woman” than any other?
Although the TRA crusade to abolish biological sex and impose gender disproportionally hurts women₁ it doesn’t end there. Many have marveled at how quickly Gender ideology seems to have gone from utterly fringe to sacred truth across large a segment of the political left. One frequent explanation for the success of the Trans lobby is the way it has managed to attach itself to other social justice movements. One of the most disgusting examples is the appropriation of anti-racism as well as the conflation of “gender critical” and “white”, usually by people who are no less white themselves. When white people accuse other white people of “white feminism” it only ever means one thing:
“I speak for all the non-whites”
Because obviously people of color all agree with gender ideology…
Probably the most impressive feat of the Trans lobby, and possibly the main reason for the sudden spike in the popularity of Gender ideology, is the way it has managed to get itself associated with – and ultimately take over – what used to be the LGB (then the LGBT and now finally the T) movement. Who would have thought just 10 years ago that we should live to see the day when the only approved “feminist” position was that women₁ neither deserve nor need any movement to stand up for their rights or interests, or when the only approved “LGBT” position was that same-sex attraction (as opposed to attraction to anyone who thinks or feels in certain ways, uses certain pronouns etc.) is the pinnacle of bigotry and evil.
In the end, the only people to benefit from any of this are the Social Injustice Warriors (SIWs) of the far right. Discrimination of and even violence against Trans people is indeed a real problem. At least to an excellent first approximation 0 % of it is coming from feminists or even from people who have anything but contempt for feminism. The real enemy of both women₁, homosexuals and Trans people is toxic masculinity. If you fail to live up the cultural norms and expectations of what a real “man” is supposed to be like, it doesn’t mean you’re less of a man, let alone a woman. It means the cultural norms and expectations are bullshit and should be abandoned. For whatever it’s worth, every real transphobe I have personally encountered were men₁ who said things like “If I fucked someone and it turned out to be a guy, I’d fucking kill him” etc. These were not people who cared about feminism to say the least. They were raging homophobes and misogynists who were afraid of being tricked into acting “gay” and end up getting “fucked like a bitch” as only women deserve.
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[1] There are also people who insist on being called “man” despite having a strong preponderance of physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers. By and large, though, their issues are not the battle ground on which the Gender Wars are being fought.
[2] The same way most progressive, left-leaning people these days are uncomfortable with using any word to identify other people by their ethnic origin, the color of their skin etc. If that was the case they were making, they might have a legitimate point, but it’s not the point they are making.
[3] Feminists sometimes use the same word, e.g. when talking about “gender roles”. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with the TRA concept of “gender identity”. The gender roles that feminists are talking about are imposed from the outside and part for the sexist culture that needs to be changed. Gender identity is supposed to be an expression of a person’s true self, hence questioning it in any way is the real act of oppression.
[4] So important, in fact, that “misgendering” a person is the most hateful act imaginable and comparable to actual violence.
[5] Another term that “people of gender” have reserved for themselves while everyone else – even those who reject gender as a concept – are assumed to be “gender conforming”. What does it even mean to be “gender non-conforming” if the only thing that makes someone a certain gender in the first place are the gender norms (s)he conforms to?
Two commentaries from transwomen on the JK Rowling situation crossed my feed today. Both are very good, and supportive of JKR. Both promote the importance of biological sex and support having thoughtful dialog about sensitive topics.
I was struck by a few things in the video. There appears to be strong support of Rowling among the trans people of White’s acquaintance. Trans “allies” came in for special criticism. The trans “community” (White’s air quotes) is not monolithic.
There seems to be a severe divide among transgender people. On one hand, there are those like Debbie, Blaire, and Buck who experience(d) psychological suffering and alleviated it through transition. On the other, there are all those who have imbibed deeply of Queer Theory and now must dissolve all boundaries between categories. I have a feeling that the former category is much smaller than the latter, simply because the requirements are harder to meet.
On a different, but ultimately related note, this happened the week before last. It seems like a minor, inconsequential thing, but I argued to friends that it was a part of a larger, very dangerous trend. I’d be glad to write why I think that even taken on its own, the decision was horrible, cowardly, and actually stupid, but that’s not my larger point here. So pissed was I that one of my friends supported the move as making the game more “inclusive”, I wrote a 3000+ word response. (That was where I stopped, not because I didn’t have more to say, but because it was becoming clear that I could write a literal book on the subject.) The relevant argument in my response was that any move toward censorship is dangerous, because censorship is self-justifying.
Well, fast-forward to today, and I learn that now the company has severed a 26–year long relationship with an artist. Terese Nielsen is, now was, one of the game’s most well-known and iconic artists. People sought out and collected her art. Why did they cut ties with her? Because she committed Wrongfollow.
This story is familiar. Policing people’s follows, cries of “racist!” and “TERF!”, and a woman whose employment is jeopardized by the woke stasi.
I see that several authors have quit JKR’s publisher, and some publisher staff members are talking of strikes or resignations. I’m glad the publisher is standing up for freedom of thought. This is ridiculous.
Snap. I just posted about that. The (highly obscure) authors quit the agency, not the publisher. The publisher on the other hand told employees they can’t refuse to work on JKR’s books. The resistance has begun at last.
Well you see it’s not the TRAs that are wrong, it’s everybody else walking around with their eyes closed. At least that’s how it works according to ‘trans queer, non-binary artist’ Fix Fisher (at last – a typo I don’t want to edit) talking about JK Rowling:
I just think that if she opened her eyes and saw that transgender women are women then we’d be able to move forward.
See? All we have to do is look and the scales will slide from our eyes because it’s just so obvious. So obvious, in fact, that we will never again misgender those hulking great people with beards because with our eyes open we can tell that beardie number one is a man and beardie number two is a woman….or something like that.
Now, from the same article, we have the non-Trump lie of the year. Fisher claims:
Since December I’ve been trying to speak to the agency about JK Rowling’s tweets and while I’d never be able to change her views – or demand to – all we wanted really was an open conversation’.
Open conversation? What a bag of non-binary bollocks. As for not demanding Rowling changes her views, well, see the first quote.
Finally, could this spat be less about trans rights and more to do with jealousy? Fox also said something that seems to have nothing to do with Rowlings views:
It is not an equal playing ground. JK Rowling is an absolutely huge author and the agency was created around JK Rowling. Even combined we’d never have the same sales as she does.
In other words, we could strive to become better writers to increase our sales, true enough, but it seemed easier to smear Rowling enough to kill her sales and get our names out there instead. That failed spectacularly so now we’re pretending that Rowlings success was the only reason the agency refused to join in with the smearing.
Male Wins Female Leadership Position in NYC Democratic Council.
“Decaudin, who identifies as transgender and non-binary, defeated Deirdre Feerick, a woman, for the female position by a margin of about 5.5 points.”
I don’t understand in the least how anybody thinks it’s appropriate for a male who doesn’t even claim to be female, but rather says he’s “non-binary”, to run for a female leadership position. That’s bonkers even by the usual bonkers standards we’ve been seeing. He presents in a feminine manner, is that all that matters? Utterly ridiculous. His ascendency subverts the whole point of having designated female leadership positions.
I thought this was an interesting thread. Something I think everyone here is aware of, but a good reminder that women, even professional, busy women, are always supposed to be helpful and respectful of a man’s priorities.
Do male scientists get scolded for politely declining media requests? I talked to five separate reporters today. I need to get my work done. pic.twitter.com/ydQAUUuwyK— Natalie E. Dean, PhD (@nataliexdean) June 25, 2020
So some conservatives are finally following their own proclaimed principles and using a market-based solution to their grievances with Twitter, by moving to a new app called Parler.
I suspect this will fail mainly because most conservatives want to yell at liberals, not each other. But in a delightful twist, some would-be Parler members are already rebelling because Parler asks them to use a special character in their password, and YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I WANT MY SHITTY PASSWORDS!
(I actually have a slight bit of sympathy for this — I really do want to re-use a simple, dumb password for sites that don’t have my credit card or other important information. But this is not a big problem to work around!)
Black, lesbian, working class lawyer sets up crowdfunding appeal on a supposedly neutral platform to launch an action against her employer and Stonewall UK for stifling free speech. After raising tens of thousand of pounds in a couple of hours, supposedly neutral platform suspends the campaign, under suspected pressure from Stonewall.
So, you know what’s fun? There was a BLM protest on my street this evening. I don’t know if it’s still going. About two hours ago, I walked my pups down to the corner to sit and watch. After all, seeing things immediately rather than through the lens of Twitter or cable news ought to give a better impression of the goings on.
Well, anyway, I sat on a low wall that sets off the yard surrounding a condo building and watched. Remy (the catahoula pup) was super intrigued and kept trying to run over and greet any protester who came near. Since I was sitting fifteen feet away from the sidewalk, that was still pretty far away. Argos, the Doberman, was more interested in getting love, so he just sat by my side, resting his head on my shoulder so I could scratch behind his ears.
Things started dying down, and lots of people left. One noticed my boys and said how cute they were. (Which is true.) One young man walked past me heading down my street. About ten feet down he stopped and lit up what I thought was a cigarette, until he spun and tossed it across the street. The residential street.
BANG.
I have fired a .357 magnum without ear protection before, so I won’t call the sound deafening, but it was pretty close. It was loud and sharp enough that someone unfamiliar with the sound of gunfire would probably think that’s what it was. It was certainly loud enough to scare the dogs, especially Argos. He pulled away, and Remy jumped up with him. As I struggled to hold them, I shouted at the fireworks flinger, “Dude! Don’t do that shit. You’re scaring my dogs.”
Of course, he lit and tossed another.
BANG.
I heard some angry voices shouting, “What are you doing?” and, “Why would you do that?” I think one of my neighbors came running to confront the guy. I can’t be sure, because all my attention was on my dogs. Remy was scared and pulling, and Argos was terrified. A 78 lb. ball of lean, terror-fueled muscle dragged me fifteen feet across grass lit only by a street light.
BANG.
Standing up was out of the question. It took all my strength—and I am not out of shape—just to keep from being dragged any farther. Just to hold onto the leashes and not lose my boys. How long this went on, I can’t be sure. It felt like a long time, but you never know. Adrenaline can do weird things to one’s perception of time.
At some point, the sound of someone shouting at me penetrated my focus. Maybe it was two voices. Angry, hate-filled voice(s) I didn’t know said, “Let them dogs go! Let ’em go, bitch! We’ll break they necks. Go back inside and get your men! We want your men!”
There may have been more than one, but I only saw one face, with wild eyes fixed on me. That phrase is so cliche that I’ve always avoided it, but it’s the most appropriate thing that comes to mind at the moment.
All I could manage was to squeeze tighter, surrounded by a little bit of chaos.
Someone with perceptions not warped by rage and hate interrupted the verbal barrage, stating the clear truth that I was just holding onto poor animals frenzied by the explosions. Two people, bless their hearts, hopped up into the condo grass and helped me get up, telling my pups they were all right and that everything would be okay.
A few minutes later I was back at my house. Remy seems unaffected, but Argos ran and hid under the kitchen table. Even a slice of chicken wasn’t enough to tempt him out. I had to pick him up and carry him to his crate so he could feel safe.
The story is also running on BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN… Iran has issued an arrest warrant for Trump, for his murder of Iranian officer and citizen, Qassem Soleimani. Obviously it will go nowhere while he is president, and even after his presidency (in a few months please) I doubt he will ever be extradited, but still!
Obviously, they have a genuine complaint against him. As shifty, even murderous, as that guy may or may not have been, Trump decided to murder him with no trial and in a foreign nation. Trump has debased America to such an extent that even Iran has been handed some measure of moral high ground. And the fact that they dare do this, even as a mere gesture, shows how isolated USA is becoming, and how tarnished its prestige has become.
I’ve been saying this in posts and presentations for a long time. I agree with this author that, “Even by the most generous of measures, the intellectual and philosophical heritage of Charles Darwin is one of the most hideously racist legacies one…”
Since we are turning over statues and renaming buildings to eradicate racism, I will be expecting the public schools to stop teaching evolutionary theory, as Charles Darwin was a racist who believed black people were a genetically inferior race.
So, in other news that compounds the weird irony of our time, it turns out Margaret Atwood—yes, the Handmaid’s Tale author—is siding with the Gender Identity Cult.
So let’s recap. The author of a highly influential dystopian SF novel about the systematic subordination and domination of female people is on the side of those who would deny us the ability to talk about female people. The author of a children’s fantasy series about a school for preteen wizards who use pig Latin for incantations is on the side of harsh reality.
So, I don’t think much of this open letter to Harper’s signed by a bunch of famous people. It’s just too vague to be anything more than another entry in the “grrr, cancel culture is BAD, and no, I won’t define what I mean!” parade.
Oh, VDW insists, she isn’t trying to get Matt fired. No, not at all. She’s just letting her employer know that Matt’s “signature on the letter makes me feel less safe at Vox and believe slightly less in it[s] stated goals of building a more diverse and more thoughtful workplace.”
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You can’t tell someone’s bosses that they have made you “less safe” at work and have that be anything other than an attempt to get them fired, or a basis for your future money-seeking lawsuit. What a disingenuous shit.
Popehat has a short thread that nicely covers the gamut of reactions to the letter…
I like and respect many of these people. But i continue to struggle with the concept. The distinction between “silencing” and more/responsive/critical speech eludes me. I see instead the problem of the preferred first speaker. https://t.co/r6T4sruvRe— BobWoodwardHat (@Popehat) July 7, 2020
The distinction between “silencing” and more/responsive/critical speech eludes me.
Screechy’s take is a rather succinct and to-the-point response to this willful Switzerlanding.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You can’t tell someone’s bosses that they have made you “less safe” at work and have that be anything other than an attempt to get them fired, or a basis for your future money-seeking lawsuit. What a disingenuous shit.
It’s one thing to say that you find the border between the two things to be fuzzy and unclear. It’s quite another to say that you cannot make the distinction at all. The world is full of pairs with uncertain borders, a fact of natural language that is both curse and blessing. Without that fuzziness, there would be little space for poetry. However, that two things are similar where they are similar is tautological and uninteresting, and it does not at all suggest that there are not cases where the difference is not clear.
Another tweet that exposes enews for the sorry thing it is.
This is the third time in recent memory that @enews has mischaracterized rape of a minor by calling it “sex” or in this case a “relationship.” Enough. pic.twitter.com/CQwlkE4ZkF— Yashar Ali (@yashar) July 8, 2020
You’re using my words in response to a completely different statement, though.
I was reacting to Van Der Werff’s complaint to Vox about Matt Yglesias co-signing the letter. VDW was trying to have it both ways: whine about Yglesias to his bosses, but deny any intent to get him in trouble. That’s what I found disingenuous.
Ken White’s response to the Harper’s letter is I think a fair one. I would certainly not call that bullshit. In fact, I generally agree with it. The Harper’s letter is hopelessly vague, and thus fails to articulate any clear principle, except to the extent that it veers into the “don’t criticize other people” territory that it purports to disclaim. I can neither agree nor disagree with the Harper’s letter, because there just isn’t enough substance there to form an opinion about.
I don’t think Ken White is being disingenuous the way VDW was. White would almost certainly agree that there are attempts to “cancel” people by getting them fired, etc. He has helped get people pro bono help when others abuse the legal system to try to punish their speech. All I understand White to be saying is that the Harper’s letter specifically (and denouncements of “cancel culture” generally) fail to articulate a clear and consistent standard. Most people support at least some actions that others claim is “cancel culture.”
It might be possible to articulate some principles to follow (I tried in a recent comment thread, but kept having to use qualifiers and exceptions), but so far I’m not seeing it.
I read that Amy Cooper, she who called the cops on the Central Park birdwatcher Chris Cooper, is being charged with filing a false police report or some such. Chris Cooper is refusing to cooperate with prosecutors, saying Any Cooper has suffered enough. I’m impressed with his stance, although I understand that some people think this will hurt the chances of future prosecutions.
Yes, I read about that too. Thought about posting about it but…I don’t know, couldn’t figure out what I thought about it. That’s often all the more reason to post, but this one…I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just that it’s too depressing, either way.
Well, you won’t be surprised to know that I have some thoughts.
Chris Cooper seems like a decent fellow, and it’s certainly magnanimous of him to say that Amy Cooper shouldn’t be punished further. And I think that a prosecutor can certainly take his wishes into consideration in deciding whether or not to pursue the matter or what plea agreement to offer.
But it sits a little uncomfortably with me when someone like him simply declares that he will not cooperate with the prosecution. (Let’s put aside people like abused spouses, whose noncooperation is coming out of fear.) Like, it is not and should not be 100% his call who gets prosecuted or not. First, he isn’t the only “victim” here — her false call wasted police and operator time. Yes, that’s a fairly trivial harm, but then this is a fairly minor crime she’s been charged with. Second, criminal justice isn’t primarily, let alone exclusively, about extracting revenge on behalf of the victim. It’s about sending a message to perpetrators that their actions will have consequences, so they don’t victimize other people. If Defendant X attacks Victim Y on the street completely unprovoked, beats the crap out of Y, but Y announces afterward that “I am a devout Christian and I believe in forgiveness. I forgive X and don’t want him prosecuted,” I kind of don’t care about Y’s wishes. *I* want X prosecuted because X sounds like a dangerous person, and I want X to have to think twice before attacking some other person in the future.
I also think this sort of emblemizes one of the problems we’ve created with our attitudes towards criminality. We’ve decided that any kind of criminal record is very very bad, ruinous to any person’s chances of having a good job or a place in “respectable” society. And so then we bend over backwards to avoid giving “respectable” people (or the children of such people) any kind of criminal record, no matter how minor, because it will “ruin” them.
And so we end up in a situation where we’re told that it would be unconscionably cruel to put a class F misdemeanor (or whatever the fuck it is) on the record of a 30-something white corporate executive. Meanwhile, how many black, brown, or just poor white kids get prosecuted every time they get “caught” in some victimless crime like pot possession, open containers of alcohol, etc.? But hey, it’s ok if THOSE kids get a criminal record — they weren’t going anywhere in life anyway, right? But god forbid a white person with a degree from a good school might have to explain a small indiscretion in the future….
SM, thanks for your extremely well put thoughts on the matter. You make many points I had not considered.
If there had not been the huge internet pile-on, if she had not lost her job and her dog, I would not flinch at prosecuting her, and I would think C. Cooper mad for refusing to cooperate. Under the actual circumstances, I have sympathy for him.
Oh yeah. I assume that, while Amy Cooper may have been getting the bulk of the hate mail, threats, etc. that unfortunately seem to come with every publicized internet controversy, that Chris is probably still getting his share, too, and would prefer it all to just go away.
There’s a new video out promoting trans acceptance, and boy is it vapid. I saw first mention of it on Intransitive’s blog on FTB, and PZ then posted it on his own. Both described it positively, with Intransitive and several commenters being almost rapturous. Apparently, several of them cried over it.
This effusive response surprised me, as the video is only two minutes long. It must be pretty powerful, right? Spoiler alert: no. In fact it’s pretty bloody vapid.
Notice that the only sign of change in the Godzilla-child is that she(?) put a pretty pink bow on her head. Femaleness is a costume. Meanwhile, a commenter expressed relief that the thing being knitted by Godzilla was not a dress: “There was a moment where I was going “please don’t be a dress, please don’t be a dress” because of what that sort of messaging entails” …but made no mention of the pink bow. Oh! And then linked to a picture of that same character in a pink bow… plus a dress.
Femaleness is a costume to these nitwits. Even when they appear to show some awareness that femaleness need not have a costume, they go right along with the idea anyway.
This makes me sad. An astonishing example of both Roman Christian and Islamic architecture and art, it has catered to both christian and muslim worshippers alike, and then was made open to all as a museum. The corrupt fucking Erdogan, in his bid to secure power by siding with Islamic nationalism, is using it as a cynical ploy to grab the votes of that demographic. Ataturk would be ashamed.
Another day, another Trump crony walking free. The orange one has decided that Roger Stone was treated unfairly and has commuted his 40 months prison sentence. No pardon, mind you. Well, not yet.
A 2018 Scottish Act had a supplementary text released recently: Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018: statutory guidance. On that page, just look at how much text is devoted to the definition of woman, such that trans women i.e. males can qualify for positions reserved for actual women. And right after that lengthy definition is this gem: “2.15 The Act does not require an appointing person to ask a candidate to prove that they meet the definition of woman in the Act.” There is no such effort to define, describe, or even mention trans men. It’s solely about getting men into women’s positions.
She makes a good point regarding how true statements are imbued with objectionable connotations. That is, I think, something we should resist rather than accept. That stating facts could constitute a hateful implicature is a bad thing, harmful to discourse and the search for truth.
“That stating facts could constitute a hateful implicature is a bad thing, harmful to discourse and the search for truth.”
I think that’s a little overbroad, probably going further than you intended to if you agree with the linked post.
As the post you linked to acknowledges, there are situations where “just stating facts” can be evidence of a nasty intent. The example the author gives is stating “All Lives Matter” in a discussion about Black Lives Matter; it is of course true that All Lives Matter, but rather missing the point of the discussion. The example I had in mind was someone who continually rattles off a bunch of statistics about how African-Americans commit a disproportionate number of crimes, and then demands that you explain how on earth it could possibly be racist to quote crime statistics. (The answer, of course, is that when you only present those statistics, and don’t acknowledge any adjustment for socioeconomic status, biased policing and prosecutorial practices leading to higher arrest and conviction rates, etc., you’re presenting a misleading picture designed to reinforce a racist stereotype.)
Or, to give a more blunt example that isn’t quite relevant to these kinds of discussions, but illustrates the point: it may be true that the person you’re talking to is fat, ugly, unintelligent, etc., but mentioning these “facts” is correctly going to be considered an aggressive and hateful statement.
I think, as the linked post suggests, rather than insisting that statements of fact can never be objectionable, the better course is to justify why those potentially insulting facts are being brought up.
I’ve been listening to a new podcast, called Blocked and Reported, by Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog, who may be familiar to many here, as both have been declared Known Transphobes for having written articles about detransitioners and other controversial issues.
I have some misgivings about the podcast. I think they’re a little too wrapped up in the world of Twitter and journalistic gossip, and toss around the “cancel culture” label a little too freely. I also think it’s rather hypocritical to do an entire podcast about silly internet fights and then have topics like “why do people want to talk about this Central Park birdwatching fight?” But Jesse and Katie show enough humility and self-deprecation that it avoids veering into overly self-righteous territory.
I’ve been meaning to check that out sometime. (I neglect the podcast category.) Herzog is a local, used to write for The Stranger but…got cancelled.
I was reading some of Singal’s tweets this morning, about someone who’s done things to him, and thinking it was all way too much detail for anyone who isn’t Singal. Not without interest, which is why I was reading, but…too much detail.
Screechy @ 127 – yes. I was going to say that but got distracted by the war on Fauci. I was going to give precisely the “you’re ugly/fat etc” example. Stating facts can so easily constitute a hateful implicature. I know people who state facts which don’t need stating and which they state only to needle or worse. Doesn’t everyone know people like that? (And don’t many of us risk being people like that? And resolve to avoid it? And so on?)
Screechy: I was a bit more brief and a bit less precise than I might have been, yes. I have an excuse, though: I was rushing to post before I had to turn off my phone and go under anasthesia. Wheeee.
It is certainly possible to utter true statements from bad motivations. You don’t have to convince me of this. There’s actually a rich area of study in social epistemology about the effects of differing sets of partial, yet true, information. A good example of where this can be relevant is in political briefs, where politicians make policy decisions based on incomplete information. The lawmaker’s actions can be entirely determined by what information is presented.
What we should not do is make a habit of inferring bad intent from the statement alone. We should actually try to avoid ascribing bad intent at all, as people’s intentions are usually better than we suppose, and conversation tends toward dysfunction when interlocutors view each other with hostility. There is, after all, a reason argumentum ad hominem is so common: it is rhetorically effective.
As things stand, for instance, there are no ways to couch stating facts about basic sexual biology that act as prophylactic against accusations of transphobia. This is a Bad Thing. It prevents useful discussion on the topic.
Saying, “all lives matter,” may indeed indicate that the speaker is racist. It may also indicate that he or she has, as you say, missed the point. Alternatively, he or she may be expressing resistance to “white lives don’t matter” rhetoric. Whatever the motivation, we can’t know it if we treat “all lives matter” per se as sufficient evidence of ill will. Doing so yet again shuts down conversation before it begins.
Yep yep. All that was basically just to agree with your final paragraph:
I think, as the linked post suggests, rather than insisting that statements of fact can never be objectionable, the better course is to justify why those potentially insulting facts are being brought up.
She wrote a staggeringly pompous letter explaining her reasons. Oddly enough she never paused to ask why she was given such a high-up job at such a young age in the first place.
In just four days, we have seen the deaths of at least three transgender and gender non-conforming people […] This horrific spike in violence against our community must be an urgent call to action for every single person in this nation,
And the deaths of how many women, which apparently mustn’t be an urgent call to action? And how many men, for that matter? How many children?
This year, the Human Rights Campaign has recorded at least 21 violent deaths of transgender or gender non-conforming people.
Obviously any number of murdered is a bad number unless it is 0, but still. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we are 50% through the year, and the murder rate continues at that same rate, i.e. 21 murders of US trans people per 6 months. That gives us an expected 42 murdered trans people at year end. If trans people are 0.6% of the US population, as stated in wiki, we expect them to be 0.6% of murdered people too. Given about 14,500 murders took place in USA according to the FBI’s most recent figures (2018), this gives us an expected 14,500*0.006 = 87 murdered trans people.
42 is less than half 87; in other words, US trans people are on track to be murdered at half the rate expected for their population size.
Holms, I’d say that “any number greater than zero is a bad number” doesn’t really capture the nuance you’re pointing to. It’s more like, any murder is bad, but it’s not possible to reduce the probability to zero, so given a large population, there will always be murder. In that context, small numbers are good and large numbers are bad. It’s pedantic, I know, but I make the distinction for a reason. Every method of reducing x (in this case murder) comes with an implementation cost, and each one reduces x asymptotically. There is some point, and I’m not saying I know what it is, where the cost of implementing another is too high relative to the cost of improving some other aspect of society. We have to be willing to say, “This isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough.”
Anyway, I just discovered that it’s hard to find separate population data for each of L, G, B, and T. The Gallup poll flattens it all into one demographic, and the wiki article on LGBT demographics does the same. That’s kinda bullshit, because it (again) makes everything after the LGB seem more common than it is.
In 2018, there were 275,325,290 Americans over 12 years of age, and we had 14,504 homicides.
P(murdered | demographic) = P(m|d). Ideal x = [x].
As Holms said, the probability of being murdered given being trans is lower than what we would expect to see were homicides distributed evenly. The “epidemic of murder” line is even more clearly delusional / propagandist when these data are put in context.
So we can see that of these demographics, trans people are murdered at a higher than only women and asians. Men are victims of homicide at more than three times the trans rate.
Here’s the rest of the table I’m working on, which include more violent crime data. I’m going to be building this table out more for my own personal use, ’cause then I know what’s accounted for and what isn’t. If anyone knows where I can go to find more data by sexual orientation and trans-ness, that’d be really helpful.
It absolutely is. It’s what alerted me to this whole subject, when I picked it up one day at Half-Price Books and was electrified by what I read. It’s also the inspiration for the Sokal hoax.
So, I hesitate to link to another piece about Bari Weiss, because I feel like she really shouldn’t be that important, especially now that she has quit her undeserved post at the NYT.
On another “cancel culture” related note, last Friday’s episode of The Gist podcast contained a debate between Yascha Mounk (one of the Harper’s signatories) and Osita Nwenavu from The New Republic. I’m not normally a big believer in debates as being terribly helpful, but I found this illuminating because Nwenavu articulated something I’ve found irritating about the Harper’s letter and the “cancel culture is OUT OF CONTROL” brigade generally. Nwenavu pointed out that the recent incident of Blake Neff, who was unmasked as the author of racist posts on a message board and fired from his job as head writer on the Tucker Carlson Show, is practically a paradigmatic example of “cancel culture.” A private citizen was “called out” for speech he made in his private life, which was deemed “beyond the pale” and racist, and was forced out of his job as a result. And yet essentially nobody is defending Neff or rallying around him as the poster child for free speech — not even culture warrior Tucker Carlson. Because (and I’m still paraphrasing Nwenavu’s argument, though I agree with it) there is actually broad agreement in our culture that there really are things that one can say that are beyond the pale so as to warrant exclusion from civil society. Yascha Mounk and his fellow signatories just disagree about where the line is in particular instances, but they’re portraying that disagreement over where to draw the line as if it is some fundamental disagreement about the very existence of free speech, calling their opponents Maoists and wringing their hands about “struggle sessions” and such. I didn’t feel that Mounk ever effectively addressed this point.
I saw a meme, a Twitter quote, about how men are 100% responsible for teaching other men how not to be toxic, because “men don’t listen to women/enbies”. I guess men can become non-toxic by becoming non-binary? I guess women can become toxic by becoming men? How do you know these toxic people are men? Why are “enbies” only classed with “women” in this directive?
I looked up the Twitter account, @rosalarian, and found it to be from a “real live nonbinary!”, apparently female, who is a cartoonist, and who chafes at the idea of “nonbinary” being a “third gender” when there are many and varied ways of being nonbinary. Apparently there are not similarly many ways of being male/female (masculine/feminine?), only the nonbinary people are extra-special.
When we are born, doctors assign us a gender based on our external genitalia (which is rooted in transphobia because they are basing it off the idea that men have penises and woman have vaginas.
The reality is, we are who we are, and our outside appearance does not change who we are on the inside.
This is amusing. The Trump campaign is running an ad with an image of a police officer being attacked by protesters. The problem is, it’s from a 2014 protest in Ukraine.
I was out running an errand and listening to the interview with Mary Trump on Fresh Air. Terry Gross had just been discussing Mary Trump being a lesbian and what effect that had on her family life. Gross asked which of Uncle Donald’s policies had affected her the most. Mary Trump replied that they all affected her, although not necessarily directly, and then proceeded to talk about the “ban” of trans people from serving in the military. That was the end of both my trip and my patience, so I didn’t hear more. No, trans people are not banned, they are just required to serve as their actual sex, not the sex they try to emulate.
I think that telling a trans woman that she has to present as a man in order to serve is a de facto ban.
How is what you’re saying different from someone claiming that “we don’t ban gay people from the military, as long as they act straight”? (To be clear, I’m referring to the pre-1992 era, before “don’t ask, don’t tell,” when essentially gay people could only serve if they remained celibate or were willing to risk court-martial if they got caught.) Or saying that “well, technically we don’t ban atheists, they just have to be willing to go to church and praise Jesus….”
So here is an interesting WaPo writeup of a medical study showing better patient outcomes for those treated by women physicians.
The article makes some appropriate cautions about drawing overly broad conclusions, the possibility of confounding variables, etc.
The reason I think it’s interesting is that I will bet that the James Damore types of the world, who always wrap their discussions of gender differences in the mantle of mere scientific curiosity, disclaiming any agenda, will studiously ignore this study. (Oh, they’ll be happy to cite any studies that show women as better suited at certain tasks, provided they’re not particularly prestigious ones.)
Of course, I could be wrong, and perhaps the Intellectual Dark Web will be lit ablaze with demands for hospitals to preferentially hire more women. But I won’t hold my breath.
Screechy @ 155 – It’s different in the way that people pretending to be something they are not is different from being sexually and romantically attracted to same sex people. They’re not particularly comparable or similar. Lesbians and gay men aren’t pretending to be same-sex attracted. (I suppose some could be, in theory, but it’s hard to see why anyone would.) They’re also not comparable to atheists.
That’s not to say I favor a ban on trans people in the military. I don’t know what I think about that, so I avoid the subject. But the category of “potential reasons for banning people from the military” is large and heterogeneous, and I don’t think we have to treat the category of trans as neatly parallel to the category of lesbian and gay.
I agree that you can (at least arguably) draw a distinction. But that seems to me to be addressing the question of “should there be a ban,” not “is this a ban.”
With some possible exceptions for the Yanivs of the world, I take trans people at their word that they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be, and that it is very important to them to present themselves as that gender. I don’t think it’s a lark or a fetish or a game or something they can switch on and off, or something like a toddler’s desire for a piece of candy, where if denied they’ll cry for a bit but then forget all about it. I assume that there is something deep and meaningful to them, which they feel a genuine need to express. Now one person’s desires, no matter how deep and meaningful, or even their needs, don’t change reality, and they don’t necessarily trump other people’s legitimate interests (for safety, for freedom of thought, etc.). Those are different questions.
I’m not sure how much of the preceding paragraph you (or Sackbut) agree or disagree with. I’m treading carefully here and trying not to presume anything because I don’t want to mischaracterize your positions. The point I was initially trying to make is that telling a trans person “no, you can’t serve your country unless you suppress what you consider to be a fundamental part of yourself” is effectively a ban. Whether that is justifiable or not is, again, a different question.
I don’t think it’s based on telling people how they must present. It simply refuses to make accommodations for presentation. This soldier is male, he will wear these uniforms and live in these places and be referred to with these titles and use these facilities because he is male. It’s a ban in the same way someone else who doesn’t want to abide by the rules and regulations of the military is banned. Male soldiers living among women and wearing women’s uniforms and so on are banned, just like male soldiers wearing, I don’t know, dreadlocks maybe. These restrictions are enough to keep many but probably not all trans people out of the military.
Even you seem to be conflating sex and gender in this case. What Sackbut wrote was:
No, trans people are not banned, they are just required to serve as their actual sex, not the sex they try to emulate.
So this is changing the subject:
I take trans people at their word that they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be, and that it is very important to them to present themselves as that gender.
Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that a military base only has two kinds of bedrooms, toilets, tents etc. One for “men” and one for “women”. Then defining “men” and “women” in terms of biological sex may indeed amount to a de facto ban on people who can’t live with being grouped with their own sex.
But guess what, it goes both ways (the one point that is always missed in these debates). Redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity”, “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking or feeling etc. amounts to a de facto ban on people who fail to think or feel the right way. I have spent a year of my life in the Norwegian army. I would not have been able to do so if all the bedrooms etc. were reserved for people who think or feel in any of the ways required to qualify as either “man” or “woman” according to gender ideology.
And, in fact, redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity” also amounts to a de facto ban on women who don’t feel safe having to sleep and shower and change clothes and change tampons along with men who say they identify as women.
And about taking “trans people at their word that they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be, and that it is very important to them to present themselves as that gender”……..
Well, one, people can really sincerely believe things that are false, and it’s not always a virtue or kind or the best thing to take them at their word about it. This applies even to sincere beliefs about the self – look at Trump for one glaring example. Two, isn’t it likely to be a matter of degree rather than an absolute? Some sincerely believe it in the way you describe but others semi-believe it, or take it up because they like it and it has its rewards, and similar possibles? Three, surely a lot of people who do sincerely believe it believe it because of this noisy ferocious campaign to harangue us all into believing it, or saying we do? Four, is it possible that a lot of people believe it or claim they believe it or join the train of people saying they believe it because it attracts narcissists and bullies and other rather difficult personality types? Five, is it possible that a lot of men join it because it’s such a socially approved opportunity to bully women in ways that went out of fashion decades ago but have come roaring back?
I don’t think it’s a lark or a fetish or a game or something they can switch on and off
Ever? You don’t think that’s ever what it is? Even a fetish? Despite all the highly fetishy images and narratives we’re treated to?
And you do know about detransitioners, right? You know there are people who do change their minds about the whole thing, so…?
Maybe where I’m coming from is the awareness or belief that fashion is a powerful thing and that peer approval is also a powerful thing. I see all the over the top “validation” of trans people and offers of support and love and fist bumps for trans people and I conclude that the fashion is a powerful magnet for people who want some or all of those things. Trans people get attention, and sympathy, and exclamations of how they’re The Most Marginalized. How can that not skew the stats?
Since Sackbut has clarified that it is indeed a de facto ban, which is all that I was trying to dispute, I think we communicated just fine.
The rest of your post goes into the merits of such a ban, which I haven’t really got a position on. Frankly, I’d need to know a lot more than I do about how the military currently handles gender, among other things.
But I’m mystified by your point about it “going both ways.” I mean, yes, allowing trans people to serve openly would act as a de facto ban on people who (1) disagree with that policy; and (2) feel so strongly about it that they would refuse/be unable to serve under those conditions. Again, you could have said the same thing about people who felt very strongly — and many did — about racial-segregation, or allowing women to serve, or allowing gays to serve. And I think you’re making a category error in treating “has opinions about gender ideology” as being in the same category as “is transgender,” just as I don’t think “has opinions about homosexuality” is in the same category as “is homosexual.”
………………….redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity” also amounts to a de facto ban on women who don’t feel safe having to sleep and shower and change clothes and change tampons along with men who say they identify as women.
But I’m mystified by your point about it “going both ways.” I mean, yes, allowing trans people to serve openly would act as a de facto ban on people who (1) disagree with that policy; and (2) feel so strongly about it that they would refuse/be unable to serve under those conditions. Again, you could have said the same thing about people who felt very strongly — and many did — about racial-segregation, or allowing women to serve, or allowing gays to serve. And I think you’re making a category error in treating “has opinions about gender ideology” as being in the same category as “is transgender,” just as I don’t think “has opinions about homosexuality” is in the same category as “is homosexual.”
Wow! Nice strawman!
I didn’t say anything at all about disagreeing with any policy allowing trans people to serve nor about feeling so strongly about it that one is able to serve under those conditions. I was simply making the point that redefining “man” and “woman” in terms of gender identity or male vs. female ways of thinking/feeling makes it no longer true that I (or anyone else who doesn’t think or feel in the ways required) am a “man” (or a “woman” for that matter), hence if the only bedrooms available are reserved for “men” or “woman” that effectively rules me out.
I guess what I’m confused by is the apparent resistance to calling the rule being discussed a “ban.” It’s not a pejorative term. The military should (and does) ban some people from service, because they can’t perform the expected duties, or can’t be trusted not to create other problems, etc. Apparently they (at least at one point) banned people with bone spurs!
I don’t think that agreeing that the military is currently banning trans people means that trans people win the argument and that the rule should be changed. Some bans are good, some aren’t.
I know sometimes that terminology is used to manipulate debate (e.g. “pro-life”), but “ban” seems fairly neutral to me.
I’m sorry, so your point was just that you don’t have a “gender identity” as defined by trans people? (Oddly, I was about to say something similar yesterday in another thread.) I wasn’t trying to strawman you, I really just did misread you. It did not seem like a position that was fringe-y or discreditable, either.
I am left a little confused at what point you were making then about it “going both ways.” I mean, it seems a little facetious if I understand you correctly. You would really have told a superior officer, “I’m sorry, but according to a definition of sex/gender with which I do not agree, I would have no gender identity, and therefore could not occupy either a male or female dorm?” That seems to go a little beyond what anyone is envisioning. I admit to not being on top of every TRA position, but I don’t think anyone is saying that you can’t continue to claim whatever sex/gender you like. I don’t think anyone is saying that you can’t continue to say “I’m a man” just because your reasons for doing so are biologically based. But I admit this world is stranger than I imagined.
Again, apologies for misreading you, there was no malicious intent.
I think “ban” has taken on a pejorative connotation in the wake of the long process of doing away with the ban on LG people. I almost added something about “ban [for arbitrary or bad reasons]” in one of those comments.
The word “ban” gets used inaccurately frequently. Prayer is not “banned” if people aren’t allowed to pray over the loudspeaker; Christians are not “banned” if proselytizing is disallowed; and so on. Being unable to participate in something on the terms you want is not the same thing as being unable to participate. Because of these fallacious uses of the term, I think it is worthwhile to distinguish actual direct bans from de facto ones.
I could understand and maybe support an effort to make military dress codes and hair codes less sex-specific. I don’t see any reason that one man should be allowed to follow the female dress code and another disallowed, simply because the first one claims to be a woman.
1. If, say, the “women’s dorms” are for people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (women₁), that rules out people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers (men₁) regardless of how they think or feel about themselves.
2. If the “women’s dorms” are for people who think or feel in whatever ways people with physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who prefer to be called “woman”/”female”/”she” happen to think/feel (women₂), that rules out people who fail to think/feel in said ways regardless of physical traits.
3. Women₂ in (1) are not technically banned from serving as men₁ (the identity they reject).
4. Women₁ who fail to think the required way according to gender ideology in (2) are not technically banned from serving as women₂ (the identity they reject).
If you read my comment #82 in this thread (and I won’t hold it against you if you don’t. It’s long!), it explains, better than I am able to do here, why I think we should refuse to play their language game. Two quotes from the piece that are directly relevant:
this is not simply about whether or not Trans women₂ have the right to define “who they are”, but whether or not they have the right to dictate who women₁ are as well (Basically saying: “Women₁ are whatever they have to be to make me one of them”)
When they speak of “inclusion” and fighting for the liberation of “all women” (as opposed to “only ‘cis’ women”), clearly what we are meant to envision is taking the circle that already includes the ‘cis’ women and expanding it to also include the ‘Trans’ women. As always when it comes to alt-left slogans, we’re supposed to hear it, let it resonate just long enough to have some warm fuzzy gut reaction and then think about it no more. If you do think about it […], it quickly becomes obvious that redefining “woman” in terms of thoughts and feelings doesn’t simply “expand” the circle, but replaces it entirely. And this matters, since TRAs have made it abundantly clear that all of “women’s rights” are supposed to go with the name rather than the actual people. If they have their way, every right, every concession, every piece of progress that women₁ have managed to wrestle from the arms of the patriarchy throughout the ages will henceforth apply to people like them instead of the people for whom they were originally intended.
As to what I would say to my superior officer, first of all I would not use the conflation “sex/gender”, and second, I sure as hell would not accept classification as a “man₂”. Again, using the same words does not amount to talking about the same things. The sentence “Bjarte belongs in the men₁’s dormitory” is true but irrelevant to any point TRAs are trying to make (such as whether or not men₂ should be allowed in the same dormitory). The sentence “Bjarte belongs in the men₂’s dormitory” might be relevant to their point, but no longer true. Definitions matter.
It’s not about whether or not I would still be allowed to call myself a “man”. I’,m sure the TRAs would like nothing better than a chance to count me as a fellow “person of gender”, part of the “gender binary” etc. I’m also sure Christians would love to count me as a fellow “Christian” (and they have: I was baptized as a child and enrolled in the Norwegian state church, without getting any saying in the matter, which allowed the church to claim me as part of the vast majority of Norwegians that were “Christians”), thus inflating their numbers. Well thanks, but no thanks.
Ok, clumsy wording. As written 4 seems to contradict 2. All I meant to say was that women₁ who fail to think in the ways required may still be allowed into the women₂’s dorm even if they don’t as a matter of fact meet the definition of women₂. After all the goal of all TRA rhetoric is to absorb women₁ into the women₂ category such that men₁ can qualify for membership. An exception can be made for a minority of “trans men₂” and “non binary” individuals, as long as nobody challenges the overarching narrative of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking and feeling.
Ever? You don’t think that’s ever what it is? Even a fetish? Despite all the highly fetishy images and narratives we’re treated to?
Sure. I did begin my paragraph with “[w]ith some possible exceptions,” which I’m happy to clarify applies to the entire paragraph and not just the initial sentence. There are always exceptions.
I think this is a case of Twitter Is Not Real Life. Social media is where the most attention-seeking, preening, showboats hang on and get validation for being flashy and outrageous.
And you do know about detransitioners, right? You know there are people who do change their minds about the whole thing, so…?
Of course I’m aware. But my understanding is that even the people who study or treat detransitioners acknowledge that it’s a low percentage. It’s grounds for caution in the transition process, especially when talking about young people, but I don’t think it proves that it’s all a choice. Sexual preference has been observed to be fluid as well — and I’m not talking about the “gay conversion therapy” victims who mostly have admitted they just went back in the closet. Young women declaring themselves lesbians but “discovering” their error after graduating college was/is common enough to have spawned a cliche “lesbian until graduation.” Some people discovery a change in orientation in their 40s. Or, if you don’t care for those examples, let’s go to religion again — some atheists “find Jesus (again),” that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are “choosing” not to.
Do you think detransitioners are flakes who decided to go through difficult, potentially dangerous, expensive medical procedures, and then decided “nah, let’s reverse all that,” as casually as if they were returning an outfit they didn’t like? I doubt you do, because most of the stories on detransitioners that you’ve blogged about emphasize the difficulties they’re experiencing. Detransitioning may suggest that the initial transition was erroneous or premature, but it doesn’t suggest to me that it was frivolous. I have yet to read a story about a detrans person who was casual about the whole thing, like “no big deal, I’ll just go back and try something else!”
Maybe where I’m coming from is the awareness or belief that fashion is a powerful thing and that peer approval is also a powerful thing. I see all the over the top “validation” of trans people and offers of support and love and fist bumps for trans people and I conclude that the fashion is a powerful magnet for people who want some or all of those things. Trans people get attention, and sympathy, and exclamations of how they’re The Most Marginalized. How can that not skew the stats?
Ah, well, I think now you’re talking about two different things. You seem to be implying that if something is culturally influenced, then it’s a choice. Or if you’re not, then there’s a missing argument somewhere.
I am not taking the position that trans status is 100% “nature” and 0% “nurture.” In fact, I’m not sure if ANY of it is “nature,” it may be 100% nuture for all I know. I certainly reject some versions of the nature hypothesis as preposterous — Kevin K used to insist that babies know that they’re trans, and I argued with him quite extensively that this seemed absurd, in part because so many of his arguments were culturally dependent.
I just don’t think it matters. There are lots of aspects of ourselves that are no doubt products of the culture we grew up in, how our parents raised us, etc. etc. That doesn’t make them any less a part of us.
Certainly there are more trans-identified people today than there were 20 or 50 or 100 years ago — I seem to recall surveys backing that up, and some particular culture-specific ones, like a huge rise in trans men in the U.K. in a relatively small time period. I don’t doubt that part of this — maybe even a huge part of it — has to do with cultural attitudes. Of course more people are going to identify as trans today, when it has some cultural support, then when trans people were treated as freaks and perverts. I suspect that would be both because some people who were trans before stayed in the closet, even on surveys, and because people are more willing to consider the possibility that they are trans today. I haven’t checked, but I suspect you’d find the same treatment of non-heterosexuality.
Social conservatives weren’t incorrect in thinking that, if they could maintain social shaming on homosexuality, there would be less homosexuality. They were wrong to wish to do so, because their underlying premises and values were wrong, but there surely is some cause and effect there.
By the way, I feel much differently about some other aspects of the current culture. For example, I think that some of this stuff about forty-seven kinds of sexual orientation, where everyone feels the need to have a label to describe “well, I like sex, but usually only with people I’m romantically involved with, but every now and then I’m horny for a casual fling” and every other variant as though they’re some special snowflake, is trendy nonsense that isn’t going to last. And I say that because it costs nothing to put “hemi-demi-gray aromantic” or whatever on your Twitter bio; it’s all posturing. But trans people who actually live as trans don’t, I think, have an easy life. Even in a large, liberal city, people will stare and whisper at someone who doesn’t “pass.” Guys still make snickering jokes about “chicks with dicks.” I don’t doubt that employment and housing discrimination against trans people occurs. And I just don’t think that people endure that for shits and giggles, or to earn retweets and follows on Twitter. Again, Twitter Is Not Real Life. While Twitter amplifies and rewards and protects (by banning their critics) the most extreme elements of the trans movement, real life is not so kind.
I freely admit I can’t prove any of that factually. It’s all intuition and casual observation and anecdote. Pretty much the same logic that led me to believe that gay people clearly didn’t choose to be gay, because who the hell would put up with the abuse and harassment and vitriol and prejudice voluntarily? But then, I don’t think there’s any proof in the other direction, either.
I’m still not sure I follow, but this is all getting far afield from my original point (which was just a semantic quibble about the word “ban”), so I’ll just thank you for the response and leave things there.
Screechy, yes, that all makes sense. I think what made me think I disagree more [with your first comment] than I do with this reply was “With some possible exceptions for the Yanivs of the world” – because that sounded like a very small fraction, Yaniv being a real stand-out. I think there are a lot more people influenced by social contagion than there are Yaniv types.
Maybe also the “they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be” bit. I think there are also plenty of trans people who don’t believe that, but just feel more at home, more comfortable, more where they should be, as the other sex. In other words they don’t make an outlandish truth claim and they don’t try to force others to endorse an outlandish truth claim. I think the distinction makes a huge difference. It’s far less violating of one’s efforts to sort fantasy from reality to be told that someone feels better living as or performing the role of the other sex than to be told someone was born in the wrong body.
Well, I suspect we probably do disagree on how common the… exceptions? posers? what should we call them? … are. I’m not sure how we would go about defining or quantifying that, much less figuring out who is closer to the “true” answer. On the one hand, you no doubt have more interaction with trans people than I do; on the other hand, I suspect your interaction is largely with an unrepresentative segment, containing the loudest, angriest, most confrontational and provocative members.
I think I largely agree with your second paragraph. That part, at least, could probably be answered by survey data.
Some of you may have seen this excellent essay by Robert Jensen from a few days ago. He talks about leftist criticisms of liberal positions, and how the same fundamental criticisms are mysteriously absent in the topics of prostitution, pornography, and transgender ideology. I find his writing very accessible. It appears that my posting of this article on Facebook was the last straw for some people, but if I can’t do this tiny act of taking a stand, I can’t do anything.
So James Lindsay made a little, satirical instagram graphic about how 2+2=4 is a hegemonic white colonialist conception that excludes other ways of knowing, and … Blue checks took the bait. They’re seriously equivocating hard on the meanings of “2”, “+”, “=”, and “5” in order to demonstrate that 2+2=5 is true.
Here’s a loud guy with lots of followers who says it’s actually 6.
Therefore the “neutral”, “unbiased”, “unpolitical”, “non-ideological” answer is 5.
Q.E.D.
Corollary:
If the loud guy with lots of followers changes his claim to 2+2=8, that makes his original position the “neutral”, “unbiased”, “unpolitical”, “non-ideological” answer.
Staff members wishing to commemorate the death of a colleague from ovarian cancer by fundraising for an ovarian cancer charity have been prevented from using their company’s intranet for the campaign unless they choose a more “inclusive” charity. https://mobile.twitter.com/NouveauFeminist/status/1289925103266885632
The only response this sort of shit deserves is FUCK OFF. They have no good faith arguments, only empty mantras and non-sequiters. The whole point is to erode the boundaries of women and the very definition of women as a sex class, and that can only be done through bullying and intimidation.
I’m sure the following could be turned into a time-saving flow chart. Any TA argument must first pass this gauntlet before being considered at all.
Sex is complex! Yes, indeed it is; there are still only two sexes. Your Venn diagram is broken. —–>FUCK OFF
Intersex! Yes, sometimes things go wrong. How many trans people are actually intersex? —–>FUCK OFF
Exclusionary! Yes. Not everything is about you.—–>FUCK OFF.
Inclusive language! Womxn! Uterus havers! Menstruators! Okay, now do “men.” You won’t look quite so hell-bent on erasing women, but you’ll still be wrong, and can still—–>FUCK OFF.
Genital preferences are transphobic! Says those who undoubtedly have genital preferences themselves. Incel much, rape aplogist? —–>FUCK OFF.
This is just off the top of my head. Have I missed any?
latsot @ 181 – I watched them and I see what you see but at the same time, the guy’s ad insults him with the stereotypes about fucking up everything he touches at home, so the two kind of wash each other out.
The majority of the math-types defending 2+2=5 are doing so by varying the equation’s meaning. E.g., if “5” means four, then it works. That smart people are unable to recognize that they’re committing an equivocation fallacy is … Well, it’s something. What that something is, I can’t tell you.
Jesus christ, they’re actually diving headlong into 2+2=5 because uncertainty. I argued this a long time ago on a game forum, specifically to annoy a guy that was regularly annoyed by how argumentative I was. He said something about how I was so argumentative, I’d probably argue against 2+2=4… and so I did. It was an exercise in wilful trolling, arguing something obviously stupid purely to annoy. And the woke are embracing it!
God that is painfully idiotic; no surprises to see Arthur Chu front and centre amongst the pomo bullshit.
Holms @195, you realise that now the closet FtB viewers of this blog will now seize on your statement as certain proof that everything you (and we) have ever said is nothing but trolling them for the lulz. Nice one buddy!
When I was in college, there was a common joke of the form “2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently small values of 5 and sufficiently large values of 2”. Engineering approximations, you know. It was intended as humor. Funny to think about it in this context.
Found some interesting background on Dawn Ennis of Outsports (“Calling All Bullies”, August 3rd). From 2013:
A few months ago, ABC News producer Don Ennis received very public support from his co-workers and the wife he was leaving to live as Dawn Stacey Ennis, a woman. Now he’s decided to switch back. In an e-mail to friends and colleagues titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis insisted, “No, I’m not fucking with you. No this is not a joke. No, this is not an episode of ‘Would You Fall For That?’” But after a bout of “transient global amnesia,” he’s going back to Don Ennis. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.”
After the memory-loss scare, Ennis explained, he thought it was 1999, the New York Post reports. “I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously,” he wrote. “It’s so odd to be experiencing this from the other side; as recently as last Friday, I felt I was indeed a woman, in my mind, body and soul.”
As for the identity-politics implications, he’s sorry. “I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed,” wrote Ennis. “Even though I will not wear the wig or the makeup or the skirts again, I promise to remain a strong straight ally, a supporter of diversity and an advocate for equal rights and other LGBT issues including same-sex marriage.”
This is response by John Halle to an article by Phillip Ewell discussing Heinrich Schenker and his music analysis method, as well as a commentary on the reaction to it. Ewell’s piece was critiqued by Thomas Jackson, a professor at University of North Texas (a premier music school) and an editor of the “Journal of Schenkerian Studies”; people piled on Jackson and are calling for his resignation. Halle says:
Reflecting this set of priorities, Ewell’s piece focusses on three main areas: 1) evidence of Schenker’s racism in his published and unpublished works, 2) the desperate measures undertaken by Schenker’s numerous acolytes and disciples to suppress evidence of Schenker’s racism, and 3) the manner in which Schenker’s racism was and is reflected in the Schenkerian analytical method.
Ewell makes particular use in his piece of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”. Both DiAngelo and her book come in for significant criticism in Halle’s piece.
Halle concludes, with words that could have applied to so many examples in a wide variety of academic disciplines:
It was not long ago that a left committed to civil liberties would have understood that demanding the firing of a faculty member for expressing her views is as transparent an attack on free speech rights as could be imagined. Then it was taken for granted that we had the most to lose from sacrificing the principle of free speech. It follows that “an attack on one person’s freedom is an attack on everyone’s freedom, and the only possible way to defeat the rising tide of repression on campus and beyond is to fight with everything we have, each and every time.”
But now defenses of free speech rarely emanate from our side. This one comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum-from The National Review. founded by the ardently racist McCarthyite William F. Buckley,
Yet again, the right cashes in yet again on “gifts” from the left which will remain marginal and irrelevant for as long as it continues to provide them.
Ewell’s text, and the response to it are ultimately little more than one more reprise of this depressingly familiar spectacle.
The National Review article mentioned in the quoted passage is:
COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.
How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for love. Those who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying, as one commentator has noted, the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it. Leading their charge is Donald Trump, a bone spur warrior, a liar and a fraud, a grotesque caricature of a strong man, with the backbone of a bully.
So I was reading through the post and comments on music theory, trying to follow what is for me a very esoteric debate, and I came across this quote in the Halle article Sackbut linked to:
…core properties of cognition are based on the creation of hierarchies, likely through a domain specific application of what linguists have identified as the operation “merge”.
In the interest of not derailing that thread, I’ll put my comment here.
“Merge” is an operation proposed within Chomsky’s “Minimalist Program”, a program within the paradigm of Universal Grammar, which has many critics within the broader discipline of linguistics. Saying “linguists have identified… ‘merge'” is akin to saying “physicists have identified ‘strings'”.
I’ve been out of the debate around UG for over a decade, but in doing some searching for critiques I found the following article which presents a (to me) novel argument against UG, as well as a critical summary of some of the other critiques that have been presented. I can’t say I’ve digested it all, but on first reading I found his argument sound (even though I find usage-based approaches convincing).
But anyway, my broader point is not that Chomsky’s wrong, but that there’s controversy in the field that’s often overlooked by scholars from different fields, and I don’t think that’s specific to linguistics, or that linguists are immune to that when commenting on other fields (which is why I won’t try to enter the debate on music theory).
Following up on my 206, there’s a bit of sleight of hand that Chomsky performs when he talks about language “evolving” that Lin doesn’t seem to pick up on (though I’ve seen an abstract of his which suggests he may be aware of it). That depends on the polysemy of “evolve”. In one sense, it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that language evolved (with the caveat that we don’t have any direct evidence), in that it probably developed from some more primitive communication system during the evolution of our line of primates, rather than springing up all at once, but that’s not the same thing as saying that language (or, as Chomsky might put it, the language organ) evolved in a Darwinian sense. That is, it is not necessarily true that there is anything in the human organism that evolved specifically and solely “for” language. It’s also plausible that language was a cultural invention that took advantage of innate capacities that evolved for other reasons.
I’m similarly not convinced by cognitive claims regarding a universal experience in music. Steven Pinker made some appallingly bad arguments in The Blank Slate. Daniel Levitin, a cognitive scientist who studies music and cognition, has made some rather strong claims in his popular books and backed them up with utter nonsense in regard to classical music. He may be right, but it is clear that he is much more interested in and knowledgeable about popular music than classical, and his examples (such as for the ubiquity of absolute pitch) are facile and unconvincing. Pinker, however, is plainly wrong in his sweeping condemnation of music of the 20th century, using appeals to what pleases babies.
Pinker’s wrong about a lot of things, starting with “The Language Instinct” (it’s not an instinct). (One of my dissertation committee members, who was a grad student around the same time as Pinker, once referred me to an old article of his and snarked, “That was back when Pinker was doing science.”)
It just occurred to me that I read Levitin’s book “This is Your Brain on Music” a few years back (it was a Christmas present). It didn’t leave much of a permanent mark on my thinking (which is to say, I don’t remember much about it). I think I thought there were some interesting ideas, but I didn’t have any way to evaluate their validity.
I guess this is less of surprise to others than it was to me — I recall reading that he had health issues, but that was about it — but Ed Brayton is saying goodbye.
Facebook has recently updated their hate speech policy, so I thought I’d take a look. Interestingly, sex is a protected characteristic, they include examples of women being referred to as objects as examples of hate speech, and they reject calling people cunts. They also reject statements that a protected characteristic doesn’t or shouldn’t exist (as a real or protected characteristic, I presume). I don’t see anything regarding criticisms of ideology. It’s very difficult to parse these policy statements for certain key cases.
Since it was one of the most-read articles of the year, many of you will already be familiar with New York Magazine’s article The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge, regarding Harvard Law School professor Bruce Hay. I won’t even attempt to summarize it other than to say that it told that story of Hay getting entangled with two women, one cis and one trans, which led to a Title IX complaint against Hay, accusations of paternity fraud and house theft, and more. Hay was the primary source for the article, which is told largely from his perspective. Not to say that he comes out looking great — see the title.
Recently, Hay (who has apparently been indefinitely suspended by HLS) has apparently reconciled with the women he previously accused of scamming him, and he filed a lawsuit against the magazine, the reporter, and the magazine’s legal counsel, for defamation, breach of contract, and sexual harassment. Yes, you read that correctly. Hay claims that the magazine defamed him by printing what he told them was true, when they should have known better had they investigated. He also claims that his participation as a source for the story created a legal contract with NY Mag to report the story accurately, and that he was a “consultant” for the magazine under NY harassment laws, which were violated when the reporter used her feminine wiles to induce him to talk more. It’s that bad. Hay is (unsurprisingly) representing himself in that lawsuit.
The two women filed their own separate lawsuit. It hasn’t been as widely reported yet; the only article I found was from an LGBTQ publication called them. That article contains some interesting phraseology:
Transgender Harvard Ph.D. student Mischa Shuman and her partner, Maria-Pia Shuman, filed a defamation suit against New York magazine and its reporter Kera Bolonik
In his suit, Hay alleges that after he “trusted and confided in” Bolonik, who herself identifies as a lesbian.
Did you catch it? Schuman just “is” transgender. (The headline also refers to Schuman and her partner as “queer”). But Bolonik only “identifies as a lesbian.” You know, we’re not sure, that’s just what she says.
The article goes on to quote the various plaintiffs and their complaints sympathetically, including their claim that the article was transphobic.
Anyway, the whole thing is just an ugly mess, so of course we must throw some accusations of transphobia into the mix. (I should also mention, for those new to the saga, that NY Mag also published a follow-up piece based on reports from other men who Schuman and her partner either did or attempted to defraud, and Hay’s ex-wife was a key source as well. This was never just a case of Hay’s word against theirs.)
A well known twitter lawyer, whom I won’t annoy Screechy by mentioning ;-), was asked about Hay’s lawsuit a few days ago. He described it as ‘beautiful’. I don’t think it was meant as a compliment.
It’s a sad story in a way. Hay was a former Supreme Court clerk, became an HLS professor at a fairly young age, and now he’s a punchline. When it was just being fooled by some con artists, well, that can happen, he’s hardly the first person to be “book smart” but not “street smart.” But this latest turn of events looks like a man who has totally lost it emotionally. Apparently there is nobody in his life who can shake him and demand “what are you doing?”
Between Hay, Larry Lessig, and Dershowitz, HLS isn’t looking very good these days. (And if you want a laugh, look up Popehat’s stories about Charles Nesson throwing chalk at him. “Billion Dollar Charlie” is a beaut, too.)
This is a thing of wonder. Just really good editing, not a deep fake. Tucker’s tiny little mind will explode. With any luck, so will a few million others.
I’ve decided that woke analysis really is just the process of looking for symbolism in literature but transferred to reality. Coloring books teach us to “stay within the lines”, which obviously means that it’s teaching us to “stay within the lines” of our race.
So apparently this comment doesn’t meet Facebook’s standard for hate speech:
So you protest in person? Imagine the hypocrisy of showing up. No democrats cannot stuff the mailboxes. We will remove the blue boxes. We will remove sorting machines. Because here is the truth. Leftists have a big voice with a big joo media amplifying them. But truthfully they are a small group. The silent majority will show up in person when it counts and vote all of you out .
The reporting system for Facebook doesn’t allow you to add a comment for why you think a post is offensive, so I’m assuming they didn’t recognize that “Joo” is an intentional misspelling of “Jew”.
This absolutely brilliant thread was referenced by several people I follow on Twitter.
Amy, a teenage girl who runs an Instagram page, likes to feature interviews with people who hold controversial views. She asked her readers who to interview, and they overwhelmingly suggested a “TERF”. Olivia was interviewed, the responses formatted and posted. The backlash was fierce.
Olivia describes the process and the reaction, and she includes the interview pages. Her introduction and responses are excellent, forthright and well argued without being in any way combative. One teen who complained on Instagram, a trans-identified girl, said Olivia made good points but it hurt her feelings to suggest that she is female. Olivia notes here that this young woman’s identity rests on a “house of cards”, an apt analogy.
A little tricky to read, but definitely worthwhile.
Looking for some input on something. How do you all feel about the expression “happy wife, happy life”? I just came across it as the title of someone’s stand-up comedy special, but I also seem to be hearing it a lot lately in “real life.” Usually in the context of married guys explaining why they (a) are doing something they don’t really want to, or (b) can’t do something they do want to.
Of course the basic concept is fine — in any partnership, there should be a healthy give and take, and being concerned with your partner’s well-being is only natural — but I note that I’ve never heard an equivalent expression about “happy husband.”
As a single guy, I don’t really have any personal emotional stake in it, but it just seems… irritating to me somehow, and I’m not sure why. Do women find it patronizing?
I don’t think I’ve heard a simple expression in reference to a husband, but I certainly have read plenty of commentary (notably in antique advice manuals) that the primary purpose of a wife is to keep her husband happy. Some examples:
I don’t think I’ve heard “happy husband, happy life” or anything so succinct, but there are any number of marriage advice sources stating or implying that a wife’s primary purpose is to keep her husband happy. Is that sufficiently close?
I think the differences are, first, that the advice to women states or implies that (as you say) it is a wife’s “primary purpose” to make her husband happy. The implication of the expression I’m talking about is not that it is a husband’s duty or primary purpose to make his wife happy, just that doing so will make his life easier. To put it more crudely, “keep the old ball-and-chain happy, or she’ll make your life miserable.”
Second, the advice you’re talking about is generally seen as outdated in our society, outside of the more conservative/religious elements, whereas “happy wife, happy life” is spouted by even (some) liberal feminist men.
Anyway, I don’t mean to make a big deal out of it.
It made me think once again of everything I detest about what Barbara Ehrenreich has (correctly in my view) called the “Ideology of Positive Thinking”.
For one thing it obviously can – and often does – lead people – from individuals to whole societies – to dismiss legitimate concerns, ignore real threats and deny real problems rather than dealing with them (climate change being an obvious example), and basically gamble everything on the unjustified hope that everything’s going to turn out fine all by itself. If that’s not criminal negligence, then I don’t know what is.
It can also make people strongly motivated to do the wrong things, whether it’s taking on unsustainable amounts of debt, or, conversely, lending out risky mortgages to people with no realistic prospects of repaying them, or, for that matter, invading Iraq and expecting to be greeted by cheering crowds throwing flowers. As others have commented, there are no more dangerous people than the highly enthusiastic incompetents who don’t know what they are doing and hence run as fast as they can in the wrong direction.
And as many others have pointed out, the really cruel and heartless side to the whole ideology (and I don’t think evil is too strong a word) is the victim-blaming aspect. If you take as a premise that every problem is fixable simply by having the right attitude, it pretty much follows logically that anyone who’s suffering – and whose problems cannot just be conjured out of existence through an act of will – must have the wrong attitude and hence only has him-/herself to blame.
Furthermore, as far as ideologies, go, the ideology of positive thinking is inherently conservative and pro status quo. Why work to improve anything in the real world if the world’s just fine as it is and any suggestion to the contrary is just negativity and wrong attitude?
To the extent that positive thinking motivates us to “improve” anything it’s only our own individual standing within the world as it is. But even here this solipsistic focus on our own inner lives easily becomes a substitute for doing the actual work out in the real world that might in fact make a difference. And this really is one of the great ironies of this whole story: After all the pseudo-”rational” justification for embracing the ideology of positive thinking (i.e. the justification most often heard from people who don’t personally believe in New Age nonsense like the “Law of Attraction”) is that “At least it can motivate people to get off their ass and work to improve their lot”.
Finally – and this is the one point that I think too often gets lost in these debates – it is important to note that positive thinking has nothing to do with actual happiness, life satisfaction, well-being etc. The goal of positive thinking was never to make people happier but to make them more tractable, more compliant, more ready to put up with anything that employers and other authority figures throw at them and not stand up for themselves. To me perhaps the most revealing quote from Ehrenreich’s Bright Sided was from the motivational speaker who told victims of the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 to “pretend” to be optimistic even if they didn’t mean it. That pretty much says it all.
Thanks for the article link. I agree with your commentary.
A family member posted a video about a remarkable man who had an awful family history, pushed himself severely as a young adult, and accomplished many physical feats, including many arduous military training certifications. Yes, he is pretty impressive, but while watching the video I thought about Survivor Fallacy, “I overcame adversity this way, therefore you can, too”. It seemed to be what he was “selling”, in addition to telling his story. And, as you note re positivity, it emphasizes fixing our own lives, it doesn’t allow for fixing wider problems that lead to these adverse conditions. Racism, discrimination, abuse, let’s just be strong and deal with it rather than stopping it and preventing others from having to deal with it. Suffering is good for you, you know.
A catholic priest has found out he was baptised incorrectly 30 years ago. His priest said “we baptise you…” rather than “I baptise you…” which is obviously completely wrong, so the magic didn’t work. This meant that his ordination was also invalid and so all the magic he’s done since (baptisms, marriages, funerals, confessions, exorcisms etc) didn’t work either and has to be re-done.
You’d have thought that a cardinal or something could just do one big spell and re-do the magic all at once, but apparently that’s stupid and the church has to track down all the people who have been living in sin and/or burning in hell and re-do the magic one spell at a time.
I’m not sure what will happen to the people they can’t trace.
Remember Jed Rubenfeld? The Yale law professor (and husband of “Tiger Mom” YLS professor Amy Chua) who said what a great guy Brett Kavanaugh is? The one who reportedly (though he denied it) told female YLS students seeking clerkships that Kavanaugh preferred a certain look? See this thread for a refresher.
Rubenfeld denies the accusations and claims he’s been targeted because of his writings about Title IX proceedings at universities. But it’s not a good sign of his credibility when he complains to a reporter that he was forbidden to know the identity of his accuser, and it turns out… nope, not the case.
Looks like “Jessica” Yaniv is at it again. He’s now launching a civil suit against some of the same minority women he dragged into the BC Human Rights Tribunal last year (where he lost):
Maybe Yaniv can get a judge to agree that the sexual binary is a racist, colonial imposition on the world and, as women of colour, the beauticians he’s targeting being victimized by should be totally fine with handling his parts, since their classification as “male” is bigotted and imperialist. More peak transing in the offing, but in the meantime those women get victimized again. Maybe some TAs concerned about alleged “racist” GC “white women” can do a cleanup in aisle five of one of their own actually harming minority, immigrant women? Hello, Morgane, are you there? I’m not sure that the dictum of there being “no such thing as bad publicity” really holds in this instance. Even without his pervy, stalker history, Yaniv’s case, grounded as much in religious and racist animosity as it is in any rights or freeedoms he might be hoping to advance, is not really going to do the cause of trans “rights” any good, but I would rather see him drop it than to force the women he is abusing from being through this ordeal AGAIN!
I hope the court tells him to fuck off, otherwise it becomes complicit in Yaniv’s continued violation of these women’s health. safety and livelihood.
Notice the name of the author – Devika Desai. The women Yaniv is tormenting are named Sandeep Benipal, Marcia DaSilva and Sukhdhip Hehar. Nicely played, National Post.
To an interested layperson like myself, trying to understand what physics actually tells us about reality at a fundamental level can be a frustrating endeavour. Still, every once in a while you read or hear something that makes you think “Yay! I just got ever so slightly less clueless!*”. Speaking for myself, no science popularizer has sparked this reaction in me more often than Sean Carroll.
For several months now Carroll has posted weekly informal lectures about “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe” on his YouTube channel. To those who may have missed it I highly recommend them. Alas, the series has just reached the end. The final episode is about a very big idea indeed. The idea is “Science”.
A school board was keeping nude images of an underage girl (i.e. child pornography) on file to discredit her in a sexual assault case. The girl (who is black) had been assaulted by a white male student. Both were suspended. Somehow the school had obtained nude photos that the girl had sent to another boy (not the assailant). In the school’s view, this apparently damaged the truthfulness of her accusation of assault against her attacker. The fact of the school board keeping these images on file has just arisen, in the course of the girl’s suit against the school board’s handling of the incident.
So another “gender reveal party” has gone bad — causing a wildfire in California.
I remain baffled at how this “blue vs. pink” thing has developed in our society over my lifetime. As a general matter, and with all the usual caveats about how much further we need to go, I really do think there’s been social progress during these decades, including in the area of sexism. But this increasing emphasis on gender, even while we insist that they’re equal, is puzzling.
I’m tempted to compare it to “separate but equal” in the context of race, where society responded to the theoretical legal equality of blacks by only paying lip service to the idea while reinforcing the actual divisions between the races. But I don’t think that quite works. In the racial context, whites held the power and used it to separate themselves. But so much of the gender stratification is being done by women — they’re doing at least, and usually more than, half of the shopping and home decorating and party planning. So it’s largely women who decide that boys get these toys and girls get those ones, and the girls’ rooms must be painted pink, and won’t a gender reveal party be fun! I don’t get the sense that these are things being imposed on women by, say, the male-dominated toy company executives or something. The mothers I know are enthusiastic proponents of folk wisdom about how boys are like this, and girls are like that.
Anybody have a good explanation, or a link to one?
This was an American Humanist Association follow-up to the AHA’s posting of a CNN article about the so-called “transgender ban” in women’s and girl’s sports in Idaho.
Apparently comments on the original post “devolved into a malicious and transphobic free-for-all”. I don’t really feel like looking up their post, but given the tenor of this follow-up, I suspect I would have significant disagreement with them about what constitutes “transphobic”, let alone a “malicious and transphobic free-for-all”.
The “scientific evidence” issue is always going to be a problem, when high-profile organizations like the NIH put out reports like the one mentioned in the article (which is a “review of the literature” study, not a direct study). It would be nice to have handy a clear rebuttal or two to the NIH article. Any suggestions?
It’s distressing to see the AHA concerned almost entirely with the trans athletes, talking about “inclusion” and emotional blackmail such as suicide risk, but not about women and their interests as a class of people.
The people sought in the survey are those who “identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (you are not cisgender)”.
MOST people are gender non-conforming. MOST people fail to live up to the sexist stereotypical expectations of their sex. Apparently “cisgender” excludes most people.
I wonder what the researcher would do in response to people like most of us who don’t question their sex, but who assert that they are gender non-conforming, and reject the label “cis”.
Is that researcher a proper academic/scientist? Because if so they should be stripped of their degree and tossed on the street to sell tacos for the rest of their lives. Talk about designing your research to support a pre-determined outcome.
New whistleblower complaint filed by human rights groups on unsafe medical treatment, neglect, and forced sterilization of migrant women in a Georgia ICE prison run by a private company.
Studebaker, I saw that reported on Twitter as well. Not only horrifying but also a literal crime against humanity if true. I also saw it reported that a refugee/inmate at one of ICE’s facilities, who was scheduled to give evidence in a Federal trial has been deported, making it impossible for her to appear. As Popehat said, the Government has ways of impeaching a witness that is not open to the rest of us.
That’s disturbing. Thanks for informing me I sincerely hope this isn’t part of an organized effort but there are disturbing coincidences. It’s hard not to see Steven Miller’s grubby little hands in all of this. Coincide it with continued family separation, sexual abuse of migrant women and children, and it’s a pretty horrific picture. I live just down the road from one of these. Once every few weeks I wake up and wonder what am I doing with my life that I’m not down there protesting every day. I don’t want to know what comes next if Trump steals the next election. More motivation to work hard on as many local and state elections as possible.
On happier notes-partner just made excellent bread so I guess I’ll drown my sorrows in carbs for now!
It’s quite good, tying together the topics of fascism, whiteness, nationalism, and racism in a clear way. Some of the points (eg transphobia) are glossed over and miss the mark, but overall I think it provides a helpful explanatory framing, and does a better job than many articles I’ve read.
Some argued that Trump only exploits societal divisions when he believes it is to his political advantage. They pointed to his denunciations of kneeling NFL players and paeans to the Confederate flag, claiming these symbols matter little to him beyond their ability to rouse supporters.
“I don’t think Donald Trump is in any way a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi or anything of the sort,” a third former senior administration official said. “But I think he has a general awareness that one component of his base includes factions that trend in that direction.”
Studies of the 2016 election have shown that racial resentment was a far bigger factor in propelling Trump to victory than economic grievance. Political scientists at Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts, for example, examined the election results and found that voters who scored highly on indexes of racism voted overwhelmingly for Trump, a dynamic particularly strong among non-college-educated Whites.
Several current and former administration officials, somewhat paradoxically, cited Trump’s nonracial biases and perceived limitations as exculpatory.
Several officials said that Trump is not a disciplined enough thinker to grasp the full dimensions of the white nationalist agenda, let alone embrace it. Others pointed out that they have observed him making far more offensive comments about women, insisting that his scorn is all-encompassing and therefore shouldn’t be construed as racist.
“This is a guy who abuses people in his cabinet, abuses four-star generals, abuses people who gave their life for this country, abuses civil servants,” the first former senior White House official said. “It’s not like he doesn’t abuse people that are White as well.”
Nearly all said that Trump places far greater value on others’ wealth, fame or loyalty to him than he does on race or ethnicity. In so doing, many raised a version of the “some of my best friends are Black” defense on behalf of the president.
So hey, he’s not racist, he’s just cynical, stupid, and an asshole to everyone (speaking of things we already knew).
WaM, #260. So now they’re trying to sell him as an equal opportunities hater. Yep, that defense is telling indeed – it’s telling the electorate ‘Vote for Trump: He hates the people you hate”. It’s just not telling them that he also hates the people who do vote for him.
I love this — Scott Adams (the Dilbert cartoonist and self-proclaimed Genius who went Full Trumper) has a video up complaining that he feels personally abused by Trump’s bad answer to the white supremacist question. Hang in there, Genius Man, perhaps eventually you’ll get to admitting that maybe Trump’s critics were right and you were wrong. Maybe.
My birthday is this week. I was wondering what I would get myself as a present – baklava? Irish cream? a computer upgrade? – when the news answered my question for me:
Another petition. This is a counter-petition, opposing an attempt to ban Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage”, about transgender ideology social contagion among teenage girls.
An odd coincidence: I recently made a comment about there being a wider selection of gender identities than of Starbucks coffees. Since making that comment I have seen a few new (to me, no idea how long they’ve been running) Starbucks tv ads carrying the tag-line Every Name is a Story.
The ‘stars’ of the adverts are transgender individuals, telling us just how affirming it is to see their ‘real’ names written on a polyfoam cup. One, a female-to-male named Cairo, apparently did have a temporary fit of anxiety when the barista mis-spelt the name, but plucky Cairo found the courage to correct the barista and they – gasp! – laughed it off.
And, yes, the f-m brave wee things speak with annoyingly simpering, whispery voices, and look at the camera with wide, wet-eyed expressions that make me think of abused puppies grateful that they haven’t been kicked today.
Such nauseating adverts. I’ve never yet been inside a Starbucks nor tasted their coffee, and crap such as these ads are certainly not about to change that.
4. Hate Items: Items that Promote, Support, or Glorify Hatred
We want Etsy to be a community where people of all backgrounds, nationalities, religions, political affiliations, and even different types of artistic taste and humor feel welcome. Art is incredibly subjective, and what is offensive to one is not necessarily offensive to others.
More Details:
Etsy does not allow items or listings that promote, support or glorify hatred toward people or otherwise demean people based upon: race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation (collectively, “protected groups”). We also prohibit items or content that promote organizations or people with such views.
The following items are not allowed on Etsy:
1. Items that support or commemorate current or historical hate groups, including propaganda or collectibles. Examples of hate groups include Nazi or Neo-Nazi groups, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups, white supremacist groups, misogynist groups, or groups that advocate anti-gay, anti-immigrant, or Holocaust denial agendas.
2. Items that contain racial slurs or derogatory terms in reference to protected groups.
I saw nothing indicating it was OK to threaten violence to members of hate groups. Saying “I Hate Nazis” is OK by example, and mocking Nazis is OK, but they say nothing specific about saying “Punch Nazis”. They do prohibit, in a different section, threatening violence.
In a small spot of good news, NZ is back to having zero active cases of Covid-19 in the community. Key to getting our recent spate of outbreaks under control:
– Contact tracing (90% of contacts traced within 48 hours).
– Wide spread community testing.
– Genome sequencing all cases with no clinical connection (to be sure which cases were related).
– Rapidly moving into a lockdown in the region where an outbreak was detected.
– Whole of community precautions such as social distancing, masks and enhanced hygiene.
– Infected community members and their households moved into quarantine facilities (travellers already do two weeks in isolation facilities).
– Pretty good buy in to all of the above from the population.
Point of interest – while airborne/droplet spread is clearly the key, at least two transmissions appear to have occurred off surfaces. These were a lift button and a rubbish bin lid, both in isolation facilities. In one case a maintenance worker used a lift just after an infected resident (and went to the same floor). In the other case a resident about to be discharged discarded rubbish in a lobby rubbish bin with a lid, shortly after an infected resident had discarded used tissues. In both these cases the combination of rapid contact tracing and genome identification allowed these clusters to be quickly pinched out and differentiated from the larger community cluster.
My point isn’t how well NZ has done, but that we have successfully implemented the techniques that health officials all over the world have been promoting. Our experience also shows just how easy it is to have outbreaks and the effort required to reign them back in. Nothing any western country couldn’t do if they had the political will.
Oh nice, another post from PZ protesting his innocence while blatantly lying about The Shunning… most notably:
… [OB] was one of our best bloggers, writing frequently and well, and I was in total denial that such a good progressive feminist could also be hateful towards trans people …
Hateful towards trans people. A specific knowledge claim without grounding, and in defiance of all that has been written by OB on the topic.
OK, it’s Friday after a long week, and I’m feeling a bit giddy, but as I was scrolling through the front page I was imagining what it would look like if the titles of the posts were mashed together (with some creative punctuation).
What he wants to say: Who will feel shut out As suspicion mounts? This monster. (Definition of How Trump responds.) Beware rank democracy: Erratic even by his standards.
Learn to stop worrying; If Donald got fired, The fly won.
Letter to the swamp creatures: Mister Dex Still flying By helicopter at sunset. Sir, he did this, and he did that. “This tyrant bitch”? Insult us more! Don Junior thinks Trump is acting crazy; Any specious argument or catechism will do.
Have y’all seen this? Jane Clare Jones has gathered a coven and launched a new magazine for feminists. A physical, material one! To reflect the physical, material reality of womanhood!
Jones has said part of the inspiration for the magazine is to take all this interest and energy and passion that has unified women around the trans issue, and channel it towards a broader, and renewed/refreshed feminist movement. (Apologies, I’m not good at paraphrasing, especially on a Friday night after a glass or two, but I think I’m getting the basic gist of it.)
It looks to be quite interesting (and it promises to be beautiful!), and the yuletide gift-giving season is fast approaching, if that’s your sort of thing, or the sort of thing for a young niece or someone you know…
On a different note, perhaps educational, or possibly not: We have something here apparently called the Art & Technology Task Force, now promoting one of their events on our intranet. I quote:
There is something uniquely subversive about spatial technologies. Though generally developed in patriarchal environments, they can be complex and unpredictable, and so introduce noise into art-making practice. They exceed the idealised singular artistic vision and resist binaries by activating non-human actors in the realisation of works. For this reason, many practitioners avoid them. Yet this contingent, fundamentally relational process, can be the very reason to embrace them. In this talk, Angela will foreground the appeal of spatial sound for her practice and introduce her idea that spatial practices can be deeply ethical, yet ambiguous and fluid. As her work often centres around non-human ontologies, a systems-based approach – responsive and ecological – is all the more appropriate. From a position of intersectional feminism, she will discuss the potential these practices have for degendering the essentialist binaries through which many of these spatial technologies have themselves been developed. How can degendering leak into other apparently binary oppositions, to create a process which is inter-subjective and still in some way representative of the voice of the artist?
I don’t understand a word of it, but the buzzword density seems a bit on the high side. Or shall we say, over the top?
Wow. It does sort of tell a coherent story – I can follow the train of thought – but the story seems to be utter bullshit. I’d love to know what “resist binaries by activating non-human actors in the realisation of works” is supposed to mean. What kind of non-human actors? Like, raccoons, or clocks, or ice cream, or what?
“After weeks of rehearsals and steady preparation to open our production of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, we discovered a great number of views and opinions expressed by and endorsed on the playwright’s personal Facebook page that, after intense investigation and research, we believe to be transphobic.
Intense investigation of personal statements in personal space, comments having nothing to do with the play. No evidence presented. Combing through minutiae, found guilty of wrongthink, never allowed to do anything ever again.
Just finishing Robert Reich’s The Common Good. His take on the current malignancy in American political life takes a longer view that encompasses decades and looks at key shifts in areas of government, and business, and the interactions and relationships between the two. While Trump plays a part in this book, Reich makes it clear that the setting of the stage for his rise took many years, not just the most recent election cycle.
I’d seen some videos and twitter posts by him and was intrigued. A quick, but incisive read, straightforward and heartfelt. A valuable contribution that desrves amplification and consideration. Recommended.
I see that the American Humanist Association (AHA) is filing an amicus brief on behalf of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in a free speech case. They discuss their rationale here, explaining well why they are sometimes on the same side although usually on the opposite side of issues.
Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has received flak for being on the same side of issues as ADF, including filing amicus briefs in their support. Certainly the arguments for and against such partnerships are sound and worth considering. I suspect the AHA will receive some similar flak. However, I don’t think the flak against the AHA will amount to much; they won’t be declared traitors to their cause, their opponents (that is, people who reject Humanism) will not use this amicus brief as indication of corruption or hypocrisy or evil inherent in Humanism.
The AHA is unlikely to support the ADF in cases related to the issues of interest to WoLF: pushing back against gender ideology. The AHA is not going to support the free speech of gender critical feminists, or those who support their cause, people like JK Rowling or Maya Forstater or Meghan Murphy. Neither will the ACLU or SPLC support free speech in these cases, their stated principles be damned.
I’ve just seen this on Crip Dyke’s blog over at FTB, and thought I’d pop it up here:
FtB generally and Pharyngula in particular had a longtime commenter nymmed What A Maroon. (Miss you! Haven’t seen you! Hope you’re well!)
Doesn’t CD know that you’re with the enemy these days, WaM? There’s only three comments on the post as of now, none of which mention that you’re a regular here* but I’m sure that it won’t be long before before the first Ummm, you do know that WaM is at TERF central now?.
*although one does suggest that your ‘nym has possible racist origins!
This book review delights me. I may have to buy the book. I am, admittedly, a sucker for stories of libertarians having sudden encounters with reality. The addition of bears to the mix is just *chef’s kiss*
Short version: a bunch of libertarian dudebros meet up online and decide to move to the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, and turn it into the Galt’s Gulch of their dreams. It…. doesn’t go well, in large part because of the emerging problem of black bears that aren’t afraid of humans. The bear problem may or may not have been caused by the dudebros, but it was certainly not the kind of problem that their philosophy of FREEDUM was equipped to handle….
1. I have long tended to keep quiet about trans issues, because (a) I’m not in any of the affected groups; and (b) I’m not entirely comfortable with either side of the issue, though I do find this site to be more open to dissent in general.
2. re my ‘nym, I chose it when I first started commenting on WEIT, in honor of my alma mater and Coyne’s employer, the University of Chicago, whose nickname is the Maroons. The law school there used to show classic black and white movies on the weekend, and they’d always have a short before the main feature. Often that short would be a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and the crowd would crack up whenever Bugs commented “What a maroon!” When I migrated to Pharyngula, I kept the name in the off chance someone would remember me, and same here.
By the way, I found two etymologies for “maroon”. The first is for the color, and it derives from a French word for “chestnut”, marron. That’s the sense that gave UC its nickname.
The second is for the sense “abandoned”, and it seems to derive from the old Spanish word cimarron, “wild, fugitive”, which itself comes from the word cimarra, “thicket”, and seems to be related to cima, “summit”. Evidently runaway enslaved people in Cuba were referred to as negros cimarrones; this was borrowed into French and at some point was shortened to marron. I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the first etymon influenced the second, either in French or in English–it could be folk etymology, for example, with people assuming that the marron element referred to the color of the fugitives’ skin.
It was in this latter sense that escaped slaves in the Americas became known as “Maroons”. I have no idea if that influenced Bugs’s use of the word, but as someone pointed out on CD’s blog, Bugs was known for mangling words.
I know I’m not the only Tom Lehrer fan here, so I thought I’d mention that Tom has taken the unusual step of placing most of his material (to which he owns the rights) into the public domain.
See here for an explanation, and links to lyrics and sheet music. The site will be taken down in December 2024.
My wife stumbled across this video on youtube: Our Bodies Back. Poetry set to dance, or is it dance set to poetry? Whichever way you see it, it’s powerful stuff. I recommend it. And so does my wife, and her endorsement counts.
Afterwards, you can watch the making of … for a bit of background.
“Last week a Dutch security researcher succeeded in logging into the Twitter account of the American President Donald Trump. Trump, an active Twitterer with 87 million followers, had an extremely weak and easy to guess password and had according to the researcher, not applied two-step verification.”
What a wasted opportunity. Imagine the fun one could have had with access to his twitter, firing off the most ridiculous things possible before changing the password to lock him out.
I’d start with ‘I can’t believe that so many Americans are Stupid enough to vote for Me again. You gotta love Idiots’, then follow it up immediately with ‘Oops!!! That was supposed to be a private text to Mitch. And I was only Joking anyway. Obama thinks my Great American Fans are stupid’
I wonder how long it would take for twitter to lock the account?.
Hm, there’s a really weird thing going on over at Pharyngula. PZ has a post up about sex. Sexed anatomy, sex as a reproductive role, sexual dimorphism… I thought these things didn’t exist? Did they get switched off and now they’re back on or something? It’s so *confusing* the way these concepts either exist or don’t exist!
*checks again*
Ohhkay it’s about spider reproduction, not human. So I guess it is one of those quantum superposition thingamies, where a thing both exists and doesn’t exist at the same time, and we can only discern if sex is understandable and real after first resolving the species being discussed. It exists for all species, but vanishes when talking about humans. Gosh, biology must be complicated.
I kid you not. The husband is to make sure that his wife votes just like he does, although he “should not be abusive or a jerk about this authority”. She just has to submit, see? So no problem, then. Funny how that works.
No twitter or facebook is allowed in our household (by mutual consent, mind you). My wife had first found a mention of this guy in the Daily Kos, then searched the net and found him. So I guess word got around.
I’ve ranted here before about my surprise at all the people who wanted to give serial fabulists like Stephen Glass and Jonah Lehner a “second chance” in journalism or law or other professions where trust is pretty important.
The Atlantic just tried giving a fraudulent journalist a second chance, and … it didn’t go so well.
Synopsis: Ruth Shalit was a writer for The New Republic (what was it about that place?) during the 90s, who was forced out of journalism after a series of scandals involving plagiarism and fabricated quotes and assertions. Over the last couple of years, she’s poked her head back into journalism, mostly via celebrity interviews, under the name “Ruth S. Barrett.”
The Atlantic commissioned her to write a long piece on the world of “prestige sports” — upper class (mostly white) people who spend crazy amounts of time and effort to make their kids good at sports like squash, fencing, etc. Sports that most people don’t even have access to, but that often have scholarship programs at prestigious universities.
It sounded like an interesting story, about a subject that intrigues me. I hadn’t read it yet, but meant to, after hearing it discussed on a podcast. (The Atlantic has officially retracted it, but for transparency has kept a copy online — there’s a link in the WaPo article I linked above.) But after some other journalists started asking questions, it turned out to have some problems. It claimed that a school had a sports program that it in fact did not. It referred to backyard hockey rinks as “Olympic sized” when they were no such thing. It exaggerated the scope of injuries suffered by these teenage aspirants. One pseudonymous mother was “given” a son she did not have, purportedly to help protect her anonymity. The mother initially lied about the son to the Atlantic’s factcheckers, and when challenged admitted that it was a lie and said that Ruth Shalit Barrett told her to lie to the factcheckers. RSB initially denied doing so, but then backed down. (There were also some problems that any editor should have fixed immediately — there’s a casual reference to these Connecticut neighborhoods being as sports-obsessed as Compton. Like RSB knows fuck all about what parents in Compton are obsessed with. It’s a cheap stereotype for which no support is offered.)
Anyway, the moral for me is: once a fraudster, always a fraudster. At least when it comes to this kind of lazy, gratuitous fraud. Sure, “writers” like RSB can get a second chance in life — but I’m not sure they should get it in non-fiction writing. There are literally thousands of other jobs by which she could support herself. The Atlantic should have known better.
Correction/amendment to the above: it’s not so much whether these prestigious schools offer “scholarships” to athletes in obscure sports (the Ivies don’t), it’s that they offer admission priority. Parents rich enough to afford world class coaching can probably pay the tuition anyway, it’s getting the kid in that is the issue.
I’m very sad to learn that an article I would have loved to read is largely a fabrication. Damn.
I fenced at a prestigious university (albeit one that does not offer any sort of admission boost or scholarship for athletes of any sport). Fencing in NYC (where I grew up) is a big thing, and much more accessible to people of modest means than fencing in most other places. It is nonetheless an expensive sport for a school to provide. I do find it quite interesting to read how these “prestige sports”, sports that are mostly taken up by upper class (mostly white) people, figure in the college sports world. It isn’t something I thought about as a young person, but later information puts the experiences of my youth in a different light.
So, Screechy, if you have any favorite articles or books you like to reference on the topic, I’m all ears, er, eyes.
I don’t, really. I was intrigued by the article because it’s a subject I don’t know a lot about, but one that has piqued my interest recently.
As you probably recall, after the “varsity blues” scandal, there was a lot of discussion about college admissions, and quite a few people argued that it was a problem (not a crime, mind you, but a problem worth discussing) that elite universities were giving admission “boosts” even to actual accomplished athletes in these sports, because they often operate as back-door preferences for the white and wealthy. Or at least, that it’s something missing from discussions about affirmative action.
So I would have liked (and would still like) to read a deeper dive into that subject.
On a related note, I read an article recently about colleges dropping varsity sports due to the pandemic. I have long been aware of schools dropping “niche” sports, often specifically men’s “niche” sports, in order to cut their athletic budgets, comply with Title IX equitable funding requirements, and still manage to pay for the monstrosity that is (American) football, usually a huge portion of the budget. I resented the loss of teams in sports I thought were interesting, things like fencing and men’s gymnastics. But this article was talking about something different: not dropping the sports, but “demoting” them from varsity (NCAA, perhaps high-status division) to club. As club sports, they don’t participate in any of the NCAA events, and they are not beholden to NCAA rules. They still have intercollegiate competition, but much lower caliber, much lower pressure, and usually a lot less money involved.
I thought this was brilliant. It returned those sports to being what most student activities are: extracurricular activities. The priority of being a student is returned. I hope the trend spreads.
Should a university’s admissions department take into account an applicant’s extracurricular achievements? Should they give a “boost” to the applicant who has demonstrated ability as a painter, dancer, or concert violinist — even if the university does not offer degrees in fine art or dance or music? What about student government, or debate team, or the chess club? If yes to any of those, why is sports different?
Right now, my answers are “yes, but not very much,” x 3, and “sports should get the same weight, but I have a suspicion that right now they get too much weight.”
But I’m also very tempted by the argument that NONE of that stuff should matter. I’ve long been a cynic about student clubs and other activities that often serve as resume builders. I was a part of one student organization whose entire raison d’etre was “there’s money in the student council budget for us, so let’s form a club and get it.” We held meetings at which the main order of business was deciding when and where to hold our next meeting. Of course, that’s hardly universally true — I don’t doubt that many people worked really hard on student council or the yearbook committee or whatever. But other students worked really hard at their part-time job, or at home taking care of younger siblings, and I don’t know if you can put those on college applications. Joining clubs and such has a whiff of privilege about it, and I don’t know that it tells you anything about someone’s character or well-roundedness or whatever it’s supposed to show.
The issue isn’t correctly framed as giving a boost to people with demonstrated skill, because, you know, we like people who put in time and effort and amass achievements. It’s more like, we have a team in a sport, and we need good players, and even if we can’t offer you a scholarship we’d still like to grease the skids a bit to help you get in if you’ll promise to play on our team.
I think the former case is unlikely to be a problem. The latter case is more concerning.
Well, let me amend that. I think you make a good point about any sort of club or outside activity having a whiff of privilege about it. So I don’t know either. But I do think the primary issue in question about athletes is mostly specific to those who might contribute to the success of the school on the field.
I guess it’s a sign of how unimportant the “skeptical movement” has become to me that I didn’t even notice the news that James Randi died on October 20.
(There was a NY Times obit, so I’m not saying it wasn’t reported, just that I wasn’t paying attention.)
At Slate, Rebecca Watson has a piece up about the good and bad of the man — celebrating his efforts, and lamenting his part in the Deep Rifts.
I hope you can also appreciate this. In the forearms there is one very small muscle that contracts only when lifting the pinky, otherwise it is invisible. Michelangelo's Moses is lifting the pinky, therefore that tiny muscle is contracted. pic.twitter.com/ewJwX5nkL5— (@vikare06) November 11, 2020
The court decision means the mother can prevent her daughter from having her body mutilated through removal of perfectly healthy body parts and through unnecessary other medical treatments, until the daughter is old enough to make such decisions legally for herself. But of course this prevention of harm is being called bigotry.
The book is Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage. The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Even Amazon will not take paid adverts for it, although they’re still selling it, but Target have withdrawn it from sale after being alerted to the book’s ‘transphobia’.
A supercut of Trump claiming he knows more about various things than anybody. It’s really pretty remarkable when you see these statements all put together like this.
Of course you haven’t been canceled! No you added an extra letter to your name the other day, that’s why that one got held up. Are there more? Sorry about the auto-complete, that’s tiresome.
It appears to be aimed primarily at Amazon. Amazon had already pulled ads for the book, and they have dropped books in response to public pressure before.
Glenn Greenwald talks about Chase Strangio and the censorious turn at the ACLU. There is apparently turmoil within the ACLU over this issue. The proximate inspiration for this piece is Strangio’s call for suppression of the Shrier book.
I like the gist of what he says, the defense of free speech, the need for argument and evidence rather than shutting down the opposition, the rejection of the idea that words are “literal violence”. It is clear, though, that Greenwald has little sympathy for the content of Shrier’s book, only for the right for people to read it and make up their own minds. I note, too, that the two examples he chose to illustrate his commitment to stand against censorship were both to the detriment of women: criminalizing catcalls, and making it easier to take action against sexual assaults.
The most fascinating parts of the piece I think are about the inner turmoil at the ACLU, including about Strangio. Greenwald was working on an article on this topic, but abandoned it due to other breaking developments.
I see that a trans-identified male prisoner is suing the Georgia Department of Corrections for failing to protect him from sexual assault in the male prison where he was housed, and for refusing to provide hormone treatments. Various “woke” organizations, including SPLC, are making a big deal of this story.
It is of course terrible that people are sexually assaulted in prison. Men assaulting men in a men’s prison is seen as so commonplace that people joke about it and assume it is guaranteed. This is another such case of men assaulting men. Given the crappy statistics promoted by the trans lobby, I’ll just assume trans-identified men are as likely as other men to experience sexual assault, until I see otherwise.
I don’t see any reason that medically unnecessary treatments should be continued, but that’s a separate issue.
I have not noticed anything in the past from SPLC decrying the rapes of men in prison. Now that a man says he’s a woman, suddenly it’s big news.
I also have not seen anything regarding rapes of women in women’s prison by men who are housed there. There are quite a few documented cases, but because the men claim to be women, and because the victims are women, it’s not news, apparently.
I took an evangelical vegan off script. He started his script off with the idea that if something isn’t necessary for human health, then it’s optional. Essentially, he wanted to lead me to the conclusion that something that can be done without should be done without if it involves harm to sentient creatures. I got him to agree to a chain of logic that showed that electricity in general and the Internet in particular meet both criteria. He should therefore stop using the Internet at the very least.
I mention this because getting ideologues, whether of diet or gender or religion, can result in some pretty surprising results. While scrabbling for a way to resolve his sudden cognitive dissonance, this one said something you wouldn’t expect to hear from a strident vegan:
The advancement of Humanity supersedes a non human animals life.
This is because without human advancement, humans would be reset to the period without electricity.
This obviously puts humans in incredible danger.
Humans come before non human animals.
Do you agree that humans are more important that non humans animals?
NiV @358, I think you just led him into completely refuting not only his own argument, but the underpinning belief structure. Suggests a lack of intellectual rigor and commitment on his part.
I’ve often discomforted people in a range of arguments that have strayed into this ‘human first’ territory. I don’t agree that humans (as a species) are more important than other animals (or even plants). It follows therefore, that I don’t believe that humans automatically come before non-human animals or even plants (let’s just call them collectively the ecosystem). All civilizational activity (even large scale species activity) comes at a cost to something else. Almost certainly many something elses. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a civilization, or that we should run rough should over the ecosystem to place ourselves first. It means we should seek a balance that is healthy and sustainable. In my mind that is actually more likely to preserve humanity than always placing ourselves first.
The funny thing was that I didn’t even take a position in the conversation. He just assumed my view vis-a-vis carnivorous tendencies and ran with that.
All civilizational activity (even large scale species activity) comes at a cost to something else. Almost certainly many something elses.
I’d go further than that and say that all activity, at the civilization level or not, comes at a cost. Managing those costs is something that we do on every level from the personal to the global. The capacity to make personal decisions regarding the costs one is willing (or not) to bear we call autonomy; on larger scales, government. Life, ethics, and politics are all fundamentally agent-relative, context-dependent optimization problems. It is both tragic and beautiful that the solutions to those problems are intractably hard, even at those rare times when we can agree on what the problems are in the first place.
NiV @ 360, I agree with everything you’ve said I think. I focused on larger scale activity because in terms of effect or damage to ecosystems, one or a very small number of individual animals or plants tends to have very minor effects. it’s when you get hordes, or machines, or hordes with machines that irreparable damage occurs.
Laverne Cox “triggered” but “OK” after “transphobic” attack. “If you’re trans, you’re going to experience stuff like this.” What happened? A man asked if LC was a guy or a girl. Rude, sure, but something that happens to little kids all the time without it being “transphobic”. I’m sure it happens to any gender-non-conforming person occasionally. Tomboys, butch lesbians, drag queens, cross-dressers. Everything to do with non-conforming, nothing to do with trans per se. Except, of course, that someone like LC is going to be upset about any suggestion that their actual sex was perceived, that they aren’t obviously the sex they are imitating.
Interesting if true: Giuliani has reportedly had discussions with Trump regarding being given a pre-emptive pardon, although it isn’t known what crimes Rudy thinks he may be collared for. Best guess seems to be it’s about his Ukraine business dealings that figured in Trump’s impeachment.
So, Ellen Page (star of the movie Juno) has “come out” as a “non-binary trans” person, meaning she’s male but she’s neither male nor female, or something like that. (I meant every last one of those scare quotes.) And, as expected, a lot of the “woke” people I know are all in a tither about “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, “I’m cis so I don’t really know the trans experience, but I’m learning”, all bowing and scraping and trying to say all the right things. It would be amusing if it weren’t so awful. Page up to this point had said she is a lesbian, but now is, what, a straight “man”, albeit “non-binary”? Heteronormativity wins again.
Doesn’t being a “non-binary trans” person disqualify Page from every possible future acting role? Well, I guess E. Page can still play E. Page in E. Page’s autobiography.
The timing of this announcement seems to be designed to distract from Keira Bell’s victory in court which has had an immediate effect on ‘gender-related’ medical treatment of minors.
In the comments to a post on FTB about Page comes this doozy (bold mine):
Tabby Lavalamp says
December 2, 2020 at 2:25 pm
TERFs have been showing their whole selves a lot more lately. Not only have they been cozying up with conservative Christians, as it turns out if you base a big chunk of your identity on hating a group of people, it’s easier to hate other groups so of course there has been stuff coming out where they are pretty much blaming the Jews for trans people.
That ‘pretty much’ is doing a lot of work in there. What it says is Look, I know this is bullshit, but if you squint your eyes, tilt your head and view it from a couple of miles away, well then it could, almost, just about seem like people are doing that. Just don’t look too closely, mind, because the nearer you get the less honest the claim looks.
What utter, absolute dishonesty!
Another one made me chuckle, though.
Intransitive says
December 2, 2020 at 4:48 pm
It’s not the only example of TERF toxicity this week. Cosmetics manufacturer Lush was caught donating to a TERF group while pretending to be “inclusive” in its advertising.
‘Caught’ donating, ffs. Visions of crack teams of undercover trans operatives embedded in companies, waiting for them to do something naughty then breaking cover to catch them in the act. Medals all round, move on to next mission.
This comic strip brought to mind other trials where the judge was only too happy to force witnesses and others to abandon standard vocabulary in talking about parties involved in the trial.
Is it a garden? Or is it just a nature patch?
Oh has to be a garden, surely. Part of the churchyard? I don’t know, I just did an image search for tulips, because I keep stopping to stare at them on neighborhood walks right now, along with bluebells. In fact maybe I should have done a search for the pair.
It is probably the Hortus Bulborum in Limmen, the Netherlands. The grounds just behind the dunes are great for growing tulips. Farther to the south is De Keukenhof (google this), of course closed this year. In this area there are massive fields of blooming tulips, the product is the bulb, not the flower.it is a great tourist attraction.
Oh, thank you! Funny thing: just yesterday I saw a Facebook post by De Keukenhof saying they’re closed but we can take virtual tours so I took one and stashed the link to the collection for future tours.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqvitLp1vxIcb5QrcUgEA7w
I think this is the one I watched yesterday – I turned the sound off because I’d rather just look without the perky music.
https://youtu.be/JfAOhZwlees
I haven’t been out in a while (crazy-busy at work) but I’m going to go to bed early tonight, get up early tomorrow, and go to the woods to see if I can find any bluebells. Not sure if they’re done for the year yet.
Here they’re just getting started, but here is way up north.
I wish I could go to the woods. One thing about moving to Nebraska is how little anything is left here. In Oklahoma we had parks that were natural systems; we had protected land, even close to and inside Oklahoma City. In Texas, same thing. Right there in the greater DFW metro area, I could find what resembled wilderness.
Here all I will see when I go out is…corn fields. Gray factories turning food into fuel. More corn fields. An occasional bean field scattered in amongst.
To do anything like that, I have to drive at least an hour. Which I may have to do, since I know some places no one else ever goes. If I take sandwiches, I won’t even have to stop for lunch and risk contact. I am going crazy for anything other than my neighbor’s not yet bloomed peonies.
Thanks for the tulips. I used to hate tulips; thought they were a boring and ugly flower. I changed my opinion as I grew older.
Iknklast, if you are anywhere near the Platte River you have a chance at crane peeping. Long skeins of sandhill cranes in the sky and the grey in the corn fields is a frightening number of birds gleaning. Getting to see them near the river itself is harder to arrange and likely more so this year as social distancing is difficult packed in a blind.
Same here about tulips – I didn’t hate them but thought they were meh. I don’t know if people around here have upped their game or if I’ve just changed my tastes – maybe it’s some of each – but I’m seeing a lot of very not-meh tulips this year. My favorite is that different shades of orange one.
A follow up, it looks like Captain Crozier may get back his command of the USS Roosevelt.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/politics/navy-recommend-reinstating-roosevelt-commander/index.html
I hope so, it would be nice to see him vindicated.
(sorry if too off topic)
I saw that. I hope it happens.
No such thing as off topic in the Miscellany Room, that’s what it’s for!
No such thing, I like it!
OK, here’s a bit of anecdotal local news. I have a neighbor who I talked to while out for a walk last week, and she was all excited when she heard that nail and hair salons, etc. were opening here on the 24th. I talked to her again yesterday, and she was disappointed to find out, when she called around and tried to make several appointments, that not even one of the salon owners would be opening for “at least another week.” So despite our flaky Governor, some of us here in the good State of Georgia are trying to do the right thing.
NinetyEight, I do live sort of near the Platte, and have gone crane watching. We were going to go again this year, until COVID. But it is still a 45 minute drive to get to the Platte from here. My town has a couple of mowed parks, a reservoir that is pretty meh, and…well, that’s about it. I do think I’m going to head down to Red Cloud sometime soon and lie on my back in the Willa Cather prairie looking up at the clouds. It’s been too chilly, but it’s now warming up, and should be able. I usually get down there at least a few times a year, and I’ve never seen anyone there but cows. The cows haven’t been there for a couple of years. Social distancing is easy if you know where to go.
Overheard this afternoon from a man talking to someone outside the local shop.
“There’s something not right about all this virus bullshit. I mean, I know a lot of people and I don’t know anyone who’s got it. I don’t even know anyone who’s been tested for it.”
My brain did a double-take all of its own.
I moved to where I’m living now in late January. There is not a day goes by that I don’t wake up and thank God-equivalent that I got here just in time; I could literally not be in a better place to ride this out. Among its many advantages, there are five huge park areas (one the grounds of a country estate–where I’m going this morning) within about a 20 minute walk–I’ve now been to each of them, but haven’t explored any of them thoroughly.
A friend of mine lives relatively nearby (a taxi ride away), and has been self-isolating for months as he has asthma–but even if he could go out I don’t think there’s anywhere near him that it would be worth walking to–no non-convenience grocery shops, no wild areas, I think one little park. Doesn’t seem to bother him, but I’d have been miserable.
I’m still not a huge fan of tulips–I find them big and awkward to put in vases, and they still look and feel very plasticky to me. And they don’t last very long in captivity–their big plasticky petals start to fall very quickly.
Until recently I didn’t actually know anyone who’d had it, but found out a few days ago that a friend’s husband has been sick in bed for more than three weeks–she says it’s been scary, and she couldn’t get any hospital treatment for him, but she thinks he’s improving now. She herself must have had it, but she said she barely noticed. They’re in London–I’d be amazed if you could be in London and not get it, frankly. I’m hoping this has convinced them to actually implement their fantasy of moving out to where I am.
Excellent opinion piece by Rebecca Traister discussing the bind faced by whoever the Democratic Party chooses as a VP nominee in light of Biden’s nomination for president. I think it makes excellent points that will likely play into the campaign, the VP choice, and the administration, whichever way the election goes. The fear of a backlash against women or against feminists in the event of a Biden loss is an extremely valid concern I hadn’t considered.
https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/the-biden-trap-woman-vice-president.html
An interesting piece about how “purity” is counterproductive to feminism. The writer, Lydia Lambfruit, takes to heart (or tries to) Helen Lewis’s point from Difficult Women that one doesn’t have to like a woman to value her. In the author’s case, the woman in question is Jameela Jamil.
https://lydialambfruit.com/blog/post/319/gender-critical-or-jameela-critical/
I read that yesterday; much food for thought.
Tulips are grand. Much nicer than daylilies.
Aaaaand link: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/05/01/remove-hateful-material-from-mandatory-teaching-says-su-council/?fbclid=IwAR3ymJt89ohNj905Ot26kx84gRxK7v91KuQtc8kIvjpupQIs4x6C01X34YQ
So important, women are. Not even a whole category. Instead, a category*, whatever the fuck that means.
I just this second opened that. It gets spooky around here sometimes!
The SPLC program Teaching Tolerance posted this article about “curriculum violence”:
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2020/ending-curriculum-violence
The author attempts to justify using the term “violence”. These curriculum characteristics are abusive, and violence is abusive, therefore these characteristics are violence, something like that. It reminded me of some other claims that certain verbal actions are “literal violence”; possibly SPLC has made some of those claims.
Oy.
I found it unreadable. I tried but…it just seems like empty verbiage, copious empty verbiage. I gave up.
Time for a positive story about humanity!
This article discusses a new book about the true story of six teenage boys who were shipwrecked on a deserted island in the Pacific. They did not turn all Lord of the Flies.
This reminds me of all the sociological research that shows that generally speaking, people don’t turn into violent, panicked mobs in a crisis. Hollywood has worked hard to promote the notion that the second the lights go out or the structures of society weaken in any way, the looting and rioting will begin, because that’s what makes for dramatic stories. But it ain’t usually so.
Reality shows like Survivor actually have to work hard to crank up the interpersonal drama, by implementing rules that create conflict (voting people off, deciding who does and doesn’t get to share a reward, etc.), and otherwise stirring things up (alcohol helps).
I saw that! Most interesting.
It’s always bothered me that for some reason people interpret Lord of the Flies as some commentary on human nature, when it’s actually about the nature of one specific subset of humans–English public school boys. Rebecca Solnit wrote about her research on how people really behave in disasters: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/
This popped up in my Facebook memories from two years ago. No one even tried to guess who it was referring to. Any guesses here?
I’ll guess Hitler.
Sounds a bit like Teddy Roosevelt.
Ah, Google tells me who it is. Not Teddy R.
Sackbut,
Right country, wrong war.
They were all quite similar. It’s a type with a label in various editions of the DSM, for whatever that’s worth.
Yeah, but I don’t think “vacillations of policy” really describes Teddy R (or Hitler, for that matter).
Hitler was vacillating wildly at the end. I think that’s one reason the generals plotted.
OK, fair point.
[…] We had a little conversation about that exact parallel a couple of days ago at the Miscellany Room, via What a Maroon: […]
So, apparently I’m an evil, amoral, uncaring person because I said I’m ambivalent about Amazon. The backstory: I live in the future Amazonia. There was a report in our local online news site about Amazon ordering a bunch of meals from a popular local gay bar to deliver to a local hospital. I posted that on a local Facebook group page with the following comment: “I always feel ambivalent about Amazon, but this is a nice gesture by the new kid in town.”
After some back and forth with one poster who listed all the evil things Amazon has done (and yes, Amazon does a lot of evil things!), I got this: “if you have all this knowledge and still choose the side of ambivalence, then what do you stand for at all? What are your morals? What do you care about? Its sad because you should care about humanity, and the environment and all the things outside of yourself, but by choosing ambivalence, you are acknowledging your lack of humanity.”
So, sorry, y’all, I guess you can just fuck off. Apparently I don’t care about you.
Here you go, proof that Trump can speak like an adult….
…..or maybe not.
Either 5 minutes before announcing this new missile somebody took great care to tell him what it was called but Trump wasn’t listening because voices other than his own don’t interest him, or he was told that they didn’t want to announce the name of a new weapon that’s only just at the beginning of development, but he had to say more than ‘missile’. Every loser has missiles, only BigBoy Trump has super duper missiles that are seventeen times better than their loser missiles. He even managed to confuse himself over that bit, too.
All credit to Esper; it must be hard to speak while your tongue is polishing the inside of the bosses anus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/15/coronavirus-us-live-house-vote-stimulus-package-donald-trump-latest-news-updates
What a Maroon:
Ambivalence is not unreasonable. Amazon does a lot of evil things on purpose and even more evil things happen because of it, but it’s more of a symptom than a disease. It does evil things because we allow it to. We don’t make it pay tax or treat its workers fairly. We don’t hold it to reasonable environmental standards. We allow it to monopolise whole industries by being both a publisher and the de facto default distributer (eg the book publishing industry, where it has a huge competitive advantage over other publishers whose books it sells). We allow ourselves, the customers, to become the product. And not a valued product, at that: customers and workers are entirely insignificant and large shareholders are everything. Boycotts and strikes will have no effect. Because we allow it.
We didn’t have to let Amazon become that monster but we did. We don’t have to let it stay that way but we will. I think it’s right to be angry at Amazon and to protest its many evils, but we can hardly do so without accepting a significant part of the blame.
See also: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple…..
The Obama appointed state department inspector general, Steve Linick, began an investigation into Pompeo for suspected abuse of office.
In totally unrelated news, Trump said that he no longer has full confidence in the state department inspector general, Steve Linick, and has fired him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-us-canada-52688658
latsot,
Thanks. Apparently you can’t mention the small good a company does without detailing all of their evil. Which I understand, but this was in a group about neighbors helping neighbors get through covid19, so I didn’t think it was appropriate or necessary. Anyway, you’ve laid out the issue nicely.
Her last lecture started with her scolding me for my apathy; I skimmed through the rest, which included a reference to Hannah Arendt, then pointed out that ambivalence isn’t the same as apathy. Her response: “sure”.
PZ writes on the recent admission from the deathbed of a major anti-abortion campaigner. As I understand it, she was previously the plaintiff in a landmark US court case on the subject, making her conversion to Team Anti-Abortion a major coup. Anyway, she admits that it was for money, and PZ makes a post on it. So far so reasonable… but check out the very first comment from one of the usual suspects. Utter idiocy.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/05/19/whoanorma-mccorvey-confesses-that-it-was-all-an-act/Oh those evil second-wavers.
Yeah, I struggle to get 100% behind the “Amazon is unmitigated evil” position, too. In part because I am skeptical of the lionizing of all the “Mom and Pop” businesses that Amazon (and Walmart, etc.) supposedly put out of business.
Some “Mom and Pop” businesses really suck. Some provide terrible customer service, don’t know their product and/or mislead their customers, are rude, and/or don’t take returns. Some of them exploit and mistreat their workers every bit as badly as the big companies do, benefitting in part from the fact that many labor laws only affect businesses with more than a certain number of employees, and other tools like class action suits or labor unions are impractical.
Good discussion at Bloggingheads.tv between philosopher Daniel Kaufman and Jesse Singal on trans issues, advocacy, and philosophy.
Jesus christ he is stupid. Another moment captured gloriously:
https://twitter.com/sarahcpr/status/1263602255476985862
I thought this was really neat, not to mention the mosaics are incredible.
Wow!
More crazy, found via this twitter thread
Resisting TERF’s [sic] and Transforming Their Organizations
I’ve just been reading that. Laura Izaguirre is batshit crazy.
Hmmm, replace TERF with TRA and ‘trans community’ with ‘women and girls’ and that [paragraph makes as much, possibly more sense. It would also still be hyperbolic, aggressive and dangerous.
Normally I wouldn’t bother to link to a story about someone “coming out” as an atheist, especially someone I’ve never heard of, but it had to take some courage for the leader of a “Christian” rock band to do so.
Equity in menstruation, I suppose: https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnTory/status/1265972099203678213
Menstruators and people who menstruate, but never women or girls. Gotta dismantle oppressive biology. :rolleyes:
Because memes: Hitler reacts to #genderwoowoo trending.
I came across this poem today on Twitter. Apparently it’s by someone named Rachel Irischild. The earliest reference to it I can find online is from Facebook on August 2018, although I can’t find the original source. Anyways, I thought it was extraordinary and I wanted to share…
oh no! The formatting posted it all weird and double-spaced, that’s frustrating. Not sure why, must be WordPress/HTML being wonky. Sorry about that. Ah, WordPress…
Hmph. I tried to fix it but WP just reverted it back. Drat.
You may have to use the html line-break tag, WP probably interprets any ASCII* CR/LF** character as a paragraph.
* Probably UTF-8 actually
** Carriage Return / Line Feed
This man truly is the most pathetic, insecure man I can recall seeing.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/donald-trump-bunker/index.html
test
Working. One of yours got held but I couldn’t tell why.
Oh wait, the spelling of your name is different. That’ll be why. Edit: the name in your email address, that is.
Ophelia
Thanks. I figured it was my fault.
I have two addresses with variants of my family name and often forget which one I should use to sign in.
More bewildering anti-woman stuff at Pharyngula, this time Rowling-related: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/06/07/true-equality-at-last-white-women-are-as-bad-as-white-men/
Notable perhaps only because of the extraordinary but now familiar elementary logic fail of some of the commentariat. The argument is that since Rowling says that only women menstruate, she’s implying that women who don’t menstruate are not women. CHECKMATE, TERF. They wouldn’t accept this sort of argument in any other setting, but it’s a tour de force in this one. Nobody points this out and it’s safe to say that accusations of TERFitude would happen if anyone did.
Well, so far so Pharyngula. But there’s also this, apparently posted without irony:
I’m not sure I can clap slowly enough to give this comment the appreciation it deserves.
I think my brain just melted from the heat of the disbelief oscillator exceeding its heuristic bounds, toppling over and crushing the irony meter.
#65 latsot
Clap once now, then clap a second time on your deathbed years from now. Assuming you live to become a centenarian.
Posie Parker / Kellie-Jay Keen posted this short response to the Daniel Radcliffe thing. I thought it effective.
Welcome to hypocrisy central: https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2020/06/10/if-sex-is-real-how-come-i-havent-had-any-in-ages/
In which the odious Giliell states that before transphobes can decide who does or doesn’t qualify as women they (the non-trans and allies) need to clearly define their terms.
WOW!
Nice, open scepticism of the existence of sex. It was only a couple of years ago that they freely admitted that sex was a thing that existed, now they have abandoned even a perfunctory ‘sure, sex exists but…’.
Interesting interview between Kim Hill and Caroline Criado Perez on Radio New Zealand this morning. Should be up at the link below shortly.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
I saw an article today about the withering of the Not One More protests. I wonder if the current protests against police brutality will be more effective. Thus far they seem to be. White people have joined black people in the protests. I don’t recall men joining women in Not One More. I see some pleas to remember female victims of police brutality.
The ACLU alerted people about the deaths of two transwomen. I don’t recall the ACLU saying anything about violence against women as a specific problem, or about Not One More. The ACLU, which has defended Nazis and claims to have a commitment to defending speech we hate, has said nothing whatsoever regarding any of the people under fire for daring to speak out against trans ideology. Surely, if they defend Jews against religious discrimination and Nazis against censorship, they could stick to their unscientific trans agenda while defending people who speak against it.
SCOTUS Harris Decision –
I just watched WOLF’s analysis and now I’m even more depressed.
I thought that one good thing about getting an increasingly conservative SCOTUS would help in that case. :(
Gender Heretic has a somewhat more upbeat “it could have been worse” impression. They mention the WoLF analysis.
https://genderheretics.substack.com/p/stephens-v-eeoc-could-have-been-worse
Good article, though I’d say only “slightly less pessimistic”. The comparison to the decisions that led to Citizens United was a bit chilling.
Quiz time. The following is the title of a post by PZ:
Does anyone on FtB think Rowling has a point? No.
IWhy does PZ believe this to be true? Is it because (tick all that apply):
a) Despite the wide range of diverse thoughts and opinions on display at FTB, this is the one topic that the entire network of freethinkers there all freely agree on:
b) Because those FTB bloggers who disagree are keeping their heads down and saying nothing, but since they aren’t actually dissenting then PZ is taking that as tacit agreement with his view:
c) Because PZ is aware of but chooses to ignore the fact that the powers-that-be at FTB have already hounded out those bloggers who dare to voice their own opinions that run contrary to the dogmatic groupthink that has replaced the concept of freethought there, and who refused to be browbeaten into accepting the trans agenda, the acceptance of which is now mandatory for both FTB bloggers and commenters.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/06/15/does-anyone-on-ftb-think-rowling-has-a-point-no/
Didn’t know where to put this but felt it may be of interest: I guess it is the next step if you accept the concept of “deadnaming.”
https://medium.com/an-injustice/should-we-alter-old-photos-to-erase-dysphoria-55ae799ef0ee
“Photo regendering is not only right, but it’s also ethical. It’s portraying the past more accurately and authentically, as we lived it in our heads and imaginations when we were being most authentic with ourselves..”
Fallon Fox. Stunning and brave.
… I can’t. I just can’t. “It’s A in that it’s not-A.”
That’s genius. Now I can re-touch my old photos to reflect my internal realities. Let’s see; when I was 6 I was a zookeeper, a year later a deep-sea diver, then an astronaut followed by soldier, police officer, surgeon; there was a phase when I was an alien being, and anot……bugger it, too much like hard work.
A while back we were discussing how people so often miss the point about Cassandra: that she was cursed to be always right, but never believed. Not surprisingly, though, Alexandra Petri gets it right:
It seems we live in a world where we have to teach children how to deal with rubber bullets fired at them by police.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-do-if-you-get-hit-with-a-rubber-bullet
This does not seem ideal.
Sorry about the length of this rant. In my feeble defense, I didn’t have time to write shorter.
The Gender Wars
People have always noticed that human beings have different innate physical traits. Furthermore, the distribution of these differences is not entirely random. Some of the most obvious (let’s call them “sex differences”) seem to cluster into two sets of traits that tend to go together far more often than expected by chance. One of these sets (let’s call it the set of “male” traits) is clearly more representative of fathers than mothers while the opposite is true of the second set (let’s call it the set of “female” traits). Roughly half the people on the planet have a strong preponderance of traits from the first set, and roughly the other half have a strong preponderance of traits from the second set. But since “Person with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from the set of traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, or vice versa, is a rather awkward and cumbersome thing to say, most of us prefer a more convenient short-hand like “man” or “woman” respectively. As we might expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms, there is going to be some fuzziness around the edges, and not every person ever born is going to fit neatly under any of these labels. Luckily, this is not a problem since they’re just short-hands for sets of physical traits anyway, not cosmic revelations about who you are on the inside.
It remains a fact, however, that societies throughout history and all over the world have tended to put people with a strong preponderance of traits from the second set regardless of what you prefer to call them at a major disadvantage compared to people with a strong preponderance of traits from the first set (once again regardless of what you prefer to call them). The list is practically endless: Being granted the right to vote significantly later than the other sex (if ever), under-representation in position of power and influence, the pay gap, less chance of getting hired in the first place, objectification, getting judged by level of attractiveness or “fuckablility”, locker-room talk, “banter”, slut-shaming, cyber-bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, groping, domestic violence, rape, hyper-skepticism towards claims of rape and abuse, victim-blaming, gaslighting, forced pregnancies, getting jailed for having a miscarriage, forced marriages, child brides, being forced to cover up, not being allowed to leave home without a guardian of the other sex, not being allowed to drive, being denied an education, being considered “impure” and having to isolate during period, female genital mutilation, acid attacks, honor killings, witch-burnings, stoning, getting burned or buried alive along their deceased husbands etc… etc…
This system of oppression has been called the “patriarchy”, and the ideological life-support system upholding the patriarchy has been given various names like “sexism”, “misogyny”, “male chauvinism” etc. The movement working to debunk sexism and abolish the patriarchy has been called “feminism”. An essential part of the feminist struggle has always been combating the sexist stereotypes that portray women as naturally inclined towards everything that tends to please men and otherwise less suited for any role that men prefer to keep for themselves.
There’s a complication, however. There are people – commonly referred to as “Trans” – who insist on being called “woman”, ”female”, “she” etc. despite having a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from our first set, which is exactly what it means to be a “man” / ”male” according to our working definition [1]. There is also a loud and outspoken group of activists – henceforth referred to as Trans Rights Activists (TRAs for short) – who may or may not be Trans themselves standing by and ready to gang up on anyone (especially if biologically female) who fails to treat the claim of these biological males as anything less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In order to make sense, these people obviously have to dispute that being a “man” or “woman” has anything to do with physical traits. On the other hand, they don’t want us to stop using words like “man” and “woman” (as if they referred to something real) altogether [2] (after all, how can one claim to be a “real woman” if there are no real women?).
So while TRAs tend to reject the idea that our physical traits make us “men” and “women”, they pretty much have to insist that something else does, usually something about the person’s inner life, personality traits, way of thinking or feeling etc. Not only are “male” and “female”, “masculine” and “feminine” ways of thinking or feeling said to be a thing, but supposedly the only thing that makes a person “male” or “female”, “man” or “woman” in the first place. Thus referring to somebody as either “man” or “woman” in the lingo of these people is to make a factual claim about what’s going on inside his/her head. Exactly what’s being claimed is never made clear since all we ever get are tautologies (A woman is someone who thinks or feels in whatever way I happen to think or feel) and circular definitions (A woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as someone who identifies as… etc. etc. ad infinitum). In the rare event that any actual specifics are offered, the internal markers of with “womanhood” invariably turn out to be indistinguishable from the sexist stereotypes that feminist have been fighting to abolish.
Calling unrelated things by the same name (in other words, the use of homonyms) is not in itself a problem as long as nobody’s laboring under the delusion that we’re still talking about the same thing. After all, few if any real-world problem are attributable to the fact that flying mammals and clubs for hitting baseballs are both referred to as “bats” in English. Words don’t mean anything in themselves, but get their meanings from us. If somebody wants to apply the word “fish” to what the rest of us call “bird”, and vice versa, they are free to do so. But then it is either disingenuous, or stupid, or both to go on talking as if everybody else were using these words in the same way, pretend we’re still talking about the same thing, and demand to have it both ways (e.g. insisting that “birds” can still fly).
Unfortunately, the TRA use of language is very much of this latter kind. There is a reason why biological males who think or feel a certain way (let’s call them “women₂”) are so obsessed with being called the same as the people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (let’s call them “women₁”): Because they want everyone to accept that they are the same. However, since they don’t in fact have innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, they have to argue that something else makes them the same as women₁, or – more precisely – that something else makes women₁ the same as them, hence the strong insistence on “female” or “feminine” ways of thinking/feeling that women₁ supposedly share with them, thus making them the same “kind of people”.
From such a point of view it quickly becomes obvious that – despite the rhetoric – this is not simply about whether or not Trans women₂ have the right to define “who they are”, but whether or not they have the right to dictate who women₁ are as well (Basically saying: “Women₁ are whatever they have to be to make me one of them”). It is also obvious why the “certain way” that women₂ are supposed to think and feel is never specified. Most women₁ might not appreciate having all kinds of mental traits attributed to them (especially if said traits seem to be entirely derived from sexist stereotypes, pornography and male sexual phantasies). To keep the women₁ from protesting that this doesn’t apply to them at all and walking out in droves, better stick to tautologies and circular definitions and avoid specifics at all costs.
I am sure we are all familiar with Daniel Dennett’s concept of “deepities”, but anyway: A deepity is an ambiguous statement with two possible interpretations. One of these interpretations makes the statement true but trivial, while the other makes it profound but false. There is something similar going on in TRA discourse except that in this case the statement in question is either true but irrelevant or relevant but false depending on the interpretation. Take the following sentences:
• This toilet / sporting event / locker room / shower / domestic abuse shelter etc. is for women₁.
• Misogyny is discrimination of / hostility towards women₁.
• Feminism is a movement fighting the discrimination of women₁.
• Straight men₁ and lesbian women₁ are attracted to women₁.
• Bjarte Foshaug is a man₁.
As written, these sentences are all true (for certain values of “this” in the first example) but also irrelevant to any point that TRAs are trying to make. Substituting women₂/men₂ for women₁/men₁ respectively might make the sentences relevant to their point but also false. In good Orwellian fashion, there is usually a strong element of having it both ways by taking credit for the truth of the first interpretation and the relevancy of the second interpretation at the same time. There’s also a strong element of “word-magic” involved. Much of TRA rhetoric seems to boil down to the idea that you can take whatever’s applicable to X and make it applicable to Y by renaming Y as X (renaming fish as “bird” makes it true that haddocks and halibuts can fly etc.).
Since the existence of biological sex allows us to talk about women₁ as a group in its own right, regardless of what’s going on inside their heads, TRAs are at war with sex as a concept. At best, biological sex is said to be too complicated and messy to allow us to say anything in particular about the sex of individuals. At worst, the validity of biological sex as a category is denied altogether. In their war on biology TRAs have come up with an entire parallel vocabulary (I call it “Genderspeak”) in which every word pertaining to biological sex has a homonym (“man₂”, “girl₂”, “misogyny₂”, “feminism₂”, “lesbian₂” etc.) redefined in terms of “gender identity” or just “gender”. It has, of course, become quite common to use “gender” as a synonym for “sex” [3] (probably because the latter word has other denotations that are irrelevant in this context). It is important to note that this is not what TRAs mean by “gender”. Instead, “gender” supposedly denotes a perfectly real and vitally important [4] difference between sets of distinct and identifiable ways of thinking and feeling best left unspecified.
Let’s pause for a minute and notice the double standard: If biological sex is messy and not everybody falls neatly into either the “biological male₁” or “biological female₁” category (once again, as you’d expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms), that pretty much invalidates biological sex as a category. But if the supposed “gender” differences they’re talking about are so vacuous and ill-defined that most TRAs don’t even try to come up with a non-circular definition, that apparently makes them more firmly established than the laws of thermodynamics. If defining “man” and “woman” in terms of biological differences doesn’t meet their standards of accuracy and precision (despite describing the vast majority of people on the planet well enough to be quite useful), then you definitely wouldn’t expect any the circular non-definitions in terms of thoughts and feelings to meet those very same standards. Even if there were no basis for talking about biological sexes as distinct and identifiable categories, it still wouldn’t imply that being a “man” or being a “woman” is about something other than physical traits. What it would imply is that there’s no basis for talking about “men” and “women” either. If biological sexes are not a valid concept, then neither are “men” and “women”. If physical traits don’t make us “men” and “women”, then nothing does.
According to gender ideology, however, most people’s way of thinking or feeling really do make them either men₂ or women₂, thus establishing a “gender binary” that really does apply to the great majority of people on this planet. Besides man₂ and woman₂ there’s a vast number – or so we’re told – of other “non-binary” genders that only apply to a minority of people on the Trans spectrum. Everyone else is considered, by default, to be “Cis” (the binary opposite of “Trans”). It is important to note that “Cis woman” does not mean the same as “woman₁”. Genderspeak doesn’t have a name for women₁. “Trans women” and “Cis women” are both women₂ since thinking or feeling in a “female” or “feminine” manner (whatever that’s supposed to mean?) is the only thing that makes somebody a “woman” of any kind in the first place. Thus even the “Cis” label rests on an implicit claim about what’s going on inside other people heads. It’s just that the “Cis” people (allegedly) see themselves as the gender that society at large consider them to be while the “Trans” people do not. Suffice it to say that by those criteria I’m neither “Cis” nor a “man₂”.
Not only are TRAs themselves using every word in the Genderspeak sense, but hardly anything they have to say makes sense without presupposing (perhaps the most disingenuous part) that everybody else is doing so as well. For example, when I have to fill out one of these forms that require us to tick off a box labeled “M” or “F”, I tick the “M” box. My passport also has the same “M” in it. When I have to take a leak, I go to the “Men’s Room” etc. All of this doesn’t involve any act of “identifying as a man” on my part. It’s simply is the case that I have physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, which is all it means to be a man₁. Yet to TRAs that “M” is taken as an admission that I do indeed embrace the whole ideological framework of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking and feeling and personally subscribe to the former. In other words, that I’m a (Cis) man₂ as opposed to a man₁. It’s as if you were saying something about flying mammals (bats₁) and I started accusing you of talking about clubs for hitting baseballs (bats₂), claiming baseball bats can fly etc.
On the same note, Gender-critical feminists (labeled by TRAs as “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” – “TERFs” for short – and portrayed as a hate-group on par with violent white supremacists and neo-Nazis) don’t accept “gender” (in its Genderspeak definition) as a valid concept, and since there is no such thing as “gender” there can be no “gender binary”. Indeed, the closest we might get to an accurate representation of the gender-critical position in Genderspeak would be to say that everybody is “non-binary”, or “gender non-conforming ” [5], or even “agender”. As already mentioned, TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that there are distinct and identifiable “male” and “female” ways of thinking and feeling, thus establishing a “gender-binary” that really does apply to everyone except a minority on the Trans spectrum. Yet the gender critical feminists, who reject this whole framework, are the ones accused of “enforcing the gender binary”, “denying the existence on non-binary identities” etc.
Likewise TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that some perfectly real and vitally important mental differences make certain people “female” to the very core of their being, regardless of any physical traits, thus justifying dividing people into separate groups requiring separate vocabularies, separate dress-codes, separate toilets, separate sporting events etc. Yet gender critical feminists, who take the position that being “female” doesn’t say anything about you other than the most superficial and irrelevant physical facts, are the ones accused of “gender essentialism”.
Even the frequently repeated trope about gender being (arbitrarily) “assigned at birth” presupposes that everybody else is using words in the Genderspeak sense: When the nurse tells the expectant parents “It’s a boy”, I for one (and I strongly suspect most people) simply take it to be a mundane empirical observation regarding the child’s biological sex (meaning “It’s a boy₁”, not “It’s a boy₂”). “Gender” in the Genderspeak sense doesn’t enter into it all. According to the official TRA narrative, however, the nurse is pulling a factual claim about the child’s (future) inner life out of his/her ass and everybody else just goes along forever after. In the case of Trans people the nurse gets it wrong, and every evil ever to befall a Trans person goes back to this fatal mistake.
It really cannot be stressed enough that TRAs are in the exclusion business as much as anybody, since their definition of “woman₂” by necessity excludes anyone who fails to think or feel the right way about themselves. When they speak of “inclusion” and fighting for the liberation of “all women” (as opposed to “only ‘cis’ women”), clearly what we are meant to envision is taking the circle that already includes the ‘cis’ women and expanding it to also include the ‘Trans’ women. As always when it comes to alt-left slogans, we’re supposed to hear it, let it resonate just long enough to have some warm fuzzy gut reaction and then think about it no more. If you do think about it (and are therefore guilty of “transphobia”, “transmisogyny”, “denying the rights” of, or even advocating “violence” against Trans people), it quickly becomes obvious that redefining “woman” in terms of thoughts and feelings doesn’t simply “expand” the circle, but replaces it entirely. And this matters, since TRAs have made it abundantly clear that all of “women’s rights” are supposed to go with the name rather than the actual people. If they have their way, every right, every concession, every piece of progress that women₁ have managed to wrestle from the arms of the patriarchy throughout the ages will henceforth apply to people like them instead of the people for whom they were originally intended.
We know for a fact that the old circle included roughly half the world’s population. How many does the new one include? It’s pretty much tautologically true that it includes the tiny minority of men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ since the Genderspeak definition of women₂ pretty much boils down to “whatever men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to be” (or at least “people who think or feel in whatever way men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to think or feel”). How many women₁ does that include? I very much doubt that many women₁ would say they fit the definition of women₂ if they knew exactly how this requires them to think or feel. Indeed if you look past the warm fuzzy connotations of words like “inclusivity” and focus on what’s actually being said, the new circle is almost certainly going to be orders of magnitude smaller and more “exclusionary” than the old one.
But it’s actually worse than that. As previously mentioned, the discrimination of people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers is a very real problem in itself regardless of what you prefer to call them. Also, as many others have pointed out, there is absolutely nothing women₁ can do to “identify out of” the way they’re treated, and all the inclusive pronouns in the world are never going to make an ounce of difference. And yet, if you follow TRA logic to its ultimate conclusion, nobody at all will be allowed to stand up for the rights and interests of women₁, since even acknowledging the latter as an oppressed group in its own right with its own separate issues that are not entirely reducible to those faced by men₁ who prefer to be called “woman”/”she” is exclusionary to Trans women₂ and hence a hatecrime. So the Trans lobby’s ultimatum to women₁ everywhere boils down to “Shut up and let the oppression you face go forever unaddressed and unopposed, or have your name pulled through the dirt all over the internet”. A hostile ultimatum if ever there was one.
Of course, few if any TRAs are going to come straight out and say any these things. I will inevitably be accused of attacking strawmen, misrepresenting the TRA position etc. Apparently, nobody is denying that biological sex exists, that discrimination of women₁ is a problem in its own right etc. My response is that most of the alleged “TERFs” whom they have already attacked and vilified, whom they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to get fired from their jobs, whose voices they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to silence, whose names they have already dragged through the mud all over the internet are guilty of nothing more than saying those very same things they now claim “nobody is denying”. If you look at who actually said what, it usually turns out that the only crime of the gender-critical feminists was refusing to give away all of women₁’s rights to people who are not women₁ while all the supposed instances of “transphobia”, “denying the rights/dignity/existence of Trans women”, perpetuating “violence” towards and even “murder” of Trans people etc. were put into their mouths by the TRAs themselves. In this respect, the latter are very much like the corrupt cops often portrayed in gangster movies who plant drugs or weapons on an innocent person and then go on to arrest him/her for finding what they themselves planted there in the first place.
I also happen to know for a fact that even many of the “approved” feminists (the “trans-inclusive”, “intersectional”, “feminist₂” kind) have said things that could get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time (in fact, things for which they themselves have already demonized others as TERFs). E.g. I have personally been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “Trans allies” who, in the absence of telepathic powers, couldn’t possibly know how I think or feel about myself. I have also heard people like that talk about the “Bechdel Test” and how this or that movie only had X “women” in it, when the movie in question didn’t offer any clue about these people’s “inner sense of self”. This goes to show that even the supposedly “good” feminists are unable to consistently live up to what’s required of them: When specifically talking about Trans issues, words like “man” and “woman”, “male” and “female” refer to an inner state, but for all other purposes they still talk and act as if these words referred to something physical. Even the Trans women₂ themselves do not in fact treat biological sex as a non-issue. After all, why would anyone need any surgery or hormone treatment to make their bodies “align” with their “gender identity” if bodies are completely irrelevant to gender and no body type is any more or less “aligned” with being a “woman” than any other?
Although the TRA crusade to abolish biological sex and impose gender disproportionally hurts women₁ it doesn’t end there. Many have marveled at how quickly Gender ideology seems to have gone from utterly fringe to sacred truth across large a segment of the political left. One frequent explanation for the success of the Trans lobby is the way it has managed to attach itself to other social justice movements. One of the most disgusting examples is the appropriation of anti-racism as well as the conflation of “gender critical” and “white”, usually by people who are no less white themselves. When white people accuse other white people of “white feminism” it only ever means one thing:
“I speak for all the non-whites”
Because obviously people of color all agree with gender ideology…
Probably the most impressive feat of the Trans lobby, and possibly the main reason for the sudden spike in the popularity of Gender ideology, is the way it has managed to get itself associated with – and ultimately take over – what used to be the LGB (then the LGBT and now finally the T) movement. Who would have thought just 10 years ago that we should live to see the day when the only approved “feminist” position was that women₁ neither deserve nor need any movement to stand up for their rights or interests, or when the only approved “LGBT” position was that same-sex attraction (as opposed to attraction to anyone who thinks or feels in certain ways, uses certain pronouns etc.) is the pinnacle of bigotry and evil.
In the end, the only people to benefit from any of this are the Social Injustice Warriors (SIWs) of the far right. Discrimination of and even violence against Trans people is indeed a real problem. At least to an excellent first approximation 0 % of it is coming from feminists or even from people who have anything but contempt for feminism. The real enemy of both women₁, homosexuals and Trans people is toxic masculinity. If you fail to live up the cultural norms and expectations of what a real “man” is supposed to be like, it doesn’t mean you’re less of a man, let alone a woman. It means the cultural norms and expectations are bullshit and should be abandoned. For whatever it’s worth, every real transphobe I have personally encountered were men₁ who said things like “If I fucked someone and it turned out to be a guy, I’d fucking kill him” etc. These were not people who cared about feminism to say the least. They were raging homophobes and misogynists who were afraid of being tricked into acting “gay” and end up getting “fucked like a bitch” as only women deserve.
________________________________________________
[1] There are also people who insist on being called “man” despite having a strong preponderance of physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers. By and large, though, their issues are not the battle ground on which the Gender Wars are being fought.
[2] The same way most progressive, left-leaning people these days are uncomfortable with using any word to identify other people by their ethnic origin, the color of their skin etc. If that was the case they were making, they might have a legitimate point, but it’s not the point they are making.
[3] Feminists sometimes use the same word, e.g. when talking about “gender roles”. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with the TRA concept of “gender identity”. The gender roles that feminists are talking about are imposed from the outside and part for the sexist culture that needs to be changed. Gender identity is supposed to be an expression of a person’s true self, hence questioning it in any way is the real act of oppression.
[4] So important, in fact, that “misgendering” a person is the most hateful act imaginable and comparable to actual violence.
[5] Another term that “people of gender” have reserved for themselves while everyone else – even those who reject gender as a concept – are assumed to be “gender conforming”. What does it even mean to be “gender non-conforming” if the only thing that makes someone a certain gender in the first place are the gender norms (s)he conforms to?
[…] a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at the Miscellany […]
Two commentaries from transwomen on the JK Rowling situation crossed my feed today. Both are very good, and supportive of JKR. Both promote the importance of biological sex and support having thoughtful dialog about sensitive topics.
Debbie Hayton writes here:
https://debbiehayton.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/jk-rowling-fell-foul-of-transgender-thought-police/
Blaire White has a video here:
https://youtu.be/jyzZ3J6IG6s
I was struck by a few things in the video. There appears to be strong support of Rowling among the trans people of White’s acquaintance. Trans “allies” came in for special criticism. The trans “community” (White’s air quotes) is not monolithic.
There seems to be a severe divide among transgender people. On one hand, there are those like Debbie, Blaire, and Buck who experience(d) psychological suffering and alleviated it through transition. On the other, there are all those who have imbibed deeply of Queer Theory and now must dissolve all boundaries between categories. I have a feeling that the former category is much smaller than the latter, simply because the requirements are harder to meet.
On a different, but ultimately related note, this happened the week before last. It seems like a minor, inconsequential thing, but I argued to friends that it was a part of a larger, very dangerous trend. I’d be glad to write why I think that even taken on its own, the decision was horrible, cowardly, and actually stupid, but that’s not my larger point here. So pissed was I that one of my friends supported the move as making the game more “inclusive”, I wrote a 3000+ word response. (That was where I stopped, not because I didn’t have more to say, but because it was becoming clear that I could write a literal book on the subject.) The relevant argument in my response was that any move toward censorship is dangerous, because censorship is self-justifying.
Well, fast-forward to today, and I learn that now the company has severed a 26–year long relationship with an artist. Terese Nielsen is, now was, one of the game’s most well-known and iconic artists. People sought out and collected her art. Why did they cut ties with her? Because she committed Wrongfollow.
This story is familiar. Policing people’s follows, cries of “racist!” and “TERF!”, and a woman whose employment is jeopardized by the woke stasi.
I see that several authors have quit JKR’s publisher, and some publisher staff members are talking of strikes or resignations. I’m glad the publisher is standing up for freedom of thought. This is ridiculous.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/22/authors-quit-jk-rowling-agency-over-transgender-rights
Snap. I just posted about that. The (highly obscure) authors quit the agency, not the publisher. The publisher on the other hand told employees they can’t refuse to work on JKR’s books. The resistance has begun at last.
I have a hard time sitting through stupid, which is why I had to stop listening to religious debates and stuff loooooooooong ago. So I have no intention of watching this Intercept video: What Comes Next in the Fight for Trans Justice, With Gabriel Arkles of the ACLU. I’m sure I would just get angry and close it.
Well you see it’s not the TRAs that are wrong, it’s everybody else walking around with their eyes closed. At least that’s how it works according to ‘trans queer, non-binary artist’ Fix Fisher (at last – a typo I don’t want to edit) talking about JK Rowling:
See? All we have to do is look and the scales will slide from our eyes because it’s just so obvious. So obvious, in fact, that we will never again misgender those hulking great people with beards because with our eyes open we can tell that beardie number one is a man and beardie number two is a woman….or something like that.
Now, from the same article, we have the non-Trump lie of the year. Fisher claims:
Open conversation? What a bag of non-binary bollocks. As for not demanding Rowling changes her views, well, see the first quote.
Finally, could this spat be less about trans rights and more to do with jealousy? Fox also said something that seems to have nothing to do with Rowlings views:
In other words, we could strive to become better writers to increase our sales, true enough, but it seemed easier to smear Rowling enough to kill her sales and get our names out there instead. That failed spectacularly so now we’re pretending that Rowlings success was the only reason the agency refused to join in with the smearing.
I know, I know, it’s the Mail but I didn’t realise until I’d clicked the link. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8454223/Author-quit-JK-Rowlings-agency-transgender-row-says-shes-fallen-wrong-crowd.html
https://4w.pub/male-wins-female-leadership-position-in-nyc-dem-council/
Male Wins Female Leadership Position in NYC Democratic Council.
“Decaudin, who identifies as transgender and non-binary, defeated Deirdre Feerick, a woman, for the female position by a margin of about 5.5 points.”
I don’t understand in the least how anybody thinks it’s appropriate for a male who doesn’t even claim to be female, but rather says he’s “non-binary”, to run for a female leadership position. That’s bonkers even by the usual bonkers standards we’ve been seeing. He presents in a feminine manner, is that all that matters? Utterly ridiculous. His ascendency subverts the whole point of having designated female leadership positions.
It’s absolutely disgusting.
“Enlightenment lesson #1”
https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2020/06/25
I thought this was an interesting thread. Something I think everyone here is aware of, but a good reminder that women, even professional, busy women, are always supposed to be helpful and respectful of a man’s priorities.
So some conservatives are finally following their own proclaimed principles and using a market-based solution to their grievances with Twitter, by moving to a new app called Parler.
I suspect this will fail mainly because most conservatives want to yell at liberals, not each other. But in a delightful twist, some would-be Parler members are already rebelling because Parler asks them to use a special character in their password, and YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I WANT MY SHITTY PASSWORDS!
(I actually have a slight bit of sympathy for this — I really do want to re-use a simple, dumb password for sites that don’t have my credit card or other important information. But this is not a big problem to work around!)
The woke cult is Orwellian. Equity requires discrimination, you see. We fight racism by becoming racists; sexism, by becoming sexists.
Black, lesbian, working class lawyer sets up crowdfunding appeal on a supposedly neutral platform to launch an action against her employer and Stonewall UK for stifling free speech. After raising tens of thousand of pounds in a couple of hours, supposedly neutral platform suspends the campaign, under suspected pressure from Stonewall.
https://twitter.com/BluskyeAllison/status/1276777523544801280
https://twitter.com/BluskyeAllison/status/1276866769488052227
I wonder how many TA heads explode because they couldn’t deploy the damning adjective “white” in their responses to this campaign?
The fund page was reopened, and shee met her goal, but parts of Bailey’s original statement of intent were edited out of the reopened page.
A timeline of the Alison Bailey Crowdjustice fiasco: https://twitter.com/anyabike/status/1277219504259555329
So, you know what’s fun? There was a BLM protest on my street this evening. I don’t know if it’s still going. About two hours ago, I walked my pups down to the corner to sit and watch. After all, seeing things immediately rather than through the lens of Twitter or cable news ought to give a better impression of the goings on.
Well, anyway, I sat on a low wall that sets off the yard surrounding a condo building and watched. Remy (the catahoula pup) was super intrigued and kept trying to run over and greet any protester who came near. Since I was sitting fifteen feet away from the sidewalk, that was still pretty far away. Argos, the Doberman, was more interested in getting love, so he just sat by my side, resting his head on my shoulder so I could scratch behind his ears.
Things started dying down, and lots of people left. One noticed my boys and said how cute they were. (Which is true.) One young man walked past me heading down my street. About ten feet down he stopped and lit up what I thought was a cigarette, until he spun and tossed it across the street. The residential street.
BANG.
I have fired a .357 magnum without ear protection before, so I won’t call the sound deafening, but it was pretty close. It was loud and sharp enough that someone unfamiliar with the sound of gunfire would probably think that’s what it was. It was certainly loud enough to scare the dogs, especially Argos. He pulled away, and Remy jumped up with him. As I struggled to hold them, I shouted at the fireworks flinger, “Dude! Don’t do that shit. You’re scaring my dogs.”
Of course, he lit and tossed another.
BANG.
I heard some angry voices shouting, “What are you doing?” and, “Why would you do that?” I think one of my neighbors came running to confront the guy. I can’t be sure, because all my attention was on my dogs. Remy was scared and pulling, and Argos was terrified. A 78 lb. ball of lean, terror-fueled muscle dragged me fifteen feet across grass lit only by a street light.
BANG.
Standing up was out of the question. It took all my strength—and I am not out of shape—just to keep from being dragged any farther. Just to hold onto the leashes and not lose my boys. How long this went on, I can’t be sure. It felt like a long time, but you never know. Adrenaline can do weird things to one’s perception of time.
At some point, the sound of someone shouting at me penetrated my focus. Maybe it was two voices. Angry, hate-filled voice(s) I didn’t know said, “Let them dogs go! Let ’em go, bitch! We’ll break they necks. Go back inside and get your men! We want your men!”
There may have been more than one, but I only saw one face, with wild eyes fixed on me. That phrase is so cliche that I’ve always avoided it, but it’s the most appropriate thing that comes to mind at the moment.
All I could manage was to squeeze tighter, surrounded by a little bit of chaos.
Someone with perceptions not warped by rage and hate interrupted the verbal barrage, stating the clear truth that I was just holding onto poor animals frenzied by the explosions. Two people, bless their hearts, hopped up into the condo grass and helped me get up, telling my pups they were all right and that everything would be okay.
A few minutes later I was back at my house. Remy seems unaffected, but Argos ran and hid under the kitchen table. Even a slice of chicken wasn’t enough to tempt him out. I had to pick him up and carry him to his crate so he could feel safe.
That was my evening.
How was yours?
Holy shit.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/iran-issues-arrest-warrant-donald-trump-killing-qassem-soleimani-interpol-2020-6?nojs=1
The story is also running on BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN… Iran has issued an arrest warrant for Trump, for his murder of Iranian officer and citizen, Qassem Soleimani. Obviously it will go nowhere while he is president, and even after his presidency (in a few months please) I doubt he will ever be extradited, but still!
Obviously, they have a genuine complaint against him. As shifty, even murderous, as that guy may or may not have been, Trump decided to murder him with no trial and in a foreign nation. Trump has debased America to such an extent that even Iran has been handed some measure of moral high ground. And the fact that they dare do this, even as a mere gesture, shows how isolated USA is becoming, and how tarnished its prestige has become.
“…Trump has debased America…”
No. That is not what happened.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DoomerMarty/status/1278380299152322560
Lack of social pressure and reinforcement leads to detransition. Whoever would possibly have guessed that we’re dealing with social contagion?
I hope we’ve all seen this by now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZoFqIxlbk0
It’s a huge hit on Spinster. And rewards analysis.
Here’s a fun thing. https://twitter.com/NoahCarl90/status/1279047073111977988
Apparently, creationists are starting to weaponize the rhetoric of critical race theory.
So, in other news that compounds the weird irony of our time, it turns out Margaret Atwood—yes, the Handmaid’s Tale author—is siding with the Gender Identity Cult.
So let’s recap. The author of a highly influential dystopian SF novel about the systematic subordination and domination of female people is on the side of those who would deny us the ability to talk about female people. The author of a children’s fantasy series about a school for preteen wizards who use pig Latin for incantations is on the side of harsh reality.
The fuck is this world?
NiV @104 – I would like to introduce you to 2020. The year that time gave up on.
So, I don’t think much of this open letter to Harper’s signed by a bunch of famous people. It’s just too vague to be anything more than another entry in the “grrr, cancel culture is BAD, and no, I won’t define what I mean!” parade.
But apparently it contains anti-trans “dogwhistles” and is signed by Nonpersons, such that any co-signed is tainted by association. That’s the theory of writer Emily Van Der Werff, a trans woman who wrote to the editors of Vox to complain that Matt Yglesias, a writer and co-founder of Vox, signed the letter.
Oh, VDW insists, she isn’t trying to get Matt fired. No, not at all. She’s just letting her employer know that Matt’s “signature on the letter makes me feel less safe at Vox and believe slightly less in it[s] stated goals of building a more diverse and more thoughtful workplace.”
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You can’t tell someone’s bosses that they have made you “less safe” at work and have that be anything other than an attempt to get them fired, or a basis for your future money-seeking lawsuit. What a disingenuous shit.
Yes I’ve been meaning to get around to the letter all day.
Popehat has a short thread that nicely covers the gamut of reactions to the letter…
Rob @ 108:
Screechy’s take is a rather succinct and to-the-point response to this willful Switzerlanding.
It’s one thing to say that you find the border between the two things to be fuzzy and unclear. It’s quite another to say that you cannot make the distinction at all. The world is full of pairs with uncertain borders, a fact of natural language that is both curse and blessing. Without that fuzziness, there would be little space for poetry. However, that two things are similar where they are similar is tautological and uninteresting, and it does not at all suggest that there are not cases where the difference is not clear.
What passes for thought these days …
Another tweet that exposes enews for the sorry thing it is.
Nullius @ 109,
You’re using my words in response to a completely different statement, though.
I was reacting to Van Der Werff’s complaint to Vox about Matt Yglesias co-signing the letter. VDW was trying to have it both ways: whine about Yglesias to his bosses, but deny any intent to get him in trouble. That’s what I found disingenuous.
Ken White’s response to the Harper’s letter is I think a fair one. I would certainly not call that bullshit. In fact, I generally agree with it. The Harper’s letter is hopelessly vague, and thus fails to articulate any clear principle, except to the extent that it veers into the “don’t criticize other people” territory that it purports to disclaim. I can neither agree nor disagree with the Harper’s letter, because there just isn’t enough substance there to form an opinion about.
I don’t think Ken White is being disingenuous the way VDW was. White would almost certainly agree that there are attempts to “cancel” people by getting them fired, etc. He has helped get people pro bono help when others abuse the legal system to try to punish their speech. All I understand White to be saying is that the Harper’s letter specifically (and denouncements of “cancel culture” generally) fail to articulate a clear and consistent standard. Most people support at least some actions that others claim is “cancel culture.”
It might be possible to articulate some principles to follow (I tried in a recent comment thread, but kept having to use qualifiers and exceptions), but so far I’m not seeing it.
Ophelia, you’re a brick!
All part of the service.
I read that Amy Cooper, she who called the cops on the Central Park birdwatcher Chris Cooper, is being charged with filing a false police report or some such. Chris Cooper is refusing to cooperate with prosecutors, saying Any Cooper has suffered enough. I’m impressed with his stance, although I understand that some people think this will hurt the chances of future prosecutions.
Yes, I read about that too. Thought about posting about it but…I don’t know, couldn’t figure out what I thought about it. That’s often all the more reason to post, but this one…I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just that it’s too depressing, either way.
Well, you won’t be surprised to know that I have some thoughts.
Chris Cooper seems like a decent fellow, and it’s certainly magnanimous of him to say that Amy Cooper shouldn’t be punished further. And I think that a prosecutor can certainly take his wishes into consideration in deciding whether or not to pursue the matter or what plea agreement to offer.
But it sits a little uncomfortably with me when someone like him simply declares that he will not cooperate with the prosecution. (Let’s put aside people like abused spouses, whose noncooperation is coming out of fear.) Like, it is not and should not be 100% his call who gets prosecuted or not. First, he isn’t the only “victim” here — her false call wasted police and operator time. Yes, that’s a fairly trivial harm, but then this is a fairly minor crime she’s been charged with. Second, criminal justice isn’t primarily, let alone exclusively, about extracting revenge on behalf of the victim. It’s about sending a message to perpetrators that their actions will have consequences, so they don’t victimize other people. If Defendant X attacks Victim Y on the street completely unprovoked, beats the crap out of Y, but Y announces afterward that “I am a devout Christian and I believe in forgiveness. I forgive X and don’t want him prosecuted,” I kind of don’t care about Y’s wishes. *I* want X prosecuted because X sounds like a dangerous person, and I want X to have to think twice before attacking some other person in the future.
I also think this sort of emblemizes one of the problems we’ve created with our attitudes towards criminality. We’ve decided that any kind of criminal record is very very bad, ruinous to any person’s chances of having a good job or a place in “respectable” society. And so then we bend over backwards to avoid giving “respectable” people (or the children of such people) any kind of criminal record, no matter how minor, because it will “ruin” them.
And so we end up in a situation where we’re told that it would be unconscionably cruel to put a class F misdemeanor (or whatever the fuck it is) on the record of a 30-something white corporate executive. Meanwhile, how many black, brown, or just poor white kids get prosecuted every time they get “caught” in some victimless crime like pot possession, open containers of alcohol, etc.? But hey, it’s ok if THOSE kids get a criminal record — they weren’t going anywhere in life anyway, right? But god forbid a white person with a degree from a good school might have to explain a small indiscretion in the future….
Yes. I agree with all of that. At the same time though I think I get why Chris Cooper would flinch away from it.
SM, thanks for your extremely well put thoughts on the matter. You make many points I had not considered.
If there had not been the huge internet pile-on, if she had not lost her job and her dog, I would not flinch at prosecuting her, and I would think C. Cooper mad for refusing to cooperate. Under the actual circumstances, I have sympathy for him.
Oh yeah. I assume that, while Amy Cooper may have been getting the bulk of the hate mail, threats, etc. that unfortunately seem to come with every publicized internet controversy, that Chris is probably still getting his share, too, and would prefer it all to just go away.
She got her dog back, by the way. The Humane Society changed its mind after a few days.
There’s a new video out promoting trans acceptance, and boy is it vapid. I saw first mention of it on Intransitive’s blog on FTB, and PZ then posted it on his own. Both described it positively, with Intransitive and several commenters being almost rapturous. Apparently, several of them cried over it.
This effusive response surprised me, as the video is only two minutes long. It must be pretty powerful, right? Spoiler alert: no. In fact it’s pretty bloody vapid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG1T0URuTWw
Notice that the only sign of change in the Godzilla-child is that she(?) put a pretty pink bow on her head. Femaleness is a costume. Meanwhile, a commenter expressed relief that the thing being knitted by Godzilla was not a dress: “There was a moment where I was going “please don’t be a dress, please don’t be a dress” because of what that sort of messaging entails” …but made no mention of the pink bow. Oh! And then linked to a picture of that same character in a pink bow… plus a dress.
Femaleness is a costume to these nitwits. Even when they appear to show some awareness that femaleness need not have a costume, they go right along with the idea anyway.
Calling it vapid almost gives it too much credit Holms. I can’t image how much time and effort was wasted on it.
Opportunistic theocrat Erdogan is turning the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/world/europe/erdogan-hagia-sophia-mosque.html
This makes me sad. An astonishing example of both Roman Christian and Islamic architecture and art, it has catered to both christian and muslim worshippers alike, and then was made open to all as a museum. The corrupt fucking Erdogan, in his bid to secure power by siding with Islamic nationalism, is using it as a cynical ploy to grab the votes of that demographic. Ataturk would be ashamed.
Another day, another Trump crony walking free. The orange one has decided that Roger Stone was treated unfairly and has commuted his 40 months prison sentence. No pardon, mind you. Well, not yet.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-us-canada-53371756
A 2018 Scottish Act had a supplementary text released recently: Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018: statutory guidance. On that page, just look at how much text is devoted to the definition of woman, such that trans women i.e. males can qualify for positions reserved for actual women. And right after that lengthy definition is this gem: “2.15 The Act does not require an appointing person to ask a candidate to prove that they meet the definition of woman in the Act.” There is no such effort to define, describe, or even mention trans men. It’s solely about getting men into women’s positions.
Harry Potter and the Reverse Voltaire https://medium.com/@mary.leng/harry-potter-and-the-reverse-voltaire-4c7f3a07241
She makes a good point regarding how true statements are imbued with objectionable connotations. That is, I think, something we should resist rather than accept. That stating facts could constitute a hateful implicature is a bad thing, harmful to discourse and the search for truth.
Nullius,
“That stating facts could constitute a hateful implicature is a bad thing, harmful to discourse and the search for truth.”
I think that’s a little overbroad, probably going further than you intended to if you agree with the linked post.
As the post you linked to acknowledges, there are situations where “just stating facts” can be evidence of a nasty intent. The example the author gives is stating “All Lives Matter” in a discussion about Black Lives Matter; it is of course true that All Lives Matter, but rather missing the point of the discussion. The example I had in mind was someone who continually rattles off a bunch of statistics about how African-Americans commit a disproportionate number of crimes, and then demands that you explain how on earth it could possibly be racist to quote crime statistics. (The answer, of course, is that when you only present those statistics, and don’t acknowledge any adjustment for socioeconomic status, biased policing and prosecutorial practices leading to higher arrest and conviction rates, etc., you’re presenting a misleading picture designed to reinforce a racist stereotype.)
Or, to give a more blunt example that isn’t quite relevant to these kinds of discussions, but illustrates the point: it may be true that the person you’re talking to is fat, ugly, unintelligent, etc., but mentioning these “facts” is correctly going to be considered an aggressive and hateful statement.
I think, as the linked post suggests, rather than insisting that statements of fact can never be objectionable, the better course is to justify why those potentially insulting facts are being brought up.
I’ve been listening to a new podcast, called Blocked and Reported, by Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog, who may be familiar to many here, as both have been declared Known Transphobes for having written articles about detransitioners and other controversial issues.
I have some misgivings about the podcast. I think they’re a little too wrapped up in the world of Twitter and journalistic gossip, and toss around the “cancel culture” label a little too freely. I also think it’s rather hypocritical to do an entire podcast about silly internet fights and then have topics like “why do people want to talk about this Central Park birdwatching fight?” But Jesse and Katie show enough humility and self-deprecation that it avoids veering into overly self-righteous territory.
I’ve been meaning to check that out sometime. (I neglect the podcast category.) Herzog is a local, used to write for The Stranger but…got cancelled.
I was reading some of Singal’s tweets this morning, about someone who’s done things to him, and thinking it was all way too much detail for anyone who isn’t Singal. Not without interest, which is why I was reading, but…too much detail.
Screechy @ 127 – yes. I was going to say that but got distracted by the war on Fauci. I was going to give precisely the “you’re ugly/fat etc” example. Stating facts can so easily constitute a hateful implicature. I know people who state facts which don’t need stating and which they state only to needle or worse. Doesn’t everyone know people like that? (And don’t many of us risk being people like that? And resolve to avoid it? And so on?)
Screechy: I was a bit more brief and a bit less precise than I might have been, yes. I have an excuse, though: I was rushing to post before I had to turn off my phone and go under anasthesia. Wheeee.
It is certainly possible to utter true statements from bad motivations. You don’t have to convince me of this. There’s actually a rich area of study in social epistemology about the effects of differing sets of partial, yet true, information. A good example of where this can be relevant is in political briefs, where politicians make policy decisions based on incomplete information. The lawmaker’s actions can be entirely determined by what information is presented.
What we should not do is make a habit of inferring bad intent from the statement alone. We should actually try to avoid ascribing bad intent at all, as people’s intentions are usually better than we suppose, and conversation tends toward dysfunction when interlocutors view each other with hostility. There is, after all, a reason argumentum ad hominem is so common: it is rhetorically effective.
As things stand, for instance, there are no ways to couch stating facts about basic sexual biology that act as prophylactic against accusations of transphobia. This is a Bad Thing. It prevents useful discussion on the topic.
Saying, “all lives matter,” may indeed indicate that the speaker is racist. It may also indicate that he or she has, as you say, missed the point. Alternatively, he or she may be expressing resistance to “white lives don’t matter” rhetoric. Whatever the motivation, we can’t know it if we treat “all lives matter” per se as sufficient evidence of ill will. Doing so yet again shuts down conversation before it begins.
Nullius,
Perhaps we can agree that, as in so many things, context is key?
Yep yep. All that was basically just to agree with your final paragraph:
Bari Weiss is out at the NY Times. Oh, won’t someone think of the Freeze Peaches!?
She wrote a staggeringly pompous letter explaining her reasons. Oddly enough she never paused to ask why she was given such a high-up job at such a young age in the first place.
I normally don’t like Ross Douthat, but he wrote a very good column about cancel culture today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/cancel-culture-.html
So … like … there’s this list of benefits of M2F transition, and … Well, are they not even pretending anymore?
It’s an AGP MRA cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuult.
#15 on that list appears to go against the dominant narrative…
More of the same: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/2020-is-seeing-an-epidemic.html
And the deaths of how many women, which apparently mustn’t be an urgent call to action? And how many men, for that matter? How many children?
Just testing.
#139 latsot
Obviously any number of murdered is a bad number unless it is 0, but still. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we are 50% through the year, and the murder rate continues at that same rate, i.e. 21 murders of US trans people per 6 months. That gives us an expected 42 murdered trans people at year end. If trans people are 0.6% of the US population, as stated in wiki, we expect them to be 0.6% of murdered people too. Given about 14,500 murders took place in USA according to the FBI’s most recent figures (2018), this gives us an expected 14,500*0.006 = 87 murdered trans people.
42 is less than half 87; in other words, US trans people are on track to be murdered at half the rate expected for their population size.
“Epidemic” of murdered trans people? Total lie.
Holms, I’d say that “any number greater than zero is a bad number” doesn’t really capture the nuance you’re pointing to. It’s more like, any murder is bad, but it’s not possible to reduce the probability to zero, so given a large population, there will always be murder. In that context, small numbers are good and large numbers are bad. It’s pedantic, I know, but I make the distinction for a reason. Every method of reducing x (in this case murder) comes with an implementation cost, and each one reduces x asymptotically. There is some point, and I’m not saying I know what it is, where the cost of implementing another is too high relative to the cost of improving some other aspect of society. We have to be willing to say, “This isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough.”
Anyway, I just discovered that it’s hard to find separate population data for each of L, G, B, and T. The Gallup poll flattens it all into one demographic, and the wiki article on LGBT demographics does the same. That’s kinda bullshit, because it (again) makes everything after the LGB seem more common than it is.
In 2018, there were 275,325,290 Americans over 12 years of age, and we had 14,504 homicides.
P(murdered | demographic) = P(m|d). Ideal x = [x].
As Holms said, the probability of being murdered given being trans is lower than what we would expect to see were homicides distributed evenly. The “epidemic of murder” line is even more clearly delusional / propagandist when these data are put in context.
So we can see that of these demographics, trans people are murdered at a higher than only women and asians. Men are victims of homicide at more than three times the trans rate.
Here’s the rest of the table I’m working on, which include more violent crime data. I’m going to be building this table out more for my own personal use, ’cause then I know what’s accounted for and what isn’t. If anyone knows where I can go to find more data by sexual orientation and trans-ness, that’d be really helpful.
—–
Data taken from:
https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/national/united-states/shr
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6686
https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population-rises.aspx
So … ethnomathematics. This strikes me as similar to the “feminist” defense of GOOP; i.e., “Women have different ways of knowing than male science!”
See this from waaaaay back in 2003:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2003/bones/
Also
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2002/science-studies/
Oh, man. I’m going to have to read Higher Superstitions. That sound exceedingly delectable.
It absolutely is. It’s what alerted me to this whole subject, when I picked it up one day at Half-Price Books and was electrified by what I read. It’s also the inspiration for the Sokal hoax.
See also: Meera Nanda.
So, I hesitate to link to another piece about Bari Weiss, because I feel like she really shouldn’t be that important, especially now that she has quit her undeserved post at the NYT.
But Robert Wright does such a good job of illustrating her hypocrisy, in his restrained, Robert Wright-ish way, that I had to share it.
On another “cancel culture” related note, last Friday’s episode of The Gist podcast contained a debate between Yascha Mounk (one of the Harper’s signatories) and Osita Nwenavu from The New Republic. I’m not normally a big believer in debates as being terribly helpful, but I found this illuminating because Nwenavu articulated something I’ve found irritating about the Harper’s letter and the “cancel culture is OUT OF CONTROL” brigade generally. Nwenavu pointed out that the recent incident of Blake Neff, who was unmasked as the author of racist posts on a message board and fired from his job as head writer on the Tucker Carlson Show, is practically a paradigmatic example of “cancel culture.” A private citizen was “called out” for speech he made in his private life, which was deemed “beyond the pale” and racist, and was forced out of his job as a result. And yet essentially nobody is defending Neff or rallying around him as the poster child for free speech — not even culture warrior Tucker Carlson. Because (and I’m still paraphrasing Nwenavu’s argument, though I agree with it) there is actually broad agreement in our culture that there really are things that one can say that are beyond the pale so as to warrant exclusion from civil society. Yascha Mounk and his fellow signatories just disagree about where the line is in particular instances, but they’re portraying that disagreement over where to draw the line as if it is some fundamental disagreement about the very existence of free speech, calling their opponents Maoists and wringing their hands about “struggle sessions” and such. I didn’t feel that Mounk ever effectively addressed this point.
I saw a meme, a Twitter quote, about how men are 100% responsible for teaching other men how not to be toxic, because “men don’t listen to women/enbies”. I guess men can become non-toxic by becoming non-binary? I guess women can become toxic by becoming men? How do you know these toxic people are men? Why are “enbies” only classed with “women” in this directive?
I looked up the Twitter account, @rosalarian, and found it to be from a “real live nonbinary!”, apparently female, who is a cartoonist, and who chafes at the idea of “nonbinary” being a “third gender” when there are many and varied ways of being nonbinary. Apparently there are not similarly many ways of being male/female (masculine/feminine?), only the nonbinary people are extra-special.
Wokeness, being rooted in critical theory, has no tools for recognizing when it’s gotten what it wants. That is, it can neither establish nor meet correctness conditions. So it will forever find things problematic. Example: https://www.therapyroute.com/article/why-the-term-transition-is-transphobic-by-v-levy
As the witchhunter will always find a witch, so will the wokebro find a problematic.
Oh, man, that’s some stupid shit right there.
Yeahhhh, cool, dude.
This is amusing. The Trump campaign is running an ad with an image of a police officer being attacked by protesters. The problem is, it’s from a 2014 protest in Ukraine.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-ad-police-officer-attacked-2014-ukraine-protests-2020-7
OOOOPS
I was out running an errand and listening to the interview with Mary Trump on Fresh Air. Terry Gross had just been discussing Mary Trump being a lesbian and what effect that had on her family life. Gross asked which of Uncle Donald’s policies had affected her the most. Mary Trump replied that they all affected her, although not necessarily directly, and then proceeded to talk about the “ban” of trans people from serving in the military. That was the end of both my trip and my patience, so I didn’t hear more. No, trans people are not banned, they are just required to serve as their actual sex, not the sex they try to emulate.
Sackbut,
I think that telling a trans woman that she has to present as a man in order to serve is a de facto ban.
How is what you’re saying different from someone claiming that “we don’t ban gay people from the military, as long as they act straight”? (To be clear, I’m referring to the pre-1992 era, before “don’t ask, don’t tell,” when essentially gay people could only serve if they remained celibate or were willing to risk court-martial if they got caught.) Or saying that “well, technically we don’t ban atheists, they just have to be willing to go to church and praise Jesus….”
So here is an interesting WaPo writeup of a medical study showing better patient outcomes for those treated by women physicians.
The article makes some appropriate cautions about drawing overly broad conclusions, the possibility of confounding variables, etc.
The reason I think it’s interesting is that I will bet that the James Damore types of the world, who always wrap their discussions of gender differences in the mantle of mere scientific curiosity, disclaiming any agenda, will studiously ignore this study. (Oh, they’ll be happy to cite any studies that show women as better suited at certain tasks, provided they’re not particularly prestigious ones.)
Of course, I could be wrong, and perhaps the Intellectual Dark Web will be lit ablaze with demands for hospitals to preferentially hire more women. But I won’t hold my breath.
Screechy @ 155 – It’s different in the way that people pretending to be something they are not is different from being sexually and romantically attracted to same sex people. They’re not particularly comparable or similar. Lesbians and gay men aren’t pretending to be same-sex attracted. (I suppose some could be, in theory, but it’s hard to see why anyone would.) They’re also not comparable to atheists.
That’s not to say I favor a ban on trans people in the military. I don’t know what I think about that, so I avoid the subject. But the category of “potential reasons for banning people from the military” is large and heterogeneous, and I don’t think we have to treat the category of trans as neatly parallel to the category of lesbian and gay.
OB @157,
I agree that you can (at least arguably) draw a distinction. But that seems to me to be addressing the question of “should there be a ban,” not “is this a ban.”
With some possible exceptions for the Yanivs of the world, I take trans people at their word that they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be, and that it is very important to them to present themselves as that gender. I don’t think it’s a lark or a fetish or a game or something they can switch on and off, or something like a toddler’s desire for a piece of candy, where if denied they’ll cry for a bit but then forget all about it. I assume that there is something deep and meaningful to them, which they feel a genuine need to express. Now one person’s desires, no matter how deep and meaningful, or even their needs, don’t change reality, and they don’t necessarily trump other people’s legitimate interests (for safety, for freedom of thought, etc.). Those are different questions.
I’m not sure how much of the preceding paragraph you (or Sackbut) agree or disagree with. I’m treading carefully here and trying not to presume anything because I don’t want to mischaracterize your positions. The point I was initially trying to make is that telling a trans person “no, you can’t serve your country unless you suppress what you consider to be a fundamental part of yourself” is effectively a ban. Whether that is justifiable or not is, again, a different question.
Re SM @155
I agree it ends up being a de facto ban.
I don’t think it’s based on telling people how they must present. It simply refuses to make accommodations for presentation. This soldier is male, he will wear these uniforms and live in these places and be referred to with these titles and use these facilities because he is male. It’s a ban in the same way someone else who doesn’t want to abide by the rules and regulations of the military is banned. Male soldiers living among women and wearing women’s uniforms and so on are banned, just like male soldiers wearing, I don’t know, dreadlocks maybe. These restrictions are enough to keep many but probably not all trans people out of the military.
Screechy Monkey 158
Even you seem to be conflating sex and gender in this case. What Sackbut wrote was:
So this is changing the subject:
Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that a military base only has two kinds of bedrooms, toilets, tents etc. One for “men” and one for “women”. Then defining “men” and “women” in terms of biological sex may indeed amount to a de facto ban on people who can’t live with being grouped with their own sex.
But guess what, it goes both ways (the one point that is always missed in these debates). Redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity”, “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking or feeling etc. amounts to a de facto ban on people who fail to think or feel the right way. I have spent a year of my life in the Norwegian army. I would not have been able to do so if all the bedrooms etc. were reserved for people who think or feel in any of the ways required to qualify as either “man” or “woman” according to gender ideology.
And, in fact, redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity” also amounts to a de facto ban on women who don’t feel safe having to sleep and shower and change clothes and change tampons along with men who say they identify as women.
And about taking “trans people at their word that they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be, and that it is very important to them to present themselves as that gender”……..
Well, one, people can really sincerely believe things that are false, and it’s not always a virtue or kind or the best thing to take them at their word about it. This applies even to sincere beliefs about the self – look at Trump for one glaring example. Two, isn’t it likely to be a matter of degree rather than an absolute? Some sincerely believe it in the way you describe but others semi-believe it, or take it up because they like it and it has its rewards, and similar possibles? Three, surely a lot of people who do sincerely believe it believe it because of this noisy ferocious campaign to harangue us all into believing it, or saying we do? Four, is it possible that a lot of people believe it or claim they believe it or join the train of people saying they believe it because it attracts narcissists and bullies and other rather difficult personality types? Five, is it possible that a lot of men join it because it’s such a socially approved opportunity to bully women in ways that went out of fashion decades ago but have come roaring back?
To add to that…
Ever? You don’t think that’s ever what it is? Even a fetish? Despite all the highly fetishy images and narratives we’re treated to?
And you do know about detransitioners, right? You know there are people who do change their minds about the whole thing, so…?
Maybe where I’m coming from is the awareness or belief that fashion is a powerful thing and that peer approval is also a powerful thing. I see all the over the top “validation” of trans people and offers of support and love and fist bumps for trans people and I conclude that the fashion is a powerful magnet for people who want some or all of those things. Trans people get attention, and sympathy, and exclamations of how they’re The Most Marginalized. How can that not skew the stats?
Bjarte,
Since Sackbut has clarified that it is indeed a de facto ban, which is all that I was trying to dispute, I think we communicated just fine.
The rest of your post goes into the merits of such a ban, which I haven’t really got a position on. Frankly, I’d need to know a lot more than I do about how the military currently handles gender, among other things.
But I’m mystified by your point about it “going both ways.” I mean, yes, allowing trans people to serve openly would act as a de facto ban on people who (1) disagree with that policy; and (2) feel so strongly about it that they would refuse/be unable to serve under those conditions. Again, you could have said the same thing about people who felt very strongly — and many did — about racial-segregation, or allowing women to serve, or allowing gays to serve. And I think you’re making a category error in treating “has opinions about gender ideology” as being in the same category as “is transgender,” just as I don’t think “has opinions about homosexuality” is in the same category as “is homosexual.”
………………….redefining “men” and “women” in terms of “gender identity” also amounts to a de facto ban on women who don’t feel safe having to sleep and shower and change clothes and change tampons along with men who say they identify as women.
Wow! Nice strawman!
I didn’t say anything at all about disagreeing with any policy allowing trans people to serve nor about feeling so strongly about it that one is able to serve under those conditions. I was simply making the point that redefining “man” and “woman” in terms of gender identity or male vs. female ways of thinking/feeling makes it no longer true that I (or anyone else who doesn’t think or feel in the ways required) am a “man” (or a “woman” for that matter), hence if the only bedrooms available are reserved for “men” or “woman” that effectively rules me out.
Sure, agreed.
I guess what I’m confused by is the apparent resistance to calling the rule being discussed a “ban.” It’s not a pejorative term. The military should (and does) ban some people from service, because they can’t perform the expected duties, or can’t be trusted not to create other problems, etc. Apparently they (at least at one point) banned people with bone spurs!
I don’t think that agreeing that the military is currently banning trans people means that trans people win the argument and that the rule should be changed. Some bans are good, some aren’t.
I know sometimes that terminology is used to manipulate debate (e.g. “pro-life”), but “ban” seems fairly neutral to me.
Bjarte,
I’m sorry, so your point was just that you don’t have a “gender identity” as defined by trans people? (Oddly, I was about to say something similar yesterday in another thread.) I wasn’t trying to strawman you, I really just did misread you. It did not seem like a position that was fringe-y or discreditable, either.
I am left a little confused at what point you were making then about it “going both ways.” I mean, it seems a little facetious if I understand you correctly. You would really have told a superior officer, “I’m sorry, but according to a definition of sex/gender with which I do not agree, I would have no gender identity, and therefore could not occupy either a male or female dorm?” That seems to go a little beyond what anyone is envisioning. I admit to not being on top of every TRA position, but I don’t think anyone is saying that you can’t continue to claim whatever sex/gender you like. I don’t think anyone is saying that you can’t continue to say “I’m a man” just because your reasons for doing so are biologically based. But I admit this world is stranger than I imagined.
Again, apologies for misreading you, there was no malicious intent.
I think “ban” has taken on a pejorative connotation in the wake of the long process of doing away with the ban on LG people. I almost added something about “ban [for arbitrary or bad reasons]” in one of those comments.
Re “ban”
The word “ban” gets used inaccurately frequently. Prayer is not “banned” if people aren’t allowed to pray over the loudspeaker; Christians are not “banned” if proselytizing is disallowed; and so on. Being unable to participate in something on the terms you want is not the same thing as being unable to participate. Because of these fallacious uses of the term, I think it is worthwhile to distinguish actual direct bans from de facto ones.
I could understand and maybe support an effort to make military dress codes and hair codes less sex-specific. I don’t see any reason that one man should be allowed to follow the female dress code and another disallowed, simply because the first one claims to be a woman.
Screechy Monkey
No hard feelings.
Here’s how it goes both ways:
1. If, say, the “women’s dorms” are for people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (women₁), that rules out people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers (men₁) regardless of how they think or feel about themselves.
2. If the “women’s dorms” are for people who think or feel in whatever ways people with physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who prefer to be called “woman”/”female”/”she” happen to think/feel (women₂), that rules out people who fail to think/feel in said ways regardless of physical traits.
3. Women₂ in (1) are not technically banned from serving as men₁ (the identity they reject).
4. Women₁ who fail to think the required way according to gender ideology in (2) are not technically banned from serving as women₂ (the identity they reject).
If you read my comment #82 in this thread (and I won’t hold it against you if you don’t. It’s long!), it explains, better than I am able to do here, why I think we should refuse to play their language game. Two quotes from the piece that are directly relevant:
As to what I would say to my superior officer, first of all I would not use the conflation “sex/gender”, and second, I sure as hell would not accept classification as a “man₂”. Again, using the same words does not amount to talking about the same things. The sentence “Bjarte belongs in the men₁’s dormitory” is true but irrelevant to any point TRAs are trying to make (such as whether or not men₂ should be allowed in the same dormitory). The sentence “Bjarte belongs in the men₂’s dormitory” might be relevant to their point, but no longer true. Definitions matter.
It’s not about whether or not I would still be allowed to call myself a “man”. I’,m sure the TRAs would like nothing better than a chance to count me as a fellow “person of gender”, part of the “gender binary” etc. I’m also sure Christians would love to count me as a fellow “Christian” (and they have: I was baptized as a child and enrolled in the Norwegian state church, without getting any saying in the matter, which allowed the church to claim me as part of the vast majority of Norwegians that were “Christians”), thus inflating their numbers. Well thanks, but no thanks.
Ok, clumsy wording. As written 4 seems to contradict 2. All I meant to say was that women₁ who fail to think in the ways required may still be allowed into the women₂’s dorm even if they don’t as a matter of fact meet the definition of women₂. After all the goal of all TRA rhetoric is to absorb women₁ into the women₂ category such that men₁ can qualify for membership. An exception can be made for a minority of “trans men₂” and “non binary” individuals, as long as nobody challenges the overarching narrative of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking and feeling.
OB @ 162:
Sure. I did begin my paragraph with “[w]ith some possible exceptions,” which I’m happy to clarify applies to the entire paragraph and not just the initial sentence. There are always exceptions.
I think this is a case of Twitter Is Not Real Life. Social media is where the most attention-seeking, preening, showboats hang on and get validation for being flashy and outrageous.
Of course I’m aware. But my understanding is that even the people who study or treat detransitioners acknowledge that it’s a low percentage. It’s grounds for caution in the transition process, especially when talking about young people, but I don’t think it proves that it’s all a choice. Sexual preference has been observed to be fluid as well — and I’m not talking about the “gay conversion therapy” victims who mostly have admitted they just went back in the closet. Young women declaring themselves lesbians but “discovering” their error after graduating college was/is common enough to have spawned a cliche “lesbian until graduation.” Some people discovery a change in orientation in their 40s. Or, if you don’t care for those examples, let’s go to religion again — some atheists “find Jesus (again),” that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are “choosing” not to.
Do you think detransitioners are flakes who decided to go through difficult, potentially dangerous, expensive medical procedures, and then decided “nah, let’s reverse all that,” as casually as if they were returning an outfit they didn’t like? I doubt you do, because most of the stories on detransitioners that you’ve blogged about emphasize the difficulties they’re experiencing. Detransitioning may suggest that the initial transition was erroneous or premature, but it doesn’t suggest to me that it was frivolous. I have yet to read a story about a detrans person who was casual about the whole thing, like “no big deal, I’ll just go back and try something else!”
Ah, well, I think now you’re talking about two different things. You seem to be implying that if something is culturally influenced, then it’s a choice. Or if you’re not, then there’s a missing argument somewhere.
I am not taking the position that trans status is 100% “nature” and 0% “nurture.” In fact, I’m not sure if ANY of it is “nature,” it may be 100% nuture for all I know. I certainly reject some versions of the nature hypothesis as preposterous — Kevin K used to insist that babies know that they’re trans, and I argued with him quite extensively that this seemed absurd, in part because so many of his arguments were culturally dependent.
I just don’t think it matters. There are lots of aspects of ourselves that are no doubt products of the culture we grew up in, how our parents raised us, etc. etc. That doesn’t make them any less a part of us.
Certainly there are more trans-identified people today than there were 20 or 50 or 100 years ago — I seem to recall surveys backing that up, and some particular culture-specific ones, like a huge rise in trans men in the U.K. in a relatively small time period. I don’t doubt that part of this — maybe even a huge part of it — has to do with cultural attitudes. Of course more people are going to identify as trans today, when it has some cultural support, then when trans people were treated as freaks and perverts. I suspect that would be both because some people who were trans before stayed in the closet, even on surveys, and because people are more willing to consider the possibility that they are trans today. I haven’t checked, but I suspect you’d find the same treatment of non-heterosexuality.
Social conservatives weren’t incorrect in thinking that, if they could maintain social shaming on homosexuality, there would be less homosexuality. They were wrong to wish to do so, because their underlying premises and values were wrong, but there surely is some cause and effect there.
By the way, I feel much differently about some other aspects of the current culture. For example, I think that some of this stuff about forty-seven kinds of sexual orientation, where everyone feels the need to have a label to describe “well, I like sex, but usually only with people I’m romantically involved with, but every now and then I’m horny for a casual fling” and every other variant as though they’re some special snowflake, is trendy nonsense that isn’t going to last. And I say that because it costs nothing to put “hemi-demi-gray aromantic” or whatever on your Twitter bio; it’s all posturing. But trans people who actually live as trans don’t, I think, have an easy life. Even in a large, liberal city, people will stare and whisper at someone who doesn’t “pass.” Guys still make snickering jokes about “chicks with dicks.” I don’t doubt that employment and housing discrimination against trans people occurs. And I just don’t think that people endure that for shits and giggles, or to earn retweets and follows on Twitter. Again, Twitter Is Not Real Life. While Twitter amplifies and rewards and protects (by banning their critics) the most extreme elements of the trans movement, real life is not so kind.
I freely admit I can’t prove any of that factually. It’s all intuition and casual observation and anecdote. Pretty much the same logic that led me to believe that gay people clearly didn’t choose to be gay, because who the hell would put up with the abuse and harassment and vitriol and prejudice voluntarily? But then, I don’t think there’s any proof in the other direction, either.
Bjarte,
I’m still not sure I follow, but this is all getting far afield from my original point (which was just a semantic quibble about the word “ban”), so I’ll just thank you for the response and leave things there.
Screechy, yes, that all makes sense. I think what made me think I disagree more [with your first comment] than I do with this reply was “With some possible exceptions for the Yanivs of the world” – because that sounded like a very small fraction, Yaniv being a real stand-out. I think there are a lot more people influenced by social contagion than there are Yaniv types.
Maybe also the “they really do sincerely believe themselves to be the gender they claim to be” bit. I think there are also plenty of trans people who don’t believe that, but just feel more at home, more comfortable, more where they should be, as the other sex. In other words they don’t make an outlandish truth claim and they don’t try to force others to endorse an outlandish truth claim. I think the distinction makes a huge difference. It’s far less violating of one’s efforts to sort fantasy from reality to be told that someone feels better living as or performing the role of the other sex than to be told someone was born in the wrong body.
OB,
Well, I suspect we probably do disagree on how common the… exceptions? posers? what should we call them? … are. I’m not sure how we would go about defining or quantifying that, much less figuring out who is closer to the “true” answer. On the one hand, you no doubt have more interaction with trans people than I do; on the other hand, I suspect your interaction is largely with an unrepresentative segment, containing the loudest, angriest, most confrontational and provocative members.
I think I largely agree with your second paragraph. That part, at least, could probably be answered by survey data.
Glosswitch (Victoria Smith) has started a newsletter (the OK Karen ;) which is well worth reading.
You can sign up here. if you like: https://tinyletter.com/Glosswitch
The Ok Karen!! God I love Glossy.
Yes, that made me laugh out loud.
I read the first installment and subscribed. Thanks for the link.
Some of you may have seen this excellent essay by Robert Jensen from a few days ago. He talks about leftist criticisms of liberal positions, and how the same fundamental criticisms are mysteriously absent in the topics of prostitution, pornography, and transgender ideology. I find his writing very accessible. It appears that my posting of this article on Facebook was the last straw for some people, but if I can’t do this tiny act of taking a stand, I can’t do anything.
https://culturico.com/2020/07/26/what-is-really-radical-in-sex-gender-politics/
Suzuki is currently running two TV adverts in the UK focusing on the stories of two Suzuki car dealers getting back to work after lockdown.
In one, the dealer is a man and his story is about his eagerness in getting back to work and his delivering cars to customers who can’t collect them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d74sqSFaC9c
In the other, the dealer is the woman, whose story is about…. cleaning the dealership and making coffee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4A5kePdaJc
Great catch. With the bonus ‘men are incompetent at normal life skills so don’t expect us to do anything useful around the house’.
The Addition War has begun!
So James Lindsay made a little, satirical instagram graphic about how 2+2=4 is a hegemonic white colonialist conception that excludes other ways of knowing, and … Blue checks took the bait. They’re seriously equivocating hard on the meanings of “2”, “+”, “=”, and “5” in order to demonstrate that 2+2=5 is true.
Some choice skirmishes:
* a TRA saying that accepting 2+2=4 makes you a transphobe.
* 2+2=5 because a crooked vendor can cheat you.
* 2+2=5 because 2.5+2.5=5
* 2+2=5 because BOGO.
* accepting 2+2=4 is Orwellian (!)
* 1+1=3 because chickens reproduce
How to prove that 2+2=5:
Mathematicians say it’s 4.
Here’s a loud guy with lots of followers who says it’s actually 6.
Therefore the “neutral”, “unbiased”, “unpolitical”, “non-ideological” answer is 5.
Q.E.D.
Corollary:
If the loud guy with lots of followers changes his claim to 2+2=8, that makes his original position the “neutral”, “unbiased”, “unpolitical”, “non-ideological” answer.
#FalseBalance
Bah ha ha ha! The Golden Mean is always unbiased.
My favorite examination of 2+2=5 is this short film. (It was nominated for a BAFTA Best Short Film award in 2011.)
https://youtu.be/EHAuGA7gqFU
That is quite good.
Officious, woke shits part 753,273:
Retweeted by Jane Clare Jones.
Staff members wishing to commemorate the death of a colleague from ovarian cancer by fundraising for an ovarian cancer charity have been prevented from using their company’s intranet for the campaign unless they choose a more “inclusive” charity. https://mobile.twitter.com/NouveauFeminist/status/1289925103266885632
The only response this sort of shit deserves is FUCK OFF. They have no good faith arguments, only empty mantras and non-sequiters. The whole point is to erode the boundaries of women and the very definition of women as a sex class, and that can only be done through bullying and intimidation.
I’m sure the following could be turned into a time-saving flow chart. Any TA argument must first pass this gauntlet before being considered at all.
Sex is complex! Yes, indeed it is; there are still only two sexes. Your Venn diagram is broken. —–>FUCK OFF
Intersex! Yes, sometimes things go wrong. How many trans people are actually intersex? —–>FUCK OFF
Clown fish! Humans are mammals. Mammals can’t change sex. —–>FUCK OFF.
Exclusionary! Yes. Not everything is about you.—–>FUCK OFF.
Inclusive language! Womxn! Uterus havers! Menstruators! Okay, now do “men.” You won’t look quite so hell-bent on erasing women, but you’ll still be wrong, and can still—–>FUCK OFF.
Genital preferences are transphobic! Says those who undoubtedly have genital preferences themselves. Incel much, rape aplogist? —–>FUCK OFF.
This is just off the top of my head. Have I missed any?
AAARGGH
It’s via JCJ that I saw the Edinburgh Press fuckup, too.
latsot @ 181 – I watched them and I see what you see but at the same time, the guy’s ad insults him with the stereotypes about fucking up everything he touches at home, so the two kind of wash each other out.
Isn’t that just saying that the man’s place is at work, not doing all that woman’s stuff at home?
When the woman comes back to work she’s just doing more woman’s stuff, but at work.
Some more ways in which 2+2=5
II+II=(F)IV(E)
The 5th hour begins 2+2 hours past midnight
2+2=(1+1+1+1+1)-1
However, as we learn from 1. Chronicles 3:22 1+1+1+1+1=6
Hence=2+2=6-1=5
You know who else believed that 2+2=4?
Hitler!
Q.E.D.
While we’re talking about JCJ, here’s a chat between her and Graham Linehan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0XNKXjwxk
Bjarte,
Please stop making me laugh. I woke up the puppy.
The majority of the math-types defending 2+2=5 are doing so by varying the equation’s meaning. E.g., if “5” means four, then it works. That smart people are unable to recognize that they’re committing an equivocation fallacy is … Well, it’s something. What that something is, I can’t tell you.
Jesus christ, they’re actually diving headlong into 2+2=5 because uncertainty. I argued this a long time ago on a game forum, specifically to annoy a guy that was regularly annoyed by how argumentative I was. He said something about how I was so argumentative, I’d probably argue against 2+2=4… and so I did. It was an exercise in wilful trolling, arguing something obviously stupid purely to annoy. And the woke are embracing it!
God that is painfully idiotic; no surprises to see Arthur Chu front and centre amongst the pomo bullshit.
Nullius #194
Motivated reasoning.
Holms @195, you realise that now the closet FtB viewers of this blog will now seize on your statement as certain proof that everything you (and we) have ever said is nothing but trolling them for the lulz. Nice one buddy!
When I was in college, there was a common joke of the form “2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently small values of 5 and sufficiently large values of 2”. Engineering approximations, you know. It was intended as humor. Funny to think about it in this context.
Found some interesting background on Dawn Ennis of Outsports (“Calling All Bullies”, August 3rd). From 2013:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/08/transgender-don-ennis-has-second-thoughts.html
He seems stable.
I think it’s pretty clear that we need more of this kind of thing:
https://twitter.com/LuckyStubbs/status/1291623999575928832
Sackbut @ 198
Yep, the joke for us was referencing floating point variables and whatnot. It was a reminder that floats and doubles are squirrely.
The world of cancel culture invades the rarefied field of music theory.
https://johnhalle.com/on-tonal-stability-and-white-fragility-music-theorys-gift-to-the-right/
This is response by John Halle to an article by Phillip Ewell discussing Heinrich Schenker and his music analysis method, as well as a commentary on the reaction to it. Ewell’s piece was critiqued by Thomas Jackson, a professor at University of North Texas (a premier music school) and an editor of the “Journal of Schenkerian Studies”; people piled on Jackson and are calling for his resignation. Halle says:
Ewell makes particular use in his piece of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”. Both DiAngelo and her book come in for significant criticism in Halle’s piece.
Halle concludes, with words that could have applied to so many examples in a wide variety of academic disciplines:
The National Review article mentioned in the quoted passage is:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/at-the-university-of-north-texas-the-mob-comes-calling-for-a-music-theorist/
It is also well worth reading.
Interesting. It’s going to take me a lot of clicking to figure out who is saying what about which here!
Took a walk the other day about 3km away from my place, and mingled with the locals.
https://imgbox.com/WO8xZaCg
https://imgbox.com/P3Ggcu9r
https://imgbox.com/LBSYeIQ4
Excellent (if sobering) article in Rolling Stone:
The Unraveling of America
Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/?fbclid=IwAR3lbJtSf-ZEtloamWxpWTJgGpeW0i91cSLIy0jvFOge9PracnfRCWz1rqA
Some choice quotes:
So I was reading through the post and comments on music theory, trying to follow what is for me a very esoteric debate, and I came across this quote in the Halle article Sackbut linked to:
In the interest of not derailing that thread, I’ll put my comment here.
“Merge” is an operation proposed within Chomsky’s “Minimalist Program”, a program within the paradigm of Universal Grammar, which has many critics within the broader discipline of linguistics. Saying “linguists have identified… ‘merge'” is akin to saying “physicists have identified ‘strings'”.
I’ve been out of the debate around UG for over a decade, but in doing some searching for critiques I found the following article which presents a (to me) novel argument against UG, as well as a critical summary of some of the other critiques that have been presented. I can’t say I’ve digested it all, but on first reading I found his argument sound (even though I find usage-based approaches convincing).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002438411730147X
But anyway, my broader point is not that Chomsky’s wrong, but that there’s controversy in the field that’s often overlooked by scholars from different fields, and I don’t think that’s specific to linguistics, or that linguists are immune to that when commenting on other fields (which is why I won’t try to enter the debate on music theory).
Thank you, I was wondering about that bit and wanting to learn more.
Following up on my 206, there’s a bit of sleight of hand that Chomsky performs when he talks about language “evolving” that Lin doesn’t seem to pick up on (though I’ve seen an abstract of his which suggests he may be aware of it). That depends on the polysemy of “evolve”. In one sense, it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that language evolved (with the caveat that we don’t have any direct evidence), in that it probably developed from some more primitive communication system during the evolution of our line of primates, rather than springing up all at once, but that’s not the same thing as saying that language (or, as Chomsky might put it, the language organ) evolved in a Darwinian sense. That is, it is not necessarily true that there is anything in the human organism that evolved specifically and solely “for” language. It’s also plausible that language was a cultural invention that took advantage of innate capacities that evolved for other reasons.
Here’s what one neuroscientist has to say about it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5325862/.
I’m similarly not convinced by cognitive claims regarding a universal experience in music. Steven Pinker made some appallingly bad arguments in The Blank Slate. Daniel Levitin, a cognitive scientist who studies music and cognition, has made some rather strong claims in his popular books and backed them up with utter nonsense in regard to classical music. He may be right, but it is clear that he is much more interested in and knowledgeable about popular music than classical, and his examples (such as for the ubiquity of absolute pitch) are facile and unconvincing. Pinker, however, is plainly wrong in his sweeping condemnation of music of the 20th century, using appeals to what pleases babies.
Pinker’s wrong about a lot of things, starting with “The Language Instinct” (it’s not an instinct). (One of my dissertation committee members, who was a grad student around the same time as Pinker, once referred me to an old article of his and snarked, “That was back when Pinker was doing science.”)
It just occurred to me that I read Levitin’s book “This is Your Brain on Music” a few years back (it was a Christmas present). It didn’t leave much of a permanent mark on my thinking (which is to say, I don’t remember much about it). I think I thought there were some interesting ideas, but I didn’t have any way to evaluate their validity.
I guess this is less of surprise to others than it was to me — I recall reading that he had health issues, but that was about it — but Ed Brayton is saying goodbye.
The last year or so has been especially cruel to him.
Facebook has recently updated their hate speech policy, so I thought I’d take a look. Interestingly, sex is a protected characteristic, they include examples of women being referred to as objects as examples of hate speech, and they reject calling people cunts. They also reject statements that a protected characteristic doesn’t or shouldn’t exist (as a real or protected characteristic, I presume). I don’t see anything regarding criticisms of ideology. It’s very difficult to parse these policy statements for certain key cases.
https://m.facebook.com/communitystandards/recentupdates/hate_speech/
In a “weird story keeps getting weirder” tale:
Since it was one of the most-read articles of the year, many of you will already be familiar with New York Magazine’s article The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge, regarding Harvard Law School professor Bruce Hay. I won’t even attempt to summarize it other than to say that it told that story of Hay getting entangled with two women, one cis and one trans, which led to a Title IX complaint against Hay, accusations of paternity fraud and house theft, and more. Hay was the primary source for the article, which is told largely from his perspective. Not to say that he comes out looking great — see the title.
Recently, Hay (who has apparently been indefinitely suspended by HLS) has apparently reconciled with the women he previously accused of scamming him, and he filed a lawsuit against the magazine, the reporter, and the magazine’s legal counsel, for defamation, breach of contract, and sexual harassment. Yes, you read that correctly. Hay claims that the magazine defamed him by printing what he told them was true, when they should have known better had they investigated. He also claims that his participation as a source for the story created a legal contract with NY Mag to report the story accurately, and that he was a “consultant” for the magazine under NY harassment laws, which were violated when the reporter used her feminine wiles to induce him to talk more. It’s that bad. Hay is (unsurprisingly) representing himself in that lawsuit.
The two women filed their own separate lawsuit. It hasn’t been as widely reported yet; the only article I found was from an LGBTQ publication called them. That article contains some interesting phraseology:
Did you catch it? Schuman just “is” transgender. (The headline also refers to Schuman and her partner as “queer”). But Bolonik only “identifies as a lesbian.” You know, we’re not sure, that’s just what she says.
The article goes on to quote the various plaintiffs and their complaints sympathetically, including their claim that the article was transphobic.
Anyway, the whole thing is just an ugly mess, so of course we must throw some accusations of transphobia into the mix. (I should also mention, for those new to the saga, that NY Mag also published a follow-up piece based on reports from other men who Schuman and her partner either did or attempted to defraud, and Hay’s ex-wife was a key source as well. This was never just a case of Hay’s word against theirs.)
Yiiiikes. Funny coincidence, I’ve just been reading a different New York Mag story about a different annoying pile of bullshit.
A well known twitter lawyer, whom I won’t annoy Screechy by mentioning ;-), was asked about Hay’s lawsuit a few days ago. He described it as ‘beautiful’. I don’t think it was meant as a compliment.
It’s a sad story in a way. Hay was a former Supreme Court clerk, became an HLS professor at a fairly young age, and now he’s a punchline. When it was just being fooled by some con artists, well, that can happen, he’s hardly the first person to be “book smart” but not “street smart.” But this latest turn of events looks like a man who has totally lost it emotionally. Apparently there is nobody in his life who can shake him and demand “what are you doing?”
Between Hay, Larry Lessig, and Dershowitz, HLS isn’t looking very good these days. (And if you want a laugh, look up Popehat’s stories about Charles Nesson throwing chalk at him. “Billion Dollar Charlie” is a beaut, too.)
This is a thing of wonder. Just really good editing, not a deep fake. Tucker’s tiny little mind will explode. With any luck, so will a few million others.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfZwWvsX0AAs-11?format=jpg&name=medium
I’ve decided that woke analysis really is just the process of looking for symbolism in literature but transferred to reality. Coloring books teach us to “stay within the lines”, which obviously means that it’s teaching us to “stay within the lines” of our race.
Obviously.
Apparently, that a kid doesn’t want to be transed is irrelevant to the court.
https://twitter.com/NewgentTGA/status/1294388338548498435?s=20
So apparently this comment doesn’t meet Facebook’s standard for hate speech:
Goddammit Zuckerberg.
The reporting system for Facebook doesn’t allow you to add a comment for why you think a post is offensive, so I’m assuming they didn’t recognize that “Joo” is an intentional misspelling of “Jew”.
Because otherwise, there’s no defense.
This absolutely brilliant thread was referenced by several people I follow on Twitter.
Amy, a teenage girl who runs an Instagram page, likes to feature interviews with people who hold controversial views. She asked her readers who to interview, and they overwhelmingly suggested a “TERF”. Olivia was interviewed, the responses formatted and posted. The backlash was fierce.
Olivia describes the process and the reaction, and she includes the interview pages. Her introduction and responses are excellent, forthright and well argued without being in any way combative. One teen who complained on Instagram, a trans-identified girl, said Olivia made good points but it hurt her feelings to suggest that she is female. Olivia notes here that this young woman’s identity rests on a “house of cards”, an apt analogy.
A little tricky to read, but definitely worthwhile.
https://twitter.com/terfalicious/status/1296755593772965889?s=19
Update: Olivia has put the interview and discussion on her “carrd” web site. It’s easier to read there.
https://radfem.carrd.co/?s=09#interviewstory
Holy shit, he really wants people dead:
A Former Administration Official Says Trump Told FEMA to Withhold California Fire Relief Out of Spite
Not that the guy revealing this gets a free pass; he kept his silence for two years before coming out with this testimony.
Jeezus.
Looking for some input on something. How do you all feel about the expression “happy wife, happy life”? I just came across it as the title of someone’s stand-up comedy special, but I also seem to be hearing it a lot lately in “real life.” Usually in the context of married guys explaining why they (a) are doing something they don’t really want to, or (b) can’t do something they do want to.
Of course the basic concept is fine — in any partnership, there should be a healthy give and take, and being concerned with your partner’s well-being is only natural — but I note that I’ve never heard an equivalent expression about “happy husband.”
As a single guy, I don’t really have any personal emotional stake in it, but it just seems… irritating to me somehow, and I’m not sure why. Do women find it patronizing?
Yep. I flinch when I hear it.
I don’t think I’ve heard a simple expression in reference to a husband, but I certainly have read plenty of commentary (notably in antique advice manuals) that the primary purpose of a wife is to keep her husband happy. Some examples:
https://www.easyweddings.com.au/articles/old-world-marriage-advice/
https://thewonderlist.net/good-wifes-guide-10-old-fashioned-good-practices-for-the-perfect-wife/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9766395/Advice-for-women-in-the-1930s-Nothing-destroys-the-happiness-of-married-life-more-than-the-lazy-slovenly-wife.html
I don’t think I’ve heard “happy husband, happy life” or anything so succinct, but there are any number of marriage advice sources stating or implying that a wife’s primary purpose is to keep her husband happy. Is that sufficiently close?
Sackbut,
I think the differences are, first, that the advice to women states or implies that (as you say) it is a wife’s “primary purpose” to make her husband happy. The implication of the expression I’m talking about is not that it is a husband’s duty or primary purpose to make his wife happy, just that doing so will make his life easier. To put it more crudely, “keep the old ball-and-chain happy, or she’ll make your life miserable.”
Second, the advice you’re talking about is generally seen as outdated in our society, outside of the more conservative/religious elements, whereas “happy wife, happy life” is spouted by even (some) liberal feminist men.
Anyway, I don’t mean to make a big deal out of it.
The Washington Post recently ran a story about “Toxic Positivity”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/toxic-positivity-mental-health-covid/2020/08/19/5dff8d16-e0c8-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html?fbclid=IwAR3eH3-favdEKPGH5l65Rupu-KTmQRgzT8taaR0gyy_po6gaYGovz8YvbUw
It made me think once again of everything I detest about what Barbara Ehrenreich has (correctly in my view) called the “Ideology of Positive Thinking”.
For one thing it obviously can – and often does – lead people – from individuals to whole societies – to dismiss legitimate concerns, ignore real threats and deny real problems rather than dealing with them (climate change being an obvious example), and basically gamble everything on the unjustified hope that everything’s going to turn out fine all by itself. If that’s not criminal negligence, then I don’t know what is.
It can also make people strongly motivated to do the wrong things, whether it’s taking on unsustainable amounts of debt, or, conversely, lending out risky mortgages to people with no realistic prospects of repaying them, or, for that matter, invading Iraq and expecting to be greeted by cheering crowds throwing flowers. As others have commented, there are no more dangerous people than the highly enthusiastic incompetents who don’t know what they are doing and hence run as fast as they can in the wrong direction.
And as many others have pointed out, the really cruel and heartless side to the whole ideology (and I don’t think evil is too strong a word) is the victim-blaming aspect. If you take as a premise that every problem is fixable simply by having the right attitude, it pretty much follows logically that anyone who’s suffering – and whose problems cannot just be conjured out of existence through an act of will – must have the wrong attitude and hence only has him-/herself to blame.
Furthermore, as far as ideologies, go, the ideology of positive thinking is inherently conservative and pro status quo. Why work to improve anything in the real world if the world’s just fine as it is and any suggestion to the contrary is just negativity and wrong attitude?
To the extent that positive thinking motivates us to “improve” anything it’s only our own individual standing within the world as it is. But even here this solipsistic focus on our own inner lives easily becomes a substitute for doing the actual work out in the real world that might in fact make a difference. And this really is one of the great ironies of this whole story: After all the pseudo-”rational” justification for embracing the ideology of positive thinking (i.e. the justification most often heard from people who don’t personally believe in New Age nonsense like the “Law of Attraction”) is that “At least it can motivate people to get off their ass and work to improve their lot”.
Finally – and this is the one point that I think too often gets lost in these debates – it is important to note that positive thinking has nothing to do with actual happiness, life satisfaction, well-being etc. The goal of positive thinking was never to make people happier but to make them more tractable, more compliant, more ready to put up with anything that employers and other authority figures throw at them and not stand up for themselves. To me perhaps the most revealing quote from Ehrenreich’s Bright Sided was from the motivational speaker who told victims of the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 to “pretend” to be optimistic even if they didn’t mean it. That pretty much says it all.
*positive thinking has nothing to do with actual happiness…
Thanks for the article link. I agree with your commentary.
A family member posted a video about a remarkable man who had an awful family history, pushed himself severely as a young adult, and accomplished many physical feats, including many arduous military training certifications. Yes, he is pretty impressive, but while watching the video I thought about Survivor Fallacy, “I overcame adversity this way, therefore you can, too”. It seemed to be what he was “selling”, in addition to telling his story. And, as you note re positivity, it emphasizes fixing our own lives, it doesn’t allow for fixing wider problems that lead to these adverse conditions. Racism, discrimination, abuse, let’s just be strong and deal with it rather than stopping it and preventing others from having to deal with it. Suffering is good for you, you know.
Heck, here’s the video. “Enjoy.”
https://www.facebook.com/439893699362805/posts/3443038809048264/?extid=HwQzpRrt8TS8XPHP&d=null&vh=e
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/08/23/invalid-baptism-dearborn-priest-sacraments/3426488001/
A catholic priest has found out he was baptised incorrectly 30 years ago. His priest said “we baptise you…” rather than “I baptise you…” which is obviously completely wrong, so the magic didn’t work. This meant that his ordination was also invalid and so all the magic he’s done since (baptisms, marriages, funerals, confessions, exorcisms etc) didn’t work either and has to be re-done.
You’d have thought that a cardinal or something could just do one big spell and re-do the magic all at once, but apparently that’s stupid and the church has to track down all the people who have been living in sin and/or burning in hell and re-do the magic one spell at a time.
I’m not sure what will happen to the people they can’t trace.
That’s hilarious.
Remember Jed Rubenfeld? The Yale law professor (and husband of “Tiger Mom” YLS professor Amy Chua) who said what a great guy Brett Kavanaugh is? The one who reportedly (though he denied it) told female YLS students seeking clerkships that Kavanaugh preferred a certain look? See this thread for a refresher.
Well, Yale just suspended him for sexual harassment. Least shocking development ever.
Rubenfeld denies the accusations and claims he’s been targeted because of his writings about Title IX proceedings at universities. But it’s not a good sign of his credibility when he complains to a reporter that he was forbidden to know the identity of his accuser, and it turns out… nope, not the case.
Looks like “Jessica” Yaniv is at it again. He’s now launching a civil suit against some of the same minority women he dragged into the BC Human Rights Tribunal last year (where he lost):
https://nationalpost.com/news/trans-activist-jessica-yaniv-files-second-lawsuit-against-3-beauticians-after-losing-human-rights-suit-to-them-in-2019
Maybe Yaniv can get a judge to agree that the sexual binary is a racist, colonial imposition on the world and, as women of colour, the beauticians he’s
targetingbeing victimized by should be totally fine with handling his parts, since their classification as “male” is bigotted and imperialist. More peak transing in the offing, but in the meantime those women get victimized again. Maybe some TAs concerned about alleged “racist” GC “white women” can do a cleanup in aisle five of one of their own actually harming minority, immigrant women? Hello, Morgane, are you there? I’m not sure that the dictum of there being “no such thing as bad publicity” really holds in this instance. Even without his pervy, stalker history, Yaniv’s case, grounded as much in religious and racist animosity as it is in any rights or freeedoms he might be hoping to advance, is not really going to do the cause of trans “rights” any good, but I would rather see him drop it than to force the women he is abusing from being through this ordeal AGAIN!I hope the court tells him to fuck off, otherwise it becomes complicit in Yaniv’s continued violation of these women’s health. safety and livelihood.
Oh good god.
Notice the name of the author – Devika Desai. The women Yaniv is tormenting are named Sandeep Benipal, Marcia DaSilva and Sukhdhip Hehar. Nicely played, National Post.
To an interested layperson like myself, trying to understand what physics actually tells us about reality at a fundamental level can be a frustrating endeavour. Still, every once in a while you read or hear something that makes you think “Yay! I just got ever so slightly less clueless!*”. Speaking for myself, no science popularizer has sparked this reaction in me more often than Sean Carroll.
For several months now Carroll has posted weekly informal lectures about “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe” on his YouTube channel. To those who may have missed it I highly recommend them. Alas, the series has just reached the end. The final episode is about a very big idea indeed. The idea is “Science”.
https://www.youtube.com/user/seancarroll/videos
* There is, of course, always the possibility that it’s just the Dunning/Kriger Effect fooling you into thinking this.
Here’s a really disturbing story.
A school board was keeping nude images of an underage girl (i.e. child pornography) on file to discredit her in a sexual assault case. The girl (who is black) had been assaulted by a white male student. Both were suspended. Somehow the school had obtained nude photos that the girl had sent to another boy (not the assailant). In the school’s view, this apparently damaged the truthfulness of her accusation of assault against her attacker. The fact of the school board keeping these images on file has just arisen, in the course of the girl’s suit against the school board’s handling of the incident.
https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/suit-gwinnett-schools-using-ex-students-nude-photos-to-discredit-her/KPHQAPMCL5CBZCEGO7FMLA377M/
Here’s an earlier story on the original assault:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/09/title-ix-sexual-assault-allegations-in-k-12-schools.html
Holy shit.
So another “gender reveal party” has gone bad — causing a wildfire in California.
I remain baffled at how this “blue vs. pink” thing has developed in our society over my lifetime. As a general matter, and with all the usual caveats about how much further we need to go, I really do think there’s been social progress during these decades, including in the area of sexism. But this increasing emphasis on gender, even while we insist that they’re equal, is puzzling.
I’m tempted to compare it to “separate but equal” in the context of race, where society responded to the theoretical legal equality of blacks by only paying lip service to the idea while reinforcing the actual divisions between the races. But I don’t think that quite works. In the racial context, whites held the power and used it to separate themselves. But so much of the gender stratification is being done by women — they’re doing at least, and usually more than, half of the shopping and home decorating and party planning. So it’s largely women who decide that boys get these toys and girls get those ones, and the girls’ rooms must be painted pink, and won’t a gender reveal party be fun! I don’t get the sense that these are things being imposed on women by, say, the male-dominated toy company executives or something. The mothers I know are enthusiastic proponents of folk wisdom about how boys are like this, and girls are like that.
Anybody have a good explanation, or a link to one?
I was just on my way to do a rant about this.
This was an American Humanist Association follow-up to the AHA’s posting of a CNN article about the so-called “transgender ban” in women’s and girl’s sports in Idaho.
https://thehumanist.com/commentary/trolling-and-controlling-harming-trans-athletes-is-not-a-humanist-sport
Apparently comments on the original post “devolved into a malicious and transphobic free-for-all”. I don’t really feel like looking up their post, but given the tenor of this follow-up, I suspect I would have significant disagreement with them about what constitutes “transphobic”, let alone a “malicious and transphobic free-for-all”.
The “scientific evidence” issue is always going to be a problem, when high-profile organizations like the NIH put out reports like the one mentioned in the article (which is a “review of the literature” study, not a direct study). It would be nice to have handy a clear rebuttal or two to the NIH article. Any suggestions?
It’s distressing to see the AHA concerned almost entirely with the trans athletes, talking about “inclusion” and emotional blackmail such as suicide risk, but not about women and their interests as a class of people.
The NIH article is here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357259/
Well that’s going to piss me off.
This person is conducting a survey.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10220746684069415&id=1006608404
The people sought in the survey are those who “identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (you are not cisgender)”.
MOST people are gender non-conforming. MOST people fail to live up to the sexist stereotypical expectations of their sex. Apparently “cisgender” excludes most people.
I wonder what the researcher would do in response to people like most of us who don’t question their sex, but who assert that they are gender non-conforming, and reject the label “cis”.
I saw that too! Was very tempted to answer the survey to say what you said. Resisted the temptation because wasted effort.
Is that researcher a proper academic/scientist? Because if so they should be stripped of their degree and tossed on the street to sell tacos for the rest of their lives. Talk about designing your research to support a pre-determined outcome.
New whistleblower complaint filed by human rights groups on unsafe medical treatment, neglect, and forced sterilization of migrant women in a Georgia ICE prison run by a private company.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/like-an-experimental-concentration-camp-whistleblower-complaint-alleges-mass-hysterectomies-at-ice-detention-center/
Studebaker, I saw that reported on Twitter as well. Not only horrifying but also a literal crime against humanity if true. I also saw it reported that a refugee/inmate at one of ICE’s facilities, who was scheduled to give evidence in a Federal trial has been deported, making it impossible for her to appear. As Popehat said, the Government has ways of impeaching a witness that is not open to the rest of us.
Rob,
That’s disturbing. Thanks for informing me I sincerely hope this isn’t part of an organized effort but there are disturbing coincidences. It’s hard not to see Steven Miller’s grubby little hands in all of this. Coincide it with continued family separation, sexual abuse of migrant women and children, and it’s a pretty horrific picture. I live just down the road from one of these. Once every few weeks I wake up and wonder what am I doing with my life that I’m not down there protesting every day. I don’t want to know what comes next if Trump steals the next election. More motivation to work hard on as many local and state elections as possible.
On happier notes-partner just made excellent bread so I guess I’ll drown my sorrows in carbs for now!
I came across this video about “white fascism” on a channel called Innuendo Studios:
https://youtu.be/5Luu1Beb8ng
It’s quite good, tying together the topics of fascism, whiteness, nationalism, and racism in a clear way. Some of the points (eg transphobia) are glossed over and miss the mark, but overall I think it provides a helpful explanatory framing, and does a better job than many articles I’ve read.
‘The Rainbow Pens of Doom Meet Judith Butler’:
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1308672369096118273
Sobering article in The Atlantic on possible scenarios in the upcoming US Presidential election: The Election That Could Break America
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/
I’m scared shitless about the election. I’m avoiding thinking about it.
Nothing here we didn’t know about Trump’s racism, but what’s telling is the defense.
So hey, he’s not racist, he’s just cynical, stupid, and an asshole to everyone (speaking of things we already knew).
Maybe of background interest to people.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/122876380/covid19-what-the-world-can-learn-from-new-zealands-and-icelands-virus-response
WaM, #260. So now they’re trying to sell him as an equal opportunities hater. Yep, that defense is telling indeed – it’s telling the electorate ‘Vote for Trump: He hates the people you hate”. It’s just not telling them that he also hates the people who do vote for him.
AoS,
People Trump loves:
Himself
Ivanka
Putin
His own reflection
and, on a good day, Melania.
He seems to have fallen out of love with Kim Jong Un.
I don’t think he really loves Ivanka. He thinks she’s hot and he thinks she makes him look good, but love? He’s a narc; narcs don’t love.
Putin though…maybe,but it could be just fear.
Good point. I think with Putin it’s a mix of admiration and envy. Sort of like Jack Nicholson’s Joker–“where does he get all those wonderful toys?”
I love this — Scott Adams (the Dilbert cartoonist and self-proclaimed Genius who went Full Trumper) has a video up complaining that he feels personally abused by Trump’s bad answer to the white supremacist question. Hang in there, Genius Man, perhaps eventually you’ll get to admitting that maybe Trump’s critics were right and you were wrong. Maybe.
Heehee I saw headlines about that.
My birthday is this week. I was wondering what I would get myself as a present – baklava? Irish cream? a computer upgrade? – when the news answered my question for me:
US President Donald Trump says he and Melania Trump have tested positive for covid-19
I was about to comment on that, too. What a headline to wake up to; I thought I was still asleep and having a pleasant dream.
I’ll bet he’s already considering nuking China.
@Holms
Happy Birthday to you and me (not today but soon enough)!
But also confused, didn’t he always test negative previously? I don’t understand how it’s possible. /s
Those Chinese are sooo clever. I bet they broke into his Twitter account and infected him that way.
Well GOOD MORNING.
Another petition. This is a counter-petition, opposing an attempt to ban Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage”, about transgender ideology social contagion among teenage girls.
https://www.change.org/p/amazon-regnery-publishing-simon-and-schuster-google-inc-don-t-ban-irreversible-damage-by-abigail-shrier
An odd coincidence: I recently made a comment about there being a wider selection of gender identities than of Starbucks coffees. Since making that comment I have seen a few new (to me, no idea how long they’ve been running) Starbucks tv ads carrying the tag-line Every Name is a Story.
The ‘stars’ of the adverts are transgender individuals, telling us just how affirming it is to see their ‘real’ names written on a polyfoam cup. One, a female-to-male named Cairo, apparently did have a temporary fit of anxiety when the barista mis-spelt the name, but plucky Cairo found the courage to correct the barista and they – gasp! – laughed it off.
And, yes, the f-m brave wee things speak with annoyingly simpering, whispery voices, and look at the camera with wide, wet-eyed expressions that make me think of abused puppies grateful that they haven’t been kicked today.
Such nauseating adverts. I’ve never yet been inside a Starbucks nor tasted their coffee, and crap such as these ads are certainly not about to change that.
Etsy has banned JKR merchandise. Apparently only the “positive” kind, expressing love for JKR, is prohibited.
Spinster thread.
Banned items include various “I Heart JK Rowling” items.
Not banned items include “Fuck JK Rowling” merchandise and “Punch TERFs” merchandise, according to examples on Spinster.
The Etsy policy referenced in the message says:
I saw nothing indicating it was OK to threaten violence to members of hate groups. Saying “I Hate Nazis” is OK by example, and mocking Nazis is OK, but they say nothing specific about saying “Punch Nazis”. They do prohibit, in a different section, threatening violence.
In a small spot of good news, NZ is back to having zero active cases of Covid-19 in the community. Key to getting our recent spate of outbreaks under control:
– Contact tracing (90% of contacts traced within 48 hours).
– Wide spread community testing.
– Genome sequencing all cases with no clinical connection (to be sure which cases were related).
– Rapidly moving into a lockdown in the region where an outbreak was detected.
– Whole of community precautions such as social distancing, masks and enhanced hygiene.
– Infected community members and their households moved into quarantine facilities (travellers already do two weeks in isolation facilities).
– Pretty good buy in to all of the above from the population.
Point of interest – while airborne/droplet spread is clearly the key, at least two transmissions appear to have occurred off surfaces. These were a lift button and a rubbish bin lid, both in isolation facilities. In one case a maintenance worker used a lift just after an infected resident (and went to the same floor). In the other case a resident about to be discharged discarded rubbish in a lobby rubbish bin with a lid, shortly after an infected resident had discarded used tissues. In both these cases the combination of rapid contact tracing and genome identification allowed these clusters to be quickly pinched out and differentiated from the larger community cluster.
My point isn’t how well NZ has done, but that we have successfully implemented the techniques that health officials all over the world have been promoting. Our experience also shows just how easy it is to have outbreaks and the effort required to reign them back in. Nothing any western country couldn’t do if they had the political will.
Oh nice, another post from PZ protesting his innocence while blatantly lying about The Shunning… most notably:
Hateful towards trans people. A specific knowledge claim without grounding, and in defiance of all that has been written by OB on the topic.
Well, you know – he has to appeal to his base.
OK, it’s Friday after a long week, and I’m feeling a bit giddy, but as I was scrolling through the front page I was imagining what it would look like if the titles of the posts were mashed together (with some creative punctuation).
What he wants to say: Who will feel shut out As suspicion mounts? This monster. (Definition of How Trump responds.) Beware rank democracy: Erratic even by his standards.
Learn to stop worrying; If Donald got fired, The fly won.
Letter to the swamp creatures: Mister Dex Still flying By helicopter at sunset. Sir, he did this, and he did that. “This tyrant bitch”? Insult us more! Don Junior thinks Trump is acting crazy; Any specious argument or catechism will do.
Have y’all seen this? Jane Clare Jones has gathered a coven and launched a new magazine for feminists. A physical, material one! To reflect the physical, material reality of womanhood!
Jones has said part of the inspiration for the magazine is to take all this interest and energy and passion that has unified women around the trans issue, and channel it towards a broader, and renewed/refreshed feminist movement. (Apologies, I’m not good at paraphrasing, especially on a Friday night after a glass or two, but I think I’m getting the basic gist of it.)
It looks to be quite interesting (and it promises to be beautiful!), and the yuletide gift-giving season is fast approaching, if that’s your sort of thing, or the sort of thing for a young niece or someone you know…
https://theradicalnotion.org
Ooh, I hadn’t seen that.
Ophelia! You must contribute to it!!! I know for a fact you and The Radical Notion are meant to be. I can’t wait to read your contributions!
Thanks Arty, I did see that and subscribed yesterday, looks great. I had meant to mention it here myself.
You’re right that Ophelia would fit right in.
While I’m on, everyone should see this brilliance from Vulvamort:
https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1314342950936211467?s=20
Arty – heh – you don’t have to wait to read my contributions, they’re right here under your nose! (Plus in The Freethinker and Free Inquiry.)
Thank you Arty–I’d been vaguely aware, but your pitch persuaded me and I’ve subscribed.
On a different note, perhaps educational, or possibly not: We have something here apparently called the Art & Technology Task Force, now promoting one of their events on our intranet. I quote:
I don’t understand a word of it, but the buzzword density seems a bit on the high side. Or shall we say, over the top?
Wow. It does sort of tell a coherent story – I can follow the train of thought – but the story seems to be utter bullshit. I’d love to know what “resist binaries by activating non-human actors in the realisation of works” is supposed to mean. What kind of non-human actors? Like, raccoons, or clocks, or ice cream, or what?
Harald, would you be willing to share Angela’s surname? I’m dying to look her up.
Ophelia: Otters, perhaps. Maybe iknklast would know.
guest: McArthur.
Thank you. From her website it looks like she’s actually doing some interesting creative work.
Sure, but sometimes I wish artists would just do the art and not try to explain it.
A production of a play about Joan of Arc was cancelled because the playwright was deemed transphobic.
https://thepostmillennial.com/playwright-cancelled-for-gender-critical-views
Intense investigation of personal statements in personal space, comments having nothing to do with the play. No evidence presented. Combing through minutiae, found guilty of wrongthink, never allowed to do anything ever again.
That sounds familiar.
Trump attempts introspection. “I could be one of the diers”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/donald-trump-covid-19-white-house.html
Just finishing Robert Reich’s The Common Good. His take on the current malignancy in American political life takes a longer view that encompasses decades and looks at key shifts in areas of government, and business, and the interactions and relationships between the two. While Trump plays a part in this book, Reich makes it clear that the setting of the stage for his rise took many years, not just the most recent election cycle.
I’d seen some videos and twitter posts by him and was intrigued. A quick, but incisive read, straightforward and heartfelt. A valuable contribution that desrves amplification and consideration. Recommended.
Thanks. Added to my Goodreads list. I read his Saving Capitalism some years back and thought it was quite good.
I see that the American Humanist Association (AHA) is filing an amicus brief on behalf of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in a free speech case. They discuss their rationale here, explaining well why they are sometimes on the same side although usually on the opposite side of issues.
Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has received flak for being on the same side of issues as ADF, including filing amicus briefs in their support. Certainly the arguments for and against such partnerships are sound and worth considering. I suspect the AHA will receive some similar flak. However, I don’t think the flak against the AHA will amount to much; they won’t be declared traitors to their cause, their opponents (that is, people who reject Humanism) will not use this amicus brief as indication of corruption or hypocrisy or evil inherent in Humanism.
The AHA is unlikely to support the ADF in cases related to the issues of interest to WoLF: pushing back against gender ideology. The AHA is not going to support the free speech of gender critical feminists, or those who support their cause, people like JK Rowling or Maya Forstater or Meghan Murphy. Neither will the ACLU or SPLC support free speech in these cases, their stated principles be damned.
I’ve just seen this on Crip Dyke’s blog over at FTB, and thought I’d pop it up here:
Doesn’t CD know that you’re with the enemy these days, WaM? There’s only three comments on the post as of now, none of which mention that you’re a regular here* but I’m sure that it won’t be long before before the first Ummm, you do know that WaM is at TERF central now?.
*although one does suggest that your ‘nym has possible racist origins!
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pervertjustice/2020/10/10/what-a-maroon/
Wow. It happened.
Twitter locked the Trump campaign’s account, saying a post about the Bidens violated its rules.
Huh!
This book review delights me. I may have to buy the book. I am, admittedly, a sucker for stories of libertarians having sudden encounters with reality. The addition of bears to the mix is just *chef’s kiss*
Short version: a bunch of libertarian dudebros meet up online and decide to move to the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, and turn it into the Galt’s Gulch of their dreams. It…. doesn’t go well, in large part because of the emerging problem of black bears that aren’t afraid of humans. The bear problem may or may not have been caused by the dudebros, but it was certainly not the kind of problem that their philosophy of FREEDUM was equipped to handle….
I’m intrigued.
Thanks for the tip, AoS. A couple of things:
1. I have long tended to keep quiet about trans issues, because (a) I’m not in any of the affected groups; and (b) I’m not entirely comfortable with either side of the issue, though I do find this site to be more open to dissent in general.
2. re my ‘nym, I chose it when I first started commenting on WEIT, in honor of my alma mater and Coyne’s employer, the University of Chicago, whose nickname is the Maroons. The law school there used to show classic black and white movies on the weekend, and they’d always have a short before the main feature. Often that short would be a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and the crowd would crack up whenever Bugs commented “What a maroon!” When I migrated to Pharyngula, I kept the name in the off chance someone would remember me, and same here.
By the way, I found two etymologies for “maroon”. The first is for the color, and it derives from a French word for “chestnut”, marron. That’s the sense that gave UC its nickname.
The second is for the sense “abandoned”, and it seems to derive from the old Spanish word cimarron, “wild, fugitive”, which itself comes from the word cimarra, “thicket”, and seems to be related to cima, “summit”. Evidently runaway enslaved people in Cuba were referred to as negros cimarrones; this was borrowed into French and at some point was shortened to marron. I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the first etymon influenced the second, either in French or in English–it could be folk etymology, for example, with people assuming that the marron element referred to the color of the fugitives’ skin.
It was in this latter sense that escaped slaves in the Americas became known as “Maroons”. I have no idea if that influenced Bugs’s use of the word, but as someone pointed out on CD’s blog, Bugs was known for mangling words.
My source for the etymology: the best extant website, The Online Etymological Dictionary, along with this article on Wikipedia.
And cimarron brings to mind Emmylou.
It’s marron season, too. Quite a few of the trees in my neighborhood.
Roast some for me, will you?
I know I’m not the only Tom Lehrer fan here, so I thought I’d mention that Tom has taken the unusual step of placing most of his material (to which he owns the rights) into the public domain.
See here for an explanation, and links to lyrics and sheet music. The site will be taken down in December 2024.
My wife stumbled across this video on youtube: Our Bodies Back. Poetry set to dance, or is it dance set to poetry? Whichever way you see it, it’s powerful stuff. I recommend it. And so does my wife, and her endorsement counts.
Afterwards, you can watch the making of … for a bit of background.
Dutch Ethical Hacker Logs into Trump’s Twitter Account
“Last week a Dutch security researcher succeeded in logging into the Twitter account of the American President Donald Trump. Trump, an active Twitterer with 87 million followers, had an extremely weak and easy to guess password and had according to the researcher, not applied two-step verification.”
And it isn’t even the first time it happened!
…
BUT HER EMAILS
lol
omgomgomg
I missed it earlier, but the password was: maga2020. The guy got it on his fifth guess.
BUT HER EMAILS
HAhahahahahahahahaha
What a wasted opportunity. Imagine the fun one could have had with access to his twitter, firing off the most ridiculous things possible before changing the password to lock him out.
I’d start with ‘I can’t believe that so many Americans are Stupid enough to vote for Me again. You gotta love Idiots’, then follow it up immediately with ‘Oops!!! That was supposed to be a private text to Mitch. And I was only Joking anyway. Obama thinks my Great American Fans are stupid’
I wonder how long it would take for twitter to lock the account?.
Before and after the internet:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/before-2
Hm…
Here’s a little preview of Amy Coney Barrett’s America:
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1320898626332209152
Hm, there’s a really weird thing going on over at Pharyngula. PZ has a post up about sex. Sexed anatomy, sex as a reproductive role, sexual dimorphism… I thought these things didn’t exist? Did they get switched off and now they’re back on or something? It’s so *confusing* the way these concepts either exist or don’t exist!
*checks again*
Ohhkay it’s about spider reproduction, not human. So I guess it is one of those quantum superposition thingamies, where a thing both exists and doesn’t exist at the same time, and we can only discern if sex is understandable and real after first resolving the species being discussed. It exists for all species, but vanishes when talking about humans. Gosh, biology must be complicated.
/lots of sarcasm
My wife stumbled across this one:
Husband, Make Sure Your Wife Votes Exactly like You
I kid you not. The husband is to make sure that his wife votes just like he does, although he “should not be abusive or a jerk about this authority”. She just has to submit, see? So no problem, then. Funny how that works.
Twitter must be reading here; it put that item at the top of my feed just now.
No twitter or facebook is allowed in our household (by mutual consent, mind you). My wife had first found a mention of this guy in the Daily Kos, then searched the net and found him. So I guess word got around.
Just as true (or rather more so) today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjWep4QyCrA
I’ve ranted here before about my surprise at all the people who wanted to give serial fabulists like Stephen Glass and Jonah Lehner a “second chance” in journalism or law or other professions where trust is pretty important.
The Atlantic just tried giving a fraudulent journalist a second chance, and … it didn’t go so well.
Synopsis: Ruth Shalit was a writer for The New Republic (what was it about that place?) during the 90s, who was forced out of journalism after a series of scandals involving plagiarism and fabricated quotes and assertions. Over the last couple of years, she’s poked her head back into journalism, mostly via celebrity interviews, under the name “Ruth S. Barrett.”
The Atlantic commissioned her to write a long piece on the world of “prestige sports” — upper class (mostly white) people who spend crazy amounts of time and effort to make their kids good at sports like squash, fencing, etc. Sports that most people don’t even have access to, but that often have scholarship programs at prestigious universities.
It sounded like an interesting story, about a subject that intrigues me. I hadn’t read it yet, but meant to, after hearing it discussed on a podcast. (The Atlantic has officially retracted it, but for transparency has kept a copy online — there’s a link in the WaPo article I linked above.) But after some other journalists started asking questions, it turned out to have some problems. It claimed that a school had a sports program that it in fact did not. It referred to backyard hockey rinks as “Olympic sized” when they were no such thing. It exaggerated the scope of injuries suffered by these teenage aspirants. One pseudonymous mother was “given” a son she did not have, purportedly to help protect her anonymity. The mother initially lied about the son to the Atlantic’s factcheckers, and when challenged admitted that it was a lie and said that Ruth Shalit Barrett told her to lie to the factcheckers. RSB initially denied doing so, but then backed down. (There were also some problems that any editor should have fixed immediately — there’s a casual reference to these Connecticut neighborhoods being as sports-obsessed as Compton. Like RSB knows fuck all about what parents in Compton are obsessed with. It’s a cheap stereotype for which no support is offered.)
Anyway, the moral for me is: once a fraudster, always a fraudster. At least when it comes to this kind of lazy, gratuitous fraud. Sure, “writers” like RSB can get a second chance in life — but I’m not sure they should get it in non-fiction writing. There are literally thousands of other jobs by which she could support herself. The Atlantic should have known better.
Correction/amendment to the above: it’s not so much whether these prestigious schools offer “scholarships” to athletes in obscure sports (the Ivies don’t), it’s that they offer admission priority. Parents rich enough to afford world class coaching can probably pay the tuition anyway, it’s getting the kid in that is the issue.
I’m very sad to learn that an article I would have loved to read is largely a fabrication. Damn.
I fenced at a prestigious university (albeit one that does not offer any sort of admission boost or scholarship for athletes of any sport). Fencing in NYC (where I grew up) is a big thing, and much more accessible to people of modest means than fencing in most other places. It is nonetheless an expensive sport for a school to provide. I do find it quite interesting to read how these “prestige sports”, sports that are mostly taken up by upper class (mostly white) people, figure in the college sports world. It isn’t something I thought about as a young person, but later information puts the experiences of my youth in a different light.
So, Screechy, if you have any favorite articles or books you like to reference on the topic, I’m all ears, er, eyes.
I don’t, really. I was intrigued by the article because it’s a subject I don’t know a lot about, but one that has piqued my interest recently.
As you probably recall, after the “varsity blues” scandal, there was a lot of discussion about college admissions, and quite a few people argued that it was a problem (not a crime, mind you, but a problem worth discussing) that elite universities were giving admission “boosts” even to actual accomplished athletes in these sports, because they often operate as back-door preferences for the white and wealthy. Or at least, that it’s something missing from discussions about affirmative action.
So I would have liked (and would still like) to read a deeper dive into that subject.
It’s long interested me because other countries don’t do it at all, because they think universities are for higher education.
On a related note, I read an article recently about colleges dropping varsity sports due to the pandemic. I have long been aware of schools dropping “niche” sports, often specifically men’s “niche” sports, in order to cut their athletic budgets, comply with Title IX equitable funding requirements, and still manage to pay for the monstrosity that is (American) football, usually a huge portion of the budget. I resented the loss of teams in sports I thought were interesting, things like fencing and men’s gymnastics. But this article was talking about something different: not dropping the sports, but “demoting” them from varsity (NCAA, perhaps high-status division) to club. As club sports, they don’t participate in any of the NCAA events, and they are not beholden to NCAA rules. They still have intercollegiate competition, but much lower caliber, much lower pressure, and usually a lot less money involved.
I thought this was brilliant. It returned those sports to being what most student activities are: extracurricular activities. The priority of being a student is returned. I hope the trend spreads.
Ophelia @326,
I’m not entirely sure what my position is.
Should a university’s admissions department take into account an applicant’s extracurricular achievements? Should they give a “boost” to the applicant who has demonstrated ability as a painter, dancer, or concert violinist — even if the university does not offer degrees in fine art or dance or music? What about student government, or debate team, or the chess club? If yes to any of those, why is sports different?
Right now, my answers are “yes, but not very much,” x 3, and “sports should get the same weight, but I have a suspicion that right now they get too much weight.”
But I’m also very tempted by the argument that NONE of that stuff should matter. I’ve long been a cynic about student clubs and other activities that often serve as resume builders. I was a part of one student organization whose entire raison d’etre was “there’s money in the student council budget for us, so let’s form a club and get it.” We held meetings at which the main order of business was deciding when and where to hold our next meeting. Of course, that’s hardly universally true — I don’t doubt that many people worked really hard on student council or the yearbook committee or whatever. But other students worked really hard at their part-time job, or at home taking care of younger siblings, and I don’t know if you can put those on college applications. Joining clubs and such has a whiff of privilege about it, and I don’t know that it tells you anything about someone’s character or well-roundedness or whatever it’s supposed to show.
The issue isn’t correctly framed as giving a boost to people with demonstrated skill, because, you know, we like people who put in time and effort and amass achievements. It’s more like, we have a team in a sport, and we need good players, and even if we can’t offer you a scholarship we’d still like to grease the skids a bit to help you get in if you’ll promise to play on our team.
I think the former case is unlikely to be a problem. The latter case is more concerning.
Well, let me amend that. I think you make a good point about any sort of club or outside activity having a whiff of privilege about it. So I don’t know either. But I do think the primary issue in question about athletes is mostly specific to those who might contribute to the success of the school on the field.
I guess it’s a sign of how unimportant the “skeptical movement” has become to me that I didn’t even notice the news that James Randi died on October 20.
(There was a NY Times obit, so I’m not saying it wasn’t reported, just that I wasn’t paying attention.)
At Slate, Rebecca Watson has a piece up about the good and bad of the man — celebrating his efforts, and lamenting his part in the Deep Rifts.
Rebecca’s a bit of a Deep Rifter herself…or maybe I have that wrong, maybe I’m the Deep Rifter and everyone else is Correct About Everything.
I thought this was neat, so…
Like it says in the URL:
https://www.out.com/news/2020/11/11/norway-has-made-biphobic-transphobic-speech-illegal
The court decision means the mother can prevent her daughter from having her body mutilated through removal of perfectly healthy body parts and through unnecessary other medical treatments, until the daughter is old enough to make such decisions legally for herself. But of course this prevention of harm is being called bigotry.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/11/12/bc-supreme-court-blocks-teens-access-to-trans-medical-treatment-at-moms-will/
Someone told me today about a transphobic dog. It only barks at men… and trans women. So it has been accused of transphobia.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Ophelia: https://quillette.com/2020/11/07/gender-activists-are-trying-to-cancel-my-book-why-is-silicon-valley-helping-them/
The book is Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage. The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Even Amazon will not take paid adverts for it, although they’re still selling it, but Target have withdrawn it from sale after being alerted to the book’s ‘transphobia’.
I have; read it this morning.
Target has reinstated the book.
But, I’ve seen it said, not accepting ads from the publisher or some such nitpicking.
A supercut of Trump claiming he knows more about various things than anybody. It’s really pretty remarkable when you see these statements all put together like this.
https://www.facebook.com/908009612563863/posts/4417312218300234/
Question: the auto-fill for comments is no longer working for me, and my comments all seem to be going into moderation.
Is this a site-wide problem or is it on my end? Have I been “cancelled?”
( not sure if this is goin to post, of course.)
Of course you haven’t been canceled! No you added an extra letter to your name the other day, that’s why that one got held up. Are there more? Sorry about the auto-complete, that’s tiresome.
And I guess the one just now got held because it’s different from the one with the extra letter. Snort.
Thanks!
And I’m very relieved I wasn’t canceled.
As if I would ever!!
Speaking of cancellations, there’s a change.org petition to ban Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier because idiots.
https://www.change.org/p/amazon-ban-irreversible-damage-by-abigail-shrier
And speaking of idiots, I saw by chance that one of the signatories is our old friend oolon:
I don’t imagine he’s read it. It’s on my list but it’s likely to be a while until I get to it.
A petition addressed to…? Who is in charge of banning books these days?
I know, I know.
That’s all we get.
Oh, “I am calling for” – well who can say no to that???
It appears to be aimed primarily at Amazon. Amazon had already pulled ads for the book, and they have dropped books in response to public pressure before.
I bought a copy at Amazon. Currently number one in Transgender Studies. Maybe that’s a good sign.
Glenn Greenwald talks about Chase Strangio and the censorious turn at the ACLU. There is apparently turmoil within the ACLU over this issue. The proximate inspiration for this piece is Strangio’s call for suppression of the Shrier book.
I like the gist of what he says, the defense of free speech, the need for argument and evidence rather than shutting down the opposition, the rejection of the idea that words are “literal violence”. It is clear, though, that Greenwald has little sympathy for the content of Shrier’s book, only for the right for people to read it and make up their own minds. I note, too, that the two examples he chose to illustrate his commitment to stand against censorship were both to the detriment of women: criminalizing catcalls, and making it easier to take action against sexual assaults.
The most fascinating parts of the piece I think are about the inner turmoil at the ACLU, including about Strangio. Greenwald was working on an article on this topic, but abandoned it due to other breaking developments.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-speech
Oh interesting, thank you.
Helen Reddy died two months ago.
It makes me a bit sad.
I see that a trans-identified male prisoner is suing the Georgia Department of Corrections for failing to protect him from sexual assault in the male prison where he was housed, and for refusing to provide hormone treatments. Various “woke” organizations, including SPLC, are making a big deal of this story.
It is of course terrible that people are sexually assaulted in prison. Men assaulting men in a men’s prison is seen as so commonplace that people joke about it and assume it is guaranteed. This is another such case of men assaulting men. Given the crappy statistics promoted by the trans lobby, I’ll just assume trans-identified men are as likely as other men to experience sexual assault, until I see otherwise.
I don’t see any reason that medically unnecessary treatments should be continued, but that’s a separate issue.
I have not noticed anything in the past from SPLC decrying the rapes of men in prison. Now that a man says he’s a woman, suddenly it’s big news.
I also have not seen anything regarding rapes of women in women’s prison by men who are housed there. There are quite a few documented cases, but because the men claim to be women, and because the victims are women, it’s not news, apparently.
I took an evangelical vegan off script. He started his script off with the idea that if something isn’t necessary for human health, then it’s optional. Essentially, he wanted to lead me to the conclusion that something that can be done without should be done without if it involves harm to sentient creatures. I got him to agree to a chain of logic that showed that electricity in general and the Internet in particular meet both criteria. He should therefore stop using the Internet at the very least.
I mention this because getting ideologues, whether of diet or gender or religion, can result in some pretty surprising results. While scrabbling for a way to resolve his sudden cognitive dissonance, this one said something you wouldn’t expect to hear from a strident vegan:
Sackbut @357, quite.
NiV @358, I think you just led him into completely refuting not only his own argument, but the underpinning belief structure. Suggests a lack of intellectual rigor and commitment on his part.
I’ve often discomforted people in a range of arguments that have strayed into this ‘human first’ territory. I don’t agree that humans (as a species) are more important than other animals (or even plants). It follows therefore, that I don’t believe that humans automatically come before non-human animals or even plants (let’s just call them collectively the ecosystem). All civilizational activity (even large scale species activity) comes at a cost to something else. Almost certainly many something elses. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a civilization, or that we should run rough should over the ecosystem to place ourselves first. It means we should seek a balance that is healthy and sustainable. In my mind that is actually more likely to preserve humanity than always placing ourselves first.
The funny thing was that I didn’t even take a position in the conversation. He just assumed my view vis-a-vis carnivorous tendencies and ran with that.
I’d go further than that and say that all activity, at the civilization level or not, comes at a cost. Managing those costs is something that we do on every level from the personal to the global. The capacity to make personal decisions regarding the costs one is willing (or not) to bear we call autonomy; on larger scales, government. Life, ethics, and politics are all fundamentally agent-relative, context-dependent optimization problems. It is both tragic and beautiful that the solutions to those problems are intractably hard, even at those rare times when we can agree on what the problems are in the first place.
NiV @ 360, I agree with everything you’ve said I think. I focused on larger scale activity because in terms of effect or damage to ecosystems, one or a very small number of individual animals or plants tends to have very minor effects. it’s when you get hordes, or machines, or hordes with machines that irreparable damage occurs.
Laverne Cox “triggered” but “OK” after “transphobic” attack. “If you’re trans, you’re going to experience stuff like this.” What happened? A man asked if LC was a guy or a girl. Rude, sure, but something that happens to little kids all the time without it being “transphobic”. I’m sure it happens to any gender-non-conforming person occasionally. Tomboys, butch lesbians, drag queens, cross-dressers. Everything to do with non-conforming, nothing to do with trans per se. Except, of course, that someone like LC is going to be upset about any suggestion that their actual sex was perceived, that they aren’t obviously the sex they are imitating.
.
https://deadline.com/2020/11/laverne-cox-transphobic-attack-1234623046/
Interesting if true: Giuliani has reportedly had discussions with Trump regarding being given a pre-emptive pardon, although it isn’t known what crimes Rudy thinks he may be collared for. Best guess seems to be it’s about his Ukraine business dealings that figured in Trump’s impeachment.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-pardon-b1764579.html
So, Ellen Page (star of the movie Juno) has “come out” as a “non-binary trans” person, meaning she’s male but she’s neither male nor female, or something like that. (I meant every last one of those scare quotes.) And, as expected, a lot of the “woke” people I know are all in a tither about “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, “I’m cis so I don’t really know the trans experience, but I’m learning”, all bowing and scraping and trying to say all the right things. It would be amusing if it weren’t so awful. Page up to this point had said she is a lesbian, but now is, what, a straight “man”, albeit “non-binary”? Heteronormativity wins again.
Doesn’t being a “non-binary trans” person disqualify Page from every possible future acting role? Well, I guess E. Page can still play E. Page in E. Page’s autobiography.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. How the hell many parts is she going to get now? Or HE.
The timing of this announcement seems to be designed to distract from Keira Bell’s victory in court which has had an immediate effect on ‘gender-related’ medical treatment of minors.
In the comments to a post on FTB about Page comes this doozy (bold mine):
That ‘pretty much’ is doing a lot of work in there. What it says is Look, I know this is bullshit, but if you squint your eyes, tilt your head and view it from a couple of miles away, well then it could, almost, just about seem like people are doing that. Just don’t look too closely, mind, because the nearer you get the less honest the claim looks.
What utter, absolute dishonesty!
Another one made me chuckle, though.
‘Caught’ donating, ffs. Visions of crack teams of undercover trans operatives embedded in companies, waiting for them to do something naughty then breaking cover to catch them in the act. Medals all round, move on to next mission.
Nobody expects the Tranish Inquisition!
https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2020/12/02/transphobes-being-creepy-or-a-day-ending-in-y/
This comic strip brought to mind other trials where the judge was only too happy to force witnesses and others to abandon standard vocabulary in talking about parties involved in the trial.
https://www.comicskingdom.com/rhymes-with-orange/2020-12-05
The link will eventually go stale. The cartoon shows a judge denying a request from the plaintiff, Narcissus, to be referred to as the “handsometiff”.