Are books just clutter you should get rid of or an essential or something in between? Julian Baggini leans toward the first.

Having recently put everything into boxes for the less terminal adventure of a house move, we decided to strictly limit how much came out of them at the other end. However, we knew that there is one kind of object that defiantly resists the cardboard coffin: books. Like so many, we would happily decimate our wardrobes, clear out our cupboards and gut our garages, but would struggle to liberate our libraries. Why is it so hard?

For a lot of reasons. We want to read a lot more books than we get around to reading. Some books … Read the rest

Freedom! Private enterprise! The boss is always right! Innovation!

Except when…

Texas has made it illegal for social media platforms to ban users “based on their political viewpoints”.

Prominent Republican politicians have accused Facebook, Twitter and others of censoring conservative views. Former US president Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after a group of his supporters attacked the Capitol in January.

The social networks have all denied stifling conservative views. However, they do enforce terms of service which prohibit content such as incitement to violence and co-ordinated disinformation.

Well no wonder Greg Abbott doesn’t like that.

(What about jurisdiction though? Can states pass laws that restrict global communications? I wouldn’t have thought Texas has the power to … Read the rest

When Republicans take credit for the civil rights movement…

Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who previously served as Donald Trump’s press secretary, has released her first television ad, which is entitled “Who We Are”.

“I’ll never forget being a student at Little Rock Central High and watching my dad – a Republican governor – and Bill Clinton – a Democrat[IC] president – hold open the doors for the Little Rock Nine, doors that forty years earlier had been closed to them because they’re Black,” Sanders says in the ad.

…

“Good triumphed over evil,” Sanders says of the Little Rock Nine in her ad. “That is who we are. The radical left wants to teach our kids America

I have a feeling that’s not what Labour said.

This is not a joke, but deadly serious.

The Labour Party have officially placed @YoungLabour chair @JessicaLBarnard under investigation – for opposing transphobia.

Here is her letter sent to NEC members – passed to me – and here are the tweets she’s being investigated for. pic.twitter.com/qnzcC0fLWm

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 10, 2021

Barnard says in her letter to NEC members that the letter gave her notice that she’s “under investigation for challenging transphobia online.” Again, it seems unlikely that that’s what the letter said.

The trouble is that activists of the Owen Jones/Jess Barnard type treat the word “transphobia” as self-evident and universally understood, when in fact it’s a recently … Read the rest

It isn’t my womb that makes me a woman, Natasha Devon writes

Because it’s the large non-motile gametes?

Hahaha no don’t be silly.

Trans people have always been present in human society. Famously Marsha P Johnson, an American activist and trans woman, threw the first brick during the Stonewall riots in June 1969.

“Famously” inaccurate. Johnson was a drag queen.

Binary notions of gender – the idea that there are only men and women and everyone fits neatly into one of those two categories – are also a Christian invention, which spread across the globe as Christian countries colonised it.

Huh. So how were there humans before Christianity? If they had no idea which was which how did they reproduce?… Read the rest

Katie makes a good point.

Anyone who does even cursory research on the “trans murder epidemic” quickly realizes that the vast majority of these are not hate crimes. Trans people usually get murdered for the same reasons as anyone else—DV, drugs, random bad luck etc. HRC won’t say this but it’s true.

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 9, 2021

One of the more fucked up aspects of activists/journalists/etc who spread the false narrative of the “trans murder epidemic” is that they are terrifying the exact population they claim to want to protect. It’s not helpful to tell people they’re at risk when they aren’t. Stop it!

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 9, 2021

Well it’s not helpful to trans people … Read the rest

Peter Boghossian has quit his job at Portland State University and published his resignation letter on Bari Weiss’s Substack.

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.

He’s taught it even though it’s not his field. He has an EdD, a doctorate in education. I’ve never really understood why he gets to teach philosophy at a university without the usual advanced degree.

Anyway, his point is, he’s dedicated to free inquiry and he likes to invite speakers with all kinds of views to his classes so that the students can learn to think and question.

But brick

Originally a comment by Sastra on To promote well-being.

Phoenix has regular counselling with the psychologist, who judges that Phoenix’s distress is significant and enduring, and is not a symptom of an underlying psychopathology.

No, it appears that the psychopathology is draped right over the top, holding sparklers and dancing the Can-can.

I remember when the goal of enlightened feminism was for women, and the society they lived in, to minimize the significance of their sex and emphasize instead the importance of their character.. Yes, you are a woman, but that says little to nothing about your interests, capacities, talents, and goals, which constitute who you are. To constantly worry about whether you are WOMAN ENOUGH in the way … Read the rest

So the Lee statue is down and cut in half.

A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century.

One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, the equestrian statue was lowered to the ground just before 9 a.m., after a construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. A work crew then began cutting it into pieces.

Two pieces, that is: it was too tall for transport so they … Read the rest

An item from the Journal of Medical Ethics:

In this article, we analyse the novel case of Phoenix, a non-binary adult requesting ongoing puberty suppression (OPS) to permanently prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics, as a way of affirming their gender identity. We argue that (1) the aim of OPS is consistent with the proper goals of medicine to promote well-being, and therefore could ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle; (2) there are additional equity-based reasons to offer OPS to non-binary adults as a group; and (3) the ethical defensibility of facilitating individual requests for OPS from non-binary adults also depends on other relevant considerations, including the balance of potential benefits over harms for that specific

No trespassing:

HOLYROOD is changing its legal status to make it easier for the police to remove protesters.

Scottish Parliament bosses have asked the Home Office to designate the building and its grounds as a “protected site” in the interests of national security.

Of course protests and protesters aren’t a threat to national security. Insurrectionists are, as we’ve recently seen all too vividly, but protesters, no.

Legislation has now been laid in Westminster under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which is due to come into force on October 1.

At present, the police have limited powers to intervene if there is no substantive offence taking place, such as protesters making a prolonged noise outside the entrances.

DoJ gonna sue.

The Justice Department plans to file a lawsuit against Texas over its restrictive anti-abortion law that critics say is unconstitutional and has brought a halt to women’s reproductive rights in the state, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

…

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday the department was urgently exploring all options to challenge the Texas law. The department will use powers under the so-called FACE Act to provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack, Garland said.

Note that Bloomberg News said “women’s reproductive rights,” something which is apparently out of reach of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.… Read the rest

A genealogy of Foucault: pic.twitter.com/Tt4hCQuC4W

— Brian Leiter https://universeodon.com/@BrianLeiter (@BrianLeiter) September 9, 2021

… Read the rest

AND another:

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has struck back after critics mocked her for using the phrase “menstruating person.”

In a CNN interview regarding Texas’ new anti-abortion law, Ms Ocasio-Cortez had carefully used the phrase to include trans men, non-binary Americans, and others who menstruate in addition to women. Some conservatives ridiculed her choice of words, but AOC fiercely defended it.

She “used the phrase” in talking to Anderson Cooper, and what she said is that she thinks Texas Governor Abbot “doesn’t understand a menstruating person’s body.” This isn’t a matter for ridicule but for outrage. Governor Abbot is ruining the lives of women; he’s waging war on women; he’s using state power to grind women into … Read the rest

You can’t fire us, we’re incompetent!

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that 11 Trump appointees to military service academy advisory boards, among them former press secretary Sean Spicer and adviser Kellyanne Conway, were asked to step down – or be fired.

Imagine putting Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway on any kind of advisory board, unless it’s for the Institute of Lying Hacks.

Conway released a letter in which she criticised Biden’s performance in office and said: “I’m not resigning, but you should.”

She tweeted it, too.

President Biden, I'm not resigning, but you should. pic.twitter.com/HuRYM4bLYP

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

What’s the “Honorable” doing in front of her name? Is that a usual title bestowed … Read the rest

You could pay for quite a few school lunches with $160 billion.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.

And they’re the ones who need it least.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.

Aw, spoilsports. All those nice billionaires do so much for the country, inflating the price of housing and useful shit like that.

Republicans in Congress and lobbyists for business are united in opposition to the proposal to shore up tax enforcement.

Law and order? Fiscal responsibility? One … Read the rest

H/t Dave Ricks… Read the rest

They just can’t get it right.

On Tuesday, the Guardian published an interview with the American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, which included a scathing critique of so-called “gender critical” transphobes and trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who don’t believe trans women are women, and oppose the right of transgender people to exist in gendered spaces, such as a bathrooms.

We don’t oppose anyone’s right to exist anywhere. That’s a sly way of putting it that nudges people to think we want trans people dead. Trans people don’t have a “right” to be in women’s spaces if they are men. Men don’t have a “right” to intrude on women, no matter how they define their “gender.”

Then the … Read the rest

Ok so I have to read the Nussbaum essay again, for the ___th time. I have to share some of the particular gems.

Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action.

See also: tweeting seditiously.

Trained as a philosopher, she is frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker about gender, power, and the body.

Much more. Much much much more. People in literature and people on Twitter.

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult

No, LP, anyone who is paying attention doesn’t know that, and neither do you.

Yes, but anyone who is actually paying attention knows that GC/Terf talking points feed directly back to the language of right-wing extremists. If she wasn’t talking about Bolsonaro/Orban, she should have been.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) September 7, 2021

Mind you “feed directly back” is confusing in itself – does she mean gender critical feminist talking points nourish right-wing extremist discourse, or does she mean they draw strength from them? Are we supposed to be aiding and abetting right-wing extremist discourse or is it supposed to be aiding and abetting us? Or both?

Or neither? Probably what she means is just that there is some overlap … Read the rest