Matt Gaetz wants us to think the US military is too woke.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, responded sharply to questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Wednesday about the examination of critical race theory in the U.S. military.

“I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding — having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?” Milley said.

He continued brusquely: “And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, noncommissioned officers of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else, because we’re studying

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Originally a comment by Freemage on On thin ice.

To an extent, the whole Trans Debate has come down to which set of adjectives the nouns “man” and “woman” should be tied to–GCFs hold that those terms apply to “Male” and “Female”, while TRAs insist that they apply to “Masculine” and “Feminine”.

The TRA position falls apart once you give it a hard look under this light, because it’s trivially easy to point out that the latter adjectives have spongy, shifting definitions, and as categories have often had traits that swapped from one side to the other. Computer programming used to be a feminine occupation, for instance, because it was unglamorous and relatively low-paid. Once it became more rewarding, … Read the rest

The Scotsman reports:

Ms Cherry, who will return to Arnot Manderson Advocates, said that as she no longer had front bench duties for the SNP in Westminster, she would take on “human rights and public law cases from time to time as my duties as a constituency MP allow”.

…

“I am grateful to the dean of Faculty for granting me a dean’s dispensation to reflect the fact that my availability to be instructed will necessarily be limited by the requirement to be at Westminster regularly and to fulfil my duties to my constituents,” she said.

…

Ms Cherry added: “I remain very committed to the law as an important instrument for upholding human rights and preventing discrimination and

… Read the rest

Giuliani’s lawless behavior is catching up with him.

Rudy Giuliani was suspended from law practice in New York state on Thursday, after a state appeals court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Appellate Division in Manhattan said there was “uncontroverted” evidence that Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public” in connection with Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s result.

“These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani’s) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the court said. “We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately

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Throwdown!

I’m pleased to announce I will be returning to practice at the bar on a limited basis & have accepted instructions through Beltrami & Co to conduct the defence of Marion Millar, a feminist activist charged with offences under s.127 of the Communications Act. https://t.co/kDA6Qhwfbw

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) June 24, 2021

This is going to be BRILLIANT.… Read the rest

Oh for godsake.

Moral maze is discussing trans inclusion in women's sport. They've invited 4 guests to speak: Dafydd Mills Daniel, Joanna Harper, Debbie Hayton & Adam Wagner. That's 4 people born male; 2 transwomen and 2 men. Not a single female person on the panel. Why?https://t.co/UQzQPTi36F

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) June 23, 2021

“Let’s get four male people to discuss the rights and wrongs of letting male people intrude on women’s sports. Obviously let’s not get any women to do that because who cares what they think?”

Women, eh? Always wanting to be consulted when their rights are being given away. So self-centered.… Read the rest

In another part of the forest…

Those of us from the @OU_GCN were made aware of a defamatory open letter published by LSE and pinned by @LSEGenderTweet. After letting LSE be aware they had published a defamatory letter, seems it has now been taken down even though @LSEGenderTweet are continuing the defamation pic.twitter.com/zjR51IXZBx

— Prof Jo Phoenix (@JoPhoenix1) June 23, 2021

Final page. The entire episode does not put LSE gender in a good light. pic.twitter.com/2tyHLyxKxk

— Prof Jo Phoenix (@JoPhoenix1) June 23, 2021

Defamatory?

The Gender Critical Research Network is an explicitly anti-intellectual attack on Gender Studies, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, and inclusive, intersectional feminist politics.

Including the word “explicitly” was…reckless.

Proponents of the “gender critical” perspective,

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A school board meeting in Loudoun County Virginia got so rowdy that the cops had to break it up.

Many of the speakers were there to express support or opposition for a draft school policy that would require teachers to address transgender students by their names and pronouns, as well as grant transgender students access to facilities and activities that match their gender identity. Loudoun is pursuing the policy in accordance with a recently passed state law requiring school systems to revise their treatment of transgender students.

Well, the trouble with that is, by “revising” their treatment of transgender students that way they will be mistreating other students, especially the female ones. If boys who claim to be trans girls … Read the rest

David Paisley had to intervene.

https://twitter.com/DavidPaisley/status/1407656305981022208

There was no hate speech.

Meanwhile of course DeWahls is getting the real thing.

https://twitter.com/baboonbrand/status/1407675232832438273… Read the rest

The Guardian does its passive-aggressive thing:

The Royal Academy of Arts has apologised to an artist whose work was removed from its gift shop after it branded her views transphobic on social media, calling its initial decision a “betrayal” of its commitment to freedom of speech.

That’s an absolute car crash of a lede. The RA has apologised to an artist whose work was removed from its gift shop? What do they mean? Removed how, by whom, when? Did art thieves take it? Was there a smash and grab in the middle of the night? Did an employee of the gift shop take it home? Who removed the artist’s work?

The artist’s work was removed from its gift shop … Read the rest

Courtesy of What a Maroon here is the actual “apology”:

Media Statement from the Royal Academy of Arts

There has been a great deal of debate around the RA’s recent communication about no longer stocking the work of Jess de Wahls in the Royal Academy shop. We have thought long and hard since then about this and the wider issues it raises.

One thing is clear to us now – we should have handled this better. We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now. We had no right to judge her views on our social media. This betrayed our most important core value – the protection of free … Read the rest

The struggle continues.

I've written to the RA again – here is their contact form https://t.co/bt1zZrYGpU pic.twitter.com/903JuKZchz

— Delyth Rennie (@Lammysaurus) June 23, 2021

The Royal Academy’s oh so generous tweet:

An apology from the Royal Academy: https://t.co/U6Hw090gWW

— Royal Academy (@royalacademy) June 23, 2021

Guess who is all up in there talking about both sides and rushing to pick one again.

It’s right the RA have apologised. This should be a lesson to leaders to not panic & shut down debate & discussion on gender, sex and identity. This is a complex issue with strong feelings on both sides. Rushing to pick one & cancelling people is not the answer. https://t.co/K07YhvGnhe

— Ayesha Hazarika (@ayeshahazarika) June 23, 2021

Putting … Read the rest

I wonder if there’s chaos in the corridors of The Guardian. The Enlightened won’t be liking Tanya Aldred’s piece on fairness in sport.

Without a separate category for females, there would be no women in Olympic finals. Even in the 100m, one of the events with the smallest performance gap, approximately 10,000 men worldwide have personal bests faster than the current Olympic female champion, Elaine Thompson-Herah (10.70sec). And it’s not just track and field. While the smallest attainment gap between the sexes comes in running, rowing and swimming events (11-13%), this moves up to 16%-22% in track cycling, and between 29% and 34% when it comes to bowling cricket balls and weightlifting. The difference in punch power between men

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Literally just one.

There is 1 transgender athlete competing in the Olympics. Literally just one. https://t.co/vQm4vngQbf

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) June 21, 2021

There is one Tongan denied a place in the NZ women's team. Literally just one. But she is neither rich nor white nor male so she is expendable.

Samoans say https://t.co/7nTMZzfpJH

— Scattergrains (@scattergrains) June 22, 2021

There is one woman who has trained for years, dreaming of an Olympic medal, a Gold Medal – who will be cheated out of it by a mediocre man. But it’s LITERALLY JUST ONE WOMAN. So it doesn’t matter.

— KM (@kaeon22) June 22, 2021

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Graham Linehan on the Laurel Intrusion:

Representatives of the nation of Samoa have been speaking out against Hubbard’s participation in the women’s category since 2019, when Hubbard bested local hero Feagaiga Stowers at the Pacific Games. Stowers, a young woman who began lifting to cope with surviving sexual abuse, had won a gold medal in the 2018 Commonwealth Games. That year, Hubbard had been ineligible for participation after sustaining an elbow injury. However, upon returning to the sport in 2019, he placed first; Stowers took the silver medal, and Charisma Amoe-Tarrant of Australia took the bronze.

In a 2019 article for Samoa Observer, Mata’afa Keni Lesa wrote of how Stowers had previously entered the Samoa Victims

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Abigail Shrier on Gorski et al v Hall, via Bari Weiss:

Within a day, Dr. Hall’s article was flooded with nearly 1,000 comments, mostly, she says, from activists demanding the article be stripped from the site, but also from some readers expressing their appreciation. Angry emails from activists swamped the blog’s editors. Within two days, those editors had given Dr. Hall an ultimatum: retract, rewrite, or allow them to add a disclaimer. 

This is a colleague, remember, not a subordinate. It’s an itchy feeling when colleagues start giving you ultimatums (or ultimata if you prefer). The temptation to say “You’re not the boss of me” becomes very strong.

“What surprised me was that my fellow editors attacked me, too.

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Jerry Coyne on the sleazy behavior of the bros at Science-Based Medicine:

… the site removed a book review written by another respected physician, Harriet Hall, known for being one of the Air Forces’s first women flight surgeons as well as a notable advocate for science based medicine and a vociferous debunker of quackery.  And—get this—Hall is one of the journal’s five editors.

If only she’d been three of the five.

Neither Shrier nor her reviewer Hall [is a] transphobes, but now they are irrevocably typed as that. The ACLU staff attorney for transgender issues, Chase Strangio, has called for the banning of Shrier’s book from bookstores (odd for the ACLU, no?), and an uproar

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Jess DeWahls talks to Spiked:

It turned out that an embroiderer was ranting online about the fact that I had work in the Royal Academy. She had attacked me twice before. This time, she basically encouraged her followers to contact all the places that stock my work, including the Royal Academy, and tell them that they shouldn’t work with a transphobe. That afternoon, the Academy emailed me, saying that it had received eight complaints about ‘transphobic’ views I had voiced online.

In other words one opportunistic rivalrous shit (whose work is crap) told people to go after DeWahls and the RA took this coordinated campaign seriously.

Transphobic views like ‘women have vaginas’ and ‘there are two sexes’, presumably. It

… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum on the different standards for your Gaugin and Picasso on the one hand and your Jess DeWahls on the other:

And what had De Wahls actually done to make herself untouchable? In 2019, she published a long, considered essay laying out her thoughts on gender identity. “My hope is that this will help you, the reader, the viewer, to understand my conclusions about this subject,” she wrote. “And I will tell you them candidly so no mistake can be made in misunderstanding or misrepresenting me.” As anyone who has ever ventured an opinion on gender could tell you, this was always a vain hope given the torrents of bad faith that run through this subject.

…So it didn’t

… Read the rest

I’ve realized I have more to say on Peter Tatchell’s fatuous remarks to the Guardian on the definite rightness of the Royal Academy’s libel of Jess DeWahls:

Veteran LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: “Trans women are different from other women, but being a different kind of woman is perfectly valid and no justification for the denial of their identity.

Let’s think about this. How are trans women “different from other women?” They’re different in being men. That’s a very differenty kind of difference. You could replace it with the word “not.” Trans women are different from other women in being not women. Well yes, that’s different all right, and it’s also a negation, and an opposite. Not-man is not … Read the rest