The Institute of Arts and Ideas have now published a Retraction Statement by philosophers Robin Dembroff, Rebecca Kukla and Susan Stryker, explaining why they didn’t want to be part of a debate with philosophers they consider not just wrong but worse than wrong on the questions around trans gender identity. That’s ok, but some of the content of what they say is not.

We welcome genuine dialogue and mutually respectful exploration of the complex and contentious social realities that characterize contemporary transgender issues. We devote a large part of our working lives to these issues, and we have much at stake in them, personally and politically. We object, however, to any “debate” that questions transgender people’s fundamental legitimacy as

And another thing. The AP reports:

Trump had raised eyebrows and drawn an emphatic fact check from the National Weather Service on Sunday when he tweeted that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

You know, in ordinary times presidents talk to us about approaching hurricanes in order to give relevant useful advice. They can advise people to leave or to hunker down or to relax because the hurricane has faded out. What presidents say has an impact on what people do. Something I’d forgotten until I watched a NOVA on hurricanes last night is that in 2005 people in Houston died trying to evacuate, because the traffic … Read the rest

At Psychology Today, Michael Moscolo explains that identity isn’t something we can determine all by ourselves. He starts with Yaniv’s ball-waxing caper.

Yaniv’s actions should not be taken to be representative of transgender individuals. Nonetheless, Yaniv’s actions illustrate the deep conceptual problems that arise when we think of gender a form of “self-identification.” I want to show that regardless of one’s views on transgender issues, it is an error to think that gender identity—or any other identity for that matter—[i]s something that can be completely determined by one’s self.

…

These actions underscore the problem of using self-identification as the sole criterion on which to establish a person’s gender identity.  Although Yaniv identifies her gender as a woman, Yaniv’s

Originally a comment by iknklast on No, please, Geoff, tell us more.

I’m not sure what the problem is understanding this. (1) It is a stock photo. (2) It has the standard set up of a photo with both men and women, where the man dominates the photo and women are subordinate. (3) There are different possible ways of reading the photo. These seem to be agreed on.

The problem isn’t whether the photographer intended a sexist message. It isn’t with whether everyone in the world sees this particular photo with a sexist message. It isn’t even with the fact that in many ways, this is probably a reasonably realistic portrayal of one small moment in time.

The problem … Read the rest

The wall is paid for!

A billion won’t cover it though – I guess that’s just an installment? Needs to be eleventy billion at least.… Read the rest

R. McKinnon, Assistant Professor of Philosophy linking to the Pink News article on woman-hating vandalism at Vancouver Rape Relief:

There’s a high likelihood that they’re doing it themselves to drum up more anti-trans hate and fear.

Hours later he was tweeting about hate mail he got from Breitbart readers.… Read the rest

What just happened to the Bahamas? There will be more of it.

While the science has yet to come in on the specifics of just how much worse climate change made Dorian, we already know enough to say that warming worsened the damage. Because it’s not a coincidence that Dorian was one of the strongest landfalling storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, with the strongest sustained peak winds east of Florida, and the strongest ever to hit the Bahamas. This comes less than a year after Florida withstood the first landfalling category 5 hurricane in decades, on 5 October – the latest ever in the season for a storm that strong.

On a basic physics level, we know that

No, Morgane Oger is not Martin Luther King, and the “rights” he is talking about are not comparable to the rights King was talking about, and the civil rights struggle is not Oger’s struggle to steal for his own purposes.

Opposing civil rights legislation or decisions is, in fact, dissenting from a society’s ethical and moral frameworks.

That’s not you, Morgane. That crowd is not a crowd of men who say they are women. There is no “right” for men to be accepted as women. That’s not how the word “rights” is understood. That’s not the dream King had that day.… Read the rest

Her name is Chanel Miller.

She was known as Emily Doe when her victim impact statement, read out in the sexual assault trial of Brock Turner, went viral.

Now, she has revealed her identity as 27-year-old Chanel Miller as she prepares to have her memoir published.

The case sparked controversy when Turner, then a Stanford University student, was sentenced to six months in jail. He served three.

Ms Miller’s book, Know My Name, is being released later this month.

Yes but swimmer. He’s a swimmer. That matters more than some mere woman.

In 2016, a jury would find Turner – then 20 – guilty of three charges: sexually assaulting an intoxicated victim, sexually assaulting an unconscious victim[,]

The dogmatic certainty argument for god:

Jesus and Mo on Patreon

… Read the rest

The ACLU gets the whole thing completely wrong and backward, starting with the headline.

A New York Jail Forced a Trans Woman Into a Men’s Facility

As opposed to what, ACLU? As opposed to forcing women to deal with a man in their facility.

Jena Faith’s experience in the Steuben County Jail was a living nightmare.

The military veteran spent four weeks in the jail awaiting trial last spring. She was initially housed in the jail’s women’s facility without incident, but things changed when officials suddenly transferred her to the men’s facility, despite the fact that she is a woman.

But he’s not a woman, so there is no “fact” that he’s a woman. He’s a man who wants to … Read the rest

Sorry to fuss about details but honestly. A woman writes a piece for Inside Higher Education about the desuetude of the faculty lounge, and the tweet promoting it looks like:

A professor laments the widespread disappearance of the faculty lounge (opinion)

Bonnie J. Morris laments the widespread disappearance of a traditional campus oasis.

Come on. Academics are supposed to be hip to semiotics, aren’t they? Which should include people who work at Inside Higher Ed? That picture could be worse only if the women were crouched on the floor covering their heads.

First of all the guy is in the middle, facing outward, so our eyes are drawn to him as if on a string. Then he’s holding … Read the rest