But it’s women who know that men are not women who are the source of all evil.

It’s funny though that women who are feminist and gender critical don’t say things like that. Even about a man who gloats about being made CEO of an endometriosis charity.

Oh yay, a new way to insult women. People are so resourceful.

Steph Richards, that is. He’s a man. Endometriosis South Coast is excited to insult women by appointing a man CEO of an endometriosis charity. I wonder how many female CEOs of testicular cancer charities there are.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on No escape for women ever.

Why are you so obsessed with hating trans people?

Who here is hating trans people? Having seen far too many linguistic word games and novel, unilateral, ideosyncratic redefinitions of basic terminolgy, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t immediately trust your definition of “hate.” There is much questioning and criticism of gender ideology and trans activism here. This is not hatred. The actual results of acceding to the demands of trans activism have harmed women. Trans identified males remain males** for life, whatever they wear, whatever surgeries and treatments they’ve had, whatever they claim to be. It is not hateful or bigoted to say this. To say it is hateful to call a male human being a male devalues the word “hate” to meaninglessness. Being male is not in itself a hateful state. But males, however they identify, have no place in women’s facilities.

As for claiming trans folks have the most privilege… Trans folks get murdered, harassed, and fired. Do you think we should stop having the government talk about indigenous rights because if they do that means indigenous people have the most power?

Trans activism has attained a remarkable degree of power and influnce in an incredibly short space of time, much of it on the back of questionable claims of being “uniquely” marginalized and downtrodden. A great deal of this has been behind closed doors, beyond public scrutiny or accountability, and without the input or consent of women, whose rights were being eroded or given away to men who demanded them. If they really were as powerless and persecuted as they are made out to be, trans identified males would not have the power and support of so many government departments and business organizations. For example, they’ve managed to get UK police departments to investigate the mildest statements of fact as “transphobic hate crimes.” Yeah, that’s marginalization and powerlessness. Have women ever had that degree of police attention for rape let alone Tweets? If misogyny was as much of a concern as “transphobia,” the police would be investigating absolutely nothing else at all.

What trans activists are demanding (recognition as the sex they are not) are not “rights” at all. Humans can’t change sex. “Gender identity” does not override sex. Women’s sex-based and sex-segregated (not “gender-segregated”) facilities (prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters, sports teams etc.) should not be made available to men, however they “identify.” Trans identified males remain males for life, whatever they wear, whatever surgeries they’ve had, whatever they claim to be. It is not hateful or bigoted to say this.

There is no right to be taken as what you claim to be, otherwise we would be forced to bow to the (self-declared) fact that Donald Trump really is a stable genius. Naively accepting all claims people make about themselves is not a thing, and certainly not a “right.” In fact society usually protects itself from malicious claims of this sort through laws that punish fraud and identity theft. Men claiming to be women is fraud against, and identity theft of an entire sex, a practice which is celebrated, aided, and abbetted by far too many in society, including the same governments that have otherwise outlawed harmful, false identity claims.

I have never seen any trans activists admit that Self-ID opens the doors of women’s facilities to opportunistic predators using this carte blanche as an all access pass. NOTE: I am not claiming that trans identified males are all “opportunistic predators.” But males as a group represent, statistically, a threat to women’s safety. Trans identified males remain male, and thus, part of that potentially threatening demographic. How do women tell the difference between a “harmless” male and one who is a predator? They can’t. The best rule is to keep all men out of female spaces. Period. Women have every right to consider any male entering their sex-segregated spaces as a potential threat, as they’ve already demonstrated a propensity to violate female boundaries. Gender Self-ID undermines this safeguarding measure by allowing men who declare themselves to be women unfettered access to women’s spaces on their own say-so. All a man has to do to bypass this usefull and valuable rule is to say “I identify as a woman.” Suddenly it’s now the protesting woman who is supposed to be viewed wth suspicion as a hateful, “transphobic” bigot, rather than the man demanding entrance to a place where he does not belong. Somehow, women are supposed to trust this man, no questions asked. Women should be under no obligation to tolerate such a gross violation and threat to their health, dignity and safety.

Women defending women’s rights (like Maya Forestater, JK Rowling, Allison Bailey, Julie Bindle, Kathleen Stock, Rosie Duffield, etc.) are routinely tarred as hateful transphobic bigots. Meetings that women organize to discuss their rights, or to just talk about things of importance to women, are routinely mobbed and picketed by trans activists and their allies. We are told that “women’s rights” is nothing but an anti-trans dog whistle, and that any such discussions that do not include men who claim to be women are hateful and bigoted. WE are told, despite the protests of many women, that there is “no conflict” between women’s rights and trans “rights.” These women have a different opinion, which is not allowed. Well, if women’s rights are “anti-trans,” it follows that trans rights are anti-woman. They are profoundly so.

Women’s concerns are real. These are not far-fetched, hypothetical, preposterous, irrational “phobias,” but the result of real harms that are actually happening. To paraphrase a venerable observation, men who claim they are women are afraid of being misgendered by women; women are afraid that men are going to kill them. Men who are violent sex offenders, who claim they are women, have been moved to womens’ prisons, where they have assaulted prisoners and staff. Men, claiming to be women, have been placed into what were originally meant to be exclusively female hospital wards. When women have complained or protested about these and other such occurrences, they have been accused of “transphobic” prejudice and bigotry. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will: it is not hateful or bigotted to point these instances out; nor is it hateful or bigoted to oppose the disastrous consequences that these ludicrous policy decisions have had. It is not bigoted or hateful to seek to end the policies that have allowed these outrageous incidents to occur.

Trans activists have repeatedly stated that women resisting this invasion of their spaces have no legitimate self-interest in doing so, and that their supposed concern for their own welfare is a just a thin pretext to persecute trans identified males out of sheer malice and bigotry. I beg to differ. Women have every right to prevent harm to themselves at the hands of any , including those men who claim they are women. They have every right to oppose and overturn the legal and regulatory decisions that have so put them at risk, resulting in harm to women subjected to this ill-advised, ill-conceived and unjustified exercise in so-called “inclusivity.” All of these outcomes were foreseen by women whose counsel and concerns were ignored and ridiculed, and who are still ignored and ridiculed. Not all “inclusion” is good. Not all “exclusion” is bad.

If male facilities are unsafe or threatening for trans identified males to use that is not women’s problem, or responsibility to solve. Somehow, trans identified males’ feelings of distress or unease are more important than women’s feelings of distress or unease at sharing their facilities with men. Men’s feelings are to be respected and catered to; women’s feelings are to be ignored and over-ridden. Why? Why must women be forced to surrender their spaces and their comfort for the sake of men who don’t want to use the spaces set aside for their sex? Instead of demanding safety and dignity from their fellow men, they’ve focused their energy on degrading the safety and dignity of women, and slandering women who have the temerity to speak oiut against these efforts. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is. Had trans activists had directed their efforts on opposing male violence rather than invading women’s spaces, the relationship between trans activism and feminism would be very different than it is now.As it is, trans activists and their allies, along with the captured institutions whose power and authority have been wielded against women who say “No,” have much to answer for. It is not hateful or bigotted for women to demand those answers, or demand redress for the actual harms done to women in pursuit of a these misogynistic policies. It is not hateful or bigotted to demand the rollback and removal of those policies.

And in the end, intersex people also exist…

Yes, and?

My understanding is that the preferred trm is DSD, or Differences in Sexual Development, and that “intersex” is considered offensive by many people with DSD conditions. These people are not a “third” or “intermediate” sex falling between male or female. They are still male and female. Their particular conditions are, as far as my understanding goes, specific to one sex or another. Their existence does not render the concept of the sex binary invalid or unclear. It does not turn sex into a “spectrum.” It does not mean humans can change sex. The only relevence the existence of DSD conditions has to gender iideology and trans activism are the strategic appropriation of its “assigned X at birth” phraseology (as a way of diluting and muddying the concept and definition of sex to a degree sufficient to allow men to fall within the definition of “woman”), and the addition of the “I” to the forced-teaming LGBTIQetc. alphabet soup “community.” So for me, the deployment of the “Intersex Gambit” is a sign of either ignorance or bad faith. Should you choose to respond, I’ll thank you in advance for not using any of the following ploys. I’ll save you the trouble by responding to them in advance:

– “Transwomen are Women; it’s right in the name!” If that’s the case, then seahorses, saw horses and pommel horses are all Horses.

-“Clownfish can change sex!” Humans aren’t fish. No mammals can change sex.

-“Transwomen are just another kind of Woman, just like Black Women, Disabled Women or Tall Women!” No’ they’re not. Trans identified males are male; everyone else on that list is female, and no less female for being Black, Disabled, or Tall.

-“By defining women by their biological role in reproduction, you’re saying post-menopausal or infertile women are no longer female, no longer women!” I’ve only ever heard trans activists make this (strawman) argument. That would be like saying that a car that had run out of gas was no longer a car, or that a clock that had stopped was no longer a clock. Trans activism is just so very, very desperate to decouple the concept of “female” or “woman” from their reproductive role in sex in order to gloss over the inescapable material fact that no male will ever produce ova, and that the male body can never be turned into a female one. One might end up with a crude approximation with which some might be able to pass, but none of the work that these men have had done to them will turn them into an adult, human female.

If you want to defend your right to be non gender conforming and occasionally pee or use a change room at the gym, principles like those you’re disparaging are there for you too, whether you agree with the current language around gender or not.

Trans activism obliterates gender non-conformity by reifying gender roles rather than dispensing with them. One’s “gender identity” is supposedly more basic and fundamental than one’s sex. Yet a man is male whatever he wears or whatever he likes. Same with women. A man in a dress and lipstick is no less male than any other man; he is also no more female than any other man. If the basis of “gender identity reinforces the idea that liking “girly” things makes you a girl, then the patriarchy is safe and secure; genderism is serving it, not smashing it. To paraphrase another venerable observation:

Patriarchy says “If you’re a woman, you must wear a dress.” Gender ideology says, “If you wear a dress, you must be a woman.” Feminism says, “if you’re a woman you can wear whatever you want.”

There’s also the inherent homophobia in “transing away the gay,” which is exactly what Mermaid’s founder, Susie Green did to her son when he showed unwelcome signs of effeminacy. Her husband couldn’t stomach the idea that their son was gay, but they were happy to mutilate him in a misguided and impossible attempt to turn him into a girl. 

I’ve already said too much, so I’ll stop here. If there’s a TL;DR it’s “Show me the hate.”

*Trans identified males are not women and can never be women. A man can no more identify out of being male any more than he can identify out of being a primate, mammal, or tetrapod. It’s just an unalterable fact of material reality.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on The trees will speak.

Me

“falsely claiming Israel is a totally innocent, ”

Nobody has claimed that. At all. If anything this is you projecting your view of Palestine onto us.

Israel is an ethnostate, that in and of itself creates problems. Palestine would equally well be an ethnostate, just a much worse run one.

We can all rattle off issues with Israel past and present. We are well aware of the bullshit you’ve been spouting, those issues do not excuse the targeted mass rape, murder and abduction of civilians.

7 October fully justified a military response.

That means that yes, if Hamas use their civilian population as shields, a lot of them are going to die, and no it won’t be murder, it won’t be collective punishment, it won’t even be disproportionate. It is what happens when those tactics are applied in a war.

If you seriously want to reduce civilian casualties, the first step would be maybe not supporting tactics that put civilians in danger. Hamas is very guilty of using such tactics. The line of bullshit you push here, is what makes those tactics effective.

“and accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism, (exhibit “A” being Bruce Gorton calling me a goddamned Jew-hating nazi)”

Lets see, why did I call you a Nazi? Was it because you’re critical of Israel? No, its because you use Israel to deflect criticism from someone calling for the deaths of Jews in Australia, a totally different country.

Jews in Australia are not responsible for the policies of Israel – they don’t even live there. That whole “collective” guilt thing you’ve got going on when it comes to Jews, is a bit of a problem.

So far as Israel is concerned, you seem to be of the opinion that Israel has no right to defend itself, or its population. That in order to have a right to defend itself, it would have to somehow be blameless of all wrongs, or lack the capacity to do so. We have seen this line of reasoning before, it is the “no angels” argument applied to a state.

This isn’t a matter of Israel being helpless babes innocent of all wrongdoing, this is a matter of Israel being a fully modern, fully armed society that will damn well defend itself whether Nazis like you like it or not.

If you don’t like what Israel is doing, you’re going to have to come up with a reasonable alternative.

Here is what I can come up with, but it requires taking a different set of tactics to your perpetual bullshit:

The UN cuts the shit and condemns Hamas. Negotiations with the UN ensue, where the UN offers to take on the responsibility of seeing Hamas destroyed in lieu of aggressive military action by Israel.

The ICC issues warrants for the arrest of Hamas’ leadership. Global banking agrees to freeze accounts linked to Hamas. States that support Hamas cannot get loans from the World Bank or the IMF. We see if we can’t get the Bank of China in on the game (their excuses with regards to their treatment of the Uygers could be used as leverage for this purpose).

At the same time the UNRWA, which is extremely guilty of maintaining this forever war, gets folded into the UNHRC. The education the UN provides moves over to a soft curriculum designed to ease the next generation into reconciliation rather than radicalization. Israel is assured that it can employ observers to ensure that the education involved is not mainly propaganda for further war.

At the same time, Israel is required to come up with a roadmap for citizenship for its Palestinian population. The same requirement is placed upon the surrounding states. This aims to solve the problem of long-term statelessness with regards to Palestinians.

The two state solution is, bluntly, exactly what Apartheid envisaged with the Bantustans.

Instead the plan should be to emulate the one thing my country, South Africa, did right and move towards an integrated solution whereby the Palestinians become full Israeli citizens. This is a long-term goal, with a lot of work required to hammer out issues such as legal protections and suchlike, but it should be the overall direction for the future.

Yes, my country does have problems, very serious problems, but this I think is the only real workable solution long term. Otherwise you end up with a perpetually impoverished Palestine, next to a wealthy Israel, and more war ensues.

I saw this:

So I decided to read the open letter to the Board of AdvanceHE. It’s what we’d expect – they always are, aren’t they.

Dear Board Members, 

As members of the higher education (HE) sector, who believe that equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are crucial to the future of the sector, we recognise the importance of Advance HE’s work in this area. Advance HE manages the accreditation schemes Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter, delivers development programmes such as Aurora, and provides advice and guidance to the sector on matters related to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

Very high-educated to repeat “equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)” in the very next sentence after citing it the first time. Fans of EDI seem to get sexually aroused by mentioning it.

 One particular area that we, the undersigned, uphold, is the importance of including trans and non-binary people; we do not believe there is any conflict between Advance HE’s efforts to improve trans inclusion, and other areas of EDI in the HE sector, such as equality for women.

Oh well then, there’s no more to be said, is there. (They do in fact say no more about why they “do not believe.”) Just dismiss the idea that “trans inclusion” is in conflict with equality for women, without any argument or particulars. In fact of course there are very obvious conflicts. Every boost of a man who claims to be a woman is a boost not given to a woman yet it doesn’t count as another man in a sea of men, it counts as diversity equality inclusion. Believe that.

The 2020 Independent Review of Athena Swan highlighted that “the Charter must embrace the wider definition of gender” and following this, a transformed Charter was published including a key principle of “fostering collective understanding that individuals have the right to determine their own gender identity, and tackling the specific issues faced by trans and non-binary people because of their identity”.

In other words the charter must do more to stop working to promote women and start promoting men with interesting genders instead. Why must it do that?

However, recent events indicate a worrying watering down of this commitment to inclusion, following public criticism from a very vocal – but, we believe, dangerously transphobic – minority.  In particular, the Gender in HE Conference 2022 was originally scheduled to include a panel on “connections and tensions between sex-based and gender-inclusive rights“.  The very framing of this panel implied that the rights of cis women and trans women are separate and in tension. However, from the standpoint of inclusivity as upheld by the Athena Swan Charter principles, trans women are women and hence there is no such tension.

Aha! Magic! Just say they are women for the 40 billionth time and the problem is solved! Not for women, of course, but that doesn’t matter.

The fact that Advance HE were unable to find a trans or non-binary speaker to participate in this panel indicates that they failed to provide an environment in which trans people felt safe and supported to speak about their views and lived experience, again contrary to Advance HE’s own commitments to inclusion.

What about people who identify as animals? Furries should be supported to speak about their views and lived experience too you know!

Following online criticism of Advance HE’s approach, the panel was eventually replaced with a session named “A contested view, in conversation with Alice Sullivan”. This did not solve the problem of the complete lack of representation of trans people in a conversation pertinent to their rights and safety. 

When we talk about violence against women, let’s be sure to include some violent men so that violent men will be represented in a conversation pertinent to their rights and safety.

To emphasise to you that we, as members of the sector and of our academic communities, do indeed believe in the inclusion of trans and non-binary people in our workplaces and in the Athena Swan Charter, we the undersigned:

• reject the premise that trans-inclusive EDI work is a threat to freedom of speech or our academic freedom.
• further reject the suggestion that there is any tension between the rights of cis women and trans women, or between sex-based and gender-inclusive rights

Imagine having to work around those fools.

So Northumbria Police harassed a woman for saying men are not women, and because the police harassed her for stating an obvious banal truth, Newcastle United FC did its bit by punishing her further. Who else is going to step up? Will she be banned from the buses? Thrown out of Waitrose? Escorted out of the library?

A gender-critical Newcastle United fan says the club have suspended her membership because police investigated her for tweeting that “trans women are men”.

The cops investigate women for saying men are men, and then everyone else steps up to punish those wicked shameless whorey women who know that men are men. Welcome to the new Inquisition, so much more inclusive and diverse than the old one.

The 34-year-old, who asked not to be identified, was interviewed under caution by police after a complaint over tweets in which she also said that gender-affirming surgery was “mutilating children”. The investigation has now been dropped.

The woman was told by the club that her account had been “temporarily suspended” while Northumbria Police investigated her for online posts.

The lifelong Magpies supporter said the club had still not reinstated her membership.  “I have been in shock about the whole thing,” she told the Telegraph. “I’ve missed some big games. It’s been a bit of a nightmare.”

Remember, kids – this is not because the cops suspected her of raping someone, or cutting someone’s throat, or torturing someone. This is because the cops suspected her of saying men are men.

The club said it was “standard practice” to suspend anyone under police investigation and that her alleged offence “contravenes our ground regulations”.

Their what? What can it possibly have to do with Newcastle United that a woman said a man is a man?

It came as a shock for the loyal supporter, who was unaware she was under police investigation at all. “I didn’t have a clue what I had been accused of,” she said.

On Friday, she was asked to attend a voluntary interview at Forth Banks Police Station in relation to “malicious communications” over several posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.

One tweet read: “Just your daily reminder that trans women are men.”

…

Harry Miller from WeAreFairCop, a gender-critical organisation which advised the woman, said: “There’s nothing that comes close to being criminal. The process is the punishment. They (police) do this to terrorise members of the public. They have put this woman through absolute hell.”

All because she says men are men. That’s where we are now.

How did NUFC even know the cops had dragged her into the station for some torture? That would appear to be the doing of this smug asshole:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on No escape for women ever.

For being one of the most THE most powerless, oppressed, and persecuted group in the history of the multiverse, People of Gender sure seem to have it their way to an unusual degree.

Would Jews in Nazi Germany be be able to tell Aryans exactly what they were obligated to say unless they wanted “a formal complaint” and “a police visit?”, and would the German Police at the time be doing their bidding by showing up at the door of ordinary civilians for making non-threatening statements that some Jews might consider offensive?

Would the Taliban regime in Afghanistan – or anywhere else for that matter – have so many days, weeks, or entire months dedicated to “female pride” that you couldn’t keep track of them all, and would you be unable to walk through the streets of Kabul for more than 10 minutes during any of these periods without seeing at least half a dozen feminist flags?

Would the 2nd in command in Myanmar be proudly displaying Rohingya symbols or slogans on his social media profile, and would the 1st in command be using his very first day in office to muscle in special privileges for Rohingyas?

Would Chinese companies be changing their profile pictures on social media into the Uigur flag (if there is such a thing) at least once a year, and would they be offering crawling apologies, firing employees etc. at the first hint of protests from Uigurs?

Would south African Universities during the Apartheid era be cancelling books, talks, lectures or entire courses in anticipation of protests from blacks?

If you asked any of these groups to tell you about the struggles they were facing, is there any chance that fucking pronouns (!!!) would even make the list?

Of course not! It’s almost as if they weren’t the most oppressed group ever after all. Indeed when you look at it from such a perspective, the alleged “oppression” is beginning to look suspiciously like privilege. Crazy-talk, I know…

What could possibly go wrong?

Local governments should be asserting, unequivocally, that men are women.

I still have trouble believing this happened.

So do you use the social media platform X? Why do you use social media? How often do you tweet?

You use ‘He/The’ in your bio. What did you mean by this?

This says ‘Just your daily reminder that trans women are men.’ What did you mean by this? Do you think this could be seen as offensive and could cause anyone alarm and distress?

This shows your account with LGB and symbols separate from the TQ. What do you mean by that?

You state ‘This period of time where people are mutilating children will be looked back in history with disgust. I’ll be able to say I never agreed with this.’ What did you mean by that? Could it could be seen as offensive?

Someone on Twitter has asked, ‘Anyone else not getting their notifications?’ To which you answer ‘None of them are shadow banned for saying trans women are men.’ Do you think this can be seen as offensive?

‘Reality is trans phobic.’ You retweeted this saying ‘Yawn.’ What did you mean by this?

You reply to someone saying they are a woman that they are not. What did you mean by that? Do you think this individual could have found this offensive? Could it have caused them alarm or distress?

I’m going to show where an individual is saying, ‘So I am not a woman?’ You reply, ‘No you are not. No one would take a tweet meant for those suffering in the Middle East and turn it into something for mens rights. You’re a man.’ What did you mean by that? Do you think this could be seen as offensive?

You tweet ‘Do men run away to another platform because they are not getting away with it on X any more?’ What do you mean by that?

Is there any lawful excuse why you made these tweets?

What business is it of the police what people mean by what they say on Twitter? Are they going to come along and demand to read our diaries now? Tap our phones? Listen in on our conversations?

The quandary of how much tolerance we can tolerate never ends.

In a free society we are meant to tolerate the intolerant. But there is a point when appeasing intolerance becomes a death wish.

The paradox, and the extremes, of our tolerance for the intolerant came to life in Bankstown’s Al Madina Dawah Centre last week when Muslim cleric Abu Ousayd delivered a sermon about killing Jews.

Ousayd is his new name. This man is better known as jihadi preacher Wissam Haddad, who previously has expressed support for terrorist groups Islamic State and al-Qa’ida.

Haddad cited Islamic scripture and parables about “the end of times” when Muslims would be fighting Jews and “the trees will speak”. “They will say ‘oh Muslim, there is a yahud (Arabic for Jew) behind me, come and kill him’,” Haddad said.

As this newspaper also revealed, Haddad has a long history of preaching hatred from Islamic centres in southwest Sydney. More recently, after the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel, he said in a sermon: “If all the Muslims in that region (the Middle East) spat on Israel, the people of Israel would drown, the Jews would drown.”

Meanwhile police in the UK haul a woman in for saying that men are not women.

Great god almighty. Unreal.

WeAreFairCop is livid, and rightly so.

Sastra reminded us today of Freddie deBoer and I’m wondering why I haven’t been reading him all along. From August: Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement. I like it already – I’m beyond tired of the constant demands for “affirmation” of utter bullshit.

Dude has a way with words.

It frequently seems like canceling has run out of steam, as a disciplinary tactic; you watch people on social media trying to get somebody canceled, these days, and it sometimes feels like watching them trying and failing to get a pull-cord lawnmower started.

I need to watch the people he’s watching, because the ones I see have all too much success – but I love the punchline.

I’m not predicting a major social change writ large so much as I am predicting a new or newly invigorated response to a preexisting cultural reality, an unfortunate one. I think there’s gathering dissatisfaction with a common set of tropes regarding personal agency and mental health. In particular, I think that the dominance of the therapeutic assumption in American life, and the role of affirmation within it, will be challenged. Currently, an inescapable American cultural mode, particularly among the educated, is one of mandatory therapeutic maximalism and an attendant tyranny of affirmation.

Yes but only for some. Mandatory therapeutic maximalism for some, and brutal shouting and shunning for others. Tyranny of affirmation for some, and loud insistent ceaseless negation for others. But, again, “tyranny of affirmation” is top-notch.

The therapeutic/affirmational mode assumes

• Wanting and not getting is disordered and a kind of identity crime
• Human life is meant to be spent in a ceaseless state of feeling “valid,” which is to say, affirmed and respected and paid attention to and liked; any deviation from this state is pathological and a vestige of injustice

For the chosen recipients. Not everyone; just the Truly Madly Deeply marginalized, like for instance trans women, and trans women, and trans women. Women are most definitely not meant to be in a ceaseless state of feeling “valid” (not, admittedly, that I would want to).

• Good people spend a great deal of their time categorically and uncritically affirming others – telling friends and strangers alike that their desires are all legitimate, their instincts always correct, their perceptions of their own needs never mistaken or misguided, their self-conception compelling
• Correspondingly, we should all assume that anyone who is not affirming us is necessarily doing so out of a particular kind of politicized wickedness, that they are likely motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, or other kinds of bigotry, and if these specific accusations are not plausible, then by simple evil

Again, for the chosen few, and not for others. Trans women yes, women absolutely not are you out of your mind.

We do the best for others by affirming what they already believe and validating what they already want; people are happiest and healthiest when they are encouraged to think that vulnerability is more valuable than resilience and that their pain is more beautiful than their strength.

Which is interesting because it means women are the winners here after all. Who would want to be babied and cooed over the way trans women are? Who would want to be treated as fragile invalids the way they are? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Rebel energy yes, whining malingering fragility a thousand times NO.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on About that capacity to persevere.

Perhaps Museum London is preparing her for the next round of this exhibition by giving Hutchison further opportunities to “persevere through all kinds of different challenges.” Being cancelled is just another “different challenge.”

And as for any trans participation in this event, surely there’s no greater challenge than standing up against what is possible in the realm of material reality. A man claiming he’s a woman demonstrates a Sisyphean resilience in the face of the permanently unattainable. Or to throw in another classical allusion of perpetual torment, being constantly misgendered is just like the punishment of Prometheus, having his ever-regrowing liver eaten anew each day by an eagle. Yikes! So it’s like these guys are rolling rocks up a mountain while having their livers eaten!! Every day!!!* By all rights, this presentation should be nothing but TiMs.

*Of course neither Sisyphus or Prometheus had the Canadian Powerlifting Union or the Ontario Human Rights Commission looking out for their interests by cancelling Zeus, so it’s not exactly the same. Had they had these two organizations batting for them, it would have been Zeus’s liver on the line.

That letter from Museum London [Ontario] merits close attention.

That second paragraph. The Ontario Human Rights Commission says “the words people use to describe themselves and others are very important.”

Are they though? Especially the ones they use to describe themselves? People have a tendency to think more about themselves than others, to flatter themselves more than others, to puff up their descriptions of themselves more than others. People have a tendency to think they matter more than others. Maybe all this huffing and puffing about idennniny and the words people use to go on and on and on about themselves is not a new form of Justice or Empowerment or Incloosion but just more of the same old vanity and self-absorption we’re so accustomed to in humans. Maybe we really don’t need more of it, but rather less.

At any rate, even if you agree that we should all care deeply about how other people label themselves, there remains a difference between truth and lies. “Misgendering” someone in the sense of not lying about what sex they are is not a form of illegitimate or wicked “discrimination.” Women absolutely need to know which people are men and which are not, and we need to be free to warn other women about men who are disguising themselves as women, whether for the purpose of attacking them or stealing their athletic prizes. Museum London is way out of line ordering women to pretend some men are women, and punishing them if they refuse.

Another woman punished, banished, called harsh names for the greater glory of men who claim to be women.

“BREAKING: I now face a 2-year ban by the CPU for speaking publicly about the unfairness of biological males being allowed to taunt female competitors & loot their winnings. Apparently, I have failed in my gender-role duties as “supporting actress” in the horror show that is my #sport right now. Naturally, the CPU deemed MY written (private) complaint of the male bullying to be “frivolous and vexatious.”

And then

It just never ends.

The latest on the corruption of Clarence Thomas:

Leonard Leo is a longtime Federalist Society leader and a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. He also steers a network of nonprofits that promote conservative causes in the courts and beyond.

Leo arranged for Ginni Thomas’s for-profit firm, Liberty Consulting, to receive an unknown sum for a contract that was to have “no mention of Ginni.” In 2012, he told pollster Kellyanne Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25k,” documents show. He directed Conway to get the money by billing a nonprofit he advises. In a statement to The Post, Leo praised the work by Conway and Ginni Thomas as an “invaluable resource.”

Since 2016, nonprofits steered by Leo have paid at least $1.8 million for public relations efforts to defend and lionize Clarence Thomas,including in a laudatory film about his life.

…

Anthony Welters provided a loan that allowed the justice to buy a $267,230 luxury RV in 1999. A congressional investigation found that Thomas made some interest payments, but that it was declared settled by Welters in 2008 without Thomas repaying a substantial portion — or perhaps any — of the principal. An attorney for Thomas said in response that the loan’s terms “were satisfied in full” but has not said what those terms were.

Listen, a luxury RV should just plain come with the job, so it’s all fair and not a bit corrupt.

The Heritage Foundation paid Ginni Thomas more than $936,000 between 2001 and 2007, tax filings show. Tax filings before 2001 are not available. Clarence Thomas reported her employment at Heritage in 2011, after left-leaning activists raised questions.

It’s the conservatives who have this kind of money to spare.

There’s more.

P. G. Wodehouse is now writing the scripts for gender havers.

Bingo the Non-binary Priest – it should be a whole series, shelved next to the Molesworth oeuvre.

My favorite part is the fact that our man Bingo thinks the Bible was written in contemporary English.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on How long a chain of logic do you have to use?

…but one thing I think matters is: how long a chain of logic do you have to use to reach the conclusion that this affects someone’s ability to do the job?

Of course, if the reasoning is sound, and the premises are solid, even a long chain of logic can lead to a justified conclusion. Too often, however, the conclusion is simply claimed to follow while the actual premises and inferences are best left unspecified.

It’s very similar to the way “worker’s rights”, “egalitarianism”, “solidarity”, “anti-imperialism”, “anti-colonialism”, “anti-fascism” etc. in the Soviet Union or Mao’s China were basically just synonyms for “whatever the party/the leader does” (e.g. living like emperors while the workers were living off scraps). It’s easy to be in favor of, say, “worker’s rights”, but how do you get from that to uncritical support for autocracy, the one party state, leader worship, forced orthodoxy and intellectual conformity, thoughtpolice, endless purges and show trials, political arrests, torture, executions, forced collectivization, mass-starvation, genocide etc. etc.? How does criticism of the latter translate into rejection of the former? Of course, you might as well forget hoping for an answer. Just by asking the question you would have marked yourself as “anti worker’s rights”, as well as “pro-fascism”, “pro-colonialism” etc. No need to spell out the intermediary steps.

Likewise, it’s easy to be in favor of “trans rights” (e.g. there isn’t a single “right” – properly formulated* – that I’m granting myself that I’m not also granting every trans-identified person on the planet), but how do you get from that to uncritical support for sex denialism, biological males in women’s sports/bathrooms/changing rooms/showers/jails/domestic abuse and rape shelters, forced teaming, the idea that it’s bigoted for lesbians to not be into “lady-cock”, automatic “affirmation” and medicalization of children etc. etc. etc.? How does disagreement with the latter translate into denial of the former? Once again, all the major premises are unstated, and all the critical inferences are left unspecified.

* By “properly formulated” i mean formulated in the most generally applicable way possible. E.g. I don’t recognize any universal right to use the “men’s room”, although I do claim that right for myself. Nor do I recognize a universal right to use “the bathroom appropriate to one’s gender identity”. What I do recognize is the right of everyone to use the bathroom intended for their biological sex. My own right to use the men’s room is just what follows from this more general right.

Horrible bossy fool gloats at the prospect of getting people in trouble with the law for not lying about what sex ThEy is.

What about the intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment Whittle and people like Whittle are creating for people who refuse to lie about what sex other people are? Why do Whittle and people like Whittle gloat over forcing people to lie about what sex someone is?

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Without forgetting her nursing training.

I’ve been trying to sort out my views on when someone’s statements or behavior outside of their work capacity should justify disciplinary action. (I mean morally justify, not what the legal lines are.)

It’s hard to come up with a formulation that doesn’t involve a lot of case-by-case judgment. The extreme bright-line rules don’t seem workable to me. It just can’t be the case that an employer should shrug and ignore a manager who is posting statements about how members of group X are intellectualy inferior, etc. — that obviously raises concerns that such a person can’t fairly make hiring/firing/employee evaluation decisions. Ditto for someone who is the “face of the company” but has made themselves toxic to the general public and/or your customer base, etc. Conversely, I’m also uncomfortable with the notion that people can’t have separate existences from their job, and that every employee’s every utterance is fodder for HR.

There’s obviously a lot of factors to consider (is it a public-facing job, how far beyond the pale are the statements, etc.), but one thing I think matters is: how long a chain of logic do you have to use to reach the conclusion that this affects someone’s ability to do the job?

When you have to make arguments like “Employee X made statement Y. Statement Y is contrary to the position of advocacy groups for minority such-and-such. Therefore Y constitutes ‘violence’ against that group, and members of that group would be justifiably ‘afraid’ to be treated by X even if X would never utter Y on the job, therefore X can’t do the job and must be fired or disciplined,” I think something has gone wrong.