Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The problem was dogma.

The problem with this whole discussion as I see it is that beliefs are just taken as a given rather than the outcome of some cognitive process in their own right, even if it’s just accepting what you’ve always been told. My main problem with faith-based religion (and its secular equivalents) was always the part about leaving the most important questions in life – questions with real-world consequences and implications for the way we treat others – up to blind faith in the first place. I don’t think it’s any kind of excuse or mitigating circumstance to be doing the right thing as we see it if the way we see it is based on unjustified beliefs, we never made any honest effort to find out what’s objectively true (rationalizing a fixed, pre-determined conclusion doesn’t count as an “honest effort”), and were unwilling to even consider the possibility that our beliefs were wrong. “I am going to think and act as if this were true no matter what and let others pay the price for my unjustified beliefs. And if that means hating others, treating them as lesser beings, even subjecting them to violence, then so be it. That’s their problem! Not only am I willing to bet their rights, their dignity, even their lives on the correctness of propositions I have no real reason to believe, but I’m unwilling to refrain from doing so, and no amount of logic or evidence is ever going to prevent me!”

William K. Clifford’s classic article on “The Ethics of Belief” is, of course, essential reading in this regard.

In my militant atheist days I often made myself unpopular (among accomodationist types) for a somewhat different reason than Sastra. I was repeatedly told that the specific contents of specific beliefs don’t matter, because (A or B):

A. Nobody actually believes any of that stuff anyway (“That’s just an excuse for what people would be doing anyway. Without the religion they would invent some other excuse” etc.).

B. People aren’t motivated by what they sincerely belive to be true about God or the afterlife. (“Nobody actually cares if they face an eternity of bliss or an eternity of torture after death, because all that matters to people is getting the best deal out of secular society during the few decades they spend on earth”)

I strongly suspect A is wrong, but in the absence of telepathic powers, it’s hard to say for sure. I’m confident that B is bullshit though. And this is where I wholeheartedly agree with Sastra. While I too have issues with Sam Harris I think he hits the nail on the head on this point. The specific contents of specific beliefs do indeed matter. As Voltaire famously put it “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”, because then they can also make you believe the kind of absurdities that would make the atrocities seem perfectly justified, even the only morally defensible thing to do. The problem with faith-based religion (or dogmatic belief systems in general) as I see it is that it allows people by the millions to think and act as if such absurdities were true whether they are in fact true or not. The fact that not all religious beliefs are equally harmful in practice is irrelevant with respect to the deeper problem, i.e. the part about leaving the most important questions in life up to blind faith in the first place. Almost every problem I have with religion-like movements ultimately comes back to the part about believing things for the wrong reasons* (as you pretty much have to do to believe in God, since no other reasons are available). The same kind of wrong reasons that gave us Jainism (a religion of total pacifism, or at least so we’re told) also gave us Jihadism.

*This is were I disagree with those atheists who say things like “I have nothing against faith, I’m only against organized religion”. If I could chose between a world without unjustified beliefs and a world without churches, I would chose the former any time. If we could get people to stop believing things for bad reasons the harmful ideas of religion would die a natural death, and whatever good ideas are in the mix don’t need the bad reasons to stay alive. If people still wanted to go to church for community and support, I wouldn’t really mind. If we could have a “religion” without unjustified beliefs, it would probably rank very low on my list of concerns. And with unjustified beliefs even secular ideologies have the potential to become the stuff of nightmares.

JKR is clearly all in, and for the long haul.

HAhahahahahahaha that’s a good one.

Yep, all in.

Originally a comment by Sastra on A kind of Turing test.

In atheist forums I often promoted an unpopular opinion: the religious were no less ethical than we were. On the whole, they share the same values and moral goals. Even the Nazis didn’t really differ in their sense of right & wrong, or commitment to fairness, from the people they persecuted.

Because change what you thought were the facts, and you change what’s right and wrong. If God was a God of Love and homosexuals subvert the Loving Natural Order, thus harming not only themselves but leading whole nations into damnation, then gay marriage is wrong. And fighting against it is right. It does no good to see my opponents as wicked, immoral, demonic, or cruel if I would do the same thing if I believed what they believe. The problem was dogma, ideology. The problem with the religious was religion.

Sure, there’s a disturbing portion of psychopaths and people who really are cruel. But if there’s a position that’s popularly held it’s very unlikely indeed that it’s believed only by the sort of people who enjoy torturing others. Look at the facts they’re working from: what looks like a moral problem may be a problem in reasoning.

When I made this case I noticed that, over time, fewer and fewer people agreed with me. It used to be a standard position in skepticism and a respectable position in atheism. But the more emphasis placed on social justice, the more the religious were seen as reveling in hatred. Till it became… like it is now. Dark vs Light, Good vs Evil, the Saved vs the Damned. It’s come full circle. We’re not just like the religious — we’re like religion.

Suzanne Moore on International Women’s Day:

As a feminist, though, I would indeed like the world to be a better place for women – and by the world, I don’t mean north London or a campus in California; I mean Herat, Tigray, Guatemala. For all the arguments about equality for women amount to nothing if we lose an international perspective. Feminism is global, or it is simply an exercise in consumer power dressed up as politics. That is exactly what happened to Western feminism in the 1990s, when everything from brunching to boob jobs was “empowering”.

Seriously. You don’t see women in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria running around exclaiming about their trans sisters – they have other stuff to worry about. One (but only one) of the enraging things about the trans ideology is the luxury of it, the optionality, the choosy-choiceness, the expensive plush shiny consumerism of it.

The pandemic worsened every existing inequality, but before Covid women’s rights were already in reverse. Women are in lower paid jobs often because of trying to juggle kids and work. Childcare costs are prohibitive. Women were more likely to be furloughed and took on the lion’s share of home-schooling. The gender pay gap has increased, from 14.9 per cent in 2020 to 15.4 per cent.

In short, without a continual fight, no headway is made. The biggest surprise to me, though, has been  that the backlash against feminism has come not from the Right, but from the Left. The whole inflated debate around trans issues is so often not about the small number of people who are gender dysphoric, and need care and dignity; it is about the rights of women to keep what we already have. It has produced an avalanche of repulsive misogyny.

Much of which issues from women, like Laurie Penny for instance.

Forgive me, then, if I do not celebrate International Women’s Day when so many political parties are kowtowing to this woman-hating religion. Forgive me if I think “non-binary” is just another way of creating a new binary, and saying “I am special” and you are not in my tribe. Forgive me if I think that, in so much of the virtue-signalling we will witness today, it will likely be that there is little “international” about any of this.

Yes, it’s trans international.

Meanwhile, we just can’t figure out what a woman is.

Woman’s Hour starting at 21:15:

Emma Barnett: And Labour’s definition of a woman?

Labour Equalities Shadow Minster Annalise Dodds: Well, I have to say that there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is, I mean you look at the definition within the Equality Act and I think it just says someone who is adult and female I think but that doesn’t say how you define either of those things – I mean that said obviously you’ve got the biological definition, the legal definition –

In short we just don’t quite know. There are different definitions, it all depends, you have to ask around, there’s the legal definition and the magic pony playtime definition.

Ok then what’s a man?

Oh don’t be silly, that’s easy, nobody’s asking that.

In London you can be fined for it.

Just one in every 1,000 drivers reported for unnecessary idling of their engines were fined in central London, data has revealed.

Toxic air pollution kills about 4,000 people every year in the capital and councils have targeted parked drivers who do not turn off their vehicles.

In Westminster, more than 70,000 idling drivers have been reported since 2017 via the council’s “report it” website. But only 63 fines of £80 were issued and just half of these were paid.

Damn I wish we could report it here. People do it more than they used to rather than less.

Air pollution may be damaging every organ in the human body, according to a comprehensive 2019 review, and is particularly damaging to children. A recent study found that switching off an engine for even 30 seconds cuts pollution by half compared with idling.

But it’s so much more fun to leave the engine running for no reason.

The Vagina Museum kept its word, with 22 tweets celebrating men pretending to be women. Like…

That one in particular interests me because the man looks frankly scary. You wouldn’t want to be trapped anywhere alone with him – he has that “I’m just barely keeping my temper” look. I think the Vagina Museum chose that photo for that reason. I don’t understand why they did that, but I think it’s clear they did – they could have found a less ragey photo.

And after all that they taunt us further with

What are men?

One day. We can’t even have one day.

They’ve turned replies off because they know this is a calculated, intentional, with malice aforethought insult to women. “This International Women’s Day we’re going to talk about men, so fuck you, Karen.”

Originally a comment by latsot on Sitting on the gender spectrum.

I’ve tried many times (as have others) to engage with gender identity fans on this point, asking them to state the GC position in such a way that a typical person broadly on the GC side would agree with it. A sort of Turing test. I’ve spent considerable amounts of time and effort on this and on trying to return the favour: on trying to state the TA position such that a typical TA person would agree.

You know what? I’ve never had the slightest success in either direction.

When they’ve even made an attempt to state the GC position with any honesty at all (rare), we’ve never got more than a few tweets in before the insults come out. Even where there’s been a reasonably respectful back and forth, at some point there will always come some obviously deliberate gross misstating, even if that contradicts what we’ve already agreed. From that point, insults will start flying, always from their side.

It’s as though they can’t help themselves. It’s as though they genuinely can’t bring themselves to state the GC position honestly. Or perhaps that in beginning to do so, they realise that the position is pretty sound and theirs is not. Or maybe they’re scared that people will think they’re catching TERF lurgy.

When it’s the other way around, deterioration is similarly rapid. It’s as though they’re looking for any excuse to kick over the board and storm out. They will take enormous offence at some statement or other, apparently at random and rather than working through a correction – as I’ve tried to do – they’ll say that there’s no reasoning with TERFs and end things in a flurry of insults.

Oh and what else is Rowling up to today? Nothing much…

Never?

See TERF Wars: Why Transphobia Has no Place in Feminism, from June 2020:

Last week, beloved children’s author J.K. Rowling briefly became the world’s most famous transphobe. After the Harry Potter writer spent days defending transphobia on Twitter and in her blog, writing that she was “worried about the new trans activism,” millions of distraught fans and confused bystanders were left wondering what the hell was going on.

But Rowling’s public spasm of self-delusion isn’t unusual.

…

“Accusations of TERFery,” Rowling writes, “have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’” Today, “terf is a slur” has become a rhetorical tic for people who don’t like trans women but don’t want to be called out on it.

And you know what? They’re right. “Terf” is a slur. It’s a word that’s used to describe a prejudice, and calling someone out on their prejudice is often insulting. People who get called racist feel the same way. The word “racist” is a slur. It’s also, often, accurate -and racists are often far more concerned about the fact that someone has dared to call them a racist than they are about, you know, racism.

So to keep things simple, I’ll just go ahead and call these feminists transphobes.

And then act very very surprised a couple of years later when these feminists fail to leap to her defense when she gets some bad reviews for her new book.

Not all “gender critical”’ women fighting against “transgenderism”’ believe they are transphobes, of course. That’s part of the problem. They genuinely don’t believe that they’re doing anything wrong or harmful, in part because they refuse to listen to anyone telling them exactly why they’re doing just that. They have nothing against trans people — they just want to make sure dangerous men in dresses don’t sneak into the women’s bathrooms. They’re just “concerned”, like Rowling, “about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition”. A lot of people also say that they have nothing against gay people. They just don’t want them around their kids. Or violating the sanctity of marriage by marrying each other. The people who say these things don’t think of themselves as prejudiced, either.

“Where have I said that?” she asked. Right there.

Or to put it more succinctly –

Another chapter in the crisps on a train saga.

Just in case you missed Apparently it’s considered unprofessional, or have forgotten the details, Laurie Penny tweeted to the world yesterday that bad reviews of her book set off her (putative) CPTSD. Julie is satirizing that absurd claim, and JKR is sharing the joke. So what does the putative CPTSD sufferer do? She makes a public fool of herself all over again. Somebody really should tell her she’s the source of her own CPTSD.

Yes that’s the ticket. Do more of the same thing, so that even more people will see what an entitled self-admiring fool you are, and what a bully.

Laurie Penny is the one who said children shouldn’t stare at men’s penises in women’s changing rooms, because it’s rude. She’s not a non-bully.

How to react when your book is greeted with harsh reviews:

It’s unprofessional to write a review saying Laurie Penny wrote a bad book? I did not know that.

The ACLU tells us:

Families in Texas are worried that supporting their transgender kids will lead to a report of child abuse. We are already seeing families being investigated. Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, saves lives, and shouldn’t be the subject of an investigation.

Supporting transgender kids is one thing, and letting them get amputations and/or puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones is another. The ACLU does not know that what it calls “gender-affirming care” (i.e. amputations, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones) is medically necessary, nor does it know that it saves more lives than it puts at risk. This is all new territory and it’s just not obvious, let alone established, that there won’t be thousands of people who regret making drastic permanent changes to their bodies when they weren’t old enough to evaluate the consequences. The ACLU is being horrifyingly reckless with the lives of other people in this stampede to say it’s just fine for teenagers to wreck their bodies because they think they’re the other sex.

Chase Strangio writes:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton told trans youth in Texas last week that they considered their health care to be a form of child abuse. This is dangerous, dehumanizing, and terrifying to trans youth and their supportive families.

But it isn’t “health care” as commonly understood. It’s pretty dangerous to give youth puberty blockers, too, but Strangio frames the issue as entirely good v evil.

The declaration will have devastating consequences — and we are already seeing them. Abbott and Paxton, along with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, want to investigate families simply for following best practice medicine and supporting their trans kids through lifesaving, medically necessary health care.

But it isn’t “medically necessary.” It may be psychologically necessary, or desirable, or better than the alternative, in some cases, but medically necessary it isn’t. It’s not “best practice” medicine, and there are plenty of detransitioners who can explain why. It’s isn’t “lifesaving” unless you make dangerous and reckless assumptions about suicidality.

The Texas law sounds intrusive and harsh, and I don’t trust Republicans to make good laws, but the ACLU/Chase Strangio take is manipulative and melodramatic and inaccurate.

In addition to being outside of the scope of their authority and clearly motivated by partisan politics, this policy is wrong and is opposed by health care professionals and child welfare experts. It also isn’t isolated — while particularly extreme and cruel, Texas politicians are part of a coordinated effort to shame, dehumanize, and attack trans kids. The end result won’t be that fewer kids grow up to be trans, it will be that fewer kids grow up.

“Give us what we think we want in this moment or we’ll kill ourselves.”

Chase Strangio is dangerous.

Trump said we should bomb Russia and pretend China did it. Sound and reasonable as ever.

Former president Donald Trump mused Saturday to the GOP’s top donors that the United States should label its F-22 planes with the Chinese flag and “bomb the shit out of Russia.”

…

“And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch,” he said of labeling U.S. military planes with Chinese flags and bombing Russia, which was met with laughter from the crowd of donors, according to a recording of the speech obtained by The Washington Post.

Hahahaheehee it is all such a great joke.

After coming under fierce criticism for praising Putin as “savvy” and “brilliant” for the Russian leader’s moves in Ukraine last month, he struck a tougher tone on Saturday — claiming Putin never would have invaded the country if Trump [were] president of the United States.

…

“I knew Putin very well. He would not have done it. He would have never done it,” Trump said, without mentioning that, as president, he held up military aid for Ukraine as he pushed the country to investigate Biden’s son Hunter.

That’s what he said the other day, too – “I know Putin very very well.” Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t know anyone or anything very very well, and Putin especially is way out of his grasp.

Charlie Porter is a fashion journalist who thinks he’s a gender-rebel.

I am 48, a midlife point that gives me perspective on what I maybe didn’t realise before. I have always used clothing to poke at the assumptions of gender. As a kid, I had safe parameters from my whiteness and middle-class upbringing within an accepting family. Where I sit on the gender spectrum is like a comedy version of “male”, which has allowed me to pass lightly in this patriarchal society.

Others, he hints, are not so capacious in their thinking.

According to gender-critical feminists, men who voice their trans-inclusive beliefs on gender identity are bullies and misogynists. It is common among such men to desire the dismantling of patriarchy. I am one of them. Yet I believe the result of the gender-critical argument is that gendered stereotypes are maintained, and patriarchy is consolidated.

I’m gonna go right ahead and say I don’t think he has a clue what the gender-critical argument is. It’s certainly not “laydeez should wear skirts and men should wear trousers.” I’m also gonna say I don’t think he desires the dismantling of patriarchy, because here he is saying he’s better at feminism than those stupid women are.

Originally a comment by Green Eagle on Capture.

“Gender” is a linguistic term, not a biological one. Words may have a gender; something which is far more understandable to people who speak languages like French, German or Italian, where many words have genders unrelated to the sex of the creatures they refer to. “Equus,” or “Alumnus, for example are words of the male gender, regardless of whether they refer to male or female horses or graduates. There is no such thing as an equua, and the term alumna is a construct.

Whether a person is male or female is a biological question, not a linguistic one, and is capable of being answered correctly by any minimally qualified geneticist. People who promote trans ideology do so by deliberately confusing biology with linguistics. This sort of thing seems to be much stronger in England and the US than other places, because, I believe, native English speakers do not understand the linguistic nature of gender.

In the end, this attitude has given birth to a frightening toleration for bullying as a way to determine which “facts” will be accepted. We have had a five year lesson here in the US about what happens when we allow right wingers to behave this way; if the left licenses this sort of thing too, both democracy and truth will become things of the past.

How not to help refugees fleeing a war on civilians:

France has accused Britain of “lacking humanity” in helping fleeing Ukrainians join their families in the UK via the French port city of Calais.

French interior minister Gerald Darmanin, in a strongly-worded letter to his British counterpart Priti Patel, urged London to set up a proper consular presence in Calais to issue visas after 150 Ukrainians were turned away and asked to obtain visas at UK consulates in Paris or Brussels.

Paris and Brussels are not across the street or around the corner, they are a hefty train journey away. These are refugees, not tourists.

The French minister, in his letter, said the UK’s response was “completely unsuitable” and showed a “lack of humanity” towards refugees “in distress”, reported news agency AFP.

“It is imperative that your consular representation, exceptionally and for the duration of this crisis, is able to issue visas for family reunification on the spot in Calais,” Mr Darmanin added.

And if they say they can’t, it’s too hard and too expensive and they don’t want to, they should pause to think of Poland.

The number of refugees fleeing Ukraine is expected to reach 1.5 million as Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered the eleventh day on Sunday. The UN has warned that the war could displace nearly five million people.

Most refugees were seen moving to the west towards Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and Hungary. Poland, which has opened its doors to the lion’s share of Ukrainian refugees, has reportedly absorbed over 650,000 people.

Do the right thing.

Zelensky did a Zoom call with a group of Congress people yesterday. The Congress people were told, emphatically, not to share anything about the call during the call so as not to endanger Zelensky. Two Republican senators said nah we’ll just go ahead and endanger Zelensky.

Two US senators have come under fire for sharing photos of Volodomyr Zelensky on social media after they were reportedly asked not to for the safety of the Ukrainian president.

Democratic Rep Dean Phillips slammed Republican Senators Steve Daines and Marco Rubio for their “appalling and reckless ignorance” after they each posted screen grabs from a Zoom call between Mr Zelensky and a group of US lawmakers on Saturday morning, where he had pleaded for more help for Ukraine from the US.

I don’t see how it can be ignorance, since they had just been told. It looks more like callous indifference, or worse.

Mr Rubio, who represents Florida in the US Senate, had posted a screen grab on Twitter of Mr Zelensky to his 4.2m followers, writing: “On zoom call now with President Zelensky of #Ukraine”.

Montana Senator Daines also posted a photo from the meeting on his Twitter, with the caption: “Currently on a zoom call with President Zelenskyy. #StandWithUkraine.”

I guess their desire to show off how important they are outweighed Zelensky’s safety.