Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Yet one remained an enthusiastic collaborator.

To be part of a mass movement was for many a chance to end their alienation, to feel close to the “masses,” to be united in a single community with workers and shopkeepers.

Of course genderism isn’t so much a “mass movement” as it is a movement forced upon the “masses” by way of forced teaming and captured institutions. They’re at no risk of being plowed under if they’re driving the plow. So much the better for one’s self image if you can claim that resistance is bigotry.

You know what I’m thinking about, of course – the chronic question of why so many otherwise reasonable/skeptical people have embraced a loony fantasy-based ideology, and done so with such zeal and venom.

Having fooled themselves that transgenderism is progressive, they can no longer see how much they resemble the forces of compulsory, civic Christianity, and that the ubiquitous “Pride Progress” flag is as much a symbol of a hegemonic imposition as the religious Right’s Ten Commandments plopped on courthouse lawns, or posted in classrooms. Both are the symbols of religious belief systems attempting to turn the commons into a totalizing, state-enforced, intellectual and political monoculture, to which all must give public obeisance or face ostracism, or worse. Questions, criticisms, and pushback are signs of irredeemable Evil, rather than principled defence against the erosion of rights and freedoms. You don’t make deals with the Devil. “NO DEBATE!”

Our erstwhile skeptics, like Republican Dominionists, have decided that the righteousness of their movement means that, so long as it is in the service of She/Her, they can do no wrong. They can say “Be kind,” and “KILL TERFS” in the same breath, with a straight face, without any thought of inconsistency or hypocrisy. After all, they’re fighting for a “marginalized, vulnerable community,” despite the fact that a movement that has succeeded in taking control of large swathes of government, business, the courts, the police, the schools, unions, news media, etc., can no longer convincingly claim to be “oppressed.” But don’t try pointing that out. You don’t have to worry about that sort of thing when you’re on the Right Side of History.

I’m not seeing any journalism reporting on this.

Updating to add:

Yes, go underground, like Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, like lesbians and gay men until the last 5 decades or so – what a cheerful prospect.

Anne Applebaum on Trump v Denmark:

What did Donald Trump say over the phone to Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, on Wednesday? I don’t know which precise words he used, but I witnessed their impact. I arrived in Copenhagen the day after the call—the subject, of course, was the future of Greenland, which Denmark owns and which Trump wants—and discovered that appointments I had with Danish politicians were suddenly in danger of being canceled. Amid Frederiksen’s emergency meeting with business leaders, her foreign minister’s emergency meeting with party leaders, and an additional emergency meeting of the foreign-affairs committee in Parliament, everything, all of a sudden, was in complete flux.

…

In private discussions, the adjective that was most frequently used to describe the Trump phone call was rough. The verb most frequently used was threaten. The reaction most frequently expressed was confusion. Trump made it clear to Frederiksen that he is serious about Greenland: He sees it, apparently, as a real-estate deal. But Greenland is not a beachfront property. The world’s largest island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, inhabited by people who are Danish citizens, vote in Danish elections, and have representatives in the Danish Parliament. Denmark also has politics, and a Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida.

…

Trump’s demands are illogical. Anything that the U.S. theoretically might want to do in Greenland is already possible, right now. Denmark has never stopped the U.S. military from building bases, searching for minerals, or stationing troops in Greenland, or from patrolling sea lanes nearby. In the past, the Danes have even let Americans defy Danish policy in Greenland.

…

The Danes were loyal U.S. allies [in 1957], and remain so now. During the Cold War, they were central to NATO’s planning. After the Soviet Union dissolved, they reformed their military, creating expeditionary forces specifically meant to be useful to their American allies. After 9/11, when the mutual-defense provision of the NATO treaty was activated for the first time—on behalf of the U.S.—Denmark sent troops to Afghanistan, where 43 Danish soldiers died. As a proportion of their population, then about 5 million, this is a higher mortality rate than the U.S. suffered. The Danes also sent troops to Iraq, and joined NATO teams in the Balkans. They thought they were part of the web of relationships that have made American power and influence over the past half century so unique. Because U.S. alliances were based on shared values, not merely transactional interests, the level of cooperation was different. Denmark helped the U.S., when asked, or volunteered without being asked. “So what did we do wrong?” one Danish official asked me.

Obviously, they did nothing wrong—but that’s part of the crisis too. Trump himself cannot articulate, either at press conferences or, apparently, over the telephone, why exactly he needs to own Greenland, or how Denmark can give American companies and soldiers more access to Greenland than they already have. Plenty of others will try to rationalize his statements anyway. The Economist has declared the existence of a “Trump doctrine,” and a million articles have solemnly debated Greenland’s strategic importance. But in Copenhagen (and not only in Copenhagen) people suspect a far more irrational explanation: Trump just wants the U.S. to look larger on a map.

…

Of course, Trump might forget about Greenland. But also, he might not. Nobody knows. He operates on whims, sometimes picking up ideas from the last person he met, sometimes returning to obsessions he had apparently abandoned: windmills, sharks, Hannibal Lecter, and now Greenland. 

Could we combine them somehow? Sharks living in windmills with Hannibal Lecter while singing songs about life in Greenland? Maybe throw in a narwhal or two?

H/t Tim Harris

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Yet one remained an enthusiastic collaborator.

It’s tribalism all the way down. My endless fascination with Scientologists taught me that attachment to a tribe is one of the great instincts that drives human behaviour — just as great as the sexual and pair-bonding instincts are. What the Scientologists demonstrate so vividly is the capacity to completely block out obvious facts if they pose a threat to their sense of belonging within their tribe. The Xenu space alien story is possibly the most obvious pile of bullshit ever conceived, and yet perfectly rational people will find ways to avoid dispelling it, for the sake of staying in the tribe.

Tribalism is the whole reason the myriad sports teams and sports stadiums and sports bars and sports television channels and billions upon billions of dollars in sports team branded clothing exists, for one thing. Football and hockey and soccer are pageants of warring tribes.

It’s the whole reason religion exists, too.

Same for youth subcultures like goth and grunge and hippies and punks.

Same for office and corporate culture, with its cringey jargon and its team-building exercises and its tedious gossipy politics.

Of course, most of those tribes are benign, most of the time. Sports fandom does occasionally turn into violent soccer hooliganism; corporate cultures become monstrously corrupt sometimes (Enron, anyone?); youth subgroups can become criminal gangs; and we all know that religion can turn people murderous.

As for why some people stick with their tribe after it turns dark while other people have the courage to resist, I wonder if it’s got to do with how one learns to cope with rejection in childhood. Perhaps there’s a parallel with attachment theory. Attachment theory says that the other major instinct that drives us to behave irrationally much of the time — human dating behaviour — splits people into four very distinct groups (secure, anxious, fearfully avoidant, and dismissively avoidant), and the factor that sets us off on one of the four trajectories is the early relationship between the infant and primary parent (almost always the mother). The brain wires up its “relationship management strategy” in one of four ways, based on the subtle cues it receives in those crucial first interactions with the mother.

I suspect there’s a “tribal in-group management strategy” that our brains wire up in early childhood, too. We learn early on how to navigate group dynamics — which things one should and should not say and do in order to avoid social punishment or even ostracization from our peers. From my own experience, I had an extremely atypical childhood: I was an absolute outcast. I was a poor kid in the ghetto who took the bus across town to the good, rich kid french-immersion school, which meant that I was absolutely despised by both my hard-knocks, underprivileged neighbours and my sheltered, overprivileged schoolmates. The physical abuse I endured from the neighbourhood boys and the psychological abuse I endured from the mean girls at school both took their tolls on me, but they immunized me against the drive to fit in, which I could clearly see had such a stranglehold on the other kids’ behaviour.

I learned not to fear the social cost of saying or doing something that would put me at odds with my peers. I suspect that ostracization is something I’m completely unafraid of — to this day, I just as quickly step into groups as part ways with them — because I never found belonging within a tribe in my childhood. I have absolutely no fear of telling a boss if I think something’s unjust at work, or walking away from a “scene” that I think is taking a wrong turn (See ya later, gay village community! Sayonara, “gender critical Twittersphere!” Adios, New Atheism!).

I suspect that for a lot of the people who stick with their tribes even when they’ve gone dark, they’re following a course of behaviour that they unconsciously trained themselves to act out in those early days of childhood play, learning to navigate the schoolyard social dynamics, and training themselves to avoid falling out with the tribe at all costs. I suspect they don’t even know that they’re doing it. I suspect all those so-called “skeptics” who’ve gone mad with gender nonsense don’t even realize that what drives their behaviour is an unconscious fear of being kicked out of the playground, cast off like a primordial ape, left to fend for oneself in the wilderness of the savanna.

Anne Applebaum in 2020 on collaboration and resistance:

Separately, each man’s story makes sense. But when examined together, they require some deeper explanation. Until March 1949, Leonhard’s and Wolf’s biographies were strikingly similar. Both grew up inside the Soviet system. Both were educated in Communist ideology, and both had the same values. Both knew that the party was undermining those values. Both knew that the system, allegedly built to promote equality, was deeply unequal, profoundly unfair, and very cruel. Like their counterparts in so many other times and places, both men could plainly see the gap between propaganda and reality. Yet one remained an enthusiastic collaborator, while the other could not bear the betrayal of his ideals. Why?

It’s a question that never really gets answered.

One possible answer I think is mostly useless: that X has more courage than Y. There’s more to it than that, and what the more may be is an interesting puzzle.

Czesław Miłosz, a Nobel Prize–winning Polish poet, wrote about collaboration from personal experience. An active member of the anti-Nazi resistance during the war, he nevertheless wound up after the war as a cultural attaché at the Polish embassy in Washington, serving his country’s Communist government. Only in 1951 did he defect, denounce the regime, and dissect his experience. In a famous essay, The Captive Mind, he sketched several lightly disguised portraits of real people, all writers and intellectuals, each of whom had come up with different ways of justifying collaboration with the party. Many were careerists, but Miłosz understood that careerism could not provide a complete explanation. To be part of a mass movement was for many a chance to end their alienation, to feel close to the “masses,” to be united in a single community with workers and shopkeepers.

That’s the kind of answer that’s more interesting.

You know what I’m thinking about, of course – the chronic question of why so many otherwise reasonable/skeptical people have embraced a loony fantasy-based ideology, and done so with such zeal and venom.

This is why courage is irrelevant. It takes more than fear of ostracism to explain the collapse.

Mmyeah. This is the way to do it. Just list all the good things and don’t pause for a single second to ask whether they are compatible with each other. Six twelve a million impossible things before breakfast.

Sure, kid, sure – challenge sexism and shout that men are women.

How’s that going?

Infant.

Donald Trump has said he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban that is due to take effect on Sunday, on the eve of his swearing-in as the 47th US president.

I don’t have an opinion about TikTok or its ban or its reprieve from a ban, because I know pretty much nothing about it.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News.

He made similarly remarks hours later to ABC News.

“Well, I have the right as you know, I’m the one who is going to be calling the shots,” he told ABC. “Most likely, I’ll extend for 90 days – you have the extension for 90 days as you probably know. I’ll do that until we figure something out.”

Squeaky baby voice: I have the right, I’m the one who is going to be calling the shots, I can do whatever I want, I’m the boss, I can break all your toys if I feel like it.

Trump previously backed a TikTok ban, but has more recently professed a “warm spot” for the app, touting the billions of views he says his videos attracted on the platform during last year’s presidential campaign.

Soft spot, not warm spot. He can’t even do clichés right. Also yuck. “Warm spot” is disgusting.

Trendies gonna trendy.

Remind us (or at least me) who she is?

Ah. Of course. The “feminists” who rejoice to give away everything that belongs to women.

(Giving a talk in your underwear is a nice touch.)

That Baker guy knows how to flatter himself.

“her invaluable work…her message and expertise…kindly agreed…continues to stand in solidarity…sends her best wishes…reaffirming her belief…we hope to collaborate with her”

Oh goodness gracious me, they had no idea.

Organisers of a women’s rights march have been forced to drop a transgender speaker after being “made aware” of a violent past.

The co-ordinators of the UK Women’s March (UKWM) caused outrage by asking Sarah Jane Baker, a convicted criminal, to address crowds on Saturday in London. The organisers had encouraged “anyone who is an ally of women and believes in women’s rights” to march with them in the fight for gender equality – and the event was set to have Baker as a speaker.

However, they have now said that Baker will not be given a platform. They said they had not previously known that the transgender rights activist was the subject of a life sentence for attempted murder and had served 30 years in 29 separate male prisons.

Excuse me???

If that’s really true, how did they manage to know enough about him to find it appropriate to invite him to tell the assembled women what’s what? If they didn’t know that about him what did they know about him? What the hell prompted them to invite him in the first place? Sheer fucking spite against the very people they claim to speak for – women?

“There has been a lot of social media traffic about Sarah Jane Baker speaking at the UK Women’s March in London tomorrow,” organisers said in a statement online.

“We would like to clarify that after being made aware of Sarah’s criminal background in interpersonal abuse, UKWM and Sarah have mutually agreed that she will stand down as a speaker at the event.”

Those absolute shits. It wasn’t mere “interpersonal abuse”; it was attempted murder.

The punchline of the whole thing is that Baker is now mad at the organizers.

“I sent a statement to the organisers and asked to share it with the public stating that it had been mutually agreed that I would step aside so that the march’s focus would be on women’s issues, not transgender issues.” However, Baker said, an alternative statement from the organisers was instead released.

“I do not agree with this new statement and was not involved at any point in its formation,” Baker added. “It is deeply disappointing and yet entirely predictable from people who don’t actually have the guts to fight on these issues.”

So that went well.

And sure enough, “trans rights” front and center in the mockingly named “Women’s March.”

The UK women’s march – the one that’s incloosive of men – is today, so it’s probably happening (in multiple cities) now.

It’s pathetic how anti-feminist it is.

The Facebook group – with 21 thousand members – has a statement. Most of it is what you’d expect; the rest of it isn’t.

We are marching because reproductive rights are being removed state by state in the US making it increasingly more difficult to access safe abortions, and where vital healthcare is needed to save a woman’s life.

We are marching because discrimination and violence against trans women and girls has increased around the world. Anti-trans rhetoric prevents women from addressing the real issues they encounter by reinforcing the gender stereotypes that have oppressed women for centuries.

We are marching because women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule have been effectively silenced by being banned from speaking in public. They are no longer allowed to access education or work and are prevented from freedom of expression.

Staggering, isn’t it. Sandwiched between forced pregnancy in the US and the Taliban we get an irrelevant whine about “trans women” i.e. men.

We’re not allowed to have anything for ourselves.

The conclusion:

It’s time to march.

*Our feminism is intersectional*

Inclusivity is at the core of UK Women’s March. We acknowledge how race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability intersect. Women are exposed to racism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia, not just sexism and misogyny. This means we must acknowledge how these differences interlock for feminism to work.

“Not just sexism and misogyny” – way to belittle your own cause.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Empathy deficit.

There’s no legal obligation on a bi or even c i s / straight person to declare their personal info…

Sure there is. If you deceive someone into having sex with you by pretending to be someone you’re not, it doesn’t matter what your orientation, or “gender identity” is. It’s the deception part that is wrong. You are lying about your “personal info.” That’s going to be a red flag no matter what that personal info is, if the other person’s consent hinges on that very information. To put it more transactionally, you’re not allowed to purchase something with counterfeit money. In fact it’s a crime. The same goes for consent. If the consent was given on the strength of that deception, a consent that would have been withheld if the true identity of the individual seeking it had been known at the time, it means that it wasn’t consensual sex at all, but rape or sexual assault.

It’s not “homophobic” or “transphobic” or “misandrist” or “misogynist” if someone exercizes their preference for partners of a particular sex. Sex is about sex, not imagined and imaginary “gender identity.” Your “gender identity” does not and cannot change your sex, no matter what it says in your passport. Your passport could just as authoritatively say that you are invisible, but it doesn’t have any more power to render you invisible than it has to turn you into a female. There’s nothing and no one that can do that. Nobody can legislate reality. We can still see you’re a man, and we have the right to say you are a man.

So wave your passport all you like. It won’t get you anywhere. Just because the IOC would let you get into the boxing ring against a woman doesn’t mean that it gives you the right to get into someones’s bed on the strength of your fraudulent claim to being “female.” And unlike athletics, part of the dating game actually does depend upon what one might well call “genital inspections.” And if you don’t pass that “test” (or if you fail to meet any other need, requirement, or desire someone might have before consenting to let you become their intimate partner), you can’t force them to change their mind. They don’t owe you anything. And, since you obviously need some guidance on this, such consent as is given is always provisional; it can always be withdrawn at any time for any reason.

All of the surgery, hormones, clothing, accessories, and makeup in the world can’t change the fact that you are male. To maintain otherwise is deceitful, however well or fleetingly you might “pass.” Nobody needs any reason at all to say “No” to you at any time. Ever. One of those reasons might be because you’re engaged in an ongoing lie. Or maybe just the fact that you’re an asshole. Perhaps someday you’ll find someone who loves you, and wants you for you; but until that day, nobody is obligated to do either on account of your supposed “identity.” We all get to say “No.”

A deep question.

Because they’re playing a trick, that’s why.

I suppose there are some circumstances where it doesn’t matter much, but for anything up close and personal, yes morally speaking you damn well should inform.

And there is something wrong with being trans: it’s based on a lie, and it’s inherently deceptive.

This just in –

Also the “mutually agreed” part is odd. What mean? He agreed that he’s a violent man with a violent history and should not be anywhere near a women’s march? Then why did he accept in the first place? Why did you invite him in the first place?

Why, in fact, DID YOU INVITE HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

These people are such fucking fools.

The inclooosive women’s march has a Facebook page.

It lists some rules.

2 No Hate Speech or Bullying

We want to ensure that this group feels safe for everyone. Therefore, bullying or degrading comments about race, culture, sexual orientation, gender or identity will not be tolerated.

And of course comments about genner idenniny are considered bullying and degrading if they fail to bend the knee to the Obvious Absolute Truth of the dogma that people can change sex just by saying so.

4 No Discrimination. No transphobia.

This is a women’s support march which includes anyone born female, identifies as female, or just wants to support other women. This is an inclusive space. Discrimination or transphobia will not be tolerated and will result in a permanent ban.

So. There you have it. It’s a women’s march, but women who say men are not women are evil people and will be permanently banned.

More on the march that identifies as a women’s march while it expresses intense hostility toward women:

A protest for women’s rights will take place this weekend across various cities in the country, including Bristol.

UK Women’s March, organised by Grassroots Feminism, will hold demonstrations against Donald Trump’s reelection, as well as recent comments made by Nigel Farage on abortion.

…

Grassroots organiser, Carolyn Storer, posted their statement regarding the need for these marches to their official Facebook and Instagram pages.

It reads, “With Donald Trump set to return as US president in January 2025 and Nigel Farage picking up the anti-abortion mantle here in the UK, it’s time to make our voices heard.

“We are marching because violence against women and girls in the UK has increased by 37 per cent since 2018 and has now been declared a national emergency. We are marching because abortion in England and Wales, if not carried out according to the strict requirements of the Abortion Act 1967, is technically still a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.”

She continues to address concerns around anti-abortion and women’s healthcare, adding, “We are marching because reproductive rights are being removed state by state in the US making it increasingly more difficult to access safe abortions, and where vital healthcare is needed to save a woman’s life. We are marching because discrimination and violence against trans women and girls has increased around the world. Anti-trans rhetoric prevents women from addressing the real issues they encounter by reinforcing the gender stereotypes that have oppressed women for centuries.”

No. Wrong. Rejection of the ideology that claims men are women if they say they are – what you call “transphobia” – is not reinforcing the gender stereotypes that have oppressed women for centuries. It simply rejects the fatuous idea that saying “I am a woman” makes you a woman.

All is not well in Women’s March land.

It’s supposed to be a women’s march, and yet, women are kicked out, kicked aside, kicked to the curb, for refusing to pretend that men are women.

You can’t have a feminism that refuses to recognize a man when it sees one. You sure as hell can’t have a feminism that punishes women for recognizing a man when they see one. You sure as hell with knobs on can’t have a feminism that boots women out of a women’s event because they recognize a man when they see one.

You also can’t have a private group that is inclusive.

Who are these bozos?

Undefined buzzwords displace thought.

“But ultimately, it’s important to remember that under the Equality Act 2010, all organizations have a responsibility to make sure trans people are included at work and don’t face discrimination.”

Yes but what are you meaning by “included at work”? What are you meaning by “face discrimination”?

We’re supposed to understand those two items in the familiar generic way, but that’s not what he means by them at all. He means a special new meaning of “included” and “discrimination.”

The familiar generic way is just that inclusion means not being shunned or bullied for no good reason, and discrimination means not being treated as weird or dangerous for no good reason. Inclusion does not mean “included among the women when you’re not a woman” and discrimination does not mean “not included among the women because you’re not a woman.”

The unspoken but crucial meanings this sly dude is using are carefully veiled and implicit and not spelled out, because if they were spelled out it would be obvious how grotesque and unjust they are.

This trick is performed absolutely everywhere, and needs to be called out absolutely everywhere.

Seriously disgusting.