Peak veronica

Dec 20th, 2019 3:27 pm | By

Veronica Ivy (formerly known as Rachel McKinnon) has another piece on How Evil Are The Feminists. It’s almost as if this trans thing is an excellent grift for Veronica Rachel.

Still full of lies though. Lies are not a great look on a philosopher.

Hate speech has no place in a free and democratic society. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of that speech. And yet, constantly, people in a position of relative power or authority seem to be saying that they should have the right to say or write rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things about their fellow citizens. But even more, they think that they should be legally protected from any and all consequences of those actions, even if their speech has negative consequences on the people to whom it is addressed.

By “rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things” he of course means things like “he.”

In early September 2018, Forstater had been a consultant to the Center for Global Development, which focuses on economic inequality, when she began using her personal Twitter account to tweet about her opposition to potential changes to the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act, writing, “I share the concerns of @fairplaywomen that radically expanding the legal definition of ‘women’ so that it can include both males and females makes it a meaningless concept, and will undermine women’s rights & protections for vulnerable women & girls.”

He actually thinks (or is pretending to think, which would be much less surprising) he’s presenting an example of “rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things.”

Later that month, in a long series of tweets, she repeatedly misgendered Credit Suisse senior director Pips Bunce, who identifies as gender fluid, referring to her as “a man who likes to express himself part of the week by wearing a dress,” “a part-time cross dresser” and “a white man who likes to dress in women’s clothes.” As part of that discussion, she also tweeted, “I think that male people are not women.”

How is that misgendering? What’s the pronoun for gender-fluid? Is there one? How many pronouns do we have to memorize, and how many rules for knowing who is what?

He goes on to say that Bunce has said he “defaults to” she, but if he expects us to think that’s a binding law that applies to all of us, he expects in vain.

This, then, is what Forstater wanted the courts to uphold: Her right to make her co-workers uncomfortable; her right to place her nonprofit organization in an untenable position vis-à-vis potential donors (like Credit Suisse senior directors); her right to be, even as she defines it, rude and disrespectful in social and professional contexts; and her right to disrespect U.K. law, which defines transgender women as women and transgender men as men if they jump through the right legal hoops. (As Judge James Tayler noted in his ruling against her: “If a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate that person is legally a woman. That is not something that the Claimant is entitled to ignore.”)

The judge said we’re not entitled to ignore other people’s “Gender Recognition Certificates”? We’re not? So because people have a certificate, we’re required to believe or pretend to believe they are the sex we don’t perceive when we perceive them?

Well, I guess I’ll have to become an anarchist now.

Courts, of course, tend to look askance at being asked to rule that an employee should be allowed to harm their employers and co-workers based on “philosophical beliefs” they’ve decided are both “biological truths” and tantamount to religious canon.

What? They do? It comes up that often? I’m betting it doesn’t come up at all, this case excepted. McKinnon does make such sloppy claims for a philosopher. If he’d stopped at “co-workers” he’d have had a point, but the rest of it is just absurd.

Then he rants about Rowling for a few paragraphs, and sums up:

So, J.K. Rowling: Write whatever you please. Call yourself “gender critical,” if you like. Support any transphobic adult who’ll discriminate with you. Live your best life with your piles of Muggle money. But force cis, trans or intersex women to live with hostile work environments because of the fairytales that transphobes tell themselves? No. #TransRightsAreHumanRights #WhatDrillAreYouTalkingAbout

Ah yes the fairytales that people who don’t believe men can become women tell ourselves – we’re the ones living on fantasies.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
Tags: , ,


For non-example

Dec 20th, 2019 2:49 pm | By

DOCTOR McKinnon did a piece for Vice attacking Rowling yesterday, because of course he did. The byline is Veronica Ivy, and a sentence at the end says:

Veronica Ivy, PhD, is a philosophy professor and athlete who has previously gone by Rachel McKinnon.

Before that he went by Rhys McKinnon. Anyway – the usual lies are summoned.

“Gender critical” is a neologism that refers to a loose collection of people focused on opposing equal rights for trans people, and specifically trans women.

Big lie. We do not oppose equal rights for trans people.

They claim that, for example, trans women are really male/men and should be excluded from women-only spaces, and should not have the legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being women.

And that’s not equal rights, is it, so it’s not “for example,” it’s “for non sequitur.” It is true that we say men should not have legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being women, any more than white people should have legal protections against discrimination on the basis of being black people. That’s what “discrimination” means.

The U.K. has had a recent rash of news media, demonstrations, and events targeting the rights of trans women.

What rights though? The “rights” of trans women to demand all the protections in theory offered to women (though we often have a struggle to find them) while retaining all the entitlement and aggression of men?

Some “gender critical” people have tried to claim that trans women are male and, as Forstater claimed, that sex is immutable, or unchangeable. They use phrases like “biological reality” and “sex matters” to express this sentiment. Their view is that since trans women are really “male,” then allowing trans women equal rights as women removes the rights of cisgender women to be in female-only spaces.

But this is, of course, nonsense. Legally and medically speaking, trans women are women; trans men are men.

Spoken like a true philosopher: if the legal and medical disciplines label men as women then that’s the end of it; there are no other categories. Similarly, if priests and rabbis say there is a god, it is nonsense to say there isn’t. Nonsense of course.

J.K. Rowling’s use of the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, expresses Rowling’s support for Forstater’s legal battle for her right to express anti-trans hate speech.

Another obvious, vulgar lie.

I would go so far as to say that Rowling, who claims she wants people to “live your best life in peace and security,” is contributing to a violation of trans people’s basic human dignity, and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, and offensive environment, like Forstater. And as Judge Tayler put it, “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

What kind of environment has Veronica Ivy-Rachel McKinnon been creating for female athletes, I wonder.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
Tags: , ,


But the law does not protect our right to call men men

Dec 20th, 2019 12:13 pm | By

This bit of the ruling – the most crucial bit, probably – seems to have some ambiguity to it.

The total of what Forstater is saying there seems to be that she called Gregor Murray “he or him” on a particular occasion because she forgot that he was “non-binary” and wants to be called “they/them,” and that she doesn’t consider it “transphobic” to see men as men, and that she shouldn’t be punished for calling men “he or him” in general.

The judge says he concludes from that that she will refer to men as men even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment.

But those are not the same thing. Forstater is saying she called a man “him” on one occasion because she forgot he was “non-binary” and that she doesn’t see that as a punishable crime, but she’s not saying she will call all men “him” on all occasions. She should be able to say that without punishment, but the point is, she didn’t say it, but the judge “concluded from this” that she did. But she didn’t. But he decided she did. But she didn’t.

I’m not sure why the judge gets to interpret what she said more broadly than she in fact said it.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 17 comments
Tags: ,


Frank Capra never made that movie

Dec 20th, 2019 11:33 am | By

Soraya is pretty obviously right about this.

Do we think a woman whose job experience for being president consisted of being a small town mayor would get any traction?

Don’t make me laugh.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments


Difficulties with understanding

Dec 20th, 2019 11:02 am | By

Hmmm.

Ardent ally just cannot understand it.

She made it about her? Really? I missed that – I didn’t think it was about her at all, but rather about reality.

Let’s see it again.

No, I was right – it’s not about her at all. It’s about this subject a lot of us have been talking about – are women women, or is it actually men who are women. It’s not about her; she doesn’t even use the first-person pronoun except in the hashtag.

I guess by “made it about her” Comerford means she said it while famous. Ok but then does he object when “Caitlyn” Jenner says things? Does he object when Jenner appears on the cover of Vanity Fair in a bathing suit age 66? I bet he doesn’t.

And then this business of “a great ruling for trans people” – what about the women whose rights are being taken away? Why does that part not give him any pause?

And then, “the abject cruelty” – it’s not cruelty to say that men are not women. It just isn’t.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


A perplexing inability to pipe down

Dec 20th, 2019 10:19 am | By

Another Witchfinder General points and hisses at Rowling.

It starts badly.

J.K. Rowling spent Thursday once again demonstrating a perplexing inability to pipe down and enjoy her millions. 

Why the hell should she “pipe down”? Why should anyone? I bet Rachelle Hampton (the witchfinder in this instance) doesn’t want to be told to pipe down, so where does she get off telling Rowling to do so? What’s perplexing about the fact that Rowling, like god knows how many other people, says things on Twitter?

Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a tax expert whose firing from a think tank over transphobic comments and subsequent court battle has generated a great deal of controversy in the U.K. In so doing, Rowling seemed to align herself with a virulently anti-trans group of otherwise liberal women, most often referred to as trans exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs.

Wait. One, calling Forstater’s comments “transphobic” is well-poisoning. Two, “generated controversy” is meaningless, and an only slightly more subtle brand of well-poisoning. Lots of things “cause controversy,” including good things that people oppose for bad reasons. Three, “virulently” is intense well-poisoning. Four, “anti-trans” is more well-poisoning and also a lie. Five, “otherwise liberal” is another lie. Six, “most often referred to” is chickenshit, since the word is a harsh pejorative and we reject it. That’s a lot of bad wording for two sentences from the opening paragraph.

Rowling’s tweet was immediately met with disappointment and anger, with critics pointing out that she fundamentally misrepresented the Forstater case.

Rowling’s tweet was also immediately met with admiration and celebration. Hampton doesn’t bother to mention that part.

Forstater’s contract with the Center for Global Development was not renewed due to a series of transphobic comments made in multiple forums. She repeatedly tweeted statements like, “I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.”

This is the problem right here: those three sentences are not transphobic.

It’s not legitimate to make up new meanings for words, such as turning “phobic” into “stating material facts,” and then do your best to trash people’s lives by branding those phony new definitions.

It’s not any kind of “phobic” to say that men are not women. It’s just reality. It’s also, by the way, not any kind of “philic” (opposite of phobic, i.e. loving) to say that men are women. It’s not particularly loving to encourage adults to live in a fantasy world, and it’s certainly not loving to attack people who refuse to give up their grip on the truth.

In short, there is nothing in any way “phobic” about saying ” I think that male people are not women.” It’s ludicrous that we’ve arrived at a place where adults are claiming it is, with menaces.

In a workplace Slack she wrote, “But if people find the basic biological truths that ‘women are adult human females’ or ‘transwomen are male’ offensive, then they will be offended.” 

And? Still not seeing the phobia.

Forstater also purposefully misgendered a nonbinary councilor on Twitter, and when they complained, she wrote, “I reserve the right to use the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’ to refer to male people. While I may choose to use alternative pronouns as a courtesy, no one has the right to compel others to make statements they do not believe.”

Still not seeing the phobia. “Non-binary” doesn’t even mean anything. “Woman” is just wrong when it’s a man, but “non-binary” is just blather.

And in conclusion:

Rowling’s support of Forstater and apparent endorsement of her anti-trans views isn’t as surprising as it might seem at first glance. As Katelyn Burns noted in a March 2018 them.article, Rowling has liked tweets that refer to trans women as “men in dresses” and arguably trafficked in anti-trans tropes in books she wrote under her pen name Robert Galbraith. Thursday’s tweet was her most overt example of transphobia to date and demonstrates that, despite previously positioning herself as an ally, Rowling cannot be considered a friend of the LGBTQ community.

It does no such thing. Pipe down.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments
Tags: ,


Define “malevolence”

Dec 20th, 2019 9:04 am | By

It’s nice that the discussion is so reasonable, so nuanced, so careful and thoughtful and temperate.

https://twitter.com/sea_of_shoes/status/1207712587129016320

That person has 90 thousand followers.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


This president has dumbed down the idea of morality

Dec 19th, 2019 5:27 pm | By

There’s much buzz about the fact that Billy Graham’s mag Christianity Today says Trump must go.

Much of what it says about why is wrong, of course, but not all of it.

We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion.

Wait. Why have the Democrats had it out for him from day one? It’s because he’s a bad mean cruel malicious bully. Yes it’s also about policy, but the Dems were and are not wrong to have opposed him from day one: he’s a very bad man and has been from the beginning. Since that’s their point you’d think they could admit that the Dems have said that all along.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

Indeed, also its insults, taunts, mean “jokes,” rages, rants, boasts, and muffled cries from the inferno within.

They quote themselves on Clinton from twenty years ago and then comment:

Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

Oh but hang on – the 10 commandments say nothing about Trump’s most horrendous behaviors. There is no commandment against cruelty, or bullying, or sadism. The creator of the big ten left most of the important stuff out, while wasting a lot of space on groveling to god and not groveling to any other god besides god.

Anyway, it’s interesting that they’re cutting him loose. Expect fireworks.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments


Melania at the Year End Sales Event

Dec 19th, 2019 12:21 pm | By

David Roth on what the Trump aesthetic tells us about the Trump:

As with most things about Trump, there’s not a lot to unpack here. Unrelenting artlessness has been Trump’s signature for as long as he has been a public figure, and that is something that cannot and will not change. The man himself cultivates and inhabits a world of luxury that’s frozen in the 1980s, and he’s spent most of his life doing the same things over and over again. They’re things that, as a friend once put it to me, are what a child thinks a rich person would do, like take a limo to McDonald’s or wear a suit to a baseball game.

Or have a living room FULL OF GOLDY STUFF. We learned that about him three years ago, while bracing ourselves for the start of the real horror.

Trump’s version of Citizen Kane’s Rosebud would not be a child’s sled—it would be a tufted settee that somehow has shoulder pads, or a photo of himself with two Cincinnati Bengals cheerleaders taken at Joe Piscopo’s 40th birthday party…

I love this guy. Love him.

Melania did another Xmas video.

Melania strides through the White House’s halls in an overcoat and high heels, unaccompanied but observed at a respectful distance by various staffers. Meanwhile, the sort of music that usually plays in television commercials under the words Toyota’s Year End Sales Event twinkles determinedly on the soundtrack. At the end of this year’s, she personally seasons some ornaments with fake snow…

Even though Melania is also a cipher whose relationship to her powerful husband has for years seemed tragicomically ceremonial, her Christmas video delivers an insight into a crucial mystery of the Trump aesthetic: Why is all this always so shitty? How is it possible for something so fancified to feel so repellent and cheap?…

The blank and baffling overstatement of it—the First Lady personally sifting plastic dandruff onto a spruce, as one does, the simultaneous clutter and emptiness, the combination of voluminousness and absence—might be poignant under other circumstances. There’s no fun in it, of course, because Trump and his family are not people who are into fun. What’s spooky about it goes beyond Melania’s personal uncanniness or Trump’s world-historic tastelessness or the built-in stiltedness of White House ritual. The pure anhedonic cheerlessness of it all points back to a deeper psychic deficit: an inability to understand what any of this might even be for, if not to spite or defeat someone else. Of course there’s too much of it. They don’t know when to stop—they never have known when to stop, they do not know how to stop—because they have never really understood why they got started in the first place.

I keep calling him empty; I think Roth is talking about the same thing. Trump is the emptiest person I’ve ever seen. He all but rattles.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


That turning of the tide has been slow

Dec 19th, 2019 11:35 am | By

James Kirkup points out that many people have been staying quiet despite concerns, some even despite having plenty of money and clout.

Yet slowly, slowly, things are starting to change. More people are starting to talk, calmly and sensibly, about a matter of policy and culture that needs more discussion. Bit by bit, more people are starting to see that this is an issue that can and should be talked about.

That turning of the tide has been slow and modest, but today the pace quickened, a lot. The gender debate has seen an event that many people have been waiting for. JK Rowling has spoken.

In a single tweet, the woman who gave us Harry Potter, has quite deliberately entered a debate that many people have avoided for too long.

And she did so why? Because of the outrageous ruling in Maya Forstater’s case, that we are required to refer to other people by their special chosen reality-contradicting pronouns, or risk losing our jobs.

In narrow terms, the judgment might well have a chilling effect on that debate. But the broader effect of the Forstater case is that issues of sex and gender, the implications of transgenderism for society and individuals, are now going to be talked about by more people.

Because JK Rowling, lovely JK Rowling, is involved. JK Rowling who has 14 million followers on Twitter and a good claim to being one of the most popular and even beloved women in the world today. And as a result, people are going to talk about this, and about her.

I do not underestimate the courage it has taken for Rowling to do this. It’s easy to say ‘well, she’s got billions and a huge platform – what took her so long?’ but I think that’s unfair. With that fame comes pressure and scrutiny that the rest of us cannot imagine. By entering this arena, she is exposing herself to significant risks, volumes of criticism beyond anything most of humanity will ever experience. I applaud her.

Words matter, and with just a few words, JK Rowling has changed the gender debate for the better. The tide is turning, the waves are getting bigger. Thank you, JK.

Words matter, and truth matters.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 26 comments
Tags:


6

Dec 19th, 2019 10:48 am | By

Human rights are human rights. What are “trans rights” exactly? If they mean trans people should be free from persecution and oppression, then sure, of course trans rights are human rights, just as other branches-of-human rights are. But if they mean special “rights” crafted specifically for trans people, then it depends. The right not to be bullied for wearing “the wrong” clothes? Sure. The right to force everyone to agree you are the other sex? No.

Well, Amnesty UK? Are you?

H/t KB Player

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments
Tags:


Riffing shmiffing

Dec 19th, 2019 10:20 am | By

No. Absolutely not. No.

There’s my “absolutist belief” for you, if you want one.

No, Trump was not “just riffing.” They don’t get to brush off disgusting sadistic contemptuous cruelty that way, least of all coming from the president of the US.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday on ABC’s Good Morning America that she did not know why Trump decided to suggest that Dingell was in hell. “You’d have to talk to the president about that,” she said.

But Grisham added that Trump is a “counter-puncher,” and suggested Trump was venting his frustration after being impeached by the House. “It was a very, very supportive and wild crowd and he was just riffing on some of the things that had been happening the past few days.”

No. You don’t get to shrug off Trump’s foul sadism with “just riffing.” You don’t get to excuse it because he was “venting his frustration.” Trump is not six, he’s a grown man, and he’s not a random guy shouting at clouds, he’s the president of the US. No.

This is Trump, it’s always been Trump. He’s a bully; he enjoys sticking the verbal knife in people. He enjoys hurting people. It’s one of his favorite activities. He’s a very bad man.

Debbie Dingell tweeted her response, telling Trump: “Mr President, let’s set politics aside. My husband earned all his accolades after a lifetime of service. I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.”

He’ll be pleased about that. It’s what he intended. It’s what he wanted. He likes hurting people; that’s what he is.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”

Dec 19th, 2019 10:03 am | By

Even The Guardian doesn’t seem entirely convinced by the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case.

A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex has lost a test case because her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”.

You can read that as straight-up reporting, but you can also think there may be a hint of skepticism that it’s really “absolutist” to think that people can’t literally change sex any more than they can change age or species.

In a keenly anticipated judgment that will stir up fresh debate over transgender issues, Judge James Tayler, an employment judge, ruled that Maya Forstater’s views did “not have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief”.

Is that because it’s too obvious to be a philosophical belief? Or is it because it’s (in the judge’s view) too wrong to be a philosophical belief?

[I]n a 26-page judgment released late on Wednesday, Tayler dismissed her claim. “I conclude from … the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

But how do we know that referring to people by their actual physical sex (not, as the judge tendentiously puts it, “by the sex she considered appropriate”) violates anyone’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment?

Also, is there any possibility that it violates people’s dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment when bosses force employees to call other employees something they are not?

There certainly are ways of referring to other people that violate their dignity and create a hostile degrading environment – I could sum them up with the single word “trump.” Sexist epithets, racist epithets, generalized epithets like “ugly,” “fat,” “stupid,” “old,” “worthless,” – you can see there’s a large supply. Some of them can refer to true or plausible facts, and still be hostile and degrading – the aforementioned “trump” gives many examples.

But does pronoun use fit in that category? I’m not convinced.

Louise Rea, a solicitor at the law firm Bates Wells which advised the CGD in the case, said: “Judge Tayler held that ‘the claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others’. He observed that the claimant was not entitled to ignore the legal rights of a person who has transitioned from male to female or vice versa and the ‘enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering a person’.

But what fundamental right is that, exactly? How fundamental can it really be when no one had ever heard of it fifteen years ago? How was it overlooked so long if it’s really fundamental?

I don’t think there is such a thing as a fundamental right to be called the sex you are not. It may be a courtesy, a kindness, an agreement among friends, a generosity – but not a fundamental right.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments
Tags:


Stand with Maya

Dec 19th, 2019 9:16 am | By

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments
Tags:


Mock the widow

Dec 19th, 2019 9:11 am | By

Trump’s latest befoulment.

The “maybe he’s looking up” is bad enough, but my disgust was already on Full from his sarcastic contemptuous mimicry of Debbie Dingell talking to him on the phone, in a breathy soft weak beseeching voice. It’s disgusting in its contempt for women, and it’s also disgusting in that what he was trying to convey and mock was her emotion over the, you know, death of her husband.

He says she called him but that’s a lie, he called her.

Also he didn’t “give” John Dingell anything; it wasn’t his call. He doesn’t decide such things, Congress does.

The man is evil.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Justified

Dec 18th, 2019 3:53 pm | By

How does this work in actual life?

Requiring women to call men women “is justified to avoid harassment” of men who call themselves women. The harassment of women who are just women, and who just are women, comes in a very distant second to the harassment of men who say they are women.

This is a judge telling women we have to call men women if the men claim they are women. Not should, not could if we want to be especially kind, but have to.

It feels very churchy, very 16th century churchy, very swear the oath or we light the fires.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 20 comments


Incompatible with human dignity

Dec 18th, 2019 3:35 pm | By

Kathleen Stock on the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case:

Today, an UK employment tribunal judge ruled that the belief that biological sex is immutable, and that it is impossible to change one’s sex, is “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.

He writes: “I do not accept the Claimant’s contention that the Gender Recognition Act produces a mere legal fiction. It provides a right, based on the assessment of the various interrelated convention rights, for a person to transition, in certain circumstances, and thereafter to be treated for all purposes as the being of the sex to which they have transitioned.” Please note: all purposes. The judge has therefore apparently ruled that there are no contexts whatsoever in which it may be permissibly denied that a person with a gender recognition certificate is the sex they say they are.

In other words in the UK people are required by law to agree that men are women if they say they are.

This judge has concluded that nothing illegal happened when Maya Forstater lost employment at the Centre for Global Development for stating these beliefs. The precedent is now set, and a message sent to UK employees: don’t express the view that people can’t change sex. Your job will not be protected if you do.

That is, for stating beliefs that contravene the judge’s ruling.

As I say, I am a professor of philosophy and I share Maya’s belief. I think it is perfectly true. My grounds are summarised in this short article. I have also written about why this belief qualifies as a philosophical belief.

I too share the belief that biological sex is immutable and that it is impossible to change it. In addition I believe that humans can’t become giraffes or geckos or hummingbirds. Go ahead, fire me.

Over the past year and a half, I have encountered many academics and public figures who have scornfully dismissed my and others’ claims that women, in particular, are losing their legal capacity to discuss what they see as their distinctive nature and interests, in certain important political contexts. This is happening because of well-funded lobbying groups like Stonewall, and their incredible reach on institutions and employers (including Universities).

We all know it’s the mantra, the mandatory imposed enforced mantra: trans women are women, trans women are women, trans women are women. It’s forbidden to deny or question that, and punishment for doing so is instant and harsh. This is ironic because women have never enjoyed that kind of swift and forceful solidarity, but for men who decide they are women it’s there at the flip of a switch. It’s almost as if men get better treatment than women do, and that remains true even after they decide they are women, it remains true even as they bully women for not agreeing that they are women just as the women they are bullying are, only better. Can you say “entitlement”?

Stonewall explicitly yet tendentiously interpret the Equality Act as saying that organisations should allow transwomen into every single space where women are present, and into every single resource already specially devoted to women.

Because trans women are women, trans women are women, trans women are women. Now do you understand?

Kathleen calls on philosophers to stand up.

I therefore call upon the British Philosophical Association, all learned Philosophical societies in the UK, and all British academic philosophers working in UK departments, to stand up and say out loud — or better, write it down where members of the public can read it: people should be legally permitted to believe that biological sex is immutable and cannot be changed, without fear of losing their jobs. You are philosophers. This is your moment. If not now, then when?

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 18 comments
Tags:


Deeply aggrieved

Dec 18th, 2019 11:06 am | By

It seems Trump is not in a good mood.

Deeply aggrieved by the proceedings and mindful of how they will stain his legacy, Trump spent the 24 hours before the vote on the phone with top officials and Republican lawmakers, according to multiple people familiar with his calls, expressing outrage at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and looking ahead to what his trial in the Senate will look like.

As he watched conservative pundits on television bolster his views, Trump called for religious intervention.

“Send god to help!”

“This shoild never happen to another President again,” he wrote, the misspelling of “should” hardly masking his outrage. “Say a prayer!”

Ok. “Dear god, please let Trump be impeached and convicted, and then arrested the minute he leaves office.”

Impeachment has consumed much of Trump’s days and nights this month, between dictating an irate letter to Pelosi, phoning his associates to vent into the wee hours and plotting his defense in a Senate trial.

He has been ranting about impeachment in phone calls with Republican members of Congress over the last several days and nights, according to multiple GOP sources.

I hope he’s calling them at 3 a.m. All of them.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement the President would be “working all day” but “could catch some of the proceedings between meetings.”

Ten minutes later, he was decrying “SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS” on Twitter, his message written in capital letters.

But he’s totally working all day. Work work workity work.

Last week, Trump and his aides — including speechwriter Stephen Miller — began drafting the scathing letter to Pelosi that was delivered on Tuesday, according to officials familiar with the matter, keeping the plan and text closely held within the West Wing until its public release.

Some White House officials who were not involved in the letter’s preparation said they were surprised when they saw the six-page document, which was indignant in tone and cited the Salem Witch Trials as a precedent to his situation.

Happy HOLIDAYS Donnie.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


In search of facts and evidence

Dec 18th, 2019 10:29 am | By

Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger issued a fine statement:

“As a former federal agent and CIA officer, I have spent my professional career in search of facts and evidence—the facts and evidence necessary to uphold the rule of law and protect our national security. Today, I am driven by facts and evidence to protect the integrity of our democracy.

“This week, the House of Representatives will vote on two articles of impeachment. In advance of casting my vote, I have read the articles and studied the evidence—including the majority and minority reports, deposition transcripts, and public testimony.

“The facts are not in dispute; witnesses, including those called by both parties, affirm these facts. The President has abused his power by soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 election and leveraging U.S. security assistance dollars paid for by taxpayers and appropriated by both parties in Congress to compel a close ally—at war and dependent on our aid—to malign his political rival. When these actions became known, the President endeavored to hide the truth, and he obstructed Congress’ constitutional duty to investigate by withholding documents, evidence, and fact witnesses.

“The President’s actions violate his oath of office, endanger our national security, and betray the public trust. Because of the oath I swore to support and defend the Constitution, I will be voting in favor of both articles of impeachment. This vote is about more than one man’s abuse of power; it is about the power of the presidency and whether we, as citizens, can expect that our elected officials, and most powerfully, our President, will fulfill their obligation to uphold the Constitution. The framers foresaw the risks to our republic that could come with a President willing to put self-interest before national interest, and they gave Congress the sole power of impeachment as a remedy.

“It is with a heavy heart, a solemn devotion to our Constitution, and a deep belief in our country that I believe we must pursue this remedy. The world, and our children, are watching as the foundation of the world’s longest-standing democracy is tested. Through this trying time, nothing is more important than fulfilling our obligation to defend the Constitution and protect our republic.”

I think the former federal agent and CIA officer bit helps. She knows from facts and evidence.

Tragically, the Republicans in the Senate appear to be wholly indifferent to the facts and evidence, but it’s still good to have people who aren’t.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


Grownups v clown

Dec 18th, 2019 9:26 am | By

Reading The Letter again. Much of it is reworked by the grownups in an attempt to disguise quite how infantile and incapable Trumpbaby is, but he pops up like a jack in the box despite them. Like here:

President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure. 

The grownups would not have said No Pressure. The grownups know that we don’t use capital letters for emphasis in formal writing.

You are unwilling and unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016.

The great Election of 2016? What was so great about it? Given the whole Russian interference problem, and the discrepancy between the popular vote and the electoral college vote problem, and the Comey’s last minute intervention problem, and the vote suppression in the wake of Shelby problem? Oh yes, of course: Trump calls it that because he won. Narcissism guides the hand that holds the sharpie.

House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country’s best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports)—who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen.

The grownups lost that round. Grownups wouldn’t make such a ludicrously exaggerated absolutist claim, nor would they say “dirtiest cops” in a formal letter to Congress.

A ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared…

Lost that round, too – to the ranting and raving “president.”

As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president.

Another eruption. The grownups wouldn’t say “As you know very well,” nor would they say “the totally appropriate conversation.” It’s not appropriate to rant and rave about a totally appropriate conversation.

Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me.  His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today.

All Trump, that bit, except a grownup must have done “as though it were.”

You are the ones interfering in America’s elections.  You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy.  You are the ones Obstructing Justice.  You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.

No YOU are! No grownups on that one.

O what an ignoble mind is here o’erthrown.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments