A heart-rending and infuriating but perhaps ultimately hopeful thread:

Oh god. Four years old. It’s unconscionable.

I think we can feel Carol’s fury with her – I think the typos are a kind of fury thermometer. I’m pretty sure I start missing keys when I get wrathful.

Great, the therapist thinks telling a girl that girls can have short hair and wear jeans is confusing while telling her she’s a boy is not confusing. I think we need a new Theory of Confusion.

Thinking critically is a good thing, including for therapists. Affirmation and Validation are not always the best thing for people.

Many sources are saying it looks as though Iran shot down that plane.

I think Glinner summed it up nicely this morning.

Many are praising Louise Perry’s review of Andrea Long Chu’s book Females. I like this passage:

The feeling of desperate, conflicted desire is a thread running through Chu’s writing. Where she departs from mainstream trans activism is in vocalising that conflict, rather than wishing it away: “What I want isn’t surgery; what I want is never to have needed surgery to begin with. I will never be natural, but I will die trying.”

It is impossible not to feel compassion, despite the fact that Chu does not spend even a moment wondering what it might feel like for cis women — a little over half the human race — to be the objects of all this longing. To engage with her writing as a female reader is to be constantly coming up against passages that trigger unease: 

I transitioned for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend . . . for feeling hot, for getting hit on by butches, for that secret knowledge of which dykes to watch out for, for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops, and all the dresses, and, my god, for the breasts. But now you begin to see the problem with desire: we rarely want the things we should.

Reading this, I happened to be sitting in a hospital waiting-room and looked at the women around me: tired nurses, frail elderly ladies, mothers pacifying screaming children, and not a pair of Daisy Dukes in sight. Observing femaleness in its unvarnished reality, I am forced to wonder whether Chu’s idea of womanhood is dependent more on an idealised image than on day-to-day reality: more on Solanas the dominatrix than on Solanas the person. 

Wonder no more: yes of course it is. That’s one of the things that drives us up the wall: the obsession with the surface, the trivial, the appearance-based, the sexy, and the indifference to coupled with ignorance of the ordinary humdrum every day reality. The thinking of “woman” as a fetish as opposed to a brute physical fact that brings a lot of ordinary human drudgery with it (as does being a man, of course).

Next comes the last paragraph, which is a gem.

But then Chu is hardly alone in her preference for fantasy. Females, and the praise for Females, is the product of a school of feminism now dominant in academia that has abandoned interest in the material aspects of women’s lives and has instead embraced confection and self-obsession. This form of feminism is far more interested in the supposedly liberating power of lipgloss and orgasms than in the difficult business of incrementally improving the lot of women and girls. When a porn-obsessed writer can be lauded as a feminist prophet for describing the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes” we should wonder how on earth we got to this point. Chu’s writing may be funny, engaging and thought-provoking, but this is not a feminist book in any meaningful sense of the term. This troubled and talented writer is in need of a hard-nosed editor and a cold shower.

Keep your blank, blank eyes to yourself, bub.

The Times Higher on what it’s like to be a gender critical academic:

“It is quite a strange situation to work somewhere where people make it clear that they loathe you,” reflected Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, on the backlash she faced for her views on gender identification.

Some of it is just hot air.

In late November, a failed campaign to bar her from speaking at the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s annual debate generated 6,300 likes on Twitter, but just five emails from outraged complainants.

And the campaign failed. Did I mention it failed? It failed, you know.

But it is at traditionally left-wing Sussex where Professor Stock has encountered some of her biggest critics: students have made several formal complaints against her, while some colleagues have made it obvious that she is not welcome, Professor Stock told Times Higher Education.

“I’ve found it quite a hostile environment – [some] have claimed my position is bigoted and I should be sacked,” she explained. Recently, she was asked to teach in a different academic building and arrived to find numerous transgender pride flags hanging from office doors near her teaching room. “It is a grey area where, in apparently being kind [to one group], you can get away with some very targeted behaviour,” said Professor Stock.

Sussex may be traditionally left-wing as the THE says, but if it thinks trans ideology is left-wing it’s tragically mistaken. The ideology is deeply reactionary.

Avoiding controversial issues because of such sensitivities is anathema to Professor Stock, she admitted. “I was always encouraged to discuss fundamental things like identity and social kinds, but now we are being told to accept a highly ideological view that a person is whatever they feel they are,” she said.

Highly ideological and also highly absurd. Trump “feels” he’s a great man, and very very smart and tuff and shrewd and good at everything. Hypertrophied ego is not the straight road to certain knowledge.

While unpopular closer to home, Professor Stock’s views are seemingly striking a chord with a larger audience outside academia – with 24,000 accounts following her on Twitter. Last month her blog on the employment tribunal ruling against Maya Forstater, the tax expert who lost her job after claiming that transgender women could not change their biological sex, was liked by more than 3,300 people.

…

While unpopular closer to home, Professor Stock’s views are seemingly striking a chord with a larger audience outside academia – with 24,000 accounts following her on Twitter. Last month her blog on the employment tribunal ruling against Maya Forstater, the tax expert who lost her job after claiming that transgender women could not change their biological sex, was liked by more than 3,300 people.

However, while some hailed 2019 as the year that gender-critical feminism reached the mainstream “thanks to the tireless efforts of many women”, Professor Stock was less optimistic that colleagues were listening. “Most academics only read the BBC or The Guardian which refuse, in general, to talk about these things, so the issue is still badly understood in academia,” she said.

There’s an irony there. It’s the highly educated people who think people can become whatever they like just by thinking.

This makes the blood run cold.

You know the one:

Paltrow and Goop are funny, but they’re not just funny – they’re also dangerous.

Why is the third a box of ashes? Because he died of flu at age 2. He’d been vaccinated but not all the herd had been.

It’s a weird thing about celebrity and “wellness” advice. Celebrity doesn’t usually make people think they can be pilots or engineers with no training…so why does it make some people think they can be medical experts with no training?

The NY Times reports:

Dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were held for hours at Washington State’s border with Canada over the weekend as the Department of Homeland Security ramped up security at border ports after Iran threatened to retaliate against the United States for the strike that killed its top military leader.

More than 60 of the travelers, many returning from work trips or vacations, were trying to come home to the United States on Saturday when agents at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash., held them for additional questioning about their political views and allegiances, according to advocacy groups and accounts from travelers.

CBP says it’s not true, it was just a busy time at the border.

While border officers are not permitted to refer someone for what is known as a “secondary screening” of questioning based solely on national origin, it is one of multiple factors they are directed to consider, in addition to travel documents, travel history or suspicious behavior when choosing whom to refer for additional scrutiny. Such referrals for extra scrutiny happen daily. Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said agents would put an added emphasis on a traveler’s country of origin when that nation was singled out as a national security threat.

The Department of Homeland Security did just that on Saturday, when it updated its National Terrorism Advisory System to warn of Iran’s ability to retaliate against the United States through terrorism or cyberattacks or violence by homegrown extremists.

The BBC has more:

Sepehr Ebrahimzadeh, a Seattle-based engineer, told BBC Persian he had waited about six hours to cross the border at Blaine, and was repeatedly questioned during that time.

A Canadian citizen with a US green card, he said he was trying to enter the US by land from British Columbia, Canada.

Mr Ebrahimzadeh said US Border Patrol guards had questioned him about his birthplace, his high school years in Iran, his own military service and his father’s, and about other relatives and his employment history.

He said he saw other Iranians next to him who had to wait hours and were questioned about their social media accounts.

It’s a bit like interrogating and hassling refugees from Hitler because hey, they’re German. Iranians who have gone to the trouble to emigrate seem unlikely to be huge fans of the regime.

US lawmakers expressed concern on Twitter about the reports.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading contender in the Democratic presidential race, called the reports “deeply disturbing”.

“Iranian Americans have the same rights as all other U.S. citizens and should be treated with dignity and respect at our border – not bigoted, xenophobic scrutiny,” Ms Warren said on Twitter.

Washington state congresswoman Pramila Jayapal also said she was “deeply disturbed”.

We’ve been down this road before, and we didn’t cover ourselves with glory.

Morgane Oger doing what he does, again.

Dude trying to get a big city library to suppress some women for him.

It’s not a “thesis” or a “core thesis.” It’s just reality. Men are not women. Men who dislike being men and would rather be women are still men. Men like Morgane Oger have no business trying to force women to stop saying men are not women.

Nobody seems to be buying his claims though.

Hey, it’s a new year, let’s peddle more bullshit “wellness” to the adoring masses.

Let’s hear from Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta:

This has been the decade of misinformation. And, in the context of health, celebrities have led the charge.

It’s an easy buck, you know? You’re famous so people will buy what you market, so why waste the opportunity?

We’ve had the vagina steam (thanks, Gwyneth), jade vagina eggs (ditto), the vampire facial (Kim Kardashian West), bird poop facials (David and Victoria Beckham), facials made with discarded foreskin stem cells (Sandra Bullock), drinking your own urine (Madonna), placenta smoothies (more Kardashians) and too many crazy diets, cleanses and detoxes to mention. I could go on and on and on.

Bird poop facials. Nice.

But does it matter? Yes.

Celebrity health noise has had (and continues to have) a large and measurable impact. There is a growing body of literature that has demonstrated celebrity marketing, musing and news coverage can have an influence on a range of health related behaviors, including dieting, cancer screening, smoking and suicide. Pop culture coverage of a health topic, like Angelina Jolie’s decision to get genetic testing, can affect, for better or worse, the utilization rates of health services. And there seems little doubt that many current evidence-free and potentially harmful health trends — such a IV vitamin therapy, nonceliac gluten-free diets, cryotherapy and detoxification diets and procedures — would not be nearly as popular but for the associated celebrity endorsements.

…

Of course, this decade of celebrity health hogwash should also be considered in the broader context. This is the era of misinformation, a time when trust in public institutions is declining and people feel uncertain about what to believe about, well, everything. Celebrity wellness hype contributes to this “culture of untruth” by both inviting a further erosion of critical thinking and promoting what is popular and aspirational rather than what is true.

Truth matters, dammit.

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:

Donald Trump’s threat to destroy the sites of ancient Persia should send a shiver down the spine of any civilised person. How can anything justify American bombing of Persepolis or the mosques of Isfahan? Only the demented can see them as “threatening America”. It is on the same ethical plane as the Islamic State vandalism of Palmyra and Mosul.

And the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and other Islamists’ destruction of shrines in Timbuktu.

The destruction of cultural artefacts in war is specifically outlawed under the Hague convention of 1954 and subsequent protocols. It ranks with genocide, chemical weapons and the “strategic” bombing of civilians as beyond the pale of human behaviour. The US does not recognise most of these treaties as it concedes extraterritorial sovereignty, but it normally obeys them.

…

Retaliation against sites termed by Trump as “important to Iran & the Iranian culture” is a new escalation. Few hands are clean in this area of conflict. Britain’s terrorist bombing by the RAF against Germany in the second world war was blatantly aimed at historic towns. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, the head of RAF Bomber Command, held that destroying Germany’s heritage would break the enemy’s spirit and force it to surrender. That he – and Winston Churchill – thought bombing Lubeck, Nuremberg and Dresden would somehow persuade Adolf Hitler of the error of his ways shows only that war drives men insane. Hitler merely retaliated with the Baedeker raids on English cathedral cities.

Harris is born again in Trump. Nothing could be more calculated to bond Iranians to their leaders – and demand revenge – than the destruction of their history. Policy should be aimed at precisely the reverse, creating conditions in which opposition to the military/clerical regime can prosper and strengthen. Bombing Persepolis would not only be grotesque, it would be utterly counterproductive. It is the act of a belligerent personality craving war.

I don’t think he craves war, I think he craves Total Domination. He’s too brain-rotted to grasp that war is what he will get.

Global fascism news, India division:

Students across India have been protesting against an attack on a prestigious Delhi university by masked men wielding sticks on Sunday.

At least 40 students and staff of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were admitted to hospital with injuries.

Why JNU? Because “left-wing.”

The JNU has long been associated with left-wing activism, and some students have blamed Sunday’s violence on a right-wing student body linked to India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That group denies involvement and says left-wing activists were responsible.

Sounds familiar.

It did not take long for students and activists across the country to mobilise. On Monday, about 1,000 people gathered in Mumbai, with demonstrations in Hyderabad, Chennai (formerly Madras), and Ahmedabad, among others.

Maliga Sirimane, a protester in the southern city of Bangalore, told the BBC: “JNU has been the inspiration for many struggles across the country. This is not only because it is an exemplary university, but also because of the spirit of struggle that it has even though its students have faced many atrocities.”

Keep that spirit alive, comrades.

Women get permanently banned from Twitter for saying men are not women, but Trump can tweet us into a war with Iran and that’s copacetic.

It is who we are though. If “we” and “who” and “are” are meaningful in the context of a whole large heterogeneous country, it is who we are. We (or “we”) have a long history of destroying cultural sites, though more by starvation and attrition than by bombs. We’re not some glorious beacon of idealism that has never touched a hair on the head of any cultural site anywhere. Of course we’re not.