Stop stop don’t you dare remove that Confederate monument.

Hours after workers began removing a towering Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a federal judge issued an order temporarily halting the effort to dismantle one of the country’s most prominent monuments to the Confederacy on public land.

Because why shouldn’t we have a monument to race-based enslavement? It’s such an inspiring part of our history.

The memorial has been criticized for its sanitized depiction of slavery, and the plan to remove it from the country’s most famous cemetery is part of a militarywide effort to take down Confederate symbols from bases, ships and other facilities. Dozens of Republican lawmakers have opposed removing the memorial.

This is where that obsession with identity politics gets Republicans – they want to be special so they stand up for slavery. Seems like backing a losing horse, to me.

On Monday, as the work to remove the monument was getting underway, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that had been requested by a group called Defend Arlington.

Defend Arlington by not removing a monument to the slaveholding South. You really want to go with that?

The monument was funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that took a prominent role in mythologizing the Civil War as a “Lost Cause,” depicting the Confederacy’s rebellion as a noble defense of Southern values and painting slavery as benign. Like other monuments that the group funded, the Arlington memorial promotes the false narrative of the “loyal slave,” which has been used to justify and perpetuate white supremacy.

Retrofitting. “We do this thing, so we have to come up with a way to make it look acceptable.”

More than 40 Republican members of Congress signed a letter last week demanding that Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, stop the removal of the monument. They argued that the memorial did not commemorate the Confederate States of America but rather the “reconciliation and national unity” between North and South.

Oh honestly. What a thing to take a stand on.

The memorial features a woman who represents the American South standing atop a 32-foot pedestal, according to the cemetery. Near the base are dozens of life-size Confederate soldiers alongside mythical gods and two enslaved African Americans.

One is a “mammy” holding the child of a Confederate officer, and the other is a man “following his owner to war,” according to the cemetery’s description.

…

The United Daughters of the Confederacy began planning for the memorial in 1906, said James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. The group, composed of descendants of men who had served in the armed forces or government of the Confederacy, raised money for scores of monuments and memorials that presented a romanticized view of the Confederacy and a sanitized take on slavery.

“The statue was a way of reminding Americans who was in charge in the South and what the true traditions of the South were,” Dr. Grossman said. “It’s one of hundreds of statues that were created across the South in the first two decades of the 20th century whose purpose was to make sure that everybody knows that this is a white country, and that slavery was legitimate and benign.”

Plans for the monument drew fierce opposition from civil rights activists and groups, notably the N.A.A.C.P. The depiction of the “mammy,” in particular, diminished the harm inflicted upon women whose families were destroyed under slavery, they said.

The monument at Arlington was among the most prominent memorials that the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded, and the symbolism of the location was potent. The cemetery was established on a former plantation that was seized from Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Nearly 200 enslaved people lived and worked on the plantation when Lee lived there, according to the cemetery.

You’d think by now we could all just agree that slavery was and is indefensible.

It’s not working any more. There are many replies and most of them ask the obvious and necessary question that has been neglected too long: what rights??? What rights exactly are you talking about? What rights don’t you have? What rights specific to trans people do you have in mind? Spell. them. out.

What rights? What rights is Helen trying to remove? What rights???

The DEI everything…

“Harvard is a vastly less tolerant place than it was when I arrived in 1998.  The intolerance is a function of an increasingly large fraction of our colleagues. And we – the rest of us on the Harvard faculty – let it happen. The cancelling, the punishments, the DEI bureaucracy, the DEI statements, the endless list that we could all recite – all this happened on our watch. We saw it happen, but we did nothing. We were too busy.  We were scared to speak up. We – we on the faculty – let Harvard become what it is. The Harvard that we have is the result of our own collective moral failure. The alumni who are furious are not trying to turn Harvard into something we do not want.  They are trying to rescue Harvard from what we let it become. We as a faculty failed.  That is why the alumni are speaking up. That is why we formed the Council on Academic Freedom in the first place.”

Still? Still?? When were we ever???

Love Actually at 20: Are we still in love with the controversial Christmas classic?

Who was ever in love with that grating cloying maddening piece of crap?

Richard Curtis’s 2003 festive drama remains a Christmas classic, albeit a controversial one.

The interlinked romantic tales of middle-class characters professing their love at Christmas gets an annual grilling from critics, viewers and even some of those involved in the film, who point out the unrealistic portrayals of love, questionable character decisions and outdated jokes.

“Unrealistic” is putting it extremely mildly. “Insane” would be more like it. The Prime Minister asks for a cup of tea and is instantly pole-axed by the young woman who brings it to him? And that’s love actually? A “writer” dude goes to Italy or Croatia or somewhere to “write” his “novel” and is instantly poleaxed by the young woman who tidies his house? And that’s love actually? A very young guy flies off to the US in quest of grrrlz and hey hey they crawl all over him, giggling madly? And that’s love actually?

Despite the misjudgements and gaffes, what many viewers want from a festive film is what Love Actually provides: easy watching, a cosy Christmas setting and an unabashed celebration of love.

It’s not easy watching though. Granted there’s no work involved, but it’s not easy being tortured. And hello, it isn’t any kind of “celebration of love.” Wanting to fuck a woman on first glance is not the same thing as love. Going all googly-eyed over someone you don’t know and haven’t spoken to is not the same thing as love.

The amount of real love in the film can be debated, but everyone agrees that Grant gyrating The Pointer Sisters’ 1983 track Jump around the No 10 offices is comedy gold.

Nooooo everyone doesn’t! I cringe so hard when Grant starts twitching his bum that I can’t even watch any more.

At other times in the year, we might be more critical of naff storylines, schmaltzy acts of love and out-of-date jokes, but at Christmas we allow ourselves to be lulled by Hugh Grant’s earnest optimism that “if you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love, actually, is all around”.

Nope. Nope nope nope. There are plenty of sappy movies I can allow myself to be lulled into watching without cringing, but Love Actually has never been one of them. It has some decent moments, which is why I can be so specific about its horrors – I have watched bits of it several times over the years. But along with the decent moments it has poke your own eyes out moments, so no. It gets no forgiveness.

That Times op-ed isn’t faring enormously well on twit.

1. (Let X=X [↩]

It turns out the key thing about Trump is his pragmatism. Who knew?

But both sides consistently misread Mr. Trump’s success. He isn’t edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism, and he isn’t attracting the backing of significant numbers of Black and Hispanic voters because they support white supremacy. His success is not a sign that America is prepared to embrace the ideas of the extreme right. Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate.

Well. Even if it’s true that many voters see Trump as a pragmatic moderate – and that’s a big if – it’s not at all clear how that perception would make everything else about him tolerable. It’s not at all clear, in particular, how that would cancel out or soften the glaring reality of what kind of human being he is – the sadism, the bullying, the domineering, the conceit, the nonstop aggression, the greed, the lying, the cheating, the theft, the exploitation, the hatred, the contempt, the narcissism, the selfishness, the vulgarity, the relentless shoving punching kicking brutality.

I guess I’m some kind of dreamy clueless optimist underneath, because I still have a hard time believing that most people like that kind of thing.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s wild rhetoric, indifference to protocol and willingness to challenge expertise have been profoundly unsettling to people of both political parties. 

His “indifference to protocol” is it. Is that what you call it. Euphemism much? January 6 was indifference to protocol was it?

His term in office was frequently chaotic, and the chaos seemed to culminate in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

Seemed? What would convince you it more than “seemed”?

But it is worth remembering that during his presidency, Mr. Trump’s often intemperate rhetoric and erratic behavior ended up accompanying a host of moderate policies. 

And then he tried to take power by force. No biggy.

I have to wonder why the Times published this glurge.

It’s odd how this is framed. The Guardian tells us:

Teachers in England will not be made to automatically “out” pupils who come to them with questions over gender identity, despite a push from Conservative rightwingers for a blanket approach, government guidance due to be published this week will say.

Schools will be expected to inform parents if children tell staff that they want to take any steps towards transitioning, but they will not have to flag conversations if children are just asking general questions, or in the event of safeguarding issues.

The decision to keep some protections in place so that children are not automatically outed is likely to frustrate some on the Tory right who have been pushing for parents to be told in all circumstances.

“The decision to keep some protections in place” – that is, “protections” meaning protections for secrecy, not protections for children. The Guardian is assuming that gender ideology needs and deserves protection from adults who understand that people can’t change sex. The Guardian is assuming that we should all be anxiously shielding gender ideology from questions, as opposed to shielding children from destructive gender ideology.

Remember when feminism got the same kind of anxious protective care? No, neither do I.

What is the point?

Prison officers are being asked to consider the needs of “pregnant people” and “breastfeeding people” in official guidance from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). 

The MoJ equality analysis policy framework, a publicly available document, gives guidance to prison officers to ensure facilities are compliant with equality legislation.

You can’t make pregnancy and breastfeeding “equal” in the sense of both sexes being equipped to carry them out. Men can’t get pregnant or breastfeed. I hope that clears that up.

Published on April 20 2023, the guidance asks officers to consider: “How are pregnant or breastfeeding people catered for when working/visiting a prison?” 

How is it “equality” to erase women?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The bindweed.

AJ Eckert, DO, is Connecticut’s first out nonbinary trans doctor….

Please, make up your fucking mind: choose one or the other and stick with it. You can’t be both.

No, Helen. That’s not why you’re transphobic. Asserting two sexes is just incorrect. You’re transphobic because you claim that individuals cannot ever change biological sex

It’s one thing to have activists believing the impossible, but here we have a doctor. But in order to fool others convincingly, you need to fool yourself first. Looks like it took.

This is a doctor who, from this quote alone, quite literally does not know what she’s doing. If she can prove that humans have more than one sex, or that they can change sexes*, there’s a Nobel with her name on it. Proving either (without resorting to word games, or equivocating about gender “presentation”) would be revolutionary. Until she’s made the trip to Stockholm to pick up her medal, she needs to be kept away from patients, particularly children.

It’s like she’s high on her own supply, smoking the product she’s selling. Such ignorant confidence is rather scary to witness, even at the distance of reading a quote online. There’s no way that her counsel is going to be honest or complete if she insists that the impossible is possible. It’s like a mechanic telling you with a straight face that by removing a couple of parts, filling the tank with aviation fuel, and painting some wings on the side, your car can be turned into fully functioning Cesna, ready to fly anywhere. I wouldn’t let someone like that clean my windshield, let alone tinker with the engine. And yet here’s Dr. Nonbinary-Trans working under the hood on humans, telling her victims clients that she can change their sex by lopping off a few organs, pumping them full of wrong-sex hormones, and grafting pretend organs onto them, sculpting their own flesh in a futile effort to give it a vague, aspirational resemblance to the target genitals it can never be.

*Two separate claims often joined in the same breath, neither of which is true. Even if one of them was true, it would not render the other any more true, possible, or likely.

Hey kids, welcome to another episode of Naming by Idiots.

Yass yass yass! “Lesbian” does not at all mean “woman attracted to women”; that is a complete misunderstanding. I don’t know where people come up with these ideas.

Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on The bindweed.

I hope one day when the bottom has fallen out of the trans movement we can have a proper belly laugh at all the people who should’ve known better but still somehow fell for it and subsequently pissed away their reputations as a result, but right now this just feels sad. Sad that the website where I first learned about Lupron and its use in crank medicine as a treatment for autism is now promoting an ideology that uses that exact same drug to stall the natural development path for adolescent humans because it thinks it’ll help children change sex.

There’s a dark beauty to this level of stupidity that just can’t really be appreciated in the present. To me stunting the process that turns a child into an adult seems so obviously like the prologue to a dystopian Sci-fi classic like Brave New World that it should be easy to dismiss out of hand, and yet here we are, doing it to thousands of kids every year.

Now we’re onto the “poisoning the blood” phase.

Donald Trump is facing a backlash for repeating a remark at a political rally on Saturday where he said undocumented immigrants to the United States are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Of course he said that. It’s how he thinks. He says it because His People love it, but also because he loves it himself. He loves talking filth of that kind. If Hitler were still around Trump would be his best friend.

In November he was widely condemned for calling his opponents “vermin”, language that echoed that used historically by dictators and authoritarians.

Well duh. He is an authoritarian, and he would be a dictator if he could. It’s all too possible that he’ll make himself one if he wins the election.

“He’s disgusting,” former New Jersey governor and Republican presidential contender Chris Christie told CNN Sunday. “He’s dog-whistling to Americans who feel under stress and strain from the economy and conflicts around the world,” Christie said. “He’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”

Here’s that dog-whistling issue again. I wouldn’t call it dog-whistling, because I think he’s just plain saying it. I mean granted he leaves off the “so kill them all” part, but I think “poisoning the blood of our country” is pretty clear.

What it is to be a Maga person:

The purpose of [Ruby] Freeman’s courtroom testimony was simple: to describe in detail how Giuliani’s lies had profoundly damaged her life. And make no mistake, Giuliani lied. He admitted that his statements were false back in July, and in August the court entered a default judgment against him, holding him liable for those falsehoods.

The only question left for the jury was the amount of the damages. And Friday, the jury gave its answer: Giuliani now owes Freeman and Moss $148 million to compensate them for his cruel and obvious lies.

The verdict is against Giuliani alone. But make no mistake, MAGA was on trial in the courtroom — its methods, its morality and the means it uses to escape the consequences of its dreadful acts. That’s because Rudy Giuliani isn’t truly Rudy Giuliani any longer. In his long descent from a post-9/11 American hero to a mocked, derided and embattled criminal defendant (he has also been indicted in Fani Willis’s sprawling Georgia case), he became something else entirely. He became a MAGA Man.

Or to put it less metaphorically, he let greed and power-hunger crowd out everything else, so he became a clone of the filthy crook Donald Trump.

The first thing you need to know about a MAGA Man like Giuliani is that he’s dishonest. Truthfulness is incompatible with Trumpism. Trump is a liar, and he demands fealty to his lies. So Giuliani’s task, as Trump’s lawyer, was to lie on his behalf, and lie he did. He even repeated his lies about Freeman and Moss — the same lies to which he’d already confessed — outside the courthouse during his trial.

A MAGA Man such as Giuliani supplements his lies with rage. To watch him pushing Trump’s election lies was to watch a man become unglued with anger. The rage merged with the lie. The rage helped make the lie stick.

That too is very filthy-trumpy. Rage is always right there, ready to show up at the smallest hint to help Master win another skirmish. Lie, rage, win.

His trial and verdict write another page in the volume of truth that tells the real story of MAGA America. Every voter should know exactly who Trump is and what his movement is like. They should know what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. We should remember their names. But if a MAGA Man remembers, he does not care. Whoever he once was is gone. He serves a new master now.

Dr Faustus without the intellect.

Science-Based Medicine has a venomous book-length post by AJ Eckert attacking Helen Joyce.

Who is AJ Eckert besides a contributor at SBM?

AJ Eckert, DO, is Connecticut’s first out nonbinary trans doctor and serves as the Medical Director of our Gender & Life-Affirming Medicine (GLAM) Program. Dr. Eckert has over 17 years’ experience in LGBTQ health care, with 9 years as a provider of primary care and gender-affirming services.

After Dr. Eckert completed their education at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine and residency at NEOMEN/Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine Program, they specialized in LGBTQ health. Dr. Eckert is board certified in family medicine.

Outside of their clinical work with patients, Dr. Eckert is active in education and advocacy. He is an assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University and has piloted a 4th-year medical student rotation at Anchor Health. Since 2021, Dr. Eckert has published nine articles in Science-Based Medicine, was a reviewer for the Journal of Medical Ethics, and had a quote in the 2nd edition of “The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.” They were on the 2021 Abstract Review Committee for the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, or USPATH.

Dr. Eckert is active in advocacy all right.

Joyce doesn’t understand why she’s seen as transphobic; in one interview, she claims,

“So according to them, I’m transphobic for just saying human beings come in two types, male and female…that’s transphobic.”

No, Helen. That’s not why you’re transphobic. Asserting two sexes is just incorrect. You’re transphobic because you claim that individuals cannot ever change biological sex, and anyone who disagrees with that statement is just frightened of activists.

Cool; that’s fine then.

Finally we get the accusation of seeking genocide:

Helen Joyce’s goal is to reduce the number of trans people and keep down the number of those who transition. She opines,

           “That’s for two reasons – one of them is that every one of those people is a person who’s been damaged. But the second one is every one of those people is basically, you know, a huge problem to a sane world.”

Joyce is following the pattern of pundits in 2023 who have taken the anti-trans campaign from “just asking questions” to “protecting children” to “trans eradication.” People are scared, and with good reason.

Subtle enough? The good doctor is saying Helen wants trans people “eradicated” i.e. killed.

It’s almost funny, because the doc goes on to quote Helen saying she hopes to see kids who think they’re trans getting over it and being happy lesbians and gay men as if that were evidence of her hoping to see them “eradicated.” Like so:

Joyce is following the pattern of pundits in 2023 who have taken the anti-trans campaign from “just asking questions” to “protecting children” to “trans eradication.” People are scared, and with good reason. And for those who still don’t believe this is Joyce’s goal, here she says in an interview:

“There are two versions of the future, and one of them is just clearly better than the other, which is to let these kids just be themselves and grow up to be gay.”

That’s not eradication. Changing your mind is not eradication. Just being yourself is not eradication. (If it is, what about people who were gay but later decide they’re trans? Wouldn’t that be eradication too?)

Joyce does not want us to exist…is it clear now?

No. No, it isn’t. She wants you not to be deluded and confused, which is not the same thing as not existing.

She compares trans rights to bindweed. We are a weed that needs to be eradicated.

“I often analogize it with bindweed or Japanese knotweed, depending on which analogy, how pessimistic I’m feeling on that day, because bindweed is hard, but Japanese knotweed is really hard. So this has spread while nobody was doing the weeding, but you could conceivably pull it all back out. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Note the lurch from “trans rights” to “we” – but note also that Helen is talking about the bizarro beliefs of trans ideology, not trans people as people. Comparing an ideology to a weed is not all that unusual, let alone shocking, let alone genocidal.

There’s a whole lot more. It’s a staggeringly long article. The bindweed goes on for miles.

H/t Harald Hanche-Olsen

Yesssssss

Eddie Izzard fails to be chosen as Brighton Labour candidate

The comedian and activist had hoped to represent the constituency as Labour’s parliamentary candidate but was defeated by music industry activist Tom Gray. The result is Eddie Izzard’s second defeated attempt to stand as an MP, after not being selected to become Labour’s candidate in Sheffield Central last year.

Tom Gray aims to become the first Labour MP for Brighton Pavilion in more than a decade after Green MP Caroline Lucas was elected in 2010.

…

Mr Gray attracted the majority of support from party members and also received the backing of several trade unions, including Unite, Unison and USDAW.

And Eddie Izzard lost.

He what?

He LOST.

Another man eager to cheat a woman out of a scholarship:

Reduxx has learned that a volleyball player from California is reportedly set to become the first known male recipient of a women’s Division 1 (D1) athletic scholarship. Tate Drageset, 17, has verbally committed to the University of Washington, and, if the offer is signed next fall, he would be seizing one of only twelve D1 volleyball scholarships available for females at the University.

The announcement of Drageset’s verbal commitment to the University of Washington was made in June to much fanfare within the volleyball community, with multiple sporting magazines and social media accounts covering the verbal commitment.

Drageset has long been considered a rising star within women’s volleyball, and he was the dominant force on two USA Volleyball teams in two separate age groups that both claimed national titles last summer. He was also named an MVP at the Girls Junior National Championships earlier this year. In addition to his club volleyball accolades, he was awarded the title of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division 5 Player of the 2022-23 Year.

I suppose being male helped him?

But this time it was a secret.

But Drageset’s transgender status has reportedly been concealed from public knowledge, with coaches, parents, and opposing players being left uninformed of his biological sex ahead of games.

Now, for the first time, a source close to the situation has anonymously come forward to reveal concerns about the steady escalation of Drageset’s participation in women’s volleyball, something which has now resulted in him preparing to take a rare, all-expenses-paid athletic scholarship opportunity.

Oh well, it’s only girls.

From the pen of Pliny:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on So many? Like five?

Back in my Movement Skeptic days, before the “deep rifts”, for a while my thinking was heavily influenced by Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. While I still think Pinker made some valid points*, in the light of everything that’s happened since, I have grown much more sympathetic towards (or at least understanding of) the reluctance among certain feminists to talk about innate cognitive or psychological differences between men and women. As I remember there was a certain “gotcha” that was very popular among “anti-blank-slatists” at the time:

So what you’re saying is that if there were differences in the distribution of interests and talents between men and women that were not entirely attributable to culture, discrimination wouldn’t be wrong after all?

Indeed, I was almost certainly guilty of occasionally using this “gotcha” myself. I now think this is a strawman. It’s not that the supposed innate differences justify discrimination, it’s that they’re too often used to explain away discrimination (Michael Shermer’s infamous “more of a guy thing” comment being a prime example).

There is a tendency among movement skeptics to talk as if claims are either “supported by evidence and sound logic” or not, when, in fact, things are almost never that clear cut. As they say, there is no algorithm for truth. The data is usually at least somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation, no method is ever infallible, and no study is ever without flaws, so if we’re motivated to reach certain conclusions and avoid others, we can always find reasons why studies that lead to an inconvenient conclusion are “fatally flawed”. For studies that lead to a desirable conclusion we don’t look so hard for flaws and don’t ascribe such fatal consequences to the ones we do notice. We can be biased and guilty of intellectual double standards even without contradicting any established facts and without making any obvious logical fallacies or methodological errors.

So while I don’t deny that there are real differences in the distribution of interests and talents between men and women, my general impression is that right-leaning people tend to be very quick to embrace biological explanations for things like the under-representation of women in positions of power and status without exposing them to the same level of hypercritical scrutiny as the alternatives. They also seem very quick to conclude that if different innate preferences enters into the explanation at all, there is no need to look any further: That’s all there is to it, and sexism has nothing to do with it. And to be fair, at the risk of engaging in false equivalence and bothsiderism, leftleaning people are almost certainly guilty of the opposite double standard.

While I have some issues with Jonathan Haidt, I think he is right to say that the merit of science is not that it makes individual scientists immune to bias, motivated reasoning, intellectual double standards etc. It’s that, at its best, it allows the competing biases of different scientists to “cancel out”, at least to some degree, which is why viewpoint diversity is so vitally important in science. I also think this is a major part of the reason it’s so important to determine in advance (i.e. before the data are in) what is going to count as a positive result. You should always be prepared to bet your pet hypothesis on predictions that haven’t yet been confirmed or disconfirmed. Because once the facts are in, it is always possible to retrofit the data to a desired conclusion.

* Indeed several critics of gender ideology, including Helen Joyce, have made the point that the tendency among many feminists to downplay and minimize the importance of biology has put them in an awkward position when it comes to defending the need for female only spaces.

Eva Kurilova reports that Canadian schools are asking students impertinent questions about personal matters.

It was recently brought to my attention that a school district in Ontario was asking students to fill out a survey that asked them to indicate what their “gender” is. The options included male and female but did not end there. This was followed by “transgender,” “non-binary,” “questioning,” and “two-spirit,” among other ridiculous prompts. If your “gender” was not listed, you could specify further.

Are school districts 14 years old all of a sudden? Are they sharing selfies on Twitter? Have they lost their minds?

These are the questions of a cult, and schools are just taking them for granted. The idea that it’s possible to be something other than male or female or that “gender” takes precedence over “sex” (they never specify which view they are taking, because confusion is the whole point) is a cult idea. It is more than just a metaphysical belief—it is a marker of complete and total indoctrination, and activist educators have the country’s children believing it.

It’s as if school districts have been taken over by Moonies or UFO finders or Freudians. Schools are supposed to educate, not induct into lunacy.

It’s been going on for some time, Eva says.

A great example is the 2021-22 York Region District School Board Student Survey. This survey asked a similar set of questions, prompting students to accept the idea that they must have a “deeply felt” sense of their “identity” on the “gender spectrum” and then asking them what it was.

What people have is the experience of being told they are girls or boys from long before their brains could form memories. That’s what these fools claim is a “deeply felt sense.” The only reason the felt sense seems “deeply felt” is because they don’t remember the beginning because they were too young to remember anything. Confusing the forgotten with the deep is a rooky error.

Why not just start asking kids if they’re elves, refugees from Remulac, giant tortoises, sharks in people suits?

Islamizing Turkish schools:

 Turkey’s steps to promote traditional moral values in students, increase Islamic lessons and open prayer rooms in schools are fuelling secularist concerns in the Muslim country and laying bare divisions over the role religion should have in education.

The measures, introduced recently, have fired up tensions over what is already a highly charged subject as Turkey marks 100 years since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the staunchly secular republic.

Reuters stumbles over its own feet there – if Turkey is a staunchly secular republic then why does Reuters call it “the Muslim country”?

The number of Imam Hatip schools, founded to educate Islamic preachers, has risen to around 1,700 from 450 in 2002 when the AKP first came to power. Their student body has risen six-fold to more than half a million.

But secularist criticism is now directed at the regular school system, where students take two compulsory religion lessons a week and now must take additional religion and morality classes.

Separately, under a regulation that came into force in October, all schools must make spaces available for what is known as a mescit, a small place for Islamic worship.

“State schools are being transformed into (religious) madrasas by making other schools’ curriculums similar to Imam Hatips,” Kadem Ozbay, head of the education sector union Egitim-Is, told Reuters.

The same thing happens in the US of course. Daddy God is always being smuggled in one way or another.