Friday, March 25, 2022
This day in Herstory: Aretha Louise Franklin, born March 25, 1942 (died August 16, 2018), was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world's best-selling music artists. (more)
USA Today and gender studies experts confirm: Women don't exist
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By Zachary Faria
March 25, 2022
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s inability, or unwillingness, to provide a definition for the word "woman" makes for a rather silly controversy, but it highlights an important fact: Women don’t actually exist.
Such is the point of Alia Dastagir’s piece in USA Today. According to Dastagir, there “is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman.” Dastagir would know, after all: She spoke to “scientists, gender law scholars, and philosophers of biology” who determined that Jackson’s nonanswer was “commendable.”
Dastagir informed us that there are “billions of women on the planet,” though it’s not clear how she knows that if no one knows what a woman is. In case it’s not clear the kind of “experts” Dastagir turned to, here is the first one she quoted: “’I don't want to see this question punted to biology as if science can offer a simple, definitive answer,’ said Rebecca Jordan-Young, a scientist and gender studies scholar at Barnard College whose work explores the relationships between science and the social hierarchies of gender and sexuality.” … read full article
Ukraine war: JK Rowling hits back at Putin's 'cancel culture' comment
From BBC News (UK)
March 25, 2022
JK Rowling has hit back at Vladimir Putin, after the Russian president cited her in a wide-ranging speech that saw him criticise "cancel culture".
At a televised meeting on Friday, Mr Putin compared recent criticism of the Harry Potter author to that faced by pro-war Russian composers and writers.
In response, Ms Rowling denounced the invasion of Ukraine in which she said Russia was "slaughtering civilians".
Rowling has been criticised for her views on transgender issues.
"Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics," the Harry Potter author wrote on Twitter.
In the lengthy speech, which was given to the winners of various cultural prizes, President Putin claimed Russian composers and writers were being discriminated against. … read full article
Twitter thread from Wesley Yang (@wesyang)
It’s well intended. It’s grounded in compassion. But …
From Twitter
By Wesley Yang
March 25, 2022
It's well intended. It's grounded in compassion. But it asks us to undo our connection to reason and reality, to disable the growth of those faculties in our children, to grow used to avowing and compelling others to avow, institutionalized falsehood. We have to say no.
It's not the Gulag. It's not the Cultural Revolution. But it demands that we pay tribute to a cluster of propagandistic falsehoods every time we make reference to ourselves or others.
The falsehood is that we are what we are by virtue of an act of identification with an internal sense of gender rather than members of a sexually reproducing species for whom our complex societies permit a diversity of ways of being women or men
The new ideology in some ways is just an extension of the Promethean urge to transform the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.
But this freedom paradoxically entails conscripting others into the project of self-definition -- since being what I truly am requires that others clap; others must clap...
A radically new conception of rights that extends the meaning of having rights to a place that cannibalizes the concept from within
Lawrence vs Texas embedded Nietzsche into the constitution; what lies ahead is not just the liberty to define your own concept of being, but the right to compel others to participate and share in it.....
This turn where the individual will grows so potent as to consume the social compact itself is a fundamental challenge for liberal, Promethean society pledged to the project Emancipation -- the place where Emancipation becomes the will to total conformity
I call this turn "Ideological Succession"'
A trans person is just a part of the diversity of the human species in a complex society and that some people would want to live as the opposite sex and would try to construct a world in which others would participate in it and seek to wider the sphere of those willing is fine
But when this project avails itself of the discourse and apparatus of rights, it couches its demand as an indefeasible one entailing no tradeoffs and requiring no balancing of other claims, other recognitions -- as well as refusing the constraints of reality and reason
In practice it has meant that prisons, locker rooms, bathrooms, sports, and other sex-segregated spaces and domains must be open to those who self-identify while bearing males bodies and male genitalia
The project proceeds without regard for, and with righteous contempt for any countervailing claim or interest -- this is what happens when the right to the valorization of an individual wish is enshrined into law and custom
Is my internal individual desire for a certain form of gratification and recognition strong enough to compel participation of others in it as a matter of right? That's the premise being tested by this movement.
Can the force of law be made the instrument of internal, individual desires that we call "identification" that is held to be dispositive of the question of who we are without reference to any other criterion?
We are on a frontier right now where the country's best funded political lobbies, the Democratic party, and most of its culture industries and corporations all speak in one voice on this question. And yet prudence dictates the answer cannot be yes.
(re-published with kind permission of the author, who also authors Year Zero on SubStack)
Media are afraid to speak against Lia Thomas because of 'cult-like mentality': Kellie-Jay Keen
The activist said many broadcasters are 'too afraid' to speak out against Lia Thomas
From Fox News (USA)
By Hannah Grossman
March 24, 2022
A women's rights activist who got into an argument with an attendee at Lia Thomas' competition over her gender said there was a sinister move on the left that was prohibiting speech about women.
"Women are called cervix-havers, menstruators, chest feeders, birthing persons. So we have to give up the language that describes us. … The only people that are allowed to be called women these days are actually men," Kellie-Jay Keen said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday.
"The person in front of me was quite happy to say that [Lia Thomas] was definitely a woman," she said. … read full article and watch clip)
All Transgender Team Plays Local Football Club In ‘World First’
From Southwark News (UK)
By Josh Askew
March 24, 2022
A goal of the transgender team is to "win at least one game."
A local football club will play against a team of solely transgender women in a “world first”.
Dulwich Hamlet will compete against Trans Radio UK United FC (TRUK) on 31 March.
TRUK United’s squad will consist only of transgender women, who will take to the pitch against Dulwich Hamlet’s womens team.
Event organiser Lucy Clark says the match, which will take place at Dulwich’s Champion Hill, will “make history” as it is the first time an all transgender female squad has been fielded in a football game.
The game is in aid of Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual event dedicated to “celebrating transgender people.” … read full article
The spectre of the new male feminist
Meet Nigel, the new type of feminist on the block
From The Critic (UK)
By Julie Bindel
March 25, 2022
The prevailing memory from my early days of feminist activism is trying to persuade men on the Left to join us in campaigning against misogyny and male violence. One time a group of anarchist men agreed to come along to a picket of a sex cinema when we pointed out that animals (as well as women) are often abused in the production of pornography. But as a rule, we would never manage to get the boys to join in on any of our various protests. It was always a delight to see one or two of them turn up, in their hessian sandals and ponytails, to fight the good fight alongside their sisters.
Imagine, therefore, how surprised I have been this past couple of decades to see more and more men fighting on behalf of “women”. Trans-women that is. Let’s call him Nigel — this man is a type you will recognise. White, bearded, and whether gay or straight he somehow manages to shoehorn himself onto the LGBTQQIAP+ community, and is absolutely, without question, more oppressed than females. He gets himself out of bed, dragging himself away from Insta, Twitter and Pornhub (he has donated to some bird making ethical porn, but he prefers the real stuff) and cycles down to where are the feminists are speaking about rape and domestic violence and other bourgeoise rubbish.
His pronouns intact, fluctuating between he/him and they/them, depending entirely on his mood and what he chooses to wear that day, Nigel drops his washing off at his mums, gets his girlfriend (they are a queer couple though) to clean out the hamster cage, slips on his £150 trainers and joins the baying mob shouting “TERFS out” and “bigots”, etc. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to The Critic!)
We won’t make it easier to change gender, say ministers
System is already robust enough, says Government, after report recommended that obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate should be simpler
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Hayley Dixon
March 24, 2022
The Government has rejected attempts to make it easier for people to change their gender, saying that the current system is “rigorous" and "robust".
In the midst of concern over access to single-sex spaces such as hospital wards, ministers refused attempts by MPs to move the law towards a system of self-identification of legal gender.
The Government said it had already consulted on the controversial subject and “the current provisions allow for those that wish to legally change their sex to do so, and we will not be changing the legislation”.
It was responding to a report by the Women and Equalities Committee, released in December 2021, which said that several steps required before a trans person can obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) should be removed.
Checks 'provide assurance'
These included the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, for spousal consent and for the requirement for a person to live in their chosen gender for two years to be scrapped. … read full article (web page archive)
What if the word we suddenly couldn't define anymore was "children"?
From Writing Behavior (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
March 25, 2022
On Tuesday, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson—asked to define the word 'woman'—hedged: "Not in this context. I'm not a biologist." You can argue Senator Blackburn was looking to stir up trouble for Democrats—no doubt she was. But it's worth thinking about how we got here.
Because, of course, it doesn't take a biology degree to define the word 'woman.' It's never been some great mystery. It's just become fashionable lately to pretend it's all very complicated. You can only pretend it’s all very complicated by detaching sex from reproductive role (the meaningful referent of sex, about which no one is in fact in any doubt) and pinning it on rare differences of sexual development or an inner sense of gender identity instead. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Writing Behavior!)
Sex Offender Paved Way for Male Transfers to Women's Prisons in UK
From REDUXX (USA)
By Anna Slatz
March 25, 2022
The case which paved the way for in-tact trans-identified males to be transferred to women's prisons in the UK was launched by a convicted sex offender and murderer.
In 2001, a man named Mark Jones (a.k.a: Karen Jones/Lawson) was jailed after the body of his sexual partner was found in their Manchester home. Jones had allegedly murdered the man after he refused to pay for Jones' nail polish and transgender surgeries, but, due to the advanced stage of decomposition in the body, he was only able to be convicted of manslaughter. The decomposition hindered the ability for coroners to ascertain a proper cause of death, and thus throttled the prosecution.
Jones was sentenced to 5 years, but was released just one year later on license in 2002. Less than a week after getting out of prison, Jones sexually assaulted a female clerk at a store which sold clothing for transsexual men, gagging the woman's mouth with a lemon and trying to rape her. He was allegedly unable to penetrate the woman only because he was incapable of maintaining an erection. Jones was re-apprehended and sentenced to life in prison.
At the time, Jones claimed the attempted rape was a "cry for help" so he could go back to prison and recieve a sex change on the public dime. While imprisoned, Jones recieved free laser hair removal, hormone replacement therapy, and a gender recognition certificate. … read full article (and SUPPORT REDUXX!)
My gender identity ideology explainer
Since transwoman Lia Thomas won the women's swimming, people are beginning to question whether this is really fair to women , so here's a new piece.
From Bea’s Newsletter (UK)
By Bea Jaspert
March 25, 2022
Here’s a brief explainer on the very basic issues as I see them:-
“Transwomen are women” is the mantra of *gender identity ideology*, which can be roughly summarised as follows:-
1. “Sex is not binary - male & female, but a spectrum.”
2. “Binary sex classifications of male and female are arbitrarily and not always correctly assigned at birth”.
3. “The true determination of personhood = gender identity, an innate essence - it can be man, woman, non binary, or any one of hundreds (by some accounts millions) of genders”.
4. “Therefore, trans people should be allowed access to all the spaces, services and provisions of the opposite sex”.
Because women - female people - face entrenched systemic, endemic sex-based discrimination and violence, female people - through their own hard work, through the hard fights of the suffragettes and the women’s rights movement - have won a few sex-based rights and protections against the violence and discrimination they suffer - historically, globally, on an ongoing and endemic basis.
These rights and protections include:-
The right to female-only rape crisis services.
The right to female-only domestic abuse services.
The right to female-only sports.
The right to single sex female-only toilets, changing rooms and accommodation.
The right to single sex female-only prisons.*
*Worth noting here that most female prisoners have been victims of male sexual violence and/or domestic abuse, and that 84% have had a head trauma as a result of domestic violence. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Bea’s Newsletter!)
I Sponsored a High School GSA...Then Gender Ideology Crash Landed on My House.
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
March 25, 2022
In 2018-2019 I sponsored the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club in a midwestern high school. I feel fortunate to have survived my years as a depressed gay teen in the early 90s, and I wanted to help now, as a gay parent.
Predictably, as I’d try to usher the group out after a meeting they would begin to open up to each other about selecting a college or coming out at home as gay or lesbian. They were a small group of bright and talented students. Many were looking forward to attending a meeting of local high school GSAs at a college as our one allotted field trip.
When we got to that local GSA meeting, I was surprised. I expected the content to be related to sexual orientation. However, upon entering, for the first time, I was given a name tag for my pronouns. And there was only an all gender bathroom—a first for me. Students were handed a microphone to announce their name, identity, and pronouns. “I’m Jamie, I’m non-binary, they/them.” Another sponsor, a 30ish year old straight teacher, leaned over to me. “She’s what? What are they talking about?”
I explained, hopefully correctly, as some of the terms I had to later Google. At 43 I felt old, as if my ten year hiatus from gay pride parades and bars resulted in me missing key developments. As I looked out at the group of excited students, I thought—what is going on here? … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to PITT!)
TGIF: What Is a Woman?
Ketanji Brown Jackson, Ginni Thomas, Madeleine Albright and more.
From Common Sense (USA)
By Nellie Bowles
March 25, 2022
Welcome back to the news roundup—and what you might have missed on Common Sense this week. TGIF to all.
→ Asking Ketanji Brown Jackson to define a woman: Confirmation hearings are underway in Washington, D.C., for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson’s rise to the Supreme Court is all but inevitable, and she will make history as the first black woman on the court.
There’s nothing of the old Brett Kavanaugh circus—remember when he was accused of rape and then after that accused of gang rape? And that the whole thing hinged on a high school yearbook? That episode feels like it was 100 years ago.
From the coverage of this week’s hearings though, you would imagine the questioning of Brown has been even more deranged. Here’s the Washington Post editorial board: “Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Ketanji Brown Jackson worse.”
Jennifer Rubin, also of the Washington Post, argued that the media shouldn’t describe the questioning as “tense” but instead “bullying, interrupting, rude, overbearing. Describe what you SEE not what sounds neutral.” … read full article