Choping is a common Singaporean practice which involves placing a packet of tissue paper (or some other item) to reserve a seat in a hawker centre or food court while one queues for food.
With choping, one will have a guaranteed seat to return to when one gets one's food.
There is a currently an anti-chope movement which is upsetting a lot of Singaporeans, since choping is a common practice, arguably part of Singapore's culture.
And of course, since the movement is supported by Minister Grace Fu, it has also become a lightning rod for anti-PAP sentiment.
Yet, choping is a demonstrably inefficient and selfish method of seat allocation which privileges early comers, leaving the community as a whole worse off. It is like free parking - it's great if there're empty lots but if all the lots are occupied, you're going to waste a lot of time cruising around looking for parking.
While it is quite obvious that leaving seats unutilised (since no one can eat at a choped seat, or is supposed to anyway) is inefficient, but we can formalise a model to test our intuition.
For simplicity, assume a hawker centre with 10 seats with 10 arrivals every 10 minutes, a 10 minute waiting time at each stall and that everyone takes 10 minutes to eat. Assume that choping and moving from stall to seat and back are instantaneous (in reality since choping takes time choping will be even more inefficient).
Under a no chope system (i.e. no one can chope - you occupy a seat if it is empty):
T = 0 mins (start of scenario):
10 people are queuing, 0 eating
T = 10 mins:
10 people are queuing, 10 are eating
T = 20 mins:
10 people are queuing, 10 are eating. 10 have finished eating and have gone off
T = 30 mins:
10 people are queuing, 10 are eating. 20 have finished eating and have gone off
T = 40 mins:
10 people are queuing, 10 are eating. 30 have finished eating and have gone off
Under a 100% chope system (you need to reserve a seat before you go and queue and no one can use your seat while you are not around):
T = 0 mins (start of scenario):
10 people are queuing, 0 eating
T = 10 mins:
0 people are queuing, 10 are eating (assume we cannot chope if someone is already eating)
T = 20 mins:
10 people are queuing, 0 are eating. 10 have finished eating and have gone off
T = 30 mins:
0 people are queuing, 10 are eating. 10 have finished eating and have gone off
T = 40 mins:
10 people are queuing, 0 are eating. 20 have finished eating and have gone off
Within the first 40 minutes under a no chope system 1.5x as many people have finished eating and gone off as under a 100% chope system.
Some might object that this is unrealistic, but one can relax or modify the model's assumptions and see how the results change (though it probably also becomes more intractable, as you can see later).
Someone claimed that "If you tweak your assumptions, you will find that it doesnt work. The truth is there are more people than tables and chairs. In hawkers, food courts, trains even. It is not 10 eating to 10 chairs every 10 min. It is 20 persons to 17 chairs every 10min and people dont even finish their lunch in 10min so it will take longer".
So I reran my model:
Assume a hawker centre with 17 seats with 20 arrivals every 10 minutes, 10 minutes waiting time and 20 minutes eating time
Under a no chope system:
T = 0 mins (start of scenario)
20 people are queuing, 0 eating
T = 10 mins
20 people are queuing, 17 are eating, 3 are looking for a seat
T = 20 mins
20 people are queuing, 17 are eating, 3 (who arrived at T = 0) are looking for a seat and 20 (who arrived at T = 10) are looking for a seat
T = 30 mins
20 people are queuing, 17 are eating (3 who arrived at T = 0 and 14 who arrived at T = 10). 6 (who arrived at T = 10) are looking for a seat and 20 (who arrived at T = 20) are looking for a seat. 17 people have finished eating (all from T = 0)
T = 40 mins
20 people are queuing, 17 are eating (3 from T = 0 and 14 from T = 10). Looking for a seat: 6 (T = 10), 20 (T = 20), 20 (T = 30). 17 people have finished eating (all from T = 0)
T = 50 mins
20 people are queuing, 17 are eating (6 from T = 10, 11 from T = 20). Looking for a seat: 9 (T = 20), 20 (T = 30), 20 (T = 40). 34 people have finished eating (20 from T = 0, 14 from T = 10)
We can see that as T increases, the number of people looking for a seat keeps increasing.
In reality some people would go elsewhere or dapao (order takeaway), but let us keep this assumption in both scenarios so we can compare them.
Anyway, what we are interested in is how many people can eat at the hawker centre (since choping or not choping doesn't stop you from eating elsewhere or dapao-ing)
Under a 100% chope system:
T = 0 mins (start of scenario)
17 people are queuing (20 arrived but there were only 17 seat), 0 eating and 3 are waiting for a seat to chope
T = 10 mins
0 people are queuing (since you need to chope before queuing), 17 are eating, 3 (who arrived at T = 0) are waiting for a seat to chope. 20 (who arrived at T = 10) are waiting for a seat to chope.
T = 20 mins
0 people are queuing, 17 are eating, 3 (who arrived at T = 0) are looking for a seat. 40 (20 arriving at T = 10 and 20 arriving at T = 20) are waiting for a seat to chope
T = 30 mins
14 people (from T = 10) are queuing, 3 are eating (arrivals from T = 0). 17 people have finished eating (all from T = 0). 6 people (T = 10), 20 (T = 20) and 20 (T = 30) are waiting for a seat to chope.
T = 40 mins
17 people are eating (3 from T = 0 and 14 from T = 10). 17 people have finished eating (all from T = 0). 6 from T = 10, 20 each from T = 20, 30 and 40 are waiting for a seat to chope.
T = 50 mins
14 people are eating (all from T = 10). 20 people have finished eating (all from T = 0). 3 people are queuing (from T = 10). Waiting for a seat to chope - 3 from T = 10 and 20 each from T = 20, 30, 40 and 50
We see that the results are virtually identical - almost 1.5x as many people have finished eating after 50 mins under the no chope system than the 100% chope one, even in the modified model.
The reason is clear - choped seats can't be used to eat and are thus under utilised. If eating time were longer relative to queuing time choping would be less distortionary since the seats would be less under utilised (but choping would still be inefficient).
So far I've only seen 2 valid objections to the analysis above.
The first is that it is annoying to walk around with a tray.
Yet, one would need to weigh the annoyance or discomfort of this heavily to make choping preferable. Especially since under a no chope system, at peak capacity all seats are being used at the same time, people arrive at different times and hawker food is eaten in a relatively short period of time, so seats should be freed up quickly.
For example, in a hawker centre of 100 seats, if people take 10 minutes to finish eating and arrive at their seats in steady numbers at regular 1 minute intervals, one would expect 10 seats to become available every minute. Indeed, you might potentially find a seat sooner as you wouldn't be limited to your choped seat.
The other is that people like to eat in groups, and choping ensures the group can sit together (since a no chope system is optimised for individual eaters).
I will observe that I don't only see people in large groups eating and that individuals and pairs do it too. That aside, choping still privileges groups which come first over people who come later.
If eating together is such a desired outcome, groups can always order takeaway and eat in their office pantries (since groups at peak hour are typically from the office crowd).
Renson has suggested that choping allows people to easily visually gauge the filled capacity of a hawker centre, and if it is full one can dapao or go elsewhere. Yet, people eating at seats are more visible than tissue paper packets, so with choping one is actually likely to underestimate the hawker centre's capacity.
A 2017 Straits Times article on the phenomenon also notes that people sometimes chope more seats than they should - which makes choping even more inefficient and inconsiderate.
Realistically, though, people are not going to stop choping, so one just needs to manage within the current constraints.
Donald Low has a good sugestion - just sit at a choped place. If the person who choped it comes back, move. Assuming you don't run into unreasonable people this should work. Then again, it should also work with unreasonable people as they will either have their hands full or otherwise be too hungry to bother to beat you up for occupying their seat.
More broadly, Singaporeans seem, for some reason, not to like to share seats. I often ask to sit at an occupied table and most people say okay (unless they are in a group).
L'origine de Bert
Thursday, June 06, 2019
Why Choping is inefficient and selfish - a model of Hawker Centre Queuing
Post ID: 5120588707802977725
Links - 6th June 2019 (1)
HIV used to cure 'bubble boy' disease - "US scientists say they used HIV to make a gene therapy that cured eight infants of severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy" disease"
Politically Incorrect D.Va II: Can't Nerf This - Posts - ""Nintendo is taking down stages from #SmashBros Ultimate if they contain the Trans Flag and doling out 9 hour suspensions for the accounts that post them. What. @Nintendo The. @NintendoAmerica Fuck. @NintendoEurope"
"Making political statements are for other people to do. We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games.""
- Reggie Fils-Aime"
Private companies are only allowed to censor when it's for progressive ends
Occupy Democrats Logic - Posts - "The Alt-Right is using a new dogwhistle.
Just like putting pepe or the OK sign on their profile, they now add "LGBTQ" which means "Let's Go Beat The Queers" to signal their homophobia to others in the Alt-Right without drawing suspicion from regular internet users."
Krinkle on Twitter - "Someone pointed out that "oh my god, becky, look at her butt" passes the bechdel test and I haven't stopped laughing for a week"
'This is why people hate millennials': Vegan 'Influencer' Says It's 'Invasive' to Look Someone in the Eye - "Chris Lavish, a 26-year-old “influencer and digital director,” is being ridiculed after giving an interview to The Cut. In the magazine’s profile, Lavish stated that he finds it “very invasive” when people look him in the eye and claims that is the reason he always wears sunglasses, favoring a pair of “big Guccis” when he is out in public."
Rami Malek promises 007 a tough time - "The new production's delays were prompted in part by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle's replacement with Cary Fukunaga in September. He reportedly left because producers refused to let him kill Bond and replace him with a female or non-white actor."
The agenda is real
how many people go bankrupt from cancer - "[In the US] 42% of new cancer patients lose their life savings ...
62 percent of cancer patients report being in debt due to their treatment.
55 percent accrue at least $10,000 in debt, while 3 percent file for bankruptcy.
Cancer costs exceed $80 billion in America each year...
There's good reason the term "financial toxicity" is in the name of this report... 40 percent of Americans can't afford to pay $400 in case of an emergency... Over half of all cancer patients "experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence, and relationship breakdowns.""
The Humorists - Posts - "I just found out this is how they X-ray small children and I can’t stop laughing"
Synagogue Gunman: Trump Is 'Jew-Loving, Traitorous C*cksucker'
Clear proof that Trump is anti-semitic and can be blamed for this and the Pittsburgh attack against a synagogue where Shabbat worshippers were hurt!
Hillary Clinton on Vladimir Putin's 'Manspreading'
No wonder she lost
God Emperor Trump - Posts - "Ban white men"
"White Men in 1919: Give women the right to vote.
White Women in 2019: Abolish White Men"
History of pad Thai: how the stir-fried noodle dish was invented by the Thai government - "the delicious concoction – “Thai stir-fry” in the local vernacular – is not historically a traditional dish in Thailand. Pad Thai’s roots are as political as they are culinary. It was imposed upon the populace almost 80 years ago as a cornerstone ingredient of a nationalistic agenda... “He simply had this particular version of a Thai noodle that was made by his housekeeper in his kitchen and he really liked it,” Van Esterik says.“So that dish somehow became standardised. It became almost a prototype for an example of a noodle dish. And from then on, it sort of had a different role. It became a ‘Thai noodle dish’, and [Phibun] was promoting the idea that one should eat it, particularly civil servants, for lunch.”It was originally called kway teow pad Thai – kway teow being “rice noodles” – and later abbreviated to pad Thai. However, pad Thai may not have been that new a creation. It’s believed a similar noodle dish was introduced to the kingdom during the Ayutthaya era by Chinese traders in the 1700s. Phibun had it modified with the addition of ingredients that made it more nutritious and tasty so that it would instil pride in people when they ate the dish. “When you look at pad Thai compared to other noodles, it has a lot of sources of protein. It’s got eggs, peanuts, shrimp and tofu and bean sprouts, which is an unusual amount of protein”... Another reason for promoting the noodle dish was that after the second world war Thailand experienced a rice shortage. A portion of rice noodles uses half as much of the grain when compared with a bowl full of rice, thus preserving the stock. The Public Welfare Department under the Phibun administration standardised the pad Thai recipe and distributed it to food vendors, along with food carts to encourage locals to eat the dish. That initiative was accompanied by a ban on the sale of Chinese and other foreign food, thus forcibly boosting the consumption of pad Thai... Cliff at Samsen believes it’s the flavour profile of pad Thai – sour, sweet, salty – that makes it appealing to so many palates.“You can’t really find it in any other cuisine. The closest comparison is Vietnamese. But Vietnamese is much lighter. And Vietnamese is very heavy on fresh herbs, fresh vegetables”... "it was kind of promoted for political purposes. And that’s very unusual. It’s the only example that I know of in history""
Socrates shows why moral posturing on social media is so annoying - "there are plenty of characteristics that are true of moral posturing both in Ancient Greece and contemporary society. For example, we still tend to equate knowledge with morality. Folch points out that if someone doesn’t accept certain facts, such as the effects of climate change, many on the left are apt to condemn them for behaving in a way that is immoral. “There’s a sense among the left that if you don’t endorse certain significant claims, then you’re probably not a very good person,” he says. “Having the right beliefs is a very significant part of virtue.” And signaling these “right beliefs” can be important for many to feel that they themselves are virtuous."
BBC World Service - The World This Week, UK to ask for Brexit delay - "There's no Google Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram in China, only their Chinese equivalents. They were all shut down years ago once the government realized that they could give people access to independent media that contradicted Communist Party rhetoric. But there is LinkedIn, the website for headhunting and posting your CV and work related updates. It’s even managed to thrive in recent years. And it's remained uncensored largely because it indirectly helps the Chinese government grow its soft power by offering companies the chance to connect with associates and expand their business operations overseas. According to its website, it has more than 44 million Chinese users. That's about 6% of China's online community. That's quite significant when you factor in that it's largely only of interest to Chinese people with an international focus, who’re predominantly English speaking. LinkedIn created a Chinese version of its website that suspended some functions, while ensuring that it doesn't look too different to how it does to the rest of the world. When Chinese users login, they can still enter basic information about themselves, search for users to connect with or upload their CVs. But what they can't do is write blog posts, upload images or videos, and they can't see public posts by other users. And because they can only exchange messages privately, the government doesn't need to worry about users broadcasting sensitive information to a mass audience. But the Chinese authorities seem to have not noticed, or at least, have done nothing about the fact that LinkedIn has become an important tool for Chinese users to reach out and talk to people in the West. Users are less suspicious of their messages being read by the authorities than they would be with a domestically created app. And it's largely trusted as a private method of exchanging information without direct government intervention, and with less risk of being brought in for questioning. So for many activists who live in a country saturated by Chinese social networks and Chinese mobile apps, it can be a lifeline to the external world… I've received messages from people in China flagging up large scale protests, but the government never reports on its these protests as evidence of dissent, and it blocks any stories about them. I've also received messages from users related to activities in the Xinjiang autonomous region in northwest China. That's an area really tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. But LinkedIn isn't fireproof. The Chinese government can and sometimes does suspend or delete accounts, if it suspects their owners to be anti government"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Libya faces civil war - "‘We can all remember David Cameron going to what he called a liberated Benghazi eight years ago. It's great to be in free Libya he said. Well, that’s sounding a bit hollow now isn’t it?’
‘One can always learn lessons, one should learn lessons from interventions, even the ones that are generally perceived as having brought stability. I'm thinking particularly of the ones in the Balkans. The UK participated in the international military action in Libya in 2011. To protect Libyans against the regime. You have to remember that in Benghazi at the time, there was the prospect of a very real, an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. So it was right to seek action to protect those civilians, that the situation then developed in a very difficult way. The Gaddafi regime subsequently fell. And since then, we and others have been working to support and encourage a political transition in Libya. And the situation we see now is, is what has happened as a result of, of the political talks not prospering’
‘Indeed, and you could well argue that without our intervention, you could argue that with our intervention, as a result of our intervention, more people have died than would otherwise have died if we just let them get on with it basically’
‘I think that's a really difficult argument, John, because, you know, there was an overwhelming, imminent and overwhelming humanitarian risk in Benghazi. Had we left that situation to develop organically on its own, I think we'd have seen a huge amount of bloodshed. And I think a lot of people, a lot of members of the public, a lot of commentators would have been clamoring for the government and other governments to intervene. So I don't want to diminish the suffering in in Libya. But I think those sorts of trade offs are very difficult. And also causation in these cases is also extremely difficult.’"
The problem with "Never again!"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Japan-UK relations - "‘My message is that whatever the outcome of Brexit, Britain is going to be the best place in Europe to invest in with our top universities, the best universities in Europe with more tech startups than France, Germany and Italy combine"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Katie Prescott - "Already we're seeing in the States people who have a subscription video on demand service, subscribing to around about 2.8 services on a monthly basis. Now, you know, that would normally include people like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, who’s another big player out in the US, Disney is going to be competing in that market. Now, when it comes to the UK, that figure is substantially lower. It's around about 1.6 subscription services per month
… Interesting research out from the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch that's found that programming computers to decode language from quarterly calls can be used to inform decisions about whether you should buy or sell stocks. So if people are using unclear language, apparently that is a clear sign you should be selling…
Unclear language is probably a sign that you don't really know what you're saying. If you can't say it clearly, you need fancy words then what do you actually mean?"
Politically Incorrect D.Va II: Can't Nerf This - Posts - ""Nintendo is taking down stages from #SmashBros Ultimate if they contain the Trans Flag and doling out 9 hour suspensions for the accounts that post them. What. @Nintendo The. @NintendoAmerica Fuck. @NintendoEurope"
"Making political statements are for other people to do. We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games.""
- Reggie Fils-Aime"
Private companies are only allowed to censor when it's for progressive ends
Occupy Democrats Logic - Posts - "The Alt-Right is using a new dogwhistle.
Just like putting pepe or the OK sign on their profile, they now add "LGBTQ" which means "Let's Go Beat The Queers" to signal their homophobia to others in the Alt-Right without drawing suspicion from regular internet users."
Krinkle on Twitter - "Someone pointed out that "oh my god, becky, look at her butt" passes the bechdel test and I haven't stopped laughing for a week"
'This is why people hate millennials': Vegan 'Influencer' Says It's 'Invasive' to Look Someone in the Eye - "Chris Lavish, a 26-year-old “influencer and digital director,” is being ridiculed after giving an interview to The Cut. In the magazine’s profile, Lavish stated that he finds it “very invasive” when people look him in the eye and claims that is the reason he always wears sunglasses, favoring a pair of “big Guccis” when he is out in public."
Rami Malek promises 007 a tough time - "The new production's delays were prompted in part by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle's replacement with Cary Fukunaga in September. He reportedly left because producers refused to let him kill Bond and replace him with a female or non-white actor."
The agenda is real
how many people go bankrupt from cancer - "[In the US] 42% of new cancer patients lose their life savings ...
62 percent of cancer patients report being in debt due to their treatment.
55 percent accrue at least $10,000 in debt, while 3 percent file for bankruptcy.
Cancer costs exceed $80 billion in America each year...
There's good reason the term "financial toxicity" is in the name of this report... 40 percent of Americans can't afford to pay $400 in case of an emergency... Over half of all cancer patients "experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence, and relationship breakdowns.""
The Humorists - Posts - "I just found out this is how they X-ray small children and I can’t stop laughing"
Synagogue Gunman: Trump Is 'Jew-Loving, Traitorous C*cksucker'
Clear proof that Trump is anti-semitic and can be blamed for this and the Pittsburgh attack against a synagogue where Shabbat worshippers were hurt!
Hillary Clinton on Vladimir Putin's 'Manspreading'
No wonder she lost
God Emperor Trump - Posts - "Ban white men"
"White Men in 1919: Give women the right to vote.
White Women in 2019: Abolish White Men"
History of pad Thai: how the stir-fried noodle dish was invented by the Thai government - "the delicious concoction – “Thai stir-fry” in the local vernacular – is not historically a traditional dish in Thailand. Pad Thai’s roots are as political as they are culinary. It was imposed upon the populace almost 80 years ago as a cornerstone ingredient of a nationalistic agenda... “He simply had this particular version of a Thai noodle that was made by his housekeeper in his kitchen and he really liked it,” Van Esterik says.“So that dish somehow became standardised. It became almost a prototype for an example of a noodle dish. And from then on, it sort of had a different role. It became a ‘Thai noodle dish’, and [Phibun] was promoting the idea that one should eat it, particularly civil servants, for lunch.”It was originally called kway teow pad Thai – kway teow being “rice noodles” – and later abbreviated to pad Thai. However, pad Thai may not have been that new a creation. It’s believed a similar noodle dish was introduced to the kingdom during the Ayutthaya era by Chinese traders in the 1700s. Phibun had it modified with the addition of ingredients that made it more nutritious and tasty so that it would instil pride in people when they ate the dish. “When you look at pad Thai compared to other noodles, it has a lot of sources of protein. It’s got eggs, peanuts, shrimp and tofu and bean sprouts, which is an unusual amount of protein”... Another reason for promoting the noodle dish was that after the second world war Thailand experienced a rice shortage. A portion of rice noodles uses half as much of the grain when compared with a bowl full of rice, thus preserving the stock. The Public Welfare Department under the Phibun administration standardised the pad Thai recipe and distributed it to food vendors, along with food carts to encourage locals to eat the dish. That initiative was accompanied by a ban on the sale of Chinese and other foreign food, thus forcibly boosting the consumption of pad Thai... Cliff at Samsen believes it’s the flavour profile of pad Thai – sour, sweet, salty – that makes it appealing to so many palates.“You can’t really find it in any other cuisine. The closest comparison is Vietnamese. But Vietnamese is much lighter. And Vietnamese is very heavy on fresh herbs, fresh vegetables”... "it was kind of promoted for political purposes. And that’s very unusual. It’s the only example that I know of in history""
Socrates shows why moral posturing on social media is so annoying - "there are plenty of characteristics that are true of moral posturing both in Ancient Greece and contemporary society. For example, we still tend to equate knowledge with morality. Folch points out that if someone doesn’t accept certain facts, such as the effects of climate change, many on the left are apt to condemn them for behaving in a way that is immoral. “There’s a sense among the left that if you don’t endorse certain significant claims, then you’re probably not a very good person,” he says. “Having the right beliefs is a very significant part of virtue.” And signaling these “right beliefs” can be important for many to feel that they themselves are virtuous."
BBC World Service - The World This Week, UK to ask for Brexit delay - "There's no Google Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram in China, only their Chinese equivalents. They were all shut down years ago once the government realized that they could give people access to independent media that contradicted Communist Party rhetoric. But there is LinkedIn, the website for headhunting and posting your CV and work related updates. It’s even managed to thrive in recent years. And it's remained uncensored largely because it indirectly helps the Chinese government grow its soft power by offering companies the chance to connect with associates and expand their business operations overseas. According to its website, it has more than 44 million Chinese users. That's about 6% of China's online community. That's quite significant when you factor in that it's largely only of interest to Chinese people with an international focus, who’re predominantly English speaking. LinkedIn created a Chinese version of its website that suspended some functions, while ensuring that it doesn't look too different to how it does to the rest of the world. When Chinese users login, they can still enter basic information about themselves, search for users to connect with or upload their CVs. But what they can't do is write blog posts, upload images or videos, and they can't see public posts by other users. And because they can only exchange messages privately, the government doesn't need to worry about users broadcasting sensitive information to a mass audience. But the Chinese authorities seem to have not noticed, or at least, have done nothing about the fact that LinkedIn has become an important tool for Chinese users to reach out and talk to people in the West. Users are less suspicious of their messages being read by the authorities than they would be with a domestically created app. And it's largely trusted as a private method of exchanging information without direct government intervention, and with less risk of being brought in for questioning. So for many activists who live in a country saturated by Chinese social networks and Chinese mobile apps, it can be a lifeline to the external world… I've received messages from people in China flagging up large scale protests, but the government never reports on its these protests as evidence of dissent, and it blocks any stories about them. I've also received messages from users related to activities in the Xinjiang autonomous region in northwest China. That's an area really tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. But LinkedIn isn't fireproof. The Chinese government can and sometimes does suspend or delete accounts, if it suspects their owners to be anti government"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Libya faces civil war - "‘We can all remember David Cameron going to what he called a liberated Benghazi eight years ago. It's great to be in free Libya he said. Well, that’s sounding a bit hollow now isn’t it?’
‘One can always learn lessons, one should learn lessons from interventions, even the ones that are generally perceived as having brought stability. I'm thinking particularly of the ones in the Balkans. The UK participated in the international military action in Libya in 2011. To protect Libyans against the regime. You have to remember that in Benghazi at the time, there was the prospect of a very real, an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. So it was right to seek action to protect those civilians, that the situation then developed in a very difficult way. The Gaddafi regime subsequently fell. And since then, we and others have been working to support and encourage a political transition in Libya. And the situation we see now is, is what has happened as a result of, of the political talks not prospering’
‘Indeed, and you could well argue that without our intervention, you could argue that with our intervention, as a result of our intervention, more people have died than would otherwise have died if we just let them get on with it basically’
‘I think that's a really difficult argument, John, because, you know, there was an overwhelming, imminent and overwhelming humanitarian risk in Benghazi. Had we left that situation to develop organically on its own, I think we'd have seen a huge amount of bloodshed. And I think a lot of people, a lot of members of the public, a lot of commentators would have been clamoring for the government and other governments to intervene. So I don't want to diminish the suffering in in Libya. But I think those sorts of trade offs are very difficult. And also causation in these cases is also extremely difficult.’"
The problem with "Never again!"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Japan-UK relations - "‘My message is that whatever the outcome of Brexit, Britain is going to be the best place in Europe to invest in with our top universities, the best universities in Europe with more tech startups than France, Germany and Italy combine"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Katie Prescott - "Already we're seeing in the States people who have a subscription video on demand service, subscribing to around about 2.8 services on a monthly basis. Now, you know, that would normally include people like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, who’s another big player out in the US, Disney is going to be competing in that market. Now, when it comes to the UK, that figure is substantially lower. It's around about 1.6 subscription services per month
… Interesting research out from the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch that's found that programming computers to decode language from quarterly calls can be used to inform decisions about whether you should buy or sell stocks. So if people are using unclear language, apparently that is a clear sign you should be selling…
Unclear language is probably a sign that you don't really know what you're saying. If you can't say it clearly, you need fancy words then what do you actually mean?"
Post ID: 8490342750640053918
Wednesday, June 05, 2019
Links - 5th June 2019 (3)
Ocasio-Cortez likens growing cauliflower to colonialism - "“When someone says that it’s ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows yuca instead of, I dunno, cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,” the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman says in an Instagram video for her proposed Green New Deal economic-stimulus package.“And that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements — because they come with a colonial lens on them.”It appears she was referring to yuca, a regional name for cassava — rather than the desert shrub called yucca. It was not clear who she believed was preventing people of color from planting yuca in community gardens. Either way, the tuber is not native to New York — making planting it here also an act of colonization.And it doesn’t fare too well in climates such as New York’s, and instead “requires a warm, humid climate” for a good yield, according to the US Department of Agriculture... Ironically, AOC in another video talked up the Swiss chard, spinach and collard greens she has been growing — even though none of those are native to North America, either.Collards are actually part of the same species as cauliflower: Brassica oleracea."
Islamic State explains why it doesn't attack Israel (yet) - "The Islamic State has not carried out an orchestrated attack on Israel, though independent cells inspired by the terror group’s ideology have been arrested by Israeli security forces, several dozen Israeli Arabs are said to have been recruited by IS, and terrorists including Nashat Milhem — who murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv on January 1 — have identified with IS... There is a place, however, where jihad does take precedence, according to the article: in the Arab states that are governed by “tyrants.” First and foremost among these is the Saudi kingdom, where the two holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina must be rescued from the Saudi royal family.“The apostate [tyrants] who rule the lands of Islam are graver infidels than [the Jews], and war against them takes precedence over war against the original infidels,” the article said. Despite the fact that the Islamic State ranks in Syria and Iraq are swelled by fighters from across the world, the article calls for jihadists to take the fight to “infidels” nearest to them. Therefore, fighting the Jews should be left to Muslims in Israel/Palestine, while Syrian Muslims should fight Bashar Assad and Egyptian Muslims should fight Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.Only once a Muslim’s native land has fallen under proper Islamic rule, the article said, should he attack the adjacent infidel land. The key argument the article makes is that once the Arab regimes, which supposedly defend Israel, are toppled, then jihadi forces can arrive “at the borders of [the] Jew[ish] State and confront its army directly.”... Muslims worldwide, therefore, have a duty to send aid — money or men — to the Palestinians fighting Israel.And lastly, if they can’t come to the Middle East or do not have money, it argues, they can attack “the Jews and their allies wherever they find them, [by] killing them, destroying their property, and harming their interests in any way they can.”"
Far more seductive to claim that ISIS is created by Israel
Maybe it's the "discrimination" Muslims face in Israel that means IS hasn't really carried out a successful attack yet
Kamala Harris owns a handgun. That's disqualifying for a 2020 Democrat in my book. - "the California senator has conceded that her personal relationship with guns is unique among the major Democratic presidential contenders. She owns a handgun... This under-publicized revelation comes as Harris is getting a lot of ink for being tough about guns. Her words are fine, but for a progressive like me, they are undermined by that handgun. And I can't be the only one who is disturbed. Keeping a handgun for personal safety is a bedrock conservative view.. six of 18 Democratic presidential contenders own firearms. With former Vice President Joe Biden's entry into the race Thursday, make that at least seven. Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg are among the other gun owners — but their weapons are old and inoperable. Buttigieg, a Navy veteran, says he has two antique pistols that are never fired."
Let the games begin!
'Political Islam' seeks secession from France: Macron - "French President Emmanuel Macron vowed Thursday to resist ‘political Islam’, which he said is a threat and seeks succession from the republic.Macron made the remarks during a press conference at the Elysee Palace to unveil his policy response to the Yellow Vest protests following a three-month-long national debate."
Spoilers Really Can Ruin Your Movie Experience - "A recent study found that spoilers — or giving away key plot details — may not ruin an experience entirely, but can reduce suspense and decrease overall enjoyment... The scientists said they were curious to find if their tests would corroborate results from a 2011 study published in the journal Psychological Science. That research, somewhat unexpectedly, suggested that people actually enjoy an experience more, at least some of the time, after hearing spoilers... the study also discovered some good news about spoilers: They're not as bad as some people think they are"
(14) (PDF) Spoilers Affect the Enjoyment of Television Episodes but Not Short Stories - "While spoilers are culturally regarded as something that detracts enjoyment from a narrative, research has presented a complicated picture. When Leavitt and Christenfeld presented participants plot-crucial information to individuals before reading a short story, the story was subsequently enjoyed as much as, or more than, unspoiled stories. Other research shows that these findings may be driven by an interaction of individual differences, such as need for cognition, rather than a broad spoiling effect. In Experiment 1, we tested if reported enjoyment of a narrative decreased even when participants were alerted to the presence of a plot spoiler, to extend previous findings for short stories while adding a condition informing participants beforehand that their short stories was being spoiled. Experiment 2 extended this methodology to full-length episodes of television. Our results were different from previously reported positive effects of spoilers and show that spoilers, under certain circumstances, have a negative effect on enjoyment for television but not short stories."
Man in Hong Kong reportedly beaten up outside cinema for leaking Avengers: Endgame spoilers - "The Russo Brothers (directors of Avengers: Endgame) may have put out an open letter on social media for the public to avoid giving spoilers but that doesn't seem to have deterred those who have watched it... a man dressed in white, who seemed to have just exited the cinema after watching the three-hour movie, started revealing spoilers loudly by the entrance."
Avengers: Endgame, Game Of Thrones, And The Peak Of Spoiler Culture - "The definition of “spoiler” has expanded so much in recent years that it encompasses just about any information about a piece of pop culture. If the headline vaguely states that it’s about a “twist,” that is a spoiler. Because now you know there is a twist. The fact that, say, a character’s movie or TV show takes place after Endgame spoils that a character won’t die, even though the studio has released that information on purpose. Attaching positive or negative adjectives to a headline about a movie is a spoiler. “Oh, there’s a ‘great’ scene with Captain America? Spoiler.” Any information, even promotion from the studio designed to get you excited and in the right frame of mind for a work, is a spoiler now. It would be one thing if this were just about fans complaining in blog comments. But their perspective is specifically being catered to. There’s been an uptick in labeling reviews “spoiler-free” or “spoiler-filled.” But the point of a review is to provide guidance on whether or not you should spend your money on something. And that can mean spoiling something by warning people that there’s a plot point that doesn’t work or is downright offensive. And it can mean writing around things that are so good you can’t recreate them in a review. A spoiler-free review at some point just becomes a series of hyperbole designed to get blurbed in an ad by the giant conglomerate behind a property, or to destroy a work that isn’t good with the most invective that can be leveled. Nuance doesn’t exist because nuance requires data. A review is an opinion, and writing it around the idea that any factual information is a “spoiler” will weaken it to the point of uselessness. Being spoiled and having a movie ruined are not the same thing... If knowing what happens in a film ruins it, the film wasn’t good"
Chinese fan cried so much at Avengers: Endgame screening she was hospitalised - and other extreme fan reactions
Aziz - checkmate XD - "The only way captain marvel can defeat Shazam is by accusing him of sexual assault"
"He can counter that by transforming back into a minor and accusing her of pedophilia."
Marvel President: Movies Will Go ‘Inclusive,’ Adding ‘Gay’ and ‘Body Positive’ Heroes - "Fat acceptance and body positivity heroes are on the docket as well. Now, that’s more like it! Feige acknowledged that “traditionally” comic book heroes have “iconic mythic proportions,” as do some of the actors and actresses in the business. Though this had been the trope, he admitted that “yes” there will be a slate of everyman heroes that represent “real bodies” and that they will be introduced “perhaps sooner than you’d think.”As if suspending disbelief for a strong man superhero weren’t enough, now we’re being asked to believe that a morbidly obese superhero will have the strength and stamina to save us. But then again, unattainable beauty standards are the main villain these days."
Leslie Quahe is with Iqbal Jumabhoy. - "When I was 10 I ignorantly called my classmate a ‘black Boy’. Unhappy at being chastised by our teacher I proceeded to punch him during recess to exact my own ‘justice’. Our parents were summoned to the Principal’s office. My father walked in and offered an immediate apology with the assurance he would make me ‘pay’ for my unwarranted indiscretion. My friend’s mother responded with the request that in lieu of pain she should be allowed to take me to her home everyday to have lunch, do homework and play with my friend. I have never forgotten her summary, “We must make them friends and not allow them to be enemies”. I spent many memorable and happy days with them. I sat in on lessons on the Quran. Ever since then we have been blessed with a lifelong friendship spanning 52 years now. To this day, I a pastor, am welcomed in this home as family. We can live and embrace one another if we teach our children to be friends and not enemies. Dedicated to all who have suffered in Christchurch and Sri Lanka with the prayer that parents will see this as an opportunity to make our children friends."
Strange, they should just have screamed at him, called him an islamophobic bigot and thrown him in jail
Clementine Ford quits Fairfax, Nine in Twitter tirade - "Controversial newspaper columnist and author Clementine Ford has quit in spectacular fashion, unleashing a foul-mouthed tirade at her now former employer.In a series of explosive tweets, Ford accused the now Nine-owned news organisation of being “dead”, accused its new managing director of being a Liberal Party stooge, spoke about having to “eat s*** every week” and dubbed PM Scott Morrison a “f***ing disgrace”."
What happens when you employ feminists
Clementine Ford begs social media followers for financial support after quitting Nine, Fairfax - "The Melbourne-based writer, who was booted from a Lifeline fundraiser after she posted a tweet saying “kill all men”, resigned from Nine, which merged with Fairfax Media last year, saying the organisation was “dead”... “Are you regularly accused of being a misandrist?,” it says on the site. “Do you bathe in a pool of male tears each night before bed? Is your bank account full to bursting with all the f**** you don't give about whether or not your feminist views are threatening the men in your life? Welcome, friend!”"
Still, we are told, feminists are not anti-men and want to help men
Islamic State explains why it doesn't attack Israel (yet) - "The Islamic State has not carried out an orchestrated attack on Israel, though independent cells inspired by the terror group’s ideology have been arrested by Israeli security forces, several dozen Israeli Arabs are said to have been recruited by IS, and terrorists including Nashat Milhem — who murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv on January 1 — have identified with IS... There is a place, however, where jihad does take precedence, according to the article: in the Arab states that are governed by “tyrants.” First and foremost among these is the Saudi kingdom, where the two holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina must be rescued from the Saudi royal family.“The apostate [tyrants] who rule the lands of Islam are graver infidels than [the Jews], and war against them takes precedence over war against the original infidels,” the article said. Despite the fact that the Islamic State ranks in Syria and Iraq are swelled by fighters from across the world, the article calls for jihadists to take the fight to “infidels” nearest to them. Therefore, fighting the Jews should be left to Muslims in Israel/Palestine, while Syrian Muslims should fight Bashar Assad and Egyptian Muslims should fight Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.Only once a Muslim’s native land has fallen under proper Islamic rule, the article said, should he attack the adjacent infidel land. The key argument the article makes is that once the Arab regimes, which supposedly defend Israel, are toppled, then jihadi forces can arrive “at the borders of [the] Jew[ish] State and confront its army directly.”... Muslims worldwide, therefore, have a duty to send aid — money or men — to the Palestinians fighting Israel.And lastly, if they can’t come to the Middle East or do not have money, it argues, they can attack “the Jews and their allies wherever they find them, [by] killing them, destroying their property, and harming their interests in any way they can.”"
Far more seductive to claim that ISIS is created by Israel
Maybe it's the "discrimination" Muslims face in Israel that means IS hasn't really carried out a successful attack yet
Kamala Harris owns a handgun. That's disqualifying for a 2020 Democrat in my book. - "the California senator has conceded that her personal relationship with guns is unique among the major Democratic presidential contenders. She owns a handgun... This under-publicized revelation comes as Harris is getting a lot of ink for being tough about guns. Her words are fine, but for a progressive like me, they are undermined by that handgun. And I can't be the only one who is disturbed. Keeping a handgun for personal safety is a bedrock conservative view.. six of 18 Democratic presidential contenders own firearms. With former Vice President Joe Biden's entry into the race Thursday, make that at least seven. Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg are among the other gun owners — but their weapons are old and inoperable. Buttigieg, a Navy veteran, says he has two antique pistols that are never fired."
Let the games begin!
'Political Islam' seeks secession from France: Macron - "French President Emmanuel Macron vowed Thursday to resist ‘political Islam’, which he said is a threat and seeks succession from the republic.Macron made the remarks during a press conference at the Elysee Palace to unveil his policy response to the Yellow Vest protests following a three-month-long national debate."
Spoilers Really Can Ruin Your Movie Experience - "A recent study found that spoilers — or giving away key plot details — may not ruin an experience entirely, but can reduce suspense and decrease overall enjoyment... The scientists said they were curious to find if their tests would corroborate results from a 2011 study published in the journal Psychological Science. That research, somewhat unexpectedly, suggested that people actually enjoy an experience more, at least some of the time, after hearing spoilers... the study also discovered some good news about spoilers: They're not as bad as some people think they are"
(14) (PDF) Spoilers Affect the Enjoyment of Television Episodes but Not Short Stories - "While spoilers are culturally regarded as something that detracts enjoyment from a narrative, research has presented a complicated picture. When Leavitt and Christenfeld presented participants plot-crucial information to individuals before reading a short story, the story was subsequently enjoyed as much as, or more than, unspoiled stories. Other research shows that these findings may be driven by an interaction of individual differences, such as need for cognition, rather than a broad spoiling effect. In Experiment 1, we tested if reported enjoyment of a narrative decreased even when participants were alerted to the presence of a plot spoiler, to extend previous findings for short stories while adding a condition informing participants beforehand that their short stories was being spoiled. Experiment 2 extended this methodology to full-length episodes of television. Our results were different from previously reported positive effects of spoilers and show that spoilers, under certain circumstances, have a negative effect on enjoyment for television but not short stories."
Man in Hong Kong reportedly beaten up outside cinema for leaking Avengers: Endgame spoilers - "The Russo Brothers (directors of Avengers: Endgame) may have put out an open letter on social media for the public to avoid giving spoilers but that doesn't seem to have deterred those who have watched it... a man dressed in white, who seemed to have just exited the cinema after watching the three-hour movie, started revealing spoilers loudly by the entrance."
Avengers: Endgame, Game Of Thrones, And The Peak Of Spoiler Culture - "The definition of “spoiler” has expanded so much in recent years that it encompasses just about any information about a piece of pop culture. If the headline vaguely states that it’s about a “twist,” that is a spoiler. Because now you know there is a twist. The fact that, say, a character’s movie or TV show takes place after Endgame spoils that a character won’t die, even though the studio has released that information on purpose. Attaching positive or negative adjectives to a headline about a movie is a spoiler. “Oh, there’s a ‘great’ scene with Captain America? Spoiler.” Any information, even promotion from the studio designed to get you excited and in the right frame of mind for a work, is a spoiler now. It would be one thing if this were just about fans complaining in blog comments. But their perspective is specifically being catered to. There’s been an uptick in labeling reviews “spoiler-free” or “spoiler-filled.” But the point of a review is to provide guidance on whether or not you should spend your money on something. And that can mean spoiling something by warning people that there’s a plot point that doesn’t work or is downright offensive. And it can mean writing around things that are so good you can’t recreate them in a review. A spoiler-free review at some point just becomes a series of hyperbole designed to get blurbed in an ad by the giant conglomerate behind a property, or to destroy a work that isn’t good with the most invective that can be leveled. Nuance doesn’t exist because nuance requires data. A review is an opinion, and writing it around the idea that any factual information is a “spoiler” will weaken it to the point of uselessness. Being spoiled and having a movie ruined are not the same thing... If knowing what happens in a film ruins it, the film wasn’t good"
Chinese fan cried so much at Avengers: Endgame screening she was hospitalised - and other extreme fan reactions
Aziz - checkmate XD - "The only way captain marvel can defeat Shazam is by accusing him of sexual assault"
"He can counter that by transforming back into a minor and accusing her of pedophilia."
Marvel President: Movies Will Go ‘Inclusive,’ Adding ‘Gay’ and ‘Body Positive’ Heroes - "Fat acceptance and body positivity heroes are on the docket as well. Now, that’s more like it! Feige acknowledged that “traditionally” comic book heroes have “iconic mythic proportions,” as do some of the actors and actresses in the business. Though this had been the trope, he admitted that “yes” there will be a slate of everyman heroes that represent “real bodies” and that they will be introduced “perhaps sooner than you’d think.”As if suspending disbelief for a strong man superhero weren’t enough, now we’re being asked to believe that a morbidly obese superhero will have the strength and stamina to save us. But then again, unattainable beauty standards are the main villain these days."
Leslie Quahe is with Iqbal Jumabhoy. - "When I was 10 I ignorantly called my classmate a ‘black Boy’. Unhappy at being chastised by our teacher I proceeded to punch him during recess to exact my own ‘justice’. Our parents were summoned to the Principal’s office. My father walked in and offered an immediate apology with the assurance he would make me ‘pay’ for my unwarranted indiscretion. My friend’s mother responded with the request that in lieu of pain she should be allowed to take me to her home everyday to have lunch, do homework and play with my friend. I have never forgotten her summary, “We must make them friends and not allow them to be enemies”. I spent many memorable and happy days with them. I sat in on lessons on the Quran. Ever since then we have been blessed with a lifelong friendship spanning 52 years now. To this day, I a pastor, am welcomed in this home as family. We can live and embrace one another if we teach our children to be friends and not enemies. Dedicated to all who have suffered in Christchurch and Sri Lanka with the prayer that parents will see this as an opportunity to make our children friends."
Strange, they should just have screamed at him, called him an islamophobic bigot and thrown him in jail
Clementine Ford quits Fairfax, Nine in Twitter tirade - "Controversial newspaper columnist and author Clementine Ford has quit in spectacular fashion, unleashing a foul-mouthed tirade at her now former employer.In a series of explosive tweets, Ford accused the now Nine-owned news organisation of being “dead”, accused its new managing director of being a Liberal Party stooge, spoke about having to “eat s*** every week” and dubbed PM Scott Morrison a “f***ing disgrace”."
What happens when you employ feminists
Clementine Ford begs social media followers for financial support after quitting Nine, Fairfax - "The Melbourne-based writer, who was booted from a Lifeline fundraiser after she posted a tweet saying “kill all men”, resigned from Nine, which merged with Fairfax Media last year, saying the organisation was “dead”... “Are you regularly accused of being a misandrist?,” it says on the site. “Do you bathe in a pool of male tears each night before bed? Is your bank account full to bursting with all the f**** you don't give about whether or not your feminist views are threatening the men in your life? Welcome, friend!”"
Still, we are told, feminists are not anti-men and want to help men
Post ID: 2122995837338977586
Considering the Male Disposability Hypothesis
Considering the Male Disposability Hypothesis
"In her analysis “Women and Genocide in Rwanda,” the former Rwandan politician Aloysia Inyumba stated that “The genocide in Rwanda is a far-reaching tragedy that has taken a particularly hard toll on women. They now comprise 70 percent of the population, since the genocide chiefly exterminated the male population.”
In a 1998 speech delivered before a domestic violence conference in El Salvador, former US senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”
These statements are illustrative of a wider trend of “male disposability.”
“Male disposability” describes the tendency to be less concerned about the safety and well-being of men than of women. This night sound surprising given the emphasis in contemporary Western discourse on the oppression of women by men...
A 2016 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that people are more willing to sacrifice men than women in a time of crisis and that they are more willing to inflict harm on men than on women. In 2017, an attempt to replicate the Milgram experiment in Poland provided some (inconclusive) evidence that people are more willing to deliver severe electric shocks to men than to women...
A 2000 study found that among vehicular homicides, drivers who kill women tend to receive longer sentences than drivers who kill men. Another study found that, in Texas in 1991, offenders who victimized females received longer sentences than those who victimized males. There is at least some evidence that “women and children first” is a principle still employed during rescue efforts in natural disaster zones. Some social scientists have also noted that the media is more likely to focus on female victims than male victims. This is especially true for white female victims.
It is interesting to consider the above in light of the following: Men are more likely to be murdered than women and, in some cases, they are more likely to be physically assaulted. In most countries, men are more likely to die from suicide, they are more likely to be homeless, they’re more likely to be killed by the police, and they are more likely to work in dangerous jobs. Some countries also specifically criminalize male homosexuality, and male homosexuals seem to be more likely to be victims of hate crimes. The wartime rape and sexual abuse of men are also believed to be more prevalent than most people realize.
Despite all this, the media appear to focus overwhelmingly on violence against women and whole international organizations and movements have been founded to end violence against women and girls. You will be incredibly hard-pressed to find similar resources when it comes to ending violence against men...
When pressured to admit that violence against men is largely normalized and ignored compared to violence against women, many respond by trying to justify the imbalance. For example, some contend that violence against women is “gendered” and should therefore be taken more seriously. However, a lot of violence against men is also gender-based... Even if we were to accept that violence against men is not gendered, that would not justify ignoring the more common and widespread victimization of men and boys.
A related argument holds that because men are usually victimized by other men, it is less important than violence inflicted on men and women arbitrarily. For some reason this is not considered “gendered” violence, because it is assumed that men cannot target other men for being men. This line of thinking is highly unsatisfactory. Men tend to be quite competitive with other men and there is at least some evidence that women like women more than men like other men...
A third excuse, usually not explicitly stated but strongly implied, is that men somehow “deserve” to be victimized. After all, if men are the majority of the perpetrators, then it is somehow just that they get a taste of their own medicine...
'The standard operating procedure in feminist scholarship and activism dictates that when a complex social phenomenon like murder is addressed, certain rules must be followed. Briefly put, trends that evoke concern and sympathy for women—in this case, the sharp rise in women’s murder rates in Ciudad Juárez—must be carefully separated out and presented in isolation. Data that threaten to offset or contextualize the portrait, perhaps to the detriment of an emphasis on female victims, must be ignored or suppressed. Hence the invisibility of the nine-tenths of Juárez’s murder victims who are male. […] This feminist strategy reflects, and exploits, cultural convictions about men that are nearly universal. Men are seen as the “natural” victims of homicidal killing, for two main reasons. In part, this is because in most cases, men’s killers are other men—and we all know that “boys will be boys.” Second, men are viewed as implicated victims.'
In other words, men are generally perceived as responsible for their own victimization on some level. Women, on the other hand, are largely innocent so violence committed against them is a more serious crime. This is merely a doctrine of collective guilt and punishment.
The question is, why does society frequently appear to care more about the well-being of women?...
At least one study conducted by evolutionary psychologists has found that men are more willing to make the anti-utilitarian choice to let three members of the same sex die in order to save one member of the opposite sex, especially when there are fewer potential sexual partners. This suggests that men’s willingness to sacrifice men to save women may be tied to their need for sexual and reproductive success. Scientist David Brin argues that women in many ways physically resemble children more than men do (neoteny) and that they evolved that way to inspire protective impulses in men. However, this doesn’t explain the findings of other studies which suggest that women are also more willing to sacrifice men. Another possible explanation is that both men and women evolved to be protective of women because one man can impregnate several women, while a woman will usually only bear one child at a time, so it makes sense for societies to keep women safe so they can reproduce.
It’s hard to say which theory is more accurate or if all of them have some basis in truth. There is shockingly little research on the subject. Researching male victims is not compelling precisely because men are disposable “lesser victims” and male disposability tends to be reinforced by this tendency to ignore the phenomenon...
Do we want to eliminate male disposability? Do we want to send more women into combat? Do we want to have more women in dangerous jobs? Do we want to focus on male and female victims equally? I think this kind of equality is a laudable goal, but it will surely meet some resistance from society. Men themselves are often hesitant to see themselves as victims, traditionalists (male and female) would resist such a challenge to gender norms, and many feminists would resist the idea that male victims should receive greater attention."
Men like women, women like women, nobody likes men
Evidence for a true sexist double standard
"In her analysis “Women and Genocide in Rwanda,” the former Rwandan politician Aloysia Inyumba stated that “The genocide in Rwanda is a far-reaching tragedy that has taken a particularly hard toll on women. They now comprise 70 percent of the population, since the genocide chiefly exterminated the male population.”
In a 1998 speech delivered before a domestic violence conference in El Salvador, former US senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”
These statements are illustrative of a wider trend of “male disposability.”
“Male disposability” describes the tendency to be less concerned about the safety and well-being of men than of women. This night sound surprising given the emphasis in contemporary Western discourse on the oppression of women by men...
A 2016 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that people are more willing to sacrifice men than women in a time of crisis and that they are more willing to inflict harm on men than on women. In 2017, an attempt to replicate the Milgram experiment in Poland provided some (inconclusive) evidence that people are more willing to deliver severe electric shocks to men than to women...
A 2000 study found that among vehicular homicides, drivers who kill women tend to receive longer sentences than drivers who kill men. Another study found that, in Texas in 1991, offenders who victimized females received longer sentences than those who victimized males. There is at least some evidence that “women and children first” is a principle still employed during rescue efforts in natural disaster zones. Some social scientists have also noted that the media is more likely to focus on female victims than male victims. This is especially true for white female victims.
It is interesting to consider the above in light of the following: Men are more likely to be murdered than women and, in some cases, they are more likely to be physically assaulted. In most countries, men are more likely to die from suicide, they are more likely to be homeless, they’re more likely to be killed by the police, and they are more likely to work in dangerous jobs. Some countries also specifically criminalize male homosexuality, and male homosexuals seem to be more likely to be victims of hate crimes. The wartime rape and sexual abuse of men are also believed to be more prevalent than most people realize.
Despite all this, the media appear to focus overwhelmingly on violence against women and whole international organizations and movements have been founded to end violence against women and girls. You will be incredibly hard-pressed to find similar resources when it comes to ending violence against men...
When pressured to admit that violence against men is largely normalized and ignored compared to violence against women, many respond by trying to justify the imbalance. For example, some contend that violence against women is “gendered” and should therefore be taken more seriously. However, a lot of violence against men is also gender-based... Even if we were to accept that violence against men is not gendered, that would not justify ignoring the more common and widespread victimization of men and boys.
A related argument holds that because men are usually victimized by other men, it is less important than violence inflicted on men and women arbitrarily. For some reason this is not considered “gendered” violence, because it is assumed that men cannot target other men for being men. This line of thinking is highly unsatisfactory. Men tend to be quite competitive with other men and there is at least some evidence that women like women more than men like other men...
A third excuse, usually not explicitly stated but strongly implied, is that men somehow “deserve” to be victimized. After all, if men are the majority of the perpetrators, then it is somehow just that they get a taste of their own medicine...
'The standard operating procedure in feminist scholarship and activism dictates that when a complex social phenomenon like murder is addressed, certain rules must be followed. Briefly put, trends that evoke concern and sympathy for women—in this case, the sharp rise in women’s murder rates in Ciudad Juárez—must be carefully separated out and presented in isolation. Data that threaten to offset or contextualize the portrait, perhaps to the detriment of an emphasis on female victims, must be ignored or suppressed. Hence the invisibility of the nine-tenths of Juárez’s murder victims who are male. […] This feminist strategy reflects, and exploits, cultural convictions about men that are nearly universal. Men are seen as the “natural” victims of homicidal killing, for two main reasons. In part, this is because in most cases, men’s killers are other men—and we all know that “boys will be boys.” Second, men are viewed as implicated victims.'
In other words, men are generally perceived as responsible for their own victimization on some level. Women, on the other hand, are largely innocent so violence committed against them is a more serious crime. This is merely a doctrine of collective guilt and punishment.
The question is, why does society frequently appear to care more about the well-being of women?...
At least one study conducted by evolutionary psychologists has found that men are more willing to make the anti-utilitarian choice to let three members of the same sex die in order to save one member of the opposite sex, especially when there are fewer potential sexual partners. This suggests that men’s willingness to sacrifice men to save women may be tied to their need for sexual and reproductive success. Scientist David Brin argues that women in many ways physically resemble children more than men do (neoteny) and that they evolved that way to inspire protective impulses in men. However, this doesn’t explain the findings of other studies which suggest that women are also more willing to sacrifice men. Another possible explanation is that both men and women evolved to be protective of women because one man can impregnate several women, while a woman will usually only bear one child at a time, so it makes sense for societies to keep women safe so they can reproduce.
It’s hard to say which theory is more accurate or if all of them have some basis in truth. There is shockingly little research on the subject. Researching male victims is not compelling precisely because men are disposable “lesser victims” and male disposability tends to be reinforced by this tendency to ignore the phenomenon...
Do we want to eliminate male disposability? Do we want to send more women into combat? Do we want to have more women in dangerous jobs? Do we want to focus on male and female victims equally? I think this kind of equality is a laudable goal, but it will surely meet some resistance from society. Men themselves are often hesitant to see themselves as victims, traditionalists (male and female) would resist such a challenge to gender norms, and many feminists would resist the idea that male victims should receive greater attention."
Men like women, women like women, nobody likes men
Evidence for a true sexist double standard
Post ID: 6388082971166390204
Links - 5th June 2019 (2) (Ilhan Omar)
Lucas Lynch - When are we going to talk about the insidious... - "When are we going to talk about the insidious ability of lobbyists using millions to influence allegiance to foreign countries such as..
*shuffles deck*
South Korea, Bermuda, Japan, KSA, Qatar and the UAE?
I'm sure #IStandWithIlhan is against lobbying in general, right?
Lobbying on behalf of Islamic-majority countries exceed that on behalf of Israel by 10s of millions of dollars"
Ilhan Omar claims US forces killed 'thousands' of Somalis during 'Black Hawk Down' mission, resurfaced tweet shows - "She also included the hashtag, “NotTodaySatan.”"
Omar rakes in cash online as controversies pile up - "Omar raised $832,000 in the first quarter, according to her FEC report — among the best totals posted by any House Democrat. Roughly half of her donations, $415,000, came from people who gave less than $200 to Omar... As supporters sent money to Omar, frustrations within her own caucus escalated to a point where Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her deputies were forced to intervene with a joint statement condemning Omar’s comments in February — an extremely unusual rebuke by party leaders of a freshman lawmaker."
Ilhan Omar under investigation for using $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use - "The Somali-born Democrat, who has been the subject of headlines in recent months for her comments about Israel, allegedly spent $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use.Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to the United States Congress this past November, is alleged to have used campaign money to pay a divorce lawyer as well as to take trips to Boston and Estonia"
Hijabs and religious head coverings okay in Congress, secular hats not? Religion once again gets a pass « Why Evolution Is True - "Ilhan Omar was elected to the House of Representatives this year. She’ll be representing a district in Minnesota, and is one of the first two Muslim-American women to be elected to Congress. She’s also the first hijabi elected to Congress... this rule is for specifically religious garb, not any other form of head covering (I wonder if a colander would qualify, since it’s headgear of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). Hats were worn in Congress before the rule was enacted, and I can see that some people, like Wilson, would want to wear them for decorative or non-religious reasons.It’s clear, then, that this rule privileges those who wear religious headcoverings (or medically-mandated ones) and not secular headcoverings. And that seems a violation of the First Amendment—something that shouldn’t be happening in our nation’s legislative bodies.Now the rule change is almost certainly a fait accompli, for Congress wouldn’t want to look Islamophobic, hijabs are now the equivalent of haloes for the Authoritarian Left, denoting some kind of admirable victimhood... it worries me that Omar is threatening, in her tweet above, to fight for lifting other bans, which seems to me to invoke more privileging of religion—in her case Islam—over secular values. I add in passing that Omar has changed her position on BDS, now supporting it after her election (she wasn’t in favor of it before she was elected), and has emitted some pretty nasty tweets against Israel (see here), as well as calling it “an apartheid regime.” (Tlaib also supports BDS)."
neontaster on Twitter - "Interesting that @rezaaslan spent all of yesterday retweeting claims about how violent rhetoric puts Ilhan Omar in danger while this very viral tweet of his is still up:
Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's? *Covington teen in MAGA hat*"
Qanta Ahmed: Ilhan Omar is a disgrace to Islam and doesn’t represent my Muslim religion - "Rep. Ilhan Omar continues to be an embarrassment and a disgrace for me and other American Muslims with her outrageous, ignorant, anti-Semitic and now anti-American comments.And while Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, holds herself out as a proud Muslim, she repeatedly projects a distorted and patently Islamist interpretation of Islam... Describing the horrific Islamist terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others – including many Muslims – Omar told a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”First, Omar betrayed her ignorance, because CAIR was founded in 1994. Second, the congresswoman displayed an appalling and dismissive insensitivity to the worst foreign attack on America in our history, claiming almost 600 more lives than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941... while Omar relishes in flaunting her Muslim identity, she categorically fails in her Islamic duty. Islam is very clear in assigning responsibility for wrongdoing. Each Muslim has a clear-cut duty to himself or herself, to God and to society.In fact, the holy texts of Islam emphasize that one's greatest allegiance should be to justice – even if doing so demands superseding family and coreligionist ties... let me set the record straight on Omar’s frequent complaints about how she and other Muslims are being persecuted and discriminated against in the United States today.As a Muslim woman of color and immigrant – just like Omar – it’s logical to assume that if there was pervasive anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States I would be aware of it.But in fact, Muslims have not experienced a contraction of civil rights in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. We continue to have the same rights as all other Americans... Muslims in America are mainstream and most are middle-class. Some of us are even wealthy. Many of us are highly educated, upwardly mobile and among the fastest immigrants to climb the economic ladder and earn six-figure incomes. This is in stark contrast to Muslims in Europe, where Muslims are much less affluent than the general population.The myth of Muslim victimhood is an Islamist one. It is completely false in the setting of Islam in America and in comparison to Islam in the wider Muslim-majority world. For me, condemning Omar’s trivialization of the Sept. 11 mass murders is an act of being fully American, being a physician advocate for my 9/11 survivor patients and their families, and at the same time – keeping in line with Islam’s clear teachings – being fully Muslim"
Trump's Attack on Ilhan Omar Is a Trap for Democrats - "Trump wishes to make Omar the face of the Democratic Party heading into the 2020 elections—and now he has provoked Democrats to comply... Having promised not to “let him drive us apart” from Omar, Democrats are now stuck with responsibility for the reckless things the representative from Minnesota says, not only about Jews, but about other issues, too. Omar has already served notice that she does not intend to behave more circumspectly in the future... Against Omar’s propensity to provoke, the Democratic Party seems institutionally almost defenseless. Pelosi was thwarted when she attempted to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitic expressions by House members. Instead, the House substituted more muddled language in which Jews appeared in a laundry list condemning all expressions of intolerance against “African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants and others.”After Trump’s tweeted attack, Omar will become even more internally uncriticizable and unmanageable, without becoming any more careful or responsible. Indeed, the speech by Omar that provided Trump with the sound bite he exploited—“some people did something”—itself exemplifies her carelessness and irresponsibility... Omar’s co-headliner at the California fundraising event was a lawyer named Hassan Shibly. Shibly is the lawyer for Hoda Muthana, a New Jersey–born woman who married an Islamic State fighter, proclaimed her adherence to ISIS in writing, and now seeks to return to the United States. Muthana’s case turns on technicalities of the citizenship laws, and she is entitled to legal representation. Shibly has stressed his own condemnation of ISIS and Muthana’s choice to join it. Yet Shibly has also spoken in extreme ways against Jews in Israel and the United States. He tweeted back in August 2014: “God as my wittiness, Israel & it’s supporters are enemies of God and humanity! How many more children must Israel kill 4 U 2 C?#Gaza.” Some have urged that Omar’s “some people did something” words about 9/11 be understood in context. Let’s try that. After the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, Trump tweeted: “My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!”"
Why Is Ilhan Omar’s Collusion With Islamists Acceptable? - "Democrats would likely contend that U.S. leaders routinely meet with President Erdogan. Turkey is ostensibly a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, albeit increasingly in name only. But a state assemblywoman is not a head of state or diplomat. Nor did Omar have any business speaking as a representative of the U.S. government, which was her de facto position in discussing international relations—and perhaps most strangely, international relations independent of the United States’. Perhaps the more troubling tie that binds President Erdogan and Omar is their shared affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood—the tip of the Sunni jihadist spear. Erdogan has publicly defended the Muslim Brotherhood, and vice versa, as he and the group share a common Sunni Islamic supremacist ideology. Erdogan’s Turkey has also been an ardent supporter of Hamas, one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most notorious jihadist offshoots. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has effectively served as the public relations arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, in part through its support of Hamas. CAIR’s coordination with Hamas was revealed when it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest jihad financing case in U.S. history, the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which several individuals were prosecuted for a scheme that resulted in millions of dollars flowing to Hamas... Omar publicly lobbied the Trump administration, via her Twitter account, to press for the release of an imprisoned leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s female affiliate. Consistent with Islamic supremacist groups like CAIR, Omar has taken—to put it charitably—a soft line on terrorists. In a 2016 letter to a judge in which Omar pled for leniency for nine Minnesota men charged with planning to join the Islamic State, the congresswoman went so far as to claim that in effect the United States is to blame for creating jihadists... consider two more troubling stories the media has been completely loathe to cover, save for a few intrepid conservative journalists, led by PJ Media’s David Steinberg: (i) Omar’s oddly substantial role in the 2016 presidential elections of the highly corrupt Somalian government, in which her support for the winning candidate was followed by an appointment of her brother-in-law to a senior position on the victor’s staff; and (ii) Omar’s seemingly pervasive web of fraudulent, felonious activity centering on the bizarre but substantiated claim that she married her brother... Is it that Omar is colluding with the right kind of people? This seems plausible. After all, in spite of Turkey leading the world in journalists jailed over the last three years, President Erdogan gets to pen editorials in the Washington Post. That same newspaper of course provided a platform for the similarly Muslim Brotherhood-supporting, virulently anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic Jamal Khashoggi."
Ilhan Omar: “This is Not Going to be the Country of White People” - "“At this moment, the occupant of the White House and his allies are doing everything that they can to distance themselves and misinform the public from the monsters that they created that is [sic] terrorizing the Jewish community and the Muslim community,” the Congresswoman told the crowd, suggesting that the recent synagogue shootings were Trump’s fault despite both shooters explicitly expressing their opposition to Trump.Omar went on to emphasize that she was a “refugee” and an “immigrant” from Somalia, which she said Trump would call a ‘shithole country’. And who could argue with her? With its rampant violence, corruption and oppression of women, Somalia is an ideal destination, which is presumably why its tourist industry is thriving... Imagine if a white Republican had made a speech in which he or she asserted, “This is not going to be the country of black people.”"
Ocasio-Cortez Defends Omar's 9/11 Comments By Mocking War Hero Dan Crenshaw - "Ocasio-Cortez defended Omar by making multiple false claims and by mocking Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who called out Omar for trivializing the 9/11 terror attacks.The 29-year-old former bartender attacked Crenshaw, a decorated war hero, by suggesting that he was not fighting for the families of 9/11 victims and saying that he should "go do something" about terrorism.As a Navy SEAL, Crenshaw lost his eye fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and earned 2 Bronze Stars (one with Valor), the Purple Heart, the Navy Commendation Medal with Valor, and other awards... Jon Stewart, who hates Trump, praised the Trump administration for how it was handling the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.Omar has called for the complete defunding of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created to protect the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Omar has also advocated for leniency and compassion in the sentencing of men who were convicted of trying to join ISIS and, just last week, Omar called for a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood to be released from prison in Egypt."
Wounded SEAL Dan Crenshaw mocked by left as ‘captain shithead,' Nazi, 'eyeless f--k' - "Talia Lavin, a New York University journalism professor who resigned from the New Yorker last year after she incorrectly identified a U.S. immigration agent as a Nazi sympathizer, slammed Crenshaw as “captain shithead” on Twitter. “The real victim, captain shithead, speaks,” wrote Lavin, linking to Crenshaw’s video... Eli Valley, a political cartoonist known for his anti-Israel drawings, suggested Crenshaw was a Nazi. “Wow it’s GOP-Nazy Party Terrorist Incitement Night on NBC,” wrote Valley, linking to Crenshaw’s comment."
"SJWs: Harassment is bad
also SJWs: WHo is this eyeless fuck baby killer Islamophobic white nationalist supremacist *repeated by thousands of accounts*"
Gad Saad - Posts - "My tweet regarding Noble @IlhanMN's claim that 9/11 was about "some people did something" covered by several media outlets. Note that @RealCandaceO's words are misconstrued by progressives to attack her. But the same cretins give Noble Ilhan a free pass.
I guess not all women of color are equal. Candace supports @realDonaldTrump so she loses her "black woman" oppression points and turns into a Christian male white supremacist. Ilhan on the other hand remains a Noble Person of Color. Victimology Poker is truly beautiful."
Lucas Lynch - 2019 thus far has taken us on amazing journey, from... - "2019 thus far has taken us on amazing journey, from "a white boy staring silently is white supremacy" to "Okay, so David Duke is praising Ilhan Omar, what's the big deal?!" #stayWoke"
But when David Duke supports Trump, it shows Trump is a racist. Because white men are evil. Power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Who voted 'no' on resolution to condemn bigotry, anti-Semitism - "The US House of Representatives voted 407-23 to pass a resolution Thursday that broadly condemned hate and intolerance, including anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim discrimination."
All lives matter!
*shuffles deck*
South Korea, Bermuda, Japan, KSA, Qatar and the UAE?
I'm sure #IStandWithIlhan is against lobbying in general, right?
Lobbying on behalf of Islamic-majority countries exceed that on behalf of Israel by 10s of millions of dollars"
Ilhan Omar claims US forces killed 'thousands' of Somalis during 'Black Hawk Down' mission, resurfaced tweet shows - "She also included the hashtag, “NotTodaySatan.”"
Omar rakes in cash online as controversies pile up - "Omar raised $832,000 in the first quarter, according to her FEC report — among the best totals posted by any House Democrat. Roughly half of her donations, $415,000, came from people who gave less than $200 to Omar... As supporters sent money to Omar, frustrations within her own caucus escalated to a point where Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her deputies were forced to intervene with a joint statement condemning Omar’s comments in February — an extremely unusual rebuke by party leaders of a freshman lawmaker."
Ilhan Omar under investigation for using $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use - "The Somali-born Democrat, who has been the subject of headlines in recent months for her comments about Israel, allegedly spent $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use.Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to the United States Congress this past November, is alleged to have used campaign money to pay a divorce lawyer as well as to take trips to Boston and Estonia"
Hijabs and religious head coverings okay in Congress, secular hats not? Religion once again gets a pass « Why Evolution Is True - "Ilhan Omar was elected to the House of Representatives this year. She’ll be representing a district in Minnesota, and is one of the first two Muslim-American women to be elected to Congress. She’s also the first hijabi elected to Congress... this rule is for specifically religious garb, not any other form of head covering (I wonder if a colander would qualify, since it’s headgear of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). Hats were worn in Congress before the rule was enacted, and I can see that some people, like Wilson, would want to wear them for decorative or non-religious reasons.It’s clear, then, that this rule privileges those who wear religious headcoverings (or medically-mandated ones) and not secular headcoverings. And that seems a violation of the First Amendment—something that shouldn’t be happening in our nation’s legislative bodies.Now the rule change is almost certainly a fait accompli, for Congress wouldn’t want to look Islamophobic, hijabs are now the equivalent of haloes for the Authoritarian Left, denoting some kind of admirable victimhood... it worries me that Omar is threatening, in her tweet above, to fight for lifting other bans, which seems to me to invoke more privileging of religion—in her case Islam—over secular values. I add in passing that Omar has changed her position on BDS, now supporting it after her election (she wasn’t in favor of it before she was elected), and has emitted some pretty nasty tweets against Israel (see here), as well as calling it “an apartheid regime.” (Tlaib also supports BDS)."
neontaster on Twitter - "Interesting that @rezaaslan spent all of yesterday retweeting claims about how violent rhetoric puts Ilhan Omar in danger while this very viral tweet of his is still up:
Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's? *Covington teen in MAGA hat*"
Qanta Ahmed: Ilhan Omar is a disgrace to Islam and doesn’t represent my Muslim religion - "Rep. Ilhan Omar continues to be an embarrassment and a disgrace for me and other American Muslims with her outrageous, ignorant, anti-Semitic and now anti-American comments.And while Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, holds herself out as a proud Muslim, she repeatedly projects a distorted and patently Islamist interpretation of Islam... Describing the horrific Islamist terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others – including many Muslims – Omar told a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”First, Omar betrayed her ignorance, because CAIR was founded in 1994. Second, the congresswoman displayed an appalling and dismissive insensitivity to the worst foreign attack on America in our history, claiming almost 600 more lives than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941... while Omar relishes in flaunting her Muslim identity, she categorically fails in her Islamic duty. Islam is very clear in assigning responsibility for wrongdoing. Each Muslim has a clear-cut duty to himself or herself, to God and to society.In fact, the holy texts of Islam emphasize that one's greatest allegiance should be to justice – even if doing so demands superseding family and coreligionist ties... let me set the record straight on Omar’s frequent complaints about how she and other Muslims are being persecuted and discriminated against in the United States today.As a Muslim woman of color and immigrant – just like Omar – it’s logical to assume that if there was pervasive anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States I would be aware of it.But in fact, Muslims have not experienced a contraction of civil rights in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. We continue to have the same rights as all other Americans... Muslims in America are mainstream and most are middle-class. Some of us are even wealthy. Many of us are highly educated, upwardly mobile and among the fastest immigrants to climb the economic ladder and earn six-figure incomes. This is in stark contrast to Muslims in Europe, where Muslims are much less affluent than the general population.The myth of Muslim victimhood is an Islamist one. It is completely false in the setting of Islam in America and in comparison to Islam in the wider Muslim-majority world. For me, condemning Omar’s trivialization of the Sept. 11 mass murders is an act of being fully American, being a physician advocate for my 9/11 survivor patients and their families, and at the same time – keeping in line with Islam’s clear teachings – being fully Muslim"
Trump's Attack on Ilhan Omar Is a Trap for Democrats - "Trump wishes to make Omar the face of the Democratic Party heading into the 2020 elections—and now he has provoked Democrats to comply... Having promised not to “let him drive us apart” from Omar, Democrats are now stuck with responsibility for the reckless things the representative from Minnesota says, not only about Jews, but about other issues, too. Omar has already served notice that she does not intend to behave more circumspectly in the future... Against Omar’s propensity to provoke, the Democratic Party seems institutionally almost defenseless. Pelosi was thwarted when she attempted to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitic expressions by House members. Instead, the House substituted more muddled language in which Jews appeared in a laundry list condemning all expressions of intolerance against “African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants and others.”After Trump’s tweeted attack, Omar will become even more internally uncriticizable and unmanageable, without becoming any more careful or responsible. Indeed, the speech by Omar that provided Trump with the sound bite he exploited—“some people did something”—itself exemplifies her carelessness and irresponsibility... Omar’s co-headliner at the California fundraising event was a lawyer named Hassan Shibly. Shibly is the lawyer for Hoda Muthana, a New Jersey–born woman who married an Islamic State fighter, proclaimed her adherence to ISIS in writing, and now seeks to return to the United States. Muthana’s case turns on technicalities of the citizenship laws, and she is entitled to legal representation. Shibly has stressed his own condemnation of ISIS and Muthana’s choice to join it. Yet Shibly has also spoken in extreme ways against Jews in Israel and the United States. He tweeted back in August 2014: “God as my wittiness, Israel & it’s supporters are enemies of God and humanity! How many more children must Israel kill 4 U 2 C?#Gaza.” Some have urged that Omar’s “some people did something” words about 9/11 be understood in context. Let’s try that. After the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, Trump tweeted: “My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!”"
Why Is Ilhan Omar’s Collusion With Islamists Acceptable? - "Democrats would likely contend that U.S. leaders routinely meet with President Erdogan. Turkey is ostensibly a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, albeit increasingly in name only. But a state assemblywoman is not a head of state or diplomat. Nor did Omar have any business speaking as a representative of the U.S. government, which was her de facto position in discussing international relations—and perhaps most strangely, international relations independent of the United States’. Perhaps the more troubling tie that binds President Erdogan and Omar is their shared affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood—the tip of the Sunni jihadist spear. Erdogan has publicly defended the Muslim Brotherhood, and vice versa, as he and the group share a common Sunni Islamic supremacist ideology. Erdogan’s Turkey has also been an ardent supporter of Hamas, one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most notorious jihadist offshoots. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has effectively served as the public relations arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, in part through its support of Hamas. CAIR’s coordination with Hamas was revealed when it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest jihad financing case in U.S. history, the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which several individuals were prosecuted for a scheme that resulted in millions of dollars flowing to Hamas... Omar publicly lobbied the Trump administration, via her Twitter account, to press for the release of an imprisoned leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s female affiliate. Consistent with Islamic supremacist groups like CAIR, Omar has taken—to put it charitably—a soft line on terrorists. In a 2016 letter to a judge in which Omar pled for leniency for nine Minnesota men charged with planning to join the Islamic State, the congresswoman went so far as to claim that in effect the United States is to blame for creating jihadists... consider two more troubling stories the media has been completely loathe to cover, save for a few intrepid conservative journalists, led by PJ Media’s David Steinberg: (i) Omar’s oddly substantial role in the 2016 presidential elections of the highly corrupt Somalian government, in which her support for the winning candidate was followed by an appointment of her brother-in-law to a senior position on the victor’s staff; and (ii) Omar’s seemingly pervasive web of fraudulent, felonious activity centering on the bizarre but substantiated claim that she married her brother... Is it that Omar is colluding with the right kind of people? This seems plausible. After all, in spite of Turkey leading the world in journalists jailed over the last three years, President Erdogan gets to pen editorials in the Washington Post. That same newspaper of course provided a platform for the similarly Muslim Brotherhood-supporting, virulently anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic Jamal Khashoggi."
Ilhan Omar: “This is Not Going to be the Country of White People” - "“At this moment, the occupant of the White House and his allies are doing everything that they can to distance themselves and misinform the public from the monsters that they created that is [sic] terrorizing the Jewish community and the Muslim community,” the Congresswoman told the crowd, suggesting that the recent synagogue shootings were Trump’s fault despite both shooters explicitly expressing their opposition to Trump.Omar went on to emphasize that she was a “refugee” and an “immigrant” from Somalia, which she said Trump would call a ‘shithole country’. And who could argue with her? With its rampant violence, corruption and oppression of women, Somalia is an ideal destination, which is presumably why its tourist industry is thriving... Imagine if a white Republican had made a speech in which he or she asserted, “This is not going to be the country of black people.”"
Ocasio-Cortez Defends Omar's 9/11 Comments By Mocking War Hero Dan Crenshaw - "Ocasio-Cortez defended Omar by making multiple false claims and by mocking Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who called out Omar for trivializing the 9/11 terror attacks.The 29-year-old former bartender attacked Crenshaw, a decorated war hero, by suggesting that he was not fighting for the families of 9/11 victims and saying that he should "go do something" about terrorism.As a Navy SEAL, Crenshaw lost his eye fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and earned 2 Bronze Stars (one with Valor), the Purple Heart, the Navy Commendation Medal with Valor, and other awards... Jon Stewart, who hates Trump, praised the Trump administration for how it was handling the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.Omar has called for the complete defunding of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created to protect the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Omar has also advocated for leniency and compassion in the sentencing of men who were convicted of trying to join ISIS and, just last week, Omar called for a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood to be released from prison in Egypt."
Wounded SEAL Dan Crenshaw mocked by left as ‘captain shithead,' Nazi, 'eyeless f--k' - "Talia Lavin, a New York University journalism professor who resigned from the New Yorker last year after she incorrectly identified a U.S. immigration agent as a Nazi sympathizer, slammed Crenshaw as “captain shithead” on Twitter. “The real victim, captain shithead, speaks,” wrote Lavin, linking to Crenshaw’s video... Eli Valley, a political cartoonist known for his anti-Israel drawings, suggested Crenshaw was a Nazi. “Wow it’s GOP-Nazy Party Terrorist Incitement Night on NBC,” wrote Valley, linking to Crenshaw’s comment."
"SJWs: Harassment is bad
also SJWs: WHo is this eyeless fuck baby killer Islamophobic white nationalist supremacist *repeated by thousands of accounts*"
Gad Saad - Posts - "My tweet regarding Noble @IlhanMN's claim that 9/11 was about "some people did something" covered by several media outlets. Note that @RealCandaceO's words are misconstrued by progressives to attack her. But the same cretins give Noble Ilhan a free pass.
I guess not all women of color are equal. Candace supports @realDonaldTrump so she loses her "black woman" oppression points and turns into a Christian male white supremacist. Ilhan on the other hand remains a Noble Person of Color. Victimology Poker is truly beautiful."
Lucas Lynch - 2019 thus far has taken us on amazing journey, from... - "2019 thus far has taken us on amazing journey, from "a white boy staring silently is white supremacy" to "Okay, so David Duke is praising Ilhan Omar, what's the big deal?!" #stayWoke"
But when David Duke supports Trump, it shows Trump is a racist. Because white men are evil. Power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Who voted 'no' on resolution to condemn bigotry, anti-Semitism - "The US House of Representatives voted 407-23 to pass a resolution Thursday that broadly condemned hate and intolerance, including anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim discrimination."
All lives matter!
Post ID: 7112130564319486037
Observations - 5th June 2019
"There used to be an old lady who sold tissue in tampines mrt in the mornings
She usually came with her husband and maid in tow
They would sit a distance away
Then she started coming on a wheelchair. Now never come liao
She managed to 'con' strangers' sympathy.
Once when her husband and maid didn't accompany her, I saw one zehzeh had bought food for her and was feeding her some more!"
***
"I wish they would ban satirical sites because they can spread fake news in the name of satire, with impunity."
Ahh, Singaporeans!
For some reason, Singapore is blocking more and more types of websites - not just porn, with one religious (Chick) and one drug (Marijuana) website. For example, last I checked William Hill and Paddy Power (online betting/gambling) were blocked.
Facebook's badge indicating a group administrator is important. Because if you call one out on his bullshit, he might boot you from the group
Google, Yahoo Singapore and Yahoo have very different hits when you search "sweet cat" HMM
If bodily autonomy is such a sacred principle why are seat belts compulsory?
Ironically most of the people supporting mandatory vaccination would also support abortion rights based on the right to bodily autonomy
Claiming that Western values are universal values is a subtle form of ethnocentrism
If you buy play tickets without reading the description and then get triggered by the play, you're an idiot
Wondering why the incels who are misogynists and hate strong female characters so much don't have a problem with Game of Thrones
"feminist schoolmate of mine would do a lot of projects about female empowerment and also post angsty Fb posts about how she was trying to do some heavy lifting and two guys (complete strangers) didn't offer their help
note that she didn't ask for any help, and she explicitly stated that they didn't help her despite being male."
***
BBC: Best of Today: Friday's business with Joe Lynam, 12 February 2016
Interview with Jenny Campbell, Chief Executive of YourCash:
'Women make other choices about their ambitions and their preferences and so on, but I also think there is an element of women probably as they get into more senior roles not negotiating quite as hard as the men'
'They don't lean in'
'They don't lean in in my view. So if I'm interviewing a man and a woman for the same job and there's a range, a pay range on that job, the man will automatically assume he can get the top number. Whereas the lady will often, I'll say, negotiate for some of the softer parts of the package like flexibility on holidays etc'
***
"If one can cite specific incidents as evidence that "Colonization was Evil" once can also cite specific incidents (Shaka Zulu virtually exterminating the population of Ndwandweland) and conclude that LACK of colonization was Evil. That is, you cannot taint a very broad historical pattern by citing a few events. Those events WERE bad, but to conclude that they were caused solely by colonization is like concluding that World War II, and the Holocaust, were caused by Industrialization. The fact is, in
Africa, like every where else, war and conquest go back a long way- when you see in a history book that such -and-such kingdom existed between 900 and 1200 AD, what do you think ended it? What ended, for example, Great Zimbabwe?
War and conquest was endemic and historic on the continent, just like the others. The only difference colonization brought was white skinned people to add to the complexity.
Here's a thought: the Bantu people originated in what is now Nigeria. Now they are dominant in South Africa. Are they colonists, too? Were they, when they destroyed the Khoikhoi culture in what is now Botswana? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Should we blame the Bantu for doing it?"
***
"local influenza that went from ordinary teen to crazy overtatted girl with blank expression, probably from too much hard partying and hookupswhat's remarkable about this account is that you can follow the transition from normal to overpartied"
"Gender Myopia – The condition of being so narrowly focused on what your gender is attracted to, you are completely blinded to the realities of what the other gender is attracted to. You think the other gender wants exactly what you want, which they don’t.
Example of male gender myopia: Men sending women pictures of their penises in order to turn them on.
Example of female gender myopia: Women bragging about how “sassy” or “tough” or “independent” they are in order to attract men."
She usually came with her husband and maid in tow
They would sit a distance away
Then she started coming on a wheelchair. Now never come liao
She managed to 'con' strangers' sympathy.
Once when her husband and maid didn't accompany her, I saw one zehzeh had bought food for her and was feeding her some more!"
***
"I wish they would ban satirical sites because they can spread fake news in the name of satire, with impunity."
Ahh, Singaporeans!
For some reason, Singapore is blocking more and more types of websites - not just porn, with one religious (Chick) and one drug (Marijuana) website. For example, last I checked William Hill and Paddy Power (online betting/gambling) were blocked.
Facebook's badge indicating a group administrator is important. Because if you call one out on his bullshit, he might boot you from the group
Google, Yahoo Singapore and Yahoo have very different hits when you search "sweet cat" HMM
If bodily autonomy is such a sacred principle why are seat belts compulsory?
Ironically most of the people supporting mandatory vaccination would also support abortion rights based on the right to bodily autonomy
Claiming that Western values are universal values is a subtle form of ethnocentrism
If you buy play tickets without reading the description and then get triggered by the play, you're an idiot
Wondering why the incels who are misogynists and hate strong female characters so much don't have a problem with Game of Thrones
"feminist schoolmate of mine would do a lot of projects about female empowerment and also post angsty Fb posts about how she was trying to do some heavy lifting and two guys (complete strangers) didn't offer their help
note that she didn't ask for any help, and she explicitly stated that they didn't help her despite being male."
***
BBC: Best of Today: Friday's business with Joe Lynam, 12 February 2016
Interview with Jenny Campbell, Chief Executive of YourCash:
'Women make other choices about their ambitions and their preferences and so on, but I also think there is an element of women probably as they get into more senior roles not negotiating quite as hard as the men'
'They don't lean in'
'They don't lean in in my view. So if I'm interviewing a man and a woman for the same job and there's a range, a pay range on that job, the man will automatically assume he can get the top number. Whereas the lady will often, I'll say, negotiate for some of the softer parts of the package like flexibility on holidays etc'
***
"If one can cite specific incidents as evidence that "Colonization was Evil" once can also cite specific incidents (Shaka Zulu virtually exterminating the population of Ndwandweland) and conclude that LACK of colonization was Evil. That is, you cannot taint a very broad historical pattern by citing a few events. Those events WERE bad, but to conclude that they were caused solely by colonization is like concluding that World War II, and the Holocaust, were caused by Industrialization. The fact is, in
Africa, like every where else, war and conquest go back a long way- when you see in a history book that such -and-such kingdom existed between 900 and 1200 AD, what do you think ended it? What ended, for example, Great Zimbabwe?
War and conquest was endemic and historic on the continent, just like the others. The only difference colonization brought was white skinned people to add to the complexity.
Here's a thought: the Bantu people originated in what is now Nigeria. Now they are dominant in South Africa. Are they colonists, too? Were they, when they destroyed the Khoikhoi culture in what is now Botswana? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Should we blame the Bantu for doing it?"
***
"local influenza that went from ordinary teen to crazy overtatted girl with blank expression, probably from too much hard partying and hookupswhat's remarkable about this account is that you can follow the transition from normal to overpartied"
"Gender Myopia – The condition of being so narrowly focused on what your gender is attracted to, you are completely blinded to the realities of what the other gender is attracted to. You think the other gender wants exactly what you want, which they don’t.
Example of male gender myopia: Men sending women pictures of their penises in order to turn them on.
Example of female gender myopia: Women bragging about how “sassy” or “tough” or “independent” they are in order to attract men."
Post ID: 3252911902814867478
Links - 5th June 2019 (1)
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Knife crime - "When there was last a knife crime spike in the mid 2000s, there were many, many more officers on the streets. And we don't see, when we're looking at the rates of serious violence, they don't, there's no sort of natural correlation between that and the numbers of police on the streets"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, From Our Home Correspondent 24/03/2019 - "Often as is already well known across the United Kingdom, [knife crime] offenders and victims tend to be mirror images of each other, a toss of the coin which ends up in the dock and which in A&E or the morgue...
[On auditioning for Game of Thrones] I needn’t have worried about the fact I'd never ridden a horse before as I was told I wasn't handsome enough to be a knight, or scary enough to be one of the savage free folk. But in many ways, I dodged an arrow. I heard of extras having to play dead bodies lying face down for 10 hours a day in Ulster's finest mud. So desperate were people to get a part in the show, I knew one man who got a horse and real swords to shoot an audition tape"
London teens sent to Africa to escape knife crime - "Hundreds of British teenagers are being sent by their parents to East Africa to avoid knife crime in the UK, representatives of the Somali community say... Of the 100 people stabbed to death in the UK so far this year, 8% were of Somali heritage, according to the Rise Projects which works with young British Somalis in north London... "One of the things I'll never forget, is the fact that when you walk in the streets in Kenya you don't have to look over your shoulder."Here I could travel in and out of the city, go and visit whoever I wanted, and it was good. I felt a sense of freedom."But for these kids [in London that can be] life and death."... The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advises against all travel to Somalia, including Somaliland, and highlights a heightened threat of terrorism and kidnappings, across Kenya.But Amina sent her 15-year-old son to Somaliland, when she was worried about the new friends with whom he was mixing.In his year there, she says he became a studious child again.He had even wanted to stay in East Africa.But within 17 days of being brought back to the UK in November 2018, he was stabbed four times."He's been completely traumatised by the experience," she says."They damaged his bladder, his kidneys, his liver. He's got permanent damage."He was safer there [in Somaliland] than he was here… 100% more safe than in London." The new mayor for Islington, Rakhia Ismail - a mother of four who came to London from Somalia as a refugee - believes that some areas of the city are unsafe for young people."Does the parent wait for her child to be killed? Or does the parent take a decision - quite a drastic decision - to take him all the way back to wherever that child is from originally?"She says she knows families who are waiting for their children to finish primary school so they can leave the UK.She estimates that out of every five Somalian families, two are taking their children back home."
Maybe Somalia should offer all British people asylum
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Knife crime - "‘Many, many, perhaps a majority - who knows - of young people who carry knives do so not because they want to attack somebody, but because they are afraid themselves of being attacked.’
‘Absolutely. And of course, the research tells you, if you're likely to carry a knife, you're more likely to have it used against you. So it's sort of contrary to reality, what they should be doing.’"
Knives don't kill people. People kill people. The solution to knife crime is to give everyone a knife!
CBO Report: 1.4 Million Lost Health Insurance Since 2016 — And Obamacare Is To Blame - "The number of uninsured climbed by 1.4 million from 2016 to 2018, according to a report out last week from the Congressional Budget Office. Naturally, this led those on the left to blame the Trump administration for its Obamacare “sabotage.”But the data in that report — which was released on the same day the Mueller report came out and largely ignored — tells an entirely different story.All of the increase in the uninsured over the past two years — all of it — is the result of the massive rate increases Obamacare’s mandates and regulations caused. According to the Health and Human Services Dept., premiums in the individual insurance market doubled from 2013 to 2017. They shot up again in 2018... thanks to the booming job market under President Trump, the number of people getting coverage through work climbed by 2.2 million over those two years.But the number of people in the unsubsidized individual insurance market? From 2015 to 2018, it plunged from 9.7 million down to 6.2 million — a 36% decrease.Before Obamacare went into effect, there were more than 10 million people buying insurance on their own, without any government subsidies... Yet, incredibly, when Sarah Kliff at Vox.com (the self-proclaimed “explanatory news” site) looked at the same report, she tried to blame the Trump administration for the increase in the uninsured... while Obamacare succeeded in making millions of people dependent on the government for health insurance, it’s done so at the expense of middle-class families who were specifically promised relief from high insurance costs."
Microsoft admits expiring-password rules are useless - "Microsoft has admitted that one of the great scourges of our time, the password reset rule, is bunk."When humans are assigned or forced to create passwords that are hard to remember, too often they'll write them down where others can see them," Microsoft's Aaron Margosis said in a blog post Wednesday. Worse, Margosis wrote, when people are forced to change their passwords, too often they make a "small and predictable alteration to their existing password" so they won't forget it. (Duh.) Microsoft isn't the first to ring this alarm. Security experts and normal thinking people have complained for years that mandatory password changes aren't worth the trouble. Two years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was time to rethink this practice. "It is important to assess the risks and benefits for your organization, as well as alternative ways of increasing security," the FTC said in a blog post. And that was after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) criticized the practice a decade ago... Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't simply yanking the password reset feature, which would be the humane thing to do. In the end, it'll still be up to your company's tech team whether to listen to reason or continue living in the security Stone Age... "Periodic password expiration is an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value""
Aurélien Emmanuel's answer to Why do people troll? - Quora - "I do troll sometimes to make people think about themselves, other times to let them realise they are guilible, or to present them something absurd but with similar flaws than their theories, or simply to catch their attention.Most of the time, trolling is just another tool to my Socratic method."
Escort reveals how his family reacted to the news he quit his job in finance - "Calling his job 'rewarding work', Mr James also shared his most popular request with the ladies on his payroll. 'It's definitely the dinner date I offer,' he said... He previously spoke to FEMAIL about what women are typically looking for throughout these experiences - and it's not just sex... 'From what I see, men are more focused on the sexual side of things. Women are focused on the sex too, they wouldn't come to see me without it, but we spend a lot of time talking as well.'Mr James said that most people would be surprised at the range of women he sees as clients.'Many of the women I see could easily go to a bar and pick a guy up and have sex that way,' he explained. 'But they want a different experience... 'The youngest client I've had was 20,' Mr James explained. 'It's rarer for a client to be in their 20s but still happens regularly.'... 'The way I describe seeing an escort is any girl could go into a bar and ask a guy to go back to hers and get a back massage. A lot of guys would say yes,' he said.'But he's not a massage therapist. She might enjoy it, but he's not a professional. If you want a certain sexual experience, it's much harder to find exactly what you want, but an escort can provide that.'"
Single-Parent Families Cause Juvenile Crime - "The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency reports that the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community is the proportion of fatherless families. Fathers typically offer economic stability, a role model for boys, greater household security, and reduced stress for mothers. This is especially true for families with adolescent boys, the most crime-prone cohort. Children from single-parent families are more prone than children from two-parent families to use drugs, be gang members, be expelled from school, be committed to reform institutions, and become juvenile murderers. Single parenthood inevitably reduces the amount of time a child has in interaction with someone who is attentive to the child's needs, including the provision of moral guidance and discipline. According to a 1993 Metropolitan Life Survey, "Violence in America's Public Schools," 71 percent of teachers and 90 percent of law enforcement officials state that the lack of parental supervision at home is a major factor that contributes to the violence in schools. Sixty-one percent of elementary students and 76 percent of secondary children agree with this assessment."
Redditor Raises His Adopted Asian Son in Chinese Culture for 17 Years, Then Realizes He's Actually Korean - "“Around about eight months we start to feel a little bit of guilt about not raising him in his on ethnic culture and given that we live in an area with a major Chinese population, it would be very easy to introduce him to his roots.”They decided they would do everything in their power to foster a strong Chinese identity. “So for the next seventeen years we do everything we can to honor his ethnicity. We send him to Chinese language courses and by five he’s fluent in Mandarin and English, he gets an ‘adopted’ by a Chinese aunt and uncle (they taught him cultural things and celebrate certain holidays and take him for dim sum every couple of weeks). We’ve been taking him to China every two years since he was eight.”
[Marvel] What's the difference between Boom Boom, Dazzler, and Jubilee? : AskScienceFiction - "Jubilee could generate, at whim, small-level explosions of brightly colored "plasmoids."
Dazzler could convert sound vibrations into light. As in, literally light, rather than some form of energetic matter.
Boom Boom's ability is similar to Jubilee. She can create orbs of plasma which explode with concussive force. Jubilee seems to have more control or variation of these, while Boom Boom's are more powerful in terms of explosive power."
Northwestern students want a controversial scholar off their campus - "Describing the program's old vetting process for visiting scholars as “weak,” Holloway said that “the department was unaware of Kanazawa’s controversial views or his flawed scholarship.”He added, “I applaud this change, and I expect this same level of basic rigor to be applied in every department at the university.”But Holloway said that Kanazawa will remain on campus until the end of his appointment, at the end of the academic year.While the university “is firmly committed to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Holloway said, at a “comprehensive research university, there will unfortunately be occasions when offensive ideas emerge and when people advance arguments that run afoul of well-established, peer-reviewed research findings.”In meantime, he said, Kanazawa’s “scholarship presents ideas that are antithetical to values that Northwestern holds dear.”Holloway said that Kanazawa is a visiting scholar on sabbatical with less than year left at Northwestern, and that he isn’t teaching, “collecting research data, or getting paid.” And like “all guest research scholars, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the university.”"
So much for academic freedom
Spaghetti bolognese does not exist, says mayor of Bologna, Italy - "Spaghetti bolognese does not exist and is in fact "fake news."The bombshell was dropped by Virginio Merola, the mayor of Bologna, Italy, which is the supposed home of the pasta dish.And Merola is now launching an awareness campaign to teach people the truth... "Spaghetti bolognese doesn't actually exist, yet it's famous the world over," Merola told Italian broadcaster RAI."What we'd prefer the world to know is that Bologna invented tagliatelle, tortellini, and lasagne."Rather than "spaghetti bolognese," what you'll actually find in Italy is Ragù alla Bolognese, which is their equivalent meat-based sauce. However it's rarely served with spaghetti — Italians tend to go for a stronger pasta type with a greater surface area to hold the sauce, such as tagliatelle"
Bella Blue Shares Photo of Child Stuffing Bills Into Her Lingerie - "A New Orleans-based burlesque dancer stirred up controversy this week after sharing a photograph of a young girl stuffing dollar bills into her lingerie and touting the scene as a constructive example of body positivity, feminism and the destigmatization of displays of sexuality... The performer, who on her website identifies as a “femme presenting unicorn,” gushed over the progressive mindset exhibited by the girl’s mother."
Don't Freak Out About That Viral 'Milk Duct' Image, It's Not Actually Correct - "A vivid anatomical image of the "female muscle system" and "milk ducts" has been doing the rounds courtesy of a viral tweet, popping up everywhere from Buzzfeed to BBC. But if you're freaking out about this sudden unveiling of the inner world of the human breast, fret no more - the image and its context are not… entirely correct... that is not the female muscle system. For starters, breasts don't actually contain skeletal muscle. (There are some cells and tissue in there that's sort-of like smooth muscle, but that's not what this diagram claims to be depicting.)... those flower-shaped things are definitely not ducts. They probably represent the lobules, except in a real human breast they are not arranged in such a neat pattern at all... Since the anatomy app [from which this came] is not the work of a reputable medical or educational publisher (in fact, we couldn't find any scientific references in it at all!), it's wise to take its imagery with a grain of salt."
‘Not a bot from China’: Meet the man behind commentary blog Critical Spectator - "Dressed in slacks and a blue jacket with sleeves folded to the elbows over a tee, 33-year-old Michael Petraeus was hunkered over the menu as I stepped up to introduce myself.The Polish national is the man behind Critical Spectator, a commentary blog which caught the attention of the Singapore public at the tail-end of 2018 and beginning of 2019."
"Aren't his inflammatory posts on Malaysia stoking neighbourly tensions. He's not even a resident here so isn't that enough grounds to consider his participation as foreign influence. Mere physical presence in socio-political events is considered foreign interference by the authorities but not running a socio-political blog in Singapore?"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, From Our Home Correspondent 24/03/2019 - "Often as is already well known across the United Kingdom, [knife crime] offenders and victims tend to be mirror images of each other, a toss of the coin which ends up in the dock and which in A&E or the morgue...
[On auditioning for Game of Thrones] I needn’t have worried about the fact I'd never ridden a horse before as I was told I wasn't handsome enough to be a knight, or scary enough to be one of the savage free folk. But in many ways, I dodged an arrow. I heard of extras having to play dead bodies lying face down for 10 hours a day in Ulster's finest mud. So desperate were people to get a part in the show, I knew one man who got a horse and real swords to shoot an audition tape"
London teens sent to Africa to escape knife crime - "Hundreds of British teenagers are being sent by their parents to East Africa to avoid knife crime in the UK, representatives of the Somali community say... Of the 100 people stabbed to death in the UK so far this year, 8% were of Somali heritage, according to the Rise Projects which works with young British Somalis in north London... "One of the things I'll never forget, is the fact that when you walk in the streets in Kenya you don't have to look over your shoulder."Here I could travel in and out of the city, go and visit whoever I wanted, and it was good. I felt a sense of freedom."But for these kids [in London that can be] life and death."... The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advises against all travel to Somalia, including Somaliland, and highlights a heightened threat of terrorism and kidnappings, across Kenya.But Amina sent her 15-year-old son to Somaliland, when she was worried about the new friends with whom he was mixing.In his year there, she says he became a studious child again.He had even wanted to stay in East Africa.But within 17 days of being brought back to the UK in November 2018, he was stabbed four times."He's been completely traumatised by the experience," she says."They damaged his bladder, his kidneys, his liver. He's got permanent damage."He was safer there [in Somaliland] than he was here… 100% more safe than in London." The new mayor for Islington, Rakhia Ismail - a mother of four who came to London from Somalia as a refugee - believes that some areas of the city are unsafe for young people."Does the parent wait for her child to be killed? Or does the parent take a decision - quite a drastic decision - to take him all the way back to wherever that child is from originally?"She says she knows families who are waiting for their children to finish primary school so they can leave the UK.She estimates that out of every five Somalian families, two are taking their children back home."
Maybe Somalia should offer all British people asylum
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Knife crime - "‘Many, many, perhaps a majority - who knows - of young people who carry knives do so not because they want to attack somebody, but because they are afraid themselves of being attacked.’
‘Absolutely. And of course, the research tells you, if you're likely to carry a knife, you're more likely to have it used against you. So it's sort of contrary to reality, what they should be doing.’"
Knives don't kill people. People kill people. The solution to knife crime is to give everyone a knife!
CBO Report: 1.4 Million Lost Health Insurance Since 2016 — And Obamacare Is To Blame - "The number of uninsured climbed by 1.4 million from 2016 to 2018, according to a report out last week from the Congressional Budget Office. Naturally, this led those on the left to blame the Trump administration for its Obamacare “sabotage.”But the data in that report — which was released on the same day the Mueller report came out and largely ignored — tells an entirely different story.All of the increase in the uninsured over the past two years — all of it — is the result of the massive rate increases Obamacare’s mandates and regulations caused. According to the Health and Human Services Dept., premiums in the individual insurance market doubled from 2013 to 2017. They shot up again in 2018... thanks to the booming job market under President Trump, the number of people getting coverage through work climbed by 2.2 million over those two years.But the number of people in the unsubsidized individual insurance market? From 2015 to 2018, it plunged from 9.7 million down to 6.2 million — a 36% decrease.Before Obamacare went into effect, there were more than 10 million people buying insurance on their own, without any government subsidies... Yet, incredibly, when Sarah Kliff at Vox.com (the self-proclaimed “explanatory news” site) looked at the same report, she tried to blame the Trump administration for the increase in the uninsured... while Obamacare succeeded in making millions of people dependent on the government for health insurance, it’s done so at the expense of middle-class families who were specifically promised relief from high insurance costs."
Microsoft admits expiring-password rules are useless - "Microsoft has admitted that one of the great scourges of our time, the password reset rule, is bunk."When humans are assigned or forced to create passwords that are hard to remember, too often they'll write them down where others can see them," Microsoft's Aaron Margosis said in a blog post Wednesday. Worse, Margosis wrote, when people are forced to change their passwords, too often they make a "small and predictable alteration to their existing password" so they won't forget it. (Duh.) Microsoft isn't the first to ring this alarm. Security experts and normal thinking people have complained for years that mandatory password changes aren't worth the trouble. Two years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was time to rethink this practice. "It is important to assess the risks and benefits for your organization, as well as alternative ways of increasing security," the FTC said in a blog post. And that was after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) criticized the practice a decade ago... Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't simply yanking the password reset feature, which would be the humane thing to do. In the end, it'll still be up to your company's tech team whether to listen to reason or continue living in the security Stone Age... "Periodic password expiration is an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value""
Aurélien Emmanuel's answer to Why do people troll? - Quora - "I do troll sometimes to make people think about themselves, other times to let them realise they are guilible, or to present them something absurd but with similar flaws than their theories, or simply to catch their attention.Most of the time, trolling is just another tool to my Socratic method."
Escort reveals how his family reacted to the news he quit his job in finance - "Calling his job 'rewarding work', Mr James also shared his most popular request with the ladies on his payroll. 'It's definitely the dinner date I offer,' he said... He previously spoke to FEMAIL about what women are typically looking for throughout these experiences - and it's not just sex... 'From what I see, men are more focused on the sexual side of things. Women are focused on the sex too, they wouldn't come to see me without it, but we spend a lot of time talking as well.'Mr James said that most people would be surprised at the range of women he sees as clients.'Many of the women I see could easily go to a bar and pick a guy up and have sex that way,' he explained. 'But they want a different experience... 'The youngest client I've had was 20,' Mr James explained. 'It's rarer for a client to be in their 20s but still happens regularly.'... 'The way I describe seeing an escort is any girl could go into a bar and ask a guy to go back to hers and get a back massage. A lot of guys would say yes,' he said.'But he's not a massage therapist. She might enjoy it, but he's not a professional. If you want a certain sexual experience, it's much harder to find exactly what you want, but an escort can provide that.'"
Single-Parent Families Cause Juvenile Crime - "The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency reports that the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community is the proportion of fatherless families. Fathers typically offer economic stability, a role model for boys, greater household security, and reduced stress for mothers. This is especially true for families with adolescent boys, the most crime-prone cohort. Children from single-parent families are more prone than children from two-parent families to use drugs, be gang members, be expelled from school, be committed to reform institutions, and become juvenile murderers. Single parenthood inevitably reduces the amount of time a child has in interaction with someone who is attentive to the child's needs, including the provision of moral guidance and discipline. According to a 1993 Metropolitan Life Survey, "Violence in America's Public Schools," 71 percent of teachers and 90 percent of law enforcement officials state that the lack of parental supervision at home is a major factor that contributes to the violence in schools. Sixty-one percent of elementary students and 76 percent of secondary children agree with this assessment."
Redditor Raises His Adopted Asian Son in Chinese Culture for 17 Years, Then Realizes He's Actually Korean - "“Around about eight months we start to feel a little bit of guilt about not raising him in his on ethnic culture and given that we live in an area with a major Chinese population, it would be very easy to introduce him to his roots.”They decided they would do everything in their power to foster a strong Chinese identity. “So for the next seventeen years we do everything we can to honor his ethnicity. We send him to Chinese language courses and by five he’s fluent in Mandarin and English, he gets an ‘adopted’ by a Chinese aunt and uncle (they taught him cultural things and celebrate certain holidays and take him for dim sum every couple of weeks). We’ve been taking him to China every two years since he was eight.”
[Marvel] What's the difference between Boom Boom, Dazzler, and Jubilee? : AskScienceFiction - "Jubilee could generate, at whim, small-level explosions of brightly colored "plasmoids."
Dazzler could convert sound vibrations into light. As in, literally light, rather than some form of energetic matter.
Boom Boom's ability is similar to Jubilee. She can create orbs of plasma which explode with concussive force. Jubilee seems to have more control or variation of these, while Boom Boom's are more powerful in terms of explosive power."
Northwestern students want a controversial scholar off their campus - "Describing the program's old vetting process for visiting scholars as “weak,” Holloway said that “the department was unaware of Kanazawa’s controversial views or his flawed scholarship.”He added, “I applaud this change, and I expect this same level of basic rigor to be applied in every department at the university.”But Holloway said that Kanazawa will remain on campus until the end of his appointment, at the end of the academic year.While the university “is firmly committed to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Holloway said, at a “comprehensive research university, there will unfortunately be occasions when offensive ideas emerge and when people advance arguments that run afoul of well-established, peer-reviewed research findings.”In meantime, he said, Kanazawa’s “scholarship presents ideas that are antithetical to values that Northwestern holds dear.”Holloway said that Kanazawa is a visiting scholar on sabbatical with less than year left at Northwestern, and that he isn’t teaching, “collecting research data, or getting paid.” And like “all guest research scholars, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the university.”"
So much for academic freedom
Spaghetti bolognese does not exist, says mayor of Bologna, Italy - "Spaghetti bolognese does not exist and is in fact "fake news."The bombshell was dropped by Virginio Merola, the mayor of Bologna, Italy, which is the supposed home of the pasta dish.And Merola is now launching an awareness campaign to teach people the truth... "Spaghetti bolognese doesn't actually exist, yet it's famous the world over," Merola told Italian broadcaster RAI."What we'd prefer the world to know is that Bologna invented tagliatelle, tortellini, and lasagne."Rather than "spaghetti bolognese," what you'll actually find in Italy is Ragù alla Bolognese, which is their equivalent meat-based sauce. However it's rarely served with spaghetti — Italians tend to go for a stronger pasta type with a greater surface area to hold the sauce, such as tagliatelle"
Bella Blue Shares Photo of Child Stuffing Bills Into Her Lingerie - "A New Orleans-based burlesque dancer stirred up controversy this week after sharing a photograph of a young girl stuffing dollar bills into her lingerie and touting the scene as a constructive example of body positivity, feminism and the destigmatization of displays of sexuality... The performer, who on her website identifies as a “femme presenting unicorn,” gushed over the progressive mindset exhibited by the girl’s mother."
Don't Freak Out About That Viral 'Milk Duct' Image, It's Not Actually Correct - "A vivid anatomical image of the "female muscle system" and "milk ducts" has been doing the rounds courtesy of a viral tweet, popping up everywhere from Buzzfeed to BBC. But if you're freaking out about this sudden unveiling of the inner world of the human breast, fret no more - the image and its context are not… entirely correct... that is not the female muscle system. For starters, breasts don't actually contain skeletal muscle. (There are some cells and tissue in there that's sort-of like smooth muscle, but that's not what this diagram claims to be depicting.)... those flower-shaped things are definitely not ducts. They probably represent the lobules, except in a real human breast they are not arranged in such a neat pattern at all... Since the anatomy app [from which this came] is not the work of a reputable medical or educational publisher (in fact, we couldn't find any scientific references in it at all!), it's wise to take its imagery with a grain of salt."
‘Not a bot from China’: Meet the man behind commentary blog Critical Spectator - "Dressed in slacks and a blue jacket with sleeves folded to the elbows over a tee, 33-year-old Michael Petraeus was hunkered over the menu as I stepped up to introduce myself.The Polish national is the man behind Critical Spectator, a commentary blog which caught the attention of the Singapore public at the tail-end of 2018 and beginning of 2019."
"Aren't his inflammatory posts on Malaysia stoking neighbourly tensions. He's not even a resident here so isn't that enough grounds to consider his participation as foreign influence. Mere physical presence in socio-political events is considered foreign interference by the authorities but not running a socio-political blog in Singapore?"
Post ID: 3276592646469688939
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Being offended by religion / Authenticity and the Self
01 JUNE 14 Race, religion & reaction to the story that went global - Everyday Ethics (BBC - not available online):
David McAfee on the Peter Robinson Islam Row: When I think of the Moslem teaching, I mean I could be offended as well when I read the Koran and read that I'm referred to as an infidel. I could be offended but I'm not offended because my faith is stronger than to be offended. 'Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them'. So why should I be offended by any comment that anyone makes?...
[Interview with Simon Blackburn by William Crawley] ‘What kinds of advice is that? Exactly? I think there is a myth which possibly started with the Renaissance or possibly with the Protestants and Puritan ideas that, you know, deep down, there's a complete nugget of goodness at the center of each of us, and if we just ourselves will uncover that nugget and everything will be absolutely fine and dandy. I think that's a myth. It's a myth of authenticity. The idea that if you're authentic, then you can't go wrong. It's there in Shakespeare. Polonius says to Hamlet, you know: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false. That’s just not true. I mean, your real self might be kind of Tony Blair or something.’
‘You might be a psychopath’...
‘And also that view of the self you've just described gives the impression that the self is somehow fixed across time... whereas we change. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago.’...
‘When you know, Hollywood or myth I mean serious myths than the ones Hollywood produces try to portray integrity and authenticity, they often portray it in very cardboard terms. They make it simple for the John Wayne figure. What's right just shines out and he's going to do it, and he's never deflected. And he's single minded, and eventually he wins. Life isn't like that. We're very seldom faced with problems which require us to be single minded, or to find the solution obvious or simple. Most of living well requires compromises and little deviations, and subtleties and so on. And actually, although Shakespeare gave us that quotation, it's interesting that it was in the mouth of Polonius, who's a bit of a simpleton. And Hamlet is very conflicted Hamlet, you know, he's the archetypal hero who doesn't really know what to do. And dithers and delays and is torn, and that's part of what makes him so sympathetic and great.’
‘There's a corollary of this in terms of the notion of meaning and how it connects with the self. You sometimes talk to people who say, I, you know, I'm having a midlife crisis or something, I haven't found the meaning of my life, as if it's something that you find, rather than something that you generate, for example, through the projects and ambition and creativity… How do you challenge that notion of fixity of meaning?’
‘Well, I think you have to point out that life is a process. It's like gardening. There's no such thing as the meaning of gardening, but you cultivate your flowers, you cultivate your plot, you do what you can. You watch the seasons come and go, and you take pleasure if you're the right kind of mindset in the process. And that's the same with life. So if you've got the right kind of mindset, you'll take pleasure in bringing up your children and doing a job well, in taking well deserved holidays, whatever it is. There's one thing after another and the the art is to bring it about that you're satisfied with one thing after another. And if you're not satisfied with it, you can either change the way you're living or change yourself to become satisfied.’
David McAfee on the Peter Robinson Islam Row: When I think of the Moslem teaching, I mean I could be offended as well when I read the Koran and read that I'm referred to as an infidel. I could be offended but I'm not offended because my faith is stronger than to be offended. 'Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them'. So why should I be offended by any comment that anyone makes?...
[Interview with Simon Blackburn by William Crawley] ‘What kinds of advice is that? Exactly? I think there is a myth which possibly started with the Renaissance or possibly with the Protestants and Puritan ideas that, you know, deep down, there's a complete nugget of goodness at the center of each of us, and if we just ourselves will uncover that nugget and everything will be absolutely fine and dandy. I think that's a myth. It's a myth of authenticity. The idea that if you're authentic, then you can't go wrong. It's there in Shakespeare. Polonius says to Hamlet, you know: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false. That’s just not true. I mean, your real self might be kind of Tony Blair or something.’
‘You might be a psychopath’...
‘And also that view of the self you've just described gives the impression that the self is somehow fixed across time... whereas we change. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago.’...
‘When you know, Hollywood or myth I mean serious myths than the ones Hollywood produces try to portray integrity and authenticity, they often portray it in very cardboard terms. They make it simple for the John Wayne figure. What's right just shines out and he's going to do it, and he's never deflected. And he's single minded, and eventually he wins. Life isn't like that. We're very seldom faced with problems which require us to be single minded, or to find the solution obvious or simple. Most of living well requires compromises and little deviations, and subtleties and so on. And actually, although Shakespeare gave us that quotation, it's interesting that it was in the mouth of Polonius, who's a bit of a simpleton. And Hamlet is very conflicted Hamlet, you know, he's the archetypal hero who doesn't really know what to do. And dithers and delays and is torn, and that's part of what makes him so sympathetic and great.’
‘There's a corollary of this in terms of the notion of meaning and how it connects with the self. You sometimes talk to people who say, I, you know, I'm having a midlife crisis or something, I haven't found the meaning of my life, as if it's something that you find, rather than something that you generate, for example, through the projects and ambition and creativity… How do you challenge that notion of fixity of meaning?’
‘Well, I think you have to point out that life is a process. It's like gardening. There's no such thing as the meaning of gardening, but you cultivate your flowers, you cultivate your plot, you do what you can. You watch the seasons come and go, and you take pleasure if you're the right kind of mindset in the process. And that's the same with life. So if you've got the right kind of mindset, you'll take pleasure in bringing up your children and doing a job well, in taking well deserved holidays, whatever it is. There's one thing after another and the the art is to bring it about that you're satisfied with one thing after another. And if you're not satisfied with it, you can either change the way you're living or change yourself to become satisfied.’
Post ID: 1071945935440304801
Links - 4th June 2019 (2) (Trans Mania)
Grizzly Bear Shatters All Pro Wrestling Records After Identifying As Human | The Babylon Bee
Connecticut Family Claims Student Was Expelled From Prep School For Having 'Politically Incorrect Views': Lawyer - "One of the incidents allegedly occurred during a class discussion on William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a play where the lead character Viola cross-dresses as a male. Though most of the class agreed that the playwright promoted transgender individuals in the text, Mancini disagreed, arguing that the author likely didn’t intend to make such a progressive statement during the period it was written (1601-1602). Mancini’s views drew scorn from several students and prompted the teacher to ask him to explain himself, according to the complaint.
Informed literary analysis is Conservative and transphobic
Paul McHugh: Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution - WSJ - "When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned. We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs. It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population... "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder."
On the uselessness of sex change/gender reassignment/gender affirmation surgery/operations
Girl — why a film about a transgender ballerina has sparked controversy | Financial Times - "some observers say it falls back on tired tropes about transgender people. “Dhont and his team like to say that they made a modern film, but Girl is very formulaic,” says Héloïse Guimin-Fati, a Liège-based researcher and co-head of Belgium’s Observatoire des Transidentités. Guimin-Fati points out similarities between Dhont’s work and, among others, Tom Hooper’s 2015 drama The Danish Girl, which starred Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the earliest recipients of sex reassignment surgery. “It’s always the same framework: a transgender character’s hatred of their body, especially their genital parts. It’s not empathy we’re made to feel, but pity.”... By arguing that a work of fiction should accurately represent an entire community’s experiences, however, activists are assigning a responsibility to artists that the latter may not be willing to embrace"
The perils of 'representation' - you get slammed by activists anyway. So you might as well not bother
'I have the right to tell this story': Lukas Dhont defends his trans film Girl - "LGBTQ activists also criticised Dhont for fixating on the physical transformation of the central character Lara, who struggles with her body dysphoria and painfully binds her genitals. Then, in December, the trans critic Oliver Whitney wrote a furious essay in the Hollywood Reporter, describing as “sadistic” and “trauma porn” a scene at the end of the film depicting self-harm. Whitney branded Girl “the most dangerous movie about a trans character in years”... When Girl came under fire, Monsecour, who dropped classical ballet and is now a modern dancer in Germany, stepped forward to defend – and in a sense claim – the film. Describing it as “my truth”, she has hit out at critics for attempting to silence her and her trans identity. “My story is not a fantasy of the cis director. Lara’s story is my story.”... I ask whether, with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to have included Monsecour on the credits? He pulls a face. “For me, of course it would have been easier. Because people would have gone, ‘Oh, a trans woman was here, so now it’s valid.’” But he doesn’t buy the argument that only trans film-makers can make trans films. “Because then you’re saying that you can only speak about that very specific identity that you are.”... Monsecour was involved in the casting process and gave her blessing to Polster. Her main requirement was actually finding an actor who could dance: “She didn’t mind if the actor wasn’t trans. She wanted someone who would respect her in an elegant way.” Dhont describes the casting as genderless: he auditioned 5oo young people, including trans girls. He has previously said that psychologists at Ghent University Hospital’s Centre for Sexology and Gender (where Monsecour had been a patient) advised against casting a trans girl at a vulnerable point in her transition."
It's dangerous to tell the real story of a person from the 'minority' you are trying to 'represent' - because it doesn't match activist fantasies
Twitter's Trans-Activist Decree - "One tweet read, simply, “Men aren’t women,” and the other asked “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” That last question is one I’ve asked countless times, including in public speeches, and I have yet to get a persuasive answer. I ask these questions not to spread hate—because I do not hate trans-identified individuals—but rather to make sense of arguments made by activists within that community. Instead of answering such questions, however, these same activists insist that the act of simply asking them is evidence of hatred.The statement that “Men aren’t women” would have been seen as banal—indeed, tautological—just a few years ago. Today, it’s considered heresy—akin to terrorist speech that seeks to “deny the humanity” of trans-identified people who very much wish they could change sex, but cannot. These heretics are smeared as “TERF”—a pejorative term that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist—and blacklisted. On many Twitter threads, the term is more or less synonymous with “Nazi.”... Tyler Coates, an editor at the apparently respectable Esquire magazine, tweeted out “FUCK TERFs!” and promptly got retweeted more than a thousand times. In many progressive corners of academic and online life, it now is taken as cant that anyone who rejects transgender ideology—which is based on the theory that a mystical “gender identity” exists within us, akin to a soul—may be targeted with the most juvenile and vicious attacks. “Punch TERFs and Nazis” has become a common Twitter tagline, as is the demand that “TERFs” be “sent to the gulag.”... The reason why engagement with the most militant trans activists is fruitless, and yields only a slew of empty mantras and false stereotypes, is that one cannot argue with religious faith. At the core of transgender ideology is the idea that the old mind/body problem that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries has been definitively solved by gender-studies specialists—and that a female mind can exist within a male body and vice versa. Moreover, we are informed that these mystical phenomena are invisible in all respects, except to the extent that they are experienced from within—which means the only reliable indicator of supposed bona fide transgenderism is the self-declaration of trans-identified individuals (many of whom seem to have made these stunning discoveries as part of a sudden social trend)... a lesbian named Taelor Furry was beat up... “Tara Wolf” was convicted of assault after beating 60-year-old Maria MacLauchlan... At Dyke Marches, lesbians who express reservations about making themselves sexually available to suitors who just happen to have penises are now commonly screamed at. In San Francisco, which one might assume to be a hot spot for lesbian pride, a group of women carrying signs that read, “Proud to be lesbian,” “Lesbian Visibility,” and “Lesbian not queer” were harassed and bullied... “I’ve been to many marches, including dangerous ones, but this was the most vicious episode I have ever experienced, ever in my life.”... the female-themed website SheKnows pulled all ads from my site... Feminist Current... because of two articles‚ one challenging the violent, misogynist threats that trans activists aim at women and lesbians, and another questioning the smear tactics that trans activists use to shut down critical questions about the transitioning of children and transgender ideology more broadly... Unlike Hailey Heartless, “Western Canada’s Only Transsexual BBW [Big Beautiful Woman] Goddess,” I don’t have any friends working at Twitter... Friends sometimes tell me that I shouldn’t worry too much, because Twitter “isn’t real life.”... Canada’s Greystone Books, with which I’d been working on a manuscript for almost three years, told me they were dropping my book
I’m a pediatrician. Here’s what I did when a little boy told me he was a girl - "If I walk into my doctor’s office today and say, “Hi, I’m Margaret Thatcher,” my physician will say I am delusional and give me an anti-psychotic. Yet, if instead, I walked in and said, “I’m a man,” he would say, “Congratulations, you’re transgender.”If I were to say, “Doc, I am suicidal because I’m an amputee trapped in a normal body, please cut off my leg,” I will be diagnosed with body identity integrity disorder. But if I walk into that doctor’s office and say, “I am a man, sign me up for a double mastectomy,” my physician will. See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender... Sometimes mental illness of a parent or abuse of the child are factors, but more commonly, the child has misperceived family dynamics and internalized a false belief.In the middle of one session, Andy put down the toy truck, held onto a Barbie, and said, “Mommy and Daddy, you don’t love me when I’m a boy.” When Andy was 3, his sister with special needs was born, and required significantly more of his parents’ attention. Andy misperceived this as “Mommy and Daddy love girls. If I want them to love me, I have to be a girl.” With family therapy Andy got better.Today, Andy’s parents would be told, “This is who Andy really is. You must ensure that everyone treats him as a girl, or else he will commit suicide.”As Andy approaches puberty, the experts would put him on puberty blockers so he can continue to impersonate a girl.It doesn’t matter that we’ve never tested puberty blockers in biologically normal children. It doesn’t matter that when blockers are used to treat prostate cancer in men, and gynecological problems in women, they cause problems with memory... we chemically castrate gender-confused children with puberty blockers. Then we permanently sterilize many of them by adding cross-sex hormones, which also put them at risk for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, and even the very emotional problems that the gender experts claim to be treating.
P.S. If a girl who insists she is male has been on testosterone daily for one year, she is cleared to get a bilateral mastectomy at age 16. Mind you, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out with a report that urges pediatricians to caution teenagers about getting tattoos because they are essentially permanent and can cause scarring. But this same AAP is 110 percent in support of 16-year-old girls getting a double mastectomy, even without parental consent, so long as the girl insists that she is a man, and has been taking testosterone daily for one year."
Transgender Navy SEAL calls 'bulls---' on Trump admin saying transgender troops aren't as lethal or effective
Maybe suicidal soldiers are even more effective
Girl Dick, the Cotton Ceiling and the Cultural War on Lesbians, Girls and Women - "You are about to be astonished at the appropriation of the lives, fears and culture of women by today’s most fashionable form of homophobia. This is itself an attack on the sexual and bodily autonomy of all women and especially lesbians, and is not just rubber-stamped by the organizations who are supposed to defend the rights of lesbians and gay men, it is positively celebrated so much that the point behind these organizations is no longer the interests of lesbians and gay men. The point is now the bank account... What Serano does is reframe his difficulty in finding a female homosexual to have sex with him as symptomatic of systematic, structural oppression. Here, he, the biological male in search of a sexual relationship with a homosexual, biological female, is bizarrely reframed as the victim... we are finding ourselves in a dystopian world where we are unable to talk about biological sex, sexual orientation or even name the reality of these in relation to the small number of perpetrators of harassment and sexual and other violence against women and girls... don’t be fooled by the deep-rooted homophobia which lies at the heart of what these men are trying to do, which is to make it unacceptable for women to be able to set their own intimate and sexual boundaries. There is of course nothing new with heterosexual males trying to do this, the difference is this is being done under the flag of social progressivism and civil rights."
Gender Dysphoria in Children - "There have been 12 studies in all that followed up transgender kids to see how they felt in adulthood, and all 12 came to the same conclusion... This issue raises ethical concerns about treating children who are too young to legally consent. Similar concerns have been raised about neonatal circumcision, ear piercing, and refusal of lifesaving treatments for children whose parents have religious objections. There is another dysphoria, body integrity dysphoria, where people experience a mismatch between their body image and their anatomy, often resulting in a strong desire to have a limb amputated. Would it be ethical to amputate a 10-year-old’s leg because he doesn’t want it anymore? Would it be ethical to amputate his penis because he doesn’t want it anymore? Or a girl’s breasts because she doesn’t want them anymore? At what age should we give in to children’s wishes rather than deciding for them that what they want is not in their best interests?... some surgeons refuse to do vasectomies on men of any age who have never had a child, because many of them will change their minds, regret the surgery, and ask for a reversal procedure that may not be successful. This is where the principle of patient autonomy comes into conflict with the principle of non-maleficence (do no harm)"
I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse. - "if genes and/or prenatal hormones contributed significantly to transgenderism, we should expect both twins to identify as transgender close to 100 percent of the time.Skin color, for example, is determined by genes alone. Therefore, identical twins have the same skin color 100 percent of the time.But in the largest study of twin transgender adults, published by Dr. Milton Diamond in 2013, only 28 percent of the identical twins both identified as transgender... [For hormone blockers] there is some evidence for decreased bone mineralization, meaning an increased risk of bone fractures as young adults, potential increased risk of obesity and testicular cancer in boys, and an unknown impact upon psychological and cognitive development... the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology reported brain abnormalities in the area of memory and executive functioning among adult women who received blockers for gynecologic reasons. Similarly, many studies of men treated for prostate cancer with blockers also suggest the possibility of significant cognitive decline... The only study to date to have followed pre-pubertal children who were socially affirmed and placed on blockers at a young age found that 100 percent of them claimed a transgender identity and chose cross-sex hormones.This suggests that the medical protocol itself may lead children to identify as transgender. There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children impersonate the opposite sex both biologically and socially. This is far from benign, since taking puberty blockers at age 12 or younger, followed by cross-sex hormones, sterilizes a child.
From studies of adults we know that the risks of cross-sex hormones include, but are not limited to, cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes, and cancers."
Teens are becoming transgender because it’s trendy, expert says - "Psychiatrist Stephen Stathis, who runs the gender clinic at Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital and is responsible for diagnosing gender dysphoria, reports that “many” youth are “trying out being transgender” in order to stand out.Apparently, declaring oneself “transgender” is trendy. “One said to me, ‘Doctor Steve ... I want to be transgender, it’s the new black,’” Stathis related.Dr. Stathis also says many girls want to be transgender as a result of sexual abuse. “The girls say, ‘If only I had been a male, I wouldn’t have been abused,’” Stathis explained."
Connecticut Family Claims Student Was Expelled From Prep School For Having 'Politically Incorrect Views': Lawyer - "One of the incidents allegedly occurred during a class discussion on William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a play where the lead character Viola cross-dresses as a male. Though most of the class agreed that the playwright promoted transgender individuals in the text, Mancini disagreed, arguing that the author likely didn’t intend to make such a progressive statement during the period it was written (1601-1602). Mancini’s views drew scorn from several students and prompted the teacher to ask him to explain himself, according to the complaint.
Informed literary analysis is Conservative and transphobic
Paul McHugh: Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution - WSJ - "When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned. We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs. It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population... "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder."
On the uselessness of sex change/gender reassignment/gender affirmation surgery/operations
Girl — why a film about a transgender ballerina has sparked controversy | Financial Times - "some observers say it falls back on tired tropes about transgender people. “Dhont and his team like to say that they made a modern film, but Girl is very formulaic,” says Héloïse Guimin-Fati, a Liège-based researcher and co-head of Belgium’s Observatoire des Transidentités. Guimin-Fati points out similarities between Dhont’s work and, among others, Tom Hooper’s 2015 drama The Danish Girl, which starred Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the earliest recipients of sex reassignment surgery. “It’s always the same framework: a transgender character’s hatred of their body, especially their genital parts. It’s not empathy we’re made to feel, but pity.”... By arguing that a work of fiction should accurately represent an entire community’s experiences, however, activists are assigning a responsibility to artists that the latter may not be willing to embrace"
The perils of 'representation' - you get slammed by activists anyway. So you might as well not bother
'I have the right to tell this story': Lukas Dhont defends his trans film Girl - "LGBTQ activists also criticised Dhont for fixating on the physical transformation of the central character Lara, who struggles with her body dysphoria and painfully binds her genitals. Then, in December, the trans critic Oliver Whitney wrote a furious essay in the Hollywood Reporter, describing as “sadistic” and “trauma porn” a scene at the end of the film depicting self-harm. Whitney branded Girl “the most dangerous movie about a trans character in years”... When Girl came under fire, Monsecour, who dropped classical ballet and is now a modern dancer in Germany, stepped forward to defend – and in a sense claim – the film. Describing it as “my truth”, she has hit out at critics for attempting to silence her and her trans identity. “My story is not a fantasy of the cis director. Lara’s story is my story.”... I ask whether, with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to have included Monsecour on the credits? He pulls a face. “For me, of course it would have been easier. Because people would have gone, ‘Oh, a trans woman was here, so now it’s valid.’” But he doesn’t buy the argument that only trans film-makers can make trans films. “Because then you’re saying that you can only speak about that very specific identity that you are.”... Monsecour was involved in the casting process and gave her blessing to Polster. Her main requirement was actually finding an actor who could dance: “She didn’t mind if the actor wasn’t trans. She wanted someone who would respect her in an elegant way.” Dhont describes the casting as genderless: he auditioned 5oo young people, including trans girls. He has previously said that psychologists at Ghent University Hospital’s Centre for Sexology and Gender (where Monsecour had been a patient) advised against casting a trans girl at a vulnerable point in her transition."
It's dangerous to tell the real story of a person from the 'minority' you are trying to 'represent' - because it doesn't match activist fantasies
Twitter's Trans-Activist Decree - "One tweet read, simply, “Men aren’t women,” and the other asked “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” That last question is one I’ve asked countless times, including in public speeches, and I have yet to get a persuasive answer. I ask these questions not to spread hate—because I do not hate trans-identified individuals—but rather to make sense of arguments made by activists within that community. Instead of answering such questions, however, these same activists insist that the act of simply asking them is evidence of hatred.The statement that “Men aren’t women” would have been seen as banal—indeed, tautological—just a few years ago. Today, it’s considered heresy—akin to terrorist speech that seeks to “deny the humanity” of trans-identified people who very much wish they could change sex, but cannot. These heretics are smeared as “TERF”—a pejorative term that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist—and blacklisted. On many Twitter threads, the term is more or less synonymous with “Nazi.”... Tyler Coates, an editor at the apparently respectable Esquire magazine, tweeted out “FUCK TERFs!” and promptly got retweeted more than a thousand times. In many progressive corners of academic and online life, it now is taken as cant that anyone who rejects transgender ideology—which is based on the theory that a mystical “gender identity” exists within us, akin to a soul—may be targeted with the most juvenile and vicious attacks. “Punch TERFs and Nazis” has become a common Twitter tagline, as is the demand that “TERFs” be “sent to the gulag.”... The reason why engagement with the most militant trans activists is fruitless, and yields only a slew of empty mantras and false stereotypes, is that one cannot argue with religious faith. At the core of transgender ideology is the idea that the old mind/body problem that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries has been definitively solved by gender-studies specialists—and that a female mind can exist within a male body and vice versa. Moreover, we are informed that these mystical phenomena are invisible in all respects, except to the extent that they are experienced from within—which means the only reliable indicator of supposed bona fide transgenderism is the self-declaration of trans-identified individuals (many of whom seem to have made these stunning discoveries as part of a sudden social trend)... a lesbian named Taelor Furry was beat up... “Tara Wolf” was convicted of assault after beating 60-year-old Maria MacLauchlan... At Dyke Marches, lesbians who express reservations about making themselves sexually available to suitors who just happen to have penises are now commonly screamed at. In San Francisco, which one might assume to be a hot spot for lesbian pride, a group of women carrying signs that read, “Proud to be lesbian,” “Lesbian Visibility,” and “Lesbian not queer” were harassed and bullied... “I’ve been to many marches, including dangerous ones, but this was the most vicious episode I have ever experienced, ever in my life.”... the female-themed website SheKnows pulled all ads from my site... Feminist Current... because of two articles‚ one challenging the violent, misogynist threats that trans activists aim at women and lesbians, and another questioning the smear tactics that trans activists use to shut down critical questions about the transitioning of children and transgender ideology more broadly... Unlike Hailey Heartless, “Western Canada’s Only Transsexual BBW [Big Beautiful Woman] Goddess,” I don’t have any friends working at Twitter... Friends sometimes tell me that I shouldn’t worry too much, because Twitter “isn’t real life.”... Canada’s Greystone Books, with which I’d been working on a manuscript for almost three years, told me they were dropping my book
I’m a pediatrician. Here’s what I did when a little boy told me he was a girl - "If I walk into my doctor’s office today and say, “Hi, I’m Margaret Thatcher,” my physician will say I am delusional and give me an anti-psychotic. Yet, if instead, I walked in and said, “I’m a man,” he would say, “Congratulations, you’re transgender.”If I were to say, “Doc, I am suicidal because I’m an amputee trapped in a normal body, please cut off my leg,” I will be diagnosed with body identity integrity disorder. But if I walk into that doctor’s office and say, “I am a man, sign me up for a double mastectomy,” my physician will. See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender... Sometimes mental illness of a parent or abuse of the child are factors, but more commonly, the child has misperceived family dynamics and internalized a false belief.In the middle of one session, Andy put down the toy truck, held onto a Barbie, and said, “Mommy and Daddy, you don’t love me when I’m a boy.” When Andy was 3, his sister with special needs was born, and required significantly more of his parents’ attention. Andy misperceived this as “Mommy and Daddy love girls. If I want them to love me, I have to be a girl.” With family therapy Andy got better.Today, Andy’s parents would be told, “This is who Andy really is. You must ensure that everyone treats him as a girl, or else he will commit suicide.”As Andy approaches puberty, the experts would put him on puberty blockers so he can continue to impersonate a girl.It doesn’t matter that we’ve never tested puberty blockers in biologically normal children. It doesn’t matter that when blockers are used to treat prostate cancer in men, and gynecological problems in women, they cause problems with memory... we chemically castrate gender-confused children with puberty blockers. Then we permanently sterilize many of them by adding cross-sex hormones, which also put them at risk for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, and even the very emotional problems that the gender experts claim to be treating.
P.S. If a girl who insists she is male has been on testosterone daily for one year, she is cleared to get a bilateral mastectomy at age 16. Mind you, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out with a report that urges pediatricians to caution teenagers about getting tattoos because they are essentially permanent and can cause scarring. But this same AAP is 110 percent in support of 16-year-old girls getting a double mastectomy, even without parental consent, so long as the girl insists that she is a man, and has been taking testosterone daily for one year."
Transgender Navy SEAL calls 'bulls---' on Trump admin saying transgender troops aren't as lethal or effective
Maybe suicidal soldiers are even more effective
Girl Dick, the Cotton Ceiling and the Cultural War on Lesbians, Girls and Women - "You are about to be astonished at the appropriation of the lives, fears and culture of women by today’s most fashionable form of homophobia. This is itself an attack on the sexual and bodily autonomy of all women and especially lesbians, and is not just rubber-stamped by the organizations who are supposed to defend the rights of lesbians and gay men, it is positively celebrated so much that the point behind these organizations is no longer the interests of lesbians and gay men. The point is now the bank account... What Serano does is reframe his difficulty in finding a female homosexual to have sex with him as symptomatic of systematic, structural oppression. Here, he, the biological male in search of a sexual relationship with a homosexual, biological female, is bizarrely reframed as the victim... we are finding ourselves in a dystopian world where we are unable to talk about biological sex, sexual orientation or even name the reality of these in relation to the small number of perpetrators of harassment and sexual and other violence against women and girls... don’t be fooled by the deep-rooted homophobia which lies at the heart of what these men are trying to do, which is to make it unacceptable for women to be able to set their own intimate and sexual boundaries. There is of course nothing new with heterosexual males trying to do this, the difference is this is being done under the flag of social progressivism and civil rights."
Gender Dysphoria in Children - "There have been 12 studies in all that followed up transgender kids to see how they felt in adulthood, and all 12 came to the same conclusion... This issue raises ethical concerns about treating children who are too young to legally consent. Similar concerns have been raised about neonatal circumcision, ear piercing, and refusal of lifesaving treatments for children whose parents have religious objections. There is another dysphoria, body integrity dysphoria, where people experience a mismatch between their body image and their anatomy, often resulting in a strong desire to have a limb amputated. Would it be ethical to amputate a 10-year-old’s leg because he doesn’t want it anymore? Would it be ethical to amputate his penis because he doesn’t want it anymore? Or a girl’s breasts because she doesn’t want them anymore? At what age should we give in to children’s wishes rather than deciding for them that what they want is not in their best interests?... some surgeons refuse to do vasectomies on men of any age who have never had a child, because many of them will change their minds, regret the surgery, and ask for a reversal procedure that may not be successful. This is where the principle of patient autonomy comes into conflict with the principle of non-maleficence (do no harm)"
I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse. - "if genes and/or prenatal hormones contributed significantly to transgenderism, we should expect both twins to identify as transgender close to 100 percent of the time.Skin color, for example, is determined by genes alone. Therefore, identical twins have the same skin color 100 percent of the time.But in the largest study of twin transgender adults, published by Dr. Milton Diamond in 2013, only 28 percent of the identical twins both identified as transgender... [For hormone blockers] there is some evidence for decreased bone mineralization, meaning an increased risk of bone fractures as young adults, potential increased risk of obesity and testicular cancer in boys, and an unknown impact upon psychological and cognitive development... the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology reported brain abnormalities in the area of memory and executive functioning among adult women who received blockers for gynecologic reasons. Similarly, many studies of men treated for prostate cancer with blockers also suggest the possibility of significant cognitive decline... The only study to date to have followed pre-pubertal children who were socially affirmed and placed on blockers at a young age found that 100 percent of them claimed a transgender identity and chose cross-sex hormones.This suggests that the medical protocol itself may lead children to identify as transgender. There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children impersonate the opposite sex both biologically and socially. This is far from benign, since taking puberty blockers at age 12 or younger, followed by cross-sex hormones, sterilizes a child.
From studies of adults we know that the risks of cross-sex hormones include, but are not limited to, cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes, and cancers."
Teens are becoming transgender because it’s trendy, expert says - "Psychiatrist Stephen Stathis, who runs the gender clinic at Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital and is responsible for diagnosing gender dysphoria, reports that “many” youth are “trying out being transgender” in order to stand out.Apparently, declaring oneself “transgender” is trendy. “One said to me, ‘Doctor Steve ... I want to be transgender, it’s the new black,’” Stathis related.Dr. Stathis also says many girls want to be transgender as a result of sexual abuse. “The girls say, ‘If only I had been a male, I wouldn’t have been abused,’” Stathis explained."
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