Links - 25th May 2019 (Trans Mania)

Transgenderism Is Propaganda Designed To Humiliate And Compel Submission - "In the collection of rhetorician Richard Weaver’s essays entitled In Defense of Tradition, Weaver describes the different forms which propaganda can take and their intended effects. Type 1 Propaganda is the “Big Lie” of the Soviet Union or Orwell’s 1984. The nature of the “Big Lie” is that the lie should be so big and so obvious that no sane person could believe it."

The Transgender War on Women - WSJ - "House Democrats introduced a bill this month that would outlaw safe spaces for women. The Equality Act—so called because, to put it charitably, Democrats excel at branding—purports merely to extend protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to people who are gay and transgender. Insofar as it would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants and employers from firing employees based on sexual orientation, it is no doubt long overdue.But the bill goes further, proposing to prohibit discrimination based on “gender identity.” That claim directly competes with the rights of women and girls. Any biological males who self-identify as females would, under the Equality Act, be legally entitled to enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms and protective facilities such as battered-women’s shelters. This would put women and girls at immediate physical risk.Because courts typically interpret Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 according to the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, amending the latter would alter the understanding of the former. Biological boys who identify as girls would gain an instant entitlement to compete on girls’ teams in all 50 states. No more democratic discussion of accommodation, competing interest, sacrifice and fairness. No more debate about whether we should really allow girls’ scholarships and trophies to go to male athletes who were unable to excel on the boys’ teams. No more discussion about whether it’s right to allow, as we have, biological men to pick off championships in women’s and girls’ powerlifting, cycling, wrestling and running. These emergent public discussions would be locked away in a vault of civil rights... As Kara Dansky, media director of the Women’s Liberation Front, put it to me, the Equality Act would eliminate “women and girls as a coherent legal category worthy of civil-rights protection.” It would do so by redefining the category of “women” to include “women and those who say they are women”—which means women and people who aren’t women at all. Activists typically counter this argument with the claim that men wouldn’t pose as men-who-believe-they-are-women unless they sincerely believed it. There are too many taboos, and the transgender life is too hard for anyone to want to fake it, they claim. But under the Equality Act, pretending to be transgender would sometimes be rational.It doesn’t strain the human imagination to picture a male convict renaming himself “Sheila” and heading for the women’s prison. Nor would it surprise anyone if rapists began to “identify” as women—no physical alteration is required to change your gender identity—to gain free access to women’s showers. What pedophile wouldn’t want open access to girls’ bathrooms? And many a biological man with no place to sleep would prefer the quieter, gentler confines of a shelter for battered women to the dodgy enclosure of one for homeless men."

Maya McKinney Attorneys Tell Court to Respect Client's Pronouns - "The second suspect in a Tuesday shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado is a 16-year-old transgender boy who goes by the name Alec McKinney... lawyers for McKinney – who is a biological female legally named Maya – asked that their client’s preferred pronouns be respected and that McKinney be referred to as “he.”Disability justice advocate Lydia X.Z. Brown echoed the McKinney legal team’s sentiments on Twitter Thursday, urging journalists not to “deadname” the suspect.“Dear every reporter writing about the #STEMShooting #ColoradoShooting: There is zero reason to publish a trans person’s deadname. Especially a minor’s deadname,” Brown said. “This dude is a murderous asshole. Neither being trans nor having psych disabilities made him an asshole.”... Colorado officials declined to use McKinney’s preferred pronouns... Erickson does not have a criminal record. However, the young man has a well-documented record of anti-conservative activism on social media.Erickson, a registered Democrat who expressed support for LGBT rights, said on Facebook in 2014 that he hated Christians for their beliefs about homosexuality.“You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays, yet in the bible, it says in Deuteronomy 17:12-13, if someone doesn’t do what their priest tells them to do, they are supposed to die. It has plenty of crazy stuff like that. But all they get out of it is ‘ewwwwww gays,’” he said.In 2015, Erickson shared a post from the left-wing Occupy Democrats Facebook page praising then-President Barack Obama. In 2016, he shared a video of NBC talk show host Seth Meyers delivering one of his many monologues criticizing President Donald Trump."
Strangely enough, "assholes" who happen to be from "majority" groups are supposedly assholes because of their group membership
If you use someone's non-legal name in a legal setting, is the legal action still valid?

(Occupy Hypocrisy - Posts - "Isn't it crazy how a kid in a MAGA hat smirking at an old indian dude was a much bigger story than an Obama supporter and a transguy shooting up a school in Colorado?"

Teacher Decides 2nd Grader Is Trans Because He Uses Staff Bathroom - "the teacher at Nellie Muir Elementary School became concerned that the 8 year old was using the staff restroom. Assuming he must secretly identify as female, she allegedly developed a lesson plan “in an effort to promote [him] becoming transgender.” In reality, the boy and his parents had arranged for him to use the staff restroom because he had a digestion-related medical condition. Yet on at least three occasions, the teacher kept the boy during recess and showed him videos and books with the message that “it is acceptable to become transgender,” the lawsuit said. Among other materials, she allegedly required him to watch episodes of the reality TV show “I Am Jazz” and read the “I Am Jazz” children’s book, both of which star transgender teenager Jazz Jennings.At the end of the school week, the teacher allegedly told the boy to take the books home and share them with his family. Only then did his parents learn about the lessons... In a disciplinary letter to the teacher, administrators said evidence was found that she had removed the student from regular activities and shared potentially controversial materials with him without informing his parents, which it recommended she do. According to the parents, the school was dismissive of their concerns, saying: “If this happened in Portland, it would not be a big deal.” The lawsuit said that the teacher’s actions caused lasting damage to the boy. He began avoiding feminine toys and games for fear of turning into a girl and became more depressed, aggressive and isolated, according the lawsuit, which added that he had started counseling."
Is transgender indoctrination a myth?

Twitter Blocked Ray Blanchard, a Ph.D. Psychologist Who Helped Write the DSM V Rules on Gender Dysphoria, for ‘Hateful Conduct’ in Expressing His Clinical Views on Transgender Identity - "[He] was blocked on Twitter for expressing his opinion informed by clinical experience. His well-reasoned position was flagged for "hateful conduct."... Ray Blanchard — the Ph.D. psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto who served on the working work for gender dysphoria (the persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite your biological sex) for the DSM V, the gold standard of definitions helping psychologists diagnose disorders for patients — tweeted out his clinically-informed opinion on transgender identity.He still affirmed the controversial idea that sex-change surgery is the "best treatment" for "carefully screened, adult patients, whose gender dysphoria has proven resistant to other forms of treatment," but he opposed "treating" children who may change their minds. (Even this position is debatable, as people who have undergone sex-change surgery after persistent gender dysphoria have later rejected their transgender identity and lamented the mutilation of their bodies.)... Blanchard explained his clinically-informed opinion that "sex change surgery should not be considered for any patient until that patient has reached the age of 21 years and has lived for at least two years in the desired gender role." This delay is controversial, as many transgender activists encourage hormonal and surgical treatments for minors, even children. Some researchers have received government grants to try such treatments on 8-year-old children, and a British transgender activist took her 15-year-old son to Thailand to get him castrated. When a Catholic woman complained about this child abuse on Twitter, U.K. police investigated her for abuse... Although the Ph.D. psychologist supported sex-change surgery for 21-year-old adults whose gender dysphoria has persisted against other forms of treatment, he acknowledged that even post-operative transgender individuals are still biologically male or female beneath the surgical changes. No matter how good transgender surgery gets, a biological male still has X and Y chromosomes in virtually every cell of his body and a biological female still has two X chromosomes. No surgery or identity can alter this... "The sex of a postoperative transsexual should be analogous to a legal fiction," he tweeted. "This legal fiction would apply to some things (e.g., sex designation on a driver’s license) but not to others (entering a sports competition as one’s adopted sex)."... transgender activists reported his tweets to Twitter, and the company chose to ban him. Helen Joyce, an editor at The Economist, called this decision "unreal."... "He is a world expert in the field. Twitter has just suspended his account for a thread setting out his findings from A lifetime of research. Unreal."... Jesse Singal, contributing writer at New York magazine, expressed his fear that "as a journalist who often writes about science," he worries that he will not be able to continue using Twitter's platform."Gender dysphoria is in the DSM-5. Despite endless rumor-mongering and misinformation to the contrary, it *is* considered a mental disorder... it's beyond insane to suspend someone for expressing an opinion which lines up with the DSM"... " this is part of a larger problem of a complete meltdown, in elite progressive spaces, of the ability to accurately convey science on stories having to do with social justice. Journalism, academia, social media -- same story everywhere. It's a slow-motion disaster"... "This is how you get the most important outlet in the world running an extremely misleading column on testosterone, the ACLU arguing women can compete w/and beat men in competitive sports. etc. We're approaching a Soviet/fundamentalist/take your pick level of science denialism""
Science is transphobic!

Twitter Suspends a Woman Reporting on Caroline Farrow Facing Harassment for Supporting Biological Sex Over Transgender Identity. Kaeley Triller Harms Says Trans Activism Is a ’New Patriarchy' - "Twitter banned the co-founder of a women's coalition dedicated to defending biological sex over gender identity. Her crime? Tweeting about a biological man harassing a Catholic mother whose family has been targeted because she disagrees with transgender identity."I’m in Twitter jail for calling Caroline Farrow’s male stalker a man," Kaeley Triller Harms, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle Women's Coalition, posted on Facebook... "It’s 2019, and people are supposed to be listening to women, not allowing entitled bully men to silence us," Harms added bitterly. "The new patriarchy wears a dress and pronoun buttons.""

Derogatory Language in Philosophy Journal Risks Increased Hostility and Diminished Discussion (guest post) (Update: Response from Editors) - "We write to register in public a complaint with a recent issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (PPR). Two papers in this issue, the first by Rachel McKinnon and the second by Jason Stanley, used the term ‘TERF’, which is at worst a slur and at best derogatory. We are extremely concerned about the normalization of this term in academic philosophy, and its effect in reinforcing a hostile climate for debate on an issue of key importance to women. Furthermore, one of the papers also included a false empirical claim which misrepresents an ongoing disagreement between trans activists and gender critical and radical feminists... the term “TERF” likely doesn’t refer to any existing person, but rather caricatures a wide range of feminist positions and gives opponents an easy way to pigeonhole and dismiss them... Apparently, under the present conditions, holding any of the following beliefs is more than enough to attract the label ‘TERF’: believing that humans are sexually dimorphic; that it is not evident that “self-identification” is a sufficient basis for determining that someone is a woman; and that we should be able to discuss changes to law and social practice which impact women’s sex-based protections. Whether or not it’s a slur, it is undeniable that”‘TERF” is a term used to harass, shame, dismiss, and denigrate women’s ideas and opinions. The fact that PPR has printed two papers that both deploy, rather than merely discuss, this term is unacceptable... Our second main concern is with a dubious empirical claim made in McKinnon’s paper. On p. 485, in the context of arguing that women’s concerns about sex-segregated space are “unfounded’ and “based only a flawed ideology,” she asserts that “there’s never been a verified reported instance of a trans women [sic] sexually assaulting a cis woman in such spaces”. (Indeed, she insists that the reverse is true, without providing any sources.)... A recent freedom of information request in the UK revealed 48% (60/125) of the known-trans population in UK jails to be sex offenders... only 3% of the female population in UK jails are sex offenders... 1/3 women in prison have been sexually abused, usually by males, making it especially traumatic to share space with offenders against women"