Tag: identity politics

XX need not apply

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A very happy Day of the Oppressive Patriarchy to all non-birthing persons who provide a traditional XY chromosome role model to immature humans within a nuclear family scenario.

By traditional, I mean supported by a hundred thousand years of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.

Everybody else, take your large, stationary, biologically expensive gametes to Mother’s Day, please. It’s where delicious apple pie lives.

On father’s day we honor beef and whiskey. I just got a pot roast started, while drinking whiskey.

Now all I have to do is finish cleaning the bathrooms and arrange the Heath bars on a dessert platter. Difference from Mother’s Day? Then I cooked steak.

Tedious cant

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People Are Discovering Their Spouses’ Work Personas and It’s Hilarious

I worked from home for several years at the turn of the 2000s, and later worked from home for several years with my wife, 8 feet away, for a joint client. Neither of us had revelations like those described in the link. At least that we spoke of. ;)

It does seem that “Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes,” and “Will it play in Peoria?,” are passé. And no one seems to be thinking of new paradigms outside the box in order to avoid drinking the Koolaid while eating their own dog food.

I only ever met a few people for whom this sort of cant was common. I recognize some of it, but there are fresh cliches (?). I’m happy not to see some I remember from earlier days.

For example, in the 70s there was, “I hear you,” after which I always thought, “But you’re not listening.” This was often uttered by someone who at least once said, “Let me be honest…” I never understood why they thought I was trying to stop them.

“Literally,” remains popular among those who do not know what it means. “Have ran,” seemed to have had a resurgence in the oughts. “New paradigm,” had a run… excuse me, a “ran,” in the 80s.

My current disfavorite is prefacing your opinion with your persona – “Speaking as an x (y, z).” In other words, “Hear me! I am the spokesbeing for all non-binary; women; of color.”

“I hear you,” is now untenable, since you’d have no idea which victims to invoke, and woe betide you if you guessed wrong. “I hear you as a non-binary woman,” would be racist. And confusing. Am I listening as a non-binary woman, or am I imputing that to your speech? And, since I’m a pale, heterosexual male, would even attempting to listen as a woman, much less a non-binary woman, be persona appropriation? Using “the voice” of the “oppressed” has got a lot of authors in trouble.

The implication of that introductory persona clause is that every member of the specified cadre agrees with whatever BS is to follow. It’s intended to shut anybody else up – under the threat of some appellation with the suffix -phobic. Actual group members who disagree are “self-haters.” They are not “woke,” a condition the Marxists used to call “false consciousness.” For today’s SJWs that’s too hard to spell.

You may think that last one isn’t really business related, but I’m sure it’s regularly uttered in Silicon Valley boardrooms, and internal Google chats.

Update 4:01PM
Added some thoughts and a bit of punctuation.

A friend pointed out the “reaching out” abomination. Wish I’d thought of it earlier. It means this post will need a follow up.

Where is George Carlin when you really, really need him?

All whimsy were the LGBTQI2S

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Faced With Gender Propaganda at the Hockey Rink, One Coach Says No

After having assisted on his son’s hockey team for three years, the father has been removed from all positions because he questioned the necessity of a mandatory gender identity training course imposed by Hockey Eastern Ontario (formerly the Ottawa District Hockey Association) following a 2017 legal settlement involving a transgender hockey player…

In part because of past abuse scandals, the coaching of children in hockey (as in most other sports) is now regulated by government and oversight bodies…

And there are still those who insist that Jordan Peterson’s warnings about legal consequences from the whimsical Canadian pronoun law were overwrought.

Emphasis mine:

[A]mid a parade of variously configured pink and blue male/female stick-people, the concept of “polygender” is introduced to define “people who identify as multiple genders simultaneously and can be several genders all at once. Or they may alternate between their varying gender identities depending on the day or the week.” Coaches also get a slide on “genderqueer” individuals, who exist in an undefined extra-dimensional gender space that allows them to “reject gender altogether”—though this is not to be confused with “agender” (it gets its own slide), a label that applies to those who are merely “genderless.” Later in the presentation, there are hockey-themed quizzes (“Drag and drop each puck in to the corresponding net”) to test coaches’ understanding of these rarified terms.

It should have had pictures of genitalia, then you could drag and drop any picture onto any other picture and you’d be correct. Of course, then there would only be two different pictures no matter how many times they were repeated.

In response to Doe’s question about “polygender” kids who, Egale claims, can switch genders on a daily basis, for instance, Isen replied: “It is not outside the realm of possibility that the personal choice of what dressing room may feel the most comfortable and safest for any gender diverse person may shift over time as they navigate their own path toward affirming their identity while also navigating their own vulnerability to the possibility of transphobic harassment or bullying in those spaces.”

Navigating the path safely means government enforced fealty to a group of narcissistic activists who occupy the space at the very edges of the Bell curve of human sexuality.

We can be civil, nothing more is required, without having to agree with their opinion. Or being forced to use their pronouns, share bathrooms with them, or date them.

This is not about the hurt feelings of a tiny minority. It rests on the contention that there’s no biological difference between males and females. THAT Is a non-trivial attack on the West’s foundational concepts:

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.””

― Theodore Dalrymple

The re-education camps come to hockey in Canada via academic Newspeak; “integrative anti-oppression education”.

Rainbows everywhen

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87983-poppyIf Ye Break Faith With Us…
-Mark Steyn on 11/11/2001

[T]hough we can scarce grasp what they symbolize, this year the poppies are hard to find. Three Canadian provinces had sold out by last Monday, and by the time you read this the rest of the Royal Canadian Legion’s entire stock of 14.8 million will likely be gone.

Canada today…
Former Conservative party candidate apologizes for viral rainbow poppy tweet

The apology was mistaken:

Rather than having been suspended for rejecting the poppy during choir practice as Bird’s initial tweet read, Natalie outlined that she had been suspended for “rejecting the idea” of the rainbow poppy…

It’s worse that Natalie was suspended for “rejecting the idea.” The idea is the problem.

I do know why Cyara Bird apologized: Unless you enthusiastically support the appropriation of Remembrance Day at SJW whim, and embrace compelled speech, YOU are a bigot.

The LGBT+ folks already have a plethora of their own days, weeks, and months – with parades and celebrations.

Every other occasion for reflection or pride does not require fealty to a group of aggrieved, narcissistic activists who occupy the space at the very edges of the Bell curve of human sexuality.

76 private showers led the big charade

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Harvard says masculinity and testosterone are not ‘connected’

“Harvard University Press International is promoting one of its new books, co-authored by Brooklyn College cultural anthropologist Katrina Karkazis. She’s also a senior research fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University.

The book “debunks the commonly held idea that testosterone and masculinity are connected,” according to the academic press.”

Someone should explain that to the people treating female to male trans individuals with testosterone, and the sports authorities who make low testosterone levels a requirement for male to female trans cheaters. It would also help if the permanent developmental effects of in utero exposure to testosterone was explained.

Such explanation might have saved this school district the money spent on this incoherent gesture.

School district to spend $2.4M on gender neutral locker rooms at Pennsylvania high school

“The changes will only impact the high school and will feature 76 private showers and 48 private changing areas.”

If there’s no difference beyond pronouns between transgendered persons and non-transgendered persons, and no biological difference between males and females, one wonders why you’d have to have private showers or changing areas. It’s almost as if they’re acknowledging the possibility of prurience in teenagers.

Prurience, however, is far from the ‘mind’ of facial recognition software.

Facial recognition AI can’t identify trans and non-binary people

“A recent study by computer-science researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that major AI-based facial analysis tools—including Amazon’s Rekognition, IBM’s Watson, Microsoft’s Azure, and Clarifai—habitually misidentified non-cisgender people.”

I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. They won’t need separate showers.

The “Equality Act”

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In May, 236 Democrats and 8 Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, updating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Title II and Title VII.

Among other consequences, should this Bill ever pass the Senate and somehow survive a veto, it’s likely to require females who practice Brazilian Bikini waxing (removal of all pubic hair from the pelvic region, vulva, labia, perineum, and anus) to apply their skills to persons possessing a scrotum and a penis. I.e., trans-women. And, for that matter, cis-males.

See Consequences: logically absurd conclusions where it is noted that the British Columbia Human Rights Commission is already taking similar demands seriously.

As to other consequences, it seems to me that if this had been law a few years ago Dr. Larry Nassar could have avoided a 175 year prison sentence for sexually assaulting hundreds of young female gymnasts simply by identifying as a ‘woman.’

Would have saved Michigan State University half a billion dollars, too.

Faire disparaître la différence

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The Cheshire Cat meets George Orwell.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
– George Orwell, 1984

“Diversity” has become a catch phrase used to whip anyone having the temerity to suggest fundamental differences exist between/among human beings. The contention is, “All individuals are the same, except when subverted by socio-cultural-political oppression. Any difference in outcome is ipso facto evidence of racism, sexism, xenophobia, or some other pervasive bias – conscious or unconscious.” Diversity is taken to mean, “If we’re not all living the same life, it’s because of a conspiracy.”

Call it “Damore Derangement Syndrome,” after the engineer fired by Google for suggesting the possibility that different people might make diverse choices. He isn’t alone. Psychology Today explains the science. Highly recommended:

The Truth About Sex Differences

Fact: As a percentage of enrollment, there are more female science majors in Burma, Oman, and Morocco than in the countries of Scandinavia.

Fact: American women are 15 percent less likely to reach a managerial position in the workplace than are men—but in Sweden women are 48 percent less likely, in Norway 52 percent, in Finland 56 percent, and in Denmark 63 percent.

Whatever the differences in men’s and women’s psyches—empathy, jealousy, cognitive abilities, mate preferences—many theories in psychology assume that they result primarily from direct gender socialization by parents, media, and societal institutions. As a result, it is often expected that sex differences will be smaller in cultures with higher levels of gender-related egalitarianism, as in Scandinavia, where socialization and roles are more balanced between men and women and sociopolitical gender equity prevails.

Surprisingly, several large cross-cultural studies have found this is not at all the case. Whether scientists measure Big Five personality traits, such as neuroticism; Dark Triad traits, such as psychopathy; or self-esteem, subjective well-being, or depression, empirical evidence shows that most sex differences are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles—as in Scandinavia…

Culture matters in explaining psychological sex differences, but not in the way most people think. It’s not harsher gender socialization by parents and media, stringent societal gender roles, or institutional sociopolitical forces that widen the differences between men and women in the most progressive nations in the world. When you treat everyone the same, as in the Nordic countries, it’s only genetic predispositions that produce the most observable individual differences. Extremes of sexual freedom beget larger psychological sex differences. Or as explained by Israeli psychologists Shalom Schwartz and Tammy Rubel-Lifshitz, it may be that having fewer gendered restrictions in a culture allows “both sexes to pursue more freely the values they inherently care about more.”

People pushing homogeneous “Diversity,” while complaining about “cultural appropriation,” don’t grasp the definition of “oxymoron.” Shouldn’t total cross-cultural appropriation be their goal? Shouldn’t we all aspire to be NPCs?

Not if more choice means more actual diversity.