tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62743231919932035852024-03-28T20:29:36.527-07:00Disruptive DissertationWide-ranging topics about the human condition today.Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.comBlogger855125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-67596124598922286532024-03-18T15:53:00.000-07:002024-03-18T15:53:48.846-07:00Donald Trump can't pay his bond<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wzb9z71W3Lw?si=dN2XBaNeup0vmev_" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<p>Related articles:<br>
<a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/investigations-of-donald-trump-crimes-5888e07923dc" target="_blank">Four investigations that could finally bring down Donald Trump</a><br>
<a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/learn-about-investigations-of-trump-13951ea60124" target="_blank">Five Reports on Investigations of Donald Trump</a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGyFFF4z03Isp5G49ogm_SYIHBO9RrkhTsOo0jhG3ntAW7PddPasy1oEaQcKKq_eB9fMSQ9rHTwzBEOoU4O7_fL0kJwR2fwiIR_gdP4rFapcG6bXrVcZXZgMOShCqMjPVpfV_r89h6jPXc1d6pxq7hZaoASL-cwwmi3KcdIjYERNaKhvdkZ7FDRDVtifM/s1600/dramatic.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="old-style cartoon of guy sticking out palm of hand to say no" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGyFFF4z03Isp5G49ogm_SYIHBO9RrkhTsOo0jhG3ntAW7PddPasy1oEaQcKKq_eB9fMSQ9rHTwzBEOoU4O7_fL0kJwR2fwiIR_gdP4rFapcG6bXrVcZXZgMOShCqMjPVpfV_r89h6jPXc1d6pxq7hZaoASL-cwwmi3KcdIjYERNaKhvdkZ7FDRDVtifM/s1600/dramatic.jpg"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-75910755620572658882024-03-13T07:34:00.000-07:002024-03-13T07:34:28.066-07:00Climate change: Dire predictions
<h2>Yes, the patterns of living beings are changing, you're not mistaken</h2>
<p>"You're not crazy. <a href="https://wapo.st/3Tnni3M" target="_blank">Spring is getting earlier. Find out how it’s changed in your town.</a>": Readers told us how spring has changed where they live. Our map shows where leaves are sprouting sooner.
Harry Stevens, Climate Lab columnist, Washington Post, March 13, 2024</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLjzgVyUZROgtakv3A9A67D_Kf4MdXN973MEdHPdHkKFPcni8k8uWqngGfksVK-ZOsHwhYhTbyWLe5Xrv32RdaANuRcTfGevzcJCNuzFHVTIE5AVisuqrWaxq74M0PYBry2XSKwIB4DH8ImvDpPJ8Oe432IsShzUF8BSFwurrutHy-IwAWHZtQOIFAps/s1600/flower.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="small yellow flower growing from cracked earth" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLjzgVyUZROgtakv3A9A67D_Kf4MdXN973MEdHPdHkKFPcni8k8uWqngGfksVK-ZOsHwhYhTbyWLe5Xrv32RdaANuRcTfGevzcJCNuzFHVTIE5AVisuqrWaxq74M0PYBry2XSKwIB4DH8ImvDpPJ8Oe432IsShzUF8BSFwurrutHy-IwAWHZtQOIFAps/s1600/flower.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>Scientists have been sounding the alarm for years</h2>
<p>"<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/great-barrier-reef-climate-change_n_5ad7c741e4b0e4d0715cfede" target="_blank">The Great Barrier Reef Has Been Forever Changed By Global Warming, Scientists Warn</a>: Rising temperatures in 2016 caused a catastrophic die-off of almost 30 percent of the iconic reef. Dominique Mosbergen, CNN, Apr 18, 2018</p>
<h2>The worst-case scenarios are probably correct</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/global-warming-our-most-dire-predictions-future-planet-are-probably-right-741099" target="_blank">Global Warming: Our Most Dire Predictions for the Future of the Planet Are Probably Right</a>, Sydney Pereira, Newsweek, Dec 7, 2017</p>
<h2>Indeed, they are coming to pass</h2>
<p>"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/29/australia/australia-great-barrier-reef-bleaching-intl-hnk-scn/index.html" target="_blank">Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffers ‘extensive’ coral bleaching, as scientists fear seventh mass bleaching event</a>," Helen Regan, CNN, February 28, 2024</p>
<h2>We are still trying to communicate it</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/earth-day-eco-fiction-climate-change_us_5ad92237e4b0e4d0715ec872" target="_blank">Apocalypse How? What Novels Screw Up About Climate Change</a>: We're obsessed with grim environmental tales, but most of them miss the point. Casey Williams, HuffPost, Apr 21, 2018</p>
<p>As one example, Williams says that “journalist David Wallace-Wells’ 2017 article 'The Uninhabitable Earth' fuses literary conventions with hard reporting to conjure apocalyptic visions of a warming world.”</p>
<p>Read it:</p>
<p><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html" target="_blank">The Uninhabitable Earth</a>: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think. David Wallace-Wells. New York Intelligencer. July 2017.</p>
<p>Seen from space, the rainforest has decreasing forest:</p>
<blockquote><p>"In 2001, I flew my first flight into space aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. Roughly a decade later, I commanded that same space shuttle on its final flight. That trip was my fourth journey -- and at least for now, my final one -- from this planet into space.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>When I first looked down upon the Amazon rainforest in 2001, I saw vast areas of jungle and a wide and winding copper colored river that went on and on and on. A river that was impossible to miss and like no other on the planet. By 2011, however, the part that was most noticeable wasn't the river or the jungle but the large swaths of empty land.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>This year has been an unequivocal disaster for the future of the planet. President Donald Trump has managed to take a wrecking ball to years' worth of hard work and painstaking negotiations. If not undone, our retreat from the Paris Climate Accords and the EPA's Clean Power Plan alone mean our planet's temperature will rise at a greater rate and our citizen's health will degrade. Other changes in environmental regulations on drilling and auto and appliance efficiency will only make matters worse."</p>
<p> &,dash; <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/26/opinions/earth-from-space-climate-change-opinion-mark-kelly/index.html" target="_blank">Mark Kelly: This year has been an unequivocal disaster for the future of the planet</a>, Mark Kelly, CNN, December 27, 2017</p></blockquote>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-83808289784982837542024-03-12T10:59:00.000-07:002024-03-12T11:00:08.853-07:00Lorber: 'Everyone was doing gender' (1994)
<p>Judith Lorber, <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780300064971" target="_blank">Paradoxes of Gender</a></i>
Chapter: 'Night to His Day': The Social Construction of Gender. (<a href="https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~tadepall/dpd/Lorber_The%20Social%20Construction%20of%20Gender.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a>)
Yale University, 1994.</p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbNMN9yp-UyKHzDWa3ymPif_xHg_Peg3ApzG1JhinxknKUvXQX0nfU13oy1f3KzyozEVcDCgQy2YFjWsoZUacwuUe_RhNN1VmZZVj1e6T-Zo7xVv2NEQm-CWj3q9oXcERoYunZyo2ZFcp6UXXIAPTLHzOk22jukixROIyHcEfaU6jg9o7esWV51uZZl8/s1600/lorber13.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water. Gender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like thinking about whether the sun will come up. Gender is so pervasive that in our society we assume it is bred into our genes. Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone constantly 'doing gender' (West and Zimmerman 1987).
And everyone 'does gender' without thinking about it. Today, on the subway, I saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a stroller. Yesterday, on a bus, I saw a man with a tiny baby in a carrier on his chest. Seeing men taking care of small children in public is increasingly common — at least in New York City. But both men were quite obviously stared at — and smiled at, approvingly. Everyone was doing gender — the men who were changing the role of fathers and the other passengers, who were applauding them silently. " border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbNMN9yp-UyKHzDWa3ymPif_xHg_Peg3ApzG1JhinxknKUvXQX0nfU13oy1f3KzyozEVcDCgQy2YFjWsoZUacwuUe_RhNN1VmZZVj1e6T-Zo7xVv2NEQm-CWj3q9oXcERoYunZyo2ZFcp6UXXIAPTLHzOk22jukixROIyHcEfaU6jg9o7esWV51uZZl8/s1600/lorber13.png"/></a></div>
<center>Lorber, p. 13</center>
<p>What I find most interesting is that last phrase: The onlookers <i>who have opinions about how another man parents his baby</i> are also doing gender. They're reading, interpreting, judging, maybe imposing gender on him.</p>
<p>Lorber says that</p>
<blockquote><p>“bending gender rules and passing between genders does not erode but rather preserves gender boundaries. In societies with only two genders, the gender dichotomy is not disturbed by transvestites, because others feel that a transvestite is only transitorily ambiguous—is ‘really a man or woman underneath.’ After sex-change surgery, transsexuals end up in a conventional gender status—a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ with the appropriate genitals (Eichler 1989). When women dress as men for business reasons, they are indicating that in that situation, they want to be treated the way men are treated; when they dress as women, they want to be treated as women...” (p. 21)</p></blockquote>
<p>There is no escape. If you change your clothes, you’re signaling your gender, or others believe you are. If you change your body, you’re signaling your gender, or others believe you are. Everyone else is always trying to figure you out. There may be nothing you can do to stop them from trying to figure you out.</p>
<p>Furthermore, simply by attempting to manage where you fit within the given gender map, others see you as attempting to preserve the map itself. If you attempt to say anything about being a man or woman (including frustration with those categories), someone will blame you for believing in the categories.</p>
<blockquote><p>”Although the possible combinations of genitalia, body shapes, clothing, mannerisms, sexuality, and roles could produce infinite varieties in human beings, the social institution of gender depends on the production and maintenance of a limited number of gender statuses and of making the members of these statuses similar to each other. Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine. As Simone de Beauvoir said: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman…; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature…which is described as feminine.’ (1952, 267).” (p. 22)</p></blockquote>
<p>Lorber says:</p>
<blockquote><p>“My son attended a carefully nonsexist elementary school, which didn’t even have girls’ and boys’ bathrooms. When he was seven or eight years old, I attended a class play about ‘squares’ and ‘circles’ and their need for each other and noticed that all the girl squares and circles wore makeup, but none of the boy squares and circles did. I asked the teacher about it after the play, and she said, ‘Bobby said he was not going to wear makeup, and he is a powerful child, so none of the boys would either.’ In a long discussion about conformity, my son confronted me with the question of who the conformists were, the boys who followed their leader or the girls who listened to the woman teacher. In actuality, they both were, because they both followed same-gender leaders and acted in gender-appropriate ways.”</p></blockquote>
<p>(Although, I’d argue, if all of them had agreed to wear makeup or to forgo it, or to split up on certain teams that wore makeup or didn’t, this itself would have been a kind of conformity.)</p>
<p>This line is really interesting: ”In the social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same thing. The social institution of gender insists only that what they do is <I>perceived</I> as different.” (p. 26) And: “All men and all women can enact the behavior of the other, because they know the other’s social script: ‘’Man’ and ‘woman’ are at once empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they have no ultimate, transcendental meaning. Overflowing because even when they appear to be fixed, they still contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions.’ (J. W. Scott 1988a, 49). Nonetheless, though individuals may be able to shift gender statuses, the gender boundaries have to hold, or the whole gendered social order will come crashing down.” (p. 27)</p>
<h2>I do not care for this</h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJEnqmt8cxwAwvJj21UtGa-gSqKlQKMMEX2AgPCNNbTB2XYgoopYKwUjArCIC5paYH_B7lr9sYlQirqCgi_dgbtx5oXKuvdgLB9EUVa0hQ_lsM9lt2Ei5AvRz-TkxXT5Hc4ToPvJawPb0cW91Misgb3_BL1SKGYfl7EeKTDJXTZ_sZtA0ZU-iUPLj7Ck/s1600/lorber.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Paradoxically, it is the social importance of gender statuses and their external markers—clothing, mannerisms, and spatial segregation—that makes gender bending or gender crossing possible—or even necessary. The social viability of differentiated gender statuses produces the need or desire to shift statuses. Without gender differentiation, transvestism and transsexuality would be meaningless. You couldn’t dress in the opposite gender’s clothing if all clothing were unisex. There would be no need to reconstruct genitalia to match identity if interests and life-styles were not gendered. There would be no need for women to pass as men to do certain kinds of work if jobs were not typed as ‘women’s work’ and ‘men’s work.’ Women would not have to dress as men in public life in order to give orders to aggressively bargain with customers.
Gender boundaries are preserved when transsexuals create congruous autobiographies of always having felt like what they are now. The transvestite’s story also ‘recuperates social and sexual norms’ (Garber 1992, 69). In the transvestite’s normalized narrative, he or she ‘is ‘compelled’ by social and economic forces to disguise himself or herself in order to get a job, escape repression, or gain artistic or political ‘freedom’’ (Garber 1992, 70). The ‘true identity,’ when revealed, causes amazement over how easily and successfully the person passed as a member of the opposite gender, not a suspicion that gender itself is something of a put-on." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJEnqmt8cxwAwvJj21UtGa-gSqKlQKMMEX2AgPCNNbTB2XYgoopYKwUjArCIC5paYH_B7lr9sYlQirqCgi_dgbtx5oXKuvdgLB9EUVa0hQ_lsM9lt2Ei5AvRz-TkxXT5Hc4ToPvJawPb0cW91Misgb3_BL1SKGYfl7EeKTDJXTZ_sZtA0ZU-iUPLj7Ck/s1600/lorber.png"/></a></div>
<center>Lorber, p. 27</center>
<p>My problems with it:</p>
<p>Lorber is here making an assumption that "reconstruct[ing] genitalia" is done <i>for the sole purpose of</i> "match[ing] identity." A way to question this assumption: If there were no social gender differences between men and women, could someone still want to modify any part of their bodies. Presumably yes; they would simply have motivations other than controlling their gender presentation. Someone might want their nose reconstructed because they have a sense of what nose shape would be more beautiful for them, or because they have a medical need to reshape their nose, or both.
<p>Why, then, should genitalia be excluded from the list of modifiable body parts? A person may want their own genitals to look or feel a certain way. They have needs and interests related to urination and reproduction. They feel sexual pleasure a certain way, or want to experience it differently, or they want to align something about their own brain–body communication, or they want to experience something that's more like what they believe people experience with Genital Type A rather than Genital Type B. This is not necessarily about the social construction of gender (at least, not as we know it today). People should be allowed to have autonomy over all parts of our bodies. And so we should be careful not to disparage this autonomy in ways that might lend support to those trying to criminalize auotnomy. It is autonomy like any other; if we insult it and fail to recognize its importance, we won't have it.</p>
<p>This points to a broader issue. If gender is eliminated — I mean its social aspects, not physical sex characteristics — life will be different for everyone. True, transgender narratives would be radically different, but so would cisgender narratives. To the extent there'd be no gender, there'd be no transgender or cisgender. Lorber is having us imagine a world with no trans people, but this is a world with no cis people. Everything in this world is different. So it is really getting overly specific to congratulate this hypothetical world for having no transsexual narratives of "of always having felt like" a man or a woman. There's a lot of other things this hypothetical world wouldn't have.</p>
<p>Lorber then goes on to to generalize that “women who become men rise in the world and men who become women fall” and to approvingly quote <a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/transphobia-janice-raymond-transsexual-empire-5a6af82e818f?sk=a9479c51a203d37c75781d6f99d1c99e" target="_blank">Janice Raymond</a> as a source of insight about trans people's privilege (p. 28), so that should give some context on how many grains of salt are needed.</p>
<p>Remember: Onlookers, whether applauding or frowning, are doing gender. So, if you don't want to do gender, stop doing it.</p>
<p>I'm intrigued by this list:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWFmZX_XaIML8e9R54JN1VZAMPAnGIisQYCXSkDJIAB10u67DoRfDgW7QCOzhRD8CIPfgr_mvCoRiDjARTb_BaxNat84X-n8nPGMSj7yxlP83rpvDJgIjmOvDQHploodO0S2i5OoRaPnUnBhBKdLNClyy-tWDnqI7ABeo8Lp7X4GQnfoU9BREBbZQdIN8/s1600/lorber30.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="social list of gender components: gender statuses, gendered division of labor, gendered kinship, gendered sexual scripts, gendered personalities, gendered social control, gender ideology, gender imagery" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWFmZX_XaIML8e9R54JN1VZAMPAnGIisQYCXSkDJIAB10u67DoRfDgW7QCOzhRD8CIPfgr_mvCoRiDjARTb_BaxNat84X-n8nPGMSj7yxlP83rpvDJgIjmOvDQHploodO0S2i5OoRaPnUnBhBKdLNClyy-tWDnqI7ABeo8Lp7X4GQnfoU9BREBbZQdIN8/s1600/lorber30.png"/></a></div>
<center>Lorber, p. 30</center>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmeofmQHQvPpITDX4vzvfGCNrLrcIiZcCFdYWVrgM9emtw9taSlMlmzdmEEHMhFHtMljo_XotazwwGQf1lCVGhOKC4Eve-YgKkQdeR3krw-o2pCKj-VuN-Um7X_OwgYvUq6dFQ6aO_WLkZC-fTRrFNabm9Np5FNjRq2HVekN2a8WeZWV7feZ_T6wCCEs/s1600/lorber31.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="individual list of gender components: sex category, gender identity, gendered marital and procreative status, gendered sexual orientation, gendered personality, gendered processes, gender beliefs, gender display" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmeofmQHQvPpITDX4vzvfGCNrLrcIiZcCFdYWVrgM9emtw9taSlMlmzdmEEHMhFHtMljo_XotazwwGQf1lCVGhOKC4Eve-YgKkQdeR3krw-o2pCKj-VuN-Um7X_OwgYvUq6dFQ6aO_WLkZC-fTRrFNabm9Np5FNjRq2HVekN2a8WeZWV7feZ_T6wCCEs/s1600/lorber31.png"/></a></div>
<center>Lorber, p. 31</center>
<p>Also noted:</p>
<blockquote><p>“As a social institution, gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As part of a stratification system that ranks these statuses unequally, gender is a major building block in the social structures built on these unequal statuses.</p>
<p>As a <I>process</I>, gender creates the social differences that define ‘woman’ and ‘man.’ ... Members of a social group neither make up gender as they go along nor exactly replicate in rote fashion what was done before. In almost every encounter, human beings produce gender, behaving in the ways they learned were appropriate for their gender status, or resisting or rebelling against these norms. Resistance and rebellion have altered gender norms, but so far they have rarely eroded the statuses.” (p. 32)</p></blockquote>
<p>Under the social construction of gender, “there is no core or bedrock human nature.” (p. 36)</p>
<p>Lorber did revise this book (I haven’t read the revised edition)...</p>
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src="https://bookshop.org/widgets.js"
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<p>...and publish <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781509544363" target="_blank">another book</a> that I suppose contains a drastically revised thesis.</p>
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src="https://bookshop.org/widgets.js"
data-type="book"
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-84849050772498293132024-03-10T11:48:00.000-07:002024-03-10T11:48:16.159-07:00'As Equals': 42 people defending women's and LGBTQ rights"<a href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2024/03/08/defensoras-latinoamerica-derechos-mujeres-lgtbq-orix/" target="_blank">Las defensoras en Latinoamérica: 12 personas que protegen los derechos de las mujeres y LGTBQ+</a>," CNN, 8 Marzo 2024
<h2>Activistas</h2>
Bianka Rodríguez<br>
Florencia Guimarães García<br>
Fernanda Falcão<br>
<h2>Defensoras de ley</h2>
Paula Ávila Guillén<br>
Sandra Mazo<br>
Olimpia Coral Melo<br>
<h2>Catalizadoras</h2>
Tarcila Rivera Zea<br>
Anielle Franco<br>
Julieta Martínez<br>
Lolita Chávez<br>
Teodora Vásquez<br>
Leslie Collao<br>
<br>
<p>"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/gender-equality-defenders-international-womens-day-as-equals-intl-cmd/" target="_blank">The Defenders: 30 people protecting women's and LGBTQ+ rights</a>," CNN, 8 March 2024</p>
<h2>Activists</h2>
Hala Al-Karib<br>
Fidan Ataselim<br>
Nila Ibrahimi<br>
Zhanar Sekerbayeva<br>
Nisha Ayub<br>
Clare Byarugaba<br>
<h2>Academics</h2>
Mary McAuliffe<br>
Judith Butler<br>
Amel Grami<br>
<h2>Advocates</h2>
Gissou Nia<br>
Angela Mudukuti<br>
Sibongile Ndashe<br>
Malak El-Kashif<br>
Monica Simpson<br>
Griselda Mata<br>
Riska Carolina<br>
Estefania Vela Barba<br>
Karuna Nundy<br>
Rasha Younes<br>
<h2>Catalysts</h2>
Erika Castellanos<br>
Ferhan Güloğlu<br>
Kinga Jelinska<br>
Alexis McGill Johnson<br>
Winnie Byanyima<br>
Fadekemi Akinfaderin<br>
<h2>Creatives</h2>
Emani Edwards<br>
Hawon Jung<br>
Faye Cura<br>
Luciana Peker<br>
Stephanie Musho<br>
<h2>How CNN funds this series, 'As Equals'</h2>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/06/world/as-equals-frequently-asked-questions-intl/index.html" target="_blank">FAQ</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>"As Equals originally launched in 2018 with the assistance of a year-long Innovation in Development Reporting grant from the European Journalism Centre. The series kept going after 2019 thanks to commitment by CNN.</p>
<p>In October 2020, CNN announced that the series would expand with a new three-year grant of US $3.6m from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."</p></blockquote>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-40530424681550392892024-03-09T14:39:00.000-08:002024-03-10T15:40:04.719-07:00What transphobia sounded like in the 1990s and 2000s — birth of the term 'gender ideology'
<p>Kate Walton explains <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/anti-gender-equality-threat-explained-as-equals-intl-cmd/" target="_blank">for CNN</a>:</p>
<h2>1990s and 2000s transphobia</h2>
<blockquote><p>"The anti-gender movement emerged in the early 1990s in response to international conferences that catalyzed recognition of gender at the United Nations and accelerated progress on gender equality, including the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights. ... In the early 2000s, the Catholic Church began sounding the gender alarm... This led to the emergence of the term “gender ideology,” which conservative and fundamentalist groups began using to refer to the broad swathe of issues they oppose, including LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and gender equality."</p></blockquote>
<h2>Now it's fascist</h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3slv9J2V_aDHGjhbJSE9V8m6ZbsWrAkL-3HX0uzqhHKw7-6mMujMMcIyEY7Z11c6YR62-DQ0sHQAX6D3voZIi9l25w9L7QQYlqJpnXJqHfdU7h7K3eo59PUeZA4jto6_vkk6M7otiuh1taQLHV24eeY4Gb1sL0Z5U8_0f07cBIAetqHxauTDAq8xiyDI/s1600/anti-gender-movement.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="What is the anti-gender movement? The anti-gender or anti-rights movement is an umbrella term that refers to social movements mobilizing opposition to what they call “gender ideology,” “gender theory” or “genderism.” Though no singular definition exists for these terms, in practice, these movements are opposed to the same things, which the United Nations identified as the rights of LGBTQ+ people, “reproductive rights, sexuality and gender-sensitive education in schools, and the very notion of gender.” The authors of a 2020 UN Human Rights report entitled “Gender Equality and Gender Backlash,” identify three specific conservative groups who are behind these movements: governments, religious groups, and civil society groups. Together, they have formed “national and transnational alliances with shared strategies and objectives.”" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3slv9J2V_aDHGjhbJSE9V8m6ZbsWrAkL-3HX0uzqhHKw7-6mMujMMcIyEY7Z11c6YR62-DQ0sHQAX6D3voZIi9l25w9L7QQYlqJpnXJqHfdU7h7K3eo59PUeZA4jto6_vkk6M7otiuh1taQLHV24eeY4Gb1sL0Z5U8_0f07cBIAetqHxauTDAq8xiyDI/s1600/anti-gender-movement.png"/></a></div>
<p>That link — the same link appears twice in the screenshot — goes to “<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WG/Gender-equality-and-gender-backlash.pdf" target="_blank">Gender Equality and Gender Backlash</a>,” a 2020 UN Human Rights report.</p>
<p>This is "connected to the political shifts being witnessed around the globe, away from liberal democracy and towards right-wing populism. As Hungarian historian Andrea Pető <a href="https://gate.ngo/knowledge-portal/article/strategies-of-progressive-actors-against-anti-gender-movements/" target="_blank">puts it</a>: 'The anti-gender movement is not merely another offshoot of centuries-old anti-feminism but is a fundamentally new phenomenon that was launched for the sake of establishing a nationalist neoconservative response.'"</p>
<p>And now,</p>
<blockquote><p>"in 2024, for anti-gender actors, the term “gender” now encompasses everything from the concept of gender itself, to gender studies, legal protections for transgender people, survivors of domestic violence and rape, and women and girls in general. In fact, <a href="https://www.awid.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/RightsAtRisk_TimeForAction_OURsTrendsReport2021.pdf" target="_blank">according to the Association of Women in Development</a>, the concept is now being used to attack all sorts of progressive “struggles,” including even environmental issues.</p></blockquote>
<h2>The US is funding it globally</h2>
<p>See below: During the tail-end of the G. W. Bush administration, both Obama administrations, and the beginning of the Trump administration (2008–2017), 11 US-based organizations paid at least $1 billion to fight LGBTQ and women's rights in other countries.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju_apjU-sed10oK0Lne4UvffJXeH4p9mgTuO3E2OlPOvt1fthkzcDqrjx8VIfIh-VAWiRyfOnkf-pJFJhXuhxgIcJdSXN08Gmuu0wmd_RoVbJ6syGNPC2YoyvGeIqgjfFbn-HgHqjpoSZfLyPtPu-BVzKQJZ_cHrkoKoK5zS9aM4vAzZX37QjHKcKhGVA/s1600/funding.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Who funds the anti-gender movement? In addition to having clear links across countries and regions, the anti-gender movement is also funded transnationally. A 2021 trends report, produced by the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURS), lists four funding sources: ultra-conservative grant-makers and private donors; religious institutions; businesses and corporations; and funding from other organizations, such as state-funded institutions. US-based organizations are important funders for anti-gender movements globally. The Global Philanthropy Project found that at least $1billion was channelled overseas by just 11 US-based organizations to fight LGBTQ+ and women’s rights between 2008 and 2017. The authors of the report state that this amount “is surely an undercount.” Not all sources of funding to anti-rights groups are intentionally in support of their agenda. Reporting by CNN As Equals shows that aid from donors such as the US and Germany had also flowed to religious organizations in Ghana which support the country’s new anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which was unanimously passed on February 28. " border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju_apjU-sed10oK0Lne4UvffJXeH4p9mgTuO3E2OlPOvt1fthkzcDqrjx8VIfIh-VAWiRyfOnkf-pJFJhXuhxgIcJdSXN08Gmuu0wmd_RoVbJ6syGNPC2YoyvGeIqgjfFbn-HgHqjpoSZfLyPtPu-BVzKQJZ_cHrkoKoK5zS9aM4vAzZX37QjHKcKhGVA/s1600/funding.png"/></a></div>
<p>Those links are:<br>
<a href="https://globalphilanthropyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Meet-the-Moment-2020-English.pdf" target="_blank">Global Philanthropy Project</a><br>
<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/13/africa/us-europe-aid-lgbtqi-ghana-churches-investigation-as-equals-intl-cmd-dg/index.html" target="_blank">Reporting by CNN As Equals</a><br>
<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/28/africa/ghana-passes-anti-homosexuality-bill-intl/index.html" target="_blank">unanimously passed on February 28</a></p>
<h2>Read the original source</h2>
<p>"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/anti-gender-equality-threat-explained-as-equals-intl-cmd/" target="_blank">Opposition to gender equality around the world is connected, well funded and spreading. Here’s what you need to know about the anti-gender movement</a>," March 2024.</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-22535536320688677532024-03-08T04:51:00.000-08:002024-03-08T04:51:41.538-08:00U.S. corporations don't have to reveal CO2 emissions if they don't want to<p>Climate news:</p>
<blockquote><p>"In 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/gensler-climate-disclosure-20220321" target="_blank">proposed</a> a climate disclosure rule that would have forced public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions—from their direct emissions (also known as Scope 1 emissions), to emissions from their energy use (Scope 2), to emissions from their supply chain (Scope 3). It also would have required that companies report how climate change is impacting their bottom line.</p>
<p>But that’s not what happened. Instead, on Wednesday [March 6, 2024], the five-person SEC voted to adopt a <a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/final/2024/33-11275.pdf" target="_blank">climate disclosure rule</a> that was significantly watered down. It is no longer mandatory for companies to report their emissions; instead it says that companies should disclose their greenhouse gas emissions if they consider them “material”—in other words, of significant importance to their investors."</p>
<p> — "<a href="https://heated.world/p/how-corporate-america-won-the-fight" target="_blank">How corporate America won the fight to keep its pollution secret</a>," Arielle Samuelson, HEATED, March 8, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p>Samuelson explains that this happened because of</p>
<blockquote><p>"the conservative Trump-appointed judges all over the country— many of whom are Trump-appointed—<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/federal-court-strikes-down-a-california-citys-natural-gas-ban.html" target="_blank">striking down federal climate regulations</a>. According to Clara Vondrich, senior policy counselor at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, the world’s most polluting industries and GOP lawmakers threatened to sue if the SEC required them to report all their emissions. Those were not empty threats—within hours of the final rule being adopted, 10 Republican-led states <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/republican-led-states-say-they-will-sue-us-securities-regulator-over-climate-2024-03-06/" target="_blank">had sued the SEC for overreach</a>."</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT84hht8NTyRVcvJjlN8rw-UvIJcpMlsMpYdEwxJk8YmSSVkIOKZUjScIncg-ExDb5yWLMVpjbmZjQ0H4e9brwr0QfPvrLbj4ZNqPCBfsSZebLKpxXhH6nYIVE_9zRUEBaFP2cnt4vB9GpuFhcyaizfOT9-Mc4Eo_fyEA5O4RVmXpHMbHLh8VD7kz8MjE/s1600/deepwaterhorizon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="burning oil rig" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT84hht8NTyRVcvJjlN8rw-UvIJcpMlsMpYdEwxJk8YmSSVkIOKZUjScIncg-ExDb5yWLMVpjbmZjQ0H4e9brwr0QfPvrLbj4ZNqPCBfsSZebLKpxXhH6nYIVE_9zRUEBaFP2cnt4vB9GpuFhcyaizfOT9-Mc4Eo_fyEA5O4RVmXpHMbHLh8VD7kz8MjE/s1600/deepwaterhorizon.jpg"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-31827002334935666152024-03-07T06:15:00.000-08:002024-03-10T13:25:47.786-07:00What's happening to news organizations in the mid-2020s
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlU8ReFJhePkJd5a5kb1fxm6KZKsM8sqEeVBL5GlJqwIgDzICijBlWIwud0VhUW1M_leUHWOS1sMdJplgUiaKAaoFJ_QElzE7hgsxzRcZ5D49H8y1yX2PMU7t3sucFO68uKB9bqsoenJwL_ItW7WliALzhzfTBDF9QVobbOe8hX2KjrJiEg1WP0T5oGac/s1600/typing.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="typewriter guy" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlU8ReFJhePkJd5a5kb1fxm6KZKsM8sqEeVBL5GlJqwIgDzICijBlWIwud0VhUW1M_leUHWOS1sMdJplgUiaKAaoFJ_QElzE7hgsxzRcZ5D49H8y1yX2PMU7t3sucFO68uKB9bqsoenJwL_ItW7WliALzhzfTBDF9QVobbOe8hX2KjrJiEg1WP0T5oGac/s1600/typing.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>On March 5, Chris Hayes on the Why Is This Happening? podcast put out an episode, "<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4tLtYYBYaej5SXHb9nnUqn?si=dd402df30d69409f" target="_blank">A Mediapocalypse? with Ben Smith.</a>" Hayes has been working as a journalist since about 2001, when he was 22 years old. He was there when print publications first began to go online, and he saw the invention of social media. It used to be that reporters were needed to record facts, but now everyone has smartphones and can do their own reporting.</p>
<p>He says that while many outlets shuttered due to the 2009 financial crisis, the layoffs and closures of 2023 felt worse to him. He says he no longer understands where people in general find their fact-based news. Where can people get not just <i>some</i> information, but high-quality, true information? Social media platforms aren't reliable for this, and these days many people are retreating to group chats.</p>
<p>Blaming the messenger by calling it "fake news," even if it is, may not be a successful tactic. (Does anyone care if you make that analysis or judgment? Fake news is at least as profitable as real news, if not more so.) And now there's so little real news to which to turn instead.</p>
<p>[As I've heard other people put it: For conspiracy theorists, facts don't really matter. If most their claims prove false, it doesn't matter, because — like someone who pretends to be psychic — they'll gain fame and money from the few things they said that proved correct. This is how credulity and conspiracy-theory thinking works. It goes by "vibes."]</p>
<p>If news becomes a weird personal hobby for some people and isn't an essential part of the culture, democracy may not survive.</p>
<p>In this podcast episode, he interviews <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Smith_%28journalist%29" target="_blank">Ben Smith</a>, former editor of BuzzFeed, now of <a href="https://www.semafor.com/" target="_blank">Semafor</a>. Smith believes that national and international news is healthy, but local news is disappearing. Local newspapers sued to be ad-supported by local businesses, but in the early 2000s Google disrupted that model because newspapers were no longer needed to announce what the local businesses were. Perhaps as a result, U.S. politics is becoming more focused on national rather than local issues. Politicians work at the level of Washington, commentators comment at the level of Washington, and that's how individual people understand it, rather than thinking about their home district.</p>
<p>(That's an argument, I'd insert, against the Electoral College. Votes don't need to be counted state-by-state if individuals aren't voting as residents of a state but simply as citizens of the same country.)</p>
<p>One big problem is that, in the pivot to online publication, 21st-century newspaper owners decided to give away their reporting essentially for free when in fact it costs money to make. They seemed to be running on an assumption that most publications will go under anyway, but the biggest one will survive and will somehow make money, so it's important to grow your readership so you can be the last newspaper standing. Well, that's what has manifested, and most local newspapers have died off.</p>
<p>For cable TV news, though, especially in the case of Fox, some of this process is happening in reverse: young people aren't turning on a specific news channel. They're instead turning to various smaller media outlets (podcasts, etc.) that are individually viable.</p>
<p>Online publishing platforms — especially the ones that work more as closed systems — tend to mystify their data and algorithms, and this provides an opening for people on those platforms to write lots of articles that position themselves as experts about how the system works. When their "expertise" begins to look attractive to others, they promise to teach others to become similar experts and stand apart from the crowd of experts. This does not add much value to society, especially if the site's algorithms aren't really that complicated or interesting and will probably change in a few months.</p>
<p>But that's all that a publication is going to get if they don't pay people to report news or increase their expertise on a specific topic. People will write about their existing expertise until they exhaust it or get bored of talking about it, and then the only additional expertise they will have developed along the way is their experience publishing on that platform, so they start talking about the platform.</p>
<p><b>Takeaway: Think about your values, what kind of platform you want, and how you'll feel when you use that platform.</b></p>
<p>On March 6, <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-is-your-news-site-going-out-of-business/sharetoken/u5I9HOFjm5YR" target="_blank">Talking Points Memo explained</a> that in 2016 they took in nearly $1.7 million from third-party ads, but when they saw that number begin to collapse, they decided to pivot to a subscription model. The subscribers were there when ads no longer provided any significant income. In 2023, their income from third-party ads was less than 5% what it was in 2016. Had they timed this differently or not had cash to invest in it, it won't have worked.</p>
<p><b>Takeaway: If your business was like that, that's what you needed to have done then.</b></p>
<p>On March 7, Fernando Alfonso III for NPR quotes Graciela Mochkofsky, the dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, as saying: "I was trained as a journalist with this very, very strong, very, very strong sense that journalism is something that is not a given; it's something you fight for every day, just like democracy." ("<a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1234374134/news-industry-layoffs-education-journalism-school-syracuse-columbia-cuny" target="_blank">Is journalism disappearing? These top educators have a lot to say about that</a>")</p>
<p><b>Takeaway: Journalism professors don't know what to tell their students about how to work in journalism because there are few traditional jobs right now.</b></p>
<p>Jeff Jarvis wrote on January 24, "<a href="https://medium.com/whither-news/is-it-time-to-give-up-on-old-news-488194f359ba" target="_blank">Is It Time to Give Up on Old News?</a>" By "old news," he means journalism as it historically has often been practiced in the United States and as it has been perceived.</p>
<p>Yes, he says, it's time to give up. He's personally done with "old news’ wishful doomsaying, its credulous coverage of politics as sport, its bothsidesing and normalization of the rise of populist fascism, its refusal to call racism racism, its chronic lack of diversity, its dependence on access to power, its moral panic about technology, and the resource it wastes on copying and clickbait." As "our attention" isn't "a commodity to be owned, bought, and sold," neither are newspapers supposed to be in what's called "content business."</p>
<p>We don't have to deliberately kill off what's dysfunctional, but we should "stop throwing good money and effort after bad."</p>
<p>Instead: "support the emergent reinvention of journalism occurring in communities everywhere." Journalism ought to be "a service built on conversation, community, and collaboration." People need to think across academic disciplines and take leadership.</p>
<p>Jarvis writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>"I say we must fundamentally reimagine journalism and its role in a society under threat of authoritarian, anti-Enlightenment, fascist takeover. I recently wrote about a <a href="https://medium.com/whither-news/journalism-belief-belonging-07a8dabe35e4" target="_blank">journalism of belonging</a>. With my colleague Carrie Brown, I helped start a degree program — a movement carried on by our alums — in Engagement Journalism. There are other movements seeking to remake journalism: <a href="https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/about" target="_blank">Solutions Journalism</a>, <a href="https://centerforcooperativemedia.org/about/history/" target="_blank">Collaborative Journalism</a>, <a href="https://www.bonn-institute.org/en/what-is-constructive-journalism" target="_blank">Constructive Journalism</a>, <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/12/the-year-journalism-starts-paying-reparations/" target="_blank">Reparative Journalism</a>, <a href="https://spaceshipmedia.org/toolkit/introduction/" target="_blank">Dialog Journalism</a>, <a href="https://cpd.colostate.edu/djp/" target="_blank">Deliberative Journalism</a>, <a href="https://mediaengagement.org/solidarity-journalism/" target="_blank">Solidarity Journalism</a>, Entrepreneurial Journalism, and <a href="https://www.citybureau.org/#who-we-are" target="_blank">more</a>. What they share is an ethic of first listening to communities and their needs and an urgency to innovate."</p></blockquote>
<p><b>Takeaway: Put your values first, and place much less emphasis on monetizing other people's attention spans.</b></p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-80875337063967399272024-03-06T15:55:00.000-08:002024-03-06T15:56:34.497-08:00Sara Sadek: 'Witnessing, action, and rest'<p>On awareness of the over 30,000 lives lost in Gaza over the past five months:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The world is hemorrhaging sacred life. And just to name and honor that feels really important. It's OK that we're a mess, because we're watching something that is catastrophic. Also, I think for us to sustain any sort of activism for a long-term resistance movement, or to come together and do anything of substance, we have to be able to titrate between witnessing, action, and rest. Witnessing, action, and rest. And joy is an act of resilience. So is dance, so is song, so is coming together in community, so is sleep. We will burn out very quickly if all we are doing is witnessing."<br>
— Sara Sadek, "<a href="https://alifeunschooled.substack.com/p/how-we-radicalize-ourselves-with" target="_blank">How we radicalize ourselves with Sara Sadek</a>": Counter-cultural motherhood, community building and our collective responsibility to meet this moment (and why we can all do our bit!). Fran Liberatore and Sara Sadek. A Life Unschooled. March 6, 2024.<br>
(audio: 12:16–13:06)</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhizMQdXcJOJ0GuZa_D9uDP_UNoDMgrAnLHK01eiyiDvSNXHLJTpk2UfMAeA33eKjhpLZk60YSXreSFkCZ55USTh27nqRD7s0Tg6f4z4InMb1ceHwg0JVWQsrlbDOaV449KgtjyHfc-qhYnqRCzuH6jRXOfaeCzTrnFJreE8oomRUjaPCNKjLQl_jCmE9M/s1600/tears.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="weeping stone statue" border="0" width="65%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhizMQdXcJOJ0GuZa_D9uDP_UNoDMgrAnLHK01eiyiDvSNXHLJTpk2UfMAeA33eKjhpLZk60YSXreSFkCZ55USTh27nqRD7s0Tg6f4z4InMb1ceHwg0JVWQsrlbDOaV449KgtjyHfc-qhYnqRCzuH6jRXOfaeCzTrnFJreE8oomRUjaPCNKjLQl_jCmE9M/s1600/tears.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Another thought:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Walter Benjamin writes [in <I>The Arcades Project</I>] that every true waking is a reshaping of reality. He describes this waking as a technique: the reclamation of what is past, not as complete facts or truths but as a period of time that can be reshaped simply by making contact with the waker’s present. Benjamin’s interest is focused on sleeping and waking as collective acts. In this sense, revolution—or awakening—is to wake from a prolonged collective slumber, and Benjamin’s moment of waking is the moment in which memory is shaped anew, in which the group—the masses—gradually reclaims its self-awareness through political action and becomes capable of reformulating reality, of providing an explanation of the dream in which it was caught, and emerges from collective absence into a new reality.”<br>
— Haytham El Wardany. “<a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/11/03/when-waking-begins/" target="_blank">When Waking Begins</a>.” Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger. Excerpted from <I>The Book of Sleep.</I> Reprinted in the Paris Review. November 3, 2020.</p></blockquote>
<p>We have to try:</p>
<blockquote><p>"...one of the paradoxes of education was that precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."<br>
— James Baldwin, "<a href="https://richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm" target="_blank">A Talk to Teachers</a>," 1963</p></blockquote>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-39320358510932915352024-03-02T07:55:00.000-08:002024-03-28T16:33:30.952-07:00Pope does not want people to be the same<p><a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2016/05/18/senior-vatican-cardinal-warns-demonic-transgender-rights-are-causing-the-death-of-god/" target="_blank">Senior Vatican Cardinal warns ‘demonic’ transgender rights are causing the ‘death of God’</a>, Nick Duffy, Pink News, May 18, 2016</p>
<p>On March 1, Pope Francis addressed a conference at the Vatican. Regarding gender theory, he said: "I have asked that studies be carried out into this ugly ideology of our times, which cancels out the differences and makes everything the same." According to a Reuters article, the Pope mentioned "reading a 'prophetic' book called <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780486803814" target="_blank">Lord of the World</a></i> — a dystopian novel published in 1907 by a Catholic priest about a world where religion has no place — which warned of the risk of cancelling out differences between people."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-francis-gender-theory-ideology-1.7130679" target="_blank">Pope says gender theory is 'ugly ideology' that threatens humanity</a>: 'Cancelling out the differences means cancelling out humanity,' Francis said, Thomson Reuters, March 1, 2024</p>
<p>I have two comments here.</p>
<p>Religion is notably an area in which a human being can change their mind, change how they show up in the world, and thus change the way in which they are different. The Catholic Church throughout history has notably tried to pull people out of their original religions and draw them into the Catholic fold. It is hypocritical for the Pope to warn about a movement that allegedly "cancels out the differences and makes everything the same. This is projection. If you really want human difference, you want non-Catholics.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if you really, <i>really</i> want human difference, well, you want trans people.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaOHpIXFrLya__6jCky84axUzRVWrEmNR8YAbr9inLpw-kLpz7Zs_WLDjopysHaVWVGq51KJ1eDdFcMCkPqqz7hl3SFWnG5RNEo_lpF3uoA2pOE6fNpRT_HWP-LDj1lVoe4-3N1BbHgSreixnHV3Yp8WKNAG5TTdxDgPm6xKbIAakN9VegnVATdsj9eR4/s1600/trans%20flag.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trans flag" border="0" width="70%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaOHpIXFrLya__6jCky84axUzRVWrEmNR8YAbr9inLpw-kLpz7Zs_WLDjopysHaVWVGq51KJ1eDdFcMCkPqqz7hl3SFWnG5RNEo_lpF3uoA2pOE6fNpRT_HWP-LDj1lVoe4-3N1BbHgSreixnHV3Yp8WKNAG5TTdxDgPm6xKbIAakN9VegnVATdsj9eR4/s1600/trans%20flag.png"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-45772863181179577682024-03-01T11:51:00.000-08:002024-03-14T19:23:08.047-07:00On the trope that trans people are repressed cis gay people with internalized homophobia
<p>There's a common trope that most trans people are gay people trying to become straight, and would not be interested in changing their gender, were it not for the pressures of homophobia, and thus are not authentically transgender. This is just a false nonsense assertion that I've repeatedly argued against.</p>
<p>I note how it's deployed here:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiODPmvsaP2PnXfp0hflDBh_pJzwddQvEDqfGqjVFFXtTW_4HE0seRwFNfLnx6bQhbZXJd62oaBsvfZYnCHUQ2BSKuX9vYOwnQdBRycDNJoOFwsWxnSrGqnNlJqygH4-0r-z-qbWALsuZs16fe6F-XYv5MGcBsC8uEIkcWLKL5O6yYodKdxj_yVy0CqQQI/s1600/paragraph.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="In a survey of 100 detransitioners, the experience of homophobia or difficulty accepting themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual was expressed by 23 per cent of respondents as a reason for transition and subsequent detransition. As German gender clinicians have noted: 'it must be understood that early hormone therapy may interfere with the patient’s development as a homosexual. This may not be in the interest of patients who, as a result of hormone therapy, can no longer have the decisive experiences that enable them to establish a homosexual identity.'" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiODPmvsaP2PnXfp0hflDBh_pJzwddQvEDqfGqjVFFXtTW_4HE0seRwFNfLnx6bQhbZXJd62oaBsvfZYnCHUQ2BSKuX9vYOwnQdBRycDNJoOFwsWxnSrGqnNlJqygH4-0r-z-qbWALsuZs16fe6F-XYv5MGcBsC8uEIkcWLKL5O6yYodKdxj_yVy0CqQQI/s1600/paragraph.png"/></a></div>
<p> — On the broadview.news site: "Gay, not trans: A powerful challenge to gender medicalisation enters the political mainstream." Feb 7, 2024.</p>
<p>The idea is that, if your "early" experiences aren't sexual in a certain way, you won't be able to feel, assert, or establish a different sexual orientation later in life.</p>
<p>It's a surprising claim, because of course people can generally reevaluate their feelings and experiences at any age. If feelings can be reassessed at all, there's no reason to assume they're age-dependent.</p>
<p>And the claim is homophobic in several ways:</p>
<ul>
<li>Cis gay people can come out as gay later in life. The timing of their coming-out experiences shouldn't be denied.</li>
<li>Trans gay people exist. Their existence shouldn't be denied. Furthermore, the argument, when applied to them, shows up in reverse: it implies that they should have been prevented from transitioning to give them a chance to be straight, which surely sounds homophobic.</li>
<li>Bisexuality seems to be erased from this discussion.</li>
<li>It seems to rely on a very old "corruption of the youth" assumption about how kids turn into gay adults, i.e., if they're not allowed to be gay when they're young, they won't end up as gay adults.</li>
</ul>
<p>There's also an inappropriate fixation on the idea that children need to have "decisive [sexual] experiences" that, in this example, the children in question have specifically said they do not want to have. The children don't need to be encouraged to have a gay development, nor a straight development, whatever that means, as long as the child is asserting that they do not want that kind of sexual experience (as they did not ask for it) and are instead more interested in gender transition.</p>
<h2>Wasn't mysterious to these people in 1999</h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAieypyZOEO_cJSQzF07eszu3iEbEewoS7dT0ELDBNq5Udus9_3z52Q2wIJLXMjVawbUPlULyNKlV7H9JFsR-IMgQ64hSMk15o0-u83_eEht1UffVpVlZiorvsJEXDbFWcnu2dzuIRLDSms9DlGU0thI7N387E9wu89e3vp6QZweMdET2QX7jI0WKaNV8/s1600/gay-data.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="1999 chart showing 1/3 FTMs are gay or lesbian, 1/3 are heterosexual, 1/3 are bisexual. FTM Newsletter #45 (Summer 1999) Data is from the San Francisco TG Community Health Project" border="0" width="80%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAieypyZOEO_cJSQzF07eszu3iEbEewoS7dT0ELDBNq5Udus9_3z52Q2wIJLXMjVawbUPlULyNKlV7H9JFsR-IMgQ64hSMk15o0-u83_eEht1UffVpVlZiorvsJEXDbFWcnu2dzuIRLDSms9DlGU0thI7N387E9wu89e3vp6QZweMdET2QX7jI0WKaNV8/s1600/gay-data.png"/></a></div>
<center><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4c_ALTO6hV/" target="_blank">Instagram</a></center>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-75765194105672678962024-02-28T13:53:00.000-08:002024-02-28T13:54:12.370-08:00Bill McKibben: 'We're the volcano now'
<p>"This year in North America has been about as close as we’ve ever come to a year without a winter—the geological obverse of 1816, the year when an Indonesian volcano put so much sulfur into the air that there was no real northern hemisphere summer," <a href="https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/as-winter-melts-away" target="_blank">Bill McKibben writes today</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>"We’re the volcano now, and the gases we produce increase the temperature: it was 70 degrees in Chicago <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/us/chicago-winter-warm-weather.html" target="_blank">yesterday</a>, in February—which was also the day that the Windy City decided to join other American cities in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/21/chicago-sues-bp-chevron-fossil-fuel-climate-change" target="_blank">suing</a> the fossil fuel industry for damages. But that was just one of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/02/26/record-warm-weather-midwest-greatlakes-south-northeast/" target="_blank">hundred heat records</a> broken in the course of the day, from Milwaukee to Dallas (94 degrees). But it wasn’t a single day of heat—it’s been an almost unrelentingly warm winter, with by far the lowest snow coverage for this time of year ever recorded (13.8 percent of the lower 48 as of Monday, compared with an average of more than 40 percent) and with the Great Lakes essentially free of ice."</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidsbBc3OhiSQ4kKN6fcAPfY6lL0yKiaFqUSX2wp8rfmbMAw5cAJmVik_nHJI3f2x784LeAaJ58ZyjwcyYax3MEA5619RydZU492yk-tIglDputnS1IKobuvXOqUl0aEELFRLiLoSe_eYBxAoZebaog1sZZCqrU-EUS9-hBLM9cEG9aHHS3P61kLYsgEyc/s1600/moose.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="moose behind tree" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidsbBc3OhiSQ4kKN6fcAPfY6lL0yKiaFqUSX2wp8rfmbMAw5cAJmVik_nHJI3f2x784LeAaJ58ZyjwcyYax3MEA5619RydZU492yk-tIglDputnS1IKobuvXOqUl0aEELFRLiLoSe_eYBxAoZebaog1sZZCqrU-EUS9-hBLM9cEG9aHHS3P61kLYsgEyc/s1600/moose.jpg"/></a></div>
<center>Moose by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/tadah-41602/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=142133">Lisa Kennedy</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=142133">Pixabay</a></center>
<p>McKibben: "In Maine, which has the largest moose herd in the lower 48, ninety percent of calves died last winter because they were sucked dry by ticks that can now last all winter long. Biologists find moose with 90,000 ticks; they rub their hair off trying to shed the pests. “Ghost moose” is what they call these hairless beasts."</p>
<p>Furthermore, "the deepest patterns of our lives — the ways our bodies understand the cycle of the seasons and the progress of time — are now slipping away."</p>
<h2>Cold air: 2020–2024 news stories</h2>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/weather/antarctica-pine-island-thwaites-glacier-climate-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">Ice shelves propping up two major Antarctic glaciers are breaking up and it could have major consequences for sea level rise</a>, Helen Regan, CNN, September 15, 2020</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/03/asia/mount-everest-climate-ice-glacier-melt-intl/index.html" target="_blank">Ice that took roughly 2,000 years to form on Mt. Everest has melted in around 25</a> Angela Dewan and Danya Gainor, CNN, February 3, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/arctic-sinkholes-9jwenj/" target="_blank">Arctic Sinkholes</a>, NOVA, Season 49 Episode 1 | 53m 17s, PBS, Feb 2, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/18/world/antarctica-sea-ice-low-extent-record-climate/index.html" target="_blank">Antarctica will likely set an alarming new record this year, new data shows</a> Rachel Ramirez, CNN, February 18, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/22/world/greenland-ice-melting-sea-level-rise-climate-intl-scli-scn/index.html" target="_blank">Greenland’s ice is melting from the bottom up – and far faster than previously thought, study shows</a> Isabelle Jani-Friend, CNN, February 22, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/28/weather/antarctica-world-record-high-temperature-anomaly-climate/index.html" target="_blank">Extraordinary Antarctica heatwave, 70 degrees above normal, would likely set a world record</a> Caitlin Kaiser and Angela Fritz, CNN, March 28, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/07/weather/antarctica-ice-sheet-climate-ecosystem/index.html" target="_blank">Antarctica’s majestic underwater world is trying to adapt to a warmer planet</a> Allison Chinchar, CNN Meteorologist, May 7, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/29/world/greenland-ice-loss-sea-level-rise-study/index.html" target="_blank">Greenland ice losses set to raise global sea levels by nearly a foot, new research shows</a>, Rachel Ramirez, CNN, August 29, 2022</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/18/world/greenland-ice-sheet-warming-climate/index.html" target="_blank">Temperatures on Greenland haven’t been this warm in at least 1,000 years, scientists report</a>, Rachel Ramirez, CNN, January 18, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/21/world/antarctic-sea-ice-record-low-climate-intl/index.html" target="_blank">Antarctic sea ice hit record lows again. Scientists wonder if it’s ‘the beginning of the end’</a>
Laura Paddison, CNN, February 21, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/03/01/antarctic-sea-ice-record-climate-change-weir-vpx.cnn" target="_blank">90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade</a>, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, March 1, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/06/world/new-zealand-glaciers-melt-climate-intl/index.html" target="_blank">‘Shocked’ by the loss: Scientists sound the alarm on New Zealand’s melting glaciers</a>, Laura Paddison, CNN, April 6, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/09/26/an-extreme-record-breaking-year-scientists-see-impact-of-climate-change-on-antarctic-sea-i" target="_blank">‘An extreme record-breaking year’: Scientists see impact of climate change on Antarctic sea ice</a>, Euronews Green with Reuters, Sept 26, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/09/23/antarctica-heat-wave-record/" target="_blank">Scientists found the most intense heat wave ever recorded — in Antarctica</a> - The Washington Post
<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/23/world/west-antarctic-ice-melt-climate/index.html" target="_blank">Rapid melting in West Antarctica is ‘unavoidable,’ with potentially disastrous consequences for sea level rise, study finds</a>, Rachel Ramirez, CNN, October 23, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/mysterious-force-antarctica-drone" target="_blank">A mysterious force under Antarctica is changing how its ice melts</a></p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/climate/greenland-ice-shelf-glacier-melt-climate-intl/index.html" target="_blank">Greenland’s northern glaciers are in trouble, threatening ‘dramatic’ sea level rise, study shows</a>
Laura Paddison, CNN, November 7, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-heatwave-in-antarctica-totally-blew-the-minds-of-scientists-they-set-out-to-decipher-it-and-here-are-the-results-220672" target="_blank">A heatwave in Antarctica totally blew the minds of scientists. They set out to decipher it – and here are the results</a>. Dana M Bergstrom, The Conversation, January 9, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/08/climate/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-melt-collapse-climate-intl/index.html" target="_blank">Scientists discover an alarming change in Antarctica’s past that could spell devastating future sea level rise</a> Laura Paddison, CNN, February 8, 2024</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-77898580174759145552024-02-27T07:24:00.000-08:002024-02-28T08:03:26.805-08:00Anti-trans people fake being trans and it does not prove whatever they believe it proves<p>Yesterday, Beth Bourne published this essay on a website called "Reality's Last Stand":</p>
<p>"I Pretended To Be ‘Nonbinary’ To Expose a Medical Scandal at Kaiser Permanente: Kaiser gender specialists were eager to approve hormones and surgeries, which would all be covered by insurance as 'medically necessary.'" Feb 26, 2024.</p>
<p>In this essay, she identifies as "a 53-year-old mom from Davis, CA." She said that, five years ago, her "intellectually mature but socially immature" 8th-grade "daughter," along with a few classmates, began identifying as trans and asked to be called by he/him pronouns at school. She and her ex-husband refused to help their child get gender-affirming care, and told their child it would be up to him to do so when he became a legal adult. At 17, the child cut off contact with Bourne. "I began publicly voicing my concerns about what many term as 'gender ideology.'"</p>
<p>So basically, instead of trying to fix her relationship with her child, she leaned harder into her own anti-trans ideology. As she clarifies: "While this estrangement brought me sorrow, with my daughter living full-time with her father, it also gave me the space to be an advocate/activist in pushing back on gender identity ideology in the schools and the medical industry."</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMh6V92Oyl8BQsPWd_c5IJwy1XfcwTYk8n0JBz5x80ec3-4Be5hCKPtlI0VYdavEe5cxOP55SVtiMbueGtolTnPPySJ3wtFqhFvGvQRGq5-wzjUznfJwaWdkArPW3xtMbxchYoWoEdBMBfWHpt4KLagOHK0BSyXoOu8_Xvf_jH5V5lDPzf6iLGfh7s8wk/s1600/reality_last_stand.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Screenshot of the Reality's Last Stand webpage, including the URL, with a photo of Beth Bourne that she featured in the article" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMh6V92Oyl8BQsPWd_c5IJwy1XfcwTYk8n0JBz5x80ec3-4Be5hCKPtlI0VYdavEe5cxOP55SVtiMbueGtolTnPPySJ3wtFqhFvGvQRGq5-wzjUznfJwaWdkArPW3xtMbxchYoWoEdBMBfWHpt4KLagOHK0BSyXoOu8_Xvf_jH5V5lDPzf6iLGfh7s8wk/s1600/reality_last_stand.png"/></a></div>
<p>This was the assignment she gave herself:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Could I expose the medical scandal of 'gender-affirming care' by saying and doing everything my daughter and other trans-identifying kids are taught to do? Would there be the type of medical safeguarding and differential diagnosis we would expect in other fields of medicine, or would I simply be allowed to self-diagnose and be offered the tools (i.e. hormones and surgeries) to choose my own gender adventure and become my true authentic self?"</p></blockquote>
<p>It's a rough start, because gender-affirming care isn't a medical scandal, it's something that has <a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/historical-transgender-children-ff239a515d51?sk=9572468fce655b44ea5db8676ca3a407" target="_blank">existed in the United States for about a century</a>.</p>
<p>Bourne wanted to show that "anyone suffering from delusions of their sex, self-hatred, or identity issues" could receive "body-altering hormones and surgeries" (as opposed to hormones and surgeries that <i>don't</i> alter your body? headscratcher), and that it would be "all covered by insurance."</p>
<p>THANK YOU FOR LETTING TRANS PEOPLE KNOW WHERE YOU CAN GET ALL YOUR GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE COVERED BY HEALTH INSURANCE</p>
<p>Most trans people do not have that kind of coverage. We should, but we don't. Again: Such coverage isn't a problem, partly because most people don't have it, and partly because it would actually be a good thing if we did have it.</p>
<blockquote><p>"I decided to go undercover as a nonbinary patient to show my daughter what danger she might be putting herself in—by people who purport to have her health as their interest, but whose main interest is in medically “affirming” (i.e., transitioning) whoever walks through their door."</p></blockquote>
<p>"My feigned gender transition," Bourne says, lasted 231 days.</p>
<p>"I was able to instantly change my medical records to reflect my new gender identity and pronouns." Of course. That's her doctor's notation indicating how she'd like people to understand her and refer to her when speaking about her.</p>
<p>She received "a prescription for testosterone and approval for a 'gender-affirming' double mastectomy from my doctor. It took only three more months (90 days) to be approved for surgery to remove my uterus and have a fake penis constructed from the skin of my thigh or forearm."</p>
<h2>Her beliefs about autonomy</h2>
<p>Shouldn't she have "adult bodily autonomy" to do this? No, she says, because autonomy applies — she claims — to "purely cosmetic procedures" that aren't covered by health insurance and supposedly don't "compromise health." (Famously, "breast implants, liposuction, and facelifts" have no potential side effects?)</p>
<p>For some reason she doesn't explain, she believes that if a procedure on one's body is deemed "medically necessary" or "lifesaving," if it's covered by insurance, and/or if it might have a side effect, she should not have autonomy to make her own decisions about her body.</p>
<p>Also, for some reason she doesn't explain, she seems to believe a child would have the same kind of interactions with their doctor as she did at age 53.</p>
<p>Also, while being (presumably) neither trans nor delusional, and while making an intentionally timewasting and fraudulent request for hormones and surgery she didn't actually want, she presents this as what a person could get if they were <i>not</i> trans but <i>actually</i> delusional, and (I guess) assumes that the person would be ignorant of what they were asking for and would regret it, and thus should not have autonomy to ask for it.</p>
<p>I think she thinks she was successfully cosplaying a self-destructive cis person, rather than successfully cosplaying a happy nonbinary person.</p>
<p>She also implies that her own fake request is somehow equivalent to her child's request. Her article does not explore the possibility that, while her own performative request was in bad faith, her child's request seems not to have been. From the information she gives, whereas Bourne lied about her own gender to her doctor for 10 months and asked for hormones and surgery she didn't want, her child has been asserting a gender for five years now and could actually just get whatever hormones and surgery he wants. As an adult, he's free to do so.</p>
<p>(And hopefully he'll remain free to do so, despite the pending U.S. legislation to eliminate the right to gender-affirming care for adults as well as children.)</p>
<h2>Takeaway</h2>
<p>Your doctor will recommend you for hormones and surgeries based on the thing you said. If you lie to your doctor, you can get what you lied to get.</p>
<p>Also, if you commit insurance fraud for nearly a year and blog about it in detail, you can get whatever the consequences of that may be.</p>
<p>This is probably not the way to convince your trans kid to talk to you. But if you're more interested in "publicly voicing my concerns about what many term as 'gender ideology,'" you have the blog post you wrote, and may it keep you warm.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-10214701660331225202024-02-24T05:49:00.000-08:002024-02-24T05:49:55.198-08:00Trans visibility isn't the same as trans safety: Chase Strangio's Feb 2024 NYT column<p>It's rare that the New York Times publishes something to fully affirm that trans people need safety and dignity, but here's a recent beautiful examle: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/opinion/trans-visibility-legislative-rights.html" target="_blank">Trans Visibility Is Nice. Safety Is Even Better.</a> Chase Strangio, New York Times, February 15, 2024</p>
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<p>Strangio, an ACLU lawyer, opens by saying:</p>
<blockquote><p>"In my childhood, trans representation was largely confined to sensationalized daytime talk shows — think 'Jerry Springer' — and fictionalized stories of cisgender people reacting with disgust or violence upon learning someone was trans — think of the movies 'Boys Don’t Cry,' 'The Crying Game,' even 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.'"</p></blockquote>
<p>(For a bit more context on <a href="https://medium.com/@blackthelma1/not-all-transwomen-start-from-the-same-point-5c5cbc2b510?sk=v2%2Fd1454865-5b7b-4ede-baa5-48a8cc5dd72b" target="_blank">more on Jerry Springer</a>, see Blackthelma on that topic.)</p>
<p>Today, by contrast:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Films like 'Will & Harper' allow cisgender people to see trans people’s full humanity, and they give trans people a welcome chance to see ourselves onscreen. Visibility is a gift when you grow up thinking your existence is impossible. But being invisible can also bring protection. I might not have seen myself onscreen in childhood, but neither did I have to deal with dozens upon dozens of bills filed each year questioning my right to use the restroom that matches my gender, have access to health care, learn about the history of trans people in school or worry about which sports teams I was allowed to play on. Though representation of transness onscreen is crucial for building empathy, trans visibility has also contributed to a false sense that the community possesses a degree of stability and power that, in reality, continues to elude us."</p></blockquote>
<p>There is a <a href="https://disruptivedissertation.blogspot.com/2024/02/anti-trans-laws-united-states-2024.html" target="_blank">legislative assault</a> against trans people in the US.</p>
<blockquote><p>"The underlying aim of this legislative assault is clear to trans people: It amounts to the slow erosion of our legal protections and attacks on our dignity, our humanity and our ability to live safely and participate in public life. Those of us who are trans or who love someone who is trans wake up every day wondering: Will we be able to get the health care that has enabled us to survive? Will our children be taken from us by the state because we are trans or because they are? Will our children be able to go to the right bathroom at school, participate in field trips or join sports teams? Will we be outed when we show identification?"</p></blockquote>
<p>"These laws," Strangio says, "structurally impair my ability to fight back against them." In other words, they disempower trans people so that it is harder for us to fight to regain our power.</p>
<p>The problem is: "Each bill contributes to a political movement that imagines a world without us."</p>
<p>The question is: "Will there be anywhere safe in the United States for trans people in the near future?"</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-28425568087674517182024-02-24T04:52:00.000-08:002024-02-24T04:52:00.125-08:00Boom! Lawyered episode: Calling to 'eliminate transgenderism' is the same as calling to eliminate trans people<p>Please watch this episode of Boom! Lawyered. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foOG_3Q8xQ" target="_blank">March 6, 2023</a>.
<p>YouTube description: "In this week's episode, Jess and Imani get into the ways anti-trans advocates, including legislators and Supreme Court justices, want to erase LGBTQ folks from society. And it's all from a familiar anti-abortion playbook."</p>
<p>Imani Gandy begins by saying that her team "really needs cisgender people to stop both-sidesing the ongoing trans genocide."</p>
<p>Jess Pieklo says that Rewire News Group is "expert repro journalism that inspires you to stand up for trans folks." If the NYT really wanted to get out of its own agenda and find out more, Pieklo suggested, they could "bring on a trans reporter to talk about the issues at hand." But of course they don't.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9foOG_3Q8xQ?si=KD1JGwzXNvCWctT-" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>In this podcast episode, Gandy and Pieklo say of Republicans:</p>
<p>They're trying to repeal nondiscrimination protections and make it legal to discriminate against someone at work, in housing, medical care, in a cake shop, wherever.</p>
<p>They're saying that teachers have to call home to out a student to their parents if the kid might be somehow trans.</p>
<p>They're threatening that the state will take away trans kids from their affirming parents and will criminally charge the parents with child abuse.</p>
<p>Racist gerrymandering and voter suppression makes it harder for people to vote for politicians who affirm their needs.</p>
<p>It's the anti-abortion playbook.</p>
<p>They even suddenly pretend to care about women's sports, when all they're doing is preventing trans girls and women from playing sports, potentially outing them, and drawing harassing attention to them. These Republicans have never cared about women's sports and will continue not to care about them. Title IX, what's that? They're not going to fund girls' sports in schools. Their attitude is: "we need to peer into your child's underwear to make sure that they have the appropriate genitals." Despite their own behavior, Republicans "have the nerve to call trans people 'groomers'!"</p>
<p>They're talking about "parental rights" for their children not to hear words like "gay" in school. They're talking about "religious freedom" as an excuse for prejudiced behavior. They're saying people can excuse themselves from classes if they object to the content, and if more than half the class objects, the curriculum will be canceled for everyone — so it's majority rule for religious prejudice.</p>
<p>
<p>Oklahoma is talking about banning gender-affirming care up to age 26.</p>
<p>They're doing this to undermine the Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p>They're talking about charging doctors with felonies and taking away their medical license.</p>
<p>They're against pronouns, even though that's what people use to talk. That's banning language.</p>
<p>They're talking about "pronouns by committee," saying that a teacher needs permission from a student's parents to use pronouns that don't reflect the students' assigned sex at birth, and furthermore that even if the parents want the teacher to use certain pronouns for their child, the teacher has the right to refuse.</p>
<p>Gandy says: "The goal is to punish trans people for existing, to make life difficult for trans kids to exist. It's pure cruelty for cruelty's sake. And I have to say, in light of the sort of discourse that has gone on since that <a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/cpac-transphobia-trump-gorka-fitton-greene-knowles-5c067fa0cb35?sk=00c1f85a167da9136a3a2eaa1d45bafb" target="_blank">jackass Michael Knowles stood up at CPAC</a> and said, you know, we have to 'eradicate transgenderism.'" And "the well-meaning centrists":</p>
<blockquote><p>"...are like, 'I mean, he didn't say that he wants to kill transgender people. He said he wants to eradicate transgenderism.' Well, ha! First of all, as I said earlier, transgenderism is not an ideology. There's no such thing as being as <i>transgender-ism</i>, just like there's no such thing as <i>Black-ism</i>. But you know, in addition, it just seems to me that people are parsing language, they're splitting hairs, they're playing semantic games because they are too chickenshit to take a strong stand. And why are they too chickenshit? Likely because they have conservatives at their Thanksgiving table or Republican friends or people who are 'just asking questions.' They don't quite understand why trans people exist. And so they're 'just asking questions.' They're not necessarily 'transphobic.' So when you say 'eradicate transgenderism,' you're not necessarily calling for the <i>killing</i> of people, <i>but you are</i>. And if you're not calling for the killing of people you're calling for, for imposing mental harm on them and mental harm, if you look up <i>genocide</i>, if you look at the UN's definition of genocide, imposing mental harm or bodily harm on a group of people counts as genocide. How are you gonna 'detransition' trans people? That's what they want. They want trans people to 'revert,' quote unquote, back to their biological sex. How you gonna do that, forcibly? What if trans people refuse?" (42:12–44:01)</p></blockquote>
<p>To that, Pieklo says sarcastically: "I don't know, Imani, these same centrists told me the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_Health_Organization" target="_blank">Court would never overturn Roe</a>."</p>
<p>Gandy: "That's a good point. Yeah, yeah. So these folks are always right about everything, all: 'Oh, don't worry your pretty little head, Roe's not gonna go anywhere'. 'Oh, don't worry your pretty little gay head. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges" target="_blank">Obergefell v. Hodges</a> isn't going anywhere'. Meanwhile, Iowa has just introduced a bill to eradicate same sex marriage."</p>
<hr>
<p>The podcast aired one year ago. The speakers were correct. Today, the legal situation in the US is worse.</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-80810100777438645582024-02-23T20:05:00.000-08:002024-02-23T20:05:00.130-08:00Tim Dunn: Anti-transgender efforts<h2>Please read this long article</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/" target="_blank">The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy</a>: The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians. Russell Gold, Texas Monthly, March 2024</p>
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<h2>In which you will learn</h2>
<p>"A 68-year-old oil billionaire, Dunn seeks to transform Texas into something resembling a theocracy. If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his checkbook. ... He has built his own caucus within the Legislature that is financially beholden to him."</p>
<p>He is patriarchal, anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-public-school.</p>
<p>"He now lives in a mansion, hidden within a roughly twenty-acre walled compound on the northern edge of Midland," and everyone he doesn't like seems to him to be a satanic marxist, coming to take away his stuff:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Throughout its history, Texas has seen plenty of influential men who have shared their message from the pulpit. And a steady march of rich men have opened their wallets to get politicians to do what they want. But we’ve never seen the two archetypes merge in quite this way. Dunn has said he believes we’re in the midst of a holy battle that pits Christians against those he refers to as Marxists, who he claims want to control all property and take away freedom. Marxists “are increasingly becoming bolder and more brazen in their quest for tyranny,” he has warned. “It is becoming clear they want to kill us.” The founder of Marxism, he argued, wasn’t Karl Marx. It was Satan."</p></blockquote>
<p>"Until recently his main tool for exerting influence <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/12/defend-texas-liberty-pac-nick-fuentes-jonathan-stickland/" target="_blank">has been the Defend Texas Liberty PAC</a>, to which he has given at least $9.85 million since the beginning of 2022. This is nearly all the money he contributed to Texas races over that span and the majority raised by the committee."</p>
<p>"A Dunn-affiliated organization lets lawmakers know how it wants them to vote," and if they comply, they are "likely to remain in Dunn’s good graces."</p>
<p>And "through [his financial vehicle] Hexagon Partners, Dunn <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/trump-brad-parscale-tim-dunn-artificial-intelligence/" target="_blank">invested $7.5 million in a company affiliated with Brad Parscale</a>, who worked in San Antonio targeting swing voters with digital advertising before he became manager of Donald Trump’s failed 2020 presidential campaign. That firm plans to build a “Christian-based” advertising agency that will use artificial intelligence to precisely target consumers with commercial and political messages."</p>
<p>He's also associated with Pipeline Media.</p>
<p>CrownQuest operating: Also him.</p>
<h2>He is anti-transgender</h2>
<p>He's been an anti-transgender pioneer since at least 2017:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The schism came to a head over <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/order-timeline-bathroom-bill-crashed-session/" target="_blank">the 2017 “bathroom bill,”</a> which would have targeted transgender Texans by requiring them in some instances to use restrooms associated with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Dunn backed the bill, but the business lobby opposed it, fearing a backlash that would’ve harmed their companies’ profits. The old guard prevailed."</p></blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote><p>Dunn’s campaign cash washes through multiple political action committees and helps support various bands of right-wing political activists. <a href="https://www.thetexasvoice.com/pro-family-conservatives-attacked-by-questionable-family-project-group/" target="_blank">The Texas Voice reported that shortly after Thanksgiving a little-known group called the Texas Family Project</a> blasted out text messages that attacked select Republican lawmakers. The messages claimed that those legislators voted in favor of funding to help transgender Texans transition from the gender they were assigned at birth. This was hogwash.</p>
<p>All of the targeted Republicans voted for Senate Bill 14, a law passed last year and signed by Abbott that banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth; further, it required Texas to revoke medical licenses for doctors who didn’t comply. Their apparent transgression was not voting for an anti-transgender amendment on an unrelated bill, creating a gossamer thread of truth to the text message’s claim. In reality, these Republicans were singled out and castigated not for their position on transgender Texans but for having the gall to vote independently. (In late January, <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/anti-muslim-campaign-mailers-18644169.php" target="_blank">the same outfit sent anti-Muslim mailers</a> assailing several Republicans in the Legislature.)</p></blockquote>
<h2>Trans rights are bound up with climate action</h2>
<p>One reason:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Dunn’s influence goes well beyond campaigns and politics. His résumé is lengthy. He is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank located a couple of blocks south of the Capitol. TPPF generates policy proposals—from severe property tax cuts to bills that impede the growth of renewable energy—that are often taken up by the Texas Legislature and emulated in other red states."</p></blockquote>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-28986696005175732182024-02-23T12:11:00.000-08:002024-02-23T12:12:32.775-08:00Trans dignity is everyone's dignity: Jamelle Bouie's Feb 2023 NYT column<p>One year ago, the New York Times published <a href="https://jamellebouie.net/" target="_blank">Jamelle Bouie</a>'s opinion column <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/opinion/trump-desantis-transgender-rights.html" target="_blank">There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America</a> (Feb. 10, 2023). Though the newspaper has been <a href="https://disruptivedissertation.blogspot.com/2023/02/transgender-coverage-nyt.html" target="_blank">generally unhelpful</a> to trans people, this publication was a happy exception.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbbMUZ4XsgBz6hIhybtX62-DDg-h8-hO7KToL814Q98I2kB2uhzc3adey3RsO29wOpzRSqoZZLX930lj2iyIv0EmVs_UotoDCQYXMbru6IPXzmsU_JXvWcJknUH9cIzMZ2mt114iVCOSWrqExRbJ0omjgPrplc1taTGLbVPnmgqskqqlJkHt0b1sBhS8/s1600/flower.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="purple flower" border="0" width="75%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbbMUZ4XsgBz6hIhybtX62-DDg-h8-hO7KToL814Q98I2kB2uhzc3adey3RsO29wOpzRSqoZZLX930lj2iyIv0EmVs_UotoDCQYXMbru6IPXzmsU_JXvWcJknUH9cIzMZ2mt114iVCOSWrqExRbJ0omjgPrplc1taTGLbVPnmgqskqqlJkHt0b1sBhS8/s1600/flower.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Bouie points out that Trump, if elected, will "target transgender adults as well" as transgender youth. How do we know? Because Trump explicitly said he he would. The overall political attack is "a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of transgender people," and it's "no accident."</p>
<blockquote><p>Over the past year, we have seen <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/gop-candidates-unleash-wave-ads-targeting-transgender-rights-rcna28945" target="_blank">a sweeping and ferocious attack</a> on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.</p>
<p>In states led by Republicans, conservative lawmakers have <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nearly-240-anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-2022-far-targeting-trans-people-rcna20418" target="_blank">introduced or passed dozens of laws</a> that would give religious exemptions for discrimination against transgender people, prohibit the use of bathrooms consistent with their gender identity <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights?redirect=legislation-affecting-lgbtq-rights-across-country" target="_blank">and limit access</a> to gender-affirming care.</p>
<p>In lashing out against L.G.B.T.Q. people, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/05/drag-show-bans-gop-statehouses-00081193" target="_blank">lawmakers in at least eight states</a> have even gone as far as to introduce bans on “drag” performance that are so broad as to threaten the ability of gender-nonconforming people simply to exist in public.</p></blockquote>
<p>Bouie also gives us this important commentary, which I happily receive as a book recommendation:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Douglass observed 'that although dignity seems to be woven into human nature, it is also something one possesses to the degree that one is conscious of having it,' the historian Nicholas Knowles Bromell writes in '<a href="https://archive.org/embed/powersofdignity00brom" target="_blank">The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass</a>,' 'and one’s own consciousness of having it depends in part on making others conscious of it. Others’ recognition of it then flows back and confirms one’s belief in having it, but conversely their refusal to recognize it has the opposite effect of weakening one’s confidence in one’s own dignity.'"</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>'A democracy,' Douglass’s work suggests, 'is a polity that prizes human dignity,' Bromell writes. 'It comes into existence when a group of persons agrees to acknowledge each other’s dignity, both informally, through mutually respectful comportment, and formally, through the establishment of political rights.' All of our freedoms, in Bromell’s account of Douglass, 'are <i>means</i> toward the end of maintaining a political community in which all persons collaboratively produce their dignity.'"</p></blockquote>
<hr>
<p><b>By the way, I wrote on <a href="https://medium.com/curious/what-is-human-dignity-f3fbd3e857a3" target="_blank">dignity</a>, on <a href="https://medium.com/p/52a253144db6" target="_blank">humility</a>, and on <a href="https://www.jewishboston.com/on-decency-defending-transgender-rights/" target="_blank">decency</a> for JewishBoston in the context of transgender rights. That's one specific connection with my own thinking on this topic.</b></p>
</hr>
<p>Bouie concludes: "And like the battles for abortion rights and bodily autonomy, the stakes of the fight for the rights and dignity of transgender people are high for all of us. There is no world in which their freedom is suppressed and yours is sustained."</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-59253055486573944972024-02-23T04:31:00.000-08:002024-03-20T06:24:55.955-07:00Renewable energy (February 2024 headlines)
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUaBNYphuCuYb_Sk72P3_LvVtZCRuIfdycddYgis4vXvTPa18HcsF_Q2L1fAf8bQcwLjWfmn2UFdRl2ApdThapiuFp1-EB1O56wqdYxsLeqOd3YkD15UUretQ5TUTzsug7FDNI3AMmpnXlLyLb4Pl5ta4z5qXU0-PQoPoozuKX6pdOyZYOuouu30wnF6E/s1600/tornado.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trees" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUaBNYphuCuYb_Sk72P3_LvVtZCRuIfdycddYgis4vXvTPa18HcsF_Q2L1fAf8bQcwLjWfmn2UFdRl2ApdThapiuFp1-EB1O56wqdYxsLeqOd3YkD15UUretQ5TUTzsug7FDNI3AMmpnXlLyLb4Pl5ta4z5qXU0-PQoPoozuKX6pdOyZYOuouu30wnF6E/s1600/tornado.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>Recent headlines on renewable energy</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/02/04/us-counties-ban-renewable-energy-plants/71841063007/" target="_blank">Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built</a> Elizabeth Weise & Suhail Bhat, USA Today, Feb 4, 2024</p>
<blockquote><p>On February 6, 2024, the European Commission (part of the EU’s executive government) "announced one of the world’s most ambitious goals to slash planet-heating pollution ... backing a 90% cut in carbon emissions by 2040, from 1990 levels, taking a stance that is likely to set a benchmark for developed nations around the world. ... The announcement will kick off months of talks that could take up to a year before the European Parliament rubber stamps the target."<br>
— <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/06/climate/eu-climate-plan-emissions-intl/index.html" target="_blank">The EU just unveiled one of the world’s most ambitious climate plans. But can it deliver?</a> Angela Dewan, CNN, Feb 6, 2024</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"Anchored to the seabed by a cable and connected to the power grid, the kite, which measures about twelve meters from tip to tip of the wings and weighs about 28 tons — actually, that corresponds to the Dragon 12 model, although there are smaller ones — navigates by taking advantage of predictable tides and currents describing a figure-eight or infinity-shaped trajectory, allowing it to move its propeller and generate up to 3.5 GWh of electricity annually."<br>
— <a href="https://medium.com/enrique-dans/tides-and-energy-why-the-best-ideas-are-usually-the-simplest-a3a12551d4fe?sk=v2%2Fc1278102-cd79-49a9-b762-e8dca7f663b6" target="_blank">Tides and energy: why the best ideas are usually the simplest</a>, Enrique Dans, Medium, Feb 13, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://switchedon.reneweconomy.com.au/content/how-communities-can-benefit-from-being---literally---invested-in-big-renewables" target="_blank">How communities can benefit from being - literally - invested in big renewables</a> Overseas projects show community co-investment can build social licence for large scale renewable energy projects. Jarra Hicks, SwitchedOn, Feb 19, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://wapo.st/3wP9Myd" target="_blank">Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power</a>: AI and the boom in clean-tech manufacturing are pushing America’s power grid to the brink. Utilities can’t keep up. Evan Halper, Washington Post, March 7, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/19/business/india-adani-green-energy-plant-climate-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">A coal billionaire is building the world’s biggest clean energy plant and it’s five times the size of Paris</a> Diksha Madhok, CNN, March 20, 2024</p>
<h2>Previously</h2>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/14/energy/siemens-energy-germany-rescue-package/index.html" target="_blank">Germany puts up $8 billion to rescue huge green energy company</a> Anna Cooban, CNN, Nov 14, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/renewable-natural-gas-may-sound-green-but-its-not-an-antidote-for-climate-change-138791" target="_blank">‘Renewable’ natural gas may sound green, but it’s not an antidote for climate change</a>, Emily Grubert, theconversation.com, Jul 6, 2020</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-83613461779659817422024-02-18T18:41:00.000-08:002024-02-18T18:41:49.141-08:00When to take a social media break
<p>Burning out?</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOKaJ-VOhCXvwj7hcGHiPOTgkGpc6lTrOw0RGqv_0xXLwDS2Cf6FfzmltLoFPmrXyob99ypeCBCraur69TGW-OQ_K_sxHB8UCbKMdRaF65r33w4IaBEFRxF3YyW8g7SRI83b5FHnUE9TJ9lgEe7Q89PUD_tdXXpm4l5dpNQpm21JEl24kLs2Y93fxPOYY/s1600/bulb.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="light bulb maybe burning out" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOKaJ-VOhCXvwj7hcGHiPOTgkGpc6lTrOw0RGqv_0xXLwDS2Cf6FfzmltLoFPmrXyob99ypeCBCraur69TGW-OQ_K_sxHB8UCbKMdRaF65r33w4IaBEFRxF3YyW8g7SRI83b5FHnUE9TJ9lgEe7Q89PUD_tdXXpm4l5dpNQpm21JEl24kLs2Y93fxPOYY/s1600/bulb.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>Scoring 'imaginary points'</h2>
<blockquote><p>"It’s the personal interactions, or the lack thereof, that make me feel done, feel more drained than I ever expected. It’s the inability to share my thoughts without seeing countless bad-faith critiques, even from people who fundamentally agree with what I’m saying. It’s the shallowness, the hollowness, the desire to score imaginary points placed above solidarity or building something or even constructive criticism. It’s the endless encounters with raw and misplaced anger with nowhere to channel it. It’s the fury and frustration shot out into the void, or directed at would-be friends."</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.jphilll.com/p/im-burnt-out-on-social-media" target="_blank">I'm burnt out on social media</a>: A reflection for supporting readers. Joshua P. Hill. New Means (Substack). February 18, 2024.</p>
<h2>'Curating personhood' inside an algorithm</h2>
<p>Wanting to take a social media break wasn't due <i>only</i> to the agitation, distraction, the urge to buy things for no reason, the inattention to what is taken and the unmindful plastic waste that resulted, the exposure to angry online trolls. It was also "perception gulfs" like:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Once, having read of a friend’s mother’s death — movingly detailed in social media posts — I saw that same friend in real life and somehow did not process that she was still grieving.</p>
<p>Conversely, I ran into a friend who seemed happy online, but realized quickly after talking to her in person that she was actually in a very dark place."</p></blockquote>
<p>There is a "labor of curating personhood in algorithmic space."</p>
<p>"I savored and cultivated something which nobody has figured out how to monetize: A sense of private delight. Indeed, I felt a new sense of private wonder."</p>
<p>"Here’s a phrase that came to me somewhere during my time off: <i>You have a real life, not an advertisement for a life. </i>"</p>
<p>"If I go back online, I only want to post and share what I would want to rain down on me, or a friend, or on the neighbor who one code calls me to love like a self."</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/24/opinions/social-media-unplug-poetry-taylor-ctrp/index.html" target="_blank">Opinion: It’s the first weekend of spring. It’s totally okay to unplug</a>: Tess Taylor, CNN, March 24, 2023</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-64382594051299246842024-02-15T07:42:00.000-08:002024-02-15T07:44:23.449-08:00U.S. humanists & atheists: Urge Congress to reauthorize USCIRF
<p>From the <a href="https://www.cfequality.org/" target="_blank">Center for Freethought Equality</a>, the advocacy and political arm
of the American Humanist Association, in an email today:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/about-uscirf/welcome-uscirf" target="_blank">United States Commission on International Religious Freedom</a> (USCIRF), statutorily-established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, is charged with examining religious freedom violations and making recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress. ... Each year, USCIRF publishes an annual report that provides designation recommendations to the State Department on how to best assess the state of religious freedom in every country. ... Congress will soon be considering whether to approve the continuation of this very important Commission. The bills (respectively H.R. 7025 / S.3764) simply reauthorize USCIRF through Fiscal Year 2026. You may read the House bill <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7025?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22hr+7025%22%7D&s=3&r=1" target="_blank">here</a>, and the Senate bill <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/3764?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22S.+3764%22%7D&s=2&r=7" target="_blank">here</a>."</p></blockquote>
<p><b><a href="http://www.votervoice.net/Shares/BAAAAAR6AC0TbAJcCYd7FAA" target="_blank">Tell your representative and your senators</a> to reauthorize USCIRF.</b></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfsfm0A8L2-QAkj2sMTn143r11EjW1xPwtqSBUw_G_aK4pcLlmaLarB1dxzQAc7qJBg_r9p45qQqd8O_TeSnMdczvBvJeK7ubAB4VYLVixlAtoPtQb-yRY661ffFSOyVr5JIQpcTWy8tmoB00fHu9tj3oJG5QbIZ2st5rucAjQbaqF0udSlZsSzoGxzQ/s1600/quilt.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="multicolored quilt" border="0" width="70%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfsfm0A8L2-QAkj2sMTn143r11EjW1xPwtqSBUw_G_aK4pcLlmaLarB1dxzQAc7qJBg_r9p45qQqd8O_TeSnMdczvBvJeK7ubAB4VYLVixlAtoPtQb-yRY661ffFSOyVr5JIQpcTWy8tmoB00fHu9tj3oJG5QbIZ2st5rucAjQbaqF0udSlZsSzoGxzQ/s1600/quilt.png"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-76644848106345885922024-02-15T07:23:00.000-08:002024-02-15T07:23:45.586-08:00Trump: I mix up other people's names intentionally<p>If you provide wrong information on purpose, that's called a <i>lie</i>.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxWNBw4EPfnV3mIs-vZcAhEURKqFqyvHfS905FAYuCqNJHr4UgoXHYo73XOIjErLD94rKK0xIYgAljGTzPTN_QYYZCM5dYN9Zg8jfjc2L7Q8jGAyZq7A5ITspE7P_6myIUTJmL6DyvA7VF9bMqRUJDwAewb7yKcxKkRWdAskMD5VpDhUHaxDy2yXTJiI/s1600/lie.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Don Damage Control: I Mixed Up Pelosi and Haley on Purpose!" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxWNBw4EPfnV3mIs-vZcAhEURKqFqyvHfS905FAYuCqNJHr4UgoXHYo73XOIjErLD94rKK0xIYgAljGTzPTN_QYYZCM5dYN9Zg8jfjc2L7Q8jGAyZq7A5ITspE7P_6myIUTJmL6DyvA7VF9bMqRUJDwAewb7yKcxKkRWdAskMD5VpDhUHaxDy2yXTJiI/s1600/lie.png"/></a></div>
<p>This is in reference to Trump having <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nikki-haley-jan-6_n_65ab471be4b076abd7abb095" target="_blank">made remarks in January</a> that confused former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat) with presidential candidate Nikki Haley (a Republican).</p>
<p>On February 14, Trump said "I purposely interpose names." He lamented: "It’s very hard to be sarcastic when I interpose." (<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nancy-pelosi-nikki-haley-interpose-names_n_65cd99ace4b02493f348cf42" target="_blank">HuffPost</a>)</p>
<p><i>Well stop making the joke if you're not good at making the joke.</i></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl49iHLPldrL4NhzYEd2jRPmTLs23y2vNXpC9NfVuSWmMUS47uyxmHJ17Ao1Qu8fe9UUVak0USYQOUmAWFZxumYTwL2Jj117CC7Z4lPELcs9sJeYMwU0nz-r_8DFL6IYSvf9OckqAwIBM_WRA2Nj8Y68f64AxlDZ4jSujNTbG5ViD5eB8tEh-UehjpRZQ/s1600/same.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Mueller, She Wrote on X, Feb 15, 2024: I think I get it. He *transposes* the names of people he hates because they’re all the same to him? Yeah, no. Even if he could say it coherently, it doesn’t stand to reason." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl49iHLPldrL4NhzYEd2jRPmTLs23y2vNXpC9NfVuSWmMUS47uyxmHJ17Ao1Qu8fe9UUVak0USYQOUmAWFZxumYTwL2Jj117CC7Z4lPELcs9sJeYMwU0nz-r_8DFL6IYSvf9OckqAwIBM_WRA2Nj8Y68f64AxlDZ4jSujNTbG5ViD5eB8tEh-UehjpRZQ/s1600/same.png"/></a></div>
<p>All of us need to be real. He didn't transpose, juxtapose, substitute, whatever. There was no sarcasm. He just said something <i>false</i>. How do we know it's intentional? Because he has the option to prepare for his remarks or not give them at all. It's his choice to run for president. He told tens of thousands of documented lies during his presidency, and he continues to tell lies today in his 2024 campaign. He runs his mouth continuously, and he does not care if he produces false information. When he's called out on his falsehoods, he says it was a joke that we didn't get, but also that it's "hard" for him to tell good jokes. He's been having these sorts of "rallies" for nine years. In my opinion, he can learn to tell good jokes or else be accountable for his lies. For Trump, there are no accidental falsehoods or bad jokes at this point. If there were ever a grace period, it was in 2015. This is 2024.</p>
<p>The nature of a lie isn't only in the speaker's intention just before he speaks. What makes a lie can come afterward, based on how he doesn't correct inaccuracies once he becomes aware he has misspoken or based on how he doesn't provide adequate context when others let him know they didn't get his "sarcasm." And that can be a worse type of lie, because it perpetuates the false information and the harm it causes.</p>
<p>If he's unable or unwilling to be accountable, then he's not only a liar — he's a liar who doesn't accept responsibility.</p>
<p>Which we've known for years and years and years.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-27603803002897847562024-02-15T05:33:00.000-08:002024-02-24T16:25:52.867-08:0090,000 trans people in a 2022 survey<p>Katelyn Burns for MSNBC a few days ago:</p>
<blockquote><p>"A survey of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/transgender-survey-transition-hrt-surgery-gender-affirming-rcna137563" target="_blank">over 90,000 trans people in 2022</a> found 94% reported being 'very satisfied' with their <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/missouri-attorney-general-andrew-bailey-transgender-health-care-rcna80437" target="_blank">transition-related medical care</a> — a remarkable result, experts say, given that such a high satisfaction rate is rare for any medical treatment, much less one that has been the subject of so much political division over the years.</p>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://ustranssurvey.org/" target="_blank">survey respondents were self selected</a>, it’s still a remarkable result. Such a high satisfaction rate is rare for any medical treatment, much less one that has been the subject of <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ohio-mike-dewine-trans-care-executive-order-rcna132982" target="_blank">so much political division</a> over the years.</p>
<p>One possible reason for such a high satisfaction rate is that gender affirming care, especially surgical procedures, is still <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9561692/" target="_blank">somewhat difficult to obtain</a> for the average trans person."</p></blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately, some people in "the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/us/politics/transgender-conservative-campaign.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">burgeoning anti-trans grift economy</a>" suggested that people "wholesale discard the data <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kkubds3ofl2r" target="_blank">because detransitioners weren’t included</a> in the sample." However, Burns says, "a similar survey of detransitioners by one of the leading anti-trans researchers was <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34665380/" target="_blank">only able to find 100 respondents</a>. Adding another hundred people to this 90,000 person survey wouldn’t move the needle in terms of satisfaction rates."</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKSy-GqJy35QQduUbk0WYrqa7didH8YGy-SoF9H56PV3VN32_0uUd2zw4oXAimhSXrldVAhOgpuuXxujpwhGp6EKbZOnA3QTIMw_b5uyWqmeixyrw5iAJgfrf9m6lWdnx44L3VE_DUzFrL9ODUZ4AUvSTPXDVufQPUrJIlslgJTLtz2vaZjiz2-mskxck/s1600/exposure.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="amusement park ride with bright light" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKSy-GqJy35QQduUbk0WYrqa7didH8YGy-SoF9H56PV3VN32_0uUd2zw4oXAimhSXrldVAhOgpuuXxujpwhGp6EKbZOnA3QTIMw_b5uyWqmeixyrw5iAJgfrf9m6lWdnx44L3VE_DUzFrL9ODUZ4AUvSTPXDVufQPUrJIlslgJTLtz2vaZjiz2-mskxck/s1600/exposure.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>And by the way, Burns adds: "knee surgeries have a <a href="https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/01/07/knee-replacement" target="_blank">regret rate of up to 33%</a>, yet we don’t see an international campaign to ban knee surgeries in the name of those who regret it."</p>
<h2>That's from an MSNBC article</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trans-survey-gender-affirming-care-rcna138452" target="_blank">The U.S. Trans Survey proves the inaccuracy of this right-wing talking point</a>: Why you shouldn’t let the abundance of poorly sourced anti-trans rhetoric fool you. Katelyn Burns, MSNBC columnist. Feb. 12, 2024</p>
<h2>Also, see USA Today</h2>
<p>The survey has good-quality information that can put an end to fearmongering.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/23/transgender-national-survey-myths-misinformation/72640839007/" target="_blank">Why the largest transgender survey ever could be a powerful rebuke to myths, misinformation</a>. Susan Miller, USA TODAY, February 23, 2024</p>
<h2>The survey</h2>
<p><a href="https://ustranssurvey.org/" target="_blank">2022 U.S. Trans Survey: ustranssurvey.org</a></p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-83466901836732015942024-02-13T07:06:00.000-08:002024-02-28T14:19:14.920-08:00Medical groups that support gender-affirming care (MSNBC graphic)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MogCt_GOvQQKLS-SGGuW2_zPvCFOEOElMtZ7Xsx1MxPMG52W-cNvZ0yrOSEw5_1BL5MwTxNWKbTOEhTaIpzX_31_ffy_k7m53XuEKIIpQp-Yo3nBo3YOm_LTlMdXmuG7QOVeLjna_sa2-_TO61aQQxlYO0ohMxjVHTFA_k02i5e0BoJdqoYKHMMkHOM/s1600/medical%20groups%20that%20support%20gender-affirming%20care.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Screenshot of MSNBC. Caption at top of screen: Why you shouldn't let the abundance of poorly sourced anti-trans rhetoric fool you. Under that, a title: Medical groups that support gender-affirming care. Under that are the logos of 14 medical associations: American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Society for Reproductive Medicine, World Health Organization, World Medical Association, American Society of Plastic Surgeons, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Counseling Association, American Nurses Association, American College of Physicians, USPATH (US Professional Association for Transgender Health), and the American Heart Association. The image is stamped as having been sourced from GLAAD." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MogCt_GOvQQKLS-SGGuW2_zPvCFOEOElMtZ7Xsx1MxPMG52W-cNvZ0yrOSEw5_1BL5MwTxNWKbTOEhTaIpzX_31_ffy_k7m53XuEKIIpQp-Yo3nBo3YOm_LTlMdXmuG7QOVeLjna_sa2-_TO61aQQxlYO0ohMxjVHTFA_k02i5e0BoJdqoYKHMMkHOM/s1600/medical%20groups%20that%20support%20gender-affirming%20care.png"/></a></div>
<ul>
<li>American Medical Association</li>
<li>American Academy of Pediatrics</li>
<li>American Psychological Association</li>
<li>Pediatric Endocrine Society</li>
<li>American Society for Reproductive Medicine</li>
<li>World Health Organization</li>
<li>World Medical Association</li>
<li>American Society of Plastic Surgeons</li>
<li>American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry</li>
<li>American Counseling Association</li>
<li>American Nurses Association</li>
<li>American College of Physicians</li>
<li>USPATH (US Professional Association for Transgender Health)</li>
<li>American Heart Association</li>
</ul>
<p>I took the screenshot from this article:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trans-survey-gender-affirming-care-rcna138452" target="_blank">The U.S. Trans Survey proves the inaccuracy of this right-wing talking point</a><br>
Why you shouldn’t let the abundance of poorly sourced anti-trans rhetoric fool you.<br>
Katelyn Burns, MSNBC Columnist<br>
Feb. 12, 2024</p>
<h2>Adversaries have portrayed this as a 'debate' since the 1970s</h2>
<p>"And similar to the 1970s, opponents of trans medicine today frame gender-affirming care as a 'debate,' even though <a href="https://glaad.org/medical-association-statements-supporting-trans-youth-healthcare-and-against-discriminatory/" target="_blank">all major U.S. medical associations</a> support these practices <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children" target="_blank">as medically necessary</a> and lifesaving."<br>
— <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pseudoscience-has-long-been-used-to-oppress-transgender-people/" target="_blank">Pseudoscience has long been used to oppress transgender people</a>: Three major waves of opposition to transgender health care in the past century have cited faulty science to justify hostility. G. Samantha Rosenthal & The Conversation US. Scientific American. February 12, 2024.</p>
<h2>Update: American Psychological Association</h2>
<p>The APA has long supported gender-affirming care for youth. Now, they've also made clear that <a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/transgender-nonbinary-inclusive-care" target="_blank">government shouldn't ban it</a>.</p>
<p>On February 28, 2024, as Erin Reed writes, "the American Psychological Association announced in a historic policy resolution that it opposes gender-affirming care bans for transgender youth. The association, the largest psychological organization in the world with 157,000 members, declared, “Government bans on gender-affirming care disregard the comprehensive body of psychological and medical research supporting the positive impact of gender-affirming treatments,” and resolves the organization’s support for the necessity of that care for transgender youth and adults."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/worlds-largest-psych-association" target="_blank">World's Largest Psych Association Passes Policy Supporting Trans Youth Care By Massive Margin</a>: The American Psychological Association, representing 157,000 members, has issued a resolution calling for an end to trans care bans and misinformation around care. Erin Reed, February 28, 2024.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-89642279983583761102024-02-10T08:01:00.000-08:002024-02-12T05:38:44.864-08:00Pamela Paul's Feb 2, 2024 screed
<p>I wrote this article: <a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/trans-people-tired-of-pamela-paul-9d34c91ea44d?sk=75a3f13e9570c3e38e7bfd63ac30897e" target="_blank">Why this trans person is tired of Pamela Paul’s columns</a> (10-min read, unpaywalled friend link) She could just stop talking about us. She could talk about anything else.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJZrcoxwNW_Mm01DP1CTIErxumcbYJWH2cJ-WL-3mPKsN-NT-afksffRulGD676OtjuBc3eqG-yj0fQsaLCKqzMKlZFDiAUhb2tNrUpRQKpZTCJtye1TLSSIHBFAMoZs8vm7X7z7fgbGBDM3atzzPHiZs4rKAxv9j9cxhrvNWIvd1u0UAJ1_5I6Ruzqg/s1600/tongue.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="purple chewing gum on tongue" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJZrcoxwNW_Mm01DP1CTIErxumcbYJWH2cJ-WL-3mPKsN-NT-afksffRulGD676OtjuBc3eqG-yj0fQsaLCKqzMKlZFDiAUhb2tNrUpRQKpZTCJtye1TLSSIHBFAMoZs8vm7X7z7fgbGBDM3atzzPHiZs4rKAxv9j9cxhrvNWIvd1u0UAJ1_5I6Ruzqg/s1600/tongue.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>More regarding her Feb 2 screed:</p>
<p>Jerry Coyne, of Evolution is True, acknowledged it on his blog.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRLmAhTBhN_bFxF-8CrI6gLIetWHDFr3Rmr46wD9PYJ1G2M7xxqMK4K1cl8V3NRyApWeTCEjm7pLTAU-Z-M50ZVyvMv-cC3vqdgFYIW0UGGiChflRYRWLD06RyZVvExtzXZScqz7cBnklYXFiqKcBLAgubEhYncYmLLRzdtJ3fkGWMJX0WTpq4ZMO3iUY/s1600/coyne1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Pamela Paul’s NYT article on gender transitioning: more than an op-ed, and guaranteed to raise a ruckus - February 4, 2024 • 11:45 am - I mentioned this article this morning, but wanted to give a bit more detail because it’s important in two ways. First, it’s a good and objective assessment of gender transitioning in America, giving both the upsides and downsides. Second, it’s in the New York Times, which has, until recently, taken the “affirmative treatment” side of gender transitioning, staying away from the topics of harmful puberty blockers and those who reverse transitioning (“detransitioners”) or those who avoid medical transitioning after thinking about it (“desisters”). Recently, however, the paper has become more objective on transitioning (this started with Emily Bazelon’s 2022 article “The Battle Over Gender Therapy“, for which Bazelon got a lot of pushback from her colleagues). Pamela Paul’s article takes that even farther. It’s well worth reading. For more plaudits, read Eliza" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRLmAhTBhN_bFxF-8CrI6gLIetWHDFr3Rmr46wD9PYJ1G2M7xxqMK4K1cl8V3NRyApWeTCEjm7pLTAU-Z-M50ZVyvMv-cC3vqdgFYIW0UGGiChflRYRWLD06RyZVvExtzXZScqz7cBnklYXFiqKcBLAgubEhYncYmLLRzdtJ3fkGWMJX0WTpq4ZMO3iUY/s1600/coyne1.png"/></a></div>
<p>In the comments, someone points out Erin Reed's critique. Coyne's first rebuttal is that it was "written by gender activists." (I do believe that pointing to the author generally constitutes a fallacious counter-rebuttal. Also, it's a circular complaint, given that "gender activist" doesn't mean anything except someone who maintains a position with which anti-trans people disagree.) OK, suppose it's his context note, rather than his rebuttal. His next rebuttal is that the person who invented the concept ROGD managed (after one retracted attempt) to submit a paper that <i>wasn't retracted</i>. This is a very, very low bar for deciding what is true. People publish papers about all sorts of things, and they are wrong, as Coyne, the author of a book <i>Why Evolution Is True</i>, ought to be well aware.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDynI-hZs61jGnudvT9O0ZyYBjOIoJHQK8Fn56Grbpj_kVL4KbvkIo2z0_GCIb5H0AFUiJoiHMvBmsMfZ6txTFw6riPlmyCLqpvEol4_Wk8Ms_Cj2qWrlVuJaeRqkctrIuXCwD4Z_t5344BVS-mlNfU3rUB3P31q1yuh1mAgRUNtrwQ7enUdF-Sj3ilug/s1600/coyne2.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Jerry Coyne, in the comments on his own blog: By all means read the critique. But that critique is written by gender activists. Also, Paul notes that ROGD is “controversial” and says that about Littman’s paper. But she also produced a non-retracted paper." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDynI-hZs61jGnudvT9O0ZyYBjOIoJHQK8Fn56Grbpj_kVL4KbvkIo2z0_GCIb5H0AFUiJoiHMvBmsMfZ6txTFw6riPlmyCLqpvEol4_Wk8Ms_Cj2qWrlVuJaeRqkctrIuXCwD4Z_t5344BVS-mlNfU3rUB3P31q1yuh1mAgRUNtrwQ7enUdF-Sj3ilug/s1600/coyne2.png"/></a></div>
<p>A commenter presents his theory of what a "transgender activist" is. They're either non-transgender people who believe that trans people need more rights than they currently have...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBesV58rQdh39c39FFP5-Ergsh5uCCa2DXgV9hnYk9f1xTsQUzBjPmyRUzgLK5vY4GdMOtJu_N-_KRos3Ws278D0_Gr26lXRZ94TCx25MB1mJ2dLuks500yLQQ8Fkjgwps4YY87jAp9a5BMVAUqFWMcpZb7oBXNMVSqB2_F6DIp_sBWx1wh1tQpU9xBCQ/s1600/coyne3.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Peter comments: Radical transgender activists come in at least two varieties. 1. Allies. They are not transgender themselves. They believe that the pursuit of the radical transgender agenda is the next frontier of the civil rights struggle (after gay..." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBesV58rQdh39c39FFP5-Ergsh5uCCa2DXgV9hnYk9f1xTsQUzBjPmyRUzgLK5vY4GdMOtJu_N-_KRos3Ws278D0_Gr26lXRZ94TCx25MB1mJ2dLuks500yLQQ8Fkjgwps4YY87jAp9a5BMVAUqFWMcpZb7oBXNMVSqB2_F6DIp_sBWx1wh1tQpU9xBCQ/s1600/coyne3.png"/></a></div>
<p>...or they're transgender people who "assume that what worked from them will work for everybody."</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMDDiFB63MZYwpGR2rkUpMXPhSlT-RluqG6R_YxyMnyOtZVRulOoLIZH0mKAon224CX5uLKyjmewYJdqkZJzZyXoEkAKMLDEEmHczSxPPxsQylj7ciwQXcgEwph1-Uw6n2ywNFdtDhu1xFGnD6oBs9vve4WvV0tBcBltysvN07BztI1RMcV85zMzDi7Ok/s1600/coyne4.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="2. Transgender adults for whom medical transitioning has worked. They make the mistake to assume that what worked from them will work for everybody – a classic..." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMDDiFB63MZYwpGR2rkUpMXPhSlT-RluqG6R_YxyMnyOtZVRulOoLIZH0mKAon224CX5uLKyjmewYJdqkZJzZyXoEkAKMLDEEmHczSxPPxsQylj7ciwQXcgEwph1-Uw6n2ywNFdtDhu1xFGnD6oBs9vve4WvV0tBcBltysvN07BztI1RMcV85zMzDi7Ok/s1600/coyne4.png"/></a></div>
<p>This is nonsense, but very telling nonsense. Trans people <i>do</i> need more rights than we currently have. Also, I don't know any trans person who assumes that our own transition will "work" for "everybody," whatever that means. Every person has a unique way of living out their gender, and trans people know this well. What trans people do commonly tend to believe — and it is this to which "gender-criticals" react so intensely — is that everybody should have the right to decide for themselves what to do with their own bodies. Children grow up at different speeds, adults remain on our own timelines for our advancing maturity and occasional epiphanies, and we have the right to do things in our own time, in our own way, because it's our own lives, because we want to try it, even if it might not work out. This sort of autonomy is what they feel is "radical."</p>
<h2>What people — oh NO, the ADF — are saying</h2>
<p>Not even a week after she published it, the ADF cites it in a court filing.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXhJPki0xArjlCD0q6dlzRsGUV4dre2QgD9GccZSFkUpTO449LRCAoP4up3oCi0U_uJeFZ1kp4ohFNQ1BFeQaoMfEA5Urx9xamgkql5AlS7m6Z8tORurvlO6bMK-nHJe1DGyRhm3l_I4Z9pic1FP4TLIM1vP3rph0zns782mLoCct_emxyH9sN8GMNZdo/s1600/paul.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Gillian Branstetter on Bluesky, Feb 7, 2024: Pamela Paul's anti-trans piece in the NYT already being cited by ADF, representing the state of Idaho in its defense of an anti-trans medical ban that threatens to put doctors in prison" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXhJPki0xArjlCD0q6dlzRsGUV4dre2QgD9GccZSFkUpTO449LRCAoP4up3oCi0U_uJeFZ1kp4ohFNQ1BFeQaoMfEA5Urx9xamgkql5AlS7m6Z8tORurvlO6bMK-nHJe1DGyRhm3l_I4Z9pic1FP4TLIM1vP3rph0zns782mLoCct_emxyH9sN8GMNZdo/s1600/paul.png"/></a></div>
<h2>Again...who's an 'activist'?</h2>
<p>On <a href="https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/readers-deserve-better-than-misinformation" target="_blank">February 8, Erin Reed and Evan Urquhart</a> write: "Paul has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/30/opinion/thepoint?partner=IFTTT#transgender-detransitioning-numbers" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">responded to our journalistic criticism</a> directly by dismissing us as "activists," a label that does not accurately describe the work she is responding to."</p>
<p>Paul praised the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) as "one of the most reliable nonpartisan organizations dedicated to the field." However, Reed and Urquhart point out:</p>
<blockquote><p>"<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/captain/defining-pseudoscience-network" target="_blank">SEGM has received significant funding</a> from the same sources that support the partisan Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation, organizations known for drafting anti-trans legislation. SEGM is closely linked with anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ extremist groups, a connection mapped out by the SPLC’s analysis. Its founder, William Malone, was part of an <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxpky/leaked-emails-reveal-an-anti-trans-holy-war" target="_blank">anti-trans working group</a> in 2019 where members asserted that '<a href="https://x.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1740123680372584802?s=20" target="_blank">god's will</a>' is being enacted through passing trans bans. In this group, <a href="https://x.com/ZJemptv/status/1754678577348349967?s=20" target="_blank">he stated</a>, 'It might take years, but we're going to get them.' If that is not activism, what is?"</p></blockquote>
<h2>Why does the NYT publish Pamela Paul?</h2>
<p>"Hiring Paul was clearly a decision to bring on a hired gun to take the Times‘ side in this 'culture war.'"<br>
<p> — Julie Hollar, "<a href="https://fair.org/home/pamela-pauls-gender-agenda/" target="_blank">Pamela Paul’s Gender Agenda</a>," FAIR, December 16, 2022</p>
<p>They make more money from paid subscriptions (people who tend to like the articles) than from random web visitors, even including those who already believe the opposite and don't intend to be persuaded but do click to see what was said. "I think you can take them [the NYT] at their word that they publish the people they publish because they think their contributions are valuable and important," says <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ositanwanevu.bsky.social/post/3kkh6iddk3c2p" target="_blank">Osita Nwanevu</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>"Paul’s piece made it into a conservative legal brief in Idaho within four days. Last April, the state’s Republican governor Brad Little signed <a href="https://www.them.us/story/idaho-gender-affirming-care-felony" target="_blank">House Bill 71</a> into law, making it a felony offense to provide gender-affirming care to trans youth. The following month, the ACLU <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/poe-v-labrador#" target="_blank">sued Idaho</a> on behalf of two anonymous trans teenagers, alleging that HB 71 is unconstitutional. A U.S. District Court <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/poe-v-labrador?document=Order-Denying-Defendant-Bennetts-Motion-to-Dismiss-Granting-in-Part-and-Denying-in-Part-State-Defendants-Motion-to-Dismiss-and-Granting-Plaintiffs-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction" target="_blank">granted a preliminary injunction</a> against HB 71 in December 2023, meaning that the law cannot be enforced while litigation is ongoing.</p>
<p>In January, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/appeals-court-sides-with-idaho-families-and-transgender-youth" target="_blank">allowed the injunction to stay in place</a>. But the state, represented by the right-wing Christian legal organization <a href="https://www.them.us/story/alliance-defending-freedom-fake-claims-anti-lgbtq-court-cases" target="_blank">Alliance Defending Freedom</a>, is challenging that decision. The legal brief they filed on February 6 cites many sources as backup for their argument, and Paul’s is one of them."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.them.us/story/new-york-times-detransition-youth-op-ed-pamela-paul-chase-strangio" target="_blank">The NYT’s Latest Op-Ed on Trans Kids Has Already Been Cited in an Anti-Trans Legal Brief</a>: The 4,500-word article has been widely criticized as misleading and misinformed. James Factora. Them. February 9, 2024</p></blockquote>
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<h2>The NYT chooses what narratives to publish</h2>
<p>Example: Joe Biden ran for U.S. Senator in Delaware. The year was 1972. He was almost too young, but he turned the minimum age of 30 between the election and the beginning of his Senate term. His age has been known since then. He was elected President in 2020.</p>
<p>On February 11, 2024, the NYT pretended to have suddenly discovered that the president is 81.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnktxtwwAMWKAUcQQZRKhu3h0nnoA7h6rlZFnQvaIsqoycRSZqL6JiXtdfjVG3FYNZr7za1p3l6frf8KWrVXZlkSdlhXYTXSMir6NWv-4i9mtiygY6-MdbncVCMv0xTSr4PyqLZJqXxpOWCzXHlKb_mjG2ANRE0mAYcn0uYfYNNS52PuBg_cvqUUtCwI/s1600/age.webp" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="NYT editorial and opinion headlines: The Challenges of an Aging President; Mr. President, Ditch the Stealth About Health; The Question Is Not If Biden Should Step Aside. It's How.; Democrats Can No Longer Stay Silent About Biden" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnktxtwwAMWKAUcQQZRKhu3h0nnoA7h6rlZFnQvaIsqoycRSZqL6JiXtdfjVG3FYNZr7za1p3l6frf8KWrVXZlkSdlhXYTXSMir6NWv-4i9mtiygY6-MdbncVCMv0xTSr4PyqLZJqXxpOWCzXHlKb_mjG2ANRE0mAYcn0uYfYNNS52PuBg_cvqUUtCwI/s1600/age.webp"/></a></div>
<center><i>Credit: This screenshot appeared in <a href="https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/the-medias-circular-logic-and-destructive" target="_blank">Margaret Sullivan's Substack</a>.</i></center>
<p>President Biden's age is a non-story.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-16661972936451626642024-02-07T19:54:00.000-08:002024-02-07T20:12:55.299-08:00If you can't imagine speaking to a trans person<meta name="description" content="...then don't restrict their life.">
<p>Here's a principle of civility (of a good sort):</p>
<blockquote><p>"Whenever you are weighing in on politics, society, and culture, ask yourself: Would you feel comfortable making this argument directly to the face of the people whose lives, rights, and dignity are most immediately affected by the issue in question?</p>
<p>I can’t quite remember where I first encountered the idea that we ought to approach politics through this lens at all times. It has profoundly shaped my perspective."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/domination-or-dissolution-rule-or" target="_blank">Domination or Dissolution, Rule or Ruin</a>: The Right is fantasizing about secession, “national divorce,” and civil war – because they will not, under any circumstance, accept pluralism. Thomas Zimmer, Democracy Americana (Substack), Feb 7, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p>One reason I believe many people feel comfortable with suggesting anti-trans restrictions is that they don't know any trans people and thus can't imagine themselves making the argument to any trans person's face. They can't imagine what it would be like to speak <i>to</i> a trans person. So, regarding what they say <i>about</i> trans people, they give themselves no intellectual constraint based on what they'd be willing to say <i>to</i> a trans person. The latter is not a concept they have; it cannot constrain them.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-RZSDzYBxnyA_iP-G0S5jj8aoRlAAOeOaizgh_69r7k6MwO7NNlHJq5h4rE2aVYmuibI152jIOgnI_fdW_vBDxZZtbn3VVUIhxwyEGrFnZPEJuEQZ3pAv0l6lvOPIc7PIns3JwjkZjMvZ7BbEE-411F4OSiGdf-vOOAOBQ7wOwPydy_cEbPUnF8IPa_A/s1600/argument.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="two people arguing" border="0" width="60%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-RZSDzYBxnyA_iP-G0S5jj8aoRlAAOeOaizgh_69r7k6MwO7NNlHJq5h4rE2aVYmuibI152jIOgnI_fdW_vBDxZZtbn3VVUIhxwyEGrFnZPEJuEQZ3pAv0l6lvOPIc7PIns3JwjkZjMvZ7BbEE-411F4OSiGdf-vOOAOBQ7wOwPydy_cEbPUnF8IPa_A/s1600/argument.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Zimmer brought up this topic in the context of the increasingly serious proposals for Texas secession or other versions of a 'national divorce.' It's wrong, he says, because you wouldn't say it to someone's face. For example, "would you feel comfortable making this argument – let them go do their own thing! – to the tens of millions of people who happen to live in those Republican-led states, who want nothing to do with the reactionary project, but would suffer most under authoritarian white Christian patriarchal rule?" Also, "the analogy simply doesn’t work." It's not a divorce because you couldn't have "amicable split"; you'd have "disastrous political, economic, and social consequences." Also, the image of a divorce falsely implies "a defensive posture on the Right, as if they just wanted to do their own thing, unbothered by an encroaching government or totalitarian progressive elites."</p>
<p>Imagine, then, what this so-called "divorce" would look like. Imagine <i>secession</i>. Imagine <i>war</i>. Imagine leaving your neighbors to unjust laws. Imagine leaving them behind to suffer cruelty.</p>
<p>That's what we'll do if we don't have empathy.</p>
<p>Would you feel comfortable proposing this to the face of someone who would suffer from it?</p>
<p>That's why I'd like everyone to refrain from proposing regulations on trans people's lives if they do not even know a trans person and can't imagine speaking to one.</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-64477582293454324392024-02-07T18:59:00.000-08:002024-02-08T06:18:43.687-08:00Violence goes on-air to stoke anti-immigrant hate<meta name="description" content="On Fox News, the Guardian Angels assault an uniidentified person who is alleged to be an immigrant and a shoplifter.">
<p>It was always going to be like this on Fox. Fox was always headed in this direction.</p>
<blockquote><p>"Fox News host Sean Hannity’s interview with former GOP New York City mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa took a shocking turn when members of Sliwa’s Guardian Angels group gave — live on air — what Sliwa described as “a little pain compliance” to a person he said was a migrant and who he claimed had been caught shoplifting.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The camera turned to film the members of the Guardian Angels bringing the unidentified person to the ground. Hannity eventually cut away from the scene but later returned to Sliwa to find out what had gone down."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-guardian-angels-fox-news_n_65c364a0e4b0dbc806aec1af#" target="_blank">Shocking Fox News Moment Sees Guardian Angels Give Man ‘Pain Compliance’ On Live TV</a>: “His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations,” the group’s founder Curtis Sliwa boasted to Sean Hannity, adding the man is now “sucking concrete.” Lee Moran, HuffPost, Feb 7, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p>By the way:</p>
<p>"...the man, according to an NYPD spokesperson, is from the Bronx and police didn’t have evidence to support the claim that he had been shoplifting." (<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/guardian-angels-fox-news-migrant-new-york_n_65c45ad1e4b093b2e7823d2b" target="_blank">HuffPost</a>) (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/guardian-angels-times-square-migrants-curtis-sliwa-dacb23b7cfe0679d12642bca116543d4" target="_blank">see also the AP</a>)</p>
<p>Part of the purpose of stunts like this is to foment suspicion of people's nationalities, languages, and races and to encourage violence.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgsDBLwHucK-mw-yQGQ7qyODkiGscoVH7kjQWtVrVdGXxGF2b_k5pyfO2VsHIBLoZjqK4c9U8L5zxIZDfoOaMNI5hmu3p3UuRejWn1OR874g1kz5sazTOZ-UgKbE3ftuX8r1KzbyjDA8mrEx9NXX6T3vvYGwrE3zfmWykBGbX2xhzWOsEl9ZaVR__Q5Q/s1600/grass.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="grass grows in pavement" border="0" width="70%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgsDBLwHucK-mw-yQGQ7qyODkiGscoVH7kjQWtVrVdGXxGF2b_k5pyfO2VsHIBLoZjqK4c9U8L5zxIZDfoOaMNI5hmu3p3UuRejWn1OR874g1kz5sazTOZ-UgKbE3ftuX8r1KzbyjDA8mrEx9NXX6T3vvYGwrE3zfmWykBGbX2xhzWOsEl9ZaVR__Q5Q/s1600/grass.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>The culture is brutal. We have to find ways to survive.</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0