Biden's choice is clear: he must draft bob mcmanus to the Supreme Court!
1: That's right. Unfit for unfogged, but good enough for the Supreme Court.
Seriously though, Biden has promised to nominate an African-American woman. Now we all agree that Biden needs to make a bipartisan gesture to show that the court is not a political institution, and that this isn't just about choosing a judge that supports a partisan agenda. Once you consider this, the choice is obvious - Candace Owens.
Slightly reduced pessimism seems like it might be appropriate here? For all that the Senate has been awful, Biden has been pretty good about appointing judges, and Manchin and Sinema have voted with him on them. I'm sure someone can explain some reason this means we're all doomed but it's not obvious to me at this point.
3: We're all doomed because of the 6 other judges on the Supreme Court. And all the other reasons.
But, yes, I'm fairly optimistic that there will continue to be a third liberal vote on the Supreme Court.
I'm increasingly in favor of Khmer-style re-education camps.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley -- the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and currently its ranking member -- went so far as to manufacture a rule that does not exist.
"You know what the rule is on that," the Iowan told CNN. "You go back to 1886 and ever since then, when the Senate's been of one party and the president's been of another party, you didn't confirm."
As Grassley really ought to know, this is spectacularly untrue. During Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, for example, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed several Supreme Court justices nominated by the Republican White House. Democratic Senates also confirmed Richard Nixon's justices and Gerald Ford's Supreme Court nominee. Years later, a Democratic-led Senate confirmed two of Ronald Reagan's high court picks. Soon after, a Democratic-led Senate confirmed both of George H.W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees. Indeed, let's not lose sight of the timeline: Grassley was elected to the Senate in 1980. The Iowa Republican believes that in every instance since 1886, the Senate led by one party refused to confirm Supreme Court nominees when the White House was held by the opposite party. But Grassley also knows this isn't true -- not because he's a student of history, but because the made-up "rule" didn't apply several times during his own tenure on Capitol Hill.
Also, it's not true at the moment that the Senate is a different party from the president.
I feel terribly sorry for the rising tide of racist death threats that that poor woman will receive from now until the end of time.
Has Breyer himself actually made an announcement? There were rumors he was mad it got out there as confirmed before he made an official statement. Wouldn't be too off brand for him to say oh never mind it's become too political.
Meanwhile DiFi said there's no rush, Breyer is staying until June so we'll have months of hearings. What's her life expectancy over the next six months again?
6: the article is from 2021; it is addressing the question about what would happen if there's a vacancy after the (assumed) Republican senate victory this year.
We already know what they would do then. It's happened before.
10 Guys, I may have some job news
5: The poor man is 88 years old. How do you expect him to remember something that happened over 20 years ago. He should be celebrated for remembering to put on his pants.
13: You? I had no idea you were a black woman!
Oh god there are going to be 500 conservatives making the same stupid "...identify as a black woman" joke.
17: You're right! Congratulations! It's about time there was a librarian on the Supreme Court!
He should be celebrated for remembering to put on his pants.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
I guess Biden is going to be just down the street from me tomorrow so I could suggest people if I can get away from my desk for an hour.
I'm not getting another calendar app. I've got outlook, Google, whatever came loaded on my phone.
We sneer at the yahoos for not "following the science" when it comes to vaccinations, but then pretend that a human being (a mammal, in terms of material reality, whether or not it has a 'gender identity,' or a 'soul') can actually change its sex (it cannot.). Democrats are going to get slaughtered on this issue in 2022, unless they very quickly reverse course, having realized the error of their ways.
25: What prompts that?
Isn't the simplest statement of the counter perspective, "one is not born but becomes a woman" -- that most of what we refer to when we identify someone as a man or a woman is social, not biological?
I think both can be correct, depending on context, but it seems odd to say that biological identification is always (or even generally) the most relevant.
25: What prompts that?
Isn't the simplest statement of the counter perspective, "one is not born but becomes a woman" -- that most of what we refer to when we identify someone as a man or a woman is social, not biological?
I think both can be correct, depending on context, but it seems odd to say that biological identification is always (or even generally) the most relevant.
One thing that cannot be changed is a double post.
What prompts that?
Democrats are about to lose the Senate and the House, but apparently have no idea why.
Also: I first read Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex when I was 14 years old, and maybe don't need to be mansplained about feminism.
I'm also confused. Does the trans issue have more salience than I realize? I thought we were still freaking out about CRT.
Oof. Rather than hit post on my first response I'll just say, JPJ, please don't. Revisiting this isn't going to help anyone here, nor will it help the electoral prospects of the Democrats.
Loudon County, Virginia. Yeah, the trans issue had more salience there than many a Democrat had realized. This is 2022, unless Democrats very quickly reverse course on science/biology/"following the science."
29: Apologies, not trying to mansplain, and I understand why it came across that way. Genuinely trying to figure out the most concise way to explain how, I believe, I would disagree with you.
I saw you making two claims. First that there is an important political liability. I don't have any confidence in my read of the politics. Second that people were taking a position that was silly and counter to science. My response is that I thought the second claim is being too reductionist.
Off for the night after this, so apologies in advance if this turns out to be an unhelpful response.
I highly doubt the national political salience of that unless Biden nominates a trans black woman to Breyer's seat. The exception is if it becomes the next Fox News CRT/Ebola/caravan of obsession, in which case it won't matter what policy position Democrats actually hold.
Democrats are likely to lose the House because of inflation perceptions, because public opinion is thermostatic, because Omicron, and about 47 other things before you get to "they don't draw a clear enough distinction between gender identity and biological sex."
I'll just say, JPJ, please don't.
I am a Roman Catholic. Let's say that I not only expect people to believe in the RC doctrine of transubstantiation (this means that the bread and the wine are literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ; and yeah, you are really expected to believe that), but that I further demand that everyone perform a public demonstration of their belief in this RC doctrine. My pronouns are Mary and Catherine.
Oh wait. That would be utterly illiberal (and utterly bonkers!), and completely inimical to the very idea of a tolerant and pluralistic society. Do you see where I'm going with this? Do you really think the Dems won't suffer for their enthusiastic of this weird new theology?
enthusiastic embrace, I meant to say
This article - by someone called Nicolas Fiore whom I haven't encountered before - is rather well-written and interesting - not least as a pointer to various other good sources on what actually happened between 2014 and 2017.
I don't get 37.
I entirely agree with JPJ about the vote-losing toxicity of the Loudon County issues, but Lourdes is right that in most contexts the social trumps the scientific and right now on the American Left the issue has become a shibboleth. So there's no point in arguing on here.
IN practice everyone knows and makes the necessary adjustments to scientific reality -- vegetarian RCs take Communion but gluten-intolerant ones and alcoholics make their own adjustments.
Similarly, when I read the document that Lourdes had found so persuasive, various passages leaped out at me:
The point I'm pressing is that transsexual claims to belong to a sex do not appear to be metaphysically justified: they are claims that self-identities ought to be definitive in terms of the question of sex membership and gendered treatment. They are therefore political in nature. And the problem is that there's no underlying political vision sustaining the support for definitive self-identities.
This is entirely compatible with the belief that they are both political and -- in a wider context -- politically toxic.
or
It's far from clear that a trans- sexual woman is really female or a woman prior to genital reconstruction surgery. This claim is made on the basis of the idea that an innate identity determines the question of which sex one actually belongs to. Yet is it not clear that this one feature should trump all the others in the case of sex assignment. And it's not clear what the argument is for saying that the body -- genitalia, gonads, etc. -- is defective while the internal sense of self is not.There's not a word there that Kathleen Stock would disagree with. And yet the trans author I'm quoting (Talia Mae Bettcher) thinks she's found a way out of this through a forest of jargon that makes theology look like jottings from a lab notebook.
In some ways this argument reminds me of the 70s/80s/90s disputes over multi-level/group selection, in which Richard Dawkins ended up absolutely wrong, but this can only now be admitted if the question is rephrased. So you can now say at Oxford that multi-level selection is real, but you can't say that group selection is, even though they refer to the same phenomenon, expressible mathematically in exactly the same ways.
The SF society at my old university had an elected position of Genital Piercing Officer. The role of this officer was not to get any piercings, or encourage or enable anyone else to get them (or indeed discourage them from doing so), but simply, should the conversation at a meeting ever flag or become dull, to begin talking about the subject of piercings loudly and in an undesirable amount of detail. The knowledge that the G.P.O. was present and poised to execute her responsibility made everyone very keen to keep the conversation interesting to everyone involved, which was, of course, the whole point of having a G.P.O. in the first place.
37, 39: yes, perhaps we can steer this conversation onto the safer ground of the Battalion Tactical Group in the attack.
It strikes me that the BTG in Fiore's telling is what you would expect from an army that doesn't consider much of its infantry arm effective/reliable/trustworthy/politically deployable/actually there (delete as applicable), and is therefore reliant on pulling out the bits it does think are effective (long-service contract soldiers, special forces, and technical corps) into task organized groups, with local allies/paramilitaries/mercenaries being used to fill the gaps. As such it has to fight shy of casualties among the core force. As Fiore says this is ironically similar to conventional wisdom about western armies.
It is really striking that a lot of the argument is "their technology is better than ours, but we can defeat that just by outnumbering them".
I'd like to read what Fiore thinks about how a BCT could defeat an attack by multiple BTGs. He refers to that in passing at the end. A brigade jolly well ought to be able to attack and defeat a battalion because it should, in principle, be three times the size and that's the ratio you want for a successful attack. What's Fiore's view on how it goes when a BCT is attacked by nine BTGs?
Yes: been reading a lot of Alfred Duggan recently, and it's very similar to the later Roman armies -- except, of course, by the end, their crack troops were barbarian mercenaries, too.
It is really shocking to me to suppose that Russian technology should be better than the US. Even in the land of $9,000 toilet seats or whatever, I kind of thought that the end results of all that money were useful or reliable. Part of me, of course, does know that any American technology the UK buys turns out to be crap (vide the latest unusable tank) but I thought they kept the good stuff for themselves.
43: Ajax was actually a fairly decent Spanish-Austrian product originally, but rendered terrible by the UK procurement process, which included covering the poor thing with extra armour and then deciding it needs to be able to keep up with deep strike so needs a bigger engine.
A lot of the advantage comes from two sources: first, Russia doesn't feel the need to follow international treaties or care very much about civilian casualties. So it can keep things like scatterable mines and area bombardment, and develop long-range surface to surface missiles which are illegal under (IIRC) INF. And, second, it has different priorities - the US doesn't have long-range gun and rocket artillery not because it can't develop them but because it decided not to, preferring to use air and precision missiles.
Also, of course, the US has spent the last 20 years fighting a different sort of war. The Crusader armoured self-propelled gun got cancelled way back in 2002 because it didn't fit with the concept. Too big and heavy and slow. But the Russians went right on developing their equivalent of Crusader and it is now deployed.
43: I'm not sure this is true. Nobody has a bad word to say, for example, about the F-4, P-8, C-17, MQ-8, E-3, E-7, CH-47, C-130 in British service, or indeed the big blow up the world rocket although how would you know. The F-35 is late and expensive but it's a new fighter, what did you expect...
41: yes. the assumption does seem to be that the US deploys in BCTs and the Russians in BTGs and it's pretty much a one-to-one matchup.
Let me expound for several thousand words on the relevance of transgenderism and military hardware on the Supreme Court replacement of Justice Breyer.
Fucking none, of course, but hobbyhorses will hobby up a place won't they.
I think SP is correct in 34 about public opinion.
I've tried to write out some thoughts on transgender issues and the American left, but it can be a tricky topic to write about without giving someone a good reason to be pissed off, so I'll just say I disagree with JPJ and stop there.
You knew all sorts of fuckery was coming with the nomination process, but I have been somewhat breathtaken by the extent of it and how many have been saying the quiet racism part out loud.
Two Shapiros and two Georgetown Law Folks (total of 3 as there is an an overlap) have been prominent on the latter. Ben "destroyer of weak arguments*" Shapiro who posits the Dems would have willingly nominated Cardi B. And Ilya Shapiro who is incoming to Georgetown: "Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identify politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American, But alas doesn't fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get lesser black woman. (I see he has since "apologized**" he is starting as director of Gtown's Georgetown Center for the Constitution Turley not quite as blatant, but as awful as usual.
Otherwise, mostly hand-wringing about optics. I do dread the hearings, But I dread anything in the Senate. And Feinstein WTF? IS our gerontocrats learning? Facts not in evidence.
*Per a NYT profile from 2017.
**"I apologize. I meant no offense, but it was an inartful tweet. I have taken it down."***
***But don't worry Andrew Sullivan still has his back.
who posits the Dems would have willingly nominated Cardi B
Glad this came up here, 'cause I didn't want to argue it on Twitter.
Cardi B might be a great SC Justice.! I don't know her positions on lots of issues but she has a longstanding interest in governance. She's self-taught and very accurate on the New Deal, which she has studied for years. Of all the random names for Shapiro to throw out, Cardi B is one that might actually be a very good justice.
Short for "Bacardi", as I probably should have worked out. (I was sitting there trying to think of names that could be abbreviated to "Cardi" and had got as far as "Cardigan"... surely people don't call their daughters Cardigan? On the other hand, they call them Brittany, which is very much the Cardigan of France...)
They call me Cardigan because nothing goes over my head.
We sneer at the yahoos for not "following the science" when it comes to vaccinations, but then pretend that a human being (a mammal, in terms of material reality, whether or not it has a 'gender identity,' or a 'soul') can actually change its sex (it cannot.).
...
My pronouns are Mary and Catherine.
The anti-vaxxers do, in fact, follow the science. Just ask them. It has become a cliche to observe that they do their own research, just as you do.
There is, of course, a well-developed scientific literature on the subjects of sex and gender. A quick Google turns up something that looks to my non-expert eye like a decent summary.
But the value of that kind of science -- of examining actual facts -- is much more limited than liberals suppose. A better science -- a true science -- would not lead us to impure thoughts unless the Church said it was okay.
Speaking for myself as a reluctant adherent of the false science, I will call you Mary Catherine because you have chosen that name and I am a decent person. It doesn't matter to me whether you were assigned that name at birth, but if it matters to you, that's okay with me too. That sort of thing is properly up to you.
If you militantly insist on ignoring how other people identify themselves, you will run into conflicts with decent people. But of course, as you point out, such people are in the minority. Only in certain narrow audiences will you be reviled as a bigot.
Safe to say that civil rights also cost Democrats the south for, well, pretty much all my life. There's a moral math there beside the electoral one that is similarly applicable here.
This is also essentially the same argument made throughout the gay marriage/military service debates.
They call me Cardigan because nothing goes over my head.
And because of the brevity of your jacket and the incredible tightness of your pants.
They call me Cardigan because nothing goes over my head.
And because of the brevity of your jacket and the incredible tightness of your pants.
It was a mere nostalgic decade or so ago that I was told my rights were a bomb that would destroy the noble Democratic party so I should probably just pipe down about wanting to be treated like a person and yet the Democrats are exactly the same feckless nobodies they were then.
Wow, 25 is one of the nastiest things I've seen on this site in a while, and fully deranged as an intervention in what was then being discussed. It also nicely demonstrates why I hate it when people say "follow the science" on political issues: there is not a single scientific answer to what to do about the pandemic; nor is the bigotry against trans people that JPJ both embraces and sees as a dominant force in US politics derived in any meaningful sense from "the science."
Bave! Smearcase!
25 raises two issues that interest me. The first -- what do you do about politics? -- was handled neatly by apo in 57-58.
The second is: What do you do when Crazy Bigoted Uncle Joe decides to spout off in public? I won't lie: More often than not, my reaction is to walk away and feel like shit about it. But sometimes I engage, and I generally feel shitty about that, too.
I hope we all know that this demented nonsense doesn't have a receptive audience here. But it seemed to me as though something direct needed to be said.
Sometimes people complain about "virtue signaling" and warn that repressed bigotry is bound to rise up and make itself felt, but often repression is a social good. People should STFU about a lot of their stupid ideas.
"I read de Beuavoir when I was a teen so it's ok that I'm a TERF" is certainly an opinion!
These are the gladdest of possible words:
"Smearcase to nosflow to Bave."
Trio of wordsmith; minds fleeter than birds,
Smearcase and nosflow and Bave.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a bon mot into a bauble
Words that are heavy with nothing but babble:
"Smearcase to nosflow to Bave."
25 was possibly my fault, sorry* and I think it must have been responding to 18? It took me a second.
So, two things. One, I think lourdes and I have to just quit engaging these debates because she definitely does not have the time and bandwidth, and I am close to the line myself. I appreciate the support and most of you have been pretty reasonable; it's just a bad time. (I am posting this with her permission.) Also, I think the only thing I really have to say to this one is "yikes!" -- so you're not missing anything.
Second: for real, is everyone okay? I'm sure I'm not okay. The last few years have sorely tested everyone's sanity, perspective, patience, etc. The forced isolation and mediation has insidiously changed almost everyone's sense of social relationships, and for those of us (like me) who were already pretty isolated, it's made everything worse. I know NW and JPJ have both lost loved ones within the last year (I think), lourdes' mother is having a terrible crisis, a vague sense of menace and decay hangs over everything around us. It's hard to be fellow citizens and political allies. Everything is unusually fucked up. If there is anything I or anyone here can do from a distance to offer support, beyond what we already do, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm sorry I'm not good for Muscular Debate or calls for deplatforming if either of those is a thing that you actually need. I do feel some communal obligation of care.
I have apparently spent 90 minutes on this comment. I bet it still sucks.
* a joke, and not to imply that I actually regret what I said. Perhaps contra 66, I think it's always better to know than guess.
Further to 62, as much as I hate twitter, I always think of a tweet that said approximately
Transphobes: There is only male and female. IT'S SCIENCE.
Science: It is actually a great deal more complex than that.
Transphobes: NOT LIKE THAT!!! I MEAN SCIENCE LIKE I LEARNED IN 8TH GRADE!!
I'm not OK compared to where I was in late 2019. Pandemic plus cohabitation plus lack of solitude (like ttaM) plus unemployment plus The Other Job plus moving north of the wall plus house hunting have combined to create a good deal of upheaval (much of it an improvement of course) which is definitely raising my general level of tension.
When the risk of an argument's grave
We will hope to meet Smearcase and Bave.
As fast as a galloping hoss flow
The bons mots of Bave and of Nosflow,
Tallyho! It's the Fliegender Zirkus
That's a thread full of Nosflow and Smearcase.
Twas smearcase and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbel in the bave
All mimsy were the borgroves
and the nosflow did* outgrabe
*To my ear the original does not scan correctly.
Actually, dose not scan 'well'.
Oh good, here's something I can engage with. De gustibus, but I love the stacked spondees in the fourth line of the original, it seems important to maintain the six-syllable count and, as Humpty Dumpty explains, "outgrabe" is the past tense of "outgribe" so an auxiliary "did" is trouble.
I'm probably going to regret this, but, JPJ, de Beauvoir isn't considered the last word on feminism especially as it applies to transgender issues. In philosophy, this is a very fast moving area -- it's been a big shift within five years. But if one thinks, following de Beauvoir, that gender is socially constructed, it's not hard to make the case that sex is likewise socially constructed or conferred (there's many flavors) as the two proferred categories don't map perfectly onto two sets of natural characteristics. It's close! (And the comparison with 'race' is instructive.) But it's devilishly hard to give a good definition of 'male', 'female', etc., that isn't littered with exceptions. So then, there's a question: how do we draw the line? Self-identification? Some sort of conferral? XX and XY are 'female' and 'male'? Reproductive capacity? How does our understanding of 'man' and 'woman' evolve? These are very tough philosophical questions (and a toxic mess on Twitter), but none of them have a goddamned thing to do with bathroom bills or message bills about girls in sports, which as near as I can tell was invented to get rightwing voters to the polls. This one isn't on the Democrats.
I would like to, embarrassingly, make this all about me for a sec and just apologize that I hide whenever the conversation turns to trans rights, instead of taking a stand and being an ally. I just do not fight on the internet. But that stand looks less principled when one runs the blog in which the offense is occurring.
73 is gracious.
Having introduced de Beauvoir, I want to reflect on my own participation on the thread.
But first, I observe that the current conversations about trans rights and trans identities on unfogged have often been bitter bitter and painful -- for reasons that are obvious. It's really clear what people are frustrated about.
My person preference (which I have no reason to expect reflects a general preference) would be the following
1) To be able to alter the conversations to a point at which they are less painful.
2) A general agreement to minimize discussions of trans rights & identities on unfogged.
3) The status quo.
From that perspective, I found 25 rude, but I can also understand why JPJ found my response rude. I referenced de Beauvoir with the goal of creating a possible point of contact -- a sense of, "is this a reference which makes it easier for you to understand where I'm coming from?" But if it fails as a possible point of contact I can see why it would come across as claiming space -- as claiming not only a better understand of sex than JPJ but also a better understanding of de Beauvoir.
So, I stand by my beliefs but was also sincere in apologizing because I was not trying to respond rudely.
I just do not fight on the internet. But that stand looks less principled when one runs the blog in which the offense is occurring.
better late than never!
My person preference (which I have no reason to expect reflects a general preference) would be the following
1) To be able to alter the conversations to a point at which they are less painful.
I have the same tendency which is why I found ajay's 39 salutary but fwiw I'm with apo, Smearcase, Bave, et al, above.
85: If it were on me to police the blog and follow through, I would no longer be able to be a FPP. I'm completely serious. That is a job that would make me resign.
the last time (that i am aware of) this kicked up the predictable happened - after a huge amount of rancor lurid wrote an extremely personal account of what hostility to transwomen actually means in her life. i don't know but strongly suspect writing that was painful. perhaps very very painful. as i recall jpj & nw responded thanking lurid & saying something like it was so moving.
i call bullshit.
bc you are both at it again.
& it is revolting that lurid is in any way being put in the position of defending her existence. lurid owes you nothing, let alone wrenching personal details.
as i said before - if a small amount of empathy won't get you there perhaps try some politeness.
I'm also curious that, as others have noted, it was responding to absolutely nothing in the original post or any comment that preceded it.
Thank you, as always, but of course lourdes is the transwoman and I am the not-very-strident spouse and ally full of tormented verbiage.
oh lord i a the fucking *worst* at namessssss! so sorry!
I am sorry to see anyone referring to Kathleen Stock, a person whose work on her actual specialty (philosophical aesthetics) is already extremely bad, as if she had anything to contribute to a topic on which she has even less of merit to say. As for "in most contexts the social trumps the scientific", well, as has already been pointed out, the idea that there's any trumping necessary relies on an impression of "the scientific" that is not, let's say, particularly up to date.
I've only read a few things by Bettcher (among them her IMO good overview for the SEP) and found none of the to be particularly jargon-filled. But if you do want to read something with a lot of Greek and Fraktur letters, you could do worse than BR George's "What Even Is 'Gender'?". But none of this should be necessary to simply not be a dick to people (of which complaining that attempts to ensure that they receive minimally just treatment at the hands of others is politically toxic is a species).
Not to worry, the pseuds do that. Kind of like how around the house lurid is "Mom" and I'm "Mum," which always gets mixed up but in an endearing way.
91: It's fine! Our real-life names are not at all mistakeable, fortunately --
around the house lurid is "Mom" and I'm "Mum"
oh right but there is this. Hey, it works at least 85% of the time, and the other 15% is probably just "can some parent please come listen to me talk about pop songs for five minutes?" and identity is irrelevant.
But none of this should be necessary to simply not be a dick to people
Yes, this is the key thing. We're not really about tone policing at Unfogged generally, but the tone of these transphobic comments in both this and the previous thread has been way out of line with usual community standards in a way that's honestly baffling to me and a lot of other people. Not only is the rhetoric overheated, but the target is a group of people that not only is subject to relentless abuse and discrimination in general but also includes multiple well-regarded members of our own community here. I don't get how people are willing to say these things right in front of the people they are demeaning, but please stop.
89: Probably responding to 15 and 18. I apologize.
Here I offer up my inner thoughts in hopes that people will chuckle at how dumb I am.
For awhile, a long time ago, I think I wasn't 100% clear that lourdes and lurid were separate people. I think that I believed it was a pseud shift.
Then, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I thought lourdes was the she of the pair (back when their was only one). I made this mistake so often that I had to train myself that it was the opposite of my expectation. What was funny was that, when only lurid was commenting in a given thread, I had to pause to remember the pseud of her partner, remember that it was the opposite, and then go continue*.
And then in the 2-3 years since I commented or lurked with even faint regularity, this all happened, and so I have to complicate my mental model further.
Just to be super clear, this is in no way a complaint; I'm very happy lourdes has found a happier/more comfortable way to be. Really, I'm just explaining why I'll probably not be able to keep track of which one of you is "Mum".
PS OK I lied, the complaint is that you both picked lk pseuds ~15 years ago.
*not that the gender id was critical as such, just as a way of keeping track of my imaginary friends
I still have trouble with all the Daves.
You, Dr. Seuss, and Bob Dylan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHIWNwVKWbw
you both picked lk pseuds ~15 years ago
No! Here is the story one more time:
Long ago -- between 2010 and 2012 because I was definitely in a particular apartment -- I posted something random about turkeys and signed the comment "lurkey." That was my handle for a while. LB complained, so I "expanded" it to dictionary words that began with "lur-" and "key-", i.e. "lurid keyaki." I had this very weird name for a few years. Then one day my spouse decided to leave a comment and chose a pseud that was a play on mine. I thought someone was fucking with me and we had a talk and it got sorted out, except for the way it has confused hundreds of friends and strangers to this very day.
My housekeeping question, by contrast, is whether the comment timestamps have gotten even screwier lately? They seem to be 20 minutes ahead of my laptop clock (PST). I think this still means JPJ posted all of her comments between 11 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. EST last night/this morning, FWIW.
I also want to add that Thorn has said that hostility expressed re: trans issues is one of the big reasons she left this community. That's a big red flag, folks.
I think there's a range of legitimate debate to be had around how laws and policies should change to recognize evolving sex and gender norms, but the vitriol that MC was spouting and that appears to be quite normalized in the UK is IMO not within that range and not characteristic of a community to which I want to belong.
Total lurker here, so leaving the community is not exactly relevant (..how would one know, anyway?), but seconding 102, in that the ugliness around trans issues made me stop lurking before because it was so ugly and unpleasant. Though I keep coming back to lurk anyway. But I don't like it (the ugliness).
but, JPJ, de Beauvoir isn't considered the last word on feminism especially as it applies to transgender issues.
Yes, I know. And I wouldn't have brought up de Beauvoir (whose work I respect enormously as an important contribution to the feminist literary canon, but of course I understand that The Second Sex was a product of its time and place ...); I was reacting to what struck me as a kind of mansplainy 'maybe you should read de Beauvoir' (but NickS, I appreciate 84).
I do believe that gender is socially constructed. I don't believe that sex is likewise socially constructed in quite the same way. Unless it must be considered socially constructed because our apprehension of the world, and of its (perhaps only putatively?) natural phenomena can only ever be mediated through language and culture and so on? But I do believe that, insofar as any aspect of the human condition (our mortality, for example) can be considered 'real' or 'natural' (or not wholly socially constructed, in other words), sex is basically real and immutable. ('Race' I do not consider to be real: I believe the very concept of 'race' is an artefact of colonial master-slave hierarchies.)
I've been struggling all day to come up with an apology to Lourdes and lurik for my tone, without also being seen to issue a craven and cowardly apology to the privileged white hetero males who have no real skin in this game, but who are obviously very much enjoying (who are positively gleeful!) at the chance to take the moral high ground while dumping on feminists/lesbians/cunts/TERFS/bitches/witches. I confess myself to be thoroughly unequal to the task.
JPJ, I'll leave my email address here if you'd rather go private. I think having to do simultaneous public performance and one-to-one interaction makes all of this a lot harder.
Glad to hear from Rance et al. I'll have more to say after like 24 hours have passed, I think.
dumping on feminists/lesbians/cunts/TERFS/bitches/witches
Nothing but love for feminists, lesbians, cunts, bitches, and witches here! One of these things is not like the others, and the suggestion that someone can't legitimately take offense at toxic spew directed at a particular group without being part of that group is, you know, pretty stupid and offensive in its own right.
I'm not really sure why anyone would be particularly certain that the grade-school idea of "sex" and everything it carries with it manages to carve reality at the joints (and to call that science!! into the bargain--seems distinctly metaphysical, to me), but whatever.
at the chance to take the moral high ground while dumping on feminists/lesbians/cunts/TERFS/bitches/witches
More bullshit. Who has done this? I know, I get it. Other people don't get to make arguments. You make their arguments for them, and then rebut them. It's a well-worn move in the reactionary playbook. You can see it on Fox News every day. It stinks.
Congratulations on at least expressing a desire to exercise minimal politeness, even if you say you won't follow through. You have acknowledged that there are human beings present with skin in the game. That's not nothing.
But you're still proudly full of shit, and despite the fact that your pronouns aren't questioned by anyone, you're going to continue to talk about privilege as though it's something you lack in this context. Some people here will be deferential to you -- that's the way privilege works -- but nobody is fooled.
But you're still proudly full of shit, and despite the fact that your pronouns aren't questioned by anyone, you're going to continue to talk about privilege as though it's something you lack in this context.
I was sexually assaulted when I was 15 years old. F*ck you, and your new apologia for male supremacy.
108: That's terrible, and I'm sorry that happened to you. I've also been sexually assaulted, and would wish it on no one. I don't actually think anyone's sexual assault is relevant to this conversation though.
If the reference is to cisgender women's perceived comfort and safety in single-sex spaces, I would point out that transphobia in these spaces is even more likely to harm cis women who don't conform to stereotypical presentations of femininity (though it would be unacceptable even if the harm was only to trans people). I've personally witnessed the bullying of butch women in locker rooms.
And as someone who now teaches about this stuff for a living, both science and history give us plenty of reasons to view the two-sex model as a social construction that's useful for some purposes and not others. I also don't get why someone who accepts gender constructionism would have a real issue with gender transition. Even if I believed that "sex" was some immutable thing that couldn't or shouldn't be changed, that's no reason to oppose gender transition, using pronouns and names and other markers for that gender, etc. If I can learn to call people by their married names, or stop using embarrassing childhood nicknames, or adopt new titles for grad students who are now doctors, I can learn to refer to trans folks in the ways that they ask me to.
107-108: join the unenviable club babe. you, me, anyone of any gender having been raped isn't a get out of jail free card for being personally vile.
I'm in the unenviable club here too. (Me: male, cisdenger, gay, if that even matters, which I don't think it does.) Some of my best friends are trans (I know!). I love them.
My sister has a kid whose pronoun is "they." They were named after my mom, but changed their name. (The new name is really, really cool. I wish I could share it here.)
When they changed their first name, they also adopted my sister's last name -- my last name. Was that an effort to reach out to my side of the family? I've never asked.
They once told me that I was one of the only people on my side of the family who paid any attention to them. I hadn't previously thought about it, but as soon as this was said, I knew it was true.
And it was a shameful moment for me. It wrenches my heart to this day. The truth is, I never interacted much with them either. I've tried to do better since.
My sister, like me, was raised a Catholic, but thank God, she has been brilliant with all of this.
I'm still working on it. I am genuinely grateful for my Catholic education on grammar. I understand the English language much better than I would otherwise. But my education betrays me here. In writing about my sister's kid, it has been difficult to avoid the feminine pronoun. My brain really struggles with attributing the plural third-person pronoun to a single person. But I will say this in my defense: I do know that this is my problem.
join the unenviable club babe. you, me, anyone of any gender having been raped isn't a get out of jail free card for being personally vile.
One of the Marthas weighs in from the Republic of Gilead.
It's weird how being a rape victim also makes you an authority on transgender people. What a disgusting bit of sophistry
I had to practice using "they" for people I had believed to be of other genders, and it did take a little time to consistently right, and now it's no big deal!
I can't imagine anyone thinks this will end well. Can we all take a pause, let the blood come to a low simmer, send any private correspondence we need to send, and move on?
I personally endorse 95, which is correct and well-said. We can be rough and tumble only when there's a foundation of trust and care, which there definitely isn't when it comes to this topic.
117: As I say: My problem. I've been working on it, really! And I'm pretty sure I haven't screwed up in conversations where a relevant person was present -- at least, not in the last ten years. Fortunately for me, one doesn't usually find oneself using third-person pronouns when one is talking to someone directly, so I have spared myself that shame.
My own affinity for reactionary politics, I think, comes from my Catholic upbringing and an aversion to shame. Maybe I'm projecting, but I think a lot of Christians are like me that way.
Donald Trump liberates people from shame. Trump tells us -- some of us -- that our feelings are valuable and valid no matter what. That's really attractive. Evangelical Christians dig Trump because he's a lot like Jesus that way.
118: I agree with ogged. Reading this thread has been painful. I love my imaginary friends and it hurts to see you fighting.
119.last: Yep
Delmar: The preacher said all my sins is washed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.
Everett: I thought you said you was innocent of those charges.
Delmar: Well I was lyin'. And the preacher said that that sin's been washed away, too. Neither God nor man's got nothin' on me now! C'mon in boys, the water is fine.
All I can say is that it's highly reassuring to see all these pseuds I've been reading (and respect and have learned a lot from) chiming in this round. I just closed the browser tab and walked away (easy for me to do, I guess, figured I'd come back later to see how acrid it got), and I'm heartened to see all of you so clearly speaking up. I don't like to argue on the internet much, either, but there are a few subjects where I just hate to let that kind of ignorance and ugliness stand unremarked.
117/119: Friends recently let us know that their kid is nonbinary and now goes by "they" pronouns, so we practiced talking about them (more than we usually would) to make sure we'd get it right. Kid showed up as a high school freshman on the first day of school wearing a rainbow shirt saying "PROUD" (brave fucking kid, I tell you what - they do not live in a highly congenial location for this). Kid told my (slightly nervous) friends that it was important to make sure they made the right kind of new friends on their very first day, and if someone didn't like it, too bad.
101: Why did you two do that when Wry Cooter was available?
And the other could have been Spry Cooter.
Why do we even let people pick their pseuds? Get assigned a number for the first fifty comments, then a community naming ceremony.
Although it's been a while since we had a new commenter.
Oh my god, we're just going to die out.
von wafer did. Just up three comments from yours.
No problem. Everyone has days where they don't pay attention very well.
102: I did not know that. Thank you for sharing. I miss her a lot. Please say hi, if you are in touch.
So... it seems like there's a significant majority here who wants the site to be less tolerant of transphobia, a small and vocal minority who regard their views as realistic rather than transphobic and would like to keep discussing them, multiple (known) people who have left the site because of anti-trans sentiment, one (known) person who has left because of intolerance of opposing views. The one precedent I'm aware of for taking administrative action over content is the Shearer affair, which I think was about specifically asking one person to leave and, maybe, letting that set the tone for shutting down racist commenters in the future.
There are a million places on the internet where you can go, post stuff like JPJ's comments, and reach a happy and supportive audience, or at least get a satisfying negative reaction from strangers. I'm struggling to see the rationale for continuing to host it here, where it's widely hated and bothersome to so many people, as they have attested here. I also think there was a point even a few years ago when discussions about trans stuff were educational for people, even with a broad range of perspectives on display, and I suspect that point is now in the past.
This isn't my call to make, but this thread seems to be the closest thing to a referendum on the subject that we've had, and the numbers seem pretty clear.
I only stop in here occasionally these days but I find this thread (and the other one from last fall, which I missed at the time) shocking, as well as the inclination many people seem to have to hush it all up and talk about something else. That's a bad way to respond to bigotry. I 100% support there being some sort of code of conduct that commenters are expected to adhere to, and "if you have transphobic thoughts please keep them to yourself" should be in there along with intolerance of hate speech directed at any other minority group.
I mean that's what I'd do if I were the boss of everything.
LK(s) you are being astonishingly graceful about this, and I am as impressed by your behavior as I am appalled at some others'.
138: MK aka Clown, read, and bob mcmanus too, though read's behavior seemed to change significantly over the course of her time here, so I always wondered if she was I'll.
No! Here is the story one more time:
I do love a good story.