I have a huge piece coming on the US debt ceiling panic, but in the meantime, I have some items to share that have drawn my attention.
First up, this item: Variety published this article by Tatiana Siegel: “ESPN Anchor and Vaccine Skeptic Sage Steele’s Free Speech Battle With Disney Heats Up.” Here are the particulars verbatim: “Steele’s suit argues that Connecticut law prohibits private employers from disciplining their employees for engaging in constitutionally protected speech, whether that speech takes place in the workplace or outside of it.”
Here’s my commentary: That’s a solid position, but Steele goofs when comparing her case to that of Disney. “I wholeheartedly agree with Disney’s position that in America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind,” she says. “In my opinion, it begins and ends with diversity of thought. We must fight to preserve that fundamental constitutional right.” Steele is a person—a flesh-and-blood human being who has an inherent right to freedom of conscience and speech. Disney is an artificial entity, a business firm, with no inherent right to any of these things. The Supreme Court may have ruled that corporations are persons, but they are not, and any ruling that necessarily supposes they are is illegitimate on its face. Rights are the possession of people. They are not the possession of legal fictions. States have powers and these are necessarily determined by the consent of those over whom these entities claim to govern and limited by democracy. Corporations are subordinate to the state as they are constructs of the state.
Yeah, I get her angle. If Disney is suing over its free speech right, then why is it denying Steele her free speech rights? But Disney doesn’t actually enjoy a right to free speech. Not morally and if principle matters. But it does according to the Supreme Court ruling recognizing corporations’ right to free speech in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in 2010. The case centered around campaign finance laws and the extent to which corporations and unions can engage in political spending. In its decision, the Supreme Court held that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that corporations and unions have the right to spend money to support or oppose political candidates and issues. The court ruled that restrictions on corporate and union spending in federal elections violated their free speech rights.
Not to get too far into the weeds here, but the majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, held that political speech is essential to a functioning democracy (true) and that the government should not restrict the ability of individuals (yes), including those acting through corporations and unions (rationalization), to express their views and participate in the political process. Critics of the ruling argue that it opened the door to increased corporate influence in politics, allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, potentially drowning out the voices of individual citizens. That’s the specific problem. The more general problem is that corporations enjoy the right of free speech thanks to a Supreme Court that has for centuries, independent of the ideological makeup of the course, ruled in favor of the “corporate citizen” over the rights of real-life flesh-and-blood citizens. I dred opening up the Constitution, but we need an amendment here.
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Because early transitioning changes a person’s brain, children who are subjected to hormones and surgeries often don’t de-transition. The gender ideology crowd uses this as proof that transitioning children is relatively unproblematic. But early transitioning is a self-fulling prophecy. For those unfamiliar with this paradox, a self-fulfilling prophecy is a concept in which a belief or expectation about a condition or an outcome influences an individual’s thinking and behavior in a way that ultimately makes the belief or expectation come true. In other words, a person’s belief about something shapes her actions or attitudes in a manner that leads to the fulfillment of that belief.
Many girls who are put through the process of transitioning would otherwise have grown up to be lesbians or straight women. They are instead given hormones and surgeries to make them appear stereotypically male with intervention confirming the result. Since the subject in the experiment is one, if the result is obtained, there is no way to know what would have happened otherwise. So powerful is the effect that some girls who transition believe they are now heterosexual because they “really are men” because the object of their romantic desires remain women. This sounds like a total form of conversion therapy performed on the body and the mind. Indeed, that is precisely what it is.
However, a growing number of adolescents and young adults are escaping the gender ideology cult, thanks to the proliferation of gender critical views, and they are de-transitioning. Some are suing the doctors and healthcare corporations that put them through the process to make them permanent medical patients. Tragically, awareness about the problems with gender ideology come too late for many people. But the hope is that awareness will save others from repeated the error.
The following clip illustrates in a deeply disturbing and tragic way recognition that one is transitioning because of social pressure, in this case pressure from the mother, who asks a question to confirm her work and instead gets the awful truth that her son played along because he believed it was important to listen to his mother. But he already started the hormones that will sterilize him. I agree with the opinion of the person who tweeted this: the mother belongs in jail. So do the doctors. I’m calling for Nuremberg 2.0. (Also shocking about this clip is that it’s from 2012.)
I don’t want to distract from the significance of the above clip, but I really wish folks would stop using the construction “biological male.” The adjective is entirely tautological if science matters. If one wants to say “biological women” to differentiate between females and “trans women,” that might work, if one accepts the construct of gender established a few decades ago by humanities and social science professors. But we can’t leave the planet altogether by treating the term “male” as if it is anything but biological. Keep one foot on the ground, at least. Then again, why give any ground to quasi-religious ideology?
We saw this construct again in this Fox News article, “Female athletes are retiring after competing against biological men, track champion warns: ‘It’s devastating,’” which originally used the construct “biological male.” No the headline uses “biological male.” Still, since trans women are male, and since a man is defined as an “adult human male,” either construct is fallacious. So, I take back what I said about “biological women.” A women is an adult human female. It’s already biological. Full stop.
“What is that agenda? It is the lucrative invention of the trans child. I say lucrative, because in the States, billions of dollars are projected to be made by surgeons and drug companies with lifelong medicalisation being offered to 13-year-olds.” This quote is from an article by Suzanne Moore, “The cult of gender ideology is finally disintegrating,” published in the Daily Telegraph.” I am happy to see people discussing the financial motive in pushing hormones and surgeries on children (and we should be concerned about the adults, as well). Moore is identifying the medical-industrial side of the problem (see Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex). There is more to the agenda, as I have discussed in past blogs and will discuss again soon. Stay tuned.
From the New York Post story “ESPN’s Sam Ponder accused of ‘bigotry’ after transgender athlete stance,” we are subjected to a ridiculous claim directed by USA Today’s Nancy Armour to ESPN host Sam Ponder concerning the latter’s comment about transgender athletes. Ponder tweeted this: “I barely said anything publicly abt this issue & I’ve had so many ppl msg me, stop me in the street to say thank you+ tell me stories abt girls who are afraid to speak up for fear of lost employment/being called hateful. It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls.” Armour responded with this: “Don’t be fooled by the people who screech about ‘fairness’ to cloak their bigotry toward transgender girls and women, the transgender girls and women who have the audacity to want to play sports, in particular. This is, and always was, about hate, fear and ignorance.” Actually, it has nothing to do with any of those things. It has everything to do with fairness. So let’s screech it out loud: Males should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports! (The majority of Americans agree with Ponder and me.)
Finally, there is this weird passage concerning “calls for transgender athletes to participate in sports against the gender they were born as instead of the gender they identify as.” Identity is subjective. Its reification is the work of ideology. What a person is born as is what is real. We are a sexually dimorphic species; male and female, we are different genotypes. It is backwards to even consider sacrificing fairness on the altar of inclusion. Equality is not at issue. There is nothing stopping trans women from competing in sports. What is at issue is protecting sex-based rights in a universe where the gender binary is a real thing.
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Here’s one of the weirdest stories to emerge over the last few days: “Target Boycott over LGBTQ+ Products is ‘Literally Terrorism’: Economist.” This is from Newsweek. The economist who is the subject of the story is Michigan professor Justin Wolfers. His hyperbole dovetails nicely with the panic conveyed in this story from ABC News: “LGBTQ+ activists call for new strategies to promote equality after Target backlash.”
It’s a fascistic impulse to seek allyship with corporate power. Why do corporations seek to ally with LGBTQ+ activists? One reason is a social credit system has been established to reward corporations that advance gender ideology and its anti-enlightenment and anti-science agenda. I discuss this in my recent blog Is the Madness Unraveling? In there I direct readers to The New York Post April 7 article “Inside the CEI system pushing brands to endorse celebs like Dylan Mulvaney.” I quote Dana Kennedy, who reports, “At stake is their Corporate Equality Index—or CEI—score, which is overseen by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group in the world.” Kennedy goes on to report that the HRC issues report cards for America’s biggest corporations via the CEI, awarding (or subtracting) points for how well companies adhere to the HRC’s rating criteria. Businesses that attain the maximum total points earn the coveted title “Best Place To Work For LGBTQ Equality.”
I go on to discuss what’s behind this. There’s the millions of dollars from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Their’s the organization Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, which pushes for kids to secretly change their genders in schools without parental consent (see here). I was asked by a reader of the blog to add information about ESG, or environmental, social and governance, which produces scores effectively grading “social responsibility” for entities ranging from corporations to governments. One of the investment firms behind the scheme is the enormous BlackRock. Transnationalist NGOs such as World Economic Forum organize corporate associations with groups like the Human Rights Campaign. Why these groups seek these ends is obvious. As I have argued before, this is in part because the system of corporate governance has established a Chinese-style social credit system designed to promote transgressive ideologies, such as queer theory, to create niche markets around manufactured identities, but also to transform western societies into a global system under corporate state control.
How on earth could an economist as decorated as Wolfers see the terrorist threat coming those who oppose the spread of fascistic policies like CEI and ESG? Corporations are entities that feed stockholders income and pay executives exorbitant salaries by exploiting workers and manipulating consumers into buying shit they don’t need and Wolfers says holding them accountable for their politics is “terrorism.” Check out his resume online. He’s beloved by the cathedral. This is how you rise to fame with a conscience capable of defending one of the worst violators of labor rights in America—you fellate the power elite. Their association with big business notwithstanding, Republicans still understand that good government depends on listening to the people, prompting virtue (not just signaling it), and safeguarding children (see Republicanism and the Meaning of Small Government). They believe in nation-states and the international system. Democrats are fused with corporate power. The party is globalist and neoliberal to its core. The choice is real.
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Finally, I watched the first 20-30 minutes of Peterson’s YouTube show and that was as much as I could take. I am actually not sure of how long I watched it because time was hard to keep track of given that Peterson has so over-monetized his show you are busy either skipping ads after a few seconds when you can or going to get more coffee when you can’t. I can tell you, though: It is awkward. Peterson is trying to find a way into sociobiology and evolutionary psychology—pulling out all the stops with his peacock example. (Well, not all the stops. He didn’t talk about lobsters. Or maybe he did later on.)
For those of you who will watch it or have what does Jordan Peterson mean when he talks about mate selection across classes? Peterson loves to talk about the phenomenon of individuals from different socioeconomic classes forming relationships and choosing partners, which he uses to explore how people navigate these choices from an evolutionary standpoint. From this standpoint, mate selection can be influenced by various factors such as personality traits, physical attractiveness, reproductive fitness, and socioeconomic status. He uses this to talk about how interclass mating leads to social mobility, as individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may have the opportunity to improve their circumstances through marriage or long-term relationships with individuals from higher social classes but that these patterns are differentiated by sex. He concludes that men choose on physical attributes, while women choose status and wealth, which allows women to mate across class and ugly men to get beautiful women. Wolf is ready for the argument to some extent (and discussed broad shoulders and large penises), but she is at points ill-informed about the literature. It’s an interesting albeit tense conversation. ‘
But all those damn ads.
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Oh, wait, one more thing. It’s brief. An observation. After decades of trying to shrink the white population by separating out white Hispanics (as “people of color”), progressives now have to deal with the fact that the majority of Hispanics are white and, yes, they can be white suprematist.
freedom and reason 