Gender Follies

A lift too far: The Court of Appeals decision [With Comment by John]

Featured image On the local front, I have sought to draw attention to the case of JaycCee Cooper v. USA Powerlifting in several posts accessible here. Filed in Ramsey County District Court and assigned to Judge Patrick Diamond, the case raises the question whether USAP’s separation of men from women in USAP’s Minnesota competitions must yield to Cooper’s self-identification as a woman. Although a biological male, Cooper seeks to compete with the »

Life of Loretta

Featured image Monty Python veteran John Cleese has been planning a stage production of Life of Brian, and several American actors advised him to cut the “Loretta scene.” Cleese said he had “no intention” of cutting the scene, which involves the Grumpy People’s Front of Judea: JUDITH: (Sue Jones-Davies): I do feel, Reg (John Cleese) that any anti-imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base. REG: »

The Grievance Studies Project revisited

Featured image Peter Boghossian thinks the time is ripe to revisit the investigation of academic grievance studies that he conducted in 2017 and 2018 with his fellow iconoclasts James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose. For background read the New Discourses post “The Grievance Studies Project.” Check out Boghossian’s current set of linked tweets beginning with the one below by clicking on the time/date. Several of the tweets include a video excerpt from the »

Chappelle Upstaged by Convict

Featured image If Dave Chappelle was convicted of a crime, the comedian said in his new Netflix special The Dreamer, he would claim to identify as a woman so he could be sent to a women’s prison and there make special demands of the girls. Chappelle is a highly original performer, but that has already been done. Back in 1980 in Los Angeles, Rodney Quine gunned down Shahid Ali Baig, a father »

Decency: It’s On the Ballot!

Featured image I actually agree with that, although from a perspective a little different from Joe Biden’s. This short video is an entertaining reminder of what an indecent clown show the Biden administration has been. And it could have been much, much longer: Joe Biden: Decency is on the ballot! pic.twitter.com/20UHXfIHin — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 16, 2023 »

Totalitarian Tutorial

Featured image “Who you are and who you know yourself to be is valid. We want you to be your authentic self every day.” That was Andrea Palm, Deputy Secretary for Health and Human Services, in an official video announcing new HHS gender identity, non-discrimination and inclusion policy. Who is this Deputy Secretary, viewers have a right to wonder,  who is so wise in the ways of authenticity? According to her HHS »

Audrey’s Manifesto

Featured image Audrey Hale is the transgender mass murderer who killed six people, including three small children, at a Christian school in Nashville. Soon after her murder spree, it came out that she left behind a “manifesto” that described her motivation. The authorities have withheld that document from public view, contrary to the usual practice, presumably because it makes the “trans” movement look bad. Someone leaked three pages of notebook paper in »

Killer Construct on Screen

Featured image Another month has passed without full release of Audrey Hale’s manifesto, which could reveal her motive for the murder of nine-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, daughter of Chad Scruggs, senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, also shot dead schoolmaster Katherine Koonce, 59; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; and custodian Mike Hill, 61. On March 29, »

EventBrite Goes Dull

Featured image The Left’s most insidious power grabs involve taking over private companies that run services that are open to the public. Especially where such services have large market shares, left-wing dominance can have real consequences in suppressing conservative (or just normal) ideas. A case in point is EventBrite. EventBrite’s managers have decided that defending women’s sports is out of bounds. Thus, they have thrown a speech by Riley Gaines at the »

No Sex Please—We’re Anthropologists!

Featured image With apologies to the old British farce “No Sex Please—We’re British!”, apparently academic anthropology wants to do a humorless remake. (Did I even need to include “humorless” after “academic anthropology”?) I would have thought that case studies in sex lives was a rather integral part of anthropology, at least it seemed that way when Margaret Mead was the hot anthropologist of her day, a forerunner of the over-rated Jared Diamond. »

No Manifesto Destiny

Featured image Today marks six months since Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, shot her way into the Covenant School in Nashville and gunned down nine-year-olds Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney and Evelyn Dieckhaus, and adults Mike Hill, Katherine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak. Hale, a former student at the school, carefully planned the attack for months. The killer left a manifesto explaining her actions but six months after the »

Authoritarian the Librarian

Featured image The onset of Autumn is a good time to recall summer stories that failed to get the attention they deserved. Consider, for example, what happened in Davis, California, back on August 20. The Stephens Davis Branch Library hosted an event by Moms for Liberty (MFL) of Yolo County, featuring speakers formerly with the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) and NCAA, as well as legal experts in Title IX and women’s rights »

Killer Construct

Featured image Back around Labor Day, the Canadian government advised that 2SLGBTQI+ persons “could face certain barriers and risks when you travel outside Canada,” because “not all countries have the same values and legal system that we have in Canada.” That is indeed true, in ways that travelers might not imagine. LGBTQ are, respectively, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. “I” means “intersex”  and + is “inclusive of people who identify as »

“Poor Cat”

Featured image This video made me laugh. Riley Gaines munches on breakfast cereal with a deadpan expression while watching a lib’s self-absorbed TikTok video. The funny thing, as Riley notes, is that TikTok banned the video even though Riley does not utter a single word. Her only commentary is “poor cat,” which you will understand if you watch the lib woman’s litany: This video just got removed from my tik tok for »

Target Takes Pride

Featured image Target announced earnings in a call with reporters and acknowledged being hurt by the company’s “Pride” promotions: The retailer said it expected sales to decline again in the current quarter and lowered its profit goal for the full year. Executives said they would still mark Pride Month next year but with a more focused assortment of merchandise. *** “As we navigate an ever-changing operating and social environment, we are applying »

A Chastened Anheuser-Busch Moves on

Featured image Anheuser-Busch InBev released second quarter data today. The Wall Street Journal reports: The culture wars have cost Bud Light big time. Now, the beer brand’s owner says its market share is stabilizing and that it will win back drinkers by staying away from controversial topics. *** Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer, said Thursday its U.S. sales, profit and market share had all fallen sharply in the second quarter as »

A Strange Hill To Die On

Featured image I confess I didn’t see this one coming: the Democratic Party has made forcing young women and girls to dress and undress in front of strange naked men a cornerstone of its political platform. Apparently Democrats are not allowed to dissent from this orthodoxy; at least, I haven’t noticed any who have done so. It is, as I say, a weird hill to die on. Not only is the policy »