The anti-trans rhetoric masquerading as philosophical inquiry and political philosophy in our field is both intellectually vacant and manifestly harmful.

From an academic perspective it is an embarrassment to the profession that trans lives are "up-for-debate."

It should a matter of professional legitimacy taken up by our learned societies that people engage in and are rewarded for the kind of vapid pseudo-scholarship that I see crop up in the field around trans lives.

I have a chapter in my thesis about the problem of anti-trans propaganda which focuses on the *central* argument in that propaganda: that trans women, by virtue of their socialization as men, pose a credible threat to cis women if allowed in to gender-regulated space.

I'm going to tweet out some of the points below.

Canada has a data problem when it comes to sexual violence perpetrated against anyone other than cis people.

They found his car, parked on the bridge between two towns, the brown sooty water of the Ohio passing beneath. After they issued his description two welders working on the bridge remember seeing a man in a topcoat and hat. /1

Friends say he was despondent. His mother had died just a few weeks before, and everyone said his was such a kind, gentle soul. His sisters already knew the worse. They understood Jimmy just as their mother had. 2/

There was no "indian summer" that year. October came in cold, stayed cold, and blew into a cold November. The local police weren't enough, so they called in the Coast Guard to drag the river. 3/

There was only time. Time to wait, but not to worry, only to find out. When they, a sister took to her bed, another retreated to her books, and my mother, the youngest, had to keep it from all falling apart. She was his kid sister, and the adoration was mutual. 4/

She kept the story from her own youngest son, who was only four. When she spoke of him at all, she simply said that he died, honey, and that he was sad. When her son was older, long left, she sent him a photo. 5/

The ever-incredible @SWACEO from @scotwomensaid is about to give evidence to the Australian federal government’s inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence on criminalising coercive control. I’m going to try and live-tweet.

Link to watch live: https://t.co/KpszEWL8C2

Chair Andrew Wallace is opening this evening’s proceedings and inviting Dr Scott to give evidence via teleconference.

Very awkward comment that the Chair wants Dr Scott to speak slowly because of her Scottish accent.

The Chair says in 3 months he hasn’t opened a newspaper with an article in it on criminalising coercive control. It’s a “hot button topic”.

While the Commonwealth won’t legislate in this area it could try and help find consistency in the legislation that is developed.

[Thread: Fandoms]
I was called by a long lost friend's parents today. A bit of history, she was involved with the fandom(?) of a popular sports team for the past year or so. The involvement grew so intense that she was engaged with the fandom-things for better part of the day ->

She administered multiple social media "fan-accounts" for the team and the players, had a huge "friends-group" within the fandom itself etc.

In the last few weeks, she almost stopped speaking to her parents, and lost all the contact with her friends in the lockdown. ->

3 weeks ago, somehow a (alleged) rumor spread within their fandom circle's social media that she is a "mole for the opposite team" (or something like that) and she faced everything from abuses to rape threats (was reported to authorities. More on that later) ->

From what the description sounded like, the harassment was really worse than what political social media has (in my experience of hot takes in the past year)

Anyway, 2 days after this rumor, their "fandom team lost to opposite fandom team" on some online contest thing. ->

She was blamed by the "friends" in the fandom "for conspiring" and this person went into a literal shock.

Couldn't speak, couldn't eat, lay in bed all day, didn't even get up to visit the restroom and was deaf to everything. FOR 48 HOURS. Had to be taken to a doctor. ->

The @ONS have decided that it's no longer possible to ask people simply what their sex is, even though this has been asked in every census since forever. Women have used the resulting data to prove that we face ongoing and widespread discrimination, at large and small scales 1/10

The people making decisions about the census, however, have been persuaded that some (unknown number of) people won't respond to the census at all if they have to answer this very basic factual question. 2/10

They have therefore changed the guidance so that an unknown number of people are advised to answer it according to their 'official documents' - which may contradict each other. Since it's easily possible to change the sex marker on a passport or driving licence 3/10

just by asking for it to be changed, this guidance effectively means that (an unknown number of) people unhappy about their biological sex are advised to answer the sex question however they choose. 4/10

The most immediately damaging impact of this decision will be on trans people. It means the opportunity to gather robust data from the new gender identity question in the same census is lost. We will not be able to tell how many trans people are male or female. 5/10

@bayareahausfrau @politico https://t.co/zPc5IqZug6

MKULTRA survivor shares how Pierre Trudeau @JustinTrudeau daddy sexually abused her on Mackinaw Island, Michigan

It began w/ her abuse as a child to Gerald R Ford “buying” her, her father was protected under the blanket of National Security + then...

@politico @JustinTrudeau the mind control program was used to control her.
#GuyVanderjagt abused her sexually + she was then dedicated to Sen. Robert Byrd to run operations of drug trafficking.
While in Nashville, TN she watched Sen Byrd on the Grand old Opry stage w/ Wayne Cox on the fiddle. After...

@politico @JustinTrudeau she was subjected to a occult blood ritual. She witnessed Wayne Cox murder a railroad bum at the then abandoned Nashville Railroad yard, and cut off his hands - this was Wayne Cox’s M.O he used the severed hands to reactivate The mercenaries running the drugs in South America...

@politico @JustinTrudeau to remember what he could do to them. #mindcontrol

Nashville and Branson were fronts to distribute + run drugs.

she was sexually abused by @BillClinton + @HillaryClinton when Billy was the Governor of Arkansas. in 1978 his drug trafficking was in full swing. ...

@politico @JustinTrudeau @BillClinton @HillaryClinton Bill wasn’t as much into women as he is men, so the abuse by him was limited.
Her abuse was more at the hands of Hillary, who like Bill, is bisexual w/ each having their primary preferences sexually. Cathy O’Brien succumbed to a new level of mind control under @HillaryClinton

I’ve been seeing tweets from women demanding not to be treated as sex objects so I figured an exposition on the subject matter may help us all. First, let’s remind ourselves what a sex object is. In simple terms, a sex object is a person who is regarded primarily...

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in terms of their sexual attractiveness or availability.

When women post pictures that highlight their boobs and ass on social media, (which they do all the time) they primarily want men to see how sexually attractive they are. In other words they want men to see them...

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as sex objects and that external validation in turn, boosts their self esteem.

It's called thirst trap because that's exactly the effect they want to achieve. They want men to thirst for them. On a conscious and subconscious level, they want you to see them as an...

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object of sexual desire.

And contrary to what some would have you believe, it's absolutely normal for heterosexual men to see women they're attracted to as sex objects.

It has nothing to do with misogyny and this is proved by the fact that homosexual men see men they...

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are sexually attracted to as sex objects. If heterosexual men are misogynists in this regard, then homosexual men are man-haters.

Go through the TL and you'll see tweets like "If you can't AFFORD EXPENSIVE women, stop trying to date them" They've made themselves into...

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White dude wrote a thread about how he 'taught' his hungry 9 year old to use a can opener; 'figure it out' The child was in tears unable to figure out how to get the opener to align with and bite the increasingly damaged can for 6+ hours, during which time she didn't eat anything

Leaving aside all the incredibly abusive elements of this, I want to talk a bit about the things I've learned about teaching children, something I've spent a decade doing.

1) Kids, even very young kids, are incredibly perceptive, intelligent, curious, and sensitive.

2) Kids can figure out very complicated things on their own (I taught media analysis/fiction writing ages 7-16), but they need to be given the parts.

ALL my kids knew what a character arc was, but would not have been able to give you the words 'character arc' in a million years.

To repeat, I didn't teach them what a character arc was. They already knew what it was, I just pointed it out to them so they could see the patterns.

Same for plot structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. They all knew what these things were, but not necessarily how to apply them.

Kids can absolutely figure things out, but because they're kids and lack life experience, they have to have what they need in front of them.

You don't tell them 'find all the apples in this picture' and then surprise 'there's two in the shopping bag!'

Nearly every day I take a walk, grab a coffee, and sit for a while in front of Baltimore’s Camden Station. This is where Abraham Lincoln was nearly assassinated on the eve of his 1861 inauguration. Thinking about that little known story a lot lately, so today, I’m sharing it. 1/

Short bit of context: prior to Lincoln’s election, the was a goddamn disaster. Ideologically divided, hateful, and violent. The President, James Buchanan, has long been considered the worst in American history. I wrote this about him a few years

If you spent even 15 minutes learning about the Buchanan presidency, you could have predicted nearly everything that’s happened in the past few years. As you may have heard, history has a way of repeating itself. But now, to Lincoln! 3/

So after Lincoln won the election, half this country was PISSED. He was going to abolish slavery and whatever whatever ‘MURICA! (Change the policy details, and it’s the same hysteria, generated by the wealthy classes to get the poor to do their bidding) 4/

Try to remember how different the world was back then. News came from the paper; not everyone was literate. Opinions were decided for many by those who controlled information. Some said Lincoln was going to destroy their way of life, and needed to die. 5/

Share wildly. The anti trans (and anti VAWA, Equality Act) Heritage Foundation 'feminist' group, Women's liberation Front (WoLF), has issued its media guidelines.
This will become the standard for the trans hate groups and anti trans media (eg BBC, The Times,The Australian).

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(1) It erases intersex people and even the word "intersex". Intersex people to referred to as "men or women with a Disorder of Sex Development (DSD)"
(2) Wants conversion therapy done on trans youth.

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{3) State that "Primary sex determination occurs upon fertilization and is determined by the presence or lack of a Y chromosome."
(4) Always misgender and deadname trans people.

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(5) Use “cosmetic body modification”, “cosmetic genital surgery”, etc rather than “gender reassignment surgery”.
(6) Make it clear when trans people are victims of male violence it is by romantic partners or when they experience violence as a result of being in the sex trade.
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(7) Use "“About 10 percent of murders in the US are committed by women or men who identify as women” rather than “About 10 percent of murders in the
US are committed by women”
(8) Not to conflate women’s sex-based rights with discrimination against trans-identified people.

5/n

In todays @Telegraph @CitySamuel write about Brexit and the difference between the purchase of vaccines in the EU and the U.K. Thread 1/

First point of importance.
All U.K. purchases and approval of vaccines actually happened under EU rules. Until the end of 2020 the U.K. was bound by EU rules and the U.K. was part of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) 2/

The U.K. approved the use of vaccines faster than EU countries. That is because the U.K. used a procedure under the EU-rules that allow for national emergency approval under certain circumstances. EU countries could have done the same but decided not to 3/

The decision not to do emergency approval was a political choice. One of the reasons is the question of liability.
In the case of emergency approval the liability for the product lies with the country allowing the emergency approval. 4/

When a vaccine is given marketing approval following the normal procedure liability is with the producer.
There are EU rules on that laid down in the EU product liability directive and there are also rulings by the Europan court of Justice on vaccines and liability 5/

Highlighting real history is not a culture war.
Being critical of your own country's past is not left, its not woke, its humane.
Pretending that what happened in the past didn't happen, is far worse.
It suggests an unwillingness to learn from the past to improve in the future.

The Sunday Telegraph is trying to frame what we are/we're as a nation.
Yes we were racist.
Yes we kept slaves and profited from it.
Yes we slaughtered millions in the name of empire.
"So what? "
In reality, only a small handful of people are responsible for these crimes.
Govt.

I don't see this country in the same way as those with a guilty conscious.
But those who bear the guilt project it onto the rest of us.

A member of my family has gone down the far right rabbit hole along with a few other members of my family (not immediate family) and part of this conspiracy is a hatred of Jews.

The one thing that stood out for me, when I tried to reason with them about why they are wrong, is the way they framed all Jewish people.
In any country, can you really smear its people on the basis of what it's govt does?
Does the govt in this country represent me and my views?

The notion that only western Caucasians can be racist is, in itself, racist, since it implies that white folk are somehow morally superior and should know better - and judging 'superiority' and 'inferiority' are the basis of racism. /2

2. There are many examples of non-white people's racism, often to sub-groups of their own race: the Hindu caste system; the treatment of Chinese Uighurs; even racism amongst light and dark-skinned American blacks.

So why are whites always targeted as 'racists'? /3

3. Why is racism often found where clearly none/little exists? As a specific example: a bearded, long-haired and hirsute man being called an ape by a 13yo girl and booed by crowds, but 86 other Indigenous players not being subjected to 'racist' comments and actions similarly. /4

4. Why is it that the Left is so preoccupied with race and racism? Is it simply to be morally superior? Is it to be the guardians of society? Is it to control a narrative? Is it to be the arbiters of good and evil?

Or is it about their own prejudices and insecurities? /5

5. Those who see racism everywhere are those who look for it. The Offence and Outrage Industry thrives on it, if only to put them in the beatific limelight to signal their virtue loudly and clearly.

Does racism exist? Of course. Does it exist to the degree the Left suggests? /6

It is at jarring times like this where society is reeling most from the lack of journalistic integrity within the mainstream media. It is for good reason that just 9% of Americans have "a great deal" of trust in media institutions, with 60% having little or no faith at all.

I would like to know how anti-Semites, climate change activists, and BLM protest attendees took front-and-center in a supposedly Trump-inspired riot (given his stance as the most philo-Semitic president in US history, a climate realist, and an outspoken critic of mob violence.)

Unfortunately, the current state of most of the news media is to engage in the exercise of simply identifying whichever take is most politically damaging to Trump, look no further, and become steadfast in the resilience against the dangers of being confused by the facts.

Commentators are po-facedly presenting the outrages on Capitol Hill yesterday as a sincere (and allegedly Trump-inspired) attempted "insurrection" (by a rag-tag group of unarmed hooligans in MAGA attire), led by these Neanderthals, who stopped to pose for a mid-coup photo shoot:

The hypocrisy is scandalous but typical. If nothing else, at least Trump has reunified the country in regarding riots as bad and law enforcement as good. That is, until the next left-wing protest turns violent.

THREAD: Last-Century thinking got humanity into a mess. It worked well though, just too well. Into the third decade of the new century and I am sad to see how little last century thinking is being named and challenged. 1/

OLD THINKING: Take that nature, use that nature. Same amount of land that we stated with, but going on four times the population and much soil erosion behind us. NEW THINKING: use it, put it back, regenerate it. 2/

OLD: Either you are good or bad. Promoted on almost every TV show. Reality is, we created a system and it grew and that system brings out the worst in us to an extent we have forgotten how to bring out the best in each other, almost. 3/

OLD: If you have money you should spend it on what you want. A few people had cars back in the 1920's. Now there are so many on the Earth that they alone can push the climate over the tipping point. NEW: Money should never give you the power and right to commit ecocide. 4/

OLD: the power in the economy is consumption. Using stuff up. Problem is, we are already using more stuff than our earth-society-earth can sustain. Successful ideas like that end badly when there is more human stuff on the earth than natural. 5/

I quit my job today and started a Twitter account for my cat (@KCPuppyCat). Why is going to take some time to explain. At least on the first count, anyway. Puppy deserves his own Twitter. But the job is about #a11y(accessibility) & a company with zero respect for their employees.

No, I'm not going to name the company. Suffice it to say they are in healthcare and provide customer service and other things related to benefits offered by other companies. They're kind of a middle man, controlled quite a few government regulations. There's lots of those around.

If you read the reviews of a company and there are a few disgruntled former employees saying horrible things, it's normal. If you look and nearly every review talks about how badly employees are treated, that's something else. I should have known. I thought I was prepared.

There were complaints about how "you only get 15 minute breaks and they count points against you if you're a minute late." But that's normal. There was talk of favoritism...that's pretty common too. Even the talk of mandatory overtime didn't ring any alarm bells at first.

What didn't concern me at first that should have was talk of how incomplete training was, how employees were expected to do 2 weeks of training and be on the phones right away. I've had a job where that was the norm, but training was actually decent and we were actually prepared.

PUBLIC DEBT HYSTERIA IN ITALY 🇮🇹
Each passing day, I'm more and more astounded at the hysteria surrounding public debt in Italy. This hysteria has country-specific peculiarities. In Italy it's somehow different from the US, the UK or Germany. 1/18

This hysteria is due not only to ideology, but also to provincialism, pusillanimity, rancor towards the State and disregard for legitimate national interest. Let's analyse these issues. 2/18

IDEOLOGY. The Italian free-marketers ("liberisti all'amatriciana") are often a parody of their American and British counterparts. They seem to lack (or pretend to lack) basic understanding of the functioning of government bonds. 3/18

There's no such thing as a free market of government bonds. Or better: a free mkt of gov't bonds can exist only in a monetary union where the central bank doesn't guarantee that single national governments will not fail. We've seen the negative effects of such architecture. 4/18

However, thanks to PEPP, the @ecb implicitly prevents governments' failure. At least for the moment.
This means that the mkt for gov't bonds is controlled by a public authority:it's what usually occurs(and should occur) in every well-functioning modern economy(and democracy) 5/18