The New York Times Has Finally Acknowledged the Problem with Women

The NYT has finally crawled out of its cave to acknowledge a festering problem: The Political Left is shitting on women. Members of the Political Left are doing this through their words but also though their silence.

Why now, NYT? Is it because there are more and more of us creeping out into public to ask obvious questions and to state the problems we are seeing and hearing? Is it because Matt Walsh recently released his hard-hitting documentary (with which I find much merit, though I have my disagreements too): "What is a Woman?" Is it because one of the main missions of the NYT is to elect democrats and they have decided that NOW is the time to save the democrats from themselves by calling out bullshit on gender ideology? Maybe all of the above? Whatever the reason, an article like this was long overdue. I'm glad the NYT has published Pamela Paul's article. Maybe we can now have more real conversations on this topic of the mistreatment of women by the Political Left.

Here's an excerpt from "The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count.":

[T]he far right and the far left have found the one thing they can agree on: Women don’t count.

The right’s position here is the better known, the movement having aggressively dedicated itself to stripping women of fundamental rights for decades. . . .

Far more bewildering has been the fringe left jumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda. There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. . . .But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”

Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.” It left out those threatened most of all: women.

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One of the “Experts” Featured in New Documentary by Matt Walsh: “What is a Woman”

I'm make sure I never sign up any biology class taught by Dr. Michelle Forcier, featured in the video clip below, from the new documentary "What is a Woman?" I agree with Andrew Sullivan and Matt Walsh. This is sheer lunacy.

More about this interview and Walsh's documentary in general from the Daily Mail.

[Added June 4, 2022]

I haven't yet watched the entire documentary, but I am planning to do that soon. After reading reviews like this, I am all-the-more interested in seeing the documentary for myself: "What Is A Woman? Review of a Cultural Turning Point: The most important documentary of the year breaks the spell and is a reckoning for gender ideology."

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Another Science Website Falls Over the Cliff by Rejecting “the Sex Binary”

This time it's a website called The Scientist.

The thesis of this article is the equivalent of saying that "because clownfish," a human animal can change its biological sex from male to female (or female to male) and to any of many unspecified "sexes" between. The article ends by saying "If you don't publicly proclaim that [the sun revolves around the earth] or [water boils at 150 degrees F] or [tectonic plates are made of cheese], you are a bigot.

I keep thinking back to the religious fundamentalists who developed numerous unhinged theological theories ("tennis without a net") because they were not willing to face the fact that  we are human animals (and see here). The false idea that we are "blank slates" has dominated large swaths of academia for years, especially in departments of education and social work. I believe this false belief has now enabled modern gender ideology.

A much more fruitful approach to understanding human complexity would be to admit that one's body is what it is. In a biological male, for instance, every one of the trillions of cells contains an XY (in the female sex, an XX). Here is a straight-forward explanation for why there are two (and only two) sexes.  An entirely separate issue from the biology is how a human animal expresses himself (or herself).

I have no problem with any human adult choosing how to express themself, choosing how to use their body, who to spend time with, how to use or change one's physical appearance or how to involve anyone else in these activities, assuming everyone consents. What I'm against is the increasingly popular notion, reinforced by formerly respectable "science" publications, that we can pretend that our underlying biology is other than what it is. Nature doesn't care about what we think. It is what it is. What anyone chooses to do with their primate body is totally up to them. But let's not conflate what kind of biological body one has with how one chooses to change its appearance or use it.

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Woke Racism, Where Ideology Defeats Science

John McWhorter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) warns us that four of the mainstays of Woke Anti-racism are long on ideology and short on scientific validity:

- Microaggressions - Diversity Equity & Inclusion Departments - Implicit Bias Testing - Systemic Racism

Ideology twisting scholarship with dangerous consequences is a phenomenon hardly limited to the Soviet Union. It's happening here, right now, in America, in an effort to spread an intolerant orthodoxy masquerading as 'Anti-racism.'

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The Problem with “Culturally Responsive Education” (CRE) and Other Variants of Neoracism

Dana Stangel-Plowe of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) explains:

In our latest video, FAIR’s Dana Stangel-Plowe discusses the issues surrounding a new academic theory called “Culturally Responsive Education.” While intended to connect students with their educational material on a deep level, Stangel-Plowe explains how this new method achieves the opposite by assuming people who superficially look like one another must also think like one another.

[T]he idea of providing kids books that feature characters who look like them feels intuitive as a way to connect them to the material; but building curriculum around students’ skin color, ancestry, or gender raises serious questions about the very purpose of education in our diverse and pluralistic nation.

By making assumptions about what will engage students based on race or immutable traits, CRE is racist. The idea that all people who share the same group identity would also share the same interests, experiences, or beliefs is reductive and demeaning to the unique human beings in that group.

Stangle-Plowe offers a more detailed analysis at FAIR's website:

Despite what some of its proponents would have us believe, CRE is much more than simply a framework for student-centered learning and a celebration of different cultures and cultural ways of knowing. CRE’s focus on “power dynamics,” “social change,” “liberation,” and “equitable outcomes” plainly reveal that critical pedagogy is baked into CRE. Critical pedagogy, popularized by Paolo Freire, is the Marxism-derived school of critical theory applied to education. Thus, it designates K-12 classrooms as the place to start a revolution to dismantle the dominant power structures—meaning our current systems of liberal democracy. Critical pedagogy is explicitly a political ideology—similar to other illiberal ideologies that focus on “liberation” and seek equality of outcomes—aiming to turn students into revolutionary activists.

With CRE becoming widespread, we must consider: Is there a better way to leverage student engagement for success across cultures? And, most importantly, how do we ensure that all students, regardless of their group identities, become “classroom insiders” without dehumanizing them or flattening them into stereotypes—and without replacing learning with activism?

It seems that we are mastering the art of slicing and dicing people culturally in much the same way that Google, Facebook and Amazon are using Billy Ball analytics on their customer bases. I see no problem categorizing people by their interests, such as knitting, pickle ball or art. The problem is with dividing people by irrelevant categories, such as the way they look or (often) the place where they were born. CRE assumes that people are "stuck" in these irrelevant categories and they they want more and more of the same. As Stangle-Plowe states, this is insulting and destructive. I'm proud to say that I am constantly learning many wonderful things from people who look different than me. I'm also proud to say that I don't obsess over what a person looks like. CLE is a well-meaning but destructive to the American Dream that we are one people who can work and play together. E pluribus unum.

Evaluating people based on superficial characteristics is inaccurate and lazy.  We need to avoid all miscategorizations, of course. Because people are extremely complex, it makes no sense to judge them on "race," sex or national origin any more than it would to determine who they are based on astrology.

Our cultural dysfunction based on insanely off-target miscategorizations needs to be cut off at the root, as suggested by Sheena Mason:

FAIR is

a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity.

In conclusion, I am including FAIR's Principles of Peaceful Change:

FAIR Principles of Peaceful Change

Based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Principles of Nonviolence

Exercise Moral Courage. Telling the truth is a way of life for courageous people. Peaceful change cannot happen without a commitment to the truth.

Build Bridges. We seek to win friendship and gain understanding. The result of our movement is redemption and reconciliation.

Defeat Injustice, Not People. We recognize that those who are intolerant and seek to oppress others are also human, and are not evil people. We seek to defeat evil, not people.

Don’t Take the Bait. Suffering can educate and transform. We will not retaliate when attacked, physically or otherwise. We will meet hate and anger with compassion and kindness.

Choose Love, Not Hate. We seek to resist violence of the spirit as well as the body. We believe in the power of love.

Trust in Justice. We trust that the universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.

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