The Woke Industrial Complex at Lockheed Martin

Christopher Rufo reports, complete with leaked training documents:

Last year, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s largest defense contractor, sent white male executives to a three-day diversity-training program aimed at deconstructing their “white male culture” and encouraging them to atone for their “white male privilege.” The program, hosted on Zoom for a cohort of 13 Lockheed employees, was led by the diversity-consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, which specializes in helping white males “awaken together.”

This "training" happened last year. It is the easiest thing in the world to predict that based on these revelations, future training will not have written materials (as a school administrator urged here).

Bonus Woke Tip: Being punctual is a "white" thing, so Lockheed should simply tell the customers, "We'll get you that order of fighter jets next year, maybe 3 or 4 year year from now, maybe ten years from now.  Whatever." :

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NYT: To Investigate COVID Origin in Humans is Racist

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter for the NYT specializing in COVID issues. She thinks that her job is to NOT investigate how this pandemic-causing virus was able to infect human beings, allegedly because to ask this question is "racist." Maybe the NYT ought to replace Mandavilli with a new COVID reporter who has at least a mild interest in science.

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Rejecting the Racial Framework. Refusing to Divide People into Colors

I have often taken the position that Christopher Rufo takes during this interview. For me, a person's color tells me next to nothing (and usually nothing at all) about that person's history, experience, intelligence, passions, morality and admirability. It is my hope that, someday, we will all recognize that a person's "race" will be one of the least interesting things about them, except, perhaps when I am taking portrait photos, were a person's skin tone sometimes requires me to make adjustments to the lighting I use (see many of my portrait photos here for examples).

In this interview, Rufo refuses to by into any sort of racial ontology and insists that he wants to be evaluated as an individual. He disagrees that there are "black" versa "white" traits, qualities and aptitudes. I agree. And further, I would agree with Rufo (who writes often about these issues) that categorizing people by appearance divides us socially and breeds mistrust of each other. We are hurting each and disrupting our abilities to work efficiently to promote the general social welfare whenever we pretend that we are internally different based on external immutable characteristics. To do this is to invoke the logic of astrology and phrenology, with far far greater capacity to hurt innocent people.

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Duke Neuroscientist Punished for Arguing that There are Only Two Sexes.

From a May 14, 2021 article in The College Fix:

John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA.

. . .

The topic that appears to have gotten him removed was the suggestion that there are only two sexes. According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

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60 Minutes Discusses Transgender Medical Issues

I applaud 60 Minutes for broadcasting this balanced report on trangender medical issues.

[Added May 24, 2021]

The ACLU's famously pro-censorship attorney, Chase Strangio probably liked the first half of 60 Minutes' recent discussion on transgender health care, the part discussing the fact that many states, including Arkansas, are attempting to restrict surgery and hormone injections for minors who claim to be transgender. I agree that this legislation should be critically examined and should not interfere with legitimate well-researched healthcare. Lesley Stahl indicated that "the vast majority" of people who have transitioned are satisfied. But Strangio's Tweet-rant claims that it is "dangerous" and "unaccountable" that 60 Minutes considered concerns with transgender health care.

As part of this topic, Stahl interviewed thirty teenagers and young adults who detransitioned, all of them having regrets, many of them after surgery and hormones. These young adults regretted that they got caught up in the excitement, many of them frustrated that their counselors "blindly affirmed" the transgender diagnosis and did not push back or dig deeper into what was really going on in their lives. I assume that Strangio was also outraged that 60 Minutes dared to mention the existence of a growing sub-Reddit Detrans group with more than 19,000 members.

The show also featured nationally recognized psychologist (and transgender woman) Erica Anderson, in accordance with the positions taken by many major medical organizations, criticized the new wave of state laws, characterizing them as "ominous." Anderson admitted, however, that there are no existing accreditation standards for work in this field of transgender health care. Anderson expressed concern that many health professionals in this field are not well-trained and she called treatment offered by many healthcare professionals "deplorable."

Another expert, Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist at one of the first transgender clinics (in Boston), stated that she is concerned about rampant unethical behavior by many practitioners. She noted that many therapists in the field share her concerns, but are "scared to speak up" for fear of pushback from the trans community.

For Strangio of the ACLU, however, this well-balanced investigative piece is not good enough. It contains too much information. Ira Glasser and John Stuart Mill are both spinning in their graves.

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