Russell Brand, as animated as ever, showcases the corrupt history of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as he simultaneously advocates for free speech. Brand didn't appreciate that Wasserman-Schultz called Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger "so-called reporters." Got him a bit riled up. I had the same reaction when I watched the hearings live . . .
Zachary Elliott's Paradox Institute has created a series of straight-forward biology lessons to make sense of the reckless (and sometimes intentional) confusion promulgated by transgender ideology. Here is the mission statement of Paradox Institute:
In an age where the very existence of male and female are being denied, the Paradox Institute provides evidence, reason, and above all, clarity to both simple and complex topics in the biology of sex.Each video contains a short description and citations to scientific resources.The content presented is directly informed by contemporary scientific literature from the fields of evolutionary and developmental biology, endocrinology, personality psychology, and neuroscience.
For example, here is why "Chromosomes are not Sexes."
Description:
Some claim that rare chromosome combinations prove there are more than two sexes, yet these combinations still result in males and females, not new sexes.
Here's one more video of the many available:
"Origins of Two Sexes"
Description:
This video essay explores the origins of the two sexes: how they formed 1.2 billion years ago and why they are nearly universal across the plant and animal kingdoms. The information for the video comes from peer-reviewed sources in evolutionary biology on the evolution of sex, anisogamy, and the two sexes.
What will anthropologists say about us in 100 years? What is our zeitgeist? I suggest this: Uncritically deployed empathy is motivating many of us to close our eyes to dream up utopias du jure. Your wish list can include anything you want, including 87 sexes, equal outcomes for all groups in every endeavor, a world where no police exist and even no opposition when the U.S. instigates its next discretionary war. Anything you can dream up can instantly be yours if you can gather up a mob on social media and occupy our sense-making institutions.
Step two is to reverse-engineer society to destroy anything that gets in your way, Chesterson’s Fence be damned. This is the Age of Ad Hoc where you are invited to declare your dream to be “self-evident” so that no evidence is necessary. Get rid of traditional math and science because the techniques that allow us to make miracle medicines and airplanes that fly will repeatedly clash with your dream. Get rid of history, criminal justice research based on multi-variate analyses and the Rule of Law. Get rid of all of these things by any authoritarian means necessary, including threatening and defunding inconvenient researchers, deleting their lifetimes of work and silencing anyone trying to question your approach. Develop hundreds of new versions of the ad hominem attack. Snap your fingers to make all Enlightenment principles self-implode without discussion by calling them “racist.” No need to do any work to actually fix any of the problems that motivated your quest. Then sit back and repeatedly blame the ensuing chaos on someone else.
For the past two years, Billboard Chris has traveled across North America wearing a billboard and carefully explaining his concerns that children and teenagers are being grossly mistreated and permanently injured by those who embrace gender ideology. In a recent tweet, Chris is shown talking to those who would like to discuss these issues:
Thank you to everyone for the outpouring of support. I’ve been at this for 2 and a half years, with the audacious idea that having intelligent conversations out in the real world would help educate millions, and spread awareness about the abuse of child transition.
Much has happened, and we are winning spectacularly. I will try to get back to as many of you as I can in the coming days. If you are media and I have missed your message, please send it again.
Children are never born in the wrong body!
In the process of trying to have conversations, Chris has repeatedly been assaulted by trans rights activists, resulting in several serious injuries. The TRAs are desperately trying to keep the rest of us from having meaningful discussions about the damage being done to children, especially by the "gender affirming care" version of treatment.
I take the position that adults (those over 18) have, and should have, the liberty to do whatever they want with their own bodies. With regard to those under 18, I largely agree with Chris. He recently explained his position to the Florida Health and human Services Committee (I created the transcript you will find below):
What does it mean to be a "Liberal"?
What follows is an excerpt from Peter Weiner's article in The Atlantic: "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America’s Divisions: The psychologist shares his thoughts on the pandemic, polarization, and politics."
Haidt says, “we’ve messed up the word liberal and we’ve used it to just mean ‘left.’ I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal, in the John Stuart Mill sense. I believe in a society that is structured to give individuals the maximum freedom to construct lives that they want to live. We use a minimum of constraint, we value openness, creativity, individual rights. We try hard to maximize religious liberty, economic liberty, liberty of conscience, freedom of speech. That’s my ideal of a society, and that’s why I call myself a liberal.”
But on the left, Haidt said, “there’s been a movement that has made something else sacred, that has not focused on liberty, but that is focused instead on oppression and victimhood and victimization. And once you get into a framework of seeing your fellow citizens as good versus evil based on their group, it’s kind of a mirror image of the authoritarian populism on the right. Any movement that is assigning moral value to people just by looking at them is a movement I want no part of.”
Haidt went on: “I think this is a very important point for us to all keep in mind, that left and right in this country are not necessarily liberal and conservative anymore. On the left, it’s really clear that there are elements that many of us consider to be very illiberal; and on the right, it’s hard to see how Trump and many of his supporters are conservatives who have any link whatsoever to Edmund Burke. It’s very hard for me to see that. You know, I would love to live in a country with true liberals and true conservatives that engage with each other. That, I think, is a very productive disagreement. But it’s the illiberalism on each side that is making our politics so ugly, I believe.”