Tag Archives: #FreedomOfSpeech

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Brynn Tannehill and the American left love them some freedom of speech and of the press . . . for themselves. For conservatives? Not so much!

I will admit it: I had not heard of Brynn Tannehill before seeing this tweet from my good Twitter friend Robert Stacy McCain. Now I don’t know what Mr McCain tweeted to her that she found blockworthy — though blockworthy seems to have a pretty low threshold among many on the left — but, as I frequently do when I see something like that, I checked out the blocking author.

It didn’t take too much scrolling down to find this tweet in Miss Tannehill’s file. She is exercising her freedom of speech and of the press to tell us why other people ought not to have the same rights. That is, sadly, far too typical of the American left!

Why Elon Musk’s Idea of “Free Speech” Will Help Ruin America

Twitter without content moderation—and with Donald Trump and others reinvited—means that lies and disinformation will overwhelm the truth and the fascists will take over.

by Brynn Tannehill | Wednesday, October 26, 2022

After months of legal wrangling, Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter appears to be finally going through. Musk and the right see this as a great thing because it will restore “free speech” to Twitter. Any suggestion that the sort of “free speech” they envision can have highly undesirable consequences is met with howls of “Libs hate free speech” or other accusations of fascism. Similarly, warnings that unfettered free speech results in dangerous misinformation spreading are derided with “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and the libertarian belief that in the marketplace of ideas, the best will always win out.

These theories will be tested quickly. It is being reported that after the sale is finalized, Musk plans on laying off nearly three-quarters of Twitter’s staff and that one of the first things to go will be any corporate attempt at content moderation and user security. Musk also plans on restoring the accounts of high-profile sources of disinformation and violent messaging who were previously banned, most notably former President Trump.

Well, of course it’s all about Donald Trump, who has been living rent-free in the heads of the left since before he was elected, and still now, after he’s been out of office for 21 months. We have often noted how some of the major organs of the credentialed media, including those who have so vigorously defended their own freedom of speech and of the press, have advocated censoring other people’s freedom of speech and of the press, all as the left scram that evil reich-wing Republicans are the fascists! That Miss Tannehill has previously accused Republicans of wanting to ban books only makes it more hypocritical, and more humorous.

OK, at this point, 9:41 PM EDT on Friday, October 28th, I need to make a serious correction. When I originally wrote this article, I made a huge, huge error: I failed to check the author’s biography, and did something silly like use the feminine honorifics and pronouns. Commenter 370H55V I/ME/MINE notified me of the error, and now I need to correct it. It turns out that Bryan Tannehill was a 1997 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and began to ‘transition’ in 2010. I left the above part of my article in place, as written, but shall now correct the rest of it.

The pro-Musk arguments are complete nonsense, and there are innumerable historical and modern examples of why social media platforms with nearly unlimited freedom of speech produce horrors. The Supreme Court decided free speech isn’t absolute long ago, when Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that you can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for obvious reasons.

As happens so often among the anti-free speech crowd, Miss Mr Tannehill wholly missed the point. From Schneck v United States, 249 US 47 (1919), internal citations omitted:

But it is said, suppose that that was the tendency of this circular, it is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Two of the strongest expressions are said to be quoted respectively from well-known public men. It well may be that the prohibition of laws abridging the freedom of speech is not confined to previous restraints, although to prevent them may have been the main purpose, as intimated in Patterson v. Colorado. We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. Aikens v. Wisconsin. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. Gompers v. Buck’s Stove & Range Co. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

The entire opinion is short, and can be easily read in just a couple of minutes, but what Miss Mr Tannehill and others have so often forgotten is that while Associate Justice Holmes — he was never Chief Justice of the United States, as Miss Mr Tannehill claimed, though he was once Chief Justice of the Massachusetts state Supreme Court — said that the First Amendment does not protect a man from the consequences of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater and causing a panic and, presumably, a stampede for the exits, he never stated that the worry that someone might do such, without solid information about a specific, real, and credible threat justifies the law disallowing him from entering a theater in the first place. Miss Mr Tannehill and the like-minded left are basing their desire to shut down access to the most important organs of free speech these days to those they fear might shout “Fire!” in that crowded theater.

First, freedom of speech has caused untold death and suffering when used to disseminate hate or spread disinformation. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fabricated antisemitic text that purported to expose a global baby-murdering Jewish plot bent on world domination. Mein Kampf was Hitler’s autobiography, which blamed Germany’s post–World War I woes on a global Jewish conspiracy. Both were readily available in the Weimar Republic, which had no First Amendment per se but guaranteed freedom of speech. They were key contributors to the fall of German democracy, the rise of the Third Reich, and the Holocaust itself.

Godwin’s law, also known as Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies, “is a statement maintaining that if any online discussion continues long enough, someone will almost certainly compare someone else to Hitler. Typically, the comment likens someone to Hitler or calls that person a Nazi, and the individual described in that way is often a participant in the discussion. The law is thought to apply to conversations about any conceivable topic.” Miss Mr Tannehill leapt to that in just four paragraphs!

In modern times, lack of moderation on social media sites has repeatedly contributed to mass murder. The Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter killed 51 Muslims at two mosques after being radicalized on YouTube, 4Chan, and 8Chan. The shooter who killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh had been radicalized on the social media site Gab, which advertised itself as the “free speech” alternative to Twitter. Dylann Roof killed nine people at the historically Black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, after he self-radicalized online. Investigations revealed that Google searches steered him further and further into extremist propaganda and hate.

Conservatives might just as well have stated that the free dissemination of the unfortunate death of George Floyd during a legitimate arrest helped lead to 2020’s summer of hate riots under Antifa and #BlackLivesMatter, though I suspect that Miss Mr Tannehill might disagree with that. If the freedom of speech and of the press are to be restricted because they might lead to harm, it has to be remembered: the speech that will be limited depends upon who is doing the limiting. Had President Trump been the horrible fascist that the left told us he was, he might have just suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press of the left. Oddly enough, the proposal for having Nina Jankowicz to lead a Ministry of Truth “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security never occurred under President Trump; that was a (quickly trashed) idea of the Biden Administration. Washington Post writer Taylor Lorenz was aghast that it had been torpedoed:

But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

Of course, Miss Lorenz being appalled that the “Disinformation Governance Board” was a flopped idea, was somewhat hypocritical, given that Miss Lorenz had been most recently famous for her investigation and doxing of Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate saleswoman and creator of the Twitter site that the left hate, Libs of TikTok. Freedom of speech is for the left, not the right.

There’s a lot more at Miss Mr Tannehill’s original, trying to tell us all about the horrors that freedom of speech has caused, and telling us that the “libertarian fairy tale” of the “free market of ideas”, that “truth will inevitably conquer demonstrably false narratives” but then she he concludes with a strange paragraph:

As far as the free market goes, people forget that the usual result of completely unregulated markets is monopolies. Ideas within social media are no different. “Free speech” competitors to Twitter such as Gab, Parler, Truth Social, and GETTR (which exert little to no moderation) are uniformly conservative monocultures full of the worst kinds of misinformation and hate outside of 4Chan and Kiwifarms. Parler’s former CEO has begged liberals to join the site and even offered people $20,000 to do so, without any success. Musk himself has made it clear that he plans to follow down the path of Parler and Truth Social, posting a meme of himself, Donald Trump (owner of Truth Social), and Ye (formerly Kanye West and now owner of Parler) as the Three Musketeers.

It’s also true that Gab and Parler and the rest are simply not very large; begun to compete with Twitter, they can’t hold a candle to Twitter’s success. However good or bad they are, they are not winners in the competition for customers. Liberal Twitter has been winning, in part because conservatives like Mr McCain, and me, have been using Twitter because it allows a far more widespread dissemination of what we want to say.

The problem with the oh-so-noble left is that they just can’t handle the truth! Allowing, gasp! conservatives to speak freely on Twitter might just challenge the left’s thinking, and that simply cannot be allowed.

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Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer does not cover a story that doesn’t fit Teh Narrative.

We noted, on Friday, how administrators at Central Bucks West High School have instructed teachers to use the names and sex indicated on a student’s records in the office, rather than go along with a ‘transgendered’ student’s chosen name and ‘gender’, unless the student’s parents discuss with and approve the use of the student’s preferred name and ‘gender.’ Robert Stacy McCain was kind enough to reference the previous article on his fine site.

Obviously, I appreciate the link! But, you know who hasn’t had anything, anything at all, about the school’s action? That would be our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, and the regions “newspaper of record,” The Philadelphia Inquirer. I searched for such a story on Friday, when I added my previous article, but found nothing. Then, on Sunday afternoon, at 8:54 PM EDT, I once again used the newspaper’s website search function to look for “Central Bucks”, and found absolutely zero on the school’s decision.

But I did find this, in the Opinion section:

I’m a trans teen in Central Bucks. Here, it doesn’t ‘get better.’

The district has become an increasingly more unwelcoming and unsafe place for marginalized students. We’re worried about what this 2022-23 school year will look like for us.

by Lily Freeman | Updated: Thursday, September 8, 2022

I’m 16, and just started 11th grade at Central Bucks High School East, part of the Central Bucks school district. I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist, an actor — a typical teen. And I happen to be trans.

I’ve spent my whole life in this district. I live with both my parents, I have two amazing sisters and an adorable dog, Scotch, all of whom inspire me every day to be my most authentic self. I feel lucky to have this support network, because I know that not every trans student does.

Now, discriminatory policies are being implemented in our schools, taking books off of shelves and further preventing students like me from receiving the support we need to thrive.

Over the summer months, the district passed a contentious library policy against books with “sexualized content” — which is often code for books that tackle issues of race or racism, or feature LGBTQ characters or plot lines. When I heard about the new books policy, which was approved in July, I wasn’t shocked or surprised. My family and I knew this was coming. We saw it happen around the country, even in a neighboring school district. My mom spoke about the dangers of book censorship in front of the House Oversight Committee back in April.

My family and I have been fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids, specifically educating around gender identity. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite happening — the district has become an increasingly unwelcoming and unsafe place for students like me. This is disappointing and scary, to say the least.

It would seem, then, if young Mr Freeman’s[1]In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” … Continue reading family have been “fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids,” that, were he a student at Central Bucks West, they’d agree to the student’s request to be called “Lily” and be referred to by the feminine pronouns.

There’s more at the original, but young Mr Freeman’s OpEd piece notes that he is a student at Central Bucks High School East, not West, and does not reference the Central Bucks High School West’s notice to staff.

Simply put, what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. due to its biased journolism[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading apparently does not want its readers to know about the schools’ decisions, because they understand that a majority of readers would agree with the schools!

What, I have to ask, would young Mr Freeman see as “a more accepting environment for marginalized kids”? While it’s clear from the OpEd that his parents would agree to their son being called their daughter instead, would the Freeman family hold that other ‘transgender’ students should be referred to by the names and pronouns they prefer, even if their parents either disagreed or were not even informed that such was happening? Becky Cartee-Haring, an English teacher at Central Bucks West, said:

I physically felt sick in that meeting, listening to an administrator basically argue that we were going to protect ourselves by outting children . . . .

Translation: Mrs Cartee-Haring, who is already a legally-mandated reporter if it comes to suspected child or sexual abuse, believes that she has a right to withhold information about a child suffering from ‘gender dysphoria.’

In his OpEd, the writer stated that other students would make fun of him, that they said “all sorts of mean and harmful things,” was “harassed and threatened online,” and that he never felt safe other than when with “supportive teachers and friends.” And that leads to the obvious question: would the “more accepting environment” he seeks include requiring other students to use the names and pronouns he prefers, and to be punished in some manner if they did not?

Well, we don’t know how the junior at Central Bucks High School East would answer that question, because it wasn’t addressed in the OpEd, but we do know that the New York City Commission on Human Rights does require such, and can levy fines of up to $250,000 for violations. The city’s ordinance essentially tramples on the freedom of speech, and requires people who do not accept the notion of transgenderism to state things they believe to be lies.

Calling a boy a girl does not make him a girl, regardless of how much he may wish her were female. We can, and should, have some sympathy for those suffering from gender dysphoria, but having sympathy does not mean that we should just go along with their delusions.

References

References
↑1 In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” Freeman’s real name — and biological sex, though we do not change the direct quotes of others.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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How Daniel Panneton used 1,183 words to tell us that he’s a great researcher who doesn’t understand a single thing about his subject

Daniel Panneton’s Twitter bio. Click to enlarge.

Daniel Panneton tells us, in his Twitter biography, that he is a “Museums worker and online hate researcher”. He also tells us that he is very afraid to let the Unapproved see his tweets. I looked, but was unable to find a significantly more detailed biography of Mr Panneton. A writer for The Atlantic, he has had published several other articles from which anyone who can read can discern his very much #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading leftist bias.

And now? This obviously well-read has decided that traditional Catholics are now evil reich-wing Protestants! I’m pretty sure that both Catholics and our separated brethren wouldn’t see it that way.

How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary

The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement.

By Daniel Panneton | Sunday, August 14, 2022 | 8:00 AM EDT

Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.

While some people might not understand that a crucifix is more commonly Catholic than Protestant, almost no one would mistake that a rosary is a Catholic symbol. What Mr Panneton has missed is that no one who prays the rosary these days is out shooting people.

Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing “everyday carry” and “gat check” (gat is slang for “firearm”) that include soldiers’ “battle beads,” handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church.

Considering that the Bible is very explicit in its condemnation of homosexual activity, and the Catechism affirms that,[2]§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of … Continue reading it is the duty of all Catholics to fight against the approval of homosexual activity. To Mr Panneton, this is just wholly, wholly wrong.

These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks. The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, “There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,” and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.

I will admit to some amusement that this article was published on Sunday, August 14th, the same day as this Gospel reading in our Catholic Churches:

Luke 12:49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!
50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!
51 Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division;
52 for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.
53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Mr Panneton has managed to wholly misunderstand what Pope Francis has said. “Spiritual combat” means to fight, with prayer, for the right ideas.

However, this is where the author truly shows how little he understands about his subject. There is no greater enemy of the “Church Militant” than Pope Francis, who has been doing his best to stamp out the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass.

Daniel Panneton, photo from his protected Twitter profile.

In mainstream Catholicism, the rosary-as-weapon is not an intrinsically harmful interpretation of the sacramental, and this symbolism has a long history. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ultramontane Catholic student publication Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique regularly used the concept to rally the faithful. But the modern radical-traditionalist Catholic movement—which generally rejects the Second Vatican Council’s reforms—is far outside the majority opinion in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Many prominent American Catholic bishops advocate for gun control, and after the Uvalde school shooting, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, lamented the way some Americans “sacralize death’s instruments.”Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company. Their social-media accounts commonly promote accelerationist and survivalist content, along with combat-medical and tactical training, as well as memes depicting balaclava-clad gunmen that draw on the “terrorwave” or “warcore” aesthetic that is popular in far-right circles.

Like such networks, radical-traditional Catholics sustain their own cottage industry of goods and services that reinforces the radicalization. Rosaries are common among the merchandise on offer—some made of cartridge casings, and complete with gun-metal-finish crucifixes. One Catholic online store, which describes itself as “dedicated to offering battle-ready products and manuals to ‘stand firm against the tactics of the devil’” (a New Testament reference), sells replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as “combat rosaries.” Discerning consumers can also buy a “concealed carry” permit for their combat rosary and a sacramental storage box resembling an ammunition can. In 2016, the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries; during a ceremony at the Vatican, their commander described the gift as “the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.”

The militarism also glorifies a warrior mentality and notions of manliness and male strength. This conflation of the masculine and the military is rooted in wider anxieties about Catholic manhood—the idea that it is in crisis has some currency among senior Church figures and lay organizations. In 2015, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix issued an apostolic exhortation calling for a renewal of traditional conceptions of Catholic masculinity titled “Into the Breach,” which led the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal order, to produce a video series promoting Olmsted’s ideas. But among radical-traditional Catholic men, such concerns take an extremist turn, rooted in fantasies of violently defending one’s family and church from marauders.

You know, this reminds me of Amanda Marcotte’s argument in her 2008 book, It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Miss Marcotte had been arguing, for a long time — and still does — that evil reich wing conservatives don’t just want to ban prenatal infanticide, but artificial contraception as well. But when it came to actually documenting her claim, the only thing with which she could come up was Quiverfull, a belief set more than an organization, the adherents to which, according to a 2006 guesstimate, range in “the thousands to the low tens of thousands”.

Miss Marcotte managed to conflate maybe 10,000 families to a nationwide assault on contraception, and now, Mr Panneton is conflating the rosary, something millions of Catholics have, and something I have hanging from the rear-view mirror of my very masculine Ford F-150, as meaning I have an AR-15 that I’m ready to use to kill queers, abortionists, illegal immigrants, liberals, girly boys and Novus Ordo Catholics.

There’s more at Mr Panneton’s 1,183-word original, but it’s a lot of the same, the conflation of a small number of people into a national menace, and the possession of a rosary as a visible symbol, practically a swastika, showing just how horribly evil we are.

I have a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror of my F-150.

Of course, some of his sources are silly ones, such as citing Salon to prove that Catholics are a “growing contingent” of Christian nationalism, and Media Matters for America complaining that Twitter should take action against people calling groomers, groomers. About the only thing he failed to mention was Libs of TikTok.

The author’s tactics are familiar. The New Yorker noted a complaint by a black United States Postal Service worker that he was the subject of racial discrimination because some other workers wore caps with the Gadsden flag, and some have even called the thirteen-star Betsy Ross flag a symbol of hate. The old “OK” hand sign has been labeled a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

There are two things going on here. One is that the left are trying, once again, to control what speech or expression is acceptable, in an attempt to limit the terms of debate by limiting how the debate may be held. If Mr Panneton had his way, if I drove to a county commissioner’s meeting with the rosary visible in my F-150, I would be ostracized and, who knows, perhaps even escorted off the property by the police for having the alt-right symbol of a rosary.

But there’s more. Mr Panneton’s motives are really pretty clear: he wants to attack Catholicism itself, by trying to make actual Catholics into Enemies of the Republic, people who, if seen with a rosary, ought to be shunned as Nazis, reported to the police, and fired from their jobs. After all, we are all heavily armed, right?

Nevertheless, he’s being pretty stupid. Other than topics of sexual morality, which are explicitly set down in the Bible, Catholic priests and theologians tend to be pretty liberal politically. Perhaps alienating people who be (mostly) your allies isn’t the wisest thing he could do.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2

  • §2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
  • §2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
  • §2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
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The myth of “banning books”

Other than the Library of Congress, which is supposed to receive two copies of every copyrighted work, every library in the country exercises some discretion as to what books, magazines and other material to purchase and add to its collection. Discretion is what the Central Bucks School Board has mandated:

Central Bucks approves contentious library policy targeting ‘sexualized content’ in books amid community opposition

The policy, said the superintendent, would create a process for the selection of new books and for parents to challenge “gratuitous, salacious, over-the-top, unnecessary, sexualized content.”

by Oona Goodin-Smith | Tuesday, July 26, 2022

By US Census, Ruhrfisch – taken from US Census website [1] and modified by User:Ruhrfisch, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=808255

Facing heated community opposition, the Central Bucks School District on Tuesday approved a contentious library policy that takes aim at challenging books with “sexualized content” — guidelines the district’s superintendent says ensure students are reading “age-appropriate material,” but that the Pennsylvania Library Association calls one of the most restrictive in schools across the state.

In a 6-3 vote, after a rally and more than an hour of public comment — most of which was vehemently opposing the policy — and questions by some board members about its origins, the Republican-dominated board voted to advance the policy that’s raised alarm among civil rights groups. . . . .

Wielding signs reading “dictators ban books, not democracies,” and “love not hate makes CB great,” dozens of parents, students, community members, educators, and advocates rallied outside the Doylestown school district headquarters Tuesday night ahead of the vote, calling for the board to strike the policy. Many repeated their remarks during public comment before the school board. Only a couple speakers voiced their approval for the policy.

“This is not a ban, this is not censorship, it’s common sense,” said one mother, who said she was “against minors being exposed to sexually explicit content.”

Full disclosure: before I retired, I did some work in Bucks County, and specifically in the Doylestown area, where the Central Bucks School District is located, though none for the schools specifically.

A very obvious point: attendance at school is compulsory for children in the United States, and the public schools have, in effect, a captive audience. Thus, when schools take decisions on what books and other materials are to be housed in their libraries, they are exposing that captive audience to those materials.

Another very obvious point: while the Central Bucks School Board can limit what materials are bought and housed in the schools’ libraries, they have exactly zero authority over library choices in any other place, or over bookstores, or amazon.com, or any other place which buys, sells, lends, or distributes anything. If the students in the district want to read about sex, it’s widely available, in other places, including, sometimes for free, over the internet. Central Bucks is not exactly a poverty-stricken area; it’s difficult to imagine that more than a handful of homes of school-aged children lack internet access.

The public schools do not exist, and should not exist, for sexualizing children. There should be no normalizing of homosexuality or ‘transgenderism,’ or of promiscuity. That’s what concerns normal parents, and that’s what concerned the elected school board. If some parents want their children to learn about abnormal sexuality, hey, that’s on them!

Karen Downer, president of the NAACP’s Bucks County branch, noted that books most frequently flagged for sexual content “tend to include certain themes,” including the history of Black people, LGBTQ topics or characters, and race and racism. The books also are often written by marginalized authors, she said.

Does Miss Debbie Downer mean books which stir up racial strife or that push the normalization of homosexuality? Guess what? Those should not be part of school libraries! If some parents want to stir up racial strife — and, despite bordering Philadelphia at its extreme southeastern end, Bucks County’s population are only 4.7% non-Hispanic black, 6.1% Hispanic, 5.5% Asian, and 82.4% non-Hispanic white — that’s their business, but it should not be what the public schools teach.

“The policy is vague and overbroad,” said Richard T. Ting, an attorney with the ACLU.

“We’re also talking about library books, …not required reading for classwork. This is just books in the library that are there for students, and students should be free to choose what they read. Families should be able to discuss those things with their kids, as well. It shouldn’t be up to a few people … to decide what everyone else gets access to.”

But that’s just it: in any library, “a few people .  .  . decide what everyone else gets access to,” as far as their collection is concerned. Any materials not present in the school libraries can be found elsewhere, often by an internet search, so that people don’t have to leave home to do so. If families wish to discuss “those things,” with their children, they can find “those things” on amazon.com, and download them onto their computers or Kindles immediately.

Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Not just no, but Hell no!

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The poor Special Snowflakes™ are getting their precious little feelings hurt!

We have previously noted how today’s left, who in past years were the most vociferous defenders of absolute freedom of speech, have now gone in very much the opposite direction. The New York Times and The Washington Post went to court in 1971 to fight President Richard Nixon’s attempts to prevent publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, winning their case  in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

Well, that was then, and this is now. One of the Times Editorial Board members, Greg Bensinger, opined that Twitter under Elon Musk will be a scary place, because, Heaven forfend! it might allow Donald Trump back on the platform, and that:

central to (Mr Musk’s) vision for the service is for it to be an “inclusive arena for free speech,” but users should understand what that phrase means: It means free speech for people like Mr. Musk, a billionaire and the world’s richest man. Even as Twitter’s board on Monday was debating his offer of $54.20 per share, which it accepted, Mr. Musk was setting the tone for his leadership by tweeting that Securities and Exchange Commission officials were “shameless puppets.”

Loosening content moderation, as Mr. Musk appears poised to do, won’t make Twitter a better place; that will make it far more toxic. Under the notion that more speech is the best antidote to harmful speech, earnest users can probably expect to be shouted down even more frequently by trolls and bots. (I am hopeful Mr. Musk was serious when he said he’ll “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”)

Female Twitter users, in particular, ought to worry about whether Mr. Musk will bring his apparent disdain for women to the company he is about to own. Twitter is already a toxic place for women who use it, particularly those of color.

This was hardly the first time that the Times, that staunch defender of freedom of speech and of the press when it comes to their First Amendment rights, has wanted them stifled when it came to other people. The Times also gave major OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to tell us that Free Speech Is Killing Us, and to Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy. to tell us How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.

It’s not just the Times. From Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion:

Twitter to Ban Use of ‘Groomers’ After Pressure From Liberal Outrage Mongers

“Right-wing users have spent months targeting LGBTQ users on Twitter with offensive accusations of ‘grooming,’ contributing to a climate of harassment and violence,” Media Matters alleged in an article demanding that Twitter take action.

Posted by Stacey Matthews | Saturday, July 23, 2022 | 2:00 PM EDT

Since leftists control most popular social media platforms, when their woke acolytes demand they get more aggressive with the thought and speech policing of conservatives, those platforms respond accordingly by tightening the reins and dropping the hammer on the allegedly offensive accounts, often on the ones that are influential and have large followings.

Such was the case earlier this week thanks in part to an aggressive online campaign started by the left-wing frauds at Media Matters for America (MMFA) and inspired by earlier actions taken by Reddit to crack down on the use of the word “groomers” when it is being used to describe, well, people who sound an awful lot like groomers.

According to Media Matters, allegations of grooming against educators—especially those who are using platforms like TikTok to openly brag about indoctrinating children with LGBTQ-themed sexualized content—by popular Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok and ConceptualJames have led to a rise in violence against members of the LGBTQ community because according to them, “groomers” is a “slur” and code-word used by the right “to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.”

There’s more at Miss Matthews’ original.

Let’s face it: the left are getting their precious little feelings hurt when conservatives do something really radical like tell the truth.

An obvious question: if Twitter is going to ban the use of the word Groomer — and the hashtag #Groomers is still up on Twitter — why wouldn’t Twitter similarly ban calling other people misogynist or homophobes or transphobes? The answer is obvious: Twitter’s leadership actively supports the homosexual and transgender agenda! Twitter, and as we noted on Saturday, the Associated Press, want to force debate to the left by forcing the use of the language preferred by the left. The left don’t like the truth because they can’t handle the truth, and they are deathly afraid of other people hearing the truth.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy.
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Why should we trust the credentialed media if they won’t check their own stories?

There was a time, not so long ago, that if you had an argument with someone over a particular point, and if you could find in The New York Times material which supported your point, that was it, you won the argument.

The First Street Journal has been very critical of the reporting of the credentialed media, concentrating on The Philadelphia Inquirer and its censorship of stories which don’t line up with its political positions, but we have not been alone. On Independence Day, Robert Stacy McCain, an actual professional journalist — my brief time with the Kentucky Kernel hardly counts as professional — noted that the viral story about the 10-year-old girl who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion wasn’t passing the smell test:

A Story Too Good to Check?

July 4, 2022 | 28 Comments

This headline appeared Friday in the Columbus Dispatch:

 

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help? . . .

This story has since been repeated all over the place (e.g., “‘A tragic situation’: Governor discusses pregnant 10-year-old with CNN host”), but having read through the original story twice with an editor’s eye, my question is: Where’s the comment from police?

Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

The extreme youth of the alleged victim is what made the headline so shocking, and I actually checked the National Institutes of Health to make sure I wasn’t alone in finding this highly unusual. The media age of menarche (i.e., onset of menstruation, generally taken as meaning when a female becomes physically capable of pregnancy) in the United States is 11.9, about three months earlier than in the 1990s. About 10% of females reach menarche by age 10. Precocious puberty is slightly correlated with earlier sexual activity — the median age of first intercourse is 15.4 for girls reaching menache by age 10, compared to 16.6 for girls reaching menarche at age 14 or older. In general, blacks and Hispanics reach menarche earlier than white girls, but the differences are not dramatic.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, which should be read, but, to put it briefly, Mr McCain did his research. I do not know how fast he works in sourcing his stuff, but if I had done the research he included in the rest of his article, I could have gotten it done in under two hours.

Then, four days later, Mr McCain once again wrote on the story , this time noting that President Biden had used the tale for propaganda purposes.

Megan Fox of PJ Media had been on the case, and she noted that The Washington Post finally started checking out the story:

A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral

Analysis by Glenn Kessler | Saturday, July 9, 2022 | 3:00 AM EDT

“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.” — President Biden, remarks during signing of executive order on abortion access, July 8

This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a right to abortion, has led a number of states to quickly impose new laws to restrict or limit abortions. Ohio was one of the first, imposing a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest.

On July 1, the Indianapolis Star, also known as the IndyStar, published an article, written by the newspaper’s medical writer, about how women seeking abortions had begun traveling from Ohio to Indiana, where less restrictive abortion laws were still in place. “Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined.

That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations. The article said that three days after the June 24 court ruling, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, Caitlan Bernard, who performs abortions, received a call from “a child abuse doctor” in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Unable to obtain an abortion in Ohio, “the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care,” the Star reported.

Personally, I regard an abortionist as, at the very least, a special pleader in a case like this, and an untrustworthy source.

The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”

The story quickly caught fire, becoming a headline in newspapers around the world. News organizations increasingly “aggregate” — or repackage — reporting from elsewhere if it appears of interest to readers. So Bernard remained the only source — and other news organizations did not follow up to confirm her account.

There’s more at the original, and if you cannot get past the Post’s paywall, here is an archived copy.

A lot has been made of the obvious question that, if a 10-year-old girl became pregnant, someone had to have sexual intercourse with her.

Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child to their local child welfare or law enforcement agency. So Bernard’s colleague would have had to make such a report to law enforcement at the same time he or she contacted Bernard. Presumably then a criminal case would have been opened.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Not a Whisper Anywhere’: Abortion Story About 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl Looking More and More Like a Complete Hoax

A 10-year-old girl cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual contact. Our minds tend to default to picturing the slavering, evil step-father, or ‘funny’ uncle, or someone who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. But when significantly underaged girls get pregnant, it is usually by a similarly underaged boy. If this 10-year-old girl actually existed — while I have my doubts, it cannot be discounted as obviously untrue — she may well have been impregnated by an 11-year-old boy, and let’s face it: we aren’t going to throw an 11-year-old boy in jail for copulating with a 10-year-old girl.

There’s a lot more, and this whole story has been inflated into a huge propaganda piece, as though evil reich-wing Republicans would force this 10-year-old to carry the baby to term. The average size for a 10-year-old girl in the United States is between 50 and 59 inches tall, the midpoint of that range being 4’6″, with an average weight of around 79 lb. It would be extremely difficult for such a girl to be able to carry a baby to full term, and such a girl would qualify for an abortion under life of the mother exceptions; a real pregnancy would probably kill her.

But, at least for me, the real story is that, despite the protestations of Nina Jankowicz, who was going to become our Minister of Truth, before evil reich-wingers derailed that, the credentialed media’s unblemished record of telling the truth isn’t quite as unblemished as they’d like you to believe.[1]Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get. The wheels started creaking when CBS News was caught using ‘unverified’ forged documents in an attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and was caught at it by the blog Powerline, and since then the ‘discrepancies’ between credentialed media stories and what actually happened have been catalogued hundreds of times over.

I have a simple rule: if a story seems to convenient to be true, start checking around; it just might not be true.

References

References
↑1 Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get.
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Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself You've got to love it when the left are eating their own

The old saying, “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself,” has a somewhat obscure past. It has been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, but direct quotes from 1805, alas! have rarely 🙂 been caught on tape.

Pamela Paul, photo from her website. Click to enlarge.

And so we come to Pamela Paul Stern, OpEd columnist for The New York Times, previously editor of The New York Times Book Review, overseeing all New York Times book coverage including the staff critics and publishing news. Graduated from Ivy League’s Brown University, she has carved out a prestigious career for herself. Married and soon divorced herself, she wrote The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, about couples who marry relatively young and divorce within five years, without having children:

The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony is a pioneering study of first marriages lasting five years or less and ending without children, and of the changing face of matrimony in America.

According to the brilliant trend analyst and journalist Pamela Paul, “It’s easy to conclude that the starter marriage trend bodes ill for the state of marriage. After all, we’re getting married, screwing it up, and divorcing—a practice that certainly isn’t strengthening our sense of trust, family, or commitment. But though starter marriages seem like a grim prospect, there is also an upside. For one thing, if people are going to divorce, better to do so after a brief marriage in which no children suffer the consequences.” But are there other consequences of starter marriages? And what causes these marriages to fail in the first place?

In today’s matrimania culture, weddings, marriage, and family are clearly goals to which most young Americans aspire. Why are today’s twenty- and thirtysomethings—the first children-of-divorce generation—so eager to get married, and so prone to failure? Are Americans today destined to jump in and out of marriage? At a time when marriage at age twenty-five can mean a sixty-year active commitment, could “serial marriages” be the wave of the future?

Drawing on more than sixty interviews with starter marriage veterans and on exhaustive re-search, Pamela Paul explores these questions, putting the issues into social and cultural perspective. She looks at the hopes and motivations of couples marrying today, and examines the conflict between our cultural conception of marriage and the society surrounding it. Most important, this lively and engaging narrative examines what the starter marriage trend means for the future of matrimony in this country—how and why we’ll continue to marry in the twenty-first century.

On August 15, 2004, she married again, this time with Michael Stern, a New York financial analyst. Then, in 2007, she published Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families:

“Strips porn of its culture-war claptrap . . . Pornified may stand as a Kinsey Report for our time.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Porn in America is everywhere—not just in cybersex and Playboy but in popular video games, advice columns, and reality television shows, and on the bestseller lists. Even more striking, as porn has become affordable, accessible, and anonymous, it has become increasingly acceptable—and a big part of the personal lives of many men and women.

In this controversial and critically acclaimed book, Pamela Paul argues that as porn becomes more pervasive, it is destroying our marriages and families as well as distorting our children’s ideas of sex and sexuality. Based on more than one hundred interviews and a nationally representative poll, Pornified exposes how porn has infiltrated our lives, from the wife agonizing over the late-night hours her husband spends on porn Web sites to the parents stunned to learn their twelve-year-old son has seen a hardcore porn film.

Pornified is an insightful, shocking, and important investigation into the costs and consequences of pornography for our families and our culture.

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that Mrs Stern, even living in liberal New York City, would have at least something of a more traditionalist idea of sex, but the left are aghast! From The Los Angeles Times[1]If you cannot access the original due to a paywall, you can read it for free here.:

Pamela Paul criticized for anti-trans opinion about the word ‘woman’

by Dorothy Pineda | Thursday, July 7, 2022 | 12:21 PDT

The online literary community is slamming Pamela Paul, publishing kingmaker turned opinion columnist, after she wrote a piece in the New York Times criticizing language that is inclusive of transgender and nonbinary communities. And at least one critic is alleging that she used her longtime perch as the head of the paper’s books section to tone down transgender advocacy.

In an article published Sunday, headlined “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count,” Paul, who stepped down as books editor in March, posits that women in America are being stripped of their human rights not only by Republicans outlawing abortion but also by academics, progressives and transgender activists who reduce women to “a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.”

Earlier this week, author and journalist Patrick Ness called the article “a nasty bit of business” for “equating anti-abortion activists with trans rights believers” on his Instagram. He also alleged that Paul had asked him to change the opening in his review last year of Kyle Lukoff’s “Too Bright to See,” a story about a transgender boy.

“Ms Paul asked me to change my original opening — stating how transgender children are under attack — into something less political and ‘more focused on the book,’” he claimed before posting his original first paragraph, which began: “The culture wars have come for your transgender children.”

Perhaps it would be better to take less of what Mrs Stern’s views are from an obviously angered Los Angeles Times book columnist[2]Dorothy Pineda’s Los Angeles Times biography states that she “writes about books, publishing and the local literary scene for the Los Angeles Times. She served a brief stint in City News … Continue reading and quote her New York Times column directly. For ease of the reader knowing what quotations are from whom, Mrs Stern’s column is presented here in Times New Roman font, while Miss Pineda’s piece is shown in Ariel font.

The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count

by Pamela Paul | July 3, 2022

Perhaps it makes sense that women — those supposedly compliant and agreeable, self-sacrificing and everything-nice creatures — were the ones to finally bring our polarized country together.

Because the 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. Thanks in part to two Supreme Court justices who have been credibly accused of abusive behavior toward women, Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 years a target, has been ruthlessly overturned.

Can we state here that Mrs Stern, by virtue of her last quoted sentences, isn’t exactly an evil reich-wing conservative?

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. Women’s rights were human rights and something to fight for. Though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, legal scholars and advocacy groups spent years working to otherwise establish women as a protected class.

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 we have reported here, “body parts” have several times offended real women! At least one member of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team has complained that Will Thomas, who claims to be a woman and calling himself “Lia,” is still a physically intact male and thinks little of parading around the locker room with his male genitalia exposed.

Kristina Wong of Breitbart has reported that:

An Army training slide obtained by Breitbart News instructs soldiers to shower with transgender members of the opposite sex even if they have not undergone a surgical transition.

Also see: William Teach: Army To Require Troops To Shower With Gender Confused

The training slide offers a “vignette” instructing soldiers on what to do if they encounter a female soldier who identifies as male according to the Department of Defense’s personnel tracking system known as Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS), but has not surgically transitioned and still has “female genitalia.”

The slide, titled “Soldier/Unit Training Barracks, Bathrooms, and Showers,” reads:

Vignette: Following his transition from female to male (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) and gender marker change in DEERS, a transgender Soldier begins using male barracks, bathroom, and shower facilities. Because he did not undergo a surgical change, the Soldier still has female genitalia.

The slide instructs soldiers: “Soldiers must accept living and working conditions that are often austere, primitive, and characterized by little or no privacy. … Understand anyone may encounter individuals in barracks, bathrooms, or shower facilities with physical characteristics of the opposite sex despite having the same gender marker in DEERS.”

It also tells soldiers that they should be “respectful of the privacy and modesty concerns of others,” but that “transgender Soldiers are not required or expected to modify or adjust their behavior based on the fact that they do not ‘match’ other Soldiers.”

Most soldiers are male, so perhaps putting it that way would be more practical, but by doing so, it ignores that which would most commonly be more objectionable: a “transgender female” who “did not undergo a surgical change” and still has male genitalia. As the father of a female staff sergeant and squad leader currently deployed to a desert area of the Middle East, I am aware that she shares quarters with another female soldier, but it doesn’t take much thought to realize that, with President Biden’s reversal of President Trump’s policy of banning the transgendered from military service, my daughter could be assigned a ‘transgender’ female who is still an intact male as a roommate.

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. Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

In a way, it’s odd. Most of the objections of us evil reich-wing conservatives have been along the lines of males claiming to be women, and taking athletic opportunities away from real women.[3]By “real women” I mean those who were born biologically female. Some people call them “cisgender women”, but in the typical phraseology of referring to “transgender … Continue reading But we appreciate Mrs Stern’s objection to the marginalization or real women from the other direction.

The noble intent behind omitting the word “women” is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed. But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.

Women, of course, have been accommodating. They’ve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. They’ve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, it’s assumed women will be the ones to serve other people’s agendas rather than promote their own.

But, but, but. Can you blame the sisterhood for feeling a little nervous? For wincing at the presumption of acquiescence? For worrying about the broader implications? For wondering what kind of message we are sending to young girls about feeling good in their bodies, pride in their sex and the prospects of womanhood? For essentially ceding to another backlash?

Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.

For a conservative like me, this is just glorious. Mrs Stern is clearly supportive of ‘transgendered’ people, but she has also, albeit grudgingly, conceded that the transgendered are simply different from the real members of the sex that they claim to be.

But here we go again, parsing women into organs. Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable.

Well, of course it is unmentionable, because conservatives note what we have known scientifically for over a century, that, in humans, as in all mammals, XX chromosomes result in the females of the species, while XY chromosomes result in males. If the far left were to go along with the scientific fact that females have XX chromosomes, they have completely undermined the notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

Those women who do publicly express mixed emotions or opposing views are often brutally denounced for asserting themselves. (Google the word “transgender” combined with the name Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling or Kathleen Stock to get a withering sense.) They risk their jobs and their personal safety. They are maligned as somehow transphobic or labeled TERFs, a pejorative that may be unfamiliar to those who don’t step onto this particular Twitter battlefield. Ostensibly shorthand for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” which originally referred to a subgroup of the British feminist movement, “TERF” has come to denote any woman, feminist or not, who persists in believing that while transgender women should be free to live their lives with dignity and respect, they are not identical to those who were born female and who have lived their entire lives as such, with all the biological trappings, societal and cultural expectations, economic realities and safety issues that involves. .  .  .  .

The women’s movement and the gay rights movement, after all, tried to free the sexes from the construct of gender, with its antiquated notions of masculinity and femininity, to accept all women for who they are, whether tomboy, girly girl or butch dyke. To undo all this is to lose hard-won ground for women — and for men, too.

Those on the right who are threatened by women’s equality have always fought fiercely to put women back in their place. What has been disheartening is that some on the fringe left have been equally dismissive, resorting to bullying, threats of violence, public shaming and other scare tactics when women try to reassert that right. The effect is to curtail discussion of women’s issues in the public sphere.

At this point, Mrs Stern just doesn’t get it. By the left’s declaration that #TransWomenAreWomen, they have declared that ‘transgender women’ are identical to real women, that they just cannot be differentiated. To claim that there are things very specific to real women is to differentiate not just ‘trans males’ from real males, but ‘trans women from real women, and that wholly upsets the transgender ideology.

But women are not the enemy here. Consider that in the real world, most violence against trans men and women is committed by men but, in the online world and in the academy, most of the ire at those who balk at this new gender ideology seems to be directed at women.

Can we tell the truth here? When it is asserted that “in the real world, most violence against trans men and women is committed by men,” it has to be noted — though most liberals will not do so — that such violence is almost entirely committed when men are taking up with a woman for sex, usually via prostitution, and then discover that the person they thought was a real woman was actually male.

If a person you believe to be female fellates you, and you then find out that he is actually male, you have been raped! Is it really that much of a surprise that a person who has been raped would respond violently?

It’s heartbreaking. And it’s counterproductive.

Tolerance for one group need not mean intolerance for another. We can respect transgender women without castigating females who point out that biological women still constitute a category of their own — with their own specific needs and prerogatives.

If only women’s voices were routinely welcomed and respected on these issues. But whether Trumpist or traditionalist, fringe left activist or academic ideologue, misogynists from both extremes of the political spectrum relish equally the power to shut women up.

Well, of course: some people have called it ‘shutupery’, the argument that what you say cannot be said, so just sit down and shut the f(ornicate) up!

Me? I don’t want the transgender activists to shut up; I want them to shout their idiocy from the rooftops, because the greatest weapon against stupidity is to have its stupidity demonstrated for all to see and hear.

Back to Miss Pineda:

Paul, whose former position made her arguably the most influential person in print media books coverage, writes that the word “woman” once “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.’”

While she recognizes “the noble intent” of omitting the word “woman” when talking about reproductive health, Paul argues that “despite the spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.”

Others writers, critics and books journalists, who had generally been circumspect about Paul during her books tenure, now decried Paul for what they considered to be her anti-trans and trans-exclusionary views.

Maris Kreizman, host of LitHub’s literary podcast “The Maris Review,” wrote on Twitter Sunday: “Looking at the Opinion section and once again marveling over the fact that this terrible, hackneyed, boring writer was once the most important person in all of book publishing.”

I’ve got to admit it: seeing one liberal calling, via quotation, another liberal a “terrible, hackneyed, boring writer” as a way of dismissing her opinion can only warm the depths of my cold, right-wing heart. Mrs Stern and Miss Pineda ought to be allies on the liberal side, but Miss Pineda clearly hates Mrs Stern’s having taken a position different from her.

I’ve said it before: for the left, when it comes to sex, they feel almost required to take the most extremely left position, because to fail to do so is to legitimize us evil reich-wingers.

In her conclusion, Miss Pineda stated that Bette Midler, who was also concerned about the marginalization of the word “women”, cited Mrs Stern’s article to support her position. Mrs Stern’s writing will be cited by other people, hostile to the furthest left position, and that has the Los Angeles Times columnist very, very worried.

And so the extreme left are trying to destroy one of their allies on the not-quite-so-extreme left. With that, I am certainly pleased.

References

References
↑1 If you cannot access the original due to a paywall, you can read it for free here.
↑2 Dorothy Pineda’s Los Angeles Times biography states that she “writes about books, publishing and the local literary scene for the Los Angeles Times. She served a brief stint in City News Service’s police beat and was a general assignment reporter for the Los Angeles Wave newspaper. Pineda earned her bachelor’s in literature from UC Santa Cruz in 2012 and a journalism certificate from East Los Angeles College in 2017.”
↑3 By “real women” I mean those who were born biologically female. Some people call them “cisgender women”, but in the typical phraseology of referring to “transgender women” and “cisgender women” in the same article, such phraseology implies a form of equality between the two; I deny that, and will not use that wordage.
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Gun Control Laws and Our First and Second Amendment Rights Beware: if you are a faithful Roman Catholic, some states would deny your right to keep and bear arms

Robert Crimo III, via Twitter.


In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, several Republicans in the Senate got all wobbly-kneed and agreed to a Democratic ‘gun control’ bill. Among other things, it provides financial incentives for states without a so-called ‘red flag’ law to pass one.

Well, the solidly Democratic state of Illinois had a red flag law, and guess what? It didn’t stop alleged Highland Park shooter Robert Crimo III[1]Some people hold that publishing photos and the names of accused serial killers somehow encourages other potential serial killers. Personally, I cannot see how such an obviously incel-looking man … Continue reading from obtaining a firearm:

Highland Park suspect’s father sponsored gun permit application, police say

By Reis Thebault and Timothy Bella | Wednesday, July 6, 2022 | 10:18 AM EDT

The Illinois State Police confirmed on Tuesday that the father of the Highland Park parade shooting suspect sponsored his son’s application for a gun permit months after relatives reported that Robert E. Crimo III had threatened to “kill everyone,” and that authorities had “insufficient basis” to deny the application.

The revelation that Crimo, 21, had at least two previous encounters with law enforcement has raised new questions about how he was able to legally purchase his guns and whether more could have been done to prevent the massacre that killed seven people and injured more than 30.

In September 2019, a family member told Highland Park police that Crimo had threatened to “kill everyone,” said Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. Officers visited Crimo’s home and confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but made no arrest, Covelli said on Tuesday, because they lacked probable cause. However, they notified Illinois State Police, he said.

Months later, in December, Crimo applied for a firearm owner’s identification card, the document required to possess a gun in Illinois. Because Crimo was under 21 at the time, state law required him to have the consent of a parent or guardian before he could own a firearm or ammunition. According to state police, which issues the cards, Crimo’s father sponsored the permit application.

Also see: William Teach: Having Relatives Report Highland Park Shooter Threatened To Kill Everyone Is Apparently Not A Reason To Deny A Gun Permit

There’s more at the original, but it sounds like Robert Crimo, Jr, is being set up to be responsible, in some way, for his son’s (alleged) killings.

The Washington Post article continues to tell us that the state police had received a “clear and present danger” report on the younger Mr Crimo, but because there was no current request for a Firearms Owner’s Identification Card, there was no action the agency could take. Then, when he did apply for a FOID, the agency could not disapprove it because he had a sponsor.

“The subject was under 21 and the application was sponsored by the subject’s father,” Illinois State Police said in a statement. “Therefore, at the time of FOID application review in January of 2020, there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application.”

So, what does this mean? It means that instates which are incentivized to establish ‘red flag’ laws, the pressure will be to make them more stringent, to suspend people’s Second Amendment rights for longer, possibly much longer.

I think back to the case of Nikolas Cruz, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter. Young Mr Cruz had many interactions with the Broward County Sheriff’s Department, all for mostly petty crimes, but the deputies kept giving him free passes, kept letting him off with admonishments to be a good boy. After Mr Cruz committed an in-school assault, the Broward County schools, which had greatly reduced references to law enforcement, because they wanted to stop the “school to prison pipeline,” following a January, 2017, in-school assault. Had Mr Cruz been charged with that assault, he could not have legally purchased the weapons he used in the attack.

A FOID card is required under Illinois law to possess guns. The cards issued by the Illinois State Police require “any qualified applicant” to meet at least 15 requirements listed on the agency’s website.

At a news conference announcing the initial criminal charges against Crimo, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said Illinois’s red-flag law, which allows loved ones to ask a court to temporarily remove guns from those deemed violent or threatening, is “very powerful.” Yet the law is rarely used.

“We must vastly increase awareness and education about this red-flag law,” Rinehart said.

In the days following the shooting, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) has vowed to strengthen state laws in an effort to prevent another tragedy like the one in Highland Park.

Translation: Illinois ‘red flag’ law did not work, so that Democrat-ruled state is going to make it stronger, restricting the rights of law-abiding Americans even further, because the state failed to act under the laws it had in place.

Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said, “(I)n the state of New York, we’re now requiring social media networks to monitor and report hateful conduct on their platforms.” As Hannah Bleau noted on Breitbart:

It is a rather controversial move, given the varying interpretations of what constitutes “hate speech” in a world where far-left radicals consider “misgendering” someone an intrinsically “hateful” act.

In other words, because my site, The First Street Journal, states in the Stylebook,

Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the honorific and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth; the site owner does not agree with the cockamamie notion that anyone can simply ‘identify’ with a sex which is not his own, nor that any medical ‘treatment’ or surgery can change a person’s natural sex; all that it can do is physically mutilate a person.

I would be denied a firearms permit in the state of New York because my sincerely-held belief that girls can’t be boys and boys can’t be girls. I have no criminal record, and have never even been accused of assaulting anyone. But because my beliefs closely adhere to Roman Catholic teachings on ‘transgenderism,’ the state of New York — where I do not live, but many Catholics do — would deny my Second Amendment rights over First Amendment right of free exercise of religion. Had I kept my beliefs entirely to myself, not exercised another of my First Amendment rights, freedom of speech and of the press, I guess I could get that permit.

There has been plenty of evidence that if law enforcement had acted on the laws already passed, some of these mass shootings could have been prevented, or at least made more difficult for the perpetrators; we could have prevented some of these cretins from obtaining firearms legally, but it seems that nothing can prevent a determined person from obtaining a firearm illegally. Instead, when existing laws have failed, due to bureaucratic mistakes and individual bungling, the response of the states is to further restrict the rights of people who have done nothing wrong. And now New York is attempting to remove people’s rights to keep and bear arms due to people’s religious and political beliefs.

References

References
↑1 Some people hold that publishing photos and the names of accused serial killers somehow encourages other potential serial killers. Personally, I cannot see how such an obviously incel-looking man male — surely no sighted heterosexual woman would ever consider actually copulating with him! — like Robert Crimo could ever inspire anyone to act like he did.
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What is ‘gatekeeping’?

From The Gods Must Be Crazy, one of my all-time favorite movies. Click to enlarge.

We have previously mentioned the ‘gatekeeping’ function that the credentialed media used to enjoy. Now it seems as though “gatekeeper” and “gatekeeping” are internet insults. From Business Insider:

The internet really hates ‘gatekeeping,’ social media’s new go-to insult. The truth is you’re probably a gatekeeper, too.

by Sirena Bergman | Sunday, July 3, 2022 | 7:00 AM EDT

Being a gatekeeper is just about the worst thing you can be accused of online.

Every few years, the internet cycles through a new buzzy clap-back phrase that’s instantly recognizable by its lifecycle, speeding from valid criticism to Twitter cliché until it hits the mainstream, finding its way into op-ed headlines and political discourse before being relegated exclusively to ironic use due to its cringe-inducing outdatedness.

You may remember the “check your privilege” phrase, circa 2012, which was counterbalanced by calling those using it “snowflakes” and “social justice warriors.” Then came the age of calling out “virtue signalers,” who were swiftly put in their place with a well-timed “this you.”

Now, the 2020s have ushered in their own social-media-specific takedown. So abhorred is the concept of “gatekeeping” that it’s been lumped in with “girlbossing” and “gaslighting” to spawn a meme.

I will admit it: I am so uncool that I had to look up “girlbossing” and “this you.”

In its simplest form, “gatekeeping” is having access, opportunity, or knowledge — and then keeping it all to yourself. Gatekeepers, at least according to the internet, pull the ladder up behind them and exclude those with fewer opportunities from their space.

A great deal follows, including defining gatekeeping as simple privacy, such as ‘celebrities’ not sharing every little thing about themselves, though as Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the former Mrs Depp, learned the hard way, sharing everything might not be a particularly good idea.

But it can also be less specific, referring to people who maybe aren’t hiding something tangible but are telling others they’re not entitled to an opinion or behavior (whether warranted or not).

The most obvious example of that, today, are the pro-prenatal infanticide forces telling men that they cannot have an opinion on the subject — unless it is pro-abortion, of course! — because males cannot get pregnant. But it has been used in countless other ways, such as blacks saying that non-black Americans cannot have an opinion on anything happening in primarily black neighborhoods.

Calling out gatekeepers is a core tenet of extremely-online Gen-Z culture which, spurred by the pandemic and the evolution of social media, has come to uphold the democratization of, well, everything, as the ideal.

This part is just silly, because it’s “Generation Z” who have been behind much of the censorship of social media: clamping down on ‘unapproved’ information about COVID-19, and Twitter’s banning of ‘deadnaming‘ and ‘misgendering‘. I have had to be careful in my article titles about Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who claims to be a woman named “Lia,” to keep from being banned; my good friend William Teach has been suspended from Twitter a couple of times, and had one account completely killed, because Twitter doesn’t like people doing something really radical like tell the truth.

Of course, the notion of “generation Z” and all of the other named generations is entirely a #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Western notion, and I hesitate to use it at all, but, alas!, it has become part of culture, and when the article I reference uses that kind of shorthand, it’s difficult to ignore it.

On social media, people have been accused of gatekeeping marginalized identities, science, mental health, zines, “the truth,” Kate Bush, and on, and on.

Accusing someone of gatekeeping online is so common that it’s now a trope in and of itself, one that is often mocked and subverted in irony.

So, what gatekeeping do I do? This site uses a spam blocker, which is almost always successful; I have attempted to close the gate against unrestricted advertising. We have a Comments and Conduct Policy, plainly accessible from both the website main page and subsequent article pages, although I’ve almost never had to actually enforce it. Maybe if more people actually read The First Street Journal, . . . .

As minor as this site is, we are, in effect, a publisher, and publishers can choose what to publish. We almost never actually censor anything, as I believe that what people say says more about the individual saying things than the writer may realize.

Is that ‘gatekeeping’? Yes, it pretty much is. But unlike the credentialed media of old, my refusal to publish something here does not prevent someone from saying what he pleases, because not only are there millions of websites out there, but starting your own site is simple, easy, and inexpensive. Some sites, like blogger.com, are so inexpensive that they are free.

I will accept the internet dismissal of OK Boomer for what it is, a reference to the fact that we boomers built the greatest economy and freest nation in the world, which the Special Snowflakes™ are trying to destroy! 🙂

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.