Mick Hartley

The inspirational surfer

He was getting too old for the male competitions, so he switched to the female - well, why not if all you have to do is say you're a woman now? - and of course won easily:

Surfing’s first competitive transsexual surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson has continued her dream run through the women’s division of the Western Australian longboard titles, winning the open gal’s crown easily.

In the final, Lowerson, a forty-three-year-old strawberry blonde [!] who has ridden “stupidly big Waimea” and who won the male division of the WA longboard titles in 2019 as Ryan Egan before transitioning, combo-ed one surfer, the other three gals needed nine-pluses to win.

The triumph was a sweet return for Lowerson who says she was close to killing herself a few months back, even had a few swings at it.

Depressed as hell, Lowerson gave up surfing, shaping, but once she decided to transition and the female hormones kicked in, woke up one day in February, felt a little better, called up Surfing Australia and said,

“Umm, this is me, the last time I competed in your Australian titles I was third, what are you going to do? I was pretty frank about it. We can do this two ways. We can do it together and make it amazing or we can do it terribly and it’s a circus and you guys are the only ones who are going to  come out looking silly… I’d prefer to not go through that.” 

Head judge Glen Elliot was super cool, says Lowerson, and told her he’d “love to see you still competing.”

Lowerson says, “To be the first trans woman competing in surfing hasn’t been an easy ride emotionally but the amount of support I’ve been showed has been phenomenal and I’m so grateful to be involved, welcomed and embraced within the longboard community in Australia.”

Inspirational.

For him, no doubt. Not so inspirational for the genuine women surfers - "gals" - he was competing against.

And here he is, showing off his moves and his, um, strawberry blonde locks:

[Photo: @sasha_jane_lowerson]

We heard from Ryan - sorry, Sasha - last November:

Sasha Jane Lowerson doesn’t identify as a transgender woman, just simply a woman with a “trans-experience”.

“I am human. I’m a woman, just like you, I don’t want to be treated any differently,” Lowerson told AAA.

But the Mandurah surfer is making a difference for all transgender people with her quest for more equality in her sport. In her former life, Lowerson was among the top longboard surfers in the country and the world but now living her full truth, as her authentic self, she said the sport that helps her feel “as free as a bird” is now caging her in like a criminal.

“I’ve been hiding in this male shell up until a year ago, for 42 years. To still be made to be that guy that I’m not, it’s shattering,” she said.

In December 2020, she began her journey to be given the right to compete as the gender with which she identifies.

“I want change for myself as an elite athlete but I also want to see fairness in community-level sport and for a better future for the next generation,” she said.

“There’s a lot of work to be done in this space, we need to get away from that old-school way of thinking.”

Oh yes. That'd be the old-school way of thinking that biological sex is real, and women's sport should be for women only.

Male breast-feeding

Trans women are now keen to experience all the joys of motherhood - well, apart from the actual and very painful business of giving birth, though they're working on that. So yes, breast feeding, aka chest-feeding, is all the rage. Never mind if it's harmful to the baby: this is all about validation of the man-as-woman. 

Shay Woulahan at Reduxx:

A Reddit post showing a trans-identified male “breast feeding” a newborn baby is circulating on Twitter and sparking concern and discussion from feminists.

On May 16, 2022, Reddit user u/AdmiralFisticuffs published a post on the r/MtF subreddit, a community of over 150,000 users for males who identify as women.

The post, titled “Oh my God I’m breastfeeding my daughter,” details how the user worked with a lactation consultant and his gender physician for several months prior to his female partner giving birth. The baby was born last week, and the user states the child has been alternating feedings between his wife, formula, and himself. The user also included a link to a photo gallery showing snapshots of himself “breast feeding” the baby. Since published just hours ago, the post has garnered over 1,000 ‘upvotes,’ bringing it to the top of the r/MtF page.

On Reddit, users offered congratulations and asked him for advice on how to replicate his results with lactation. In the comment section, u/AdmiralFisticuffs provided a step by step guide, detailing when to use an electric breast pump, and which cocktail of hormones he had to take to be able to lactate. He also notes he had to illicitly import domperidone from Canada, as it is not approved for use in the USA.

While the response within the transgender subreddit was largely positive, the user’s post was received drastically differently elsewhere on the web after the post was screen captured and began to circulate on Twitter....

“This poor child. This is an experiment on an infant who can’t consent. This is abuse for validation and it’s disgusting” one user said.

In the replies, many expressed concerns that the child was being used as a tool to ‘affirm’ the man’s gender identity. Another user questioned whether the hormone-induced discharge from a man’s nipples would be healthy or safe for babies.

Speaking to Reduxx, retired physician Dr. Maja Bowen said she had “several concerns” about the practice.

“What comes out of a man’s nipple is not mother’s milk, but a watery substance devoid of antibodies and nutrients that are found in mother’s milk, the composition of which changes as the baby grows up.”

Dr. Bowen says that the few previous studies done on trans-identified males who have induced lactation show a paucity of evidence the discharge is nutritious or in equivalent of a mother’s breast milk.

“Men are not women or mothers. They are not designed to breast feed. So the question is why is this man doing this, when the baby has a mother and access to both actual breast milk and formula?” Dr. Bowen also notes that there are questions about the man’s intentions.

“For all we know, the mother is breast feeding and he is using the baby as a prop. What is the benefit to the baby here? It seems to be all about him and his needs.”

Peer-reviewed research into the nutritional value of male breast fluid is hard to come by, and some researchers report even having been discouraged from inquiring out of fear of medically justified “transphobia.”  

In 2018, an endocrinologist from Boston Medical Center claimed that breast feeding was an important method of validating a trans-identified male’s gender identity. 

In an interview with The New Scientist, Dr. Joshua Safer said: “Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular.”

Reports of trans-identified males seeking support from lactation consultants have increased. On social media, many new and breast feeding mothers have also stated they’ve noticed an increase in men attending breast-feeding groups.

A "hormone-induced discharge". Lovely.

Arousing the masses

Just what's needed in a pandemic: a strong dose of ideology. From North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun - Ideological Campaign Launched to Curb Health Crisis:

All the Party organizations and officials in the DPRK have turned out to arouse the masses to the anti-epidemic campaign.

The Pyongyang City Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea launched a work to implant the ideas and spirit of the 8th Political Bureau Meeting of the 8th WPK Central Committee and the consultative meeting of the Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee into the masses through motivation means, while displaying the revolutionary slogans and watchwords at industrial establishments and in streets and villages.

The North Phyongan Provincial Party Committee disseminated a radio program calling upon the people to safeguard their own precious lives and future to the end by emerging victorious in the ongoing anti-epidemic war. It has also made sure that itinerant art squads in the province conduct vigorous agitation activities for encouraging the people to the anti-epidemic campaign.

The North Hamgyong Provincial Party Committee has scrupulously organized the work to inform the people of the orders and instructions from the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters and the anti-epidemic rules in combination with the faults revealed in the past epidemic prevention work, thus awakening the masses.

The Party organizations in North Hwanghae Province made their officials go among the masses and conduct a political work for inspiring them to positively respond to the state emergency steps under the present circumstance in which the people are separately working with each enterprise or family as a unit in a state of tight closure.

The Party organizations in Nampho and Kaesong cities focus their efforts on raising the awareness of the masses that it is very important in safeguarding safety of the country and people as well as themselves and their families to more strictly observe the epidemic prevention rules of the state.

Party organizations and officials across the country, including those in South Phyongan, South Hamgyong and South Hwanghae provinces, have found themselves among the popular masses and shared joy and sorrow with them, positively conducting the organizational and political work for inspiring the people with confidence in sure victory in the ongoing anti-epidemic war and for overcoming the current health crisis.

That should do the trick.

The angry black woman

Raquel Rosario Sánchez on The remarkable poise of Allison Bailey:

In her month-long Tribunal, Bailey alleges that both her chambers, Garden Court, and Stonewall discriminated against her after she expressed the view that biological sex is a reality. She started expressing concerns after her chambers, like hundreds of public and private bodies around the UK, signed up to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme.

This scheme enables the trans lobby group to supervise, vet and influence an organisation’s internal policies. The scheme argues that everybody has a inner “gender identity” and that this trumps people’s biological sex, in all aspects of private and public life. In her witness statement, Bailey explains why this did does not sit well with her:

My experience of being female has not been defined by my feeling female. I don’t know what it means to feel female; I just am female. My life has been defined by having a female body: gynaecological problems, sexual abuse in childhood, sex discrimination, being a lesbian, a black woman, gender non-conformity and menopause. These experiences are all located in my physical, female body. I cannot identify into or out of them.

This represents a problem for any law firm because Stonewall, through its “trans women are women” sloganeering, has sought to get ahead of the law, advocating against the legal rights that women and LGB people already hold in the UK....

When Allison Bailey voiced her opinion, Stonewall filed a complaint against her, demanding that her Chambers investigate her for “transphobia”, which they duly complied with. Kirrin Medcalfe, Head of Trans Inclusion at Stonewall, wrote to her employers:

For Garden Court Chambers to continue associating with a barrister who is actively campaigning for a reduction in trans rights and equality, while also specifically targeting members of our staff with transphobic abuse on a public platform, puts us in a difficult position with yourselves: the safety of our staff and community will always be Stonewalls first priority. I trust that you will do what is right and stand in solidarity with trans people.

In a highly competitive field where black women are underrepresented at the bar and those that do make it get paid the least when compared with their colleagues, this threatening email from Stonewall sought to expel the high-profile and successful Bailey from her chambers simply for dissenting. When Medcalfe, a white man, was questioned about the complaint he filed as a witness during her Tribunal, he asked for last minute accommodation so that he could have his mother, a support dog and a support person to handhold him through the cross-examination. The Tribunal acquiesced.

Nobody accommodated Allison Bailey while she withstood the onslaught from trans activists and an openly hostile work environment inside her chambers. On the contrary, she had to put up with a climate that was expressly disrespectful of her. Employees and barristers would oftentimes refer to her in internal communications as “delusional”, “unprofessional”, “a massive hypocrite” and “the terfy barrister”.

Her work load was vastly reduced. Her security concerns, given the climate of abuse meted out against feminists who speak out in favour of sex-based rights, were dismissed or entirely ignored by her chambers, who showed her no sympathy. On the contrary, she was the one who was framed and treated like a problem. Her white, male colleagues kept transcripts of her private conversations and shared them with the people investigating her.

People watching her cross-examination saw the thoughtful and measured Allison Bailey belittled and dismissed by Defendants who sought to characterised her as an “angry” black woman who just needs to calm down....

The purpose of the “angry black woman” trope is to create caricatures out of complex people. A black, lesbian barrister who has endured slight after slight, is presented as uncivil and improper in the insipid environment of a courtroom, even when her speech and cadence is tempered and restrained. If she were to complain about this one-dimensional narrative created about her, this would become further evidence of her aggressive nature.

We are living through a period of mass delusion, in which trans lobby groups demand we ignore material reality and replace it with autocratic dogma. Organisations like Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers should be celebrating women like Allison Bailey. In order to become a criminal barrister, she had to overcome immense odds and prejudice. Yet, when she spoke out, she was targeted and ostracised.

Deep down, like many women having to be poised and articulate while their detractors get coddled and rewarded for their yobbish behaviour, Allison Bailey must be seething with rage. Yet she is not allowed to display anything other than immaculate decorum, and she has more than risen to the challenge.

There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of the different standards at play here, where the white male "head of trans inclusion" is allowed to have his mummy, a support dog, and a support person to hold his hand through the cross-examination, while the black defendant is treated with barely disguised condescension.

Jo Bartosch unpacks that "angry black woman" trope:

"Take a breath” instructed Barrister Andrew Hochhauser QC. Allison Bailey, the black, lesbian barrister he had been cross-examining replied, “I don't need to take a breath — don't patronise me.” Without waiting to inhale himself, Hochhauser called Bailey, “angry,” an accusation she neatly rebuffed with well-practiced composure.

This small exchange was loaded: a white man tried to goad a black woman, and when she responded by asserting herself and drawing attention to his tactics, he cynically pulled-out the “angry black woman” trope to undermine her credibility. As a witness in her own case, Bailey was not afforded the space to express how she may have felt, though her resolute rebuttal was exquisite. It spoke of a lifetime of having to politely correct bigoted bores without rising to their bait.

Whatever our color or sexual orientation, any woman watching that exchange would doubtless recognise to varying degrees what Hochhauser was trying to do. In Bailey’s case, there are dimensions of racism and lesbophobia. But, more broadly, male abusers the world over use similar tactics to undermine the credibility of women. Often this is accomplished by zooming-in on the incidental, the small details — after all, who would interpret advice to “take a breath” as hostile?

Acts where men assert their dominance are presented as gifts. The kindly neighbor who believes that having matching chromosomes means one needs help backing into a parking space. The “compliment” from a stranger who remarks we “look so much prettier when we smile.” The instructive lesson on politics from a dullard at a party who assumes his female would-be interlocutor has been hitherto trapped in a walled convent, with no knowledge of current affairs. Objecting to such male beneficence would be churlish and hostile, but the impact of biting it back with a smile is a soul-crushing death by a thousand slights.

Sometimes, powerplay isn’t sanitized by a veneer of chivalry or humor but, in those instances, politely excusing it is still deemed the only socially acceptable option.

The similarity of transgender ideology to religious fundamentalism

Another depressing tale on the spread of trans dogma, from the Times:

A girl who argued that biological sex is real after a talk about transphobia felt forced to leave her school after pupils hounded her for challenging the views of a visiting speaker.

She was treated like a heretic for questioning a politician’s assertions about sex, a teacher at the school said. The female member of the House of Lords visited the private girls’ school, a Stonewall diversity champion, to talk about transphobia in parliament.

The girl told The Times: “The language she was using was implying critical theory took precedence over biological reality in defining women.” She added: “When I questioned that, she said it wasn’t an issue of semantics. She said trans people don’t have basic human rights in this country. Afterwards I spoke to her and said I’m sorry if I came across as rude.”

The pair parted amicably, the girl said. But on returning to the sixth form she was surrounded by up to 60 girls who shouted, screamed, swore and spat at her. She escaped and said she collapsed, unable to breathe properly.

Teachers were initially supportive but withdrew their backing after the other sixth formers accused the girl of transphobia. The teenager returned to school a few times but was told she would have to work in the library if she said anything provocative in lessons, and faced bullying and accusations of transphobia from pupils throughout the school. She also spent breaktimes and lunchtimes in the library. The girl left in December and is studying at home.

A teacher at the school said: “We know how these views are being silenced in the adult world through high-profile legal cases and the bullying and defamation of celebrities such as JK Rowling. This is also happening in schools.”

Writing for the website Transgender Trend, he said: “There was a time when the school invited in Christian and other religious speakers to address moral and ethical issues and to provide food for thought and contemplation. It was usually the practice to follow these up with Q&A sessions during which the students could share their own feelings and opinions on the issues, and even disagree if they wanted to.”

It was the similarity of transgender ideology to religious fundamentalism “alerted me to the danger of what has been going on in our schools over the last few years”, the teacher added.

He said a group of sixth-formers arrived in an “animated state” after the speaker’s visit, with a “significant group of girls verbally ‘laying into’ one particular 18-year-old who had had the audacity to question the position”.

The teacher added: “It was probably somewhat naive of her not to realise that this is indeed ‘an ideology’ and one with which you’re simply not allowed to disagree.” The 18-year-old girl ended up denounced by other pupils in the school. The teacher said: “It is quite chilling to witness first hand how this ideology operates and grows.”

Naive of her? She's a young girl at school, still finding her way, still learning. Shouldn't her teachers be, you know, doing their job and protecting her? Supporting her? Making a safe space for her and her questioning of a dogmatic ideology, instead of taking the easy cowards way out and supporting all the bullies? 

Here's the teacher's article at Transgender Trend:

It is quite chilling to witness first hand how this ideology (and by ideology I mean ‘collectivised false or inauthentic selfhood’) operates and grows. It should be obvious that the underlying message ‘Take the knee to us or else be crucified’ has nothing whatsoever to do with care and compassion. Narcissistic rage is the antithesis of righteous anger in that it is vengeful and vindictive, and (in its purest form) always seeks to annihilate and never forgives. What happened in the 6th form centre, known these days as a ‘woke pile on’ is an example of where narcissistic rage masquerades as righteous anger in the form of ‘gleeful outrage’. Here, otherwise perfectly nice and agreeable individuals collude and congregate to show that they are on the moral high ground and ‘on the right side of history’. Also any waverers will be getting the clearest message of what will happen to ‘them’ if they don’t conform....

When I enquired a couple of weeks back as to how our young student was doing these days (having not seen her around the place since the incident and also having a strong sense that I was committing some kind of crime by asking the question), I was asked firstly ‘why I wanted to know’. I was informed that she was; ‘no longer on the system’ – that ‘the matter had been dealt with’ and that ‘we’re not talking about it’. This to be fair may be simply because sensitive matters these days are always handled on a ‘need to know’ basis. As I wasn’t involved with her in any formal capacity I simply ‘didn’t need to know’. On the other hand, anyone with an insight into the way that ‘mystification’ operates in institutional bureaucracies with their ‘communicating through the proper channels’ and ‘not opening unnecessary cans of worms’ etc, will be able to intuit a whiff of pathology in such language and positioning. I wasn’t happy with ‘we’re not talking about it’ and have discussed it with several 6th and 5th form pupils (on an individual basis.) All admitted that they couldn’t really see what was wrong in what the girl had said on that day....

It was on contacting her recently through her mother that she said to me: “It’s so heart-rending to hear from someone who can be, as an outsider, aware of the injustice and plain absurdity of the situation. I spent so long convincing myself that I was in the wrong because I don’t even want to countenance the hatred people must feel towards me if that wasn’t the case – or how they can sit so smugly with themselves when my whole life was turned upside down.”

Her mother said: “We were always sad to think that after all these years in the school, she left and nobody even batted an eyelid. We’re still picking up the pieces.”

The Boneyard

The Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson houses the largest aircraft and missile facility in the world. The Arizona "boneyard" has nearly 4,000 planes that are maintained, recycled for parts, and stored across miles of the desert landscape.

Photographer Bernhard Lang visited the site recently to document the aircraft, which are organized in neat rows and grouped by model. Containing both rusted and disassembled machines and those in pristine condition, the boneyard is designed for preservation “in order to make (the planes) airworthy again if necessary, a current topic in times of the Ukraine war and the global discussion about deliveries of arms,” Lang says. 

[Photos © Bernhard Lang]

Cryptic messages

Terrible goings-on in Ottawa, as reported by Colton Praill - "Multi-Skilled Journalist" - for CTV News: 

In Ottawa’s ByWard Market, cryptic messages are showing up; posted on poles and garbage bins. 

They are signs with anti-trans messages, and Charlotte Helen Robertson is making it her mission to tear them down. 

"Since this past Saturday walking home, I’ve now pulled down, I believe it’s 60 so far," Robertson, who lives in the market, said. 

A trans-woman, Robertson says she has noticed the signs appearing in the downtown for more than a year now, but the frequency, and the messages themselves, have changed since the announcement of the upcoming election.  

"A lot of these stickers explicitly reference elections; they’ve really started putting them up a lot more," Robertson said. 

Some display messages that read, "If you don’t respect my sex, don’t expect my ex," with the title "Canada Election 2021." 

Others call to "keep prisons single sex", while some simply read, “Woman. Noun. Adult human female.” 

Although some messages may appear subtle or subversive, Robertson says the signs are clear dog whistles. 

“It’s coded in such a way that it’s not very visible to people who don’t necessarily know about the issues,” Robertson said. 

"We need to be aware of the dog-whistles that are being used by the people who are organizing these campaigns and attacking these demographics," she added. 

Advocates say the hateful message behind the stickers is clear. 

"It sends a message to every trans person who sees that that there are folks in this city who just don’t want them to be here, that feel like our presence in public space should be contested," Fae Johnstone, Executive Director of Wisdom2Action said....

Advocates say the increase in anti-trans signage is concerning, particularly as anti-trans rhetoric is on the rise in the United States and the United Kingdom. Johnstone says there are fears similar anti-trans movements could become more vocal in Canada. 

"They look at what’s happening in the U.S., they look at what’s happening in the U.K. and they say, 'Oh that looked like it succeeded, let’s bring that here too,'" Johnstone says.  

So, stickers pointing out that women are adult human females and similar self-evident facts are deemed to contain cryptic hate messages that only the specially sensitive antennae of trans activists are able to pick up. And of course everyone rolls over in horror at this transphobic outrage. Thank goodness we Canadians, they say, aren't as bad as the US or, god forbid, the UK.

A more accurate account appears here.

Any arguments against trans ideology are dismissed as hate, if not actual violence, and must be banned.

The paranoid style revisited

The latest outrage in Buffalo reminds us of the continuing power of conspiracy theories  - in this case the white replacement theory popularised by the likes of Tucker Carlson - in US politics. As Michael J Totten reminds us, it's nothing new:

Roughly a quarter of Republican voters in the United States believe that “elitists” in government, the media, and Hollywood are a cabal of Satan-worshipping, child-trafficking pedophiles who murder children for their adrenochrome. Meanwhile, 25 percent of Americans believe that it’s “definitely true” or “probably true” that the coronavirus pandemic was “planned.” More than a third of self-identified conservative Republicans are in this camp, as are nearly one-in-five Democrats.

These are not garden-variety conspiracy theories. It’s one thing to believe that, say, the CIA assassinated President John F. Kennedy because they didn’t like his Cold War policies. It’s quite another to believe that a demonic organization of millions is murdering as many people as Nazi Germany did—and without a single government anywhere in the world uttering so much as a peep about it or a single insider blowing the whistle or leaking. If you believe these plots are real, you are not the target audience for historian Richard Hofstadter’s collection of essays, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first published in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s not often that a magazine asks a writer to review a book published more than a half-century ago, but much of Hofstadter’s work is timelier and more relevant now than it was when he wrote it.

Hofstadter was writing at a time when the anti-communist witch hunts of Joe McCarthy were still fresh in the minds of the American public.

The first episode covered in his title essay won’t surprise anyone since most Americans are already at least passingly familiar with the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s. Most famously, American playwright Arthur Miller metaphorically condemned these proceedings in his 1953 play The Crucible about the actual witch trials held in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692–3. “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?” McCarthy fulminated in 1951. “This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.”

Of course, there were some communist spies in the American government, and no doubt there are still foreign spies operating on American soil, some of whom work for the Russians. That’s what the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program is for. The Americans also had sources inside the Kremlin. That’s espionage for you. But contrary to what the revisionists who claim that “McCarthy was right” insist, this is not what the anti-communist paranoiacs were talking about. Robert Welch of the John Birch Society echoed McCarthy’s apocalyptic exaggeration: “Communist influencers are now in almost complete control of our Federal Government.” Not quite complete control, but almost! And not just the government but also the media, the churches, the courts, and the schools.

This is what characterizes the paranoid style rather than run-of-the-mill conspiratorial theorizing. The problem isn’t some small group up to no good. It’s a monumental conspiracy, and it’s ruining everything. Even adding fluoride to drinking water terrified millions during Hofstadter’s day, for it, too, was supposedly part of a communist “plot.” Somehow, the theory went, fluoride in drinking water would make people more willing to go along with the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture than fluoride in toothpaste.

These conspiracy theories tend to rise in relatively peaceful times, when real-world enemies are in short supply and have to be fabricated. In real crises - WW2 for instance - there's no need.

[S]nce human beings are wired for conflict and strife, it makes a perverse sort of sense for a certain kind of person to pick oversized fights about relatively trivial matters during peacetime and to hallucinate existential threats when none exist. When there really is an enormous real-world problem, those otherwise prone to paranoia can focus on that rather than on the bogeymen in their minds.

If Hofstadter was right, there is, in all likelihood, no solving this problem any more than we can solve winter aside from patiently waiting for spring. “While [the paranoid style] comes in waves of different intensity,” he wrote, “it appears to be all but ineradicable.” The good news about a problem that arrives in waves is that all waves break eventually. It’s mathematically impossible for any kind of wave, physical or metaphorical, to continue building forever. But since not even a pandemic that killed a million Americans and crashed the global economy was enough to change the American mood, God only knows when this preposterous era will finally expire.

Directly pertaining to the personal safety of the country’s supreme leader

Why has North Korea suddenly admitted that it has a Covid problem and started to institute draconian lockdown measures, when it's fairly clear that Covid has been a continuing issue for some time, with suspected cases being isolated, shut away, and left to die? Could it be that they've decided to act now because there's actually perceived to be a threat to the Great Leader himself, Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un? If it was just ordinary North Koreans they wouldn't care, but a threat to the great scion of the sacred line of Mt. Paektu simply cannot be countenanced. 

From the Daily NK:

North Korean authorities have determined that an individual infected with COVID-19 was at a recent event attended by leader Kim Jong Un, leading the country to announce the country’s outbreak, Daily NK has learned. 

A Daily NK source in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Friday that the government received reports that a university student infected with COVID-19 attended an event with the North Korean leader. This spurred the government to action without hiding the facts, he added. 

On May 1, Kim Jong Un posed for a commemorative photo with university students and young workers who contributed to the success of the military parade to mark the 90th anniversary of the North Korean military’s founding, according to state-run media. 

The source said one of the university students who attended the event was infected with COVID-19, and most importantly, the authorities judged that the student may have been in close contact with Kim. This led the authorities to announce the outbreak and implement measures to respond.

N. Korean authorities judge they can’t hide holes in their quarantine efforts at an event attended by Kim 

Daily NK’s source said that North Korean authorities are taking their failure to weed out an infected individual from an event attended by Kim very seriously. 

Nobody can overlook the matter as it directly pertains to the personal safety of the country’s supreme leader, he added. 

Well, I suppose we should have known...

Everything will be alright

An alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest winner: Ukrainian musician and activist Svyatoslav Vakarchuk inside Chernobyl.

It is probably the first in history music performance at Chornobyl power station!
Incredible workers - brave and dedicated to their job.
Everything is gonna be alright! #Ukraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/XLeHPDwrJY

— Sviatoslav Vakarchuk (@s_vakarchuk) May 13, 2022

Translation here.

I remember the time when the world just began

He who could raise himself up did so and went on

Walked up the mountain high, took with him his hope as strong as love...

 

Chorus:

Everything will be all right

For everyone of us

Everything will be all right7

Our time will come...

The bully has been reduced to size

After WW1 the Germans felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles - a feeling that Hitler successfully exploited. The Germans after all were a great nation, now disgracefully disrespected by the international community. If the rest of the world refused to acknowledge the undoubted fact of German greatness, then the Germans would be forced to reclaim their rightful place themselves.

A similar dynamic seems to have developed in post-Soviet Russia - now with alarmingly similar effects. Sergey Radchenko in the Spectator:

Russia’s humiliation in Ukraine has untold benefits, not least for Russia itself. We have heard it said for years that Russia must be indulged and humoured because, if not, it will resent having lost its great power status. The Soviet collapse, we were told, was a terrible catastrophe from which aggrieved, embittered Russians never recovered. So they need to be respected. They need to stand tall and proud. God forbid if they are humiliated because who knows what they will do.

I witnessed the Soviet collapse first-hand. It was, without doubt, a traumatic experience. There was poverty and misery and chaos and a far-right backlash. Rabid nationalists rallied under their revanchist banners. And then Russia invaded Chechnya in a brutal attempt to recover its tainted pride by bringing defiant separatists in the region to heel. And we watched and commiserated because, you see, the Russians had a good reason to be resentful: they lost the Cold War!

For many Russians the collapse of the Soviet Union was not so much because of its internal faults  - its internal contradictions, even - but because of malign anti-Russian forces at work.

Too many refused to accept that the Soviet collapse was the outcome of years of economic mismanagement and imperial hubris – and so they looked for traitors instead. Mikhail Gorbachev, in particular, was singled out for his naïveté, if not malice. In the blame-shifting game of the 1990s, someone had to be assigned responsibility for Russia’s woes: the traitor Gorbachev, the drunkard Yeltsin, the rapacious oligarchs, and of course the devious western advisers who had always sought Russia’s demise.

Out of the chaos and weakness of the 1990s arose Vladimir Putin who promised to deliver order and strength. Putin’s abuse of power, corruption, violation of human rights and erosion of democratic institutions were all tolerated in the name of that promise of strength. Russia may have been poor, corrupt, and authoritarian, but Putin was seen as investing in the military and restoring Russia’s ‘greatness’. And some Russians have always been suckers for greatness. They would sell their last shirt for its elusive promise.

But it couldn't last. The siren call of Russian greatness was always at odds with the reality of its declining power and strength.

Now Ukraine has punctured a big, gaping hole in the narrative of Russia’s ‘greatness’. Russia is poor, corrupt and authoritarian, and now we also know that it is weak and pathetic. Russia’s ‘greatness’ has crumbled in an orgy of murder and rape inflicted by brutal occupiers in Ukraine. Tainted by the blood of the innocents, and beaten in honest combat, the bully has been reduced to size. It’s about time. Thank you, Ukraine, for serving this bitter medicine. Russia needed it badly.

Russia needs proper humiliation. It needs a humble recognition of its diminished status, an acceptance of guilt, and a slow, painstaking effort to rebuild the trust of those it has wronged. Russia did not learn this lesson in the 1990s. It must learn it now.

True greatness lies not in hideous military parades, nor in promises to unleash a nuclear Armageddon. True greatness lies in acceptance of the past, and a willingness to make amends. It lies in the commitment to build a better future, in a country that could become known for its schools and hospitals rather than its tanks and missiles.

The real source of Russia’s humiliation has always been Russia itself: its arrogant, autocratic rulers and the chauvinistic populace that slavishly worship them. Russia’s defeat in this unjust, criminal war against Ukraine may help shift the domestic narrative in Russia towards accepting the country for what it really is, rather than what it has vainly pretended to be. It is only then that Russia can, finally, be at peace with itself and with its neighbours.

All true, no doubt: but I'm not holding my breath. It took the bloodiest war in history, and the almost total destruction of Germany itself, to end the Nazi dream. Will a humiliating defeat  in Ukraine be enough to end Putin's nationalist fascism and set Russia on the path to a mature political future, as happened with Germany after WW2? At the moment it seems very much like wishful thinking.

A roadmap towards medical transitioning

Fired from his job because he voiced concerns about troubled young people being encouraged to mutilate their bodies. James Esses - ‘I questioned why children were being encouraged to transition – and it cost me my dream career’:

Until he joined Childline in 2016, he’d never much engaged with the notion of gender dysphoria – feeling trapped in the wrong body. But the rise in those calls “set something off in my mind”, he remembers. Esses began reading books and academic papers on the subject, wanting to better understand how to help. “Once I began reading, I began to get extremely concerned with the medical pathways that we were putting very, very young children on,” he says. The children on the other end of the line “were so young that they weren’t even able to really verbalise to me what exactly it meant to be a man or a woman” – yet they told Esses they wanted to take puberty blockers and hormones, wear breast binders and have sex reassignment surgery.

Concerned, Esses raised the issue internally, perturbed too by the influence of Stonewall – the charity brought in by many organisations in the name of equality – whose posters in counselling rooms suggested “an ideological message around gender”, and Childline’s website, where he describes the page on gender identity as a “roadmap towards medical transitioning”. It also features a video from individuals who have transitioned, who are “basically selling it to young people… [with] no mention of de-transitioners and the significant risks and potential permanent scars that might come from those who regret [it]”.

He spoke with senior management, yet nothing changed. As his online advocacy around safeguarding continued, he was told not to refer to the charity or his role there. In July, Esses received a call dismissing him with immediate effect. “I was distraught,” he reflects, at “the most important thing in my life” – which had inspired his decision to leave law and train as a psychotherapist – going “up in smoke almost overnight”.

No independence of thought allowed. Trans dogma must be followed, even if it is at the expense of all those irreversibly damaged children.

If anything, going public has only fortified his stance: he has been inundated with messages from anguished parents who, in one case, had found correspondence from Mermaids, the transgender charity, promising to send breast binders to their child behind their back. (Mermaids did not respond to requests for comment.) De-transitioners, who have taken puberty-blocking medication and been left infertile, or “permanently disfigured and scarred,” have also been in touch to show their support.

It seems mind-boggling that someone could be ejected from much-needed counselling work and therapy training for questioning how best to help vulnerable children; that Esses now spends his days fielding messages from peers who share his views, yet are too frightened to speak out. But the “‘trans’ topic is the issue of our time”, Esses now realises, one where an “affirmation mindset” has taken hold and any deviation results in career combustion like his own.

Part of the problem is in schools, where he has heard many cases where “children at a very young age are being taught that sex was assigned at birth, which is factually inaccurate”. Social media – in which people can find confirmation bias in corners of the internet – also plays a part. As, he thinks, does the language used by organisations such as Mermaids who tell children that “family isn’t blood” – “very, very alienating [and] isolating” phrasing designed to “drive young people further and further away” from loved ones who might challenge their point of view. If children are left to develop unencumbered, Esses says, “given time, given exploratory therapy, most of them settle into themselves and settle into their bodies”.

At some point in the future there's going to be some serious reckoning about all these ruined lives. 

Critical Childhood Studies

Postmodernism seems to be a kind of poison that gradually corrodes and destroys the fundamental categories that liberal democracy is based on. It's behind gender ideology, via Judith Butler and Queer Theory, which denies the reality of biological sex differences between men and women. That's just a part of its war against science and the enlightenment of course, but that's the part that we're living through, and the part that most affects us at the moment. Next on the horizon: children, and the new efforts to legitimise paedophilia by "deconstructing" the notion of childhood.

Dana Vitalosova at 4W:

Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) is an emerging academic field that has developed over the past two decades. The field belongs in the same ballpark as Critical Race Theory or former Women’s Studies (now Gender or Queer Studies). Established to examine the histories and provide cultural context for people oppressed on the basis of race and sex, these fields have morphed.

Rather than helping oppressed communities, critical scholars often promote ideological views on race and “gender” that ultimately do the exact opposite: further fuel racism and sexism. Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) has fallen into the same trap — deconstructing childhood to a degree that, if applied outside of an academic setting, would put children in danger.

Foe example:

A 2021 online book launch by Jacob Breslow, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, mentioned the “violence of childhood.” Three Critical Childhood scholars gave speeches at the event, hosted by LSE Gender.

In her contribution, Erica Meiners claimed that the “categorizations- adult, child, youth perform a kind of violence and ontological disqualification.” She added there is “ violence incurred by the ontological register of childhood.”

Besides violence, according to CCS scholars, childhood causes injustice. Speaking at the same event, Mary Zaborskis claimed that childhood enables “racism, transmisogyny, heteronormativity and the violence of the border.” Death was also evoked. In Zaborskis’ words, “childhood itself is ambivalent at best and deadly at worst.”

Zaborskis also argued against child safeguarding. According to her, “making bids for expanded inclusion or representation or care for the child can often be a guise for violence.” The scholar added that “childhood innocence,” is a “pernicious racialized construction.”

The third guest speaker, Jules Gill-Peterson, took it a step further with his stated wish to “abolish childhood.” According to him, “the world would simply be better without the concept of childhood.” But, as this trans-identified male scholar added in disappointment, such a “conclusion is a bit of magical thinking.”...

If, as Gill-Peterson advocates, society abolished childhood, what would this look like? In a glance back to the 17th century, kids would be considered “little adults.” As such, they would not only lose protections, but gain rights too....

With the abolition of childhood, “tiny adults” would lose safeguards against exploitation. This includes, of course, child protection laws against sexual abuse....

As critical studies scholars deconstruct the nature of childhood, real children are put at risk. As we’ve seen with Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Studies, postmodern ideas that begin in academia may spread down through society, eventually reaching even into elementary schools. While there is currently major public backlash against CRT and gender ideology being taught to children, these philosophies are relatively benign compared to the risks posed by implementing Critical Childhood Studies theories in schools.

Right on cue, here's a classic case of a fox being appointed to look after the hen house:

A Johns Hopkins-affiliated public research center is facing backlash after hiring an instructor who was forced to resign from their University after defending the “dignity” of “minor attracted people,” and entertaining theories about giving pedophiles “high quality child pornography.”

On May 12, the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse announced that disgraced Old Dominion University instructor Allyn Walker would be joining the Center as a postdoctoral fellow.

Walker, a female-to-male transgender who identifies as non-binary, was the subject of widespread controversy last year after she sat down for an interview with Prostasia – a registered 503c which many have called “pro-pedophile” for their stances on legalizing child-like sex dolls and routinely comparing pedophilia to a sexuality....

Speaking with Reduxx, Dr. Alaric Naudé called Walker’s new position “insane.”

Dr. Naudé is a Professor focused on social sciences and linguistics at Suwon University in South Korea. In February, he had his research on Prostasia removed from The British Journal of Sociology and History just 24 hours after it was first published after the organization pushed the Journal to remove it.

The article, titled A Case Study via Sociolinguistic Analysis of [a] Covert Pro-Pedophilia Organization Registered as a Child Protection Charity, focused on how Prostasia claimed to be for child protection but built a narrative framing pedophiles as victims of “an oppressive social structure.” Dr. Naudé found that many organizations “claiming to want to protect children” had “linguistic markers [denoting] that something else was their intention.”

Dr. Naudé emphasized how the Moore Center’s partnership with Walker demonstrated a microcosm of a much larger issue.

“The example of Dr. Walker being welcomed along with her ideology to the Moore Center is a piece of a puzzle. The parts of the puzzle continue to come together to give us a clearer picture of the pro-pedophilia agenda being pushed by an unholy triad of academia, psychology associations and pseudo-child protection groups,” Dr. Naudé asserted.

“The façade of safe guarding and child protection that fosters pedophilia as a sexuality is now becoming a perverse parody which if left will eventually result in pedophiles becoming a protected group. This will be a disaster for decades of work attempting to eradicate the pestilence of child abuse in society,” Dr. Naudé said.

Humans "not sexually dimorphic"

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, has been losing the plot for some time now, having decided to plunge down the gender rabbit hole under the guidance of trans man Chase Strangio.

Now they're round the bend and out of sight. Anna Slatz at Reddux:

The American Civil Liberties Union is intervening in a lawsuit launched by four female inmates who were subjected to abuse at the hands of trans-identified male transfers. In the intervention, the ACLU claims that human beings are “not sexually dimorphic,” and that males have no biological differences from females.

In November of 2021, the Women’s Liberation front (WoLF) launched a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in response to the state’s transfer of male inmates to women’s prisons. In the suit, WoLF included representation for four female inmates currently incarcerated in the state who had experienced violations of their rights at the hands of male inmates who had been transferred under SB-132, one of which was sexually assaulted by a trans-identified male transfer.

SB-132, or the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, went into effect in January of 2021, and allowed male inmates to seek transfer to women’s prisons on the basis of self-declared gender identity. Male inmates did not have to be on hormones, have surgery, be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or even have legal documents supporting their transgender status in order to gain transfer.

But the ACLU has now filed a motion to intervene in the suit, claiming the state of California cannot adequately represent their interests against WoLF, and that they must join in to defend SB-132.

But in the motion, filed on May 9 in the Fresno District Court, the ACLU not only rejects the details in WoLF’s suit, it also makes some bold assertions — including that “males” and “females” do not exist.

“Proposed Intervenors deny that ‘men as a class’ are defined and differentiated from ‘women as a class’ by their ‘anatomy, genitalia, physical characteristics, and physiology,'” the ACLU writes, going on to state that they “deny the allegation” that there are anatomical, genital, and physical characteristics that differentiate men from women....

The ACLU also claims that human beings are not sexually dimorphic, and there are no reproductive systems, hormones, or chromosomes which result in differences between males and females.

Why would they take such an extreme and frankly absurd position? Perhaps because they can't admit that trans women could possibly constitute a threat to women inmates, despite the overwhelming evidence that that indeed has proved to be the case on numerous easily verifiable occasions. Having lost that argument, they're reduced to this desperate ideological nonsense.

Speaking to Reduxx, WoLF legal director Lauren Adams expressed a mix of confusion and amusement at the ACLU’s claims in the filing. But rather than seeing it as an obstacle, Adams says there is opportunity that bodes well for WoLF’s position....

“Ultimately what we are dealing with is a complete denial of reality,” Adams says, “The ACLU along with every person on this planet knows what men and women are, and what makes them different. Their denial of this fact in order to validate the identities of male offenders is embarrassing.”

There's good news at least in that they're finally taking gender ideology to its logical conclusion, so there's no longer room for pretence or dissembling. They are indeed saying that science doesn't count; that sex has nothing to do with biology. So we know where they stand and they know where they stand - naked, and exposed for the cultists they really are.

Official homophobia

From the Glinner:

From the White House "readout", April 27th:

Yesterday, in celebration of Lesbian Day of Visibility, the White House hosted a roundtable conversation with trailblazing lesbian and LGBTQI+ senior leaders from the White House and the broader Biden-Harris Administration. The roundtable included lesbian and queer advocates, community leaders, leaders across the federal government, several of whom are the first out lesbians to hold their position, including: Ambassador Chantale Wong, Director of the Asian Development Bank, who is the first out lesbian to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to an ambassador post; Admiral Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health, who is a lesbian and the first openly transgender woman to achieve the rank the four-star admiral in any of the country’s uniformed services...

Both Chantale Wong and Rachel Levine are heterosexual men. Men, admittedly, who've chosen to present themselves as women, but men nevertheless. So, by definition, not lesbians.

It can't be long before men take over completely. Lesbian women (once upon a time a tautology) can be excluded on the grounds that, unwilling to have sexual relations with men (ie lesbians with a penis), they're transphobic and must therefore be ignored and reviled.