RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/jk_rowling_has_been_mugged_by_gender_reality.html

In December, J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author of the Harry Potter books, dared to support a woman who argues that men cannot magically become women. For this crime, Rowling, who has been a lockstep leftist, became the subject of a sustained hate campaign. On Thursday, she published an essay justifying her belief in biological womanhood and expressing concern that the transgender movement is part of a sustained attack on women.

Transgender madness has progressed further in Britain than in America. The woman Rowling was defending, Maya Forstater, lost her job for challenging proposed amendments to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Under the GRA, people who want legal “gender” recognition have to jump through a few hoops showing their commitment to their non-biological gender. The proposed revisions would end any requirements other than a person’s say-so.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-name-changing-and-statue-toppling/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

General David Petraeus wrote an impassioned article in the Atlantic this week about the need to change the names of military bases that for over a century have been named after Confederate generals and to recalibrate iconic remembrances such as statues commemorating Robert E. Lee at West Point — points of reference he reminds us that have been central in his own experience and career.

His relevant points were twofold and ostensibly rational: Commanders such as Bragg and Benning (Petraeus proposes the renaming of other eponymous bases as well) were not especially effective commanders worthy of such majestic base commemoration. In some cases, as Petraeus notes, they were not even highly regarded by their peers. No one, certainly, would wish to defend the worldview of a Braxton Bragg. And, as Petraeus put it, as “traitors” they fought for an ignoble cause that perpetuated slavery. (Of course, the logic of renaming should then apply to the northern California community of Fort Bragg, also named after the unattractive Braxton Bragg — an idea to which some in the Democratic California legislature failed to win over the town’s mayor in 2015).

I think Petraeus is in many ways correct about his anguish. Yet, the bases were named not so much to glorify overt racists as for a variety of more mundane, insidious reasons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — from concessions to local southerners where many of these bases were to be located, to obtain bipartisan congressional support for their funding, and to address the need in the decades-long and bitter aftermath of the Civil War to promote “healing” between the still hostile former opponents.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/19/the-tide-is-turning-back-to-biological-definitions-of-gender/

In 2014 Kevin Williamson wrote a column in the Chicago Tribune titled “Laverne Cox Is Not A Woman.” The premise of the piece, focused on the actor, was that trans women are not women but rather individuals who believe they are women. In what was at the time one of the biggest victories of the trans advocacy movement the Tribune retracted the piece for misleading facts and a poor tone. The message had been sent. Saying trans women are not women was forbidden and style guides were changed across the country.

But in the past week or so events in a Connecticut courthouse have ushered in a dramatic change to this rule. Mainstream outlets like the New York Post and Newsweek published pieces explicitly advocating the position that got Williamson’s piece banned six years ago. Both are written by women and both make clear that the authors believe in a biological definition of sex. An article from February in the Wall Street Journal also took this stance even earlier. What is emerging is a more concerted effort to defend biological gender in the news media space.

This is really pretty remarkable. Progressives and trans advocates had every reason to believe that the arc of history could only move in their direction. After all, once defining gender based on biology became offensive, even a slur, how could it ever make its way back into polite society? But what they didn’t understand was just how massive the gap was between their beliefs about the nature of gender and those of the American people.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/teen-girls-vs-trans-athletes/

The restoration of sanity depends on straight talk.

In the latest installment of our dystopian black comedy, Biological Sex v. Gender Identity, using the scientifically accurate term “males” to refer to boys who “identify” as girls is enough to land you in contempt of court.

District Judge Robert Chatigny, during an April 16 conference call, chastised the attorneys who are contesting Connecticut’s transgender sports policy on behalf of three female high-school athletes. During the call, as reported first by National Review’s Jack Crowe, who obtained a transcript, Chatigny said that using the term “male” to refer to — well, male athletes — was “very provocative,” tantamount to “bullying.” Thereafter, in his court, it would be unacceptable, he warned.

Never mind that the two transgender athletes in question were born male and lived unambiguously as such until several years ago, when, in their late teens, they began socially “identifying” as females and competing with girls. Enabled by their state’s athletic conference, the pair have, between them, claimed 15 women’s state-championship titles and deprived countless more girls of the opportunity to participate in races and compete for scholarships.

How can you parse such blatant injustice? How can you view perpetrators as the victims? The only way to do this is to believe, as the ACLU attorneys claim to believe, that the boys — declaring themselves to be female — are female. In this instance, the person they are required to convince is not the average American, but the presiding judge. Luckily for them, he has already decided in their favor.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/in_britain_and_america_judges_are_buying_into_transgender_lies.html

Judges in England and America are becoming infected with the politically correct theory that transgenderism is real – that is, a person who thinks he is a member of the opposite sex, is a member of the opposite sex. This notion will cause damage to real women who find themselves before judges who have substituted politically-espoused mental illness over biological reality.

Transgenderism is not real. The science of sex is simple: Among mammals, including humans, there are two sexes, male and female. Within each mammalian species, the biological gender differences are strong, both physically and mentally. Only in rare cases are kids born with tangled sex genes.

The “science” of “gender,” as opposed to the biological reality about human sex, is a make-believe 21st-century construct. Examining a recent statement about so-called transgenderism from the American Academy of Pediatrics, America’s preeminent pediatric organization, reveals that, while the AAP has all sorts of theories predicated upon accepting that transgenderism is real, you will find nothing proving that through the scientific method.

So-called transgenderism is just another form of body dysmorphia (people’s feeling that their bodies do not align with their sense of self). It’s a tragic condition and sufferers deserve sympathy. Nevertheless, in a functioning society, sympathy cannot transmute into a legal system that accepts delusions as reality. That’s why what’s happening in English and American courts is so dangerous.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/21/the-privilege-of-identity-politics/

Last month, Melinda Gates announced that “we need to apply a gender lens to solving this [coronavirus] crisis.” She linked to a March 12 story in the New York Times reporting that with women making up to 70 percent of healthcare workers worldwide, women are at “disproportionate risk.” COVID-19 may very well end up “exacerbating gender, social and economic fault lines,” Gates claimed.

Buried in the Times story, however, was an inconvenient detail. It appears as an afterthought in parentheses at the end of a paragraph. The preceding phrase talks about women being “squarely in the virus’ path,” but then comes this: “(although some early studies of coronavirus in China suggest men have a higher death rate).”

Well, one would think that before asserting the greater vulnerability of women to the disease a reporter would check on mortality rates or at least wait until more information comes in. But, of course, that would be to allow the possibility that males have a higher susceptibility, and that would yield the wrong gender equality. The whole story would be shot. Let’s go with the female vulnerability instead.

That’s what Melinda Gates did. After all, she has steered piles of cash at the Gates Foundation to the issue. Last October she wrote a story in Time Magazine under the headline, “Here’s Why I’m Committing $1 Billion to Promote Gender Equality.” And on March 7, she published an op-ed in the New York Times with the title, “How to Start a Conversation About Gender Equality.” A photo accompanying the story showed a sign announcing, “WOMEN’S RIGHTS are HUMAN RIGHTS.”

That conversation might begin with this: Can you explain why men are more likely than women to die of coronavirus, thus far making up more than two-thirds of all fatalities?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-you-care-if-a-white-man-cured-covid-19-11587142808?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

“If we are in a war, as our leaders tell us, we should act like it. Diverting scientists’ attention, time and funding away from research and toward identity politics is a decadence that we can no longer afford. Reviving the economy will be as urgent a task as fighting the pandemic. Yet an early Democratic version of last month’s $2 trillion relief package required corporations to bulk up their diversity bureaucracies if they want aid. The only qualifications that should matter for both science and private enterprise are knowledge, insight and drive.”

Scientists at Oxford University and King’s College London are racing to develop an inexpensive ventilator that can be quickly built with off-the-shelf components. Should it matter that all the lead researchers on the project are men? If you believe university diversity bureaucrats and many academic deans, the initiative will be handicapped by the absence of women among the project heads. If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to expose as dangerous nonsense the practice of hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific accomplishments.

Mandatory diversity statements are now ubiquitous in hiring for science, technology, engineering and mathematics jobs. An Alzheimer’s researcher seeking a position in a neurology lab must document his contributions to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” At the University of California, Berkeley, the life sciences department rejected 76% of the applications it received last year because they lacked sufficiently effusive diversity, equity and inclusion statements. The hiring committee didn’t even look at the failed applicants’ research records.

Were the remaining contenders the best scientists in their field? Apparently it doesn’t matter. What matters is how good they are at discussing “distinctions and connections between diversity, equity, and inclusion” during their job talks, in the words of UC’s diversity guidance. The rejected applicants showed insufficient knowledge of the “dimensions of diversity that result from different identities, especially URMs”—underrepresented minorities. Perhaps some were so rash as to suggest that racial and sex quotas in STEM hiring are antithetical to the university’s research mission.