RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.dailywire.com/news/47257/walsh-simple-matt-walsh

For the last few weeks I have been trying with increasing desperation to get a leftist — any leftist — to answer one simple question: what is a woman?

You’ll notice that folks on the Left use the word “woman” quite a bit. They make many claims about women. They say that these creatures known as women have something called “women’s rights.” They say that these rights are under attack. They say that women are persecuted and disadvantaged by something called male privilege. They say that women are the victims of a wage gap. They say things like, “We need a woman President.”

They also say that biological males can be women. They say transwomen are women. They say that someone can start out life as a male and transition into a woman. They make many other claims in this vein.

But how can I understand any of these claims and declarations if I do not know what they mean by the word woman? And how can they make any meaningful statements about women if they themselves do not know what they mean by it? So I ask again very simply: what is a woman?

I feel in fairness I should provide my own definition. I tend to agree with Merriam-Webster that woman means “an adult female person.” I agree not only with the dictionary but with the whole history of human civilization, which, collectively, has always understood woman in this way.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/why-is-fat-a-feminist-issue/

In a speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation” jointly sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Department and the Center for Equity and Inclusion (what else?) at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the prodigiously overweight Sonalee Rashatwar, a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis, defined child dieting as sexual assault, attributed the Christchurch shooting to ‘thin” white supremacism, and condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.”

She wonders, rhetorically, “is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” She goes on to blame the Reagan administration for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidize my food costs.” Believe it! We have entirely transcended the realm of reason, sanity and common sense, and tossed the concept of personal responsibility into the cultural dumpster.

Rashatwar, of course, is not alone in pursuing her redemptive mission. Fat is big in the feminist Weltanschauung. Virgie Tovar’s influential You Have the Right to Remain Fat is a case in point, resting on a subtle distinction between fat positivity and fat activism. Lindy West, whose book Shrill is a feature on Hulu, tells us she had “always been a great big person,” but uses her natural condition as a kind of license for voluntary accumulation. If we are to be honest, we would have to say that we are witnessing a grotesquerie in progress—which is, again to be honest, what feminism has become.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/vermont-replaces-columbus-day-with-indigenous-peoples-day/

Vermont on Friday became the sixth state to eliminate Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day.

Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill designating the second Monday in October a day honoring Native Americans rather than the 15th-century Italian explorer.

“Vermont was founded and built upon lands whose original inhabitants were Abenaki people and honors them and their ancestors,” the state’s new law reads.

“I know it’s controversial from many standpoints, from many people, but you know, it’s just a day, and we’ll get through it,” Scott said last month after the state legislature passed the measure.

Vermont’s move comes on the heels of similar bills in Maine and New Mexico, whose Democratic governors signed the holiday change into law last month. Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota had already chosen to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day.

Some modern Native American tribes object to the celebration of Christopher Columbus, who led several expeditions to Central and South America and spearheaded the European colonization of the New World.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/actor-stephen-fry-accused-of-white-supremacy-for-making-ok-gesture/

Last week the Chicago Cubs banned a fan for playing the Circle Game, claiming he was actually being a white supremacist. They fell for the hoax that the OK gesture is actually something bad. And NBC News even blurred out the guy’s hand so the infection wouldn’t spread, or maybe so the audience couldn’t see that it was just an OK sign.

“Chicago Cubs fan, who appeared to flash a hand gesture that has become associated with white supremacy behind a black sports reporter while he was on air, has been banned from Wrigley Field. https://nbcnews.to/2HcgNeJ ”

Emma Kelly, Metro (UK):…While Stephen was just trying to raise awareness and drum up support by sharing the universally recognisable OK symbol, others piped up to claim it was a sign of the alt-right.One person wrote: ‘Stephen and friends – You might want to be super careful using this symbol if you don’t want to be confused with white supremacist creeps. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that even the kindest of intentions can be taken out of context.’ Another replied: ‘Are you aware that this hand symbol can be misinterpreted as support for white supremacy?’, while one reply said:‘Didn’t have you down as part of the alt-right.’

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/13/the-modern-bonfire-of-the-vanities/

Five centuries ago, in Renaissance Florence, the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola, in his quest to purge Florence of all “immoral” works of art, started what came to be known as the “bonfire of the vanities.” Thousands of objects and works of art were burned in the fire; paintings by Sandro Botticelli, works by the poet Boccaccio, and countless other books, paintings, and objects were forever lost to history.

Looking back on this event today, we might be tempted to feel smug. We’re better than that, aren’t we? Surely today, in our enlightened, modern society, we’d never be stupid enough to destroy works of art or irretrievable relics of our history.

Yet it seems like, every day, leftists are more and more eager to prove that yes, they are that stupid. Because of the Left today, we are stuck in a slow-moving, modern version of the bonfire of the vanities. Unlike Savonarola’s bonfire, this isn’t a one-day affair; it’s an ongoing, subtle, never-ending eradication of our Western history and culture.

A story out of George Washington High School in San Francisco is the latest case in point. Earlier this month, the high school convened a “reflection and action working group” to determine the fate of a pair of 83-year-old murals depicting George Washington. The group determined the artwork is “highly problematic” and “traumatic” for students, since one of the murals presents George Washington next to several laboring slaves, and the other represents a dead Native American. The working group’s choice follows an earlier decision in February by a school-board committee that the art “glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-5-8-modern-architecture-theres-no-accounting-for-taste

This past Sunday I joined the good people from Maggie’s Farm on their annual “Urban Hike” in New York City. This year they rounded up a group of about 13. The hike started at the Museum of Natural History (80th Street and Central Park West — near the geographical center of Manhattan Island) and proceeded uptown on a meandering path of about 9 miles, stopping at sites that included things like Pomander Walk, Straus Park (Leo Straus was the founder of Macy’s who died on the Titanic), and Columbia University. The weather was chilly with persistent rain. Toward the end of the hike, at about 155th Street, we had just stood on Edgecomb Avenue at the top of the bluff overlooking the spot where once had stood the Polo Grounds (actually a baseball stadium that was the original home of the Mets, and before them the New York Giants baseball team), and we turned the corner, and suddenly this:

Several gasps and “Oh my God”s erupted spontaneously. I heard the words “Darth Vader building” uttered behind me. Whatever this black block might be, there had been no mention of it in the hike itinerary that had been provided to us; and yet this building was clearly the dominant presence in the neighborhood. Viewing it from the street, its function was not obvious. Had this thing been dropped in by space aliens? What could it possibly be, and why was it here?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273718/new-york-orders-museums-hire-people-race-daniel-greenfield

Another great idea from New York City’s white mayor and white city council speaker.

They’ve destroyed so much of New York City. But even in the city’s darkest days, the Met, Carnegie Hall, and other classical cultural institutions had survived. Now the cultural revolution is coming for them.

The heads of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall are among dozens of cultural institution leaders quaking in their boots as Mayor Bill de Blasio considers slashing their funds if they fail to meet his staff diversity criteria, The Post has learned.

De Blasio’s decree targets the nonprofit organizations that run the 33 museums, theaters, concert halls, botanical gardens and zoos that comprise the city’s “Cultural Institutions Group.”

But in 2017, de Blasio reversed course and warned that diversity “will be a factor in funding decisions,” claiming, “We do this because we believe in fairness.”

And nothing says fairness like giving people jobs because of their race.

The move is intended to help boost people with African, Latin, Asian, Arab and Native American heritage, “LGBTIQ populations,” people with disabilities, non-English speakers and the poor.

The next great Met conductor can be one or all of the above.

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22649/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-political-correctness

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy. Political correctness is a humanitarian hoax. It is a deceitful end-run around the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. This is how it works.

The freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution award citizens the right to disagree without fear of reprisal. American civil society is predicated upon the freedom to express disagreement, and is diametrically opposed to the politically correct demand for avoidance of language that might be offensive and hurt someone’s feelings.

The freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution do not care about anyone’s feelings – political correctness does. Political correctness is a severe prohibition on free speech disguised as courtesy.

Political correctness (PC) is marketed by its devotees as progressive, compassionate, sensitive, and caring. It is defined as the avoidance of language or actions that are seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people who are seen as disadvantaged or discriminated against, especially groups defined by sex or race. Political correctness has been embraced by leftist liberals with religious fervor in America. The problem of course is deciding WHO will determine what is and what is not insulting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/standing-against-psychiatrys-crazes-11556920766

In 1979 Dr. Paul McHugh closed the sex-change clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the ’80s he testified against phony ‘recovered memories.’ He hasn’t given up the fight.

You might have heard this joke: A man in a car gets a call from his wife. “Honey, be careful,” she says. “A car is going the wrong way on the highway.” He replies: “It’s not just one car. It’s hundreds of them!”

If it were a psychiatrist joke, Paul McHugh, 87, could be that driver. A professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a tenacious skeptic of the crazes that periodically overtake his specialty, Dr. McHugh has often served as psychiatry’s most outspoken critic. Either he’s crazy, or all the other psychiatrists are.

The best-known, and most controversial, decision of his professional life is newly relevant—and recently reversed. In 1979, as psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he shut down the Gender Identity Clinic, which performed sex-change operations. In his view, the hospital had “wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it,” as he wrote in 2004. In 2017 the clinic was reopened as the Center for Transgender Health, performing what it now calls “gender-affirming surgeries.” Its medical-office coordinator, Mellissa Noyes, told me “the demand is massive.”