RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/a-transgender-hero-breaks-ranks/

Even though it’s still young, the transgender movement has occasioned many bizarre and horrific stories. But even in that company, the saga of Jamie Shupe stands out.

Born in 1963, Shupe has been married to his wife, Sandy, for three decades; they have a daughter. He spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in the U.S. Army. In 2013 he began identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for years with a deep sense of being different and had been harassed in the military because he was perceived as gay. After declaring that he was a woman, he “lived for a year in Pittsburgh, got hormone treatments and a name change,” but never had a sex-change operation. Finding Pittsburgh inhospitable for a trans woman, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he continued living as a woman for another two years. In 2015, the New York Times profiled Shupe as part of a splashy, upbeat series celebrating “transgender lives.”

“I have effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities,” Shupe lamented in the full-page Times testimony. “I now live in a world where radical, conservative politicians and religious groups routinely attack my very existence with legislation to deny me basic human rights such as a bathroom that matches my gender-identity….I am a transgender woman. My civil rights are fragile. I live in daily fear in a country that claims world leadership. And my trans brothers and sisters are forced to serve their nation in silence.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/virginia-democrats-controversy-intersectional-politics/

Who is the greatest victim of them all? Leave it to the mob to pick the ‘winner.’

From The Ox-Bow Incident to To Kill a Mockingbird, novelists warned of the American propensity to become mob-like and often lethally so. Our Puritan roots, when coupled to elements of Athenian-style democracy, can on occasion vary wildly between dangerous bias and equally mindless self-righteousness.

Update those traditions within the modern bane of electronically charged instantaneous social media, identity politics, the decline of journalism, and vicarious virtue-signaling, and we increasingly suffer psychodramas like the Virginia fraternity mess, the Duke Lacrosse fiasco, the Kavanaugh hearings, and the Covington nightmare.

In such cases, predictable constructs often set afire the new mob. “Vulnerable” women or minorities or both are juxtaposed against young white males who have the scent of traditionalism, conservatism, or “privilege.” I say “psychodramas,” because the point is never to assess guilt or innocence or to establish some set of objective standards by which to condemn or exempt the accused. No, the aim is to vent outrage — the quicker, the more venomous, and the more public, the more advantageous either in a careerist or psychological sense.

The result is that there are now no rules in the Roman arena of feeding the accused to the carnivores — except two. If the progressive cause can be advanced, then necessary, one-time adjustments can call off the mob. And, two, given the complex hierarchy of victimhood and the relative degrees of perceived progressive correctness, it is sometimes difficult to sort out who should be rescued from, and who served up to, the famished lions.

https://quillette.com/2019/02/04/psychologists-respond-to-the-apas-guidance-for-treating-men-and-boys/
Introduction — John P. Wright, Ph.D.

John Paul Wright is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati. He has published widely on the causes and correlates of human violence. His current work examines how ideology affects scholarship. Follow him on Twitter @cjprofman.

Thirteen years in the making, the American Psychological Association (APA) released the newly drafted “Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Boys and Men.” Backed by 40 years of science, the APA claims, the guidelines boldly pronounce that “traditional masculinity” is the cause and consequence of men’s mental health concerns. Masculine stoicism, the APA tells us, prevents men from seeking treatment when in need, while beliefs rooted in “masculine ideology” perpetuate men’s worst behaviors—including sexual harassment and rape. Masculine ideology, itself a byproduct of the “patriarchy,” benefits men and simultaneously victimizes them, the guidelines explain. Thus, the APA committee advises therapists that men need to become allies to feminism. “Change men,” an author of the report stated, “and we can change the world.”

But if the reaction to the APA’s guidelines is any indication, this change won’t happen anytime soon. Criticism was immediate and fierce. Few outside of a handful of departments within the academy had ever heard of “masculine ideology,” and fewer still understood how defining traditional masculinity by men’s most boorish—even criminal—behavior would serve the interests of men or entice them to seek professional help. Instead of passing quietly into the night, as most academic pronouncements do, the APA’s guidelines did what few such documents have ever done: They engendered a social media maelstrom, and likely not only lost professional credibility, but potentially created new barriers for men who need help.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/04/art-exhibit-invites-people-throw-trash-vacuuming-ivanka-trump-lookalike/

“Ivanka Vacuuming” is now a thing in the nation’s capital. Because art, or something.

The exhibit, on display at CulturalDC’s former Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, D.C., is a piece of “performance art” where an Ivanka Trump lookalike wearing a pink dress with bows and stiletto shoes vacuums crumbs off a plush, pink carpet. To make the spectacle interactive, onlookers are encouraged to take crumbs from a pedestal and throw them at her to vacuum up.

“Inspired by a figure whose public persona incorporates an almost comically wide range of feminine identities – daughter, wife, mother, sister, model, working woman, blonde – Ivanka Vacuuming is simultaneously a visual celebration of a contemporary feminine icon; a portrait of our own relationship to that figure; and a questioning of our complicity in her role-playing,” a press release on the project reads. “The public is invited to throw crumbs onto the carpet, watching as Ivanka elegantly vacuums up the mess, her smile never wavering. This process repeats itself for the entire duration of the performance.”

The irony, of course, is that the exhibit reflects every stereotype feminists claim to stand against, oversexualizing Ivanka’s body and ignoring her hard work. (One can only imagine the feminist rage if it were, say, Michelle Obama on display.)

In addition to mocking Ivanka for her looks, the exhibit demeans the First Daughter’s success as a business woman and White House advisor to that of a woman with a vacuum—as if something’s wrong with that, too. Worse, in the process of shaming stay-at-home mothers, “Ivanka Vacuuming” encourages onlookers to throw trash at her. Again, because “art,” or something.

Therein lies the only interesting insight offered by artist Jennifer Rubell, who is of course female because no male could get away with such sexism masked as art.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/gender-identity-ideology-honest-inquiry-demonized/Honest inquiry into the causes of gender dysphoria is being demonized.

With debate over the Equality Act looming, two groups held events in Washington D.C. last weekend. The first, “Women Stand Up,” was organized by members of Standing for Women, along with other bipartisan women’s- and lesbian-rights groups across Britain and North America. The second, “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left,” was put on by the Heritage Foundation and featured an all-liberal panel.

Jennifer Chavez, a liberal lawyer on the Heritage panel, pointed out an irony:

One of the significant differences between here and the U.K. is that there are journalists in the U.K. speaking out about [the issue]. And here there are journalists speaking out but not with the sort of national reach and name recognition that the journalists who are speaking in the U.K. have had and I think that has made a humongous difference. So, we need journalists to speaking about this and covering both sides of the story at least.

Ironically, Chavez was later misquoted (and a correction was issued) by Tim Fitzsimons of NBC News. Fitzsimons’s piece focused on the conservative politics of the Heritage Foundation and ignored the progressive parents’ testimony.

This is particularly striking, since the host at the Heritage Foundation, Ryan T. Anderson, explained that the event had only come about once a progressive mother, whose autistic daughter has identified as a boy for the past four years, contacted him saying she’d been ignored by liberal organizations and media.

“As a lifelong Democrat I am outraged by my former party and find it ironic that only conservative news outlets have reported my story without bias or censorship,” the mother, who wished to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s privacy but is known to National Review, wrote.

Anderson introduced the event by acknowledging that while he and the panel and audience likely disagreed on a range of issues from abortion to taxes, “If ‘gender identity’ becomes a protected class in federal civil-rights law, there will be serious negative consequences. That’s where we agree. And that’s where we can work together.”

https://quadrant.org.au/hard-to-swallow/

In his Road to Wigan Pier, which touches often on the miserable diets of the poor in that unfortunate town, George Orwell reserved a special contempt “the food crank” who is

…by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.

Such sorts were attracted, he said, by

… the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ [which] draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

Those words were published in 1937, when the Left’s ratbag fringe was the chief sanctuary of those given to lecturing a population recently reminded of what they were missing by the empty bellies of the Great Depression and, according to the food fanatics, shouldn’t be eating anyway. In one word: meat to build bones and bodies.

That was then. Today the commissars of cuisine no longer need hector and lecture from the outer edges of rational discourse. Indeed, the local variety now get to deliver their sermons from the pulpit of Their ABC’s news pages, where authors Rosemary Stanton and Kris Barnden today prescribe the diet we must embrace to stymie “the ongoing devastation of our planet.”

Blessed with the authoritative tag line “analysis”, rather than the more appropriate “opinion”, they detail a menu that, while it might not help you live longer, will certainly make it seem that way (emphasis added).

https://canadafreepress.com/article/how-to-lose-a-culture-war

The owner of a gym in Troy, Missouri recently asked army vet Jake Talbot not to wear his “Trump 2016” shirt to her gym in the future. The owner did so in response to complaints from other customers that the shirt made them feel “uncomfortable.”

It is all too common nowadays for graduates of our finer colleges to accord moral significance to their feelings, regardless of whether those feelings are objectively reasonable. You’re uncomfortable? Then clearly someone needs to alter his behavior. Reports say that some customers found the shirt “offensive” or “racist.” That such judgments are preposterous is irrelevant in our brave new world of political correctness.
The culture warriors at Ms. Drew’s gym have won a small victory over President Trump’s America

What about the discomfort of Mr. Talbot at having to alter his dress at the whim of anonymous complainers? Also irrelevant. As a white male, Mr. Talbot has no say in the matter. Gym owner Liz Drew texted that she just wants “to ensure that all my members feel safe and unthreatened.” Threatened? By a shirt with our president’s name on it? Ms. Drew is well schooled in the lingo of the Left.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/honoring_country_music.html

Country music has almost always been counter-counter-culture. Country music honors ancestors and traditions, while hardcore rocker bands like Stick To Your Guns glorify felons Eric Garner, Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, the ludicrously named Prophets of Rage mock “the chosen whites” who “wear[ ] badges” (“Killing In The Name”), and Vampire Weekend and Foster the People shill for socialist retread Bernie Sanders.

Often featuring sharp and witty lyrics and hummable tunes, Country fosters a patriotic love of the land and its people, and displays a spirit of proud independence. As such, it is among the most engaging of musical idioms. It is at its purest an amalgam of swagger and humility. True, its subject matter can’t help but touch the world out there and can’t help but convey attitudes and beliefs, often of a patriotic nature, but it is certainly not an agenda-driven program for incendiary or subversive or revolutionary change. It purveys no drummingly sociopolitical message. Rather, Country in its essence expresses natural and universal feelings of love and home and basic human experience — “the basics of love,” as Waylon Jennings put it in “Luckenbach, Texas.” Anchored in everyday life, it does not hector or seek to persuade but treats of perennial themes while retaining a distinctive artistry in melody and lyric.

As Alan Jackson sings in his haunting 9/11 requiem, Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning, he is not “a real political man,” unlike the smug patricians of the reigning Western cultural elite. Jackson’s elegy for Hank Williams, “Midnight in Montgomery,” is unforgettably poignant and as unpolitical as it can get, very much like Williams’ signature “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Williams is reputed to have said: “God writes the songs. I just hold the pen” — a way of articulating a felt truth and a welcome antitoxin to the malignant spirit of decay and subversion that has permeated the cultural, political and institutional life of America today. Such cultural decadence is the reason why so much of its music is trash.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272630/ten-truths-about-hijab-danusha-goska

In a city I cannot name, on a date I cannot specify, an anonymous woman and I embarked on a risky drive to an institution whose address I cannot disclose. “Aisha” and I had eaten, gabbed, laughed, worked and dreamed together. I had met her family. They were lovely people. They planned to kill her. She had violated their Islamic expectations. Thus our drive to a remote safe house. In the United States. In the twentieth century.

In January, 2019, after Ilhan Omar [pictured above] was sworn in as a new congresswoman, my liberal Facebook friends celebrated her and Rashida Tlaib. They made three false claims: “First refugee elected to Congress! First Palestinian! We celebrate diversity!”

No, Omar was not the first refugee elected to Congress. Jewish refugees, and refugees from Communism preceded her.

No, Tlaib was not the first Palestinian. Justin Amash, a male, Christian Republican, was. Newly sworn-in Donna Shalala, like Tlaib, is an Arab. She is a Catholic who supports Israel. None of the memes celebrating Tlaib celebrated Shalala or Amash.

The third lie is that celebrations of Omar and Tlaib were celebrations of diversity. At the same time that liberals were elevating Tlaib and Omar to meme stardom, they were maintaining complete radio silence about a story that was rocking the world. Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun is a Saudi teenager who, in early January, 2019, escaped from her family and was granted asylum in Canada. Alqunun described beatings, captivity, and the threat of death for abandoning Islam. She insisted that her case was not unique, and that women in Saudi Arabia “are treated like slaves.”

Also in January, 2019, the New York Times brought attention to Loujain al-Hathloul, who has “worked relentlessly to earn Saudi women the right to drive.” For her efforts, al-Hathloul has been tortured, water-boarded, and threatened with, and possibly, raped.