Feb 19

Picard … Seriously?

So I watched Star Trek: Picard, wherein he saves the day, and the future, for the creation of synthetic life.  A surprising move for someone so … intelligent.

With respect to the creation of organic life …

1. We have not been able to control how many we create.  Our planet can comfortably sustain 2-3 billion people (‘comfortably’ defined as the current European standard of living) (which is about 40% lower than the current hoggish American standard).   To date, there are 7.8 billion organic life forms in existence.  And we’re adding (that’s net gain) 150 per minute.  

2. Men often force women to create organic life (by raping them, when they aren’t using, often because they don’t have access to, effective contraception).  Although statistics show that one-quarter (United States) to two-thirds (Africa) of all women are raped,  we really don’t know how often this forced reproduction occurs because, apparently, it’s no big deal.

3. Men (primarily) also often force women to be incubators for organic life forms (by prohibiting abortion). 

4. Once organic life is born, men (primarily) have been woefully irresponsible toward it, abandoning it in one way or another (financially, emotionally) or, worse, hurting it (up to 93% are beaten, and over a million are raped each year). 

So, Jean-Luc, what is it that makes you think ‘we’ will be any more responsible when creating synthetic life?

Feb 15

from Three, Annemarie Monahan

from Three, Annemarie Monahan

“How long did it take for you to realize that men as a class raped women as a class?”

“‘Women are just as bad as men.’ As bad as men? Tell me, if women act the same as men, where are the bodies piled? Where are the masses of men murdered every single day by women? In what other oppression do we equate nastiness or selfishness or just plain anger with murder? Of course not all women are good! But are women honor-killing men? Are women abducting 6-year-old boys for rape? Have women built an international, multi-billion-dollar industry selling films where women gag men with their genitals, ram fists up their asses until they prolapse, shit on their bodies?”

Feb 10

Sports Competition, Sports Scholarships

In my novel Gender Fraud: a fiction, several people discuss the negative effect of gender recognition legislation on women’s sports (in a nutshell, it allows men to compete in women’s events and often they win … sponsorships, scholarships …) and one person suggests that sports should be categorized not by sex but, instead, by directly relevant factors, such as muscle mass (proportion and position), height, weight, even foot size (for swimming) …

I’d go further and say let’s just forget sports competition altogether, because, really, can we ever make it fair?  Determining what we have is hard enough; determining what we’ve been born with and what we’ve developed is near impossible.  Why not just have athletic activity?  Engagement. Participation. Fun. Why this obsessive desire to figure out who’s best?  Who wins?  (And who’s a LOSER …)  Enough with the ‘You get a medal and all those advertising contracts because on a given day you ran a certain distance a tenth of a second faster than a bunch of other people. 

Sports scholarships in particular have got to go.  On what grounds is admission to an institute of learning justified by athletic achievement? 

Because yes, universities are, should be, places for the intellect.  They prepare scholars, architects, engineers, psychologists, mathematicians, biologists, physicists, chemists, doctors, lawyers …  What place do football players have there?  And it’s not like they (the football players) don’t cost a ridiculous amount of money to be there.  Money that could be used for library resources, labs, etc.   So in addition, perhaps prior, to the elimination of sports scholarships to universities, I call for the elimination of sports at universities.  (And so, too, the elimination of sports competitions between universities.)  Sure, let’s have gyms and fields.  Physical activity often enhances mental activity.  Activity.  Competition is not required.

Feb 07

Jane Clare Jones on Transactivism: brilliantly funny

reposted from https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/

Episode 1: The First War Begins. Scene 1: Cyberspace – probably around 2013

Trans activists: So hey, when we said we’d like you to treat us like women that wasn’t right, because actually, we ARE women and we demand that you treat us exactly like women because we are women and that you to stop violently excluding us from all your women things.

Women: Um, we thought you were male people who had to transition to help with your dysphoria?

Trans activists: No, that is out-dated and pathologizing. Women are women because they have a gender identity which makes them women.

Women: Um, we thought we were woman because we’re female?

Trans activists: No, you are women because you have magic womanish essence that makes you women. We have the same magic womanish essence as you, it’s just that ours got stuck in the wrong body.

Feminists: That sounds kind of sexist. Can you tell us what this woman-essence is, and how it gets stuck in the wrong body, because that sounds like a weird metaphys…..

Trans activists: It’s SCIENCE.

Feminists: Science says there’s ‘magic woman essence’??? Are you sure? Because feminism would…

Trans activists: Shut up bigots.

Feminists: Sorry? What?

Trans activists: You are our oppressors, you don’t get to speak. When you speak you oppress us, and it literally kills us.

Feminists: WHAT?

Trans activists: You are cis women, cis people are our oppressors.

Feminists: We’re what?

Trans activists: It’s your new name, it comes from Latin, and means you have a magic gender essence that matches your body, and because your magic gender essence matches your body you are privileged…

Feminists: Hang on a minute, women are oppressed because they are women, we’re not really sure that’s a privilege…

Trans activists: YOU ARE PRIVILEGED BECAUSE YOUR GENDER IDENTITY MATCHES YOUR BODY. Nobody knows the pain of being trapped in the wrong body. It is the greatest pain of all the pains that has ever happened to all of human kind, and everyone who does not know this pain is privileged and is therefore our oppressor.

Feminists: Um, were not really sure we’re oppressing you, we don’t have much social power to oppress you, we’d just like to ask you some questions about this gender identity thing….

Trans activists: ARE YOU DEBATING OUR RIGHT TO EXIST???

Feminists: What? No, we just wanted to ask you…

Trans activists: YOU ARE DEBATING OUR RIGHT TO EXIST. THIS IS LITERAL VIOLENCE.

Feminists: No no no hold on, we’re just trying to ask you a question…

Trans activists: WE WILL NOT DEBATE OUR RIGHT TO EXIST. YOU ARE TRYING TO EXTERMINATE US. YOU ARE JUST LIKE GENOCIDAL RACISTS

Feminists: What??? We’re like genocidal what??? This is fucking crazy. Can we just try and calm down and talk about this?

Trans activists: NO. There is NO DEBATE. Debating is literal violence and makes us unsafe. Repeat after us – Trans women are women. Trans women are women because they have woman essence, just like cis women. You’re not women because of your bodies. Bodies have nothing to do with being a woman.

Feminists: Okay, this is sounding nuts now, because we really think our bodies have quite a lot to do with our being woman.

Trans activists: Bio-essentialism!

Feminists: What? Essentialism is bad we agree, but that means thinking people with certain kinds of bodies have to…

Trans activists: No, essentialism is thinking male and female people exist.

Feminists: But male and female people DO exist.

Trans activist: FUCK YOU TERF. DIE IN A FIRE.

Feminists: Woah.

Trans activists: How many fucking times do we need to tell you this cis-scum? Your body has nothing to do with your being a woman. There is no such thing as female biology.

Feminists: WHAT THE FUCK????

Trans activists: The gender binary was created by white heteropatriarchal colonialism.

Feminists: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK???? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?? WHICH ‘COLONIALISM’????

American trans activists who don’t know the rest of the world exists: Colonialism colonialism duh.

Feminists: How the hell is the colonization of North America responsible for the creation of male and female people? And while we’re here that sounds kinda racist…

Trans activists: Two-spirit people burble burble sex is a spectrum burble clown fish burble burble intersex people burble burble some women don’t have ovaries burble social construct burble Judith Butler

(Academics with cool-girl syndrome and assorted edgelords and wokebros: JUDITH BUTLER!!!!)

Trans activists: ….burble burble, there is no such thing as female biology and women are women because they have magic gender essence and therefore some women have penises!

Feminists: Okay, this is batshit. We REALLY need to talk about this.

Trans activists: WE WILL NOT DEBATE OUR RIGHT TO EXIST.

Feb 05

Reducing sexism: non-binary sex and sex-neutral language

That sex is binary makes sexism so easy. What if sex existed on a spectrum? 

But, you may reply, it doesn’t.  Contrary to so many transactivists, sex is a matter of biology, and you are either male or female; barring the exceptional, one has either XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes.

True, but saying that sex is physiological rather than emotional, an objective reality rather than a subjective feeling, need not imply that it’s binary. [1]  Imagine a spectrum: people with XX chromosomes and functioning female reproductive anatomy at one end (implying a certain level of estrogen); people with XY chromosomes and functioning male reproductive anatomy at the other end (implying a certain level of testosterone); in between, pre-puberty people (neither completely female nor completely male yet, post-menopausal people (no longer completely female), people with hormone variations from the norm (due to natural levels or injections), people with surgical variations (for medical reasons or cosmetic reasons—we may want to distinguish between the two), and so on.  There could be multiple (physical) determinants of sex, and people would be more or less male or female depending on their particular constellation of chromosomes, hormones, and anatomical bits.

In many ways, such a world would surely be more complicated.  For instance, competitive sports would have to be completely reorganized not according to sex, but according to height, weight, muscle mass, etc.  But surely, it would be, eventually, manageable.

Another way to reduce sexism would be to adopt sex-neutral language, because if you didn’t know whether the person was male or female, you couldn’t discriminate on that basis. [2]  This would involve the adoption of sex-neutral names and sex-neutral pronouns [3] and the elimination of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (as in ‘police officer’ instead of ‘policeman’).  We would retain ‘male’ and ‘female’, of course, but mentioning sex would be relevant only in biological/medical contexts (and personal contexts regarding sexual interaction); to use ‘male’ and ‘female’ in everyday discourse would seem, as it does now, rude.

[1] Nor need it imply essentialism in the sense that physiological sex is essential to one’s identity (for example, although I am female, I have never referred to myself as a woman because as far as I’m concerned, my sex doesn’t define me except in medical contexts; it does imply essentialism, however, in the sense that physiology is essential to one’s sex.

[2] In many cases, given the spectrum mentioned above and the hoped-for elimination of gender, it might not even be possible to know whether the person was male or female if you actually saw them.

[3]  Though, please, not ‘they’ because of the consequent singular/plural confusion; there’s no reason we can’t re/introduce ze, zim, and zer.

Feb 01

“My Love” by Chris Wind

commentary on love, from Chris Wind’s Album “The Art of Juxtaposition” www.chriswind.com

Jan 28

December, Like It’s 1989

December, Like It’s 1989

Tell it.
  Geneviève Bergeron, civil engineering
  Hélène Colgan, mechanical engineering
  Nathalie Croteau, mechanical engineering
  Barbara Daigneault, mechanical engineering
  Anne-Marie Edward, chemical engineering
  Maud Haviernick, materials engineering
  Maryse Laganière, finance department
  Maryse Leclair, materials engineering
  Anne-Marie Lemay, mechanical engineering
  Sonia Pelletier, mechanical engineering
  Michèle Richard, materials engineering
  Annie St-Arneault, mechanical engineering
  Annie Turcotte, materials engineering
  Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, nursing.

“Hey, come on.
  Not all men are like that, okay.”
  Not really a question.
  Reductio ad absurdum.
  That’s an order, okay?

Men are proud, they have all the good qualities.
  A penis.
  Inalienable rights.
  Access to female bodies.
  (Everyone knows the females don’t have real minds, okay?)
  Not really a question.

Look, don’t men suffer?
  Aren’t they brave?
  Aren’t they manly?
  Aren’t they courageous?
  Aren’t they rational?
  Not really questions.
  They deserve what they get.
  That’s an order, okay?

Cold day, ordinary winter day, right?
  Not really a question.
  “He told us to leave, and we did.”

Just walked out.
  Not one of them tried to tackle him.
  Not one of them tried to grab the semi-automatic.
  Just walked out.
  They were very rational.
  Didn’t want to get hurt.
  Weren’t they brave?
  Weren’t they manly?
  Weren’t they courageous?
  Not really a question.
  Reductio ad absurdum.
  Not all men are like that, okay?

Don’t ask the question.
  That’s an order.
  Pat Parker said it, paraphrasing here…
  “Brother, that system
    you hit me with
      is called
        a fist.”

Tell it.
  Geneviève Bergeron, civil engineering, 21;
  Hélène Colgan, mechanical engineering, 23;
  Nathalie Croteau, mechanical engineering, 23;
  Barbara Daigneault, mechanical engineering, 22;
  Anne-Marie Edward, chemical engineering, 21;
  Maud Haviernick, materials engineering, 29;
  Maryse Laganière, finance department, 31;
  Maryse Leclair, materials engineering, 25;
  Anne-Marie Lemay, mechanical engineering, 23;
  Sonia Pelletier, mechanical engineering, 22;
  Michèle Richard, materials engineering, 28;
  Annie St-Arneault, mechanical engineering, 21;
  Annie Turcotte, materials engineering, 23;
  Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, nursing, 21.

six decembre mille neuf cent quatre-vingt neuf

C. Osborne

http://www.moonspeaker.ca/AllocentricPerceptions/Poetry/decemberlikeits1989.html

Jan 26

A Jury of One’s Peers?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-1.png

Jan 22

JKR re women-only spaces

reposted from https://www.facebook.com/radfemsca

Jan 20

A woman in Milgram’s experiment

So I’m reading Humanity: a hopeful history by Rutger Bregman, and he says the guy hired by Milgram to pressure the participants to shock the ‘learner’ actually “came to blows with one forty-six-year-old woman who turned the shock machine off” (p.165).

YAY US!

(Funny how this is never mentioned in Psych 101 textbooks that report the Milgram experiment.)

Load more