“Act female”

I’m kinda tired of being the flashpoint for this particular revelation but prescriptive codes of behaviour based on gender norms suck. To put it bluntly, they suck a lot.

Just last week, a transgender man in Louisiana won his discrimination complaint against his employer through arbitration. Tristan Broussard involuntarily resigned from the financial services company he worked for when he was intolerably forced to “act and dress only as a female.” He was awarded more than a year’s salary as well as additional damages for emotional distress.

Okay, so there’s a lot being tangled up in gender codes. For starters, there’s no distinction made between gender identity, gender expression, and gender role. This would clarify a great deal of where these employers are going wrong–and why, thankfully, judges are ruling on an interpretation of Title VII that indicates “sex stereotyping” as a form of sex-based discrimination.

For my part, I look forward to any and all attempts to elucidate whatever the flaming fuck “act female” means. Mostly because it demonstrates that the very principle of gender differentiated codes is inherently sexist and impossible to rationalize without falling back on unsubstantiated claims about the nature of gender. It’s like getting someone to explain a rape joke–they’ll figure it out, what a flaming turd they’ve stepped on, usually. Because here’s the critical thing, dear readers: The liberty of your gender expression is at stake too.

Even without taking into account gender identity and trans employees, employers are pushing to create a precedent where it is legal to dictate an acceptable range of gender expression that they can impose on you based on your assigned sex. That means even if you’re cis, the employer’s success in the courts would indicate that the same imposition will affect you. This exists to some degree already, but employers are narrowing that range ever further, ensuring “proper womanhood” looks a certain way (I anticipate makeup, long hair, pencil skirts, regardless of whether or not you want them).

If experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that nothing will get the support of cis people on trans issues faster than pointing out how it affects cis people. (Yes, that’s my bitter cynic talking). But it’s true. Even if courts side with the employers (and reading the above article seems to indicate they aren’t), there’s a decent chance an issue like this could gain mainstream support and see much bigger protests than if it were marketed as a “trans issue.”

Transmisogyny is just a more specific manifestation of misogyny. Just tell the next cis person that when they dismiss these discrimination cases–the rulings will affect them too.

-Shiv

Quoting Jordan Peterson is “muckraking” now

I don’t know if Jordan Peterson is a Christian or not, but by George has he ever mastered their breathless cries of “perseeecuuuutiiiooooon.”

The Varsity noted that Dr. Peterson’s Patreon is now pulling in a few pennies shy of $8,200/month, at least as of December 5th. Shortly after they asked him to elaborate on his Patreon goals, he shot back a rather nasty response:

An hour after the initial statement was sent to The Varsity, Peterson expressed frustration at this newspaper’s pursuit of this article. “Here’s an idea, why don’t you do a story on the fact that my YouTube channel, prior to this political firestorm, had already attracted a million viewers? That means I brought advanced psychology knowledge to a million people – free,” he said in the email.

He continued: “But you can’t do that, because you are so blinded by your damnable ideology that you muckrake instead. Why do good, when you can advance your ideological presumptions, and find someone to hate?”

Dr. Peterson’s irony has presumably been surgically removed.

He references, of course, the fact that The Varsity has been a breath of No, Both Sides Don’t Do It fresh air. Perhaps he doesn’t appreciate that the editor has correctly identified that Peterson’s free speech vs. ess jay double yoos is a false equivalency.

Those who came to the rally advocating for social justice engaged in a range of protest activities, which included blasting white noise over the sound of rally speakers. While the tactics this group employed are not beyond scrutiny — in a free society, almost nothing is — it is essential to recognize that the cause of this group is legitimate in a way that the cause of those propagating hate speech will never be. Those who would have The Varsity present the former’s cause on equal footing with the latter’s will be disappointed.

How to be PERSECUUUUTIIOOOOOOON’d like Jordan Peterson in six easy steps, according to Glad Hand:

Fuck, Peterson, if this is your idea of persecution, then hand me a nail and a cross. I’ll crucify myself for eight grand a month.

-Shiv

(Silver lining: As long as Dr. Peterson is still a professor, his combined yearly income puts him in the new tax brackets that were recently increased.)

Peter Boghossian: “Critical thinking” apparently means “pretend this field of study doesn’t exist”

Hands up:  Who thought atheism needed another arrogant atheist douchebro who cloaks himself in rationality and then proceeds in a spit-flecked rant rife with fallacious reasoning to tell us we are irrational about stuff?

Peter Boghossian raves about “Gender studies professors” who “are pumping out complete bullshit” in Areo Magazine, producing something resembling less of an argument and more of a rancid onion. And for some fucking reason, I’m feeling masochistic enough to peel back the layers of entitled manbaby whinging. Tears to ensue.

One would think that an example of critical thinking would explicitly identify the premises of a presented argument, compare peer-reviewed literature to see whether the premises are accurate, and use formal logic to determine if the conclusion is sound. But Boghossian’s rant is devoid of any particular specifics–aside from quoting one of Jordan Peterson’s critics–and on top of that he has the gall to represent himself as some kind of model freethinker. The problem is that the sort of freethought that lacks any resemblance to reality is the sort of “freethought” we’d expect to see from mushroom-tripping hippies reacting to psychedelic phantoms rather than what’s in front of them.

Compare, for instance, how Boghossian opens up his interview with some pontificating on critical thinking:

Malhar Mali: What in your opinion is the best way of fostering critical thinking when it comes to religious and supernatural beliefs?

Peter Boghossian: I think the whole way we’ve taught critical thinking is wrong from day one. We’ve taught, “Formulate your beliefs on the basis of evidence.” But the problem with that is people already believe they’ve formulated their beliefs on evidence — that’s why they believe what they believe. Instead, what we should focus on is teaching people to seek out and identify defeaters.

What is a defeater? A defeater is:

IF A, THEN B, UNLESS C.

All of which is sound epistemology…

Then, minutes later, Boghossian expels this adorable piece of absolute claptrap:

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Transition Reactions p14: You need therapy

I still haven’t quite adjusted to the realization that trans rights discourse is so primitive at this stage that some of the most blatantly fucking obvious statements perpetrated in this conversation are treated as “serious points of debate.” One of these is the appallingly clueless “You need therapy,” and it’s ableist cousin “you’re just messed in the head.” It is, in my estimate, the strongest predictor of a fruitless conversation, because anyone who thinks trans folk don’t receive therapy hasn’t bothered to check their most basic assumptions which distort their opinion.

Join me as we run through the gamut of my healthcare process to illustrate why the assumption underlying the response “you need therapy” is an observation as asinine as “you have skin.”

Step one: I need to figure out I’m trans

In order to access any kind of gender related care, I first have to know I need it. In the absence of comprehensive vocabulary, many of us gender variant folk are really confused and disgruntled, which often compels us to seek–wait for it–therapy. If we’re lucky, the therapist might lift the fog and say “you have some gender identity problems,” and either address them or refer us to someone who can, at which point our pre-existing questioning starts to gain traction.

Step two: I have to convince my general practitioner or existing therapist I’m trans

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Trump is slated to purge Energy Department employees who worked on climate change

Although it is entirely ordinary for the management positions of government administration to rotate when new governments are elected, over here in sane Canuckistan, most low- to mid-level administrators keep their positions. This is in part because they are hired to follow orders rather than issue them, so the logic there is that an administrator whose job is to spellcheck a report will still need to spellcheck reports regardless of who they come from.

Apparently that’s not good enough in Trumpland, because the transition team is asking the Energy Department to “provide a list of employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings and worked on key Obama administration climate policies, including the social cost of carbon.”

Which is a pretty fucked up request. It’s one thing to turf the reality-based management of the EPA and the Energy Department, because the new administration is allergic to reality and a government is well within its rights to do so (regardless of how regrettable said action is). But for fuck sake, the employees who attended? The god damn minute-takers and personal assistants gotta go too?

I guess I just haven’t fully comprehended how much reality the incoming Trump administration is prepared to pretend doesn’t exist.

-Shiv

The Advocate, milquetoast liberals, and wearing many hats

Content Notice: Racism, white supremacist apology, minimization, gaslighting, general clueless white assholery

When we last saw Apologist-for-White-Supremacy Amanda Kerri, she was attempting to delicately explain “economic anxiety” coming from the United States’ least troubled demographic within the working class. Now it seems Kerri is joining what will soon be a tradition of milquetoast liberals falling in line to give jackbooted authoritarianism a chance.

I try to ration my criticisms of other trans women carefully. Belonging to a badly-maligned group often makes visible activists a lightning rod for bad faith criticism, but nonetheless there’s only so much bullshit I can take before I switch from “maybe you just had limited opportunities in education because of prejudice” to “okay, you’re an asshole.”

Kerri begins:

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Parents for Choice in Education: Stop teaching my kids queer & trans people exist

Content Notice: Homo-antagonism and trans-antagonism

Eva Ferguson begins this article in what (I hope) is a barely contained snicker:

A new toolkit for teachers on educating students around gender diversity is being criticized by parent groups who say it doesn’t give families a chance to opt out of conversations they say may not fit their values.

Yes, that’s right, there are “some families” complaining they can’t opt out of fact-based education. If you’re a regular on my blog, you’ll suspect Parents for Choice in Education, a lobby group that gets its jimmies rustled every time more facts worm their way into schools.

Ferguson writes of a guidance document published by the Alberta Teacher’s Association called Toolkit for Safe and Caring Discussions and Sexual and Gender Minorities. It’s exactly what it says on the tin: A series of tips on what a law like Bill 7 or Bill 10 actually means and what substantive changes you can make to your teaching when you need to be accommodating of queer & trans youth. It includes such insidious suggestions as…

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