The Singal problem

You might want to read this Twitter thread by Siobhan points out how Jesse Singal delicately carves up his sources to only allow views that align with his own perspective through.

Short version: Singal reported that the controversial “conversion therapy” lab of Kenneth Zucker was shut down for purely political reasons by omitting the words of scientists who pointed out that he was far out of the mainstream of clinical practice.

That kind of slanted reporting is why transgender individuals, you know, the people most endangered by his biases, consider him to be shady and untrustworthy.

The miracle of selling razors

This is a really good commercial.

Without saying a single outrageous thing, by presenting a purely optimistic message, it has generated a huge amount of controversy and has everyone talking about it (gosh, I just put it on my blog). It’s selling razor blades, and it doesn’t show any razors — none of the male models in the ad are lathered up, or even in need of a shave or a trim. Nobody is shaving. I’m impressed with how neatly capitalism can exploit both good and bad sentiments to serve the cause of selling stuff.

From another perspective, it’s also cool how it has maneuvered a lot of men into whipping out their manly six-shooters and blasting away at their feet. The message is that bullying, sexual harassment, and condoning bad behavior with silent assent are bad, but that good men can and will oppose such behavior, which has provoked the peculiar, guilt-ridden response of “how dare Gillette accuse me of bullying and harassment!”, completely missing the opportunity to identify with the good-looking, well-groomed men who are stopping bullying and harassment. You’ve got a chance to see yourself mirrored in commendable behavior, or oppressive behavior, and thousands of men are screaming, “How dare you criticize my choice to catcall, or mansplain, or punch people!”

And now everyone is selling razors for Gillette. It’s a marvel.

Piers Morgan. Can he get any more repulsive?

That’s a challenge. I’d like to see him try. He and Tucker Carlson have this thing going where they screw up their faces and pretend to ignorance, as if it were to their credit, and the routine is getting old fast.

His latest schtick is to declare that women are disgusting if they don’t shave off all their body hair.

Morgan and co-host Susanna Reid were discussing the new campaign ‘Januhairy‘, which encourages women to not shave their armpits and embrace their natural hair.

But Morgan was repulsed by the idea, and after being shown images of celebrities who have decided not to shave – including Lady Gaga, Madonna and Julia Roberts – the GMB presenter said he died inside.

Reid asked Morgan if he shaved his pits, to which he replied a firm, No.

“Is that laziness?” Reid then asked.

No because women don’t have a problem with that. But men don’t fancy women who let it all out in January.

Apparently, someone needs to urgently inform Lady Gaga, Madonna and Julia Roberts, and all other women, that it is their duty to satisfy Piers Morgan’s sexual kinks. I think they need to grow even more body hair, because if a few tufts of armpit hair make him die inside, a bit more fuzz might make him die the rest of the way, which would be nice.

Also curious if women out there really want to know anything about Piers Morgan’s armpits, because I didn’t. I could have lived a long, contented life without ever considering Morgan’s body hair, and I feel like him forcing me to think about it was a terrible violation.

Here’s something even worse: Kate Smurthwaite appeared on Susanna Reid’s show (Morgan is just the dull sidekick there) to talk about why women shouldn’t feel compelled to shave, and he got totally sidetracked with the revelation that Smurthwaite is polyamorous…so he had to jack up the creepiness quotient by pestering her with prurient little questions.

Kate Smurthwaite, a comedian, was describing how her hairy armpits have never stopped her from finding a lover, and Piers was desperate to get back to his conversation.

He asked her: Can I talk about your polyamorous thing for a minute, because I’ve never heard of this thing? What does that mean?

Oh god. He’s never heard of this thing. Right. That was just an excuse to continue to probe into a woman’s sex life, in public.

Why does this horrible little man appear on television? Promise me, English-type persons, you’re not going to someday elect him to be prime minister, are you? Because that seems to be a common trajectory in our little colony, rising from cheap bigoted ‘entertainer’ to high office. I’d hate to see it happen to you.

If you’d like to see the whole episode, here it is. Morgan was more of a sleazy prat than I imagined, and Smurthwaite was smart, classy, and funny.

Deep disappointment

I’ve been told that an old friend has become profoundly illogical. This bothers me.

It’s a reply to a fairly mundane tweet.

Here’s the response:

Bad beginning, taking “cis” as 1) a meaningful and useful descriptive and 2) an obviously privileged and dominant group that needs to check itself. I don’t recognize “not thinking I’m the sex I’m not” as a form of privilege, any more than I recognize “not thinking I’m a bird” as a form of privilege. The word “cis” is pretty much designed to make people feel guilty and defensive simply for not having a bizarre delusion. Granted, it’s convenient not to have a bizarre delusion, but convenience isn’t exactly the same thing as privilege.

1) Cis does have a sensible meaning. It refers to someone whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Even if you don’t like it, you have to acknowledge that there are people whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex, making this a meaningful and useful descriptor. Or do you think trans people are actually comfortable and identify with their assigned sex? Are they just making it all up? Why?

2) Our society favors people who conform to cisgender expectations, so of course if you don’t conform, you’re disadvantaged. Right here in this post the author is expressing scorn for people who don’t fit her expectations. I rather despise the “oh so you identify as an attack helicopter” criticism, since birdness or helicopterness aren’t in the range of human behavior, but the “bird” argument doesn’t hold up either. There are people who find social gratification in identifying as an animal — look up furries sometime — and yeah, they face mockery for it, and lacking those desires is a privilege.

Also, if you regard trans people as mentally ill as this person does (I don’t), that doesn’t get you out of the claim that you aren’t privileged for not being mentally ill.

I’m cis. The person who wrote that tweet is saying they’re cis. I don’t feel guilty or defensive, and neither do they. Cis is a non-judmental description of a state that fits most people, used to distinguish them from the minority who are trans. It certainly was not “designed” to provoke guilt, just as heterosexual is not a term calculated to instill shame in us straight guys, and just as white is not a dirty word calculated to make European-Americans feel miserable and embarrassed about their ancestry.

There’s some projection going on here. If someone uses “trans” as an expression of contempt, then maybe they’re only able to see the complementary, neutral, descriptive term “cis” as carrying similar intent. These are the same people who see the accurate and neutral term Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) as some horrible defamatory slur, for the same reason.

This is coming from a person I tried to defend as not a TERF, once upon a time. Boy, was I wrong.

Jordan Peterson and friends

Oh, shut up, Jordan Peterson. He was at this ghastly Turning Point USA conference last week, and he gets to meet Charlie Kirk, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump Jr, so he takes the opportunity to lecture them about the wicked left. It’s a bizarre one-sided conversation in which he Petersonsplains to them about the nature of the Left, the Left, the Left, laying all blame on them, and never bothers to consider the oppressive nature of the Right. Bonus: continuous weird hand gestures throughout. Double bonus: Charlie, Kimberly, and Junior look excruciatingly bored throughout. What? You want us to have a serious discussion?

His basic point is that the Left is just as uptight about sex as the Right, so maybe that is a productive avenue for a meeting of the minds. But he doesn’t seem to recognize the differences, that the Right wants to control who you have sex with, and how you do it, while the Left doesn’t care about what individuals do in the privacy of their own home, but are very concerned about individual freedom and autonomy, and that consent is paramount.

The radical leftist types, their basic claim is that anything goes. But at the same time they’re putting forward these affirmative consent regulations and laws in many states, and they’re insisting that we live in the middle of a rape culture and they’re acting as if sex is a very volatile and dangerous enterprise, which actually happens to be the case. And so there’s…even though this issue is extraordinarily tense, partly because people on the left, I would say, would like to let a thousand flowers bloom, let’s say, there is an accruing agreement that there is some deep discussion that has to be had about sexual morality.

There isn’t a middle ground there. What is the compromise? Peterson doesn’t have a clue. He just says They’re upset on the left, they’re upset on the right, therefore they’re comparable, without noticing that they’re upset about radically different things: the Right is upset that they can’t control sexual behaviors, and the Left is upset that some people (including some on the left) still want to control sexual behaviors, and especially control women. That’s the key difference. There is no compromise to be made, no discussion to be had.

His explanation is that it’s all about birth control.

We haven’t adapted to the birth control pill yet. You know it was a major technological revolution, the birth control pill. It’s only been fifty years, and we haven’t figured out what it means for women to have control over the reproductive function and what the consequences of that should be socially. The leftist types, especially in the Sixties, thought you could just blow sexual morality up completely, because now people were free to do what they want but that isn’t working. There’s a backlash against that, on the left, as well, so it would be fun and necessary to think…fun, it would be engaging and necessary to think that through, ’cause maybe there’s room for some real discussion about that.

First, about the Sixties — there was a lot of exploitive crap going on, and there still is. There are always people who think freedom from consequences means freedom for them, but not for you, and that blowing up sexual morality was an opportunity to get more sex, rather than an opportunity for their partners to be liberated. I also don’t think there’s much to figure out about the consequences of ‘allowing’ women to control their own bodies — did we ever have that conversation about allowing men to have the freedom to control their own lives?

But again, he only rails against the sinister Left. I think for the most part the Left is on the same wavelength here: consent is essential, both women and men get to decide what sexual behaviors are rewarding, and that Charlie Kirk isn’t the reasonable, tolerant guy we should have a conversation with.

And Jesus, is Peterson so oblivious he doesn’t realize who he’s openly aligning with here?

Shocking revelation about my core discipline

My whole worldview is in upheaval. I thought I had a Ph.D. in biology, and broadly understood what that entailed, but now I learn that the proper way to parse the name of the discipline is not to read “bio” as “life”, but “bi” as in “two”. I’m a two-ologist!

Isn’t folk etymology fun? Especially when wielded by a conspiracy-theorist, racist, sexist, climate-change-denying, pro-war MAGAt to get the rationalization he wants.

Wow. That boy is stupid.

So I, too, could menstruate if I eat enough donuts?

Every once in a while, kind of like a cycle, some men on the internet get really mad about menstruation, and they start explaining how it’s filthy, unnatural, and disgusting for women to bleed from their vagina. “Why?” they wonder, and the obvious answer is that woman are unclean, they’re eating too much junk food, so menstruation must be their repulsive horrible body’s way of cleansing itself of toxins.

Obvs. I’m kind of curious about this “academia and the arts” cure, though, but not curious enough to wander over to the Art building on campus and ask the women faculty and students about their periods. I suspect they would, if they didn’t call the police, tell me that they’re perfectly normal and didn’t notice any decline in frequency when they entered college.

I’m also interested in this claim that “Men are the superior sex and they don’t have periods because we know how to look after their bodies.” So I could look for some fat lazy slob (why are you looking at me that way) watching trash TV (I didn’t!) and gossiping (I never!) and ask them if they’ve been menstruating lately (no, I’m not going to ask myself) (and no, I’ve never menstruated). I’m wondering if I could take up a diet of Twinkies and cheeseburgers now, and look as svelte as those ladies in the tampon commercials, if only I could start bleeding out of my bottom every month. It might be a fair trade.

It’s not just men who make these claims! Freelee the Banana Girl made similar arguments a while back. If you menstruate, you must have been wicked and accumulating toxins that your body needs to purge.

And don’t forget Yada the Hotep wackaloon. He got really angry when his daughter started menstruating, and went on a quest to find a magic bark and a magic diet that would make her stop. He also claims that animals don’t menstruate…except they sort of do. One way to stop menstruation is to get pregnant, and most mammals only thicken their endometrium seasonally, and typically don’t shed that tissue until they go into labor. Humans have the curse of year-round fertility, so that’s the problem, not that they menstruate, but that they are constantly preparing for a potential pregnancy.

I wrote about this before. It’s not about toxins or cleanses — it’s about maintaining a defensive boundary against those highly invasive mammalian embryos — put up a wall of soft vascularized tissue against the chance that you might get pregnant some month, and then discard it when fertilization fails to occur.

And the prize for worst not-pology goes to…

…Geoffrey Rush! It’s a tough field of contenders with a lot of really weasely apologies out there, but Rush went all out for the win. Rush treated his co-star in a play, Yael Stone, to the spectacle of taking off his clothes and dancing naked in front of her, spying on her in the shower with a mirror, and sending sexualized text messages to her, and has now offered up this stunning “apology” for his actions:

Clearly Yael has been upset on occasion by the spirited enthusiasm I generally bring to my work. I sincerely and deeply regret if I have caused her any distress. This, most certainly, has never been my intention.

I’m sort of impressed. That’s a degree of obliviousness that even I, in my cosseted male whiteness, couldn’t even aspire to. I’ll have to remember that “spirited enthusiasm” is a perfectly acceptable synonym for “sexual harassment”.