Tuesday, April 16, 2024
The Lord's Prayer and the Holy Name
In Matthews 6:9 we read:
Ἁγιασθήτω ὄνομά σου
Hagiasthētō onoma sou
hallowed be name of You
They are simple Greek words but how should we translate them? How to translate "Hagiasthētō"? It is a form of the normal Greek word for "holy". "Hallowed" is not a bad translation but it is an old-fashioned form of English. "Reverenced" or "revered" would be better. Perhaps "treated as Holy" would be best.
And what is the name being referred to? God the father is normally referred to in the Greek NT as "theos". But pagan gods are referred to in Greek as "theos" too. So the prayer is not referring to that. It is clearly referring to the distinctive name for the Hebrew god, as used thousands of times in the OT: "Yahveh", or "Jehovah" in English.
So Jesus was explicitly telling his disciples to not to follow the priestly practice of substituting other words for "Yahveh". It seems a pity that Christians have chanted those words so often while not heeding them. Most Christians follow the practice of the Pharisees despite Christ telling his followers not to. Rather amazing.
I am not here arguing for the rightness of the Jehovah's Witness denomination but they have clearly got one thing right. They one of the very few who obey the instructions in the Lord's Prayer
JR
************************************************
Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund State Department’s DEI Pseudoscience
The federal government increasingly looks like an Ivy League classroom, combining therapy for fragile souls with indoctrination into specious ideology.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the State Department, where employees are encouraged to take courses in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or DEIA, that stress their differences, trauma, and status on the victim-oppressor continuum.
As reported by The Daily Wire, the State Department spent a whopping $77 million on DEIA programs last year for its staffing shop, the Bureau of Global Talent Management.
Just this past month, the State Department offered a training session called “Unveiling the Hidden Wounds: Exploring Racial Trauma and Minority Stress.” It promised a “space for empathy” where “voices are heard, wounds are acknowledged, and action is taken towards justice and equity.”
Then there was “A Conversation on Racial Equity and Social Justice” with Bryan Stevenson, who pulled in $55,000 in donations per minute for a single TED Talk.
Employees could also take the half-day course “Intersectional Gender Analysis Training,” which “explores how gender and systems of power shape an individual’s lived experience.” Alternatively, they could attend a seminar called “Embrace Equity and Inspire Change” or a series of female empowerment sessions such as “Elevating Women in Technology and Beyond.”
Anticipating resistance, the State Department offered the course “Understanding Backlash to DEIA and How to Address It,” in which psychologist Kimberly Rios claimed to “highlight evidence demonstrating that DEIA initiatives can challenge the power, values, status, belonging, and cultural identity of dominant group members, particularly White Americans whose racial identity is important to their sense of self.” Rios will do this, the announcement said with unwitting irony, “to promote intergroup harmony.”
Government employees are required to take a variety of training courses to advance in their careers. Even five years ago, most of these were about doing your job better—courses on leadership, management, and other skills. But in the “woke” era, employees are also subjected to ideological sessions such as those mentioned above.
Given what all these courses and speakers cost taxpayers to provide, is there any evidence that they are based on sound information or that they improve the workforce?
Let’s examine one offering more closely.
The State Department runs a “DEIA Distinguished Scholar Speaker Series” that “highlights cutting-edge scientific research,” under which the agency recently brought in Yale professor John Dovidio to give a talk titled “Racism Among the Well-Intentioned—Challenges and Solutions.”
In a 2013 speech, Dovidio said: “About 80% of white Americans will say they are not sexist or they’re not racist … but work with the IAT will show that 60% to 75% of the population are both racist and sexist at an implicit level.”
So, what is this “IAT” that Dovidio cites?
Harvard’s Implicit Association Test is a favorite tool of social scientists who want to prove that people are inherently racist and sexist. This is a necessary premise for critical race theory, which posits that nebulous concepts such as “structural bias” and “systems of oppression” can explain all variances in performance between racial groups rather than individual factors such as education, industry, and behavior. The Implicit Association Test offers the evidence the Left needs to support this theory.
But the Implicit Association Test isn’t an accepted measure of bias. One of its own inventors said, “I and my colleagues and collaborators do not call the IAT results a measure of implicit prejudice [or] implicit racism.”
And in a 2015 review, Hart Blanton of Texas A&M wrote that “all of the meta-analyses converge on the conclusion that … IAT scores are not good predictors of ethnic or racial discrimination and explain, at most, small fractions of the variance in discriminatory behavior in controlled laboratory setting.”
In a 2021 academic paper, Ulrich Schimmack came to the same conclusion, writing that “IATs are widely used without psychometric evidence of construct or predictive validity.”
As far back as 2008, in an article for the American Psychological Association, Beth Azar wrote that a person’s scores on the Implicit Association Test “often change from one test to another.” German Lopez, writing for Vox, took the test two days apart and found that in the first, he “had a slight automatic preference for white people,” and in the second, “a slight automatic preference … in favor of black people.”
Summing up, Greg Mitchell of the University of Virginia said, “The IAT is not yet ready for prime time.”
That’s hardly a firm foundation for using taxpayers’ money to train federal staff in a worldview that will affect their careers and lives. And of course, all of the hours employees spend auto-flagellating with critical race theory is paid time they are not working on matters of national interest.
One can’t put too much blame on race merchants such as Dovidio, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Nikole Hannah-Jones for simply trying to sell their product. But the question is: Why is the government buying it with our money?
Taxpayer-funded institutions shouldn’t pay for courses and speakers whose premises are contentious and whose efforts won’t measurably improve the workforce.
Federal employees are free to explore social theory on their own time. On our dime, they should get on with their real job.
***********************************************
Antiwar Activists Chant ‘Death to America’ at Event Featuring Chicago Alderman
If they don't like America, they should be given a ticket to somewhere else
Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a member of the mayor’s leadership team, headlined an event Saturday at which some participants chanted “Death to America” and plotted ways to disrupt this summer’s Democratic National Convention in the city.
Sigcho-Lopez made headlines last month for appearing at another anti-convention protest, where he spoke next to a burned American flag. His appearance at the March 22 event prompted a nearly two-hour discussion before the City Council and an effort to remove him as chairman of its housing committee. The measure failed in a 29-16 vote.
After his most recent appearance at Saturday’s event, Sigcho-Lopez is facing a fresh wave of attention, given his role on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s leadership team.
The event, which drew about 300 antiwar activists to the Teamsters union headquarters in Chicago, took place as Iran was launching an attack on Israel. Olivia Reingold, a reporter for The Free Press, embedded with the activists and documented what transpired:
Earlier that day, before news of the attack broke, at a “breakout session” on “the antiwar movement,” Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, taught participants how to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi.
“Marg bar Israel,” he chanted, leading a group of about 80 attendees along with him. A man draped in a Soviet flag bearing a gold hammer and sickle clapped his hands.
A man in a full black denim outfit shouted out from behind his N95—“Can we get a ‘marg bar America’?”
“We can get a ‘marg bar America,’” Rizvi replied.
Then Rizvi raised his hand in the air, leading the crowd like a conductor. “Marg bar America,” they cheered.
The Free Press reported that attendees donned black N95 face masks while plotting ways to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in August.
“It’s really inspiring to see that people are just as enthusiastic, and maybe even more enthusiastic, to march on the DNC as they are to march on the RNC,” said Omar Flores, a Milwaukee-based activist, according to The Free Press. “We can thank Genocide Joe [Biden] and our movement for that.”
Sigcho-Lopez’s appearance at the pro-Palestinian event on March 22 sparked a raucous debate at the City Council’s April 1 meeting. The alderman said he was unaware that a military veteran burned an American flag near where he spoke.
“I make no apologies for standing for First Amendment rights. I think some of my colleagues need to have, maybe, a lesson of what First Amendment rights mean,” Sigcho-Lopez said at the meeting. “If any way, shape, or form, my actions have offended anyone—especially the veterans—I take full accountability, but not once, by no means, I’m going to condemn a veteran for using his First Amendment right.”
Sigcho-Lopez is a member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus of the Chicago City Council. He was first elected in 2019 to represent the 25th Ward.
A fellow member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus, Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, made headlines of her own last week. Taylor accused the Chicago Fire Department of making race-based decisions when administering tests to firefighters and distributing equipment.
*******************************************
So-called security guards
Most security personnel in Australia aren't armed and industry experts say current rules mean they "don't stand a chance" against attackers with dangerous weapons.
What's next? Security guards say they should be allowed to be armed, but some worry that would mean "going down a pretty dangerous road".
The horrific stabbing deaths of six people at a busy shopping centre in Sydney on the weekend has sent shockwaves across the nation.
Two victims — including one of the deceased, Faraz Tahir — were security guards.
It comes two months after the fatal stabbing of a 70-year-old grandmother at a shopping centre in Ipswich, Queensland.
In February, a 30-year-old security guard died after allegedly being punched in the head outside a pub in Sydney's south.
Now, there's debate about whether security guards have enough protection and powers to keep themselves, and the public, safe across the country.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Scentre Group, the company that operates Westfield shopping centres, have both flagged reviewing the measures in place around security personnel.
But for some security guards, it's too little too late — and they say lives could have been saved on the weekend if policy settings were different.
They're the people we expect to keep us safe in public spaces, but most security personnel in Australia aren't armed.
The award rate for security officers in Australia is about $25 an hour, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman.
And while they may look like law enforcement in some ways, security consultant Scott Taylor said they were not given the same tools to protect themselves and others in the face of danger.
"We have the same powers of arrest and use of force guidelines as any general citizen," the founder of Praesidium Risk and Resilience said.
Essentially, unarmed security guards can prevent you from entering certain places, remove you from a premises, make a citizen's arrest and use force if reasonable and necessary.
"[The general public] don't think of them as ... first responders to incidents, offering first aid, jumping in and going towards situations while others go the opposite way," Mr Taylor said.
Mr Taylor said he had long been advocating for security guards to be armed with capsicum sprays, stab-proof vests, batons and handcuffs.
"They're often going around with a small first aid kit, a torch and a radio," he said.
"For unarmed security personnel to be dealing with someone with an edged weapon like that ... sadly they had nothing else at their disposal — they don't stand a chance."
Samuel*, a security manager with more than 17 years experience in the industry, said people didn't understand the limitations placed on security guards.
He said Mr Tahir's death could have been prevented if he had proper protective gear.
"[He] did not have to lose his life ... no-one should have had to lose their lives over that."
Another security guard, Felix*, said greater access to stab-proof vests would better protect security guards against stabbings.
He said some employers didn't like security guards wearing extra protective equipment because it made them look unfriendly.
"A lot of clients want security to appear more as a friendly concierge. They get their panties in a twist that we look too intimidating or tactical. They believe it leaves their patrons with an uneasy feeling."
'A dangerous road'
Though it would require additional regulation, training, and likely, pay, Mr Taylor said it was time to give security guards better access to things like batons, protective equipment and capsicum sprays.
He said going so far as to arm security guards with guns, like they do in the United States, was not the solution.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
***************************************
Monday, April 15, 2024
The brutal new class division appearing in Australia
This is not a new division at all. There have always been those who inherited significantly and those who did not. And being a "not" is far from a life sentence. Those who pass down wealth often started off poor themselves. I did. Nobody ever gave me a penny -- or even a cent for that matter. I earned it all.
And I remember that. I now provide heavily discounted rental accommodation to five people and give half my disposable income to a charitable education cause. So the rigid class lines described below are a myth. There are such lines but they are not all due to inheritance and are not fixed or permanent. And inherited wealth is often squandered anyway, which makes it very impermanent. It is squandering that I find contemptible
Inheritocracy – a term recently heard. Our lucky country is careering towards a great generational divide; a landed gentry of property owners on one side and renters on the other. A brutal new class division, flippant about educational attainment as the great equaliser. Rules are upended in the new order; degree holders may well be losing out. Indeed, among certain writers it’s now de rigueur to put “renter” in your social media bio. Blazing contempt and coolness, the brazen political stance of the othered. But as a nation we’re heading into uncharted waters, as resentments grow and younger voters cleave to whatever political party can do something about this vexed housing situation. If it can. The challenges are immense, the population restive.
That silky game of inheritocracy is playing out all around me. In one corner, a succession of friends and acquaintances stepping into enormous wealth as their parents pass away and family dwellings are inherited. The talk is of clearing parents’ houses for sale, upsizing into better places, holiday homes on the coast, paying off mortgages, extensive travel. They’re living their best lives, free of the corrosiveness of money worries. That’s a heady liberation. And during a cost-of-living crisis, no less.
In another corner, the dumping of building waste in a local car park. A council man clearing it up tells me people can’t afford the tipping fees anymore, so they drive all over the city to find car parks and secluded roads without CCTV to deposit their waste, which sometimes contains asbestos. A tiny snapshot of the other side. Of despairing Australians forgoing three solid meals a day because they can’t afford it. Of putting off the doctor visit because it’s too expensive. Of holidays as a distant memory. And many younger Australians work within a new order of employment – they’re immersed in all the stresses and indignities of the gig economy; the sheer, craven callousness of a system not on their side.
The stark reality: vast numbers cannot afford to live the life their parents had. For a 34-year-old in 1990, the average mortage in Australia was roughly three times their yearly wage – now it’s eight times. Many have given up on that great Australian dream of home ownership, a situation likely to reverberate through the generations. It’ll never happen for them now, nor, quite possibly, their children. Thus disadvantage rolls down through the years. What is bequeathed is all the uncertainties of the rental market – and a fundamental stress in life is instability. When it comes to property, we want to feel safe, in our own place, in a dwelling no one is going to take away from us. In the lucky country, the Great Australian Dream is now denied to a vast tranche of the unlucky.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has warned that if we don’t act sharpish on housing affordability then Sydney may well be heading down the path of San Francisco, where you can see middle-class workers in suits and ties lining up for food banks and living in homeless shelters. The natural order of things, upended. The consequence of an obscene property market. Mookhey believes there’s only a five- to 10-year window to act.
“How one grudges the life and energy and spirit that money steals from one,” writer Katherine Mansfield wrote during a stretch of poverty. “I long to spend and have a horror of spending: money has corrupted me these last years.” The dream, for all of us, is to not be held hostage by a lack of money. To be free of the endless scrabble to obtain it, because how exhausting, stressful, consuming that is. What an extraordinary moment in time in Australia. We’re heading towards a new class order. It’s called a “propertocracy”, and it’s a tragedy for our nation.
**************************************************
Biden Education Secretary Refuses to Answer Whether ‘Women Are Physically Different Than Men’
There is no limit to Leftist reality denial
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona repeatedly refused to answer questions on whether physical differences exist between men and women at a Wednesday hearing.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced Monday that only biological females can play in women’s sports at the roughly 240 universities it represents, which lawmakers referenced at the House Appropriations Committee budget hearing. Cardona has rejected discussing the NAIA policy as he says his department is currently engaged in a related rulemaking process on Title IX, but Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris pressed him on the issue.
“Would you agree that Title IX was necessary to help establish women’s sports, because women can’t fairly be expected to compete on biological male teams?” Harris asked.
Cardona began to speak about another topic but Harris cut him off, saying, “Please. No filibustering.” The representative then repeated his question, to which Cardona agreed that Title IX was necessary for this reason.
Female athletes have sued the National Collegiate Athletics Association over its policy allowing biologically male athletes to compete against women.
“Would you agree that women are physically different from men?” Harris followed up.
“I see where you’re going with this,” Cardona responded before the congressman cut him off. Harris then repeated the question, to which Cardona gave the same answer, adding, “I would love to talk about how we can work together to support the students,” before Harris cut him off again.
The Education Department sent Title IX regulation to the White House for its evaluation in February, which is anticipated to increase protections for transgender people in sports, according to Politico.
“Mr. Secretary, do you agree that biological women are different from biological men physically?” he asked. “This is a simple question for an educator. You’re not going to answer. OK.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/10/miguel-cardona-wont-answer-question-about-womens-sports/
*********************************************U.S. Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Run a Fog Machine of War
Wikimedia
Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds.
A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”
But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.
Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.
Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.
Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.
“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.
There’s no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists.
As Congress debates major new funding to support the Ukrainian war effort, U.S. taxpayer dollars are already flowing to outlets such as the New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media, the Institute of Mass Information, the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine and many others.
Some of this money has come from the $44.1 billion in civilian-needs foreign aid committed to Ukraine. While the funding is officially billed as an ambitious program to develop high-quality independent news programs; counter malign Russian influence; and modernize Ukraine’s archaic media laws, the new sites in many cases have promoted aggressive messages that stray from traditional journalistic practices to promote the Ukrainian government’s official positions and delegitimize its critics.
It’s not only dissident voices targeted by the media groups, which are funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Detector Media went after the New York Times in February over a news report about hundreds of Ukrainians in the battle for Avdiivka who were captured or missing. The Ukrainian fact-check site offered little in terms of a rebuttal. Detector Media only cited a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Forces disputing the Times' story, which it labeled as "disinformation." The New Voice of Ukraine quoted a Ukrainian official describing the Times story as a “Russian Psyop,” a term for psychological warfare.
Unlike similar media development programs that USAID has led throughout the Middle East, Ukrainian outlets tend to produce a great deal of English content that trickles back into the domestic American audience and explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse.
The New Voice of Ukraine syndicates with Yahoo News. VoxUkraine is a fact-checking partner with Meta, which assists in removing content deemed “Russian disinformation” from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Detector Media has similarly led a consortium of nonprofit groups pressuring social media platforms to aggressively remove content critical of Ukraine.
"It makes more sense to have it in English because one of the things that happens is that the narrative that one encounters in the mainstream media in the West is referenced as the official Ukrainian voices," said Nicolai N. Petro, a professor specializing in Russian and Ukrainian affairs at the University of Rhode Island.
"These then become the known Ukrainian voices, although they're actually only an echo of the voice that we are projecting into Ukraine,” Petro added.
In the new aid earmarked for the war in Ukraine that Congress is now debating, a small portion of the $60 billion emergency spending package is devoted to continued USAID programs in the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview this week with Politico and Bild, argued that legislators skeptical of the aid package were under the influence of Russian propaganda.
“They have their lobbies everywhere: in the United States, in the EU countries, in Britain, in Latin America, in Africa,” Zelenskyy said of Russian influence, without naming names. The pro-Russian pressure groups, the Ukrainian president added, relied on "certain media groups, citizens of the United States."
Information control is a central dynamic playing out in the Ukraine-Russia war. U.S. media have provided wide coverage of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to clamp down on critical news outlets, enacting new criminal penalties for those publishing "false information" about the conflict. Many independent outlets in Russia have been forced to close, including the left-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy. The Russian government has also blocked Russian-language news sites based in the West and arrested at least 22 journalists, including the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich.
*****************************************
Discrimination against men can be toxic too
On one reading, Jason Lau, the man who successfully challenged the discriminatory sexism of the “Ladies Only” lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, is a massive sook. But on another reading, Lau is a paladin for modern men.
He is the victor in a small but significant fight against an increasingly aggressive feminist agenda that portrays all masculinity as “toxic” but doesn’t bother to define for boys what “non-toxic” masculinity might look like.
Lau paid full entry price for MONA but, like all male visitors, was refused entry to the lounge, which is a women-only space full of plush sofas and exquisite artworks cordoned off from the male gaze. The curator of the lounge, Kirsha Kaechele, says the discrimination is the point of the artwork – it is a comment on the historical exclusion of women from male spaces for centuries.
So piqued was Lau at being bounced from the lounge that he instigated a legal challenge against the museum. He made a complaint with Tasmania’s anti-discrimination commissioner, who escalated it to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
This week the tribunal found in his favour, with deputy president Richard Grueber stating that the relevant legislation “does not permit discrimination for good faith artistic purpose per se”. The museum is considering its options regarding an appeal.
The case was a literal example of what some men’s rights activists say is the new discrimination against men that post #MeToo feminism has enabled. It’s a hard contention for many women to stomach, to put it mildly.
We still face discrimination in the form of violence from men, pay inequity, and in the household labour we disproportionately take on. That’s not to mention the fact that in the United States – supposed a beacon of freedom – women’s rights over their own bodies are being stripped away at a pace that would please the Taliban.
This week the state of Arizona was the latest to outlaw abortion care. Control over female reproduction and sexuality is a well-recognised marker of ultra-right, nationalist and fascist governments. So long as they’re not facing all of that, what have men got to complain about?
Plenty, according to a growing number of sensible voices in the United States. They caution that if the left demonises men, particularly young men, in the process of pushing a gender-equality agenda, it leaves a vacuum for boys to be scooped up by misogynistic influencer-jerks like the notorious Andrew Tate.
Richard Reeves is one such voice. He is a British-American author and commentator who used to work for the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, he of the “radical-centrist” Liberal Democrats. Reeves now works at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan social sciences think-tank in Washington DC, where he is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
In 2022, he published a book called Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters and What To Do About It. In it, Reeves argued that young men feel displaced by advancing women’s rights and a changing jobs market, where traditional, working-class “men’s work” is shrinking and less valued than it used to be.
Overall, boys now perform less well in school than girls (a trend replicated in Australia), and more young women go to university than young men (again, this is the same in Australia). Men are less likely to have close friends than women, and they take their own lives at a much higher rate.
In the United States, these problems are amplified for black men, who are overall poorer, more susceptible to family disruption, and incarcerated at a much higher rate than non-black men. Reeves argues that it’s wrong for progressives to dismiss the hostility of some young men to feminism as a sexist backlash against ideals of equal opportunity.
He says that “young men see feminism as having metastasized [sic] from a movement for equality for women into a movement against men, or at least against masculinity”. This is especially galling for young men when they are struggling on a number of fronts (not least in terms of their mental health), but these struggles are ignored or even mocked in mainstream discourse.
This, in turn, leaves them susceptible to the overtures of nasty misogynists like Tate, and the masculinist “philosopher” Jordan Peterson. The latter, in particular, affects understanding and empathy with struggling young men, and helps them turn their energies outward rather than retreating inwards.
Jonathan Haidt is a New York University academic and author who has recently published a book on the ills of smartphones combined with childhood – The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He told the New York Times recently that there is plenty of evidence that social media is very bad for girls.
But for boys, the internet presents different dangers. While girls might be too invested online, for boys, the internet is a pathway to opting out. They do this through pornography and video games, which facilitate “the gradual withdrawal of boys from effort in the real world”. “We’re not seeing boys really applying themselves in the real world — we’re seeing them apply themselves in the virtual world,” Haidt says.
“They’re investing their time, their efforts into things that don’t pay off in the long run.” The appeal is obvious – porn and gaming are virtual opiates where your mastery is complete. In both, you are in control, or your male avatar is, and you can construct a fantasy-reality without having to consult, or please, the people around you – the women around you.
This male disaffection is mirrored in the growing political divide between young men and young women, a phenomenon across the OECD, including in Australia, on which I have written before. Sometimes the news can read like a litany of power abuses by men, from the geo-political to the interpersonal. But as we advance towards gender equality, we also need to consider how those stories are perceived by boys.
They need role models who can show them how to keep their innate sweetness, and pick a path towards being the sort of decent, kind men we all know in our families and communities.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
***************************************
Sunday, April 14, 2024
EU Proposals Could Make Swedish Jam Illegal After More Than a Century on the Market
A new proposal from the European Commission aims to make breakfast foods healthier for Europeans by raising the minimum berry content requirements in jam. The proposed regulations, discussed on April 10 and 11, seek to increase the minimum berry content in jams from 35 to 45 grams per hundred grams of product.
The proposal, which is likely to pass, poses significant implications for the Swedish jam industry, potentially altering over a century of culinary tradition.
Björnekulla, a renowned producer with popular offerings like raspberry jam, queen jam, and strawberry jam, finds itself at a crossroads due to these changes, as all the products would fall below the new permitted limit if the law is enacted.
Björnekulla would then face two options: either change their classic recipes or stop labeling their products as jam.
Pär Berglund, CEO of Björnekulla, expressed concerns about potential impacts on taste and pricing.
"More berries and less sugar tend to make the jam more sour. It's not just about compliance; it's about consumer preference," Berglund explained to Sydsvenskan.
Peter Kullgren, Minister of Rural Affairs, clarified that the intention behind the regulation is not to ban existing products but to standardize what qualifies as jam across Europe.
"This ensures that when you buy jam, whether in Sweden or Spain, you're getting the same quality and content," Kullgren stated.
*****************************************
Left is still defending OJ because race is more important to them than justice
“O. J. Simpson clearly killed people . . . he murdered his wife,” admitted CUNY professor and frequent media commentator Marc Lamont Hill on his “official” YouTube channel hours after Simpson’s family announced the athlete, entertainer and killer’s death from cancer at the age of 76.
Nevertheless, Hill maintained that Simpson’s 1995 acquittal was the “correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system.”
“He should have been found not guilty,” Hill continued. “It’s a referendum on the system.”
That’s who is teaching your children, America. A college professor saying that it’s OK to let a murderer go free — as long as it sticks it to “the system.”
The evidence against Simpson was overwhelming.
His hair, blood, shoe prints, glove and DNA were found at the crime scene. The victims’ blood and DNA were found there, in Simpson’s car, on his clothing and along a path leading from his car to his front door.
Multiple witnesses observed him leaving his home in dark clothes just before the murders were committed and returning shortly thereafter, with no alibi.
Prosecutors identified 62 incidents of harassment, assault and death threats against his ex-wife during and after his troubled marriage, including an assault conviction following a no-contest plea.
Instead of submitting to arrest for the double homicide, Simpson attempted to flee in a nationally televised car chase.
The sole mitigating factor, which Hill and those like him believe more important than all other evidence combined, is that one police officer involved in the case had previously used the “N-word.”
A predominantly black jury felt that was enough for reasonable doubt, and racial politics alone were enough to gain freedom for Simpson, a criminally accused black man, and deny justice to his victims, who were white.
The Simpson decision was bad enough, but the tragedy is how that 1995 verdict became the left’s de facto stance.
If you thought Hill was saying the quiet part out loud, tune into CNN, where commentator Ashley Allison claimed on air that Simpson “represented something for the black community . . . because there were two white people who had been killed.”
She followed this appalling justification of murdering whites by cautioning that “we will always have moments like O. J. Simpson.”
Allison is no outlier.
She was a senior staffer of President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, worked on his transition team, served as an Obama administration senior policy adviser and was a fellow of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.
Try asking her if “all lives matter” and see if you get a more encouraging response than White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre’s insulting statement that the administration’s “thoughts are with [Simpson’s] family during this difficult time,” with no mention of the victims or their families.
While you’re at it, pose the same question to any George Soros-funded district attorney, starting with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, whose campaign website declared it is “morally indefensible” to prosecute crimes that lead to disproportionate incarceration of blacks.
Since Bragg’s election, his office has radically reduced prosecutions for felony offenses and instead criminally charged heroes like Marine veteran Daniel Penny for daring to defend themselves and others.
*****************************************
Another academic fraud
I knew before I looked it up what skin color the lady would be. Guess! Good scholarship among Left-leaning blacks seems to be virtually non-existent. It's pretty rare among Left-leaning whites too
Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.
Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.
The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise.
Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials. In 2022, investigative journalist Christopher Brunet pointed out that, despite billing herself as a macroeconomist, Cook had never published a peer-reviewed macroeconomics article and had misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming that she had published an article in the journal American Economic Review. In truth, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.
An exclusive City Journal and Daily Wire investigation reveals additional facts that cast new doubt on Cook’s seriousness as a scholar.
In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University’s own written academic standards.
We will review several examples which, taken together, establish a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/lisa-d-cooks-careless-scholarship
****************************************Seattle dance squad says they were told American flag shirts made audience members feel ‘triggered and unsafe’
What an absurdity! Old Glory makes someone feel "unsafe"! They are mental cases if so. It's most probably just a lie. But the anti-patriotism of the Left is very sad and destructive
Over the weekend at the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle, the Borderline Dance team was set to perform, but were essentially told they weren’t welcome by organizer Rain Country Dance Association, an LGBTQ+ dance community, over their matching American flag themed shirts, Jason Rantz reported for 770 KTTH.
“Unfortunately, what our team was met with upon arrival was that our flag tops were offensive to some of the convention goers,” the dance group posted to Facebook.
“There was a small group that felt ‘triggered and unsafe.'”
Co-captain Lindsay Stamp spoke with Rantz for The Jason Rantz Show, explaining that their costumes sparked a “small percentage” of complainants who brought up Israel’s war against Hamas and transgender issues.
“At first we were told we would just be boo’d, yelled at and likely many of them would walk out,” the group’s Facebook post explained. “This did not deter us. But then we were given an ultimatum. Remove the flag tops and perform in either street clothes (which most didn’t bring as they traveled there in their uniforms) or they would supply us with ECH shirts from years past… Or, don’t perform at all, which effectively was asking us to leave.”
“We don’t speak for our team, we speak on behalf of them so the choice was theirs,” the post said. “As we knew would happen because there really was no choice in our minds, it was a unanimous NO.”
Stamp told Rantz that members of the team were shocked after they spent only 30 minutes at the venue before they started receiving complaints, adding that the team is patriotic, but doesn’t make statements about politics.
“My team doesn’t take a political stance. We came to dance,” she said. “We’re a patriotic group. We support our military, our veterans, our first responders. We’re a group of patriots.”
In the Facebook post, the group said they were not the only one that received this treatment.
“Our friends, West Coast Country Heat, who were also scheduled to dance for the convention that evening also did not perform as they too proudly don the colors of our country in the same spirit of patriotism that we do,” the post said. “Both of our teams stood in solidarity and put actions to words.”
But, the group said watching the two teams band together was “the greatest performance.”
“These people are strong, resolute and unwavering in their patriotism,” the Borderline Dance Team said. “They are the families and friends of people who have suffered the unimaginable so that we may all have our own opinions and sleep soundly in our beds at night. THAT is why we wear the colors. Because although we may not always agree with the current state of things, we recognize that being an American means true FREEDOM.”
“We all understood and accepted this and walked out with class and dignity despite the discrimination we had experienced,” the post added.
The Rain Country Dance Association did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment but indirectly addressed the incident on Facebook.
“Hi y’all! After the close of another amazing Hoedown weekend, we know there are some questions about the Saturday night performance line-up,” the post read.
“We appreciate y’all giving us the time to clear up misunderstandings and address the situation with people directly involved. We will be posting a follow-up statement later this week once we are able to have those conversations.”
In a Facebook comment, board president Ziadee Cambier said members of the Borderline Dance Team weren’t asked to leave.
“We will be in continued communication with the captains of the dance teams that were slated to perform Saturday,” she wrote.
“To clarify, as this was not a competition, no one was disqualified and no one was asked to leave. While we are mending our relationships directly with the dance teams we will be disabling comments on this post. We will be sharing more information later this week, to hopefully clear up any misunderstandings.”
Stamp disagreed and told Rantz she didn’t think there was miscommunication.
“It’s pretty clear to me, there’s always room for error in any situation, but I don’t believe so,” she said.
“I would just love to see more conversations opened about people accepting one another,” she added. “About being wholly inclusive. You know, every group of person talks about being inclusive and accepting. And I think that we need to work on being inclusive and accepting of people outside of our immediate comfort zones. I would love to see that.”
*********************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
***************************************
Thursday, April 11, 2024
"Married at First Sight" TV show is a cry for help about the state of gender relations
Rubbish! The participants are picked for drama potential, not representativeness
Each relationship was not so much the beginning of two people’s happily ever after as it was project management for the brides of their of grooms.
Take Cass – an admin officer from Queensland – who was bubbly, outgoing and optimistic while also mourning the death of her first boyfriend and mother. She was matched with Tristan – a 30-year-old events officer from NSW – who at one stage told the experts and his co-stars that he “hates himself” as he has always struggled with his weight and finding connections with women.
Sneaky editing and the splicing and dicing of footage amplified everything, but it was difficult to watch how both individuals grappled with these issues, and each other, while trying to build a romantic connection. Tristan then threw a tantrum when Cass asked to leave.
Another star, Lucinda – a compassionate wedding celebrant from Byron Bay – was matched with Tim, a convicted drug smuggler, who wouldn’t touch or open up to her until midway through the season. He proudly proclaimed he was “like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz” and didn’t like to talk about feelings (or his criminal past) until the final credits rolled.
Lucinda cracked.
“Am I signing up for minimum affection? Am I signing up for someone who can’t share their emotions?”
The silver lining was witnessing both Tristan and Tim acknowledge their troubles. But the excessive emotional labour required by their partners should be something the Fair Work Commission should look into.
The highlights of the season was not the salacious scenes and sound bites, it was the way it held up a mirror to how far we have to go when it comes to breaking down the barriers men face.
There are still oceans of difference between how men and women interact and seek help.
Women are talkers. Men – if this MAFS sample size is anything to go by – are unable to shake off conditioning to not seek external help from friends and professionals when it comes to “hidden” issues like emotional pain and mental turmoil.
MAFS cops a lot of criticism. Rightly so. It’s got about as much depth as a paddling pool. Yet if it continues to help shine a light on how we can help bridge the gender divide to stop women being the carers and men being closed off, sign me up for another serving of this televisual junk food.
************************************************
Marriage and babies really DO make women happier, says top researcher who's spent 20 years studying relationships
The US is battling an epidemic of sad, anxious young women. Despite the surge in our opportunities and freedoms over the past 50 years, it appears we are more depressed than ever.
Studies suggest that around a third of all adult women suffer some sort of mental health problem, compared to a fifth of men.
This is particularly apparent in the 18 to 25 age group, 41 percent of which are said to suffer anxiety, according to Harvard University research.
Over the last six years, the amount of women reporting depression increased 10 percent, from 26.2 percent in 2017 to 36.7 percent in 2023, according to a Gallup poll of over 5000 US adults.
With 20 years under my belt as a sociologist, studying the lifestyle patterns of Americans as well as their fulfillment over time, I believe I have stumbled on one possible explanation for this sea of sadness.
It might appear a controversial take: too few women are getting married.
Only 47 percent of women ages 18 to 55 were married in the US in 2022, compared to 72 percent in 1970, according to my analysis of the U.S. census data. Research from Bowling Green State University shows marriage rates reached an all time low in 2021 in the United States, with only 28 out of every 1000 married women getting married each year in the country, down from 76 in the 1970s.
There are a myriad of reasons for this - more career focus, less disposable income and a change in societal norms are just a few.
But the uncomfortable truth is women who aren't married are worse off, health-wise, compared to their married counterparts.
Studies have shown that married women have a lower risk of developing heart disease, are less likely to die from heart disease and have longer lifespans in general than non-married women.
One study tracking a sample of over 11,000 nurses found that married women are 35 percent less likely to die early than those who did not marry.
The mental health benefits of marriage and having a family of your own have also been well proven in scientific studies.
Some 40 percent of married mothers - both heterosexual and lesbian women - aged under 55 reported that they were 'very happy' with their lives, compared with 22 percent of single, childfree women and 25 percent of married childfree women, according to 2022 General Social Survey. Only 13 percent of divorced women say they've reached this level of happiness.
It is true, however, that more than one in three couples will get divorced. However, it's worth saying that many divorced couples remarry - up to 64 percent - and studies show this improves self-reported happiness.
Those who often find themselves irritated by their partner's infuriating habits may find this surprising.
But it's true: Studies have consistently shown that strong social relationships are key to happiness. And research has also shown that, although it may sound stereotypical, spouses provide a stronger bond than any other relationship.
Admittedly, taking care of children is an exhausting job. But extensive research has shown that the rewards outweigh the negatives. Married women also have the advantage of working alongside a devoted partner to share the tough job.
Despite the scientific data, social media is doing its part to malign marriage.
On TikTok, videos that jokingly depict marriage as a fast route to domestic chores like washing dishes, caring for a newborn baby, and cleaning the house, go viral.
Then there's the glamorization of childfree life, much of which is a result of the social media trend of DINKS (which stands for 'dual income no kids').
DINK couples consistently go viral online, showcasing their luxurious and fun-filled lives spent travelling the world and spending surplus cash that would, presumably, otherwise go on diapers.
These sentiments are being absorbed nationally. Only 24 percent of women under 30 believe that women who get married and have kids live fuller and happier lives than those who don’t, according to a 2023 poll.
Yes, it's true that men benefit more from marriage than women do when it comes to the division of household labor. And it has been shown that women, on average, do more emotional labor and spend more time on chores and childcare than their male partners.
But the gap in those measurements has been flattening somewhat, as my research from the Institute for Family studies (IFS) has shown.
My studies prove that dads are more involved in their children’s lives than ever before. Dads' child are time has increased while mothers’ child care time has remained stable over the past two decades.
American fathers now spend an average of nearly eight hours per week taking care of their children at home, while mothers’ childcare time is around 13.
As far as I am concerned, household work is work - and if you add up the number of hours mothers and fathers spend working overall, it's pretty much the same, on average.
In 2021-2022, work averaged 57 hours per week for both married fathers and mothers with children under age 18.
Also, studies that show married men benefit more from marriage are usually comparing married men to single men, not married men to married women.
When the comparison group is changed, the happiness level for married men and women is quite similar. Around 37 percent of married women under 55 and younger say they are 'very happy' as do 34 percent of married men, according to the IFS 2022 General Social Survey.
Likewise, 40 percent of married mothers report being very happy with their lives, as are 35 percent of married fathers.
In 2017, comments made by Hollywood star Anne Hathaway about her marriage to actor and producer Adam Shulman were heavily criticized on social media.
She told ELLE: 'I think the accepted narrative now is that we, as women, don’t need anybody. But I need my husband. His unique and specific love has changed me.'
The idea that a woman could need a man did not sit well with the Gen Z feminists on Instagram, who passionately argued that Hathaway was 'letting the side down' by insinuating that women cannot be truly happy without a male partner.
But the truth is, sharing your life with another person does have unique benefits for your emotional health.
Perhaps this is because married people are known to be markedly less lonely than their peers.
The CDC have identified loneliness as a contributor to a host of diseases- from dementia to stroke- as well as earlier death.
You might say it is possible to beat loneliness with a long-term partner, or even a good friend. But there is a sense of anxiety-busting stability you get with marriage that is not the case for other long-term relationships. It's a controversial point, but much of this lies in the financial benefits.
Padding your income with a partner's contribution allows you to lead a much more comfortable life.
In 2022, the median family income for married women ages 18-55 was $114,000, but only $54,000 for single, never-married women according to my analysis of American Community data.
Married women also have more than 10 times the assets than single, never-married women by the time they are in their 50s, which can help them close in on retirement.
Marriage is not a cure-it-all magic wand, but the data tell us that the average American woman who is married with children is markedly less lonely and living a more meaningful and joyful life.
So, to millions of young women who are at the start of adulthood: Do not let your fears of failing in love and family, or a slavish devotion to career, hold you back.
Do not allow popular misconceptions to keep you from enjoying the benefits of marriage and motherhood.
Prioritize relationships in your twenties, cultivate friendships with other marriage-minded young adults, be open to a relationship that could lead to marriage, and embrace marriage and parenthood when the time comes.
*************************************************
Landmark review rejects puberty blockers for children wanting to change gender
An entire field of medicine aimed at enabling children to change gender has been “built on shaky foundations”, the chairwoman of an NHS review has concluded.
Dr Hilary Cass found that there was no good evidence to support the global clinical practice of prescribing hormones to under-18s to halt puberty or transition to the opposite sex.
This method of medical intervention for young people who identify as transgender has become embedded in clinical guidelines around the world over the past two decades. Thousands of children have received puberty blockers on the NHS since 2011, and referrals to its youth gender identity service have increased 100-fold in little over a decade.
Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS England in 2020 to review services for children with gender dysphoria. Her final report has endorsed a fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have.
Rishi Sunak welcomed her findings and said that the lack of knowledge about the long-term impact of medical interventions meant people should proceed with “extreme caution”. He said: “We’ve seen a sharp rise in recent years of children, particularly adolescent girls, questioning their gender. I welcome Dr Cass’s expert review which urges treating these children, who often have complex needs, with great care and compassion.
“We simply do not know the long-term impact of medical treatment or social transitioning on them, and we should therefore exercise extreme caution.
“We acted swiftly on Dr Cass’s interim report to make changes in schools and our NHS, providing comprehensive guidance for schools and stopping the routine use of puberty blockers, and we will continue to ensure that we take the right steps to protect young people. The wellbeing and health of children must come first.”
The report contains 32 recommendations for overhauling services. “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” Cass said, adding that children must be seen “as a whole person and not just through the lens of their gender identity”.
She said it was vital that services take into account high rates of autism and mental health problems in children identifying as transgender.
The report is the world’s biggest review into the contested field of trans healthcare, and involved patients, families, academics and doctors.
Researchers at the University of York examined all available evidence on how to treat children questioning their gender identity. They concluded there was “wholly inadequate” evidence to support medical intervention, making it impossible to know whether it improves mental or physical health.
The treatment, or pathway, involves giving children puberty blockers, and then cross-sex hormones from the age of 16, and has been adopted globally.
In an opinion piece for the BMJ, Cass said evidence-based medicine was built around three pillars of integrating the best available research with clinical expertise, and patient preferences. She said: “When conducting the review, I found that in gender medicine those pillars are built on shaky foundations.”
The review found that the use of puberty blockers had “spread at pace” around the world, based on a single Dutch study that began in 1998. It said there was no good evidence that puberty blockers helped, and they may damage bone health and height.
The NHS has committed itself to overhauling its gender identity services for children, including banning the use of puberty blockers for under-16s. The youth gender identity clinic run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been closed, with care moved to two new NHS services.
The review also found that debates on trans issues had led to fear among doctors and parents, with some worrying about being accused of transphobia. Since the Gender Identity Development Service opened in 1989, it has seen more than 9,000 young people.
An NHS spokesman said: “NHS England is grateful to Dr Cass for comprehensive work on this important review. The NHS has made significant progress towards establishing a fundamentally different gender service for children and young people.”
A 2019 investigation by The Times first exposed concerns about children being put on experimental treatments at NHS gender clinics.
Helen Joyce, from Sex Matters, a charity that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, said: “Hilary Cass’s report is the nail in the coffin for the so-called ‘gender-affirming’ treatment model. The total lack of evidence base is laid bare for everyone to see.”
************************************************
Australia: No transition from gender reality, app boss Sall Grover tells court
The founder of a women's-only social media app says she does not accept that a person who transitions from male to female surgically, socially and legally is a woman, and removed her from the app as she does with “all males”.
The view, held by Giggle for Girls app founder and CEO Sall Grover was described in court on Wednesday by Roxanne Tickle’s legal team as being at the “heart” of the discrimination case.
Ms Tickle, who underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2019 and is now designated as female on her birth certificate, argues she was discriminated against on the grounds of gender identity by Giggle for Girls and Ms Grover when she was denied access to the app. Ms Tickle claims she was initially accepted into the app in February 2021 when she submitted a “selfie” through Giggle’s third-party artificial intelligence tool but was later blocked by Ms Grover.
Barrister Bridie Nolan, for Ms Grover, says the app was designed “for the purpose of achieving equality between men and women in public life by providing an online refuge”, and so does not amount to discrimination as it is a “special measure”.
But Georgina Costello KC, acting for Ms Tickle, said: “The critical issue in this case, your honour, is that the first and second respondents, Ms Grover and the company Giggle for Girls, have persisted in misgendering the applicant for years. That’s the heart of this case – that there’s been a discrimination on the basis of gender in excluding her from the app and persisting in misgendering her subsequently.”
It is the first time a case alleging gender identity discrimination has been heard by the Federal Court following changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013, which made it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.
Ms Costello asked Ms Grover in cross-examination whether “even where a person who was assigned male gender at birth has transitioned to being a woman” by having gender-affirming surgery, taking hormones to make them grow breasts, removing their facial hair, wearing female clothing and using female changing rooms, “you don’t accept that that person is a woman, do you?”
“No,” Ms Grover replied.
Ms Costello continued: “I suggest to you that in Australian society, the natural meaning of, the ordinary, contemporary meaning of woman, includes women whose gender is dated to be a woman on their birth certificate, having transitioned from man to woman?”
“I don’t agree,” Ms Grover replied.
Ms Costello also questioned Ms Grover about the alleged hurt caused to Ms Tickle through interviews and tweets referring to her as a man.
The court heard Ms Tickle said in an affidavit Ms Grover’s public statements about the case had been “distressing, demoralising, draining and hurtful” and claimed the “scale of online hate” towards her, as a result, was “enormous”.
Ms Grover agreed she would have done about 20 to 50 interviews about the case, most recently travelling to the UK for press, and that she frequently described Ms Tickle as a man, and as a “man wanting access to female spaces”.
Ms Grover also said she had told interviewers she was “harassed by the applicant” and “afraid of the applicant”.
Ms Costello put to her that it was “not kind” to refer to Ms Tickle as a man. “I don’t think it’s kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman,” Ms Grover responded.
In her opening address on Tuesday, Ms Nolan argued “sex” is a biological and binary concept, while Ms Tickle’s legal team argued it is partly psychological and social.
On Wednesday afternoon, barrister Zelie Heger, on behalf of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner submitted that “sex” for the purpose of the Sexual Discrimination Act is “changeable” and “non-binary” and as a result not “only” biological.
The Commissioner is assisting the Court by providing submissions about the meaning, scope and validity of relevant provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).
Ms Heger also said a person can be of the “female sex” as per the Act “if they are registered as such” and “had gender affirming surgery”.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
***************************************
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Do autism and psychopathy overlap?
Answering that question runs into a lot of difficulties over definition. For reference, I give the Mayo definition of both conditions below
* Autism spectrum disorder is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socializes with others, causing problems in social interaction and communication. The disorder also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior.
* Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior.
As you will see, psychopathy is no longer called that any more. For a while it was renamed "sociopathy" but now it is usually called "antisocial personality disorder'
There would appear to be one clear area of overlap: concern over other people and their feelings. But the causality would appear to be different. The psychopath is aware of other people's feelings but doesn't care while the austistic person is not aware. Both ignore other peoples feeling but for different reasons. Still, that indifference is a central feature of both syndromes so their apparent identity is an important question.
In my case, I am a person with a pretty full set of autistic characteristics, and I am aware of how little other people's sufferings and feelings impact me. I am not a sympathetic person. I do for instance greatly deplore the vicious October 7 attacks on innocent Israelis by a deranged Palestinian minority but I cannot FEEL anything about that event.
But on the other hand I have always been generous to others in some ways. At present I give roughly half of my disposable income to a charitable cause while living a generally frugal personal life. I have long given away a large slice of my income
So there is clearly a possibility of mistaking the two traits and unwinding any confusion depends on looking at other characteristics of the person
Another potential confusion is the way I drive. I am a "demon" driver and that could be mistaken for psychopathic carelessness. But it is an item of pride to me that in 60 years of driving I have never hurt myself or anyone else. I just work with fine margins, that's all. I have been known to give my passengers the shakes however
So again, things that may look the same may in fact be fundamentally different
This very post is an instance of autistic behaviour. It is common for autistics to be unusually self-revealing. Psychopaths, on the other hand, tend to be devious and to "fake good"
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen is an acknowledged authority on autism and he argues that calling it a "disorder" is wrong.
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12703
Like some of the people mentioned in the article linked below I am inclined to think it can be a gift, or even a "superpower"I commented on that article a few days ago
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/04/beautiful-minds-inside-identity.html
JR*****************************************************
How Can People Keep Claiming That Penalties Don't Deter Criminals?
Gordon Tulloch long ago did the numbers on this and found that the threat of punishment DOES deter crime. See below:
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/does-punishment-deter-crime
Last week, New York’s progressive Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, claimed he doesn't believe increasing penalties deters crime. He said:"I was simply asked a question of, ‘Do I believe that increasing penalties deters crime,’ and I gave a simple answer, ‘No,’ ” Heastie told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t believe, in the history of increasing penalties, has that ever been the reason that crime has gone down.
"I'd love somebody to give me an example as to when that happened."
Unfortunately, Heastie is hardly alone. Soros backed District Attorneys across the country don’t believe that their unwillingness to prosecute criminals has anything to do with increasing crime. In academia, most criminologists (which is dominated by sociologists) don’t even include things like arrest and convictions rates in their empirical work on questions such as gun control because they don’t think that it matters in determining crime rates.
It is hard to believe that anyone takes such a claim seriously, but it is a popular idea among progressives. If Heastie really believes that, then he should be open to abolishing police and prisons. If penalties don’t reduce crime, then why waste money on police, courts, and prisons? By the same token, perhaps we should also eliminate the penalties for violating the gun control laws that Heastie so strongly supports.
We can see what happens on our southern border when we don’t enforce laws or impose penalties. People simply continue breaking the law and entering by the millions.
California’s murder rate peaked in 1993 at 13.1 per 100,000 people, an increase from 10.9 per 100,000 in 1989. But by 2000, the murder rate had fallen by 53% compared to its 1993 peak. One obvious explanation is the enactment of California’s tough, three-strikes criminal punishment law on March 7, 1994.
New York City increased the number of police officers from 31,000 to 40,000 during the 1990s, and major felonies meanwhile plunged from 430,460 in 1993 to 162,064 in 2001. Over those same years, the number of murders plummeted from 1,927 to 649.
Amidst longer prison sentences and higher arrest and conviction rates, criminals will commit fewer crimes. The vast majority of empirical research by economists shows that. It’s also simply logical that in addition to keeping criminals off the street, the threat of arrest and conviction will deter criminals. The higher price for crime, the less crime you get, Most criminals do not want to go to prison.
Criminals also don’t want to get hurt, and an armed citizenry can make criminals think twice. The defensive value of guns is evidenced by international comparisons of so-called “hot burglaries,” whereby a resident is at home when a criminal strikes. In the United Kingdom, which has tough gun-control laws, almost 60% of all burglaries are “hot burglaries.” In the United States, where gun ownership is commonplace, the “hot burglary” rate stands at only 13 percent. The overall burglary rate in the UK is about two-thirds higher than the rate in the US (2.7 per 1,000 in US and 4.5 per 1,000 in England & Wales).
Convicted American felons reveal in surveys that they are much more worried about armed victims than about encountering the police. The fear of armed victims causes American burglars to spend more time than their foreign counterparts in “casing” a house to ensure that nobody is home. American burglars break into homes during the middle of the day, when homeowners are less likely to be at home, but British burglars often break in during the evening so that they can get the homeowners to open up any safes. Felons frequently comment in interviews that they avoid late-night burglaries because “that’s the way to get shot.”
It isn’t rocket science. Criminals are deterred with higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and the fact that victims might be able to defend themselves. One wonders if people like Carl Heastie have ever had children.
******************************************
Arizona Supreme Court revives 160-year-old abortion ban
Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday revived a 160-year-old ban on abortion, a decision that ratchets up the political stakes in a state that could decide the 2024 presidential race.
Abortion in the state has been allowed through 15 weeks of pregnancy under a law that the GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature passed in 2022, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents and some Republican politicians argued that the recent law didn’t override one dating to 1864 – before Arizona was a state – that banned abortion throughout pregnancy except in lifesaving situations.
The Arizona Supreme Court, in a 4-to-2 decision, agreed that the 19th-century law takes precedence. The court delayed implementation of the ban for at least two weeks to allow for additional legal arguments, but abortion-rights advocates appear to have few options to prevent it from taking effect.
The state high court said legislators had made clear at the time of the 2022 law that they wished to restrict abortion as much as federal law allowed.
“To date, our legislature has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorised, elective abortion,” Justice John R. Lopez IV wrote for the court.
Most abortions take place before 15 weeks of pregnancy, and Arizona thus far has seen little change in the number of abortions since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to the procedure. Now a state with a libertarian streak will have one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, similar to laws in deep-red states such as Oklahoma and Texas.
It is unclear when or whether the ban will ultimately be enforced. Arizona Attorney-General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Tuesday that women and doctors won’t be prosecuted while she holds office.
Nonetheless, the ruling is likely to supercharge the fight over a ballot measure to protect abortion rights that is expected to be on the state ballot in November – and could spill over into other races in a top battleground state. The measure would allow abortion access through foetal viability, or more than halfway through a typical pregnancy. Abortion-rights groups already have collected more than 500,000 signatures, putting the measure on track to clear the threshold required to appear on the ballot.
Arizona is a longtime GOP bastion that has been electing Democrats in recent years. Abortion was a potent issue in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats won all major statewide offices and performed better than expected across the country.
November’s election will see many competitive races in the state, meaning Arizona voters could decide which party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. Republicans have worried that an outright ban would push winnable voters into the Democratic column.
President Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020 but is trailing former President Donald Trump in most surveys this year, including in a Wall Street Journal poll from March. The poll found that abortion was a rare issue in which voters in seven battleground states favoured Biden over Trump.
“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” Biden said Tuesday.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Arizona was one of a handful of states that never formally repealed abortion bans that had been on their books before the 1973 Roe decision that recognised abortion rights nationwide for nearly 50 years. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, the old bans once again became potentially enforceable.
In September 2022, a state trial court briefly allowed enforcement of the old ban, but an appeals court stepped in and blocked it. That court said the 19th-century measure needed to be harmonised with the more recent law, effectively allowing abortions up to 15 weeks.
**********************************************
The Tailspin of American Boys and Men
Many boys and men are struggling to flourish in their roles as sons, students, employees, and fathers, and to achieve the sense of purpose that comes from being rooted within marriages, communities, churches, and country.
Much of the literature on the boy crisis contains impressive, even essential social science work that clearly demonstrates that boys and men are falling behind. My recent essay, “Men Without Meaning: The Harmful Effects of Expressive Individualism,” is an attempt to distill this literature and explore how expressive individualism—the notion that the inner self is the true self and is radically autonomous—plays a central role in the boy crisis.
The ascendance of expressive individualism, which can be traced to the Sexual Revolution, is partially responsible for the breakdown of marriage and has gained a foothold in religious institutions. Among others, it combines the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, who divorced sex from gender; psychologist Sigmund Freud, who elevated human sexuality as central to identity; and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that man is innocent and corrupted by society.
Political scientist Warren Farrell and counselor John Gray’s The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It is the go-to text for understanding the dad deprivation that is the primary cause of the boy crisis. It lays out how a dad’s presence can positively impact a child’s scholastic achievement, verbal intelligence and quantitative abilities, and development of trust and empathy. Likewise, it shows that the absence of a father’s presence increases the likelihood that a child will drop out of school, commit suicide, use drugs, become homeless, end up in poverty, develop hypertension, and be exposed to or commit bullying and violent crime, including rape.
Fathers, like mothers, contribute in unique and indispensable ways to the raising of children. One example is through play, which helps children develop, learn the limits of their bodies, and properly channel aggression. According to, “Theorizing the Father-Child Relationship: Mechanisms and Developmental Outcomes”: “Children seem to need to be stimulated and motivated as much as they need to be calmed and secured, and they receive such stimulation primarily from men, primarily through physical play.”
Dad deprivation is especially disastrous for boys. As mimetic creatures, theoretical arguments about masculinity and virtue fall short of a father’s lived witness of their mastery. Boys learn how to become good men by imitating a good man, and the mentors of their lives are their fathers.
Thanks to expressive individualism’s effect on our moral imagination, however, today many people dismiss the benefits of embodied play and assume that fathers and mothers are interchangeable. We have accepted the premises that the mind and body are disconnected and the body is unimportant.
Expressive individualism has also changed the way we think about marriage, making it more fragile. Marriage is no longer geared towards the character formation of each spouse and to providing a loving environment for the raising of children, but rather is now primarily viewed as a means to achieving emotional satisfaction and personal improvement. Rather than both husband and wife sacrificing for the good of the marriage, each spouse aims separately to achieve his and her personal subjective idea of “self-actualization.”
As Andrew Cherlin, a sociology and public policy professor at Johns Hopkins University, articulates in The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, marriages based on expressive individualism involve:
Growing and changing as a person, paying attention to your feelings, and expressing your needs…[M]arriages are harder to keep together, because what matters is not merely the things they jointly produce—well-adjusted children, nice homes—but also each person’s own happiness.
Over twenty years ago, in The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers drew attention to the fact that boys were falling behind in school. Some of the precipitating causes were newer, such as zero tolerance policies, the decline of free play and recess, and the rise of a self-esteem centered safety culture. Others reach back much further. Our education system, in many ways, is not designed for boys. Simultaneous shifts in our economy have lengthened the time spent in school and raised the stakes of getting an education.
On average, the energy level of boys makes it difficult for them to sit still for long periods. They can be unorganized and frustrate their teachers, who factor behavior into grading. Perhaps some teachers, mired in expressive individualism, expect girls and boys to behave the same, as “boys on average receive harsher exclusionary discipline than girls for the same behaviors.” In truth, as senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute Richard Reeves writes: “The parts of the brain associated with impulse control, planning, future orientation, sometimes labeled the ‘CEO of the brain,’ are mostly in the prefrontal cortex, which matures about 2 years later in boys than in girls.”
The progressive style of education, relying on Rousseau’s romantic vision and promulgated by reformers like John Dewey and others, contends that theoretically children should direct their own educational trajectory. This has been particularly harmful to boys. Approximately since the 1970s, as Sommers writes, children have been treated as their “own best guides in life. This turn to the autonomous subject as the ultimate moral authority is a notable consequence of the triumph of the progressive style over traditional directive methods of education.”
Changes in education were greeted with changes in the economy itself. Precipitated by free trade and automation, America is now a global knowledge economy. Overall, those most negatively impacted have been men without much education. According to “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men”: “Between 1973 and 2015, real hourly earnings for the typical 25-54 year-old man with only a high school degree declined by 18.2 percent, while real hourly earnings for college-educated men increased substantially.” American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis details how over seven million men ages 25-55 have checked out of the workforce. Such men often receive disability payments or are living with a relative who serves as a source of income.
These disengaged men are spending a great deal of time in front of screens that promote disembodied expressive individualism. This includes an average of 5.5 hours of movies and TV per day, not to mention the rise of exceedingly popular online pornography. Some estimate that Gen Z boys are being exposed to porn at the average age of nine. Studies indicate that pornography rewires the brain, causing boys and men to desire more and more novel content rather than a relationship with a real woman. Male employment is often tied to family structure, and marriage rates for low-income men have declined, demonstrating the unique causes and reinforcing mechanisms of the boy crisis.
The devastating impact of the opioid epidemic is another factor. Some estimate that it could account for 43 percent of the decline in male labor force participation from 1999 to 2015. During that time, the number of overdoses quadrupled, and men made up almost 70 percent of such deaths. The incarceration rate has also risen, and years behind bars reduce the likelihood of finding employment.
These phenomena are not equally distributed across the country, and some have hypothesized that increased deaths of despair (deaths from suicide, overdose, etc.) “among less-educated middle-age Americans might be rooted in ‘a long-term process of decline, or of cumulative deprivation, rooted in the steady deterioration in job opportunities for people with low education.’” The second leading cause of death for American men under 45 is suicide.
All this has left many men without purpose and hope. The boy crisis both reflects and contributes to the broader crisis of America and the West, in no small measure driven by the expressive individualism that has left men and women disconnected from relationships, human nature, and objective truth. America and the West are running on the fumes of our heritage, no longer able to articulate our principles or the gratitude we owe the past.
For much of history, human beings have been most willing to give the last measure of their devotion for what truly provides identity: God, family, and country. Each of these encompasses the individual, pulling him out of himself and toward a life of sacrifice, responsibility, and devotion. Expressive individualism is a stark deviation from the traditional understanding that freedom and virtue are intertwined. As articulated in the classic work Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life:
influenced by modern psychological ideals, to be free is not simply to be left alone by others; it is also somehow to be your own person in the sense that you have defined who you are, decided for yourself what you want out of life, free as much as possible from the demands of conformity to family, friends, or community.
Solutions to the boy crisis must counteract such messaging and ideas, putting forth a substantive view of marriage, revitalizing religious institutions, and honoring fatherhood and male mentorship as fundamental sources of meaning. They will reestablish a proper understanding of the human person and the ties between happiness and virtue. Sadly, there are no silver bullet solutions to these issues. The devastation is far-reaching and multitudinous, and the work we have to do matches the price we have paid.
https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/the-tailspin-american-boys-and-men
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
***************************************
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
/>
Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See