Meanwhile on the International front....

Gay was heavily implicated in the hounding of the guy who dared serve on Harvey Weinstein's legal team.

 

President of Harvard ought to be the world's easiest gig. You're just the respectable front person for a combination hedge fund/charity fundraising scam. Yet President after President fucks it up.

 

One of the most fundamental rights a person has is their own identity. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to start referring to you as a woman or applying female pronouns to you, not because there is anything inherently better or worse about either gender, but because it denies you your identity. Because you are a cisgender person, it is probably something you don't even think about. I don't think about it. If someone referred to me as a woman, I'd roll my eyes and laugh, but it is a much more serious thing to a transgender person. When people refuse to acknowledge them for who they are, that is standing in their way. If you cannot respect who they are, you are not an advocate for their right to be who they want to be.

It is possible to acknowledge that Lia Thomas was once a man who did not transition until she was 19 and has no business competing in NCAA women's events, but still respect her identity by referring to her as a woman. I've done that in discussions on this very board. I'm not denying reality, but I'm also not denying her identity.

Your argument about "emperor's new clothes" language doesn't work, either. It is just an excuse, and not a very good one. Yes, I cringe at referring to individuals as they. It's not what I grew up with. I care about the proper use of English, but I also understand that languages are living things that grow and change with the societies that utilize them. I'm surprised you aren't seeing that.

 

I wrote a post that addresses this. It is not semi or at all Orwellian to fully respect a person's identity, but 1984 is relevant here. The book reminds us of the power of language, how important it is to properly define things and people. When you refer to a transgender woman as a man, you aren't doing that and you aren't respecting her identity. When you dead name Lia Thomas, which is what you do when you repeatedly bring up William Thomas, you aren't respecting her identity.

Let me try putting this another way, because we are getting way off topic here. You see yourself as someone who respects the rights of others. When I challenged that, you got offended because I was challenging your identity. When you refer to transgender women as men, you are doing something similar. You are challenging their identity, but that is even more fundamental because gender is such an important part of who we are as humans.

 

The human condition when it goes off the rails.

 

A good question that a Dem should have asked the college presidents would have been if it would be a violation of their schools’ code of conduct or bullying if protesters were calling for genocide of LGBTQ people.

It either would have made the presidents look worse if they said that it was a violation, or if they said it was not, it’d put Stefanik on the side of LGBTQ people, which would make her look bad with the MAGA base.

 

Cease-fire.

Realistic?

U.N. Secretary-General Demands a Cease-Fire in Gaza

 

About as realistic as that feckless dipshit "demanding" anything.

 

You know, this is a known, real thing in today's world. There actually are transgender police -- often transgender people -- who jump down anyone's throat for not using the correct pronoun, anytime it happens, when, sometimes, it doesn't necessarily mean someone is anti-transgender. It might just mean people are not used to having to call people women/she/her who were born men and/or used to be men, but who now say they're women, want to be women and have, maybe up to a point, done what they can to be women (in other words, they haven't fully transitioned but expect everyone to "know," understand and treat them as if they have.

It isn't an easy issue to wrap the mind around, and that should be obvious and recognized, but sometimes, transgender people (and others) are actually militant about this when it isn't necessary to be so. It is/can be a known form of bullying, even by transgender people themselves.

Oh, and how did this subject get on this thread? I'm sorry for the thread-jack. It's the last I'll say about it here.

 

I've been excoriated on Twitter in such a case. A writer who presented as female, with a female name and profile picture, wrote something I approved of. I commented something to the effect of "That's dead on. You go, girl!". Turns out that they were non-binary and preferred they/them pronouns, and I got slapped around and told that the proper response was "You go, Enby!"

I would have known this if I had stopped to read the profile, but it was just another tweet going by, one which I happened to respond to with something more than a like. The reaction couldn't have been much more violent if I called them the C word. Felt more than a bit over the top.