Exalting an ‘Anti-Colonial’ Gender Identity

So much for exulting indigenous native Americans for celebrating trans people with a unique transgendered identity they highly revered:

Exalting an ‘Anti-Colonial’ Gender Identity

"“2S,” signify “Two-Spirit,” a term that’s been a form of self-identification among Indigenous North Americans since the 1990s. But the descriptor doesn’t appear to be in wide everyday use outside Canada. And so non-Canadian readers will sometimes ask me to explain its meaning—at which point, I have to admit that I can’t. And I’m hardly alone: While most Canadians know that the “Two-Spirit” category is connected to Indigenous identity in some way, there’s an unspoken rule against requesting more specific information. 

Last week, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the province’s elementary-school teachers union, published what the authors present as a primer on Two-Spirit identity, a document written in close consultation with 2S-identified Indigenous people. Since the report’s target audience consists of workaday teachers who educate young students, I imagined that Niizh Manidoowag: Two-Spirit might finally provide me with a straightforward explanation of what the 2S identifier actually means.  

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. In fact, one of the main themes of the 32-page document is that the task of defining the Two-Spirit concept is (quite literally) beyond the powers of Western language and epistemology. And in any case, the category is almost completely open-ended: The act of proclaiming oneself Two-Spirited could be a statement about one’s gender, or sexual orientation, or both, or neither. Or 2S can be a statement about one’s politics, spirituality, or simply one’s desire to present as “anti-colonial.”

According to the ETFO report, there are only two non-negotiable elements of a Two-Spirited individual—both of which are spelled out multiple times in the document, and in bold letters. Neither rule is concerned with sex or gender, but rather with race and political orientation: To be Two-Spirited requires (1) that you are Indigenous; and (2) that you are engaged in a “decolonizing act of resistance”...

The term Two-Spirit was first popularized in 1990, at an inter-tribal Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian summit in Winnipeg, and is derived from the Ojibwa words Niizh Manidoowag. By one account, delegates were looking for a term that would “distance Native/First Nations people from non-Natives, as well as from the words ‘berdache’ [a European term suggesting deviancy] and ‘gay.’” But lore has it that the true originator is a Fisher River First Nation woman named Myra Laramee, who experienced a vision of the world as seen “through the lens of having both feminine and masculine spirit.” 

On the surface, that sounds like what today might be called “non-binary.” But that analogy fails on a fundamental level. The idea of gender identity relates to the (perceived) nature of oneself. Two-Spirit people, on the other hand, are described in the ETFO report as possessing a savant-like power (or “lens”) that channels truths about the nature of the external world.

The Two Spirit concept is also entirely distinct from run-of-the-mill gender dysphoria. In everyday progressive gender parlance, it is typically insisted that trans women are just like other women. Two-Spirited people, by contrast, are presented as an entirely unique specimen whose arrival within traditional Indigenous societies was “celebrated”—“highly valued” “gifts” who “possess the best of both gendered identities.” 

While the authors of the ETFO report were careful to source their work to Indigenous writers and interviewees, it’s interesting to note that all of the listed societal roles attributed to ancient Two-Spirited people align uncannily with the avant-garde outlook of a white 2022-era environmentalist who’s embraced intersectional conceptions of gender...

Some of the content in the ETFO report might be properly described as “meta.” At one point, for instance, we are told of Marie Laing (a self-described queer Kanyen’kehá:ka writer), who sees Two-Spirit as a “container” for collecting “multiple distinct understandings” of gender diversity. At other points, the tone is religious, with the authors citing lessons from “the Creator” in regard to the storytelling of Two-Spirit narratives. In several sections, Two-Spirited people are lauded as vessels of Indigenous “spiritualism.” But most of the jargon consists of generic anti-racist slogans. We are told no fewer than nine times, for instance, that the authors are following an “anti-oppressive” approach. Colonialism is denounced more than a dozen times, including in its “heteronormative” (three times) variant.

On page 11, we learn that, for some, the Two-Spirit descriptor may not have anything to do with one’s individual identity whatsoever, but rather signals an ideological commitment to collective Indigenous “sovereignty.” In fact, even Dr. Laramee’s own foundational description seemed to imagine the Two-Spirited individual as summoniing a mystically inflected nationalist spirit than binds soul and soil: “It is sacred and is more than just words—it is a spirit/heart language … When Two-Spirit is used, it invokes our sacredness and reminds us that we have always been here, and we will always be here.”

It may not surprise readers to learn that the documented historical basis for the ETFO’s claims is quite thin. And at one point, the report’s authors even concede that “in traditional Indigenous communities, gender roles were very distinct.” But much of the blame for that, we are told, goes to “the harsh indoctrination of Christian teachings”—with Two-Spirited individuals now being cast as Edenic Lorax-like figures who will cleanse Indigenous societies of such Christian contaminants while guiding them back to their ancestral ways.

And yet, for all these lofty themes, some of the actual biographical details offered by self-identified Two-Spirited individuals described in the ETFO report seem quite hard to distinguish from old-fashioned sexist stereotypes—by which men wear pants and exhibit strength, while women wear skirts and nurture their young...

In a remarkable 2013 essay, pseudonymous writer Deirdre Bell noted that progressive mysticism surrounding traditional Indigenous attitudes toward gender often have served to obscure such sexist realities. In particular, Bell poured scorn on “the white trans person who points to American Indian cultures as some kind of more accepting place for people with dysphoria, because many of these cultures had a ‘third gender.’” In most cases that we know of, Bell argued, Indigenous third-gender categorization was a mechanism to negotiate a useful societal role for non-conforming men. Women weren’t eligible...

Just as the Two-Spirit designation often signifies an “anti-colonial” Indigenous person who happens to be exhibiting some (at least vaguely expressed) gay or trans affect, the larger umbrella term “queer” itself now is increasingly used to denote anti-bourgeois political postures." 

A more subtle way in which trans mania is misogyny:

Toward an End to Appropriation of Indigenous “Two Spirit” People in Trans Politics: the Relationship Between Third Gender Roles and Patriarchy – culturallyboundgender

"I have a special kind of rage for any white person who claims to identify as a “Two Spirit” person.  It’s like wearing a hipster headdress: it proclaims loud and clear that you’re a white person who likes to appropriate American Indian culture while having little or nothing to do with the culture you’re appropriating.

The version of this that’s less enraging but more prevalent (think of it as the “dreamcatcher” of appropriation–common, misunderstood, and talked about in gross ways by all kinds of white people) is the white trans person who points to American Indian cultures as some kind of more accepting place for people with dysphoria/GID, because many of these cultures had a “third gender.”  This represents a misunderstanding of what, precisely, being two-spirit meant culturally, economically, and socially for many two-spirit people, and also represents a very limiting, naive, “all these people look the same to me” view of American Indian nations.

Before we start: lumping all non-gender-conforming people in indigenous North America into a single “third gender” or “berdache” or “two-spirit” label is problematic.  The cultures of pre-Columbian North America were incredibly distinct from each other, with significantly different gender roles to be observed even in Indian nations that were very close to each other.

What gets even more interesting when you look into the two-spirit phenomenon is where it doesn’t pop up–or doesn’t pop up with the same frequency.

The Iroquois Confederation historically had no two-spirit people in spite of keeping significantly more detailed documentation of the lives of its people than many other American Indian nations.  For that matter, neither did the Apache, who treated two-spirit people respectfully and cordially when they met them but did not themselves have two-spirit people as part of their culture.

What would make the Iroquois and Apache different?  It’s not a matter of genetics.  That’d only be possible if there were no intermarriages between American Indian people from different nations, and that’s simply not true.

The Iroquois had one of the most politically egalitarian societies for men and women in the world, at the time when white folks set out to destroy them systematically.  Women had significant amounts of political power, and the society was not simply matrilineal (which can sometimes still involve huge patriarchal gender role issues–hello, Orthodox Judaism!) but involved real equality of authority.

The Apache were famed for their skill in battle, which may mean you’ve never heard one of the most fascinating parts about their culture.  Because war was a near-constant fact for Apache adults, while adults tended to have sex-segregated roles in society, children were actually given a very non-gendered upbringing.  Girls were expected to know how to do “boy” things, and vice versa.  Why?  Think about the home front during World War II.  It’s a good idea if all your people know the basics, just so that when there are war parties gone, or a sex imbalance after raids, you don’t lose all of the missing/dead people’s knowledge and skill base.

Neither of these societies–which have in some ways more progressive and egalitarian places for women and/or girls than contemporary societies–had two-spirit people.  Was this because they were evil and repressive?

Let’s take the Lakota, one piece of the Sioux nation, as an alternate example.  Please note that I’m speaking about the Sioux nations from the perspective of someone who has taken time to learn a great deal of a Sioux language and has studied these cultures both in historical and contemporary contexts.  The Lakota have a longstanding tradition of two-spirit people, documented as far back as the written record goes.  Among the Lakota, polygyny was accepted, and gender roles were extremely clearly established for boys and girls from an extremely early age.

The Lakota two spirit people are never born women.  Almost all of them, historically, have been men.  Claims of intersexed/hermaphroditic people from the 19th/early 20th centuries should ALWAYS be taken with a significant grain of salt, because of the trouble Europeans in this era had distinguishing between homosexuality and hermaphroditism (both male and female homosexuals were often thought to have hermaphroditic qualities–a historical fact we’ll talk about in another entry!).

Were no Lakota women “born this way” while men were?  Let me postulate a different theory: that it’s men in power who impose gender roles, and that Lakota men’s patriarchal society had to have somewhere to put “men who don’t ‘act like’ men” because of male gender policing. Lakota people put two-spirit men in the part of the camp where women and children lived, which was generally not as well cared for and considered not as prestigious because of the patriarchal way that they lived.

While there were occasionally women in the Lakota and other Sioux nations that became part of war parties, they were not regarded as “male” in any way relating to their oppressed status at home.  There was no need for the patriarchal Sioux to create a category for gender non-conforming women, nor to give them special status or specific supposed talents (Lakota and Dakota two-spirit people are said to be excellent namers of children and are thought to be able to see visions of the future).  That’s something men do for men, because just by dint of having a penis, gender non-conforming men deserved to be able to have their own group and identity.

You see this in large numbers of patriarchal American Indian cultures: societies where there’s a firmly established “third” gender that men can elect to participate in (sometimes as older people, sometimes from an early age), while women’s gender roles are firmly entrenched and allow for little variance.  What’s amazing is that many people are invested in the notion that third gender was egalitarian.  Check out how careful this website is to show us both male and female two-spirit people–in fact, having more stories of female two-spirit people–while making no mention of the fact that female third gender individuals were incredibly rare compared to male ones.

Let’s take another example of a society that had a significantly different conception of gender and what it meant to be two-spirit.  The Dene people of Alberta are a First Nations group that historically believed children could be reincarnations of deceased relatives.  So far, so good, lots of cultures think that–hell, sometimes my own mother tells me I’m the reincarnation of my great grandfather.  But in Dene culture, if your parents saw the spirit of a woman enter your mother’s body when she was pregnant, regardless of your birth sex you could be referred to as “my daughter” by the man who believed his daughter’s spirit had been reincarnated into you.  You wouldn’t have to live as the sex of the person that you were thought to have been before, but would always be considered to in some way have a foot in each gender from your reincarnated past.

The Dene, it’s worth noting, forced women to go hungry at their husband’s discretion whenever the tribe was low on food.  Women in this society were among the most oppressed women in all of indigenous North America.  These supposedly progressive ways of viewing gender don’t come from cultures that actually treat women progressively.  Not once.

It’s very strange to watch the contemporary trans movement attempt to incorporate American Indian cultural conceptions of gender-nonconformity, because it’s so clearly an attempt to shoehorn people of the past into contemporary cultural labels.  In some third gender societies, two-spirit was simply a way to handle homosexuality within the group: homosexual men were considered not fully men, a halfway gender that wasn’t quite “normal.”  In others, it was a way to handle intersexed people in societies with rigid sex binaries.  In still others, it was for men who specifically preferred women’s work and roles, like weaving and cooking.

In almost none of these societies did two-spirit people born male identify *as women*.  We have no documented cases (in spite of documentation of other activities and feelings of “berdaches”/two-spirits in history) of two-spirit men anguishing over an inability to be fully recognized as a woman or to have a woman’s body.  They tended to identify as a different type of man, or something between masculine and feminine.

To systematically deprive historical two-spirit people of their own thoughts regarding their gender and what the historical record shows was their place in society–to misrepresent these people, who were often oppressed within their groups rather than lauded for their non-conformity, in spite of the all-too-common hagiographic contemporary notion of American Indian nations as places free from oppression–is to erase the nuance of real history in favor of a conception of history in which really, everyone’s just like you, you lucky 21st century son of a gun who has it all figured out.

The continuous use of two-spirit people as a way to show that transgenderism has existed in all societies–and the incredible lack of knowledge of the basics of indigenous North American cultures shown by many trans people who casually refer to there being transgender people in American Indian societies–is appropriative behavior.  It is taking the parts of a society that you think you like, without studying them much or looking at their origins, and deciding that the culture they’re from must really be deep and would really get you.  It’s de-contextualizing and de-humanizing, and erases differences between American Indian cultures as well as the fundamental ways those cultures historically were different from anything we have on the planet today.

What’s instead true is that American Indian nations that had more rigid gender roles and assigned women less power historically felt the need to strip male/female identities from non-conformers, while more egalitarian societies with less gender socialization lack two-spirit people because of, rather than in spite of, their lack of emphasis on sex-assigned gender roles."

Links - 26th April 2024 (1 - General Wokeness)

Meme - Hot Takes Nobody Asked For: "wil wheaton was wearing this *punch* shirt at a supermarket. he once had an emotional breakdown after watching larry david pretend to be mean to elmo as a joke."
"Never Stop Punching Nazis"

Disagreeing on same-sex marriage doesn’t make you evil, says Rowan Williams - "he warns that moral debates "have become weaponised in the current culture wars", meaning that nuance is lost. He will also caution that cancel culture means that people of opposing views on contentious issues - such as same-sex marriage, abortion and assisted dying - are seen as “automatically monstrous and oppressive"... “It won’t do to demonise those with inconvenient consciences as automatically monstrous and oppressive.   “You can’t simply ascribe deliberately evil intention to someone who disagrees on principle with the principles you think self-evident. Think, for example, of the debates over abortion or physician-assisted dying.”... Christians now account for less than half of England and Wales's population for the first time in census history."
From 2022. He missed the memo that if you disagree on gay marriage, you're a homophobic bigot and not a decent human being. Since he does not brand them monsters, he must be a terrible and awful person himself

Thread by @fentasyl on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It's ridiculously profitable to be classified as a "non-profit" by the IRS
1998: $1.0T revenue, $2.3T assets
2016: $2.6T revenue, $6.0T assets
In 1991, there were 516,000 501(c)3 organizations according to the IRS. By 2021, there were 1,431,000. Over 10% of the US workforce is in the NGO industry, doling out $670B in wages 6 years ago... We've maybe reached "peak per capita NGO" in the 2010s, but the 1990s-2000s were a feeding frenzy  Reagan-era Tax changes hugely incentivized NGOs  Used to great effect as tax shelters for the ultra-rich & as taxpayer subsidized political activist orgs disguised as "civil rights". In 2012, NGOs made up a huge amount of the Northeast workforce (surely even more now):
- 27% of DC
- 18% of NY, MA, ME, VT, RI
- 16% of PA
And... whaddya know? The industry is recession-proof. Underappreciated is that NGOs aren't only for money laundering and political activism. You are also personally subsidizing all the activities of:
- Every College/University (yes, even "Private" ones)
- Every pediatric transgender clinic
- Every COVID mass death nursing home
Since 1990, the ultra-rich have funneled some $8+T to their NGOs, all of it deducted away from their fair share of taxes  That is, we pay the wealthy to do this  And once the cash is sheltered in the NGO, it can be spent largely tax free (compared to a "for profit" corporation)... Heck of a racket to produce highly indoctrinated indentured servants, all paid for by the average schmuck USA Taxpayer
What can be done? From easiest to hardest:
- End PSLF
- End the "charitable" tax deduction
- Force schools to underwrite their own students' loans
- Abolish the entire concept of "non-profit organization" and tax them the same as "for-profits""
This won't stop left wingers from insisting that churches be taxes and that since they don't pay taxes they shouldn't "interfere with politics"

I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "NEW: The NYC Council began its meeting today by praising Allah as the supreme lord of the world, expressing their reverence in both Arabic and English."
Presumably the new left wing logic is separation of church and state only applies to Christianity because the mosque is not a church

RadioGenoa on X - "Bisexual girl says she would rather live in an Islamic caliphate than a Spain ruled by Vox. What don't these young people understand?"

What Is Systemic Racism? - "The invocation of “systemic racism” in political arguments is both a bluff and a bludgeon.   When a person says, for example, “over-representation of black Americans in prison in the United States is due to systemic racism,” he is daring the listener to say: “No. It’s really because there are so many blacks who are breaking the laws.” And who would risk responding that way these days? The phrase effectively bullies the listener into silence.  Users of the phrase seldom offer any evidence beyond citing a fact about racial disparity while asserting shadowy structural causes that are never fully specified. We are all simply supposed to know how “systemic racism,” abetted by “white privilege” and furthered by “white supremacy,” conspire to leave blacks lagging behind.  American history is rather more subtle and more interesting. Such disparities have multiple, interacting causes, ranging from culture to politics to economics and, yes, to nefarious doings of institutions and individuals who may well have been racist. But acknowledging this complexity is too much nuance for those alleging “systemic racism.”  They ignore the following truth: that America has basically achieved equal opportunity in terms of race. We have chased away the Jim Crow bugaboo, not just with laws but also by widespread social customs, practices, and norms. When Democrats call a Georgia voter integrity law a resurgence of Jim Crow, it is nothing more than a lie. Everybody knows there is no real Jim Crow to be found anywhere in America... Our lives are being remade every decade by technology, globalization, communication, and innovation, and yet all we seem to hear about is race.  My deep suspicion is that these charges of “systemic racism” have proliferated and grown so hysterical because black people — with full citizenship and equal opportunity in the most dynamic country on Earth — are failing to measure up.  Violent crime is one dimension of this. The disorder and chaos in our family lives is another. Denouncing “systemic racism” and invoking “white supremacy,” and shouting “black lives matter,” while 8,000 black homicides a year go unmentioned — these are maneuvers of avoidance and blame-shifting.   The irony is that so many of us decry “systemic racism,” even as we simultaneously demand that this very same “system” deliver us."
"Systemic racism requires institutional collusion.   Systemic racism is being carried out today in America’s elite university system against Asian-Americans"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Although the percentages aren't very high, white liberals are roughly five times more likely than white moderates, and twice as likely as white conservatives, to admit to often secretly wishing for bad things to happen to people who politically disagree with them.
Source: ANES 2020 Pilot Survey (April 10-18)"
This tracks with left wing violence (though it's usually confined to fantasies and threats). But of course elites just obsess over the "far right"
20% of white liberals wishing it happened often or all the time is pretty high to me

Thread by @FistedFoucault on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""Young European men. We need you to urgently volunteer for military service in your respective countries in order to fend off Putler's coming invasion. You will fight for human rights, tolerance, and mass migration, while Google changes all of your history."
"You will fight for our right to call you misogynists, homophobes, racists, and transphobes. You will fight to ensure that young men from all over Asia and Africa can freely move into your lands and displace you socially, culturally, and economically."
"You will fight to ensure that political parties that best represent your interests will never, ever be allowed to come into power. You will fight to protect our right to curtail your ability to speak your minds, as doling so would threaten our democracy."
"You will fight to reduce our carbon footprint, even at the cost of complete de-industrialization, because we need to save Planet Earth from Climate Change. You will fight disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the three-headed beast of anti-democracy." "

Jay Van Bavel, PhD on X - "College admission essay content has a stronger correlation with household income (R2 = 16%) than SAT scores. This explains how removing standardized tests can increase inequality. Based on 240,000 admission essays to the University of California."
Essay content and style are strongly related to household income and SAT scores: Evidence from 60,000 undergraduate applications
DEI benefits rich "minorities"

Visegrád 24 on X - "BREAKING: Another massacre against Christian Nigerians perpetrated by Islamist Fulani militias in Plateau State At least 11 were murdered in Bokkos during a night attack. Dozens wounded Homes & churches burned. Children killed Any protest march planned in London? Why not? 🇳🇬"
Gad Saad on X - "Is there a way that we can blame this on the Zionist regime? Clearly, Islam does not permit violence so this must be a false flag perpetrated by the Yahood."
PM - on X - "All religions are cults, money making organizations that kill for it."
Gad Saad on X - "Oh yes but especially the Jains.  They are such bloodthirsty killers that they use a broom to sweep in front of them while walking in order to not inadvertently kill any insects.  All religions are equal; all cultures are equal; criminals are equal but more so than their victims; men are women; borders are racist.  Suicidal empathy = death of the West.  Next book coming."

Meme - Karl Reid @educator2us: "Just boarded an early morning flight wearing my @MIT gear. A seat mate looked at me and asked, "Basketball?" I said, "No. Engineering!" What about me prompted him to think I was playing or coaching basketball?"
The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial: "It's not that deep. You're dressed like a coach, not a nerd."
Sebastian Stern @sternseb: "What is this obsession in western society with projecting victimhood and demanding attention? I really can't wrap my mind around it. It's so sad. It's damaging to the individual, it's damaging to society. We used to champion strength and perseverance. What happened?"
Valspar11 @Valspar111: "POLITICAL POWER. And all that comes with it- the ability to: 1) Steal in the name of the 'oppressed' richest 'poor' on the planet. 2) Lie about any topic and be supported by the leftist media - get away with it over and over again. 3) Hold very well paying 'employment' poisoning the minds of the ignorant, polluting the public square with alien concepts based on envy jealousy and marx. For starters."
Cernovich @Cernovich: "If we are being technical, according to MIT, you work in "outreach" and now DEI"

Keep Social-Justice Indoctrination Out of the Therapist’s Office - "Alexander Adams, a pseudonymous recent graduate of an American Master’s program in counseling, recently wrote an essay for Critical Therapy Antidote entitled, My Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology Taught me a lot about ‘Social Justice’ But Very Little about Counseling or Psychology. He describes two and a half years of “incompetence and mediocrity”—at a cost of $70,000 in (borrowed) money—during which teachers felt free to lecture students about their political beliefs, and trainees were instructed on “the dynamics and dilemmas of microaggressions,” and “developing a nonracist and antiracist white identity.”  On the same site, a Master’s degree candidate in counseling (identified pseudonymously as “Student J”) asked what this pedagogy would mean for white patients: “When you seek counseling, how [would] you feel knowing that the person supposedly providing you with empathy and care sees you as an oppressor? … How is this healthy and productive for anyone?”  A white woman who recently obtained her doctoral degree in counseling psychology, whom I’ll call “N,” was struck by the overt bias among instructors. They routinely derided conservatives as “ignorant and uneducated,” she told me. Like Adams and “Student J,” “N” noted that antagonism was directed at trainees who questioned the relevance of social justice dogma to their clinical cases. “If we were not combating oppression, we were contributing to it,” “N” said. A therapist is free to personally believe that Black Lives Matter and Ibram X. Kendi should (or should not) serve as guiding lights in the creation of a new kind of social contract. But in regard to clinical practice, Critical Social Justice Therapy violates core tenets of sound psychotherapy. Instead of addressing the individual person in need, it applies a pre-programmed ideological agenda that classifies individuals as oppressor or oppressed based on identity group.  The task of the therapist, said Anthony Storr, the late British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is “to get the patient to talk as freely as possible whilst he himself stays in the background.” But talking freely is possible only if a therapist assumes a posture of caring neutrality, openness, and curiosity. And learning to maintain compassionate detachment lies at the heart of practitioner training. The mature therapist keeps her private passions from distorting the work. She is attuned to the development of what Freud called “countertransference,” wherein her own emotional reaction to a patient clouds her clinical judgment. Even seasoned therapists engage trusted supervisors to help them understand and manage such complexities as they emerge in therapeutic relationships.   The “therapeutic alliance” between therapist and patient depends on their agreement in regards to the methods employed and the goals pursued. And research has shown that the quality of this alliance can help predict whether the therapy will be successful... When a therapist comes to the first session armed with an ideological program that dictates what the patient should become, such an alliance is doomed. Even insofar as a patient may agree to this program before treatment begins, what they will be receiving isn’t psychotherapy so much as anti-racism cant delivered under the pretext of therapeutic treatment. Where the patient should be inculcated in the habit of self-observation, he will instead be taught to search outside himself for sources of all duress; instead of traveling a path to greater autonomy, he will be instead rewarded for adopting the victim role...   Olden, like most people who pursue psychotherapy, wanted to find clarity, relief from suffering, and freedom from the habits that had imprisoned her for years. Instead, she was told that we were “victims of vague societal forces outside of our control.”... researchers purporting to show the value of “multicultural counseling” typically have failed to even define this therapeutic subcategory with any precision. As well, many of their studies neglected to randomize subjects to control groups; instead, the researchers simply relied on self-reporting by selected clients and therapists. In all, one is hard-pressed to find any systematic evidence that the latest wave of CSJT techniques offer any real benefit...   I’ve heard reports of patients being scolded by therapists for voting the “wrong” way. And I’ve exchanged emails with a former academic who has an informal side gig referring conservative (and ideologically non-compliant liberals) to “non-woke,” neutral therapists"

The warmongers have gone woke - "The recruitment video went viral. It outraged the right for portraying America as weak to its adversaries. And it outraged the left, who accused the CIA of dishonestly ‘co-opting’ progressive politics.  In truth, the CIA has been woke for some time – and no one should be surprised by its drift in this direction. The ‘Humans of CIA’ campaign, which highlights the diversity of the agency’s staff, has actually been running since 2019. A year before, Gina Haspel, despite her alleged involvement in ‘extraordinary rendition’, became the first female CIA chief – a move the Trump administration tried to spin as a victory for ‘women’s empowerment’.  It’s not just the CIA, either. The broader defence establishment is now bound up with woke politics. A watershed moment arrived in 2019 when MSNBC could proudly proclaim that the ‘military-industrial complex is now run by women’. As well as Haspel at the CIA, Andrea Thompson at the Pentagon was America’s lead weapons negotiator and in charge of the nuclear stockpile. The five largest arms contractors – Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defence arm of Boeing – were also run by women. In the same year, Raytheon, the world’s largest manufacturer of guided missiles, began its partnership with the Girl Scouts, apparently to ‘close the gender gap in STEM’. Of course, for US militarism to be truly ‘intersectional’ it has to encompass race and sexuality as well as gender. At the weekend, the US Navy celebrated its first ever all-gay helicopter crew. Dow Chemical, which produced skin-burning napalm for the Vietnam war, has drawn media praise for its gay CEO. ‘How Dow Chemical Got Woke’, was how Bloomberg reported it. Earlier this year, ex-CIA chief John Brennan made headlines when he declared that he was ‘increasingly embarrassed’ to be a white man – perhaps not everyone can be ‘unapologetically themselves’ at Langley, after all.   Why do they bother? Why have the warmongers gone woke? Partly it is a question of image. Of course, just as big companies like to align their corporate missions to Black Lives Matter because it is too gauche to say they are out to make a profit, the CIA and the defence establishment cannot simply say that they are out to dominate other countries or defend US commercial interests.   But it is more than just PR. There are a number of aspects inherent to wokeness that make it so appealing to powerful institutions and elites. First, identity politics allows for ‘divide and rule’... an institution like the CIA could never draw moral legitimacy from more democratic ideals like national or popular sovereignty, as it overrides these every day. Secondly, wokeness allows the powerful to pose as being on the side of the weak. If you question these institutions which claim to be fighting racism, sexism and other -isms, it is because you are racist, sexist or some other ‘-ist’.  Then there is the therapeutic aspect of wokeness. On the one hand, this allows the powerful to present themselves as vulnerable... you don’t need a decent wage, or the CIA to stop droning your village — you just need to see a therapist. Finally, there is the vast scope for obfuscation provided by political correctness. Wokeness normalises euphemistic language – ideal for the practitioners of ‘enhanced interrogation’ and the like.  The CIA’s embrace of ‘intersectional’ imperialism should make it clear beyond doubt that wokeness is the ideal ideology of the powerful."

Did Slavery Create American Prosperity? - "Recently there seem to be an increasing number of claims that American prosperity resulted from slavery.  This is presented as justification for the renewed calls for reparations for slavery, which Democrats are using in an attempt to gain support as we approach the next presidential election.  But did slavery actually create the wealth of the U.S.?  Does this claim have any historical basis in fact, or is this a distortion of history to influence the views of voters?... If we consider the historical experience of other nations involved in the slave trade, it could help our understanding of the issue.  The transatlantic slave trade that took place from the 16th to the 19th centuries was a system in which Africans sold members of other tribes, often prisoners, as slaves to Europeans, who then shipped them to the Americas.  During this time period only 5% of the total number of slaves sent across the Atlantic went to the U.S., with the other 95% going mostly to South America and the Caribbean.  If American prosperity is based on slavery, then we would expect other nations that participated in the transatlantic slave trade to also be prosperous.  If we take Brazil, for example, that nation took about 20 times more slaves than the U.S.  So, if slavery leads to great prosperity one would expect Brazil to be much more prosperous than the U.S., since they took many more slaves.  However, the U.S.’s GDP per capita is about four times greater than Brazil’s.  Although the standard of living in Brazil is significantly lower than that of the U.S., other nations in South America are even worse off and among the poorest in the world, despite their historical experience with slavery.   Now if we consider a sample of other prosperous nations that have a standard of living comparable to that of the U.S., would we find that their prosperity resulted from slavery?   In Europe let’s take Switzerland, Germany, and Norway; in Asia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea; and let’s also consider some other former British colonies, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  None of these prosperous nations participated in the transatlantic slave trade.    If American prosperity were based on slavery, then we would expect to learn that in the 1800s the Southern States were wealthier than the Northern States, where slavery was illegal.  However, this was simply not the case.  The Industrial Revolution, which included new mechanized manufacturing techniques along with innovations in transportation and communication, such as the railroads, steamboats, and the telegraph, dramatically increased production.  This was the driving force of the North’s economy, and in 1860, 90% of the nation’s manufacturing output came from the North...  80% of the U.S.’s wheat was produced in the North.  Southern plantation owners had less motivation to invest in modern farm machinery since they owned slaves, so Southern agriculture remained more dependent on labor, which hindered progress and economic growth as the North became more mechanized and productive.  In 1860 per capita income in the South was only 72% of the U.S. average, so there is no evidence that slavery made the South wealthy, let alone the entire U.S... It is also worth noting that in the years after the war cotton production increased dramatically without the use of slave labor... By any objective measure, American prosperity is not based on slavery.  The industrial revolution set the stage for people such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and companies such as Boeing and Apple.  It set the stage for all the American entrepreneurs, small businesses, and workers that contributed to American economic growth and prosperity.  This along with a developed legal system, property rights, a high literacy rate, and a market economy is what led to a prosperous nation.  To deny this and distort history to further a political agenda only creates more conflict and division at a time that has already become one of the most divisive in the U.S. since the Civil War."

Rutgers Prof: ‘Officially, I Now Hate White People’ - "James Livingston, the Rutgers University history professor who made the remarks, proceeded to detail “little Caucasian a**holes” that annoyed him at a restaurant.  “OK, officially, I now hate white people,” Livingston said. “I am a white people [sic], for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood? I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lenox for a Classic burger to go, that would [be] my dinner, and the place is overrun with little Caucasian a**holes who know their parents will approve of anything they do.”  “Slide around the floor, you little s**thead, sing loudly, you moron,” he continued. “Do what you want, nobody here is gonna restrict your right to be white.”  “F**k these people,” finished the professor, noting that he “resign[ed]” from his race."...  “I just don’t want little Caucasians overrunning my life, as they did last night,” Livingston explained later Friday morning on Facebook. “Please God, remand them to the suburbs, where they and their parents can colonize every restaurant, all the while pretending that the idiotic indulgence of their privilege signifies cosmopolitan — you know, as in sophisticated ‘European’ — commitments.”"

"I Hope We Have No Crackers Here": EBF Staff Sanction Racial Slur - "A week ago, residents of Enchanted Broccoli Forest discovered the words “No crackers!” scrawled in paint across their bus...   You would think that residents of a supposedly progressive and racially conscious house would jump to remove a racial epithet from house property. Not so. When a resident posted a picture in the EBF GroupMe last Thursday, peers brushed aside the incident with off-color jokes. Disappointing, but, unfortunately, the story gets far worse. After a week, another resident, Ian Knight — a first-generation, low-income, white Southerner who felt understandably uncomfortable with the slur — raised the issue in the house GroupMe and was immediately dismissed as an apologist for “reverse racism.” When other residents had worried that the “problematic” fake tepee on the porch of their retreat AirBnB represented cultural appropriation, staff members immediately responded: the tepee would be removed by the first car to the house. But when Ian pointed out that something should be done about the blatantly racist graffiti on the bus, his concerns were brushed aside. One resident simply responded “No,” receiving fourteen likes from house members.  Other residents accused Ian of piggybacking on the complaints of people of color to raise his less-important “white” concerns, while others shamefully tried to excuse the slur for being “deserved.” The graffiti didn’t matter because white people are, by nature, oppressive and racist, they said — all while enjoying the best university in the world, while rural whites suffer grinding poverty. If anything, a blatantly racist act of vandalism is far more clear-cut than the murky concept of “cultural appropriation.” Residents repeatedly brushed aside Ian’s discomfort with the racist graffiti. Finally, a staff member explicitly endorsed the message on the bus, telling him (erroneously) that since “the word cracker, has been historically defined to mean ‘racist white person,’” that she agreed with the graffiti. Apparently too enlightened to take ten seconds to read the definition of “cracker” as a term “for white people, used especially against poor rural whites in the Southern United States” (never including the idea of racism), she told her first-generation white Southern resident: “I hope we have no crackers here.” If such ignorant and bigoted remarks are not grounds for immediate dismissal from a staff position, we are not sure what are. EBF can pretend to be socially progressive all it wants, but this incident reveals alarming hypocrisy: the right kind of racism is just fine. While the staff reaction alone is shocking, other EBF residents did not only ignore or play down the slur, but also supported its appalling sentiment. To a mind-boggling sixteen likes from the group, one resident even stated that he was “strongly against removing the ‘no crackers’ spray paint”! He claimed, absurdly, that addressing racism against white people should be delayed until every other possible form of oppression is eradicated. One could only imagine the outcry that would have ensued had this comment been directed at anyone except whites."

ACLU withdraws subpoena for gender clinic whistleblower's messages with journalists after callout - "The American Civil Liberties Union is known for its historic defense of freedom of the press — unless it's prying open the press.  The 104-year-old organization, which championed a House-passed bill in January to prevent "government from compelling journalists to reveal their sources and work product," is seeking a wide range of communications from a conservative journalist, some but not all related to its First Amendment lawsuit against Florida's Stop WOKE Act. The ACLU's Missouri affiliate and Lambda Legal quickly dropped requests for communications with journalists related to their lawsuit against the Show-Me State's law against medicalized gender transitions for minors after a liberal journalist posted the subpoena...   Chris Rufo, who wears hats as a journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and New College of Florida trustee, disclosed Wednesday on X that the ACLU subpoenaed him for "all of my sources and journalistic materials related to critical race theory" as part of a "heavily financed propaganda campaign against my work." His lawyers told the ACLU to "pound sand," but the group has threatened to depose him for more than a year, according to Rufo. "Depose me anytime. But I won't let you hide behind a Zoom screen and the pronouns in your email signatures. You will have to face me in person – and I will wreck you," he wrote.  Rufo gave more details in his newsletter Thursday, saying the ACLU sent "an agent to my home while I was eating dinner with my wife and children" to serve the 18-page subpoena in 2022. It would expose his confidential sources on CRT, Black Lives Matter and "racial justice protests."   He's spilling the beans because of "another misleading attack on my character" by the ACLU, apparently referring to a Feb. 14 broadside targeting Rufo as a "far-right" enemy of "racial equity and free speech" for his activism against diversity, equity and inclusion programs...   Rufo told Rogan the investigation is an "intimidation mechanism" that could involve depositions and subpoenas. It suggests the U.S. is "not far from" a "Soviet Union-style gulag situation in 2029."...   The ACLU didn't respond to queries for its explanation of how subpoenaing Rufo doesn't set a precedent that conservatives can use against similarly activist journalists on the left, such as Nikole Hannah-Jones, in challenges to blue states' laws, and whether Granick's complaint prompted the federal investigation."

Links - 25th April 2024 (3)

How Baseball Betrayed Cuba’s Covert Ops - "On a few occasions, Cuba’s unique fondness for baseball betrayed its covert activities — at home and abroad — to American reconnaissance, thanks to the visible presence or absence of distinctive baseball diamonds... Twice during the Cold War, Cuban troops’ penchant for building recreational baseball fields helped American reconnaissance learn some of Fidel Castro’s secrets.  The first story — dubbed “The Case of the Missing Diamond” in an article by legendary CIA photo analyst Dino Brugioni — begins in 1970. That year, Cuba began to build up the naval infrastructure on Cayo Alcatraz, an island in the port of Cienfuegos. The construction got underway just as a Soviet flotilla consisting of a nuclear submarine and guided-missile ships headed for the island... In an episode that both Haldeman and Kissinger recounted in their memoirs, the presence of soccer fields at the new facility led U.S. analysts to conclude it was meant for the Soviets.  Haldeman writes that Kissinger slapped U-2 spy plane photos of Cayo Alcatraz on his desk and drew his attention to the soccer fields. “Those soccer fields could mean war, Bob,” Kissinger said. “Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer.” Then-CIA Director Richard Helms concurred. In a Congressional briefing recounted by Brugioni, Helms told congressmen that “clinching the case that all this was for Soviet — not Cuban — use, there are sports facilities for soccer, tennis and volleyball only, and we have yet to see a major Cuban military installation that does not provide for ‘beisbol.’”  “The ubiquitous baseball diamonds are an important part of the Cuban landscape, and photo interpreters often gauge the amount of activity by the number of diamonds present in an area,” Brugioni wrote. The practice dated back at least early as the Cuban missile crisis, according to Brugioni. During the crisis, analysts counted on soccer and baseball fields to distinguish Soviet from Cuban military encampments... Cuba’s fondness for baseball captured the attention of America’s aerial spies on another occasion in 1975. When Angola achieved independence from Portugal during that year, Cuba sent military advisers to assist the leftist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola in its war against factions backed by the United States and the racist apartheid government in neighboring South Africa.  The Cuban advisers stayed well into the 1980s. Their bases were apparently identifiable to American satellites — because of the baseball diamonds the Cubans built. David C. Miller, Jr., American ambassador to Tanzania during the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan, recalled that he used to pass images of the fields to Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere in order to convince him of Cuba’s role in Angola... And for whatever secrets Cuba’s baseball diamonds did spill, the Reagan administration’s attempt to use and abuse them also highlights the perils of analyzing intelligence through the lens of simplistic truism.  In the 1980s, Reagan’s National Security Council was hard at work orchestrating the illegal sale of arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to fund “Contra” rebels fighting the leftist Sandanista government in Nicaragua.  After the scandal broke, NBC’s Tom Brokaw recalled a briefing he’d received in advance of a trip to Nicaragua by one of the maestros of Iran-Contra, U.S. Marine Corps colonel Oliver North. Writing in The New York Times, Brokaw said North excitedly pointed out baseball diamonds in grainy satellite footage of what he alleged was a Cuban training camp in Nicaragua.  “Nicaraguans don’t play baseball,” North told Brokow in an apparent attempt to cast himself as Kissinger at Cienfuegos. “Cubans play baseball!”  Of course, both the Cubans and Soviets supported the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. But as Brokaw quickly realized, North’s contention was astonishingly ignorant of the country’s long history of baseball fandom. “His declaration will come as a surprise to the Nicaraguans who have made it to the major leagues,” Brokaw wrote."

Please Stop Misusing the Phrase ‘Height of the Cold War’ - "Lest you doubt the extent of journalistic abuse of the “height of the Cold War” War Is Boring compiled an utterly unscientific sampling of major news outlets’ use of the phrase.  With the exception of four years spread across the the very beginning and end of the conflict, there’s at least one article in a major news outlet proclaiming every year of the period to be “the height of the Cold War.”... All three men pointed to years leading up to and including the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as the late 1940s and early ’50s, when the U.S. faced off against the Soviets and the Chinese over Berlin and the Korean War. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a fairly obvious choice for the period of greatest tension during the Cold War. U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev squared off over the Soviet Union’s stationing of nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba, with both sides tiptoeing up to the edge of nuclear confrontation.  “As the most tense ‘height of Cold War’ episode,” Burr says, “the Cuban Missile crisis remains the inescapable candidate in terms of the seriousness of the situation, where both sides realized they faced a dangerous crisis and were nuclear forces were on high alert.”  The period of the ’40s and ’50s, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin played a tense game of brinksmanship over control of Berlin with a blockade of the city and the Korean war briefly brought the U.S. to war with China, are also a logical candidate for the Cold War’s rightful “height.”  In the latter half of the Cold War, the superpowers largely duked it out through proxy conflicts in the third world. While those conflicts exacted a bloody real-life toll on the participants, they prevented the U.S. and Soviet Union from facing. Both Burr and Hershberg also mention the events surround NATO’s Able Archer exercise in 1983 as a reasonable—if less widely understood—candidate for the Cold War’s peak.  The election of Pres. Ronald Reagan and the subsequent increases in U.S. defense spending and anti-Soviet “evil empire” rhetoric made the Soviets nervous enough as it was.  The Soviets’ mistaken downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007 and the U.S. deployment of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, which the Soviets feared could allow for a swift NATO nuclear first strike, made the Cold War even tenser... As Russian president Vladimir Putin’s pushes to recapture the former territories of the Soviet Union, sinking U.S.-Russian relations to a low, many are quick to label it a “new Cold War.”  Russia’s actions are dangerous and deplorable. And they certainly put the U.S. on notice that Moscow is willing to use military force to try and restore its former empire.  But a review of the darkest moments of the Cold War — when the West came perilously close to nuclear exchange with Russia — shows that, bad as things might be now, the temperature still has a way to go before it plunges to the icy depths of the Cold War’s darkest days."

Sun Ra: A True Birthday - "Perhaps most affecting is Ra’s solo keyboard track, “Advice to Medics,” titled after his history of playing for what his biographer John Szwed describes as a therapy-through-music group that “included catatonics and severe schizophrenics.” (The biographer reports that one patient, breaking a years-long silence, approached Ra to ask: “Do you call that music?”)"

Meme - @Spacecorgi: "I love that one middle-management ore who kept arguing with Saruman about realistic factory output."

SKorea Hopes New Speed Train Links Will Help Boost Birthrate - "South Korea is launching a high-speed train service that will reduce the travel time between central Seoul and its outskirts, a project officials hope will encourage more youth to consider homes outside the city, and start having babies"

Shirley Temple, the Child Star Who Wasn't a Cautionary Tale - The Atlantic - ""Can the most famous child in the world grow up emotionally unscarred?"  Twenty-five years ago, that was the question that opened the New York Times news service's review of Shirley Temple Black's autobiography, Child Star. It remains the question attached to anyone who could plausibly write an autobiography by that title—and recent examples, from Lindsay Lohan to Justin Bieber, have created a consensus is that no, usually, famous kids don't grow up unscarred.  But Temple, who died Monday night at age 85, is the popular counterexample. After her prepubescent acting gigs, she went on to live a meltdown-free career as a diplomat, political activist, and mother of three.  That fact made her "perhaps the best example of a child star who came out the other side sane and used her fame for a great 2nd act," said entertainment critic Alan Sepinwall on Twitter. Or, as writer Jeff Pearlman put it, she "was Justin Bieber with talent, taste, judgement and 0 inane tattoos."... One thing that stands out reading through the obituaries for Temple is that people probably shouldn't get too nostalgic for the how classic Hollywood treated Temple and kids like her. If she emerged unscarred, it's not for the film industry's lack of trying... In 1939, a woman who thought Temple had stolen her daughter's soul tried to assassinate her during a radio performance. "The tale seemed understandable to me,” Temple wrote of the incident in Child Star. As Matt Weinstock pointed out last year for The New Yorker, that's a shockingly level-headed response in the annals of celebrity brushes with the deranged: "In 1981, Jodie Foster would respond to the Hinckley incident by sinking into depression, demanding to read all her hate mail, and ironically hanging an enormous photo of Reagan getting shot in her kitchen."... "On her first visit to MGM, Mrs. Black wrote in her autobiography, the producer Arthur Freed unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her," reports the Times. "Being innocent of male anatomy, she responded by giggling, and he threw her out of his office."... many kid actors turn out fine... Parenting likely plays a role, and Temple spoke effusively about how much affection she maintained for her mother over the years. But Temple also seemed like she possessed a steeliness that'd be unique in any era."
From 2014

A (Straight, Male) History of Sex Dolls - The Atlantic - "Pygmalion’s true modern heir might be Davecat, a man who lives in southeastern Michigan with three high-end sex dolls. His first purchase, which he named Sidore Kuroneko, he considers his wife; the other two—named Elena and Muriel—are just intimate friends. Though he didn’t sculpt them, they are his creations. He designed their bodies before they were manufactured and their personalities after they arrived. “There was never a moment when [Sidore]—or any doll, for that matter—was merely an object to me”... he’s part of a community called iDollators. These owners of high-end, anatomically correct dolls use them for sex, love, art, and companionship.  If Pygmalion lived in today’s world, none of this would be too foreign to him. In Ovid’s original story, there is some implication that the sculptor was not only in love with the statue but that he had sex with it before it came to life, according to The Erotic Doll, a book by Dr. Marquard Smith, the head of doctoral studies and the research leader at the Royal College of Art’s School of Humanities... the Greek rhetorician Athenaeus wrote of a man who had a physical love affair with a statue of Cupid... a gardener was reportedly found attempting to get it on with a replica of the Venus de Milo in 1877. Throughout history, men without access to beautiful statues—but with an inclination to make love to women-shaped things—have made do in various ways. Sailors often used cloth to fashion fornicatory dolls known as dame de voyage in French, or dama de viaje in Spanish. In modern-day Japan, sex dolls are sometimes known as “Dutch wives”—a reference to the hand-sewn leather masturbation puppets made by the 17th-century Dutch sailors who traded with the Japanese. Though sailors’ dolls were just generic substitutes for the female form—any female form—there are some instances of men creating dolls as stand-ins for specific women. In 1916, after the Austro-Hungarian artist Oskar Kokoschka was jilted by his lover, the pianist and composer Alma Mahler, he wrote that he had “lost all desire to go through the ordeal of love again.” (This is a refrain that doll owners have repeated through the ages.)... the most public prelude to the modern sex doll was the mannequin-based art created by Surrealists like Man Ray and Salvador Dalí. A work called “Mannequin Street,” featured at the Exposition International du Surréalisme at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in 1938, included 16 mannequins outfitted by different artists, while Dalí’s “Rainy Taxi” centered on a female mannequin whose half-undressed body was crawling with live snails. Man Ray once claimed that the Surrealists not only infused these works with eroticism but personally “violated” their mannequins.  A persistent urban legend holds that Adolf Hitler charged one of his SS commanders to design sex dolls for German soldiers during World War II, to prevent them from slaking their lust with non-Aryan women. Whether or not this is true, the commercial sex doll does find its origins in Germany.  The Bild Lilli doll—invented in the 1950s and modeled on a sexy, outspoken comic-strip character called Lilli—was an 11.5 inch plastic model, not a penetrable sex doll. In his book The Sex Doll: A History, Anthony Ferguson calls the Bild Lilli “a pornographic caricature.” Although it was marketed to adult men, the doll is widely cited as the inspiration for Barbie, so, you know, take that and run with it... The realism and utility of sex dolls took a giant leap forward in the late 90s, when  artist Matt McMullen started working on a lifelike silicone female mannequin and documenting its progress on his website. Before long, he began getting emails asking if it was … anatomically correct. At the time, it wasn’t. But the demand was there, and so McMullen provided the supply. Hence, the eerily lifelike RealDoll was born. After shock jock Howard Stern got hold of one and seemingly had sex with it on his radio show, McMullen’s company grew quickly, and he now sells anywhere from 200 to 300 high-end customizable sex dolls per year... He insists that actual women have nothing to fear from his dolls. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Do I think the dolls will replace women or threaten to replace women? Absolutely not.” Throughout history—from Pygmalion and his marble bride to Oskar Kokoschka and his fuzzy companion—the creators and users of sex dolls have been overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, straight men. “In the content analysis I did of magazines and books, I don’t think any of [the examples] involved women,” says Cynthia Ann Moya, vice-president of the erotica database Alta-Glamour.com Book Gallery, who wrote her Ph.D. dissertation at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco on artificial vaginas and sex dolls from the late 19th century through the 1980s. “This is not to say that it never happened. But the mythologies that people tell each other about these sex dolls all involved men.”... “Why aren’t more women using sex dolls?” and “Why are so many men drawn to them?”  Some answers are purely practical. For instance, only 25 percent of women can consistently orgasm from vaginal sex alone, which makes a doll far from the most efficient sex toy. Also, when it comes to RealDolls and their ilk, everyone I spoke with told me how heavy they are. (Female RealDolls weigh between 75 and 115 pounds.) Some mentioned it sheepishly, others matter-of-factly, but there was a general consensus that the dolls are difficult for many women to move around.  There’s also plenty of speculation about the difference between men and women’s masturbation styles. In his 1936 book Studies in the Psychology of Sex, the English psychologist Henry Havelock Ellis wrote that men are more visual, while women are more imaginative and rely more on their sense of touch... There are some women who buy female dolls. But McMullen says many of them purchase the dolls with a male partner—or with the intention of dressing them up and enjoying them as fashion dolls. “A lot of women like the dolls because they’re like life-size Barbies,” he says... many of the men she surveyed for her research felt shame or embarrassment about owning sex dolls. But contrary to popular stereotypes, they were just as satisfied with their lives, on average, as the general population, and didn’t suffer higher-than-normal rates of depression or other mental illness... Some doll owners are just having fun. Some suffer from social anxiety or even disabilities that might make human relationships difficult. Some people just want to take arty photographs. The whole phenomenon is surprisingly hard to nail down... “Ninety-eight percent of the iDollators and technosexuals I know treat their Dolls like goddesses”... because they don’t meet women’s expectations.” But then he went on: “Dolls don’t possess any of the unpleasant qualities that organic, flesh and blood humans have. A synthetic will never lie to you, cheat on you, criticize you, or be otherwise disagreeable.”"

Malaysian minister says heritage dish status for bak kut teh nothing to do with race, religion - "Stop turning the bak kut teh (pork rib soup) discussion into a religious issue and show respect for Malaysia’s multiracial structure, Tourism Minister Tiong King Sing said... as per the National Heritage Act 2005 (Act 645) discussions on whether to turn bak kut teh into a heritage dish has nothing to do with religion or race.  The Bintulu MP said bak kut teh is not a new dish as it has been part of Malaysian society for a long time.  “We know that there are halal and non-halal versions. There is even a vegetarian version of bak kut teh.  “The recognition of bak kut teh as a heritage food is based on Act 645 and does not involve issues of race or religion,” he said.  With that in mind, Tiong called on all quarters to respect the different cultures and religions in Malaysia so as to protect the harmony in the country... Bak kut teh was among the 10 dishes declared by Heritage Commissioner Mohamad Muda Bahadin on February 24 as national heritage dishes.  Earlier this month, Umno Youth chief Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh described the action of recognising bak kut teh as a national heritage dish as “extremist,” claiming it showed “a lack of sensitivity towards the country’s Muslim population.”"
Malaysia Boleh!

Malaysia opposition MP slammed for linking Chinese villages under Unesco plan to communism - "Housing and Local Government Minister Nga Kor Ming, who is from the multiracial but Chinese-led Democratic Action Party, last year proposed to ask Unesco to recognise the “new villages”, which were set up by the British across several states in the peninsula to contain the spread of communism after World War II.  His proposal triggered an immediate backlash from some Muslim academics and Islamist parties, who described it as an attempt to grant native status to non-Malays. Global recognition accorded to these villages could be seen as legitimising the struggles of the Communist Party of Malaya (PKM), Ismail Abu Muttalib, a lawmaker with the Perikatan Nasional (PN) opposition front"

April Harding on X - "Matt Taibbi was asked "why doesn't he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from "the right"?" He gave a great answer: Why I don’t spend a lot of time on the Republicans:
1) There is a enormous army of MSM reporters already going after them from every angle, with most major news organizations little more than proxies for the DNC, to the point where stations hire Biden spokespeople as anchors;
2) The Republicans have very little institutional power nationally. It’s not their point of view prevailing in schools, on campuses, in newsrooms (where over 90% of working reporters vote blue), and especially in the intelligence and military apparatus, which has openly aligned itself with Democrats. Even if Donald Trump were a “threat to Democracy” he lacks the institutional pull to do much damage, which can’t be said of Democrats;
3) The Democrats’ ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance — all plans being executed globally as well as in our one country — they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans. I lived in third world countries and the endless criminal indictments of people like Trump and ongoing lawfare efforts to prevent even third party challenges are classic authoritarian symptoms. The Republicans aren’t near this kind of capability;
4) Last and most important, the Democrats are being organized around a more potent but also much dumber, more cultlike ideology. People like Yuval Harari and his Transhumanist “divinity” concept scare me a lot more than the Rs, and I was once undercover in an apocalyptic church in Texas. Ask your average Russian or Cuban what overempowered pseudo-intellectuals are capable of.
I have a pretty good record of picking dangerous phenomena ahead of time. I feel confident on this one, and that’s before we get to the demographic/class shifts in the parties."
It's only "fascism" if it threatens the left wing agenda

Taliban To Resume Stoning Women In Public For Adultery: Report - " Taliban's Supreme Leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada made the announcement - that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death - in a voice message broadcast on state TV."
Weird. We were told they had changed

Meme - "When your girl is pregnant but you never had sex and when your child is born, 3 random dudes that you have never seen show up with gifts for the baby. *Mary and Joseph*"

Meme - "Stumptown Coffee Roasters *woman with 2 stumps for hands with crazy look*"

Meme - *looking at computer screen* "Is that multiplayer?"
"yep."
"Are you any good at it?"
"Well... Not to brag, but I ALWAYS get first or second"
*guy leaves*
Girl playing chess: "No, wait. Come back."

Adidas Bans '44' on Germany's Team Jerseys After Historian Says It Looks Like a Nazi Symbol - "Adidas has banned fans from personalizing the German national team jersey with the number “44” after outrage over the resulting resemblance to Nazi symbolism.  Historian Michael König appears to have been one of the first people to notice the resemblance between the “44” and the symbol for the “Schutzstaffel,” also known as the SS, which was responsible for planning and carrying out the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, last Friday, König included screenshots of Germany’s national team jersey, which is sold by the company, with the number “44” and said it was “questionable” to allow the shirts... Fans were able to choose the number “44” because Adidas allows them to personalize some of their apparel with specific names or numbers. In light of the criticism, Adidas quickly disabled the personalization option for the jerseys in its online store."

Meme - "First time doing anal vs when your hoe ass is used to it
*Mufasa from Lion King falling down slope* *Scar from Lion King falling down slope*"

'Tepid' GDP extends Australia's per capita recession, hinting November's interest rate rise may have been 'unnecessary' - "The federal government played a significant role in avoiding economic contraction during the December quarter, according to the ABS data... The government contribution included a one-off boost from all the polling officials temporarily employed to run the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum."

A longevity doctor says this is the No. 1 mistake that will 'make you age faster' - “Sleeping well is the No. 1 way to slow down aging”

browser - Edge on ALT-TAB to show its windows not tabs - “If you don't want ALT+TAB to show the browser tabs (but show them as one process), you can go to (System) Settings > System > Multitasking > Alt + Tab, and select Open windows only.”

Montpellier introduces free transport: Where else in Europe can you travel without buying a ticket? - “It is the largest French metropolis to boast such a scheme. Local residents can now utilise a free transport pass across the city’s bus and tram network. The scheme aims to slash emissions, reduce pollution and improve accessibility for the city’s residents… French towns and cities have been rolling out such schemes since the country’s transport management was decentralised in 2015. However the majority of these have less than 150,000 inhabitants. With almost 200,000 inhabitants, Dunkirk is the largest city to have embraced free transport so far. After it introduced fare-free bus routes in 2018, passenger numbers increased by an average of 85 per cent. The scheme is funded by a small increase in the Mobility Payment tax already levied on public and private companies in France with more than 10 employees. In total, 39 territories in France have similar schemes, including the Marseille suburb of Aubagne, the port city of Calais and the western commune of Niort… some fear it could discourage investment and development in the transport sector, and that the costs could fall on taxpayers. Increased demand spurred by ticket-free travel may also stretch capacity in busy urban areas, while similar schemes across Europe have not always proven to reduce car use… Two European countries stand out for their trailblazing free transport schemes. Estonia’s capital Tallinn introduced free public transport in 2013. In 2020, Luxembourg became the first country in the world to scrap fares on all public transport. Spain is experimenting with free train tickets for short and medium-distance journeys in a scheme that runs until the end of this year. It aims to reduce the impact of the cost of living crisis, while cutting CO2 emissions. Germany introduced a similar measure between June and August last year with a discounted nationwide public transport pass. It gave travellers unlimited use of local and regional services for just €9 a month. Together, France and Germany are giving away 60,000 free train tickets to young people this summer to encourage cultural exchange. More than 50 cities and towns in Europe have now introduced free public transport, citing climate ambitions and social equality as their primary motivators.”"

Inside one of the most secretive nations on Earth where dirty cars are illegal - "The car rule has come to the country courtesy of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Chairman Of The People’s Council of Turkmenistan. It’s reported Mr Berdimuhamedow – who was president of the country until 2022 when he entered into a power-sharing arrangement with his son Serdar – made the rule after ordering the impounding of all black cars in the capital in 2018. Police were said to have subsequently seized black cars and told the owners they had to pay to have them repainted white or silver. The ban was later extended to vehicles of all other colours. No official reason was given for the directive, although it’s known that Mr Berdimuhamedow is a fan of the colour white, believing it to be lucky. Not only do cars have to conform to the colour rules, but they also have to be sparkling clean. In fact, visitors report that driving with a dirty car can land you in trouble with the police, who strictly enforce the rules. And the theme doesn’t stop at cars either. Ashgabat holds the oddly-specific Guinness World Record for the place with the ‘highest density of white marble-clad buildings’... don’t expect to be able to freely use the internet if you visit as you can in other parts of the world. Access to the Internet is heavily regulated there and only a small fraction of the population can access it, with most websites banned other than local ones accessible via the Turkmenet, a censored version of the web available only in Turkmen. And you won’t be able to drop your friends back a home a message telling them about the visually breathtaking sights of the capital. Most social media apps, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are blocked in Turkmenistan, along with WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube. While many get round the ban by using VPNs, these are frequently shut down by the authorities."

Turning point for Turkey? Erdogan's AKP suffers biggest election setback in decades - "Despite media and courts stacked against the opposition, the ruling party lost the country’s five biggest cities."

Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler

Since the website often has issues. From 2016:

Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler
The “Big Lie” has been around for over fifty years. 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

“Except for Adolf Hitler's extermination of the Jewish people, the American bombardment of defenseless peasants in Indochina is the most barbaric act of modern times.”

That quote didn’t come from some Soviet hack coughing up copy for Moscow, but from Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. (Some years later, McGovern would compare the Communist massacres in Cambodia to the Holocaust and call for some of that barbaric military intervention.)

Vice President Hubert Humphrey also brought out Hitler when running against Nixon, declaring, “If the British had not fought in 1940, Hitler would have been in London and if Democrats do not fight in 1968, Nixon will be in the White House.”  Chicago Mayor Daley had accused Nixon of “Hitler type” tactics.

McGovern had set a record for comparing Nixon to Hitler, which made him very popular with the left, but he hadn’t originated it. Comparing any Republican presidential candidate to Hitler had been a standard Democratic political tactic for some time no matter how inappropriate it might be.

Before McGovern was comparing Nixon to Hitler, he was comparing Barry Goldwater to Hitler. Goldwater had a Jewish father and a distaste for Socialism, which would have made him unwelcome in the ranks of the racially and politically pure National Socialists, but that didn’t stop the Hitler accusations from being hurled by the Democratic party and its political allies in the press.

Governor Pat Brown of California said, “Goldwater's acceptance speech had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.” Mayor Jack Shelley of San Francisco claimed that Goldwater strategists got all their ideas from Mein Kampf.

Even though Goldwater had been an early NAACP member, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins warned, "Those who say that the doctrine of ultra-conservatism offers no menace should remember that a man come out of the beer halls of Munich and rallied the forces of rightism in Germany. All the same elements are there in San Francisco now."

The NAACP accused Goldwater of appealing to “fear and bigotry”. Martin Luther King said, “We see danger signs of Hitlerism in the candidacy of Mr. Goldwater.”

Union leaders launched a national campaign to denounce Goldwater as Hitler II. "I have drawn a parallel between Goldwater and Hitler and I make no apology for drawing that parallel," George Meany of the AFL-CIO declared. While Goldwater wasn’t Hitler, the CIO part of the AFL-CIO had strong Communist influences and after the Hitler-Stalin pact, some unions within it staged strikes to sabotage production and prevent aid from reaching the Allies who were fighting Hitler. Not only was Goldwater not Hitler, but some of the organizations represented by Meany had aided Hitler when Stalin told them to.

Accusing Republicans of being Hitler for assorted petty reasons dates back to the time when Hitler was still around. FDR accused Republican candidate Wendell Willkie of using “Hitler tactics” by repeating his slogans frequently. But it was the frequent associations of Republicans and Hitler by Democrats that was the true Big Lie. Its only purpose was a senseless association through the repetition of ridiculous and baseless accusations that every single Republican was just Hitler in a better suit.

Typical of this tactic was Senator Tom Lantos ranting, “If you overlook your involvement in the KKK, or the Nazi party, or the Republican Party, you are lying.” The issue at hand had nothing to do with Nazism. It was about Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture taking bribes. The goal was to associate Republicans with Nazism by classing the two together as frequently as possible regardless of relevance, decency or truth.

In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North was accused of “following Adolf Hitler’s official strategy”. What did one have to do with the other? Nothing. But this sort of lazy accusation had become typical and routine. William Shirer, who had also compared Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi to the Holocaust and called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler (Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim was Goebbels), compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada. Then Shirer compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.

By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.

President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.

Congressman Charles Rangel compared the Iraq War to the Holocaust. “This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed." (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler.) Senator Durbin compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps. Senator John Glenn compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” Like repeatedly accusing Republicans of Nazism.

Congressman Keith Ellison, a former Nation of Islam supporter who had defended its anti-Semitism, compared the September 11 to the Reichstag fire while hinting at 9/11 Trutherism.  Al Gore claimed that “The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts”.

Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, a former Klansman, compared Bush to Hitler stooge Herman Goering. Byrd, who had filibustered the Civil Rights Act, also compared efforts to block Democratic filibusters to Nazi Germany. The “nuclear option” that Byrd was denouncing became a reality under Obama and Reid, but by then using it did not make Senators Democrats into the successors of Nazi Germany.

To most people, Nazi analogies summon up images of the Holocaust and a ruthless dictatorship. To the left however, any populist reaction against their rule is Nazism.  In their world, there is a battle between progressive and reactionary forces. Any movement that dares to run for office by challenging progressive policies is reactionary, fascist and the second coming of the Third Reich. Republican victories are lazily attributed by liberal hacks to mindless public anger being exploited by right-wing demagogues.

And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It doesn’t matter if Democrats considered him a moderate 5 minutes ago. Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.

Republicans aren’t progressive. Therefore they’re Hitler. It’s really that simple.

Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years. It will go on limping around the liberal corral for another fifty years or a hundred years. The Big Lie will continue being repeated to indoctrinate each new politically active progressive with the conviction that anyone to the right is Hitler and that every election is a brand new battle to stop Hitler 2.0 from taking over America.

Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate has already begun. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.