Comedians having a clue.

Nazis.

So lemme see, we were told for years: Ukraine full of nazi, and that Bad™, but suddenly Ukraine Good™, because Russia Bad™. Then we are told, “You no like nazi, huh? hahaha, well Russia nazi too because Wagner are nazi, hahaha I am very intelligent.” But then Wagner Good™, because they mutiny against Bad Russia™, but maybe Wagner Bad™ after all because no overturn Bad Putin Hitler Man 2.0™.

Very confusing, I think maybe the West just likes nazis.

Quote from: h1d1ng1npla1ns1ght

It couldn’t possibly be the case that left-wing and right-wing women uniting over an issue means the issue has merit for women. It must be that we’re all hateful bigots who love Hitler. A friend of mine called JK Rowling a “literal nazi”. What!? A literal nazi. Literal. She writes things on twitter he doesn’t like so obviously she’s comparable to the worst war criminals who have ever existed.

Misusing the word "literal" may be even worse than misusing the word "Nazi".

It's a gaming of the disgust response in humans. The goal is to make undecided people so averse to looking at what we're saying that they swerve away from us without any engagement. We get labelled as those things that people feel most aversion to, so the undecideds stay away.

The beauty of this approach is that the greater the aversion response you create, the less people feel they ought to think for themselves, and in fact the more people feel that they should actively not do so.

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2012/Q3/prof-be-wary-when-disgust-tactics-used-in-campaigning.html

Typos.

Inside the Grauniad’s civil war over trans coverage

Following the 2020 letter, Moore loudly resigned from her position at the paper. In a typo-ridden email in March 2020, Moore lashed out at some Guardian colleagues who signed the letter.

Not really.

I'm not going to call grammar Nazi, but thanks to what has turned into the usual bias, I won't be bookmarking Semafor.

A new moment requires new thinking.

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Join us and make sense of a complex world with a news source you can trust stifled laughter.

The wilder shores of satire is a whoosh for some people, too.


Don't laugh

That hair looks familiar...


Oh be nice.

I'd say bullying your mum belongs on this list, though I suppose mums will forgive just about anything.

I have female friends whose daughters have disidentified from femaleness. In doing so, have seen fit to lecture their mothers on how they — mere older women — could not possibly understand what it is like not to feel at home in one’s female body or to reject the social identities imposed on female people. When my friends initially protested that on the contrary, they knew exactly what it was like — that they, too, had complex inner lives, and had only come to accept their bodies after fighting to reject the meanings imposed on them — their children did not believe them. Instead, they saw a bigotry that had to be combated with an even more aggressive form of disidentification.

Freedom from compelled speech.

The Legal Feminist, on grammar and grievance:

You can’t defend irrational beliefs with reason. By and large genderists don’t try: instead, their strategy has been to attempt to leapfrog over the usual campaigning, lobbying, arguing, persuading phases of bringing about profound cultural and legal change, and to pretend instead that the desired outcome is already accepted by all right-thinking people – and to silence dissent by visiting dire consequences on anyone who questions that claim. That, I believe, is the whole reason for the vitriol and toxicity that surrounds this subject. Anyone who points out the absurdity of propositions like “some women have penises” must be howled down as a bigot, shamed, no-platformed, hounded from her job, kicked off her course, etc. That way, any doubter who lacks an appetite for martyrdom will be persuaded to steer clear of the whole debate – and insist if pressed that this subject is all too complicated and toxic, and they simply haven’t found the time or head-space to form a view.

The more insidious part of the strategy is the first part: the pretence that the contentious propositions that form genderist beliefs are already accepted without question by all educated, right-thinking people. Genderists make determined efforts to weave their claims seamlessly into our language and the fabric of our workplace culture, with the aim of converting contentious claims into the kind of tacit knowledge that doesn’t even need to be stated or formulated...

The mechanism by which pronouns are supposed to make the workplace more open and inclusive is that they demonstrate your support of genderist beliefs, but without requiring you to say anything explicit. They bolster and entrench the idea that gender identity is more important than sex, while maintaining the appearance of a trivial, harmless courtesy.

Which brings us to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.


There is a great deal of worry in some quarters that truth will be allowed to break out.

The sale of Twitter to Elon Musk would be a victory for disinformation and the people who peddle it. Musk could unleash a wave of toxicity and harassment and undo Twitter’s efforts to increase quality engagement and make its platform safer for users,” staff for Media Matters, a left-leaning media non profit, wrote Monday.

Erin Reed, a prominent LGBTQ+ activist with a Twitter following nearing 44,000, said the platform has been instrumental in communicating and organizing with other advocates and interacting directly with legislators.

But Reed, who mostly uses her account to sound the alarm on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation moving across the country, told Changing America that she and others are considering at least a partial departure from the platform over negative comments made by Musk about LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender and nonbinary people.

Musk in 2020 took to Twitter to share his opinion on personal pronouns, writing from his account that “pronouns suck.” Later that year, Musk said social media accounts displaying personal pronouns were “an esthetic nightmare,” and the Human Rights Campaign demanded an apology after he posted a meme deriding users who put their pronouns in their social media bios.

Twitter has long been an #estheticnightmare.

A little late on the toxicity and harassment front. It seems Media Matters are unaware of the torrent of violent imagery and misogyny that comes through the transoms of JK Rowling and less well known gender critics every day of the week. Women have been kicked off the platform for heresy rather than hate, unless that word has been redefined to include pointing out that men aren't in fact women – something I'm confident Mary, born 263 years ago today, would agree with. But never mind. Media Matters:

Any negotiations to sell Twitter to Musk must include clear enforceable mechanisms to uphold and maintain existing community standards, including the removal of those who violate those standards.”

Yes, there's some scary stuff about white supremacists and The Donald, but I think the chief worry is that the reality remodelling project, of which this is another plank, may not be allowed to continue as it has been.

I have no view on Musk's worthiness. We both agree that the sky is blue and that compelled or just heavily encouraged use of pronouns, particularly ones that don't come naturally, is wrong.



Alternate view/interesting experiment:

I must admit I'd be happy to call everyone they as i still don't see the point of continually referring to someone's sex and I don't want to give people gender limitations or descriptions



However I would expect Them to afford you the same respect 



Everyone is they them or no one