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“Name Redacted (they/them) is the new Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy. They are a dual Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and the Technology and Policy Center.
#amplify #genderfluid #nonbinary”
Let’s not amplify toxic gender norm in society. This male individual has decided to wear high heels. Good for him if that’s what he’s about. The choice to wear damaging uncomfortable footwear should be available to both men and women.
The stereotypical outerwear does exactly zero to change one’s sex or position in societies hierarchy. Declarations of being ‘gender-fluid’ or ‘non-binary’ are simply declarations of slavish devotion to sex stereotypes (aka gender).
Let’s end with a picture from another post –
Yes, so celebrating being the last regressive category is actually quite cringe worthy. But apparently using the correct pronouns for the dude pictured above is a ban worthy offense – the gender religious are soooooo sensitive. :)
No topic in a liberal democratic society should be off the table for reasonable debate. Yet here we are in 2022 with a seasoned educator being silenced and suspended for raising safeguarding concerns over ideological transgender literature being made available to children. Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.
The studies regarding medical transition are not conclusive, yet here in select transgender children’s literature everything is a-fucking-okay. This is an issue worth discussing in public and in great detail at the *very* least.
Canada’s National Post has run a story called No Dissent is Allowed:
“An Ontario school board is facing charges of censorship this week after shutting down a teacher’s presentation to the group, saying her comments about books on transgender issues violated the province’s human rights code
Carolyn Burjoski was discussing publications she said are available in the libraries of Kindergarten to grade six schools. She had begun to argue the books made it seem too simple and “cool” to medically transition to another gender when her presentation was cut short by the Waterloo Region District School Board’s chair.”
Ms. Burjoski’s presentation was about safeguarding children from potentially dangerous medical treatments. Seems reasonable right? (Wrong)
“Scott Piatkowski ruled she could not continue and the board eventually voted 5-4 to back up his decision. The fallout has continued since.
Though controversial and opposed by most transgender advocates, concerns have been voiced before — including by leading figures in the movement itself — that gender-dysphoric young people are sometimes pushed too aggressively into medical transition.
Piatkowski latertold a local CTV station , however, that Burjoski’s comments were actually transphobic and “questioned the right to exist” of trans people. Meanwhile, the organization took down its recording of the meeting — a regular, public session of elected officials — and had YouTube remove another copy of the video for alleged copyright infringement.”
Piatkowski and the Board have taken down the meeting off of youtube, fortunately the meeting recording has appeared elsewhere.
Go here and judge for yourself if *ANYTHING* Ms. Burjoksi says or presents is in the least bit ‘transphobic’ or in violation of the Canadian Human Rights Code (nothing is).
Time Stamp Highlghts:
2:01 – Book called ‘Rick’ – That is about why Rick doesn’t think about naked girls. He goes to a ‘rainbow club’ and identifies as ‘asexual’. Counterpoint – Maybe Rick doesn’t have sexual feelings yet because Rick is a child. Also a book that sexualizes and objectifies girls might not be appropriate reading for young girls (ed. or really *any* educational setting)
2:59 – The first warning from Piatkowski directed at Ms. Burjoski on the unfounded basis of her presentation somehow being against the Ontario Human Rights Code.
3:55 – Book called ‘Shane’ – The main character dismisses the very real consequences of being sterilized. The book also makes medical transition seem like an easy cure to emotional and social distress. (ed. it most certainly is not).
4:16 – Ms. Burjoski shut down by Chair Piatkowski for alleged breach of Ontario Human Rights Code.
Watch the whole thing, but like any zoom meeting its disjointed and frustrating to watch especially when those who value critical analysis and freedom of speech are shut down.
A bit of a side bar for you, gentle reader to make the judgement for yourself of what the Ontario Human Right Code actually says and how it happens to be interpreted by Chair Piatkowski. Here is a portion of the informal legal analysis by a Canadian lawyer justdad7 :
“The Board refers to the Ontario Human Rights Code its own policies on human rights and equity and inclusion. There is also a policy on harassment.
There is nothing wrong with the board’s policies. They accurately reflect the requirements of the Human Rights Code and the case law interpreting it. The problem is the Board’s interpretation.
The Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in the employment, housing and the provision of services on prohibited grounds of discrimination which include “race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability.”
It also prohibits harassment in employment or housing. Harassment “means engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.” The board’s human rights policy elaborates on this definition and explains that harassment consists of conduct directed at an individual such as insults, epithets, persistent teasing and offensive jokes based on a protected characteristic. Nothing in Ms. Burjoski’s presentation could possibly fit this definition.
The Ontario Code does not attempt to regulate speech in general. Section 13 prohibits publication of a “notice, sign, symbol or emblem” that indicates an expression to discriminate but it is subject to a proviso that it shall not interfere with freedom of expression.”
Yeah… So it would seem that these ‘human rights violations’ are really just important and valid concerns with gender ideology that desperately need to be discussed in context of their application in Public Schools.
Also Ms. Burjoski was then summarily excommunicated from her staff and students for her heretical statements.
“And then the teacher was given what she calls a “stay-at-home order” and told not to communicate with colleagues or students, though she’s still being paid and is slated to retire soon. On Thursday, she says her union rep informed her the board had appointed an outside investigator to examine her actions.”
Yep. Did you think that freedom of speech is a valued tenet of our society? Try speaking out against the gender-religion and see how far you get. Suspended in Burjoski’s case for wanting to discuss the appropriateness of sexualizing children and child safeguarding against still largely experimental medical gender therapies.
“In her first interview on the affair, Burjoski said she was “flabbergasted” by what happened at the meeting and Piatkowski’s remarks afterward
“I am not a transphobic person. It’s crazy that just because you ask a question, the first thing people do is call you that,” she said. “We do need to have a conversation about the intersection of biology and gender. We’re not having those conversations in our culture because, look what happened to me.”
She said the order to stay away from school was likely meant to make an example of her: “The message is clear: no dissent is allowed.”
No ideology is above reproach and measured critique by members of a free and open society, yet here we are watching a teacher be excommunicated for questioning the transgender doctrine in the context of prioritizing the safety of children.
If you are not asking questions about what transgender ideology is and how it affects children (and society) it is time to start. How many more people are we going to let be silenced in the name of transgender orthodoxy? Thankfully Ms. Burjoski is not going quietly. Support her legal fund as she fights not to be silenced for making valid criticisms of a potentially pernicious ideology.
The demands of people for you as a third party to partake in their gender-fantasy is not a reasonable one.
What other adults think and believe in society is not my responsibility. I believe that society should be based on verifiable facts, evinced arguments, and the willingness to be compromise on contentious issues. We’re all not going to get exactly what we want from society, but through negotiation and Reason, a middling solution must be found. The best way to interrogate the issues that we all face in the broader societal context is to have the ability to discuss social issues without fear in a nuanced and usually complex way. No topic should be off limits in a reasonable discussion – yet an entire class of unreasonable arguments seems to be off that table. Those arguments deal with the ideas of personal identity and how the individual and society is supposed to interact.
The problematic identities that are causing friction in society usually involve the nebulous concept of ‘gender’. Gender is the set of socially constructed beliefs and values that are associated with the two sexes of human beings in society. For instance, males are aggressive and good leaders, while females are compassionate and good care-givers are both examples of sex stereotypes (aka gender) that individuals in each sex class are saddled with. Society is constructed around the preservation of these stereotypes and in breaking them there is usually a negative social cost involved.
Feminists, during the second wave, sought to break down these gender stereotypes and move toward an understanding of gender as an often toxic construction of norms and ideas that shouldn’t necessarily be followed. Gender non-conforming behaviour was lauded as the way forward as individuals of both sexes should be able to access and embody the traits and values that were traditionally ‘not allowed’ for them. Women could be aggressive, powerful leaders while men could be caring nurturing and family orientated – and neither would face social censure for acting outside what was considered “normal” for their sex classes.
I consider the refutation of gender norms and gender non-conforming behaviour to be the way forward in society as individuals should be able to embody whatever sex stereotypical sets of behaviours that seem right for them.
All of this is based on the notion that gender is a set of sex stereotypical behaviours that have been arbitrarily (and some times coercively) assigned to the two human sexes.
The Transgender Identity movement we know today takes precisely the opposite view of sex stereotypes and how they should play out in society. Transgender ideology states that the act of performing and identifying with one set of sex stereotypes *makes* you that stereotype AND the physical sex associated with it. So for instance, a man who likes wearing high heels and dresses (both sex stereotypical clothing types) should be regarded as a ‘woman’ (adult human female). Because, in transgender ideology, adopting femininity and feminine affect is what makes women ‘women’.
To reality based feminists and most of the general population this is a preposterous notion. Human beings inhabit a sexual binary. We are either male or female for the most part. What makes a woman or a man is simply being male or female with all the associated physical characteristics. We are defined by the sex class we are born into – the set of stereotypes prescribed for us is based on natal sex. Second Wave feminism correctly identified gender as (usually harmful) sex-stereotypes and specifically rallied against the notion that to be a proper man or a woman one must follow the normative prescriptions of gender identity.
Transgender ideology flips this around and says that people who don’t associate with set of sex stereotypes that are assigned to them must then adopt the stereotypes of the opposite sex and through gender magic the individual ‘transitions’ to actually being the opposite sex. Thus, acting a male acting in a stereotypical female fashion ACTUALLY becomes female.
This is Grade A bonafide horseshit, but it is the tenet that lies at the very heart of transgenderism – by adopting they stereotypes of the opposite sex, you become that sex… Fundamentally, the notion is nonsensical and at odds with the physical reality we all share. But it is also here where the compelled speech becomes and issue for me and the rest of society. You see, correctly observing reality is looked at as harmful and abusive because it does not align with the transgender individuals internalized notion of gender and of which sex they are. The transgender movement argues that subjective feelings of individuals should override the rights of others in correctly identifying the physical reality that is before their very eyes. A male is woman because he has feminine feelings and because he says so, and to contradict his gender delusion is to be bigoted and transphobic.
In polite society, being a bigot or phobic carries serious social consequences which is precisely why the transgender movement subverted these social norms to comport with their inner feelings of gender and the protection thereof. Individuals in society must then carefully consider the social costs to disagreeing with transgender ideology which makes it harder to discuss and grapple with. Sometimes it’s just easier and safer to go along with the gender deluded individual despite the damage being done to free speech and allegiance to material reality in society. It is this chilling paradigm that I rally against.
If we value the liberal foundation that we have based our society on, transgender ideology and those who espouse it should not get a free pass. Transgender ideology must be debated, argued, and its merits and faults examined closely in society. Compelled speech to preserve gender-feelings that do not comport with reality is an unacceptable state of affairs. The current imposition of transgender ideology is a clear and present safeguarding issue to women and children in our society because men who identify as women are gaining access to single sex spaces based on their say-so and that, if we value the safety of children and women, is a problem.
It’s time to organize against the gender religion. I’ve got the book… somewhere. One of the worst feelings in the world is to know you have the book in question, but cannot find it. So here is a quick summary I found on the web.
“According to Alinsky, the organizer, especially a paid organizer from outside, must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
When one takes time to examine the arguments put forward by the gender religious it quickly becomes obvious that past verbal intimidation and name calling, not many debatable points exist.
“That’s the way feminists have used the terms since the 1970s, as they challenged patriarchal claims that men’s domination and exploitation of women is “natural” because of biology. Patriarchy turns biological difference into social dominance. Feminists have long argued that gender is connected to our sex differences but is “socially constructed” in a way that reflects the unequal distribution of power between men and women over the past few thousand years. Anything socially constructed could be constructed differently through politics.
The trans movement flips that understanding, routinely asserting that gender is not the product of social forces but is a private internal state of being, which may be innate and immutable (opinions in the trans movement vary). In other words, transgender ideology asserts that gender is something one feels and has no necessary connection to one’s body and reproductive system. Trans activists routinely assert that “sex is a social construction,” that the biological distinctions of male and female are not objectively real but are created by societies. Stock painstakingly explains why this—again I’ll use the phrase, though it sounds harsh—doesn’t make sense.
In the preceding paragraph, I wrote “routinely assert” not only because there are differences of opinion within the transgender movement (which is to be expected in any movement) but because I have heard trans activists shift arguments when asked to defend a position (which is an indication of a weak argument in any movement). I once asked a trans activist, “If sex is socially constructed, that implies that it could be constructed in some other way. Do you know of any other way for humans to reproduce other than with an egg (produced by a female) and sperm (produced by a male)? By what means would human reproduction be socially constructed differently?” The activist offered no rebuttal to that, but simply dropped the claim, moving on to assert that trans people know what sex they “really” are and that any challenge to this idea was hateful and bigoted.”
This paucity of argumentative integrity has not stopped the gender-faithful from pushing their agenda and colonizing female spaces in society.
Stock also explains why allowing transwomen—again, males who identify as women—to participate in women’s sports will undermine and potentially eliminate sex-segregated activities that create opportunities for girls and women to thrive. Separate athletic competitions for males and females exist because of the physiological advantage males have over females, and those advantages don’t disappear by identifying as a woman.
Does any of this really matter? Well, it matters to teenage girls who may not want to change clothes in a locker room next to a boy who identifies as a girl. It matters to women at a health club that allows transwomen in a “women only” space. It matters to clients in a women’s homeless shelter that refuses to restrain sexually aggressive behavior of transwomen in order to be “inclusive.” It matters to the woman who is bumped from a country’s Olympic weightlifting team when a transwoman is allowed to compete as a woman. It matters to the women who were sexually assaulted by a transwoman who was housed in a women’s prison. It matters to the lesbians who choose not to date transwomen—because their sexual orientation is toward female humans and not male humans who identify as women—and are then called bigots and ostracized. And it matters to the woman who had to fight to get her job back after being fired for publicly stating that she believes “that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity.”
Trans activists’ responses to these challenges vary, but they can be reduced to a trans slogan so popular that an LGBT organization in the UKput it on a t-shirt: “Transwomen are women. Get over it!”
To say the least, the meaning of the statement “transwomen are women” is not obvious, either intuitively or logically. It’s a claim that many people find hard to understand, not because they are bigots but because it seems at odds with material reality. It would be more accurate to say: “Transwomen are transwomen, which raises many complex intellectual, political, and moral questions. Let’s work out solutions that respect everyone’s rights and interests!”
Not the catchiest slogan, but accurate and honest. It’s a t-shirt that I think Stock would endorse. She doesn’t condemn or mock trans people but rather seeks deeper understanding to make public policy choices as fair as possible for all.
The problem is that there has never been a public debate or a reasonable discussion of how we are in include the gender religious into society. It has always been ‘accept every demand, otherwise you are bigot!’. It has gotten them far, but at the expense of female rights, boundaries, and safety, which is clearly unacceptable in a society that values individuals rights and freedom.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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