9/11 and the resulting concurrent military debacle and ascendancy of the American Military Industrial Complex continues to haunt us to this day. Americans and the rest of the free world suffered severe setbacks to their individual liberties and privacy, and perhaps most importantly, the rule of law. Not that America was super good at following the rule of law when it’s own interests came into play, but perhaps the facade of us being the ‘good guys’ is an illusion that can never be restored.
Many military leaders in the US still parrot the GWB line trying to defend the indefensible War On Terror, nothing particularly surprising there. The military, institutionally speaking, will always prioritize its interests first. Looking further down the line though, we can see that people of conscience are coming forward with their stories about the horrors of the WoT and how they simply cannot continue business as usual.
Of course, these people will be punished by the state apparatus for violating the secrecy surrounding the acts of terror and bloodshed that the US is responsible for yet these individuals persisted. The two individuals both ended up losing their freedom because they were compelled by their conscience to do the right thing.
I’m not a big fan of the military industrial complex in the USA and their imperial spread across the globe – too many people in America and across the world are blind to the actions perpetrated in their name. In a democratic nation the truth must be known to the citizenry so they can be informed and equipped to make the best choice possible with regards to who will represent and lead them.
If I was an American and either of the following individuals ran for office, they would garner my vote. They spoke their mind to did what was right demonstrating an ethical and moral backbone that seems so rare in our body politic.
“Recently, some more minor players in the post-9/11 era have apologized in unique ways for the roles they played. For instance, Terry Albury, an FBI agent, would be convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking documents to the media, exposing the bureau’s policies of racial and religious profiling, as well as the staggering range of surveillance measures it conducted in the name of the war on terror. Sent to prison for four years, Albury recently completed his sentence. As Janet Reitman reported in the New York Times Magazine, feelings of guilt over the “human cost” of what he was involved in led to his act of revelation. It was, in other words, an apology in action.
As was the similar act of Daniel Hale, a former National Security Agency analyst who had worked at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan helping to identify human targets for drone attacks. He would receive a 45-month sentence under the Espionage Act for hisleaks— documents he had obtained on such strikes while working as a private contractor after his government service.
As Hale would explain, he acted out of a feeling of intense remorse. In his sentencing statement, he described watching “through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of Hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering purple-colored crystal guts.” His version of an apology-in-action came from his regret that he had continued on at his post even after witnessing the horrors of those endless killings, often of civilians. “Nevertheless, in spite of my better instinct, I continued to follow orders.” Eventually, a drone attack on a woman and her two daughters led him over the brink. “How could I possibly continue to believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness” was the way he put it and so he leaked his apology and is now serving his time.”
The cost of a clear conscience shouldn’t have to be your freedom, but kudos to Terry Albury and Daniel Hale for being true to themselves and their country.
Arguing with gender ideologues can be a very disparaging and fruitless task. Many of the argumentative styles they adopt are purely reflexive and will be based in goading or shaming the person they disagree with into silence or compliance. The ‘social pressure’ dodge will be part three of this series. However, the topic today is the ill considered use of the term “intersex” and intersexed people in general when used as rhetorical ammunition in a gender identity debate.
The Intersex ploy goes something like this:
There are several deformed ideas going on in this fine slice of twitter, so let’s parse them out.
1. The notion that intersex individuals are somehow outside of the sex binary.
2. That self identification somehow trumps the biological reality of sex (i.e non binary and trans men).
3. The notion that this third sex or sex spectrum is somehow supported by credible scientific sources.
Firstly, people with intersex conditions are genetically unambiguously male or female.
No third sex to be seen here. Also, from the Endocrine Society this definitive assertion:
“Sex is an important biological variable that must be considered in the design and analysis of human and animal research. The terms sex and gender should not be used interchangeably. Sex is dichotomous, with sex determination in the fertilized zygote stemming from unequal expression of sex chromosomal genes. By contrast, gender includes perception of the individual as male, female, or other, both by the individual and by society; both humans and animals have sex, but only humans have gender.”
Secondly, gender beliefs mirror religious beliefs. They have no root in the material reality we all share. Illustrated here.
A big hat tip to Logic vs Pseudoscience for accurately framing the belief in ‘gender identity’. We should not be expected to play a pivotal role in someone else’s self perception. Not ignoring the data our senses accurately report is not a crime, nor is it violence against a person with gender identity claims.
Just like we don’t have to accept the religious claim that is our jesus saviour, we can also show the same skepticism for a male that claims to be woman because he self-identifies or feels like it. Not going along with risibly outlandish claims about reality is a reasonable stance to take.
Thirdly, the bullshit that is mentioned most often in the intersex ploy is a piece by by Anne Fausto – Sterling. Claiming there are 5 sexes and the percentage of intersex people in the population is 1.7%. Fausto-Stirling’s claims have been debunked.
AFS ‘walks-back’ her claims –
Yeah, so I’m thinking ‘tongue-in-cheek’ assertions are not quite the rigorous science based arguments gender ideologists would like us to think they are. As for the second mistake, her figures are based on a category error and corrected in this paper here.
“Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%.”
Oops… So be wary of individuals quoting Fausto-Sterling’s ‘facts’ when it comes to the intersex ploy in particular and gender identity arguments in general.
So much ink has been spilled in the quixotic attempt to placate gender confused males. It would be sadly funny, but because trans ideology centres itself on the destruction of female boundaries and rights leaving little room for jocularity .
The very definition of women is under attack. Women = adult human female is now a controversial stance to uphold because it may injure the self perception of males who think they are women. It is a travesty that we would allow male gender feelings to take precedence over the very material realty of being actually female in today’s society.
This rhetorical dodge frequently appears in arguments about the preservation of female only spaces in society. It is simply this, do you want this trans identified female in female only spaces? We are presented with a picture of a female that has masculine features and dressed stereotypically male.
Can you see the false equivocation? It goes like this, since we expect trans identified males to use the male washroom then also, we must expect trans identified females (like the dudette pictured above) to use the female washroom. The ‘gotcha’ continues, sometimes alluding to butch lesbians being questioned in female only spaces.
What this argument glosses over is that, back in reality, the class of females and the class of males in our society are socialized in very different ways and despite any gender pretenses have roughly the same capacities of the sex they were birthed into. So, women do not (in most cases) represent a threat to men in society this holds true regardless of how they ‘identify’. (The solution the gender religious do not want to hear is that every male space should be ‘gender inclusive’ while female spaces remain protected.)
The contrapositve is not true though. Men, regardless of how they identify, inhabit the class of people that do present a threat to women. Male and female standing and socialization in society is not equal, and trying to fudge this fact in an argument about female safety and spaces is patently dishonest. Therefore trans identified males – since they are male – are a threat to female safety and thus should not be in female only spaces.
If there is one feature that so many gender ideologues gloss over it is the current material conditions in society that we live in still work regardless of how one identifies. We still live in a society that has many patriarchal features that do not magically disappear if we start erasing females and their boundaries. On the contrary, corrupting female autonomy and boundaries increases the oppressive features of society for women.
It would be nice if the gender-woo was consistent. But it isn’t. Quelle Suprise.
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