Smash the patriarchy!

Screw white men and their...
*Squints*
Disproportionate likelihood to put their lives at risk in order to save others. https://t.co/keSj4JZasq

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) December 18, 2018

God and gender

"Progressive Christians" object to using masculine pronouns for God. They resort to awkward neologisms like "Godself". The justification is that God isn't male. God is a discarnate spirit. 

Ironically, this debate has been overtaken by transgenderism. "Progressive Christians" champion the cause of transgenderism, yet that detaches gender from biology, so if they wish to be consistent, they must reverse their position on masculine pronouns for God.

But bracketing their intellectual schizophrenia, what about the original argument? Things that are biologically sexless can still be gendered. Take a Jane Austen novel (or Virginia Wolf novel, or short stories by Eudora Welty). The novel is not a female body. It doesn't have female chromosomes, hormones, or sexual anatomy. A Jane Austen novel is an inanimate object. 

And yet a Jane Austen novel is unmistakably feminine. Her novels are exemplifications of a feminine outlook. They reflect a feminine viewpoint.

The converse is true with respect to the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Even if these writings were anonymous, and we knew nothing about the authors over and above the writing itself, we can tell that a Jane Austen novel is written by a woman while the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is written by a man. In works like these, the reader sees the world through the eyes of a man or woman, even though the book itself has no biological sex. 

So gender is more abstract than sexual biology. Sexual biology and psychology are concrete exemplifications of those abstract properties. 

Gender ideology harms children

The following is from the American College of Pediatricians:

Gender Ideology Harms Children

The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sexual differentiation (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V). The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.

6. Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.

7. Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT – affirming countries. What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures that they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Michelle A. Cretella, M.D.
President of the American College of Pediatricians

Quentin Van Meter, M.D.
Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians
Pediatric Endocrinologist

Paul McHugh, M.D.
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital

(Source)

The Republican Debates Can Be Misleading

I've watched all of the Republican presidential debates so far. There have been more than a dozen, if you include the undercard debates. I've noticed that some issues haven't come up much yet, if at all. We'll see if that continues in tonight's debate and the others to follow. But the fact that these patterns have persisted through more than a dozen debates is significant.

It's a reminder that we need to distinguish between primary debates and debates in the general election campaign. A candidate can be well-suited for one, but do poorly in the other context.

The audiences will be different. There are lines that will get nothing but applause in a Republican primary debate, but would also get a lot of booing in a debate for the general election.

US Marines: “All-male teams outperform mixed-gender units in 69% of ground-combat tasks”

Mixed-gender combat: “more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong” (there is no paywall on this article).

the Marine Corps released research data showing that all-male teams outperformed units comprising men and women in 69% of ground-combat tasks, especially those that involve carrying heavy ammunition or weapons.

The findings, Marine officers said, show mixed-gender units are less effective in combat and more likely to suffer casualties than traditional all-male units.

In a summary of the findings, the Marines cited a 1992 presidential report that concluded: “Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desire or interest of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.”

A new study in an all-volunteer unit last year confirmed the results:

The study found that in 93 of 134 tasks, all-male teams outperformed mixed-gender teams. In 39 tasks, there was no difference. In two tasks, the mixed-gender teams performed better.

“The brutal and extremely physical nature of direct ground combat, often marked by close, interpersonal violence, remains largely unchanged through centuries of warfare, despite technological advancements,” the Marines said in a summary of the research findings.

Not everyone is persuaded by the Marines approach….

Women Should Cease to Exist Says "the Religion of Peace, Prosperity and Gender Equality"

http://www.alankurschner.com/2014/04/01/more-proof-that-islam-is-the-religion-of-peace/

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/04/muslim_clerics_women_should_cease_to_exist.html

After declaring women to be un-Islamic, Shirani explained that there were actually two kinds of women – haraam and makrooh. “We can divide all women in the world into two distinct categories: those who are haraam and those who are makrooh. Now the difference between haraam and makrooh is that the former is categorically forbidden while the latter is really really disliked,” Shirani said. He further went on to explain how the women around the world can ensure that they get promoted to being makrooh, from just being downright haraam. “Any woman that exercises her will is haraam, absolutely haraam, and is conspiring against Islam and the Ummah,whereas those women who are totally subservient can reach the status of being makrooh. Such is the generosity of our ideology and such is the endeavour of Muslim men like us who are the true torchbearers of gender equality,” the CII chairman added. Officials told Khabaristan Today that the council members deliberated over various historic references related to women and concluded that each woman is a source of fitna and a perpetual enemy of Islam. They also decided that by restricting them to their subordinate, bordering on slave status, the momineen and the mujahideen can ensure that Islam continues to be the religion of peace, prosperity and gender equality.