#but i have heterodox opinions on religion

[sturnellaneglecta]

It's funny seeing Catholics hate on conclave for being anti-catholic bc that movie was irritatingly pro-catholic. like i did really enjoy it but i also said out loud "oh come on!" at that character's speech at the end

[hestiasroom]

About six months after I stopped identifying as transgender, I waded into the discourse on Twitter. I began by following other “detransitioners” and expanded from there. When you speak as someone who is critical of sex-trait modification, you end up attracting all different kinds of people. 

You attract radical feminists, who have been railing against the concept of “gender identity” and discussing its impact on the rights of women for decades. 

You attract parents of trans-identifying children, who are desperately seeking answers regarding an intervention that is being pushed on people younger and younger. 

You attract concerned health care professionals, who see something dangerous happening within the medical system and want to correct it. 

You attract social conservatives, who want to maintain traditional values that have guided society for many years. 

You attract people whose values come from religion – also traditional, but with perhaps more of an emphasis on morality and spiritual well-being. 

You attract gay men and lesbian women, whose orientation is challenged by an ideology which posits that “homosexual” can mean attraction to both sexes (so long as the opposite sex has a special identity). 

And you attract what might be termed old-school transsexuals, who tend to frame sex-trait modification exclusively as a treatment for “gender dysphoria” and who are discontented with the mainstream trans rights movement.

(...and I certainly haven’t named every kind of person you may attract.)

Together, these people make up what social justice leftists have taken to calling the “anti-gender movement” (e.g., see Wikipedia for a biased explanation). They tend to give the impression that everyone in the “movement” has a common goal and common values. This simply isn’t true. Many of these people don’t even consider each other allies. Radical feminists often won’t work with social and religious conservatives due to conflicting opinions on abortion, for example.

I was fresh out of social justice culture when I joined Twitter and highly critical of what I’d just left behind – not just the ideology around transgenderism, but around leftist identity politics as a whole. I’d watched as people with certain “marginalized” identities were given credibility and authority, and bad faith actors weaponized those identities in order to gain power and abuse others. The result was a movement full of narcissistic leaders who could not be criticized, lest you be deemed a bad person and ex-communicated. (Note: I’ve observed the same dynamics in parts of the “anti-gender movement.”)

I was still calling myself a leftist at this time, though. I was simply a dissident leftist instead. To me, “left” was progressive (and therefore correct), and I still wanted to be seen as a “good” person. I didn’t want my friends to think I was “transphobic,” just that I had concerns that should be taken seriously. I also wanted to remain in touch with my friends who were still transitioned; I hoped that if they ever changed their minds one day, they could come to me.

If your goal is to reach the left on the topic of sex-trait modification, then using identity politics to your advantage might be a decent strategy. Because of this, I was quite willing to work with heterodox transsexuals early on. These are primarily people who were satisfied with their own “treatments,” but believed that medical professionals needed to re-adopt the restrictions that once existed, particularly for people under the age of 18. They also tended to emphasize “gender dysphoria” as a medical condition in need of treatment rather than the mainstream emphasis on “gender identity” as a natural human variation.

I believe this remains what is considered a “moderate” view for most: that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their sex traits chemically and surgically modified and who must live in the “gender role” of the opposite sex or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

This is now exactly as convincing to me as the idea that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their legs amputated and live as disabled people or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

That is to say, it is no longer convincing to me at all.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post during which, in part, I defended transsexuals in the movement. I described the concerns people had — “the very act of existing as an ‘out’ transsexual is seen as ‘promoting’ an unhealthy lifestyle” — with some reservations. I also argued that “detransitioning” isn’t accessible for every person and that “having transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement is — I think — important.”

I no longer have reservations about those concerns (I now agree that being an “out” transsexual is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle), and I disagree with my former beliefs (I think “detransition” is often more accessible than people are willing to admit, and I don’t think it’s necessarily “important” to have transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement).

Because this is a departure from things I’ve said in the past, I think it deserves a well-thought-out explanation.

I also want to acknowledge that there is no way to write this that will not be taken as condescending to “happy” transsexuals, in the same way that telling people who believe they have an incongruent gender identity that they are wrong will be taken as condescending, and in the same way that telling someone who is reliant on alcohol that they need to go to rehab will be taken as condescending.

My intention is not to force anyone to “detransition.” I have a right to my opinion about someone’s actions (in this case, their choice to medicalize and present themselves as the opposite sex). That is not the same thing as imposing on their behaviour. We all have free will.

My intention is also not to force anyone to disassociate themselves from individual transsexuals. My criticisms are primarily with medicalization and secondarily with how transsexuals try to justify it for themselves. I believe these people are victims of “gender medicine” as much as I am — not necessarily “bad” people, but people who are fundamentally self-harming.

My intention is twofold: to provide an opinion on a specific medical and psychosocial intervention and its effects, based on everything I have seen — not only in the past three years, but since I started “questioning my gender” fifteen years ago; and to explain why I have changed my mind about presenting “happy” transsexuals as role models just because they’re telling minors to wait.

You may have assumed that, after three years involved in the discourse and a lot of exposure to dissident transsexuals, I would have begun to accept that there were indeed people who truly benefited from the intervention. The opposite is true. The more I met, the less convinced I became. Many give the outward appearance of “successfully” living in an opposite-sex “gender role” while quietly having difficulties in their personal lives that have been caused or exacerbated by chemically and surgically altering their bodies and trying to live in an opposite-sex “gender role.”

But it wasn't only meeting transsexuals that changed my mind. It was also meeting detransitioners.

My personal story is very much one born of social influence. I was a tomboy my whole life (save for a feminine phase in my teens), but I did not have any distress around my gender when I was young. I was different from other girls, but I was also different from other children in general. Not like the girls, but not necessarily like the boys either.

When I stopped identifying as transgender, I very quickly stopped believing that anyone was “born in the wrong body,” but I did think it was possible that some people were benefiting from medicalization — perhaps some rare cases who have had persistent dysphoria their entire lives, as most of these “old school” transsexuals said they did. 

Then I started meeting detransitioners whose stories were literally the exact same… and who still realized the whole thing was bullshit. I also met people who had what could be termed childhood dysphoria but who were managing it without medicalizing.

And I just can’t ignore it anymore.

I have framed sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism for a long time. Medicalization does not “cure” one’s distress around being male or female in the same way that antidepressants don’t cure depression. It may alleviate distress, but if you can never stop medicalizing, the problem has not actually been resolved.

One of the traps of sex-trait modification, though, is that you often feel more distress the further into it you get. A TikTok video recently made rounds on Twitter of a man explaining exactly this: that every step he took in changing his body fed his desire to change more. (“Some things I have dysphoria about now that I never had before.”) At first, he only wanted his face to change, but the feeling of being “affirmed” spurred him on. He used to be okay with being androgynous, but now he wants to be able to “pass” seamlessly as a woman.

He frames this as having his experience “evolve” through the process when, if you take a step back, the treatment is clearly exacerbating his distress. First, he is convinced that he is not a man. Then, as he begins obscuring his biological sex (e.g., softening of skin, growing breast tissue, etc.), each step he takes that makes him look more “female” (to him) gives him a little thrill. Then the thrill wears off, he becomes more anxious and desperate regarding the traits giving away that he is male, and he starts looking for a new “embodiment goal.”

If that sounds a bit like an addiction, it’s because it is. He is psychologically reliant on being affirmed in his delusion that he is a woman. It’s masking something else for him. Whether it’s internalized homophobia, a paraphilic disorder, or something else entirely, I don’t know. But it is not healthy for him.

The transsexuals who boast that medicalization “worked” for them are, essentially, high-functioning addicts. They may have gotten lucky with surgery results; they may be holding regular employment; they may still have their families; their lives may not have fallen apart. But they are still psychologically reliant on being affirmed.

They’ll try to convince you they’re not, though. They may claim they don’t care what pronouns you use for them… then become upset or accuse you of being “disrespectful” when you use sex-based ones. They may acknowledge they aren’t actually the opposite sex… then continue to use the opposite-sex washroom.

Some seem to think that, if they say the right things, they will be entitled to special privileges. And other people are indeed falling for this! If someone says “use whatever pronouns you like,” they will often get their preferred pronouns. (“I respect her pronouns because she gave me a choice.” No, you got manipulated, and he knew exactly what he was doing.)

They often try to separate themselves out from other people who identify as “trans” by pointing out those who have clearly been socially influenced as “fake,” condemning over-the-top bad behaviour, and mocking people who don’t “pass.” This is all done to create the illusion that there are “real” transsexuals: the ones who were not influenced online, who behave appropriately, and who blend in seamlessly. (And by the way, mocking people who don’t “pass” often coerces them into medicalizing if they haven’t.)

Ultimately, they want to be coddled the same way TRAs expect to be coddled. They won’t insist that “trans women are women,” but they will insist that there are “true” transsexuals or that transition “works” for some people, and if you don’t agree with them, well, you’re transphobic — or at least an extremist of some kind. I mean, it’s a black-and-white take, isn’t it?

But “men can never be women” is also a black-and-white take.

Sometimes the truth isn’t “nuanced.” And sometimes it is very uncomfortable.

I don’t believe there are “real” transsexuals. I don’t even believe “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate condition anymore. Distress is merely a symptom with varying causes, none of which is “incongruence” between one’s sex and one’s identity, and none of which should be “treated” by helping someone dissociate from their body and denying reality.

What there are, are people who altered their bodies and decided it was worth the risks. I’m not saying they aren’t happy; I’m saying they aren’t healthy. Messing with your endocrine system and removing healthy body parts to assuage your troubled mind is objectively a bad idea. 

So what’s the draw here? Why are “happy” old-school transsexuals so invested in the “anti-gender movement”?

I don’t believe most of them are primarily interested in stopping harm from happening to others. Instead, I believe they’re scrambling to try and protect themselves. They don’t want to lose access to their addiction, whether it be exogenous hormones or their ability to quietly enter opposite-sex spaces, and the complete insanity of the mainstream trans rights movement has put that access under threat.

Most of them focus almost exclusively on criticizing pediatric sex-trait modification, because anyone with half a brain knows that chemically altering the sex traits of children, sterilizing them, and/or cutting off their healthy body parts in service of a psychiatric condition is entirely unethical. Restricting access until the age of 18 is the easiest position to take while still ensuring that medicalization will be available to them as adults.

This doesn’t make them good role models, though. How can they be? “Hey kids, transition was the right thing for me, I can’t live without it, but you have to wait until you’re 18.” Like telling kids not to do drugs while smoking crack.

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Claiming that sex-trait modification “worked” for you is still proposing it as a viable option. It is still marketing for the gender industry. Telling children to wait until they’re 18 is not solving the problem. If these kids think there are “real” transsexuals, they will be convinced that they are one themselves. It is doing nothing for children, except maybe guaranteeing that they’ll show up at a Planned Parenthood looking for hormones on their 18th birthday — and some of the transsexuals in the movement quite openly have no problem with that. It doesn’t matter if the kid’s been brainwashed their entire childhood.

Indeed, many of my clashes with the purported “good ones” have been over the fact that I don’t believe sex-trait modification should be offered as a medical treatment at any age.

One seemed surprised when I got hostile with him after he told a detransitioned woman that there was nothing wrong with the fact that she’d gotten a testosterone prescription from Planned Parenthood after a single 30-minute phone call as an adult. (“I support detransitioners; I’m on your side.” If you’re in support of doing away with safeguarding for adults, we are not on the same side.)

Some have conceded that there appeared to be negligence in my case, but others have thrown the good old “take some personal responsibility” line at me when I said that what happened to me simply should not have happened. 

Perhaps unsurprising to many, a couple of these “reasonable” transsexuals have come off as manipulative narcissists after I got to know them privately.

And one more inconvenient fact to point out before moving on…

Most of these transsexuals are same-sex attracted. This inadvertently pushes the message to young gays and lesbians that medicalizing our gender non-conformity is “good” for some of us.

One of the strongest messages we have is that medicalization is often “transing the gay away.” How do we square that with putting mastectomized lesbians and castrated gay men up as examples of “real” transsexuals for whom medicalization “worked”?

We don’t. Absolutely not.

As someone recovering from medicalization, I have struggled to process while around people who are actively engaging in and singing the praises of the thing that irreversibly altered my life for the worse. It’s annoying, to say the least. For others, though, it’s dangerous.

Those who have acknowledged sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism and are trying to figure out how to disengage with it as much as possible are, essentially, addicts in recovery. Whether the addiction continues to affect them, and how much, differs from person to person. The detrans subreddit often has people saying that they’re “jealous” of those who continue to medicalize or that they’re constantly thinking about “re-transitioning” (in other words, relapsing).

By definition, “high-functioning” addicts are rather stable. They make medicalization look good, but it’s a false front. They give off the impression that everything is fine even though they don't have control over the addiction and are creating health issues for themselves. (This false front doesn’t only influence young people who think they are born in the wrong body, but also influences people in recovery. It’s tempting to plug yourself back into the Matrix rather than face reality.)

Contrarily, those newly in recovery are extremely unstable. They recognize they have a problem, their worlds have been pulled out from under them, and they are often trying to completely rebuild their lives from scratch. If they seem more erratic than high-functioning transsexuals, it’s because one of these groups is upheaving their lives to live in reality and restore their health, and the other is not. 

If a “transsexual” and a “detransitioner” held mirrors up to each other, we would both see ourselves.

Every “transsexual” is a potential “detransitioner.” Every “detransitioner” was once a “transsexual.”

I am done with the pretense that the “good ones” are separate and apart from everyone else who has undergone the same intervention. My story may not be your story, but your story is invariably the story of one of my friends.

I said at the beginning that I cannot tell anyone what to do. But if your question is actually “well, what would you have me do?” this is my answer: stop going by a name that traditionally invokes the opposite sex; stop requesting “preferred” pronouns; stop presenting yourself in a way that explicitly intends to deceive others about your sex; and stop telling people that sex-trait modification is “good.”

I have compassion for every person who has irreversibly altered their body and does not know how to move forward. Some people will continue to be mistaken for the opposite sex for the rest of their lives, and not every moment has to be a teaching moment. I don’t expect anyone to be “correcting” strangers every single time. I certainly don’t. 

My alternate answer, which I imagine people of all stripes will not like, is to stop being “out” and go stealth. You might not be living in reality, but you shouldn’t be influencing others to do the same.

I was originally willing to work with transsexuals because I thought it would be more convincing to the left. I thought if I could reference “reasonable” transsexuals who believed the same thing I did, that people might listen to my arguments. It turns out that identity politics doesn’t work that well for dissident transsexuals. They just get accused of being self-loathing instead of being taken seriously.

It didn’t matter that transsexuals agreed with me. I didn’t convince anyone to listen. I made compromises that both disturbed my recovery and alienated people who would have otherwise agreed with me, and I still ended up losing my existing friends.

Many moderates have decided that they must work with transsexuals on this matter for the same reason I did. They think it gives legitimacy to their arguments. Again, I recognize that this is a strategy some will continue to employ and that I will not be able to stop them from doing so.

The curse of being "moderate" is that you end up alienating both sides of the debate. The "moderate" orgs I've been involved with have a high turnover rate. It's not hard to figure out why. Trying to compromise with extremes is very stressful. Even people within the orgs can't agree on which compromises to make.

It's certainly not an enviable position to be in.

I'm solo from here on out.

My writing will always be free to read. If you’re interested in supporting me financially, please donate to my fundraiser, which will allow me to cover costs associated with my legal action: https://www.givesendgo.com/michellealleva. Thank you.

[whitehotharlots]

It’s all religion, and it’s all profane

Over the past few days I have delved, rather pointlessly, into the messy scenery of the UK’s ongoing gender wars. My interest was equal parts morbid and academic. I hoped to answer two questions. First, why is the back-and-forth between trans rights advocates and gender critical feminists so vicious in the UK, culminating not just in the threats and recriminations found in the war’s American iteration, but in women being blackmailed and even arrested. 

The second question is why is it even happening? That is, why is the UK in particular a hotbed for an ideological war of this type among liberal-identifying people, while in the US the feminist movement has accepted trans ideology more or less uniformly and with minimal pushback. My first inclination was that it was a matter of professional survival. Perhaps academic jobs aren’t as precarious in the UK, meaning that it’s somewhat safer for people to issue heterodox opinions. But, again, the viciousness of the first question seems to rebut my assumption in regards to the second. Losing your job is bad, but going to prison is worse.

Of course, I found no clear answer to either question. UK academe is utterly unknowable to an American who’s never experienced it. I found out what “O Levels” means but after that I got kind of lost. As much as a shitty lie our myth of academic meritocracy might be, the UK makes us look like a Dutch Montessori school run by doctrinaire Quakers. If your first name isn’t proceeded by Lord, Lady, or Sir, or if you don’t have a number after your name that’s at least as high as The Fourth, there’s not much of a chance you’re going to get yourself a gig within Oxbridge.

So I delved into the viciousness, and oh boy did I get what I was looking for. The English are renowned for their dry, cutting humor, but that’s because only the best of the best come into the American purview. The majority of pedestrian UK humor is a sort of sarcasm without jokes. Like, let’s say you brought home a sausage pizza. I asked you what the topping was and you said “It’s pepperoni, mate.” And then you opened it up and it was sausage and that made me confused and slightly pissed. That’s the extent of the comedic ability of your average Brit.

The fights, meanwhile, are more direct and blunt, really a sight to behold. Again, there’s no attempts at humor, which tend to accompany the verbal conflicts of Americans. When Americans fight, we’re usually doing it to try and get the people around us to think we’re cool. When UK people fight, they just want to hurt the other person.

Of course, there’s much in common between the US and UK iterations of gender discourse. Minor disagreements are regarded as violence, hyperbolic overstatements of harm are routine, and person who uses terminology that was considered progressive up until very recently can find themself labeled a Nazi for not making linguistic adjustments quickly enough. But it’s still somehow even more rancorous in the UK. You get a sense that they’re not in it just for online clout but out of a desire to cause real, physical harm to members of the other side. 

One of the more salient aspects of UK arguments is how their insults will often consist of a simple description of a person. Sometimes you’ll get “fat” or “snaggle toothed” or something most of us would consider mean. But other times it’s like “you blonde cunt” or “you working class shite” or something else that us Americans would never regard as an insult. Mentions of religion are surprisingly common. They say “you Catholic bigot” as opposed to “you bigot,” or “you deranged Protestant” instead of “you freak.” 

This really struck me. You’d never, ever see that in America. Firstly because it’s taboo (unless it’s a Republican talking about Muslims). Secondly, because we simply do not care. Your average religious American cannot articulate any meaningful difference between Catholics and Protestants. We have no need to, because as much as we love Jesus we don’t bother with any of the messy parts of religion, such as having a faint understanding of the faiths we claim to adhere to.

This, I have always felt, is the greatest folly of New Atheism. What are you gonna do, present a scientific case demonstrating the absurdity of the creation myth? You gonna stick solely to the bible and highlight its multiple hypocrisies and contradictions? What is that gonna achieve? These people had Donald Trump autograph their bibles. They think salvation can be purchased by giving 20% of their paychecks to millionaires who preach in stadiums. There’s nothing an outsider can do to profane their religion that’s more obscene than the manner in which they practice it.

(I recall a time in my mid-teens when I attempted to “A-ha!” a youth pastor with my knowledge of the story of Jephthah from the Book of Judges, who committed yahweh-approved ritualistic sacrifice of his eldest daughter. In response, the pastor informed me that he hadn’t read that part of the bible, and that his relationship with Jesus was more about the feelings it gave him than some words written down in an old book. Needless to say, he won the argument.) 

The UK is, even now, broadly to the left of the US in regards to their social safety net and most cultural matters (this is a low bar, for sure, but they do clear it). Perhaps people who us Americans would identify as liberal (in that they don’t openly want to murder poor people; they’ll often still do it, but they won’t giggle while doing it) aren’t as ideologically siloed over there. The Democratic party is, after all, an unworkable mishmash of a few dozen different concerns, and their basic strategy since the Clinton era has been to blame the incompatibility of those concerns for the fact that their governance is indistinguishable from that of the GOP. 

An American liberal therefore doesn’t focus on piddling things like principles or ideals or even whether or not a policy they support does the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to achieve. Paying too close attention to the workings of our coalition will reveal its manifest contradictions, which will in turn weaken it, and if gets too weak then we’ll once again have an evil fascist doing the exact same stuff that a good and honorable man like Joe Biden is presently doing. Instead, we must understand politics as a means of achieving self-actualization through the process of deferring our concerns to others. Those concerns are not addressed within the present system, no, and neither are our own, but worrying about cause and effect and results is not the point. It’s much more important to exist, to validate, and to listen. 

In the UK, politics is still understood as politics. It is a means of gaining and exercising power. In the US, politics falls eerily in line with our profane understanding of what religious devotion entails: an acontextual, borderline illiterate expression of ourselves, which we have been trained to believe connects us to some kind of higher power that unifies us as humans by calcifying our utter disconnectedness from one another. 

And so maybe that’s the difference? In the UK, people are delusional enough to think that politics is entered into by people who have something to gain or lose. In the US, it’s all about vibes.

[kemetic-dreams]

Nobody has a right of self-defense against this country [USA], even if it intervenes across the ocean to impose by force governments that the people of that country reject — Noam Chomsky

America rose to dominance post-WW2, post 9-11 it has again made another power surge to become an even stronger super power. More extended, more involved, more unapologetic about stepping on other nations sovereignty. The USA has an amazing knack for converting every global crisis into a stepping stone for its own interest; amazing efficient at exploiting regional conflicts. The U.S. has spent $1.3 trillion on the war on terror so far. That was in reaction to about 14,000 total deaths from so-called international terrorism from 1975 to 2003. That’s more than $90 million spent for each person killed. Right now, according to Robert Fisk, Western military presences inside the Islamic World is 22 times that than during the Crusades, yet the Western world expects zero response to this neocolonialism. [11] And what blinds reality and informs public opinion to demonize religion, in this case Islam, is only because Muslims do not to own Fox, CNN, BBC News, or even Western controlled Al-Jazeera (Al-CNN).

Forget the worldwide rampant Islamophobia and demonization of Arabs… Human Rights and Labor, has “institutionalized the fight against global anti-Semitism”, even though the US military and their allies have been destroying countries mostly populated by Muslims for over a decade. Or maybe is it precisely to support the war on Islam and the Arab World – a.k.a. “war on terrorism” – that the “war on global anti-Semitism” is being launched?–Julie Lévesque 

And again it is “religious” when people of Islamic heritage take up arms, for whatever reason (mainly defense), but non-religious when “Christian” nations “bomb them back into the stone ages.” How does that work? Why is the threshold of inclusion of a “religious act of violence” so open where Islam is concerned, and so closed when Europeans practicing Christianity is concern. If a Muslim sneezes in the wrong direction it is automatically an act of their Islamic faith. And why is spreading “Islamic Sharia” to Muslim countries so offensive, yet spreading capitalism and its carrying bag (sometimes going by the sobriquet democracy) so acceptable? Why is a “Jewish state” allowed but an “Islamic state” taboo? Has this democracy created any tangible benefits for oppressed people in South Africa, Israel, or even democracy’s own country of manufacture?

The only thing that can be seen as “Successful” in the world is a Western model. To beat out another path is vulgarly heterodoxical, and will be met with an absolute, and copious prejudicial use of force. Alternatives must not only fail, they must be made to fail visibly to deter being inspirational. And this is the backdrop to every major clash post WW2. Because as far as the Western control, they allow sell systems which they make so they can be manipulated (like their brand of Democracy).

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it– Hitler

There is a global campaign from CNN (hawks) right down to Europe’s favorite African intellectuals (vultures) to push a myth by collating every instance which fingers “Islam and a problem” because “they hate our freedoms.” (freedoms or foreign policies? [Zogby]) If one compiles all the reports side by side the pattern is crystal clear; semi-fictional, hyperbole, dubious sources, to create a relationship to justify an agenda. This one-way moral mirror used to discuss “religion” never reflects on Western “secular” aggression with the same tone or supposed impartiality.

And it is identical to the way in which Africans are demonized in the West by constantly reporting statistics and occurrences, which they say prove the myth of a “Black problem.” But failing to mention the oppression African Americans have been victims of for the last 300 years. Why does it work? Because the general public are ignorant or misinformed about the dynamics and the overview of most of the world’s issues. Again reality seems to verify a casual relationship between African-Americans rape and others crimes.

The mass media become the authority at any given moment for what is true and what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is important and what is trivial. There is no greater force in shaping the public mind; even brute force triumphs only by creating an accepting attitude toward the brutes –Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly)

One thing should ring out in every situation, WHO DOES IT REALLY PROFIT. If America has a hand in anything, and they have their hand in everything, be 100% sure it profits America. Some rebels are good, some rebels are bad. History is replete testifies that what determines good rebels and bad rebels is American interest.

Why discuss anything without also factoring that Muslim countries control most of the world’s oil reserves? And Western powers have been hell bent on seeking justification for the taking of these assets under the guise of a “War on Terror.” And the omnipresent evil or nemesis of the “good White guys” is the omnipresent monolithic faceless “Islamist,” a neologism created by US foreign policy. It would be dishonest to label Western as Christian, or Israel as Judaism, just as it is dishonest to factor religion into a greedy neocolonial resource conflict. We also seem to forget the fact that of the top 10 deadliest conflicts on Earth none of them were religious in nature.

In the last 20 years of American history, there have been 129 confirmed White terrorist (Timothy Mcveigh, Robert Lewis Dear, to the Olympic Park Bomber, to the infamous Unabomber), all Christian, all white, all American, an all successful at killing people: However, has that fact ever factored in profiling White American Christians? Has it caused a backlash or the mythical association between Christianity, secularism or America and violence?“ Who from Anders Behring Breivik religion made a global apology? With the Rober Dear attacks blogger James Schlarmann chided “moderate white Christians” for not denouncing the Planned Parenthood attack as “moderate Muslims” are often asked to denounce Islamist terrorism.

And listen to the media “Oh he was stressed, he had a hard childhood”, I am sure Binny Boy was under a lot of stress also with all those Yankie troops prostituting his country. What about Michael Kadar, the Jewish lad who made hoax terrorist calls to Jewish organizations? Apparently his tumor made him do it.9) Less than a score of Arabs are accused of lone terrorist acts and now, because of that 0.0000000000001%, 1.5 billion people, 1/5 humans on the planet are on the FBI watch list. The one million dead Iraqi children somehow are “unworthy” causalities (Chomsky),that is not “religious aggression” by Western nations because it is sanitized by words such as indirect war, collateral damage and the cost of liberation.

[everydayhybridity]

Book Review: The Unmasking Style in Social Theory, Peter Baehr

Full disclosure on this book review. Peter is a cherished colleague from Lingnan University and I had many interesting discussions with him while he was writing this book. In many ways this text crosses into my interests with religion and social theory, and also about public debate in the era of social media. There is no doubt about it, this book provides some challenging material. It is provocative and has many conservative strands. What it does provide is a helpful way to think about the absence of a middle ground in contemporary public debate. This might well apply to the grandeur of social theory, of social justice, populist politics, or everyday online exchange.

I read this book as a call to engage in the humanity of discussion that recognises individuals and social life as opaque. It is above all else a request to debate, recognise difference, and not be shielded from disagreement or offence. From a sociological perspective, it is also an affirmation on the promise of qualitative work, not least ethnography which seeks to know people rather than to judge and condemn. 

Firstly let me describe what the author understands unmasking to be. This is a style of rhetorical challenge which consists of five techniques, weaponization, reduction, positioning, inversion, and deflation. The classic example that Baehr provides is that of Marx, who weaponises language and reduces social action to class struggle. Religion is a prime target, this is not what is seems, it is a distraction, an opiate. The unmasking style is chiefly about ending debate, it provides a watertight assertion that the guilty party does not know their own flaws. Protest against such an accusation only further confirms the ignorance and guilt of the accused. In Marxist thought, religion is always a distraction and to claim otherwise is only proof of your addiction to the opiate. The relevance of this unmasking style in the barbed exchanges on social media are apparent. Unmasking is about showing to the world what is concealed and hidden, your true face. But it is hindered by the fact that it is unsolicited, accusatory, and reliant on showing what is not there, rather than what is apparent. It is in effect a race to the bottom.

So in short, weaponization is a language that talks in escalation. A ‘war on drugs’ is only ever a metaphor, but it contains hyperbole. Other examples are a ‘weapon of truth’, or murderous intentions, and violent language. Reduction and positioning are polemical styles that assert to know the real truth behind an argument or comment. That is, to reveal a secret motive. Knowing what others don’t know, reducing an argument to a hidden truth, is largely unanswerable. Inversion is a ‘technique that destroys people’s credibility by upending the meaning of their statements.’ Deflation moves an argument to a new terrain, labels it as something else, takes the breath out of it. Baehr takes particular issue with the clinical approach that has been popularised, equating discrimination with a psychological malady.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the proliferation of terms that end in phobic: homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, ecophobic and several others in a steadily expanding list. Strictly speaking this language is redundant. We have other terms to express intolerance: bigotry, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and so forth. Phobia in contrast, has connotations that are distinctly medical and therapeutic...It transforms an account that expressed a political or moral argument into a social sickness caused by toxic motives or interests. It is striking more generally that an ever more common way to denouncing political opponents - presidents included - is to claim that they are unhinged or even mad.

So the book is a challenge to Unmasking and proceeds with three parts. The first unpacks examples of the unmasking style giving particular attention to the Enlightenment unmasking of religion, and Marx’s theory. The second part looks at Sociology and explores how unmasking has been embraced or rejected by various scholars. The final part presents ways to avoiding unmasking in an unmasking age. One approach being to read literature which enables us to engage with the truth that humans are fallible, changing, and full of nuance. A further remedy is a proposed disposition of conflictual pluralism that works with democratic politics to balance the inevitably of disagreement, not to eradicate it. The warning Baehr provides is to be wary of unmasking, it is a vacuous approach which halts discussion and strikes fear in those who might voice more balanced and nuanced opinions.

I especially enjoyed the sections on sociology where the various styles of different scholars are explored, we visit debunking, and unveiling. We learn how ethnography helps insert some reflection on human variance, and tolerance at the same time. This is however a text that has little sympathy for leftwing social justice identity politics and trigger warnings. It is similarly critical of the unmasking techniques of the right wing arguing that ‘White despisers occupy the same extreme polemical space as White Supremacists: Sarah Jeong is Richard Spencer’s twin.’ Let me be clear here that this is challenging terrain. I follow neither Sarah Jeong or Richard Spencer on Twitter, but 12 of the people I follow also follow Jeong, and only 1 person I follow is listed as a follower of Spencer. This is some indication of my political stance.

So does Baehr simply unmask the unmasking style? He responds to this in the final part of the book (pg135), but it is evident throughout that he is not engaged in unmasking. He does not employ the same tactics outlined above, and takes care to balance his attacks with empirical examples rather than speculations of ulterior motives. In this I am largely satisfied.

In sum, an erudite and engaging book. It will appeal to those who take seriously the challenge of heterodox ideas and mostly to those who are perhaps cautious and tired of the unmasking style and its vehement rhetoric of vilification. 

[andromedainruins]

Week 12: Birth of Orthodoxy

A. What doctrinal teachings led the proto-orthodox churches toward the stability and continuity that helped ensure their survival in competition with heterodox churches? Cite them and explain why they had this effect.

One thing that led the proto-orthodox churches towards stability and continuity was their structure. The Churches were highly structured, with a Bishop at the head followed by Deacons and other acolytes. 

Another thing that helped the proto-orthodox church thrive was the household rules that their scripture set. By not fully separating from Judaism and upholding these rules, the Christians could hide among the Romans. This was the best way to ensure that their religion survived, hide until it was safe for them to come out. 

The rules they followed are talked about in the Pastoral Epistles and mostly concerned behavior. They upheld the status quo set forth by the Romans and made a point to emphasize the need to not attract notice. They also talked on authority and social hierarchy, which would assist with staying hidden. 

The teachings of rival Christian sects were also denounced, and a doctrine of Apostolic Succession was set. This determined who should lead the churches, something that was of great concern given the fact that the apostles would one day die. This set it so that authority started with Jesus - having been the Son of Man - then went to his disciples - the twelve Apostles - before going to their disciples, ensuring that there was always someone who could run the church. 

B. In your opinion, why and how could pseudepigraphic documents gain enough prestige to be included in the New Testament canon? Be as specific as possible.

Pseudepigraphic documents were viewed differently back then compared to the modern day. Today, we would call them a forgery. However, I can see where the tradition came from. It was almost a way of honoring your teacher. They are the ones that taught you everything you know and everything that you wrote, so why not put their name on it to honor that? It’s not dissimilar to the way academic papers are structured.

Of course, modern academic papers do keep the undergrad/post-grad student’s name on it, but the professor is always prioritized with their name coming first. And I think that is how they can become important enough to include in the New Testament canon. When the documents were originally spread, the people reading them may not have known that they weren’t from the person whose name is on the document and started to incorporate them into local church teachings. Then, the truth comes out but the information is oddly close to what the actual Paul would say, so why not keep it? Eventually, it ends up in canon.

[sailorgreywolf-legacy]

D1 Ale B3 A6 c4 Diego and Isabella please

D1: How religious is your OC? What do they practice, if anything? If they don’t associate with any religion, what do they think of religion in general?

Oh, Ale’s religious beliefs, my favorite subject! He is Catholic, but it is a little more complicated. His practice of Catholicism is a bit heterodox; he focuses more on the saints and personal devotion. He has a strong attachment to the Virgin of Guadalupe; he really has a much stronger devotion to her than Spain ever did. He has also kept a few of his mother’s holidays and just fit them into a Catholic framework. He also has a lot of distrust for the Church as a political entity or an institution. That comes from seeing Spain using Papal Decrees to justify his claims on the New World being valid, and also seeing Spain use the Inquisition as a political weapon. Though Ale is a Catholic, giving the Catholic church political power seems like a bad idea. 

B3: Under what situations would they get angry at servers, staff, customer service, et cetera?

Diego: He gets annoyed fairly easily if he feels like he is being ignored. Also, if they are intentionally rude to him for any reason.

Isabelle: She is a woman and a mulatta, and if anyone is rude to her for either of those reasons, she will not let them get away with it. And she can be plenty forceful if she needs to correct someone on their ignorance.

A6: Does your OC tend to assume their interpretation of events and reality is correct, or do they question it? I.e., “I’m sure that’s what you said” versus “It’s possible I misheard you.”

Diego: He is usually pretty sure in his own interpretation of the world. It has actually been to his detriment more than once because he assumes other people’s motivations and that they see the situation the same way he does. It was part of the problem between him and Ale. He assumed that Ale saw the situation the same way he did, and never questioned if it was really different for Ale.

Isabelle: She is confident that her interpretation of events is correct. She is generally very self confident, and she kind of has to be considering the boy’s club that is Latin America. She has learned to hold her ground and be confident in herself.

C4: Do they consider themselves superior or more important than anyone else? Lesser?

Diego: Superior to Oklahoma On the whole, not particularly. He doesn’t have a low opinion of himself. Though, he does still have an inferiority complex when it comes to Ale, especially in terms of appearance. He still gets comments about how much more attractive his brother is, and he has taken that to heart.

Isabelle: Superior does not seem like quite the right word for her attitude. She thinks highly of herself but she wouldn’t say that she is better than anyone. But, she also refuses to let anyone make her feel less than.

[humorepoch9-blog]

Misunderstanding Heterodox Academy

Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University, and the Director of Communications at Heterodox Academy.

Around this time last year, I had the honor of sharing the stage with former UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks for a dialog on academic freedom.

While the event was billed as a “debate” between us, it turned out that we held a lot more in common than we differed on the core issues. And so, it was with great interest that I read his recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay, “How Colleges Make Themselves Into Easy Targets.” Once again, I found a broad sphere of agreement — and not just between myself and the Chancellor, but between he and Heterodox Academy more broadly.  

Chancellor Dirks’ central argument is that attempts to shut down disagreeable speech, while often well-intentioned, are typically counterproductive. Riffing on this theme, Half Hour of Heterodoxy host Chris Martin has argued that it is in everyone’s interests to restrict the capacity of administrators or lawmakers to exert arbitrary power over students and faculty. Jon Haidt and I argued in The Atlantic that scholars from historically marginalized and disenfranchised groups tend to suffer most when speech protections are undermined on campus. I elaborated in subsequent essays how the lack of engagement with the right, and growing partisan distrust of social research (and the academy overall), is especially damaging for those who do work on gender, sexuality and/ or race. That is, a commitment to academic freedom and constructive disagreement is just as (or perhaps more) important for progressives as conservatives. 

Given this strong overlap between the expressed views of the HxA core team and his own, it was surprising to hear Chancellor Dirks insist: 

“This is not to say that universities should seek ‘viewpoint diversity’ (to invoke the phrase of the Heterodox Academy) in the service of mirroring political opinions as they exist in society, nor is it to say that universities can be entirely neutral.” 

While Heterodox Academy does believe that promoting viewpoint diversity (alongside open inquiry and constructive disagreement) is essential to addressing the problems Chancellor Dirks raised, our goal is not to have institutions of higher learning simply mirror “political opinions as they exist in society.”

For one, our concern for viewpoint diversity is not restricted to concerns about political monocultures. There are many deficits of viewpoint diversity on campus which we are concerned about, including a lack of socio-economic diversity, geographical distortions in higher ed (e.g. here, here, here, here), the failure to engage with religion (here, here), and the dearth of blacks, Hispanics, and women in many fields. Indeed, we are currently in the process of reformulating our Guide to Colleges to better reflect this more comprehensive and demanding conception of viewpoint diversity.

However, it’s critical to note that these problems are all interrelated, and are most effectively addressed in tandem. For instance, as I pointed out in a recent essay, blacks and Hispanics tend to be more socially conservative and religious on average than whites. Therefore, institutions which are hostile to socially conservative or religious perspectives will be more likely to alienate black and Hispanic students than white students. Incidentally, that essay closes by directly rejecting the aspiration to have institutions of higher learning precisely mirror ‘political opinions as they exist in society’:

“The Academy need not reach 100% parity with the broader public in ideological representation. Indeed, any particular target ratio would be arbitrary. But we clearly need more ideological diversity than we currently have. And we need to take a sober look at the institutional and cultural barriers conservatives face and ask if they are truly consistent with our values – be it as scholars or as progressives.” 

As HxA Executive Director Deb Mashek put it: 

“This is not a left-right issue. This is about creating intellectual institutions where learners can come together, humbled by their incomplete knowledge, curious what they can learn from others, able to share their own ideas and perspectives and eager to think together with nuance, open minds, respect and goodwill — all in service to understanding the complexities of our world more deeply.”

She argued that three components are essential: university stakeholders must value open inquiry and constructive disagreement, have access to (or create) strategies for enacting these values, and perceive social permission to act on them. Notice, Mashek’s prescription is virtually identical to that of Chancellor Dirks, who asserts:  

“The commitment to freedom of speech and expression should be accompanied by an institutional culture that values disagreement and debate, and that provides a supportive setting for fundamental differences of belief, perspective, and persuasion.” 

Over the course of his essay, Chancellor Dirks decries how trolls and provocateurs abuse the First Amendment to wreak havoc at public universities. He admonishes efforts by lawmakers to subvert institutions of higher learning for political ends. The Heterodox Academy core team has consistently emphasized similar themes in our own publications:  

Research Associate Nick Phillips has argued that his fellow conservatives should avoid inviting trolls or provocateurs to campus.  He has argued that the efforts to achieve viewpoint diversity on campus through top-down legislation are ill-conceived. I have argued the same, as has our Board Chair Jon Haidt.  

Haidt has gone on to condemn the right-aligned  ‘outrage industry;’ I have elaborated that, in the current climate, virtually any progressive scholar could end up in its crosshairs. Research Associate Ian Story explored on our site how most of the faculty terminated for speech issues actually seem to be on the left.  Pushing back against these trends, literally the only official position HxA has taken as an organization so far has been to  condemn Professor Watchlist.

Not all of us agree on these issues (that’s the point!) — indeed, even for our statement on Professor Watchlist we published a dissent by UCO psychology professor Robert Mather. But nonetheless, as Director Mashek put it, “virtually anyone who enjoyed [Dirks’] column would feel right at home in Heterodox Academy.”

As an organization that prizes pluralism and disagreement — with more than 2400 members holding diverse views on most issues — Heterodox Academy almost never takes positions as an organization on current events and controversies. Opinions expressed here are those of the author(s). Publication does not imply endorsement by Heterodox Academy or any of its members. We welcome your comments below. Feel free to challenge and disagree, but please try to model the sort of respectful and constructive criticism that makes viewpoint diversity most valuable. Comments that include obscenity or that sound like a tirade or screed are likely to be deleted.

Source: https://heterodoxacademy.org/misunderstanding-heterodox-academy/