New York Times vs. Chomsky

From Today's New York Times: "'During Obama, the overwhelming majority of enforcement actions targeted criminal aliens," said John Cohen, former acting under secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama Administration." (p. A12, below the fold)

From Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (2014) by Aviva Chomsky (Noam Chomsky's daughter), p. 107:

"Promoters touted the program as a way 'to remove dangerous criminals from your community.' However, only about half of those deported through Secure Communities fit the profile of a criminal--that is, had been convicted of a crime other than a traffic or immigration violation. The only violation for 45 percent of the deported was being 'present without admission'--that is, being undocumented. Only half of those deported received a hearing before an immigration judge to determine their deportability. The other half were simply deported under ICE administrative procedures or pressured into taking voluntary departure. By late 2011, 226,694 immigrants had come into ICE Custody through Secure Communities.

"Gender Identity" and De-Transition

Transactivists must argue that de-transitioners weren't really trans to begin with because if they admit that someone who really is trans can go back to being cis, then that is an implicit admission that 'gender identity' is a choice instead of something innate and, therefore, fixed. But this presents the transactivists with this problem. Because anyone at anytime can de-transition and thereby announce that ze was not really trans, there is really no way of knowing anyone's true 'gender identity' until de-transitioning is no longer possible, i.e. when hir life is over. Thus, whereas sex is knowable at birth, 'gender identity' is knowable only at death.

My DM exchange with Morgane Oger

[This is my DM exchange with Morgane Oger, vice-president of the NDP in British Columbia. On a lark I sent him a post which I knew he would find annoying. I expected that he would block me, but to my surprise he wrote me back. A rather long and alarming exchange ensued over two days (April 6 -7):]


ME:

"If penis doesn’t equal man and vagina doesn’t equal woman, how come our dysphoria is valid? Shouldn’t sjws be telling us NOT to get surgery because it’s transphobic to deem a vagina a female part? Y’all are literally DELUSIONAL and senseless."

At this point it should be extremely clear that transgenderism is completely irrational. For instance, transactivists insist that the sexual definition of man- and womanhood is wholly unscientific and must be replaced with one that is scientific, and the scientific definition they have in mind is simply a feeling and a wholly subjective declaration of that feeling. Or the transactivists insist that anatomy does NOT constitute man- and womanhood but still insist that 'gender confirmation surgery' to change one's anatomy to fit one's 'gender identity' is medically necessary (the tweet above, of course, points out this really GLARING contradiction). The transgender movement demands that we understand subjective feeling as scientific truth and clamors that we both deny and affirm the body's relevance to 'gender identity'. And when you point this out, as I and many others have done again and again and again and again and again, you're not met with counter-arguments but with charges of bigotry, 'hate speech', even death threats. The trans movement is not about reason and science, it's about the Triumph of the Will.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Thank you for attempting to participate in the conversation.
Sadly, you are not contributing.

ME:

Yeah, you can't defend transgenderism. I thought so.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Can't is not the same as won't. It's a law enforcement responsibility to defend transgender people, not mine. I'm on the consequences team.


ME:

Yes, you have to use men with guns to defend this rabid nonsense because people simply won't believe that transwomen are women otherwise.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

I don't care what you believe, actually


ME:

If you could just define 'gender identity', I would be willing to take the claims of transpeople based on that concept seriously. But you cannot even do that.

Every time an attempt has been made to define ‘gender identity’ in law, the result has been ridiculous circularity. For instance, Massachusetts defines it thus: “Gender identity shall mean a person’s gender-related identity…” “Gender identity” appears on both sides of the copula, both as the definiendum and as the definiens. That’s a perfect circle, and that is NO accident because ‘gender identity’ cannot be defined. It cannot be defined as physiological sex for reasons too obvious to mention, and it cannot be defined by behaviour or sartorial preference because that would lead to absurdities such as all pants-wearing women are really men or all empathetic men are really women. So, if 'gender identity' cannot be defined by sex, behaviour, or sartorial preference, all that's left is merely the individual's uncorroborated assertion. And an uncorroborated assertion is not a definition. It’s merely a sound.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Canada defines gender identity as the knowledge of what gender a person is.

You are asking about a settled matter of law.

Please refer the British Columbian Human Rights Code and to the 27 March Oger v Whatcott BC Human Rights Tribunal ruling, which upheld my protection from publications inciting discrimination on the basis of my gender identity.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

I do not know how human rights are protected in your jurisdiction but in Canada there is no definition of ANY of the explicitly protected classes in our laws. They are concepts, not classes. We do not quantify the protected races (a fiction anyways) or the religions (there are an infinite number). We protect people from discrimination on the basis of their religion, their gender identity, or their race to name three.

ME:

"Gender identity is the knowledge of what gender a person is"?? And I suppose 'triangular identity' is the knowledge of what triangle a shape is. Both definitions simply beg the question, the former what gender is and the latter what a triangle is. Definitions are supposed to answer questions, not beg them. And, yes, religious beliefs are protected, but that does not mean that I am forced to adopt the beliefs of Muslims, say. But to protect 'gender identity', it seems, everyone must be forced to believe that self-identification and NOT physiological sex determines man- and womanhood because if people thought that physiological sex determined man- and womanhood, they would call trans women men, and that, according to you and the Canadian Courts, is invidious discrimination on the basis of 'gender identity'.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Define race.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

...or faith.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

I urge you to read this... (He sent me this article.)

ME:  

The comparison with laws protecting faith does not work because those laws do not force one to adopt the beliefs of others whereas the laws protecting 'gender identity' forces every one to accept the entirely unfounded belief that self-declaration constitutes man- and womanhood.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Sorry, they are EXACTLY the same law. You are not required to BELIEVE me. You are required to NOT DISCRIMINATE against women or anyone else because they are transgender.

NOBODY cares what you THINK, only what you DO.

ME:

Yes, I am required to believe you are a woman. If I do not believe it and say so, then if I am a Canadian Citizen, you'll have the courts fine me 35,000 dollars. Thank the good Lord that I am NOT a Canadian Citizen.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Actually, you don't need to be Canadian to face my wrath, but you DO have to violate our laws which DO NOT CARE AT ALL what you think or believe.

ME:

But the law says that I may not voice my belief that self-declaration is not the basis of man- and womanhood. Publicly I must adhere to the nonsensical belief that self-declaration constitutes man- and womanhood. That's downright Orwellian. That's like saying that I may believe privately and secretly that 2 + 2 = 4, but in public I must say that 2 + 2 = 5.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

You have had as much of my free attention as you deserve. If you would like to book 20 minutes of my time, please donate $50 to the Oger Foundation and we can have a 1 on 1 video meeting. I will record it and publish it online.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

I am watching this very funny take on people who do what you do: (He sent me a Contrapoints video.)

ME:

You're arrogant. (I sent him a response to that Contrapoints video.)

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Morgane Oger/about

ME:

Your line is this: You may secretly think that sex determines man- and womanhood but if you give voice to this notion, you are engaging in invidious discrimination and should be punished, but you may express 'gender identity' all you want. How is this NOT a glaring double standard?

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

My line is:
"I don't care what a transphobe or a racist thinks if they refuse to catch up. Everyone's a prejudiced jerk about something or other and we put up with this inconvenience because we have to. We are already educating the next generation not to be like you and if you step out of line too far, you will face the might of the state and its enforcement tools keeping criminals and other miscreants who foolishly misbehave too much."

Get over yourself.

ME:

You are assuming that your notion of what constitutes man- and womanhood is right and that mine is wrong, but that's very much in dispute, isn't it? Therefore, you are begging the question.

ME:

And I see you smuggled in the parallel between being a racist and being gender-critical (what you evidently regard as 'transphobia'). That parallel is false. The racist AFFIRMS racial theory whereas the gender critic DENIES gender theory. No parallel, and those who use it are intellectually dishonest.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

In Canada, being a racist and being a transphobe are the same thing in the eyes of our laws.

ME:

Laws have been known to be wrong, you know.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

This law enjoys 84% of support and my inbox is chock-full of congralutory messages.
At today's lgbtq2+ event at Simon Fraser University my recent wins got 4 separate mentions from queer elders.

Now, go away

ME:

None of which resolves the glaring contradictions within the transgender movement, makes 'gender identity' any less of a glaringly empty concept, or refutes the obvious difference between gender criticism and racism. If the law declared 2 + 2 = 5 with popular support, two and two would still be four.

Morgane Oger M.S.M.:

Go away

ME:

Bottom line is that your ideology can be enforced only by a draconian regime that suppresses reasoned argument.

The Drummond Dilemma

This is Alex Drummond, who insists that he is a woman and a Lesbian. Now, how does Lesbianism makes any sense at all if Alex Drummond is to be regarded as a woman? Remember, you’ve got to call him a woman. If you don’t, you’re a vile, trans-erasing, transmisogynistic bigot. But if you call hIm a woman, then you are saying that he belongs to a class of people to whom Lesbians are supposed to be erotically attracted. Saying this can mean only one thing, that self-identification and NOT physiological sex is the source of erotic attraction. If that’s the case, that would mean a man can get a Lesbian to be attracted to him simply by identifying himself as a woman. Right? Who knew that Reparative Therapy could be so easy!

This is wholly absurd. If you replace physiological sex with ‘gender identity’ as the one cause of man- and womanhood―and there must be only this one cause, otherwise you’d justify differential treatment of cis- and transpeople, which is OUTRAGEOUS transphobic bigotry―then sexual orientation no longer makes sense as an identity and can at best be regarded as an anatomical fetish. Thus, homosexuality becomes a perverse fetish for body parts (as does heterosexuality, by the way). Gays and Lesbians bristle when they’re told that their orientations are mere fetishes. They consider such a classification to be straight up homophobic bigotry, but, again, how is this classification to be avoided if you grant the transactivist demand that ‘gender identity’ replace physiological sex as the basis of man- and womanhood? Unless you can answer this question, then you must face the fact that the LGBT Alliance makes it logically impossible to avoid bigotry. Affirming gays and Lesbians requires the assumption that physiological sex constitutes being a man or a woman, and this assumption is genocidal transphobic bigotry, but affirming transpeople requires the denial of physiological sex as what it means to be a man or woman, and this denial reduces sexual orientation to a body part fetish and is therefore scandalous homophobic bigotry. You’re a bigot no matter what.

Stupid things tenured professors say: Jeffrey McCune

Jeffrey McCune, an associate professor of gender studies at Washington University in St. Louis, posted this imperious demand on his Facebook page:

"Parents: your child’s sexuality and gender identity is not your information to share. JUST STOP! You can’t even talk to your child, but you talking to and telling everybody else. YOUR INABILITY TO COPE WITH CHANGE AND DIFFERENCE, DOES NOT GIVE YOU LICENSE TO INVADE YOUR CHILD’S PRIVACY!"

Presumably he is talking about children so young they cannot yet talk, i.e. infants. So, I really don't know how many parents gab about their infants' sexuality. Most parents I know would probably try to kill you if you were stupid enough to mention 'sexuality' and their little kids in the same breath. So, I am inclined to think that the Professor is wasting words by telling parents not to do that which they would never think of doing and hope to God that anyone who goes anywhere near their kids would never think of doing.

But he also tells parents not to share their kid's 'gender identity'. What? Parents are not to refer to their kid with pronouns? Or use gender-neutral pronouns until the kid is old enough to decide its own "gender identity". Yeah, fine, but isn't a neutral gender itself a gender? Wouldn't the parents be sharing the kid's "gender identity" or, even worse, imposing a "gender identity" on it even if they used gender-neutral pronouns? So, the parents must eschew pronouns altogether when talking about their kid lest they commit a crime against humanity and INVADE THEIR CHILD'S PRIVACY! OH, THE HORRORS! Eschewing pronouns makes for extremely awkward English, but Professor McCune is not a tenured professor of English. Obviously enough.

He is rather a tenured professor of silliness.

A tweet from @alteredboy

"If penis doesn’t equal man and vagina doesn’t equal woman, how come our dysphoria is valid? Shouldn’t sjws be telling us NOT to get surgery because it’s transphobic to deem a vagina a female part? Y’all are literally DELUSIONAL and senseless."

At this point it should be extremely clear that transgenderism is completely irrational. For instance, transactivists insist that the sexual definition of man- and womanhood is wholly unscientific and must be replaced with one that is scientific, and the scientific definition they have in mind is simply a feeling and a wholly subjective declaration of that feeling. Or the transactivists insist that anatomy does NOT constitute man- and womanhood but still insist that 'gender confirmation surgery' to change one's anatomy to fit one's 'gender identity' is medically necessary (the tweet above, of course, points out this really GLARING contradiction). The transgender movement demands that we understand subjective feeling as scientific truth and clamors that we both deny and affirm the body's relevance to 'gender identity'. And when you point this out, as I and many others have done again and again and again and again and again, you're not met with counter-arguments but with charges of bigotry, 'hate speech', even death threats. The trans movement is not about reason and science, it's about the Triumph of the Will.

A friendly reminder

Every time an attempt has been made to define ‘gender identity’ in law, the result has been ridiculous circularity. For instance, Massachusetts defines it thus: “Gender identity shall mean a person’s gender-related identity…” “Gender identity” appears on both sides of the copula, both as the definiendum and as the definiens. That’s a perfect circle, and that is NO accident because ‘gender identity’ cannot be defined. It cannot be defined as physiological sex for reasons too obvious to mention, and it cannot be defined by behaviour or sartorial preference because that would lead to absurdities such as all pants-wearing women are really men or all empathetic men are really women. So, if 'gender identity' cannot be defined by sex, behaviour, or sartorial preference, all that's left is merely the individual's uncorroborated assertion. And an uncorroborated assertion is not a definition. It’s merely a sound.