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.

Let's play "when can we leave Syria responsibly"!

1. When ISIS is completely gone? Wrong! ISIS can always re-group, just ask Ronan Farrow's mother. So, if ISIS is the reason for our presence, then our presence must be indefinite.

2. When the Kurds feel completely safe? Wrong! They won't feel completely safe until the Turks no longer understand the Kurds as a mortal threat to Turkishness. Which will be never. So, if protection of the Kurds is the reason for our presence, then our presence must be indefinite.

3. When Iran is no longer meddling in the affairs of Syria? Wrong! Iran will always be meddling in Syria as long as we are meddling in Syria, and the Iranians must be taught that meddling is our God-given right, and that will happen only when every Iranian converts to American Christianity. Therefore, our presence can only be indefinite. That's the responsible thing to do. Trump is bad.


Thanks for playing.

An example of how an LGBT Advocate argues these days

LGBT Advocate: Transwomen are women!

LGBT Skeptic: Why are they women? Just because they and you say so? But how does that make them women? Are you gods who can transform people solely by the mystical power of your utterances? That seems like magical thinking, doesn't it?

LGBT Advocate: Shut up, bigot!

A livid somewhat desultory response to Ben Travers' patronizing review of My Dinner with Hervé

Well, about two weeks ago I watched the HBO film My Dinner with Hervé and was devastated by it. The film captures perfectly the humiliation to which we cripples are subjected by smiling able-bodied pricks who think they are doing us a fucking favor. The film made me howl in pain, and I do mean howl. Had I been living in a cheap apartment building, where the flats are separated by a few layers of gypsum and plywood, some one certainly would have called the cops on me. After I had calmed down a bit, I wanted to know what the reviewers had to say about this film. I am a cripple, so my opinion can't be valid unless it is confirmed by an able-bodied, gainfully employed adult. I happed upon this review, which was very unfavorable. So, I was wrong. But this review hit a nerve. A very, very tender one. I exploded and immediately wrote the polemic below. I thought at first that I would edit it but decided that editing it would probably soften the rage, and I did not want to do that. I am fucking tired of trying to appear level-headed to my able-bodied betters. So, I present my rage as it spilled out of me, and if you don't understand it, gentle reader, tough shit.



So, why oh fucking why did this Film not give us a more sympathetic Hervé, the Hervé that worked with troubled youth, the Hervé that helped abuse victims cope with tragedy? Why were we instead given a womanizing, hostile drunk who likes to brandish knives at people just for shits and giggles? As a cripple myself I can answer this question, you dumbfuck. Look, when we do everything you able-bodied pricks ask us to do, so that you'll allow us to conform to your society (sorta), we're still not your equals. You still laugh at us. Look, I myself went through sixteen years of schooling, and I got academic awards and scholarships, and you fucking wankers won't even allow me basic arithmetic because I walk and talk funny. And Hervé Villechaize became an accomplished painter, a successful actor, a generous philanthropist, and all everyone remembered him for or wanted him to do was say "Da Plane, Da Plane" in that funny voice and play everyone's adorable little dwarf toy. Pretty fucking soon one get's really tired of playing the part of the talking doll, and the only way to demonstrate to the vacuously smiling peanut gallery that you are not that talking doll is to show that you do not have a drawstring but instead have a cock and have a knife, and that you know how to use both, fuck you very much. To get the cute warm and fuzzies out of these wankers' heads, you must be the complete opposite of cute. Do you understand that, dumbfuck? You would if you had read Richard III. We cripples learn pretty damn fucking quickly that all that matters to you able-bodied assholes is power, and if you don't have it, then you are at worst fucked and at best accepted briefly as an amusing side-show as Hervé was, but you'll never ever accept us as fully human, and that just pisses us off. And so we quasimodos, we prefer to be unsympathetic, knife-wielding assholes. No, that won't make us likeable, but we're not trying to be liked. What we desperately want is human dignity, and you able-bodied pricks have taught us one thing and one thing only, that you get dignity only if you're feared. GO FUCK YOURSELF, MR. TRAVERS!

Chase Strangio is lying

So, Ms. Strangio claims that the laws protecting trans people have been in place decades before Obama. What she means is the 1989 Court Case, Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse, which ruled gender stereotyping to be a species of sex discrimination. What Ms. Strangio doesn't tell you (or doesn't say explicitly) is how she understands that ruling to apply to trans people, namely by broadening the concept of gender stereotyping to include anatomical expectations based on sex. And it is this re-definition of gender stereotyping which was introduced by the Obama Administration. Yes, Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse happened decades before Obama, true, but the re-definition of gender stereotyping necessary to make this precedent apply to transpeople did not happen until the Obama Administration. Ms. Strangio is lying.

Furthermore, if we are to understand gender stereotyping to include anatomical expectations associated with sex, then that would make the very concept of physiological sex itself constitutionally impermissible gender stereotyping because it is simply impossible to understand sex without reference to its anatomical markers. Sex becomes absolutely meaningless, and if sex is meaningless, so is any discrimination based upon it. So, the sex clause in Title VII is meaningless, and Title IX becomes utter nonsense.

Lastly, man- and womanhood become simply an ipse dixit because all other ways to define these concepts--dress, behaviour, physiology--are constitutionally impermissible gender stereotyping. Thus, sex/gender can only have private meanings, and yet Ms. Strangio demands that these individual, private meanings receive public recognition as if they could be understood publicly, but all outward markers which would enable such an understanding have, according to Ms. Strangio, been ruled to be--altogether now--constitutionally impermissible gender stereotyping. This is the central contradiction of the trans movement.

Update on Facebook

Facebook will now allow the link to Woman's Place, U.K., because allowing Holocaust Denial and links to really savage pornography while forbidding a link to a site, the front page of which has a picture of extremely modestly dressed suffragettes is the textbook example of an impossible PR Nightmare.

FUCK FACEBOOK'S "COMMUNITY STANDARDS"!

Tanith Lloyd tweeted this over an hour ago: "you can send a link to porn hub via facebook but you can't send a link to a women's organisation. this is beyond absurd now."


The women's organisation in question is Womans_Place_Uk, an organisation known for its opposition to the Gender Recognition Act. I just tried to link to "womansplaceuk(dot)org" and was told immediately that I was posting spam. I then linked to pornhub. That went through with no problems whatsoever (I have since taken the link down, of course). So, yeah, this is beyond absurd. FB will let you link to a hardcore porn site that shows thousands of videos, depicting almost every imaginable violent act that can be inflicted upon women, but a link to a feminist organisation violates its "Community Standards". You may also deny the Holocaust, but may not link to a feminist organisation. So, fb's "Community Standards" deem neo-nazism and porn (which includes hardcore VIOLENT porn) acceptable, but a feminist organization is so unacceptable that a link to it may not be even visible on anyone's page. Okay, well, one can infer one conclusion and one conclusion only:  Facebook's "Community Standards" are NOTHING but one great, big, huge, gigantic, GROTESQUE JOKE. FUCK FACEBOOK'S "COMMUNITY STANDARDS"!

The Internal Contradictions of the LGBT Alliance

The trans line currently is very clear: The man- and womanhood of transpeople is not a whit less real than the man- and womanhood of cispeople, and for this claim to make any sense at all, man- and womanhood must have just one cause. More than one cause would justify different treatment and different facilities, and the trans lobby has made it abundantly clear that this is nothing but transphobic bigotry. Therefore, there must be only one cause of man- and womanhood, and it cannot be physiological sex for fairly obvious reasons. It can only be the ipse dixit of ‘gender identity’. ‘Gender identity’ must replace sex for transpeople to attain what they claim justice demands, but, as many people have pointed out (especially Lesbians), once you replace sex with ‘gender identity’, the concept of sexual orientation makes no sense because the idea that self-identification is the source of visceral, sexual attraction is just absurd.

So, the LGBT Alliance rests upon premisses that cancel each other out. Again, this seems glaringly obvious to me, and, again, that may be because my irrational hatred has so warped my mind that I shall never exit my cave of bigotry to experience the pellucid sunlight that is Queer Theory. Maybe. But if that is not the case, and the contradiction is as glaring as I argue it to be, then why do many gay activists insist vehemently upon an alliance that cancels out the gay identity? I would suggest that for the gay activist, what’s even more important than the assertion of the gay identity is the demolition of concepts that make heterosexuality normative. The gays' arch nemesis, heterosexism, must be destroyed utterly, and it can be destroyed only if it is no longer normative for anything. It cannot be normative for relationships, and it cannot even be normative for determining man- and womanhood. All arguments for physiological sex as the determinant of man- and womanhood are premised upon reproductive complementarity, and you just can’t get more heterosexist than that. Thus, in order to finally free society from the oppression that is heterosexism root and branch, man- and womanhood must be divorced completely from reproductive complementarity and be predicated simply upon an individual’s say so. But, again, once you do that, then sexual orientation makes no sense as an identity.

Belaboring the point

I want to belabor this point because, well, all this identity crap really pisses me off. Too many people have accused me of hatred for daring to be skeptical of the concept of ‘gender identity’ simply because, as far as I can tell, a person’s identity is not up for debate. To say otherwise is to deny that person’s existence, and that’s dehumanizing violence. If that is the case, then it seems to me that this logic can be applied with equal force to the skepticism about the existence of God. The Catholic identity depends upon being created in the image of God. Deny the existence of God, you deny the Imago Dei  and therewith the identities of Catholics. So, if skepticism about ‘gender identity’ amounts to dehumanizing violence against transpeople, Atheism amounts to dehumanizing violence against Catholics. If we cannot question ‘gender identity’ because it’s perverse to debate the existence of transpeople, then we should not debate the existence of God, either, because doing so amounts to disputing the existence of Catholics.

WTF?

Please, tell me, please, anyone, tell me, why the hell man- and womanhood is such a crucial identity anymore. What, you have to identify as a man because you fancy women? That's heterosexist bigotry. You identify as a woman because you are empathetic and nurturing? That's sexist stereotyping. You identify as a man because you want to be a civil engineer? What, are you saying women can't be civil engineers? You do know this is the 21st century and not, say, the seventeenth, right, male chauvinist pig? Women can be logical, and men can be hysterical. Men can wear skirts, and women pants. Women can be engineers, and men nurses. So, what the hell is so unique about being a man or a woman that justifies the recognition of so being? The answer, of course, is physiological sex, which CANNOT be changed. At all. It can only be mutilated. "Gender identity" is rabid nonsense. So is transgenderism.

Talking Point: Atheism is violence!

The Catholic Belief in the Imago Dei is crucial to the Catholic Identity, much more so than even one’s being created as male or female.  In fact, the Imago Dei IS the Catholic Identity.  Denying one is denying the other.  Thus, if denying the identities of transpeople is tantamount to denying their existence and thereby constitutes violence against transpeople (as transactivists tell us ad nauseam), then so too is the denial of the Imago Dei. Ergo, atheism is violence against all Catholics just as misgendering is violence against transpeople.

Therefore, anyone committing atheism should be locked up.  They are clearly a menace to society.

February 22, 1943

Today is the 75th Anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst, three of the noblest people who ever walked the face of the earth.  The Good die young.

Germany, Kierkegaard, and Motherfuckers

An American Wetback working under the table at an English Bookstore in der Schellingsstraße was frustrated after a typically infuriating encounter with a German Bureaucrat at the Post Office. A German co-worker noticed his frustration and asked, "What's wrong, Bill?"

"Some days I wish my German were better than it is. What's German for 'motherfucker'?"

"Well, mutterficker, I guess, but it does not mean anything."

At this moment a customer who was paying for his books at the check-out counter turned towards Bill up in the mezzanine and said, "In Germany there are no motherfuckers, therefore ve have no need of the term."

Bill narrowed his eyes at the customer and said, "Sir, have you ever heard of Søren Kierkegaard?"

"No, I have not."

"Well, Sir, Kierkegaard was a nineteenth century Protestant Theologian, who once shrewdly observed that in a country where everyone is a Christian, no one is. It seems to me, Sir, that we have an analogous situation here. You say that no one in Germany is a motherfucker. Therefore, you are all motherfuckers!"

"Ungeheuerlich!" shouted the customer and stomped out.

Bill died last week. Recquiescat in pace.

Shibboleth

I have a compilation of Greek Recipes from some Orthodox Parish. A few years ago a friend and I decided to do the recipe for cold cucumber soup (Cold soups are the best--screw you, Archie Bunker). A fairly simple recipe, which we followed to the letter, and after we were done, we tasted it, and my friend said that there was something missing, and, yeah, well, I thought so, too--after she said so, that is. So we thought and thought and smacked our tongues and thought some more. And then my friend exclaimed, I know! Lemon Juice! But Lemon Juice was not listed in the recipe, and then I realized that this was a Greek Orthodox Cook Book. Lemon Juice is just assumed, and if you don't know that, you're either a Protestant or a hopeless and hapless Scholastic. Either way, you're damned.