The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

438 thoughts on “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum”

1. Humans are truly amazing creatures.
   Some of them are amazingly silly.

   1. Most of them are amazingly silly, but some have the poor taste to show it in public.

2. Grabs the popcorn.

   1. Here are the previews:

3. homosexuality might very well be genetic (I don’t know), but still not be expressed in everyone who has the genes. It’s looking like genetics is even more complex than we originally thought, and sometimes things turn on/off for reasons we don’t understand quite yet.

   1. Yep older son has promised me a post on epigenetics, but then things got going in medschool, so….
      Also when I told him about the “genetic test for autism” I got the flat out “that’s impossible.” Because autism is another of those things.

      1. Epigenetics is ever so interesting, it looks like Lamarck was correct but wrong at same time.

         I first learned of epigenetics about fifteen years ago when I was living in Southampton, England and renting rooms from a widowed nurse. My landlord was one of the lead nurses of study of people from Netherlands who experienced severe famine while still in mother’s womb during Nazi occupation of Holland. She talked to me about her job and what they were studying a few times and I remember that she, and her colleagues, were befuddled about what was happening.

         A bunch of people who were fetuses while their mothers underwent severe shortage of food during last year of nazi occupation, they all developed similar health problems when they were in their 50s and 60s and doctors wondered wtf?

         1. The way I’ve heard it described is that Lamarck was more wrong than he was right, but he was more right than high school biology texts give him credit for.

         2. I believe they have traced the epigenetic effects to their children and grandchildren, even.

            1. There was some sort of study of Norwegians or Danes who grew up during famine years or plentiful years. Genetically very similar folks can be really really different in other ways.

      2. Yep, women smell differently than men. Not to mention that men and women also smell differently as they age. And trans people don’t smell the same either, regardless of which direction they go, or how far they’ve manipulated their bodies.

         I’d love to see a blinded study where people had to identify whether someone was male or female just by scent using ordinary men and women. And a second study doing the same thing only mixing in transmen and women.

         1. And disallowing cologne and scented soaps/shampoos. That would be the hard part.

            1. “You must shower here before the tests and you must use the provided boring cleaning products.”

            2. Even with scented stuff, you can usually tell– I definitely don’t smell like my husband, even though we both use a knockoff head’n’shoulders and Irish Spring.

               1. I had a girlfriend back in the day who just smelled wrong to me. I could be drying her off after a shower but she just didn’t smell right. I eventually just figured that there was some subtle genetic mismatch that my nose noticed and was trying to tell me.

                  It was like being smashed by a clue bat when I realized that the me who thought in words was not the whole of me. Sometimes you just need to shut up and let the rest of you carry the ball.

                  1. Women who are pregnant are attracted to different men (by smell) than they are when they’re not. The interesting thing is that they’re attracted to protectors more when they’re pregnant—and in this case, “protectors” means “more closely related.” IOW, your cousin is more likely to take care of you in a prehistoric society when you’re pregnant than the unrelated guy who smelled like a good idea to have a kid with and enlarge the gene pool.

                     The really interesting part is that they think perhaps that women who are on the pill while they’re dating may be setting themselves up for problems when they try to get pregnant later—because sometimes those pheromone signals mean that any child conceived would have problems that would lead to miscarriage, or that the couple could be infertile. It’s impossible to double-blind that study, hence the hedging, but there are a lot of couples with fertility problems that just might be caused by subtle incompatibilities.

               2. My wife (and my kids) are convinced my wife and I are together because our pheromones line up with each other. As good an explanation as any other.

         2. The fundamental research has been done but nobody is going to do the study you suggest for fear the answer may be unacceptable:

            It turns out that smell is the way to a woman’s heart
            Smelling good is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

            That’s per a new study from the University of British Columbia recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Psychology researchers at the Canadian institution discovered that women demonstrated lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, after smelling a t-shirt that had been worn by their opposite-sex partner.

            “Many people wear their partner’s shirt or sleep on their partner’s side of the bed when their partner is away, but may not realize why they engage in these behaviors,” said Marlise Hofer, the lead author of the study, which involved 96 couples.

            Women were chosen as the subjects because they are believed to have a stronger sense of smell. They weren’t told if the shirt they were smelling was their partner’s prior to having a stress test administered. That said, women who correctly identified their partner’s scent prior to taking the test were more relaxed.

            Conversely, sniffing a tee that had previously clothed a stranger increased the subject’s stress level. “From a young age, humans fear strangers, especially strange males, so it is possible that a strange male scent triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response that leads to elevated cortisol,” Hofer says.

            [END EXCERPT]

            1. It was very important to me I like how my partner smelled, in terms of bodily scent, since I considered it a necessity that the man in question be of decent hygiene. I didn’t realize this until much, much later. (I will bury my face into Rhys’ chest, take a deep breath, and feel much more relaxed.)

               I had a male friend back in college who said he found ‘my scent very soothing.’ As in, he would request to bury his nose into the top of my head, inhale deeply, then sigh as if all the stress was leaving his body. Then he’d thank me and step back and we’d continue talking (usually about books, or school, food or anime.) I wasn’t his type nor was he romantically interested in me (and for a lot of guys, including this friend, I’m the ‘safe girl’ female friend = the ‘universal big sister’ most of them didn’t have that they could chat to without worrying that I might misconstrue something they said as sexual come on or flirting, nor worry that I’d ‘start developing that weird possessiveness as if we were involved romantically’ which was rather nice.) He wasn’t the only male friend who would sniff my head or hair to feel better either.

               Scents are important; I don’t think they don’t have to = sexual or romantic attachment. They might also mean ‘this person is important to me, and I should cherish that connection/protect it’ – after all, lots of new parents remark on the smell of their babies. This might also extend to people who are perhaps emotionally healthy for the person involved.

               1. New baby smell beats new car smell by miles and miles.

                  1. But, suspending your new baby from the rearview mirror will get you pulled over.

                     And “new car smell” lasts longer, without interruption from “oh dear Lord in Heaven, what crawled into my baby’s diaper and died?!” smell.

                  2. Oh yes! I rather miss that smell…

            2. Women are naturally attracted to the smell of men who are different from them because it makes good genetic sense. During pregnancy, a repugnance for strange things may invert this.

               Putting a woman on the Pill means she’s attracted to men who are biologically unwise matches.

         3. I can vouch that if you’re separated from females of the species for a couple of months, it’s a very obvious thing when you find yourself unexpectedly downwind of some.
            Even without perfume being in the equation.

            My wife was rather disturbed to learn that women in the fertile portion of their cycle smell differently. (Also during the very infertile portion of their cycle, but obvious fact is obvious.)

            1. Thanks, I wasn’t going to bring that particular point up myself.

            2. My daughter – when she was in high school (a Catholic all-girls high school) often averred to me that she could smell when they were about to go on their period.

               1. That’s another thing. It’s been observed that large groups of women in close proximity to each other synchronize their menstrual cycles. Well known fact to boot camp company commanders, or drill sergeants.

                  Could also explain a lot about most HR departments, since they’re mostly staffed by females…. Get there during the wrong time of month and request something…

         4. And scent is, for many people, a huge part of attraction. I know two women whose general scent (mostly from the pits) is still a memory I can conjure and describe with great detail. They are also two of the women I have been the most attracted to that I’ve know, representing 50% of the “wish I was still with” and “glad I kept” categories.

      3. …they can’t even define autism and stop arguing about it, and folks wanna genetically test for it?

         1. Yep. There’s a company taking a patent. Older son said “at some point, high IQ IS autism.”

            1. Heh. My 13 year old who’s still working on counting past three would quibble with that definition.
               (OK, she’d laugh and request a hug. But with NAUNCE.)
               😉

               1. And I believe you, BUT here’s the thing: everyone I know with a kid whose IQ is above 140 has had a school trying to label them autistic.

                  1. Children with truly high intelligence often look stupid to teachers. I should know, I was one. Took me until I was an adult to discover it though. Lots of “C” report cards with “does not apply himself.”

                     If the teachers were honest, it would have read “child alternately bullied and bored to tears, needs to be removed from toxic environment ASAP.”

                     1. Many teachers score kids downward for not giving the expected answer, i.e., not the one in the answer guide.

                        My favorite instance of this is the little girl who, asked the difference between a fish and a sub, replied, “One has mayo, the other oil & vinegar.”

                        1. ROFL!

                     2. You name in real life wouldn’t happen to be Oliver Chadwick Gardenier, would it? /laugh

                        1. Nope, I am Mr. Nobody in Real Life. Going to keep it that way too. ~:D

                     3. Not to mention you learn quickly that being smarter than the teacher is WRONG and not to be done so you hide your intelligence (or become a problem child…guess which I did).

                        1. I became smart-mouthed, resistant and surly. Not an effective strategy, but better than taking drugs and becoming a wasteoid as many did.

                           Sometimes not being accepted by the Cool Kids is a life-saving thing. ~:)

                  2. The schools, and their mothers. After all, they’re the real heroes. It’s so HARD. And they’re so BRAVE.
                     They’ll tell you so.
                     At length.

                     Yeah, I’ve used up my allotment of nice.
                     I tend to go straight to “Wow. Jimmy doesn’t look retarded.” And when they hit the roof, explain (in small words) what Pervasive Developmental Delay is a euphemism for.

                     It’s quite funny when they cringe every time you use the word “retarded”. And my daughter loves laughing at their reactions. Which *really* upsets them.

                  3. Really? Huh. That’s one heap of bad training. (Of course, the school my kids attend has a whole set of teachers specifically trained to deal with higher-level autism, and even the ones who aren’t have picked up a lot. My eldest IS on the spectrum, is mainstreamed, and the teachers have given him a lot of good coping skills.)

                     *sigh* I know smart adults, and I know smart adults on the spectrum—the latter being hardly noticeable, until you see something like my friend cringing as an idiot down the street turned on the booming car speakers—at a level that was hardly louder than the conversation we were having. But something about that frequency went straight to the sensory issues she has. People have such wrong ideas about how autism presents.

                     1. Note: People who don’t know ASD are surprised to find out my son has autism. Folk who work with ASD types spot it within two minutes of meeting him, no question about it. “I work with kids on the spectrum—is your—” “Yep.”

                        Schoolteachers aren’t qualified to give that diagnosis. The most they should do is suggest the things that make them think the kid should be tested—and the tests aren’t quick, either, and take months to schedule and hours to do.

                     2. *curious*
                        Is there a known pattern of being really annoyed by the hum of electronics? About half of the “geek group” on the ship could tell if a TV was on in the other room, even if the screen was black– and my husband at least once knocked on the door of the room next to them and asked them to turn off the tv if they weren’t going to watch anything on it. He was focusing on something or other and the hum was driving him nuts.

                        1. Huh. I was never really annoyed by it, but I could always hear when a CRT was turned on, even with no sound (a computer monitor, or a TV on mute). There’s a high-pitched whine that I could hear, which although not that annoying, was just annoying enough that I’d usually go turn off the device if I could. (I could only hear it when nothing else was making noise, as the sound was faint — so my own computer monitor didn’t bother me). I never hear that sound any more since LCD panels don’t seem to produce that sound; I figure it had something to do with the part of the CRTs that makes the cathode rays.

                           As for autism, I’ve never been diagnosed as on the scale, but I do have ADHD. And some people are talking about ADHD as being related to autism in some vague, not-yet-sufficiently-understood way. I do miss social cues easily, so it’s not hard for me to believe that there may be some kind of spectrum connection there, even if it’s a slight one in my case.

                           1. My husband can hear flat-screens. The door he knocked on, it was for a flat-screen. It’s like… have you been next to a big machine that doesn’t really need fans or anything, but it’s got power through it? That “it isn’t really there but it’s THERE” sort of hum/vibration, almost like the way a ship sounds/feels? Like that.

                              Like Sarah said– there’s a lot of over-lap with high IQ, too. How on earth would you be able to tell “can’t hear it” from “never really noticed it”?

                              I am very glad to hear about the “it just drives them insane” response as a sign of autism– our son will flip out over people singing “happy birthday” or similar in an out of tune five to eight person group, I was worried it might be something else. (He’s usually OK at Church, and will yell “turn it off” just in a twit-boy way for random songs, but off-key group singing just drives him bonkers.)

                           2. When it comes to singing, I am the same way. If I hit the wrong note or tone, I will stop until the twinge goes away. I tried doing circle time at various drop ins with the Squire until it got too painfully annoying for me. I notice every off key sound and it irks and irritates me to no end.

                           3. Beloved Spouse & I were watching a program on Garth Brooks under the premise of “We’re vaguely aware of this guy, we’ve got the time and what we know of his music doesn’t deter” and were struck by his recounting a performance at a Dublin arena. He said there were fifty thousand people in the place, all of them singing along on key.

                              It leaves one to wonder about the pain suffered by many performers when audiences join in. Some apparently have a sense of humour about it, as I gather John Fogerty has been known to alter the words of his “Bad Moon Rising” to:

                              Don’t go around tonight,
                              Well, it’s bound to take your life,
                              There’s a bathroom on the right.

                           4. I used to be able to hear that high-pitched whine, also. I noticed it most especially when I was a kid, walking home from school, going past a house at a distance of about twenty feet or so from the front door, and knowing that there was a TV on somewhere within that house. I think that after a while, I would get used to the sound, and block it out, when the TV was on in a place where I was. I don’t much hear it any more – either my hearing has lost some sensitivity, or CRT aren’t much around any more.

                           5. I could always tell when our TVs were going out. Thankfully HD TVs have taken care of that problem. Unfortunately the one DVD recorder we have makes a very annoying whine (louder than my tinnitus) when plugged in but not on, worse than the old tube TVs.

                           6. when was a kid i could ‘hear’ the high pitched whine that certain floodlights made before they went out. like, the ones in my elementary school’s hallways…

                           7. Horizontal flyback transformer’s magnetostriction… 15,7XX Hz… I can stil hear it… at least from one ear. But it’s rare for there to be an actual CRT in use now, so.. not much an issue.

                        2. The only correlation that I know of is un-destroyed hearing. I can tell when most electronics are on even if they’re in idle. However, while it’s annoying, it’s not “flinch away and cover ears” annoying.

                           1. Commercial cooling.chilling systems are another matter. I don’t know if HVAC folk are high(er) frequency deaf, or just not close to the systems in quieter environments, but I know that some grocery story refrigeration systems shriek and it’s nearly painful to me – and is outright painful to some others.

            2. I was very intrigued by your post suggesting that “autism” may be resulting from our society changing such that the sort of people who want/need clear rules on how to function in society are instead being fed loads of ever-changing BS.

               1. Possibly. Autism as diagnosed is a moving target.

                  1. The best diagnosis is one that takes into account sensory overload, since that seems to be the one universal factor in actual autism. The individual expression is the result of the individual’s level of overload interacting with their personality.

                     1. People with perfect pitch, good hearing, etc. are not overloaded by this stuff, but they do notice it and get annoyed by it.

                        Similarly, there are plenty of normal kids who can experience parts of the things that become sensory overload in autistic people; and there are sensory/processing problems that aren’t autism.

                        So “has a wide hearing range that includes very high sounds” is unusual, but it’s not a sign of autism, just as a deaf autistic person would still be autistic.

                        Still, a lot of this stuff is somewhere in the same neck of the neural woods.

         2. http://victorygirlsblog.com/science-plus-bigotry-plays-parents-fears-disability/

            1. Oy….

               *head in hands* Yeah, my kids would probably get shoved into “autistic” if they were in school.
               Nah, just decently smart and with their parents’ lack of filter. (Takes a while.) We’re trying to make sure they GET a filter in some way other than “I don’t like hurting people, they insist I am hurting them, and they try to hurt me, avoid avoid avoid.”

            2. if the next school shooting took place in a classroom full of children with disabilities, there would be people who would immediately go to Twitter for the “hot take” that hey, they were “only disabled kids, what kind of quality of life do they really have anyway?”

               Already happened. Knife-wielding killer in Japan took out a classroom of disabled students (for whom he had previously been a caregiver) because he thought it would be “better” for them, and not only did the Japanese shrug it off, so did many of the folk over here, for that very reason.

               1. This is admittedly one of the areas where I get concerned. You have a not so insignificant portion of populace that would just shrug it off or try and pawn blame on some nebulous entity. And then there is a portion whose first regret is not having been able to put themselves in the way. The trick for society has to be to empower the latter and minimize the predations of the former.

                  I’m not so sure we qualify.

               2. Not students, residents at a care facility that he felt were (crazytalk deleted). The letter outlining his “offer”, that he delivered to a government official months in advance, was taken seriously, but apparently he could fake sanity long enough to fool the shrinks.

                  -j

         3. Half the problem with defining autism is the modern tendency to label ordinary boys as abnormal because they don’t behave in some Progressive’s theoretical manner (more like girls, mostly, but sometimes like aliens from another galaxy entirely).

            1. And tell girls that act like studious little boys that they’re either lesbian or trans. -.-

            2. Oh, you mean like the school district telling a 6 year old boy he’s a sexual predator because he kissed a girl to get her to stop picking on him rather than decking her like she deserved?

      4. Can I trot out my ‘maybe autism is like cancer, potentially many different underlying mechanisms exhibiting the same symptoms’?

         1. Probably better if you don’t.

         2. I still remember the article from a few decades ago that said (based on studies) that *everything* causes cancer^, but the question was the level of toxicity and that varied by person for most everything.

            (^ Well, everything that won’t just outright kill you at a level of toxicity below the cancer level. Like water.)

      5. Guessing and really oversimplifying:

         What was thought to be: You have gene $THINGIE which means you have $THINGUS.

         Seems to really be: You have gene $THINGIE which means you have the switch that might be flipped to give you $THINGUS – and we’re not (yet) sure just what flips that switch – in either direction.

         Now I wonder if I am even anywhere close with that.

         1. And if I can find a defensible alternate explanation that offends, I may do so and propose it simply to be contrary. Potentially useful in science, but makes going along to get along challenging.

         2. Seeing as “switchers” are actually a thing– as are bi folks–I’d guess it’s multiple switches that are related to a tendency, plus emotional stuff.

            1. that is a close approximation.

            2. A set of combination locks… that interact.
               Thus it might be as annoying as figuring out what option packages to get on a new car… the packages set up to be either almost or excessive.

               1. And don’t forget teratogenic effects and imprinting during the two brain cascade periods as toddlers and again at puberty.

                  But sure. You’re born that way = everything about you. Bah.

               2. Nobody ever lets me pick only the options that I want.

                  1. The bastages!

   2. Genetics is to biology what magnetic tape is to recorded music. Yeah, there’s a lot of the story going on there, but the machinery of reproduction has as much to do with the quality of the music and how it sounds as the actual recorded data on the tape does.

      The more I read in the area, and this goes back to the beginnings of the sequencing era, the more I’m convinced that genes only tell half the tale. The machinery of the cell and the epigenetic processes that determine which gene will be expressed, and precisely how it will be…? That’s just as important, and in a lot of ways, far less well-understood.

      Then, there are the obvious interactions that enable someone’s immune system to ignore entirely separate genetic lines in the same organism, producing functional chimeras. How the hell does that work, when we can’t make organ transplants function without extensive and destructive suppression of the immune systems in the recipients? How many “auto-immune” diseases and syndromes are due to chimera-like situations in that individual?

      We don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. Hell, the actual rate of chimeras in the human population is entirely unknown, because we’d never notice, absent a really unusual chain of circumstances in most of the known cases. I mean, who tests for the unknown? And, since we don’t… We don’t know what we don’t know.

      My bet is that we’ve released a bunch of guilty people from jail, due to genetic testing that failed to catch that the evidence came from them, but the tested tissue used to exonerate wasn’t from the same part of the body as the evidence left at the scene. Given what we know, they should be typing like tissue to like, not taking a buccal swab and calling it good.

      1. We don’t know nearly as much as we think we do.
         But it’s science, damnit! It’s settled! Our models show it’s so!

         Yeah, not nearly as much as our hubris leads us to think.

      2. If genetics were the end-all be-all of inheritance, then it shouldn’t matter what kind of egg cell we insert the DNA into. We could literally insert the entire nucleus of a human being into a chimpanzee, whale, or cow egg cell, and by that logic, the kid would grow up to be an ordinary human being, exactly the same as everyone else. Funny, but I don’t see any serious biologist or doctor agreeing with that. IIRC there’s currently a bunch of nations that outlaw any such experimentation.

         As for releasing some guilty from jail due to faulty genetic testing; I consider that an acceptable risk compared to punishing any innocent people. Punishing the innocent is a greater injustice than not punishing the guilty; and the guilty will almost always provide another chance to catch them and punish them.

         1. The UK gave permission to use animal eggs to make human chimeras and treat them as non-humans. I seem to remember they’re currently required to kill them before they’re too old, though.

            1. Here we go: Two weeks.

               http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/hybridembryos_1.shtml

               1. BUT, but, but….Progressive!

               2. *does sinal salute* Even leaving aside ethics completely, there are certain Sci-fi franchises I do not want to become prophetic…

                  1. Isn’t this the history of the “Good Men” ? I can’t remember the previous name. I’m old (1 year older than our hostess.) and have swiss cheese brain.

                     1. Early stages, though not to the degree most stories (including our hostess’s) postulate. We’re not at full ‘construct-a-humanish-critter’ yet. If I recall the Darkship universe started at this point, though my initial thought had been Planet of the Apes.

                        1. Darkship, like many other SF stories, does make a good cautionary tale about making sweeping changes to our socio-political-economic systems based on poorly thought out models. At least Sarah has them slowly clawing their way out of that mess.

                     2. First one that came to my mind was Island of Dr. Moreau, along with a zillion scifi movies of “oh hey we’ll do THIS nominal difference and that TOTALLY makes them not humans, really.”

                        1. Until they rebel and turn on their captors.

                     3. I thought of Pam Uphoff’s “Wine of the Gods” series, myself…

                     4. The oldest I know are the Cordwainer Smith stories of The Instrumentality of Man (whose name is in all probability a very religious reference).

                        Oddly, The Instrumentality included one of the best thought out strongman systems in sci-fi IMHO. Lords/Ladies of the Instrumentality left governing to the “mere” humans most of the time. They also had strict policing rules amongst themselves including the ability of any Lord to kill another if they believed it was necessary BUT accepting they would be executed for doing so. The only difference would be if found justified they would get a good mark on their permanent record instead of a bad one. Larger numbers had more authority.

                        I wouldn’t want to live under but but at least Smith put serious thought into and how it might be made stable.

                        1. Without the second half in there– that is why you never want to be so horrible that genuinely good people think you need to be dead. Because they won’t see anything wrong with dying so long as you die, too.

                  2. If I remember right, the thing that hit the news hardest was that the UK (Catholic) Bishops and the bioethicists— the guys who are usually the ones saying why the obvious ethics don’t apply– were all joining up in a chorus of “ARE YOU FREAKING NUTS?!?”

                     Predictably enough, the justification was “oh, gosh, this might make it so we can save people!”

                     Seriously, they ARE getting their lines from bad scifi movies.

                     1. I think this one merits the meme of Godzilla, both middle fingers raised, retreating back into the ocean declaring ‘nope, nope, nope’.

                        1. Yep.

      3. Chimeras are actually pretty rare. But DNA tests are only as good as the markers used for comparison. In dogs, when we have good markers (lots of data on closely-related animals) the tests are fairly reliable, but when we don’t the error rate has been reported at around 70%. Per someone I knew who worked in a forensics lab, that was about right across the board.

         1. Quibble:
            Chimeras are not that commonly known of— since we don’t have any systematic way to look, and aren’t try to find out in a good sample, we only find out when it comes up in the course of something else.

            It’s been known that there are “blood chimeras” since the 50s, which they found out…because some people had impossible blood. An lady named Mrs. McK, 1953, had AO type blood.

            Then in 1998, that lady in for a transplant who was “genetically proven” not to be the mother of most of her kids until they figured out she had the “wrong” DNA in her mouth to identify one of her ovaries.

            Since the theory is that this is from a sibling– how often is the DNA going to be different enough to be noticed as something besides signal noise? My parents have the same blood-type– if you’re O-positive or A-positive, you’ve got pretty decent chances of finding a mate that is, too.

            1. Didn’t they claim that Andrei Chikatilo (Soviet serial killer) had different DNA samples as one of the reasons they didn’t catch him sooner?

               1. Not familiar with it.

                  Found your memory is correct, although there’s no mention if it’s a form of chimeraism or what, it says that “non-secretors” have body fluids that “type” as one blood type, but their actual blood-type is something else.

                  It doesn’t explain how but the transcript then says it doesn’t screw up modern DNA techniques. I’ll poke around some more.

               2. Apparently it is linked to how the body fights infection.

                  http://www.dadamo.com/B2blogs/blogs/index.php/2004/02/19/secretors-and-non-secretors?blog=27

   3. In the 90s, there was all the hoopla about the search for the gay gene … and then it went away and people rarely talk about it now.

      One thing that came out of these gene searches was prenatal testing … and abortions if the baby had the “wrong” gene (i.e., Downs syndrome).

      Which group is most likely to opt for prenatal testing and subsequent abortions? Which group is more likely to accept the baby “as is”?

      Sure, there may be more than genetics at work, but I find the dichotomy and rapid about-face quite amusing.

      1. feh, the leftoids have “normal kids” so they can abuse force “allow” them to grow up gay, but I’d bet they’d be more than happy to practice their sacrament and abort any kid they knew for certain was gay, but they’d lie about the reasoning why.

      2. My wife once was referred to a doctor for amniocenteses, and while it can detect other issues besides Downs syndrome, we got the distinct impression it was because they considered her to be at a higher risk at carrying a baby with Downs syndrome.

         Where we had to go for the test was a considerable drive. We’re talking 2+ hours one way. There were no hospitals nearby on that route. And we were warned the test had some risks.

         We talked it over. If the baby had Downs, we would welcome it just the same as a normal baby. I have a relative who has Downs, who my wife had met, so we knew exactly what that meant. Sonograms had improved a great deal by then, and some other issues could be detected that way. So we both decided, since we would be far from hospitals for over a couple of hours after the test, that the risk was too great. She decided not to do the test.

         Now, the thing is, there is no treatment for Downs. Can’t be, not with that extra chromosome. So there is just one reason to determine if a baby has Downs prior to birth. Just one. And that reason is why it’s suggested before the mother feels the baby’s movements.

         1. Yeah, we decided we’d never have an abortion, so we didn’t have amniocentesis.

         2. I don’t know that I would say that there is only one reason to determine if the child has Down’s (or any other chromosomal abnormality). Even if you don’t believe in abortion, it could be useful to know if there is going to be an issue with the child and be able to work through your own feelings before welcoming the child into the world. Thus, your first reaction to seeing your baby won’t be disappointment.

            The emotional issues may not be worth the dangers of an amniocenteses that you mentioned, but the test is a lot less invasive these days (they can isolate fetal cells from the mother’s blood, so it was no different than any of the dozens of other blood tests I had during pregnancy).

            1. Back then there was a risk of miscarriage, and instructions to head straight to a hospital if some symptoms I’ve forgotten appeared. Since we wouldn’t be close to a hospital for hours, that made the risk greater in our eyes.

            2. The cheap ones still have up to a 20% increase in risk of miscarriage*, from the papers they wanted me to sign.

               And pretty high false positives. And, infamously known from the “wrongful life” lawsuits, false negatives.

               *not a 20% chance, a 20% increase. Still big, but not one in five die from the test.

               1. The high risk of false positives was why I firmly, but privately disregarded the test.

            3. I had a friend* whose fourth baby was found to have a deadly trisomy condition in utero. It was very helpful for them to know, since they were not the types to abort regardless, so they had months to go of a pregnancy that wasn’t going to result in a baby.

               *I’d run across a single blog entry of his that ended with him saying he wanted to perform in G&S operettas again—and his information stated he lived in my area. And my G&S company always needed males. So I kept in contact with him, letting him know about the group, and then when this problem came up, I had just run across an online resource for parents dealing with such pregnancies (and keeping them), so I shared it with him. Which apparently moved me into the “very good friend” category, so when I actually met him for the first time in person, I got a big hug, which was weird as heck because, from my perspective, he was basically an acquaintance. (We’re good friends now. That was just weird.)

               1. He?

                  Yeah… I think I know why he hugged you.

                  People are usually not crass enough to walk up to the mother in those cases and “talk sense” to her– but they’ll corner the father and try to get him to “be sensible” and “end the pregnancy” while it’s inexpensive and “painless.”

                  Because the wife is obviously irrational due to not wanting to “end the pregnancy” as soon as she finds out.

                  If I was in that situation, and someone not only didn’t pull that junk, but went “Ah, you are going that route, leaving a path open for Himself just in case? Here, these places might help you deal with it, if there isn’t a miracle. You’re doing the right thing.”

                  We, thank God, haven’t ever had to deal with anything like that…and I’m tearing up just THINKING about it.

                  1. I figure I got pointed to that site for a reason. Didn’t realize the “reason” was going to show up so soon.

                  2. BTW, they had another child after that. Trisomy issues usually aren’t genetic, just a bad roll of the dice.

                  3. We got our miracle. over and over we were assured that Robert would be mentally retarded (by the second time I was hospitalized with skyhigh blood pressures) and that we should abort and save ourselves the lifelong trouble and expense.
                     Over and over again they worked on us separately, including telling Dan I was risking my life because I didn’t want to disappoint HIM and the baby would be a basket case.
                     Well…. He MIGHT be mentally retarded. Or damaged at any rate. In which case I wouldn’t have been able to handle the Full Robert TM.
                     Talking in sentences at one and a half, reading at three, on his own, and now in medschool?
                     We got our miracle. And I’m more grateful than I can say.

                     1. Between “we don’t know what we think we know” and “wait, that was DEFINITELY the other way, and now it’s not– what the….? Uh, thanks?” stuff that happens– yeah, just not doing the hubris thing is a really good idea.

                        See earlier comment thread, re: doctors lost a lot of trust when folks saw what happened more.

         3. There is a considerable growing body of evidence indicating that most of the problems associated with Downs Syndrome are the result of inappropriate and harmful “therapies” for the condition.

            Sort of the same way that many of the problems experienced with deaf, dumb and blind children owed more to lack of effective treatment and less to the underlying condition.

            IIRC, the treatment for polio used to almost guarantee paralysis — until some intransigent nurse employed physical therapy and proved the problems were mitigable. I think a movie was made about her, starring Rosalind Russell. Thank-you, searchengine:

            Elizabeth Kenny (20 September 1880 – 30 November 1952) was an unaccredited Australian nurse who promoted a controversial new approach to the treatment of poliomyelitis. Her findings ran counter to conventional medical wisdom; they demonstrated the need to exercise muscles affected by polio instead of immobilising them. Kenny’s principles of muscle rehabilitation became the foundation of physical therapy, or physiotherapy.

            Her life story was told in the 1946 film Sister Kenny. She was portrayed by Rosalind Russell, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Kenny.

            Sometimes the treatment does more harm than the illness.

            1. Elaborate, please?

               My history is pretty slim on it– I know it was only with Dale Evans and Roy Rogers insisting on keeping their daughter at home, where she lived an incredibly long time for what was considered “normal” then, that the “awareness” got raised– but then, not much you can do for a seriously defective heart before the fairly modern times, too.

               I seriously have no idea what the “normal” symptoms would be, I’ve only known one or two folks with downs, and one was in his 20s by the time I met him. (Elder cousin’s classmate, small and rather religious town so “mainstreaming” was a very good idea. Couldn’t live alone, but in a bigger area would have done rather well in a group home.)

               1. Sorry – I have no direct acquaintance with any Downs person, so what I have gleaned has only been in passing, casually and without noting particulars.

                  My general impression has been that by no longer treating Downs individuals as inherently incapable of learning … we find they can learn quite a bit. With patience and attention they can indeed learn to manage many of life’s daily tasks, often with more diligence than “more capabale” people (funny how needing to pay attention to what you’re doing can improve the results.)

                  I suggest checking Wesley J, Smith, perhaps by searching for his name in combination with “downs syndrome” and selecting from the articles that turn up.

                  Or try this: https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/09/the-joy-of-parenting-children-with-down-syndrome
                  David and Annelies Reilly had dozens of questions swirling in their minds when doctors diagnosed their newborn daughter, Melissa, with Down syndrome. Could she learn? Would she go to school? Could she ride the bus alone? Could she live a normal life? Could they? Melissa, now 25, is successful by any measure. The college student is a speaker invited to inspire others around the country. She travels to represent the Down syndrome community internationally, and is a Special Olympian who brings home gold medals in skiing, cycling and swimming. Additionally, she interns for a Massachusetts state senator and tutors pre-school students with Down syndrome in math and reading.

                  “She has taught us compassion for those who are not as strong or so-called perfect and beautiful,” says Annelies Reilly of Boxborough, Mass. “We see her as perfect and beautiful.” The Reillys represent some of the experiences reported in three surveys conducted by doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston that suggest the reality of Down syndrome is positive for a vast majority of parents, siblings and people with Down syndrome themselves. Among 2,044 parents or guardians surveyed, 79 percent reported their outlook on life was more positive because of their child with Down syndrome.

                  1. There was a boy with Downs syndrome in my youth group at church. He always came with his sister who was two years older. It was a bit of a shock when I first met him. After a while he was just one of the group. Sometimes didn’t get the jokes or would suddenly laugh minutes later. But he fit in fine with us.

                  2. Ah! I was thinking more along the lines of “dead before you’re six.”

                     There are even a couple of companies that are staffed almost entirely by folks with serious developmental issues, mostly Downs– Walmart carries them, frequently, just like the “Workshop For Disabled Vets” type stuff.

            2. Since my Downs relative was raised pretty much as any kid, I don’t know. There seems to be commonalities with other Downs. There is some variation, of course, but there is with everyone.

            3. Yeah, I think the reasoning ended up being that moving and touching the limbs during therapy reinforced the motor and sensory nerve impulses to prevent them from atrophying. A wonderful case of use it or lose it.

         4. They tested my sons for Downs – a test when they’re well formed already, something about an ultrasound scan; and there was a small indication that they might be born with Downs. I snarled against the thought of killing them in utero on a maybe. When Damien was stillborn, there was no indication of Downs (I blame a problem with the placenta for his death; it didn’t look right when I looked) and later on when Brandon was born, Brandon was described as being unusually strong and alert for a preemie – and also, no signs of Downs.

            1. One of my husband’s nieces (back when it was sonogram, not ultrasound) seemed to have no brain. My SiL refused to abort, and when her daughter was born, the comment from the doctor was a happy “We have a good baby!”

   4. When i worked at the airport, some of the workers for SWA were chatting about gayness (they were on the subject when I walked up so how they got there I know not), but one guy, stereotypical flaming etc, held out his hand, “Show me your hand” (I held mine up) “You see a guy with ring fingers longer than his middle finger, he’s gay.” (his were like that). He had to explain, slowly to one of the people that, no, not all gay people had hands like that, just that in his (then) 30 years of life, every guy he met like that was “Gay as I am.” He said in some it was totally genetic, mostly those you could tell at a young age, and others it was likely some other reason. Mental issues, was how he put it, while I wasn’t quite so harsh in describing a few I knew, they did have certain reasoning they bought into for why they were gay trauma’s abuses or just plain fed up with dealing with women in their personal lives. That last was the reason given by one of the SWA ramp workers who was gay, but had grandkids from two different ex-wives.
      The one co-worker at my company there who was gay said he had no idea why. He just said all his life, females did nothing for him, so why fight it? But most people there had no idea he was gay unless he or someone told them.
      Somewhat fittingly, he was named Lance. Hey, he made the joke.

      1. I have lesbian hands. No, seriously. No interest whatsoever in women. Eh.

         1. Heh, do your hands make passes at women or something? (~_^)
            I did work with a lesbian who claimed lesbians were born that way, but gay guys were just sexual deviants.
            She was also the one declaring it seemed everyone she met hated her because she was so obviously gay, and I told her if everyone she met had a problem with her it might not be because she was gay, but the fact she was an insufferable asshole.

            1. https://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/07/25/2d4d-ratio-masculinity/ My ring finger is longer than my index finger. Testosterone in utero. (Likely because of male twin that didn’t make it.)
               They claim that increases your chances of being lesbian. Does it? Don’t know. I think it made me a gay mormon male with a great rack 😉

               1. THAT’S Proof!
                  Wait,
                  My ring finger is slightly longer than my index finger . . . does that make me a lesbian trapped in a mans body?

               2. I am glad to see the testosterone in utero explanation has been provided, but I feel compelled to mentiion that when I was growing up it was widely accepted that a guy with ring fingers longer than his middle finger was a werewolf.

                  1. And if all your fingers are merged into two you’re a minor air?

                     1. Minotaur.

               3. Mine are close enough to the same length to be impossible to tell which is actually longer (because slight shifts in angle change the result.)

            2. My middle fingers are both longer than my ring fingers. Especially when my forefinger, ring finger and pinky are all curled down to my palm.

         2. How many men have decided they were gay after being subjected to rejection after rejection by the feminist Left? And how many women have been convinced they should be lesbians as the only defense against predatory males by the feminist Left?

            1. I have met a couple that were lesbians due to fear of rejection from the feminists (they called it political reasons).

               1. I know a couple that became lesbian because it was the best way to hurt their ex-husband.

                  There’s a family friend that… you know the guys who always date the absolutely freaking insane gals? There is a lesbian version. You can tell who the most vicious user in the room is, because said friend will be hitting on her. One decent girlfriend in 25 years, it was a rebound situation, and they both treated eachother rather poorer than you’d expect if you knew them otherwise.

      2. Good thing I’m old enough to know what I am…

         Dexter, the ring finger is (just slightly) shorter than the index finger.

         Sinister, the ring finger is (noticeably) longer than the index finger.

         I think I need to dig for a study. Maybe it’s just a sign of geekness…

         1. Yeah, I be sinister both ways, I’m left-handed and got d4 longer than d2.
            but this is middle finger … d3/d4 v d4/d3
            Using the d4/d2 ratio his ring finger was almost a full joint longer than his index.

      3. My grandmother said you always had to check out the toes before marriage. Big toe much longer than the others meant you were a dominating man or a submissive woman. Much longer second toe than the big toe then you a dominating woman or a submissive man. You had to get a good toe match for a successful marriage.

         1. If you have to check their toes to know if they’re the dominating sort, you’re DOING IT WRONG. IMHO.

         2. ….good thing both my husband and I have ugly feet, if we’d done that we would’ve figured on eternal dominance games….

            Not that he couldn’t tell I’m pig headed already, and likewise.

         3. Isn’t toe length a sign of ancestry? (Or… sort of. I have the “Greek toe”, where the second toe is longer than the big toe, but my roots are mostly Germanic.)

4. Sexual orientation is a choice of lifestyle, except when it’s a genetic orientation. Pick one and flip a coin. Change your opinion when there’s studies proving or disproving your current belief.
   Or as one blogger I know calls sex changes, “Post modernism body sculpting”.

   1. I know it sounds like a joke, but I have always thought sex change operations are best described as extreme body piercing. You remove functioning body parts because you want to feed a fantasy.

      1. I go a step farther. I think ‘gender reassignment surgery’ is a scam, and the doctors who perform it should be struck off. One day, maybe even soon, we will be able to completely change sex. When that happens, then whatever body you are wearing will be the sex you are at the moment. Until then, ‘sex change’ is a cruel hoax.

         1. “CONCLUSIONS:
            Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.”

            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21364939

            BUt I guess this is fake science, right?

            1. Actually, I sspect it is real science…at least as real as the psychiatric branches get. The crucual statistic seems to me to be that post op transsexuals have a higher incidence of suicide and depression than non-op transsexuals. In short, if the studies are,to be trusted (and it makes sense to me) themfailure of the operation hurts.

               I think that, in time, we will view the surgeons who performed such operations the way we view the ‘doctors’ who tansplanted goat testicles or injected testicular material into men seeking vatious ‘cures’.

               1. As one of my ex-boyfriends (who’s now an ex-girlfriend) explained, the post-op suicide rate is very high because the pre-op psychiatric care and screening are insufficent on a basic level of not being able to fix the mental issues and disabuse people of the dream of what they’ll become.

                  Namely, people who are transgender tend to have picked up a number of other psychological issues in the course of living their lives, and many of them have fallen for the dream of a disney transformation – that with a sparkle, a swirl, a triumphant fanfare, the poor ragged unloved servant girl becomes the beautiful beloved princess, and everything is wonderful and happily ever after.

                  But all that changes is your body, not your brain, your friends, your finances, your family, your social situation, your crummy apartment and boring, frustrating job… when you get out of the hospital, nothing’s changed except you. And you’re still the same depressed, paranoid, unhappy person who hates their life, now in a scarred-up body that doesn’t look nearly as pretty as you wanted it to.

                  This particular ex-girlfriend spent a lot of time getting her head straightened out, becoming grounded and down to earth. She also transitioned, and told me with a love and tenderness that while we’d stayed great friends, her highest goal in life was to disappear into the great mass of American women – she didn’t want to be “A Trans Woman”, she wanted to be just another woman. And as part of that, she cut ties with many people in her past, including her exes. I wish her nothing but the best of luck, love, and happiness in life.

                  Another ex-boyfriend, who after moving somewhere he’s happy with life, getting a job he loves, and having friends he really enjoys, decided he was just “too lazy” to transition. Because the surgery is painful, expensive, scarring, and he had built a world where no one really cares and just accepts him as his own little odd self.

                  A third person, an acquaintance whom I did not date, dropped out of college and has bounced from one low-paying job to another, ran away from the “evil uncaring prejudiced midwest” to the west coast, and set about bouncing from one low-paying job to another there, always with drama and fights with friends and a love life that is more like a series of imbroglios. He’s still convinced that if he could just save enough to get the surgery, then he’d be an absolutely stunning woman who’s making 6 figures, living in a mansion, surrounded by beautiful friends who love him, and with a beautiful partner who’s sane, stable, and adores him while making tons of money and going on european vacations…

                  If he ever does somehow manage to get the transition, I fear for his life, and would put him on the suicide watch immediately in post-op. Because he’s not genetically gifted with a body that will, ah, conform to his heart’s desire, has no marketable job skills for high-paying jobs, and self-sabotages relationships and friendships with a stunning level of blind optimism and refusal to acknowledge reality.

                  1. I wish that I could give you a dump-truck-load of up-votes for this. I am pretty certain that the trans-fans are desperately unhappy people, or at least, confused people. And mutilating surgery will not fix that which they feel is wrong with them.
                     Sometimes I think that this is such a warped century to live in …

                  2. And this is more or less my point. If the pre-surgery screening eliminated all the poor souls who think the change is going to make them PERFECT and solve all (or most of) their problems, who would be left?

                     I really think that the correct designation for post-op trassexuals is ‘victim’ and for the doctors it would be ‘defendant’.

                     So, you weren’t born into the body type,you would prefer. Join the crowd. You want a magical transformation in your life, and expect not to have to friggin’ work like hell for it? Play the lottery; your odds are better.

                     1. Ah, but here is where I disagree with you – because of my examples, one out of three went through the surgery, and the outcome was a successful, happy, stable person who got what they wanted – as much as it’s possible to get.

                        I also have post-op friends, and the sane, stable, happy ones? They’re the ones that, like my ex-girlfriend, fixed all the other problems in their head, and are determined to fit in, and make their own place in society as women who can’t have kids, and have a few extra scars, but otherwise are just another woman, someone you wouldn’t be able to tell from any of your other neighbors.

                        Not all who wander are lost. Not all who chose the surgery are unstable souls in search of a magic wand. If the screening and psych care was better, who’d be left? …The people who were determined to fit in, and live happy, healthy, sane lives.

                        1. However, they cannot improve the screening and psych care. To do so would mean going against the whole ‘born this way’ and ‘s/he says s/he is trans, give them the surgery and hormones as early as possible for least harm!’ mindset. To improve screening and psych care requires a more stringent set of criteria and observation that would ‘deny many of the suffering’ the ‘release from their pain that they seek.’ It would require more than FEEEELS, and well, that’s just asking for career suicide, y’know.

                     2. I’m really disappointed I wasn’t born into a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, a healing factor like Wolverine’s, and with parents as rich as Bill Gates. Oh woe is me!
                        *Now I have to clean to coffee off my monitor*

                        1. Well, Arnold put some work into making his body the way it is. 😉

                        2. Don’t particularly care about having a body like Arnie, though a mutant healing factor would be neat. Probably would fate me to some horrible experiences that couldn’t kill me, but other times I’m sure it would be neat.

                  3. There are two sides I’d expect. One accepts that there is an abnormality in their mind. They can physically help decrease the obviousness but they can only come to peace internally. If you can do so regardless of how you modify your body you are in a good place. And at least from me, you get a lot more sympathy and leeway. Same with trying to fit in to best of your ability and accepting the limitations (People work off of looks much of the time. They will default to the standard greetings and pronouns, etc. Sometimes they will miss.)

                     The second is the one that poisons things. It’s exactly the person you note in that third party. They try and make a false reality happen and when it fails they will lash both out and in. Of course this is the group that people hear more about. For instance the pronoun games, the sex-of-the-day, or the ‘I don’t need to attempt to meet societal norms but you must obey my feelings that I don’t publicize’ are three forms it can lash out as. Lashing in would be the suicide.

                     It sucks because actually finding ways to deal with comorbid disorders and accept reality could work wonders for many but we’ve ceased trying to bring people to accept themselves and attempt to force society to shift for each individual reality.

                     1. Like the poor guy at the office store back before we moved–very, very obviously cross-dressing, but so dogged earnest that you’re just polite to him and make sure the kids don’t say anything, anymore than you’d let them comment on someone’s extreme tattoos. (We’ve manage to get across “don’t say anything unless it’s nice”, so we’ve had a few “wow, that’s a pretty flower!” but no “Why do you have a funny bug on her neck?”)

                        Of course, it’s much easier to be tolerant when there’s either individual restrooms, or a “family and disabled” restroom. (which is an individual restroom with lots of space)

            2. thirty-something percent…

   2. Wouldn’t that be the crazy ones who amputate legs and blind themselves or damage their hearing because they ‘identify as blind/amputee/deaf/mute’? Never mind the ones who do actual body sculpting and add horns, fangs, bumps, etc. (probably the least mutilating of these is ear pointing – a small cosmetic surgery that results in pointed ears and is probably the one that actually doesn’t end up horrible…)

5. Ummm…is not insisting that we all must feel sexual attraction to this, that, or the other category of human for which we manifestly do not, the very definition of sexual harassment?

   1. I thought so.

      1. I was on a board several years ago, when that show about the “traditional” Mormon with three (or was it four?) wives was the hot topic.

         I remember some poster being accused of “polyphobism” because they didn’t see the sense in having more than one spouse (this was not based on religious bigotry). Well, I guess I’m a polyphobe…

   2. And if so, should we not be able to bring charges against the insisters according to their own rules?

      1. No, no, you see, any less than wholeheartedly positive reaction to an approved category is at minimum a microaggression.

         1. But the charging of having committed a microaggression in this case constitutes yet another instance of sexual harassment! (I can keep this up all day long…)

            1. Quit bringing logic to a Twitter-fight! *shakes paw at drloss* 😉

               1. “Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being repressed!”

                  1. bloody peasant

            2. I aim to do a lot more than micro-aggress. 😀

               1. : – ) Trust me, if I decide to aggress someone, there won’t be anything “micro” about it.

                  1. A long flat line with a spike at the end. *chuckle* Because some things just aren’t worth the price of anger. But those things that are… well, if you’re going to get your righteous mad on, best to go whole hog and pull out all the stops so you don’t have to do it *twice.*

                     1. That’s why you don’t intentionally &^$@ with the quiet ones.

                        1. Yep.

                     2. Someone once told Archie Goodwin that he’d make a huge row if Archie tried to search him. Archie said, “Back at you. You do that, and I’ll show you how I make sausage. One peep out of you and I don’t stop till the ambulance comes.”

                        As I recall, the guy was a blackmailer. Some people do seem to deserve it.

                        1. I really liked Archie Goodwin’s work for Jim Warren, and consider the issues of Creepy and Eerie he edited to be some of the finest graphic story-telling ever. I greatly enjoyed his work for Marvel although I thought his creation, Luke Cage, suffered from excess exposure to Blaxploitation films – at least in its dialogue.

                           He did some pretty good work at DC, too, and his work on the Star Wars comic books and strip helped keep the franchise fresh.

                           Or did you mean the Archie Goodwin the NBA player?

                           1. Likely him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Goodwin_(character)

                           2. The Bookish Friend is correct. Sigh.

               2. Aspire to kilo-aggress! 😛

   3. First, that rule only applies t the testosterone abundant.

      Second, we are overlooking an alternate hypothesis. Given this was on a “Reality” Show, it is entirely possible the entire interaction was scripted, designed to provoke a response in the Twit-Sphere.

      1. I hadn’t thought about that aspect. If it was on a “reality” TV show, it’s not just entirely possible, it’s virtually guaranteed that it was entirely scripted.

   4. I was in a discussion once where it eventually came out that it wasn’t good enough to ‘treat gays/trans people as no different than another human being’ – I had to myself become gay in order to at least partially understand their troubles. That opened my eyes hard, because the people saying this (and those agreeing) essentially were advocating sexual harassment at the very least (passively having to accept unwanted sexual and romantic attention from someone I wasn’t wanting it from) to being okay with rape and sexual for the cause – essentially, if I refused these advances or sex, I was a bigot. So I knew about this long ago, and this discussion happened a long, long time ago, and I believe that discussion was eventually deleted.

      So this does not surprise me. True Equality was never the desire. Power and sexual enslavement of the majority was.

      1. For many it is just a way to piggyback onto something and get power. For others it is the ‘bullied becoming the bully’ paradigm. Get someone to think they are being bullied and revenge is much more likely to be outcome.

         1. Considering I never had, until then, a negative opinion about LGBT-anything, insisting that I submit to rape and sexual slavery and have no choices about my own body is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar beyond revenge – and one without reason at all.

            I wonder sometimes if what you say though is part of why the northern European states as well as Germany so meekly allow their women and children to be raped by their ‘refugee’ invaders.

            1. It depends on who is making the demands. If it is a white cis-male you are permitted to decline the invitation. There will soon be a smart phone app allowing you to input data and calculate the requirements of intersectionality to determine whom you can refuse and with whom you must engage in intercourse (and in what forms, positions and inclinations.)

               1. do the rules get updated every single microsecond that the SJWs keep changing the rules?

                  1. It updates in real time constantly, but only if your phone signal strength is eight bars.

                     Authority of analysis is not guaranteed, of course, as the rules are subject to change in the time required to say “I’d rather not,” “I’d love to” or “How dare you ask such a thing of me, you creep!” (In fact, in the event of that last response it is possible for the rules to change multiple times.)

                     I think they are attempting to quantify the response in a colour field, graphing the real time variations but there have been problems with phones going psychotic, with reports of Siri telling users to just go [eff] themselves.

            2. It’s not revenge against a real person but their imagined oppressor. It’s a variant of how Germans turned on Jewish neighbors because they were convinced they were the victim first. It let’s someone be an ass without pangs of conscience.

               1. Then that ‘revenge’ is stupid, because they were voicing it to sympathetic allies, who they were demanding must submit.

                  1. It’s an excuse to bully. Tell a kid that someone is holding them down and if they believe you they’ll resent the target. Even if it’s your boot on neck.

                     1. There’s a reason why I felt that good old fisticuffs was a good way to fight bullying. I got bullied a LOT as a kid, but hoo boy, I fought back. After a while, the bullying stopped. At least then, in Germany.

                        That was never going to happen in France, where the bullies were the Muslim boys. The area I went to school in is now a Zones Urbaines Sensibles. A ‘police no-go zone.’

            3. Not revenge… just evil.

6. Some sad-sack male dragon decided that he was actually a female dragon.

   The Dragon Matriarchs showed him that female dragons are much more dangerous than male dragons and that they disliked “fake females”. 😈

7. For must of our history, during the best of times, we’d make allowances for our deviants accepting them in spite of their oddities, lauding them for their real accomplishments.

   Alas today they glorify degeneracy and denigrate accomplishment.

   I say the inmates are not only running the asylum, they own it lock, stock and barrel.

   Once enough people drink the ink, it becomes rater hard for the few left to raise a stink.

   1. Sign, in want of an edit function; Much of our history, not must of our history.

      1. & in want of an edit function I’ll ignore rater.

   2. I think there’s a tipping point for general societal insanity, and that we may have gone past it. The inmates are truly running the show, or at least, they’ve got control of the remote for the TV in the lobby.

      The question is, what happens when the other pivot point is reached, and enough people are tired of this BS? The Soviet Union was similarly “on the side of history”, and doomed to succeed and dominate the future. And, then… It wasn’t there any more.

      The nutters are in the same late-Socialist stages, I think, and we are witnessing the collective insanity stemming from all that coming to a head. When the abscess finally bursts, I worry about who all is going to get spattered with the resultant mess. I strongly suspect that all the SJW-chosen groups are going to find that their place in society is a lot less secure than they think, and that the excesses of today are going to turn into the pogroms of tomorrow.

      One of the ironies that I think a lot of folks miss is just how many of these groups are seemingly hell-bent on enacting all the base canards of the old repressive norms. Remember when women were deemed “too sensitive” and “too frail” for the hurly-burly of daily life in the workplace…? Gee, what the hell are the idiots doing, but demonstrating proof of that, with all these “workplace sensitivity” issues they keep bringing up? What nut job would hire a woman, under such circumstances? Best not to… Remember when black men were deemed a threat to white women, and white civilization? Have a look at the crime statistics, and compare the rate of rape between the races; it’s damn near zero for white-on-black, and significantly higher for black-on-white. How long is that going to go on, before the general population of whites notices that fact, and decides that decades of social conditioning that they’ve undergone for tolerance and inclusivity is entirely bullshit? Follow-on effects, anyone?

      I swear to God, you would think that the people running these minority groups (if there were such a thing…) were actually setting out to provide proof that the old-school racists and bigots were actually, y’know… Right.

      Scary shit, when you contemplate the likely backlash. If I were gay, I’d be busy burying myself in the closet, and avoiding all public acknowledgement of my status. Black? No idea, but I’d be seriously poising myself to get the hell out of the major urban areas, and ideally, going somewhere that race was a non-issue. Wherever the hell that might be, during the coming storm.

      Everything may dampen out, but I honestly can’t believe we’ll dodge yet another bullet. God has got to be tired of looking out for us, and I’ve noticed that no matter how many times the fool dodges fate, eventually it catches up to him…

      1. When the abscess finally bursts, I worry about who all is going to get spattered with the resultant mess.
         Why I keep my 12ga “Lysol” handy for cleaning things up.

         going somewhere that race was a non-issue
         Just about anywhere not run by progs for the last 10 years or more. The question isn’t really finding those places, it’s more will they be able to overcome their conditioning enough to recognize them.

         1. “Race a non-issue?”

            A post I followed a link to on another site earlier today – I think it was Chateau Heartiste – made a comment to the effect that when you erase American culture in favor of multiculturalism, it all will boil down to racial identity in the end. Because racial identity is all you’ll be left with.

            As white America is coming to realize after decades of being scapegoated for every racial and political ill while being . . . replaced . . . with a “diversity” of serfs who’ll work cheap and keep quiet and do whatever their betters tell them to.

            Not a big fan of that particular site – for much the same reasons (*cough*anti-Semitism*cough*) Vox Day’s website tends to elevate my blood pressure to dangerous levels these days – but the writer is IMHO correct about that. And its not by accident that the biggest abcess the Left has inflicted on the body politic is the racial issue.

            1. but the writer is IMHO correct about that. And its not by accident that the biggest abcess the Left has inflicted on the body politic is the racial issue.

               Exactly this.

               1. Likely it isn’t as noticeable, out where you live, but the Left/Democrats have been prodding that abscess since this nation’s founding. First they threatened to reject independence if it meant freeing their (Negro) slaves, then they attempted to break the contract of the Constitution, then they imposed the weeping sores of segregation, Jim Crow laws and racist suppression of civil rights, only to eventually turn about and play the race card from the other side, blaming everybody but themselves for the sorry condition existing between the races today, a condition nowhere worse than in the cities and states controlled by the Left.

                  1. Actually, more complex. In the Revolutionary War offered freedom to slaves of rebels who came to their side (and sold a number of captured Haitian soldiers as slaves). That alone makes a “?” to claims of not supporting Independence over slavery. I’m sitting here thinking of Loyalists/Patriot divisions and the see-saw shifts of control in Georgia between the two and how at the start the main goal was for colonists to be treated as Englishmen and how the Independence faction gained ground.

                     When you state “Break the contract of the Constitution,” that can go two ways. That gets into causes, a forbidden topic here, and so I’ll only suggest reading William Rawle’s A View of the Constitution of the United States. Rawle was an honest-to-goodness Philadelphia lawyer appointed by George Washington as the first Federal DA to Pennsylvania.

                     As to the rest – well, there’s so much – I’ll summarize that Progressives were hijacked just like everyone else. You could make a very strong argument that it was the Progressives who supported Abolition. At some point, though Progressives abandoned their Christian roots in the US and adopt another religion. So it was that Progressive Oliver Wendell Holmes penned that he wished those who opposed Eugenics had it applied to them.

                     I for one am just fascinated by how today’s Progressives support applying things that look like they were lifted from the “slave codes” to all Americans, and most belong to the party that supported slavery. But that’s another topic.

            2. Myself against my brother. My brother and I against my cousin. My brother, my cousin and I against the world.

               We’re just oversized apes. And regardless of whether you assign the attraction to genes or culture, the visual identifier of race is a quick way to identify someone as ‘my tribe’ or ‘not my tribe’.

         2. One of several reasons why I adore my tiny red-state rural patch. 🙂

      2. The modern overabundance of Kooks is akin to an algal bloom, or any other overgrowth.
         America has always had Kooks, but the Colombian Exchange managed to breed our Kooks with the hardy European Kook in the late 19th Century, and the population exploded.
         In our case, the environment has been artificially changed to support Kooks- the post WWII GI Bill led to a building of far too many colleges, their natural breeding ground.
         Likewise, our government inadvertently reduced the various natural limiting factors of Kooks via welfare programs and arts subsidies.
         But the main resource driving the overpopulation of Kooks is the natural concern of others, otherwise known as Fucks To Give (FTG). We can expect an extraordinary decline in the Kook population once the current reserves of FTG are depleted. Already, there are reports that formerly vast fields of FTG are failing to produce, or are producing far lower yields.

         2. From the Power Line summation of Judge Alsup’s determination to defer ending of DACA:

            Minnesota had argued along with California and Maryland that it suffered injury to its public universities “through harm to their educational missions and the loss of students and teachers. According to the declarations filed by plaintiffs, the rescission, and the resulting loss of work authorization and potential for deportation, will adversely impact the diversity of the talent pool of potential students, which will make it more difficult for the universities to fulfill their missions of increasing diversity [sic][.]”
            http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/defer-this.php

            Silly me! I thought a university’s “mission” was to provide education, especially critical thinking and higher reasoning skills.

         3. Years ago on the Bar, I was asked to no longer discuss mental health issues with someone, for stating a special case of this model. IE, tolerance for druggies, increase in druggie population, the hot mess of druggies out on the streets, and eventual results on tolerance for born mentally ill.

         4. “Likewise, our government inadvertently reduced the various natural limiting factors of Kooks via welfare programs and arts subsidies.”

            Removing the “needs killing” justification for homicide should not be overlooked.

      3. This is why the pushes to push people into pure category groups scares me silly.

         It doesn’t matter what the black on white anything is…unless that is actually signal, not noise. Is there an actual connection between the fact of being black, and of violence.

         I believe it’s noise; they are working like crazy to make everyone agree it’s signal.

         That is…horrifying.

         1. “Is there an actual connection between the fact of being black, and of violence.”

            Wellllll … there is and there isn’t.

            It is a secondary condition: being black currently correlates with high (>70%) probability of growing up without a father present in the household. Growing up without a father (or strong male presence) has a significant correlation with violent acting out.

            Since LBJ’s Great Society the US Government has actively pursued policies which might be summarized as eliminating black men from families. Prior to that set of programs, even under the pressures of Jim Crow and slavery, black families were more often found intact and with lower incidences of crime and other socially negative attributes(citation needed.)

            1. Bingo.

               Something is more common there because other, known causes are more common–and when they’re corrected for, the variation goes down into sample error range.

               As opposed to the correlation between being small and being female– there are other possible causes, but due to biology it’s much more likely to be smaller when you’re a female human, as compared to a male of the same genetic background and nutrition, etc.

               1. We see the same “conclusion first, analysis afterward” pattern in arguments about the “Gender Wage Gap” — a gap that disappears when you control for all significant non-gender variables, such as education, years in career, hours on the job, etcetera.

                  It also occurs in such venues as sports — men’s soccer vs women’s soccer, men’s basketball vs women’s — where the pay is largely determined by audience interest. Apparently sports whose games routinely draw 50,000 fans are able to pay players more than sports whose games draw 5,000 fans to a game.

                  1. Speaking of– they’ve now decided that Tylenol causes “language delays” in girls at 30 months, if the mom takes it.

                     Study consisted of checking urine levels and reported use.

                     ….no, it didn’t keep track of ANYTHING ELSE, say, why the ladies were having more pain in the first trimester, or any demographics, or…anything.

                     1. And yes, I can think of a very obvious link– gals who had aches and pains before they were pregnant, who were self-treating with alcohol, especially heavily. It takes a while to figure out you’re pregnant, after all, and it’s possible the detox would have some effect.

                        That’s in like 30 seconds, simply because I was wondering if there might be an obvious, known thing that could screw with it….

                     2. Additional note, they found one in ten kids over-all had “language delays,” but the correlation with a higher average was only in girls.

                        1. There was a recent study that found Ibuprofen (Advil) had adverse effects on male … potency. It apparently tended to suppress testosterone effects, resulting in less motile sperm and erectile dysfunction. I doubt any studies of its effect on make children in utero have been conducted or are likely to be published.

                           A quick search turns up this:

                           Ibuprofen appears to mess with male hormones. Should you be worried?
                           In recent decades, prompted by concerns that men’s sperm quality is declining, researchers have looked at things they suspect of potentially disrupting the body’s endocrine system — from chemicals in water bottles to WiFi laptops to wearing tight underwear instead of boxers.

                           You can add ibuprofen to the list.

                           In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that a concentrated dose of the over-the-counter painkiller taken by young, healthy men appears to be linked to a testicular condition that typically only appears at middle age and has been linked to infertility.

                           [END EXCERPT]

                           Another item turned up in my search (terms: “ibuprofen affects male reproductive system” ) was a 2010 report on a study claiming aspirin, acetaminophen, and Ibuprofen use during pregnancy affects male reproduction organs: Aspirin in pregnancy affects male reproductive organs.
                           “Use of acetaminophen, aspirin and ibuprofen during pregnancy may partly account for a sharp increase in male reproductive disorders in recent decades, according to a study published.

                           “The research found that women who more than one mild analgesic at a time during pregnancy – and especially in the second trimester – had an increased risk of giving birth to sons with cryptorchidism, a risk factor for poor semen quality and testicular cancer.”

                           1. Imagine a class action suit against Big Pharma” over such claims. The evidence seems ample that Man is once again blithely building a tower to Heaven without sufficient attention to potential effects.

                           2. We’re already not supposed to use vitamin M– heart defects.

                  2. Fun with this one. My industry (Various aspects of Geology/Geophysics in various stages of exploration for resources, I don’t say oil because they counted things like mining, and processing companies like ours who work with anything people want to record via seismic. Including stuff like geothermal.) did a pretty detailed study oh about 10 years back, and the biggest factor in the ‘straight average’ gap was the AGE gap. The oldest cohort in the industry was about 90% men with the youngest a pretty even split. The second was that women tended to choose to work for smaller companies that paid less but were more flexible. Eliminate those two factors and the wage gap vanished completely. That last is almost never controlled for.

                     1. “the biggest factor in the ‘straight average’ gap was the AGE gap.”

                        Oh Lord, YES! Failure to segregate data by age cohort is one of the biggest flaws in most such studies. And it permeates everywhere! I do not give a damn about American life expectancy, as a whole. I am only concerned about life expectancy for my present age cohort. Factor out all those who died of drug overdoses back in the Sixties and Seventies, their data does not affect me now.

                        In my ideal world all journalists would be hauled before Courts of Inquiry and required to demonstrate a basic comprehension of statistical analysis at penalty of being assigned to clean restrooms in bus stations.

                        1. for serial offenders, gas stations. Those that still don’t get it? Rest stops….

               2. I think culture trumps race. Multi-cultualism promotes substandard cultures that fail to produce viable citizens.

                  1. Hey, we have had multiple tests of this.

                     They’re usually labeled something like “North (country)” and “South (country)”, and one has a generally socialist culture put in place, while the other develops with more civilized support.

                     *looks at the Koreas* How’s that workin’?

         2. If you tilt your head a certain way, and squint… You can make out the outlines of what has got to be either a chain of really convenient coincidences, or a huge many-armed effective group conspiracy that’s been going on since about the time of Wilson.

            Look around you at the current state of society, where LA has people claiming it is a violation of human rights to deal with an obvious public-health hazard, human feces deposited by the homeless. They’re actually suing to block cleanup. There’s a freakin’ epidemic of Hepatitis A, and they’re suing to block doing anything about it because it’s demeaning to the homeless…

            Oh, and let us not forget that a key enabler of all this was the movement to do away with cheap plastic bags, which the homeless use to use to defecate in, and then throw away. Paper doesn’t work so well for that, so they’re just defecating in the streets. Whose idea was it to do that, again?

            What went into this happening…? Well, wow… Consider: The work of the various do-gooders to de-institutionalize the folks who were institutionalized. Then, there was the good work they did to make the justice system all fair, which led to the explosion in low-level crime due to hobbling the cops and the courts. The intellectuals like Leary and a few others helped create an explosion in drug use, making it all romantic and such, which led to people going to the government and begging them to “do something” about the drug problem, which led to the “War on (some) Drugs”, which has led to a situation where we’re now used to basic violations of our civil rights that would have triggered a civil war, had they implemented the changes all at once a hundred years ago…

            Can you imagine telling the folks who paid to build all those parks, back in the 1890s, that they’d eventually be turned into free-form drug dens for vagrants and the mentally ill to live in cardboard tent camps? LOL… They’d have never let that happen. But, their kids did, and we tolerate it.

            And, it’s all happened by slow, gradual incrementalism, innocent little step-by-step. How’d we get here? The roots go back, dark and deep–And, when you look at the causal chain, and ask “Could this all be coincidental…?”, you really start to freakin’ wonder. Especially when you read the stuff that was in the Mitrokhin Archive, and do a quick compare/contrast of whose name is where along the litany of “activists” down the years.

            If it’s not a conspiracy, there sure are an awful lot of really amazing coincidences, interlocking to enable this whole mess.

            But, of course, I’m sure that there’s no such thing. Couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be possible…

            Or…

            1. More likely, it’s got to do with the “But It Sounds Nice” and “cheap grace” issue– I know that the normalizing of drugs had a lot more to do with the “war on drugs” than any sort of feel-good, because you can fix addiction– you can’t fix crazy, not long term.

               Both end up being more of a bandaid, but gosh you can point at how much GOOD you did.

               1. You can do a lot to fix YOUR crazy, but it takes hard work and more than a little luck (in therapists, if nowhere else). And most poeple aren’t willing to do the heavy lifting involved.

                  My lady and I got lucky, and lot of lucky. It helps that we are stubborn as pigs in constructive ways. We still have crazy, but we deal. We try real hard not to let it out in public. And mostly succeed.

                  The crazy you can’t fix is somebody else’s.

                  1. I’m glad you got lucky.

                     I was thinking more of the “something is broken” type. Which can sometimes be helped with therapy, but….

            2. Look around you at the current state of society, where LA has people claiming it is a violation of human rights to deal with an obvious public-health hazard, human feces deposited by the homeless. They’re actually suing to block cleanup. There’s a freakin’ epidemic of Hepatitis A, and they’re suing to block doing anything about it because it’s demeaning to the homeless…

               Oh, and let us not forget that a key enabler of all this was the movement to do away with cheap plastic bags, which the homeless use to use to defecate in, and then throw away. Paper doesn’t work so well for that, so they’re just defecating in the streets. Whose idea was it to do that, again?

               WHAT. No, seriously WHAT THE ACTUAL (insert long string of swearing).

               1. But plastic is forever! Have you no environmental conscience?
                  /sarc

                  1. And let us not forget that you have to use “reusable” bags 130 times to make up for the energy costs of creating them vs. the cheap flimsy ones. Cheap grace, as Foxfier says above.

                     1. Sucks, too, because now that they’re pushing ’em to replace plastic bags, they’re flimsier. I’ve got canvas bags I got in high school, and one or two from the commissary in about ’09, and the rest of the shopping bags tear after three or four uses.

                        …now, I’m not using them for groceries, I’m using them for books, and kid toys, and frequently to pack the kids’ clothes in a huge suitcase. But for heaven’s sake, if it can’t handle a third grader’s lessons, it can’t handle 130 grocery trips!

                        1. Mine probably will, but that’s because I’m one of those people that always packs things carefully, even if it’s only groceries. Of course, I got almost all of my bags as freebies at one point or another, so that’s even better.

                           1. *snickers* Oh, *I* pack carefully.

                              Does nothing for when someone drags it by one handle…. or puts teh books in the “wrong” bag…. or just uses them without the whole “but I might break it!” vibe.

                     2. and let us not forget the increased incidence of food poisoning and cross contamination from reusable bags….

                     3. Don’t forget the energy costs of cleaning them, as they are a major source of food contaminants.

                        One could believe the real purpose of imposing the damn things was population die off, except we all know it is for the fun of bossing people around. Population die off is just an occasional fun side effect.

               2. Isn’t that new; Seattle had the same argument about 5 years ago and the same arguments were heard.

            3. > Mitrokhin Archive

               Totally nothing to see there. Move along… squirrel!

      4. “I strongly suspect that all the SJW-chosen groups are going to find that their place in society is a lot less secure than they think, and that the excesses of today are going to turn into the pogroms of tomorrow.”

         And the precious snowflakes don’t have a clue that revolutions eat their creators. It would be funny if a lot of non-SJWs wouldn’t end up as collateral damage.

      5. As Milo’s put it “It’s boring to be gay now.” (paraphrased.)

   3. I think we can agree that human sexual deviancy has been around for tens of thousands of years. And that if it wasn’t consistently negative in its impact on our species as a whole, it would have been eliminated via natural selection. So it’s either neutral, or of some benefit to our species at a certain level of overt occurrence. I’d estimate that level to be between 3 and 10% of the population; 3% overt, 10% total since many gays historically hid it by marrying and fathering or bearing children for camouflage or family expectations even though they preferred members of the same sex.

      What that benefit could be, I have no idea; although if someone isn’t exerting themselves totally in the reproduction race, that may give them time to do other creative things like invent or develop fire, writing, language, etc. Be a tough study to identify all the inventors through the ages, and whether any or how many were sexually deviant in action or desire.

      1. It only helps in your scenario, though, if they are out about it. If they fit in by marrying and having a family, they don’t have that extra time to devote.

      2. Note the language you choose to discuss the issue, and ask yourself why that feels natural to you…

         “Deviancy”.

         You didn’t say “variety”, which would be a more neutral way of saying the same thing, and it indicates that at some level, you’re disturbed by some of the behavior you’re typifying as “deviant”. Why is that? You could have said “mal-adaptive”, for example, and not come across as disapproving, but here we are.

         Follow-on from that is the question of why that term, “deviant”, resonates so well for so many of us when discussing this stuff. No matter how “tolerant” you think you are, most of us would still be choosing to frame this as “deviant”. Why?

         I’m not saying you’re wrong, either. Just pointing out how most of us frame this stuff.

         I think there’s a reason for this, and it’s rooted in the fact that most humans instinctually shy away from other people who are displaying behavior patterns we identify as being out-of-the-norm, and thus, dangerous. We all like to watch the dancing bears, as they do their tricks out on the stage, but when the night ends, who do we go home with, turn our backs on, and go to sleep next to? It ain’t that “dancing bear” who was up on stage, displaying the entertaining and aberrant behavior, now is it? That individual, outside of the controlled realm of our night-time carouse, is often someone we would not willingly associate, or trust in any deep sense. And, why is that? Because we identify that behavior as being “off”, and something to avoid outside of carefully controlled and limited doses.

         A lot of the problem we have today is that the aberrant are trying to force their way into the inner circles of trust in society, and that’s only going to be allowed to go so far, before a reaction sets in. You wonder why the old theme of gay-bashing got going, and was so well-established? Witness the insistent-on-normalization of the new transsexuals. They’re not satisfied with being tolerated, they now insist on being normalized, and that just isn’t that likely to happen. What is more likely is that the experiment with tolerance is going to be ended, and we’re all going to recognize why there are so few societies around the world where this sort of thing is a norm and freely accepted.

         What’s so damn sad about it is that when it all comes crashing down, a lot of these folks are only going to have themselves to blame for what happens, because they will have provoked their own pogrom through their demanding behavior. If they can’t be lived with, they won’t be.

         1. Jiminalaska used deviant in the form of, “departing from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behavior” Jim wasn’t talking about variety or maladaptivity. Pushing for a euphemism of a different, less currently objectionable label for the same behaviors is how the Left bubble wraps its followers, and confounds the rest of us by changing the meanings of words incrementally. Which is how we go from someone merely being courteously tolerant to being labeled as a transphobic hater.

            Seems to me that trying to pussyfoot around the subject with “neutral” phraseology used when speaking to the Left; while the Left uses whatever words they damn well please, is pretty much appeasement and capitulation. It’s called a spade because it looks like a shovel, not because it’s black.

         2. Kirk said: “A lot of the problem we have today is that the aberrant are trying to force their way into the inner circles of trust in society…”

            I strongly disagree. The actual aberrant individuals are doing what they have always done, they have not changed and they are in no greater number than previous. The problem we have as a society is a political faction which USES those aberrations and those individuals as weapons on their political opponents.

            Example, true transgender individuals. How many are there? No more than thousands in a population of 300 million. A fraction of a percent. How much can they do to society in those numbers? Hardly anything. Why do we even -know- about a group that small? Because their plight and their suffering in life is being exploited by the Left, as a bat to beat up the general population.

            Just one more reason to despise the Left.

            1. Absolutely RIGHT.

               1. Yay, senpai noticed me! ~:D

            2. And, sadly, to encourage growth of that population. More kids are declaring themselves trans nowadays – and I think it’s because they’ve pushed it as a “cool” and “courageous” thing to do.

               That’s downright evil, imo.

               1. Yes, before now is was cool to be gay, so all the Kool Kids were “gay” for presentation purposes, anyway.

                  Now trans is the new gay, so all the edgy artist types are suddenly discovering their “inner woman” as it were. In fine art circles being a no-effort tranny will help you get gallery space, apparently.

                  Hucksterism is rampant on the “Ahhhht” community apparently.

                  1. “Hucksterism is rampant on the `Ahhhht` community”

                     More like “Ahhhht” is a favorite scam of the Huckster community.

                     Especially as it no longer requires any semblance of skill or talent.

                     “Perspective? Pfagh! That’s for lightweights.”

                     “Representational Art is soooooo 19th Century!”

      3. I heard a good possible genetic reason why homosexuality would be useful to have around—because then you’d have handy adopters when their siblings died and left children behind, and ones who wouldn’t be likely to off the kids. (The single largest risk to kids is a resident unrelated male, whether abuse or death.)

      4. Do you know about berdaches? Among certain native American tribes (the Lakota, I believe, for one), certain boys decided at puberty that being men wasn’t for them, and instead were initiated as women. I’ve read that they were not favored as first wives, but were considered desirable as second wives, because they could double the amount of women’s work you had done for you, but not give you extra children to support. And since it was mostly the rich and powerful men who could have two wives, marrying a berdache became a status symbol. The family whose boy grew up to be a woman thus was likely to have a chance at an alliance with a rich, powerful man. It’s plausible that that might have increased their inclusive fitness.

         I’d also note that fitness reduction doesn’t guarantee that a trait will be eliminated. A modest decrease in fitness may result in selection against a trait at a lower rate than spontaneous mutation giving rise to the trait. And for a lot of cultures, homosexuality is at most a modest effect. A woman can get married and have children even if she finds sex with men an ordeal, and may well be pressured to do so (since her fertility is an asset); and a man can do so if he can become aroused by women at all, even if he really enjoys men, boys, or livestock a lot more. And in a lot of pre-modern societies, it’s just assumed that everyone will get married, whatever their feelings in the matter. Our society, where gay men and lesbians are free not to marry at all, might well have a higher rate of selection against the hypothetical gay gene than the great majority of societies in history.

         1. “I’d also note that fitness reduction doesn’t guarantee that a trait will be eliminated.”

            It does when there’s no margin for survival. Hunter-gatherer groups in post-glacial North America probably didn’t tolerate berdaches.
            Part of the reason why it doesn’t matter much in the current US of A is that for most of us, we are so incredibly wealthy compared to humans 10,000 years ago, that the margin for survival goes past the doggone horizon. You have to almost work to not survive here, and a lot of our people that wouldn’t have survived under pre-historic conditions, thrives in our current State.

            That’s one of the things that drove the early eugenics movement. Thing is, we keep changing our own environment, so things that were very adaptive 100 centuries ago aren’t necessarily adaptive for today’s world, and vice versa. But it’s a very complex phenomena, much like the difference between weather and climate. We probably don’t know enough to risk tinkering a whole lot with what’s been working for generations. But the Ivory Tower crowd doesn’t seem to realize that.

            1. I’m not sure what you mean by “postglacial.” If you mean the environment that existed just before white people showed up, there were hunter-gatherer societies, and some of them did have berdaches, unless you’re supposing the custom was introduced by white people into native American tribes that had never thought of it. So the selective pressure can’t have been as rigorous as you suppose. On the other hand, if you mean right after human beings showed up, I have the impression that it was an incredibly rich environment, one characterized by plentiful and unwary big game, in which human beings could spread rapidly from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego through natural fertility.

               But also, your original question was how homosexuality (or customs analogous to it; it’s not really accurate to describe native American or ancient Greek customs as “homosexuality,” because it suggests American patterns of behavior that are different in significant ways) could be advantageous. I suggested one way: It makes the rich man better off by giving him the labor of a second wife without extra children to support, and it makes the berdache’s kin better off by giving them a rich man as an in-law. I don’t think you’ve actually argued that that can’t work, so I’m not sure what your basis is for saying that having berdaches necessarily lowers fitness.

               But also, nearly every population has some genetic diversity, and thus some genes that lower fitness. So I’d hesitate to say that conditions where such genes cannot persist are at all common.

               1. Post-glacial as in bare rock to tundra biome. If you’ve ever been on Mount Rainier in Washington State, think of the quarter mile or more immediately below the bottom of the existing glaciers.

8. And women endure pain better. But there’s no sport for that.
   Ummm, I thought *all* sports were that.

   You can’t really say if you’re not attracted to something you’re “phobic”.
   They don’t really mean “phobic”. They mean “someone I don’t like, because they don’t like the approved things.” It’s part of post-modernism, to destroy the language. I think this probably hurts good writers more than anyone else (except possibly children).

   I haven’t kept up with developments in the last decade or two, but the “it’s all genetic” crowd were basing their claims on two sets of studies that just didn’t bear up under basic scrutiny (not for those claims, anyway). One of them – the LeVay hypothalamus study – even admitted that it didn’t prove didly-squat (he used fancier words). He said it just provided incentive for more study. (He acknowledged all of the methodological problems with his work.) The twins studies (Baily and Pillard, iirc) had LOTS of methodology problems, and didn’t show much in the way of correlation, to boot.
   But the results could be twisted just enough to “prove” a genetic basis when you write about them in a popular newspaper or magazine. (The above analysis is my own, based on actually reading the papers/studies concerned and researching the things surrounding them.)

   As to whether it’s genetic or entirely un-genetic, or some range in-between, is still up for debate, imo. And it’s entirely irrelevant to the discussion of whether it’s morally right or not, or whether it should be legal or civically supported or not.

   1. BTW, my impetus for digging into the studies was getting exasperated with “my own” side in the debate not bothering to actually do more than “Oh, those studies are baloney!” and never explaining why. They were making the same bad Appeal to Authority the other side was.

      1. I know what you mean. The Religious Right resorting to the default of “God says it’s wrong” drives me nuts. He may indeed say it’s wrong, but fallible humans have managed to garble The Word enough to make ascertain His Word rather difficult. And you’ll never get a pure secular humanist to agree with it unless you can show a “natural law” reason to back the Good Lord’s word.

         1. Well, that I actually don’t have trouble with. A religion dictating what’s within its morality is part of the package. Because g/God says so is legitimate.

            My problem was they were claiming the studies were bunk without providing any evidence. It was just a “because I said so.”
            I spent a couple of days researching it because “I said so” didn’t have much validity based on exactly the point you’re making.

            BTW, I was fortunate in my location when I dug into it. I spent time in two public libraries, one university library, and one medical library at a hospital. So, I was able to dig up all the original publications, as well as analysis of them.

         2. You know…. I’ve never actually seen anybody trying to use that to change anybody’s mind.

            I’ve seen folks insist that’s what someone means, but when you look at it they’ve actually made a natural law argument in normal language, ie, that male complements female or similar.

            Kind of like I’ve never seen a pro-lifer that really didn’t care about born humans, rather than didn’t agree with whatever the screamer wanted them to do instead of preventing the death of the unborn….

            1. “I don’t think just handing a hobo money helps”
               Really means
               “You hate the poor and want them to die”

               1. Hobos work, bums steal.

                  If I have no choice but to be someone who wants the bum to suffer and die, than I want the bum to suffer and die. What are they going to do about it?

                  There is a reason I have chosen to identify as not compassionate. Just today I found a perhaps new to me multicultural defense of torturing and killing prisoners.

         3. Side bar: Actually, the transmission of the Tanakh and the New Testament is pretty good. Variants have zero impact on core doctrines and turn out to be minor. At one point, the scribes of the Tanakh implemented a series of checks to ensure an accurate copy.

            Some years a back, archeologist discovered two tiny metal scrolls, likely phylacteries, were discovered in what was a garden in or hear Jerusalem (from memory here) at the time of or before the Babylonian conquest. The interesting thing is that the writing is recognizable as containing a portion of the Law. In those sections, at least, we had confirmation that the text prior to the exile was the same as before.

            Some variants were well documented, such as the differing Number of the Beast in Revelation. The media went gaga because the oldest existent copy had a different number, implying it was the correct one. But writings discussing the variant date from prior to that copy, thus being the oldest copy doesn’t mean very much. And when we consider that it’s recorded someone asked John’s living disciples about it, and they said it was “666,” that casts this variant in a different light.

            Other variants aren’t. IIRC, you can see at least one in a difference between a number given in both Kings and Chronicles. Which is correct? No one knows.Yet it has zero impact on doctrines.

            The biggest risk is actually translations of translations, but this has been well known for centuries. Thus “modern” translations all the way back to the 17th Century went to the Hebrew and Greek texts. I know one of the proofreaders for the Holman Christian Standard Bible, and he tackled some of the Greek translations (and while I think he’s a good fellow, I still think the New American Standard Bible is the better translation of the two, but that’s just my opinion).

            All of which means exactly nothing if someone doesn’t believe it, anyway, but I’m not handing out tracts. My point is that the transmission of the Word is a lot better than some think.

            1. Good point– the only variation I can think of that’s not a known gnostic work is I think the same one you’re talking about– it’s something like how many horses there are or something.

            2. I like to read the JPS’s most recent Tanakh along with my KJV readingsn in the OT. As you say, very few differences are doctrinal, but a lot of them are interesting. I like the JPS because, although they sometimes mess with things, they always footnote what they did, or would like to do but didn’t think they could get away with it.
               Lots of “Hebrew uncertain” and “emendation yields” and “would go better after verse X instead of here”.
               But Isaiah still doesn’t make any sense to me.

   2. No, no, a pop-singer said that it is genetic and so it MUST be true!

      1. Why do so many people believe in celebrities so much?

         1. I’m not sure how much of it is believing in them, and how much is shifting the argument to a safer location.

            “FAmouse PErson SAys” is so much less about me than “Here is my reasoning, and the logical steps I took.”

            1. I don’t believe in celebrities. The mythology that enough people knowing one person’s name makes that one person anything other than just another person is probably one of the most dangerous things that modern society has produced.

               Show me their work, and then I’ll decide if someone is worth paying attention to.

               (Aside: I tried three frigging times to rewrite that last so as to not end with “…to.” and it just won’t flow. Darnit.)

               1. Ending sentences with prepositions is not recommended, but it *is* fun!

         2. A variation on the appeal to improper authority logic fallacy.

            1. THANK you for correctly identifying that fallacy as appealing to improper authority! I swear, that one is the fallacy I see most often used totally incorrectly. That, and the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Two fallacies usually used incorrectly. Oh, and Godwin’s Law, which usually gets wrongly used as “You mentioned HItler, therefore you lose the argument”. Three incorrectly-used fallacies… I’ll come in again.

               1. No, no, you just add ‘the count’ laugh and you can keep adding themin.

               2. Also the fallacy fallacy (improper support, therefore false) and the fallacy fallacy fallacy (you pointed out my fallacy, so you are wrong, because Fallacy Fallacy).

                  1. buffalo buffalo buffalo…

         3. It’s inculcated from childhood. “Skeezo the Klown says ‘Buy Fruity-Os!'” “Because the book says so.” When coupled with punishment for questioning ‘authority’, it trains them to accept what they’re told. Then, since they’ve always been told what to think and do, they look for similar authorities when they’re turned loose into the world.

            “Of course Paris Hilton’s opinions are valid. If they weren’t, she wouldn’t be on TV, now would she?”

   3. But the Science Is Settled!!!!!! 😈

      More seriously, I wonder how much actual research is going on about this.

      Can you imagine the up-roar if a major study of gays showed no evidence of a “gay gene” or “gay genes”. 👿

      On the other hand, I remember reading of one gay activist saying that he didn’t want any body looking for a “gay gene” because those “evil” homophobics would abort unborns carrying the “gay gene”. 😦

      1. But but but, women’s right to choose!!!!11!

         There’s a fight I’d pay money to watch.

         1. Same here. 😆

         2. Only if there’s jello involved.

         3. This is why they had to devise Intersectionality, developing a hierarchy for rights according to oppression, employing formulas so arcane and resistant to replication that they make Sabremetric (“Moneyball”) geeks look sane in comparison.

            
            Of course, these folk make “Rainman” look sane in comparison.

         4. See above. Women’s right to choose gets trumped by a lesbian’s wants and needs.

      2. “..because those “evil” homophobics would abort unborns carrying the “gay gene”.”
         Proof right there of insanity or at least cognitive dissonance and Bubble Bias.
         His alleged homophobes are the ones protesting against abortion-on-demand.
         Gays are the ones who (statistically most often) belong to the group that demands it.

      3. I’ve been saying that ever since the possibility was first raised.

   4. RE: The “women endure pain better” thing. I’ve heard that, a lot, and here’s the thing I’ve taken away from my real-world observations: Women handle some kinds of pain better than men, in general terms, but it’s highly individual and the variables seem to be wrapped up in factors that relate to the source of the pain.

      From my time in the service, women seem to handle long-term, low-level chronic pain better than men do. Major injury pain? Stuff that guys will shrug off, and “gut through”, will have women curled up in fetal positions, and going into shock. I’ve watched men march on broken legs, unaware that they’d even done damage to themselves. Women with similar issues will usually not continue to keep going, acknowledging the injury.

      From this, you can discern an observational sexual dimorphism that makes a lot of sense, when you template the differences onto a hunter-gatherer band where the females stay around a base of operations, and the males are out roaming for game.

      You say that women handle pain better than men, I think you really ought to qualify that as “some women handle some kinds of pain better than many men handle similar pain, but some men handle other types of pain better than many women…”. It’s all of a piece, I think, with how the sexes are dimorphically adapted to the roles they filled, back in the days when we were persistence hunters on the savannah and steppes.

      1. (Nods) I had an acquaintance who was a chiropractor for awhile. According to him, his female patients would report feeling vaguely out of sorts, and when he actually started working on them he would find spinal misalignments that would leave men practically incapacitated.
         (Suspect the difference has something to do with pregnancy, but that’s just spitballing.)

         1. Take a hammer to their legs, though, and you’ll see a major difference in responses.

            I think a lot of the whole issue has to be related to the way sexual dimorphism has optimized the sexes for various aspects of human life. Women had to endure chronic pain, men had to gut through major injuries and then reach shelter. Women didn’t have to do that, soooo… The lathe of adaptation took that away, and gave them a better toleration for things like chronic joint issues that are probably somewhat tied into the loosening effects of the lutienizing hormones that enable the pelvic girdle to become loose enough to pass a child’s head through something that was never meant to be able to do that…

            Like I said, you can see the outlines of “why” in what we take to be the lifestyles of the early human hunter-gatherer bands.

            1. “chronic joint issues that are probably somewhat tied into the loosening effects of the lutienizing hormones that enable the pelvic girdle to become loose enough to pass a child’s head through something that was never meant to be able to do that”

               Look up “pubic symphysis disorder.” A friend of mine found out she had that with her last pregnancy. She’d wanted a big family, but she has had to stop at three kids because each successive pregnancy makes it worse, and she’s already at the point where she can’t bend over half the time because of the pain.

   5. And women endure pain better. But there’s no sport for that.
      Ummm, I thought *all* sports were that.

      some people are gluttons for punishment

      http://blacksportsonline.com/home/2017/12/watch-north-dakota-state-lineman-pop-elbow-back-into-place-between-plays-video/2/

      1. They call it “ballet”.

         1. True, point is ridiculously difficult and painful

   6. “whether it should be legal or civically supported or not.”
      Actually, it’s at the core of the argument, because the Left’s claim that opposing homosexual behavior is exactly the same as racism collapses if homosexuality isn’t caused by inherent immutable differences similar to skin color.

      1. If Homosexuals only have sex with their own sex, how can homosexuality be inherited? 😈

         1. Lateral lines (brothers etc). The same way heritable diseases which kill before maturity are passed down.

9. The source of this is utter selfishness and the object is to persecute those who don’t celebrate the latest flavor of sexual or moral deviance with sufficient enthusiasm. Any excuse will do. Logical consistency or objective reality have nothing to do with it.
   One cannot expect to successfully reason with, enlighten, or persuade those who are willfully, obstinately blind.

10. There was a joke about how California had made homosexuality legal, better get out before it was made mandatory. Sounds like that day has finally arrived, at least as far as the Twitterverse is concerned.

    I think that the real problem is that straight men (or lesbians) rejecting transwomen is that it breaks the fantasy. It reminds them that no matter how much they might wish it, they aren’t women, and that even sex-change operations are, as Sarah said, “sex-pretend operations, cosmetics and hand wavium.” Even people who are willing to go along with most of the fantasy have a limit, and when that limit is reached, it’s not really any wonder that they react like the UK Socialist party when you tell them that yes, North Korea is Communist.

    1. “It reminds them that no matter how much they might wish it, they aren’t women…”
       Exactly. One may pretend as hard as one can, and perhaps you will be indulged – but there are limits, and I believe that those limits have been reached.

    2. For the record, it was Bob Hope that made that comment about homosexuality laws in California.

       1. Thanks. I knew it was someone famous, but I’m lazy and didn’t feel like looking it up.

    3. If the latest uproar over Greg Hullender’s Rocket Stack Rank is any indication, Gay is the new Angry White Man.

       I have a huge bowl of popcorn ready for this one.

    4. I believe that was the great and prescient Bob Hope.
       ““I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it mandatory.”

11. When the activists began insisting that homosexuality was genetic while heterosexuality was a social construct*, I bought a pair of BS-cancelling headphones (Meows and Olafson, if you care to know). Amazing how quiet the Internet got after that. 😉

    *This was a few months before the “magic tile” moved and became trans-rights.

    1. Fascinating how the word “genetic” gets used in so many different ways by the same people. Almost as if they were making up a new story every morning.
       “Gay is genetic but straight is a social construct. I like it! To the fax machine, Robin!”

       1. And they’re supposed to be the ‘believers in science.’ They have a pretty shitty and inconsistent religion if it changes every day, as opposed to exhaustive and long debate and discussion carried out over decades or centuries…

          “BUT IT IS NEW!” I can almost hear the bleating protest now.

          1. Oh ghod, you’re making me think of Flopatron. Believer in science, forsooth. Now I have to bleach my brain.

             They just lie, Shadow. They’ll say literally -anything- if they think it’ll hurt your feelings. You dig down under it all, and they’re just malicious, spiteful liars.

          2. I don’t “believe” in science. I consider science a useful tool for understanding this world and the Universe it is part of. I keep running into people who say they “believe” in something like Science, but it seems they are really just religious fanatics trying to pretend they are sane and rational.

             Of course, I end sentences with a preposition so that makes me evil.

12. We on the progressive left are vocally and militantly pro choice just so long as your choice follows lock step in the vein of the current narrative. And do pay attention and keep up because the rules for the narrative can do a 180 in a New York minute.

    1. “We are totally pro-choice, and by ‘choice’ we mean you choosing to do exactly what we tell you to!”

13. So now “no means no” unless the one asking is trans. Then “no” means “you’re transphobic!!!!”

    I will have to update my decoder ring.

    In other news: http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2018/01/stan-lee-accused-of-metoo.html

    In this case, “medical confidentiality” is null and void because #MeToo. Or, you know, not.

    1. I noticed that the accusations came after they fired the nursing company, and that the current nursing company says he’s a sweet old guy.

       I’d start going through records and see if there’s a record of this kind of shake-down happening. I know that there are those who prey on old people who need care, although sexual harassment accusation blackmail would be a slightly new twist. Usually it’s just walking out with “gifts” every week.

       1. The accusation claims the ‘harassment’ occurred in the year Stan’s wife was dying as well.

          Yeah, I see more a ‘hey, here’s a stinkin’ rich old man, blackmail him so we get loads of moneys to leave him alone’ scheme.

          1. Oooh… if they were hired to take care of both, there may be some rump-covering.
             “Wait, you found some irregularities in our activities? We will SMEAR you unless you give us money!”

             1. Embrace the power of And.

                1. Eh, possible, but mostly in that if they decided to cover their rumps, they’d also decide to get some cash out of it.

                   1. I’ll tell you one thing. They are royally screwed as of right now, because word gets around. I don’t know who they are, but the home-care community for wealthy clients in California is VERY SMALL. Everybody already knows, and will be taking steps to deal with it. Rumor travels faster than light.

14. That is, your “gender” is what you learned to be, and there are up to — what was it? — 50 of them?

    I thought it was 57, one for each state in the US according to Obama.

    1. Heinz genders!

    2. Does cross-species sexuality make up any of those 57? Bleah.
       The Last Jedi moment on this one; “This isn’t going to go the way you think.”

    3. 60
       he skipped Alaska and Hawaii, and had 1 more state to go, 57+2+1
       /pedant

       1. As we can surmise from his economic record in eight years, Obama was not good at math. In all likelihood what he did was start with fifty states, subtract three for the ones not visited and reached the conclusion of fifty-seven visited. It all depends on how you go about carrying the one, and as He was The One He just assumed it made the number greater.

          1. heh, I knew what he did at the time. Conflated State and City or stops and I can see someone as frazzled from travel doing the same thing. He and his supporters problem was in telling us that no, he was so brilliant we could never understand his 5d math on the run skills and shut up you racist.
             All he needed to do after the gaff was laugh, and say “Boy, I musta been tired. I counted cities as states!” and walk away.
             As for how poor his econ record was, math had nothing to do with it, he didn’t care if his policies work growth-wise, other than growth of power over peoples lives.
             If he could have gotten a collapse and had everyone working for a CCC or WPA, he’d see that as a massive success.

             1. That and envy called fairness. He wasn’t lying when he said that he would increase taxes on the rich even if it decreased gross receipts because the rich deserved it.

                1. yep.

          2. Well, there actually are 57 states and territories (counting DC), but I don’t think his campaign stops included American Samoa, Guam, etc.

             -j

15. I foresee a day when the “creepy” app on your phone will take a surreptitious genetic sample of your date and check whether they are a “born wo/man” or not.

    Because there will be – even after we get to a point of biologic artificial wombs and artificial sperm generators, the transhuman singularity – some of us who will insist on authentic humanity.

    1. No, they are all too human. And like most humans, they are a little nuts. What needs,to happen, damnit, it a move towards “keep your crazy off of my crazy, K?”. If I am not attracted to your crazy, that may be MY crazy. Hands off.

16. The women in my life, the people I am surrounded by, all agree that men deciding they are females and having operation, does not make them women.

    Women are mostly born with lots of estrogen and a female reproductive system and it is that which makes them female, womanhood is not a social construct that males can adopt decades after they were born with different chemicals and internal system.

    1. I’m surrounded by women every day at work. Haven’t had a single moment in those 15 years thinking I was a women. I know! I must be transphobic! LOL.

       1. *looks at his profile picture*
          *gets the giggles at THAT mental image*

          Gee. How horrible for you.

          ***********

          Now, I have been mistaken for male, but never in person– in video games. I like male characters, my husband likes female ones– they’re just prettier to us, and it’s more fun to RP outside of your own head.
          Folks know we’re a couple, so when there’s a pretty but demurely dressed female character, and a masculine but not over the top male, they assume that we’re some of those folks whose characters are pretty close to an in-game version of themselves. When my husband logged in to say I’d be out of the game for a while because I was in the hospital after giving birth, it causes a bit of head-spinning…. *snicker*

       2. Oh, I roleplay female characters in RPGs, on-line or pen and paper. Interestingly enough, always non-humans, though not necessarily non-humanoid. Dark elves, gnomes, dwarves, lizards. Maybe because I recognize that I can’t convincingly RP a real woman; but the social racial differences of non-humans can excuse the errors I do make. Sounds like a good topic to discuss with a group of friends in a bar over a couple pitchers of good beer.

          1. Goodness, yes- world’s most awesome BS subject!

          2. Some years ago, a researcher through it was an issue that some guys on WoW played female characters. What turned up, though, was that most of them went “If I’m going to be looking at this character for hours, i want one easy on the eyes.”

             1. *snicker* We had exactly one idiot try to pull the “you’re gay” thing on my husband, after he got embarrassed by assuming he was female. (My husband never made a big deal of it.)
                Vent went really quiet when hubby demanded “Which one of us wanted to stare at a dude’s ass for 60 levels?”

                1. /laugh
                   That’s one of the major reasons why I hated marching anywhere.

             2. Me, I play both – because I have the ability to appreciate male and female beauty without sexual desire.

                Rhys played a male character in L2 because he didn’t want to get hit on. Interestingly, this was also a reason given why female gamers play male toons – but when I played a male Dark Elf character, I was focused more on helping newbies (I was leveling the character to try out a different player class). I had to disappoint someone when they sighed “If only there were more guys like you in RL” with “Sorry, I’m a girl. Thank you for the compliment though.”

             3. Whenever I play an RPG, I usually play as a guy, the reason being that romancing a guy in-game would just feel…weird.

                1. Romance the Stone. At least they can’t accuse you of being sexist then.

             4. “If I’m going to be looking at this character for hours, i want one easy on the eyes.”

                That’s definitely part of it, though the voice also has it’s attraction. I tended to play as FemShep because I like Jennifer Hale’s voice, though Mark Meer is okay. (Actually, Meer is very good when he’s voicing other characters. I’m guessing the director had him be a bit too stoic when playing MaleShep.)

                That and I like the female voices for a lot of the character classes for SWTOR. Female smuggler definitely, though I’m also starting to like the female Sith inquisitor.

                “Fools, feel the power of the SNARK SIDE of the Force!” -my Darth Imperious hasn’t said this, but I know she wants to.

          3. Many of the popular writers of “true romance” have been men, IIRC.
             I noticed that, in the Golden Days of SF, the female writers often used pseudonyms, but I never noticed their writing as being “female” — and conversely, some of the male writers did dang good jobs of presenting geeky women in their stories.

    2. Be careful how loudly you say that last bit, or the insane left will insist on “gender reassignment” surgery at a younger age.

       1. Been done once before and it didn’t end well for the patient. Forget names and dates. Doctor botched a circumcision, and they ended up turning the boy into a “girl”. Watched a documentary on it and the poor slob found out about it and tried to live like his chromosomes and ended up committing suicide. Forget what happened to the doctor.

          1. The psychopath’s name was Money. Yes, really, Dr. Money maimed a little boy to promote his theory.

             When the kids parents finally admitted to him that he was a male, and he tried to work to correct things as best he cook, the kid took the name David Reimer.

             At birth in 1985, he was Bruce Reimer. His parents renamed him Brenda. At age 15, he informed them that if they forced him to go to that doctor again, he would kill himself. That’s when they told him the truth.

             He lost his battle with the black dog in 2004, after his brother died in an overdose.

             1. kinda makes one wish the Doc, and parents were then helped along into following the two brothers into the darkness

                1. I can give the parents a pass purely because of the era– people literally died because a doctor told them they would.

                   The trust was that high.

                   Took until a bit later for that trust in doctors to get worn away.

                   1. one kept mom’s uncle in a drug stupor vegetative state for nearly 30 years

                      1. And stuff like that is WHY they lost the “oh, you’re a PHD, angels whisper the diagnosis to your ear in pure prophecy” level trust.

                         Because they’re human, and some humans are freaking evil, and some humans just do evil things– sometimes because they think it’s right, sometimes because it’s just easier.

                         We’re stuck with the clean up, of course, but that’s just nature. Our kids will be stuck dealing with stuff like “OK, we now have an *anti*Pacebo effect, what the heck?”

             2. We studied about him in sociology. The premise in the textbook was that gender roles were taught by society, and used this as a glowing example.

                What happened was they were using a heated wire device. The idea behind such was to cauterize the wound and minimize the risk of bleeding. Trouble was, the first time didn’t do a good job, so the doctor immediately tried it again, with disastrous results. The parents agreed to the suggested “correction,” and attempted to raise him as a girl. The text gushed that this was perfectly successful. I think this happened in the 1960s, but recall that he would have been younger than we were.

                It was only years later that the truth came out, that raising him as a girl wasn’t as successful as some wanted everyone to believe.

                1. The various ethics pages, these days, that actually look at the case instead of citing it blindly– point out that the guy basically lied like crazy.
                   Also that he should probably have been charged with child molestation for some of the “therapy.”

             3. Argh, JUST noticed I managed to write 1985, not 1965. Argh.

       2. They keep doing that by pushing for hormones before puberty already. It’s a moot point. Chemical mutilation.

    3. I recently figured out why trangender people as a group raise my hackles in both the wary and angry senses: “I can’t live a lie! …here, all of y’all do it for me.”

       1. Point horse make deer.

    4. I just think this about the whole trans thing:

       You know how women have ‘I go crazy because hormones/period’ during menstruation? It’s accepted as a simple truth, and backed up with biochemistry and how it affects mental and emotional states.

       I can’t help but think ‘you’re going to subject a man to that, when he hasn’t had puberty to adjust?’

       On the similar vein, women being given testosterone and becoming hyperaggressive rage factories … because similar reason, and worse, not having the social conditioning to help channel and quiet those resulting emotions?

       It just… seems cruel to me.

17. There’s also the nonsexual aspect. I read lately—it may have been on Samizdata—about a woman in the UK who went in for a gynecological exam, and requested that she been examined by a woman. So the examiner who showed up had stubble and a deep voice. (Okay, some women do have stubble. As the case was described, this was someone whose outward and visible signs added up to “male.”) The patient protested, and was told, “I identify as a woman.”

    The hospital has since apologized. But it seems clear that they were thinking in terms of the examiner’s legal right to be classified as a woman, and not of the patient’s right to have certain procedures done by someone she was comfortable with in that role, rationally or irrationally.

    If gender is subjective, then don’t I have the right to classify people according to my own subjective perception of their gender? Those who say no should be careful; they may have to say that that woman in England had a legal duty to accept her reproductive organs being touched by a practitioner she found emotionally disturbing.

    1. When victims collide, the traditional will lose, in today’s world.

18. “(And women endure pain better. But there’s no sport for that.)”

    Yes there is. It’s called ‘Dating’.

    1. DING!

19. Just because I want to date a woman doesn’t mean I want to snog with every single woman, even if natural born.

    1. Whaaaaa? You mean you’d turn down the chance to take Hillary on a date and kiss her good night at her door? Oh, that’s almost enough to make me retch.

       1. Trigglypuff.
          ‘Nough said.

          1. AUUUUUGH! NO! BAD! NOT ENOUGH BRAIN BLEACH!

             1. I keep hearing the Jigglypuff song when I see that name. Though perhaps I’m hoping it’ll make Triggly fall asleep.

                If Jigglypuff wants to use a marker on Triggly’s face after that, I’m not objecting.

                1. jiiiiigggleee-eeeeee-puuuuuffffff
                   jiggle-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-puff

                   1. The Kid’s WB had a funny commercial depicting Bruce Wayne of all people singing the Jigglypuff song. 😀

          2. I’ll see your Trigglypuff and raise you crazy-eyed stripper. The ugly is not always on the outside.

             Important safety tip, kids! ~:D

20. Meh. I caught onto their incoherence when they tried pulling the “no difference” and “women are innately better — more empathetic, more nurturing” legs at the same time.

    1. Heh. Women have the capacity to be extremely caring, nurturing, and so on. They express this in different ways than men. We’re (broadly) compatible biologies, not interchangeable ones.

       1. I have noticed that men who fail to express their empathetic and nurturing aspects in ways consistent with those of women, their empathetic and nurturing aspects are not recognized as existent.

          1. Men nurture children by letting them fall down. We keep them safe, we watch like hawks, but we let them do it wrong so they see what happens.

             Women nurture a completely different way, and can’t STAND watching the way men do it. There is often yelling involved. (This is why God made men bigger. So women wouldn’t kill us all.)

             Statistically, single parent families work less well than the two-parent variety. A kid really does need one of each kind.

             1. “Men nurture children by letting them fall down.”

                At the park, I’ve once or twice had a young child fall, get up, dust themselves off, and move on in front of another parent. When said parent wonders at their non-reaction, I say that I don’t react until they do.

                Small children who aren’t hurt and who don’t know they’re “supposed” to be hurt won’t react. Of course, if they are hurt, you give full-press comfort, but then you know they need it.

                1. I’ve seen them save up until Mom got home. That’s always a giggle.

                2. I’ve noticed the same – kids falling, and getting up and being quite insouciant about it … until Hovering Mommy became unglued. THEN kidlet starts wailing.
                   I encouraged my daughter to be stoic about bumps and bruises; “If there isn’t any blood, sweetie, I don’t want to see any tears.” Just because I saw too many Hovering Mommies come unglued. It can’t be good for kidlet.

                   1. Being a primary care giver has been interesting. Trying not helicopter as it is and it has been mentioned that I do it from time to time. Majority of the time I am sitting in my chair telling him to “suck it up”. Mind you there are times where it’s not a small trip and fall. Trying not to wince too much and I am getting better at it. Mostly.

                   2. I have a theory….

                      Helicopter Moms Cause AntiFa.

                3. When Daughtorial Unit was quite young Beloved Spouse & I noticed a distinct tendency: while Daddy could tease, Momma could not. Daddy teasing was an accepted element of the relationship, a required interaction that gave pleasure. Momma teasing was a violation of the fundamental relationship, threatening the conception of Momma as source of comfort.

                   Thus, for example, when inevitable questions about Santa arose, Momma need must answer truthfully while Daddy could smile and warn, “If you don’t believe in Santa I expect he won’t come ’round at Christmas” and D.U. could feel as if she’d been let in on a grown-up secret.

                   1. You may have something there – my Dad was the most brutal tease, of all of us in the first gen, and to my daughter in the second. Learning how to handle it was possibly a vital element in growing up.

                   2. Healthy dad-kid relationships involve rough-housing. It is dad who throws the kids in the air at the pool or wrestles with them or chases them through the house to tickle them. This is very beneficial to the kids.

21. If the “gay gene” is ever discovered, it will be interesting to see how the overwhelmingly pro-abortion left will react if women start aborting babies because they have the “gay gene.”

    1. I understand that there is an sf novel, or a series of novels, where that has happened. I haven’t read it, but I heard the author speak about it at an SF con. Apparently he envisioned a future where the Biblical literalist Protestants mostly decided that homosexuality was repugnant enough to justify setting aside their opposition to abortion, but the Catholics felt that abortion was repugnant enough to justify accepting the birth of babies naturally inclined to same-sex attraction. So in his imaginary future the much smaller minority of homosexuals tended to adopt Catholic imagery and iconography. He didn’t envision any nonreligious women as choosing to abort “gay gene” babies, as far as I could tell.

       1. Interesting the degree to which authors are allowed to project group behaviour based on religious affiliation* in ways which would never be sanctioned if premised on race, ethnicity, gender or other characteristic.

          *excluding Islam, of course, as that Islamophobic Kratman guy should know.

          1. Although I don’t agree with the practice of assigning all members of any group the same characteristics, it actually does make more sense in the religious affiliation, because that is very often a conscious, personal choice to affiliate with some group that practices a behavior of which you approve (way too complex to boil down to the stereotypes, but it is what allows us to laugh at jokes that point out the differences in sectarian stereotypes).
             http://txipl.org/lightbulbjokes

             However, if you are a member of a religious group solely because of birth and inertia: not so much.

    2. > start aborting babies because they have the “gay gene.”

       …or, given how extremist their stance is, aborting the ones *without* the ‘gay gene.’

    3. No need to wonder. It is already happening with the abort the girls movement especially in China. The left is freaking out over it when they allow themselves to notice it.

    4. It will be equally interesting to see how many of the “anti-abortion” right decide that “just once wouldn’t be that bad.”

22. *sad* It’s a logical advancement of a bad assumption.

    Sexual attraction is sexual. They’ve decided sex must be just…genital stimulation, with various levels of pretty paint put on how they figure it.

    Contrast with a more mystic view of sex– mutual self-sacrifice and an act of creation– and you get a very different answer.

    See also, the trouble with any kind of love that doesn’t involve sexual attraction.

    1. Yep. Because if sex is more than just boot-knocking, then having it whenever you want with whoever you want however you want whoever you want becomes a much less tenable proposition.

23. I habe read Charlton Heston’s autobiography several times (IN THE ARENA, it’s a fun read) and like his answer to the people who insist that Michaelangelo must have been Gay. Heston read a,lot about the man, preparing for the role in THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY, and it seemd to him that while Michaelangelo tried both, he really wasn’t interested in sex; he prefered carving marble.

    1. The most compelling theory I’ve ever read/heard (can’t recall where at the moment, alas) was that Michaelangelo was probably autistic, or at the very least on the spectrum.

       Preferring sculpting above all else (including, as I recall, hygeine, sleeping or eating unless forced to)…yeah, I’d buy “autistic or something like.”

       And considering the stuff I’ve heard about da Vinci, and Donatello, and others…I half wonder if ‘trying both’ wasn’t just the fashion amongst the artists of the time.

       1. Knowing how many college gals at least fake it? Plus the whole ideailzation of Rome and stuff?

          Heck, yeah, I’d buy that.

          ************

          It’s interesting how a lot of the stuff that’s now “obviously autistic” looks a heck of a lot like “classic absent minded professor.”

          1. Socially inept is one thing. Non-verbal is something else.

          2. Side note on famous people with possible autism: there are theories that Stonewall Jackson might have been somewhere on the spectrum. The evidence is…anecdotal…but he was a natural artillerist, which required some level of mathematical skill, and was notorious at VMI for not only reading his lectures, but, in the event of being asked a question, looking at his class somewhat confusedly, and then going back and reading the lecture from the beginning.

       2. I seem to recall reading somewhere that he tried both ways and was later heard to say that he didn’t see the point of either. I suppose we could label that ‘autism’, but is it somhard to imagine that somebody with a huge talent could enjoy USING that talent more than the friction of mucus membranes.

          1. Which reminds me of my mother’s pallid contribution to the “Just Say No” fervor of the 80’s. “Probably don’t try pot. I used to smoke it, but I couldn’t see much difference, so I quit.”

          2. Well, and though the lefties, with their obsession with sex, wouldn’t want to even consider it…it’s also possible he was simply asexual. Which would also explain being far more interested in his talent and the use of it than in getting it on with humans of any kind. Or possibly he just kept his sex life out of public knowledge, which I realize is a foreign concept to many of our fellow travelers in this day and age.

             Considering the current obsession to define a person’s *entire* being in relation to sex (which, to my mind, is awfully limiting), I can also see why finding little to no indication of a famous artist’s sex life in the historical record would lead some people to go “well, he MUST have been autistic or have something equally wrong with him!”

             Frankly, I could care less. Except insofar as the faint “Well, it’d be nice if took a shot at passing those genes on, but since even THAT isn’t in any way a guarantee…” (Not to mention trying for the possibly less-talented or talented-in-an-entirely-different-area child.) I don’t find other people’s sex lives anywhere near as interesting as other things, like their talents, etc.

             (Though the bit I recall reading about Michaelangelo–and again, I can’t remember where, so I can’t claim it is anything other than anecdotal–that he had to be forced to stop and bathe/eat/sleep…that does read as at least something on the spectrum that lends itself to hyperfocusing.)

       3. “Absent minded professor” and “So intelligent that their brain is focused on other things and person needs a caretaker” are very, very old characterizations / tropes that would fall under ‘somewhat autistic’ these days.

          I prefer the former, personally. It acknowledged the capabilities of the person.

24. The rules ar simple:

    The “in” folks can do no wrong.

    The “out” folks can do no right.

    The “in” folks declare who is who, and declare the current wrongs of the “out”.

    The “out” apologize, grovel, obey, pay, etc, seeking to be deemed “in”.

    Simple.

    Comrades, you didn’t scream approval of each of the rules and applaud until your hands bled. You are “out”.

25. Well said. I always appreciate when someone can put into words what I have a hard time explaining.
    Thank You.

26. The argument over whether homosexuality is genetic or a choice is just so much stress over nothing. While I suspect the answer is “all of the above”, it doesn’t matter.

    Think about it, person “A” is gay as a $3 bill. Maybe ze has a gene that’s causing it, maybe ze was getting it on with zis date after the prom, looked at said date’s genitalia and projectile vomited. So ever since, every time ze see’s genitalia of the same physical form factor as zis prom date’s, ze is just put off… In that case, unbeknownst to zir, zis sexual preference is, in effect, caused by a slightly off bottle of Boones Farm (that ze really shouldn’t have been drinking at that age).

    Doesn’t matter though… ze is still who ze is, and is still attracted to who ze is attracted to, and no amount of somebody else getting all bothered by it is really going to change anything.

    (Yes, I know a dude who got so drunk he vomited all over his, nearly naked, prom date after prom… No, he didn’t end up gay because of it, but he DID end up VERY single)

    1. Truly, an example of wine giving the desire and taking away the ability.

    2. Zis iz ze way ze iz I guezz.

       1. Ve haff vayz

27. But meanwhile, if you are attracted to women of East Asian appearance, that is “Asian fetish” and “racist”. And if you do NOT find them attractive– I guess that is racist too.

    1. ding ding ding. we have a winner.

    2. Housemate once recounted a story. He’s asexual, but finds Asians beautiful (really nice to look at). He once got into a conversation with a Caucasian woman who noticed the Hatsune Miku phone case he had and struck up a conversation.(If I am going to have a phone case, may as well have it be eyecatching so I don’t spend a long time doing ‘where’s my phone’.) The conversation was pleasant and it passed the time (he was waiting for someone) and this Asian woman walked by – by his description “pretty enough that I watched her walk by, but didn’t stop chatting.”

       The woman he was talking to blew her top. Called him a racist for doing that, called him anti-women for ‘fetishising’ Asians, and a ‘race traitor’ for not finding Western women attractive.

       His response? “NOTHING you’re doing right now is attractive, and you’ve only increased my certainty that Western women are insane.” Cue more screaming, whereupon he walked away, and called me up to vent.

       1. Western women -are- insane, on the whole. Taken as a group, they are largely vain, intolerant, untutored, disloyal and have no personal honor. Working in an environment where Western women are managers is torture for male and female employees alike. Mean Girlz is a thing. They invariably act like a pack of superannuated cheerleaders, complete with backstabbing.

          Exceptions exist, of course. I treasure each one I find. In 61 years I’ve collected maybe five or six Western women of Quality in my circle of friends. Goddesses, I tell you.

          Which is why I comment here. Sarah Hoyt and all you other ladies are exceptions to the rule. Logical, reasonable and honorable.

          Gentlemen, we are blessed by their company. 🙂

          1. Why thank you, kind sir.

             1. Not flattery madam, but simple truth. The other sort of Western female is on display in most other SF/F forums, our blessing is self-evident. ~:D

                1. Logic, reason and honor are tools of the Patriarchy by which they keep women subjugated!

          2. Everything you just said about Western women is true…and is also true of Western men, taken as a whole.
             It’s like the whole “toxic masculinity” thing–of course it exists. All you need to prove that is to look at crime statistics. The problem is that the people who talk the most about the concept refuse to admit that “poisonous femininity” exists–and will call you a misogynist if you point that out.

    3. What if pale Irish redheaded lasses tend to be more one’s preference?
       Is that somehow racist too?

       1. No, that’s just taking a lot of Gaul.

          Or Donegal, as the case may be.

       2. Speaking as a pale Irish redheaded lass, I heartily endorse the idea. 😀

28. As many have noted in the past, the long-term goal of totalitarians is to wind up with everybody genuinely guilty of some crime. Whether that crime is “transphobia”, or “Asian fetish”, or using air freshener in a manner inconsistent with its labeling doesn’t really matter, as long as they have a crime cut to your measure.

    If the fake crime is made up ahead of time, the state doesn’t have to trouble itself with making up fake evidence when you become inconvenient. Since you are definitely and provably guilty of the (made-up) crime, straight to the gulag you go!

    1. As the old saying goes- pillage first, then burn.
       The modern wannabe American totalitarian tends to get so caught up in who they are going to purge after seizing power that they don’t really get around to seizing power. And the more they screech and shame more and more diverse groups, the more likely it is they won’t get the chance.

29. Yeah, no. Since childhood I’ve made a point of not caring a fig about what pressure is brought upon me; on that subject I make up my mind for myself. To give others leverage is to almost invite predation. And being preyed upon does not cause happiness.

    It may be fair to say that excitement is one thing and serious interest is another. I find many people fairly unpleasant to be around. (And I gather, vice versa.) Trust is also very important to me. I’m very untrusting. The number I might actually want to touch is much smaller than the number I might enjoy looking at. And the former is expected to approach unity or zero at some point.

30. c4c

31. I was looking to post this on “It’s Always the Gulag” but this is really just a riff on the same melody, so here it is:
    https://pjmedia.com/trending/sjws-bar-conservative-hispanic-writer-worldcon-claiming-racist-bully/

    After sending that private email message to Del Arroz, they publicly denounced him on Facebook, Twitter, and Worldcon’s main website. Del Arroz was not given a reason for the banning even though he sent several messages inquiring about the alleged “incident” that triggered it. “Worldcon 76 has chosen to reduce Jonathan Del Arroz’s membership from attending to supporting,” they wrote. “We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. We take that seriously….racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon.”
    * * *
    Note that not giving any evidence for their exclusionary tactics is standard MO.

    Comments are pretty much what you would expect.
    “Exactly. The SJWs are a minority, but a vocal one, and one obsessed with taking complete control of everything in human society. They succeed because (at least, up until recently) no one fought back. When people oppose them it’s obvious just how weak they are.”
    “You know if they just came right out and said “We don’t like you because you’re not in the right group” I could at least respect the honesty. It’s the lying and the projecting that is really disgusting.”

32. So, I should have read Sarah’s PJ post first…all roads lead to Rome, however.
    https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/truth-and-consequences/?singlepage=true

33. Hey! That science has been S-E-T-T-L-E-D!!!!!!!!!!!!

    There’s No Such Thing as Overpopulation
    By Sarah Hoyt
    I grew up on stories of overpopulation. Unfortunately, Paul Ehrlich (the world’s most reliable prophet, if you take into account everything he ever said happened the opposite) was translated into Portuguese.

    I remember both the frisson of fear and the mild bewilderment while reading his book in my mom’s kitchen and coming across the prophecy that we would run out of potable water by the eighties.

    But then I hit all his predictions of overpopulation, and how crowded we were all going to be, and I realized he had no idea how much space there was, even in Portugal.

    And frankly, all of us who grew up in Europe had absolutely no idea how much open space there was in the U.S.

    I mean, we’d see the movies, with all the high-rises and car chases and highways crossing over and under each other, and that was our idea of America. This is why, I think, Europeans are far more concerned about the environment than Americans, and a little more insane about the whole “global warming” thing. They think we are way more crowded than they are. (This probably also has to do with the fact that they really have no concept of how vast our territory is, and they get our population measures bandied around constantly.)

    [END EXCERPT]

34. Whatchoo mean, “If”?

    If the Left And The Press Were Hostile Aliens
    By Sarah Hoyt
    If we were invaded by aliens who hated all of humanity, anything promising prosperity and advancement to the human race, and bore a particular hatred for the United States of America and its prosperity and well-being, how would we be able to tell?

    More importantly, how would we be able to tell we haven’t been?

    [END EXCERPT]

    1. Well, they could be Everness Selkies.

       1. Thin Men… well, lots of them aren’t all that thin, but they do have the poison spittle.

35. I read through a lot of the links about Jon del Arroz’s banning from WorldCon and found a lot of articles most of you are likely already familiar with (always late to the game, that’s me). I was appalled at the goings-on in Comics and Magic: The Gathering, especially because my kids were involved in all of those gaming things (although not to the same degree as many boys), and would be thoroughly saddened to see what’s happened to the things they enjoyed because they were fun (not because they were Socially Justiciable). That was twenty years ago now, though, and a lot can — and did — happen in that much time.
    Apparently, the endeavors of Sad Puppies and Gamergaters had little to no effect on the spread of the rot, although it began the process of opposing it.
    Further action to counter leftist tyranny is nonetheless extremely problematical, with the thumb of Leviathan weighing the scales toward injustice, while loudly trumpeting its own virtue.
    See the lawsuit filed by James Damore (I read the entire complaint and it’s sickening), and the blatant anti-conservative actions of Google in public now, as well as in private.
    (These are only two of the stories available.)
    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455288/james-damores-google-lawsuit-exposes-companys-intolerance
    http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/googles-new-factchecker-is-partisan-garbage/

36. Whatever happened to the listing of recent comments?

    1. WordPress decided we didn’t need it anymore. I’ll be doing a theme change this week.

37. OK, on the publishing/readers/market front:
    https://nypost.com/2018/01/10/confused-readers-are-buying-the-wrong-fire-and-fury/

    Readers are angry because there’s nothing in the book about Trump.
    I’m alternating ROFL and SMDH. NeverTrumpers seem to not be the brightest bulb in the array.

38. Orwell and 1984 and Animal Farm were not the only warnings.

    n the end, what people are attracted to is their own business. You can’t really say if you’re not attracted to something you’re “phobic.”

    We are in the midst of a crisis over people demanding sex without respect to consent but the left is already working on moving beyond Orwell to Huxley. I will leave to see the left try to institute the idea that refusing to have sex with anyone who asks is immoral and illegal discrimination.

    1. They’ve been attacking the idea of the wrong people being able to say know as long as I’ve been aware of it.

       Ask any gal who didn’t put out, or, if you’ve got a strong stomach, talk to some self-identified asexuals….

       1. Oh, you mean how asexuals get offered rape therapy to fix it. I am very close to a self-identified asexual and am horrified by things people say to her. I mean, who ever raised these people…I mean, really, WTF.

          1. You may be demonstrating your own good upbringing by glorifying it with such a term as “raised.” Might be not due to parental failure, but holy crud what a failure.

             1. *laughs*

                I embrace my upbringing privilege.

                It is like my friend with a service dog and who is part time in a wheel chair. The things people do and say boggle my mind. I mean, around the dog it isn’t even “you shouldn’t bother a service dog like that” it is “have you seen a dog before?” and “do you think everyone with a dog wants to spend 15 minutes with you petting it?”

                And don’t get either of them started on “allies” or, as one of them says, “people who want cookies for pretending to be helpful while making it worse.”

                1. Oh, gads, I know those guys.
                   The “Well, you SAID you wanted help, and I’m putting so much effort into helping, how DARE you tell me that my help isn’t helpful? You’ll take my help and LIKE it!”

                2. (I am inflicting Upbringing Privilege on the kids by being one of those people who demand that they respect anyone working, even if they’re “just” a working dog– “That vest means that he’s working. You do not get in the way of people who are working, they have a job to do. Even if they say it’s OK, you need to be polite.” And then it goes into “watching your language” in “dog talk” — two year old really WANTS to put her face in the dogs’. Aaaargh.)

                3. “have you seen a dog before?”
                   I remember having to -carry- my golden retriever puppy and fend off admirers who were “OH GHOD I HAVE TO PET HIM RIGHT NOWZ!!!”

                   I think the ultimate was the woman on the subway platform that decided she needed to french-kiss the dog. For realz. Toronto does seem to collect weirdos. I let her do it, she was so fried I didn’t have the heart to tell her off.

                   I did have the dog to the vet to check for worms, however. One never knows.

                   1. People can be so careless of another’s property. And a dog is property, meaning the owner has a duty of maintenance and care. If the dog is merely an animal companion you owe it no more than you owe a human companion. The two of you are merely hanging out, like Hondo and Sam.

                      Fun fact: Sam was portrayed by Lassie, with potters’ clay rubbed into the coat.

                   2. Funny, I usually don’t go out of my way to pet other people’s dogs, but I keep running into very friendly dogs around where I live. They and cats always want a scritchy toll. 😀

                      1. Chuckle Chuckle

                         A few minutes ago I was bringing my Beagle Lilly in from our walk and she decided that she needed pets from people in the apartment building lobby. 😀

    2. “I will leave to see the left try to institute the idea that refusing to have sex with anyone who asks is immoral and illegal discrimination.”

       Vulgar insults like “FOAD” and “GFY” seem oddly appropriate responses to that sort of thing.

39. cc4c

40. When a couple live together, their scents alter each other’s hormones. When the woman is pregnant, her hormones cause the male to have more bonding hormones and lower testosterone.
    Interesting that the same Left that wants any expression of sexual interest that is “unwanted” to be assault has also started to insist that any refusal to reciprocate interest (like not dating/having sex with a trans person) is bigotry. Please make up your minds (hahaha…just kidding, they are nuts so logic is impossible for them).

Comments are closed.