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NYC Pride – 6/25/2023
My name is K. Yang, I’m a former trans rights activist & LGBT non-profit whistleblower. I was just kicked, hit, pushed, mobbed by dozens of people in Washington Square Park.who identify as
— Stop Female Erasure / K Yang (@StopXXErasure) June 25, 2023
A brilliant and brave woman I know named K. Yang posted a video from NYC Pride on Sunday, showing her being mobbed by a gang of Pride-goers, frothing at the mouths, rabid with anger at a lone woman daring to stand up for herself and millions of girls and women around the globe.
Holding a sign reading, “Defend female sex-based rights,” and another with the words, “Trans ‘Rights’ = Big Pharma, Big Banks, United Nations Propaganda,” Yang was verbally abused, threatened, and assaulted by a number of men (surely claiming any identity but “man”) and screamed at by women in the crowd. Yang, once a trans activist who realized the (ever expanding) 2SLGBTQ+ was a misogynist, corporate con and began calling it out, tweeted:
“Two [men] followed me calling me a “bitch.” They began to explain misogyny to me. I was called a “cis bitch” by a [man] who claims to be a [woman]. Another begins the gang assault by hitting me, yet another kicks me from behind. #CisIsASlur“
Many of you have likely observed the endless stream of fear-mongering propaganda force-fed to us by mainstream media outlets, politicians, and NGOs, insisting “attacks” against the “2SLGBTQ+ community” are on the rise. In the month leading up to Pride, these claims have been amplified in what has become an ongoing war against reality.
On June 6, the Human Rights Campaign declared a national “state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States… following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”
What they are referencing is not, in fact, any actual “assault” — legislative or otherwise — but a series of bills passed in various red states preventing youth from being given harmful puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries on account of a declared “trans” identity.
What has happened is that states like Oklahoma, Iowa, North Dakota, and Kentucky (among others) have passed laws preventing the medical transition of kids. This legislation protects minors from making adult-influenced decisions that cause irreparable damage, rendering youth sterile before they have even had a chance to explore intimate relationships and their sexualities. The long term effects of these drugs are both known and unknown, leading to bone loss, increased risk of cancer, and all sorts of other obvious and perhaps less obvious problems related to interference in the natural, healthy development of human bodies. We don’t have enough long term research on this kind of experimentation to know the extent of the damage, but we do know there is damage.
The tragic story of Jazz Jennings, whose mother thrust him into the spotlight as a “trans child,” and who has now undergone four “sex reassignment” surgeries, all of which have resulted in painful complications, should have acted as a warning. Today, the 22-year-old struggles with eating disorders and depression, and will likely never experience sexual pleasure or be able to have children.
You cannot simply stop puberty, feed a developing child or teen hormones that increase cancer risk and result in a host of other side-effects in adults, and assume no harmful repercussions for youth. Yet, that’s what these NGOs insist, claiming these treatments are “life-saving” and medically necessary, and that laws limiting these interventions constitute an “assault” on “LGBTQ+ people.”
The response to this legislation has been hyperbolic, to say the least, suggesting that kids feeling confused or troubled by their changing bodies and entry into adulthood flee their hometowns in search of states that will allow these interventions.
An HRC guidebook directs youth in their decision to leave their homes for “friendly states” that allow minors to alter their IDs and bodies, no questions asked, and encourage them to find their “chosen families,” described as “people who are in your life, not because of biological ties, but for love and support, to celebrate you and help you no matter what.”
This kind of rhetoric is common to trans activists, who often recommend youth identifying as trans abandon their “non-supportive” families (labelled “abusive” for failing to encourage transition) for a “chosen family,” who support and validate their transition. “Come talk to me about your secrets — your parents don’t really love or understand you, but I do” should be treated as a red flag of epic proportions, but within trans activism is normalized.
Moreover, the irony of describing a “dizzying patchwork of discriminatory state laws that have created increasingly hostile and dangerous environments for LGBTQ+ people” becomes obviously rich when we look at how women are treated by these groups. In the past five odd years, women and girls have not only lost the right to women-only spaces — including change rooms, shelters, and prisons — and lost the right to compete on fair grounds, among females, in sport, but have lost the right to speak out about this. Women who have challenged gender identity legislation and policy have been fired, assaulted, censored, threatened, blackballed, ostracized, deplatformed, and banned from social media.
And all this has been perpetrated against women with impunity while being gaslit into oblivion by public officials, the media, institutions, corporations, progressives, activists, NGOs, and human rights organizations. We are told over and over again that it is not women, but the “LGBTQ community” who are under attack and in dire need of our support.
Nonetheless, yesterday, GLAAD, a non-profit originally founded to fight for gay rights (recently expanded to advocate the LGBTQ cultural revolution) published an open letter calling on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter to “Stop the flow of anti-trans hate and malicious disinformation about trans healthcare.” Signed by a dizzying number of celebrities such as Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Haley Bieber, Elliot (nee Ellen) Page, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the letter claims “Dangerous posts (both content and ads) created and circulated by high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts targeting transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people are thriving across your platforms, directly resulting in terrifying real-life harm.
The letter labels “misgendering and deadnaming” as “hate speech,” claiming that correctly sexing individuals or daring to acknowledge a name change is “utilized to bully and harass prominent public figures while simultaneously expressing hatred and contempt for trans people and non-binary people in general.”
By framing pushback against and discussion of the harms of transing kids as “disinformation and hate,” and claiming refusal to call men women as “dangerous,” GLAAD is able to demand censorship, insisting these social media companies “urgently take action to protect trans and LGBTQ users on your platforms (including protecting us from over-enforcement and censorship).”
It is all very urgent. An emergency. People are dying because of true statements and free speech. Not any real people, but certainly people in our imaginations. Either way, we are not used to being challenged and it is triggering.
On June 1, Marci Ien, minister for women and gender equality and youth, issued a statement to mark the start of what the Canadian government has rebranded as “Pride Season,” saying:
“While it is important that we take the opportunity to recognize the hard-earned victories of the Pride movement, we must continue pushing back on the sharp rise in anti-trans hate and anti-2SLGBTQI+ legislation, protests at drag events, the banning of educational books in schools, and calls against raising the Pride flag.”
She followed this statement with the announcement that the Liberal government would be “moving forward with the development of a new Action Plan to Combat Hate – that will address hate faced by 2SLGBTQI+ communities and, specifically, hate faced by trans people.”
Where is the Canadian government’s action plan to address the silencing, marginalization, and harassment of women who speak up about their sex-based rights and about biological reality? Where is our “feminist” Prime Minister on women’s rights and the actual assaults perpetrated against female inmates by the violent male criminals he has allowed to be transferred to female prisons?
Nowhere.
Justin Trudeau’s government didn’t stop with an action plan. On June 5, Ien announced that the government would be pledging $1.5million in “emergency funding to ensure Pride festivals stay safe across Canada.”
Safe from what? Where is the emergency?
Half of the population are losing their rights without any genuine public consultation or debate, and the government leaps to action, pouring money into a trend that is already the most well-funded marketing campaign I have seen in my life.
Today, Pride is a corporate-sponsored event that is celebrated as though it is the national religion. Dissent is unacceptable, but even if it were allowed, who is attacking Pride-goers? Nothing of the sort has been reported, nor was anything of the sort even threatened. What I did see was a lone woman mobbed by deranged, violent Pride fanatics, enraged that anyone would dare challenge their faith.
I would, frankly, never attend one of these things out of fear of being assaulted or worse, so clearly Yang is braver than I. We should all be enraged at the lack of support for women and women’s voices from those in power, who dare lie to our faces while we suffer the consequences.
The post The Pride industrial complex ignores threats against women and doubles down on the myth of 2SLGBTQ+ ‘hate’ appeared first on Feminist Current.
My son’s language is made of a bundle of sounds that do not exist in the Spanish that we speak around the Río de la Plata. He repeats syllables he himself invented, he alternates them with onomatopoeias, guttural sounds, and high-pitched shouts. It is an expressive, singing language. I wrote this on Twitter at 6:30 in the morning on a Thursday because Galileo woke me up at 5:30. He does this, madruga (there is no word for “madrugar”, “waking up early in the morning” in English, I want to know why). As I look after him, I open a Word document in my computer. I write a little while I hear “aiuuuh shíii shíiii prrrrrr boio boio seeehhh” and then some whispers, all this accompanied with his rhythmic stimming of patting himself on the chest or drumming on the walls and tables around the house.
My life with Gali goes by like this, between scenes like this one and the passionate kisses and hugs he gives me. This morning everything else is quiet. He brings me an apple for me to cut it for him in four segments. He likes the skin and gnaws the rest, leaving pieces of apples with his bitemarks all around the house. He also brings me a box of rice cookies he doesn’t know how to open. Then he eats them jumping on my bed. He leaves a trace of crumbles. Galileo inhabits the world by leaving evidence of his existence, of his habits, of his way of being in the world.
When we started walking the uncertain road to diagnosis, someone next of kin who is a children’s psychologist with a sort of specialisation in autism informally assessed him. She ruled (diagnosed, prognosed) that he wasn’t autistic, that we shouldn’t ask for the official disability certificate (because “labels” are wrong, she held), and that he should go on Lacanian therapy and music therapy on Zoom —now I think this is a ready-made sentence she just gives in general to anyone.
The most violent intervention in Galileo’s subjectivity is denying his being-disabled in an ableist world and his being-autistic in an allistic world. We, as a culture, have internalised the terror of disability so deep in our minds that we hurry to deny it. We are not willing to accept that what causes us so much angst and dread actually exists, that it is not an imagined ghost. Denying like this, in this delusional way, is an instinct only humans have. It is so human (so stupid) that it is not a survival instinct. When we deny autistic affirmation, we prepare the ground for its annihilation, i.e., for the annihilation of everyone who is autistic. Being autistic isn’t being an imperfect allistic, a not-yet-allistic person. Being disabled isn’t the same as being a flawed abled person. The denial of disability doesn’t amount to affirming an alternative ability, it implies the ableist annihilation of all vulnerability. But when disability is negated, able people do not survive either. We are born and we die in disability. How did it happen that we dare to imagine we can supersede need? (Maybe by the same process by which it is believed that capitalist profits are meant to satisfy human needs).
The instinct of denying disability is not innate, though. It is an intelligent trap designed to break communities apart, to disorganise, to debilitate us: not to make us disabled but to make us unable, powerless. This is how ableism works, de-politicising vulnerability and unease, making disability, at most, an object of pity and compassion, a matter of bad luck, a fate to try to twist and avoid.
***
Galileo’s spoken language has the musical texture of a genre he alone can perform. There was a (short) time when I thought that my role in his life was to be her translator, a mediation between him and the rest of the world. This is impossible for many reasons. The most important of them isn’t that I don’t get him (I don’t), it isn’t that I don’t speak his language (I don’t), or that no one (much less a mother) can or should mediate anyone. The main reason is that Galileo speaks as someone who plays in their instrument a piece that they have composed for themselves.
Sometimes language is comprehensible only insofar as one gets ready to listen to it as if they were in an empty church in front of a little bench where Rostropovich is about to play Bach’s suites with his Duport, and as if he were Bach himself. Then, and only then, we understand that we don’t understand, that we are at the gates of the incomprehensible. When is language more language than when it is spoken so incomprehensibly? The impossibility of interpreting oneself, myself, comes not only from the fact that no one controls or owns language. No one plays their own scores because no one creates their own language. No one, but Galileo and his equals. The autistic non-verbal language is that impossible thing that we try not to talk about when we talk, that we try to drown by talking too much, moving our hands, and writing for example this text. Autistic languages say what can’t be said in any articulated allistic “normal” language. Galileo speaks a language that complements other languages. This language of his is not the opposite of language: it perfects other languages, like music or silence do.
***
Does my son have a mother tongue? Do we speak to each other as mother and child? What do we tell each other when we chat? My son’s autism and his magic words lend me a whole new vocabulary for my own neurodiversity, a new and authentic view on my severe misophonia, hyperacusis, and hyperosmia, and on my life-long inability to grasp the majority of the rules of interpersonal relationships, among other things I thought were personal flaws that made me inferior. I won’t mask it anymore. I won’t keep it a secret anymore. Now I know how to talk about it, now I have names to name it. Maybe he will never speak his mother tongue or any other “normal” language, but he has taught me to speak a language in which I now can say what I couldn’t formulate in an allistic alien tongue. Stripping me of all the allistic and ableist expectations that have shaped the way I was meant to raise my children has liberated me from the suffering of trying to meet them myself. The truly difficult thing, besides raising an autistic child in an allistic world, besides being a non-verbal autistic child in an ableist world, is how to de-internalise all this life-long inferiorisation.
But I know he will tell me how.
Earlier this week, I was at a meeting to discuss the question whether my university should cut its ties with the fossil industry, or else impose additional conditions on working with partners from fossil industries. There was quite some agreement that the university should think hard about spelling out and endorsing a moral framework, and based on those values and moral principles work out what (if any) forms of collaboration would remain legitimate in the future. This led our vice-chancellor to ask the question what else such moral framework would imply for university staff. “Should we perhaps completely stop flying?”, he asked.
And then there is, once again, a very depressing IPCC report and we must radically change our modes of production and consumption if we want to leave our children (and our older selves) a planet that will remain safe for the human species. And it’s not just about the future, but about the present: urgent action is needed to lower the number of the deadly climate-related events that we have seen over the last years, from increases in wildfires to deadly floodings – that led poor people, who have made almost zero contribution to this problem, lose their livelihoods, and many simply died. So to me it seems obvious that what we change in response to climate change is a very urgent moral question.
Hence the question: Do academics fly too much? Should we simply stop flying at all?
I’m using academics here in the sense of people employed as professors, postdocs, and PhD candidates at universities or other institutes of higher education and research. And it concerns flying for academic activities – most often, presenting one’s research at conferences or as an invited speaker to a seminar series or workshop. Of course, many of the thoughts that follow will apply to other professions too, but since this makes it easier for me to write down my worries, let me start there.
During the pandemic, it was easy: we couldn’t fly. I missed travelling. Frankly, I missed it a lot: I missed the interaction with other scholars working on related questions; I missed the inspiration from meeting the smart and creative people that one tends to meet on such occasions; I missed learning about the new work other people are doing; I missed the feedback on the work that I presented; I missed the intellectual joy of long conversations over breakfasts, lunches and dinners on matters academic, political, and otherwise; I missed the strengthening of my professional networks that travel brought me; I missed seeing friends far away; I missed the adventure of travelling to places; I missed the intellectual energy and inspiration such a trip could give.
Some have argued that the ‘normalisation’ of videoconferencing has taken away any reasons for travel. I love the new habits that are created by zoom, teams, and the other programs – the international paper discussions, seminars, reading groups. But no matter how wonderful these online events can be, many of the good things that come with travelling to workshops and conferences are not part of online events. Perhaps, some might argue, that is simply the price we should pay to stay within our fair emissions budget?
There are other reasons why academics want to travel long-distance by plane. Many want to travel because they feel they need to in order to build their scholarly networks or to strengthen their CV – in short, they feel they need it for their career. I’ve heard some colleagues say that this should be a reason why only junior scholars should be allowed to fly. This strikes me as self-defeating, since some of the most interesting conversations I had when I was a PhD student or postdoc was with older, more senior scholars who came to give a talk – I’ve always felt there is much I could learn from them too. Academia is international, and if we could only interact with our local peers that would be a loss. Moreover, I suspect that there are some very senior scholars who receive a lot of overseas keynote invitations: should they always decline invitations if those would require them to fly? What reasoning could they use that is genuinely sound, and not a form of self-deception?
There is no emissions-free alternative to flying long-distance, which makes travel-by-airplane a scarce good. There are, presumably, many more academics who would like to fly many more miles than would be good for the habitability of the planet. Should we have an open discussion about how much we should allow ourselves to fly, just like we have discussions about how much we should referee? Or should we just leave this, loosely libertarian and without causing offence to anyone, to everyone’s own judgement without a public discussion?
Once the discussion kicks off, there are various arguments one encounters. Here are a few of claims I’ve heard from others or considered myself, when trying to justify why travel by airplane is fine:
(1) It doesn’t make a difference at all whether I fly or not. It’s inconsequential to addressing climate change.
(2) I’ve been invited oversees as a keynote, so if I decline, the organisors invite someone else, and it doesn’t make a difference to total emissions.
(3) It’s bad that I fly, but I’m going to find a golden offset mechanism, and compensate the full damage that my flying does to planet – perhaps 150%.
(4) I wish I wouldn’t have to fly, but I must fly for my job; I commute by airplane. Yes, I could find a non-academic job closer by, but it’s not reasonable to ask from me that I give up my profession for the sake of lowering my emissions.
(5) Why would I have to stop flying if my North-American colleagues on average fly so much more than we [Europeans, Africans, Latin-Americans, …] do? When they limit their flying, I’ll limit mine too.
(6a) Why would I have to stop flying (whether for work or privately) if the really big pollutors, for example in Big Oil companies, keep earning millions destroying the earth? Why should I worry about adding one or two ton CO2 if the biggest polluters are not setting the right example?
(6b) Why should we stop flying if the number of superrich people flying in their ultrapolluting private jets keep flying? Let them stop flying first, and then we can talk about ordinary folks who should stop flying.
(7) I eat vegan, have no car, have put my savings in solar energy production, and have no kids. Given all this, I think I should be morally permitted to fly.
(8) I’m on the academic job market and need to go to any conference I can afford to travel to, in order to improve my chances at landing a job.
(9) I’ve joined Extinction Rebellion (or another group) and I’m making my contribution to addressing climate change there. We should only talk about political activism, not about consumption, such as flying.
(10) I’m only flying if I think it makes a difference not just to myself, but also that the trip is worthwhile for enough others too. And once I decide to fly, I try to get the most out of it in terms of contributing, e.g. by offering to give another talk in a nearby place.
(11) …
(12) … and so on, and so forth.
While I think some of these claims are dubious, others are less obviously so. But which ones are acceptable as reasons in our own deliberations whether to fly or not, and which ones should we reject? How do (or should) we deliberate with ourselves on those matters?
I’ve recently accepted an overseas invitation, and while the climate cost was immediately on the forefront of my mind, after some agonizing claims #2 and #10 made me, eventually, think it was OK to accept the invitation. But was it? I am not just, because of my love for academic travelling, simply fooling myself? And are those of us who keep travelling by plane not fooling ourselves most of the time? Or can a balance be struck without giving up on travel by plane completely?
So, friends, over to you. Given me claims/reasons #11, #12, etc. that you’ve had in your own mind, or heard, and let me know what you think of all these claims. And if anyone has a proposal for a decision procedure we should endorse, across academia globally, on when we are still permitted to fly (if at all), then let us know. Because, as you can can see, I have more questions than answers.
PS: Please be respectful of others’ point of views and arguments; many of us are unsure about these matters and trying to find out what we should think and do. If you’ve thought about this long and hard and made up your mind, good for you, but give others the time too to find out what they decide to believe. I’ll filter out rude or hateful comments.
The grotesque irony of accusing @ThePosieParker of being a violent threat. I hope at very least this incident shows the world the truth about this movement. https://t.co/n1DQloKSse
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) March 25, 2023
Kellie-Jay Keen (also known as Posie Parker), founder of Standing for Women, was to host her Let Women Speak event on Saturday morning in Auckland, but was met with a mob of protesters who pelted her with tomato juice and water, yelling, “fuck you cunt” and “go home Posie, go home.” Trans activists pushed down metal barriers to mob the 5’1” mother of four. Keen was forced to abandon the event, fearing for her life, and was escorted away through a crowd of deranged, screaming protesters by police and her security team.
Keen had been smeared as a Nazi in the country after a small group of men at her Melbourne event gave Nazi salutes. Keen had no association with these men, and said she doubts they were in fact neo-Nazis:
“All of this doesn’t make any sense, it feels really off. I mean, look in the UK. We had police impregnating animal rights campaigners. And we had those police infiltrating those groups. I don’t think it’s beyond the wits of anyone to think that either that was TRAs [trans rights activists] dressed up, or police, or, something was just off.”
When asked about the men giving Nazi salutes, she told The Herald:
“They’re absolutely not associated with me whatsoever. I absolutely abhor anything to do with Nazis. It’s preposterous they even exist in 2023.”
The executive director of Gender Minorities Aotearoa, a New Zealand trans organization, Ahi Wi-Hongi, said they are thrilled at the display of opposition to Keen’s event:
“People have really showed her that we don’t want that here, it’s not welcome. Perhaps she’s gonna pack up and leave — hopefully.
For us the takeaway is that people like her shouldn’t be allowed to come here and spread hateful views and carry out actions that result in people being harmed.”
The Let Women Speak gathering in Wellington planned for tomorrow has been cancelled as Keen’s security team say they cannot keep her safe from violence.
Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau said she “condemns the views and actions” espoused by Keen and that, “In Wellington we proudly celebrate and welcome diversity and inclusion of all members of our community.”
Members of the Rainbow Greens party had called for Keen to be blocked entry to New Zealand, saying she has a “longstanding track record of hateful speech and the incitement of violence towards trans and gender diverse people as well as other marginalized communities.”
“This is because it directly threatens the human rights and bodily integrity of people—in this case, our takatāpui, trans and gender-diverse communities. It is also because these networks of extremists are connected and reinforce one another.”
These kinds of comments offer a particularly glaring irony considering the very real threats women like Keen continue to face every time they attempt to speak publicly about the conflict between gender identity ideology and women’s rights.
Keen told The Daily Mail:
“I do feel like public enemy No 1 out here, genuinely I feel afraid. I am a hate figure. I didn’t realize how much women are hated by some parts of society before I came here. I feel like there are some great powers somewhere who don’t want women talking.
I can take being called a transphobe, but calling someone a Nazi? One of the politicians here called me a c***. They used rhyming slang of ‘dropkick and punt.
The war on women in these countries is absolutely frightening.
I have got to have a team of seven security guards out here with me. I genuinely do feel my life could be in danger sometimes.”
Meanwhile, Eliana Rubashkyn, the protester who threw juice on Keen explained:
“We have to stop the hate against our communities because the world is, right now. It feels like we are in the 1930s again.
New Zealand needs to stand up in front of the world and say this is not welcome here. We protect trans people.”
Rubashkyn told 1News the juice because represented the blood of “our people.”
“I want her to know that her words are blood.”
The post Kellie-Jay Keen is attacked and mobbed by trans activists in New Zealand appeared first on Feminist Current.
Every day, anti-trans rhetoric is spreading and becoming more virulent. Conservative forces in statehouses across America are pushing bills that would strip trans people of rights, including access to vital medical care. In some places, these laws have already passed. This is all part of a concerted, coordinated effort, as Madison Pauly’s reporting shows. Pauly gained access to a trove of emails exchanged by a group of anti-trans advocates who workshop legislative bills, public messaging, and other aspects of their crusade:
They brainstormed responses to the argument that gender-affirming care reduces suicide — an assertion that is backed up by research. Peer-reviewed studies have repeatedly found that trans and nonbinary youth with access to gender-affirming care are significantly less like to seriously consider suicide than those who did not receive such care. A larger analysis, using online survey data from over 11,000 trans and nonbinary youth, found using gender-affirming hormonal therapy was associated with lower rates of both depression and suicidality. Yet one team member called the argument that gender-affirming care reduces suicide “abusive”; another argued it was a way for doctors to coerce parents to consent to gender-affirming care for their child.
Van Mol, the doctor, suggested Deutsch reply to the suicide prevention argument with a rebuttal published on a defunct anti-trans blog: “Why weren’t the 1950s a total blood bath for suicides if non-affirmation of everything is the fast train to offing one’s self?” Van Mol asked, paraphrasing the blog post.
Another doctor in the working group, California endocrinologist Michael Laidlaw, had gained attention for his writing against gender-affirming care after parents at a charter school in his region raised complaints that they hadn’t been notified before kindergarteners were read a children’s book, I Am Jazz, about trans teenager Jazz Jennings. Last fall, when the state of Florida called on Laidlaw as an expert witness in a lawsuit over its anti-trans Medicaid policy, a federal judge concluded that he was “far off from the accepted view” on how to treat gender dysphoria, in part because Laidlaw had said he would refuse to use patients’ preferred pronouns. In his South Dakota testimony, Laidlaw compared gender-affirming care to Nazi experimentation and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. In emails to Deutsch and the group, he railed against doctors who prescribe puberty blockers — which are used to delay unwanted physical changes in gender-diverse kids and give them more time to explore whether or how to transition — accusing them of “willfully harming” children, even if kids and their parents consent to treatment. “The physician is the criminal in these scenarios and must be prosecuted by the law,” he argued.
David Enoch, professor of philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was among those protesting the Israeli government’s controversial plans to scale back the independence and power of its judiciary yesterday near Tel Aviv when he was arrested by police.
[photo via David Enoch’s Facebook page]
In a public Facebook post about the arrest, he recounts the experience (the following has been translated from Hebrew into English by ChatGPT):
So this morning, I was arrested at a protest at the Green Village interchange. I’ve heard before, from others who aren’t accustomed to it, that it’s simply a psychological barrier that needs to be overcome. And that’s really what it was. We went down to the road to block it. The policeman tried to fight it. I made sure my hands were behind my back and didn’t resist. He pushed a little, threatened a little, but I didn’t move. So he arrested me. It wasn’t a wonderful experience, but it wasn’t terrible either. About an hour of waiting in the patrol car until another detainee was added, a little more waiting at the police station, and then release. One less psychological barrier. It wasn’t really interesting at all.
But here are a few takeaways:
Last month, over 100 philosophers signed onto a letter to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the nation’s Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, objecting to the judicial changes.
(via Leiter Reports)
(Note: the translation has been slightly edited since originally published)
Private investigator hired to look into possible involvement of two student activists in occupation of building
Sheffield University has been criticised for hiring a private investigator to look into the possible involvement of two student activists in a protest in one of its buildings.
The two students received letters on 9 November informing them that the university had hired Intersol Global, a firm of investigators, to look into whether they were involved in a student occupation of a building in late October protesting against Sheffield’s links to the arms industry.
Continue reading...The UK is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, along with a number of other international instruments providing for humanitarian protection. The Convention provides that someone who is a refugee – a status that they have on the basis of their objective circumstances, having a well-founded fear of persecution on specific grounds and being outside their country of citizenship or habitual residence – must be granted certain protections by signatory countries. The most important of these is that they not be sent back to a place where they are at risk of persecution. The weakness of the Convention is that people cannot usually secure recognition as refugees by a country unless they claim asylum on its territory. Accordingly, wealthy nations seek to make it the case that those wanting protection cannot physically or legally get onto the territory to make a claim. That way, states can both vaunt their status as human rights defenders (“we support the Convention”) and nullify its effect in practice.
Today, ostensibly as a response to the “small boats” crisis, which has seen tens of thousands of people from countries such as Afghanistan and Iran arrive in the south of England after crossing the channel, the Conservative government has announced new plans to deter refugees. Those arriving will no longer be able to claim asylum in the UK, as the government will not try to find out whether they are refugees or not, they will be detained, and then they will be removed to their country of origin or to a third country (potentially breaching the non-refoulement provision of the Convention). The plan has been to send them to Rwanda, although because of legal challenges nobody has actually been sent and, anyway, Rwanda lacks the capacity. Even the plan to detain arrivals in the UK runs up against the problem that the UK lacks the accommodation to do so. In addition, people who cross in small boats are to be denied the possibility of ever settling in the UK or of securing citizenship. So as well as being a stain on the UK’s human rights record and a measure of great cruelty, the plans appear to be practically unworkable.
The government, echoed by the Labour opposition, blames “evil smuggling gangs” as the “root cause” of the small boats crisis. But, of course, the real root cause of the crisis are the measures the UK takes to evade its obligations under the Refugee Conventions, measures that make it necessary for anyone wanting to claim asylum on the territory to enter without the authorization of the UK government. People at risk of persecution, whether Iranian women protesting against the veil, or Afghan translators who worked with the British government, are not granted regular visas to hop on a flight, nor will they be able to get to the UK by road or rail. The UK has sealed these routes, making those who want to cross turn to the boats as a solution.
This has suited the UK government because it wants to weaponize asylum for domestic political reasons. The UK now has large numbers of people who have waited for years while their claims go unprocessed, all living on a pittance (around £5 a day) and, since COVID, crowded into hotels in large numbers, thereby providing a focus for local resentment and far-right campaigning, which demonizes victims of persecution as potential terrorists and sexual predators. The regularly televised arrivals of boats on the south coast also generate a sense of perma-crisis that fuels popular concern and resentment. This too has political value, unless it makes the government look weak and out of countrol, hence the latest tightening of the screw.
Of course the government and its media supporters claim that many who come are “bogus” and that “genuine refugees” would stop in the first country they passed through that was safe. But none of this survives scrutiny. The presence of people who are not refugees on boats does not detract from the rights of those who are, and the Home Office ends up accepting that most people from a range of countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea etc) are refugees. There is no obligation under the Convention for refugees just to stop and the first “safe” country, and people may have very good reasons to choose the UK as their destination, including historic links to the UK, family connections, or speaking English. Moreover, the Convention is not just about “safety” but about providing people whose citizenship has been rendered ineffective by persecution with a means to remake their lives as members of a new political community. The UK government seeks to thwart this. A shameful day.
As Sophia P. Sarantakos, Assistant Professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work,explains in this Twitter thread, "Over the past many months, a few of us from within professionalized social-change work have come together to create a platform that we all felt was sorely missing and needed within our profession and communities. — Read the rest
Ukraine's national postal service Ukrposhta has introduced a new "FCK PTN!" postage stamp created by mysterious artist/activist Banksy. The stamp commemorates the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We believe that the Ukrainian postage stamp "FCK PTN!" will also become prophetic," said Igor Smelyanskyi, Director General of Ukrposhta, said. — Read the rest
As January draws to a close, our favorite stories this week included a stirring critical essay, a paean to the world’s greatest boxed meal, a rethinking of psychedelics’ impact on the planet, a profile of a craftsperson at his peak, and an eye-opener about how humpback whales use air in some unexpected ways.
Ken Chen | n+1 | 11,542 words | January 25, 2023
After Corky Lee passed last year, the photographer and community organizer was memorialized in his hometown’s most conventionally prestigious outlets: The Times offered a sizable obituary, as did Hua Hsu in The New Yorker. This week, on the first anniversary of Lee’s death, Ken Chen rendered an altogether different kind of portrait in n+1. Much of the same biographical information is included, as are a number of Lee’s iconic photographs of Asian Americans in New York throughout the last six decades. Yet, when Chen writes about his encounters with Lee, and about the 14 photographs he selects to represent Lee’s work, the grief that suffuses his words isn’t solely about Lee, but about the many atrocities visited upon the Asian American community, up to and after Lee’s death. Chen’s critical acumen here is reason enough to read: “His images lack a charismatic subject,” he writes of Lee. “Those whom capital dismissed as surplus, he saw as beautiful. He commemorated the multitude, the striking waiters and seamstresses whose unruly abundance crowded away any beatific composition.” But he brings a similar understated poetry to the social conditions Lee’s work served to illuminate — and with violence against Asian American elders and others seemingly unending (including a horrifying recent attack in my own hometown), that juxtaposition makes Chen’s piece nearly as indelible as the images it contains. —PR
Ivana Rihter | Catapult | January 19, 2023 | 2,261 words
I only discovered Kraft dinners later in life after moving to North America revealed the cult of Kraft to me. A stable lurking in every cupboard; I admired the respect that something so impossibly orange had managed to garner. When Ivana Rihter finds KDs, though, they are much more; cooked for her by her baba, they are inextricably linked to her immigration story. She describes the process of boiling the pasta and adding the sauce with reverence, the memory mixed in with her love for her baba and appreciation for the economic hardships her family struggled through to start their new life. Her baba teaches her to put feta on top, and with this “secret little piece of the home country mixed in with all-American shelf-stable cheese” it remains a food for life, and — consistently sitting at about a dollar a box — one that carries on seeing her through hard times. I found this an unexpectedly beautiful essay, more about memory and belonging than cheesy pasta. Food can transport you back in time, especially if, as Rihter describes it, it “is soaked with memories of [an] origin story.” —CW
Amber X. Chen | Atmos | January 16, 2023 | 3,196 words
In this piece, Chen explores what the current psychedelic renaissance means for environmental activism, and how synthetic drugs like LSD and MDMA and psychoactive plants like ayahuasca and peyote can stir change within individuals — and ultimately galvanize social movements. This all sounds incredibly positive on the surface, but not everyone who dabbles in such mind-altering journeys is transformed for the better; psychedelics also fuel right-wing movements, too. (See: “QAnon Shaman.“) The decriminalization of psychedelics is a step toward making their therapeutic benefits accessible to more people, yes, but as Chen notes, it increases the threat of deforestation, and — with today’s psychedelic movement being largely white — it also takes power away from Indigenous people, who have harnessed the healing power of these sacred plants for thousands of years. (See also a Top 5 essay I picked last year: “The Gentrification of Consciousness.”) I appreciate Chen’s exploration here, and the questions posed that I haven’t stopped thinking about, like: “How broken is Western society that we think we need drugs in order to facilitate mass climate action?” —CLR
Elly Fishman | Chicago Magazine | January 17, 2023 | 4,177 words
Recently, in his late 60s, my dad decided to learn how to play the violin. I respect the choice to try the impossible, especially something as delicate and timeless as bowing a stringed instrument. (My parents’ cats, who endure the scratching out of notes from beneath the couch or bed, seem to have a different opinion.) After reading this lovely profile, I think perhaps my dad, a skilled carpenter, should also try apprenticing as a luthier. I, someone with zero skills at playing an instrument besides an egg shaker, who curses putting IKEA furniture together, was mesmerized by the descriptions of how John Becker, perhaps the best violin restorer on earth, practices his craft. Elly Fishman’s profile has a musical quality: It sweeps readers through chapters of Becker’s personal story and dwells in long, lyrical moments when, with the surest of hands, Becker repairs some of the most revered instruments on the planet — namely, Stradivari. There are just 650 of the violins left. What makes them so extraordinary? Musicians and scientists may puzzle over that question forever. In the meantime, Becker works — quietly, meticulously, instinctively. “We are caretakers of these instruments,” one of his clients tells him. “We move on, but these instruments continue to the next generation.” —SD
Doug Perrine | Hakai Magazine | December 20, 2022 | 1,500 words
It’s well known that many animals use tools to aid feeding and other tasks of life. Think: otters floating on their backs, cracking shells with rocks. You’d think it would be hard for whales to use tools, but as Doug Perrine reports at Hakai Magazine, humpbacks use what’s available to them — air and water — to form bubbles for a variety of activities. “I’m tempted to describe the air in a humpback’s lungs as a Swiss army knife because I’ve seen whales do so many different things with it,” he wrote. “It is not actually a tool collection though, but a storehouse of raw construction material with which the whale can fashion a variety of tools. Lacking free fingers and opposable thumbs, whales are unable to create and use tools in the same way as humans, but reveal their intelligence through the manner in which they utilize other body parts for tool production and use.” —KS
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The human fascination with psychedelics is nothing new. The earliest use of psychoactive plants dates back to 11,000 B.C. in Israel, with the brewing of beer, while some people theorize that the eating of magic mushrooms 20,000 years ago fostered the intellectual evolution of early humans (see: “stoned ape theory“). For Atmos, Amber X. Chen explores the current psychedelic renaissance’s effects on environmental activism, and how hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and psilocybin, and ancient plant medicine like ayahuasca, can stir change within individuals — and ultimately galvanize social movements.
It sounds incredibly positive on the surface, but not everyone who dabbles in such mind-altering journeys comes out the other side positively transformed. As research shows, psychedelics have enormous therapeutic potential, sure, but they also fuel right-wing movements, too (see: “‘QAnon Shaman“).
The use of psychoactive plants has its roots with Indigenous tribes, who’ve used them for healing and cultural practices for thousands of years. Before we push for the decriminalization of psychedelics and encourage their use to help stir climate activism, reports Chen, there are steps that need to be taken for these powerful, sacred plants to play a positive role in the environmental movement.
In a 2022 study that surveyed 240 people, mostly from Australia, the U.S., and the U.K., who had prior experience with psychedelics, researchers found more pro-environmental behaviors among participants who reported having had a previous mystical experience than those who had not. The researchers measured these behaviors based on a wide range of behaviors—anything from adopting a vegetarian diet and purchasing eco-friendly products to turning off your lights more regularly.
Before adding psychedelics to the climate action toolkit, we need to first plan for their conservation, prioritize Indigenous cultures, and place Indigenous peoples into leadership positions. This means respecting the wishes of Indigenous peoples: if a tribe or nation doesn’t want its plant medicines commercialized, we should not interfere. For those willing to share, we must not appropriate. Ultimately, we have to listen.
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