Tag: gender

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ideological culture judiciary litigation

Trouble with Definitions

Supreme Court, gender, sex, sports

Is it time to push for a complete wall of separation between Sports and State?

The First Amendment helped the United States — together and separately — protect religion from the ravages of regulation, taxation, suppression, and favoritism. Maybe it’s time to extend the concept. 

This came to mind as I skimmed through the transcript to a current case before the Supreme Court, Little v. Hecox (Docket No. 24 – 38), which involves a challenge to Idaho’s law restricting “transgender women and girls” from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.

I doubt the forthcoming ruling will get government out of sports generally, much less out of sports in public schools — which is what this is all about, Idaho’s law applying only to athletic teams sponsored by public educational institutions (or certain nonpublic ones competing against public ones), not to purely private teams. 

One lawyer for the respondents, Kathleen R. Hartnett, Esq., got stuck with the “tough” job. She was asked by Justice Alito if an understanding of what men and boys are, and what women and girls are, was relevant to the Equal Protection Clause. She said yes, but then confessed to lacking a definition of the sexes for the Court.

Then “how can a court determine that there’s discrimination on the basis of sex,” Alito inquired, “without knowing what sex means.… ?”

Her answer started out on a most unpromising note: “I think here we just know …” immediately pivoting to the statute’s applicability. Alito went on to challenge her on a key notion in trans ideology, that one becomes trans just by saying so.

I see a lot of people online chortling on the comedy of it all.

But I think here we just know it’s … seriously troublesome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Girls [sic] Sports Saved

The only thing that should have been required to save the T‑shirt? 

An apostrophe.

The T‑shirt boldly proclaimed “Save Girls* Sports.”

But matters were more complicated for students of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Riverside, California, who wore the shirts to protest their school’s decision to let a boy claiming to be a girl join the girls’ cross-​country team.

The school sent students wearing the shirt to detention, allegedly for violating the dress code. Two of the girls who wore it said that school administrators compared the wearing of it to wearing a T‑shirt with a swastika.

Those two students and their families sued the school and school district on constitutional grounds.

Maybe it was the lawsuit, or maybe it was the show of solidarity — but something caused MLK High to cave. And hundreds of other students did show up wearing the “Save Girls Sports” T‑shirt, willing to buck the dress code or thought code, whatever it is, to support their classmates.

Somehow the school failed to place these hundreds of students in detention and has apparently dropped the detention policy.

Students at other schools in the area had also started wearing the T‑shirts.

With regard to the policy of letting boys play on girls’ sports teams, the Riverside Unified School District says that its hands are tied. “RUSD is bound to follow California law,” which requires letting students “participate in sex-​segregated” activities in a way “consistent with his or her gender identity.”

Laws are meant to be changed, however, if not through California’s legislature, then through the state’s citizen initiative process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * We leave the [sic] for the title.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Library Against Liberty

library, Moms for Liberty, gender

In order to conduct a forum “on Fair and Safe Sport for Girls,” Moms for Liberty reserved and paid for a room at a library.

Then, the librarians ambushed them.

Yolo County Public Library Regional Manager Scott Love “invited disruptive protesters” to the August 2023 forum and then shut it down as soon as it started. He disagreed with Moms for Liberty that men who demand the right to participate in women’s sports are men. So the matter couldn’t even be discussed. Not in the library’s reserved and paid-​for meeting room.

With the help of the Institute for Free Speech and Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty sued, arguing that Yolo County Library had acted unconstitutionally.

According to the complaint, “Defendants are not required to agree with Plaintiffs’ views about protecting women’s sports. The First Amendment, however, requires that Defendants allow Plaintiffs to speak freely about the integrity of female athletics in library meeting rooms. It demands public library officials not enable — let alone participate in  — the disruption and cancellation of Plaintiffs’ events on account of their viewpoints.

“The Court should hold Defendants accountable for the damage they caused in censoring Plaintiffs’ event and ensure that such censorship never happens again.”

The library has now settled, revising its policies to (we hope) protect the freedom of speech of patrons who use its meeting rooms. It must also pay plaintiffs $70,000 in damages and legal costs.

Sadly, those funds come from taxpayers. Seems Mr. Love should pay a price.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom regulation

There Ought Not Be a Law

toys, gender neutral, regulations, authoritarianism

Not everything that we dislike should be illegal. Not everything that we like or want should be made mandatory. 

To most of us, this is common sense. 

We lack the totalitarian impulse.

But every day, otherwise-​inclined people, including lawmakers, notice another aspect of our lives that they decide must no longer be free. If they can’t fix our bad thinking — by sending us to reeducation camps for summary brainwashing — they can at least regiment our conduct.

The latest victims of this totalitarian impulse are owners of big stores that sell toys. Often, toys for boys are in one section, toys for girls in another. Barbie dolls are not on the same shelf as firetrucks and water pistols.

It’s a great hardship — supposedly — for a little girl who likes fire trucks or a little boy who likes Barbie dolls to cross the aisle to the opposite-​gender toy section.

Enacted in 2021 and taking effect in 2024, California’s new law says that “keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the product and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.”

So the new law compels stores with at least 500 employees to “maintain a gender-​neutral section” that is so labeled. First violation, $250 fine. Further violations, up to $500.

There ought to be a law making such laws illegal. 

A constitution, maybe? 

Meantime, the affected stores should sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Happier in the Moment?

gender affirming care

When I express worry about children and teens being put through what we used to call “sex change” procedures, the push-​back often runs like this: 

  • this is not happening; 
  • you’re falling for a “moral panic”; 
  • stop listening to right-​wing propaganda!

But consult this video.

One interviewee who performs sex-​change surgery discusses the “informed consent” of 14-​year-​olds. This doctor acknowledges that many children who agree to puberty blockers and surgery — changing their bodies irreversibly — end up regretting it.

“We talk about it [with the kids] but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about it in a serious way. That’s always bothered me,” he says. “But you know, we still want the kids to be happy. Happier in the moment, right?”

“It’s everything you have been told doesn’t happen,” says my friend David Strom in his report on the Project Veritas investigation (“Undercover video: puberty blockers at 8, surgery as young as 10 in New York”).

“It happens,” David writes. “Watch the doctors who do it explain that they do and that they are eager to do it to even pre-​adolescent children. Even admitting that the ‘science isn’t really settled,’ but hey, we’ll do it if you want.”

We don’t let kids do everything that adults may do because we know that it takes time for human beings to mature. Adults, too, may regret having undergone hormone blocking and genital surgery. But adults have the best chance, a real chance, to decide responsibly.

Peer-​pressured, doctor-​pressured, even legislature-​pressured, and perhaps very confused 14-​year-​olds, 12-​year-​olds, 10-​year-​olds … and 8‑year-​olds … don’t have the same chance to make an adult decision.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling

Suspended for Dissent

SUNY, university, PC, political correctness

Don’t state the “wrong” opinion while studying at SUNY-Geneseo.

That is, if you want smoothly to sail through your academic career.

Owen Stevens violated the school’s “inclusivity” creed, according to which “a diverse campus community [is] marked by mutual respect for the unique talents and contributions of each individual.”

Would-​be future teachers like Stevens, the university contends, must respect “all forms” of gender identity. But he has argued publicly that there are only two sexes or genders (male, female).

“A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man,” said Stevens in one un-​inclusive Instagram video. “The biology is clear.”

So, faster than we have time to remember that “academic freedom” was once a hallowed standard of university conduct, he was suspended from the field teaching programs that are a requirement for all education students at the school. Stevens has refused to cooperate with the school’s plan to rehabilitate him.

The toleration and respect promoted by SUNY-​Geneseo apparently does not include tolerating and respecting the right of others to express opinions about politics, society, and biology with which a university censor might disagree.

Of course, what constitutes “official” acceptable doctrine keeps changing. One can never know which once obviously untenable claims — about biology or anything else — will suddenly be upgraded to sacred dogma by persons with the power to penalize disagreement.

Regardless of one’s views of transgender contentions, though, Americans should judge a policy of forcing people to salute certain government- (or administrator-) approved conclusions intolerable.

It’s the school administrators responsible for suspending Stevens who should be suspended — or fired — for their conduct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Seventh Time’s the Charm?

Gender, neutral, term limits, Memphis, City Council,

“You have to give the public something,” explained termed-​out former Councilperson Emily Evans, a few years ago. She was referring to a 2015 initiative she had pushed. The unsuccessful measure had tempted voters with a smaller council in exchange for weakened term limits.

On Tuesday’s ballot, voters find lame attempt number seven by Metro Nashville Council’s to weaken or repeal their own term limits. As I told readers of the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, that makes for a council-​forced do-​over on term limits every 3.4 years for the last 24 years — since 1994, when greater than 76 percent of Nashville-​Davidson County voters passed a consecutive two-​term limit on councilmembers.

Voters have repeatedly said no to the council. 

But this time there is a twist, an incredibly enticing enticement having been carefully coupled with the undercutting of term limits. Only totally sexist male Nashvillian Neanderthals could possibly ignore this special offer. (And perhaps, too, the poor women they purportedly tell how to vote.)

Amendment 5 not only guts term limits, it also installs much-​needed gender neutral language into the term limits section of the charter. In practical terms, it changes wording from “councilmen” to “councilmembers.”

How to choose? 

Keep term limits by voting NO? Or accept weak limits but fasten onto the freedom to stand on your own two feet and proudly say, “councilmember”? 

I tremble at the tendered trade-off.

Turns out, luckily, that Nashville voters can keep their term limits and use gender neutral terms too. The following ballot measure, Amendment 6, updates the entire charter with gender-​neutral language. 

NO on Amendment 5, YES on Amendment 6.

Whew! 

That was close.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people

Gender Offender

Elizabeth Warren, wage gap, gender, gap, hypocrisy, sexism

Tuesday, April 4, was Equal Pay Day. It’s the day 20 percent into the year some use to mark the supposed fact that women earn 79.6 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

This “gender pay gap” is concocted by taking the median pay for all men working 35 hours a week or more and comparing it to the median pay for all women working 35 hours or more — without regard to the actual number of hours worked* or occupation chosen.

It’s a ridiculously phony statistic. I know that; you probably do, too. But does Sen. Elizabeth Warren?

“The game is rigged against women and families, and it has to stop,” the Massachusetts Senator proclaimed on last year’s Equal Pay Day. “It is 2016, not 1916, and it’s long past time to eliminate gender discrimination in the workplace.”

Gender discrimination. That’s bad, no? Sen. Warren fervently argued that the “gap” is the result of evil, insidious sexism. 

The money-​grubbing misogynists perpetrating this crime against women certainly deserve to be called out and held accountable!

Thank goodness, the folks over at The Washington Free Beacon did just that. Using public records, the Free Beacon found a U.S. Senator exacerbating the problem with an even bigger gender pay gap — women making a mere 71 cents on every man’s dollar. This Senator has hired five men at six-​figure salaries, who make more than all the women employees, with only one woman besting the $100,000 mark.

That Senator? Elizabeth Warren.

On Tuesday, each of her 15 female Democratic colleagues took to the Senate floor to jaw about “equal pay.” But not Warren.**

Not even a tweet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Men, on average, work more. The “gap” also ignores work history, and similar factors that have more direct bearing on the choices of women than the discrimination of employers.

** It is worth noting that Snopes​.com “debunked” the Free Beacon’s charge using the same arguments economists and others have used to debunk the “gender wage gap” itself — without acknowledging the ominous parallels.

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ideological culture individual achievement national politics & policies

Ditch Your Male Doctor

woman, female, doctor, gender, medicine, illsutration

It’s the Christmas season, so wait to do this until the New Year, but … be sure to fire your male doctor.

He’s a quack.

At least, that seems to be the gist of James Hamblin’s “Evidence of the Superiority of Female Doctors,” a report in The Atlantic on a new Harvard School of Public Health study.

“Patients cared for by female physicians,” Hamblin writes, “had lower 30-​day mortality than did patients treated by male physicians.” The rate for female physicians was 11.07 percent and for males 11.49 percent.

Though a “modest” difference, it’s still “clinically meaningful.”

The study (conducted by an all-​male team) tracked more than 1.5 million Medicare patients treated by nearly 60,000 general internists.

“If male physicians were as adept as females, some 32,000 fewer Americans would die every year — among Medicare patients alone,” concludes Hamblin. “[T]hese numbers may be what it takes to spur equal (or better) compensation and opportunity for female physicians.”

NBC News played the equal pay angle as well: “Many hope the new study pushes hospitals to promote and pay women equally.”

Still, in a poignant moment of concern for the lesser sex, correspondent Kristen Dahlgren advised, “Maybe not a reason to ditch your male doctor, but there might be lessons to learn from his female colleagues.”

Indeed, the study explained that “physician sex by itself does not determine patient outcomes,” arguing instead that “differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians” must be investigated.

Smart.

The other thing, of course, is that every doctor, male or female, is an individual — not merely an XX- or XY-​chromosome carbon copy.

Sex isn’t everything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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woman, female, doctor, gender, medicine, illsutration

 

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education and schooling folly ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Toiletarianism

toilet, bathroom, trans, transgender, sex, gender, law, folly

President Obama and other politicians are taking a wide stance over the nation’s public restrooms. Important bathroom policy will finally be determined at the highest levels.

Last week, public educators nationwide received a legalistically-​worded letter from the Departments of Justice and Education explaining how to legally treat transgender students under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. CNN boiled it down to “Fall in line or face loss of federal funding.”

Friendly federal “guidance” comes after dueling lawsuits between the Feds and North Carolina over that state’s House Bill 2, which establishes statewide restroom regulations. Those regs require that transgender folks use the bathroom appropriate to the sex listed on their birth certificate (whether Kenyan, Canadian or other).

Obama wants Americans to choose the restroom matching their self-​chosen “gender identity.” Conservatives seem most worried that his policy is so loosely defined as to allow non-​transgender male persons to simply claim to be transgender in order to shower with the girls volley-​ball team or lurk in the powder room.

“Have we gone stark raving nuts?” questioned Sen. Ted Cruz, proclaiming: “Grown adult men, strangers, should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls.”

In California, there’s legislation to force businesses to make “all single-​stall public restrooms” gender neutral. “Let’s make a clear statement that, if you want to go pee, by all means help yourself,” argued the proposal’s author.

Transgender people should be treated with care and respect, as should every person. But do we really need a national bathroom policy designed for maximum division in an election year?

Before politicians solve today’s glaring non-​problem in public restrooms, they should solve a real problem first.

Just one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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toilet, bathroom, trans, transgender, sex, gender, law, folly