Gillette: The Worst a Man Can Get

frontpagemag
Mark Tapson, Jan 19, 2019


Has the Marxist assault on masculinity pushed men too far?
So far, 2019 seems to be establishing itself as a year in which the cultural Marxists are intensifying their war on traditional masculinity. But it may turn out to be the year in which the misandrist tide begins to turn.

In just the last week, the American Psychological Association (APA) caused a stir by declaring traditional masculinity – “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” – to be a “harmful” mental disorder. Then People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), sharing online a grotesquely suggestive video declaring that “Traditional masculinity is dead,” suggested that we “cure toxic masculinity by going vegan.” In another example, the New York Times posted a piece last Friday praising “The New Angry Young Men: Rockers Who Rail Against ‘Toxic Masculinity’” with songs that “protest old notions of manhood.” The article concludes with one singer declaring, “Toxic masculinity is real.”

It is not real. Toxicity is not an inherent feature of masculinity, just as “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” are not inherently bad – far from it, in fact. Without those propulsive masculine qualities, which the APA deems harmful, humankind would never have elevated itself from cave to civilization. Unfortunately, the term “toxic masculinity” has become deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness now and is being conflated intentionally with traditional masculinity. That’s because the endgame of the totalitarians pushing this concept is to emasculate Western civilization in order to erect a collectivist utopia in its stead.

But the most controversial assault on masculinity in the last week was razor company Gillette’s release of a two-minute promotional video called “We Believe: the Best Men Can Be.” It immediately went viral with well over 19 million views (as of this writing) and spurred a massive backlash. Down-votes on YouTube were originally running at a 10-to-1 ratio over up-votes (that gap narrowed quickly and suspiciously to a 2-to-1 ratio). “Bullying… the Me Too movement against sexual harassment… masculinity,” the voiceover begins, clearly linking all three and depicting various examples of ugly behavior on the part of (almost exclusively Caucasian) boys and men. “We believe in the best in men,” the voiceover intones unconvincingly, after shaming men collectively for the worst in men. “To say the right thing, to act the right way. Some already are, in ways big and small. But some is not enough. Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.”







Encouraging men to aspire to their best character is actually an admirable message. Men should strive to be the best husbands, fathers, sons, the best men they can be. Bullying and sexual harassment (neither of which is exclusive to men, by the way) are unacceptable. But consider the context in which this ad appeared: the aforementioned APA report labeling traditional masculinity harmful; the ongoing demonization of men via the out-of-control #MeToo movement; the relentless messaging that masculinity is an outmoded cliché, something that must be discarded for us to evolve; and behind all this, literally decades of vicious browbeating from feminists whose goal is not equality but the eradication of masculinity. Then along comes this virtue-signaling Gillette ad stating that only “some” men are decent and the rest are pigs.

For many, that may have been the last straw. Social media swarmed with men (and supportive women) swearing off Gillette products. Op-eds defending masculinity, and denouncing the ad as ill-advised at best, abounded.

A PR expert quoted at The Guardian (a publication which devotes a significant amount of space to bashing norms of masculinity) praised the ad and said, “It is no longer enough for brands to simply sell a product. Customers are demanding that they have a purpose – that they stand for something. Masculinity is a huge part of Gillette’s brand, and there is a recognition in this ad that the new generation is reworking that concept of masculinity, and it is no longer the cliché it once was.”

Some have put forth the argument that Gillette, whose tagline used to be “The Best a Man Can Get,” was making not a political statement but simply a calculated marketing move for publicity, much like Nike did last year by making the cop-hating Communist Colin Kaepernick the face of a highly controversial “Just Do It” campaign. That argument falls apart in light of the fact that the creator of the Gillette video is “philosophically unpleasant” feminist Kim Gehrig, of the UK-based production agency Somesuch. Gehrig was behind an ad campaign for Sport England called “This Girl Can” and “Viva La Vulva,” an ad for a Swedish feminine hygiene brand “which boldly challenged the stigmas around women’s periods,” according to AdWeek. The ragingly misandrist Jezebel website reported that Gehrig sent an email to CNBC which read, “At the end of the day, sparking conversation is what matters. This gets people to pay attention to the topic and encourages them to consider taking action to make a difference.”

So presumably the motive for the Gillette ad was more activism than profit, although of course the company hoped to score the same net boost in customers that Nike’s Kaepernick ad did. As The Intelligencer points out, however, the difference between that ad and Gillette’s is that the former “is uplifting rather than accusatory.” By contrast, the Gillette ad is a “downer.” (For a more uplifting, sympathetic take on masculinity, check out this video response to the Gillette ad from Egard Watches.)

Of course, the Left embraced the ad (imagine their apoplectic outrage if an ad campaign dared to address “toxic femininity”). One male Twitter user remarked that “if your masculinity is THAT threatened by an ad that says we should be nicer then you're doing masculinity wrong.” This is way off the mark. Men weren’t threatened by the ad; they were insulted by it. It sparked widespread anger because men are fed up with being demonized. They are fed up with having masculinity equated with bullying and sexual harassment. They are fed up with being told that their very nature is poisonous and that redefining masculinity means acting like stereotypical women. Countless good men who are quietly leading lives as protectors and providers and role models and unacknowledged heroes are fed up with the cultural insistence that masculinity is a dire problem instead of a dynamic life force.

The pushback against the Gillette ad and the APA report are evidence that the Marxist assault on Western masculinity is finally beginning to be met with resistance. Men and the women who love traditional masculinity (i.e., the majority of them) are getting mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.



Thank You FPM and Mr Tapson.

Trump v Deep State, Toon

Teacher Says Pupils Being ‘Tricked’ Into Thinking They’re Wrong Sex At School With 17 Children Changing Gender

weaselzippers

Nov 19, 2018


Yikes.
Via Daily Mail:

An astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Most of the youngsters undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a teacher there, who said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being ‘tricked’ into believing they are the wrong sex.

The whistleblower says few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria – the medical term for someone who feels they were born in the wrong body – but are just easily influenced, latching on to the mistaken belief they are the wrong sex as a way of coping with the problems caused by autism.

Earlier this year, The Mail on Sunday revealed that a third of youngsters referred to the NHS’s only gender identity clinic for children showed ‘moderate to severe autistic traits’.

Keep reading…


Thank You Nick and WZ.

Alarming Study Finds 50% of Biological Female Trans Adolescents Have Attempted Suicide in Past Year

Let's hear it for the Mental Health set. Your tax dollars hard at work.

CNSNews
Kelsey Harkness | September 14, 2018 | 9:26 AM EDT

One in every two transgender adolescents who are born female but identify as male has attempted suicide in the past year, according to a new study.

The study, “Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior,” was published in Pediatrics, the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

It raises serious questions about how families, schools, doctors, government, and the media should grapple with the increasing number of children and teens who self-identify as transgender.

In addition to the alarmingly high rate of suicide attempts among transgender boys, the study reported an attempted-suicide rate of over 40 percent for adolescents who identify as gender nonconforming (neither exclusively male or female) and nearly 30 percent for transgender girls (children and teens who were born male but identify as female).

Researchers said they did not find any evidence that transgender youth of color were at a higher risk compared with white transgender adolescents. Higher levels of education among parents and geographical location—urban or rural—did not have a significant effect on suicide attempts.

To arrive at the results, three researchers from the University of Arizona analyzed a survey filled out by more than 120,000 young Americans between the ages of 11 and 19.

By comparison, they found that 14 percent of all teenagers had attempted suicide at least once.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults ages 10 to 34 in the U.S.

The study’s leading author, Russell B. Toomey, focuses his work on youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or what they call queer—meaning that any attempts to discredit the research as “anti-LGBTQ” will likely fall flat.

Toomey describes his research in his bio:


“Largely, my research has examined these relationships with explicit attention to the minority-specific stressors of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination that contribute to the disparate rates of negative outcomes experienced by sexual and gender diverse adolescents and Latinx youth, and the protective factors (e.g., family support, acceptance) that buffer these associations.”

“Latinx” is a gender-neutral term that some use instead of Latino or Latina.

The new study comes on the heels of another alarming and controversial one examining the contagious nature of transgender ideology.

That study, published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One by Brown University’s Lisa Littman, looked at “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”—that is, gender dysphoria not present in early youth but that manifested within days or weeks in teens and young adults.

Littman found that exposure to peers who identified as transgender and transgender-positive content online may contribute to development of this rapid-onset gender dysphoria.

Within days, Brown University pulled down an article promoting Littman’s study. The university said it removed the article in order to conduct an academic review, but it’s clear the decision had more to do with political correctness and uncomfortable results.

Unlike “Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior,” Littman’s study wasn’t peer-reviewed. Littman herself concluded that her study “raises questions for more research.”

“One of the main conclusions is that more research needs to be done,” she said.

The study by Toomey and fellow University of Arizona researchers Amy K. Syvertsen and Maura Shramko provides further evidence that research institutions should encourage more studies in this area—not shut them down. At this point, we don’t just know that lives are at stake—we know how many lives are at stake.

And those numbers deserve repeating: One in two biological girls who identify as boys tried to kill themselves in the past year. Two in five gender-nonconforming adolescents tried to kill themselves. And three in 10 biological boys who identify as girls tried to kill themselves.

In discussing these results, Toomey described an “urgent need to understand why transgender, female to male, and nonbinary adolescents report engaging in suicide behavior at higher levels than other adolescent transgender populations.”

He’s right. But that’s just the first of many questions this study begs to be answered.

There’s no excuse. You can’t be an ally of the transgender movement and reject this research. You can challenge it. You can debate it. You can encourage more of it. But you can’t suppress it.

Doing so is harmful to the cause you claim to defend.

Every day, more and more children and teens are identifying as transgender. That’s a fact that The Atlantic captured well:


“In June 2016, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated that 1.4 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender, a near-doubling of an estimate from about a decade earlier. As of 2017, according to the institute, about 150,000 teenagers ages 13 to 17 identified as trans. The number of young people seeking clinical services appears to be growing as well. A major clinic in the United Kingdom saw a more than 300 percent increase in new referrals over the past three years.”

With more teens identifying as transgender, and attempted-suicide rates for this group between 30 and 51 percent, this has become a national epidemic. The time for political correctness has passed.

Families, schools, doctors, government, and the media have an obligation to figure out how to differentiate between celebrating differences and encouraging dangerous behavior. Because if being transgender poses such a grave risk to adolescent lives, it’s hard to understand why any sane society would embrace the trend.

Kelsey Harkness is a senior news producer at The Daily Signal and co-host of "Problematic Women," a podcast and Facebook Live show. Send an email to Kelsey.


Thank You Ms Harkness and CNS.

Democratic Socialist Ocasio-Cortez Bans Media From Town Hall Events

CNSNews

Natalia Mittelstadt | August 17, 2018 | 5:02 PM EDT

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old Democrat congressional candidate for New York’s 14th district, banned the media from her “listening tour” events at Corona on Sunday and the Bronx last Wednesday, according to Queens Chronicle.

The press ban came after a Bronx community meeting Ocasio-Cortez had last Tuesday with healthcare activist Ady Barkan. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager, Virginia Ramos Rios, said that they were “mobbed” by reporters, “even though we said no Q&A and no one-on-one [interviews].”

“We wanted to help create a space where community members felt comfortable and open to express themselves without the distraction of cameras and press. These were the first set of events where the press has been excluded,” said Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign spokesman, Corbin Trent. “This is an outlier and will not be the norm. We’re still adjusting our logistics to fit Alexandria’s national profile.”

According to Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter, the “listening tour” events are “intended for lively, compassionate discourse with a diversity of viewpoints.” 


 
She tweeted that, at the Corona event, she and the attendees “talked about race, immigration, healthcare, disability rights and housing.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who says she is a Democratic Socialist, supports, among other things, Medicare for All, a Federal Jobs Guarantee, Abolish ICE, Support LGBTQIA+, Gun Control, a Peace Economy, End Private Prisons, and Mobilizing Against Climate Change.


Thank You Ms Middlestadt and CNS. 

PC, Redefining FOS: Monty Python Attacked For Being 'Too White'

dailywire
Paul Bois

"I'm a BLT, a black lesbian in transition"

The beloved "Monty Python" franchise has been attacked for being "too white," prompting one of its top stars — Terry Gilliam — to say some outlandish stuff in defense.

Recently, the BBC's Head of Comedy Shane Allen criticized the classic comedy troupe "Monty Python" for being too white, male, and middle class.

"If you're going to assemble a team now it's not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes," Allen said in June. "It's going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world."
"And I think we've heard the metropolitan, educated experience," he continued. "I think it’s about how original a voice you have over what school you went to."

At the time, "Monty Python" star John Cleese (not one for political correctness) immediately leaped to the franchise's defense on Twitter:

BBC's Head of Comedy puts Monty Python's lack of originality down to a surfeit of education and racist bias
Unfair ! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME
We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 20, 2018

Speaking at the Karlovy Vary film festival in the Czech Republic, Terry Gilliam pumped his troll factor to 11 when he lampooned the politically-correct backlash by declaring himself a "black lesbian."
"It made me cry: the idea that … no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show," said Gilliam. "Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented … this is bullsh*t. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian. … My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition."

"[Allen’s] statement made me so angry, all of us so angry," he said. "Comedy is not assembled, it’s not like putting together a boy band where you put together one of this, one of that everyone is represented."

Read More: Political Correctness Race

Thank You Monty Python and the Daily Wire. 

We're Damaging Kids With Sex Hormones And Genital Surgery To Placate Radical Transgender Ideology

dailycaller
jane robbins 7/5/18

It has become clear that radical activists care less about the health and welfare of children suffering from gender dysphoria (“transgender” children) than about advancing their own political movement.

Case in point: the response to a lengthy piece in The Atlantic about the supposed benefits and potential pitfalls of various treatments for transgender children. Author Jesse Singal sympathetically treated the plight of the children and families he interviewed. He even gave unwarranted credence to political groups masquerading as scientific organizations, such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH (non-physicians and non-scientists are welcome to join WPATH).

But radical activists were outraged at the article. Singal’s sin, in their eyes, was daring to acknowledge that 1) gender dysphoria may be caused by psychological disturbances and influenced by factors such as peer pressure and the Internet; 2) dysphoric children therefore need counseling before, or in some cases rather than, medical treatment such as hormones and surgery; and 3) some dysphoric individuals who undergo medical “transitioning” later regret it and revert to living as their biological sex.

Singal didn’t interview physicians who are brave enough to dispute the entire concept of “gender fluidity” and being “trapped in the wrong body.” Pediatric endocrinologist Quentin Van Meter, for example, bluntly says there is “zero point zero zero” scientific evidence for any of that. But even Singal’s nibbling at the margins of skepticism was too much for the radicals.

In responses replete with obscenities and vulgarities, trans activists dismissed acknowledgement of any shades of gray in gender dysphoria as hateful, bigoted, and intolerable. Consider the case Singal described of a teenager who decided she wasn’t transgender after all and so came to accept her biological sex. While people of normal disposition would consider this a happy ending – she made peace with reality, fortunately before undergoing life-altering and irreversible medical interventions – a trans commentator labeled the case “an all-too-familiar horror story.”

A horror story for whom, exactly? Certainly not for the girl, who was spared a lifetime of warring with her own body. Nor for her family, who dodged years of anguish. The only people horrified by this outcome are activists who pursue their genderless utopia at all costs, and who consider any child who slips through the net as a lost opportunity.

But radicals object even to psychological therapy before a child undergoes hormones or the scalpel. Any exploration of underlying issues must be rejected as a delaying tactic that increases the child’s current stress. And if that therapy actually works – if it resolves the problem(s) that created the gender confusion – not only is that result of no importance, but it’s a bad outcome. A horror story.

Singal interviewed some clinicians, such as psychologist Laura Edwards-Leeper, who accept the possibility of “transitioning” but temper their enthusiasm with the realization that it’s not appropriate for every dysphoric child, and that thorough mental-health assessment should precede any medical intervention. Surely every medical professional would agree with this.

But not Dr. Johanna Olson of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. We wrote recently about her participation in slanted, federally funded research into treating gender dysphoria. Olson, who serves as medical director for the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, advocates providing medical intervention if children ask for it, and her views cast doubt on the appropriateness of her selection to conduct supposedly objective research.

What she said to Singal confirms this concern. Her statements about how to treat gender-dysphoric children were startling, and for a physician, borderline reckless.

“[Olson] believes,” Singal writes, “that therapy can be helpful for many TGNC young people, but she opposes mandating mental-health assessments for all kids seeking to transition. As she put it when we talked, ‘I don’t send someone to a therapist when I’m going to start them on insulin.’”

One needn’t be a physician to understand how inapposite this analogy is. Juvenile diabetes is a medical condition clearly diagnosed by laboratory testing and treated by insulin. But there is absolutely no diagnostic certainty about which gender-dysphoric child will grow up to be trans-identifying. Therefore, up to 80 to 95 percent of these children will be misdiagnosed and irreversibly damaged by puberty blockers, high-dose cross-sex hormones, and genital surgery.

Olson’s attitude, which according to endocrinologist Van Meter is common among so-called medical professionals who specialize in these issues, demonstrates that political extremism has replaced professional judgment. Van Meter believes these practitioners will pay the price years from now, when the now-grown children flock to the courthouse. But whatever financial settlement they receive won’t compensate for their ruined lives.

Even physicians are being corrupted by political madness. That has happened before, in other countries. May we sober up before repeating that experience.

Jane Robbins is a senior fellow at American Principles Project.



Thank You Ms Robbins and the DC.

SCOTUS Rules Overwhelmingly In Favor of Colorado Cake Baker In Wedding Cake Case

townhall

Katie Pavlich

Posted: Jun 04, 2018 10:22 AM

The Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 in favor of Colorado baker and devout Christian Jack Phillips, who declined to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple five years ago due to deeply held religious objections. Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Breyer, Kagan, Gorsuch and Thomas ruled in favor of Phillips, with Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion.

"The Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious  viewpoint," the ruling states. "The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices."

"The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression," the ruling continues. "To Phillips, his claim that using his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation, has a  significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs."  

In Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Supreme Court holds that Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated baker's rights under the free exercise clause

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 4, 2018

Oral arguments in the case were made in December and Phillips was backed by the Department of Justice. 

The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he doesn't create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would violate his religious beliefs.

The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe.

"Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the brief.

Many legal scholars are saying the ruling doesn't necessarily protect individuals on religious grounds from being forced to participate in same-sex marriages overall. They argue the Justices focused on the Commission's particular bias toward Phillips and the unequal application of Colorado anti-discrimmination laws against him, not strictly the issue of religious expression. Parts of Justice Kennedy's opinion backs up this analysis. 

"The commissioner  even  went  so  far  as  to  compare  Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of  slavery  and  the  Holocaust.    This  sentiment  is  inappropriate  for  a  Commission  charged  with   the  solemn  responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation," Kennedy wrote. "The  Court  cannot  avoid  the  conclusion  that  these  statements  cast  doubt  on  the  fairness  and  impartiality  of  the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case."

"Colorado can treat a baker who discriminates based on sexual orientation differently from a baker who does not discriminate on that or any other prohibited ground.  But only, as the Court rightly says, if the State’s decisions are not infected by religious hostility or bias," Kennedy continued. 

Shorter Masterpiece Cakeshop:

States can still punish wedding vendors who do not want to participate in same-sex weddings, but they cannot be overtly hostile to religion while they do it.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) June 4, 2018

Masterpiece Cakeshop decision leaves open the possibility that anti-discrimination law, neutrally applied, could require bakers and others to provide services for weddings or other events to which they have religious objections. https://t.co/yNkQjhKPeI

— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) June 4, 2018

This story has been updated with additional information. 

Thank You Ms Pavlich and Townhall.

Mark Dice: Not Mother's Day Too!

Re-Educate Yourself Comrade! The 'Greater Good' Demands It!

Study That Said Hate Cuts 12 Years Off Gay Lives Fails To Replicate

Well Here's a surprise. Said no one. 

Welcome to the Behavioral Sciences where human emotions are life endangering Lethal Weapons. So Shut Up, you Hater You. Swallow the Therapeutic bait and switch double talk, re-educate yourself, take the pills, get sick and die, because it's Mentally Healthy for you and the Greater, Collectivist Good.

retraction watch

A highly cited paper has received a major correction as a result of the ongoing battle over attitudes towards gay people, when a prominent — and polarizing — critic showed it could not be replicated.  
In December 2017, researchers led by Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University corrected the paper, originally published in Social Science & Medicine in February 2014, which showed that gay people who live in areas where people were highly prejudiced against them had a significantly shorter life expectancy. The corrigendum came more than a year after a researcher who has testified against same-sex marriage was unable to replicate the original study.
“Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations,” has been cited 102 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, and attracted media coverage when it was published, from outlets such as Reuters and U.S. News & World Report.

In November 2016, polarizing researcher Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas at Austin published the results of his (failed) attempt to replicate the study. After Regnerus’s study, Hatzenbuehler hired a colleague at Columbia, Katherine Keyes, to try to replicate the findings as well. She found a variable coding error. Hatzenbuehler requested a correction — although it’s not clear when [See update below]– in September 2017, despite the fact that the error nullified the main findings. The journal agreed to simply correct (not retract) the paper, and issued the notice Dec. 11, 2017.
We asked Social Science & Medicine why it agreed to a correction, given that the paper’s main finding was no longer valid. The journal’s Editors-in-Chief Ichiro Kawachi and S.V. Subramanian, both of Harvard University, told Retraction Watch the authors claim they can support their original findings with additional data, which they are preparing as a new submission:

If the findings do not stand up to peer review, we will proceed to retract the original paper. But in the meantime, we asked the authors to issue the Correction.

When we contacted Hatzenbuehler, we received a response from a spokesperson for Columbia, who confirmed the authors are preparing a re-analysis of the paper that will be submitted “in the coming months.”
Needless to say, the notice has a lot of backstory.
Regnerus has been accused of harboring anti-gay bias. What’s more, several researchers have said they’ve identified problems in Regnerus’s own research results. In 2012, 200 researchers wrote a letter to the editor of Social Science Research criticizing a paper Regnerus had published that year. In addition to questioning the review process that led to that paper, the critics wrote:

The methodologies used in this paper and the interpretation of the findings are inappropriate.

Despite the fact that Regnerus’s critique of the 2014 paper was ultimately proven correct, Nathaniel Frank, a lawyer who runs the What We Know project, a catalog of research related to LGBT issues housed at Columbia Law School, told Retraction Watch:

…Mark Regnerus destroyed his scholarly credibility when, as revealed in federal court proceedings, he allowed his ideological beliefs to drive his conclusions and sought to obscure the truth about how he conducted his own work. There’s an enormous body of research showing the harms of minority stress, and Regnerus is simply not a trustworthy critic of this research.

In September 2017, a year after Regnerus published the results of his failed replication study, he mentioned the debate over the Hatzenbuehler paper in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, submitted in support of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. The brief said:

Ironically, both the Hatzenbuehler study and the study documenting its inability to be replicated are published in the same academic journal—even though both cannot be correct. This reinforces impressions of disarray in this new and politicized field of research.

Regnerus denied that his replication study was an attempt to influence the battle over attitudes towards gay people. He told Retraction Watch:

There are parties i’ve worked with who think ahead down the line, but I do not. I’m a social scientist who loves to mess with data.

Regnerus said he didn’t come across the Hatzenbuehler study until the summer of 2015, more than a year after it first appeared in February 2014. He said replicating studies is “not usually something I do,” however, he said he also tried to replicate a different study from Hatzenbuehler published a month prior, in January 2014, that used the same dataset. Regnerus claims he found a coding mistake in that paper as well, which his research assistant communicated to Hatzenbuehler.
Regnerus told us the February 2014 study caught his eye because:

I just didn’t believe there could be a 12 year loss of lifespan because of the attitudes of one’s neighbors… It didn’t seem valid in my mind. If smoking knocks a decade off your life, how could anti-gay attitudes of people you don’t know be more harmful than something you would do to yourself?

Regnerus’s 2016 replication paper itself was picked up by the New York Post and by conservative publications, including the National Review.
Regnerus said that he never zeroed in on the particular coding error discovered by the second replication attempt:

It was always in my head that someone made a coding mistake…

Stanford University Professor John Ioannidis, who has studied reproducibility but was not involved in either replication attempt — and who Regnerus cited in his Supreme Court brief — told us:

I suspect [coding errors are] a common problem, but it is rare for authors to go back and recheck what they did. A failed replication may be an incentive to go back and recheck the data and the analysis code, so this is one extra benefit from replication attempts.

Update, UTC 21:00, 2/1/2018: A spokesperson for the journal told us that on Sept. 28, 2017:

Hatzenbuehler contacted us to say he had hired a research group to replicate his 2014 findings and as a result of their findings wanted to publish a corrigendum.

Thank You Retraction Watch. 

Once again Studies Prove that with enough Funding (Other Peoples Money), you can come up with any bullshit conclusions you set out to come up with.

Teacher Who Was Fired For 'Misgendendering' A Student Slaps School With A Lawsuit

It has come to this. Call girls 'girls' and get fired for it.

dailycaller
Grace Carr Reporter
9:57 AM 12/11/2017
A teacher who was fired for calling a transgender student by her biological gender hit back at the school with a lawsuit.

After math teacher Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, allegedly said “well done girls” to two students at an Oxfordshire secondary school in England, the school suspended him and called for a disciplinary hearing. He apologized to the student, but he was charged with misconduct for “misgendering,” according to the Evening Standard.

Not long after, Sutcliffe was fired from his teaching post and he responded by sending a letter to the school saying that it’s equality policies are “totalitarian,” Metro reports. “I regret that our relations have reached this point, but I feel I have no choice but to bring legal proceedings against you without further notice,” Sutcliffe wrote in his letter.

“While the suggestion that gender is fluid conflicts sharply with my Christian beliefs… I have never looked to impose my convictions on others,” Sutcliffe, who is also a Christian pastor, said the school initially suspended him for six weeks, according to BBC News. He also thinks referring to someone by their birth gender isn’t wrong or unreasonable, according to the Daily Mail. (RELATED: Teacher Faces Discipline After Using Wrong Pronoun For Transgender Student)

More than 2,000 children aged three to 18 in the U.K. were referred to a gender identity specialist last year, BBC reports. (Related: 8-Year-Old Boy Sues Private School For Not Letting Him Be A Girl)

The teacher’s firing and sequential lawsuit comes after similar events in the U.S. An 8-year-old transgender student and his parents recently sued a California school for failing to let him express his identity as a girl and another set of parents filed a lawsuit against a school in New York, alleging the school created a hostile environment for their five-year-old kid, according to The New York Times. 


Thank You Ms Carr and the DC.

UC Davis Offers Exclusive Grants To LGBT, Illegal Immigrant Students

Imagine the uproar if it was going the other way.

thecollegefix
George Congdon - Emory University •October 24, 2017



Students need only to ‘identify’ a certain way to receive monetary gifts

Special programs at the University of California, Davis offer narrowly tailored grants based on sexual orientation, “gender identity” and immigration status, The College Fix has learned.

UC Davis’s AB540 and Undocumented Student Center offers a variety of grants intended for students who are in the country illegally. Among them are “emergency grants,” a “bedding grant” and an “UnducoScholar award.”

The emergency grants, which are capped at $500, stipulate that the recipient must have “AB540 undocumented status,” must have a “DREAM Act application on file with UC Davis Financial Aid Office,” and must have exhausted all other financial aid opportunities at the university.

However, it is unclear if it is actually necessary for recipients to have AB540 status to qualify. The emergency grant requests that “only those students who identify as AB540 / undocumented” apply for the loan.

Whether or not one can “identify” with such an immigration status without technically holding the status is unclear. The student center did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment on the matter.

The center also offers students in the country illegally students a “bedding grant.” The application material for that grant, which appears to comprise a gift of sheets and pillowcases, lays out no criteria students must meet in order to qualify for it; the instructions simply tell students to email the center’s director and “explain why you would like the bedding.”

Similarly, the university’s LGBTQIA+ Resource Center distributes grants to “LGBTQIA+” students. “Since funding is limited,” the application reads, “we ask that only those who identify as LGBTQIA+ and have no access to other resources and forms of continuous and abundant financial support utilize this grant.”

Reached via email, Elizabeth Coté, a representative from the Center, told The College Fix: “There are no measures taken to confirm the identities of those who apply for grants. We utilize the criteria provided by the private donor funding this grant. Scholars either self-identify as meeting those criteria or not.”

Julia Ann Easley, a campus spokeswoman, corroborated this procedure to The Fix via email: “A private donor funds the emergency grants available through the LGBTQIA Resource Center. To meet those criteria for the grants, students self-identify.”

Easley also told The Fix that the grants for students in the country illegally are funded by “a combination of developed funds and U.C. Davis President’s Undocumented Students Initiative.”

We Are Aggie Pride distributes two different “awards” to UC Davis students. As with the grants listed above, these awards do not have to be paid back.

MORE: Smith College to offer scholarship to illegal immigrants

MORE: Iowa State University offers scholarships that appear to exclude white applicants

Thank You Mr Congdon and The College Fix.

Feds Spend $587,441 to Make Engineering A 'Safe Zone' For LGBTQ Engineers

freebeacon

Elizabeth Harrington
September 18, 2017 5:00 am

Study seeks to combat 'chilly' environment for LGBTQ engineers

The National Science Foundation is spending over $100,000 to create "safe zone" inclusion training so more members of the LGBTQ community become engineers.

The project, which will not start until January 2018, is a joint study being conducted by the American Society For Engineering Education, Rowan University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The focus of the study is to find ways to combat what the researchers call a "chilly" environment for lesbian, gay, and transgender individuals in engineering labs.

Two separate grants totaling $587,441 were awarded Thursday. A grant worth $473,325 was awarded to the American Society For Engineering Education, and $114,116 was given to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Recent research on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals in engineering has shown that the climate can be unfriendly (or ‘chilly') for both students and professionals," according to the grant for the study. "This project aims to increase the inclusion of LGBTQ students and professionals in engineering."

The study aims to "foster inclusion" and allow college faculty and professors to "become change agents."

"The project will identify issues faced by LGBTQ students and professionals in engineering, identify and implement strategies to create more welcoming engineering environments, and disseminate those strategies so that they can be expanded to a national level," the grant states.

The study also involves creating an online course called "SafeZone," which can train college engineering professors how to be inclusive to gay students and other sexual minorities.

"In addition, the research will be the basis of systematic development and formative refinement of an online SafeZone course to provide inclusion training to engineering students and professionals nationwide," the grant states.

"A chilly climate for LGBTQ individual [sic] can be found in every sector of STEM professions, where cultural norms and professional ideologies make it difficult to recognize and rectify exclusionary practices," the grant states. "One negative consequence of this chilly environment is difficulty in recruiting and retaining talented LGBTQ individuals into the engineering profession."

"This project uses qualitative research to generate new knowledge about the processes of developing a community of practice to promote LGBTQ inclusion in engineering, how the members of the community develop into change agents, and what strategies are effective in reshaping norms and increasing LGBTQ inclusion in engineering departments," the grant added.

Kelly Cross, a post-doctoral researcher for the University of Illinois, Stephanie Farrell, the chair of experiential engineering education at Rowan University, and Rocio Chavela Guerra of the American Society for Engineering Education, are leading the study.

Cross list of research interests includes "diversity and inclusion in STEM, intersectionality, teamwork and communication skills, assessment, and identity construction."
This entry was posted in Politics. Bookmark the permalink.


Thank You Ms Harrington and Free Beacon.

Everyone who can be labeled, by Themselves or Political Charlatans looking to gain advantage gets their own Special Parade.

If they understood how they're being played by people who don't in fact give a rat's left hind foot about them, people would Stop Labeling themselves as 'Special' and simply demand that the extant Laws be upheld.

So Now Who's Nutz? Ca. Senate Passes Bill Allowing 3rd Gender Option On IDs

cnsnews
By Annabel Scott | June 2, 2017 | 6:35 PM EDT  

(CNSNews.com) - California lawmakers voted to pass a bill Wednesday that will add a third gender option - non-binary - on state identification cards.

Senate Bill 179, introduced by Sen. Tori Atkins, will now move onto Assembly after the 26-12 Senate vote. If it passes Assembly, California Gov. Jerry Brown can sign the measure into law, making California the first state to add a third gender option on IDs.

In addition to changing the gender selection on driver’s licenses, the bill would also allow three options for birth certificates, identity cards and gender change court orders.

The bill, if signed into law, will allow minors to apply for a gender change on their birth certificates with parental or guardian consent.

Atkins applauded her fellow senators for passing the bill, saying their vote showed bravery.

“Most of us use our I.D. on a daily basis and take it for granted,” Atkins said in a statement. “SB 179 will make what should be a simple task much easier for our transgender and non-binary neighbors.”

The bill, although celebrated by many California lawmakers, has its fair share of opposition.

The California Family Council, a conservative religious group, has openly opposed the bill.

“If you allow someone who is physically male to list themselves on a government document as a female, or vice a versa, then the government will be legalizing a lie,” California Family Council spokesperson Greg Burt said during testimony to the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee in April. “As state senators, I know you think you are powerful, but you do not have the authority to simply change the meaning of words just because you want to.”

Atkins also penned a bill similar to SB 179 that passed through the Senate on Wednesday.

Senate Bill 310, if signed into law after passing through assembly, guarantees prison inmates the right to ask the court for gender change or name change. In addition, the bill states that if a name or gender change is granted to an inmate, then correction officers must refer to a prisoner by their new alias.


Thank You Ms Scott and CNS.

So Now Who's Nutz? Report: Harvard Tells Students Gender Identity Can Change "Day To Day"

And where is it, again, that Psychiatric/Psychological OPINIONS of thoughts, moods, and behaviors being Incurable medical diseases germinate?

weaselzippers


Trying to determine one’s gender from day to day must be a real challenge… especially for those brainiacs at Hahvad.

Via The Washington Times:

A Harvard University office devoted to LGBT issues reportedly has issued a flier telling students that gender identity can change as frequently as “day to day.”

The flier from the Ivy League schools BLGTQ Student Life office, headlined “Get the facts about gender diversity,” informs readers that “Sex assigned at birth and gender identity are not necessarily the same,” Campus Reform reported Thursday.

The flyer adds that “gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy, and/or how one is perceived in daily life.”

The document also seems to categorize speech that challenges or disagrees with transgenderism as “violence.”

“Transphobic misinformation is a form of systemic violence,” read the document, which included examples of the alleged verbal violence: “Fixed binaries and biological essentialism, manifest in gendered language, misgendering someone, and the policing of trans bodies, threaten the lives of trans people.”

The reference to “fixed binaries” appears to have in view the notion that a person’s gender identity is dependent on an unalterable binary — male or female — scheme.

According to the Oxford Reference website, “biological essentialism” is “The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual’s personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).”

Keep reading…


Thank You Wash Times and Huck Funn.

Marvel Comics Says Pandering To 'Diversity Enforcers' May Have Alienated Readers, Led To Decline In Sales

And this week's Homer Simpson 'D'oh!' award goes to;

weaselzippers

I’m shocked… said exactly zero people.

Via Guardian:

Marvel’s vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio’s efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers “were turning their noses up” at diversity and “didn’t want female characters out there”.

Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.

But speaking at the Marvel retailer summit about the studio’s falling comic sales since October, David Gabriel told ICv2 that retailers had told him that fans were sticking to old favourites. “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” he said. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not.”

Thank You Guardian and Zip. 



Marvel Comics Proudly Presents Thor, She, yes She, is now a Woman.

Pssst, Marvel, beware very large bearded men bearing hammers.

Democrats Grill Trump Nominees On Gay Marriage Again and Again and Again

Go get 'em Kamala. That's the way to put 96 Million out of work Americans back to work.

washington examiner

By Philip Wegmann • 1/12/17 5:54 PM

Senate Democrats are obsessed with sex. Each of Trump's nominees to the departments of defense, housing, and the Central Intelligence Agency endured a steady bombardment of questions about gay marriage. It was a needless LGBT hat-trick.

At all three hearings, Democrats demonstrated how their fascination with gay marriage eclipses their interest in military preparedness, urban development, and cybersecurity. Even more telling, they completely disregarded the president-elect's position on social issues.

Trump might have campaigned against political correctness. But he didn't run to resurrect the religious right's crusade for traditional marriage. On social issues, he's less Pat Buchanan and more Mitch Daniels. Anyone who doubts that should revisit Trump's 60 Minutes interview and Vice President-elect Mike Pence's Focus on the Family roundtable.

One more time, the president-elect accepts gay marriage as "the law of the land." And his vice-president advocated an era of gay federalism. But even those facts still couldn't stop the repetitive questions.

As the Islamic State endures and Al-Qaeda metastasizes, Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand opted to ask secretary of defense nominee James Mattis about gays and women in the military. While the Marine commander has been critical of the Obama administration's social engineering in the ranks, the nominee said he's primarily focused on military readiness.

Continually pressed about the sexual preferences of his enlisted men and women, Mattis echoed the party line. "Frankly, senator," he said, "I've never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with."

Things weren't much different for Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan. Russia might have undermined an election recently, but Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., grilled the aspiring CIA chief about employee benefits for gay public servants. She spent most of her allotted time on questions that, frankly, were better suited for Langley's HR department.

Harris wanted assurances that the top spy would "not put in place any policies that would discriminate against any members because of their sexual orientation." Without hesitation, just like his bosses promised to leave the LGBT issue be, Pompeo gave it.

Even evangelical favorite Ben Carson didn't bite at the question when pressed by Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Asked about protections for same-sex marriages, the HUD nominee replied that he'd "enforce all the laws of the land." Though a vocal opponent of gay marriage, the neurosurgeon and aspiring bureaucrat held his tongue.


Thank You Mr Wegemann and Wash Ex.