Poor neurobiologists... they can't catch a break

 So these poor souls can't do right by anyone. 

If they claim there are gender-based differences in the brain, they are called sexists and worse. Heck, there is even a name for them: NEUROSEXISM! Don't believe me? Read Nature's glowing review of the Genderd Brain, a book, that shatters old, sexist, outdated stereotypes! All hail this final blow to the Patriarchy! (Except... well, maybe the science does not actually say that, and it is quite worrysome that Nature gets into the social activism game ignoring the papers it (and other papers) regularly publish in the topic... but that is a different conversation.)

So now saying that there may be gendered differences in the human brain will unleash the Social Justice Warriors, who will do their best to get you silenced or even get you fired.

OK, so you accept that our brains are uniform- there are no gendered differences. At the present the leading feminist standpoint is that women are the same as men, and all differences between women and men are the products of our society (you know: da patriarchy). This means it is true in neuroscience, too, as we have seen. As a researcher you really, really do not want to lose your position at your research institute, you do not wish to be the target of a Twitter mob, and you do want to get funded, so you obligingly stand in the line, and work from this angle, or just do your best to avoid this issue altogether, and ignore the topics that would shed light on the basics of these differences which do seem to exist between men and women. (Long story- read the link above.) A question: is it good for science (and humanity) when there are forbidden areas where scientific inquiry dares not to go?

And then comes the other side of Social Justice. Activists who claim you deliberately ignore the differences in the brain because you hate women, and you are a sexist pig serving the Patriarchy, and who will, eventually, again, unleash the very same Social Justice Warriors to write outraged articles about you. There really is no good choice here. It is the Schrödinger's Patriarchy. It oppresses women by claiming they are different from men and simultaneously oppresses women by claiming they are the same as men.

Obviously, for humanity's sake, you should accept what science tells you, and factor this into your medical treatments, policymaking, etc. However when simply saying that women are, well, different, and not just "menstruating people" will earn you death threats, when simply saying that women are different from men will literally unleash hell on you and your family, well, it is a difficult choice, isn't it? The pressure to ignore the differences is not exactly conductive in helping shedding the old habits of only using male animals and men in your studies. Perhaps Dr Liisa Galea should direct her attention to those pesky feminists, too, because I suspect they are the ones needing to be convinced -perhaps starting with Dr Hyde and Dr Halpern. (Who at least argue that there are differences, however negligible -without actually supporting this hypothesis.) 

 The fact remains: there are contradicting demands on science: on one hand it should not acknowledge the statistical differences between male and female brains, on the other it definitely should take them into consideration and include them in the design of preclinical and clinical experiments. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But what do I know. Facts are not objective, as we know. Identity politics over everything.

Fuck, just reading this makes me wonder where we put our collective common sense. The saying about the truth being a revolutionary act in dictatorships seems to work in our age of wokeness, too.

Let's blame the whistleblowers, shall we?

 So there were several instances when the obvious bias of certain media outlets, or even whole "scientific fields" (I am not sure how gender studies constitute as science, but whatever) have been revealed by people who submitted fake articles and got published.

The Independent has published an outrageously, obviously over the top article about comedy and free speech (rather a call to curtail it). Got published, no problem. This is very important as it exposed how certain (if not all) media outlets do nothing but pushing agendas. When it was realized it was a hoax, people were outraged at the perpetrators -rather than actually at the obviously biased media outlet. No hard questions about how this may or may not be an endemic issue with all media printed or otherwise. Nothing to see here. After all, it is not as if it is something important, right? We only get our news from them, after all, they only shape our reality.

Same with the Grievance Studies affair- the authors managed to publish a whole chapter of Mein Kampf as a feminist manifesto, they argued for chaining white students, and talked about rape culture in dog parks -and were enthusiastically welcomed by the academic publishers. They passed through peer review, and it seems like social sciences embraced these articles wholeheartedly.

When it became clear these were fake articles, again, the outrage was not directed at the publishers (and the academics who peer-reviewed them), there were no hard questions ask how these academic fields can be biased to this cartoonish level where the Mein Kampf is actually publishable -no, the outrage was directed against these horrible hoaxers.

To this day there are no consequences of these events. None at all. The people who are responsible for these hoaxes are trying to push a conversation about them, they do appear on programs, podcasts and whatnot, but these are very much isolated from the "mainstream". The mainstream media, the mainstream conversation resolutely ignores them. If anything they only blame them for exposing this agenda-driven "science" to the whole world, giving ammunition for right-wingers, climate change deniers and so on to question the integrity and validity of science (as the above linked Atlantic article does, too). So to recap: it is not an issue if you pervert science. It is only an issue when you publicise it.

And this, again, is ignored completely. 

 

You are trying too hard - Aliens and colonial oppression

 OK, so apple pie is racist. Right. I find this whole argument a bit on the far too much side, but then I've read this one about the story of the Aliens from the aliens' perspective and realized that the apple pie article is reasonably sane compared to this.

Obviously we have to reinterpret everything from the bad guy's perspective. I mean it can be a fun thing to do: the Last Ringbearer was kind of good, and after reading much Warhammer 40K I did realize the Empire in Star Wars was a positive force in the universe. All good, it is always interesting to see things from other viewpoints.

However, the author of this article really went off the deep end when he is trying to push his agenda of critical race theory through Aliens.

Some quotes:

'They find an alien spaceship with a cache of alien eggs. In the spirit of rapacious colonizers past, they try to salvage one of the aliens for biological experimentation, but the infant bravely fights back, killing all of the crew except Ripley.'

'And the aliens repeatedly sacrifice themselves to damage the invaders, spraying their acid blood on their attackers in a final, gallant act of defiance.'

' The alien mother manages to climb aboard the escaping human spacecraft, and, enraged at the wanton murder of her children, tries to take revenge. But even that is denied her. Ripley shoots her out the airlock into space. The entire alien encampment is wiped out, just as American soldiers wiped out the Vietnam village of My Lai in 1968.' (Emphasis by me.)

And this is where it becomes just a parody of itself and the whole critical race theory it is trying to push. A really bad one at that. Making comparisons between the aliens in this setting and the mass murder in My Lai... well, that is not just poor taste. That is literally spitting on the graves of those who were murdered by American soldiers. And this trash is being published online.

Astonishing. People have lost their ability to think. Both the author of this piece of crap and the editors who gave it the go-ahead.

'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'

 So apparently a psychiatrist can give a lecture in one of the best universities of the world delivering extremely racist statements without having been shut down five minutes after starting. Or being arrested for inciting violence. Or being pilloried by the whole world, mentioned in every major media outlet how a deplorable racist could air her views in an Ivy Leauge university.

I bet if she was talking about unloading a revolver into the head of any Jew that got in her way, or maybe any black person that got in her way, the outrage would have been much, much bigger. But she only wanted to kill white people (I guess Jews, too, if it matters), so that is OK. I am not a legal expert, but I am not sure talking about how someone wants to kill everyone from a certain background even fits the definition of "free speech".

You can listen to the recording here (because Yale is trying to distance itself from this thing now it became public).

Obviously she is not going to act on these feelings -as she herself stated. But will she be held responsible if someone does? The woke machine is great at stroking resentment and anger against whites (and men); I am not sure it is a wise thing to add fuel to the fire to "evoke emotion". Is this an excuse for these statements, anyway? If I say I am not going to act on my feeling, can I, too, say the most racist shit I can think of with impunity? 

Interestingly (not) the kind lady's message was listened to with a sympathetic ear by the WaPo; of course it was meant some other way than what it actually meant. Telling people to pointless to talk to them obviously conveys the message that it is not pointless to talk to them. And talking about killing them because of their skin color is is such a great conversation starter. Or maybe, just maybe, Khilanani was trying to do some damage control; the question is why WaPo is giving her a platform to do so? Would they do the same for a white supremacist? (Not that I think they should, but my point is: neither should they give one to her...)

Another, interesting question, is why she made these statements in the first place? Listening to the non-official recording, it did not seem like an attempt on sparking a constructive conversation. It seemed like a rant from a racist who completely lost her marbles. So maybe it is what actually happened: we reached peak-woke now. She honestly thought that after the whole White Fragility, antiracism training, critical race theory and other successes of the woke movement she is truly free to speak her mind without facing repercussions. Apparently while #killallwhitemen was acceptable, her version of genocide based on pigmentation is not, even if it is only directed against white people (maybe she should have only talked about white men). Who knew. 

But it is still quite chilling that someone in Yale (and not some third rate community college) was given a platform to spew her hatred, and nobody from the major media outlets, from the political establishment (you know the people who decide what gets known and what does not)  really cares. The world depicted in the media and the actual, real world have very little in common.

Wargaming and misogynistic attitudes according to Wired

 So I read this article about how horrible men are to those few women who dare to play tabletop wargames, even though they would flock to the hobby if they were allowed to.

Upon reading the article you can't help but realize how utterly ridiculous this whole victimhood-search has become.

First of all: are there total assholes in wargaming? Well, there are total assholes everywhere, so that is a given. However, is it fair to generalize the whole hobby based on two or three jerks? 

I guess the answer is yes. I will keep that in mind the next time some fuckwit kills a lot of people in name of Islam. 

Apart from this interesting idea, the examples the poor female wargamers bring up are not exactly cases of gatekeeping and misorgynistic attitudes, as they claim them to be.

Have you been to tabletop wargaming events? No? Well, allow me. Imagine a place with huge tables filled with tiny little plastic soldiers and monsters, terrain, weird dices and whatnot. The attendants are 99.99% male, mostly white, usually socially awkward (you know the people you normally bully in high school because they are total nerds). Some have questionable personal hygene. What connects them is the love of the game and the lore -they are extremely passionate about minor issues; imagine how papal councils must have been in the Middle Ages trying to decide if Peter sat right next to Jesus or two seats away during the Last Supper (and burn the losers of the debate at stake), and you have an idea about the dedication here.

The few females you see are usually spouses or mothers who were dragged there without their consent, and are forced to endure this whole experience. There are very, very few women who are actually interested in playing and painting these stupid little minis; and I am quite sure the reason is not because men don't let women play with little toy soldiers. The stereotype of the husband trying to hide how much he spent on his latest Raptor squad is there for a reason. Also: if you want to make sure that that troublesome sexy girl who keeps hitting on you leaves you alone, you just tell her you play Warhammer. It is the perfect female-repellent. Works better than sandals with socks.

Anyhow, do you see why people would not assume immediately that a member of the fairer sex would actually like to play the game or know anything about it? It is not because they won't allow women to play. It is because in their experience no women would want to play the game. In fact, if you tell them, that you are a woman and you have a 2000 point Blood Angels army (painted), I am sure you will get so many unsolicited marriage proposals, you won't know what to do with them.

You see, people will stereotype because this is what we do. It helps everyday life; it is a survival mechanism that is older than our species. It is not sexism and it is not racism. And it is not just those evil wargamers. Do try to bring your child as a male to a playground, and see where you get. If you survive with some well-meant but quite insulting pieces of advice about how to do this whole parenting-thing, you can count yourself lucky. They might even call the cops on you because, having a penis means you might be a creep or worse. (But that, of course, is not sexism. Of course.)

Or do this in any femaled dominated profession/hobby. Go there as a male and see how women react to you. You are not the regular demography for that particular setting, so people will struggle to place you. And not because they hate men, either. Creating a story about this non-story to depict how evil and racist certain groups of people are (who are inevitably white and male in these stories) is just bad journalism. (They pulled the same thing with gamers and Star Wars fans, too.)

Shame on you Luke, and shame on you, Wired.

Somewhat unsettling cases of inequality

 

The Social Justice Warriors normally jump on any and all differences in outcome as a proof for oppression. Well, not any and all, because somehow the fact that working class white boys (and white boys in general) underperform in schools, or men are overreprensented in workplace deaths, suicides, homelessness, and all that jazz, is conveniently ignored, or are explained away by the absolutely moronic "the Patriarchy hurts everyone". (So why is it called patriarchy?)

There are two very interesting articles I ran across lately in this very topic. The first is a Swedish article demonstrating that men face discrimination in female-dominated workplaces. (And they were the only group shown to be discriminated against in this experiment.)

The second is a more serious one demonstrating that men do not get the appropriate help from mental health support services. The prevailing "wisdom" is that men are too macho (you know, Patriarchy) to ask for help. This paper demonstrates that they do ask for help, they just do not get it, hence the high number of suicides.

So there you have it. No Guardian op-eds, no US Senators bringing it up, no WHO reaction, no outrage. While SJWs keep saying that compassion is not a finite resource, and that it is not a zero sum game any time some moronic Republican senator brings up some hair-brained whataboutism about how white men are literally the only persecuted group (which is also an idiotic thing to do), they very much dispense with it selectively. Perhaps compassion is a finite resource.

What is white privilege if you are poor?

 Well, have a read. This chap has the galls to explain a poor white guy why he is privileged by his skin. Quite an interesting little mental gymnastics laced with condescension. (Not to mention weird little jumps in logic, but who am I to criticize him, right? I should just check my privilege.)

I guess this is how you get the race war going... you, as a privileged, rich guy explaining away to a poor person why he is privileged over, let's say, a black lawyer who makes more money than his whole extended family combined. (Perhaps it is April fool's day? It did feel really surreal reading the article.)