Katie getting turned down for a haircut - or “refused a service” - reminds me of, say, a bakery (or a web design) story. Hmmm…I thought the argument on the left was you can’t refuse service based on beliefs. Am I missing something??
Something can be shitty but still legal. It’s legal for the hairdresser to refuse service but it understandably stings. I think it’s small minded of the hairdresser and I’m really sorry that it happened. I do find it highly hypocritical of the left to want to banish wrongthinkers while wanting to force people to produce work that violates their religious beliefs.
And that would be exactly why I stopped donating money to the ACLU. And SPLC. And my NPR station for that matter. I used to have memberships for each - no more. I still get mail from SPLC and ACLU and I use their return envelopes and membership forms to say “I can’t support you and here’s why…”
Yes. Refusing someone service because you think they're an asshole is perhaps unwise as a business strategy, but it's not illegal. Refusing someone service because they are black or gay or Muslim, on the other hand, usually is.
And what if you think someone's an asshole because they expressed beliefs and opinions that totally oppose yours, what then? And just to point out the obvious from your examples, being Muslim is not a race or ethnicity, it's a professed belief in Islam.
Zagarna is correct here. Unless you're arguing that Katie's views on the podcast are a sincerely held religious belief and you could prove that the hair stylist is refusing service on the basis of that religious belief, this isn't the same situation as the bakery cases. (Religion is a slightly trickier analysis because it's not the same as an immutable physical characteristic. Private businesses may not generally discriminate on the basis of your sincerely held religious beliefs, but otherwise, they aren't constitutionally required to serve people regardless of viewpoint in the same way the state is.)
Seems clear that Katie isn't being refused service for being gay per se.
I appreciate these responses as I was sincere when I asked “am I missing something?” However, when I wrote “you can’t refuse service based on beliefs” I was referring to the beliefs of the business owner/vendor - not the customer. As I recall, the cake maker and the (more recent) web designer refused services based on their OWN beliefs as being contrary to the client.
Anyway, I do think I’m drawing a tenuous comparison here and I think Zag’s example (above) is a better description of what’s happening. Still, even if I’m technically incorrect in my positioning, I think there’s something in it that’s true. (But, again, thanks for the replies.)
Ah. I didn't hear anything in the episode about the hairdresser's religious beliefs, but after the most recent SC decision, the broad gist is that business owners *can* refuse to engage in creative/speech endeavors that are contrary to their sincerely held beliefs. But it's a huge stretch to claim that hairdressing has any creative or speech component. (I suppose if Katie wanted "TERFS RULE" shaved into an undercut....)
That actually reminds me of the Bari Weiss podcast round table on the case, which posed a hypo about a nail salon. If you're Jewish and own a nail salon, you can't refuse to paint a Christian customer's nails, but you can refuse a client who wants you to write 'Jesus saves' ON their nails. (Pardon me for any changes in the details of the hypo, I think it may have been slightly different but the gist is the same.)
I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about the legal posture of those cases.
303 Creative involved a public-accommodations law that said you had to serve gay customers equally, and the business owner claimed a constitutional right (on the basis of the First Amendment) to discriminate despite that statute. Very unfortunately, the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court bought that argument, with the result that all public-accommodations laws are now in jeopardy any time the business owner claims a "free speech" objection to them (it's virtually always possible to claim some degree of "speech" involved in any business transaction).
In your hypo, though, there is no public-accommodations law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of (I guess) political beliefs in the first place, so the question of whether the business owner's free speech rights trump that statute is never implicated.
Religion is a protected category under (to my knowledge) all American state and federal public-accommodations laws. Generic belief is not (to my knowledge-- less sure about this one) a protected category under any of them. If you think it should be, fair enough but I'm afraid that that's a matter you will have to take up with the relevant legislature.
It's not the same. The analogy would be if Katie asked for a specific type of haircut, and the stylist refused based on the style, rather than the person requesting it. "I'll cut your hair, just not like that."
Katie I’m going to violate my own preferences here and say this: I have been cutting my own hair since I was like thirteen. If you want a really nice side part let me know and I will give you the best 1950’s professional businessman haircut.
Just know you are loved as the Clint Eastwood of lesbians in the same way that I love Ireland, meaning I don’t know very much about it but just use it as a repository of general good will.
My wife learned to do the standard boys haircut so she could cut our kids hair during the pandemic, Katie’s wife seems extremely talented and there are lots of tutorials on YouTube. On the other hand, that seems like a recipe for possible divorce...
I am pretty girly and work in a professional setting, and I cut my own hair once during the pandemic, with the help of an extremely gay YouTuber... it took me like three hours and it made me feel slightly carsick, because I had to do everything in the mirror and I’m *very bad* at doing things in the mirror, but it actually turned out okay! If I can cut my own damn hair I’m sure Jana could cut Katie’s.
Yeah, a man who is policing women's speech about an issue directly affecting them gets no sympathy from me. He was violating their first amendment rights. He has no place in a government institution that has the ability to silence people he disagrees with.
It sounds more like he was very confused and principled. He was wrong, and he can be educated on that. If he's reprimanded and continues to do wrong, then fire him. It's not like it's crazy to be wrong about a law. It happens all the time. And, no one was hurt.
I think most libraries have policies that require them to allow people to use their facilities to hold meetings regardless of the viewpoint because they're bound by the first amendment. Getting kicked out would require something along the lines of inciting violence. If they have that kind of policy, the librarian clearly violated it and that is probably a cut and dry firing offense.
I’m a librarian & used to feel the profession strongly aligned with anti-censorship & being a space where people can explore all sides of an issue. I might be an alarmist but I no longer feel this way based on a a number of pronouncements (followed by applause) at a few meetings at professional organizations in the SFBay Area. There is a general feeling at these events that becoming a platform for “harmful” ideas is not for libraries but the problem of who gets to decide who is being harmed remains. There are holdouts but as seen in this story even veterans have given up on this value of upholding a debate of ideas.
Anyway, many thoughts on this episode, the general turn away from liberal values in so many of these instances (including Seattle Area abhorrent treatment of Katie) s a real downer in so many ways.
I don't believe that he independently decided to do this. He frequently refers to "policy" and at one point says something like "I have been directed." The guy in the video is not the County Librarian -- the overall boss of the system. Katie explained that this was the 5th meeting of the group in the library, and that there had been a lot of controversy about the first 4 meetings. My take is that the decision to go with this approach to the controversy was collectively made by the library admin and approved by the county librarian. This guy just drew the short straw of actually having to enforce it.
Recently, there has been discussion among librarians about using nominally non-partisan rules to discriminate against use of the library by those with disfavored political opinions. In some cases, the American Library Association (ALA) is giving librarians advice on how to do so. (For example, by booking all the rooms in advance when you expect a conservative group might want to use them so that you can honestly tell them that no rooms are available -- see this FIRE essay: https://www.thefire.org/news/americas-public-libraries-must-not-take-arms-culture-war )
This case was a particularly dumb effort to find a supposedly neutral reason for getting rid of an unpopular meeting, but I think that it reflects a systematic problem rather than a bad decision by a single individual who decided to ignore policy to impose his personal ideology.
I can’t imagine risking my job over a public meeting. Is he just a general reference librarian? Department head? Does anyone know how big the library is?
California librarians are a different breed. He’s being an activist during work and deserves to be fired.
Idk he probably sees it as his job to be an activist. I’m sure they have had 50 hours or mandated “training” so he like he thinks he’s doing what he’s supposed to.
You can get a Master’s degree in librarianship and most job postings now require it, but many older librarians, especially in smaller communities, have risen through the ranks without formal librarianship education, or with just a library technician certificate.
(He likely does have a Master’s but there is no guarantee.)
Agreed. But he is just doing what he has been trained to do 🙄🙄🙄🙄.
For over a decade equity/DEI trainings run all participants over and over with the Wheel of Oppression and Intersectionality. Any white, able-bodied (bonus points for male, cis-, and hereronormative) person has an important job going forward: to vigilantly and passionately root out any potential -ism they see and destroy it. It is the only thing one can possibly do to wash the sins of being born racist (white) away and prove they are a decent human being.
Being fired for something you said outside of a work context is being canceled. Being fired from a job based on your job performance is not being canceled.
Getting fired for undermining the very mission of the library and subjecting the county to a massive lawsuit as a result is not 'canceling' in the way most people understand it.
As I've noted elsewhere on this thread, it is by no means obvious that what happened here is unconstitutional-- and I certainly do not think employees should be fired for taking debatable stands on legal issues. (Not least because I personally do that literally every day of the work week!)
It’s not just that he “took a debatable stand,” but that having that he chose to stop a member of the community from exercising her first amendment rights. That’s what we’re criticizing.
It’s not a debatable stand though. California has no such law. He was playing hate speech policeman without a law to back up his vigilantism.
I’m an accountant. If I lie about the tax law, I would lose my employment. Though what he did would be more like me standing around yelling at my clients that GAAP suddenly didn’t apply because of some new law I pulled out of my butt.
I think part of the point of the pod is that he really might have… if Not for the totally disproportionate response of the astroturfing critics that Riley Gaines sent the library’s way.
Nothing helps people to come together more than literal physical threats.
Tangentially anyone else see the Keith Olbermann tweet about Riley Gaines? This is straight-up misogyny: man who has no athletic ability whatsoever diminishes an objectively successful young woman as being bad at sports and stupid? What a piece of shit. The fact that this didn't get any left-wing pushback speaks volumes.
He is such an asshole. I used to watch him on MSNBC back in the day, and now I question my life choices because maybe he was always an insufferable prick. I wonder what Katy Tur saw in him.
Katie is now married and a mom. I’m happy for her. More salient to me is that she loves Phish as much as I do. I would love to boogie with her at a show and then I would want to hug her because her father is unhinged AF and the AGP is probably not the worst of it.
She also used to drop in veiled references to Phish lyrics without explaining them - lil Phishy Easter eggs. I haven’t kept up with her in ages, tho, since I got rid of cable.
I forgot about that! I’ve blocked my Olbermann memories. I only remember he was a James Thurber superfan or something & occasionally read bits of his work.
Damn I had no idea. I only know olbermann as that guy that made anti-Trump youtube videos all the time in which he looked very stern and apparently used to be a baseball guy. Katy Tur I know is still on MSNBC.
I remember KO being on espn and talking about baseball, and specifically, baseball cards. This is a distant memory. The next time I heard his name-msnbc. Bit of a jump but, whatever. Next time I heard his name, he’s gone full loon. There are a lot of cases of TDS in the media, his might have reached clinical diagnosis level. Bill Maher is another one that makes me laugh. I can get behind quite a few things he says. When anyone mentions trump though, he loses it. If I believed in reincarnation I might suggest that in another life trump banged his wife.
What’s happened with libraries and librarians is really sad. When I was a teenager be in the ‘90’s they were fighting against politicians who wanted public libraries to be required to install internet filtering software on the computers for patrons. I know a bunch of librarians and until recently I would have said the profession was really holding up the ideals of free access to information
Today the most prolific spreader of misinformation I know is a librarian who teaches patrons that the most important thing when evaluating the veracity of information is who would benefit from it being true. This individual also gets very upset when asked to assist a patron looking for information supporting a position that they disagree with. This does not seem to be uncommon among librarians.
Part of this seems to be a shift in what they see as their profession’s purpose. There is a greater emphasis on making people (well, certain people) feel safe and avoiding specific types of risks. During the pandemic, libraries stayed closed for longer than bookstores and other businesses. They continued to require masks (even for toddlers) after mask mandates had been lifted and most people had had an opportunity to be vaccinated . When I mentioned this to librarians they explain that it was preserving access because there might be people who would avoid the library if masks were not required. When I pointed out that it specifically excluded people with certain disabilities and young kids who couldn’t keep their masks on the point just got waved off. Meanwhile, they’re very hesitant to eject patrons who are creating a safety problem or nusiance for other patrons because they’re almost always homeless.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Seattle library allowed Kirk Cameron to have an event at the library after much protesting because they are taxpayer funded and bound by the first amendment. They got them banned from Seattle pride.
As a teacher of English majors, I regret to say that I suspect the informal but very real English-major-to-MLIS-degree-holder pipeline is not doing great things for ideological diversity among librarians. We get all these curious first-year students in our classes, then the conservatives/libertarians/moderates realize what you have to write to get an A in your median English class and sort themselves into other majors.
I won't speak for librarians in general, but this particular librarian's opinion that "respect" trumps the First Amendment is pretty representative of the views of the humanities professors who teach future librarians. Years ago, when campus-speech debates arose among academics, I would try to point out the basics of 1A jurisprudence to other English teachers, but the resolute denial of the most elementary precedents was such that I gave up.
My sister is an English professor. Love her dearly, but I watched her profession literally changer her personality as she takes on more and more extreme political view in order to “fit in”. She would never admit to it but it’s obvious. She’s been chasing tenure so hard it’s painful to watch. The other day she opened up a livestream or something with a stolen-land-acknowledgment. I will love her my whole life but my tolerance for bullshit has a limit and her profession is punishing wrong-think by exclusion and has been for some time now.
Funnily enough, that librarian is one of those anti-capitalists who insist that solving every problem requires getting rid of capitalism. So commissar is spot on.
I was one of those librarians protecting people's access to information and trying to have a variety of viewpoints in the collection. I got out just as the mission was starting to change.
Librarians like yo are awesome. People forget how bad the religious right was back in the '90's and how even Bill Clinton got on the censoring the internet boat. And I think everyone was better off with libraries that had a large range of veiwpoints. Reading books by people who shared my opinions and those whose opinions were the complete opposite made me a better thinker and the library was where I had access to those books.
Thanks to the pandemic, I retired early. I'm thankful I had a good career. I feel bad for those entering the profession now. The vocational awe is set to 11 in many libraries.
I've been working in libraries since the mid-90s, albeit in the UK and in the academic sector. It's less extreme where I am, but there's been a definite change in ethos in the last decade among newcomers to the profession. The assumption when I trained was that you preserved neutrality as far as possible and didn't try to privilege particular viewpoints. There were nuances of course, but that was the ideal. Increasingly now I get the impression from some of my younger colleagues that privileging particular viewpoints is just fine as long as they as they are the "right" viewpoints.
There was a controversy in the profession recently about the Library of Congress Subject Heading "Illegal immigrants". (Library of Congress Subject Headings are the industry standard for subject indexing in English speaking libraries.) After the Library of Congress was blocked from changing the term, various libraries, including my own, made a unilateral change to "Undocumented immigrants" or something similar. I was involved in some of the discussions. I remember a colleague of about my own age expressing reservations, to do with departing from the standard, and also with abandoning neutrality in our indexing practices. This provoked an impassioned speech from a younger colleague, arguing for the change largely on account of the iniquitous immigration policies of our current Conservative government. Which is a political position with which I largely agree, but I wouldn't think it appropriate to incorporate my political beliefs into my professional practice.
And every week another colleague adds pronouns to his or her email signature. I feel like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers...
Similar spot here. I would also say the large number of retirements during Covid has hastened the change and also diminished institutional memory over the battle fought over censoring. I'm about 15 years from retirement and yet I stand as one of the very few librarians who went through the nineties but it is jarring hearing the same arguments about safety and enabling harmful ideas coming from my colleagues rather than the religious right. Unfortunately, my colleagues are in a much better place for silently pulling contentious books from the stacks without causing any headlines about censorship. Nothing to see here, there's no censorship we're just "decolonizing the collection" or doing an "inclusion audit."
Librarians are constantly discarding books but we used to do so based on community interest and circulation statistics rather than ideological reasons. We also used to feel compelled to include books where there was a lot of controversy because we wanted to create access so people could discuss knowledgably, now that's considered platforming hate, if the books come from the "wrong" side.
After George Floyd, there were journalists promoting "moral clarity" over objectivism. (Which would be fine for op-ed columnists, but these were reporters)
Properly framed, I don't view moral clarity and objectivity as in conflict.
The objection to what journalism has traditionally called "objectivity" is that in practice it amounts to simply parroting both sides of every issue, regardless of whether one of those sides has any merit to it or not. That's actually the opposite of objectivity-- it's treating the subjective opinions of interviewees as if they have merit irrespective of the facts.
But it's also true that when you print the insane, obvious lies of, say, Donald Trump alongside the truth as if the two were equally valid, you are abdicating your moral responsibility to the readership.
That might be a nice dream if the reporters themselves had two brain cells between the lot of them. But a huge number of them are just as stupid as Donald Trump and so are in no position to do anything but print both sides.
Look Donald Trump is an idiot and a menace, but as someone who knows a lot about how the federal government works you would see papers and journalists running wild on things he said that were say only 70% true, and printing headlines and arguments that were say 20% true.
I remember once specific incident where Donald Trump said "The US government did Y" (the fact of the matter was the US government did 80% Y), and the "fact check" by the NYT/PolitiFact etc. was "Trump is a liar the government has done NOTHING for Y".
Which is without a doubt more false than what Trump said. And that was presented as a "Correction of his lie". A bigger lie!
Total TDS. Anyway, the journalists long since ceded the moral high ground (if they ever had it), so they are in zero position to wield "moral clarity". It is just hiding camoflaging editorializing in the news section.
I would love to refute this completely made-up anecdote, but it's so lacking in detail that I can't even tell what you're talking about, much less explain why you're full of shit. These percentages are just abject nonsense. I'm reminded of a passage from the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series:
"Many stories are told of Zaphod Beeblebrox’s journey to the Frogstar. Ten percent of them are ninety-five percent true, fourteen percent of them are sixty-five percent true, thirty-five percent of them are only five percent true, and all the rest of them are… told by Zaphod Beeblebrox."
Next time, try to exceed "English words next to each other" and shoot for the minimum standard of "more coherent than a satire from a work of fiction."
As a public library director, this is my nightmare. I handled protests over pride events in a DEEP red county in a DEEP red state without much fanfare. Year 2- no protestors at all. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if a staff member did this.
Anyone else find it a little ironic that a librarian, standing within the library he is currently working in, says he can’t find the code he’s enforcing at the moment?
The librarian abused his (albeit meager) power and violated people’s First Amendment rights. It is reasonable to call on people to voice their opposition. Groups like FIRE do something similar, encouraging people to send emails. It’s absurd to say she should have known someone would call in a bomb threat. You might as well say this incident shouldn’t be publicized at all, because some lunatic might do something crazy. Bullshit.
EXACTLY. And if Riley Gaines hadn't tweeted it, another big account would draw attention to it inevitably and everyone would be blaming Libs of TikTok or Matt Walsh or someone else.
Yeah, couldn't disagree with Jesse on this take more. Appealing to John Ronson's work on public shaming is not a correct analysis of the situation. This is a PUBLIC OFFICIAL. Not a random Twitter user. There should absolutely be public outcry about a violation of constitutional rights in this manner.
National outcry and harassment because of an issue in a local library and one of its librarians is unbelievably out of scale and totally unfair. He deserves a reprimand and a talking to, not a national tar and feathering.
He did it once. He deserves a stern talking to because he was clearly confused and ignorant, he's not trying to oppress anyone. If he does it a second time, then I'm much, much less against the thirst for his blood I'm seeing on display here.
There were lawyers there advising him in real time of the law. He chose to deprive people of their civil rights. I didn't catch a whiff of confusion -- definitely deliberate ignorance based in political bias.
Intent is irrelevant to me. And I wouldn't concern myself on intent of a police officer who deprived someone of their civil rights. It's not "a stern talking to" scenario -- public officials have a duty to the public to not deprive them of their civil rights. It's very straightforward.
Also "thirst for his blood" is ridiculous. How do you think this ultimately works out? It's not like he's going to prison. There will be a sure-win lawsuit, the library's insurance will quickly settle and make a modest payment, premiums may inch up, there will be some mandated training for employees to advise them of the first amendment, and the librarian will... most likely get a stern talking to and will likely get a second chance before being fired.
But accountability is important. And there needs to be a mea cupla from the library and a commitment to respecting the public's rights going forward.
also do you guys really think that it was a good idea for Riley to tweet out the PHONE NUMBER? To me that seems an insane thing to do.
Of course, obviously, someone who wants to complain can find that information themselves. But there are a lot of bored basement dwellers who wouldn’t bother to do this type of thing until it shows up on their feed. In which case, it’s low enough effort.
There’s a line here and I think she definitely crossed it. Not that it’s illegal - rather that it’s bad and (based on the outcome) clearly counterproductive.
How is it counterproductive? Who was going to discipline the librarian? Nobody. Hopefully a judge will, but certainly no one in Davis wants to. The bomb threat didn’t make anyone close ranks--the ranks were already closed tight. No, it is not insane to tweet the phone number of a public institution. Gaines is not responsible for the actions of her followers, and it’s unreasonable to expect her to think through every possible reaction someone might have to something she tweets.
What does strike me as insane is the notion that she and others should pull their punches when protesting a government official who violated citizens’ constitutional rights.
Oh so you're merely expressing outrage with no hope or expectation that the expression will become more tangible and painful to your target, who you should be reminded, hurt no one? Or do you think you're being a little dishonest here?
First of all, I am not Riley Gaines, in case that wasn’t clear. Second, no, I am not being dishonest. If you’re suggesting that Gaines was trying to get the librarian fired, well, what if she was? Whether this is the best outcome is debatable, but I don’t think it would be unreasonable, let alone reprehensible, to suggest that violating people’s First Amendment rights should be a fireable offense for a government employee. Whether he “hurt” anyone is besides the point. He fucked up. If you have a different view, fine, but I don’t know where you’re finding dishonesty.
The library is a public institution though, and its phone number is neither private nor difficult to find. The idea that someone tweeting this info crosses some imaginary line is fairly baffling to me.
If it wasn’t her someone else would have. It would have happened eventually.
If the standard is that people must realize some crazy person will possibly do something violent, should the Senate Majority Leader be rebuked? Someone traveled across the country and planned to execute Brett Kavanaugh, after all. A bit more of an immediate threat than what could be a dumb kid’s joke bomb threat. https://www.newsweek.com/chuck-schumer-brett-kavanaugh-roe-v-wade-pay-price-comment-1713964
Yes. I know this. I mentioned it because people are in a tizzy because Ms. Gaines put out the number of a public institution that unjustly constrained the speech of someone in the public.
You're comparing one person making a fake bomb threat to someone shooting at a field of Republicans playing baseball.
I only mentioned it because I'm guessing no one who is so upset about Riley Gaines was saying Leftists in media should tone down their speech. I get it now. People who are opposed to progressive overreach are held to a higher standard than progressives themselves.
I think that anything that increases the temperature in an issue to an extent that people are tossing around death threats is counter productive.
The fact is that before the death threats there was a reasonable chance the librarian would have disciplined. Now though? No way. Nothing like a death threat to cause people to close ranks.
“The fact is that before the death threats there was a reasonable chance the librarian would have disciplined.” Are you basing this on some other time TRAs overplayed their hand and were held accountable?
It didn’t happen when Riley was essentially held hostage at a college in California. The administration said the students were brave.
And so it’s better to make it even less likely? Everyone has got to get off their moral high horses. It’s pissing off the 80% of the populace that would otherwise have your back.
How would you suggest people express their feelings to a public institution that had unjustly stifled the speech of some members of the public for ideological reasons, without saying which library it was? Arrange a scavenger hunt to search for clues?
I'm always amazed at how people who temporarily have the moral high ground make silly errors and miss layups. Tweeting his name and number was a great way to abdicate any sense of righteousness RG's "side" may have had.
We’re talking about a government functionary who violated citizens’ constitutional rights. I see no reason why he should be entitled to have his name and work number kept private.
I think the idea that is that public outcry and righteousness has nothing to do with efficacy when engaged in advocacy as part of a social movement with policy objectives. Like the climate activists, direct action that makes you feel good in the moment (yelling at people, throwing soup) doesn’t actually advance a cause. It feels good to channel outrage and self-righteousness (I’m so right and they are so wrong and I just need them to see their wrongness and shout about how right I am) but then nothing changes, so what is the point. Now the woman who was actually locally organizing can’t do anything because these super online national activists have hijacked local politics again.
Emma V is the same person who said that the desire to feel safe in public is bourgeois cope, and white ladies who are assaulted on the subway should just get over it, so I do not have high hopes here.
Another example of the “there are no safe spaces in the real world, snowflake” attitude from conservatives in the 2010s now being used by progressives in response to kids seeing perverted piss play parades in public and bearing the brunt of your city’s soft-on-crime policies.
I think Jesse calling in to their show could potentially have some small impact because as someone who is (or maybe “was” is getting to be more accurate at this point) the target audience for their show, I started changing my own thinking about trans issues based, in part, on Jesse’s work, so there are some people who may actually be reachable over there.
I think Emma coming on BAR is going to be pretty unproductive. I have seen her responses to arguments about this issue and she comes from extreme privilege so she’s one of those luxury beliefs people. She doesn’t care about women in sports because her background is so far removed from poverty that she’s not thinking about the women who rely on these sports to get them into school or to earn them a living. She doesn’t care about women in prison because she has never lived on the margins and been in a place where the reality of what it would mean to be a female incarcerated with a male rapist is even fathomable.
She's in the media business she has no skin in the game and doesn't have the intellectual curiosity to think about what her position means on a practical level.
Most people who defend the inclusion of trans women in women's sports do so for reasons that are obviously wrong and easily debunked. I'll give Vigeland credit for having a coherent position: she just doesn't care if it's unfair. She thinks inclusion trumps fairness and that's that. Not a position I agree with, but one I can at least understand.
y'know what yeah. It's at least coherent. More coherent than the current NCAA policies that focus on testosterone quantity in the blood which is not directly relevant to pre-built muscle mass.
I just don't get the inclusion argument. Inclusion of men in women's sports means excluding women. It's so one-sided. It never goes the other way. Check out shewon.org, it's where all the women who've lost to men are listed, and it represents a tiny fraction of women who've been excluded from their sports podiums.
Yeah, but that's just excluding women... it's not like they are fully fledged humans like male-bodied people... women don't matter when male bodied people want something.
I'm interested to hear what someone who disagrees with Jesse has to say. I think it's unlikely that she'll convince me, but it's still IMHO healthy to have the conversation.
This episode makes me hate everyone. I have a lot of sympathy for Beth. She's undoubtedly in a tough position, but becoming an activist in this way will no 'save' her child, nor is it likely to mend the relationship.
The librarian is unhinged, everyone on Twitter wading in is not helping. Nothing is achieved, everyone is angry.
I'm going outside to watch the birds in my garden with a cup of tea now.
I get that, but what is Beth to do? Just ignore this bizarre trend that is sweeping Davis? That hasn't worked so far, anywhere. I hope it dies out as the damage that medicalization does becomes well-known, but the ideology is becoming more and more entrenched. It truly is like living through the play Rhinoceros. Last week, I was told to ask for pronouns from my middle school students. Every time we do this, it just reinforces the entire gender ideology. This entire generation is being inculcated with this stuff as fact. That isn't the worst thing going on in this world, but it's not great. I guess one hope is that the more mainstream this stuff becomes, the more kids will reject it.
Yeah, of the parents I've seen navigate this very difficult situation, the ones I admire the most are those who've handled things patiently within the family, with the main goal being to keep up their relationships with their children.
That said, doing that is a lot easier if you're still together with your co-parent or at least on amicable terms. I can't imagine how much harder it would be if you and your kid's parent weren't on the same page. It seems like a lot of the situations that have made it into the news have involved divorces and custody disputes. I feel for all families in that complicated position.
Never read the comments before listening to an episode. The vibe of comments never matches that of the episode. Comments are always more catastrophic. That's the tendency for people who participate in comment sections.
I mean come on guys, listen to yourselves talk about the downstream consequences of the bomb threats...
Moms for Liberty smeared even further
Riley Gaines blamed/smeared
Anti-Trans position painted as extreme, even potentially violent
Rights of trans people reaffirmed by officials
Support for librarian goes up
Like obviously this was someone on the trans rights side who did these fake threats and it worked perfectly.
Also let’s be honest, if it was someone on the anti trans side they’d have exposed their identity, combed through their social media, and gotten them fired from their job already...
I think this is the most likely explanation, but I do respect Katie's insistence on waiting for more facts to emerge. I'm pretty jaded by the numbers of "hate crimes" that have turned out to be "awareness-raising" stunts, though.
yeah, very likely. Also, remember that in Northern Ireland, it was just entertainment for teens to call in bogus bomb threats during the 90's. Also, blaming Riley Gaines asking them to write google reviews as the cause of the bomb threat is a bit irresponsible: this video had trended on the right immediately after it happened, went viral without Riley. She is just the person the left needed to demonize the most, so maybe this was an unwitting assist.
Sure it could be false flag but I honestly doubt it. Do you know how many bomb and murder threats totally innocent elections officers got from deranged right wing assholes after trump lost in 2020?
It really seems to be something that right wingers feel is helpful to their cause (it’s usually not). I wouldn’t blame TERFs but right wing extemists that have latched onto this issue? Definitely.
Well I mean the issue is that I don’t know because there’s never any resolution to them. Either someone found and charged or whatever. That’s not to say your point isn’t true, it very well could be. But we actually don’t know and can’t know unless there’s someone identified and charged.
Again, you very well may be correct and I’m not disagreeing with you, but right now it’s not a knowable thing.
While the bomb threats may well be false flag it does seem anyone who publically states any controversial opinion these days gets death threats. I think it’s likely that there are just violent morons of all political persuasions more than willing to attack anyone they disagree with. In my experience, the real “false flags” tend to be more symbolic (bleach, nooses, tape over names on portraits) and/or self-directed.
The conflation of civil rights with the right to be addressed or spoken about exactly as one prescribes is disturbing enough, but this case makes no sense at all. It was generic "males" who were alluded to, not any particular individual. Clearly the library staff was just looking for an excuse to shut down the meeting.
I had seriously considered living in Davis for a while. I'm glad to have a reason to cross it off my list, because there are just too many places one could live.
The librarian's conflation of references to natal sex with "misgendering" made me want to grind my teeth while I was listening. I worry that the sex-denialist trend is becoming more mainstream, to our cultural detriment. How are you supposed to talk about these controversies, even from the most supportive angles, if you can't refer to sex?
I know. I just gave my basic lecture on gender versus sex and saw lotsa friendly nods as I said, there is no spegg - only two sexes when it comes to reproduction, and potentially about 8 billion genders.
I really think that gen Z is hungry for some reality as long as they’re assured it’s not hateful. The exception is kids unmoored by trans identification.
That really bothered me, too. I don't agree with changing the meanings of "woman" or "man", but to change the meanings of male and female is totally insane. That shows, to me, a total immersion in an ideology that has severed itself completely from reality. Just bonkers.
The comment in question did not stick to that terminology, though. It explicitly said "men in women's sports." Not "natal males" or whatever. Men.
If you are going to toe that line, you had better toe it correctly. These speakers didn't. Whether that should be legally dispositive of anything is a different kettle of fish altogether, but let's not misrepresent what happened here.
I find it surprising that your Rah Rah One Hundred Percent Real Woman schtick doesn't get old for everyone else here, because literally every comment you post is the same repetitive transphobic garbage. Me, I find it incredibly tedious.
Funny. Reading a pompous man on the Left repeatedly direct ire at women speaking up on issues affecting women's rights, and think he's justified in doing so, is incredibly tedious. You think you can badger us into silence but you're wrong. I'm a mother of daughters. This is a hill I'm willing to die on, as are many others.
MULIEBRITY, STOP RAISING ZAGARNA'S IRE! WE NEED RAIN THIS YEAR FOR THE CROPS AND IF YOU ANGER HIM HE WILL WITHHOLD RAIN! PLEASE DO NOT FORCE HIM TO PUNISH US.
If you are going to nit-pick, you had better nit-pick correctly. The librarian drew the line at "male" so there was nothing they could have said that would have been acceptable.
He said you cannot use the word male to refer to “transgender females” because it is not respectful. Assuming I’m correct that he means trans women when he says transgender females he’s clearly not allowing male
Given that many people use the word "men" to refer to sex, I am skeptical that progressives will be successful in getting everyone to accept that "men" and "women" refer to gender by fiat. Only the most devoted activists and followers of any given issue care about these language games.
Yeah, despite the attempts to make "man" mean something other than "biological male" I can't help but, you know, use the language the way 99% of humans understand it. I'm not going to call people "natal males" or "biological males" when the context doesn't merit it. Obviously if you were discussing specific trans issues, that level of clarification makes sense and is necessary, but in most conversations, when I say, "I saw some guy crossing the street" I assume the listener knows I mean "a human with a penis who is biologically male."
I am all for language evolving, but if this process is synthetic and causes more confusion it might be more like GMO fruit vs "oh, what a weird thing nature made by accident!" I get tired of word games pretty quickly.
Yes, the way we use it colloquially sometimes, as in, hey guys, is genderless. But saying, hey guys, to a group as opposed to staying “where is that guy?” are very different things, and most people would understand the difference.
Cutting your tits off and going on hormones doesn't make you a man. Nor a surgically constructed fake penis. Sorry.
And that goes triple the other direction.
It is not really up for debate you ridiculous troll. People were willing to be polite to these people until they demanded policing reality and speech with nonsense as a requirement.
I listened to it twice. He used the words male and female to refer to gender identity. In other words, a trans woman was referred to as female. This is not uncommon these days, but it makes it impossible to talk about males in women's sports, for example. And it muddies the waters in general to such a degree that it is impossible to talk or even to think clearly about these issues.
I believe the comment was “males in women’s sports”; we absolutely need to be consistent in stating that properly sexing an individual or group is appropriate.
"The conflation of civil rights with the right to be addressed or spoken about exactly as one prescribes is disturbing enough, but this case makes no sense at all. It was generic "males" who were alluded to, not any particular individual." THIS.
I wanted to scream while listening to it because (maybe I have to listen again), but they repeated the library director's claims about "misgendering" but didn't point this out.
Are we not allowed to point out the people colonizing women's sports are male now? This is why I stopped playing the language games to be "nice." First they wanted "women," and said it was because that referred to "gender" and not sex (BS, but whatever), and that "female" referred to sex. Then the stupid states started being accomplices by codifying legal fallacies in putting "F" on their government issued IDs, and I see guys saying they're "legally female." Fork that.
I used to be careful on Twitter and when I stopped saying "trans women" I used "trans-identified males." But this is confusing people. There was a recent poll out of the UK and a third of people polled didn't know that "trans women" are biologically male. In London the people most confused were 25-34 (or thereabouts), which makes no sense until you realize there are a lot of people for whom English is a second language. We are unable to discuss these issues if people don't understand what we're talking about.
They're men. Men who identify as women. Always men. J & K may play the nice game, but look at what's happening to Katie - they will NEVER care about her honoring preferred pronouns.
I try to stick to male-bodied or female-bodied, but an alarming number of people don't know much about female-bodies. Trans identified male, India Willoughby claims to have a cervix and several Labour politicians seemed to think that it was possible for males to grow a cervix with hormones.
I used to try to use more scientific language, too, but after realizing how confused so many people are, I don't want to add to it. I've started using "men who identify as women" (Philosophy prof. Gary Francione in the US has been doing that in his recent threads). If I'm out of patience that day it's just "men."
Just call them cutters, for a lot of them it comes from the same place anyway. Desire for attention, interest in self-harm and self-hate/lack of self-esteem.
I don't say "trans-identified male" anymore. I realize it was confusing, too... hence why I said just after that "But this is confusing people."
I (and others) thought relying on biological terms would clarify things. But after reading about that poll in the UK, I see that allowing the terms to be muddled at all in the first place was the mistake. Non-native English speakers are confused by "trans women" -- the poll shows that. Queer theory intentionally confuses people with language games.
Now I just say "men," or "men who identify as women," as philosophy professor Gary Francione has been recently in his discussions on this topic on Twitter/X.
"I’m still not really convinced this would clarify things to someone who’s English is poor and doesn’t already know what a trans woman is."
The UK poll that people shows that people who have poor English don't ALREADY know what a "trans woman" is. I'm saying JUST CALL THEM MEN. When you learn a new language some of the first words you learn are "man," "woman," "boy"," and "girl." Most of the world isn't made up of people who went to college or have friends who were gender studies majors.
Dylan Mulvaney? Man.
Rachel Levine? Man.
Sam Brinton? Man.
Elliot Page? Woman.
etc.
It's a holiday. Let's drop this now.
Go pet that cute dog of yours in your profile pic, and I'll go pet mine. ✌️
Haven’t listened all the way yet but can’t believe Jesse is getting married to Emma Vigeland. Huge surprise. Writers of this show seem to be reaching but I’m intrigued.
At even odds? I'd take that bet. I've been on the receiving end of false-flag threats before, so I know that the chances are not trivial that it is one, but I don't think it's as high as 50%. I'd probably lay 2-1 odds that it's real in Vegas.
I'd hope I'd have the wherewithal to say, "are you, a government employee, saying right now that I am not free to speak how I'd like in a public place?"
But I do know in situations like this it's very easy to get flustered.
Listening now- I'm so sorry for Katie. Even though you can know intellectually know that it really isn't personal, it still hurts.
This hair stylist is playing her own movie in her head and reacting to it.
Katie getting turned down for a haircut - or “refused a service” - reminds me of, say, a bakery (or a web design) story. Hmmm…I thought the argument on the left was you can’t refuse service based on beliefs. Am I missing something??
It’s only bad when your enemies do it.
Something can be shitty but still legal. It’s legal for the hairdresser to refuse service but it understandably stings. I think it’s small minded of the hairdresser and I’m really sorry that it happened. I do find it highly hypocritical of the left to want to banish wrongthinkers while wanting to force people to produce work that violates their religious beliefs.
Shitty but legal used to be the ACLU's position.
And that would be exactly why I stopped donating money to the ACLU. And SPLC. And my NPR station for that matter. I used to have memberships for each - no more. I still get mail from SPLC and ACLU and I use their return envelopes and membership forms to say “I can’t support you and here’s why…”
Yes. Refusing someone service because you think they're an asshole is perhaps unwise as a business strategy, but it's not illegal. Refusing someone service because they are black or gay or Muslim, on the other hand, usually is.
And what if you think someone's an asshole because they expressed beliefs and opinions that totally oppose yours, what then? And just to point out the obvious from your examples, being Muslim is not a race or ethnicity, it's a professed belief in Islam.
Zagarna is correct here. Unless you're arguing that Katie's views on the podcast are a sincerely held religious belief and you could prove that the hair stylist is refusing service on the basis of that religious belief, this isn't the same situation as the bakery cases. (Religion is a slightly trickier analysis because it's not the same as an immutable physical characteristic. Private businesses may not generally discriminate on the basis of your sincerely held religious beliefs, but otherwise, they aren't constitutionally required to serve people regardless of viewpoint in the same way the state is.)
Seems clear that Katie isn't being refused service for being gay per se.
I appreciate these responses as I was sincere when I asked “am I missing something?” However, when I wrote “you can’t refuse service based on beliefs” I was referring to the beliefs of the business owner/vendor - not the customer. As I recall, the cake maker and the (more recent) web designer refused services based on their OWN beliefs as being contrary to the client.
Anyway, I do think I’m drawing a tenuous comparison here and I think Zag’s example (above) is a better description of what’s happening. Still, even if I’m technically incorrect in my positioning, I think there’s something in it that’s true. (But, again, thanks for the replies.)
Ah. I didn't hear anything in the episode about the hairdresser's religious beliefs, but after the most recent SC decision, the broad gist is that business owners *can* refuse to engage in creative/speech endeavors that are contrary to their sincerely held beliefs. But it's a huge stretch to claim that hairdressing has any creative or speech component. (I suppose if Katie wanted "TERFS RULE" shaved into an undercut....)
That actually reminds me of the Bari Weiss podcast round table on the case, which posed a hypo about a nail salon. If you're Jewish and own a nail salon, you can't refuse to paint a Christian customer's nails, but you can refuse a client who wants you to write 'Jesus saves' ON their nails. (Pardon me for any changes in the details of the hypo, I think it may have been slightly different but the gist is the same.)
I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about the legal posture of those cases.
303 Creative involved a public-accommodations law that said you had to serve gay customers equally, and the business owner claimed a constitutional right (on the basis of the First Amendment) to discriminate despite that statute. Very unfortunately, the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court bought that argument, with the result that all public-accommodations laws are now in jeopardy any time the business owner claims a "free speech" objection to them (it's virtually always possible to claim some degree of "speech" involved in any business transaction).
In your hypo, though, there is no public-accommodations law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of (I guess) political beliefs in the first place, so the question of whether the business owner's free speech rights trump that statute is never implicated.
Religion is a protected category under (to my knowledge) all American state and federal public-accommodations laws. Generic belief is not (to my knowledge-- less sure about this one) a protected category under any of them. If you think it should be, fair enough but I'm afraid that that's a matter you will have to take up with the relevant legislature.
https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/
CA for example has laws against discrimination based on political affiliation. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
That's for employment-- the public accommodations law has a narrower set of protected classes:
https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/unruh/#whoBody
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-51/
But here we're not talking about a business, are we?
Huh? You think hairdressers aren't businesses?
Katie needs to spin this as "this hairstylist won't cut Lesbian's hair."
It's not the same. The analogy would be if Katie asked for a specific type of haircut, and the stylist refused based on the style, rather than the person requesting it. "I'll cut your hair, just not like that."
Katie I’m going to violate my own preferences here and say this: I have been cutting my own hair since I was like thirteen. If you want a really nice side part let me know and I will give you the best 1950’s professional businessman haircut.
Just know you are loved as the Clint Eastwood of lesbians in the same way that I love Ireland, meaning I don’t know very much about it but just use it as a repository of general good will.
My wife learned to do the standard boys haircut so she could cut our kids hair during the pandemic, Katie’s wife seems extremely talented and there are lots of tutorials on YouTube. On the other hand, that seems like a recipe for possible divorce...
We should all get to do this collaboratively as a bonus for being long time subscribers and commies.
I am pretty girly and work in a professional setting, and I cut my own hair once during the pandemic, with the help of an extremely gay YouTuber... it took me like three hours and it made me feel slightly carsick, because I had to do everything in the mirror and I’m *very bad* at doing things in the mirror, but it actually turned out okay! If I can cut my own damn hair I’m sure Jana could cut Katie’s.
I gave my daughter the best haircut she ever had during Covid. I wonder if I should quit academia and just do hair. It’s easy.
Move to German and become an Herr Doctor.
I guffawed :)
Avoiding Katie and her wife seems to be standard for people who are mad at her, and there were lots of openings on her schedule.
I never want anyone to lose their job- here comes my big but- that librarian?? Maybe him.
He so confidently and righteously denied someone their first amendment rights. It was chilling. I think it was reprehensible.
Yeah, a man who is policing women's speech about an issue directly affecting them gets no sympathy from me. He was violating their first amendment rights. He has no place in a government institution that has the ability to silence people he disagrees with.
I'd prefer a formal reprimand and he can choose to leave if he doesn't want to serve the general public with equal respect.
No, fire his ass.
You don't always deserve a second chance because you're arrogant.
It sounds more like he was very confused and principled. He was wrong, and he can be educated on that. If he's reprimanded and continues to do wrong, then fire him. It's not like it's crazy to be wrong about a law. It happens all the time. And, no one was hurt.
This seems sensible.
I think most libraries have policies that require them to allow people to use their facilities to hold meetings regardless of the viewpoint because they're bound by the first amendment. Getting kicked out would require something along the lines of inciting violence. If they have that kind of policy, the librarian clearly violated it and that is probably a cut and dry firing offense.
I’m a librarian & used to feel the profession strongly aligned with anti-censorship & being a space where people can explore all sides of an issue. I might be an alarmist but I no longer feel this way based on a a number of pronouncements (followed by applause) at a few meetings at professional organizations in the SFBay Area. There is a general feeling at these events that becoming a platform for “harmful” ideas is not for libraries but the problem of who gets to decide who is being harmed remains. There are holdouts but as seen in this story even veterans have given up on this value of upholding a debate of ideas.
Anyway, many thoughts on this episode, the general turn away from liberal values in so many of these instances (including Seattle Area abhorrent treatment of Katie) s a real downer in so many ways.
I don't believe that he independently decided to do this. He frequently refers to "policy" and at one point says something like "I have been directed." The guy in the video is not the County Librarian -- the overall boss of the system. Katie explained that this was the 5th meeting of the group in the library, and that there had been a lot of controversy about the first 4 meetings. My take is that the decision to go with this approach to the controversy was collectively made by the library admin and approved by the county librarian. This guy just drew the short straw of actually having to enforce it.
Recently, there has been discussion among librarians about using nominally non-partisan rules to discriminate against use of the library by those with disfavored political opinions. In some cases, the American Library Association (ALA) is giving librarians advice on how to do so. (For example, by booking all the rooms in advance when you expect a conservative group might want to use them so that you can honestly tell them that no rooms are available -- see this FIRE essay: https://www.thefire.org/news/americas-public-libraries-must-not-take-arms-culture-war )
This case was a particularly dumb effort to find a supposedly neutral reason for getting rid of an unpopular meeting, but I think that it reflects a systematic problem rather than a bad decision by a single individual who decided to ignore policy to impose his personal ideology.
More fun facts about librarians!https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-discourses/id1499880546?i=1000622960788
I can’t imagine risking my job over a public meeting. Is he just a general reference librarian? Department head? Does anyone know how big the library is?
California librarians are a different breed. He’s being an activist during work and deserves to be fired.
Idk he probably sees it as his job to be an activist. I’m sure they have had 50 hours or mandated “training” so he like he thinks he’s doing what he’s supposed to.
You need a Masters to be a Librarian.
You can get a Master’s degree in librarianship and most job postings now require it, but many older librarians, especially in smaller communities, have risen through the ranks without formal librarianship education, or with just a library technician certificate.
(He likely does have a Master’s but there is no guarantee.)
Sad to see barpod comments are just as bloodthirsty as loathsome scummy Twitter threads.
Yes. He should lose his job. And the library should be forced to print an apology on social media and in the local paper.
It should also be forced to display the constitution prominently with the notice that no law trumps it. Not even in California.
I might also be OK with him wearing a Stars and Stripes dunce cap for one week.
That’s mean. But, well, funny. 🤪
https://www.legion.org/flag/code
Agreed. But he is just doing what he has been trained to do 🙄🙄🙄🙄.
For over a decade equity/DEI trainings run all participants over and over with the Wheel of Oppression and Intersectionality. Any white, able-bodied (bonus points for male, cis-, and hereronormative) person has an important job going forward: to vigilantly and passionately root out any potential -ism they see and destroy it. It is the only thing one can possibly do to wash the sins of being born racist (white) away and prove they are a decent human being.
"I don't want anyone to be canceled, except the people I don't like who deserve it" is not the principled stand you seem to think it to be.
Being fired for something you said outside of a work context is being canceled. Being fired from a job based on your job performance is not being canceled.
Yeah, I would say this is a job performance issue and not a him expressing his opinion issue.
Getting fired for undermining the very mission of the library and subjecting the county to a massive lawsuit as a result is not 'canceling' in the way most people understand it.
Making up laws seems to warrant firing or at least being put on unpaid leave. If the law were real, even if unconstitutional, that is one thing.
Shouldn't have an online mob involved, you would hope the library would police itself based on the actual laws it is supposed to adhere to.
Say that to your own "brothers in Christ" and you might have a point. Instead you are choosing to ignore the unconstitional behavior.
Go simper somewhere else.
As I've noted elsewhere on this thread, it is by no means obvious that what happened here is unconstitutional-- and I certainly do not think employees should be fired for taking debatable stands on legal issues. (Not least because I personally do that literally every day of the work week!)
It’s not just that he “took a debatable stand,” but that having that he chose to stop a member of the community from exercising her first amendment rights. That’s what we’re criticizing.
Zagarna knows that; he’s arguing for the sake of arguing. It’s his happy place.
It’s not a debatable stand though. California has no such law. He was playing hate speech policeman without a law to back up his vigilantism.
I’m an accountant. If I lie about the tax law, I would lose my employment. Though what he did would be more like me standing around yelling at my clients that GAAP suddenly didn’t apply because of some new law I pulled out of my butt.
100 percent agree. He is absolutely wrong.
I think part of the point of the pod is that he really might have… if Not for the totally disproportionate response of the astroturfing critics that Riley Gaines sent the library’s way.
Nothing helps people to come together more than literal physical threats.
Tangentially anyone else see the Keith Olbermann tweet about Riley Gaines? This is straight-up misogyny: man who has no athletic ability whatsoever diminishes an objectively successful young woman as being bad at sports and stupid? What a piece of shit. The fact that this didn't get any left-wing pushback speaks volumes.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/keith-olbermann-calls-riley-gaines-stupid-unsuccessful-ex-swimmer-responds-showing-off-accolades
He is such an asshole. I used to watch him on MSNBC back in the day, and now I question my life choices because maybe he was always an insufferable prick. I wonder what Katy Tur saw in him.
Katie is now married and a mom. I’m happy for her. More salient to me is that she loves Phish as much as I do. I would love to boogie with her at a show and then I would want to hug her because her father is unhinged AF and the AGP is probably not the worst of it.
Oh, yes. I remember her talking about Phish!
She also used to drop in veiled references to Phish lyrics without explaining them - lil Phishy Easter eggs. I haven’t kept up with her in ages, tho, since I got rid of cable.
Finding about about KO and Katy Tur send me down the rabbit hole of reading about her father. What a nightmare.
I almost posted something about her father but deleted it (it sounds like he was physically abusive).
Ironic that he used to do that “worst person in the world” segment when the worst person in the world was in the mirror the whole time
I forgot about that! I’ve blocked my Olbermann memories. I only remember he was a James Thurber superfan or something & occasionally read bits of his work.
Sports fans of a certain age will remember a witty, self-effacing and hilarious ESPN anchor named Keith Olbermann from back in the 1990s.
That "K.O." bears no resemblance to the pompous, smug blowhard of 21st century cable news.
Saw this on B&W. Disgusting.
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2023/oink-oink/
Ah but men using trans issues as an excuse to be sexist never happens you see.
Damn I had no idea. I only know olbermann as that guy that made anti-Trump youtube videos all the time in which he looked very stern and apparently used to be a baseball guy. Katy Tur I know is still on MSNBC.
Gosh, he is trying so hard to be relevant.
I remember KO being on espn and talking about baseball, and specifically, baseball cards. This is a distant memory. The next time I heard his name-msnbc. Bit of a jump but, whatever. Next time I heard his name, he’s gone full loon. There are a lot of cases of TDS in the media, his might have reached clinical diagnosis level. Bill Maher is another one that makes me laugh. I can get behind quite a few things he says. When anyone mentions trump though, he loses it. If I believed in reincarnation I might suggest that in another life trump banged his wife.
I saw some hilarious responses to that, did they record this prior to Olbermann's Tweet. because he was being particularly awful.
What’s happened with libraries and librarians is really sad. When I was a teenager be in the ‘90’s they were fighting against politicians who wanted public libraries to be required to install internet filtering software on the computers for patrons. I know a bunch of librarians and until recently I would have said the profession was really holding up the ideals of free access to information
Today the most prolific spreader of misinformation I know is a librarian who teaches patrons that the most important thing when evaluating the veracity of information is who would benefit from it being true. This individual also gets very upset when asked to assist a patron looking for information supporting a position that they disagree with. This does not seem to be uncommon among librarians.
Part of this seems to be a shift in what they see as their profession’s purpose. There is a greater emphasis on making people (well, certain people) feel safe and avoiding specific types of risks. During the pandemic, libraries stayed closed for longer than bookstores and other businesses. They continued to require masks (even for toddlers) after mask mandates had been lifted and most people had had an opportunity to be vaccinated . When I mentioned this to librarians they explain that it was preserving access because there might be people who would avoid the library if masks were not required. When I pointed out that it specifically excluded people with certain disabilities and young kids who couldn’t keep their masks on the point just got waved off. Meanwhile, they’re very hesitant to eject patrons who are creating a safety problem or nusiance for other patrons because they’re almost always homeless.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Seattle library allowed Kirk Cameron to have an event at the library after much protesting because they are taxpayer funded and bound by the first amendment. They got them banned from Seattle pride.
As a teacher of English majors, I regret to say that I suspect the informal but very real English-major-to-MLIS-degree-holder pipeline is not doing great things for ideological diversity among librarians. We get all these curious first-year students in our classes, then the conservatives/libertarians/moderates realize what you have to write to get an A in your median English class and sort themselves into other majors.
I won't speak for librarians in general, but this particular librarian's opinion that "respect" trumps the First Amendment is pretty representative of the views of the humanities professors who teach future librarians. Years ago, when campus-speech debates arose among academics, I would try to point out the basics of 1A jurisprudence to other English teachers, but the resolute denial of the most elementary precedents was such that I gave up.
My sister is an English professor. Love her dearly, but I watched her profession literally changer her personality as she takes on more and more extreme political view in order to “fit in”. She would never admit to it but it’s obvious. She’s been chasing tenure so hard it’s painful to watch. The other day she opened up a livestream or something with a stolen-land-acknowledgment. I will love her my whole life but my tolerance for bullshit has a limit and her profession is punishing wrong-think by exclusion and has been for some time now.
"The most important thing when evaluating the veracity of information is who would benefit from it being true."
That's not a librarian. That's a political commissar.
Funnily enough, that librarian is one of those anti-capitalists who insist that solving every problem requires getting rid of capitalism. So commissar is spot on.
What are you basing this claim on?
I was one of those librarians protecting people's access to information and trying to have a variety of viewpoints in the collection. I got out just as the mission was starting to change.
Librarians like yo are awesome. People forget how bad the religious right was back in the '90's and how even Bill Clinton got on the censoring the internet boat. And I think everyone was better off with libraries that had a large range of veiwpoints. Reading books by people who shared my opinions and those whose opinions were the complete opposite made me a better thinker and the library was where I had access to those books.
Thanks to the pandemic, I retired early. I'm thankful I had a good career. I feel bad for those entering the profession now. The vocational awe is set to 11 in many libraries.
I've been working in libraries since the mid-90s, albeit in the UK and in the academic sector. It's less extreme where I am, but there's been a definite change in ethos in the last decade among newcomers to the profession. The assumption when I trained was that you preserved neutrality as far as possible and didn't try to privilege particular viewpoints. There were nuances of course, but that was the ideal. Increasingly now I get the impression from some of my younger colleagues that privileging particular viewpoints is just fine as long as they as they are the "right" viewpoints.
There was a controversy in the profession recently about the Library of Congress Subject Heading "Illegal immigrants". (Library of Congress Subject Headings are the industry standard for subject indexing in English speaking libraries.) After the Library of Congress was blocked from changing the term, various libraries, including my own, made a unilateral change to "Undocumented immigrants" or something similar. I was involved in some of the discussions. I remember a colleague of about my own age expressing reservations, to do with departing from the standard, and also with abandoning neutrality in our indexing practices. This provoked an impassioned speech from a younger colleague, arguing for the change largely on account of the iniquitous immigration policies of our current Conservative government. Which is a political position with which I largely agree, but I wouldn't think it appropriate to incorporate my political beliefs into my professional practice.
And every week another colleague adds pronouns to his or her email signature. I feel like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers...
Similar spot here. I would also say the large number of retirements during Covid has hastened the change and also diminished institutional memory over the battle fought over censoring. I'm about 15 years from retirement and yet I stand as one of the very few librarians who went through the nineties but it is jarring hearing the same arguments about safety and enabling harmful ideas coming from my colleagues rather than the religious right. Unfortunately, my colleagues are in a much better place for silently pulling contentious books from the stacks without causing any headlines about censorship. Nothing to see here, there's no censorship we're just "decolonizing the collection" or doing an "inclusion audit."
Librarians are constantly discarding books but we used to do so based on community interest and circulation statistics rather than ideological reasons. We also used to feel compelled to include books where there was a lot of controversy because we wanted to create access so people could discuss knowledgably, now that's considered platforming hate, if the books come from the "wrong" side.
Wow- that is depressing as hell.
After George Floyd, there were journalists promoting "moral clarity" over objectivism. (Which would be fine for op-ed columnists, but these were reporters)
Properly framed, I don't view moral clarity and objectivity as in conflict.
The objection to what journalism has traditionally called "objectivity" is that in practice it amounts to simply parroting both sides of every issue, regardless of whether one of those sides has any merit to it or not. That's actually the opposite of objectivity-- it's treating the subjective opinions of interviewees as if they have merit irrespective of the facts.
But it's also true that when you print the insane, obvious lies of, say, Donald Trump alongside the truth as if the two were equally valid, you are abdicating your moral responsibility to the readership.
That might be a nice dream if the reporters themselves had two brain cells between the lot of them. But a huge number of them are just as stupid as Donald Trump and so are in no position to do anything but print both sides.
Look Donald Trump is an idiot and a menace, but as someone who knows a lot about how the federal government works you would see papers and journalists running wild on things he said that were say only 70% true, and printing headlines and arguments that were say 20% true.
I remember once specific incident where Donald Trump said "The US government did Y" (the fact of the matter was the US government did 80% Y), and the "fact check" by the NYT/PolitiFact etc. was "Trump is a liar the government has done NOTHING for Y".
Which is without a doubt more false than what Trump said. And that was presented as a "Correction of his lie". A bigger lie!
Total TDS. Anyway, the journalists long since ceded the moral high ground (if they ever had it), so they are in zero position to wield "moral clarity". It is just hiding camoflaging editorializing in the news section.
I would love to refute this completely made-up anecdote, but it's so lacking in detail that I can't even tell what you're talking about, much less explain why you're full of shit. These percentages are just abject nonsense. I'm reminded of a passage from the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series:
"Many stories are told of Zaphod Beeblebrox’s journey to the Frogstar. Ten percent of them are ninety-five percent true, fourteen percent of them are sixty-five percent true, thirty-five percent of them are only five percent true, and all the rest of them are… told by Zaphod Beeblebrox."
https://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio8.htm
Next time, try to exceed "English words next to each other" and shoot for the minimum standard of "more coherent than a satire from a work of fiction."
As a public library director, this is my nightmare. I handled protests over pride events in a DEEP red county in a DEEP red state without much fanfare. Year 2- no protestors at all. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if a staff member did this.
Anyone else find it a little ironic that a librarian, standing within the library he is currently working in, says he can’t find the code he’s enforcing at the moment?
The fantasy of offering to pull up a chair while he looks it up...
W
Legal databases can be a real bitch to search
Riley Gaines did nothing wrong.
The librarian abused his (albeit meager) power and violated people’s First Amendment rights. It is reasonable to call on people to voice their opposition. Groups like FIRE do something similar, encouraging people to send emails. It’s absurd to say she should have known someone would call in a bomb threat. You might as well say this incident shouldn’t be publicized at all, because some lunatic might do something crazy. Bullshit.
EXACTLY. And if Riley Gaines hadn't tweeted it, another big account would draw attention to it inevitably and everyone would be blaming Libs of TikTok or Matt Walsh or someone else.
Yeah, couldn't disagree with Jesse on this take more. Appealing to John Ronson's work on public shaming is not a correct analysis of the situation. This is a PUBLIC OFFICIAL. Not a random Twitter user. There should absolutely be public outcry about a violation of constitutional rights in this manner.
National outcry and harassment because of an issue in a local library and one of its librarians is unbelievably out of scale and totally unfair. He deserves a reprimand and a talking to, not a national tar and feathering.
He deserves the lawsuit he likely will receive for denying citizens their constitutional rights.
This isn't a 15 year old you need to give a stern talking to...
He did it once. He deserves a stern talking to because he was clearly confused and ignorant, he's not trying to oppress anyone. If he does it a second time, then I'm much, much less against the thirst for his blood I'm seeing on display here.
There were lawyers there advising him in real time of the law. He chose to deprive people of their civil rights. I didn't catch a whiff of confusion -- definitely deliberate ignorance based in political bias.
Intent is irrelevant to me. And I wouldn't concern myself on intent of a police officer who deprived someone of their civil rights. It's not "a stern talking to" scenario -- public officials have a duty to the public to not deprive them of their civil rights. It's very straightforward.
Also "thirst for his blood" is ridiculous. How do you think this ultimately works out? It's not like he's going to prison. There will be a sure-win lawsuit, the library's insurance will quickly settle and make a modest payment, premiums may inch up, there will be some mandated training for employees to advise them of the first amendment, and the librarian will... most likely get a stern talking to and will likely get a second chance before being fired.
But accountability is important. And there needs to be a mea cupla from the library and a commitment to respecting the public's rights going forward.
also do you guys really think that it was a good idea for Riley to tweet out the PHONE NUMBER? To me that seems an insane thing to do.
Of course, obviously, someone who wants to complain can find that information themselves. But there are a lot of bored basement dwellers who wouldn’t bother to do this type of thing until it shows up on their feed. In which case, it’s low enough effort.
There’s a line here and I think she definitely crossed it. Not that it’s illegal - rather that it’s bad and (based on the outcome) clearly counterproductive.
How is it counterproductive? Who was going to discipline the librarian? Nobody. Hopefully a judge will, but certainly no one in Davis wants to. The bomb threat didn’t make anyone close ranks--the ranks were already closed tight. No, it is not insane to tweet the phone number of a public institution. Gaines is not responsible for the actions of her followers, and it’s unreasonable to expect her to think through every possible reaction someone might have to something she tweets.
What does strike me as insane is the notion that she and others should pull their punches when protesting a government official who violated citizens’ constitutional rights.
"If your employer doesn't punish you for misplaced confidence and ignorance, *me and our army of trolls will.*" Reprehensible.
Violating the First Amendment is reprehensible. Expressing outrage at such a violation is not.
Oh so you're merely expressing outrage with no hope or expectation that the expression will become more tangible and painful to your target, who you should be reminded, hurt no one? Or do you think you're being a little dishonest here?
First of all, I am not Riley Gaines, in case that wasn’t clear. Second, no, I am not being dishonest. If you’re suggesting that Gaines was trying to get the librarian fired, well, what if she was? Whether this is the best outcome is debatable, but I don’t think it would be unreasonable, let alone reprehensible, to suggest that violating people’s First Amendment rights should be a fireable offense for a government employee. Whether he “hurt” anyone is besides the point. He fucked up. If you have a different view, fine, but I don’t know where you’re finding dishonesty.
The library is a public institution though, and its phone number is neither private nor difficult to find. The idea that someone tweeting this info crosses some imaginary line is fairly baffling to me.
If it wasn’t her someone else would have. It would have happened eventually.
If the standard is that people must realize some crazy person will possibly do something violent, should the Senate Majority Leader be rebuked? Someone traveled across the country and planned to execute Brett Kavanaugh, after all. A bit more of an immediate threat than what could be a dumb kid’s joke bomb threat. https://www.newsweek.com/chuck-schumer-brett-kavanaugh-roe-v-wade-pay-price-comment-1713964
You're responsible for what you do do, not what someone else might do.
Public life is just about 100 times more complex than that.
Yes. I know this. I mentioned it because people are in a tizzy because Ms. Gaines put out the number of a public institution that unjustly constrained the speech of someone in the public.
“Someone else would have done something bad and counterproductive anyway therefore it’s ok that Riley Gaines did something bad and counterproductive.”
I don’t find this a compelling arguement
You're comparing one person making a fake bomb threat to someone shooting at a field of Republicans playing baseball.
I only mentioned it because I'm guessing no one who is so upset about Riley Gaines was saying Leftists in media should tone down their speech. I get it now. People who are opposed to progressive overreach are held to a higher standard than progressives themselves.
Firmly sub-optimal.
I think that anything that increases the temperature in an issue to an extent that people are tossing around death threats is counter productive.
The fact is that before the death threats there was a reasonable chance the librarian would have disciplined. Now though? No way. Nothing like a death threat to cause people to close ranks.
“The fact is that before the death threats there was a reasonable chance the librarian would have disciplined.” Are you basing this on some other time TRAs overplayed their hand and were held accountable?
It didn’t happen when Riley was essentially held hostage at a college in California. The administration said the students were brave.
And so it’s better to make it even less likely? Everyone has got to get off their moral high horses. It’s pissing off the 80% of the populace that would otherwise have your back.
How would you suggest people express their feelings to a public institution that had unjustly stifled the speech of some members of the public for ideological reasons, without saying which library it was? Arrange a scavenger hunt to search for clues?
I'm always amazed at how people who temporarily have the moral high ground make silly errors and miss layups. Tweeting his name and number was a great way to abdicate any sense of righteousness RG's "side" may have had.
If she had tweeted his personal number, I would agree, at least in part. But she tweeted the number of the library: https://twitter.com/Riley_Gaines_/status/1693608550373728448?s=20
We’re talking about a government functionary who violated citizens’ constitutional rights. I see no reason why he should be entitled to have his name and work number kept private.
Ah that’s something I did not realize. It was the public number of the library. Fair enough I suppose.
This. It's not like members of the public showing up to protest SCOTUS judges AT THEIR HOUSES, when they may have young children at home.
I think the idea that is that public outcry and righteousness has nothing to do with efficacy when engaged in advocacy as part of a social movement with policy objectives. Like the climate activists, direct action that makes you feel good in the moment (yelling at people, throwing soup) doesn’t actually advance a cause. It feels good to channel outrage and self-righteousness (I’m so right and they are so wrong and I just need them to see their wrongness and shout about how right I am) but then nothing changes, so what is the point. Now the woman who was actually locally organizing can’t do anything because these super online national activists have hijacked local politics again.
Tweeting a phone number and telling your followers to harass a person is universally bad. It never makes anything better.
I'm starting a MILFs for freedom chapter asap
I want us to be the Alliance of Left Handed Lesbians (ALL).
I nominate myself for Vice President
Subscribed!
Emma V is the same person who said that the desire to feel safe in public is bourgeois cope, and white ladies who are assaulted on the subway should just get over it, so I do not have high hopes here.
Ew. As a brown lady who wants to feel safe in public... fuck that.
Seriously, the ladies most likely to get assaulted in the subway *are not white*.
Shhhh, we’re not supposed to talk about that.
Another example of the “there are no safe spaces in the real world, snowflake” attitude from conservatives in the 2010s now being used by progressives in response to kids seeing perverted piss play parades in public and bearing the brunt of your city’s soft-on-crime policies.
Emma should tell that to the Ukraine, or something. Her statement sounds like a good example of a “luxury belief”. How ironic.
I think Jesse calling in to their show could potentially have some small impact because as someone who is (or maybe “was” is getting to be more accurate at this point) the target audience for their show, I started changing my own thinking about trans issues based, in part, on Jesse’s work, so there are some people who may actually be reachable over there.
I think Emma coming on BAR is going to be pretty unproductive. I have seen her responses to arguments about this issue and she comes from extreme privilege so she’s one of those luxury beliefs people. She doesn’t care about women in sports because her background is so far removed from poverty that she’s not thinking about the women who rely on these sports to get them into school or to earn them a living. She doesn’t care about women in prison because she has never lived on the margins and been in a place where the reality of what it would mean to be a female incarcerated with a male rapist is even fathomable.
She's in the media business she has no skin in the game and doesn't have the intellectual curiosity to think about what her position means on a practical level.
Most people who defend the inclusion of trans women in women's sports do so for reasons that are obviously wrong and easily debunked. I'll give Vigeland credit for having a coherent position: she just doesn't care if it's unfair. She thinks inclusion trumps fairness and that's that. Not a position I agree with, but one I can at least understand.
y'know what yeah. It's at least coherent. More coherent than the current NCAA policies that focus on testosterone quantity in the blood which is not directly relevant to pre-built muscle mass.
I just don't get the inclusion argument. Inclusion of men in women's sports means excluding women. It's so one-sided. It never goes the other way. Check out shewon.org, it's where all the women who've lost to men are listed, and it represents a tiny fraction of women who've been excluded from their sports podiums.
Clearly, the trans maximalist definition of "inclusion", excludes a great many people...including, just about everyone who plays women's sports.
Yeah, but that's just excluding women... it's not like they are fully fledged humans like male-bodied people... women don't matter when male bodied people want something.
it's worth the try, even if it just confirms our priors.
Yeah, if at the end of the day her position is "I don't care about the women this will hurt" at least it's out there.
It'll be a waste of time at worst, but it could be entertaining. It won't be counter-productive, so might as well give it a shot.
I'm interested to hear what someone who disagrees with Jesse has to say. I think it's unlikely that she'll convince me, but it's still IMHO healthy to have the conversation.
This episode makes me hate everyone. I have a lot of sympathy for Beth. She's undoubtedly in a tough position, but becoming an activist in this way will no 'save' her child, nor is it likely to mend the relationship.
The librarian is unhinged, everyone on Twitter wading in is not helping. Nothing is achieved, everyone is angry.
I'm going outside to watch the birds in my garden with a cup of tea now.
I get that, but what is Beth to do? Just ignore this bizarre trend that is sweeping Davis? That hasn't worked so far, anywhere. I hope it dies out as the damage that medicalization does becomes well-known, but the ideology is becoming more and more entrenched. It truly is like living through the play Rhinoceros. Last week, I was told to ask for pronouns from my middle school students. Every time we do this, it just reinforces the entire gender ideology. This entire generation is being inculcated with this stuff as fact. That isn't the worst thing going on in this world, but it's not great. I guess one hope is that the more mainstream this stuff becomes, the more kids will reject it.
Yeah, of the parents I've seen navigate this very difficult situation, the ones I admire the most are those who've handled things patiently within the family, with the main goal being to keep up their relationships with their children.
That said, doing that is a lot easier if you're still together with your co-parent or at least on amicable terms. I can't imagine how much harder it would be if you and your kid's parent weren't on the same page. It seems like a lot of the situations that have made it into the news have involved divorces and custody disputes. I feel for all families in that complicated position.
What are those birds doing with your cup of tea?
Yeah I don't think I'm going to listen to this one. It just sounds too depressing.
Never read the comments before listening to an episode. The vibe of comments never matches that of the episode. Comments are always more catastrophic. That's the tendency for people who participate in comment sections.
It was still worth listening to. That part is only 1/4 of the podcast.
BIRDS AREN’T REAL
I mean come on guys, listen to yourselves talk about the downstream consequences of the bomb threats...
Moms for Liberty smeared even further
Riley Gaines blamed/smeared
Anti-Trans position painted as extreme, even potentially violent
Rights of trans people reaffirmed by officials
Support for librarian goes up
Like obviously this was someone on the trans rights side who did these fake threats and it worked perfectly.
Also let’s be honest, if it was someone on the anti trans side they’d have exposed their identity, combed through their social media, and gotten them fired from their job already...
I think this is the most likely explanation, but I do respect Katie's insistence on waiting for more facts to emerge. I'm pretty jaded by the numbers of "hate crimes" that have turned out to be "awareness-raising" stunts, though.
I will honestly not be surprised either way it turns out. I think Katie’s wise to wait.
yeah, very likely. Also, remember that in Northern Ireland, it was just entertainment for teens to call in bogus bomb threats during the 90's. Also, blaming Riley Gaines asking them to write google reviews as the cause of the bomb threat is a bit irresponsible: this video had trended on the right immediately after it happened, went viral without Riley. She is just the person the left needed to demonize the most, so maybe this was an unwitting assist.
Fuck in the 90s kids at my school called in fake bomb threats to skip tests. Happened like once or twice a year.
I never understand when people take them seriously. Bombings imply aren't common anymore.
Death threats are even worse. If you publicly take an online death threat seriously, I lose a lot of respect for you.
Sure it could be false flag but I honestly doubt it. Do you know how many bomb and murder threats totally innocent elections officers got from deranged right wing assholes after trump lost in 2020?
It really seems to be something that right wingers feel is helpful to their cause (it’s usually not). I wouldn’t blame TERFs but right wing extemists that have latched onto this issue? Definitely.
Well I mean the issue is that I don’t know because there’s never any resolution to them. Either someone found and charged or whatever. That’s not to say your point isn’t true, it very well could be. But we actually don’t know and can’t know unless there’s someone identified and charged.
Again, you very well may be correct and I’m not disagreeing with you, but right now it’s not a knowable thing.
While the bomb threats may well be false flag it does seem anyone who publically states any controversial opinion these days gets death threats. I think it’s likely that there are just violent morons of all political persuasions more than willing to attack anyone they disagree with. In my experience, the real “false flags” tend to be more symbolic (bleach, nooses, tape over names on portraits) and/or self-directed.
Yeah I mean I think for the most part when someone/some organization states they’ve received death threats they’re either:
a)making it up to garner sympathy and paint opposition as extremist
b)false flag in fake hate crime hoax variety to achieve same affect as a)
c)a troll (not saying someone trolling you with death threats is okay, not scary/traumatic , not something to call out as wrong and bad)
Just from my own observations of when and how this device is deployed...
You really think false flag death threats are more common than the standard variety? I don’t. Most People aren’t that crafty.
Most people assume only THEIR side gets death threats and anything against their enemies must be a false flag.
The conflation of civil rights with the right to be addressed or spoken about exactly as one prescribes is disturbing enough, but this case makes no sense at all. It was generic "males" who were alluded to, not any particular individual. Clearly the library staff was just looking for an excuse to shut down the meeting.
I had seriously considered living in Davis for a while. I'm glad to have a reason to cross it off my list, because there are just too many places one could live.
The librarian's conflation of references to natal sex with "misgendering" made me want to grind my teeth while I was listening. I worry that the sex-denialist trend is becoming more mainstream, to our cultural detriment. How are you supposed to talk about these controversies, even from the most supportive angles, if you can't refer to sex?
You're not supposed to talk about them. Removing the vocabulary you need to talk about them ensures that you can't.
I know. I just gave my basic lecture on gender versus sex and saw lotsa friendly nods as I said, there is no spegg - only two sexes when it comes to reproduction, and potentially about 8 billion genders.
I really think that gen Z is hungry for some reality as long as they’re assured it’s not hateful. The exception is kids unmoored by trans identification.
That really bothered me, too. I don't agree with changing the meanings of "woman" or "man", but to change the meanings of male and female is totally insane. That shows, to me, a total immersion in an ideology that has severed itself completely from reality. Just bonkers.
The comment in question did not stick to that terminology, though. It explicitly said "men in women's sports." Not "natal males" or whatever. Men.
If you are going to toe that line, you had better toe it correctly. These speakers didn't. Whether that should be legally dispositive of anything is a different kettle of fish altogether, but let's not misrepresent what happened here.
"If you are going to toe that line, you had better toe it correctly."
Yes, because men on the Left like you are just champing at the bit to police our speech.
Good thing we don't need men to police women's speech on an issue directly affecting women.
I find it surprising that your Rah Rah One Hundred Percent Real Woman schtick doesn't get old for everyone else here, because literally every comment you post is the same repetitive transphobic garbage. Me, I find it incredibly tedious.
Funny. Reading a pompous man on the Left repeatedly direct ire at women speaking up on issues affecting women's rights, and think he's justified in doing so, is incredibly tedious. You think you can badger us into silence but you're wrong. I'm a mother of daughters. This is a hill I'm willing to die on, as are many others.
MULIEBRITY, STOP RAISING ZAGARNA'S IRE! WE NEED RAIN THIS YEAR FOR THE CROPS AND IF YOU ANGER HIM HE WILL WITHHOLD RAIN! PLEASE DO NOT FORCE HIM TO PUNISH US.
I direct ire at transphobes of every gender. You just happen to be a particularly mendacious example of the species.
The fact that you repeatedly invoke your cishet femaleness does not mean that anyone who disagrees with you is thereby engaging in sex discrimination.
Serious question- How is accurately sexing an individual transphobic?
Or, put differently, how is properly sexing an individual or group invalidating one’s gender identity?
If you are going to nit-pick, you had better nit-pick correctly. The librarian drew the line at "male" so there was nothing they could have said that would have been acceptable.
Listen to it again.
I did. 1:03:30.
He said you cannot use the word male to refer to “transgender females” because it is not respectful. Assuming I’m correct that he means trans women when he says transgender females he’s clearly not allowing male
Given that many people use the word "men" to refer to sex, I am skeptical that progressives will be successful in getting everyone to accept that "men" and "women" refer to gender by fiat. Only the most devoted activists and followers of any given issue care about these language games.
Yeah, despite the attempts to make "man" mean something other than "biological male" I can't help but, you know, use the language the way 99% of humans understand it. I'm not going to call people "natal males" or "biological males" when the context doesn't merit it. Obviously if you were discussing specific trans issues, that level of clarification makes sense and is necessary, but in most conversations, when I say, "I saw some guy crossing the street" I assume the listener knows I mean "a human with a penis who is biologically male."
Yep. This is the standard among linguists, by the way: Words mean what native speakers of the language understand them to mean.
I am all for language evolving, but if this process is synthetic and causes more confusion it might be more like GMO fruit vs "oh, what a weird thing nature made by accident!" I get tired of word games pretty quickly.
Yes, the way we use it colloquially sometimes, as in, hey guys, is genderless. But saying, hey guys, to a group as opposed to staying “where is that guy?” are very different things, and most people would understand the difference.
Cutting your tits off and going on hormones doesn't make you a man. Nor a surgically constructed fake penis. Sorry.
And that goes triple the other direction.
It is not really up for debate you ridiculous troll. People were willing to be polite to these people until they demanded policing reality and speech with nonsense as a requirement.
Well, I guess that settles it! You have declared it Not Up For Debate, therefore, the debate is concluded. Good to know.
Yeah. I'm not trying to convince anyone. I was substantially more polite on this issue until the TWAW stuff happened.
But if people are going to be disingenuous bullies, well you can bully the broken weirdos right back.
I listened to it twice. He used the words male and female to refer to gender identity. In other words, a trans woman was referred to as female. This is not uncommon these days, but it makes it impossible to talk about males in women's sports, for example. And it muddies the waters in general to such a degree that it is impossible to talk or even to think clearly about these issues.
I believe the comment was “males in women’s sports”; we absolutely need to be consistent in stating that properly sexing an individual or group is appropriate.
That was not the comment, or at least not the relevant comment, but thanks for playing.
"The conflation of civil rights with the right to be addressed or spoken about exactly as one prescribes is disturbing enough, but this case makes no sense at all. It was generic "males" who were alluded to, not any particular individual." THIS.
I wanted to scream while listening to it because (maybe I have to listen again), but they repeated the library director's claims about "misgendering" but didn't point this out.
Are we not allowed to point out the people colonizing women's sports are male now? This is why I stopped playing the language games to be "nice." First they wanted "women," and said it was because that referred to "gender" and not sex (BS, but whatever), and that "female" referred to sex. Then the stupid states started being accomplices by codifying legal fallacies in putting "F" on their government issued IDs, and I see guys saying they're "legally female." Fork that.
I used to be careful on Twitter and when I stopped saying "trans women" I used "trans-identified males." But this is confusing people. There was a recent poll out of the UK and a third of people polled didn't know that "trans women" are biologically male. In London the people most confused were 25-34 (or thereabouts), which makes no sense until you realize there are a lot of people for whom English is a second language. We are unable to discuss these issues if people don't understand what we're talking about.
They're men. Men who identify as women. Always men. J & K may play the nice game, but look at what's happening to Katie - they will NEVER care about her honoring preferred pronouns.
In the UK census they found a surprisingly high number of people reporting to be transgender in Brent, Newham, and Luton, which are all places with a very high number of people who are not native English speakers. https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/what-did-we-learn-from-the-census/
I try to stick to male-bodied or female-bodied, but an alarming number of people don't know much about female-bodies. Trans identified male, India Willoughby claims to have a cervix and several Labour politicians seemed to think that it was possible for males to grow a cervix with hormones.
I used to try to use more scientific language, too, but after realizing how confused so many people are, I don't want to add to it. I've started using "men who identify as women" (Philosophy prof. Gary Francione in the US has been doing that in his recent threads). If I'm out of patience that day it's just "men."
How about “Trans-identified Dicks”?
Just call them cutters, for a lot of them it comes from the same place anyway. Desire for attention, interest in self-harm and self-hate/lack of self-esteem.
I don't say "trans-identified male" anymore. I realize it was confusing, too... hence why I said just after that "But this is confusing people."
I (and others) thought relying on biological terms would clarify things. But after reading about that poll in the UK, I see that allowing the terms to be muddled at all in the first place was the mistake. Non-native English speakers are confused by "trans women" -- the poll shows that. Queer theory intentionally confuses people with language games.
Now I just say "men," or "men who identify as women," as philosophy professor Gary Francione has been recently in his discussions on this topic on Twitter/X.
"I’m still not really convinced this would clarify things to someone who’s English is poor and doesn’t already know what a trans woman is."
The UK poll that people shows that people who have poor English don't ALREADY know what a "trans woman" is. I'm saying JUST CALL THEM MEN. When you learn a new language some of the first words you learn are "man," "woman," "boy"," and "girl." Most of the world isn't made up of people who went to college or have friends who were gender studies majors.
Dylan Mulvaney? Man.
Rachel Levine? Man.
Sam Brinton? Man.
Elliot Page? Woman.
etc.
It's a holiday. Let's drop this now.
Go pet that cute dog of yours in your profile pic, and I'll go pet mine. ✌️
I mean, if this isn't the world's most obvious just-so story, I've never read one.
Muliebrity wants to be abusive to trans people, full stop. The fig leaf for doing so changes as needed.
Haven’t listened all the way yet but can’t believe Jesse is getting married to Emma Vigeland. Huge surprise. Writers of this show seem to be reaching but I’m intrigued.
$1000 says the bomb threat was a false flag made by someone on the Trans rights side of the debate
My money's on Trantifa, too. If it's not, so be it.
if it is TRA's, we'll never know. Remember the Nashville manifesto?
At even odds? I'd take that bet. I've been on the receiving end of false-flag threats before, so I know that the chances are not trivial that it is one, but I don't think it's as high as 50%. I'd probably lay 2-1 odds that it's real in Vegas.
I'd hope I'd have the wherewithal to say, "are you, a government employee, saying right now that I am not free to speak how I'd like in a public place?"
But I do know in situations like this it's very easy to get flustered.
I thought asking for the code section was pretty good.