For Men's and Women's Rights, with Pride

A picture of me participating with Planned Parenthood at last year's Pride Parade, as I'll be doing again Sunday. I'm on the right, holding a Happy Pride sign in front of my The Red Pill movie T-shirt.

A Non-Naughty Limerick

A prof at old Miskatonic
Dared to say about gods things ironic
When an un-forecast storm
Altered his form
  -- now he's permanently catatonic!

Caster Semenya Should Compete As a Human Being

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/31/728400819/i-am-a-woman-track-star-caster-semenya-continues-her-fight-to-compete-as-a-femal

There's never been any good reason to segregate sports.

The rationale is given that without segregation, women would have no chance of winning. If true, so what? Many men have no chance of winning either, but they still participate because sports can be healthy and fun. If the only reason someone gets into sports is the hope of winning a medal, they're in it for the wrong reason.

Hence the saying: you should be competing with yourself, not with others

The Truth About Margaret Sanger and Eugenics

https://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2015/oct/05/ben-carson/did-margaret-sanger-believe-african-americans-shou/

This is an example of how an ideologically expedient conflation can backfire. If progressives hadn't stigmatized the concept of eugenics by falsely equating it to Nazi racism, this smear against Sanger would have no legs.

Quote of the Year

Here comes the penalty which a land pays when it stifles free speech and free discussion and turns itself over entirely to propaganda. It does not make any difference if at the time the things advocated are absolutely right, the nation nevertheless becomes morally emasculated and mentally hog-tied, and cannot evolve that healthy difference of opinion which leads to the discovery of truth under changing conditions.

  -- W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1935, first edition), page 144

Quote of the Month

"You have no conception at what extravagant rates everything is paid for in this place " -- US Representative Frederick Muhlenberg (PA), first Speaker of the House, writing home from New York City (cited in Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution)

Three ways to spot dodgy nutrition advice -- Futurity

https://www.futurity.org/nutrition-advice-red-flags-2070432-2/

A coworker desperate to help a loved one with cancer once showed me an article about a supposed cure. It concluded with a long list of citations designed to impress the naïve -- especially the Dunning-Kruegerishly naïve like my coworker. Problem was, the citations were nothing but journal titles. As anyone who's had actual experience with scientific or medical journals knows, each of these typically comes out several times a year and each issue comprises dozens of papers filling hundreds of pages. So a "citation" consisting of nothing but a journal title is absolutely worthless. There's no practical way to pore through thousands of pages for each title in search of something supporting the claims in the article. The sole purpose of such a phony list is to make a quack look legitimate to those who don't know any better.

Yippee!

The place I'm currently working through 5/22 invited has invited me to join them on another project starting 6/3!

No to Capitalist Censorship!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/02/facebook-bans-extremist-leaders-including-louis-farrakhan-alex-jones-milo-yiannopoulos-being-dangerous

It's unacceptable that powerful, unaccountable corporations are using their property "rights" to decide which ideas we can discuss. They should be nationalized and brought under workers' control so that the First Amendment governs their platforms.

A Day in the Park: There's a Science to It

Saturday I went to Clark Park, where I'd volunteered to petition to put Olivia Faison, the Green Party's candidate for Philadelphia Council at-Large, on the November ballot. The sign-up sheet hadn't described the nature of the event, but what I found was Science in the Park, part of the Philadelphia Science Festival. So I led my pitch with the fact that Olivia is a retired scientist, and gathered 28 signatures in an hour. Then I spent 45 minutes selling One Step Away and made $25.75.

NAACP Puts Democrats Over Democracy

The president of the national NAACP has just attacked the democratic rights of his members to appease his politican friends.

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/04/28/naacp-to-missouri-black-men-your-lives-dont-matter/?fbclid=IwAR1cnuoRD0oVg2fO-tgo8GJOznpVkljx62jhTuvYwqHIlYR_Rc6v8_XDnwo

Open Democracy Still Not Open to Diverse Viewpoints

Our friends at Open Democracy have shown once again how closed their minds are with a story about the role of the "manosphere" in Donald Trump's election.

They do have a comments section and I tried to use it, but I just got an error message no matter whether I logged in with Disqus, Facebook, or Twitter and regardless of which browser I used. So instead I posted my comment with Gab's Web commenting tool Dissenter. Below is a link to what I wrote.


https://gab.com/stripey7/posts/eHl4K29vVFc4TnlVaEZMTSs0MWdtUT09

Thank You, Mindy Brudno

As part of a job application today, I was asked to write about one of two topics. The one I chose was, "Describe the most important criticism you've ever benefited from. Describe the event and explain how it changed you."

When I was 16-17 years old I was part of what I now regard as having been a political cult. Perhaps the most critical moment during my membership was when I stood alone in objecting to a proposed change in line on an upcoming ballot measure. All of the other ten members of the chapter were ready to vote for it.

The group was nominally democratic, but didn't really encourage independent thought, and I was already struggling with social anxiety. And so, despite having just argued that the proposed line change was unprincipled, I found myself saying I would abstain on the question. Immediately thereafter, another member leaned over and whispered to me that if I thought the line change was unprincipled, I should vote "no" on it, not abstain. I realized she was right and, fortified, voted no.

Looking back on it, I recognize this as the moment when I was in greatest danger of losing my intellectual and emotional freedom. I thank Mindy Brudno, wherever she is.

I Will Be Reading Again at the Upcoming Erotic Literary Salon

http://theeroticsalon.com/category/press-release/

In addition to my reading, I will use the opportunity of the intro to inform people of my new project writing a screenplay based on Hbrushed's short story, "Poor Beth."

I performed two song parodies at the salon in March, which got the biggest applause of the evening.

Today I attended my first meeting of the Philly Writers meetup group. I was hoping to get tips on writing my screenplay, and I wasn't disappointed. Based on what one of the other members said (which was, in turn, based on a book she's currently reading, Writing the Breakout Novel), I realized I have to add a couple scenes prior to what I'd initially conceived as the first, in order to make the protagonist sufficiently sympathetic and get viewers emotionally engaged with her.

Futurity: "Boys aren’t born with better spatial reasoning"

https://www.futurity.org/spatial-reasoning-gap-2035092/

Note that the headline isn’t supported by the research being reported. What the lead author actually says is, “While our results don’t exclude any possibility that biological influences contribute to the gender gap, they suggest that other factors may be more important in driving the gender difference in spatial skills during childhood.” Meanwhile, other research has definitively established that brain sex differences exist in utero: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929318301245 (My thanks to u/SomeGuy58439 for linking to this on r/FeMRADebates.)

Quote of the Day: the Political Streisand Effect

"The Antifa 'protestors' had pretty much no impact on the event. Our report on their pre-event threats really boosted our website's daily views though, so they actually ended up helping us in a way."

  -- Penn Statesman president and College junior Sydney Gwynnx, on demonstrations against their invited talk by Candace Owen

https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/04/candace-owens-penn-college-republican-protest-antifa-philadelphia

Tell Attorneys General to Remember the Constitution!

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments announces:

ACTIVISM FRIDAY!!!

Nineteen Attorneys General are lobbying against the presumption of innocence for college students.

In an effort to promote due process and fairness, SAVE encourages everyone to contact Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota and voice their concerns with this decision.

Attorney General Ellison can be contacted via Twitter (@keithellison).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/title-ix-ags/582673/?fbclid=IwAR2uUSfutJVtofX8E8MW4nX6yzQfzpRy0M6FUODTQ9xXh10zrWYm0kjXpMU

I'm not sure why SAVE singled out Keith Ellison for attention.  I sent my message to PA's AG Josh Shapiro, @PAAttorneyGen, as follows:

It's outrageous that you've signed a letter attacking the presumption of innocence in Title IX cases. This is one of the bedrock principles of our nation's Constitution.

Quote of the Month

Please do not believe anything you read on the Internet.

   -- Bared Affair, number 3.01, page 1

Starting a New Creative Project

Recently, I read an erotic story online and was blown away by it.

I've been reading such stories for years, but it's the first time I found myself thinking as I read one, "This deserves to be made into a movie!" (The only time I'd thought that before was while reading Freedom Road, an historical novel by Howard Fast which, it turns out, actually was made into a movie.) "Magnificent" is the word that first came to mind, both for the very creative plot twists and the striking visual images suggested by the text.

Not long after I read this short story, I was actively imagining how the shots would look and the sequence of the scenes, including ones occurring in the story as flashbacks as well as new ones taking the place of exposition. In my mind the story went from "deserves" to must be made into a movie -- that it would be a cosmic injustice for this not to happen. And I have to do what I can to make this happen -- meaning, at the least, to write a screenplay. I guess this is the feeling I've heard reported by other writers before -- that a story is somehow "out there" and demands that they tell it -- but it's the first time for me.

I mentioned to my therapist that I was hesitating because of my lifetime problem of feeling intimidated by big projects, going back at least to fifth grade when I failed to turn in a report because I had been unable to stop procrastinating on it. She encouraged me to go ahead and just try to write a little every day, and I agreed to do that. And yesterday I actually got started -- I've now completed the "Dramatis Personae" page.