The Middle East Needs the Fourteenth Amendment: My Message to the White House

At the urging of an email from Dr. Cornel West's Presidential campaign, I left a message on President Biden's website today, as well as those of Senators Casey and Fetterman and Representative Boyle:

I demand that my taxes stop being used to fund the Israeli occupation that has given rise to the current bloodshed. Make clear that the resumption of aid is conditioned on unilateral action to withdraw forces from occupied lands, end the ethnic pass system and all discrimination within their own territory, and start negotiations to found a state for all its people in the entirety of historic Palestine/Israel.

From Dr. West's message:

"I call on world leaders, especially those from Western colonial nations, to be conscious of their rhetoric and actions to not add fuel to a violent fire that has been raging for decades. President Biden’s baleful, one-sided comments to the nation and the world on the terrible violence in Palestine and Israel were the direct antithesis of the requisite leadership to engender an immediate cessation of crimes against humanity and a pathway to lasting peace.

"After ordering a naval battle group into a region already trapped in a cauldron of war and senseless suffering, President Biden upped the ante by committing the United States and the people’s hard-earned money to another war of attrition. Worse yet, Congress, still without a Speaker of the House, is working to pass a resolution that will send even more military aid to Israel for operations that will result in greater bloodshed. And Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary just confirmed that more of your hard-earned money will be sent to increase military operations in Israel and Ukraine.

"The war machine of the deadly duopoly must be stopped, defunded, and deracinated before we find ourselves in a calamitous third world war.

"That’s why, as part of my Pillars for Truth, Justice, and Love, I committed to slashing the U.S. military budget and ceasing military spending in the Eastern European and Middle Eastern theaters. But the truth is, we can’t wait until I become president to stop the duopoly’s bellicose initiatives – we must act now and prevent more slaughter of innocent people, many of them children and elders. “Ordering” one million people living in an open-air prison to simply move somewhere else is unacceptable.

"I urge you to call, write, tweet, and otherwise message President Biden and your elected lawmakers by clicking here and demand they stop paving the road to war and start building bridges to peace.

"This is no time for placing party loyalty over people and the planet. We need independent voices speaking out and coming together for a collective call for immediate and lasting peace. The truth is until we achieve justice for the precious Palestinian people, there will never be peace for precious Jewish people, nor the opportunity for both to live together with love through truth, reconciliation, and deep healing.

"We need fewer weapons, less vindictive rhetoric, and more truth, more love, and more justice. Together, we can send our lawmakers and the world a message that we not only choose peace, we demand it.

"May all those suffering find immediate solace and safety."

Election Endorsement: Vote for Seth!

 

My thinking about electoral politics over the past few years has been focused on searching for strategies for breaking the grip of the orchestrated culture wars that both big capitalist parties have been promoting to keep working-class people in their thrall by getting us polarized along tribal partisan lines rather than uniting on a class-wide basis.

Because of the way we've been induced to demonize each other, the most promising tactics to change this picture are those that "tug sideways" -- those that don't appear to be coming from either the left or the right, and therefore don't provoke a reflexive tugging back from those on the other side. One project along these lines is the Forward Party, which has the slogan, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward," and which prioritizes fighting for political reforms like open primaries and ranked choice voting, as well as government transparency.

So I was very interested to hear the news that Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein had declared himself a supporter of Forward. But not so surprised. Earlier, starting when I was actively involved with the Greens, I had had very positive experiences interacting with both him when he was a Deputy Commissioner, and his boss, then Commissioner Al Schmidt. In the spring of 2020, when only a few days before the primary I still hadn't received the mail ballot I'd applied for, I contacted Schmidt's office and that same weekend he came up to Northeast Philly, where I was living at the time, in a van to hand deliver me an emergency ballot, letting me go fill it out and seal it in a private location before returning to his van to watch as he dropped it in a portable ballot box he'd brought with him. This only reinforced the positive impression I already had of him and his deputy as hard-working public servants dedicated to helping all voters impartially.

Before hearing about Bluestein's announcement, I saw no reason to be interested in the City Commissioners race. In fact it's not competitive this year. No party is allowed more than two nominees, so it's practically guaranteed in this overwhelmingly blue town that the two Democratic incumbents will win. And since the Republicans only have one nominee this time, the contest for the minority party seat is also non-competitive. But casting a vote can perform an expressive function. By voting only for Seth, and not for the two Democrats who are just machine politicians -- especially if your other votes indicate Democratic leanings -- you can signal that you value the spirit of public service over blind partisanship. That's why I'm planning to vote for him, and if you're a Philadelphia voter I encourage you to do so too.

Student Workers Rally at Penn

 

The other day student workers rallied on Penn's central green after voting overwhelmingly to form a union. Above is a group picture taken at its conclusion. I'm in the second row near the extreme left, with a blue baseball cap on.

The Daily Pennsylvanian's story on the rally can be read here, and a video panorama I took of the crowd can be seen here.

Behind the Button

Yesterday, as I was sitting in Mark's Cafe in Van Pelt Library, someone who looked to be a Penn undergrad pointed to one of the buttons on my sweatshirt and said he'd be very interested in learning how I came to be wearing it. So I told him.

A number of years ago, I read in the paper about a city employee who claimed to be intimidated as a Jew by a Palestinian flag that someone had posted on an office bulletin board. I thought: if that person feels intimidated, it's clear they're misinformed about the flag's meaning. I recalled the historic position of the Palestinian movement -- one state for all its people -- and considered that a symbol clearly expressing this idea couldn't be misinterpreted as exclusionary and menacing. And the idea of a flag to symbolize a pluralist state reminded me of post-apartheid South Africa, where this was done by melding the apartheid-era flag with that of the ANC.

So I thought: I can do something analogous for Palestine by melding the Palestinian and Israeli flags. And I did so. (Subsequently I posted stickers of it in various places, and on one occasion gave a copy to someone I met at an event for artists at Underground Arts.) So, when I read a couple weeks ago how the Palestine Writes Literature Festival was under attack, I had the idea of showing my solidarity with it by turning the flag into a badge that I could wear on my clothes.

The young man thanked me for taking the trouble to explain this history to him, and said he thought the button is really cool. I do too!

The other button shows a profile picture of Omega Kitten Hydra, the youth liberation advocate who makes videos about children's rights with whom I'm mutuals.

Ageist Superstition Is Not Okay: Answering Verity Violet

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

In a superlong post partially screencapped below, Verity Violet lists numerous age-gap relationships involving famous people, restricting herself in sexist fashion to those between an older male and a younger female although in reality they occur in all combinations of age and sex. Then she asserts that this is "not okay."

Here's what the science shows: "Constantine (1981) showed that reaction depends on perception of willingness and whether the minor had absorbed the moral negatives about the sex. If the minor both saw himself or herself as willing and had not absorbed the moral negatives, then he or she would likely respond positively; otherwise, negatively or neutral. Rind et al. (2001) in footnote 7 showed how non-clinical research since Constantine has confirmed his conclusion. 'Informed consent' is a legal construct that varies widely across nations, from 12 to 18, and in the U.S. is at the high end (16 to 18). In the psychological literature, it has been assumed without any empirical evidence that informed consent relates directly to how persons react to sex. The unexamined assumption is that people under the U.S. age of consent of 16 or 18, by nature, will react negatively to age-gap sex, but those age 18 and above will react well. This is a serious conflation of moral and legal constructs with a scientific construct. Rather than informed consent, the scientific construct of 'simple consent' (whether the minor was willing in the minor's own perception) is the one that has predictive validity with respect to reactions (Rind et al., 2001)." -- Rind, Bruce (2010). "Social Response to Age-Gap Sex Involving Minors: Empirical, Historical, Cross-Cultural, and Cross-Species Considerations," Thymos, Vol 4, Issue 2, p. 113.

What's really not okay is making facile ageist assumptions that aren't supported by a shred of scientific evidence. Such assumptions can result in tragedies like this one:

A middle-aged woman recounts her positive experience at the hands of a loving adult and her negative experience at the hands of the authorities: "Perhaps you cannot imagine this but, when I was 12, I was very much in love with a man of 50 and he with me. I don't know who made the first move now, but we stroked each other and experienced a sexuality together. It relaxed me wonderfully. "One day my parents found out and the police were called in. The examination was terrible, I denied and denied again. Then I gave in. My older friend was arrested. My parents, after my forced confession, made out a formal complaint. Nothing then could be of help anymore. I have never been able to forget this. It wasn't just. It could have been such a beautiful memory. I am married and have four children. I would not object to their having sexual contacts with adults. I regard it as positive." "Pedophilia: psychological consequences for the child." In Child and Sex: New Findings, New Perspectives, L.L. Constantine & F.M. Martinson eds. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1982

 

Why You Shouldn't Tell Someone That Everyone's a Little Autistic

It's not true, and it's extremely annoying to be told this as an autistic person. I wrote about one aspect of how being autistic is a qualitatively different way of experiencing things in this post: https://stripey7.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-new-window-on-myself.html

The video by Amanda (IAmMindBlind) pictured above: https://fstube.net/w/dTcSBWKS45J2k6kHFfMy2t 

Not Swallowing Matt Christman's Black Pill

In a recent conversation with Ben Burgis, Matt Christman argues that third-party presidential efforts are a waste of time. I commented:

This discussion reflects a very narrow and mechanical conception of how political change takes place. Over the long run people's attitudes and behaviors in all areas, including politics, are shaped and reshaped by a variety of kinds of social influence, many of them quite subtle.

If I'm in a polity -- Philadelphia, for instance -- that overwhelmingly supports one of the two capitalist parties, then it's profoundly un-pragmatic to vote for either of them, precisely because there's no chance that it will make a difference to who's elected in this cycle. But if I understand social psychology, then I can appreciate that voting for a third party creates social proof (one of the six "weapons of social influence" identified by Robert Cialdini in his signal work Influence) for supporting a different kind of politics. At any given time under normal historical conditions, most people won't be carefully studying the election results, but those who do will notice an increase in the vote for a third party and will start taking it more seriously. It may lead them to investigate its platform and get involved in some of its issues. Even if they don't get into the weeds of the election returns, the same things might result simply from noticing how many people are wearing a third candidate's campaign buttons. And again, particularly in an election that isn't close, this may result in their also wearing that button and voting for that candidate, which in turn broadcasts social proof to others, etc. You have to be willing to think long-term.

I should add that the non-existence of any (major) vehicle for effecting change outside the red/blue dichotomy doesn't mean you can't work on building them, and there are currently several such projects. One of the most interesting is Vote Pact, a concept that involves finding someone with opposite ideological leanings but a similar frustration with the pressure to vote lesser-evil, and jointly declaring that neither of you will vote for either major party in any election for which you're both eligible. This withdraws two votes from the big capitalist parties without changing the balance between them, but also has the virtue of motivating people to seek out and develop understanding and trust with people who have a different perspective.

See the interview here: https://fstube.net/w/5NG9yC3etQLLgBAweuv7DA 

Quotable from Adam Smith

From The Wealth of Nations:

Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.

Penn Administrators Uphold the Value of Free Speech While Recycling Zionist Smears

In response to criticism of the upcoming Palestine Writes Literature Festival on the University of Pennsylvania campus, administrators have issued a statement endorsing the false equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

I hadn't been too sure I'd make time to attend a general literature event, but in response to these smears against Palestinians I feel obligated to show up in support.

PW's correspondence with Penn: https://palestinewrites.org/2023/09/15/letter-to-the-university-of-pennsylvania/

My sign at the Global Climate Strike today. A fellow marcher made it easier for me to carry by letting me hang a couple of my bags from her handlebars.

A Video of My First Filk Song Is Posted

My first song parody, "Trinity," is based on the Lois McMaster Bujold fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion and set to the tune of "Yesterday." I composed it in 2004 and got a tape recording made a few years later at Philcon, which I subsequently got converted to a sound file. Today I sang it again for a video recording, whose visual part is simply the book standing up on a table.

The lyrics focus on the uncomfortable condition of the protagonist, Cazaril, for much of the story. At the opening he's barely staying alive, wandering the countryside of a feudal society in search of a position. On his last legs, he realizes he's arrived at the estate of a noblewoman he served in his distant youth as a page. Hoping against hope that she might remember him and let him serve as a page again, he drags his weary self to the gate. Once he gets the guard to inquire within, he finds that the noblewoman not only remembers him, but wants him for a significantly more exalted position as secretary and tutor to a young princess in the royal line of succession named Iselle, who is currently under the noblewoman's protection, and her lady in waiting. Over the next weeks they become fast friends, only to receive a mysterious summons to the royal court. Shortly after they arrive, they learn the reason: under the influence of intriguing courtiers, the King has betrothed Iselle to a lout named Dondo. Feeling he owes his life to her, Cazaril resolves to do whatever he can to save Iselle from this fate. He obtains an audience with the King in hopes of changing his mind, but is unable to sway him. Next, he attempts to assassinate Dondo by various means, but they all fail. His last resort is to death magic.

In the universe of this book there are five gods: the Lord of Winter, patron of old men; the Lord of Autumn, patron of young men; the Lady of Summer, patron of mature women; the Lady of Spring, patron of maidens such as Iselle; and finally the Bastard God, patron of all things out of season. Death magic is a ritual whereby one prays to the Bastard God to end someone's life. Two troublesome things about death magic: if it fails because the Bastard God didn't answer your prayer, the attempt is considered to have been blasphemy. On the other hand, if it succeeds you lose your own life in the process, because the death demon that the god sends in answer to your prayer takes the soul of the person for whose death you prayed and then takes your soul too.

For the first reason, Cazaril has to make his attempt in secret. He finds a section of the royal castle that's no longer in use, and since no  one else knows about what he's doing he has to conduct the entire elaborate ritual by himself. When he's finally completed it he collapses in exhaustion, hoping not to wake up since if his prayer is answered he'll be dead soon.

But he does wake up, still alive if oddly bloated. At first he thinks he must have failed, but soon learns that Dondo did in fact die mysteriously at table. He asks around and learns of an old retired wizard who's working in the King's private menagerie, whom he goes to see in hopes he might have an idea why Dondo has died yet Cazaril hasn't. The wizard gets the story from Cazaril, also noting his strangely bloated condition, and figures it out: the Bastard God answered his prayer and the death demon he sent took Dondo's soul, but before it could also take Cazaril's, one of the other gods intervened by encapsulating the demon along with Dondo's soul in Cazaril's gut. Hence the bloating. This implies that whichever god did this has some use for Cazaril, making him by definition a saint. It doesn't take him too long to figure out that the god in question is the Lady of Spring, but most of the remaining book to work out exactly what her purpose for him is. Cazaril's awkward condition is the focus of my song.

Here is a link to the video I made: https://fstube.net/w/hJRNXPjjzuXNsm8ME9Fm7t

A Little Bit Culty?

 

A few years ago I saw an article about groups for explorers of urban spaces and looked into joining one. I noticed that one Meetup group's web page asked that people not rate the Meetups unless they were going to give five stars, on the grounds that the Organizer was going to the effort to make them happen and lead them and people who didn't like them just shouldn't come back. This sounded to me like the request of an insecure narcissist so I decided not to get involved with that group.

"Is your online community a little bit culty? These are the signs"

https://www.cultnews101.com/2023/08/is-your-online-community-little-bit.html

Sabine, Markets =/= Capitalism

 

Quantum physicist Sabine Hossenfelder wades out of her depth in a video titled "Capitalism Is Good." I posted the following comment:

There are two fundamental errors here. One is assuming the consequent: she argues for the benefits of a market in the context of private ownership of the means of production, but that's precisely the condition for the capitalist system's operation, which she doesn't question.

The second error is confusing a free market with capitalism. As Sabine acknowledges, capitalism is a recent historical development, yet markets have existed since ancient times. What distinguishes capitalism as a system is the commodification of labor-power. The existence of labor markets and capital markets, which is unique to the current capitalist era, results in an increasingly uneven distribution of personal income, so that there's growing expenditure on luxuries for a few while the basic needs of many others go unmet. This in turn causes capital to be increasingly invested in producing luxuries and comparatively disinvested from the production of necessities. Obviously this is sub-optimal for the species biologically.

It also misses the point to dismiss the problem of anticipating externalities like the social cost of carbon emissions as "another problem." The problem is precisely that the capitalist setup, in which the means of production are privately owned by wealthy people who can afford to insulate themselves from the social costs of their investment decisions, guarantees that such considerations will by default be an afterthought, and by the time even a robustly democratic government has begun to catch up with them, much damage has been and there's a vested interest with the resources to obstruct any attempt at regulation. Capitalist democracies are constantly closing the barn doors after the horse is gone.

None of this is to deny that a great deal of material progress has been made possible by capitalism, but further progress is increasingly obstructed by the imbalances it creates, and it's been absolutely destructive in the way it forces most people into a much more alienated relation to their work than was typical in premodern times. Instead of one-sidedly pronouncing it "good" as if it represented the end of history, it's necessary to see it as a phase of social evolution that it's time to move beyond. Capitalism has created machine industry and in the process it's also created a working class for whom cooperative labor is second nature. It's time for this class to recognize that it can lead society in replacing the allocation of productive resources by unconscious market mechanisms with the conscious democratic self-direction of society, and to act on this understanding by substituting its own political rule for the present de facto dictatorship of capital.

To deepen your understanding of capitalism not as synonymous with liberalism but as a contradiction immanent within bourgeois society and pointing beyond it through proletarian revolution, I suggest you enroll in The Platypus Affiliated Society's primary Marxist reading group.

Echo Chambers Happen in Science Too: The Case of Obesity Research

 

These days there are many people who tell us we should just "trust the science." They insist anyone who suggests there could be systematic bias on a question within the scientific community is just a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and that conventions like peer review and the desirability of making one's mark with an original insight ensure against excessive conformism. But the reality is that collective delusions can occur in spite of their collective non-functionality among scientists just as easily as in any other group.

A good example is obesity research. As demonstrated in the article I'm linking to below, for half a century or more this field has been totally dominated by an "energy balance" explanation for what causes obesity and what can be done about it. This is in spite of the fact that it's been repeatedly observed in various species that some individuals reliably become obese even when they're starving. Saying weight gain equals energy in minus energy out is much like saying the average price is that at which supply equals demand: it's a mere tautology that doesn't actually predict anything. Yet it's been treated as dogma within this community and obstructed the advancement of knowledge that could actually reverse the trend of ever more overweight people.

"How a ‘fatally, tragically flawed’ paradigm has derailed the science of obesity"

https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/13/how-a-fatally-tragically-flawed-paradigm-has-derailed-the-science-of-obesity/

Review: The Little Red Schoolbook

 

The Little Red Schoolbook was written in 1969 by Danish educators influenced by the youth radicalization and counterculture of the period. It was soon translated into many different languages and published in many countries -- and also banned in many countries, as described by The Children's '68.

Its purpose was to encourage pupils to question authority and learn how to organize and stand up for their rights, just as their older counterparts at colleges and universities were doing. It also aimed to give them information that they wanted and needed which was typically being embargoed from them on topics such as sex and drugs.

Although I learned of its existence a few months ago while researching Beatrice Faust, the Australian civil liberties and women's rights campaigner who contributed to that country's edition of the book, it's an American edition that I recently finished reading.

The book goes into considerable detail describing how schools work and the role of the different actors such as teachers, principals, and school boards. It describes how to engage constructively with these, especially teachers who have power over students but little control of their own situation, as well as how to turn to outside forces such as the press when this is unsuccessful.

It also provides accurate, non-judgmental information about sexuality, including homosexuality, and tells girls how to avoid unwanted pregnancy as well as how to seek an abortion. One section that falls a little short is three paragraphs about "Child molesters or 'dirty old men.'" It begins, "In the old days people used to talk about 'dirty old men.' Children were told they were dangerous. This is very rarely true. They're just men who have nobody to sleep with."

While it's true that they're very rarely dangerous, they're not simply men who have nobody to sleep with. It's now understood that both men and women vary in their sexual age orientation just as they vary in their sexual gender orientation. Although most minor-attracted people don't harass children or youth, those who do do so because these are the people to whom they're attracted. They may well, and often do, have someone adult to sleep with, but that's not what they actually want.

The conclusion of this section is also problematic. It states, "If you see or meet a man like this, don't panic. Go and tell your teachers or your parents about it." This assumes a child wouldn't be interested in sexual activity with an older person, which isn't always the case. It also doesn't make sense, given not only that they're rarely dangerous, but especially in light of the fact, mentioned in the preceding sentence, that in the rare cases they become violent "it's usually because the man has got scared." In that case, it should be obvious that spreading around the advice that follows could only make violence more likely rather than less.

There's also a major section on drugs, with accurate information about a great variety of them with respect to both their affects and their hazards and without regard to whether a particular drug is "illicit" or "licit," such as tobacco or alcohol -- one of the things that made the book controversial.

Although I only learned of this book recently, reading about it in its historical context has prompted me to comment on the article I linked to above, as follows:

I only learned of this book a few months ago and subsequently read it. But the culture of that period had a profound effect on me, even though I only turned seven in 1968, thanks to my having Old Left parents who were friends with hippies. When I was eight years old and starting to form a perspective on the world beyond my immediate experience and what attitude I should take toward it, the adult conversations I sat in on when we had visitors and the "underground" papers and comics that lay around formed me as essentially radical several years before I actually got involved with politics. It was only natural that as I sat in a police station that same year after running away from home, I imagined myself tearing down the "Wanted" poster for Angela Davis -- so the police couldn't use it to help them catch her. And that when the Pledge of Allegiance was introduced in 10th grade, I refused to say it, even though some classmates initially forced me to my feet for it. (Ironically and tellingly, before the end of the semester no one in my home room was saying it, including those students.)

OTD in 1923 and 2016

On this day in 1923, the Nineteenth Amendment was certified as part of the US Constitution, ending sex discrimination in the franchise. Coincidentally yet appropriately, on this day in 2016 tickets went on sale for the world premiere of _The Red Pill_ documentary about the men's human rights movement. I ordered one that day for the very first screening the afternoon of October 7 in Greenwich Village, where I met filmmaker Cassie Jaye among other people. She posted the picture below the day before that.

My Creative Process

I just watched a video by Shirley Serban from a couple years ago about how she composes song parodies, prompting me to put down my thoughts on how it works for me. I posted them as a comment:

Interesting. It's a much more intuitive, organic kind of process for me. I've composed 24 parodies to date (8/23/23), all but three of them since August '19, but I've never thought systematically about the process. I think it usually starts when I realize that some song I'm hearing or thinking of has lyrics that could have a different meaning, or that rhyme with something that particularly interests me, and I gradually build around that starting point until I've got something of satisfying length. Often the entire process occurs in my head. Sometimes, if I don't actually know the original lyrics by heart, I'll print it out on a sheet of paper so that I can write what I've thought of alongside the corresponding lines. If I'm not sure I know the whole melody, or discover that I don't after I've started composing, I'll watch a lyrics video a whole bunch of times until I can recite at least the whole tune, if not all the words, without fault. This process can result in a parody that's longer in terms of unique lyrics than the original, though the running time may be the same since I don't care for repeating verses without variation. So, for instance, my parody of "Windy" would probably play about the same length of time as The Association's classic recording, even though it has nearly three times as many unique lyrics (eight verses versus three in the original). It takes no effort to review what I've composed since it's pleasurable and more or less compulsive to review my creation over and over in my head for several days thereafter, in the course of which I'll sometimes realize there's a tweak to be made that sounds more natural or achieves a more perfect parody of the original.

The video: https://fstube.net/w/w9BDWVdswbnefux2Jb22Lw

AP Tells Lies about ROGD

An AP article appearing in Wednesday's Metro contains some misinformation. I wrote the editor about it.

I am infuriated at the ideologically motivated distortion of science in your article ""How many transgender and intersex people live in the US?"

It says, "[C]onversations about gender-affirming care bans were at times clouded by a discredited 2018 study that claimed kids might experience gender dysphoria because of peer influence. This led to erroneous suggestions that the number of trans people was inflated."

The article deviously fails to name the allegedly discredited study, making it difficult for readers to check the facts for themselves. Fortunately I'd heard of the paper and read an interview with the author, Lisa Littman, in the magazine Quillette. The study was never discredited. The journal PLOS One did a re-review in response to criticism, but as stated in the Notice of Republication, “Other than the addition of a few missing values in Table 13, the Results section is unchanged in the updated version of the article."

Not only was peer influence not discredited as a factor in the recent rise in the number of adolescents and young adults presenting with gender dysphoria -- and the sudden shift toward more female-to-male, rather than male-to-female, transitioners -- but as Littman noted in the interview, "One amazing outcome [of the controversy] is that four young women who experienced gender dysphoria in their teens and then de-transitioned or desisted [pictured above] found each other and created The Pique Resilience Project, a video series they use  to share their experiences. All of them now speak openly about having experienced ROGD [rapid onset gender dysphoria]."

Blanket age restrictions or parental vetoes on young people's bodily autonomy would not be justified. But where irreversible procedures that destroy people's reproductive potential are concerned, this principle needs to be balanced with the ethical responsibility of professionals to thoroughly explore someone's gender dysphoria and other emotional issues to rule out other, non-trans causes before referring them for medical or surgical treatments.

Quote of the Day: Adorno on Sexual Taboos

In law and morals sympathy is accorded to everything that perpetuates the modes of behavior of societal oppression -- and ultimately sadistic violence -- whereas modes of behavior that are contrary to the violence of the social order itself are dealt with mercilessly. -- Theodor Adorno, "Sexual Taboos and Law Today," 1963

https://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/readings/adorno_sexualtaboostoday.pdf

Lolita Misread

 

In a book I'm currently reading I saw the following passage:

"There is the incontrovertible fact, very hard for some of us to accept, that in certain cases it is not the man who inaugurates the trouble. The novel Lolita ... describes what may well happen. A girl of twelve or so is already endowed with a good deal of sexual desire and also can take pride in her 'conquests.' Perhaps, in all innocence, she is the temptress and not the man." (The Facts of Sex, 1970, quoted in Fear of Child Sexuality by Stephen Angelides, 2019)

Doubtless in some cases this is what happens, but it misrepresents the novel, and I've encountered this misrepresentation quite a number of times. Go no further if you're supersensitive to spoilers, but in a nutshell here's what happens up to that scene in the book: Humbert sees twelve-year-old Lolita and finds her attractive, as he's a hebephile who loves "nymphets." There's no indication that she has any interest in him. He devises to befriend and ultimately marry her mother, pretending to love the latter, simply to get close to Lolita and ultimately achieve intimacy with her. Yet he's beset with the perverse notion that he's morally obligated to preserve her "innocence," so he devises to give her a drug that will put her out, allowing him to take her without her being "corrupted." But when he actually gets to this point, he's anxious to be absolutely certain that she's really unconscious, and so deeply so that she won't wake up during the act. So he keeps almost initiating intercourse without actually doing so. Finally he falls asleep from exhaustion, only to be awakened by Lolita's jumping his bones.

In this context, it appears perfectly clear what Nabokov was portraying: a relationship initiated and driven exclusively by the older man's desire, ultimately consummated by the girl only because his repeated "almosts" when she wasn't actually asleep have started to drive her crazy and to arouse her with the feeling that she's desirable.

For whatever reason, the term "Lolita complex" came to be used for a girl pursuing older men, and presumably this is why many people, perhaps people who haven't actually read the book, have had a misapprehension of the story it tells.