I’ve always had a fascination with “brainwashing”. It turns out that the human mind is, indeed, pretty plastic out on the far edges, and so long as you don’t care about the health and wellbeing of the object of your literal skullfuckery, you can do some interesting things. For instance, a book on every dissident’s shelf should be The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost Meerloo. You’ll need to get it used, or on Kindle (the usual caveats apply). Meerloo was a Dutch (or Flemish or Walloon, I forget) MD who was briefly detained by the Gestapo during the war. They had nothing more than a cordial chat (by Gestapo standards), but they obviously knew what they were doing, and the only reason Meerloo didn’t get Der Prozess for real was that they didn’t feel the need at that time. He escaped, and the experience charted the course of his professional life.
Like Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (another must-read), I read Meerloo years ago, so my recall of the details is fuzzy, but the upshot is obvious: The techniques of “brainwashing” have been known since at least the Middle Ages, and they’re still the same. Suspected witches in the Early Modern period, for instance, got Der Prozess, and though the witch hunters also had recourse to the rack and thumbscrews and all the rest, none of it was really necessary — isolation, starvation, and sleep deprivation work even better, provided you hit that sweet spot when they’re just starting to go insane …
I’m being deliberately flip about a horrible thing, comrades, because as no doubt distasteful as that is to read, the fact is, we’re doing it to ourselves, everywhere, all the time. Not the starvation part, obviously, but we eat such horribly unnatural diets that our minds are indeed grossly affected. Want proof? Go hardcore keto for a week and watch what happens. Or if that’s too much, you can simulate the experience by going cold turkey off caffeine. I promise you, by the end of day two you’d give the NKVD the worst dirt on your own mother if they sat a steaming hot cup of java in front of you.
Severian, “Kickin’ It Old Skool”, Founding Questions, 2021-10-04.
January 20, 2025
QotD: Brainwashing
January 18, 2025
Incentives matter even to “objective” scientists
A 2019 Canadian “study” ideally illustrates that scientists are just as human as anyone else where they are incentivized to provide “desired” outcomes:
“The Beer Store” by Like_the_Grand_Canyon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Earlier this year, a major Canadian study on alcohol policy provided an excellent illustration of this. As news headlines across the country reported, 16 scientists and researchers at various universities and institutions had, through their Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation, shown that provincial governments are “failing to address alcohol problems”.
The scientists evaluated provincial government policies and assigned a grade in the “D” range to seven of Canada’s 13 provinces or territories, while five received an “F”. The policy evaluation, however, was a curious one. Strangely, the policy evaluation did not evaluate whether government policies were beneficial to those who want to buy or sell alcohol.
Instead, provincial governments were evaluated more favorably if they devoted greater efforts toward afflicting buyers and sellers of alcohol through punitive taxes, price controls, heavy restrictions on the sale and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher minimum legal drinking ages, and so on.
Even in the most restrictive markets, the researchers found that alcohol was too cheap, or that its purchase was too convenient, or that governments did not do enough to discourage or restrict its sale and consumption.
Predictably, and perhaps exemplifying Berlinski’s point on scientists grasping for government funds, the report authored by 16 scientists whose livelihoods involve raising public alarm about alcohol consumption concluded that there ought to be more government funding for public education on the dangers of alcohol consumption.
The report also advocated more government funding for bureaucracies to discourage drinking, more government funding for a lead organization to implement restrictive alcohol policies, more government funding for independent monitoring of such implementation, and more government funding to track and report the harm caused by alcohol consumption.
Like the CEO of a domestic automobile company insisting that tariffs against car imports — which would cause a massive wealth redistribution from consumers’ wallets into his own and those of the company’s shareholders — are in the national interest, the anti-drinking scientists insisted in the name of public health and wellness upon income redistribution from taxpayers and consumers to their own industry.
January 17, 2025
“… most of them can do simple low-IQ jobs like manual labor, basic retail, or writing for the New York Times“
At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander discusses the highly controversial national IQ estimates of Richard Lynn … I’m sure I don’t need to spell out exactly why they were (and continue to be) controversial:
Lynn’s national IQ estimates (source)
Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country. Typical of his results is this paper, which ranged from 60 (Malawi) to 108 (Singapore).
People obviously objected to this, and Lynn spent his life embroiled in controversy, with activists constantly trying to get him canceled/fired and his papers retracted/condemned. His opponents pointed out both his personal racist opinions/activities and his somewhat opportunistic methodology. Nobody does high-quality IQ tests on the entire population of Malawi; to get his numbers, Lynn would often find some IQ-ish test given to some unrepresentative sample of some group related to Malawians and try his best to extrapolate from there. How well this worked remains hotly debated; the latest volley is Aporia‘s Are Richard Lynn’s National IQ Estimates Flawed? (they say no).
I’ve followed the technical/methodological debate for a while, but I think the strongest emotions here come from two deeper worries people have about the data:
First, isn’t it horribly racist to say that people in sub-Saharan African countries have IQs that would qualify as an intellectual disability anywhere else?
Second, isn’t it preposterous and against common sense to compare sub-Saharan Africans to the intellectually disabled? You can talk to a Malawian person, and talk to a person with Down’s Syndrome, and the former is obviously much brighter and more functional than the latter. Doesn’t that mean that the estimates have to be wrong?
But both of these have simple answers, which IMHO defuse the worrying nature of Lynn’s results. These answers aren’t original to me, but as far as I know, nobody has put them together in one place before. Going over each in turn:
1: Isn’t It Super-Racist To Say That People In Sub-Saharan African Countries Have IQs Equivalent To Intellectually Disabled People?
No. In fact, it would be super-racist not to say this! We shouldn’t conflate advocacy with science. But if we did, Lynn’s position would make better anti-racist advocacy than his detractors’.
The “racist” position is that all IQ differences between groups are genetic. The “anti-racist” position is that they’re a product of environment — things like nutrition, health care, and education.
We know that in the US, where we do give people good IQ tests, whites average IQ 100 and blacks average IQ 85.
If IQ was 100% genetic, we should expect Africans to have an IQ of 85, since American and African blacks have similar genes. This isn’t exactly right — US blacks have some intermixing with whites, and only some of Africa’s staggering diversity reached the US — but it’s close enough.
January 16, 2025
“The only possible conclusion is that we didn’t call them racist often enough”
Apparently there are still a lot of US politicians who think that letting men compete in womens’ sports is not only okay, but praiseworthy:
Of all the absurdities of the culture war, perhaps the most egregious is the normalisation of the idea that men should be able to identify their way into women’s sports. We are living through a period of mania, so we cannot clearly see how this will look to future generations. But I have little doubt that all those photographs of hulking men towering over women on winners’ podiums will be the memes of the future. “Can you believe they let this happen?” they’ll say, scratching their AI-enhanced cyborg heads.
Wherever one stands on Donald Trump, there can be little doubt that his imminent arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will act as a corrective to this problem. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act with its goal of preventing males who identify as female from participating in school sports. If passed into law, schools that attempt to defy the ban would have their federal funds withheld. The bill was introduced by Republican representative Greg Steube of Florida, and makes clear that it will be a violation of federal law “for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates an athletic program or activity to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls”.
One of the most astonishing aspects of the passing of this bill was the voting outcome. 216 Republicans and only 2 Democrats (Vicente Gonzales and Henry Cueller) voted for the motion. Is it really that controversial that sex, as the bill puts it, “shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”? You will recall the outcry back in November when Democratic politician Seth Moulton admitted that he objected to mixed-sex contact sports in schools. “I have two little girls,” he said, “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that”. For this he was branded a “transphobe” and a “Nazi cooperator”, because we all know that one of the top priorities of the Third Reich was the preservation of women’s rights.
Moulton failed to retain his backbone for the latest vote (he called the bill “too extreme”), but his previous comment had been striking for its honesty. He was willing to openly state that fear was the key factor in the reticence of Democrats on this issue. It cannot be the case that only two Democratic members of the House take the view that there is no advantage in sports conferred by male puberty. Surely most of them must have glanced at a biology textbook from time to time. The charitable conclusion is that they have been browbeaten into voting ideologically, not that they genuinely don’t know that there exist anatomical differences between men and women.
Disturbingly, this vote would seem to suggest that the Democrats are not learning their lessons from the election, and instead are determined to double down on the very attitude that cost them the White House.
December 31, 2024
Resolutions? Meh.
James Lileks considers the futility of New Year resolutions … for most of us, anyway:
New Year, New You — if you believe that all the cells in your body are replaced every 12 months. So we were told, right? I don’t think that’s the case. The brain, for example, stays constant, which is good, because the idea of the cells handing off memories to the new cells would probably end up like a game of Telegram, and after 15 years you’re convinced your first kiss was not on a boat in the lake on the 4th of July but deep in the Amazon forest on a dugout canoe during a meteor shower.
I don’t think your liver renews itself, alas. It has to sit there and take it. The bones, being the tentpoles for the cellular circus that is You, have to remain solid. No, the New You is entirely a matter of will, of resolutions and revelations undertaken on the First of the Year with solemn gravity, so you can be disappointed with yourself two weeks later.
Resolutions are always matters of self-improvement, and this presents a certain amount of difficulty. I’m at the age where the available options for self-improvement consist of the trivial and the insurmountable. Example: I should resolve to be more patient on the road with drivers who dawdle along a few miles below the speed limit, perhaps giving me adequate time to study the various political and philosophical statements glued to the rear of their auto. Why — why yes, you’re right, you cannot hug your child with nuclear arms. You also cannot defend the continental United States against the threat of ballistic bombardment with maternal limbs. A more pressing issue might be thus: Can we make the green light? No, we’re not going to make the green light.
I would indeed be happier if I could accept with zen detachment the lumbering pace of the car ahead. My impatience, my self-righteous desire to arrive at our destinations before Haley’s Comet arcs anew through the heavens — well, it brings me no joy. But this will not change. What’s the phrase? To thine own self be true. Well, being peeved because the driver ahead of me believes their face will ripple with G-forces if they go 21 MPH is my true self, and I am not about to deny who I am.
December 27, 2024
QotD: Adapting to “permanent” food surpluses
More to the point, this is a testable hypothesis. I’m a history guy, obviously, not a biologist, but you don’t need to be a STEM PhD to see it. All our physical structures still look the same in 2021 as they did in 1901, but our biochemistry is far different. Just to take two obvious — and obviously detrimental — examples, we are awash in insulin and estrogen. Time warp in a laboring man from 1901 and feed him a modern “diet” for a week; the insulinemic effects of all that corn syrup etc. would put him in a coma. Even if he didn’t, the knock-on effect of all that insulin — greatly ramped-up estrogen — would deprive him of a lot of his physical strength, not to mention radically alter his mood, etc.
Severian, “The Experiment”, Founding Questions, 2021-09-25.
December 17, 2024
The rejection-in-advance of Bovaer as a “climate-friendly” “solution” to the “problem” of climate change
At Watts Up With That?, Charles Rotter documents yet another imposed-from-above bright idea that consumers are already eager to reject:
When global elites and bureaucrats decide they must “fix” the world, the results often speak for themselves. Take the latest technocratic debacle: Bovaer, a feed additive designed to reduce methane emissions from cows, marketed as a “climate-friendly” solution. It’s now being shelved by Norwegian dairy producer Q-Meieriene after consumers flatly rejected its so-called “climate milk”.
This is more than a simple story of market rejection. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when governments, corporations, and globalists push policies and products that tamper with the food supply to address a problem that may not even exist.
The Quest to Solve a “Crisis”
Bovaer, developed by DSM-Firmenich, has been touted as a game-changer in the fight against methane emissions — a major target of climate policies. The additive is said to suppress a key enzyme in the cow’s digestive process, reducing methane emissions by up to 30%. Regulatory bodies in over 68 countries, including the EU, Australia, and the U.S., have approved its use.
But let’s step back for a moment. Why are we targeting cow burps and farts in the first place? Methane is indeed a greenhouse gas, but it’s also a short-lived one that breaks down in the atmosphere within about a decade. Moreover, cows and bison have been emitting methane for millennia without triggering apocalyptic climate shifts. Yet suddenly, livestock emissions are treated as a planetary emergency demanding immediate action.
This myopic focus on cow methane is a prime example of how climate zealotry warps priorities. Rather than addressing real and immediate issues — like the energy crises their own policies create — governments and globalists have decided to micromanage how your milk is produced, all to reduce emissions by an imperceptible fraction of a percentage point.
Consumer Rebellion
The backlash against Bovaer has been swift and fierce. In Norway, Q-Meieriene began using the additive in 2023, branding the resulting product as “climate milk”. The response? Consumers overwhelmingly rejected it, leaving supermarket shelves stocked with unsold cartons while Bovaer-free milk flew off the shelves.
Facing dismal sales, Q-Meieriene recently announced it would discontinue the use of Bovaer, stating:
Demand for Q climate milk has not been high enough to continue production … we phased out the use of methane suppressants in cow feed and are putting this project on pause.
https://www.nettavisen.no/nyheter/ville-redde-klimaet-med-prompe-fri-kumelk-snur/s/5-95-2166980
This is not merely a marketing failure. It reflects a broader consumer revolt against the technocratic imposition of “solutions” no one asked for. People are increasingly skeptical of being told that their daily choices — what they eat, how they travel, how they heat their homes — must be sacrificed on the altar of climate orthodoxy.
December 12, 2024
The dispiriting rise of the “kidult”
Freya India explains the need for modern parents to re-embrace some of the more traditional duties of parents in raising children:
It’s pretty much accepted as fact that parents today are overprotective. We worry about helicopter parenting, and the coddling of Gen Z. But I don’t think that’s the full story. Parents aren’t protective enough.
Or at least, what parents are protective about has changed. They are overprotective about physical safety, terrified of accidents and injuries. But are they protective by giving guidance? Involved in their children’s character development? Protective by raising boys to be respectful, by guiding girls away from bad influences? Protective by showing children how to behave, by being an example?
As far as I can see many parents today are overprotective but also strangely permissive. They hesitate to give advice or get involved, afraid of seeming controlling or outdated. They obsess over protecting their children physically, but have little interest in guiding them morally. They care more about their children’s safety than their character. Protective parenting once meant caring about who your daughter dated, the decisions she made, and guiding her in a good direction. Now it just means preventing injury. And so children today are deprived of the most fundamental protection: the passing down of morals, principles, and a framework for life.
One obvious example of this is that adults act like children now. They talk like teenagers. They use the same social media platforms, play the same video games, listen to the same music. Our world moves too rapidly to retain any wisdom, denying parents the chance to pass anything down or be taken seriously, so they try to keep up with kids, who know more about the world than they do. Fathers are “girl dads” who get told what to think. Mothers are best friends to gossip with. The difference between childhood and adulthood is disappearing, and with it, parental protection.
Beyond that, too, there’s this broader cultural message that adults should focus on their own autonomy and self-actualisation. This very modern belief that a good life means maximum freedom, with as little discomfort and constraint as possible, the way children think. Now nothing should hold adults back. They have a right to feel good, at all times. They stopped being role models of responsibility and became vessels of the only culture left, a therapeutic culture, where it’s only acceptable to be protective of one thing, your own mental health and happiness. Listen to the way adults judge decisions now, how they justify themselves. Parents are celebrated for leaving their families because they were vaguely unhappy or felt they needed to find themselves, even at the expense of their children’s security. Adults talk about finding themselves as much as teenagers do. Parents complain online about the “emotional labour” of caring for family, or express regret for even having children because they got in the way of their goals. Once growing up meant sacrificing for family, giving up some of yourself, that was an honour, that was a privilege, and in that sacrifice you found actual fulfilment, broke free from yourself, moved on from adolescent anxieties, and there, then, you became an adult.
But slowly, without thinking, we became suspicious of adulthood. We debunked every marker and milestone, from marriage to children all the way to adulthood itself. Now we aren’t just refusing to grow up but rejecting the very concept of it. Adulthood does not exist, apparently. It’s a scam, a lie, a myth. Adulthood is a marketing ploy, we say, while wearing Harry Potter merch and going to Disneyland. Adulthood is a performance, apparently, that’s going out of style. “There is nothing, there is nobody which/who would really justify the claim ‘you have to grow up’,” seems to be the sentiment. “For whom? for what?”
December 9, 2024
Public wash-house Liverpool (1959) | BFI National Archive
BFI
Published Dec 12, 2017Admire the industriousness of the Liverpool women who transport huge bundles of laundry to and from the local wash-house every week, crammed into old prams or balanced skilfully on their heads. The wash-house doubles as a social hub for the women, with a cafe and creche facilities. At the time of filming, this one in the Pontack Lane area was one of 13 remaining original public wash-houses in the city, although new more modernised buildings were under construction. Liverpool’s last working wash-house closed in 1995.
The peppy documentary not only looks at the modern wash-house, but introduces the story of Kitty Wilkinson, “the Saint of the Slums”, who pioneered the public wash-house movement in Liverpool during the 1832 cholera epidemic. John Abbot Productions, who made the film, specialised in sponsored non-fiction films from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.
(more…)
December 4, 2024
The Disturbing Origins of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jul 30, 2024A bowl of the original Corn Flakes made with only corn.
City/Region: Battle Creek, Michigan
Time Period: 1895Dr. John Kellogg was all about health, and when his brother, William (the financial brains of the operation), wanted to add sugar to the very bland original Corn Flakes, he flat out refused. Eventually, William bought the rights to Corn Flakes, changed the recipe, and the rest is history.
I don’t have the industrial rollers that the original recipe for Corn Flakes used, so I made a dough. The flakes turned out nice and crispy, but they are very bland. I would recommend using stone-ground cornmeal and adding some sugar and salt to make the whole process easier and the end product tastier.
Excerpt from Patent No. 558,393 [for] Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing Same.
First. Soak the grain for some hours — say eight to twelve — in water at a temperature which is either between 40° and 60° Fahrenheit or 110° and 140° Fahrenheit, thus securing a preliminary digestion by aid of cerealin, a starch-digesting organic ferment contained in the hull of the grain or just beneath it. The temperature must be either so low or so high as to prevent actual fermentation while promoting the activity of the ferment. This digestion adds to the sweetness and flavor of the product.
Second. Cook the grain thoroughly. For this purpose it should be boiled in water for about an hour, and if steamed a longer time will be required. My process is distinctive in this step—that is to say, that the cooking is carried to the stage when all the starch is hydrated. If not thus thoroughly cooked, the product is unfit for digestion and practically worthless for immediate consumption.
Third. After steaming the grain is cooled and partially dried, then passed through cold rollers, from which it is removed by means of carefully-adjusted scrapers. The purpose of this process of rolling is to flatten the grain into extremely thin flakes in the shape of translucent films, whereby the bran covering (or the cellulose portions thereof) is disintegrated or broken into small particles, and the constituents of the grain are made readily accessible to the cooking process to which it is to be subsequently subjected and to the action of the digestive fluids when eaten.
Fourth. After rolling the compressed grain or flakes having been received upon suitable trays is subjected to a steaming process, whereby it is thoroughly cooked and is then baked or roasted in an oven until dry and crisp.
— John Harvey Kellogg. United States Patent Office, 1895
November 29, 2024
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya nominated as Director of the US National Institutes of Health
From the point of view of the establishment, the barbarians are well and truly inside the gates, as President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as the next director of the National Institutes of Health:
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Donald Trump’s nominee as Director of the National Health Institutes.
Photo by Taleed Brown, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons.
Four years ago, Jay Bhattacharya was ostracized by his colleagues at Stanford and censored on social media platforms thanks to a campaign against him by the public-health establishment. The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, sent an email to another NIH official, Anthony Fauci, urging a “quick and devastating published takedown” of Bhattacharya and his fellow “fringe epidemiologists”.
Bhattacharya is far from the fringe today. Donald Trump nominated him this week for Collins’s old job, director of the NIH. Assuming the Senate confirms him, it will be a major victory for science and academic freedom — and a serious threat to the universities that suppressed scientific debate and promoted disastrous policies during the pandemic, causing public trust in science to plummet. Academic researchers and administrators have mostly refused to acknowledge their mistakes, much less make amends, but Bhattacharya promised yesterday to “reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again”.
As NIH director, he would wield a potent tool to induce reform: money. Stanford and more than a dozen other universities each get more than $500 million annually in grants from the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. The NIH grants support not only researchers but also their universities’ bureaucracies, which collect a hefty surcharge to cover supposed overhead costs. The federal largesse has helped finance the administrative bloat at universities, including the expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies under the Biden administration, which took into account a university’s commitment to DEI principles when deciding whether to award grants from the NIH and other agencies.
Those priorities are about to change. Trump has vowed to rescind immediately Biden’s executive order directing federal agencies to promote DEI. During his first term, Trump threatened to issue an executive order barring universities from receiving federal funds if they suppressed free speech. He didn’t issue that order, but whether or not he does so in his next term, the NIH director will already have the power to consider a university’s commitment to academic freedom in deciding whether or not to award funds.
“For science to thrive and progress, we must be open-minded and allow vigorous and passionate debate,” says Martin Kulldorff, a former professor of medicine at Harvard. “Why should taxpayers subsidize universities that don’t allow that?” Kulldorff, an eminent epidemiologist, lost his job at Harvard after he became an early and outspoken critic of pandemic policies. In 2020, he joined with Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford, to write the Great Barrington Declaration, a critique of lockdowns that was signed by tens of thousands of scientists and physicians.
Bhattacharya, who has a Ph.D. in economics as well as an M.D. from Stanford, hung on to his job as professor of health policy at the latter’s medical school, but his views were taboo on campus. After he and colleagues did a field study at the start of the pandemic showing that the Covid fatality rate was much lower than the doomsday number used to justify lockdowns, they were vilified by academics and journalists, and Stanford subjected them to a two-month inquiry by an outside legal firm. (They were vindicated by the inquiry and also by subsequent research confirming their findings.)
November 27, 2024
Trump’s plan to dismiss transgender troops will apparently “gut” the US military
As if the US military services hadn’t suffered enough from their own government, it’s now being widely asserted in the media that Trump’s declared plan to get rid of all current transgender service members will be a desperately hard blow to an already over-stressed military structure:
The news media is calmly warning that Donald Trump is planning to ban transgender servicemembers from the American military, which will absolutely gut the armed forces.
Sample claim, from Newsweek, quoting the leader of an LGBT advocacy nonprofit:
Abruptly discharging 15,000-plus service members, especially given that the military’s recruiting targets fell short by 41,000 recruits last year, adds administrative burdens to war fighting units.
There would be a significant financial cost, as well as a loss of experience and leadership that will take possibly 20 years and billions of dollars to replace.
We’ll practically have no military left! It would be like a whole infantry division suddenly just vanishing: 15,000-plus transgendered service members.
You’re going to see this number a lot in the weeks ahead. The New Republic, today: “Donald Trump’s plan to ban transgender people from the military would have a devastating effect: At least 15,000 members would be forced to leave.”
That number comes from a 2018 report by the now-defunct Palm Center, a pro-LGBT independent research institute in California, which reached this conclusion: “Transgender troops make up 0.7% (seven-tenths of one percent) of the military (Active Component and Selected Reserve)”. Their best guess about a total number: 14,707. The media is just rounding that number up to the next thousand.
The Palm Center … extrapolated a lot, let’s say, in good part by multiplying their guess about a percentage, derived from a grossly inadequate survey of a select number of active duty troops, times the total number of servicemembers. Page 4:
Assuming that the distribution of transgender men and women is roughly equivalent in the Active and Selected Reserve Components, it is possible to derive an estimate of the number of transgender troops in the Selected Reserve as follows. The number of transgender women is .0066 x 652,623 = 4,307 and the number of transgender men is .0091 x 156,080 = 1,420. The total number of transgender members of the Selected Reserve is 4,307 + 1,420 = 5,727. And, the total number of transgender troops is 8,980 (active) + 5,727 (reserve) = 14,707.
Assuming the distribution, it is possible to derive an estimate. That’s the basis of the 15,000 number that you’ll see in news stories. Remember that language.
Similarly, a 2016 RAND study offered these findings (among others), and note the remarkable thing that happens between the first and second paragraph:
It is difficult to estimate the number of transgender personnel in the military due to current policies and a lack of empirical data. Applying a range of prevalence estimates, combining data from multiple surveys, and adjusting for the male/female distribution in the military provided a midrange estimate of around 2,450 transgender personnel in the active component (out of a total number of approximately 1.3 million active-component service members) and 1,510 in the Selected Reserve.
Only a subset will seek gender transition–related treatment. Estimates derived from survey data and private health insurance claims data indicate that, each year, between 29 and 129 service members in the active component will seek transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy.
So studies indicate that there are 3,960 transgendered servicemembers, and also that there are 14,707 transgendered servicemembers, and “between 29 and 129 service members in the active component” who will actively seek gender transition services in a typical year.
So it’s definitely somewhere between 29 and 15,000.
Scolianormativity
At FEE, Michael Strong defines the neologism and provides evidence that it has been a long-term harm to children forced into the Prussian-originated school regimentation regime:
Scolianormative (adj.): The assumption that behaviors defined by institutionalized schooling are “normal”. An assumption that became pervasive in industrialized societies in which institutionalized schooling became the norm that resulted in marginalizing and harming millions of children. Once society began to question scolianormativity, gradually people began to realize that the norms set by institutionalized schooling were perfectly arbitrary. It turned out that it was not necessary to harm children. The institutions that led to such widespread harms were dismantled, and humanity transcended the terrible century of institutionalized schooling.
The conventional educational model, government-enforced and subsidized, is based on 13 years of schooling consisting of state-defined curriculum standards and exams leading to a high school diploma.
Young human beings are judged as either “normal” or not based on the extent to which they are “on track” with respect to grade level exams and test scores. Students who are not making the expected progress may be diagnosed with learning differences (formerly known as disabilities). Students who can’t sit still adequately may be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Students who find the experience soul-killing may be diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Students who can’t stand to be told what to do all day may be diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). Students who score higher on certain tests are labeled “gifted”.
Massive amounts of research and institutional authority have been invested in these and other diagnoses. When a child is not progressing appropriately in the system, the child is often sent to specialists who then perform the diagnosis. When appropriate, then the child is given some combination of medication, accommodations, and/or sent to a special program for children with “special needs”.
Many well-intentioned people regard this system as life-saving for the children who might otherwise have “not had their needs met” in the absence of such a diagnosis and intervention. And this is no doubt often true, but our fixation on scolianormativity blinds us to the fact that an entirely different perspective might actually result in better lives for more children.
How could one possibly deny mountains of evidence on behalf of such a life-saving system?
Scolianormativity
The Prussian school model, a state-led model devoted to nationalism, is only about two hundred years old. For much of its first century it was limited to a few hours per day, for a few months per year, for a few years of schooling. It has only gradually grown to encompass most of a child’s waking hours for nine months a year from ages 5 to 18. Indeed, in the U.S., it was only in the 1950s that a majority of children graduated from high school (though laws requiring compulsory attendance through age 16 had been passed in the late 19th and early 20th century). In addition, for most of its first century, it was far more flexible than it has become in its second. The increasing standardization and bureaucratization of childhood is a remarkably recent phenomenon in historical terms.
In his book Seeing Like a State, the political scientist James C. Scott documents how governments work to create societies that are “legible”, that can be perceived and managed by the state to suit the needs of the state’s bureaucrats and political leaders. Public schools are one of the most pervasive of all state institutions. The structure of public schooling has grown to suit the needs of the state bureaucrats who monitor it.
November 23, 2024
Common sense on males in female sports from … checks notes … the United Nations?
Ramesh Thakur summarizes some of the findings from a recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls which somehow defies the narrative from most of the legacy media in the Current Year:
Has Hell frozen over? Uncommonly for the UN (think Antonio Guterres with the global warming hyperbole), one of its recent reports is full of common sense. In the last three years, I have been critical of UN performance regarding some high-profile issues, including World Health Organisation failings in responding to the coronavirus pandemic and a power grab for future pandemic management; lawfare against Israel by the world court and International Criminal Court; and UN Women’s betrayal of the raison d’être for its creation and existence with a shamefully delayed acknowledgment of the weaponisation of mass rape, sexual violence, mutilation and public humiliation of Israeli women on October 7th 2023.
Enter Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s a relief and a pleasure to acknowledge her positive report “Violence against women and girls in sport“. Published on August 27th, it was presented to the UN General Assembly last month. She notes that until very recently, the need for a separate category for females “to ensure equal, fair and safe opportunities in sports” was a “universally recognised principle”. Maintaining separate-sex sports is a proportional action that corresponds to legitimate aims within international law. Females also have a right to privacy under international law which is forfeited by compelled mixed-sex spaces in intimate facilities. Alsalem explained to Fox News on October 21st that this is primarily a human rights issue, not a cultural or an individual issue.
Biological advantages for males in competitive sports include strength (162% greater punching power on average!), weight, muscle mass, speed, height, reach and endurance. Separate categories for males and females were created to recognise this biological reality and provide equal, fair and safe opportunities for females to win recognition, prize money, fame and career advancement. Allowing biological males into female sports is unfair and amounts to cheating by males who are simply not competitive in male sports (think swimmer Lia Thomas). It steals women’s dreams, aspirations and rewards. Alsalem’s data show that more than 600 female athletes in over 400 competitions have lost nearly 900 medals across 29 different sports. Other reports document instances of injuries from trans-on-females encounters, including teeth knocked out, concussions resulting in neural impairment, broken legs and skull fractures. Thus safety is yet another another concern.
Despite the unfairness, invasion of privacy, opportunity costs and safety risks, many athletes and coaches who object to trans-inclusion policies are silenced or forced to self-censor at the risk of losing sporting opportunities, scholarships and sponsorships. Many who do speak out despite such formidable hurdles are accused of bigotry, suspended, expelled and subjected to unfair disciplinary proceedings. Many (like Moira Deeming) face hostility if they assemble to discuss how to deal with these issues, violating the fundamental human rights to freedom of belief, opinion and expression. Some have quit sport entirely under the cumulative stress. Because “biological sex is central” to women’s “experiences of discrimination and violence”, countries that permit biological men to compete in women’s sports deny women “their femaleness”. To counteract the “worrisome trend”, she recommends the creation of open categories in sports competition and non-invasive and confidential sex screening procedures to ensure fairness, safety and dignity for female athletes alongside inclusive participation for everyone.
The trans-extremist assault on female spaces in the workplace and sporting arenas has been in the thick of the culture wars. Amidst the wreckage of those wars, the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) industry has morphed into DIE (division, intolerance, exclusion), promoting resentment, language-policing and unjust outcomes instead of real solutions. Trade-offs are central to public policy decision-making. The last major issue on which this was ignored was the panicked response to Covid and we will be paying for the resulting disasters for many years yet. By putting the spotlight back on the importance of balancing competing and clashing rights through policy trade-offs, this report provides a key to navigating our way out of the wreckage. It’s potentially also helpful in Sall Grover’s appeal in the Giggle v. Tickle case, as is the return of Trump to the White House. Alsalem is right to note that these policies originate from and exist almost entirely in Western countries. Their hold on many parts of the UN system is evidence of the hegemony of Western ideas and practices as the global norm. The adoption of trans and multigender language and the inclusion of trans athletes in international sports is confirmation of cultural imperialism at the cost of women-specific human rights.
November 20, 2024
QotD: The Chads, the Staceys, and the Incels
These boys have their own vocabulary and belief systems. Pretty girls (Staceys) all sleep with the same few Alpha men (Chads). The Staceys ride the Cock Carousel, ie, have sex with the same few Chads. All this sluttish behaviour gives the Staceys something called A Thousand Cock Stare.
It is a grim world, in which women are evil and manipulative, and hated both for being sluts and for being virgins. It is a world in which pictures of pretty girls with their pet dogs are unbelievably sinister. These boys choose to live in this bleak world. They are culpable. But, if you tell all young, white boys that they are damned, why should they not behave as if they are damned?
A society which does not allow for people to atone, to be redeemed, and to be judged on their intent and actions is a miserable place. Most people interact with each other without antagonism most of the time. We should start being a bit more forgiving to each other, ditch the Puritanism and learn to cherish the well-meaning stumble towards decency. Even if, sometimes, we fall.
Antonia Senior, “Identity politics is Christianity without the redemption”, UnHerd, 2020-01-20.
