Here’s a recent email from the City of Cambridge, a taxpayer-funded enterprise that in theory is bound by the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause:
Everyone is encouraged to join the celebration by supporting Cambridge women-owned businesses and other entrepreneurs during the month of October and beyond. To find women-owned businesses in your neighborhood, visit the online Cambridge Business Diversity Directory.
The full event page links to this directory, which says “The Directory aims to elevate businesses owned by women, people of color, veterans, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and individuals of Portuguese descent.” The event page also notes “These events recognize, support, and are inclusive for all who self-identify as women or with womanhood, including transgender, gender fluid, and non-binary persons.”
I can’t figure out how any of this is legal. What in the Constitution allows a city to favor citizens (and migrants!) of one gender ID out of the 74 recognized by Science? And what in the Constitution allows a city to prepare a business directory that excludes most companies owned by white males unless they swear that they’re 2SLGBTQQIA+?
Readers: What are you doing this month to increase your purchases from companies that are purportedly owned by “women” (however the term may be defined) and reduce your purchases whose owners have other gender IDs?
PhilG:
“A rising tide lifts all boats”. — JFK
They are assisting the tide by weighing down the white (of non-Portuguese ancestry) boats. It’s really that simple.
Correction:
“white (of non-Portuguese ancestry) boats” ->
“white cis-men’s (non-Portuguese ancestry) boats”
My guess anyway. Sorry, I hope that makes it clearer–it has been a while since I studied set theoretic identity politics.
Phil, we Leftists on the Cambridge City Council got a good chuckle at your expense upon reading your post here. I wanted to share a little secret with you (please keep it on the down low?). We care about nothing other than getting elected and reelected, so we enact and implement programs that help us accomplish this (the pay isn’t too shabby and the hours are minimal, so we have plenty of free time to do other “stuff”). We care nothing about these parasitic groups, per se. And who in their right mind is going to challenge us in any way! Beyond that, a quick read about my “experience” in Cambridge might be helpful to you in understanding how things work in Cambridge. My good friend Hunter Biden has an expression, which I like (Comprende?).
Paulie:
> “stuff”
Yeah, yeah we know about the brothel. Assuming you are a hetero (yes, another identity category I forgot earlier) cis white male of non-Portuguese descent what are you going to do now, having worked so hard at scuttling your own hull? Oh, I see…
> “take a step back from elective office to explore other opportunities.”
Maybe open a legal brothel in Nevada? Standard advice is not to get high on your own supply, bro.
Phil, I’d imagine that if you were to pursue a case alleging that Cambridge violated the Equal Protection Clause, you would face significant backlash from the progressive left and the media. You would be portrayed as a wealthy white man criticizing a program designed to support disadvantaged women—entrepreneurs working hard to build their own businesses—making it easy for critics to frame your position as completely out of touch and unsympathetic. Who knows, it might even give birth to Greenspun Derangement Syndrome (GDS).
Does Cambridge expect everyone to have a degree in biology?! How can us non-biologists support women-owned businesses when we can’t even define what a woman is? It’s a question so perplexing, that even Harvard-educated Supreme Court justices can’t answer it.
Anonymous:
> Does Cambridge expect everyone to have a degree in biology?
Biology is science, it has nothing to do with identity politics. As Phil keeps telling us, what they expect you to have is a degree in Science, like Sociology or Queer Studies. You are clearly over-thinking this. A woman is anything that declares itself to be one, except when not politically correct, a tradwife, or a not a liberal. A man, unless he is queer, trans, non-white, or Portuguese, is a horrible privileged monster who is holding Cambridge and the world at large back. Got it?
Now prepare to be amazed as the city of Cambridge flowers into its eminent destiny, after eliminating the influences that made anybody hear of it in the first place.
Among the large DEI community at Harvard, led by the Inimitable Claudine Gay, our constant companion was the phrase: stupid is as stupid does.
If I’m not mistaken, “stupid is as stupid does” is now the official new motto for America.
Anon, thank you so much for recognizing the positive impact I’ve had on America! I’ve attached one of my favorite moments from the past couple of years. It’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw your post on the new motto for America. I look forward to living up to your motto even more going forward (god willing).
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SJRk5PV588Q
How do the Portugees get a pass? As I recall, they went pretty hard on that whole slavery/empire thing.
https://www.slavevoyages.org/blog/introductory-maps-to-the-transatlantic-slave-trade/150
Maybe they mean Azoreans, who hail from the dirt-poor eponymous islands, and who identify as Azorean first, Portugee afta.
Keeping up with The Way We Live Now…so complicated…
Sr/Sra/SrX Reed:
Lusophobia is really not that different from Hispanophobia. New England was the only place I lived where I encountered direct Lusophobia, especially Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In the Midwest, they referred to a Brazilian friend of mine “as that Mexican guy” and my adult South African wife as “the little English girl.” (Specifics of crazy are kind of regional.) Like some Spanish people, these Portuguese decided to immigrate to a colony founded by WASPs (the U.S.) rather than one founded by their ancestors in Spain (Mexico) or Portugal (Brazil). New England seemed like it had much finer discrimination against ethnicity in general, e.g. Italians, when I lived there.
I guess Hispanidad and Lusofonia are going to have to pay themselves reparations, or something. Despite my know-it-all tone, I don’t get it either. Should we include the Vikings in our personal list of supported businesses, because they have vulnerable progeny like Greta the Blonde?
“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Amen.