Supreme Court spreads a big rainbow flag over the word “sex”

“Civil Rights Law Protects Gay and Transgender Workers, Supreme Court Rules” (NYT):

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination, handing the movement for L.G.B.T. equality a stunning victory.

“An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling.

Until Monday’s decision, it was legal in more than half the states to fire workers for being gay, bisexual or transgender. The vastly consequential decision extended workplace protections to millions of people across the nation, continuing a series of Supreme Court victories for gay rights even after President Trump transformed the court with two appointments.

Personally, I think that any law like this actually reduces employment opportunities for the category of people whom such a law purports to help. The law highlights to employers the inferior nature of workers in this category and that, if the employer is unwise enough to hire someone from this category, a lawsuit is an ever-present possibility. Absent a substantial discount, therefore, a rational employer, even one who is completely without prejudice, should thus do everything possible to avoid hiring someone who might fit into the protected category.

In our neighborhood… (“Love is Love” in a larger font than “Black Lives Matter”; significant?)

Gary Drescher, an MIT computer science PhD who is also interested in cognition and philosophy, posted this analysis on Facebook:

Today’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling on sex-discrimination is encouraging, and not only because the outcome is good (and not only because Trump’s appointee Gorsuch wrote the opinion rebuking the Trump administration’s position). It’s encouraging because the legal reasoning is correct and straightforward: discrimination against someone for being gay or transgender is an instance of sex discrimination, even if Congress did not understand it as such when they banned sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That is, it’s sex discrimination to fire someone for, say, wearing a dress or having a male spouse, if those same behaviors would not be penalized if the person’s own sex were different than it is.

By fanciful analogy, imagine if Congresspersons were all numerologists who in the 1960s passed a law saying that a person must pay an income-tax surcharge in any year for which the person’s taxable income was a prime number of dollars, due to some mystical property of primes. But imagine that at the time, 23,069 was widely believed to be a prime number, so Congress expected the surcharge to apply to that income. Nonetheless, upon discovery of the factorization of 23,069, a court today would have to hold that income exempt from the prime surcharge, even though the exemption contradicts Congress’s expectation when they passed the law. It’s not that Congress was using the term ‘prime’ differently back then–rather, they had a factually incorrect belief about a particular number’s primality. Even originalism regarding the meaning of a legal text does not necessarily bind us to false beliefs held by the text’s framers.

Gary has persuaded me! Readers: what about you? Is this the dawning of a great new era in American employment litigation?

(Separately, I wonder if the new interpretation of the law leads to a logical contradiction among some American religious beliefs. Transgenderism is as “real” as science, per the sign above. Belief 1: If Joe Linebacker decides to identify as a “woman” starting tomorrow, she immediately becomes a completely successful 6’3″ tall, 275 lb. woman, indistinguishable from a cisgender woman. Belief 2: Employers, being more interested in after-work sexual activities and gender IDs than in profit, will ferret out the transgendered and, as the NYT says, “fire workers for being gay, bisexual or transgender”. How can Beliefs 1 and 2 be consistent? According to Belief 1, absent a DNA kit, nobody can discern the difference between a transgender woman and a cisgender woman. If that is true, how does the prejudiced employer figure out whom to fire?)

Finally, what if the Equal Rights Amendment had been passed?

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

With this new interpretation of “sex”, what else would change had the ERA been ratified?

Finally, what is the practical effect of the righteous elites passing laws like these? Here’s a private text message from a small business owner, responding to the NYT article:

Except transgender is mental illness. Do you really think a company should be forced to hire a 6 foot tall man who thinks he is a woman?

From an immigrant physician, near the beginning of coronapanic:

We have a transgender psychiatrist health secretary. We r f**ked

(she is from a conservative culture)

Will these people (Deplorables?) be persuaded to abandon their prejudices via threat of litigation? Or will they just hide behind Silicon Valley-style “not a culture fit” (regarding an over-35 applicant) cover stories?

To sum up: I am persuaded by Gary and think the Supreme Court made the right legal decision, but I also think this decision will end making it harder for a transgender person to get a job in the U.S.

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Time to watch Jar Jar Binks instead of Harry Potter?

“Harry Potter Fans Reimagine Their World Without Its Creator” (NYT):

When J.K. Rowling was accused of transphobia about two years ago for “liking” a tweet that referred to transgender women as “men in dresses,” much of the Harry Potter fandom tried to give their beloved author the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it really was just an accident, a “clumsy and middle-aged moment,” as Ms. Rowling’s spokesperson said at the time.

[now] First, Ms. Rowling took aim at an article that referred to “people who menstruate,” suggesting that it was wrong to not use “women” in a misguided attempt to include trans people. When she received negative response to this, she then published a 3,700-word essay on gender, sex, abuse and fear: “I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.”

The Times itself seems to reject the idea of more than a handful of gender IDs:

Each fan must make her own choices for herself then.

Is it acceptable to start and end a list of pronouns for “fans” with “her”?

This is a “news”, not “opinion”, article in the Times. It is apparently a proven fact that TERFs are wrong:

Ms. Rowling’s essay, which was published on Wednesday, rails against the term T.E.R.F., or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, describing it as a slur used to silence women like herself on the internet. She repeated a number of pieces of misinformation that are common talking points for this loose association of people, and made the claim that the “movement” led by transgender activists is eroding the notion of womanhood and “offering cover to predators like few before it.” As a sort of explanation for that fear, Ms. Rowling recounted memories of a sexual assault in her 20s.

Here’s the real question for me: how hateful does a hate-filled author have to be in order to justify watching Jar Jar Binks?

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Star Trek misogynistic?

A friend’s Facebook status:

I just finished re-watching Star Trek (The Original Series).
WOW… every single episode is uncomfortably misogynistic.
EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE.

He then amplified this for a friend who questioned the above statement:

in this case misogynistic does not mean “hate” so much as objectification and dismissal — In the first few episodes of the first season we hear that women are prone to more emotional outbursts than men, that they are all searching for a man to care for them, that they need a man to be self actualized.
That women can be coaxed from their command duties (commit mutiny or traitorous activity) when a man shows interest.
Even the first episode which had a female officer as second in command (With Command Pike) the female officer was shown to be lustful toward Pike at one point and catty when compared (by the butthead aliens) to the younger ensign.

Me, always trying to be helpful on social media:

You could create a new series: Woke Trek. All officers of the Starship Safe Space have PhDs in Comparative Victimhood.

Readers: What would be the ideal science fiction series for our woke time?

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Jet pilot hero considers returning to the Air Force Reserve

A friend used to be a military hero flying an exotic airplane for the U.S. Air Force. Due to the airline industry boom, a lot of pilots retired during the past few years, but now the Air Force hopes to get some back, at least part time, for the Reserve. A recruiter called. Here were the first three questions:

  1. What was your sex at birth?
  2. What pronouns do you use now?
  3. Have you tested positive for Covid-19?
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Heteronormative Prejudice and Gender Binarism from the Census Bureau

Note the priority given to the options for a person who might live in the same house or apartment:

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Textbook Heteronormativity.

The gender ID choices:

Textbook Gender Binarism.

Aside from the agency’s failure to get up to speed on LGBTQIA+ issues, I have to say that Census has given us a good example of web design. Maybe it is best not to try to figure out what these forms cost the taxpayer, but the overall IT budget is in the $billions.

A 2019 article, “2020 U.S. census plagued by hacking threats, cost overruns”:

The effort to move the census online aims to streamline the counting process, improve accuracy, and rein in cost increases as the population rises and survey response rates decline. Adjusting for 2020 dollars, the 1970 census cost $1.1 billion, a figure that rose steadily to $12.3 billion by 2010, the most recent count. The 2020 tally is projected at $15.6 billion, including a $1.5 billion allowance for cost overruns.

U.S. population was 205 million in 1970 compared to 330 million today. So a 61% rise in population corresponds to a 1400% increase in cost.

We are informed by the New York Times that Vladimir Putin does all of our voting for us (but it is the Chinese who post coronapanic on Facebook). Will Mr. Putin also fill out our Census forms?

T-Rex’s work, which includes security, data storage and performance testing, is projected to cost taxpayers up to $1.4 billion, according to the census budget.

So if the $1.4 billion in spending includes a firewall, we will have to complete these forms ourselves…

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We’re gender-neutral, but all children are either girls or boys

Our town is building what is, on a per-student basis, the most expensive school ever constructed in the United States. Thus, when it comes time to do sex ed they need to rely on materials from Procter and Gamble. The conservative Midwesterners try to be up to date regarding the irrelevance of biological sex:

But notice that they commit the sin of gender binarism. The school population falls into just two categories: girls and boys.

Separately, although the materials are targeted at the full rainbow of students, including those who identify as “boys”, the only available role models in the teacher slides appear to be cisgender females:

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Wailing over Elizabeth Warren’s defeat betrays heretical anti-rainbow flag religious beliefs?

A Facebook friend who is passionate about both Elizabeth Warren and the Rainbow Flag (LBGTQIA+) religion posted “Elizabeth Warren endured sexism at every step of her campaign” (Guardian):

The next president, it is now assured, will be a man.

Setting aside the insulting dismissal of Tulsi Gabbard, this statement betrays extreme cisgender-normative prejudice and a denial of gender fluidity. How does the author (or anyone) know that Joe Biden won’t identify as a woman by the time January 2021 rolls around?

Nobody predicted Bruce Jenner adopting a new gender ID, right? Is there something more inherently male about Joe Biden than there was about Bruce Jenner? (an immigrant friend after Super Tuesday: “I can’t believe they picked the most demented puppet. The guy had to be defended by his wife from a vegan. He needs a physical and a head CT. Strikes me as a guy with cortical atrophy.”)

If there is nothing special about being born with a doctor-identified female biological sex, how can there be anything special about Elizabeth Warren compared to Joe Biden purely on account of her (potentially transitory) current gender ID?

From March 9, 2020 in our righteous neighborhood (Lincoln, Massachusetts, soon to be home of the most expensive school building, per student, ever constructed in the United States):

Related:

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Black Death lesson: immigration will discourage women from working

“The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, includes a great lecture on economics. One of the effects of a reduction in population was a rise in wages. Market-clearing wages turned out to be high enough to induce women to work in much larger numbers than previously. This, in turn, was one reason it took hundreds of years for the European population to return to pre-Plague levels. Working women would elect to delay having children and would have fewer total children.

Via immigration and children of recent immigrants, the U.S. has been expanding its population, the reverse of what happened during the Black Death. Simultaneously, Americans are decrying (a) stagnant wages for the working class, (b) the lack of women in the workforce, and (c) the wages paid, specifically, to those who identify as women. (One definite difference between the Middle Ages and today is the percentage of the population that can qualify to be placed in the “women” category!)

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Elizabeth Warren bows out with a dose of cisgender-normative prejudice

From NPR:

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her bid for the presidency on Thursday, acknowledging her place as the last major female candidate in the race “and all those little girls who are gonna have to wait four more years.”

Absent cisgender-normative prejudice and the heretical assumption that gender is not fluid, how does she know that the U.S. won’t have a president who identifies as a “woman” starting next week? Did God call up Elizabeth Warren and tell her that Donald Trump will never experience gender dysphoria?

Related:

  • “Elizabeth Warren: ‘Girls will have to wait for woman president'” (BBC)
  • “Transcript: Elizabeth Warren Speaks After Suspending Campaign” (WBUR): in response to people saying that she was too angry to appeal to voters, Elizabeth Warren uses the word “fight” three times in the first two paragraphs. “I say this with a deep sense of gratitude for every single person who got in this fight, every single person who tried on a new idea. … I guarantee I will stay in the fight for the hardworking folks across this country who’ve gotten the short end of the stick over and over. That’s been the fight of my life and it will continue to be so.”
  • “If Elizabeth Warren doesn’t become president… will the New York Times blame voters’ prejudice against women or voters’ prejudice against Native Americans?” (post from January 3, 2019)
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NYT “How to Make Your Marriage Gayer” article has a simpler explanation?

“How to Make Your Marriage Gayer: Same-sex spouses feel more satisfied with their partners than heterosexual ones. What’s the secret?” (NYT):

Women in different-sex marriages reported the highest levels of psychological distress. Men in same-sex marriages reported the lowest. Men married to women and women married to women were in the middle, recording similar levels of distress.

Complex theories are proposed, especially regarding dishes (presumably the author has never met an actual man, e.g., Don Gorske, and therefore does not realize that an American man in his native environment does not generate any dirty dishes, only McDonald’s wrappers).

Could there be a simpler explanation? What if men get on women’s nerves after a few years (half of women will stop wanting sex with a husband after four years of marriage, says Good Housekeeping)? This makes those who identify as “women” unhappy. As a reflection of that and being constantly around a resentful person, those who identify as “men” in heterosexual marriage are not too happy.

This would explain why homosexual relationships are less distressing: there is no man to make a woman unhappy.

It wouldn’t be enough to explain why male homosexual couples are happier than female homosexual couples. For that, though, we could just posit the simple statement: “women are generally more open to expressing unhappiness.” Now everything in the article is explained without reference to who washes which dish.

[See “The happiest children in Spain live with two daddies”: “children who lived with their two mothers were extremely unhappy, one of the most dramatic differences in any two populations presented at the conference” (i.e., a same-sex marriage in which both adults identify as female is the most miserable situation from a child’s perspective, even worse than having separated or divorced different-sex parents).]

(The author suggests an alternative explanation for why male homosexual partners are happy: they’re having sex with their friends and neighbors.

One distinctive strength of male couples is that their tendency to candidly discuss respective preferences extends to sexuality as well, including choices that may startle some heterosexuals. For example, while the extent of non-monogamy in gay-male partnerships is often exaggerated, openly non-monogamous relationships are more common than among lesbians or heterosexuals. Many gay couples work out detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.

If we assume that sex with new friends makes people happy (litigators told us that the only thing that makes Americans happier than this is getting paid to have sex with new friends), this would also account for male-male couples being happier than female-female. )

Separately, I think this article is consistent with a long line of American journalistic thinking. Americans can become like the French and run an awesome low-cost (as a percent of GDP) health care system. Americans can become like the Japanese and give up both guns and violent crime. Heterosexual Americans who identify as “men” can become just like homosexual Americans who identify as “men”, except when in the bedroom, and extra happiness will ensue. (Diversity is our strength, but we don’t want glum heterosexual married people. Everyone needs to strive for the level of happiness achieved by homosexual married people.)

Some fun reader comments:

Molly in Boston: Can only speak for myself and my own experience, but I feel that my queerness by its very nature makes me a better partner. Both my girlfriend and I–via the process of realizing our own sexuality in a heteronormative world and coming out in that world–have done a great deal of soul searching and work to know ourselves which in turn helps us to state our emotional needs more clearly and address each other’s needs in turn. In general, it just seems that we have more practice in emotional intelligence than a typical different-gender couple.

AW, NYC: They make more money and don’t have kids. Simple.

A New Yorker: As a gay man who has been life-long single (by choice), I would like to note that this article might be missing the ultimate summary. Among gay men, only those who really want to get married and have kids, go that far. That maybe why their marriages work better. Hence, the corollary could be that maybe fewer heterosexuals should get married and even fewer should have kids.

GP, from Oakland: This is fake news. First, the article makes the mistake of conflating correlation with causality. “Doing the dishes” may correlate with “marital unhappiness,” or whatever, but the author doesn’t even try to show causality. Couples who share the dish-doing might also enjoy greater wealth creation or longer lives, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with dishes. Second, why look at only one household task–one that typically women have been expected to perform? Why not look at lubricating the deadbolts or replacing missing shingles on the roof? Because in fact, the “studies” knew the answer they were seeking before they asked the question. Not exactly scientific. Third, when you’re writing about some group or other, always reverse the order to see how it reads. How about an article entitled “Gay Couples Should be more Hetero” or the like? Immediately the bias becomes clear. Articles like this encourage right-wing pushback, and for good reason. The articles are biased, the logic is specious, and the data corrupted.

Angelica, Pennsylvania: Dishwashing is just symptom of a larger, hidden issue not openly discussed in the article: women are expected to fully carry the burden of planning and managing the household. It’s meaningless if my husband washes dishes when I have to ask him vs him taking initiative. If I have to manage my “partner” the way I manage my kids, that is a problem that causes discord. Who wants to have sex with someone who needs the same level of management as kids do? I’d rather be single in that scenario.

David H, D.C.: I bet that a study of second marriages among heterosexual couples would reveal far less stress for women. [At a minimum, they’d have a lot more cash to spend if they planned that first marriage properly!]

Amanda, Nashville: Same-sex couples have chosen each other largely on the basis of sexual compatibility, which is a big predictor of marital satisfaction. Heterosexual women in particular are often guilty of entering into marriages where their sexual needs aren’t being met, if they even know what those needs are.

British Columbian: Also, I would expect that hetero couples engage in child-rearing more often than same-sex couples do. If that is the case, it’s well-known that much tension between partners arises from the stresses of child-rearing. So this could well be another explanatory factor.

Charlie L: It’s always “dishes and laundry”, the wicked duo of drudgery. Worse, actually, than being shackled in the hull of a slave ship. Two jobs which are done indoors and have been made vastly quicker and easier by machines invented by men. [A Bill Burr fan?]

Stephen, NYC: The problem with opposite sex couples, is that men and women may be lovers, but they are also enemies. It’s a paradox. [Let’s send some woke “allies” to his apartment!]

Caroline st Rosch, Hong Kong: There is a theory that you should have 3 loves in your life – your first, young, romantic love; the love you have children with and the love you grow old with. [Until the “love you grow old with” lawyers up and sues: “When 80-Year-Old Parents Divorce” (nytimes, same date!)]

Nancy Robertson, Mobile, Alabama: “Would you like to guarantee the marriage and birth rates plunge even lower than they are today? Then go ahead and insist that straight men do more housework.” [She might have met Don Gorske!]

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