Decency demands it: 

16 Vancouver women are facing human rights complaints for refusing to wax a transgender woman’s male genitalia. The anonymous individual “JY” has filed 16 separate complaints with the Human Rights Tribunal after being refused a Brazilian wax from businesses that only service women.

The faintly surreal news item is worth reading in full, though one passage seems to, as it were, brush against the nub of things:

In spite of the fact that JY is able to obtain a Manzilian in Vancouver, JY has filed 16 complaints against these women at the BC Human Rights Tribunal, claiming discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” […] One of them, Shelah Poyer, is a single mom who works out of her home. JY was willing to withdraw his complaint in exchange for $2,500. 

The term naked shakedown comes to mind. Via Claire Lehmann. 

Andy Ngo on media dishonesty and racial shakedowns: 

The genre of “white people doing something to black people” is, by now, a well-established media genre that generates easy clicks. But there is also an unsettling subplot that few seem willing to discuss. Rashsaan Muhammad and Mattie Khan, the two people of colour who star in last week’s viral video, both act abominably toward a young woman they’ve just met… And it was Ms Khan, not the pedestrian, who instantly racialised the incident, while her male partner called the woman an “idiot” and told her that she doesn’t belong in the neighbourhood. Who’s the racist—not to mention segregationist—here?

The couple’s abominable behaviour didn’t end after that encounter and the publication of the video, however. Within hours, Ms. Khan named the bicyclist publicly and posted her photo on social media. Friends and followers of Ms Khan then continued the doxing, publishing more photos and personal details of the woman… Sha Ongelungel, who was recently profiled glowingly as a racial justice activist in the Guardian, published the woman’s employer information on Twitter and encouraged others to call or email them. They obliged and demanded that she be fired. Ms Ongelungel stopped responding after I inquired if she took any steps to verify the couple’s (false) allegation.

Previously and somewhat related: When “dismantling the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy” trumps little things like opening hours. 

Heather Mac Donald on pathological academia and the barking left: 

The epithets used by the left are simply reflex actions. They have nothing to do with reality. “White supremacy” is now the favoured term of art and it’s trotted out in situations that are ludicrous… We saw this during the feminist hysteria over the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Those who defended the idea of due process… were accused of supporting “white supremacy” and “white privilege.” What was left out of the equation was that his accuser was also white. So how does race come into this?

And in unambiguous hate-crime news: 

Contrasting invitations, spotted in the central lobby at Evergreen State College:

The college in question has of course been mentioned here before.

Lifted from the comments, an unhappy Twitter exchange. As it’s couched in the contortions of “social justice,” and therefore not entirely honest, or indeed remotely honest, I’ll attempt to paraphrase:

Pretentious Woke-ling: 

“I’m a student of critical race theory and I’ve decided to get preposterously upset because you favourably quoted one of my super-woke boilerplate tweets. You should now pay me for my insufferable narcissism, on account of my Designated Victim Group status.”

Everyday Mentalism:  

“We’re sorry for quoting one of your tweets, which was obviously a traumatic violation of your Designated Victim Group status. However, the employee who quoted you is black, queer and non-binary, and therefore also a Designated Victim. So, although we’ll pretend to be sorry – because we all have to pretend, otherwise the whole racket will collapse – you really shouldn’t be applying our insane standards to us.”

Much theatrical fretting ensues. You see, quoting someone’s tweet, favourably, is, it says here, “causing harm.”

John Staddon on Ethnic Studies standards: 

The anonymous sociologist’s claim that empirical facts are irrelevant… raises an important question: if theories in the social sciences are not constrained by empirical facts, what are they constrained by? The answer seems to be that theories in Race and Ethnic Studies sociology are mainly constrained by the political opinions prevailing in that branch of the field… [‘Race theorist’] Eduardo Bonilla-Silva scorns the very idea [of truth], speaking of the “devil of ‘objectivity’” (note the scare quotes). Without the possibility of objectivity, there is no science. Has sociology become, then, just political activism? To some extent, yes. According to Tukufu Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva: “The aim is to attain epistemic liberation from White logic.” 

Professor Bonilla-Silva and his nasty, paranoid contortions have been mentioned here before. When not denouncing objectivity and “white logic” – or complaining that his employer, Duke University, “oozes whiteness,” which is, it goes without saying, a terrible thing to ooze – the professor equates critics of affirmative action with 19th century supporters of slavery. He also claims that non-racial ‘colour-blind’ attitudes and policies are merely a “way of calling minorities niggers, Spics or Chinks.”

One of the more bizarre indicators of Bonilla-Silva’s mental state is his written insistence – published in a course syllabus – that students must control their “body language” and avoid any “irresponsible contestation” of his arguments. Black students who disagreed with the professor’s lurid racialist theories have been denounced by him as “Uncle Toms.” Oh, and Professor Bonilla-Silva, a grown man, a tenured academic with a six-figure salary, refers to the United States, in class, as “Gringoland” and “AmeriKKKa.”

Further to this recent hoaxing drama, James Lindsay on laundering hokum: 

‘Critical race theory’ is a mess, for example. It’s an explicitly political situation, in which ‘whiteness’ has to be bad and therefore can’t do anything right, and they take these ideas and launder them through the academic process. And these departments exist specifically to launder these ideas, to put them through the academic process and give them the appearance of being rigorous studies, so then activists can go and say, “Oh, a study has shown…”

For more on so-called “critical race theory,” see also this.