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Pregnancy Pronouns Or Else Shakedowns

Bad Language

November 19, 2023 39 Comments

From the Telegraph, some healthcare news:

Cambridge University Hospital Trust under scrutiny for using the word in maternity leave policies, losing points in NHS diversity assessment.

Can you guess the offensive, verboten word?

The Cambridge University Hospital Trust, which manages a maternity hospital called the Rosie, lost points because staff use the term “mother” when referring to the policies it had in place regarding paid leave, instead of broadening it to include gender-neutral alternatives.

One might think that the employees having babies and therefore on maternity leave are, in fact, by definition, mothers. One might even think that a hospital, and a maternity hospital in particular, is a place where physical realities of this kind would be difficult to avoid. And yet.

While none of the hospitals’ current staff classified themselves as confused about which of the two sexes they are, it is, I suppose, possible that at some point one of the mothers taking maternity leave may, potentially, be sexually dysmorphic – i.e., mentally ill. But mental illness, even fashionable mental illness, isn’t generally something that one should affirm. Nor should it be a basis for the coercion of others. Farce, after all, soon loses its charm.

The scheme is commissioned by NHS England but run by trans rights groups, including Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, who carry out the grading.

And these grifting monomaniacs appear to have their feet firmly under the taxpayer-funded table. Such that, even in hospitals regarded as doing nowhere near enough, rainbow ‘Pride’ lanyards swing freely around countless employee necks, “painted rainbow walkways” already assail the eye, along with innumerable rainbow-adorned posters and rainbow staff badges, and at least one “LGBT+ progress flag” flutters gaily from a dedicated flagpole.

In the same hospitals, unused tampons are abundant in the men’s toilets, and the womanhood of expectant female patients is being dutifully downplayed – one might say marginalised – lest the pretentious and unhinged feel in some way anomalous. Hospital staff are expected to introduce themselves to patients by gratuitously announcing their pronouns. As if their sex might otherwise be difficult to fathom.

The “diversity” assessments also insist that gynaecology services must “take… additional action to support trans and non-binary patients.” Specifically, dysmorphic women – women who wish to be perceived as men – should be spared having to sit in “a busy, gendered waiting room,” where the presence of other women may induce psychological discomfort and feelings of “dysphoria.” Instead, such women should be provided with “an adjoining waiting room that matches their affirmed gender.” In short, a waiting room for men in need of gynaecological attention.

We’re also told that gynaecology departments should remove “gendered names (e.g. ‘Women’s Health’),” as this may also make transgender visitors feel unhappy. The words “mother” and “woman” should, we learn, be replaced with the word “client.” The feelings of other, non-dysmorphic female patients on this matter, or on any of the matters raised, are not explored and are seemingly of zero interest.

Regarding the demanded erasure of the words mother and woman, another complaint is aired by our “diversity” overlords:

This change is only happening slowly across the service due to an already existing backlog.

A backlog of other “diversity” demands, that is. The ones being churned out at a boggling rate and with manic enthusiasm.

Among which, a demand that the term “heterosexual partnership” be replaced with “opposite-sex partnership,” on grounds that “bisexual people in opposite-sex partnerships” may “not classify themselves as being in a heterosexual partnership.”

Despite actually being in one.

At which point, readers may wish to imagine a bisexual chap, one in a relationship with a woman, arriving at a hospital with a fractured wrist and having the time to complain that his paperwork doesn’t allow him to stipulate that his heterosexual relationship with said woman is merely conditional and doesn’t preclude other, more manly entanglements at some future date.

Because when you’re fixing a chap’s fractured wrist, you obviously need to know about his bisexuality. And hey, priorities.

As part of the “diversity” assessment, feedback from hospital staff is solicited, presumably to determine the exact level of ideological conformity. However, much of this feedback has been denounced as “transphobic,” or “homophobic,” or insufficiently affirming of “pansexual” or “asexual” people. Examples of such inexcusable wickedness are included in the sixty-eight-page assessment report. For instance,

The sexuality or gender identity of my colleagues is not relevant to the job they do. Like everyone else, they should come to work and focus on their patients.

And,

I feel like I am surrounded by LGBTQ+ too much.

For readers on the verge of hyperventilated gasping, paper bags can be found under your seats.

Other supposedly scandalising staff comments are offered:

It gives me the impression that the hospital is prioritising trans rights over all other protected rights. Sex is a protected characteristic… and yet I am afraid the hospital will not protect the rights of female patients… Might a woman find a fully intact man who claims he is a woman in the next bed?

And,

If a patient asks for a female healthcare practitioner for an intimate procedure, can they be sure that person will be a woman?

The feedback quoted above is of course deemed worthy of a “content warning” and is prominently flagged as both bigoted and a “cause for concern.” One warranting “further investigation” by the employee’s superiors. Apparently, for Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, and by extension the NHS, these are questions that needn’t be answered – and indeed one mustn’t ask.

Behold the new unsayable.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (701)

November 17, 2023 89 Comments

“I am not a cat.” || Nommy-nommy-nom. || Nude descending. || “Can you give me your phone, please?” || “This weird phenomenon.” || Big fellah. || Mastering a foreign tongue. || Maybe the melting is a bad thing. || Intriguing object. || “It brings them a sense of peace.” || Utopian scenes. Related. || Andromeda is approaching. || New dance sensation. || Novel experience. || Penny drops, but takes a while. || Cooling chair, 1786. || Soho, London, 1956. || Quality time. (NSFW) || I have questions. || Short quiz. || She’s “cute” and she’s “nice,” but she expects you to lie on demand, or she’ll kick you in the teeth. || Jake used to be a trans woman. (NSFW) || Today’s word is gratitude. || And finally, a guide to megalasers, relativistic missiles, and other means of waging interstellar war.

If tempted, you can follow me on X / Twitter.

To register with the blog and thereby enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page. It’s free and quite painless.

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Anthropology Food and Drink Politics

Already Broken

November 15, 2023 77 Comments

Margot, seen below, is a “nutrition counsellor.” She is “root-cause and system focussed.” Oh, and she has some questions:

What do we eat during the revolution?

Turns out you can’t smash capitalism and agitate the proletariat without a solid meal plan.

Tiktok commies are doing revolution meal prep, I am dying 💀😂

You cannot make this up. pic.twitter.com/2OYFD6A2NP

— Right Side of History™️ (@xxclusionary) November 15, 2023

“We can fight with our food,” says she.

I wanna discuss and explore with you what, er, how we divest from capitalism while balancing, and, er, while getting adequate nutritional needs. We’re not gonna burn out this time. We’re not gonna let the resistance break us. 

Bridge crossed, methinks.

Update, via Mr Muldoon in the comments:

Apparently, the revolution will be fuelled by cashew milk and vegan pseudo-cheese. Because as capitalism is toppled, and amid the riots and burning cars, there will, it seems, be space for neurotic niche cuisine.

Update 2:

NielsR adds,

Sounds pretty bourgeois to be telling the proles what their nutritional needs are.

I suspect that the fantasy of being in charge and important, of correcting others amid some cosmic drama, is very much the appeal. It’s the standard pattern of the type. And Margot, dear Margot, is very much of a type.

And so, while her comrades “break capitalism” and “abolish” prison, and as violent criminals roam the streets unmolested, Margot will be instructing the little people on how to dry pepper seeds and how to wash foraged bin scraps in vinegar to remove any trace of those nasty pesticides. And I doubt that this fantasy, this contrived, absurd mindset, is amenable to realism or logic, or any kind of correction. It’s probably best considered as a case of bad wiring.

Margot and her peers, these psychologically precarious young women – all of a remarkably narrow social class – are, they tell us, the ones who will be “moving the world forward.” And they’ll bestow this gift, this glorious transformation, by “coaching people in how to eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint,” and by making endless TikTok videos about themselves and their cultivated mood disorders.

Assuming, that is, that the proletariat are tempted by the prospect of economic ruin, roaming gangs of muggers and rapists, and evenings spent washing other people’s bin contents.

Somewhat related.

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Anthropology Free-For-All Parenting Politics

She Should “Just Be Able To Have” Things

November 14, 2023 61 Comments

Via Mr Muldoon in the comments, umbrage is detected:

I've been saying it forever: they're upset that they've been asked to participate in their own survival. No clearer distillation of the worldview than here. https://t.co/QRawwks7eU

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) November 13, 2023

As this chap quips in reply,

Like, I get that someone has to work for society to function, but why does it have to be me?

And this one,

A lot of complaints about capitalism are more properly bug reports to God.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

I like that you tagged this ‘parenting’.

Well, addressing the matter earlier might have spared our unhappy madam a lot of pierced and tattooed grumpiness.

There is, of course, plenty of scope for grumbling about the seemingly endless range of things that can be taxed. And existential angst – or existential pouting – can be difficult to avoid, the human condition being what it is. See the aforementioned “bug reports to God.” But the emotional assumption that Things Should Just Be There For Me, Forever, In Unlimited Quantities™ is, I think, something best addressed before one’s children venture out into the world.

Children who, as adults, may then make TikTok videos of themselves bemoaning the fact that they aren’t simply being given a free house, and free food, and a free car, and free petrol for the free car. Children who, as adults, may then seem genuinely bewildered by the prospect of being responsible for the feeding and clothing of any children that they, in turn, might have.

Another thing occurs to me. If pretty much everything you need, or want, should just somehow be there anyway, on an indefinite basis, via some oddly unarticulated rearrangement of the universe, then it’s not obvious how gratitude might fit into such a mindset.

Also, open thread.

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Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (84)

November 13, 2023 35 Comments

Because you deserve no less, some items from the archives:

Their Happiness Hurt My Feelings.

When your Zoom-meeting décor is deemed oppressive.

It turns out that the reckless visibility of a wedding photo may be crushing the self-esteem out of the touchily unwed. You see, the mere sight of a photo of someone’s happy day can “crowd out the experiences of people with minoritized social identities,” albeit in ways never quite explained. Other taboos include references to “simple activities like family dance parties,” which are apparently a thing, and “gardening with a spouse.”

Curiously, given the stated importance of “sensitivity” and being mindful of what things might mean, we aren’t invited to ponder the kind of person who would resent someone else’s wedding photo. And then complain about it. Or whether such neurotic affectations, these unhappy mental habits, are something to be actively encouraged. In the name of progress. At a university.

Their Fevered Brows.

Let’s visit the pages of Salon, where the delusional hyperventilate.

Dr Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a lecturer in Italian Studies, is of course on-message: “I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.” This is followed by pointed references to Hitler and Mussolini – because hey, why not? – and whisperings of a cowed and fearful media: “Many people in the news media are afraid to really engage the fact that Trump is an authoritarian because if they do so then reality becomes too threatening, and therefore they would have to take a different stance publicly.”

Readers are invited to take a moment to reflect on Mr Trump’s famously warm and not at all fractious relationship with the mainstream media, which never, ever calls him names. Like “proto-fascist,” for instance. Or when MSNBC’s Niccole Wallace breathlessly announced that the President was genocidal and, for reasons left to the imagination, clearly bent on “exterminating Latinos.” Or when the same broadcaster’s Frank Figliuzzi suggested that Trump’s lowering of flags following a shooting tragedy was actually a coded salute to Adolf Hitler.

Apparently, these things never happened, are not in fact bizarrely routine, and the pundits at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, NBC, Salon, etc., are just too terrified and deferential to admit, as Dr Ben-Ghiat puts it, that “they are living in the middle of a fascist, authoritarian takeover.”

But Why Aren’t People Rushing To Buy My Art?

Deep thoughts, shifting paradigms, and heads wrapped in meat.

For those who may be confounded by the profundity of the piece, a handy walk-through guide is available. Said guide points out that the performance will encourage among onlookers “a deeper level of critical thought.” Of the many ruminations that will doubtless be inspired is the following: “After seeing someone wrap their head in meat twice, does it still hold the same weight as it did the first time?”

The guide notes, rather earnestly, that the first attempt, by Mr Carvalho – to envelop his head in bread, string, and assorted meat products – prompted more amusement from the tiny audience than the subsequent repetition of it by Ms Cochrane. This is presented as an invitation to “a fundamental shift in paradigm” and some allegedly profound insight into gender politics. Or, how “different actions are read on different bodies.” Our artistic deep thinkers are seemingly unaware of the concepts of novelty and diminishing returns. 

Other feats of head-wrapping are also available.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.