Sleepless in Midland

Abigail Shrier in WSJ -- claims of sexism less about women's feelings, more about hurting competitors

Abigail Shrier penned an interesting editorial the other day titled Ken Fisher, Joe Biden and the Merciless Young how a clumsy old guy can easily get trapped by the "me too" movement.

Apparently, Ken Fisher made a remark at a conference to the effect that people need to be careful what they say, using a crude example:

... it’s like “going up to a woman in a bar and saying, ‘Hey, I want to talk about what’s in your pants.’ ”

Cue the outrage. Competitors pounced on the remark with their twitter feeds, and according to Ms. Shrier,  "As of this writing, Fisher Investments has lost more than $2 billion in institutional assets, and Ken Fisher has been widely tarred for sexism." Ouch!

Likewise with Joe Biden's touching -- years ago women could handle it, but not now.

Ms. Shrier gets to the point:

None of this is about women. Denouncing sexism is a pretext that permits one competitor to damage another while playing the hero. Messrs. Biden and Fisher were successful in their fields, but vulnerable because of old age. They failed to keep up with political correctness. This is the competitive advantage of the young—that they can so readily assimilate the ever-expanding list of shibboleths and forbidden expressions. Mock horror is the next generation’s form of rent-seeking, and political correctness the younger players’ edge.

What then are the lessons for other Ken Fishers and Joe Bidens? Shake fewer hands, make fewer jokes, never speak freely or off the cuff. It’s a tall order.

For now, their younger competitors need only lie in wait. But someday age will render them more human and less vigilant, too. Eventually, they too will cough up the keys to their own downfall. Viva la revolución!

Accusations of sexism for minor touching and unguarded comments are now merely weapons to be used against competitors.

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4:02 PM 10/26/2019

Moderate Dems, if there are any, not welcome at Netroots

The political sides are moving farther apart. Conservatives hold out hope that at least some Democrats will see the advantages of the things most conservatives and libertarians want in a government. But the far left seems to have a hard grip on progressives and run of the mill Democrats.

Look at Netroots for a sampling. See Anti-Trump fervor runs hot at liberal summit at Politico.com. Extract:

NEW ORLEANS — Centrist Democrats for months have nudged the party’s left flank to avoid the kind of strident partisanship and outright provocations that Donald Trump could seize on to whip up Republicans voters in the midterms.

The response from the progressive base this week? Shove off.

Arriving here Thursday for the annual progressive gathering Netroots Nation, several thousand activists and organizers teed up a program laced with presentations on Trump’s ties to Russia, “warmongering and bigotry” and “protecting the Mueller investigation.” They depicted Trump’s immigration policies as racist, cheered efforts to block his border wall and plotted next steps for “fighting the global right” — all while amplifying calls to impeach Trump.

“The winning strategy is not chasing after Trump voters or moderating our message,” said Aimee Allison, president of the progressive advocacy group Democracy in Color. “Democrats need to be holding Trump accountable. … They need to be up in arms every day talking about Trump, and they’re too timid. They’re too quiet. ...

And, invoking former first lady Michelle Obama’s 2016 campaign message, “when they go low, we go high,” Monica Roberts, a transgender rights advocate from Texas, told fellow progressives, “The Democratic Party needs to get some balls … There are some times in political life that you have to go World Wrestling Federation on people.”

Does anyone else want to say "WTF" when a transgender rights advocate talks about getting balls?

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1:52 PM 8/3/2018

Trump dumps military push for transgenders

What's not to like about this?

Source.

The Obama agenda was more focused on identity politics than on protecting America.

From mental disorder to merely distressed -- how transvestites were transformed in four short years

Two movements that shot to the top in the last few years were gay marriage and transgender sex. Those of us out here in the unwoke flyover country were taken by surprise at how fast those two systems progressed past the point of no return.

Of particular interest is the status of those people who think they were born with the wrong genitalia. There was a time when someone who thought he/she was a man/woman born in a woman/man's body was considered to have a mental disorder. Not any more. Now, it's reversed. If you can't accept who they think they are, then you are the one with the mental disorder.

So it's nice to see Mark A. Hewitt addressing that in How the Left Hijacked the American Psychiatric Association and Normalized Personality Disorders. Here's an excerpt:

In 1987 homosexuality was struck from the DSM by a majority vote of the APA members. In 2012, transvestitism, was also eliminated from the DSM-5 (fifth edition), replaced gender identity disorder and further redefined and softened the previous personality disorder into gender dysphoria. The change in terminology removed all implication and designation that transvestitism was a mental illness. Dysphoria is defined as the distress a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth.

With transvestitism finally voted out of the DSM, in June 2015 LGBT rights groups had one urgent agenda item for President Barack Obama: End the ban on transgender people serving in the military. It wasn’t that transgender people were straining red rope barriers, lining up at recruiting stations to serve in the military in a rush of abject patriotism; no, acceptance into the military allowed transgenders free government-paid sexual reassignment surgery. No longer was transvestitism considered a mental disorder, it was now considered a medically correctable condition, like a cleft lip and palate.

It's probably fair to say, "follow the money," since recognition of gay marriage and transvestitism could qualify more people for government largess, whether sharing in spousal rights to government payouts or for subsidized sex change drugs and operations. But that's just part of it. The need for recognition for one's differentness has to factor in somehow, especially in the age of identity politics.

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2:19 PM 7/17/2017

If USS John S. McCain docking at Vietnam turns heads, wait til USNS Harvey Milk docks at Syria

Stephen Green remarks, " It’s an incredible thing that a ship named John S. McCain is making port calls in Vietnam."

Oh yeah? If you want to get noticed, send the Harvey Milk to the Middle East and bomb them with military handbooks on sex change.

Forget that strong horse/week horse metaphor. Let Obama convince them a transgender man is the real stallion.

Anthony Weiner had the wrong fetish -- if he liked to wear a dress Dems would call him heroic

Let's face it, what he likes to do must be some sort of rare but growing fetish involving cameras and the internet. In his case, it's snapping a pic of himself in his skivvies and posting them online. It's doesn't turn most of us on, but obviously he gets off on it.

So Dems, give him a break. If he came out as transsexual, he would be a cocktail party favorite, and Dems would be patting themselves on the back about how tolerant they are.

Unfortunately for Weiner, his fetish falls somewhat in the porn category, and that four letter word, we are told by feminists, describes a terrible thing.

Maybe it's the luck of the draw that some of us came out hetero, some homo, some cross dressers, and some like Weiner, who gets off by taking sexy selfies. If only Weiner had come out as homosexual or transgender, he would be a hero in the class of tolerant Democrats in which he wants to circulate.

Transgenders now choose their bathrooms -- will male prison inmates get to move to women's prisons? Roger Corman, get your camera ready.

Some stores have given in to transgender bathroom usage. School districts are grappling with the issue, especially with the Obama administration breathing down their necks.

Now, with Obama getting more and more liberal with convicts, it seems only a matter of time before transgender inmates get to declare whether they are male or female and serve time in a prison designated for the sex they declared.

It sounds like something out of a Roger Corman movie. In case you don't remember him, he earned millions making B grade sexploitation movies in the 60s and 70s with titles like "Women in Cages," "The Big Bird Cage," and "Caged Heat."

Coming soon to a theater near you: "Man Trapped in a Woman's Body Trapped in a Women's Prison."

Sex roulette game with HIV positives

This has got to be a hoax. See Sex roulette parties where one person is secretly HIV+ and nobody is allowed to use condoms are on the rise, warn doctors.

There was a time when a diagnosis of HIV positive was tantamount to a death sentence. And indeed, many people died from it. But introduce some anti-viral drugs and the life extending medicines available to positives, and you get gay men more willing to take risks.

But this comes from Spain, a country with single payer heath insurance which NPR calls one of the best in the world.

Would these men be taking such chances if they knew they had to pay for the medicine out of their own pockets? It's one thing to deal with a positive HIV test. It's another thing to face poverty to pay for the meds. Score another one the dreamland that is socialism.

That aside, this still seems like a hoax. Skydiving and rock climbing can provide an adrenaline rush. And for some, asphyxiation sex seems to provide some sort of pleasure combining sex with a near death experience. The HIV roulette, however, seems too weird to be true. But it's a big world out there, most of which this country boy hasn't seen, so what do I know?

Choose from six different gender classifications

There was a time when a simple question on a form asking what's your sex had two choices, male or female. I'm so old I can remember a time when the thought of a third option -- "Other" -- would have consumed an entire Johnny Carson monologue.

Not now. For one, the word "sex" is a verb, and your sex classification is now "gender." But that's old news. See California college will now ask students to pick from 6 genders. Excerpt:

The new form will ask students to pick one gender from six different choices. Prospective students will be asked to choose between male, female, trans male, trans female, gender queer/gender non-conforming and different identity.

What I wonder is this: If you change your mind, can you change your selection or are you stuck with the first choice? That would be important to an applicant tempted to fudge on the form to gain an edge on acceptance to the school.

Meanwhile, I'm nostalgic for "Other."