Saturday, February 29, 2020

Blow Your Stack Saturday: Indoctrinate 'Em Early


This is a response to a post on Transgender Trend. They discuss the ways in which the British public school system works on indoctrinating kids into the Trans Cult starting in primary school. It is well worth the read. I have chosen a few special gems from the rhetoric being taught to today's kids.

"the things we call female produce eggs and get pregnant, while the things we call male produce sperm and don’t get pregnant."
The things we call female and the things we call male.
Not even animals, beings, or creatures, but things.
I'm screaming.

Barnados tells children that “Gender is assigned at birth, depending on biological characteristics."
For most people, "gender" is not assigned at birth. Sex is observed at birth.
Terms like "assigned male at birth" or "assigned female at birth" apply to babies with intersex conditions. 

The confusion between "sex" and "gender" is perpetuating the current insanity.

"Unplanned pregnancies can occur if penis-in-vagina sex happens where the penis ejaculates sperm, and the person with the vagina also has a womb.”

GAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

The way this sentence reads, it appears that a disembodied, independently functioning penis is penetrating a "person with a vagina". Let's hope that this interlude was consensual.

“Cisgender: Someone who is male and happy being a boy or a female who is happy being a girl.”

I wasn't particularly happy being a girl, and sometimes I'm not particularly happy being a woman, but this doesn't mean I'm a man or want to be a man. It means I didn't like the way girls are belittled and sexualized and I don't like the way women are belittled and sexualized. I have been oppressed and exploited because I am "one of those things we call female." I don't like that. Why is this a surprise?

Maybe the princess boy just feels like a boy who likes to wear dresses.

Homosexual, gender-nonconforming, and even dysphoric kids really lose out in this scenario. The only ones who win are those interested in creating lifelong patients by pushing puberty blockers, hormones, and potentially debilitating surgeries. 

~Sly Has Blown Her Stack~

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Ornery Book Reviews: Opaque



Genre: 
Young Adult/Paranormal Romance/Sci-Fi

Rating: 
Three out of Four stars for Online Book Club, 
Three out of Five stars for Amazon

Disclosure:
If readers purchase a copy of this book through the above link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.
This review is a duplicate of my Amazon review for this book.
I received an advance copy of this book for review purposes.

Read my exclusive Online Book Club review for this book here.

This story has a fascinating premise and compelling characters. Adam is a young man who is unaware that he has superhuman abilities until Carly comes to his school and teaches him the truth about himself. Adam initially presents as potentially being a sociopath and certain of his actions and their consequences (or lack thereof) are the reasons why I question whether this book should be categorized as a young adult novel although the protagonists are teenagers.

Adam experiences romantic attraction to his mother. Although the author avoids graphic detail, incestuous fantasies are a rather taboo subject, perhaps best left in adult fiction. At one point, Adam's disturbing behavior leads to the death of a young woman and he suffers no real consequences for his actions. I found this plot device unsettling.

The book suffers to a degree from The Twilight Problem. "You can redeem the bad boy" is a terrible message to be imparting to young girls. Carly, Adam's love interest, is so concerned with saving Adam that she ignores his abusive and violent actions. For a female character to be completely wrapped up in saving a significant other who presents a danger to her sends a dangerous and frankly sexist message. I am frustrated by stories which present female characters only as foils and helpmates to badly behaved males.

Further, I was appalled by the frequent references to Carly's apparently ample yet shapely buttocks and to the scene describing her stripping down to her underclothes. I found it unsettling to be reading a voyeuristic description of a teenage girl undressing.

I nearly stopped reading this book when the author made the unfortunate decision to use a psychological condition as an adjective to describe certain of Adam's behaviors that Carly found irritating.

"She sighs at his bipolar actions.”

The author is using the term "bipolar" to mean mercurial or changeable, and this is an utterly offensive thing to do. Individuals who live with bipolar disorder are as varied in their behaviors as those who do not have this condition. I am 55 years old and have type 2 bipolar disorder. I do not tend to present as mercurial or changeable and, in fact, I tend to present as staid and sedate. What people do not see below the surface is the fact that I am constantly fighting against low self-esteem and suicide ideation. The battles of me and others with this serious psychiatric condition should not be reduced to an adjective describing undesirable behavior on the part of a character in a novel. To do so is extremely dismissive and insulting. I would hope that no-one would ever say something like "she sighs at his cancer actions" to describe the behaviors of a person who is weak and tired. Why in the world would anyone think it's okay to do this sort of thing regarding psychiatric conditions?

Although I found the characters compelling, to a degree I also found them two-dimensional. Adam's father was the only character who wasn't Hollywood-pretty.


If the reader can overlook these faults, they will likely be drawn into the story. It is probably okay for older teens to read this book, but I would advise against giving it to anyone under sixteen.



Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors



Monday, February 17, 2020

Rudeness vs. Encouraging Violence


Kate Scottow, the woman on the right, was threatened with jail time for insulting Stephanie Hayden, on the left, and referring to Hayden with "he" and "him" pronouns.

Granted, it's rude to call someone a pig in a wig. But women are called far worse by trans rights activists for being critical of procedures such as giving children puberty blockers. Women get called names like "TERF c**t," and nobody gets up in arms about it. The trans rights activists encourage people to "punch a TERF." Basically, a TERF is any woman who does not agree with 100% of their agenda. Further, women are constantly belittled for our physical appearances, whether for our size, our race, our age, or some other factor. We are called dehumanizing names such as "front hole havers." Nobody gets up in arms or tries to jail those hurling these insults at women. "Pig in a wig" is mild by comparison.


Call a trans woman a "pig in a wig" and you will face jail time.

Meanwhile:

Click to enlarge. Screenshot of violent tweets encouraging people to engage in violence against women. Source: terfisaslur.com


We are supposed to condone and accept violent rhetoric encouraging violent acts against women for disagreeing with any of the TRA agenda.

This whole business reeks of misogyny.

Friday, February 14, 2020

Fat Friday: Thoughts from an Irritating Overweight Woman

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

As my fan club of -666 readers knows, I review books for a living, such as it is.

I was presented with a book to possibly review, and was, initially, excited. It was a collection of short stories about a group of female friends.

The short story is an undervalued art and female friendships are an undervalued treasure. I was interested in reading this until I saw one of the characters described by another reviewer as "an irritating overweight woman."

The comment about the "irritating overweight woman" gave me pause. Why is her weight such a determining factor in her characterization? Many authors tend to write large people in a negative light. As a person who fights with my abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) constantly, I don't really need to read works that vilify people who look like me. It's a shame because a good short story collection about female friendship sounded like just the ticket.

I decided to give the book a hard pass.

Authors (like society as a whole) love to scapegoat, stereotype, and vilify large people. I have enough problems wrestling with ED on a daily basis. I don't really need to read fiction putting down people who look like me yet again. ED does that quite often enough.


Fat and Ornery
Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Sly and Snarky
Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com


Tuesday, February 11, 2020

To the Handmaiden Who Blocked me On Tumblr

Image by prettysleepy1 from Pixabay

I've followed your Tumblr for several years because you've pointed out ways in which the impetus for women to starve themselves to maintain bodies reminiscent of those of girls in their early teens is both misogynistic and racist. You have written about the ways that chronic dieting for women is tied into upper-class white women wanting to maintain a slender figure lest their bodies come to resemble the bodies of the black servitor class. You have written posts about the myriad of ways in which the diet industry promotes eating disorders. 

Yet despite your education, intelligence, and claims of feminist ideology, there is complete cognitive dissonance when it comes to your support of trans rights activists. 

The red flags went up when you first made the claim that the women who suffer most from eating disorders are trans women. No proof offered. You simply bought wholesale into the screed that Trans Women Are The Most Oppressed Of All In Every Way.

Still, I said to myself that you are an educated person well-versed in doing research. Certainly, it will become apparent to you that trans rights activists are trying to silence women with tactics such as claiming that words like menstruation, uterus, and vulva are violence against trans women. Surely an educated person such as yourself will see that using terms like "pregnant people" and "chest-feeders" is an erasure of women. Surely you will come to see that the TRAs TERF anyone who disagrees with them in the least way.

Well, that did not happen, and now I find myself wondering whether your research into the misogyny and racism inherent in diet culture isn't just more virtue signaling to earn yourself Woke Points. You refuse to examine the misogyny and violent rhetoric inherent in trans rights activism. You would rather throw women under the bus, blocking anyone who disagrees with the TRA screed, because "OP is a TERF! Block and stay safe!"

You might claim that the hatefully misogynistic screenshots of real words by TRAs and their allies found at terfisaslur.com are simply the words of a marginalized group punching back at their oppressors. What you fail to see is that this "marginalized group" is not punching back at their oppressors. Their oppressors are the same as our oppressors: the patriarchy. However, they are not lashing out at the men in power. They are lashing out at women, demanding subjugation and silence.

I was like you once. I chided women who pointed out fallacies in the TRA logic. I told myself that it was only fair that I should refer to myself as "cis" even though that term didn't sit well with me from the start. I told myself that these poor trans women were only behaving badly because of all their years of being oppressed. And of course, trans women are women! We need to be inclusive!

Then the cracks that appeared became too wide for me to ignore. You have done scientific research, yet you seem to buy wholesale into the claim that "biological sex is a social construct." Anyone who knows basic biology knows that such an assertion is patently false. You cannot even seem to wrap your head around the basic truth that the TRAs and their allies are conflating sex and gender. Humans are sexually dimorphic. There are males and females. The fact that intersex conditions appear in a minority of the population does not change this fact. Further, many intersex people seem to take umbrage at the co-opting of their condition by the TRAs and their minions.

Biological sex is an empirical reality. Gender is a social construct. 

You blocked me to "stay safe." Yet, you were never in any danger from me. You are still in no danger from me. I am not going to reveal who you are. I'm not going to start a harassment campaign against you. I'm not going to doxx you. If you anger any of the TRAs whose backsides you're kissing, I'm not sure the same thing can be said. They will TERF you without a second thought, and once you are TERFed, you are fair game for their harassment and death threats. 

Being gender-critical does not make me or anyone else dangerous to you or to trans people. Being gender-critical is not the same thing as being "transphobic." Questioning the TRA agenda is not transphobia. Pointing out the TRAs violent rhetoric is not "transphobic." Pointing out TRA misogyny is not "transphobic."

I want the same thing for transgender people that I want for everyone else. I want them to have the same opportunities for jobs, education, and housing that anyone else has. I believe they deserve to be treated with common decency.  I do not believe that they should be harassed, bullied, doxxed, threatened, or ridiculed. 

I do not believe that the majority of transgender people are any kind of a threat. I have only spoken out against extremists with an extreme agenda.

You call yourself a "feminist," but when you throw other women under the bus in order to appear "woke," I say you are no feminist. You are a TRA handmaiden. Hopefully, you will one day open your eyes to the truth. These people are not your friends. The instant you express the least dissent, you will be in for a very rude awakening.

~Sly Has Spoken~




Friday, February 7, 2020

Senryu: Two Hearts

Image by Goran Horvat from Pixabay

do hearts beat as one
does a broken soul get crushed
beneath brutal will

~cie~


Tan Renga Wednesday on Friday: Last Leaf


a last leaf
swirls on the wind towards the east -
first snow falls gently
the falling snow is pleasant
the icy roads are not so

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~


notes
The Hokku stanza was written by Chevrefeuille. The Ageku was created by me. I do like the snow, but I hate driving on icy roads. I've had a couple incidents when doing so which left me with a bit of PTSD. I tend to tense up when I have to drive on icy roads, which makes doing so a bad idea.

I will try to catch up with the poems over the next few days. I was working on a short story for blog.reedsy.com. If you are looking for a short story contest with no entry fee, they have a weekly contest here. Go to the apps section of the page and choose "story prompt."

Also, if you're looking for help with editing or publishing your book, you can look at what Reedsy has to offer here. Using that link will get you $25 credit on any of Reedsy's services.

I believe I may have had another TIA. There always tends to be a cognitive shift when one of these happens. It's hard to explain. It isn't as if I'm having short term memory issues (well, no worse than I ever did). It's simply that the WAY I think changes. At this point, I find myself needing to be a little more measured in my output. I get tired very easily. It's frustrating because although I've never been a Type A personality by any means, I've always been very productive.

I know that I'm vulnerable to vascular problems because of my diabetes. Well, I'm perfectly happy to keep my blood sugars in check, which I can do if I have, you know, ADEQUATE INSULIN! Which my health care provider and Medicaid seem to be conspiring not to provide me. Going without insulin for weeks at a time is, I don't know, a bad thing when you're diabetic. 

The elite devils in charge of things don't care about that, though. They want the poor and the handicapped dead. Of course, then they won't have anyone to do the menial jobs that they revile, but I wouldn't give them too much credit for being smart.

Yeah, I said "handicapped" instead of the more politically correct "disabled." I honestly don't see what the difference is. I can apply both to my own condition, and I don't find either one offensive. Sometimes people become so busy picking nits that they forget to work on the issues that really matter.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Carpe Diem Haiku: Love Senryu for a Troubled World


love to change the world
in this troubled atmosphere
hope for better dies

~cie~


notes from nuts
I don't even have the strength to begin addressing all the reasons I feel this way.