Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Good morning on cat shabbos, CaturSaturday, April 13, 2024, and National Peach Cobbler Day, one of the best cobblers, and a treat in the American South. Here’s a fancy one from Wikipedia; the ice cream is essential.
Today’s Google Doodle click below celebrates “the 93rd birthday of Mexican American psychologist Dr. Martha Bernal, who became the first Latina to earn a PhD in psychology in the U.S. and made major contributions in children’s clinical work and multicultural psychology.”
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 13 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I haven’t read the new Cass Report on the UK’s gender clinics and gender treatment, but we’ll have an analysis by a reader early next week. But apparently Andrew Sullivan has read it, and writes about it this week in a post called “Will Big Trans be held to account?” He starts by being surprised at where the parties stand on various issues, and then gets to Big Trans:
But would anyone have predicted that the Democrats and the left in general would soon favor a vast, completely unregulated, for-profit medical industry that would conduct a vast, new experimental treatment on children with drugs that were off-label and without any clinical trials to prove their effectiveness and safety? In the 2016 presidential race, both Dem contenders railed against Big Pharma, with Bernie going as far as calling the industry “a health hazard for the American people.” Back in 2009, you saw MSM stories like this:
The Food and Drug Administration said adults using prescription testosterone gel must be extra careful not to get any of it on children to avoid causing serious side effects. These include enlargement of the genital organs, aggressive behavior, early aging of the bones, premature growth of pubic hair, and increased sexual drive. Boys and girls are both at risk. The agency ordered its strongest warning on the products — a so-called black box.
Nowadays, it’s deemed a “genocide” if you don’t hand out these potent drugs to children almost on demand. Drugs used to castrate sex offenders and to treat adult prostate cancer have been re-purposed, off-label, to sexually reassign children before they even got through puberty. Big Pharma created lucrative “customers for life” by putting kids on irreversible drugs for a condition that could not be measured or identified by doctors and entirely self-diagnosed by … children.
. . .The reason we were told that children couldn’t wait and mature was that they would kill themselves if they didn’t. This is one of the most malicious lies ever told in pediatric medicine. While there is a higher chance of suicide among children with gender distress than those without, it is still extremely rare. And there is absolutely no solid evidence that treatment reduces suicide rates at all.
Don’t take this from me. The most authoritative and definitive study of the question has just been published in Britain, “The Cass Report,” by Hilary Cass, one of the most respected pediatricians in the country. It’s 388 pages long, crammed with references, five years in the making, based on serious research and interviews with countless doctors, parents, scientists and, most importantly, children and trans people directly affected. In the UK, its findings have been accepted by both major parties and even some of the groups who helped pioneer and enable this experiment. I urge you to read it — if only the preliminary summary.
. . .It’s a decisive moment in this debate. After weighing all the credible evidence and data, the report concludes that puberty blockers are not reversible and not used to “take time” to consider sex reassignment, but rather irreversible precursors for a lifetime of medication. It says that gender incongruence among kids is perfectly normal and that kids should be left alone to explore their own identities; that early social transitioning is not neutral in affecting long-term outcomes; and that there is no evidence that sex reassignment for children increases or reduces suicides.
. . .The British child-gender service had almost no followup with patients into adulthood, and, amazingly, when Cass asked for contacts for former patients to follow up herself, the doctors refused to cooperate. What on earth, one wonders, are they trying to hide? And why would any doctor want to restrict rather than expand our knowledge base?
One answer is what Megan McArdle has suggested: the doctors and activists behind this are now caught in the Oedipus Trap. Having conducted many sex-reassignments for children, sterilizing them, removing their capacity for orgasm, and rendering them patients for life, these doctors can hardly now admit they had no solid studies to back them up. But they didn’t. And they have no excuse.
And some finger-pointing. I especially appreciate the criticism of the odious Chase Strangio, the ACLU “gender lawyer” who said that censoring Abigail Shrier’s book was a “hill he would die on”. Time for these people, if they’re honest and rational, to admit they were wrong. But Sullivan is right: they won’t:
Accountability? Good luck with that. Will any of the Twitter mobs who hounded the skeptics take stock? Will the ACLU’s Chase Strangio feel any regret for trying to censor the first major book raising the alarm? Will groups like GLAAD and HRC confess to their grotesque lies — “The Science Is Settled” — and ugly bullying tactics to suppress reporting on the question? Will they cop to having supported gay conversion therapy in which many gay kids were “fixed” by being turned physically into the opposite sex?
Will HRC and countless educators temper the curriculum that tells small children that their bodies are irrelevant to whether they are a boy or girl, and that they can change their sex at will? Will these ideologues ever concede the foul homophobia behind questioning the maleness of a girly boy or the femaleness of the tomboy? Will they ever admit that their ideological extremism, and their “queer” conflation of trans and gay experiences, has led to one of the greatest medical abuses of gay kids in history? Of course they won’t. As I write, HRC and GLAAD have not uttered a peep about the report’s findings. They are intellectually and morally bankrupt institutions, desperate for money, and using the scarred bodies of gender-dysphoric children to fundraise.
In the future, people may well look back and wonder at the madness that swept gender medicine in our era, permanently mutilating children who didn’t need such drastic treatment.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Iran may attack Israel on Friday or Saturday.
This is an update of a warning earlier in the week by US intelligence officials who said Iran could potentially attack proxies of Israel or embassies abroad.
However, a more recent warning from a US official said the attack could occur “possibly on Israeli soil” as opposed to Israeli interests elsewhere, and likely in the north or the south of the country.
Iran has made several threats to retaliate for the strike that killed an IRGC Quds force general, his deputy, and 6 other terrorists in Damascus earlier this month.
Although Israel has not claimed responsibility for the airstrike in Damascus, it is widely assumed that Israel was behind the killing of the terrorist general.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to respond forcefully against any attack on Israel.
He said, “Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We are prepared to meet all of the security needs of the State of Israel, both defensively and offensively.”
. . . and the second:
Amid warnings that Iran may attack Israeli soil on Friday or Saturday, the IDF said it was on high alert and prepared to respond.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a press conference that Israel is “on alert and highly prepared for various scenarios.”
He added, “We are ready for attack and defense using a variety of capabilities that the IDF has, and also ready with our strategic partners.”
Among the partners is head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) Gen. Michael Kurilla who traveled to Israel and met with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi concerning the current security challenges.
Responding to the warning, the US government has urged its employees not to travel beyond the major city centers of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba “out of an abundance of caution.”
Iran has warned Israel that it would retaliate for strikes that killed an IRGC Quds Force general along with other terrorists on April 1st in Damascus.
Iranian sources told Reuters that the attack would be planned carefully to avoid any escalation that will destabilize the region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian sought to reassure Washington that the attack will be “controlled” and “non-escalatory” and planned “to use regional proxies to launch a number of attacks on Israel.”
No escalation that will destabilize the region? I’m wondering how that is going to happen! Israel will retaliate if Iran does anything, especially if it strikes Israeli soil, and then all hell will break loose. I’m still wary about Iran striking Israeli assets, but if that happens I’ll worry if the U.S. will really help go after Iran.
The U.S. rushed warships into position to protect Israel and American forces in the region, hoping to head off a direct attack from Iran on Israel that could come as soon as Friday or Saturday.
The moves by the U.S. that are part of an effort to avoid a wider conflict in the Middle East came after a warning from a person familiar with the matter about the timing and location of the potential Iranian attack. A person briefed by the Iranian leadership, however, said that while plans to attack are being discussed, no final decision has been made.
Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, discussed a possible Iranian attack with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Israel on Friday. “We are prepared to defend ourselves on the ground and in the air, in close cooperation with our partners, and we will know how to respond,” Gallant said, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry.
The U.S. moves included repositioning two destroyers, one of which was already in the region and another that was redirected there, U.S. officials said, adding that at least one of the vessels carried the Aegis missile-defense system.
President Biden, asked Friday when an Iranian strike on Israel may occur, said, “My expectation is sooner than later.” Asked if he had a message for Iran, Biden said: “Don’t.”
“We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel and help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” Biden said.
. . . Late Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had called Gallant to reassure him Washington would defend its closest ally in the region if Tehran struck on its soil. Austin told Gallant “Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, which Tehran has publicly threatened,” a Pentagon spokesman said.
Well, it’s not a massive amount of preparation, but the proof is in the firing, and Israel will take what help it can get.
*I’ve never read The Scroll before, but they have a post called “Most of the hostages are dead, U.S. and Israel say.” Indeed, I’ve heard this several times recently, and one friend told me, when the war began, that we should just assume that none of the hostages would make it out alive. Fortunately, that isn’t the case, but there are supposed to be 130-odd hostages left.
Mainstream reporting is catching up to The Scroll’s speculations. In our March 25 edition, Tablet’s geopolitical analyst wrote:
My guess is that most or all of the hostages are dead and their bodies are buried deep in tunnels—which is why these “negotiations” don’t and can’t go anywhere. The reason the hostages are dead is that moving them around became a clear strategic liability, while their gruesome accounts of torture and rape at the hands of their captors would only further inflame Israeli and perhaps world opinion against Hamas. The eventual report of their deaths will be merely a “drop in the bucket” next to the “tens of thousands of dead Gazans.”
The Israelis are obviously constrained from saying this because it is speculative—and giving Hamas an excuse to kill any surviving hostages would be morally questionable and politically explosive, which obligates them to go through the motions. On the other hand, assuming an 80% or higher probability that some version of this scenario is right, which only grows over time, “the fate of the hostages” is no longer sufficient to constrain Israeli action.
Following reports from earlier this week that Hamas could not produce 40 living hostages as part of a deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday:
Around 130 remaining hostages taken in the attack are still in Gaza. Of those, Israeli officials have publicly confirmed that 34 are dead, but Israeli and American officials estimate privately that the number of deaths could be much higher. …
Some U.S. estimates indicate that most of the hostages are already dead, U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said. They stressed, however, that U.S. visibility on the hostages is limited and depends, in part, on Israeli intelligence. Some were likely killed during Israeli strikes on Gaza, the officials said, while others have died from health issues, including injuries suffered during their initial capture.
The Israeli military, the Israeli prime minister’s office, and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment publicly on these estimates. The Journal notes that these estimates represent a marked increase from Israeli and U.S. assessments in February, when about 80 of the 130 hostages in Gaza were believed to still be alive. The “majority” of the dead, according to the paper, died from wounds suffered during the Oct. 7 attack, though some have likely been killed by Hamas in captivity or by Israeli airstrikes. Israel has admitted to mistakenly shooting three hostages, and a fourth was killed in a failed rescue mission.
Hamas still won’t produce a list of hostages, living or dead, and claims not to know where 40 of them are. Without such a list, how can Israel possibly negotiate with Hamas for the return of the hostages? But yes, many of the ones that were taken alive are certainly dead now.
*As always, I’ll steal some items from the estimable Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: No Justice. No Peace. No Hors D’Oeuvres!” I’ll steal four this week; I’m sure Ms. Bowles won’t mind:
→ Hamas made plans for a conquered Israel: When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, they had real plans to take the country. An astonishing report from Haaretz details the agenda, which included splitting Israel into smaller territories. It’s unclear what exactly would have been done to the residents of Israel, but apparently some Jews would be kept alive and/or made to stay. From conference documents obtained by Haaretz: “Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry should be retained [in Palestine] for some time and should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired.” Anyway, read the whole story. Basically, what many saw as wild fantasies and metaphors were actually very specific plans Hamas had in mind. We all laugh when a Houthi chants “Death to America,” but it turns out they really, really mean it.
→ Biden considering shutting down the border: After we had a lot of fun with the open border–palooza, the Dems have decided they might temporarily close the southern border with Mexico to ensure it doesn’t cost them this election. Or at least give border shutdown vibes. And so, Biden this week said he is mulling closing off the border and is “examining whether or not I have that power.” Now, I actually think the theory (promoted a lot by Elon Musk and others) that the Biden administration opened the border for some future voting demographic advantage gives them too much intellectual credit. My theory: there is a strain of elite thinking that truly believes all borders are evil, that lines on Mother Nature’s green earth are bad, that no human is illegal. This is the crowd that believes any enforcement of anything is bad, man. That says subway turnstile jumpers are heroes. This is unfamiliar to organized, rule-following Nordic socialists, my favorite kind. But don’t worry! Biden is sending out border shutdown vibes. He’s really thinking hard about laws this time.
→ Comedy break:
Yes, the argument now is that the men randomly sucker-punching women in New York are suffering Trump-induced rage.
Trump does stir up wild feelings, nativist feelings, rages and furies, and there’s a lot to write about his fans and whatever else. But sweet New Yorkers, you can’t blame all of your problems on Trump, as though he is the secret hand behind all sin. Like, my dog biting someone cannot be blamed on Trump, even if they’re both sort of orange. The potholes in Los Angeles cannot be blamed on Trump, even if they both bother me and are rounded. The men randomly attacking people for fun on your streets, that’s a you problem, New York.
→ That’s. . . not a First Amendment right: Berkeley law school students staged an anti-Zionism protest inside a random professor’s house this week. And when the professor tried to stop them, the demonstrators just calmly repeated this is our First Amendment right, this is our First Amendment right. It is, in fact, not your right to enter a home and scream at the homeowners. But let’s back up: the protest was against Dean Erwin Chereminsky, who the anti-Zionists are obsessed with—they love making little antisemitic portraits of him. I can’t figure out what Erwin did exactly. He’s very, very left-wing (I once saw a viral video of him saying he illegally discriminates when hiring new professors to bring more diversity). Just to say: this is not someone who appears to be an enemy of the movement. But he is Jewish. And he hasn’t called on Berkeley to divest from all Jewish businesses, which is what the movement wants. And he was hosting a dinner party, which I guess extra-upset them. No Justice. No Peace. No Hors d’Oeuvres!
In other notes of insanity on this issue, Jodi Dean, a professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has come out with a full-throated embrace of Hamas and October 7, zero holds barred. Here she is: “The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating. Here were moments of freedom, that defeated Zionist expectations of submission to occupation and siege. In them, we witnessed seemingly impossible acts of bravery and defiance in the face of the certain knowledge of the devastation that would follow.” And: “When we witness such actions many of us also feel this sense of openness.” This is a professor at a real college.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a solution to the Jehova’s Witnesses, who even go as far as the tiny hamlet of Dobrzyn:
Hili: Jehovah’s Witnesses are coming.
A: We will tell them that we can’t have a chat because we are studying the Bible.
In Polish:
Hili: Świadkowie Jehowy idą.
Ja: Powiemy im, że niestety nie możemy rozmawiać, bo studiujemy Biblię.
From Masih. Women imprisoned in Iran don’t often speak about rape as a form of punishment, but this brave woman does.
"Having endured the trauma of rape in Iran, I struggled for years to find justice. Narges Jalali bravely breaks her silence, joining the United Against Gender Apartheid campaign to shed light on the brutality of Islamic regimes. In Iran and Afghanistan victims of assault and… pic.twitter.com/QRwQxgtEJ5
From Malgorzata, a disturbing tweet that I retweeted:
Only in a regime where dying as a "martyr" is regarded as a good thing could a mother and father celebrate this way after the death of one of their children. https://t.co/7LpVZsCdVa
Here’s the Berkeley Law student who interrupted the Dinner that the dean gave to third-year students. Her first mistake comes by saying “there is not an inappropriate time to talk about policy.” Her second is to say “there is an [Israeli] genocide going on.” Remember that the only reason she disrupted the dinner was because the Dean was Jewish. And then she acts as a victim. Since her name was publicized, potential employers will know who she is.
She showed up at a dinner party to protest with a microphone and now she’s playing the victim and claiming Professor Fisk is a racist: pic.twitter.com/rHEuH8cf3a
On this day:
1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1612 – In one of the epic samurai duels in Japanese history, Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojirō at Funajima island.
1613 – Samuel Argall, having captured Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia, sets off with her to Jamestown with the intention of exchanging her for English prisoners held by her father.
1699 – The Sikh religion is formalised as the Khalsa – the brotherhood of Warrior-Saints – by Guru Gobind Singh in northern India, in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1873 – The Colfax massacre: More than 60 to 150 black men are murdered in Colfax, Louisiana, while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British Indian Army troops led by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer kill approx 379-1,000 unarmed demonstrators including men and women in Amritsar, India; and approximately 1,500 injured.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson’s birth.
1948 – In an ambush, 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital, and a British soldier, are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. This event came to be known as the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
1964 – At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed “Odyssey”) while en route to the Moon.
1975 – An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.
2017 – The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
Births:
1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, member of the Gunpowder Plot (probable; d. 1606).
1735 – Isaac Low, American merchant and politician, founded the New York Chamber of Commerce (d. 1791).
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, American lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826).
1771 – Richard Trevithick, Cornish-English engineer and explorer (d. 1833).
1780 – Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer, invented the Screw-pile lighthouse (d. 1868).
1828 – Josephine Butler, English feminist and social reformer (d. 1906). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1852 – Frank Winfield Woolworth, American businessman, founded the F. W. Woolworth Company (d. 1919).
1854 – Lucy Craft Laney, American founder of the Haines Normal and Industrial School, Augusta, Georgia (d. 1933).
1860 – James Ensor, English-Belgian painter, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism (d. 1949).
1866 – Butch Cassidy, American criminal (d. 1908).
1891 – Nella Larsen, Danish/African-American nurse, librarian, and author (d. 1964).
1892 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, invented Radar (d. 1973).
1899 – Alfred Mosher Butts, American architect and game designer, created Scrabble (d. 1993).
[American writer of children’s books, writing fifty-nine books based on true stories of horses and other animals. She won the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind, a 1948 book about horses, and she was a runner-up for two others. One of the latter, Misty of Chincoteague (1947), was the basis for several related titles and the 1961 movie Misty.
1906 – Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989).
1916 – Phyllis Fraser, Welsh-American actress, journalist, and publisher, co-founded Beginner Books (d. 2006).
1919 – Howard Keel, American actor and singer (d. 2004).
1919 – Madalyn Murray O’Hair, American activist, founded American Atheists (d. 1995). [And Holocaust denier.]
1920 – Roberto Calvi, Italian banker (d. 1982). [Found hanged underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in mysterious circumstances. Five people were acquitted in Rome in June 2007 of conspiracy to murder him. Popular suspicion has linked his death to allegedly corrupt officials of the Vatican Bank, the Sicilian Mafia, and the Continental Freemasonry lodge Propaganda Due.]
1922 – John Braine, English librarian and author (d. 1986).
1922 – Julius Nyerere, Tanzanian politician and teacher, 1st President of Tanzania (d. 1999).
1924 – Stanley Donen, American film director and choreographer (d. 2019).
1929 – Marilynn Smith, American golfer (d. 2019).
1937 – Edward Fox, English actor.
1939 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013).
1941 – Michael Stuart Brown, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate.
1949 – Christopher Hitchens, English-American essayist, literary critic, and journalist (d. 2011).
1967 – Michael Eisen, American biologist and academic.
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” (Terry Pratchett, Going Postal):
1605 – Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia (b. 1551).
1793 – Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, French botanist, lawyer, and politician (b. 1763). [Served as the president of the Paris Commune and played a leading role in the establishment of the Reign of Terror. He was one of the ultra-radical enragés of the revolution, an ardent critic of Christianity who was one of the leaders of the dechristianization of France. His radical positions resulted in his alienation from Maximilien Robespierre, and he was arrested and executed.]
1855 – Henry De la Beche, English geologist and palaeontologist (b. 1796). [The first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who helped pioneer early geological survey methods. He was the first President of the Palaeontographical Society.]
1938 – Grey Owl, English-Canadian environmentalist and author (b. 1888).
1941 – Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer and academic (b. 1863).
1997 – Bryant Bowles, American soldier and activist, founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (b. 1920). [White supremacist bitterly opposed to racial integration of public schools in the United States.]
2005 – Johnnie Johnson, American pianist and songwriter (b. 1924). [His work with Chuck Berry led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for breaking racial barriers in the military as a Montford Point Marine, where he endured racism and inspired social change while integrating the previously all-white Marine Corps during World War II.]
Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey; born on this day in 1828, died 30 December 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law [JG: the legal view that married women were simply chattels – the property – of their husbands and not persons in their own right], the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
Grey grew up in a well-to-do and politically connected progressive family which helped develop in her a strong social conscience and firmly held religious ideals. She married George Butler, an Anglican divine and schoolmaster, and the couple had four children, the last of whom, Eva, died falling from a banister. The death was a turning point for Butler, and she focused her feelings on helping others, starting with the inhabitants of a local workhouse. She began to campaign for women’s rights in British law. In 1869 she became involved in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseases—particularly in the British Army and Royal Navy—through the forced medical examination of alleged prostitutes, a process she described as surgical or steel rape. The campaign achieved its final success in 1886 with the repeal of the Acts. Butler also formed the International Abolitionist Federation, a Europe-wide organisation to combat similar systems on the continent.
While investigating the effect of the Acts, Butler had been appalled that some of the prostitutes were as young as 12, and that there was a slave trade of young women and children from England to the continent for the purpose of prostitution. A campaign to combat the trafficking led to the removal from office of the head of the Belgian Police des Mœurs, and the trial and imprisonment of his deputy and 12 brothel owners, who were all involved in the trade. Butler fought child prostitution with help from the campaigning editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead, who purchased a 13-year-old girl from her mother for £5. The subsequent outcry led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and brought in measures to stop children becoming prostitutes. Her final campaign was in the late-1890s, against the Contagious Diseases Acts which continued to be implemented in the British Raj.
Butler wrote more than 90 books and pamphlets over the course of her career, most of which were in support of her campaigning, although she also produced biographies of her father, her husband and Catherine of Siena. Butler’s Christian feminism is celebrated by the Church of England with a Lesser Festival, and by representations of her in the stained glass windows of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and St Olave’s Church in the City of London. Her name appears on the Reformers Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, and Durham University named one of their colleges after her. Her campaign strategies changed the way feminist and suffragists conducted future struggles, and her work brought into the political milieu groups of people that had never been active before. After her death in 1906 the feminist leader Millicent Fawcett hailed her as “the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century”.
From 1901 Butler began to withdraw from public life, resigning her positions in the campaign organisations and spending more time with her family. In 1903 she moved to Wooler in Northumberland, to live near her eldest son. On 30 December 1906 she died at home and was buried in the nearby village of Kirknewton.
Jez: thank you for this continuing feature of heroes whom most, or at least many I would think, of us have never known about. Seeing their motivations, often extreme initiative and effort, and results is truly inspiring. After reading your write-ups, I feel that I can picture them and, somehow, personally know them a bit.
So how are students in 300- and 400- level social and political science or studies courses graded by professors like a Jodi Dean. She is degreed via Princeton and Columbia, has taught at some of the best schools internationally. As a math, physics, and engineering student, I was graded on answers to objective questions (well engineering sometimes required a pareto optimal judgement in weighing options and factors in a design or solution space, but still a defense of one’s decision was often what the professor was looking for), but what about a prof with a clear ideology like Prof Dean in the soft sciences or studies courses? If I disagree with her view of the world, do I fail? Am I graded on the structure and strength of argument? Is her worldview the worldview in her classes or are her classes vehicles for logical discussion and argument?
Good questions. I had a couple of humanities teachers, one as far back as junior high school, who seemed to teach unargued opinion and grade the same way. I never understood what they were being paid to do. I didn’t let them get away with their assertions without vigorous questioning. They didn’t like it.
The “Yank body positivity” image made me wonder how it might be worked into the final scene of Planet of the Apes. “You blew her up! Ah, damn you! Gawd damn you all to Hell!” –” Mr. Taylor, please pull your horse up to the next window so you can receive your order.” –“Filthy apes! Daaaamm!” –“0rrrr…you might just dismount the horse and pound sand.”
I so hope that the hostages are alive and can be returned to their families.
But if they are dead and it becomes known that they are dead, a major part of Hamas’s leverage goes away. They still have public opinion as a bargaining chip, but even that might soften (albeit briefly) if it becomes widely known that the hostages are gone.
If the hostages are dead, or if only a few are left, it is in Hamas’s interest to fabricate excuses for not being able to release them—which they are now doing. The illusion of hostages still alive becomes their leverage. It is quite possible that all that is left is the illusion.
How long will Israel continue to negotiate with Hamas without proof of life? Not long.
I can’t get the image of “died of wounds” out of my mind. Once an important category in wartime casualty lists, the number in Western wars is now about 1% of total casualties. Nearly all wounded whether friendly, enemy, or civilian, who are still alive when they reach definitive resuscitation and surgical care (and therefore not counted killed in action) will survive. The conditions of suffering under which hostages wounded while being taken on 7-8 October who died from those wounds must have been truly horrific. (To be fair, we do know that at least one hostage later released did get some kind of surgical care for what sounds like a compound fracture of her humerus from gunshot which saved her arm and her life.)
The prospective medical students should see film from a trauma centre in Iraq or Tel Aviv or Baltimore. A C-section is almost bloodless. Trauma ain’t.
I wish the fatty Lady Liberty had orange hair…it seems appropriate.
As for screening medical students by exposing them to the realities, I think it a splendid idea. My brother was doing his housejobs (aka internship in north America) when I was considering applying to medical school and I went to stay with him in London a couple of times to shadow him around the wards. I learned to scrub up and assisted at a few ops. I was used to skinning rabbits and butchering sheep by then, so it was not a shock to me, and I really enjoyed the experience.
Even better— have the students see live how all the trans surgeries are performed, with the continued updates and how long they will be linked to doctors visits for the rest of their lives. I think still photos are gruesome enough, but… they are still being promoted as quick fixes that will make you happy.
“In the future, people may well look back and wonder at the madness that swept gender medicine in our era . . .”
As well as wonder about the millions of adult enablers who, perhaps out of misguided empathy, uncritically embraced the euphemism of “gender-affirming care,” blindly trusted “the experts,” and then refused for years to listen to criticism of the practice because most of it was deemed “right wing.” This might have been the most tragic consequence of our polarized times.
Unfortunately, the future is not yet here. One major US political party still embraces this madness and condemns those who want it to end.
This has been making the rounds among the activists. It was posted to another site I follow by a doctor whose estranged trans child sent it to her in a 2 a.m. fury after a difficult conversation with Mum.
Thank you for that, Leslie. I see that the method was “reflexive thematic analysis.” Is that what we used to call a knee-jerk response?!
I am not generally a one-issue voter, but I have reached the point that I will support no party or candidate who embraces the mutilation of children–and I will vote against anyone who tries to shame, ostracize, silence, or otherwise sideline informed critics of the practice.
I approached this analysis as a non-binary researcher, as a parent of a trans child, and with experience as a parent-service user of children’s gender services in the UK. My approach to this topic is informed by a commitment to trans emancipatory research, acknowledging that trans lives are equal to cis lives, and being attentive to cisnormativity or pathologization of gender diversity.
The author appears to be very, very upset that all the premises behind the Affirmation approach were not assumed to be true. Here, let me show all the places where they weren’t assumed to be true. See the bias?
As soon as I read cisnormative bias and the UK is hostile to trans people I knew it was going to be a measured balanced response to any concerns the Cass report brought up.
I think they have had their heads so long in the sand that they can no longer see or are unwilling to open their eyes.
Consider I am (was, it seems) broadly left of center.
Now when I see pronouns, or a hijab, I just move on. Previously I had that reaction to nuns’ habits, collars and crucifixes: “Not somebody to take seriously.”
My new standards are holding up pretty well, a good filtering device.
A mere c-section freaked the students out? Goodness. No episiotomies? No eye surgery?
Wimps.
hehehe
Actually they *should* show them the medical realities of “sex reassignment surgery” which until a few years ago I’d counted as something like a nose job. How wrong I was…
Fortunately they don’t need to do anything medical or scientific these days to attend med school, or even pass the MCATs, just be a community activist and have the right skin color.
I only want to see OLD doctors now for my health (Gen X like me and above).
If you’re following what is going on at med schools – from genderwang to Gaza, you’ll be amazed and appalled.
“
On this day:
1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1612 – In one of the epic samurai duels in Japanese history, Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojirō at Funajima island.
1613 – Samuel Argall, having captured Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia, sets off with her to Jamestown with the intention of exchanging her for English prisoners held by her father.
1699 – The Sikh religion is formalised as the Khalsa – the brotherhood of Warrior-Saints – by Guru Gobind Singh in northern India, in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1873 – The Colfax massacre: More than 60 to 150 black men are murdered in Colfax, Louisiana, while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British Indian Army troops led by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer kill approx 379-1,000 unarmed demonstrators including men and women in Amritsar, India; and approximately 1,500 injured.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson’s birth.
1948 – In an ambush, 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital, and a British soldier, are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. This event came to be known as the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
1964 – At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed “Odyssey”) while en route to the Moon.
1975 – An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.
2017 – The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
Births:
1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, member of the Gunpowder Plot (probable; d. 1606).
1735 – Isaac Low, American merchant and politician, founded the New York Chamber of Commerce (d. 1791).
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, American lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826).
1771 – Richard Trevithick, Cornish-English engineer and explorer (d. 1833).
1780 – Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer, invented the Screw-pile lighthouse (d. 1868).
1828 – Josephine Butler, English feminist and social reformer (d. 1906). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1852 – Frank Winfield Woolworth, American businessman, founded the F. W. Woolworth Company (d. 1919).
1854 – Lucy Craft Laney, American founder of the Haines Normal and Industrial School, Augusta, Georgia (d. 1933).
1860 – James Ensor, English-Belgian painter, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism (d. 1949).
1866 – Butch Cassidy, American criminal (d. 1908).
1891 – Nella Larsen, Danish/African-American nurse, librarian, and author (d. 1964).
1892 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, invented Radar (d. 1973).
1899 – Alfred Mosher Butts, American architect and game designer, created Scrabble (d. 1993).
[American writer of children’s books, writing fifty-nine books based on true stories of horses and other animals. She won the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind, a 1948 book about horses, and she was a runner-up for two others. One of the latter, Misty of Chincoteague (1947), was the basis for several related titles and the 1961 movie Misty.
1906 – Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989).
1916 – Phyllis Fraser, Welsh-American actress, journalist, and publisher, co-founded Beginner Books (d. 2006).
1919 – Howard Keel, American actor and singer (d. 2004).
1919 – Madalyn Murray O’Hair, American activist, founded American Atheists (d. 1995). [And Holocaust denier.]
1920 – Roberto Calvi, Italian banker (d. 1982). [Found hanged underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in mysterious circumstances. Five people were acquitted in Rome in June 2007 of conspiracy to murder him. Popular suspicion has linked his death to allegedly corrupt officials of the Vatican Bank, the Sicilian Mafia, and the Continental Freemasonry lodge Propaganda Due.]
1922 – John Braine, English librarian and author (d. 1986).
1922 – Julius Nyerere, Tanzanian politician and teacher, 1st President of Tanzania (d. 1999).
1924 – Stanley Donen, American film director and choreographer (d. 2019).
1929 – Marilynn Smith, American golfer (d. 2019).
1937 – Edward Fox, English actor.
1939 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013).
1940 – Ruby Puryear Hearn, African-American biophysicist.
1941 – Michael Stuart Brown, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate.
1949 – Christopher Hitchens, English-American essayist, literary critic, and journalist (d. 2011).
1967 – Michael Eisen, American biologist and academic.
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” (Terry Pratchett, Going Postal):
1605 – Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia (b. 1551).
1793 – Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, French botanist, lawyer, and politician (b. 1763). [Served as the president of the Paris Commune and played a leading role in the establishment of the Reign of Terror. He was one of the ultra-radical enragés of the revolution, an ardent critic of Christianity who was one of the leaders of the dechristianization of France. His radical positions resulted in his alienation from Maximilien Robespierre, and he was arrested and executed.]
1855 – Henry De la Beche, English geologist and palaeontologist (b. 1796). [The first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who helped pioneer early geological survey methods. He was the first President of the Palaeontographical Society.]
1938 – Grey Owl, English-Canadian environmentalist and author (b. 1888).
1941 – Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer and academic (b. 1863).
1997 – Bryant Bowles, American soldier and activist, founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (b. 1920). [White supremacist bitterly opposed to racial integration of public schools in the United States.]
2005 – Johnnie Johnson, American pianist and songwriter (b. 1924). [His work with Chuck Berry led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for breaking racial barriers in the military as a Montford Point Marine, where he endured racism and inspired social change while integrating the previously all-white Marine Corps during World War II.]
2006 – Muriel Spark, Scottish novelist, poet, and critic (b. 1918).
2012 – Cecil Chaudhry, Pakistani pilot, academic, and activist (b. 1941).
2015 – Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, and illustrator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1927).
2022 – Gloria Parker, American musician and bandleader (b.1921).
Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey; born on this day in 1828, died 30 December 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law [JG: the legal view that married women were simply chattels – the property – of their husbands and not persons in their own right], the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
Grey grew up in a well-to-do and politically connected progressive family which helped develop in her a strong social conscience and firmly held religious ideals. She married George Butler, an Anglican divine and schoolmaster, and the couple had four children, the last of whom, Eva, died falling from a banister. The death was a turning point for Butler, and she focused her feelings on helping others, starting with the inhabitants of a local workhouse. She began to campaign for women’s rights in British law. In 1869 she became involved in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseases—particularly in the British Army and Royal Navy—through the forced medical examination of alleged prostitutes, a process she described as surgical or steel rape. The campaign achieved its final success in 1886 with the repeal of the Acts. Butler also formed the International Abolitionist Federation, a Europe-wide organisation to combat similar systems on the continent.
While investigating the effect of the Acts, Butler had been appalled that some of the prostitutes were as young as 12, and that there was a slave trade of young women and children from England to the continent for the purpose of prostitution. A campaign to combat the trafficking led to the removal from office of the head of the Belgian Police des Mœurs, and the trial and imprisonment of his deputy and 12 brothel owners, who were all involved in the trade. Butler fought child prostitution with help from the campaigning editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead, who purchased a 13-year-old girl from her mother for £5. The subsequent outcry led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and brought in measures to stop children becoming prostitutes. Her final campaign was in the late-1890s, against the Contagious Diseases Acts which continued to be implemented in the British Raj.
Butler wrote more than 90 books and pamphlets over the course of her career, most of which were in support of her campaigning, although she also produced biographies of her father, her husband and Catherine of Siena. Butler’s Christian feminism is celebrated by the Church of England with a Lesser Festival, and by representations of her in the stained glass windows of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and St Olave’s Church in the City of London. Her name appears on the Reformers Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, and Durham University named one of their colleges after her. Her campaign strategies changed the way feminist and suffragists conducted future struggles, and her work brought into the political milieu groups of people that had never been active before. After her death in 1906 the feminist leader Millicent Fawcett hailed her as “the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century”.
From 1901 Butler began to withdraw from public life, resigning her positions in the campaign organisations and spending more time with her family. In 1903 she moved to Wooler in Northumberland, to live near her eldest son. On 30 December 1906 she died at home and was buried in the nearby village of Kirknewton.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Butler
Jez: thank you for this continuing feature of heroes whom most, or at least many I would think, of us have never known about. Seeing their motivations, often extreme initiative and effort, and results is truly inspiring. After reading your write-ups, I feel that I can picture them and, somehow, personally know them a bit.
And happy birthday Thomas Jefferson!
So how are students in 300- and 400- level social and political science or studies courses graded by professors like a Jodi Dean. She is degreed via Princeton and Columbia, has taught at some of the best schools internationally. As a math, physics, and engineering student, I was graded on answers to objective questions (well engineering sometimes required a pareto optimal judgement in weighing options and factors in a design or solution space, but still a defense of one’s decision was often what the professor was looking for), but what about a prof with a clear ideology like Prof Dean in the soft sciences or studies courses? If I disagree with her view of the world, do I fail? Am I graded on the structure and strength of argument? Is her worldview the worldview in her classes or are her classes vehicles for logical discussion and argument?
Good questions. I had a couple of humanities teachers, one as far back as junior high school, who seemed to teach unargued opinion and grade the same way. I never understood what they were being paid to do. I didn’t let them get away with their assertions without vigorous questioning. They didn’t like it.
My baby brother was in your camp and had a visit or two with the Principal in high school because if it, but in the long term was very successful.
The “Yank body positivity” image made me wonder how it might be worked into the final scene of Planet of the Apes. “You blew her up! Ah, damn you! Gawd damn you all to Hell!” –” Mr. Taylor, please pull your horse up to the next window so you can receive your order.” –“Filthy apes! Daaaamm!” –“0rrrr…you might just dismount the horse and pound sand.”
I so hope that the hostages are alive and can be returned to their families.
But if they are dead and it becomes known that they are dead, a major part of Hamas’s leverage goes away. They still have public opinion as a bargaining chip, but even that might soften (albeit briefly) if it becomes widely known that the hostages are gone.
If the hostages are dead, or if only a few are left, it is in Hamas’s interest to fabricate excuses for not being able to release them—which they are now doing. The illusion of hostages still alive becomes their leverage. It is quite possible that all that is left is the illusion.
How long will Israel continue to negotiate with Hamas without proof of life? Not long.
I can’t get the image of “died of wounds” out of my mind. Once an important category in wartime casualty lists, the number in Western wars is now about 1% of total casualties. Nearly all wounded whether friendly, enemy, or civilian, who are still alive when they reach definitive resuscitation and surgical care (and therefore not counted killed in action) will survive. The conditions of suffering under which hostages wounded while being taken on 7-8 October who died from those wounds must have been truly horrific. (To be fair, we do know that at least one hostage later released did get some kind of surgical care for what sounds like a compound fracture of her humerus from gunshot which saved her arm and her life.)
The prospective medical students should see film from a trauma centre in Iraq or Tel Aviv or Baltimore. A C-section is almost bloodless. Trauma ain’t.
It’s difficult even to think about what the wounded hostages went through or are going through—if they are alive at all.
I wish the fatty Lady Liberty had orange hair…it seems appropriate.
As for screening medical students by exposing them to the realities, I think it a splendid idea. My brother was doing his housejobs (aka internship in north America) when I was considering applying to medical school and I went to stay with him in London a couple of times to shadow him around the wards. I learned to scrub up and assisted at a few ops. I was used to skinning rabbits and butchering sheep by then, so it was not a shock to me, and I really enjoyed the experience.
Even better— have the students see live how all the trans surgeries are performed, with the continued updates and how long they will be linked to doctors visits for the rest of their lives. I think still photos are gruesome enough, but… they are still being promoted as quick fixes that will make you happy.
Very good, Su.
And a lot of us have been wondering at the madness for several years.
Indeed! The comparison with lobotomies is something of a cliche, but nonetheless valid.
“In the future, people may well look back and wonder at the madness that swept gender medicine in our era . . .”
As well as wonder about the millions of adult enablers who, perhaps out of misguided empathy, uncritically embraced the euphemism of “gender-affirming care,” blindly trusted “the experts,” and then refused for years to listen to criticism of the practice because most of it was deemed “right wing.” This might have been the most tragic consequence of our polarized times.
Unfortunately, the future is not yet here. One major US political party still embraces this madness and condemns those who want it to end.
The POMOs strike back. (ThyroidPlanet, this is for you, with thanks.)
The Cass Review: Cis-supremacy in the UK’s approach to healthcare for trans children 14 March 2024.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2024.2328249
This has been making the rounds among the activists. It was posted to another site I follow by a doctor whose estranged trans child sent it to her in a 2 a.m. fury after a difficult conversation with Mum.
Thank you for that, Leslie. I see that the method was “reflexive thematic analysis.” Is that what we used to call a knee-jerk response?!
I am not generally a one-issue voter, but I have reached the point that I will support no party or candidate who embraces the mutilation of children–and I will vote against anyone who tries to shame, ostracize, silence, or otherwise sideline informed critics of the practice.
Predictable.
The author appears to be very, very upset that all the premises behind the Affirmation approach were not assumed to be true. Here, let me show all the places where they weren’t assumed to be true. See the bias?
Gosh thanks for this.
As soon as I read cisnormative bias and the UK is hostile to trans people I knew it was going to be a measured balanced response to any concerns the Cass report brought up.
I think they have had their heads so long in the sand that they can no longer see or are unwilling to open their eyes.
Consider I am (was, it seems) broadly left of center.
Now when I see pronouns, or a hijab, I just move on. Previously I had that reaction to nuns’ habits, collars and crucifixes: “Not somebody to take seriously.”
My new standards are holding up pretty well, a good filtering device.
D.A.
NYC
(article of mine to come this week.)
“When I see pronouns or a hijab I just move on.”
Excellent!
A mere c-section freaked the students out? Goodness. No episiotomies? No eye surgery?
Wimps.
hehehe
Actually they *should* show them the medical realities of “sex reassignment surgery” which until a few years ago I’d counted as something like a nose job. How wrong I was…
Fortunately they don’t need to do anything medical or scientific these days to attend med school, or even pass the MCATs, just be a community activist and have the right skin color.
I only want to see OLD doctors now for my health (Gen X like me and above).
If you’re following what is going on at med schools – from genderwang to Gaza, you’ll be amazed and appalled.
D.A.
NYC