I realize that there’s all kinds of different people in the world. Lord knows I live a marginal life myself and I like my life. But what this [i.e., pride commercials and marketing campaigns] does is it sends a message it’s really kind of an extremist framework.
[Pride is] really about being left alone but being treated equally and fairly . . . it’s as though there has to be another step forward, another kind of push for something, for everyone to be a victim or for some kind of new dynamic.
Those kinds of ads really do damage to the gay and lesbian community. Because it’s pandering, it’s extreme… It does not respect the audience in a sense.
[Companies are] not used to how Americans are usually quiet and that while we might not be having riots and marches, that we’re gonna speak with the dollar, especially when the economy is tight. That we’re going to be very careful about where we spend money.
And it’s not about homophobia, it’s about everything being politicized. Having messages, political messages of any type, being pushed onto us. None of us want that, no matter what your sexual orientation or your race or your background.
There are two types of hormone therapy (obviously): feminizing hormone therapy and masculinizing hormone therapy.
Feminizing hormone therapy
This means giving estrogen and possibly androgen blockers to people “assigned male at birth.” (That is a phrase I don’t like. People “assigned male at birth” are male and will be male their entire lives no matter what. Do a DNA test if you have any doubt about it.)
Here are the changes you can expect from feminizing hormone therapy:
Body fat redistribution
Breast growth
Decreased muscle mass and strength
Decreased libido
Decreased penile function
Decreased testicular volume
Decreased sperm production
Slowed growth of body and facial hair
Softening of skin
To maintain these changes, you need to keep taking hormone therapy for the rest of your life.
Masculinizing hormone therapy
This involves giving testosterone to people “assigned female at birth.” Expected changes include:
Body fat redistribution
Clitoral enlargement
Deepened voice
Facial and body hair growth
Increased muscle mass and strength
Increased skin oiliness
No more periods
Vaginal atrophy
As with feminizing hormone therapy, to maintain the changes, you need to keep taking hormone therapy for the rest of your life.
According to the web page, people who benefit most from hormone therapy usually have:
Persistent, well-documented gender dysphoria or gender incongruence
The capacity to make a fully informed decision and consent to treatment
The Mayo Clinic says that the gender dysphoria diagnosis “was created to help people with gender dysphoria get access to necessary health care and effective treatment.” This seems to imply that gender dysphoria is not really a pathology, it’s just a “diagnosis” created to allow people to bill treatments to their health insurance. But if it’s “just a diagnosis” and not a pathology, why are people’s breasts and genitals being amputated? That seems a bit extreme.
Side effects
Possible side effects of feminizing hormone therapy include
Blood clots
Gallstones
Headaches or migraines
Heightened risk of diabetes and heart disease
Nausea or vomiting
I’ve had gallstones. They’re excruciatingly painful. Headaches and vomiting I could live with short term, but I wouldn’t want to have them going on all the time. The other three I don’t want at all.
Possible side effects of masculinizing hormone therapy include
Headaches or migraines
Higher risk of heart attack, heart disease and stroke
Weight gain
Not so bad. Except the second one. The second one looks pretty bad.
And of course because research in this area is just beginning, it’s possible that there are other long-term risks we don’t know about yet.
According to the web page, “current guidelines suggest that around 16 years of age is a good time to start hormone therapy.”
I love that sentence, I think because it’s so offhand and mundane. It sounds like “Guidelines suggest that X years of age is a good time to start piano lessons.”
To put in context what’s happening here, these are South Chicago residents complaining about immigrants being bused into their neighborhood.
In the 2020 presidential election, one candidate promised (sincerely, I think) to do everything possible to prevent illegal immigration, and one candidate, well . . . Democrats don’t really care about illegal immigration because the people coming across the border are almost certainly going to be Democratic voters.
South Chicago voted 97 percent for Biden, the “I don’t care about illegal immigration” guy. So what are they complaining about? They got what they voted for.
Yes, I’m sure they all thought that the problems created by illegal immigration would be borne by somebody else — somebody closer to the border, probably redneck Texans — not by them. They voted to create problems for other people that they are not willing to bear themselves.
So I don’t feel bad for them at all — in fact, I’m laughing a little as I watch the video — because what they did is not a nice thing to do.
— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) May 5, 2023
I’d rewrite that headline to say Stupid People Furious! Well, that’s a little harsh. Let’s change it to Uninformed People Furious!
Let me start my saying that I’ve had a couple of cancerous skin lesions removed, and because the removal was medically necessary, the cost of the removal was covered by my health insurance.
I’ve also had a couple of benign lesions removed just because I thought they were unsightly. Those removals were not medically necessary so I had to pay for their removal myself.
People identifying as transgender don’t want to pay for puberty blockers and hormone treatments and surgeries out of their own pocket so what we came up with is “gender dysphoria,” a mental disorder. Now everything becomes medically necessary and can be billed to health insurance.
Some people don’t like that “gender dysphoria” implies some sort of pathology. They’ll say “No it’s not a pathology, it’s just a diagnosis.” If it’s “just a diagnosis,” why are we amputating people’s breasts and genitals?
And if “gender dysphoria” is an objective reality, I still question why are we amputating breasts and genitals? Since we stopped doing frontal lobotomies, I’m not aware of any mental health condition that’s treated with surgery.
Here’s a doctor perhaps saying it a little better and more authoritatively because he’s a doctor and I’m not:
“Transitioning” does not have a 100 percent success rate, however you define that. Some people transition and find themselves no happier than they were before, just the same people with the same problems. Some people are even less happy than they were before and go so far as to detransition back to their original sex.
I’ve never heard of a lobotomy patient expressing dissatisfaction with the surgery or asking to have it undone.
Former NBA player Jason Collins, who became the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major North American sports leagues, spoke out this week about the recent wave of NHL players and teams opting out of Pride Night, saying that “religion should not be a cause for division.”
Some Russian NHL players have opted out over fear of reprisals in their home country, but the main reason given for opting out has been religious beliefs.
You’ve got to offer some excuse and that’s the one that people seem most willing to accept. It may be sincere in most or all cases, I don’t know. I know that there are some people who believe in a God who frowns on any sort of non-heterosexual activities.
Religion is definitely a cause of division in the world, there’s no disagreeing with that. But in this case, I’m going to say that the cause of division is Collins himself.
He seems to be saying that celebrating gayness is more important than anyone’s religious beliefs. I’m not gay and I’m not religious and I’m not easily offended, but that is an offensive statement.
Players should be able to opt out of Pride Night for any reason or no reason. Mine would be “I don’t like people telling me what to wear.”
Why would the fact that Jason Collins likes to suck dicks merit a celebration? Not that’s there anything wrong with sucking dicks. Women do it, men do it. But that’s what Pride Night is, right? A celebration of certain sexual preferences and practices.
There are also lots of other sexual preferences and practices. Must all of them be celebrated at NHL games?
Why would you think that being gay or trans means that everyone is required to accept you and love you? You think everyone loves me? Surprisingly, they don’t.
The United States actually used to have laws against homosexual sex and the rallying cry was that the government should “stay out of the bedroom.”
Now we’ve gone completely the other way, where we’re required to look in the bedroom and to applaud what we see.
Vida Blue was a left-handed pitcher between 1969 and 1986, most notably as a member of the starting rotation with the Oakland A’s dynasty that won three consecutive World Series championships between 1972 and 1974.
He won the American League Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player Award in 1971, the youngest American League player to win the MVP Award in the 20th century. He had a 24–8 record, an AL-leading 1.82 ERA, eight shutouts and 301 strikeouts.
Those were the days when starting pitchers throwing a shutout weren’t taken out of the game because of a pitch count. Today, pitchers throwing no-hitters are pulled based on pitch counts. So eight shutouts is more than a current pitcher will likely throw in a lifetime.
Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader and a good guy to go to for an opinion like this, said that Vida Blue threw as hard as anyone he ever faced. I have to take exception to that. Blue may have been the second-hardest thrower, and the hardest-throwing lefty, but no one in that era threw harder than Nolan Ryan.
Vida Blue was 73 years old.
Footnote: My son met him several years ago at a celebrity golf tournament and said he seemed like a good guy.
I like this technique. I’ve seen it a few times now. Instead of partisan gotchas, the incompetence of Biden nominees is exposed by asking them basic questions about the job for which they’ve been nominated.
In this one, the nominee for FAA Chief goes 0-for-7 on questions about aviation policy.
I’ve seen judicial nominees who couldn’t answer questions like “As a judge, how do you handle a Brady motion?” or “What does Article 5 of the Constitution do?”
2 + 2 = White Supremacy: How Woke Ideologues Corrupted Canada’s Math Curriculum — nationalreview.com
White supremacy? Wasn’t arithmetic invented by the Babylonians? Were Babylonians white?
How great a threat is white supremacy in Canada? I’m thinking not much since when I’ve been in Canada, I didn’t see anything but white people and a few Asians.
From the above-linked article:
Two plus two no longer equals four, according to members of the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA), who consider the equation to be a white-supremacist dog whistle instead of a basic mathematical truth.
According to a webinar created by OMCA president Jason To, proponents of math’s political neutrality who use the phrasing “2 + 2 = 4” are engaged in an act of “Covert White Supremacy.”
Former OMCA president Heather Theijsmeijer, who originally publicized the webinar, pointed to commentary by Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explaining that proponents of “2 + 2 = 4” are grounded “in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.”
Not to marginalize the horror of marginalizing things, but there are no other possible values for 2 + 2.
Meanwhile, for some probably unrelated reason, test scores in Ontario have plummeted.
Not even half of sixth-grade students meet provincial math standards at present; 52 percent of ninth-graders met the bar during the 2021–2022 school year, down from 75 percent just three years prior, according to provincial standardized testing administered by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). Woke Math advocates have doubled down in the face of falling performance, seeking to incorporate so-called Indigenous Knowledge Systems and anti-racism.
Theijsmeijer and OMCA did not respond to a request for comment.
I can only think of two possible explanations. Either Ontario students are more than 30 percent dumber than they were three years ago, or the quality of math education, as a consequence of politicizing the curriculum, is 30 percent worse than it was three years ago. The second explanation seems more likely.
For the last decade, the EQAO has documented the continuous decline of math scores among third- and sixth-graders. International tests such as the OECD’s “gold standard” Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show similar declines.
To facilitate comparisons, PISA standardizes test scores around an average of 500 score points. Students in the Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang regions in China had by far the highest average scores in reading (555), math (591) and science (590), vaulting over previously dominant Singapore, which was relegated to second place. Macao and Hong Kong, other Chinese territories, were also in the top four places in reading and math.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that while kids in Ontario were learning to be anti-racist and queer-affirming, and searching for other possible values for 2 + 2, kids in the high-scoring regions were actually learning math.
NPR didn’t really concede much with its correction. Here it is:
Correction: An earlier tweet incorrectly stated there is limited scientific evidence of physical advantage. Existing research shows that higher levels of testosterone do impact athletic performance. But there’s limited research involving elite trans athletes in competition.
To me, NPR’s statement is so stupid that “scientific research” is not required to refute it. Let’s look at some anecdotal evidence:
Lia Thomas, a biological male, a total nobody as a swimmer in men’s competitions, won an NCAA championship when swimming against women.
CeCe Telfer, a biological male, a total nobody as a hurdler in men’s competitions, actually won a national championship by a full second-and-a-half when competing against women.
Tiffany Thomas (no relation to Lia AFAIK), a biological male, recently won a New York City women’s cycling race. Thomas is a Category 1 (i.e., elite) women’s cyclist, despite being 46 years old, not starting cycling until age 40, and competing against women in their 20s and 30s.
I’m not making a list like this to imply anything negative about women, just to point out that it’s delusional to say that men don’t have a significant physical advantage in sports.
I’d make a list of trans-identifying men (i.e., women) who’ve competed successfully against male athletes but I’m not aware of any.
I saved my favorite example for last. Anne Andres, a biological male, competes in women’s powerlifting competitions in Canada. Apparently the male-or-female rules are pretty loose in Canadian powerlifting and if you say you’re a woman, you can compete as a woman. There are no rules about testosterone, hormones or surgeries.
Naturally, Anne Andres wins all these competitions and also likes to badmouth the lackluster quality of his competitors.
One of the powerlifting events is the bench press, in which Andres, until recently, held the record at 275 pounds, which seems pretty good for a woman, but Andres is a pretty big (fat) guy who probably weighs about 275. Not to mention, you could walk into any gym in America and find at least one guy who can bench 275 pounds.
So at the recent Heroes Classic powerlifting tournament in Lethbridge, Alberta, Avi Silverberg, the head coach for Team Canada Powerlifting since 2012, made a mockery of Anne Andres and the whole transgender sports issue by entering the women’s bench press.
Silverberg is a biological male, which, if you couldn’t tell by his name, you could certainly tell by looking at him, including the fact that he has a full beard.
Silverberg won the women’s bench press, although I couldn’t tell just from watching the video below how much weight he was using. The competition was in Canada, so the numbers on the screen are in kilos, but it turns out that what you’re seeing is Silverberg pressing, quite easily, 380 pounds, breaking Andres’s record by more than 100 pounds.
????? Team Canada powerlifting coach, Avi Silverberg just broke the Alberta WOMEN's bench press record in the 84+ kg category at the "Heroes Classic."
Former record holder, trans-identifying male, Anne Andres had a front row view as Silverberg mocked the discriminatory CPU policy… pic.twitter.com/ajhUJPB4gc
Andres made some obligatory statement about Silverberg being “a bigot and a coward,” even though Silverberg is doing the same thing Andres is doing, but he’s just a lot better at it.
What does “woke” mean? I’ve heard a lot of different definitions, some with a positive connotation, some with a negative connotation.
I’d say a woke person is one who makes sweeping, prejudicial judgments about others based on race, gender and sexual preferences. People are sorted into identity groups and the groups are stack-ranked from best to worst.
Riley Gaines is attacked by violent trans activists mob, physically assaulted by a man in a dress, and then held hostage by the vicious mob because she dared to speak out to save women’s sports. The left is SILENT. pic.twitter.com/4Db0NGLa85
The woke left is silent about things like this because trans is the best identity group you can be in right now. It doesn’t matter that the trans branding is “We are militant, violent and delusional.”
It doesn’t even matter that you shoot up a school and murder children. As long as you identify as trans, the woke media will portray you as a victim.
The FBI uses a “glossary of terms” to look for online that could indicate someone is involved with “violent extremism.
According to the FBI glossary, “based” means “someone who has been converted to racist ideology.”
“Red pill” or being “redpilled” means someone is accepting racist, antisemitic or fascist beliefs, according to the FBI.
I’ve never heard those definitions. I’ve heard “based” used in tech culture to admire, sometimes ironically, someone’s authenticity and boldness.
Let’s run it by ChatGPT:
The word “based” is often used to indicate that something has a foundation, source, or origin in something else. It means that a particular thing, person, or concept is rooted or founded in something else, or that it has a particular relationship to something else.
For example, if we say that a company is based in New York, it means that the company’s headquarters or main operations are located in New York. Similarly, if we say that a book is based on a true story, it means that the book is inspired by a real-life event or person.
In general, “based” is used to express a connection, reliance, or dependency on something else.
Not really close to the FBI definition.
I’ve heard “redpilled” used a lot of different ways, but mostly in a Matrix type of context.
Here’s ChatGPT again:
“Redpilled” is a term that originated from the 1999 movie “The Matrix,” in which the main character, Neo, is offered a choice between taking a blue pill, which would allow him to continue living in a simulated reality, or a red pill, which would awaken him to the truth about the world around him.
In contemporary culture, “redpilled” is used to describe a person who has become aware of or enlightened to certain truths, usually related to politics, society, or culture. It is often associated with an attitude of skepticism towards mainstream or commonly accepted beliefs, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.
The term is often used within certain online communities, particularly those associated with the political far-right or conspiracy theories, but it has also been used more broadly to describe people who have undergone a personal transformation or change in their worldview.
Taken all together, the evidence seems to indicate that “redpilled” is pretty benign unless you’re hanging out in online conspiracy theory communities, which probably indicates more about you than your use or non-use of certain FBI no-no words.
Hunter Biden Sues Laptop Repair Shop Owner Citing Invasion of Privacy. — The Washington Post
The lawsuit is an implicit admission that the laptop that was given to the FBI and Rudy Giuliani was in fact Hunter Biden’s laptop. The only way the laptop could be responsible for invading his privacy is if the material disseminated from it was in fact authentic.
Pretty much everyone now knows and admits that the laptop is authentic, and pretty much everyone knew in October of 2020 that the laptop was authentic, including the corporate media and social media that were propagating a lie formulated by the CIA that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
What we know for sure is that the media lied [about the laptop] and it’s Journalism 101 that when you make a mistake, as you’re going to do as a journalist, even big ones, the first thing you do is you go to your readers or your viewers and you say, I reported this, I’ve since learned it was false. This is why I got it wrong. I apologize. I retract it. And here’s what we’re doing to ensure it never happens again. That’s what you do if you are actually a journalist. That’s Journalism 101. If you don’t do that, you have no business claiming that title.
Not one single corporate outlet, not one, not a single one, every single time there’s more proof that they lied, has even acknowledged the evidence showing that they lied, let alone accounted for what they did, let alone retracted it. And they never will. Even now that Hunter Biden is suing the repair store in Delaware, implicitly acknowledging that that laptop was his all along, that he left it at the Delaware repair store, there’s not the slightest pressure to even acknowledge what they did or to retract it, because they are not journalists. They are there to lie on purpose. This is their mission. If you perform your job well, you don’t apologize. They’re showing you what their job is by not apologizing. Their job is to lie. Their job is to spread lies on behalf of the U.S. Security State and the Democratic Party to please their audience and to serve the political agenda that they all have. And that’s what they did here effectively, and that’s why they will never retract it.
So, every time there’s new evidence of this, I’m going to report it, I’m going to note it. I’m going to talk about it. As I say, I’ll probably do it until I die. And I know for sure, Hunter Biden could go on camera and say, “I now have a recovered memory. I remember clearly bringing my laptop to this repair shop, and then I abandoned it there and I recognized every document that was published by the New York Post as my own – and that, therefore, the way The New York Post claimed they got the story is, in fact, how they got this story.” He could swear to that under oath, and they still will never apologize for the lies that they spread for weeks before the election because lying is their mission, and they know that.
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Greetings mortals —
I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman who just lost her job at Google. There are lots of layoffs happening in the US economy. Joe Biden says the American economy is “stronger than hell” but I can assure you that the economy in Hell is much stronger than the Biden economy in the US. No layoffs here, ever.
The LinkedIn poster said, “I feel God’s grace in this transition and know He has greater things ahead.”
I can’t help noticing that people who believe that God is going to make good things happen in their life have a lot of bad things happen in their life.
