Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Judith Butler misfires again

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    From that LRB article:

    There are two significant problems with using gametes to define sex. First, no one checks gametes at the moment of sex assignment, let alone at conception (when they don’t yet exist). They are not observable. To base sex assignment on gametes is therefore to rely on an imperceptible dimension of sex when observation remains the principal way sex is assigned. Second, most biologists agree that neither biological determinism nor biological reductionism provides an adequate account of sex determination and development. As the Society for the Study of Evolution explains in a letter published on 5 February, the ‘scientific consensus’ defines sex in humans as a ‘biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex.’ They remind us that ‘sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.’

    This is, in short, nonsense. Jerry Coyne has debunked this stuff ad nauseam – here, for instance, or here.

    And here's his take on the Butler LRB article.

    Added:

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  • At The National Women’s Hall of Fame

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    From the article:

    Stone, credited with starting the academic field of transgender studies, is also a recording engineer, an artist, and the first known trans woman in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Around the end of this year, her story will be told in a documentary film.

    Stone was inducted into the hall last year along with several other prominent women, such as civil rights icon Ruby Bridges, tennis champion Serena Williams, and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

    Earlier inductees, among more than 300 in the hall, include Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Maya Angelou, Hillary Clinton, Angela Davis, Emily Dickinson, Amelia Earhart, Jane Fonda, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Billie Jean King, Wilma Mankiller, Michelle Obama, Rosa Parks, Nancy Pelosi, Sally Ride, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The hall, founded in 1973, is located in Seneca Falls, New York, noted as the birthplace of the American women’s rights movement, having hosted the nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848.

    And now, finally, a man! Well isn't that just wonderful.

    “It’s a great honor and a great responsibility,” Stone says of her induction. “Somebody has to go first.”

    “Obviously this was an incredibly historic induction,” says Jennifer Gabriel, CEO of the hall. “We were delighted to be able to celebrate her. She does a good job of highlighting the trans community and experiences we all share as women.”

    Except – you know – he's not a woman. From his Wiki page we learn that he "underwent gender reassignment" in 1974, in his late thirties. So no, his experience is not one "we all share as women".

  • The suffering of Middle Eastern Christians

    of the anti-Western Arab nationalist movements and their conjunction with Islamic revivalism….

    So Western Christians keep their peace in the face of oppression or even genocide in the Middle East – unless, of course, the victims happen to be Arabs, in which case the Western Christian conscience is quickly stirred to righteous protest and rhetoric, and even action.

    Unless the victims happen to be Arabs, and the perpetrators are Jews.

    As I've said before….

    Whoever's doing the PR for Arabs is doing one hell of a job. One of the darkest imperial expansions – across northern Africa as Islam was spread by the sword: ignored or downplayed, as only Western imperialism counts. Look at all those lovely mosques they built! The brutal history of centuries of slavery – black Africans dragged, chained, in camel trains across the deserts to Arabia, and the Barbary Coast raids on northern Europe: only the Atlantic slave trade counts.

    And now, largely Arab groups slaughter black Africans and have "slave hunts", with women and girls being rounded up…it doesn't make the news apart from the odd largely ignored report on the back pages. In Gaza, though, the Arabs are the biggest victims ever as the Israelis take strong action to counter the Hamas Islamic jihad against Jews, and the world explodes in protest. It's genocide, they cry.

    Nice work if you can get it.

  • Israel targeting fighting-aged men, not women and children

    hows that Hamas has quietly dropped thousands of deaths from its Gaza war casualty figures.

    Salo Aizenberg, from the US-based non-profit organisation Honest Reporting, said that Hamas’s March 2025 casualty update had removed thousands of people it previously listed as having been killed last year.

    “Hamas’s new March 2025 fatality list quietly drops 3,400 fully “identified” deaths listed in its August and October 2024 reports – including 1,080 children. These “deaths” never happened. The numbers were falsified – again,” Mr Aizenberg wrote. The casualty lists are released as PDFs by the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health, which has been cited by international media as a source for fatality figures in the enclave since the start of the war.

    Including, notably, the BBC.

    A report by the Henry Jackson Society in December said that the number of civilians killed in the Gaza conflict had probably been inflated by Hamas in order to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent people.

    Andrew Fox, the author of the report, said the latest deletions are likely to have been an attempt by Hamas to retain credibility….

    Mr Fox noted that data within Hamas’ lists undermines its claim that most casualties have been civilians.

    “The demographics are the most important thing in all this. We’ve heard the claims that about 70 per cent of the deaths are women and children, and these lists, especially the most recent, show that’s complete nonsense,” he said.

    About 72 per cent of fatalities aged 13-55 are men, which is the rough age range of Hamas combatants, Mr Fox said. “We know that Hamas uses child soldiers, and these statistics show clearly that Israel is targeting fighting-aged men.”

  • April blossom

    Magnolias at Golders Hill Park this morning:

    IMG_3579s

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    IMG_3588s

    IMG_3593s

  • Cleopatra

    Another German trans saga, from Reduxx:

    Geschwister-Scholl-Strase-Henrico-Hilton

    A trans-identified male accused of murdering a security guard at a refugee shelter was placed in pretrial detention for women in the federal state of Brandenburg, where he terrorized female inmates and threatened to kill them. Henrico Hilton G., a refugee from South Africa, was supposed to have been deported before his gruesome act and is now demanding in court to be addressed as a “female” named “Cleopatra.”

    The court, of course, complied.

    In a bizarre twist, three hours after fleeing the murder scene, Hilton contacted police to report that he had been “misgendered” at an Edeka supermarket in Schöneberg. Unaware of his connection to the murder, local officers recorded Hilton’s complaint without recognizing his connection to the ongoing manhunt, allowing him to remain free after taking his report. Information from this incident eventually led to Hilton’s arrest.

    Initially placed in pretrial detention at Luckau-Duben women’s prison, Hilton reportedly terrorized the female inmates, leading to criminal complaints from two women. Witnesses at his trial described his behavior as aggressive and threatening, including frequent harassment and issuing death threats. Following numerous complaints, he was transferred to the men’s prison in Neuruppin-Wulkow in August 2024.

  • Britain beset by mediocrities

    Great column by James Marriott in today's Times:

    Watching Justin Welby bleat out vapid non-apologies for his handling of the church abuse crisis on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, I wondered what St Anselm or Thomas Cranmer would make of the most recent occupant of the See of Canterbury. Not much, one suspects.

    Welby — with his bland managerial face, his rimless spectacles, his shapeless paunch and his casual open-collared shirt — has all the archiepiscopal gravitas of a mid-ranking management consultant. I would not trust him to restructure the regional distribution networks of a medium-size company, let alone save my immortal soul. He was not wrong to warn of the “immense distrust for institutions” currently prevalent in society. But his performance emphasised another important threat to British institutions: the mediocrity of those who lead them.

    21st-century Britain is beset by mediocrities. Every new scandal at every supposedly august organisation seems to reveal that there were never any grown-ups in the room, only spineless non-entities squatting ineffectually on top of the mess. Paula Vennells at the Post Office is perhaps the pre-eminent example. And the type is notably well represented in the senior management of our universities….

    Britain seems peculiarly vulnerable to such characters. I suspect part of the problem may be traced to the fact that our economy is heavily weighted towards the service sector. Many in Britain’s elite have spent their careers at several removes from real life and real consequences, in industries such as public relations or consultancy. It surely matters that where once our leaders were imperial administrators, soldiers and industrialists, we now draw our overclass from professions oversupplied with what the anthropologist David Graeber famously called “bullshit jobs”.

    The bias towards bullshit extends deep in British life, from hospitals that are run by managers not doctors, to universities that employ vast bureaucracies staffed by administrators who are better paid than actual academics.

    They're the same people who put pronouns in their bios, and make sure that everyone goes on Stonewall courses about trans inclusivity. They didn't get where they are today by thinking for themselves.

    Then again, on X – "You’re lucky to have mediocrities. We here in the States can’t seem to find anybody that good."

  • The ACLU lawyer

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    It's difficult to make out what she's saying, with that weird strangulated voice. Her interviewer also seems to be having some difficulty…

  • The reversible aircraft propeller

    y.com/node/27706?size=_original#caption” style=”display: inline”>image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Harris & Ewing]

  • Thank you Yemen

    Irish politician Clare Daly does her bit to bolster Ireland's reputation as the most antisemitic country in Europe. From MEMRI TV:

    Former EU Parliament member and Irish politician Clare Daly attended the International Quds Day rally in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 28, 2025. In an interview with Al-Masirah TV (Houthis-Yemen), she stated: "This is the future." She added: "Thank you, Yemen, for everything you have sacrificed, and for the leadership you have shown all over the world. We will try to emulate your actions in our countries".

    Her Wiki page. She has interesting views on Russia and Ukraine:

    Daly has consistently voted against resolutions that have been critical of Vladimir Putin's Russia. She said that, while she has not supported Vladimir Putin, she is "an unapologetic opponent of the rampant Russophobia that prevails and only benefits the military-industrial complex". A clip from a European parliament speech by Daly was broadcast on Russian state media Rossiya 1 and Channel One Russia, where a presenter and a guest said it was "evidence that western politicians were coming around to the Kremlin point of view on the Ukraine invasion". For her statements about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine added Daly to a list of public figures it regards as spreading Russian disinformation and propaganda. Daly responded by accusing Ukraine's government of a "smear campaign against international figures who refuse to toe the line"…

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