“We ask that the University prevent Matt Walsh from speaking on our campus and that the University live out its Statement of Commitment to Diversity by taking action to protect its minority students from future harmful events.”
—623 Washington & Lee signatories, including 65 professors and law professors, of an online petition to block a conservative speaker from appearing on campus
Displaying either ignorance or contempt for the core American ethical principle of freedom of speech, 623 members of the Washington & Lee University community, mostly students and faculty members but with a few others mixed in, maybe cafeteria workers or something, have signed an online petition insisting that conservative political commentator and author Matt Walsh be prevented from speaking at the Virginia campus on March 30, on the currently controversial topic of “What is a woman.” Walsh has been a deliberately inflammatory critic of the current extremist, indeed brain-melting phenomenon of transsexual madness, which has reached such heights (or depths) that the last confirmed Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court professed an inability to define “woman.” Walsh stars in online documentary film “What Is a Woman?” created by the conservative website, The Daily Wire.
What is so disturbing about the petition, which is reproduced in its entirety below, is the anti-democratic logic and ideology it displays, though all of this is now familiar to anyone following the descent of the American Left into aspiring totalitarianism. The position one whole side of the American political spectrum has now almost completely accepted as legitimate is that dissent from its obviously virtuous and correct cant (they are on the “right side of history,” after all) is the equivalent of violence and causes permanent “harm” to member of its constituency or society in general. The petition justifies its existence by providing frightening proof of many horrible truths, among them that the U.S.’s institutions of higher learning now indoctrinate their students into anti-democratic philosophies. Here is just a sample of the petitioners’ reasoning:
- “W&L continues to approve speaker events that provide one-sided platforms for harmful ideologies — these actions stand in direct conflict to this Commitment to Diversity..”
This is an Orwellian masterpiece that 65 faculty members apparently had no problem with. In the interests of “diversity,” diverse ideas that clash with the predominant views of students (supposedly) must be suppressed.
- “Matt Walsh’s words have real life consequences. For example, following his repeated accusations that Boston’s Children’s Hospital was “mutilating” children who seek gender-affirming medical care, the hospital released a statement sharing that its workers were being harassed and facing threats of violence.”
The hospital is mutilating children; “gender affirming care” is a deceptive cover-phrase to make questionable and arguably unethical surgery sound benign. That some people react illegally or unethically to what they find persuasive rhetoric is now used to justify suppressing ideas—unless the illegal or unethical is directed at those who displease the Left, like the Supreme Court Justices harassed and threatened after the Dobbs decision.
- “Welcoming [Walsh] to speak on our campus allows him to leave an impact on this community that cannot be reversed and will link him to this institution forever.”
Can you imagine how hysterical one has to be to believe this? Forever! I’ll lay odds right now that in a decade or less nobody will remember who Matt Walsh was, unless Washington & Lee manages to make a free speech martyr out of him (the Streisand Principle applies). Angela Davis, a violent felon, a Marxist and an antiwhite, anti-U.S. racist has spoken several times at Harvard University. As bad as Harvard has become, its ethics rot can’t be blamed on Davis, nor is Harvard “linked” to the Sixties radical.
There are more equally desperate and illogical claims in the petition, which does not speak well at all for the quality of critical thought conveyed to students at Washington and Lee. Jonathan Turley, in his thorough virtual defenestration of the petitioners, points out their hypocrisy:
A couple years ago, Ibram X. Kendi spoke at the university without opposition from these faculty over his one-sided and controversial views. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, previously attacked Justice Amy Coney Barrett over her adoption of two Haitian children and suggested that it raised the image of a “white colonizer.” He suggested that the children were little more than props for their mother. In addition to calling for “defunding the police” and limiting free speech, Kendi insists that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Kendi also maintains that “The life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism…In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.”
Turley then neatly lays out the significance of the petition, because it is far from an isolated outbreak of “The Great Stupid”:
The issue is whether universities should censor such views based on what faculty may consider “harmful.” That is particularly chilling when faculty are applying such a clearly selective standard for those speakers who hold opposing views. The “speech-as-harmful” rationale is now a virtual mantra on our campuses.
The resulting viewpoint intolerance has produced a chilling effect on our campuses that has both faculty and students engaging in self-censorship. The current generation of the faculty and administrators are destroying the diversity of thought that sustains higher education.
This petition to bar any speaker viewed as supporting a “hateful ideology” would only reinforce what has become an academic echo chamber in higher education. Yet, the petition has the support of law professors and other faculty members who openly seek the barring of opposing views while, fittingly, omitting even a reference to free speech.
Turley has authored a scholarly article on the crisis in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy:“Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States.” As a result, I assume that the professor would be the target of a silencing campaign by students and faculty if he were invited to speak at Washington & Lee.
Turley pointedly lists the professors who signed the disgraceful petition. They should be shamed, mocked, and avoided by students wishing to get a responsible education, so I am entering their names here as well; the professors of law and history should be particularly scorned. The petition follows.
Brenna Womer, English Professor
Alan M. Trammell, Law Professor
Chelsea Fisher, Environmental Studies Professor
Avvirin Gray, Professor of English
Michael Berlin, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Carliss Chatman, Law Professor
Diego Millan, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies
Ellen Mayock, Ernest Williams II Professor of Romance Languages
Jessica Wager, Institutional History
Lubabah Chwdhury, Professor of English and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Nneka Dennie, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies
Kary Smout, English Professor
Domnica Radulescu, The Edwin A. Morris Professor of Comparative Literature
Jane Harrington, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Romina Green Rioja, Assistant Professor of Latin American History
Mia Brett, VAP of African American History
Allison Weiss, Law Professor
Joan M. Shaughnessy, Roger D. Groot Professor of Law
Robert T. Danforth, John Lucian Smith, Jr. Memorial Professor of Law
Kristina Roney, Assistant Professor of French
Karen Woody, Law Professor
Beth Staples, English Professor
Mattie Clear, Archivist and Assistant Professor
Alison Bell ‘91, Professor of Anthropology
Keri Gould, Law Professor
Franklin Sammons, VAP History
Zoila Ponce de León, Assistant Professor of Politics
Jon Eastwood, Professor of Sociology
Elizabeth Belmont, Law Professor
Matthew F. Tuchler, Professor of Chemistry
Lesley Wheeler, English Professor
Carla Laroche, Law Professor
Bobby Jones’14 Assistant Professor / Football Coach
Russell Miller, J.B. Stombock Professor of Law
Mikki Brock, Associate Professor of History
Henryatta Ballah- Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies
Benjamin G. Davis, Visiting Professor of Law
Jill Fraley, Professor of Law
Chris Gavaler, Associate Professor of English
Josh Fairfield, Law Professor
Chris Seaman, Professor of Law
Mary Z. Natkin, ‘85L, Emeritus Professor of Law
Fernando Zapata, Ted DeLaney Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy
Molly Michelmore, Professor of History
Stephen P. McCormick, Associate Professor of French and Italian
Erin Ness Associate Professor of Physical Education
Shane Lynch Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities
Margaret Anne Hinkle, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Geoscience
Paul A. Gregory, Professor of Philosophy
Angela Sun, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Emerson Lynch, Visiting Assistant Professor of Earth & Environmental Geoscience Megan Fulcher, Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
Emily Filler, Assistant Professor in the Study of Judaism
Clover Archer, Director of Staniar Gallery
Heather Kolinsky, Professor of Practice W&L Law
Mohamed Kamara, Professor of Romance Languages and Africana studies
Nathaniel Goldberg, Professor & Chair of Philosophy
Holly Shablack, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
Jenefer Davies, Professor of Dance & Chair of Theatre, Dance & Film Studies
Bill Hamilton, Professor and Head of Biology
Fiona Watson, Associate Professor of Biology & Neuroscience
Helen I’Anson Perry Professor of Biology & Research Sciences, Neuroscience
Nadia Ayoub, Professor of Biology
Gregg Whitworth, Associate Professor of Biology
David Bello, Professor of History
Lawrence Hurd, Professor of Biology
Sarah Blythe, Associate Professor of Biology & Neuroscience
Dear President Dudley, Vice President Evans, and All Involved in the Event Registration Approval Process,
We are disappointed. Washington and Lee’s Statement of Commitment to Diversity, approved by the Board of Trustees in 2018, promises that our university is “committed to the recruitment, enrichment, and retention of students, faculty, and staff who embody many experiences, cultures, points of view, interests, and identities.” However, W&L continues to approve speaker events that provide one-sided platforms for harmful ideologies — these actions stand in direct conflict to this Commitment to Diversity. Hosting Matt Walsh’s upcoming “What is a Woman” event on March 30th is just one example of W&L’s disregard for those with minority identities on campus. Today, we write to challenge W&L to uphold its commitments.
Matt Walsh openly refers to himself as the “Transphobe of the Year” in his Twitter bio. His words and actions prove that this self-proclaimed title is true. In his recent Tweets, he repeatedly and intentionally misgenders well-known trans TikTok creator Dylan Mulvaney, and he refers to trans women as “men dressed in womanface” on his YouTube channel. After the Club Q shooting, where five people were killed by a gunman inside an LGBTQ nightclub, Matt Walsh responded, “If [drag] is causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it?” His view of open dialogue is exploitation and harm—he even advertised a fake documentary titled “The Gender Unity Project” to lure trans individuals into interviews and exploit them in his actual, anti-trans documentary, “What is a Woman.” Matt Walsh does not create spaces for productive, academic discourse, but rather, he insists that only his transphobic viewpoint be heard.
Matt Walsh’s words have real life consequences. For example, following his repeated accusations that Boston’s Children’s Hospital was “mutilating” children who seek gender-affirming medical care, the hospital released a statement sharing that its workers were being harassed and facing threats of violence. Because he speaks to the many individuals in our society that are transphobic, regardless of what happens at W&L, Matt Walsh will continue to have a platform. The point of this letter is not to quash Matt Walsh’s right to speech. Rather, the point of this letter is that W&L as an institution can make clear that it does not stand for or support his violent words. It is one thing for Matt Walsh to say transphobic things on the Internet. It is another for him to be welcomed into our home and provided a platform to share a hateful ideology that harms our minority students.
While W&L’s Facility Use Policy states that allowing an event on campus does not imply endorsement of the views shared at the event, the school cannot escape responsibility for providing a platform for one-sided, non-academic, harmful rhetoric. Allowing Matt Walsh to headline an event on our campus advocating for unapologetically transphobic views sends a message to current and prospective students, alumni, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community that transphobia is not just accepted on our campus, but it is welcomed. It tells the world that here at Washington and Lee, we will not shut down transphobia, but instead, we will provide it room to grow.
These are not the only harmful views welcomed onto our campus this semester. During the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a speaker came top our campus to compare the life of Dr. King with Robert E. Lee. Our colleagues in the Black Law Students Association said it best: “Emphatically, there is no co-alignment” between these figures. This event insulted the sacrifices of the civil rights movement and reduced the history of white supremacy—which this institution still has a distinct role in—to “flimsy both-sideism” that alienated Black students, faculty, and staff.
Matt Walsh does not meet the standard of honor and civility that Washington and Lee aims to uphold. Welcoming him to speak on our campus allows him to leave an impact on this community that cannot be reversed and will link him to this institution forever. We ask that the University prevent Matt Walsh from speaking on our campus and that the University live out its Statement of Commitment to Diversity by taking action to protect its minority students from future harmful events.
Ethics Alarms 
Are you surprised? You really shouldn’t be, because that would mean you hadn’t been paying attention, and I know you have. This is Dan Savage-ism cleaned up of the constant f-bombs and gone mainstream. When you come right down to it, Old Dan was, at his heart, a one-sided, hateful, assaultive advocate for his particular viewpoint. If you did not agree with him, you had blood on your hands, and he had no use for you. He also said that if you disagreed with his views regarding gay rights that you should be treated like a flat earther and drummed out of the conversation completely. Because he was just one guy with a big mouth writing obnoxious columns that ran next to ads for gay escort services, we didn’t worry too too much about him, and the Obergerfell decision left him with not much to talk about and drained of much of his political potency.
However, most of the activists who had pushed for gay marriage/marriage equality very quickly pivoted to transgender rights, because otherwise they would have no cause to fight for and the donation money would stop rolling in. They picked up Dan’s tactics, cleaned them up a bit so that they could run in mainstream publicstions without being censored by publishers or disregarded by decent readers who stop reading when a column or article deteriorates into fucking this and fucking that like it was written by some loading dock worker in tattered jeans and a wife beater who dropped out of high school, and ran with them.
Dan Savage never gave a rat’s ass about anything other than his own cause or anyone’s rights other than his particular constituency. He probably couldn’t tell you what the Bill of Rights was, leave alone enumerate the rights for you. What’s more, like Jim Wright, that jerk with the poison pen who writes for the blog Stonekettle station, and just stacks up the curses and hateful statements, he doesn’t give a damn about any of this stuff. If it were up to him, or to them, anyone who disagreed with their particular view would be muzzled, and, at least in their opinion, the world would be a much better place for it. The thing is, away from academia, most people can see this anti-free speech approach for what it is. Some go along with it, but it hasn’t gone mainstream in the real world, yet.
What’s more insidious here is the weaponization and co-opting of otherwise legitimately good things and good terms, like kindness, compassion, and even “the right thing.” Kindness no longer means the Fred Rogers belief that people can like others just the way they are, it means if you don’t like the people the left tells you to like, you are UNkind. Compassion no longer means helping others, it means if you don’t help who the left says you must help, you lack compassion. Doing the right thing no longer means doing the right thing according to any set of principles other than the left’s pre-approved ones, and if you deviate, you aren’t doing the right thing. According to the left, this should all be manifestly obvious to anyone with any level of intelligence or decency, so if it’s not obvious to you, you must not be even minimally intelligent or decent.
You see how this all fits together, of course. According to the left, there really isn’t even any need to get to things like the Bill of Rights, because anyone who tries to hide disagreement with them behind the Bill of Rights is a rotten person with the blood of every oppressed group on his hands, and the most important right is the right to live and breathe, everything else comes after.
This is the kind of thinking we’re dealing with now.
However, W&L continues to approve speaker events that provide one-sided platforms for harmful ideologies…
It would seem that if anyone is going to pay lip-service to a declaration on diversity, supporting diverse viewpoints should be on the docket, but of course, that is not the case. ANY speaker is going to present his view, which is, practically be definition, one-sided. Though I will agree that maybe a better forum is a debate, in which two people get to wrangle over a proposition. But what should be interesting is that the declaration on diversity seems only include students, faculty, and staff. It doesn’t say anything (in what was quoted here) about speakers. So on the one hand, suppressing Walsh’s viewpoint is curtailing diversity of “points of view” (which IS in the statement), and on the other, inviting Walsh cannot be a violation of the diversity commitment, since speakers are not covered by it. The protest right there is failure on two counts in one statement.
Hosting Matt Walsh’s upcoming “What is a Woman” event on March 30th is just one example of W&L’s disregard for those with minority identities on campus.
Apparently only minorities can have viewpoints. Of course we all know this: these people don’t care one whit about the viewpoints of anyone who doesn’t belong to some specialized intersectional minority group. Anyone who doesn’t have a valid minority experience has nothing to contribute to society anymore.
Matt Walsh’s words have real life consequences.
As do the words of most prominent figures. That’s actually the point of having people speak. By hearing what people say, we can either agree and alter our lives accordingly, or disagree and hopefully have the chutzpah to voice our disagreement. (I’m a failure on that part so far, but maybe I can find some courage do so myself.)
For example, following his repeated accusations that Boston’s Children’s Hospital was “mutilating” children who seek gender-affirming medical care, the hospital released a statement sharing that its workers were being harassed and facing threats of violence.
The flippant part of me wants to respond, “And this is a bad thing?” Because of course, whether or not gender-reassignment surgery is a good thing is a debatable topic. Whether or not it is mutilation should be discussed. And whether or not those in the medical field are betraying their sacred duty of “At least, do no harm” should be strongly considered. Threats of violence should be over the top and discouraged, but there’s another point that needs to be addressed. Since the Left has condoned violence and threats of violence, at least in some limited circumstances, doesn’t this ultimately condone violence — REAL violence — as a valid method? As Steve-O would say, this is the bed the Left has made for themselves.
But more importantly than any of that, if the protestors believe that Matt Walsh is responsible for threats of violence against the hospital staff, is a better forum to confront him publicly and have him defend his words in light of those threats? If he shows himself to be a weasel who won’t address the question, that dampens any impact his words otherwise could have had. The only reason not to ask him to defend himself in public, at a public event, where he has opened himself up to Q&A and dialogue, is because of fear that his answer might be cogent and compelling. Which in turn indicates the protest about his words inciting violence is perhaps neither cogent nor compelling.
It is one thing for Matt Walsh to say transphobic things on the Internet. It is another for him to be welcomed into our home and provided a platform to share a hateful ideology that harms our minority students.
I think Jack as demonstrated quite well that inviting someone to speak does not mean an endorsement of that person’s ideas. It is an opportunity to hear opposing viewpoints, dialogue about them, and perhaps even sharpen one’s rhetorical tools. If hearing hateful things said about your demographic wounds you, perhaps you need your rhetorical tools sharpened. Appearing to the world to be mewling ninnies that can’t handle confrontation is not flattering to your demographic.
It tells the world that here at Washington and Lee, we will not shut down transphobia, but instead, we will provide it room to grow.
Of course, believing that there are only two sexes and disapproving of gender-altering surgeries must be transphobia. There cannot be any concern about the people who perhaps are being inundated by one viewpoint that is propelling them towards irreversible damage to their bodies. There cannot be any concern that focusing on hormonal treatments and surgery gloss over potentially deeper issues. There cannot be any deep seated belief that reality does not rearrange itself for you just because you’re suffering and wish things were different.
Are the travails of transgender people real? Of course they are. Like so many arguments in our society, it is not recognition of the problem that is at stake. It is the proposed solutions.
Matt Walsh does not meet the standard of honor and civility that Washington and Lee aims to uphold.
This is actually the only potentially compelling statement in the entire screed. I have not heard Matt Walsh, and I don’t know how he delivers his message. If he is vulgar, derisive, and incoherent in his speech, then I would potentially agree that not inviting him on grounds of decorum and civility could be compelling. But I doubt anyone signing onto this protest letter has heard him sufficiently to know whether he is articulate or not, suave or crass, charismatic or obnoxious.
He’s the Dan Savage of the right, although without the foul mouth. He also turned his wife into a baby factory, and has produced six children and seven miscarriages.
There is a point where the number of children a person chooses to have becomes a reflection on their character and judgement, but I don’t think it’s somewhere below six, at least for the financially well-off. My next door neighbors have six, my mother in law is from a family of nine children, my own parents each from a family of five children.
He not only has many children and has tried for many more, but he pushes the idea of having a large family, and that someone who does not have one, like myself, is somehow deficient. That’s nonsense. Not everyone is called to parenthood, and not all of us find joy in a toddler looking out the door waiting for daddy to get home. Frankly I dislike very young children, as they are often messy disasters waiting to happen. I was particularly disgusted by one mom of a toddler’s story where first her son evacuated his bowels in his bed, then he rubbed it around, then he woke her by touching her face with his still dirty hands. WTF?
You just need to be chased by some dinosaurs. Remember, Dr. Grant didn’t like kids until his experiences in “Jurassic Park”…
I don’t have to outrun the raptor, I just have to outrun one of the kids….
“He also turned his wife into a baby factory, and has produced six children and seven miscarriages.”
Not sure where you are getting your info Steve-O, but the Matt Walsh being batted around on this thread has four kids. Couldn’t find anything about miscarriages or bullying for babies.
Consent is obviously a pivotal component of any couple’s procreation dynamic.
Your characterization of him turning his wife into a baby factory implies coercion.
From a message I sent yesterday about some folks’ ideas of what to do to speakers they don’t agree with:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/prof-suspended-for-post-saying-it-s-admirable-to-kill-a-racist-homophobic-or-transphobic-speaker/
He also mentions an example in the little-known Sholem Schwarzbard, who killed a former Soviet army commander he held responsible for massacres, then was acquitted. A better-known example would be Soghomon Tehlirian, who killed Talaat Pasha (author of the Armenian Genocide) in Germany and was later acquitted. There are a few differences, of course, like killing whoever in a different country. I have no doubt that if either of these men had been tried in their target’s home country they would have been found guilty and executed. Also, there’s a whole lot of real estate between a speaker you don’t agree with and whose views you think are dangerous and a known mass murderer or genocide. Even the State of Israel didn’t go that far with Adolf Eichmann, beyond a bit of do-it-yourself extradition. They at least gave him a trial with counsel and a defense before they hanged him, when they could have just had him assassinated.
Stuff like this makes me both nervous and angry at the same time. It’s one thing to try to assassinate a political figure who at least is usually protected. It’s quite another to murder a writer or academic or other prominent non-government, non-military, non-emergency services person who has zero protection and minimal capacity to fight back. The thought that some legal scholar who backs the Dobbs opinion could be gunned down by some angry woman’s boyfriend or someone who dares say that transgender issues shouldn’t become a huge wedge issue could be clobbered to death bothers me a lot. At the same time, part of me wants to say, sort of like John Brown, that maybe we on the right need to start killing some prominent lefties to silence them and intimidate others into zipping it. After all, what’s the difference between that and what this jerk is advocating for?
Kind of reminds me of the opener of Season 19 of the original Law and Order, where a construction worker beats a day trader to death in a “fight club” situation, but gets minimal punishment before the DA’s office finds out that the killer obtained the victims consent to fight under false pretenses (telling him he was not a trained fighter when he was in fact a trained boxer) and continuing to beat him after he withdrew his consent. The friends of both involved mix it up in an old-fashioned rumble, including pipes, tire irons and hatchets, uninvolved people get swept up in the fight, and one is killed. How’s it going to look if something like this escalates into Antifa v. Proud Boys and some uninvolved guy, just trying to attend a lecture that looked interesting, is beaten to death by ideologues who don’t much care who they beat up or kill?
The danger in all of this is always, “Don’t become the evil you seek to fight.” And always remember, “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.”
I would not trust any of these faculty members to educate anyone. Let me begin with the professors of English or any of the Romance languages. Why do they continue to use the suffix phobe with those who disagree with concept of transsexuality? Even the most liberal use of the suffix to suggest hatred of something or revulsion to that thing is unsupported. The only issues that people find objectionable is intact males disrobing, showering or using the same private facilities ordinarily reserved for biological women and unfair competitive advantages in women’s sports. The issues above are those that affect third parties. Another issue that affects the alleged transexual is when “gender affirming care” or what should be called irreversible medical interventions on minors. We do not allow minors to do many things that may cause permanent harm even if the parent allows it. No one that I am aware of has objected to any adult who wants to have a surgical or medical procedure done to change the outward appearance of that adult. The exception to that statement is joining the military change sex to impose the costs on taxpayers.
How do the Biology faculty reconcile the absolute differences between the sexes if gender and sex are used interchangeably? It appears to me that the faculty signers are ill equipped to defend their thesis on this subject and that is why they need to silence him
It should be noted that so much has been condemned as cultural appropriation and Rachel Dolezal was run out of town for assuming the life of a black person, so how is this behavior – that is the condemnation of this appropriation- any different than the ideas put forth by Matt Walsh? There is none.
The cancel culture faction of the 1990’s religious right would have been a lot more efective in their goals if they had support of media, entertainment, and academic elites.
While I’m tempted to condemn those fascists (they are) and note the hypocrisy in them pretending to fight for “diversity” yet fight against the most important type of diversity, diversity of thought, I will refrain from doing so because I simply don’t ascribe any value those people or what they think, as I don’t think of them as “academics.” They are merely leftist political activists freeloading from our bloated education system.
To illustrate, in the aftermath of the recent incident at Stanford, I looked up the bloat there:
17,246 students (incl. 9,388 postgraduates)
17,593 staff (2,279 academic and 15,314 administrative).
Tell me why I should value the opinion or views of anyone at Stanford when vast majority of those staff are clearly useless and are there simply to get cushy (but unnecessary) job, and presumably fill some quota or check some checkbox
I think Matt Walsh is a detestable human being. I would therefore take the apparently radical step of not attending his talk. As for “one-sided platforms,” I’m reminded of the critic Kenneth Tynan’s response to charges that the plays of Bertolt Brecht were “unfair” to capitalism: “Henry V is unfair to the French; Everyman is unfair to the Devil.” Any opinion worth stating is inherently one with which at least some others will disagree.
For what it’s worth, I have a dear friend, more liberal than I (and I’m pretty much on the leftist fringe of your readership, at least among those comment at all frequently), on the W&L faculty. She is not a signatory to the petition.
“Not all progressives…”
“those *who comment…”
Forgive me but are there two Matt Walshes? I have viewed a number of his videos on this subject and have not seen him behave in a detestable manner. His opinions on transgender issues mirrors that which I see here.
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
You are not Curmie.
Can someone prove to me that gender exists? I mean, I know biological sex exists. We can tell from people’s chromosomes that they will develop into male or female depending on their chromosomes. This results in producing different physical features, hormone levels, and gametes. Anthropologists can tell the sex of a skeleton from thousands of years ago based on definite skeletal differences, especially the pelvis. Not only that, this phenomenon is seen uniformly in all mammals on earth (well, some are different in the platypus, but the same theme). Additionally, every known society on earth has recognized the two sexes and their differences. It doesn’t matter what time period or how isolated they were. I want the same level of proof for gender. I don’t want ‘some people feel…”. I want actual physical and historical evidence. Sex has been replaced by gender, so I want at least an equal amount of proof for its existence.
People are not ‘assigned’ a gender at birth, their sex is discovered. It is usually discovered before then, but ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. It is discovered almost 100% accurately, only questionable when their is a birth defect or genetic anomaly (XXX or XXY, for example). The ideology of gender is a refutation of the evidence of biological sex and a complete refutation of what is known of the biology of mammals. If sex doesn’t exist for people, why does it for squirrels? What about chickens?
As far as I can tell, all this gender theory comes from John Money, who ‘transitioned’ an infant that had a damaged penis, into a girl to further his idea that male and female are social constructs rather than innate (gender theory). He convinced the parents to let him remove the testicles, put the child on hormone therapy, and raise the child as a girl along with his twin brother. He had the boys rehearse sex acts with each other and did other bizzarre experiments. He reported the experiment was a complete success in multiple journal articles, with the boy being seamlessly converted into a ‘girl’. The ‘girl’ found out he was a boy when he was 14 and wanted to go back to being a boy. He had been ostracized as a child and never felt like a girl. The reports had all been fabrications to bolster the gender theory. Both he and his brother committed suicide. This seems to be the basis for gender theory and the transgender movement. Much like the fraud ‘Sybil’ and multiple personalities, this scientific fraud underpins the transgender mass hysteria.
I have followed this for awhile and this is the impression I get from the transgender proponents. I also notice the ‘move the goalposts’ typical of leftist arguments (as seen in “I never smoked marijuana”). A few decades ago, the gender theory people were saying that sex is your biological identity with your secondary sex characteristics. Gender is how you ‘feel’. You can be sex male and gender female. They softened this by stating ‘of course, you can’t change you sex’. Under this ‘gender theory’, being transgender or ‘gender fluid’ doesn’t require surgery, hormones, or even a change in hairstyle or wardrobe. You just ‘feel’ like a woman. Taking hormones and having surgery is changing your sex. Such people were transsexuals, not transgender. I never saw any evidence for this, just assertions. Now, sex is gone and it has been completely replaced with gender. What were the findings and where is the evidence for that change? The very claim that there are only two genders (as the previous gender theory) is met with hostility now. Despite this claim, and the claim of 50+ ‘genders’ with their requisite pronouns, gender reassignment treatments only try to convert someone to either a male or a female. No one is getting surgery or hormones to be any of these ‘other’ genders. Why are none of the ‘pronoun people’ getting gender reassignment?
I don’t think gender exists. I think this is just some psychology idea that you put in a journal to get tenure. It is just an idea like Dark Sucker Theory for light.
So, that seems to be the case to me. Am I wrong? If so, why? No..seriously. This all seems so illogical and mutually contradictory to me that I can’t believe anyone falls for this. I feel I must be missing something. Why is this such a big thing? Is it like Scientology?