Trans Activism Ethics Train Wreck

Ethics Hero: Singer Tish Hyman

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In an ethics seminar I recently described how conduct could be legal but unethical (example: lying) and ethical but illegal (civil disobedience). Singer Trish Hyman decided that a little disturbance of the peace in a Gold’s Gym’s cafe area was the best way to draw attention to the gym’s unethical (and stupid….but woke, so it’s okay) practices regarding dangling penises in women’s changing rooms, so she shouted out her complaint raucously and made sure it was recorded.

The Beverly Center Gold’s Gym revoked the singer’s membership after she complained that a transgender wannabe woman (“with a big dick”) being in the women’s dressing room. “Today I was naked in the locker room. I turned around, and there was a man there. Boy clothes, lip gloss, standing there looking at me, and I’m butt naked,” Hyman said in a video posted on TikTok.

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How Long Can Harvard Maintain the Myth That It Is a Trustworthy and Resepctable Institution With Stories Like These?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A brief introduction: Last night I attended a lavish Georgetown Law Center reunion gala. I boycotted the previous reunion of my class and would have boycotted this one, but two classmates I hadn’t seen in decades persuaded me to attend. Georgetown being a sort-of Catholic institution there was prayer before the meal, but the cleric involved felt it necessary to lead into the blessing with a long string of dog-whistles to angry progressives, “the resistance,” Democrats and the Trump-Deranged, droning on about “troubled times” and “losing hope” and the need to “navigate the waters of societal division” with kindness, mercy and respect for humanity. I started eating long before she got to amen: another ad for illegal immigration was a good bet to spoil my appetite. Later on, one of my left-wing classmates volunteered the opinion that she was glad that Harvard had stood up to the Evil One. I began listing all of the reasons I have my diploma to that school turned to the wall, and, of course, she was aware of none of them. Why? You know the reason: she only reads and watches the Axis news media, which carefully gives minimum attention to incidents that tend to discredit fellow propagandists and indoctrinaters of the Left…like Harvard. I stumbled across a useful new website last week that highlights embarrassing news and developments regarding Old Ivy, but lost the link. I searched for it using every possible search term, and couldn’t locate it on Google.

Gee, I wonder why…

Sorry for the digression. Back to the topic at hand: here are two bits of damning Harvard news:

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J.K. Rowling Smacks Down “Hermione”: Is It Ethical To Attack The Person You Owe Your Wealth, Fame and Influence To?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

To be clear, the one attacking the person she owes her wealth, fame and influence to isn’t Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter books and the billion dollar industry it spawned, but Emma Watson, the now grown child actress who played cute Hermione in the films. It is Watson who has been criticizing Rowling by name for years because the British author has openly challenged the whole concept of transsexual ideology: that people can change their sex by just deciding they are the opposite sex than their genes make them and have the law accede to their decision.

The ethics issue today is not whether Rowling is right or wrong. The question is whether Watson (along with her fellow Harry Potter child stars Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe) has behaved with gratuitous disloyalty and ingratitude by attacking Rowling by name while she is being vilified and threatened by other celebrities and the woke news media.

Not to keep you in suspense, the answer is yes. Rowling finally had enough, and responded with the scathing social media take-down of Watson that the actress deserves.

What was apparently the magical straw for Rowling was Watson saying in a recent podcast that that their opposing views on trans rights do not mean she can’t or doesn’t “treasure” Rowling as a person. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish,” the has-been star blathered. “I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”

That hypocrisy, for that’s what it is, was too much for Rowling, who unleashed her considerable rhetorical talents on Watson, and brava to that. Rowling wrote in part,

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UPenn Capitulates in the Trans Swimming Scandal, If In a Weaselly Way…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Well, it’s still progress. Conservative, Trump cheer-leading outlets are pushing the “So much winning!” line, but anyone progressive, conservative or otherwise who couldn’t see that UPenn’s “transitioning” swimmer Lia Thomas (above: guess right or left) was a cheat had his or her brain eaten by the Woke Virus.

UPenn announced yesterday that it would no longer allow transgender women to compete on its women’s sports teams and erased Thomas’ records from UPenn’s list of all-time school records in women’s swimming. “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season,” the UPenn weasels injected as a footnote. That’s part of UPenn’s spin. A cheating swimming coach (who should be fired) let Thomas, a mediocre male swimmer who saw a loophole to exploit, be the star of the women’s team to enhance his coaching record. But UPEnn could get away with it then, so it was all right.

The change in policy was part of an agreement reached with the Education Department yesterday about two months after the department found that Penn had violated Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex discrimination in schools, when it allowed transgender athletes to compete on women’s sports teams. The Trump administration had frozen millions of dollars in federal funding for the school over its transgender athlete policies. AUTOCRACY! No, this is called “using legitimate government power for justice and the public good.” As part of the deal, UPenn says it will “apologize” to the women placed at a competitive disadvantage by its allowing a penised swimmer with male-puberty musculature to slaughter competing female swimmers in one pool after another last year.

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Message to Simone Biles: “Shut Up and Vault!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It shouldn’t matter than cute little Simone Biles isn’t very bright. She’s a talented gymnast, and has parlayed that skill into a fortune, a brand, and enough fame to last her a while. There was that choking episode at the 2020 Olympics, but never mind: she’s won enough championships and medals to qualify as one of the all-time greats.

Unfortunately, Biles, like so many other jocks and celebrities,, has let her popularity and acclaim in a very narrow field go to her head. She thinks she has something to contribute to national debates that have nothing to do with floor exercises and the balance beam, and she doesn’t. I’d love to know what books, if any, Biles has read while being essentially a full time gymnast since she was knee-high to a praying mantis. The fact that she never attended high school (she was home-schooled) and eventually got a college degree from a non-profit, online college doesn’t mean Simone necessarily is lacking in critical thinking skills, but her engaging in a name-calling battle with Riley Gaines—the former competitive swimmer who has become a critic of trans men who still have to shave every morning throttling girls and women in women’s sports because they can— does.

To begin with, Gaines is smart, articulate and knows her topic. Biles’ contribution to the debate has consisted of social media posts the equivalent of “Oh yeah?” and “Well, I’m better at my sport than you were at yours, so there!” Here’s one…

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It’s About Time: CNN Gets Called On Its “It Isn’t What It Is” Rhetorical Dishonesty and Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

and…

Good.

All ethical and aware Americans should treat their Axis-supporting friends, relatives and colleagues similarly. What both Miller and Hamill did was to label propaganda what it really was, and not allow it to falsely present itself as “journalism.”

From Maine, A “Nah, the Democratic Party Doesn’t Embrace Censorship!” Head-Exploder….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Reacting to Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby‘s tweet above, the Maine House speaker and majority leader (Guess which party…) demanded that she take it down. Libby refused, so the body’s Democrats introduced a censure resolution. Their contrived reason: her post included photos and the first name of a minor, the male athlete who was allowed to compete in female-only sports. Both the photo and student’s name were publicly available and had been published by media sources. Obviously, this was an effort to silence an effort by an elected official to have the public understand “what’s going on here,” and, as we all know from the motto of an Axis-supporting newspaper of note, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

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Fencing Ethics: What’s Going On Here?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’m afraid I don’t know enough about fencing to comment as intelligently as I need to regarding this episode, but I’m going to charge on anyway…

USA fencer Stephanie Turner was scheduled to face Redmond Sullivan at the Cherry Blossom Fencing Tournament held at the University of Maryland. As the match was about to begin, however, Turner “took a knee” and removed her mask, signifying that she would not compete against Redmond the Division 1A Women’s Foil event. Redmond, you see, is a formerly male fencer who has recently “identified” as female. Turner had decided that as a matter of principle she would not compete in women’s fencing against a “man.” “I saw that I was going to be in a pool with Redmond, and from there I said, ‘OK, let’s do it. I’m going to take the knee’,” she explained

After her protest, Turner was slapped with a “black card” signifying that she was suspended and out of the tournament.

“I knew what I had to do because USA Fencing had not been listening to women’s objections,” Turner said. “I took a knee immediately at that point. Redmond was under the impression that I was going to start fencing. So when I took the knee, I looked at the ref and I said: ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do this. I am a woman, and this is a man, and this is a women’s tournament. And I will not fence this individual.'”

U.S. Fencing responded with a wokey, weaselly statement undoubtedly drafted by the DEI Dept.:

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Societal Enabling of Abnormal Behaviors

/ Jack Marshall / 81 Comments

Guest Post by Steve Witherspoon

[My first reaction to this passionate guest post was “Gee, how do you really feel, Steve?” My second was “The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the host.” My third is: I wouldn’t laugh yet. One of my oldest friends is visiting D.C. to meet his new grandson, birthed by the wife of his former daughter, now son. When I went to the memorial service of a former thoroughly Irish Catholic boss from the streets of Brooklyn, I discovered that two of his three sons, all of whom I knew as children, are now middle aged women, and seemingly very happy about it. A close member of my immediate family is “transitioning.” Whatever it is that’s going on here, its getting dig in like a tick.]

I have raised the question in an earlier essay titled, What’s Considered Normal, where I looked into the differences between what is considered to be “normal” and “abnormal”. You can read the arguments presented in the entire post if you like, but I’ll briefly summarize some of the details as I go along in this essay.

I think it’s extremely important that everyone understands the core of an argument based on the words used and how those words are defined. So with that in mind, let’s start by presenting some generally accepted “norms”.

NORMAL

  • Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected
  • Conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern..
  • …characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine.
  • If something conforms to a general pattern, standard, or average, we describe it as normal.

ABNORMAL

  • Deviating from what is normal or usual.

  • Not normal, average, typical, or usual.

  • Something that is abnormal is out of the ordinary, or not typical

ENABLING

  • Supporting or allowing (whether intentionally or unintentionally) harmful or destructive individual behaviors thus preventing the individual from facing either the consequences of their choices and/or generally accepted reality.

Dysfunctional: Deviating from the norms of social behavior in a way regarded as bad.

Delusional: Characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgments about reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, typically as a symptom of a mental condition.

Now that we have the terms settled, on to the core of this essay…

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They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,

“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive  [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”

I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.

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