Totally can relate. I left the UU after feeling completely gaslit from my minister and the wider congregation on the trans issue. My concerns were considered intolerable and I had no choice but to withdraw from attending. I am no longer a member.
I tried Quakers but that's just the same. To be honest, this is just the entire western world now. I'm hoping 2024 brings change though and some deeper conversations and I certainly welcome your lawsuit in this effort and wish you all the luck. Standing with you!
So many institutions, people, politicians, former friends, have betrayed me with this lie. This world that demands me to lie to keep my job and social accounts is not a world in which I want to live. I will not shut up about it.
It's taken over conservative people's institutions which is what we're talking about here. Many conservatives used to attend my church, and many send their kids to public schools and join sports teams that have been taken over by this ideology.
It may depend on what state you live in. I live in one of the most liberal states in the country. It is the conservatives who aren't buying into the insanity of the left.
Why not try to find common ground with trans people? Why not be curious rather than allow yourself to be repulsed by people you aren't in community with?
Exactly! Also places where people find comfort in difficult times, the inspiration to be a better person and the strength to go on. All taken away from us when we need it most.
It hasn't taken over radical feminists either, they've been fighting it since the 00's when far leftists began insisting that trans women were actual women and sex work was work and white feminists were all racists. Check out some of them here:
Sometimes I think it's good to be a member of a church that is for the most part conducted in a language other than English, and its (long!) marriage service requires not even an "I do" of bride and groom.
I'm not a church goer, and neither were my parents except sometimes, but when I walk into a Greek Orthodox church I'm in a familiar, dependable space.
The Greek Orthodox Church takes no political stances, although Archbishop Iakovos of North and South America, before the patriarch in Constantinople split that role and made the position less powerful, marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Trans stuff? BLM? Victim classes? It's all so transitory and meaningless. Orthodoxy is what it is and doesn't change and lets us live our lives. We can get divorced and still get remarried in the church. I have never heard of anyone getting expelled. Priests can marry unless they aspire to be bishops. Greek gay people who want to get married go to a justice of the peace, and I don't notice any prejudice or fulminations against gay people either. We don't hear a lot about damnation. The chants are beautiful. So are the Byzantine ikons.
Sounds like you just want a place where you can hate trans people (trans women in particular, classic) with impunity? I hope yall can realize that trans people deserve a safe place to worship and be as much as you do. Pluralism is hard. If you want tolerance, that's a two way street.
You from the South, or south Madison, Wisconsin? Or south something?
I do not mind people from certain regions using regionalisms in common speech, but appropriating someone else's slang or, if you're from the South, using in your writing a slang expression you might not normally use in order to try to make a point, is really precious.
If you're from Georgia, sorry. Still, I've visited the South a lot and don't hear it. My Tennessee cousin doesn't say it either.
Sounds like you are a true believer in the trans cult. In fact, there are 2 genders and you can't change which one you were born. I say this as someone who has a degree in Biology and Medicine. There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. What people "hate" about this ideology, besides its absolute lunacy, is that it is being used to harm children. It's not hatred of "trans" people, nor is it fear. It's a feeling of helplessness while you watch the world celebrate the destruction of a fellow human being. Trans people DO deserve a place to worship, but more than that, they deserve to be told the truth.
Gender affirmation is not the destruction of anything. Its a new lease on life. If this weren't the case we would see droves of bitter detransitioners, but that is simply not the case. Recent polling suggests that the vast majority of trans folks, upwards of 90 percent, are happier after transitioning.
If you were genuinely invested in this tradition you would be more curious about trans folks than you were obsessed by your own narrow understanding of the truth. You don't have the full picture. Neither do I, nor any of us for that matter. Compassion and trust ought to lead us, not fear and helplessness.
May you come back to Love and reconnect with the living tradition of curiosity grounded in kindness.
I am not curious, nor am I afraid. I am a medical doctor, so I tend to look at things through the lens of what is scientifically true. Feelings are great, but one should not make life altering decisions on them alone. The truth is, we don't know the long term effects these "treatments" will have on children. It should be concerning to you and others that European countries who have been doing this for many more years than we have, are pulling back.
I do feel deeply sorry for folks who are so unhappy with themselves that they would take manufactured chemicals and have surgery to try and alter who they are. And there are plenty of detransitioners out there who are suing those that hurried them down the road of "gender affirming" care. Young women who have had their breasts removed, well ok, they can have implants, but they will never breast feed their own child.
Again, I am not concerned for full grown adults who are capable of weighing the pros and cons and making an informed choice. I am deeply concerned for teenagers who are allowed to make life altering decisions, that are in fact not reversible, and that they do not fully understand.
It is not just the children, though. This ideology is destroying families. If you haven't, you should check out the PITT Substack. It is heartbreaking.
Hold on! There's a leap here. We're using adult transgender experiences to understand what's best for young children transitioning. Let's break this down: Memories and bias: Adults reflecting on their childhood have years of experience coloring their memories. A child's understanding of gender is still forming. Shifting landscape: The social landscape for transgender adults today is vastly different from when many older adults transitioned. Their experiences might not translate well. Medical choices: Adults make informed decisions about their bodies. This is different from pre-pubescent kids facing potentially irreversible medical interventions. Informed consent: Can a young child truly grasp the lifelong ramifications of transitioning? This is complex with no easy answers. Social factors: Is the child's desire to transition intrinsic, influenced by peers, trends, pressures they might not fully comprehend? Reversibility: Some interventions are reversible, others are not. Weighing the risks and benefits for a child requires careful consideration. Long-term data: We lack research on long-term outcomes for kids who transition medically at young ages. This lack of data makes decision-making difficult. Crux of the matter: Who benefits? Are medical decisions best for the child, or are there external agendas at play? This needs exploration... Alternative approaches: Shouldn't a child have space to explore gender identity without immediate medical intervention? And what about those that simply needed help with depression or just feeling like needing to belong where's the compassionate in that Balancing compassion and caution: How do we offer support for a child's struggle, exercising caution to avoid potentially harmful, irreversible actions? And as far as happiness in terms of long term we just don't know! there's no science on it https://segm.org/regret-detransition-rate-unknown
The comment below is where I get lost. Another big thing about UUism is a belief in the Principle of democracy. The way the democratic UU faith is going is the same way the whole world is going-trying for the first time in history to intentionally include perspectives that have never had a voice. So those voices now have a voice, and you don't like what they're saying, so...where is the problem?
The problem is that there is no questioning allowed. In regards to the trans movement any comment critical of the trans movement is labeled trans-phobic and hate speech. There is no place for debate.
Good call. Cloak the issue/rhetoric in democracy and the over used inclusivity wording. It is debate, evidence based, fact driven argument that should be presented. Medical science anyone? Gender dysphoria, which was originally Gender ID, is totally different from removal of body parts with respect to your aforementioned comment.
Greeks don't question Greek Orthodoxy. Many of us who might not like certain aspects of its dogma nevertheless find comfort in the liturgy and rituals familiar to and beloved by our grandparents (when we do attend church) and go about our daily business as we need to. It works out.
I guess it's like cafeteria Catholics -- except that Catholicism makes noises about relevancy and cultural issues, and Catholics debate them. The Greek Orthodox Church is tolerant of its wayward and sporadic members but stands rooted in its history.
I hope it is never silly enough to repair the schism and team up with Rome.
The existence of trans people is not a matter of debate. What, do you think you can debate someone into denying their own experience? We have a word for that. It's called gaslighting.
It's factually incorrect that there are perspectives now being included that have never had a voice. The perspectives you talk about have always had a voice. They've just not been permitted to silence others. They call their new power "inclusion" and "centering the marginalized."
I call it totalitarian control by an unpopular minority opinion.
Democracy that doesn't seek to heed the call from the margins is just mob rule. Democracy is the best system, but it's flawed when we become uncurious about our neighbor and entrenched with our own ideas.
Yep. So glad those voices finally getting the opportunity to say “every voice but ours is False, every view but ours is morally debased, all the world but us is racist, no one except us deserves to be employed, no one can help with society’s problems except by doing what we say without questioning, and the proper activity of any voice but ours is to revile itself for our pleasure.” Great to see these folks flourish.
It's interesting that you start with a false characterization of the comment you're replying to and the original post as well. It's clear that the objection is not to inclusion of marginalized voices but the intolerance for other voices.
This is so sad. I remember from when my kids were young it was typically the UU where the interfaith services were held & so much outreach towards the community began. With the politicization, that sense of outreach towards others even when they didn't have "think right"left as did some of those interfaith opportunities- slowly but surely. I had come to depend on those & other opportunities like it, to show my children a world where differences didn't have to equal an immediate threat to self, nor any acquiescence of your own self or belief.
I'm a social worker so I had to study on all of these post modern/critical theories all through grad school as most social work programs are now firmly grounded in those theories. What they've contributed to the world in positive terms beyond a basic awareness of "issues" is minimal @ best. What they've taken away from the world & our children is tragic.
Fellow social worker here - yeah, our field is completely metastasized with these toxic, cynical and anti-human “theories”. It breaks my heart, because they really don’t help people at all.
I am also a social worker. As a matter of fact, I was the national NASW Social Worker of the Year in 2020. In the UK there is an alliance working to keep these noxious ideas out of the social work field. It is the Evidence-Based Social Work Alliance. Perhaps we need such an alliance in the USA?
Best wishes for you and your lawsuit against them. Thank you for having the endurance and courage to fight back. So many people in your position have just walked away.
You mean… they have “turned the other cheek”? As much as I sympathize with her efforts to fight — particularly against libel if it occurred — it’s a contradiction of common Christian ethics. At least superficially—Christian ethics are hypocritical, but one side of it is “forgiveness” and “loving your enemy”. That is not compatible with fighting. Fighting isn’t for the “meek”.
The fact that “so many people” in her “position have just walked away” is not surprising given they plausibly embrace a morality of masochistic autophagic self-abasement, which Jesus and Paul preached.
They have stolen the religion, pretending virtue while engaging in vice. The point is not to punish but to discourage continuing wrong doing. Also to get my reputation and livelihood restored. Christian ethics don't encourage allowing bullies to retain their power to wound.
Jumping into a thread about people grieving the takeover of their church, in order to troll Christian philosophy, is the work of a troll. Are you a troll?
Have some decency and self-respect and go away, please.
"Any attempt to challenge someone else’s ideas is now frequently met not with evidence or reasoned defense, but by labeling the challenge (and often the challenger) as racist, ableist, transphobic, and the like. "
Try something more than just labeling me a troll[quite "dehumanizing" of you!] without any evidence. If you want to actually debate anything, I would have no reservations. Your comment is exactly a reflection of the behaviors of the people who she is suing.
A good response for people in the UU church who don't like the infiltration of "gender woo" (your words) is to start a new tribe that actually has good standards with regard to "reason". The bible, and other major religious texts, are some of the most irrational works of literature created by humanity. To declare them "sacred", and to revere them, and then get upset that "woo" is taking over is ridiculous. I have enough "self-respect" and "decency" not to apologize for a book of torture and slavery while simultaneously being outraged by people who want to police our pronouns.
Incoherent and self-destructive notions of "tolerance" and "equality" are the "liberal values" of UU that ultimately allowed it to be poisoned by the gender fascists.
But as I said, I sympathize with her fight, particularly if libel is involved.
If you can't handle my opinion, you go away. I'm not going anywhere.
Oh, Kate, this is an amazing story, grievous to see. I am your basic believing Presbyterian and even I recognize that when the Unitarians become ideological Puritans we are in big trouble. Having been in Moscow soon after the wall fell, I have to say it feels so "soviet." May you prevail.
It’s amazing how low the race hustlers can take things, and how willingly their useful idiots go along with it. Anyone spewing “white supremacy” is a destroyer, plain and simple. The most appropriate response is an eye roll at best.
I was just wondering this morning when some person or group might get sued for calling someone a 'white supremacist' or calling something they say 'white supremacy' that isn't. Too many so-called liberals buy into this BLM bullshit.
Do you have a problem with labia? Or referring to them? Are you as offended by the phrase 'grow a pair' or 'grow some balls'? Just curious as to where the offence lies...
While I fully support your sentiment (and I guess you could think of labia in emulating grow thicker skin), in males balls or testicles produce testosterone which increase aggression, and supposedly bravery. Labia doesn't. Grow some inner balls? (Estrogen is the source of strength particular to women). No one says, grow some himen, scrotum or dick to men who are cowards. IMHO, Just the nerd in me.
Tragically, the biology doesn't always match up as much as I'd like. Technically, to match 'grow some balls', it should be 'grow some ovaries', but I wanted to keep it between the legs and ovaries are higher up, in the hips. Labia are what would have been the ball sac if the fetus had developed as a boy, so it was close enough for government work ;)
After all, what good are balls if they don't have something to hold them? They'd dangle down below your hip joints and get caught in your zipper ;)
Sounds like you need to grow some futunari balls and labia.
Ezekiel 23:19
“Yet she increased her harlotry, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt and doted upon her paramours there, whose members were like those of asses, and whose issue was like that of horses.”
My hypothesis is that your concern about genital tissue does not extend to the book of slavery and torture.
She was very sensitive about the term labia -- thus she should grow some balls and labia to be tougher("grow some balls" is a phrase that implies the person is weak or cowardly). Futunaris have both male and female genitalia. The "vulgarity" in the bible exceeds what Sophia was upset about with regard to the word labia. But I suspect Sophia reveres the bible(the book of slavery and torture) and isnt concerned about it "bringing down society."
No...why would it? How is that relevant? I picked the name because we say "Grow some balls!" to men to assert themselves, but it doesn't really apply to women. There's nothing inherently offensive about labia...it's not like I used the p-word or worse, the c-word. What does Ezekiel's discomfort with female sexuality, a common problem back then, have to do with it? Not to mention his probable penis envy if his own member wasn't as big as his competitors' ;) If you're referring to FGM, I'm very much against it...as well as MGM, the male version, of which the Israelites were quite fond. Blades do not belong near human genitals!!!
My comment was directed at Sophia, not you. I suspect Sophia is fond of the bible. Its unlikely an American would have the level of church-lady outrage at the word labia and not sleep with a bible under their pillow.
Im perfectly okay with my circumcision, and I'm not mutilated. I implore you to reconsider that language; its degrading.
The bible is the book of slavery and torture because the main character (Yahweh) commands humans be his slaves and threatens them with torture if they don't obey him. Slavery and torture is the main theme of the book.
did my comment get put under yours and not Sophia's?
I don't think it did. It just seemed a little odd I think. Not everyone likes my name and that's OK. I consider circumcision to be mutilation because there's no good reason for it. They're mostly religious. For girls, it's expressly to destroy female sexual pleasure and keep her jealously 'pure' for whomever she marries if it includes infibulation. For boys, it's frankly a silly-ass method the Israelites useful to distinguish themselves from the Pagans. Or, as I suspect with the Cathlolic Church, hostility to the make sex organ. Eith Americans, a mindless belief that the kid should 'look like daddy' or might get bullied in school, although I've never heard of a boy getting teased because he's uncut. Doctors' arguments that it is cleaner and/or prevents penile cancer are bullshit; it's easy enough to clean on the shower and I looked into penile cancer rates in uncutting cultures; they're lie .5%-2%. Men who were circumcised when they were older report less sexual sensation than before.
I can't imagine how it wouldn't be a traumatic effect on most infants even if they can't remember it. Even if they use anesthetic, what about residual pain for days afterward? And for *what*? There's no point.
In Islam it's also a manhood test. It's done on them when they're older and they're expected to bear it without flinching. Patriarchal bullshit IMO. There's something deeply suspicious about adults attacking babies' genitals.
Terrible. Although I'm not a Christian, I have a working relationship with a liberal Christian denomination that has been similarly overtaken by woke ideology. So far there hasn't been an outright coup, but I notice a high degree of knee-jerk fealty to the jargon and customs of progressivism, including a female pastor who wears a pronouns badge. And I was corrected for using the term "homeless" in lieu of the made-up term "unhoused." Newspeak is a sure sign that virtue signalling has taken the place of objective thought.
The irony is that the congregation includes some of the kindest people you'll ever meet, always ready to help and give of themselves. One would think that having the moral framework of an established religion would be sufficient for people to feel properly grounded in what is right, good and true, without adopting the blatantly illiberal customs of a woke religion on top of it. But that's not how it works anymore.
I applaud Dr. Rohde for her refusal to sacrifice the foundational principles of both her church and this country: free speech, plurality of views, and respect for the individual. May she kick their butts in court.
The established religion you are referring to, Christianity, traditionally views “free speech, plurality of views, and respect for the individual”, as sins. Rationality is anathema to Christianity. It isn’t surprising that the UU is being hypocritical and violating principles that violate the principles of Christianity. Hypocrisy, self-deception, and irrationality are principles of Christianity.
“ Though Unitarianism and Universalism were both liberal Christian traditions, this responsible search has led us to embrace diverse teachings from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies.
”
UU exists because of a merger for two Christian sects. The current state of whether UU is labeled a Christian denomination is irrelevant to my argument. It still honors the Bible as a primary source of wisdom. The current state it exists in, some weird post modern soup of incoherent religious and political ideological fusion, is a testament to its lack of interest in rationality.
When I first joined Unitarian Universalism, over 2/3 of the denomination were religious humanisnts. Only about 10% to 20% were Unitarian Christians. So that minority considers the Bible as the primary source of wisdom. But that is just not so for a humanist.
What I was reacting to in this article was the author's view that in the past, the values of the UU had aligned strongly with her progressive views, which made the two paradigms a good fit for her. But now, the UU has been corrupted by woke ideology in much the same way that many of our mainstream institutions have been corrupted, so its approach to speech and individuality no longer reflect its earlier liberal culture and values.
As an atheist, I personally have no use for religion. But my observation is that the invention of a supernatural parent is ubiquitous in human societies throughout time and place, and also that religions can either help or hinder human progress. All religions are irrational by definition. They posit the existence of non-material entities and forces that run our lives. Christianity is not unique in this regard.
(The author who has influenced my thinking the most on this matter is a computational biologist named John C. Wathey, PhD, author of "The Illusion of God's Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing." It's a big, dense book but easy to read and incredibly eye-opening.)
Speaking for myself, absent atrocities and authoritarianism, I choose to respect people's religions, not because I believe in them, but because they do.
Id wager you don’t actually *respect*, that is *honor*, peoples’ religions that you think are “irrational.” “Tolerate” may be a better word? Or do you really *honor* a Scientologist’s religion?
All major religions are “authoritarian”.
Irreligion does not logically follow from atheism. There are religions that are atheistic. Nor is a supernatural parent universal to all human religion through history and cultures; and a single super natural “parent” is even less common than supernatural beings(that aren’t parents to humanity) in general. “God” -- the singular, often vague, inconsistently defined, abstraction that is now found in many societies — as an idea or word didn’t form in a human mind for millions of years after humans evolved. When surveying the history and anthropology of supernatural creatures imagined by humans, which includes gods, it’s important, to be accurate, not to overgeneralize or project modern concepts onto ancient beliefs.
Materialists also typically posit, ironically perhaps, the existence of non-material entities : minds. Even aside from that Materialism is religious.
I personally think everyone has religion, at least every functional person, although not everyone is aware of it.
UU used to respect all pursuit of faiths and doctrines so long as you applied it to yourself and didn't impose or abuse others. So there was a very secular aspect that was based on rejection of creeds and dogmas, and a focus on individual conscience and rational inquiry. There was also a strong belief of separation of church and state. And embracing science ands the scientific method. All of that is being abandoned.
UU has always had a strong moral and political perspective. Today, the stuff that it is “inclusive” about is no longer appreciated by some people, like yourself. The rhetoric it uses to describe itself hasn’t actually changed much. A lot of woke rhetoric actually fits nicely with the traditional rhetoric of UU. It’s all bullshit, but it matches.
It’s not surprising that UU was the first “Christian” church to be captured by woke ideology. It has traditionally been the Christian church that was most open to projecting whatever political and social values the members had into the Bible and then to any and all religious texts. UU simply began to use the reputation and authority of traditional religion to backup whatever political positions they had regardless of logic. They do that with the authority of “science” as well. Men are women become women because Jesus, Gotama, Krishna, Muhammad, and Darwin said so.
If the UU respected the scientific method they would have stopped suggesting their political, moral, and religious views are in any meaningful way supported by the Bible long ago.
One, not Christian, but originated with Christian churches. Two, being open and inclusive is not the same as forced diversity and to ignoring what peer review based science is saying. I don’t mind open debate. Now UU stifles debate.
Wager whatever you like. You don’t know me and are in no position to tell me what I actually believe. We’ve both thought a lot about the purpose of religion and have come to different conclusions. That's all.
I'm not sure how you overlooked the essential qualifier in my comment: "Speaking for myself, ABSENT ATROCITIES AND AUTHORITARIANISM, I choose to respect people's religions." Atrocities and authoritarianism define Scientology, which is in its own unique category of corruption and cruelty. The behavior of pathological miscreant and leader David Miscavige alone could serve as Exhibit A. But you probably know all that already. Now I'm really and truly done here. Have at it.
What a sad situation. I wish you the best in your lawsuit. “The simple step of a courageous individual is to not take part in the lie.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I appreciate your lawsuit. Now, do not make excuses and give rhetoric such as -'I'm old. I'm tired.' If you want to preserve not just your religious liberty and other democratic ideals, you will have to fight, and fight hard. I have a mom that already went through this Marxist nonsense, from Imperial Japan and their subjugation of Korea. Like she said, Thank God for American troops. I will not let this country fall to a bunch destructive Marxists/Maoists, Stalinists and Imperial Japanese ideologues. If it bankrupts me financially, I will stand athwart from them.
People of faith with politically liberal views are being attacked by the rabid far-left "woke" dogma that has infiltrated every walk of life in Western society. This phenomenon has also been occurring, for example, in progressive Jewish organizations and temples. (Read "Woke Anti-Semitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews", by progressive American Jewish leader David Bernstein.) The irony here is that politically progressive Christians and Jews played big roles in the women's movement, the civil rights movement and the mainstreaming of non heterosexuals into Western life (both religious and secular). Unfortunately, woke dogma (as described by Dr. Rohde and in Mr. Bernstein's book) is not interested in judging a person by their character and deeds but on whether they belong to groups of "oppressed" or "oppressors". It insists that if you are someone "of color" or belong to an LGBTQ community you are among the "oppressed". If you are white with European ancestry, if you are hetero-sexual or if you are Jewish, you automatically fall into the "oppressor" category. I do not consider myself politically liberal. I'm politically independent. But I count myself among liberals on certain issues, including equal access in secular society for all persons and the free exchange of ideas, whether liberal or conservative. Woke dogma seeks to shut this down and if given free reign, will destroy all the good that classical liberalism has brought society.
I've attended the UU church for 28 years in my community. I'm a lesbian who wrote to our board of trustees asking them to remove the "Progess Pride" flag from our social hall that appeared over the holidays. To me this flag symbolizes trans activists hatred of women. The flag was not removed and instead I'm being "tried" by our Right Relations team for objecting to the flag.
Yes, I have heard some of the concerns from lesbians - and non-lesbian feminists - about the trans movement. An obvious problem is the trans' insistence on being included in women's sports and other spaces that pretty much all women believe should be reserved for "women only" (like public women's washrooms). Many mothers I know will not allow their youngsters to use a public washroom alone because of their fear of pedophiles posing as women who may be present there. Also, it seems to me that trans ideology, which is based on the notion that one can "choose" one's gender or gender identity flies in the face of the long-held belief that being gay/lesbian or heterosexual is an inherent characteristic; not something one "chooses" to be. My own concerns center around the proselytizing of gender identity in general and specifically to public school youngsters. (I am equally concerned about our society's flagrant promotion of all forms of sexual permissiveness because I believe it creates many psycho-social problems.) But with trans issues specifically, I have read about the physical and emotional problems associated with transitioning and cannot understand why the medical and psychiatric fields are going along with it.
Your story is troubling, and I feel for you. I left my UU church 15 years ago because I felt it was becoming intolerant. The roots of this go back quite a way. I wish you the best as you move forward.
Your story is troubling, and I feel for you. I left my UU church 15 years ago because I felt it was becoming intolerant. The roots of this go back quite a way. I wish you the best as you move forward.
Thank you for your long service to Unitarian Universalism and thank you for standing up for its values again today. I am so sorry about what has been done to you. Thank you for speaking out about it with honesty and courage.
Shit, they got the UUs too. Well, now you can freely denounce them and call them out for their hypocrisy and illiberal views. I guess I'm not surprised. I really don't know why the hell it's been so easy to poison the liberal well this way. But, if you can convince conservatives to abandon conservatism for the Trump cult, I guess you can do equally to get former liberals to join the wokeness cult.
You say you “don’t know why the hell it’s been so easy to poison the liberal well this way”. Well it’s because modern liberals ( whose usual party of choice in America has been the Democrats) allowed it to be hijacked incrementally by the radical left. And historically speaking, intolerance, subjugation, tyranny and mass scale murder has always been the result of leftist ideologies. Marxists, communists and socialists have always professed to care about oppressed peoples but in actuality despise them and only use them to achieve their despotic ends.
From Russia to China to Cambodia and Cuba, history is replete with the evidence. And with the ennabling by well intentioned liberals, this cancer has now metastasized in America and we are enduring our own version of the Cultural Revolution dressed in Wokeism. You want to talk cults? This movement is the mother of all cults.
What you say is all true, and for sure, all the cancers the left thought only existed on the right - misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, etc. have always been there, as has been cancel culture long before it had a name (Google E.O. Wilson sometime if you're bored & aren't familiar with this problems with Boomer college students). What gets me I think is the conscious turning over of one's critical thinking faculties to what you so aptly describe as a cult (as have myself and many others). What particularly bothers me is how easily gaslit so many feminists are by manipulative men who appropriate womanhood and get the girlies to do what they want (except for lesbians who seem a bit more rebellious against penii, lol). Feminism has a very long way to go when women can be convinced to allow male bodies - even convicted sex offenders! - in female spaces and prisons. I've never figured out why the hippies could condemn Nixon's campaign in Vietnam in one breath and support ratbastards like Castro and other southern hemisphere dictators so easily. Or how white so-called liberals today can bow and scrape before the racists in 'antiracism' who are clearly just as racist (against white people), including re-defining a fair number of non-white Jews as white to justify their anti-Semitism. But to be honest, I've been just as mystified by how far-righters have hijacked conservatism and turned it into MAGA stupidity. Chickens for Colonel Sanders, and many genuine conservatives who haven't turned their brains over to the MAGA cult are just as afraid to speak up against their own terrorists as libs are against our woke ones.
I'm one lesbian who has protested regularly at my UU church, all to no avail. It has been three years of seeing UU becoming an illiberal, anti-women, and racist religion. This has been a very sad and angry time for me.
You could also call it social justice warriorism, or identity politics, or identitarnism, or cultural progressivism,or post-modernism, or social media activism, or intersectional feminism, or 4th wave feminism, or something else if you like. The point is there is a social movement a trend, which has grown significantly since about 2013, which people often refer to as "wokeness." The name is less important the phenomenon. While yes, conservatives and Neo-fasicists and MAGA's and all those folks also talk about this phenomenon, that doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist. In fact you are using two different forms of sophistry and deceptive rhetoric here. You're trying to change the subject by getting people to focus on the name of the social movement rather than the substance of the thing itself. You'e also trying to dismiss any critique or even discussion (or indeed naming) of that movement by asserting that, by definition, anyone attempting to discuss and critique it are right wing fasicists, bigots, etc. Anyone who follows these issues fairly knows that isn't true. This ideological split is not so new. It's what Frederick Douglas criticized William Garrison about in the abolition movement. It's what MLK criticized the Nation of Islam about. Hell, it's what older Malcolm X criticized younger Malcom X about. If you want to discuss sincerely, go read a book then come back. If you want to troll, please just stop.
I can just visualize you scratching and clawing at yourself, trying to find the most vulgar utterances to make us sane folks feel threatened. Whaaagh, not happening. 👏👍
If the shoe fits. Not my fault DEI/CSJ chose to embrace the concept of wokeness to champion their cause. Heterodox "woke" need to vehemently reject these concepts if they want to save the term.
Evidence shows these extremist positions come from Universities and Colleges - and they grow more and more extreme. But why? I speculate that it is due to "publish or perish" coupled with America having far too many professors in the humanities.
Getting tenure (and build a reputation) in Higher Ed requires publishing stuff that is "New" and compatible with the zeitgeist of the field.
In STEM fields, there are many unanswered questions that are related to active topics of research. A young scientist can select a question and publish an answer to build her/his reputation. Many scientific careers grew from picking a neglected topic and exploring it. The ultimate judge of the quality of these answers of question is Nature - via empiricism. Increasingly, STEM fields require large teams of Scientists who do competent work but do not have the reputation draw in grant dollars. (TBH: young scholars in STEM are starting to go woke, too. If the work cannot stand on its own, wokify it! Relabel your new, mediocre programming language as being trans- friendly! Whether or not you have had surgery and hormone treatment - it all compiles the same!)
It is harder in the humanities. First, humans have been talking about humans for millennia so there is little new to say about the human condition. Second, there isn't much funding for large teams to do big projects (and, frankly, how big of team do Humanities projects need?). This creates an environment for young humanities professors to make bold claims in order to get tenure and build their reputation (the alternative is to be assistant manager at a WalMart). To avoid that fate, many in the humanities take an old, popular argument and make it more extreme. For example, anti-racism asserts without evidence that everyone is either racist or anti-racist, with no grey areas. (making the state of racism unlike sex)
The next scholar has to push it further because just saying "S/He got it right" will not get you tenure. So the next one asserts without evidence that all Whites are intrinsically incapable of being anti-racist (but they point out that the fact that Whites cannot help being racists does not absolve them of blame!)
Now, we have humanities profs teach unwitting students about biological sex - they barely understand the biology and empiricism so they rely on sophistry and rhetoric to conflate biological sex with social gender. So the poor students come out less educated and more confused than when they went in - but they are very confident about their misunderstanding of biology. God help the families of those students when they return home for Thanksgiving!
I note that these woke-folks seem to be focused on issues related to race, identity and sex. I suspect it's because these topics attract adolescents and keep enrollments high (oh. I didn't mention the importance of enrollment - depts that have high enrollment grow whereas depts with low enrollments shrink). Also, since people tend to crave novelty profs have to keep pushing their positions, making them ever more extreme.
Here are 3 predictions of positions that will come out of academia in the next ten years:
1) Human sexes are on a spectrum but 'male' is not a legitimate sex on that spectrum - only female and intersex are. (They will have to redefine 'species' to explain how human males can interbreed with human females to produce fertile offspring - but that's child's play for them).
2) People who have sex with animals are not deviant, it's just a sexual orientation - anyone uncomfortable with humans having sex with animals is a bigot, and probably homophobic.
3) Recent arrivals from Africa - who tend to have more success than African-Americans whose families have been here for centuries - will be considered "White Adjacent".
Very interesting rundown on what happens in academia - you sound like you've spent rather a lot of time there. I think it's also that the kids want to hear a certain narrative and the academia model has d/evolved to treat students like customers, which they're not, but as you know 'the customer is always right'. So they learn a blinkered view of humanity that fits their constipated worldview and don't develop the resilience they need for the real world. Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff covered it in The Coddling of the American Mind. I also think critical everything theory simply provides an excuse to be a bigot (racist, antisemitic, misogynist, misandrist, homophobic, etc.) but against different people, or in different ways. (white people are evil, so are male people, white males are the worst, and anyone we don't like gets bleached (hence the sudden whitenizing of all Jews, and Asians to a certain degree, and yeah, I agree with her, some black people are going to find out they have been granted white privilege whether they want it or not. Yeah, I see the animals thing coming too, along with furries and 'Otherkin' as 'viable' identities, but I think the pedos will be moving in soon. I don't think biological sex can ever truly be considered a spectrum, but *feelings* about it could be. What a mad, insane, world we live in...
I enjoyed reading your reply to my overlong comment. I think we are in agreement. BTW: I have spent most of my adult life in academia, for 25 years I was a research astronomer and for the past decade or so, I have been teaching. I mostly teach General Ed Astronomy because my 'mission' is to increase science literacy in America - it is a quixotic quest because academia's science literacy is plummeting at a staggering rate. Let me give you an example:
I was having beers with some friends in academia when some of their friends show up and joined us - they teach Philosophy. I tend to have a lot of respect for Philosophy because doing science well requires us to think about how we are thinking about things (metacognition is the douchey term for it). One of these Philosophers mentioned that she teaches a class on sex and gender - I replied that I have had discussions with a *lot* of biologists whether sex is binary or not and it is a complicated topic.
She and her ally eagerly agreed and somehow made a case that complexity in Biology supports their position that sex is a spectrum. I kept saying "The community of biologists does *not* have a consensus that sex is a spectrum." That did not seem to make them hesitant, as Philosophers, to speak for the field of Biology.
They quoted one estimate that 'intersex' makes up 5% of the spectrum and I pointed out that many biologists dispute that estimate for being far too high (the most common estimate is between 1 & 2%). They dismissed that, saying a lot of people are intersex and don't know it, justifying cherry-picking the higher estimate. I replied that *real* scientists do not make up new numbers because the old numbers are flawed. *Real* scientists make better measurements to get better numbers. They brushed that aside.
Then they made the absurd case that 5% is a *huge* number - why that exceeds the percentage of redheads! I replied, "First, no 5% is not a huge number, would you accept a 5% COLA in your salary during this period of inflation?" Then, because I am a scientist and am very careful about comparisons, I said "Comparing the percentage of an entire spectrum of non-male & non-female to the percentage of a SINGLE category of hair color is an apples to oranges comparison. It would only be valid if their position was that there are three sexes."
Once I got into the topic of measurements and analysis, they reverted to rhetoric and essentially based everything on their feelings and the feelings of intersex people (I should have walked away, saying I was searching for a person who is one exact sex: tight tush, big rack ... and a vagina. The last part is non-negotiable)
After beers one of the profs - who had a BS in Biology and wisely stayed out of it - told me that we were quibbling whether these variations are within the two sexes or constitute another sex, but the words do not change their nature or reality. Folks in the humanities spend all of their time thinking about things that humans have created so they lose sight of the Universe out there. It was there before us, it will be there after us, and it exists entirely independent of us. Our words and thoughts do not change it.
Maybe y'all should challenge them more on feelings. They may be *part* of the humanities but in the end, for something like sex, it's pretty immutable...feelings notwithstanding, you can't say transwomen are women because biology says they're not; and it's the gametes, as you point out, that ultimately define them. Everything else is window dressing, although it strikes me that bio males always think like bio males to some extent, as do bio females. Elliott Page is the most chicky transmale I've seen so far. I'm quite sure she will one day regret what she did to herself; it seems so ridiculously inauthentic, and I wouldn't say that about all transfolk.
I agree mostly, except the part about engaging with them. Arguing with an intellectual is like mud wrestling with a pig - you both wind up covered in muck but the pig actually likes it!
Instead, we should get word out that _some_ college degrees aren't worth the price. They don't provide marketable skills beyond what should have been learned in High School. Also, if a person must work 3 jobs to pay rent and student loans, then they don't have time & energy to ponder all the deep thoughts that these degrees introduce. It is just a waste. I call these 'dilettante degrees' because only kids with trust funds can afford to major in them.
Going to college nowadays is like entering indentured servitude - you have to work the rest of your life to earn your freedom. How ironic they bandy about decolonization when they are the biggest colonizers of the modern era.
Thank you for posting that video! It is excellent. I had heard most of those points before (Dr Asher has been saying this for a few years now) but that video is a nice summary of his points (there is an accompanying article on substack: https://boghossian.substack.com/p/dr-lyell-asher-why-colleges-are-becoming
Mary Harrington has some interesting things to say about why the liberals fell so easily. Her book "Feminism Against Progress" is a fascinating analysis.
Interesting. I may have to read that. Also beginning to consider books from a conservative (not far right/Christian fundy) viewpoint that critiques where liberalism may have failed women. Steven Pinker writes about it in a few of his books, and he's no right wing crazy.
I, too, am in exile from the UU church because I do not support the trans movement as it now exists where it encourages young people to harm their bodies with hormones, surgery, and drugs, and where it encroaches on the hard won rights of natal women. It is comforting to know I am not the only one. I have felt so very alone and silenced.
I recently went back to a Baptist congregation in Canada after years away from any church. People from 40 different countries represented. Many black and brown people and new immigrants. Musical lyrics often sung in multiple languages. And everyone gets along fine, with no evidence of identity politics or policing of "microagressions". Just a bunch of humans with something bigger in common than the amount of melanin in their skin. And the congregation is growing fast. Maybe you should try a new church?
My Mother loved UU for all the reasons you describe and would be horrified to know what it has degenerated into. I admire your sense of justice and willingness to give voice to the many who cannot or will not speak out.
Universal intolerance in service of a Unitary vision of ultimate authority vested not in God, but in humans. Define the oppressor and oppress him in arbitrary exercises of power. No allowance for the possibility that ultimate justice resides in heaven. Decency and humility are cast aside.
IMO it would be a more productive use of energy to gather the traditional UUs and re-establish a new congregation than to give energy to the old structures by fighting them.
Totally can relate. I left the UU after feeling completely gaslit from my minister and the wider congregation on the trans issue. My concerns were considered intolerable and I had no choice but to withdraw from attending. I am no longer a member.
I tried Quakers but that's just the same. To be honest, this is just the entire western world now. I'm hoping 2024 brings change though and some deeper conversations and I certainly welcome your lawsuit in this effort and wish you all the luck. Standing with you!
It's taken over the United Church of Christ too. I feel so alienated and betrayed by the beautiful little church I once loved.
Betrayal is the word for all of this
So many institutions, people, politicians, former friends, have betrayed me with this lie. This world that demands me to lie to keep my job and social accounts is not a world in which I want to live. I will not shut up about it.
The only people it hasn't taken over is conservatives.
It's taken over conservative people's institutions which is what we're talking about here. Many conservatives used to attend my church, and many send their kids to public schools and join sports teams that have been taken over by this ideology.
It may depend on what state you live in. I live in one of the most liberal states in the country. It is the conservatives who aren't buying into the insanity of the left.
Yes. Places where people get to know each other and find common ground. Usurped by these ideologies.
Why not try to find common ground with trans people? Why not be curious rather than allow yourself to be repulsed by people you aren't in community with?
Exactly! Also places where people find comfort in difficult times, the inspiration to be a better person and the strength to go on. All taken away from us when we need it most.
It hasn't taken over radical feminists either, they've been fighting it since the 00's when far leftists began insisting that trans women were actual women and sex work was work and white feminists were all racists. Check out some of them here:
https://reduxx.info
https://uncommongroundmedia.com
https://www.womenarehuman.com
https://4w.pub
https://womensdeclarationusa.com
https://womensliberationfront.org
Depends on which conservatives. There's a flavor of this that calls itself libertarian.
Trump
Sometimes I think it's good to be a member of a church that is for the most part conducted in a language other than English, and its (long!) marriage service requires not even an "I do" of bride and groom.
I'm not a church goer, and neither were my parents except sometimes, but when I walk into a Greek Orthodox church I'm in a familiar, dependable space.
The Greek Orthodox Church takes no political stances, although Archbishop Iakovos of North and South America, before the patriarch in Constantinople split that role and made the position less powerful, marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Trans stuff? BLM? Victim classes? It's all so transitory and meaningless. Orthodoxy is what it is and doesn't change and lets us live our lives. We can get divorced and still get remarried in the church. I have never heard of anyone getting expelled. Priests can marry unless they aspire to be bishops. Greek gay people who want to get married go to a justice of the peace, and I don't notice any prejudice or fulminations against gay people either. We don't hear a lot about damnation. The chants are beautiful. So are the Byzantine ikons.
It's pretty easy.
Sounds like you just want a place where you can hate trans people (trans women in particular, classic) with impunity? I hope yall can realize that trans people deserve a safe place to worship and be as much as you do. Pluralism is hard. If you want tolerance, that's a two way street.
"Yall"?
You from the South, or south Madison, Wisconsin? Or south something?
I do not mind people from certain regions using regionalisms in common speech, but appropriating someone else's slang or, if you're from the South, using in your writing a slang expression you might not normally use in order to try to make a point, is really precious.
If you're from Georgia, sorry. Still, I've visited the South a lot and don't hear it. My Tennessee cousin doesn't say it either.
Sounds like you are a true believer in the trans cult. In fact, there are 2 genders and you can't change which one you were born. I say this as someone who has a degree in Biology and Medicine. There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. What people "hate" about this ideology, besides its absolute lunacy, is that it is being used to harm children. It's not hatred of "trans" people, nor is it fear. It's a feeling of helplessness while you watch the world celebrate the destruction of a fellow human being. Trans people DO deserve a place to worship, but more than that, they deserve to be told the truth.
Gender affirmation is not the destruction of anything. Its a new lease on life. If this weren't the case we would see droves of bitter detransitioners, but that is simply not the case. Recent polling suggests that the vast majority of trans folks, upwards of 90 percent, are happier after transitioning.
If you were genuinely invested in this tradition you would be more curious about trans folks than you were obsessed by your own narrow understanding of the truth. You don't have the full picture. Neither do I, nor any of us for that matter. Compassion and trust ought to lead us, not fear and helplessness.
May you come back to Love and reconnect with the living tradition of curiosity grounded in kindness.
I am not curious, nor am I afraid. I am a medical doctor, so I tend to look at things through the lens of what is scientifically true. Feelings are great, but one should not make life altering decisions on them alone. The truth is, we don't know the long term effects these "treatments" will have on children. It should be concerning to you and others that European countries who have been doing this for many more years than we have, are pulling back.
https://segm.org/segm-summary-sweden-prioritizes-therapy-curbs-hormones-for-gender-dysphoric-youth
I do feel deeply sorry for folks who are so unhappy with themselves that they would take manufactured chemicals and have surgery to try and alter who they are. And there are plenty of detransitioners out there who are suing those that hurried them down the road of "gender affirming" care. Young women who have had their breasts removed, well ok, they can have implants, but they will never breast feed their own child.
https://www.iwf.org/2023/02/07/identity-crisis-years-later-a-former-detransitioner-is-still-recovering-from-hormones-surgery/
Again, I am not concerned for full grown adults who are capable of weighing the pros and cons and making an informed choice. I am deeply concerned for teenagers who are allowed to make life altering decisions, that are in fact not reversible, and that they do not fully understand.
It is not just the children, though. This ideology is destroying families. If you haven't, you should check out the PITT Substack. It is heartbreaking.
Hold on! There's a leap here. We're using adult transgender experiences to understand what's best for young children transitioning. Let's break this down: Memories and bias: Adults reflecting on their childhood have years of experience coloring their memories. A child's understanding of gender is still forming. Shifting landscape: The social landscape for transgender adults today is vastly different from when many older adults transitioned. Their experiences might not translate well. Medical choices: Adults make informed decisions about their bodies. This is different from pre-pubescent kids facing potentially irreversible medical interventions. Informed consent: Can a young child truly grasp the lifelong ramifications of transitioning? This is complex with no easy answers. Social factors: Is the child's desire to transition intrinsic, influenced by peers, trends, pressures they might not fully comprehend? Reversibility: Some interventions are reversible, others are not. Weighing the risks and benefits for a child requires careful consideration. Long-term data: We lack research on long-term outcomes for kids who transition medically at young ages. This lack of data makes decision-making difficult. Crux of the matter: Who benefits? Are medical decisions best for the child, or are there external agendas at play? This needs exploration... Alternative approaches: Shouldn't a child have space to explore gender identity without immediate medical intervention? And what about those that simply needed help with depression or just feeling like needing to belong where's the compassionate in that Balancing compassion and caution: How do we offer support for a child's struggle, exercising caution to avoid potentially harmful, irreversible actions? And as far as happiness in terms of long term we just don't know! there's no science on it https://segm.org/regret-detransition-rate-unknown
The comment below is where I get lost. Another big thing about UUism is a belief in the Principle of democracy. The way the democratic UU faith is going is the same way the whole world is going-trying for the first time in history to intentionally include perspectives that have never had a voice. So those voices now have a voice, and you don't like what they're saying, so...where is the problem?
The problem is that there is no questioning allowed. In regards to the trans movement any comment critical of the trans movement is labeled trans-phobic and hate speech. There is no place for debate.
Good call. Cloak the issue/rhetoric in democracy and the over used inclusivity wording. It is debate, evidence based, fact driven argument that should be presented. Medical science anyone? Gender dysphoria, which was originally Gender ID, is totally different from removal of body parts with respect to your aforementioned comment.
Exactly; and don't even think about criticizing Islam!
Greeks don't question Greek Orthodoxy. Many of us who might not like certain aspects of its dogma nevertheless find comfort in the liturgy and rituals familiar to and beloved by our grandparents (when we do attend church) and go about our daily business as we need to. It works out.
I guess it's like cafeteria Catholics -- except that Catholicism makes noises about relevancy and cultural issues, and Catholics debate them. The Greek Orthodox Church is tolerant of its wayward and sporadic members but stands rooted in its history.
I hope it is never silly enough to repair the schism and team up with Rome.
The existence of trans people is not a matter of debate. What, do you think you can debate someone into denying their own experience? We have a word for that. It's called gaslighting.
It's factually incorrect that there are perspectives now being included that have never had a voice. The perspectives you talk about have always had a voice. They've just not been permitted to silence others. They call their new power "inclusion" and "centering the marginalized."
I call it totalitarian control by an unpopular minority opinion.
The mob that silences dissent is not democracy.
Democracy that doesn't seek to heed the call from the margins is just mob rule. Democracy is the best system, but it's flawed when we become uncurious about our neighbor and entrenched with our own ideas.
If you don't see the problem, it's pointless to engage this question.
Let's not give up so easily. We must stay engaged with the people we share our piece of society with even when they say false things.
Yep. So glad those voices finally getting the opportunity to say “every voice but ours is False, every view but ours is morally debased, all the world but us is racist, no one except us deserves to be employed, no one can help with society’s problems except by doing what we say without questioning, and the proper activity of any voice but ours is to revile itself for our pleasure.” Great to see these folks flourish.
It's interesting that you start with a false characterization of the comment you're replying to and the original post as well. It's clear that the objection is not to inclusion of marginalized voices but the intolerance for other voices.
So why are you mischaracterizing?
This is so sad. I remember from when my kids were young it was typically the UU where the interfaith services were held & so much outreach towards the community began. With the politicization, that sense of outreach towards others even when they didn't have "think right"left as did some of those interfaith opportunities- slowly but surely. I had come to depend on those & other opportunities like it, to show my children a world where differences didn't have to equal an immediate threat to self, nor any acquiescence of your own self or belief.
I'm a social worker so I had to study on all of these post modern/critical theories all through grad school as most social work programs are now firmly grounded in those theories. What they've contributed to the world in positive terms beyond a basic awareness of "issues" is minimal @ best. What they've taken away from the world & our children is tragic.
Fellow social worker here - yeah, our field is completely metastasized with these toxic, cynical and anti-human “theories”. It breaks my heart, because they really don’t help people at all.
I am also a social worker. As a matter of fact, I was the national NASW Social Worker of the Year in 2020. In the UK there is an alliance working to keep these noxious ideas out of the social work field. It is the Evidence-Based Social Work Alliance. Perhaps we need such an alliance in the USA?
I vote that you create it here, Zander! If you do it I’ll sign up right away!
Hi Gabi. If you're on LinkedIn, join our preliminary group there ProSocial Work - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14088158/
Best wishes for you and your lawsuit against them. Thank you for having the endurance and courage to fight back. So many people in your position have just walked away.
You mean… they have “turned the other cheek”? As much as I sympathize with her efforts to fight — particularly against libel if it occurred — it’s a contradiction of common Christian ethics. At least superficially—Christian ethics are hypocritical, but one side of it is “forgiveness” and “loving your enemy”. That is not compatible with fighting. Fighting isn’t for the “meek”.
The fact that “so many people” in her “position have just walked away” is not surprising given they plausibly embrace a morality of masochistic autophagic self-abasement, which Jesus and Paul preached.
They have stolen the religion, pretending virtue while engaging in vice. The point is not to punish but to discourage continuing wrong doing. Also to get my reputation and livelihood restored. Christian ethics don't encourage allowing bullies to retain their power to wound.
UU isn't just Christian, and thus it didn't have to follow a christian ethics analysis. If anything it was more Deist.
Yah, as of now it is quite incoherent nonsense.
No disagreement there.
Oops, you're in the wrong forum. Trolling Christians is that way --------------->>
Your understanding of Christianity seems inspired by LaVey rather than any actual Christian teachings.
lol Lavey.
Let me guess, you have actually not read the Bible?
Jumping into a thread about people grieving the takeover of their church, in order to troll Christian philosophy, is the work of a troll. Are you a troll?
Have some decency and self-respect and go away, please.
"Any attempt to challenge someone else’s ideas is now frequently met not with evidence or reasoned defense, but by labeling the challenge (and often the challenger) as racist, ableist, transphobic, and the like. "
Try something more than just labeling me a troll[quite "dehumanizing" of you!] without any evidence. If you want to actually debate anything, I would have no reservations. Your comment is exactly a reflection of the behaviors of the people who she is suing.
A good response for people in the UU church who don't like the infiltration of "gender woo" (your words) is to start a new tribe that actually has good standards with regard to "reason". The bible, and other major religious texts, are some of the most irrational works of literature created by humanity. To declare them "sacred", and to revere them, and then get upset that "woo" is taking over is ridiculous. I have enough "self-respect" and "decency" not to apologize for a book of torture and slavery while simultaneously being outraged by people who want to police our pronouns.
Incoherent and self-destructive notions of "tolerance" and "equality" are the "liberal values" of UU that ultimately allowed it to be poisoned by the gender fascists.
But as I said, I sympathize with her fight, particularly if libel is involved.
If you can't handle my opinion, you go away. I'm not going anywhere.
"I'm not a troll!"
(Proceeds to troll some more)
Bye! -------------------------------->>>>
I quit my board position and left the church in 2019 due to everything you’ve said and more. I hope you win your lawsuit.
Yes! The people who decide to stay and fight for their spiritual home are heroes in my book.
Oh, Kate, this is an amazing story, grievous to see. I am your basic believing Presbyterian and even I recognize that when the Unitarians become ideological Puritans we are in big trouble. Having been in Moscow soon after the wall fell, I have to say it feels so "soviet." May you prevail.
👆🏻this
It’s amazing how low the race hustlers can take things, and how willingly their useful idiots go along with it. Anyone spewing “white supremacy” is a destroyer, plain and simple. The most appropriate response is an eye roll at best.
I was just wondering this morning when some person or group might get sued for calling someone a 'white supremacist' or calling something they say 'white supremacy' that isn't. Too many so-called liberals buy into this BLM bullshit.
Your online name is vulgar. Vulgarity brings all of society down, including you. It's like the broken window theory.
Do you have a problem with labia? Or referring to them? Are you as offended by the phrase 'grow a pair' or 'grow some balls'? Just curious as to where the offence lies...
While I fully support your sentiment (and I guess you could think of labia in emulating grow thicker skin), in males balls or testicles produce testosterone which increase aggression, and supposedly bravery. Labia doesn't. Grow some inner balls? (Estrogen is the source of strength particular to women). No one says, grow some himen, scrotum or dick to men who are cowards. IMHO, Just the nerd in me.
Tragically, the biology doesn't always match up as much as I'd like. Technically, to match 'grow some balls', it should be 'grow some ovaries', but I wanted to keep it between the legs and ovaries are higher up, in the hips. Labia are what would have been the ball sac if the fetus had developed as a boy, so it was close enough for government work ;)
After all, what good are balls if they don't have something to hold them? They'd dangle down below your hip joints and get caught in your zipper ;)
True, true. LOL. Ah that Zipper is murderous.
Oh sweet irony!
You guys are funny! All gave me a chuckle!
Sounds like you need to grow some futunari balls and labia.
Ezekiel 23:19
“Yet she increased her harlotry, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt and doted upon her paramours there, whose members were like those of asses, and whose issue was like that of horses.”
My hypothesis is that your concern about genital tissue does not extend to the book of slavery and torture.
Wot?
My comment was directed at Sophia.
She was very sensitive about the term labia -- thus she should grow some balls and labia to be tougher("grow some balls" is a phrase that implies the person is weak or cowardly). Futunaris have both male and female genitalia. The "vulgarity" in the bible exceeds what Sophia was upset about with regard to the word labia. But I suspect Sophia reveres the bible(the book of slavery and torture) and isnt concerned about it "bringing down society."
I hope that was helpful.
My sentiments entirely ;)
No...why would it? How is that relevant? I picked the name because we say "Grow some balls!" to men to assert themselves, but it doesn't really apply to women. There's nothing inherently offensive about labia...it's not like I used the p-word or worse, the c-word. What does Ezekiel's discomfort with female sexuality, a common problem back then, have to do with it? Not to mention his probable penis envy if his own member wasn't as big as his competitors' ;) If you're referring to FGM, I'm very much against it...as well as MGM, the male version, of which the Israelites were quite fond. Blades do not belong near human genitals!!!
My comment was directed at Sophia, not you. I suspect Sophia is fond of the bible. Its unlikely an American would have the level of church-lady outrage at the word labia and not sleep with a bible under their pillow.
Im perfectly okay with my circumcision, and I'm not mutilated. I implore you to reconsider that language; its degrading.
The bible is the book of slavery and torture because the main character (Yahweh) commands humans be his slaves and threatens them with torture if they don't obey him. Slavery and torture is the main theme of the book.
did my comment get put under yours and not Sophia's?
Your comment is utter ignorance. Making assumption is the core of so much division in our culture. If you do not know - shut up.
I don't think it did. It just seemed a little odd I think. Not everyone likes my name and that's OK. I consider circumcision to be mutilation because there's no good reason for it. They're mostly religious. For girls, it's expressly to destroy female sexual pleasure and keep her jealously 'pure' for whomever she marries if it includes infibulation. For boys, it's frankly a silly-ass method the Israelites useful to distinguish themselves from the Pagans. Or, as I suspect with the Cathlolic Church, hostility to the make sex organ. Eith Americans, a mindless belief that the kid should 'look like daddy' or might get bullied in school, although I've never heard of a boy getting teased because he's uncut. Doctors' arguments that it is cleaner and/or prevents penile cancer are bullshit; it's easy enough to clean on the shower and I looked into penile cancer rates in uncutting cultures; they're lie .5%-2%. Men who were circumcised when they were older report less sexual sensation than before.
I can't imagine how it wouldn't be a traumatic effect on most infants even if they can't remember it. Even if they use anesthetic, what about residual pain for days afterward? And for *what*? There's no point.
In Islam it's also a manhood test. It's done on them when they're older and they're expected to bear it without flinching. Patriarchal bullshit IMO. There's something deeply suspicious about adults attacking babies' genitals.
Terrible. Although I'm not a Christian, I have a working relationship with a liberal Christian denomination that has been similarly overtaken by woke ideology. So far there hasn't been an outright coup, but I notice a high degree of knee-jerk fealty to the jargon and customs of progressivism, including a female pastor who wears a pronouns badge. And I was corrected for using the term "homeless" in lieu of the made-up term "unhoused." Newspeak is a sure sign that virtue signalling has taken the place of objective thought.
The irony is that the congregation includes some of the kindest people you'll ever meet, always ready to help and give of themselves. One would think that having the moral framework of an established religion would be sufficient for people to feel properly grounded in what is right, good and true, without adopting the blatantly illiberal customs of a woke religion on top of it. But that's not how it works anymore.
I applaud Dr. Rohde for her refusal to sacrifice the foundational principles of both her church and this country: free speech, plurality of views, and respect for the individual. May she kick their butts in court.
The established religion you are referring to, Christianity, traditionally views “free speech, plurality of views, and respect for the individual”, as sins. Rationality is anathema to Christianity. It isn’t surprising that the UU is being hypocritical and violating principles that violate the principles of Christianity. Hypocrisy, self-deception, and irrationality are principles of Christianity.
Again, Jeffrey, UUism is not a Christian denomination. Try to keep up.
It isn't any denomination. It is more a political group than anything else. A little spirituality (if you can call it that) and lots of politics.
From the UU website :
“ Though Unitarianism and Universalism were both liberal Christian traditions, this responsible search has led us to embrace diverse teachings from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies.
”
UU exists because of a merger for two Christian sects. The current state of whether UU is labeled a Christian denomination is irrelevant to my argument. It still honors the Bible as a primary source of wisdom. The current state it exists in, some weird post modern soup of incoherent religious and political ideological fusion, is a testament to its lack of interest in rationality.
“is a testament to its lack of interest in rationality.”
Or absolutes and facts.
And a lack of interest in Christ. It’s not a Christian church.
When I first joined Unitarian Universalism, over 2/3 of the denomination were religious humanisnts. Only about 10% to 20% were Unitarian Christians. So that minority considers the Bible as the primary source of wisdom. But that is just not so for a humanist.
I said “a” primary source of wisdom, not “the”. Do you personally think the Bible is a source of wisdom? How about Mein Kampf?
Tell me: what do you feel was Achille’s biggest sin and what do you feel was Jesus’ biggest sin?
What I was reacting to in this article was the author's view that in the past, the values of the UU had aligned strongly with her progressive views, which made the two paradigms a good fit for her. But now, the UU has been corrupted by woke ideology in much the same way that many of our mainstream institutions have been corrupted, so its approach to speech and individuality no longer reflect its earlier liberal culture and values.
As an atheist, I personally have no use for religion. But my observation is that the invention of a supernatural parent is ubiquitous in human societies throughout time and place, and also that religions can either help or hinder human progress. All religions are irrational by definition. They posit the existence of non-material entities and forces that run our lives. Christianity is not unique in this regard.
(The author who has influenced my thinking the most on this matter is a computational biologist named John C. Wathey, PhD, author of "The Illusion of God's Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing." It's a big, dense book but easy to read and incredibly eye-opening.)
Speaking for myself, absent atrocities and authoritarianism, I choose to respect people's religions, not because I believe in them, but because they do.
Id wager you don’t actually *respect*, that is *honor*, peoples’ religions that you think are “irrational.” “Tolerate” may be a better word? Or do you really *honor* a Scientologist’s religion?
All major religions are “authoritarian”.
Irreligion does not logically follow from atheism. There are religions that are atheistic. Nor is a supernatural parent universal to all human religion through history and cultures; and a single super natural “parent” is even less common than supernatural beings(that aren’t parents to humanity) in general. “God” -- the singular, often vague, inconsistently defined, abstraction that is now found in many societies — as an idea or word didn’t form in a human mind for millions of years after humans evolved. When surveying the history and anthropology of supernatural creatures imagined by humans, which includes gods, it’s important, to be accurate, not to overgeneralize or project modern concepts onto ancient beliefs.
Materialists also typically posit, ironically perhaps, the existence of non-material entities : minds. Even aside from that Materialism is religious.
I personally think everyone has religion, at least every functional person, although not everyone is aware of it.
UU used to respect all pursuit of faiths and doctrines so long as you applied it to yourself and didn't impose or abuse others. So there was a very secular aspect that was based on rejection of creeds and dogmas, and a focus on individual conscience and rational inquiry. There was also a strong belief of separation of church and state. And embracing science ands the scientific method. All of that is being abandoned.
UU has always had a strong moral and political perspective. Today, the stuff that it is “inclusive” about is no longer appreciated by some people, like yourself. The rhetoric it uses to describe itself hasn’t actually changed much. A lot of woke rhetoric actually fits nicely with the traditional rhetoric of UU. It’s all bullshit, but it matches.
It’s not surprising that UU was the first “Christian” church to be captured by woke ideology. It has traditionally been the Christian church that was most open to projecting whatever political and social values the members had into the Bible and then to any and all religious texts. UU simply began to use the reputation and authority of traditional religion to backup whatever political positions they had regardless of logic. They do that with the authority of “science” as well. Men are women become women because Jesus, Gotama, Krishna, Muhammad, and Darwin said so.
If the UU respected the scientific method they would have stopped suggesting their political, moral, and religious views are in any meaningful way supported by the Bible long ago.
One, not Christian, but originated with Christian churches. Two, being open and inclusive is not the same as forced diversity and to ignoring what peer review based science is saying. I don’t mind open debate. Now UU stifles debate.
Wager whatever you like. You don’t know me and are in no position to tell me what I actually believe. We’ve both thought a lot about the purpose of religion and have come to different conclusions. That's all.
You are welcome to prove my wager wrong by telling us you honor Scientology.
I'm not sure how you overlooked the essential qualifier in my comment: "Speaking for myself, ABSENT ATROCITIES AND AUTHORITARIANISM, I choose to respect people's religions." Atrocities and authoritarianism define Scientology, which is in its own unique category of corruption and cruelty. The behavior of pathological miscreant and leader David Miscavige alone could serve as Exhibit A. But you probably know all that already. Now I'm really and truly done here. Have at it.
And some people are just virtue signalers.
What a sad situation. I wish you the best in your lawsuit. “The simple step of a courageous individual is to not take part in the lie.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I appreciate your lawsuit. Now, do not make excuses and give rhetoric such as -'I'm old. I'm tired.' If you want to preserve not just your religious liberty and other democratic ideals, you will have to fight, and fight hard. I have a mom that already went through this Marxist nonsense, from Imperial Japan and their subjugation of Korea. Like she said, Thank God for American troops. I will not let this country fall to a bunch destructive Marxists/Maoists, Stalinists and Imperial Japanese ideologues. If it bankrupts me financially, I will stand athwart from them.
There is VERY big money behind this!
People of faith with politically liberal views are being attacked by the rabid far-left "woke" dogma that has infiltrated every walk of life in Western society. This phenomenon has also been occurring, for example, in progressive Jewish organizations and temples. (Read "Woke Anti-Semitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews", by progressive American Jewish leader David Bernstein.) The irony here is that politically progressive Christians and Jews played big roles in the women's movement, the civil rights movement and the mainstreaming of non heterosexuals into Western life (both religious and secular). Unfortunately, woke dogma (as described by Dr. Rohde and in Mr. Bernstein's book) is not interested in judging a person by their character and deeds but on whether they belong to groups of "oppressed" or "oppressors". It insists that if you are someone "of color" or belong to an LGBTQ community you are among the "oppressed". If you are white with European ancestry, if you are hetero-sexual or if you are Jewish, you automatically fall into the "oppressor" category. I do not consider myself politically liberal. I'm politically independent. But I count myself among liberals on certain issues, including equal access in secular society for all persons and the free exchange of ideas, whether liberal or conservative. Woke dogma seeks to shut this down and if given free reign, will destroy all the good that classical liberalism has brought society.
I've attended the UU church for 28 years in my community. I'm a lesbian who wrote to our board of trustees asking them to remove the "Progess Pride" flag from our social hall that appeared over the holidays. To me this flag symbolizes trans activists hatred of women. The flag was not removed and instead I'm being "tried" by our Right Relations team for objecting to the flag.
Yes, I have heard some of the concerns from lesbians - and non-lesbian feminists - about the trans movement. An obvious problem is the trans' insistence on being included in women's sports and other spaces that pretty much all women believe should be reserved for "women only" (like public women's washrooms). Many mothers I know will not allow their youngsters to use a public washroom alone because of their fear of pedophiles posing as women who may be present there. Also, it seems to me that trans ideology, which is based on the notion that one can "choose" one's gender or gender identity flies in the face of the long-held belief that being gay/lesbian or heterosexual is an inherent characteristic; not something one "chooses" to be. My own concerns center around the proselytizing of gender identity in general and specifically to public school youngsters. (I am equally concerned about our society's flagrant promotion of all forms of sexual permissiveness because I believe it creates many psycho-social problems.) But with trans issues specifically, I have read about the physical and emotional problems associated with transitioning and cannot understand why the medical and psychiatric fields are going along with it.
Thank you for speaking your truth, Rev. Kate. Many of us agree with you.
Your story is troubling, and I feel for you. I left my UU church 15 years ago because I felt it was becoming intolerant. The roots of this go back quite a way. I wish you the best as you move forward.
Your story is troubling, and I feel for you. I left my UU church 15 years ago because I felt it was becoming intolerant. The roots of this go back quite a way. I wish you the best as you move forward.
Thank you for your long service to Unitarian Universalism and thank you for standing up for its values again today. I am so sorry about what has been done to you. Thank you for speaking out about it with honesty and courage.
Shit, they got the UUs too. Well, now you can freely denounce them and call them out for their hypocrisy and illiberal views. I guess I'm not surprised. I really don't know why the hell it's been so easy to poison the liberal well this way. But, if you can convince conservatives to abandon conservatism for the Trump cult, I guess you can do equally to get former liberals to join the wokeness cult.
You say you “don’t know why the hell it’s been so easy to poison the liberal well this way”. Well it’s because modern liberals ( whose usual party of choice in America has been the Democrats) allowed it to be hijacked incrementally by the radical left. And historically speaking, intolerance, subjugation, tyranny and mass scale murder has always been the result of leftist ideologies. Marxists, communists and socialists have always professed to care about oppressed peoples but in actuality despise them and only use them to achieve their despotic ends.
From Russia to China to Cambodia and Cuba, history is replete with the evidence. And with the ennabling by well intentioned liberals, this cancer has now metastasized in America and we are enduring our own version of the Cultural Revolution dressed in Wokeism. You want to talk cults? This movement is the mother of all cults.
What you say is all true, and for sure, all the cancers the left thought only existed on the right - misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, etc. have always been there, as has been cancel culture long before it had a name (Google E.O. Wilson sometime if you're bored & aren't familiar with this problems with Boomer college students). What gets me I think is the conscious turning over of one's critical thinking faculties to what you so aptly describe as a cult (as have myself and many others). What particularly bothers me is how easily gaslit so many feminists are by manipulative men who appropriate womanhood and get the girlies to do what they want (except for lesbians who seem a bit more rebellious against penii, lol). Feminism has a very long way to go when women can be convinced to allow male bodies - even convicted sex offenders! - in female spaces and prisons. I've never figured out why the hippies could condemn Nixon's campaign in Vietnam in one breath and support ratbastards like Castro and other southern hemisphere dictators so easily. Or how white so-called liberals today can bow and scrape before the racists in 'antiracism' who are clearly just as racist (against white people), including re-defining a fair number of non-white Jews as white to justify their anti-Semitism. But to be honest, I've been just as mystified by how far-righters have hijacked conservatism and turned it into MAGA stupidity. Chickens for Colonel Sanders, and many genuine conservatives who haven't turned their brains over to the MAGA cult are just as afraid to speak up against their own terrorists as libs are against our woke ones.
I'm one lesbian who has protested regularly at my UU church, all to no avail. It has been three years of seeing UU becoming an illiberal, anti-women, and racist religion. This has been a very sad and angry time for me.
Thanks for saying what needs to be said more often.
You could also call it social justice warriorism, or identity politics, or identitarnism, or cultural progressivism,or post-modernism, or social media activism, or intersectional feminism, or 4th wave feminism, or something else if you like. The point is there is a social movement a trend, which has grown significantly since about 2013, which people often refer to as "wokeness." The name is less important the phenomenon. While yes, conservatives and Neo-fasicists and MAGA's and all those folks also talk about this phenomenon, that doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist. In fact you are using two different forms of sophistry and deceptive rhetoric here. You're trying to change the subject by getting people to focus on the name of the social movement rather than the substance of the thing itself. You'e also trying to dismiss any critique or even discussion (or indeed naming) of that movement by asserting that, by definition, anyone attempting to discuss and critique it are right wing fasicists, bigots, etc. Anyone who follows these issues fairly knows that isn't true. This ideological split is not so new. It's what Frederick Douglas criticized William Garrison about in the abolition movement. It's what MLK criticized the Nation of Islam about. Hell, it's what older Malcolm X criticized younger Malcom X about. If you want to discuss sincerely, go read a book then come back. If you want to troll, please just stop.
Good faith? Introducing vulgarity into the conversation is not good faith.
Your vulgarity is unwelcome.
Oh my, are you ‘triggered’? Feel ‘unsafe’?
SO sorry Scottie 😩
Triggered? No, I hope for a much less vulgar culture.
Oh Scottie,
I can just visualize you scratching and clawing at yourself, trying to find the most vulgar utterances to make us sane folks feel threatened. Whaaagh, not happening. 👏👍
The fact that you came on here to while about the post, shows you are the one whining. LOL
If the shoe fits. Not my fault DEI/CSJ chose to embrace the concept of wokeness to champion their cause. Heterodox "woke" need to vehemently reject these concepts if they want to save the term.
Oh look, you are able to regurgitate your nonsense twice.
Evidence shows these extremist positions come from Universities and Colleges - and they grow more and more extreme. But why? I speculate that it is due to "publish or perish" coupled with America having far too many professors in the humanities.
Getting tenure (and build a reputation) in Higher Ed requires publishing stuff that is "New" and compatible with the zeitgeist of the field.
In STEM fields, there are many unanswered questions that are related to active topics of research. A young scientist can select a question and publish an answer to build her/his reputation. Many scientific careers grew from picking a neglected topic and exploring it. The ultimate judge of the quality of these answers of question is Nature - via empiricism. Increasingly, STEM fields require large teams of Scientists who do competent work but do not have the reputation draw in grant dollars. (TBH: young scholars in STEM are starting to go woke, too. If the work cannot stand on its own, wokify it! Relabel your new, mediocre programming language as being trans- friendly! Whether or not you have had surgery and hormone treatment - it all compiles the same!)
It is harder in the humanities. First, humans have been talking about humans for millennia so there is little new to say about the human condition. Second, there isn't much funding for large teams to do big projects (and, frankly, how big of team do Humanities projects need?). This creates an environment for young humanities professors to make bold claims in order to get tenure and build their reputation (the alternative is to be assistant manager at a WalMart). To avoid that fate, many in the humanities take an old, popular argument and make it more extreme. For example, anti-racism asserts without evidence that everyone is either racist or anti-racist, with no grey areas. (making the state of racism unlike sex)
The next scholar has to push it further because just saying "S/He got it right" will not get you tenure. So the next one asserts without evidence that all Whites are intrinsically incapable of being anti-racist (but they point out that the fact that Whites cannot help being racists does not absolve them of blame!)
Now, we have humanities profs teach unwitting students about biological sex - they barely understand the biology and empiricism so they rely on sophistry and rhetoric to conflate biological sex with social gender. So the poor students come out less educated and more confused than when they went in - but they are very confident about their misunderstanding of biology. God help the families of those students when they return home for Thanksgiving!
I note that these woke-folks seem to be focused on issues related to race, identity and sex. I suspect it's because these topics attract adolescents and keep enrollments high (oh. I didn't mention the importance of enrollment - depts that have high enrollment grow whereas depts with low enrollments shrink). Also, since people tend to crave novelty profs have to keep pushing their positions, making them ever more extreme.
Here are 3 predictions of positions that will come out of academia in the next ten years:
1) Human sexes are on a spectrum but 'male' is not a legitimate sex on that spectrum - only female and intersex are. (They will have to redefine 'species' to explain how human males can interbreed with human females to produce fertile offspring - but that's child's play for them).
2) People who have sex with animals are not deviant, it's just a sexual orientation - anyone uncomfortable with humans having sex with animals is a bigot, and probably homophobic.
3) Recent arrivals from Africa - who tend to have more success than African-Americans whose families have been here for centuries - will be considered "White Adjacent".
Very interesting rundown on what happens in academia - you sound like you've spent rather a lot of time there. I think it's also that the kids want to hear a certain narrative and the academia model has d/evolved to treat students like customers, which they're not, but as you know 'the customer is always right'. So they learn a blinkered view of humanity that fits their constipated worldview and don't develop the resilience they need for the real world. Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff covered it in The Coddling of the American Mind. I also think critical everything theory simply provides an excuse to be a bigot (racist, antisemitic, misogynist, misandrist, homophobic, etc.) but against different people, or in different ways. (white people are evil, so are male people, white males are the worst, and anyone we don't like gets bleached (hence the sudden whitenizing of all Jews, and Asians to a certain degree, and yeah, I agree with her, some black people are going to find out they have been granted white privilege whether they want it or not. Yeah, I see the animals thing coming too, along with furries and 'Otherkin' as 'viable' identities, but I think the pedos will be moving in soon. I don't think biological sex can ever truly be considered a spectrum, but *feelings* about it could be. What a mad, insane, world we live in...
I enjoyed reading your reply to my overlong comment. I think we are in agreement. BTW: I have spent most of my adult life in academia, for 25 years I was a research astronomer and for the past decade or so, I have been teaching. I mostly teach General Ed Astronomy because my 'mission' is to increase science literacy in America - it is a quixotic quest because academia's science literacy is plummeting at a staggering rate. Let me give you an example:
I was having beers with some friends in academia when some of their friends show up and joined us - they teach Philosophy. I tend to have a lot of respect for Philosophy because doing science well requires us to think about how we are thinking about things (metacognition is the douchey term for it). One of these Philosophers mentioned that she teaches a class on sex and gender - I replied that I have had discussions with a *lot* of biologists whether sex is binary or not and it is a complicated topic.
She and her ally eagerly agreed and somehow made a case that complexity in Biology supports their position that sex is a spectrum. I kept saying "The community of biologists does *not* have a consensus that sex is a spectrum." That did not seem to make them hesitant, as Philosophers, to speak for the field of Biology.
They quoted one estimate that 'intersex' makes up 5% of the spectrum and I pointed out that many biologists dispute that estimate for being far too high (the most common estimate is between 1 & 2%). They dismissed that, saying a lot of people are intersex and don't know it, justifying cherry-picking the higher estimate. I replied that *real* scientists do not make up new numbers because the old numbers are flawed. *Real* scientists make better measurements to get better numbers. They brushed that aside.
Then they made the absurd case that 5% is a *huge* number - why that exceeds the percentage of redheads! I replied, "First, no 5% is not a huge number, would you accept a 5% COLA in your salary during this period of inflation?" Then, because I am a scientist and am very careful about comparisons, I said "Comparing the percentage of an entire spectrum of non-male & non-female to the percentage of a SINGLE category of hair color is an apples to oranges comparison. It would only be valid if their position was that there are three sexes."
Once I got into the topic of measurements and analysis, they reverted to rhetoric and essentially based everything on their feelings and the feelings of intersex people (I should have walked away, saying I was searching for a person who is one exact sex: tight tush, big rack ... and a vagina. The last part is non-negotiable)
After beers one of the profs - who had a BS in Biology and wisely stayed out of it - told me that we were quibbling whether these variations are within the two sexes or constitute another sex, but the words do not change their nature or reality. Folks in the humanities spend all of their time thinking about things that humans have created so they lose sight of the Universe out there. It was there before us, it will be there after us, and it exists entirely independent of us. Our words and thoughts do not change it.
Maybe y'all should challenge them more on feelings. They may be *part* of the humanities but in the end, for something like sex, it's pretty immutable...feelings notwithstanding, you can't say transwomen are women because biology says they're not; and it's the gametes, as you point out, that ultimately define them. Everything else is window dressing, although it strikes me that bio males always think like bio males to some extent, as do bio females. Elliott Page is the most chicky transmale I've seen so far. I'm quite sure she will one day regret what she did to herself; it seems so ridiculously inauthentic, and I wouldn't say that about all transfolk.
I agree mostly, except the part about engaging with them. Arguing with an intellectual is like mud wrestling with a pig - you both wind up covered in muck but the pig actually likes it!
Instead, we should get word out that _some_ college degrees aren't worth the price. They don't provide marketable skills beyond what should have been learned in High School. Also, if a person must work 3 jobs to pay rent and student loans, then they don't have time & energy to ponder all the deep thoughts that these degrees introduce. It is just a waste. I call these 'dilettante degrees' because only kids with trust funds can afford to major in them.
Going to college nowadays is like entering indentured servitude - you have to work the rest of your life to earn your freedom. How ironic they bandy about decolonization when they are the biggest colonizers of the modern era.
Agreed. Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hybqg81n-M
Thank you for posting that video! It is excellent. I had heard most of those points before (Dr Asher has been saying this for a few years now) but that video is a nice summary of his points (there is an accompanying article on substack: https://boghossian.substack.com/p/dr-lyell-asher-why-colleges-are-becoming
Thanks for posting the article!
C’mon now! Stop confusing us with the facts! It’s not FAIR!!!! Whaaaaah!!!
A very good analysis of why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hybqg81n-M
Mary Harrington has some interesting things to say about why the liberals fell so easily. Her book "Feminism Against Progress" is a fascinating analysis.
Interesting. I may have to read that. Also beginning to consider books from a conservative (not far right/Christian fundy) viewpoint that critiques where liberalism may have failed women. Steven Pinker writes about it in a few of his books, and he's no right wing crazy.
I, too, am in exile from the UU church because I do not support the trans movement as it now exists where it encourages young people to harm their bodies with hormones, surgery, and drugs, and where it encroaches on the hard won rights of natal women. It is comforting to know I am not the only one. I have felt so very alone and silenced.
Same at my UU church where I've attended for 28 years.
I recently went back to a Baptist congregation in Canada after years away from any church. People from 40 different countries represented. Many black and brown people and new immigrants. Musical lyrics often sung in multiple languages. And everyone gets along fine, with no evidence of identity politics or policing of "microagressions". Just a bunch of humans with something bigger in common than the amount of melanin in their skin. And the congregation is growing fast. Maybe you should try a new church?
My Mother loved UU for all the reasons you describe and would be horrified to know what it has degenerated into. I admire your sense of justice and willingness to give voice to the many who cannot or will not speak out.
Universal intolerance in service of a Unitary vision of ultimate authority vested not in God, but in humans. Define the oppressor and oppress him in arbitrary exercises of power. No allowance for the possibility that ultimate justice resides in heaven. Decency and humility are cast aside.
IMO it would be a more productive use of energy to gather the traditional UUs and re-establish a new congregation than to give energy to the old structures by fighting them.
There is a group trying to form a coalition around UU Classic. It is called North American Unitarian Association.
May they enjoy the success of Coke Classic.