Weekly Roundup
Reading, watching, & listening list
King County Jail Whistleblower Comes Forward
For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Nikki Johnson interviews a former nurse who worked for five years at Jail Health about cross-sex housing and safety concerns for female inmates.
These challenges faced by our prison system demand immediate attention and thoughtful reform. The experiences shared by Olivia and others like her reveal a deeply flawed system that prioritizes ideology over safety, putting vulnerable populations at risk. As a society, we must recognize the imperative to protect the rights and safety of female inmates. This requires a thorough reevaluation of current policies, implementation of standardized, evidence-based procedures, and a commitment to ongoing dialogue between correctional facilities, healthcare professionals, advocates, and the inmates themselves.
Don’t Let Gender-Affirming Care Be the New Abortion
For her Substack, BROADVIEW, FAIR Advisor Lisa Selin Davis writes about why it would be a mistake for liberals to continue linking abortion and gender-affirming care.
To continue to link abortion and gender affirming care is block offramps for Democrats, wanting to walk back unyielding faith in these treatments, aware that supporting them played some role in the Democrats’ massive defeat on Election Day. To link them is to make it hard for people anywhere on the political spectrum to object to or support one without endorsing or rejecting the other, when these issues don’t break down neatly along party lines. There are anti-abortion Republicans who support gender-affirming care, and pro-choice Democrats wary of it. To link them is to prevent us from achieving comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines for treating gender-distressed youth.
Is there a right to die? Don’t look to liberals for an answer.
For The Washington Post, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid writes about why the expansion of individual autonomy isn’t necessarily always good.
What makes this particularly troubling for me, as someone who still believes in liberal democracy’s core promise, is watching how a noble commitment to personal autonomy has morphed into something almost unrecognizable. We’ve stripped away many of the cultural and religious frameworks that traditionally gave meaning to questions of life and death. In their place, we’ve installed a cold calculation of personal preference and consent.
Kathleen Stock: Right on Gender, Wrong on Board Games
For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay writes about what Kathleen Stock gets wrong about board games.
I regularly play tabletop games with people who hold all sorts of political views (and, for what it’s worth, self-defined gender identities); and the vast majority have the good manners to keep their opinions to themselves. Alas, from surveying mainstream media coverage of board games, one might get the opposite impression—as when The New Yorker recently ran a hopelessly pretentious article under the headline, The Personal, Political Art of Board-Game Design.
Eradicating Consideration of Race in Technology, AI Innovation, and Beyond: An Agenda for Policymakers
For the Cato Institute, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith writes about why the government should adopt a policy of racelessness in technology.
Of course, most anti-racists take issue with racelessness, especially those steeped in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) industry, but their reasons are decidedly illiberal. For them, colorblindness, a concept simply denoting the belief that race need not be considered when evaluating someone, is not a virtue but a vice; it promotes ignoring race and racism. For this reason, the immutable characteristic of race, not merit, achievement, and virtue, is the primary factor in determining one’s character. Also, DEI is a multibillion-dollar industry. Eradicating race, then, would not be in the best financial interests of DEI professionals. One can conclude that DEI professionals do not want to get beyond race and racism.
Magic, Bird & Caitlin Clark
For his Substack, Man of Steele, FAIR Advisor Eli Steele writes about the latest racial controversy surrounding WNBA star Caitlin Clark.
What happens on the court is what most of us care about. There’s no privilege on that court. Clark will learn one day that using race to help others will only lead to more problems — race is a poison that advances nothing and betters nothing but its own corrupted power. If she wants to truly be an asset to others she will have to move beyond performative race-signaling into the human realm — the realm that allowed her to reach great heights by instilling within herself the universal values of hard work, resilience, creativity, and merit.
Appeals court revives lawsuit of doctor who says she was demoted for political beliefs
For Alpha News, Hayley Feland writes about a significant positive development in the lawsuit filed by Dr. Tara Gustilo against Hennepin Healthcare System (HHS).
“Political ideology and discrimination have no place in our healthcare system,” said UMLC attorney James Dickey. “Hennepin Healthcare System Inc.’s retaliation violated Dr. Gustilo’s constitutional rights, and the Court of Appeals recognized that this case has merit and deserves to be heard. Dr. Gustilo is an exemplary doctor who is entitled to voice her beliefs and fight back against their unjust and discriminatory practices that put a political agenda over patient care.”
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Someday they'll restrain themselves from trying to give every female athlete they feature extra sex appeal.
Someday....but not this year.