Chamblee54

Joe Rogan went on a “woke culture” rant the other day, and said this: “you know what else you banned for … you know what will get you banned for life … dead naming … do you know a deadnaming is … if you call Caitlyn Jenner Bruce … banned for life … for life damn ridiculous this is what we’re living in” This set off the bs detector in PG’s fevered mind. As soon as you could say George Jorgenson, PG went to google. This is a repost from 2019.
Does twitter permanently ban people for deadnaming? (Deadnaming is using a trans person’s per-transition name.) As they say at snopes, the result is a mixture, half true, half false. Yes, twitter has changed its rules, and deadnaming is no longer permitted. However, it is not clear how strictly it is being enforced. The one case people like to talk about is Meghan Murphy. Ms. Murphy seems to be a nasty piece of work, who went out of her way to make trouble. She is not a typical case. There are no statistics on how many people have been “banned for life for deadnaming.” G-d is in the details.
Twitter has indeed changed its rules. They will be quoted in the next four paragraphs. If you want to skip over, you will be excused. “Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
“We recognise that if people experience abuse on Twitter, it can jeopardize their ability to express themselves. Research has shown that some groups of people are disproportionately targeted with abuse online. This includes; women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.” (Women are an estimated 50.8% of the population. If you add the other groups, you wind up with a sizeable majority of the population. You create a situation where white, cis, straight males are the marginalized underrepresented community.)
“We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
“When determining the penalty for violating this policy, we consider a number of factors including, but not limited to the severity of the violation and an individual’s previous record of rule violations. For example, we may ask someone to remove the violating content and serve a period of time in read-only mode before they can Tweet again. Subsequent violations will lead to longer read-only periods and may eventually result in permanent account suspension. If an account is engaging primarily in abusive behavior, or is deemed to have shared a violent threat, we will permanently suspend the account upon initial review.”
Twitter is a private company, which some say it is a public utility. These rules have inspired many discussions. It is always easy to point out examples of hypocrisy, and uneven treatment. Some of these objections are valid. Has anyone been banned for saying you should “Punch a Nazi”?
This *woke up call* has a New York Times editorial, How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech. In an ironic touch, this piece about “Free Speech” is hidden behind a pay-wall. For the savvy blogger, a pay-wall is no more effective than a border-wall.
“As a transgender woman, I find it degrading to be constantly reminded that I am trans and that large segments of the population will forever see me as a delusional freak. Things like deadnaming, or purposely referring to a trans person by their former name, and misgendering — calling someone by a pronoun they don’t use — are used to express disagreement with the legitimacy of trans lives and identities. … Kenan Malik argued that banning misgendering will shut down debate on trans issues and strike a blow to free speech. But in fact, the content free-for-all chills speech by allowing the dominant to control the parameters of debate, never letting discussion proceed past the pedantic obsession with names and pronouns.”
The last quote raises more questions than it answers. Who is “the dominant”? Maybe this discussion is about who will be “the dominant” in the next round of the debate. And as for pedantic obsession with names and pronouns… does anyone have a recipe for that can of worms?
The NYT piece had another zesty quote, from certified poopyhead Ben Shapiro. “Is this framework useful? Perhaps Trump is a racist. Perhaps not. Either way, we can have a productive conversation about whether particular Trump statements or actions are racist. But we can’t have a productive conversation that starts from the premise that Trump is a racist overall, and that every action he takes and every statement he makes is therefore covered with the patina of racism. That conversation is about insults, not truth.” Should perceived racial values be a protected category? That is a topic for another discussion. This one has gone on long enough.
To sum things up, Twitter has changed its rules to prohibit transgender trash talk. They probably have good intentions for doing this. It remains to be seen whether these good intentions will lead to hell, or just back into messy everyday life. Twitter is a work in progress, and some well meaning changes run into trouble. It is theoretically possible to get banned for saying Bruce, one time. It does not appear to be happening, yet. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

Joe Rogan Experience #1367 – Bridget Phetasy hit the ether last week. Miss Phetasy bills herself as Writer, Comedian, Verified Nobody. Her real name is Bridget Anna Walsh. The visit to the Rogan show was impressive. Three minutes in, Miss Phetasy made a meme worthy comment.
03:00 “I don’t blame myself for that happening but I do have to take responsibility for the fact that when you’re a woman or a girl and you’re out getting blacked out … bad things happen.” Where was this voice of reason during the Brock Turner circus? A young lady, with a history of blackout drinking, passes out behind a dumpster. This was scarcely mentioned in all the outrage about Brock Turner.
Before going further with this, we can mention a couple of youtube gadgets. If you look under the viewing window, you see three dots. If you click on those dots, you will be able to see a transcript of the show. You copy some of this text, and make a comment. If you put the time of the text in your comment, youtube will make a link to the text. That is how the link, at the start of the paragraph above, was made. The link goes directly to the “don’t blame myself” comment.
Bridget Phetasy is a cool person. She has a youtube show, Dumpster Fire. She likes to make fun of sjw goofiness … a topic that never runs out of material. At 3:48 of the latest episode, she dropped this tidbit: “moving on … clapping banned at Oxford University to stop people from being triggered” She ranted for a few minutes, leading up to this: “around this they banned clapping banned it like I’m gonna end up in the gulag someday fucking clapping I know by these people.”
PG had never heard of this, and wanted to know more. There were several tabloid articles, and this: ‘University of Oxford Clapping Ban’ Rumor. This is the danger of saying “google it.” Someone might find information that you don’t want them to find.
“The first Student Council meeting of the academic year, … passed the motion to mandate the Sabbatical Officers to encourage the use of British Sign Language (BSL) clapping, otherwise known as ‘silent jazz hands’ at Student Council meetings and other official SU events. … BSL clapping is used by the National Union of Students since loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, are argued to present an access issue for some disabled students who have anxiety disorders, sensory sensitivity, and/or those who use hearing impairment aids.”
Clapping out loud is not banned. Nobody is going to the gulag for applauding. While some noise-weary people might appreciate the use of jazz hands, this ban is simply not going to happen. Bridget Phetasy does not always know what she is talking about. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for Phetasy is Pheasant. This is a repost.

@realDonaldTrump Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts…. Our ever tweetable POTUS sent this message out today. It raises an important question: what municipality elects the animal control associate? Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
What an elected dogcatcher reveals about small-town America is the result from The Economist. “You’ve reached your article limit Sign up to keep reading or subscribe now to get the complete experience.” For $12, USD, you can get twelve weeks of this publication. There is no guarantee that you will learn anything about dog catcher politics.
Is dogcatcher actually an elective office? Slate wrote an article about this, when all they had to say was no. The author: “Christopher Beam is a writer living in Beijing.” This is a place where dog catchers are an important part of the restaurant supply chain.
A brief history of people who have actually been elected dog catcher The Washington Post tried a bit harder. They found newspaper clippings referring to elected dog catchers. Col. Tom Parker, the manager of Elvis Presley, was said to have been elected dog catcher in Tampa FL. There is also the story of Bob White. He assured voters that even though he lost both legs, he would be able to perform the duties of dog catcher.
Duxbury VT keeps coming up in this search party. They have a town meeting every year, and the dog catcher is chosen by citizen vote. In the most recent town meeting, “dog catcher Zeb Towne, who was nominated almost unanimously for re-election, despite a “no” vote from his wife that cause laughter to erupt in the room. “She’s mad about the late nights I have to go out on those calls,” Towne said. “It’s because you’re out there rounding up them bitches,” This is a repost.

A recent post included the phrase “getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building.” Those are googling words. Most of the results are hand wringing about the number of overweight people. A couple of the results were worth clicking out.
The headline result is from Merry Olde England, which is becoming known as the fattest country in Europe. Fire service called in 50 times to winch fat people out.
“Paramedics in the West Midlands have had to call on their heavy-lifting emergency service colleagues, despite having extra equipment to help move extremely heavy patients themselves. Over a three-year period they called in West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service on 50 occasions, so the patients could be winched out with apparatus designed for lifting car wrecks. Sometimes morbidly obese patients, … can only be extracted from their homes after a window is taken out, say firefighters.
… Nick Harrison, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, said: “In most cases these people are quite elderly and are suffering from serious medical issues which have left them bedridden for a long time, and they have put on a lot of weight. “Many times we have to remove the whole window frame and get them out that way. It’s a lot safer both for them and for the rescuers.”
… Official statistics show the West Midlands to be the fattest region in Britain, which is itself the fattest major country in Europe. According to the Association of Public Health Observatories, about 25 per cent of adults in Britain are now clinically obese. In the West Midlands, the figure is 29 per cent. By comparison, across the European Union as a whole it is just 14 per cent. “
One of the commenters had a constructive suggestion: “The ‘feeders’ should be brought to court and punished. For every obese person there is one or more ‘feeders’, who shop, supply the food, help the person eat it etc. Being a ‘feeder’ should be a criminal offense.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.