Chemistry

I’m bored and have nothing interesting to say, so here’s a quick chemistry lesson.

This floated across the internet a while ago, but whatever…

Wither Utah, indeed…

The Governor of Utah has had a brain, and vetoed the bill I mentioned the other day, after a huge amount of public pressure opposing the legislation.

“What’s been striking about the correspondence that we’ve been receiving is that it’s not template or spam content. It’s individually and uniquely crafted and often very heartfelt, from parents, from educators, from those who care about Utah’s kids and public policy,” [Allyson] Isom [the governor’s spokesperson] said in an interview with KUER.

Already, some of the fanatics on the right are crying BAWWW, but this is an all around good thing, and is an example of the governor doing the job of his office—standing in the way of legislation that would be harmful to his people, and in conflict of their rights.

The bill was mostly one of sex education in the state schools, and would have made Utah the first state to mandate abstinence-only sex ed across the board (using abstinence-only sex ed to prevent pregnancies and the transmission of STIs, is the equivalent of preventing heart attacks by not letting people know anything about diet, smoking or first-aid).

But the bill had a more sinister undercurrent, for it also prohibited schools from discussing homosexuality in a positive manner. This is abhorrent, and such policy has already directly lead to the deaths of students across the US and the world.

It is all around a good thing to see this kind of legislation vetoed, but it makes me worried about what else the Legislature has brewing…

Germaine Greer tastes the rainbow

Germaine Greer is one of the stalwarts of feminism in the later 20th century, and contributed greatly to the freedoms that women enjoy today. She is also, however, a transphobic idiot:

“Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.”

So, Queer Avengers in Wellington turned up at her book signing the other day, and glitter-bombed her.

Yes, she said offensive things, but to ruin a perfectly good glass of wine with glitter? Unconscionable.

Her statements on transwomen are so ridiculous they would be laughable if they weren’t so damaging. She thinks that they are just men who’ve put on a dress and castrated themselves—she seems to be unaware of what being trans actually entails. That she’s been saying this stuff since the 70’s, and has been called out on it time and time again, shows that she’s wilfully ignorant, and that she’s refusing to even listen to criticism. I get that she’s trying to defend womanhood, but if you’re defending womanhood from people who actually are women, then you either need to refocus your sights, or shut the hell up.

“The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males.”

She denies the rights of transwomen to exist, as well as the rights of women with AIS, which prompted Prof. Milton Diamond to respond,

“While you might readily admit that feminists can differ in their views toward their own femininity or identification with their woman-ness (whatever that might mean) you deny that right to others and see it as some sort of charade. You see it as a weakness that other women accept AIS individuals (and male to female transsexuals) as bone fide women.”

Transphobic feminism should be a thing of the past, and people like Germaine Greer do all of feminism a disservice by spouting such nonsense. And she did more of a disservice in the 1980s and ’90s when she effectively went on a witch-hunt for transwomen:

In 1996, Greer outed Rachel Padman, a physicist at an all-women college at Cambridge University. She stated that the “dignity of this college is marred by this unfortunate event.” Greer apparently had no interest in the dignity of Rachel Padman, who survived Greer’s repeated tabloid attacks and retained her position at Cambridge.

There’s a lot more to being a woman than having two X chromosomes and the matching set of gonads. You’d think that a feminist would agree, but for those like Germaine Greer, you need a full set to enter her house.

Glitter away, good heroes. Glitter away.

Whither Utah?

The Utah Legislature have recently passed a bill that prohibits the discussion of homosexuality in schools, and if the governor signs the bill into law, the state will become the first in the US to prohibit teachers from telling students about contraception.

“… we as a society should not be teaching or advocating homosexuality or sex outside marriage or different forms of contraceptives for premarital sex.”

So saith Sen. John Valentine.

This kind of legislation has been used over and over again to deny LGBT rights. We’re seeing it now in Russia—ironic how the US is passing laws more expected from their historic enemies.

LGBT teenagers are facing a wave of bullying and violence in American schools, and states from Utah to Tennessee, as well as school districts, are responding by further grinding the bullied students into the dirt. The Anoka school district, for example, blames pro-equality activists for driving gay students to suicide.

Hillary Clinton warned the world not to be on the wrong side of history, but many parts of her country find themselves precisely there.