how much damage this court will do — Mikie

The court will be leaving wreckage in its wake, for sure, but affirmative action has been supported and attacked since John F, Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which included a provision "that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." That was the first step, but legislative action followed in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Over time the principle was extended to other activities, like education, and at the state level, applied to more factors like 'sexual orientation'.

A pun, also rarely known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple (correct or fairly reasonable) interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, especially as their usage and meaning are usually specific to a particular language or its culture.

There's more if you need it.

All this is relevant to the Masculinity thread because Universeness and I are engaging in typical masculine rhetorical maneuvers.

That was a pun?

BTW, 'gullible squirrels' was a pun on the daily Canadian news show, As It Happens. They always end their day's lead in with a pun on one of the day's stories.

Thoughts about this or other cases — or the court in general? — Mikie

The court's decision on affirmative action is as surprising as its decision on abortion. In both cases, the court delivered on the conservative agenda because the majority of justices are conservative. It would have been much more shocking if they had upheld either one. File under "Elections Have Consequences".

It wasn't only conservatives that have had quarrels with various kinds of affirmative action.

Will the decision make a difference? Not having access to higher education is harmful from several angles, but getting a BA degree is not the ticket to career success that it once was. The percentage of workers with bachelors degrees is already pretty high.

District of Columbia 63.0%
Massechusetts 46.6%
Colorado 44.4%
Vermont 44.4%
New Jersey 43.1%
Maryland 42.5%
Connecticut 42.1%
Virginia 41.8%
New Hampshire 40.2%
New York 39.9%

Getting an advanced degree isn't the ticket it used to be either. Depending on the person's family and community background, connections, and so forth, quite a few advanced degree people end up not getting into the career slots for which they had spent so much time and money.

If affirmative action is a gateway to a BA, MA, and PhD, a ton of debt, and a run-of-the-mill job (which it will be for some) the loss isn't as great as it might seem to be.

'Went viral,' is a common phrase in use today. — universeness

Like the video of a herring gull swallowing a squirrel whole "went viral". Neither squirrels nor sea gulls changed their behavior, despite their addiction to social media.

Who knew squirrels were so gullible?

Who had the most agency with respect to the Chicago Housing Authority? In first place was the federal government which established funding and various requirements. Next in line was the Chicago City Council, which had control over certain aspects of CHA. Third in line was CHA, which had to abide by the requirements and limitations other agencies placed upon them. Fourth in line were the various community groups that did not want CHA buildings anywhere near them.

The residents in CHA buildings were at the bottom of the agency and autonomy list, They had no agency with respect to operation of their neighborhood. However, CHA always had waiting lists of people who needed housing and were willing (even anxious) to live there. It wasn't that it was so great: it was that other options were so bad.

The thing about ghettos (from the medieval Jewish ghettos in Italy where the name came from) to your average American ghetto is that living in them is no body's first choice. People are forced to live in ghettos, either by police force (the Warsaw Ghetto) or by social/economic force: it's the only place available. Where would poor people like to live? They would like to live in a nice house/apartment in a quiet, leafy neighborhood with little crime, clean streets, decent schools, parks, good stores nearby -- super markets, drug stores, Target, aldi, etc. Why don't they live there? a) they can't afford the rent in neighborhoods like that b) they won't BE or FEEL welcomed in such a neighborhood. So, they end up in noisy, dirty, high-crime ghettos with crappy schools, no near-by shopping or parks, etc.

Indeed, the problems come down to various levels of tolerance for discomfort caused by other people. — schopenhauer1

I am not confident that this description is realistic, my doubt hingeing on the word "tolerance".

There are unfortunately plenty of people who don't mind roaming dogs biting them and do look at it as if it's just a part of being in a neighborhood. — schopenhauer1

I doubt that very much. They DO mind, even in the ghetto; they don't "tolerate it" - they have to
"endure it". Bad environments (ghettos, homeless encampments, poverty-ridden rural areas, deteriorating public housing, etc.) are the cause of long-term stress-induced disease patterns. In other words, living in very bad environments makes one sick and drives one crazy.

Even bad work environments (evil bosses, bad co-workers, unhealthy working conditions, various things) are stress inducing and can erode physical and mental functioning. Workers aren't at all indifferent to these conditions, it just that IF that is where they are, they have to put up with it.

An example: in Chicago's Public Housing, places like the huge Robert Taylor Homes or Cabrini Green, many residents did resist the social and physical deterioration that was degrading these places. They tried to get repairs made, they tried to limit the effects of negative behavior in the buildings.

What killed these places was Chicago Public Housing policies, like allowing a very high ratio of children to adults. This might be somewhat tolerable when the children are little, but when the children grow into teenagers, the ratio becomes unbearable -- the teen-age children take over with very bad results.

Why did adults stay there until everyone was evicted and the buildings dynamited? They had no choice. Poor people don't have a lot of choices. What is one of the main health differences between reasonably well off people and decidedly poor people? Unavoidable chronic stress.

Some standards can be applied to anyone, without respect to their wealth or poverty, residence in a $1,000,00 - $5,000,000 per home suburb, or stinking ghetto. I suppose one could apply Kant's Universal Imperative or the Golden Rule to anyone. Neither gilded suburbanites nor ghetto dwellers should engage in drive-by shootings, frivolous lawsuits, DIY justice, bribery of private school personnel, rape, public drug use, failure to recycle their empty fine wine bottles, or public drunkenness. That dog? keep it on a leash or inside a fenced yard. Throwing beer bottles into the street? Not acceptable anywhere.

it seems like people do maintain a minimum level of acceptable behavior -- or even aimed for more than that -- because even in a ghetto, people have to interact in an orderly manner to accomplish their goals -- whether that goal is drug dealing, fencing catalytic converters, getting children to school, or scrounging for food,

Do people in gilded suburbs maintain a minimum standard of behavior or better? Or, are they as likely to be inconsiderate, noisy, bad neighbors, and so on? I have little contact with gilded suburbanites, but from what I have read, they are as likely to behave badly as anybody else, but will maintain a veneer of nice behavior. If they are going to shoot you, they probably won't call you a motherfucking bitch first. Or, maybe they like ghetto slang -- I wouldn't know. They probably will take care of their purebred dog, but might sue you for painting your house an inappropriate shade of beige, thus lowering their property value. If you up-stage them in status display, you might be snubbed at the country club.

So, minimum standards are an issue in the gilded suburbs, but the 'level' is higher. There are rules. Violation is verboten.

The neighborhood I live in ranges from stable working class to professional working class, with more upscale people living along the Mississippi River. About 10,000 people live in this neighborhood. Most of the housing is modest single family bungalows with small yards. It's a solid Democratic area. Most people maintain their property reasonably well. Off-leash dogs are a rarity. More objectionable is people not picking up their dog's shit. Driving too fast on residential streets is a problem. Lots of people display "20 is plenty" signs -- drive at 20 mph on most residential streets (it's the law). I'd say there is a consensus about what is minimum acceptable behavior here.

The kind of behavior one sees in 'ghetto' areas -- like noisier, messier partying involving large numbers of people would not be considered acceptable around here. A large party is possible, but quiet, neat, and orderly, please.

Supererogatory standard — schopenhauer1

I looked it up, but this is a totally new word to me. I believe in avoiding rare terms where common terms will serve as well.

Look, your thread title is "What makes a ghetto what it is?". In my book, the term "ghetto" requires poverty. A gated community of millionaires is a "ghetto" only in a satirical sense.

What makes ghettos is what makes people poor. The wealth pump extracts money from working people through reduced wages, reduced benefits, longer hours, inflation, and regressive taxes which penalizes working people much more heavily than rich people. The working class (90% of the population in the USA) is in a 50+ year period of gradual loss. Most working people are significantly poorer now than they were in 1970. The most unlucky working class people are now immiserated. They end up in dilapidated housing because they can not afford better. If they own their own home (which many working class people do) it may be becoming more dilapidated because they can not afford to maintain it.

People who are gradually forced down to the bottom don't just sink, they change on the way down. The milieu of poverty produces alienation and anomie. They do not feel a sense of belonging responsibility, shared community, and so on. They feel beaten, and they are. It is very difficult to get off the bottom once you land there.

How people PERCEIVE the ghetto and the people who live in it is where your conservative red herring and liberal straw men make their entry. Their opinions are relevant because effective political/economic/social intervention will, or will not occur based on one's ideology. The main response to ghettos is slum clearance -- just level them. The ghetto will then disperse and regather somewhere else, because the poor are still poor. Only their ratty, run-down, unsafe, unhealthy tenement has changed (it's now in a landfill). One response (more "liberal") is to replace the slum with nice but durable townhome units and select the residents from the ghetto carefully. Another, more cost conscious response is to replace the slum with "a ghetto in the sky" -- high-rise buildings filled without careful selection.

Ripe ghettos don't have a whole lot of community. There is too much transience, instability, unmet need, crime, etc. for people to bond with lots of other people. Poverty, isolation, anomie, and alienation again. Add cheap alcohol, and plentiful person-recking drugs, and you have a social sink added to the ghetto.

Circling back to the question of "agency": The only people connected with the ghetto who have real agency are the rich people (landlords, investors, real estate interests, speculators, building companies, etc.) who created the ghetto in the first place through very specific policies.

There are some great books on how people get fucked over in the ghetto:

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond is an excellent account of how landlords make money renting ghetto property to the poor.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of how the Federal Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. FHA and VA home loans programs created both the white suburbs (and contributed to white wealth) while, at the same time, concentrating poverty and denying opportunity in the inner city.

Several books about Detroit show how corporate policies and corrupt government turned Detroit from a really great city into the shit hole it is now.

Numerous books about the Chicago Housing Authority show how slum clearance and urban renewal ended up creating new, and worse, ghettos. Most of Chicago's ghettos in the sky have been torn down, replaced by housing for "nicer people". Many of the former high-rise residents received Section 8 housing vouchers. Whether and where they used the vouchers, how well it worked out, and where the former residents are now is mostly unknown.

I want to talk about agency and how it manifests in society. — schopenhauer1

In places like TPF, there are hard determinists who claim we do not have agency--physics is the law. Their opposites claim we have free will and executive agency. My position is that we have a fair degree of agency but free will is limited. Our behavior is subject to numerous determinants of variable strength.

Politics is one of the determinants of how we judge other people's agency. A conservative is more likely to credit individuals with agency: they are well off because they earned it -- they were enterprising, clever, thrifty, etc. The poor are badly off because they are slovenly, lazy, stupid, and wastrels. Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely to attribute their good fortune to beneficial environments, and to explain poverty by attributing to the poor harmful environments.

Neither the rich nor the poor got the way they are strictly on their own merits. The way in which society is organized has a lot to do with success and failure. Peter Turchin (End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration) describes "the wealth pump" which are the various means by which the rich extract wealth from the working class and concentrate it among themselves. Over time, the working class is immiserated, and more and more people end up on the very low end of the distribution -- destitute.

Sorry, got to go to an appointment (old guys' lunch date); more later.

Harvard Business School or not, social science experiments like this have often been found 'non-reproducible'. A different group repeating the same experiment may get much different results or interpret similar results differently.

That said, I'm pretty sure political orientation, religious background, education, wealth, height and weight, sex, market experience, and so forth all interact with each other, under various circumstances. That seems like a truism. I'm not sure I could devise an experiment that would yield consistent, valid results proving that.

Question: did the alleged conservative vegetable shoppers agree that they had picked out inferior produce? If so, did they have an explanation for their behavior? (Maybe what looked OK to the shopper looked inferior to the experimenters?)

Was some unaccounted variable at work? Perhaps wealthy people (rather than conservative) people choose food in a market differently than less-wealthy people?

So, I'm very liberal and I've very fussy about stuff I buy in person. Slightly dented can? No. Slightly discolored spot on banana peel? No. Slightly crushed box of cereal? No. Speck of something on the milk bottle? No. This might be some sort of superstitious thinking, On some things, like shoes, I expect better service from higher cost items more than very cheap ones. On the other hand, if I have to replace an appliance (washing machine) I'm likely to look on line, check out Consumer Reports, and buy it sight-unseen if it's rated highly. Does it make sense to dither over a can of beans but buying a washing machine without seeing it for real? No. (I've looked at a lot of appliances in stores. Touching it, looking at it, etc. doesn't tell you the really essential information: how well does it work, and how long will it last.

Some shopping behaviors (well, behaviors in general) are just irrational -- a little bit crazy.

Got it, Maybe 2053?

No, I missed that. What did he win? (What was his wager?)

No it's not like H & O. I'm thinking that consciousness, or sentience, isn't supported by clusters of nerves that are exclusively concerned with the operation of the animal. Walking, flying, vision, vibration detection, catching prey, avoiding predators, and so forth are managed by specific neural clusters. This is true, to some extent, in our brains too. Presumably, conscious, sentient thought activity is not handled by any and all cells. Rather, mental functions originate in certain areas.

Bear in mind that a lot of our 100 billion neurons are tightly focused on running us meat machines, not in thinking or generating consciousness, whatever that is. C. elegans (a nematode) has exactly 959 somatic cells of which 302 are neurons. Not a lot with which to generate consciousness, on top of running the tiny piece of meat.

A bumblebee clocks in with a million neurons. If 302 neurons can run a nematode, maybe a million are enough to run a bumblebee with a little left over for consciousness. A cockroach also has a million neurons.

It seems to me that consciousness requires a number of neurons well above the number needed to keep the animal alive. I don't think C. elegans has enough neurons; a bumblebee, on the other hand, can learn to do a few things not related to life support -- like "play" a very simple game. On up the ladder re many animals with billions of brain cells. A dog has 530 million cortical neurons--gray matter. Humans have about 16 billion cortical (gray matter) cells.

It seems like Fido has a better chance at consciousness than the cockroach or bumblebee had before you stepped on them.

One of the things the Wagner Group shows is that sending mercenaries abroad is safe and effective when used as directed, but having them within a day's drive of the capitol is hazardous.

Prigozhin would do well not to trust Vladimir & Company, including Lukashenko, with his life. He's likely to be dead meat sooner rather than later. I wouldn't expect too much kindness were I a Wagner soldier, either. Charges dismissed? Probably not. I'm pretty sure the empire will strike back, as soon as they get their act together.

All of my Moscow agents retired, so I don't have any inside information. But my guess is that Russia will not have regime change this week, or next.

I take American right wing militia types seriously. They are quite capable of causing real damage, and have done so at various times and places.

I certainly don't know what all happened in Russia behind the scenes and off the screen. Time will tell, maybe soon, maybe not.

How do commentators here compare the January 6 insurrection in the US capitol building with Prigozhin's coup attempt (if that's what it was)? Granted, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group had a lot more hardware than the Proud Boys could dream of, but in both cases, an attack on the center of power occurred.

According to Peter Turchin, [End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration] the USA is about due for a period of social disintegration. "The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer."

I don't know whether Russia as it is currently constituted is eligible for the kind of severe instability of which Turchin writes. The two episodes of past US instability climaxed in the Civil War, and then in the Great Depression. We are, he thinks, heading for a third crisis period.

The USSR collapsed 32 years ago. Has Russia inherited or developed enough new internal conflicts to tear itself apart? There are obviously significant conflicts, but are they sufficient for Prigozhin's coup to trigger an implosion. One thing Russia seems to be sharing with the USA is "the wealth pump" whereby the elites get richer and working people are immiserated.

Here's a picture from Sunday of "a barrier" blocking a street leading to Red Square. I don't know... It just doesn't look like an adequate barrier to block a determined skate boarder, let alone the Wagner Group. Were they so confident the barrier wasn't needed or was this the best they could do on short notice?

reason (b) a reasonable belief that the person's tie colour clashed with their socks. — unenlightened

As director John Waters showed, conclusively, in his epic film "Serial Mom", the immorality for wearing white high heels after September 1, or wearing clashing tie and socks, is a capital crime.

It seems to me that would be true only if men's lives are somehow better than women's. Is that true? — T Clark

The answer, of course, is NO, it is not true.

Over the last 50 years, real wages have been cut and inflation has reduced purchasing power at significant levels. Neither men nor women are exempt from falling income and rising costs of living. More and more families live on the precarious edge of poverty, having to work more hours in second or third jobs to avoid falling into the pit of poverty.

The realities of class overrun our educated chatter about sex, gender, men (masculinity), and women (femininity). Educated, professional workers are just not in the same boat as blue-collar / gray collar workers. I've been both. The latter is definitely more pleasant than the latter.

Battling "Patriarchy" is a war against the distorted shadows on the wall of the academic cave. Success or failure will have no consequences.

A line from an old song by Count Basie: "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking."

Behavior is observable; thoughts are not. I don't know what you (or anyone else) is thinking. I can't account for all of my own thoughts completely, given that some of them are not conscious. I can, of course, judge the moral quality of my deliberate thoughts, and I do, but I am a very biased judge. Some thoughts are dismissed out of hand as aberrations for which I am not really responsible.

First person accounts of what I, you, or anybody else is thinking are no more reliable than eye-witness accounts (given our capacities for self-deception).

One of the levers of monotheism is that (we presume) god is able to read our thoughts -- everything from the urges of the Id to the most elaborate plans for murder. The believer is taught to monitor his thoughts because god can read his mind, and will hold his thoughts as evidence for and against him. Internalizing the omniscient god is both somewhat effective and somewhat terrible. (I know this from first hand experience.)

I fall back on behavior: is this behavior good or is it bad or somewhere in-between? Was this an isolated, possibly impulsive, act, or was it part of a series of connected actions? An accountant might make an accidental error which costs the company money. That's one thing. An accountant might also systematically rob the company of several million dollars. That's not an accident.

@Baden A focus on masculine aggression and competitiveness ignores the extensive cooperative behaviors that are required to maintain a functioning complex society--cooperation exhibited by men and women separately and in combination. Cooperation and competitiveness are not exclusive -- tune into any team sport broadcast, or just observe the vast array of cooperative activities going on all the time.

Granted, humans are not universally cooperative, either on a macro scale or a very granular micro scale--the source of wars and domestic disputes about household chores.

Personally, I just don't find categorisation behaviour by the masculine~feminine spectrum of supposed traits to be particularly useful when living my life. — apokrisis

I don't either. By the time a child can benefit from reading about the masculine-feminine spectrum his or her location on any M-F spectrum is firmly in place and isn't going to change on the basis of a psychologist's construct.

The same thing goes for Kinsey's homosexual - heterosexual distribution scale. It has diagnostic value for someone who finds that what they want to do and what they are doing is at variance--like a person whose behavior is entirely heterosexual, but whose fantasies are entirely homosexual. Very screwed up. The spectrum is real, and most adults who are reasonably self-aware, pretty much already know what they are and would like to be doing.

How men treat women, how people treat other people, is not a political question, no matter how much political ideologues try to make it one. — T Clark

How people treat each other is a personal, family, social, moral and ethical question, certainly. But I don't see how it can NOT be a political question as well. Jim Crow laws involved white people treating black people very, very badly. People who hate homosexuals tend to discriminate against them. Women could not vote (in this country) until the 20th century. How have these wrongs been ameliorated? Through political action, because what people can get away with or for what they are punished for doing is determined through political processes. Women weren't granted the vote through religious means. The Civil Rights efforts by blacks were nothing if not political. Homosexuals resisting police bar raids was entirely political.

That said, I don't understand why Apokrisis' post was so caustic.

What is a real man? — Moliere

This has been a conflicted issue for me, more earlier in life than later. I didn't fit. First, I was seriously visually impaired from birth, which has been a life-long limiting factor. (I didn't hear about partially blind, partially deaf E. O. Wilson till it was way too late for him to be a model.). Second, I am gay. This isn't an impairment, but it can require extra psychic labor to locate define and locate one's self in community.

I did have good models of manhood: my father especially, and there were uncles and family friends. My father was a steady long-time worker in the post office, and a produce gardener. He had grown up on an Iowa farm when horses were still essential, and he had a lot of general skills. He was always even tempered--something I didn't become till late in life. He supported a large family of wife and 7 children. He smoked but didn't drink. He was very active in church and small-town community life. A good man.

I wanted to be "a good man" too, but with different parameters than my father's. I often found myself up against the status quo, and resisted. Successful resistance, and if not resistance then strong criticism of the status quo was a significant piece of manliness. I was a SJW before the term was coined. As a consequence, my worklife was not particularly peaceful, nor highly remunerative. A lot of the leftists and gay activists that I admired were resisters, criticizers, and in general trouble makers for the establishment. They were "real men".

On the other hand, I consider pleasure in art, film, literature, and music also a significant part of manliness, as long as it isn't too academic, too 'fussy', too rationalized. Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans, excoriates the academic, fussy, feminist, POMO climate he depicts in the University of Iowa's Writers' Program through a gay student frustrated with the artificiality of it all.

Ready-to-go sexuality is also a feature of manhood. Of course I realize that there are various restrictions, boundaries, limitations, and degrees of decorum that we (try to) respect, but I expect men will be sexual when and where it is possible, and that this is a good thing.

I don't consider my definition of manhood applicable to all men. Manhood varies from the refined to the rough.

Here's refined gay Cole Porter's take on the rough man from his 1929 musical, 50 Million Frenchmen:

Find me a primitive man,
Built on a primitive plan.
Someone with vigor and vim.
I don't mean a kind that belongs to a club,
But the kind that has a club that belongs to him.
I could be the personal slave
Of someone just out of a cave.
The only man who'll ever win me
Has gotta wake up the gypsy in me,
Find me a primitive man.

https://careersmart.org.uk... — Hanover

I have spent many hours mulling over lists like this, trying to realistically locate myself in jobs I could do and jobs I wanted to do -- or, in roles I wanted to occupy.

I've known too many people who do or do not live up to the cliches across the sex line to think sex is very determinative of one's traits or abilities. — Moliere

Most of us know particular men and women who are not typical of men and women - in general. Take 1 million women and 1 million men and there will be significant differences.

I'll need a link. — Hanover

Don't we all? This is a famous ad, a Clio winner, a classic.

I'll drink to that.

Deficiencies in services for the elderly, the disables, the mentally ill, the chronically (physically) ill, the poor, the addicted, unemployed, etc. are a feature of neoliberal economics. Eliminate or privatize public services; if the private sector can't make a profit in social service, well, too bad for the customers.

Really, it's entirely their fault. If they had worked harder, saved more money, had not used the products of some Fortunate 500 companies, if they had been more disciplined, studied harder, eaten healthier food - which they couldn't afford, and exercised more - which they were too tired from work to do, they wouldn't have all these problems. So fuck the who lot of whining cry babies!

Antagonism "between trans folk and those with disabilities" is, here, in the mind of the beholder.

I don't believe any and all requests for accommodations from disabled persons are justifiable (in terms of expense and disruption) and the same goes for accommodations for trans people. As I said, if a bathroom or locker room can be neutered with a change in signage, fine. If it takes a large construction project to produce a neutered bathroom or locker room, then... maybe one or two trans people don't get one.

It's ridiculous to frame this discussion as a fight between trans and disabled folk. — Banno

The reason for mentioning disability is that I am aware of the substantial cost for building out additional bathrooms that weren't in the original floor plan. If a building has a bathroom that can be neutered (changing the signage) that's not a cost issue. If building out is required, then cost is an issue,

I wouldn't have the Emancipation Proclamation as a holiday because it only freed slaves in states that opposed the union. Many northern states continued having slaves until the 13th amendment. — TiredThinker

Well, to be honest, I don't give a rat's ass for the Juneteenth celebration -- it just isn't part of my heritage. Ditto for the Emancipation Proclamation, or VE or VJ Day. Some people in Minnesota celebrate Syttende Mai the 17 of May (Norwegian Constitution Day), Svenskarnas Dag (Scandinavian Midsummer Festival), Cinco De Mayo (5th of May) or Deutsche Tage (German Days) in June. These aren't important to me, and they aren't general enough to be national holidays.

That's the problem I see in Juneteenth -- it's not a general celebratory event for all black people--mainly southern Texans, let alone everyone else. Ditto for Kwanzaa.

All that said, people can and will do their own thing with celebrations, and that's fine. I would just as soon that Gay Pride Day be a gay event, and not a city-wide, state-wide, or nation-wide party.

This is to say the Proclamation was a strategic manuever. — Hanover

I was taught in 7th grade history that the Civil War was about slavery, which is why Lincoln "freed the slaves". With several more history classes, and some reading over the last few decades, I would agree that it was a strategic maneuver. It wasn't a foredrawn conclusion that the Union would win the war, after all, any more than it's a foredrawn conclusion that Ukraine will win its war.

That's not exactly a democratic success story. — frank

History is full of inconsistencies, contradictions, great and shabby compromises, falsehoods, truth, and more. A lot of pieces in the American Experience were/are not democratic success stories. Maybe, possibly, perhaps the greatest success in the American Experience is the story that we are the very model of the perfect democracy. Everything about slavery flew in the face of our ideals, but democratic processes allowed for the formal institutionalization of slavery.

Or, why not a holiday for the Emancipation Proclamation which was the news to arrive late in Galveston. Lots of notable black people to commemorate.

We need more holy days with time off. How about Joe Hill's birthday, or Eugene Debs death day, or several union holidays? Let's celebrate Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Bread and Roses Day?

One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc — Tom Storm

I presume that being trans, like being gay or straight, is NOT a choice. The style in which one lives out his or her sexuality, however, is a choice, moderated by circumstances. As a gay man, I could elect to wear black leather and chains or corduroy suits. I could choose to be sexually promiscuous, sexually abstemious, or something in between. I could solicit sex from inappropriate people (like students, clients, choir boys, etc.) or not. There are all sorts of things that I could do as a matter of lifestyle choice. The same goes for heterosexuals. And the same goes for trans people.

here are, however, costs associated with any given choice. Sexually promiscuous men are likely to experience more infections and if they are reckless, are likely to get arrested or worse. Trans people have to elect their lifestyle options in light of their (social and material) environment, just like everybody else does. Society is no more obligated to accept all trans lifestyle choices, any more than they are obligated to accept all gay or strait lifestyle choices.

Accepting lifestyle choices is not the same thing as accepting someone's right to exist.

You raise an important issue.

1 in 7 Americans have a disability that interferes with ordinary life activities. Even so, advocates and legislators have been working on accommodations for people with disabilities for over 50 years. The ADA federal bill was passed in 1990. There are still plenty of barriers which disabled people encounter, though a lot of progress has been made over the last 50+ years.

Transseuxuals / transgendered people have been present for the last 50+ years, but have become an organized advocacy group much more recently. In addition, the age at which some persons declare themselves to be trans has fallen into the years of childhood.

Perhaps there are as many as 1/2 of 1% trans people. What counts as "trans" varies. Some people's 'trans' status seems to be ideational and emotional. They may not alter their appearance at all. Conversely, some people require a change of costume, change in circulating hormones, and a radical restructuring of their anatomy.

Thousands of cities, businesses, and building owners have discovered that making the required accommodations for physical disability are quite expensive. Creating a fully accessible bathroom can run into many thousands of dollars. Eliminating steps into a building can require a lot of construction work. Establishing systems and facilities for the hearing and visually impaired, to cite another example, requires considerable institutional effort and commitment

My point is this: providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, and the number of beneficiaries doesn't justify the required spending, especially when we have not met all the very definite needs of 60 million disabled Americans.

It's interesting that no one ever raises the issue of female to trans-male. No one seems to care and perhaps this says something about attitudes to women more generally.
— @Tom Storm — Hanover

I raised that very issue in my post above.

(1) those of sexual orientation "woman" and (2) those of gender orientation "woman." — Hanover

The term "sexual/gender orientation" doesn't help discriminate between one kind of "woman" and another kind. Would "sexually" or "chromosomally" defined and "gender defined" be better? Or just say, "real woman" and "fake woman" (real man and fake man).

You have written about the difficulty of defining "woman" because, apparently, "new categories of woman" have been created/floated/tried. In your view, is it equally difficult to define "man"? An XX woman, born with breasts, ovaries, uterus, and vagina (BOUV) could have her distinctive BOUV organs removed, and replaced with testosterone injections, a penis like fleshy tube, and a skin pouch with plastic testicles. A beard and body hair might grow. Some changes in musculature might occur, depending on age and activity level. Is this person a 'real man' or a 'disfigured woman'?

Is the issue charged because some sort of (apparently disguised) female-like potentially predatory person could use a woman's toilet, and this would be very disturbing to 'real women'? And on the other hand, men wouldn't be disturbed by a (apparently disguised) male-like person, predatory or not, using a man's toilet?

But then one might ask, are F to M transsexuals at risk of attack while using men's toilets? I suppose it would depend on the toilet. A F to M could safely urinate in the toilets of the Campaign of Human Rights, but maybe the toilet at Tea Party HQ, or a really rough biker bar would not be a good place to test things out. Is anyone safe in a Tea Party toilet?

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin. It's about the problem of immiserated masses, over-production of elites, and the conflict this has led to again and again in different societies. Just published yesterday.

I enjoy reading books which eloquently and elegantly describe how cancer works, or how historical processes are the meat grinder of civilizations -- including ours. "Ah. So that's how one dies of cancer; or how a country goes down the tubes." At least I don't have to worry about being one of surplus elite.