"You Owe Me Your Opinion", She-Hulk: Attorney At Law Edition

 Women being angry at things appear to be an unlimited vein of ore for certain genre cultural artifacts, as evidenced by my favorite hobby horse in this space, Paul Feig's 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, less objectionably Xena: Warrior Princess. Despite generally favorable ratings at Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing, 87% fresh from the critics, 74% audience score), the preemptive kvetching from outlets that can be counted on to tell us What We Need To Think — e.g. ScreenRant — are busying themselves letting certain audience reviewers Have Wrong Opinions. In particular, they have a beef with IMDB's audience score, currently at 5.2/10 stars.

...[A]s exposed by the review bombs of She-Hulk and other recent projects, IMDb’s intent to offer a credible index of genuine audience reviews has been massively undermined by one of its own rules and by the site’s rise in popularity. The rise in bad-faith IMDb reviews, particularly for projects led by women and/or BIPOC, threatens to render the site’s scores meaningless if the problem is not addressed.

Well, maybe if so much of the film biz (including flacks at places like ScreenRant) weren't aimed at sliming large parts of the potential audience as racists and sexists, this might not happen so much? Regardless of the cheap attempt at mind-reading, De'Vion Hinton has a valid point: IMDB shouldn't allow reviews for products not yet in circulation. But that doesn't mean anybody has to actually like it, either.  He (?) doesn't attempt to break this down by date of review, but the statistics IMDB themselves publish show a certain, um, pattern here:

The plurality of low ratings come from teenage boys. Wow, hoocoodanode? I expect next a soulfully argued piece coming out against calling neighborhood bars and looking for Amanda Hugginkiss.

Public Health Reticence To Call Monkeypox A Sexually-Transmitted Disease Meets New Evidence

 One of the most baffling things about the recent monkeypox outbreak is the nearly unanimous refusal of public health agencies to declare it a sexually transmitted disease. On the one hand, monkeypox is above the break at the CDC's sexually transmitted disease page — along with COVID-19:

On the other, it doesn't make the big list at the bottom. Moreover, the CDC continues to insist that "anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, who has been in close, personal contact with someone who has monkeypox is at risk." The WHO website is even worse on the subject of transmission, saying, "While close physical contact is a well-known risk factor for transmission, it is unclear at this time if monkeypox can be transmitted specifically through sexual transmission routes."

Careful researchers will always need to make sure they aren't fooling themselves, it's true, but a CNBC news story today highlights exactly how illusory is the politically-motivated desire of public health officials to omit gay male sexual behavior as the primary mode of transmission:

In recent weeks, a growing body of scientific evidence — including a trio of studies published in peer-reviewed journals, as well as reports from national, regional and global health authorities — has suggested that experts may have framed monkeypox’s typical transmission route precisely backward. 
…

“A growing body of evidence supports that sexual transmission, particularly through seminal fluids, is occurring with the current MPX outbreak,” said Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, medical director of the University of Chicago Sexual Wellness Clinic, referring to monkeypox and to recent studies that found the virus in semen.

Consequently, scientists told NBC News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities should update their monkeypox communication strategies to more strongly emphasize the centrality of intercourse among gay and bisexual men, who comprise nearly all U.S. cases, to the virus’ spread.

It will likely take a while for this to pervade the CDC et al., because their cosmology does not admit that gay male promiscuity never entirely went away, even after after the AIDS crisis, and is loathe to criticize LGBT+ individuals for any reason. While it may be true that a comparative minority of gay men are promiscuous in this way, young gay men especially are more likely to have multiple partners than either older gay men or straight people of either sex. The lessons of AIDS have been frequently forgotten by the current generation.

The Kansas Abortion Referendum: The Gap Between Activism And Governing

 The Bulwark positions themselves as a centrist organ, "focuse[d] on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices". Charlie Sykes today published a piece about the failure of yesterday's abortion ban referendum in Kansas and what it means going forward in the ongoing politics of abortion. The important points:

• Pro-choice advocates stuck to messaging about government medical mandates, linking them to unpopular mask and vaccine mandates.
• They also stayed away from the crazier "men can get abortions, too" nonsense, avoiding "scratch[ing] their ideological id."
• They mentioned that abortion is already highly regulated in Kansas.
• The measure lost even in some counties that voted for Trump in 2020.

Pro-choice people will have to model this messaging going forward, though the details will differ depending on locale. It probably helped immensely that the bill was a radical measure that would ban abortion under all circumstances, which is a consequence of conception personhood. It really highlights just how unpopular conception personhood really is once people consider its logical conclusions: under this rubric, abortion has the same valence as first-degree homicide (laying in wait). This underpinning ideology is fine if you need to get activists worked up, but it's a positive hindrance if you need to speak to people outside your tribe, i.e. if you need to actually govern. In that vein, it's pretty significant that the measure's advocates felt the need to use confusing language to hide what a "yes" or "no" vote actually meant.

 With Roe v. Wade now a matter for the history books, latitude for sweeping, polarizing gestures politicians don't have to worry about because, Supreme Court, has suddenly collapsed. San Clemente might try to make their city a "sanctuary for life", but did anyone actually ask people living there what their opinions on the matter might be?

Trans Proselytizing In Elementary Schools Is No Moral Panic

 Florida's HB 1557 created something of a firestorm, in case you haven't heard. The opposition Democrats and their friends in the press called it the "Don't Say Gay" bill, the furor being over this paragraph:

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

It is arguable that this could extend to a number of incidental discussions (hence, the hypothetical of a gay teacher being forbidden to discuss weekend plans with his husband). It's already facing a court challenge, which focuses on its vague drafting. But if it falls, this will not go away, because the motivations for it have not:

• Transsexual agitators seek to use the public schools for literal recruiting in ways that gay and lesbian advocates did not. Andrew Sullivan recently reviewed the materials on sexual identity lately published for very young children, and concludes this is now very mainstream:
  

  Am I nut-picking? Are these examples on the fringe? One indication that they are not is that “Born Ready” was written by a board chair of the Human Rights Campaign, Jodie Patterson. It doesn’t get more mainstream Gay Inc. than that.

  It is not, of course, totally normalized in the public schools just yet, but it's pretty clear where this is destined:

  For the sake of argument, let’s posit that this kind of teaching, and these kinds of books, are not yet entrenched in K-8 in public schools. But they are definitely popping up in stories around the country — in Stamford, CT; in West Hartford, CT; in Oak Park, CA; in Chicago; in Seattle; in Charlotte-Mecklenberg, NC; in St. Paul, MN; in Jefferson County, KY. Parents are beginning to hear their kids talk about “women with penises,” as more teenage girls suddenly announce they’re transitioning, and the White House doubles down on affirming puberty blockers for children, even as European countries begin to realize they overstepped. (In the U.K., Sweden, Finland, and France, medical authorities are sounding the alarm. But the Biden administration regards these drugs as essential.)

  As always, the end goal is sexual transition, using puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and reassignment surgery. What is the analog of this among gay men or lesbians, in the Stonewall era or the present one?
  
• Pediatric sex transition has the backing of the medical establishment and the Democratic Party. Health & Human Services offers a guide to pediatric sexual transition, one which apparently is the White House playbook now. This guide cites position papers from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Jenn Psaki has recently stated that sex reassignment surgery, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy amount to "best practice"; states preventing it "will be held accountable". Accountable, though, for what?
  
• The academic and institutional recommendations principally push for self-ID as the standard, and prescribe medical interventions at surprisingly young ages in some cases. The Endocrine Society's guidelines (2017, PDF) at least admits the possibility that some people who claim to be gender dysphoric may "have conditions other than gender dysphoria/gender incongruence and … may not benefit from the physical changes associated with this treatment", i.e. that appropriate screening is necessary. On the contrary, the AAP document (2018) flatly calls anything other than self-ID as "conversion therapy", noting this approach has been "banned by executive regulation in New York and by legislative statutes in 9 other states as well as the District of Columbia." And the WPATH guidelines (2012, with a new edition to be released shortly) are even more explicit, saying "withholding puberty suppression and subsequent feminizing or masculinizing hormone therapy is not a neutral option for adolescents," and that these interventions should occur "as soon as pubertal changes have begun … it is recommended that adolescents experience the onset of puberty to at least Tanner Stage 2. Some children may arrive at this stage at very young ages (e.g., 9 years of age) [emphasis mine]."
  
  
• Evidence for improved post-transition mental health is extremely sketchy. Advocates badly misrepresent such evidence as we do have. The supporting belief undergirding pediatric transition is that it results in improved mental health outcomes, and particularly lowered suicidal ideation. But Jesse Singal's recent essay on Tordoff, et al. showed the opposite, that puberty blockers and hormone therapy does not help the mental health of kids with gender dysphoria (formatting is original equipment):

  … [K]ids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.

  It’s hard even to figure this out from reading the study, which omits some very basic statistics one would expect to find, but the non-result is pretty clear from eTable 3 in the supplementary materials, which shows what percentage of study participants met the researchers’ thresholds for depression, anxiety, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts during each of the four waves of the study:

  

  At each time point, “PB/GAH” refers to the kids who reported being on puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones, while “none” refers to the kids who reported no such treatment.

  "The kids in the study arrived with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems, many of them went on blockers or hormones, and they exited the study with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems." All of which is to say, transition did nothing to improve kids' mental health.
  
  
• The claim that efforts to discuss sexual identity with very young children is a moral panic is categorically different from the most famous recent widely known instance, the satanism panic of the 1980s. This is all over social media, of course, but evidence of the mainstreaming of the "moral panic" slur may be found in this Advocate piece of September, 2019 that smears Andrew Sullivan's criticism of pediatric transition as some sort of "unintentionally ... transphobic" writer, smirking that "transgender people are coming for your kids":

  I have been trying to find someone, anyone, I could seduce into the seamy underbelly of the transgender lifestyle. I thought perhaps I could take them to the Southern Comfort Conference or sneak them into a meeting of the National Center for Transgender Equality. So I have hung around soda counters, pool halls, and even pachinko parlors (look it up). I have wandered Times Square at 2 a.m., looking for groups who appear vulnerable and/or defenseless, and hissing, “Hey … wanna buy some estrogen? Testosterone? Good stuff! Guaranteed hospital grade!”
  

  This descends into the usual minimization of all critics as being 1950s McCarthyists, tarring everyone raising alarms at the poor quality of the research being used to support medicalization and surgery. Again, this is coming from The Advocate, which as Sully said before, is about as mainstream Gay, Inc. as it gets. But the most visible historical precedent of moral panic involving young children and sex is not very favorable to the pediatric trans argument.
  
  The McMartin Preschool case, the zenith of the satanism panic, hinged entirely on the discredited recovered memory therapy of Lawrence Pazder. Judy Johnson, the mother of a child at McMartin, claimed the staff there engaged in ritual sexual abuse of children and animals, and a lot more; she was eventually hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia and died from the side effects of alcoholism before the preliminary hearing she sparked had concluded.
  
  That is to say, the whole thing was a farce, a made-up string of lies based on the charges of a mentally ill woman, abetted by pseudoscience and bogus experts. There were no sexual abusers lurking there, no witches, no chambers, and no tunnels. But proselytizing for sexual transition has both a real goal (puberty blockers, hormone therapy, sexual reassignment surgery) and people willing to carry this out. These are real outcomes, supported by institutional players, not hobgoblins manufactured by quacks. Trans advocates cannot escape this, because it is what they actually demand.

 I do not profess to know what the right course of action for young people with gender dysphoria is. But the medical profession and a lot of institutions have taken the trans party line that pediatric transition is the way to go, evidence or no. As Sullivan wrote recently,

What we need … is clarity and transparency about what exactly is “age-appropriate.” This is completely routine for all subjects, because toddlers and teens obviously need different approaches. And we should tailor teaching according to age. I’ve been an openly gay man my whole adult life, but I don’t think that kids in primary grades need to know anything more about homosexuality, let alone gay sex, than what they may pick up in the media or find out from their parents. For that matter, I don’t see why the tiny phenomenon of trans identity — much less than one percent of the population — needs to be centered in sex ed for eight-year-olds. But I do think public schools should teach the facts about sex, including homosexual orientation and transgender identity, as neutrally as they can.

People need to take a breath and step back. And more importantly, we need serious pushback on the institutions that have been knocked senseless in the name of a misguided sense of fairness.

The Suppression Of Black Lives Matter Abuse At Meta/Facebook

 I've previously written about the obvious scam that is Black Lives Matter; as a basic matter, there is no national organization per se, and as a consequence, money donated to that cause merely awaits the right scammer to pick up the tab, particularly as much of it passes through the sticky and opaque fingers of ActBlue, a fundraising siphon where accountability goes to die.

Sean Campbell's extensive update to the story at New York magazine discovered that Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Melina Abdullah had purchased a home with

… more than 6,500 square feet, more than half a dozen bedrooms and bathrooms, several fireplaces, a soundstage, a pool and bungalow, and parking for more than 20 cars, according to real-estate listings. The California property was purchased for nearly $6 million in cash in October 2020 with money that had been donated to BLMGNF [Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation].

Of course, this meant that the BLMGNF immediately started playing defense, changing ownership of their clubhouse (known as "the campus") "to an LLC established in Delaware by the law firm Perkins Coie … [ensuring] that the ultimate identity of the property’s new owner was not disclosed to the public." It also meant 

…monitor[ing] social media for negative mentions of BLMGNF, with members using their influence with the platforms to have such remarks removed. It’s currently not possible to share the Post’s article on Cullors’s home purchases on Facebook because the site’s parent company, Meta, has labeled the content “abusive.” At other points, Bowers and his associates direct a private investigator to look into BLMGNF detractors and journalists, including me.

(Emboldening mine.) The ban appears to be over, thankfully, but it's pretty clear they fully expect the cooperation of social media companies to prevent unseemly details from leaking out. To their credit, as far as I can tell, Twitter never did play along with this game.

Lia Thomas And The Denial Of Biological Reality

 Jerry Coyne, whose Why Evolution Is True blog is linked on the sidebar, has a fine post from earlier in the month outlining the problems with Lia Thomas' swimming record:

While her performance on the men’s team was so-so, Thomas has become famous by cleaning up after joining the women’s team, breaking record after record and beating her opponents by substantial times. She may well break the records of famous women swimmers like Katie Ledecky and Missy Franklin.
…

It’s also clear from recent research (see here, for instance), that many of these advantages are acquired at puberty, and even hormone-blocking after puberty (testosterone suppression) won’t eliminate either physical or performance advantages of males, even after three years of treatment. (The International Olympic Committee used to require only one year of hormone suppression.) While Thomas has had several years of hormone suppression, she still shows the physical advantages acquired as a male who experienced puberty, and there’s little doubt that these advantages are making her a champion.

To deny the above is to deny reality. Thomas’s new record of victory largely reflects the physical and phsiological [sic] advantages over women she gained at puberty. While she identifies as a woman (and should be treated as such in nearly every area save sport), she is winning with the advantages gained as a male. This should be uncontroversial to anybody who knows the facts.

 I somehow missed that "[T]he Olympics has, for the moment, rescinded its rule on transgender athletes and has no rule in place at all", which I assume means the extremely lax rules published last November.

Much to my surprise, Outsports had a surprisingly open response to the Sports Illustrated interview with Thomas that also sparked Coyne's essay (one of at least two he's written on the subject). I say "surprisingly open" because Cyd Zeigler at least recognizes this is not strictly a left-vs-right culture war fiasco.  But her Outsports piece calls legislative efforts to ban transwomen in women's sports "unnecessary". When the sanctioning bodies refuse to understand the differences between men and women, people not under the sway of gender ideology will notice this and act accordingly. When the NCAA and IOC have fallen prey to trans activist bullying, it's time to stand up and be counted.

Black Lives Matters: The Lid Comes Off The Con

 I have said now for at least a couple years that Black Lives Matter is a label, not a proper organization. Jen Monroe at her Substack has recently detailed the painful unraveling of whatever shambles existed of that organization, and particularly, what happened to $60 million in donations now that "[b]oth Andrew Kerr of the Washington Examiner and Sean Campbell of New York magazine reported on the lack of leadership and transparency within the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation."

To recap –- the nation’s premier social justice organization does not have a functioning board of directors, nor an office, and $60 million that nobody is willing to say who is in control of. According to BLMGNF’s bylaws, the executive director has control of all funds related to the corporation but it seems it has not had anyone in that role since Cullors left.

It turns out the most visible arm of BLM has murky finances, former officers buying themselves real estate in multiple tony addresses, and no visible leadership — none of which is a surprise. This is a more extreme form of the general problem of "awareness" in charities, which always amounts to an excuse for self-referential fundraising. Given the state of racial hucksterism, I fully expect that even this brazen cash grab will result in a shrug among their corporate donors, whose major interest is in shooing away bad press.

The Senator From East Virginia Takes On Licensing Of PetSmart Groomers

 Shoshana Weissmann’s Twitter persona as the Senator from East Virginia is the cover story for her advocacy on a number of subjects with the R Street Institute: DMCA Section 230, social media regulation, and especially, occupational licensing. Charming, smart, and funny despite the numerous trolls she attracts daily, she gets to a lot of stories that would otherwise miss my attention. One such that escaped me from 2018 was a tawdry story of New Jersey PetSmart groomers actually killing dogs in their custody — and PetSmart immediately turning this into an opportunity to pretend that licensing dog groomers would have fixed this situation!

PetSmart should absolutely be held accountable for these losses. Harming dogs in this way is both unconscionable and illegal. The state of New Jersey ought to step in and investigate. However, a pet grooming license will do little to help protect dogs from negligent or reckless groomers.

The New Jersey bill would require individuals to pass an exam, be at least 18 years of age and “of good moral character” to obtain a groomer license. The problem, however, is that large corporations like PetSmart will have no trouble getting licenses for their groomers. PetSmart is a major company with the financial means to train its staff and ensure that its groomers have licenses. In fact, PetSmart already trains its groomers.

Instead, adding licensing requirements will prevent smaller groomers from practicing — including struggling small businesses, teens who have learned to groom to earn some extra money, and other individual groomers of poorer means who have been grooming pets for years but cannot afford the training.

Now, it should also be mentioned that among the dogs that died, 20 of 47 were brachycephalic breeds — in other words, dogs with congenital breathing disorders bred into them. This is not an excuse, of course, but it does help to understand why some of them died, anyway. It in no way excuses PetSmart’s absurd reaction, which would kick people out of the business who had not killed any dogs.

Review: The French Dispatch

There was a moment when I was in a Westwood theater watching L.A. Story where the plot amiably loped toward a weekend getaway at an upscale resort hotel. The hotel's name slipped out of Steve Martin's mouth so stealthily that, when the establishing shot showed the name "El Pollo del Mar", I exclaimed out loud, "Chicken of the Sea?" And the entire audience erupted. The French Dispatch is full of moments like that, and even though I have much less experience with French than Spanish, it's a big part of the buffet of little comedic moments that constantly wash over you.

The action centers on Bill Murray, who plays mainly a supporting role as Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the publisher of The French Dispatch; around him is one of the most talented ensembles I've seen in years, including Benicio del Toro, as the homicidal painter Moses Rosenthaler who eventually seduces his prison guard Simone (Léa Seydoux, who somehow manages to be naked and funny at the same time). Frances MacDormand gets another typically dissolving character role as the crusty Lucinda Krementz. The third act utterly belongs to Roebuck Wright (as Jeffrey Wright) and Steve Park (as Nescaffier, one of the film's many punning names) in an absurdist kidnapping and culinary caper. I laughed almost the entire way through it, and harder than any film of the last decade that I can immediately recall. Run and see this one.