The Alma Otter

The University of Illinois hasn’t had an official mascot since 2007, when they retired “Chief Illiniwek.” Like many people I despised that mascot and consider it racist. However, I despise attacks on Free Speech even more. The University is in a bind right now, because when they eliminated the “Chief,” they failed to replace it with a new mascot. Consequently many U of I sportsball fans and alumni continue to “support the Chief” while the U of I misuses trademark law in weak attempts to stop them, mostly for virtue-signal points. This article in the local rag today got me thinking (text below, until I receive a copyright threat):

Pro-Chief group plans event

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February 19th, 2019 | Category: animals, Free Culture, Urbana | 2 comments

Panel: Does Sex Matter? Gender Identity vs. Material Reality

Saturday, March 23rd, 3-5pm
Urbana Free Library, Lewis Auditorium (downstairs)
210 W. Green Street, Urbana IL 61801

A transwoman, a detransitioner, and a radical feminist walk into a Library…. Speaking from different perspectives on modern gender identity politics, these three panelists agree that all people broadly deserve civil rights protections. But should gender identity replace sex as a legal category? Women – particularly marginalized, imprisoned, lesbian, and abused women – pay the highest price for this trend, as sex-based protections and resources are rolled back in the name of “inclusivity.”

Despite their unwavering support for individual expression, each speaker has faced repercussions for critically analyzing gender identity, including threats of violence, professional blacklisting, and

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February 11th, 2019 | Category: heresy, speaking, TERFy, Urbana, wimmyns | One comment

Blacklisted

Ebertfest (Roger Ebert’s Film Festival) is the big film festival in my town (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois). In October, its director told 2 film critics/scholars I know that my new feature film Seder-Masochism was “at the top of our list.” Which makes sense, since it’s by an Urbana filmmaker (me) whose last film was a star at the festival (Sita Sings the Blues) and contains my late father’s voice, which is known to much of the fest’s audience (he used to be Mayor of Urbana, as well as a math professor at the U of I). I emailed Ebertfest in January to ask if they were going to screen it, because I have

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February 4th, 2019 | Category: Academese, Academics, bullshit, festivals, Seder-Masochism, TERFy, Urbana | 11 comments

Another way the Internet is like the Printing Press

10 years ago, the Free Web was revolutionary, democratizing, and empowering. Many of us correctly compared it to the advent of the printing press, another revolutionary technology that was inextricably linked to the Reformation that soon followed.

What I didn’t consider was that also inextricably linked to the Reformation were the European Witch Hunts. (Perhaps not inextricably linked, but simultaneous, were the European Enclosures.) Now we’re seeing online Witch Hunts (and Enclosures too, hello Social Media). So my enthusiasm for the Internet is a lot more qualified now, as is whatever I had for the Reformation.

Recommended reading (albeit in leaden academic prose – someone should rewrite it for a popular audience!): Caliban and the

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February 4th, 2019 | Category: Academics, books, bullshit, handbasket, hell, heresy, sucktastic suckage, TERFy, the interwebs | Leave a comment

Why I Don’t Use “Preferred Pronouns”

The short answer is I use SEX pronouns, not GENDER pronouns.

What activists call mis-gendering is in fact correct-sexing. What “preferred pronouns” demand is mis-sexing, which requires a lot of mental bandwidth.

Like most mammals, I can’t help but identify someone’s sex with +99% accuracy. (A tiny minority of humans intentionally “pass” as the opposite sex, and others are ambiguous. I know a few women who refuse to perform gender entirely, and that confuses some men. Women, I think, are better at identifying sex than men, either due to instinct or conditioning for survival, since males pose threats to us [physical overpowering, rape, impregnation] they don’t pose to other men.)

Pronoun activists are conditioning

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February 4th, 2019 | Category: essay, heresy, TERFy | 3 comments