If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Dak]

And enacting this ban seems like the worst way to go about correcting any potentially damaging consequences. First of all, it only bans people from joining, it doesn't do anything about the transgender people already serving, meaning that the number of transgender people in the military can't grow. This inflames the bias already surrounding transgender people that you suggest is probably present, and it prevents that bias from waning through increased interaction. If there's any social institution in which differences like this could be overcome, it's the military--"who fucking cares if the person next to you is transgender, when it comes down to it s/he might save your life."

The ban will only reinforce already existing biases and will prevent the formation of transgender in-groups through which transgender individuals might actually provide some kind of psychological support for one another.

An open policy won't overcome it with differential treatment, which is what providing the extra care and allowances provides (which is, in my mind, the concrete sticking point rather than unit cohesion - how does one even measure "unit cohesion"?). If a person is trans pre-transition and demands no special accommodations, I can - as I said before - see that working, but that's not what the open serving policy was limited to.

The reason that there's still bias internally against female service-members is because the differential fitness and medical standards, and non-deployability due to pregnancy and other higher rates of medical non-availability. These get overlooked on the policy side because keeping women out is losing half of your potential recruitment pool. Transpersons are such a small pool that the military isn't losing much in not accepting them, while the potential cost for such a small pool entering is enormous relative to the population. The oft-cited RAND study said that <500 transpersons requesting surgery and/or hormones could cost more than 8 million dollars per year(I estimate that transition number to be too low if the open policy were enacted, and I expect the cost per person to be at that high end or much higher once all "externals" are factored in). The Pentagon already wastes too much money on expensive projects with little to no benefit other than to the wallets of contractors, no need to add transition surgeries and maintenance to the list. If it's actually about funding transitions, the Pentagon could just straight fund it without adding them into the services.

I think it's true that fewer upper class people join the military than lower class. When upper class people do enter the military, I doubt they're serving in the thick of things, where issues such as distraction and group cohesion really matter.

Well this is highly probable.

 

[Serjeant Grumbles]

Actually, there's a large consensus on that definition among experts and scholars who study the history of race relations. But they're all crazy leftist academics, so why believe them, right?

Plenty of people on the left are critical of that definition, but they're all manarchist brogressives, right?

One can avoid confusion by simply using the term "institutional racism", so people who insist that racism only means "prejudice+power" can rightly be suspected of ulterior motives.

 

[CiG]

Exactly. I don't see why racism has to mean institutional racism or systemic racism. Nobody would deny that those definitions are real forms of racism, but very little would agree that those should be the only definition of racism.

 

[CiG]

Canadian military responding to Trump's trans ban: "Diversity is our strength."

"Oh really? Overwhelming absolute dominance in war is ours."

I love Justicar.

 

[Dak]

FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE

 

[CiG]

Ladies and gentlemen, elite trans only hit squads. Send them in to trigger Islamists into suicide bombing themselves.

 

[Einherjar86]

One can avoid confusion by simply using the term "institutional racism", so people who insist that racism only means "prejudice+power" can rightly be suspected of ulterior motives.

Exactly. I don't see why racism has to mean institutional racism or systemic racism. Nobody would deny that those definitions are real forms of racism, but very little would agree that those should be the only definition of racism.

All racism is institutional (or cultural, or systemic, etc.). That's what you find when you dig into how racism functions, even when we're looking at examples of racism between individuals. Institutional racism is just redundant. There may have been a time, or some remote past/location where racism touched some primordial disagreement between persons. But this element of racism no longer exists, and it's pointless to identify this as the kind of racism that operates primarily between individuals.

This doesn't mean that individuals can't be accused of acting racist, of course.

 

[rms]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-universities.html

Interesting that this already been framed as a "omg reverse racism" issue, especially since i haven't seen a word from the administration on the issue;

outsider:

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.

at least she tells on herself though. poor asians, not enough discrimination

But Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project as “misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups,”

this coupled with the (black) response to the proposed HBO show Confederate (link) just makes me sad

 

[CiG]

A group of Muslim men attacked strangers because they were white “non-Muslims” in a drunken rampage through a city centre.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co...bolton-muslim-gang-liverpool-rampage-13392870

 

[Dak]

Apparently Google blocked Jordan Peterson from his account for "Violating TOS" before eventually reinstating it after the outcry. Shit's getting out of hand.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

Dave Rubin dropped a Kekistan reference on Fox News last night. It was pretty great.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

 

[CiG]

Interesting angle the left is coming from these days.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...obvious_example_of_how_science_is_flawed.html

 

[Einherjar86]

Google bro would argue that we ought to consider the possibility that white women and racial minorities simply produce lower-quality work, which is why we struggle to be recognized as competent knowledge producers. It’s time to turn the tables on this debate. Rather than leaning in and trying endlessly to prove our humanity and value, people like him should have to prove that our inferiority is the problem. Eliminate structural biases in education, health care, housing, and salaries that favor white men and see if we fail. Run the experiment. Be a scientist about it.

Seems like a rational proposal.

I'd rephrase it slightly. Regardless of whether the disparities in education, health care, housing, salaries, etc. are structural or simply the result of lower intelligence, let's rectify them for the purposes of science. Run an experiment and see who succeeds and who doesn't.

But that'll never fucking happen.

 

[CiG]

Eliminate structural biases in education, health care, housing, and salaries that favor white men and see if we fail. Run the experiment. Be a scientist about it.

She has to first demonstrate what that actually entails. That's just political buzzword gibberish.

But that'll never fucking happen.

And be honest here, it will never happen because which crowd will protest it? It won't be the evil right-wing capitalists and science-deniers that make sure it doesn't happen.

 

[Einherjar86]

Give a group of one hundred people from common educational backgrounds--fifty men, fifty women--equal salaries and positions, equal access to health care and adequate housing, and allow a board to review their work anonymously so as to avoid bias.

Let the experiment run for at least a year, preferably longer. Then run it again with new people, same conditions. Then run it one more time.

 

[CiG]

Sounds great to me.

 

[Einherjar86]

That was just off the top of my head. I'm sure it would have to be a bit more detailed...

 

[CiG]

Well sure.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

"Google bro" never even argued that women produce inferior work though, simply that there's no reason to believe that the ratio of men vs women of a certain standard of work is 1:1. Computer engineering has roughly a 9 to 1 graduate ratio of men to women, why should a computer engineering company strive to have a 1 to 1 ratio? There are far more male engineers than female, therefore there will be far more top-tier male engineers than female and "hiring biases" are absolutely normal if they reflect the available worker pool.

Though fwiw I will admit that evo psych is one of the more bullshit fields of science out there, and often not science at all but rather just series of thought experiments to come to some "logical", presupposed conclusion.