Savage Minds

Kara Dansky, attorney and author of The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls (2021), discusses Sarah Weddington, the architect of Roe v. Wade, who argued the case before the Supreme Court using the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment that guarantees Americans privacy. Addressing the leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito which indicates that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn the landmark decision, Dansky details possible strategies for American women to regain the right to abortion. The 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and was buttressed by a subsequent 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey 505 U.S. 833 that largely maintained this right. Dansky analyses the various legal and constitutional avenues that would fare better than Roe v. Wade while outlining the dangers for women and girls for the impending overturn of this Supreme Court decision. Explaining how the late Justice Ruther Bader Ginsberg, principal author of the brief that carried Reed v. Reed 404 U.S. 71 (1971), argued that women were discriminated against under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Dansky posits that the Equal Protection Clause would have granted women stronger federal constitutional protections of abortion rights over the Due Process Clause employed by Weddington. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dennis Kavanagh, a former criminal barrister and one of the directors of the Gay Men's Network, discusses his recent article that analyses the case of barrister Allison Bailey against the UK charity, Stonewall, while historicising lesbian and gay rights in Britain since the 1980s. Noting the incredible irony of Britain’s most important gay and lesbian charity having changed course over its historic protection of gay and lesbian rights to swap out the political narrative of sex for gender, where being “same-sex attracted” has been carefully conflated with “gender dysphoria,” Kavanagh elaborates how gender ideology has become a subterfuge for Schrodinger’s medical condition whereby on the one hand, this ideology is framed as part of a larger civil rights movement that is not a medical condition while on the other hand, adherents to this ideology exact demands for medical care. Kavanagh lays out the “culture of silence” that permeates gender ideology whereby women are disproportinately silenced for stating that sex is real while this movement evidences an appallingly regressive discourse replete with misogyny, homophobia and racism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sharron Davies, an English former competitive swimmer who represented Great Britain in the Olympics, discusses how she became embroiled in the debate over men participating in women’s sports in 2019 as she foresaw problems where the inclusion of these men “has the potential to ruin women’s sport.” Having followed the science for many years on this issue, Davies shares her experiences of having had to compete against East German swimmers who were given testosterone to outperform their competitors in what can only be described as a full-blown state-run doping programme. Reviewing the science while arguing for fairness in sports, Davies details how today mediocre male athletes can shift categories and outperform top female Olympians. This obviously poses an existential threat to women’s sports in addition to robbing women of titles, careers, economic remuneration, scholarships and many high profile opportunities which serve these athletes throughout the prime of their careers and beyond retirement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Christian Parenti, professor of economics at John Jay College (CUNY), discusses his recent article “How the Organized Left Got COVID Wrong, Learned to Love Lockdowns and Lost Its Mind: An Autopsy” elaborating on the power of the pharmaceutical industry that has dominated media discourse surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic along with the medical industry’s fixation on vaccines over treatment. Analysing how Covid became politicised by both parties in the US, Parenti discusses how social and medical policies were fomented based entirely upon politics leaving no room for any type of public rethinking of lockdown much less accommodating shifts in current policies as new facts regarding the virus emerged. Parenti explains how the left was caught in “Trump derangement syndrome” while Trump had lost control of his own Covid task force early on, such that there was hysteria being whipped up as the pandemic had been entirely politicised by April 2020 where “everybody with power is abusing it in the name of public safety.” Laying out how the left abandoned the working class during the pandemic, Parenti criticises the way class dynamics have been entirely elided noting how “a bunch of American oligarchs…have masked capitalist exploitation in this fog of woke identity politics.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Richard Hanania, President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a Research Fellow at Defense Priorities, discusses the current Russian war in Ukraine and the intertwined western cultural war deeply embedded within this conflict’s narrative. Noting how the “white conservative Christians bad” forms the ideological core of neoliberal views of this conflict, Hanania explains how wokery has crept into current media and political discourses which show support through emotional readings of the current war in Ukraine without any concern for the humanitarian impact of neoliberal calls to punish Russia. Hanania describes the generational differences of older generations who suffer from Cold War nostalgia lending to their hostile views of Russia while giving detailing the links between television’s influence on the representation of the current conflict. Covering the business model of major media like CNN and MSNBC and the American foreign policy establishment and its policies, Hanania covers the current media bias from the right’s militaristic bent and the left’s focus on identity politics while outlining the dangers in how many intake media. Hanania presents the background of US involvement in Ukraine historically to include its involvement in the protests against Yanukovych and its form of “democracy promotion” which fundamentally amounts to regime change while also accounting for the historical role of NATO in the run-up to this conflict and the post-Soviet situation in relationship to US foreign policy. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dora Moutot, journalist, Instagrammer (@tasjoui), and author of Mâle-baisées, talks about patriarchy and feminism today through a critique of the language of identity and queer politics being pushed by the left within France. Delving into the politics of medicine and the divide between how men and women are offere unequal access to medicine, Moutot chronicles how men who claim to be women will readily receive medical interventions while women suffering from conditions like endometriosis were only covered by the state one month ago with many other conditions falling outside state funding. Moutot also covers her views on the gender identity movement, political lesbianism, and how non-western cultures approach death while offering a window into how to understand the popular media messages and literature regarding women and feminism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah Haider, a Pakistani-American writer, public speaker, and political activist, discusses religious dissent and her exit from Islam while elaborating how girls’ and women’s rights under Islam are negatively effected. Noting the patterns and political effects of religion in the Arabo-Islamic world, Haider critiques how the left has consistently moved to any eschew criticism of this religion by pretending that any critique is necessarily a generalisation or a result of colonialism. Haider maintains that with such rationale, nothing would be analysable since scrutiny depends upon noticing patterns and specific paradigms. Discussing the parallels between the repression of women’s freedom in the Muslim world and women in west who are today hounded for pushing back on gender identity, Haider examines how women’s rights around the topic of material reality are being restricted in the west through the “derangement” and enforcement of gender ideology that “has the potential to undo some of the gains of feminists in the west.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jenni Swayne, a former teacher, discusses her work as a women’s rights activist her recent arrest for stickering in Newport, Gwent (Wales). Elaborating how the police arrested her on suspicion of having committed a “hate crime” (a public order offence) after which time she was held in a cell for ten hours, Swayne details the treatment by the police to in include the police interrogation and the limitations put upon her until the bail is over in in a month’s time when she will learn if she will be charged, cautioned or if the case will be dropped entirely. One of the stickers she posted reads: “No child is born in the wrong body: Humans never change sex.” Another found by the police who searched her house removing several sheets of stickers reads: “3+ women killed by men each week: Domestic violence kills.” As Harry Miller puts it, Swayne is being put through a system where “the process becomes the punishment.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, discusses her latest book, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy (2021) outlining how long before “fake news” became the calling card of the right, Americans had already lost faith in their news media. Noting how during the 20th century journalists used to live among the working class, Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism has undergone a status revolution over the twentieth century—from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession today firmly cemented within the well-rewarded and often high-profile knowledge-industry labour sector. Covering the conterminous to the rise of the Internet, the implosion of local news, and the nationalisation of America’s elite news media, Ungar-Sargon notes how journalists became both affluent and ideological which contributed to their ability to de-platform working class voices through the employment of obscure academic language and identity politics. She highlights how the working class has been rendered untouchable while the pressures of the digital media landscape align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades of wokery while the poor flounder under the goals of neoliberalism and meritocracy. Vituperating against the moral panic around racism, Ungar-Sargon elaborates how neoliberal media covers up the economic interests of the elite with a “patina of social justice” while abandoning the American descendants of slaves. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

John McWhorter, associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University discusses his latest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021). Examining how “anti-racism” has become a religion in all but name that treats black Americans as simpletons despite being billed as “anti-racist,” McWhorter states that “what started out as a socio-political orientation has become a foundation of people’s identity…and something of an obsession,” pointing out that this religion demands that the masses suspend logic while it also pushes a narrative of moral purity. McWhorter notes that this religion commands the subject to pretend that nothing has changed all that much for black Americans, something McWhorter deems “anti-empirical” noting that today “it’s racially progressive to pretend that no real progress ever happens” which is anathema to reality. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe