Savage Minds

Katherine Deves, an Australian lawyer who ran as a Liberal candidate for the seat of Warringah in the 2022 Australian federal election, discsusses how her campaign was in part derailed by her views on gender identity. Framing this ideology as a religon where the god is the “curated identity” of the self, Deves like the gender identity cult to “Revenge of the Losers” where people who never had friends at school “have accumulated social capital online” to command public opinion. Accounting for the civil and criminal sanctions in Australia imopsed upon those who do not go along with gender identity, Deves elaborates how “transgender vilification” has been incorporated within the anti-discrimination law in New South Wales where “vilify” can simply be ideological disagreement and where, as Deves notes, even if the accused can sucessfully defend herself from this criminal chargs through the public interest exemption, “the process is the punishment.” Deves also covers how “gender identity” is a protected characteristic at the federal level noting how with recent proposed laws in the state of Victoria, that were anyone not to affirm someone’s “gender identity,” they could potentially be charged with crime. Deves goes on to analyse how this ideology is “so impoverished” that it has affected our cultures where from this movement no art or music is produced, where there is “no singing, no community…no joy.” Deves describes how this ideology has created a socio-political environment of nervousness where the current reality is “merciless, heartless and brutal,” as she exposes how many people irrationally go along with this ideology depsite having no idea what they are conceding until the moment they find themselves “up against it.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Biggs, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, discusses his foray into gender criticism from his graduate studies in the United States to being told by students to “get educated.” Bigg reports: “I did educate myself but I came away with the ‘wrong’ views.” Sharing his thoughts on the origins of gender ideology, Biggs examines inert facets within feminism where some feminists have maintained that there are no differences between men and women, a posture which inevitably led to the likes of Judith Butler being able to step into this discourse and to further disassociated gender from sex. Covering the history of transsexualism from the 1950s through the 1990s, Biggs considers how this era was a fundamentally male phenomenon with 90% of transsexuals being men and their clinicians were also invariably male (eg. John Money, Harry Benjamin). Conversely, Biggs apprehends an interesting shift from the beginning of this century where not only the majority of those claiming a trans identity have been women, but he observes that it is mostly females (eg. Judith Butler, Stephen Whittle, Ruth Hunt, Nancy Kelly, Polly Carmichael) driving this movement to include the incredible push for institutional and political capture. Biggs also elucidates how the transgender movement of today has nothing to do with the transsexual phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. Detailing how the scientific hokum within the literature of gender identity has been successful in elaborating what he calls “idea laundering,” Biggs expounds upon the mechanism whereby articles advancing bad ideas with poor research behind them are incredibly difficult to discredit while, even if one succeds in publishing a critique of a flawed study, the refutation, in all likeihood, will result in the flawed study being cited even more.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, discusses two of his articles on the gender debate—“The ‘T’ Piggybacking on the ‘LGB’” and “Transgender Confusions”—covering the policies around public policy, law, and Supreme Court rulings. Beginning with issues such as “bathroom bill” and prisons, Sapir criticises the central tenet of this movement: no debate. Claiming that we are in the throes of a “public mania,” Sapir goes through many of the contradictions within the trans movement’s arguments such as the claim that the only proper determinant of being a man or a woman is gender, not sex. Noting how the gender movement makes an exception within sports as, at the very least, acknolwdging sex as a reality, Sapir explains how this lobby has no other choice given that the political implications of denying sex would do away with women’s sports entirely. He also demonstrates how this “oppressed minority” has gained pervasive institutional capture within a decade and is anything but “oppressed” as he elaborates the American debate through the gender lobby’s inability to answer basic philosophical and scientific questions. Sapir explores how this movement has managed to build so much momentum “without actually having a coherent philosophical understanding of the human person or without having good scientific evidence for the transitioning of children.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Norman Finkelstein discusses his forthcoming book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom (2022, Sublation Media) and the current dilemma within academia today of identity politics. Covering historical examples of people who have been punished by authority for their beliefs, Finkelstein contextualises cancel culture from McCarthyism where ruling elites on the right attempted to silence critics of US domestic policy by deradicalising the US labour movement by ridding it of Communists in addition to the suppression of domestic dissent against US global hegemony which ultimately led to massive and brutal repressions internationally. Finkelstein outlines how the current brand of cancel culture on the left is not state-driven and somewhat milder in its form than in the 1950s, noting how the Democratic Party substituted identity politics for its working-class base. He asserts that identity politics and cancel culture form the party’s reigning ideology which he characterises as a “menace.” Finkelstein elaborates his thoughts on transgender rights observing that “there is a large element of…self-indulgence by people who have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of money in their bank accounts” maintaining that this ideology is more current in elite institutions and graduate schools than at universities frequented by working-class students. He posits that identity politics are elite concerns of the 1% where pronouns—what he frames as “self-absorbed word games”—have captured headlines in the media all invented by “Martha’s Vineyard culture” that is entirely disconnected from “the real lives of real people in the real world.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani discusses her latest book Divining Chaos: The Autobiography of an Idea (New Village Press, 2022) outlining her political and artistic coming of age in the 1960s in downtown New York, her development as a feminist, and her evolution into an ecoartist who employs a multi-disciplinary approach to take on the current ecological crises. Having worked at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, Rahmani explains the differences between ecoart and land art stating, “Where land artists such as Robert Smithson were using sculptural techniques to stamp their own philosophical comments on the Earth, as my father had, ecoartists are driven by the sense that the Earth desperately requires healing much more than stamping.” Rahmani elaborates how it is imperative that we understand the entire spectrum of change within the natural world without interrupting these spaces as she delves into what she calls “trigger point theory,” a pro-active relationship to change based in the physics of the natural world. Incorporating the diverse disciplines of art, music, law and science, Rahmani views the siloisation of disciplines as part of the problem leading is leading to ecosuicide. Instead, she engages the ecosystem through a trans-disciplinary paradigm whereby knowledge from various fields is brought together in order to address the ecological problems of our day. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Douglas Kellner, Distinguished Research Professor of Education at UCLA and an early theorist in the field of media literacy, discusses the current state of media today and the need for consumers of news media to think critically and to question everything they intake. Critiquing major media’s non-stop coverage of the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in recent weeks, Kellner analyses media's capitalist project where objective reporting of current events is rare because entertainment ultimately sells. Giving a brief history of television and cable news along with his consumption of print news from his time as a paperboy, Kellner elaborates how the age of the internet fails to offer the paradigm shift that many progressives hoped it would thirty years ago. He observes how corporate media dominates political and social discourse while raking in large sums by leaping from one spectacle to the next within strict partisan lines. From stories of “extreme weather,” the OJ Simpson trial, wars, sex scandals, Donald Trump, celebrity gossip, and the British monarchy, Kellner notes how media proliferates within the ethos of what Guy Debord called the “society of spectacle.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Fred Sargeant, a 74-year-old disabled French-American gay rights activist, veteran of the 1969 Stonewall riots, and a co-founder and organizer of the first Gay Pride march, discusses having been attacked at a recent Pride event in Burlington, Vermont. Tracing his involvement within the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, Sargeant criticises the transgender movement’s wholesale capture of the lesbian and gay rights movement whereby today it is assumed that gay men and women “owe trans people the event that we created,” likening this hijacking to a bad marriage where he believes the only solution to this conflict is for lesbians and gay men to separate themselves from the QT. Sargeant notes how local gay and lesbian organisations and media have ignored the attack on him, noting the many death threats and acts of violence committed by the transgender community whenever anyone denounces the fetishism, homophobia, misogyny, and abuse rife within this community. Sargeant observes how violence is being used to force the public to accept a fiction, “We are being asked to exalt their personality in very weird ways,” citing JK Rowling who recently spoke out about the attack on him: “Violence is not a bug, but a feature of this authoritarian movement.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jim Fouratt, former actor, gay rights activist, and one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front which was formed on the third night of the Stonewall Riots (also called the Stonewall Uprising), discusses what happened on 28 June 1969, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street. Speakng to the many fictions that have circulated in recent years, perpetuated largely by the transgender lobby, Fouratt historicises the era as well as the class and race issues prevalent in the late 1960s within New York City’s gay and lesbian community. Fouratt details how what he calls the Stonewall Rebellion was most definitely not a political protest that involved the sic “transgender community,” noting that Marsha P. Johnson was not even present and that drag queens barely figured into the venue of the Stoewall Inn much less the rebellion. Describing the political, policing, and social milieu at the time, Fouratt delves into how and why Stonewall took place, elaborating the social dynamics of various generations within gay culture as he vituperates the rewriting of gay and lesbian history by the transgender lobby that attempts to whitewash and erase gay men and lesbians from their own movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Monica Smit, founder of activist group Reignite Democracy Australia which opposes the Victorian government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, discusses her 2021 arrest, detention and the charges brought against her of incitement for urging people to attend anti-lockdown protests. Having spent twenty-two days in solitary confinement for refusing to sign the draconian bail conditions—extreme conditions which have since been appealed and revoked—Smit, recently recognised as Australia's first political prisoner, still faces criminal charges for her human rights activism. Here she elaborates the political machinery within Australia today that refuses to come clean on “the science” that many politicians fabricated to justify what she deems to have been unecessary lockdowns and draconian police actions taken against peaceful protests. Working with internationally respected experts and organisations to form a new global platform, Reignite World Freedom, Smit clarifies her endeavour to educate the public around the planet as to how they too can pushback against the globalist agenda in a post-Covid-19 world where the left has utterly failed to take up the mantle of defending human rights leaving the political right, as she views it, to undertake this task. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, discusses current public health measures and how the COVID-19 pandemic, now an endemic, has been handled—from the misguided WHO recommendations, to national policy responses, to lockdowns, and vaccine mandates. Bhattacharya analyses how the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 was politically framed and wrongly assumed by some to be capable of stopping virus transmission noting how countries like Israel had vast case outbreaks even with high vaccination rates. Bhattacharya details how vaccine discrimination grew out of wrong-minded public health policies based on vaccine falsehoods within the US where officials ignored the fact that those who had already recovered from having contracted COVID-19 had pretty good protection against getting sick again, stating: “Essentially they introduced…legalised discrimination against the unvaxed on the basis of a scientific falsehood: the idea that the vaccine could stop transmission.” Observing how the lockdowns were a complete failure in stopping the spread of the virus while there were viable alternatives for protecting the elderly, Bhattacharya vituperates how the lives of the poor, the vulnerable, and the working class worldwide were devastated. He cites a UN report from 2021 that documents how 230,000 children died as a result of the economic dislocation caused by lockdown in South Asia—starvation effectively—something he maintains was utterly predictable. Criticising “policy contagion” on the world stage and the conflicts of interest presented by Anthony Fauci’s roles in virus mitigation and in funding high-profile immunologists and virologists like Jeremy Farrar who are involved in setting COVID policy, Bhattacharya maintains that there is a conflict of interest between those who fund the science and those on the receving end of this funding who set public health policy given that these scientists will be afraid to speak up. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe