Category: Questions
Dear White Women
This has great CC for the hearing impaired. Hugs
Let’s talk about why conservatives are mad at Fox….
LOCAL NEWS
Gov. Newsom fines Temecula Valley school board $1.5 for rejecting new curriculum
This about bigotry and erasing LGBTQ+ people from history. These same people refusing to teach kids about an openly gay political claiming he was a pedophile, insinuating he was abusing little children. He was said to be in relationships with a couple of older teens who were well over the age of consent. In NY at the time the age of consent was 14. But these same bigot haters have no trouble promoting the teaching of republican politicians who have been charged and found guilty of child sex abuse. Also there is a double standard. No one refers to Elvis as a pedophile or pederast. Priscilla Beaulieu was only 14 years old when she met 24-year-old Elvis Presley. At the age of 40, Elvis dated Reeca Smith, then 15 years of age. There are scores of examples of male celebrities and their 16-year-old girlfriends. This is just an excuse to prevent children from learning that gay people exist and are leaders in government. These haters want to wipe out any mention of gay or trans people from history and society. Plus these bigots refused to use the new textbooks with Milk in them even after the parents overwhelming told them to do so. Quotes below. Hugs
The repeated decisions by board members have drawn the ire of many Temecula parents, who have taken to city streets to protest the decision. They’re upset by the board’s conscious disregard of public opinion in which 98.8% of TVUSD parents voted to support the adoption of the new curriculum, according to data from the Governor’s office.
“Once again, it is clear that you are a homophobe,” the woman said while speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced that the state would be fining the Temecula Valley Unified School District in an ongoing battle over a social studies curriculum that involves gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
On Tuesday, the TVUSD board voted against the new curriculum, which has been endorsed by the state, adding to what has been a tumultuous span of weeks in which the governor and district have been trading jabs.
A 3-2 vote saw the board again reject the material solely based on the mention of Milk, a gay rights figure who paved the way for LGBTQ+ members today, becoming the first openly gay man elected into office in California. Board members and a group of parents are upset over allegations that Milk was a pedophile and had a relationship with a teenager while he was in his 30s.
As a result, Gov. Newsom imposed a $1.5 million fine for the district, in what he calls a “willful violation of the law.” He also plans on providing the new textbooks to TVUSD students prior to the start of the new school year, which begins on Aug. 14, along with the estimated $1.6 million price tag to acquire the textbooks.
“The three political activists on the school board have yet again proven they are more interested in breaking the law than doing their jobs of educating students — so the state will do their job for them,” Newsom said in a statement. “California will ensure students in Temecula begin the school year with access to materials reviewed by parents and recommended by teachers across the district. After we deliver the textbooks into the hands of students and their parents, the state will deliver the bill — along with a $1.5 million fine — to the school board for its decision to willfully violate the law, subvert the will of parents, and force children to use an out-of-print textbook from 17 years ago.”
The repeated decisions by board members have drawn the ire of many Temecula parents, who have taken to city streets to protest the decision. They’re upset by the board’s conscious disregard of public opinion in which 98.8% of TVUSD parents voted to support the adoption of the new curriculum, according to data from the Governor’s office.
“They embrace the fact that Governor Newsom is getting involved because it’s almost like that’s their goal,” said Aaron Cook, a TVUSD parent. “Rather than doing what’s best for the students.”
On top of that, their current textbooks are dated and don’t contain an accurate representation of the state’s history, preventing children from receiving a thorough education.
“This is not a religious school district,” said another TVUSD student. “It’s a public school district that has to abide by California Public Education Code.”
Related: Temecula Valley Unified School District fires superintendent
In what was yet another emotionally charged meeting on Tuesday, a video shows one woman being escorted out of the room after confronting board members.
“Once again, it is clear that you are a homophobe,” the woman said while speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Other members voiced their full support for the efforts of the board members.
“I can tell you know that you have more support than you’ll ever know,” said one man, whose comment was met by cheers from others in the crowd.
Upon request for comment, TVUSD issued a statement on behalf of Board President Komrosky, which said:
“I speak personally here and not on behalf of the entire TVUSD Board when I say, the Temecula Valley Unified School District is not done with its work on curriculum for the 2023-2024 school year. We continue to engage our parents and work diligently towards finding the right solution for our community, and every day we make progress towards that goal. We still have the time to continue this critical process and meet all state and federal mandates before the next school year begins. Throughout this process, we have put a high value on Board priorities such as curriculum & instruction as well as family & community. One such policy priority of the Board is that “Our families and community members will feel connected, informed, and welcome to participate as true partners in the education of our students.” We take that policy seriously and intend for those words to have actual meaning. Additionally, parental feedback is critical in collaborating with our educators, and executive staff to find agreement on what standards will best achieve educational excellence.
A critical component of that exercise is to determine the subject matter’s age appropriateness for any curriculum and the specific grade level at hand. While engaged in this process, I am confident that while reviewing any curriculum for use in this District, TVUSD will select the best material that emphasizes our mission of, “High-Quality Teaching and Learning for All”, but that also avoids any teacher-to-student conversations related to sex and sexual activity at the elementary school level. These conversations are better left to the parents and their children.
Despite our continuing work and commitment to core values, Governor Newsom has taken unilateral action to intervene in the middle of our work without even contacting the school district first to understand what the school district may be further doing to meet all of the curriculum needs of our students. What he calls inaction we see as responsible considerations for all of our community’s viewpoints as we come to a final decision and with time left to do so. To that end, I will be calling a Special Meeting of the Board for July 21, 2023, to consider a culmination of our work on this issue and the potential adoption of curriculum that meets all state and federal mandates. We do not appreciate Governor Newsom’s effort to usurp local control and all that will apparently result from these tactics is a waste of the taxpayers’ money. We sincerely hope he has a 14-day return policy with the publisher of the books he just purchased.”
The debacle began back in June when board members first voted 3-2 in favor of rejecting the new social studies book. Prior to the vote, TVUSD Board President Dr. Joseph Komrosky, commented on the allegations against Milk.
“My question is, why even mention a pedophile?” he said at the highly contentious meeting.
In the time since, Newsom has directed public comments towards the school board, referring to Komrosky as “an ignorant person.”
Komrosky responded to the governor, in a rhetorically-charged statement of his own.
“I assure you that I am anything but ignorant regarding what you said. Governor, you said it right when you said this isn’t Texas or Florida as we could be so much better than these states if we had better leadership than the top levels of government…,” Komrosky said.
This is the latest instance of the California governor’s attempts at preventing book banning, both in the Golden State and nationally, after interjecting himself into ongoing debates in Republican-controlled states like Texas and Florida.
The mention of LGBTQ+ material has been highly-divisive in school districts across the United States, with several notable instances taking place in Southern California in recent months.
In Glendale, activists and protestors clashed at a school board meeting, with several fights breaking out between both sides as board members discussed Pride month.
Similarly in North Hollywood, protestors scuffled with activists at Saticoy Elementary School where a scheduled Pride assembly was met with outrage from some parents. Weeks earlier, a burnt Pride flag was found on campus outside of a classroom where it was being displayed.
Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/
I recently posted a video on how a lot of things go into determining a person’s sex. A human’s sex is created using different ingredients, and everyone has different amounts of those ingredients. I realized I should present a non-video presentation also. I went looking for graphs or charts to explain what the video said, when I found this great article in Scientific American. It has the graphs and charts, but more importantly it addresses the issue of males have external sexual organs and females have internal ones. Here is a quote from the article. Biological sex, on the other hand, appears to leave less room for debate. You either have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y; ovaries or testes; a vagina or a penis. Regardless of how an individual ends up identifying, they are assigned to one sex or the other at birth based on these binary sets of characteristics. But of course, sex is not that simple either. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play.
The article is informative and pretty easy to read. Hugs
Infographic reveals the startling complexity of sex determination
By Amanda Montañez on August 29, 2017
Sex and gender pervade nearly every aspect of our lives. Each time we use a public restroom, shop for clothes, or fill out a form, we are insistently reminded that we must be either male or female; men or women; boys or girls. Even things that ostensibly have nothing to do with sex or gender—what we eat, for example, or the books we read—are often sold to us as if they are necessarily feminine or masculine.
Some of these conventions currently face challenges, some more polarizing than others. On the milder end of things, enterprising online retailers promote gender-neutral clothing for babies, and city transport authorities mercifully abolish the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” from public announcements. And on the other side of the controversy scale, U.S. state legislators debate so-called “bathroom bills,” which would prohibit transgender individuals from using public restrooms corresponding to their gender identity. This dispute has prompted some venues to offer a gender-neutral restroom option, or simply to do away with gender distinctions altogether in their facilities.
Much of the public discourse in this arena centers on gender rather than sex, presumably because gender is understood to be somewhat subjective; it is a social construct that can be complex, fluid, multifaceted. Biological sex, on the other hand, appears to leave less room for debate. You either have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y; ovaries or testes; a vagina or a penis. Regardless of how an individual ends up identifying, they are assigned to one sex or the other at birth based on these binary sets of characteristics.
But of course, sex is not that simple either.
The September issue of Scientific American explores the fascinating and evolving science of sex and gender. One of the graphics I had the pleasure of working on breaks down the idea of biological sex as a non-binary attribute, focusing largely on what clinicians refer to as disorders of sex development (DSD), also known as intersex.
The project was originally conceived as a data-driven graphic exploring the spectra of sex and gender. I wondered, for instance, what data could tell us about the frequency of transgender and non-binary identities, what proportion of the population is intersex, and how that value might break down into rates of specific DSDs.
I hired the researcher Amanda Hobbs to look into these questions, and what she came back with, rather than answers, looked more like a series of new questions. The search for solid data on transgender and intersex populations proved challenging, and was confounded by a variety of factors. For example, surveys often lump transgender in with gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities. And DSDs, in addition to being variously defined by different entities, sometimes go undetected or emerge unexpectedly, either during sexual development or later in life.
The project abruptly transformed into an exercise in visualizing complexity. First, it seemed imperative to define a few terms. Sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another (although they are often related), and each exists on its own spectrum. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play. The density of science underlying this phenomenon compelled a shift towards intersex as the primary focus of the visualization.
Now that my task was clear, I set about assembling the content of the graphic and putting it down on paper. In part, this process clarified how much I could include, as the complete list of known DSDs and their various manifestations proved unwieldy for a single spread in a print magazine. I ended up with a visual outline of sorts depicting a diverse selection of conditions and their convoluted pathways of development over time. Although not an especially pretty sketch, it captured the sense of intricacy the topic demanded.
Credit: Amanda Montañez
Next I consulted with Dr. Amy Winsiewski, a DSD specialist at the University of Oklahoma, who was kind enough to review the content of my sketch for accuracy. And finally, I called upon the visualization experts at Pitch Interactive to help bring the project to life.
Credit: Pitch Interactive
Once the aesthetic of the graphic had been established, I continued to refine both the text and design elements, guided by feedback from my colleagues who helped identify areas that were unclear or difficult to follow.
Credit: Pitch Interactive and Amanda Montañez
Credit: Pitch Interactive and Amanda Montañez
The resulting visualization is a source of pride for me, as I hope it is for everyone who contributed to its development. (You can see a larger version here in the September digital issue.) Design and visual communication feats aside, I believe the content itself is of critical importance from a social and policy perspective.
DSDs—which, broadly defined, may affect about one percent of the population—represent a robust, evidence-based argument to reject rigid assignations of sex and gender. Certain recent developments, such as the Swedish adoption of a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and the growing call to stop medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies, indicate a shift in the right direction. I am hopeful that raising public awareness of intersex, along with transgender and non-binary identities, will help align policies more closely with scientific reality, and by extension, social justice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Amanda Montañez is an associate graphics editor at Scientific American. Follow her on Twitter @unamandita
Recent Articles by Amanda Montañez
The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | Karissa Sanbonmatsu
Again a biologist destroys the idea that gender is binary, male / female. Really just as science moved on from the ideas of 2,500 years ago of biblical writers that couldn’t understand the solar system or have an idea of germ theory, it has moved on from the 1950s stereotypical two genders model of male / female only model popular in the 1950s, where men were automatically at the top of the chart. Science from a scientist destroys tradition. Female / male brains develop differently in the womb. Well it was never this way before or hey tradition was this all my life so it should still be. It is not just feelings, it is based in science facts. Hugs
Matt Walsh is WRONG about sex | The Biological Sex Constellation
This is for those who have tried to say that gametes are the total determination of sex. That is wrong and has been wrong for some time. Again gains in scientific medical studies shows sex is not binary. Medical understanding has evolved, knowledge has moved on from the textbooks of the 1950s. I wish some people could. What an incredible video. At the very end in a small few second clips he explains about his finger nails. Hugs
chapters
00:00 – introduction
02:50 – building a visual model of biological sex
12:20 – sex isn’t binary
15:55 – what is a female?
21:19 – charting intersex people on the sex settings graphic
25:20 – 45,X/46,XY mosaicism
29:35 – conclusion
Queer Folks in the UK are Being Denied Sexual Healthcare Due to Budget Cuts
A new study has exposed the startling lack of access to sexual healthcare in the UK. After testing the healthcare resources across Great Britain, the researchers nearly half of all requests for doctor’s appointments concerning sexual health were denied.
The study was conducted by Terrence Higgins Trust, a nonprofit focused on HIV and sexual health services, with support from British Association of Sexual Health and HIV. In the UK, the National Health Service is funded by the government, and the researchers wanted to examine “the state of sexual health services after a decade of austerity.”
Under the persona of a ‘mystery shopper’ called ‘Gabriela,’ the researchers contacted 57 clinics in England, Scotland, and Wales to try to book a sexual health appointment. ‘Gabriela’ was described as being in her mid-20s, having recently had unprotected sex with both men and women, and as experiencing no symptoms. The researchers chose this persona in order to test whether clinics prioritized symptomatic patients, given that asymptomatic patients are common in STIs like chlamydia.
What they found was that 49% of appointment requests in all three countries were denied. The remaining 51% did offer face-to-face appointments, but with wait times averaging 13 days (19 in rural areas).
While these appointments were successfully made by telephone, online booking proved challenging. In England, only 10% of clinics offered online booking, none in Wales, 44% in Scotland.
Only 11% of clinics offered walk-in appointments without exceptions. Postal STI testing, meanwhile, varied wildly. All clinics in Wales offered mail-in testing, but only 56% in Scotland did.
In consequence, the researchers are calling on all three countries to provide free year-round postal testing, easy access to online appointment booking, and to reduce wait times to no more than 48 hours.
“The sexual health of the nation has consistently been ignored by Central Government,” said Richard Angell, Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust. “A wake-up call is needed. If more than 1,000 new STIs being diagnosed each and every day does not incentivize policy change and renewed investment, it is hard to see what will.
“Ultimately, you get what you pay for – the lowest real terms spending on sexual health is matched by the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections.
“The Government should guarantee long-term funding settlements for sexual health services at a rate of inflation plus 1 percent so as to address years of consistent under-funding.”
Conservatives are more likely to complain in everyday service contexts due to their higher sense of entitlement
Conservative consumers are more likely than their liberal counterparts to complain across various service contexts, according to new research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. The findings provide evidence for the role of entitlement in explaining ideological differences in complaining behavior.
Previous research suggested that conservatives complain less than liberals due to their higher level of system justification motivation (SJM), which involves defending institutions and perceiving policies as fair. However, this account may not apply to service contexts where self-interested motivations are prioritized over system justification. Therefore, the researchers aimed to investigate whether conservatives would complain more than liberals due to their higher sense of entitlement.
“I have always been interested in political ideology as an area of research,” said study author Steven Shepherd, an associate professor and William S. Spears Chair in Marketing and International Business at Oklahoma State University.
“Some recent research in marketing finds that liberal consumers are more inclined to complain that conservatives, and although their theorizing makes sense, a lot of political ideology theory and research suggests that conservatives might in fact complain more than liberals. So we wanted to explore that side of things and provide a more complete account of how political ideology relates to consumer complaining.”
The researchers conducted a series of three studies to explore the relationship between political ideology and complaining behavior.
In Study 1, the researchers recruited 301 American participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The participants rated their likelihood of complaining across six scenarios (e.g., “Imagine you are getting a takeout order from a restaurant and it is taking much longer than usual for it to be ready. How likely are you to give a smaller tip because of this?”). They also completed measures of political ideology, consumer entitlement, and SJM.
Political ideology was measured using a single item, where participants indicated their position on a spectrum ranging from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” This allowed the researchers to categorize participants as either liberal or conservative based on their responses.
To measure consumer entitlement, participants responded to an 11-item scale developed by Butori (2010). The scale assessed participants’ beliefs about their deservingness of special treatment or benefits as consumers. Participants indicated their level of agreement or disagreement with statements such as “I deserve better treatment than the average customer.”
Finally, participants completed an eight-item scale to measure their level of system justification motivation. The SJM scale captured participants’ tendencies to defend and view overarching institutions, organizations, and norms as fair and just. Participants rated their agreement or disagreement with statements such as “Most of the time, the system works well and is fair.”
The results showed that political ideology, consumer entitlement, SJM, and complaining intentions were positively correlated. The researchers found that conservatives had higher consumer entitlement, which predicted increased complaining intentions. This relationship held even when controlling for demographic variables.
To further explore the findings, Study 2 focused on the influence of social comparison and the perception of deservingness. The researchers recruited 791 American participants from MTurk. They presented participants with a scenario in which they overheard another customer receiving a special discount due to their status as a student or a police officer.
The researchers predicted that conservatives would feel less entitled and show lower complaining intentions when a police officer received a discount, as conservatives tend to view the police as a fair authority. The results supported this hypothesis, revealing that conservatives showed higher entitlement in the student condition and lower entitlement in the police officer condition. Moreover, conservatives exhibited higher complaining intentions in the student condition but not in the police officer condition.
In Study 3, the researchers extended their investigation to service recoveries. They recruited 594 American participants from MTurk and presented them with a scenario where they experienced a delay in a restaurant delivery. Participants were assigned to either a control condition, where they received an apology and a standard discount, or a special treatment condition, where they were told their situation was unique and received a special discount. In line with the previous studies, conservatives showed higher complaining intentions in the control condition but not in the special treatment condition.
“We consistently found that conservative consumers expressed an increased willingness to complain about various service experiences. This was due to conservatives on average being higher in consumer entitlement; that is, feeling that they are not just ‘any other customer’ and are more deserving of special treatment and consideration than other customers.”
These results contribute to a better understanding of ideological differences in complaining behavior and highlight the role of consumer entitlement as a novel mechanism and predictor in consumer political ideology research. However, the researchers note that future research utilizing behavioral data from different sources and exploring potential moderating factors can provide further insights into the relationship between ideology and complaining behavior.
“The predicted effect was quite robust across a range of different everyday service situations. Throughout the research we didn’t find evidence to the contrary; that is, that liberals complain more than conservatives. In the paper we propose a number of contextual factors, either individually or in combination, that might play a role, and future research might be able to more precisely pin down exactly when and why conservatives vs. liberals complain more vs. less.”
The study, “On the political right, the customer is always right: Political ideology, entitlement, and complaining“, was authored by Steven Shepherd, Hesam Teymouri Athar, and Sahel Zaboli.
NYT: DeSantis Worsened Florida’s COVID Death Toll
If you remember Der DeathSantis attacked hard anyone who disagreed with his covid denial. When the vaccines were first made available the governor made sure his wealthy friends got first chance to get them, making sure distribution sites were next to or in wealthy enclaves. Then he held a sort of lottery where the pharmacy / company that gave him the largest donation would have exclusive rights to give out the vaccine. That was the Publix chain of grocery stores, which are found by and run on “Christian” principles. When state officials challenged his views of forcing companies to violate federal guidelines, he fired them and used the state legal authorities to attack and harm the whistleblowers. When the state medical community would go along with him he fired them, and hired one of the Frontline doctors that were scamming the maga by charging $90 or more for a short video medical consultation and then charged them for an Ivermectin prescription. This was led by the “semen doctor” who claimed demons were having sex with people leaving demon semen seed in them causing all sorts of illnesses. His new quack head of the Florida health department is a complete anti-vaccine covid denying fraud who is now raking in almost $600,000 when he first took the position because Der DeathSantis forced a state university to make him their president. Not a bad gig, going from scamming random maga people to making over half a million a year just to parrot and provide pseudo-science reasons for what ever the governor proclaims. Hugs
The New York Times reports:
In Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. As the governor’s political positions began to shift, so did his state’s death rate, for the worse.
Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.
Tapping into the Republican revolt against scientific authority made him a political star. But that revolt came with costs. “These were preventable deaths,” Dr. Rivkees, who resigned as Florida’s surgeon general in September 2021, said in a recent interview.
Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive. Gift link.
Scottie's Playtime 