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This could shape to be peak toxoplasma. A lot of things are still unknown so my thoughts are pure speculation.
The police seemed to have actually acted adequately. It was not Uvalde - so the only thing resembling a good thing in the situation.
This is the first mass school shooting by a woman that I know. Probably the first mass shooting I hear at all committed by a woman.
The police released the race and age of the shooter, but not name or picture. There was a macabre joke that if the picture is not shown - the shooter is black. She is unidentified so far - which decreases slightly the chances the shooter was far right.
Two AR-15 and a handgun ... probably a loadout a bit high unless you are Caleb. (if you get the Blood reference - sorry buddy - you are officially in the risk cohort for covid by age)
Low body count - unexperienced shooter.
So I have the suspicion that either the shooter is trans or someone radicalized over Roe v Wade overturn. Also some last minute news outlets started saying female instead of woman. So I guess trans. Anyway CW-wise - will be toxic as hell.
Edit: NBCNews and NYPOST openly call it transgender woman. Not clear if MtF or FtM. And there seems to be manifesto.
The revealed preference here is glaring.
People aren’t using the preferred pronouns if a child killer, because they don’t care about the preferences of a child killer.
But what that reveals as that even among the most woke, there are no true gender ideology believers. They still know that what they’re doing is a courtesy, not a reflection of reality.
And when they don’t like the person, the courtesy is dropped and the reality is revealed.
Speaking of woke people and their revealed preferences, perhaps the worst take came from David Pakman, who took the opportunity to make fun of the dead children being dead, suggesting it was because they didn’t pray hard enough:
https://twitter.com/dpakman/status/1640666981593382913He deleted the tweet, but it is archived: https://archive.ph/6Tp4c
When people had the nerve to respond negatively to this, he of course pointed out to them that requesting he not dance on the graves of dead children is anti semitic.
I think the media started out unsure about the facts. Take all the confusion seen in this thread, then multiply it by playing a game of telephone.
Repeat until some editor gestures at a deadline and the author copies whatever the BBC picked.
Edit: if this is the case, I’d expect to see those sites stealth-updating to use preferred pronouns. If they keep articles unchanged, that’s evidence for your reading.
Personally, I’ve been trying to dodge the issue by saying “shooter” or occasionally “loser.” For some reason, mass media hasn’t picked that up.
I google "Nashville shooting" and I get
washingtonpost.com: "Video shows Nashville police confront school shooter""
cbsnews.com: "A shooter opened fire at a private Christian grade school in Nashville Monday, killing three children and three adults, officials said. The shooter was fatally shot by..."
abcnews.go.com: "A shooter armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun killed three...."
There's also reuters.com who refers to the shooter as "a heavily armed 28-year-old"
I don't think the media is failing to think of of ways to refer to the shooter without referencing their gender.
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I for one believe the shooter should not be misgendered. Misgendering is disrespectful to all trans people. I guess I am a true believer.
There was a Reddit thread, a few months ago maybe, discussing a crime committed by a trans person. It was a murder or something similarly universally condemned. Some of the commenters were misgendering the perpetrator, others were criticizing the misgenderers.
One of the arguments brought up by the latter group was that you wouldn't call a Black person a "nigger", even if they have committed a vile crime. Using the word "nigger" is offensive to all Black people. It implies that being Black is bad in and of itself. Likewise with misgendering.
This is, of course, addressed to those who believe that misgendering trans people is not otherwise acceptable. Whether it is acceptable to misgender trans people in general, whether trans people really are their identified gender, etc., is a separate discussion.
Nope. Actual trans people are already pushing it, when they demand that the entire society changes their language for their sake. I can see an argument for why good manners demand accommodating people acting in good faith, but criminals have no right to such accommodations. Let alone child murderers, or rapists.
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If someone shoots up a school, there's a non-zero chance I'm gonna call them a bad name because I disapprove of their actions. I really don't think it matters if kids are dead and someone gets misgendered or called a "nigger."
NB I don't think it matters in any case, because I was raised that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.' But I especially don't care about their feelings if they shot up a school
This is not about the shooter's feelings. Calling a Black criminal "nigger" is offensive to all Black people because it denigrates the Black criminal for being Black, not for being a criminal. Likewise, misgendering a transgender criminal is offensive to all trans people because it denigrates the trans criminal for being trans, not for being a criminal.
Not really. "Nigger" refers to a subset of black people. If you disagree, it's because you have no idea how people use that word in the real world.
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I don't see how this analogy works. The 1st part seems right to me; calling a black person "nigger" in a derogatory way necessarily implies something negative about all black people, due to the history and connotations of that word. But misgendering a trans person doesn't denigrate all trans people; it just says that you don't consider that specific trans person as belonging to the gender they're claiming to. This doesn't denigrate them for being trans; at worst, it says that respecting their identified gender is conditional on that person not being a criminal. Which means not submitting to the "self-ID is definitionally correct" standard, but that's not denigrating the criminal for being trans.
I'm confused by your argument. A person's gender identity is orthogonal to their criminality. I agree that there are some people who are being knowingly deceitful when they claim to be trans but they aren't, and I don't really feel bad about someone "misgendering" or "deadnaming" Karen White, who is obviously a bad actor exploiting a poorly-designed policy.
But I don't understand the argument "I thought you were a legitimate trans person, but then you committed a crime, which proves that you were malingering all along!" The two things don't have anything to do with one another. "Legitimate" trans people (i.e. people diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a qualified mental health professional, and receiving medical treatment for that condition) commit crimes all the time. Committing a crime isn't a rule-out diagnostic criterion for gender dysphoria.
Maybe Audrey/Aiden Hale was suffering from gender dysphoria, maybe they weren't. If they were, the fact that they committed a horrific school shooting doesn't change that. If they weren't, likewise. It's just a completely irrelevant fact, like what colour shoes they were wearing at the time. Committing a crime doesn't stop a person from being authentically trans - this almost strikes me as a no true Scotsthey argument.
That's not the argument, though. Charitably, the argument would be more like, "My choice to respect your preferred pronouns as a trans person is contingent on you not committing a crime (implied: of certain severity)." And that's also not my argument, and I don't subscribe to it myself. My argument is that somebody who does subscribe to that argument is not denigrating all trans people by subscribing to and living out such an argument, certainly not in a way similar to denigrating all black people by calling a particular black person "nigger."
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The problem is, "not submitting to the 'self-ID is definitionally correct' standard" necessarily implies that some fraction of the time, self-ID may be overcome by an outside judgment, and this fatally undermines the activist position that self-ID is definitive. Admitting the existence of bad actors casts a shadow over every trans person's self-assessment of his own identity as the exclusive and inviolate basis of her social persona.
Right, so it's offensive to a certain subset (admittedly a very large and mainstream subset) of trans activists. And such trans activists are not shy about trying to conflate their own opinions with that of trans people in general. But such conflation has no real basis, and offending those activists doesn't imply offending trans people in general.
It's not merely the dominant position among alternatives; it won. There used to be a debate, but alternative positions like "trans identity is based on gender dysphoria" are no longer positions that you may hold publicly in the trans activist space.
Certainly true, and further, trans activists are frequently "allies," rather than trans themselves.
The first part is not true. The basis of the conflation is that the activists are the public face of the community--whether or not they are even members!--and get to define the community, including socially policing dissenters. "Offending trans people in general" simply does not matter; it's the opinions of the activists that carry social consequences for those who challenge self-ID uber alles.
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Causing offense does not cause me any alarm compared to causing death. In fact, some level of offense is inevitable in a world where people only have control over their own feelings, no?
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Understanding this is a necessary prerequisite to understanding firmamenti's revealed preferences argument isn't it?
Misgendering an alleged trans person is not the same as calling a black person "nigger". It's more like saying "if you do X, you ain't black". Calling an alleged trans person "tranny" or "troon" would be an appropriate analogy.
I find that progressives do deny that people they dislike belong yo the protected group, but they will almost never use protected group slurs.
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Here's a screenshot, he deleted the tweet, citing anti-Semitism and threats. Then he deleted the tweet with the complaint of anti-Semitism.
To be fair, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the replies. Even the Taliban PR twitter account (?) joined in.
Pakman could have said something edgy with more plausible deniability like "Sending thoughts and prayers", still in bad taste but could have been said to be a social critique. But "given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events" is just a WTF. You can say that sending condolences doesn't solve an underlying problem, but it is certainly not "often" that a lack of prayer is blamed. He let the mask slip.
This is an old complaint about Twitter. Conservatives get banned, but ISIS and pedophiles get active accounts with no action taken against them.
I don't think the Taliban were exempt from bans in the pre-Musk era. There was a fairly popular account that sprung up in 2021 right after the pullout that was supposedly them, but it got nuked after about a month. By now most, though not all, of the conservative accounts banned under the old regime have been let back on. I think Signals is expressing uncertainty whether the Taliban PR account is genuinely them. I'm leaning towards thinking it's real due to the post informing people that Lord Miles is missing. But it's hard to tell anything these days honestly.
I'm confused by that. If they are taliban, looks like lord miles would be fine. So what would've caused his issues. I suppose just like before, inside Kabul and outside it are two different worlds, security-wise
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In case you're still in doubt, the Taliban PR account is satirical.
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This is a rare case of me sympathizing with the media because it seems like a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they put up a fight and try to affirm their gender, they get made fun of for caring so much about the gender identity of a mass-murderer. If they decide not to do so, they get called out (by the same side) for their beliefs being conditional.
That's like saying that it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't, if you commit a bank robbery and have to choose between assaulting the officers or surrendering, each of which is bad. Sure, but that's because you robbed a bank to begin with.
This is only a dilemma for the media because of their previous policy about gender pronouns. Either don't follow the policy (showing that they're not sincere) or do follow the policy (showing how absurd it is). If they didn't have such a policy in the first place, they wouldn't have faced the "dilemma" of choosing between an absurd policy and hypocrisy.
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They willingly waded into the no-win scenario that I'm sure many people warned them of. Sympathy seems unnecessary.
What, by doing their job?
I guarantee not covering the story would meet backlash, too. And rightly so.
You know full well I'm talking about media outlets twisting themselves in knots over how to gender a mass shooter - or in many cases trying to dodge it altogether by just not mentioning it.
You only find yourself in this bind if you've swallowed trans activists' prescriptions, but now find yourself having trouble fully digesting them.
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How did the media wade into it willingly, though?
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True enough. Plenty of ways this could have been avoided.
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Ah man, that's a trip down memory lane. Funnily enough with the GamerGate thead down below, I first discovered him because of his willingness to actually materially engage in the controversy. He had the usual biases, but at least he wasn't running and hiding from the object level reality of it.
Some time later I saw him on Joe Rogan, and it appeared TDS had completely broken his brain. He was making statements about Biden looking to be in better mental and physical health than Trump. Because of that single time Trump walked slowly down a ramp.
Somehow I'm not shocked he followed that trajectory to where we find ourselves today.
Wow I had almost the exact same experience with him. I saw him first interviewing Brianna Wu, and appreciated his willingness to be intellectually honest towards her.
But this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg. Where he suggests that Trump might be illiterate, and not as a statement about his intelligence, but the claim was that Trump is actually incapable of reading simple statements, made me scratch my head.
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It's a little bit more interesting than that. Some preferences are respected, some aren't.
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